You watching booktv on cspan at the arizona book festival. A couple more panels coming up. One on immigrants and education and finally epidemics and a couple chances for you to talk to different authors. Host professor hayes, were you able to answer your question . Guest thats probably not for me to judge, but i hope so. Host and what was the answer . Guest i think to explain the holocaust, you have to explain a number of interlocking issues. There is no single explanation. There were multiple things happening that came together in a quite special way to produce these events. So what i did is i broke down the question why into subquestions, and i had eight of them. They were not my invention, they are questions people have asked me repeatedly, questions my students brought to the class that i taught for 26 years at northwestern, and i decided this was the way to organize the book. So each chapter is a single subset question to that larger question. Host and the first chapter is why the jews. Guest why the jews. The well, the short answer is, of course, it has tradition. Its been going on for a long time. The attack on the jews is rooted in religious rivalry between christianity and judaism. Jews were regarded as a heresy, christians regarded it as an improvement on their tradition. This produced hundreds of years of rivalry, and christians defended themselves against the possibility that judaism would poison their people, by confining them to trades, certain areas to live and so on. Thats the origin to. In the modern world, hostility to jews mutated. Voltaire attacked them for being simply backward, attached to old customs and rituals. Later in the 19th century, the attacks became that they were corrosive in some way of society, that they were, their emancipation had meant that that is their freedom from all of these restrictions that christianity had imposed had meant they had opportunities, and these opportunitieses allowed them to oppress christians and, therefore, came the argument of modern antisemitism which was a word that was eninvented invented in the 19th century, uniquely dangerous to the societies in which they live. So why the j everything ws . J well, ews . It has ebbed and flowed, it has done shape shifting. Its a tradition of regarding a particular group of peoples removal as the solution to all of societys problems. If you put it in that form, its apparent how ridiculous it is. Host the second question you ask, professor hayes, is why the germans. Guest why the germans is in some ways tougher. Germany has been a country only since around 1871. If you had asked anyone in the aftermath of the dreyfuss affair in the 1890s which country will oppress people, what country will try to kill them, most people would have guessed france or germany im sorry, france or russia. [laughter] germany became a place that was particularly dangerous to the jews because there was a rhetorical tradition of antisemitism. It was not a very effective Political Movement in germany, but it had frequent adherents who wrote books favoring it. And then this philosophy attracted people after world war i or because germany was facing an existential crisis, if you will, a crisis on every front. Emotionally, theyd been defeated in the war. The consequences of the war meant economic turmoil throughout germany. Politically, they felt knew milluated. All of felt humiliated. The nazis said we have the single answer to all your problems. The answer is remove these people from your midst, and everything will get better. Even so, that idea, that ideology did not have majority support in germany even when hitler was appointed. It didnt even have very strong electoral support until the depression struck. And be only when many germans began to conclude that desperate be times demand Desperate Measures were they ready for a government that hitler headed. Host did the world consider itself pretty sophisticated at that point, the early 30s . Guest about what . Host just in general. Guest i think host educated, sophisticated, scientific. Guest i think people in all times think they are the last word, that they are sophisticated compared to our ignorant be forebearers. I think people were, however, in the 1920s disarmed by what happened. Authoritarianism prevailed in many european states. After all, think of the fact that in 1919 when all of those Eastern European states were carved out of the russian and german and austrian empires, they all began as democrats, and by 1938, all but one of them was a dictatorship. The exception was czechoslovakia, and that was handed over to the nazis at the munich conference. Host the book is called why explaining the holocaust. The author is peter hayes, chairman of the Academic Committee for the u. S. Holocaust memorial museum. If youd like to call in and discuss this issue with him, 202 is the area code, 7488200 for those of you in the east and central time zones, 7488201 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. And well get to your calls in just a minute. Total number of jew killed . Guest the number, estimates have varied, of course, over time, but what is remarkable is weve been able to do statistical analyses that tell us that the total number killed is roughly between 5. 99 and 6 million. 5. 9 and 6 million and that is very close to the initial estimates right after 1945. Host what was the Jewish Population in europe at that time . Guest in 1939 the Jewish Population; that is, people who belonged to jewish communities and so forth, was 9 million. Host what happened to the other 3 million . Guest some fled as the germans fellowed the soviet union, and some retreated with the army. Others were saved by governments that collaborated with the nazis. Its hard to say saved, because at first most of these governments were willing to give their jews to the nazis. The french actually began to let the germans deport jews from france to death camps. They were refugees, and it was easier for the french government to give them up, but they began doing it. Whats remarkable is the story of bulgaria and romania and hungary were all allies of germany. In fact, romania and hungary sent troops to invade russia in 1941. They had promised the nazis in early 42 that they would deliver their Jewish Populations to the german camps, and these are substantial numbers of people. Its probably over a million and a half. And then at the beginning of 1943 at the time that the germans lost the battle of stalingrad, they reneged. I should have said that a little differently. That is, hungary did not promise, bulgaria and romania did, but all of them made very clear they would not do this. And, in fact, the largest surviving community of jews in europe in 1934 was the romanian jewish community. Romanians had participated in the murder of jew but did not give most of their nativeborn population to the germans. Host hitler took power in 1931 . Guest 33. Host at what point did the planning start for this . Or was it haphazard . Guest its hard to define what planning was. After hitler came to power, the policy of the nazi regime was to separate jews from the rest of german citizens and to gradually discourage them from living in germany by restricting their professional possibilities and so forth and then driving them out. Basically, the german the verb the nazis always used was to remove the jews. And this was the policy the regime followed until roughly 1938. And what becomes clear is the vocabulary that nazis are using about jews changes in late 1938. They begin to say if all of the jews do not leave, then they are going sooner or later to their complete annihilation. And this was the first time they speak, the leaders of the movement, the leaders of, in fact, the bureaucracy, speak of the possibility that the jews would be killed. Under certain conditions, this will happen. But the thought was out in the open at that point. And the reason why they do that is they realize they cant remove jews from germany as fast as germanys borders are expanding to contain more jews. And as a result, they realize theyre chasing their own tail, and they begin to think of new solutions other than expulsion to their socalled jewish problem. Host were wealthy jewish people in germany able to get out early . Guest they were, and if they chose to get out early in 33, 34, they got out with more of their wealth than they would have later. The problem is that wealth tempted people the stay. People who had substantial assets, they were more reluctant to give them up. They somehow thought they were more important to germanys welfare that they wouldnt be attacked, and so the temptation was for some of the wealthiest german families, the warburgs, for instance, who were a big banking family, the temptation was to stay. And by 1938, 39, it was too late. Most of them got out with their lives but with nothing else. Host why was it too late at that point . Guest because the policy had become much more confiscating by then. Host peter hayes, when did you get interested in the holocaust . Guest probably in high school. Its hard to pinpoint these things, but i had a neighbor who lived down street in my hometown who had a tattoo on her forearm, and so i was aware from asking questions about what had happened. I am a child of the 60s. In the late 50s, i was a teenager. I saw exodus, i saw various fill becomes about this, i became films in this, i became interested and one thing led to another. Host lets hear from our callers. Peter hayes is our guest, jerry is in largo, florida. Please go ahead, jerry. Caller thank you for taking my question. I would like to ask why the holocaust occurred in germany and previously in other countries because of the undue influence of a small minority like the jewish people in the media and in banking. And whenever the large majority feels that a small minor has undue influence, that civilization is ripe for holocaust and similar type eventsful ill hang up and events. Ill hang up and listen to your answer. Host peter hayes. Guest theres a kind of circular reason there. What is undue . If i were to say that in chicago where i live most of the dealers in oriental rugs are armenians, is that undue . I dont know why. And so i think it is true that because of a preexisting tradition of antisemitism people thought there was something nefarious in the presence of jews in the entertainment industry, banking and so on and so forth. But these were people following their occupational opportunities. Host when did the first camps happen . Guest ing it depends which camps youre talking about. Concentration camps happened immediately in 1933 when the nazis take over. Murder camps are something else. The death camps are creations of late 1941, early 1942. There were six of them. They were located on the territory of prewar poland, and theres a reason for that, and that is because the european Jewish Population was very much concentrated in the Northeast Corner of the european continent. The old settlement of the russian empire was still where most jews lived in the in 1940s, so the germans sited the death camps in the vicinity of large populations to be killed. Host dye yarntion denver. Mead go ahead with your question or comment. Caller thank you. I wonder if professor hayes sees any similarities in our culture in the United States with what happened in germany given the wave of antisemitism that weve seen lately . And i would appreciate if he thinks this could happen here, god forbid. Thank you. Guest no, i dont think this could happen here because unlike germany, were not a bipoetal society, that is a big a small Minority Group and everybody else who thinks theyre the same. Were a [inaudible] society, were all minorities in one shape or form or another, so i think we have kind of internal constraints that work against this. Whats happening this america right now insofar as there are attacks on jews, this recalls nazi germany. But we have a rich nativist tradition in this country. The resistance to people seeking asylum and refugees is not new in america, it just happens to be a certain group. When my great grandfather landed in this country in 1860, he had to contend with the fact that for the preceding 20 years there was a Political Party that was determined to prevent him from coming here, and that is the American Party or the know nothings who were violently opposed to irish immigration. Weve had that, weve had the resistance to immigration by people from southern and Eastern Europe at the dawn of the century, immigration bow thats quotas that were established in the 1920s, so weve had waves of this in american history, and i think were experiencing another version of that. Host was there a checkpoint in the 1930s where this could have been stopped . Guest if it wasnt nipped in the bud almost immediately, the answer is no. Once the nazis were or in power and they had swept away all other political parties, reduced the independence of the press and the judiciary, there was nothing in the society to stop them. And so hitler actually sucking seeded in turning succeeded in turning germany into a oneparty dictatorship within a period of only six months. And once he had done that, individual selfinterests took over as many people saw it in their interests to go along and even to start mouthing the words that the nazis were telling germans to mouth. So if you dont stop this kind of authoritarian impulse at the beginning, then its very difficult to stop as it gets power. Host david in boston, you are on with professor peter hayes. Were talking about his book, why explaining the holocaust. Go ahead. Caller hi, peter. I would like to say that i visited the Holocaust Museum in december of last year. I found it very interesting that the word holocaust, as i understand it, was first used to describe the book burnings which the germans did. And if you burn books first, people are then not then next in line. One particular book since youve mentioning nativism and antisemitism, was henry fords publication the prose kohls of protocols of the ailers of zion, which was an exhibit in your museum which i didnt get a chance to see , and i would like you to mention that book and the fact that the jews of the time went and actually told him that this was a hoax and that he renounced it later. But yet, one of those books ended up in the library of one Corporal Adolf hitler which i understand is in the library of congress hitler collection. I would like to just mention that as an example of how one bad idea can be transmitted, and unless it is stopped, will continue and become fact. Host thank you, david. Guest yeah. And the protocols are the original fake news. They are a forgery. They were prepared by the Russian Secret Service before 1914. They were translate ld into german at the end of world war i, also translated into english, so forth. They were debunked almost immediately by the london times, and yet those people who chose to believe this it, who wanted what was said in this which is, basically, theres a jewish plot to take over the world, refused to accept the disproving of the text. And so this is a text that hitler was not the only person who gravitated to it. Many other people dud. But it was a demonstrable fraud, and even ford ultimately came to admit that. Host we are talking about the holocaust with peter hayes, and ty is calling in from flag staff, arizona. Go ahead, ty. Caller hi. Wanted to make a comment and ask a question. I read a book in graduate school by the british historian Lawrence Reese called hitlers charisma, and my question is, do you see parallels between the charisma that adolf hitler contained and those that, the qualities that mr. Trump has in his ability to rally segments of the population against other segments of the population . Guest well, the speaking styles are extraordinarily different. So its hard to see those parallels. I do see parallels not in the way they talk, although some of the slogans are similar. Hitler basically promised to make germany great again. The slogan was germany awaken, but the rhetorical styles are entirely different. What is similar is the feeling on the participant of many of hitlers followers, that the welleducated elites disdained him and that was a positive virtue. That was something they were for. And, therefore, when he said outrageous things and they were disproved, many of hitlers followers said, oh, no, thats nonsense, theyre just con firing against him and conspiring against him and so on. And be that is rather chillingly familiar at the moment. But i dont think we in the United States are anywhere near the situation of germany in 1933. Host walk us through the socalled final solution conference. Guest well, the final solution is a decision that the nazis arrived at slowly. They, as i say, they first wanted to expel the german jews, and one form of this was just make life miserable for them, and theyll leave. The next form was well round them up, put them in ghettos and find someplace to put them. When these things became impractical, then they began to think about killing people. And they began shooting the jews they encountered in the invasion of the soviet union almost immediately. By the end of august 1941, they were shooting women is and children as well as men. And be the pretense on which they were doing this was that jews were all enemies of germany and, therefore, they would help the partisans. They would help snipers pick off german soldiers and so forth. Once they decided that, they really had embarked on killing the jews of europe, and there was nothing to stop them from extending that process. They begin to extend it when they realized they had a method of doing it without shooting people. They can bring the people to installations where they will be killed, and they knew this because they had been killing the mentally ill and disabled in germany in their own mental institutions since 1939. The method they had used was to gas people with carbon monoxide. They also realized in september of 1941 that they had a fumigating agent that they were using to disinfect barracks that they could also use to kill people. And so by the fall of 1941, they knew they could gas most of the jews of europe, the only issue was where do you want to do it, and how do you get these people to these installations, and they solved those issues, if you will, december into january 1941, 1942. Host and what was the conference called . Guest it was held in january 1942, but that was not a decisionmaking occasion. That was an occasion to inform the heads of various ministries, this is what were doing. We want to be sure you are on board to help us. Host another one of your subchapters or subareas in your book, why didnt more jews fight back more often. Guest well, the short version of the answer is they couldnt. They were overwhelmingly outgunned. They didnt know what was coming. In the case of the german jews, it was inconceivable that a civilized country would begin this process of exclusion and impoverishment and then, ultimately, deportation and so on. For the jews of Eastern Europe, it also is something that had never happened before, thered been isolated pogroms but never an attempt to wipe a whole population from the nice of the either from the face of the earth. And for two years in poland while the ghettos were being formed and so forth, that is the state of play. Murder had not begun on a mass scale, though there had been starvation and various individual incidents and so on. So i think the answer is they couldnt see what was coming. Internally, they were very divided in interpreting the events that they were seeing, and they couldnt Reach Agreement on a common course of action. Even ghettos in occupied poland that decided on very different strategies, there were ghettos that decided well appease the germans and hope that will be the way to survive, there are ghettos that decided we will help the part a sans and shoot at partisans and shoot at the germans, there were ghettos that tried to mix these strategies. The end result was the same, everyone is killed. And so the options available to them were terrible. In the face of that, they concentrated on survival as long as they could. Host lets hear from arthur whos calling in from port arthur, texas. Go ahead, arthur. Caller good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with professor hayes and from the book festival. Professor hayes, i want to thank you, first of all, for your highlighting in your earlier comments about the rivalry and the inborn conflict between judaism and christianity which, i think, sets up, has set up a situation that manifested itself in the european theater. My question is, is as we look at scripture and we look at the historical record, there is the circumstances in the middle east and in the holy land and then somehow there appears this large number of jews amazed in europe amassed in europe and then nazi comes to power. How long did the migration from the middle east take, and how did such numbers arrive in an area such as germany, and how is it that it went so unbeknownst to the rest of the world . Guest well, it took hundreds of years. The romans expelled the jews from jerusalem after a series of revolts in the early part of the second century to have common era. And then jews were or spread out over at the beginning the north african coast and so forth, and then they dispersed through spain up into what became france and germany and so forth. By the middle ages, there were substantial Jewish Populations particularly along trade routes which were mostly rivers in those days, and they, they were this medieval germany, for instance, along the rhine there were large numbers of populations. These were subject to attacks by christian groups in the middle ages, the 14th century particularly in itly and in germany, and many of the people who were attacked moved further east to to poland where the kings of to poland welcomed them because their territories were underpopulated. That is what is the source of the large concentration of the Jewish Population in Eastern Europe. But this is a process that goes from the second century of the common era into, basically, the 17th century. Host gerda is in white pigeon, michigan. Youre on booktv, please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller yeah. I went through world war ii, 1940 til 45 and was occupied by the germans, amsterdam, and i had jewish friends in my class. One family was taken, never came back; father, mother, two daughters. The girls were in my class. I had another jewish family in my class, boys. The father never came back. The mother and the two boys survived. They all had numbers on their tattooen tattooed on their arms. My aunt lived across from a train station. I watched em being loaded into boxcars like cattle, and some of them survived. And a lot of them didnt. And im watching your program, and i could almost cry to see how people can be so mean. And it is still going on in the world. It is awful. And im watching your program, and im so upset to think that people can be so bad in this world, and it is still going on. A thank you. Host gerda, can you tell us, do you remember how you felt when you saw that happening . Caller yeah, because these were children in my class. And, you know, whole neighborhoods. Where my grandmother lived, she had a jewish friend. The father never came back. They all had numbers and tattoos on their arms where they were in the concentration camps. The germans starved us. I had to go, i was 8 years old when the war started til 1945. We had to go and steal coal. We had to steal food. The germans starved us. I lived in amsterdam. And you would just, they starved us out. They gave us coupons to get food which hardly, you know, would feed you. And so we had to go steal stuff. And it, people here in this country, they have a clue. I dont think they have a clue, and they complain about things. And they never seen anything like in that i went through. Im 85 years old now, and i can remember everything that happened. Host thank you, maam. Peter hayes. Guest well, i mean, of course, one of the worst things about the subject is it introduces you to or confronts you with the worst things that human beings can do to one another, and thats one of the most depressing aspects of it. In amsterdam, the situation was particularly bad in that the germans moved against the jews of the netherlands very quickly. And in all the places where they moved quickly, theres a common denominator; that is, they intended to annex them. So netherlands was to be made into with german territory. And so the reason why in to beland, in ukraine, in lithuania, in netherlands the death rates are the highest as opposed to a country 75 of the jews of the netherlands were killed as opposed to 25 of the jews of france. The germans were more determined to clear the jews out of the areas they intended to take, and, therefore, they moved more rapidly in those areas than in others. Host when you hear gerdas story, was there an opportunity for resistance, for subterfuge to help the jewish guest there was opportunity to hide people, and many people in amsterdam tried that. But it was extremely difficult. Anne frank is, of course, the great, wellknown example. But anne frank probably was denounced by someone on the streets, somebody who decided to collaborate with the germans tipped off the ss to where she was. The survival rate of people in amsterdam was about the same as the survival rate in warsaw. That is, there were attempts to hide a percentage of the population. They succeeded at roughly the same level, and that level was low. Host peter hayes is the author of this book, why explaining the holocaust. Thank you for taking calls from our viewers. Guest thank you. Host booktvs live coverage of the tucson festival of books on the campus of arizona now continues. Theres a couple more author panels that well be covering and a come more callin opportunities a couple more callin opportunities. Pardon me. Up next is an author panel on immigrants and education