Transcripts For CSPAN3 Democracy During World War II 20161226

1946 triumph and tragedy. Robert citino this session is entitled america democracys bastion. We have three fine scholars who will give presentations. For my immediate right, james t. Sparrow is an associate professor of history at the university of chicago, the author of the age of Big Government which received an Honorable Mention in 2012. He is currently working on a sequel to his book. Moving to his right, allida black is Research Professor of history and International Affairs at the George Washington university. The Founding Editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt papers project which highlights the former first ladys writings and pronouncements on human rights and democracy. She is a widely published author , including casting her own shadow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Extensivelyd reedited edition of tomorrow is now. Eleanor roosevelt own book. She has worked on human rights education in numerous countries especially in postconflict societies. I think the number i heard with 14 separate projects you have worked on. This is going to be an interesting presentation indeed. To her right, sarah cramsey, a newly minted phd at berkeley and stanford. And a professor of jewish studies at tulane university. She has been a fulbright fellow and a foreign scholar. She will be a Research Fellow at the institute are holocaust studies in the following year. She has received Research Funding from the mellon germanion and the historical institute. And i will be asking her for grant writing advice because she obviously has that nailed. Without further ado, let us begin with dr. James sparrow. Dr. Spero . [applause] dr. Sparrow thank you. We live in a time defined by an abiding mistrust of government. Recently, we have entered a moment in which even the most basic assumptions about the proper role of government, namely those pertaining to National Security and national interest, have become unsettled and bitterly contested. When it comes to the mission and mandate of our national government, the contrast between our moment and that at the end of the Second World War could not be more extreme. On vj day, the federal government was proportionately larger than at any other time in u. S. History. It consumed half of the gnp, employed over 5 of the civilian labor force, and issued war contracts that built entirely new sectors of the economy and shifted the Population Centers of the country into the suburbs of what we now call the sun belt. The growth of the government was more striking on the military side of the ledger. Over the course of the war, the armed forces mobilized 60 million men and women in a 16 nation that numbered 130 million in 1940. Through just one program, lend lease, the federal government sent approximately 50 billion in guns, tanks, and other aid to the allies. Compare that to the just 40 billion that was spent on all emergency welfare measures under the new deal in the previous decade, and it gives you a sense of what we mean when we talk about Big Government. The warfare state was much larger and more capacious than the welfare state. To pay for it all, congress instituted a mass income tax that reached 10 times as many taxpayers as the new deal had in the 1930s and increased its Borrowing Capacity even more dramatically making structural deficits permanent and in a fashion that keynesian new dealers would never have dreamt much less attempted. This chart is showing the proportion of taxpayers in American Society and how drastically that changed in the few years of the Second World War. Mass income taxation, a peacetime draft and a Standing Army to go with it not to mention entangling alliances. These were profound and lasting departures from the american traditional position. American political tradition. But during the war, there were no tax revolts, no Government Shutdown over the budget, no draft resistance. After the war, these foundational structures of Big Government remained in place of , funding internationalism rather than a retreat to isolationism. A popular memory of the Second World War chalks this up to the fact that it was a good war fought by a Society United to defend american independence and liberty in a world threatened by the global aggression of axis powers. While this view is not wrong, it takes too much for granted. Lend lease, the Selective Service act, the arsenal of democracy these policies were hardfought accomplishments of attained despite strenuous political headwinds that filled the sails of neutrality for half a decade prior to the war. Domestically, the Roosevelt Administration had been back on its heels since the core Packing Court packing fight and the rise of the conservative coalition in congress thereafter. How did the Roosevelt Administration manage to mobilize a nation that had become so wary of Big Government by 1941 . To simply say pearl harbor is to take too much for granted. While the will to a good and the flash while the will to avenge that surprise attack unquestionably galvanized american purpose, it did not determine how the u. S. Would wage the war that it entered. Think of the frustrations of the china lobby for example which was unhappy with the Roosevelt Administrations strategy focused on europe. Nor did it decide how or why ordinary americans would comply with the effort. In other words, legitimacy was the central challenge. It was a hard constraint on the mobilization for total war. Much as one might retrofit an automobile factory to produce bombers, roosevelt and his speechwriters retooled their ideological framework in the late 1930s and 1940s portraying the confrontation with fascism as an International Extension of principles as a new , deal for the world. The Atlantic Charter was part of that effort on the domestic scene. Not all americans swallowed the new deal line whole but most of them did identify powerfully and intimately with roosevelt. As part of that process of identification, they began to adopt a rhetoric of rights and freedom and adapted it to their own lives. Propagandists soon learned that the most effective appeals were those that personalized government messages while downplaying the overly ideological statements. The most common strategy used to accomplish this was a rhetorical approach that the historian has turned termed the homefront analogy. This was a valuation of every conceivable aspect of civilian life. Most often by tracing the battlefront consequences of ordinary decisions at home. In this rhetorical universe defense workers were promoted to , soldiers of production. Home gardens became victory gardens. And young women going to socialize with soldiers were called victory girls. Roosevelt understood the need to personalize the war and he did so relentlessly in his fireside chats. On january 11, 1944, he promised million listeners an economic bill of rights that the g. I. s and the American People had earned as their due in a war caused not only by aggression but also by desperation. These rights included rights to employment, education, housing, health care. It was a comprehensive list. But what has been largely forgotten however was that this promise of economic rights was tied to fdrs insistence on a plan for National Service, compulsory and universal in which civilians contributions would be directly related to if not conflated with those of the g. I. Facing battle overseas. Roosevelts plans for National Service followed a personalistic logic. Im going to read to you from his fireside chat that was broadcast on national radio. I know that all civilian workers will be glad to say in many years to their grandchildren that i was in service in the great war. I was on duty in an airplane factory and i helped make hundreds of planes. The government told me that in doing that, i was performing my most useful work in the service of my country. David kennedys talk made clear that americans, especially civilians, experienced very little absolute sacrifice relative to other nations participating in world war ii. Those chart really set it all. Id itts really sa all. In the process of mobilizing millions of workers, consumers, taxpayers, the government had to convince the citizenry that it must embrace unprecedented sacrifice. The scene was not always as uplifting as fdrs language might suggest. You can imagine the guilt and sense of obligation that images and messages might have produced. It was the symbol of selfsacrifice. This symbol, the combat soldier, that provided the master key to wartime political culture. The g. I. Was a culture hero whose name stood for government issue. And a joking reference to the standardized nature of the military in which he served. He personified the new ideals of a changing social order. His ordinariness and common touch conveyed the democratic and the humane nature of the american war effort as opposed to the regimentation and hierarchy of the germans and the fanaticism of the japanese dive bombers. Everyone knew someone that served and this reinforced a direct personalization of the war effort. While the image of this new culture hero was fairly uniform and verged on being universal, the ways in which americans responded to it were not. If we focus on three kinds of citizens, fiscal citizens, taxpayers and bond workers, or war workers, and servicemen, we can see how divergent they wartime ideas obligation really were. These groups deserve special attention. Without them, the american war effort have ground to a halt. Researchers in the war government certainly recognized this. They found that intangible differences in morale could produce results that were all too concrete. For example, the average time to lay a keel in maine was 76 days. Where in a South Portland yard, they required days on average to 207 put out the same sort of vessel using the same kinds of workers. The difference in morale explained the difference. Similar findings explained why one person bought more war bonds than the next and explained how troop cohesion could be strengthened or undermined. I will spare you the details of the mountains of studies that these government researchers produced. A summary could have been used as a weapon of mass boredom. But the findings were quite significant. And i will touch on them in what follows. Bondholders and taxpayers posed a special challenge because most americans were unaccustomed to paying income tax or owing the owning the government debt, which had mostly been the preserve of the upper middle class or the wealthy which was subject to the class taxation in the 1930s but world war ii brought mass taxation. For all the talk about soaking the rich, the new deal fiscal regime was a feeble and repressive jerry built structure that was insufficient to finance total war. The Second World War regime extracted vastly greater revenues on an order of a n order of magnitude greater. Taxpayers had to learn how to file and pay on time. It was just as aggravating and difficult then as it is today , and it was not made much easier by the fact of the new withholding scheme because people still had to file forms. Before the war, the number of taxpayers could have fit into the borough of brooklyn, roughly 4 million. You can imagine the change. And a similar change happened in war finance in the ownership of debt with 85 million men, more than that, the government stopped counting. 85 million men, women, and children who bought war bonds over the course of the war. To meet the challenge of guiding and motivating these tens of millions of new fiscal citizens, the treasury developed a strategy centered on personalizing obligation. Often, its most successful ads initiatives were the most literal minded and concrete. This kind of advertising and campaign was incredibly popular. Individual children and families could buy equipment for family members that they knew in the service, Small School Districts might pitch in together to raise money to purchase a jeep. Larger metro districts purchased aircraft carriers. The treasury was also quite savvy in enlisting the talents of media stars like kate smith, whose rendition of God Bless America made her both famous and beloved. Smith constantly brought a advanced a personal obligation to the g. I. In her public appearances. She conducted a radio marathon in september of 1943 that raised a recordbreaking 39 million. It does not sound like much to us now. But it certainly was then. One of her callers rang in with a moving pledge. Saying i would give all of my , money or my health or my own life to buy my boy back from the war but i am afraid i cannot do that now. I got a telegram from washington this morning and my boy is not coming back. From that point on, the new pledges surged in making it a recordbreaking event. It gives you a sense of how intensely that personal connection was felt by so many americans. That is what war bonds are to us , kate smith concluded. A chance to buy our boys back. 85 million americans agreed. As they paid their taxes and bought their bonds, they also learned to make a claim on the government to begin expecting that the claim would be returned by the federal government. That is my tax dollar was something that virtually everyone could say once the victory tax was implemented and mass taxation had been instituted. Industrial production like fiscal policy was missioncritical to the american war effort. As the taxpayers and bondholders, it was not guaranteed that workers could be persuaded to comply. In the half decade prior to the war, union levels had tripled from 3 million to 9 million. Because of a wave of militancy unleashed by measures such as the sitdown strike that had shut down General Motors plants in flint, michigan over the winter , of 1936 into 1937. Although Union Leaders had signed a no strike pledge after pearl harbor, rank and file discontent led to wildcat strikes that crested from 1943 until the end of the war and then again after the war in 1946. Worker morale could make or break the arsenal of democracy and the Roosevelt Administration knew that. It turned out that the war workers took their images of the soldiers of production there very seriously. This kind of poster captured quite vividly the worker sense that they were contributing to the war. Just like taxpayers and bondholders. They took this role very personally and conceptualized a more link to the fighting front and objective by it in the war material they produced every day. This powerful sense that they were fighting alongside the combat soldier not only linked the home front to the battlefront but also fostered a rising sense of entitlement to National Citizenship guaranteed by the federal government. Women and black workers pushed the government to honor its promises of fair employment. They did not get it for the most part during the war but a generation of civil rights and labor feminism emerged from the war anyway. White ethnic workers enjoyed more immediate gains as overtime pay, seniority rights were built into the war economy with lasting consequences for the postwar timeframe. Workingclass americans joined the affluent society in the 1940s viewing their upward mobility as a fitting reward. Finally, we turn to the g. I. s, the third group. Without millions of them, it would have been impossible to defend the continental United States much less win a war, two wars on opposite sides of the globe at the same time. In their case, the challenge of motivation had the highest stakes possible. The g. I. s were walking, talking proof that the last thing you want to be in the time of war is a living symbol of national sacrifice. As everyone in this room knows well, military service inculcated a deep sense of National Commitment that remained a defining aspect of the war generations outlook through the postwar period. As with the Industrial Works ers, taxpayers, and bondholders this was not to be , taken for granted going into the war. Efforts to instruct the soldiers on why we fight had mixed results but war propaganda did succeed in providing a clear image of the fascist enemy to be defeated. If g. I. s were of many minds of what they were fighting for, they were largely of one mind when it came to what they were fighting against. That was because beneath their varied political commitments ran deeper obligations to their buddies fighting next to them, to their families back at home, and that made the stakes of war quite personal. We can see this in the palpable hunger that servicemen expressed for any news of home. This is a photo of a navy bomber squad on new georgia island in the solomons in february of 1944. You can see the intensity with which these men reach out for their mail. When after more than three years of slogging through it all, these soldiers finally got to stop reading about home and they returned to it, newly minted veterans could claim a new set of benefits at the state and local level and at the private sector. This amounted to a new kind of National Citizenship. Although it was less universally applauded than the g. I. Bill of rights which i think this postwar advertisement captures a sense of citizenship and homecoming that the g. I. Bill represented. The Marshall Plan was less universally applauded. It was supported and sustained over a long period of time and it also revealed the legitimacy that the war effort had bestowed on Big Government. While the Truman Administrations breakneck demobilization quickly liquidated many of the war agencies, it did not bring military budgets or personnel down back to where it was prior to pearl harbor. Although the public clamor to bring the boys back home was quite pronounced, it did not produce a return to the hemispheric insularity of the earlier years. Indeed, quite the opposite was the case. The human face of the new commitment to International Obligations was known to everyone from photos of friendly american g. I. s trading cigarettes, candy bars, and other rations with europeans desperate for food and the basic rule of law. We know from Historical Research that not all aspects of American Occupation were friendly or even welcome, but the American People on the whole were not privy to that information. What they got was a benign vision that the g. I. Represented. And this was a form of internationalism that americans could get behind. Yet there was a mounting if hidden price to be paid for all of this. What the war was about meant too many Different Things to citizens whose interests could not always be reconciled. Taxpayers chafed at taxes that cut into the higher standard of living that roosevelt had promised and provided. At the same time, they began to resent paying for the higher wages enjoyed by war workers particularly when they went out on wildcat strikes. Workers denounced the high salaries of management. Soldiers bristled at the mere suggestion that they were being played for suckers by coddled civilians. This is a sensibility that found violent expression in the riots. Soldiers mutinied in the winter of 1945 into 1946 when the Truman Administration changed their discharge formulas to keep troop levels from problem to dangerous lows. To pursue global ambitions, the United States needed the government to sustain the legitimacy it had earned in wartime. That government was capable of projecting American Power across the world but only to the extent that it fostered a personal sense of National Mission among its citizenry that proved fractious in the long run. Over decades, it only became more difficult to agree on what National Citizenship demands and who can claim it. The stronger the United States grew, the less its citizens could agree on the beneficiaries or the basic purposes of the powerful government they had created. The crisis of legitimacy in which we live today has been a long time in the making. Thank you. [applause] allida black i am short. [laughter] i am very grateful that you stayed on a saturday afternoon. As i am watching all of these phenomenal posters, i cannot help but give a shout out to the franklin d. Roosevelt president ial library where i am a proud trustee and plead with you all with a full heart to make the trek to hyde park to see our new permanent exhibit and our new visitors center. I think it will amplify the conflicting and disparate messages unified by defiance that i think i have heard so far today. And i would also very much like to give a shout out to constance who did emergency travel planning for me last night when i missed my flight. The first time that has happened to me in 64 years. But as you can tell from my hacking, i beg your indulgence. I have, as my mother would have said, a honking sinus infection. With that plead for indulgence, i will ask you to suspend everything you have talked about so far for the past three days. I want you to think not about military strategy, not about who won the war, not about the geopolitical outcomes of the war, or the wars economic consequences. What i want you to get into your heart is the ricocheting , emotional pingpong ball that america and the world is going through at the end of the war. We ricocheted from unbridled fear to almost unbridled relief. Underneath all of that is a palpable uncertainty of what kind of nation we will become, what americas role in the world will be, and how we will manage a world not only bifurcated by ideology, but an america that is ripped apart by anxiety and fear. Fdr has died. We have an untested president. Who by the middle of 1945 will have poll numbers that make Herbert Hoover look like a rock star. We have the horror of the holocaust to which we have become anesthetized, haunting us every day. The best motion picture, Academy Awardwinning film that year was the best year of our lives. An extraordinary film which if you do not own, shame on you who are interested in the war. We have incredible heightened racial tensions in the United States. We have wildcat strikes. We have an untested president disregarding his poll numbers but who cannot seem to manage the economy. He lifts rent controls while he keeps the controls on wages. He lifts food prices and puts controls back on rent but still keeps controls on wages. We have massive dislocation in the United States. As many people left home to work in the Defense Industries as went overseas to fight the war. We have new communities, multiracial communities that were trying to figure out how to develop. And europe has 60 million displaced refugees. That is 60 times the amount that europe is dealing with now. 60. We have the start of the cold war. We have the start of the arms race, soon to become the nuclear arms race. We have a heightened international guerrilla Warfare Campaign that will give rise to terrorism. Does this mean that hope evaporates . No. I asked you how many in this room have been in an immediate conflict situation . Please raise your hands. I have been in 14. My conversation is rooted in my soullifting experience around the world and within the United States of people just trying to define in their own minds what human rights mean. When we began this conversation, i dont want you to put it in a box like it is the United Nations. It is the United Nations space responsibility. We are beginning, at the end of the war as we are today, a new world order. We are trying to get away with mandates and how to manage unstable but hopeful postcolonial democracies. People are demanding change but at the same time they are confronting the paralysis of fear. We could make an argument in 19451948 just as we can make an argument now around the world, and especially in the shadows of the election, that we are a world addressed and america is trying to find its voice. In 1948, the u. S. Political system is fractured. Republicans and democrats have equal numbers and equal weight. At state level and at the federal level. They are also being challenged from within. You have strom thurmond, harry wallace, republicans trying to find their way, and you have the democrats who are clinging to harry truman. The overarching theme of all of those four parties, all of america and existing political institutions, as in the u. N. Itself, is, how are we going to deal with economic and social insecurity . The u. N. Is untested. Fdr is dead. As eleanor would say, the boys have taken over and are concerned with the bomb. They totally discount the refugee crisis in europe which will become the first defining crisis that the u. N. Has to address. The second is rebuilding the european economy and how do we transition from the u. S. Economy that is totally defied to a wartime economy the overarching dark tornado cloud of the great depression. It is not an easy time to negotiate. A witness Eleanor Roosevelt, who had four years of school. Four. I am not talking postdoc, graduate school, i am not talking all this stuff i am talking for years of self educated school but taught herself six languages and was conversant with every major religion in the world. She was placed on the american delegation solely for one reason. By september 1945, she had raised her boys against harry truman. His polling numbers were in the toilet. Lets put eleanor on the delegation, get her out of the country, and we can have franklins widow going to the first meeting of the general assembly. When he first called her, she said no. Her secretary looked at her and said, are you crazy . You have met all the leaders of the world. You are the only head of state who has actually traveled to conflict zones. You lost your hearing on a military aircraft. You spent six weeks in the pacific. After the bombing of london, you were in london for five days and where you doing, not staying with the king and queen but staying in the bomb shelters in the metro tubes. You have some experience of war, not to mention your experience in the battleground in postwar france right as the war came to an end. The guys did not know what to do with her so they put her on committee three. Eleanor says, thank you so much. Have the material sent to my state room rather than saying, why dont i get to pick . Committee three, as you know, is the committee for social humanitarian and cultural concerns. What was the most pressing issue of the u. N. The exact same most pressing issue now in europe, only 60 fold. What are we going to do with the refugees . The soviets want to repatriate them to rebuild the 40 million citizens that were lost in the war. None of the american delegation, vandenberg, austin, knew how to debate. Return to eleanor who writes for words on the back of an envelope. Outdebates so much that it makes the front page of a newspaper. After that, the conversation within the United Nations turns to, how will they execute a sentence in the preamble charter to the u. N. . Which says, we must reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights. People are clueless on what human rights mean, like people are clueless on what democracy means. We have an idea, but we do not have an inkling of the hard work and the sacrifice that it takes to build local institutions from the ground up. We talk about rights. We do not talk about responsibilities. And, the charter says that we must find words to respect the dignity and worth of each human person, the rights of men and women and nations. Think about this for a minute. This is not politically correct language. We are in the shadow of the most horrific war the world has ever seen. Even though the 51 nations who formed the United Nations only have one thing in common, and that is that by god, they beat the germans. We still have to figure out what this means. So, it is a twoyear debate that lasts more than 300 sessions, more than 3000 hours of conversations across two oceans. Initially, 18 nations who have nothing in common, as i said, other than the beat the germans. They do not share the same currency, they do not believe that currency exists, they do not share the same god, they do not believe that god exists, they do not share the same government, they do not share the same concepts of citizenship, they do not share the same concepts of nationality. The only thing they have in common, even among our allies, is that we beat the germans. The United States has grave concerns. Oh, my god, what are we going to do about socioeconomic and cultural rights . Are we going to give everybody a job . The soviets go, oh, my god, what are we going to do about the right to vote . Great britain is worried about their empire. India is secretly sabotaging the negotiations as they go along. India is trying to figure out how to create a vision that is not a gandhiesque ideal vision but a nation that is at war within itself and at war with its occupying nation in terms of what they will fight for. They are awakening the fight for palestine and israel. The war in Southeast Asia is beginning. So, what do we know from this . I was so struck by the cartoon that you put up there of what to do do today for freedom . Eleanor roosevelt carried a prayer in her wallet with her that i continue to carry in mine, even though i am an agnostic. This is the prayer. Dear lord, help me to remember to ask sorry. My drugs are kicking in. Sorry. Dear lord, help me to remember that somewhere, someone died for me today. And if there continues to be war, how me to remember to ask and to answer, and i worth dying for . This is the strategy that she took into the negotiations. In the four minutes i have left, i would like to give you the thumbnail negotiating strategy why i believe that was right and leave you with the so what questions that i hope we can pick up in questions and answers. Eleanor understood a fundamental thing. We could either say the world sucks, that it was inherently evil, awful, that we would never end more, and that we would live in the shadow of the holocaust forever. Or we could say, i am not going to go down that road. That we have to have another vision to inspire people when they succumb to fear. That is the simple approach that she took, arguing and negotiating the declaration of human rights. She also fundamentally believed that the only way to have an effective conversation with someone is to know the opinion of your fiercest critic as well as you know your own and treat them with respect and stay at the table. She made a very faithful decision to separate the negotiation into three parallel tracks so that you and create the declaration which would be a vision and to negotiate the covenant separately because as she said, lawyers would spend three years deciding where to put a comma, and then figure out how to do the implementation. She was right. The covenant were ratified in 1966. They were adopted by the u. N. , the United States ratify the political civil rights covenant in 1992. We have still not yet ratified the covenant on social economic and cultural rights. This is the challenge of our time. It is not just about dignity. It is not just about sovereignty did it is not just about what rights mean. It is the challenge to negotiate with respect. It is the challenge to debate, how to confront fear and real political power with grounded inspiration. As eleanor would say, we are all on trial to show what democracy means. I would like to leave you with article one, which is the absolute hardest article to negotiate. It took more than 3000 hours of the day of debate, and it is the first time in the history of the world that governments can together to adopt it. Article one is all human beings are born free and equal, in dignity and in rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should treat one another in the spirit of brotherhood. As we succumb to hyper politicized conversations in the next six weeks, and does the world begins to come together to figure out how they will respond, i cannot help but believe that this is the firmest legacy that we must hold onto to move forward. And i am very grateful for your attention. [applause] thank you. I do not think i am the only person that thinks your talk was invigorating. Thank you for waking up the audience. I will do my best to keep them awake. I would like to thank dr. Mueller and Jeremy Collins for inviting me to be here. I would also like to thank the doctor who introduced me to this museum and thank you very much for your attention. I teach 1820yearolds at 9 00 in the morning every monday, wednesday, and friday. I use a lot of images. Forgive me if i am bombarding you. I would like to begin by showing you some images that are familiar. Here, an image from auschwitz from january 1945. Here, an image from buchenwald. This image was made famous because a young man named Ellie Elie Wiesel was in one of the bunks. Here is a picture of giving a speech in the zeilsheim camp in 1946. Here, this is not paul newman, but we see some young men and women on their way to palestine. Perhaps they could be on their way to the americas, north and south. We are very familiar with the story. The displaced persons camps in occupy germany, specifically in the american zone, all of these displaced people in the americans zone, an effort to put pressure on the british to open the gates of palestine to legal immigration. We know about the heralds and report in a sense, when we think about the name of our panel today, the United States as a bastion of democracy this is in part true. I think that the story i am going to tell will demonstrate that it is a bit more complicated. What i would like to do is slow down our chronology, zoom in on a few months in 1946 and four granddad with what is happening foreground that with what is happening prior. I would like to recast the lens that we used to retell the story of displaced people and we are recasting that lends so that we are looking at them from the standpoint of those who are living in East Central Europe, specifically czechoslovakia and poland. How should we understand liberation . Homecoming, return. These are big words. Homecomings are staggered, incomplete, and they do not end in the wake of victory. More europeans are on the move between 19451947 they had at any other time in human history. We have been introduced to the scale, using the comparison of the refugee crisis unfolding today. My numbers are between 3050,000,000. It is difficult to know how many people are displaced by the war. As people are changing their locations, political and ethnic borders are changing as well. This will impact the course of liberation and how people experience it. I would like to propose it simply arriving in a displaced persons camp in occupied germany. There is nothing simple about it. There is a contingent journey from the duration to ending up in a displaced person camp. There is not a straight line. Today, were going to focus on a small group. It is a group of polish jews to see how their liberation and return unfolds. Before i launch into this particular group of people, i would like us to keep four contexts in mind, constituting some of the great ironies of the postwar moments. Shifting polish borders mean that prewar homes are often in different postwar states. There is immense destruction, as well. We need to recalibrate our understanding of what home is. Surviving jews collect in occupied germany in 19451947 and onward. There were upwards of hundreds of thousands of jews in cans throughout the american zone, in particular. They are changing and growing. The number of jewish camps actually increases from 19451946 and this is for the most part once from other nations are decreasing in occupied germany. In this group increasingly becomes a huge problem for both the United Nations, member nations, and the relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Finally, this brings into the group of polish jews i would like to speak about the majority of jews living in poland survive the Second World War because they spent the war living sprinkled throughout the soviet union in the context of labor camps and we have upwards of 300,000 survivors who survived the war in the soviet union compared to 80,000 survivors who survived the war in occupied poland. In fact, when i am talking about this group of polish jews, i am talking about the majority of survivors. In 1939, poland is divided. Part of poland is attached to the soviet union. With this comes the promise that upwards of one one million poles will be deported in order to work in labor camps. This translates into scores and scores of settlements, many of which have half close to 90 of jews as these polish citizens living in the settlements. Those of you that are interested interestingly in the process by which pulls are decoded into the soviet union should take a look polls are deported into the soviet union poles in the soviet union i want to understand exactly what soviet exile and work looks like and what that means. There are elements of this exile are horrible. Hunger, cold, constant displacement. Just because you were deported does not mean you are going to stay there for two years. You could quickly be taken to to giga stand samarkand what is interesting about the polish jews is the experience they survive often with the family unit intact. Although through people returning to poland after the war find that there are 345 children with their parents in one family. There is some time to put down roots as evidenced by this picture now these are pictures fresh off the archival presses. Here you can see a teacher asking the students with the weather what holiday is it today . Teaching these children, making sure that their polish language is up to snuff. Here, an interesting picture of people celebrating polish democracy and independence. Notice all of these children wearing white close. Notice how the close look clean. Those of us who have experience know how difficult that is. Look at the artistic backdrop. These are people that have paints, taking time to make signs. They have access to a camera that they can use to take this commemorative picture. Here we have a exhibition poster. They are memorializing their own immigration. They have space for an exhibit. There is time to put together the exhibit. There are visitors that are coming this is an advertisement. Here we have an example of one the most interesting things that i found. Throughout 1945 there are huge commemorations for the warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943. In many of these camps, the majority and almost exclusively be your people at least a dozen cans had a commemoration such as this in 1945 i will be giving a paper on these commemorations in south africa next year if any of you will be in cape town in march. And eventually, this group of polish jews eventually returns home. Now, what does home mean . This is a money, basically, from the Repatriation Fund that is given to people as they can ready to return home but this home what does home mean . We have already mentioned that polish borders shift in 1939. They also shift after the war. You have this pink entity, the socalled recovery territories that belonged to nazi germany. Poland is losing the territory annexed to the soviet union. We have shifting borders, massive destruction. This is the place of general eisenhower toured and of course polish society itself is completely dismantled and eviscerated. Upwards of 6 Million People have been killed. 90 of all people that identify as jews were killed. This is what home is beginning to look like. Home is not just a place you return to, it is all the other elements. Some of these towns ceased to exist. Anyone who has Read Everything is illuminated knows about this town that only has one person living in it after the war. Besides that, throughout poland, there are massive population movements going on. Millions of ethnic germans we also have population exchanges and forced deportations in the eastern borders professor snyder talks about this as well. This is building off a society that has already suffered massive displacement. Those of you who have read a diary of a polish medical doctor know that he himself is constantly under threat that he is going to be displaced. Polish jews and polish christians lived under the constant threat of displacement themselves. What we have for this group of polish jews, liberation beginning in january 1946. That is quite a few months after peace in europe is included. Polish citizens, boarding repatriation trains across the soviet union making their way home. They returned to poland across a sixmonth span. These are the polish jews who are experiencing events like those of july 4, 1946. What is interesting to me is that upwards of 80,000 stay in poland. They settle in the socalled recovery territories. The man who taught me you dish is one of these people grew up going to a yiddish school. More jews from this group join something called the semi Legal Movement of European Jews towards palestine. To refresh your memory, where the socalled recovery territories are, they are in the pink and that is where you begin to see the population of jews go from 015,000 in todays. Two days. These towns are being swarmed with people in the constitutions are changing irrevocably. Most of these towns are able to take on so many people because they were recently emptied of ethnic germans or the town themselves have been destroyed. This word means flight to zionists operative from mandate palestine come back to europe secretively in order to induce or encourage people to leave and to try to live life in palestine. I use induce or encourage to give us a spectrum because depending on who you are, you are going to have a different view as to who these zionist operatives were and whether this was a forced choice. Why do i define it has semi legal . In british law, this is any Legal Movement. IlLegal Movement. According to czechoslovakian law, this is actually legal. The polish and czechoslovak government leave the border open to allow returning jews to pass onward through czechoslovakia to displaced persons camps in occupied germany, specifically the american zone. The goal is to get to the american zone to continue to put pressure on the british to open the gates for these migrants. There are different ways to palestine there seem to be a plethora of different stories of how people end up in different places. I recommend the book underground palestine to understand more about how people were able to move onward. Another is flight and rescue. The question i was asking him greatly intersected with his book that went off on a tangent. I specifically wanted to know practically logistically and financially how the border between poland and czechoslovakia state opened. Why does one particular exit point at one town become so crucial for this flow of polish, jewish refugees. We can see a map of czechoslovakia. The town would be up in the top the third arrow from the top moving down. Has anybody in this room been there . Here we see people standing in the center of the town. Notice the interaction with local shopkeepers, how the town itself is changing as it is flooded with these refugees, some who stay just for a few hours, others who stay for a few weeks and use the fresh air to convalesce. We can see polish jews on czechoslovak repatriation trains. We can see jewish children at the main train station in frog. According in prague. In the eyes of world zionists, czechoslovakia has become the important spot in europe. When i gave this presentation to a professor, the director of the museum of history of polish jews, he said, in fact, 1946, the state of israel existed. I have about two minutes left and i have two slides and i would like to get into a little bit of the how and why. I and happy to take more questions during the q a. According to one mans memoir, he details the reaction of polish government officials. Zuckerman says, those in control of the borders made a phone call and said the border should remain open and that was how the borders opened. What i was able to find, legal crossings began to accumulate making the flow of these refugees increase and continue and what is interesting about studying what is happening on the ground is trying to figure symbiosis of work. One associate has one idea and another person says that she is wrong in the first woman has to leave. The jewish joint Redistribution Committee is highly involved and their director and czechoslovakia is working tirelessly to inform ministries of what is happening but in my mind, the most important players are people two important czechoslovakian officials, and their shared desire to create east Central European polities that are based on ethnicity. I call this event the ethnic revolution. In my book, uncertain citizenship pinpoints the process by which wartime and postwar leaders in places like poland and germany rewrote citizenship laws so that when socalled if the groups equaled one political citizenry, strangely enough these ideas are rooted in third reich policies but they are also enabled by a drastic shift in International Norms that make massive populations transfer is permissible in signals a conclusive end to the heterogeneous state of the land of the former habsburg monarchy. What is fascinating in the mind of the reorganization of ethnic groups in East Central Europe demanded the simultaneous embrace of palestine as an f ethnonationalist project. I try to understand our chronology and able to shift our perspective and we have seen that the prospect of displacement and return our small stories that are happening to individual people and stories that are happening to governments, nonprofits. If we really want to understand the emergence of the state of israel in 1948i suggest that we turn to the wonderful complicated and fascinating laboratory of East Central Europe for a more nuanced answer. Thank you very much. [applause] we have time to take a few questions. In the center of the room. Professor cranston and ms. Black discuss the role of the u. N. To resettle 3060 million refugees and my question is how exactly did they do it or did they do it . They tried as best as they could. The u. N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was able to help people outside germany better than those rather than those who were resettled in the four major zones. I think the most effective part, which is the one that has been the least really looked at, or which is why i add the other 10 million to the total, is we dont look at all among the refugee populations in africa. We look primarily at the refugee populations in central europe. Did a great job in france. They did an ok job in italy. I think they really did an extraordinary job if you look at liberia, nigeria, im sorry. And some of the other side of the mediterranean. I would say the people that did the best job with this were outside the organization. Unicef didnt extort a new job. This is where unicef takes off you have a very bankrupt Catholic Charities give way to unicef into the world health organization. And they begin to really take in and so i would argue and to be honest i am really rusty on this so i would have to go back and pull that on my documents but i would argue that the greatest impact that on rough had was in africa and in the creation of the direct agencies that gave specific services to refugee populations and created chapters and partnered with what we would today call Civil Society organizations that were generic to those countries. It is important to keep in mind that displacement continues and arguably still continues for many people affected by this conflict. It is a question that i asked my students. When does displacement and . Can displacement be inherited, trauma be inherited . We have displaced persons camps functioning into the 1950s. I think one way that displacement is solved quickly to a certain extent is because there are open houses, exchanges that people are being forced when you have 3. 5 million ethnic germans leaving czechoslovakia, millions leaving what had become poland after 1945, you have a readymade place to bring people so thats something for us to keep in mind and if i could just speak to the context of jewish organizations American Jewish organizations, jewish organizations throughout south america, as well, and in palestine and israel worked, as well, to attempt to resolve to resolve displacement. I would also say that it ties very much to the question over the fight of the nationality of the displaced person. Back left. This question is for sarah. Great talk. In terms of infrastructure for displaced persons in poland, was there any infrastructure and for formal how formal was it . When we talk about infrastructure, we have to keep in mind that when the United Nations assembled in San Francisco in 1945, poland was unofficially represented because the allies could not agree on which polish government was the official government. We have an issue of legitimacy that is still permeating the entire allied camp well through the beginning of the summer of 1945. As far as infrastructure on the ground, what strikes me when i read the archival files for reading through remembrances is how much people seem to be working, how passionate people are about their job but we have to keep in mind, especially in the case of poland, dealing with a country that is the most ripped apart in europe so that we are also dealing with the task of cleaning the rubble in the biggest cities, warsaw so, it is interesting to keep this in mind. My experience working in czechoslovakia has led me to a lot of laughter in so far as it is a wonderful example of how individuals in bureaucracies cannot get along and will use personal alliances against other people. When we talk about a large nonprofit, we have the different personalities involved. One person living in prague actually wields quite a bit of power. Have repaired they are to handle certain things and finances your questions. Thank you to all three presenters. I have a comment directed to dr. Black. I figured it was coming. If it sounds like nitpicking perhaps it is. That is who i am. When you told us that Eleanor Roosevelt had only four years of education, i think that was a little misleading. As a child, she and other children were schooled at home by a very good teacher. By an awful teacher, sir, who ripped her books up it do not believe eleanors version of that. Eleanor could not write a grammatically correct sentence in english when she worked with mademoiselle roger. Weldon, that was not much education, was it . There is a lot of stuff that i will defer to everybody on about eleanor, but that i know more than anybody in the history of the universe. [laughter] she made up for it. Bigtime. Thank you very much. Thank you for your question. I hope i did not seem flippant. Back to your left with james. Earlier, Richard Frank talked about the extraordinary efforts that were taken to prevent famine and typhus in japan. Now, youve got 3060 Million People moving around central and eastern europe. What did we see in terms of starvation and disease and so forth . How do these people just survive . Given those numbers. A boatload of them died. There was great debate within the American Government and within unicef and within onra on how many calories a day constituted a good diet . It was based totally upon the political the suspected political affiliations of the group. Eleanor herself was very involved in a debate where she said, i am happy with 1000 calories per day. That is one bureaucratic and political issue. The other is the infrastructure and the delivery issue. What i would like to do because sarah can talk about this much more concretely than i can because my work now has turned into much more on the ground do you deliver as opposed to what we did in the war but the one thing that i would like to say is that also, part of the delivery was impacted because beloved american charities, once they got their feedback on the ground, got very turfconscious of who should deliver what to whom that greatly delayed the delivery of a central nutrient blanket tents and medicines. Which spurred greatly the development of a new Refugee Organization and the creation of the who and gave added fodder and information depending on which side you are on about the role for a u. N. Peace force in displaced camps. I should just add that that is within europe but then there was a famine in india and there was a great debate over whether that food relief should be sent to other parts of the country. I should point out that the Food Relief Program built out of the new deal had tremendous support by 1947 majority of people polled said they would support reimpose an rationing which is not popular in order to feed starving europeans which was an extra ordinary degree of support. They had their first meeting in 1943, the second in 1944 atlantic city, montreal, and london. Already, you see the cemeteries of this newark in it you see the signatories asking these concrete questions about things like calories, how do we dispense things, how are we preparing ourselves against diseases. In the first meeting, there was not a special designation for dps of jewish backgrounds. One of the nongovernment entities that i work with, the world jewish organization, lobbied vigorously so that in their legal language, there is a distinction may distinctively for jewish dps in the idea that they want to make sure that this category of jewishness is in their language so that these people can be entitled to more calories. They want to be able to say if you are jewish you should have more calories than if you were not persecuted racially so these conversations that we might find so concrete about things like calories really mean quite a bit when you begin to attach a calorie limit to specific displaced person populations. One last question to your left, please. I was really struck by the charts that you showed with higher taxes and higher military spending maintaining after the war in the postwar years. I know there are still a massive demilitarization of the economy, ray privatization. Read privatization reprivatization. Was there any kind of desire to hold on to some of that . That is an excellent question. We can look at this moment in two different ways. One is to see it as a moment of extraordinary upward ratcheting of state presence beyond the peak of what had been possible in the new deal. By 1947, troop levels noted go below 1. 5 million. You look at military spending as a proportion of gdp. Any of those indices there are always at least 50 higher than at the peak of the new deal which produced a lot of political backlash. One way is to observe how powerful acceptance of this new government was. Of course, the cold war comes along by 1950. And many of these changes are locked in permanently but it might have gone a different way and maybe if congress was determined actually to roll back not just the war machinery but parts of the new deal and had a lot of support. But were not able to succeed even in modest objectives like trying to obtain a significant and permanent rollback of the personal income tax, the initial postwar cut. What is really quite astonishing is how many of these different measures remain. On the other hand, this is a period in which extraordinary distrust of the government is alongside acceptance. In a context of determine his asian to mobilize eventually against the soviets, i think anticommunism has to be understood in part not only has been about particular communist governments but also a deeper and abiding distrust. At one point, mccarthy was putting the army itself on trial. That reflected the powerful discontent with the sudden state presence in everyday life. What is quite striking is how robust things like anna c 68 could be in a context in which these new interNational Commitments well supported created ambivalence and over the course of decades finally came apart. Thank you all very much. [applause] you are watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest news. This week on cspan in prime time, my denied it at 00 eastern, here from some of the democrats buying to leave the party, including ray buckley, chair of the Democratic Party. The chair of south carolinas Democratic Party and representative Keith Ellison from minnesota. Low for voter a turnout. The Democratic Caucus the lowest harry. Weve got a lot of rebuilding to do every tuesday night at brock obamant visits the naval base at pearl harbor. Wednesday night beginning at 8 00, the review of house and Senate Hearings from 2016 on topics including the flint michigan water crisis and the wells fargo on authorized account scandal. Seriously, you found out that one of her divisions had created 2 million fake accounts, had fired thousands of employees for improper behavior, and had cheated thousands of your own customers, and you didnt even wants consider firing her at of her retirement . Thursday, remember some of the political figures that passed away in 2016, including former first lady, nancy reagan, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a. Friday night at 8 00, our in Memoriam Program continues with shimon peres, mohammed ali, and john glenn. This week in prime time on cspan. Coming up next, author William Hazelgrove talks about his book, madam president the secret presidency of edith wilson. When Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, it was edith who guarded access to the recovering president. The wilson house in washington, d. C. Hosted this hourlong event. Welcome everyone to the Woodrow Wilson house. I am the interim director. Before we get started, i would like to point out the portrait on the wall. That is the lady we will be talking about tonight. It is fitting we are here because her birthday was a few days ago