Faster Danielle AllenNational BookAward Finalist kevin Young Software engineer ellen ullman and many others. First up is to look at some of the lesserknown stories from world war ii. This is like coverage of the texas book festival on booktv. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. My name is Jim Horne Fisher and its my pleasure to welcome you to the opening session of the 2017 texas book festival. [applause] thank you for coming out in support of our authors and second of his wonderful annual event now in its 22nd year. [applause]he and third of all the books that we discussed and enjoyed throughout this beautiful Texas Capitol complex hereom in downtn austin i would ask you to silence your cell phones t. Live tv, thank you cspan. After a session both offers authors are relocating to the book signing tent down the street to autograph their books. Books are for sale at that beautiful independent bookstore. You are supporting not only the author off the festival and a great local store but you are also helping the texas book festival a nonprofit entity pursue its mission of supporting lowincome schools in texas with author visits the book donations via the reading rock Stars Program and to fund grants for libraries throughout the state. Additionally the festival is running a benefit, a book drive benefit this weekend to raise money to help rebuild texas libraries that were damaged by hurricane harvey. The Program Works like this. We go to the Cash Register checkout to purchase your books simply tell the cashier youd like to donate an additional 15 to buy a book for your reading rock star student. The tbf foundation will match your donation to build a library for hurricane harvey. Three books end up going to help people. All of this should make it quite clear exact how your purchase can make a difference of thank it vans and assisted the book signing will take place down the street after our session. Now to our panel. Have two very talented narrative historians who produce fascinating books that shed light interesting and somewhat unlikely theme hidden histories of world war ii. We have to my left meredith handley a writer and historian living in washington d. C. That she found a way to thes capital after attending the university of wyoming and is a student at laramie she studied english and history and attended American University where she got her ph. D. T. Meredith says one of the great things about being and historian of world war ii is having a reason to visit london, paris and casablanca. Its true. She isis currently a writer in e humanities o the National Quarterly review for the endowment of the humanities. She is here to discuss her first book destination casa blanca textile espionage in the battle for north africa and world war ii published by public affairs. Foreignpolicy magazine called it compelling of the casablanca cast of characters. History of buffs will love the grand geopolitical scheming but theres enough action and adventure to make the book a perfect beach reading. Which is 90 degrees today, a balmy november. Liza mundy is the best song of the three books are richer sex, michelle, a biography and now sub for the antle story of the american women codebreakers of world warri ii. She has worked as a reporter at the Washington Post and is written for the atlantic politico and other publications. She is a frequent commentator on National Television radio and on line news outlets. Code girls has been widely and well reviewed nationally. The boston rodin and monday stories one of women and men bound together by the wish to serve the country working sidebyside as equals temporary but real. And that picture is more than a marvel of it reminded the sidebyside as equals is who we are at our best and how we do our best so congratulations to you both for the success of your books and welcome to austin. Thank you. [applause] thank you for this amazing welcome to texas. My first time here so thanknkso. Destination casablanca is im going to be honest and say it was inspired by the movie. Like many of you here i saw the movie over a number of years and every time i would watch it i would thinknk wow i wonder what actually was going on it casa blanca during the wars. What was the problem for the refugees and so the historian in me decided to dig in and take a look around and the resulting book is destination casablanca casablanca. The story turns out to be much more interesting and i think compelling than the movie although it has a lot of the same elements. Because casablancaa was a port refugees found their way to the city during the war and it became one of the possible avenues to leave europe and the nazis. The fact that it also became specifically important to the french war efforts the war effort and the allied war effort effort. The book looks at what happens to the city when the refugeeswh come what happens to the city when arrivedn in what happens to the city when the americans come. The americans come in force. In 1939 there were only 100 americans and all of morocco. In november of 1942 which began the 71st anniversary is this coming week. 33,000 americans would arrive in french morocco and the next week another 30,000 would arrive as well. Morocco becomes swamped with americans. The story is about people, when people ask me what the story is about i often say its about people who make choices. They makees choices to invade germany they make choices on whether or not to collaborate. They make choices about whether or not they want to join the war effort or sit on the sidelines. Thank you. While meredith was doing her Great Research and places like morocco i was in a lot of assisted living facilities here in the United States. [laughter] meeting a fair eating a fair amount of cottage cheese and interviewing women in their about thisg women in their incredible secret effort to recruit them to come to washington and become a group of more than 10,000 women who are breaking the codes of the german naval codes the uboat the Japanese Naval codes the Japanese Army. They were reading signals all over the world including some that were coming out of north africa so it was a massive effort to recruit collegeeducated women secretly. Women at the Seven Sisters schools s were tap secretly. They were called then to private interviews with math professors and astronomy professors. They were asked to questions do you like foster and are you engaged to be married . Of a number of them lied to the second question and said that they were not because whatever they were being invited to do was more interesting than waiting around while their fiance was fighting in that war. The women came to washington. Those women joined the navy and alternately would be joined by enlisted women as well who would not have the benefit of a College Education who came from california oklahoma all over the country and if they had the aptitude they were routed into these during codebreaking and washington. They hit upon a strategy of the handsome young Army Officers throughout the south and the midwest recruiting schoolteachers because again they wantedd women and as a womn in the 1940s if you had a grade level arts degree the only job he could expect with the two school. Again marriage was the theme. They were trying to lure the women to washington with the expectation of making a marriage to meet a young officer like the one that was recruiting them. A lot of these women were ready together hasty engagement so those women pack up theres suitcases and came to washington. The reason this story has been untold for so long as the women were told they would a shot if they talk while they ran washington. They all had security clearances and to talk about their work would be treason so they were told to tell people that they sharpened pencils that they emptied wastebaskets that they were secretaries and thats what they continued doing after the war. In some t ways they were the idl Intelligence Officer because people believen whatever they were doing couldnt possibly be important. [laughter][l phenomenal stories and yet here we are 70 years a on and ts reads fresh and both of your cases. You talk about the journey thats captured in the story starting in the tiny research the book doing interviews. A sort of lonely work and you end uppp having the journey that historians follow. Talk about the Research Process and what gave you the spark to go underground and search for the storys . The initial spark for me was i was in the movie. I was inspired by the fact that when i was in archives working on other projects i would see mentions of refugees from kosovo and the internment camps in morocco and that stayed with me. When youre a historian and youre working on a project you cant go over that shiny thing. You do have to stay on task but one i was looking for a new book i kept remembering those telegrams said those reports. I decided actually to dig and then see what was really going on in casa blanca. I also tried to go to france to do research and archives there because morocco at the time was controlled by the french and it was the french are of the morocco and when france left in 1950s when morocco gained its independence and to most of the records from the wartime era with them to france. There are also some in paris. I also did research at the Holocaust Museum in washington d. C. Which turned out to be an amazing resource for me because of all the records that i had collected. I collected records of how len benatar who ran a refugee in casa blanca but she wanted to join the French Resistance and she cant but when theres this massive humanitarian crisis in the summer of 1940 when 200 ships show up carrying refugees and they cant dock and it goes on for weeks. These refugees are living in squalor and suffering Health Problems she decided to step in and tell. She started her own refugee agent and she would run the Refugee Agency throughout the entire war and become one of the major resources for arrived in casa blanca. So that was an incredible fine for me. You end up having to use certain Research Tools to compel the release of secret documents. Can you talk about how you reach that point of than what you did . Amazingly a lot of the intelligence related documents from world war ii are still classified and so i was working with the nsa on trying to get the story out. I was trying to find living women and wind up there was any documentary evidence of the work they had done. It turned out there was an enormous amount documented evidence that i started filing will freedom of information documentsat. Once the japanese surrendered you had all these bright people who were still employed by the codebreaking operation they started grinding t out great to have fully written histories and memos and administrative reports about the effort which they have also been generating the whole time but they were classified. Intelligence agencies like the nsa are still flooded by foia request. In the end i wouldnt call it the Nuclear Option but i had to ratchet it up to a mandatory declassification review request and was able that way to procure more than 20 oral histories that have been taken of women over a number of years and a couple of the volumes and great histories of the codebreaking effort. Unbelievably there are still a couple i understand that are still classified because the nsa had to talk to other intelligence agencies all of which came out of this wartime intelligence with the oss so wartime intelligence gathering. There is the usual washington infighting over whether orth not we can declassify these records that are 75 years old. Would the got transcripts where they blacked out her scissors snipped . Yeah and even more random than that. Sometimes the National Archives they call it history city will see the redacted sections of the administrative records do exist. You can actually see whats in the redacted sections. Then i was taking pictures on my phone and sending them to my contact at the nsa saying i have all these women seems in the footnotes and yet theres this redacted page. Please get this sign and they did ultimately. They dont necessarily know. Maybe you dont want to tell them. They were buried cooperative and motivated. They really wanted to get this story out. Male historians as well were so helpful but if you are at the nsa do you want another story about Edward Snowden or wartime . I think this is where life and i need to give a shoutout to the library that helps us with these products because without the care to the historical record we wouldntrie able to do this kind of work and we wouldnt be able to write this kind of history. [applause] meredith lets talk about the movie casablanca is history about history as the case may be be. Its amazing the movie was released to literally weeks if not days after the campaign was actually one so was this movie propaganda . No. Warner bros. Had been making a movie during 1942 armored in a can as they say and then on novemberr eighth, ninth and teh americans woke up to discover that its forces haded invaded north africa in one the primary targets was casa blanca which was taken by Major General george patton. Warner bros. F said hey we havea film about casablanca. Maybe we should watch that out. The movie had its premier new york around thanksgiving and then it would go into larger release in the beginning of 1943 but what are the Great Stories about the movie on new years eve roosevelt as part of his new yearsve eve party is watching this movie. There were only a handful of people who doubtbt that less thn two weeks later he will be lying across the ocean to go to the casablanca in morocco. Does happen to be a great piece of publicity for the movie as well so warner bros. Really o locked out. It helped that the movie was actually good. That t helped too. The box office wasnt huge though was that . Wasnt huge but it was h steady. Your book is on one hand toward history and youre set peace operation torch is stunning. The book is not just military history. Its a culture portrait as well. Can you talk about some of the cultural figures . The ones that jumped out at me were Josephine Baker and the novelist arthur kessler. Talk about their roles in this drama. Cursor is the author of one of the most important books of the 20thor century on the soviet system. He finished that book and send it off to the publisher in i london 10 day 10 days before the nazis invaded france. Kirzner was also a hungarian and had been active in the communist party. He had an antiand her knew if the germans were in fact able to rule inri paris that he would be in major trouble. He escaped like so many of the refugees did and it ends up through a series of calculations joining the French Foreign legion. He makes it tois marseilles and hooks up with british p. O. W. S who were also trying to escape in the goto north africa. He has no papers at this point proving who he is and this is arthur kirzner the wellknown hungariannd journalist. He goes to the american consulate and tells the story and the consulate journal consulate general believes him and issues him an emergency certificate and he eventually makes it to britain. The French Foreign legion turns out to be an important part of my luck and if youio want to her more surprising things about the book its in north africa. Then there is baker. Baker is the woman who takes paris by storm in the 1920s and 30sin. She sings and she gets recognition and paris in ways that she could not get in the United States because she is africanamerican. She loved france because of the opportunities that provided her. When france falls to the germans she joins up with the French Resistance. A celebrity, that might be a problem. Everybody loves baker. Spanish officials french officials portuguese officials wherever they would go doors would open and they would tell her things. She eventually makes it to north africa in morocco and she uses morocco as a base to travel to spain and portugal where she would party and she would basically right information as she collected onto sheet music using invisible and can bring it back to morocco. Its quite amazing. She could have been sought as a spy but then she suffers a Major Health Crisis and she goes to a clinic in morocco and is in casablanca from 19 months and even then she is still fine. Her hotel room, her hospital room becomes a place for everyone to meet and people come and they talk and so thats another way to gather intelligence. This is great cover for status. A cover for status being a celebrity. No one would ever suspect. Lies i love how some of your heroines have their own cover for status. They are working secretly with the Intelligence Services and people say what do you do in the gaggle and say it i sit in the laps of thet, officers. A great cover for status. I love the stories of women. There was another woman who was an Intelligence Officer either for the americans or theri brith and she would hobnob with the nazis in say it could possibly have this data the system. The men would say yes, yes we do do. Never underestimate a mans ego. [laughter] so wasnt all sweetness and light. Thesee women were subject to sexist standards of performance and Everything Else like that. Is that why perhaps one of your reviewers said the book was somewhat infuriating to discover the injustices and how their success was ultimately temporary temporary . Right. It was a var