Transcripts For CSPAN QA Robert Sutton Nazis On The Potomac

Host Robert Sutton you have a new book out titled nazis on the potomac. What is the basic story you were telling . This is a story that could have very well disappeared. During world war ii in fort hunt, most people consider fort hunt a picnic park, it is halfway between alexandria and mount vernon on the George Washington parkway, but during world war ii it became the site of three programs that were topsecret, that were so topsecret that the people who were involved in the program were sworn to secrecy and assumed they would carry the story with them to the grave, and most of them unfortunately did. In about 2000 as many of the different programs from world war ii were declassified, it became clear that something really interesting had happened there. There was one program called misy that brought very high level or high value german prisoners in either from uboats or the field to interrogate and listening to their conversations. Another program mirs translated and evaluated literally tons of german documents and wrote reports about it. The third program, military Intelligence Research series x was escape and invasion, and they put together packages were four pilots so if they were shut down they would have a means hopefully to evade capture, or if they were in pow camps they set up a very elaborate and sophisticated and Successful Program where they would communicate through cryptographic letters with prisoners and they would say that a package is coming and it would come from a dummy corporation or organization and might have a transmitter in the board or maps in playing cards. These were the three programs at fort hunt. After world war ii there was another program called operation paperclip, and what this did was during the cold war americans wanted to recruit the highest level and highest functioning engineering and so forth germans from world war ii to help them plan for dealing with the cold war. Host what were the exact years fort hunt was used in this capacity . Guest it was used from 1942 to 1946. Host how many nazis were brought to the site . Guest over 3000. Host the subtitle of your book declares this, that they helped the war effort significantly. What was the major contribution of the work done at fort hunt . Guest i would say it was cumulative. They got some of the bits and pieces from soldiers they interrogated, people were listening to conversations, so they did get information, such as allied bombers late in the war were successfully bombing railroad terminals, but they noticed the next day trains were running as if nothing had happened. They found out they were loading and unloading trains at the crossings, so this is something that they found that was important so they started bombing the crossings, and that was successful. The other thing was the publications that came out of the military Intelligence Research section were incredibly valuable, the most valuable was what was called the redbook, the order of battle of the german army. What this did was it documented every division in the german army, who the commander was, where they were, where they had been, so forth. It went into great detail about the ss, gestapo, the different branches. What they did. Who were the lethal ones and not. When they were preparing for dday this book was it a invaluable because it told all of the different German Forces that were in belgium and france, where they work on that with their strength was and so forth, so that was incredibly valuable as well. Then they uncovered things like what was going on after the assassination attempt on hitler. They begin to focus on whether people were loyal to hitler more about winning the war. If you add what happened it fort hunt, when you add together what happened there and what happened with other intelligence gathering operations the allies really were incredibly well prepared by the end of the war. There are scholars that say the war probably ended two years before it would have. By the end of the world one scholar said eisenhower new more about who was going on with German Forces than hitler did. It was an impressive operation. Host it ends up being an interesting historical narrative. Do you think this has lessons for us today . Guest it does, and the main thing that came through either from my discussions with soldiers stationed there or the Oral History Program we did with the National Park service where we interviewed 65 of the soldiers that were there plus a reunion that took place in 2007, one thing they wanted to make a very, very clear and i have several places in the book was that they did not torture anybody. They never resorted to corporal punishment. They had ways of getting information short of that, but they wanted to make it very clear. This was the late 2000s. It was clear what was going on in iraq with torture. They made it clear that they got more information by treating them well than by torture. Thats probably is the most important lesson that comes from the story. Host explain where it was physically, a couple miles north of mount vernon. It has got a really long history. Would you tell me about it . Guest it was actually part of George Washingtons river plantation, and everything that he did on his plantations was very well documented. Shortly before he died he actually wrote a plan for all of his plantations, and he specifically talked about river plantation, how many slaves there were on his plantation, what he intended to do, the crops you plan to raise, the animals he planned to have their, whether it was for food or foraging. It was part of the river plantation. It fell into disuse after he died, but then around the turn of the century around 1900, a little before, a little after the American Congress and president recognized that americas Coastal Defenses were in a deplorable condition so they came up with a plan named for the secretary of war to either beef up or build new Coastal Defense systems throughout the coastal areas and harbor entrances throughout the United States. They refortified Fort Washington across the river in maryland and built a new fort, fort hunt, on the potomac. The thing that is fascinating about this period and this program is that they built these humongous gun batteries, and the purpose was to protect against naval attacks, but ironically one of the Little Things i had in my book that i think is really fascinating is the last battery at fort hunt was completed in january 2004, and a month earlier the Wright Brothers flew their flyer. And so about a month before this last one was built these forts became obsolete. They had no way of protecting against air tax. Air attacks. Host you meant 1904 . Guest yes, sorry. Host is off the George Washington parkway, heavily traveled and it is completely surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. What was it like in the 1940s . Guest there were some of the houses around. Some of the people talked about they saw what was happening at fort hunt and there were some reports from the locals but it was pretty much isolated, and for good reason, because it was such a topsecret operation. There were a lot of buildings that were there both from the early period and they were New Buildings built during world war ii. One thing that fascinated me about this period was how fast people could build things. They needed to have an enclosure for the prisoners that were being brought in, so they asked one of the engineers in the military to build a new enclosure system that would be fortifications, offices, interrogation rooms, the whole thing. They said you have eight weeks to build this. He built it in six weeks. There were New Buildings that were there but there were quite a bit from earlier. Host during the time period, you describe a very congenial setting in addition to the housing, there were actually open fields and places of leisure for the prisoners. What was the thinking . Guest the thinking was that if you have them comfortable they are more likely to talk, and it worked pretty well. They would have a recreation room with pingpong, pool, and one thing that the germans really liked that they did not know anything about before was horseshoes. They could do anything they wanted to. They would treat them well, they would feed them well. A lot of times a lot of the interviews you read the transcript in the interview and about two words into it they would say would you like a cigarette . Are you comfortable . Are we treating you well . And then if a prisoner was particularly helpful they would take them to a nice dinner and washington, d. C. , one of the fancy restaurants, they might take them to a movie or so forth so they generally treated them fairly well, and the thought was if you treat them well they will give you the information that you need. Host they were taking prisoners into washington, d. C. Did anyone ever escape . Guest there was one attempted escape, and this was a uboat captain, and he was captured, his uboat was sunk, he was captured along with his crew. He had been very successful. I do not know how many tons of shipping, most of the ships that he had sunk were british. He was terrified he would be sent to Great Britain and be handled as a war criminal. And be executed. He was so afraid of this he actually probably committed suicide by running out to the fence, trying to scale the fence, he was shot and killed. He was the one prisoner who tried to escape but we did not think he would be able to escape and he tried to commit suicide by trying to escape. Host would you see any evidence of this period of time . Guest no, there are a couple of partial foundation scattered in the woods. You have to look to find them. Mostly what you will see are the gun placements from around 1900. There is one noncommissioned officers house there from the early period, and that is it. There is a monument and flexible flagpole to this program. Host when was that installed . Guest 2007. Host during this period it had a codename. Why and what was it . Guest it was po box 1142 and they did not want to have anything that would refer to fort hunt at all. This was the po box in alexandria. Host you have retired from the National Park service and the park service has an Important Role to play in the story. Tell me how that all came about. Guest in about 2000 let me back up, preparts of his in prepark service in this program, in about 1990 eight 1998 1990 eight soldiers stationed at fort hunt by the name of Lloyd Schumacher wrote a book about the escape factory in which he talked about this program, military intelligence sectionx at fort hunt. The army had not declassified it at the time. He wrote this book, published it. The army found out about it and tried to buy as many copies as they could. The park service knew about this story and about 2000 they had a study done of fort hunt, and many of the documents such as the interrogations, transcripts of interrogations were now declassified, so they began to piece together what was happening at fort hunt. In 2005, 1 of the rangers at fort hunt was giving a tour of the military history of fort hunt. She would go through the whole thing, the early history, so forth and so on, but she would always ask the rangers would ask if anybody knows anybody who is stationed here who is still alive we would really like to speak to them. One of the visitors spoke up and said i had a neighbor who is here. He moved from here to lexington, kentucky. He did not say much about it but we know he was here during world war ii and you might want to contact him. The park service contacted this man, his name was fred michelle. The person who contacted and was contacted him was not having much luck trying to set up an interview with him and he thought maybe the reason was because mr. Michelle was sworn to secrecy. Finally he arranged to meet with them. He took a long several of the interrogations that he had conducted with his name on them and he started talking about what he had done in the program at fort hunt. Then he gave them several names of people he remembered who were there. With that and going through the roster and internet trying to track people down through google and so forth that they were able to track down about 65 people stationed at fort hunt and conducted oral history interviews with as many as they could from 2006 to 2010. There were some interesting interviews. There were some who were bedridden who literally died within weeks of the interviews, and at the time world war ii veterans were dying at a rate of one every 90 seconds so time was of the essence. One of the soldiers they were ready to interview, they were ready to get on the plane, the family called and said he had fallen into a coma and they might as well not worry about coming. Several days later he came out of the coma, looked around and said where is the park service . They said he came out of the coma. He passed not long after that. That was one of the challenges was trying to not only track people down by trying to get to them before they passed. The amount of information gained from these interviews is just absolutely amazing. One of the people we interviewed Paul Fairbrook said why havent you contacted john. He became wellknown later and was considered at one point the richest man in the United States. We said we have tried but we cannot get in touch with them. Paul picked up the phone and said, john, i have park service here and they would like to talk to you. Host all of these oral histories are on the National Park service website. In addition to this book, how have they been used . Guest well, they have been used for interpretation at the park. They have mostly been put up for research. I am not in the park service anymore so i do not know what the current discussions are, but there is one building that is there from the early period, the 1900 period right near the entrance, and there has been some talk of making a museum or Research Center out of that building. As far as i know that is not gone too far beyond the conversation stage, but that i think would be perfect used for use for the building and a wonderful place for people to look at these interviews. The wonderful thing is most of the interviews have a transcript. You can listen to the interview or you can watch it on video. Most of them are videotaped. They are wonderful as a research tool. Host i imagine pentagon historians would be interested in additional information. Did you work with the pentagon in doing this project . Guest i did not work with the pentagon. One of the challenges of doing i did most of this during covid. Host i am thinking about the oral histories themselves. Guest i was not very involved in actually conducting the interviews. The people involved were at the park, they have the system set up. What i was able to do is give them some money so they could travel to places like california to conduct interviews but i personally was not involved in conducting interviews. Host did brendan tell you what the reactions were of these men talking after so many years . Were they reluctant or happy to finally be able to tell their story . Guest it varied. Some were very reluctant. Sometimes what he would do is what he did with fred michelle, which was to find a transcript of an interview, and most of them it was like opening a flood gate. They were anxious to talk about what they had done. Now that they knew that they could. They could not during the war. In fact, there is one joke one fellow said that his wife kept pestering him about what he was doing during the war and he said what he was doing was making brassieres for the womens artillery corps. They were very cagey even with their families. When they had an opportunity to open up, most of them were anxious to. Host these interrogators, and we need to spend some real time on them, or a very special group were a very special group of soldiers, and they all had a particular heritage that you write about. Tell me about that. Guest first of all the army and navy were bringing in germans, right . So it would be very helpful if they could find somebody who spoke german, and it would be even more helpful if they could find a native german who not only spoke german as a native tongue but also understood the nuances of the language and the culture, and it would be even more impressive if they could use jewish german and austrian so what the army started doing there were quite a few who had come to the states mostly during the 1930s as children, and they came in different ways. Some came with their families, some came through a program in which the government allowed 1000 German Jewish children to come to the United States without their parents if they had either a foster family willing to sponsor them or relatives in the United States. The parents were willing to do this because they thought hitler was an aberration, that eventually he would be booted out of office because he was so radical. Of course they were wrong and it was a tragedy for them. The children came but the parents were not allowed to do so. Anyway, there are different stories, there is one one of my favorites, a fellow by the name of george went to school one day and was told he could no longer attend school, he lived in austria. He said why is that. They said because you were jewish. That was two shocks. One, he couldnt attend school. And two, he did not know that his family had been jewish. That was a double shock to him. Paul fairbrook was 10 years old, things are going badly in germany. His father was a pretty successful banker, and he decided that he did not like what was happening in germany, took the family to palestine, later to the netherlands and eventually the United States. Many of these have stories where if you would read the stories , you would think this is a novel, but it cannot be a novel because it is too outlandish to be a novel. Some of the stories of their escapes were amazing, some were straightforward. They were able to travel to the Robert Sutton<\/a> you have a new book out titled nazis on the potomac. What is the basic story you were telling . This is a story that could have very well disappeared. During world war ii in fort hunt, most people consider fort hunt a picnic park, it is halfway between alexandria and mount vernon on the George Washington<\/a> parkway, but during world war ii it became the site of three programs that were topsecret, that were so topsecret that the people who were involved in the program were sworn to secrecy and assumed they would carry the story with them to the grave, and most of them unfortunately did. In about 2000 as many of the different programs from world war ii were declassified, it became clear that something really interesting had happened there. There was one program called misy that brought very high level or high value german prisoners in either from uboats or the field to interrogate and listening to their conversations. Another program mirs translated and evaluated literally tons of german documents and wrote reports about it. The third program, military Intelligence Research<\/a> series x was escape and invasion, and they put together packages were four pilots so if they were shut down they would have a means hopefully to evade capture, or if they were in pow camps they set up a very elaborate and sophisticated and Successful Program<\/a> where they would communicate through cryptographic letters with prisoners and they would say that a package is coming and it would come from a dummy corporation or organization and might have a transmitter in the board or maps in playing cards. These were the three programs at fort hunt. After world war ii there was another program called operation paperclip, and what this did was during the cold war americans wanted to recruit the highest level and highest functioning engineering and so forth germans from world war ii to help them plan for dealing with the cold war. Host what were the exact years fort hunt was used in this capacity . Guest it was used from 1942 to 1946. Host how many nazis were brought to the site . Guest over 3000. Host the subtitle of your book declares this, that they helped the war effort significantly. What was the major contribution of the work done at fort hunt . Guest i would say it was cumulative. They got some of the bits and pieces from soldiers they interrogated, people were listening to conversations, so they did get information, such as allied bombers late in the war were successfully bombing railroad terminals, but they noticed the next day trains were running as if nothing had happened. They found out they were loading and unloading trains at the crossings, so this is something that they found that was important so they started bombing the crossings, and that was successful. The other thing was the publications that came out of the military Intelligence Research<\/a> section were incredibly valuable, the most valuable was what was called the redbook, the order of battle of the german army. What this did was it documented every division in the german army, who the commander was, where they were, where they had been, so forth. It went into great detail about the ss, gestapo, the different branches. What they did. Who were the lethal ones and not. When they were preparing for dday this book was it a invaluable because it told all of the different German Forces<\/a> that were in belgium and france, where they work on that with their strength was and so forth, so that was incredibly valuable as well. Then they uncovered things like what was going on after the assassination attempt on hitler. They begin to focus on whether people were loyal to hitler more about winning the war. If you add what happened it fort hunt, when you add together what happened there and what happened with other intelligence gathering operations the allies really were incredibly well prepared by the end of the war. There are scholars that say the war probably ended two years before it would have. By the end of the world one scholar said eisenhower new more about who was going on with German Forces<\/a> than hitler did. It was an impressive operation. Host it ends up being an interesting historical narrative. Do you think this has lessons for us today . Guest it does, and the main thing that came through either from my discussions with soldiers stationed there or the Oral History Program<\/a> we did with the National Park<\/a> service where we interviewed 65 of the soldiers that were there plus a reunion that took place in 2007, one thing they wanted to make a very, very clear and i have several places in the book was that they did not torture anybody. They never resorted to corporal punishment. They had ways of getting information short of that, but they wanted to make it very clear. This was the late 2000s. It was clear what was going on in iraq with torture. They made it clear that they got more information by treating them well than by torture. Thats probably is the most important lesson that comes from the story. Host explain where it was physically, a couple miles north of mount vernon. It has got a really long history. Would you tell me about it . Guest it was actually part of George Washington<\/a>s river plantation, and everything that he did on his plantations was very well documented. Shortly before he died he actually wrote a plan for all of his plantations, and he specifically talked about river plantation, how many slaves there were on his plantation, what he intended to do, the crops you plan to raise, the animals he planned to have their, whether it was for food or foraging. It was part of the river plantation. It fell into disuse after he died, but then around the turn of the century around 1900, a little before, a little after the American Congress<\/a> and president recognized that americas Coastal Defense<\/a>s were in a deplorable condition so they came up with a plan named for the secretary of war to either beef up or build new Coastal Defense<\/a> systems throughout the coastal areas and harbor entrances throughout the United States<\/a>. They refortified Fort Washington<\/a> across the river in maryland and built a new fort, fort hunt, on the potomac. The thing that is fascinating about this period and this program is that they built these humongous gun batteries, and the purpose was to protect against naval attacks, but ironically one of the Little Things<\/a> i had in my book that i think is really fascinating is the last battery at fort hunt was completed in january 2004, and a month earlier the Wright Brothers<\/a> flew their flyer. And so about a month before this last one was built these forts became obsolete. They had no way of protecting against air tax. Air attacks. Host you meant 1904 . Guest yes, sorry. Host is off the George Washington<\/a> parkway, heavily traveled and it is completely surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. What was it like in the 1940s . Guest there were some of the houses around. Some of the people talked about they saw what was happening at fort hunt and there were some reports from the locals but it was pretty much isolated, and for good reason, because it was such a topsecret operation. There were a lot of buildings that were there both from the early period and they were New Buildings<\/a> built during world war ii. One thing that fascinated me about this period was how fast people could build things. They needed to have an enclosure for the prisoners that were being brought in, so they asked one of the engineers in the military to build a new enclosure system that would be fortifications, offices, interrogation rooms, the whole thing. They said you have eight weeks to build this. He built it in six weeks. There were New Buildings<\/a> that were there but there were quite a bit from earlier. Host during the time period, you describe a very congenial setting in addition to the housing, there were actually open fields and places of leisure for the prisoners. What was the thinking . Guest the thinking was that if you have them comfortable they are more likely to talk, and it worked pretty well. They would have a recreation room with pingpong, pool, and one thing that the germans really liked that they did not know anything about before was horseshoes. They could do anything they wanted to. They would treat them well, they would feed them well. A lot of times a lot of the interviews you read the transcript in the interview and about two words into it they would say would you like a cigarette . Are you comfortable . Are we treating you well . And then if a prisoner was particularly helpful they would take them to a nice dinner and washington, d. C. , one of the fancy restaurants, they might take them to a movie or so forth so they generally treated them fairly well, and the thought was if you treat them well they will give you the information that you need. Host they were taking prisoners into washington, d. C. Did anyone ever escape . Guest there was one attempted escape, and this was a uboat captain, and he was captured, his uboat was sunk, he was captured along with his crew. He had been very successful. I do not know how many tons of shipping, most of the ships that he had sunk were british. He was terrified he would be sent to Great Britain<\/a> and be handled as a war criminal. And be executed. He was so afraid of this he actually probably committed suicide by running out to the fence, trying to scale the fence, he was shot and killed. He was the one prisoner who tried to escape but we did not think he would be able to escape and he tried to commit suicide by trying to escape. Host would you see any evidence of this period of time . Guest no, there are a couple of partial foundation scattered in the woods. You have to look to find them. Mostly what you will see are the gun placements from around 1900. There is one noncommissioned officers house there from the early period, and that is it. There is a monument and flexible flagpole to this program. Host when was that installed . Guest 2007. Host during this period it had a codename. Why and what was it . Guest it was po box 1142 and they did not want to have anything that would refer to fort hunt at all. This was the po box in alexandria. Host you have retired from the National Park<\/a> service and the park service has an Important Role<\/a> to play in the story. Tell me how that all came about. Guest in about 2000 let me back up, preparts of his in prepark service in this program, in about 1990 eight 1998 1990 eight soldiers stationed at fort hunt by the name of Lloyd Schumacher<\/a> wrote a book about the escape factory in which he talked about this program, military intelligence sectionx at fort hunt. The army had not declassified it at the time. He wrote this book, published it. The army found out about it and tried to buy as many copies as they could. The park service knew about this story and about 2000 they had a study done of fort hunt, and many of the documents such as the interrogations, transcripts of interrogations were now declassified, so they began to piece together what was happening at fort hunt. In 2005, 1 of the rangers at fort hunt was giving a tour of the military history of fort hunt. She would go through the whole thing, the early history, so forth and so on, but she would always ask the rangers would ask if anybody knows anybody who is stationed here who is still alive we would really like to speak to them. One of the visitors spoke up and said i had a neighbor who is here. He moved from here to lexington, kentucky. He did not say much about it but we know he was here during world war ii and you might want to contact him. The park service contacted this man, his name was fred michelle. The person who contacted and was contacted him was not having much luck trying to set up an interview with him and he thought maybe the reason was because mr. Michelle was sworn to secrecy. Finally he arranged to meet with them. He took a long several of the interrogations that he had conducted with his name on them and he started talking about what he had done in the program at fort hunt. Then he gave them several names of people he remembered who were there. With that and going through the roster and internet trying to track people down through google and so forth that they were able to track down about 65 people stationed at fort hunt and conducted oral history interviews with as many as they could from 2006 to 2010. There were some interesting interviews. There were some who were bedridden who literally died within weeks of the interviews, and at the time world war ii veterans were dying at a rate of one every 90 seconds so time was of the essence. One of the soldiers they were ready to interview, they were ready to get on the plane, the family called and said he had fallen into a coma and they might as well not worry about coming. Several days later he came out of the coma, looked around and said where is the park service . They said he came out of the coma. He passed not long after that. That was one of the challenges was trying to not only track people down by trying to get to them before they passed. The amount of information gained from these interviews is just absolutely amazing. One of the people we interviewed Paul Fairbrook<\/a> said why havent you contacted john. He became wellknown later and was considered at one point the richest man in the United States<\/a>. We said we have tried but we cannot get in touch with them. Paul picked up the phone and said, john, i have park service here and they would like to talk to you. Host all of these oral histories are on the National Park<\/a> service website. In addition to this book, how have they been used . Guest well, they have been used for interpretation at the park. They have mostly been put up for research. I am not in the park service anymore so i do not know what the current discussions are, but there is one building that is there from the early period, the 1900 period right near the entrance, and there has been some talk of making a museum or Research Center<\/a> out of that building. As far as i know that is not gone too far beyond the conversation stage, but that i think would be perfect used for use for the building and a wonderful place for people to look at these interviews. The wonderful thing is most of the interviews have a transcript. You can listen to the interview or you can watch it on video. Most of them are videotaped. They are wonderful as a research tool. Host i imagine pentagon historians would be interested in additional information. Did you work with the pentagon in doing this project . Guest i did not work with the pentagon. One of the challenges of doing i did most of this during covid. Host i am thinking about the oral histories themselves. Guest i was not very involved in actually conducting the interviews. The people involved were at the park, they have the system set up. What i was able to do is give them some money so they could travel to places like california to conduct interviews but i personally was not involved in conducting interviews. Host did brendan tell you what the reactions were of these men talking after so many years . Were they reluctant or happy to finally be able to tell their story . Guest it varied. Some were very reluctant. Sometimes what he would do is what he did with fred michelle, which was to find a transcript of an interview, and most of them it was like opening a flood gate. They were anxious to talk about what they had done. Now that they knew that they could. They could not during the war. In fact, there is one joke one fellow said that his wife kept pestering him about what he was doing during the war and he said what he was doing was making brassieres for the womens artillery corps. They were very cagey even with their families. When they had an opportunity to open up, most of them were anxious to. Host these interrogators, and we need to spend some real time on them, or a very special group were a very special group of soldiers, and they all had a particular heritage that you write about. Tell me about that. Guest first of all the army and navy were bringing in germans, right . So it would be very helpful if they could find somebody who spoke german, and it would be even more helpful if they could find a native german who not only spoke german as a native tongue but also understood the nuances of the language and the culture, and it would be even more impressive if they could use jewish german and austrian so what the army started doing there were quite a few who had come to the states mostly during the 1930s as children, and they came in different ways. Some came with their families, some came through a program in which the government allowed 1000 German Jewish<\/a> children to come to the United States<\/a> without their parents if they had either a foster family willing to sponsor them or relatives in the United States<\/a>. The parents were willing to do this because they thought hitler was an aberration, that eventually he would be booted out of office because he was so radical. Of course they were wrong and it was a tragedy for them. The children came but the parents were not allowed to do so. Anyway, there are different stories, there is one one of my favorites, a fellow by the name of george went to school one day and was told he could no longer attend school, he lived in austria. He said why is that. They said because you were jewish. That was two shocks. One, he couldnt attend school. And two, he did not know that his family had been jewish. That was a double shock to him. Paul fairbrook was 10 years old, things are going badly in germany. His father was a pretty successful banker, and he decided that he did not like what was happening in germany, took the family to palestine, later to the netherlands and eventually the United States<\/a>. Many of these have stories where if you would read the stories , you would think this is a novel, but it cannot be a novel because it is too outlandish to be a novel. Some of the stories of their escapes were amazing, some were straightforward. They were able to travel to the United States<\/a>, but most of them came here, and the army , of course, recognized the value of not only their language but their incentive for interrogating these prisoners. Their reactions to the interrogation process was fascinating. They would say, you know, i realize these people i was interrogating were not really bad people. They were doing what they were required to do a soldiers. As soldiers. I saw on the other hand if i was facing them at the battlefield they would be trying to kill me, and i would be trying to kill them. They had very interesting reactions, and most of them that had families that were still in europe, have lost contact with their families. They did not know what was happening. Later in the war they knew about the terrible conditions of the holocaust. This was one of the most fascinating parts of the story, the jewish men who were there, and early on in the war, Paul Fairbrook<\/a> was one of the first to find this out, he went down as soon as the war started, he went down to the marine core marine recruiting office, and asked to join. He could not join any branch of service because he was classified as an enemy alien, because he was a german citizen, and many of them were classified in that classification. The army allowed the men because the army decided in part that had declared that all jewish german citizens they were no longer german citizens. Host lets listen to a very short clip of paul telling that in his own words. I think i recall in your autobiography that you tried to enlist . I was turned down by the services, because, i had letter saying so. And this was before the end of 1944. I was drafted in january 1943. It was not long after pearl harbor when they decided we better take those guys. They realize you are valuable with your german Language Skills<\/a> . Oh yeah. Host he mentioned pearl harbor and you write in your book how pivotal pearl harbor was for these interrogators and joining the cause. Can you talk about that . Guest there is a wonderful collection the library of congress has done, the Folklore Center<\/a> had been recording songs, folk songs or local songs during the depression, and the fellow in charge of this sent out a telegram to everybody asking them to go talk to people on the street, get their impressions of pearl harbor and it is very , interesting. Some people are afraid theyre going to be drafted, some women are afraid their husbands are going to be drafted, but the reaction of almost all of the people i talked to eddie we that we talked to that were at fort hunt that were jewish, they were absolutely thrilled. They thought this was the greatest thing ever that finally their new country was going to do what he could to get even with hitler and most of them were perfectly fine with joining. Most of them that joined were fine with that. Some of them were drafted, and they were fine with that, but most of them were very happy finally the United States<\/a> was entering the war against this person who would make their life so miserable. Host successful interrogation is a learned skill. These men got there training at fort ritchie. Where is fort ritchie . Why was the training so rigorous that you report 40 of those there washed out of the program . Guest camp ritchie is near presentday camp david. Camp ritchie had been a Maryland National<\/a> guard facility. It was established as a facility for intelligence, and if you went there at the time you would wonder what you would come into because everywhere you look there were german soldiers, german tanks, everything look like germany because the training, they wanted to make it as realistic people as possible. Most of the people that came out of camp ritchie went to europe. That was the purpose for that. As far as interrogations, they would have germanamericans dressed in germanh uniforms serve as the subjects for conducting interrogations, and many of them would do everything they could to try to trick the interrogator. What is your name . What is your rank . I do not want to give you my name, i do not want to tell you anything. They would do everything they could to try to trick the interrogators, but the interrogation training also give gave them different tricks to try. By the time they left camp ritchie, they usually were very good at what they were doing, but some were not in some had trouble. The training, that was part of the training. They actually had a recreated german village, this is what it looks like. They would have german artillery, this is what it sounds like as opposed to american artillery. For the americans that were at fort hunt the training was he was either in interrogation or research. Host how does a u. S. Department learned the craft of interrogation . Guest what they did, before world war ii, this is an interesting part of the story, in 1941, the u. S. Military the War Department<\/a>, recognize that the intelligence gathering operation and then into place was woefully inadequate, and they sent a team over to u. K. In june 1941 to study everything that the brits were doing for intelligence gathering, which was a smart move because they had been involved in the war for several years. They had learned a lot of things that were working, were not working, so they came back and said we need to set up for the interrogation side, the misy program, we need to have two components. One, need to interrogate prisoners and we need to set up a system so that we can listen into all of their conversations either in their rooms, around the fort and so forth. They set up part of the program there, they had hidden microphones all over the fort, and they would try to pick up conversations. They had a monitoring system. There were to be 12 soldiers on each day monitoring conversations around the fort. If something sounded like it might be useful they had a recording system. It was not a tape recorder. They did not have tape recorders then, it looked like a record player, if they would record a conversation and make a transcript of it. They learned all of this from the brits, but there was some hesitation about doing the eavesdropping part of the intelligence gathering. Some felt that it was unethical to do that. They had really not done that before, at military had not done the military hadnt done that before. So there was controversy with that but they decided this was a good program. Host you talked about fred michelle. One of the first people interviewed. We have a clip from his oral history. He is talking about being brought to fort hunt for the first time. When we worship out of ritchie, everyone expected to go to europe. We pulled out 20 or so people were loaded on a bus, and nobody knew where we were going to go. Suddenly, we pulled off the parkway into a wooden area, and which was surrounded and there was a guard at the gate, and we were going into this unknown area. We were briefed on the nature of what the installation was, and that the installation was known as po box 1142 and we were not to under any circumstances to tell anybody where we were. Host that is fred michel. During his first interview on world war ii. Did the interrogators live onsite . Guest mostly they did. However, there were some who were married and they were allowed to live off site with their spouses, but most lived on site, most of them were single. Host how long did most of the prisoners who came through fort hunt stay there . Guest it varied. There were some who were there for a few days and gone. Some of the interrogators became quite skilled at telling within just a few minutes whether there would be value in what they said or not so they would be there and leave after a short time. Later in the war and after operation paperclip someone to some would be there for weeks or months. Most of them were there for a couple of weeks, fairly limited period of time, and what was really important, the classification, it was not considered a pow camp. There were certain restrictions on what you could do with prisoners. It was considered very temporary, and generally the people who were there were transferred from fort hunt to a pow camp. Somewhere in the country. Host who were the most notable names among the germans who came through . Guest there were some german scientists, german generals. One of the generals came through had been one of the he was a brigadier general, but his main job during world war ii was he was in charge of prisoners in russia, so he knew quite a bit about russia so key became valuable during the cold war. He was very ruthless. He and his team held no punches in what they were doing to the russians. Part of the problem was the americans wanted his expertise, but he had been a pretty nasty person during world war ii along with his people, but they said ok, we need you anyway. Another person who had been connected with the Russian Embassy<\/a> was gustaf hilger, and he was there for quite a long time. He had been the ambassador to russia, he was raised in russia. He probably knew more about russia than anyone who was not russian. His value mostly after the war was incredible. For the cold war, he was an incredibly valuable person there as well. There were some, and i shift gears a bit, there were some who came through early on there were some who came through uboats who made it very clear they did not like what was going on in germany and they made it very clear they would not serve as they would be stool pigeons. There were quite a few in that program as well. If you add together all that the different people who were there, the generals, people after the war, during the war, most of the information was tidbits here and there, but when you add all of it together it was incredibly valuable. Host lets listen to the voice of another one of the interrogators. This is george frankel. We went through north west louisiana. There i was grabbed, without any previous knowledge of my part and i was transferred to pob 1142 and there i was placed in charge of a contingent of enlisted men who transcribed, monitored interrogations. Interrogations of naval personnel. Host one of the things you reported from these interrogations is that the germans were terrified of being turned over to the russians. Why . Guest this is one of the fascinating stories. I mentioned earlier was what they mentioned was generally the prisoners were fairly forthcoming with information. If they were not but they never beat them, they want you they wanted to be very clear that they did not want to be beat prisoners. But they wanted to make it very clear that they wanted information, so one of the first techniques they used was to take them down from the bunkers to but the thing that worked better than anything else, there were two soldiers dressed in red army uniforms, conspicuous throughout the fort. And so if in interrogator thought a prisoner was being cagey. He would say what if ivan here takes you to the soviet union . Maybe they would like to hear what you have to say. That worked incredibly well both at fort hunt and in europe, and one of the fellows who did interrogations primarily in europe said and this is fairly well substantiated that about 80 of soldiers who were reluctant to talk would talk if the threat was if they did not talk take them to the soviet union. Host Mamie Eisenhower<\/a> has a cameo role in your book. Tell me that story. Guest one of the men who was actually still alive, i have talked to him. He is a former retired professor at princeton, and he and one of his friends, and they have been together actually they were at camp ritchie, this is after they came to fort hunt together this is after the war, they were at fort hunt and he had lined up two dates in new york. He was from new york, and he had lined up two women for them to date. They had to get to new york and they had to catch a train. There was a bus that sometimes would run. They were not supposed to hitchhike but they went out on the gw parkway, it was pouring rain and the first car pick them up. They were sitting in the backseat and they talked back and forth, the women said they did not know how far they could take them, but they like them so they took them all the way to union station. When they got on the train, Leslie Wilson<\/a> said to arnaud, mary said did you hear the women calling the woman sitting in the middle mamie . Yes . Did you also hear that her husband was general eisenhower . So they checked and they found out that mamie was federal eisenhowers wife. They thought it would be nice to write a note to her in care of her husband who at the time was chief of staff at the pentagon. They wrote a letter thanking Mamie Eisenhower<\/a> for giving them a ride. So a few days later they are called into the Commanding Officers<\/a> office at fort hunt, and they are terrified, they do not know why they are being called in. They knew they had hitchhiked. Maybe they werent supposed to do that. Maybe that was a problem. They wrote a letter to Mamie Eisenhower<\/a>, but as they walked in the office they said the Commanding Officer<\/a> was almost bowing to them. He handed them a letter. The letter was from general eisenhower. In the letter, it said, dear sergeants, misses eisenhower had not been feeling well, she had been very busy. She asked me to write a letter to you. She would like to thank you for thinking her. We love picking up young soldiers that we always learn something from you. Signed white eisenhower. Dwight eisenhower. Both of these men, one cap the letter, one kept the envelope. They donated both to the National Park<\/a> service and we have them in our collection. Host you earlier had mentioned two other operations that went on at fort hunt. One was called the creamery, and the other was the warehouse. I want to go back to the creamery. And american pows held in german camps. You described it as being able to send encrypted messages and hide things. Things like cribbage boards. It seems so elementary. How were they able to get these things passed the germans . Past the germans . Guest what they would do the person that set up the cryptographic system, key became famous later at what is not the American History<\/a> museum at the smithsonian, we were able to catch him not long before he passed away, and he was actually bedridden when weight captured him. He set up this cryptology system, and the way it worked was he would have soldiers who were not very educated write the letters. And this is something i found very fascinating. He said you can teach people to improve their writing, but what you cannot do is take someone who is a very good writer and have them write something that is not very good. He tried to make the letters not the letters that were sent from fort hunt not be the best in style or grammar and so forth, but in these letters would be a message that would be important. And if the germans read the letters they would have no idea what any of this meant. They would come in, there was somebody at every fort, every pow camp, maybe two or three who knew what this cryptographic message system was. They could read the letters. They knew what was coming. A letter would say there is a package coming from such and such organization, be on the lookout for it. What they would do is they would do everything they could to keep an eye on all of the packages coming in and do whatever they could to try to make sure the germans did not see what was in these packages before they could get them and use them. As you said, there were things hidden in the packages. Sometimes they got more bold as the war went on, but is just an amazing story. In reality, not Many Americans<\/a> were able to escape from german pow camps. I think it was 700 or something, that were able to escape from these camps. Because most of them were far Eastern Europe<\/a> so it was difficult. Mostly what it did, it improved their morale. They would know from these transmitters and radios that were sent to them, they could monitor the bbc for example, and there were encrypted messages in the bbc. Or they would get something saying hang in there, we are almost done. And they could follow what was going on in the war as well. Mostly it was to improve morale. Host we have about seven minutes left in the conversation. Something else you reference was operation paperclip. Can you tell me more about that . Guest after the war the americans were very anxious to get top level germans who had expertise they thought would be valuable to have them come state stay in the United States<\/a> and help plan for the cold war. So there were some areas that were like gold, the german Rocket Program<\/a> was very important. And so werner von braun came to the United States<\/a> with his team and most of his rocket engineers came with him. There is no evidence that he personally was at fort hunt. He might have been, we just dont know. He came through fort strong into Boston Harbor<\/a> and soon thereafter went out to el paso to fort bliss, but that was an important part. I think one of the most interesting people who came through this program was a man , named hans. There was a german submarine , u234. The germans took everything out of the submarine, loaded it with everything they possibly could, including a disassembled jet airplane, mercury, geranium, the Newest Technology<\/a> uranium, the Newest Technology<\/a>, everything, and the plan was to send this submarine to japan to help the japanese a fight the war. The war ended and the commander of the uboat surrendered to the americans. The uboat was taken to portsmouth, new hampshire. Most of them were brought to fort hunt. The man, hands shifty hans, was a specialist in microwave technology, and he was one of the top engineers in germany, so with the war ending there all of the sudden was the desire to have him stay in the United States<\/a>. They wanted to encourage him to stay in the United States<\/a>, but the problem was his family was in germany and now in the russian sector of germany. They had to get his family to the United States<\/a> so he would stay. And he turned out to be one of the most successful. And he actually ended up in milwaukee and became one of the most important parts of the cold war period. There were several hundred that came here with all kinds of expertise, and it was controversial. And it is controversial because some of them were not very good people. Gay hard, i mentioned earlier, was a pretty awful person. Werner von braun, considered father of american rocketry but later americans found out that he had been a member of the nazi party, he had been an officer in the ss, as well as being a rocket designer. So that there was some controversy with it but americans felt this was such an Important Program<\/a> they needed to get the top people they could. Host after the germans surrendered, how long did it take for the unit at fort hunt to be disbanded . Guest about a year. About a year. Host how long did it take for all of the buildings and everything there to come down . Guest when the war was over, this is an interesting side story, before the war the fort had been turned over to the National Park<\/a> service, and it had been a major civilian concentration corps camp. So the arrangement between the department of war at the department of interior was it would still belong to the National Park<\/a> service, but a year after the work was over it after the war was over it would be returned to the National Park<\/a> service, and the War Department<\/a> would remove all of the buildings it had built before the war. Not long after the park Service Started<\/a> dismantling what was left of the other buildings. Some were reused. One of the soldiers at fort hunt , rudy pins, took gustaf hilger, he wanted to see the site where he had been. He took him to fort hunt. At this time it was probably the 1950s. The hut that he had been staying in was being used as a restroom. Over time almost all of the facilities at fort hunt were demolished to make way for the recreation park. Host you have detailed the contributions of the information gathered by the interrogations at fort hunt made to the world war ii effort. You also wrote, the information was valuable to our understanding of war, how war affects soldiers in modern conflicts like iraq and afghanistan. As we close, could you comment on that . Guest yes. The volume of information gathered at fort hunt is enormous. I cannot even imagine how many forests were lost with the paper that was gathered. German scholar, i forget his name at the moment, they actually started looking at these interrogations not so much for the information that came through the interrogations but for how soldiers were reacting to things. In other words, how are they reacting when they talked about death . Was it like, ok, so and so died and it was too bad, or was it something that really affected them . Was it something that would have a profound influence on them . And so they would start looking at these documents not so much for the information that had been gathered about world war ii, because that was long gone, but they found they could really get into the heads of prisoners who were opening up and telling a lot of things that were not really important at fort hunt for winning world war ii but it became important later on for understanding how soldiers react to war, and there are a lot of things that have been to. That have been written that i did not refer to. I do not refer to some of the things that have been written more recently but now we understand more things like ptsd. We understand that a lot better, and so the documents that we have from the interrogations i think now are really valuable for understanding a lot of things, like how war affects people and how war affects individuals. In this case how it affected the germans. Host the book is called nazis on the potomac. Robert sutton, a historian and author of the book, thank you so much for spending an hour with cspan. Guest you are welcome, and thank you for inviting me. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National<\/a> cable satellite corp. 2022] all q and day programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our cspan now at. App. Coming up tonight on cspan, a look back at the second hearing of the january 6 hearing on the attack on the capital. We will also hear from a number of candidates in the november midterm elections. Also, as wyomings gop primary elections are being counted, we expect to hear from liz cheney tonight. Cspans washington journal, every day we take your calls alive on the air on the use of the day news of the day and discussed policy issues that impact you. 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