Mentioned i think its always fun when you can put documents together that casts several different lights, several different kinds of light on the same event and sometimes even the same person saying something differently at different points in time. A little example of that for example, in hemingways novel about the war for whom the bell tolls, the central episode in that novel the blowing up of the bridge behind nationalist lines, hemingway himself part in a. That lou up the bridge and i tell that story in the book. Anyway in that novel he paints an excoriating picture of stalins man who was in charge of the international brigades. When the book appeared in this country, the communist press was outraged because they had expected hemingways muchanticipated book about the war would be about workingclass men from Different Countries standing shouldertoshoulder in the fight against fascism and the hero is a lover of Spanish Literature who is nonpolitical and heres this portrait of stalins leading commissar in spain and one of American Party officials and spanish civil war veteran, himself an author of quite a good memoir about the war reviewed the novel and the communist party publication and talked about how dreadful it was that hemingway distorted history in this way and said these insulting things about you know the great antifascist andrea marteeyo. You compare it with bessies own diary about when he met mark t. And found him with bug in the demagogue and said so in his diary. So its putting together things like that. I think we are running out of time. A quick question. I recall one of the books i read mention was made that one franco forces marched into barcelona that one of the First Political leaders they executed happened if the president of barcelona, the soccer team. In your research did you find out anything about the role of the soccer club and the resistance . I did not. As i mentioned, yes you could write a whole other book about this period with a whole different set of care cares and the stories would be equally fascinating. My wife knew for 30 years i have lived in the shadow. Cant measure up to that war hero. She did mention he was shot. He was wounded in the stomach and he met hemingway and said he was there again. His dad was in the brigade. A couple of questions quickly. What would spain have looked like if the republicans won the republicans want to would it be stalinist or democratic and if the republicans one would hitler and mussolini maybe not started at start of the war . A good question. I think if the spanish public republicans one where the people of spain would have been much better off. There are rightwing historians who say well if a republican one it would become a soviet satellite industry that the soviets did have great insolence in the army and the Security Police but i think to effectively turn the country into a satellite you have to have military occupation. A soviet satellites in Eastern Europe had remained that way for 40 years because the red army was on hand and moscow didnt help, didnt stop to, didnt hesitate to deploy it when somebody got out of line like in hungary in 1956, it is germany 1953 and just look czechoslovakia in 1963. Similarly the u. S. Kept most nations in Central America and the caribbean doing pretty much it wanted throughout the 20th century there is ceaseless string of military interventions without the red army occupying the public republicans painted out that it would have been a soviet satellite. What kind of a country would have been quite say think democratic, disorganized, chaotic but not a military dictatorship. Furthermore in this sort of gets to the second question you asked, if the republicans won the war, spain would not have been a de facto ally for hitler in world war ii. Spain never joined the axis powers in world war ii but franco gave hitler a base for 21 attack submarines on spains united coast. Spain supplied radio listing post encouraged 45 dozen young spaniards to volunteer for hitlers army and his doomed invasion of fresh and most important supplied hitler but they stream of Strategic Metals and minerals of the war, things that were very important in making weapons. If the republic of spain had one hitler would not have had a de facto ally in world war ii. I dont think it would have stopped hitler from launching the Second World War because i think spain for hitler was always something of a sideshow. His real ambition was to show russia who was boss and control Eastern Europe and the western parts of the soviet union and breach the balkan and cascade oilfields. I dont think a loss in spain would have deterred him from that. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] the Democratic National convention is live from philadelphia this week to watch every minute on cspan. Listen live on the free cspan radio app. Its easy to download from the apple store or google play. Watch live or ondemand anytime at cspan. Org on your desktop, foner tablet where you will find all of our Convention Coverage in the full convention schedule. Follow us at cspan on twitter and like us on facebook to see video of newsworthy moments, the Democratic National commission live from philadelphia all this week on cspan, the cspan radio app and cspan. Org. Good evening and welcome. My name is howard unger and on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial museum its my honor to lucky me to todays program entitled ever let loose pursuit ringing holocaust perpetrators to justice. I am the son of a holocaust survivor and had served on the council for the u. S. Museum museum for the past five years but ive come to learn that the museum is so much more than just a building that houses exhibits. The museum researches history, trains educators members and military and the judiciary both in the u. S. And internationally and has many programs focused on preventing future genocides from occurring again. Here in new york the northeast Regional Office offers a variety of events including talks like the one youre about to hear plus Film Screenings and programs on holocaust history as well as contemporary genocide and antisemitism. Tomorrow we will be holding this same program at the synagogue and not kisco new york so please encourage her westchester friends and families to join us there tomorrow evening at 7 45. Tonights program is part of a conversation of the u. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is holding nationwide examining the role each of us has when confronted with difficult and complex challenges. Only in recent history has International Law evolved to define and punish Mass Violence against civilians. Out of the devastating crimes of the holocaust the allied powers were forced to bring state access to justice for unspeakable crimes never before tried in a court of law. A small percentage of nazi officials and collaborators were brought to trial in immediate postwar period. As the years passed the global Legal Community largely lost interest in pursuing the remaining perpetrators however a few remarkable individuals continue to work to bring nazi criminals to justice and these later trials continue to influence International Law. Love grows the dissenting of president s but how you apply the law helps determine what the law means. To the judgments of these tribunals and courts International Law on genocide and crimes against humanity evolves deepening our understanding of the crimes and our capacity to respond. Today our outstanding panel will discuss how these precedence were created and applied to help carry them out in the ongoing legacy of its history. It is now my pleasure to introduce a special guest. Andrew nagorski, journalist and author of the new book the nazi hunters and talk or Lawrence Douglas chair of the jurisprudence and social thought at Amherst College and author of the right wrong man. Our moderator this evening is dr. Elizabeth white. She goes by mary. Following the program both authors will be outside in the lobby to sign copies of their books. Thank you. [applause] [applause] good evening everyone. I am dr. Elizabeth barry white. This is Lawrence Douglas and andrew nagorski. Thank you all for coming out tonight and thank you both for participating in this program. Brutal atrocities have been a feature of warfare since the dawn of Human History and to the extent that perpetrators were ever made to account for their actions it was true acts over to fusion either winning side against the losers. During world war ii the allies signaled that they were going to take a different approach. Late in 1943, as it became clear that nazi germany was going to lose the war, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain and the soviet Union Announced that the perpetrators of nazi atrocities would be brought to trial under the laws of the countries where they committed their crimes and that the major nazi leadership and criminals would face joint punishments by the allies. Did the signal that the allies have decided that they were going to forgo vengeance in favor of justice and what are they hope to accomplish by putting nazi criminals on trial . Not really in the sense that justice and vengeance were inevitably intertwined at the end of the war and 1943 the moscow declaration that you cited there was a lot of fighting ahead all the way to berlin and a lot of it was very vicious and especially the red army had suffered massive losses and they were getting revenge, among others not just on the military but for instance rapes by the red army made it close to 2 million in germany. But, there you have that declaration which was a novel idea that instead of you exact vengeance you do seek justice but right away six weeks later if the tehran Conference Call and said to roosevelt and churchill, zero i have an idea of justice. Lets line up to 2000 or 100,000 of the top german commanders and lets shoot them. That would be justice. Churchill was horrified and roosevelt said Something Like lets have a compromise. Lets shoot 49,500. It didnt go over well with churchill but whats interesting it goes back and forth and eventually stalin and roosevelt decide they do want a trial for different reasons. Stalin loved show trials. The 30s he had faked trials but roosevelt really wanted the principle and churchill was aware of the danger of the trap of show trials and he suddenly declassified documents we found out that at one point he was considering a plan to just have summary executions of a few top leaders and some just imprisoned without trial. This went back and forth and eventually the trials happen as we know. Nuremberg and so forth and it was imprisoned in but every step of the way was controversial right up to today. And what were the reasons they opted to go for the trials . Where their particular goals besides Holding People accountable . Aside from Holding People accountable and the obvious one that somebody has to be punished for all the horrors there was the educational elements very early and present chairman at one point said what these trials are meant to do is to make it impossible for someone to say now or anytime in the future that these things happened and that is why it immediately you have at the trials documents, films, witnesses and in some cases witnesses in some cases documentation by the west to set the record straight because so many people were in denial but what happened especially in germany and austria but elsewhere in the world people are only beginning to grasp the aptitude of what it happen. So we were focusing on the german people and show them the evils that have been done in the name than . That was the priority at first and while we fought this war but there was a media opposition terms of the United States both on the left and the right. For the people who went into the concentration camps and liberated them they said no this is not justice. Lawrence you are our legal expert here. The charges before the International Military tribunal at nuremberg were crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. At least some of these word new terms. Did the international Legal Community consider these to be wellfounded in existing law or were some of them particularly controversial . Well the whole trial was engulfed in controversy. Its remember that this was the First International criminal court in Human History and in certain respects not only were there 21 individual incentives on trial, that is to the extent that the allies had committed to doing a Trial Program is supposed to summer education they really had to demonstrate that law was an adequate tool for dealing with crimes of this magnitude so they wanted to certainly make sure that whatever charges were brought against these defendants that they had adequate grounding in International Law. That said i think we need to bear in mind that norbert trial, the famous before the International Tribunal was not in the first instance a holocaust trial. As you mentioned the principle charge against the defendants that norm berg was that they had waged an aggressive war in violation of International Law and that charge to wage an aggressive war, that has not shown a lot of durability since nuremberg and even at the time it was very my chin developed and controversy. The victors justice was applied to the charge of waging an aggressive war because the question emerged since when in Human History was waging war at crime . It might be something you dont like it might be something you disagree with us since when was it a crime . The other charges that were brought, were crimes is pretty well established in International Law and crimes against humanity in my mind was the most distinctive contribution that norm berg made it was through the channel of this relatively new thing called crimes against humanity that most of the evidence of the crimes of the holocaust answered the nuremberg trial and i think we can say now with 70 plus years of hindsight crimes against humanity was the most instinctive and important legal breakthrough of the nuremberg trial. And crimes against humanity included what kinds of actions . A basically included what we can describe as extermination, systematic attacks on the civilian population. We have to remember that genocide which is a term that we offered used today to describe discriminatory practices genocide was only coined as a term in 1944 a year before the trial started. It was coined by a Legal Adviser to the u. S. War department and so even though today genocide stands as an independent crime and International Law at the time of norm burkett was very much a new term and it does emerge in the trial itself. If you look in particular at the closing prosecutors they start to use this new term but the new term of genocide is basically used as a description of the nazis crimes against humanity. I think that was in the indictment as well. The indictment is mentioned as a war crime and in the closing arguments of the lawyers that prosecutors then started describing it as a crime against humanity. If you are going to hold a trial yet to present evidence to support the charges and so late in the war the United States army formed war crimes investigative teams and the mission was to accompany combat troops as they fought their way across germany and to seize and collect evidence of nazi war crimes. Lets take a look at how this works according to nuremberg prosecutors. An odd what i would do would secure the records. An odd in order to have the sex successful war crimes prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt and specific crime no crimes been committed. And you needed a defendant. If you havent got a together at the same time youve got nothing and to bring the two together is not easy. Between 1945 in 1948 there were thousands of trials of nazi criminals by the allies, in germany. There are several but i will point to three and i will get that to ben for ends in a moment but with poland where there was an investigator by the name of of. He was from a polish family of german origin and i discovered researching a story it turns out that his brother during the occupation that registered as ethnic german and became the mayor of a small town and disappeared after the war, he was a lawyer who did not do that and he became the most fervent war crimes investigator in poland and he was the one for instance those of you who of course know from schindlers list the concentration camp commander. He was the one who had him hanged but most importantly the most important was the longestserving commandant of auschwitz and what was interesting he was representing a regime that communist postpost regime so he had gone by the stalin rules. He would summon the guy how to make a quick statement hang him. Instead he spent days, weeks, months coaxing tests to write his whole life story and the story of the camp and it is i think the most chilling document of the holocaust because here is hess explaining how hes a functionary in working so hard and he is hurting kids and women into the gas chambers but im working so hard that i dont have time to play with my own kids acros