A panel of holocaust scholars talk about recent scholarship trends as well as new findings. They focus on the brutality of regime and the relation of the holocaust to world war ii. This was part of the world war ii museums annual conference in new orleans. The month of was june, 1944. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Topic tom a dark probably the darkest of all also is led by some of the worlds leading scholars period. It is, of course, the holocaust. For this session, we have a asked dr. Alexander ritchie of our president ial counselors to lead dr. Gerhard weinberg. Alex has been involved with the our 2014nce conference. In those five years cannot we have kept her busy. And meetings, committees, leading a lot of educational travel tours. Deep and personal connection to the holocaust as law was himself in auschwitz. To hear the latest in holocaust scholarship and to look at what was going on in june 1940 four, it is my proof prep it is topleasure to ask dr. Richie come up. Thank you. This is a topic very close to my heart. As most of you know, i live in warsaw in poland. My fatherinlaw was an off wits in auschwitz and became a Founding Member of an aided theon which warsaw ghetto uprising. For hisut into prison pains and was later in solidarity. When the wall collapsed, he became foreign minister of poland a couple times. Wasgreat passion in life talking about what had happened, not just in poland, but in germany and central europe, and to make sure that these history was not just remembered but actually understood, that it was constantly scrutinized and new research was always listened to and scholarship was always encouraged. Has costlyesearch been changing since the war been constantly changing since the war began. Revealed arg trials great deal of the extent of nazi crimes. Member of the american Prosecution Team coined the term genocide. There were initiatives to member the tragedy right away, like the creation of the warsaw ghetto and many other things right after the war. Waned interest in it until the iceland trial in 1961. Scholarly research on the holocaust has exploded since the 1980s. Re are new directions jim examining the scale and complexity of the holocaust, which i know jeff will talk about, which points to the tens of thousands of camps and killing sides of the holocaust sites in the holocaust. And new focus, everything from collaborators and participation and geography and many things, which i know we will hear about today from our two magnificent speakers. I am honored and pleased to magnificentu to speakers. He served since 2000 as project director for the museums encyclopedia of the camps and ghettos. The first volume appeared in. Une 20 2009 jeff received his doctorate in military history from most i ohio state university. Work upon which he based his work in hitlers high command. Of war ofthe author annihilation combat and genocide on the Eastern Front, and many other things Eastern Front, and many other things. I am honored to have gerhard consider to bee the dean of historians, internationally recognized authority on nazi germany. A professor of history at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill. He is the author or editor of so many books and articles it is almost impossible to list them. We would be here until midnight. I wanted to say that i used his work when i was starting out as a historian and i have copies of most of his works on my bookshelf. Just plucking one out of the blue, which is extraordinary and calculates encapsulates his work because it brings his redible Life Experience born in hamburg, working in japan after the war, and really understanding what learning about the entire world. As aistory of world war ii scene from a military perspective, social, economic, and many other perspectives. He manages to weave these things into this extraordinary international, global perspective, which is extremely rare. It is with great gratitude and toor that i welcome gerhard the stand. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Can you hear me . That is a big help. Time, there was a that attractede a good deal of attention between those who called themselves intentional lists intentionalists and functionalists. The former argue the systematic killing of jews was planned and organized from the top. The latter held the process was radicalization pushed forward over time by engagedvolved as they in ever more radical procedures, culminating at some point in systematic mass killing. Localreful attention to detail and initiatives that characterized the work of those who called and consider themselves functionalists has certainly contributed greatly to our ability to follow the technical developments of mass murder. The extent to which individual police, military, and administrative personnel exercised their own judgment about the procedures they followed. Whatever the prior developments in the making of global state a formal decision at the top, even though thisof those writing about still prefer to ignore the relative evidence and continue to advocate something of a functionalist interpretation. Record from the romanian , that was determined to be accurate by the german official who checked in at the time, that when adolf hitler met a romanian on june 12,munich what wasasked hitler to be done about the jews in the soviet territory that their armies were about to invade. For him,ant issue since the area that would be seized initially was known to contain a large number of jews. Hitlers told him they were all instruction, and that the evidence indicates he given to heinrich. Immler we have a clear confirmation of the meeting before the invasion, official toldh ss that they were to follow the german armies into and a majornion part of their assignment was to kill all the jews. I will come back to the source when i getsolution to another point. Havehe evidence we now leaves no doubt that the ,ommanders of the battalions units with members more than 10 times as numerous as the famous group, were similarly instructed junee the invasion of 1941. s own tellinger the minister of croatia that all jews in europe were to be killed jerusalem inng november of 1941 that all jews in the middle east and in the rest of the world were also to inkilled are both recorded s publisheddocument decades ago, although these clear and explicit records are still ignored by many scholars. Literature that widely moved as far and as this speaker things as needed is that of the very close war aslationship of the a fight between germany and those it attacked on the one hand and the holocaust on the other. Recently thatte those writing on the war, other than myself, include any references to the holocaust at all. Similarly, those who write on the holocaust pay very much too little attention to the realities of the fighting. Let me illustrate this issue with some examples. Commanders in many cases killed men, not whole families, and the first weeks of the german invasion of the soviet union. This is occasionally used as step thator a first will be followed by radicalization subsequently. Here is anying reference to the reality of the early fighting on the Eastern Front. Assault surprised the red army that stalin had held all as he disregarded warnings from his own Intelligence Service and from the british and American Governments. Forces, under these circumstances, advanced rapidly, and the german armys chief of on july 3, 1941, that the campaign had succeeded and that the rapid advance of German Forces showed that a quick victory was certain. Meant, as a practical matter, that a murder commander that had to follow and advancing German Military unit through some of the most densely jewish settled part of europe at the day. Of about 30 miles a they were simply not in a position to do anything else. The members of the unit which shoots the local men and come back with the front when the and had no need for new orders or the personal supervision of as wech himmler who, know, repeatedly went to the east in the summer of 1941 watch the progress of his new program. Just as subsequently, he would visit auschwitz in the summer of 1942 to observe the killing procedure implemented there. Nor cared if the jews were killed by shooting, gas or on the means. Subject lefted the to local initiatives and preferences. A most critical point about the fighting, namely that the allies first contained and then ended the holocaust also rarely receives the attention it deserves. Offended if ibe suggest that if the germans had one won, and contained control of the 47 of the then 48 states of the usa, that the japanese were willing for them to have, they surely would have been in any american groups, some of them themselves, parents or grandparents commode would have been killed because they were jewish. Would haves audience been killed as jews. Some nonjews would have been killed because of some handicap. Some would have contracted polio and either died as a result, or had been crippled and then killed because the two doctors whose discovery conquered that disease in the 1950s would both have been killed because they happen to be jewish. Happened to be jewish. On the other side but those who have written endlessly about field Marshal Rommel and his companions in north africa generally exhort a critical part of this assignment generally ignore a critical part of this assignment. He was originally sent their in april 1941 to salvage italys conquering of libya, lest the italian people dump mussolini. Was a major worry for hitlers. Africa corps the onto egypt and the middle east in 1942 and do this at a time when the primary military theater for germany was the Eastern Front . Thanks, obviously had not gone the way the generals had confidently anticipated. Things. The germans intended italy to have egypt and the middle east while germany would get its oil. Rom the caucuses in spite of these realities and aans, and in spite of necessity for a resistance against the soviet union, in the summer of 1942 it looked as if the africa corps might get to cairo and beyond a commander attached to it. Because not done settler wanted the members to or that hitlers expected them to dismantle one of the pyramids so that it could reerected. D that all ofint was the jews in the middle east, about one million at the time, or to be killed before the area was turned over to italy because settler and himmler because and himmler did not trust the italians, but did trust rommel to direct the murder commander to do what hitler had promised to do so a year earlier. There haveecades, been on hand significant and positive developments in the study of the holocaust as a result of several trends. Trend has important been the declassification of very important relevant records. The agreement of the british 1986 to then interceptioneir and decoding of the german order ource has transformed understanding of the early holocaust in 1941. It is now clear that these notce battalions included only about 10 times as many men overe murder commandos, but also compared with kill more jews than the commanders whose reports because of their far earlier ability for research had been a central piece of evidence in all prior stazi publications are the recent publications in german city of in pursuit both supplements what we already knew about such units, and also provides in detail their specifiction in such notorious as the september 1941 mass murder of ukraine,00 jews in the as well as their guarding of juice jews in the netherlands beginning in the summer of 1942. Perhaps other german cities will follow the example and facilitate first the research of , and the publication of the activities of Police Battalions that originated in them. Additional Important Information has come to light with the declassification that came out of the 1998 nazi war crimes disclosure and Imperial Japanese records passed by the american congress. Law wasfeature of that that it lifted the automatic exclusion from declassification review and from the implementation of freedom of information requests of two categories of american records. Relating to intelligence sources and methods, and those called Foreign Government information. Utilized by the u. S. Government for material provided to the United States by Foreign Governments that had a security classification at the time it was given to our government. While records in the former category could now be subjected to systematic declassification in the latter case, the government that had provided that information, in general great britain, would be asked for its consent for declassification the procedure and the former category promptly led to massive deep , and work onns these newly opened records has just begun. Of requesting permission to declassify in the latter category, it turned out that the british were unusually cooperative. As chair of the Historical Advisory Panel advising the Interagency Working Group that had been established to implement the new law, i was told by several of those at the working end of the declassification process that with alldramatic of their Prior Experience with dealing with the british in declassification records was most likely due to the widely known personal interest of then president clinton and the general topic. Up, hee were a hold might telephone his friend pray minister 20 blair at 10 downing street. Relevant offices in and near london would not want the rocket from 10 downing street. Since by definition the records in question were at least half a century old, the highly unusual rapidity of the agreement to be declassified was unlikely to cause any real problems for british security. An important byproduct of the declassification of american intelligence records was the publication of books by Richard Brightman and others about the postwar american recruitment of nazis. Some with exceedingly dubious records by american intelligence agencies. One significant product of the declassification of Foreign Government information, with the consent of the British Government is the collection of summaries of british interrogations of murder theando leader oldendorf in beforeof 1941 1945, he was turned over to the americans in december of that year in which hillary earl could refore utilize for rural her goal on the trial of commando leaders. Reasonable to expect that in the coming years, other researchers will find Important Information in the material that the british allowed the American Government to open up. Obviously, the American Government could ask for declassification of only those british documents of which copies had been given to it at the time. That left open the question of british records, especially their Intelligence Services, of which no copies were to be found in american archives. That process also has been moving forward slowly but steadily in recent years, and scholars have been making good use of these newly opened importante can expect publications based on these declassified records in the coming years. Now a clearer perspective on two quite passage of the events. Toay in which some type profit on the murder of their former neighbors is illustrated dramatically by the 2012 book of anet gross, Golden Harvest events at the periphery of the holocaust. Which offers insight into the digging up of both the dead and related materials for profit by substantial nobles numbers of dignitaries. Way a fewer site, the jews try to protect themselves and their families by eating the by the 1992cribed book which recounts the activities of the notorious jewish woman who assisted the tois in catching jews trying survive with false identities, or in hiding in wartime berlin. Of thehe descendents woman who betrayed jews to the problems engaging their situation with this ancestry. With worth considering those of the woman who was makes the discovery that her mother was the daughter of the murderer who is shown shooting , in as a form of morning the movie schindlers list. She now does speaking at the Holocaust Museum about her speaking sent findings paired may i suggest that a significant issue we all need to confront and engage in is this divergence between a clearer and more fairly published scholarship about the holocaust on one hand, and the general mental distance war from whiche it was a central part on the other. Another Significant Development in the field holocaust studies has been its inclusion in other centers, programs and courses. This is a development that should not, in this offices opinion, should not be opposed paired it is essential that in the process, there not be any gliding over distinctive features of the holocaust that have not been a part of any of the other horrors that we call genocide. That theggesting holocaust is worse than other there are but that significant differences between genocides thatr the courses and programs engage. The most obvious of these are fundamental differences i would suggest is the geographic one. All other genocides have a specific geographic focus. Those who killed others invariably did so to remove a hated population element from a specific area. Who was aan genocide terrible event in the ottoman empire. Those who ordered, and those are perpetrated in it were not interested in armenians who had settled in the United States, latin america, or anywhere else outside the ottoman empire. Murdering busy eastern Orthodox Christians in the world war ii puppet state of croatia were not planning on killing eastern Orthodox Christians who had moved to chicago, or lived anywhere else in europe. The holocaust was a project to clear all jews from the globe, regardless of location. Successful ine containing it, and thereby saving approximately two thirds of the intended victims. That was most certainly a great disappointment to those who thatated and implemented particular genocide. Another difference is the routinized preparation and up limitation by vast numbers of professionals, soldiers and others over the. Over the period of four years. This development in holocaust studies makes even more historicalhan the concerns of historians another scholars the major issues of direct access to records on one hand, and the preservation of records on the other. The american records relating to the holocaust have been systematically declassified. Relevant german records in germany, and any still held in the United States, britain and france, are also, as far as we know, accessible or in the being the germans have been working hard to observe permission to microfilm german records that work half. But the advancing red army, and are scattered and archives all over the Russian Federation in exchange for giving the russians a set of the films. The extent to which these provide Additional Information on the holocaust is largely unknown at this time. An important collection of material to be utilized in future investigations. As i mentioned earlier, the british have been declassified their holdings of intelligence files from world war ii, and it is reasonable to expect that before too long, that process will be completed. Other european countries, the process differs from state to state. A complete survey of that issue remains to be prepared and publicized. Situation leads to consideration the two major records of thent existence of which we know, but that are not as yet fully accessible for research. These are some of the files of the president ial archive of the iiiet union, and a world war intelligence files of the soviet closedboth held and kept by the current regime in moscow. To be reminded, the soviet union dissolved over two decades ago. At first, there was thereafter a very substantial opening of access to records. Over the years, there has been under the Russian Federation something of a reversal. Ironically, precisely in the years in which in other countries there has been an increasing willingness to open records. There has been more access both to russian scholars, and those to other countries than was true in the former soviet union, but the reality beenns that the access has for some years, and is currently major that of all other world war ii allies. I point to the next portion of this talk, the current restrictive policy is like do to keep those even who insist on locking up parts of the record from ever being able to benefit from reading it themselves. The issue of access is very closely related to the issue of preservation. Ii, all countries paper inely utilized order to use their resources for more important things. The paper is in the process of disintegration. Longer it is already no readable. This is not micra from that will be permanently inaccessible this is not microfilm, this is an aspect of the still closed records that has not received the attention that both in my judgment and experience it deserves and desperately needs. Closely related to the issue a , thoughating paper rarely mentioned, is the issue of inaccessible electronic records. This, butts to hear it happens to be a case. An American Government advisory late 1990s,the members were informed that our government could no longer access very substantial portions of its own records of the vietnam war. Be ais certain to continuing problem. Thele refuse to engage reality of ideological change. Digitization is fine, as long as all involved recognize that this is a format that facilitates access from widely scattered and distant locations, but only for a short time. At the mostears, 15. The point i want to stress is that this issue of technological and deteriorating paper mean that unless records are microfilmed, and those microfilms are reproduced after 75 years, eight rate deal is a a great rate of information is something going to disappear from access. We must remember in our libraries, there are risks of by manuscript collections, and journals also deteriorating subject tod being technological changes that will not only the particular subject of the holocaust, but all research in the history of the recent past. Thank you. [laughter] [applause] good afternoon everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. We all know now how pivotal the month of june, 1944 was in the european theater. And the success of overlord the destruction of Army Group Center by the soviets, the third reichs alt ultimate ultimate fate was real. On fort lee, the germans did not read the memo. They would fight on from a fear of panic to and coercion. Millions of prisoners suffered and died in the camps, but still functioned in the territory of the germans control. For nearly 20 years, i have been the project director and editor general of the United StatesHolocaust Memorial museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos. That project is focused on the individual camps. Who ran them, who the prisoners were, the conditions, so on. There was always a sense that something bigger was effort. That the hole was bigger than the sum of the parts. After 20 years, we are beginning to see the big picture. We know the nazis ran camps. We have images of them in our minds. What do we really know about these places . I will point out that i am using this word camps as shorthand. We are going to be talking about a lot of facilities. If you think of all the different kind of camps you know about, concentration camps, extermination centers, pow camps, forced labor camps, prisons, whatever. How many do you think there were . Encyclopedia, we are going to cover about 45,000 individual sites. I will give you a moment to think about that. I will tell you that that is a low figure. That is less than half of what really existed. A lot of documentation is missing. For categories are too big us to put into the encyclopedia. The numbers themselves are significant. The key point about the camps is how central they were to the whole nazi program. The nazi regime had four overlapping goals. Ensuring the dominance of the socalled area and race, creating a Peoples Community which also had a racial component, living space to guarantee germanys selfsufficiency, and defeating germanys enemies internal and external. Of camps were a set practical tools with which the nazis tried to achieve those goals. This is how we can make sense of a collection of so many different camps with different kinds of prisoners under different conditions run by differing agencies. They capture a system. Camps were a system, not like a computer, but as a group of organizations that acted independently to achieve related goals. I would to examine the purposes the caps on the camps served, that way we can get a sense of how the system worked. We will start with the tension. Androl of prisoner space time was the fundamental goal for every site. The attention was not a goal in and of itself, attention facilitated other purposes. For example, there were internment camps for foreign nationals commit especially westerners per these were people who were just on the wrong side of the border when the war broke out. It seems like a case of short attention. Little was demanded of these people. They were not being punished. There were not targeted for illumination, but there was a connection to the war effort. Potential spies or saboteurs, and they had to be detained and observed. This was common in every country that took part in the war. In other countries, we can talk about the ghettos. Ghettosre about 1150 created on an ad hoc basis to detain jews, but eventually extermination became part of their purpose. Inmates were put to work, and they were denied food and medicine. Ghettosof 1944, the were pretty much all gone. That was also true for the ,called forced labor camps these were linked with the ghettos very often people were taken out of the ghettos and put into these caps, worked until they were too weak, and thrown back into the ghetto. Prisoner of war camps. The tension was a main goal there. You did not want enemy soldiers wandering around. Very importantme the germans wanted to put these people to work. Campsf thousands of sub spring up at labor sites all over germany. Some pow camps were also defective killing sites. Soviet pows were condemned for rates and politics, they suffered a 50 death rate. That is about 3. 3 million soviet soldiers died in german captivity through shooting, starvation, exposure, disease and overwork. 2 3 n compare that to a death rate for most other pows. You can see how detention work, and you can start to see how these purposes overlap, as we will talk about more we just talked about labor at ghettos and pow worksites, now we are going to focus on it as a main purpose for the camps. It is hard to find a camp that did not use labor. Labor fulfilled two objectives, productive and punitive. The productive objective was making up for a labor shortage, and producing military surprise supplies at minimal cost. Ast german men were fighting war, so the germans had to pull other people in to perform labor. The largest category of camps for the camps were foreign forced laborers, nonjews. There were more than 36,000 of these caps. How many more we do not know. Who were in them were simply there to work in every conceivable sector of the economy. Agriculture, manufacturing, retail, social services. Individual firms and factories had their own camps. When there was demand for small numbers of workers, say in a farming committed he come of the germans often put together Community Camps where the prisoners would sleep at night, and during the day they would go out to perform work. Objective was to establish punishment and control. The nature and the pace of work could be adjusted to exhaust, humiliate commit oppressed, and even kill. The work itself could kill. Tosoners who became too weak work were often murdered. There were 24 main concentration camps and about 900 sub camps as worksites. There were penal units for soldiers. There were Justice Ministry prisons, police camps, and lots of other sites that used punitive labor. This could be a tool for reform for the very small number of prisoners whom the nazis wanted to reformat release. It was a matter of establishing so much harsh work for them that you broke their spirit and they would never give you trouble again. There were also camps that for workeducation camps. There were about 235 of these. They show you the links between some of the types of camps. If you are a forced laborer, and you refuse to work or you were not working hard enough or you broke some regulation, you could eight weeksup to and would be forced to work under harsh circumstances. After eight weeks, if your attitude improved you could go back to your forced labor camp which would seem like a garden party in comparison. Judged that your attitude had not improved, you would be sent to a concentration camp which was going to be considerably worse per note that there was a gray area between productive and punitive labor. Ghetto inmates for supposed to be per door performing productive work, even while they were being worked to death. Ordinary forced laborers from Eastern Europe who theoretically were not being punished for often starved, beaten, and tens of thousands died. Our segue into punishment, the next objective. Parts. S central to many it was a tool for reform, a means of control, and a deterrent to people outside. Germans knew that if they misbehaved, and people in occupied europe as well, if they misbehaved they were going to wind up in someplace that was going to be unpleasant. Could take many forms. We have talked about labor already. Detention was another form of punishment. Every normal part of camp life could be adapted for punishment. Food, housing, closing clothing. Much of this occurred without cause or justification. Excesses, even though brutality was supposed to be regulated there were supposed to be rules, but there was plenty of room for gratuitous cruelty. Nazis, some people just deserved to be punished because of who they were. Jews, gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, the chronically unemployed, drunks, wehrmacht soldiers who defied the regime. These people were a danger to the community. Their punishment could be whatever the authorities decided upon. Next, racial policy. Nazi is him was based on the idea that there are races. Races compete for resources the way animals compete in a darwinian sense. Some races are better than others and deserve to take with a neat, lesser races can be enslaved or a limited appeared this ideology created realworld consequences for the camps. Were beaten and starved, russian pows were among the victims whose experiences were harsher and fatal. There were places that preterm german eyes asian facilities. Germanization facilities. Young people with plot hair and blue eyes would be put in these places and evaluated. If they were found valuable they would be given to german couples to be raised as germans. Were euthanasia centers. We are careful in how we talk about this phrase. This is not euthanasia as we debated today. It today. Ebate this is how germans dealt with children and adults with disabilities and congenital diseases. There were about 170, though we suspect more euthanasia centers. These were the first places that the germans used poison gas on human beings. They killed up to 300,000 people in these places. Of course there were extermination camps that were an outgrowth from the euthanasia centers. We count five of them. They were the ultimate expression of nazi racial theory. The sites that placed the nazi regime, in my information most firmly apart from any other. Most of the extermination camps beenhut down and had illuminated by june of 1944, but auschwitz was still in operation. Murdering the jews of hungary. Racial superiority was also central to the plant to reorder the map of the Eastern Europe in order to provide germany with resources. Those resources would be useful in the short term to fight the war, and in the long term to support the area and race. S the camps that end linepoles. Were such harsh places that they became defective death camps. Finally, fighting a total war. I have often heard it asked, why did the germans waste so much effort and resources to imprison and kill people when they had a war to fight . The short answer is this was not a waste. Served a central purpose as part of the war effort. Contributed to production. Jews wasuction of the certainly not in distraction or a waste. Reasons theyof the were fighting to begin with, to rid the world of the jewish race. Lesser sense come out were other efforts. A total war acquired the control or elimination of anyone who weakened society or threatened y tonations abilit fight. Wereians in the east incarcerated, screened and executed as communists, partisans or jews. The harm he used hundreds of thousands of people for forced labor, working on roads and fortification. It sent more of those people back to germany for forced labor there. This was part of their antipartisan campaign. Give me a show of hands if you have heard of the socalled comfort women . I bet most of you dont know that the germans did the same thing. They set up a network of what they called field bubbles. The women who worked in those bubbles, the vast majority were not there voluntarily. They were rounded up in the streets, taken out of concentration camps, sometimes they were put in there because they were be planning they were being punished. This, i think you can see just how pervasive, dominant, and significant the camps were. They were a central part of the nazi regime the nazis aspire to control every aspect of german lives, ostensibly for their own good. Anyone who is not a member was a target. Enemies,d political outcasts and military opponents all faced attention, abuse and death. War. Was total the germans forced millions of people to sacrifice their freedom, health and lives. The camps were tools in that effort. They were centers of production, a means of combating weakness all for the benefit of the socalled area and rates. In the end, they achieved none of those things and became the most visible reason why much of the world banded together to defeat the nazi regime. Thank you for listening. [applause] thank you you to our panelists. We have time for a few questions before our hard and at 3 30. Please raise your hand. We will start in the front. Thank you for your presentation. Perhaps you folks can answer a question i have posed as a i have posts to military experts with regards to the normandy campaign. Of 1944, from a military standpoint field others feltmel and the war was lost and the answer withor germans to settle the west and combine forces to combat communists. Is, could they really expect to settle with the light of the final solution my question is, at least on the wehrmacht, who knew that all of this was going on especially in light of your explanation of how pervasive and like a web of to just how terrible and awful this is . I i want to make sure understand, you are talking about who knew in germany . Yeah. At what level i am sure the ss, but in the fair market, who knew about it . Wehrmacht, who knew about it . Soldiers were taking pictures of shooting. The concentration camps were supposed to be secret, though word got out quickly too. Word got out about all of this. Especially when new get to the last year of the war, the last half of the war, the number of camps, the number of prisoners who were doing all kinds of things you could not turn a corner in any german city or town without running into people who were being held against their will, forced to work, abused. There was no secret about this bird there was no secret about the concentration camps from the very start because the German Government wanted people to know about these places are they wanted the deterrent effect from people knowing that these places existed. There is a another aspect of this that i think it is important. That is, in normas enormoustion of participation of the military in the killing program. Which deals by with the german army in belarus. Of jews shooting becomes a part of standard procedure for german soldiers so that while, obviously, they do not know the details and coverage and so on, this is in general very well known at the time. Normandy,higher up in they are told that the reason the german army cannot send as much ammunition to the german ,oldiers fighting the british americans and canadians in ofmandy is that in march 1944, germany occupied hungary, and there are lots of trains now ruralg from the rule communities to auschwitz, carrying jews, and they cannot simultaneously file carrying jews to their death at etheridge auschwitz, carry ammunition from german factories to northern france. Note to thend delusional germans, just to say, himmler, on the day after s birthday meets with the representative of the World Jewish Congress in sweden the first time he has met a jewish person in the house. He shakes his head and says lets say bygones be bygones. [laughter] himmler, crazy. Know what wase to the extent of the role of german , inn, particularly ss wives this extermination of jews. To what extent did that happen . There were substantial numbers of women guards in the caps. There were all stashed guards in the camps, there were also those who performed duties for the killing units. Participation in the killing program was predominantly male, but there was a very substantial female participation. There were also wives of at cities insonnel the east, or at camps. I will recommend a book by wendy lower. If i could remember the name. Hitlers fury. Next question all the way to the right. I think i speak for everyone in this room when i say what an hear youis to speak again mr. Weinberg. We had a discussion the other day about auschwitz and white was not bombed by the lead forces. I go running out to the table to find your book that was mentioned of course i do not have the title perhaps you could give us some indication of your opinion about why the allies did not bomb auschwitz and what was in the chapter in your book that i am missing . Allies had a general idea but theyas going on, prioritized the military side of the war. It was the military side of the two thirds of the worlds jews are but the allies knew. What the allies knew is that if auschwitz, germans find another way to kill jews. What one has to remember is that the holocaust had a high priority for the regime. Substantial literature about how theok holocaust interfered with the daytoday conduct of the war by the germans. Ist we tend to overlook that, from the perspective of hitler and his immediate show she its immediate associates, at times the war might make the holocaust more difficult, and at other times the holocaust might make the fighting more difficult. Perspective, please remember they were always they always act on their views. Not yours, not mine, theres. Theirs. They were not trying to conquer the globe for entertainment. The conquest of the globe was to be for a demographic revolution. Revolutionaphic would include the disappearance, disappearance, not only of jews, but of slavic peoples, roma gypsies, the killing of all the handicapped, etc. You therefore need to keep in mind that a regime that is in the process of killing its own disabled world war i veterans finishes that in the fall of 1944, and has started on the systematic killing of its disabled world war ii veterans. Its ideological objectives high and on roughly the same level. Last question is going to be in our front row. Ago in the st. Louis jewish , an article was printed arguing that president roosevelt his response will for the death of jews because he refused to bomb Railroad Lines. I have read this repeatedly. What is your reaction to that . Think it is a lot of nonsense. Is that a president is bound by the constitution of the United States. Roosevelt took that very seriously. Time, on the basis of the rules under which a president could temporarily bring prisoners of war to the german,tates italian, japanese the president decided at one time to bring just short of 1000 refugees into this country. This is the famous oswego experiment. Impeachment congresss begin in the. I do not think it is a coincidence that two things happen within 24 hours of each other. House announces there will be no further such the impeachment procedures are dropped. I think we have to see this in terms of the political realities there were, where limitations on the president , which the president adhered to, on the other hand, when it was possible and where it was, he assisted jewish refugees. I will add one point. You can repair a Railroad Line in a day. You would have to hit them again and again. It has to be a sustained attack. Gerhard pointed out, the u. S. Was more interested in winning the war. That was the best way they thought to stop the killing. [applause] you are watching American History tv, covering history cspan style with eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures, in classrooms and visits to historic places. All weekend every weekend on cspan three. Civil war scholar james morgan discusses the 1861 radel of balls bluff that occurred near ash battle of balls bluff that it occurred near leesburg. The loss wast largely due to miscommunication between the officers. This was a part of the pamplin National Cattle parks symposium. Are first speaker today is james morgan. James morgan is a lifelong civil war enthusiast and author. His cofounder and current president of the fort sumter roundtable and recently joined board of the fort sumter historical trust. He is also a cofounder of the friends of balls bluff. He his b