From his point of view church house was still a. When you look back in your career which was extraordinary but would you say you are most proud of having done . With the caveat that history takes a long time to judge i think im most grateful that we stood up for their right for people to i know there were a lot of criticism and a lot of it is probably justified about freedom agenda and declaring one of americas most Important Services was to work hard so that no one would live in tyranny. I think america is at its best and its highest calling when it leads both from power and principle. We stand for the proposition that the right to be enjoyed are indeed universal and if they are universal that there are no people for whom they shouldnt he will secured. Im very grateful that we were able to do that. Im grateful that some of my travels was when it was ice about people in a couple of things stick out as an individual. I went to china and a little boy walked up to me and said you are that lady from the United States, argue plex nice said yeah i am and then people asked me what was it like to be a woman representative the United States in the middle east and one story sticks to my mind there. I had a very difficult meeting with shiite clerics who couldnt touch me because i was a woman outside of the family. At the end of the meeting, a very difficult meeting he said will you do me a favor . It was translated and he said will you do me a favor to ask okay really, but sure. My 13yearold granddaughter watches you on television and she loves you and she and her mother are coming. Would you meet them . This little 13yearold girl comes in and up tshirt and she walks up to me and said i want to be a foreign minister to. I thought there was something in that moment. That conservative grandfather beamed when he thought about this little girl. This progress to democracy through justice and equality, its a long long road. People have traveled that road for a long time. America has traveled that for a very long time and we are still working at it. The thing i am most grateful for is that even with their own troubles here in the United States we stood for the proposition that every man woman and child to live in freedom. Do want to have a recommend to everybody here this book which i enjoyed, democracy. [applause] will i want to thank you for your service to our country for all the years. It was an honor. Thank you. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] host this has booktv on cspan2, live coverage of the live coverage of the 2017es National Book festival. Condoleezza rice being interviewed by one of the major sponsors of the festival, david rubenstein. Over the history and biography room, Ben Macintyre is just started his talk. We will bring that to you now live in progress. Its about special forces during world war ii, rogue heroes is the name of the book. And then effectively run away into the desert. It sounds like a simple idea and, indeed, it was but in many ways it was completely revolutionary because many of the middle ranking officers at that point had a static idea of how war is formed. This came from the First World War, the idea that was too large armies when meat and a large space fight it out to of them wins. What started was recommending was completed different and vere revolutionary. Amazingly it got permission to start recruiting and he set about doing this in a very particular way. He was looking for people who were unconventional. It was looking for people who didnt really stick by the rulea and he got them. One of his earliest recruits was a man called patty who is in northern irishman with an explosive temper and a series drink problem. And a capacity for raw and frequently unconstrained violence. He probably destroyed more planes than anybody else during the Second World War, anyth Fighter Pilot on either side but he blew them up all entirely on the ground. Another cubicle was a man called chuck lewis was an oxford educated intellectual reallya with sort of matinee looks but is also very a clever man. R man. He invented a particular kind of bomb which was a lewis bomb which a disabled rustic handheld timebomb. I particularly love this painting because it shows you his training and his racecourse in britain which is one of the big race courses in britain. You can actually see the horses coming up behind them. He looks as if hes about to start were mowing down their riders with the 350. Im another man who was a foulmouthed one id boxer from cambridge who had a gift for killing really. He was able to do so without remorse. He described himself as a rough and tough soandso. Most people thought he was a complete maniac but he was the sort of person you wanted on your side in a war like this. His closest friend was a man named johnnie cooper. Cooper was actually 17. He was too young to join the sas. He lied about his age to get in and hear of it typical photographs. There are lots of photographs in this sas photograph and lots of photographs in the book. One of the things sas was good at was taking photographs of themselves. They knew that they were going to become extremely famous after the worst of it might as well he was an extraordinary man. He thought fought through every single one of the campaigns that take place at the sas during the Second World War. He had the broad grin across his face on every single photograph. You see them here again a most unlikely candidate to lead what would become a famously fit fighting force. He was tall, stooped and he had a bad back. He had conjunctivitis. He was very unfit. He drank too much, he smoked all the time and yet he had one particular account which was he had a real gift for identifying the character that he wanted. In a way was like a dirty dozen operation picking up people that he thought would fit the bill. He said i didnt want psychopaths. He got a few psychopaths but he wanted people who were unconventional who were able to think laterally but who could also be when necessary completely ruthless. He began treating them in egypt. They were trained in unarmed combat in longterm desert survival techniques and in particular in parachuting. Sterling believed there is a way to train for parachuting. If you jump out of the back of a speeding truck at 40 miles an hour. This is actually not a good way to train for parachuting because you are going horizontally and not radically. But its a very good way to break your legs which quite a number of trainees in fact did. This was very tough tough training and the two died while training for the first operation which was called operation squatter. Take place in november 1941. It involves 55 per shooters in the idea was very simple. They would parachute in the desert and then sneak up behind the aligned airfields classed as many as they could and then escape. It was an unmitigated catastrophe. These parachuter jumped into what was the worst storm in the area in 30 years. Most of them landed miles off target. Many became completely disoriented and got lost in the desert at night. Some were actually scraped to death on the desert floor because they couldnt unclip their parachutes and a couple were so badly wounded by the fall that they literally had to be abandoned and died alone in the desert. Of the 55 per shooters that went in on operation squatter, 23 came back. They straggled back to rendezvous in the desert with a longrange desert group. These were the desert reconnaissance Intelligence Unit whose target was try for five and a file to be in desert and spy on the troops were moving along the coastal road. They were brilliant navigators. They had incredible techniques for getting across the desert and they were the ones who took the survivors of the sas back out again. Instead of this leading to the immediate disbanding of this operation and sterling interestingly never reported on were quite what a disaster it can predict who read his report on operation squatter. Teaches that it didnt go terribly well and we are getting on with the next one. Lap no but as a result of that will he hit on a simple idea which is it that color dp these born in jeep troops could get into the desert they could bring their man in the first place and that would obviously obviate the need to jump out of planes in parachutes in the middle of the night. A quite glaringly obvious solution to a quite simple problem had not occurred to anyone before. Its one of the great mysteries of the sas story. But it was a real turning point for the sas because it made them highly mobile and they began with the sas and lrdt to carry out lightning race. They threw out hundreds of them and escape back into the desert. If its one thing i learned in writing this book it requires a particular cast of minds and sometimes that cast of mind has to be particular in ertel. They mentioned at the beginning one handwritten document i found in the archives that is actually very chilling. An assault was made on an airport hamate and it goes roughly like this. They go to the airfield and theyd notice sneaking off and when they were spotted in the corner the airfield a light coming from and at the door and they realized the party was taking place and time inside. Science and the germans were having a ball inside. This is previously the main description of what happens next i open the door and stood there with my 45 theaters at my side with a tommy gun and another automatic. The germans just stared at us. We were a peculiar and frightening sight. And with unkempt hair. What seemed like an age we stood there and looked at each other in complete silence and then i said good evening. At that again german arose to move slowly backwards and i shot him. It turned hired at another some 6 feet away. The room by now its in pandemonium and then they parodied the door. They will then hand grenades and barricades. At least 30 people were killed that night in even what will sterling was shot by what he called the callous execution in cold blood. Patty mains was really in some ways a trained killer. Alongside people there were others no less brave at the very different kind of model and one of my favorite in the story frazier mccluskey who called himself the parachute padre. He was the first chaplain of the sas me to partake in all of the toughest assignments they were on. He never carried a gun and he had an astonishing moral force that had a great impact on the regiment. Life expectancy in the early sas was extremely short because having partaking in these they would then have to escape and any surviving planes from the airfields would then go hunting for the sas in this appalling game of cat and mouse would take place in the desert. Will lewis who was attacked with his convoy on Christmas Eve in 1941, he was hit by a shell which blew his leg off and he bled to death. He is buried somewhere in the western desert. No one has ever found his remains. The men of the detachment they called themselves elves attachment sas. Al stood for learner. Al detachment were very mindful of their own drama. The left, dressed into considerable extent at the perth swashbuckling desert warriors and they took the cue from the First World War from lawrence of arabia and his very romantic take on war. Everyone wore beards like this. With the cover ive always thought shows six who are just about to go into battle and i always thought it looked exactly like a rock band preparing to go on stage. They knew exactly the impact they were happening because theirs was not just a military effect, they were on strict orders never to post about their exploits but they really never needed to because others posted for them to. The exploits of the sas quickly became the stuff of myth and legend. They inflicted huge damage on axis airpower. They tied up with thousands of enemy soldiers defending airfields who otherwise would have been deployed on the frontline. In his diary he wrote that the sas inflicted server sevier have a pretty sad the men cause more damage to it than any other unit. There were people who understood the importance of military drama better than Winston Churchill and you see him here with his son randolph who have figured who is almost completely lost to history but who plays a very important part in the sas story. Randolph was the most unlike the soldier. Hes extremely overweight and sterling job it was hard to push them through the hole in the aircraft trying to get them to actually parasitic parachute. Randolph was a journalist and who like many journalists he had a pretty vivid imagination. Sterling. If feca get randall involved and the sas will project that randolph would tell his father and that would ensure the future of the sas because it was really in trouble. He invited randall to take part in one of the least successful operations not just of the north African Campaign but the entire war and it was called operation operation the plan is very simple. Thurling decided he would convert to a german vehicle and you see it here they called it the blitz buggy and the idea they would try than to the occupied benghazi which was seething with italian and german troops. They would then go down to the dock. They would inflate some inflatable kayaks and paddle out on shipping that was a morgue in the dark implement up and sink all the ships there in bloc benghazi and prevent any other shipping in supplies from coming in. It is a very simple idea. Here you see them about to set off in the blitz buggy. A key figure who had to be brought along for this was a man called victoria mclean. Fitzroy could speak italian and a guard post around benghazi were manned by italians. He could speak italian but it was only sort of italian because he had learned italian who starting with will asap hard. Italian he spoke with was a 15th century italian. As they approached the first italian checkpoint fitzroy will will spoke in what must have sounded like dante will open yonder so i and my companions enter and the italians were so astonished that he just drove then. They drove ahead in the dark and most of the kayaks were punctured so none could be use of a called off the operation. There were four of them in this operation. As they were marching out they realized instead of for they had become six because two italian soldiers obviously thinking some weird military parade was taking place in the middle of the night had joined the back of the line so i think this was the only time in the war will. Access soldiers marched together in perfect harmony. As they left fitzroy was completely high on the turtle and at this point calling out the italian guard and addressing them and bizarre italian saying what youve done here is incredibly dangerous. There could be british saboteurs all over the place, you are fired. The Operational Support failure and had no impact whatever but as planned will randolph did indeed write it off in a series of wonderfully vivid letters that he sent to his father in that ensured the future of the sas. Churchill was very taken by this warfare. He loves swashbuckling and as soon after this he was in a dinner party in cairo when he met sterling ends thurling will the very next day and again from the archives churchill said tell me what they sas is about the sterling replied with a blueprint for what special forces could he. Was really a power grab. Said put me david sterling in charge of it the way you seen this document really is kind of the print for a walk all with special forces became. Ensured that the sas future was safe. I very quickly want to tell you, the sas by this point have developed techniques of desert survival that meant they could hang out in the desert for long. In these desert in camp months. Let me tell you a quick story about what represents a preview. Silatolu was with his unit trying to in 1942 when he was separated from his unit and realized he was completely alone in the desert. He could either surrendered to the germans or he could try to walk back 130 miles across the desert to try and rejoin the union in the desert. Chose the latter course but he had no water. He had ever sat to go with though. On the second day he began to drink his own which became deadly more concentrated as a trip to the desert and on the third day his feet twister and crafts. On the fourth day his tongues while the. On the fifth day he began to hallucinate and on the sixth day he saw in the distance eight convoy of jeeps and he took off his shirt and set fire to it in an effort to try to attract their attention. They drove away across the horizon and disappeared. He trudged on. He covered 130 miles and finally will got to the desert in canton. Sterling believed a week after this sila to have completely recovered which i think was not true actually. I think he never fully recovered from it. The second battle of alamein will be see general montgomery here. He was the commander of the eighth army, was a turning point for the army. Montgomery was very skeptical about sterlings operation. He said the boy sterling is mad, quite, quite mad but in war there is always a place for mad people. They began to lose a lot of men. The reason i found in the archives will, the sas would was implicated by a man named theodore scourge who was an italian who had been recruited by an italian. The reason they sas loss of many bandwidth because a lot of their positions were betrayed by theodore scourge who was captured and tried them is the only british soldier to be tried and executed for treason in the course of the war. With the end of the war in the desert the focus redeployed to europe. The sas was deeply involved in retaking italy in the fight for afcap occupied france but they were now under the command command no longer the command of david sterling. David sterling was in the operation of the desert were trying and failing to escape from prisoners of war camps. The unit now came under the command of patty mayne. Hitler by this point passed something called the commander order. The commander order was a direct response to what the sas had doing and it effectively called for all captured sas personnel to be executed immediately and without trial. Dozens, scores of sas murder 20 20 soldiers were to be murdered and in the final phase of the war the sas was vastly expanded. Played a vital role in dday parachuted behind the lines and really trying to prevent the south moving north to reinforce what the bridgehead. Sas troops were among the first to enter bergenbelsen concentration camp a scene of unbelievable horror. There was an extraordinary moment and as you may remember i mentioned red seeking the one id boxer. He decided to take it into his own hands and decided to beat up an sas officer. He was stopped by his commanding officer. He said they must all be put on trial and theres an interesting moment is the sas executed every one of those ss soldiers but instead they decided they should be put on trial. Its a little spark of humanit