Continued rise of communist in the soviet union and china. Cspan recorded this event in 20913. 2013. Ian buruma professor of human rights in journalist at bard college was educated in holland and japan. Hes won several awards for his work among them the International Erasmus prize and journalism award, publications he writes for in the new york review of books, new yorker, New York Times, and r. C. Handleblog and the guardian, which recently published his highly learned and highly entertaining review of the British Museums current exhibition shunga, sex and pleasure in japanese art. Also taming the gods, religion and democracy on three continents. Murder in amsterdam, liberal europe and inventing japan 1863 to 1964. In the year 0, history of 1945, most of which he wrote while he was a fellow at the Common Center in 201112 to the series fellow, fellows, he was so productive, produced a brilliant portrayal of the world emerging from the devastation and unspeakable horrors of world war ii in europe and in asia. Skeptical about the idea we can learn much from history he nonetheless wanted to know, he writes, what those who lived through the war and its end including his own father went through. For it helps me to make sense of myself and indeed all of our lives in the long, dark shadow of what came before. The wall street journal called year zero remarkable in combination of magnificence and modesty and the Financial Times describes it elegant, humane, luminous. Martin amos honored at the library lion published more than 20 books including several collections of stories and many novels among them money, london fields, times arrow, and most recently lionel, state of england. Amos received the james tate black memorial prize for memoir experience and named one of the 50 greatest british writers since 1945 by the times, london times in 2008. 1945 seems to be a theme here tonight. We are extremely fortunate to be able to listen in on a conversation between these two extraordinarily gifted writers who are also friends. They will talk for about 45 minutes and then take a few questions from the audience. There are mics towards the front on by this sides. Please, come up to the mic rather than try to speak from your chair. Be and then they will sign books. So when theyre finished speaking, please, let them get out to the table there to sign. Please welcome ian buruma and martin ramos. [ applause ] well, first thing to be said, ian is that this is a tremendous book. Very its an amazing task of organizing a great view of your kaleidoscopic material, because the war the aftermath of the war was determined by the war itself, and shaped by the years that preceded it, and ive been spending recent years writing about this war, and wondering about it. And it it was, apart from being uniquely devastating, 55 million dead. And many ruined city and all the devastation we know of, it was, it looks increasingly weird and grotesque, i think, some aspects of the war in that it wasnt blundered into like the it wasnt blundered into like the first world war. There was one man. The japanese experience is slightly different but can almost be considered separately. But one man brought this about. And shaped by the years that preceded it. And ive been spending recent years writing about this war ask wondering about it. And it was apart from being uniquely devastating, 55 million dead, and many a ruined city, and all of the devastation we know of, it was it looks increasingly weird and grotesque, i think, some of this some aspects of the war in that it wasnt blundered into like the first world war. There was one man, i mean, the japanese experience is slightly different, but can be almost considered separately. But one man brought this about. And the only time hitler ever made me smile is i think it was just before the invasion of poland, which set the war in motion, but he said he was questioned by a general and he said, im not i havent got any nerves about this war. The war im worried about is some swine is going to come up with a peace proposal. He was set on it ever since 1918. And the fact that this one man flipped germany, the most the best educated country on earth, the best educated country that had ever been, into this pedantic exploration is still sort of remarkable. And the weirdness of much of the aftermath is sort of inherent in the war. Do you have you know,ist the great crux that no one can answer. It was said of the jews that they went like lambs to the slaughter. You could flip that a bit and say the germans went like lambs to the slaughterhouse, and donned the rubber aprons and got to work. Do you have any german connections and your feeling for germany . I think ian is exceptionally well equipped to write such an ambitious book because of your connections with england, with america, with holland, germany and crucially with japan. I dont think it helps necessarily to know germany well or japan well to explain the human propensity for extreme violence. One of the reasons im very happy to be on stage with you, because i think we share a sort of horrified fascination with why people are capable of doing terrible things. And i dont think people say, you can explain because germans had an extermanist mentality from luther to hitler or the japanese are uniquely barbaric or cruel or anything like that. I dont believe that for a minute. And i think your question is a good one. How is it that one of the most highly educated and civilized countries in europe produced so much extraordinary, because, yes, it was hitler that led it but he couldnt have done it on his own. People he had very active participation. And i think hitler is one example, perhaps the most extreme example in modern history but there are others on a smaller scale of a political regime that deliberately exploits peoples basic instincts. And i think the idea that there is a torturer in all of us is a little trite. Its probably not true either. I mean, not all of us would make good torturers, but it is true, i think, that if the authorities, the government, gives people license to do whatever they like with other human beings, you also find a large number, and one cant put a particular number on it, but youll find a sufficient number of people who will do their worst, and it leads to torture and killing. Even if people had lived perfectly happily together before that. And again i think another trite thing people often say, for example in the balkans war, they explained serbian violence against the muslims as saying these are ancient hatreds and they explode at a certain time. I dont think hatred is necessarily ancient even though there are myths that keep coming back and are manipulated by politicians and leaders be and so on, in order to put people up to violence. But i dont think theres such a thing as a smoldering hatred that suddenly like a volcano bursts out. Its always orchestrated. And i think the one of the best examples of this in my book in 1945 is what happened in particularly in czechoslovakia and poland where large german populations whose families had lived there for centuries and suddenly the after the war the poles and the czechs were given license, by their own leaders as well as the allies, who did nothing to stop it. They were told, now you can do what you like with the germans. We cant live with these people anymore. They have to be expelled. And in a way, do your worst. And people did, for several months. Now german nationalists like to claim what happened to the german populations in poland or czechoslovakia or what the germans in germany suffered from the soviet red army, which was also horrendous in terms of rapes and killing and torture and so on, that somehow this was just as bad as what the germans did to others, which is actually not the case. A huge subject of relativizing and trying to not rewrite but put in a different put a different complexion on these. I mean, it was said in that thoughtful review, New York Times book review, that what you didnt do in this book is the fashionable word is deheroize the allies. And that usually goes along the following lines. They say, one hiroshima, two allied bombing, dresden being the paradigm of that, the return of the ethnic germans where i think the figure you come to is of 10 Million People turfed out of poland, czechoslovakia, et cetera, ethnic germans, 500,000 dead, perhaps a bit more. Yalta, where we agreed to return russian p. O. W. S to certain enslavement if not certain death, and the way we revived colonialism, it gave us things like saying that the resistance in france particularly was not that. Was certainly i mean, thats become the myth, but the truth was Something Like collaboration not resistance. But i find myself very much reacting against that in a sort of visceral way. And there is no moral equivalence. And once you remember that as churchill referred to the moral rot of war. And an interesting concept that i saw raised, the wars get old and the bigger they are, the faster they age. And six years in, theres just a kind of a loss of patience in a mild way of putting it, but we dont feel that, do we . And i think he said, well, we created the United Nations and the european community, but i would sort of say we destroyed hitler. That was the achievement. Yes. And it was a necessary achievement, of course. One cant take away the heroism of that. But i think that the bleaker conclusion one can draw is that very often heroes can very quickly turn into villains. For example, the soviet red army fought like heroes. The sacrifices of the soviet soldiers were extraordinary. And they fought like lions and it was a necessary fight. And without them, we wouldnt have defeated hitler, but those same soldiers behaved like beasts often. When they invaded germany, likewise they were an army of rapists. They were an army of rapists. That senator the other day in america who said, when a woman is raped, she switches off the procreational mechanism. He might like to know there were a million births from those rapes. Indeed. Not just the soviets, were not the only ones who are guilty. When because of the Japanese Occupation of countries in southeast asia, such as the dutch east indies, so on, the asians in those countries, the local population, certainly didnt want to go back to the status quo, where the dutch and french and british to some extent did have illusions that they could simply go back to the prewar order and take back their colonies. Now, the nationalists in these countries had often in burma, in indies had collaborated with the japanese quite understandably because they saw that as their chance to liberate themselves from their european colonial masters. But after the war in europe, these nationalists were depicted as collaborators. Collaborators with fascism. So who assent north africa, too, algeria. So who is sent to algeria, northeast indies as soldiers to put down the anticolonial nationalist rebellions with bruit and often atrocious force, people who had fought in the resistance against the nazis. And so my point really is that human behavior, including the sort of atrocity and extreme violence is not a matter of character or of culture, its a matter of circumstances. The same people who can behave like heroes in certain circumstances can behave like animals in others. Yes. And that finding that if if you find yourself if you find you have someone completely at your mercy, the human thought that comes next is torture. Although we should make note in general of Steven Pinkers book, the better angels of our nature why violence is declined, and one sort of rears back a bit from his conclusion that violence has declined and it continuing to decline. Of the reasons he adduces, one important notion that took a loot of reestablishing itself after the war is who has the monopoly of violence . It must be the state. This is a founding idea of what makes a nation state. Not in this country. No, no, exactly. Ive always thought americans just havent accepted that preset and they want to be able to stand up to the u. S. Army if things should get slightly tyrannical in the white house. But the police are what stops violence, going back a couple of centuries and that gathers force. Also, you may be interested to know, its sort of flattering for a novelist, that the novel made a big difference, because Steven Pinker doesnt like the word empathy. He said he heard a mother screaming at one of her two children in the streets saying, show some empathy, but thats what the novel promoted. Do you think this is eradicable. Violence . The idea that you torture someone if you get the chance . No, i dont think so. And i dont think high culture makes us into better human beings. I mean, this is one of George Steiners great hobby horses, how is it possible that an ss officer who could play schumann absolutely beautifully and read poems by goethe could the next day go to work and pull out peoples fingernails . I dont think its rarely all that mysterious. And nor do i think that Higher Education makes us into more moral human beings. I really dont think it is a question of, well, as i said, i think of circumstances. And i suppose if you if you think of more recent wars, and its a real moral dilemma, because when you talk about the monopoly of force, Saddam Hussein certainly monopolized force in his state, and in an extremely brutal manner. It was a state in which torture was widespread, in which people were gassed and is so on. He came up through the torture. Indeed he did. He was a torturer. He monopolized it. One could argue, theres one thing people fear more than a brutal dictatorship and its anarchy, in which its every man for himself and chaos, which we see, to some extent, where we see it in libya now. We see it to some extent in iraq and is so on. Which is not to say, well, things would have been better if we left Saddam Hussein alone, but it does pause its something that people should think about a bit more before they casually say, well, its, you know, we as americans, its our duty to fight dictatorship and bring freedom and use military force to do so. They should have listened to what saddam said, which is iraq is a very difficult country to govern. Well, he was right. Helicopter gunships and poison gas and ubiquitous torture and terror. Yeah, terrible, brutal, dictatorial order for most people is probably still to be preferred to violent anarchy. And violent anarchy is in many ways what you had in 1945, until order was reimposed. Ideology, the period 1914 to 1945 is often been called the 30 years war, europes second 30 years war, but it wasnt a war of religion on the face of it. And ideology, you know, looking back, it was obviously the sense was that ideology religion was like heroine and ideology was like methadone. It brings you trembling down from religion. But not a bit of it, 100 million super numery dead for naziism and fascism. Barbarian is not seen for centuries it because of ideology. And the borderline between ideology and religion is not always so clear. At its in its most violent phases, and much of it was very violent, there is not a huge distinction, maoism between religion and ideology because it was also a religious cult in which people could be tortured today for treading on a newspaper with maos image on it. And thats religion at its worst really. Its not ideology. Its not anything to do with marxist, leninism. Its a cult. Its to do with the peer group, isnt it . Considered if you think the peer group is overemphasized as a determinant to young peoples lives, the great study of that is christopher brownings Police Reserve battalion 101 where its established that the killing squads that went out behind the wehrmacht in poland and in russia who, you know, would go and kill everyone in a village and babi yar, what is that, 38,000 dead, kill all day, kill women and children and men all day, and no one ever got punished for seeking seeking transfer. They werent sent to the front. They werent sent to some commander at the front. They would be transferred. And all you might have in the meantime is a bit of jostling in the lunch queue, as people said, youre lettering the side down. And there is not a single case of anyone being punished for requesting a transfer. And yet rather than shame themselves in front of the group, they would kill women and children all day, every day. Yeah, they didnt necessarily enjoy it. There was a sort of wear and tear on the nerves of ss killers. Which is why, of course, the gas chambers were employed because after a while the killing gets its a bit of a strain. Even if they got drunk, which they did, so it was considered to be cleaner and more efficient to have gas chambers and the people who operated the gas chambers were not usually germans either. It was left up to the victims to do that. It was not necessarily the case that the killers found it easy. But i suppose you can get used to anything. And the other thing is, while were on this cheerful subject, ive often thought that the reason why the violence in civil wars and, again, to come back to the ethnic germans after the war and poland and czechoslovakia, the reason why theyre so particularly brutal, and the killing almost always goes together with humiliation. You see it in india where the last famous instance was the when the sikhs set upon the what was it . I cant remember now. Rajeef gandhis son. In india you see it over and over. In partition you saw it, people who set upon their neighbors and it wasnt enough that they to kill people the way the jews were killed also t wasnt enough just to kill them. It had to go it was always proceeded by humiliation of some grotesque kind. And i think, this is simply speculation, i think one of the reasons is, its not easy for one human being to murder another human being, especially if they if they identify with them. If they were their neighbors, if they look like you and so on. So, it makes it easier if you reduce your victim to the status of an animal, some abject creature crawling around in the mud. And then youre killing an animal and no longer a human being, which is why you have to reduce people to that state. Animalization or insect. Yes. Thats why in rwanda the victims were called cockroaches on the radio. Its easier to kill cockroaches than your neighbor. And the selffulfilling slander is marvelous to watch. In the ghettos of poland, and i think, you know, if the holocaust had never happened, we would regard that as some sort of apogee of beastianity. How the poles were polish jews would terrorize, looted, exploited and had to work for their conquerer, but theres a gerbils report where he said, i visited the ghetto in warsaw, if theres anyone who still has any sympathy at all of these people, they should just go and have a look at what these people left of themselves, en masse, no selfrespect, not even the common