Displacement of people in a torrent cities in japan, and the continued rise of communism, soviet, union and china. Cspan or court at this event in 2013. In baruma, was educated in holland and japan. Hes won several awards for his work. Among them the international prize, and the journalism award. The publication he writes for the guardian recently published his highly learned, and highly entertaining review of the British Museum exhibition sex and pleasure in japanese art. Among his previous books are teaming the gods. Religion and democracy on three continents. Murder in amsterdam. The limit of tolerance, and inventing japan, 1863 to 1960. Four in years zero, most of what he wrote while he was a fellow at the command center in 2011 and to this in 12, to the series and think of his fellows felicity was so productive. He produced a brilliant portrayal of the world emerging from the devastation and unspeakable horrors of world war ii in europe and asia. Skeptical about the idea that we can earn much from history, he nonetheless wanted to know he writes with those who lived through the war ended and including his own father went through. For it and 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 your zero remarkable in its magnificence and modesty and the New York Times describes it as elegant, humane, luminous. Honored last fall as a lab realign has published more than 25 bucks including several questions of stories and many novels. Among the money, london fields, comes errol, and most recently state of england. He received the james tate black memorial prize for his memoir experience and was named one of the 50 greatest british writers since 1945 but the london times into this an eighth, 1945 seems to be a team theme here tonight. We are extremely fortunate to be able to listen in on a conversation between these two extraordinarily gifted writers are also. Friends they will talk for about 25 minutes and then take a few questions from the audience. They are mics from the front on both sides. Please come up to the mic rather than trying to speak from your chair. Then they will sign books. So when theyre finished speaking please let them get up to the table to sign. Please welcome ian baruma, and martin. The first thing to be said ian is that this is a tremendous book, its a amazing task of organizing a great deal of kaleidoscopic material the aftermath of the war was determined by the war itself and shaped by the years that preceded it. I have been spending recent years writing about this war and writing about it. Apart from being uniquely devastating, 55 million dead. Many a ruined city and all the devastation we know of, it looks increasingly weird and grotesque, some aspects of the war. It wasnt blundered into the first world war. There was one man. The japanese experience is slightly different but fit almost be considered separately. But one man brought this about. The only time that hitler ever made me smile is i think just before the invasion of poland. Which set the war in motion. But he was questioned by a general. I havent gotten any nerves but the war. Im worried that if one is gonna come up with a peace proposal. Says he was set on it ever since 1980. And the fact that this one man says flipped germany, says the best educated country on earth. The best educated country thats ever been in the pedantic expression of the best, which is what happened. The weirdness of much of the aftermath is here in the war. Do you have the great perks that no one can answer. It was said that the jews went like mad at slaughter. You could flip that a bit and say the germans would like month to slaughterhouse. Do you have any with your german connections and feeling for germany . I think he is exceptionally well equipped to write such a book because of connections with, england holland, germany, and crucially japan. I dont think it necessarily helps to know germany well or japan well explain the human propensity for extreme violence. One of the reasons im happy to be on stage with u. S. Because i think we share a horrified fascination with why people are capable of doing terrible things. I think there are people who say you can explain it because the germans had a extremist mentality, which goes from luther to hitler. For the japanese are uniquely barber or cruel. 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 nations of europe it is so much extraordinary violence . Yes, it was hitler who let it but he couldnt have done it on his own. People had very active participation. I think hillary is one example and props but most extreme example in modern history, but there are others on a smaller scale of a political regime that deliberately exploits peoples basic instincts. The idea that there is torture and all of this is a little trite and also really not true. Not all this would make great torture but i think it is true that if the authorities, the government, gives people license to do whatever they like with other human beings, you will find a large number, one cannot put a particular number on this bill will find a particular number that will do their worst and that leads to torture and killing. Even if people lived perfectly happily together before that and i think that attracting that people say for example in the bulk and worries, people explained serbian violence against bosnian my slums and said these are ancient hatreds. They explode at a certain time. I dont think hatreds are necessarily ancient even though all kinds of myths keep on coming back and are manipulated by politicians and leaders and so one in order to put people up to the violence. But i dont think there is such a thing as a smoldering hatred like a volcano that suddenly burst out spontaneously. Its always orchestrated. One of the best examples of this in my book in 1945 is what happened particularly in checks lackey a, pull, and large german populations, whose families lived there for centuries and suddenly after the war the polish and the checks were given license by their own leaders, the allies did nothing to stop it. They were told now you can do with you like with the germans. We cant live with these people anymore. They have to be expelled. In a way, do your worst. People did, several months. Now chairman nationalists like to claim that would happen to the german populations in poland and czechoslovakia, or with the germans in germany suffered from the soviet red army which is also horrendous in terms of race and killing a torture. Somehow, this was just as bad as what the germs to others which obviously is not the case. You subject to the roles of icing, and trying to not rewrite, but put eight different complexion on these. It was said in the but you didnt do is the hero wise the allies. One hiroshima. To, a load bombing. The return of the ethnic germans, the figure you come to is 10 Million People ethic germans, half 1 million dead, perhaps 1 million more. The way we revived colonialism. Give it a shot in the arm and also saying revived colonialism and things like that resistance in france in particular wasnt that. Certainly, that has become the mid. The truth was Something Like collaboration. Not resistance. I find myself very much reacting against that in sort of a visceral way. There is no moral equivalence. Once you remember look, churchill referred to the moral rot of war. An interesting concept that i sought raised, worst get old, the bigger they are, the faster the rage. Six years and, this kind of a loss of patients is a mild way of putting it. But we dont feel that . Do we . He said we created the inundations and the european community. I would say we destroyed hitler. That was the achievement. It was a necessary achievement, of course. One cannot take away the heroism of that. I think 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 villains. The sacrifices of the german soldiers was extraordinary. They felt like i lions and without it they wouldnt have defeated hitler. But they behave like beasts often. When they invaded germany likewise. They were an army every. Pests the senator in army said that when a woman is raped she switches off the probe recreational mechanism. That there were million deaths. Yes, indeed. Not just they were not only guilty. Because of the Japanese Occupation of countries in Southeast Asia such as malaysia, the asians in those countries local populations certainly did not want to go back to the state where the british in the french to some extent did have an illusion to simply go back to prewar or take back their colonies. Now the nationalists in these countries had often collaborated with the japanese quite understandably because they saw that as they are chant deliberate themselves from their european colonial masters. After the war, in europe, these nationalists were depicted as collaborators. Collaborators with fascism. Who was sent to algeria and other places as soldiers to put down the anti colonial nationalist rebellions with brute and often atrocious force . People who fought in the resistance against the nazis. So my point really is that Human Behavior including the sort of atrocity and extreme violence he is not a matter of character or of culture, its a matter of circumstances. Its the same people who behave like heroes in certain circumstances can behave like animals and others. Yes and that finding that if you find yourself if you find you have someone completely at your mercy. The human thought that comes next is torture. We should make note in general of stevens a book, the better angels of our nature, why violence is declined. One sort of rears back from his conclusion that violence has declined and continuing to decline. Of the reasons he abuses one very important notion that took a lot of redistracting itself off the war is who has a monopoly of violence . It must be the state. Its a founding i idea of what makes a nation state. Not in this country though. No, no, exactly. I have always thought that americans have not accepted that precept. They want to be able to stand up to the u. S. Army if things should get tyrannical in the white house. But that has been the police is what stops violence going back a couple of centuries. Also, you may be interested to know that the novel made a big difference. Steven does not like the word empathy. He said he had a mother screaming at one of her two children in the streets. That is unquestionably what the novel promoted. Do you think this is a radical . The idea that you torture somebody . No, i do not think so. I do not think high culture makes us into better human beings. This is one of georges diners great hobby horses that how is it possible that analysis officer who could play showman absolutely beautiful and read could the next day go to work and pull out peoples fingernails . I do not think its rarely all that mysterious. Nor do i think Higher Education makes us into more moral human beings. I really do think its a question of, well as i said, of circumstances. For i suppose if you think of more recent wars, 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 matter. It was a state in which torture was widespread in which people were guests when he came up through the torture. Indeed he did. He was a torture. He monopolized it. One could argue is 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, we see it in libya now, we see it to some extent in iraq. Which is not to say well that means things wouldve been better if we had 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 shouldve listened to whats the downside which is iraq is a very difficult country to govern. He was right. Helicopter gunships, poison gas and ubiquitous torture in terror. Terrible, brutal dictatorial order for most people is still to be preferred to violent anarchy. And violent anarchy, in many ways, which you have in 1945 until order was reimposed with. For ideology, the period in 1914 1940 to 1945 feet, it was not a war of religion on the face of it. Ideology looking back was obviously that ideology, religion was like heroin and ideology was like methadone. It brings you trembling down to religion but not a fitted. On hundred dead for communism and nazis and fascism. For barbarity is not seen for centuries because of ideology. And also the borderline for ideology and religion is not always so clear. Its most violent phases and much of it was very violent. There is not a huge distinction for between religion and ideology because it was also a religious cult in which people could be tortured to death for trailing on a newspaper with images on it. That is for religion is worst, really. Face not to do with ideology, its a cult. Its to do with the peer group, isnt it . I mean, you know, its considered i mean one of them, if you think that peer group is far as a determinant of young peoples behavior and in fact throughout their lives, the great study of that is christopher brownings Police Reserve battalion 101 where its established that the killing squads that went out behind for poland and russia who, you know, were going to kill everyone in the village. What was that . 30,000 dead . Kill all day, kill women and children and then all day. No one ever got punished for seeking food transfer. They were not sent to the front. They were not sent to some penal commander of the front. They would be transferred. All you might have in the meantime is a bit of jostling as people say. You are letting that side down. There is not a single case of anyone being punished for requesting a transfer. And yet rather than shaming themselves and hurt the group, they would kill women and children all day, every day. Yeah, they did not necessarily enjoy it. There was a sort of wear and tear on the nerves of ss. Which is why of course the gas chambers were employed because after a while, the killing faith is a bit of a strain. Even if they got drunk, which they did and 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. So it is not necessarily the case that the killers founded easy but i suppose you can get used to anything. The other thing is while we are on this beautiful subject, i have often thought that the reason why the violence and civil wars and, again, to come back to the ethnic germans after the war in poland czechoslovakia, the reason they are so particularly brutal and the killing almost always goes together with humiliation. You see it in india. I mean the last famous instance was the seeks set upon the what was it . I cannot remember now. In any case in india you see it over and over. In partition, you saw it. People who set upon their neighbors and it was not enough to kill people the way the jews were killed also. It was not enough just to kill them, it had to go. It was all proceeded by humiliation of some grotesque kind. I think that this is simply a speculation. I think one of the reasons is is that its not easy for one human being to murder another human being especially if they identify with, if they were your neighbors and looked like you. 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 you are killing an animal and no longer human being, which is why you have to reduce people to that state. An animalization. Yes. That is why in rwanda victims were called cockroaches on the radio. Its easier to kill cockroaches than it is your neighbor. The self fulfilling for is marvelous to watch. In the ghettos of portland and i think if the holocaust had never happen, we would regard that a sort of a beast quality. How the polish jews were terrorized, looted, exploited and had to work for their conquer win. Fear is a report that said i visited the ghetto in warsaw, if there is anyone who still has sympathy, they should just go and have a look at what these people left themselves, no self respect, not even common decency, etc, etc. The way they treat their children, their children are starving. What do you think the sort of imposition of what you think of them . And then cumulus reporting of your indignation . Four through other unpleasant in these concentration camps. 50 saw he fainted nearly . Yes. If you had been a german in 1942 and heard that it can explore, and hes pasha, that they were machine gunning mental patients to clear pet space for people have gone there while killing women and children in the east. I thought something is not quite right. No, but on the other hand from 1945 after the liberation, Russian Troops often teenagers freighted hospitals and raped people who were sometimes on their death bed, patience. We have to be a little careful with. When you write about violence, there is of course the danger of the pornography of violence and we are frightened of it and therefore fascinated by it and as a writer one always has to be a bit careful that you do not start to revel in descriptions of it because there is a pornographic element. How fun one im guards against that, i have no clear answer to it but its a factor. For as we sit here. Very closely aligned to whats prima lovey called for literally electorally when you come to these. Horribly for an unwelcome lee rich to even experience it. It is close to six. That is why i think there is a pornographic element. People read about violence and the fascination that is not entirely unrelated to the fascination for reading about sex. Many of the americans had bleep. In line with tankers argument, one might note that there was a standing of a shun in congress when he got to his sentence commuted. There was a rockabilly song that was on top of the rockabilly chart for months. Americans didnt find my lies shocking. Not en masse anyway. There was sort of a horror that americans, americans are just as capable of doing these things as germans are. It belies a different case because people often wonder about the rape event king in 1937 when the japanese took the japanese Chinese Capital at the time in there was massive reap, looting and killing, and so on. Its often explained as the japanese are particularly cruel and barbaric. How is it circumstances that army behave like that even though in the war in 1905 the japanese were was known for its discipline and how well it treated its p. O. W. s, and so on. And i think it explains a little bit of what happened in world war ii and afterwards as well. Its a partic