On behalf of the entire staff, welcome it is the pleasure to have you here. Its a pleasure to talk about hustling hitler. If you have noisemaking devices a please turn them off. Walter will discuss his book for about 25 minutes on and take as many questions as we can fit into 20 minutes more. We encourage questions. Please use the microphone in the center by the pillar. After the q a please fold up your chair and place it against the bookshelf. Thank you. The signing line will be here at the table and books are for sale at upfront where you walked inches and hustling hitler, walter, Walter Shapiro tells a story about Freeman Bernstein, vaudeville manager, boxing promoter, car promoter, car chart, writer of worthless ious in one of the con on the nazi government. Of course he is his great uncle. Although walter does not have appeared to inherited his criminal tendencies, he did inherit a sense of hustling. He covered every president ial election since 1980 which makes 10. He has written for roll call, politics daily, usa today, time, newsweek, the Washington Post among others. Has also served as washington Washington Post among others. Has also served as Washington Bureau chief as a speechwriter the Carter White House and as a lecturer at yale university. Please welcome Walter Shapiro. [applause]. While. First first of all, i really want to thank politics and prose which is one of the worlds great bookstores. I love independent bookstores. Independent bookstores. I particularly love that politics imposes driving. Now looking around i dont how many many of you are old enough to remember, the old, old 1950s tv tv show, this is your life. Clapmac, will that is a little bit how i feel looking around the room is seen so many old friends. So let me start off by, this book really starts with my father. My father died in 2004 and he and he was a connecticut city planner. A mildmannered city planner. In suburban connecticut who went to the zoning board meetings in the evening. Were talking about a racy upbringing i had. But my father kept talking about his uncle, his uncle freeman. My grandmothers older brother and he kept saying he was a really big and vaudeville, he knew people like sophie tucker, he married a showgirl and ultimately he cheated hitler on a nickel deal. Wait a second. We are in a suburban connecticut living room, this makes no sense. It was like my father taking me my father taken me aside and sang, you know son, your direct descendent of sitting bull. Back okay. After my father died, i didnt really think about Freeman Bernstein until 2010. That was when a visiting when a visiting cousin from paris showed up and the visiting cousin, second cousin was from a branch of the family i did not even recognize the name. We. We are not a close family. He is doing genealogical research, not for him but for his sister. So there we are, two guys, we can go out to lunch at bernie bring grass and we are desperately trying over eggs and onions which i recommend to everyone on the upper west side, were desperately, desperately trying to maintain conversation. It is slagging. How. How much can you talk about family among two people who dont care about family. After about 45 minutes minutes in, we are about to have sent to thoughtful silences, he says to me, you know the only interesting thing i ever heard about my family was that i had a great uncle who cheated hitler. Wait. I had a great uncle who cheated hitler. So i was told. By very unreliable narrative narrator, my father. I took enough college anthropology to know there were two tribes on two islands in the pacific ocean, 2000 miles apart, and they both have religion based on the arrival of a white ship, there probably was a white ship. Now we are about to deal with the first lucky thing and doing hustling hitler. That is that my great uncles name was Freeman Bernstein. Dont ask me working from. Had he been his brothers name, sam bernstein, do you have any idea what it would be like to find the right sam bernstein. So lets be honest, i can brag about my Research Method but they really started off with mr. I typed the name Freeman Bernstein with quotation marks into google and i expected to only come up with up interest in minneapolis. Maybe. Instead, the the first clip that pops up whats from the Los Angeles Times of february 20, 1937. Metals broker denies it bilking hitler. It recounts how one Freeman Bernstein metals dealer, jewel importer, and former vaudeville manager, had been arrested at midnight in the back of a chauffeured limousine, smoking a cigar having just left may west apartment. Laughmac the charge that mr. Bernstein was arrested on was, cheating the nazis on a nickel deal for scarce canadian nickel. He had been indicted from new york and this was a fugitive warrant in los angeles. Okay, precooked and the story that just this point. The moment that really hooked me was the last paragraph of this 1937 on signed l. A. Times story. Mr. Bernstein asked the visiting reporter for cigar and lost angeles county jail. When told there was no cigar, he settled first cigarette. He blew a perfect smoke ring. I mean, forget the forget the Surgeon General for a moment, what we are talking about, i wanted to be related to someone after 24 hours of l. A. Lockup could still blow a perfect smoke ring. This got me started on the quest the next moment came when and the new york public library, i found a 50 page pamphlet that why do i feel like was not in heavy demand among the 4,000,000 bucks in the new york public library. It was a pamphlet by Freeman Bernstein entitled, was hitlers nickel hijacked . Reading it i discovered that if you believe his story then somewhere on the high seas between canada and germany, another boat came up with the exact same weight of the nickel and canadian scrap metal and substituted the cargo. Okay. In the book there was one other thing that sort of got my attention. Freeman bernstein, a jew born in troy, new york in 1873, claimed that he met with chancellor hitler. In freemans telling, hair hitler spoke flawless english. A biographical detail that has been subsequently lost to future historians. Laughmac. Its a its amazing how sloppy it is when you have original sources. That was enough, in fact i was going through one of thes and downs in journalism and my wife was with me and i turned to her and said, i know they say in times of trouble you can depend on your family. But this is ridiculous. One tip for all apprentice authors out there, it really helps to sell a book if you can get adolf hitler and may west into your opening paragraph and neither is a metaphor. [laughter] i spent five years researching the life of Freeman Bernstein. A person who variety in his 1942 oh oh but you are a called fabulous vaudeville character of yesteryear. Because the nickel deal was just the end of a long career of both successes as a vaudeville manager and as a silent movie producer, object failures, and rather interesting approaches to honesty. In fact, if its into sort of the jewish framework in america, you have read all of the immigrants stories whether whether youre jewish or not. First generation immigrant rose his way across america, shows up speaking no english but inspired by the statue of liberty. Work goes to work in a garment factory, works 18 hours per day, goes to school on saturday, only to put young david to medical school. We have already. Periodically we have seen the stories of the jewish gangsters. The Bugsy Siegels of this world. The people for who is submachine gun, better. The people for who a submachine gun, better not use weapon weaponry after this week. A gun is really not show us a part of their livelihood and dead bodies, the term. There is a middle ground that nobody writes about. That is juice i really believe that honesty is the best policy if you are born a loss. If you are given membership in the Union League Club at birth. For them, for them, honesty works fine. For people without those advantages, honesty works only when it is convenient. Anyway, that got me started on this road. I cannot retell all of freemans life but i can tell you some high points. He was known in vaudeville for having the lobbyist voice, the biggest cigars, the most outlandish streams and the biggest reputation for not paying his bills. But he was successful enough, variety called him the biggest smalltime agent which meant he booked vaudeville acts into places like scranton, pennsylvania, syracuse, new york. The towns not big enough for the orpheum circuit or the all the circuit in the east coast. He had relatively sometimes major figures on the way up. Both george burns and his autobiography and actually may west also claims that he helped give her her start on stage. The point about all of this is he wasnt a nobody, but he kept his dreams always surpasses income. For example, in 1904 he had the dream, enough with the orpheum circuit, its enough for a time its time for the bernstein circuit. So he went to places like scranton, harrisburg, places like that and guaranteeing them split week entertainment. Two week entertainment. Two shows per week. A bernstein production. It works like a charm. Until he had to change acts. The fact is, then vaudeville, the only way to get people coming back like yuletide movies is there had to be something new each monday. The problem was the gate receipts were not big enough to book the second tier of good acts. So he had to book a second tier of very bad acts. Very talentless people. Eventually the gate receipts became such that theres only enough money for one train ticket out of town. I will let you guess who got it. In vaudeville he specialized in a subset of vaudeville called in those days, freaks. Freaks. What weeks were, they were reality tv. If you are the other in the famous divorce case which ended with your notoriety, there is freeman trying to book you a 10000 a week. One of the people he booked regularly with someone by the name of may yogi. In the 1890s it was a american young actress who hit london and hooked up with the british royalty. Particularly lord hope. The owner of the hope diamond. May yogi actually had the hope diamond for about seven years until she ran off was someone more attractive and decidedly less wealthy. Down on her luck freeman would stumble upon her onstage for 1000 per week. Week. He did things like this. Eventually vaudeville dried out, by 1914 silent movies were really killing the good days of vaudeville. He was broke. I mean he was really broke. I have to mention that he and his showgirl wife may ward had declare bankruptcy twice each. The only time he was embarrassed by this was may wards first bankruptcy was on page one with a picture of new york world. Three years later when she declare bankruptcy again in was in the new york world right next to a failed barrier. That was the only embarrassment. Okay, so they they have to leave town. They just have enough money to get to philadelphia. Remember and stain was one of the most persuasive people around, he gets the local townspeople in germantown pennsylvania to stake into a silent movie production company. With his wife as the star. His first movie which was actually from the reviews pretty good, inspired by the birth of a nation, it was a reenactment of the battle of saratoga called continental girl. I know you did not see it when may ward clambered up a 40foot flagpole to show the stars stripes. It was just inspiring. The second film, it had a wonderful plot of may word as an innocent girl in a boarding school abducted by white slavers and brought to new york to live out the bots wife only to be rescued by her loyal boyfriend from the school in pennsylvania. It was wonderful. Except the sensors did not capture the mood of a movie called virtue and they focus too much on the scenes in new york in the middle and he was banned in philadelphia. He was banned in new york. He was banned everywhere. This of course led to the business necessity known in the annals of American Business as the insurance fire. By the 1920s he had shall we say on a little more rolled. He and his wife who had retired from vaudeville loved ocean liners. Freeman was a a card shark and what he was wonderful at is policing the passengers with their money between new york and southampton. The best thing they did was something they called the anniversary hustle. It worked like this. First night out in the first class salon they walk in arm in arm and say tonight is our anniversary. There is free champagne for everyone, we want all of you to be a newfound friends and celebrate with us. There was no con the champagne was legit, if if low, it was good vintage stuff. The next afternoon, normally these wealthy people of first class would not like it when a stranger just suggests a little card game for fun. But remember and steam wasnt stranger, he was there close friend who had bought them shane champagne the night before. And verbally by the time the boat docked, freeman, freeman made ten times the cost of the champagne in cards. By 1929, he was a little desperate so you look, i dont know if you can see this picture but he look like a Freeman Bernstein. However in 1929 at the boston garden, he organized an irish festival under the name of roger obrien. I mean, it was authentic. The blarney stone was authentically dug up from behind the massachusetts bar. The irish razorback pigs came from the estate of someone named irish in new jersey. Much more importantly the meals were provided by didnt see more. Actually, the the placemats were stolen from ten to more. The irish stew was cooked up by an offduty policeman at the irish fare. But but still, this was a glorious Financial Success until and this will shock all of you, roger or ryan disappeared just before the performances were going to be paid. And this time the Boston Police and newspapers tracked him down and made a lot of attention to a man who they called mr. Obrien steam. Its my joke, its the boston herald. I dont want to bore you with the sports book that did not exactly go right at the Hotel New Yorker in 1930 and the only way to pay off the gamblers was for freeman to write a few, i wont call them bum checks, i will call them hopeful checks which of the hotel cash. I have to say, freeman loved hotels because they had many exits. He also loved to writing checks on obscure canadian banks. He loved them at the end of railroad minds because he figured it would take for 4 6 weeks for the checks to come back. Asked after the second grand larceny indictment it was time to go. He moved to shanghai and crowned himself the jade the king of china. It was a very stirring in vest for sure, little like king arthur and the sword and the stone. But he actually traveled all over asia to get jewels. He developed, as mae west actually sketches out her autobiography, goodness had nothing to do with it. He had a novel way of smuggling jewelry. Jewels. He and his wife did not have children, but they loved animals. He traveled with his beautiful white carrier and about three hours outside of port before facing u. S. Customs, the dog was fed a mineral rich diets. And what could be cuter than this distinguished gentleman coming back from the orient, accompanied by this the beautiful little ball of fluff. With a slightly protruding stomach. All of this set up the great con which i will not go into too much detail on which was, he and a corrupt corrupt metals dealer got the idea for selling the nazis on bogus canadian nickel. Nickel, turns turns out in the 1930s was desperately needed for military reasons like lining the insides of guns and armor plating. In fact, fact, if you intended to invade poland and france you needed a call. Canadian nickel was the only nickel available. However, the canadians were aware of the number of canadian soldiers who died in the trenches of world war i from guns fired by germans lined with canadian nickel. It was almost impossible to export canadian nickel. So freeman and his partner set the word out in new york that they had 200 tons of canadian nickel. They sparked the understandable bidding war, the germans represented by a fellow by the name of otto cosco. Franz cosco first cousin. I am the only person who did a book on a trickster who took out the nyu library and academic volume called cost goes relatives. Its in the bibliography. So all of them working together created this bidding war for canadian nickel. But they kept whispering. We cant label this when we exported as canadian nickel or the mounties will stop us. So well have to be canadian scrap metal. And wherever question was raised, we do it this way to hide what were doing from the mounties otherwise they will find out. Of course the metal had to be inspected. All that meant is that the metals inspector had to be bribed and freeman, this entire deal was done with the 20 pounds of nickel. Not 20 tons, 20 pounds that freeman bought a small metal shop. This was his constant sample case. It was injected at the top of barrels in toronto before the barrels were inspected. Ultimately he had the good fortune if youre exporting something from halifax in march and the temperature outside is minus 7 degrees, you can have pretty good hope that the cargo will not be closely inspected. Freeman, from his days in vaudeville new went to get off stage. So as soon as he was paid hundred 50,000 dollars, dollars, he took off for the orient. When the boat landed in humber, instead instead of hard to get canadian nickel the nazis opened up hard to get canadian rusted tin cans, rusted auto bodies, hard to get canadian brake crumbs and in fact the junk metal dealer in toronto think its it his number two bundles. He was indicted through the middle man in new york and we have left him locked up in l. A. Lockup where he spent two months in jail. He was backed by the Hollywood Jewish community who saw and he pertained himself as a martyr to the nazis when he wasnt quite claiming that the nazis that what they paid for. If you melt down what i gave you there some nickel in there somewhere. His lawyer turned out to be just on his way up, a man about town by the of greg bowser who is dating i think dating may be the slight word. Liana turner. Despite his sleepless nights he was a very good lawyer and by rallying the Jewish Community including a major producer by the name of joseph shank who was the cofounder of 20th century fox, the governor of calif