- course, which, the ones which you've posted.
- I've read those, which are really well written.
- I really--
- Well, I--
- --really thought that you did a wonderful job on them.
- I'm just going to put this over here.
- I think so, too.
- [LAUGHS] Well, good.
- And also, I sort of qualify that by saying
- that I have been away.
- The distance between me and those scripts--
- Yes.
- --is so great that I feel that I'm a neutral observer.
- Right, right, right, right.
- And I've asked myself the question many times,
- could I have done it-- could I do it today?
- I know.
- The one thing I know I couldn't do
- is I couldn't do it within the time constraints.
- Right.
- The pressure you must have been under at Nuremberg--
- You see, this trial--
- the court will close around 4:30.
- Then I didn't find it very appealing
- to stay at the courthouse and write my story,
- write my script, because it was so noisy.
- And so I went back to my--
- drove back to where we were staying,
- which was the Faber Schloss, which was Eberhard Faber.
- Eberhard Faber, was that a hotel?
- Or was that a residence?
- No, that was, you know, what Eberhard--
- well, Faber, we call it--
- Yeah.
- --you know, was a pencil manufacturer.
- Right, right.
- Well, the Faber was from that, the pencil manufacturer.
- Right.
- And he had a big castle.
- And it had not been touched at all.
- And also, he had a number of barns and things
- like that, which the Army took over and made dormitories out
- of them.
- Yes, yeah.
- And so all media stayed there.
- See, Nuremberg was absolutely flat on the ground.
- Right, right.
- It was one of the most destroyed cities in Berlin--
- in Germany.
- And it's amazing that the courthouse was not bombed--
- Right.
- --which was not purposeful.
- They just missed it.
- They just missed it.
- So you would go back to the Schloss.
- Yeah, it was 8 miles, took about 20 minutes.
- 8 miles, yeah.
- And so I'd go out there.
- And we were all--
- You had the army Jeep.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Then I'd go back.
- I'd get back there about 20 to 9.
- And then we'd go on air at 10 o'clock.
- From the trial?
- Courthouse.
- From the courthouse.
- That's where the-- and one of our problems at the beginning
- was that we thought that AFN Nuremberg was still operating,
- but it wasn't.
- And we had to get to Munich, where they
- had a big 60,000 watt station.
- But the problem was that it was very difficult to get
- a landline telephone.
- And of course, all the telephone lines were down.
- From Nuremberg to Munich?
- Well, all over Germany.
- Yeah, right, right.
- And those that had been restored,
- you had two things going on.
- You had the displaced person traffic.
- And then you also had the traffic
- that was going back to the US at the time,
- because the soldiers were being sent back home.
- So it was very difficult. And it took really an order
- from Supreme Headquarters to get a telephone line.
- But you know, Eisenhower was very
- conscientious in making certain that the German people knew
- what happened.
- Right.
- And in fact, when these concentration camps
- were liberated, before they cleaned them up,
- they forced all the people who lived within, say, a 25,
- 30 mile radius to go through the camp
- while the dead bodies were still there.
- Yeah.
- And the reason that AFN spent--
- gave as much time to it was that he
- wanted the upper scale German people
- to know exactly what went on.
- And--
- And this came directly from Eisenhower?
- Yeah.
- And he-- and so what they had done,
- they had taken a survey on what was the most trusted news
- source in Germany by people who spoke English.
- And they said it was American Forces Network on the theory
- that they felt that the Americans played it
- straight with the army, with their troops.
- Now, one other thing you mentioned--
- it's always interests me-- having
- been a foreign correspondent also, the business of how
- you file and so forth, you said you had that window.
- You had to get back to the Schloss, write your scripts,
- but then come back in time for broadcast.
- But was there-- how much editing was involved?
- Did you have to give--
- was there much editing?
- The only editing that was done was done by me.
- Really?
- And I couldn't-- that's one of the-- as I've gotten older,
- and read about the control right now about--
- Right.
- It could never happen today.
- No one ever touched my script--
- Wow.
- --except the person who read it sometimes would say,
- it will be--
- can I change this, because you've
- got three 8-syllable words running together.
- Right, right.
- And so some of those scripts have got editing
- by the announcer.
- Right, right, right, right.
- But literally, I did 44 broadcasts, I think.
- And--
- All from the main trial at Nuremberg?
- Yeah, all from the main trial.
- And never did I get a complaint from any of my superiors.
- In fact, the only closest thing I ever got was I was pretty
- tough on Jackson when he cross-examined--
- Goering.
- Goering.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And Tom Dodd was Jackson's Chief of Staff.
- And I just happened to run into him
- as I was going up to the courthouse trial the next day.
- And he said-- you know, not a really nasty way-- when
- he said, you were pretty tough on the chief last night.
- And I said, don't you think he deserved it?
- And he just waved his hand--
- [LAUGHS]
- --at me.
- Yeah, yeah, right.
- Well, that's even more impressive
- that your scripts are so well written,
- because usually these days, you assume there
- was a fair amount of editing.
- None whatsoever.
- I did my own editing.
- Right, and it also reflects.
- It also shows that you're really reflecting what you're
- hearing and so forth-- for instance,
- when you talk about the mood and a lot of GIs asking, well,
- why don't we just shoot them?
- Yeah.
- That that was really what-- this was simply your take on this.
- Well, it was my take, but I tell you,
- I was very influenced by Jackson who--
- because he was-- you know, he really
- fought to get those trials, that trial, set up the way he did.
- If it weren't for the Americans--
- and I would say that he played a good big part in it--
- it would have been a sort of a court martial type--
- Yeah.
- --situation.
- But he felt that he wanted to give them as fair a trial
- as could be done where the winner tries the loser.
- Yes.
- You know, a hard thing to do.
- Oh, of course.
- Hard thing to do.
- Right.
- But I think that the Americans made every effort
- to at least go through the motions.
- They paid for the lawyers for the defense.
- They gave them facilities.
- They gave them all the documents.
- You know, actually what happened was
- the strategy for the prosecution was that the documents
- convicted them.
- Yes, yeah.
- And so everything that the Germans did
- was extremely well documented.
- Yeah.
- I mean, there were very few witnesses at that trial, right?
- I mean, when--
- Not a great number.
- Yeah.
- No, not a great number.
- But hundreds of documents
- Yes, yeah.
- Thousands of documents altogether.
- Right.
- And one of the most dramatic moments in the whole trial
- was when the tough--
- the best prosecutor was Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe.
- And the one thing that Goering wanted
- to protect above everything else was his military honor.
- Yes.
- And he made the statement more than once
- that they could take him out and shoot him and give him
- a soldier's death, and he would have no problem with that.
- Yes.
- His problem was that he thought that hanging was the worst
- that you can do to a soldier.
- Right.
- So Goering, when he was at his peak,
- could get anything he wanted.
- So when the war started, he established--
- the Luftwaffe had its own prisoner of war system.
- They didn't go into a general prison of war,
- which the rest of them did.
- But if you were a military--
- I mean, a Air Force pilot or bombardier or navigator
- and you were shot down, you would
- go into a Luftwaffe prison, operated by Luftwaffe.
- Right.
- And the conditions were something very, very much
- better than the other armed services,
- because Goering felt that the air people were
- the superior people, which was a general feeling in our army,
- too.
- So the point that Maxwell-Fyfe was trying to--
- No, that's all right.
- I just want to double check that everything's is on.
- --was trying to make was that Goering
- had violated his own commitment to himself of being
- a soldier, a man of honor.
- And he started questioning Goering.
- He said, what is the first duty of a prisoner of war?
- And Goering said, it's to escape.
- And Maxwell-Fyfe then said--
- read four names-- British Airmen.
- You ever heard of these people?
- No, never.
- He said, do you know--
- you're familiar with this Luftwaffe Stalag--
- he gave the name of him, [INAUDIBLE]..
- And he said, are you aware that there were three of them,
- they tried to--
- they did escape.
- And they were caught?
- Were caught and brought back after a couple of days.
- A month later, they escaped again.
- And they were caught, brought back and executed.
- And he asked Goering if he knew anything about it?
- No, he knew nothing whatsoever of that.
- So Maxwell-Fyfe pulls out a document
- which had been written.
- Because the ground rules were that you can't touch these--
- you can't execute a punishment with--
- death was not permitted.
- And so they had to write to our command because--
- For permission.
- The camp commandant wanted to execute them.
- And it goes all the way up to Goering.
- And he signed off on it?
- And Goering approves it.
- And he said, this will teach the others in the camp
- that we're not fools, you know, we can catch them.
- Right.
- And Goering was just completely wiped out by that,
- Yeah, right.
- He stuttered, stumbled.
- And he wouldn't admit that he did it, but his name was--
- Was on it.
- And those people were presumably shot?
- Shot, yeah.
- Yeah.
- They--
- Right.
- But--
- A couple of small things, just before I forget--
- in one of the scripts right in the beginning, you write ETO.
- That means European--
- European Theater Operations.
- That's what I thought.
- I just wanted to make sure I had that right.
- European Theater of Operations.
- Yeah, right.
- And in terms of just a little biographical detail,
- I read about how you grew up in Memphis,
- your parents had come from England.
- What kind of background did they have?
- Were they--
- My father was born in Leeds.
- And my mother was born in what is now Belarus.
- They-- a town called--
- the nearest town was Bialystok.
- Oh, yes.
- Sure, which is now in the Polish border.
- It will be--
- It's been part of Poland, Russia and--
- Right.
- I know that area.
- My mother was born near Minsk.
- In Minsk.
- Yeah.
- Is there any Jewish background in your family?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Both parents or--
- Both parents.
- Yeah.
- And what happened, I didn't know how they got to Leeds
- until about 10, 15 years ago.
- I was invited by the Metropolitan University
- of Leeds to be the speaker at the 10th anniversary
- of their communications college.
- And I sat next to this history professor at a dinner.
- And he was Jewish.
- And I said, my parents came from Leeds.
- And I said, my father was born in Leeds.
- But his father came from Lithuania.
- And this man said, I bet he came around between 1840 and 1850.
- And I had no way to verify that, because my father passed away.
- But it's sort of trying to calculate.
- And we have, like every family, there was a genealogist--
- Yes, yes.
- --in the family.
- And I checked it with her.
- And what happened was Leeds was a big textile manufacturing
- company.
- And basically, they made cloth.
- Manchester, after Leeds established itself,
- started competing with Leeds.
- So the cloth manufacturers in Leeds
- decided they would upgrade, bring added value
- to their product.
- And so they started making men's suits.
- And they needed tailors.
- So they started recruiting them from that part of the world,
- where there are a lot of--
- And apparently, the best tailors in Europe were in Lithuania,
- and most of them were Jewish.
- Yes, yeah, yeah.
- So that was one of the jobs that they could do.
- That's fascinating.
- It's always interesting to have that family history,
- and you learn how that ties in with these bigger trends.
- Yeah, so that's how I got there.
- But my father was in the British Army for four years
- and came to--
- he was a cotton buyer for a textile mill.
- He went to Memphis, but three times
- before World War I had decided, on his first trip,
- that he was going to emigrate to Memphis,
- talked his two brothers into coming to Memphis.
- And he didn't want to give up his job,
- so he stayed and got caught by World War
- I and was in the British Army for four years.
- Got gassed at the first use of gas in Belgium at Ypres, 1915.
- Right.
- And so but they came to Memphis right after the war was over.
- They got married, my mother and father.
- And I was born about a year later--
- Right.
- --after they got there.
- Well, you have a pretty extraordinary story.
- I read about that and the Faulkner interview.
- Yeah.
- That's wonderful.
- That-- he's up there was his horse, you see.
- Oh, wow.
- Yes, yeah, now I see.
- Yes, absolutely, that's wonderful.
- Yeah.
- Now, did you feel--
- so when did you go to Europe and in the army?
- At what point--
- I was--
- When did you get into the army, and when did you go to Europe?
- Oh, I got out--
- I was graduated in '40.
- And from which school?
- From--
- Ole Miss.
- Ole Miss, that's right.
- University of Mississippi.
- That's right, Ole Miss.
- Yeah, And I went to work for a newspaper.
- If I had had the money to support me for three months
- and buy a bus ticket, I would have come directly to New York,
- I wanted to be a newspaper man.
- And I paid my way through school by being the correspondent
- for the Memphis newspaper.
- Right.
- And that actually paid all my--
- As a stringer, yeah.
- As a stringer, $0.14 a column inch.
- And it was sort of understood that I
- was going to go to work for the paper,
- because I had that stringer job for three years.
- And I had also worked on summers as a copy boy,
- filling in for vacations.
- And I had this crazy notion that someone
- was going to discover me and take me to New York.
- I didn't know how or when, but I really
- felt that was going to happen.
- Graduated in June, the Selective Service Bill
- was passed in August.
- And it set off a tremendous construction program
- for training facilities, munitions
- plants, things like that.
- And I was covering an area in West Tennessee where the plant
- was going to be located.
- And I got the story, and it was one of the biggest construction
- undertakings ever.
- This was what kind of a plant?
- It was ammunition.
- Ammunition plant.
- Shell-loading plant, yeah.
- And this was in Tennessee?
- In Tennessee.
- Yeah, west Tennessee.
- And I met-- the company that built
- it was one of the largest in the US at the time.
- It equated to Halliburton or Bechtel today.
- Right.
- And I met the CEO, interviewed him.
- And also his son who was 29-years-old years old
- was on that particular job.
- And I got to know him and his family.
- And they had a big problem at the beginning,
- and that was a labor problem.
- It was a union shop contractor operating
- in a non-union territory.
- And so this was the first time in this government construction
- program that this situation had come up.
- So this is a paradigm for what's going
- to happen to billions of dollars worth of construction.
- Right.
- And so this man who owned the company--
- very farsighted-- and he felt that it
- was so important it was going to really make the media press.
- And so he asked me if I could get a leave of absence
- to help him through the six or eight week period.
- Well, I kind of thought it as my ticket to New York.
- And he asked me how much money do I make?
- And I said $25 a week.
- And he said, well, I'll double that--
- biggest raise I ever got.
- Right.
- And he said, do you have a car?
- And I said, no, sir.
- He said, well, you need a car, we'll get you a car.
- So I did, and everything gets settled in about five weeks.
- So you were then working for-- who was this man?
- It was a company called the HK Ferguson Company.
- OK, for that company.
- Yeah, for that company, the builder.
- Right.
- And so you know what did he take me to do after that?
- He had a shell-loading plant as another construction job.
- And so I had gotten close to the boss' son.
- And the boss' son knew that I was getting itchy, antsy.
- And he called his father and told him
- that if they wanted to keep me around,
- they better do something about it.
- And so his father came in--
- called me a couple of days later--
- says, come down and visit the job
- and asked me to pick him up at the airport,
- and we could talk, and for hour and a half.
- And so he said he felt that after the war,
- the construction industry is going
- to be a lot different, because the war was going to create
- a lot of new competition, which it did,
- and that advertising, marketing, public relations would
- be much more important in their industry than before.
- And he said, you've got to learn the business.
- And he said, the other thing is that I'm
- doing all this traveling.
- And he said, I just can't manage the logistics of my travel
- and do everything I'm supposed to.
- So he said, I've been thinking about getting an assistant.
- He said, you'd be my assistant, travel with me.
- And that's the way you learn what our business is about.
- Right.
- Well, he took me into practically every meeting
- that he did.
- And I did that for about almost three years.
- But when the draft thing started,
- I made up my mind that I was not going
- to let the war end without my going into the army.
- And one of the reasons, I guess, for that--
- that my father, see, was a veteran, British army.
- We had a neighbor who had gone to France.
- And there was another neighbor across the street who somehow
- or another never got drafted.
- And my father and this other neighbor
- referred to him as the slacker.
- And I wasn't going to be--
- I thought it would--
- whatever I did in business or any other place-- if I didn't--
- Go into the--
- --go into the army, that it would--
- Yeah.
- --happen, so I started getting deferments,
- because I was working for this defense--
- Oh, for this man.
- --contractor.
- And at the end of '43, toward the end, I told my boss.
- I said, I think that this thing's
- going to be over in the next year, 18 months.
- I better go in the army.
- So I went in the army.
- You volunteered.
- Starting '44.
- And I was in Normandy six weeks after the invasion
- and with an engineer combat group.
- And we pulled the mines out of the hedgerows
- as our first assignment.
- And I stayed with the combat--
- I tried to get out of the combat engineers from the time
- I got in there.
- But I didn't get my transfer until around April 15th,
- which was less than a month before the war in Europe
- was over.
- And I ended up going to work for this American Forces
- Network, the radio network.
- Yeah.
- And it was a great experience professionally for me.
- I'd never done radio.
- And I was doing radio news.
- Right.
- And I--
- So you started working for them when the war ended or--
- The war was over.
- The war was over.
- I got to Paris--
- Yeah, in Paris.
- --toward early part of June.
- Yeah.
- And a great-- one of the great things about it was getting
- to live in Paris at a time when the French were very grateful
- for having--
- Yeah.
- [LAUGHS] yes.
- That didn't last too long, but--
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And so one day in early November,
- that first or second day in November, I had this--
- I was an enlisted man all the way through.
- They closed-- by the time I got in there,
- all of the officer candidates were--
- and I couldn't get a commission to begin,
- because I never could pass the eye test.
- Back then you had to have 20-20 uncorrected.
- Yes, yeah.
- And so I went through the war as an enlisted man.
- And I got this call that I'm supposed
- to go up and see the colonel who was
- a commanding officer of that American Forces Network.
- He was a real pro.
- He ran the WQXR before the war.
- And he said that he would like for me to go to Nuremberg
- to cover the trial.
- And it was very surprising to me that he chose me,
- because I was one of the youngest people, about 24,
- and had really not had that much radio experience.
- How long had you been working for AFN at that point?
- Well, I guess it's only a couple of months.
- Three, four months.
- Yeah.
- And I asked him, I said, why are you choosing me,
- there are a lot of other people here?
- And he said, I've got to have two things,
- and he said you've got them, all three--
- you've got both, all three of them.
- And he said, number one, I need someone who's
- going to be around for a while.
- And at the army, after the end of the war in Europe,
- was very, very good about letting
- you know when you were going to get out of the army.
- You had to have a certain number of points
- based on length of service--
- Right.
- --and where you got your service.
- You could figure out almost to the week
- when you were going to get out.
- When you were going to be discharged, yeah.
- And I was going to get out the end of May.
- And this was November.
- Yeah.
- And everybody thought the trial was
- going to last only about three or four months, five months.
- But and then he's saying just-- he's named off some people--
- so and so and so and so, most of them were in their late 30s,
- but he's going home in two months,
- and this one's going home in six weeks.
- Right.
- So you know, the other thing he said
- is that everybody believes that you're
- a good reporter and a solid writer.
- And he said, the other thing about it,
- which I later found out what he meant, he said,
- you don't have any political baggage.
- And the way I found out is when I got back home to Memphis,
- I went back to the paper just to say hello to some people.
- And the managing editor said to me, you know,
- I remember the FBI came in here and wanted
- to know all about you.
- And apparently, they had done a check.
- A background check.
- Background check.
- And I guess they--
- I was from down South, and you'd expect the New York easterners
- would have a lot of political ideas, which I really
- didn't have.
- Right, right.
- Well, it was one of the great experiences that I had.
- But--
- Well, can we talk for a moment, just how did
- your view of the trial itself--
- I can see from your coverage, which is one thing.
- But going into the trial do you have one view?
- Did it change?
- And now, do you, like just through the evolution of your--
- Well, number one, I had little knowledge of the law.
- I had covered a few trials in federal district court when I--
- during the summer that I worked for the paper
- before going to the construction company.
- And but they were usually commercial type cases.
- I covered one murder case.
- And there was a great deal of--
- when I got--
- I didn't really start forming ideas until a day or two
- before the trial when I was there talking
- to other correspondents.
- And I found out there was a great deal of skepticism.
- Among the correspondents?
- Among the correspondents that this
- is a show, not going to last very long.
- But we want to show the German people what happened
- and so forth and so on.
- These people, most of them, are going to get hung anyway.
- And I was sort of hooked on the idea
- that there may be a better future
- than we've had in the past.
- You know, Roosevelt had started the United Nations.
- I had a cousin who was very instrumental
- in the negotiations that led up to the United Nations.
- A man named Abe FORTAS.
- And I had a bit of idealism that I
- thought that this was certainly a step in the right direction.
- And I had a talk with Tom Dodd early on.
- And he explained to me that although we
- had various treaties that had sanctions in them, he said,
- there's really no body of law for an international trial.
- And also, there's no body of law on human rights violations
- and things like that.
- And he said at least this gives them
- a peg in the ground that if somebody starts something,
- they could be punished for it.
- And of course, the United Nations
- was being formed at that time.
- There was a certain amount of idealism.
- So and I think in my scripts, there's a tinge of naivete.
- And that was-- my friend, Joe Nocera found refreshing--
- Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- --that I might not have brought to it today.
- Yeah.
- So that was probably the best part
- of my being a virgin in that respect.
- [LAUGHS]
- Yeah But generally as the trial proceeded, did you--
- was that your positive sentiment grow or--
- Well, I had my positive sentiment.
- But once I got--
- saw that the Americans had all these cases buttoned up--
- Yeah.
- --that there was not going to--
- that the Germans were-- very few of them were going to get life
- sentences or--
- Yeah.
- They-- one of the people that shouldn't have been there
- was Fritzsche, who was like number four to Goebbels.
- Goebbels should have been there, but he died, committed suicide.
- But he was in the propaganda ministry,
- and he filled the propaganda minister, so he got acquitted.
- And then Schacht got acquitted, who was a financial person.
- And the reason he got acquitted is he turned on Hitler,
- or Hitler turned on him--
- Right.
- --about late '43, I guess.
- He put him in prison actually, so--
- Right, right.
- That kind of went.
- And then it was von Papen who got out.
- And he was the one who really legitimatized the Nazi party.
- He was from a good family.
- And he had-- Hitler, see, had very--
- didn't have any connections with the upper strata there.
- And von Papen took him up to the Ruhr
- and introduced him to all of the industrialists up there
- and sold them on the idea of how much business they were going
- to get, because they were going to rebuild
- the army and the airplanes.
- And so the people who owned the steel mills and that things
- started giving him money.
- Right.
- And so he really financed the party.
- And he was Vice Chancellor for two or three years
- and actually opposed Hitler on a number
- of things he wanted to do.
- So Hitler sent him down to Turkey to be the Ambassador.
- So he was pretty much out of it after that.
- So they-- he was acquitted, too.
- And there was a lot of rumors I never
- did use it in any of my broadcasts,
- but that the Catholic Church was really putting
- a lot of pressure on him to--
- he was a very strong Catholic--
- to give, to acquit von Papen.
- So he was-- the three of them, those three, got acquitted.
- But in general, you felt the trial
- did what it set out to do in terms of justice,
- in terms of teaching a lesson?
- To the extent that the victim is being tried by--
- the vanquished, you know.
- The loser being tried by the winner, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And you know, I think they tried to do it within the American
- Anglo-Saxon legal framework.
- Yeah.
- You weren't there for the actual hangings, right?
- No, I left in--
- at the end of March.
- What happened was I knew I was going to be discharged
- toward the end of May.
- And I had a deal with my commanding officer.
- I had never taken any leave in the army.
- Right.
- And he-- sometimes I'd go back to our headquarters,
- which is up in like north of Frankfurt--
- Höchst.
- Right.
- And I'd just touch base with people in the AFN station.
- And I was talking to the commanding officer one day,
- and he asked me how long I was going
- to want to stay down there.
- And I told him until I go home, except I
- would like to have a month off between leaving
- Nuremberg and going home.
- And he said, you know, what do you want to do-- maybe
- I can help you?
- And I said, well, I've got this girlfriend in Paris,
- and I'd like to spend a month on the Riviera
- or down in that area.
- And he said, we'll do it.
- So he gave me orders that took me down to Riviera.
- So I didn't go--
- That's nice of him.
- Yeah.
- So I started leaving France toward the middle of May.
- I went to Le Havre, got on a LST.
- Right.
- And I was discharged on the 29th of May, 1944--
- '46.
- Went to Memphis, stayed there until August with my family--
- did nothing.
- And then I came up here and started my own business.
- Right, which has done rather well.
- [LAUGHS]
- Done rather well, yeah.
- A question on one of the things that
- struck me on one of the scripts, the never forget line.
- It feels-- you know, now it's become such a--
- almost this mantra of so much of the literature
- about the Holocaust and so forth.
- But at the time, was this something
- that you simply wrote?
- And did you feel it was sort of borrowed?
- Or was it simply the way you wrote it
- and without any outside influence?
- Was it just-- I was always--
- No.
- --curious where that starts.
- See, one of the big frauds that the German people played
- was-- you know, you never met anybody who was a Nazi
- or who knew that the concentration camps were there.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And you know, I suspect it was a situation
- that people knew they were there,
- but they didn't talk about it.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Because they didn't know who your friend was and who wasn't.
- And so you know, I felt that they
- had to have this indelibly imposed on them
- that they'd never forget it.
- And I think the Germans of this generation,
- the previous generations, have taken responsibility.
- Yes.
- --very well.
- Yeah, I agree.
- Much more so than any of the other
- of the European countries.
- Yeah.
- And that's, I think, that's partly
- the legacy of the trial--
- that trial and the subsequent one?
- I think it was probably the good fortune
- that they had people like Adenauer, Willy Brandt, very
- good people at the start of when the German Republic was really
- formed.
- And also, I think General Clay probably
- played a big part in that, too.
- Yeah, yeah.
- He was the military governor for four years.
- Have you read that book In the Garden of the Beasts
- or something like that?
- Yeah.
- Well, my book-- it was funny, we were both writing it,
- but deals with that situation some, but much broader.
- I talk about Americans from the end of World War I
- right up until Pearl Harbor in Germany.
- And so I'm familiar with In the Garden of the Beasts.
- You know, I thought that book was pretty good.
- But I think it sort of got more interested
- in the daughter's social life.
- Which was interesting, but--
- Yeah.
- Yeah, well I hope you'll read mine.
- You know, if it was about anything, here,
- she got-- on the one hand, she's got
- the guy who's running the Gestapo,
- and then on the other hand, she has
- one of the chief Russian spies.
- Right, right, right.
- So that's pretty good juggling.
- Yeah, yeah, right.
- An interesting book.
- I read-- I just picked it up one day--
- called The Candy Air Force?
- Oh, The Candy Bombers?
- The Candy Bombers.
- Yes, yes.
- I'm familiar with that.
- Yes, Yes.
- Yeah, it was really a--
- Yes there's nothing profound about it, but--
- But it's a well done book.
- Well done book.
- And basically, it just shows you what kindness--
- Can do.
- --that-- can do, And particularly
- if you have a way of getting the information around,
- that's being done.
- Right.
- Yeah, I enjoyed that book.
- Right.
- And one other question about Howard K. Smith.
- You met Shirer, [? Jospasos. ?] I assume.
- I didn't meet [? Jospasos. ?] I met Shirer.
- But what was it like for you as a young reporter
- to meet all of these people in Nuremberg?
- You know, it just blew my mind.
- Yeah.
- It really-- one of the people who was one of my announcers
- ended up--
- my last one with NBC, a fellow by the name of Herb Kaplow.
- Herb Kaplow, yes, yeah.
- Yeah, He ended up in Washington with NBC.
- But he-- I had him for like two weeks at the end of--
- right before I left.
- Was he at AFN then?
- AFN, yeah.
- He was young.
- He was-- I think they got him when
- he was a sophomore in college or something like that.
- Right, right.
- Right, so yeah, you got quite an experience there
- with all these people.
- Yeah.
- But it was one of the great experiences in my life.
- And before you began to hear the testimony, how much did
- you really know about what had happened in terms of the camps,
- in terms of the killings and--
- Well, you know, I've always, since I was a teenager,
- my father was a voracious reader.
- And he really instilled in me--
- he had an expression called, in the know--
- Right.
- --which is going to be the title of my memoir.
- And being in the know is that you have got enough information
- where you can, if someone brings up
- a subject or a current event, you can at least talk--
- Intelligently about it, yeah.
- --intelligently about it for until you
- can change the subject.
- [LAUGHS] Yeah, right.
- And so I was a newspaper reader from early on.
- Right.
- And you know, I worked in New York.
- My headquarters was in New York for the last three years
- before the war so that I--
- and I was doing. public relations and those
- things, so I had a lot of news people.
- So I was pretty well informed as to what was going on.
- And the couple of weeks before I went to Paris--
- I went to Nuremberg--
- I went over to the library of the Herald Tribune
- and read everything that they had for the last six months
- or so.
- So I had pretty good background.
- Right.
- --on what had led up to how the trial was structured and why,
- what's happened, a lot of that.
- But a lot-- in terms of the atrocities and so forth,
- I assume a lot of that you didn't know or find out
- until the trial, or at least some of it.
- Yeah.
- I had been only up to one concentration camp.
- Oh, you had?
- Bergen-Belsen, yeah.
- Oh, you had?
- Yeah.
- And--
- Shortly after liberation or--
- No, this was-- yeah.
- Yeah, it was probably a week after liberation.
- I was up there.
- We went up there for the day.
- I went up with some reporters.
- So you could still see what had happened there?
- Yeah.
- And but you know, I didn't know the fine points of--
- Right.
- And I got to know Jackson's pressman very well.
- He was a lawyer working with Jackson
- when Jackson was in the Department of Justice.
- Right.
- And he ended up as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission,
- got killed in an airplane crash 1952 or 1953,
- going into Nantucket-- a man named Gordon Dean.
- He helped me get the only interview that Jackson did
- Yes, well, I saw the transcript there.
- It was very interesting, very--
- Yeah.
- Well, just getting back to our moment at Bergen-Belsen,
- were there still a lot of prisoners, ex-prisoners, there.
- And that was also-- it was pretty grim, so--
- Yeah, grim throughout the [? ending. ?]
- You know, it was one of these things I just
- wasn't very interested in standing around
- very long, frankly.
- All right, well, I know you have to get to physical therapy.
- No, actually, my physical therapist
- is currently having another problem.
- Oh.
- So she's not operating this afternoon.
- Oh, OK.
- But usually I go about this time.
- And--
- Right, right.
- Well, and--
- I've been doing this now for about 2 and 1/2, 3 years.
- And the idea is that just trying to strengthen
- the muscles that control equilibrium
- so I don't fall down.
- Right, right.
- It's the thing that scares me the most at my age.
- You know, you fall down, break something
- and go to the hospital.
- They fix it.
- You get an infection, and two days later you're
- in the New York Times in the obituary column.
- I'm trying to avoid that.
- Yes, well, you look like you're in wonderful shape,
- and I look forward-- when's your memoir going to come out?
- Are you almost done with it or--
- I've done-- I'm through with it, and I've gotten to the point--
- I've had it finished for about two months, now.
- And I'm to the point now where there
- are a couple of additional chapters that I've
- got to put in there [INAUDIBLE] And then
- I've been sort of sharpening it up.
- I got preoccupied with that thing that Audible did.
- Right, right, right.
- That just came out of the blue.
- But that's wonderful, that's wonderful.
- It came out of the blue.
- This agent that I have for the ones--
- you know, I didn't even know she was working on it--
- she called me one day.
- And she said, I got a check for you.
- And I said, why do you have a check for me?
- I knew she hadn't done it with the book.
- Yeah.
- And she said, ever since I heard that you had those scripts,
- I've been trying to get somebody--
- in fact, we thought we had a book deal with Norton.
- But they finally decided not to do it,
- because I didn't cover the whole trial.
- And they thought it was incomplete.
- What we originally-- the original proposal was that we
- were going to get a lawyer--
- I mean, a college professor who had really
- made a life studying Nuremberg trials to do the last three
- months of the trial just narratively.
- Right.
- And apparently the powers that be at Norton
- decided that sort of jerry-built type thing.
- And they didn't do it.
- But--
- So do you have a contract now for the new--
- for the memoir?
- It's being shopped around.
- They-- see, a book with my name on it
- is commercially a no-brainer.
- Yeah.
- The company will buy 7,500, 10,000 copies of the book.
- And I'm told that 10,000 is about the break even point.
- Right.
- And then we're using the David Ogilvy book sort of as a model.
- Ogilvy's book came out 30 years ago.
- Oh, is it that long ago?
- Yeah.
- It sold 375,000 copies.
- Wow.
- And it has sold 25,000 to 35,000 a year ever since.
- That's amazing.
- In paper.
- And the audience, the buyers, are schools, colleges--
- I see.
- --studying communication and advertising.
- Right.
- Well, today, there are more students
- studying public relations than there are advertising.
- So you know, so there's probably 15,000, 20,000, 25,000 copies
- a year for a good long period.
- Wow.
- There is no book in the public relations
- field that is a counterpart of Ogilvy's book.
- Ogilvy's, yeah.
- Well, it's interesting, I have one daughter who has just
- started working at Ogilvy.
- Yes.
- Probably still-- at least for--
- she's now just still doing it freelance, but it
- may work into a full time--
- Yeah, I knew David.
- Yeah.
- I was on the World Wildlife Board
- with him back in the '80s, early '80s.
- He was quite a character.
- Right.
- And his agency I have tremendous respect for it, you know.
- Right.
- I've known their people for a long time.
- Well, thank you so much.
- You're very--
- A pleasure to meet you.
- Same here.
- And if you have a chance to read my book, I hope you'll enjoy.
- How long have you been a full-time writer?
- Or are you--
- Well, I was a correspondent for Newsweek,
- a foreign correspondent for Newsweek
- for most of my career--
- Oh, really.
- --an editor.
- So I did that for 35 years.
- Oh, really.
- Until when.
- Until five years ago.
- And then five years ago, I took a job-- you know,
- what was happening with Newsweek,
- I decided I'd done everything I wanted to do there.
- I took a job with a place called the EastWest Institute,
- one of the so-called think tanks.
- I've done that for five years, but I'm going to leave in April
- and just try to focus on my books,
- and in particular now, this book about--
- starting with Nuremberg and going
- to the present about Nazi hunters,
- about the whole attempts to bring Nazis to justice.
- So that's my next project.
- The next book I'm going to read, I'm
- reading this book about Roger Ailes.
- Oh, yes.
- It is absolutely unbelievable.
- He is just such an outrageous character.
- [LAUGHS]
- But my next book is A Monument Man.
- Oh, right, right.
- And--
- I haven't read that one.
- I read Saving Italy, which is the subsequent book, which
- I reviewed for the Washington Post.
- But that Monument Man, you know, the pictures in it--
- Yeah, the photos.
- Yeah, they're getting.
- That's really good.
- They're getting quite a big buildup.
- Oh, year they're having a huge publicity campaign.
- Yeah, they spent a lot of money.
- Yeah, but it's a great story.
- Oh, yeah.
- It's a wonderful story.
- It's one of these things.
- I mean, as you know, it's amazing
- how much you can still find--
- undiscovered stories about that period.
- It seems like everything's written,
- and then you find that's never true.
- Yeah.
- I knew Elliott.
- Which Elliott?
- Jack-- oh, what's his-- the one who was editor of Newsweek.
- Oh, Os Elliott.
- Oh, sure, sure.
- Of course.
- I knew him.
- I knew his brother better, Jock, who was the head of Ogilvy.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Who else?
- Of course, I know Jon Meacham--
- Yes.
- --who is a-- really, I think one of the most brilliant people
- I've run into.
- Another person from Tennessee.
- Tennessee, that's right.
- He went to Sewanee.
- Right, right, right.
- He's actually-- I just saw he's going to be
- teaching a course in Sewanee.
- He actually has gone--
- as far as I know, I think he's sort of resettled in Tennessee.
- I think he goes back and forth.
- But--
- Yeah.
- Well, I don't quite--
- he was-- he's got some kind of a job,
- but it's not full time, at Random House.
- Random House, yeah.
- And then he's on Joe Scarborough's radio show
- two or three times a week.
- Yeah, right.
- And I don't know what else he's doing.
- I guess he's doing some writing.
- He's a good writer, I think.
- Yeah, he's got-- I'm sure he's writing another book.
- I'm not quite sure what the next one is.
- Did you read David Remnick's Obama interview?
- You know, I've had it in my bag, and I haven't read it yet.
- It is fascinating.
- Yeah.
- He spent like three or four days with him off and on.
- Right.
- And he has a lot of interesting observations about him.
- Right.
- I guess next to the Herhey article,
- it's probably the longest piece that--
- They've published in a long time.
- --long time, 22 pages.
- Yea, yeah, that-- normally, these days,
- they don't do that anymore.
- But when you're the editor, you can do it.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Do a man named Peter Boyer?
- I know who he is, yeah.
- He's a very good friend of mine.
- He's an Ole Miss man.
- Oh, is he?
- Oh, I didn't know that.
- Yeah, he worked at the Times.
- And then-- what's her name who went over
- to Newsweek, a woman who was the editor of New Yorker?
- Dorothy Wickenden?
- No, married to Brown.
- Oh, Tina Brown.
- Tina Brown.
- Tina Brown.
- Oh, yes.
- I'm sorry.
- Sorry, of course, Tina Brown.
- Yes, yes.
- Yeah, well, you you, she brought--
- took Boyer from the Times over to--
- To Newsweek.
- --New Yorker.
- New Yorker.
- And then I called.
- I was trying to get him on the phone
- for a period of about a month.
- And he never returned my telephone calls.
- And I finally got him.
- And I said, why the hell haven't you called me back?
- He said, I've been afraid.
- And I said, why are you afraid?
- He said, I'm no longer at the New Yorker.
- I said, well, where are you?
- He says, I'm over here with Tina.
- Yeah.
- I said, you've got to be kidding.
- [LAUGHS]
- You've got to be--
- Right.
- Yes, that didn't last too long.
- But he and Remnick didn't get along, apparently.
- He felt that Remnick wanted to do--
- you know, Peter comes into a story from way,
- from that corner.
- Yeah.
- The thing-- you wonder where the hell he's going with it,
- but it always turns out pretty darn good.
- Yeah.
- And apparently, Remnick wanted him
- to be a little bit more direct.
- Right.
- But he's a good writer.
- Yes, yeah, oh, very talented.
- Very talented guy.
- Well you know, it seems to me that from what
- I've heard from him that you just can't get a better
- deal than the New Yorker.
- Yes, yeah.
- Yeah, well, I'm not sure--
- I assume that's still true, but--
- I don't know how it is now, but--
- But it used to be true if you got into the New Yorker--
- You could go to the moon almost if you get a way,
- find a way to get there.
- Right, right, exactly.
- They pay so much.
- I know, I know.
- I don't know if that's still true, but certainly--
- Yeah, they spend a lot of time on these--
- Oh, yeah, huge amount of stories.
- Yeah, right.
- I'm glad to see that the New York
- Times is doing a lot of spending on-- particularly
- on sociological type stuff.
- Right, right, I know--
- I think they're doing a very good job.
- Those are often the most interesting stories, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, I know.
- I--
- Let me just grab this over here.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Harold Burson
- Interviewer
- Andrew Nagorski
- Date
-
interview:
- Credit Line
- Permanent Collection. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Gift of Andrew Nagorski
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MP3.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Personal Name
- Burson, Harold.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Andrew Nagorski donated the interview with Harold Burson to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016. Nagorski recorded the interview during his research for his book "The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi."
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:40:06
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn562490
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Also in Andrew Nagorski collection
Materials related to research conducted by Nagorski into topics related to the history of the Holocaust and World War II. Includes the extended draft of an article about Auschwitz written by Nagorski, 1995, and published version of same as it appeared in Newsweek, 16 January 1995, sound recordings of interviews of historical eyewitnesses, historians, and others interviewed by Nagorski during his career at Newsweek, and while writing his books “Hitlerland” and “The Nazi Hunters,” transcripts of interviews, and other related research (and other) materials.
Andrew Nagorski papers
Document
Collection consists of transcripts of interviews conducted by Nagorski, primarily in preparation for a cover story on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, written for publication in Newsweek magazine in January 1995. The collection consists of a typescript of the full version of the article; the shortened, public version as it appeared in Newsweek; and transcripts of related interviews that Nagorski conducted in the years following this article. In addition to interviews with Polish and Russian former prisoners of Auschwitz, mostly conducted in the early 1990s, the collection of transcripts also includes interviews with German president Richard von Weizsäcker; Manfred Rommel, the son of General Erwin Rommel; and Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, the Nazi administrator of occupied Poland who was tried and executed by the Allies at the International Criminal Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Oral history interview with Richard Hottelet
Oral History
Oral history interview with Angus Thuermer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Richard Staar
Oral History
Oral history interview with Władysław Bartoszewski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henryk Mandelbaum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Chaya Kroin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Zygmunt Zins
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rafal Molski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Stella Madej
Oral History
Oral history interview with Adam Dobrzanski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Yisrael Gutman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Albert Grinholtz
Oral History
Albert Grinholtz, born on December 4, 1920 in Opoczno, Poland, discusses his family’s move to Paris, France in 1922 (he went with his father first and then his mother and little brother arrived later); being summoned along with his younger brother to register at the commissariat de police on May 14, 1941; being taken to the Gare d’Austerlitz and sent to Pithiviers, where he stayed for 13 months; being deported on June 25, 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau by cattle car, while his parents remained behind in Paris; the conditions of deportation and arrival in Birkenau; how the camp was not yet completed and the men were housed in the women’s barracks; the daily routine, brutality, and construction work brigade; being selected as one of 22 barbers to shave daily both the Germans and prisoners, about 450 men a day, and this work providing him with a bit more food; working on the construction of an Olympic pool in Birkenau, which was used for Nazi propaganda; his work cutting fuelwood for the mines nearby; the situation in January 1945 as the Germans began their retreat and the evacuation and murder of Jewish prisoners; hiding in the kitchen, unseen in the chaos, and being liberated later; being evacuated to Marseille, France on June 18, 1945; going to Budapest, Hungary and Bucharest, Romania, where he was taken care of by the Joint; and returning to Paris.
Oral history interview with Helena Wrona
Oral History
Oral history interview with Kazimierz Smolen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jerzy Tabeau
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marek Edelman
Oral History
Marek Edelman discusses his participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Oral history interview with Manfred Rommel
Oral History
Manfred Rommel discusses his father Erwin Rommel's plot against Hitler.
Oral history interview with Martin Walser
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jan Karski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Helena Slezynska
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gabriel Bach
Oral History
Oral history interview with Deidre Berger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Black
Oral History
Oral history interview with Monika Boll
Oral History
Oral history interview with Allan Ryan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Piotr Cywinski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Donaldson
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rafi Eitan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Benjamin Ferencz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Heidenberger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marvin Hier
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth Holtzman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Lelyveld
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Marwell
Oral History
Oral history interview with Martin Mendelsohn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Herman Obermayer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Krzysztof Persak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Harry Phillips
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eli Rosenbaum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Avraham Shalom
Oral History
Oral history interview with Bernhard Schlink
Oral History
Oral history interview with Efraim Zuroff
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth White
Oral History
Genocide panel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ilona Ziok
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irmtrud Wojak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Schneider
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Sichel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sandra Schulberg
Oral History
Sehn Institute
Oral History
Oral history interview with Thomas Will
Oral History