The Democratic Party and Jews

ARE THE JEWS MASOQUISTS?, OTHERWISE, WHY THEY VOTE DEMOCRAT?

CNN LARRY KING WEEKEND
Interviews With Michael Beschloss, Tony Orlando, Larry Elder, Arthur Levitt, Phyllis George
Aired December 15, 2002 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
EXCERPTS
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, starting with shocking revelations on America's role in World War II with best-selling historian Michael Beschloss. And then Tony Orlando tells us how he survived drug abuse and the psych ward.

It's all next on a jam packed LARRY KING WEEKEND. We always look forward to these editions of LARRY KING WEEKEND when we meet some terrific authors with some great new books. And no better one than the one we kick off with tonight. Michael Beschloss, the renowned historian and best-selling author, the commentator for ABC News, PBS' "THE NEWS HOUR WITH JIM LEHRER," a frequent guest on this program. His new book is "The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany 1941-45."

Now I understand you've been on working this for 10 years or you put it aside or what?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, AUTHOR, THE CONQUERORS: I did. You know, I started it in '91 and almost finished it a few years later. And then I was told I found out that a lot of stuff was coming open. British intelligence archives and CIA documents. The Soviet Union is putting a lot of -- out of lot of stuff that showed us what Stalin thought. So I basically set the book aside for a few years. And good thing I did.

KING: Haven't there been tons of books about World War II, the end of World War II, about Churchill, about Roosevelt, about Stalin? What could you find that's new?

BESCHLOSS: There -- it's a great thing about history is that even 50 or 60 years later, there's all sorts of new stuff. One example is that British Secret Service agents were trying to kill Hitler all through the war might have succeeded. The most grave one I found was that it was thought that Franklin Roosevelt had never dealt with the question of possibly stopping the Holocaust bombing the death camps. And I found an interview that had never been seen before in which it turns out it did come up to Roosevelt. He was told you've got a chance to perhaps stop Hitler's killing of the Jews by bombing the death camps. And to my great disappointment, he sort of flicked it away, said well I'm not interested in that, did not really take it seriously.

KING: And his Jewish secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthal, fought for it, did he not?

BESCHLOSS: He did. And that's really a great story. I think the most moving in the book because Morgenthal was Jewish, but unobservant. If you can believe it, he had never attended a Passover Seder by the age of 50, but when he learned in 1943 about the Holocaust, it radicalized him. He almost fainted. And he found out that FDR and the administration had been stopping Jewish refugees from coming out of Europe. They had been unwilling to use military resources to stop the killing.

And even though Morgenthal said my friendship with the president was the most important thing in my life, and he also worried that Roosevelt that did not like him to raise Jewish matters, he went to the Oval Office and he said, "Mr. President, this has to stop. You have to do something about the Holocaust."

KING: Now Roosevelt so loved by Jewish America. I believe he got 98 percent of the Jewish vote.

BESCHLOSS: Close to it.

KING: Why didn't he bomb? Why didn't he help?

BESCHLOSS: Well, it sort of goes back. One scene I got in the book is that shortly after Pearl Harbor, Morgenthal had lunch with Roosevelt, along with a Catholic guy named Leo Crowley. And Roosevelt said to them, you guys have got to understand that America is Protestant country. And you Jews and Catholics are only here under sufferance, he said. And therefore, you have to do everything I ask. And Morgenthal, who loved Roosevelt, went back to his office and almost went, you know, what the hell am I working 24 hours a day for, if America is not for me?

KING: Is Roosevelt diminished in this book?

BESCHLOSS: I think he's diminished in terms of not being able to face the big moral crisis, perhaps of the 20th century. The murder of the Jews, the Holocaust, this monstrous crime...

KING: Where is the elevated?

BESCHLOSS: He's elevated in terms of understanding that we did have to fight Hitler. That was very unpopular in '39 and '40. Had he not said that to Americans, we could have lost the war. Many of us would not be here.

KING: Right wing America was opposed to us going into helping Europe, was it not? BESCHLOSS: Absolutely. And if Roosevelt had taken the advise of his advisers, they were saying America's isolationist. You know, don't alienate people. You might lose the election.

KING: Including Joseph Kennedy?

BESCHLOSS: Including Joseph Kennedy, who in my book Roosevelt says to him in private, interestingly enough, Roosevelt was always worried that people say that he was going into World War II to save the Jews, because there were many Jews in his administration. Ridiculous charge, but Roosevelt said to Kennedy in private, which I've got in the book, he said, "I think if an American demagogue took up anti-Semitism," Roosevelt says, "there would be more blood running through the streets of New York City than in Berlin." I think he was wrong, but it shows how sensitive he was to this.

KING: How does Churchill come out in a book I cannot wait to read? The book is "The Conquerors," by the way. Churchill, up or down?

BESCHLOSS: Actually very well because, for instance, on the issue of the Holocaust, he got the same information that FDR got. And rather than Roosevelt saying let's just win the war and not deal with this directly, Churchill with his great sense of history said we're obviously witnessing the great crime in human history. He asked his Air Force to explore every possible way of stopping the killing.

KING: But they didn't?

BESCHLOSS: They couldn't do it. And they found that actually the Americans were better situated to do it. That's why the question when to Roosevelt, who turned this down very brusquely.

KING: Churchill was the first of the three, was he not? Of the Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, to see Hitler for what he was?

BESCHLOSS: He was back in the '30s. And as you know, he was seen by the British people almost as a crank. And in that relationship, he's the one who's always giving very good advice, but the problem was that he was the junior member. I've got a scene in the book, for instance, 1943, they were in private. They were meeting at Tehran, the big three. And Stalin is talking about what do you do with Germany at the end of World War II? And he says, I think the way to fix the Germans is let's murder the top 50,000 German military officers. That will do it.

And Roosevelt replies well, you know, Uncle Joe, that's too harsh. Why don't we murder only 49,000? And Churchill, you know, sort of storms out of the room and says, you know, this is ridiculous. We're fighting a war for justice. I'd love to do this emotionally, but this is exactly the opposite of what we're saying to the world. And Uncle Joe sort of brings it back in and says, "Winston, we were only kidding." Of course he wasn't kidding at all.

KING: Stalin, how did he dance the dance? He signs a pact with Hitler. Hitler invades the Soviet Union. He gets us in. He wants to -- he forces a break-up of where he gets control of Eastern Germany? How did -- pretty good player, wasn't he?

BESCHLOSS: Machiavellian player. Roosevelt was always terrified that at any time during this war, Stalin would make a deal once again with Hitler and say, you know, we'll make a deal on the Eastern front. You turn the German army against the British and the Americans. That's why Roosevelt said let's all fight this war to unconditional surrender, even though that cost many more British and American lives.

KING: One terrific review in your book, which widely praised it, ended it by bringing in Iraq, saying we learned from Beschloss' book. Know what you're going to do when you win. That's as important as winning.

BESCHLOSS: Absolutely, because what Roosevelt did, and I hope President Bush does if we do this thing, is Roosevelt said we've got to find -- fight this war to unconditional surrender. Bush will have to do that against Saddam Hussein if we do this. But the other part of it is that in Germany, just like Iraq. We didn't just win the war, FDR and Truman said let's make it into a democracy so we'll never have to do this again. And Iraq, that may mean that we Americans have to stay there for a long time with a lot of sacrifice.

KING: What surprised you the most?

BESCHLOSS: The fact that FDR, who I always have thought of as a humane man and as a great president, could have been pretty cold- hearted on the Holocaust, because you know, he was confronted with this evidence. He realized that the murder of the Jewish people, this is the first time that someone had tried to remove an entire people from the face of the earth. Despite that, he dealt with this as if it were sort of a minor military matter instead of the great moral issue that we now know it was.

KING: Did we learn a lot about the military activity of World War II in "The Conquerors?"

BESCHLOSS: We do. And one of the diamonds in the chandelier is this. You know, this war took until 1945 to win. One reason it took so long was that Roosevelt kept on saying this time, let's not just defeat Hitler and maybe sign a peace treaty with the Germans. We've got to go all the way to Berlin and have absolute victory. The meaning of that, Roosevelt didn't want to advertise it, was that this war took a lot longer, killed a lot more Brits and Americans, but in the end, it was the right thing to do because that's the only way that you absolutely overwhelm the possibility of another Hitler in Germany.

KING: And how about Truman, who finishes it off? Roosevelt dies before seeing this?

BESCHLOSS: Complex, because Truman for instance, his first week in office begins to see these pictures of the death camps opening. And I was born 10 years later, but I know that even anti-Semites in this country saw those horrible pictures and said, you know, how could I have said and thought such things? They changed their minds.

Truman, although a humane man, would write in his diaries such things as the Jews think that they're God's chosen people. I think God had better judgment. You see the two sides of Truman as more complex. At the same time, he finally did the right thing on Germany, which was punish the Nazis, get them out of positions of power after VE day, but try to make them like Americans.

KING: And he didn't know about the A-bomb, right?

BESCHLOSS: Didn't know about A-bomb. Knew virtually nothing that Roosevelt wanted to do, because Roosevelt told virtually no one in his circle.

KING: Can't wait to read this, Michael.

BESCHLOSS: Thank you.

KING: And always great seeing you.

BESCHLOSS: Great to see you, Larry.

KING: Michael Beschloss, highly recommended, great reviews. The book is "The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the destruction of Hitler's Germany 1941-45."

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