Actress Rebecca Pidgeon

DATE January 3, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air
Interview: Rebecca Pidgeon talks about her new movie and marriage
to David Mamet
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, Rebecca Pidgeon, is starring in the new movie "State and Main." It
was written and directed by David Mamet, who's her husband. She also starred
in his films "The Spanish Prisoner" and "The Winslow Boy" and in his plays
"Oleanna," "The Old Neighborhood" and "A Boston Marriage." Pidgeon was born
in the US and grew up in Scotland. She studied at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Arts in London. "State and Main" is a comedy about what happens when
a Hollywood movie crew shoots on location in a small New England town. W.H.
Macy plays the director who smooth talks everyone into doing what he wants
them to do. Alec Baldwin plays the leading man who can't control his lust for
young girls. Philip Seymore Hoffman is the naive screenwriter; he's used to
writing for theater, not film. And Rebecca Pidgeon is the local bookstore
owner. She also runs the drama club. In this scene, the screenwriter goes
into her store looking for a typewriter so that he can rewrite scenes for the
movie.

(Soundbite of "State and Main")

Mr. PHILIP SEYMORE HOFFMAN: You doing a play?

(Soundbite of phone ringing)

Ms. REBECCA PIDGEON: Local drama group. (On phone) Northern Books. No, it
hasn't come in yet. As soon as it does--you too, Marge.

Mr. HOFFMAN: In a small town I suppose you have to make your own fun.

Ms. PIDGEON: Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself,
it ain't fun. It's entertainment.

(Soundbite of phone ringing)

Ms. PIDGEON: See my point? (On phone) Northern Books.

What can I do for you?

Mr. HOFFMAN: Honey, I need a typewriter.

Ms. PIDGEON: We got them. (On phone) No, Henry James was the novelist, Frank
James was a criminal. Yep, you came to the right place. Jesse James was the
brother of the novelist, that's right. That's all right, Suzy. See you
tomorrow, Suzy.

Mr. HOFFMAN: OK, I want to rent this one.

Ms. PIDGEON: Why don't you buy it, only 40 bucks.

Mr. HOFFMAN: I had one but they lost it.

Ms. PIDGEON: You buy this typewriter, I will get it all spruced up for you,
good as new. Better than new because it has some history.

Mr. HOFFMAN: Other one had history, too. I wrote my play on it.

Ms. PIDGEON: You wrote a play on it. What play is that?

Mr. HOFFMAN: You never heard of it.

Ms. PIDGEON: What's it called?

Mr. HOFFMAN: "Anguish."

Ms. PIDGEON: "Anguish" by Joseph Turner White. You're Joseph Turner White?

Mr. HOFFMAN: That's right.

GROSS: Rebecca Pidgeon, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Ms. PIDGEON: Thanks for having me.

GROSS: Now this movie is about what happens when a movie crew shoots a film
in a small town and part of the town is thrilled by the opportunity and the
other part is really cynical about it. But the whole town is changed by it.
Where did you shoot "State and Main?"

Ms. PIDGEON: We shot it in a little town called Manchester by the sea in
Massachusetts and I gather that there were little bits of life imitating art
in that, you know, people were requesting more money and, you know, why
shouldn't they? But I think on the whole, people enjoyed it and I hope that
the film crew didn't ruin too many places, I don't think we did. But there
were a lot of spectators as well.

GROSS: Where you very self-conscious about your interaction with people from
the community since the movie is about that?

Ms. PIDGEON: You know, not really. Everybody was really welcoming. In
fact, I had my son and nanny on the set with me and we were sort of renting a
room in somebody's house and she was extremely hospitable. And we kind of
became--you know, the only annoying thing was that we had to stop the traffic.
And that was annoying because their main street was really a main throughway
for, you know, traffic going up and down the coast. But I think they were
kind of used to it because in Gloucester, Massachusetts, next door, they were
filming "The Perfect Storm." So it was their little Hollywood community.

GROSS: That's funny. Now Philip Seymore Hoffman plays your leading man in
the movie. I think he's a great actor.

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah, he is.

GROSS: But I think it's also the first time he's been in this kind of leading
man type of role.

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: He doesn't fit the glamour prerequisites for...

Ms. PIDGEON: No.

GROSS: ...most leading man kind of roles. Tell me a little bit about how he
was cast in this, if you know, and what it's like to have a leading man who
doesn't fit the leading man look.

Ms. PIDGEON: I actually don't know how he was cast in it. I just know that
David Mamet, my husband, who directed it, really admired his work, and met
him and liked him. And how was it--it was charming, you know, it was just
charming from beginning to end. He's a lovely person, great to work with and
a great--obviously, a great actor. But it was particularly nice because he's
also so--he doesn't bring any preconceived notions into a scene. He's not
somebody who's kind of working on his performance to bring it in. You know,
already made. So we'd start and surprising things would happen. I think
we--we really enjoyed working together.

GROSS: Rebecca Pidgeon is my guest and she's starring in the new movie "State
and Main." Let me ask you about an earlier role, "The Winslow Boy," which was
adapted by a Terrance Rattigan play--adapted by David Mamet, who also
directed it. And this story is set in England just before World War I and
it's about a very proper British family whose son is wrongly accused of
stealing in his academy. And the family hires England's top lawyer to defend
the boy because they believe he is innocent. You're the boy's older sister,
you're very independent, you're a suffragist and you're kind of conflicted
about the lawyer. You know that he's the best there is. On the other hand,
he's not an advocate of women's rights. In fact, you think he's often
representing the villain in legal cases. And let me play the scene in which
you're meeting him for the first time. You're in his office and he asks you
for permission to smoke.

(Soundbite from "The Winslow Boy")

Ms. PIDGEON: What could be more absurd than your asking me for permission
to smoke in your establishment?

Mr. JEREMY NORTHAM: Well, it's just a custom.

Ms. PIDGEON: I indulge, myself.

Mr. NORTHAM: Indeed.

Ms. PIDGEON: Some people find that shocking.

Mr. NORTHAM: Amazing how little it takes to offend the world's sensitivities.

Ms. PIDGEON: No thank you. My father and brother will be here in a moment.
What time are you dining?

Mr. NORTHAM: 8:00.

Ms. PIDGEON: Far from here?

Mr. NORTHAM: Darringer House(ph).

Ms. PIDGEON: Oh, then you mustn't on any account be late?

Mr. NORTHAM: No.

Ms. PIDGEON: I'm rather surprised that a case of this sort should interest
you, Sir Robert.

Mr. NORTHAM: Oh, yeah.

Ms. PIDGEON: It seems such a very trivial affair compared to most of your
great forensic triumphs. I was in court during your prosecution of Len Rogers
in the Trade Union embezzlement case.

Mr. NORTHAM: Really?

Ms. PIDGEON: Magnificently done.

Mr. NORTHAM: Thank you.

Ms. PIDGEON: I suppose you heard that he committed suicide a few months
ago.

Mr. NORTHAM: Yes, I had heard.

Ms. PIDGEON: Many people believed him innocent, you know.

Mr. NORTHAM: So I understand. As it happens, however, he was guilty.

GROSS: And that was Jeremy Northam as the lawyer Sir Robert.

Rebecca Pidgeon, you're speaking very obliquely to each other in this scene,
speaking about feminism and about principles each of you belive in but you're
not speaking directly about it. This is kind of acting where you don't reveal
what's beneath the surface, it's not like emotional acting.

Ms. PIDGEON: Right.

GROSS: There's a very proper and formal front.

Ms. PIDGEON: Right.

GROSS: What kind of challenge does that prevent for you as an actress?

Ms. PIDGEON: It's--as you say, it's a definite style, right. It's a manner.
And so you have to have the right physicality and you have to have the right
voice, I guess. And, you know, I trained at RADA in London.

GROSS: That's the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Ms. PIDGEON: Exactly. And--where they're very, very severe about--that you
acquire a received pronunciation and that you really can speak perfect.
Received pronunciation, I suppose, is sort of BBC English. Although, now, I
guess, they're, you know, allowing more regional accents into the BBC. And
that was a great tool for me to have because I really needed it, my God, in
this movie. Just listening to that clip, I realize how American I sound now.
I've been in America now for 10 years, oh my God. Even at the time it was
really a wrench for me to return back to that accent that I found quite easy
to do when I was a student.

I mean, it's very important to have that and then to sort of throw it away and
not think about it and then get on with the action of the scene and act it
with the actor. But, you know, I was really inspired by Celia Johnson and
Noel Coward, by their work. And, of course, they worked together, I guess, in
the '30s and '40s, by that clipped, very, very precise and quick and
non-emotional way of talking. It was really important to be non-emotional in
this particular movie as well because, also, it's a melodrama and melodrama
has to be played that way to allow the audience, really, to get the feeling.
Do you know what I mean? You feel it as an actor but you have to suppress it
if you're going to get into, like, emoting. In a melodrama, you're really
lost, because then the audience attention is just going to go away and they're
not going to be moved at all by the piece.

GROSS: So this kind of acting is very different from trying to get in touch
with that pivotal emotional moment in your life that best reflects the pivotal
emotional moment that the character is going through.

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah, in a way, it's always best to avoid trying to work up
into an emotion before a scene so that you are free to have a real emotion in
the scene. Is that clearly expressed? It's important to--yeah, you were
going to say something.

GROSS: It's clearly expressed. It's always--not being an actor...

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah.

GROSS: ...it's hard for me to imagine any of the methods working as well as
they seem to and it always seems to be that...

Ms. PIDGEON: You know...

GROSS: ...it always seems to me to be that whatever works best for an actor
is the best method.

Ms. PIDGEON: Exactly, exactly. You have to do your own thing and then you
have to forget about it when you do the scene and just concentrate on the
other actor.

GROSS: My guest is Rebecca Pidgeon. She's starring in the new movie "State
and Main." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is actress Rebecca Pidgeon. She's starring in the new David
Mamet movie "State and Main" and also starred in "The Spanish Prisoner" and
"The Winslow Boy."

Now you met your husband David Mamet in 1989 when you were starring in a
British production of his play "Speed the Plow." Had he come to direct the
play?

Ms. PIDGEON: Gregory Mosher directed it and David came over just to see
the opening of it and that's how we met.

GROSS: Were you very self-conscience, thinking, `Oh, well, here's the
playwright and he's going to be looking at my performance.'

Ms. PIDGEON: Oh, it was hellishly nerve-racking. I also expected Arthur
Miller, you know, not David Mamet. I didn't realize he was going to be so
young and kind of regular. And, yeah, I was taken aback in a very big way.
And, yeah, nervous.

GROSS: So did he give you any good tips on how to perform his play? Any good
feedback that first time out?

Ms. PIDGEON: No, I think he just basically fell in love with me right then
and there and just said, you know, `That's it. That's it. That's how you
should play it.'

GROSS: Well, what about you, did you fall in love with him as quickly as he
fell in love with you?

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah, I kind of did. I sort of believe in love at first sight
now.

GROSS: When you married and moved back to the States with him, were you
concerned with re-establishing, like--establishing a career in America after
you had gotten started in England.

Ms. PIDGEON: Oh, it was difficult because--well, actually, we sort of
courted for two years. I still stayed on in England working for two years and
then I came over to America. And then it was just life in Boston and I was
suddenly very young and a step-mother of two wonderful, wonderful girls.
And who--they didn't live with us but they would visit. And I was suddenly in
this sort of non-theatrical--nothing was happening in my industry in Boston.
I was the wife of David Mamet which was sort of a liability, really--not for
me, it was the best thing that ever happened in my life in terms of getting
work because it was--I'd go into New York and it was, `Who is this Mrs.
Mamet,' you know, `Oh, God, the wife of a famous person.' You know, there's
nothing more boring. And so it was difficult. It was really difficult to get
a job. But, fortunately, I started to work with Dave and I think the first
theater piece I did here was "Oleanna," which was kind of an out of
control--became sort of a news story because it was such a vividly--it was a
very angering piece. People were just sort of shocked and outraged by it and
very moved by it.

GROSS: You play a college student in that who basically accuses your
professor of trumped-up sexual harassment charges and it's all about what is
sexual harassment and who's guilty and who's innocent, who's manipulating who.

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: And it's the kind of show that leads to a lot of debate on the subject
matter afterwards.

Ms. PIDGEON: People didn't leave the theater. They stayed in the theater,
in their seats and argued with each other and shouted at each other. So in
order to leave this small theater--it's an off-Broadway theater, the
Orpheum--you have to get off the stage and walk through the audience to go
out the front doors. And I would do that and I would start getting, you know,
accosted by very, very angry people who really could not disassociate me, the
actress, from the character. And I took to escaping through the side door and
running to a car and just zipping on home, you know, before I could see
anybody because, you know--and it was literally--it was a bit frightening.

And when we were on the stage--Dave has this story: He was watching us, or he
was watching--I think he was watching me on the stage. Oh, no, no, he was
watching the audience come in, that's right, and Bill Macy was standing beside
him. And Dave had this sort of pale, very worried look on his face and Bill
turned and said, `Don't worry Dave, you know, they've got to get through me
first.' Meaning, `If anybody jumps up on the stage to attack your wife, I'm
going to beat them up first.' You know, it was a real concern.

GROSS: Did you like your character?

Ms. PIDGEON: Oh, God, I loathed her. But I had to say all of these--I
didn't loathe her, I just loathed saying some things that the audience would
gasp and freak out at, you know, like, `You raped me,' you know, when,
obviously, he didn't rape her. She was this--and I, you know, understood her
dilemma but, obviously, I was playing a very, very confused and also kind of a
hazed person.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit more of the difficulty in getting established
after moving to the States. My guess is when you moved to the States with
David Mamet and people knew that you were married, you're a lot younger than
he is, you're very beautiful, that a lot of people could say, `Oh, it's his
really young, beautiful wife.'

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah.

GROSS: `He had a mid-life crisis and married this young, beautiful person and
she's trying to pass herself off as an actress now.'

Ms. PIDGEON: That's right. That's right.

GROSS: `And there's no way I'm going to hire her.'

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah, sure. One has to...

GROSS: So--yeah, go ahead.

Ms. PIDGEON: You have to prove yourself and I completely understand that.
So I had to prove myself, you know.

GROSS: Well, you know, it seems to me to be in a position like that, you have
to have a pretty strong sense of your own identity so that you don't believe
the stuff that's projected on to you and also so that you don't end up being
in the shadow of your famous husband.

Ms. PIDGEON: I was always very confident about my acting. I mean, I was
always--you know, I lived through all that, a lot of rejection before I met
Dave. And I worked with also very people. I've worked with, I mean, the
creme de la creme. I worked with Sir Peter Hall. He directed me in
"Something in Peggy Ashcroft" and Trevor Howard and Anthony Hopkins and I
worked at the National Theater with Richard Ayres. I was--you know, I was
very confident about myself as an actress. It's just that nobody in America
had heard of the National Theater of London, you know, or it's just somewhat
of joke. I just saw, you know, in Steve Martin's movie--What's it
called?--about the--they're going to make this--it was with Eddie Murphy. And
they're going to make...

GROSS: The movie's called "Bowfinger."

Ms. PIDGEON: "Bowfinger" right. There's even a joke about a very serious
actor from Britain coming in and auditioning saying, `You know, I worked at
the National,' and you know that being completely meaningless and also like a
liability. So it's a joke. I mean, British theater is a joke in America. I
didn't realize that. I also didn't realize that British--you know, it's
fashionable or it's the mode or it's something. It's considered attractive in
Britain to be somewhat self-depricating, to be modest--Right?--about yourself.
To say, `Oh, well, you know, thank you, I was just'--you know, that piece of
acting is--I don't know. But I didn't realize that in America, you're
supposed to say, `I'm great. Hire me because I'm great.' So those are two
things that I didn't realize. But I, you know, think you just have to persist
and I persist because it's what I do and it's what I love.

GROSS: So did that sense of the British humility get in the way when you were
auditioning for roles and people expected confidence?

Ms. PIDGEON: Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. Yes, yeah. Little did I know.

GROSS: Did you end up changing your approach to auditions?

Ms. PIDGEON: I think so, yeah. Now I do them as rarely as possible.

GROSS: But it seems most of your work has been with Mamet, with your husband.

Ms. PIDGEON: Yes, yes, thank God. I love it.

GROSS: And, you know, is that by choice now or is that because you're still
not getting other roles?

Ms. PIDGEON: It's sort of by choice. I mean, there's roles that I turn
down. There are lots of people that I want to work with but I also want to
work with my husband. I love it. We're fortunate, we work together very
well. You know, people say, `It must be so difficult, I could never work with
my husband.' `I could never work with my wife.' But there is a tradition of
husbands and wives working together in theater companies. In fact, I belong
to the Atlantic Theater Company and there's many couples: Bill Macy and
Felicity Huffman who work together and Mary McCann and Neil Pepe who work
together all the time. And so it's not that hard.

GROSS: Rebecca Pidgeon, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Ms. PIDGEON: And to you, Terry. Thank you.

GROSS: Rebecca Pidgeon is starring in the new movie "State and Main." She's
also a singer. Here's a track from her latest CD "Four Marys." I'm Terry
Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite from "Four Marys")

Ms. PIDGEON: (Singing) I did not come for not, I came to warn. Not do
those men, they'll come alas, they'll be here in the morn'. I traveled hard
upon the road, through the rainy night, call them empty arms my lads, it'll be
a heavy fight. It seems the lass you've taken in is promised to never. She's
no' who she appears to be, she might have returned ...(unintelligible). She
said she was a tinker lass who lost her way sublime. And so she come unto
your door, she knew you'd treat her kind. I did not come for not, I came to
warn. But do those men, they'll come alas, they'll be here the morn.' I
traveled hard upon the road, through the rainy night.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, how Hitler and his chiefs came up with the final solution.
We'll talk with historian Ian Kershaw about the second volume of his biography
of Hitler.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Ian Kershaw discusses Adolf Hitler
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Historian Ian Kershaw has just completed the second volume of his biography of
the man who is considered the embodiment of political evil: Adolf Hitler.
Kershaw is the head of the History Department at the University of Sheffield
in England. Volume two covers the years 1936 to '45, the year of Hitler's
suicide. I asked Kershaw what anti-Jewish measures were already in effect in
1936 when the new book begins.

Professor IAN KERSHAW (Historian): Major steps of discrimination had, of
course, already been under way since Hitler took power in Germany in January
1933. And the Jews had been forced out of many parts of the economy. Already
are subjected to major pressure. Most of all--most significantly of all,
perhaps, they have been forced out of some professions. And with the
Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, they have been officially turned into
second-class citizens. That is to say, they were deprived of certain rights.
And within the framework of the legislation, the notorious Nuremberg rules,
increased--the screw of discrimination was turned ever more tightly. So at
this stage in 1936 we just ended a phase of very considerable anti-Semitic
violence in the summer and autumn of 1935.

By this time, the Nuremberg laws have come into operation and by 1936, the
outward appearance of discrimination, or itinerary of the outward violence
towards the Jews has been toned down because of foreign policy considerations,
especially in the Olympic year with the Winter Olympics in February, the
Summer Olympics coming up, it was important for Hitler now to put the best
face upon Germany's outside image. And, therefore, for that year it was a
rather quiet year in anti-Jewish policy. But this rather quiet year was
simply a prelude to the greater explosion of violence which was to follow in
late 1937, especially going into 1938.

GROSS: The plan to exterminate the Jews was the culmination of a lot of
smaller steps in Hitler's anti-Jewish campaign. Do you think that by 1936 he
already had a vision of genocide? Or do you think that vision of genocide
came a little bit later, and he had other plans that he wanted to enact?

Prof. KERSHAW: I think his overall vision of the distant future was the
utopian vision--a terrible vision, but a utopian vision--was one in which
there was no place for Jews. So you could say that implicitly this had a
genocidal dimension, but in terms of any type of plan or program, concrete
specific program for it, this emerged only in the course of 1941 in the light
of, by then, eight years of increasing anti-Jewish discrimination and
anti-Jewish violence, which had then taken off particularly in the period
after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. So we have a culmination of a
lengthy process of escalating discrimination and violence.

GROSS: There were Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns. Did Hitler think
that that was necessary to convince the German people that the Jews were evil,
or did it not take much convincing?

Prof. KERSHAW: No, he did think, and those around him, most prominently in
this case, the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, did think, that although
the German public was anti-Semiticly inclined, nonetheless propaganda was
needed to convince them of the true nature of Jews from their perspective;
from this completely perverse, distorted perspective that the Jews were the
epitome of evil, and that message had to be rammed home time and time again.
And in this message, it had to be made plain to the German people what a
threat to Germany the Jews pose.

And that was not just the Jews who were within Germany, but as time went on
increasingly, and the policy moved from expulsion of the Jews within Germany
to the question of external conflict, then the image of the Jews had to be
portrayed to the German people that the Jews were an evil and a threat, which
went way beyond German borders. They were behind bolshevism in Moscow, as
they were behind capitalism in the city of London and Wall Street. So it was
this universal threat, and to that extent, propaganda was ceaseless in pumping
up this threat of the Jews as the absolute major danger that the German vision
faced.

GROSS: One of the original plans for dealing with the Jews was to just remove
them from Germany. And you say that one of the early plans for that was to
expel the Jews to central Africa. How seriously did Hitler and his men in the
Reich take that plan?

Prof. KERSHAW: For a short time they did take it seriously. It was an old
idea that had been kicked around for quite some while in extreme racist,
nationalist circles, not just in Germany, and the idea was mooted. In fact,
in the 1903s even outside Germany, for awhile it was talked about in France
and in Poland. And even in Britain there were extreme right-wing groupings,
fascist--neo-fascist group--not neo; real fascist groupings who were then
talking about this idea. But in Germany the idea was taken up seriously in
the summer of 1940. The possibility after the victory over France, the
possibility of expelling the Germany Jews, of deporting them to Madagascar.
And Madagascar was a French possession and, of course, geographically a very
long way away. But for that time, it was a serious consideration. And that
serious consideration lasted a few months so that even by the autumn of 1940
plans were still being reached about the possibility of setting up a Jewish
reservation on Madagascar.

Of course, it would have been a form of genocide in its own right, but a
different form of genocide to the one which eventually materialized. The
genocide of the Jews would have been under German police control and would
have been worked to death and would have died out through disease and
malnutrition and so on over a lengthy period of time.

GROSS: And it would have been out of sight of Germans and other Europeans.

Prof. KERSHAW: Yes. I mean, the idea rapidly came to nothing because
Britain didn't form any peace terms with Germany, so the prospect of
transporting Jews across the seas, which Germany didn't control, was one that
couldn't be entertained. And in any cases, the idea of a war against the
Soviet Union took concrete shape in the winter of 1940 to '41--into 1941. So
the idea of a reservation moved from the impractical notion of Africa to a
more practical consideration of deporting the Jews to the east, i.e., to the
Arctic wastes of the Soviet Union, where again Jews would have been intended
to die out through the forced labor, through slave labor, through
malnutrition, to starvation, through the weather conditions--through being
frozen to death--and so on and so forth. And it was again implicitly a
genocidal idea.

GROSS: My guest is Ian Kershaw. The second volume of his biography of Hitler
has just been published. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Ian Kershaw. And he's
published the second half of his biography of Adolf Hitler. And this covers
the years 1936 to 1945, the year that Hitler committed suicide.

It was in about 1941 that Hitler ordered his chiefs to come up with a final
solution to the Jewish question. How explicit was Hitler in describing what
he wanted, and what he meant by a final solution?

Prof. KERSHAW: Hitler wasn't very explicit at all, as far as we can tell from
the evidence from the source materials. The source materials, I have to say,
are not wonderful at this point. Hitler's own actions remain somewhat clouded
in the shadows. Immediately say on there that Hitler's moral and political
responsibility for what was happening, his knowledge of what was happening,
his approval of what was happening, his authorization of key steps, is not in
question. But the precise nature of his statements and his actions--that is
less than a hundred percent clear.

And one of the reasons for that is that he had, of course, many discussions
with the police chief, Heinrich Himmler, who was responsible for carrying out
Hitler's dirty works, lets say. And these were meetings just of the two of
them; no minutes were kept, no notes were taken except Himmler's desk diary
notes of sometimes what was going to be said in the meeting. So we don't have
any plain record of that.

But everything points to the fact that what Hitler did repeatedly was to speak
in these terrible but nonetheless somewhat vague generalities. And people
understood or read into those what he was intending, so that the most likely
interpretation is that there was never one specific order on a particular day
to announce the arrival of the final solution, but rather a series of steps of
escalation in which Hitler gave the decisive authorization or agreement or
order, if you want to have it that way.

GROSS: Now you say that there was a taboo in Hitler's entourage, an explicit
reference to the mass killing of the Jews. And I think it's kind of
interesting that Hitler could be demented enough to actually want the mass
killing of the Jews, but that he was discreet enough to think that they
shouldn't talk about it explicitly.

Prof. KERSHAW: Yes. It is an oddity that because, obviously, he was very
closely involved in the war policy and war leadership decisions and in foreign
policy and so on. I think I just have to also say that in Hitler's own
thinking, the war had to be a war against the Jews, so there was no difference
in his eyes between the war leadership itself and the policies towards the
Jews. The annihilation of the Jews, the murder of the Jews, was part and
parcel of the war effort itself.

When all that's said and done, you're right; that there is a oddity there in
that this remained within even his closest entourage a taboo subject. It
wasn't only Hitler incidentally, though, who held to this taboo. Himmler,
too, recognized the need for utmost secrecy in all this. Of course, it wasn't
an entirely well-kept secret, but the attempt to keep it secret was there.
And Himmler said in these--one of these meetings that this is a glorious
secret which we must take with us to our graves. So there, too, Bormann and
others around Hitler, also recognized the need for this secrecy.

GROSS: Why did they think they had to keep it secret?

Prof. KERSHAW: I...

GROSS: I mean, that might seem...

Prof. KERSHAW: Yeah.

GROSS: ...obvious to people who are sane...

Prof. KERSHAW: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

GROSS: ...but, I mean, these people actually believed everything they said
about Jews...

Prof. KERSHAW: You--yes.

GROSS: ...and they were perfectly--I mean, they were not only willing, they
were enthusiastic about the extermination of the Jews.

Prof. KERSHAW: Yes. That's true. But I think the most likely guess is that
they were nonetheless uncertain about the impact on German morale of the
knowledge of what they were doing. And that doesn't contradict the point we
were making earlier on that Hitler did think that anti-Jewish propaganda was
effective. On the other hand, I think Hitler and Himmler and Borman and the
others were hesitant about the impact of the knowledge that not only were
Jews being deported to the east, but Jewish women and children were being
slaughtered en masse. And the sense that they had, I think, was that the
German people were not ready for this sort of information. And that might
have had from their angle then negative effects, and they wanted to avoid
that.

They'd had some indication of the possible difficulties that had come about,
of course, with the so-called euthanasia action towards the inmates of asylums
between 1939 and 1941 which had given rise once the people had learned that
these inmates were being killed--and it had given rise to some protests and
certainly big feelings of unease about what was going on. And in the middle
of a war I think the Nazi leadership, Hitler quite specifically, wanted to
avoid any sorts of possible upset of that kind which could disturb the war
effort, could affect morale, and not least affect his own prestige and his own
standing, something which he was always highly conscious of. So I think
that's the most likely explanation for why the Nazis attempted to keep the
thing an entire secret, and why, therefore, in this very extreme fashion
Hitler, too, didn't refer to any specific and any particular kind but, again,
held to these more general comments, even amongst his own entourage.

GROSS: In 1944 there was a failed military coup against Hitler. Who was
behind the attempt to assassinate Hitler?

Prof. KERSHAW: This was a group of officers. At the center of the attempt
was Colonel Stauffenberg, who by this time had reached the conclusion that
Hitler had to be destroyed--had to be assassinated as the basis for a coup
d'etat that would follow, which whereby the war would be brought to an end and
Germany would, even at this late stage now, be saved. So the idea was then,
of course, to kill Hitler, which was a difficult enough enterprise. He was
mainly out at his, by this time, well-secured headquarters in east Russia or
at his alpine retreat in the Berghof. He had to be killed there, but the coup
attempt had to be unleashed from Berlin. And one of the logistical
difficulties and major flaws in the attempt was that Stauffenberg was one of
the few people who had reason to have access to Hitler as his role in the
reserve army. As the deputy head of the reserve army he had access to Hitler,
which was needed. But also Stauffenberg was needed to run the coup attempt
from Berlin. And between these two roles, of course, things went hopelessly
awry on the 20th July 1944.

GROSS: How close did this plot come to actually assassinating Hitler?

Prof. KERSHAW: Well, it came very close. And there historians frequently
ignore or underrate the factor of luck or bad luck in the writing of history,
but here we have to say that ultimately Herr Stauffenberg got there, planted
the bomb and so on, but bad luck played a major part. Nearly all those around
Hitler were badly injured and some of them were killed. Hitler came out of
the room with only burst eardrums and tattered underpants. All those around
him were, as I said, injured or killed with, I think, the exception of his
right-hand man in the army. Herr Marshall Kietler(ph) was also uninjured. So
in the end it was really bad luck.

And even that, you could add another piece of bad luck onto that which is that
the planning for the bomb--there should have been two bombs. And because of
the shortage of time on that day, Stauffenberg had been unable to set the
second bomb. If there had been two, or even had the second bomb had been
taken into the room, the explosion of the first bomb would have probably
detonated the second one and not a single person would have been left alive.
But as it so happened, he didn't. He was only able to put one bomb in and, as
we know, the bomb didn't really have the desired effect. And Hitler was able
to walk out of the room and with remarkably slight injuries. So bad luck also
played its major part.

And that came very close to success. And if that had been successful, then
quite possibly--in fact, probably, I should say, the coup d'tat that should
have followed would have also stood a very good chance of success.

GROSS: Would you describe the bunker that Hitler and other Reich leaders hid
out in during the burning of Berlin?

Prof. KERSHAW: In the last weeks, you mean?

GROSS: Yeah.

Prof. KERSHAW: Yeah. This was an underground complex of rooms beneath the
Reich Chancellory in the middle of Berlin, and also beneath the gardens of the
Reich Chancellory. So a whole complex--a labyrinthine complex of rooms there.
And they--this is now some 20 or 30 feet below ground. Hitler had moved down
there basically from arriving back in Berlin early in 1945. He was at that
time still partly in the increasingly ruined buildings of the Reich
Chancellory, but increasingly underground, and in the last weeks, hardly ever
came up to the surface. So you have this really almost bizarre spectacle
really of the leader of this Reich now confining himself to this underground
set of rooms with his entourage around him; these people in the catacombs deep
below the center of Berlin. And that was almost like a sufficiently saturnine
end to this terrible regime.

GROSS: My guest is Ian Kershaw. The second volume of his biography of Hitler
has just been published. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest Ian Kershaw has just published the second volume of his
biography of Hitler. When we left off, we were talking about Hitler's final
days when Hitler and his inner circle hid out in a bunker while Berlin burned.

Also in the bunker was Eva Braun, Hitler's lover. In fact, they got married
in the bunker I think about a day and a half before they killed themselves.

Prof. KERSHAW: Yes.

GROSS: What did you learn about the wedding?

Prof. KERSHAW: Well, the wedding came as a surprise to everyone, I think. No
one until about a few hours before it had any inkling that this would take
place. And then on the day itself, it was the 29th of April 1945, Eva Braun
gave one or two hints to the secretaries that it would take place, and then in
the middle of the night, the wedding was formalized in this weird set of
surroundings in the bunker underneath Berlin with a hastily improvised
ceremony, with a few of the Nazi leaders and the usual entourage around. Very
abbreviated celebrations. Obviously very little to celebrate at that time.
Question is really why Hitler did it. And I suppose the most likely
explanation is probably the correct one, which is that by this stage he'd
already decided to commit suicide. There was nothing left for him to gain out
of his continued public image of being unattached to any woman, and that now
he gave Eva Braun what she wanted, which is possibly the most unattractive
fate in the world, which was to marry Hitler a day before he would kill
himself.

GROSS: And before she killed herself.

Prof. KERSHAW: Exactly. Yeah.

GROSS: So Hitler didn't want the German public to know about his relationship
to Eva Braun.

Prof. KERSHAW: No. And hardly anyone apart from the close entourage of
Hitler did know about this relationship until after the end of the Third
Reich itself. The reason, again, was a propaganda one, essentially. That
from the beginning Hitler had emphasized the fact that he belonged to no
woman, that his bride was Germany, so to say, and he represented the German
people and was not going to be distracted by any human concerns or normal
considerations. And in a way, a little bit, I suppose, like you might think
with pop stars. You know, say Elvis Presley can't belong to any one woman,
something like this. I don't know. But there was that element to it as well,
that Hitler had to be seen to be distant from any type of conventional
relationship with a woman around him. And earlier on this had also been a
conscious attempt to woo the women of Germany, and I think that idea was held
to right to the end; that Hitler was there for the German people and not for
any one individual who might distract him from that.

GROSS: What's your final diagnosis of Hitler? Do you see him as insane, as a
sociopath?

Prof. KERSHAW: I don't think he was insane in a clinical sense of the word;
that is to say someone that you would want to take out and lock up in an
asylum. Maybe it would have been better in the world in general if that had
happened. But I don't think he was insane in that sense. Rather there was an
element there which is obviously very abnormal about his personality. And I
think it may be possible to see that in terms of someone who fits into a broad
category of schizophrenia.

That is to say, someone who has an abnormally large gulf between self-image
and achievement, going right back to his early years there where he had this
vision of himself as a great artist, and the reality was that he was a very
mediocre painter. He had the image of himself of greatness from early days,
and he sank down into the gutter and into the tramps' hostel in Vienna, and,
therefore, I think probably there was a deep-seated sense of personal
humiliation in the man from an early stage onwards. Which at the end of the
First World War, I think that was the critical moment in his life really, if
you can point to one.

At the end of the First World War this sense of personal humiliation matched
up with a deep-seated sense of national humiliation and his entire life
thereafter, his entire so-called career, could be seen as an attempt to erase
the shame of the capitulation of November 1918. And who did Hitler hold to
blame for that shame of capitulation? The Jews. Hence, another war would
bring Germany's triumphant dominance in Europe. And then later in the world,
it would bring the attainment of living space to secure Germany's future for
everyone, it would bring the final eradication of the danger of the Jews. So
for Hitler then the war, that he'd plan all along, had to come was by
definition also a war against the Jews.

So I see Hitler as a person who from this somewhat schizophrenic personal
framework held strongly to this obsession. This sort of individual then tends
to have visions, tends to have diabolical images to counter these visions, to
look for scapegoats for his or her own individual shortcomings, individual
humiliation and blame. I think that all fits in the individual Hitler who
then from 1919 onwards found all at once that instead of just being the
eccentric, which he had seemed to be up till then, now was a person whose
eccentricities, if we were to put that way, now were gaining--finding an
audience. And that heightened then the sense in him that he was a man with a
vision, a man with a mission.

And I think that is what Hitler was. His mission was a terrible one. His
vision was a horrendous one for humankind. But this was a man who was then,
by this stage, not only a supreme propagandist, but also an absolutely
obsessive ideologue.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Prof. KERSHAW: Well, it's a great pleasure.

GROSS: Ian Kershaw has completed the second volume of his biography of
Hitler.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with a German propaganda recording from
the war; one of a series of propaganda records that featured popular American
songs with rewritten lyrics that are anti-Jewish and anti-American. There
were intended for air play on German-controlled radio stations that reached
English-speaking listeners.

(Soundbite from song)

Unidentified Man: The Jews of USA have asked Eddie Cantor to write a new
version of his famous old-timer "Makin Whoopee." In one of his latest
programs on the air, he sang the following song.

(Singing) Another war, another profit, another Jewish business trick, another
season, another reason for makin whoopee. A lot of dough, a lot of gold. The
British Empire's being sold. They're in the money thanks to Frankie. We're
makin whoopee. Washington is our ghetto. Roosevelt our king. Democracy is
our motto. Think what a war can bring. We throw our German names away. We
are the kikes of USA. You are the goys, folks. We are the boys, folks.
We're makin whoopee.V
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