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Mike Pesca (5:43)

Jack Fairweather has done it again. He was on the show a couple of years ago to talk about an amazing book. An amazing story that he wrote called the Volunteer is about Vitold Pilecki, who is a Polish officer who purposefully got himself captured and sent to Auschwitz so he could tell the world. Now he's out with another book of another unbelievably brave person who fought the Nazis. The name of this man, well, I should say it this way, the name of this book is the Prosecutor. One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice. And when he says one man's, it really emphasizes the point that without the work of Fritz Bauer, we might not know of many of the atrocities that the Nazis committed and they certainly wouldn't have been held to account. The author again, Jack Fairweather joins me. Hi Jack, welcome back to the gist.

Jack Fairweather (6:40)

Hi Mike, thanks for having me.

Mike Pesca (6:42)

So I know you're in this world, I know you're a former war correspondent, but now you're writing books, you're steeped in history, World War II history. Where'd you first come across the story or the person of Fritz Bauer?

Jack Fairweather (6:54)

It was really through my previous book about Vito Pilecki, as you mentioned, the guy who volunteered for Auschwitz to report on Nazi crimes. Pilecki wrote all of these reports naming the perpetrators of these crimes, sent them out secretly from the camp and the world did not respond. And I was at the end of writing that book looking up what happened to these perpetrators and discovered a really disturbing fact, which was that almost all of them went on to live very comfortable lives in post war Germany, many of them returning to the very jobs that they had been carrying out before the Nazis took power and had been attached to their roles. And Auschwitz SS doctors who had performed selections at the ramp, sending people to the gas chambers, returning to work in their clinical practices as doctors, dentists who had supervised the ripping out of gold dentures from Jewish victims, returning back to their dental practices. And what was so striking about so many of them was comfortable lives in post war West Germany until the early 1960s when many stood trial for their crimes. And I quickly deduced there was a single common denominator in all of those trials. And it was this guy, Fritz Bauer, and looked into his story and it was, yeah, very, absolutely extraordinary. A gay Jewish socialist who had stood up to the Nazis during their rise to power.

Mike Pesca (8:35)

Just want to establish a little bit of who he was before he, the Nazis put him in the concentration camp. And I think luckily for him early on. He was early on identified as an enemy of the state. And this was before the real killing apparatus and the Final Solution could kick into gear. So that in a way probably saved his life. But he was a member of what's it called? The Reichs Banner Militia. So situate it for us. Is this an antifa type organization? But he was also a judge at the time, and so he was taking a firm political stance against the Nazi, which was the right moral stance. But just help me understand who he was, what that group was and what, what his thinking was before the, before Hitler gained power.

Jack Fairweather (9:19)

All right, so, you know, Bauer was a judge, actually one of the youngest district judges in, in Germany at the time. He was a brilliant legal scholar and sort of walked, could pick his job on the bar once he, once he joined. And what he found was he found himself joining the work, joining work in the late 1920s in, at the very time that the Nazis were coming to, to power. And he reached out to the Social Democratic Party, which was the main progressive force, and he reached out to them as, as the main party that he saw as being able to oppose the Nazis. And I think it, in a way, Mike, that really maybe speaks to our time. You mentioned antifa. This was a. This really fractures violent political culture that, you know, maybe we glimpsed in January the sixth, in which, you know, people start to take law into their own hands. The Nazis had their paramilitaries, the Brown Shirts, the Social Democratic Party and other progressive groups in response, created their own paramilitary group, the Reichsbanner. And Bauer joined this organization because this was the way to defend free speech. Because what was happening was, you know, left progressive centrist politicians were getting up to speak at rallies and the Nazi brownshirts were coming and beating everyone up. And so the police, which was quite sympathetic towards the Nazis in many cases, were sort of turning a blind eye. And so that was why there needs to be this Reichs banner. And Bauer felt very compelled to take a stand. As you said, he was a judge. And so this was quite a difficult position. He found himself in sort of speaking out against the rise of the Nazis whilst in the evenings turning up at the courthouse with his colleagues, many of whom were very conservative, many of whom actually supported the Nazis. And so he was an outlier. He was very quickly put on the list of Nazi enemies in his city of Stuttgart. And indeed when the Nazis did seize power, he was one of the very first to get, to get rounded up for having had the temerity to speak out against Hitler.

Mike Pesca (11:57)

So then he flees. You chronicle his flight. He goes to countries that are conquered by the Nazis, Denmark, Sweden. He survives, survives. He comes back. He is a judge, he is a brilliant jurist. But give me the lay of the land when he returns to Germany, which, by the way, as you point out, wasn't necessarily the common move. The World Jewish Congress had essentially said that Jews should not go back to Germany ever. But he goes to Germany and gets reinstalled as a judge, but in a fairly far flung place without a lot of power. And what is going on then? What is, what is, what is he butting up against in his quest to prosecute Nazis who are often ensconced in polite society?

Jack Fairweather (12:47)

Well, Bauer returns to Germany in 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War. He wanted to go a lot sooner. In fact, within a month of Hitler's defeat, he was at the US Embassy in Stockholm where he saw out the end of the war in Sweden and knocking on the door saying, I'm a juris, I'm a judge, I want to go back and help. And he was told by the US officials that, no, we don't want any Jews coming back, least of all in the justice system. Judging Nazis, that's going to create all the wrong impression. And it took him four years of trying all sorts of different ways to, to land a job back in relatively lowly position in the town of Braunschweig, and which he was sort of on probation for the first year. Everyone was like, oh no, a Jew's coming back into the justice system. We better be careful. It took him until 1950 to finally get a job as a prosecutor in West Germany. And what he found was that in those intervening years after Nuremberg was the Allies had quickly pivoted to the threat of the Cold War and their priority was standing up West Germany to serve as a bulwark against communism. And that meant turning to a lot of ex Nazis. They needed people in the justice system, they needed people in police force, they needed people all walks of life. And they made a compromise, which was in the case of the justice system, that half of the judges could have, could have been former Nazis or served under Hitler implementing Nazi laws. And that meant that when Bauer took his, took up his job in the courthouse, he was literally surrounded by the very Nazis who had helped to impose Nuremberg race laws. The chief of police was an SS officer who had deported Jews and Poles to Auschwitz. One of the prosecutors he was working with had had helped send 15,000 children to be euthanized under Nazi Euthanasia. Program. He was surrounded by Nazis and incredibly brave move, announced his intention to begin to begin prosecuting Nazis in a way that had really sort of ceased to happen in the West German court system. I mean there was, there were some cases early on. West Germany was founded in 1949 and its courts sort of took sovereignty then. And they, with the sort of allies like keeping an eye on them, had pursued some Nazi war criminals. But they were getting, they were getting off. They were, you know, every, these judges had no interest in, in sort of exposing the crimes of Nazism because they themselves in many cases were former Nazis. So people, everyone said, everyone just said we, we're following, we were following orders. Nuremberg, they got the leaders. Like we were just the guys following orders.

Mike Pesca (16:07)

Right. So you mentioned that they compromised by having Nazis within the system. It wasn't a, it wasn't a rock compromise. Conrad Adenauer, who's the first chancellor of West Germany for many years and has to this day a very exalted reputation in the west in 1949, you write about how his first address to the Bundestag, he lays out his Nazi reintegration policy and the belief that many have subjectively atoned for a guilt that was not heavy. It is time to let bygones be bygones, he declared. Two shouts of bravo. You write. So even though I think in the contemporary imagination Germany is a place that laudably wrestled with what it did in ways many other countries and many other perpetrators of genocide, it did have not. Isn't. It was not the case. It was not the case in the first decade. And this is what Bauer was butting up against, that he was not just one man alone against the system. He was in many ways against the politics of the time, the political will of the time. He had to maybe convince juries who weren't necessarily supportive of what he was doing. He was really a man on a mission.

Jack Fairweather (17:25)

I think it's so good to remind listeners it was a, you know, that was why I have been so compelled to tell this story because I think like, like everyone, we think of World War II sort of ending in May 1945. Confetti, troops come home. Nuremberg justice served. And then we think Germany today, oh, here's this bastion of, of progressiveness that has fully atoned for its crimes. We think we hold it up as, in fact as an example to other countries and post genocide situations as an example. And I was, yeah, really shocked to discover, and this is why I think Bowers story is so important for us today. Like that knowledge of the Holocaust that we take from for granted, that we sort of assume that everyone except a few far right folk, except that really had to be battled for. When he returned in 1949, Holocaust wasn't taught in schools. People weren't talking about it. In fact, it was the opposite. Like there was a, effectively a state policy of Holocaust denial in place in West Germany in which one of the most powerful men in government, Adenauer's chief of staff, had been one of the main implementers of the Nuremberg Race Laws that had set up the legal framework for the Holocaust. He had been put there with the express purpose of drawing a veil of silence over the past. The CIA was backing a spy network ostensibly to battle the Soviet Union, but was made up of ex SS men and compromised officers who were used by Adenauer as a tool to suppress dissent in West Germany to make sure the people who did want to speak about the Nazis crimes were ostracized, slandered in the press as communist stooges, had difficulties in employment. You know, wasn't the Gestapo time they couldn't go and shoot people. But it was a time of fear, a time of silence, a time of repression, a time when survivors were not able to speak or those that did speak met deafening silence or interference from the government. And you know, I think this is, yeah, I think I, I hope that readers will really feel stunned by this disturbing dark world and, and, and indeed, you know, as we live in our own time of suppression and dissent, find a lot of eerie parallels.

Mike Pesca (20:05)

Yeah, you even write as late as I think it's the mid-50s, shadow and fog comes out. It's banned in Germany. The German Main encyclopedia, the most popular encyclopedia, their only reference to Auschwitz is for its production capacities. There's not even an acknowledgment or a reference in the encyclopedia that it was a concentration camp and a death camp and, and Bauer was one of the men instrumental in exposing that to the public and, and pursuing prosecutions. So do you want to ask you a couple questions about him? Do you think him being Jewish helped or hurt his cause of getting attention and of actually successfully pursuing these prosecutions?

Jack Fairweather (20:55)

It was absolutely a hindrance. I mean, it took him four years to land a job because he had to battle against the anti Semitism of American and British officials. It meant that whenever he took a stand he was quickly criticized for being nothing more than a vengeful Jew, like people it undermined in the eyes of other Germans, his credentials. He received, you know, a huge amount of abuse. I mean I describe a moment when some of his colleagues in the courthouse in Braunschweig overheard saying, oh, Bower should have been gassed too. Just, I mean, just, you know, to think of, think of that environment that he was operating in. He, you know, he would receive death threats over the phone every night, swastikas daubed on his apartment building. You know, it was a very hostile environment he found him in. Memorably, he said, when I leave my office, I step into the rest of the courthouse. I am enter entering enemy territory. And so being Jewish was not in any way a badge of honor at that, at that time. And in fact, it sort of made his. Made his work very much more difficult. He didn't speak about it in, you know, he would often just refer to himself as being German. And, you know, it was, you know, many years later, towards the end of his life, that he actually began to speak a little bit more openly about his Jewishness.

Mike Pesca (22:41)

Last question. In writing this book, did you have any insights as to the nature of reckoning or when a reckoning can occur? Can it be forced? Do people have to be ready for it?

Jack Fairweather (22:54)

It has to be forced. You can't. You can't sit back and, and wait. I mean, that's, you know, Bauer, you know, I think the lesson from Bauer is twofold. One is he was an incredible networker. And I think for everyone who's listening, who's, you know, thinking about how to combat some of the changes Trump is bringing in American life, this. This example of Bauer reaching out across the Iron Curtain to people and just becoming a source of strength and connection is, you know, immensely powerful. And that's how you see, I mean, the, The Auschwitz trial that he staged, this Incredible trial in 1963 took almost over five years to come about, but really it took years, many more years, because it reflected Bowers powers of networking. And I think that's important. The other piece of this is not so much that you can't force a reckoning, but that a reckoning is a generational struggle. And that is difficult for us to hear today, I think, like, because we want. We want a quick, quick fix. We want to think that in, oh, yeah, four years time, everything can get returned to how it was. But, you know, for Bauer, you know, his vision was that it wasn't simply enough to pursue Nazi war criminals like Adolf Eichmann. It was what he wanted the reckoning to be was addressing the roots of Nazism in German society. And he felt until you could, like, examine the militarism, the Authoritarianism, the extreme conservatism, until that was, like, understood its role in aiding and abetting Nazism, then there would be no guarantee that Nazis couldn't come back again because the work hadn't been done. And. And that's a work that isn't just. It's not like those features of those. Those cultural strands don't just go away. They get to be examined, but they need to be continually examined, and that's our duty. And that's what Bowers great call to arms was for that generation of the. Of the 60s. And, you know, and it's his call of arms. Two arms for us today is that we need to keep examining that. Those cultural strands in around us and in ourselves and ask those difficult questions.

Mike Pesca (25:45)

Jack Fairweather is the author of the Volunteer. His new book is the Prosecutor One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice. That man being Fritz Bauer. Jack, thank you so much.

Jack Fairweather (25:56)

Thank you, Mike.

Mike Pesca (26:10)

And now the spiel. Let me state my opinion up front. The Voice of America should continue to exist. This is clearly an opinion which should help me frame the discussion that follows. The Trump administration has gutted the Voice of America after an executive order placed 1300 employees on leave and terminated 500 contractors. These employees are now suing, arguing since VOA was congressionally funded, it can't be unilaterally defunded by an executive agency. The situation is favorable for the world's dictators, but not the rest of us. Now, I was interested in examining what the Trump administration's criticisms that the VOA had become anti American were. This claim should be interpreted as the Trump administration saying that the VOA has become anti Trump. That is how they define anti American. But was this accusation true? VOA is essentially an arm of US Soft power according to its charter. It's supposed to be scrupulously nonpartisan. Has it always been? But it hasn't always achieved this ideal. So the White House issued a letter detailing examples of VOA allegedly failing to maintain nonpartisan standards. And the Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler evaluated the criticisms and concluded that they didn't add up. The piece was titled the White House Flimsy Attack on Voice of America. None of the claims of radical propaganda add up. So I read through the fact check, and I was struck by how tendentious and flimsy the Washington Post's analysis was. When you tell me that a claim doesn't add up, that doesn't mean to me that the claim is more bad than good. It says to me, especially if you're the fact checker that the claim that doesn't add up is inaccurate isn't true. Let's examine the claims. One Voice of America's management told staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists except when quoting statements. Did they really do this? They did indeed do this. The National Review obtained an email to staff instructing them, quote, to avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists except in quotes. Useful alternatives are militant group or militants or fighters, stated VOA standards editor Carolyn Ginsburg. In any case, it would be the Hamas militant group or Hamas militants. Well, that's clearly telling staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists. Anyone who's worked in a newsroom like I have knows when the standards editor issues a note saying avoid saying X, it means the outlet standards are not to say X. It's not really a suggestion. Bizarrely, the Washington Post fact checker tries to argue it's just a suggestion, kessler wrote. She advised VOA to avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists except in direct quotations. Avoid is not the same as the White House claim of an order to not use the term. I disagree, she said. Don't use the term avoid using the term. From the standards editor is saying, hey, should we use the term? You should not use the term. That's how I would interpret it as a member of that organization. Now this occurred in 2023. Republicans criticized the directive when they found out about it and the VOA tried to do some cleanup saying exactly that. No, no, no, we said avoid. We didn't say don't use it. Yeah, sure. Huh. It is strange and I think inaccurate that the Washington Post ruled the claim management told staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists as this is false. I don't think it's false. The Post then moves on to the White House's next claim. Multiple Voice of America reporters have posted anti Trump content on social media. Is this true? The Washington Post doesn't really get into it. The Washington Post ruling isn't true or false. It's this. There is no evidence this affected coverage. But did it happen? It did happen. Does it violate VOA's own policy? It does. Is it scrupulously unbiased and nonpartisan to do that? It is not. The Post argues. We can't prove that public expressions against policy of anti Trump sentiment among employees of a news organization in any way is reflected in the coverage of the news organization. To which I say, okay, the Post continues. Rep. Scott Perry wrote in a 2022 letter that voice of America has grown exceedingly Partizan over the past several years. What is the Post's ruling quote? This is an opinion expressed by a pro Trump lawmaker. True, but shouldn't the fact checker go a little beyond that? All you need to know is that this guy likes Trump. Is it a guy who likes Trump saying things that are true? So I went and read Scott Perry's letter. He writes VOA Persian News Network employee Mashi Alanjad is seen pushing Americans to make negative statements against then candidate Donald Trump, at one point even giving a high five to someone expressing their disapproval of Mr. Trump. Is that what happened? I went and watched the broadcast. In it, the reporter does a desk piece about then candidate Trump's proposed Muslim ban. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. She then goes out for man on the street interviews showing different Americans and different New Yorkers a picture of Donald Trump.

Jack Fairweather (31:56)

Excuse me, who's this guy?

Advertiser (31:59)

Donald Trump?

Jack Fairweather (32:00)

How do you feel about him?

Advertiser (32:01)

I don't like him.

Mike Pesca (32:02)

No, he's. He's a joke, that's what he is.

Jack Fairweather (32:04)

Do you know this guy? Oh, yeah. How do you feel about him?

Mike Pesca (32:09)

For him to get in office would be a sad mistake. Everyone she interviews criticizes Trump. She then talks to a bus driver.

Jack Fairweather (32:18)

Have you heard what he said recently?

Mike Pesca (32:20)

He sucks.

Jack Fairweather (32:21)

Why?

Mike Pesca (32:22)

Because I'm an immigrant and I'm living the American dream here in America. Everybody got the right to come here and get a living. And that clapping sound you heard was indeed the reporter high fiving the anti Trump bus driver. The interviewee gave a quote that I like. I mean, I've done Man on the street interviews. That's a great quote. Also, I'd say it probably advances US Foreign policy by presenting to Iranians who might watch this the idea that ordinary Americans are opposed to the proposed Muslim ban, which they would find very offensive. But guess what? The reporter does exactly what Representative Scott Perry described. Even if Scott Perry likes Donald Trump. The Washington Post has some more quibbles. I have some quibbles with their quibbles. I mean, there are elements in the White House's complaints against the Voice of America that were really weak. The White House, for instance, complained about a story about white privilege. Fine. It was decently well done. The White House didn't like a story about trans migrants. I mean, we know why not, but it was an accurate story. VOA reports stories. The Post fact checker rules. VOA's coverage mirrored that of other mainstream news organizations. And another point, it notes that VOA's policy was essentially the same as the Associated Press style book. But to the Trump administration and most conservatives, that's exactly the problem. They don't want news organizations to be like the ap. They don't even want the ap. They certainly don't want to fund news organizations that mirror the other news organizations or follow AP style. As I said, I would not defund the Voice of America, but as statutes say, as rules say, its employees need to be scrupulously nonpartisan. And they haven't always been. Republicans have for a long time wanted to defund Voice of America. Democrats have wanted to protect it. Like other American institutions that once emerged from shared patriotic interests, they've now fractured. I would put the Washington Post in that category too. The story by the fact checker purported to be checking facts, but it didn't really do that. And when it did attempt fact checking, I think it got that one wrong. What the story was really doing was arguing the VOA isn't so bad, or the VOA's merits outweigh its demerits, or that some of the White House's criticisms were weak. I might agree with those positions, but they aren't matters of fact. And the Post's analysis isn't a fully fair accounting of what it was, which is a viewpoint the White House's that differs from its own. The Post basically played a bunch of word games in the guise of fact checking to advance its point of view. 1 I agree with that said, doing that at all, it is one of the reasons why the assault on the media has gained so much steam. It's not only bad faith from one side that wants to suppress information. In this instance, the self appointed champions of truth and accuracy weren't nearly as truthful and accurate as they should have been. And that's it for today's show. The gist is produced by Cory Wara, who successfully sheltered in place today, and Michelle Pesca, who does so every day in her own way as CBS Peru. And thanks for listening.