 Hi, Mr. Preston. Come on, is yours ready for another test? Yes. We have all the time for you to take a minute. Do you have a staff here? Help us out with our deadline. You know, it's nothing undercover. That's right. It's on our own. We can make anything available to you if yours doesn't get it. Yeah, that's right. No, they're very good about the transcript, as you know. But you're going to have quite a trip, though, ten days. A lot of movement there. Yes. I just, yesterday I got a complete list of how many places I will be speaking. And it comes out around 15. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I tell you, Mr. President, we just got a little while, and since our deadline is so difficult for this weekend, you'll know the ceremonies that I wanted to try to get you to put your mind forward to the time when you will go through the ceremony, particularly at the cemetery. And what would you like the world to hear and see when you do that? Well, that whole day's ceremonies, and they are all virtually in one day, the whole concept of that, I think, was so morally right that all that has taken place now in the whole furor has blinded everyone to the purpose. Chancellor Cole, as you know, they felt in the great June ceremonies, D-Day and all, that a little as if they couldn't see how they could be included, but at the same time they felt now as this 40th anniversary was coming along here at the end of the war, is it going to be, you know, like earlier on, the repeat of the celebration, hey, we won the war, or are we going to recognize what has happened in these 40 years and what has been achieved? And he and I talked about it, and I told him that my own view was that, because it's apparent I would be in Germany at this particular time, that my view was, isn't it time for us to look back to that day of the end of the war and then recognize if there's any celebration, it is a celebration of what is followed, but from the end of that war came this complete turnaround that is led now to 40 years of peace, plus our one-time enemies being, you might say, our staunchest allies. And here at the summit conference alone, three of the seven heads of state will be from three Axis nations and the other four will be from the Allied. And so when he told me about the experience when President Mitterrand invited him to join him at the cemetery at Verdun, where in three wars, German and French men have died in unprecedented numbers in the battles of Verdun. And he said the impact seemingly European-wide was so significant that here these two countries that had engaged in so many wars, here they were standing as friends shoulder to shoulder in that surrounding that he asked me would I be willing to do something similar on a state visit following the summit conference. And I said, of course, it seemed to fit in with what I myself had said of what we should be observing. And so the whole, I am a state visitor and it's a state visit following the summit. The mix-up came and I perhaps contributed to it with an incomplete answer to a question at the last press conference on Dachau. Well, what apparently happened was, and I don't think I misunderstood, was that an invitation came from another source to go to Dachau while I was there. And it seemed to me that as a state visitor being hosted by the government officially in ceremonies that were dedicated to this idea that this was a private invitation for me to go off on my own. And it could be conceived by the German people as something of an affront to do that and for that particular type of visit. This was to be an act of forgiveness, I mean, a mere visit or reconciliation. Well, I suppose, yes, but just visiting. And so I said I can't do that. I am going to do what is the official program that is planned for my state visit. Then I got a cable subsequently, but after I'd answered that question and I didn't make it evident at the press conference that I thought it was a private invitation. And the misunderstanding came was that they evidently thought it was an official invitation that I had turned down. And I've tried a number of times now to clarify that since. But then I got a cable from Chancellor Cole saying that a camp, a concentration camp, was a part of the schedule, had not named one and said there were several possibilities that within range of where we were going to be. Then our people who went over there, they worked out that Bergen-Belsen was the logical choice. So, yes, I'm going to the one, I'm going to the other, but Bittberg was picked because that is where a base, where there are joint forces, German and American forces base there, working together on the NATO line. There will be a religious service with the military, both countries. The cemetery thing is a very brief stop. It's simply a stop on the way to this meeting with these soldiers and with the troops. I never thought of it as honoring. I thought of it as just what we had talked about, that in that locale, the presence of men who had died regardless of which side they were on, there was nothing brought up about whether any were connected with the camps in the sense that the stormtroopers were. That came along later as a matter of fact when the choice was made there was snow on the ground and even coal didn't know that there were any buried there. Was this the sharpest criticism of kind of personal conduct like that that you've gone through, Mr. President? Yes, other than the time when an opponent in my first election, the 1966 election in California tried to portray me as anti-Semitic. And I must say, the Jewish community of California rose to my support because they knew very much different than they knew of many things that I had done that revealed the lie of that. But this, yes, has been very painful because, Hugh, no one has said oftener than I have that we must never forget and that the Holocaust must always be remembered with the knowledge that it must never be repeated. Our relationship with Israel, all of these things and to suddenly make this as if it was something that I was doing that was hostile to the people who had suffered in the Holocaust I think I was in on the knowledge of what had taken place in those camps myself and a few other people much earlier than anyone else in this country was because the post where I was serving as an agent and executive officer in California, the Air Corps post we received the film, the combat film from all various branches of the service there and we put together on a regular basis a film staff report for the general staff in Washington that was classified top secret. So we were the first to receive the film, combat camera film from the units that overran the camps, drove the Germans out and rescued the prisoners and it was unbelievable to sit there and see that film of not only the dead in the ranks of dead but the condition of the living. I remember one shot I can never forget. It was a building that looked like a warehouse. The floor was entirely carpeted with bodies and in that film while we were looking at that out in the middle of all of those suddenly slowly one body moved and raised up a man on his elbow and tried with his other hand to gesture he was alone alive out there. This was on the down. Yes and so I can never forget what we saw there. Granted it wasn't equal to the living visits that some have been able to make at that time or those who were the victims and here I have to say for anyone who went through that I realize there's no way we can understand the depth of their wound and we have to realize that yes they're going to have an emotional response to anything that they think might be toward forgetting what took place. I understand that. And so I am most pleased to be able to complete the visit with Bergen-Belsen and I will be speaking there. I gather never entertain an idea of canceling that cemetery visit and that goes to the matter of your responsibilities as president. Yes and the fact that I thought it was right because we're not going there in the sense of forgive and forget. We're going there actually what I believe is needed is a recognition of what has been accomplished in Germany that here is a Germany that is certainly the most democratic regime that the German people have ever known and here is as I say this, well you know you could see where a country that had done what they did might have bulldozed out of existence those camps and said let's pretend it never happened and let's never mention it again. No, they have preserved those camps with enlarged pictures to show all the horrors for people to come and visit. They themselves have said we will preserve the memory of this so it never happens again. And now today you have a German people who as I say are our staunchest allies and friends for 30 years and ally and NATO 40 years of peace and it began virtually with the end of the war and revealed how widespread must have been the hidden repugnance of many Germans for what was going on. But now this is what I think is needed and for the benefit of the Germans to recognize what they have accomplished. They certainly live with a sense of guilt of what happened then but now I think they deserve the recognition that this generation of Germans yes there are some there who are old enough as I am to have been part of the other but about two thirds of the Germans either were not born or were small children and so had nothing to do with that. Can you assuage the criticism in this country? I am hopeful that when they see the tone and hear the tone of that day of remembering that they will understand because at Bergen-Belsen I am going to speak freely about my feelings with regard to the Holocaust. And I recognize that when I said something about once an answer to a question that the people in that cemetery even though they were the enemy, the conquered enemy that they too were victims of Nazism and someone they interpreted that as meaning that they were as much victims as were the people of the Holocaust know. The people in those camps have a memory that I doubt of any other people on earth that have ever had and that memory must be preserved. What I meant was that it was Nazism not just with the camps and that horror but that brought on the war, that brought on the destruction of the killing of civilians in the Battle of Britain just as subsequently there were victims within their own country of our own bombings in Hamburg and so forth. So to recognize that all of that, all of our young men who gave their lives were victims of this obscene regime that was responsible for so much hatred and destruction You know, other wars in the past, particularly in Europe have all led to the next war. The settlement of the war was such that the grudges and the hatreds and the rivalries remained but the miracle that took place 40 years ago, the cleansing that has taken place now of that, as I say, not forgetting but that a settlement was arrived at that has led to this great friendship now and this peace for these 40 years. Very well put. That's wonderful, Mr. President. Thank you. I didn't mean to give a lecture here. No, that's precisely what I wanted because as you know our magazine comes out on a Monday after the ceremony and I kind of put the tone that you'll try to portray on that day, I'm sure and I'll be there to keep my eye on you and watch and wish you good luck. I'm going to have an opportunity. I spent a lonely time, I'm sure, watching old friends that have been distressed and that sort of thing. I'm going to have an opportunity to speak to several thousand young people. I guess they're wrong about high school age or something. And I'm really looking forward to it because I found out that that generation of younger Germans, they're unhappy, they're pessimistic, they know they have to feel this shame about what their country did when they didn't have anything to do with it and then coupled with that, well, you know, what hope is there for them I'm going to try to tell them that something about the job that their country has done and that there is hope. None of us can choose our parents or where we're born. Well, I think we've got a few memories, not that widespread. I remember in Colorado, the commandant went out and wiped out that individual. I, and quite honestly, Mr. President, I remember in Vietnam, when indeed some of the young people were told they were victimized by their country. Remember that terrible time when Johnson was in this office and tried to go around the country to explain it and the same thing happened. A little bit of it here. You kids have no choice, you know. You've been brainwashed, you know. So we've all suffered somewhat like that. I've tried to ask myself, I've tried to say, you know, here, if you're growing up and you wanted to love your country and the flag of your life and cure the national anthem, but at the same time you were filled with a deep shame about something your country had done, it must be a very trying time for young people. They must have a tendency to get cynical about, well, why should we stand up when the flag goes by? We'll try to cure that. Okay, that's terrific. Thanks so much. Good luck. And I'll say I'll be along. I'll say it's snowing over there. Yeah, I'm a nasty guy. I don't know what to pack. That's good. Everything. I always try to take the attitude of, hell, we're not going to love the U.B. outdoors much anyway. Yes, Tom. Well, fine. It was a pleasure. Is everybody's mics turned off?