 Greetings from the National Archives Flagship Building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Dakotchtank peoples. I'm David Terrio, Archivist of the United States, and it's a pleasure to welcome you to today's conversation with David McKean about his new book, Watching Darkness Fall. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up next month on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, February 1st, at 1 p.m., we'll hear from Sarah Pollock, who will discuss her book FDR in American Memory, Roosevelt and the Making of an Icon. She analyzes Roosevelt as a cultural icon in American memory, the historical leader who carefully and intentionally built his public image. And on Tuesday, February 8th, at 1 p.m., David O. Stewart will share his story of how George Washington became the dominant force in the creation of the United States of America. His new book, George Washington, The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, unveils the political education that made Washington a master politician and America's most essential leader. Ambassadors serve as the president's representative abroad, but perhaps more importantly as his eyes and ears inform capitals. In the years leading up to the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt's ambassadors in key European capitals, London, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Moscow, observed and reported on the rise of fascism in the outbreak of war. The National Archives Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library contains letters and reports from these ambassadors, Joseph Kennedy, William Dodd, Breckenridge Long, and William Bullitt. And a number of those documents are available online. David McKean's new book, Watching Darkness Fall, brings together these four perspectives and more. Daniel Ford in his Wall Street Journal book review declares that McKean tells his story easily and well, and has a sharp eye for detail beyond diplomacy. David McKean is the former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg and former director of policy and planning for the U.S. Department of State. He's currently a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, D.C. His books include High Places, the 1995 New York Times Notable Book, Tommy the Quark, A Washington Post Book World, Best Books of 2004, and The Great Decision. He previously served as the CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and has also served as a member of the National Archives Foundation Board of Directors. Now let's hear from David McKean. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, David. And it's a great pleasure to be back at the National Archives. And I really appreciate the introduction from David Ferriero, who's really just been a superb archivist for the United States over the past dozen years. I feel very fortunate today to have as the moderator discussant who's going to join me, a former colleague on the National Archives Board, the former chairman, Tom Wheeler. Tom is, I won't go through his many accomplishments and his full resume, but he's a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President Obama. He's the author of three books himself, including one that I really enjoyed called Mr. Lincoln's Teagrams and how Abraham Lincoln used the telegraph to win the Civil War. He's about to release a new book, which I think is extraordinarily timely, called Techlash, Who Makes the Rules in the New Gilded Age? And that's one that I think is going to generate a lot of interest, not just in the public, but hopefully in Congress as well, Tom. So thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Well, David, thank you. I'm not here to talk about my books, I'm not here to talk about you. And if you want to talk about a prolific writer, oh my goodness, this is your sixth book, but what really amazes me and makes me stand in awe and wonder is that this is your second book in the course of 12 months. In April of 2021, you published Partners of the First Resort about the Atlantic Charter and the Atlantic Alliance, and then you follow up, what, seven months later with this, you know, what I'm going to hold it up here, this wonderful book, you know, Watching Darkness Fall, and you know, what a great contribution that you have made, both as a public servant and as an author that has a way of parsing issues and expressing them in a way that people like me can understand. So bless you, my friend. But let me just ask you a question right here at the outset, David. It is not as though there are no books written about the Second World War or the lead up to the Second World War, but just when we thought that everything had been written, you turn around and find this little unique angle and perspective into what led up to the war. What led you to see that angle? It's a good question, Tom. You know, a couple of things really. One is that I had written a book in 2004 that David Ferriero mentioned called Tommy the Core, which was about one of Roosevelt's sort of most important domestic advisors, Tommy Corcoran, little known, but an incredibly interesting person. And you know, the fact is that Roosevelt never really had a chief of staff. And so that Tommy Corcoran sort of rose behind the scenes to become this extraordinarily influential domestic policy advisor. And I wondered if there was somebody else in the area of farm policy who perhaps had played that role for Roosevelt. And then there is the fact that I did serve as an ambassador in Luxembourg. And you know, Luxembourg is a very small country. It's a little hard to find on the map. It's surrounded by Germany, France, Belgium, and at the very northern tip by the Netherlands. But it's a critical country in the sense that it was an original member of the European Union and an original member of NATO. And so they're very much involved in the history and the future of Europe. And few people know that it actually, after Normandy, it has the second largest military cemetery in Europe, U.S. military cemetery. Over 4,000 soldiers or American soldiers are buried there, including George Patton, General George Patton, who was actually intended to retire to my hometown in Hamilton, Massachusetts after the war. As you all know, he died in a car crash. And he's buried with his troops, many of who died in the Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg. And honestly, I remember walking through the, you know, through the cemetery and thinking to myself, you know, how did this war come about? And what were the ambassadors in the Great Capitals of Europe reporting to Roosevelt at the time? And the more I began to read about them, and you know, I have to give credit to another author, Eric Larson, who wrote just a fabulous book called In the Garden of Bees, about William Dodd, who was the ambassador in Germany. But I knew there were other ambassadors, so I didn't really know about. And the more I began to read about them, the more interesting they became, the more I understood they actually interacted with each other. And the more I understood that they became the eyes and ears for Roosevelt during this critical time during the 1930s. You know, one of the fascinating things that you have successfully done, David, is keep the reader on the edge of his or her seat, despite the fact that everybody knows how it's going to end, right? And how do you do that? How did you, was there conscious thought here of how do I deal with the fact that everybody knows where this is going to end up, and I've got to make it interesting along the way? Do you have any little tricks for how you did that? That, I have to say, is dumb luck. And it really is that the four people I chose, and I chose them because they, you know, again, represented the United States in the four critical capitals in Europe during this period. Berlin, Paris, London, and Rome. And Bill Bullitt, who served in Paris, had also served previously in Moscow. And I'm sure we'll talk about that. But these were sort of the critical, you know, the critical posts. They all happen to be extraordinarily interesting people in their own way. They have, some have serious flaws. And some are not what I would call your typical diplomat. But they all are fascinating people. And again, they're sort of interaction with one another, and they're interaction with Roosevelt. I, you know, I really believe it sort of kept the narrative interesting and moving along. So one of the things that you mentioned, and it struck me so much there, I wrote it down. You said the Roosevelt presidency represents something of a historical apex for the influence of United States diplomats and their direct influence with the president. So tell us about that and how Roosevelt used his ambassadors. And then we'll go on and talk about each of those. Sure. Sure. So you have to remember, this is the 1930s, no, no Internet, no social media, television and its infancy. The radio really, you know, is the sort of the main form of getting your news. We are in many ways an isolated nation. Two great oceans separate us from the rest of the world. The male traveled slowly. And you know, Roosevelt used his ambassadors, as I said, he was, as you all know, he was in a wheelchair because of polio. And he was not able to really travel himself at least comfortably, although we took a lot of trips on boats and did a lot of sailing. But he did not enjoy, you know, being in an airplane. And so he was not really able to travel. And he used his ambassadors really as his eyes and ears abroad. He wanted them to give direct reports to him about what was happening in the countries where they were posted. We only had, by the way, the State Department at that time was a very small organization. It was 700 diplomats, all men, 2,500 support staff, mostly women. And we had 60 posts around the world as opposed to a couple hundred today. So it was a relatively small organization. And Roosevelt didn't necessarily have a lot of good things to say about the State Department, to be honest. He thought it was a fairly elite group of men, many of whom he had known in prep school and college. And as I sort of, as I like to say, I mean, I think Roosevelt thought that he was put on earth to make a mark and that many of them were marking time and were using their posts as playgrounds. But he felt that the ambassadors, and particularly the ones that he handpicked, were going to, you know, these were people he trusted. And so he wanted them to be in touch with him directly. And they were. They wrote him letters. They wrote him memos. And when they were back in Washington, they often came to see him and had lunch or had dinner with him. They weren't exactly foreign policy superstars, right? And they were entrusted with this incredible position at a hinge moment in history. Yeah. I mean, again, when they were pointed, however, this was not, I'm not sure that Roosevelt understood that it was a hinge point in history. Where he, he was elected in 1932 really at the height of the Great Depression. The unemployment rate was 25%. The GDP had fallen to a level that it had known 30 years earlier. Banks were closing every day. People were being displaced from their homes and many people were hungry. So it was a desperate time in the United States and Roosevelt was entirely focused as a candidate in 1932 on the domestic economy. In fact, he rarely mentioned foreign policy, if at all, a little bit about international trade. But foreign policy was not an issue. And again, I think what he was looking for in his ambassadors, well, let me back up one second. We were 12 years out of World War I. There were a number of countries in particularly in Europe that owed the United States reparations. And Roosevelt believed that the primary objective for an ambassador was one to help us in those countries where there were reparations to obtain the payments. And also, if possible, to create new trade agreements and trade arrangements. But foreign policy rich large, there was no overarching foreign policy at the time. And so he sent these ambassadors who he knew and trusted to these posts essentially to report to him and to help with the economic situation that the United States was facing, in any way that they could, that the United States was facing at this time. So this kind of leads back to what I was saying before about everybody knows what the outcome is. But one of the things that you do really well is you make clear how when you're reading this book in the 21st century, you need to understand where people were coming from back in the 1930s. And there was the isolation movement that you talked about. There was many in this country and some of our ambassadors felt that Hitler was the bulwark against communism. And so one of the great things that you do in this book is to help the reader understand what it was like then rather than, well, I know we fought a war and Hitler was a bad guy and we won, which is the perception coming from this angle. Talk to us about that. So I think what's actually the most interesting thing about it is that Roosevelt really recognized this more than anything. Roosevelt recognized that over time, he came to the presidency as someone who, again, did not campaign on foreign policy, but that didn't mean that Roosevelt didn't have an understanding of the world. He had actually traveled quite extensively as a young man, as a child. He'd gone with his parents many times to Europe. So he'd been to the great capitals and he knew that there was something beyond the United States. And then he also served as the assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I. And he'd toured the battlefields of France after, or excuse me, during World War I. So he knew the destruction that war created. And Roosevelt, so he was very much of an internationalist sort of in spirit. Over time, he came to recognize that what was happening in Europe was going to have an impact on the United States eventually. And again, he was getting this information from all of his ambassadors and they were learning in the process as well. That when William Dodd is the ambassador of Berlin, when he arrives in Germany, he actually has something of an open mind about the government there. Hitler is the vice chancellor at that point. And over the course of the next year, Dodd has a couple of meetings with the hierarchy and it takes him a while to get his credentials. But after a while, he has a meetings with the hierarchy in the German government. He winds up having two meetings with Hitler. And he had been open minded, Dodd had been open minded about the German government. But after meeting with Hitler, he recognizes that this is an individual who is really bent on conflict with the rest of Europe. And that he's not somebody to be trusted. He's a he rants and raves about Jews in Germany and Jews in the United States. And Dodd is shocked, frankly. And he's reporting all of this to Roosevelt. So Roosevelt's getting this information. You know, likewise in in Italy. Breckenridge, let's go back. Let's let's let's let's talk about about each of these guys. Not sure. Sorry, I'm for a second. And because you do such a good job of of of bringing them each to life. And I want to end up just a spoiler alert. I want to end up with Dodd. And I think you just proved this point in your comments here, because I think he was your favorite. But we'll come back to that. The, you know, the the the name brand, the headliner of the four who you focus on was, of course, Joseph P. Kennedy as ambassador to the Corps St. James in London, a political rival of FDRs and an avowed appeaser. Yet FDR sends him to London. What's the story there? I mean, we just maybe even put up a slide of Kennedy just so people remind people of Joe Kennedy and the number 12 is in the slides. If we could have that. And there he is being sworn in in the Oval Office with Franklin Roosevelt. Sitting there in Stanley Reed is justice of the Supreme Court is swearing in Joseph P. Kennedy. So they, you know, this is a very interesting relationship. They'd known each other for a long time, again, dating back to the to. You know, the world, World War One, but they never really liked each other. And. Nevertheless, Joe Kennedy did support Roosevelt in in 1932 when he ran for president. He was enormously wealthy by that point. He made a sizable contribution to the campaign and, you know, Roosevelt felt that Joe Kennedy was a successful man. And so he didn't quite know what to do with him. So he decided to make him the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was, you know, a new new institution at that time. And by all accounts, Joe Kennedy did a terrific job. He stayed for about a year and a half. There was actually Tommy Corcoran, who I noted earlier I'd written about. He wrote the legislation establishing the SEC and some of the earliest rules and regulations. Joe Kennedy wanted to be Secretary of the Treasury and Roosevelt, you know, had Henry Morgenthau, who he trusted and liked. And it was had no intention of appointing a firing Morgenthau and making Kennedy the Secretary of Treasury. But at a certain point in the mid 30s, he said, well, if you still want to come back into government, I'll make you head of the Maritime Commission. And Joe Kennedy, much to everyone's surprise, accepted that. It was actually a step down from the SEC. But again, you know, Kennedy proved that he was loyal. He was competent. He did a terrific job. And and Roosevelt appreciated it. Then at a certain point, 1937, Kennedy tells Roosevelt's son, James, he says, you know, I have an idea. I'd like to be appointed to the court of St. James. I, you know, I know the current ambassador is retiring. And I think I'd be a good ambassador in England. And, you know, a wonderful story of James Roosevelt going back to the Oval Office and reporting to his dad that Kennedy wants to be the next ambassador to the court of St. James, and they both apparently had a good, long laugh about it. Roosevelt had no intention of appointing Kennedy at that point. But as the months progressed, he thought more about it. And he said, you know, maybe this isn't such a bad idea. And he thought that for a couple of reasons, because the Roosevelt hadn't completely decided whether he was going to run for president again in 1940, but he felt that Kennedy, who was politically powerful and again, very rich and Catholic, that he could be a thorn in his side during the campaign. And so to get him out of the country wouldn't be such a bad idea. And then there was the fact that Roosevelt felt that the British at that point were somewhat disengaged from what was happening in the rest of Europe. And Roosevelt, as I say, never really liked the British. He never really liked the English going back again to World War One. He felt they had sort of a superior attitude towards Americans. And he thought maybe appointing an Irishman, particularly someone as as crusty as Joe Kennedy, might shake things up a bit. So in the end, he gave him the job and, you know, he did not give him, I think, any sort of definite set of directions or agenda that he wanted to achieve. And that was probably a mistake because Kennedy, in the end, decided that he was going to make policy instead of communicate policy. And he was very much of a maverick as an ambassador. And what you said, Tom, you know, he was he was a defeatist. In the end, he wanted to have a economic relationship with Hitler. I don't think he I don't think he liked Hitler, but he felt that Hitler was going to win and that we should be on the winning side. And he was also, you know, quite anti-Semitic. So Joe Kennedy turned out to be rather a poor choice, poorly suited to be ambassador. I mean, the one thing he was not was diplomatic. Yeah. And and and he lived a lot as things got tough in London. He was moved outside of London, right? Absolutely. He had a house, a country house that he retreated to. And it wasn't as though the, you know, the people in London didn't notice this. They did because it was it was widely reported. And so that actually when Kennedy was replaced by John Winant, again, I'll mention another terrific book, Citizens of London by Lynn Olson, great book. You know, there's a there's a famous story about which I recount in the book about when London's being bombed and why it's in his office and he sees the bombs going off. And, you know, he doesn't retreat to the basement of the embassy. He he goes out and he helps to rescue people. And and nobody knows who he is. But a few people do recognize him. And, you know, it's a it's a very poignant moment, to be honest, because this is this is a man who is clearly, you know, risking his life. And he's a great he's a great humanitarian. And it comes across in so many different ways while he is the ambassador. And unfortunately, in stark contrast to Joe Kennedy. And so then when Joe Kennedy comes back finally, he certainly doesn't befriend FDR, does he? Supports him in the election and then what happens? So he doesn't support, you know, he does support him in the election. And again, you know, this is what's so so I think is sort of an interesting part of the book is the the interaction between Kennedy and Roosevelt. And it's really sort of a chess game all the time that Roosevelt and Kennedy are communicating with one another. Because Kennedy gets very frustrated by by the president while he's in London, that the president's not including him in certain, you know, bilateral talks that are going on. He's not aware of the back, you know, the back channel negotiations that are going on that Roosevelt has underway. But and he writes these letters and says, you know, I'm I'm I don't want to be treated like a dummy. I mean, I might as well just resign. And Roosevelt, you know, has this sort of wonderful way of soothing egos and he writes to, you know, he writes to back or calls Kennedy and he says, oh, Joe, come on. You know, look, you're doing you have to say because you're just doing a marvelous job and the people of Britain love you. And, you know, and I think you're doing I just think you're you're terrific. So please, please, please stay in place. And, you know, this and periodically this, you know, the Swages Kennedy. But at a certain point, he does resign and he comes back just before the election and actually does endorse doesn't endorse Roosevelt. You know, war is on the horizon. There's no one else that out there that Kennedy sees that is in a better position to navigate these difficult waters than than Franklin Roosevelt. But he does it. You know, you sort of get the feeling that Kennedy is doing it. He's not he's not happy about it. He just isn't. And afterwards, they they really don't communicate very much with each other. And then when actually when Roosevelt passes away, you know, in 1944, Kennedy writes rather disparagingly over. So let's let's take this picture down for a second so that we can see the author. But but the they you mentioned a couple of times here. Letters and other other documents. How much of your research was done at the National Archives? So frankly, not a heck of a lot, as David Farrio says, there's an off lot that's available online, which is what I was able to do. So, you know, the Roosevelt these were the assets of the National Archives, just absolutely. Yes. Sitting in the chair. No, I was. Now, you know, you talk about sort of, COVID was a is continues to be a horrible pandemic. But the one thing that it did is it made me sit in my chair and write this book. And luckily, fortunately, I was able to go online and to find a lot of material. And also, I have to say, you know, a lot of the letters of all of these individuals are have been I've been gathered and are published in compendiums. And so I had I had wonderful, you know, books that had literally all of Roosevelt's letters to all of these ambassadors and and, you know, a lot of a lot of access to their their their personal papers. OK, let's go back to these guys. William Bullitt, you talked about a minute ago. He was the first ambassador of the Soviet Union that he went to Paris. He was probably the closest to FDR. Are you right? Tell us about him. Sure. So that's why we pull up slide 10, if we can. So people, he's not well known. So I think it's interesting to have a look at William Bullitt. And there he is with Sigmund Freud. So Bullitt is a fascinating guy. He had gone to Yale, very, very bright and had served in the in the Wilson administration and actually negotiated with Lenin in 1919 about the future of the Bolshox and then had testified before Congress that he felt the Treaty of Versailles was not was not a good treaty for the United States. A lot of the Democratic Party. Viewed that as something of what it was as a betrayal of Woodrow Wilson. And for the next several years, he was doing different things. He wrote a book in 1926, a novel, and it actually has the same year, by the way, that the Great Gatsby was published. Bullitt's book outsold F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby. Really? Yeah. He traveled a lot to Paris during these years. He spoke impeccable French, spoke German pretty well. He was a he was a real renaissance man. And in 1932, Roosevelt was introduced to him and they immediately established a rapport. I mean, Bullitt had a very, you know, a command of European history, understood American politics, just as a very, very bright guy. And, you know, Roosevelt actually handed after he was elected, handed a piece of paper to his. Designee for Secretary of State, Cordell Hull and said, listen, I got four names here that I want to have prominent positions in the department. And one of those names was William Bullitt. And so because of his past experience in World War One with with with Lenin, Roosevelt decided to make Bullitt the ambassador to the to the Soviet Union. And Bullitt was very excited about this. And he he he, you know, he put together an extraordinary staff while he was there, including George Kennan, who went on to be, you know, just a giant in terms of American foreign policy. Chip Bolin, who became an ambassador, a number, a number of people. And he was, by all accounts, you know, quite a good ambassador. But the Soviet Union was not an easy place to serve. And after only a few months, you know, he found that his phones were being wiretapped and he was being followed. He really didn't feel he had access to anybody who was in the hierarchy of the Communist Party. He'd had a very interesting, which I write about, you know, first meeting with Stalin. But but beyond that, he felt somewhat isolated and he really didn't enjoy being there. And actually asked to be moved. And so in 1937, he came back to the United States. He wrote some speeches for for Roosevelt. But Roosevelt, when when Paris became open, Roosevelt made him the next ambassador to France. And this was really a dream come true for for for for Bullitt. I mean, I think if he he was an extraordinarily ambitious man, by the way, he desperately wanted to be Secretary of State, but being the ambassador to Paris wasn't that bad. And he immediately ingratiated himself with all the leaders in France. He was known as the Champagne ambassador. He had these wonderful parties. And he, you know, he I think had a very sort of. Had a very good take on what was happening in Europe at the time, although he underestimated, as many did, he under underestimated Hitler. So let's talk about this picture for a second, because the guy with Bullitt there, Sigmund Freud, as I recall from the book, this is when Freud stopped through Paris on his escape from Nazi Germany. Is that right? That's right. So again, Bullitt had gotten to know Freud during the 1920s. Interestingly, they had actually written a book. Similar to Dino Dott had written a book on Woodrow Wilson. Bullitt and Freud co-authored a book on Woodrow Wilson, which was unpublished. It was finally published in 1956. But they wrote it, you know, in the in the 20s, and they'd gotten to know each other. And. Freud was in Vienna. And after the Anschluss, after the Nazis took over Austria, he was very afraid that he was going to wind up either being deported or placed in a camp. And he called William Bullitt and Bullitt called Roosevelt. And Roosevelt helped to get Freud out of the country. And this is a photograph of after they had the long train ride from Vienna to Paris, Bullitt meets him and puts him on a train to or not on a train, but puts him on a boat to London. And and Freud is, you know, spends the rest of the war there. But they were they were quite good friends. And as I say, in the end, they were co-authors. I didn't realize that. So but but Bullitt viewed himself as the ambassador to Paris. Right. Yeah. I mean, Bullitt viewed himself as the ambassador to Europe in a lot of ways. Yeah, OK. He, as I say, he really wanted to be the the Secretary of State. But he felt that in many ways that Paris was sort of the lynchpin to Europe. And and he loved the culture and he loved. Tell us tell us the story about the about the fall of Paris. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, that's a that's a terrific story. So in in 1940, well, this is 1940, I guess, when the Nazis after they had invaded France, they had surrounded Paris and were on the on the verge, literally, of not just occupation, but after some German soldiers were were were shot by snipers by French snipers. There was an order given to actually bomb the city mercilessly to destroy it. And they had done this to Rotterdam only months earlier. And hearing this, Bullitt sought out the German commander and was able to persuade him to hold off. And, you know, much of the leadership of the of the city had vacated at this point. And Bullitt, in a sense, was, you know, many people considered him to be the mayor of Paris by that time. And he is credited. And I think I think largely it's accurate with having saved the city. He certainly takes he certainly took credit for it. Well, you know, and that's again, that's one of the wonderful things about your book. I mean, these stories, I don't think I will ever go to Paris again and not think of William Bullitt. Yeah. And because of your book. And then but but then he didn't want to go to Vichy, right? No, I'm the I'm the ambassador to Paris. Right. He, you know, he wanted to, again, by this point, he wanted to get back to the United States to be Roosevelt's right hand man in foreign policy. He did not want to be serving, you know, Payton in Vichy. He knew that he felt that that was a dead end. And so that Roosevelt gave him the order to go there. And Bullitt. Claimed falsely that he never received it. Yeah. And, you know, he actually left France through Spain and flew back to the United States. Roosevelt was very unhappy that Roosevelt, that he'd been ignored by by Bullitt. But at the same time, he also valued, again, Bullitt's advice. And so, you know, Roosevelt was one of these guys who one of these political leaders who. Used people very sort of perceptively. He would he kept he kept Bullitt close to him because he felt Bullitt was giving him good advice. But he didn't. But at this time, by this time, he didn't entirely trust him. OK, let's go to your next on the list to who probably reading your book is at the bottom of your list. And that's Breckenridge Long, who was serving as ambassador to Italy and who you describe as fawning over Mussolini. Now, Breckenlong, again, this is somebody that Roosevelt got to know in during during World War One. And Breckenlong was was from Missouri. He'd run for the Senate twice out there. He was from a very aristocratic family. His his ancestor, John Breckenridge, had been the vice president under James Buchanan. I mean, he was considered Southern aristocracy, is is how I've heard it framed. But he he had gone to Princeton very courtly gentlemen and Roosevelt liked him. They had their offices were almost across the hall from each other during World War One. And, you know, Long was also not withstanding that he'd lost to Senate races. He was a very astute political operator. And he helped Roosevelt in 1932. He managed the floor at the convention floor for for Roosevelt, helped to get him elected. And so Roosevelt sent him to Italy. And, you know, it's interesting because the first few letters that he writes back to to President Roosevelt, he doesn't say dear Mr. President. He writes him, dear Frank. And that's the, you know, that's sort of the familiarity that he had with the president now over. Over the months, I think he recognizes that perhaps that's not appropriate. And he begins to address Mr. President, but initially it's dear Frank. And he, yeah, he's very impressed by wealth and by authority. And, you know, there's this sort of a wonderful letter. It's actually not to Roosevelt. It's to it's to one of his colleagues where he where he talks about Mussolini and when he says he talks about the fascists and he says, you know, they look dapper. They are all dressed in black shirts and they lend a they lend a sort of a feeling of formality to to every occasion. And then he talks about Mussolini and he says, you know, in Mussolini, he's been extraordinary that the trains are now running on time. And so, you know, that's how we write. That's the old saying about Mussolini. He made the trains run on time. So this is what Breckenridge Long, our ambassador, Italy, most admired that the fascists dressed well and that the trains were on time. So let's let's take Ambassador Long down so we can look at Ambassador McCain here for a second again. The OK, so so the trains ran on time. He was happy for that. But then he came back and was given a job in the State Department to tell us about that. Yeah. So the reason that he was actually brought back because again, Roosevelt lost a little bit of respect for Long after the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italians. And again, Long was fawning over Mussolini over this. Roosevelt thought it was a travesty. He brings them back, but he still gives them a very good job in the in the Department of State as an assistant secretary of state, essentially for administration of the entire department. I mean, he's sort of managing the department. And what in his portfolio is immigration and Long was a terrible anti-Semite. There's just no way around it. He justified it. And by the way, you know, he was not alone in the State Department. There were many anti-Semites in the State Department and and it was, frankly, a fairly common trait in American society at the time. But he was he channeled this and he wrote a memo to again, to one of his colleagues after Germany had invaded the Low Countries. And literally there were, you know, tens of thousands of Jews trying to flee Germany, trying to flee the Netherlands, trying to flee trying to flee Europe. And he writes a letter to one of his colleagues and he says, you know, listen, we cannot let everyone in. And this is how we, you know, this is how we do it. We just postpone and postpone and postpone. So and that's effectively what he did. He he did everything he could to throw up roadblocks to immigration. And can I just tell you one quick story? Yeah, so, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt detested him and there's a there's a wonderful iPhone story in the book and it tells you a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt. You know, Franklin's the politician, Eleanor's the agitator and also the humanitarian. They're having breakfast together one morning and reading Drew Pearson in the Times Herald. And Eleanor says to Franklin, she turns to him and in reference to Breckenridge Long, she says, you know, Franklin, he's a fascist. And Franklin Roosevelt, you know, he was this. He's this very aristocratic. He's got that so that wonderful voice. And he turns to Eleanor and he says, oh, Eleanor, you must not say that. And and, you know, she glares at him and says, Franklin, I'm saying it because it's true. And it just sort of, you know, it summed up and it some sort of sums up, I think, well, a lot about Eleanor. But it tells the story of Breckenridge Long. He was not a person that should have been in this position. And I say in the book, I think it was Roosevelt's worst appointment in his presidency. And and FDR did not exactly distinguish himself on the Jewish immigration question. But his wife did. Tell us the story about when she personally intervened override long. So yeah. So there is a ship called the Kwanzaa that had come to the United States with Jewish refugees. And many of them had been allowed to to disembark. But they stopped in Florida and there were still something like 80 to 90 Belgian Jewish refugees who had not been allowed to disembark because their papers were not entirely in order. But they appealed to various people in Congress and they appealed to Eleanor Roosevelt. And, you know, she thought this is just silly, this bureaucracy, this red tape. And these are people that, you know, if they go back to Europe, they're going to be killed. And so she appealed to the president and they circumvented long. They they sent a representative from the from the State Department down there to sort of personally grant these individuals visas. And there's a nice sort of, I think, juxtaposition at the end where many of them send Roosevelt a bouquet of roses. But, you know, there's there's one individual that sends a very personal letter to to Eleanor Roosevelt. And, you know, I say in the book that I think that that sort of is what to me, it's a very poignant story because that individual recognized exactly what Eleanor had done to to help these individuals. So if if Breck Long was the worst appointment, was William Dodd the best? Well, I'm not sure, to be honest. Now, you know, a lot of people think I'm very hard on William Bullet because he because he was such a sort of a sycophant to Roosevelt and many of his communications. And those are fascinating to to hear about. But, you know, William Dodd, William Dodd's also he's and he's a terrific man. He's a wonderful man in many ways. But I'm not sure he was cut out to be an ambassador. So this is a gentleman. Again, he's from a small town in North Carolina. He's educated at Virginia Tech. Very erudite becomes the chairman of the History Department at the University of Chicago. You know, there's a wonderful story. I mean, Roosevelt is turned down by four people, three people, four people to be who he wants for ambassador to Berlin. He knows it's an important post and he can't get anybody prominent to serve there. And his secretary of the commerce, William Roper, they're sitting around the cabinet table and he says, well, what about William Dodd? And Roosevelt has met this individual and, you know, thought he was impressive. So called him up and said, you know, Mr. Dodd, I'd like you to be a Professor Dodd. I'd like you to be my next ambassador, Berlin. I think Dodd must have been just, you know, floored because it came out of nowhere. So he goes to Washington, he meets with Roosevelt. What he's most concerned about is that he won't have enough money to do to entertain. But he has no political experience and no diplomatic experience. Again, he goes to Berlin and he goes with an open mind. And after a couple of meetings with Hitler, he recognizes that this is a, you know, really a group of mad men running the country and that if something isn't done, that war in Europe will very likely be an inevitability. And he communicates this with Roosevelt. So he's, you know, I applaud him for all of that. He's right about everything. He decides that at a certain point that he can't, he will not entertain any of the German hierarchy in leaders, you know, in the embassy ever again. And he really doesn't want to go to any event that Hitler or Goybls or Göring are present at. In fact, he largely skips the 1936 Olympics. So, you know, here's a guy who is now the United States ambassador to Germany, but he's essentially muted and isolated and not able to do very much. He's getting no support in the Department of State. I don't blame him for that, but I'm just not sure again that he was the right man for the job. Somebody who had a little bit more sort of force of personality, understood politics a little bit better, I think could have been a little bit more forceful both in communicating back to Washington as well as communicating in Germany itself. So he's a very- I stand corrected. Well, I think he's a, look, I think he's an enormous, I think he's the finest man, if I can say that in many ways. Just maybe not the best ambassador. Bullet, you know, I admire Bullet because Bullet knew how to pull levers everywhere. Well, that's where I want to go there. But Bullet used to backstab Don for his anti-Nazi sympathies, right? He did, he did. That's absolutely correct. That's absolutely correct. You know, he, again, Bullet travels to, you know, while Don won me with Göring, you know, in 1938, 1937, Bullet will and Bullet goes to Germany and actually meets with Göring and he writes back to Roosevelt and he said, listen, anybody who, you know, is sort of a decent diplomat can have a conversation with this person, can have a conversation with Göring and we can work something out. Now that was wrong and it was, and he did backstab him. But the other side of Bullet is that he was really the first one to tell Roosevelt to rearm the United States. And as a result, Roosevelt began a huge effort to produce aircraft, airplanes. And Bullet was in many ways, you know, a driving force behind that decision. So the name that we haven't discussed and was not an ambassador, but ended up being the de facto national security advisor when there was none, right? Was a son of a Iowa harness maker by the name of Harry Hopkins. Tell us about Hopkins. So Hopkins is just a, you know, tremendous figure and there's been a lot written about him, but he's such a, he's just an extraordinary man. And as you say, from Iowa originally, you know, he's not Ivy League educated. He went to Grinnell College. He'd actually worked for President Roosevelt in Albany when Roosevelt was the governor. But they didn't really know each other, even though he had a reasonably prominent position. He followed Roosevelt to Washington and eventually became head of the Works Progress Administration. And he did a terrific job. So he was on the domestic front, working on the domestic front most of his career. But, you know, again, and then he got very, he became a secretary of commerce. He became very ill. And Roosevelt invited him to live in the White House. And they became just sort of wonderful friends. And Roosevelt trusted him and thought he was brilliant and a great humanitarian and began to seek out his advice on foreign policy. And so, you know, he sends Hopkins to England when during a time at Roosevelt, excuse me, Churchill is now the prime minister and London's being bombed. And he sends Hopkins to London to negotiate lendlies. And I, you know, I have to just sort of, I don't have a lot of long passages in the book. And this is a fairly long quote, but I just have to read it because it's so, I can find it, I may not be able to find it. Yeah, this is something that was written by Robert Sherwood, who was a speechwriter for Roosevelt. And he's writing- Roosevelt wrote Roosevelt at Hopkins. Right, and exactly. And if I could have written something better, I would, but I would have, but I couldn't. And I just think this is a marvelous summary of Harry Hopkins. Hopkins naturally and easily conformed to the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea at any rate the America of which FDR was president. And I think that that sort of sums it up. You know, you remember Franklin, Franklin went to France and he had on the Coonskin cap and and that's, you know, Harry Hopkins shows up and he's got he's got this rumpled suit and he doesn't look like a diplomat. He's met by these English civil servants and bowler caps and striped pants. But much to his credit, Roosevelt immediately takes to him and thinks he's Churchill really takes to him. Excuse me, Churchill takes to him and recognizes that this is a, you know, a wonderful man and a very honest and sincere individual. So tell us the story of Hopkins quoting Ruth in the Bible. And then I want to go on to one last topic before we close. Sure. So this is this is before Hopkins actually goes to see Stalin. And, you know, this is a again an extraordinarily emotional moment where they are having dinner in Scotland actually before Hopkins gets on this plane. And I wish I had it exactly. But you know, he essentially says, you know, that to, to Churchill, I will, you know, your God is my God, your people are my people, and I will follow you wherever you may, you know, wherever you may go, I go. Yeah, exactly. And thank you. And he looks, he looks at, he looks over to Churchill and their, you know, tears just streaming down his eyes. He's so moved by this. So it's, you know, it's an incredible moment, it really is because he was trying to find out at that point in time, you know, where was this guy Roosevelt and where was this kind of standoffish absolutely stuck between the isolationist and seeing what was going on and all of a sudden Roosevelt's as close as I say, you know, Hopkins and, excuse me, Roosevelt and Churchill did not trust each other, but they both trusted Harry Hopkins and he brought them together in many ways. Okay, Mr. Ambassador, I want to go back now and ask you to relate the first third of the 20th century with the first third of the 21st century in which you were a senior official at the United States Department of State, and you were an ambassador of the United States of America. What was the difference between those two periods that most vividly struck you in both your experience in Luxembourg and at the State Department as well as was reinforced by your writing of the book? All in two minutes, right? Yeah, hey, you know, what's that? So, look, first of all, there are actually some similarities between the two periods, you know, we are currently facing a, I think the rise of authoritarianism around the world, whether it's in the Philippines or Turkey or obviously what's happening in Russia now and the potential to invade a sovereign country. So, there are some similarities and there are some similarities at home, by the way. There was, again, a very isolationist streak in during the 1930s and there is now. And, you know, I think there was a lot of unrest in society during the 1930s and there clearly is now too. We have a lot of issues to work through. So, all of that said, you know, the practice of diplomacy is just a much different ballgame these days. We're represented in over 200 countries. The department is a huge institution. Its communication is, as you know, much better than anybody. It's so fast. It's global. You know, we know what's going on instantly in Ukraine. We know what's going on instantly in China. So, it's an entirely different situation. Ambassadors now, I think, you know, they have a much clearer mandate. But they, even then, you know, in both periods, they played an important role. And that is, again, to sort of communicate to the mothership, you know, what is happening and to communicate to the leaders in the countries in which they're posted, what the United States position is on any given issue. And so that issue of communication is terribly important. You know, I just very quickly, I mean, I was a staff director at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that was oversight. At policy planning, that was really the concept. We were conceiving foreign policy. I wouldn't say we were making foreign policy, but we conceived it. Sometimes more effectively than other times, but we did. And ambassadors have a different role. They are communicators and at times implementers. And so they have an enormously important role. We need good ambassadors around the world. And, you know, they serve our country well, I think. Well, David, we have approached the, we've come to the bewitching hour here. And I just, you know, on behalf of everybody who is listening in and those who aren't, thank you for the incredible service that you've given our country that you just summarized and the fact that you took the time to write this book and tell this amazing story. So David McCain, thank you very much. Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate it. And again, many thanks to the National Archives.