"American Masters" Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny

1 00:00:00,633 --> 00:00:10,300 ♪♪ 2 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:18,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 3 00:00:27,700 --> 00:00:34,033 [ Siren wailing ] 4 00:00:34,033 --> 00:00:35,233 [ Lighter clicks ] 5 00:00:35,233 --> 00:00:45,366 ♪♪ 6 00:00:45,366 --> 00:00:49,266 -Never has our future been more unpredictable. 7 00:00:49,266 --> 00:00:52,466 Never have we depended so much on political forces 8 00:00:52,466 --> 00:00:57,266 that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common-sense, 9 00:00:57,266 --> 00:00:59,333 forces that look like sheer insanity 10 00:00:59,333 --> 00:01:03,333 if judged by the standards of other centuries. 11 00:01:04,866 --> 00:01:10,033 -Hannah Arendt was a fearless thinker 12 00:01:10,033 --> 00:01:12,800 and becomes one of the most prolific 13 00:01:12,800 --> 00:01:15,100 political writers of our time. 14 00:01:15,100 --> 00:01:16,933 [ Typewriter keys clacking ] 15 00:01:16,933 --> 00:01:21,333 -Antisemitism had been a feature of her life. 16 00:01:21,333 --> 00:01:23,000 -Hannah Arendt saw this. 17 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:24,633 She was there. She was living there. 18 00:01:25,666 --> 00:01:27,666 -She escapes Nazi Germany 19 00:01:27,666 --> 00:01:31,900 and she boards a boat bound for the United States, 20 00:01:31,900 --> 00:01:33,800 and that's where she writes 21 00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:36,633 "The Origins of Totalitarianism." 22 00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:41,566 -No one could ignore it. It's too important. 23 00:01:41,566 --> 00:01:44,266 At the same time, she becomes an American citizen. 24 00:01:44,266 --> 00:01:47,166 -Never have been a member of the Communist Party. 25 00:01:47,166 --> 00:01:50,700 -McCarthyism takes hold. It's very familiar. 26 00:01:50,700 --> 00:01:52,900 [ Fireworks exploding ] 27 00:01:52,900 --> 00:01:57,200 -In the 1960s, she became a voice of American politics. 28 00:01:58,100 --> 00:02:00,933 -Arendt sees this rise in violence 29 00:02:00,933 --> 00:02:03,966 that can threaten the norms and the institutions 30 00:02:03,966 --> 00:02:06,700 that preserve freedom in the United States. 31 00:02:06,700 --> 00:02:08,066 [ Gunshot ] 32 00:02:08,066 --> 00:02:09,200 -I had a member of my family killed. 33 00:02:09,200 --> 00:02:10,300 [ Gunshot ] 34 00:02:10,300 --> 00:02:12,300 -She sounds off a warning. 35 00:02:12,300 --> 00:02:14,200 She says, "You can actually destroy 36 00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:15,566 the republic from within. 37 00:02:15,566 --> 00:02:17,866 -...in the Watergate bugging case... 38 00:02:17,866 --> 00:02:19,633 -Crisis of our time 39 00:02:19,633 --> 00:02:21,666 has brought forth an ever-present danger 40 00:02:21,666 --> 00:02:25,233 that is only too likely to stay with us from now on. 41 00:02:26,666 --> 00:02:28,133 The questions that my generation 42 00:02:28,133 --> 00:02:32,300 has been forced to live with -- What happened? 43 00:02:32,300 --> 00:02:34,466 Why did it happen? 44 00:02:34,466 --> 00:02:36,300 How did this happen? 45 00:02:43,933 --> 00:02:51,566 ♪♪ 46 00:02:51,566 --> 00:02:55,133 [ Children shouting ] 47 00:02:55,133 --> 00:02:59,666 ♪♪ 48 00:02:59,666 --> 00:03:02,533 -Hannah Arendt was born in 1906, 49 00:03:02,533 --> 00:03:05,300 in Hanover, Germany, and pretty soon, 50 00:03:05,300 --> 00:03:08,633 the family moved to Koenigsberg. 51 00:03:10,133 --> 00:03:13,633 She was born into a secular Jewish family. 52 00:03:13,633 --> 00:03:16,133 Her mother was a musician. 53 00:03:16,133 --> 00:03:19,966 Her father was educated, erudite, loving. 54 00:03:19,966 --> 00:03:23,100 Her parents were creatures of the Enlightenment. 55 00:03:23,100 --> 00:03:26,933 They were creative. They were deeply, deeply loving. 56 00:03:27,766 --> 00:03:31,433 -Her great-grandparents had fled the pogroms. 57 00:03:31,433 --> 00:03:35,400 It was a historical understanding of her identity. 58 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:38,400 It was part of her family story in that way. 59 00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:42,400 -My father had died young. 60 00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:46,000 My grandfather was the president of the liberal Jewish community 61 00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:49,166 and the civil official of Koenigsberg. 62 00:03:49,166 --> 00:03:53,800 I never heard the word "Jew" at home when I was a small child. 63 00:03:54,600 --> 00:03:57,766 I first encountered it through antisemitic remarks 64 00:03:57,766 --> 00:04:00,800 from children on the street. 65 00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:04,533 After that, I was, so to speak, enlightened. 66 00:04:05,566 --> 00:04:09,333 All Jewish children encountered antisemitism, 67 00:04:09,333 --> 00:04:12,400 and it poisoned the souls of many children. 68 00:04:12,400 --> 00:04:15,033 The difference was that my mother was always convinced 69 00:04:15,033 --> 00:04:17,500 that you must not let it get to you. 70 00:04:17,500 --> 00:04:21,866 She would say, "You have to defend yourself." 71 00:04:21,866 --> 00:04:24,033 [ Explosion ] 72 00:04:24,033 --> 00:04:27,933 ♪♪ 73 00:04:27,933 --> 00:04:32,166 [ Indistinct radio chatter, gunfire ] 74 00:04:32,166 --> 00:04:35,366 It's almost impossible to describe what happened in Europe 75 00:04:35,366 --> 00:04:37,866 on August 4, 1914. 76 00:04:40,466 --> 00:04:43,866 The days before and the days after the First World War 77 00:04:43,866 --> 00:04:46,633 are separated, like the day before 78 00:04:46,633 --> 00:04:50,366 and the day after an explosion. 79 00:04:50,366 --> 00:04:52,400 The first explosion seems to have touched 80 00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:56,366 off a chain reaction in which we have been caught ever since 81 00:04:56,366 --> 00:04:59,933 and which nobody seems to be able to stop. 82 00:05:02,733 --> 00:05:08,000 -Hannah Arendt's life was disrupted by World War I. 83 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:14,366 Koenigsberg was not a safe place for people to be at the time. 84 00:05:14,366 --> 00:05:17,933 Arendt and her mother were forced to flee to Berlin. 85 00:05:17,933 --> 00:05:19,566 [ Train whistle blows ] 86 00:05:19,566 --> 00:05:22,766 Things were moving very, very quickly. 87 00:05:22,766 --> 00:05:26,200 She'd seen the soldiers coming back without limbs, 88 00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:29,800 the marches, the fear, the anger. 89 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:31,600 She'd seen all those. 90 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:34,000 There was violence on the streets. 91 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:35,566 And it's really important to realize just 92 00:05:35,566 --> 00:05:39,233 how profoundly shaking that was, because it wasn't just, 93 00:05:39,233 --> 00:05:40,666 "Oh, these are bad things happening," 94 00:05:40,666 --> 00:05:43,966 but that sense of your experience of the world 95 00:05:43,966 --> 00:05:45,966 being profoundly altered in ways 96 00:05:45,966 --> 00:05:50,633 you do not understand was Hannah Arendt's starting point, 97 00:05:50,633 --> 00:05:55,200 as it was for many of her generation, too. 98 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:57,233 [ Bell tolling ] 99 00:05:59,300 --> 00:06:02,466 -You studied at the University of Marburg 100 00:06:02,466 --> 00:06:06,166 with a major in philosophy and minors in theology and Greek. 101 00:06:06,166 --> 00:06:08,200 How did you come to choose these subjects? 102 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:13,633 -You know, I thought about it often. 103 00:06:15,666 --> 00:06:18,300 I always knew I would study philosophy 104 00:06:18,300 --> 00:06:21,433 ever since I was 14 years old, 105 00:06:21,433 --> 00:06:24,900 I read Kant. I had this need to understand. 106 00:06:24,900 --> 00:06:28,633 The desire to understand was there very early on. 107 00:06:28,633 --> 00:06:32,533 You see, all the books were in the library at home. 108 00:06:32,533 --> 00:06:36,566 One simply took them from the shelves. 109 00:06:36,566 --> 00:06:38,266 -Kant, she said, 110 00:06:38,266 --> 00:06:40,933 teaches us that we're thinking beings, 111 00:06:40,933 --> 00:06:45,800 and it's thinking that gives us a place in this new world, 112 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:48,533 that how we think has consequences 113 00:06:48,533 --> 00:06:50,333 for other human beings. 114 00:06:50,333 --> 00:06:52,966 That's the thing that Kant taught her, 115 00:06:52,966 --> 00:06:55,233 and she never forgot it. 116 00:06:59,300 --> 00:07:01,500 As soon as the young Hannah Arendt gets off the train 117 00:07:01,500 --> 00:07:05,900 at Marburg, what's happening in the rest of Germany? 118 00:07:05,900 --> 00:07:08,933 Adolf Hitler steps on the stage. 119 00:07:08,933 --> 00:07:15,333 ♪♪ 120 00:07:15,333 --> 00:07:18,066 So the very time that she's studying, she's reading Kant, 121 00:07:18,066 --> 00:07:22,233 of course she's reading Hegel, she's reading Plato, 122 00:07:22,233 --> 00:07:24,133 Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf." 123 00:07:24,133 --> 00:07:28,733 So the beginnings of her anti-totalitarian thinking 124 00:07:28,733 --> 00:07:33,033 run in direct parallel to the rise of Adolf Hitler. 125 00:07:35,466 --> 00:07:40,033 -Students from across Germany were flocking to Marburg 126 00:07:40,033 --> 00:07:43,466 to take courses with Martin Heidegger. 127 00:07:43,466 --> 00:07:46,400 -[ Speaking German ] 128 00:07:46,400 --> 00:07:48,400 -Thinking has come to life again. 129 00:07:48,400 --> 00:07:51,266 -[ Speaking German ] 130 00:07:51,266 --> 00:07:52,600 -There exists a teacher. 131 00:07:53,766 --> 00:07:57,333 One can perhaps learn to think. 132 00:07:57,333 --> 00:07:59,400 -Martin Heidegger was at the beginning 133 00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:02,333 of what became known as Existentialism, 134 00:08:02,333 --> 00:08:04,233 which is to say there is nothing 135 00:08:04,233 --> 00:08:09,300 to ground us except what we make of our own being. 136 00:08:10,566 --> 00:08:15,666 For a generation of young thinkers, it was exhilarating. 137 00:08:15,666 --> 00:08:21,500 You could exist, you could be fearlessly on your own terms. 138 00:08:23,666 --> 00:08:26,633 [ Bell tolling ] 139 00:08:26,633 --> 00:08:30,833 -We're so accustomed to reason versus passion... 140 00:08:32,300 --> 00:08:34,833 spirit versus life... 141 00:08:34,833 --> 00:08:37,600 that the idea of a passionate thinking 142 00:08:37,600 --> 00:08:41,233 in which thinking and aliveness become one 143 00:08:41,233 --> 00:08:45,700 takes us somewhat aback, but it is more than questionable 144 00:08:45,700 --> 00:08:47,566 that we would ever have discovered this 145 00:08:47,566 --> 00:08:51,166 without the existence of Heidegger's thinking. 146 00:08:52,866 --> 00:08:54,433 -She was thoughtful. She was restless. 147 00:08:54,433 --> 00:08:57,633 She wanted to fall in love. She wanted to be. 148 00:08:57,633 --> 00:09:02,833 She wanted to exist. She wanted to experience life. 149 00:09:02,833 --> 00:09:06,666 She was serious and she was very, very beautiful. 150 00:09:07,800 --> 00:09:11,200 -My most momentous encounter in Marburg was with 151 00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:14,600 Hannah Arendt, whom I met in 1924. 152 00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:17,166 At the time, she was 18. 153 00:09:17,166 --> 00:09:20,866 I noticed her at once. Who wouldn't have? 154 00:09:20,866 --> 00:09:23,700 The beauty was mainly in her eyes, 155 00:09:23,700 --> 00:09:25,566 the way she looked into the world 156 00:09:25,566 --> 00:09:28,033 or the way she looked away. 157 00:09:28,033 --> 00:09:31,833 We were the only Jews in a seminar on the New Testament. 158 00:09:31,833 --> 00:09:35,433 Our position as outsiders immediately created a bond 159 00:09:35,433 --> 00:09:39,066 between us, which lasted for the rest of our lives. 160 00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:42,000 Among the philosophy students, 161 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:45,600 the Heidegger cult was hard to take. 162 00:09:45,600 --> 00:09:48,133 It was more like a sect, almost a new religion, 163 00:09:48,133 --> 00:09:51,700 which I found profoundly repellent. 164 00:09:51,700 --> 00:09:55,600 What was developing in Marburg in those days wasn't healthy. 165 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:01,433 -He's a 35-year-old married man with two sons. 166 00:10:01,433 --> 00:10:04,733 He nonetheless writes a note to her and says, 167 00:10:04,733 --> 00:10:08,833 "Why don't you come to my office, and let's talk." 168 00:10:09,900 --> 00:10:12,933 -Hannah confided the following to me. 169 00:10:12,933 --> 00:10:17,933 At some point, Hannah had to see Heidegger during office hours. 170 00:10:17,933 --> 00:10:22,033 It was late in the day, and in his office, it was growing dim. 171 00:10:22,033 --> 00:10:26,566 Hannah got up to leave. Heidegger saw her to the door. 172 00:10:26,566 --> 00:10:29,700 -Suddenly, he went down on his knees before me. 173 00:10:29,700 --> 00:10:31,633 He reached his arms up towards me 174 00:10:31,633 --> 00:10:35,766 and I took his head in my hands and he kissed me 175 00:10:35,766 --> 00:10:38,200 and I kissed him. 176 00:10:39,433 --> 00:10:42,233 -This moment marked the beginning of something 177 00:10:42,233 --> 00:10:45,766 from which both parties never freed themselves. 178 00:10:45,766 --> 00:10:47,533 ♪♪ 179 00:10:47,533 --> 00:10:49,533 [ Squawking ] 180 00:10:49,533 --> 00:10:53,066 ♪♪ 181 00:10:53,066 --> 00:10:54,866 -He has an odd way of signaling 182 00:10:54,866 --> 00:10:58,600 when he wants to make her appear before him. 183 00:10:58,600 --> 00:11:00,733 "There will be a lamp lit in the room, 184 00:11:00,733 --> 00:11:04,066 and that will tell you that I am not available." 185 00:11:04,066 --> 00:11:07,966 Or "I will be taking the train to such-and-such a place. 186 00:11:07,966 --> 00:11:10,466 Why don't you come on at the next station 187 00:11:10,466 --> 00:11:12,266 and sit in the car behind me." 188 00:11:13,300 --> 00:11:18,566 -She always knew that to be in love was to be totally immersed, 189 00:11:18,566 --> 00:11:19,966 and she kind of wanted that. 190 00:11:19,966 --> 00:11:22,000 [ Indistinct conversations ] 191 00:11:24,766 --> 00:11:28,366 -I no longer know how love feels. 192 00:11:28,366 --> 00:11:32,300 I no longer know the feels aglow. 193 00:11:32,300 --> 00:11:38,266 And everything wants to drift away simply to give me peace. 194 00:11:38,266 --> 00:11:42,100 ♪♪ 195 00:11:42,100 --> 00:11:44,633 -The affair went on for two years. 196 00:11:44,633 --> 00:11:47,233 He was married and staying married, 197 00:11:47,233 --> 00:11:48,933 and when it became apparent, 198 00:11:48,933 --> 00:11:52,666 Hannah was the one who cut it off. 199 00:11:52,666 --> 00:11:55,166 -So, on one hand, this is a story about a professor 200 00:11:55,166 --> 00:11:57,633 who has an affair with a female student, 201 00:11:57,633 --> 00:12:00,233 but the other side of that story is about a younger thinker 202 00:12:00,233 --> 00:12:02,000 and an older thinker 203 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:04,500 and the older thinker opening up a passageway 204 00:12:04,500 --> 00:12:07,400 for the younger thinker to move into. 205 00:12:08,733 --> 00:12:12,733 And I think that's why Heidegger was so important to her. 206 00:12:12,733 --> 00:12:14,733 [ Train whistle blows ] 207 00:12:14,733 --> 00:12:19,866 ♪♪ 208 00:12:19,866 --> 00:12:22,166 -What I want to tell you now is nothing 209 00:12:22,166 --> 00:12:26,066 but a very frank assessment of the situation. 210 00:12:26,066 --> 00:12:27,800 The path you showed me is longer 211 00:12:27,800 --> 00:12:29,400 and more difficult than I thought. 212 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:34,266 Do not forget me and do not forget how much 213 00:12:34,266 --> 00:12:35,833 and how deeply I know 214 00:12:35,833 --> 00:12:39,900 that our love has become the blessing of my life. 215 00:12:39,900 --> 00:12:42,633 This knowledge cannot be shaken. 216 00:12:42,633 --> 00:12:45,166 ♪♪ 217 00:12:45,166 --> 00:12:47,166 [ Train screeching, hissing ] 218 00:12:47,166 --> 00:12:56,800 ♪♪ 219 00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:58,800 [ Man singing in German ] 220 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:06,133 ♪♪ 221 00:13:06,133 --> 00:13:11,066 -Hannah Arendt goes to Berlin to become a journalist. 222 00:13:11,066 --> 00:13:14,633 She starts writing book reviews for the major newspapers. 223 00:13:14,633 --> 00:13:17,133 She bobbed her hair. 224 00:13:17,133 --> 00:13:22,766 She started smoking long cigarettes, going to parties. 225 00:13:22,766 --> 00:13:24,566 [ Singing continues ] 226 00:13:24,566 --> 00:13:27,566 ♪♪ 227 00:13:27,566 --> 00:13:33,366 -After the untidy end of her relationship with Heidegger, 228 00:13:33,366 --> 00:13:38,466 she begins work on her dissertation on Saint Augustine 229 00:13:38,466 --> 00:13:41,033 and the theme of love. 230 00:13:41,033 --> 00:13:46,866 ♪♪ 231 00:13:46,866 --> 00:13:50,566 -She found, in Augustine, the idea of neighborly love. 232 00:13:50,566 --> 00:13:51,833 [ Whistle blows ] 233 00:13:51,833 --> 00:13:54,033 No one exists alone, and we have an ethical 234 00:13:54,033 --> 00:13:58,066 responsibility to one another in the world, 235 00:13:58,066 --> 00:14:00,800 which gave her a way of thinking about 236 00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:04,833 how one should be in the world. 237 00:14:06,200 --> 00:14:08,500 So, the passage from Augustine 238 00:14:08,500 --> 00:14:11,300 that Hannah Arendt always goes back to is that 239 00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:14,433 "man was born, a beginning was made," 240 00:14:14,433 --> 00:14:20,033 which means as long as new people are born into the world, 241 00:14:20,033 --> 00:14:24,266 then we can always act to change the world that we inhabit. 242 00:14:24,266 --> 00:14:26,533 [ Singing continues ] 243 00:14:26,533 --> 00:14:29,133 -It's a beautiful thesis. 244 00:14:29,133 --> 00:14:31,133 As she's writing, 245 00:14:31,133 --> 00:14:36,000 the culture of death is taking hold all around it. 246 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,033 [ Singing continues ] 247 00:14:42,333 --> 00:14:48,300 -At the time, she was invited to a Marxist ball, 248 00:14:48,300 --> 00:14:52,466 and at the ball, she met Guenther Stern. 249 00:14:52,466 --> 00:14:53,766 [ Woman laughs ] 250 00:14:53,766 --> 00:14:58,033 Stern came from a good family. He was Jewish. 251 00:14:58,033 --> 00:15:00,700 He had also studied at the University of Marburg 252 00:15:00,700 --> 00:15:02,966 with Martin Heidegger. 253 00:15:02,966 --> 00:15:05,333 So they had a common base, 254 00:15:05,333 --> 00:15:09,333 and six months later, they're married. 255 00:15:09,333 --> 00:15:15,700 ♪♪ 256 00:15:15,700 --> 00:15:18,000 At the time, Hannah Arendt 257 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:22,366 encountered a still very lively city, 258 00:15:22,366 --> 00:15:26,466 but a city where you could sense the tensions. 259 00:15:26,466 --> 00:15:28,300 [ Indistinct conversation in German ] 260 00:15:28,300 --> 00:15:30,200 -There's a sense of resentment 261 00:15:30,200 --> 00:15:32,700 that many people feel between a deeply unhappy, 262 00:15:32,700 --> 00:15:37,633 depressed, working-class, often-unemployed group of people 263 00:15:37,633 --> 00:15:43,166 and a more artistic, sexually free, libertine culture. 264 00:15:43,166 --> 00:15:45,533 ♪♪ 265 00:15:45,533 --> 00:15:49,166 At the same time, you have Roma, Jews, 266 00:15:49,166 --> 00:15:53,566 Slovaks, Poles moving in between borders, 267 00:15:53,566 --> 00:15:56,533 because, suddenly, after World War I, 268 00:15:56,533 --> 00:15:59,933 there was a lot of homelessness, a lot of rootlessness. 269 00:15:59,933 --> 00:16:02,333 The world was in flux. 270 00:16:03,900 --> 00:16:09,200 -When you've got a profound fear of the future 271 00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:12,133 and then you bring the figure of the migrant Jew, 272 00:16:12,133 --> 00:16:17,400 it's very easy, at that point, for Hitler to step in and say, 273 00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:19,233 "Look, these migrants are destitute. 274 00:16:19,233 --> 00:16:20,633 They come with nothing. 275 00:16:20,633 --> 00:16:25,600 They're menacing. And they're on your borders." 276 00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:30,666 You've got the perfect recipe for Hitler-style fascism. 277 00:16:30,666 --> 00:16:34,366 ♪♪ 278 00:16:34,366 --> 00:16:37,000 -I think a lot of people had to sense 279 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:39,366 that something was going to happen. 280 00:16:39,366 --> 00:16:43,333 It's like the moment before the summer storm starts. 281 00:16:43,333 --> 00:16:48,233 ♪♪ 282 00:16:48,233 --> 00:16:49,733 Hannah, bored with philosophy, 283 00:16:49,733 --> 00:16:52,433 gets interested in German Romanticism, 284 00:16:52,433 --> 00:16:56,833 but she's also becoming increasingly aware 285 00:16:56,833 --> 00:17:00,733 and troubled and disturbed by antisemitism. 286 00:17:00,733 --> 00:17:04,200 Where do these two histories come together for her? 287 00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:06,100 They come together in the figure 288 00:17:06,100 --> 00:17:10,066 of a woman called Rahel Varnhagen. 289 00:17:11,500 --> 00:17:15,366 -Arendt is working on a book on Rahel Varnhagen, 290 00:17:15,366 --> 00:17:19,566 who's a 19th century woman who was born Jewish, 291 00:17:19,566 --> 00:17:22,600 ran one of these very famous salons at the time, 292 00:17:22,600 --> 00:17:25,766 and hid her Judaism in order to fit in with 293 00:17:25,766 --> 00:17:28,966 and assimilate into Berlin society. 294 00:17:30,733 --> 00:17:34,700 -Naturally, one was not going to cling to Judaism. 295 00:17:34,700 --> 00:17:36,900 Why should one? 296 00:17:36,900 --> 00:17:38,400 Excluded for centuries 297 00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:42,533 from the culture and history of the lands they lived in, 298 00:17:42,533 --> 00:17:44,666 Jews were only tolerated, 299 00:17:44,666 --> 00:17:48,300 but usually oppressed and persecuted. 300 00:17:48,300 --> 00:17:51,466 Rahel's life was bound by this inferiority, 301 00:17:51,466 --> 00:17:55,366 by her infamous birth from youth on up. 302 00:17:55,366 --> 00:17:59,100 It remained a nasty, present reality 303 00:17:59,100 --> 00:18:02,633 as a prejudice in the minds of others. 304 00:18:03,933 --> 00:18:06,733 -When Hannah Arendt started to work on Rahel, 305 00:18:06,733 --> 00:18:12,033 I think she saw the danger of assimilation. 306 00:18:12,033 --> 00:18:15,533 You have to forget that you are a Jew 307 00:18:15,533 --> 00:18:17,566 and you have to become a German 308 00:18:17,566 --> 00:18:21,666 and you have to leave behind who you are. 309 00:18:23,466 --> 00:18:26,033 -Rahel's struggle above all against the fact 310 00:18:26,033 --> 00:18:28,800 of having been born a Jew 311 00:18:28,800 --> 00:18:33,166 very rapidly became a struggle against herself. 312 00:18:35,366 --> 00:18:40,933 -It's pretty obvious that assimilation was a big failure, 313 00:18:40,933 --> 00:18:44,100 because she was sitting there in Berlin, 314 00:18:44,100 --> 00:18:47,166 and you just could sense every single day 315 00:18:47,166 --> 00:18:50,500 that antisemitism was growing, growing, growing, growing. 316 00:18:50,500 --> 00:18:52,366 And I think, pretty early on, 317 00:18:52,366 --> 00:18:54,766 she knew that something would happen, 318 00:18:54,766 --> 00:18:58,666 that the history of Jewish assimilation in Germany 319 00:18:58,666 --> 00:19:01,033 would come to an end. 320 00:19:01,033 --> 00:19:09,100 ♪♪ 321 00:19:09,100 --> 00:19:11,700 [ Bell dinging ] 322 00:19:11,700 --> 00:19:17,633 ♪♪ 323 00:19:17,633 --> 00:19:20,766 -Suddenly, we have hyperinflation. 324 00:19:20,766 --> 00:19:23,100 The unemployment, which is already a problem, 325 00:19:23,100 --> 00:19:25,400 turns into a crisis. 326 00:19:25,400 --> 00:19:30,000 The world is not only wobbling, it's shaking violently. 327 00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:36,066 -The deutsche mark loses all of its value, and people are angry. 328 00:19:36,066 --> 00:19:38,266 They feel like they have been lied to 329 00:19:38,266 --> 00:19:40,133 and they're looking for someone to blame. 330 00:20:01,433 --> 00:20:03,000 [ Cheers and applause ] 331 00:20:04,300 --> 00:20:07,266 -The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda 332 00:20:07,266 --> 00:20:10,966 was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy. 333 00:20:10,966 --> 00:20:15,900 The Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews 334 00:20:15,900 --> 00:20:19,233 and needed a counter-conspiracy to defend itself. 335 00:20:24,933 --> 00:20:26,766 By 1931, 336 00:20:26,766 --> 00:20:30,733 I was firmly convinced that the Nazis would take the helm. 337 00:20:38,566 --> 00:20:42,300 -There were federal and regional elections at the time. 338 00:20:43,666 --> 00:20:47,466 And if you look at Hitler's speeches during the campaigns, 339 00:20:47,466 --> 00:20:51,700 he would say things like, "We are a majority." 340 00:20:52,500 --> 00:20:54,866 He was never a majority. 341 00:20:54,866 --> 00:20:58,833 And he would come up with some argument that they won. 342 00:20:58,833 --> 00:21:01,633 He was giving them a coherent narrative. 343 00:21:01,633 --> 00:21:04,800 "We are winning. We are going to change Germany. 344 00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:06,766 We are going to change the world. 345 00:21:06,766 --> 00:21:09,433 And the movement is growing and it's stronger 346 00:21:09,433 --> 00:21:12,033 because of you and your undying loyalty to me." 347 00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:17,366 -The Nazis translated the propaganda lies of the movement 348 00:21:17,366 --> 00:21:20,333 into a functioning reality. 349 00:21:20,333 --> 00:21:24,433 The ideal subject was not the convinced Nazi, 350 00:21:24,433 --> 00:21:26,266 but people for whom the distinction 351 00:21:26,266 --> 00:21:30,866 between fact and fiction no longer existed. 352 00:21:31,733 --> 00:21:35,200 A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader, 353 00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:38,033 who, like a talisman, assures 354 00:21:38,033 --> 00:21:43,833 that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality. 355 00:21:45,533 --> 00:21:47,200 -Arendt saw this. 356 00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:49,400 She was there. She was living there. 357 00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:55,500 And so many of her friends said, "Oh, well, he's just crazy. 358 00:21:55,500 --> 00:21:58,933 He's just making things up. And don't worry about him. 359 00:21:58,933 --> 00:22:02,000 He can't win. He's just creating fantasies." 360 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,833 But fantasies are sometimes what we want 361 00:22:05,833 --> 00:22:10,200 and especially at times of economic, cultural, 362 00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:13,233 social, and political despair. 363 00:22:13,233 --> 00:22:15,033 People -- they were lonely. 364 00:22:15,033 --> 00:22:19,166 They were needy of meaning and belonging, 365 00:22:19,166 --> 00:22:22,600 and that's what Hitler was giving people. 366 00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:25,266 -The Nazi movement recruited their members 367 00:22:25,266 --> 00:22:27,833 from this mass of indifferent people 368 00:22:27,833 --> 00:22:31,400 whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic 369 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,133 or too stupid for their attention. 370 00:22:34,133 --> 00:22:37,266 The result was that the majority of their membership 371 00:22:37,266 --> 00:22:39,266 consisted of people 372 00:22:39,266 --> 00:22:43,433 who never before had appeared on the political scene. 373 00:22:47,233 --> 00:22:49,266 -I think she came up with these ideas 374 00:22:49,266 --> 00:22:52,833 when she was looking at what this mass society 375 00:22:52,833 --> 00:22:55,700 would provide people. 376 00:22:55,700 --> 00:22:57,533 It would provide them with the impression 377 00:22:57,533 --> 00:23:00,166 that they're not alone anymore, 378 00:23:00,166 --> 00:23:04,000 and there is a party giving them an idea 379 00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:06,766 that they are part of something really big. 380 00:23:06,766 --> 00:23:09,966 [ Crowd chanting ] 381 00:23:14,366 --> 00:23:18,300 -All the major German conservative politicians are 382 00:23:18,300 --> 00:23:21,366 on record over and over again saying, 383 00:23:21,366 --> 00:23:25,033 "We cannot let Adolf Hitler become chancellor." 384 00:23:25,033 --> 00:23:30,033 And, yet, because they wanted to recruit followers of Hitler 385 00:23:30,033 --> 00:23:35,500 to their side, they didn't just exclude Hitler when they could, 386 00:23:35,500 --> 00:23:37,900 they tried to control him, 387 00:23:37,900 --> 00:23:40,666 and he was able to then play them all against each other 388 00:23:40,666 --> 00:23:43,633 until they had to make him chancellor. 389 00:23:43,633 --> 00:23:49,066 ♪♪ 390 00:23:49,066 --> 00:23:51,333 [ Fireworks whistling, exploding ] 391 00:23:51,333 --> 00:24:00,933 ♪♪ 392 00:24:00,933 --> 00:24:02,933 -Is there a definite event in your memory 393 00:24:02,933 --> 00:24:05,833 that dates your turn to the political? 394 00:24:08,666 --> 00:24:12,200 -I would say February 27, 1933, 395 00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,600 the burning of the Reichstag and the illegal arrest 396 00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:17,733 that followed the same night. 397 00:24:17,733 --> 00:24:20,566 ♪♪ 398 00:24:20,566 --> 00:24:23,266 What happened next was atrocious. 399 00:24:24,500 --> 00:24:26,733 -Right after the Reichstag fire, 400 00:24:26,733 --> 00:24:33,533 the Nazis blame the communists and declare martial law. 401 00:24:33,533 --> 00:24:36,166 -Police start arresting communists, 402 00:24:36,166 --> 00:24:40,466 and her husband, Guenther Stern, is forced to flee. 403 00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:44,033 I think she knew that the life she had 404 00:24:44,033 --> 00:24:47,866 was over and I think from that point on, 405 00:24:47,866 --> 00:24:50,500 it became a question of how to fight. 406 00:24:52,033 --> 00:24:54,400 -People were taken to Gestapo cellars 407 00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,100 or to concentration camps. 408 00:24:57,100 --> 00:24:58,733 This was an immediate shock for me. 409 00:24:59,966 --> 00:25:03,866 And from that moment on, I felt responsible. 410 00:25:03,866 --> 00:25:05,433 I was no longer of the opinion that 411 00:25:05,433 --> 00:25:08,200 one can simply be a bystander. 412 00:25:10,833 --> 00:25:13,200 -It's at this point 413 00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:18,066 that Hannah Arendt decides to turn her apartment 414 00:25:18,066 --> 00:25:22,900 into a safe space for communists who have to flee Germany 415 00:25:22,900 --> 00:25:26,433 and find safety and refuge outside. 416 00:25:26,433 --> 00:25:31,000 ♪♪ 417 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,466 -Hitler becomes dictator of what is now called the Third Reich. 418 00:25:36,533 --> 00:25:39,433 I mean, it's a profound power grab 419 00:25:39,433 --> 00:25:41,433 and it happens in the blink of an eye. 420 00:25:41,433 --> 00:25:43,133 Literally, you go to bed one morning 421 00:25:43,133 --> 00:25:45,833 and you have one set of laws, you wake up in the morning, 422 00:25:45,833 --> 00:25:47,600 and your friends are being put into camps. 423 00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:49,633 You don't know whether you are going to be the next one. 424 00:25:49,633 --> 00:25:52,433 You don't know who's going to be shot down on the street. 425 00:25:52,433 --> 00:25:55,200 Suddenly, it's the takeover. 426 00:26:08,766 --> 00:26:11,533 [ Crowd cheering ] 427 00:26:11,533 --> 00:26:20,266 ♪♪ 428 00:26:20,266 --> 00:26:23,333 [ Laughter, bell tolling ] 429 00:26:27,633 --> 00:26:30,233 [ Man speaking German ] 430 00:26:33,866 --> 00:26:35,766 -Professor Martin Heidegger 431 00:26:35,766 --> 00:26:39,200 declares that his university must now sign up 432 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:45,000 to Nazi ideologies and become a university of the Reich. 433 00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,400 He signed the memos that drove out Jewish students, 434 00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,466 that drove out Jewish faculty. 435 00:26:51,466 --> 00:26:55,466 He was an active ideological Nazi. 436 00:26:58,066 --> 00:27:00,466 -When Arendt finds out that Martin Heidegger 437 00:27:00,466 --> 00:27:07,000 has joined the Nazi party, she cuts off all contact with him. 438 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:08,833 ♪♪ 439 00:27:08,833 --> 00:27:10,466 [ Man speaks German ] 440 00:27:10,466 --> 00:27:13,833 -The problem, the personal problem, 441 00:27:13,833 --> 00:27:19,266 was not really what our enemies did, but what our friends did. 442 00:27:19,266 --> 00:27:24,000 At least not yet under the pressure of terror, 443 00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:28,333 cooperation among intellectuals was the rule. 444 00:27:28,333 --> 00:27:30,300 And I never forgot that. 445 00:27:33,066 --> 00:27:36,400 -Arendt starts working for an old friend of hers. 446 00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:39,200 Kurt Blumenfeld, the head of the 447 00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:42,800 World Zionist Organization in Germany. 448 00:27:44,866 --> 00:27:46,766 -Blumenfeld said, 449 00:27:46,766 --> 00:27:48,900 "We want to put together a collection 450 00:27:48,900 --> 00:27:52,933 of all antisemitic statements made in everyday circumstances." 451 00:27:52,933 --> 00:27:55,433 For example, in teacher associations, 452 00:27:55,433 --> 00:27:57,066 professional journals, 453 00:27:57,066 --> 00:28:00,833 It's the sort of thing that wasn't known abroad. 454 00:28:00,833 --> 00:28:03,466 No member of the Zionist organization could do this, 455 00:28:03,466 --> 00:28:05,200 because if he were found out, 456 00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,033 the whole organization would be exposed. 457 00:28:08,033 --> 00:28:11,333 "Will you do it?" I said, "Of course." 458 00:28:11,333 --> 00:28:12,400 I was happy. 459 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,533 It gave me the feeling 460 00:28:14,533 --> 00:28:17,166 that something could be done after all. 461 00:28:18,866 --> 00:28:23,200 -One day, a librarian reported her to the Gestapo 462 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,600 for reading too many newspapers. 463 00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,633 What use does an academic have with so many newspapers? 464 00:28:29,633 --> 00:28:32,033 And walking out of the library, 465 00:28:32,033 --> 00:28:36,600 she is arrested and imprisoned at Alexanderplatz, 466 00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:38,033 the Gestapo headquarters. 467 00:28:38,033 --> 00:28:41,333 ♪♪ 468 00:28:41,333 --> 00:28:44,066 She sat in a prison cell 469 00:28:44,066 --> 00:28:47,233 while the Gestapo searched her apartment. 470 00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,233 The only thing they could find was a collection of notebooks 471 00:28:52,233 --> 00:28:54,466 which had funny writing in them, 472 00:28:54,466 --> 00:28:56,666 and when they questioned Arendt about them, 473 00:28:56,666 --> 00:28:59,400 she said, "Those are my Greek notebooks. 474 00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:01,566 It's Greek." [ Laughs ] 475 00:29:02,533 --> 00:29:05,566 -I had to lie to the official who arrested me. 476 00:29:05,566 --> 00:29:09,233 I couldn't let the Zionist organization be exposed. 477 00:29:09,233 --> 00:29:13,400 I told him tall tales, and he said, "I got you in. 478 00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:16,266 I shall get you out again." 479 00:29:16,266 --> 00:29:18,333 I was very lucky. 480 00:29:20,266 --> 00:29:24,133 -It was clear to her that she couldn't stay longer in Germany. 481 00:29:24,133 --> 00:29:28,333 I think her passport had been confiscated. 482 00:29:28,333 --> 00:29:31,966 So, overnight, she crossed the frontier into Czechoslovakia 483 00:29:31,966 --> 00:29:33,700 on foot, walking. 484 00:29:33,700 --> 00:29:36,366 She reached the other side. 485 00:29:36,366 --> 00:29:51,733 ♪♪ 486 00:29:51,733 --> 00:29:54,533 -When Hannah Arendt arrives in France, 487 00:29:54,533 --> 00:29:58,400 there are massive waves of refugees arriving from Germany 488 00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:01,533 daily, and this generated 489 00:30:01,533 --> 00:30:04,933 mass anti-immigrant attitudes in France. 490 00:30:07,500 --> 00:30:10,400 -France, too, was in depression. 491 00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,433 France, too, had to find its scapegoats. 492 00:30:13,433 --> 00:30:16,066 So the very fascism that she escaped from 493 00:30:16,066 --> 00:30:18,700 was also there in her refuge. 494 00:30:18,700 --> 00:30:24,766 ♪♪ 495 00:30:24,766 --> 00:30:28,033 -When you left Germany in 1933, you went to Paris 496 00:30:28,033 --> 00:30:29,666 where you worked in an organization 497 00:30:29,666 --> 00:30:33,166 that tried to provide for Jewish youngsters in Palestine. 498 00:30:33,166 --> 00:30:35,466 Can you tell me something about that? 499 00:30:37,033 --> 00:30:39,500 -That was Youth Aliyah. 500 00:30:39,500 --> 00:30:41,766 This organization brought Jewish youngsters 501 00:30:41,766 --> 00:30:44,800 from Germany to Palestine. 502 00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:47,266 Most of the children were not yet damaged, 503 00:30:47,266 --> 00:30:49,900 but they were in despair. 504 00:30:49,900 --> 00:30:52,333 But why did I take this on? 505 00:30:52,333 --> 00:30:55,400 I expressed it then time and again. 506 00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:01,333 If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew, 507 00:31:01,333 --> 00:31:04,133 not as a German, not as a world citizen, 508 00:31:04,133 --> 00:31:06,900 not as an upholder of the rights of man, 509 00:31:06,900 --> 00:31:10,900 but very specifically, "What can I do?" 510 00:31:12,566 --> 00:31:15,166 I wanted to go into practical work, 511 00:31:15,166 --> 00:31:18,533 exclusively and only Jewish work. 512 00:31:18,533 --> 00:31:22,566 In pursuit of this work, I spent three months in Palestine. 513 00:31:23,833 --> 00:31:27,466 -Arendt saw the existence of being Jewish 514 00:31:27,466 --> 00:31:29,100 as a starting point. 515 00:31:29,100 --> 00:31:31,000 This is what her book on Rahel had taught her. 516 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:33,366 This is what national socialism was teaching her. 517 00:31:33,366 --> 00:31:36,000 You cannot escape Jewishness. 518 00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:39,100 So the only way is to be Jewish. 519 00:31:39,966 --> 00:31:43,633 It's not safe to be Jewish in Europe. 520 00:31:43,633 --> 00:31:46,700 The Jews need a homeland. 521 00:31:46,700 --> 00:31:50,833 Palestine offered one such homeland, 522 00:31:50,833 --> 00:31:52,200 and what she had in mind 523 00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,566 was a binational federated state where Jews and Arabs 524 00:31:56,566 --> 00:32:00,166 would, together, make Palestine a homeland. 525 00:32:01,100 --> 00:32:06,400 So that journey itself was very significant to her. 526 00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:13,133 ♪♪ 527 00:32:13,133 --> 00:32:15,433 -When Hannah returns to Paris, 528 00:32:15,433 --> 00:32:19,433 there's some sense in the German refugee community 529 00:32:19,433 --> 00:32:24,366 that there's a way of continuing to have a kind of social life. 530 00:32:25,866 --> 00:32:29,466 She's separated from her husband, Guenther Stern, 531 00:32:29,466 --> 00:32:34,333 and has made the acquaintance of Heinrich Bluecher. 532 00:32:35,300 --> 00:32:38,533 -He was this dashing, charismatic man, 533 00:32:38,533 --> 00:32:42,333 who, unlike Stern, had no formal education, 534 00:32:42,333 --> 00:32:45,366 came from a poor family, and was not Jewish. 535 00:32:46,933 --> 00:32:51,133 -Heinrich was a Marxist, an activist. 536 00:32:51,133 --> 00:32:54,566 He had been a street-fighting man in the revolution. 537 00:32:54,566 --> 00:32:57,966 He was a cabaret performer. He was a talker. 538 00:32:57,966 --> 00:33:01,600 He had very, very sparkling eyes. 539 00:33:02,566 --> 00:33:05,166 He was captivating. 540 00:33:06,633 --> 00:33:09,833 But what she really loved was the way he saw her, 541 00:33:09,833 --> 00:33:11,866 and that never stopped. 542 00:33:14,533 --> 00:33:18,133 -You see, dearest, I always knew, even as a kid, 543 00:33:18,133 --> 00:33:22,166 that I can only ever truly exist in love, 544 00:33:22,166 --> 00:33:23,533 and that is why I was so frightened 545 00:33:23,533 --> 00:33:26,100 that I might simply get lost. 546 00:33:26,100 --> 00:33:29,600 And so I made myself independent. 547 00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:30,833 And about the love of others 548 00:33:30,833 --> 00:33:32,966 who might have branded me as cold-hearted, 549 00:33:32,966 --> 00:33:34,600 I always thought, 550 00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:38,266 "If only you knew how dangerous love would be." 551 00:33:38,266 --> 00:33:40,433 And when I first met you, 552 00:33:40,433 --> 00:33:42,733 suddenly, I was no longer afraid. 553 00:33:42,733 --> 00:33:45,766 It seems incredible that I managed to get both things -- 554 00:33:45,766 --> 00:33:50,200 the love of my life and the oneness with myself -- 555 00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:55,100 and, yet, I only got the one thing when I got the other. 556 00:33:56,133 --> 00:33:59,900 But finally, I know what happiness is. 557 00:33:59,900 --> 00:34:10,266 ♪♪ 558 00:34:10,266 --> 00:34:17,100 -In March 1938, Germany invades and annexes Austria. 559 00:34:17,100 --> 00:34:22,000 This triggers a flood of Jewish refugees desperate to escape. 560 00:34:24,166 --> 00:34:27,066 But most countries, including the United States, 561 00:34:27,066 --> 00:34:29,666 refuse to take them in. 562 00:34:29,666 --> 00:34:35,100 ♪♪ 563 00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:38,466 Hannah becomes a person without a country, 564 00:34:38,466 --> 00:34:40,933 a person without a home. 565 00:34:43,233 --> 00:34:45,233 -Suddenly, there was no place on Earth 566 00:34:45,233 --> 00:34:49,233 where migrants could go without the severest restrictions, 567 00:34:49,233 --> 00:34:52,733 no country where they would be assimilated, no territory 568 00:34:52,733 --> 00:34:55,866 where they could find a new community of their own. 569 00:34:55,866 --> 00:34:58,766 The calamity of the rightless is 570 00:34:58,766 --> 00:35:03,600 that they no longer belong to any community whatsoever. 571 00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:09,833 ♪♪ 572 00:35:09,833 --> 00:35:12,200 [ Air-raid siren blaring ] 573 00:35:14,133 --> 00:35:16,166 -Adolf Hitler's all-out attack on Poland 574 00:35:16,166 --> 00:35:19,066 makes the long-dreaded European war a certainty. 575 00:35:19,066 --> 00:35:21,633 [ Sirens continue ] 576 00:35:21,633 --> 00:35:23,866 -Alarms sound over Paris. 577 00:35:23,866 --> 00:35:26,933 Nazi bombers attack in earnest. 578 00:35:26,933 --> 00:35:28,633 -So, in January 1940, 579 00:35:28,633 --> 00:35:31,000 Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Bluecher marry, 580 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:35,300 and a couple of months later, Germany invades France. 581 00:35:38,733 --> 00:35:42,233 -Soon after, France requires all Germans to register 582 00:35:42,233 --> 00:35:46,800 as enemy aliens and to be sent to a detention camp. 583 00:35:49,633 --> 00:35:52,700 -Heinrich and Hannah are separated, 584 00:35:52,700 --> 00:35:57,733 and she's sent down to Gurs camp in Southwest France. 585 00:35:57,733 --> 00:36:03,433 ♪♪ 586 00:36:03,433 --> 00:36:06,966 -What Gurs was known for was the terrible soil. 587 00:36:06,966 --> 00:36:08,233 [ Thunder rumbles ] 588 00:36:08,233 --> 00:36:12,533 You would sink in deeper and deeper and deeper. 589 00:36:12,533 --> 00:36:16,266 As time went on, the rations got smaller and smaller. 590 00:36:16,266 --> 00:36:21,100 People all had dysentery and people died like flies. 591 00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:28,366 -Every day, they would throw one loaf of bread into the barrack. 592 00:36:28,366 --> 00:36:31,400 -When we became hungrier and hungrier, 593 00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:34,266 things became worse and worse. 594 00:36:34,266 --> 00:36:38,500 These women who had been ladies turned into animals 595 00:36:38,500 --> 00:36:41,766 just to have a little bit more bread. 596 00:36:43,033 --> 00:36:46,466 -Arendt later said, "It was the one time in my life 597 00:36:46,466 --> 00:36:48,900 when I thought about committing suicide." 598 00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:52,000 -Thinking about despair, 599 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:55,100 I posed the question to myself in earnest 600 00:36:55,100 --> 00:36:57,666 and I answered, somewhat jokingly, 601 00:36:57,666 --> 00:37:02,233 "If only world history were not so awful, 602 00:37:02,233 --> 00:37:04,733 it would be a joy to live." 603 00:37:06,433 --> 00:37:10,100 -June 1940 happens. France falls. 604 00:37:10,100 --> 00:37:12,600 It's chaos. 605 00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:14,600 No one knows quite what's going to happen. 606 00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:20,733 Arendt and a few others make the decision to leave the camp. 607 00:37:20,733 --> 00:37:23,466 -When the German front approached, 608 00:37:23,466 --> 00:37:25,933 the order inside the camp fell apart, 609 00:37:25,933 --> 00:37:29,033 and the women forged exit papers. 610 00:37:29,033 --> 00:37:33,700 -Camp discipline seemed to fall apart. 611 00:37:33,700 --> 00:37:37,300 The sentries were confused and distraught. 612 00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:39,966 And we started to distribute certificates 613 00:37:39,966 --> 00:37:42,133 to escape from the camp. 614 00:37:42,133 --> 00:37:44,266 Someone said, 615 00:37:44,266 --> 00:37:46,900 "Don't forget Hannah Arendt in the next block. 616 00:37:46,900 --> 00:37:51,800 She wants to get out with us, but wants to go on her own." 617 00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,366 [ Train whistle blows ] 618 00:37:55,366 --> 00:37:57,866 -None of us could describe what lay in store 619 00:37:57,866 --> 00:38:00,033 for those who remained behind. 620 00:38:01,100 --> 00:38:05,666 All we could do was to tell them what we expected would happen, 621 00:38:05,666 --> 00:38:10,200 that the camp would be handed over to the victorious Germans. 622 00:38:11,300 --> 00:38:14,500 -3,000 women were left inside the camp 623 00:38:14,500 --> 00:38:19,966 after Hannah Arendt escaped, and a couple of months later, 624 00:38:19,966 --> 00:38:25,066 Adolf Eichmann sent all of the prisoners to Auschwitz. 625 00:38:25,066 --> 00:38:34,466 ♪♪ 626 00:38:34,466 --> 00:38:37,500 -After walking for weeks, she gets word 627 00:38:37,500 --> 00:38:42,700 that refugees who have escaped are gathering in Montauban. 628 00:38:44,266 --> 00:38:47,533 -The place was flooded with Jewish refugees. 629 00:38:47,533 --> 00:38:49,633 [ Baby crying ] 630 00:38:51,233 --> 00:38:53,766 One day, she's walking around Montauban 631 00:38:53,766 --> 00:38:57,133 and she thinks, "I recognize that gait. 632 00:38:57,133 --> 00:38:59,566 I recognize the swagger." 633 00:38:59,566 --> 00:39:02,800 She looks again, and it's Heinrich. 634 00:39:03,733 --> 00:39:06,600 -He had managed to be released from the camp that he was in, 635 00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:09,266 and I can't imagine the sense of joy 636 00:39:09,266 --> 00:39:12,233 at having found each other again. 637 00:39:12,233 --> 00:39:17,633 ♪♪ 638 00:39:17,633 --> 00:39:23,000 The situation in France is getting more and more difficult. 639 00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:27,966 There are very few exit visas that are going to be issued. 640 00:39:27,966 --> 00:39:31,666 And the word is that people who want to get out of France 641 00:39:31,666 --> 00:39:35,533 need to get to Marseille and get one of these visas. 642 00:39:36,766 --> 00:39:40,366 -Arendt goes to petition, to hustle, to queue, 643 00:39:40,366 --> 00:39:43,533 and fortunately, she scrapes in. 644 00:39:43,533 --> 00:39:47,066 She's not that well-known, Hannah, but she has friends. 645 00:39:47,066 --> 00:39:51,033 She scrapes in and gets a permit. 646 00:39:51,033 --> 00:40:05,400 ♪♪ 647 00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:07,766 [ Horn blows ] 648 00:40:07,766 --> 00:40:28,366 ♪♪ 649 00:40:28,366 --> 00:40:30,033 -We're saved. 650 00:40:30,033 --> 00:40:35,066 We are here and living at 317 West 95th Street. 651 00:40:35,066 --> 00:40:37,833 ♪♪ 652 00:40:37,833 --> 00:40:40,566 [ Typewriter keys clacking ] 653 00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,800 -In the first place, we don't like to be called refugees. 654 00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,166 We ourselves call each other "newcomers" or "immigrants." 655 00:40:50,166 --> 00:40:52,200 And as far as I know, 656 00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:55,833 there is not and never was any club founded by 657 00:40:55,833 --> 00:40:58,933 Hitler-persecuted people whose name indicated 658 00:40:58,933 --> 00:41:01,233 that its members were refugees. 659 00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:08,066 We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. 660 00:41:08,066 --> 00:41:10,966 We lost our occupation, which means the confidence 661 00:41:10,966 --> 00:41:14,066 that we are of some use in this world. 662 00:41:14,066 --> 00:41:16,033 We lost our language, 663 00:41:16,033 --> 00:41:18,866 which means the naturalness of reactions, 664 00:41:18,866 --> 00:41:21,233 the simplicity of gestures, 665 00:41:21,233 --> 00:41:24,533 the unaffected expression of feelings. 666 00:41:24,533 --> 00:41:26,933 We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos 667 00:41:26,933 --> 00:41:30,166 and our best friends in concentration camps. 668 00:41:31,666 --> 00:41:33,800 I don't know which memories and which thoughts 669 00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,266 nightly dwell in our dreams. 670 00:41:36,266 --> 00:41:38,400 Sometimes, I imagine that at least nightly, 671 00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:40,500 we think of our dead 672 00:41:40,500 --> 00:41:43,966 or we remember the poems we once loved. 673 00:41:43,966 --> 00:41:46,300 [ Thunder rumbles ] 674 00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:51,566 -Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Bluecher 675 00:41:51,566 --> 00:41:55,800 go about trying to build a new life. 676 00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:59,933 Her first impressions of America are really of awe. 677 00:42:01,433 --> 00:42:03,166 -She reads Alexis de Tocqueville. 678 00:42:03,166 --> 00:42:05,233 She reads the Founding Fathers. 679 00:42:05,233 --> 00:42:08,566 She comes to believe the American creed of 680 00:42:08,566 --> 00:42:11,166 "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" 681 00:42:11,166 --> 00:42:14,266 and that this is a country that's not a Christian country, 682 00:42:14,266 --> 00:42:17,766 not a male country, not a white country. 683 00:42:17,766 --> 00:42:20,800 What a country for everyone. 684 00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,133 -You can't imagine how foreign and strange 685 00:42:23,133 --> 00:42:26,033 this social life is for us here. 686 00:42:26,033 --> 00:42:28,300 With all that, we are doing well. 687 00:42:28,300 --> 00:42:30,566 Monsieur works as a sort of expert 688 00:42:30,566 --> 00:42:33,400 on all possible book and research projects. 689 00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:36,133 I'm writing my things on antisemitism 690 00:42:36,133 --> 00:42:39,300 and publishing them piecemeal in Jewish publications. 691 00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:44,133 On the side, I'm a rather regular contributor to Aufbau. 692 00:42:44,133 --> 00:42:45,466 [ Typewriter keys clacking ] 693 00:42:45,466 --> 00:42:48,300 -Aufbau was a German paper that 694 00:42:48,300 --> 00:42:50,900 was established for immigrants 695 00:42:50,900 --> 00:42:54,466 so that they could keep up with news, culture, politics. 696 00:42:54,466 --> 00:42:58,000 She's trying to raise awareness in the United States 697 00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,866 about what is happening in Europe. 698 00:43:01,866 --> 00:43:04,866 -It's Saturday, December 13, 1942. 699 00:43:04,866 --> 00:43:07,533 Here is the latest news. 700 00:43:07,533 --> 00:43:10,733 -Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, 701 00:43:10,733 --> 00:43:12,233 are being gathered up 702 00:43:12,233 --> 00:43:15,000 with ruthless efficiency and murdered. 703 00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,966 The phrase "concentration camp" is obsolete. 704 00:43:17,966 --> 00:43:22,466 It is now possible to speak only of extermination camps. 705 00:43:25,300 --> 00:43:29,700 -What was decisive was the day we learned of Auschwitz. 706 00:43:30,866 --> 00:43:32,900 And at first, we didn't believe it. 707 00:43:32,900 --> 00:43:34,966 My husband said, "Don't be gullible. 708 00:43:34,966 --> 00:43:36,900 Don't take these stories at face value. 709 00:43:36,900 --> 00:43:40,200 They cannot go that far." 710 00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:41,633 And then, half a year later, 711 00:43:41,633 --> 00:43:45,500 we believed it, after all, because we had the proof. 712 00:43:45,500 --> 00:43:48,066 That was the real shock. 713 00:43:49,266 --> 00:43:51,466 Something happened there to which 714 00:43:51,466 --> 00:43:54,033 we cannot reconcile ourselves. 715 00:43:54,033 --> 00:43:57,266 None of us ever can. 716 00:43:57,266 --> 00:44:05,833 ♪♪ 717 00:44:05,833 --> 00:44:08,100 What meaning has the concept of murder 718 00:44:08,100 --> 00:44:13,766 when we are confronted with the mass production of corpses? 719 00:44:15,466 --> 00:44:18,166 -She said, "This is why we broke at this point, 720 00:44:18,166 --> 00:44:21,900 because we could not find the words or imagination 721 00:44:21,900 --> 00:44:25,266 to conceive what was happening." 722 00:44:26,233 --> 00:44:28,933 Hannah first left Germany in 1933. 723 00:44:28,933 --> 00:44:30,933 She lived the experience of totalitarianism 724 00:44:30,933 --> 00:44:33,700 and she's trying to understand it. 725 00:44:33,700 --> 00:44:38,633 Finally, we get to '43, and she starts to see a pattern. 726 00:44:38,633 --> 00:44:40,900 She starts to see a book. 727 00:44:40,900 --> 00:44:42,333 [ Typewriter dings ] 728 00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,400 -Propaganda provided the foundation 729 00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:48,766 for building totalitarian power. 730 00:44:48,766 --> 00:44:52,300 The Nazis translated the propaganda lies of the movement 731 00:44:52,300 --> 00:44:54,066 into a functioning reality. 732 00:44:54,066 --> 00:44:57,733 Totalitarianism replaces all first-rate talents 733 00:44:57,733 --> 00:44:59,466 with crackpots and fools 734 00:44:59,466 --> 00:45:02,200 whose lack of intelligence and creativity 735 00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:04,466 is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. 736 00:45:04,466 --> 00:45:07,833 The Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews 737 00:45:07,833 --> 00:45:11,733 and needed a counter-conspiracy to defend itself. 738 00:45:11,733 --> 00:45:16,333 ♪♪ 739 00:45:16,333 --> 00:45:17,866 [ Whistle blows ] 740 00:45:23,766 --> 00:45:34,200 ♪♪ 741 00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:36,866 -The line she uses -- and she actually repeats it 742 00:45:36,866 --> 00:45:39,866 many times in her "Origins of Totalitarianism" -- 743 00:45:39,866 --> 00:45:41,866 is, "To comprehend what's going on." 744 00:45:41,866 --> 00:45:46,933 And she says, "Comprehension is the unpremeditated 745 00:45:46,933 --> 00:45:51,766 and attentive facing up to and resisting of reality, 746 00:45:51,766 --> 00:45:53,500 whatever it may be. 747 00:45:53,500 --> 00:45:57,133 Unpremeditated, you can't come at it with your theories. 748 00:45:57,133 --> 00:45:58,966 You can't come at it thinking you know it. 749 00:45:58,966 --> 00:46:03,166 You have to face up to reality if you're going to resist it. 750 00:46:03,166 --> 00:46:06,333 While it may not happen again in the same way 751 00:46:06,333 --> 00:46:08,233 that it happened in Germany, 752 00:46:08,233 --> 00:46:11,666 it's likely that totalitarianism is going to come back, 753 00:46:11,666 --> 00:46:13,233 and it may come back in different forms, 754 00:46:13,233 --> 00:46:14,600 but we have to be prepared for it. 755 00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:15,633 We have to understand it." 756 00:46:17,500 --> 00:46:20,133 -At the end of "The Origins of Totalitarianism," 757 00:46:20,133 --> 00:46:22,466 she brings us back to Augustine 758 00:46:22,466 --> 00:46:26,133 and gives us that passage that "Man be born, 759 00:46:26,133 --> 00:46:29,266 a beginning was made," which means that even 760 00:46:29,266 --> 00:46:33,300 though totalitarianism has come into existence, 761 00:46:33,300 --> 00:46:39,700 even though this horrifying political reality shapes 762 00:46:39,700 --> 00:46:44,433 the world that we live in, it doesn't have to be this way. 763 00:46:44,433 --> 00:46:47,766 We have the ability to act to make the world anew. 764 00:46:47,766 --> 00:46:54,066 ♪♪ 765 00:46:54,066 --> 00:46:56,100 [ Crowd cheering ] 766 00:46:59,566 --> 00:47:01,266 -The forces of Germany 767 00:47:01,266 --> 00:47:04,733 have surrendered to the United Nations. 768 00:47:04,733 --> 00:47:08,666 The flags of freedom fly all over Europe. 769 00:47:08,666 --> 00:47:10,833 [ Cheering continues ] 770 00:47:12,833 --> 00:47:15,300 [ Foghorn blows ] 771 00:47:15,300 --> 00:47:18,266 -After the war, Hannah Arendt starts working for 772 00:47:18,266 --> 00:47:21,433 the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Organization 773 00:47:21,433 --> 00:47:23,533 and she goes back to Germany 774 00:47:23,533 --> 00:47:28,733 to find the lost archives of the Jewish communities. 775 00:47:28,733 --> 00:47:30,933 -She was going back to reclaim stolen goods, 776 00:47:30,933 --> 00:47:34,366 to find the books, to find the manuscripts, 777 00:47:34,366 --> 00:47:37,566 to find the Torahs, and getting the things back. 778 00:47:41,966 --> 00:47:44,666 -It appears that the German synagogue's silver 779 00:47:44,666 --> 00:47:46,333 was carefully preserved for the purpose 780 00:47:46,333 --> 00:47:49,966 of establishing an anti-Jewish museum. 781 00:47:49,966 --> 00:47:52,900 The people who worked under the Gestapo told me 782 00:47:52,900 --> 00:47:55,700 that they had seen silver from all over Germany 783 00:47:55,700 --> 00:47:58,366 and many items from abroad. 784 00:47:58,366 --> 00:48:01,433 For instance, a Torah scroll from Thessaloniki, 785 00:48:01,433 --> 00:48:04,133 which was 500 years old. 786 00:48:04,133 --> 00:48:06,566 This is a pretty sad report. 787 00:48:08,866 --> 00:48:11,666 -But what she also discovers in post-Nazi Germany 788 00:48:11,666 --> 00:48:14,700 is a sense of unreality. 789 00:48:14,700 --> 00:48:18,466 It's like walking through a vandalized museum, 790 00:48:18,466 --> 00:48:23,233 and there's a sense that people did not understand the crime 791 00:48:23,233 --> 00:48:25,300 that had been committed. 792 00:48:25,300 --> 00:48:30,766 ♪♪ 793 00:48:30,766 --> 00:48:33,333 -The sight of Germany's destroyed cities 794 00:48:33,333 --> 00:48:35,766 and the knowledge of German extermination camps 795 00:48:35,766 --> 00:48:38,900 have covered Europe with a cloud of melancholy. 796 00:48:40,700 --> 00:48:43,700 But nowhere is this nightmare of destruction and horror 797 00:48:43,700 --> 00:48:48,800 less felt and less talked about than in Germany itself. 798 00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:51,766 And it is difficult to say 799 00:48:51,766 --> 00:48:54,366 whether this signifies a half-conscious refusal 800 00:48:54,366 --> 00:48:59,633 to yield to grief or a genuine inability to feel. 801 00:48:59,633 --> 00:49:03,200 And the indifference with which they walk through the rubble 802 00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:06,066 has its exact counterpart in the absence 803 00:49:06,066 --> 00:49:08,533 of mourning for the dead. 804 00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:14,000 Dear Heinrich, do you know how right you were never 805 00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:16,333 to want to come back here again? 806 00:49:16,333 --> 00:49:22,500 ♪♪ 807 00:49:22,500 --> 00:49:25,033 -At the end of her trip, she ends up in Freiburg, 808 00:49:25,033 --> 00:49:27,066 near where Martin Heidegger is living. 809 00:49:27,066 --> 00:49:31,366 And she calls her friend, the American writer Mary McCarthy, 810 00:49:31,366 --> 00:49:33,533 who's in Paris, and she says, "I don't know. 811 00:49:33,533 --> 00:49:34,933 Should I write to him? Should I not? 812 00:49:34,933 --> 00:49:37,200 Should I see him? Should I not?" 813 00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,000 And Mary McCarthy says, "The very fact that you're 814 00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:42,666 going crazy, you're still in love with him 815 00:49:42,666 --> 00:49:44,200 like a schoolgirl, you've got to see him." 816 00:49:45,533 --> 00:49:49,766 So she writes him and says, "I'm at this hotel." 817 00:49:49,766 --> 00:49:52,833 -There was a knock on her hotel-room door, 818 00:49:52,833 --> 00:49:55,700 and there stood Heidegger saying, 819 00:49:55,700 --> 00:49:58,433 "I have come to turn myself in." 820 00:49:58,433 --> 00:50:00,900 Both of them, as she told me freely, 821 00:50:00,900 --> 00:50:03,733 were overwhelmed by their feelings. 822 00:50:05,500 --> 00:50:08,500 -Dear Heinrich, I went to Freiburg, 823 00:50:08,500 --> 00:50:11,000 and Heidegger soon appeared at the hotel. 824 00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,566 The two of us had a real talk. 825 00:50:13,566 --> 00:50:16,600 I think for the first time in our lives. 826 00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:18,800 He, who always at every opportunity 827 00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,066 has been such a notorious liar, 828 00:50:22,066 --> 00:50:25,533 evidently never, in all those 25 years, 829 00:50:25,533 --> 00:50:30,366 refuted that I had been the passion of his life. 830 00:50:30,366 --> 00:50:35,100 For God's sakes, Heinrich, I wish you were here. 831 00:50:35,100 --> 00:50:36,433 Hannah. 832 00:50:37,466 --> 00:50:39,300 -Her good Heinrich had no choice 833 00:50:39,300 --> 00:50:42,033 but to accept the situation, 834 00:50:42,033 --> 00:50:44,900 more so since he himself took ample advantage 835 00:50:44,900 --> 00:50:48,033 of the modern notion of an open marriage. 836 00:50:48,033 --> 00:50:50,600 Hannah basically didn't approve of Bluecher's 837 00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:54,766 libertine ways, for she was a faithful soul. 838 00:50:54,766 --> 00:50:58,666 Heidegger being the only exception. 839 00:51:01,033 --> 00:51:04,433 -Heidegger, by that point, is a diminished man. 840 00:51:04,433 --> 00:51:06,933 He was put through denazification committees, 841 00:51:06,933 --> 00:51:10,600 found guilty, temporarily stopped from teaching. 842 00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,300 He was poor. 843 00:51:12,300 --> 00:51:14,166 They became friends again, 844 00:51:14,166 --> 00:51:16,766 and she helped his work be translated into English. 845 00:51:17,666 --> 00:51:21,466 -Martin Heidegger is, to this day, 846 00:51:21,466 --> 00:51:24,566 widely regarded as one of the great philosophers 847 00:51:24,566 --> 00:51:26,533 of the 20th century. 848 00:51:26,533 --> 00:51:32,066 And he became an ardent Nazi, worse than people thought. 849 00:51:32,066 --> 00:51:33,433 And people say, 850 00:51:33,433 --> 00:51:36,866 "Well, how is it possible that she defended him 851 00:51:36,866 --> 00:51:39,300 and maintained a relationship with him?" 852 00:51:39,300 --> 00:51:44,466 And the answer is so simple that it is amazing 853 00:51:44,466 --> 00:51:47,266 that it doesn't stick. 854 00:51:47,966 --> 00:51:53,166 Martin Heidegger was the love of Hannah Arendt's life. 855 00:51:53,166 --> 00:51:57,133 In that sense, friendship and that intimacy 856 00:51:57,133 --> 00:51:59,866 triumphed over politics. 857 00:52:02,700 --> 00:52:05,400 -"The Origins of Totalitarianism" 858 00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:07,600 was published in 1951. 859 00:52:09,300 --> 00:52:11,866 -It's well-read and -reviewed. 860 00:52:11,866 --> 00:52:14,966 No one could ignore it. It's too important. 861 00:52:16,533 --> 00:52:20,566 So she begins to get a place in intellectual life. 862 00:52:20,566 --> 00:52:23,066 At the same time, she becomes an American citizen. 863 00:52:23,066 --> 00:52:25,233 It's something she takes really seriously. 864 00:52:26,533 --> 00:52:29,200 -There's much I could say about America. 865 00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:32,266 There really is such a thing as freedom here. 866 00:52:32,266 --> 00:52:34,666 The republic is not a vapid illusion, 867 00:52:34,666 --> 00:52:37,000 and the fact that there's no national state 868 00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:43,000 and no truly national tradition creates an atmosphere of freedom 869 00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:46,766 or at least one not pervaded by fanaticism. 870 00:52:46,766 --> 00:52:49,366 This country is united neither by heritage, 871 00:52:49,366 --> 00:52:56,033 nor by memory, nor by soil, nor by language, nor by origin. 872 00:52:56,033 --> 00:52:59,000 The natives were the Indians. 873 00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:01,566 Everyone else is a citizen. 874 00:53:01,566 --> 00:53:06,500 And these citizens are united only by one thing, 875 00:53:06,500 --> 00:53:10,266 by simple consent to the Constitution. 876 00:53:13,033 --> 00:53:14,733 -Over time, 877 00:53:14,733 --> 00:53:18,300 the Riverside Drive apartment becomes a kind of 878 00:53:18,300 --> 00:53:22,500 New World salon, the kind of friendship circle 879 00:53:22,500 --> 00:53:25,966 that discussed ideas and politics 880 00:53:25,966 --> 00:53:28,366 and the events of the day. 881 00:53:28,366 --> 00:53:32,666 [ Jazz music playing ] 882 00:53:32,666 --> 00:53:35,200 -Every year on New Year's Eve, 883 00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:37,533 she gave one big party 884 00:53:37,533 --> 00:53:39,966 at which the Germans, arriving promptly at 9:30, 885 00:53:39,966 --> 00:53:42,666 would congregate in one room with the marzipan 886 00:53:42,666 --> 00:53:44,300 and the liqueurs, 887 00:53:44,300 --> 00:53:46,633 while the Americans, piling in around midnight, 888 00:53:46,633 --> 00:53:50,066 would gather in another with the bourbon and the scotch. 889 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:58,066 -Hannah Arendt loved fun. She had a good sense of humor. 890 00:53:58,066 --> 00:54:02,100 She had a wonderful smile that would just light up every now 891 00:54:02,100 --> 00:54:03,833 and then. 892 00:54:03,833 --> 00:54:07,033 And she might get up and sing or do something like that. 893 00:54:07,033 --> 00:54:10,866 The woman was intensely alive. 894 00:54:10,866 --> 00:54:13,733 And you can't be intensely alive and not have fun. 895 00:54:15,766 --> 00:54:18,366 -Hannah's husband was quite eccentric 896 00:54:18,366 --> 00:54:22,900 and absolutely adorable, a very peppery little Prussian. 897 00:54:22,900 --> 00:54:26,100 And when people came, he'd sit down in the center of the room 898 00:54:26,100 --> 00:54:28,533 and listen to the conversation. 899 00:54:28,533 --> 00:54:31,933 And if somebody said something that he disapproved of, 900 00:54:31,933 --> 00:54:34,633 he'd explode like a little artillery piece. 901 00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:38,833 -Heinrich was the one who brought her down to earth. 902 00:54:38,833 --> 00:54:42,466 He was the Marxist who taught her about real politics. 903 00:54:42,466 --> 00:54:47,700 A lot of their thinking was a two-in-one dialogue. 904 00:54:47,700 --> 00:54:51,200 Hannah wrote the bonds and threads of friendship 905 00:54:51,200 --> 00:54:57,000 that, as it were, keep us in a place, keep us together. 906 00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,133 So if you've been a stateless refugee, 907 00:54:59,133 --> 00:55:01,333 if everything else has failed, 908 00:55:01,333 --> 00:55:06,333 what you have is what she'll call the hazards of friendships 909 00:55:06,333 --> 00:55:08,900 and the incalculable grace of love. 910 00:55:08,900 --> 00:55:12,233 And you get a sense, for Arendt, that the first lines of defense 911 00:55:12,233 --> 00:55:16,966 against totalitarianism were love and friendship. 912 00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:22,500 -Asked me if I knew him and various other people. 913 00:55:22,500 --> 00:55:27,833 I am not and never have been a member of the Communist Party. 914 00:55:29,966 --> 00:55:33,500 -No sooner has a Arendt found a place in the world, 915 00:55:33,500 --> 00:55:36,533 no sooner has she unleashed her understanding 916 00:55:36,533 --> 00:55:38,566 of totalitarianism on the world, 917 00:55:38,566 --> 00:55:42,333 McCarthyism takes hold in the United States. 918 00:55:42,333 --> 00:55:45,533 It's very familiar, what is going on. 919 00:55:45,533 --> 00:55:48,866 -One communist on the faculty of one university 920 00:55:48,866 --> 00:55:51,500 is one communist too many. 921 00:55:51,500 --> 00:55:52,766 [ Crowd cheering ] 922 00:55:52,766 --> 00:55:55,266 -Arendt was actually teaching at Berkeley, 923 00:55:55,266 --> 00:55:59,400 and she talks about how the academic environment on campus 924 00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:01,166 was chilled, 925 00:56:01,166 --> 00:56:03,633 how people were afraid to laugh in public 926 00:56:03,633 --> 00:56:06,833 or to make jokes or just to speak freely. 927 00:56:06,833 --> 00:56:08,200 [ Siren wails ] 928 00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,166 -And you see how far the disintegration has gone 929 00:56:11,166 --> 00:56:14,133 and with what breathtaking speed it has occurred, 930 00:56:14,133 --> 00:56:16,933 and up to now, hardly any resistance. 931 00:56:17,966 --> 00:56:20,533 The whole entertainment industry and, to a lesser extent, 932 00:56:20,533 --> 00:56:23,466 the universities, have been dragged into it. 933 00:56:24,633 --> 00:56:29,300 It all functions without any force, without any terror. 934 00:56:29,300 --> 00:56:31,300 They're introducing police methods, 935 00:56:31,300 --> 00:56:33,500 they name names, and, in this way, 936 00:56:33,500 --> 00:56:37,966 the informant system is being integrated into the society. 937 00:56:40,166 --> 00:56:43,133 -One element that she sees unfolding 938 00:56:43,133 --> 00:56:48,766 is the threat to denaturalize naturalized citizens. 939 00:56:48,766 --> 00:56:52,633 Heinrich Bluecher, who had been a communist in Germany, 940 00:56:52,633 --> 00:56:55,666 was quite worried, as well. 941 00:56:55,666 --> 00:56:58,733 -It seems that one can now deprive someone of citizenship 942 00:56:58,733 --> 00:57:02,300 with a simple denunciation, and in my case, 943 00:57:02,300 --> 00:57:04,166 absolutely nothing could stop it. 944 00:57:04,166 --> 00:57:06,966 -I think they're correct. -American citizenship could, 945 00:57:06,966 --> 00:57:08,433 it seems to me, become 946 00:57:08,433 --> 00:57:11,133 the most worthless in the world at a stroke. 947 00:57:11,133 --> 00:57:14,066 -Whether they're American or alien-born. 948 00:57:14,066 --> 00:57:16,800 -What's always in common is the conviction 949 00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:18,233 that you are right and there are enemies 950 00:57:18,233 --> 00:57:20,300 and the enemies must be found and the enemies must be 951 00:57:20,300 --> 00:57:23,200 destroyed and they must be relinquished. 952 00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:26,500 If you allow this, then you are actually going to undermine 953 00:57:26,500 --> 00:57:29,233 the foundations of America. 954 00:57:30,266 --> 00:57:34,966 -If you try to make America more American, you only destroy it. 955 00:57:34,966 --> 00:57:38,266 Your methods are the justified methods of the police 956 00:57:38,266 --> 00:57:41,133 and only of the police. 957 00:57:41,133 --> 00:57:45,133 -Have you no sense of decency, sir? 958 00:57:45,133 --> 00:57:50,100 At long last, have you left no sense of decency? 959 00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,000 -McCarthy is finished. 960 00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,466 The historians will no doubt busy themselves 961 00:57:56,466 --> 00:57:59,000 someday writing about what has happened here. 962 00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,666 What I see in it is totalitarian elements springing 963 00:58:02,666 --> 00:58:08,900 from the womb of society without a movement or clear ideology. 964 00:58:08,900 --> 00:58:12,100 ♪♪ 965 00:58:12,100 --> 00:58:14,333 -The McCarthy years were more frightening 966 00:58:14,333 --> 00:58:19,500 to German Jewish refugees than a native American could imagine. 967 00:58:20,900 --> 00:58:23,666 For Hannah and many of her friends, 968 00:58:23,666 --> 00:58:26,433 the original trust she had had in the protection 969 00:58:26,433 --> 00:58:29,033 of this country for her right of free thought 970 00:58:29,033 --> 00:58:33,866 vanished on the spot and was never fully restored. 971 00:58:33,866 --> 00:58:47,500 ♪♪ 972 00:58:47,500 --> 00:58:51,000 -In Jerusalem, the trial of Adolf Eichmann begins. 973 00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:52,466 -The building in this compound 974 00:58:52,466 --> 00:58:54,766 was originally designed as a theater. 975 00:58:54,766 --> 00:58:56,733 It has been rushed to completion in order to serve 976 00:58:56,733 --> 00:58:59,900 as the temporary courthouse in which the state of Israel 977 00:58:59,900 --> 00:59:02,233 will bring Adolph Eichmann to trial. 978 00:59:05,266 --> 00:59:07,266 -Dearest Mary, 979 00:59:07,266 --> 00:59:10,033 I decided that I wanted to attend the Eichmann trial 980 00:59:10,033 --> 00:59:11,400 and wrote to The New Yorker. 981 00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:14,133 -Your passport, please. -William Shawn called me 982 00:59:14,133 --> 00:59:16,633 and seemed to agree to let me go for them, 983 00:59:16,633 --> 00:59:18,966 with the understanding that he does not have to print 984 00:59:18,966 --> 00:59:20,933 whatever I may produce. 985 00:59:20,933 --> 00:59:25,033 ♪♪ 986 00:59:25,033 --> 00:59:28,800 -Adolf Eichmann had been Hitler's chief logician. 987 00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:32,733 He took part in the Final Solution 988 00:59:32,733 --> 00:59:36,966 and was in charge of liquidating the internment camp 989 00:59:36,966 --> 00:59:41,933 where Arendt herself had been held captive. 990 00:59:41,933 --> 00:59:51,133 ♪♪ 991 00:59:51,133 --> 00:59:52,900 [ Door opens ] 992 00:59:53,800 --> 00:59:56,933 -So, the horror of the Holocaust, 15 years later, 993 00:59:56,933 --> 00:59:58,433 walks into this courtroom. 994 00:59:58,433 --> 01:00:00,166 It's beamed across the world. 995 01:00:00,166 --> 01:00:03,700 It's on American TV every night. 996 01:00:03,700 --> 01:00:08,433 -Here with me at this moment 997 01:00:08,433 --> 01:00:13,300 stands 6 million prosecutors. 998 01:00:13,300 --> 01:00:17,933 But, alas, they cannot rise to level 999 01:00:17,933 --> 01:00:20,533 the finger of accusation 1000 01:00:20,533 --> 01:00:23,600 in the direction of the glass dock 1001 01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:30,133 and cry out "J'accuse" against the man who sits there. 1002 01:00:30,133 --> 01:00:35,666 -This is the opportunity to try and understand this new crime, 1003 01:00:35,666 --> 01:00:38,200 a crime against humanity itself. 1004 01:01:09,133 --> 01:01:10,866 -Eichmann tried a number of times 1005 01:01:10,866 --> 01:01:13,333 to explain that, during the Third Reich, 1006 01:01:13,333 --> 01:01:16,066 the Fuehrer's words had the force of law. 1007 01:01:16,066 --> 01:01:19,400 He did his duty, as he told the court over and over again. 1008 01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:23,633 He not only obeyed orders, but he also obeyed the law. 1009 01:01:23,633 --> 01:01:25,200 He was perfectly sure 1010 01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:28,400 that he was not what he called an "innerer schweinehund," 1011 01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:31,400 a dirty bastard, in the depths of his heart. 1012 01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:34,566 And as for his conscience, he remembered perfectly well 1013 01:01:34,566 --> 01:01:36,300 that he would have had a bad conscience 1014 01:01:36,300 --> 01:01:39,466 only if he had not done what he had been ordered 1015 01:01:39,466 --> 01:01:42,600 to do -- to ship millions of men, women, 1016 01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:45,333 and children to their death with great zeal 1017 01:01:45,333 --> 01:01:48,033 and the most meticulous care. 1018 01:01:48,033 --> 01:01:51,133 He left no doubt that he would have killed his own father 1019 01:01:51,133 --> 01:01:53,200 if he had received an order to that effect. 1020 01:02:52,100 --> 01:02:53,400 -Banality was a phenomenon 1021 01:02:53,400 --> 01:02:55,833 that really couldn't be overlooked. 1022 01:02:55,833 --> 01:02:57,800 The more one listened to him, 1023 01:02:57,800 --> 01:03:00,833 the more obvious it became that his inability to speak 1024 01:03:00,833 --> 01:03:04,133 was closely connected with his inability to think, 1025 01:03:04,133 --> 01:03:08,600 namely to think from the standpoint of someone else. 1026 01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:12,900 There's nothing deep about it, nothing demonic. 1027 01:03:12,900 --> 01:03:15,700 There's simply the reluctance ever to imagine 1028 01:03:15,700 --> 01:03:19,033 what the other person is experiencing. 1029 01:03:19,033 --> 01:03:21,766 That is the banality of evil. 1030 01:03:23,900 --> 01:03:26,333 -So, Hannah came up with this 1031 01:03:26,333 --> 01:03:30,400 idea that what really happened was that something 1032 01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:34,733 that was radically evil had become normalized 1033 01:03:34,733 --> 01:03:37,100 through the use of law 1034 01:03:37,100 --> 01:03:40,066 and the bureaucratic organization 1035 01:03:40,066 --> 01:03:46,633 of work killing Jews became like herding cattle or, 1036 01:03:46,633 --> 01:03:48,666 you know, boxing cereal, 1037 01:03:48,666 --> 01:03:54,300 that the utter horror of it was not the work 1038 01:03:54,300 --> 01:03:59,600 of a bunch of devils, but ordinary people like you and me. 1039 01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:04,500 It was your neighbor who had a nice family and mowed the lawn, 1040 01:04:04,500 --> 01:04:10,033 and that person was part of an elaborate, huge mechanism, 1041 01:04:10,033 --> 01:04:13,666 nearly industrial, of killing people. 1042 01:04:13,666 --> 01:04:17,033 -Crimes against humanity involve a lot of people. 1043 01:04:17,033 --> 01:04:20,433 That's why they're atrocious and major. 1044 01:04:20,433 --> 01:04:23,933 And what she wants to say about Nazi totalitarianism 1045 01:04:23,933 --> 01:04:26,833 is it corrupted everybody. 1046 01:04:26,833 --> 01:04:31,500 -Her example was of Jewish leaders in Jewish communities 1047 01:04:31,500 --> 01:04:34,066 who collaborated with the Nazis, 1048 01:04:55,166 --> 01:04:59,700 -Eichmann's modus operandi is that he would come to a city, 1049 01:04:59,700 --> 01:05:02,033 find the Jews who wanted to work with him, 1050 01:05:02,033 --> 01:05:04,766 and make them the Jewish leaders, the Judenraete, 1051 01:05:04,766 --> 01:05:09,933 and then they would do what he asked in return for favors. 1052 01:05:09,933 --> 01:05:11,700 They would organize the Jews. 1053 01:05:11,700 --> 01:05:13,866 They would make people wear the yellow star. 1054 01:05:13,866 --> 01:05:15,866 They would then decide who gets deported 1055 01:05:15,866 --> 01:05:18,333 and they would decide who gets saved. 1056 01:05:55,900 --> 01:05:58,066 -We know how the Jewish officials felt 1057 01:05:58,066 --> 01:06:00,233 when they became instruments of murder, 1058 01:06:00,233 --> 01:06:03,266 like captains whose ships were about to sink 1059 01:06:03,266 --> 01:06:05,633 and who succeeded in bringing them safe to port 1060 01:06:05,633 --> 01:06:10,500 by casting overboard a great part of their precious cargo, 1061 01:06:10,500 --> 01:06:14,466 like saviors who, with 100 victims, save 1,000 people, 1062 01:06:14,466 --> 01:06:18,333 with 1,000, 10,000 victims. 1063 01:06:18,333 --> 01:06:21,066 To a Jew, this role of the Jewish leaders in 1064 01:06:21,066 --> 01:06:23,200 the destruction of their own people 1065 01:06:23,200 --> 01:06:28,433 is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story. 1066 01:06:28,433 --> 01:06:32,100 ♪♪ 1067 01:06:32,100 --> 01:06:34,933 -When her "Report on the Banality of Evil" 1068 01:06:34,933 --> 01:06:37,666 was published in 1963, 1069 01:06:37,666 --> 01:06:42,000 she was told that what she had seen was wrong. 1070 01:06:46,833 --> 01:06:50,066 -There were highly personal attacks, 1071 01:06:50,066 --> 01:06:52,600 highly emotional response. 1072 01:06:53,466 --> 01:06:56,366 A lot of pain and fury and confusion 1073 01:06:56,366 --> 01:06:59,100 was being poured on her. 1074 01:07:04,133 --> 01:07:08,866 -What she didn't see was the effect of the testimony 1075 01:07:08,866 --> 01:07:12,100 of Holocaust survivors from that trial on everybody else. 1076 01:07:12,100 --> 01:07:14,400 So some people, especially in America and Europe, 1077 01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,033 were hearing this stuff for the first time. 1078 01:07:17,033 --> 01:07:22,000 And so the world was not ready to hear about banality of evil, 1079 01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:24,666 and she totally misjudged that. 1080 01:07:28,433 --> 01:07:29,733 [ Telephone rings ] 1081 01:07:31,100 --> 01:07:35,400 -I immediately phoned Hannah to talk to her about the article. 1082 01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:37,333 I was shocked by the manner 1083 01:07:37,333 --> 01:07:40,966 in which she gave Jews responsibility for the Shoah. 1084 01:07:40,966 --> 01:07:43,166 Instead of describing the tragic, 1085 01:07:43,166 --> 01:07:46,633 terrible state of affairs as forced cooperation by the Jews 1086 01:07:46,633 --> 01:07:48,866 in their own destruction, 1087 01:07:48,866 --> 01:07:51,500 Hannah made herself judge over the behavior 1088 01:07:51,500 --> 01:07:54,866 of people caught in this terrible situation. 1089 01:07:56,066 --> 01:07:57,966 I could forgive her even less 1090 01:07:57,966 --> 01:08:02,000 when she advocated the thesis of the banality of evil, 1091 01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:04,466 as if Eichmann was, strictly speaking, 1092 01:08:04,466 --> 01:08:07,233 an innocent, who simply and faithfully 1093 01:08:07,233 --> 01:08:09,933 fulfilled what he was instructed to do. 1094 01:08:11,166 --> 01:08:14,166 Hannah painted a terribly distorted image of 1095 01:08:14,166 --> 01:08:17,833 both the Jewish and the Nazi side. 1096 01:08:17,833 --> 01:08:19,900 I had to break off our relationship, 1097 01:08:19,900 --> 01:08:21,833 because the foundation of our friendship 1098 01:08:21,833 --> 01:08:25,100 had been destroyed by her Eichmann book. 1099 01:08:25,100 --> 01:08:27,500 ♪♪ 1100 01:08:27,500 --> 01:08:29,433 [ Cawing ] 1101 01:08:29,433 --> 01:08:35,533 ♪♪ 1102 01:08:35,533 --> 01:08:38,066 -When I wrote "Eichmann in Jerusalem," 1103 01:08:38,066 --> 01:08:41,100 one of my main intentions was to destroy the legend 1104 01:08:41,100 --> 01:08:43,933 of the greatness of evil... 1105 01:08:45,333 --> 01:08:47,466 to take away from people the admiration 1106 01:08:47,466 --> 01:08:51,000 they have for the great evildoers, like Richard III. 1107 01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:52,933 -[ Shouting in German ] 1108 01:08:52,933 --> 01:08:56,433 -I found, in Bertolt Brecht, the following remark. 1109 01:08:56,433 --> 01:08:59,466 "The great political criminals must be exposed 1110 01:08:59,466 --> 01:09:02,233 and exposed especially to laughter. 1111 01:09:03,666 --> 01:09:06,200 They are not great political criminals, 1112 01:09:06,200 --> 01:09:09,866 but people who permitted great political crimes, 1113 01:09:09,866 --> 01:09:12,633 which is something entirely different." 1114 01:09:14,733 --> 01:09:17,066 -Above all, people were offended by the question 1115 01:09:17,066 --> 01:09:19,033 you raised of the extent 1116 01:09:19,033 --> 01:09:22,133 to which Jews are to blame for their passive acceptance 1117 01:09:22,133 --> 01:09:24,200 of the German mass murders 1118 01:09:24,200 --> 01:09:25,900 or to what extent the collaboration 1119 01:09:25,900 --> 01:09:27,766 of certain Jewish councils 1120 01:09:27,766 --> 01:09:31,366 almost constitutes a kind of guilt of their own. 1121 01:09:33,500 --> 01:09:36,600 -First of all, I must, in all friendliness, state 1122 01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:40,400 that you yourself have become a victim of this campaign. 1123 01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:47,366 Nowhere in my book did I reproach the Jewish people 1124 01:09:47,366 --> 01:09:49,566 with non-resistance. 1125 01:09:53,733 --> 01:09:55,900 -I've read the book. I know that. 1126 01:09:55,900 --> 01:09:58,966 But some of the criticisms made of you are based on the tone 1127 01:09:58,966 --> 01:10:00,833 in which many passages are written. 1128 01:10:03,366 --> 01:10:06,033 -That the tone of voice is predominantly 1129 01:10:06,033 --> 01:10:08,500 ironic is completely true. 1130 01:10:08,500 --> 01:10:11,400 Look, there are people who take it amiss, 1131 01:10:11,400 --> 01:10:14,800 and I can understand that, in a sense. 1132 01:10:14,800 --> 01:10:19,433 When people reproach me with accusing the Jewish people, 1133 01:10:19,433 --> 01:10:23,400 that is a malignant lie and propaganda and nothing else. 1134 01:10:23,400 --> 01:10:25,166 The tone of voice, 1135 01:10:25,166 --> 01:10:28,266 however, is an objection against me personally, 1136 01:10:28,266 --> 01:10:31,166 and I cannot do anything about that. 1137 01:10:33,033 --> 01:10:34,833 -I mean, she'd never backtrack. 1138 01:10:34,833 --> 01:10:39,466 She knows something's gone wrong, and I think it broke her. 1139 01:10:39,466 --> 01:10:42,866 She stopped writing poetry after "Eichmann." 1140 01:10:43,866 --> 01:10:46,566 -In New York, the whole apartment was literally filled 1141 01:10:46,566 --> 01:10:49,033 with unopened mail. 1142 01:10:49,033 --> 01:10:52,133 Almost all of it about the Eichmann business. 1143 01:10:52,133 --> 01:10:57,100 People are resorting to any means to destroy my reputation. 1144 01:10:57,100 --> 01:10:59,466 If I had known this would happen, 1145 01:10:59,466 --> 01:11:03,400 I probably would've done precisely what I did do. 1146 01:11:03,400 --> 01:11:09,266 ♪♪ 1147 01:11:09,266 --> 01:11:14,533 -Hannah Arendt returns to America from the Eichmann trial 1148 01:11:14,533 --> 01:11:18,733 and then begins a pretty awful time in her life. 1149 01:11:18,733 --> 01:11:22,966 She has a course to teach -- on Machiavelli, of all things. 1150 01:11:22,966 --> 01:11:25,433 Halfway through teaching the course, 1151 01:11:25,433 --> 01:11:27,733 her beloved Heinrich falls ill. 1152 01:11:27,733 --> 01:11:31,966 She rushes back. She's in a car in Central Park. 1153 01:11:31,966 --> 01:11:35,533 A truck comes, smashes into the taxi. 1154 01:11:35,533 --> 01:11:38,966 Hannah Arendt is pulverized. Face is smashed to bits. 1155 01:11:38,966 --> 01:11:40,333 She's broken nine ribs. 1156 01:11:40,333 --> 01:11:42,033 She's practically lost an eye socket. 1157 01:11:42,033 --> 01:11:44,100 She is an absolute mess. 1158 01:11:44,100 --> 01:11:48,666 -I awoke in the car and became conscious of what had happened. 1159 01:11:48,666 --> 01:11:50,233 I tried out my limbs, 1160 01:11:50,233 --> 01:11:53,900 saw that I was not paralyzed and could see with both eyes, 1161 01:11:53,900 --> 01:11:56,266 then tried out my memory very carefully, 1162 01:11:56,266 --> 01:12:01,466 decade by decade, poetry, Greek and German and English, 1163 01:12:01,466 --> 01:12:05,866 then telephone numbers -- everything alright. 1164 01:12:05,866 --> 01:12:08,333 The point was that, for a fleeting moment, 1165 01:12:08,333 --> 01:12:10,666 I had the feeling that it was up to me 1166 01:12:10,666 --> 01:12:13,566 whether I wanted to live or die. 1167 01:12:13,566 --> 01:12:17,066 And though I did not think that death was terrible, 1168 01:12:17,066 --> 01:12:20,466 I also thought that life was quite beautiful 1169 01:12:20,466 --> 01:12:22,833 and that I'd rather take it. 1170 01:12:22,833 --> 01:12:25,900 [ Monitor beeping ] 1171 01:12:25,900 --> 01:12:30,500 ♪♪ 1172 01:12:30,500 --> 01:12:33,166 [ Birds chirping ] 1173 01:12:33,166 --> 01:12:35,166 ♪♪ 1174 01:12:35,166 --> 01:12:36,600 [ Lighter clicks ] 1175 01:12:36,600 --> 01:12:43,866 ♪♪ 1176 01:12:43,866 --> 01:12:47,366 Dear Mary, we acquired a television set 1177 01:12:47,366 --> 01:12:49,466 and use it very infrequently for news 1178 01:12:49,466 --> 01:12:52,233 and presidential announcements. 1179 01:12:52,233 --> 01:12:56,866 The more I see of Johnson, the less do I like him. 1180 01:12:56,866 --> 01:12:59,833 I'm worried and have no confidence in LBJ. 1181 01:12:59,833 --> 01:13:03,066 -Against United States ships... seas and the Gulf. 1182 01:13:03,066 --> 01:13:05,600 -What troubles me more than anything else 1183 01:13:05,600 --> 01:13:08,300 is the sort of lying we have begun to practice. 1184 01:13:08,300 --> 01:13:10,400 -On the orders I gave after... 1185 01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:12,366 -In the 1960s, 1186 01:13:12,366 --> 01:13:16,000 she reinvented herself as a voice of American politics, 1187 01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:18,866 and what she witnessed in the Vietnam War 1188 01:13:18,866 --> 01:13:22,166 was the success of the resistance to the government, 1189 01:13:22,166 --> 01:13:24,633 the exposure of its lies, 1190 01:13:24,633 --> 01:13:28,933 and to the protections of civil liberties and civil rights. 1191 01:13:28,933 --> 01:13:31,366 -I've just come from a student protest meeting 1192 01:13:31,366 --> 01:13:33,466 against our policy in Vietnam. 1193 01:13:33,466 --> 01:13:37,133 The whole thing was extremely reasonable and un-fanatical, 1194 01:13:37,133 --> 01:13:39,600 so crowded that one could hardly get through. 1195 01:13:39,600 --> 01:13:41,000 -We will not have mass arrests. 1196 01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:44,533 -This generation seems characterized by sheer courage, 1197 01:13:44,533 --> 01:13:46,833 an astounding will to action 1198 01:13:46,833 --> 01:13:50,033 and by a no-less astounding confidence in the possibility 1199 01:13:50,033 --> 01:13:52,000 of social change. 1200 01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:57,166 -She really loved the civil-disobedience movement. 1201 01:13:57,166 --> 01:13:59,266 At the same time, there was violence, 1202 01:13:59,266 --> 01:14:01,533 the rise of political violence. 1203 01:14:01,533 --> 01:14:07,066 You start to see a real challenge not just to freedom, 1204 01:14:07,066 --> 01:14:08,833 but to civil freedom. 1205 01:14:08,833 --> 01:14:11,766 [ Gunshots ] 1206 01:14:11,766 --> 01:14:16,966 -There's no doubt that someone of her background and experience 1207 01:14:16,966 --> 01:14:21,266 would see harbinger of a possible bad outcome 1208 01:14:21,266 --> 01:14:22,733 of authoritarianism. 1209 01:14:22,733 --> 01:14:24,766 -Take your hands off of me unless you intend to arrest me. 1210 01:14:24,766 --> 01:14:25,966 Don't push me, please. 1211 01:14:31,566 --> 01:14:34,233 -This is the kind of thing that can threaten the norms 1212 01:14:34,233 --> 01:14:36,766 and the institutions that she thinks ground 1213 01:14:36,766 --> 01:14:38,900 and preserve freedom in the United States. 1214 01:14:38,900 --> 01:14:40,433 [ Typewriter keys clacking ] 1215 01:14:40,433 --> 01:14:43,766 -I'm working on an essay on power and violence. 1216 01:14:44,933 --> 01:14:46,833 I am trying to understand the experiences 1217 01:14:46,833 --> 01:14:49,466 of recent years here. 1218 01:14:50,333 --> 01:14:52,500 Power and violence are not the same. 1219 01:14:52,500 --> 01:14:53,900 [ Dogs barking ] 1220 01:14:53,900 --> 01:14:57,066 The power of the laws or the constitution rests on 1221 01:14:57,066 --> 01:14:59,133 the consent and support of the people. 1222 01:14:59,133 --> 01:15:01,866 -Martin Luther King dedicated his life... 1223 01:15:01,866 --> 01:15:06,233 -Wherever this power is intact, violence is unnecessary. 1224 01:15:06,233 --> 01:15:07,966 [ Screaming ] 1225 01:15:07,966 --> 01:15:10,433 -What she saw towards the end of the '60s, 1226 01:15:10,433 --> 01:15:12,433 and the beginning of the '70s 1227 01:15:12,433 --> 01:15:17,433 was the acceptance of violence as a way of doing politics. 1228 01:15:17,433 --> 01:15:21,033 That terrified her, because she thought it kind of meant 1229 01:15:21,033 --> 01:15:22,700 that totalitarianism had won. 1230 01:15:22,700 --> 01:15:24,400 [ Thunder rumbles ] 1231 01:15:33,233 --> 01:15:37,733 -Dear Mary, I'm now sitting in Heinrich's room 1232 01:15:37,733 --> 01:15:40,400 and using his typewriter. 1233 01:15:40,400 --> 01:15:42,900 Gives me something to hold on to. 1234 01:15:43,700 --> 01:15:45,833 I don't think I told you that, for 10 long years, 1235 01:15:45,833 --> 01:15:47,900 I had been constantly afraid 1236 01:15:47,900 --> 01:15:51,000 that just a sudden death would happen. 1237 01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:54,633 This frequently bordered on real panic. 1238 01:15:54,633 --> 01:15:56,900 Where the fear was and the panic, 1239 01:15:56,900 --> 01:15:59,500 there's now sheer emptiness. 1240 01:15:59,500 --> 01:16:06,566 ♪♪ 1241 01:16:06,566 --> 01:16:09,400 -There were two things working at the same time. 1242 01:16:09,400 --> 01:16:14,100 One was despair, but the other was resilience. 1243 01:16:14,100 --> 01:16:16,133 Being alone with your thoughts, 1244 01:16:16,133 --> 01:16:19,966 but being in the world at the same time. 1245 01:16:23,133 --> 01:16:25,466 -I sit here much worried. 1246 01:16:25,466 --> 01:16:29,033 Things are in an extremely dangerous state here, 1247 01:16:29,033 --> 01:16:31,366 but I sometimes think this is the only country 1248 01:16:31,366 --> 01:16:35,466 where a republic at least still has a chance. 1249 01:16:35,466 --> 01:16:39,900 I have no great desire to watch another republic go to the dogs. 1250 01:16:42,300 --> 01:16:44,766 -Daniel Ellsberg, ex-Pentagon employee, 1251 01:16:44,766 --> 01:16:47,066 made history by leaking to The New York Times 1252 01:16:47,066 --> 01:16:48,933 the Pentagon Papers. 1253 01:16:48,933 --> 01:16:52,333 -So, the Pentagon Papers breaks and reveals 1254 01:16:52,333 --> 01:16:56,300 that the government have been lying about Vietnam War. 1255 01:16:56,300 --> 01:16:58,433 -As I felt that the concealment of this information 1256 01:16:58,433 --> 01:17:02,966 for 25 years has now led to the death of 50,000 Americans 1257 01:17:02,966 --> 01:17:04,966 and several hundred thousand Vietnamese 1258 01:17:04,966 --> 01:17:06,833 in the last few years, 1259 01:17:06,833 --> 01:17:09,866 a couple of million over 20 years of this involvement. 1260 01:17:09,866 --> 01:17:12,033 -They knew the war was being lost. 1261 01:17:12,033 --> 01:17:14,500 They knew that they were killing people at much higher rates 1262 01:17:14,500 --> 01:17:16,100 than they were telling us. 1263 01:17:16,100 --> 01:17:18,633 They knew the costs were much worse. 1264 01:17:18,633 --> 01:17:21,966 The lie was told to serve a purpose, 1265 01:17:21,966 --> 01:17:24,666 to help justify the war in Vietnam 1266 01:17:24,666 --> 01:17:27,933 and pursue the anti-communist agenda. 1267 01:17:29,033 --> 01:17:31,600 -If everybody always lies to you, 1268 01:17:31,600 --> 01:17:34,966 the consequence is not that you believe the lies, 1269 01:17:34,966 --> 01:17:38,500 but, rather, that nobody believes anything any longer. 1270 01:17:38,500 --> 01:17:40,833 And the people that no longer can believe anything 1271 01:17:40,833 --> 01:17:42,700 cannot make up its mind. 1272 01:17:42,700 --> 01:17:46,333 It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, 1273 01:17:46,333 --> 01:17:50,333 but also of its capacity to think and to judge. 1274 01:17:50,333 --> 01:17:55,000 And with such a people, you can then do what you please. 1275 01:17:56,633 --> 01:17:58,433 -Two former White House aides 1276 01:17:58,433 --> 01:17:59,866 with electronic receiving devices 1277 01:17:59,866 --> 01:18:01,866 were in the room of the Watergate Hotel 1278 01:18:01,866 --> 01:18:04,300 on the early morning of June 17th 1279 01:18:04,300 --> 01:18:06,666 when five men with bugging gear 1280 01:18:06,666 --> 01:18:08,333 were found in Democratic headquarters 1281 01:18:08,333 --> 01:18:10,200 here in the Watergate building. 1282 01:18:12,700 --> 01:18:14,366 -Watergate has eaten rather deeply 1283 01:18:14,366 --> 01:18:16,600 into my time and attention. 1284 01:18:16,600 --> 01:18:18,466 The overwhelming number of scandals 1285 01:18:18,466 --> 01:18:22,400 that have come to light is, in a way, self-defeating. 1286 01:18:22,400 --> 01:18:23,766 -Oh, I think there was no question 1287 01:18:23,766 --> 01:18:25,833 that the coverup began that Saturday 1288 01:18:25,833 --> 01:18:27,500 when we realized there was a break-in. 1289 01:18:27,500 --> 01:18:29,633 -I began by telling the president 1290 01:18:29,633 --> 01:18:32,566 that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. 1291 01:18:32,566 --> 01:18:34,333 -Mr. Nixon was asked about break-ins and 1292 01:18:34,333 --> 01:18:36,600 burglaries and wiretapping. 1293 01:18:36,600 --> 01:18:38,866 He said a Supreme Court decision has indicated 1294 01:18:38,866 --> 01:18:42,133 inherent power to the president to protect the country. 1295 01:18:42,133 --> 01:18:43,766 -Well, when the President does it, 1296 01:18:43,766 --> 01:18:45,600 that means that it is not illegal. 1297 01:18:46,433 --> 01:18:50,566 -Dearest Hannah, Nixon's appeal to national security 1298 01:18:50,566 --> 01:18:55,833 expresses, I think, his true political aim of a police state. 1299 01:18:55,833 --> 01:18:59,733 I immediately thought of "The Origins of Totalitarianism." 1300 01:19:00,933 --> 01:19:04,266 -Dear Mary, everybody, so it must seem, 1301 01:19:04,266 --> 01:19:06,833 did more or less what Nixon did, 1302 01:19:06,833 --> 01:19:10,133 and where all are guilty, no one is. 1303 01:19:10,133 --> 01:19:13,233 Since Nixon actually behaved like a tyrant, 1304 01:19:13,233 --> 01:19:15,500 his downfall would be a kind of revolution. 1305 01:19:15,500 --> 01:19:18,866 -Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective 1306 01:19:18,866 --> 01:19:20,133 at noon tomorrow. 1307 01:19:22,100 --> 01:19:24,200 -It was obvious that, during Watergate, 1308 01:19:24,200 --> 01:19:27,266 crimes had been committed, big crimes. 1309 01:19:27,266 --> 01:19:30,833 But what's amazing is how many people 1310 01:19:30,833 --> 01:19:35,200 who knew better weren't willing to stand up and stop it. 1311 01:19:35,200 --> 01:19:40,100 So many people cared more about power 1312 01:19:40,100 --> 01:19:42,966 than they did about the health of the republic 1313 01:19:42,966 --> 01:19:45,333 and doing what was right. 1314 01:19:49,233 --> 01:19:50,900 -Watergate has revealed perhaps one 1315 01:19:50,900 --> 01:19:52,933 of the deepest constitutional crises 1316 01:19:52,933 --> 01:19:54,900 this country has ever known. 1317 01:19:56,500 --> 01:19:58,266 It's the whole fabric of government 1318 01:19:58,266 --> 01:20:01,066 which is actually at stake. 1319 01:20:01,066 --> 01:20:02,966 The Founding Fathers never believed 1320 01:20:02,966 --> 01:20:06,500 that tyranny could arise out of the Executive Office. 1321 01:20:06,500 --> 01:20:10,933 However, we know today that the greatest danger of tyranny 1322 01:20:10,933 --> 01:20:14,100 is, of course, from the executive. 1323 01:20:14,100 --> 01:20:16,100 ♪♪ 1324 01:20:16,100 --> 01:20:17,466 [ Applause ] 1325 01:20:17,466 --> 01:20:21,233 -Suddenly, the very idea of the United States itself 1326 01:20:21,233 --> 01:20:26,000 as a constitutional republic was called into question. 1327 01:20:26,000 --> 01:20:27,600 And this scared Arendt. 1328 01:20:27,600 --> 01:20:32,033 Not only is the republic itself in danger, 1329 01:20:32,033 --> 01:20:34,933 but if fascism is going to emerge in America, 1330 01:20:34,933 --> 01:20:37,800 it's going to come from the Executive Branch, 1331 01:20:37,800 --> 01:20:42,466 from the liberties the Executive feels free to take. 1332 01:20:42,466 --> 01:20:48,333 ♪♪ 1333 01:20:48,333 --> 01:20:51,566 The last major speech she gives in the United States 1334 01:20:51,566 --> 01:20:56,900 is for the bicentennial anniversary of America. 1335 01:20:56,900 --> 01:20:59,766 ♪♪ 1336 01:20:59,766 --> 01:21:03,533 -We may very well stand at one of those decisive turning points 1337 01:21:03,533 --> 01:21:09,333 of history which separate whole eras from each other. 1338 01:21:09,333 --> 01:21:11,500 At such moments in history, 1339 01:21:11,500 --> 01:21:14,166 when the writing on the wall becomes too frightening, 1340 01:21:14,166 --> 01:21:17,600 most people flee to the reassurance of day-to-day life, 1341 01:21:17,600 --> 01:21:20,700 with its unchanging pressing demands. 1342 01:21:21,666 --> 01:21:25,266 One of the discoveries of totalitarian governments 1343 01:21:25,266 --> 01:21:27,966 was the method of digging giant holes in which 1344 01:21:27,966 --> 01:21:30,500 to bury unwelcome facts and events, 1345 01:21:30,500 --> 01:21:33,833 for the past was condemned to be forgotten 1346 01:21:33,833 --> 01:21:36,433 as though it never had been. 1347 01:21:37,533 --> 01:21:40,166 But I rather believe with Faulkner, 1348 01:21:40,166 --> 01:21:42,666 who wrote, "The past is never dead. 1349 01:21:42,666 --> 01:21:45,600 It is not even past. 1350 01:21:45,600 --> 01:21:48,333 And this for the simple reason that the world we live in 1351 01:21:48,333 --> 01:21:51,666 at any moment is the world of the past." 1352 01:21:54,200 --> 01:21:55,966 When the facts come home to roost, 1353 01:21:55,966 --> 01:21:58,866 let us try at least to make them welcome. 1354 01:21:58,866 --> 01:22:03,933 Let us try not to escape into utopias, images, theories, 1355 01:22:03,933 --> 01:22:06,733 or sheer follies. 1356 01:22:06,733 --> 01:22:09,100 For it was the greatness of this republic 1357 01:22:09,100 --> 01:22:12,900 to give due account for the sake of freedom 1358 01:22:12,900 --> 01:22:17,366 to the best in man and to the worst. 1359 01:22:17,366 --> 01:22:23,066 ♪♪ 1360 01:22:23,066 --> 01:22:25,633 [ Light switch clicks ] 1361 01:22:25,633 --> 01:22:34,866 ♪♪ 1362 01:22:46,466 --> 01:23:22,066 ♪♪ 1363 01:23:22,066 --> 01:23:30,833 ♪♪ 1364 01:23:30,833 --> 01:23:43,833 ♪♪ 1364 01:23:44,305 --> 01:24:44,746