HERMAN LEVIN:
"Office of American Absorption."
So, we need to be absorbed,
do we?
We're not American enough yet?
Living on Summit Avenue,
in the city of Newark,
in the state of New Jersey?
I'm not American enough?
♪ ("PLOT AGAINST AMERICA"
PODCAST THEME PLAYS) ♪
PETER SAGAL:
Hi, this is Peter Sagal,
normally the host of NPR's
 Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!,
here again with episode three
of the official podcast
for HBO's Plot Against America.
And once again I am joined
by the executive producer
and creator of the show,
David Simon.
-Hello again, David.
-DAVID SIMON: Thanks again.
PETER: We are talking this week
about part three
of The Plot Against America,
so this is your usual warning
that if you like to actually
see your TV without knowing
what's going to happen,
stop listening to this podcast,
watch the episode,
and come back to us.
This episode,
just to recap briefly,
begins with a nightmare,
and we then enter into
a nightmarish version
of American history,
in which Charles A. Lindbergh
has won the presidency
and we now see what that is like
for the Levin family
of Newark,
for Rabbi Bengelsdorf,
who's now an official
in the Lindbergh administration,
and, ultimately,
for the country.
This is where the story
of the show really veers
from American history
as it was lived,
so it's worth it just to mention
what happened.
In real life, of course,
FDR won the 1940 election.
The year 1941 passed
with isolationist sentiment
continuing to hold the day
in America,
especially as Germany invaded
Soviet Russia,
until finally everything changed
with Pearl Harbor.
Roth may have made up
this election and the result,
but he did not make up
the nativist, anti-Semitic,
-xenophobic, isolationist strain
in American thought at the time.
-DAVID: Not at all.
The German American Bund
and the America Firsters
genuinely came to believe
that Jewish Americans
were one of the elements
pushing America
towards a war
that we did not need.
But, you know,
it wasn't all racialist,
and it wasn't all unreasoned.
There was a sense that
Europe was perpetually
at each other's throats,
that the First World War
had solved nothing,
that we were in a new hemisphere
and we could maybe fashion
our own history independent
of the rest of the world.
There was a core logic
to isolationism
that isn't necessarily
predisposed to anti-Semitism
or fascism.
But those were fellow travelers.
-PETER: Right.
-Anti-Semitism and fascism.
PETER: And in, now,
the version of America
in which this TV show is set,
Lindbergh is now president
and, shall we say,
activates all that latent stuff
in the American character,
and we see almost immediately
that it's had an effect,
because a Jewish cemetery
has been vandalized
with swastikas and other slogans
and we see Herman
and his friend Shepsie there
trying to clean it off.
And Shepsie is leaving.
Herman is like,
"Absolutely not.
I am not letting them
do this to me.
It's my country too and I'm
gonna stand up for myself."
Which is a brave thing to do?
DAVID: It's where German Jewry
found itself in 1932,
-1931, 1933, 1934.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: It's exactly that moment.
PETER: Well, and you mean
just this sense of, like,
"Yes, this Nazi regime
in Germany has taken over,
but it's my country.
I'm not gonna be driven out.
-I'm going to..."
-DAVID: "They can't mean
-everything they say."
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: "They have to see
that we're Germans."
German Jews who had fought--
who were veterans
of World War I
couldn't believe that
they were not German,
that they wouldn't be
perceived for being
the patriots they were.
But they can inform you
at the drop of a hat
that you're mistaken.
-Seemingly civilized countries
have competed with themselves...
-PETER: Yes.
DAVID: ...and with each other
for the ability to, uh,
malign and misuse and exile
their Jewish populations,
and so there comes a moment
where every Jew thinks,
"What am I?
I believe I'm an American..."
But if you're Jewish,
they say you always have
one bag packed.
That's not unique to Judaism.
I mean,
at any given moment,
African Americans are reminded
that there are fellow citizens
that think their status
is somehow questionable.
Latinos.
That notion of the hierarchical
American is one of the most
dangerous and destructive things
we have going.
PETER: Speaking of hierarchies,
there's a conversation
in the cemetery,
how the mayor
and the police commissioner
came out in support
but that they were late.
There's this sense,
this is actually something
that I think is very relevant
to today,
which is... you realize
how much you assume
that the machinery of the state
will protect you.
-DAVID: Right. Right.
-PETER: At least here
in America.
At the beginning of the episode,
Herman seems to still believe,
as frustrated as he is,
that the authorities
will be on their side
-and protect them.
-DAVID: Institutional America
will respond like
Institutional America
-is supposed to respond.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: Everyone has the illusion
of control.
And at the point at which
your democratic norms
stop working,
it is an illusion.
It is an illusion.
This is fragile stuff,
democracy.
My dad had something
that he said
every Passover, every Seder.
He said, "Freedom can never
be completely won,
but it can be lost."
That's the one-sheet tagline
for Plot Against America.
PETER: You should probably
explain what a one-sheet
tagline is.
DAVID: Oh, it's the--
the poster. The billboard.
Bernie Simon is up there.
That's his line.
I copped it from my father.
But what it says is that
democracy-- you know,
Churchill,
to quote a conservative Tory,
he said, "Democracy's
the worst form of government
until you consider
all the alternatives."
That's pretty accurate.
Which is to say it's messy,
it relies on consensus,
it can never be like a laser,
the same way fascism can be.
To be goal-oriented,
you have to build consensus.
It's a struggle.
And it's a quotidian struggle.
Every day, you get up
and you try to kill
a couple snakes.
And push the string.
And that is not the cleanest
or easiest way to govern,
but it is the only way
to self-govern.
So it never feels like
it's working completely,
it always feels like
it has problems,
the day never arrives
where you say,
"Well, this is the democracy
we deserve."
-PETER: Right.
-DAVID: It never comes.
And every day, you're gonna
feel the same way about it.
There's no romantic notion
to that,
and there's no moment
where you cross the goal line
and think, "Well, the--
you know,
don't have to worry
about this again."
On the other hand,
the moment you stop doing that
and the moment you start
convincing yourself
that these institutions,
your justice department,
-your courts...
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: ...your education wo--
that they'll all do what
they're supposed to do because
they're charged with that
and you can stop engaging
in the fight
to make your government
your government,
that's when you lose it.
PETER: Alvin goes off to war
in this episode.
Everything that happens
during Alvin's sojourn
in the Canadian Army
is your creation
-for the TV show.
-DAVID: Yeah.
PETER: So why was it important
to you to show
what Alvin went through?
DAVID: I'll be honest,
if we'd have had
ten more days of filming
and six million more dollars
in the budget,
I might have followed him
right up to the commando raid.
I might have actually
filmed the sequence.
Uh, as it was, I think it's
probably a better notion
that that happens offscreen.
The actual combat.
But the idea that he represents
at the point of conflict,
that we see him as a soldier
preparing to do battle
with fascism, gives
the character real resonance,
so that when he comes back
and he is less than ennobled
at all points,
we nonetheless see him
at the moment
of his actual ambition
with regard to being
an honorable soldier
in the fight.
There's something about that
that makes his journey
feel much more real,
and it makes him
getting off the train
that much more heartbreaking
when he comes back.
And I feel like showing
just enough of it,
so that you believe
he was all in
at one point,
gives the character
real resonance.
It pays dividends
as you go through the piece.
PETER: There's a scene
that begins
as something we've seen before,
his romance with a girl
in a bar. They're gonna go
off to war, what the hell.
But it leads to certainly
my favorite scene
in the episode,
if not one in the whole series,
in which Alvin and this woman
have a conversation in bed.
JUNE:
 You don't seem so different.
(ALVIN CHUCKLES)
JUNE: (SCOFFS) I mean to say,
 you believe in
more or less the same stuff
as anybody else.
-God and all that.
-ALVIN: I don't believe in God.
JUNE: Then why be Jewish?
ALVIN: You make it sound
 like a choice.
WOMAN: Isn't it, in a way?
(DISTANT EXPLOSION)
ALVIN: I believe...
 in my father...
who was a Jew...
and in his father, a Jew...
and his father and his father
and all the way back
to whatever the hell tribe
was wandering around the desert
when someone had the bright idea
to trim off the end
of his prick.
WOMAN: (CHUCKLES)
 So it's about family?
-(SIREN WAILING)
-ALVIN: No, it's more than that.
I'm a Jew
because I was born a Jew
and this whole fucking world
wishes I wasn't.
They want us gone.
All of us.
And they drive themselves crazy
because after all this time,
they still can't get rid of us.
-JUNE: That's it?
-ALVIN: Yeah, that's it.
PETER: I think I was
so grateful
because I've never been able
to be as articulate about it.
Like, well, yes, I don't
actually go to synagogue,
and I don't tend to believe
in any of those things,
but no, I'm a Jew.
If you were raised
as a Catholic,
and then you lose your faith
in the Catholic Church,
you don't refer to yourself
as a Catholic.
You refer to yourself, maybe,
as an ex-Catholic
or maybe a cradle Catholic.
But you're not Catholic anymore
'cause you don't go to church
or take Mass,
you're not Catholic.
DAVID: It's a matter
of theology.
And there is something
about peoplehood
that keeps Jews Jews.
-PETER: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
-DAVID: Or it makes you
feel guilty if you--
if, you know, if--
if you're an apostate,
you really feel...
not as if you've fallen
ideologically
away from the faith,
but as if you've
severed yourself from a...
PETER: Yes. My grandparents
and ancestors
put up with everything
they put up with
-so I could, like, eat bacon?
-DAVID: Well, that's it.
That's it.
I don't believe in God,
I don't keep kosher.
I'm with Spinoza,
I don't believe in chosenness.
You know, I got off
the chosenness trip
-as soon as I heard about it.
-(PETER CHUCKLES)
DAVID: And I don't believe
that any other Jew
has to believe in anything
to be called Jewish.
After the Holocaust,
a lot of Jews
looking at assimilation
and whether or not
to identify as Jewish,
they said, "Don't give Hitler
any posthumous victories.
Don't intermarry, don't--
You know. Raise--"
PETER: "Keep the Jewish people
alive."
DAVID: Yeah.
"They tried to kill us.
Raise your kids Jewish.
You know, be Jewish."
And there's a bravado to that,
but there's also something
that if you're Jewish
you hear it and you go,
"Okay, it's really hard to
exist for any length of time."
Certainly as you get
further away from the Holocaust.
-PETER: Yeah.
-DAVID: It's hard to exist
on a negative.
It's hard to be like,
"I'm Jewish
'cause the world is pissed off
at me being Jewish."
That can only carry you so far.
At a certain point,
there has to be
some personal affirmation.
And you can find those things
and not be religious.
I mean, you know,
there's-- there's a whole
liberation theology
embedded in the Exodus.
The guts of the New Testament,
in terms of addressing
your neighbors yourself,
is in Isaiah.
There's a lot
of good righteousness.
There's also a lot
of misery and xenophobia
in the Old Testament.
You know,
-it's a flawed book.
-(PETER CHUCKLES)
DAVID: But, um...
but an interesting one.
PETER: We look forward
to your adaptation.
DAVID: My adaptation
will only have the good parts
-and leave out the bad parts.
-(PETER LAUGHS)
DAVID: Or maybe vice versa,
actually,
if I'm doing it for work
for HBO.
-But, um...
-(PETER LAUGHS)
DAVID: But honestly,
the examination
of what it means
to be a Jew,
particularly a secular Jew,
is something we've all
wrestled with.
And so I got to that scene
and I was like,
"I am gonna try to say
why I'm Jewish. Me."
I don't know if it would have
landed with Roth.
I think it might have.
From everything I've read
of his work,
I think it would have been
close to the pocket
of what he might have said
if Alvin were challenged
on why he was
over there fighting.
But yeah, I'm very proud
of that scene.
PETER: Let's follow Alvin.
He goes to his training,
he is sent on a mission
that has to do with
pulse navigation.
-That's a real thing?
-DAVID: Yeah.
It was critical
to the Battle of Britain.
It was very new.
And pulse navigation later
would come into actual use.
It's what our whole
air traffic system functions on.
So the British were
experimenting with that.
So were the Germans.
And he's basically told,
part of the mission
of the raid on Norway
is to try to grab the German
equivalent of that stuff
-and bring it back.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: This is all conjured
by Ed Burns and myself,
-and it will later be relevant.
-PETER: Yes.
This will come up again,
which is why
-I'm highlighting it now.
-DAVID: Pay attention, viewers.
PETER: Yes. Pulse navigation,
everybody.
DAVID: Yeah. One of my favorite
lines in the whole thing is...
Alvin. He's brought in
because he has an aptitude
for electronics.
And they ask the two soldiers,
the commandos,
where they had their training.
SCIENTIST: We're also working on
 an off-shoot
of radar technology,
pulsed navigation.
Can either of you make
heads or tails
of that schematic?
ALVIN: (SIGHS) You put
 an electric beam or a beacon
on a plane and it sends pulses.
HASTINGS: Triangulate the pulses
 with ground units
and you can locate planes.
Is that correct?
MAN 1: Quick studies,
 both of you.
Can I ask where you acquired
a healthy understand
-of electronics?
-HASTINGS: University
 of Warwick, sir.
ALVIN:
Irv Simkowitz's garage, sir.
-(PETER LAUGHS)
-DAVID: So, we actually, like,
we embedded this
in such a playful way,
but... I love the British look
on the guy's face
when he says,
"Simkowitz's garage, sir."
And he just looks--
he looks at him like, "Quite."
(LAUGHS)
PETER: The actor Anthony Boyle,
who plays Alvin
and delivers that scene
so beautifully,
is not Jewish.
He's from Northern Ireland.
So he had to learn a Jewish,
New Jersey accent.
And he also had to learn
some Yiddish, right?
DAVID: He got to the point
where he showed up on set
for one of the Friday night
meals
and Azhy Robertson,
who plays young Philip,
was asking for the pronunciation
of a Hebrew word.
And before I could get it
out of my mouth,
Anthony Boyle looked at him
and said, "It's 'baruch.'"
-(PETER LAUGHS)
-DAVID: Or whatever
the word was,
I can't quite remember.
-And I looked at him like,
"Really?"
-(PETER LAUGHS)
DAVID: He didn't break
the accent until the wrap party.
I mean, he showed up
at the wrap party
and began talking in his brogue.
And the crew was falling out.
-PETER: "Who the hell is this?"
-DAVID: "Are you kidding?"
'Cause he came off...
In between takes,
he didn't slip.
He stayed in Jersey.
Uh, he's a remarkable actor.
PETER: I-- I'm just going
to say this.
It has nothing to do
with this,
but nothing will ever
come close in my esteem
to you having Dominic West
in The Wire, who is British,
playing a Baltimore cop
faking an English accent.
-DAVID: Badly. Yeah.
-PETER: Badly.
And it's like a double
half reverse Sopwith Camel.
-It's amazing how he does that.
-(DAVID LAUGHS)
PETER: Just wanted to say that.
DAVID: And, you know, I mean,
thank God you have looping
to back you up,
'cause it's a little bit scary.
It's a little bit scary.
But the truth is,
take the better actor.
That's all. Who's the role?
Take the better actor.
-PETER: Yeah, and they'll
figure it out.
-DAVID: That's right.
PETER: Let's leave Alvin
in Europe,
heading off to his mission,
and we'll come home,
where things continue
to get dark,
as Rabbi Bengelsdorf
announces his new program,
with the extraordinarily
creepy yet friendly name
-of Just Folks.
-DAVID: Just Folks.
PETER: Which is a program
to invite Jewish youth
to go to the Heart of America.
And when you look at somebody
like that
actually creating this program
that will take Jewish children
away from their families
and condition them to be
"Real Americans"...
Does he genuinely believe
it's a good idea?
DAVID: I think he does.
I think he has convinced himself
that the more American...
You know, the classic,
middle American heartland,
American Gothic,
Norman Rockwell version
of Americanism.
The more Jews can apply
themselves to that leitmotif
and demonstrate that they are
quintessentially American,
the better off they will be.
Of course, what's going on
all around him
that he's not attending to
is the fact that
this is landing on Jews who
are not sitting on their porch
speaking Yiddish,
who are not wearing
17th-century frocks and payots.
-PETER: Yes.
-DAVID: They're assimilating
-as fast as every other
immigrant group assimilates.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID:
Maybe in some ways faster.
They are not disadvantaged
by the color of their skin.
You know, it's like
they've got everything for them
and they're seizing it
and they're becoming...
You know, some of them
are becoming Abe Steinheims,
some are becoming Herman Levins,
but they are becoming Americans
so fast it makes your head spin.
And yet he has embraced
this idea
that there's some Americanism
beyond that.
-PETER: Yeah.
-DAVID: Like Moses,
he's gonna lead them to that.
It's weirdly messianic
and it-- it basically
leads to a point
of almost self-loathing,
of "I'm gonna shave so much more
of this stuff off
that pretty soon you won't
be able to tell the Jews
from the non-Jews."
That's the melting pot
to the point where
-you're actually melting
human beings down...
-PETER: Yes. Right.
DAVID: ...into nothingness.
PETER: One of the things
that's amazing to think about,
especially when you're talking
about Bengelsdorf
and his motivation,
is that he may say to himself,
"Well, this is a wonderful,
benevolent, benign way
to solve this problem."
But what do you mean,
"this problem"?
Why is there an assumption
that there's a problem here?
They're simply buying into that.
This idea that the Jews
need to understand
what America really is
-is, in and of itself,
a kind of horror.
-DAVID: Yeah.
PETER: Let's check in
with Evelyn,
who seems to be enjoying
her new life
as Rabbi Bengelsdorf's
assistant,
uh, heading up the New Jersey
office of Just Folks.
And I won't know if "enjoying"
is the right word,
but certainly experiencing
the pleasure
of being his, uh, consort?
DAVID: You know,
what those two actors gave us,
and what we had the opportunity
to do,
was to graft in a genuinely
affectionate love
between the two.
Th-- There's a grounding
in something quite genuine
that the book never can give you
because all that
the Levin family experiences
from externally,
what they're experiencing
in terms of Evelyn's engagement
with the rabbi is opportunism.
It's political opportunism
and opportunism
on Evelyn's behalf
because she's finally got
her hooks into a man to marry,
-and a macher at that.
-PETER: Yes.
DAVID: So it feels as if
they're very shallow,
because their ambitions
are so belligerent
to the existence of the Levins
and other people
who are trying to get through
this moment
that it doesn't grant them
any possibility
that they might themselves
be tragic.
And the thing I think
we were able to deliver
on the part of a lot of
these characters
that are outside
of young Philip's view
in the book, of his narration,
is they have interior lives,
and maybe they're
a little more equivocal,
maybe they're
a little more human,
than Philip's version of them.
And in some ways you're seeing
the genuine affection
that Evelyn has for this man,
and him for her,
juxtaposed against the politics
and the damage done,
which I think makes
the characters
-a lot more interesting.
-PETER: Yeah, I think
Rabbi Bengelsdorf's affection
for Evelyn is genuine;
it's not just an older man
acquiring
some attractive young eye-candy.
I think he's genuinely needy
in a human way
and she fulfils that need,
and I think obviously for her
a caring, fatherly guy
who provides her position
and that life.
So, we've talked about
Rabbi Bengelsdorf's motivation
for starting Just Folks.
Evelyn seems to be going along
with it.
It gives her a place to go.
It gives her work to do.
It gives her a purpose.
But I have to say,
personally,
that scene set
in the Just Folks office,
where we enter,
and there are all these people
who are distinctly not Jewish
wandering around
and, you know,
with their papers
and their folders
and their typing
and their typewriters,
and adding
with their adding machines.
And in a weird way,
seeing Winona Ryder come out
in the middle of it,
this small, dark-haired person
in the midst
of these tall Aryans,
was equally spooky.
It was like,
"Who are these people?"
DAVID: Right.
Few and far between
were the number of Jews
who would take
that civil service job,
so she stands as--
in stark relief.
PETER: Yeah. And look at all
the people
who would take these jobs
and are just doing their jobs,
-you know?
-DAVID: Right.
PETER: There was something
so creepy
about the banality
of that evil.
-DAVID: The bureaucracy. Right.
-PETER: The bureaucracy
of it.
This machinery
of picking up children
and moving them away.
DAVID: And it begins
with something that feels
as if it could be benign.
"You're gonna go learn
what it is to milk a cow."
You know,
there's a little bit of that.
-PETER: Sounds pretty good.
-DAVID: We've all had
field trips to the farm.
So it begins with that,
but, of course,
-it's a six-hour miniseries.
-PETER: Yes.
DAVID: But I had--
To have two actors
who are playing
all of their heart
into the character,
even though the characters
on the page
exist as antagonists
to the Levin family
in the book,
by letting them breathe
a little bit,
John and Winona
gave us the opportunity
to really deepen the tragedy.
PETER: There's that great scene
which juxtaposes two things
as they're about to enter
into this fancy party.
And they talk about the fact
that Henry Ford will be there.
EVELYN: He hates Jews.
 Everyone knows it.
BENGELSDORF: He does.
And yet he will be entirely
polite when you meet him.
Do you know why?
EVELYN: Because you have
 the President's ear.
BENGELSDORF:
 And the President is not,
despite what others say,
a Jew-hater.
So Mr. Ford will behave.
PETER: And you see exactly
what Bengelsdorf's position is.
He's like, "This is how
I'm gonna protect myself
and presumably my people,
by having that close connection
to power."
And it's interesting that it's
then followed up
by his proposal.
Like, in his power,
in his moment of, like--
of security, he's like,
"This is when I will now."
-From that position of power.
-DAVID: I'm delivering my people
and I can deliver you.
-PETER: Exactly.
-DAVID: Yeah.
PETER: Herman's attitude
toward all of this
becomes very clear
in a number of ways
during the trip to Washington.
And Morgan Spector,
the actor who plays Herman,
has thoughts on why
Just Folks,
the Lindbergh presidency,
and the anti-Semitism
cropping up everywhere
are particularly hard to swallow
for someone like Herman.
MORGAN SPECTOR:
 Herman is in some ways,
I think, a classic
second-generation American.
The social contract of America
in the '40s
has worked for him.
If you work hard
and you're willing to sacrifice,
that America will reward you,
and that you'll have
a decent life.
He's seen that promise fulfilled
in his life,
and he has enormous faith
in America and its institutions
and in its democracy
as a result.
He's, I think, acutely aware
of his Jewishness
and proud of it,
but at the same time feels
that that makes him
no less American,
feels very integrated
into the broader social fabric
of the country,
uh, and I think feels that
that's generally the direction
that the country is going,
that more acceptance,
more tolerance,
and a continued sense
of belonging
are, uh, his birthright
as an American.
As a Jewish American.
PETER: Let's go to DC.
I mean, I saw it as...
I mean, obviously they've
left Newark
on a couple of occasions
to go into the city,
but they are leaving
their world
and they're going into
Lindbergh's America
for the first time.
And-- And it's represented
by the capital city.
It turns out that the world
is actually turning
as dark as they thought.
HERMAN: I was just saying,
 Mr. Taylor,
it is the damnedest thing
what this country does
to its great men.
WOMAN: Well, thank goodness
 for Lindbergh.
HERMAN: Compare Lincoln
 to Lindbergh?
MAN: Something bothering you
 about what the lady just said?
A loudmouth Jew.
PETER: And you can just see
Herman getting more belligerent.
Every insult he gets,
he reacts with more anger.
In a weird way,
this is the most, least to me,
the scariest part
of the miniseries so far
because there's been a lot
of worry, there's been threats,
but now the Levins are out
in the world
and there's very little
to protect them.
Get back to the hotel,
they've been removed
from their room.
I mean, it's hard to talk
about realism
in a show that is based
on alternative history.
But do you think that America
would get to that place
so quickly after the election
of a Lindbergh?
Well, you've got to remember
it's 1940
and America was actually
at that place.
There was hard red-lining
against Jews in hotels
and country clubs
and restaurants,
and there was
a real fundamental sense
of there were Jewish places
and Jewish spaces
and there were not.
The same thing, obviously,
for African Americans.
It was a segregated society.
And DC was
a very segregated city.
Except, interestingly enough,
for the federal land.
We were very careful to show
African Americans moving around
on the mall.
Because it was federal
US park property,
you could promenade anywhere
around the monuments.
-PETER: Huh!
-DAVID: It-- It was
an artifice of an America
that was promised
-but never delivered.
-PETER: I had no idea
that was the case.
DAVID: Oh, in the '40s
black families would go picnic
in Hains Point
beside white families
and it was an integrated
environment.
It's fascinating what existed
in the middle of a town
-that was incredibly southern.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: So we have to transport
ourselves back to an America
that really was drawing
those lines
and doing so legally.
There was, you know--
"I don't want you here,
and I'm the manager.
-And... get out."
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: And that was perfectly
legal.
And so there were hotels.
If you were Jewish,
there were places
you could stay.
And there was places
you wouldn't dare stay.
There were places you could
make reservations to eat
and there were places
you wouldn't dare.
And then you graft on the idea
of Lindbergh has now empowered
people
to act on their worst impulses.
-Legally.
-PETER: I mean,
there's actually a line
in the miniseries
where someone says,
"Now these people
have permission."
There's this sense,
and again,
there's some resonance,
I think,
in what's going on today,
that there are a lot of people
walking around
with these feelings, thoughts,
actions they want to take,
but they can't
because there's a sense
of they're
socially unacceptable.
There's certain things
you can't do anymore
in polite society.
You get a leader
who starts doing them,
or saying them,
or giving his tacit permission
to do it,
and it's not like he's
creating that impulse
in everybody.
It was already there.
DAVID: There's a moment
where you decide
that you can go
to a Confederate statue
with a tiki torch
and start screaming,
"You will not replace us,"
and you're plausible.
You're politically plausible.
And that tone
comes from the top.
PETER: Yeah. It's interesting
to think about these scenes
in Washington
with people walking by
and saying these things
about Lindbergh and Jews,
and an encounter, eventually,
in the cafeteria.
There was an article
in the Washington Post
in mid-February
about how there have been
hundreds of incidents
of bullying in schools
with kids echoing
the President's language.
"We're gonna send you back.
We're gonna build a wall.
Build a wall, build a wall."
And it's not like
these feelings were invented
out of whole cloth.
They were there.
DAVID: When all else
is said and done,
the pulpit of the presidency
is essential.
And what tone you set.
-And what is said
and what is not said.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: Whether you're
the president
of some of the people
or all of the people.
PETER: We end
with the restaurant,
where they run into
a genuine bully, anti-Semite,
and Herman stands up to him.
And that's when Mr. Taylor
finally reveals
his inherent decency.
HERMAN: Do we have a problem?
MAN: Winchell's a Jew
 paid for by the British.
So if there ever was
a loudmouth Jew...
TAYLOR: That is enough.
PETER: Turns out he's
a righteous gentile,
-to use the phrase.
-DAVID: As do the people
running the cafeteria.
They have no patience for this.
Roth was really smart about
this in the novel, which--
In Roth's mind,
this does not come down
to it's the Jews
against the gentiles.
-That's not the point
of the novel.
-PETER: Right.
DAVID: This is about
those people who were willing
to stand for the country--
for the republic
as it has to be.
The republic-- As I said,
democracy's exhausting.
But it can't endure
in any cohesive way
without a daily ration
of tolerance
that is doled out
just to begin the day
so that we-- we basically can
do our business as Americans.
And the novel has faith in that.
Which is to say,
at critical moments,
when you think all hope is lost,
and Lindbergh's America
is about to assert itself
on every...
A Taylor shows up.
Or the people in the cafeteria.
They show up and they say,
"That not right."
And it happens again and again
in the novel.
There are moments where
you expect the worst
because the Levins are living
in a prism
of increasing totalitarianism
and increasing tolerance
for anti-Semitism.
Or intolerance, I should say.
Um... Because that's what
they are experiencing,
you start to expect the worst
from Americans who are gentiles.
Roth was careful to place
the totems of real Americanism
right where they needed to be
in the book,
so that when you start
thinking they're all Nazis
and they're all--
No, no, no,
that's not the imp--
You know,
America's actually fighting
for its soul.
And it is right now, too.
The book's not about Lindbergh.
The verdict on whether or not
Lindbergh was a good guy or not
or what damage
he might have done
if he was president
is unimportant.
What could have happened
to the Jews in 1940
in America is unimportant.
Whatever happened, happened.
The book exists,
the reason HBO spends
the money to do it,
the reason I spent
two years doing it
-is it's an allegory for now.
-PETER: Yeah.
DAVID: It's about tolerance.
You know, the allegory is
"Who are
the vulnerable cohorts?
Now, who is being used as grist
to deliver fear
so that we can have
the politics we're having now,
so the people can take power
and use politics?
Which people are vulnerable now
and how are they being treated?
And where does everybody stand
on the continuum
of what do you say
and what do you do
and what's your responsibility
as a citizen of a republic?"
And that, at every moment
in the book,
Roth examines it.
He holds up Taylor,
he holds up Alvin,
he holds up Bengelsdorf,
and he says, "What did you do
and when did you do it?
And why? And will the verdict
on you be...
will it be benign
or will you be held
in low regard?"
PETER: Taylor's example
for Herman is so powerful
that he ends up standing up
and starts singing.
HERMAN: ♪ Oh, the moonlight's
Fair tonight along the Wabash ♪
♪ From the fields there comes
 The breath of new mown hay ♪
PETER: He puts on
that little show.
It's almost as if,
-"You're gonna notice me?
Fine, notice me."
-DAVID: It's right out the book.
Ostensibly, it's a love sonnet
to his wife, in a way.
But he unabashedly sings it
for the cafeteria.
It's such a piece
of Americanism.
It's so rooted
in American culture
to sing
"On the Banks of the Wabash,"
this Jewish man standing there
and delivering it
over the shoulder
of this belligerent anti-Semite,
that it's an absurdist moment
of triumph.
The only thing we added to that
was we delivered his verdict
that his son could go
to Kentucky
and experience whatever he was
going to experience...
-came on the heels
of that triumph.
-PETER: Yes.
DAVID: That Herman had carved
enough confidence
out of defeating that moment
of anti-Semitism
that he's willing to let his son
take the same chance.
PETER: We rarely get to see
Herman be happy in this show
'cause he has such the burden
of fear and anxiety
and his family
and everything else
and his anger.
And it's nice to see him
be happy for a moment,
and as you say,
because he's had his faith
restored, all right,
his son can go to Kentucky.
Maybe if there are people
out there like Mr. Taylor,
you'll be fine.
DAVID: The moment of connection
to Mr. Taylor at the end,
the quiet dignity that Taylor
has now exhibited,
and the gratitude from Herman
is one of my favorite moments
in the whole sequence
of events.
In-- In the book, it made
my heart go into my throat.
PETER: One last scene.
We return to England,
where Alvin has come back
from his mission
that has gone very badly.
And there's that ultimately
heartbreaking shot
of panning through
the military hospital,
arriving at Alvin in his bed
with his bloody stump,
and his friend sits there,
looks at him,
and then gets up and leaves
without letting him know
she was ever there.
There's this moment...
(CHUCKLES)
which is relatively rare
for this miniseries
at this point,
of happiness, of success,
of almost joy,
-and we end on--
-DAVID: Yeah, let me tell you
who you're working for.
You're working for
Blown Deadline Productions.
-We don't do happy.
-(PETER LAUGHS)
I'm familiar with your work,
Mr. Simon.
Uh, so we end with that,
with Alvin crippled and alone.
Hey, America,
don't get too excited
about what you just saw.
Darkness is coming.
DAVID: Well, yeah. I mean,
Herman and the Levin family
have fought their own
little battle
-on the banks of the Potomac.
-PETER: Yes.
DAVID: And they've emerged
victorious with a, um,
a benign moment
in the cafeteria.
-PETER: Yeah. Right.
-DAVID: Alvin has gone to war.
This harkens off
of what June says to him earlier
in the bedroom about how
we're so terribly excited,
you know, living through
the Blitz.
It's a blackout,
they've covered the windows,
they're making love.
You can hear the ambulances
rolling around London.
And he says, "Like living
on the edge of a knife."
There's a romance that exists
around the idea of war
that doesn't actually survive
the actuality of war.
PETER: Alvin finds that out,
as they say, the hard way.
-DAVID: Bluntly. And quickly.
-PETER: Yeah.
♪ (THEME PLAYS) ♪
PETER: We've reached the end
of part three
of The Plot Against America
with Alvin, now deprived
of part of his leg,
lying unconscious in a bed.
We'll leave him there
for a while to recover.
Thanks once again
to David Simon
for joining us to talk
in depth about his work.
-Thank you, David.
-DAVID: Thank you.
PETER: We'll be back next week
to discuss part four
of The Plot Against America.
That will air next Monday,
9:00 p.m. Eastern on HBO.
My name is Peter Sagal.
If you miss me
in the week to come,
you can always hear me
on NPR's
 Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
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