Page 156 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Chapter Two: Getting to Know der Führer

The account of Chamberlain and Hitler is taken from a number of sources, but chiefly David
Faber’s excellent Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2008), pp. 272–96; “so unconventional…breath away,” p. 229; that 70 percent of the country
thought Chamberlain’s trip was a “good thing for peace” and the toast to Chamberlain’s health, pp.
284–85; Chamberlain’s speech at Heston Airport and the reaction to it, p. 296; “no signs of
insanity…beyond a certain point,” p. 302; “between a social gathering and a rough house,” p. 300;
“mixture of astonishment, repugnance, and compassion,” p. 40. Faber is quoting from British
diplomat Ivone Kirkpatrick’s account of the event in his memoir, The Inner Circle (London:
Macmillan & Company, 1959), p. 97; and “borderline into insanity,” p. 257.
The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours. I
suppose that makes a certain sense: you need to be exposed to a fraud before you can fall for a
fraud. On the other hand, Hitler’s dupes were all intelligent men, well experienced in world affairs,
with plenty of suspicions going into their meeting. Why didn’t whatever extra information they
could gather on Hitler from a face-to-face meeting lead to an improvement in the accuracy of their
opinion of him? See also Faber, Munich, 1938, pp. 285, 302, 351; Chamberlain’s third and final visit
to Germany, p. 414; “Herr Hitler was telling the truth,” p. 302; “This morning…as mine,” p. 4;
“sleep quietly in your beds,” pp. 6–7.
For King’s admiration of Hitler (in footnote), see W. L. Mackenzie King’s Diary, June 29, 1937,
National Archives of Canada, MG 26 J Series 13, https://www.junobeach.org/canada-in-
wwii/articles/aggression-and-impunity/w-l-mackenzie-kings-diary-june-29-1937/.
“In certain moods…marvelous drollery”: Diana Mosley, A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography
of Diana Mosley (London: Gibson Square, 2002), p. 124.
“Halfway down the steps…the house painter he was”: Neville Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain,
September 19, 1938, in Robert Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters: Volume Four: The
Downing Street Years, 1934–1940 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), p. 346; “In short…given his
word,” p. 348; “Hitler’s appearance…friendly demonstrations” and “Hitler frequently…brought
with me,” Neville Chamberlain to Hilda Chamberlain, October 2, 1938, p. 350.
A good account of Halifax’s visit to Berlin is here: Lois G. Schwoerer, “Lord Halifax’s Visit to
Germany: November 1937,” The Historian 32, no. 3 (May 1970): 353–75.
Hitler even had a nickname for Henderson: Peter Neville, Hitler and Appeasement: The British
Attempt to Prevent the Second World War (London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006),
p. 150.
Hitler, he believed, “hates war as much as anyone”: Abraham Ascher, Was Hitler a Riddle?
Western Democracies and National Socialism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 73.
Göring “loved animals and children…teach squeamishness to the young” (in footnote): Sir
Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission: Berlin 1937–39 (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1940),
p. 82.
Anthony Eden…saw the truth of him: See D. R. Thorpe, The Life and Times of Anthony Eden,
First Earl of Avon, 1897–1997 (New York: Random House, 2003).
For Sendhil Mullainathan’s study, see Jon Kleinberg et al., “Human Decisions and Machine
Predictions,” NBER Working Paper 23180, February 2017; this is an early version of Kleinberg et
al., “Human Decisions and Machine Predictions,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 1
(February 2018): 237–93.

Pronin had them fill in the blank spaces: Emily Pronin et al., “You Don’t Know Me, But I Know
You: The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 4
(2001): 639–56, APA PsychNET.

I quoted part of Pronin’s conclusion. But the whole paragraph is worth considering: