Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,108

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, junobeach/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:

The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

Those are wise words.

Chapter Three: The Queen of Cuba

“Homeland or death, you bastards”: Transcript taken from the documentary Shoot Down, directed by Cristina Khuly (Palisades Pictures, 2007). That Juan Roque was the Cubans’ source inside Hermanos al Rescate is also