Speaker 1: Also media. Oh boy, hottie, we're back having a good
Speaker 1: time and uh, everything's good. Uh podcasting about Alfred Hugenberg,
Speaker 1: a great asshole who at this point in time, has
Speaker 1: helped make World War won a reality, which you know,
Speaker 1: I hope to one day make World War one a reality,
Speaker 1: so uh you.
Speaker 2: Are you're keeping its memory alive every.
Speaker 1: Day, every day. As soon as this call finishes, Amanda Montel,
Speaker 1: our great guest and the author of Coldish, as soon
Speaker 1: as we finish this recording, I'm going to get back
Speaker 1: on the phone with Emmanuel Macron over in France and
Speaker 1: try to sell them some new machine guns. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the Germans, you know what Macron is doing?
Speaker 1: Holy shit?
Speaker 2: What that moment? That that moment when you become your
Speaker 2: podcast that's right, where do you end? And it would
Speaker 2: Gin's look subject burbergreement.
Speaker 1: I don't know, what's the one thing everyone agreed in
Speaker 1: nineteen on, in nineteen thirteen and today too many young
Speaker 1: people in Europe. You know, we're gonna knock that problem
Speaker 1: out right away. Just make a new Western Front exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, it's good for the economy. Harold destroys the
Speaker 1: whole we are at the point at which World War
Speaker 1: One is underway, millions of boys are dying in an
Speaker 1: industrial form of slaughter heretofore unknown to the human race,
Speaker 1: and as Germany feeds its future into a steel maw
Speaker 1: of British and French bullets, Alfred Hugenberg has an idea.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The job he's working at this point is pretty close
Speaker 1: to what we'd call a hedge fund manager today, right,
Speaker 1: not in terms of the way he's moving his money,
Speaker 1: but in the fact that he is the guy who
Speaker 1: other rich people give their cash to and he tells
Speaker 1: them what to do with it in order to make
Speaker 1: the most of it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And he's always been very bullish on German expansion. That's
Speaker 1: kind of his whole deal, Like what if we had
Speaker 1: more Germany? And he's always felt like Germany deserved a
Speaker 1: bigger piece of the pie that was Africa. And at
Speaker 1: this point world War One, arguably Germany's best military commander
Speaker 1: of the entire war is in Africa, like a very
Speaker 1: actually like innovative insurgent kind of commander running a truly
Speaker 1: ingenious insurgent campaign. And after the initial first few weeks
Speaker 1: of heady advances through Belgium and eastern France. Everything gets
Speaker 1: bogged down for the German army in the West, and
Speaker 1: so Africa is going to be one of those places
Speaker 1: that Germans can look to for like the kind of
Speaker 1: glorious martial stories of military cunning and courage that you know,
Speaker 1: make good propaganda because like and then another boy died
Speaker 1: in the mud, not great stories, you know, not super
Speaker 1: not super inspiring, right, so true, So Hugenberg is like, naturally,
Speaker 1: when we Germans win this war, we're going to need
Speaker 1: to expanded our African possessions. And for an idea of
Speaker 1: what it would have looked like had Hugenberg got his wishes,
Speaker 1: we don't have to look back much further than like
Speaker 1: the period that we're in right now, nineteen fourteen. In fact,
Speaker 1: we just have to go back to January of nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four, which is when the Herrero people of modern
Speaker 1: day Namibia, led by a chief sit named Samuel Mahari Maherero,
Speaker 1: launched a rebellion against their German colonizers. Right, so Germany
Speaker 1: already has Namibia. Hugenberg is looking at because he wants
Speaker 1: to take basically British African possessions and make them German right.
Speaker 1: And what had happened ten years before this in Namibia
Speaker 1: was the Herrero had rebelled, they'd killed about one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty something German settlers, and zue Germans had responded
Speaker 1: by bringing the armed might of They have the most
Speaker 1: powerful army on the planet at the time to bear
Speaker 1: against these guys who don't have an army. They just
Speaker 1: have some men who are warriors, right, So it's not
Speaker 1: like a military with like an industrial state by it.
Speaker 1: And this does not go well for the Herrero and
Speaker 1: the actual fighting, the battle is won quite quickly because
Speaker 1: the Germans have artillery, and as a general rule, if
Speaker 1: one side has artillery and the other side has not,
Speaker 1: that the side with artillery wins. This is one of
Speaker 1: the fun rules of warfare that's been generally true. German
Speaker 1: soldiers pursue the fleeing civilians after they kind of break
Speaker 1: the fighting forces, they continue to pursue because like the
Speaker 1: Herrero flee they try to get the fuck out of Namibia,
Speaker 1: right sure, and these colonial soldiers pursue these fleeing civilians
Speaker 1: into the desert and massacre thousands of them, a mix
Speaker 1: of just shooting them to death, end mass and poisoning
Speaker 1: their well. So they'll be in like the desert and
Speaker 1: they'll poison like a water supply to kill more of them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's a genocide. This is a genocide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is universally recognized as a genocide. You know, like
Speaker 1: Germany was doing genocides well before Hitler got into power,
Speaker 1: right and around this time. They are also going to
Speaker 1: have a hand in the Armenian genocide during World War One,
Speaker 1: so they're not clean on that either. In October of
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four, a German commander gave this order to
Speaker 1: Herrero civilians seeking to return home to Namibia. Quote, within
Speaker 1: the German borders, every male Herrero, armed or unarmed, will
Speaker 1: be shot to death. I will no longer take in
Speaker 1: women or children, but I will drive them back to
Speaker 1: their people or have them fired at. These are my
Speaker 1: words to the Herero people from the Great General of
Speaker 1: the mighty German Kaiser.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, I have a question. So one of the
Speaker 2: like mind blow moments for me from our part one
Speaker 2: was the context that so much of German nationalism hinged
Speaker 2: on them being jealous of Britain's colonization of various territories.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, were there still, though Germany's attitude seems especially belligerent,
Speaker 2: like they were there other nations that had like newly
Speaker 2: embraced nationalism around this time that aspired to the level
Speaker 2: of colonization and brutality that Germany was extracting.
Speaker 1: A great example would be Japan, who is starting they're colonizing.
Speaker 1: Who's starting to colonize right around I mean in World
Speaker 1: War One, they take a bunch of German possessions. This
Speaker 1: is a big part of Japanese colonial expansion, and they're
Speaker 1: going to be hideously genocidal everywhere they the Empire of
Speaker 1: Japan spreads to And obviously the British have been doing
Speaker 1: colonizing a lot longer, but one of the first big
Speaker 1: acts of British colonialism was to kill by some counts,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of people in Bengal through a famine
Speaker 1: that was largely the result of business choices made by
Speaker 1: a British corporation. So the fact that Germans get a
Speaker 1: colony in Namibia and almost immediately do a genocide, this
Speaker 1: is very much the norm, right constantly, Yes, shit, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not at all like a freak in set.
Speaker 1: This is not just the Germans right, this is a product.
Speaker 1: This is just how colonialism always works. Yeah, but he
Speaker 1: sure is aware of what the Germans are doing in Namibia.
Speaker 1: This is reported on and his whole attitude is we
Speaker 1: need to be doing this to way more of Africa
Speaker 1: to make room for a bunch of German farmers. You know,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's get on it. We've got better guns
Speaker 1: than these people. Wiping them out will be no problem.
Speaker 1: So when he talks about needing to expand to Africa,
Speaker 1: I just I wanted to tell that story because that's
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. Right now, Africa. Things are I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say they're going well for Germany in the war,
Speaker 1: but it's one of the areas where they can take
Speaker 1: a lot of pride because they've got this like very
Speaker 1: innovative commander doing very innovative things over there. That's a
Speaker 1: lot sexier than what's happening on the Western Front. Past.
Speaker 1: To point, the other big win the Germans had had
Speaker 1: right at the start of the war was that they
Speaker 1: had conquered Belgium. Right now, this is actually a big
Speaker 1: part of why they lose the war on a strategic level,
Speaker 1: because Belgium is an independent, neutral nation right. The Germans
Speaker 1: take Belgium because they need it as a road to
Speaker 1: get to France, because this plan they have says that
Speaker 1: that's the best way to do these things. And the
Speaker 1: British are like, if you go through Belgium, we don't
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we don't have a dog in this fight,
Speaker 1: but if you go through Belgium, then you're gonna be
Speaker 1: fucking with us, right, And they go through Belgium and
Speaker 1: the British get involved, right. So this is it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where the Germans are very proud to
Speaker 1: have a Belgium, but also it kind of is a
Speaker 1: big part of what fucks up over But Hugenberg is
Speaker 1: not really thinking about that at the time. He sees
Speaker 1: Belgium as an investment opportunity and he's very glad to
Speaker 1: have it. And he sees the same as you know,
Speaker 1: Germany has taken a good deal of French territory at
Speaker 1: this point in eastern France, which includes this one recent
Speaker 1: region of like southeast France that Germany has occupied, is
Speaker 1: where the French keep a big chunk of their minds. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like a heavily resourced inns region, right. So he's
Speaker 1: looking at these new conquests and seeing them as permanent,
Speaker 1: even though the war is very much doubt. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the smart man needs to be thinking, how
Speaker 1: are we going to take advantage of this right? What
Speaker 1: are we going to turn these new possessions that we
Speaker 1: have as a people into. So as the war grinds forward,
Speaker 1: the Pan Germanic League works overtime propagandizing that these new
Speaker 1: conquests are now German territory forever by right of blood,
Speaker 1: and no peace can even be negotiated if giving up
Speaker 1: Belgium or any French territory is required. This is a
Speaker 1: big part A lot of people wonder, well, it became
Speaker 1: very quickly obvious no one's going to win this easily.
Speaker 1: It is bleeding everyone white. You're all wiping out whole
Speaker 1: generations of young men to fight this war. Why don't
Speaker 1: we just stop? Right? And a big part of why
Speaker 1: is the Allies, you know, Britain and France are like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: like we'd be happy to end the war. I'm not.
Speaker 1: They're not initially like this, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: willingness to end the war. But Germany has to give
Speaker 1: up the places they took, right, Like you could just
Speaker 1: keep all this France like fuck, he just can't Belgium
Speaker 1: and the Germans. And this is a big part of
Speaker 1: why the German state and the Kaiser refused to go
Speaker 1: along with this is you've got these this very influential
Speaker 1: Pandermanic league being like, absolutely, under no circumstances can we
Speaker 1: compromise on these territories. Right. Again, that's not all of
Speaker 1: why this happens, but they're not an They're not a
Speaker 1: small part of why there is no willingness to compromise,
Speaker 1: which could have ended the war at least a year
Speaker 1: or two earlier. Right, maybe in a way that would
Speaker 1: have been less overall calamitous to the German economy, right
Speaker 1: because a negotiated peace wouldn't have involved Germany completely surrendering.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they would have they would have had
Speaker 1: to lose give back a bunch of this territory, but
Speaker 1: they they could have maintained being a functional state and
Speaker 1: not had it wouldn't have been like a Treaty of
Speaker 1: Versailles situation. Right, Potentially it's a much better future, but
Speaker 1: Hugenberg and his ideological simpaticos are like, the fuck, give
Speaker 1: up Belgium, we have all sorts of all sorts of
Speaker 1: plans for Belgium.
Speaker 4: Then I gets, as an Italian man, my natural enemy
Speaker 4: is the Belgian you know, as Caesar said, oh gall
Speaker 4: is divided into three parts, and one of those motherfucking
Speaker 4: parts is the Belgians.
Speaker 1: And I got us, I got a quarrel with them.
Speaker 1: I'm still hoping to take Belgium one day. I think
Speaker 1: I think I could.
Speaker 2: As an Italian, I thought your your your number one
Speaker 2: enemy was not eating lunch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not eating lunch, seven hour dinners. The Persians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of enemies. We Italian so also
Speaker 1: healthcare CEOs apparently anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh yeah, the Italians. They're everywhere and they're
Speaker 2: doing a.
Speaker 1: Most Famous Italian?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, is that true? Is that mean?
Speaker 1: Who's the mo? What Italian is more famous than that guy?
Speaker 1: Right now? Berlascone? Absolutely not, no, no way.
Speaker 2: I feel like Luigi has even overtaken, like the Luigi
Speaker 2: from Mario.
Speaker 1: Yeah's that he's definitely he's more famous than Mussolini now,
Speaker 1: which I gotta say is a huge win for Italian Americans.
Speaker 2: You know, honestly, whoa massive weird? What a weird? What
Speaker 2: a weird?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Pr strategy or.
Speaker 1: Like, h, we're looking a lot better these days. Now.
Speaker 1: You got to remember, so the war is on and
Speaker 1: while he's kind of he's a part of this group
Speaker 1: that's pushing we can't give any of this up. His
Speaker 1: job is running this like organization made up of all
Speaker 1: of the rich guys with mines and arms companies putting
Speaker 1: pooling some of their money together. This organization is called
Speaker 1: the zeken Verband Uh and it's an association of industrial businesses,
Speaker 1: mines and crop like. There's companies like Krupp in there too,
Speaker 1: so it's not just raw material producers, people who use
Speaker 1: those raw materials, and basically just everybody with a big
Speaker 1: business in the Ruhre. In this industrial heartland region, the
Speaker 1: zeke their Bund had been founded in nineteen oh eight
Speaker 1: to represent their common interests. In pre war this had
Speaker 1: mainly meant fucking with labor unions, and up through the
Speaker 1: end of the war, the Zekenverbund was successful at ensuring
Speaker 1: no one mine union could work with any other mine
Speaker 1: union right. They they basically made seerer legislatively. Unions could
Speaker 1: not ally right, so that you can strike at one
Speaker 1: mine or one factory, but you can't organize any kind
Speaker 1: of general strike, right, And the ziegen Verbund also had
Speaker 1: a strike fund, but for mine owners themselves, so that
Speaker 1: if the workers at any mine went on strike, other
Speaker 1: minds that were their competitors would pay to keep them going,
Speaker 1: because it was more important to fight the labor Right
Speaker 1: now that the war is going on, there's suddenly a
Speaker 1: lot more on the line than just like you know,
Speaker 1: fucking with labor unions. The good news for these guys
Speaker 1: is that profits fucking sore because Germany needs a lot
Speaker 1: more weapons now, right, And the people were making the
Speaker 1: raw materials, bullets and cannons, they're doing great. That people
Speaker 1: making the weapons are great. This is a good time
Speaker 1: to have stock in Krupp. Hugenberg helped gently direct the
Speaker 1: eyes of his hungry fellow mine owner, or of these
Speaker 1: hungry mine owners towards all of the territory in France
Speaker 1: and Belgium that they might be able to exploit in
Speaker 1: the future. He's like, hey, guys, I know we're making
Speaker 1: bank now. The war's got it end someday, but we
Speaker 1: just got all this new French territory, a lot of
Speaker 1: mines there, Belgium, a lot of mining potential in Belgium,
Speaker 1: we should start investing now in being able to take
Speaker 1: advantage of that once the war ends and we still
Speaker 1: own all it. And so, from Hugenberg's perspective, the thing
Speaker 1: he is most frightened of in nineteen late nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen sixteen, the thing that scares him is peace,
Speaker 1: because if peace goes wrong, I was gonna say, he's
Speaker 1: gonna lose a lot of investments that he started to make, right.
Speaker 2: Okay, as my question like just sort of nervous system wise.
Speaker 2: I can't late at all to these motherfuckers, because.
Speaker 1: Well you shouldn't. They're monsters. They're ghouls for sure.
Speaker 2: But even if I'm like at my most empathetic and
Speaker 2: I'm like, let me get into the mind and body
Speaker 2: of an arity type just to see what's what's making
Speaker 2: him tick, I can't. I can't. I still can't understand
Speaker 2: how one could reconcile wanting wartime and wanting conflict because
Speaker 2: it will be good for your wallet, but like, we're not. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just don't get it how it works.
Speaker 1: Part of it is because they also tell themselves we're
Speaker 1: not being selfish, we're we're patriots and this will be
Speaker 1: better for Germany. Right, the sacrifices.
Speaker 2: Justify the philosophy.
Speaker 1: But the other thing, I think, if you want to keep,
Speaker 1: if you want to get into your head, how these
Speaker 1: people can be so greedy? I think there's a microway
Speaker 1: of kind of looking at it. There was a time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure in your life, Amanda, the same is true
Speaker 1: of me. It seems it's going to be true of
Speaker 1: most people listening. Where you made a lot less money
Speaker 1: than you currently make, right, you know, when you're nineteen
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you survived right had you paid rent
Speaker 1: and you ate food. Right now, you make I'm presuming
Speaker 1: more money than you did when you were eighteen or nineteen,
Speaker 1: and you're still surviving. But you also probably still have
Speaker 1: a lot of things, like have a lot of economic
Speaker 1: anxiety even though you have a lot more, which is
Speaker 1: very common, and that psychological process doesn't stop just because
Speaker 1: you have more money than you can ever spend right.
Speaker 5: Enough to get to exactly right right right, like if
Speaker 5: you get if you get a billion dollars, statistically the
Speaker 5: thing you want to do most most people, not everyone,
Speaker 5: like time from my.
Speaker 1: Space, seems you've a witted this, but statistically a lot
Speaker 1: of people who get a billion dollars. The main thing
Speaker 1: on their mind is now I want to get two.
Speaker 1: I need to get ten, I need to get right.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's just kind of like you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's why again, it's why you need to have
Speaker 1: like societal restrictions that stop people from accumulating like that,
Speaker 1: because once the process starts mentally, very few people can
Speaker 1: avoid continuing down that road, even to some extent, even
Speaker 1: if they're reasonably good people ahead of you. Ye, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of it's a poison. It's a drug. It's
Speaker 1: a drug. It's like giving someone a heroin. Right, sometimes, yes,
Speaker 1: you give them a heroin, they might get addicted, even
Speaker 1: if they don't want to, because like that's what drugs do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I know, it just keeps reminding me of. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: we have like cultural lessons and axioms and proverbs that
Speaker 2: try to convince us to resist those impulses. And the
Speaker 2: one I always think of is that Edward Abbey quote
Speaker 2: that's like growth for growth's sake is the ideology of
Speaker 2: a cancer cell.
Speaker 1: Yes, but like absolutely it's.
Speaker 2: So hard to internalize messages like.
Speaker 1: That and again, and that's why that's why there's there's
Speaker 1: gotta be just actual like you have to as at
Speaker 1: the at the kind of collective level rules to stop
Speaker 1: that because individual people are not not that. No one
Speaker 1: can avoid this because there are people who have strong
Speaker 1: enough sense of self and moral centers that yeah, likely
Speaker 1: the option won't get that Brich won't let it happen.
Speaker 1: But usually this does not happen the Hugenberg route where
Speaker 1: people are like because and again you have to again
Speaker 1: to go back to the heroin comparison the amount of
Speaker 1: money they start making because of the war, like they
Speaker 1: they don't want to give that up period, right, Like
Speaker 1: that is it's like pop loves Dog.
Speaker 2: It's like, if money comes because of war, let's do
Speaker 2: more war.
Speaker 1: Delicious, delicious, I love it all. Yeah, So Hugenberg convinces
Speaker 1: these guys, the only threat to our future profits is peace,
Speaker 1: particularly the wrong sort of peace, And if we want
Speaker 1: to make that impossible, I need you to give me
Speaker 1: some of your money and we're going to start buying
Speaker 1: up newspapers, right because that's how we can stop we
Speaker 1: can kill the peace movement because from the beginning, once
Speaker 1: this war starts wiping out generations of young men at
Speaker 1: there's an anti war movement brewing even within Germany, a
Speaker 1: pretty sizable one, and they're like, this is all the
Speaker 1: fault of like Bolshevik propaganda. We need to start buying
Speaker 1: the newspapers and then we can convince everyone their son's
Speaker 1: dying is a good idea. So the four largest of
Speaker 1: the companies that are in this organization that Hugenberg's heading,
Speaker 1: the Zeichenwerband, including Krupp, which is still managed by Hugenberg,
Speaker 1: send representatives to act as spokesman for the creation of
Speaker 1: a private association, the vertschaftlicht Geslschaft, and this is a
Speaker 1: trust fund regularly topped off by profits from war profiteers
Speaker 1: and used to quote countermand threatening dangers in the economic
Speaker 1: and social fields. Leopold and his biography of Hugenberg continues
Speaker 1: through the use of diverse bank accounts and holding companies
Speaker 1: administered by additional trustees. Hugenberg and these industrial leaders masked
Speaker 1: their control. The Ousland established a night teen fourteen became
Speaker 1: one of their key corporations, the Vertschaft deinst GmbH, incorporated
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen sixteen, concealed investments made for the
Speaker 1: improvement of economic news service and the management of press corporations.
Speaker 1: A third firm, the Deutsche Gewerbahaus AG, established in February
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen, officially managed funds for the erection of
Speaker 1: business offices for the varied associations of German industry. Its
Speaker 1: larger purpose, however, was to participate in various businesses and
Speaker 1: measures which appeared suitable to the corporation for the advancement
Speaker 1: of general German industrial and national interests. So they are
Speaker 1: buying up newspapers, and they're creating organizations to manage newspapers
Speaker 1: as a group, and they're hiding through these shell companies
Speaker 1: the fact that they own all of these papers and
Speaker 1: that it's Hugenberg pulling the strings. Now, this of course
Speaker 1: means you're going to you need to bribe a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and you need to make the kind of
Speaker 1: investments that act as bribes. But a large chunk of
Speaker 1: the tens of millions of reichs Reichsmarks that are raised
Speaker 1: in this period are put to towards the purchase directly
Speaker 1: of media organs. The fund set its beady eyes and
Speaker 1: a large Berlin publishing house, the August Schurrel Company, named
Speaker 1: after a right wing newspaper entrepreneur. He was basically the
Speaker 1: equivalent of the German William Randolph Hurst or the guy
Speaker 1: who created the Daily Mail back in the UK. Like
Speaker 1: he's that kind of guy. These are these are conservative papers.
Speaker 1: This is like the Fox News of its day in
Speaker 1: Germany and the situation and so these guys buy it right.
Speaker 1: The Scheryl Company's two big publications are Der Todg, which
Speaker 1: is for intellectuals in the capital, and Berlin or Locale Anzinger,
Speaker 1: which is about ten times larger in terms of its
Speaker 1: readership and is aimed more at the working class. Schurrel
Speaker 1: also ran a.
Speaker 2: Series Robert, were you always as good at reading and
Speaker 2: pronouncing German words? Or has? The podcast?
Speaker 1: People are going to be talking so much shit about
Speaker 1: how I'm saying these things.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean it sounds like super confident. You're not
Speaker 2: even like bum I.
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't do well with this. People
Speaker 1: are going to be going.
Speaker 3: To be to be convinced you're pretty good at Ukrainian words.
Speaker 2: But like other than.
Speaker 1: That, I don't know if I'd say that, but oh.
Speaker 2: Does that say something about you that's fascinating?
Speaker 1: So Cheryl ran a bunch of small weekly papers all
Speaker 1: over the country, all of which are united only by
Speaker 1: a shared conservative view of reality and politics, and this
Speaker 1: stood not position. The August Schrol Company is the big
Speaker 1: conservative publisher. The two bigger publishers in Germany are the
Speaker 1: Rudolph Moss Masse Company and the Ostein Company, both of
Speaker 1: which are pro democratic and generally liberal. August Scheryl the
Speaker 1: company had been profitable until nineteen fourteen when the war
Speaker 1: broke out. Because everything gets more expensive when the war
Speaker 1: breaks out, there's massive inflation, it's very difficult to afford
Speaker 1: to put out a newspaper. And part of why people
Speaker 1: stop reading the August Scheryl publications in nineteen fourteen is
Speaker 1: that up to the war starting, they've been telling everyone, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is going to go great. You're going to love
Speaker 1: the war. We're going to be done in a couple
Speaker 1: of months. Everyone will be back at home by Christmas.
Speaker 1: And when that doesn't happen, people are like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: I don't like this paper. Now that all four of
Speaker 1: my sons are dead, perhaps I will stop reading these guys.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of he's a Hugenberg's able to buy
Speaker 1: this shit on the cheap in nineteen sixteen, using these
Speaker 1: pooled industry funds. Now, by the time the August Cheryl
Speaker 1: company sells to Hugenberg, things are bad enough that they
Speaker 1: need like seven million marks just to settle their debt,
Speaker 1: and then there's they got to put a couple Hugenberg
Speaker 1: has to put a few million more into it in
Speaker 1: order to actually like invest so that the company can
Speaker 1: be profitable again.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't ca can't like chump change to him.
Speaker 1: Yes he is. He is all essentially a billionaire at
Speaker 1: this point, right, Like not literally because like nobody had
Speaker 1: that much at that point, really, but he is essentially
Speaker 1: a billionaire for our terms, he would have been a
Speaker 1: billionaire if we're kind of like adjusting shit, right. Schuryl agrees,
Speaker 1: because again this is chump changed to him, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't care about profits. His condition is that if he
Speaker 1: buys this thing and gets them out of debt, he
Speaker 1: has full, absolute personal control over the publishing house and
Speaker 1: what they publish. So the show company inks in agreement,
Speaker 1: and Hugenberg puts one of his friends from the Pan
Speaker 1: Germanic League in charge of the holding company that manages it. Instantly,
Speaker 1: Scherl's papers go from being conservative to adopting the exact
Speaker 1: same line on war, aims that Hugenberg and his fellow
Speaker 1: war profiteers wanted no peace unless we get everything, and
Speaker 1: also no piece while there's a buck to be made.
Speaker 1: One of Hugenberg's friends laid out the motivation of this
Speaker 1: cartel in buying these papers very directly in a letter
Speaker 1: at that This is one of Huggenberberg's friends writing in
Speaker 1: a letter about what they're doing. Well, Waite, the gentleman,
Speaker 1: this is who he's writing to, should not believe that
Speaker 1: we were involved to have a good investment. We knew
Speaker 1: that nothing would come out of this, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to have political influence for our money. In other words,
Speaker 1: we're not we're gonna make money off of these. This
Speaker 1: is a lost leader. It's like, you know, the We're
Speaker 1: gonna pump money into this, not because it'll make us money,
Speaker 1: but because it'll change the culture in a way that
Speaker 1: makes us money.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they're poisoning wells in so many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do the fucking ah, the Germans and Well
Speaker 1: poisoning big Well, poisoning culture at this point in.
Speaker 3: Time, speaking of poisoning the well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of you know who loves poisoning. Nope, uh, here's ads.
Speaker 1: We're back. And you know what, I just put strychnine
Speaker 1: in a well and I gotta say it feels good.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a hoot. Doesn't hurt anybody except for
Speaker 1: the people who drink from the well, and I don't
Speaker 1: know them. So yeah, you know what, I get it.
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm a German nationalist now, long live
Speaker 1: the Kaiser. Anyway, in addition to pushing an extreme Sophie
Speaker 1: you always say every time I try to give the
Speaker 1: Kaiser praise, you just hate Kaisers for some reason. What
Speaker 1: about Kaiser permanente? Wonder what? No, Yeah, that's even worse
Speaker 1: than the last Kaiser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really bad Kaiser. I got the fuck
Speaker 2: out of that Kaiser.
Speaker 1: Some fucking guy sat down was like, I want to
Speaker 1: be a Kaiser, but I want to kill more people
Speaker 1: than the last. I know, I'll become a health insurer.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, would probably do a better job. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to go.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to go from a no m M.
Speaker 1: I think we should let him give it a shot. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to pushing an extreme line on war aims,
Speaker 1: The papers were also set to the task of attacking
Speaker 1: the left, which it defined as anyone supportive of democracy.
Speaker 1: Alfred didn't write his own propaganda, but he was very
Speaker 1: involved at the operational level, investing in several major papers
Speaker 1: to push them further right, and also establishing a separate
Speaker 1: fund to shotgun money off to little nationalist papers all
Speaker 1: over the empire. So they're not just buying papers, they're
Speaker 1: giving away money to small independent papers to keep them
Speaker 1: afloat during World War One. So all of like the
Speaker 1: centrist papers are going out of business because it's a
Speaker 1: terrible time to be in business in Germany, so are
Speaker 1: a lot of the left wing ones. But the right
Speaker 1: wing press thrives because he's paying it with war money.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh my god, oh my god. Is this what's
Speaker 2: happening in conservative media right now? Because yes, I don't
Speaker 2: know exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what was The Daily Wire might be
Speaker 1: going bankrupt now, but you know, the oligarchs got what
Speaker 1: they needed out of them, right. Yeah. It's this thing
Speaker 1: of like, wow, it's hard to be an honest newspaperman
Speaker 1: trying to report accurately on things, and also those people
Speaker 1: are dangerous to us. What if we made the only
Speaker 1: profitable kind of news, right wing news, using our infinite moneies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my god.
Speaker 2: Did you see that infographic or like some Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I saw it in the form of an talking
Speaker 2: about how like yeah, the like biggest thought leaders and
Speaker 2: pundits right now, like podcasters are all conservatives except for
Speaker 2: like one exception, that being Trevoranoa. And I was just like,
Speaker 2: this feels like a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was. It's just a very obvious one. Right.
Speaker 1: You put a lot of money into Audience City and
Speaker 1: put you get people on the boards of the social
Speaker 1: media company, so they make sure the algorithms support it,
Speaker 1: you know, same as it ever was. So Hugenberg's support
Speaker 1: of war aims that held German expansion is non negotiable
Speaker 1: led him to back the political ambitions a field Marshal
Speaker 1: Paul v On Hindenberg and General Eric Ludendorf, both of
Speaker 1: whom are going to be key players in Hitler's rise.
Speaker 1: Hindenberg is the guy who hands over control to Hitler
Speaker 1: when he dies, and Ludendorf is the general who marches
Speaker 1: with Hitler during the beer hall push. Now, by this point,
Speaker 1: and the war is still on, right, now there's a
Speaker 1: huge anti war movement right by nineteen seventeen, a lot
Speaker 1: of Germans are like, what if we stopped killing our sons,
Speaker 1: we can call these the sane people. And so Hugenberg
Speaker 1: hates these folks and he helps develop and advertise a
Speaker 1: right wing counterpart, the German Fatherland Party. Now the only
Speaker 1: real demand of the German Fatherland Party is that Germany
Speaker 1: should annex everything and keep fighting until the rest of
Speaker 1: used to let them keep it.
Speaker 3: You just stop that name, as I was triggered, but
Speaker 3: I did not enjoy that name.
Speaker 2: That was bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's okay. Where we're like three years away from
Speaker 1: the American Fatherland Party, Sophie, it's going to be great.
Speaker 2: I think we're there.
Speaker 1: We might be now. While he's also playing the part
Speaker 1: of arch propaganda baron of the right, Alfred starts taking
Speaker 1: investment money from his friends, with the end goal of
Speaker 1: exploiting all of those resources Germany was definitely going to
Speaker 1: control entirely once the war ended. For John Leopold quote
Speaker 1: he established three companies which would help Germany exploit Belgian resources. Similarly,
Speaker 1: at the end of nineteen seventeen, he formed a company
Speaker 1: to develop the post war settlement of French territory, which
Speaker 1: he expected the Reich to annex. Much more elaborate plans
Speaker 1: were formulated for the Colonists of the East, which were
Speaker 1: incorporated in nineteen eighteen after the Russian defeat. Now, if
Speaker 1: you know your history, you know that investing in Germany
Speaker 1: continuing to control France, Belgium and Western Russia in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen not a good investment about to really really go
Speaker 1: badly for Hugenberg. But I read this because by the
Speaker 1: end of World War One he has become a bookie
Speaker 1: for war on a continental scale. He's taken everybody's cash
Speaker 1: right like this, you know, and all the cash of
Speaker 1: the people who are betting on we're going to keep
Speaker 1: all this shit right. He takes in some thirty seven
Speaker 1: million marks to establish cooperative funds aimed at settling German
Speaker 1: farmers on conquered land, and then of course Germany loses
Speaker 1: the war. Now again, it is one hundred percent agreed
Speaker 1: by absolutely everyone who, every professional historian, every military history
Speaker 1: and even the German ones that Germany simply could not
Speaker 1: continue to fight. The moment they made peace was the
Speaker 1: last moment they could have done it without the army
Speaker 1: shattering entirely and leaving a clear path to Berlin, and
Speaker 1: by the way, without a full scale like anti socialist
Speaker 1: revolution overtaking the country, right, and they almost have one anyway,
Speaker 1: Like Germany is absolutely out of gas. They have fucking
Speaker 1: nothing left. But if you're looking at a map like
Speaker 1: a dumb person, it looks like Germany gives up when
Speaker 1: they're winning. They're still in France, they still have Belgium,
Speaker 1: and they've got a lot of Russian territory. Germany's the
Speaker 1: biggest it's ever been. It's the largest continental empire that
Speaker 1: I think it existed, certainly since the era of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. It might have been large. I don't recall precisely,
Speaker 1: but it looks really good on a map if you're
Speaker 1: not aware of the fact that all of their soldiers
Speaker 1: are about to drop dead where they're standing right now.
Speaker 1: Hugenberg is not a dumb man. He understands the army
Speaker 1: literally could not have kept fighting, but he can't that
Speaker 1: intellectually because that would mean that he'd been wrong, and
Speaker 1: he just is not the kind of guy who can
Speaker 1: be wrong. So he convinces himself, we've been stabbed in
Speaker 1: the back somebody fucked this up for us. It wasn't
Speaker 1: me and the other people running this fucking country. And
Speaker 1: he sets his fast propaganda apparatus. He now controls the papers,
Speaker 1: and he sets the papers to convincing the country of
Speaker 1: what we now call the big lie. Right, Germany didn't
Speaker 1: lose because we got out fought and outlasted, and we
Speaker 1: pissed off the Americans, And boy, maybe we shouldn't piss
Speaker 1: off the people who have literally all of the resources
Speaker 1: on planet Earth behind them. Possibly a bad idea would
Speaker 1: wear Germany. We lost because a sinister alliance of Jews,
Speaker 1: socialists and liberal Democrats stabbed the Fatherland in the back.
Speaker 1: You know, that's why all this happened. It's not that
Speaker 1: we picked a fight with a man who was three
Speaker 1: feet taller than us and made of solid steel. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the US in this period of time,
Speaker 1: after we were already beaten so bloody that our eyes
Speaker 1: had swollen shut. You know, it's not that it's the Jews.
Speaker 1: You know, the August Cheryl Company plays a substantial role
Speaker 1: in spreading this lie, and their propaganda falls on welcome ears,
Speaker 1: not just among the same group of people where the
Speaker 1: nation Nazi Party did most of its recruiting at this time.
Speaker 1: He focused a lot on the Buildings Burgertum right, the
Speaker 1: younger members of that class, these university students, many of
Speaker 1: whomen are too young to fight right, and this spelled
Speaker 1: the final end of liberalism within the Buildings Burgertum. As
Speaker 1: Hermann Beck lays out in his book The Fateful Alliance,
Speaker 1: students preceded the established Buildings Burgertum in appropriating a new conservatism.
Speaker 1: Before the German defeat in the First World War and
Speaker 1: the subsequent economic turmoil and inflation, this cultivated bourgeoisie had
Speaker 1: enjoyed significant material security and comfort, as well as greater
Speaker 1: social prestige than its counterparts in other European countries. To them,
Speaker 1: the more in the war was more than a military disaster.
Speaker 1: It signified personal humiliation and the loss of the distinct
Speaker 1: cultural identity. As a result, large sections of the educated
Speaker 1: elite moved further to the political right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing that turns like a generous, intellectually rigorous
Speaker 2: class of people. Conservative like bitterness like bitterness, Yeah, loss
Speaker 2: aversion suddenly statorialism.
Speaker 1: I thought I was promised more than this. It must be.
Speaker 2: Someone's exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Now, Huggenberg's papers aren't just geared towards these people, and
Speaker 1: in fact he's got a bunch of papers that are
Speaker 1: geared towards different segments of the population. But because number one,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's from this group, they're best at messaging
Speaker 1: to these people. Right. You know, it takes less than
Speaker 1: two years after the end of the war for like
Speaker 1: this rage in Mania that's being drilled into German conservatives
Speaker 1: via Hugenberg's propaganda to really start to flourish. And one
Speaker 1: of the conservatives who is influenced by this stuff and
Speaker 1: is going to have a big impact on things is
Speaker 1: a fellow traveler of Hugenberg's named Wolfgang Cap. Now. Cap,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, had been born in New York City because
Speaker 1: his family fled during the eighteen forty eight revolutions. There's
Speaker 1: this wave of left wing revolutions all around Europe in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight. They don't succeed in toppling the German government,
Speaker 1: but it's scary. CAP's family comes from money and they
Speaker 1: leave to be in New York for a while, right,
Speaker 1: but he moves back. He since spends his youthful years
Speaker 1: in Germany, and he is kind of sculpted from conception
Speaker 1: to be a right wing culture warrior. Right, his family
Speaker 1: and his wife's family are nationalists. They have strong far
Speaker 1: right pedigrees, and Cap grows up to run an agricultural
Speaker 1: credit union. He used his position to argue against debt
Speaker 1: relief for starving farmers, and in World War One full
Speaker 1: throatedly endorsed the impossible war aims of Hugenberg and his ILK.
Speaker 1: He was also very bullish on unrestricted submarine warfare. You can't.
Speaker 1: This guy thinks, you know what'll win us World War
Speaker 1: one is if we just shoot everybody's shipping all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what never pisses off again? For example, the
Speaker 1: United States is killing a bunch of their citizens and boats.
Speaker 1: They love having their citizens killed in boats. Let's do
Speaker 1: a lot more of that, right, It doesn't work out
Speaker 1: very good. Not a great thing for Germany. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: after the war, Cap co founds the German Fatherland part
Speaker 1: or at the end of the war he Cap is
Speaker 1: the co founder of this German Fatherland Party, right that
Speaker 1: Hugenberg is backing, alongside a guy named Admiral Turpets. And
Speaker 1: it was in this position that Cap first makes contact
Speaker 1: with the Pan German League. Germany had been entirely overtaken
Speaker 1: by a socialist revolution. Of the aftermath of the war,
Speaker 1: the whole country barely stops from going socialist because the
Speaker 1: Weimar government that gets put in place after the Kaiser
Speaker 1: leaves basically like is a compromise government meant to avoid
Speaker 1: full civil war, and they, to his significant extent, make
Speaker 1: kind of a deal with a lot of these right
Speaker 1: wing forces, with the military, with the Fry Corps, which
Speaker 1: is are these groups of like veterans who fought against
Speaker 1: the left, that's kind of all happening in this period
Speaker 1: in order to like put that down. And these Free
Speaker 1: Corps units that develop. These guys aren't yet Nazis, because
Speaker 1: Nazis don't exist yet, but a lot of them will
Speaker 1: be later, and they basically are the inspiration for the
Speaker 1: Brown Shirts or the essay. And Cap sees these this paramilitary,
Speaker 1: these paramilitaries that formed to crush the left in you know,
Speaker 1: the immediate post war period, and he realizes, like, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential here. We can mobilize these people
Speaker 1: not just to do violence for us, but as like
Speaker 1: a voting block. Now, the problem is Cap is not
Speaker 1: good at waiting for his moment. So once he gets
Speaker 1: he forms this umbrella organization to lump these paramilitaries together,
Speaker 1: and he gets General Ludendorf to agree to join, right,
Speaker 1: and then he tries to overthrow the government. And one
Speaker 1: thing that's funny is that Ludendorf gets on board with
Speaker 1: this plan a few years later in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: Because this is nineteen twenty he's going to do the
Speaker 1: same thing with Hitler. Ludendorf loves trying to overthrow the
Speaker 1: Weimar government, is no good at it, but loves yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's his cigarettes. So CAP's whole idea he is called
Speaker 1: the cap Pusch, and it's the same basic plan that
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways that Hitler's going to try
Speaker 1: to execute, although different logistically. He's really focused on Berlin
Speaker 1: from the start. He wants to try to take the capital,
Speaker 1: and for our purposes today, I'll just say it doesn't
Speaker 1: work right. And what's relevant to Hugenberg, who's our focus,
Speaker 1: is that the League is definitely aware that Kapp is
Speaker 1: planning this putsch and they give him a little bit
Speaker 1: of quiet support. But as soon as it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that he's not going to win, the League disavows him
Speaker 1: and is like, we never supported oh my god, treason,
Speaker 1: absolutely not us, and Ludendorf kind of does the same thing,
Speaker 1: and they all walk away unscathed. Almost no one is
Speaker 1: punished for trying to overthrow the government. Cap even is
Speaker 1: allowed to go into exile in Sweden. Right, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to piss off the far right by punishing them for
Speaker 1: trying to overthrow the government and institute a dictatorship. And
Speaker 1: a lot of these same guys are going to do
Speaker 1: it again. Fascinating how that works. So Hugenberg and his
Speaker 1: fellow plutocrats, you know, they make the public noises they
Speaker 1: have to make. You know, that's like, oh, that's how horrible.
Speaker 1: Why would anyone try that? But Hugenberg is also already
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how can I overthrow the Weymar government.
Speaker 1: And he's not a putsch guy. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: have a bunch of dudes with guns do it. He's
Speaker 1: going to overthrow Vymar democracy through the ballot box. Right,
Speaker 1: that's his plan. Had left Krupp finally in nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: with a gargantuan fortune and a lot of influence. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, Germany defaulted on her reparations repayments, which
Speaker 1: led to a cascading series of problems. The French occupy
Speaker 1: the Ruur, this industrial heartland. If you're not going to pay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take the money out of you by
Speaker 1: occupying the place where you make everything. The government, in
Speaker 1: order to counter the French back's a general strike, you know,
Speaker 1: in order to so no one's going to work in
Speaker 1: the rum, then it's not worth it for you to
Speaker 1: occupy it. And the effect of all this is the
Speaker 1: economy fucking nosedives, right, and since people aren't working, the
Speaker 1: government starts printing more money to try and keep things going.
Speaker 1: And you know that's how you get hyperinflation. Right. We're
Speaker 1: all aware that this is the thing people generally know
Speaker 1: about Vuyimar, and you know this is bad for basically everyone,
Speaker 1: but it's really good for Hugenberg because he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of liquid assets and everything is basically for sale
Speaker 1: in Germany for pennies on the dollar. So he buys
Speaker 1: up basically all of the remaining newspapers that he didn't own.
Speaker 2: And wanted to own, my god.
Speaker 1: And now they're his personal property. He's not just owning
Speaker 1: them through this organization he's helping to run. He's just
Speaker 1: the guy who owns all these fucking papers. By the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen twenties, he is the single largest media magnate
Speaker 1: in Germany. He has unparalleled reached. No one, probably no
Speaker 1: single person had ever had as wide a reach for
Speaker 1: disseminating their ideas to a culture as Alfred Hugenberg has
Speaker 1: in this period of time. He has total control.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, So he's back to his roots.
Speaker 1: He's back to his roots. He's spent or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he does. He purchases the largest German cinema chain,
Speaker 1: so he runs the movie theaters too, which means he
Speaker 1: gets to pick like what sort of newsreels go on
Speaker 1: ahead of movies in Germany. Like this guy has owns the.
Speaker 2: Media ideology of a cancer.
Speaker 1: That's right, exactly, he's fucking cancer. In nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: he compounds all of that by purchasing his very own
Speaker 1: political party. Now he doesn't like literally by it, but
Speaker 1: he uses his wealth and influence and control of the
Speaker 1: press to become the chairman of the German National People's Party.
Speaker 1: This is the largest right wing nationalist party in the
Speaker 1: country at the time, and his plan is.
Speaker 2: Going to be.
Speaker 1: I want to shift it even further right, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to read from an article by Sea and Truman here.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, he produced the party's new manifesto.
Speaker 1: Hugenberg called for the immediate restoration of the monarchy, the
Speaker 1: tearing up of the Treaty of Versailles, much greater contact
Speaker 1: between Germany and Austria, compulsory military service, a new German Empire,
Speaker 1: and a reduction in the perceived economic power the Jews
Speaker 1: had in Weimar's economy. Hugenberg's most immediate target was Chancellor
Speaker 1: Heinrich Grinning, who he believed was pushing Weimar inexorably towards socialism.
Speaker 1: Hugenberg was one of the most influential men at the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one Harsburg Front Conference, which met with the
Speaker 1: specific aim of trying to persuade the aging President Hindenburg
Speaker 1: to sack Brunning. So he is a major part of
Speaker 1: the conditions that formed to allow Hitler's rise in this
Speaker 1: period of time, and he is also he wants to
Speaker 1: be Hitler. His goal is to put himself in charge
Speaker 1: of the company of the country by buying this party,
Speaker 1: right like, that's kind of how he is thinking at
Speaker 1: this period of time. Now, unfortunately, he's not.
Speaker 2: Getting tired, like, oh no, get tired for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean again, cocaine is available over the counter.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to energy. I guess, so fair.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking like he must be experiencing back pain
Speaker 2: by now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, No, he can't be moving too well,
Speaker 1: although he's never had to work physically a day in
Speaker 1: his life, so maybe he's doing okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of sun though.
Speaker 1: True. Now under Hugenberg, the National People's Party actually shrinks
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of conservatives who are like conservatives,
Speaker 1: but they're not super anti Semitic or even I mean
Speaker 1: some of them might have just been actual like Jewish conservatives,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to stick around as he makes
Speaker 1: the party much much worse on that. And there's also
Speaker 1: a chunk of conservatives who are like economic conservatives but
Speaker 1: like military nationalism. We just had a horrible war. I'm
Speaker 1: not really down for it. So the party shrinks under Hugenberg,
Speaker 1: and the folks who leave tend to join either the
Speaker 1: Conservative People's Party or the largest like the Center Party.
Speaker 1: Others rejected the monarchist bent, and they saw what Hugenberg
Speaker 1: was doing as watered down nationalism, so they just went
Speaker 1: and joined the Nazi Party, who in this point in
Speaker 1: time consider Hugenberg and the Conservatives one of their big
Speaker 1: enemies because at their route, the Nazis are a poor
Speaker 1: workers party in this period, and while they have wealthy
Speaker 1: elites backing them, the whole capital class has not yet
Speaker 1: gone in for the Nazis. Right the early There are
Speaker 1: some early rich backers of the Nazis, like Hitler's friend Putsi, right,
Speaker 1: that guy haunch Stengel, who's like a very rich guy
Speaker 1: who helps bankroll the Nazis early. But most of the
Speaker 1: early rich people who bankroll the Nazis are socialites, and
Speaker 1: they get in board with the Nazis because the Nazis
Speaker 1: are cool and transgressive and they want to be cool too,
Speaker 1: right Yeah. Hitler's first real inroad to wealth, to like
Speaker 1: serious money was an industrialist industrialist named Fritz Tyson. Now
Speaker 1: that last name, Tyson Tyssen. If you go into an
Speaker 1: elevator right now, walk into basically any elevator in the
Speaker 1: world wherever you happen to be, and look around, you
Speaker 1: will see somewhere in that elevator almost certainly. The name
Speaker 1: Tyson Krupp. Krupp, of course, is the arms company that
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. Tyson is the company of Fritz Tyson.
Speaker 1: They merge at a certain point and they make all
Speaker 1: the elevators as well as submarines that get sold to THEYS.
Speaker 2: I was already considering taking the stairs more.
Speaker 1: That's right, take the stairs fight time. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just kind of a boring company now, but this
Speaker 1: is these are these are the origins of all of that, right.
Speaker 2: I don't like those roots. I'm taking those stairs. Good
Speaker 2: for the blues, good for the soul.
Speaker 1: So Fritz Tyson had been social with Hitler for a
Speaker 1: while from like the twenties, so they become like kind
Speaker 1: of friends. But Fritz is also like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if this guy's going anywhere. He's kind of extreme. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to like go whole ho again. But in
Speaker 1: the in the thirties, he's like, you know what, this
Speaker 1: guy is the best speaker I've ever seen. He calls
Speaker 1: he's enthralled by what he calls Hitler's oratorical gifts, and
Speaker 1: he says, what impressed me most.
Speaker 2: I don't get that either. Okay, I want to hear
Speaker 2: what impressed in most. Let's hear that first.
Speaker 1: What impressed me most was the order that reigned in
Speaker 1: his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell Hitler's charisma as a Western watching
Speaker 1: these speeches.
Speaker 2: It is it is. I do not get it. It's yelly,
Speaker 2: it's it's one note. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't
Speaker 2: doesn't follow the rules of like classical dynamics. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like a bad pop song that's just for tissimo
Speaker 2: the whole way through. Sure, it's like where did lets
Speaker 2: so Piano go?
Speaker 1: You know, people say that about Trump and it works.
Speaker 1: You know, it's true. It's true.
Speaker 2: The populist yelling.
Speaker 1: Hitler's really good at it, tweaking the amigdala of his followers,
Speaker 1: and it promising them vengeance. And if you can do
Speaker 1: those two things effectively, you can get about anything you
Speaker 1: want out of a pody.
Speaker 2: So true, it's cathartic, it's right sthartic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, Tyson has been kind of shotgun. He's been funding
Speaker 1: the Nazis as a little as a side hobby for
Speaker 1: a while in the late twenties been in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two. He looks out the Communists are also
Speaker 1: climbing in the polls right, and the Nazis actually look
Speaker 1: like they're kind of bottoming out, like they've reached their height.
Speaker 1: But the Communists are still getting more popular, and he
Speaker 1: can see that things are reaching a terminal juncture in Ymar.
Speaker 1: Something is going to break soon, and he wants it
Speaker 1: to break for the right. And he's like, Hitler's my
Speaker 1: best bet. So he invites Hitler to speak in Dusseldorf
Speaker 1: before an assembly of industrial magnates. After the speech, all
Speaker 1: of the richest guys in Germany, the people who own,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the factories, all the big businesses,
Speaker 1: whose donations had usually gone to like the Center Party
Speaker 1: or to kind of one of the center right parties,
Speaker 1: they start sending money to the tune of ournd TiO
Speaker 1: million marks a year to the Nazis. And because they
Speaker 1: don't want to be seen directly funding the Nazis, they
Speaker 1: reach out to a guy they all knew and had
Speaker 1: worked with who was really good at funneling money, Alfred Hugenberg.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be Hugenberg who funnels the money
Speaker 1: from these industrialists directly into the Nazis. Now in this
Speaker 1: he is playing the same role he'd done earlier, but
Speaker 1: he's not a Nazi himself. He does not like hit
Speaker 1: He hates Hitler as a matter of fact. He thinks
Speaker 1: he's gross. He's a poor he's poor, he's a corporal,
Speaker 1: right like, he's not as good as me. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have an education, he's and.
Speaker 2: A lot doesn't look like squid words exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: It looks like a little one of those bars you
Speaker 1: put over someone's dick if they're naked. Though, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I'dn't convinced at this point that like, well, I'll hold
Speaker 1: my nose because Hitler, in these Nazis, they can be
Speaker 1: a good weapon against the left, and obviously that's what
Speaker 1: matters most, is crushing the Yah.
Speaker 2: There's so much of that happening in through these years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of nose holding.
Speaker 1: Not a lot. Yeah, And it'll happen elsewhere soon. So
Speaker 1: Hugenberg doesn't stop running his own political party, and in
Speaker 1: fact he gets in the Reichstag like, he gets elected
Speaker 1: to office, and his message, which is not as effective
Speaker 1: as the Nazi message is in part not as effective,
Speaker 1: because he's really speaking mostly to this educated upper middle
Speaker 1: class that buildings Burgertom. As Hermann wrote in The Fateful Alliance,
Speaker 1: the educated elite's fate had been closely aligned with that
Speaker 1: of the Empire. With the empire's demise, it suffered a
Speaker 1: decline in reputation that increased its alienation from Weimar, to
Speaker 1: which inflation added the grievance of material destitution. The inflation
Speaker 1: broke the economic spine of the buildings Burgertom, whose lifestyle
Speaker 1: had been supported largely by their savings, as regular salaries
Speaker 1: rarely sufficed to maintain the material of coutrama that went
Speaker 1: with their exalted social position, such as domestic servants and
Speaker 1: a costly education for their offspring. Probably no part of
Speaker 1: the German population felt the humiliating changes in everyday life
Speaker 1: more deeply than the educated elite. None felt more distant
Speaker 1: from a republican regime with which reconciliation seemed impossible. Again,
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, you guys are angry because your treats
Speaker 1: are gone. You can't afford servants anymore. Like that's what
Speaker 1: he's promising, Whereas Hitler's promising workers, I'll get vengeance. For you,
Speaker 1: for all these people who have made your life's hard,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure you have jobs, and not just jobs,
Speaker 1: you'll get vacations. You know. The big thing the Nazis
Speaker 1: did was like made it possible for like working class people.
Speaker 1: They had like funded vacations. Like yeah, that's who he's
Speaker 1: talking to. Hugenberg's talking to like the sort of rich
Speaker 1: who were now sort of poor and like saying I'm
Speaker 1: going to bring I'm gonna fix things for you. Right So,
Speaker 1: for a time, because this is not that large a
Speaker 1: chunk of the population, it seemed as if Hugenberg was
Speaker 1: destined to watch his party shrink while the Nazis grew
Speaker 1: and grew right alongside the Communists. And while he is
Speaker 1: responsible for funneling some money to Hitler, he refuses to
Speaker 1: compromise within the party, right Like he is not willing
Speaker 1: to change what the German National Party is saying because
Speaker 1: he wants it to be his mouthpiece. And in fact,
Speaker 1: when he gets rid of so many of his rivals
Speaker 1: that like the party is insolvent, like he's gotten rid
Speaker 1: of enough so many people that were funding it, that
Speaker 1: like it can't be funded anymore, he just pays for
Speaker 1: the whole party himself.
Speaker 2: Yes, now they're still He's like just this sad dude
Speaker 2: with no friends and.
Speaker 1: No friends all the money. Again, so familiar to a
Speaker 1: certain plutocrat we all know and are frustrated by today.
Speaker 1: Now speaking of people with no friends, if you want
Speaker 1: to have friends, make friends with these sponsors. We're back.
Speaker 1: So Hugenberg is shotgunning some money the Nazis in the
Speaker 1: early thirties, and he's got his party, which is winning
Speaker 1: seats in the Reichstag. It's actually like doing better and
Speaker 1: better in kind of thirty two. Not enough to control anything,
Speaker 1: but enough to be like part of a coalition. But
Speaker 1: he knows that, like you know, the Left is also
Speaker 1: still growing, and I want to win this larger battle
Speaker 1: for control of the German state. And so he kind
Speaker 1: of admits, I have to work more directly with the Nazis. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not enough to just kind of like help get
Speaker 1: some money to them. I have to actually start helping
Speaker 1: them out using my resources. So Hugenberg diverts his vast
Speaker 1: media apparatus to the cause of boosting Hitler. By this
Speaker 1: point he has a degree of control in some fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred newspapers and also owns the largest movie studio in Germany.
Speaker 1: One reporter at the time for a centrist paper described
Speaker 1: Hugenberg as the great disseminator of national socialist ideas to
Speaker 1: an entire nation through newspapers, books, magazines, and films. And
Speaker 1: he's doing this because he envisions his party governing alongside
Speaker 1: the other right wing party and the Nazis as a coalition.
Speaker 1: And so he's like, well, the more votes the Nazis get,
Speaker 1: the better our coalition can crush the left together, but
Speaker 1: will be in a coalition together, right. And it's in
Speaker 1: this brief period thirty two to thirty three that Hugenberg
Speaker 1: is going to reach the apex of his evil talents.
Speaker 1: By this point, he was simultaneously the bag man for
Speaker 1: the whole far right. He's funneling wealth from Germany's capitalist
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. He's funding his own party, and he's
Speaker 1: running this vast media empire. And he's also sitting in
Speaker 1: the Reichstag as an elected member and directly pushing his
Speaker 1: own political agenda. And I'm going to quote here from
Speaker 1: an excellent article in the Atlantic by Timothy Riibeck. Hugenberg
Speaker 1: practiced what he called catastrophan politique the politics of catastrophe,
Speaker 1: by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the
Speaker 1: political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them entirely
Speaker 1: fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage. According to
Speaker 1: one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and
Speaker 1: selling them to its allies in order to service its
Speaker 1: war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center,
Speaker 1: political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse.
Speaker 1: As a right wing delegate to the Reichstag, Hugenberg proposed
Speaker 1: a freedom law that called for the liberation of the
Speaker 1: German people from the shackles of democracy and from the
Speaker 1: onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The law called for
Speaker 1: the treaty's signatories to be tried and hanged for treason,
Speaker 1: along with government officials involved with implemating the treaty provisions.
Speaker 1: The French ambassador in Berlin called Hugenberg one of the
Speaker 1: most evil geniuses in Germany.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Okay, so you said, like way way
Speaker 2: earlier in this recording that Hugenberg was not necessarily the
Speaker 2: most introspective motherfucker.
Speaker 1: He was like for his own person, No.
Speaker 2: Not right. So what do you think he thinks is
Speaker 2: the justification for all of this at this point? Like
Speaker 2: how is he not feeling cognitive dissonance or guilt or
Speaker 2: like how is he I'm just curious how.
Speaker 1: I mean, why would he feel guilt? You know? He
Speaker 1: believes number one, it's moral for Germany to be to
Speaker 1: take its place in the sun. He believes the Jews
Speaker 1: are a force for evil. He believes the poor need
Speaker 1: to be ruled by men like him, and he sees
Speaker 1: his bottom line as tied to this. I don't think
Speaker 1: it goes any deeper than that, I think. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: is this guy like associate, like, could you diet? Could
Speaker 1: he have been diagnosed as a psychopath? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but like, this is not a man whose conscience troubles
Speaker 1: him for what he's doing overmuch?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, clearly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty two, the Nazis carry the affluent Germans
Speaker 1: of the Berlin suburbs for the first time, which is
Speaker 1: a sign that some of the stuff that's going on
Speaker 1: here to push them, to boost them is working now.
Speaker 1: Joseph Goebbels does not want credit to go to Hugenberg, right,
Speaker 1: even though Hugenberg is a part of why this happens,
Speaker 1: because Goebels, who is Hitler's propaganda guy, despises Hugenberg and
Speaker 1: he is repeatedly trying to turn Hitler against Hugenberg, which
Speaker 1: actually wasn't really necessary because one thing Alfred can't do.
Speaker 1: He can't suck up. Maybe he can to richer guys,
Speaker 1: but he can't suck up to Hitler because Hitler's again
Speaker 1: some poor asshole who got wounded in the trenches, like
Speaker 1: an idiot. Right, that's how Schugenberg looks at these people.
Speaker 1: He's a social inferior. So Hitler doesn't like Hugenberg I
Speaker 1: just because no one does.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, no one does.
Speaker 1: No, he's a but does.
Speaker 2: You are not understand the exactly but like does Hugenberg
Speaker 2: not understand the power of youthful cool?
Speaker 1: Because no, no, no no, And in fact there's a
Speaker 1: good bit here. So for words, a socialist paper en Weimar,
Speaker 1: Germany had taken to drawing Hugenberg as a bloated frog
Speaker 1: in glasses like that was their caricature of him. But
Speaker 1: even Hugenberg's friends had mean nicknames for him. Like the
Speaker 1: people close to him called him the hamster. Hitler, for
Speaker 1: his part, called Hugenberg Wow Wow or wolf Wolf right,
Speaker 1: like he's a he's a barking dog. Right, he won't
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up. He's annoying the hell out of me. Now,
Speaker 1: that same year, Alfred opposed Hitler in the presidential election.
Speaker 1: So again he's been putting money into Hitler and his
Speaker 1: propaganda has been boosting the Nazis, but he is still
Speaker 1: trying to oppose him politically, and he I forget who
Speaker 1: he backs, it doesn't matter, but he backs someone who's
Speaker 1: not Hitler for the presidential election. And during this election,
Speaker 1: for the first time, his party actually takes seats from
Speaker 1: the Nazis, which does force Hitler to come to the table. Right.
Speaker 1: Hitler is like, Okay, well, I guess I do have
Speaker 1: to work with this guy who I don't like very
Speaker 1: much because he just took some seats from me and
Speaker 1: my party's kind of maybe starting to bottom out. The
Speaker 1: meetings go by, they try to see if they can
Speaker 1: work out an agreement to govern together, and they absolutely
Speaker 1: can't because the Hitler's line, and he always sticks to this,
Speaker 1: is that we'll form a coalition government but every ministry
Speaker 1: has to be headed by one of our people, right,
Speaker 1: we need them all, no compromise, and Hugenberg's not willing
Speaker 1: to compromise yet on that. Hugenberg himself is convinced that
Speaker 1: since his party has managed to capture a lot of seats,
Speaker 1: he and other Conservatives, if they work with Hitler can
Speaker 1: quote box Hitler in right, So if we let the
Speaker 1: Nazis rule with us, we can kind of surround them
Speaker 1: and we'll stop him from doing any crazy shit. Will
Speaker 1: be the adults in the room. Right. So by late
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, Hitler and Hugenberg are trapped in this
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult situation where Hitler has the ability to become
Speaker 1: chancellor because you know, he's got Hindenburg's kind of starting
Speaker 1: to support the idea, like his party's got enough electoral success,
Speaker 1: but he can't. He needs Hugenberg's support to cross that line, right,
Speaker 1: both his money and his kind of voting support. Right,
Speaker 1: Hugenberg can't be chancellor on his own. He doesn't have
Speaker 1: nearly the votes, so he can help make Hitler the chancellor,
Speaker 1: but he can't. He has no chance of getting that
Speaker 1: for himself, and the Nazis sure shit aren't going to
Speaker 1: make him chancellor. So a compromise is reached. Right, as
Speaker 1: one of Hitler's friends put it, Hugenberg had everything but
Speaker 1: the masses. Hitler had everything but the money and that
Speaker 1: excellent piece. Yeah, exactly, and that excellent piece. For The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: author Timothy Rybeck describes what happened next. After cantankerous negotiation,
Speaker 1: a deal was reached. Hugenberg would deliver Hitler the chancellorship
Speaker 1: in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as
Speaker 1: head of a superministerium that subsumed the ministries of Economics, agriculture,
Speaker 1: and nutrition. Once in the cabinet, Hugenberg didn't hesitate to
Speaker 1: meddle in foreign relations when it suited him. Reinold Quats,
Speaker 1: a close Hugenberg associate distilled Hugenberg's calculus as follows. Hitler
Speaker 1: will sit in the saddle, but Hugenberg holds the whip.
Speaker 1: In other words, I am writing Hitler to a success,
Speaker 1: and I can whip him if I need him to
Speaker 1: move in a direction.
Speaker 2: Oh god, now.
Speaker 1: There is Immediately everyone gets scared when Hitler winds up
Speaker 1: directly in power in Germany. And then Hugenberg gets this
Speaker 1: position where he's running all the ministries, and all of
Speaker 1: the dumb papers do the same thing they're doing today
Speaker 1: with Musk, where they're like, ha, you are so scared
Speaker 1: of this Hitler guy. This Hugenberg dude is running things obviously.
Speaker 1: The New York Times publishes a column where they describe
Speaker 1: Huggenberg as an arch capitalist who quote stood in strongest
Speaker 1: discord with economic doctrines of the Nazi movement. Right, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, he's running the finances, this Nazi Schmatzi,
Speaker 1: Like Nazi Schmazi. They're not gonna be that scary. This
Speaker 1: guy is gonna run things, right, and not when.
Speaker 2: You put Schmatzi after it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the New York Times the name of a
Speaker 1: little poodle. They're usually wrong about stuff like this, but
Speaker 1: even the left gets confused. The communist daily paper in Berlin,
Speaker 1: The Red Banner, argues that Hugenberg is in charge, not Hitler.
Speaker 1: In fact says that Hitler's socialist mask has slipped. Hah,
Speaker 1: he revealed his cards. It's the evil capitalists running things,
Speaker 1: you know, just like we said, and they're they're doomed
Speaker 1: to fail and then it'll be our turn next. The
Speaker 1: Weekly Journal dae veltpun described the new government as Hitler,
Speaker 1: Hugenberg and co. Roughly a day after Hitler was appointed chancellor,
Speaker 1: Hugenberg is said to have talked to a friend, the
Speaker 1: mayor of Leipzig, and hold him, I've just committed the
Speaker 1: greatest stupidity of my life. I have allied myself with
Speaker 1: the greatest demagogue in the history of the world. So well,
Speaker 1: everyone else is like, oh, thank god, Hugenberg's running things.
Speaker 1: That crazy Hitler guy is just a figurehead. Hugenberg who
Speaker 1: is has a lot of power right now, but has
Speaker 1: become aware enough and is smart enough to be like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, this this could go badly.
Speaker 1: Like this guy I might not be able to control
Speaker 1: for long.
Speaker 2: And is that just was it really just like Hitler's personality,
Speaker 2: Like everyone underestimated him and then just got fucking clovered
Speaker 2: by the guy.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing that people don't it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with Trump, right, I always get I always try to
Speaker 1: push back when people talk about how dumb Trump is
Speaker 1: or you know, what an idiot he is. He's not.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know a lot of things, you know, but
Speaker 1: he knows his business, which is getting number one populist support.
Speaker 1: And also he is really good at maneuvering through organizations
Speaker 1: to crush dissent and reform them in his image. And
Speaker 1: Hitler has a similar Hitler is a genius politician. He
Speaker 1: is extremely skilled. This is an intellectual skill. He is
Speaker 1: not lucky. I mean, he's got luck behind him too.
Speaker 1: It's always a factor. But he is not accidentally succeeding.
Speaker 1: He is succeeding because he's better at the stuff that
Speaker 1: matters than the people opposing him that gets too.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why people call Trump stupid is
Speaker 2: because of data that will come out from time to
Speaker 2: time saying that he like speaks at a third grade
Speaker 2: reading level, whereas like the average presidential candidate speaks at
Speaker 2: a tenth grade reading.
Speaker 1: Whatever fucking new? Right? Yea, yeah? You know who beats
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who read it like at twelfth
Speaker 1: grade level, a bunch of people who read at a
Speaker 1: fifth grade level with more guns like come on now,
Speaker 1: who gives it? Yeah and it. Hitler's the same. Hitler's
Speaker 1: very good at what he does. He's good at building
Speaker 1: personal loyalty, and he's good at keeping his people in lockstep.
Speaker 1: They don't act without his approval. Right. So that said,
Speaker 1: right after Hitler becomes Chancellor and Hugenberg has made this
Speaker 1: economic minister, he is a kid in a candy store.
Speaker 1: Right for the first few months of the Third Reich,
Speaker 1: Hugenberg has nominal control over the entire German economy. He
Speaker 1: describes himself as the economic dictator of Germany, and his
Speaker 1: first big step is to fire every government employee he can,
Speaker 1: trying to wipe out the entirety. He does a doge.
Speaker 1: He's trying to wipe out as all of the administrative state. Right,
Speaker 1: so he had because he's angry that he has had
Speaker 1: to pay for taxes for public so he wipes out
Speaker 1: every public employee he can, and at the same time
Speaker 1: he starts executing a one man war against workers' rights.
Speaker 1: He cuts his own employee wages by ten percent across
Speaker 1: the board, he gives everyone a pay cut as soon
Speaker 1: as he gets into power, and he guts labor rights
Speaker 1: the right to strike across Germany. All of this he
Speaker 1: justifies as necessary in order to get the German economy
Speaker 1: back into shape, and he uses his vast network of
Speaker 1: newspapers to manufacture consent for extremist policies that damaged the
Speaker 1: average German. One of his pet columnists wrote at the time,
Speaker 1: the real battle against unemployment lies singularly and alone in
Speaker 1: re establishing profitability and economic life. Parroting Alfred's personal beliefs,
Speaker 1: this editor argued that the goal of state policy should
Speaker 1: be to rescue the merchant middle class aka small business owners,
Speaker 1: no matter the costs to everyone else. Now, the focus
Speaker 1: on the middle and upper middle class was reflected in
Speaker 1: the few good moves that Hugenberg made, including he puts
Speaker 1: in a temporary foreclosure moratorium. Now he doesn't do an
Speaker 1: eviction moratorium, and that should tell you who he's working for, right,
Speaker 1: the people who are this kind of middle class that
Speaker 1: has just lost everything. He sees them as his base
Speaker 1: of support. He doesn't give a fuck about the renters,
Speaker 1: the people who are really poor. Right, there's a foreclosure moratorium,
Speaker 1: not an eviction moratorium. He also launches a limited debt
Speaker 1: jubilee calculated to support struggling members of the buildings Burgertum.
Speaker 1: And again, it's just kind of worth looking at sort
Speaker 1: of some of the stuff that he's doing, because it's
Speaker 1: not some of these policies. You could look at it
Speaker 1: a vacuum is good, but his overall goal is fuck
Speaker 1: the poor. I'm going to build support among this kind
Speaker 1: of educated, upper middle class elite. And of course, Hugenberg
Speaker 1: also pursues a tariff program focused mainly on agricultural goods
Speaker 1: in an ill conceived attempt to rescue German farmers. If
Speaker 1: I tear if all of these foreign agricultural goods, then
Speaker 1: Germans will farm and be profitable. It'll be great now.
Speaker 1: The only result to these tariffs was that they skyrocket
Speaker 1: the cost of living. People who couldn't afford food can
Speaker 1: now afford food even less, and it goes so badly
Speaker 1: that Hitler has to intervene. At one point, he blows
Speaker 1: up during a meeting with Hugenberg and says, it just
Speaker 1: won't do that. The financial burdens of these rescue measures
Speaker 1: fall only on the poorest. Like when a Hitler is
Speaker 1: speaking exactly, Wow, this is unjust you're a real day seriously,
Speaker 1: so Hugenberg alf for his part, Hugenberg is not afraid
Speaker 1: to argue with Hitler, and he says, quite literally, we
Speaker 1: have to let the poor suffer. That eventually will even
Speaker 1: out the hardships, but they have to suffer first. This
Speaker 1: does not work more. Germans go hungry. The economy, which
Speaker 1: had recovered a lot from the hyperinflation a few years back, plunges.
Speaker 1: One of the few papers Hugenberg didn't control that was
Speaker 1: still allowed to operate, nicknamed him the Confusions Rat or
Speaker 1: Confusion Consultant. As is the case today, the mean nicknames
Speaker 1: don't hurt Hugenberg's feelings. Rybeck describes him as being utterly
Speaker 1: calloused to the idea of being despised. And it was
Speaker 1: true that they hate God, right right.
Speaker 2: I don't know, how do I get like just the
Speaker 2: tiniest little bit of that inerg Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah. I mean it's you have to
Speaker 1: write if you're going to do anything. Unfortunately, he is
Speaker 1: ignoring the fact that people are angry because he's making
Speaker 1: them starve. Right now, it was true that the left
Speaker 1: hating him. That doesn't really hurt Hugenberg in this point.
Speaker 1: They don't have any.
Speaker 2: Teav anymore them.
Speaker 1: But he makes a major tactical error at this point
Speaker 1: because he chooses to believe my money, which Hitler needs,
Speaker 1: will protect my position relative to Hitler. I'll always be
Speaker 1: co equal with him because I'm rich, And that just
Speaker 1: ain't the way it's going to play out. I want
Speaker 1: to quot from Rybeck again, summarizing what happens next. In
Speaker 1: late June nineteen thirty three, Well Hitler was trying to
Speaker 1: assuage international concerns about the long term intentions of his government.
Speaker 1: Hugenberg appeared in London at an international conference on economic development.
Speaker 1: To the surprise of every one, including the other German
Speaker 1: delegation members present, Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for
Speaker 1: economic growth through territorial expansion. The first step would consist
Speaker 1: of Germany reclaiming its colonies in Africa, Hugenberg explained. The
Speaker 1: second would be that people without space would open areas
Speaker 1: in which our productive race would create living space. The
Speaker 1: announcement made headlines around the world. Reich asks for return
Speaker 1: of African lands at London parlay, reads one New York
Speaker 1: Times headline, below that a subhead continued also seeks other territory,
Speaker 1: presumably in Europe. Such a funny way to write about
Speaker 1: what World War two is gotta be. They won Africa back,
Speaker 1: also some other stuff, maybe in Europe. Who knows.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Christ today we can say, well Hugenberg, which has given
Speaker 1: everyone a very accurate warning about what was about to happen.
Speaker 1: That is what goes down next, right, But Hitler and
Speaker 1: everyone else Hitler's furious, so was everyone in German government.
Speaker 1: For one thing, they don't have an army yet, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the German army is bullshit at this point. Now it's
Speaker 1: strong enough that it could overthrow Hitler, which is a
Speaker 1: big thing he's scared about, but it cannot conquer anything
Speaker 1: right now. So they're like, what you're threatening people, You're
Speaker 1: like threatening to punch somebody, and our arms are both
Speaker 1: still in fucking traction. Like we can't. You can't be
Speaker 1: doing this yet, like we have, there's steps before we
Speaker 1: start acting like this. And so Hitler has his other
Speaker 1: top people try to pull back from hugenberg statements. A
Speaker 1: bunch of other like cabinet members start being like, no,
Speaker 1: of course, we're not gonna take any year up. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna we're gonna get back, and we're just trying
Speaker 1: to fix Germany. Baby. You know, Hugenberg is incapable of
Speaker 1: reading a room, and he doubles and then triples down.
Speaker 1: He keeps talking about how Germany is going to try
Speaker 1: to conquer everyone around them, and.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck yeah, keep that shit on.
Speaker 1: The down low. Ultimately, the conflict culminates in a cabinet
Speaker 1: meeting with Hugenberg on one side and everyone else on
Speaker 1: the other. With this tells you how bad things are.
Speaker 1: Hitler's the mediator.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, God, I can't think of a worse mediator
Speaker 2: in all of human history Hitler.
Speaker 1: If Hitler's the guy in the middle trying to keep
Speaker 1: everybody calm, things are not going to go well.
Speaker 2: Hitler's like meeting gently without Buddy.
Speaker 1: Nobody is angry, you know. So Hitler still at this
Speaker 1: point has some hesitation of totally dispensing with Hugenberg, and
Speaker 1: he tries to insist, like, hey, if you'll stop, everything's forgiven,
Speaker 1: you know. He tells the other people in the room
Speaker 1: what already happened is no longer of interest. But Hugenberg
Speaker 1: again refuses to read the room and he doesn't mediate
Speaker 1: his language at all, and ultimately Hitler forces him out
Speaker 1: of his job as economic dictator in late June nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. You know, Hugenberg technically resigns, but it's obvious
Speaker 1: what happened. And this is the end of Alfred's major
Speaker 1: period of influence in the Nazi regime. He will spend
Speaker 1: the remainder of the Third Reich living at his estate
Speaker 1: as essentially a small local dictator, right, Like, he's got
Speaker 1: this little country home with some towns around it, and
Speaker 1: he just kind of runs things there, right, And the
Speaker 1: Nazis more or less leave him alone. They make him
Speaker 1: sell off all his newspapers. He has to sell his
Speaker 1: media empire, but he gets a good price for it, right.
Speaker 1: His party is dissolved pretty quickly after this, but he
Speaker 1: gets to remain a guest member of the Reichstag, which
Speaker 1: isn't really in charge of anything anymore. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of a we'll let you keep this because we don't
Speaker 1: really want to have a fight with you. His wealth
Speaker 1: and connections did protect him from the Night of Long Knives.
Speaker 1: He's never purged, but he clearly understands it. I have
Speaker 1: to stay out of the spotlight if I don't want
Speaker 1: to lose my money and my nye shit. And that's
Speaker 1: what he does for the remainder of the Third Reich. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just kind of chilling. And when Hitler shoots himself
Speaker 1: in that bunker and the Third Reich falls, Hugenberg had
Speaker 1: been out of direct power long enough that the Allies
Speaker 1: don't really focus on him as a danger.
Speaker 2: He doesn't get up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they kind of. He does get arrested in
Speaker 1: forty nine as part of like this denotification process, but
Speaker 1: he gets he gets basically ruled to be like, ah,
Speaker 1: you weren't really a Nazi, you know what.
Speaker 2: He's really old by then.
Speaker 1: He's old. He dies two years later, but he's never
Speaker 1: upun it. He's allowed to keep his possessions in his business.
Speaker 1: And he dies, you know, peacefully, on March twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one.
Speaker 2: Oh did he ever have a family?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he had some.
Speaker 2: Oh he do.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think. I don't think he
Speaker 1: thinks much about them. So whatever, I'm not gonna Oh.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they hated his guts. He sounds he.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a real dick.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They they might not have been great themselves.
Speaker 2: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whoa wow. What a random piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he's a piece of shit that is
Speaker 1: very much crafted by his social class and his time,
Speaker 1: and he's very much again he's he is there there,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. He's this guy who as soon as the
Speaker 1: fascists come into power, gets the job of wiping out
Speaker 1: the administrative state and completely fucking the economy, and then
Speaker 1: I guess shit canned right as soon as he's no
Speaker 1: longer useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean it is true that like
Speaker 2: a major difference between him and Elon is that he
Speaker 2: came from not nothing, but nothing compared to Elon, and
Speaker 2: so no rich rise exactly, and so like his rise
Speaker 2: is a little scary because there was like no warning.
Speaker 2: He was just like bobin and weave and Bobbin and
Speaker 2: weavin his way to this like opportunistic position, and it
Speaker 2: kind of inspires to feelings like holy ship, like who's
Speaker 2: going to be the next this guy? And wow, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of like soothed that more people like this are
Speaker 2: are not coming up already.
Speaker 1: I mean they are, and this is what got a
Speaker 1: little bit of I think the difference is that number one,
Speaker 1: most of those guys don't didn't bother to buy a
Speaker 1: political party of their own. Instead, we're like.
Speaker 2: Get involved with weapons manufacturing and like selling weapons.
Speaker 1: Really, I mean Peter t Alan's palanteer, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a it's a kind of weapon system.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that Musk hasn't so much gotten involved in
Speaker 1: that entirely.
Speaker 2: But like you know, but I guess define weapon in
Speaker 2: the digital exactly. Yeah, damn, okay, fuck whoa, it's.
Speaker 1: Always the same people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh and it's always a dude who has weird, weird face.
Speaker 1: Yep, it's always it's always a fucking yeah, some busted
Speaker 1: weird asshole.
Speaker 2: What a bastard? Yeah wow, thank you for regelling me
Speaker 2: with that tail. It was a roller coaster. I'm I'm
Speaker 2: I keep thinking back on this. On this art exhibit
Speaker 2: I went to in Zurich where what was his name,
Speaker 2: clumped glop.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, was it climped? Crupt was the
Speaker 1: arm manufacturer, but I think there was a there's a
Speaker 1: yeah artist clip yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, not not climt. I'm talking about the weapons manufactured,
Speaker 2: the arms manufacturer.
Speaker 1: Yeahrupt k r U p P Yeah oh Crup Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a Crup family collection of artwork. Yeah that traveled
Speaker 1: around massive. Yes, well, then that's where their money came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's wild. I was just like pondering the
Speaker 2: how weird, how weird it was, and this was like
Speaker 2: the point of the exhibition to like admire these beautiful artworks.
Speaker 2: I mean there were like Monaise in there and Desgades
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: You have the money to buy them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like he was like celebrated as an art
Speaker 2: collector like this amazing taste or whatever, and like the
Speaker 2: reason he was able to acquire that artwork was because
Speaker 2: he was like making weapons that did World War two
Speaker 2: or made World War two possible and.
Speaker 1: World War one and two because CRUP is arming Germany
Speaker 1: in both. But every one of those paintings represents a
Speaker 1: pile of corpses of Yeah, yeah, teenage boys primary, Oh
Speaker 1: it's good, it's good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you love to see it?
Speaker 1: You don't, but you see it.
Speaker 2: No, you do see it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of what you see, where can people see you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
Speaker 2: I love, I love well, I love and I hate
Speaker 2: and feel, I feel icky, and I feel great about
Speaker 2: knowing stories like the one you just told me. And
Speaker 2: if people want to know stories that will make them
Speaker 2: chortal and also feel a little disturbed, they can find
Speaker 2: me at sounds like a cult pod wherever you stream podcasts.
Speaker 2: I have another podcast called Magical Overthinkers, and I got
Speaker 2: a bunch of books. Cult dish the age magical overthinking.
Speaker 2: I love talking about social science in a cheeky way.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, excellent. All right, we'll check out Amanda and
Speaker 1: her work and check out our modern Alfred Hugenbergs as
Speaker 1: they engage in the process of flaming out and getting
Speaker 1: forced out by the fascists who are going to use
Speaker 1: the power given to them by these people to do
Speaker 1: god knows what. Hopefully, uh not as much as the
Speaker 1: last ones. We'll see everybody had a great weekend.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 3: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Speaker 3: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
Speaker 3: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 3: at Behind the Bastards