WEBVTT - Part One: Julius Streicher: The Other Hitler 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:05.200 Oh boy, welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:09.639 I just played a trick on Sophie. I'm Robert Evans. 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:11.960 This is a show about the worst people in all 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.319 of history and uh, and to help us talk about 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:17.640 one of the worst people in all of history, one 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:22.480 of my favorite Did it happen, Sophie? Did it happen? 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:24.200 Did you catch my cunning roosts? 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.960 I asked you the script and it says, ha ha ha, Sophie, 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:28.920 this was a trick. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:33.159 Uh, your fake documents. It's not the real script. 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:34.280 I know, I know. 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.000 It was such a shitty thing to do. And that 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:42.120 laugh on the line was Jake Hanrahan, Jake you are 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:45.720 I'm doing good. I'm doing any buddy, how are you 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:46.440 doing this week? 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:48.000 Yeah? Good, I'm good. I'm good. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:55.880 I'm moving forward with looking into dead Russians. 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:59.160 You've taken on the fun job for yourself this year 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:04.520 of looking into the mysterious accidental deaths and suicides of 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:08.800 a bunch of Russian oligarchs for your hit podcast Sad Oligarch. 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:10.039 Yeah. 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.840 Mine, and it's it's been really eye open and actually 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:17.840 like it's it's a lot of work, but it's very 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.800 I mean the coincidence is being stretched to its absolute. 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:23.200 Limit on what's happening here. Put it that way. 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:26.679 Yeah, it's it's a super impressive podcast. Really happy to 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.560 have it on the network. You also, Jake, run an 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:34.920 outfit called Popular Front, which does both a regular podcast 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:38.640 on conflict all around the world and also has a 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:41.520 you put out a print journal. I think I'll call 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:43.920 it a journal because that sounds that sounds I mean. 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:49.120 Yeah, magazine, Yeah, yeah, I'm moving forward, and documentaries as well. 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:49.920 Yeah. 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.320 So in other words, Jake, you are kind of a 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:56.200 good version of the bad guy that we're going to 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:58.680 talk about today, because the guy we're talking about today 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:03.240 is like the evilist example of like a dude who 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.280 you could technically call a journalist he ran a newspaper 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:11.120 or a journal or whatever, which was the podcast of 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:14.520 the of the nineteen thirties and forties. What do you 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:16.960 know about a fella named Julius Striker? 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:18.520 Nothing? 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:23.040 Actually, okay, okay, very good. So Striker was, I mean 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.440 the kind of the surface level thing that he was, 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.200 and sort of the most prominent thing that he was 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.200 was the dude who ran a newspaper in Weimar, Germany 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.519 called Der Sturmer. So he was like the guy who 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:40.400 published the primary anti semitic newspaper of like the pre 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:45.200 Nazi in the Nazi era. He was the only dude 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:49.079 we executed at Nuremberg who hadn't actually had a government 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.200 position in the Nazi Party. In other words, when they 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.440 killed Striker after the war, they acknowledged like, well, this 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.520 guy wasn't you know, he wasn't a military leader, he 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.280 wasn't in the government. He didn't like help start a war, 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.120 he didn't like command troops, he didn't run a death camp. 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:08.440 But we're going to hang him because the propaganda he 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.400 made was an integral part of the Holocaust. 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.640 He should have studied science and he could have been 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:17.560 sent to America. 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:19.840 Yeah, if he known how to build a bomb. 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.160 He missed Piper Clip with profession, you know. 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.160 I mean, one of the things about Striker is that 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.440 he kind of did He was kind of like that 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.160 level of evil genius in that he figured out a 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.920 way to utilize the news media as a weapon in 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:41.440 a way that a lot of people today still do. 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.000 Like people are hurting folks right now using a lot 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:45.680 of the tactics that Striker pioneered. 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:48.160 But he's also smart why did he die though? 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:53.480 You know, yeah, I mean python, the accumulated head injuries 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.000 that he got in street fights in the nineteen thirties 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.360 might have blunted him by the end. You know, some 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.560 of that cte, which I think is an underdiscussed part 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:04.920 of a lot of the old Nazis right. You can't 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.040 you can only have like so many beer bottles broken 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.480 over your head before you start to yeah, yeah he was, 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.480 I mean he was. He was like just kind of 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:15.760 involved in because he was a big speaker during the 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:18.159 Weimar era, right, and so you were a big Nazi speaker, 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.599 you get into a shitload of bar fights. But one 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:23.680 of the things that's interesting about Striker is that, like, 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:26.760 so this is this is getting a little bit outside 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:29.600 a topic. But if you like spending the time engaging 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.000 with the actual historiography of the like the quote unquote 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.719 Holy Land or the the what you know, the lifetime 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.440 of the person who uh has come down to us 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.520 as Jesus Christ, you'll find out that, like there were 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.080 sort of a bunch of Messianic figures like in that 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:49.719 part of the world in that period of time, people 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.039 claiming to be like Messiah's people claiming to be, you know, 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.000 holy Man. And basically the guy that like, you know, 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.320 the you get a lot of stories about in the 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:03.080 Bible is like one of a number of dudes who theoretically, 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.120 if you're not a believer in Christianity, right, if you 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.760 don't believe that guy's the son of God, theoretically there 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.240 were probably other dudes that like maybe could have been 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.520 the focus of a big religion if shit had broken 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:14.880 a little bit differently, right, Yeah. 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:19.599 John the Baptist is worshiped by as I forget the 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.640 name now, but there's a like specific religion in the 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:24.200 Middle East. Most of them actually don't live in the 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.240 Middle East now as they were persecuted, but yeah, they 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.240 for them, John the Baptist was there Jesus, if. 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:29.680 You know what I mean. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.400 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so Striker is in addition to 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:36.599 being this very influential propagandist, he's kind of that guy 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.480 for Hitler, as in, if a couple of things had 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.200 broke differently, he could have been the like fearer of 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.160 the fascist party that rose to power. Like, he had 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.120 a lot of similarities, and there was a period of 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.640 time where they were kind of seen as rivals for 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.280 like the guy who's going to become the center of 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.839 the of the the far right movement in Bymar, Germany. 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:02.279 So he's a really interesting dude for a number of there. So, yeah, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:06.599 that's who we're talking about this week. Julius Striker aka 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:12.359 Jules So. Julius was born February twelfth, eighteen eighty five, 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.560 in a little bitty country town named Fleinhausen, about fifteen 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.880 miles west of the town of Augsburg in Bavaria. Now 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.840 Bavaria is kind of like sometimes I hear people say, 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.720 it's like the Texas of Germany. Right, it's traditionally the 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:31.720 conservative chunk of Germany. It's quite large. It's also like 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:34.520 heavily Catholic as opposed to kind of the more Protestant 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.640 parts of the country. And his family's Catholic. His dad 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.800 is the town school master in this little bitty town, 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:44.760 and his dad is, like a lot of folks in 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.720 Bavaria at the time, a big believer in having as 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.840 many babies with his wife as she is capable of surviving. 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.760 So Julius is his ninth kid, which is that's a 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:56.120 lot a lot of kids to have. 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.800 That's a hell little kids. Yeah, back Denvi was like, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:00.719 just keep going. 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:02.800 Yeah, you gotta like, you gotta make him out. Three 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:04.520 of them are going to make it to fifteen, you know, 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:06.599 and then then you can die at the right old 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:12.360 age of thirty eight. Yeah. So the Strikers were a conservative, 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.960 traditional family in a pretty conservative and traditional part of Germany. 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:19.160 Julius had been born and you could call it he 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.080 was basically born during Germany's kinsinera, right, like Germany is 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.720 like fifteen years old when he turns fifth or when 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.320 he's born, and his family's pretty excited to be a 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.120 part of this new country. So everybody's like, yeah, Germany, 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.080 great idea. This is only gonna only gonna end. Well, 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.480 his mom is kind of a homemaker at the time, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:42.200 while his dad is again a school teacher, and he's 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.920 as a very young kid again a lot like Hitler. 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:47.720 He's a mama's boy. He actually calls his mother the 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:52.480 fortress of my childhood, so, you know, very much, very 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.120 much tied to his mom, very much. 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.520 Word, Okay, I'm sorry, I love my mom. 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:00.640 That's the way weird fortress. 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.680 Yeah, my sweet mother, Like no, she was the fortress, 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.600 like she was the verdun of my childhood. 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.040 That's like, my mom's my favorite person. 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.720 No, yeah, she's a fortress. 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:19.040 Yeah she's Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, Hitler's kind of 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.120 the same way, where like the h if you listen 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.200 to like folks who knew the family at the time, 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.240 or like the doctor who took care of her when 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.760 she had cancer, he was like, I've never seen anybody 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.120 who was like so into his mom as this guy. 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.040 You know, not that it's bad to be a mama's boy, 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:37.040 but an interesting detail for me, this fellas. 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:38.640 Good to fuck your mom, like, you. 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:41.439 Know, yeah, there's a little bit of like that emotionally 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:45.440 going on, right, Yeah, yeah, a little odd. So in short, 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.280 his early life is characterized by this kind of both 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:53.080 this comforting sort of feeling of a very stable like family, 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.200 but also this very comforting feeling of like the weight 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:58.720 of all of this tradition you know that that exists 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.079 in the area he lives in. But despite this, while 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:06.720 his family's Catholic, while Bavaria's Catholic, he's never super into 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:11.080 Catholicism as a religion, but he is very culturally Catholic, 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:12.839 and one of the things that he gets out of 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:17.840 his cultural Catholicism is a pretty rough attitude towards Jewish people, 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.400 not not not great relations between the Catholic Church and 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.680 Judaism in this period at time, Not that he would 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.000 have known any Jewish people growing up right, Julius would 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.560 have only occasionally even met other like Christians who had 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.160 spent time interacting with Jewish citizens of the Reich. There 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.800 were a significant amount of German Jews in like cities. 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:41.800 You know, you would if you grew up in a city, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.400 you certainly were going to like meet and interact with 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.400 with Jewish Germans. But he's out in the countryside and 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.520 basically everybody's you know, Catholic where he is. You know, 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:52.480 you got a couple of Protestants, Like that's kind of 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:57.760 a big deal running into Protestants for his folks, let alone, Like. 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.800 Why why did he hate Jews if he didn't annoyny. 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:05.560 Well, because he's raised on stories about them and largely 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.800 like really negative propaganda. So the church in his hometown, 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.400 and this is the case with hundreds of churches across 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:16.040 Europe had stained glass reliefs of what's called the Judensao 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.160 j U d E N s A U. You can 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.720 you can look up pictures of this. If you'd like, 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.680 and the Judensao is a pig nursing Jewish babies, right, 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:29.040 Like that's it's like this it's a racist kind of 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.280 like cartoon or whatever, but this is like literally like 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:36.280 carved into churches. There were also would have been a 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:40.240 relative regular talk about what was called the Blood Passover, 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:43.320 which is this medieval era conspiracy theory that existed up 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.400 until it still exists in some areas that claims that 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.520 like rabbis have to murder Christian children to get their 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.080 blood to make matza, and that's like like fucked up 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:57.679 and wild and stuff. But these were really common. Again, 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.280 this stuff is literally like in there's stained glass reliefs 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.520 of some of these stories. You know, this is a 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.960 thing that goes back a very long time. And some 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.559 of these myths about Jewish people, these like conspiracy theories 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.719 about rabbis and the like, would have been taught to 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.560 him both kind of as a part of his Catholic upbringing, 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.680 but also by adults who kind of these were not 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.360 just literal beliefs, they were also things that adults would 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.640 kind of embellish for kids as like a form of entertainment. 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.080 So it's kind of this mix of the two things, 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.000 but it all contributes to this kind of general miasma 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.400 of bigotry that is culturally the norm. And this is 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.040 not just in Germany. Right, if you're in France around 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:44.600 the same time, you're kid in Belgian Scandinavia, Kidden, most 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.760 parts of the UK during this period of time, you're 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.520 getting pieces of this. You know, there's differences culturally kind 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.240 of depending on where you are and what your dominant 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:56.920 religion is. But like this is a big part of why, 0:11:57.200 --> 0:11:59.920 you know, when when the Nazis take over in France, 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.480 like one of the logistic problems they have is like 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:06.240 so many people handing in Jewish neighbors and relatives because 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:08.520 you know, this kind of bigotry is just it's very 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:13.679 I mean, this is like, yeah, it's already there, and 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:15.679 this is you know, it's one of those things where 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.600 as much as we're talking about how much bigotry this 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.400 kid and everyone else in this part of rural Bavaria 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:27.199 is ingesting, this is also simultaneously a period in which 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.280 Jewish people are making great strides towards equality in Germany. 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:35.880 Prussia had made Jewish people's citizens for the first time, 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.959 albeit kind of second class citizens. In eighteen twelve as 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.320 a part of the Napoleonic Wars, which is only you know, 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.880 like sixty or so years before Strikers born seventy years 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.880 full civic equality had been granted in eighteen forty eight 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.760 in Prussia, although most states in what became Germany a 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.839 little after that still had some restrictions on Jewish people 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.640 doing things like joining the military until eighteen sixty. And 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:04.440 you know, eighteen seventy is when we have the Franco 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.120 Prussian War, which is what gives us the birth of 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.360 like Germany as a traditional state. So like right before 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:13.960 the Franco Prussian War, Jews get the right to serve 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.760 in the German military. And then when that war ends 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.560 and Germany is established as an independent nation for the 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:25.240 first time, one of the things that happens when Germany 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.160 is born is that Jewish people are given full rights 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.280 as subjects of the Kaiser. So it's you've got again 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.320 in this period, you're both you both have this very 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:39.000 medieval bigotry is still super common, but also you've got 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:44.280 this very like progressive movement towards recognizing Jewish people as 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:46.079 the same as anyone else in the country. So both 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.600 of the stuff's happened at the same time his first 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.600 Julius's first direct memory of Jewish Germans came when he 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.840 was about five years old. His mom ordered fabric from 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.640 a shop owned by a Jewish shopkeeper in a town 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.440 near by. The fabric did not meet her expectations for 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.559 whatever region, and because she'd spent so much money on it, 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:09.760 she got angry. She started crying, and Julius, you know 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.760 who's again about five during this period, recalls, probably from 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.160 the adults around him, hearing that this betrayal of getting 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:20.760 bad fabric was just like a jew. And in Randall 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.520 Bitework's biography of Striker, he notes the village priest, in 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.520 his regular periods of religious instruction in the school, explained 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.720 how the Jews had fought Christ bitterly, finally crucifying him. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.520 This was my first inkling that the nature of Jews 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.960 was peculiar. Striker later wrote, So this is kind of, 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.440 you know, it's this again. You've got like this, your 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.160 preacher talking about how Jewish people are responsible for the 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.600 death of Christ, and your mom complaining that like they 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.120 screwed you out of you know, the proper cloth. It's 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.840 just kind of this all encompassing thing. So in this period, 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.160 age fourteen is kind of the start of your adulthood. 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:57.960 That's when a young man is going to start working 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:01.800 and apprenticing to learn a trade. Julius actually finished his 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.360 primary school at thirteen and started attending a teacher training 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.440 program where he's like learning how to become a school 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.320 teacher as a as a thirteen year old, which is wild. 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.760 Yeah, that's crazy. Imagine going to school tea. 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.520 Yeah, yeah, you're like eight's he's thirteen. He's like, I 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.400 can't even imagine the things he's seen that kids are hard. 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:30.240 Fourteen telling me, shit, I'm alone anything. Yeah, it's funny. 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:32.960 So he's one of like and you know, it says 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.640 something probably about his dad that of the nine kids 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.640 in the family, five of them following their dad's footsteps 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.200 as teachers, which is not like uncommon. Right, Like, at 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.200 that point in time, you're a coal miner, right, You're 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:46.320 living in somewhere in the south of England and your 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:48.160 dad's a coal miner, You're probably going to grow up 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:48.920 to be a coal miner. 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:49.400 You know. 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.200 It's kind of the same thing with Striker's family and 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.080 being a teacher. He's a he does Okay, he like 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.640 passes everything, but he's he's got kind of mediocre grades, 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:02.760 and he's starts working as a substitute teacher in nineteen 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:07.360 oh four, having been an indifferent teaching student. Now, the 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.760 Bavarian school system at this point is partly run by 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:15.040 the Catholic Church, so in villages, the local priest was 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.640 like the administrator of the school, like he would check 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:20.760 in to see like what the teachers doing, what they're 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:25.600 teaching kids, whether it's acceptable, and Julius, while he's kind 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:30.480 of very culturally Catholic, doesn't particularly believe and is kind 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.000 of oppositional defiant, right, Like he's just reflexively angry at 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.360 anyone who's telling him how to do things. So he 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.720 starts getting into a bunch of fights with the local 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.280 priest as he's starting his career as a teacher. Kind 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:44.440 Of a lot of this starts when he decides he 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.560 wants to change the starting time for Sunday school classes, 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.680 which is, you know, a part of the school teacher's job, 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.280 and the local priest gets really angry and it gets 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:56.160 him in trouble with his bosses all that stuff. So 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.240 in nineteen oh seven, his kind of reflexive need to 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.840 sort of, I don't know, resist authority causes problems for 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.080 him again because he he has to do his year 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:09.080 of compulsory military service, which all german Men have to 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:11.080 do in this period of time. Kind of when you're 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.560 a young adult you have to at some point you 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:15.880 have some flexibilities to win, but you have to go 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.760 spend a year working as a soldier so that when 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:20.720 it's time to do a World War one they can 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.359 call everybody up and have them go, you know, do 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.960 a World War one. And he's terrible at this. Like 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:33.680 his leaders, his officers notice that he like can't be controlled. Basically, 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.439 he winds up going to jail for several days because 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.520 like a guy in the lunch Tint makes fun of him, 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.280 and he just beats the absolute piss out of this dude. 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.160 So his superiors are like, this is not a guy, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.679 like because he's a school teacher. They were considering, you know, 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.800 sending him to officer school. But they're like, wow, this guy. 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:53.960 We can't have this guy do anything, right, He's just 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.960 not like a reliable soldier. So nineteen oh yeah, loose 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.639 cannon kind of an asshole, right, He's just kind of 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:04.440 a giant dick. So nineteen oh eight he goes back 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:07.159 to teaching, and then the next year he gets in 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.159 trouble when a priest visits his class and says something 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.239 that Julius disagrees with. So Striker kind of like they 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.800 have this big confrontation, maybe it's kind of gets close 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.320 to blows and he forces the priest to leave, which 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.280 gets him in trouble with the church again, and he's 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.399 like pushed out of that town and eventually like comes 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.160 to find a teaching position in the biggest city near him, 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.640 which is Nuremberg. This is a good thing for him 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.000 because like he doesn't really like the Catholic Church. He's 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.359 pissed at how much of a role they have in 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.040 teaching people. And in Nuremberg there's a lot of Protestants 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:43.919 and also you know, a growing number of people who 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.240 aren't particularly religious at all, who are like why are 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:51.360 schools run by the Catholic Church? Like this maybe shouldn't 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:53.159 be the way that we do things and are in 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.960 our new modern Germany that's supposed to have some degree 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.720 of pluralism in it, like why are they in charge 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.959 of this? And so he gets along really well with 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.840 his boss in Nuremberg, he starts to like find some success, 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:11.600 you know, teaching in Nuremberg. You know, it's this kind 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:14.439 of interesting place in the early nineteen hundreds, it had 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.719 been like majority Protestant up until the turn of the century, 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:19.960 and that a bunch of Catholics had moved in along 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:24.600 with eight thousand or so Jewish Germans. And it's one 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:26.960 of those things I just talked about how racist his 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.560 upbringing was, But at this period of time in his life, 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:32.159 there's no evidence from any of his writings at the 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.920 time that he had any particular negative interactions with any 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.879 of his fellow citizens who were Jewish, that he had 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.840 any particular issue. In fact, he seems to have kind 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:46.000 of been a progressive leftist early on when he moves 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:48.320 in for the time what you'd call that. When he 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:52.119 moves to Nuremberg, he sort of was interested in the 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:56.000 Social Democratic Party, but at that time the government forbade 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.560 state employees from being Social Democrats, so he joined the 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:03.399 Democrat Party, which was kind of like the center slightly 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.400 liberal option at the time, right, and the Democratic Party's 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.680 primary goal was to end clerical supervision in the schools, right, 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.719 like their big campaign sort of like issue was like, 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.360 maybe we don't have priests running all of our schools. 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.640 So Striker was, you know, into this. He joins and 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.520 at some of these early meetings he's doing, he starts 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.600 like speaking up and eventually like actually giving speeches, and 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:31.560 it's kind of one of those things he doesn't have 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:34.719 as a teacher. He's got some experience being up in 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.120 front of an audience, but the first time he gets 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:39.200 up in front of an audience at a party meeting 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:41.760 and starts like you know, teaching, kind of going on 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:43.480 a little bit of a rant about why he doesn't 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.480 like priests being in charge in the schools. He's kind 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.520 of electrifying. Like people, all of the people running this 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.960 party are like, this guy's actually really good at this, 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:56.560 and so they're like, hey, Julius, what if we had you? 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:58.960 But what if we hired you in basically as like 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:02.200 a regular speaker. So you know, when we have party meetings, 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:04.560 when we're doing like vote drives and stuff to bring 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:06.840 in more folks to raise money, we can just have 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:09.280 you get up on stage and start, you know, doing 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.600 your thing. And so that's how he starts. That's like 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.199 kind of the birth of this guy's political experience is 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.800 he's just kind of like has this natural gift. And 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.159 in this period, you got to remember, people don't have 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:24.800 radios really, you know, I think they exist, but not 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.679 a lot of folks really are are listening to the radio. 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.520 There's certainly no television. One of the primary methods of 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:35.480 entertainment is just like at night, you hear like, oh, 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:37.880