1
00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:04,480
Speaker 1: Also media.

2
00:00:04,680 --> 00:00:08,440
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every

3
00:00:08,440 --> 00:00:10,920
Speaker 2: week I try to make you feel worse about life,

4
00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:14,680
Speaker 2: even though life makes you feel worse about life every week.

5
00:00:14,920 --> 00:00:17,079
Speaker 2: Why do I do this? Money?

6
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:17,640
Speaker 3: Uh?

7
00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:20,880
Speaker 2: And also I live to hurt you. You know. That's it.

8
00:00:21,040 --> 00:00:24,160
Speaker 2: That's all that's going on with me. Let's talk about

9
00:00:24,160 --> 00:00:28,480
Speaker 2: what's going on with our guest today, Joe Kassebian. Joe,

10
00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:29,240
Speaker 2: how are you doing?

11
00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:32,879
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm I'm great. I'm ready for pain to be

12
00:00:32,960 --> 00:00:36,600
Speaker 4: inflicted on me and absorb the pain and the suffering

13
00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:37,640
Speaker 4: like a sponge.

14
00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:40,480
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, feature pain, your delicious pain.

15
00:00:40,720 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 3: Say that. But when you're hear what the topic?

16
00:00:43,720 --> 00:00:45,760
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, last time I was on it was like

17
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:49,280
Speaker 4: four hours of Laventi barrier. What could possibly be worse

18
00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:49,559
Speaker 4: than that?

19
00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:52,000
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question.

20
00:00:52,159 --> 00:00:56,840
Speaker 2: It could possibly be worse than Laventi barriers. Stalin's head

21
00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:01,120
Speaker 2: of the Secret police and almost certainly a pedophile on

22
00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:03,920
Speaker 2: an industrial scale. What could be worse than that?

23
00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:05,360
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked that question.

24
00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:08,600
Speaker 2: Could be worse than that, Sophie, what could be worse

25
00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:09,000
Speaker 2: than that?

26
00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:12,120
Speaker 3: I mean, I know the top, yes.

27
00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:14,640
Speaker 2: But I think I think Joe, I think we've done

28
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:17,080
Speaker 2: an able job of finding a worse one for you,

29
00:01:17,480 --> 00:01:21,240
Speaker 2: because this week and motherfucking next week, because boy howdy,

30
00:01:21,319 --> 00:01:23,440
Speaker 2: you can't do this guy. In two parts, we are

31
00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:28,200
Speaker 2: talking about mister Holocaust himself, Adolph Eichman. You're welcome, Are

32
00:01:28,200 --> 00:01:35,959
Speaker 2: you fucking Serious's right, baby, mister Holocaust himself. I probably

33
00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:37,520
Speaker 2: shouldn't call him, And.

34
00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:40,800
Speaker 4: I mean it's a good If he had a rig name,

35
00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:42,039
Speaker 4: it would be Holocaust.

36
00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:44,240
Speaker 2: And he, as we'll talk about, he worked most of

37
00:01:44,280 --> 00:01:47,760
Speaker 2: his professional career. He worked very hard to make himself

38
00:01:47,800 --> 00:01:50,840
Speaker 2: the number one name associated with the Holocaust internationally, like

39
00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:55,200
Speaker 2: that was a he was not actually like he his reputation.

40
00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:58,200
Speaker 2: He was very involved, obviously, but his reputation is even

41
00:01:58,280 --> 00:02:01,440
Speaker 2: higher than his actual involvement. And that was due to

42
00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:04,919
Speaker 2: him trying to jink up his career. But I think it's.

43
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:07,320
Speaker 4: Oh God, to juice up as Holocaust.

44
00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:09,080
Speaker 2: He really was here, really was.

45
00:02:09,200 --> 00:02:11,320
Speaker 1: And And Joe, when Robert told me he was writing

46
00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:13,040
Speaker 1: the scripts, He's like, who should we get as a guest,

47
00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:14,280
Speaker 1: And I was like, Joe.

48
00:02:14,160 --> 00:02:16,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, we probably gotta get Joe over this one.

49
00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:19,400
Speaker 4: Joe, Yes, yes, I'm glad I have a brand and

50
00:02:19,440 --> 00:02:20,200
Speaker 4: it's horrible.

51
00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:24,720
Speaker 3: Uh huh uh, well boy, howdy, let's do it.

52
00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:26,760
Speaker 4: I'm gonna say though you had me in the first

53
00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:30,040
Speaker 4: half because he said mister Holocaust himself add off of

54
00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:32,400
Speaker 4: like did he did? He really? Motherfucking really bring me

55
00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:34,360
Speaker 4: on for the Hitler ships episodes.

56
00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:38,040
Speaker 2: We've done so many Hitlers. I know, we've covered we

57
00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:40,640
Speaker 2: gotta you gotta cover Hitler in like little pieces, like

58
00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:42,680
Speaker 2: we'll do two parts on how we fucked you know,

59
00:02:42,760 --> 00:02:45,920
Speaker 2: you gotta cover all the there's so much niche Hitler stuff.

60
00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:49,160
Speaker 2: Although you know, let's let's come back from the cold

61
00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:51,200
Speaker 2: open and I'll talk about the scope of these episodes.

62
00:02:51,240 --> 00:02:54,040
Speaker 2: But we're done with the cold open. You're you're warm

63
00:02:54,120 --> 00:03:02,800
Speaker 2: now very warm, and we're back. We're back. We're all

64
00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:07,680
Speaker 2: lathered up and hot bothered. So these episodes. If you

65
00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:13,480
Speaker 2: know anything about Aikman, and he's like outside of Hitler, Gerbels, Himmler,

66
00:03:13,880 --> 00:03:17,520
Speaker 2: you know, Gering, he's probably the first name, one of

67
00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:20,200
Speaker 2: the one of the few names that like the average

68
00:03:20,240 --> 00:03:23,240
Speaker 2: person who knows anything about the Holocaust, you've heard of Aikman, right,

69
00:03:23,760 --> 00:03:26,480
Speaker 2: A lot of people will have if you haven't. As

70
00:03:26,520 --> 00:03:29,520
Speaker 2: I always say, there's a great movie called Conspiracy about

71
00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:32,000
Speaker 2: the conference where they planned the Holocaust, where Eikman is

72
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:39,040
Speaker 2: played by Stanley Tucci, and it's perfect performance. He's played

73
00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:40,240
Speaker 2: by Stanley Tucci.

74
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:43,160
Speaker 3: Chooch can play any part he is.

75
00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:47,360
Speaker 2: And Stanley is incredible as Aikman, Like he really nails it.

76
00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:49,960
Speaker 4: I can see it, I can see he's got a face.

77
00:03:50,120 --> 00:03:51,640
Speaker 3: Is he also hot in the movie?

78
00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:54,240
Speaker 1: Because Stanley Tucci has been hot in every movie he's

79
00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: ever been and except the one where he played that pedophile.

80
00:03:57,480 --> 00:03:59,400
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna say. I will say one of the

81
00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:02,000
Speaker 2: critiques the movie you got is that. And I also

82
00:04:02,040 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 2: think he does an excellent job. Kenneth Branna plays Reinhardt Heidrich,

83
00:04:05,600 --> 00:04:08,600
Speaker 2: and one of the complaints that, like some Holocaust scholars

84
00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:10,400
Speaker 2: had is that, like he's a very good actor. He

85
00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:11,920
Speaker 2: does a good job, but like he probably shouldn't have

86
00:04:11,960 --> 00:04:17,240
Speaker 2: made Hydrich hot, right, Like maybe.

87
00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:18,240
Speaker 4: That is too sexy.

88
00:04:18,680 --> 00:04:20,680
Speaker 2: I tend to think the movie's just good enough that

89
00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:23,080
Speaker 2: if you've watched the second season of and or the

90
00:04:23,160 --> 00:04:26,440
Speaker 2: first episodes where they're planning that genocide on Gorman are

91
00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 2: themed after that movie, like that movie Conspiracy, seriously, yeah, yeah,

92
00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:33,560
Speaker 2: had a big influence on it. Tony Gilroy is confirmed it.

93
00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:37,120
Speaker 2: But Eikman, the guy we're talking about today, is not

94
00:04:37,760 --> 00:04:41,520
Speaker 2: the architect of the Holocaust because that that generally goes

95
00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:44,279
Speaker 2: to hydric although obviously he was not the only person

96
00:04:44,279 --> 00:04:47,240
Speaker 2: involved in setting up the architecture, but Heidrich and Eichman

97
00:04:47,279 --> 00:04:49,200
Speaker 2: were both at this meeting, the Vonsee conference, where the

98
00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:53,080
Speaker 2: architecture of the Holocaust was set up. And Eichman's primary job,

99
00:04:53,440 --> 00:04:55,800
Speaker 2: you might call him the trigger man, not because there

100
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:57,760
Speaker 2: were actually a lot of guys who just shot people, right,

101
00:04:57,839 --> 00:05:00,839
Speaker 2: like the Einsatzgrupa who shot tens of thousands at places.

102
00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:02,000
Speaker 4: Like the World Federal trigger but.

103
00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:05,599
Speaker 2: In terms of like the Nazi state had to build

104
00:05:05,720 --> 00:05:09,719
Speaker 2: a system that was effectively a big gun for genociding people,

105
00:05:09,800 --> 00:05:11,719
Speaker 2: and Eikman was the man who worked. He was the

106
00:05:11,720 --> 00:05:15,040
Speaker 2: guy who his primarily primary thing was like logistics, like

107
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:17,880
Speaker 2: making sure how we're going to move get all of

108
00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,520
Speaker 2: these people out of the communities they're in and move

109
00:05:20,560 --> 00:05:21,640
Speaker 2: them into the different camps.

110
00:05:21,720 --> 00:05:21,880
Speaker 1: Right.

111
00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:24,240
Speaker 2: He was the guy who managed that system. He was

112
00:05:24,279 --> 00:05:27,640
Speaker 2: the deportation guy, right, that was a big part, and

113
00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:30,440
Speaker 2: he was like overseeing a lot of that system. As

114
00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:32,719
Speaker 2: we'll talk about there's other stuff that he did. But

115
00:05:32,760 --> 00:05:35,120
Speaker 2: if you're making like a top five list of the

116
00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:38,599
Speaker 2: Nazis who were most directly responsible for the genocide of

117
00:05:38,600 --> 00:05:41,479
Speaker 2: European Jewry, Aikman is going to make the list every

118
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:45,520
Speaker 2: single time, right, Like he's that central to what happened

119
00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:49,960
Speaker 2: and kind of the biggest. Probably, I don't know, pop

120
00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 2: culture is probably the wrong way to talk about Hannah

121
00:05:51,960 --> 00:05:54,360
Speaker 2: Rintz writing in twenty twenty five, but it was at

122
00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:57,360
Speaker 2: one point popular culture, right, Like, because this guy goes

123
00:05:57,360 --> 00:05:59,600
Speaker 2: on trial, he gets caught by the Masad, and he

124
00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:02,600
Speaker 2: goes on trial. In the sixties, and Hannah A Rent,

125
00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:06,200
Speaker 2: who's a famous philosopher and scholar of totalitarianism, writes a

126
00:06:06,240 --> 00:06:09,920
Speaker 2: book called Aikman in Jerusalem, right, which is very much

127
00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:12,920
Speaker 2: worth reading today, although very flawed, right, And it's very

128
00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:14,799
Speaker 2: flawed in part. And one of the things that gets

129
00:06:14,839 --> 00:06:17,800
Speaker 2: a lot of criticism for today is that as she

130
00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:21,840
Speaker 2: is describing Aikman on trial, a Rent coins a term

131
00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:24,520
Speaker 2: called the banality of evil to describe the man that

132
00:06:24,560 --> 00:06:27,279
Speaker 2: she sees in Israeli captivity, because he's just kind of

133
00:06:27,279 --> 00:06:31,880
Speaker 2: this late middle aged balding dude and he's mostly talking

134
00:06:31,920 --> 00:06:33,839
Speaker 2: about like, look, I was just following orders, you know,

135
00:06:33,880 --> 00:06:35,520
Speaker 2: I was just doing what I was told to do.

136
00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:37,799
Speaker 2: I was one cog and a bigger machine. I didn't

137
00:06:37,800 --> 00:06:40,680
Speaker 2: actually kill anyone directly. That was like the bulk of

138
00:06:40,680 --> 00:06:44,240
Speaker 2: his legal defense. And I don't think the banality of

139
00:06:44,279 --> 00:06:47,360
Speaker 2: evil is a useless term. I think it does describe

140
00:06:47,400 --> 00:06:50,920
Speaker 2: a lot of people who were involved in administrative levels

141
00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:54,240
Speaker 2: of the Holocaust. Right. There are individuals whose job is

142
00:06:54,279 --> 00:06:56,800
Speaker 2: pretty banal, and who were themselves pretty banal and played

143
00:06:56,800 --> 00:07:00,039
Speaker 2: an important role in the killing machine. Eikman is not

144
00:07:00,160 --> 00:07:02,360
Speaker 2: a good example of that. He was not banal at all.

145
00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:04,720
Speaker 2: He is like a super villain in terms of his

146
00:07:04,760 --> 00:07:07,360
Speaker 2: actual personality and how he talked about what he did.

147
00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:10,200
Speaker 2: This is not a that was his defense in court.

148
00:07:10,360 --> 00:07:14,000
Speaker 2: The reality of Iikman was not a boring middle manager, right.

149
00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:18,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like she saw Iikman like out of power.

150
00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:22,320
Speaker 4: It is old man's sweater pacing around, because there's famously

151
00:07:22,360 --> 00:07:24,600
Speaker 4: a video of him pacing back and forth and Israeli

152
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:27,720
Speaker 4: prison cell on the stand like, yeah, of course he

153
00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:33,080
Speaker 4: looked like the local accountant dork. Yes, yes, of course

154
00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:35,160
Speaker 4: he looked like that. Yeah.

155
00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:37,640
Speaker 2: And and it's one of those things I don't think

156
00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:40,400
Speaker 2: it's a useless concept. It's just misapplied to Iikman, she

157
00:07:40,440 --> 00:07:41,920
Speaker 2: does get We'll talk about it. She gets a lot

158
00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:43,640
Speaker 2: right in this. We'll be quoting from it some in

159
00:07:43,640 --> 00:07:48,040
Speaker 2: the last episode. And it's one of those things. I

160
00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:51,480
Speaker 2: don't reject the term the banality of evil. I just

161
00:07:51,520 --> 00:07:55,679
Speaker 2: think it often is it's less aptly applied to individuals,

162
00:07:55,840 --> 00:07:58,560
Speaker 2: often in part because those individuals are not so banal

163
00:07:58,640 --> 00:08:00,880
Speaker 2: as they may seem from the outside. But I think

164
00:08:00,880 --> 00:08:03,320
Speaker 2: there's a real banality of evil in like the systems

165
00:08:03,320 --> 00:08:06,240
Speaker 2: that we allow to exist and that we live inside

166
00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:09,240
Speaker 2: that can be turned into instruments of mass violence or

167
00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:12,320
Speaker 2: slaughter because we collectively make the poor choice to hand

168
00:08:12,320 --> 00:08:15,520
Speaker 2: over more of our responsibility for our security to elected

169
00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:18,960
Speaker 2: officials and government institutions that are neither accountable nor interested

170
00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:21,560
Speaker 2: in our health. Right, Like, you could use the term

171
00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:24,720
Speaker 2: banality of evil for the twenty years that voters spent

172
00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:28,360
Speaker 2: continuing to fund DHS and to expand ICE right, or

173
00:08:28,400 --> 00:08:31,120
Speaker 2: to the work of editors at hundreds of publications deciding

174
00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:33,920
Speaker 2: to greenlight more stories about migrant crime because hey, that

175
00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:36,679
Speaker 2: does well on Facebook and traffic is money. Right, The

176
00:08:36,679 --> 00:08:39,400
Speaker 2: banality of evil is the Sulzberger family who owns The

177
00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:42,280
Speaker 2: New York Times, ignoring the Holocaust because Eastern European Jews

178
00:08:42,280 --> 00:08:45,640
Speaker 2: from rural areas aren't, in their words, worth caring about. Right.

179
00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:48,360
Speaker 2: The banality of evil is all of us like hearing

180
00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:50,760
Speaker 2: about shit like this and being like, oh, man, that's

181
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:53,120
Speaker 2: fucked up, But like, I gotta make the mortgage, so

182
00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:55,520
Speaker 2: I guess I'm going to walk right past the atrocity,

183
00:08:56,520 --> 00:08:58,720
Speaker 2: keep going right. This can't be on me to fix,

184
00:08:58,800 --> 00:08:59,120
Speaker 2: can it?

185
00:08:59,280 --> 00:09:03,680
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah, the concept of banality of evil is not

186
00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:06,040
Speaker 4: like if you see a guy and you've heard of

187
00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:09,240
Speaker 4: a guy Eikman, for example, he's not the definition of

188
00:09:09,280 --> 00:09:11,640
Speaker 4: the banality of evil. Yeah, that makes him management.

189
00:09:11,880 --> 00:09:15,920
Speaker 2: No, he is again a super villain, like you stick

190
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:18,480
Speaker 2: this motherfucker in a Bond movie going on some of

191
00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:22,400
Speaker 2: the rants he goes on and he fits perfectly. So

192
00:09:22,800 --> 00:09:25,319
Speaker 2: A big source for my episodes is a book by

193
00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:28,800
Speaker 2: German philosopher and author Bettina Stegneth, who wrote a wonderful

194
00:09:28,800 --> 00:09:32,839
Speaker 2: book called Eichman Before Jerusalem, and in this book number one,

195
00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:34,920
Speaker 2: she's trying to kind of break some of the myths

196
00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:36,839
Speaker 2: that came up as a result of a Renz piece.

197
00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:40,760
Speaker 2: But she also highlights, opening this book, how relatively little

198
00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:44,760
Speaker 2: we know about him. In this passage, we cannot speak

199
00:09:44,800 --> 00:09:47,439
Speaker 2: of the systematic extermination of millions of men, women, and

200
00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:49,920
Speaker 2: children without mentioning his name, And yet people are no

201
00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:53,360
Speaker 2: longer even sure what his first name was, Carl Adolph Otto.

202
00:09:53,679 --> 00:09:56,240
Speaker 2: It's the simplest of questions, yet it can still surprise us,

203
00:09:56,280 --> 00:09:59,800
Speaker 2: long after we thought we'd established who he was, because

204
00:09:59,800 --> 00:10:02,040
Speaker 2: he you know, he has a couple of names, and

205
00:10:02,080 --> 00:10:04,120
Speaker 2: he goes by a few in his life, and there's

206
00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:06,080
Speaker 2: kind of this open debate is like what was he

207
00:10:06,120 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 2: actually called as like a general rule by people that

208
00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:09,800
Speaker 2: he knew.

209
00:10:10,120 --> 00:10:12,760
Speaker 4: He's had a symbol to go out, you like, prince.

210
00:10:12,800 --> 00:10:15,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, prince right, yeah, we get his call him that

211
00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:20,360
Speaker 2: he was born Otto Adolph Eichman on March nineteenth, nineteen

212
00:10:20,400 --> 00:10:23,560
Speaker 2: oh six, in Solingen, Germany. But Bettina's point is that

213
00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:25,360
Speaker 2: depending on who you ask and what you read, there's

214
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:27,760
Speaker 2: room for debate as to what he would have given

215
00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:30,320
Speaker 2: as his name during different points in his life. Right,

216
00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:34,240
Speaker 2: his first biographers were people like British journalist Comber Clark,

217
00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:37,480
Speaker 2: who in nineteen sixty tried to chronicle Eikman's early life

218
00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:39,760
Speaker 2: and came up with a sort of tale of woe

219
00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:42,640
Speaker 2: you might expect from a great historic victim, right, And

220
00:10:42,679 --> 00:10:44,880
Speaker 2: this is partly what you get when a journalist tries

221
00:10:44,920 --> 00:10:46,800
Speaker 2: to do a biography, right as he's like.

222
00:10:46,800 --> 00:10:52,560
Speaker 4: Looking for that why what shit? Ye yeah, it's one

223
00:10:52,559 --> 00:10:56,839
Speaker 4: of my biggest pet peeame not what we do a

224
00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:00,319
Speaker 4: journalist trip into writing a biography or writing in depth

225
00:11:00,400 --> 00:11:01,720
Speaker 4: history like not.

226
00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:06,840
Speaker 2: Our place, not our place. In Comer's telling Comber Clark's telling,

227
00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,839
Speaker 2: Eikman's mother died before he was five years old. His

228
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:12,160
Speaker 2: mother had to move back to Austria from once they

229
00:11:12,160 --> 00:11:14,400
Speaker 2: hailed when he was young, but his father had to

230
00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:17,400
Speaker 2: go back to Germany after this to escape the sorrow

231
00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:19,920
Speaker 2: of being trapped with memories of his late wife, and

232
00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:23,760
Speaker 2: so his boy was raised largely by his aunts. David Csarini,

233
00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:26,959
Speaker 2: who's a better Aikman biographer, summarizes the rest of Clark's

234
00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:30,520
Speaker 2: version of events. According to Clark, Eikman was repeatedly mistaken

235
00:11:30,640 --> 00:11:32,959
Speaker 2: for a Jew at school and beaten up, which left

236
00:11:33,040 --> 00:11:37,240
Speaker 2: him with a lasting antipathy towards Jewish people. Against this background,

237
00:11:37,320 --> 00:11:39,440
Speaker 2: it was natural that he should join the Nazi party

238
00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:43,200
Speaker 2: after hearing Hitler speak, and this is all nonsense. None

239
00:11:43,240 --> 00:11:44,520
Speaker 2: of that's true, right.

240
00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:46,760
Speaker 4: If that happened, I really wish you would have learned

241
00:11:46,760 --> 00:11:50,880
Speaker 4: the opposite lesson of that, which is racism. That's just

242
00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:53,679
Speaker 4: that we all just must look the same, Like this

243
00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:55,240
Speaker 4: racism thing is stupid.

244
00:11:55,400 --> 00:11:58,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe if I can get mistaken for these people, Jesus,

245
00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:02,559
Speaker 2: this racism thing must be both. Right. This is almost

246
00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:06,560
Speaker 2: certainly not what happened. Cessarini, who is the author of Aikman,

247
00:12:06,679 --> 00:12:10,080
Speaker 2: His Life and Crimes, describes similar cavalcades of bullshit from

248
00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:13,640
Speaker 2: a generation of lazy ahistorical pop bios of this guy.

249
00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:17,559
Speaker 2: Quote Quentin Reynolds, another British pressman, declared that Eichman was

250
00:12:17,640 --> 00:12:20,920
Speaker 2: left motherless and introverted. His family was so poor that

251
00:12:20,960 --> 00:12:23,320
Speaker 2: there was never enough food on the table. Young Adolph

252
00:12:23,400 --> 00:12:26,840
Speaker 2: turned into a problem child and suffered even more once

253
00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:30,319
Speaker 2: his father remarried a harsh, domineering woman. As a young man,

254
00:12:30,360 --> 00:12:33,760
Speaker 2: he was unsuccessful and friendless, not least because he looked Jewish.

255
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:36,559
Speaker 2: He failed in job after job and walked the streets

256
00:12:36,559 --> 00:12:38,000
Speaker 2: of Lynz with the unemployed.

257
00:12:38,760 --> 00:12:39,840
Speaker 4: That sounds more accurate.

258
00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:44,040
Speaker 2: It's not, but it sounds like it should be right

259
00:12:44,120 --> 00:12:47,920
Speaker 2: because it fits, it fits the Hitler profile. I think

260
00:12:47,920 --> 00:12:50,120
Speaker 2: that's why they did this, is that like, well that's

261
00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:52,120
Speaker 2: kind of I mean, Hitler was mostly in Austria by

262
00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:55,040
Speaker 2: the time he was like living homeless.

263
00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:56,520
Speaker 4: Right, he was living in a men's home.

264
00:12:56,920 --> 00:13:00,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was in Vienna by that point. But otherwise, like, yeah,

265
00:13:00,120 --> 00:13:02,679
Speaker 2: that's kind of Hitler's life, right, Like his dad dies early,

266
00:13:02,800 --> 00:13:04,800
Speaker 2: doesn't have a lot of friends, he fails a job

267
00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:08,319
Speaker 2: after job, right, Hitler didn't get mistaken for big Jewish often.

268
00:13:08,400 --> 00:13:10,480
Speaker 2: But like you know, the rest of that's pretty simple.

269
00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:12,280
Speaker 4: No, just inbread.

270
00:13:14,360 --> 00:13:17,680
Speaker 2: The pieces fit together, right, dead mom, dad, not around,

271
00:13:17,720 --> 00:13:21,240
Speaker 2: economic anxiety, bullying, that gives him a convenient reason to

272
00:13:21,280 --> 00:13:21,880
Speaker 2: hate Jews.

273
00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:22,080
Speaker 1: Right.

274
00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:27,239
Speaker 2: It's an easy, easy thing, easy biography to accept for Eikman. Unfortunately,

275
00:13:27,240 --> 00:13:29,800
Speaker 2: it's also hogwash. It's like if you were to do

276
00:13:29,840 --> 00:13:33,560
Speaker 2: a biography of some modern day homophobic bigot and say, like, well,

277
00:13:33,600 --> 00:13:35,640
Speaker 2: he got called gay or the f slur a bunch

278
00:13:35,720 --> 00:13:38,080
Speaker 2: on the playground as a kid, right, so that's why

279
00:13:38,080 --> 00:13:40,640
Speaker 2: he did such monstrous things as an adult. And if

280
00:13:40,679 --> 00:13:42,560
Speaker 2: you're like someone three hundred years in the future and

281
00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:44,360
Speaker 2: you read that, you might be like, oh, I guess yeah,

282
00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:46,080
Speaker 2: that makes sense. But if you were to talk to

283
00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:49,040
Speaker 2: like either of us, like they could bring us forward

284
00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:50,679
Speaker 2: into the future and be like, so is this why

285
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:52,199
Speaker 2: this guy did it? We could be like everybody get

286
00:13:52,240 --> 00:13:53,480
Speaker 2: called those things on the playground man.

287
00:13:53,880 --> 00:13:57,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, like that's just like a universe then that was.

288
00:13:57,640 --> 00:13:59,920
Speaker 2: Like living in the late nineties, early two thousands. Man

289
00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:03,000
Speaker 2: like that cannot explain why he did what he did.

290
00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:06,160
Speaker 4: I'm also a bit worried because it's like, oh, you know,

291
00:14:06,240 --> 00:14:09,800
Speaker 4: he failed at all these jobs, you know, shitty home life.

292
00:14:09,800 --> 00:14:13,000
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, so he is at seventeen, he's going

293
00:14:13,040 --> 00:14:14,880
Speaker 4: to list in the army, and that is me.

294
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:15,680
Speaker 1: Ye.

295
00:14:15,880 --> 00:14:17,880
Speaker 4: A lot of guys, a lot of guys.

296
00:14:17,920 --> 00:14:20,840
Speaker 2: Who don't go on to commit hate crimes and war crimes.

297
00:14:20,840 --> 00:14:22,040
Speaker 2: So maybe, like I don't.

298
00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:24,520
Speaker 4: Know, got beat up for thinking of a different race

299
00:14:24,560 --> 00:14:26,040
Speaker 4: than I am. That is just me.

300
00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:30,560
Speaker 2: Now, in Eikman's case, there's even less reason to believe

301
00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:33,760
Speaker 2: his anti Semitism resulted from bullying, because there's simply no

302
00:14:33,920 --> 00:14:37,880
Speaker 2: real evidence that he was bullied about this or accused

303
00:14:37,880 --> 00:14:40,440
Speaker 2: of being Jewish, you know, in any way that impacted

304
00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:45,000
Speaker 2: his development. Likewise, the claims that poverty and desperation drove

305
00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:48,120
Speaker 2: him to fascism are baseless. And again I think this

306
00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:50,920
Speaker 2: is like a mainstream Hitler discourse thing right, Like it

307
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,720
Speaker 2: sounds kind of like Hitler's backstory, So that makes it

308
00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:56,680
Speaker 2: seem like, oh, of course, this is where fascists come from.

309
00:14:56,840 --> 00:14:57,040
Speaker 4: Right.

310
00:14:57,640 --> 00:14:59,640
Speaker 2: It's more comforting than being like, no, a, fascists come

311
00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:01,440
Speaker 2: from the s in place, like the guy who runs

312
00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:05,520
Speaker 2: the local fucking credit union came from right, like they

313
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:09,560
Speaker 2: just come from the world. I'm going to read another

314
00:15:09,640 --> 00:15:12,520
Speaker 2: quote from Cessarini's book, and I want you to think

315
00:15:12,560 --> 00:15:14,760
Speaker 2: about how easily you could do a find and replace

316
00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:17,240
Speaker 2: on this paragraph and make it sound like modern reporting

317
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:21,720
Speaker 2: on some American neo Nazi mass shooter quote. The NBC

318
00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:24,840
Speaker 2: correspondent John Donovan concluded, on the basis of interviews with

319
00:15:24,880 --> 00:15:27,800
Speaker 2: eikman schoolmates, that he was a lonely and distant fellow.

320
00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:31,440
Speaker 2: He was a fragile, underfed youth, and an obviously unhappy one,

321
00:15:31,520 --> 00:15:35,080
Speaker 2: a misfit. According to Donovan, Eikman represented the classic pattern

322
00:15:35,120 --> 00:15:39,160
Speaker 2: of disturbed, introverted personality which so often produced the Larvae fanaticism.

323
00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:42,120
Speaker 2: His father, a struggling and underpaid manager of a failing

324
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:45,440
Speaker 2: electrical company simply could not provide for his abundant family,

325
00:15:45,480 --> 00:15:47,520
Speaker 2: and more often than not, there was insufficient food on

326
00:15:47,560 --> 00:15:49,920
Speaker 2: the table. The boy grew to manhood with a grudge

327
00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:52,440
Speaker 2: and drifted around in a world without hope until he

328
00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:56,720
Speaker 2: traded a threadbare suit for a splendid essay uniform. And

329
00:15:56,760 --> 00:16:00,360
Speaker 2: again not true. I'm bringing this up to talk like

330
00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:04,479
Speaker 2: how how similar a lot of these very fake backstories

331
00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:06,040
Speaker 2: are and what they say about what we want to

332
00:16:06,080 --> 00:16:08,240
Speaker 2: believe about a guy named Iikman, Right.

333
00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:11,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, we always want to believe these people come from

334
00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:16,040
Speaker 4: like disadvantaged backgrounds or tortured family homes, or we're bullied.

335
00:16:16,640 --> 00:16:18,880
Speaker 4: I mean, I know we're about the same age, Robert,

336
00:16:18,880 --> 00:16:22,960
Speaker 4: and what we're we always told growing about the Columbine shooters, right, oh, yeah,

337
00:16:23,160 --> 00:16:25,440
Speaker 4: Like these people always need to be victims of some

338
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 4: kind of lashing out. They can't be cold and calculated

339
00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:31,960
Speaker 4: and ideologically driven, you know.

340
00:16:32,040 --> 00:16:35,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's this Yeah it's tough too, because like

341
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:38,120
Speaker 2: there's this belief that is very common on the left

342
00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:41,040
Speaker 2: and I think is not a bad guiding light that like, well,

343
00:16:41,280 --> 00:16:44,400
Speaker 2: you should seek to improve people's conditions because that makes

344
00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:47,600
Speaker 2: the world better and guys like Iikman point out that

345
00:16:47,720 --> 00:16:51,120
Speaker 2: like that, yeah, you should, but that's not enough to

346
00:16:51,240 --> 00:16:54,240
Speaker 2: avoid the birth of an Aikman Because what's kind of

347
00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:56,640
Speaker 2: scariest about this guy's backstory is that if you grew

348
00:16:56,720 --> 00:16:59,760
Speaker 2: up in the suburbs like ten fifteen years ago or

349
00:16:59,800 --> 00:17:02,960
Speaker 2: like you know today, a lot of his background's kind

350
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:05,480
Speaker 2: of sound similar to you, right, like in some ways

351
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:10,159
Speaker 2: that are like weirdly direct. So his birth town, Solingen,

352
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:13,320
Speaker 2: was an industrial town in the Rhineland, and his father

353
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:16,000
Speaker 2: was a modern German Man with a modern German job.

354
00:17:16,280 --> 00:17:18,320
Speaker 2: He worked as a clerk for a company that supplied

355
00:17:18,320 --> 00:17:21,840
Speaker 2: parts to power plants. His name was Adolf Karl Eichmann,

356
00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:24,159
Speaker 2: and he was a strict disciplinarian, but not in a

357
00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:26,399
Speaker 2: way that would have been weird to his son or

358
00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:30,080
Speaker 2: anyone else. This was very normal for the time. Our

359
00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:33,359
Speaker 2: Eikman would recall in his own autobiography, I acknowledged my

360
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:37,720
Speaker 2: father as the absolute authority. The earliest recollection that he

361
00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:40,480
Speaker 2: gives us of his education is of a kindergarten teacher

362
00:17:40,520 --> 00:17:43,480
Speaker 2: with an illustrated book of Bible stories which showed Moses

363
00:17:43,520 --> 00:17:47,800
Speaker 2: having demonic horns. Now Eikman gave this recollection when he

364
00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:50,800
Speaker 2: was on trial for genocide, So he may have been

365
00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:53,480
Speaker 2: trying to defray his culpability by making a point about

366
00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:56,480
Speaker 2: the deep roots of anti Semitism and his culture. That said,

367
00:17:56,480 --> 00:18:00,239
Speaker 2: as I've noted before, you can today find churches in

368
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,520
Speaker 2: Germany and elsewhere in Europe with what's called a judensau

369
00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:06,760
Speaker 2: depicted on the outside, which is a sculptural depiction of

370
00:18:06,800 --> 00:18:11,400
Speaker 2: a pig suckling Jewish babies. These are like medieval churches,

371
00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:13,520
Speaker 2: but they're around today and there were more of them

372
00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:15,359
Speaker 2: back then. So like the idea that he would have

373
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:19,280
Speaker 2: encountered this in Sunday School. Not weird, right, pretty racist

374
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:22,560
Speaker 2: at all? Culture, not at all weird. Germany was a

375
00:18:22,600 --> 00:18:26,119
Speaker 2: deeply anti Semitic place. And I also liked the idea

376
00:18:26,119 --> 00:18:30,440
Speaker 2: of like, maybe we shouldn't take the guy on trial

377
00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:34,440
Speaker 2: for Jesse on trial, yeah, for killing for the Holocaust

378
00:18:34,440 --> 00:18:35,240
Speaker 2: to face value.

379
00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:41,040
Speaker 4: Yes, maybe the concept of innocent until proven guilty needs

380
00:18:41,040 --> 00:18:42,160
Speaker 4: to be ignored on this one.

381
00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:46,000
Speaker 2: Perhaps there were a lot of fascinating like Jewish prudential

382
00:18:46,119 --> 00:18:49,480
Speaker 2: arguments about at the Nuremberg trials, And obviously this isn't

383
00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:51,320
Speaker 2: a part of that. This was a different thing, but like,

384
00:18:52,080 --> 00:18:54,240
Speaker 2: and part of it was like number one, well, technically

385
00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:56,960
Speaker 2: everything these guys did was legal in their country, so

386
00:18:57,119 --> 00:18:59,600
Speaker 2: like what law are we trying them under kind of

387
00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:02,800
Speaker 2: expos facto? And number two like well we know, like

388
00:19:02,880 --> 00:19:06,320
Speaker 2: we know Herman Gearing doesn't have an offense against being

389
00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:07,159
Speaker 2: Herman Gearing.

390
00:19:07,359 --> 00:19:13,360
Speaker 4: Right, it's the first legal precedent of fuck that. Yeah,

391
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:17,000
Speaker 4: we've all come together and our our our six or

392
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:24,040
Speaker 4: eight judge brains have decided full yeah, all his life

393
00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:26,680
Speaker 4: in my weird dress with my wig.

394
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:33,359
Speaker 2: Oh man. I did watch the fucking Mandela movie with

395
00:19:33,520 --> 00:19:37,720
Speaker 2: starring Idris Elba as Mandela, and it was like it

396
00:19:37,800 --> 00:19:39,800
Speaker 2: was fine, but the opening of it is like early

397
00:19:39,880 --> 00:19:43,120
Speaker 2: South African courts where everybody's wearing the wigs, even like yeah,

398
00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:45,159
Speaker 2: the black lawyers, and it's like, oh man, this is

399
00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,600
Speaker 2: did that really? I guess that must that must have

400
00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,960
Speaker 2: really been how everyone dressed in those courts. See, it's weird.

401
00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:53,440
Speaker 2: I guess it's a holdover.

402
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:55,679
Speaker 4: I love that there's still places that do it, like

403
00:19:55,720 --> 00:19:58,000
Speaker 4: this is ridiculous. I don't care if you're passing me,

404
00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:00,160
Speaker 4: like I could be sitting in front of you, I'm

405
00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:02,680
Speaker 4: sings cuffed together and you're like I sent you to

406
00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:08,000
Speaker 4: death of like bro not you bring up the real judge?

407
00:20:08,320 --> 00:20:12,800
Speaker 2: Yeah whatever, Adolph Karl, his dad moves back to Linz

408
00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:15,119
Speaker 2: to take a job managing a local power company, and

409
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:17,920
Speaker 2: his wife and kids follow that a year later. They

410
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:21,760
Speaker 2: were Evangelical Calvinist Protestants, which made them as much a

411
00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:24,800
Speaker 2: minority in the small Austrian town of Linz as the

412
00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:27,600
Speaker 2: Jewish citizens. Right, Jewish people are like seventeen percent of

413
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:32,000
Speaker 2: the population, Evangelical Protestants are like nineteen percent. Linz is

414
00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:35,840
Speaker 2: predominantly Catholic, and while Catholics believe that good works can

415
00:20:35,880 --> 00:20:38,360
Speaker 2: win someone a place in heaven, Calvinists are as close

416
00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:41,080
Speaker 2: to the opposite of Catholics as you get in Christianity.

417
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:41,320
Speaker 1: Right.

418
00:20:41,359 --> 00:20:43,959
Speaker 2: The idea is there's an elect few that make it

419
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:45,399
Speaker 2: to heaven and those roles are fixed.

420
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:48,600
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, it's very Dutch coded.

421
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:52,520
Speaker 2: It's very Dutch coded. But there's there's no real evidence

422
00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:55,840
Speaker 2: that this difference caused Karl a much trouble. His family

423
00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:58,720
Speaker 2: overall seems to have blended in. His dad was a

424
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:02,160
Speaker 2: German nationalist, and as a Protestant as well, he would

425
00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:06,160
Speaker 2: have been drawn to George Rider von Schener's Pan German movement.

426
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:10,320
Speaker 2: This was a foundational pillar of the right in Austria

427
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:14,240
Speaker 2: and also a prelude to Nazism's conflict with the Catholic Church,

428
00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:20,240
Speaker 2: because the Pan German movement is a heavily evangelical Protestant movement. Right,

429
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:22,680
Speaker 2: that's where like the core of the membership comes from.

430
00:21:23,040 --> 00:21:25,159
Speaker 2: And I want to read you a summary of Schoener's

431
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,280
Speaker 2: life and career written for Amsterdam University Press, which notes

432
00:21:28,280 --> 00:21:32,080
Speaker 2: that his politics were quote founded on antagonism towards Slav's,

433
00:21:32,160 --> 00:21:35,359
Speaker 2: Jews and Catholicism. This culminated in his establishment of the

434
00:21:35,359 --> 00:21:38,920
Speaker 2: Pan German Party in eighteen seventy nine and the subsequent

435
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:42,720
Speaker 2: away from Rome movement seeking mass conversion of Austrian Catholics

436
00:21:42,720 --> 00:21:47,120
Speaker 2: to Lutheranism, echoing Bismarck's culture comp in Germany. Schooner became

437
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:50,720
Speaker 2: notorious for his pioneering use of physical and verbal violence.

438
00:21:50,920 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty eight, he was imprisoned, losing his title

439
00:21:53,359 --> 00:21:57,320
Speaker 2: and temporarily all parliamentary privileges, after ransacking the offices of

440
00:21:57,359 --> 00:22:00,720
Speaker 2: a Jewish owned newspaper. In eighteen ninety eight, the orchestrated

441
00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:04,560
Speaker 2: mob protests that expedited the dismissal of the Austrian Prime Minister,

442
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:08,000
Speaker 2: Count Bedini, one year after Schener's own re election to

443
00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 2: the reix Rot. This was in protest against Badini's language

444
00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 2: ordinances obliging civil servants in Austrian Bohemia to speak Czech

445
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,320
Speaker 2: excluding germanifhones, and it helped his party reach a high

446
00:22:17,359 --> 00:22:19,639
Speaker 2: water mark of twenty one delegates in nineteen oh one.

447
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:23,200
Speaker 2: Schoenerer helped create an entirely new political form and climate,

448
00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:27,360
Speaker 2: described as being in a new key sharper, violent, demagogic,

449
00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:31,399
Speaker 2: and Schoenerer is a massive because again Hitler grows up

450
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 2: in Lenz. Schoenerer is a huge influence on Hitler right.

451
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:38,840
Speaker 2: He is like the way his party works is a

452
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 2: proto Nazi party. These guys are destroying Jewish newspapers, They're

453
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:45,359
Speaker 2: getting into fights in the street, and there are like

454
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 2: a Pan German nationalist group right who is seeking to

455
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:51,080
Speaker 2: destroy any of these religions that have ties Like his

456
00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:53,680
Speaker 2: issue with Catholicism is its ties to Rome Right, which

457
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 2: is obviously not German.

458
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:58,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, as a German nationalist that makes a lot of sense.

459
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,800
Speaker 4: I like that he he ascends to power because his

460
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:04,679
Speaker 4: entire thing is a I see, you guys have a

461
00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:07,159
Speaker 4: nationalist movement and it's not doing very well. Have you

462
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 4: considered violence, have you considered people out have shared street crime?

463
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:16,600
Speaker 2: Oh shit, this is working great. Yeah, let's keep trying that.

464
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 4: This is wonderful.

465
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:23,479
Speaker 2: So Aikman would later recall that his father had been

466
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:27,200
Speaker 2: essentially a political quote. At home, politics was never discussed.

467
00:23:27,280 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 2: My father didn't bother with politics. But that's the kind

468
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:32,919
Speaker 2: of thing people say when like they don't view whatever

469
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 2: their family believes as political right. And as a kid,

470
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 2: Aikman doesn't think German nationalism or pan Germanism is political right.

471
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:44,400
Speaker 2: It's just correct. It's like how you get there's some

472
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:47,440
Speaker 2: religious extremists in the US. We'd be like, Christianity isn't

473
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 2: a religion. It's just the truth, you know, right, Like

474
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 2: I've heard that's that's a conversation I've had.

475
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 4: It's like, I mean, and having Christianity in politics is

476
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 4: neither something to argue for. Are you against? It just

477
00:23:58,400 --> 00:23:59,679
Speaker 4: should be something that exists.

478
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:01,679
Speaker 2: It's just the truth, right, Yeah, it's just the truth.

479
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 2: You know.

480
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 4: I hate to see yet another father get radicalized by

481
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:05,959
Speaker 4: using Facebook.

482
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, tragic, Yeah, his dad would have lost

483
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 2: it to Facebook, so Schoenerer's party would have was the

484
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:16,520
Speaker 2: first big political party to influence Hitler, and in a

485
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 2: less direct way, the same would have been true of

486
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 2: young Eichman. His family did everything a loyal Austro Hungarian

487
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,520
Speaker 2: family ought to do, which for Adolph's mom meant Maria

488
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:29,120
Speaker 2: popping out a child every single opportunity she had. Little

489
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:32,119
Speaker 2: Adolph was joined by four siblings, three of whom were boys,

490
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 2: in the space of about eight years. And in other words,

491
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 2: Maria popped out a kid once every two years until

492
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:40,639
Speaker 2: she died in nineteen sixteen, and her death was a

493
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,119
Speaker 2: consequence of both World War One is on at this

494
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:47,000
Speaker 2: point everyone is starving in Germany and Austria Hungary and

495
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 2: number two, she's just had not had enough time to

496
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 2: recuperate between pregnancies, right, so like her body is already

497
00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 2: taxed and then there's not enough food while she's going

498
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 2: through pregnancy number five in nine years.

499
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:01,359
Speaker 4: Christ give the woman a weekend off.

500
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 2: Nope, that not the way they did it. Back then

501
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 2: she dies it thirty two.

502
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 3: That was a lot.

503
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 4: Yeah, this dude couldn't pull out of a driveway.

504
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:18,159
Speaker 2: Uh, the elder Hadolf Eikman remarried almost instantly. This was

505
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:20,959
Speaker 2: likely a product of two pragmatic realities. He had no

506
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 2: desire to raise his own children, and he needed more

507
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 2: children because that's what you did as a loyal citizen

508
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:29,959
Speaker 2: of the Empire and a good evangelical Christian right. His

509
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 2: second wife was also named Maria. Perhaps, oh that's weird.

510
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 2: Perhaps he had it type, although an Austrian woman named

511
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 2: Maria not too uncommon.

512
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 4: I am looking for an Austrian woman named Ria who

513
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:48,399
Speaker 4: could give births in litters three or four at a

514
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 4: time would be ideal. It really saves us time and money.

515
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:55,959
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like, I'm not learning another name. What

516
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 3: are you talking about?

517
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 2: Yeah?

518
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 4: Oh no, this is the world's first puppy play enthusiasts, right.

519
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 3: I feel like I.

520
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: Feel like he just numbered his children and he's like,

521
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: number one, come here.

522
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's faster that way. Yeah.

523
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 4: Why is it always the psychos that want the most

524
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 4: about of kids have the least about to do with

525
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 4: parenting them.

526
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the point is to have the kids, not

527
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:23,760
Speaker 2: to be there with them. So, you know, speaking of

528
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 2: being with people, I want to be with our advertisers,

529
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 2: you know, both both physically and financially and we're back,

530
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 2: all right. So, uh, his second wife, we'll call her

531
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 2: Maria to her family has money, which helps a lot

532
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 2: because they're going to have more kids. Also, her family

533
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,159
Speaker 2: is closely tied to She has like a number of

534
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 2: relatives who had married into wealthy Jewish families in Vienna.

535
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,159
Speaker 2: And obviously by that you should know these are like

536
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 2: urban sophisticated Jewish sophisticated by the term of the day,

537
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 2: they're not there. They're trying to just be Germans, right,

538
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 2: which is a not uncommon thing for people in like

539
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 2: the upper class who are Jewish in both in Austria

540
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 2: and in Germany to do to try to kind of

541
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 2: leave behind the religion and like we're basically secular, we're

542
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 2: married into Christian families. None of this really saves a

543
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,760
Speaker 2: lot of these people come the Holocaust, but there is

544
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,119
Speaker 2: this attempt to like integrate that, like I'm a German

545
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 2: before I'm anything else, right, And that's kind of Her

546
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 2: family is number one, you'd say, probably more open minded

547
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:30,960
Speaker 2: than a lot because they are willing to marry into

548
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 2: these families. Although it's also you know this thing of like,

549
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 2: well they got money, right, so that's that's that over

550
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 2: you know, overwhelms the fact that they're this race that

551
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't like.

552
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:42,200
Speaker 4: Right, they're rich.

553
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that that that kind of papers over that

554
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 2: to some people. But it's meaningful in the case of

555
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 2: Eichmann because you often don't hear this with him. You know,

556
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:55,400
Speaker 2: every version of this backstory, of his backstory emphasizes cultural

557
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, which both he was raised with and tries

558
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 2: to say that he was like a key of being Jewish,

559
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 2: but it ignores the fact that, like he was exposed

560
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 2: to positive images and accounts of Jewish people as part

561
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:11,120
Speaker 2: of German society. His in laws were Jewish, some of them. Right,

562
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 2: He knew Jewish people growing up, and he would have

563
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 2: had like a family relationship with him. Right. So this

564
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:20,680
Speaker 2: is not a guy who was like destined by any

565
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 2: means to be completely anti Semitic.

566
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 4: Right, destined by the stars to be a massive piece

567
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 4: of shit.

568
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 2: Right, That's just not how it works. This is a choice.

569
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 2: He makes it a point. Right Now. Obviously, his mother's

570
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 2: death would have been traumatic for him. It's always traumatic

571
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 2: for your mom to die when you were a little kid.

572
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 2: But again, a lot of these stories are like and

573
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 2: he hated his wicked stepmother, who was cruel to him.

574
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 2: He never described her that way. He described her as

575
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 2: a zealous and responsible guardian.

576
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 4: Like which is like the highest complimented German can pay you.

577
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 2: Right right, you get the thing. He didn't love her

578
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:56,720
Speaker 2: like he did his mom, which again isn't weird. But

579
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 2: he was like, no, she was like respectable. She did

580
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 2: the job that she was brought into do right, and

581
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 2: three more children quickly joined the family. He later recalled

582
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: of his family life, there was no disorder. We were

583
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 2: brought up in a strict way and we had a normal,

584
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 2: quiet life. He did recall as a child that while

585
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 2: his stepmother tried to get the family interested in the Bible,

586
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 2: young Adolf Eichmann was primarily interested in the bits with

587
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 2: battles and killing, which is not abnormal for young boys.

588
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:25,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's more on brand. I would be more worried

589
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 4: if he was it. He's like, no, I'm actually more

590
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 4: really into the logistics half of this.

591
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeaha they what kind of food were they

592
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 2: carter around the desert for forty years? How did they

593
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 2: make that work? Right?

594
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 4: Let me see the wagons?

595
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of his best friends as a child

596
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 2: was a Jewish classmate, Misha Seba. Seba's father was a

597
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 2: pharmacist and his mother owned a salon, and the two

598
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 2: were close enough that Cserini describes them as regularly staying

599
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 2: over at each other's houses. So again, this is not

600
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: a guy who's destined to the kind of anti Semitism

601
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 2: that he is going to adopt in adulthood. It's a

602
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 2: choice he makes. Seba and Eikman would maintain their friendship

603
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 2: in fact well into not just adulthood, but Aikman's involvement

604
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 2: with like far right organizations into the early I think

605
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: like thirty two is when they have their last contact,

606
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,360
Speaker 2: So like that's late, right.

607
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 4: And that's also not uncommon though. No, all of these

608
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 4: psychos who you know, maybe put the blueprints to the

609
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 4: Holocaust in place where high ranking members of the Third

610
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 4: Raich had some kind of hands on shit, Like all

611
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 4: of them had close personal contacts with Jewish people and

612
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 4: the mental gymnastics, state workers like, ah, well he's on

613
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 4: the good ones. It's fine.

614
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is in fact a thing that was

615
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 2: talked about, like and they cover this in conspiracy at

616
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 2: the Vonse conference where they're trying to decide like how

617
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 2: far do we go with this? And finally like, look,

618
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 2: everyone has their good jew but we just can't build

619
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: that into the plan. We have to try to wipe

620
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:53,479
Speaker 2: it all out, right, But like, as I'll like Hitler

621
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 2: even there was one Jewish guy he picked to spirit

622
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 2: out of Nazi Germany after he took power. His family doctor.

623
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 4: Right, oh there's here's also his personal driver. Yeah, his

624
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 4: personal driver was Jewish as well.

625
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, he like he like all of these

626
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 2: guys had relationships with Jewish people, right, But you know

627
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 2: that's just the way racism works, right.

628
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 4: And no one ever accused him of being smart or

629
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 4: logical in the racism.

630
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 2: No, there was a fucking a great Louis Throux documentary

631
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 2: where he goes to see Tom Metzger, who used to

632
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 2: lead an organization called White Area of Resistance or War

633
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 2: that was responsible for the murder of a young immigrant

634
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 2: named Mlugeta Surah in Portland years back. And you know,

635
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 2: Metzger is as violent and anti Semiti as possible, and

636
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 2: during Louie's time with him, he like meets his neighbor

637
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 2: who's like a Mexican man, and they're like friendly and

638
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 2: Tom's like no, I mean, like we get along, like

639
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 2: I like him, Like it doesn't change my overall opinion

640
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 2: about like different races. And it's just like, yeah, that's

641
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 2: just how these people are, Like cognitive dissonance does You're

642
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 2: not immune to it just because you're a bigot, right, Yeah,

643
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 2: So anyway, Seba and Eichman are friends for a while,

644
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 2: and yeah, another friend of his was Friedrich von Schmidt.

645
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 2: And this is a friend more that you would expect

646
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 2: from a guy who grows into what Eikman was. As

647
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 2: you can tell by the Vaughn. Friedrich is the son

648
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 2: of a noble family. His dad had been a field

649
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 2: marshal for the Austro Hungarian Army, which means he was

650
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 2: terrible at his job. None of them were nobody's worse

651
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 2: at their job. Yeah, not a single good field marshal

652
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 2: in that army. And his family was impoverished by the

653
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:32,040
Speaker 2: time that Eikman met him, right, probably because of the

654
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 2: heretoforementioned World War One.

655
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I'm glad to see at least one family

656
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 4: got with the deserve poverty.

657
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Cesarini notes that the mere fact that Eichman was

658
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 2: allowed to play with this kid counters the narrative that

659
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 2: he was like a desperate loaner on the fringes as

660
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 2: a kid, because like von Schmidt's family wouldn't have let

661
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 2: them play their son play with the weird kid, right,

662
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 2: that's just not the way these groups worked.

663
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 4: So anything, it's evidence that his family was quite well

664
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 4: placed in society to be hanging out with us, even

665
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 4: though they are impoverished. It's that kind of European non

666
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 4: nobility that's poor, but they still have social standing.

667
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 2: And they're no, yeah, and they don't. And like the

668
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 2: Iikman family is not like impoverished. I think they go

669
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 2: from kind of lower middle class to solidly middle class

670
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 2: by the time he's like an adult, right, Like this

671
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 2: is sort of how I And again, middle class terms

672
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 2: like that are not as useful when we're talking about

673
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 2: Austro Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century.

674
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 2: But that's or Austria. But that's kind of like.

675
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 4: Used horse salesman, right, the used car salesman didn't exist yet. Yeah.

676
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, they drive the they drive the equivalent of a

677
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 2: Pontiac vibe and horses, which I guess is just a

678
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 2: horse with no legs you pull mule, put my horse

679
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 2: up on cinder. We pull the horse with mule is pontiac.

680
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 4: This is my horse vibe.

681
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 2: So if we're looking for signs in his childhood of

682
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 2: the monster he would become, we don't have a lot

683
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 2: to go on from childhood trauma, because he doesn't seem

684
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 2: to have had a lot of childhood trauma more than

685
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 2: probably you and I or most kids. Because he grew

686
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 2: up in World War One. Right, he's not fighting in it,

687
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 2: but everyone is starving for a while, right, that's probably

688
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 2: pretty bad for you. Now, what's interesting to me is that,

689
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 2: like it is a seminal moment, this war for a

690
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 2: lot of the Nazi old Guard, whether they fought in.

691
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 4: It or not.

692
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 2: But Eikman didn't talk about it much, and we get

693
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 2: little of his backstory on that. Now, he would have

694
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:32,319
Speaker 2: been inundated with imperial propaganda and the shortages of the

695
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 2: war years would have impacted him, but his father seems

696
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 2: to have maintained a comfortable living for the family in

697
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 2: spite of the times, and as it was never drafted himself,

698
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 2: which also suggests that what he was doing was really

699
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 2: useful during the war, right to not get drafted by

700
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 2: the end of that fucking thing as a yeah, yeah

701
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 2: he had.

702
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 4: He either had really good connections or he did something

703
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 4: some kind of manufacturing.

704
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,000
Speaker 2: He's working in power, right, yeah, I like that.

705
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,200
Speaker 4: By the end, the Austro Hungarian Empire was scrape big,

706
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:02,400
Speaker 4: the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. They were

707
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 4: drafting the horses with no legs.

708
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 2: Do you have one or more hens? Okay? That's not

709
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:08,200
Speaker 2: a good Austrian exit.

710
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 3: But what is that?

711
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 1: Okay?

712
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:12,840
Speaker 2: How am I doing it?

713
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 4: We have paperwork for something called the horse vibe.

714
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 2: So the war cost to Austria what was left of

715
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 2: her empire? Right uh? And a third of the German

716
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,960
Speaker 2: speaking population wound up separated into different countries, which really

717
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 2: pitches off Pan Germanists like Aikman's father. But again, we

718
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,839
Speaker 2: have nothing that shows child Aikman was particularly traumatized at

719
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 2: the war's outcome, nor is there any particular evidence that

720
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,640
Speaker 2: his dad blamed the Jews. We might do better looking

721
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 2: at the place and systems he was raised in than

722
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 2: the specifics of his family life. This is because the

723
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 2: town he was raised in, Linz, is also the town

724
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 2: where Hitler had written raised a couple decades earlier, and

725
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:56,720
Speaker 2: the future Furor was at this point on the Western

726
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 2: Front during World War One, but he and Aikman went

727
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,359
Speaker 2: to the Sane High School as kids, obviously with some

728
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 2: time in between them, and they had some of the

729
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 2: same teachers. Right, Aikman has Hitler's history teacher.

730
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 4: Who is this guy? This guy history teacher has the

731
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,200
Speaker 4: most cursed alumni minver.

732
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 2: And he's a piece like he's got some blame for

733
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:20,720
Speaker 2: what happens.

734
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 4: Yes to his track record is h is spotless and tragedy.

735
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 2: And this is why I always tell my friends who

736
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:33,920
Speaker 2: are teachers, don't teach children things. It never ends well,

737
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 2: you know, keep their little minds empty. Rights.

738
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 4: I had a teaching job for years. I'm never gonna

739
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 4: say it was a good one, but I'm willing to

740
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 4: bet I did not teach American Hitler. Hitler, Yeah, way

741
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:47,320
Speaker 4: too busy watching remember the Titans?

742
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: Right?

743
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, put that on um, sty'll be fine. His history

744
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 2: teacher was named doctor Leopold poet poet O e like

745
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 2: poet S. E. H. Both Hitler and Eichman later wrote

746
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,320
Speaker 2: about the impact this man had on their developing minds.

747
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 2: So it's probably worth looking into him a bit deeper

748
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 2: in mind comp Hitler wrote this about Poets quote an

749
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 2: old gentleman kind, but at the same time firm. He

750
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 2: was able not only to hold our attention by his

751
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 2: dazzling eloquence, but to carry us away with him. Even today,

752
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 2: I think back with genuine emotion on this gray haired man, who,

753
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 2: by the fire of his words sometimes made us forget

754
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 2: the present, who, as if by magic, transported us into

755
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: times past and out of the millennium mists of time,

756
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,800
Speaker 2: transformed dry historical facts into vivid reality. There we sat,

757
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 2: often a flame with enthusiasm, sometimes even moved to tears.

758
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:36,800
Speaker 2: He used our budding national fanaticism as a means of

759
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,240
Speaker 2: educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor.

760
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 2: This teacher made history of my favorite subject. And indeed,

761
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 2: though he had no such intention, it was then I

762
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 2: became a young revolutionary. Not a good teacher.

763
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 4: No, no, that's not good.

764
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 2: You fucked up, Leopold.

765
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, at any point you're a teacher, and you get

766
00:37:55,120 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 4: noted in your students that manifesto. Manifesto, yeah right, not

767
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 4: a good vote of confidence.

768
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 2: So Poet was a German supremacist, although he was also

769
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 2: a one. He was a weird kind because he was

770
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 2: super loyal to the Habsburgs, which obviously Hitler does not

771
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 2: become loyal to the Habsburgs he leaves Austria to join

772
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 2: the German Army. His exhortations to nationalism influenced both Hitler

773
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 2: and Eichman, though Eichmann recalled later that while he was

774
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 2: never very political as a kid, he reflexively leaned towards

775
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 2: right wing nationalism. This would have kept him well inside

776
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 2: the mainstream within Linz. For most of his childhood, the

777
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 2: city government was run by Mayor Carl Burley, who headed

778
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 2: a coalition of lawyers, teachers, small business owners, and government

779
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 2: employees who were all bound together by a shared hatred

780
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 2: of liberals, Jews, and the Catholic clergy.

781
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,800
Speaker 4: And yes, just a normal Republican meeting these days.

782
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:51,399
Speaker 2: A normal Republican meeting these days. His father went through

783
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:55,439
Speaker 2: several career changes, Aikman's and significant reversals of fortune while

784
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 2: he's a kid. The job in Linz had initially seemed

785
00:38:58,120 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 2: like a step to the upper middle class, and for

786
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 2: time it was, but his dad retired early and put

787
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 2: his savings into a fifty one percent stake in a

788
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 2: mining company based in Salzburg. Which was experimenting with an

789
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,960
Speaker 2: early form of what we now call hydraulic fracturing. Right,

790
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 2: like he his family, he has some family money from fracking.

791
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 2: Adolf Iikman even he's an oil and gas kid.

792
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 4: Oh so does this make him like ancestrally from North

793
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 4: Dakota or something? Yeah? Is he Dakota?

794
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why adolf Iikman High School is located in Bismarck. No,

795
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 2: I say sorry to our listener in North Dakota, but

796
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 2: they don't have the internet there.

797
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,279
Speaker 4: Do They explains all the Nazis there.

798
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 2: To be fair, it's I'm sorry North Dakota. I love you.

799
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 2: I don't love you, but I've been to you.

800
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,760
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody could be in love with a Dakota. Yeah,

801
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 4: it's hard, more of a friend.

802
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:57,320
Speaker 2: Like loving a vampire squid. You know, you can appreciate

803
00:39:57,400 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 2: some of its characteristics, but.

804
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 4: A what a vampire squid is a vampire.

805
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 2: It's a squid that's a vampire today.

806
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 4: It is what it says on the tin.

807
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:11,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's it's what's advertised.

808
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 3: Your brain is like this today.

809
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 2: That's a lot of days, Sophie.

810
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 4: Much like the legs of a vampire squid.

811
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 3: There we go.

812
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 2: So this uh, this fifty steak in a fracking company

813
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 2: in Salzburg. It brings in a living, but it doesn't

814
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 2: make them rich. Right, you're in it a little too

815
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 2: early to get loaded from fracking. So Adolph's dad invested

816
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,480
Speaker 2: what was left of his savings and his wife's inheritance

817
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 2: into a mill in Upper Austria. This was a bad

818
00:40:40,680 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 2: choice and the investment went busted quickly. Carl pivoted to

819
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:47,399
Speaker 2: an investment in a company making locomobiles. I had never

820
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 2: heard of these. They were they were steam powered cars.

821
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 4: That rules, I mean you have to you have to

822
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 4: invent something with your horse as the fucking legs.

823
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he gets into a locomobiles, but it turns

824
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 2: out this isn't like a real investment. His business partner

825
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 2: is a con man who hangs himself.

826
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 4: So well, yeah, you invested in steam powered cars with

827
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 4: the local Austrian flim flam man.

828
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 2: You're an oil man. Some biographers would try to make

829
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 2: hay out of the impact his father's unstable employment and

830
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 2: financial situation might have had, as with the fact that

831
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 2: his dad has gone for a period. There's like a

832
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:30,919
Speaker 2: year where he's working in Germany. Well, Iikman's a kid,

833
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 2: But Aikman never related this as particularly traumatic, and the

834
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 2: evidence shows, while again they had financial difficulties, they were

835
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 2: never in danger of like losing their home or starving.

836
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 2: If anything, the Aikman's enjoyed unusual stability and financial security

837
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 2: for people of their class in time. Right. Not that

838
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 2: they were totally stable, not that they didn't have anxieties,

839
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:53,919
Speaker 2: but they had it better than a lot of folks. Right.

840
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they're making a killing selling weird steam

841
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 4: powered cars, saying their neighbors drinking on fire with frakin.

842
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean his business partner in the steamcars

843
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 2: thing killed himself because it would belly up. So I

844
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 2: don't know about that part.

845
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 4: But yeah, you're right, it's more of a Shelbyville thing.

846
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 2: I guess it's a Shelbyville thing. Yeah, but he does

847
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 2: get he does get tricked by yeah, the fucking music man. So,

848
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 2: as I noted earlier when I read Ccerinia's biography, the

849
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:23,239
Speaker 2: big thing I took away was how similar Iikman's childhood

850
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 2: was to like mine, which is not something that tends

851
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 2: to happen with books about guys who grew up in

852
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 2: Austria at the turn of the century. And I find

853
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 2: this very weird. And I'm just going to quote from

854
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,320
Speaker 2: that book now. Iikman's social life was typical of the

855
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,479
Speaker 2: children and youth of his class, Like every good bourgeoisie child.

856
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 2: He was taught a musical instrument and he became a

857
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 2: proficient violinist. His father encouraged him to learn fencing, and

858
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 2: he took classes in jiu jitsu. He was enrolled in

859
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 2: the Young Men's Christian Association and went to the club

860
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 2: every Sunday after attending church with his family. He later

861
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 2: joined the Wandervogel, a sort of scouting or woodcraft association

862
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 2: that organized hikes and camps for teenagers. The particular Wandervogel

863
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 2: group he joined belonged to the Federation of Youth Organizations,

864
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 2: which was ostensibly apolitical, although the movement had a strong,

865
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,960
Speaker 2: if diverse ideological currents running through it. Eichman's group, named

866
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 2: after the Griffin Bird, introduced him to older boys who

867
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 2: were already in the ranks of right wing Austrian militias.

868
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:16,239
Speaker 2: And just like the whole yeah, he like, he has

869
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 2: to learn an instrument. Everyone does. He takes fencing classes.

870
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 2: He takes jiu jitsu like he's doing karate classes. I

871
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 2: didn't know they were doing that at this point in

872
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 2: time in Austria.

873
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 4: I love the idea of like of a Nazi brown

874
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 4: shirt getting it a street battle. He just falls on

875
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,359
Speaker 4: his ass and starts scooting around to juju Brazilian jiu

876
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 4: jitsu like.

877
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:38,800
Speaker 2: A crab on his back. I'm gonna pull guard on

878
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 2: the under man. It's so funny. It's just it's all, Yeah,

879
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 2: that's fascinating to me. And yeah, the wander Vogel there

880
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 2: were like there was like a left wing chunk of them.

881
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,360
Speaker 2: But the group he is in, he doesn't get involved

882
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 2: in right wing militias, but he now has friends in

883
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 2: them right, and he will know people kind of the

884
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 2: rest of his life until he gets directly in the

885
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 2: far right who are in far right groups.

886
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 4: Right. This makes sense to me as someone who did

887
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 4: a lot of jiu jitsu or you never I expect

888
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 4: that you're gonna end up in the middle of a

889
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 4: group of right wingers, But the second you walk into

890
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 4: the jiu jitsu chip.

891
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,040
Speaker 2: Like, oh the vibes are off.

892
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 4: I guess I'm in a right wig space or.

893
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,560
Speaker 2: Three people with hats that are problems walk in and

894
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 2: I may not be happy here, speaking of places, I'm

895
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:28,800
Speaker 2: not happy a world without these products and services. Wow,

896
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 2: and we're back. So Eiken was an indifferent student, we

897
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 2: might even say a bad one. His later life would

898
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 2: show him to be a generally smart guy, or at

899
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 2: least it possess kinds of intelligence. So the way I

900
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 2: read this is that he's not motivated by any of

901
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 2: the school work he's doing, nor is he motivated by

902
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 2: any of the paths set before him by his education.

903
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,720
Speaker 2: His father takes him out of traditional school in nineteen

904
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 2: twenty one. He puts him into a vocational program to

905
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 2: train him as an electrician. Right, so his dad is like,

906
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 2: you're not doing well in like school school and you

907
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 2: have to learn how to like do something right. But

908
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 2: he fails out of vocational school. He ultimately drops out

909
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 2: without any kind of degree. So he's now failed both

910
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 2: of the different kinds of schooling tracks in Austria at

911
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:22,760
Speaker 2: the time. Now, for a young man with fewer means

912
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 2: behind him, this might have ended with Aikman winding up

913
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 2: like Hitler, you know, as some of those other biographies

914
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:30,839
Speaker 2: had claimed. Living on the streets of Vienna, homelesser at

915
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 2: the edge of it. But unlike Hitler, Aikman's father was

916
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 2: still alive, and Eikman's dad used his plentiful connections to

917
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,799
Speaker 2: get his job. He owns a mining company, right, and

918
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 2: he gets his job involved in the fracking company. Right,

919
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 2: so Adolf Eichman, future foreman of the Holocaust. His first

920
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 2: like big boy job is hydraulic fracking.

921
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: Right.

922
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 2: That's that's a fail sign as a fail son.

923
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 4: Yeah.

924
00:45:58,080 --> 00:45:59,919
Speaker 2: His dad seems to have put him through a number

925
00:46:00,080 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 2: of roles at the company, trying him out doing everything

926
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 2: from squeezing through underground tunnels to running machinery above ground.

927
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 2: Iikeman liked work in the tunnels. It was physical and

928
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 2: dangerous and seems to have been the first labor that

929
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 2: he found motivating. After some time working at the fracking company,

930
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 2: he did an apprenticeship at an Austrian electronics company, which

931
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 2: occupied him for two and a half years until his

932
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 2: dad convinced him to take a gig as a radio salesman.

933
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 2: This does not pan out, and ultimately Iikman gravitates towards

934
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:30,879
Speaker 2: a position he finds advertised in the paper at an

935
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 2: oil company. His stepmom used a family connection through one

936
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 2: of her Jewish in laws to get him hired by

937
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 2: the owner of the company, who was also a Jewish guy.

938
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 2: Now the executive who interviewed him told him he was

939
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 2: too young for the job, but said I've been told

940
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,640
Speaker 2: to hire you anyway, so congratulations, like welcome in.

941
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 4: He probably. I don't know if this guy survives long

942
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 4: enough to regret this or not, but woo yeah.

943
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 2: If Ikeman was at all embarrassed or ashamed at the

944
00:46:56,520 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 2: nepotism involved in keeping him afloat, he left no record. Instead,

945
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:02,720
Speaker 2: he seems to have enjoyed the job and the relative

946
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:05,880
Speaker 2: comfort it afforded him. He bought a motorcycle and devoted

947
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 2: himself to the work well enough to get promoted. Key

948
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 2: to his success was that the job involved constant travel,

949
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:15,480
Speaker 2: which he mostly did via the motorcycle that he bought already.

950
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 2: Eichman showed a preference for work that allowed him to

951
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 2: set his own hours and mixed Dex's work with time

952
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 2: in the field. He spent a lot of time out

953
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 2: in rural Austria finding spots to build gas stations, and

954
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 2: he had to handle a lot of logistical hurdles scheduling

955
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 2: fuel deliveries to make sure that shit got where it

956
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,840
Speaker 2: needed to be at the right time. And he gets

957
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 2: good at this, right, Like his training for how to

958
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 2: make the Holocaust trains run is setting up gas stations

959
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 2: and gas fuel deliveries, right. That is honestly something I

960
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 2: could see coming. Yeah, it's not so surprising when you

961
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 2: lay it out like.

962
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 4: That, a middle management NEPO guy in the oil gas

963
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 4: fuel to fascism pipeline. I feel like that's a pretty

964
00:47:57,960 --> 00:47:59,280
Speaker 4: well trodden path.

965
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:04,120
Speaker 2: Now. He was known to work hard, often during the weekend,

966
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 2: but he was also not someone who led his social

967
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,879
Speaker 2: life atrophy. As Cesarini writes, his social life flourish now

968
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 2: that he had disposable income, freedom to come and go

969
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:14,560
Speaker 2: as he pleased on weekday evenings, and a motorcycle with

970
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 2: which to impress prospective girlfriends at the weekend. He was

971
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:20,800
Speaker 2: definitely a lot not the lonely Gausch outsider who depicted

972
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 2: as the typical recruit to Nazism in many of the

973
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 2: psychological and socio psychological explanations for the movement's growth. His

974
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:29,799
Speaker 2: prison memoir is filled with gratitude to his father for

975
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 2: the move to Upper Austria his second homeland, and for

976
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:36,160
Speaker 2: giving him a glorious, untroubled youth, A keen horseman. He

977
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:38,839
Speaker 2: spent hours riding in the countryside. He recalled that as

978
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 2: for all young men, those days offered him love, spring

979
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 2: and life, motorsports, mountain sports, work, coffeehouses, friends and girlfriends,

980
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:48,360
Speaker 2: and why not filled the days and years.

981
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 4: So good for him.

982
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 2: He's living it up. He's again not at all the

983
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 2: guy he's described as by a lot of people. He's

984
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:58,000
Speaker 2: a dude with a social life. He's a dude who's

985
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 2: reasonably good with women. He's a dude who's has options

986
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 2: to be happy outside of joining the Nazi Party. Right.

987
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, If you didn't know how the story ended, I

988
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 4: would say, well, I'm sure this guy turns out perfectly

989
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 4: normal for German of the.

990
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 2: Era, A normal dude. Yeah. Now, Throughout this period, the

991
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 2: Nazi Party is arising up in Germany and in Austria.

992
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:20,719
Speaker 2: The left and right are engaging in open warfare in

993
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 2: the streets, with the government cracking down hard against the

994
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 2: social democratic militias. Eikmann is an ignorant of any of this.

995
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 2: Although he is not initially much of an activist, his

996
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:33,319
Speaker 2: particular chapter of the Wandervogel movement shares members with some

997
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 2: of these militias, and this seems to be where he

998
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 2: starts the years long onboarding process that eventually leads him

999
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:42,880
Speaker 2: to Nazism. His aristocratic friend von Schmidt convinces him to

1000
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 2: join an anti socialist nationalist association for veterans. Obviously Eichmann

1001
00:49:48,080 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 2: isn't a veteran, but that's not a problem. He joins

1002
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 2: the young veterans wing of the group, which is I

1003
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:53,760
Speaker 2: guess for non.

1004
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 4: Veterans that a young veterans.

1005
00:49:57,400 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 2: I think it's love that will be a veteran when

1006
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:01,879
Speaker 2: the war we all know it's gonna come. Well, yeah,

1007
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 2: future veterans.

1008
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 4: I mean a young veteran back then could have just

1009
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:08,359
Speaker 4: been child soldiers as well, because there's plenty of them

1010
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:13,640
Speaker 4: floating around. But I love like Adolf Eichmann, honorary Austrian veteran.

1011
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:17,440
Speaker 2: Honorary Austrian veteran. Yeah, we're gonna throw rocks at you,

1012
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:19,280
Speaker 2: and it's like you're in the tyroll.

1013
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, what a bunch of dirds.

1014
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 2: So this is where he learns to march and shoot

1015
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:29,640
Speaker 2: their leader. And it's so funny to me, how close

1016
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 2: this guy's last name is to Hitler. Their leader is

1017
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 2: Perman von Hiltel. Not quite Hitler, right Hiltel. It's like carsonalization,

1018
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 2: but for fascists, like evolution was always working to produce

1019
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 2: a Hitler. If Hitler, if our Hitler hadn't come off,

1020
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 2: the von Hiltel family would have produced a Hitler given

1021
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 2: enough time, right.

1022
00:50:56,080 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 4: To shift, Yeah, give it enough time that the chances

1023
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 4: of Hitler approached.

1024
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,760
Speaker 2: Their leader, Colonel Hermann von Hildte, was violently anti Semitic

1025
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 2: and described Jewish Marxism as the enemy of Germany. He

1026
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,479
Speaker 2: was an outspoken advocate of dispossessing Austrian Jews who owned

1027
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:15,840
Speaker 2: land and stripping them of their citizenship. Von Hiltel railed

1028
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 2: against Jewish immigration into Austria and held regular rallies where

1029
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,600
Speaker 2: his loud, violent young followers would encourage their Jewish neighbors

1030
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:26,360
Speaker 2: to leave the country. Now this is the group that

1031
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:29,720
Speaker 2: Eichman starts hanging out in. There is a Nazi party

1032
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 2: in Austria by the late twenties, but Eichman isn't interested

1033
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 2: in it because it's really weak and small. It's like,

1034
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 2: by far the weakest part of what is at that

1035
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 2: point a vibrant far right ecosystem. So he's like the Nazis,

1036
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 2: like those are Germans and they're kind of losers. Like

1037
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 2: there's better far right Austrian groups. Evan Berbuki, a historian

1038
00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:50,879
Speaker 2: of Lenz, describes the Nazis in this period as a

1039
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 2: party of outsiders, and Eikman's not an outsider, right, key

1040
00:51:55,280 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 2: aspect of him. He is never an outsider.

1041
00:51:57,480 --> 00:51:59,240
Speaker 3: Party of outsiders.

1042
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:02,360
Speaker 2: Okay, it's the weirdos in the freaks who become Austrian

1043
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 2: Nazis in this period, right, and Iikman is is not.

1044
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:09,279
Speaker 2: You know, he's a normal guy with pretty good connections.

1045
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 2: So he joins a mainstream far right militia that pats Jewish.

1046
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 3: Sorry, not Nazi enough.

1047
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 2: For me, No Nazis'.

1048
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 3: I just think that you should be you know more Nazi.

1049
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little fringe for me, darling. So I don't

1050
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:30,439
Speaker 2: know why I give Iikman that. I'm telling you your

1051
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 2: brain today is I have I've got I've got George

1052
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 2: Lucas disease. I can't help but imagine Germans as sounding

1053
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 2: like British people.

1054
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 4: I mean to be fair.

1055
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 2: Look, it works, it makes sense, right.

1056
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:48,800
Speaker 4: There's a reason why whenever they make like Nazi movies

1057
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,800
Speaker 4: and the bad guys actually have speaking lines, they're always

1058
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 4: just played by people British accents. Yeah, there's a reason

1059
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 4: for that.

1060
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big exception being Waltz in the Tarantino movie.

1061
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 2: We're like, oh, yet they actually have a German guy

1062
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 2: doing Nazi stuff. In nineteen thirty, Iikman gets engaged to

1063
00:53:08,600 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 2: a cops daughter. The relationship is not going to work out,

1064
00:53:11,920 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 2: weirdly enough, because she doesn't like Nazis right. She's like

1065
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:18,960
Speaker 2: this cops daughter very, which doesn't mean she's not far

1066
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 2: right or racist, it just means they like another party

1067
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 2: and the Nazis are kind of weirdos. One day, Iikman

1068
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:28,439
Speaker 2: is over at her family apartment in nineteen thirty one,

1069
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 2: which sit in their apartment sits above a bar that

1070
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 2: Nazis would gather in regularly throughout the week, and Eikman

1071
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 2: later claimed in our circle and like he's talking about

1072
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 2: their friend group, it was the done thing to say

1073
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 2: that the NSDAP consisted of idiots and no hopers, and

1074
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 2: his fiance made the statement a statement to that effect

1075
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 2: when she saw a troop of brown Shirts marching down

1076
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 2: the street Iikman got angry and snapped back. These idiots

1077
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 2: have order and discipline, and they march well. He ended

1078
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 2: the engagement shortly thereafter. Really good at marching.

1079
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 4: I can't do it. They too good.

1080
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 2: They're so good at walking. Goddamn, don't you understand how

1081
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 2: important walking is. By nineteen thirty two, the Australian economy

1082
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 2: is in the tank and Eichmann doesn't lose his job

1083
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 2: right away, but he can see the writing on the

1084
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,239
Speaker 2: wall right that like his company is going to have

1085
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 2: to get rid of him. He may have ultimately joined

1086
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:21,720
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party as much as anything because he saw

1087
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 2: a future there in the potential for paying work, right,

1088
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:27,879
Speaker 2: not initially that he is such an ideological Nazi, because

1089
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 2: he's still not at this point. He's a German nationalist.

1090
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 2: He's increasingly racist, but he could have gone a couple

1091
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 2: of ways. But he's like, look, the Nazis, they're starting

1092
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 2: to They're no longer a fringe group in Austria by

1093
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:41,799
Speaker 2: like thirty one thirty two, right, they're starting to get

1094
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:45,439
Speaker 2: more normal. And if you know anything, like my career

1095
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:47,319
Speaker 2: is based on a version of this, If you want

1096
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:50,759
Speaker 2: to move ahead really quickly, you find a thing, an

1097
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:54,840
Speaker 2: organization that's fairly new and growing rapidly, and you just

1098
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 2: kind of stick yourself in there and find like a

1099
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:01,799
Speaker 2: place where you can sort of make it your own, right,

1100
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:03,360
Speaker 2: And that's what he's gonna do with the Nazi parties,

1101
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 2: Like this is a new organization, I can push my way. Yeah,

1102
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 2: it's it's this is the way everything works, screening me. No, no, no,

1103
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 2: this is this is the way before that. I'm talking about,

1104
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 2: like my early Like you find a company that's just

1105
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 2: started and they're desperate for people, and you just start deciding,

1106
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 2: my job's going to be this, My job's going to

1107
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 2: be that, And it's it offers opportunity that doesn't exist

1108
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 2: in like the Austrian state, right.

1109
00:55:30,520 --> 00:55:32,680
Speaker 4: And I mean this is definitely a guy that's a

1110
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 4: very very comfortable job hopping whenever he's an opportunity, Like

1111
00:55:35,719 --> 00:55:37,719
Speaker 4: he doesn't have a career. He's like, I'm an oil man,

1112
00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 4: I'm also electrician. Doing this for a little bit, I'll

1113
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 4: guess I'll be a non.

1114
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 2: Oil man again. Well, and he's also he sees number one,

1115
00:55:46,040 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 2: the corporate economy is not going to be good for

1116
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:52,800
Speaker 2: a while. The depression is starting and the Austrian government

1117
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 2: is a really ossified so that you don't move quickly

1118
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:00,360
Speaker 2: in that the Nazis they're starting to take power and germony.

1119
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:02,239
Speaker 2: By this point, the writing is on the wall there

1120
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 2: and he's like, well, maybe they'll take power in Austria.

1121
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:06,720
Speaker 2: I think this is going to happen. And the sooner

1122
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:09,239
Speaker 2: I get in, the better my chances of getting a

1123
00:56:09,280 --> 00:56:12,360
Speaker 2: really good job in the new state. Right because this

1124
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:15,239
Speaker 2: is still a small organization, I can make myself a

1125
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 2: big part of it, and when it takes over, I'll

1126
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:20,360
Speaker 2: be really well positioned, right makes it's just a smart

1127
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 2: way to look at, like any kind of like organization,

1128
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:28,080
Speaker 2: right Like, if you're looking to jump ahead in your career,

1129
00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:31,879
Speaker 2: find a place where they don't really have anything solidified yet.

1130
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:34,359
Speaker 2: You know, that's just that's just kind of always how

1131
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:38,719
Speaker 2: big organizations work. By the end of thirty one, the

1132
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 2: Austrian Nazis had started getting their shit together, just as

1133
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:45,280
Speaker 2: the dominant far right militia of the area, the Heimware,

1134
00:56:45,600 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 2: starts falling apart. Right Eikman finally joins the party in

1135
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen thirty two, after the Nazis sweep

1136
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 2: a bunch of local elections in Vienna and Salzburg, right,

1137
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:57,919
Speaker 2: and we should see this again, is he knows where

1138
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,160
Speaker 2: the wind is blowing, right, Like he's aware of what's

1139
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:04,480
Speaker 2: about to happen, and he's positioning himself for kind of

1140
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:06,799
Speaker 2: the next big part of his life, which we will

1141
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 2: be discussing in part two. Oh boy, I uh, how

1142
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:13,720
Speaker 2: we feeling about Iikman?

1143
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 4: Weird? I don't. I don't know how to put it. Like, honestly,

1144
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 4: Iikman is a guy which you know, obviously we we

1145
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 4: know a little bit about him just from the background,

1146
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 4: knowing about the Holocaust, but the fact that he seems

1147
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 4: so normal is off putting, because even the normal Nazi

1148
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:36,840
Speaker 4: guys there's something truly strange about them. He is very

1149
00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:39,240
Speaker 4: normal up until you know we're about to get to

1150
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:42,080
Speaker 4: in the Nazis take over Austria. He's still not even

1151
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:45,920
Speaker 4: really ideologically driven other than what could be considered mainstream

1152
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:46,959
Speaker 4: politics at the time.

1153
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and that's like, yeah, that that's kind of

1154
00:57:51,520 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 2: the thing about him, that's really and it's you can

1155
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 2: see a bit of this with Hydrick too, where well

1156
00:57:56,680 --> 00:57:59,040
Speaker 2: you're and even with Mengola where it's like, yeah, the

1157
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:05,880
Speaker 2: big motivation is your career is this movement has allowed

1158
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 2: you to leap frog ahead at a much younger age

1159
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 2: to a high position than you would have ever gotten

1160
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 2: in the old German state or the old Austrian state. Right,

1161
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 2: that just wouldn't have happen. And look if you look

1162
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 2: at like I'm just looking right now, this twenty two

1163
00:58:20,400 --> 00:58:22,600
Speaker 2: year old kid that was appointed to DHS to lead

1164
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:25,440
Speaker 2: terrorism prevention. Right, it's the same thing going on right now.

1165
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:29,320
Speaker 2: There's opportunities, oh my shit, like this for very young

1166
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 2: people who aren't good or great at anything, and who

1167
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,560
Speaker 2: wouldn't have risen up in the traditional system. But things

1168
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:40,080
Speaker 2: have been disrupted and they're primarily good at not causing

1169
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:43,880
Speaker 2: problems for the people above them, right, yeah, and yeah,

1170
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 2: you can make you can make a place for yourself that.

1171
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 4: Way auto move fast and break break.

1172
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, bigs, it's.

1173
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 3: A great picture. It's a great picture.

1174
00:58:53,400 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 4: Though it's a horrible picture.

1175
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 3: It's so scary.

1176
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 4: Someone needs to give that kid of early immediately. I

1177
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:06,400
Speaker 4: do wonder would we have been better off if Iikman

1178
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 4: did get the shit bullied out of him when he

1179
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 4: was a child? Like, is this a proper application of bullying?

1180
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:14,920
Speaker 2: There's only one way to find out Joe, you and me,

1181
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 2: we got to get in a time machine and we

1182
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 2: got to beat the shit at a little kid. Iikman,

1183
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:23,760
Speaker 2: I mean, put that fucker in traction like Austrey and

1184
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 2: like a whole body, like a big old machine, like

1185
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 2: fucking rusted metal. Nailed his body until he gets better.

1186
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:32,919
Speaker 2: That's what we're doing.

1187
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:35,200
Speaker 4: Me and you need to need to knock back a

1188
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:37,960
Speaker 4: couple of pine skin, go back in time and beat

1189
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 4: the shit out of this child, just.

1190
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 2: Wail on his ass. Absolutely, yep, call, this is it.

1191
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 2: This is what we're doing. All right, everybody, if you

1192
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:49,960
Speaker 2: have access to a time machine, let Joe and I know.

1193
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:52,880
Speaker 2: I promise that's all we'll do. We're not going to

1194
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:56,040
Speaker 2: do any sports betting. Absolutely not going to do a

1195
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 2: lot of sports betting with it. We would never do

1196
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:02,960
Speaker 2: primarily sports instead of saving lives. You know, we're not

1197
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:04,560
Speaker 2: going back to two thousand and one to bet on

1198
01:00:04,560 --> 01:00:09,520
Speaker 2: the World Series. Yeah, not me. Well, well, obviously we'll

1199
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 2: stop nine to eleven, of course.

1200
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:16,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. I promise that I will only go back

1201
01:00:16,080 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 4: in time to beat up children.

1202
01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. That's right.

1203
01:00:19,240 --> 01:00:21,120
Speaker 4: That's how I'll stop nine to eleven. I'll go back

1204
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:23,160
Speaker 4: further in time, I'll beat up on the children.

1205
01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:26,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna travel back to Saudi Arabia when Been

1206
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 2: Lotten's like seven and just kick the shit out of

1207
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 2: that kit until he's pissing blood. That's what we're doing exactly.

1208
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 2: This will fix all these problems.

1209
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 4: The only way that will stop it is time traveling

1210
01:00:38,200 --> 01:00:39,080
Speaker 4: child abuse.

1211
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the way to do it. Been Lodden waits

1212
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:44,520
Speaker 2: another five years, and his big attack is ramming a

1213
01:00:44,600 --> 01:00:52,920
Speaker 2: plan into a podcasting studio. Good stuff. Okay, well we

1214
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 2: should probably stop now. We're back in part two for

1215
01:00:57,360 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 2: more genocide. Bye everybody.

1216
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1217
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1218
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:12,919
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1219
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,480
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1220
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes

1221
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 3: every Wednesday and Friday.

1222
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:25,000
Speaker 1: Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind

1223
01:01:25,040 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 1: the Bastards