Speaker 1: Okay, welcome back to the podcast that this is, which
Speaker 1: is not the podcast that this isn't um, which is
Speaker 1: to say that this is behind the bastards family. Was that?
Speaker 1: Come on? Come on? I was being very specific, Sophie,
Speaker 1: Love of God, you're talking about the worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Okay, that's what we do. That's our
Speaker 1: that's our milieu is the worst people bad, yes, and
Speaker 1: one of the and one. Sometimes those are bad people.
Speaker 1: There's dead babies. We always have this wonderful lady on
Speaker 1: Sophia Alexandria is here today to talk with us about
Speaker 1: some dead babies. Well, Robert, what did I say? I said,
Speaker 1: stop only inviting me to dead baby things? Can you
Speaker 1: break it up with some adult murder every once in
Speaker 1: a while? I mean, yeah, there was some adult murder
Speaker 1: in the last one. Come on, remember that doesn't count
Speaker 1: of Part two. Is baby murder that neiggates Part one?
Speaker 1: I don't know that it is. I think it just
Speaker 1: makes for more murdered people. I think that we do
Speaker 1: one baby murder episode, we do one other people murder episode,
Speaker 1: and that is a healthy balance for our relationship, you
Speaker 1: know what. I respect that and I accept it. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well, good, See this is why communication is
Speaker 1: so critical. I'm hugging you through the zoom. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Sophie. I'm hugging you to talk. Yeah, oh yes,
Speaker 1: right for having me. You're welcome your will. So this
Speaker 1: is part two of our episode you know about Nazis
Speaker 1: and stuff? Right, actually introduced me, you fool? Okay, I did.
Speaker 1: I could said you're Sophia Alexandria, who we talked about. Well,
Speaker 1: you're also a comedian a podcast. First of all, pronounced
Speaker 1: her last name, right, Sophia Alexandria. Nope, what Alexandra? Sorry?
Speaker 1: What fucking I was thinking about princesses. Um. I have
Speaker 1: literally hundreds of hours with you. I know I was
Speaker 1: thinking of princesses. I too think of royalty when I
Speaker 1: think of Sophia, but I know how to pronounce her
Speaker 1: last name. Yes, you're so good at making him look
Speaker 1: like shit. This is an episode about Nazis, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking worse than the Nazis right now, not worse than
Speaker 1: not after this episode. I'm not Jesus what with all
Speaker 1: the baby killing? All right, let's let's all right. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when one of the nice things Sophia about
Speaker 1: studying the old Nazis as opposed to studying today's fascists
Speaker 1: is that we we we do know how things ended
Speaker 1: with the old ones, right, Like you know, they don't
Speaker 1: win in the end, um, And we're all we don't
Speaker 1: know at about our fascists, right, We're all still living
Speaker 1: through this. And there's a there's a there's a pretty
Speaker 1: good chance they'll wind up, they'll wind up taking home
Speaker 1: the trophy, you know. Um, Yeah, I do believe in us,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly the game is not the game is
Speaker 1: not ended. Um. The game is certainly still afoot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think we all have to get used to
Speaker 1: the idea. Like one of the frustrating things I think
Speaker 1: there's this, like, especially if you have friends and family
Speaker 1: members who kind of went went Trump and have been
Speaker 1: getting increasingly at least far right, if not explicitly fashy
Speaker 1: over the last few years, is that like you want
Speaker 1: some sort of emotional closure where they're like, I fucked up,
Speaker 1: I was wrong, Like I I made a bad call.
Speaker 1: It's never gonna happen. It's never going to happen. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think is most
Speaker 1: interesting about Meyer's book, they thought they were free. Is
Speaker 1: that he talks to like former Nazis about that. These
Speaker 1: guys are You would think if anyone can be like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the wrong horse to bag, it would be
Speaker 1: guys living in Germany in like nineteen but like, no,
Speaker 1: like they don't. Like even those people weren't like, oh
Speaker 1: you know what, this was a bad call. My kids
Speaker 1: are dead in my house, got burned down in a
Speaker 1: bombing raid. Probably voted for the wrong guy. That's not
Speaker 1: what I want. I'm sure there was some unfortunate mistakes,
Speaker 1: but overall it's been a pretty good couple of years.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what they said. It's it's amazing these guys,
Speaker 1: these little Nazis. And again, these are not the guys
Speaker 1: who got rich under Nazism, Like these are not the
Speaker 1: Venti Nazis. They're just merely tall yeah yeah, yeah, tall,
Speaker 1: which again in Starbucks and Nazi terminology means short. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's it's fascinating. Rather than turning against Hitler,
Speaker 1: these little Nazis, the guys that Meyer you befriended, they
Speaker 1: looked back on the Nazi time and power as like
Speaker 1: a golden age, and they blamed the Fewer's failures on
Speaker 1: everyone but him. Only one of Meyer's ten friends was
Speaker 1: actually willing to condemn large aspects of the Nazi system.
Speaker 1: As for the others. Quote, the other nine decent, hard working,
Speaker 1: ordinarily intelligent and honest men did not know before nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three that Nazism was evil. They did not know
Speaker 1: between nineteen thirty three and forty five that it was evil,
Speaker 1: and they do not know it now. None of them
Speaker 1: ever knew or knows now Nazism as we knew it
Speaker 1: and know it, and they lived under it, served it,
Speaker 1: and indeed made it. These nine ordinary Germans knew it
Speaker 1: absolutely otherwise, and they still know it otherwise. If our
Speaker 1: view of national socialism is a little simple, so as
Speaker 1: there's an autocracy, yes, of course, an autocracy as in
Speaker 1: the fable days of the golden time our parents knew,
Speaker 1: but a tyranny, as you Americans use the term nonsense.
Speaker 1: When I asked Tara Wedtkin to the Baker why he
Speaker 1: had believed in national socialism, he said, because it promised
Speaker 1: to solve the unemployment problem. And it did, But I
Speaker 1: never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did. I
Speaker 1: thought I had struck pay dirt and I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean, what it would lead to war? He said,
Speaker 1: nobody ever imagined that it would lead to war. And
Speaker 1: that's interesting. When they talk about what it led to,
Speaker 1: they're not talking about the Holocaust. They're not talking about
Speaker 1: the deportations, they're not talking about the murder of of
Speaker 1: the Roma, they're not talking about the murder of you know,
Speaker 1: Hitler's political enemies. They're talking about the thing that fucked
Speaker 1: them up personally. That's what they didn't realize it would
Speaker 1: lead to. But you know what, that baker has the
Speaker 1: kind of vibes where he would not bake a cake
Speaker 1: for a gay couple. Definitely not. And hearing reading that
Speaker 1: quote reminds me of the perennially relevant tweet by Adrian Bought.
Speaker 1: I never thought leopards would eat my face, sobs woman
Speaker 1: who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. But
Speaker 1: like it also reminds me of a Simpsons line. Um, sure,
Speaker 1: Nazis have made some mistakes in the past, but that's
Speaker 1: why pencils have a raisers. Yeah, it's it's It's very funny.
Speaker 1: I think though, if we actually want to understand what
Speaker 1: happened Nazi Germany and understand our own times better. As
Speaker 1: a result, we do have to understand that, like when
Speaker 1: these little Nazis say they had no way of knowing
Speaker 1: that that Hitler was going to lead Germany into a war,
Speaker 1: they're not lying. It seems like like, obviously, how could
Speaker 1: you not know? German? Hitler wanted war um but a
Speaker 1: lot of his early appeal to the little Nazis was
Speaker 1: the fact that he was a wounded war veteran and
Speaker 1: that he'd been a private right, that he had been
Speaker 1: a very low ranking war veteran. And one of the
Speaker 1: things you would say is that like, of course I
Speaker 1: don't want war. I know better than anybody how bad
Speaker 1: war is. I've been in the middle of one. Why
Speaker 1: would I want something like that? Like that was that
Speaker 1: was one of the lines that he took. Now, it
Speaker 1: was transparent nonsense, and it was obvious to people at
Speaker 1: the time who really who were intelligent, who paid attention, Like,
Speaker 1: for example, have you heard that Hitler was a Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize nominee. That's like a thing people talk about, right,
Speaker 1: that's pretty well known asn't are you? I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was rhetorical or no, No, he was, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that's the thing that gets brought up from
Speaker 1: time to time that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: You were doing a thing where you're like, so we
Speaker 1: all know this, right, And then I was waiting for you,
Speaker 1: I thought, and then you were just waiting for me
Speaker 1: to say something, and I was like, did you know that?
Speaker 1: On the same page, I thought that was yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's something that people talk about as
Speaker 1: much as in being a vegetarian or whatever. I read
Speaker 1: a lot of Hitler, so I'm I'm I'm probably off
Speaker 1: on what's common knowledge. So you're a big Hitler head.
Speaker 1: We all know that he was a hitstand. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, but the nomination
Speaker 1: was a joke. It was a satire by a Swedish
Speaker 1: anti fascist politician who was like being like, like, it's
Speaker 1: absurd because this guy clearly wants to pull the world
Speaker 1: into war. So obviously, like a lot of people who
Speaker 1: anyone who paid attention and who was modestly intelligent, knew
Speaker 1: what Hitler was going to do. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: like it was hidden in any real way, but it
Speaker 1: was hidden to these little Nazis, not because like Hitler,
Speaker 1: obscured it particularly well, but because the only media they
Speaker 1: paid attention to was essentially a like either completely idiotic
Speaker 1: or complete propaganda. They lived in a media bubble, right um,
Speaker 1: And that we we see that today. As Meyer wrote, quote, remember,
Speaker 1: none of these nine Germans had ever traveled abroad. None
Speaker 1: of them had ever known or talked with a foreigner,
Speaker 1: or read the foreign press. None ever wanted to listen
Speaker 1: to the foreign radio when it was legal to do so. None,
Speaker 1: except oddly enough, the policeman, listened to it when it
Speaker 1: was illegal. They were as uninterested in the outside world
Speaker 1: as their contemporaries in France or America. And you know,
Speaker 1: Meyer gets it right. You can see reading this book.
Speaker 1: He doesn't talk a lot about American fascism, but you
Speaker 1: can see in the way he writes the book like
Speaker 1: he knew we were vulnerable too, like because these people
Speaker 1: are everywhere. Yeah. I don't know how you feeling, Sophia,
Speaker 1: Just you know, positive waiting for the babies to get here,
Speaker 1: to come on, and then to leave immediately, and to
Speaker 1: leave a pair of shoes behind. Baby shoes Comma never worn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: baby shoes. See myself out. Thank you for the hemmingway.
Speaker 1: I've always said you're the hemming way of this podcast,
Speaker 1: mainly because of the amount of time you spend shirtless
Speaker 1: firing a shotgun. I mean, people gotta get a load
Speaker 1: of these ditties. I always say, yeah, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the jacket quote for hills like white elephants. People
Speaker 1: got to get to look at these ditties. So that
Speaker 1: is also the tagline for my titties. A lot of similarities.
Speaker 1: You also spent a period of time in Havana. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, my titties are there right now. So yeah.
Speaker 1: Meyer points out that like for his Nazi friends who
Speaker 1: lived in small towns and away from like a lot
Speaker 1: of where a lot of the violence the Nazis did occurred,
Speaker 1: like the negative things the Nazis did, the negative press
Speaker 1: about them was drowned out by things like the Strength
Speaker 1: through Joy program, which enabled working Germans to visit places
Speaker 1: like Norway in Spain at very little cost. These little
Speaker 1: Nazis and those like them were concerned with the economy,
Speaker 1: and again that meant not starving in those days, and
Speaker 1: a lot of that appeared to get better under Hitler.
Speaker 1: Some of this was a losory, and a great deal
Speaker 1: of it was driven by what's called arianization, which is
Speaker 1: the process of stealing Jewish businesses and property and giving
Speaker 1: them to Germans, to arian Germans. Um. But Myer's friends
Speaker 1: felt is like a really clean name for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. And there's a there's a very good movie
Speaker 1: about it, all called that was made in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union and like the sixties called The Shop on Main Street.
Speaker 1: That's about like one like Russian peasant in an occupied village, um,
Speaker 1: who has given this old Jewish woman's uh. I think
Speaker 1: it's like a it sells like button and sewing equipment shop, um,
Speaker 1: and she and he become friend and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a very It's an interesting movie because like all
Speaker 1: of the people acting in it were like peasants on
Speaker 1: the Russian steps when the Germans invaded, and they lived
Speaker 1: in villages that the Nazis took over and then like
Speaker 1: turned like a lot of them turned in their their
Speaker 1: own Jews. So like the actors aren't like just acting,
Speaker 1: they're like remembering. It's a fascinating film. I really recommend it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to see it. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very very good movie in a very I mean very
Speaker 1: dark movie because it's about Russia and World War Two.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, what do you mean. It's kind
Speaker 1: of sounded like a lighthearted romp to me. Yeah, compared
Speaker 1: to talk about actually in part one and you knew
Speaker 1: a name of an actor, I was like, of course
Speaker 1: you grant. Yeah. I was just impressed by your just
Speaker 1: putting Yeah, is he what? Yeah, he's in and he
Speaker 1: plays in the pame Minister of England or something. Right,
Speaker 1: he's the sketchy politician. Yeah, he's the one that makes
Speaker 1: an insane number of like body shaming fat jokes during it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember up, but the only thing I remember
Speaker 1: is that Liam Neeson is in it. Um woman that's
Speaker 1: a supermodel, but not a supermodel, Like she's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be a supermodel, but she is. In the joke
Speaker 1: he just keeps talking about how, oh, like the only
Speaker 1: person I'd marry is Claudia Schiffer or whatever the fuck,
Speaker 1: And then this Claudia Schiffer shows up. You know what,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. That's not a good retelling of the movie,
Speaker 1: but it's partially true. But you know what, ties that
Speaker 1: back into our our episode. How are you going to do? Impressed? Well,
Speaker 1: you were, you were. You were just telling me that
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson is in love actually because of when love
Speaker 1: actually was made. We're talking about we're talking about what's
Speaker 1: that Holocaust movie with the red dress? Liam Neeson? Bam
Speaker 1: back to We're back to World War two. Perfect degrees
Speaker 1: of Hitler. Yeah, well that's amazing, son of a bitch.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, you know, I'm only
Speaker 1: three degrees away from him. I mean like like genetically
Speaker 1: or no, no, no, just in terms of like direct handshakes. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: hands with I shook hands with a guy who at
Speaker 1: age eight, like the Nazis came to power, and he
Speaker 1: was a member of the Hitler Youth and they did
Speaker 1: a lot of meeting like meet and greet gathering stuff
Speaker 1: with Nazi hy brass. And he shook Herman Garring's hand.
Speaker 1: Uh and obviously Herman Gerring by obviously by Nazi transitive property,
Speaker 1: you have shaken Hitler's hand. I basically shook Hitler's hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's what we're talking about. Yeah. The thing that's
Speaker 1: crazier about it to me is that that dude's grandpa
Speaker 1: had fought with a sword on horseback as a cavalryman,
Speaker 1: and like that that it's that recently that people were
Speaker 1: doing that. Like, yeah, this dude fought in the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one with like a fucking sword on horseback, and
Speaker 1: I like shook hands with his grandson. And as advanced
Speaker 1: as we are, we're that close to like people stabbing
Speaker 1: each other while riding horses. It's wild, right, is that
Speaker 1: when you got into machetes. No, I've always been in machetes,
Speaker 1: so um, yeah, yeah, Sorry, we got off on a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tangent here um, but kind of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Most of this is for you,
Speaker 1: but a little bit of this is for me. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it can't be just Hitler, Hitler, Hitler of the time.
Speaker 1: Give me two of Hitler related, Hitler adjacent and yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a lot of Hitler adjacent little Nazis here.
Speaker 1: And and these folks were able to kind of get
Speaker 1: on board because they were, you know, distracted by a
Speaker 1: lot of the benefits of Nazis and they didn't see
Speaker 1: they didn't go looking for the ugly stuff, even though
Speaker 1: they knew some of it was there um because the
Speaker 1: stuff that was positive was like way more in their
Speaker 1: face is and that's really all they cared about. And
Speaker 1: that's why even the the Nazis never had an electoral majority,
Speaker 1: almost every German got on board with Nazism, even if
Speaker 1: they didn't join the party during the years in which
Speaker 1: Hitler was succeeding, right, because people back a winner um,
Speaker 1: And that's what gets it. That's what scares me most
Speaker 1: about imagining the United States sliding into fascism. And it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the midnight raids, the abduction and execution
Speaker 1: of dissidents, the slow clamped down and in resistance. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that most Americans that like people I know
Speaker 1: and am friendly with, would find ways to pretend none
Speaker 1: of it was happening, while like people I love and
Speaker 1: maybe me are disappearing and being murdered. That's the scariest
Speaker 1: thing about it, right like that is so much more
Speaker 1: frightening than imagining, than thinking about the actual fascists doing
Speaker 1: the killing. It's like the people that I've I've hung
Speaker 1: out and played video games with, like turning and turning
Speaker 1: away while it happened. Anyway, I'm gonna read another quote
Speaker 1: from Meyer's book that's exactly on this topic. None of
Speaker 1: the horror impinged upon the day to day lives of
Speaker 1: my ten friends or was ever called to their attention.
Speaker 1: There was some sort of trouble on the streets as
Speaker 1: one or another of my friends was passing by on
Speaker 1: a couple of occasions, but the police dispersed the crowd,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing in the local paper. You and
Speaker 1: I leave some sort of trouble on the streets to
Speaker 1: the police, so did my friends. And it's the police
Speaker 1: who are disappearing the Jews in this period, right, that's
Speaker 1: what's happening, along with all the political dissidents. Um and
Speaker 1: Meyer actually presented his friends with an article from their
Speaker 1: local newspaper from back in nineteen thirty eight about a
Speaker 1: group of local Jews who were taken into protective custody
Speaker 1: by the police, and Maya writes, none of them, including
Speaker 1: the teacher, the anti Nazi teacher, remembered ever having seen
Speaker 1: it or anything like it. And maybe they're lying. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's just our brains are that good, And when we're
Speaker 1: really hate reality, closing it out, if we're able to
Speaker 1: escape it, if we're safe enough to escape reality. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, people's memories of events are so unreliable,
Speaker 1: incredibly so in general, um much less when you like
Speaker 1: really want to forget that you were a Nazi, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: or or just don't want to remember that you what
Speaker 1: being a Nazi exact exactly, exactly exactly now, The cold,
Speaker 1: hard reality is that most of the Germans who lived
Speaker 1: in the Third Reich knew what was being done to
Speaker 1: the Jews. Not every detail, for sure, but like they
Speaker 1: knew enough. Right, the gas chambers, the death camps were
Speaker 1: tremendously widely known, but the fact that the Jews were
Speaker 1: being disappeared and that something terrible was happening, you were
Speaker 1: everyone was aware. This has not been kind of historical
Speaker 1: consensus for long. In two thousand one, Robert Professor Robert Gladley,
Speaker 1: who we we quoted from earlier, conducted a massive survey
Speaker 1: of German mainstream media newspapers and magazines from nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three on. And he started down this path of research
Speaker 1: when he was looking through old German papers and he
Speaker 1: found report of a woman who had been sent to
Speaker 1: the Gestapo for looking Jewish and having sex with a neighbor.
Speaker 1: Now at the time and this is like the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. When he came across this article, conventional academic
Speaker 1: wisdom held that the majority of Nazi atrocities had happened
Speaker 1: without the knowledge of most Germans, gladially noted for decades
Speaker 1: my generation had been told that so much of the
Speaker 1: terror had been carried out in complete secrecy. So coming
Speaker 1: up upon that report openly in a major German newspaper
Speaker 1: made him wonder if this was true, and so he
Speaker 1: decided to look into the matter, and then the way
Speaker 1: that academics do, very very in a very like methodical way,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote now from a Guardian rite up
Speaker 1: on the study he conducted. As a result of this,
Speaker 1: his media troll with a research assistant, found that as
Speaker 1: early as nineteen thirty three, local papers reported the killing
Speaker 1: of twelve prisoners by guards at Dakau, the first to
Speaker 1: be set up as a model concentration camp initially for communists.
Speaker 1: On May, the dekaur Zeitung, which is the Dacow newspaper,
Speaker 1: said that the camp was Germany's most famous place and
Speaker 1: wrought new hope to the decou business world, which obviously
Speaker 1: there's a town also next to the camp By nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, the main and widely read Nazi owned paper
Speaker 1: Vocashabao Bacter was reporting on a widening of policy to
Speaker 1: other political criminals, including Jews accused of race defilement. By
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, communist prisoners were no longer mentioned in
Speaker 1: a photo essay, and the s S paper Dash Schwartz Corp.
Speaker 1: The Dark Core emphasized the camps has places for people
Speaker 1: for race to filers, rapists, sexual degenerates, and habitual criminals.
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me that that's how they're That's how
Speaker 1: the Nazis spun the concentration camps first not as a
Speaker 1: place for Jews in specific, but as a place for
Speaker 1: race to filer's, rapists, sexual de degenerates, and habitual criminals
Speaker 1: um and that process continued through the years of the
Speaker 1: regime short life. In nineteen thirty seven, Heinrich Heimbler made
Speaker 1: public announcements that still more camps would be needed for
Speaker 1: those with hydrocephalis, cross eyed, deformed, half Jews, and a
Speaker 1: whole series of racially inferior year types. In nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: after Christal knoch Gebel's made a widely purported public announcement
Speaker 1: that the final answer to the Jewish problem would occur
Speaker 1: via government decree. So far from being unaware of the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: the little Germans were well informed about a lot what
Speaker 1: was going on. They knew their government was looking to
Speaker 1: a final answer to the Jewish question, and they knew
Speaker 1: what that meant more or less. So, Yeah, not only
Speaker 1: were the Nazi atrocities well known as they occurred, but
Speaker 1: the desire of little Nazis to pretend ignorance at the
Speaker 1: crimes that were enabling was also really obvious to outside
Speaker 1: and inside observers at the time. There's a quote that
Speaker 1: I think is really useful from Peter Viereck, who was
Speaker 1: a German American scholar, and he wrote this in nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: well publicized among Germans already before Hitler came to power,
Speaker 1: and during a period when he still depended on their
Speaker 1: consent rather than coercion, were the many actual deeds of butchery.
Speaker 1: Someday the same Germans, now cheering Hitler strut into Paris,
Speaker 1: will say to their American friends, into their brave German
Speaker 1: anti Nazi friends, we did not know what went on.
Speaker 1: We did not know. And when that day of no
Speaker 1: nothing comes, there will be laughter in Hell. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot to say about the forgetting that happened after
Speaker 1: the war, and some of it was because we wanted
Speaker 1: the Germans as allies against the Communists. The US government
Speaker 1: was very much willing to to let people forget, and
Speaker 1: it was not a unified thing. Like one of the
Speaker 1: things Eisenhower did that I think was really laudable was
Speaker 1: forced Germans who lived near the concentration camps to tour
Speaker 1: them where they were like still corpses lying out and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But but for the most part, this
Speaker 1: was allowed to be the mainstream belief. For you go
Speaker 1: find old documentaries about the Holocaust and stuff like. This
Speaker 1: was a very widespread belief that most Germans hadn't known
Speaker 1: because it was politically dangerous in the period when those
Speaker 1: same Germans were still running Germany to admit that they'd
Speaker 1: known and that they'd at least let it happen. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, it's a real bummer. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also makes me think of like the fact that, um,
Speaker 1: there's so many reminders of what happened in Germany and
Speaker 1: like all these monuments and stuff, and um, how that's
Speaker 1: really important. Also for reckoning with UM, something that is
Speaker 1: like a big historical event that most people would like
Speaker 1: to forget. Yeah, their country was a part of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually put a lot of If you go to
Speaker 1: any of like the any of the concentration camps that
Speaker 1: are actually in Germany, like in order to be a
Speaker 1: guide at one of those places, like there's a certain
Speaker 1: level of education you have to have and and the
Speaker 1: people there are extremely knowledgeable about the Holocaust UM. And
Speaker 1: it's something that the German government does now put a
Speaker 1: lot of importance in UM because you you have to
Speaker 1: people I want to forget that. When people want to forget,
Speaker 1: it's not that just they don't want to remember a
Speaker 1: bad episode from history. They want to forget that they
Speaker 1: might do that right. They probably wouldn't be Nazis, but
Speaker 1: they would let the Nazis do what the Nazis did.
Speaker 1: And nobody wants to remember that. Nobody wants to think
Speaker 1: about that. But it also just makes you think about
Speaker 1: how much wilder it is that people fight for Confederate
Speaker 1: monuments here, because they're the opposite of of those kind
Speaker 1: of monuments that you're trying to remember the people that
Speaker 1: were for something horrible, not the people that fought against them.
Speaker 1: So it's it would be like if you want to
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany and all of the monuments, instead of being
Speaker 1: too like, um, the Germans being Nazis, we're like, let's
Speaker 1: not this is so we don't forget that there were Nazis.
Speaker 1: Here's uh Henrich Hitler's uh statue. Oh it's right next
Speaker 1: to you know, Hitler and Hitler's garden. It's just like
Speaker 1: that's I mean, and that's something that has been taken
Speaker 1: for granted in America for so long that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Confederate monuments of course, and on that side, it's time
Speaker 1: for an ad biats that we can all take some
Speaker 1: deep breaths off. Mike whoa. I like it when we
Speaker 1: can be more playful. Robert say, welcome back. I say, woo,
Speaker 1: everything's fine in the world. So uh yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. I think it's important to note, because
Speaker 1: there's very little nuance in our education of the concentration
Speaker 1: camps that they started as a place to put criminals, right,
Speaker 1: sexual deviance, you know, child molesters, right the the that
Speaker 1: that's what the Nazi that's not what who they were
Speaker 1: putting there, but that's how the Nazis justified it, um.
Speaker 1: And you can look at things like Q went on
Speaker 1: suggests going after and whatnot and see some see some
Speaker 1: lines there, but also like what a crazy coincidence that, um,
Speaker 1: like all the people um that are the murderers and
Speaker 1: the rapists and whatever are Jewish and gay and roma
Speaker 1: and communist and political. Such a wild coincidence. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it is like you you see shades of that in
Speaker 1: our own fascists, this idea that like everybody who was opposed,
Speaker 1: who is actively opposed to the regime is a criminal,
Speaker 1: you know. And they're not just criminals because they're breaking
Speaker 1: laws in their protests, but there they all have like
Speaker 1: have to be like part of some pedophile cabal they're
Speaker 1: doing like they're they're they're they're all, um, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's this, it's in the reason they do that, right,
Speaker 1: The reason they do that is because it stops normal
Speaker 1: people from caring. Because normal people don't give a ship
Speaker 1: if a criminal gets murdered by the cops, because that's
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. You know, normal people care when someone
Speaker 1: they see as a good person gets hurt. Um, they
Speaker 1: don't care about criminals because there's a lot that's fucked
Speaker 1: up in our society. But the Nazis were taking advantage
Speaker 1: of that same thing too. You know, you you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't say we're cracking down on political dissidents. It's
Speaker 1: we're arresting criminals, and then everybody's fine with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quote from a book called Backing
Speaker 1: Hitler by Robert Gladalie, who were just talking about. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a very good book, and it talks about sort
Speaker 1: of how, um, how the images that the Nazi regime
Speaker 1: put out to justify the people they were locking away.
Speaker 1: The social reception of the images that were projected, no doubt,
Speaker 1: varied enormously. At one end of the scale, these published
Speaker 1: accounts that a terrorizing or deterrent effect on potential opponents
Speaker 1: of Nazism and those who were officially stigmatized. Certainly, many
Speaker 1: people in the country would have seen through the propaganda. However,
Speaker 1: for good citizens who wanted to return to an idolized
Speaker 1: version of German law and order, these images helped to
Speaker 1: ease the appearance of even the terroristic sides of Hitler's regime.
Speaker 1: They could read in the press that those who suffered
Speaker 1: at the hands of the new system were other people,
Speaker 1: Communists and various social outsiders, and the Jews. Good citizens
Speaker 1: were invited to see the camps as educative institutions and
Speaker 1: as a corrective and a warning to those described as
Speaker 1: social rabble, that is, men and women who were habitual criminals,
Speaker 1: the chronically unemployed, beggars, alcoholics, homosexuals, and repeat sex offenders.
Speaker 1: Totally different. Now amount of science. It's like Robert says something,
Speaker 1: and then then I so one thing about Robert and
Speaker 1: eyes chemistry that's not really Robert and my chemistry. That's
Speaker 1: not really popping off over long? What is this zoom call?
Speaker 1: We're on zoom now? Yeah, yeah, thank you, because I
Speaker 1: feel like you pause for me to say something when
Speaker 1: I have nothing to say, and I'm just defeated by
Speaker 1: the content. And then when I do have something to say,
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm in the middle of my thoughts and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're right, You're right. My thing was stupid.
Speaker 1: And that's what's happening podcasting. You know, maybe delete that.
Speaker 1: They don't need to know how this sounds. It just
Speaker 1: made no I like it. Stop saying that. Yeah, So Jesus,
Speaker 1: what a what a time to be alive? So I
Speaker 1: could go through in link excerpts from articles that kind
Speaker 1: of make that point about like Trump topping talking about
Speaker 1: violent criminals and like you know, camps at the border
Speaker 1: and all the crystal fascist paranoia about trans people using bathrooms.
Speaker 1: Which when they talk about the Nazis arresting sex criminals,
Speaker 1: that's who they were arresting. It's not rapists, it was
Speaker 1: people who had sex they thought was criminal. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or we could talk about q and On's obsession with
Speaker 1: mythical child sex traffickers. But like you, we've all been
Speaker 1: through the same news cycles. I'm sure you see the parallels. Uh.
Speaker 1: And a read through of Professor Gladalle's book, which I
Speaker 1: do recommend reveal several of them. Quote Orrick Herbert recently
Speaker 1: suggested that during the Nazi years there was a growing
Speaker 1: lack of moral concern in German society for human rights
Speaker 1: and the protection of minorities, which grew rapidly during the
Speaker 1: years of the dictatorship, and which led to a profound
Speaker 1: moral brutalization in Germany. That's familiar, right, growing lack of
Speaker 1: concern for human rights and protection of minorities in the
Speaker 1: society leading to brutalization Um. Yeah. Gladali himself uses the
Speaker 1: term desensitization to refer to the impact that the Nazis
Speaker 1: years long drumbeat of like news articles about the people
Speaker 1: that were arresting and sending away and killing, the impact
Speaker 1: that had on people, desensitization. Again, we're experiencing a version
Speaker 1: of that ourselves, with all of the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of deaths from from from COVID nineteen, with the violence
Speaker 1: in the streets, with like these, these, this constant drumbeat
Speaker 1: of police murders, like and and just you know, not
Speaker 1: even from like stories about death, but just like the
Speaker 1: sheer amount of horrible things happening, it just numbs you
Speaker 1: after a while that was going on then too. Um
Speaker 1: another thing we don't talk about enough. So while we're
Speaker 1: talking about desensitization and genocide, we should probably talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of the little Nazis who wound
Speaker 1: up as cogs in the machine of death that actually
Speaker 1: made the Holocaust happen. This is the dead baby section, Sophia. Finally,
Speaker 1: keep your Jesus, I had a fucking prologue in this
Speaker 1: some bitch, So I want to quote now from an
Speaker 1: article in Der Schpiegel titled Everyday Murder Nazi atrocities committed
Speaker 1: by ordinary people quote. Perpetrators included both committed Nazis and
Speaker 1: people who had nothing to do with the Nazis. The
Speaker 1: murderers and their assistants included Catholics and Protestants, the old
Speaker 1: and the young, people with double doctorates, and poorly educated
Speaker 1: members of the working class. And the percentage of psychopaths
Speaker 1: was not higher than the average in society as a whole.
Speaker 1: One thing you have to accept if you really want
Speaker 1: to understand the Holocaust is that most of the people
Speaker 1: involved were what we would describe as mentally healthy. They
Speaker 1: were not people who could have been diagnosed with any
Speaker 1: sort of of of mental illness UM which again like that,
Speaker 1: This is why I pushed back whenever people talk about
Speaker 1: the Nazis being crazy or Hitler Is being crazy, Like, no,
Speaker 1: these were rational people taking rational action that happened to
Speaker 1: be the worst thing you can imagine. And that's so
Speaker 1: much scarier UM now in the early nineteen nine So
Speaker 1: didn't they put mentally ill people. That's the first people
Speaker 1: that they executed a lot of That's the biggest than
Speaker 1: most horrible irony to call people that were just like willingly, um,
Speaker 1: being agents of fascism. Yeah, I'm comparing them and to
Speaker 1: people that are actually mentally ill. It's very it it is,
Speaker 1: it's sick, and it's wrong because it ignored, it completely
Speaker 1: ignores what was actually going down. Um. And that's that's
Speaker 1: very important. Like the very first um, you know, the
Speaker 1: gas chambers. Before the gas chambers, they were actually using
Speaker 1: like like trucks that they would hook up carbon monoxide
Speaker 1: gas too and pump into the trucks and they'd fill
Speaker 1: them with people. And the people they experimented on first,
Speaker 1: the first people the Nazis killed with any kind of
Speaker 1: poison gas were mentally handicapped folks. Yep, that's how it started. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it was the T four ethan Asia program.
Speaker 1: Might maybe getting things a little bit wrong there, but yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the early nineteen nineties, a large group of
Speaker 1: researchers and historians began the long plotting work of digging
Speaker 1: through mountains of the Third Reich surviving records and their
Speaker 1: goal was to put together for the first time. And again,
Speaker 1: this is right around the time that they're starting to
Speaker 1: understand that like actually most Germans were complicit to some degree. Um.
Speaker 1: So that they're starting to understand this, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to put together a comprehensive list of actual active perpetrators
Speaker 1: in the Holocaust for the first time, not just the leadership,
Speaker 1: but in everyone who pulled a trigger or the equivalent, um,
Speaker 1: the people who loaded Jewish folks in the train cars,
Speaker 1: the people who man gas chambers, everybody, and at present,
Speaker 1: the number of active participants that they have listed. These
Speaker 1: are all individual people include more than two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Germans and another two hundred thousand Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and
Speaker 1: members of other occupied countries, including Frenchmen. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the little Germans who pulled a lot of triggers was
Speaker 1: Walter Mattner. And Walter was a police secretary from Vienna
Speaker 1: who had been just kind of a function arry in
Speaker 1: the Viennese police and then joined the s S when
Speaker 1: the war started and became an administrative officer. And we
Speaker 1: have a lot of his letters to his wife back
Speaker 1: at home, and from those we learned quite a bit
Speaker 1: about the man. I'm gonna have a link to just
Speaker 1: like a sheet that has all of his letters home
Speaker 1: on it, because it's very compelling stuff. On September one,
Speaker 1: right after his first entry into the conquered territories of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union after the invasion started, he wrote, if
Speaker 1: I were not already a national Socialist, the first day
Speaker 1: of my wartime deployment would have turned me into one
Speaker 1: through and through now not that long after. On twenty
Speaker 1: nine September, about a week later, he wrote a letter
Speaker 1: in which he assured his wife that he and his
Speaker 1: fellow men of the s S were not committing war
Speaker 1: crimes against the Jews of Eastern Europe. He insisted, at
Speaker 1: the most we arranged things, i e. Everything is taken
Speaker 1: away from the Jews. Just a few days later, like
Speaker 1: three or four days later, on October second, nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: he wrote this, This is again a letter to his wife.
Speaker 1: I should have already turned in. It's already nine pm,
Speaker 1: and I volunteered for a special operation. Tomorrow REVELI is
Speaker 1: at four thirty am, and we're moving off at five
Speaker 1: thirty am tomorrow. I'll also have the first opportunity to
Speaker 1: use my pistol. I'm taking twenty eight rounds with me.
Speaker 1: Probably won't be enough, but another comrade will lend me
Speaker 1: his pistol or carbine. I don't even know if I'm
Speaker 1: being permitted to tell you this, but that the Jews
Speaker 1: are our misfortune. That's something you've known for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's something we saw again and again on our
Speaker 1: journey to Warsaw and onto here. Just how many comrades
Speaker 1: are already resting in the cool earth, and this is
Speaker 1: how many young men are sleeping single and married the
Speaker 1: prime of our German nation to protect our home from
Speaker 1: the monsters we have gotten to know here. It is
Speaker 1: simply dreadful to have to look at these Asiatic hords.
Speaker 1: What we Europeans feel when seeing this, You can understand
Speaker 1: bitterness that takes a hold of me and which everyone
Speaker 1: here feels when thinking of our home and our great
Speaker 1: fateful struggle which we have to wrestle through here. For
Speaker 1: our people, what are one thousand, two hundred Jews who
Speaker 1: are two men and yet another city and have to
Speaker 1: be bumped off? As the saying goes, it is only
Speaker 1: the just punishment for all the suffering they have inflicted
Speaker 1: and continue to inflict on us Germans. Until I arrive home.
Speaker 1: I shall tell you nice things, but enough for today,
Speaker 1: Otherwise you'll believe that I'm bloodthirsty. Wow on October seven,
Speaker 1: Walter and his comrades traveled to a village named Muglov
Speaker 1: in Belarus. There they gathered up two thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three Jewish people. They stripped them of everything
Speaker 1: but the clothes on their backs, line them up beside
Speaker 1: an open pit, and shot every single one of them
Speaker 1: to death at close range. Walter Mattner, mild mannered police secretary,
Speaker 1: wrote this home to his wife. For the first truckload,
Speaker 1: my hand trembled slightly when shooting, but one gets used
Speaker 1: to it. By the time the tenth truck arrived, I
Speaker 1: was already aiming steadily and fired surely at the many women,
Speaker 1: children in infants. Bear in mind that I also have
Speaker 1: two babies at home to whom these hordes would do
Speaker 1: the same, if not ten times worse. The death we
Speaker 1: gave them was a nice, short death compared to the
Speaker 1: hell is torture meeted out to hunt thousands upon thousands
Speaker 1: in the dungeons of the gpu. Infants flew in a
Speaker 1: white arc through the air, and we blew them away
Speaker 1: while still in flight, before they then fell into the
Speaker 1: pit and the water. Let's get rid of this brood
Speaker 1: which has plunged the whole of Europe into war, and
Speaker 1: is still mongering in America until it drags them into
Speaker 1: the war as well. Hitler's words are coming true what
Speaker 1: he once said before the war began. If jewelry believes
Speaker 1: it will be able to incite a war in Europe again,
Speaker 1: it won't be the Jews who will triumph, but will
Speaker 1: herald the end of jewelry in Europe. Magliev has now
Speaker 1: lost a number with three Zeros, but that's of no
Speaker 1: consequence here. I'm already looking forward to it, and many
Speaker 1: here are saying that when we return home, it's the
Speaker 1: turn of our local Jews. This is probably a cool
Speaker 1: time to mention that my grandma's family was shot to
Speaker 1: death by the Nazis. So it bringing back some real
Speaker 1: fond memories. Yeah. Yeah, these are the people who do that,
Speaker 1: and it it um, it happened to a tremendous degree.
Speaker 1: The eyes who did this, for the most part were
Speaker 1: um groups called the INSETS group and which was like
Speaker 1: it means special task unit and it was it was
Speaker 1: a lot of SS like it was like the folks
Speaker 1: that they recruited for this, a lot of them had
Speaker 1: been local police officers, before um. And these were folks
Speaker 1: who were willing who they This was kind of the
Speaker 1: first attempt at carrying out a genocide and mass and
Speaker 1: they did it with gunfire. And they realized very quickly
Speaker 1: that this was not um. Yeah, it was not efficient um.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But
Speaker 1: but reading about Mattner's crimes in particular brought to mind
Speaker 1: a passage from Meyer's book that I find rather striking,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I'm gonna read that passage. Now. The
Speaker 1: German language, like every other, has some glorious epithets untranslatable
Speaker 1: and will get wordney Spiceburger is one of them. It
Speaker 1: means very roughly, little men gone wild. I think about
Speaker 1: that a lot when I think about us, when I
Speaker 1: think about some of the things I've being in the streets,
Speaker 1: little men gone wild. That's some powerful ship. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, Mattner, obviously former police officer killing
Speaker 1: people in Belarus for the Third Reich, and his fellow
Speaker 1: police back home in Germany were hard at work on
Speaker 1: that same task. Uh, and they thought they were free.
Speaker 1: Meyer notes that his friend, the sensitive politician Hoffmeister quote
Speaker 1: did his duty in nineteen thirty eight when he was
Speaker 1: ordered to arrest Jews for being Jews. One of those
Speaker 1: he arrested the Taylor Morrowitz and this guy survived the war,
Speaker 1: calls him a decent man, which I have trouble getting
Speaker 1: into that guy's head too. Um. But it's a it's
Speaker 1: a shade of genocide that we don't see enough. I
Speaker 1: think that is important to tell people about. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: One of the most bitter and fucked up realities of
Speaker 1: the Holocaust is that a lot of the killing was
Speaker 1: done by folks who would other wise be described as
Speaker 1: decent men, people who were good husbands and good fathers
Speaker 1: and friendly, positive members of their community, nice people, people
Speaker 1: who would have smiled at you as you passed them
Speaker 1: on the street when they were old men. Uh. And
Speaker 1: people who also played an active role in the extermination
Speaker 1: of millions, people like, for example, Major Trap of Reserve
Speaker 1: Police Battalion one oh one. And I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: the Guardian to tell you about Major Trap. According to
Speaker 1: witness testimony, Major Trap was in tears when he ordered
Speaker 1: the shooting a fifteen hundred women, children, and elderly Jews
Speaker 1: near Warsaw, all the while saying an order is an order.
Speaker 1: In July ninety two, his men drove the victims out
Speaker 1: of their homes, loaded them into trucks, and took them
Speaker 1: to a remote clearing to be executed. They shot them
Speaker 1: in the head or in the back of the neck,
Speaker 1: and in the evening, the soldiers uniforms were covered with
Speaker 1: bone fragments, brain matter, and bloodstains. And that's like, that's
Speaker 1: I think almost a more useful picture of what it
Speaker 1: means to commit genocide is this man weeping and going
Speaker 1: through with it anyway because it's an order. That's just
Speaker 1: so fucking frightening to me. Um. I think anytime you
Speaker 1: justify anything with it's an order, it's a frightening thing
Speaker 1: because it's just completely uh takes away like the humanity
Speaker 1: a decision all the way. Yeah, And it's why we
Speaker 1: decided at Nuremberg that like, being under orders was not
Speaker 1: an excuse to commit genocide, because it's not. But it
Speaker 1: is precisely because of that guy. Um. Now, you may
Speaker 1: have noticed that a lot of the folks were talking
Speaker 1: about in this segment about people who actually committed genocide
Speaker 1: by pulling triggers themselves. A lot of those people were cops,
Speaker 1: strange weird. I wonder what the connection is there. Huh Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Nazis stay was adept at using regular police to
Speaker 1: round up Jews and other undesirables, and overwhelmingly German police
Speaker 1: officers who were not members of the Nazi Party previously
Speaker 1: agreed to do this work without complaint. Timothy Snyder, a
Speaker 1: Holocaust scholar and one of the world's great experts on fascism,
Speaker 1: one of your must reads if you want to understand
Speaker 1: what happened, uh notes in his book Black Earth that
Speaker 1: regular police were a key resource for the Nazis. Quote
Speaker 1: after its triumph in the Night of Long Knives, the
Speaker 1: s S implemented Hitler's fourth innovation, the hybridization of institutions.
Speaker 1: Crime was redefined, racial and state organizations were merged, and
Speaker 1: cadras were rotated back and forth. In nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: in a significant reform, Himmler explicitly redefined the s S
Speaker 1: and the police apparatus as a single organ of racial protection. Himler,
Speaker 1: who served a racial movement rather than a traditional state,
Speaker 1: personally directed both the s S and the German police.
Speaker 1: From nineteen thirty six, the Investigative Service of the s
Speaker 1: S proposed a new definition of political crime. It was
Speaker 1: not crime against the state. The state had validity only
Speaker 1: insofar as it represented the race. Since politics was nothing
Speaker 1: but biology, political crime was a crime against the German race. Now,
Speaker 1: later on in that same book, Snyder continues, the Einstetz
Speaker 1: group and we're also hybrid organizations, mixing SS members and others.
Speaker 1: The police forces themselves were hybridized from within, as police
Speaker 1: officers were recruited to the SS, while s S officers
Speaker 1: were assigned to the police. The secret State Police, the
Speaker 1: detectives of the criminal police, and even the regular uniformed
Speaker 1: order police were to become Himmler's racial warriors. And police
Speaker 1: are tools of the state. They are they are. And
Speaker 1: if we're talking about hybridization of the police with shall
Speaker 1: we say, federal forces vehicles or I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: or deputized cops who get federal arresting powers, or what's
Speaker 1: been happening with ICE for the last four years years.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a Pro Publica article here. In
Speaker 1: the year after President Trump took off, as state and
Speaker 1: local police officers across Pennsylvania swept car loads of Hispanic
Speaker 1: immigrants into ICE's net. In the process, they helped the
Speaker 1: agency's regional field off Talas office, Telly, more than more
Speaker 1: at large ar rests of undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions
Speaker 1: than any of the twenty three other field offices in
Speaker 1: the country. These are immigrants picked up in communities, not
Speaker 1: at local jails in prisons. Last year, five states New York, California, Illinois, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and Washington limited how police can question immigrants about their
Speaker 1: legal status or hold them for ICE without a warrant. Separately,
Speaker 1: more than four counties restricted their engagement with ICE enforcement,
Speaker 1: according to a national survey. On the other hand, fifty
Speaker 1: nine local agencies and seventeen states have partnerships with ICE
Speaker 1: to train and deputize their officers to enforce immigration laws. Hybridization,
Speaker 1: baby and eat Yeah, and it makes you wonder how
Speaker 1: many major traps exist on our police force is today.
Speaker 1: Men who might be friendly and polite, um, but who
Speaker 1: would stand there with tears in their eyes and shoot
Speaker 1: dissidents if that's what they were supposed to do. Popular
Speaker 1: history likes to focus on outrageous villains like you know, Hitler,
Speaker 1: But I think these guys are are are are more
Speaker 1: important to study the the the these otherwise decent normal
Speaker 1: people who completely fail the thing that turns out to
Speaker 1: be the greatest moral test of their lives. I say, agents,
Speaker 1: anyone who's running any of the detention facilities, abusing children
Speaker 1: in those facilities, any any of those things. But also,
Speaker 1: in a way, all of us who live with it,
Speaker 1: everyone who's able to live with it. You know, that
Speaker 1: brings me back to the little list of the little Nazis,
Speaker 1: these guys, these men and women who lived in quiet
Speaker 1: small towns and villages and suburbs, you know, and most
Speaker 1: of these people were people of conscience. They didn't vote
Speaker 1: for Hitler when they had chance to vote for Hitler
Speaker 1: um and you know, to the extent that they were
Speaker 1: aware of what was going on, a lot of them
Speaker 1: probably wondered, what can I do? How can I keep
Speaker 1: this from happening? And part of why they let it happen,
Speaker 1: part of why they sat back while their camps were
Speaker 1: killing people, were sterilizing people, is because they were just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by daily life. Like if you read these people's interviews,
Speaker 1: that's a thing you'll hear a lot, is that there
Speaker 1: was just so much going on, right, There was so
Speaker 1: much happening in the world, and so many different like
Speaker 1: things occurring. I didn't know what to do, and I
Speaker 1: was just exhausted all the time. It's a great excuse,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Like, Yeah, there's a there's so. So. In
Speaker 1: his book, Meyer talks to one of his German colleagues,
Speaker 1: and this isn't one of the friends that he was studying,
Speaker 1: because those guys were all members of the Nazi Party.
Speaker 1: This man was not a Nazi, but he was a
Speaker 1: German who lived in Germany when the Nazis were in power. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a linguistics expert and an academic who was
Speaker 1: obsessed with the study of Middle high German. So he
Speaker 1: was he had his field of study that he loved
Speaker 1: and was tried to kind of pour himself into while
Speaker 1: the Nazis rose to power. He told Meyer, quote, what
Speaker 1: happened here was the gradual habituation of the people little
Speaker 1: by little to being governed by surprise, to receiving decisions
Speaker 1: deliberated in secret, to believing that the situation was so
Speaker 1: complicated that the government had to act on information which
Speaker 1: the people could not understand, or so dangerous that even
Speaker 1: if the people could understand it, it could not be
Speaker 1: released because of national security. Yeah, and we've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about Trump and this, but that's not Trump, that's Obama,
Speaker 1: that's w. Bush, that's Bill Clinton, that's Bush Senior. That's
Speaker 1: an increasing thing that's been happening in America under all
Speaker 1: of the good presidents that have led us to this
Speaker 1: point is the habituation of people to being governed by surprise.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, uh, speaking of being governed by surprise,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you to take an ad break. Surprise
Speaker 1: Bitch Goods and Services nailed it. Good to know that
Speaker 1: our comedic timing is still a boy, Sophie me, and
Speaker 1: you're better than ever rising to the occasion. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So for most ordinary people, the extraordinary degree
Speaker 1: of trust that they had in Hitler, and there was
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of that, especially as he starts to
Speaker 1: win these victories. He starts to achieve things that had
Speaker 1: seemed impossible, you know, the retaking the Pseudente Land, rebuilding
Speaker 1: the German military concrete in France. Um. People had faith
Speaker 1: in him, and so that was one reason a lot
Speaker 1: of them were able to ignore the disappearances in the night. Um.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't a factor for the people who weren't
Speaker 1: Nazis the people who never converted. For them, the thing
Speaker 1: that stopped them from doing more was not just personal fear.
Speaker 1: It was the exhaustion and burnout they had from living
Speaker 1: in a society like this. And I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 1: from that linguist Zim talking to Meyer. You will understand
Speaker 1: me when I say that my middle high German was
Speaker 1: my life. It was all I cared about. I was
Speaker 1: a scholar, a specialist. Then suddenly I was plunged into
Speaker 1: all the new activity as the university was drawn into
Speaker 1: the new situation, that new situation being fascism. Meetings, conferences,
Speaker 1: interview ceremonies, and above all papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires,
Speaker 1: and on top of that where the demands in the community,
Speaker 1: the things one in which one had to one was
Speaker 1: expected to participate that had not been there or had
Speaker 1: not been important before. It was all rigamarole, of course,
Speaker 1: but it consumed all one's energies. Coming on top of
Speaker 1: the work one really wanted to do. You can see
Speaker 1: how easy it was then not to think about fundamental things.
Speaker 1: One had no time. Those Meyer said in response are
Speaker 1: the words of my friend the Baker one had no
Speaker 1: time to think. There was so much going on. Your
Speaker 1: friend the Baker was right, said my colleague. The dictate
Speaker 1: leadership and the whole process of its coming into being
Speaker 1: was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to
Speaker 1: think for people who did not want to think anyway.
Speaker 1: I do not speak of your little men, your baker
Speaker 1: and so on. I speak of my colleagues and myself
Speaker 1: learned men. Mind you, most of us did not want
Speaker 1: to think about the fundamental things, and never had. There
Speaker 1: was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental
Speaker 1: things to think about. We were decent people and kept
Speaker 1: so busy with continuous changes in crises, and so fascinated, yes,
Speaker 1: fascinated by the machinations of the national enemies without and
Speaker 1: within that we had no time to think about these
Speaker 1: dreadful things that were growing little by little all around us. Unconsciously,
Speaker 1: I suppose we were grateful. Who wants to think, Wow, damn, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't like that. But yeah, yeah, myself in this
Speaker 1: photo and I don't like it. That's how if you
Speaker 1: really study the Nazis, you should see yourself more and
Speaker 1: more with everything you learn in them. And if you don't.
Speaker 1: You're not studying them, right. That's what's scary about them.
Speaker 1: That's what's scary about the Holocaust. They thought they were
Speaker 1: free as a chilling book. But I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any competition for the most frightening passage in the whole work.
Speaker 1: It comes when Meyer sits down, sat down with one
Speaker 1: of his colleagues, a chemical engineer. And again this is
Speaker 1: another non Nazi, and he is more depressing than the
Speaker 1: one you just read. Oh yeah, yes, this is the
Speaker 1: bleakest thing I may ever have read. So he sits
Speaker 1: down with this anti Nazi colleague of his, a chemical
Speaker 1: engineer who lived through the Reich, and he asks him,
Speaker 1: one day, tell me, now, how was the world lost?
Speaker 1: And this is his colleague's response. The world was lost
Speaker 1: one day in nineteen thirty five here in Germany. It
Speaker 1: was I who lost it. And I will tell you how.
Speaker 1: I was employed in a defense plant, a war plant,
Speaker 1: of course, but they were always called defense plants. That
Speaker 1: was the year of the National Defense Law, the law
Speaker 1: of total Conscription. Under the law, I was required to
Speaker 1: take the oath of fidelity. I said I would not.
Speaker 1: I opposed it in conscience. I was given twenty four
Speaker 1: hours to think it over. In those twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: I lost the world, yes, I said, and this is
Speaker 1: Meyer speaking, you see. His friend responded, refusal would have
Speaker 1: meant the loss of my job, of course, not prison
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Later on the penalty was worse.
Speaker 1: But this was only nineteen thirty five. But losing my
Speaker 1: job would have meant that I could not get another
Speaker 1: wherever I went. I should be asked why I left
Speaker 1: the job I had, and when I said why, I
Speaker 1: should certainly have been refused employment. Nobody would hire a Bolshevik.
Speaker 1: Of course I was not a Bolshevik, but you understand
Speaker 1: what I mean, yes, Meyer said. I tried not to
Speaker 1: think of myself or my family. We might have gotten
Speaker 1: out of the country in any case, and I could
Speaker 1: have got a job in an industry or education somewhere else.
Speaker 1: What I tried to think of was the people to
Speaker 1: whom I might be some help later on if things
Speaker 1: got worse, and as I believe they would, I had
Speaker 1: a wide friendship in scientific and academic circles, including many
Speaker 1: Jews and Arians too, who might be in trouble. If
Speaker 1: I took the oath and held my job, I might
Speaker 1: be of help somehow as things went on, if I
Speaker 1: refused to take the oath, I would certainly be useless
Speaker 1: to my friends. Even if I remained in the country,
Speaker 1: I myself would be in their situation. The next day,
Speaker 1: after thinking it over, I said I would take the
Speaker 1: oath with the mental reservation that by the words with
Speaker 1: which the oath began, I swear by God, I understood
Speaker 1: that no human being, in no government had the right
Speaker 1: to override my conscience. My mental reservations did not interest
Speaker 1: the official who administered the oath. He said, do you
Speaker 1: take the oath? And I took it. That day the
Speaker 1: world was lost, and it was I who will lost it.
Speaker 1: Do I understand? Meyer said that you think you should
Speaker 1: not have taken the oath? Yes, But Meyer said, you
Speaker 1: did save many lives later on. You were of greater
Speaker 1: use to your friends than you ever dreamed you might be.
Speaker 1: His friend's apartment was until his arrested imprisonment in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three, a hide out for hugitives. This man hid
Speaker 1: people from the Nazis. For the sake of argument, he said,
Speaker 1: I will agree that I saved many lives later on, Yes,
Speaker 1: which you would not have done if you had refused
Speaker 1: to take the oath in nineteen thirty five. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: I must explain. First of all, there is the problem
Speaker 1: of the lesser evil. Taking the oath was not so
Speaker 1: evil as being unable to help my friends later on
Speaker 1: would have been. But the evil of the oath was
Speaker 1: certain and immediate, and the helping of my friends was
Speaker 1: in the future and therefore uncertain. I had to commit
Speaker 1: a positive evil there and then in the hope of
Speaker 1: a possible good later on. The good outweighed the evil,
Speaker 1: but the good was only a hope. The evil effect
Speaker 1: there then is my point. If I had refused to
Speaker 1: take the oath of fidelity, I would have saved all
Speaker 1: three million he says, three million. He's talking about all
Speaker 1: of the eleven million people we now know died in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. This was before they had a full count.
Speaker 1: You are joking, Meyer said, No, you don't mean to
Speaker 1: tell me that your refusal would have overthrown the regime
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five. No, or that others would have
Speaker 1: followed your example. No, I don't understand. You are an American,
Speaker 1: he said again, smiling. I will explain there I was
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five a perfect example of the kind
Speaker 1: of person who, with all of his advantages in birth
Speaker 1: and education and in position, rules or might easily rule
Speaker 1: in any country. If I had refused to take the
Speaker 1: oath in nineteen thirty five, it would have meant that
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands like me all over Germany were refusing
Speaker 1: to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus
Speaker 1: the regime would have been overthrown, or indeed would never
Speaker 1: have come to power in the first place. The fact
Speaker 1: that I was not prepared to resist in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands like
Speaker 1: me in Germany were also unprepared, And each one of
Speaker 1: these hundreds of thousands was like me, a man of
Speaker 1: great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world
Speaker 1: was lost. You were serious, Meyer said completely. He said,
Speaker 1: these hundred lives I've saved, or a thousand or ten,
Speaker 1: as you will, what do they represent a little something
Speaker 1: out of the whole terrible evil? When if my faith
Speaker 1: had been strong enough in nineteen thirty five, I could
Speaker 1: have prevented the whole evil. Your faith, Meyer asked, my faith.
Speaker 1: I did not believe that I could remove mountains the
Speaker 1: day I said, no, I had faith in the process
Speaker 1: of thinking it over. In the next twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: my faith failed me. So in the next ten years
Speaker 1: I was able to remove only antills, not mountains. How
Speaker 1: might your faith on that first day have been sustained?
Speaker 1: Meyer asked, I don't know. I don't know, he said,
Speaker 1: do you. I am an American, I said, my friend smiled.
Speaker 1: Therefore you believe in education, yes, Meyer said, My education
Speaker 1: did not help me, and I had a broader and
Speaker 1: better education than most men have had or ever will have.
Speaker 1: All it did, in the end was enabled me to
Speaker 1: rationalize my failure of faith more easily than I might
Speaker 1: have done if I had been ignorant. And so it was.
Speaker 1: I think among educated men generally in that time in Germany,
Speaker 1: their resistance was no greater than other men's. When do
Speaker 1: you think the day was lost here? I don't know
Speaker 1: that it has been, But I know that if I
Speaker 1: just mean in terms of how far like that, we
Speaker 1: couldn't have imagined so far that like we we didn't
Speaker 1: know that Trump's presidency, uh I would have resulted in
Speaker 1: all of the things that it did. Even though we
Speaker 1: didn't know that it would be terrible. I So when
Speaker 1: do you think was the moment that that mass miscalculation
Speaker 1: happened for the people that were not like active Trump supporters,
Speaker 1: but that went along and voted for him. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say when they cast a ballot.
Speaker 1: Now there's an element of which obviously the thing that
Speaker 1: had happened in Germany that this person is talking about
Speaker 1: has not happened to us yet. There's no regime making
Speaker 1: us take loyalty. No, no, no, of course not. But
Speaker 1: that's not what I'm saying. I'm it's a one to one.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that as pessimistic because I was Trump
Speaker 1: got elected, I couldn't have even imagined that it's been
Speaker 1: so much worse. So yeah, so it just makes me
Speaker 1: wonder at what point people who voted for him, while
Speaker 1: you know, quote unquote holding their nose or whatever, at
Speaker 1: what moment it was lost for them when they decided that,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll just fucking vote for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be. It can't be the
Speaker 1: emails like what was the straw? I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a question I go with all of the time,
Speaker 1: and some of it is that as it was then, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the thing that I think this fellow
Speaker 1: is talking about that that we we have not hit yet,
Speaker 1: is that the time at which decent people completely surrender
Speaker 1: to the regime. Um. But it is a thing that
Speaker 1: will happen if the regime gains enough power, because decent
Speaker 1: people are always scared of dying. UM. And I think
Speaker 1: the folks who have crossed the line already, we're neither
Speaker 1: decent nor educated. You have to have had a failure
Speaker 1: of education or decency to have voted for Trump. And
Speaker 1: you know it's not it's not the people who vote
Speaker 1: for him that scare me the most. It's it's again
Speaker 1: the people who didn't vote for him. But if it
Speaker 1: meant the difference between their lives or not, would let
Speaker 1: the camps on the border where there's force ticks directed
Speaker 1: me is occurring and babies being put in cages, would
Speaker 1: let those turn into full death camps because the alternative
Speaker 1: would be would be their own not even loss of life,
Speaker 1: but loss of comfort and prestige. Like that's the that's
Speaker 1: the thing. That's the thing. Like the lesson that this
Speaker 1: guy is trying to get across to people is that
Speaker 1: it is not the fascists decision to let the fascists win.
Speaker 1: They don't make the final call. We do. They only
Speaker 1: win if we consent to their victory, as millions of
Speaker 1: decent people consented to the victory of the Nazis. Mic drop, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to plug your plugable story. Fucking funk yourself. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was. I'm on the edge of teers, so I'm
Speaker 1: trying to Oh, I know, I know, I feel that. Um.
Speaker 1: I felt that energy this whole time I was on
Speaker 1: the Virgin Teers earlier. You know, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: life we're living, my man cool time, So you know, guys,
Speaker 1: follow it out. I'm just really don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: Get us up on the Graham. Um. If you want
Speaker 1: to not kill yourself, I guess, uh, maybe listen to
Speaker 1: my comedy album Father's Day available wherever you listen to things.
Speaker 1: Can I just can I just say that when I
Speaker 1: plut a shuffle on my like music library and it's
Speaker 1: you and you come up like after like a really
Speaker 1: somber song, it's so great. It's just you being just
Speaker 1: your radiant itself and it just like makes my day
Speaker 1: every lovely Thank you, Sophie. If you guys want to
Speaker 1: find my podcasts that are not about dead babies, learning
Speaker 1: some of great transitions from Robert You can watch me
Speaker 1: talking about fiance with Miles Gray from The Daily day
Speaker 1: Gist and Private Parts Unknown, my podcast with Courtney Kosak
Speaker 1: about loving sex. Yeah yeah, let's fight fascism real quick, Yeah,
Speaker 1: real quick. Just for a second, just treat a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. Yeah. Uh. Podcasts, Happy Trump, COVID day, no comment,
Speaker 1: not a single comment was given. Good stuff, that's the podcast.
Speaker 1: Sorry it was so depressing. Yeah, damn, thanks, I guess
Speaker 1: all right, well sorry, Sophia M.