WEBVTT - Part Two: How Nice, Normal People Made The Holocaust Possible 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:06.480 Okay, welcome back to the podcast that this is, which 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:10.160 is not the podcast that this isn't um, which is 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:13.680 to say that this is behind the bastards family. Was that? 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.560 Come on? Come on? I was being very specific, Sophie, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.680 Love of God, you're talking about the worst people in 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:21.600 all of history. Okay, that's what we do. That's our 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.000 that's our milieu is the worst people bad, yes, and 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:28.520 one of the and one. Sometimes those are bad people. 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.560 There's dead babies. We always have this wonderful lady on 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:35.640 Sophia Alexandria is here today to talk with us about 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:40.880 some dead babies. Well, Robert, what did I say? I said, 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.000 stop only inviting me to dead baby things? Can you 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:47.440 break it up with some adult murder every once in 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:50.280 a while? I mean, yeah, there was some adult murder 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:54.040 in the last one. Come on, remember that doesn't count 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:57.840 of Part two. Is baby murder that neiggates Part one? 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.279 I don't know that it is. I think it just 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.320 makes for more murdered people. I think that we do 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.280 one baby murder episode, we do one other people murder episode, 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.480 and that is a healthy balance for our relationship, you 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:17.440 know what. I respect that and I accept it. Okay, 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.280 all right, well, good, See this is why communication is 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.039 so critical. I'm hugging you through the zoom. Thank you 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:30.560 so much, Sophie. I'm hugging you to talk. Yeah, oh yes, 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:37.000 right for having me. You're welcome your will. So this 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:39.600 is part two of our episode you know about Nazis 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:44.720 and stuff? Right, actually introduced me, you fool? Okay, I did. 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.360 I could said you're Sophia Alexandria, who we talked about. Well, 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.120 you're also a comedian a podcast. First of all, pronounced 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:59.960 her last name, right, Sophia Alexandria. Nope, what Alexandra? Sorry? 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:04.840 What fucking I was thinking about princesses. Um. I have 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:09.560 literally hundreds of hours with you. I know I was 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.240 thinking of princesses. I too think of royalty when I 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.440 think of Sophia, but I know how to pronounce her 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.880 last name. Yes, you're so good at making him look 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:25.760 like shit. This is an episode about Nazis, and I'm 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:30.600 looking worse than the Nazis right now, not worse than 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.480 not after this episode. I'm not Jesus what with all 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:40.160 the baby killing? All right, let's let's all right. So, 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:44.880 you know, when one of the nice things Sophia about 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:49.560 studying the old Nazis as opposed to studying today's fascists 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.160 is that we we we do know how things ended 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.240 with the old ones, right, Like you know, they don't 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.760 win in the end, um, And we're all we don't 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.320 know at about our fascists, right, We're all still living 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:04.560 through this. And there's a there's a there's a pretty 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.079 good chance they'll wind up, they'll wind up taking home 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:12.680 the trophy, you know. Um, Yeah, I do believe in us, 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:16.160 but it's certainly the game is not the game is 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:20.560 not ended. Um. The game is certainly still afoot. Yeah, 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:22.040 And I think we all have to get used to 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.760 the idea. Like one of the frustrating things I think 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.120 there's this, like, especially if you have friends and family 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.600 members who kind of went went Trump and have been 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:34.400 getting increasingly at least far right, if not explicitly fashy 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.440 over the last few years, is that like you want 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.040 some sort of emotional closure where they're like, I fucked up, 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.640 I was wrong, Like I I made a bad call. 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.800 It's never gonna happen. It's never going to happen. Um. 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.280 And one of the things that I think is most 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.800 interesting about Meyer's book, they thought they were free. Is 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:57.760 that he talks to like former Nazis about that. These 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.520 guys are You would think if anyone can be like, ah, yeah, 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:02.040 that was the wrong horse to bag, it would be 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.920 guys living in Germany in like nineteen but like, no, 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.960 like they don't. Like even those people weren't like, oh 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.840 you know what, this was a bad call. My kids 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:14.680 are dead in my house, got burned down in a 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.080 bombing raid. Probably voted for the wrong guy. That's not 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.280 what I want. I'm sure there was some unfortunate mistakes, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.360 but overall it's been a pretty good couple of years. 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:32.320 That's exactly what they said. It's it's amazing these guys, 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:34.440 these little Nazis. And again, these are not the guys 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.240 who got rich under Nazism, Like these are not the 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:43.040 Venti Nazis. They're just merely tall yeah yeah, yeah, tall, 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.360 which again in Starbucks and Nazi terminology means short. Um. 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:53.880 So yeah, it's it's it's fascinating. Rather than turning against Hitler, 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.200 these little Nazis, the guys that Meyer you befriended, they 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.360 looked back on the Nazi time and power as like 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.400 a golden age, and they blamed the Fewer's failures on 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.960 everyone but him. Only one of Meyer's ten friends was 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.640 actually willing to condemn large aspects of the Nazi system. 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.120 As for the others. Quote, the other nine decent, hard working, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.400 ordinarily intelligent and honest men did not know before nineteen 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:18.640 thirty three that Nazism was evil. They did not know 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.239 between nineteen thirty three and forty five that it was evil, 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.480 and they do not know it now. None of them 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.320 ever knew or knows now Nazism as we knew it 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:28.479 and know it, and they lived under it, served it, 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.000 and indeed made it. These nine ordinary Germans knew it 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.080 absolutely otherwise, and they still know it otherwise. If our 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.760 view of national socialism is a little simple, so as 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:41.040 there's an autocracy, yes, of course, an autocracy as in 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.760 the fable days of the golden time our parents knew, 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.000 but a tyranny, as you Americans use the term nonsense. 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:49.600 When I asked Tara Wedtkin to the Baker why he 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.839 had believed in national socialism, he said, because it promised 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.279 to solve the unemployment problem. And it did, But I 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.359 never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did. I 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.400 thought I had struck pay dirt and I said, what 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.200 do you mean, what it would lead to war? He said, 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.400 nobody ever imagined that it would lead to war. And 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.120 that's interesting. When they talk about what it led to, 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.680 they're not talking about the Holocaust. They're not talking about 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.359 the deportations, they're not talking about the murder of of 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:15.640 the Roma, they're not talking about the murder of you know, 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.360 Hitler's political enemies. They're talking about the thing that fucked 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.400 them up personally. That's what they didn't realize it would 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:24.960 lead to. But you know what, that baker has the 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.479 kind of vibes where he would not bake a cake 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:31.039 for a gay couple. Definitely not. And hearing reading that 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.440 quote reminds me of the perennially relevant tweet by Adrian Bought. 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:38.719 I never thought leopards would eat my face, sobs woman 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:47.600 who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. But 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:52.119 like it also reminds me of a Simpsons line. Um, sure, 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:55.520 Nazis have made some mistakes in the past, but that's 0:06:55.520 --> 0:07:04.600 why pencils have a raisers. Yeah, it's it's It's very funny. 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.000 I think though, if we actually want to understand what 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.440 happened Nazi Germany and understand our own times better. As 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.040 a result, we do have to understand that, like when 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:14.920 these little Nazis say they had no way of knowing 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:17.480 that that Hitler was going to lead Germany into a war, 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:21.200 they're not lying. It seems like like, obviously, how could 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.600 you not know? German? Hitler wanted war um but a 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.520 lot of his early appeal to the little Nazis was 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.680 the fact that he was a wounded war veteran and 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:31.320 that he'd been a private right, that he had been 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.120 a very low ranking war veteran. And one of the 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:34.520 things you would say is that like, of course I 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.480 don't want war. I know better than anybody how bad 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:39.720 war is. I've been in the middle of one. Why 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.600 would I want something like that? Like that was that 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:44.840 was one of the lines that he took. Now, it 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:48.080 was transparent nonsense, and it was obvious to people at 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.480 the time who really who were intelligent, who paid attention, Like, 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:53.600 for example, have you heard that Hitler was a Nobel 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:59.000 Prize nominee. That's like a thing people talk about, right, 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.760 that's pretty well known asn't are you? I'm sorry, I 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.480 don't know if it was rhetorical or no, No, he was, yeah, yeah, 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:07.240 that that that's the thing that gets brought up from 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.680 time to time that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.120 You were doing a thing where you're like, so we 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:15.960 all know this, right, And then I was waiting for you, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:18.240 I thought, and then you were just waiting for me 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:20.000 to say something, and I was like, did you know that? 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.520 On the same page, I thought that was yeah. I 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.960 don't think that it's something that people talk about as 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.000 much as in being a vegetarian or whatever. I read 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:32.520 a lot of Hitler, so I'm I'm I'm probably off 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.880 on what's common knowledge. So you're a big Hitler head. 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.000 We all know that he was a hitstand. Yeah, he 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.960 was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, but the nomination 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.240 was a joke. It was a satire by a Swedish 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.880 anti fascist politician who was like being like, like, it's 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.520 absurd because this guy clearly wants to pull the world 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:52.880 into war. So obviously, like a lot of people who 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.520 anyone who paid attention and who was modestly intelligent, knew 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:58.960 what Hitler was going to do. I'm not saying that 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.600 like it was hidden in any real way, but it 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.840 was hidden to these little Nazis, not because like Hitler, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.360 obscured it particularly well, but because the only media they 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.079 paid attention to was essentially a like either completely idiotic 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:19.200 or complete propaganda. They lived in a media bubble, right um, 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:23.000 And that we we see that today. As Meyer wrote, quote, remember, 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.679 none of these nine Germans had ever traveled abroad. None 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:27.680 of them had ever known or talked with a foreigner, 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.080 or read the foreign press. None ever wanted to listen 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.120 to the foreign radio when it was legal to do so. None, 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.960 except oddly enough, the policeman, listened to it when it 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.760 was illegal. They were as uninterested in the outside world 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.920 as their contemporaries in France or America. And you know, 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:46.000 Meyer gets it right. You can see reading this book. 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.200 He doesn't talk a lot about American fascism, but you 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:50.920 can see in the way he writes the book like 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:54.920 he knew we were vulnerable too, like because these people 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.640 are everywhere. Yeah. I don't know how you feeling, Sophia, 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.599 Just you know, positive waiting for the babies to get here, 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.280 to come on, and then to leave immediately, and to 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:13.319 leave a pair of shoes behind. Baby shoes Comma never worn. Yeah, 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.640 baby shoes. See myself out. Thank you for the hemmingway. 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.040 I've always said you're the hemming way of this podcast, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.440 mainly because of the amount of time you spend shirtless 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.680 firing a shotgun. I mean, people gotta get a load 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:36.800 of these ditties. I always say, yeah, yeah, that's the 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.680 that's the jacket quote for hills like white elephants. People 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.240 got to get to look at these ditties. So that 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:48.280 is also the tagline for my titties. A lot of similarities. 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.080 You also spent a period of time in Havana. If 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:59.120 I'm not mistaken, my titties are there right now. So yeah. 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:01.960 Meyer points out that like for his Nazi friends who 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.360 lived in small towns and away from like a lot 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.920 of where a lot of the violence the Nazis did occurred, 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.240 like the negative things the Nazis did, the negative press 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:12.520 about them was drowned out by things like the Strength 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.200 through Joy program, which enabled working Germans to visit places 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.960 like Norway in Spain at very little cost. These little 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.679 Nazis and those like them were concerned with the economy, 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.720 and again that meant not starving in those days, and 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:26.680 a lot of that appeared to get better under Hitler. 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.400 Some of this was a losory, and a great deal 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:30.760 of it was driven by what's called arianization, which is 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.640 the process of stealing Jewish businesses and property and giving 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:39.240 them to Germans, to arian Germans. Um. But Myer's friends 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.880 felt is like a really clean name for that. Yeah, 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.080 it is. And there's a there's a very good movie 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.280 about it, all called that was made in the Soviet 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.080 Union and like the sixties called The Shop on Main Street. 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:55.240 That's about like one like Russian peasant in an occupied village, um, 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.480 who has given this old Jewish woman's uh. I think 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:02.880 it's like a it sells like button and sewing equipment shop, um, 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.240 and she and he become friend and it's it's it's 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.040 it's a very It's an interesting movie because like all 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.600 of the people acting in it were like peasants on 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.480 the Russian steps when the Germans invaded, and they lived 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:15.800 in villages that the Nazis took over and then like 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.720 turned like a lot of them turned in their their 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.800 own Jews. So like the actors aren't like just acting, 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:25.480 they're like remembering. It's a fascinating film. I really recommend it. 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.040 I'm going to see it. Yeah, it's a it's a 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.360 very very good movie in a very I mean very 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.600 dark movie because it's about Russia and World War Two. 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.080 I was gonna say, what do you mean. It's kind 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.880 of sounded like a lighthearted romp to me. Yeah, compared 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.680 to talk about actually in part one and you knew 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.240 a name of an actor, I was like, of course 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:50.640 you grant. Yeah. I was just impressed by your just 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:55.000 putting Yeah, is he what? Yeah, he's in and he 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:57.480 plays in the pame Minister of England or something. Right, 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.480 he's the sketchy politician. Yeah, he's the one that makes 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:06.120 an insane number of like body shaming fat jokes during it. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.959 I don't remember up, but the only thing I remember 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:16.040 is that Liam Neeson is in it. Um woman that's 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:20.720 a supermodel, but not a supermodel, Like she's not supposed 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.200 to be a supermodel, but she is. In the joke 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:28.320 he just keeps talking about how, oh, like the only 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.200 person I'd marry is Claudia Schiffer or whatever the fuck, 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.120 And then this Claudia Schiffer shows up. You know what, 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.240 it doesn't matter. That's not a good retelling of the movie, 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.719 but it's partially true. But you know what, ties that 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:45.720 back into our our episode. How are you going to do? Impressed? Well, 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:47.600 you were, you were. You were just telling me that 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.319 Liam Neeson is in love actually because of when love 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:54.240 actually was made. We're talking about we're talking about what's 0:13:54.240 --> 0:14:00.320 that Holocaust movie with the red dress? Liam Neeson? Bam 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.200 back to We're back to World War two. Perfect degrees 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.360 of Hitler. Yeah, well that's amazing, son of a bitch. 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.000 I know, I know, I know, you know, I'm only 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:16.319 three degrees away from him. I mean like like genetically 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:21.640 or no, no, no, just in terms of like direct handshakes. Okay, yeah, 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.480 hands with I shook hands with a guy who at 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.480 age eight, like the Nazis came to power, and he 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:28.400 was a member of the Hitler Youth and they did 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.920 a lot of meeting like meet and greet gathering stuff 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.000 with Nazi hy brass. And he shook Herman Garring's hand. 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:39.760 Uh and obviously Herman Gerring by obviously by Nazi transitive property, 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:44.280 you have shaken Hitler's hand. I basically shook Hitler's hand. Yeah, 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.160 it's it's what we're talking about. Yeah. The thing that's 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.920 crazier about it to me is that that dude's grandpa 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.920 had fought with a sword on horseback as a cavalryman, 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:56.760 and like that that it's that recently that people were 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.120 doing that. Like, yeah, this dude fought in the eighteen 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.840 seventy one with like a fucking sword on horseback, and 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.080 I like shook hands with his grandson. And as advanced 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:07.440 as we are, we're that close to like people stabbing 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.960 each other while riding horses. It's wild, right, is that 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.160 when you got into machetes. No, I've always been in machetes, 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:21.400 so um, yeah, yeah, Sorry, we got off on a 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.560 little bit of a tangent here um, but kind of 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:26.800 what we're talking about. Most of this is for you, 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.480 but a little bit of this is for me. Okay, okay, 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:35.120 it can't be just Hitler, Hitler, Hitler of the time. 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:40.760 Give me two of Hitler related, Hitler adjacent and yeah, 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.480 we're talking about a lot of Hitler adjacent little Nazis here. 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.840 And and these folks were able to kind of get 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.720 on board because they were, you know, distracted by a 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:51.720 lot of the benefits of Nazis and they didn't see 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.360 they didn't go looking for the ugly stuff, even though 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:56.920 they knew some of it was there um because the 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.600 stuff that was positive was like way more in their 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.120 face is and that's really all they cared about. And 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.600 that's why even the the Nazis never had an electoral majority, 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:10.680 almost every German got on board with Nazism, even if 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.160 they didn't join the party during the years in which 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.080 Hitler was succeeding, right, because people back a winner um, 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:18.960 And that's what gets it. That's what scares me most 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.840 about imagining the United States sliding into fascism. And it's 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.000 not it's not the midnight raids, the abduction and execution 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.520 of dissidents, the slow clamped down and in resistance. It's 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:29.960 the idea that most Americans that like people I know 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.160 and am friendly with, would find ways to pretend none 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.560 of it was happening, while like people I love and 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.120 maybe me are disappearing and being murdered. That's the scariest 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:42.040 thing about it, right like that is so much more 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.720 frightening than imagining, than thinking about the actual fascists doing 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.960 the killing. It's like the people that I've I've hung 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.560 out and played video games with, like turning and turning 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.560 away while it happened. Anyway, I'm gonna read another quote 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.480 from Meyer's book that's exactly on this topic. None of 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.720 the horror impinged upon the day to day lives of 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:03.880 my ten friends or was ever called to their attention. 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.840 There was some sort of trouble on the streets as 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:08.879 one or another of my friends was passing by on 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.840 a couple of occasions, but the police dispersed the crowd, 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.239 and there was nothing in the local paper. You and 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.840 I leave some sort of trouble on the streets to 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:20.879 the police, so did my friends. And it's the police 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.120 who are disappearing the Jews in this period, right, that's 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.879 what's happening, along with all the political dissidents. Um and 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.840 Meyer actually presented his friends with an article from their 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.720 local newspaper from back in nineteen thirty eight about a 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.040 group of local Jews who were taken into protective custody 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.160 by the police, and Maya writes, none of them, including 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.480 the teacher, the anti Nazi teacher, remembered ever having seen 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:48.040 it or anything like it. And maybe they're lying. Maybe 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.120 that's just our brains are that good, And when we're 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.000 really hate reality, closing it out, if we're able to 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:59.280 escape it, if we're safe enough to escape reality. I 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:04.119 don't know. I mean, people's memories of events are so unreliable, 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:09.560 incredibly so in general, um much less when you like 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.960 really want to forget that you were a Nazi, yeah yeah, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.879 or or just don't want to remember that you what 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:22.200 being a Nazi exact exactly, exactly exactly now, The cold, 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.600 hard reality is that most of the Germans who lived 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.320 in the Third Reich knew what was being done to 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.639 the Jews. Not every detail, for sure, but like they 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:33.520 knew enough. Right, the gas chambers, the death camps were 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.520 tremendously widely known, but the fact that the Jews were 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.760 being disappeared and that something terrible was happening, you were 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:43.280 everyone was aware. This has not been kind of historical 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.400 consensus for long. In two thousand one, Robert Professor Robert Gladley, 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:51.000 who we we quoted from earlier, conducted a massive survey 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.760 of German mainstream media newspapers and magazines from nineteen thirty 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.200 three on. And he started down this path of research 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.679 when he was looking through old German papers and he 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:01.919 found report of a woman who had been sent to 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.040 the Gestapo for looking Jewish and having sex with a neighbor. 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:07.360 Now at the time and this is like the late 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.159 nineteen nineties. When he came across this article, conventional academic 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.280 wisdom held that the majority of Nazi atrocities had happened 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.640 without the knowledge of most Germans, gladially noted for decades 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:19.679 my generation had been told that so much of the 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.200 terror had been carried out in complete secrecy. So coming 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.240 up upon that report openly in a major German newspaper 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:28.399 made him wonder if this was true, and so he 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.240 decided to look into the matter, and then the way 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.960 that academics do, very very in a very like methodical way, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.400 and I'm gonna quote now from a Guardian rite up 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.280 on the study he conducted. As a result of this, 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.119 his media troll with a research assistant, found that as 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.159 early as nineteen thirty three, local papers reported the killing 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:49.199 of twelve prisoners by guards at Dakau, the first to 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.880 be set up as a model concentration camp initially for communists. 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:57.040 On May, the dekaur Zeitung, which is the Dacow newspaper, 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.800 said that the camp was Germany's most famous place and 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.480 wrought new hope to the decou business world, which obviously 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.439 there's a town also next to the camp By nineteen 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.080 thirty four, the main and widely read Nazi owned paper 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.800 Vocashabao Bacter was reporting on a widening of policy to 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:17.479 other political criminals, including Jews accused of race defilement. By 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:21.040 nineteen thirty six, communist prisoners were no longer mentioned in 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.960 a photo essay, and the s S paper Dash Schwartz Corp. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:28.159 The Dark Core emphasized the camps has places for people 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:32.959 for race to filers, rapists, sexual degenerates, and habitual criminals. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:35.840 That's interesting to me that that's how they're That's how 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.800 the Nazis spun the concentration camps first not as a 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.879 place for Jews in specific, but as a place for 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:45.200 race to filer's, rapists, sexual de degenerates, and habitual criminals 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.520 um and that process continued through the years of the 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:51.520 regime short life. In nineteen thirty seven, Heinrich Heimbler made 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:55.000 public announcements that still more camps would be needed for 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:58.480 those with hydrocephalis, cross eyed, deformed, half Jews, and a 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.880 whole series of racially inferior year types. In nineteen thirty eight, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.639 after Christal knoch Gebel's made a widely purported public announcement 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.840 that the final answer to the Jewish problem would occur 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.760 via government decree. So far from being unaware of the Holocaust, 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.439 the little Germans were well informed about a lot what 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:18.119 was going on. They knew their government was looking to 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.400 a final answer to the Jewish question, and they knew 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:27.520 what that meant more or less. So, Yeah, not only 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.240 were the Nazi atrocities well known as they occurred, but 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:32.679 the desire of little Nazis to pretend ignorance at the 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.880 crimes that were enabling was also really obvious to outside 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:38.720 and inside observers at the time. There's a quote that 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.320 I think is really useful from Peter Viereck, who was 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:45.240 a German American scholar, and he wrote this in nineteen forty, 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.320 well publicized among Germans already before Hitler came to power, 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:51.640 and during a period when he still depended on their 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:55.480 consent rather than coercion, were the many actual deeds of butchery. 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.600 Someday the same Germans, now cheering Hitler strut into Paris, 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.240 will say to their American friends, into their brave German 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:05.160 anti Nazi friends, we did not know what went on. 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.159 We did not know. And when that day of no 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:13.720 nothing comes, there will be laughter in Hell. And there's 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:16.720 a lot to say about the forgetting that happened after 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:18.280 the war, and some of it was because we wanted 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:20.960 the Germans as allies against the Communists. The US government 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:23.960 was very much willing to to let people forget, and 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:25.840 it was not a unified thing. Like one of the 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.639 things Eisenhower did that I think was really laudable was 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:31.720 forced Germans who lived near the concentration camps to tour 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.439