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Speaker 1: Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel After the

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Speaker 1: Revolution is available for pre order now from a k

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Speaker 1: press dot org. Now, if you go to a k

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Speaker 1: press dot org you can find After the Revolution. Just

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Speaker 1: google a k press dot org After the Revolution you'll

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Speaker 1: find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book.

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Speaker 1: And if you pre order now from either these independent

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Speaker 1: bookstores or from a k Press, you'll get a custom

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Speaker 1: signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: You can also preorder it in physical or in kindle

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Speaker 1: a form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold.

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Speaker 1: So please google a k press after the Revolution um

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Speaker 1: or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre

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Speaker 1: order it. You'll get assigned a copy and you'll make

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Speaker 1: me very happy. Sophie, this plate of behind the Bastards

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Speaker 1: is so heavy as we walk through this hallway. Oh

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Speaker 1: my gosh, is that David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds with

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Speaker 1: with a with a heavy plate of of the dollarp?

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Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, I'm losing control. Oh god, you

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Speaker 1: guys are slipping too. How was how was that? I

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Speaker 1: couldn't disagree more? That was the most organic, just real thing.

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Speaker 1: I think I've ever heard that. It was, yeah, like

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Speaker 1: you're the only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates.

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Speaker 1: So I'm wondering how I was wondering as I started it,

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Speaker 1: are they going to join in? Or am I going

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Speaker 1: to just have to commit fully to this? And now

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Speaker 1: that's something where if it's me, I just let you

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Speaker 1: go and then let you have I was a dog

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Speaker 1: in a yard that wanted to leave it, but I

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Speaker 1: was like, I get I'm not supposed to leave, so

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Speaker 1: I wanted to join. Oh gosh, well this is this

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Speaker 1: is just a wonderful time. Obviously. Again you are Dave

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Speaker 1: Anthony Gareth Reynolds, hosts of The Dollarp, the podcast that

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Speaker 1: invented being funny about history on the Internet. Um, thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for for sitting down with us today.

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Speaker 1: Thank you boys. For a long time, I've wanted to

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Speaker 1: do something with you so and we've talked about this,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, we have. This has been like bouncing back

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Speaker 1: and forth for a while and it was just one

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Speaker 1: of those things where it's like, well, when we finally

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Speaker 1: do our six part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going

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Speaker 1: to be the worst thing we've ever had to do. Therapy.

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Speaker 1: I have a therapy ses right afterwards, Dave married a

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Speaker 1: therapist in preparation. That's good, really putting in the deep

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Speaker 1: work to make this, to make this series of success. Um.

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Speaker 1: So my working title for this, which they probably won't

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Speaker 1: let us use, is Henry Kissinger Comma a big sack

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Speaker 1: of donkey balls? Um before can we do that? So funny?

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Speaker 1: Perfectly fine? What are you talking about? Um? What do

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Speaker 1: you guys know? Like I kind of think we may

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Speaker 1: be it's a good idea to start with, like, what

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Speaker 1: what's your your cliffs notes? We'll have We'll have you

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Speaker 1: do it, Dave, because because you're the one who reads

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Speaker 1: things normally, I mean I think that's of Kissinger. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know Kissinger, the thing that you know obviously stands

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Speaker 1: out of Vietnam and camp and Cambodia, and you know

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Speaker 1: that's just reprehensible beyond all words. But he's really been

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Speaker 1: a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions

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Speaker 1: and had his He's always getting in there. He's always

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Speaker 1: a part of the business release was. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if he is now, but for a long time he

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Speaker 1: was always a guy who would come in and go,

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Speaker 1: why don't you do the worst thing. Yeah, and that's um,

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Speaker 1: that's the thing that's that's interesting and even a little

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Speaker 1: bit difficult about talking about him because he's not one

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Speaker 1: of these guys. He's not like you can't say with

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Speaker 1: him like you can without Saddam who's saying like, oh,

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Speaker 1: he ordered he started this war on this date, you know,

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Speaker 1: or he um, he ordered this man. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: can actually, Um, but he's he's not like he's not

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Speaker 1: on paper supposed to be a warlord or an elected leader.

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Speaker 1: The thing that he is good at doing is getting

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Speaker 1: the ability to do stuff that warlords and dictators do

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Speaker 1: by sitting in the back rooms with people who are

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Speaker 1: the ones who on paper hold the power and convincing

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Speaker 1: them to let him do stuff. Um. And he's the

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Speaker 1: best at that there's ever been. We've had a couple

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Speaker 1: of figures on our podcast who I would relate to like,

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Speaker 1: and I would say, maybe Kissinger is like the war

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Speaker 1: Crimes Forrest Gump, where it's like it's kind of you're like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was there, invented shit happens. I don't know that phrase. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's incredibly that's that might. I mean, that's honestly

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Speaker 1: a better title than I mean, obviously, Forrest Gump is

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Speaker 1: blameless and Kissinger is not. But it does get at

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Speaker 1: the fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's

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Speaker 1: just in every fucking photo of like guys doing a

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Speaker 1: war crime. Like it is baffling the number of things

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Speaker 1: he's connected to. I should probably just start stop selling it,

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Speaker 1: but I do kind of want to talk about the

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Speaker 1: fact that he is. He is this kind of back

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Speaker 1: room figure in a lot of the worst things that

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Speaker 1: happened in the twentieth century. Because we're going to spend

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Speaker 1: episode one. By the time this episode is over, he's not,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the White House, He's not running shit.

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Speaker 1: This is an episode where we talk about like his

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Speaker 1: early life and his ideological roots, because that's what that's

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Speaker 1: what underpins all of the things that he does. He's

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Speaker 1: not a guy people talk about like what Kissinger believes,

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Speaker 1: and Kissinger himself has written a bunch of books about

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Speaker 1: what he believes. My opinion, as an amateur guy studying

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Speaker 1: this dude, is that I don't think he believes things

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Speaker 1: as much as he beliefs and ideas are weapons that

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Speaker 1: he uses in order to get people to let him

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Speaker 1: do horrible things. And he is the master of using

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Speaker 1: beliefs and and moving between different groups of people who

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Speaker 1: on paper are ideologically opposed and getting them all to

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Speaker 1: agree with whatever bullshit he wants to do, because he's

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Speaker 1: really good bit talking about ideas like a fucking philosopher,

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Speaker 1: Like that's his superpower. They might just have trouble understanding him.

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Speaker 1: I know I have whatever. What did we agree to?

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Speaker 1: Oh god, I was going to ask Gareth before we

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Speaker 1: get started. Here is your German accent locked and loaded?

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Speaker 1: I mean, listen as to the disgust of the German people,

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Speaker 1: it is. That's fine, that's fine they I think we

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Speaker 1: can all agree. After the twentieth century, the Germans lost

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Speaker 1: the right to be angry when people That's how It's

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Speaker 1: like Texans. You know, everyone can do a Texan. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's how. I don't think I can. I can make

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Speaker 1: any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish,

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Speaker 1: and yet can't do English. It's really just sort of

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Speaker 1: this amazing ability to see whenever I do a non

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Speaker 1: American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point of

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Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, oh my god, well this is your time.

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Speaker 1: Now you can shine with what's going on. I know,

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Speaker 1: I know, I'm ready to just yuck it up over

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Speaker 1: speaking of which, there's a number of roots of what's

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Speaker 1: happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can

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Speaker 1: type action. I mean, that's that's a little bit less

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Speaker 1: his his the area that he fucked around in, But

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Speaker 1: he did some fucking around there. Like one of the things.

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Speaker 1: We are spending six episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and

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Speaker 1: we're leaving some ship out. Yeah you have to. I mean,

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Speaker 1: he's been around so many years. I mean, just the

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Speaker 1: fact that he was still paling around with Hillary Clinton

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Speaker 1: in the election, and you're like, what is that guy

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Speaker 1: doing there? Don't you know? He's bad? And and he's

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Speaker 1: the thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that

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Speaker 1: he he does have this equal He's equally good at

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Speaker 1: talking to like people who would call themselves liberals and

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Speaker 1: progressives as he is to like far right neo CON's

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Speaker 1: like he's he's he's I mean, you could I think

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Speaker 1: you could say that part of what that reveals is

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Speaker 1: that the ruling class in this country are all in

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Speaker 1: agreement about things more often than they disagree about things.

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Speaker 1: But part of it is just that, like he is

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Speaker 1: so charming. We'll be talking a bit about Kissinger is

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Speaker 1: a sex symbol, which is a thing that happens. And

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Speaker 1: I am so sorry that we have to discuss it. No,

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Speaker 1: I was hoping that he would say this because I've

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Speaker 1: wanted I've wanted to funk him for so long, Like

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Speaker 1: that's one of the main things. He's hot. Everyone, sucker,

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Speaker 1: I've always wanted to kiss. Is not enough kiss that's

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Speaker 1: just the taste boat. I'm at the boy will a

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Speaker 1: b test the Forest Gump and the Fuckinger title, and

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Speaker 1: we'll just see what plays best in Poughkeepsie. Um so

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Speaker 1: Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on nineteen twenty three in

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Speaker 1: the city of firsth Germany. The Kissingers were a Jewish family,

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Speaker 1: and so given that this is Germany in the early twenties,

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Speaker 1: you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right,

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Speaker 1: this is this is not going to be a story

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Speaker 1: that begins in a particularly pleasant place. Um. He was

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Speaker 1: born in a very chaotic world. The Great Year was

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Speaker 1: like five years past when he comes onto the planet.

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Speaker 1: Everything is falling apart in Germany and a lot of others.

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Speaker 1: The year he's born Primo de Rivera seized power as

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Speaker 1: the dictator of Spain Mustafa Kamal took power. In Turkey,

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Speaker 1: the Bulgarian prime minister minister was assassinated um in a coup.

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Speaker 1: Like it was a troubling time to be a baby.

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Speaker 1: But Heinz's mother and father had some reasons for optimism.

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Speaker 1: While Firth was not an attractive city. In fact, one

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Speaker 1: contemporary described it as stifling and its narrow dreariness are

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Speaker 1: unguarden city city of soot Um. You know, it's it's

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Speaker 1: a city, it's city, it's city. It's a working class

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Speaker 1: factory town. But because of that, and this is the

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Speaker 1: period in which the working class is a lot more

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Speaker 1: left wing than you know, folks didn't give it credit

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Speaker 1: for being today. Um, it's a very it's like a

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Speaker 1: haven for democrats, not like our democrats, but people who

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Speaker 1: support democracy is opposed to want to go back to

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Speaker 1: having a kaiser you know, Um, so first I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: want to go back to having a ki was worked

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Speaker 1: so good? Yeah, I want to have a king who

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Speaker 1: gets us into World War one and like wax off

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Speaker 1: about his mom's hands, that sounds great again now that

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Speaker 1: I know what we're talking about Let's dance I'm in

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Speaker 1: So Firth is in some ways you could see it.

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Speaker 1: It's reputation in Germany is being kind of like Portland today.

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Speaker 1: It's a very left wing town. It's seen as a

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Speaker 1: haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma,

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Speaker 1: Alabama during the Civil Rights era because Firth has a

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Speaker 1: very large Jewish population and the period and like the

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Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds has win a lot of like there's

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Speaker 1: there's essentially a partheight against Jewish people in Germany for

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Speaker 1: a long time. So Firth is the city that has

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Speaker 1: Germany's first Jewish lawyer, and it has a bunch of

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Speaker 1: their other first Jewish you know, X's person who does

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Speaker 1: this job. Because it's it's this very progressive city with

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Speaker 1: a very integrated Jewish community. So it's this mix of

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Speaker 1: the Nazis aren't going to like this town, right, Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like Portland. Yeah, it's it's got some similarities between a

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Speaker 1: couple of things. So Heinz's parents, Paula and Lewis, had

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Speaker 1: grown up in Imperial Germany, where Jews were restricted from

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Speaker 1: hold certain jobs, going to certain schools, living in certain homes.

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Speaker 1: And this had ended by the time the Kaiser had

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Speaker 1: so Lewis Kissinger, Henry's dad Kim of Agent, a period

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Speaker 1: in which a Jewish boy could actually build a professional

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Speaker 1: life for the first time in mainstream German society. He

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Speaker 1: was a member of the first and almost the last

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Speaker 1: generation that this would be true of Um, what happens,

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Speaker 1: oh day, we may need to do it a separate podcast. Seriously,

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Speaker 1: never read any German history, Oh my, kind of exciting.

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Speaker 1: So he starts work Lewis as a teacher in a

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Speaker 1: secular private school when he's eighteen, and he holds the

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Speaker 1: job for fourteen years. And he was a very patriotic person. Um,

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Speaker 1: he's he's also like he has an Orthodox jew so

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Speaker 1: he's very religious, but he considers himself a German first

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Speaker 1: and foremost, and his family is very patriotic. His brother

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Speaker 1: fights in World War One, so does his wife's dad.

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Speaker 1: Two of his cousins die fighting for the Kaiser. And

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Speaker 1: when the war ins in German defeat. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: all these rumors spread throughout the far right that the

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Speaker 1: nation has been stabbed in the back by an alliance

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Speaker 1: of Jewish boogeman um hinz or sorry, Louis kind of

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Speaker 1: he sees this as happening, but he doesn't think that

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Speaker 1: it's ever going to like take hold. He's Henry would

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Speaker 1: later recalled that his father would regularly say, we live

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Speaker 1: in an age of tolerance. So his dad is not right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Are you talking about America? Are you talking Germany? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we are talking about this on the day that Texas

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Speaker 1: just announced a fun new Um. Yeah, this is this

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Speaker 1: is like, you know, Henry is wrong about a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a

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Speaker 1: much sadder recent because there was a psychic Jane in

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Speaker 1: the family. I see us being tolerant for generation. Germany

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Speaker 1: will be a watchword for tolerance. We would be a

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Speaker 1: beast gent for all types. Oh poor buddy. Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: so he's Uh, it's interesting because like the Zionist movement

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Speaker 1: is rising in this time and Kissinger's family rejects this

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Speaker 1: wholeheartedly because they're so aman right. Um, like they don't

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Speaker 1: they don't want to ever leave. Um. So obviously, the

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Speaker 1: Nazi party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially

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Speaker 1: safe from this. Just a few months after Hines is

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Speaker 1: born in September of twenty three, the Nazis and other

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Speaker 1: far right organizations hold a German Day in Nuremberg. Several

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Speaker 1: caravans of them passed through Firth, sort of like Nazis

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Speaker 1: do today in a lot of places. Um. And you

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Speaker 1: know they were looking for a fight when they drove through.

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Speaker 1: They went through first because it's the town where you

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Speaker 1: can get a fight, and they got one. Uh. This

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Speaker 1: is like right after Hinton he is born, a mob

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Speaker 1: of brown Shirts are assaulted by a hundred strong crowd screaming,

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Speaker 1: killed him and down with Hitler, which is let's end

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Speaker 1: the story. It's a great and there's the tale of

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Speaker 1: Henry kissing Jeris a kid who was a baby when

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Speaker 1: some dudes did some rad stuff. Um. So Firth was

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Speaker 1: integrated enough that Hines initially attended a public school with

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Speaker 1: Christian classmates, which was not common for Jewish kids in

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Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, he's like going to school with with

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Speaker 1: other like kids who are not Jewish. Um. Eventually his

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Speaker 1: dad puts him in his private school, but that's also

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Speaker 1: an integrated private school. So while his education is secular

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Speaker 1: her family, his family's very strict Orthodox. He attended Hebrew school,

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Speaker 1: which he hated. I found a quote from another Jewish

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Speaker 1: guy who grew up in Firth at the same time.

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Speaker 1: That gives an idea as to why Henry was not

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Speaker 1: a big fan of his early religious education. Quote. Religion

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Speaker 1: was a study and not a pleasant one, a lesson

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Speaker 1: taught soulless lye by a soulless old man. Even the

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Speaker 1: day I see his evil conceded old face in my dreams.

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Speaker 1: He thrashed formulas into us, antiquated Hebrew prayers that we

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Speaker 1: translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language. What

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Speaker 1: he taught was paltry, dead, mummified, and that I think

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Speaker 1: is broadly in line with how Henry feels because he's not.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't grow up very religious. So Henry is as

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Speaker 1: is a little kid, you know, he does a lot

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Speaker 1: of religion stuff. But as he grows older he rejects

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Speaker 1: his father's passion for faith um and his dad's interests

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Speaker 1: in classical music and theater. Instead, Henry Kissinger falls in

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Speaker 1: love with soccer. He is a huge soccer head. Oh yes,

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Speaker 1: um Firth has like a locally renowned team. They're one

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Speaker 1: of the best teams in Germany, and so like their

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Speaker 1: kids teams which are feeders into this whatever team are

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Speaker 1: very competitive to Henry starts playing in a youth league

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Speaker 1: when he's six years old. Um, and he later recalled quote,

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Speaker 1: I wasn't really very good, though I took the game seriously.

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Speaker 1: But what about soccer? We should talk about that. Sorry.

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Speaker 1: So his real prowess early on was in strategy, as

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Speaker 1: this quote from Nile Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger

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Speaker 1: Like the Guy, makes clear the no great athlete Heinz

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Speaker 1: Kissinger was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team

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Speaker 1: a system that, as he as it turns out, is

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Speaker 1: the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to

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Speaker 1: drive the other team nuts by not letting them score

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Speaker 1: by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very

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Speaker 1: hard to score when ten players are lined up in

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Speaker 1: front of the goal. So immediately Henry Kissinger as a kid,

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Speaker 1: is like, you know what, we'll help us win and

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Speaker 1: also make this game no fun at all. Yeah, Henry,

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Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Fire bombs er? I know

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Speaker 1: we are six, but we will park the bus. There

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Speaker 1: will be no joy in soccer. Remove the keeper's hands.

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Speaker 1: He is he is, as a six year old doing

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Speaker 1: the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so

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Speaker 1: into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and

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Speaker 1: his father actually banns him from playing for a while. Um.

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Speaker 1: The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts

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Speaker 1: with his dad. So I thing that no one else

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Speaker 1: has ever experienced. Um and Yeah, he would regularly, after

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Speaker 1: fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of

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Speaker 1: a friend who later recalled he liked he liked being

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Speaker 1: with us. It seems to me he had a problem

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Speaker 1: with his father, if I'm not mistaken, he was afraid

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Speaker 1: of him because he was a very pedantic man. His

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Speaker 1: father was always checking Hines his homework and kept a

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Speaker 1: close watch on him. Hines told me more than once

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Speaker 1: that he didn't discuss anything with his father, especially not girls.

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Speaker 1: So his dad's not like hitting him or anything. He's

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Speaker 1: just like really really annoying to him, and just like,

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Speaker 1: just like, pay attention to your studies beyond anything else.

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Speaker 1: Like I think I like this girl, Like, well she doesn't.

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Speaker 1: She's not going to the same school. The focus handed

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Speaker 1: it focus. Yeah, and he's clearly a dick who's like,

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Speaker 1: you know, you can't be a professional soccer player eight

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Speaker 1: you have to go to school, like he's clearly an asshole.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean he's definitely the villain of the story,

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Speaker 1: no doubt, no doubt. So Henry is magnetic to women

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Speaker 1: from a well girls at this point, from a very

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Speaker 1: young age. But the funk is happening. I know, it's

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Speaker 1: really weird. It's weird. And this is the quotes about

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Speaker 1: you know, girls really liking him at this age come

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Speaker 1: from his father. But like, this also happens when he's

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Speaker 1: in his forties and the secretary of State. So I'm

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Speaker 1: going to say his father is probably telling the truth.

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Speaker 1: I mean, at no point have I seen any version

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Speaker 1: of Henry kissing very like man. I mean, it's weird.

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Speaker 1: That's got memory hold because there were there were New

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Speaker 1: York Times stories about how much women like her because

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Speaker 1: he looks like a lump of clay you could mold

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Speaker 1: into anything potentially that would be good. No, yeah, no, no,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's weird. I mean, yeah, he's the guy like, yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of the things he said about

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Speaker 1: sexuality later. Um, I know you're all getting real excited

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Speaker 1: for that episode. Yeah. Yeah. At one point one of

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Speaker 1: his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with

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Speaker 1: him because he had quote earned a reputation as a

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Speaker 1: skirt chaser. And this is like when he's nine, little

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Speaker 1: little Henry come Rocket Kissinger. The first time I sex

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Speaker 1: was nine, So you know, like at this point, he's

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Speaker 1: rebelling against the family religion, he's hanging out with girls,

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Speaker 1: he's playing a hell of a lot of soccer um,

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Speaker 1: which seems like a decent childhood. But obviously you know

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Speaker 1: the Nazis. So in the mid twenties, the German nation

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Speaker 1: goes on strike against some ship fans was doing Versailles stuff.

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Speaker 1: We don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right,

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Speaker 1: this is the wheelbarrows full of cash time. Um. This

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Speaker 1: hurts the Kissinger family badly because if you're like, if

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Speaker 1: you're a private laborer, if you're working for a private company,

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Speaker 1: you can generally like strike and organize to get your

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Speaker 1: salary adjusted to deal with inflation somewhat like it's still bad,

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Speaker 1: but it's less bad. If you're a public servant, you

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Speaker 1: don't get ship, your salary stays the same while inflation

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Speaker 1: jumps up. So this is really a disaster for the

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Speaker 1: Kissing Singer family. And of course economic trouble coincides with

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Speaker 1: a constant acceleration of far right violence. Later as an adult,

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Speaker 1: Kissinger would note without emotion that he was somewhat regularly

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Speaker 1: chased through the streets and beaten up by Nazi thugs

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Speaker 1: as a child. Um, yeah, that's tough. No punch lines, no,

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Speaker 1: no punch lines. But there is something weird about that.

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Speaker 1: Because he's talked about this a few times, but everything

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Speaker 1: time he talks about this, it is so that he

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Speaker 1: can emphatically state that this part of his life had

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Speaker 1: no impact on him. Yeah, it's you're really weird. It's

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Speaker 1: very strict, literal impact of fists had no impact upon him. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, he declared, quote, my life and

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Speaker 1: firth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions.

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Speaker 1: You don't get to say that, by the way, that

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Speaker 1: you don't like, I feel like you don't. I feel

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Speaker 1: like I said that to a shrink once about my

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Speaker 1: parents divorce and then wept. I didn't do anything. What's this?

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Speaker 1: What's this coming out of it? And it's like Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, when discussing the times he was

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Speaker 1: beaten in the streets by Nazis. He insisted to a

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Speaker 1: reporter quote that part of my childhood was not a

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Speaker 1: key to anything. I was not consciously unhappy. I was

385
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Speaker 1: not acutely aware of what was going on for children.

386
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Speaker 1: These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now

387
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Speaker 1: to explain everything psychoanalytically. But let me tell you, the

388
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Speaker 1: political persecutions of my childhood are not what control my life,

389
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Speaker 1: which is really interesting. Right and so I know, right,

390
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:03,960
Speaker 1: like I'm sure the reporter is like, I'm ready to

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Speaker 1: ask follow ups whatever he stops talking. You're not supposed

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00:21:08,359 --> 00:21:13,199
Speaker 1: to remember anyway. I mean, I wouldn't. That's how I

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00:21:13,240 --> 00:21:17,000
Speaker 1: can kill I went not at nine. I don't feel anything.

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00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:20,159
Speaker 1: It is It's like, you know, I got assaulted by

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Speaker 1: a Nazi when I was thirty three, and it left

396
00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:28,960
Speaker 1: a market any but any time, it's just growing up

397
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: in that environment without being assaulted is going to leave

398
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:36,479
Speaker 1: psychological damage. If your parents you completely safe from street violence,

399
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:40,240
Speaker 1: it would it could not. Yeah, It's like, Henry, this

400
00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 1: is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you.

401
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:45,119
Speaker 1: But it's fine. If being beaten by Nazis is a

402
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 1: child left a market, it's the only time you want

403
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:51,040
Speaker 1: to Matt damon him with Robin Williams are, yeah, like

404
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:57,120
Speaker 1: it's okay, many, Um, It's interesting the way he explain,

405
00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:59,880
Speaker 1: the ways he explains why this didn't leave any mark

406
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:02,680
Speaker 1: on him are very interesting. And I want to quote

407
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:06,640
Speaker 1: from Henry Kissinger in two thousand four. Now, I experienced

408
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:09,119
Speaker 1: the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but

409
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:11,359
Speaker 1: it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people

410
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:13,440
Speaker 1: of my age, so that I did not find it traumatic.

411
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Speaker 1: I have resisted the psychiatric explanations which argue that I

412
00:22:16,480 --> 00:22:19,119
Speaker 1: developed a passion for order over justice and that I

413
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 1: translated it into profound interpretations of the international system. I

414
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Speaker 1: wasn't concerned with the international system. I was concerned with

415
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Speaker 1: the standing of the football team of the town in

416
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Speaker 1: which I lived, which, like, you can't do both. You

417
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: can't pay attention to soccer. Obviously, as as a no

418
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:36,159
Speaker 1: one thinks Henry that as an eight year old you

419
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,439
Speaker 1: were like, well, this is going to impact the way

420
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Speaker 1: that I believe state power should be used. What I'm

421
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Speaker 1: Secretary of State in several decades, I'm gonna just like

422
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:49,200
Speaker 1: if you have a car accident as a kid, you're

423
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Speaker 1: not thinking, well, this is going to make me unable

424
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Speaker 1: to let other people touch me when I'm thirty three,

425
00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 1: you know, like I'll hate I'll hate freeway merging like

426
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 1: like obviously man, and I don't know, like there's a

427
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 1: degree to which in terms of this is the period

428
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 1: in which you can be sympathetic to him. I do

429
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:08,159
Speaker 1: think there's probably something to be said that if you

430
00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the

431
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,280
Speaker 1: Nazis anything, you know, even the like this left an

432
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:15,160
Speaker 1: impact on me, right because like funck him, I don't

433
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:17,159
Speaker 1: want to say that it had an influence on me,

434
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:20,720
Speaker 1: which I get. No having grown up in a traumatic

435
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:24,119
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of childhood. You can shut it

436
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:27,159
Speaker 1: down and tell yourself that you're fine, like you he

437
00:23:27,600 --> 00:23:30,560
Speaker 1: The way he survived it was to to shut his

438
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: emotions down a little bit and tell him self that

439
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 1: he was fine when it actually is by far probably

440
00:23:36,840 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 1: the most traumatic thing there and and created a fucking

441
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:44,680
Speaker 1: monster because he didn't get any psychological help. Naturally, it

442
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:51,440
Speaker 1: did not nature versus nurture. I would have killed just

443
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:55,120
Speaker 1: as many people if despicable piece of ship. Either way,

444
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:02,399
Speaker 1: don't judge my family. So as the twenties rolled to

445
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: an end. The political situation in the Weimar Republic gets

446
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 1: correspondingly more dire. In nineteen twenty five, during a Nazi

447
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 1: rally and Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel

448
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: of the Jews. The local response at that point in

449
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:18,680
Speaker 1: twenty five is overwhelmingly negative, and in nineteen twenty seven

450
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 1: only two hundred people in Firth were members of the

451
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. Hitler visited the city again in nineteen twenty eight,

452
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: to little effect. The party just got six point six

453
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:29,679
Speaker 1: percent of the vote in local elections that year. But

454
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 1: the Great Depression rescues the end of the twenties rescues

455
00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 1: the Nazis flagging poll members. As first economy collapses, people

456
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,200
Speaker 1: grow more willing to listen to the fascists. In the

457
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty elections, Nazis surged from two point six percent

458
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,639
Speaker 1: of the vote nationwide to eighteen point three percent. In

459
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:47,800
Speaker 1: first they won twenty three point six percent of the vote,

460
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: which is four times better than they've done two years

461
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 1: earlier and very frightening for a lot of relevant reasons.

462
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:59,199
Speaker 1: To today. Um yeah uh. Nazis electoral successes continue to

463
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: pace the next year and by nineteen thirty three, more

464
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,959
Speaker 1: than two were Nazi voters. I want to quote from

465
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:08,880
Speaker 1: Nil Ferguson's book again. On April ninth, ninety two, fifteen

466
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,399
Speaker 1: s A men were set upon by Iron Front members

467
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 1: as they left the pro Nazi Yellow Lion pub. Two

468
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,919
Speaker 1: months later, Nazi supporter Fritz reine Gruber was beaten up

469
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 1: for being a swastikist. The same fate Befell another Nazi

470
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 1: caught selling the n s d AP newspaper the Vocabeo Bactor.

471
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 1: The police watched helplessly on the evening of July thirty

472
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: as a mob through potatoes and stones at a Nazi

473
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: motorcade going from the First Airport to the Nuremberg Stadium.

474
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:35,119
Speaker 1: The car carrying Hitler himself was among the vehicles. But

475
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: just a year after, Hitler's car gets pelted. After the

476
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: Nazis begin to consolidate power, when Hitler's the Chancellor, the

477
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:44,200
Speaker 1: mood is very different. On March three, there's another torchlit

478
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 1: parade by the Nazis through Firth, and on the evening

479
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: of March nine, a crowd of between ten and twelve

480
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: thousand people's gathers outside one of the bars there to

481
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: watch the raising of the red Nazi flag. Um, so

482
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:00,639
Speaker 1: you know it gets bad pretty fast. Can I just

483
00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock

484
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:08,160
Speaker 1: throwing event? Yeah? I feel like he turned first. Yeah

485
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: we're doing rocks. Oh I know that was a drawing

486
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 1: of a rock. Don't look like potatoes? Al good lord?

487
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna say it right now. If

488
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler.

489
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: Could we could have avoided the guy for want of

490
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,879
Speaker 1: a rock? World War two? Oh you guys, see my

491
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: potato hit that car. It really smushed it. I do

492
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: left the idea that he also boiled it before. Yeah, well,

493
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: I don't want to look weird. So Louis Kissinger lost

494
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,240
Speaker 1: his job teaching once the Nazis came to power. Henry, again,

495
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 1: who had never gotten along with his dad, watches his

496
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:59,479
Speaker 1: father collapse into what biographer Thomas Alan Schwartz describes as

497
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: a quote state of immobility and psychological depression. Lewis withdrew

498
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 1: into his study, according to Henry's brother Walter, while the

499
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: world outside veered closer to nightmare. In his book, Henry

500
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: Kissinger and American Power, Schwartz writes, Kissinger and his brothers

501
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:17,679
Speaker 1: saw the progressive segregation, isolation and humiliation the Jews of

502
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: Firth experienced. Even their attempt to watch soccer games came

503
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: with the risk of their being beaten by the young

504
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,199
Speaker 1: Nazi thugs. The world of Heinz's childhood rapidly collapsed, and

505
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: his parents and the older generation of First Jews could

506
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: not protect their young from the hatred around them. After

507
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:34,360
Speaker 1: the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in nineteen thirty five,

508
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: Kissinger's mother began to look for a way to leave Germany.

509
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 1: A cousin in the United States was willing to provide

510
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: the financial support that would allow the Kissingers to immigrate.

511
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: In August and of nineteen thirty eight, after a last

512
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: visit with Paula's elderly parents in Ludershausen, where Heinz saw

513
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: his father cry for the first time, the family headed

514
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: to New York. Only three months later, during Christal Knocht,

515
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 1: the synagogue and Firth, like hundreds of others throughout Germany,

516
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: burned to the ground in a night of orchestrated violence. Yeah,

517
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 1: I mean that is when Henry leaves first. There are

518
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: two thousand Jews in the Jewish community at the end

519
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: of World War Two, there are forty Oh my god, yeah,

520
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: three months is so, I mean, that is fairly mean.

521
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: That's like they stay as late as they possibly came. Um.

522
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: At least thirteen members of Kissinger's family would perish in

523
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, obviously, it being what it is. I don't

524
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:28,840
Speaker 1: know that you can it's easy. It's not super easy

525
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:31,239
Speaker 1: to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as

526
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 1: devastated as you would expect of a German Jewish family.

527
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: And he does acknowledge for the first time, he likes it,

528
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: admits that like some part of this had an influence

529
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: on him. It was moving away from Germany and like

530
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: going across the world to the United States. Um. And

531
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: he says, and this is I think him being somewhat honest,

532
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: that the deepest impact of all this was quote, all

533
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: the things that had seemed secure and stable collapsed, and

534
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: many of the people that once had that one had

535
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: considered the steady examples suddenly were thrown into a enormous

536
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: turmoil themselves and into fantastic insecurities. People will say, we'll

537
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: talk about this later. He's very much an order obsessed guy,

538
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: and like Okay, yeah, I get it, Like I get

539
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: where that came from, you know, um yeah, I mean

540
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 1: that's very common for that happened in you know, Chile

541
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: and other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism.

542
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 1: They there's a lot of people who are like I

543
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: just wanted to be the same. Yeah, well, and yeah

544
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: you hear that all the time here too. I mean,

545
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: not not like that. Obviously, it's far It was far

546
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: more dire. But there are a lot of people I

547
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: know who keep saying that ship here, who keep being

548
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: like I just wanted to go back to normal, and

549
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: you're just like that ship that's sucking sale. That is

550
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: not you know, yeah, it never does, it never can,

551
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:45,720
Speaker 1: but we all do it. Like even the kind of

552
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: like obsession with nineties nostalgia is evidence of that, and

553
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 1: not because the nineties were like a perfect time, but

554
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, you didn't. You weren't aware of how

555
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 1: fun like like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into

556
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: like and unable to handle him just like look, it's

557
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: too aggressive and like oh my god, we don't have money. Yeah,

558
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 1: you went from oh my gosh, you know, um, the O. J.

559
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: Simpson trial, what a mess? Too. Well, now a plague

560
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: has killed a million people. Oh my god, it's Arry.

561
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: Better give me that time capsule. It's it's so funny

562
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: that parallels because I'm I literally am writing a dollar

563
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: right now, and and the guy turns into nor authoritarian

564
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: and his dad shut himself in his house and isolated.

565
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: It's it's so weird how these things if you, i mean,

566
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: just to continue off of that, Dave hit, there's dad

567
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: dies when he's a little kid, pluges the family finances

568
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: in situation and insecurity and chaos. Yeah, yeah, it's it

569
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: when when something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses,

570
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: perhaps it has an influence. Yes, despite what Kissinger said,

571
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: Despite what Kissinger said, but you know what, Henry Kissinger

572
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: loves the products and services that support this podcast. Look,

573
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: Henry is one of the few v I p s

574
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: on its island where you can hunt children anytime he wants.

575
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: He gets a free three bedroom apartment on the child

576
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: hunting Island. Sophie. That yeah, because for some fucking reason

577
00:31:23,800 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: he is still alive. Yes, well, let's be honest here.

578
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: This is essentially as eulogy because when we finished this

579
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: podcast and it's published, Kissinger should die. It's possible. I'm

580
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: planning a dark occult ritual using my own blood and

581
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: a candle I bought in Mexico to deals like I'm

582
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: not gonna say I'm not doing it, you know. Um anyway,

583
00:31:53,600 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 1: here's here's some ads. Ah, we're back. Have you guys

584
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: gone to the island where you can hunt little kids?

585
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: First sports? It's amazing. It's also fresh. It's very the brisk,

586
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: expecting to be that fresh. So good. Um. So Kissinger

587
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: today has I sofish just shaker. Kissinger today has idyllic

588
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: recollections of his early years in the United States. He

589
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: often talks about walking down the streets of his new neighborhood,

590
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing

591
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: the street because he's, you know, he's afraid he's going

592
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: to get beata like um. And then he would realize like, oh,

593
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen here, which obviously, yeah, he's just wearing

594
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: brown shirts because they like brown. Yeah, Henry, this is

595
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 1: a country where some people who wear brown aren't Nazis.

596
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: Some of them are, some of them are, Henry. Um.

597
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 1: Different did not mean easy. Though the Kissinger spent their

598
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: first years in a crowded Bronx apartment living with family,

599
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to

600
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: take control of the family and handle ship. She became

601
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline.

602
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish

603
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 1: families with a familiar background. A lot of them were

604
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 1: from other parts of Germany, and so the Kissingers benefited

605
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: from the help of several community organizations and getting back

606
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: on their feet. He he benefits a lot from the

607
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, there's not really a government support network,

608
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: but the other Jewish refugees who have come over from

609
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: Europe um have built support networks to make it easier

610
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: for new folks coming um. Henry's teen years were a

611
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:38,479
Speaker 1: mix of school in synagogue. He failed his first driving

612
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: test but excelled at soccer, and he grew to admire

613
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 1: many aspects of his new home, including quote American technology,

614
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 1: the American tempo of work, and American freedom, which I

615
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 1: might say is in direct opposition to the American tempo

616
00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: of work. But whatever um Kissinger was frustrated to the

617
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: though by the casual approach to life that he saw

618
00:33:57,440 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: in his new peers, um he thought they were super.

619
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: He wrote at the time that quote, no youth my

620
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: age has any kind of spiritual problem that he seriously

621
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: concerns himself with, which, well, yeah, okay, Henry, al right,

622
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:13,720
Speaker 1: Hank Fair. I like, if you come over from Nazi

623
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:16,720
Speaker 1: Germany and you're like people here seem carefree and shallow.

624
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,919
Speaker 1: Probably yeah, and your schooling was basically like some old

625
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:23,239
Speaker 1: dude being like you didn't read this right, you know,

626
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 1: like you're gonna be like, jeez, these guys are really

627
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 1: not focused on what matters. Yeah. Look, maybe I don't

628
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to be too critical, but

629
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: New York could use a little bit of Nazism, you

630
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:37,759
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's good lord. So because of

631
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: all of this, um, this is this is why one

632
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:43,400
Speaker 1: of his biographers, Schwartz, describes young Henry as socially inept.

633
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: He's not not great at talking, too, He's not great

634
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again, though,

635
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: first a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nuremberg,

636
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 1: but most of his focus was on schoolwork in soccer, Kass,

637
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: since you graduated, George Washington high school and started at

638
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: the City College of New York. He took classes at

639
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: night so he could work during the day at a

640
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: brush cleaning factory. Some of his cousins owned these brushes

641
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: fail They've always keep going. It's the most amazing like

642
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: old timey job. Ever, it's basically like all I can picture.

643
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:18,880
Speaker 1: It is just like the jobs are either like pressing

644
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 1: sheets or washing brushes. These brushes, I'm not going to

645
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: claim themselves, gentlemen, how many times do I have to

646
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,800
Speaker 1: tell you? Well, in the corollarya is some mom being like, Billy,

647
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: you didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. Now,

648
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 1: it's very funny. Um, everything old timey is funny. People

649
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:43,640
Speaker 1: are going to think this in the future about I

650
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: don't know, having water. So at this point him Rey's

651
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: ambition in life was to get quote a nice job,

652
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: likely in accounting. One biographer noted, quote nothing that happened

653
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: to Kissinger during those years encouraged him to read more widely.

654
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: His historical interests were as underdeveloped when he was twenty

655
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: as when he arrived in New York as a boy

656
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: of fifteen, which is the first normal thing about him

657
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, dude, he's you're you know whatever, like

658
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: he's a kid. Yeah, we're about to get to the

659
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 1: studio fifty four years. I feel like, yes, So World

660
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: War two happens, um starts for the United States at

661
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: least it started elsewhere earlier, but for for the US, Right,

662
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:25,879
Speaker 1: we'll do it ye when Henry is twenty one. Um.

663
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: He did not initially feel called to volunteer for service,

664
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: but when he got his draft notice in nineteen forty three,

665
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: he complied and joined the roughly sixteen million Americans who

666
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: became soldiers during this period. And if it weren't for this,

667
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger probably never would have been a figure of

668
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: historical importance. Again, he just kind of wanted to be

669
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: an accountant, but being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for

670
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,200
Speaker 1: a quiet, boring life and thrust him into the world.

671
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not maybe don't draft this guy, right, I

672
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:05,879
Speaker 1: did not actually see your venmo this year, so the process. Yeah,

673
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: there's a future where he just has really strong opinions

674
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:13,839
Speaker 1: on W two's Yeah, exactly nine, But I feel like

675
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: it was actually more like W four or he does

676
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: like a Bernie made Off thing. But either way, it's

677
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:23,359
Speaker 1: a much better feature than the one we got. We'll

678
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: take the maide off ending for him for sure. Um.

679
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: So we have letters that Henry sent to his brother

680
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: Walter during training. He purported to like the quote middle

681
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: Americans he met there, but warned his sibling, don't become

682
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there. He

683
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: did pick up, he did pick up a little something

684
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 1: from the Nazis. He's a little bit right, yeah. Um.

685
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: He also he also advised against having sex with the

686
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 1: quote filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific

687
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 1: to have been random. I think the Kissinger had a

688
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 1: bad experience with the camp follow Everyone at camp as syphilis.

689
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:14,479
Speaker 1: Every girl I had syphilis, one girl that syphilis. Every

690
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: one of them has it. That's why they zero of

691
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:27,879
Speaker 1: the syphilis epidemics. You're surrounded by counselors. So the Army

692
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and

693
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:33,879
Speaker 1: he earned entrance into a special training program that sent

694
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship

695
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:40,720
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three while he was at Lafayette College

696
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months, and Henry

697
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,879
Speaker 1: and Henry finished twelve engineering classes. During his off hours,

698
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: he would hitchhike home and see his girlfriend. He was

699
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: a brilliant student, recognized by his roommates as the quote

700
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 1: brainiest of a very intelligent class. One classmate recalled he

701
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: didn't read books. He ate them with his eyes, his fingers,

702
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: and with his squirming in the chair or bed, with

703
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:07,839
Speaker 1: his mumbling criticisms. More salt if I would be other

704
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: than the sounds like a book. This is really a

705
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: weird way to describe it, dude. It's kind of what

706
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: but the way it looks now is like he eats books.

707
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: What had like a visual like reaction to that, to

708
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 1: that line, like I kind of want the story of

709
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: that classmate. Like caused you to describe a dude reading

710
00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: books that way? Well, in my college, I ate analogies

711
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: and I just would just just devour them. I eat

712
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: him like a synonym, you know. Um. His professors would

713
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 1: use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers,

714
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: and for a brief period of time, he had status

715
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 1: and respect, which he'd begun to crave as a young man.

716
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: His time in this program was cut short because you know,

717
00:39:57,520 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: D day we decide America's like, we're going to do

718
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: us a normandy landing, and the army is like, well,

719
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: we probably don't need smart people for that, So let's

720
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: police kids out of the class and shine how to

721
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: get shot by guys actually want to talk to you

722
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,360
Speaker 1: over here about something totally different. No, no, not you,

723
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: not you, Chad. You stay right there, Chad talking about

724
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 1: these other guys. Thank you. Good luck. So Henry and

725
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:20,680
Speaker 1: his classmates get sent back to basic training with a

726
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 1: drill sergeants. According to Henry took glee and tormenting the

727
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: college kids, um, which I don't know, probably true while

728
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: he was preparing to go overseas. And this is what

729
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 1: my grandpa was doing in World War Two. And I

730
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:37,800
Speaker 1: hope peoplelied Henry Kissinger. I hope my grandpa got a

731
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: chance to give Henry Kissinger's some ship. Did he did?

732
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: He did, absolutely so, while he was preparing to go overseas,

733
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:53,680
Speaker 1: his biographer Schwartz rights, even in the misery of Camp Claiborne, however,

734
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:57,240
Speaker 1: Kissinger stood out. Selected by his commanders to provide soldiers

735
00:40:57,239 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: with a weekly briefing on war news. Although he did

736
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 1: the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older

737
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: German refugee in an American uniform Fritz Kramer, who came

738
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: to Camp Claiborne in May nineteen forty four to speak

739
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: about the meaning of war. After Kramer's in passion talk,

740
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: Kissinger wrote him a note, Dear Private Kramer, I heard

741
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:20,959
Speaker 1: sorry basically yeah, he literally like it's like I liked

742
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: what you had to say. Can I help you something like?

743
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: It's it's literally what the note is scared Yeah. Um.

744
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: Kramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter, returning

745
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation

746
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: and dinner, insistently speak in German, not English. The Lutheran

747
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:40,840
Speaker 1: Kramer later said that he was taken with this quote

748
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: little Jewish refugee he had met, who he believed as

749
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow, that's

750
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:53,919
Speaker 1: an interesting way to describe him. It sounds like, yeah,

751
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: and this guy Kramer is um. Kramer is a Prussian,

752
00:41:57,080 --> 00:41:58,880
Speaker 1: which I don't know the degree to which that that

753
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: means anything to a lot people, the Prussians. So there

754
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from

755
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: the left. Once the Nazi has gotten to power, the

756
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian, not

757
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,440
Speaker 1: because they were good dudes, but because they were way

758
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 1: too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we want

759
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: to fight on take over all of Europe, but like

760
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,759
Speaker 1: with a kaiser who has royal blood, not this like

761
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,920
Speaker 1: gross little corporal and stuff. And it's complicated because like

762
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 1: a lot of those Prussians got murdered by the Nazis,

763
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:28,759
Speaker 1: and as a general rule, your sympathy is with the

764
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 1: people who get murdered by the Nazis, but it's also like, yeah,

765
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 1: you got murdered by the Razi Nazis for the wrong

766
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 1: recent's yeah. They were like, we have one small note,

767
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: but everything else is working great for They were the

768
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 1: guys who were like Hitler's bad because he's not going

769
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: to win the war against Russia. Okay, So this guy,

770
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:50,760
Speaker 1: Fritz Kramer would be, in Henry's words quote, the greatest

771
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: single influence on my formative years, since Fritz was a

772
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: Prussian conservative. So an idea of how fucking German Fritz

773
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,720
Speaker 1: Kramer is. He wears a uncle to make his wife

774
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: I work harder, to make his weak eye work, Like,

775
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 1: my god, I'm the craziest asshole. Ever, and you know,

776
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:20,200
Speaker 1: Fritz hated the Nazis, which good good. He also hated

777
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,600
Speaker 1: the Communists, which you have to think there was some

778
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: some some some stuff there. Um, you know, Communists as

779
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 1: a mixed bag like everybody, but I don't think he's

780
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:33,280
Speaker 1: very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits Fritz with expressing

781
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 1: quote a respect for international law and emphasis on the

782
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by

783
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: the moral basis of civilization is not the same as

784
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 1: what I think maybe you or I might mean, yeah

785
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 1: now that Yeah. I think the most important influence Kramer

786
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 1: had was he's Kramer is very conservative, and he Henry

787
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: is kind of a natural conservative. And Kramer really reinforces

788
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:01,240
Speaker 1: this feeling in Henry, which is rest by a growing

789
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of

790
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 1: the political median right. Um, which you get why he

791
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: has a tendency towards this. If your life, if your

792
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,800
Speaker 1: childhood is this like battle of extremes in your hometown,

793
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,400
Speaker 1: I get why you would kind of veer towards the middle.

794
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 1: And this guy, Cramer really turns that up to eleven

795
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:20,799
Speaker 1: in him. One right up in the New Yorker notes

796
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,920
Speaker 1: quote he warrant Kissinger not to emulate cleverling intellectuals and

797
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 1: their bloodless cost benefit analyzes. Believing Kissinger to be musically

798
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: attuned to history, he told him, only if you do

799
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 1: not calculate, will you really have the freedom which distinguishes

800
00:44:35,840 --> 00:44:39,399
Speaker 1: you from the little people. So that's bad. So that's

801
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: gonna go really bad. I mean you really are like,

802
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: I mean, this is his Morpheus. We're just starting to

803
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: be like, okay, this is by the way, have you

804
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 1: thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going

805
00:44:49,120 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 1: with the Wand that is so much like punish your

806
00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 1: weak eye. You much punished a week, even when it

807
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 1: comes to your eyes. Yeah, yeah, he is. He has

808
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: found a kid who like has problematic history of starting

809
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: fires and is now teaching him how to build a

810
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: fertilizer bob. Yeah, he's a bad influence matches so so,

811
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:14,799
Speaker 1: but have you ever seen a zippo? Yeah? Great. So

812
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the eighty four

813
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: Entrant Infantry Division as it moves towards Nazi europe Um.

814
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: His division sees a decent amount of combat, He does

815
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: not he's a back ranker. He handles administrative and management

816
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: tasks um, and he finds the power and authority he

817
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: gets through his time in the service intoxicating. Though he

818
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: never again he doesn't fight directly, he does earn a

819
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: bronze star for a valor because he helps catch and

820
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: take out a Gestapo sleeper cell, primarily due to the

821
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,240
Speaker 1: fact that like he's just you know, a very observant dude. Um.

822
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty five, he participates in the liberation of

823
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 1: a concentration camp alum um a h L E M.

824
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: I'm not sean how to pronounce it um. One prisoner

825
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 1: at the camp remembered him as the young American who

826
00:45:56,280 --> 00:46:00,279
Speaker 1: announced you are free. For Kissinger, the overwhelming mem of

827
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 1: this experience was seeing inmates he described as being barely

828
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 1: recognizable as humans and feeling the instinct to feed them

829
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: before learning that some were so starved that solid food

830
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: would kill them shortly thereafter. Yeah, I mean one thing

831
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: you got to say, he does not like, he's not

832
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:19,120
Speaker 1: a sheltered upbringing, and you I mean, like you would

833
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 1: be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that

834
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 1: made him be like, oh, you know, you can there's

835
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,839
Speaker 1: there's good you can provide, like provide the people who

836
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 1: are tortured and starved some you know, you could take

837
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: away from this like my god, war is evil and

838
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:38,320
Speaker 1: we should do everything we can as opposed to Yeah, baby, well,

839
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 1: let's see how it plays out, Dave. Maybe this is

840
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 1: the sixth part behind the Bachard's episode about a cool

841
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,320
Speaker 1: dude who does nice things. I just brought you guys

842
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: here to talk about a chill guy. Um. So, shortly

843
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:58,319
Speaker 1: after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on

844
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 1: his experience where he asked, quote who was lucky the

845
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:04,319
Speaker 1: man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles I

846
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: am free? Or the bones that are interred in the hillside.

847
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in

848
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. So, I mean an understandably bleak take

849
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: from liberating a concentration Yeah, like that, that's fair. Um,

850
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: you know what is a bad time to move to

851
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 1: an ad plug. I didn't think you're gonna be brave

852
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: enough to do this, but fair enough, boy, Yeah, you

853
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:42,399
Speaker 1: know what makes me hungry. Probably shouldn't go too far

854
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: down that road. Let the ads do the talk. Let

855
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: the ads do the talking. The ads are gonna come

856
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: and win, the same way the Soviet Union did, wave

857
00:47:54,120 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: after wave of men into Nazi trenchet. Anyway, I think

858
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 1: we lost it. We had it for a minute right there.

859
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: I took it too far, you know, I took it there.

860
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: Here we go. Oh we're back. So when the war ends,

861
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,800
Speaker 1: World War two, you know that is uh. Sergeant Henry

862
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 1: Kissinger finds himself as quote the absolute ruler of a

863
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: small village named bin Shim. He enjoys this experience. He

864
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: really starts to like having power. One thing that we're

865
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:36,359
Speaker 1: getting here is he adores having power over people. Yeah,

866
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,960
Speaker 1: he really likes it. In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly

867
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: to his family that he has quote absolute authority to

868
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: arrest people. Um, and it's this is this is problematic

869
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:53,439
Speaker 1: because of what he does later. I will say, if

870
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: you are a Jewish kid who has to flee Germany

871
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:57,759
Speaker 1: and then you come back and get made like the

872
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: military head of a town that's full of former Nazis,

873
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:04,800
Speaker 1: I get reveling in it a little bit. Yeah. Well

874
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: for me, I'm having beheading tuesdays if that's yeah. So

875
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:13,319
Speaker 1: again he's not because of what he does later this

876
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: is unsettling, but like it's understandable in the moment. Yeah,

877
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: he appropriates a luxury home in a fancy car, both

878
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which

879
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: is like, it's what you do, right. He gets a butler.

880
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: He brags back to his family that butler, a fucking

881
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 1: Nazi butler. That's artested for not giving butler. Yeah, that

882
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 1: is that is obvious now. That said, he's also, to

883
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 1: his credit, really aware of not wanting the Germans in

884
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 1: town to identify this guy who's absolute ruler as being Jewish.

885
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:51,239
Speaker 1: I think because he doesn't want it to make things

886
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: up problems for people who's Jewish, people who stay behind

887
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 1: in Germany. He makes other soldiers referred to him as Mr.

888
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,080
Speaker 1: Henry rather than by his last name. He's consciou. He

889
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:01,879
Speaker 1: doesn't want them to think quote that the Jews were

890
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,400
Speaker 1: coming back to take revenge. Um. And he had a

891
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,560
Speaker 1: reputation in general as being more objective as a as

892
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: a ruler in this kind of period than most Jewish

893
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 1: veterans and similar positions in general. Henry counseled accommodation and

894
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 1: rapprochema with one exception Communists as the civil of course,

895
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 1: that's like understandable period, yeah, the Nazis, but the coming yeah,

896
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: and that's literally what happens. So the Cold War, you know,

897
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 1: early stages in nineteen forty six, but already in that period,

898
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,719
Speaker 1: Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left wing

899
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 1: sympathies and Nazis just like, yeah that the leftist due,

900
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: the leftist due. He doesn't want them. He also wants

901
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: to ban Communists from taching at the local schools, which, again,

902
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 1: what the fuck? He went straight Nazi all of a sudden. Now, yeah,

903
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 1: he's he's definitely well, let's say fascist. Let's let's say fascist. Okay,

904
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,800
Speaker 1: he does a bit. He does a bit. He starts

905
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: dating a gentile German girl during this period, because again

906
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though,

907
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:24,960
Speaker 1: because they don't like this at all. Um, They're they're like,

908
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:27,800
Speaker 1: you're losing your your faith, and Henry gets very combative

909
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: with them. He sees them as a rational writing quote,

910
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 1: to me, there is not only right or wrong, but

911
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: many shades in between. The Real tragedies in life are

912
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 1: not choices between right and wrong. Real difficulties, bare difficulties

913
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: of the soul, provoking agonies which you and your world

914
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,280
Speaker 1: of black and white can't begin to comprehend. How's the dog?

915
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: How's the dog? Love you? Mom? Good is his and

916
00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: his parents? His parents have very actually we all did,

917
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: where they're like, hey, how are you, Hay, But it

918
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: seems like the war may have had an effect. I've

919
00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: said this ever since you met the monocle guy, but

920
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 1: you're really intense. Maybe maybe all of the things you've

921
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: seen have had an impact on you. And in response

922
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: to this, by getting enraged and saying not everybody came

923
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: out of this war as a psycho neurotic. Oh, that

924
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,720
Speaker 1: shows him. That'll teach them that that's exactly. That's fine,

925
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:31,960
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's exactly. That's the right reaction of a

926
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: non psycho neurotic when you're when you're screaming, I'm not

927
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:40,600
Speaker 1: a psycho neurotic. In letters, you're a psychoneurotic. Garland Camp.

928
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 1: If all they're saying is like, hey, Henry, do you

929
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:47,320
Speaker 1: think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental

930
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: scars that you need to like heal from. Maybe I

931
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:54,600
Speaker 1: should draw that to the toilet. Okay, alright, buddy, alright, Pa,

932
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 1: We're just okay, just tough. We're just writing letters here, buddy.

933
00:52:57,640 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. That's

934
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 1: what those things. This is a period of time obviously,

935
00:53:02,440 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: like every like, one of the things that causes what

936
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 1: happens later in American history is that sixteen million Americans

937
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: go to war and a bunch of them get traumatized,

938
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 1: and they come back to a world where like their

939
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,280
Speaker 1: dad was always like, if you talk about your feelings,

940
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: I'm going to hit you. Pory's family doesn't seem to

941
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you

942
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: want to talk about your feelings, and he's like, I'm

943
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:29,279
Speaker 1: not crazy. Yeah. Um. Obviously, obviously the fact that this

944
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: is a time in which like men don't fucking do

945
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 1: therapy does have an impact on it. But I think

946
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: his family is probably more understanding than well. He also

947
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 1: has no i mean even now, he has no acknowledgement

948
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 1: of like his trauma. So he probably even in the

949
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:43,560
Speaker 1: in the actual moment, I mean, you're probably even more defensive,

950
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:47,480
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Um. In seven, Kissinger finally decides to

951
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: leave Germany for the second time. On Fritz Kramer's advice.

952
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: He applies, He applies late to Harvard, and he was accepted,

953
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:57,440
Speaker 1: winning one of the two national scholarships the school gave

954
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: New Yorkers each year, and tramp House did a tournament

955
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: of evil people from Harvard's and Kissinger one that makes sense. Boy,

956
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: the IVY League good at producing bad people. Um, maybe

957
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: we should look into that one. So one of his

958
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 1: classmates recalls, and he obviously he does like it's Henry Kissinger.

959
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 1: He's very good at school. Um. One of his classmates

960
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: recalls that he quote worked harder and studied more than

961
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: anybody else on campus. He stays school. He school's been

962
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: stop him from shoven pencils in his mate the campus

963
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: like Godzilla would have. He nearly died from lead. His

964
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 1: studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him.

965
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: He made quote no lasting friendships with other students. He

966
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered

967
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:56,720
Speaker 1: around him. So Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer

968
00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:59,400
Speaker 1: had started him off on. He agreed with Girtha I

969
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: believe is the as the name of the German philosopher

970
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: that if he quote had to choose between justice and

971
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,000
Speaker 1: disorder on the one hand, and injustice and order on

972
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 1: the other. I would always choose the latter. So well,

973
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: there we go. He's made his choice. That's very telling,

974
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: Like we know, we know. Yeah, it's just nice to

975
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:20,719
Speaker 1: know where like around the time, like, okay, so he

976
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:23,799
Speaker 1: was pretty defined. Okay, so Henry, you know some other

977
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah,

978
00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:34,359
Speaker 1: had an impact on you. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just

979
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 1: such a it's a strange thing that he it's so

980
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 1: consciously like he he's so completely aware of it. Yeah,

981
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: like he's like a psychopath. He might be. I mean,

982
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:47,960
Speaker 1: I think if you're I try not to do too

983
00:55:48,040 --> 00:55:51,919
Speaker 1: much like the psychoanalyzing people, but like fucking maybe right, Well,

984
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 1: psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about,

985
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: leaving people over in the room. Um, you know ladies,

986
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: man like is they they learn how to be a

987
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:05,319
Speaker 1: human and then they sort of and a lot of

988
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 1: you got syphilis ad camp and a lot of symphilicit

989
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,359
Speaker 1: camp like Henry Kissinger. Well, Sophie, can we let's green

990
00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:13,680
Speaker 1: light some Henry kissing some some T shirts that are

991
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,280
Speaker 1: just Henry Kissinger with his face riding off from syphilis.

992
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:22,600
Speaker 1: People are gonna want to wear them. He's making the kiss.

993
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:24,600
Speaker 1: He kiss he lips and his lips are falling off.

994
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: What you like a kissing? Let French Kissinger you. So

995
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:37,359
Speaker 1: he meets his second mentor at Harvard. Henry Kissinger has

996
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 1: a lot of mentors. And this is maybe a lesson

997
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,920
Speaker 1: to never mentor anybody. Um, you never know they might

998
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: become Henry Kissinger. Don't teach people things. Sabotage them at

999
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:51,239
Speaker 1: every step. Right next time you drive past a kindergarten,

1000
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: throw him a textbook that's all lies, you know, just

1001
00:56:55,160 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: slow him down. So his second mentor is this guy,

1002
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:04,760
Speaker 1: William Yandel Elliott. And Elliott has is a professor at Harvard.

1003
00:57:04,760 --> 00:57:07,880
Speaker 1: He's also like very politically connected. He had advised several

1004
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:11,760
Speaker 1: US presidents on international matters. Uh. And Kissinger was drawn

1005
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:14,480
Speaker 1: to this guy because not only is he a respected educator,

1006
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: but he's really well connected to people with power um

1007
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: and Elliott. One of the things that like he is

1008
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:23,680
Speaker 1: famous for being a big advocate of is what is

1009
00:57:23,720 --> 00:57:27,680
Speaker 1: what's called real politique UM as embodied by you know

1010
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 1: and particularly the guys that Kissinger grows up admiring and

1011
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:33,480
Speaker 1: that Elliott, you know, helps teach him to admire I mean,

1012
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:37,240
Speaker 1: like Klauswitz and Bismarck, these these these guys who are

1013
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 1: like Bismarck is the dude who makes Germany right, we

1014
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 1: have it, We get a Germany because Bismarck orchestrates, over

1015
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,560
Speaker 1: a period of like I think it's decades, gradually he

1016
00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:50,520
Speaker 1: welds all these different German principalities and kingships together and

1017
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: then helps to orchestrate this war, which out of which

1018
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 1: emerges Germany. Like that's the kind of dude that Otto

1019
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: von Bismarck is, and he is kind of the master

1020
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: of the kind of politics that Kissinger comes to respect.

1021
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: And he Kissinger calls cloud Fits and Bismarck philosophers of history.

1022
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 1: That's how he sees this guy, these guys um, which

1023
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:12,720
Speaker 1: is not really what I would call out of on Bismarck,

1024
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:15,120
Speaker 1: Like he's very good at what he does, obviously, um,

1025
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:18,440
Speaker 1: but but not I wouldn't call him a philosopher. UM.

1026
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: I want to quote now from the book Kissinger's Shadow

1027
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 1: by Greg Grandon. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his

1028
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 1: own view of how history operated. It was not a

1029
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:30,240
Speaker 1: story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of

1030
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 1: cycles of history, or cycles of birth, maturity, and decline. Rather,

1031
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: it was a series of meaningless incidents fleetingly given shape

1032
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 1: by the application of human will. As a young infantryman,

1033
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 1: Kissinger had learned that Victor's ransacked history for analogies to

1034
00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 1: guild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out historical causes

1035
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 1: of their misfortune. So yeah, yeah, you know stuff, it's

1036
00:58:55,640 --> 00:59:00,360
Speaker 1: it's maybe not yeah, yeah, you can think about however

1037
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: you want. So a lot of folks who analyze the

1038
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,920
Speaker 1: Kissinger in this period sees on one sentence in Kissinger's

1039
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: undergraduate thesis, and his thesis is titled The Meaning of

1040
00:59:13,840 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: History that they can kind of explains a lot of

1041
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: what comes to be going down. It is, right, I mean, honestly,

1042
00:59:22,680 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 1: he's not a dude who makes like little leaps, right, yeah, yeah,

1043
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:31,400
Speaker 1: why do we love? This is the line The realm

1044
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 1: of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an

1045
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:39,640
Speaker 1: inward experience, which is you know, we read it again,

1046
00:59:39,960 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except

1047
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: by an inward experience. Wow, and this is this is

1048
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 1: a like a heavily influenced by French French existentialism. His

1049
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:55,200
Speaker 1: thesis cites Jean Paul Start a lot, and both Start

1050
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: and Kissinger think that morality is not an inward thing,

1051
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: is determined by actions, which it is not an unreasonable

1052
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: thing to believe, right that, like what matters is what

1053
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: you do. You know is that line from the Bible.

1054
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: You're not damned by what goes into your head, but

1055
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:09,120
Speaker 1: like what you know comes out right, Like, that's not

1056
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: an unreasonable thing to believe. Start Um. He believes that

1057
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:18,440
Speaker 1: like action creates the possibility of intellection, individual and collective responsibility. Right,

1058
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: that morality is determined by action, but that our actions

1059
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 1: create this possibility of like individual and collective moral responsibility

1060
01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:30,080
Speaker 1: for things. Kissinger does not come to that conclusion. Kissinger

1061
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 1: believes that morality is determined by action, but he also

1062
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 1: thinks that, like you, moral indeterminacy is a condition of

1063
01:00:37,120 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: human freedom. It's this idea that you can't be bound

1064
01:00:40,560 --> 01:00:43,960
Speaker 1: by morality, and to be free, if you want to

1065
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: freely act, you have to be able to act above morality.

1066
01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 1: That's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts.

1067
01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:56,840
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of his intellectual development as him.

1068
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:59,800
Speaker 1: And you know, also a lot of this is obviously

1069
01:00:59,840 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 1: all of this. One of the things that you have

1070
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:03,360
Speaker 1: to account for is all of this analysis of like

1071
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:06,479
Speaker 1: his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things,

1072
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 1: so including from him and from like the people who

1073
01:01:10,760 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: are sources who were saying this is what he was

1074
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 1: like as a kid. There is that degree of biasing, right,

1075
01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:17,600
Speaker 1: like that this is after he is the person that

1076
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:19,240
Speaker 1: he is. Because if he had gone on to like

1077
01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 1: just to be a professor, nobody would have given a

1078
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: ship about what the accountant said that I would be like, yeah, look,

1079
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:27,280
Speaker 1: just would you what do I owe? Yeah? Yeah, tell

1080
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:29,240
Speaker 1: me what the I R S gets man, I I don't.

1081
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 1: I don't need another lecture on this um and Kissingers,

1082
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:37,240
Speaker 1: the fact that he becomes so kind of moral relativism

1083
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:38,360
Speaker 1: is the word of use. I don't even know if

1084
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:41,280
Speaker 1: that's right, but like this idea that like freedom and

1085
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 1: morality are kind of like inherently opposed. This upsets a

1086
01:01:44,760 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: lot of people around him, including people who are like

1087
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: his big supporters, including that professor Elliott guy at his

1088
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:55,200
Speaker 1: retirement party, Henry Kissinger. Elliot's retirement party, Henry Kissinger in

1089
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 1: a number of students gather to like bid him farewell,

1090
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: and journalist David Halberston wrote that Elliott had positive things

1091
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: to say about almost all of his students who had

1092
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:07,720
Speaker 1: gathered there, but when he reached Kissinger, he said this, Henry,

1093
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:11,080
Speaker 1: he began, You're brilliant, but you're arrogant. In fact, you're

1094
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:14,880
Speaker 1: the most arrogant man I've ever met. Kissinger became ashen faced.

1095
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 1: Mark my words. Elliot continued, your arrogance is going to

1096
01:02:18,400 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: get you in real trouble one day. That is amazing levels,

1097
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:25,960
Speaker 1: like at your retirement party to be like hey and

1098
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 1: you listen, chip bag, chill out, and then for that

1099
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: also to be totally incorrect, Like you know, I saw

1100
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:37,920
Speaker 1: this like clip of some some guy in like Atlantic

1101
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:40,240
Speaker 1: City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well,

1102
01:02:40,240 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: what is what makes a native American? And the guy

1103
01:02:42,440 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 1: just goes, sir, I'm glad You're never going to get

1104
01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: into any real power and you're like yeah, dude, oh dude. Well,

1105
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: and one of the things like this, the Professor Elliott

1106
01:02:53,480 --> 01:02:55,200
Speaker 1: is like one of the guys who helps get him

1107
01:02:55,240 --> 01:02:57,400
Speaker 1: his first big gigs and ship like he's a major

1108
01:02:57,440 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 1: bags and I think this is kind of him belated

1109
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:07,000
Speaker 1: Lee being like, Boo, I'm gonna go patronize a Cambodian

1110
01:03:07,080 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 1: restaurant just to make myself feel of them. Yeah. Real, Well, Ever,

1111
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:15,080
Speaker 1: when he went to like, just give me the tip slip, don't,

1112
01:03:15,080 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 1: I haven't did just give me a tip slip? I

1113
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:18,800
Speaker 1: owe you guys. I'm not going to tell you why

1114
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:21,720
Speaker 1: you go. Don't worry about it. Take my take everything.

1115
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:24,720
Speaker 1: Here's my hang. I gotta go. Do you know if

1116
01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: there's a Bangladeshi restaurant nearby. I'm actually having a lot

1117
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 1: of spots tonight and not eating. I'll be on a

1118
01:03:30,480 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: long list. I'm going to a lot of places. No, no,

1119
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,000
Speaker 1: not German, No, not no, not German. You know what,

1120
01:03:37,080 --> 01:03:41,360
Speaker 1: They're actually fine. I don't think I need Yeah. So

1121
01:03:41,640 --> 01:03:45,560
Speaker 1: his thesis that that thing that that he says to Kissinger,

1122
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:50,960
Speaker 1: it it should be what happens, but our society rewards

1123
01:03:50,960 --> 01:03:58,480
Speaker 1: psychopaths above anybody else, and most societies, yeah should be

1124
01:03:59,000 --> 01:04:02,920
Speaker 1: is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world,

1125
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: which isn't what this is. And it's it's one of

1126
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:08,120
Speaker 1: those things. This is something like that kind of more

1127
01:04:08,160 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: into anthropological thinking, but like, one of the reasons people

1128
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:15,000
Speaker 1: will say, like why we have psychopaths is that if

1129
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 1: you're in a band of seventy people who are like

1130
01:04:17,880 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers, starving through the winter, it's it's helpful to

1131
01:04:22,120 --> 01:04:23,920
Speaker 1: have a guy like Henry Kissinger. You can say, like, well,

1132
01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:26,840
Speaker 1: these these six people are too old and sick, and

1133
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:29,240
Speaker 1: we have to let them die otherwise we'll all starve. Right,

1134
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:31,640
Speaker 1: that's a situation which it's good to have a psychopath

1135
01:04:31,680 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 1: because you need someone who just doesn't give a shit

1136
01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: about certain things. When you have a society of billions

1137
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 1: that's global, it becomes a problem because that kind of

1138
01:04:39,880 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: thinking is not so useful and and tends to just

1139
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:46,360
Speaker 1: get millions and millions of people killed. Um. It's it's

1140
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 1: not great. Um Anyway. Henry's thesis is published in nineteen fifty.

1141
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:53,800
Speaker 1: It roughly the same time Harry Truman decides to send

1142
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:57,120
Speaker 1: troops to Korea and to aid French forces in Vietnam.

1143
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:59,840
Speaker 1: Professor Elliott told Kissinger that the Korean War was in

1144
01:04:59,880 --> 01:05:03,000
Speaker 1: a example of the East quote testing the civilization of

1145
01:05:03,040 --> 01:05:07,240
Speaker 1: the West. Yeah, people doing their own thing in their

1146
01:05:07,240 --> 01:05:11,480
Speaker 1: own country is a test to us, Like the Koreans

1147
01:05:11,480 --> 01:05:15,120
Speaker 1: and the Vietnamese having completely their own ship going on

1148
01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:18,400
Speaker 1: as a test of us in the United States. Damn

1149
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 1: you you know, Ho Chi Min not wanting to be

1150
01:05:21,240 --> 01:05:23,440
Speaker 1: ruled over by the French is really a test of

1151
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:27,920
Speaker 1: American I mean. And obviously they see that like the

1152
01:05:27,960 --> 01:05:30,040
Speaker 1: Soviet Unions or frustrating all of this, and the Soviet

1153
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:32,280
Speaker 1: Union is involved too, but like it, they're looking at

1154
01:05:32,320 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 1: us in the eyes. They've got their own ship going on. Dude,

1155
01:05:35,640 --> 01:05:43,200
Speaker 1: they are on the same level. How dare they do this? So,

1156
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:46,280
Speaker 1: as the US increased its commitments to a growing series

1157
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 1: of wars in Southeast Asia, kissing you more dedicated to

1158
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: the work of a guy named Oswald Spangler. Spangler's book

1159
01:05:53,640 --> 01:05:55,680
Speaker 1: The Decline of the West is not something I am

1160
01:05:55,680 --> 01:05:58,560
Speaker 1: well equipped to describe or explain in detail, but Greg

1161
01:05:58,600 --> 01:06:02,200
Speaker 1: Grandin is, so I'm gonna quote from Hi again. Spangler

1162
01:06:02,200 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 1: waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality.

1163
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:08,000
Speaker 1: He insisted that there existed a higher plane of experience

1164
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 1: that was inaccessible to rational thought, a plane where instinct

1165
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:14,760
Speaker 1: and creativity reigned. We have, Spangler thought hardly yet an

1166
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:18,400
Speaker 1: inkling of how much in our reputedly objective values and experiences.

1167
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:22,160
Speaker 1: Is only disguise, only image and expression. To get behind

1168
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 1: image and expression, to penetrate perceived material power and interests,

1169
01:06:26,040 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 1: and grasp what Spengler called destiny. One needed not information

1170
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: but intuition, not facts but hunches, Not reason but a soul, sense,

1171
01:06:35,040 --> 01:06:38,520
Speaker 1: a world feeling. Often enough, a statesman does not follow,

1172
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,040
Speaker 1: does not know what he is doing, Spengler wrote, But

1173
01:06:41,120 --> 01:06:43,960
Speaker 1: that does not prevent him from following with confidence. Just

1174
01:06:44,120 --> 01:06:46,800
Speaker 1: the one path that leads to success. Oh my god,

1175
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:49,280
Speaker 1: and that is George W. Bush crawl out of a pilogoon.

1176
01:06:49,360 --> 01:06:56,360
Speaker 1: Now like this for our freidom. George Bush like pops

1177
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 1: out of Henry's Kissinger's back. Is a poll that's like

1178
01:06:59,680 --> 01:07:04,480
Speaker 1: since it's like dr headed rumsfeld Bush like thing like

1179
01:07:05,160 --> 01:07:07,520
Speaker 1: where they are there in the east, west, north, and

1180
01:07:07,640 --> 01:07:14,919
Speaker 1: south um Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating, but he did

1181
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: disagree with Spengler about Spengler's primary contention, which is that

1182
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:23,840
Speaker 1: civilizational decay was inevitable. Spengler argued that civilizations had spring, summers, autumns,

1183
01:07:23,880 --> 01:07:26,000
Speaker 1: and winters right, that they proceed through kind of like

1184
01:07:26,040 --> 01:07:29,320
Speaker 1: inevitable stages, and there's not really any way to stop

1185
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 1: this procession, right, Um, which is I think a pretty

1186
01:07:31,960 --> 01:07:33,920
Speaker 1: reasonably like, yeah, any civilization is going to have like

1187
01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:36,160
Speaker 1: a life cycle, right, that's the thing. Like historically you

1188
01:07:36,160 --> 01:07:41,880
Speaker 1: can argue pretty well Kissinger doesn't believe this everything. Yeah,

1189
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 1: that's actually not what kissings. And of course the man,

1190
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:49,080
Speaker 1: of course, the man who is like living way beyond

1191
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:53,720
Speaker 1: his shelf life is like told you so, yeah, doesn't die.

1192
01:07:54,480 --> 01:07:58,120
Speaker 1: So here's Grandon again talking about Kissinger. Kissinger grapples with

1193
01:07:58,120 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 1: this aspect of Spengler having lost a sense of purpose.

1194
01:08:01,080 --> 01:08:03,960
Speaker 1: Civilizations lurch outward defined, meaning they get caught up in

1195
01:08:03,960 --> 01:08:06,960
Speaker 1: a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by

1196
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:10,680
Speaker 1: history's cosmic beat power for power's sake, blood for blood.

1197
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:14,840
Speaker 1: Imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote,

1198
01:08:14,960 --> 01:08:17,799
Speaker 1: summing up the decline of the West's argument an outward

1199
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:21,960
Speaker 1: thrust to hide the inner void. Kissinger accepted Spangler's critique

1200
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:27,320
Speaker 1: of past civilizations, but rejected his determinism. Decay was not inevitable. Spengler,

1201
01:08:27,400 --> 01:08:30,559
Speaker 1: Kissinger said, merely described a fact of decline and not

1202
01:08:30,680 --> 01:08:33,360
Speaker 1: its necessity. There is a margin, he would write in

1203
01:08:33,360 --> 01:08:37,120
Speaker 1: his memoirs between necessity and accident, in which the statesman,

1204
01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:40,400
Speaker 1: by perseverance and intuition, must choose and thereby shape the

1205
01:08:40,439 --> 01:08:43,679
Speaker 1: destiny of his people. So Spengler's like, yeah, it seems

1206
01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:46,080
Speaker 1: like when civilizations lose their purpose and start to age,

1207
01:08:46,080 --> 01:08:48,960
Speaker 1: they lurch outward, engage in wars of imperial conquest and

1208
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:51,120
Speaker 1: a search for meaning, and that leads to disaster which

1209
01:08:51,160 --> 01:08:53,320
Speaker 1: destroys them. And Kissinger's like, but what if you did

1210
01:08:53,360 --> 01:09:01,759
Speaker 1: the wars right? But what was involved in everyone? But

1211
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:04,599
Speaker 1: if it was like Mickey in the corner of Rockie, Yeah,

1212
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:07,080
Speaker 1: it's it is an amazing like this guy being like,

1213
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:09,960
Speaker 1: here is what happens to empires every single time there's

1214
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:12,120
Speaker 1: an empire. This is a thing you can go through

1215
01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:15,040
Speaker 1: history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years, and

1216
01:09:15,120 --> 01:09:17,160
Speaker 1: kiss You're just like, no, I can do it right.

1217
01:09:17,520 --> 01:09:20,360
Speaker 1: But to be like, no, you're You're pretty You're pretty close.

1218
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:26,000
Speaker 1: You're pretty close. So I'm just thinking kill more. Like

1219
01:09:26,120 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 1: I heard what you said ups and downs, but I

1220
01:09:28,520 --> 01:09:32,280
Speaker 1: think you wipe everybody out. You know, it is the

1221
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:34,760
Speaker 1: same logic I have seen every time I've seen more

1222
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:38,160
Speaker 1: than one person get get stuck in the mud. It's

1223
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:40,280
Speaker 1: always either one person gets stuck in the mutter fifty

1224
01:09:40,280 --> 01:09:42,000
Speaker 1: two because one person gets stuck in the mud and

1225
01:09:42,040 --> 01:09:44,280
Speaker 1: the other forty nine Go, well, I saw it happened

1226
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:45,720
Speaker 1: to that guy. But I think I can figure it

1227
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:50,559
Speaker 1: out and can get around. Yeah. It's almost like when

1228
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:53,679
Speaker 1: you enter Congress. I've got a plan. I've got a plan.

1229
01:09:54,120 --> 01:09:59,200
Speaker 1: Oh I get money. Yeah, well, I have a plan,

1230
01:09:59,320 --> 01:10:01,519
Speaker 1: but it's a different You're not going to like it

1231
01:10:01,560 --> 01:10:08,679
Speaker 1: a bit more about a pool. Yeah. In nineteen fifty one,

1232
01:10:08,720 --> 01:10:10,880
Speaker 1: Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the

1233
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 1: Army on psychological warfare while he finished his graduate studies.

1234
01:10:14,680 --> 01:10:17,680
Speaker 1: Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not

1235
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:21,160
Speaker 1: seem overly relevant to politics, but his first sentence had

1236
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:24,160
Speaker 1: discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts

1237
01:10:24,200 --> 01:10:26,839
Speaker 1: of British and Australia, and that the efforts the British

1238
01:10:26,840 --> 01:10:30,040
Speaker 1: and Austrians made to contain Napoleon might be useful in

1239
01:10:30,080 --> 01:10:33,880
Speaker 1: handling the Soviet Union. I might argue, did Napoleon have

1240
01:10:33,960 --> 01:10:36,200
Speaker 1: a way to end all life on earth if things

1241
01:10:36,240 --> 01:10:43,759
Speaker 1: went badly? Was that a factor in them? A sword

1242
01:10:44,439 --> 01:10:47,839
Speaker 1: A Kissinger believes he sees that containment is a failure,

1243
01:10:47,880 --> 01:10:51,320
Speaker 1: which it is because people do not like being colonies. Um.

1244
01:10:51,400 --> 01:10:54,800
Speaker 1: And if the the opposition to being a colony is communism,

1245
01:10:54,840 --> 01:10:57,000
Speaker 1: they'll be like, well, let's try communism. Being a colony

1246
01:10:57,040 --> 01:11:02,519
Speaker 1: seems to suck. Um. Sokissinger sees that containment is a failure. Um,

1247
01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:05,320
Speaker 1: but he also believes believes not that, like, well, why

1248
01:11:05,320 --> 01:11:07,519
Speaker 1: don't we just like let people do things and like

1249
01:11:07,600 --> 01:11:09,439
Speaker 1: just take care of our own ship. He's like, no,

1250
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:13,760
Speaker 1: because containments of failure. War with the Soviet Union is inevitable. Now,

1251
01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:16,200
Speaker 1: in Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the

1252
01:11:16,240 --> 01:11:19,960
Speaker 1: actions of the United States, but is instead quote because

1253
01:11:19,960 --> 01:11:22,679
Speaker 1: of the existence of the United States as a symbol

1254
01:11:22,720 --> 01:11:26,760
Speaker 1: of capitalist democracy. It is literally the early extent of like,

1255
01:11:26,800 --> 01:11:29,880
Speaker 1: well they hate us for our freedom. Yeah, Like that's

1256
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:33,160
Speaker 1: that's that's where he's starting down. Obviously, a lot of

1257
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:34,720
Speaker 1: people are saying ship like this right, this is not

1258
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:37,200
Speaker 1: a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the John Birch Society,

1259
01:11:37,240 --> 01:11:38,840
Speaker 1: all sorts of ships on this period. I don't want

1260
01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:40,960
Speaker 1: to give him too much credit there. It's clear by

1261
01:11:40,960 --> 01:11:44,200
Speaker 1: this point that Henry was going to get into politics. Um.

1262
01:11:44,320 --> 01:11:47,040
Speaker 1: Although law enforcement was a possibility too, because when he

1263
01:11:48,200 --> 01:11:50,479
Speaker 1: gets he starts being a professor at Harvard, right like

1264
01:11:50,560 --> 01:11:52,800
Speaker 1: after he graduates and stuff, he starts like helping out

1265
01:11:52,800 --> 01:11:55,559
Speaker 1: his stuff and teaching some classes. And at one point

1266
01:11:55,560 --> 01:11:59,200
Speaker 1: the school hosts an international seminar, and when he hears

1267
01:11:59,240 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: that like a bunch of foreign academics are coming to Harvard,

1268
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:05,679
Speaker 1: he calls the FBI and volunteers to spy on people

1269
01:12:05,680 --> 01:12:10,559
Speaker 1: for as as. I mean, honestly that it is so

1270
01:12:10,680 --> 01:12:15,120
Speaker 1: amazing with his background to be like to have that attitude.

1271
01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:18,280
Speaker 1: It just is, it really is. It's hard. It's hard

1272
01:12:18,320 --> 01:12:21,960
Speaker 1: to get there. You gotta give him credit. The man

1273
01:12:22,080 --> 01:12:27,640
Speaker 1: covers some ground. Man is a Batman villain. Yeah, so yeah.

1274
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:30,880
Speaker 1: His love of politics and his first attempt to build

1275
01:12:30,880 --> 01:12:34,800
Speaker 1: influence at Harvard is by starting a journal named Confluence. Now,

1276
01:12:34,840 --> 01:12:37,160
Speaker 1: this is ostensibly a journal that exists to create what

1277
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:39,960
Speaker 1: he calls an international forum for discussion. Right, I just

1278
01:12:39,960 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: want to get good people talking from all around the world,

1279
01:12:42,080 --> 01:12:43,559
Speaker 1: you know what the ideas fly. It's like a Ted

1280
01:12:43,640 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 1: Talk kind of pitch. But he's he's really vague about

1281
01:12:47,120 --> 01:12:49,360
Speaker 1: he doesn't really seem to care about what particular discussions

1282
01:12:49,360 --> 01:12:52,280
Speaker 1: he encourages Um, and his critics would later claim that

1283
01:12:52,320 --> 01:12:55,559
Speaker 1: this journal was quote a fake, primarily an enterprise design

1284
01:12:55,640 --> 01:12:59,120
Speaker 1: to make Kissinger known to powerful people. Right, Like he's

1285
01:12:59,120 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 1: just giving let powerful people write articles because then then

1286
01:13:01,840 --> 01:13:03,920
Speaker 1: he gets them and he gets their their phone number. Right,

1287
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 1: it's they're they're mailings. Yeah, he's not working um. Confluence

1288
01:13:09,439 --> 01:13:11,920
Speaker 1: leads to Henry's first mention in the pages of The

1289
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:14,920
Speaker 1: New York Times, and despite what his critics claim, which

1290
01:13:15,000 --> 01:13:17,720
Speaker 1: is probably broadly accurate, the journal did also publish some

1291
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:21,519
Speaker 1: really significant figures, including Reinhold Neighbor and Hannah A. Rent.

1292
01:13:21,840 --> 01:13:24,800
Speaker 1: But while he claimed commitment to free discourse, Kistener had

1293
01:13:24,800 --> 01:13:28,200
Speaker 1: a real tendency to publish right wing ship heads, including

1294
01:13:28,360 --> 01:13:32,360
Speaker 1: Enoch Powell, a conservative British politician famous for comparing immigration

1295
01:13:32,400 --> 01:13:36,240
Speaker 1: to quote rivers of blood. Well, I mean I've always

1296
01:13:36,280 --> 01:13:40,519
Speaker 1: agreed with that. I mean that is like blood rivers.

1297
01:13:40,800 --> 01:13:45,519
Speaker 1: I love a blood river. That's the laziest of rivers. Yeah,

1298
01:13:45,520 --> 01:13:50,560
Speaker 1: because you float real good. Yeah, it's molasses. But that's freedom.

1299
01:13:50,560 --> 01:13:53,439
Speaker 1: If you can, if you can say immigrants are like

1300
01:13:53,439 --> 01:13:57,400
Speaker 1: a river blood, that's the freedom he's talking about. That's

1301
01:13:57,400 --> 01:13:59,360
Speaker 1: the freedom. You want to know what other kinds of

1302
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:04,480
Speaker 1: freedoms he's interested. I'm going to quote from Nile Ferguson

1303
01:14:04,960 --> 01:14:09,439
Speaker 1: from the book Kissinger. Here an article by Ernst von Solomon,

1304
01:14:09,560 --> 01:14:11,880
Speaker 1: a right wing German writer who had been convicted for

1305
01:14:11,920 --> 01:14:15,240
Speaker 1: his role in the assassination of Walter Rathanaw, a German

1306
01:14:15,280 --> 01:14:18,479
Speaker 1: foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an

1307
01:14:18,520 --> 01:14:21,120
Speaker 1: angry letter from Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation, who

1308
01:14:21,160 --> 01:14:24,160
Speaker 1: had provided money from both the International Seminar and the Journal. So,

1309
01:14:24,240 --> 01:14:28,960
Speaker 1: first note, he publishes a guy who's basically pretty close

1310
01:14:29,000 --> 01:14:32,040
Speaker 1: to a Nazi, a far right German terrorist in the

1311
01:14:32,160 --> 01:14:35,559
Speaker 1: in the Weimar years, and it's so upsetting that a

1312
01:14:35,640 --> 01:14:42,519
Speaker 1: representative of the Ford Foundation complaints. I mean, you're crossing

1313
01:14:42,560 --> 01:14:45,840
Speaker 1: that if the Ford Foundation is like, your connection to

1314
01:14:45,920 --> 01:14:49,760
Speaker 1: a Nazi worries me. And that's coming from us, who

1315
01:14:49,880 --> 01:14:54,080
Speaker 1: are really who we are? Like to pfend that. Look,

1316
01:14:54,120 --> 01:14:57,000
Speaker 1: I have the protocols of the Elders of Zion tattooed

1317
01:14:57,000 --> 01:15:00,960
Speaker 1: on my chest. But Ford Foundation and eployees to throw

1318
01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:03,400
Speaker 1: a flag on the play, I'm still flagging the play

1319
01:15:03,520 --> 01:15:15,080
Speaker 1: and are there cars coming OUTA? Yeah? Oh man? So quote.

1320
01:15:15,160 --> 01:15:17,519
Speaker 1: Stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by

1321
01:15:17,520 --> 01:15:20,639
Speaker 1: a criminal and a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told

1322
01:15:20,640 --> 01:15:23,360
Speaker 1: Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for,

1323
01:15:23,479 --> 01:15:27,400
Speaker 1: considering him a damned soul driven by the furies. Demonstrating

1324
01:15:27,400 --> 01:15:30,519
Speaker 1: a remarkable self confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended

1325
01:15:30,600 --> 01:15:33,640
Speaker 1: himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on

1326
01:15:33,680 --> 01:15:35,920
Speaker 1: the side of two great tolerance, partly because I believe

1327
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:39,200
Speaker 1: our readers sufficiently mature to make their own judgments. Kissinger

1328
01:15:39,280 --> 01:15:42,400
Speaker 1: argued that what Solomon represented was a symptom of certain

1329
01:15:42,400 --> 01:15:45,000
Speaker 1: tendencies of our age, but that by appearing in a

1330
01:15:45,040 --> 01:15:48,720
Speaker 1: liberal journal like Confluence, Solomon was the one who was compromised.

1331
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:52,360
Speaker 1: Kissinger was not simply defending free speech. He had solicited

1332
01:15:52,360 --> 01:15:55,599
Speaker 1: the article from Solomon, telling the German about quote, having

1333
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:58,759
Speaker 1: long admired your writings, I could not share your point

1334
01:15:58,800 --> 01:16:03,759
Speaker 1: of view. What so it gets better and more relevant

1335
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:06,600
Speaker 1: to today because when there's an outcry against this. Kissinger

1336
01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:09,360
Speaker 1: writes a letter to his friend Kramer and says, I

1337
01:16:09,400 --> 01:16:13,479
Speaker 1: have now joined you as the cardinal villain in liberal demonology.

1338
01:16:13,479 --> 01:16:17,720
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he's just doing it now. What he's

1339
01:16:17,800 --> 01:16:20,040
Speaker 1: just doing it now? He's got the monocle now too.

1340
01:16:20,479 --> 01:16:24,000
Speaker 1: It's like you're Glenn Greenwald talked to Joe Rogan. Yes,

1341
01:16:24,240 --> 01:16:27,360
Speaker 1: it's like, what the how? How is this still happening?

1342
01:16:28,040 --> 01:16:31,320
Speaker 1: How are you the pioneer of this? Henry Kissinger? How

1343
01:16:31,360 --> 01:16:37,200
Speaker 1: are you the pioneer of this? That's his explanation if

1344
01:16:37,200 --> 01:16:41,760
Speaker 1: you're if you're me just listening to like, Okay, I'm

1345
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:45,400
Speaker 1: not sure what he's saying, but all right, okay, so

1346
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:49,639
Speaker 1: we got to hear from this nazi who shot at Okay,

1347
01:16:49,720 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 1: because alright, is it will anger the lips? As he said,

1348
01:16:53,479 --> 01:16:57,160
Speaker 1: it's cool. And next next month we have ed Gean

1349
01:16:57,360 --> 01:17:00,439
Speaker 1: is doing a little number and Gaine's gonna want us

1350
01:17:00,439 --> 01:17:07,960
Speaker 1: through lamp workings. So and then we're having the Zodiac

1351
01:17:08,040 --> 01:17:13,120
Speaker 1: Killer on to teach us about proper parking technique pentagram.

1352
01:17:15,439 --> 01:17:19,800
Speaker 1: He actually be pretty good at that. Yeah. So once

1353
01:17:19,840 --> 01:17:23,200
Speaker 1: he had finished his dissertation graduated, Henry found himself in

1354
01:17:23,280 --> 01:17:24,840
Speaker 1: need of like a steady guy. He's doing like he

1355
01:17:24,840 --> 01:17:26,240
Speaker 1: wasn't a professor at that point. He was, but he

1356
01:17:26,280 --> 01:17:28,240
Speaker 1: was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to

1357
01:17:28,280 --> 01:17:31,600
Speaker 1: teach whatever. I didn't do a college, so but you

1358
01:17:31,640 --> 01:17:33,960
Speaker 1: know how grad students teach it and stuff, but he

1359
01:17:34,000 --> 01:17:36,280
Speaker 1: wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get

1360
01:17:36,600 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 1: an actual full time job as an assistant professor, but

1361
01:17:39,640 --> 01:17:42,960
Speaker 1: he's not able to because most people don't like Henry Kissinger.

1362
01:17:43,400 --> 01:17:46,960
Speaker 1: I wanted any reason why. A lot of people at

1363
01:17:47,000 --> 01:17:50,400
Speaker 1: Hervard not loving it, not not a huge fan of

1364
01:17:50,479 --> 01:17:56,639
Speaker 1: loving the Nazi publishing. Yeah, they are, they are. They

1365
01:17:56,720 --> 01:18:00,880
Speaker 1: consider him slightly problematic. Drifts for a bit, he's unable

1366
01:18:00,920 --> 01:18:02,519
Speaker 1: to find work, you know, and he's still he's still

1367
01:18:02,520 --> 01:18:04,919
Speaker 1: doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's not not he's

1368
01:18:05,000 --> 01:18:07,080
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of a drift in his career until

1369
01:18:07,120 --> 01:18:10,080
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four he runs into a friend, Arthur

1370
01:18:10,160 --> 01:18:13,800
Speaker 1: Sleshinger Jr. At Harvard. Sleshinger had a letter in his

1371
01:18:13,840 --> 01:18:17,480
Speaker 1: possession from a former Secretary of the Air Force defending Eisenhower.

1372
01:18:17,560 --> 01:18:21,640
Speaker 1: The Eisenhower administration standard of threatening massive retaliation for the

1373
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:24,120
Speaker 1: so to the Soviets. Now, the gist of this idea

1374
01:18:24,160 --> 01:18:27,000
Speaker 1: that the Eisenhower administration really kicked off was that if

1375
01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:29,600
Speaker 1: we promise the Soviets that if there's ever a confrontation,

1376
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:32,000
Speaker 1: we will immediately like send out a world and in

1377
01:18:32,080 --> 01:18:35,200
Speaker 1: hale of nukes. Right, then those lines won't get crossed. Right,

1378
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:36,680
Speaker 1: we won't have any kind of fight at all. If

1379
01:18:36,720 --> 01:18:38,439
Speaker 1: like that, if everyone knows those are the stakes, then

1380
01:18:38,479 --> 01:18:43,559
Speaker 1: nothing will happen. Right, that's the idea. Um. Kitschinger disagrees

1381
01:18:43,600 --> 01:18:46,360
Speaker 1: with this take right, which is reasonable to disagree with. Right,

1382
01:18:46,360 --> 01:18:48,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems with the we will in

1383
01:18:48,080 --> 01:18:51,800
Speaker 1: the world. If there's any kind of issue, he's gonna

1384
01:18:51,840 --> 01:18:57,240
Speaker 1: make it worse. He's gonna make it worse. He shared us.

1385
01:18:58,360 --> 01:19:03,599
Speaker 1: That's exactly what he does, Gareth, because because Kissingers, yeah, well,

1386
01:19:03,600 --> 01:19:05,040
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what he doesn't a bit. But he

1387
01:19:05,160 --> 01:19:07,280
Speaker 1: writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this,

1388
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:10,440
Speaker 1: and he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower.

1389
01:19:10,479 --> 01:19:13,880
Speaker 1: He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller. But every everyone is in

1390
01:19:13,920 --> 01:19:19,720
Speaker 1: this period. Um. When the President rejects Kissinger's analysis, at

1391
01:19:19,760 --> 01:19:23,240
Speaker 1: the advice of John Foster Dullus, Rockefeller resigns and he

1392
01:19:23,280 --> 01:19:26,840
Speaker 1: resigns from his job with the administration, which like temporarily

1393
01:19:26,920 --> 01:19:29,720
Speaker 1: like closes a door to Henry. But the letter that

1394
01:19:29,800 --> 01:19:33,360
Speaker 1: Kissinger had received was well enough, like popular enough among

1395
01:19:33,400 --> 01:19:35,759
Speaker 1: other thinkers in Washington that it earns him a job

1396
01:19:35,800 --> 01:19:38,519
Speaker 1: offer heading a study group at the Council on Foreign

1397
01:19:38,520 --> 01:19:42,679
Speaker 1: Relations studying nuclear weapons and foreign policy. But of course,

1398
01:19:42,800 --> 01:19:46,080
Speaker 1: Henry's problem with massive retaliation wasn't that using nuclear weapons

1399
01:19:46,080 --> 01:19:48,960
Speaker 1: was unconscionable. It was that the world inding nature of

1400
01:19:48,960 --> 01:19:52,080
Speaker 1: the threats the Eisenhower administration was making meant they would

1401
01:19:52,120 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 1: never knew anybody, and Kissinger thought this was a terrible idea.

1402
01:19:55,920 --> 01:19:59,160
Speaker 1: He thought that nuclear weapons should be used tactically to

1403
01:19:59,240 --> 01:20:04,880
Speaker 1: secure battle field victories against the communists. What's happening? He thinks?

1404
01:20:05,439 --> 01:20:07,960
Speaker 1: He thinks it's bad to have nukes and not used them.

1405
01:20:08,000 --> 01:20:13,400
Speaker 1: He's yeah, that's his that's his angle. What in the fuck? Yeah,

1406
01:20:13,439 --> 01:20:16,880
Speaker 1: it's wild that in this argument between if there's a fight,

1407
01:20:16,920 --> 01:20:19,240
Speaker 1: will kill everybody or what if we just try using

1408
01:20:19,320 --> 01:20:22,000
Speaker 1: nukes a little bit to kill everybody, guys have the

1409
01:20:22,040 --> 01:20:29,760
Speaker 1: more reasonable take. I mean, really, you're close, you're close together. Yeah,

1410
01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:35,760
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible. And also, but like again, this is

1411
01:20:35,760 --> 01:20:39,400
Speaker 1: this he's the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration.

1412
01:20:39,640 --> 01:20:42,920
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller is not a right winger who's like, this

1413
01:20:43,000 --> 01:20:45,639
Speaker 1: guy's got some ship going on, you know, we should

1414
01:20:45,640 --> 01:20:48,840
Speaker 1: listen to him. And like he's a lot of people

1415
01:20:48,880 --> 01:20:53,120
Speaker 1: who are not like, you know, hard right dudes are like, yeah,

1416
01:20:53,160 --> 01:20:54,680
Speaker 1: maybe it makes sense. We've got to be using these

1417
01:20:54,680 --> 01:20:57,760
Speaker 1: like tactical nuclear what should the possibility? You know, he

1418
01:20:57,800 --> 01:20:59,839
Speaker 1: makes a good point. He uses smart words and helotes

1419
01:21:01,200 --> 01:21:04,800
Speaker 1: about nuking folks. You've got a lot of words. So

1420
01:21:05,160 --> 01:21:08,440
Speaker 1: that is part one of our epic series Henry Kissinger

1421
01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:13,280
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ dude, maybe become an accountant? Um what a guy.

1422
01:21:14,120 --> 01:21:16,439
Speaker 1: In part two we'll talk about how he gets into power.

1423
01:21:16,520 --> 01:21:18,559
Speaker 1: So that's got to be a hoot for everybody. But

1424
01:21:18,880 --> 01:21:21,240
Speaker 1: I feel like before we do that, you guys, do

1425
01:21:21,240 --> 01:21:23,479
Speaker 1: you guys like do like um like a like a

1426
01:21:23,640 --> 01:21:28,400
Speaker 1: like a giant influential popular podcast that maybe this this

1427
01:21:28,439 --> 01:21:31,519
Speaker 1: podcast is heavily influenced by. Is that something you guys do?

1428
01:21:31,600 --> 01:21:34,000
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Rogan? Yes, yes you are both

1429
01:21:34,080 --> 01:21:42,040
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Right. The Dollar? The Dollar? It is your podcast.

1430
01:21:42,200 --> 01:21:46,760
Speaker 1: We believe, yes that that was that your six part

1431
01:21:46,800 --> 01:21:49,960
Speaker 1: series The Dollars, Why we Need the Nuke people? Go

1432
01:21:50,120 --> 01:21:53,800
Speaker 1: for it. Check out with the Dollar if you have

1433
01:21:53,920 --> 01:21:58,760
Speaker 1: not already. Um, just a very very funny podcast. You

1434
01:21:58,760 --> 01:22:01,160
Speaker 1: guys wouldn't plug anything else before we we roll out

1435
01:22:01,160 --> 01:22:03,200
Speaker 1: into part two. I mean my ears a couple of

1436
01:22:03,200 --> 01:22:09,680
Speaker 1: times during this, but well you can do podcast dot com.

1437
01:22:09,760 --> 01:22:13,040
Speaker 1: We tore all over the place in Australia and uh

1438
01:22:13,240 --> 01:22:16,080
Speaker 1: and domestically soon that will be very exciting. I am

1439
01:22:16,120 --> 01:22:21,240
Speaker 1: exciting toured touring to exist again in our lives. Uh,

1440
01:22:21,479 --> 01:22:26,559
Speaker 1: fingers crossed until part two. Go home and read some

1441
01:22:27,040 --> 01:22:29,760
Speaker 1: Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way

1442
01:22:29,800 --> 01:22:33,400
Speaker 1: that makes you much much worse. Yes, put the monocle

1443
01:22:33,479 --> 01:22:40,400
Speaker 1: in the bad eye. Yeah, all right, Hi everybody. Robert

1444
01:22:40,400 --> 01:22:43,400
Speaker 1: Evans here and my novel After the Revolution is available

1445
01:22:43,439 --> 01:22:46,960
Speaker 1: for pre order now from a k press dot org. Now,

1446
01:22:47,000 --> 01:22:48,880
Speaker 1: if you go to a k press dot org you

1447
01:22:48,880 --> 01:22:51,320
Speaker 1: can find After the Revolution. Just google a k press

1448
01:22:51,360 --> 01:22:53,760
Speaker 1: dot org After the Revolution you'll find a list of

1449
01:22:53,760 --> 01:22:56,680
Speaker 1: participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre

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Speaker 1: order now from either these independent bookstores or from a

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Speaker 1: k us, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book,

1452
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Speaker 1: which I think is pretty cool. You can also preorder

1453
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Speaker 1: it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon

1454
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Speaker 1: or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google

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Speaker 1: a k press after the Revolution um or find an

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Speaker 1: indie bookstore in your area and preorder it. You'll get

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Speaker 1: assigned a copy, and you'll make me very happy.