Speaker 1: Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel After the
Speaker 1: Revolution is available for pre order now from a k
Speaker 1: press dot org. Now, if you go to a k
Speaker 1: press dot org you can find After the Revolution. Just
Speaker 1: google a k press dot org After the Revolution you'll
Speaker 1: find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book.
Speaker 1: And if you pre order now from either these independent
Speaker 1: bookstores or from a k Press, you'll get a custom
Speaker 1: signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You can also preorder it in physical or in kindle
Speaker 1: a form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold.
Speaker 1: So please google a k press after the Revolution um
Speaker 1: or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre
Speaker 1: order it. You'll get assigned a copy and you'll make
Speaker 1: me very happy. Sophie, this plate of behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: is so heavy as we walk through this hallway. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, is that David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds with
Speaker 1: with a with a heavy plate of of the dollarp?
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, I'm losing control. Oh god, you
Speaker 1: guys are slipping too. How was how was that? I
Speaker 1: couldn't disagree more? That was the most organic, just real thing.
Speaker 1: I think I've ever heard that. It was, yeah, like
Speaker 1: you're the only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering how I was wondering as I started it,
Speaker 1: are they going to join in? Or am I going
Speaker 1: to just have to commit fully to this? And now
Speaker 1: that's something where if it's me, I just let you
Speaker 1: go and then let you have I was a dog
Speaker 1: in a yard that wanted to leave it, but I
Speaker 1: was like, I get I'm not supposed to leave, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to join. Oh gosh, well this is this
Speaker 1: is just a wonderful time. Obviously. Again you are Dave
Speaker 1: Anthony Gareth Reynolds, hosts of The Dollarp, the podcast that
Speaker 1: invented being funny about history on the Internet. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for for sitting down with us today.
Speaker 1: Thank you boys. For a long time, I've wanted to
Speaker 1: do something with you so and we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have. This has been like bouncing back
Speaker 1: and forth for a while and it was just one
Speaker 1: of those things where it's like, well, when we finally
Speaker 1: do our six part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going
Speaker 1: to be the worst thing we've ever had to do. Therapy.
Speaker 1: I have a therapy ses right afterwards, Dave married a
Speaker 1: therapist in preparation. That's good, really putting in the deep
Speaker 1: work to make this, to make this series of success. Um.
Speaker 1: So my working title for this, which they probably won't
Speaker 1: let us use, is Henry Kissinger Comma a big sack
Speaker 1: of donkey balls? Um before can we do that? So funny?
Speaker 1: Perfectly fine? What are you talking about? Um? What do
Speaker 1: you guys know? Like I kind of think we may
Speaker 1: be it's a good idea to start with, like, what
Speaker 1: what's your your cliffs notes? We'll have We'll have you
Speaker 1: do it, Dave, because because you're the one who reads
Speaker 1: things normally, I mean I think that's of Kissinger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know Kissinger, the thing that you know obviously stands
Speaker 1: out of Vietnam and camp and Cambodia, and you know
Speaker 1: that's just reprehensible beyond all words. But he's really been
Speaker 1: a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions
Speaker 1: and had his He's always getting in there. He's always
Speaker 1: a part of the business release was. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he is now, but for a long time he
Speaker 1: was always a guy who would come in and go,
Speaker 1: why don't you do the worst thing. Yeah, and that's um,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's that's interesting and even a little
Speaker 1: bit difficult about talking about him because he's not one
Speaker 1: of these guys. He's not like you can't say with
Speaker 1: him like you can without Saddam who's saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: he ordered he started this war on this date, you know,
Speaker 1: or he um, he ordered this man. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can actually, Um, but he's he's not like he's not
Speaker 1: on paper supposed to be a warlord or an elected leader.
Speaker 1: The thing that he is good at doing is getting
Speaker 1: the ability to do stuff that warlords and dictators do
Speaker 1: by sitting in the back rooms with people who are
Speaker 1: the ones who on paper hold the power and convincing
Speaker 1: them to let him do stuff. Um. And he's the
Speaker 1: best at that there's ever been. We've had a couple
Speaker 1: of figures on our podcast who I would relate to like,
Speaker 1: and I would say, maybe Kissinger is like the war
Speaker 1: Crimes Forrest Gump, where it's like it's kind of you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was there, invented shit happens. I don't know that phrase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's incredibly that's that might. I mean, that's honestly
Speaker 1: a better title than I mean, obviously, Forrest Gump is
Speaker 1: blameless and Kissinger is not. But it does get at
Speaker 1: the fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's
Speaker 1: just in every fucking photo of like guys doing a
Speaker 1: war crime. Like it is baffling the number of things
Speaker 1: he's connected to. I should probably just start stop selling it,
Speaker 1: but I do kind of want to talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that he is. He is this kind of back
Speaker 1: room figure in a lot of the worst things that
Speaker 1: happened in the twentieth century. Because we're going to spend
Speaker 1: episode one. By the time this episode is over, he's not,
Speaker 1: you know, in the White House, He's not running shit.
Speaker 1: This is an episode where we talk about like his
Speaker 1: early life and his ideological roots, because that's what that's
Speaker 1: what underpins all of the things that he does. He's
Speaker 1: not a guy people talk about like what Kissinger believes,
Speaker 1: and Kissinger himself has written a bunch of books about
Speaker 1: what he believes. My opinion, as an amateur guy studying
Speaker 1: this dude, is that I don't think he believes things
Speaker 1: as much as he beliefs and ideas are weapons that
Speaker 1: he uses in order to get people to let him
Speaker 1: do horrible things. And he is the master of using
Speaker 1: beliefs and and moving between different groups of people who
Speaker 1: on paper are ideologically opposed and getting them all to
Speaker 1: agree with whatever bullshit he wants to do, because he's
Speaker 1: really good bit talking about ideas like a fucking philosopher,
Speaker 1: Like that's his superpower. They might just have trouble understanding him.
Speaker 1: I know I have whatever. What did we agree to?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I was going to ask Gareth before we
Speaker 1: get started. Here is your German accent locked and loaded?
Speaker 1: I mean, listen as to the disgust of the German people,
Speaker 1: it is. That's fine, that's fine they I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree. After the twentieth century, the Germans lost
Speaker 1: the right to be angry when people That's how It's
Speaker 1: like Texans. You know, everyone can do a Texan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how. I don't think I can. I can make
Speaker 1: any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish,
Speaker 1: and yet can't do English. It's really just sort of
Speaker 1: this amazing ability to see whenever I do a non
Speaker 1: American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point of
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, oh my god, well this is your time.
Speaker 1: Now you can shine with what's going on. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm ready to just yuck it up over
Speaker 1: speaking of which, there's a number of roots of what's
Speaker 1: happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can
Speaker 1: type action. I mean, that's that's a little bit less
Speaker 1: his his the area that he fucked around in, But
Speaker 1: he did some fucking around there. Like one of the things.
Speaker 1: We are spending six episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and
Speaker 1: we're leaving some ship out. Yeah you have to. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's been around so many years. I mean, just the
Speaker 1: fact that he was still paling around with Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: in the election, and you're like, what is that guy
Speaker 1: doing there? Don't you know? He's bad? And and he's
Speaker 1: the thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that
Speaker 1: he he does have this equal He's equally good at
Speaker 1: talking to like people who would call themselves liberals and
Speaker 1: progressives as he is to like far right neo CON's
Speaker 1: like he's he's he's I mean, you could I think
Speaker 1: you could say that part of what that reveals is
Speaker 1: that the ruling class in this country are all in
Speaker 1: agreement about things more often than they disagree about things.
Speaker 1: But part of it is just that, like he is
Speaker 1: so charming. We'll be talking a bit about Kissinger is
Speaker 1: a sex symbol, which is a thing that happens. And
Speaker 1: I am so sorry that we have to discuss it. No,
Speaker 1: I was hoping that he would say this because I've
Speaker 1: wanted I've wanted to funk him for so long, Like
Speaker 1: that's one of the main things. He's hot. Everyone, sucker,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to kiss. Is not enough kiss that's
Speaker 1: just the taste boat. I'm at the boy will a
Speaker 1: b test the Forest Gump and the Fuckinger title, and
Speaker 1: we'll just see what plays best in Poughkeepsie. Um so
Speaker 1: Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on nineteen twenty three in
Speaker 1: the city of firsth Germany. The Kissingers were a Jewish family,
Speaker 1: and so given that this is Germany in the early twenties,
Speaker 1: you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right,
Speaker 1: this is this is not going to be a story
Speaker 1: that begins in a particularly pleasant place. Um. He was
Speaker 1: born in a very chaotic world. The Great Year was
Speaker 1: like five years past when he comes onto the planet.
Speaker 1: Everything is falling apart in Germany and a lot of others.
Speaker 1: The year he's born Primo de Rivera seized power as
Speaker 1: the dictator of Spain Mustafa Kamal took power. In Turkey,
Speaker 1: the Bulgarian prime minister minister was assassinated um in a coup.
Speaker 1: Like it was a troubling time to be a baby.
Speaker 1: But Heinz's mother and father had some reasons for optimism.
Speaker 1: While Firth was not an attractive city. In fact, one
Speaker 1: contemporary described it as stifling and its narrow dreariness are
Speaker 1: unguarden city city of soot Um. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a city, it's city, it's city. It's a working class
Speaker 1: factory town. But because of that, and this is the
Speaker 1: period in which the working class is a lot more
Speaker 1: left wing than you know, folks didn't give it credit
Speaker 1: for being today. Um, it's a very it's like a
Speaker 1: haven for democrats, not like our democrats, but people who
Speaker 1: support democracy is opposed to want to go back to
Speaker 1: having a kaiser you know, Um, so first I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to go back to having a ki was worked
Speaker 1: so good? Yeah, I want to have a king who
Speaker 1: gets us into World War one and like wax off
Speaker 1: about his mom's hands, that sounds great again now that
Speaker 1: I know what we're talking about Let's dance I'm in
Speaker 1: So Firth is in some ways you could see it.
Speaker 1: It's reputation in Germany is being kind of like Portland today.
Speaker 1: It's a very left wing town. It's seen as a
Speaker 1: haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma,
Speaker 1: Alabama during the Civil Rights era because Firth has a
Speaker 1: very large Jewish population and the period and like the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds has win a lot of like there's
Speaker 1: there's essentially a partheight against Jewish people in Germany for
Speaker 1: a long time. So Firth is the city that has
Speaker 1: Germany's first Jewish lawyer, and it has a bunch of
Speaker 1: their other first Jewish you know, X's person who does
Speaker 1: this job. Because it's it's this very progressive city with
Speaker 1: a very integrated Jewish community. So it's this mix of
Speaker 1: the Nazis aren't going to like this town, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Portland. Yeah, it's it's got some similarities between a
Speaker 1: couple of things. So Heinz's parents, Paula and Lewis, had
Speaker 1: grown up in Imperial Germany, where Jews were restricted from
Speaker 1: hold certain jobs, going to certain schools, living in certain homes.
Speaker 1: And this had ended by the time the Kaiser had
Speaker 1: so Lewis Kissinger, Henry's dad Kim of Agent, a period
Speaker 1: in which a Jewish boy could actually build a professional
Speaker 1: life for the first time in mainstream German society. He
Speaker 1: was a member of the first and almost the last
Speaker 1: generation that this would be true of Um, what happens,
Speaker 1: oh day, we may need to do it a separate podcast. Seriously,
Speaker 1: never read any German history, Oh my, kind of exciting.
Speaker 1: So he starts work Lewis as a teacher in a
Speaker 1: secular private school when he's eighteen, and he holds the
Speaker 1: job for fourteen years. And he was a very patriotic person. Um,
Speaker 1: he's he's also like he has an Orthodox jew so
Speaker 1: he's very religious, but he considers himself a German first
Speaker 1: and foremost, and his family is very patriotic. His brother
Speaker 1: fights in World War One, so does his wife's dad.
Speaker 1: Two of his cousins die fighting for the Kaiser. And
Speaker 1: when the war ins in German defeat. You know, there's
Speaker 1: all these rumors spread throughout the far right that the
Speaker 1: nation has been stabbed in the back by an alliance
Speaker 1: of Jewish boogeman um hinz or sorry, Louis kind of
Speaker 1: he sees this as happening, but he doesn't think that
Speaker 1: it's ever going to like take hold. He's Henry would
Speaker 1: later recalled that his father would regularly say, we live
Speaker 1: in an age of tolerance. So his dad is not right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Are you talking about America? Are you talking Germany? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are talking about this on the day that Texas
Speaker 1: just announced a fun new Um. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is like, you know, Henry is wrong about a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a
Speaker 1: much sadder recent because there was a psychic Jane in
Speaker 1: the family. I see us being tolerant for generation. Germany
Speaker 1: will be a watchword for tolerance. We would be a
Speaker 1: beast gent for all types. Oh poor buddy. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's Uh, it's interesting because like the Zionist movement
Speaker 1: is rising in this time and Kissinger's family rejects this
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly because they're so aman right. Um, like they don't
Speaker 1: they don't want to ever leave. Um. So obviously, the
Speaker 1: Nazi party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially
Speaker 1: safe from this. Just a few months after Hines is
Speaker 1: born in September of twenty three, the Nazis and other
Speaker 1: far right organizations hold a German Day in Nuremberg. Several
Speaker 1: caravans of them passed through Firth, sort of like Nazis
Speaker 1: do today in a lot of places. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know they were looking for a fight when they drove through.
Speaker 1: They went through first because it's the town where you
Speaker 1: can get a fight, and they got one. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is like right after Hinton he is born, a mob
Speaker 1: of brown Shirts are assaulted by a hundred strong crowd screaming,
Speaker 1: killed him and down with Hitler, which is let's end
Speaker 1: the story. It's a great and there's the tale of
Speaker 1: Henry kissing Jeris a kid who was a baby when
Speaker 1: some dudes did some rad stuff. Um. So Firth was
Speaker 1: integrated enough that Hines initially attended a public school with
Speaker 1: Christian classmates, which was not common for Jewish kids in
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, he's like going to school with with
Speaker 1: other like kids who are not Jewish. Um. Eventually his
Speaker 1: dad puts him in his private school, but that's also
Speaker 1: an integrated private school. So while his education is secular
Speaker 1: her family, his family's very strict Orthodox. He attended Hebrew school,
Speaker 1: which he hated. I found a quote from another Jewish
Speaker 1: guy who grew up in Firth at the same time.
Speaker 1: That gives an idea as to why Henry was not
Speaker 1: a big fan of his early religious education. Quote. Religion
Speaker 1: was a study and not a pleasant one, a lesson
Speaker 1: taught soulless lye by a soulless old man. Even the
Speaker 1: day I see his evil conceded old face in my dreams.
Speaker 1: He thrashed formulas into us, antiquated Hebrew prayers that we
Speaker 1: translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language. What
Speaker 1: he taught was paltry, dead, mummified, and that I think
Speaker 1: is broadly in line with how Henry feels because he's not.
Speaker 1: He doesn't grow up very religious. So Henry is as
Speaker 1: is a little kid, you know, he does a lot
Speaker 1: of religion stuff. But as he grows older he rejects
Speaker 1: his father's passion for faith um and his dad's interests
Speaker 1: in classical music and theater. Instead, Henry Kissinger falls in
Speaker 1: love with soccer. He is a huge soccer head. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: um Firth has like a locally renowned team. They're one
Speaker 1: of the best teams in Germany, and so like their
Speaker 1: kids teams which are feeders into this whatever team are
Speaker 1: very competitive to Henry starts playing in a youth league
Speaker 1: when he's six years old. Um, and he later recalled quote,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really very good, though I took the game seriously.
Speaker 1: But what about soccer? We should talk about that. Sorry.
Speaker 1: So his real prowess early on was in strategy, as
Speaker 1: this quote from Nile Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger
Speaker 1: Like the Guy, makes clear the no great athlete Heinz
Speaker 1: Kissinger was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team
Speaker 1: a system that, as he as it turns out, is
Speaker 1: the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to
Speaker 1: drive the other team nuts by not letting them score
Speaker 1: by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to score when ten players are lined up in
Speaker 1: front of the goal. So immediately Henry Kissinger as a kid,
Speaker 1: is like, you know what, we'll help us win and
Speaker 1: also make this game no fun at all. Yeah, Henry,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Fire bombs er? I know
Speaker 1: we are six, but we will park the bus. There
Speaker 1: will be no joy in soccer. Remove the keeper's hands.
Speaker 1: He is he is, as a six year old doing
Speaker 1: the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so
Speaker 1: into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and
Speaker 1: his father actually banns him from playing for a while. Um.
Speaker 1: The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts
Speaker 1: with his dad. So I thing that no one else
Speaker 1: has ever experienced. Um and Yeah, he would regularly, after
Speaker 1: fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of
Speaker 1: a friend who later recalled he liked he liked being
Speaker 1: with us. It seems to me he had a problem
Speaker 1: with his father, if I'm not mistaken, he was afraid
Speaker 1: of him because he was a very pedantic man. His
Speaker 1: father was always checking Hines his homework and kept a
Speaker 1: close watch on him. Hines told me more than once
Speaker 1: that he didn't discuss anything with his father, especially not girls.
Speaker 1: So his dad's not like hitting him or anything. He's
Speaker 1: just like really really annoying to him, and just like,
Speaker 1: just like, pay attention to your studies beyond anything else.
Speaker 1: Like I think I like this girl, Like, well she doesn't.
Speaker 1: She's not going to the same school. The focus handed
Speaker 1: it focus. Yeah, and he's clearly a dick who's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't be a professional soccer player eight
Speaker 1: you have to go to school, like he's clearly an asshole.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean he's definitely the villain of the story,
Speaker 1: no doubt, no doubt. So Henry is magnetic to women
Speaker 1: from a well girls at this point, from a very
Speaker 1: young age. But the funk is happening. I know, it's
Speaker 1: really weird. It's weird. And this is the quotes about
Speaker 1: you know, girls really liking him at this age come
Speaker 1: from his father. But like, this also happens when he's
Speaker 1: in his forties and the secretary of State. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to say his father is probably telling the truth.
Speaker 1: I mean, at no point have I seen any version
Speaker 1: of Henry kissing very like man. I mean, it's weird.
Speaker 1: That's got memory hold because there were there were New
Speaker 1: York Times stories about how much women like her because
Speaker 1: he looks like a lump of clay you could mold
Speaker 1: into anything potentially that would be good. No, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: but it's it's weird. I mean, yeah, he's the guy like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of the things he said about
Speaker 1: sexuality later. Um, I know you're all getting real excited
Speaker 1: for that episode. Yeah. Yeah. At one point one of
Speaker 1: his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with
Speaker 1: him because he had quote earned a reputation as a
Speaker 1: skirt chaser. And this is like when he's nine, little
Speaker 1: little Henry come Rocket Kissinger. The first time I sex
Speaker 1: was nine, So you know, like at this point, he's
Speaker 1: rebelling against the family religion, he's hanging out with girls,
Speaker 1: he's playing a hell of a lot of soccer um,
Speaker 1: which seems like a decent childhood. But obviously you know
Speaker 1: the Nazis. So in the mid twenties, the German nation
Speaker 1: goes on strike against some ship fans was doing Versailles stuff.
Speaker 1: We don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right,
Speaker 1: this is the wheelbarrows full of cash time. Um. This
Speaker 1: hurts the Kissinger family badly because if you're like, if
Speaker 1: you're a private laborer, if you're working for a private company,
Speaker 1: you can generally like strike and organize to get your
Speaker 1: salary adjusted to deal with inflation somewhat like it's still bad,
Speaker 1: but it's less bad. If you're a public servant, you
Speaker 1: don't get ship, your salary stays the same while inflation
Speaker 1: jumps up. So this is really a disaster for the
Speaker 1: Kissing Singer family. And of course economic trouble coincides with
Speaker 1: a constant acceleration of far right violence. Later as an adult,
Speaker 1: Kissinger would note without emotion that he was somewhat regularly
Speaker 1: chased through the streets and beaten up by Nazi thugs
Speaker 1: as a child. Um, yeah, that's tough. No punch lines, no,
Speaker 1: no punch lines. But there is something weird about that.
Speaker 1: Because he's talked about this a few times, but everything
Speaker 1: time he talks about this, it is so that he
Speaker 1: can emphatically state that this part of his life had
Speaker 1: no impact on him. Yeah, it's you're really weird. It's
Speaker 1: very strict, literal impact of fists had no impact upon him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, he declared, quote, my life and
Speaker 1: firth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions.
Speaker 1: You don't get to say that, by the way, that
Speaker 1: you don't like, I feel like you don't. I feel
Speaker 1: like I said that to a shrink once about my
Speaker 1: parents divorce and then wept. I didn't do anything. What's this?
Speaker 1: What's this coming out of it? And it's like Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, when discussing the times he was
Speaker 1: beaten in the streets by Nazis. He insisted to a
Speaker 1: reporter quote that part of my childhood was not a
Speaker 1: key to anything. I was not consciously unhappy. I was
Speaker 1: not acutely aware of what was going on for children.
Speaker 1: These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now
Speaker 1: to explain everything psychoanalytically. But let me tell you, the
Speaker 1: political persecutions of my childhood are not what control my life,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. Right and so I know, right,
Speaker 1: like I'm sure the reporter is like, I'm ready to
Speaker 1: ask follow ups whatever he stops talking. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to remember anyway. I mean, I wouldn't. That's how I
Speaker 1: can kill I went not at nine. I don't feel anything.
Speaker 1: It is It's like, you know, I got assaulted by
Speaker 1: a Nazi when I was thirty three, and it left
Speaker 1: a market any but any time, it's just growing up
Speaker 1: in that environment without being assaulted is going to leave
Speaker 1: psychological damage. If your parents you completely safe from street violence,
Speaker 1: it would it could not. Yeah, It's like, Henry, this
Speaker 1: is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you.
Speaker 1: But it's fine. If being beaten by Nazis is a
Speaker 1: child left a market, it's the only time you want
Speaker 1: to Matt damon him with Robin Williams are, yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's okay, many, Um, It's interesting the way he explain,
Speaker 1: the ways he explains why this didn't leave any mark
Speaker 1: on him are very interesting. And I want to quote
Speaker 1: from Henry Kissinger in two thousand four. Now, I experienced
Speaker 1: the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but
Speaker 1: it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people
Speaker 1: of my age, so that I did not find it traumatic.
Speaker 1: I have resisted the psychiatric explanations which argue that I
Speaker 1: developed a passion for order over justice and that I
Speaker 1: translated it into profound interpretations of the international system. I
Speaker 1: wasn't concerned with the international system. I was concerned with
Speaker 1: the standing of the football team of the town in
Speaker 1: which I lived, which, like, you can't do both. You
Speaker 1: can't pay attention to soccer. Obviously, as as a no
Speaker 1: one thinks Henry that as an eight year old you
Speaker 1: were like, well, this is going to impact the way
Speaker 1: that I believe state power should be used. What I'm
Speaker 1: Secretary of State in several decades, I'm gonna just like
Speaker 1: if you have a car accident as a kid, you're
Speaker 1: not thinking, well, this is going to make me unable
Speaker 1: to let other people touch me when I'm thirty three,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'll hate I'll hate freeway merging like
Speaker 1: like obviously man, and I don't know, like there's a
Speaker 1: degree to which in terms of this is the period
Speaker 1: in which you can be sympathetic to him. I do
Speaker 1: think there's probably something to be said that if you
Speaker 1: have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the
Speaker 1: Nazis anything, you know, even the like this left an
Speaker 1: impact on me, right because like funck him, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that it had an influence on me,
Speaker 1: which I get. No having grown up in a traumatic
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of childhood. You can shut it
Speaker 1: down and tell yourself that you're fine, like you he
Speaker 1: The way he survived it was to to shut his
Speaker 1: emotions down a little bit and tell him self that
Speaker 1: he was fine when it actually is by far probably
Speaker 1: the most traumatic thing there and and created a fucking
Speaker 1: monster because he didn't get any psychological help. Naturally, it
Speaker 1: did not nature versus nurture. I would have killed just
Speaker 1: as many people if despicable piece of ship. Either way,
Speaker 1: don't judge my family. So as the twenties rolled to
Speaker 1: an end. The political situation in the Weimar Republic gets
Speaker 1: correspondingly more dire. In nineteen twenty five, during a Nazi
Speaker 1: rally and Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel
Speaker 1: of the Jews. The local response at that point in
Speaker 1: twenty five is overwhelmingly negative, and in nineteen twenty seven
Speaker 1: only two hundred people in Firth were members of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. Hitler visited the city again in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: to little effect. The party just got six point six
Speaker 1: percent of the vote in local elections that year. But
Speaker 1: the Great Depression rescues the end of the twenties rescues
Speaker 1: the Nazis flagging poll members. As first economy collapses, people
Speaker 1: grow more willing to listen to the fascists. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty elections, Nazis surged from two point six percent
Speaker 1: of the vote nationwide to eighteen point three percent. In
Speaker 1: first they won twenty three point six percent of the vote,
Speaker 1: which is four times better than they've done two years
Speaker 1: earlier and very frightening for a lot of relevant reasons.
Speaker 1: To today. Um yeah uh. Nazis electoral successes continue to
Speaker 1: pace the next year and by nineteen thirty three, more
Speaker 1: than two were Nazi voters. I want to quote from
Speaker 1: Nil Ferguson's book again. On April ninth, ninety two, fifteen
Speaker 1: s A men were set upon by Iron Front members
Speaker 1: as they left the pro Nazi Yellow Lion pub. Two
Speaker 1: months later, Nazi supporter Fritz reine Gruber was beaten up
Speaker 1: for being a swastikist. The same fate Befell another Nazi
Speaker 1: caught selling the n s d AP newspaper the Vocabeo Bactor.
Speaker 1: The police watched helplessly on the evening of July thirty
Speaker 1: as a mob through potatoes and stones at a Nazi
Speaker 1: motorcade going from the First Airport to the Nuremberg Stadium.
Speaker 1: The car carrying Hitler himself was among the vehicles. But
Speaker 1: just a year after, Hitler's car gets pelted. After the
Speaker 1: Nazis begin to consolidate power, when Hitler's the Chancellor, the
Speaker 1: mood is very different. On March three, there's another torchlit
Speaker 1: parade by the Nazis through Firth, and on the evening
Speaker 1: of March nine, a crowd of between ten and twelve
Speaker 1: thousand people's gathers outside one of the bars there to
Speaker 1: watch the raising of the red Nazi flag. Um, so
Speaker 1: you know it gets bad pretty fast. Can I just
Speaker 1: flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock
Speaker 1: throwing event? Yeah? I feel like he turned first. Yeah
Speaker 1: we're doing rocks. Oh I know that was a drawing
Speaker 1: of a rock. Don't look like potatoes? Al good lord?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna say it right now. If
Speaker 1: that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler.
Speaker 1: Could we could have avoided the guy for want of
Speaker 1: a rock? World War two? Oh you guys, see my
Speaker 1: potato hit that car. It really smushed it. I do
Speaker 1: left the idea that he also boiled it before. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to look weird. So Louis Kissinger lost
Speaker 1: his job teaching once the Nazis came to power. Henry, again,
Speaker 1: who had never gotten along with his dad, watches his
Speaker 1: father collapse into what biographer Thomas Alan Schwartz describes as
Speaker 1: a quote state of immobility and psychological depression. Lewis withdrew
Speaker 1: into his study, according to Henry's brother Walter, while the
Speaker 1: world outside veered closer to nightmare. In his book, Henry
Speaker 1: Kissinger and American Power, Schwartz writes, Kissinger and his brothers
Speaker 1: saw the progressive segregation, isolation and humiliation the Jews of
Speaker 1: Firth experienced. Even their attempt to watch soccer games came
Speaker 1: with the risk of their being beaten by the young
Speaker 1: Nazi thugs. The world of Heinz's childhood rapidly collapsed, and
Speaker 1: his parents and the older generation of First Jews could
Speaker 1: not protect their young from the hatred around them. After
Speaker 1: the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: Kissinger's mother began to look for a way to leave Germany.
Speaker 1: A cousin in the United States was willing to provide
Speaker 1: the financial support that would allow the Kissingers to immigrate.
Speaker 1: In August and of nineteen thirty eight, after a last
Speaker 1: visit with Paula's elderly parents in Ludershausen, where Heinz saw
Speaker 1: his father cry for the first time, the family headed
Speaker 1: to New York. Only three months later, during Christal Knocht,
Speaker 1: the synagogue and Firth, like hundreds of others throughout Germany,
Speaker 1: burned to the ground in a night of orchestrated violence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that is when Henry leaves first. There are
Speaker 1: two thousand Jews in the Jewish community at the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two, there are forty Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: three months is so, I mean, that is fairly mean.
Speaker 1: That's like they stay as late as they possibly came. Um.
Speaker 1: At least thirteen members of Kissinger's family would perish in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, obviously, it being what it is. I don't
Speaker 1: know that you can it's easy. It's not super easy
Speaker 1: to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as
Speaker 1: devastated as you would expect of a German Jewish family.
Speaker 1: And he does acknowledge for the first time, he likes it,
Speaker 1: admits that like some part of this had an influence
Speaker 1: on him. It was moving away from Germany and like
Speaker 1: going across the world to the United States. Um. And
Speaker 1: he says, and this is I think him being somewhat honest,
Speaker 1: that the deepest impact of all this was quote, all
Speaker 1: the things that had seemed secure and stable collapsed, and
Speaker 1: many of the people that once had that one had
Speaker 1: considered the steady examples suddenly were thrown into a enormous
Speaker 1: turmoil themselves and into fantastic insecurities. People will say, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this later. He's very much an order obsessed guy,
Speaker 1: and like Okay, yeah, I get it, Like I get
Speaker 1: where that came from, you know, um yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's very common for that happened in you know, Chile
Speaker 1: and other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: They there's a lot of people who are like I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be the same. Yeah, well, and yeah
Speaker 1: you hear that all the time here too. I mean,
Speaker 1: not not like that. Obviously, it's far It was far
Speaker 1: more dire. But there are a lot of people I
Speaker 1: know who keep saying that ship here, who keep being
Speaker 1: like I just wanted to go back to normal, and
Speaker 1: you're just like that ship that's sucking sale. That is
Speaker 1: not you know, yeah, it never does, it never can,
Speaker 1: but we all do it. Like even the kind of
Speaker 1: like obsession with nineties nostalgia is evidence of that, and
Speaker 1: not because the nineties were like a perfect time, but
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, you didn't. You weren't aware of how
Speaker 1: fun like like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into
Speaker 1: like and unable to handle him just like look, it's
Speaker 1: too aggressive and like oh my god, we don't have money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you went from oh my gosh, you know, um, the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson trial, what a mess? Too. Well, now a plague
Speaker 1: has killed a million people. Oh my god, it's Arry.
Speaker 1: Better give me that time capsule. It's it's so funny
Speaker 1: that parallels because I'm I literally am writing a dollar
Speaker 1: right now, and and the guy turns into nor authoritarian
Speaker 1: and his dad shut himself in his house and isolated.
Speaker 1: It's it's so weird how these things if you, i mean,
Speaker 1: just to continue off of that, Dave hit, there's dad
Speaker 1: dies when he's a little kid, pluges the family finances
Speaker 1: in situation and insecurity and chaos. Yeah, yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: when when something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses,
Speaker 1: perhaps it has an influence. Yes, despite what Kissinger said,
Speaker 1: Despite what Kissinger said, but you know what, Henry Kissinger
Speaker 1: loves the products and services that support this podcast. Look,
Speaker 1: Henry is one of the few v I p s
Speaker 1: on its island where you can hunt children anytime he wants.
Speaker 1: He gets a free three bedroom apartment on the child
Speaker 1: hunting Island. Sophie. That yeah, because for some fucking reason
Speaker 1: he is still alive. Yes, well, let's be honest here.
Speaker 1: This is essentially as eulogy because when we finished this
Speaker 1: podcast and it's published, Kissinger should die. It's possible. I'm
Speaker 1: planning a dark occult ritual using my own blood and
Speaker 1: a candle I bought in Mexico to deals like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say I'm not doing it, you know. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: here's here's some ads. Ah, we're back. Have you guys
Speaker 1: gone to the island where you can hunt little kids?
Speaker 1: First sports? It's amazing. It's also fresh. It's very the brisk,
Speaker 1: expecting to be that fresh. So good. Um. So Kissinger
Speaker 1: today has I sofish just shaker. Kissinger today has idyllic
Speaker 1: recollections of his early years in the United States. He
Speaker 1: often talks about walking down the streets of his new neighborhood,
Speaker 1: seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing
Speaker 1: the street because he's, you know, he's afraid he's going
Speaker 1: to get beata like um. And then he would realize like, oh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen here, which obviously, yeah, he's just wearing
Speaker 1: brown shirts because they like brown. Yeah, Henry, this is
Speaker 1: a country where some people who wear brown aren't Nazis.
Speaker 1: Some of them are, some of them are, Henry. Um.
Speaker 1: Different did not mean easy. Though the Kissinger spent their
Speaker 1: first years in a crowded Bronx apartment living with family,
Speaker 1: Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to
Speaker 1: take control of the family and handle ship. She became
Speaker 1: a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline.
Speaker 1: The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish
Speaker 1: families with a familiar background. A lot of them were
Speaker 1: from other parts of Germany, and so the Kissingers benefited
Speaker 1: from the help of several community organizations and getting back
Speaker 1: on their feet. He he benefits a lot from the
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, there's not really a government support network,
Speaker 1: but the other Jewish refugees who have come over from
Speaker 1: Europe um have built support networks to make it easier
Speaker 1: for new folks coming um. Henry's teen years were a
Speaker 1: mix of school in synagogue. He failed his first driving
Speaker 1: test but excelled at soccer, and he grew to admire
Speaker 1: many aspects of his new home, including quote American technology,
Speaker 1: the American tempo of work, and American freedom, which I
Speaker 1: might say is in direct opposition to the American tempo
Speaker 1: of work. But whatever um Kissinger was frustrated to the
Speaker 1: though by the casual approach to life that he saw
Speaker 1: in his new peers, um he thought they were super.
Speaker 1: He wrote at the time that quote, no youth my
Speaker 1: age has any kind of spiritual problem that he seriously
Speaker 1: concerns himself with, which, well, yeah, okay, Henry, al right,
Speaker 1: Hank Fair. I like, if you come over from Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany and you're like people here seem carefree and shallow.
Speaker 1: Probably yeah, and your schooling was basically like some old
Speaker 1: dude being like you didn't read this right, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna be like, jeez, these guys are really
Speaker 1: not focused on what matters. Yeah. Look, maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to be too critical, but
Speaker 1: New York could use a little bit of Nazism, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's good lord. So because of
Speaker 1: all of this, um, this is this is why one
Speaker 1: of his biographers, Schwartz, describes young Henry as socially inept.
Speaker 1: He's not not great at talking, too, He's not great
Speaker 1: at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again, though,
Speaker 1: first a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: but most of his focus was on schoolwork in soccer, Kass,
Speaker 1: since you graduated, George Washington high school and started at
Speaker 1: the City College of New York. He took classes at
Speaker 1: night so he could work during the day at a
Speaker 1: brush cleaning factory. Some of his cousins owned these brushes
Speaker 1: fail They've always keep going. It's the most amazing like
Speaker 1: old timey job. Ever, it's basically like all I can picture.
Speaker 1: It is just like the jobs are either like pressing
Speaker 1: sheets or washing brushes. These brushes, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: claim themselves, gentlemen, how many times do I have to
Speaker 1: tell you? Well, in the corollarya is some mom being like, Billy,
Speaker 1: you didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. Now,
Speaker 1: it's very funny. Um, everything old timey is funny. People
Speaker 1: are going to think this in the future about I
Speaker 1: don't know, having water. So at this point him Rey's
Speaker 1: ambition in life was to get quote a nice job,
Speaker 1: likely in accounting. One biographer noted, quote nothing that happened
Speaker 1: to Kissinger during those years encouraged him to read more widely.
Speaker 1: His historical interests were as underdeveloped when he was twenty
Speaker 1: as when he arrived in New York as a boy
Speaker 1: of fifteen, which is the first normal thing about him
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, dude, he's you're you know whatever, like
Speaker 1: he's a kid. Yeah, we're about to get to the
Speaker 1: studio fifty four years. I feel like, yes, So World
Speaker 1: War two happens, um starts for the United States at
Speaker 1: least it started elsewhere earlier, but for for the US, Right,
Speaker 1: we'll do it ye when Henry is twenty one. Um.
Speaker 1: He did not initially feel called to volunteer for service,
Speaker 1: but when he got his draft notice in nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: he complied and joined the roughly sixteen million Americans who
Speaker 1: became soldiers during this period. And if it weren't for this,
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger probably never would have been a figure of
Speaker 1: historical importance. Again, he just kind of wanted to be
Speaker 1: an accountant, but being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for
Speaker 1: a quiet, boring life and thrust him into the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not maybe don't draft this guy, right, I
Speaker 1: did not actually see your venmo this year, so the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a future where he just has really strong opinions
Speaker 1: on W two's Yeah, exactly nine, But I feel like
Speaker 1: it was actually more like W four or he does
Speaker 1: like a Bernie made Off thing. But either way, it's
Speaker 1: a much better feature than the one we got. We'll
Speaker 1: take the maide off ending for him for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: So we have letters that Henry sent to his brother
Speaker 1: Walter during training. He purported to like the quote middle
Speaker 1: Americans he met there, but warned his sibling, don't become
Speaker 1: too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there. He
Speaker 1: did pick up, he did pick up a little something
Speaker 1: from the Nazis. He's a little bit right, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: He also he also advised against having sex with the
Speaker 1: quote filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific
Speaker 1: to have been random. I think the Kissinger had a
Speaker 1: bad experience with the camp follow Everyone at camp as syphilis.
Speaker 1: Every girl I had syphilis, one girl that syphilis. Every
Speaker 1: one of them has it. That's why they zero of
Speaker 1: the syphilis epidemics. You're surrounded by counselors. So the Army
Speaker 1: administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and
Speaker 1: he earned entrance into a special training program that sent
Speaker 1: particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three while he was at Lafayette College
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months, and Henry
Speaker 1: and Henry finished twelve engineering classes. During his off hours,
Speaker 1: he would hitchhike home and see his girlfriend. He was
Speaker 1: a brilliant student, recognized by his roommates as the quote
Speaker 1: brainiest of a very intelligent class. One classmate recalled he
Speaker 1: didn't read books. He ate them with his eyes, his fingers,
Speaker 1: and with his squirming in the chair or bed, with
Speaker 1: his mumbling criticisms. More salt if I would be other
Speaker 1: than the sounds like a book. This is really a
Speaker 1: weird way to describe it, dude. It's kind of what
Speaker 1: but the way it looks now is like he eats books.
Speaker 1: What had like a visual like reaction to that, to
Speaker 1: that line, like I kind of want the story of
Speaker 1: that classmate. Like caused you to describe a dude reading
Speaker 1: books that way? Well, in my college, I ate analogies
Speaker 1: and I just would just just devour them. I eat
Speaker 1: him like a synonym, you know. Um. His professors would
Speaker 1: use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers,
Speaker 1: and for a brief period of time, he had status
Speaker 1: and respect, which he'd begun to crave as a young man.
Speaker 1: His time in this program was cut short because you know,
Speaker 1: D day we decide America's like, we're going to do
Speaker 1: us a normandy landing, and the army is like, well,
Speaker 1: we probably don't need smart people for that, So let's
Speaker 1: police kids out of the class and shine how to
Speaker 1: get shot by guys actually want to talk to you
Speaker 1: over here about something totally different. No, no, not you,
Speaker 1: not you, Chad. You stay right there, Chad talking about
Speaker 1: these other guys. Thank you. Good luck. So Henry and
Speaker 1: his classmates get sent back to basic training with a
Speaker 1: drill sergeants. According to Henry took glee and tormenting the
Speaker 1: college kids, um, which I don't know, probably true while
Speaker 1: he was preparing to go overseas. And this is what
Speaker 1: my grandpa was doing in World War Two. And I
Speaker 1: hope peoplelied Henry Kissinger. I hope my grandpa got a
Speaker 1: chance to give Henry Kissinger's some ship. Did he did?
Speaker 1: He did, absolutely so, while he was preparing to go overseas,
Speaker 1: his biographer Schwartz rights, even in the misery of Camp Claiborne, however,
Speaker 1: Kissinger stood out. Selected by his commanders to provide soldiers
Speaker 1: with a weekly briefing on war news. Although he did
Speaker 1: the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older
Speaker 1: German refugee in an American uniform Fritz Kramer, who came
Speaker 1: to Camp Claiborne in May nineteen forty four to speak
Speaker 1: about the meaning of war. After Kramer's in passion talk,
Speaker 1: Kissinger wrote him a note, Dear Private Kramer, I heard
Speaker 1: sorry basically yeah, he literally like it's like I liked
Speaker 1: what you had to say. Can I help you something like?
Speaker 1: It's it's literally what the note is scared Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Kramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter, returning
Speaker 1: a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation
Speaker 1: and dinner, insistently speak in German, not English. The Lutheran
Speaker 1: Kramer later said that he was taken with this quote
Speaker 1: little Jewish refugee he had met, who he believed as
Speaker 1: yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting way to describe him. It sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this guy Kramer is um. Kramer is a Prussian,
Speaker 1: which I don't know the degree to which that that
Speaker 1: means anything to a lot people, the Prussians. So there
Speaker 1: was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from
Speaker 1: the left. Once the Nazi has gotten to power, the
Speaker 1: resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian, not
Speaker 1: because they were good dudes, but because they were way
Speaker 1: too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we want
Speaker 1: to fight on take over all of Europe, but like
Speaker 1: with a kaiser who has royal blood, not this like
Speaker 1: gross little corporal and stuff. And it's complicated because like
Speaker 1: a lot of those Prussians got murdered by the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and as a general rule, your sympathy is with the
Speaker 1: people who get murdered by the Nazis, but it's also like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got murdered by the Razi Nazis for the wrong
Speaker 1: recent's yeah. They were like, we have one small note,
Speaker 1: but everything else is working great for They were the
Speaker 1: guys who were like Hitler's bad because he's not going
Speaker 1: to win the war against Russia. Okay, So this guy,
Speaker 1: Fritz Kramer would be, in Henry's words quote, the greatest
Speaker 1: single influence on my formative years, since Fritz was a
Speaker 1: Prussian conservative. So an idea of how fucking German Fritz
Speaker 1: Kramer is. He wears a uncle to make his wife
Speaker 1: I work harder, to make his weak eye work, Like,
Speaker 1: my god, I'm the craziest asshole. Ever, and you know,
Speaker 1: Fritz hated the Nazis, which good good. He also hated
Speaker 1: the Communists, which you have to think there was some
Speaker 1: some some some stuff there. Um, you know, Communists as
Speaker 1: a mixed bag like everybody, but I don't think he's
Speaker 1: very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits Fritz with expressing
Speaker 1: quote a respect for international law and emphasis on the
Speaker 1: moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by
Speaker 1: the moral basis of civilization is not the same as
Speaker 1: what I think maybe you or I might mean, yeah
Speaker 1: now that Yeah. I think the most important influence Kramer
Speaker 1: had was he's Kramer is very conservative, and he Henry
Speaker 1: is kind of a natural conservative. And Kramer really reinforces
Speaker 1: this feeling in Henry, which is rest by a growing
Speaker 1: sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of
Speaker 1: the political median right. Um, which you get why he
Speaker 1: has a tendency towards this. If your life, if your
Speaker 1: childhood is this like battle of extremes in your hometown,
Speaker 1: I get why you would kind of veer towards the middle.
Speaker 1: And this guy, Cramer really turns that up to eleven
Speaker 1: in him. One right up in the New Yorker notes
Speaker 1: quote he warrant Kissinger not to emulate cleverling intellectuals and
Speaker 1: their bloodless cost benefit analyzes. Believing Kissinger to be musically
Speaker 1: attuned to history, he told him, only if you do
Speaker 1: not calculate, will you really have the freedom which distinguishes
Speaker 1: you from the little people. So that's bad. So that's
Speaker 1: gonna go really bad. I mean you really are like,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is his Morpheus. We're just starting to
Speaker 1: be like, okay, this is by the way, have you
Speaker 1: thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going
Speaker 1: with the Wand that is so much like punish your
Speaker 1: weak eye. You much punished a week, even when it
Speaker 1: comes to your eyes. Yeah, yeah, he is. He has
Speaker 1: found a kid who like has problematic history of starting
Speaker 1: fires and is now teaching him how to build a
Speaker 1: fertilizer bob. Yeah, he's a bad influence matches so so,
Speaker 1: but have you ever seen a zippo? Yeah? Great. So
Speaker 1: Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the eighty four
Speaker 1: Entrant Infantry Division as it moves towards Nazi europe Um.
Speaker 1: His division sees a decent amount of combat, He does
Speaker 1: not he's a back ranker. He handles administrative and management
Speaker 1: tasks um, and he finds the power and authority he
Speaker 1: gets through his time in the service intoxicating. Though he
Speaker 1: never again he doesn't fight directly, he does earn a
Speaker 1: bronze star for a valor because he helps catch and
Speaker 1: take out a Gestapo sleeper cell, primarily due to the
Speaker 1: fact that like he's just you know, a very observant dude. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty five, he participates in the liberation of
Speaker 1: a concentration camp alum um a h L E M.
Speaker 1: I'm not sean how to pronounce it um. One prisoner
Speaker 1: at the camp remembered him as the young American who
Speaker 1: announced you are free. For Kissinger, the overwhelming mem of
Speaker 1: this experience was seeing inmates he described as being barely
Speaker 1: recognizable as humans and feeling the instinct to feed them
Speaker 1: before learning that some were so starved that solid food
Speaker 1: would kill them shortly thereafter. Yeah, I mean one thing
Speaker 1: you got to say, he does not like, he's not
Speaker 1: a sheltered upbringing, and you I mean, like you would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that
Speaker 1: made him be like, oh, you know, you can there's
Speaker 1: there's good you can provide, like provide the people who
Speaker 1: are tortured and starved some you know, you could take
Speaker 1: away from this like my god, war is evil and
Speaker 1: we should do everything we can as opposed to Yeah, baby, well,
Speaker 1: let's see how it plays out, Dave. Maybe this is
Speaker 1: the sixth part behind the Bachard's episode about a cool
Speaker 1: dude who does nice things. I just brought you guys
Speaker 1: here to talk about a chill guy. Um. So, shortly
Speaker 1: after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on
Speaker 1: his experience where he asked, quote who was lucky the
Speaker 1: man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles I
Speaker 1: am free? Or the bones that are interred in the hillside.
Speaker 1: He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. So, I mean an understandably bleak take
Speaker 1: from liberating a concentration Yeah, like that, that's fair. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what is a bad time to move to
Speaker 1: an ad plug. I didn't think you're gonna be brave
Speaker 1: enough to do this, but fair enough, boy, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what makes me hungry. Probably shouldn't go too far
Speaker 1: down that road. Let the ads do the talk. Let
Speaker 1: the ads do the talking. The ads are gonna come
Speaker 1: and win, the same way the Soviet Union did, wave
Speaker 1: after wave of men into Nazi trenchet. Anyway, I think
Speaker 1: we lost it. We had it for a minute right there.
Speaker 1: I took it too far, you know, I took it there.
Speaker 1: Here we go. Oh we're back. So when the war ends,
Speaker 1: World War two, you know that is uh. Sergeant Henry
Speaker 1: Kissinger finds himself as quote the absolute ruler of a
Speaker 1: small village named bin Shim. He enjoys this experience. He
Speaker 1: really starts to like having power. One thing that we're
Speaker 1: getting here is he adores having power over people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really likes it. In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly
Speaker 1: to his family that he has quote absolute authority to
Speaker 1: arrest people. Um, and it's this is this is problematic
Speaker 1: because of what he does later. I will say, if
Speaker 1: you are a Jewish kid who has to flee Germany
Speaker 1: and then you come back and get made like the
Speaker 1: military head of a town that's full of former Nazis,
Speaker 1: I get reveling in it a little bit. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: for me, I'm having beheading tuesdays if that's yeah. So
Speaker 1: again he's not because of what he does later this
Speaker 1: is unsettling, but like it's understandable in the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he appropriates a luxury home in a fancy car, both
Speaker 1: of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which
Speaker 1: is like, it's what you do, right. He gets a butler.
Speaker 1: He brags back to his family that butler, a fucking
Speaker 1: Nazi butler. That's artested for not giving butler. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is that is obvious now. That said, he's also, to
Speaker 1: his credit, really aware of not wanting the Germans in
Speaker 1: town to identify this guy who's absolute ruler as being Jewish.
Speaker 1: I think because he doesn't want it to make things
Speaker 1: up problems for people who's Jewish, people who stay behind
Speaker 1: in Germany. He makes other soldiers referred to him as Mr.
Speaker 1: Henry rather than by his last name. He's consciou. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want them to think quote that the Jews were
Speaker 1: coming back to take revenge. Um. And he had a
Speaker 1: reputation in general as being more objective as a as
Speaker 1: a ruler in this kind of period than most Jewish
Speaker 1: veterans and similar positions in general. Henry counseled accommodation and
Speaker 1: rapprochema with one exception Communists as the civil of course,
Speaker 1: that's like understandable period, yeah, the Nazis, but the coming yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's literally what happens. So the Cold War, you know,
Speaker 1: early stages in nineteen forty six, but already in that period,
Speaker 1: Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left wing
Speaker 1: sympathies and Nazis just like, yeah that the leftist due,
Speaker 1: the leftist due. He doesn't want them. He also wants
Speaker 1: to ban Communists from taching at the local schools, which, again,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? He went straight Nazi all of a sudden. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's definitely well, let's say fascist. Let's let's say fascist. Okay,
Speaker 1: he does a bit. He does a bit. He starts
Speaker 1: dating a gentile German girl during this period, because again
Speaker 1: he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though,
Speaker 1: because they don't like this at all. Um, They're they're like,
Speaker 1: you're losing your your faith, and Henry gets very combative
Speaker 1: with them. He sees them as a rational writing quote,
Speaker 1: to me, there is not only right or wrong, but
Speaker 1: many shades in between. The Real tragedies in life are
Speaker 1: not choices between right and wrong. Real difficulties, bare difficulties
Speaker 1: of the soul, provoking agonies which you and your world
Speaker 1: of black and white can't begin to comprehend. How's the dog?
Speaker 1: How's the dog? Love you? Mom? Good is his and
Speaker 1: his parents? His parents have very actually we all did,
Speaker 1: where they're like, hey, how are you, Hay, But it
Speaker 1: seems like the war may have had an effect. I've
Speaker 1: said this ever since you met the monocle guy, but
Speaker 1: you're really intense. Maybe maybe all of the things you've
Speaker 1: seen have had an impact on you. And in response
Speaker 1: to this, by getting enraged and saying not everybody came
Speaker 1: out of this war as a psycho neurotic. Oh, that
Speaker 1: shows him. That'll teach them that that's exactly. That's fine,
Speaker 1: that's fine, that's exactly. That's the right reaction of a
Speaker 1: non psycho neurotic when you're when you're screaming, I'm not
Speaker 1: a psycho neurotic. In letters, you're a psychoneurotic. Garland Camp.
Speaker 1: If all they're saying is like, hey, Henry, do you
Speaker 1: think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental
Speaker 1: scars that you need to like heal from. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should draw that to the toilet. Okay, alright, buddy, alright, Pa,
Speaker 1: We're just okay, just tough. We're just writing letters here, buddy.
Speaker 1: We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. That's
Speaker 1: what those things. This is a period of time obviously,
Speaker 1: like every like, one of the things that causes what
Speaker 1: happens later in American history is that sixteen million Americans
Speaker 1: go to war and a bunch of them get traumatized,
Speaker 1: and they come back to a world where like their
Speaker 1: dad was always like, if you talk about your feelings,
Speaker 1: I'm going to hit you. Pory's family doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you
Speaker 1: want to talk about your feelings, and he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not crazy. Yeah. Um. Obviously, obviously the fact that this
Speaker 1: is a time in which like men don't fucking do
Speaker 1: therapy does have an impact on it. But I think
Speaker 1: his family is probably more understanding than well. He also
Speaker 1: has no i mean even now, he has no acknowledgement
Speaker 1: of like his trauma. So he probably even in the
Speaker 1: in the actual moment, I mean, you're probably even more defensive,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Um. In seven, Kissinger finally decides to
Speaker 1: leave Germany for the second time. On Fritz Kramer's advice.
Speaker 1: He applies, He applies late to Harvard, and he was accepted,
Speaker 1: winning one of the two national scholarships the school gave
Speaker 1: New Yorkers each year, and tramp House did a tournament
Speaker 1: of evil people from Harvard's and Kissinger one that makes sense. Boy,
Speaker 1: the IVY League good at producing bad people. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: we should look into that one. So one of his
Speaker 1: classmates recalls, and he obviously he does like it's Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: He's very good at school. Um. One of his classmates
Speaker 1: recalls that he quote worked harder and studied more than
Speaker 1: anybody else on campus. He stays school. He school's been
Speaker 1: stop him from shoven pencils in his mate the campus
Speaker 1: like Godzilla would have. He nearly died from lead. His
Speaker 1: studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him.
Speaker 1: He made quote no lasting friendships with other students. He
Speaker 1: seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered
Speaker 1: around him. So Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer
Speaker 1: had started him off on. He agreed with Girtha I
Speaker 1: believe is the as the name of the German philosopher
Speaker 1: that if he quote had to choose between justice and
Speaker 1: disorder on the one hand, and injustice and order on
Speaker 1: the other. I would always choose the latter. So well,
Speaker 1: there we go. He's made his choice. That's very telling,
Speaker 1: Like we know, we know. Yeah, it's just nice to
Speaker 1: know where like around the time, like, okay, so he
Speaker 1: was pretty defined. Okay, so Henry, you know some other
Speaker 1: people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: had an impact on you. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just
Speaker 1: such a it's a strange thing that he it's so
Speaker 1: consciously like he he's so completely aware of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like he's like a psychopath. He might be. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if you're I try not to do too
Speaker 1: much like the psychoanalyzing people, but like fucking maybe right, Well,
Speaker 1: psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about,
Speaker 1: leaving people over in the room. Um, you know ladies,
Speaker 1: man like is they they learn how to be a
Speaker 1: human and then they sort of and a lot of
Speaker 1: you got syphilis ad camp and a lot of symphilicit
Speaker 1: camp like Henry Kissinger. Well, Sophie, can we let's green
Speaker 1: light some Henry kissing some some T shirts that are
Speaker 1: just Henry Kissinger with his face riding off from syphilis.
Speaker 1: People are gonna want to wear them. He's making the kiss.
Speaker 1: He kiss he lips and his lips are falling off.
Speaker 1: What you like a kissing? Let French Kissinger you. So
Speaker 1: he meets his second mentor at Harvard. Henry Kissinger has
Speaker 1: a lot of mentors. And this is maybe a lesson
Speaker 1: to never mentor anybody. Um, you never know they might
Speaker 1: become Henry Kissinger. Don't teach people things. Sabotage them at
Speaker 1: every step. Right next time you drive past a kindergarten,
Speaker 1: throw him a textbook that's all lies, you know, just
Speaker 1: slow him down. So his second mentor is this guy,
Speaker 1: William Yandel Elliott. And Elliott has is a professor at Harvard.
Speaker 1: He's also like very politically connected. He had advised several
Speaker 1: US presidents on international matters. Uh. And Kissinger was drawn
Speaker 1: to this guy because not only is he a respected educator,
Speaker 1: but he's really well connected to people with power um
Speaker 1: and Elliott. One of the things that like he is
Speaker 1: famous for being a big advocate of is what is
Speaker 1: what's called real politique UM as embodied by you know
Speaker 1: and particularly the guys that Kissinger grows up admiring and
Speaker 1: that Elliott, you know, helps teach him to admire I mean,
Speaker 1: like Klauswitz and Bismarck, these these these guys who are
Speaker 1: like Bismarck is the dude who makes Germany right, we
Speaker 1: have it, We get a Germany because Bismarck orchestrates, over
Speaker 1: a period of like I think it's decades, gradually he
Speaker 1: welds all these different German principalities and kingships together and
Speaker 1: then helps to orchestrate this war, which out of which
Speaker 1: emerges Germany. Like that's the kind of dude that Otto
Speaker 1: von Bismarck is, and he is kind of the master
Speaker 1: of the kind of politics that Kissinger comes to respect.
Speaker 1: And he Kissinger calls cloud Fits and Bismarck philosophers of history.
Speaker 1: That's how he sees this guy, these guys um, which
Speaker 1: is not really what I would call out of on Bismarck,
Speaker 1: Like he's very good at what he does, obviously, um,
Speaker 1: but but not I wouldn't call him a philosopher. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to quote now from the book Kissinger's Shadow
Speaker 1: by Greg Grandon. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his
Speaker 1: own view of how history operated. It was not a
Speaker 1: story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of
Speaker 1: cycles of history, or cycles of birth, maturity, and decline. Rather,
Speaker 1: it was a series of meaningless incidents fleetingly given shape
Speaker 1: by the application of human will. As a young infantryman,
Speaker 1: Kissinger had learned that Victor's ransacked history for analogies to
Speaker 1: guild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out historical causes
Speaker 1: of their misfortune. So yeah, yeah, you know stuff, it's
Speaker 1: it's maybe not yeah, yeah, you can think about however
Speaker 1: you want. So a lot of folks who analyze the
Speaker 1: Kissinger in this period sees on one sentence in Kissinger's
Speaker 1: undergraduate thesis, and his thesis is titled The Meaning of
Speaker 1: History that they can kind of explains a lot of
Speaker 1: what comes to be going down. It is, right, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: he's not a dude who makes like little leaps, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: why do we love? This is the line The realm
Speaker 1: of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an
Speaker 1: inward experience, which is you know, we read it again,
Speaker 1: The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except
Speaker 1: by an inward experience. Wow, and this is this is
Speaker 1: a like a heavily influenced by French French existentialism. His
Speaker 1: thesis cites Jean Paul Start a lot, and both Start
Speaker 1: and Kissinger think that morality is not an inward thing,
Speaker 1: is determined by actions, which it is not an unreasonable
Speaker 1: thing to believe, right that, like what matters is what
Speaker 1: you do. You know is that line from the Bible.
Speaker 1: You're not damned by what goes into your head, but
Speaker 1: like what you know comes out right, Like, that's not
Speaker 1: an unreasonable thing to believe. Start Um. He believes that
Speaker 1: like action creates the possibility of intellection, individual and collective responsibility. Right,
Speaker 1: that morality is determined by action, but that our actions
Speaker 1: create this possibility of like individual and collective moral responsibility
Speaker 1: for things. Kissinger does not come to that conclusion. Kissinger
Speaker 1: believes that morality is determined by action, but he also
Speaker 1: thinks that, like you, moral indeterminacy is a condition of
Speaker 1: human freedom. It's this idea that you can't be bound
Speaker 1: by morality, and to be free, if you want to
Speaker 1: freely act, you have to be able to act above morality.
Speaker 1: That's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of his intellectual development as him.
Speaker 1: And you know, also a lot of this is obviously
Speaker 1: all of this. One of the things that you have
Speaker 1: to account for is all of this analysis of like
Speaker 1: his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things,
Speaker 1: so including from him and from like the people who
Speaker 1: are sources who were saying this is what he was
Speaker 1: like as a kid. There is that degree of biasing, right,
Speaker 1: like that this is after he is the person that
Speaker 1: he is. Because if he had gone on to like
Speaker 1: just to be a professor, nobody would have given a
Speaker 1: ship about what the accountant said that I would be like, yeah, look,
Speaker 1: just would you what do I owe? Yeah? Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me what the I R S gets man, I I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't need another lecture on this um and Kissingers,
Speaker 1: the fact that he becomes so kind of moral relativism
Speaker 1: is the word of use. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: that's right, but like this idea that like freedom and
Speaker 1: morality are kind of like inherently opposed. This upsets a
Speaker 1: lot of people around him, including people who are like
Speaker 1: his big supporters, including that professor Elliott guy at his
Speaker 1: retirement party, Henry Kissinger. Elliot's retirement party, Henry Kissinger in
Speaker 1: a number of students gather to like bid him farewell,
Speaker 1: and journalist David Halberston wrote that Elliott had positive things
Speaker 1: to say about almost all of his students who had
Speaker 1: gathered there, but when he reached Kissinger, he said this, Henry,
Speaker 1: he began, You're brilliant, but you're arrogant. In fact, you're
Speaker 1: the most arrogant man I've ever met. Kissinger became ashen faced.
Speaker 1: Mark my words. Elliot continued, your arrogance is going to
Speaker 1: get you in real trouble one day. That is amazing levels,
Speaker 1: like at your retirement party to be like hey and
Speaker 1: you listen, chip bag, chill out, and then for that
Speaker 1: also to be totally incorrect, Like you know, I saw
Speaker 1: this like clip of some some guy in like Atlantic
Speaker 1: City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well,
Speaker 1: what is what makes a native American? And the guy
Speaker 1: just goes, sir, I'm glad You're never going to get
Speaker 1: into any real power and you're like yeah, dude, oh dude. Well,
Speaker 1: and one of the things like this, the Professor Elliott
Speaker 1: is like one of the guys who helps get him
Speaker 1: his first big gigs and ship like he's a major
Speaker 1: bags and I think this is kind of him belated
Speaker 1: Lee being like, Boo, I'm gonna go patronize a Cambodian
Speaker 1: restaurant just to make myself feel of them. Yeah. Real, Well, Ever,
Speaker 1: when he went to like, just give me the tip slip, don't,
Speaker 1: I haven't did just give me a tip slip? I
Speaker 1: owe you guys. I'm not going to tell you why
Speaker 1: you go. Don't worry about it. Take my take everything.
Speaker 1: Here's my hang. I gotta go. Do you know if
Speaker 1: there's a Bangladeshi restaurant nearby. I'm actually having a lot
Speaker 1: of spots tonight and not eating. I'll be on a
Speaker 1: long list. I'm going to a lot of places. No, no,
Speaker 1: not German, No, not no, not German. You know what,
Speaker 1: They're actually fine. I don't think I need Yeah. So
Speaker 1: his thesis that that thing that that he says to Kissinger,
Speaker 1: it it should be what happens, but our society rewards
Speaker 1: psychopaths above anybody else, and most societies, yeah should be
Speaker 1: is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world,
Speaker 1: which isn't what this is. And it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. This is something like that kind of more
Speaker 1: into anthropological thinking, but like, one of the reasons people
Speaker 1: will say, like why we have psychopaths is that if
Speaker 1: you're in a band of seventy people who are like
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers, starving through the winter, it's it's helpful to
Speaker 1: have a guy like Henry Kissinger. You can say, like, well,
Speaker 1: these these six people are too old and sick, and
Speaker 1: we have to let them die otherwise we'll all starve. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a situation which it's good to have a psychopath
Speaker 1: because you need someone who just doesn't give a shit
Speaker 1: about certain things. When you have a society of billions
Speaker 1: that's global, it becomes a problem because that kind of
Speaker 1: thinking is not so useful and and tends to just
Speaker 1: get millions and millions of people killed. Um. It's it's
Speaker 1: not great. Um Anyway. Henry's thesis is published in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: It roughly the same time Harry Truman decides to send
Speaker 1: troops to Korea and to aid French forces in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Professor Elliott told Kissinger that the Korean War was in
Speaker 1: a example of the East quote testing the civilization of
Speaker 1: the West. Yeah, people doing their own thing in their
Speaker 1: own country is a test to us, Like the Koreans
Speaker 1: and the Vietnamese having completely their own ship going on
Speaker 1: as a test of us in the United States. Damn
Speaker 1: you you know, Ho Chi Min not wanting to be
Speaker 1: ruled over by the French is really a test of
Speaker 1: American I mean. And obviously they see that like the
Speaker 1: Soviet Unions or frustrating all of this, and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union is involved too, but like it, they're looking at
Speaker 1: us in the eyes. They've got their own ship going on. Dude,
Speaker 1: they are on the same level. How dare they do this? So,
Speaker 1: as the US increased its commitments to a growing series
Speaker 1: of wars in Southeast Asia, kissing you more dedicated to
Speaker 1: the work of a guy named Oswald Spangler. Spangler's book
Speaker 1: The Decline of the West is not something I am
Speaker 1: well equipped to describe or explain in detail, but Greg
Speaker 1: Grandin is, so I'm gonna quote from Hi again. Spangler
Speaker 1: waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality.
Speaker 1: He insisted that there existed a higher plane of experience
Speaker 1: that was inaccessible to rational thought, a plane where instinct
Speaker 1: and creativity reigned. We have, Spangler thought hardly yet an
Speaker 1: inkling of how much in our reputedly objective values and experiences.
Speaker 1: Is only disguise, only image and expression. To get behind
Speaker 1: image and expression, to penetrate perceived material power and interests,
Speaker 1: and grasp what Spengler called destiny. One needed not information
Speaker 1: but intuition, not facts but hunches, Not reason but a soul, sense,
Speaker 1: a world feeling. Often enough, a statesman does not follow,
Speaker 1: does not know what he is doing, Spengler wrote, But
Speaker 1: that does not prevent him from following with confidence. Just
Speaker 1: the one path that leads to success. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: and that is George W. Bush crawl out of a pilogoon.
Speaker 1: Now like this for our freidom. George Bush like pops
Speaker 1: out of Henry's Kissinger's back. Is a poll that's like
Speaker 1: since it's like dr headed rumsfeld Bush like thing like
Speaker 1: where they are there in the east, west, north, and
Speaker 1: south um Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating, but he did
Speaker 1: disagree with Spengler about Spengler's primary contention, which is that
Speaker 1: civilizational decay was inevitable. Spengler argued that civilizations had spring, summers, autumns,
Speaker 1: and winters right, that they proceed through kind of like
Speaker 1: inevitable stages, and there's not really any way to stop
Speaker 1: this procession, right, Um, which is I think a pretty
Speaker 1: reasonably like, yeah, any civilization is going to have like
Speaker 1: a life cycle, right, that's the thing. Like historically you
Speaker 1: can argue pretty well Kissinger doesn't believe this everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually not what kissings. And of course the man,
Speaker 1: of course, the man who is like living way beyond
Speaker 1: his shelf life is like told you so, yeah, doesn't die.
Speaker 1: So here's Grandon again talking about Kissinger. Kissinger grapples with
Speaker 1: this aspect of Spengler having lost a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: Civilizations lurch outward defined, meaning they get caught up in
Speaker 1: a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by
Speaker 1: history's cosmic beat power for power's sake, blood for blood.
Speaker 1: Imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote,
Speaker 1: summing up the decline of the West's argument an outward
Speaker 1: thrust to hide the inner void. Kissinger accepted Spangler's critique
Speaker 1: of past civilizations, but rejected his determinism. Decay was not inevitable. Spengler,
Speaker 1: Kissinger said, merely described a fact of decline and not
Speaker 1: its necessity. There is a margin, he would write in
Speaker 1: his memoirs between necessity and accident, in which the statesman,
Speaker 1: by perseverance and intuition, must choose and thereby shape the
Speaker 1: destiny of his people. So Spengler's like, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like when civilizations lose their purpose and start to age,
Speaker 1: they lurch outward, engage in wars of imperial conquest and
Speaker 1: a search for meaning, and that leads to disaster which
Speaker 1: destroys them. And Kissinger's like, but what if you did
Speaker 1: the wars right? But what was involved in everyone? But
Speaker 1: if it was like Mickey in the corner of Rockie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is an amazing like this guy being like,
Speaker 1: here is what happens to empires every single time there's
Speaker 1: an empire. This is a thing you can go through
Speaker 1: history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years, and
Speaker 1: kiss You're just like, no, I can do it right.
Speaker 1: But to be like, no, you're You're pretty You're pretty close.
Speaker 1: You're pretty close. So I'm just thinking kill more. Like
Speaker 1: I heard what you said ups and downs, but I
Speaker 1: think you wipe everybody out. You know, it is the
Speaker 1: same logic I have seen every time I've seen more
Speaker 1: than one person get get stuck in the mud. It's
Speaker 1: always either one person gets stuck in the mutter fifty
Speaker 1: two because one person gets stuck in the mud and
Speaker 1: the other forty nine Go, well, I saw it happened
Speaker 1: to that guy. But I think I can figure it
Speaker 1: out and can get around. Yeah. It's almost like when
Speaker 1: you enter Congress. I've got a plan. I've got a plan.
Speaker 1: Oh I get money. Yeah, well, I have a plan,
Speaker 1: but it's a different You're not going to like it
Speaker 1: a bit more about a pool. Yeah. In nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the
Speaker 1: Army on psychological warfare while he finished his graduate studies.
Speaker 1: Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not
Speaker 1: seem overly relevant to politics, but his first sentence had
Speaker 1: discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts
Speaker 1: of British and Australia, and that the efforts the British
Speaker 1: and Austrians made to contain Napoleon might be useful in
Speaker 1: handling the Soviet Union. I might argue, did Napoleon have
Speaker 1: a way to end all life on earth if things
Speaker 1: went badly? Was that a factor in them? A sword
Speaker 1: A Kissinger believes he sees that containment is a failure,
Speaker 1: which it is because people do not like being colonies. Um.
Speaker 1: And if the the opposition to being a colony is communism,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, well, let's try communism. Being a colony
Speaker 1: seems to suck. Um. Sokissinger sees that containment is a failure. Um,
Speaker 1: but he also believes believes not that, like, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we just like let people do things and like
Speaker 1: just take care of our own ship. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: because containments of failure. War with the Soviet Union is inevitable. Now,
Speaker 1: in Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: actions of the United States, but is instead quote because
Speaker 1: of the existence of the United States as a symbol
Speaker 1: of capitalist democracy. It is literally the early extent of like,
Speaker 1: well they hate us for our freedom. Yeah, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's that's where he's starting down. Obviously, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are saying ship like this right, this is not
Speaker 1: a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the John Birch Society,
Speaker 1: all sorts of ships on this period. I don't want
Speaker 1: to give him too much credit there. It's clear by
Speaker 1: this point that Henry was going to get into politics. Um.
Speaker 1: Although law enforcement was a possibility too, because when he
Speaker 1: gets he starts being a professor at Harvard, right like
Speaker 1: after he graduates and stuff, he starts like helping out
Speaker 1: his stuff and teaching some classes. And at one point
Speaker 1: the school hosts an international seminar, and when he hears
Speaker 1: that like a bunch of foreign academics are coming to Harvard,
Speaker 1: he calls the FBI and volunteers to spy on people
Speaker 1: for as as. I mean, honestly that it is so
Speaker 1: amazing with his background to be like to have that attitude.
Speaker 1: It just is, it really is. It's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get there. You gotta give him credit. The man
Speaker 1: covers some ground. Man is a Batman villain. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1: His love of politics and his first attempt to build
Speaker 1: influence at Harvard is by starting a journal named Confluence. Now,
Speaker 1: this is ostensibly a journal that exists to create what
Speaker 1: he calls an international forum for discussion. Right, I just
Speaker 1: want to get good people talking from all around the world,
Speaker 1: you know what the ideas fly. It's like a Ted
Speaker 1: Talk kind of pitch. But he's he's really vague about
Speaker 1: he doesn't really seem to care about what particular discussions
Speaker 1: he encourages Um, and his critics would later claim that
Speaker 1: this journal was quote a fake, primarily an enterprise design
Speaker 1: to make Kissinger known to powerful people. Right, Like he's
Speaker 1: just giving let powerful people write articles because then then
Speaker 1: he gets them and he gets their their phone number. Right,
Speaker 1: it's they're they're mailings. Yeah, he's not working um. Confluence
Speaker 1: leads to Henry's first mention in the pages of The
Speaker 1: New York Times, and despite what his critics claim, which
Speaker 1: is probably broadly accurate, the journal did also publish some
Speaker 1: really significant figures, including Reinhold Neighbor and Hannah A. Rent.
Speaker 1: But while he claimed commitment to free discourse, Kistener had
Speaker 1: a real tendency to publish right wing ship heads, including
Speaker 1: Enoch Powell, a conservative British politician famous for comparing immigration
Speaker 1: to quote rivers of blood. Well, I mean I've always
Speaker 1: agreed with that. I mean that is like blood rivers.
Speaker 1: I love a blood river. That's the laziest of rivers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you float real good. Yeah, it's molasses. But that's freedom.
Speaker 1: If you can, if you can say immigrants are like
Speaker 1: a river blood, that's the freedom he's talking about. That's
Speaker 1: the freedom. You want to know what other kinds of
Speaker 1: freedoms he's interested. I'm going to quote from Nile Ferguson
Speaker 1: from the book Kissinger. Here an article by Ernst von Solomon,
Speaker 1: a right wing German writer who had been convicted for
Speaker 1: his role in the assassination of Walter Rathanaw, a German
Speaker 1: foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an
Speaker 1: angry letter from Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation, who
Speaker 1: had provided money from both the International Seminar and the Journal. So,
Speaker 1: first note, he publishes a guy who's basically pretty close
Speaker 1: to a Nazi, a far right German terrorist in the
Speaker 1: in the Weimar years, and it's so upsetting that a
Speaker 1: representative of the Ford Foundation complaints. I mean, you're crossing
Speaker 1: that if the Ford Foundation is like, your connection to
Speaker 1: a Nazi worries me. And that's coming from us, who
Speaker 1: are really who we are? Like to pfend that. Look,
Speaker 1: I have the protocols of the Elders of Zion tattooed
Speaker 1: on my chest. But Ford Foundation and eployees to throw
Speaker 1: a flag on the play, I'm still flagging the play
Speaker 1: and are there cars coming OUTA? Yeah? Oh man? So quote.
Speaker 1: Stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by
Speaker 1: a criminal and a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told
Speaker 1: Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for,
Speaker 1: considering him a damned soul driven by the furies. Demonstrating
Speaker 1: a remarkable self confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended
Speaker 1: himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on
Speaker 1: the side of two great tolerance, partly because I believe
Speaker 1: our readers sufficiently mature to make their own judgments. Kissinger
Speaker 1: argued that what Solomon represented was a symptom of certain
Speaker 1: tendencies of our age, but that by appearing in a
Speaker 1: liberal journal like Confluence, Solomon was the one who was compromised.
Speaker 1: Kissinger was not simply defending free speech. He had solicited
Speaker 1: the article from Solomon, telling the German about quote, having
Speaker 1: long admired your writings, I could not share your point
Speaker 1: of view. What so it gets better and more relevant
Speaker 1: to today because when there's an outcry against this. Kissinger
Speaker 1: writes a letter to his friend Kramer and says, I
Speaker 1: have now joined you as the cardinal villain in liberal demonology.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he's just doing it now. What he's
Speaker 1: just doing it now? He's got the monocle now too.
Speaker 1: It's like you're Glenn Greenwald talked to Joe Rogan. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like, what the how? How is this still happening?
Speaker 1: How are you the pioneer of this? Henry Kissinger? How
Speaker 1: are you the pioneer of this? That's his explanation if
Speaker 1: you're if you're me just listening to like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what he's saying, but all right, okay, so
Speaker 1: we got to hear from this nazi who shot at Okay,
Speaker 1: because alright, is it will anger the lips? As he said,
Speaker 1: it's cool. And next next month we have ed Gean
Speaker 1: is doing a little number and Gaine's gonna want us
Speaker 1: through lamp workings. So and then we're having the Zodiac
Speaker 1: Killer on to teach us about proper parking technique pentagram.
Speaker 1: He actually be pretty good at that. Yeah. So once
Speaker 1: he had finished his dissertation graduated, Henry found himself in
Speaker 1: need of like a steady guy. He's doing like he
Speaker 1: wasn't a professor at that point. He was, but he
Speaker 1: was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to
Speaker 1: teach whatever. I didn't do a college, so but you
Speaker 1: know how grad students teach it and stuff, but he
Speaker 1: wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get
Speaker 1: an actual full time job as an assistant professor, but
Speaker 1: he's not able to because most people don't like Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 1: I wanted any reason why. A lot of people at
Speaker 1: Hervard not loving it, not not a huge fan of
Speaker 1: loving the Nazi publishing. Yeah, they are, they are. They
Speaker 1: consider him slightly problematic. Drifts for a bit, he's unable
Speaker 1: to find work, you know, and he's still he's still
Speaker 1: doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's not not he's
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of a drift in his career until
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four he runs into a friend, Arthur
Speaker 1: Sleshinger Jr. At Harvard. Sleshinger had a letter in his
Speaker 1: possession from a former Secretary of the Air Force defending Eisenhower.
Speaker 1: The Eisenhower administration standard of threatening massive retaliation for the
Speaker 1: so to the Soviets. Now, the gist of this idea
Speaker 1: that the Eisenhower administration really kicked off was that if
Speaker 1: we promise the Soviets that if there's ever a confrontation,
Speaker 1: we will immediately like send out a world and in
Speaker 1: hale of nukes. Right, then those lines won't get crossed. Right,
Speaker 1: we won't have any kind of fight at all. If
Speaker 1: like that, if everyone knows those are the stakes, then
Speaker 1: nothing will happen. Right, that's the idea. Um. Kitschinger disagrees
Speaker 1: with this take right, which is reasonable to disagree with. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems with the we will in
Speaker 1: the world. If there's any kind of issue, he's gonna
Speaker 1: make it worse. He's gonna make it worse. He shared us.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what he does, Gareth, because because Kissingers, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what he doesn't a bit. But he
Speaker 1: writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this,
Speaker 1: and he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower.
Speaker 1: He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller. But every everyone is in
Speaker 1: this period. Um. When the President rejects Kissinger's analysis, at
Speaker 1: the advice of John Foster Dullus, Rockefeller resigns and he
Speaker 1: resigns from his job with the administration, which like temporarily
Speaker 1: like closes a door to Henry. But the letter that
Speaker 1: Kissinger had received was well enough, like popular enough among
Speaker 1: other thinkers in Washington that it earns him a job
Speaker 1: offer heading a study group at the Council on Foreign
Speaker 1: Relations studying nuclear weapons and foreign policy. But of course,
Speaker 1: Henry's problem with massive retaliation wasn't that using nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: was unconscionable. It was that the world inding nature of
Speaker 1: the threats the Eisenhower administration was making meant they would
Speaker 1: never knew anybody, and Kissinger thought this was a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: He thought that nuclear weapons should be used tactically to
Speaker 1: secure battle field victories against the communists. What's happening? He thinks?
Speaker 1: He thinks it's bad to have nukes and not used them.
Speaker 1: He's yeah, that's his that's his angle. What in the fuck? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's wild that in this argument between if there's a fight,
Speaker 1: will kill everybody or what if we just try using
Speaker 1: nukes a little bit to kill everybody, guys have the
Speaker 1: more reasonable take. I mean, really, you're close, you're close together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible. And also, but like again, this is
Speaker 1: this he's the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration.
Speaker 1: Nelson Rockefeller is not a right winger who's like, this
Speaker 1: guy's got some ship going on, you know, we should
Speaker 1: listen to him. And like he's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are not like, you know, hard right dudes are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it makes sense. We've got to be using these
Speaker 1: like tactical nuclear what should the possibility? You know, he
Speaker 1: makes a good point. He uses smart words and helotes
Speaker 1: about nuking folks. You've got a lot of words. So
Speaker 1: that is part one of our epic series Henry Kissinger
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ dude, maybe become an accountant? Um what a guy.
Speaker 1: In part two we'll talk about how he gets into power.
Speaker 1: So that's got to be a hoot for everybody. But
Speaker 1: I feel like before we do that, you guys, do
Speaker 1: you guys like do like um like a like a
Speaker 1: like a giant influential popular podcast that maybe this this
Speaker 1: podcast is heavily influenced by. Is that something you guys do?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Rogan? Yes, yes you are both
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Right. The Dollar? The Dollar? It is your podcast.
Speaker 1: We believe, yes that that was that your six part
Speaker 1: series The Dollars, Why we Need the Nuke people? Go
Speaker 1: for it. Check out with the Dollar if you have
Speaker 1: not already. Um, just a very very funny podcast. You
Speaker 1: guys wouldn't plug anything else before we we roll out
Speaker 1: into part two. I mean my ears a couple of
Speaker 1: times during this, but well you can do podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We tore all over the place in Australia and uh
Speaker 1: and domestically soon that will be very exciting. I am
Speaker 1: exciting toured touring to exist again in our lives. Uh,
Speaker 1: fingers crossed until part two. Go home and read some
Speaker 1: Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way
Speaker 1: that makes you much much worse. Yes, put the monocle
Speaker 1: in the bad eye. Yeah, all right, Hi everybody. Robert
Speaker 1: Evans here and my novel After the Revolution is available
Speaker 1: for pre order now from a k press dot org. Now,
Speaker 1: if you go to a k press dot org you
Speaker 1: can find After the Revolution. Just google a k press
Speaker 1: dot org After the Revolution you'll find a list of
Speaker 1: participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre
Speaker 1: order now from either these independent bookstores or from a
Speaker 1: k us, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty cool. You can also preorder
Speaker 1: it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon
Speaker 1: or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google
Speaker 1: a k press after the Revolution um or find an
Speaker 1: indie bookstore in your area and preorder it. You'll get
Speaker 1: assigned a copy, and you'll make me very happy.