Speaker 1: Jake, are you a you a morning person? Hew? Do
Speaker 1: you handle waking up starting the day good?
Speaker 2: I really, I really think it's like real important to
Speaker 2: get up early, But I hate it all the time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a real bottle for me, To be
Speaker 2: honest with.
Speaker 1: You, I'm exactly the opposite. I hate getting up, Like
Speaker 1: twelve forty five is kind of a normal time for
Speaker 1: me to wake up, Like, oh oh, I love that shit.
Speaker 1: Then I just get to stay.
Speaker 2: I'm depressed if I get up late.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Well, I am always depressed, so
Speaker 1: that might be something to that.
Speaker 3: I'm opening it this long times people like ask me
Speaker 3: something to ask Robert. I'm like, he will not be
Speaker 3: awake for at least four hours. I don't know. You
Speaker 3: for me, like you will not be you would late?
Speaker 1: Right? Uh? Huh? I did. I woke up at eight
Speaker 1: am this morning actually recording, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: why would I do this? Horrible? And then I went
Speaker 1: to sleep until right before this recording started and woke
Speaker 1: up feeling like.
Speaker 3: Shit, that sounds like just your life voices.
Speaker 1: Yeah it sure was. Uh, Sophie, why did you make
Speaker 1: me get up this early? Huh uh?
Speaker 3: Jake, doesn't live in our time zone, and it seems
Speaker 3: fokay okay to make somebody record a podcast in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about conspiracy theorists today. It seems
Speaker 1: like kind of a conspiracy to suggest that the time
Speaker 1: might be different just because you're in another country. Sophie,
Speaker 1: you're son.
Speaker 2: You should stick through, like you guys should follow real
Speaker 2: time British time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, isn't it? Isn't it Greenwich meantime? Is that
Speaker 1: what you guys use? Right?
Speaker 2: We just call it real time, just real time, just
Speaker 2: the actual the time, as opposed to fight American time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, our time zones are fucking nonsense. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't know using inches? But wait, do
Speaker 1: you guys use inches? Are you? I always forget how
Speaker 1: it works?
Speaker 2: Do you know what we use everything? It's weird. Use
Speaker 2: all of them, right, depending on what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, like people give America shit because we like
Speaker 1: picked the one thing that no one else basically uses.
Speaker 1: But you guys picked like both of them, which is
Speaker 1: also kind of nonsense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it, love it. Were a stupid place,
Speaker 4: really everyone is. This is behind the bastards A podcast
Speaker 4: about the stupid place that is the world and the
Speaker 4: terrible people who make it worse. I guess Jake ready
Speaker 4: to get back to talking about Julius Striker. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: So again as we left off, he is he's kind
Speaker 4: of one of the guys alongside Hitler that a lot
Speaker 4: of people in the German writer like, maybe this guy's
Speaker 4: are Messiah, you know, maybe he's the dude who's gonna
Speaker 4: bring us back to greatness and then convince us to
Speaker 4: invade Russia in an inopportune time and get several million
Speaker 4: of our young men killed again.
Speaker 1: Whatever. That's what That's what people are saying about Striker
Speaker 1: and about Hitler, and Striker is part of this kind
Speaker 1: of like anti Semitic, you know, u in or Ober
Speaker 1: organ whereas Hitler's, you know, part of the German Workers Party,
Speaker 1: which is in the process of merging with the German
Speaker 1: Socialist Party to form the National Socialist German Workers Party
Speaker 1: aka de Nazis so win, Striker joins this organization run
Speaker 1: by his buddy Dikele. He takes the newspaper that he
Speaker 1: had started using the funding from the German Socialist Party
Speaker 1: and he brings it with him because he's the guy
Speaker 1: who owns it. He changes its name to Deutscher Volkesville,
Speaker 1: which I think just means German people's will. And he
Speaker 1: kind of ups the violence in his rhetoric, particularly the
Speaker 1: anti Semitic violence by a couple of Jats. When he
Speaker 1: does this, not only does he start devoting more time
Speaker 1: to laying out conspiracy theories, but he starts accusing Jewish
Speaker 1: citizens in Germany, often by name of specific criminal acts,
Speaker 1: generally in Nuremberg. So he's not just doing the sort
Speaker 1: of general it's the Jews that causes to lose World
Speaker 1: War One, YadA, YadA. He's saying like there is a
Speaker 1: specific Jewish person or a specific group of ju Wish
Speaker 1: people who carry it out the specific crime in Nuremberg.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Often these crimes are complete Generally these crimes are completely
Speaker 1: made up. He's basically always making up like who was
Speaker 1: the culprit behind them. A lot of it is like
Speaker 1: accusing rabbis of ritually murdering Christian children and stuff. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that like kids aren't going missing, or sometimes
Speaker 1: like a kid will die just the way. You know,
Speaker 1: it's fucking nineteen twenty one. You know, kids trip and
Speaker 1: fall and cut their arms and get infections and shit
Speaker 1: exactly right, Like, yeah, so anytimes something like that happens,
Speaker 1: find a way to blame it on the Jews, you know,
Speaker 1: put this shit out. Now it's not legal to just
Speaker 1: like accuse random people of child abduction and murder, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can get in trouble for that even back then.
Speaker 1: And he actually he goes so far in this stuff.
Speaker 1: The Bavarian courts are pretty right wing, they're not like
Speaker 1: naturally inclined to prosecute a guy like Striker, but he
Speaker 1: goes so far in like accusing random Jewish people of
Speaker 1: crimes that he gets charged and convicted of slander. Getting
Speaker 1: convicted of slander as a right wing politico in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one Bavaria pretty hard, but Julius does it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This tiny amount of pressure from the government, though, winds
Speaker 1: up really helping him, like the fact that he's been
Speaker 1: convicted and charged, because now he's able to play the victim, right.
Speaker 1: Not only is he he's like, I'm being prosecuted, persecuted,
Speaker 1: you're trying to stop me from talking to you, and
Speaker 1: so it brings this helps to bring him more followers,
Speaker 1: bring more subscribers to his newsletter bring more members to
Speaker 1: the organization that Dickle founded, that he's kind of the
Speaker 1: figure four, and Striker gets more famous. On April fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, several thousand Nurembergers, Nurembergians, whatever, show up
Speaker 1: to Burgers is good. Several thousand burger Now I'm hungry.
Speaker 1: Several thousand Burgers show up to listen to Striker give
Speaker 1: a speech in which he explains that in August of
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen he had gone to war believing himself a
Speaker 1: soldier of Germany, only to find out that he was
Speaker 1: a pawn in this grand Jewish game for global control
Speaker 1: and also the French you're involved. And a huge amount
Speaker 1: of his rhetoric is focused upon kind of taking advantage
Speaker 1: of and stoking the anxieties of young German men in
Speaker 1: this time who they've just lost a war. Like young
Speaker 1: men don't like losing wars, and they're kind of emasculated
Speaker 1: right by defeat and this sense of inferiority that it brings.
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of what Striker is going
Speaker 1: to take advantage of. I'm going to read you a
Speaker 1: quote that he gave in this speech. Here stand in
Speaker 1: front of a hotel and see who takes the arms
Speaker 1: of the German girl, not the German worker. We know
Speaker 1: they sometimes give themselves to the Orientals. When a Negro
Speaker 1: or a black soldier on the Rhine misuses a German girl,
Speaker 1: she is lost to the race, and he is when
Speaker 1: he's bringing up like black soldiers going out with German girls.
Speaker 1: What he's talking about is that the Rhine, which is
Speaker 1: kind of or the Ruer actually I think it is,
Speaker 1: which is the industrial It's all along the Rhine, though,
Speaker 1: which is the industrial heartland of Germany. It's where they've
Speaker 1: done a lot of their arms production for World War One.
Speaker 1: That's occupied under the Treaty of Versailles by French troops
Speaker 1: for a significant chunk of the Weimar period, and the
Speaker 1: French often send over like colonial soldiers, including like African soldiers.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly everywhere you have soldiers stationed in a foreign country,
Speaker 1: this shit will happen. Some number of them will do
Speaker 1: bad things. And whenever something like that happens with these
Speaker 1: French occupation troops, it is this huge deal on the right,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's this race panic issued towards it too.
Speaker 1: You know, they're angry just period at the fact that
Speaker 1: they lost the war. So that's what Striker is kind
Speaker 1: of He's not only sort of like, you know, look,
Speaker 1: they've got these like black soldiers on our soil, but
Speaker 1: more broadly speaking, he's like, German women are being taken
Speaker 1: from German men because we've been emasculated by defeat, and
Speaker 1: this is part of a Jewish plot to like water
Speaker 1: down our blood. Right, that's the thing that Striker's doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, well, yes, of course, yeah, that do be
Speaker 1: the Nazis. So his time with the German Working Group
Speaker 1: was short. One of his rallies was broken up by
Speaker 1: a giant street fight with Communists, which Dickle's organization apparently
Speaker 1: considered his fault. He left in the subsequent disagreement, unable
Speaker 1: as ever to handle anyone criticizing him, and this leaves
Speaker 1: Julius in a bit of a pickle. He needs an organization, right,
Speaker 1: He's not anything without sort of like he's got like
Speaker 1: a degree of celebrity, but like he wants to be
Speaker 1: a part of a party, right. He wants to be
Speaker 1: working towards taking power, and his paper at this point
Speaker 1: is still too small to be profitable on its own
Speaker 1: without kind of the guaranteed regular sales that came with
Speaker 1: being the paper of a political organization. And he's so
Speaker 1: we sort of like fishing around who's going to take me?
Speaker 1: Who wants Julius, you know, who's who's willing to have
Speaker 1: me be on their side? And the only party in
Speaker 1: Germany who's kind of rat enough to take someone like him,
Speaker 1: who's got the reputation he has is the new Nazi Party.
Speaker 1: Now they're still in the process of doing this merger
Speaker 1: at the time, and the guys who had been sort
Speaker 1: of running the Democratic Socialist Party and had worked with
Speaker 1: Striker earlier don't want him in the Nazi Party and
Speaker 1: the dudes who had sort of been fighting with Hitler
Speaker 1: within the German Workers Party also don't necessarily want Striker.
Speaker 1: And so when he starts reaching out to Hitler because
Speaker 1: like Hitler's the guy he likes, basically sends a letter
Speaker 1: to being like, hey, I think I'd be willing to
Speaker 1: like work with you. Guys, they send Hitler a letter
Speaker 1: filled with like dirt on Julius, trying to basically like
Speaker 1: convince Hitler not to work with him, be like, ah,
Speaker 1: here's all this shit about like Julius Striker all this
Speaker 1: bad stuff you know about like why this guy's not trustworthy.
Speaker 1: But then this is really interesting. Striker doesn't get along
Speaker 1: with most people who are in charge of him, and
Speaker 1: Hitler not a great guy at sharing the stage, but
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, the two of them kind of get along.
Speaker 1: And when Hitler gets this letter filled with dirt on Striker,
Speaker 1: he's like, I think this is bullshit. I think I
Speaker 1: like this guy and I want to work with him.
Speaker 1: And we don't really know why. But in addition to
Speaker 1: Hitler kind of liking Striker and wanting to work with him, Striker,
Speaker 1: this guy who cannot take direction, who doesn't like to
Speaker 1: listen to people, who has a conflict with everyone who
Speaker 1: puts themselves above him, kind of decides at this moment,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm willing to, like take a back
Speaker 1: seat and back Hitler as the fewer Like maybe I
Speaker 1: could do that, but I'm willing to like back him.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to give him, you know, my full faith
Speaker 1: and support. We don't fully know why he makes this call,
Speaker 1: but in May of nineteen twenty two, he publishes an
Speaker 1: article on his newspaper called the Longing of a Strong Hand,
Speaker 1: echoing Subotandorf's work. He begged German Anti Simites to a
Speaker 1: knite behind a single leader who could give direction to
Speaker 1: the quarrel some right wing and he kind of ends
Speaker 1: with him like being like, you know, I think Hitler's
Speaker 1: problem probably a guy to watch for this one possibility
Speaker 1: here as that striker. At this point, he's been in
Speaker 1: politics a while. He's had a couple of big failures.
Speaker 1: You know, he's tried to basically build two parties around
Speaker 1: him and failed two times. So he may have just
Speaker 1: like he's not a humble guy, but he may have
Speaker 1: actually just kind of recognized his limitations and been like, clearly,
Speaker 1: I can't do this and Hitler can, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to support the guy who's doing it. You know. The
Speaker 1: other possibility, which I think, you know, both of these
Speaker 1: things are possible, is that he kind of just falls
Speaker 1: in love with Hitler, Like this seems to be genuine
Speaker 1: from him, like that he is like genuinely loyal and
Speaker 1: genuinely believes in Hitler as the fucking right wing messiah
Speaker 1: type dude. We don't actually know when the two first met,
Speaker 1: probably at some point in nineteen twenty two years later,
Speaker 1: when he's on trial at Nuremberg. Julius is going to
Speaker 1: like give his sort of like explanation of how they too,
Speaker 1: how they met, And this is a lie. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: are talking about like a Nazi leader on trial for
Speaker 1: war crimes against humanity. He's not giving you the truth
Speaker 1: of whatever their meeting was. But I still think it's interesting.
Speaker 1: What he's later going to claim is like how the
Speaker 1: two of them like meet. So he says, you know,
Speaker 1: he shows up at the speech that Hitler's giving. He's
Speaker 1: kind of curious about this guy that's sort of been
Speaker 1: billed as, you know, maybe his rival, and he's immediately
Speaker 1: taken in by Hitler's supernatural charisma. He's overwhelmed by the
Speaker 1: chanting of the crowd, and he he like has almost
Speaker 1: this vision of Hitler as a messenger from heaven. That's
Speaker 1: how he described it, quote clothed with the beauty of
Speaker 1: inspired language. And Stryker claims that he's so overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: the raw godly force of Hitler's charisma that he like
Speaker 1: walks up to him right after the speech and swears fealty.
Speaker 1: Quote never before had I heard that song sung so imploringly,
Speaker 1: so filled with faith and hope, and never before had
Speaker 1: the singing of Deutsch lenduber ales moved me as deeply
Speaker 1: as it did in that mass meeting where I first
Speaker 1: saw Adolf Hitler and heard him speak. I felt it
Speaker 1: in this moment destiny calls to me a second time.
Speaker 1: I hurried through the jubilant masses to the podium, stood
Speaker 1: before him and said, I am Julius Striker. At this moment,
Speaker 1: I know I can only be a follower, but you
Speaker 1: are a leader. I give you the popular movement which
Speaker 1: I have built in Franconia, which is the German state
Speaker 1: that Nuremberg's in.
Speaker 2: So I was like, he was giving Hitler the DICKU
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's given. He's definitely like boot licking here. Pretty,
Speaker 1: He's like deep throating that boot. He's got it up
Speaker 1: to the he.
Speaker 5: I'd just been trying to work you out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, proud of you my head, Yeah, just churning along
Speaker 1: like a cement mixer, just like white. Yeah. Now this
Speaker 1: is what I just related to you. Again. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth having because this is like the claim that
Speaker 1: he makes, it's absolutely a lie. And Randall bite Work,
Speaker 1: who is Striker's biographer, he kind of provides what I
Speaker 1: think is a much more realistic theory as to how
Speaker 1: these two guys get together, which is basically that like Striker,
Speaker 1: he he's a man without a party, but he's got
Speaker 1: a shitload of followers who just like him because they
Speaker 1: like listening to him. He's got this paper and he
Speaker 1: sits down with Hitler in the Nazis and they have
Speaker 1: this like negotiation, like this kind of hard nosed negotiation
Speaker 1: in which you know, he's like, Hey, I need money
Speaker 1: from you guys to help me deal with the debts
Speaker 1: that I've accumulated. You know, in exchange, I'll bring you
Speaker 1: these followers I'll like back Hitler. It is very much
Speaker 1: a rational political decision. While there's definitely hit like Striker
Speaker 1: will be loyal to Hitler, like there is a degree
Speaker 1: of legitimate affection between the two men, this is also
Speaker 1: just a very practical call for him. It's a business
Speaker 1: decision as well as a political one. So yeah, interesting stuff. Julius,
Speaker 1: for his part, seems to be one of the few
Speaker 1: men Hitler respected. It's notable. You'll every time you read
Speaker 1: anything about the two, you will see it noted that
Speaker 1: Striker was one of a very small number of Nazis
Speaker 1: who are allowed to use the pronoun do to refer
Speaker 1: to Hitler.
Speaker 3: Do you.
Speaker 1: I'm not a German speaker, I barely speak English, but
Speaker 1: but do is like an intimate pronoun, like you only
Speaker 1: use it with somebody that you're like close with, right right,
Speaker 1: Like you're your actual friend, like your actual friends, actual
Speaker 1: like almost people you. Yeah. And obviously this is I
Speaker 1: think on Hitler's part, letting Striker do this is more
Speaker 1: of a it's a it's a it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a political move, but it's also based on his respect
Speaker 1: for the man's loyalty because Hitler does not personally like Striker.
Speaker 1: The two are not friends, they don't hang out together.
Speaker 1: Hitler will actually kind of avoid him when he's in
Speaker 1: power and like big meetings and stuff like we'll try
Speaker 1: not say. But Hitler will also defend him against other
Speaker 1: Nazis who hate him because he has so much respect
Speaker 1: for Striker's skill as a propagandist, right, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting sort of relationship for them to have.
Speaker 2: It just sounds like that guy whay, he's like, oh fuck,
Speaker 2: it's him again, you.
Speaker 1: Know it's him again, but also a man, and that
Speaker 1: he's fucking good at what he does.
Speaker 2: He's good. Yeah, we need him around, but I don't
Speaker 2: want him around me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to like have dinner with him,
Speaker 1: but like will, I will back him to the hilt
Speaker 1: as long as he stays away. So Striker never quarreled
Speaker 1: with Hitler, but he did get into regular conflict with
Speaker 1: other Nazis, and he has a particular early issue with
Speaker 1: the leader of the Nuremberg essay, you know, the storm
Speaker 1: the Nazi street fighting organization. They're proud boys, so to speak,
Speaker 1: because he winds up taking control of the city's Nazi Party. Like,
Speaker 1: this struggle kind of goes on and he winds up
Speaker 1: winning it. And in nineteen twenty three, Julius is sort
Speaker 1: of running the Nazi Party branch in Nuremberg, and as
Speaker 1: a result of like taking over, he decides to launch
Speaker 1: a new newspaper. And this is a publication that he's
Speaker 1: going to use for the specific goal of not just
Speaker 1: bringing people to the Nazi Party, but to inspire regular
Speaker 1: Germans to embrace his war on Judaism. He names it
Speaker 1: dear Sturmer. Now that means like the Stormer, right, like
Speaker 1: in terms of like a storm trooper, right like that's
Speaker 1: how that term is used. He's very much calling up
Speaker 1: sort of people's memories of World War One. He's very
Speaker 1: much sort of making you a point of the fact
Speaker 1: that that's what he did in the war. He will
Speaker 1: later claim that his inspiration was that he wanted to
Speaker 1: use this paper to storm the red fortress of left
Speaker 1: wing politics in Germany, and initially in dere Stormer articles
Speaker 1: are kind of split between three major topics. He's one
Speaker 1: of the major topics is him just going on rants
Speaker 1: against people who made fun of him. The other is
Speaker 1: attacking the Jews, and the last is going after the
Speaker 1: mayor of Nuremberg, Herman Lupa. Like half of his early
Speaker 1: articles are just attacking the mayor. He fucking hates this guy.
Speaker 2: He is not the guy that did him for Tolkien bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a major role in that. That's a
Speaker 1: big part I think where it starts and Lupa, to
Speaker 1: his credit, he's not a left wing radical. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's too script, but just to describe him, he's
Speaker 1: not a left wing radical. He's kind of politically he's
Speaker 1: like a brid between moderate centrist liberals and democratic socialists
Speaker 1: who are sort of like the moderate leftists of their day,
Speaker 1: you know, and obviously the kind of centrist Libs don't
Speaker 1: get along with the Democratic Socialists, don't get along with
Speaker 1: the communists. Lupa's not, you know, really in with the communists,
Speaker 1: but he is a bridge between like the Centrists and
Speaker 1: the Democratic Socialists, and he is profoundly an anti Nazi,
Speaker 1: and he does the best that he knows to try
Speaker 1: to go after Striker. Obviously it doesn't work, and you
Speaker 1: feel for the guy. He gets persecuted under the Nazis.
Speaker 1: He winds up dying as a real bummer. He makes
Speaker 1: it through most of the war as like a persecuted
Speaker 1: political enemy of the Nazis, and then dies in an
Speaker 1: air raid in forty five, which is a fucking bummer,
Speaker 1: but you know, he tried. Yeah, Striker spends most of
Speaker 1: his first four issues attacking the mayor with publishing alongside,
Speaker 1: you know, ancillary articles accusing local Jewish people or organizations
Speaker 1: of crimes. And it was this latter brand of content,
Speaker 1: you know, the these articles sort of making explicit allegations
Speaker 1: against Jewish citizens. That's going to lead to Striker's first
Speaker 1: period of time in jail. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from Calvin University's German Propaganda archive here and one of
Speaker 1: these meetings held in nineteen twenty two in the town
Speaker 1: of Schenengen in Franconia. Striker pointed out that sixteen newspapers
Speaker 1: had recently reported on the disappearance of over one hundred
Speaker 1: German children before the Jewish Passover season of nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Since none of the boys was ever located, Striker concluded
Speaker 1: that they must have become victims of Jewish ritual murder.
Speaker 1: He explained that his reasoning was based on teachings contained
Speaker 1: in the Talmud, which allegedly instructed Jews to kill Christians,
Speaker 1: especially children, and drink their blood during the Jewish Easter season.
Speaker 1: Striker was sued on the ground of defaming the Jewish
Speaker 1: religion and sentenced to fourteen days in prison. He appealed
Speaker 1: and the sentence was reduced to a fine of two
Speaker 1: thousand marks plus court costs. And first off, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I before this call were kind
Speaker 1: of talking about our episodes a week or so ago
Speaker 1: on bTB about this kidnapping panic that's that's going everywhere
Speaker 1: you see, the same thing is going on in Vymar Germany,
Speaker 1: right this, You know, in America, the statistically here quoted
Speaker 1: is like half a million children go missing every year
Speaker 1: in the United States, which is a lie. That would
Speaker 1: be one out of seven children born every year in
Speaker 1: the United States get subducted.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What it is is that, Yeah, there's like four or
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand every year.
Speaker 2: Report.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not it's reports of kids going missing, which
Speaker 1: is generally not a kid actually going missing. It's either
Speaker 1: you have a custody dispute between you know, two people
Speaker 1: and one of them takes the kid and it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a report filed against the police as part of
Speaker 1: that ongoing thing, or like you know, some of a
Speaker 1: lot of its mistakes and stuff. There's not a half
Speaker 1: a million children who just disappear, right, Like that would
Speaker 1: be like that would be a calamity, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think the thing is
Speaker 2: though it's it's one of the ones where as dark
Speaker 2: as is it's smart to use something like that, because yeah,
Speaker 2: one child going missing is a total tragedy. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: to play on people, you know, kids, everybody loves that
Speaker 2: kids or they should do, you know, and everyone loves kids,
Speaker 2: and it's like, yeah, it's it's so hates you right
Speaker 2: in the ha you know, so say it's a tactic,
Speaker 2: as we can see old as time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and who knows why these one hundred kids go missing? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for one thing hundred kids across Germany in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: that's not like an epidemic. But each of those cases,
Speaker 1: as you said, is like a dagger to the heart. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a bunch of different reasons. Striker is
Speaker 1: just using that statistic and then making the unfounded claim
Speaker 1: it's the Jews that are doing it, whereas I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's a mix of you know, kids falling down wells,
Speaker 1: kids getting abducted by parents. There's probably some like creepy
Speaker 1: sex pests in there. But it's like any society, like
Speaker 1: some number of kids, bad things will happen too. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that to like write it off, but like
Speaker 1: if you sort of can blame it on a specific
Speaker 1: group of people, you can make a lot of political heay,
Speaker 1: And so anyway, that's working well for him, and he
Speaker 1: learns from his time getting arrested for this and like
Speaker 1: the fact that again getting fucked with by the court
Speaker 1: a little bit getting this fine, it doesn't really disrupt
Speaker 1: his ability to organize. You know, the party pays the fine,
Speaker 1: but it helps him build support and he also like
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, this strikes such a nerve.
Speaker 1: The reason why he gets prosecuted for this is because
Speaker 1: it works. It gets a lot of people reading his paper,
Speaker 1: because people are interested when you claim that there's some
Speaker 1: conspiracy against their children, right, Like, it's just a thing
Speaker 1: people inherently pay attention to, and whatever punishment the state's
Speaker 1: going to give you for lying about this stuff is
Speaker 1: a lot less of an issue than like the benefit
Speaker 1: you get from making this a center of your politics.
Speaker 1: So Dare Sturmer becomes a runaway hit, and in fact
Speaker 1: it's so successful that Maximon, who's the leader of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party's press wing, asks him to stop publishing it
Speaker 1: because it's taking business away from the Nazi Party paper.
Speaker 1: Now Strikers not is going to ignore him, and it's
Speaker 1: going to wind up being good for the Nazis that
Speaker 1: he does ignore him. In these early days, dere Sturmer
Speaker 1: is it's not as the full sized newspaper's going to become.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a pamphlet right now, it's usually
Speaker 1: about four pages long, and so you know, it's building
Speaker 1: a name for itself. And then in nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: our boy Hitler has his Munich beer Hall putch, right,
Speaker 1: tries to take over the Government's not.
Speaker 3: With our boy Hitler.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, sure, Sophie a friend of the pod Adolph,
Speaker 1: So no, he does his Pusch. It doesn't go well.
Speaker 1: A lot of people get shot, and strikers a part
Speaker 1: of that, right, he's one of what the Nazis are
Speaker 1: going to call the old fighters, you know. So he
Speaker 1: he's in the Puch. He doesn't get killed, but he
Speaker 1: does get arrested. He does a couple of months, you know,
Speaker 1: in prison, so not that bad a sentence. Hitler's more
Speaker 1: like a year. And he gets out afterwards and he
Speaker 1: starts printing dere Sturmer and the Pusch. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that have happened here. For one, the Nazi
Speaker 1: Party has been temporarily banned. So suddenly this Nazi newspaper that,
Speaker 1: like folks in the party, had been frustrated because darre
Speaker 1: Sturmer was distracting attention from it. It can't publish anymore.
Speaker 1: But dar Sturmer is not a Nazi newspaper. It Striker's paper,
Speaker 1: so he can keep publishing it during this period in
Speaker 1: which the party is kind of technically banned. The other
Speaker 1: thing that's happened here is that the court case that
Speaker 1: Hitler goes through, right when he's charged with doing this,
Speaker 1: this pusch, as we've talked about in our episode on
Speaker 1: the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, becomes like a media circus
Speaker 1: in Germany, right and everybody. Hitler uses it very effectively
Speaker 1: to spread propaganda. While he's on trial. He's giving these
Speaker 1: speeches about his beliefs and about what he sees is
Speaker 1: necessary for the nation, and it works incredibly well. Like
Speaker 1: he makes a lot of political hay out of this,
Speaker 1: and in the wake of it, number One, Hitler's come
Speaker 1: a celebrity across the country as opposed to this kind
Speaker 1: of regional figure. And number two, a lot of Germans
Speaker 1: are now curious about Nazi beliefs and about anti Semitic politics,
Speaker 1: and Striker's paper, which is still publishing, kind of becomes
Speaker 1: the de facto paper for Nazi sympathetic people. During this
Speaker 1: period in which the party is technically banned. By nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five, it's increased its circulation to the size of
Speaker 1: a normal newspaper with full page advertisements and enough circulation
Speaker 1: to actually like make money. So Striker is now making
Speaker 1: a profit, and in fact, in the near future he's
Speaker 1: going to get rich off of the success of this newspaper.
Speaker 1: So he continues while he starts, this thing starts blowing
Speaker 1: up to push the boundaries of what is considered at
Speaker 1: the time to be sort of acceptable anti Semitic discourse.
Speaker 1: Most mainstream racists in Germany stuck to vague insinuations that
Speaker 1: the Jews are in bed with the French or the socialists,
Speaker 1: or the French socialists and irresponsible for them losing the war, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: But you're also starting to get more and more writing
Speaker 1: in the mainstream German press about Nazi racial theory. Right,
Speaker 1: a lot of these high minded articles about ancient Aryans
Speaker 1: start coming out. Now this stuff that existed before World
Speaker 1: War One, you know, as we've talked about, there's all
Speaker 1: these weird little right wing secret societies and vulcish secret
Speaker 1: societies and stuff. But now this starts to get out
Speaker 1: into the mainstream. And Stryker understood that when it came
Speaker 1: to getting people on board with this kind of propaganda.
Speaker 1: One thing worked on getting the attention of regular people
Speaker 1: better than anything else, and that was blood. Right, The
Speaker 1: best way to get people to pay attention to your
Speaker 1: racism was to titillate them with gory stories of violence.
Speaker 1: And speaking of profiting off of titillating people with stories
Speaker 1: of violence. You know what time it is now, Jake?
Speaker 1: That's right, Uh, we are back. So I was just
Speaker 1: telling you, Jake again, we're talking about like how modern
Speaker 1: this guy is part of what Striker does to like
Speaker 1: build a career for himself as he kind of gets
Speaker 1: into true crime, right, Like that's that's sort of like
Speaker 1: the thing that he's going. That's the kind of content
Speaker 1: that's going to like help make der Sturmer a big deal.
Speaker 2: That changes everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly, he kind of you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't sound so bad now, No.
Speaker 1: Sounds so bad now, I'm scared of serial killers. Sure,
Speaker 1: these aren't actual true crimes, but that's how he like
Speaker 1: frames what he's doing. The first reference to ritual murder
Speaker 1: in dere Sturmer is in nineteen twenty four, and reader
Speaker 1: responses start to roll in, convincing Julius that this is
Speaker 1: a second spring of audience interest. By nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: he'd built to focusing an entire issue of dere Sturmer
Speaker 1: on ritual murder, framing it as an investigation into the
Speaker 1: supposed ritual killing by Jews and Breslau. Quote. In Breslau,
Speaker 1: two children, Ottow and Erica Fessi, secretly vanished. They were murdered.
Speaker 1: The corpse pieces were found the same day in a
Speaker 1: tied package in a public place. The search for the
Speaker 1: murderer began. The cloth and corpse pieces, which were packaged,
Speaker 1: became an open showcase in a public window, which drew
Speaker 1: masses of people to come in view. According to the
Speaker 1: author of the article, the body parts had been bled
Speaker 1: before they were package. This and history were enough to
Speaker 1: proclaim it a Jewish ritual murder. Here's striker again, doesn't
Speaker 1: the fact that the body parts were found totally bled
Speaker 1: point to such a Jewish butcher's procedure. Such was the
Speaker 1: report of two of the Silesian newspapers that announced that
Speaker 1: this Breslau child murder sounds as though it is possibly
Speaker 1: a Jewish ritual murder. The Breslau child murder reminds us
Speaker 1: of the Koenitz boy murder that was discovered a few
Speaker 1: decades ago when for no apparent reason, a boy disappeared
Speaker 1: from school. The traces led to a house of Jewish butchers.
Speaker 1: The blood pieces of remains of the boy were also
Speaker 1: found in a public place. This unsolved mystery has been
Speaker 1: brought to the attention of the criminal police. The crime
Speaker 1: was never solved. Now with the disappearance of these children
Speaker 1: in much the same way, should this case also be
Speaker 1: lost in the sand. And again you see what he's
Speaker 1: doing is he's like this case, which we have to
Speaker 1: assume is done by the Jews because we know this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing they do, is the same
Speaker 1: as this other case decades ago where we know that
Speaker 1: a boy was murdered by Jewish people, and of course
Speaker 1: it was never solved, but like we know who it was.
Speaker 1: There's no not ever any evidence here, right, but like
Speaker 1: are there? But you can give the details. Since you
Speaker 1: don't have evidence to actually connect this. What you do
Speaker 1: is you give the details of the murder, right, and
Speaker 1: that gets people at such an agitated state that you
Speaker 1: say and then obviously you know this was done by
Speaker 1: this group of people. And it works very well when
Speaker 1: blood and violence weren't enough, Striker turned to sex. Many
Speaker 1: dere Sturmer articles contained livid descriptions of sexual violence, right,
Speaker 1: And this is generally he'll like have an article about
Speaker 1: some purported client crime by like you know, a non
Speaker 1: white French soldier in the Ruh, or by you know,
Speaker 1: Jewish cabals or whatever, and the purpose is both to
Speaker 1: like get people angry against those groups of people, but
Speaker 1: also he's able to spend paragraphs talking about know lurid
Speaker 1: sexual assault stories and that gets people to buy the
Speaker 1: newspaper because like it's kind of the most accessible pornography
Speaker 1: at the time, right, Yeah, Like yeah, it's messy, but
Speaker 1: like this is like a big part of it's it's
Speaker 1: it's appeal. And in fact, one Nazi German writer who
Speaker 1: hated Striker described dare Stirmer's appeal this way. He wants
Speaker 1: to keep his readers in constant suspense. But what do
Speaker 1: his readers want? Sensation and filth? Striker gives that to them.
Speaker 1: He floods his readers with tastelessness. And who are his readers?
Speaker 1: Mostly adolescents who are still wet behind the years thanks
Speaker 1: to Striker's education, Every lattice familiar with homosexuality and prostitution.
Speaker 1: One cannot blame Striker for speaking about these matters. Every
Speaker 1: newspaper today does. The question is how one speaks of them.
Speaker 1: Striker gives them great prominence. May not one be concerned
Speaker 1: when one sees the Stirmer not only in the hands
Speaker 1: of older students, but also in possession of elementary school students.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because it gels with something Randall bite
Speaker 1: Work says in his biography of Sturmer, which is that
Speaker 1: in the early years of Dere Sturmer, it was kind
Speaker 1: of an analog to Playboy magazine.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: That was a big part of its appeal to the
Speaker 1: kids who are going to get sort of pilled on
Speaker 1: early Nazi politics. Is that, like you start reading Dear
Speaker 1: Sturmer because it's where you read about like sex, right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like titillating, you know, and boys will like they'll
Speaker 1: get copies without their parents knowing, and they'll share them
Speaker 1: with each other. They'll like huddle around each other after
Speaker 1: school and like read these like lurid stories of sex
Speaker 1: and violence and whatnot, because like it's kind of where
Speaker 1: you get them. And this I had no idea this
Speaker 1: had gone on because the fascination with this sort of
Speaker 1: thing was so durable that a lot of dere Sturmer's
Speaker 1: early readers are Jewish Germans, who would buy every issue
Speaker 1: and read it cover to cover. Striker would actually jokingly
Speaker 1: thank them for supporting the paper in its early years.
Speaker 1: And while he's not a trustworthy source. Byite Work notes
Speaker 1: that in nineteen twenty five, a Jewish newspaper in Nuremberg complained, quote,
Speaker 1: it is of great concern that the Sturmers very frequently
Speaker 1: read even in Jewish circles. We have found that large
Speaker 1: numbers of citizens of the Jewish faith by the Sturmer
Speaker 1: and then take it home concealed in a copy of
Speaker 1: you know, other newspapers. Thus, Jews directly support the Sturmer.
Speaker 1: So this is like a problem for them, and they're
Speaker 1: supporting it not because they're like secretly you know, into
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda, but because like where you read sex stuff, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, everyone likes smut.
Speaker 1: Yep, that is a that is the secret to Striker's brilliance,
Speaker 1: as he understands, like you wrap your racism in some smut,
Speaker 1: you'll get everybody's money, you know. Yeah. Striker was also
Speaker 1: innovative in another way, While most Nazi propagandists, including Hitler,
Speaker 1: saw themselves as like these central powerful figures guiding people
Speaker 1: towards the set of truths, Striker was willing to have
Speaker 1: more of a give and take relationship with his audience. Now,
Speaker 1: part of this was pragmatic and based on something other
Speaker 1: Nazi news paper owners would do, which is that it's
Speaker 1: expensive to hire writers to write articles, right, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, photographs cost too much money to have a
Speaker 1: lot of those. But publishing reader letters is free. Right.
Speaker 1: If you solicit shit from your readers and then publish
Speaker 1: that stuff to a mailbox or whatever, you know, you
Speaker 1: can like get free content for your newspaper without paying
Speaker 1: for it. This is a thing that a lot of
Speaker 1: Nazi papers did. Where Striker and der Sturmer differed was that, again,
Speaker 1: they consider this sort of a two way street. So
Speaker 1: when he starts to get a bunch of letters from
Speaker 1: readers who are like talking about a specific conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: they have of you know, so and so doing an
Speaker 1: evil thing, Striker will use that and he'll just sort
Speaker 1: of like write out an investigation, and you know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't actually send anyone to investigate but he'll take these.
Speaker 1: It's Alex Jones does this a lot where he'll like,
Speaker 1: you'll hear one episode he'll get like a caller come
Speaker 1: in and make some sort of claim. In the next episode,
Speaker 1: he's like, I've got sources that say this is going on.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's an easy way to make content, right,
Speaker 1: We'll do it. Sources never right, of course. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: found a fascinating analysis of the letters to dere Sturmer
Speaker 1: and like the different kind of ways they impacted content
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Modern Judaism by Dennis Showalter, and
Speaker 1: Showalter notes that dere Stirmer did sometimes publish just letters
Speaker 1: by outright cranks, like you know people. One example he
Speaker 1: gives is, there was this guy who writes a letter
Speaker 1: to Striker about how the Jews stole my business and
Speaker 1: they forced me in an insane asylum. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's clearly some dude who just like had a mental
Speaker 1: breakdown and blamed it all on the Jews for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: But the letter, yes, yes, yeah, But letters, these kind
Speaker 1: of letters where it's just like some crank writing out
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theory are kind of rare in terms of
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff. He published a much larger number
Speaker 1: of letters where requests for aid either by people claiming,
Speaker 1: you know, I got swindled by a Jewish merchant or something,
Speaker 1: or by people just claiming that they were suffering under
Speaker 1: the Weimar system, which was its self seen as Jewish
Speaker 1: and publishing all of these letters allowed Striker to make
Speaker 1: the case for Nazism in a way that was more
Speaker 1: personal than even a lot of Hitler speeches. The pages
Speaker 1: of dere Strmer became a place where Germans suffering from
Speaker 1: hard times could come to ask for aid. You could
Speaker 1: sort of direct support to people who were suffering through
Speaker 1: the NewsPage was kept people coming in, which built the
Speaker 1: sort of relationship with the And again it's very modern
Speaker 1: to like the way social media works where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy is kind of politically on our side and
Speaker 1: he needs money for this. We'll do like a fundraiser
Speaker 1: for him, you know. And this also serves as a
Speaker 1: way to like, you know, we can talk about this
Speaker 1: bad thing that happened to him and how it's part
Speaker 1: of the evil that our enemies are doing right right,
Speaker 1: and so dere Stirmer becomes kind of this is how
Speaker 1: it becomes so central a big part of how it
Speaker 1: becomes central to like the growing Nazi movement, and likewise
Speaker 1: Striker is able to use the kind of conversations he's
Speaker 1: having with his readers through these letters to forge Derek
Speaker 1: Stirmer into a sort of weapon that really hadn't existed before.
Speaker 1: And to talk about that, I'm going to quote again
Speaker 1: from Showalter's piece. By far the largest category of letters
Speaker 1: in der Sturmer's files and pages expressed grievances of one
Speaker 1: kind or another. This correspondence could be further subdivided under
Speaker 1: four general headings. The first can be best described as
Speaker 1: undifferentiated anti Semitism, dislike of Jews as Jews. Here's simple
Speaker 1: hatred was less common than hostility based on profound ignorance.
Speaker 1: One rural correspondent described in detail the alleged Jewish practice
Speaker 1: of throwing stones on the graves of their dead while saying,
Speaker 1: greet Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for me, and when you
Speaker 1: see the little carpenter, throw a stone at his head.
Speaker 1: The daughter of another local Nazi was employed by a
Speaker 1: gentile family as lady help until served a meal that
Speaker 1: included ground meat purchased from a Jewish butcher. Years of
Speaker 1: anti Semitic horror stories about Jews deliberately polluting food, especially meat,
Speaker 1: and then selling it to gentiles had their effect. The
Speaker 1: girl refused her dinner, even when her employers mocked her
Speaker 1: Volkish prejudices and told her to eat or give notice
Speaker 1: to her proud father. This principled stand is served recognition
Speaker 1: in dar Sturmer and Striker agreed, then that may just
Speaker 1: sound like undifferentiated Nazi propaganda, and it is. But also
Speaker 1: what's happening here is this girl or her dad at least,
Speaker 1: is using dere Stermer to say, Hey, this family, this
Speaker 1: prominent family who hired my daughter, are doing business with
Speaker 1: a Jewish butcher. They're buying his products. And so not
Speaker 1: only does this spread this conspirat that Jews are poising people,
Speaker 1: but it also shames this specific family and kind of
Speaker 1: directs threats against them because darre Sturmer's readership are a
Speaker 1: bunch of asshole Nazis, right, so they hear, oh, this
Speaker 1: family's buying from a Jewish butcher. Let's go fuck with them, right, Let's,
Speaker 1: you know, do some graffiti at their house. Let's like
Speaker 1: mess them up a little bit until they stop. And
Speaker 1: this is a really important point in turning point for
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda because one of the first steps on the
Speaker 1: road to genocide anywhere that it exists, but in Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany this particular instance is the exclusion of targeted people
Speaker 1: from daily life life right. Once Hitler takes power, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, they pass a bunch of laws to restrict
Speaker 1: Jewish employment, to get them out of public right, so
Speaker 1: that Germans on a daily basis are not making contact
Speaker 1: with Jewish people and thus don't have relationships with them,
Speaker 1: you know, won't stand up to stop the state from
Speaker 1: killing them in other ways. But during the Weimar period,
Speaker 1: Striker is able to push Germans to cut about tens
Speaker 1: of thousands, god knows how many to cut off ties
Speaker 1: with their Jewish neighbors. By using his paper this way,
Speaker 1: readers start basically whenever they see they see it. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got like a German family, you know, or a
Speaker 1: German business that's like not run by racist right, So
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we'll sell products that are made by
Speaker 1: this Jewish owned company, or we'll have business with this
Speaker 1: Jewish butcher or whatever you write about to dare stirmer
Speaker 1: about them and then darre Sturmmer says, Hey, this grocery
Speaker 1: store is selling meat from a Jewish butcher. Go pick
Speaker 1: it it, you know, go a spray pant, go break
Speaker 1: their windows, right and some a lot of businesses just
Speaker 1: start to pull back from their deal with Jewish business people,
Speaker 1: with Jewish companies, with Jewish doctors and stuff like you
Speaker 1: know one thing. People will literally get yeah exactly, because
Speaker 1: they don't want to be the subject of this shit.
Speaker 1: Like people will write in letters being like my neighbor
Speaker 1: goes to a Jewish doctor, and then that guy will
Speaker 1: get like fucking egged in the street or like beat
Speaker 1: up by the essay or something. And it pushes people,
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people who are kind of centrists or
Speaker 1: even kind of progressive to cut off ties with their
Speaker 1: Jewish neighbors in a lot of cases because it's so
Speaker 1: dangerous to do so. It's disastrous to your business. You
Speaker 1: can wind up getting very badly hurt as a result
Speaker 1: of it. He is using mass media to direct harassment
Speaker 1: campaigns in order to separate German Jews from other Germans,
Speaker 1: and it works extremely well. Dere Sturmer is a potent weapon,
Speaker 1: and it's a kind of weapon hadn't really existed before
Speaker 1: in this form because like mass media is sort of
Speaker 1: becoming getting born in this period of time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's good sets off for real chain reaction, right.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I mean variants of this tactic are used
Speaker 1: all around today, right. It just it works really well.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of like when we talk about like
Speaker 1: the negative things about social media and how it can
Speaker 1: like direct harassment campaigns against people who go viral for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. You know, this is an early gasp of that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously it's more directed. It's less of
Speaker 1: kind of a consequence. It's not a consequence of an
Speaker 1: algorithm or anything, but it is this this understanding of like,
Speaker 1: well you could just like lie to piss off a
Speaker 1: bunch of people at a specific random person, and that
Speaker 1: will change their behavior in a way that might benefit
Speaker 1: me politically.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I mean it's a kind of algorithm, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a programmed one that's programmed by not
Speaker 2: on computers, but it's it's like a human algorithm. If
Speaker 2: we can upset this one, then these lot will be
Speaker 2: scared to come here, and as a result, it will
Speaker 2: it will exclude one group from something else. It's very
Speaker 2: much like that now, but just obviously like you said,
Speaker 2: via social media.
Speaker 1: Where yeah, he basically I mean, he's built a kind
Speaker 1: of gun here and he's gonna leave it on the
Speaker 1: table when he gets hung at Nuremberg. But everybody can
Speaker 1: pick that gun up today, right like it's easy to find.
Speaker 1: So the Sturmer becomes a potent weapon. You get these
Speaker 1: lurid stories of violence and sex that draws in readers,
Speaker 1: especially young readers. Who young people, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have as much sort of impulse control. So when these
Speaker 1: letters come out saying this family or this business is
Speaker 1: doing business with the Jews, there may be more likely
Speaker 1: to go funck shit up, go break stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: It works well and circulation increases during the period this
Speaker 1: like late twenties period, from the tens of thousands to
Speaker 1: the hundreds of thousands, and this makes Julius a very
Speaker 1: wealthy man. As the years go on, the Nazis draw
Speaker 1: ever closer to power, and Striker who is he's generally
Speaker 1: recognized is that he's not a particularly bright guy in
Speaker 1: most things. You know, he's not like a very academic person.
Speaker 1: He's not a guy as a teacher. He wasn't very successful.
Speaker 1: But he's not just. This is not just. He has
Speaker 1: like a degree of kind of like gut instinct as
Speaker 1: a propagandist. But he also pays attention to what works
Speaker 1: and doesn't, and over time he starts to lay out
Speaker 1: a basis, the basis for a theory on how to
Speaker 1: properly deploy propaganda and a Nazi historian who worked with
Speaker 1: him in the thirties described Striker's style this way. Since
Speaker 1: he wanted to capture the masses, he had to write
Speaker 1: it in a way that the masses could understand, and
Speaker 1: a style that was simple and easy to comprehend. He
Speaker 1: had recognized that the way to achieve the greatest effect
Speaker 1: on an audience was through simple sentences. Writing had to
Speaker 1: adopt the style of speaking if it were to have
Speaker 1: a similar effect. Striker wrote in The Sturmer the way
Speaker 1: that he talked. The worker who came home at night
Speaker 1: from the factory was neither willing nor able to read
Speaker 1: intellectual treatises. He was, however, willing to read what interested
Speaker 1: him and what he could understand. Striker therefore took the
Speaker 1: content from daily life and the style from speech. He
Speaker 1: thus gave the Sturmer Its style, a style which many
Speaker 1: intellectuals could not understand, but which fundamentally was nothing but
Speaker 1: the product of his own experience, gained over the years.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the things that's compelling to me
Speaker 1: about this is that obviously, like you know, liberal and
Speaker 1: leftist intellectuals hate Striker and attack him and often kind
Speaker 1: of don't understand why what he does works. But also
Speaker 1: Nazi intellectuals hate him because they don't. They think he's gross,
Speaker 1: he's boorish, his kind of anti Semitism is really low class,
Speaker 1: whereas theirs, they feel is very intellectual. Hitler a big
Speaker 1: part of what Hitler does is he defends Striker from
Speaker 1: the intellectuals and the Nazi Party who hate him by
Speaker 1: being like, you guys don't get it. This dude has
Speaker 1: a fucking like hotline to the like angrying up the
Speaker 1: blood of sort of like working class Germans. He gets it.
Speaker 1: He gets how to talk to them, and you people
Speaker 1: don't with your like fancy as weird books about Nazi
Speaker 1: race magic, you know, like that's exactly it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly it, And I mean I hate saying it.
Speaker 2: Like Hitler was clever in that regard. Like he. But
Speaker 2: the irony is that Striker's version of anti Semitism is
Speaker 2: way more honest. It's awful, but it's way more honest
Speaker 2: because the intellectuals are as disgusting as Striker. He's just
Speaker 2: saying it without the without the window dressing, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not making I'm not making like a moral
Speaker 1: difference between these guys, for sure, but.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, like, it's it's ironic that they would
Speaker 2: look down on Striker when they're the exact same people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously, like he'll lie about, you know, crimes and
Speaker 1: stuff that he claims people committed, but when it comes
Speaker 1: to the meaning of his hate, he's very honest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Striker's sentences when he writes them in the Discernment
Speaker 1: are short. He keeps you know, he's very focused into
Speaker 1: the point. He uses simple words when he makes a
Speaker 1: report and a big thing thing from his When he
Speaker 1: makes a point, he repeats it over and over again
Speaker 1: for months or even years each issue. There's never any
Speaker 1: new arguments, right, Every argument you're gonna get from Striker
Speaker 1: is laid out in the first, you know, issue of
Speaker 1: Dear Stirmer. But every issue brings more pieces of evidence
Speaker 1: to support these arguments, right, and the central argument is
Speaker 1: that the Jews are a threat to German life. The
Speaker 1: line that he uses over and over again is the
Speaker 1: Jews are our misfortune, right, which becomes one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic pieces of anti Semitic Nazi propaganda. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen twenties, Striker adds cartoons to dear
Speaker 1: Stirmer he had become. This is another area in which
Speaker 1: he's a trailblazer because he's become a fan over the
Speaker 1: period of making this of a racist cartoonist named Philippe
Speaker 1: Rupricht who wrote racist cartoons under the pseudonym Phipps, and
Speaker 1: Striker is like the first Nazi dude to realize, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know what everyone loves is a cartoon.
Speaker 1: This is a great way to dispread our propaganda. Phipps
Speaker 1: is interesting because he was initially just like a cartoonist
Speaker 1: who happened to be a racist. And so he gets
Speaker 1: hired by a social Democratic paper to show up at
Speaker 1: a Striker speech and draw a caricature of Striker, right
Speaker 1: for this newspaper that doesn't like him. But Phipps kind
Speaker 1: of falls in love with Striker. And instead draws caricatures
Speaker 1: of that mayor I talked about Lupa and a prominent
Speaker 1: Jewish citizen who's got like beef with Striker, and he
Speaker 1: instead of like doing the thing he'd been paid to,
Speaker 1: he goes to Striker and he's like, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: got paid to draw you, but instead I did these
Speaker 1: caricatures of these guys you hate. Will you publish them
Speaker 1: in Dear Sturmer? Striker does, and over the next eight years,
Speaker 1: Phipps's anti Semitic caricatures became the standard German visual shorthand
Speaker 1: for like identifying a public figure as Jewish. Michael D. Bulmosch,
Speaker 1: whose family collection of Holocaust related propaganda is hosted by
Speaker 1: Kenyan University, describes the impact of Phipps's drawings this way.
Speaker 1: These grotesque, often pornographic cartoons of Jewish stereotypes accompanied the
Speaker 1: propaganda Striker disseminated, saturating the consciousness of Germans during the
Speaker 1: Third Reich and contributing to the capacity of many Germans
Speaker 1: to accept the Nazi program. These drawings often ended with
Speaker 1: the statement the Jewish our misfortune, and without a solution
Speaker 1: to the Jewish question, there was no salvation for mankind. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have Sophie show you one of these cartoons,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to post any of this shit
Speaker 1: on the internet, because, by god, there's enough of it.
Speaker 1: But like, what's going on in this cartoon you're looking at.
Speaker 1: It shows like a Jewish butcher with his wife behind him.
Speaker 1: They are both drawn uncharitably, and he is putting rats
Speaker 1: in an organ grinder in order to make meat to
Speaker 1: sell to Christians. Right, specifically, sort of conspiracy theories against
Speaker 1: Jewish butchers are a big part of the thing that
Speaker 1: Striker is pushing because it makes people feel like they're
Speaker 1: personally threatened. You know, it's a way to kind of
Speaker 1: force them out of society. So you know, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see sort of like the visual shorthand that he's
Speaker 1: developing here.
Speaker 2: It's really like the archetypal like anti Summit, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: style if you like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of the modern sort of racist caricatures in
Speaker 1: this vein are descendants of Phipps's drum. Yeah, yeah, pretty common.
Speaker 2: Everybody wants to hidden knowledge, right.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, exactly, But you know the only way to
Speaker 1: get hidden knowledge Jake buying something that's right, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, exactly. When you purchase something that you
Speaker 1: don't want, it creates a gnostic info path in which,
Speaker 1: you know, the demi urge will beam a secret truth
Speaker 1: into your head. Because you've subscribed to Blue Apron's meal
Speaker 1: box plane.
Speaker 2: Everyone's saying it.
Speaker 1: Everyone's saying it. Ah, we're back here, so good stuff here.
Speaker 1: So yeah. By nineteen thirty three, dere Sturmer is a
Speaker 1: the most popular newspapers in Germany. There's more than half
Speaker 1: a million sales each month. You know, they're doing great.
Speaker 1: Hitler's in power, and he holds a big celebration rally
Speaker 1: in Nuremberg, which is against Striker's city. Right, That's where
Speaker 1: the base of his power has always been, the early
Speaker 1: years of political legitimacy, you know, because the thirties before
Speaker 1: Hitler kind of has made chancellor, the early thirties is
Speaker 1: when they're starting to get in to the Reichstag and whatnot.
Speaker 1: This has been good for not just Striker but other
Speaker 1: Nazi big wigs, and they'd started to get both rich
Speaker 1: and like literally physically overweight, right because they're not fighting
Speaker 1: in the streets so much. They've all gotten older and
Speaker 1: now they have money for like nice food, and alcohol.
Speaker 1: And I bring this up because so you look at
Speaker 1: like iconic footage of Nazi rallies, have you noticed that
Speaker 1: a lot of them are at night, right, these big
Speaker 1: torchlit rallies. I had always assumed that like that was
Speaker 1: just because oh, torches are like impressive visually, like it
Speaker 1: makes it look kind of like more serious and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But the reason why this first big Nuremberg rally is
Speaker 1: done like in torchlit style is because Hitler's like angry
Speaker 1: at the fact that all of his old fighters have
Speaker 1: gotten fat and he doesn't want their bellies to show.
Speaker 1: So he's like, we got it, we gotta do this
Speaker 1: at night so nobody sees. We don't want him to
Speaker 1: look at harm and garritt. Yeah, it's really it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny if you can, you know, not think about
Speaker 1: what comes later a little bit. But yeah, So while
Speaker 1: most of the old fighters straight away took offices in
Speaker 1: Germany and set to work dismantling Weimar, Striker remains at
Speaker 1: his paper right, he doesn't a lot. Basically, all of
Speaker 1: the other guys who had been that tight with Hitler
Speaker 1: for that long get jobs in the government. Even if
Speaker 1: that job they're not really doing anything. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of like, well, now you can get money and like
Speaker 1: take bribes and stuff. They get gigs in the state.
Speaker 1: Striker doesn't do that, and I think it's probably because
Speaker 1: Hitler and everyone knows, like, I know, you like this
Speaker 1: guy will take care of him, but like he can't
Speaker 1: work in the government. Likes he's just not that kind
Speaker 1: of person. He's not able to function within a bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a useful propagandist, but he's just too
Speaker 1: thorny to like function in a system like that. So
Speaker 1: they give him kind of this sort of like the
Speaker 1: prize that they give him that allows him to exist
Speaker 1: outside of the state apparatus. He's made Gaulighter for Franconia,
Speaker 1: which is the region that Nuremberg is in, and Galllighter
Speaker 1: is a party position, so it's not part of the government.
Speaker 1: It's part of the Nazi party and it's effectively like
Speaker 1: the head of a state party. Right, Like you think
Speaker 1: about Gaulight, I know it's nonsense, nonsense language, and hey,
Speaker 1: I don't feel any better about France coming for you
Speaker 1: next when we do the Napoleon episodes. So Galllighter is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's you think about, like in the United States,
Speaker 1: you've got like the Republican Party of Texas or the
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party of Wyoming or whatever, they're going to
Speaker 1: have like a person who is running the party for
Speaker 1: that state. That's what the Gawlighter is. But because the
Speaker 1: Nazis have taken control of the state and are sort
Speaker 1: of in the process thirty three thirty four to thirty
Speaker 1: five of like eating the state apparatus, being the head
Speaker 1: of the party for Franconia puts him in functional control
Speaker 1: over the government of the region, but he's not actually
Speaker 1: responsible for anything, so he can step in anywhere. He
Speaker 1: could tell the mayor what to do, you can tell
Speaker 1: the governor what to do. He can like, you know,
Speaker 1: force his will anywhere in Franconia he wants. But he
Speaker 1: also doesn't have to do anything, so he's not like
Speaker 1: managing the sewers. But if there's a way for him
Speaker 1: to like get money out of like the sewers, he
Speaker 1: could do that. You know. It's kind of a perfect
Speaker 1: position for a gangster type dude to be in, right
Speaker 1: because you don't actually have to accomplish anything for people,
Speaker 1: but you can take advantage whenever it sort of occurs
Speaker 1: to you, how you can do that? It's a sweet gig.
Speaker 1: But as Biteworking explains, yeah, yeah, exactly. But as his
Speaker 1: biographer bite Work explains, even this sweetheart gig is not
Speaker 1: something that Julie is as well suited to handle. Just
Speaker 1: as he had been a poor soldier off the battlefield
Speaker 1: and a good one on it, he was better at
Speaker 1: fighting for political power than he wasn't using it. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the almost absolute power of a gau Lighter of the
Speaker 1: Third Reich exacerbated the flaws in his personality. He could
Speaker 1: not tolerate the orders of others, nor would he tolerate
Speaker 1: disobedience on the path of his subordinates. And Randall goes
Speaker 1: on to cite the analysis of a historian named Edward Preston,
Speaker 1: which I find interesting, if slightly questionable in phrasing. Probably
Speaker 1: more so than any of his peers, Striker combined the
Speaker 1: elements of a dictator who would brook no opposition with
Speaker 1: those of the anarchist, the lover of chaos, who would
Speaker 1: accept no orders from superiors. This inability to fit into
Speaker 1: an organization, even his own, was his greatest weakness as Gaulighter.
Speaker 1: His lack of control made him enemies above, such as
Speaker 1: Gerring and Himmler, who and drove honorable men out of
Speaker 1: his organization below, leaving miserable toadies who had to crawl
Speaker 1: at his feet. There was constant turmoil in Franconia because
Speaker 1: there was constant turmoil in Striker. So he's he's given
Speaker 1: this gig, which is like his reward for being loyal,
Speaker 1: but he's like bad and he's fucking up. He's not
Speaker 1: just bad at it, but he's like fucking up the
Speaker 1: ability of the government to function in this This is
Speaker 1: a pretty crucial period for the Nazis, really, especially thirty
Speaker 1: three to thirty sixths or so. They're not it's not
Speaker 1: guaranteed that they're going to hold onto absolute power. The
Speaker 1: military doesn't really like them. They're in the process of
Speaker 1: replacing the police, right, there's still a chance that they
Speaker 1: could get like pushed out at this stage. So they
Speaker 1: don't want a guy like Striker just like fucking around
Speaker 1: in the local government and being incompetent. It's like bad
Speaker 1: for them, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't want a live wire, yeahime of everyone
Speaker 2: needing to play.
Speaker 1: Booll exactly exactly. This is like a really critical period
Speaker 1: and it's recognized that he was. He's a very reliable propagandist.
Speaker 1: He's not reliable here. So you know, the big reason
Speaker 1: why he gets into trouble then is not that like
Speaker 1: he's you know, a gangster, because they all are. It's
Speaker 1: that he's bad at being a gangster. You know. He
Speaker 1: after he chases his nemesis, the mayor out of job,
Speaker 1: the out of the job, he replaces him with a toady,
Speaker 1: like a guy who's supposed to you know, suck up
Speaker 1: to him, but like that guy isn't very good at
Speaker 1: his job and also doesn't work with Striker well because
Speaker 1: basically no one does. And the police chiefs that Himmler
Speaker 1: appoints in Franconia they also hate Striker because he's like
Speaker 1: super corrupt and is constantly breaking even like the minimal
Speaker 1: laws they're trying to enforce. So over and over again,
Speaker 1: Striker will get, you know, in trouble with somebody for
Speaker 1: like fucking up something critical in the state, and Nazi
Speaker 1: functionaries will write complaints to Hitler, and Hitler will intervene
Speaker 1: again and again. This happens a bunch in the mid thirties,
Speaker 1: like Nazis trying to force Striker out as gal lighter
Speaker 1: and Hitler being like, nah, man, he's my boy. Nah,
Speaker 1: he's my boy. Like I know he's bad at this,
Speaker 1: but like fuck you, he's my guy. And again, while
Speaker 1: this is going on, Nuremberg is a big city for Hitler.
Speaker 1: He visits there regularly. He doesn't like to see Striker.
Speaker 1: There's like a bunch of cases where he'll show up
Speaker 1: in Nuremberg for an event and he'll kind of like
Speaker 1: have like an advanced team go just to like warn
Speaker 1: him where Striker is so he doesn't have to like
Speaker 1: hang out with him, Like he really doesn't like it.
Speaker 2: They could see me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't let that dick can see me. But also
Speaker 1: it's known this is not just something that like was propaganda.
Speaker 1: People who knew and spend time around Hitler said that,
Speaker 1: like Dare Sturmer is the only thing Hitler reads cover
Speaker 1: to cover, like every issue, this guy's reading it. You know.
Speaker 1: So when we look at Striker living under Nazi control, again,
Speaker 1: he's not this guy of kind of like broad ranging talent.
Speaker 1: His talent is extremely focused on being a propagandist. But
Speaker 1: you know, outside of that, he's kind of a failure
Speaker 1: in every other aspect of life. The early years of
Speaker 1: the Reich are then largely about score settling for Julius.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, after the Night of Long Knives,
Speaker 1: a Nuremberg school teacher was heard in a cafe saying
Speaker 1: that strikers should have been among the victims. When word
Speaker 1: got back to Julius, someone reports this teacher. He has
Speaker 1: the man arrested, and then he shows up in this
Speaker 1: teacher's cell with two other Nazis armed with whips and
Speaker 1: they beat this guy half to death with them. As
Speaker 1: they leave the cell, Julius has heard to say, I
Speaker 1: needed that. Now I feel released, like you know, And
Speaker 1: I think this is like he's a street fighter, he's
Speaker 1: an old soldier, Like I'm going to use my part
Speaker 1: of what he is using his power on now that
Speaker 1: he is in political powers to like go beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of people whenever he wants to deal with
Speaker 1: his stress. Yeah, because he's you know, he's a big
Speaker 1: bully too. Maybe we have like glossed over that, but yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's like at the center of a lot of
Speaker 2: these ideologies is yeah, just suppressed bullies or bullies in
Speaker 2: a position where you know they can't do it for
Speaker 2: a bit or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just like that's I mean, obviously you
Speaker 1: think about like who wants to be a Nazi? Well, assholes, right.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, that's the way you'll live in So I
Speaker 2: want to crush you.
Speaker 1: Like exactly. Yeah, Like we shouldn't be surprised that Julia
Speaker 1: Stryker uses his power to like beat whoever he wants
Speaker 1: with a fucking whip. That's not a obviously like Heinrich
Speaker 1: Himler or whatever isn't going to like go after him
Speaker 1: for whipping some random teacher. But where Striker causes problems
Speaker 1: is so one of the first things he does when
Speaker 1: the Nazis take power is he helps to organize an
Speaker 1: anti Jewish boycott through his paper, which like is really successful,
Speaker 1: you know, And while it's actually kind of a mixed bag,
Speaker 1: but it's successful in making Nuremberg seen as the center
Speaker 1: of Nazi racial jurisprudence. Because Striker is the guy who's
Speaker 1: writing all of these theories out, now that they're sort
Speaker 1: of in power, he doesn't need to like like spread
Speaker 1: conspiracies about the Jews as much as he needs to
Speaker 1: make specific suggestions for how German law should deal with them.
Speaker 1: And this feeds into the fact that in September of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, at a Nuremberg rally, Hitler announces a
Speaker 1: new set of laws restricting the behavior of Jewish Germans
Speaker 1: known as the Nuremberg Laws. Among other things, these legally
Speaker 1: banned sexual relations between German Jews and German non Jews. Now,
Speaker 1: Striker was not a part of writing these laws. Any reading,
Speaker 1: anything you ever read about the Holocaust, any documentary about
Speaker 1: the Holocaust will talk about the Nuremberg Laws. They are
Speaker 1: extremely important in the advancing sort of assembly of the
Speaker 1: apparatus that becomes the Holocaust. Striker gets credit for these laws.
Speaker 1: He has no role in them actually, cause again, you're
Speaker 1: not going to bring in this dude to help you
Speaker 1: write laws. But because he was kind of the most
Speaker 1: known anti Semite in the Nazi Party, and because Nuremberg
Speaker 1: is his city, he gets credit for this thing that
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually really make. I mean, obviously he does
Speaker 1: support them, but he also like part of why he's
Speaker 1: not going to get to write these laws that he
Speaker 1: gets credit for is that these laws are written by
Speaker 1: the Nazi intellectuals that we talked about, who don't believe
Speaker 1: the exact same things that he does, like among other things,
Speaker 1: Striker believes that, like Stryker has these like weird mishmash
Speaker 1: of different sort of conspiratorial or in different stort of
Speaker 1: like historical almost some kind of like magical beliefs about
Speaker 1: the Jews and like where they came from, and like
Speaker 1: all of this weird stuff that kind of reaches back
Speaker 1: to like ariosophy and stuff like that Helena Blovotsky kind
Speaker 1: of shit. We talk about all this stuff, and some
Speaker 1: of that is common among the Nazi intelligensia, but like
Speaker 1: Striker's version of it is considered kind of gutter, and
Speaker 1: so it's interesting he gets kind of the last laugh
Speaker 1: here because these guys who hate him because they consider
Speaker 1: him low class are the ones who write the Nuremberg Laws.
Speaker 1: But Striker kind of gets credit for it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: after Hitler announces the Nuremberg Laws, like during his speech,
Speaker 1: there are chants of hail Striker that break out in
Speaker 1: the crowd because so many people give him credit for
Speaker 1: this stuff. Interesting side note under the individual.
Speaker 2: Kind of planting this seed without actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doing the thing such a good job that he
Speaker 1: gets credit for it over these people who are pretty
Speaker 1: pissed that, like, he's the one who gets credit for
Speaker 1: their racism. Yeah, no, he's not being racist, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: Under the new third reich, DERs Schermer expanded its ouvra
Speaker 1: into publishing children's books like the nineteen thirty six text
Speaker 1: Trust No Fox on the Green Meadow and No Jew
Speaker 1: on His Oath. Not as good a title is like
Speaker 1: I don't know, hop on pop, but yeah, that's a that's.
Speaker 2: Not not as good as anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: Daily, No anti anti Semitic letters. Yeah. This book is
Speaker 1: written by Elvira Bauer, who is an eighteen year old
Speaker 1: art student in kindergarten teacher, and is illustrated by Phipps
Speaker 1: Kenyon University. Right, children as young as six would be
Speaker 1: propagandais to recognize the Jew as distinct from the Aryan German,
Speaker 1: as crafty and exploitative, untrustworthy, greedy money hoarding, physically repulsive,
Speaker 1: and sexually predatory. The school child would be indoctrinated with
Speaker 1: old antisemitic tropes and canards from an early age. German
Speaker 1: youth would learn not only to recognize these repulsive descriptions
Speaker 1: of Jews, but as well the importance of standing together
Speaker 1: as a nation to remove the jew as a threat.
Speaker 1: Der Sturmer constantly reminded Germans that the Jews are our
Speaker 1: misfortune and jewry and its malignant influence had to be destroyed.
Speaker 1: So again, through all the issues, the first five years
Speaker 1: of Nazi power are broadly speaking a good time for him.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty eight he steps out of line again.
Speaker 1: And the cause here is Christallnacht happens, right, so you
Speaker 1: get this big night of rioting across Germany. Bunch of
Speaker 1: synagogues are burnt down, munch of Jewish businesses are like
Speaker 1: robbed the windows, yeah, break in the wind. That's the
Speaker 1: night of broken glass, right, And Striker uses this as
Speaker 1: an excuse kind of in the wake of this to
Speaker 1: buy up millions of dollars of a Jewish property at
Speaker 1: forced sale prices, where it's basically like, hey, seeing what's
Speaker 1: happening to all these other Jewish owned businesses. Your shop
Speaker 1: can either get burnt down, you can sell it to
Speaker 1: me at like five percent of its actual value. Right now.
Speaker 1: The Nazi don't have an issue with this as a thing.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is what they are all doing. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that Striker is not going within the
Speaker 1: party apparatus. He's just doing this at wherever he thinks
Speaker 1: there's a profit, and Harriman Gering is the guy who's
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing all this like making like buying
Speaker 1: all these businesses for nothing. So when Striker does this,
Speaker 1: he kind of steps on Gering's toes, and so the
Speaker 1: two men are wind up in conflict over this, and
Speaker 1: that conflict gets stoked by some of Striker's other enemies
Speaker 1: within the Nazi Party apparatus. One of these guys is
Speaker 1: the local police president who like goes to Gering and
Speaker 1: is like, hey man, look, you and I are buds.
Speaker 1: I just want to let you know Striker's telling people
Speaker 1: your dick doesn't work. Like he's saying that, like your
Speaker 1: wife got artificially inseminated, because like you can't come anymore.
Speaker 1: I just want you to know, bro, like I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that. Jules is saying that. You know, it is
Speaker 1: so petty, right, He's like, yeah, got him. So this
Speaker 1: pisses off Herman Gearing, who launches a yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, who launches a commission to investigate Striker and
Speaker 1: of course finds a lot of examples of outrageous corruption
Speaker 1: and obviously Herman Gehing is Herman Gearing. I don't trust
Speaker 1: that this was a good investigation. But Striker is outrageously corrupt,
Speaker 1: so it's probably not art and like it's so fucked up.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things they're doing, there's like a
Speaker 1: fucking paparazzi element to this, where like Striker is constantly
Speaker 1: cheating on his wife, right, He's got all these mistresses,
Speaker 1: he's visiting prostitutes. So a big part of what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're just like having photographers ambush him while
Speaker 1: he's like naked, fucking people and like take photos and
Speaker 1: stuff of him. Yeah, that's like a bunch this.
Speaker 2: Paparazzi.
Speaker 1: But like right there, so Gerring's investigation comes up with
Speaker 1: both a bunch of photos of Striker morally sort of
Speaker 1: being and one of most of the Nazis are like this, right,
Speaker 1: Herman Ghering is like this, right, like he is a
Speaker 1: he is a decadent motherfucker. But Hitler's actually not. Hitler's
Speaker 1: like weird and repressed and kind of grossed out by
Speaker 1: this sort of behavior. So even though they're all doing it,
Speaker 1: if you can make the case to Hitler that like
Speaker 1: this guy's a degenerate Hitler will get kind of pissed
Speaker 1: off as Rizaldebta. So that's like the hope, that's why
Speaker 1: they're going after him this way. So this force is
Speaker 1: a wider investigation, you know, Gerring's investigation. And so it
Speaker 1: now becomes a matter for the Nazi courts, and the
Speaker 1: Nazi courts call up Striker's assistant, a guy nams Hans Kanig,
Speaker 1: to testify against him, and it does say as much
Speaker 1: of an asshole as Striker as to most people who
Speaker 1: works with Kanig is as loyal as you can be
Speaker 1: because when he gets subpoenaed, basically he goes to Striker
Speaker 1: and he's like, they're gonna make me, They're gonna question
Speaker 1: me on the stand about you. And Striker's like, you
Speaker 1: should kill yourself, bro, the only way to get out
Speaker 1: of this, and Kanig does it. Kanag kills himself to
Speaker 1: protect Striker. What Yes, It's like, yes, sir, taking the order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess this is how I'm doing it. Yeah, wha?
Speaker 2: What the fuck was going on in Germany?
Speaker 1: Man? People? Are you got a note with all of
Speaker 1: this happening that like you can buy heroin over the
Speaker 1: counter there's like methamphetamine everywhere. Maybe that maybe that also
Speaker 1: everyone's drinking all I don't know, maybe that plays a
Speaker 1: role all the head injuries from the war. Who knows,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 5: It's it's a really wild time though, it's fucking nuts. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like obviously everything else happen off that was wild and
Speaker 5: fucked up and crazy, but it really didn't spring from nothing.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's a it's quite a quite a period.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so fucking Kanig offs himself, which winds up
Speaker 1: protecting Striker. Now, the Commission still finishes its report. Its
Speaker 1: investigation on him, and what they uncovered provides us with
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting lens into the early ground reality of
Speaker 1: Nazi corruption. And I'm going to quote from the book
Speaker 1: Julius Striker here. The Commission even investigated Striker's sexual life,
Speaker 1: greatly aided by the cooperation of a nervous mistress announcing
Speaker 1: that no proper man would wear a wedding ring. Striker
Speaker 1: had collected those of his underlings to melt down into
Speaker 1: a jewelry box for his mistress and he Sits, who
Speaker 1: also received a regular salary for very limited duties from
Speaker 1: Striker's one of his newspapers. Other mistresses too, received paychecks
Speaker 1: from surprising sources. A country house with a well equipped
Speaker 1: bedroom had been built for Striker's affairs. Further cases of
Speaker 1: the beatings of political opponents were uncovered, as were Striker's
Speaker 1: detailed examinations of the sex lives of arrested juvenile delinquents
Speaker 1: and his boasts in the presence of young people of
Speaker 1: sexual prowess. So he's doing shit like he's having all
Speaker 1: the people who work with him given his wedding rings
Speaker 1: so he can like melt them down to give a
Speaker 1: present to his mistress. He's like whenever juvenile delinquents are arrested,
Speaker 1: he's like showing up to like sexually harass and sometimes
Speaker 1: assault them, like he'te real weird piece of shit. So again,
Speaker 1: a lot of Nazis are doing stuff like this. Striker's
Speaker 1: just really bad at covering it up. But still Hitler
Speaker 1: fights back against these attempts from the other Nazis to
Speaker 1: use this as a justification to remove him from power,
Speaker 1: and he continues to back Striker for another year until
Speaker 1: the German invasion of Poland. And what finally gets Julius
Speaker 1: in trouble with Hitler is really dumb. Basically the invasion
Speaker 1: of Poland. Again, we forget this because of everything is
Speaker 1: kind of unpopular even in Germany at the time, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a dicey move. It's a gamble. Hitler's
Speaker 1: a gambler. It's a gamble to invade Poland because people
Speaker 1: aren't fully on board with doing another World war at
Speaker 1: this stage. While he's trying to build support for Hitler's
Speaker 1: invasion of Poland, Striker kind of goes off a little
Speaker 1: bit on a limb and he makes some comments critiquing
Speaker 1: the leadership of the Wehrmacht, which Hitler absolutely needs the
Speaker 1: army's support, and so when Striker fucks up and makes
Speaker 1: the army angry, Hitler has to ban Striker from giving
Speaker 1: public speeches in order to keep the army on his side.
Speaker 1: This sort of forces another investigation against Striker, which reveals
Speaker 1: a bunch more corruption, and in nineteen forty, Hitler finally
Speaker 1: agrees to remove Julius from his official position as Gaulighter.
Speaker 1: Sort of he doesn't. Hitler can't have him in control anymore,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't want to like publicly insult him, so
Speaker 1: in public Striker is still named the Gawlighter, but he
Speaker 1: is privately another person is picked to do the job,
Speaker 1: and Striker is banned from leaving his home. Right, He's
Speaker 1: not allowed to go to Nuremberg anymore. He's basically on
Speaker 1: like house arrest, but he's still allowed to publish Dare Stirmer.
Speaker 1: It's this weird back and forth Hitler has with him,
Speaker 1: where he's like, you are under house arrest, kit you
Speaker 1: if you go to Nuremberg. But also while the war
Speaker 1: is going on, I'm going to send you like precious
Speaker 1: supplies of fuel and paper in order to keep making
Speaker 1: their stirmer.
Speaker 2: Right, he just needs that, but he doesn't a lunatic
Speaker 2: behind it. I'm certainly not just in here and what
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say that Trump is like Hitler or anything
Speaker 2: like that, But it's it's in a way it reminds
Speaker 2: me slightly of like Bannon and Trump, like yeah, we
Speaker 2: eat this Rabel Rouser and then it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: for fuck's sake, he's he's going too far. What the
Speaker 2: fuck can we do with him? You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's one of those things like they're
Speaker 1: both authoritarian guys. Like obviously Trump hasn't killed tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people real big difference there, but there's similar
Speaker 1: personality things, right, and there's including as you I think
Speaker 1: pretty astutely noted, Bannon is super talented propagandist, was terrible
Speaker 1: at being involved in politics directly right, and immediately got in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these kind of guys come up and down in history,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, it's that's just the way it goes.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, Oddly enough, firing Striker in this way is
Speaker 1: one of the few things Adolf Hitler ever felt guilty about.
Speaker 1: Like this kind of gnaws at his heart. There's like
Speaker 1: a very yeah a quote from him during a private
Speaker 1: dinner in nineteen forty two where he's like lamenting this
Speaker 1: Striker affair is a tragedy. Striker is irreplaceable. There's no
Speaker 1: question of his coming back. But I must do him justice.
Speaker 1: If one day I write my memoirs, I shall have
Speaker 1: to recognize this man fought like a buffalo in our cause.
Speaker 1: I can't help thinking that in comparison with so many services,
Speaker 1: the reasons for Striker's dismissal are really very slender, Like
Speaker 1: it's so as a guy, he's a real piece of
Speaker 1: I mean, he's literally Hitler, but he's got this like
Speaker 1: he's like morally harmed by the fact that he's he
Speaker 1: feels like he's not doing right by Striker. Like, it's
Speaker 1: so strange.
Speaker 2: About evil that someone and feel bad about, like fireing
Speaker 2: this fucking lunatic that he didn't even like, and then
Speaker 2: not feel bad about literally massacreing six million people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything else weird thing? It is so because I
Speaker 1: think it is that for all of his numerous flaws,
Speaker 1: you know, as as other Nazis saw them, Striker was
Speaker 1: right or die for Hitler. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and someone with.
Speaker 2: An ego like Hitler's that means so much.
Speaker 1: That means everything to him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it's important in anyone's life, but for
Speaker 2: someone like that, when they're doing these evil shit, you
Speaker 2: need that person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need you need that fucking dude who liked Like,
Speaker 1: you know, Striker had this guy who was willing to
Speaker 1: kill himself for him. I think Stryker would have done
Speaker 1: that for Hitler, Like he was able to be kind
Speaker 1: of selfless when it came to backing Hitler. This is
Speaker 1: the only place he was able to do that in
Speaker 1: his life because he's otherwise real piece of shit, but
Speaker 1: he had that to him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting it's it's so things like that just so fun,
Speaker 2: the psyche of just you know, like pure evil like
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's compartmentalized within these people's heads, like it's
Speaker 2: it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: There's a lot there just about the human the humanity
Speaker 1: and I don't mean this and like we need to
Speaker 1: be sympathetic toward Adolf Hitler, but the humanity of him
Speaker 1: in that he is a man who is capable of
Speaker 1: having something gnaw at his conscience, but also like the
Speaker 1: thing the nauset is conscience is that he wasn't nice
Speaker 1: enough to a giant piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, it's I don't know how you work
Speaker 2: it out, Like.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to it's just like a thing. Like I
Speaker 1: think it's if you actually, if you actually want to
Speaker 1: understand these people not just as like historical figures, but
Speaker 1: as like people. This is a thing. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: aspect of absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you don't understand where this is coming from,
Speaker 2: it will happen.
Speaker 1: Again, yeah, exactly. And it also like these people someone
Speaker 1: we often say like oh, this person's a mom, right,
Speaker 1: and you use it to kind of treat them like
Speaker 1: a force of almost like magic, like an ill wind,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, Hitler was a person. Striker was
Speaker 1: a person they had.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Part of what you have to understand here that I'm
Speaker 1: sure is like an aspect of how they both feel
Speaker 1: the way they do. Is this like feeling of like
Speaker 1: trench loyalty to a fellow soldier, you know, yes and yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So World War two not great for the Dear Sturmer
Speaker 1: as a as a as a profitable organization. For one thing,
Speaker 1: paper fuel all gets harder to find, it's more difficult
Speaker 1: to publish newsletters. Most people in this period are actually
Speaker 1: going to be reading Dear Sturmer, not by like buying
Speaker 1: a copy, but because in every town in Germany they'll
Speaker 1: put up these big kind of like ground level billboard
Speaker 1: type things where every new issue will be like put
Speaker 1: under glass or something so you can see each page
Speaker 1: and like presented that way, so people in town can
Speaker 1: just like walk up to it to read that week's
Speaker 1: issue of Dear Stirmer. Like that's how a lot of
Speaker 1: it gets handed out because like like for free, yeah,
Speaker 1: for free, because.
Speaker 2: There's shortage of yeah, because you.
Speaker 1: Can't you can't make as much as many paper copies
Speaker 1: for one thing, right, it's just not possible with the
Speaker 1: reality of the war. So obviously dear Sturmer becomes less
Speaker 1: profitable it also people are less interested in it. During
Speaker 1: World War Two, Striker was had built his base of
Speaker 1: readers through sexual titillation and blood and guts and fear
Speaker 1: mongering about the Jews, that's the core of it, right,
Speaker 1: And by the time World War Two starts, there are
Speaker 1: not Jews publicly in German society, right, that's like the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: you know, And so there's nothing for him to fear
Speaker 1: monger about, Right, what are you going to do? Like,
Speaker 1: how are you going to do the thing that you
Speaker 1: were doing?
Speaker 2: They've they've a new enemy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been removed, right, And he he's not ever
Speaker 1: able to really figure that out. So dear Sturmer stays
Speaker 1: working during the World War Two. But it kind of
Speaker 1: it's it's it's public interest in it sort of falls
Speaker 1: through the floor. And in early nineteen forty five, Julius
Speaker 1: requests permission from Hitler to basically I want to you know,
Speaker 1: everything's falling apart, Please let me go to the front
Speaker 1: and like fight, and Hitler gives him permission, but Striker
Speaker 1: doesn't wind up doing that instead, he's just married his
Speaker 1: secretary after his wife died, who he'd been cheating with
Speaker 1: on his wife for a long time. And right before
Speaker 1: the war ends, they flee to Burkedisgotten, which is where
Speaker 1: Hitler had, Like it's this nice little mountain town where
Speaker 1: Hitler had his like summer home, and they kind of
Speaker 1: just like move there with the plan of like writing
Speaker 1: it out as long as they can and then killing themselves.
Speaker 1: So while they're in hiding, American gis you know, capture
Speaker 1: Nuremberg and whatnot. And they find Striker's house and as
Speaker 1: they're going this is a thing. All of these Nazis, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Hermann Gering's big palace gets like gone through
Speaker 1: by soldiers, so does like Hitler's place in Burkedisgotten. They
Speaker 1: find all of the different like art these guys had collected,
Speaker 1: and when it Striker, you know, these other big Nazis
Speaker 1: they had stolen like very valuable works of art. Inside
Speaker 1: Striker's home they find what might have been the largest
Speaker 1: stockpile of pornography in the world at the time.
Speaker 4: Are you surprised, No, no, not, like just rooms of
Speaker 4: porn and what he'd done is for years, as gall lighter.
Speaker 1: Striker had collected, using the police, every piece of pornography
Speaker 1: produced in the city that he could get his hands on.
Speaker 1: He claimed, I'm building a library to like study the
Speaker 1: Jewish plot to destroy area and masculinity. That's why I
Speaker 1: need more porn than any man has ever had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, one minute there, I'm just in the office studying.
Speaker 1: I'm studying.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna study so Hot to Night.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's it's funny to think of, but
Speaker 2: at the same time, it's not a tool surprising from this.
Speaker 1: Yey right now, not at all. So on May twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, the Americans are in Burke dis Godden. There's
Speaker 1: the you know, they're looking for all of these Nazi
Speaker 1: big wigs, right, and Striker is on the list. He's
Speaker 1: gone missing. So like officers are getting handed these lists
Speaker 1: being like be on the lookout for this dude. We
Speaker 1: we want to talk to this Nazi. And there's this
Speaker 1: American Jewish major, right, he's a he's a Jewish American
Speaker 1: who's an army major. His last name is Plitt, and
Speaker 1: he's walking around town one day in burked this godden
Speaker 1: and he sees Striker in his mistress, and Plitt doesn't
Speaker 1: think that he's Striker is instead is just like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you look a lot like this escape Nazi. Has anyone
Speaker 1: ever told you that? Right? Like, he's just being kind
Speaker 1: of casual about it. Yeah, but he does it in
Speaker 1: like German, and he's not great at speaking German, right,
Speaker 1: because he's an American, And so Striker, because the dude's
Speaker 1: German is broken, thinks this guy is saying you are
Speaker 1: the escaped Nazi Julius Striker and hands himself in Right,
Speaker 1: He's like, you got me, And then the Major's like, wait,
Speaker 1: really for real, why are you actually that guy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you know, the language barrier captured us at least
Speaker 1: one Nazi. There you go. Right now, Striker gets arrested.
Speaker 1: If you go and read and if you're googling a
Speaker 1: lot of stories about Striker, you will wind up on
Speaker 1: a bunch of Nazi websites. Because they are livid that
Speaker 1: he gets they call it torture, which I guess you could.
Speaker 1: It's not not torture. Basically, what happens is when he
Speaker 1: gets arrested. This is a thing that happens to a
Speaker 1: number of arrested Nazis, a couple of like Jewish soldiers
Speaker 1: and Black soldiers just beat the shit out of him, right,
Speaker 1: just absolutely to fuck it. But right, like, I'm not
Speaker 1: worried about this, This is not this doesn't tweak my heart.
Speaker 1: But Nazis get really angry about the fact that the
Speaker 1: Allies tortured this guy. Where it's like, yeah, I don't know, man.
Speaker 1: One thing that we know happens is that US troops
Speaker 1: starts circulating a picture of him after he got the
Speaker 1: hell beaten out of him that has a sign that
Speaker 1: says Julius stre or King of Jews. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you kicked in. Yeah, he gets a little he gets
Speaker 1: more of his come up ince than like most Nazis. Right,
Speaker 1: So he goes on, you know, he's captured. He's there's
Speaker 1: like a year or so where he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: in custody and everyone's trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: do the Nuremberg trials because that's the whole process. And
Speaker 1: like while he's being interrogated while this court trial is
Speaker 1: going on, Striker he kind of like he has a
Speaker 1: couple of weird periods. There's like one period of time
Speaker 1: where he starts because this is if you remember, you
Speaker 1: know your history, Right after World War Two, a number
Speaker 1: of these Jewish militias that had existed in Palestine start
Speaker 1: like fighting, you know, more openly, right, And he hears
Speaker 1: about this, and he starts making speeches about how now
Speaker 1: you know, if you'll let me go, I'll go to
Speaker 1: Palestine to fight on behalf of these Jewish militias because
Speaker 1: unlike the German, they're willing to fight for their homeland
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, it's very weird, Like I think he's
Speaker 1: just like fucking with people, right, like yeah, because he
Speaker 1: like he's trolling, right, like that is the guy this
Speaker 1: is like he knows this will get attention. He wants
Speaker 1: to troll people. He makes a claim at one point
Speaker 1: that like I met this Jewish American soldier who treated
Speaker 1: me well and it proved to me that there's good Jews.
Speaker 1: But then he also writes like a final like big
Speaker 1: anti Semitic rant that's his like political statement about how
Speaker 1: everything's the fault. He's just like trolling people, right, like
Speaker 1: we don't need to get into it that. I mean
Speaker 1: the guy that he is in prison, Yeah he's going
Speaker 1: to say that shit, yeah exactly. So they have this
Speaker 1: big international military tribunal. Striker and Garring are kind of
Speaker 1: like two of the bigger Nazis there. There's some like
Speaker 1: generals and whatnot. And the indictment of Striker concludes that
Speaker 1: he was like not directly involved in the physical commission
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, right, not or at least not in
Speaker 1: a way that's like similar to you know, the people
Speaker 1: who are running aushwit whatever. Right. But they note, and
Speaker 1: I think this is a really interesting and valuable thing
Speaker 1: that the Nuremberg trial does that while he was not
Speaker 1: a part of the state and he was not organizing
Speaker 1: death camps, his propaganda was consciously preparing the way for genocide, right,
Speaker 1: that that had been part of his goal, and that
Speaker 1: he was thus partly responsible for Nazi crimes against humanity.
Speaker 1: There's a line in here, basically like within sort of
Speaker 1: the kind of indictments against him, there's this sort of
Speaker 1: a line that quote the effects of this man's crime,
Speaker 1: of the poison that he has poured into the minds
Speaker 1: of millions of young boys and girls, goes on, for
Speaker 1: he concentrated upon the youth and childhood of Germany. He
Speaker 1: leaves behind him a legacy of almost a whole people
Speaker 1: poisoned with hate, sadism, and murder and perverted by him.
Speaker 1: That people remain a problem and perhaps a menace to
Speaker 1: the rest of civilization for generations to come. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that is the accurate conclusion of the Nuremberg Commission. He
Speaker 1: is sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, very I mean, in many ways, I
Speaker 2: think his legacy is a lot more dangerous than someone
Speaker 2: dealing out violence at the time. Not to say there
Speaker 2: were any absolutely as well, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: his legacy is definitely lasted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you think about, like a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago in the US, we had the Tree of
Speaker 1: Life synagogue shooting. Right, this guy, Robert Bowers walks and
Speaker 1: shoots eleven people he bred there. You can find like
Speaker 1: quotes of him basically sharing evolutions of Striker propaganda. There's
Speaker 1: a direct line between the two. Right, Striker's still killing people, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Point Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool that on October sixteenth, nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: the United States had a mostly illiterate con man who
Speaker 1: pretended to be a skilled executioner hang Striker on the
Speaker 1: gallows at Nuremberg and really fuck it up. It's a
Speaker 1: bad execution. This guy did not know what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets.
Speaker 3: Caught by a guy who's who has broken German and
Speaker 3: then gets by a guy who's you bad at people?
Speaker 2: Right, it has like this Looney Tunes death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the American people helping to punish the Nazis through incompetency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know we were doing but we got him in
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's luckily he felt like a lot of
Speaker 2: pain before death, just from American incompetence. But it works.
Speaker 1: God willing. All right, that's the story of Julius Striker. Jake,
Speaker 1: how you feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very fascinating, man, I'm really really interested in that.
Speaker 2: It's particularly like I've read Oh God, what's anyway? The
Speaker 2: book about like the lead up to World War Two,
Speaker 2: and I don't remember this guy. I'm sure it was
Speaker 2: in it. It was a long time ago, but it's really
Speaker 2: interesting this kind of stuff, and it really sadly shows
Speaker 2: that it's not really going anywhere and hasn't really gone
Speaker 2: anywhere in some ways, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's that's pretty pretty cool
Speaker 1: if you're interested in Julius Strek. I really do recommend
Speaker 1: people the book Julius strike Or by Randall Bitwork. Really
Speaker 1: good book, really good historiography of this guy, talks in
Speaker 1: much more detail about his propaganda. Jake, Where can people
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just hit me up any social media at
Speaker 2: Jake underscore Hanrahan that's h A n A h A n.
Speaker 2: Or check check out my platform, popular Front. Just go
Speaker 2: well search, Yeah, your best bet. We were shadow band
Speaker 2: off of a load of stuff. We're censored heavily on
Speaker 2: everything but Twitter, ironically. But yeah, so just search at
Speaker 2: popular dot front and you'll find us.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Yes, so check out popular Front, check out
Speaker 1: sad Oligarch, and join Cooler Zone Media so you can
Speaker 1: get all of these wonderful shows. Well, not popular Front
Speaker 1: ad free, but popular Front is ad free normally, so
Speaker 1: all of your podcasts will be add free if you
Speaker 1: add that to your.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest. Times are very hot, and I don't
Speaker 2: think it's going to stay out free for much younger.
Speaker 2: We've done five years, but yeah it's going bad. But yeah,
Speaker 2: not bad in terms of the business, in terms of
Speaker 2: cost of living crisis, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard out there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: And that brings me back to blue aprons.
Speaker 2: Goddamn.
Speaker 1: Anyway, everybody fresh you know, have a have a happy holiday.
Speaker 1: This isn't going to come out during a holiday, but
Speaker 1: the next time you have a holiday, remember me wishing
Speaker 1: you a happy one. Now on Christmas, Yeah, and Christmas,
Speaker 1: you know, for a few months from now.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Bye.
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