Speaker 1: Hitler, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. But we did it. I always
Speaker 1: promised we do it again. That's our That's everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: intro is when I just a totally shouted Hitler. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Hitler today. This is Behind the Bastards podcast
Speaker 1: about the worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: and this is actually a special mini series of Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards called Behind the Insurrections. Uh. Last episode we
Speaker 1: talked about Benito Mussolini's March on Rome. This episode, we're
Speaker 1: talking about another fascist insurrection directly inspired by the March
Speaker 1: on Rome and carried out by Bastard's pod side character
Speaker 1: and main character, Adolf Hitler. We're talking about the Munich
Speaker 1: beer Hall push today. Yeah, lighted a fire, baby lighted
Speaker 1: on so awful insurrection. I realized I should probably reference
Speaker 1: where I got that from. It's okay, so Common the
Speaker 1: actor and I call him the actor. I'm finishing. That
Speaker 1: is an interesting since the rapper. Okay and yes, and
Speaker 1: one could argue of the top ten list of greatest
Speaker 1: rap albums of all time, Common may hold two of
Speaker 1: those slots, one of which is an album called Resurrection
Speaker 1: and That's where I got that from, was because he's
Speaker 1: saying Ris Rick should so I was just saying insurrection,
Speaker 1: deep cut, unnecessary piece of information. But you can pull
Speaker 1: that out next time somebody tried to judge you about
Speaker 1: your pop culture stuff. Beautiful, thank you. I'm more excited
Speaker 1: about the fact that he was common sense. And then
Speaker 1: he got into Hollywood and decided to drop the sense,
Speaker 1: which no com There was a there's a band out
Speaker 1: here in l A, like a local band who sued
Speaker 1: him whose name was common said, and they were like
Speaker 1: almost like a three eleven sublime, like white Boy Raggai band,
Speaker 1: and they sued him for the name. They were like,
Speaker 1: we were common sense first, and I mean I feel like,
Speaker 1: I feel like you can't copyright the word or name
Speaker 1: common sense, but they wont. So he was like, all right,
Speaker 1: whatever comment and then became a list celebrity. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, speaking of people who won, we should
Speaker 1: talk about hitler Um at least for a while, but
Speaker 1: not in this particular story, although eventually, at least when
Speaker 1: this particular story ends, it's not the end of the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: This particular story is with Nazi defeat. But the broader
Speaker 1: story of the Nazis is more complicated than that. So
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna start here by talking about the
Speaker 1: city of Munich, because generally when people talk Nazis, they
Speaker 1: wind up kind of focusing on Berlin Um. But Munich
Speaker 1: is where the National Sohalist Germans Workers Party, the n
Speaker 1: s d a P, the Nazis, That's where they came from.
Speaker 1: That's the birthplace of the Nazi movement is Munich. And
Speaker 1: if you look a little bit into Munich's history it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Um. Munich is a city in the German
Speaker 1: state of Bavaria Um and Bavaria is historically the most
Speaker 1: conservative part of Germany. It's kind of like Texas, uh
Speaker 1: in that even after German unification in eighteen seventy, Bavarians
Speaker 1: tended to see themselves as different and other from like
Speaker 1: the rest of Germany, right like we're Germans, sure, but
Speaker 1: we're more Bavarian, right Like it's it's this this the
Speaker 1: attitude that you do kind of see like Texans have
Speaker 1: a bit of this, right like where we're our own thing.
Speaker 1: So that's always big in Bavaria and there's this kind
Speaker 1: of like traditionalism. They have their own monarchy that's separate
Speaker 1: from the Kaiser right, like the Kaiser's in charge of
Speaker 1: Bavaria still, but they also have their own king UM.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of Bavarians who aren't super into
Speaker 1: the idea of being part of Germany right because they
Speaker 1: they they are more Bavarian than anything. Now. Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 1: who was again in Austrian so he's not really a
Speaker 1: German by the consideration of a lot of Germans. He
Speaker 1: moves to Munich in nineteen thirteen mainly because he was
Speaker 1: getting drafted to go join the Austrian Army and he
Speaker 1: didn't want to join the Austrian army. So he's a
Speaker 1: draft dodger and he moves to Munich to avoid serving
Speaker 1: his time in the military. UM and just based on
Speaker 1: what happens lest this is less because Hitler was Hitler
Speaker 1: was not scared of being in the military. He didn't
Speaker 1: like Austria. He thought it was like racially polluted UM
Speaker 1: and so he moved to Munich because it was more
Speaker 1: in line with his right wing sensibilities. UM. So he
Speaker 1: rented a cheap room and he made a poverty level
Speaker 1: income in Munich painting pictures of like famous buildings in
Speaker 1: town because the beautiful city and selling them to tourists.
Speaker 1: And this was like a whole industry in Munich. A
Speaker 1: bunch of of little artists would paint pictures of local
Speaker 1: buildings and sell them as like keepsakes to tourists. Hitler
Speaker 1: was kind of unique among these artists because while most
Speaker 1: of them would actually go out to where those buildings
Speaker 1: were with like an easel and paint the buildings and
Speaker 1: then sell their pictures and stuff, Hitler would buy cheap
Speaker 1: postcards of those buildings and paint alone in his room
Speaker 1: where he spent most of his time reading fringe political
Speaker 1: tracts and one presumes masturbating furiously. We have to Yeah,
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. Yeah, yeah he was. I mean he was
Speaker 1: a pretty right wing guy. But yeah, he's he's pounding
Speaker 1: it in his little office um and painting from postcards. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's not a very good artist, which is one
Speaker 1: of the key little because he lived in like a
Speaker 1: tiny little real he was renting from a lady. He
Speaker 1: was he was very little. Yeah, when Hitler, I thought
Speaker 1: we were just putting him down for no reason. But no, no,
Speaker 1: he was extremely poor. So when Hitler moved to Munich,
Speaker 1: he had just finished being like a homeless person in
Speaker 1: in Vienna, Like he lived in like a men's home
Speaker 1: and stuff for like people who couldn't afford um to
Speaker 1: stay off the street and whatnot. So he had just
Speaker 1: gotten out of like a really dire financial situation. Um.
Speaker 1: And actually part of why he was in a dire
Speaker 1: financial situation is he inherited money from his mom, but
Speaker 1: then his sister needed it for her kids, and so
Speaker 1: he gave up his inheritance to her. Um, which you know,
Speaker 1: kind of his evidence that, like everyone who turns out terrible,
Speaker 1: there was a period of time in which Hitler might
Speaker 1: not have wound up being Hitler. Um. So anyway, important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. So Hitler's living in Munich, He's
Speaker 1: painting shitty paintings, tugging it all the time, um, and
Speaker 1: reading a bunch of like reactionary right wing zines, like
Speaker 1: poorly mimiographed newsletters about the dangers of the Jews. That's
Speaker 1: like a huge thing Hitler's doing in this period. Some
Speaker 1: things never changed, man. Yeah, Yeah, It's like it's like
Speaker 1: he's like hanging out on the day's equivalent of eight Chan,
Speaker 1: which is like these tracts that are being passed out
Speaker 1: on the street. So when World War One kicks off,
Speaker 1: and you know, in this period, right the Archduke's assassinated,
Speaker 1: as we talked about last time, but in the run
Speaker 1: up to World of One, Benito Mussolini's furiously trying to
Speaker 1: get his country Italy involved in the war. UM. Germany
Speaker 1: goes to war with the World UM, and Hitler immediately
Speaker 1: joins up and become as an infantry man. UH. And
Speaker 1: he's almost immediately thrown into one of the most horrifying
Speaker 1: battles in not just like the whole war, but like
Speaker 1: ever it's known colloquially as the Slaughter of the Innocence
Speaker 1: because the Germans sent tens of thousands of basically children
Speaker 1: to die to like Allied machine guns, a horrible battle. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: at the same time as Hitler's watching his friends getting
Speaker 1: mowed down in the trenches, Herman Gerring, who would become
Speaker 1: his future second in command, is becoming one of the
Speaker 1: first fighter pilots in history. Gering flew with Manfred ron
Speaker 1: Richtoven the Red Baron's Flying Circus. He took command of
Speaker 1: the squadron after Ricktoven got killed in nineteen eighteen, and
Speaker 1: he got something. He shot down like twenty nine planes.
Speaker 1: He's an extremely good fighter pilot, and it's like a
Speaker 1: dad becomes like a dashing national hero. Now another big
Speaker 1: Nazi you might know, Heinrich Himler was too young to
Speaker 1: serve during World War One. He came from that awkward
Speaker 1: generation where you were too young to fight in the
Speaker 1: First World War, and he would have been too old
Speaker 1: to fight in the second, and so his entire youth
Speaker 1: was spent like idolizing these soldiers go off to die
Speaker 1: in France who he was unable to join. Now, another
Speaker 1: fellow who went to war in nineteen fourteen was Ernst Pohner.
Speaker 1: Now Powner was a middle aged I know, it's a
Speaker 1: rough name. You gotta give the guy some credit for
Speaker 1: it the real cross to bear. So Powner grew up
Speaker 1: or Powner was like a middle aged, conservative educated Bavarian,
Speaker 1: pretty right wing guy. When the war starts and he
Speaker 1: was commissioned as an infantry officer and eventually rose to
Speaker 1: regimental command. Now, despite being a Bavarian to his soul
Speaker 1: and thus being kind of like separate from the rest
Speaker 1: of Germans, fighting in the war gives him this sense
Speaker 1: of like unity with the rest of Germany and he
Speaker 1: starts to feel like a member of this, like this
Speaker 1: unified nation for the first time in his life. And
Speaker 1: in fact, all of Bavaria was brought closer in step
Speaker 1: to the rest of Germany. As a result of the war.
Speaker 1: The region industrialized rapidly to provide armaments, and as the
Speaker 1: German state devoted itself increasingly to becoming an engine of
Speaker 1: arms production. Um, Bavaria becomes like a big part of that,
Speaker 1: particularly Nuremberg or not, I think I think it might
Speaker 1: have been. It was it was Narremberg. I'm not great
Speaker 1: on all the other German cities, but like Bavarius starts
Speaker 1: industrializing heavily, and their military was like just the best
Speaker 1: in the world, incredibly good. Yeah yeah, like like Germany
Speaker 1: actively amazing goes up against the entire rest of the
Speaker 1: world in World War One and comes pretty close to winning.
Speaker 1: They yeah, they like it's not like World War Two
Speaker 1: where after a while, like they're almost they almost pulled
Speaker 1: it off almost one yeah yeah, um, so the Kaiser's
Speaker 1: propaganda had forbidden so like and that that's actually part
Speaker 1: of the problem is that right up until the end
Speaker 1: of the war, Germany could win it. It's not again,
Speaker 1: not like World War Two. We're after nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: Everyone can see the writing on the wall up until
Speaker 1: like late nineteen eighteen, Germany could pull that ship off.
Speaker 1: Um And this is sort of compounded in the minds
Speaker 1: of German people who see their soldiers winning by the
Speaker 1: Kaisers propaganda, because the Kaiser had forbidden journalists from reporting
Speaker 1: on the dire situation in the West. Um. So number one,
Speaker 1: Germany is in a pretty good position most of the war.
Speaker 1: They knock Romania and Russia out of the fight, so
Speaker 1: they beat like two powers, including Russia, which is like
Speaker 1: a fifth of the world's land masks which they heard
Speaker 1: of at the time. They conquer Ukraine, um like get
Speaker 1: it in a treaty basically, and they spend most of
Speaker 1: the war within spitting distance of Paris. So on a map,
Speaker 1: Germans spend most of that war thinking like we're winning.
Speaker 1: This is tough, we're losing a lot of men, but
Speaker 1: like we're gonna win this thing now. The situation on
Speaker 1: the map belied some crucial realities, including the fact that
Speaker 1: as the war went on, Germany was completely hollowed out
Speaker 1: of soldiers, of supplies, and of food. Three quarters of
Speaker 1: a million German civilian starved to death as a result
Speaker 1: of the Allied blockade. UM. By the time Germany surrenders
Speaker 1: in the winter of nineteen eighteen, it's army is on
Speaker 1: the very brink of collapse. The generals who are in
Speaker 1: charge at the end a guy named Eric Lundor for
Speaker 1: you might remember from the Wonder Woman movie. Yes, he's
Speaker 1: the bad guy and Wonder Woman um, but was a
Speaker 1: real dude. UM. And Paul von Hindenberg, who was his
Speaker 1: his co general. We're not the ones to accept failure gracefully, right,
Speaker 1: Like both of them had some victories to their name,
Speaker 1: both of them made some major strategic errors at the
Speaker 1: end that we're a big factor in German defeat. Um.
Speaker 1: But when the Germans lose, they don't stay on deck
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, guys, we tried our best, we
Speaker 1: fought as hard as anyone could fight, and we got
Speaker 1: our We we just lost. They fucking bounce like as
Speaker 1: soon as it becomes clear they're going to surrender, they're
Speaker 1: fucking out of there. Yeah yeah, so back yeah, and
Speaker 1: they they hand over responsibility for negotiating Germany's surrender because
Speaker 1: the Kaiser also bounces like that motherfucker's off the Belgium
Speaker 1: on a trade like um. So all of the people
Speaker 1: who had gotten Germany into war and had like pushed
Speaker 1: the war the whole time leave and put the responsibility
Speaker 1: for negotiating the surrender on the social democrat dominated Reichstag.
Speaker 1: So Germany overnight is a social democracy. And also the
Speaker 1: liberals who had been most a lot of them anti
Speaker 1: war up to that point, now have to deal with
Speaker 1: negotiating germany surrender. Meanwhile, the guys who were responsible for
Speaker 1: losing the war start concocting a narrative that the left
Speaker 1: had stabbed the German army in the back, um, and
Speaker 1: that's why they lost. And when I say the left,
Speaker 1: I also mean the Jews, because that's what they mean, right,
Speaker 1: like they're not, yeah, the left. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing people talk about cultural Marxism today, right the turn
Speaker 1: back then was Judeo Bolshevism. But it's the same idea, right.
Speaker 1: So the first days and weeks after Germany's defeat, there
Speaker 1: were just a bunch of revolutions all throughout these different
Speaker 1: cities in Germany, and a lot of them were left wing.
Speaker 1: But Verry was not spared in this wave of unrest.
Speaker 1: As you said, there was a strong While Bavaria is
Speaker 1: very conservative, in Munich in particular, there's a very vibrant
Speaker 1: left wing. And several days before Germany signs the armistice
Speaker 1: on November eleven, on November seven, this huge crowd as
Speaker 1: symbols in Munich and they forced the Bavarian king to
Speaker 1: leave his throne. Now, the guy who orchestrate did this
Speaker 1: was a dude named Kurt Eisner, and he's the head
Speaker 1: of the Bavarian Social Democratic Party and his goal was
Speaker 1: to you know what he did. He wanted to kick
Speaker 1: out the king and establish a Bavarian republic. Now, that
Speaker 1: worked for a little while. The unfortunately Eisner, the coalition
Speaker 1: that Eisener used to kind of kick the king out
Speaker 1: and establish a republic was only united in their desire
Speaker 1: to bring it into the war and get rid of
Speaker 1: the king. And once that war ended and the king
Speaker 1: was gone, they didn't agree on anything else because it
Speaker 1: was a coalition of like the far left, but also
Speaker 1: a lot of like center left people and even centrists
Speaker 1: were just like this World War One thing doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be working out for anybody. All of us sucks
Speaker 1: for all of us. And when that ends, a lot
Speaker 1: of these centrists are like, well, we don't really agree
Speaker 1: with the left on anything else, you know, And there's
Speaker 1: this huge desire to We've got the king out, the
Speaker 1: war has gone. Let's go back to business as usual.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the way things were before the war.
Speaker 1: I think people Americans can understand. People. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: want to go back to branch man. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to brunch. And a lot of these
Speaker 1: centrists wanted to go back to the center right and
Speaker 1: the center left, arguing because both the extreme right and
Speaker 1: the extreme left had been empowered by the war and
Speaker 1: the economic collapse that came with it, and these these
Speaker 1: folks in the middle were scared by that. So this
Speaker 1: is before like Proust, and like the new like the
Speaker 1: new Democrats or the new like Constitution. They right, like this,
Speaker 1: this is right, this is before the Weimar Constitution. Istion
Speaker 1: Eisner over Eisner leads his sort of revolution like five
Speaker 1: days before Germany surrenders. Um. So this is contemporary, like
Speaker 1: the Weimar Constitution starts being written during the period where
Speaker 1: a lot of this is happening. But this starts before.
Speaker 1: This starts while the Kaiser is still on the throat, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm fairly sure while the Kaiser is still on the front.
Speaker 1: It starts before the official German surrender. So things, you know,
Speaker 1: the center right or the center left decides like, we
Speaker 1: don't really want to work with Eisener. Eisner's support dissolves,
Speaker 1: and he kind of winds up unable to govern because
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have a lot of people backing him. Um.
Speaker 1: There's new elections, uh in January of nineteen nineteen, and
Speaker 1: this kind of center left dominates as opposed to Eisner's
Speaker 1: far left. So on the morning of February one, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Kurt Eisner starts walking to the lawn Tag, the land Tag,
Speaker 1: which is like they're, you know, kind of their Congress
Speaker 1: sort of thing, to resign his position as head of
Speaker 1: the local government. Now, while he's on his way, this
Speaker 1: German noble count Anton Arco Valley, which is a fucking badass.
Speaker 1: Now Arco Valley, it's like he's like a Spiderman victim right, Billy, Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a rich Bavarian nobleman. So Arco Valley
Speaker 1: like comes up and shoots him dead. Eisner. Um so
Speaker 1: because he's you know, Arco Valley is a monarchist and
Speaker 1: a and a far right kind of guy, and he
Speaker 1: wants to murder this left wing dude, even though the
Speaker 1: guy is about to leave power willingly. So one of
Speaker 1: Eisner's Eisner does have some very loyal followers, and one
Speaker 1: of them responds to Eisner being killed by gunning down
Speaker 1: another politician. And for reasons unknown to history, this like
Speaker 1: leftist supporter of Eisner, instead of going after one of
Speaker 1: arco Valley's allies, picks a moderate liberal um, a guy
Speaker 1: named Ernard our Um and shoots him. Now, our survives
Speaker 1: an hour at the time is kind of the head
Speaker 1: of the Social Democrats and Munich. So he's like, he's
Speaker 1: like kind of the Joe Biden right, Like he's like
Speaker 1: a moderate liberal. Um. Yeah uh. And this leftist shoots
Speaker 1: him instead of one of arco valleys allies for a
Speaker 1: good reasons that aren't really well known. Um, but our survived.
Speaker 1: What theories you know, I I haven't really heard a
Speaker 1: good one. It might just be that, as a rule,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks on the far left will always
Speaker 1: hate liberals more than they hate the right. Um. It
Speaker 1: might have been it's like it was just like personal
Speaker 1: It's like that fool hit on my girl. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been personally. He might have been a man. I took
Speaker 1: my chance. He might have just fucked up right, like
Speaker 1: guns are at the wrong rate back then, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, I don't really know. Um Ours survived
Speaker 1: though he doesn't get killed, but his injuries keep him
Speaker 1: out of politics for two years. And while our was
Speaker 1: like kind of a centrist, he was an effective leader
Speaker 1: of the Social Democratic Party. He was good at getting
Speaker 1: people in line. Um And the fact that he's out
Speaker 1: of the picture for a couple of years means that
Speaker 1: his party is effectively rudderless right at the same time
Speaker 1: that the far left is energized by Eisner's martyrdom. Now,
Speaker 1: our successor, a guy named Johann Hoffman, was weak and
Speaker 1: not very competent um. So you've got this position where
Speaker 1: the dominant center left party loses its effective leader at
Speaker 1: the same time as the radical left gets energized by
Speaker 1: the assassination of like one of their big dudes. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote now from a
Speaker 1: graduate dissertation by James McGee titled the Political Police in
Speaker 1: Bavaria nineteen nineteen to nineteen thirty six. To explain what
Speaker 1: happens next. The assassination of Eisner had worked as a
Speaker 1: solvent upon political consensus such as it was in Bavaria.
Speaker 1: The Hoffman government found itself caught between the advance of
Speaker 1: radicalism on both the right and the left the first round,
Speaker 1: and the struggle went to the radical left. No longer
Speaker 1: able to maintain itself in Munich, the Hoffman government decamped
Speaker 1: on April seven, eventually coming to rest in the northern
Speaker 1: Bavarian city of Bomberg. Authority in Munich was assumed successively
Speaker 1: by two councils, the first led by an ill assorted
Speaker 1: collection of independent socialists and anarchists, and the second by
Speaker 1: the communists. So two different successive kind of far left
Speaker 1: governments take over through like a revolution basically, but neither
Speaker 1: of them are very good at it right. Neither of
Speaker 1: them really have like the anarchists are way more focused
Speaker 1: on creating public art and stuff um and don't really
Speaker 1: have a great, uh cohesive set of plan to deal
Speaker 1: with the needs of a lot of like uh Moonstionaris,
Speaker 1: I think it is like people of the people of Munich,
Speaker 1: um whereas the communists are kind of they're not really
Speaker 1: that good at building support outside of the people who
Speaker 1: are already involved in their movement. Uh there there spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time going after their political enemies, um
Speaker 1: and again aren't very good at consolidating power. Meanwhile, outside
Speaker 1: the city, conservative forces start regrouping and preparing to invade
Speaker 1: Munich because there's been a left wing revolution. What is
Speaker 1: the right going to do? They're gonna murder everyone they can.
Speaker 1: So the core of this right wing movement where the
Speaker 1: Free Corps um, and that's an organization of right wing
Speaker 1: veterans that you could see is broadly similar to groups
Speaker 1: like the Oath Keepers or the three Percenters today. Now,
Speaker 1: the main difference between these two is the oath Keepers
Speaker 1: and the three Percenters are mostly people dressing up like
Speaker 1: soldiers who if they were in the military, never heard
Speaker 1: a shot fired in anger. The men of the Free
Speaker 1: Corps are hard sons of bitches, like they have They
Speaker 1: have done a ton of killing. They have seen thousands
Speaker 1: die before their eyes, Like a lot of these guys.
Speaker 1: These guys are like veterans of the trenches. So they're
Speaker 1: not they're not playing, you know, like they're not dressing
Speaker 1: up because soldiers look cool. They've they they have been
Speaker 1: so broken by war that it's the only thing they
Speaker 1: can really do, you know, Larkin over here. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: called the Free Corps, the Free Corp, the Free Corps
Speaker 1: right like where, Yeah so, and the Free Corps. Not
Speaker 1: all these guys. A number of like free core dudes
Speaker 1: actually become anti Nazis later, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: Free Corps are the genesis of what becomes some of
Speaker 1: the Nazi street movements too. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: we saw with the r d T in Italy right
Speaker 1: where you've got all these veterans. Some of them do
Speaker 1: become some of them just one order and they're more
Speaker 1: Republican than anything. But they'll fight the radical left and
Speaker 1: then they wind up being anti Nazi. Most of them
Speaker 1: go more in a Nazi direction. Some of them wind
Speaker 1: up being kind of more on the left after a
Speaker 1: while because they get, you know, disillusioned by right wing politics.
Speaker 1: But you have this melting pot of soldiers who are
Speaker 1: angry at things, and the bulk of them do go
Speaker 1: to the right. Now. Yeah, so these guys invade and
Speaker 1: they make quick work of the Red forces of the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Government. I'm gonna quote from macgee's article again. By
Speaker 1: the end of April, the feeble Red forces had been
Speaker 1: pressed back into the environs of Munich itself. At this moment,
Speaker 1: with their backs to the wall, elements of the Red
Speaker 1: Army executed tin hostages. Some of the hostages were members
Speaker 1: of the right radic called Tula Society. Others appeared to
Speaker 1: have been selected almost at random. None of the ten, however,
Speaker 1: had done anything to earn so terrible a retribution with run.
Speaker 1: With one gratuitous act, the leftist defenders of Munich had
Speaker 1: opened the floodgates of violence. The aroused White forces poured
Speaker 1: into the city on May first, bent upon the eradication
Speaker 1: of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and its supporters in the
Speaker 1: most literal sense imaginable. The hardened Free Corps and Army
Speaker 1: troops coursed through the streets of the city, shooting anyone
Speaker 1: who appeared even remotely suspicious. The orgy of execution did
Speaker 1: not stop until May seven, when it was discovered that
Speaker 1: the White forces had mistakenly murdered a group of twenty
Speaker 1: one Catholic school boys. These school boys were by no
Speaker 1: means the only innocence who fell before the guns. Before
Speaker 1: this first wave of killing had come to an end,
Speaker 1: over six hundred individuals had been slain, many of them
Speaker 1: individuals with no connection to the Red Army or the
Speaker 1: Soviet Republic. The revolution, which had begun so peacefully six
Speaker 1: months before, had ended in a blood bath. Order had
Speaker 1: returned to Bavaria. And that's kind of the story of
Speaker 1: the radical left in the rat right, right, you get
Speaker 1: the radical left, some of them go a little bit far.
Speaker 1: They killed ten people, and the right murder six hundred people,
Speaker 1: including several dozen schoolboys. Yeah, got dog man, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: hearing about this just this time in the world and
Speaker 1: being a you know, albeit African American male, But the
Speaker 1: reality is I live in America, you know that like
Speaker 1: in this in this era that like the type of
Speaker 1: violence these people endured all the time, you know, and instability,
Speaker 1: Like it's just we really can't get our brain around
Speaker 1: that six hundred Yeah, you know, it was six hundred
Speaker 1: people at least, like they murder a whole school of
Speaker 1: Catholic children, you know, famous leftists the Catholic school. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I mean to be actually, if we're being honest, like
Speaker 1: one of the in Germany, the anti fascists were a
Speaker 1: mix of anarchists, communists, social Democrats, and Catholics. A lot
Speaker 1: of very traditional conservative Catholics were anti fascists because they
Speaker 1: were against the Nazis, right, and they still believed some
Speaker 1: pretty messed up stuff. You're talking about Catholics in the
Speaker 1: thirties and forties. But um, we're not Nazis, you know,
Speaker 1: And you get a lot of credit in my book
Speaker 1: if you're anti Nazi, regardless of what you believe in
Speaker 1: that all the other stuff I can say this about you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, this does kind of everything that's happening
Speaker 1: in Germany in this period makes it clear what I
Speaker 1: what I kind of consistently think is the most the
Speaker 1: thing that we have going for us the most in
Speaker 1: our present struggle against fascism, which is that our fascists
Speaker 1: are they're fucking whimps for the most part, right, most
Speaker 1: of them have never seen heavy combat. They have not
Speaker 1: seen people shot to death. They haven't shot anyone to death,
Speaker 1: they have not been in like That's why a lot
Speaker 1: of them started to run as soon as like the
Speaker 1: police started really using force the fascists, the Nazis, the
Speaker 1: O G Nazis. Most of them are hard, hard people.
Speaker 1: Hitler is an incredibly physically tough man. Like Hitler is
Speaker 1: a guy who got into street fights with a whip,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, these are these are rough people, um
Speaker 1: and I that's one of the things we have going
Speaker 1: for us is that most of ours just aren't that tough,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Yeah. There's like this weird like combo
Speaker 1: of like there's you're not that tough, but you have
Speaker 1: something to prove, so you're gonna be so you're dangerous
Speaker 1: because you have something to prove, right, But then there's
Speaker 1: you are tough and you have something to prove and
Speaker 1: you ain't scared, you know. I'm like, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: toll that. That's a totally different situation. Yeah. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of folks in our far right
Speaker 1: dress up in you know, plate carriers and carry guns
Speaker 1: and look like soldiers. The Nazis did that too, They
Speaker 1: war military. They dressed like German stormtroopers, and most of
Speaker 1: them had been right when they dressed like the guys
Speaker 1: who charged through trenches with an axe in one hand
Speaker 1: and a handgun in another. It's because they charged through
Speaker 1: trenches with an axe in one hand and a handgun
Speaker 1: in another. You know, Yeah, and I know you've seen
Speaker 1: that look, bro as a tangent, but like as much
Speaker 1: as you've trapped as any war zones you've been in,
Speaker 1: and then even here, like you can see it in
Speaker 1: a person's eyes to where you're like, oh, yeah, you'll
Speaker 1: cut me, you will cut my throat. You're not, you
Speaker 1: won't think twice, You'll cut my throat, Like you can
Speaker 1: see it in a person's eyes. Yeah, it's the willingness,
Speaker 1: it's it's the people, and you can really see it
Speaker 1: in a lot of folks eyes, the folks for whom
Speaker 1: doing violence is the same as like turning the page
Speaker 1: in a book, right, Like it doesn't require a switch
Speaker 1: in their mental circuitry. Yeah, they're just ready, you know,
Speaker 1: and most of them aren't that. Most of the far
Speaker 1: right in Munich in this period are that kind of person.
Speaker 1: You know, You've got folks like Heinrich Hemler who were
Speaker 1: too young and who want to be that and are
Speaker 1: playing at it. But a lot of them are really
Speaker 1: tough people. So mainstream Munich, which you know, after the
Speaker 1: right comes in and massacres everybody, it's still like kind
Speaker 1: of the liberals who are in charge of the government
Speaker 1: for about a year after this point, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the mainstream center left, and they blamed the far
Speaker 1: left for everything, even though the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: killing had been done by folks that were basically proto
Speaker 1: fascists um and among other things, the fact that the
Speaker 1: left had taken over the city briefly helped to incite
Speaker 1: and fuel an extremely active right wing malicious scenes. So
Speaker 1: all of these different street militias of armed young men
Speaker 1: start to form up during this period of time. So
Speaker 1: different groups of angry young men, many of them veterans,
Speaker 1: got together to fight the reds and then share their
Speaker 1: city would never fall to the left again again. A
Speaker 1: liberal government is in charge for the next year, but
Speaker 1: after the Free Corps and the army come in, the
Speaker 1: real power in Munich is with the military and the police,
Speaker 1: and the dominant political ideology in the city among both
Speaker 1: the center left and center right comes a thirst for
Speaker 1: order above all else, right, which you can understand, like
Speaker 1: these people aren't just going through like a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans just want order at this point after the last
Speaker 1: four years, and we didn't go through a war that
Speaker 1: killed like what one out of every ten of our
Speaker 1: young men something like that. Yeah, their calls for law
Speaker 1: and order are understandable. Yeah, I think they're you know,
Speaker 1: the history will show it was the wrong way to
Speaker 1: go about it, But you have to be more sympathetic
Speaker 1: to them than the people calling for now like well,
Speaker 1: you can't even imagine. No one in in America can
Speaker 1: imagine we have no Yeah, exactly. Um. So, Ernest Pohner
Speaker 1: was one of the first men who stepped in to
Speaker 1: fill this need for order. And he'd been enraged by
Speaker 1: Eisner and you know, even more enraged by the Soviet
Speaker 1: Republic that briefly took charge of Munich. Um and so
Speaker 1: he gets promoted to be the head of the Munich
Speaker 1: Police Force in May of nineteen nineteen. And he's fresh
Speaker 1: back from commanding a regiment in World War One at
Speaker 1: this point, and as soon as he's put in, you know,
Speaker 1: in charge of the police force, he sets to work
Speaker 1: not just crushing Marxism but doing everything he can to
Speaker 1: encourage the growth of the radical right in Munich. Now,
Speaker 1: the radical right there were a number of different parties
Speaker 1: at this period, but the one that would come to
Speaker 1: dominate the Munich far right scene was of course, the
Speaker 1: National Socialist German Workers Party the n s d a P.
Speaker 1: They were founded in February of nineteen twenty by a
Speaker 1: fellow named Anton Drexler. A lot of people don't know this.
Speaker 1: Hitler didn't start the Nazi Party. He wasn't involved at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. It was a locksmith named Drexler who
Speaker 1: had been involved previously in a bunch of other fanatical
Speaker 1: nationalist parties. Now, from the beginning, the n s d
Speaker 1: a P. And they're not the Nazis at this point,
Speaker 1: nobody calls them that yet. That that that takes for
Speaker 1: a while later, So at this point called him the
Speaker 1: National Socialists or the n s d AP. Their goal
Speaker 1: initially was to be the party of the German middle class.
Speaker 1: And I think you'll remember that from our episode on Italy. YEP.
Speaker 1: Drexler sought robust social aid programs for arians. So he
Speaker 1: wanted socialism four arians, right, and he wanted anyone who
Speaker 1: was not to not be in his fucking country. That
Speaker 1: that yeah. Now, at the onset, the National Socialists were
Speaker 1: a small and secretive group of about sixty people. Now,
Speaker 1: the reichs Wear, which is Germany's post war army becomes
Speaker 1: immediately concerned with this small party, namely because they were
Speaker 1: afraid that it might have subversive or revolutionary goals. Right,
Speaker 1: the Army is definitely more anti left than right, but
Speaker 1: they're concerned about anyone who might be a threat to
Speaker 1: order in this period, So they decided to send in
Speaker 1: a spy to look at this young starting party and
Speaker 1: figure out if it's a threat. And the spy they
Speaker 1: send is a young German corporal named Adolf Hitler. Like
Speaker 1: of of all the times, I mean like of So
Speaker 1: there's so much of world history that fascinates me, but
Speaker 1: this moment, this time, this time, the in between wars,
Speaker 1: this time is so interesting to me. U is it
Speaker 1: so interesting that we should take an ad break for
Speaker 1: a suspect. Yeah, you know who won't send Hitler and
Speaker 1: to infiltrate a radical political party and then become its head.
Speaker 1: Our sponsors, They will not, our sponsors have never ordered
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler to infiltrate right wing politics. That for a fact,
Speaker 1: Absolutely certain. Yes, I'm a bastard for that transition. By
Speaker 1: the way, that was a great transition. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we have returned and I am just loving talking about
Speaker 1: some old h bomb hittie hits h bombay. Uh here
Speaker 1: here's what you could do. Here's what you can do
Speaker 1: for these people, which is some of the Uh well,
Speaker 1: I don't get into these Gussies anymore because they're ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But um, help these people understand this party having to
Speaker 1: term socialists in it, but they're not socialists, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: help them understand net. It's just they're they're national socialists,
Speaker 1: which means which means they're they're kind of and in
Speaker 1: their conception that means that, like, we seek a socialist
Speaker 1: state for members of our race, so we want to
Speaker 1: and and some of that was just was just lies
Speaker 1: because the Germans, a lot of stuff is happening here.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the left is very powerful in Germany
Speaker 1: during this point. The Communists are beating the Nazis for
Speaker 1: the most part in elections through most of this history.
Speaker 1: So and they're both competing for people who have been radicalized,
Speaker 1: like we talked about last time, people who have accepted
Speaker 1: that the system is fucked. A lot of them can
Speaker 1: go left or right. So the Nazis have to be
Speaker 1: reaching out to the workers, have to be trying to
Speaker 1: recruit from that. And there's also you know, you are
Speaker 1: talking about a period of time in which the German
Speaker 1: economy is it's like five point seven billion marks to
Speaker 1: the dollar. Like Germany is a nation of trillionaires who
Speaker 1: can't afford food. So you have to be able to
Speaker 1: speak to these people and promise them some sort of aid.
Speaker 1: And that was a big part. And and the way
Speaker 1: basically the left is like everybody deserves to be taken
Speaker 1: care of. We need to take money away from these
Speaker 1: We need to nationalize industries, we need to nationalize corporations,
Speaker 1: we need to give the means of production to workers.
Speaker 1: The Germans are basically like we need to take money
Speaker 1: away from the Jews and businesses away from the Jews
Speaker 1: and give it to arians, right because of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of like accepting the fact that, like you
Speaker 1: lost this war. I feel like that's what's so that
Speaker 1: this is part of what's interesting me about this season
Speaker 1: to this time in history, because it's like you couldn't
Speaker 1: get your brain around the fact that y'all just lost,
Speaker 1: Like it just you lost. You drained your economy on
Speaker 1: a war that you shouldn't have been in the first place. Again,
Speaker 1: nothing that sounds similar to this country today exactly. Just hey, bro,
Speaker 1: you take it on a chint. You lost, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Let's figure this out. Were you looking for? Like, well,
Speaker 1: we just lost because of them? Like well anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of this is familiar. And it's also when we're
Speaker 1: talking about sort of socialism within the Nazis. One thing
Speaker 1: people do need to understand is that in the early
Speaker 1: period and this hasn't even really evolved yet in the
Speaker 1: episode we're talking about. This is more in like the
Speaker 1: later twenties, there's a left wing and a right wing
Speaker 1: of the Nazi Party. There are Nazis who are anti capitalist.
Speaker 1: The Night of Long Knives is the right wing of
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party, which is the dominant chunk of the party,
Speaker 1: murdering all of those ps. Which is not to say
Speaker 1: the left wing of the Nazi Party weren't a bunch
Speaker 1: of hideous racist monsters. They were, Um, they just believed
Speaker 1: slightly different things and were then murdered, right Like. That's
Speaker 1: that's what the Knight of Long Knives was, was a
Speaker 1: purging of the kind of more socialist elements within the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party that they needed to kind of get into
Speaker 1: power and get enough workers behind them that they could,
Speaker 1: you know, um take the streets. Um so. Again, a
Speaker 1: lot of Chairman, his political history is incredibly complicated in
Speaker 1: this period, so much is going on, um and again,
Speaker 1: like people who are convinced that the system needs to
Speaker 1: be destroyed will often have some stuff in common with
Speaker 1: each other, which is what you do see Nazis and
Speaker 1: communists on a couple of occasions, like fight together against
Speaker 1: police in the state, not because they agree with each other,
Speaker 1: but because they agree on the fact that the state
Speaker 1: is ship. Um you know, it's it's a very messy
Speaker 1: time because everything is falling apart. Again, I'm sure Americans
Speaker 1: can identify with that. Um so. Yeah. This Hitler's you know,
Speaker 1: commanding officer sends him to infiltrate this far right group
Speaker 1: and learn if it's like a threat to the German government,
Speaker 1: which I think you have to count as like one
Speaker 1: of the worst decisions ever made, like calculation and I
Speaker 1: don't know if anything's ever backfired more than be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't want to we we want to make sure
Speaker 1: these guys don't overthrow the government. Send Hitler in the
Speaker 1: checkout him yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Mostly underestimated big so Hitler at the time was an
Speaker 1: angry young man, still suffering from his war injuries. He'd
Speaker 1: been pretty badly messed up at the front, and he'd
Speaker 1: been at the front for about four straight years. So
Speaker 1: he's he's riddled with PTSD and physically injured, and he's
Speaker 1: adrift in a nation on the verge of collapse. The
Speaker 1: economy is in free fall. People don't have jobs, and
Speaker 1: Hitler's kind of One of the reasons he does this
Speaker 1: is he's desperate to not get kicked out of the military.
Speaker 1: Most soldiers are released from the military after the war.
Speaker 1: He hangs onto his job for a while, and this
Speaker 1: is how and he needs the fucking money, right, so
Speaker 1: he takes this gig. He goes in and shows up
Speaker 1: at a meeting or two of the Nazi Party, and
Speaker 1: he finds himself kind of enthralled by the group's discussions. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the party's early members was a fellow named
Speaker 1: Dietrich Eckert. Now Eckert was an anti Semitic poet, and
Speaker 1: most historians consider him to be the spiritual founder of
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party. Hitler himself, in some private writings, described
Speaker 1: Eckert as the spiritual founder of Nazism. Now, Eckert was
Speaker 1: all about nationalism and saving Germany from the Jewish menace
Speaker 1: that he believed had lost the war for her bereft
Speaker 1: of a Kaiser. Dietrich became convinced that an Aryan hero
Speaker 1: was needed to save the German race, and he spent
Speaker 1: a lot of his time thinking about who that hero
Speaker 1: might be. And I'm gonna quote Dietrich here. This is
Speaker 1: talking about like what he believes is necessary to save Germany. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rabble has to be scared shitless. I can't use
Speaker 1: an officer, by which he means a military officer. The
Speaker 1: people no longer have any respect for them. Best of
Speaker 1: all would be a worker who's got his mouth in
Speaker 1: the right place. He doesn't need much intelligence. Politics is
Speaker 1: the stupidest business in the world, right, I mean, politics
Speaker 1: is the stupidest. Yeah, you have to see Eckard is
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways one of the most effective
Speaker 1: and like political thinkers of all time. He's absolutely right
Speaker 1: about how to take over German democracy. It succeeds, a
Speaker 1: plan works. Yeah, he turns out he was right. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: during one early Nazi party meeting, a professor got up
Speaker 1: and made an impassioned argument about why Bavaria needed to
Speaker 1: seceed from Germany. Hitler got enraged by this, and he
Speaker 1: starts screaming at this professor and he's so eloquent in
Speaker 1: his arguments about like why Germany needs to stay together,
Speaker 1: that like everyone who's there is just struck by his
Speaker 1: his skill as a speaker. Um, And this professor actually
Speaker 1: like flees the room in in shame because he can't
Speaker 1: like argue against Hitler. And yeah, this convinces all of
Speaker 1: the party leaders at the time that Hitler had a
Speaker 1: future as an orator, that he could be like a
Speaker 1: big voice for spreading the party's propaganda. So they start
Speaker 1: having Hitler gift speeches and they're right, Like he's able
Speaker 1: to draw a crowd. That guy is a good public speaker.
Speaker 1: He gets better and better about it over time, and
Speaker 1: in short order he's the most prominent member of the
Speaker 1: National Socialist Party and the soon it's figurehead. Now the
Speaker 1: Nazis grew quickly at this point, drawing in other disaffected
Speaker 1: veterans like Herman Gearing and Ernst Rome. Him. Now, Rome
Speaker 1: had been a stormtrooper and he's a really interesting guy.
Speaker 1: He's one of the members who's purged in the Night
Speaker 1: of Long Knives. So he had in World War One
Speaker 1: been like a Special Forces guy, an elite assault trooper.
Speaker 1: He's covered head to toe in scars. His nickname because
Speaker 1: he has so many connections in the military. He's able
Speaker 1: to get like heavy machine guns for these militias and
Speaker 1: stuff like have them smuggled out illegally from the army
Speaker 1: to these right wing groups. They call him the machine
Speaker 1: Gun King, which is an objectively cool nickname. No, Rome
Speaker 1: is a terrifying person um and and it's just like
Speaker 1: a like and if you want to think about his
Speaker 1: the way he's seen by a lot of the radical
Speaker 1: right at this point point in Germany. You think about
Speaker 1: a guy like Chris Kyle, right, the American Sniper, how
Speaker 1: Republicans talk about him. Rome was that sort of legend.
Speaker 1: He's just this absolute legendary brawler, a warrior. He's also
Speaker 1: very almost openly gay, which is why he's murdered in
Speaker 1: the light Night of Long Knives, right, is because like
Speaker 1: Hitler doesn't want that kind of ad pr He's a
Speaker 1: very interesting guy. Um. Yeah, he's a tough He's a
Speaker 1: tough and that's like a huge factor in you know
Speaker 1: there there again we talked about all these kind of
Speaker 1: countercultural movements coming together. You see versions of this within
Speaker 1: the Proud Boys too, right like where and that's a
Speaker 1: big part of Like at the time, what you know,
Speaker 1: Romes sexuality wasn't something that they advertised. Now it is
Speaker 1: kind of an advertising point where it's like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: not white nationalists, like look, you know our leaders, this
Speaker 1: our leader is like a black guy. We've got all
Speaker 1: these gay people, like, we couldn't possibly be fascists. And
Speaker 1: it's like, no, no, no, The fascists have had always
Speaker 1: at the start a lot of different people represented as
Speaker 1: long as they're violent. Now, once they get into power,
Speaker 1: they murder those people. Yeah, Rome doesn't last after Hitler
Speaker 1: gets into power. No no, no, no. But Hitler's happy
Speaker 1: to be his friend when he needs to be up.
Speaker 1: The finesse on that kid, Hitler, Man, it's just that
Speaker 1: the finesse is ridiculous, Like yeah, yeah, any you can't
Speaker 1: finesse is ridiculous. Anyway, Hitler starts attracting these war heres
Speaker 1: because Garing is also herman. Garring is like a fighter
Speaker 1: ace and he's very handsome as a young man. Like
Speaker 1: everyone knows like the obese heroin addicted garing that like,
Speaker 1: you know, gets caricatured when he's a young man. He's
Speaker 1: this like very handsome, prominent look like he looks like
Speaker 1: a movie star, and he's a legendary fighter pilot. You've
Speaker 1: got Ernst Rome, who's just like tough as nails, and
Speaker 1: all of these like war heroes start joining the Nazi ranks,
Speaker 1: which of course brings in more guys from the far
Speaker 1: right because you've got all as a young man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need a young one. Now I'm looking at young one.
Speaker 1: This dude's handsome, young herman Gary, drop the leak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll show you a picture of him. I'll show you
Speaker 1: a picture of him. Drop that into chet. You know what,
Speaker 1: we're gonna agree to disagree on this one. This is
Speaker 1: a point to motherfucker looking like no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw I'm gonna like an ugly lego loss
Speaker 1: from one of the rings. Well you got it. Well
Speaker 1: you gotta type those in there, so I mean no,
Speaker 1: I don't ugly. Okay, chat chat picture of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: hold up this the same picture I was looking at. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is not an attractive man. He looks like he
Speaker 1: looks like a young bing Crosby. Yo. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit of you know what I'm saying, a little Matthew McConaughey, jaw, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's traditionally, I I don't
Speaker 1: want to get caught into the talking about how hot
Speaker 1: Herman Garring used to be. Discuss he's still a monster.
Speaker 1: He is, he's he is seen as being an attractive
Speaker 1: young war here traditionally attractive recording to Western standards. Also,
Speaker 1: half of the men in Germany in this period have
Speaker 1: had their faces blown off, So it's the bar is
Speaker 1: not as hot. Um, it's like Ricketts chip, it's a
Speaker 1: no for me dog. Okay, well good does not think
Speaker 1: Herman Garring is hot. Well, that's a T shirt right
Speaker 1: there on the motherfucking record. We need to we need
Speaker 1: a let's get two sets of T shirts out Team
Speaker 1: Herman Garring was fuckable and Team Herman Garring wasn't fuckable yet, Sophie,
Speaker 1: can we get can we get t public on? That?
Speaker 1: Is that a good idea? I'm sure, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just just a picture of Hermann Garring and DTF
Speaker 1: The question, right under uh, that might not go over
Speaker 1: well for us. It's all bad, so uh yeah, they
Speaker 1: start to draw in a lot of like because they've
Speaker 1: got all these war heroes, they start to draw in
Speaker 1: a lot of other people on the right who had
Speaker 1: idolized these men's soldiers who you know, these guys have
Speaker 1: been their heroes in the trenches, and also younger men
Speaker 1: who hadn't been old enough to fight in the war.
Speaker 1: But we're drawn to wanting to be in the company
Speaker 1: of these legends, guys like Heinrich Hemler, right, he sees
Speaker 1: all these heroes joining the Nazis. He never got to
Speaker 1: fight in the war, so he joins the Nazis. Now
Speaker 1: Hitler's give speech after speech after speech, and while he's
Speaker 1: doing this, Dietrich Ekort is helping Hitler mold his public
Speaker 1: appearance and create what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: Hitler myth. And this is the idea that Hitler was
Speaker 1: not just a politician, but he kind of supernaturally embodied
Speaker 1: the spirit of the German people and was their defender
Speaker 1: against their racial enemies. Eckert is the architect of this idea,
Speaker 1: which is the core of like what became It comes
Speaker 1: like the fewer principle like the center of Nazism. Now,
Speaker 1: one of Eckert's main points was that a new German
Speaker 1: revolution was necessary. The nineteen eighteen revolution, he felt, which
Speaker 1: is like the socialist revolution that takes O Remunich, had
Speaker 1: failed because it was soulless and Jewish. Eckert wanted a revolution,
Speaker 1: but he wanted a revolution that was led by someone
Speaker 1: he crafted, namely hitler Um, that could lead the German
Speaker 1: people into freedom and wipe away the stain of defeat
Speaker 1: in World War One. Now, of course, the Nazis were
Speaker 1: opposed even from an early period, as they always are
Speaker 1: by the left, namely socialists and communists. In this period,
Speaker 1: and this is before the birth of German anti fascismism
Speaker 1: as a movement, there are people fighting fascism, but like
Speaker 1: the idea of like Antifa as we know it like
Speaker 1: comes out of Germany like a decade later than this
Speaker 1: or so um, that hasn't really evolved yet. And there
Speaker 1: anti fascism in Germany in this period is at a
Speaker 1: more primitive level than it is in say Italy. Right, um,
Speaker 1: so there are but they are still opposing the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and there are frequent fights at Nazi party rallies. Communists
Speaker 1: and socialists will show up at beer halls where Nazis
Speaker 1: are meeting and like try to beat the ship out
Speaker 1: of these guys, and the Nazis will do the same
Speaker 1: thing at left wing gatherings. All everything, every political thing
Speaker 1: in Munich happens at a beer hall. And you do
Speaker 1: have to assume that everyone but Hitler has wasted it
Speaker 1: pretty much all the time. Hitler is not much of
Speaker 1: a drinker. Everybody else is just fucking man. How come
Speaker 1: like as unstable as the world is like at this time, Matt,
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder if we would have much more
Speaker 1: people entering into political discourse if they fought the way
Speaker 1: that these people fight. Y'all just drinking scrap, Like could
Speaker 1: you imagine that that? Like our party, I know, our
Speaker 1: parliament in the seventeen d was like this, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, eight hunts, We used to actually scrap,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. But like these dudes like
Speaker 1: like you you talking. It's so funny because it's like
Speaker 1: it's this is hood ship. This sounds like gangbanging, Like
Speaker 1: y'all pulling up. It's like, yo, you left this Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm left this what's what's What's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like you flashing signs at each other, y'all, y'are politicians.
Speaker 1: Y'are politicians. You know what I'm saying? Like what that's
Speaker 1: so that's what I think Again, that's going back to
Speaker 1: what I mean by like, we don't have we don't
Speaker 1: have categories for it is their officials fight. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: crazy to me. M Yeah, they are like like and
Speaker 1: this is a lot of these guys are like kind
Speaker 1: of not elected, like elected leaders do get into fights
Speaker 1: and stuff. This. Yeah, a lot of these guys are
Speaker 1: just sort of like campaigning, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: happens via street fighting, and it's it's ugly. Ship people
Speaker 1: are being gunned down and stabbed and beating um like
Speaker 1: it's nasty stuff. And in fact, it gets so nasty
Speaker 1: that now only does like Hitler start carrying a whip
Speaker 1: and a handgun so that he can like slash people's
Speaker 1: faces open during barbawlls. But the Nazis, in order to
Speaker 1: like defend their meetings, develop a powerful and organized street
Speaker 1: fighting arm. Uh. These guys are called the Storm Abtai
Speaker 1: Lung or the Storm Division and they were created an
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenty as a hall protection force, like a
Speaker 1: beer hall protection force for like the meetings that the
Speaker 1: party would hold in Munich. Now, in addition to having
Speaker 1: like a bunch of guys who would show up to
Speaker 1: like crackheads and fight communists, they also opened a sports
Speaker 1: and gymnastics wing which started training their men in boxing,
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu, and exercise. And you see the same thing
Speaker 1: with modern fascist. There's a lot of fascist and neo
Speaker 1: Nazi m M A. Jim's a strong like lifting culture
Speaker 1: among like the Rise Against movement, who are a big
Speaker 1: part of Charlottesville Unite the Right in Charlottessville. Like you
Speaker 1: know that that the idea of like nazis loving to
Speaker 1: get into jiu jitsu. Nothing against jiu jitsu, it's rad
Speaker 1: as hell, but like the fact that they've been into
Speaker 1: it that goes back a century. Man, I'd say, bro, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been playing its eyes where I'm like I just
Speaker 1: may I just do some like somebody like catasthenics like
Speaker 1: plan metrics stuff. Man, I'm not going to these gyms
Speaker 1: just just like you just feel like it's just full
Speaker 1: of these like buck boys. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and now it makes sense. It's like, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: history of this. Yeah, there's a history which is like
Speaker 1: there's also some pretty rad you know, anti fascist like
Speaker 1: m m A gyms and stuff out there. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think it's important to train people who aren't Nazis
Speaker 1: and how to defend themselves against But there's a long
Speaker 1: history of like there's a there's a huge like fascist
Speaker 1: m m A fighting like network in Eastern Europe, particularly
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. Like they'll have these big conventions and and
Speaker 1: competitions and stuff like. It's a big part of that
Speaker 1: kind of culture. Um. Yeah, so that you know that
Speaker 1: starts with the Nazis in this period. Um, they're doing
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu in nineteen fucking twenty, so that's kind of
Speaker 1: And the Stormtrooper catchphrase in this period was a very
Speaker 1: subtle death to the Jews. So not great at keeping
Speaker 1: a lid on what they're about, you know. Now. In
Speaker 1: nineteen two, Herman Gearing was promoted to lead the Sturm
Speaker 1: up Tailung, hereafter known as the Essay These are the
Speaker 1: guys that come to be known as the brown Shirts. Now,
Speaker 1: by that point, his men had spent much of the
Speaker 1: last two years and by being a steady diet of
Speaker 1: race hatred and revolutionary fascist propaganda. Wilhelm Bruckner, who was
Speaker 1: the head of the Munich Stormtroopers, told Hitler that year
Speaker 1: that very soon Hitler would be unable to restrain his
Speaker 1: men from doing something. And what Bruckner was warning about
Speaker 1: is the same thing we saw in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: On the sixth. If you have this movement of young
Speaker 1: men that you gin up with conspiracies about child eating
Speaker 1: pedophiles and the globalist destruction of their race and nation,
Speaker 1: which is exactly the kind of a lot of the
Speaker 1: ship the Nazis are learning hearing this period is like
Speaker 1: q and on ship right, very similar. If you if
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of angry, violent young men obsessed
Speaker 1: with weaponry focused on that ship for years, they will
Speaker 1: demand to go shed blood to stop it at some
Speaker 1: point and you won't be able to stop them. And
Speaker 1: kind of one of the areas where you know Trump
Speaker 1: fucked up is he didn't do anything with them cohesive,
Speaker 1: because I don't think he ever had much of a
Speaker 1: cohesive plan. So they raided the capital and caused a
Speaker 1: crackdown on themselves. It's beyond him. Now, yeah, it's beyond him.
Speaker 1: Now Hitler doesn't let it get beyond him. He realizes
Speaker 1: this is happening and that action needs to be taken now.
Speaker 1: For a while he was able to kind of burn
Speaker 1: out this excess energy among his street fighters by having
Speaker 1: them go after journalists and newspaper offices, having them tear
Speaker 1: down political propaganda and beat up left wing canvassers in
Speaker 1: the streets. So he has them assaulting his enemies and
Speaker 1: part to just try to get off this excess energy
Speaker 1: so they don't blow up and like tip their hand
Speaker 1: too early. And of course all of the fighting and
Speaker 1: violence in the street they're doing is very illegal under
Speaker 1: under German law at the time. But the Police President Powner,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about earlier, ensured the Nazis faced few consequences.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from McGee's article on the Munich
Speaker 1: political police. At this point, the debt with which the
Speaker 1: Nazi movement owed Powner was real. As Police President Powner
Speaker 1: extended a sheltering hand to protect the activities of the
Speaker 1: nascent Nazi movement. In doing so, he ensured its survival
Speaker 1: and gave it an opportunity for future growth. This passive image, however,
Speaker 1: does little to convey the full dimensions of Powner's commitment
Speaker 1: to both the radical right in general and Nazis in particular.
Speaker 1: As a key figure in Bavarian politics during the post
Speaker 1: war period, Powner actively aided the Volcush movement and occupied
Speaker 1: a central position in its highest councils. And the Vocish
Speaker 1: movement is like all these ideas about the Aryan race
Speaker 1: and the German people that kind of feed into Nazism.
Speaker 1: I mean they had like that judges. Yeah, we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about the judges. Becomes a judge. He's becomes a judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. These scholl was sitting in court with their
Speaker 1: legs all the way up the cross like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Yeah. And for an example of how biased
Speaker 1: he was, at one point during his time as the
Speaker 1: chief of police in Munich, Powner is asked if he
Speaker 1: realizes the Nazis are murdering people in the streets of Bavaria,
Speaker 1: and he replies, yes, but far too few of them.
Speaker 1: So now, as an aside, unrelated to anything we're talking
Speaker 1: about at present, we now know that at least twenty
Speaker 1: eight police officers were present for the storming of the
Speaker 1: capital on January six. Um. I should note that in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, after a series of dueling protests in
Speaker 1: Portland between left and right wing demonstrators that ended with
Speaker 1: police assaulting and hospitalizing a left wing activist, internal planning
Speaker 1: documents from the police revealed that they viewed the fascist
Speaker 1: activists as quote much more mainstream than the anti fascists.
Speaker 1: There's a long through line, you know. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: mainstream has quite a subtext. It sure does, sure does. Probably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So by nine the thrill of beating the ship out
Speaker 1: of their enemies in the streets was wearing thin for
Speaker 1: the storm Abtai Lung. Now, roughly two thirds of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party membership was under the age of thirty one
Speaker 1: at this point. These are young men who want to
Speaker 1: drink and fight and revolt against the liberals and Jews
Speaker 1: they see is ruining their country, right. Um, they look
Speaker 1: a lot like the Proud Boys. It's a group of
Speaker 1: like macho, like, testosterone loaded young men who drink and
Speaker 1: probably do a lot of like the Proud Boys do
Speaker 1: a lot of cocaine. I'm guessing a lot of these
Speaker 1: guys are on blow too, you know, not uncommon in
Speaker 1: Germany in that period. So Hitler was super on board
Speaker 1: with getting these guys into the fight do largely to
Speaker 1: what he and the rest of the world had watched
Speaker 1: Benito Mussolini's Black Shirts do in Italy the year before,
Speaker 1: Because again, the March on Rome is the year before
Speaker 1: Hitler does his beer hall punch. Twenty three is the
Speaker 1: beer hall punch. And I'm gonna quote now from a
Speaker 1: book called The Trial of Adolf Hitler by David King,
Speaker 1: and that he's this is Hitler talking at first. If
Speaker 1: a German Mussolini is given to Germany, Hitler said to
Speaker 1: a journalist for London's Daily Mail on the eve of
Speaker 1: the push, people would fall down on their knees and
Speaker 1: worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshiped. This
Speaker 1: journalist was unim rest In private, he dismissed Hitler as
Speaker 1: another hot air merchant. But Hitler had in fact decided
Speaker 1: to follow in the Fascist footsteps and march on Berlin.
Speaker 1: The original plan had been to strike on Saturday night,
Speaker 1: November ten. This was, after all, the weekend, which Hitler
Speaker 1: believed was the best time for a revolution. Authorities would
Speaker 1: be away from their desks, police would be reduced to
Speaker 1: a minimal staff, and the lighter traffic would not impede
Speaker 1: on the movement of his trucks and troops. So Hitler
Speaker 1: becomes convinced after seeing Mussolini that like, not only did
Speaker 1: Missolini have some great ideas, but this will work even
Speaker 1: better in Germany, um, because we kind of have more
Speaker 1: of an authoritarian culture. Italy when Mussolini took over, had
Speaker 1: a much longer democratic Germany a lot more authoritarianism. Hitler's like,
Speaker 1: if I present myself the way Mussolini did, I'll be
Speaker 1: even more powerful. People will join me on the road
Speaker 1: to Berlin and we'll take over the whole country. Now
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, h Yeah he's not. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: wrong in this instance, but not overall. There's an interesting
Speaker 1: light um even with that like Germans like at the
Speaker 1: time propensity towards like authoritarian like I still think even
Speaker 1: and and then their their assaulted is towards Catholicism. When
Speaker 1: I think about their like Protestant movement um being so
Speaker 1: informed by sort of like reform Calvinist thought like this
Speaker 1: this idea that like humans are so depraved at their
Speaker 1: core because of sin. You know what I'm saying like,
Speaker 1: you can't trust them to make good choices for themselves,
Speaker 1: So you need a strong man in the same way
Speaker 1: that Jesus was your strong man. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: to make to make these answers, to choose these for you,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you're full of sin nature, So why
Speaker 1: would we trust what you would vote for yourselves. No,
Speaker 1: you need a guy. You need a guy, a dude
Speaker 1: in charge that can tell you what's better for you
Speaker 1: because you can't us your own instincts. And and that
Speaker 1: that theological twist to me, it's like it adds to
Speaker 1: the mythos of how somebody like a good, smooth talking
Speaker 1: Hitler could convince this nation who already got got authoritarian tendencies.
Speaker 1: Now you add in this like this like theological worldview
Speaker 1: to it, it's just like it's just gonna work. And
Speaker 1: it does. What else is gonna work? The products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast? Oh yeah, that is going
Speaker 1: to totally deprave my wallet. They are absolutely going to
Speaker 1: march on Berlin and overthrow the Reichstag. Yes, I I
Speaker 1: think that's been t public school from the beginning. We're back.
Speaker 1: So now Hitler knows he wants to march on Berlin.
Speaker 1: He wants to do a Mussolini but better. But he's
Speaker 1: he's not a dumb guy. He realizes that he alone
Speaker 1: doesn't have a big enough name to successfully push Bavaria.
Speaker 1: He's very popular within Munich and the Munich right. He's
Speaker 1: not a national figure at this point, so he has
Speaker 1: to enlist the help of a national figure, and he
Speaker 1: picked someone he had idolized, General Eric Ludendorff. Now, the
Speaker 1: old General had already tried to take over the government
Speaker 1: once before, right after World War One, um, and had
Speaker 1: failed at that, but he hadn't really been punished because
Speaker 1: you know, he was the war hero. He's Ludendorf, he
Speaker 1: was the architect of the victory over Russia. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was just very beloved and he was a massive figure
Speaker 1: for the right wing, revered and respected for his part.
Speaker 1: The old Field Marshal had spent his declining years becoming
Speaker 1: an increasingly massive racist and conspiracy theorist and mostly pushing
Speaker 1: the stab in the back narrative, blaming the loss in
Speaker 1: World War One on the Jews, all that stuff. You
Speaker 1: could see him as like a General Flynn figure. Um.
Speaker 1: He's he's this very popular among the far right general
Speaker 1: who shacks up with this far right political character. Now,
Speaker 1: the big difference is that General Flynn has been like
Speaker 1: profoundly loyal to Donald Trump, and Ludendorff just kind of
Speaker 1: saw Hitler as a vector for which he could, you know,
Speaker 1: push his kind of fringe right wing politics to get
Speaker 1: more storm and Norman sports cough head ass, yeah a little, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's not that. Yeah, yeah, he's not like
Speaker 1: he's not like, um, loyal to Hitler, but he sees
Speaker 1: Hitler as a guy he can use, and Hitler sees
Speaker 1: Ludendorff as a guy he can use. I feel like
Speaker 1: in that that exact sentence is like was the dagger
Speaker 1: for almost all the political parties, y'a thought I could
Speaker 1: uses man like he wasn't. Yeah anyway, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: And so Hitler goes to Ludendorf and is like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to overthrow the government. I want to be
Speaker 1: the dictator, and I want to have you be basically
Speaker 1: like running the country with me. You'll be in charge
Speaker 1: of the army and together will bring Germany back to greatness.
Speaker 1: And Ludendorf gives a soft yes, the kind of yes
Speaker 1: that could mean to know if like the police came
Speaker 1: to his door and he could say like, but he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if do it, like, I'm on board. I'll take over
Speaker 1: the army if you win, you know, like that's the
Speaker 1: kind of yes Ludendorf gives him um, but he's he's
Speaker 1: he's on board as long as he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: stick his neck out too much. Is kind of like
Speaker 1: Ludendorff's attitude towards this. So the initial plan for the
Speaker 1: pusch is November ten, but they wound up pushing it
Speaker 1: up by two days kind of at the last minute,
Speaker 1: the Thursday, November eight, because Gustav von Kar, who's basically's
Speaker 1: the General Commissar, he's basically like the governor of of
Speaker 1: of of Munich. Um. He's giving a speech at the
Speaker 1: Burger brow Keller beer Hall, which is one of Munich's
Speaker 1: most prestigious places for people to drink heavily and do politics.
Speaker 1: Burger Carl Burger, the Burger Browbeer beer Hall. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: we need to rename something like that because that's yeah,
Speaker 1: I would still around today, I think, yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this is where the putsch actually starts. So Car is
Speaker 1: in charge in Munich and he is he's been brought
Speaker 1: to power and what some would call a military coup um.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a soft coupe, but basically, after
Speaker 1: the liberals had let the left seize the city and revolt,
Speaker 1: the military made sure that a strongman like Car wound
Speaker 1: up in charge after the you know a year or
Speaker 1: so later, and Carr had vowed during his campaign to
Speaker 1: turn the city into a cell of law and order.
Speaker 1: Oh god, they keep saying that, keep saying that, which
Speaker 1: just keep saying law and order, but just you don't
Speaker 1: never happens never. Yeah yeah. So I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: author David King describing cars politics here. He welcomed right
Speaker 1: wing extremists to settle in the region, and many of
Speaker 1: them in turn joined the paramilitary societies emerging in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the war and revolution. Car also organized many
Speaker 1: of these bands into a loose coalition called the Iron
Speaker 1: waterwaven or Citizens Militia, that would soon surpass three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand men. Car would use this volunteer home guard and
Speaker 1: everything from law enforcement to border patrol. They were necessary,
Speaker 1: he said, like a fire brigade. So Car builds this
Speaker 1: Citizens Militia basically a private army of himself for his
Speaker 1: own to crack down on the left, and Germany at
Speaker 1: this point is forbidden from having much of a real military.
Speaker 1: They're captive about a hundred thousand soldiers in the reichs
Speaker 1: Fair um. And this is a part of the Treaty
Speaker 1: of Versailles. And France realizes that Car is raising up
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of private soldiers, and they complained that
Speaker 1: he's building a new German army, and he's forced to
Speaker 1: disband his militia. UM. Now this pisses off the far right,
Speaker 1: the fact that Car caves and cancels his militia and
Speaker 1: tells his guys to go home. Um. And a lot
Speaker 1: of them consider him like the fascist equivalent of a
Speaker 1: rhino at this point, you know, a Republican and name
Speaker 1: only like they're like a cars not really on the right.
Speaker 1: He got cooked by the French, yea. UM, but he's
Speaker 1: still very popular with the center right, and he's seen
Speaker 1: as something of like a a resistance hero um among
Speaker 1: like the center right. So he's you know, he's not
Speaker 1: like popular on the fringe right, but he's popular on
Speaker 1: the middle right. So in October. Now, another thing that's
Speaker 1: happening at this period of time is. In August of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, Gustav Stresseman is elected Chancellor of Germany.
Speaker 1: Um and right before he comes to power, the Germans
Speaker 1: had begged the Allies for a moratorium on reparations payments
Speaker 1: because the German economy is collapsing in this period, they
Speaker 1: just can't afford it. The French had refused to put
Speaker 1: in a moratorium on payments, and then in order to
Speaker 1: get money out of Germany that Germany wasn't sending, they
Speaker 1: invaded and occupied the Ruhr, which is Germany's industrial heartland.
Speaker 1: So Germany defaults on their payments after, like you know,
Speaker 1: before they invade the rule and like the fact that
Speaker 1: the French invade pisses off all of Germany and particularly
Speaker 1: the German right wing. Yeah so is this this again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a little little little human in his story here
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, so you guys a new chancellor because
Speaker 1: they had to write a whole new constitution, the Roho
Speaker 1: new Constitution, got a new chancellor. They gotta payback Audisty
Speaker 1: they destroyed for his war. They already feel salty about that,
Speaker 1: Like damn, I gotta I gotta clean it. I gotta
Speaker 1: pay for artists, you know what I'm saying. And then
Speaker 1: they like, literally, we're broke, Like God, damn it, we're broke,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So then and then for
Speaker 1: France to be like, oh, you're gonna give me my
Speaker 1: money and they're like what money, Well, they don't have anything.
Speaker 1: What money? We don't have it. Yeah, we starve to
Speaker 1: death on turnips last winter, like we have nothing, like
Speaker 1: you saw it. We lost. Damn man, we lost, and
Speaker 1: now we are like we got it. Yeah. And this
Speaker 1: this a lot of the anger at the Treaty of
Speaker 1: Versailles and the way the French are behaving gets pushed
Speaker 1: onto the German liberals, who like because their internationalists kind
Speaker 1: of like try to engage with the French and g
Speaker 1: stop stress him and gets elected and one of the
Speaker 1: first things he does is he orders the end of
Speaker 1: a general strike against the French and the RU and
Speaker 1: he starts resuming reparations payments, and this enrages the right
Speaker 1: wing and so and stress him and knows it's going
Speaker 1: to so he has the President of the Reich declare
Speaker 1: an emergency. The Bavarian government gets pissed by this because
Speaker 1: they hate Stressman. They're all very conservative, he's a liberal,
Speaker 1: and they're like, basically, this guy has been cucked by
Speaker 1: the French, and they declare Bavaria to close its own
Speaker 1: state of emergency. Now, the decision to do that was
Speaker 1: made by the Triumvirate that ruled Bavaria, which consisted of
Speaker 1: von Kar General von Lasso, who's in charge of the
Speaker 1: army in Bavaria, and the commander of the state police,
Speaker 1: a guy named Ciser I think. Now, this triumvirate had
Speaker 1: publicly refused a number of orders from Berlin as a
Speaker 1: show of protest and his red meat to their right
Speaker 1: wing base. So basically it's like a state in the
Speaker 1: United States refusing orders from the federal government because it's
Speaker 1: against what their political base wants. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: mostly for show, because yeah, this is mostly for show
Speaker 1: um because like the federal government has the ability to
Speaker 1: deny funds to Bavaria, right, which kind of fox them over.
Speaker 1: And so by early November, the Triumvirate is losing heart
Speaker 1: because they wanted to get red meat to their base
Speaker 1: and like improve their own personal popularity by saying fuck
Speaker 1: you to the central government. But they did want to
Speaker 1: pay consequences, so they're starting to cave by November, but
Speaker 1: most voters don't know that. And so when von Kar
Speaker 1: takes the stage at the burger Brow beer Hall on
Speaker 1: November eight, the really like a lot of people show
Speaker 1: up because they think he's about to announce that Bavaria
Speaker 1: is seceding from Germany. Um. Now, Hitler knows that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. He knows that's very unlikely because Hitler sees
Speaker 1: von Kar is basically a moderate. But he also knows
Speaker 1: that a huge crowd, including all of the people running Bavaria,
Speaker 1: are going to be in the beer hall that night,
Speaker 1: which makes it a great place to occupy with armed men.
Speaker 1: If you're going to do a push, if you're pushing,
Speaker 1: you know, that's where you want to put this where
Speaker 1: you push the put. Yeah, this is the beer hall.
Speaker 1: The burger Brow beer Hall is the equivalent of the
Speaker 1: capital on January six. Here, it's like where all these
Speaker 1: elected leaders are. If you want to actually capture these people,
Speaker 1: this is where you do it. Um. So he gets
Speaker 1: together his stormtrooper leaders and his key advisors and they
Speaker 1: work with their police insider, who's a fellow named Frick.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of cops are Nazis. I'm not to
Speaker 1: get a put like a timeline on that a lot
Speaker 1: of cops. Let's just for a little okay, cool, so
Speaker 1: frick this cop ensures that the police presence outside the
Speaker 1: beer hall is minimal. Like all of the guys running
Speaker 1: Bavaria are there, but they don't have very many cops
Speaker 1: protecting them, and that's by design to make it easier
Speaker 1: for the storm trippers. So Hitler sets Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: another thing that has never happened again, yea. So Hitler's
Speaker 1: other lackeys, the guys who aren't like fighters, get set
Speaker 1: to the organizing propaganda. One man was set was like
Speaker 1: put to the job of organizing the distribution of posters
Speaker 1: and newspapers announcing the Nazi overthrow of the government. Hitler's
Speaker 1: half American friend, a guy named Hunt Stengele that are
Speaker 1: known as Putsy, who's like a Harvard graduate um was
Speaker 1: in charge of making stir. The foreign press was there
Speaker 1: without knowing why they were there, because Puts a charmer.
Speaker 1: He's a he's a like an aristocrat guy. He's good
Speaker 1: at talking to people. He's good talking to like American media,
Speaker 1: so like the New York Times has a guy there
Speaker 1: on this night. Now, Hitler and his entourage show up
Speaker 1: at the beer hole uh that night, like as thousands
Speaker 1: of people are gathered up outside to get in to
Speaker 1: watch von Kar speak, and Hitler's immediately gets out of
Speaker 1: his I think it's a Mercedes, and he's immediately greeted
Speaker 1: by a crowd of three thousand people outside the hall.
Speaker 1: Because Hitler is very popular in with the right in Munich,
Speaker 1: so he gets mobbed by this crowd who wanted to
Speaker 1: know if, like he knew what von Kar was going
Speaker 1: to speak about, is you know, are we going to succeed?
Speaker 1: What's happening? And Hitler's like, I'm just a guest. I'm
Speaker 1: here like the rest of you. And he goes inside
Speaker 1: to get a beer, and he doesn't get a beer
Speaker 1: because he wants to drink it. Hitler's not really a drinker.
Speaker 1: Every now and then he'll he'll like down like um,
Speaker 1: some champagne or something. He's not much of a drinker.
Speaker 1: He has the beer because Garing has warned him like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to try to overthrow the government. We don't
Speaker 1: want people to realize we're onto something early. If you're
Speaker 1: sitting in a beer hole in Munich with a beer.
Speaker 1: No one will suspect that you're planning to break the
Speaker 1: law because it's Munich. Um. So Hitler gets a beer
Speaker 1: and he's like kind of nurse sing it um, and
Speaker 1: Car takes the podium. Now, car speech is boring and pointless,
Speaker 1: in a big bummer to everybody. He just starts like
Speaker 1: he's not succeeding. He starts a standard harangue about the
Speaker 1: evils of Marxism, about how Munich was going to fight
Speaker 1: the contagion and quintessential evil of socialism. Pretty normal right
Speaker 1: wing stuff. Um. And Hitler is reported to have asked
Speaker 1: his men during cars speech, does anyone understand what he's
Speaker 1: talking about? Like? What the fund is this guy doing
Speaker 1: up there? Started trolling him. Yeah, well this is going
Speaker 1: on while you know, Hitler and his kind of inner
Speaker 1: circle or watching Car speak, and this beer halls got
Speaker 1: thousands of people in it. Hitler's stormtroopers are assembling nearby.
Speaker 1: Now twenty six year old Cigar a dealer named Josef
Speaker 1: was the quartermaster, and so he basically like as the
Speaker 1: troops assembled, he starts handing out rifles and machine guns
Speaker 1: and grenades to several dozen of the Nazi Party's best fighters,
Speaker 1: the men of Stostrip Hitler or the Hitler Assault Squad. Now,
Speaker 1: these guys wore a gray military a uniform with a
Speaker 1: silver Death's Head badge on their caps. The star Strup
Speaker 1: would wind up evolving into the shoot Staffle, which is
Speaker 1: the infamous SS right, Like, that's the the guys who,
Speaker 1: among other things, man the concentration camps. At this point,
Speaker 1: they're Hitler street fighters, um, and are responsible for protecting
Speaker 1: him and stuff. And these are the guys he's going
Speaker 1: to use to be the the armed fist of his push. Now,
Speaker 1: before the putch, Hitler had given his fighters a few
Speaker 1: suggestions for how to behave. He had told them cruelty impresses,
Speaker 1: and don't leave a fight unless you're being carried out dead. God,
Speaker 1: these are disorders screen light. Yeah, look you the only
Speaker 1: the only way you leave is in a bagh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these guys are sucking. Um. You know, he's a gangster.
Speaker 1: This is a gangster regime. A lot of people at
Speaker 1: the time, actually, like a lot of American newspaperman in
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties will say this about the Nazis.
Speaker 1: These people are working gangsters. Yeah. Now, a little before
Speaker 1: eight thirty pm, a hundred stormtroopers swarmed the premises of
Speaker 1: the Burger Brow and entered the beer hall, shouting Heil
Speaker 1: Hitler and waving guns. Herman Gering, who led the assault team,
Speaker 1: told the police officers outside that the government was being overthrown.
Speaker 1: The dozen or so cops there were easily overpowered. Garing
Speaker 1: and his men secured the building, and as he entered,
Speaker 1: he called for quiet. Now everybody's drunk at this point,
Speaker 1: so they don't get quiet. So he has to shoot
Speaker 1: into the roof with his handgun. Then he like basically
Speaker 1: hands things over to Hitler, who pulls off his trench
Speaker 1: coat to reveal a black suit with two iron crosses
Speaker 1: pinned to his lapel. And I'm gonna quote next from
Speaker 1: a rite up by Douglas oh Linder. He jumped up
Speaker 1: on a table, pulled out a pistol, and fired two
Speaker 1: shots into the ceilings. The second guy who's fired into
Speaker 1: the ceiling that night, it keeps happening. It happened several
Speaker 1: more drinking guys and fired two shots into the ceiling. Silence,
Speaker 1: he yelled. Then Hitler and several supporters pushed their way
Speaker 1: to the front of the room and confronted speaker Car
Speaker 1: at the podium. Stormtroopers pointed a machine gun at the crowd.
Speaker 1: Many who were in the audience leader said that they
Speaker 1: suspected they were about to witness an assassination. Hitler shouted
Speaker 1: to the crowd out, the national revolution has begun. Six
Speaker 1: hundred armed men are occupying this hall. No one may leave.
Speaker 1: The governments of Bavaria and in Berlin have been overthrown.
Speaker 1: Army barracks and police headquarters are now under the control
Speaker 1: of this party. None of this was true, but Hitler
Speaker 1: hoped and suspected that it would be soon enough. Hitler
Speaker 1: then told car and two other important political leaders, General
Speaker 1: von Lasso and Colonel von Seiser, that they should join
Speaker 1: him in a side room for a conversation about Bavaria's future.
Speaker 1: After the men leave, Garing told the crowd, you all
Speaker 1: have your beer, keep drinking. You have nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fine. It's just a punch. Chill out, guys.
Speaker 1: Nobody has to die. Man, keep drinking. Just that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in charge where the Nazis. It's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 1: So Hitler's goal was to convince the triumvirate to back
Speaker 1: his plan. He wanted Bavaria's army units and police on
Speaker 1: his side. He doesn't want to fight these guys. His
Speaker 1: plan is to do a grander version of what Mussolini
Speaker 1: had done and start marching with Ten's basically all of
Speaker 1: the right wingers in the military of Bavaria and start
Speaker 1: marching up to Berlin. And he imagines thousands of people
Speaker 1: are going to join him on the way, and once
Speaker 1: they reach Berlin, they're going to overthrow the liberal government
Speaker 1: easily in institute of fascist state run by Hitler and Ludendorff.
Speaker 1: And of course for that to happen, they can't get
Speaker 1: bogged down fighting the Bavarian state right now. Seisser, loss
Speaker 1: Out and car were all pretty close to being fascists themselves.
Speaker 1: But these guys are all state loyal right, they're not revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: They don't want to overthrow the government. They want the
Speaker 1: government to change into a more right wing government. But
Speaker 1: they're not like bomb throwers like Hitler is um. So
Speaker 1: they didn't want to follow his weird little Nazi guy
Speaker 1: in open rebellion against the state. Now, Hitler tried to
Speaker 1: smooth talk them. He promised them cushy positions in the
Speaker 1: new regime. Car is a monarchist and Hitler tells him like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring back the King of Bavaria and you
Speaker 1: can be his envoy to the government. Isn't that like
Speaker 1: your dream? Um? Right? Yeah? So they resist um Car
Speaker 1: and Lasso and everyone like they're not they're not on
Speaker 1: board with this, And before very long, Hitler did what
Speaker 1: Hitler's do and he starts threatening to murder them at gunpoint. Now, Ludendorff,
Speaker 1: who like when the occupation of the beer Hall starts,
Speaker 1: Ludendorff like some Nazis show up at his house and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, you know that thing you kind of
Speaker 1: agreed to, we're doing it. Ludendorff like shows up and
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, I guess we'll see if this works.
Speaker 1: And he's kind of horrified by Hitler's behavior because Ludendorff
Speaker 1: is a he's like a classic imperial German manners dude, Right,
Speaker 1: there are ways in which you, especially these people are nobles.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't point a gun in their face, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's very ghost and he's not. He doesn't like
Speaker 1: Hitler in a lot of ways because Hitler's a fucking,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a peon to him, but he's not,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's he's gotten acclimatized to being in
Speaker 1: high society. Hitler is very much crude, um damn and
Speaker 1: Ludendorff is kind of like horrified by this, but he's
Speaker 1: he's still on board with the Jim Rule plan because
Speaker 1: he wants to take over the government and institute right
Speaker 1: wing military dictatorship. And eventually, now that once Ludendorf shows
Speaker 1: up to these guys, car And and Lasso and Sisser
Speaker 1: kind of agree to help the putsch and agree to
Speaker 1: like basically put the powers of the Bavarian state behind
Speaker 1: Hitler's push attempt. And they didn't really mean it, but
Speaker 1: a guy was threatening to murder them, so they're like
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, yeah. Now, while this was happening, different
Speaker 1: armed groups of Nazis were out capturing key parts of
Speaker 1: the city. The Bavarian War Ministry was taken by Ernst
Speaker 1: Rome and his men, including young Heinrich Himler, and they
Speaker 1: proceeded to fortify it. Another group of four hundred stormtroopers
Speaker 1: was sent to take guns and equipment from the army
Speaker 1: engineer barracks. Now this is a very fun story because
Speaker 1: these Nazis all show up and the captain on duty
Speaker 1: who's like in charge of handing out guns and stuff.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, we're here to do maneuvers. Can we
Speaker 1: borrow the guns? Um? And the captain realizes something is
Speaker 1: very fishy, and it's like, you can use the guns,
Speaker 1: but you can't go on maneuvers outside. You got to
Speaker 1: show up inside and like the big gymnasium and then
Speaker 1: I'll hand you the guns there and you can do
Speaker 1: your maneuvers inside. And so all four hundred Nazis go
Speaker 1: into the gymnasium and he locks it from the outside. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah here, he bro yeah, yeah, I got you us
Speaker 1: right here there, Yeah, right inside the door. I got you.
Speaker 1: This guy's name should be remembered. His name is Captain
Speaker 1: Oscar Canceler, and he ruled. He he saves the German
Speaker 1: state that night. He definitely stays at least for a
Speaker 1: little while. You know, it didn't last, but he did
Speaker 1: his bit um. So the Nazis who were locked inside
Speaker 1: couldn't call Hitler to let him know they had the guns.
Speaker 1: And we're ready to take part in the Putsch and
Speaker 1: Hitler was waiting for that call. Right, He's got teams
Speaker 1: going out and seizing places in the city, and he realizes, like,
Speaker 1: these dudes haven't called in from the barracks yet, Right,
Speaker 1: something must be wrong. And this was a key part
Speaker 1: of his intricate plan. Uh and he knew. So this
Speaker 1: kind put Hitler in a bind. Um. He knew that
Speaker 1: the Triumvirate were not enthusiastic about this plan, and if
Speaker 1: if he was going to keep them enthusiastic and like
Speaker 1: kind of forced them to be enthusiastic his men, and
Speaker 1: we're going to have to be in total control of
Speaker 1: the city. Right if he could, if he could really
Speaker 1: be in charge in Munich, they weren't going to fight him.
Speaker 1: They give the army the orders to go along with it,
Speaker 1: right because they don't want to die. But he's got
Speaker 1: to actually be in charge. And making his first critical mistake,
Speaker 1: Hitler desize it's necessary for him to leave the Burger
Speaker 1: Brow beer hall late that night to see what's going
Speaker 1: on at the Engineer barracks, and he leaves Ludendorff alone
Speaker 1: with the Triumvirate. This is a bad call. Oh, So
Speaker 1: Hitler and his Nazis know these guys are captives. He
Speaker 1: knows that he's holding them against their will. He knows
Speaker 1: that if they're agreeing, it's they're not really that on
Speaker 1: board with the idea. Ludendorff again is kind of not
Speaker 1: being told the entire truth about what's happening, and he
Speaker 1: thinks these guys are fellow German patriots, right um. And
Speaker 1: he also thought they looked tired, you know, it's been
Speaker 1: a long night. And he's like, do you guys want
Speaker 1: to go home and like take a nap or something,
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, we would like to go home,
Speaker 1: and he's likely, bro, yeah, man, you guys are German officers. I,
Speaker 1: as a German officer, know that no German officer would
Speaker 1: ever lie. Give me your word of honor that you'll
Speaker 1: come back to help us finish the coup tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be back. What's time we'll be yeah, they say,
Speaker 1: of course we'll come back, of course, Bro. What's what's
Speaker 1: I like, tan, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see you in
Speaker 1: the morning. Yeah. So some of the Nazis there are
Speaker 1: Nazis in the room too, and they see Ludendorf doing this,
Speaker 1: They're like dude, they're not gonna come back. And Ludendorff
Speaker 1: gets pissed at them and he's like, I forbid anyone
Speaker 1: in this room from doubting the word of a German officer.
Speaker 1: How dare you? YEA? When I was a kid, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the like the clue you was about to
Speaker 1: get knocked out but robbed by somebody like hey, hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: your phone right quick? Let me use your phone? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well you would look and be like, don't get that
Speaker 1: man your phone. Do not walk over there and get
Speaker 1: that mean, what are you talking my many? You just
Speaker 1: want to borrow my phone. Don't give him your phone?
Speaker 1: What do you do? You keep walking? Bro? Like, hey, hey, man,
Speaker 1: come on, let me just use it right quick? No,
Speaker 1: man like like you know what do you what do you?
Speaker 1: What do you? What are you doing? What are you doing? Well?
Speaker 1: There it is now you're now you're sleeping. Hey, just
Speaker 1: put you to sleep and your stare foot The guy
Speaker 1: just stole your shoes. I told you not to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's totally funny. Like the guys in room
Speaker 1: saying yeah. The boss is like, yeah, let him go
Speaker 1: take a nap, and the dudes are like, hey, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a good idea. Man, you really think
Speaker 1: they're gonna come back, Like, I don't think they're gonna
Speaker 1: come back. Hey boss, maybe you shouldn't let them leave
Speaker 1: you kind of seeing this why Ludendorff didn't win the war, right, Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this good idea, coach, Yeah, hey boss, this this
Speaker 1: might not be the plan. So that is where we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it in part one. General Ludendorff the genius
Speaker 1: of German military tactics. It's just let everyone go that
Speaker 1: he needs in order to make Germans don't lie, German
Speaker 1: officers don't lie. Um, I swear to you, I'm coming back.
Speaker 1: I'll bring back Yeah, absolutely tons of coffee. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna push the hell out of this state. Give
Speaker 1: me a minute, Yeah, let me get a nap um prop.
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Speaker 1: conclusion of Put Put Tabulous. There you go, yes, but Sam, Yes,