WEBVTT - Part One: Oskar Dirlwanger: The Worst Nazi 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:08.840 What's cracking my peppers. This is Robert Evans bringing away 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.560 classic introduction to the podcast Behind the Bastards, where we 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.080 tell you everything you don't know about the worst people 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:18.880 in all of history. Now, I've decided to do this 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:23.840 blast from the past introduction because this week lads and ladies, 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:31.840 them's and fims, him bows and us. But whatever. Anyway, 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.040 we're doing a classic Behind the Bastards episode. We're getting 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.760 back to our roots. We're we're doing it, doing it 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.320 old school style, and we're talking about a Nazi. Yeah, 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.680 Matt Lee our guest for today. Matt, you're a podcaster, uh, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.760 the host of the podcast Hood Yourself a Gun, which 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.880 show the Sopranos, and obviously, Matt as a comedian, you 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.360 understand that there's nothing more toxic than getting political. But 0:00:57.600 --> 0:00:59.880 I want to ask you to just kind of riskly 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.560 delve into those waters and and and and answer me 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:11.160 this question. The Nazis are we like are we like warm? Cold? Lukewarm? 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.399 Where what do you land on the Nazis? Honestly, bro 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.440 jury is still out on the Nazis. I think people 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.399 are starting to just like think, like, hey, maybe they 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.280 had some ideas a lot of people are starting to 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.520 think that way. Man. They're like, wait, wait, maybe some 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.880 of that stuff about the Jews Connor Rings true. Um 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:36.400 j K, I'm anti ant anti anti Nazis. Maybe Amtley, 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.959 How would you like to learn about the worst Nazi? Oh? Man, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.199 I thought I've Every time I come on, I feel 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:45.720 like I've learned about the worst Nazi. And I'm like, well, 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.320 we're done with the Holly Coast. This is when we 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.560 talk about the Nazis, and we talked about the Holocaust. Obviously, 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.760 there's a couple of different categories of worst. There's the 0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:59.080 guys who are actually like out in the field doing 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:02.760 war crimes with our actual bodies against the people's actual bodies. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.320 And there's the guys who are like organizing it, doing 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.040 the paper pushing that made it possible. There's the propagandists 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.160 who got everyone riled up. I tend to find those 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.880 latter two categories more interesting, right, because there's always just 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:18.320 like thugg thuggish pieces of ship who will hurt people. Um. 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.480 The guy we're talking about today is kind of both 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.639 straddles both those lines. And as a spoiler, this is 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.200 a guy who got written up by the SS for 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:34.560 violence during the Siege of Warsaw. That is that is 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.359 the level of level of Nazi we're talking the s 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:39.760 s was like, this guy's making us look bad. This 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.959 guy is really the Jews right now? Yeah, I mean 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.519 I hate the Jews, but holy shit, she calms the 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.919 fun down. Wow. Yeah, we get it. We get it's 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:56.240 the Jews are bad. Just we're killing these people. But 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:00.399 good lord, I understand you want to do a dollar now, 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.520 but there's a process. Okay, we're trying to do it 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:10.000 step by step. My god, mind, god mind, got Uh. 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.920 There's nothing like making fun of a German accent. Um. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.080 It is good. You never have to ask for permission 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.440 to know you're officially I think for the next thousand 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.760 of the thousand years, Uh, everyone can just do a 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:25.200 German accent and make fun of them and for their 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.000 history whenever you disagree with them on some random thing. 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.720 That is the punishment instead of a thousand year Reich 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.600 for a thousand years, we all get to be a 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:37.200 little racist gets German people. But it's okay, they're going 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:41.320 to complain a thousand year accent right where he's like, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:46.800 I'm German. Look at Mr Crimes. Yeah, I like to 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:51.280 climes and mountains. I don't like Jews, but I lost 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.800 the whole war where look at my leader host and 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.960 in my decision to invade Russia is out vinta cults. Yeah, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.720 I plan out for his in my hat. Look at me. 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:03.840 I don't know what. Do they have feathers in their hats? 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.280 I feel like at some point, yeah, feathers and that 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.280 idle this flower whatever. Anyway, So we're talking about Oscar 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:16.320 Durrell Wanger today. That's his name. Ridiculous name, ridiculous name, um, 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.960 but also quite possibly the worst personal history of bloodshed 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.000 that I've heard about a Nazi having. Um. He is 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:30.520 a real, a staggering piece of shit, said Oscar Durrell Wanger. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.400 Durrell Wanger, ridiculous name. We call him. Oscar is a 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.840 grouch because he's so grouchy. He's a very grumpy man. 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.360 He's a he's a thug and and just a gross thug. 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.960 But he's also an, unlike most of the thugs, a 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.040 key part of like the organizing machinery of genocide. He 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:55.560 didn't just take live's hand to hand. He helped orchestrate 0:04:55.640 --> 0:05:00.280 mass killings um and and made sort of paula see 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.560 for Nazi field units doing genocide that was adopted on 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.640 a pretty wide scale. But before we talk about him, 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:08.480 we got to get into one of my favorite topics, 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:13.240 Matt Leeb hitlerology. Yes, oh yeah, So a lot of 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.159 people study Hitler, a lot of a lot of Hitler 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.080 stands out there. Um, and there's a I'm a big 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:22.440 hitler ologistlogist too. Yeah. I've decided that I would not 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.640 go back in time to kill him. Uh really yeah, 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.200 because if you think about it by now, like Hitler 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.800 has got to be a fucking expert at killing time travelers, right, 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.760 that is a good point, because that's all he does 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.120 all day. So every time traveler who's gone back in 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:38.960 time has died at the hands of Hitler because we 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.120 still know who he is. Yeah. I feel like it's 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:46.200 a trick to get the Jews to accidentally holocaust themselves 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.919 by like inventing time travel and then dying at the 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.440 hands of Adolf Hitler. Like he has a here's a 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.200 little room that they all go to and his actual 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.599 secret plan. See I had I actually have an idea 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.279 for a TV show. I shouldn't be sharing this with 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.960 the open Internet, But scientists go back in time, and 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.760 they reverse the polarity of Hitler's brain and they make 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.080 him reverse Hitler. And then after that it's a matchmaking show, 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:14.080 and he's just trying to get Jewish couples to get 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.440 together and have babies to like undo all of his crimes. 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:21.880 Like a Hitler yenta, like a Hitler love boat. Yeah, right, exactly, 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.960 match makeup, make me I love that. Yeah, probably will 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.400 be the Yeah. Probably shouldn't. Shouldn't say that on the 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.560 open Internet, but I did so amongst people who are 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:38.760 like Hitler nerds, which nobody who does this professionally calls themselves. 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.599 But I called her that. Um. There's a big debate 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.520 as to whether or not Hitler was what some academics 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.760 call a weak dictator. Now, this term, when it gets 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:53.000 kind of like translated, particularly academics, is sort of un 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.719 It gets people kind of interpreted the wrong way when 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:58.960 the people who are the academics who are calling him 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.680 a weak dictator are not arguing that he wasn't influential 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.320 or central to Nazi crimes. Instead, it's more of a 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:08.039 debate about the way in which he exercised influence and 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.200 the way in which the the actual structural ways in 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.840 which he contributed to the Holocaust. Right, there's a debate 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.760 about and and basically, so one side of this they're 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:21.160 called intentionalists, and intentionalist historians argue that Hitler was quote 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.640 master in the Third Reich, essentially a micro manager who 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.920 exercised tremendous direct control and gave specific orders that are 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.640 behind many of the regime's crimes. Now, the other side 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:36.200 of this debate, they're called generally either structuralists or functionalists, right, 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.760 and these historians think that the structure of the Nazi 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:43.840 Party and the Nazi state actually hamstrung Hitler from exercising 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.760 direct power, and thus his influence in things like the 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.320 Holocaust was more a result of his rhetoric and the 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.960 culture that he helped build and helped have take over 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:57.040 Germany rather than actual specific minute orders that he issued. Right. Interesting, Okay, Yeah, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.920 so like the George W. Bush theory where everyone's right, 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.280 he's not really were criminal because he's too stupid. It 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.320 was Cheney who's the real war criminal. And I'm like, 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.800 why not? Both yeah, And I do want to say 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.120 most of the people who are making the argument that 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:14.920 like he was a weak dictator are not trying to 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.080 mitigate his crimes. They're just trying to understand specifically, how 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.920 did the Holocaust occur and how did the Nazi Party 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.680 do the crimes that it did? Right, was Hitler? Was 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:26.640 Hitler sitting there being like and you go killed and 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:28.560 you go or was it more that like, well, he 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:30.480 he puts these people in power, and he builds this 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:33.120 system where all of these guys are kind of competing 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.000 to be the worst Nazi to rise in this party. 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.000 And it was that sort of thing, right, So it's 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:40.240 not I don't think most of them are not trying 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.240 to mitigate his crimes. They're more just trying to be 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:44.680 specific about And I'm not taking, by the way, a 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:49.960 side here as to who is still calling I'm Hitler lovers, 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:55.600 So the Hitler lovers Hitler. Yeah, some of these guys 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:59.880 are Jewish, so he probably shouldn't. Well, you're trying to 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.800 some it's complicated because some of them are Holocaust deniers. Um, 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.120 It's it's messy Hitler. When you when you really get 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.240 deep into Hitler studies, it gets kind of messy. And 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.360 part of one of the reasons why there's a debate, 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.360 Right if you look at a guy like Putin nobody's 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.400 going to argue that Putin is not a strong dictator 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.680 and that he exercises direct personal control over what his 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.000 regime does. Right. We know right now that he's like 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:28.080 giving field orders to his commanders in Ukraine directly, which 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:30.520 is like that strong dictator stuff, right, and then is 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.160 certainly something Hitler did from a military standpoint. No one 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:37.440 really argues that he wasn't a strong dictator as regards 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:42.240 his control of the military machine. In terms of the 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.400 the architecture of genocide, you know, how do we how 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.360 do we categorize him? Um? And And part of the 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.920 reason why there's this debate is that Hitler knew that 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.040 he was committing a genocide um and was pretty careful 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.000 about not having ship written down right, Like he he's 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.520 the stringer Bell of this where he's like the fucking 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.200 take no, it's yeah, motherfuck, are you taking notes on 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.920 a cuminal conspiracy? Although there are a lot of notes 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.120 on his criminal conspiracy, He's just kind of coy about stuff. 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:11.840 So there's I just want to say shout out to 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.920 you for bringing a stringer Bell reference with because we're 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.839 always looking for it. We're now covering the wire pot 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:22.160 yourself the wire is the new show. So if you 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.960 like Stringer Bell references and you're behind the bastards, sorry, 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.320 I had to plug. I have a baby coming. I 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.360 need to plug. So Hitler, I mean, yeah, again, quite 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:34.640 careful about There's not like a piece of paper where 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.520 Hitler says, hey, guys, I want you to start doing 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.120 death camp ship right, Hey guys, turn Auschwitz into a 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:43.040 factory for murder. Right. We don't have like Hitler's signing 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.840 that piece of paper. Obviously, again the spoilers. He knew 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.120 about all of it. He was very involved in all 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.440 of it. But he's not like sitting down and being 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:54.520 like and everybody make sure to note that I Hitler 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.320 told you to do this, because it's a it's a 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.400 pretty serious crime. He's committing, yes, and he knows it, 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.520 and and it's it's the funk up thing is it's 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.239 like the foundation of I think a lot of Holocaust 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:11.160 denialism is the fact that they were so secretive about 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.680 the entire project. So you you know, to this day 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:18.319 there are people who are falling for Hitler's fucking bullshit, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.040 and and there is there's a whole strain of people 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.240 who are not quite Holocaust deniers who will say, yeah, 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:25.360 the Holocaust happened and it was bad. They'll also say 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:27.160 stuff like it wasn't as bad as the bombing of 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.800 German cities. There wasn't bad, questions, it was all nonsense. 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.280 But then they'll be like, but Hitler didn't direct it, right, like, 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:35.520 we have no evidence. This was just things like this 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.840 is these are like things that there's weird Nazis out there, right, 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:44.000 it's anyway. So the the actual phrase wicked weak dictator 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.800 comes from a historian named Hans Momson, who argued alongside 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.480 other historians that the Fewer was actually a weaker leader 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.920 in a lot of ways than previous German rulers. Right 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:55.520 in terms of the way he exercised power. He has 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.559 less direct power than a guy like the Kaiser did. Right. 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:04.000 That's he's no kids, and and what he's saying is 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.120 that he's not again, Momson, as far as I know, 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:08.520 is not trying to deny the Holocaust. What he's saying 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:11.160 is that the way the Nazi state was constructed is 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.360 all of these guys who are basically gangsters come in, 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.080 they destroy a lot of the existing German bureaucracy and 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.120 they replace it with the nest of like a this 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.640 web basically of of conflicting criminal gangs that are all 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.679 fighting each other and sometimes killing each other, and that 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.839 makes it hard for Hitler to direct aspects of state 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:33.800 personally in a way other autocrats are able to do. 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:36.520 This was not done to the military, which is part 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.199 of why Hitler was able to like exercise so much 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.320 direct control of the military is a lot of the 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.320 old structure of the Imperial Military was still in place. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.480 Um Now, this line of reasoning is again it's not 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.320 what Moms is saying is not inherently unreasonable. That said, 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.560 it's also probably worth noting that it is unsettlingly similar 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:00.520 to justifications that German citizens at the time, like during 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:04.200 the Third Reich, made for how bad Nazi officials were. 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.000 Because Hitler by thirty eight is very popular, but the 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.440 Nazis are bad at governing and a bunch of ship 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:12.640 keeps going wrong that they were supposed to have fixed. 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.840 So there's this attitude among citizens in the right that like, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.320 Hitler is great, he doesn't know about how fucked up 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.160 some of these guys are. Right, he's too trusting, he's 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.800 too gentle natured. Hitler he would never expect people to 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.760 do crimes. That's the thing about Hitler is that he 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.880 was always a very tolerant guy. You know, he's just 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.800 very nice, very sweet, non confrontational. I think that's a 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:39.480 big thing about Hitler, the man who anti fascists with 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:44.000 a whip and bar fights. I'm a bit of an introvert. 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.600 I don't like confrontation, don't like direct conflict. Yeah, I 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:52.320 just kind of want everyone to be cool and friends. Um, 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:56.520 it's yeah again. And this is so part of what's 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.120 gnarlis that this is an important debate to have if 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:01.360 you're trying to understand what happened during the Third Reich, 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.440 because it's it's not there's nothing wrong with saying well, 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.800 because of the structure of the Nazi Party and how 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.079 like criminal and incompetent a lot of these guys were, 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:11.760 Hitler was not able to exercise the kind of direct 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.200 control in domestic policies that some people expected, and as 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.760 a result, a lot of the early things, a lot 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.120 of things that were done by the Nazi state were 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.040 things that were just sort of like done by guys 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.320 that he trusted to do stuff, and so he wasn't direct, 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.600 which is not saying he's not ultimately responsible because like 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.080 if I were to hire someone on the cool Zone 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:32.240 media and I were to say, like, you have a 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.240 fifty thou dollar budget for that can only be spent 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.240 on bullets, but I'm not going to tell you what 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.120 to do with them, and then that person goes and 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:43.720 commits crimes, I'm responsible to some extent, right, Like, yeah, 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:46.600 I mean it'd be weird if you were just like, hey, 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:51.000 come join my podcasting company and I'll give you fifty bullets. Yeah, 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.320 no microphones. Here's a list of people I dislike, Right, 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.640 I wouldn't be saying go kill these people, but it 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:02.400 wouldn't be my fault, right, Like, yes, um, I think 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.440 in that case. Again, one of the conflicts here is 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:08.240 that a number of people who are proponents of the 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:12.720 weak dictator hypothesis are fucking fascists, including a guy named 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:16.480 David Irving. Irving was at one point a semi respected 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.040 scholar of German history. Kurt Vonnegutt quotes him in uh 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:25.160 in a slaughter House five because one of the things 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:27.240 Irving did is he he would write about how bad 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.680 the Allied bombing campaigns were, and he seems to have 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.960 exaggerated the death count substantially, but they weren't pretty bad. 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.119 So there was a time in which a guy like Vonnegutt, 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.800 definitely not a Nazi, would be like, oh, yeah, I 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.840 was at Dresden. I know it was bad. I I 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.640 this guy is saying the numbers are even worse than 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:47.440 I knew. That seems credible to me, and so Irving 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:51.520 as as at one point semi respected, and then kind 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:53.600 of turns into like it now he is a hard 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:55.480 core Holocaust and I are right, and I guess he 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.000 probably was at the time, but it wasn't immediately obvious. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.040 So you you do run into people like Vonnegut who 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.560 like sited Irving fifty something years sixty years ago or 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.040 whatever before he was a Nazi, and then it kind 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.400 of comes out and it's kind of tarnished Vonneget a 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:11.160 little bit, even though it really shouldn't have. It was 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.840 not It's not unreasonable for a guy who's sitting in 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.720 Dressden during the fire bombing to well, that was pretty bad. 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.160 The problem is, you know, Kurt Vonnegut didn't have um 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.200 retweet stone equal endorsements on exactly. That would have solved 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:27.280 the proud, would have solved the people like no, no, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.080 no, no no, no, he's cool. He's just he's not involved 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.480 with the whole Holocaust and iing thing, but he does 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:36.680 think that Dresden was pretty pretty bad bombing. Yeah. Now, 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.160 as is whenever you've got like a case where someone 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.720 like me who's not a historian is saying, here's these 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.160 camps in this like massive historical debate, the reality is 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:50.040 near rely always that actual credible experts kind of like 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.400 wind up more in the middle than anything else. That said, 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.520 it's probably fair to say that the intentionalist interpretation of 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:02.360 things um is more spected among serious academics. And it's 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.600 like Klaus Hildebrand will sum up that argument by saying 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:10.320 that national socialism was basically Hitlerrism, right, And there's a 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.520 lot to back up the fact that there was nothing 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.920 to this ideology and there's nothing to this government beyond 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.760 this kind of central focus on Hitler as a person, 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:23.040 just straight and the fact that all resistance pretty much 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:27.480 collapses when Hitler shoots himself is not uncompelling evidence that right, like, 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:31.320 you can make a strong case here very uh kill 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.840 the night King, energy and everyone else dissolves. But that said, 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.199 it's also worth noting that like you know, we're not 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:39.959 done with Nazism today, and like a lot of a 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:43.320 lot of fascists today are base have based their own 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:48.320 ideologies heavily on nationalist socialist principles. Millions of assholes all 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.480 over the world are drawn to aspects of the political 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.639 philosophy that animated the Nazis, even if they're not waiving 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:59.040 an actual swastika themselves, Um, they're usually they're just wearing 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.760 a blue Lives Matter. Yeah, that, and you can see 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.240 that as evidencely like, well, maybe the functionalists have a point, right, Like, yeah, 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.679 you know it was not just hitler Ism, there was 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:11.280 something more to it. Now. The story of the man 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.239 that we're going to discuss today kind of lies at 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.920 the heart of this debate because Hitler is a factor. 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:17.880 And you can say in the same way that when 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.280 I hire that guy and give him thousands and thousands 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.000 of bullets, I am responsible for what he does with them. 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.840 Hitler is responsible to some extent for every murder that 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.760 this guy is going to commit, but his direct fingerprints 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.280 aren't really on any of it. Right. Hitler never says, hey, Oscar, 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.400 I want you to go do some real fucked up ship. Um, 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.640 but also ready to put in work. Oscar Hitler absolutely 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.040 said send that guy Oscar out to do the worst 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.160 things anyone's ever done. Right, He's a real go getter, 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.800 he's got that entrepreneurial spirit. And this is all. There's 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.480 a second debate that's kind of broader than the Hitler debate, 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:57.440 which is are the physical culprits of the Holocaust willing executioners? 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.560 Like did the Germans just raise up a narration of 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.159 real assholes who are willing to do horrible things? Or 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.480 were they ordinary Germans? And it just turns out that 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.520 normal people are a pretty malleable when it comes to 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.640 war crimes. And again, the actual truth here is always 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:15.040 going to be from credible people. Well, it's kind of both, 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:16.439 and it kind of depends on which group of them 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.480 you're talking about one period of it, right, Um, anyway, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.080 that's all just interesting context, I think for sort of 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.159 the philosophical debates that are going on behind all of 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:27.080 the war crimes were about to talk about, because I 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.200 don't just want to be like, yeah, it sounds like 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:34.359 the twenty minute preface where it's like, we do not 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:39.119 say that Hitler wasn't responsible for what we're just saying 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:42.719 there were some people who went above and beyond the 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:46.800 call of yeah exactly, and and and also just like 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.439 when you're trying to understand how genocides occur, it's important 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:54.040 to understand that it's like structurally, a number of overlapping 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:58.120 factors usually come together, right. Um, Anyway, I just wanted 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.000 to talk about that. You can read a lot more 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.479 about this. We'll have sources wherever we put sources, I'm 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:05.680 sure at some point. Um, but there's a bunch of 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.159 there's a bunch of books about people write entire books 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.240 arguing over this. Um. I am not again trying not 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:14.520 to come down on either side because basically, with the 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:16.840 exception of that Holocaust, and I are most of the 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.080 people involved in the debate on both sides no more 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.359 about this than I do so. Oscar Darrel Wanger was 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:28.320 born on September eight in Wurzburg, Swabia, Swabia, which is 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:33.120 a ridiculous name for a place in southern Germany because 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:37.520 they all came from really just ridiculous sounding places. Yeah, 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.040 they come from fucking Swabia. And then they hear there's 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.400 a city called crack Ow, which is a dope name 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:47.120 from like, well, we gotta fucking take that ship. Warsaw. 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.440 What a cool name. And we're over here with Stuttgart. 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:57.240 Goddamnita is a name for a city, and I gotta 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.679 be honest. Moscow pretty cool fucking name for a like 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.560 Stalin grad don't like Stalin pretty dope name like. And 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:12.080 one of you guys got see his munichue skin Flagging's 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:18.560 just gotten come ons like vomiting towns filled with vomiting. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.080 That's why they did it. That's why. Yeah, that's why 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.320 they're bad. The secret to Hitler's madness is he grew 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.920 up in a fucking shitty little town with a stupid name. 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:36.120 Matt's here for this episode. Well, you know, I just 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.720 I like to keep it silly when talking Holocaust. Yeah, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.639 you gotta, you gotta keep it light right, Yeah, fucking 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.080 brown now I'm in. Was the name of his fucking birthplace? 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:53.320 What stupid? Anyway, Um, Matt, you know what's not stupid? 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.160 What the products and services that support this podcast? Nine? 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:07.160 We're back. So we just talked about how Oscar Durrell 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:12.160 Wanger born eighteen, his family moves from the stupid named 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:16.080 town to a slightly less stupid named town, Stuttgart Germany 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:18.280 and nineteen hundred, which is where my mom was born 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:22.119 quite a bit laer Um. Yes uh. She told us 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:24.600 later later in life, was like, yeah, you actually could 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:29.040 have gotten German citizenship, And we were like, what the funk? 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:33.640 Why didn't she do? What the hell? I could have 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:36.080 to fucking passports? You know what kind of ship I 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:40.320 could get up to. I could have had healthcare? Yeah. Um. 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.120