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Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards of podcasts

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Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history. We

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Speaker 1: are talking about Adolph Eichman this week and last week.

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Speaker 1: Last week we got through his childhood and his early

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Speaker 1: rise through the SD, which is the ss' Security Division,

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Speaker 1: to become the in his words, czar of the Jews

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Speaker 1: for Nazi Germany. And today, with our guest Joe Kasabian,

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Speaker 1: we're talking about what happens to Iikman as the war

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Speaker 1: moves towards its final phase.

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Speaker 2: How you doing, Joe?

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Speaker 1: Excited to hear about this guy. I think he's gonna

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Speaker 1: finally break good in this last two parts.

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Speaker 2: I gotta say I'm not super optimistic that he's gonna

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Speaker 2: have a redemption arc. I dressed up for this episode

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Speaker 2: because I I was surprised last time, so now I'm

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Speaker 2: just wearing a shirt. This has all pain.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm treating this like people were treating like the

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Speaker 1: second half of and Or, where they were hoping their

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Speaker 1: favorite like Monster Imperial characters, like oh, this guy's going

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Speaker 1: to totally turn out good at the end, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is our moment like that for Iikman.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, most Nazis are not in fact, the one from

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Speaker 2: the Pianist No No.

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Speaker 1: Where we left off in part two, he had gone

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Speaker 1: on a fact finding mission to eastern Europe, and the

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Speaker 1: fairly early stages of Operation Barbarossa were the first parts

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Speaker 1: of what we now know as the actual killing stage

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Speaker 1: of the Holocaust began, which was a mix of you know,

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Speaker 1: gas bands showing up outside of various villages and Eindset's

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Speaker 1: group and units just doing mass shootings. Well, Iikman's watching

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Speaker 1: all that, and he's taking notes, and he's figuring out,

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Speaker 1: how do you actually kill a lot of like a

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Speaker 1: shitload of people, like more people, like as many more

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Speaker 1: people than would have died in a war a generation

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Speaker 1: or two ago. We've got to like figure out to

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Speaker 1: get rid of while we're fighting a war.

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Speaker 2: How do we do that? Right?

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Speaker 1: And all of this is preparation for a big old

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Speaker 1: meeting they're going to have called the Vonse Conference in

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Speaker 1: early nineteen forty two. So that's where we are right now,

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Speaker 1: And yeah, that's what we're hurtling towards at the moment.

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Speaker 1: And the problem the Nazis are dealing with as the

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Speaker 1: war in the East starts to turn against them is

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Speaker 1: they've got a logistical hurdle on their hands. They have

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Speaker 1: captured way more Jews than they know how to handle,

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Speaker 1: and they have no real process for dealing with them.

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Speaker 1: If you think back to the numbers we were talking

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Speaker 1: about in the first parts of this series, they're dealing

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Speaker 1: with a couple one hundred thousand people at a time.

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Speaker 1: As you know, they take over Austria, as they take

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Speaker 1: over Czechoslovakia, and then you know more when they take

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Speaker 1: over Poland. But now they've captured this huge chunk of

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Speaker 1: what had been the Soviet Union. They got millions of

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Speaker 1: people on their hands, right, and these earlier decisions they

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Speaker 1: had to make about what should we do? Do we

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Speaker 1: deport these people? Do we find a place for them?

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Speaker 1: The decision moves towards like all we can do is

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Speaker 1: annihilate them, right, But we we have a limit in

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Speaker 1: our war material and a limit in how many soldiers

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Speaker 1: we can have actually kill people.

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Speaker 2: And not to mention, like how many people are willing

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Speaker 2: to drive insane, right and drink themselves to death by

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Speaker 2: turning them into executioners.

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Speaker 1: That's a major problem for the SS at this stage.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So many of the sources that you'll find on Eichmann

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Speaker 1: will point out that he never really wrote policy, right,

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Speaker 1: he was just an implementation guy. And this is accurate

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Speaker 1: technically in some ways, but I don't think it is

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Speaker 1: in a way that matters, right.

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Speaker 2: I think policy wonk.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he really kind of was right. He's not the

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Speaker 1: author of a bunch of stuff, but he's like, he's

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Speaker 1: part of the process of authoring a lot of things.

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Speaker 1: And he does help create policies, particularly like where the

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Speaker 1: treatment of people with partial Jewish as history is concerned.

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Speaker 1: And he's got this foundational role in how the Nazi

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Speaker 1: state interacts with captured Jewish communities and deports them.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: And that's he's not literally writing out policies all the time,

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Speaker 1: but he is effectively making policy in all but name. Now,

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Speaker 1: that said, he doesn't give the order to start the Holocaust, right,

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Speaker 1: that's obviously not his call. That happens way above his head,

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Speaker 1: which begs the question, then who does right you would

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Speaker 1: expect in an organization as hierarchical as the Nazis, there's

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Speaker 1: someone we could trace to like and this is the

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Speaker 1: moment the order was given. Right, We don't actually, we

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Speaker 1: don't directly have that, right. We know Eichmann helps organize

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Speaker 1: and facilitate the von Se conference where it's planned, and

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Speaker 1: this is on orders of his boss, Reinhardt Heidrich, and

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Speaker 1: Heydrich takes his orders, you know, from Himmler and from Hitler.

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Speaker 1: But we don't have any record of Himmler or Hitler saying, Okay,

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Speaker 1: it's time to do the Holocaust now, right, because that's

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Speaker 1: just not the way any of this works, right.

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Speaker 2: And man man has that led to a lot of

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Speaker 2: problems and then Holocaust denial and Hitler rehabilitation and right,

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Speaker 2: you fucking name it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we have no evidence of Hitler saying we've got

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Speaker 1: to do that, and that kind of feeds into at

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Speaker 1: the time, a lot of people in Nazi Germany who

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Speaker 1: were often annoyed or even horrified by aspects of the regime,

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Speaker 1: by things the s S and the SD did, right,

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Speaker 1: would be like, well, but Hitler clearly doesn't know about this, right,

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Speaker 1: like he's got he can't have any idea this is

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Speaker 1: going on, and this is something Hitler, you know, this

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Speaker 1: is the smart way to play shit. As a totalitarian dictator,

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Speaker 1: you don't want your name attached to everything the regime

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Speaker 1: is doing, especially shit that's not going to work out

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Speaker 1: or that's more experimental. You need plausible deniability, right, even

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Speaker 1: if you're Hitler.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, not every tyrant or dictator is going to have

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Speaker 2: a camp called like the Hitler Camp for undesirables.

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Speaker 1: Right, right, that's that's just bad business. And the Nazi

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Speaker 1: regime again, there's this attitude and this really is something

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Speaker 1: that causes people who even aren't trying to do Nazi

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Speaker 1: apologia to do apologia for regular people under the Nazi system,

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Speaker 1: there's this errand idea that like, well, normal people had

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Speaker 1: no choice but to go along with what the regime

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Speaker 1: has doing. It was so dangerous. Any degree of resistance

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Speaker 1: would have gotten you killed, would have gotten your family

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Speaker 1: wiped out. At no point in the history of the

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Speaker 1: Nazi regime was that true.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: There were no no, no members of the Nazi state

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Speaker 1: and like were ever executed or punished for just refusing

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Speaker 1: to take part in the Holocaust.

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Speaker 2: Right, Most of them were out, yes, and people could

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Speaker 2: take it, right, Like the Nazi reserve police battalions had

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Speaker 2: to volunteer, yes, to do the Holocaust by bullets, and

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Speaker 2: they overwhelmingly volunteered.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And people who said no didn't have their families

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Speaker 1: killed or themselves killed.

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Speaker 2: Right, they didn't even get demoted, they just got moved

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Speaker 2: somewhere else.

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Speaker 1: So much choice was involved and being part of the

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Speaker 1: worst aspects of the regime, and there was in fact

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Speaker 1: internal criticism inside Nazi Germany, and the regime even buckled

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Speaker 1: under that criticism at times. When word of the T

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Speaker 1: four euthanasia program broke out, which was basically the gassing

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Speaker 1: of you know, to say, people by the Nazi state,

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Speaker 1: there was backlash among German civilians, and that backlash was

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Speaker 1: significant enough that it made Hitler number one. They backed

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Speaker 1: away publicly on the program, and it made Hitler wary

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Speaker 1: in the future of putting further policies of mass murder.

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Speaker 1: In writing, and I want to quote from an article

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Speaker 1: by Kevin Sweeney in the journal Constructing the Past. Here,

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Speaker 1: between nineteen forty and nineteen forty one, the German people's

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Speaker 1: negative reaction became increasingly vocal and vehement, culminating in Hitler

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Speaker 1: being openly jeered by a crowd watching mentally challenged patients

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Speaker 1: being loaded onto a trade at a rail station in Hoff,

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Speaker 1: Bavaria in nineteen forty one. Ultimately, this negative public reaction

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Speaker 1: to the T four program in Hitler's sanctioning of it,

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Speaker 1: bolstered by denunciations from Catholic and Protestant church leaders, forced

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Speaker 1: Hitler to publicly cancel the program in August of nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty one, though it continued in secret until nineteen forty five.

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Speaker 1: So again people yelled at Hitler over this and he

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Speaker 1: backed down, right, Like, that's such a critical part of

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Speaker 1: the story of how this regime worked.

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Speaker 2: Do you also think this is something that is batted

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Speaker 2: around a bit in my field of research, where it's

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Speaker 2: just like, this is the one that was taking average

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Speaker 2: Germans family members away as well. Yes, everybody was connected

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Speaker 2: to it.

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Speaker 1: Yes, And there were other times where that happened, Right.

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Speaker 1: There was a moment where they started deporting people who

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Speaker 1: had like one Jewish relative but weren't like religiously Jewish

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Speaker 1: and were married into you know, gentile German families. They

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Speaker 1: were protests, and they had to publicly back off of

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Speaker 1: that because Germans were like, well, but these guys aren't

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Speaker 1: really Jewish, right, what are you doing here?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, moments like that happened, and the state was

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Speaker 1: always conscious of how far they were pushing people, right,

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Speaker 1: which meant that the state could be pushed now because

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Speaker 1: of all of this, there's not a clear order to like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: Hitler signed this paper saying kill everybody, right, and this

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Speaker 1: has led even within it. And again, these are none

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Speaker 1: of these people are what you'd call denialists. But there

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Speaker 1: was a debate for a very long time, like half

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Speaker 1: a century between historians who specialized in the Holocaust between

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Speaker 1: what are generally called intentionalists and functionalists. And the intentionalists

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Speaker 1: argue that Hitler personally instigated the final solution. The functionalists

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Speaker 1: argued that it arose naturally as a result of the

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Speaker 1: structure of the Third Reich. Now this debate is mostly done.

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Speaker 1: We don't really this is like I think people will

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Speaker 1: talk about in terms of the history of how we

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Speaker 1: looked at this. There's not much argument here anymore. A

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Speaker 1: preponderance of evidence that exists today proves that Hitler that

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Speaker 1: basically aspects of both of these are very true.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I was actually going to point that out.

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Speaker 2: There's more, there's a third camp, which I generally fall into, yeah,

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Speaker 2: which is like Hitler ordered it. However, a lot of

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Speaker 2: it arose from the structure. It was not the state. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: both of the did it would have happened.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Hitler premeditated on the slaughter of European jewelry. And

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Speaker 1: also the functionalists have some very good points. One piece

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Speaker 1: of evidence for the intentionalists that often get cited that

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Speaker 1: is important when we talk about Hitler's premeditation is an

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Speaker 1: interview Hitler gave in nineteen twenty to a journalist where

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Speaker 1: he said, once I really am in power, my first

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Speaker 1: and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews,

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Speaker 1: as soon as they.

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Speaker 2: Have the power to do so.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's like, I.

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Speaker 1: Will have the gallows built in rows and the Jews

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Speaker 1: will be hanged indiscriminately until all of Germany has been

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Speaker 1: completely cleansed of Jews. That's pretty hard. That's like not

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Speaker 1: you know, we can state that is pretty clear evidence

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Speaker 1: of intent, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And mine Komf also kind of really lays it out there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's not a lot, there's there's a it's

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Speaker 1: hard to argue he didn't say regularly what he planned

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Speaker 1: to do, right.

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Speaker 2: It's what he's known for, it's his bit.

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Speaker 1: It's his whole thing. And obviously the fact that he

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Speaker 1: said all this doesn't mean Hitler wrote out the plan

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Speaker 1: for Auschwitz or ever. Like, he's not the guy. He

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Speaker 1: didn't tell everyone, Okay, we're gonna do an Auschwitz and

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Speaker 1: here's how it's gonna work. Right, He was like, we

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Speaker 1: got to kill these guys. Figure it out. I'm Hitler,

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Speaker 1: I got Hitler stuff to do, right, Like, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of tasks on my hand. You

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Speaker 1: guys locked down how we're going to handle this, right,

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Speaker 1: And there were always other possibility up until you know,

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Speaker 1: things start to turn for them in the East. It's

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Speaker 1: not a guarantee that mass slaughter is the only thing

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Speaker 1: that we've done for all of these captured people. I

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Speaker 1: think there was a point in which something like the

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Speaker 1: Madagascar plan, if that itself was never really feasible, could

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Speaker 1: have been done for some amount of people, right.

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Speaker 2: But at a.

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Speaker 1: Certain point, the only thing they were going to do

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Speaker 1: was was genocide. And Hitler had repeatedly countenanced that and

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Speaker 1: urged that throughout his career. In nineteen thirty nine, he

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Speaker 1: told the Czech Ford and Minister, we are going to

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Speaker 1: destroy the Jews. They are not going to get away

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Speaker 1: with what they did. On November ninth, nineteen eighteen, the

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Speaker 1: Day of Reckoning has come. Eichmann himself would later claim

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Speaker 1: under interrogation that Reinhard Heidrich had told him about plans

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Speaker 1: for the Holocaust as early as August nineteen forty one.

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Speaker 1: And this is Heydrich talking to an interrogator. The war

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Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union began in June nineteen forty one.

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Speaker 1: I believe it was two months later that Heydrich sent

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Speaker 1: for me. I reported he began with a little speech,

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Speaker 1: and then the fearer has ordered physical extermination of the Jews.

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Speaker 1: Then Heydrich said, go and see ss ober group and

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Speaker 1: fuer otto Globotschnik. The fur has already given him instructions.

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Speaker 1: And you know that doesn't mean that's exactly what happened,

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Speaker 1: because Eichman lies under interrogation. But there's a good amount

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Speaker 1: of evidence to suggest that's pretty much what happened. Right,

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Speaker 1: we haven't talked. We'll talk about Globoschnik one of these days.

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Speaker 1: He's a really interesting Nazi, And from what we know

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Speaker 1: of Hydrich and of him, this is pretty feasible, right,

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Speaker 1: that something like this is basically what went down. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of outside kind of evidence that this is

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Speaker 1: pretty close to what happened.

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Speaker 2: Those ideas definitely would have flowed through hydrich.

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Speaker 1: Yes yes, through hydric and probably through globotschnik too, in

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Speaker 1: a similar way to how it's described here. And Bettina

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Speaker 1: Stangneth basically argues that Eichman was given the job of

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Speaker 1: planning the vonse conference, nothing to coordinate all the different

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Speaker 1: government branches. He'd played a role in the genocide because

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Speaker 1: he'd made himself the Reich's gopher in anything related to

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Speaker 1: the Jewish question. He's just the guy you reach for

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Speaker 1: when you're like, well, we need someone to pull all

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Speaker 1: of these things we've been doing together and plan the

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Speaker 1: execution of the Holocaust. You've got Eikman, right. You already

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Speaker 1: know he knows how to do this kind of shit,

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Speaker 1: so you pull for him. Stengneth writes when others were

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Speaker 1: at a loss, he was the man they called on.

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Speaker 1: For example, a professor at Strasburg University was adamant he

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Speaker 1: wanted the schools of Jewish Bolshevik commissars to add to

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Speaker 1: a collection of skeletons, despite the fact that they were

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Speaker 1: still alive. And Eikman's the guy who gets pulled in

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Speaker 1: to do that. He's just already been the kind of

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Speaker 1: we need someone to handle this unpleasant implementation that's going

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Speaker 1: to involve killing a lot of people, right, Well, iikmans,

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Speaker 1: who does that?

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Speaker 2: You know? Of course that's a collection that existed at

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Speaker 2: a German univers That's a German university's collection, right, I

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Speaker 2: mean recently a German university I forget which one, maybe

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Speaker 2: it was Salzburg discovered Oh we still have all these

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Speaker 2: boxes of human skulls right from the Herrero and Nama

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Speaker 2: jediside just like oops, oops, yeah, oops skulls.

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Speaker 1: Look, you don't want to go too deep into the

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Speaker 1: into the archive section of any German or British university

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Speaker 1: or any American university than a certain age.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, I should, I should point out due to my

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Speaker 2: family's land deeds. Or Turkish university, yeah, or Turkish universites.

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Speaker 1: Very few old universities do you want. And honestly, the

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Speaker 1: Vatican sub basements, we don't really want to get into

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Speaker 1: those too deep either.

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Speaker 2: Those stay locked. Yeah, those.

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Speaker 1: Us, Yeah, there's some there's some fucking first Indiana Jones movie.

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Speaker 1: Shit if you go deep enough in that. So as

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Speaker 1: the death camps spun up to full operation in the

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Speaker 1: years following Von Say Eichmann was set to the task

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Speaker 1: of organizing the registration, collection, and eventual deportation or evacuation

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Speaker 1: of captive Jewish populations to the camps. By this point,

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Speaker 1: he was highly placed enough and the job was big

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Speaker 1: enough that he often sent out trusted subordinates to handle

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Speaker 1: the on the groundwork for him, involving himself directly if

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Speaker 1: he felt their progress was too slow, and acting as

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Speaker 1: a wrecking ball whenever his people encountered resistance from local

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Speaker 1: government officials. And this resistance is usually not we have

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Speaker 1: a moral issue with what's happening. Sometimes it's actually later

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Speaker 1: in the war it's a mix of that, or they're

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Speaker 1: just worried that they'll get blamed for it because they

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Speaker 1: could see where things are coming. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: the times it's more, well, we need supplies for other things,

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Speaker 1: right Like, we have issues that are a bigger priority

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Speaker 1: to us in the general government of Poland or whatever

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Speaker 1: than the annihilation of these people, And why are we

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Speaker 1: focusing on this? And Eichman will come in and say,

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Speaker 1: fuck off, this is the priority, right Like. That's kind

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Speaker 1: of part of his job, and one of his personal

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Speaker 1: obsessions is ensuring that no individual Jews are exempted from

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Speaker 1: the final solution. This is more of an issue than

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Speaker 1: you might expect. It was often said that every Nazi

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Speaker 1: had their good Jew, or even recognized a handful of

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Speaker 1: good Jews that ought to be spared. And in fact

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Speaker 1: this extends to Hitler, as I bring up on this

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Speaker 1: show every now and then, he interviewed personally to save

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Speaker 1: his childhood doctor, a Jewish man who he viewed as

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Speaker 1: a decent person.

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Speaker 2: Right, and his personal driver, Emil Maurice.

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Speaker 1: Yeah right, there were guys, right and ladies right that

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Speaker 1: every even a lot of the worst of the Nazis had,

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Speaker 1: they would be like, well, this, this person should be spared.

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Speaker 2: Eichmann.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that makes him noteworthy is he

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Speaker 1: doesn't have these people, right, and he actually sees it

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Speaker 1: as his personal job to make sure none of the

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Speaker 1: like every even the worst of the ss are soft

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Speaker 1: towards a Jew here and there. I have to make

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Speaker 1: sure those people don't escape the drag net as much

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Speaker 1: as possible.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's supposed to be more evil than the most

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Speaker 2: evil men.

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Speaker 1: Hitler, Yeah, that's part of his job here. I've got

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Speaker 1: to be harder even than the boss. You know, Hitler's

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Speaker 1: you know he's too soft. He could be soft on

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Speaker 1: this issue, take up the slack. Yeah, you know, Hitler

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Speaker 1: real soft of the Jewish issue. Yeah, yeah, at least

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Speaker 1: softer than he's willing to be. And this is a

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Speaker 1: thing that comes down from Hydrich to Heydrick's very much

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Speaker 1: similar in this attitude, right, So, and again it's kind

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Speaker 1: of when we talk about his complicity. He doesn't order

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Speaker 1: any of this, but his job is to make sure

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Speaker 1: it's as total a victory for the Nazis as he

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Speaker 1: can manage. And while his role here is important, we

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Speaker 1: shouldn't neglect a highlight other major figures behind the final solution,

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Speaker 1: including Aikman's childhood friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, as well as Heinrich Mueller,

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Speaker 1: Theodore Daniker, Dieter Weslinsky, Franz Novak, and a bunch of

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Speaker 1: other young men in Hitler's SSNSD. And it's really worth

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Speaker 1: emphasizing how young a lot of the people doing this are.

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Speaker 1: That the Holocaust is committed primarily from an implementation stage

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Speaker 1: by very young, ambitious men. An article for the National

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Speaker 1: World War II Museum by doctor Jason Dawesy notes of

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Speaker 1: Eikman's peers quote. None of them had reached the age

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Speaker 1: of thirty five when World War two ended. They exhibited

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Speaker 1: a terrifying combination of attention to detail and steadfast commitment

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Speaker 1: to the core ideas of Nazism. Reynhard Heidrich himself, Eikman's boss,

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Speaker 1: was thirty eight when he was killed by Czech partisans

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Speaker 1: in June of nineteen forty two, just a few months

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Speaker 1: after the Vonse Conference. We've already covered Hydrich in other episodes,

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Speaker 1: and there's not enough time in these ones to discuss

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Speaker 1: all of Eikman's subordinates and colleagues, the guys at his level.

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Speaker 1: But we should talk about one of his men in

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Speaker 1: order to kind of tell the story of several others, right,

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Speaker 1: because I don't want it to look like I never

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Speaker 1: wanted to be like a great man thing where Eikman's

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Speaker 1: the only one kind of at this level of importance.

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Speaker 1: There are other guys who are at similar levels, and

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Speaker 1: one of them is his subordinate, Theodore Daniker. Right, And

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Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about Daneker, both because he's

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Speaker 1: a monster worth knowing and because his story tells us

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Speaker 1: something important about how Eikman operated. Daniker was born in

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Speaker 1: March of nineteen thirteen in Tubingen, southwest Germany. His father

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Speaker 1: was a member of the comfortable middle class, as a

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Speaker 1: lot of these guys are, and was a businessman until

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Speaker 1: he died in nineteen eighteen fighting for the Kaiser. Theodore

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Speaker 1: was raised by his mom and he grows up number

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Speaker 1: one angry about the war, believing in the stabbed in

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Speaker 1: the back myth like all of these guys do. And

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Speaker 1: other than that, he's kind of mediocre, right. His family

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Speaker 1: was used to being more comfortable than they are after

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Speaker 1: the war. He wants to do better. He feels like

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Speaker 1: he's owed it, but he's not very good at anything,

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Speaker 1: like eichmansocre student, right, he makes no real impact on

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Speaker 1: his professors, and there's no signs that he's going to

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Speaker 1: go on to have a really significant career. He's just

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Speaker 1: kind of mid. Right. These are all very young, very

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Speaker 1: mid guys who are given in their only chance to

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Speaker 1: be excellent is with the Nazi Party.

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Speaker 2: Man, that is unfortunate. We need some kind of jobs

398
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Speaker 2: program for dudes who are solidly mid.

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Speaker 1: It's this thing I come up with with, like guys

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Speaker 1: like Ben Shapiro, like all of these dudes in the

401
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Speaker 1: right wing media who try to make it in the

402
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Speaker 1: Hollywood and can't because they're mediocre. We need like a

403
00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:40,040
Speaker 1: fake Hollywood where we like, we give these guys fake

404
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Speaker 1: fans and let them pretend like they've got a TV.

405
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Speaker 1: This is what we can use AI for, just generate

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Speaker 1: their shitty scripts.

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Speaker 2: Robert, this already exists. It's the Hallmark Channel. It's the

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Speaker 2: Hallmark Channel. Thank god.

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Speaker 1: We'd be in so much worse shape if it weren't

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Speaker 1: for the Hallmark Channel.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like Ben Shapiro could be cranking out or like

412
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Speaker 2: the Dannekers of today, big balls who works at Dose. Yeah, Yeah,

413
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:04,680
Speaker 2: to just be just be cranking out the world's worst

414
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Speaker 2: Christmas movies year round for a Hallmark.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we use AI to give a bunch of

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Speaker 1: fake fans so they feel like they're really making it.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean on a serious level, it is important,

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Speaker 1: you understand. People always a lot of people get this

419
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Speaker 1: wrong when they act like, oh, well, the Nazis were this.

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Speaker 1: They came out of the middle class, or they came

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Speaker 1: out of like the poor in the working class, these

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Speaker 1: people who had endured privation and that was you know,

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Speaker 1: there's there were these real legitimate you know fear and

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Speaker 1: anger of this this group of people who were really

425
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Speaker 1: suffering that fed into Nazism. Some of those guys existed

426
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Speaker 1: and part of this guy Hitler was that kind of guy.

427
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Speaker 1: Hitler really did suffer. He had a terrible early life, right.

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Speaker 2: He had a shitty fucking life. Dog shit, that's very

429
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Speaker 2: few Nazis, right. Unfortunately, that shitty life did not kill him. Yeah,

430
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Speaker 2: Hitler was that guy. But like his inner circle, his

431
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Speaker 2: the people at surroundam absolutely. Word, there's like, now, a

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Speaker 2: lot of these guys were young, like you said, and

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00:20:57,800 --> 00:20:59,240
Speaker 2: a lot of them were mid.

434
00:20:59,119 --> 00:21:02,600
Speaker 1: Fucking Gary was like famous and kind of well off, right,

435
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:04,399
Speaker 1: Like a lot of guys were like that.

436
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:09,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of these dudes are doctors, yes, doctors, lawyers,

437
00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:14,439
Speaker 2: you know, PhDs, Yeah, fucking engineers, lawyers. He's surrounded himself

438
00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:15,479
Speaker 2: by Germany's elite.

439
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:19,399
Speaker 1: Eichmann comes from oil and gas, like his dad was

440
00:21:19,480 --> 00:21:20,680
Speaker 1: comfortable from oil and.

441
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:21,560
Speaker 2: Gas money, right.

442
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:25,639
Speaker 1: Daniker comes from like a comfortable, middle class business owning background.

443
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:25,960
Speaker 2: Right.

444
00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:27,919
Speaker 1: These are not guys who are poor, but they are

445
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 1: guys who are not doing as well as they think

446
00:21:29,520 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 1: they ought to be doing. And they blame that on

447
00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:34,720
Speaker 1: whoever's convenient, which turns out to be the Jews and

448
00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:37,160
Speaker 1: the communists, right, So that's Danni.

449
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:39,240
Speaker 2: They would own a like they would own like a

450
00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:43,800
Speaker 2: Mitchibhi dealership today, right right, not a great MITSUBC dealership,

451
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:44,200
Speaker 2: but like.

452
00:21:44,840 --> 00:21:48,760
Speaker 1: An education dealership, but not a great great right, Like.

453
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:51,240
Speaker 2: They don't own a Ford. They don't own like a

454
00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:54,639
Speaker 2: Chevy dealership. They're like, we have to look family, we

455
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:57,640
Speaker 2: have to settle for selling. I don't know, evil lancers

456
00:21:57,760 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 2: or fucking whatever.

457
00:21:58,840 --> 00:22:02,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're spokesman is like a fucking amateur baseball star.

458
00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:09,040
Speaker 1: Like it's just not that good. So speaking of amateur baseball,

459
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:13,440
Speaker 1: don't watch amateur baseball listen to the rest of this podcast.

460
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:16,720
Speaker 3: Or watch amateur baseball while listening to this podcast.

461
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:20,399
Speaker 2: No, absolutely don't do that. You'll turn into a fascist.

462
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:22,879
Speaker 2: Now these ads from Mitchubishi.

463
00:22:31,119 --> 00:22:34,920
Speaker 1: We're back. So Theodore Danaker comes up kind of mitted everything.

464
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 1: When he's a young adult, he starts working as a

465
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:40,280
Speaker 1: textile dealer, and like Eikman, he goes to a trade

466
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: school because his grades aren't good enough for him to

467
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:44,959
Speaker 1: do anything else, and he feels pulled to far right

468
00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:48,480
Speaker 1: politics from a young age, like Eikman for a similar motivation.

469
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:51,400
Speaker 1: The Nazi Party offers him a chance to remake himself

470
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,640
Speaker 1: in a new regime that he wouldn't have been able

471
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:56,600
Speaker 1: to earn a place of similar kind of importance in

472
00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 1: the wat Weimar Republic. In nineteen thirty two, he joins

473
00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:02,960
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party at age nineteen. At age twenty one,

474
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,800
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, Daniker joins the SS, initially serving

475
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:10,400
Speaker 1: in the VT or the SS dispositional Corps. These were

476
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 1: essentially political soldiers at the direct command of Adolf Hitler,

477
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: except in times of war, in which case they'd be

478
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,719
Speaker 1: integrated into the army. This is the unit that eventually

479
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,479
Speaker 1: becomes the waffen SS. Right, it isn't that yet, but

480
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 1: he's in the proto WAFFENSS. That's Daniker. Like Eichman, Daniker's

481
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: first real job for the regime is helping to guard

482
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:34,240
Speaker 1: an early concentration camp. In his case, it's Columbia House

483
00:23:34,359 --> 00:23:38,080
Speaker 1: in Berlin. Now, this was the only official SS camp

484
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:39,919
Speaker 1: in Berlin, and it was built out of an empty

485
00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:44,000
Speaker 1: prison in nineteen thirty three, and like most wild concentration camps,

486
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: which is kind of what the first camps are called,

487
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 1: where They're like, we've got this empty government building or

488
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: school or whatever. We'll just throw some political prisoners in there.

489
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:52,040
Speaker 1: We'll torture them.

490
00:23:52,119 --> 00:23:55,399
Speaker 2: Right. Columbia House is noteworthy for being where lawyer Hans

491
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:56,640
Speaker 2: Litten dies. Right.

492
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:58,640
Speaker 1: We've talked about him in the past. He's the guy

493
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:02,240
Speaker 1: who puts Hitler on trial. So it's that kind of place,

494
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:04,760
Speaker 1: and it is. Columbia House has been described by one

495
00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: historian and camp survivor as an agony house and the

496
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:12,480
Speaker 1: side of quote perhaps the ghastliest atrocities imaginable. It acted

497
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: as an SS testing ground for promising young officers. As

498
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:19,040
Speaker 1: historian Reinhard Burbeck noted, quote, this was not just a

499
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: place where people were terrorized and tortured, but a school

500
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: of torture. The people who had been commanders after Columbia

501
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 1: later turned to commanders of other concentration camps at Bukenwald,

502
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,480
Speaker 1: at Saxonhausen, at Majdenek, and Auschwitz. So once you had

503
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: gone through concentration camp Columbia, apparently this was the perverse

504
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 1: career step in order to stay in the SS and

505
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 1: become a commander elsewhere.

506
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 2: Right, oh god, it was a concentration camp trade school yes,

507
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 2: And this is also important.

508
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: We talk about how this is like less on the

509
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,439
Speaker 1: intentionalist side of things, right, and more on the other

510
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 1: side of things, where you're like, well, they started building

511
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: this system where you would train people up in how

512
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:57,439
Speaker 1: a concentration camp is to work. And once you've committed

513
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: the kind of crimes you're committing at Columbia House, you

514
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: don't go back. You only do worse and worse stuff,

515
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 1: and you don't always have to be ordered to do

516
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: that worse stuff.

517
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:05,200
Speaker 2: Right.

518
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: You are, naturally, when you get put in charge somewhere,

519
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 1: going to be even more extreme than you were at

520
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 1: Columbia House, because that's just how this kind of thing works, right.

521
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 2: Your humanity is sanded away. Even if even if the

522
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,919
Speaker 2: people who started off as like, you know, prison guards

523
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:21,919
Speaker 2: say what you will about them and their ethics and morality,

524
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 2: by the time they leave this place they're just dead

525
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:26,360
Speaker 2: eyed psychos.

526
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: There's nothing left of humanity in them. Right, And that's

527
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 1: important too. No one necessarily orders that I want you

528
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 1: to do twenty percent worse than Columbia House. You just

529
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 1: are that person by this point, right, And so that

530
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: happens naturally.

531
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 2: Nobody's tracking fingernail metrics.

532
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,480
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, it's like how many fingernails did you

533
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:44,359
Speaker 1: pull out this week?

534
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 2: Right?

535
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: You don't have to do that anymore. So eventually Daniker

536
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,280
Speaker 1: gets transferred over to the SS Security Office or the

537
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 1: SD where Eikman works, and he winds up working under

538
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 1: Eichman at the Department of Jewish Affairs in nineteen thirty seven.

539
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,120
Speaker 1: That same year, he writes the report urging the complete

540
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: removal of Jews from political life and the Reich in

541
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:06,120
Speaker 1: order to bring Germany's Jewish question closer to its final solution.

542
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: In this paper, he attacks the Gestapo for being too

543
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 1: mild in their application of force and insufficiently committed to

544
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:16,160
Speaker 1: anti Semitism. So like, he's this guy where he's like, wow,

545
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 1: the Gestapo really soft on the Jews. Got we gotta,

546
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: we gotta get these people under control.

547
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 2: You know, I'm really sick of our local Gestapo being

548
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 2: so soft and gunnly, the woke Gestapo. These de I

549
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 2: policies have ruined the Gestapo.

550
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:33,919
Speaker 1: He is that guy, though, right, And that's you know,

551
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: that's why he's the kind of guy who becomes Aikman's

552
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: you know, second effectively fuck. In nineteen thirty eight, after

553
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:42,880
Speaker 1: the anschlus Daniker goes with Iikman to Vienna to help

554
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: expel thousands of Jews from their homes and confiscate their

555
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: possessions for the state, and he brings this new expertise

556
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: with him to Poland. He goes to Paris in nineteen

557
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:54,199
Speaker 1: forty after the German victory and he helps oversee the

558
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:57,360
Speaker 1: French police in their roundup of the Jewish population of Paris.

559
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:00,199
Speaker 1: Now it's not widely known or discussed that some of

560
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 1: the most important early perpetrators of the Holocaust were local police.

561
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 2: All over Europe. And these are not German police. These

562
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 2: are by and large these.

563
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: Are French police, right, some of whom had been part

564
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 1: of French far right parties right.

565
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:16,960
Speaker 2: And Dutch police. Don't forget my local.

566
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: Police police, right, But they're local cops, and most of

567
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: them hadn't been super involved in the far right, you know.

568
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: They were cops before anything else. And like basically one

569
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: hundred percent of cops and basically every society, their identity

570
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 1: as police matters more to them than the morality of

571
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: whatever actions they are asked to take. Right, So you

572
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: can find arguments that French police helped to shield and

573
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,880
Speaker 1: this is true. There are individual French police who helped

574
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: to shield and hide hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. Right,

575
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: there are individual French cops who act heroically to protect

576
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 1: people targeted by the SS. But modern historiography has made

577
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: it very clear, and I would say unarguable that as

578
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: an institution, French law enforcement was overwhelmingly a willing tool

579
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: of the Nazi genocide in late Yeah. Yeah, there's just

580
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: no real argument against that. In late twenty eighteen, historian

581
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,440
Speaker 1: Laurent Joli published The State against the Jews, which compiled

582
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: previously unknown documents about French police and government collaboration and

583
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: the rounding up of tens of thousands of Jews. Per

584
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:20,199
Speaker 1: an article in France twenty four quote, Jolie told AFP

585
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: that Paris police had one of the most sophisticated systems

586
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,199
Speaker 1: in the world to classify foreigners. Some one hundred and

587
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand Jews were recorded in a role based

588
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 1: on the census the Nazis demanded in nineteen forty one,

589
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: which Jolie has said curiously remained unknown until my research

590
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: because it got buried, right, of course it did. In

591
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 1: VC France, the authorities were so eager to curry favor

592
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 1: with their new Nazi masters that they began rounding up

593
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: and handing over Jews without being asked. Per Joli, the

594
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: Germans were not asking for the Jews who lived in

595
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: the VC controlled part of France to be handed to them.

596
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: V she was always trying to demonstrate this goodwill towards

597
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 1: the Germans. In other words, the French police in VC

598
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:00,440
Speaker 1: France create a problem for the Nazis because they're handing

599
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: over more Jews than the Nazis can process. And they're like, guys, Jesus, like,

600
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: we're the Nazis, but.

601
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 2: Come on call me out here. I mean, that reminds

602
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 2: me of early on in the Holocaust, when the Gestapo

603
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 2: will put out effectively it was like a hotline to

604
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 2: regular Germans to rat out people who were hiding Jews

605
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,880
Speaker 2: or people they thought were Jews. And so many people

606
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 2: were ratting out their neighbors that the Gestapo had to

607
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 2: kindly ask them to fucking stop because they couldn't handle

608
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 2: it all. God.

609
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 1: And now, thankfully there's no SS analog in the US

610
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: today that would put out a request for regular Americans

611
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: to report their neighbors, you know, sequestering undocumented foreigners. Right, yeah, weird,

612
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: how that's always what it is, right, weird, how that's

613
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: what it is in Paris.

614
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 2: You know, Remember, folks, Tiranny doesn't work without the assistance

615
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: of your friendly neighbors.

616
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, the cops and local government officials and yeah,

617
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: there's the guy who lives next to you. Dan Aker's

618
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 1: job in Paris was to push French authorities to arrest

619
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: and deport ever greater numbers of Jews, both foreign reds

620
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: us whod fled other areas the Nazis had advanced on

621
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:06,160
Speaker 1: or native French people. Some were told that these deportees

622
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: would be taken to a new Jewish state being established

623
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: by the Nazis, essentially a variation of the Reservation Plan,

624
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: although this was known to be false by with half

625
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: a brain. There had been ample reporting before the German

626
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: invasion about the early stages of the kz Or concentration

627
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: camp system. The first major arrest and deportation of French

628
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: Jews in World War II was the Green Ticket roundup.

629
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: Eikman and Daneker both helped to organize this scheme, by

630
00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: which almost seven thousand foreign born Jews living in France

631
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: were sent a summons by mail ordering them to visit

632
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 1: a local immigration office for review of their visas. Anyone

633
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: who showed up, as around thirty seven hundred men did,

634
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: was arrested and deported immediately. Now, again, you'd never see

635
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: anything like this whereby people who are attempting to maintain

636
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: their legal status even though they their foreign born people

637
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 1: who have immigrated would be asked to show up at

638
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: the immigration office and then arrested as soon as they

639
00:30:56,760 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: show up trying to comply with the law. That would

640
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: never happen here, right, you.

641
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 2: Know, thankfully not. I can't think of any anything that's

642
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 2: happening totally differently or before.

643
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be like, really really wrong of me

644
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: to just suggest that the Department of Homeland Security is

645
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: the American SS based on something like this, because they've

646
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: never done anything like this, right, you know, ICE hasn't, right.

647
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, And ICE is certainly not the Gestapo. They would

648
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: do things that are Gestapo. S. No, they're not the

649
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 2: Department of Jewish Affairs, right, There's.

650
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: Not no similarity between these organizations, right, right, exactly because

651
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 1: we haven't started death camps yet, just like the Nazis

652
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 1: had it in nineteen forty, right.

653
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 2: I feel like Robert, we can really trust a guy

654
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 2: who wears a mask and snatches people into an unmarked van.

655
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:41,760
Speaker 1: Yes, if I'm remembering properly from my Disney movies as

656
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: a kid, the child catcher is a good guy.

657
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:47,960
Speaker 2: Oh Man.

658
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: So despite this success and the success of Operation Green Ticket,

659
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 1: France lags behind the arbitrary deportation quota that Eikman's office

660
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: had set for them. It was Daniker's office to motivate

661
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: French authorities. Eichmann came to consider Daniker almost as his

662
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 1: right arm, someone he could drop into a new territory

663
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: and trust to centralize the system by which Jews were

664
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 1: rounded up and deported and leave it in such a

665
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: way that whoever followed would be able to continue operating

666
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: the system with these because it runs on its own right.

667
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: That's a huge part of it. You leave as little

668
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,479
Speaker 1: up to chance as possible, You leave as little up

669
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: to the mercy of individual members of the government as possible,

670
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:24,440
Speaker 1: all of whom are soft to some groups of people

671
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: you want to get rid of. That's why you build

672
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: a system that has no softness left inside it. Right

673
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: that right up for the National World War Two Museum

674
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 1: notes Danniker was a completely modern form of perpetrator, really

675
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: unknown before the twentieth century. The deportation specialist.

676
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, he's Tom Holman.

677
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: He's Tom Holman. Right, this is how modern genocide is done.

678
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: The primary perpetrators are not the guys who just shoot

679
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, right, they're the deportation specialists. That's

680
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: who does a modern genocide. Is a deportation specialist.

681
00:32:56,240 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 2: Right. Not to keep linking these two things together, but

682
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 2: when like, one of the things that sticks out to

683
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 2: me is in the book Ordinary Men, Yeah, one of

684
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 2: the things that sticks out is the gerbid Reserve police

685
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 2: officers were just normal guys who took this job because

686
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 2: they they wanted a pension and benefits. And then again,

687
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 2: they were voluntarily doing this that they were told multiple

688
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 2: times they could back out whenever they wanted, but they're

689
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 2: there pulling the trigger. Yeah, And then you got this

690
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: fucking guy.

691
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 1: And there's this this argument you get it around ordinary

692
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: men too, about like, well, it's wrong to look at

693
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: these as like the banality of evil, because these guys

694
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: weren't banal. The things they did weren't banal, the kinds

695
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: of crimes they committed, No But that's that's the point,

696
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 1: is that that kind of hideous, mask off nightmare evil

697
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: is lurking behind your neighbor's eyes. If he gets the opportunity,

698
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,719
Speaker 1: if it'll benefit him enough, right, if it'll get him

699
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 1: that Mitsubishi dealership. You never know, quite just like you

700
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: never know which what motherfucking guy who like seems kind

701
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: of lame and boring right now could be a hero

702
00:33:57,520 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: when actually called upon to shelter people from RZI. I'm

703
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 1: thinking about that judge husband and wife cop couple in

704
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: New Mexico who were like destroying evidence to protect these

705
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,399
Speaker 1: undocumented friends of theirs who are now being tried. Where

706
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 1: it's like you would never guess that these people would

707
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: have been a heroes in a time like this, but

708
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 1: goddamn it, you can't look at them anyway else. Right,

709
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: And in the same manner, some guy who would you

710
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:19,879
Speaker 1: would never guess is anything but the dude who lives

711
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: next to you could become an absolute monster if he

712
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,959
Speaker 1: was given the opportunity, if it would advance him personally enough.

713
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:28,439
Speaker 1: And you don't know until the chips are down, who's

714
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: going to be what? Right, There's hints sometimes, but you

715
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 1: can't know perfectly cool stuff.

716
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 2: Just to be safe, I say, if you've ever seen

717
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,800
Speaker 2: them shooting a video in the cab of their pickup

718
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,959
Speaker 2: truck at that upward angle, probably on the bad side

719
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 2: of things, Yeah, you just stay the funk away from there, right.

720
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 2: Man Danaker would have loved filming himself drunk in his

721
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:55,720
Speaker 2: car ranting about movies. God, they would love that so much. Yeah, yelly,

722
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 2: like my wife left me.

723
00:34:59,040 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 3: So.

724
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 1: Historian Robert Gerwath describes Daniker as one of the quote young, educated,

725
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: self confident, and ideologically committed men Heydrich actively courted for

726
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 1: the Jewish desk. These men would develop the actual methodology

727
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 1: by which Hitler's dream of a jew free Europe might

728
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: be made a reality. To continue with another quote from

729
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:18,439
Speaker 1: that article, Daniker utilized in an array of weapons, the pen,

730
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 1: the telephone, and the typewriter. Besides researching and working behind

731
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 1: a desk, Daniker negotiated, cajoled and berated officials, coordinated with

732
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:28,919
Speaker 1: the Reich Transportation Ministry to secure rolling stock, and worked

733
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,399
Speaker 1: at the SSSD, Gestapo and German armed forces to ensure

734
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 1: the efficient and orderly removal of massive numbers of Jewish men, women,

735
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,320
Speaker 1: and children in the spring of nineteen forty two, Daniker

736
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 1: visited the camp at Auschwitz Berkanau. This was the same

737
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:44,919
Speaker 1: month that it transferred from being primarily a labor camp

738
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: to being a straight up death camp, and Daniker is

739
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: one of the very first people to see Auschwitz in

740
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: full operation. He reports back to his boss about it

741
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 1: and he immediately sets to work feeding a group of

742
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 1: eleven hundred French Jews into the factory of death. This

743
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: annihilation acts as a proof of concept. Right, this is

744
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 1: the desth star test firing of Auschwitz, right where you're like, yep, okay,

745
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: we can, we can get rid of people at the

746
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: speed we need to. Here, Daniker reports back to Iikman

747
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: about how Auschwitz is working, and Iikman could not have

748
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: been happier. So he and Daniker spend several weeks planning

749
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: a more ambitious operation to wipe out a substantial chunk

750
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: of the French Jewish population. They call this Operation spring Wind.

751
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: It had been initially scheduled for July fourteenth, but that

752
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: was the Steel Day, and the French collaborators insisted it

753
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: would be bad form to commit genocide on a holiday,

754
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 1: So the operation is ultimately executed by friend right, we'll

755
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: do this, but not on but still day. Right, we

756
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: can't do a holocaust on b Steel Day.

757
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 2: That's like the most fucking French way of like, no,

758
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 2: you don't understand.

759
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: We have the steel work, everyone's got the day off work. Look,

760
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:50,839
Speaker 1: we'll do a holocaust, but not on our day off.

761
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 2: Right. If you if you make all the cops go

762
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 2: in and do the genocide on the holiday, they're gonna

763
00:36:55,640 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 2: riot and they're gonna rights. It's something that happens here.

764
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 2: They can't do this.

765
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 1: So the operation is ultimately executed by French police in

766
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,719
Speaker 1: July sixteenth and seventeenth. They break into houses and they

767
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,720
Speaker 1: rip whole families out of their beds, arresting thirteen thousand

768
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: Parisian Jews for deportation. The police insisted in public facing

769
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: communications that these people were mostly quote foreign and stateless,

770
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: so they're verrely people. Course of course, of course, suck yeah.

771
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 1: Operation spring Wind was the brainchild of a French VCH

772
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:31,399
Speaker 1: collaborator named Luis d'arkier. He had fought in World War

773
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: One and become a radical far right activist in the thirties,

774
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,720
Speaker 1: actively participating in the nineteen thirty four far right riot

775
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: that was seen by some at the time as an

776
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: attempted coup deetas he had become a journalist largely to

777
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: write articles drumming up anti Semitic hate among his fellow Frenchmen.

778
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,320
Speaker 1: When the Nazis took over, they made him Commissar General

779
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 1: for Jewish Affairs, basically the vch counterpart to Eikman. D'arkier

780
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,879
Speaker 1: had suggested to denaturalize all Jews who'd acquired French citizenship

781
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty seven, and he also suggested the mass

782
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: arrest of stateless Jews, largely because it provided a legal

783
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 1: coding for the general expulsion of Jews. This worked. Danniker

784
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,920
Speaker 1: himself noted that once this shoddy justification was in place,

785
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,240
Speaker 1: the cops were happy to help the SS. The French police,

786
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: despite a few considerations of pure form, have only to

787
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:21,320
Speaker 1: carry out orders, right as long as it's like surprising, Yeah,

788
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: that's just how these guys work.

789
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,280
Speaker 2: That's how cops are, right, and that's how cops are

790
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 2: and France was wildly anti Semitic. Yeah, for people who

791
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:33,359
Speaker 2: don't know. One of my co hosts and producers on

792
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 2: my show did he speaks French and did research on

793
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 2: like French Officers magazines in the French military a little

794
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 2: bit after this time in Algeria. Yeah, and like half

795
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,919
Speaker 2: half of the titles are like Lee anti Semitism, Yeah,

796
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:52,399
Speaker 2: like shit like that, Like yeah, you know, oh, I'm

797
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,439
Speaker 2: just subscribed to Anti Semitism Weekly. Yeah.

798
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: But by the way, folks watched The Battle of Algiers.

799
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: Great movie. Yeah, that's all I'll say about it for now.

800
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:07,720
Speaker 1: So Daniker's role in France came to an end shortly

801
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: after Operation spring Wind, which is better known as the

802
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: veldiev roundup Right, his direct supervisor in the SD, a

803
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 1: guy named Helmut Knockin, caught Daniker abusing his authority, by

804
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: which I mean he was stealing shit from deported Jews

805
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: that the SS wanted to steal for Germany, right, and

806
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 1: so he was transferred back to Berlin. Right, Like, look,

807
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: but steal from them, Yeah, we're stealing from them. You're

808
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: stealing from us when you steal too much from them, right.

809
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 2: Come on, man, Jesus. Yeah.

810
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 1: Now, the system Daniker had built with Aikman's guidance continued

811
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 1: to operate for the remainder of v France's lifespan. Ultimately

812
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: some seventy seven thousand French Jews and Jews on French

813
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 1: soil were deported and murdered by the Nazis under the

814
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: direction of Aikman and Daniker and with the enthusiastic aid

815
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: of French collaborators in law enforcement and the VC government.

816
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 1: After the war, Charles de Gaulle and the French government

817
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: that replaced the VC regime refused to apologize for the

818
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:05,280
Speaker 1: role the police played in these genocidal crimes. Their argument,

819
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: all right, Their argument was that VCH France wasn't the

820
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 1: French Republic, and the re established republic shouldn't have to

821
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: apologize for the crimes of another government, right now.

822
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 2: Never mind, all those dudes kept their fucking job, right.

823
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 2: Isn't the case that these cops are still cops? A

824
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 2: lot of times? Yes? But why is that our responsibility? Right?

825
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 2: Slipping off the armband.

826
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 1: You can't blame law enforcement as a whole for the

827
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: fact that everyone in it did this, right, Oh, it's

828
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:33,840
Speaker 1: cool stuff.

829
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 2: So you do not understand, I was not throwing a

830
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 2: pizza of salute. I was just ashing my cigarettes very awkwardly.

831
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 2: Oh man.

832
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: It was not until nineteen ninety five that French President

833
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: Jacques Scharack finally admitted blame on behalf of French law

834
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: enforcement and the state.

835
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 2: Right, so you know, it's so bad that had to

836
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:57,240
Speaker 2: be Sharrock that did it, because he's like cartoonishly corrupt.

837
00:40:57,280 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 1: He's otherwise. Yeah, but he's like a jeez, this is wow,

838
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 1: we really fucked up here.

839
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 2: I will steal from everybody's pension and I will get

840
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 2: France locked soldly into the Afghan War, but I will

841
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 2: not cover for Nazi cops.

842
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 1: I'm not going to cover for the Nazi cops. I

843
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,240
Speaker 1: got too much other shit I gotta do after Paris.

844
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:18,319
Speaker 1: Daniker doesn't remain in Berlin long. He sent and he's

845
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: forgiven for his misdeeds.

846
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 2: He's sent to.

847
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 1: Bulgaria in nineteen forty three to arrange the deportation of

848
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: some eleven thousand and four Jews to farious death camps.

849
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: He follows the Eichman playbook in this interfacing with a

850
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 1: newly created Bulgarian Commissar for Jewish Affairs to arrange the deportations.

851
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: In just two months, all eleven thousand people had been

852
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,839
Speaker 1: shipped by train to Trablinka or Auschwitz, where nearly half

853
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: of them died. The dead included some two thousand children. Yeah,

854
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,799
Speaker 1: I mean these guys the level of mass murderer the

855
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: least of the ss men in Iikman's office commit is

856
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: pretty outrageous.

857
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine a more cursed title that

858
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 2: we've spoken other than a Bulgarian Jewish commissar.

859
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh boy, like, oh your war crimes did

860
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: war crimes?

861
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:06,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

862
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: This deportation met with little local resistance, as the Jews

863
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 1: marked for expulsion were mainly from Thrace and Macedonia and

864
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: thus not Bulgarian citizens. But Daniker's next move was to

865
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: evacuate nearly fifty thousand Bulgarian Jews from Sophia, the capital.

866
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 1: This was done and some forty eight thousand Jews were

867
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: stripped of their property and forced into a camp outside

868
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: the city. However, this sparked resistance because again, these aren't foreigners, right,

869
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: these are Bulgarian, you know. Jason Dossi writes, quote outrage

870
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: from Dimatarbashev, the deputy speaker of the parliament, clergy from

871
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 1: the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and representatives of communities where these

872
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:45,000
Speaker 1: Jews resided pushed King Boris the Third to intervene Bashev,

873
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:47,320
Speaker 1: who was forced to resign his position, still appealed to

874
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: the honor of Bulgaria, wanting that our nation's reputation would

875
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:53,320
Speaker 1: be stained forever and its moral and political standing forever

876
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 1: compromised if deportations ensued. Boris acquiesced and prevented the removal

877
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: of Bulgaria's Jewish populace. And we can see this as

878
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: both there's legitimate heroism here which saves a lot of lives, right, right,

879
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:10,160
Speaker 1: of course, but also any pride in this has to

880
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: be tempered by the fact that all these guys are

881
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: only moved to act against the Nazis because now citizens

882
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: were being deported, right, these Macedonian Jews and whatever, it's

883
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: if they get exterminated, no one's going to speak up, right,

884
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 1: But now you're going after Bulgarian Jews, and we've got

885
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 1: to say something, right.

886
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 2: Of course, they shouldn't even be here. They're like they

887
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 2: you know, they broke the law just crossing them.

888
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 1: I mean, Christ, you can't just break the law, right,

889
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 1: that's fucked up.

890
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,160
Speaker 2: Look, I wouldn't have voted for Hitler if he was

891
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:42,839
Speaker 2: gonna start going after the good ones, right right, right,

892
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 2: these are the good ones. You know. He was only

893
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 2: supposed to go after the criminals.

894
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: You know, and had the Nazi regime lasted, Iichman and

895
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: his colleagues would have taken another stab at this group

896
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: that King Boris helps to protect. As it was, things

897
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 1: were going pretty badly for the Nazis by the summer

898
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,799
Speaker 1: of forty three, and the work of extermination was taking

899
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: on an air of dire urgency. By this point, Danniker's

900
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: qualities had been recognized outside the SD and Eichman's protege

901
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: was sent by the Gestapo chief to Rome, which had

902
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: just been occupied by the Nazis after Mussolini's overthrow. Eichman

903
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: by this point was the most prestigious name in the

904
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:18,360
Speaker 1: genocide business. His obsessive need to stamp his name on

905
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:20,680
Speaker 1: every part of the Holocaust, even in actions at which

906
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,760
Speaker 1: he had little to know known involvement, insured him steady

907
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,279
Speaker 1: promotions and regular direct contact with Himmler. It also got

908
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: him the attention of the international press. He and his

909
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,359
Speaker 1: friend Calton Brunner would brag to each other about their

910
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: respective war criminal ranks during social events. Iichman later recalled, Yeah,

911
00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: that's how they frame it. They're like looking at for

912
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: impressed and be like, ah, man, I'm a higher ranking

913
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 1: war criminal than you now, Calton Brunner.

914
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 2: Ha ha, Right. You know what's impressive is that I don't

915
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 2: really think that there's like a lot of competition because

916
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:51,960
Speaker 2: nobody else wanted to put their fucking name on it.

917
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: Right, everyone else is too smart to like stamp their

918
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 1: fucking last, first and last name on this shit. Eichman

919
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: later recalled quote I found the war criminals in a

920
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: press review once. I was number nine, and I had

921
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 1: a bit of a laugh about it, all right, and

922
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: he will, he'll go back and forth between I was fourteen,

923
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: I was nine, I was number one, right, depending on

924
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: who he's talking to.

925
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 2: After that, Oh, bro, you were never number one. Called

926
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 2: down you were like, I'll give credit, you were easy

927
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:25,359
Speaker 2: top ten. But you know, whatever considered you number one,

928
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 2: I'll believe nine nine is credible. Right, Yeah, you're making

929
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 2: the playoffs. Good for you? Sure, Yeah, you're in the

930
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 2: war crime playoffs. Yeah, you and Calton Brunner.

931
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, as the war neared its end,

932
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 1: Adolf Eichmann was about to do something that would skyrocket

933
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,840
Speaker 1: him to the top of that list. In November of

934
00:45:43,920 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Germany had signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy

935
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: and Japan, officially creating the Axis Powers, and they considered

936
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: it a priority to sign on as many new allies

937
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:54,920
Speaker 1: as possible, given out things had gone the last time

938
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: Germany was isolated in an international war. Hungary's regent was

939
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 1: a guy named Admiral Niklos Horthy, and he was offered

940
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: the honor of becoming the fourth member of the club,

941
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: but German diplomat Joaquem von Ribbentrop tacitly threatened that Romania

942
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: might be allowed to join first if Hungary dithered. Ultimately,

943
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 1: Horthy signed up, and this would prove to be a

944
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 1: catastrophic mistake. Horthy, who had served the Old Empire in

945
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: World War One, had seen World War Two as a

946
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: chance to regain lost Hungarian territory and make his country

947
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: great again.

948
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 2: Right, we did some good last time, boys War one?

949
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: Was I mean, if it could have worked better if

950
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: we just did a couple of things different, right?

951
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 2: I love that the Nazis are so fucking stupid, righty, Like, Look,

952
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 2: it didn't work out for us last night, but what

953
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 2: if we allied with brought what I've got the band

954
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: back together? Yeah? Oh, man.

955
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: God, you know now as you think about it, Italy

956
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 1: really is the Pete Best of World War One, right.

957
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 2: Or reverse Pete Best. I guess I don't know the

958
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:58,240
Speaker 2: Patrick Stump of World War one.

959
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:03,879
Speaker 1: Hungarian troops. This seemed to work at first right. World

960
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:05,880
Speaker 1: War two initially is go is kind of working like

961
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: Orthy at hope. Hungarian troops get to invade the Balkans

962
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 1: alongside the Wehrmacht, and by the spring of nineteen forty one,

963
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:13,680
Speaker 1: Hungary was nearly tripled the size of where it had

964
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: stood in nineteen thirty eight. Then came Operation Barbarossa and

965
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: the invasion of the USSR. Hungry again sins troops, but

966
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 1: this time there's no swift victory. Within months, thirty percent

967
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,720
Speaker 1: of the Hungarian army is killed or wounded too badly

968
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: to fight.

969
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 2: As tradition demands when Hungry goes to war.

970
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:33,520
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're looking, if you're thinking

971
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: from like a military planning standpoint, if you have lost

972
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: thirty percent of your forces killed or injured, you no

973
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 1: longer have an effective army. It sounds like seventy percent

974
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: is a lot. It's not enough. You've lost too much

975
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: of your command and control too much. You have to

976
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: reorganize at that point before you can continue fighting effectively.

977
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:53,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. From a military historian's perspective, I must say it

978
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 2: is not good if you're planning a war at home today.

979
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,560
Speaker 2: Don't lose thirty percent of your forces at a year

980
00:47:58,560 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 2: and a half.

981
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:03,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a catastrophe. In early nineteen forty three, the

982
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:06,680
Speaker 1: entire Hungarian second Army was smashed trying to anchor the

983
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: German northern flank during the Battle of Stalingrad. Only twenty

984
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:12,760
Speaker 1: percent of the army survives the retreat home intact.

985
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 2: Hey, at least there's something in common with Romanians now, right, right, right?

986
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, from Hungary in Romania wiping out eighty percent of

987
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:20,720
Speaker 1: their army.

988
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:23,839
Speaker 2: Hey, fellas, you want to meet up inside of Stalogrid

989
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 2: and die Stalograd. That's a nice name. I think things

990
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 2: are gonna go well for us there. Yeah.

991
00:48:29,040 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: So Horthy at this point, showing that he's smarter than Hitler,

992
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: complains the war is lost right after Stalingrad. Horthy's like, well, fuck,

993
00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: there's literally no way we can pull a victory out

994
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 1: of this one. And Hitler, for his part, complains that

995
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 1: Hungarian soldiers had doomed the Wehrmacht, which is not really correct, you.

996
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 2: Know, not true. Yeah, that is that is not true.

997
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 2: Over on my show Lines of by Donkeys, we talked

998
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:56,239
Speaker 2: about Stalingrad for about six hours. Yeah. Look, I'm not

999
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 2: saying Hungary would have won the battle, but they certainly

1000
00:48:58,400 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 2: didn't lose them the battle.

1001
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:02,920
Speaker 1: Things were fucked by the point at which you know

1002
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 1: they can get into action in this way. Right, if you're,

1003
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: for one thing, if your entire battle plan comes down

1004
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 1: to the Hungarian army holding in the field, you have

1005
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 1: fucked up.

1006
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 2: Right, mind feure the army has been churned to Gulash.

1007
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:24,319
Speaker 1: So Horthy had never been a good guy. I think

1008
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,719
Speaker 1: we've made that clear. But he's not personally genocidal towards

1009
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:29,280
Speaker 1: the Jews of his nation, right.

1010
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 2: He doesn't.

1011
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,359
Speaker 1: Left to his own devices, he had no desire to

1012
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,279
Speaker 1: wipe out the whole Jewish population of Hungary, and so

1013
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:39,560
Speaker 1: for most of World War two, Hungarian Jews were fairly safe. Right,

1014
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: for most of the war, this is the best place

1015
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: and kind of broader, the kind of broader Nazi and

1016
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: that's the Allied territory, one of the better places to be.

1017
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:50,319
Speaker 1: But Hitler now demanded that Horthy kill or put his

1018
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 1: Jews into camps. Horthy refused. He has no issue. Like

1019
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:56,680
Speaker 1: they seize Jewish property to fund the war effort. He's

1020
00:49:56,680 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: fine with that, but he doesn't want because he sees

1021
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall. I don't want to be

1022
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: involved in a war crime of this scale right now,

1023
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: because we're not gonna win. There's going to be a

1024
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: butcher's bill to pay. As the Russians advanced, he and

1025
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: other Hungarian leaders tried to make a separate peace with

1026
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: the Allies. Hitler finds out, and he orders German troops

1027
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: to conquer the country in March of nineteen forty four,

1028
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: which they do easily because the Hungarians are very bad

1029
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: at having an army, right, even Thermacht can take them.

1030
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 2: Hungarian's military tradition. All right, they will lose every war

1031
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 2: they go in, but they'll be goddamn just thinking of it.

1032
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 2: A genocide. Be on the side of jenociders, yes, sure, sure,

1033
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 2: but we're not that active at it. We have our

1034
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 2: standards here in Hungary, yeah.

1035
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: Which is, will sit by and let it happen, right,

1036
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: that's right now. Orthy is kept on as a puppet

1037
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: leader for a time and as soon as Hungary was

1038
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:55,439
Speaker 1: under the German occupation Hitler orders, the Jewish population wiped out.

1039
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: This is no mean task. There were somewhere between seven

1040
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 1: hundred thousand and over eight eight hundred thousand Jews in

1041
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,719
Speaker 1: Hungarian territory. Sometimes you'll hear around a million. Eikman is

1042
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: sent over to supervise the work of an Einst's commando

1043
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: especially assembled for the task. Daniker and other colleagues in

1044
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: the SD or there as well, and they handle a

1045
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:17,320
Speaker 1: lot of the ground actions while Eichman coordinates this massive effort.

1046
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 1: What followed was one of the swiftest and bloodiest mass

1047
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 1: killings in human history. Per doctor Darsy's article, what happened

1048
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 1: in Hungary in the late spring and early summer of

1049
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four overwhelms our fragile capacities to imagine. It

1050
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 1: was simply a frenzy of killing. In May and June

1051
00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:35,760
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty four, four hundred and thirty seven thousand

1052
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:39,240
Speaker 1: Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz Berkanal, and three hundred

1053
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 1: and ninety seven thousand were plunged into Berkeenhow's gas chambers.

1054
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: Their fate exhibited just how desperate, the Nazi regime was

1055
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 1: to finish the annihilation of European Jews, even as its

1056
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:52,280
Speaker 1: hopes of winning the war disintegrated. Under increasing pressure, Horthy

1057
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 1: finally halted the deportations in July, temporarily sparing most of

1058
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:00,120
Speaker 1: Budapest's Jewish populace. Eikman and Daniker bided their time. The

1059
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 1: removal of Fourthy three months later opened up new possibilities.

1060
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:06,919
Speaker 1: When Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg openly offered sanctuary to Jeose

1061
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 1: in Budapest as Soviet troops near the capital city, the

1062
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: enraged Aikman turned to Daniker to raid the safe houses

1063
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: established by Wallenberg. Now, first off, that term frenzy of

1064
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 1: killing is the thing to remember when you're thinking about

1065
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: what did Iikman do? What the Daniker do? They Aikman

1066
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: is the man who masterminds this. This is on him

1067
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 1: more than any other single person, right.

1068
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:31,280
Speaker 2: And it's telling how important he is in the hierarchy

1069
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:34,399
Speaker 2: in general and how much everybody relies on them when

1070
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 2: they're like, we have this insurmountable killing goal in mind,

1071
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 2: we have to bring in our experts. Yeah, and it's

1072
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 2: him and his boy Yeah, and it's Aikman arrayed against

1073
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:49,400
Speaker 2: Wallenberg right in trying to Wallenberg is trying to save

1074
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 2: this Jewish population and Eikmen is trying to annihilate it.

1075
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 2: And we've done a reverse bash. It's a Christmas episode

1076
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:55,640
Speaker 2: on Wallenberg. He's one of the.

1077
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:59,400
Speaker 1: Great heroes our species ever produced. In the war's waning days,

1078
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:02,439
Speaker 1: he was Aikman nemesis, granting fake Swedish documents to every

1079
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 1: Jew he could find. You're a Swedish citizen, you're a

1080
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:07,040
Speaker 1: Swedish resident, you got a green card.

1081
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:10,359
Speaker 2: They can't kill you. You're a Swede. Right the hand

1082
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 2: reaches out your hand for the paperwork and just smashing

1083
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:20,760
Speaker 2: meatballs in every single fucking one nor they can't support

1084
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 2: you with a meatball in your hand. Oh my god,

1085
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 2: sure official Swedish paperwork.

1086
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: These are not. There's nothing legal in legitimate. Only Wallenberg's

1087
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: charisma is backing these documents up. But he is so

1088
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: good at what he's doing that a lot of ss

1089
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: men back off because he's like, look, if you're seen

1090
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,719
Speaker 1: violating the law here all make sure you get your

1091
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: due when the war is over, right, And they're so

1092
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 1: fucking scared of him that he saves by some accounts

1093
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people. There's a lot of debate about

1094
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 1: these numbers, but it's in the tens of thousands at

1095
00:53:49,400 --> 00:53:50,759
Speaker 1: the very least personally.

1096
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 2: And these men know the war is fucked at this point.

1097
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:56,919
Speaker 2: No one, no one has illusions at this point, right,

1098
00:53:57,200 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 2: everybody's fully an eye have Like, look, the guy at

1099
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 2: the meat balls is telling me he's good, He's fucking good.

1100
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: Fucking yeah, fuck it. I don't want anymore of his

1101
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 1: guy with the meat ball. So Eikman calls Raoul the

1102
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: jew Dog Wallenberg and threatens to have Raoul and all

1103
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:19,000
Speaker 1: other friends of Jews assassinated. Someone subsequently blows up Wallenberg's

1104
00:54:19,000 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: car and he only narrowly escapes. In her book Iikman

1105
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: Before Jerusalem, but Tina Stangneth describes Adolf Eikman in this

1106
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 1: period as almost mad, with a mix of desperation and megalomania.

1107
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: He could feel the walls closing in, but just as

1108
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,880
Speaker 1: crucially as he feels the window closing, he feels that

1109
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:37,040
Speaker 1: he might be losing out on his chance to achieve

1110
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: the only goal that matters to him at this stage,

1111
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: winning the war against European Jewry. And this is important

1112
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 1: you understand, the Nazis don't see this all as one war,

1113
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:48,160
Speaker 1: the war against the Jews. Even though the war against

1114
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe may be unwinnable, now the war

1115
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:53,400
Speaker 1: against the Jews of Europe is still winnable. Right, we

1116
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:54,799
Speaker 1: have to pull something.

1117
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 2: Out of this.

1118
00:54:57,280 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: Speaking of have we done our second advert?

1119
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 2: Soovie, no, here it is. We're back boy.

1120
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: Our sponsors really love being thrown to ads right after

1121
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 1: we talk about Aikman.

1122
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:18,560
Speaker 2: Wanting to win the war against European Jewry. Well, hopefully

1123
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 2: the ad wasn't for like IBM or something.

1124
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, Critical Partners and the Nazi war against European Jews.

1125
00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:28,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, this ad brought to you by Hugo boss.

1126
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:35,360
Speaker 1: Ah Man be a boss like Aikman. Yeah, so the

1127
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 1: Nazi state was in chaos at this point. Eikman doesn't

1128
00:55:38,719 --> 00:55:41,759
Speaker 1: report kind of he's not technically on like an ORG chart.

1129
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: He's not directly reporting to Himler, but he basically is

1130
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:46,879
Speaker 1: reporting to Himler. He's got regular meetings with the man,

1131
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: and so even though there's guys between him and Himmler

1132
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 1: on the ORG chart, Iikman outranks everyone above him except

1133
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 1: for Himmler because he's regularly talking to Himmler, and so

1134
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: whenever there's a disagreement, he can bring Himler in, right,

1135
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:02,839
Speaker 1: And that's kind of how the Nazi state works more

1136
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 1: than like officially, here's who's reporting to who. It's like, well,

1137
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 1: but this guy can bring in Himmler, or this guy

1138
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:09,560
Speaker 1: can bring in Gerring. Right, this guy could bring in

1139
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:12,760
Speaker 1: Hitler directly, so he's effectively in charge.

1140
00:56:13,239 --> 00:56:16,280
Speaker 2: It's a whole power structure of his constant name dropping.

1141
00:56:16,480 --> 00:56:20,760
Speaker 1: Yes, fuck horrible, absolutely, that's how it works now. Iikman,

1142
00:56:21,200 --> 00:56:23,799
Speaker 1: as a show of how fucking important he is, he

1143
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: has access, in this late stage of the war to

1144
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:28,800
Speaker 1: a private aircraft that he can travel around what remains

1145
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:31,719
Speaker 1: of the crumbling Reich end That means he's a big man.

1146
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:34,920
Speaker 1: And when he really wanted to impress another Nazi, Eikman

1147
00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:37,480
Speaker 1: would claim to have personal control over the gas chambers

1148
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: at Auschwitz. Right, I'm the guy running the gas chambers.

1149
00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:44,240
Speaker 1: That's his brag. Iikman's colleagues later recalled some of Iikman's

1150
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 1: most outrageous boasts, and these are all direct quotes from Iikman.

1151
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 1: I am a bloodhound. I'll set the mills of Auschwitz

1152
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:53,880
Speaker 1: grinding and blood for goods. This was This is a

1153
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: reference to a promise that Iikman made. This in Hungary,

1154
00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: aid in exchange for Jews. Right, that's the blood for

1155
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,719
Speaker 1: goods program. You give us, Jews will give you the

1156
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: aid that you need to continue holding on.

1157
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 2: H Oh, God, that's like the most evil FOREI and

1158
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 2: aid package you've ever heard.

1159
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 1: Huff yeah, blood for Jews. His favorite line was simply,

1160
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 1: I'll inform Himmler, and his darkest boast was I'll do

1161
00:57:17,200 --> 00:57:20,520
Speaker 1: away with all the Jewish filth of Budapest. In the

1162
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 1: last months of nineteen forty four, Ikman makes constant trips

1163
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:26,560
Speaker 1: back and forth from Budapest to Auschwitz, dealing with Commandant

1164
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: Hess personally to ensure the smooth operation of the chief

1165
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:33,400
Speaker 1: genocide machine. In the Nazi Toolkit, Stangneth writes, he seemed

1166
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:36,080
Speaker 1: to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Iikman talked so

1167
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 1: much and for so long that the people around him,

1168
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:40,680
Speaker 1: ignorant of what was really going on, believed he might

1169
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 1: actually have been involved in the overthrow of Hungarian Reich

1170
00:57:43,360 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 1: administrator Miklos Horthy. Weslinsky claimed that in Hungary, Iikman boasted

1171
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 1: that he and Otto Globoschnik were behind the whole idea

1172
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: of exterminating the Jews. Eichman inflated his murderous lifetime achievement

1173
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 1: to crazy proportions and believe there was certain to be

1174
00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:59,480
Speaker 1: a monument erected to me in Budapest. He threatened his

1175
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: victims the prospect that after final victory, Hitler would make

1176
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: him world Commissar of the Jews. These are the things

1177
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:09,520
Speaker 1: that Eichman is bragging about. And you can see this

1178
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: as maybe he's lost his mind a little bit at

1179
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: the end of the Reich, or you can see this

1180
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: as he knows where things are going, but he knows

1181
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: that these are the boasts that will give him just

1182
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:23,280
Speaker 1: enough flex to accomplish his mission. Right, That's what matters

1183
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:24,200
Speaker 1: to him at this stage.

1184
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 2: And I am curious, Like, he's not a dumb person,

1185
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,640
Speaker 2: so he probably has to know that the war is lost.

1186
00:58:31,760 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 2: He sure does, But I am curious if he thought

1187
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:39,680
Speaker 2: a lost war in their mind also include a complete

1188
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:42,120
Speaker 2: loss of Nazi Germany itself, or if this is going

1189
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:44,080
Speaker 2: to be more like a World War One situation where

1190
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 2: Germany just continues to exist. You know.

1191
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's debatable at the point of which he knows

1192
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: even keeping that is not on the table anymore. Yeah,

1193
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: But he, as we'll talk about in part four, he'll

1194
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 1: start he's starting to make plans in forty four for

1195
00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: what he's going to do after the war, right, I

1196
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,480
Speaker 1: think it really is. It just is his personal response.

1197
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 1: He feels personally a duty to kill as many of

1198
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: these people as he can, even though the war is over.

1199
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: That that's what's important to him morally, right, And it

1200
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:14,760
Speaker 1: was his job, and it's his job, right, and he's

1201
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: going to do it.

1202
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 2: He's always been a dead eyed careerist, and if everybody

1203
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 2: else is failing, I bet he probably thinks the way

1204
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 2: to continue to stick out and feel great is to

1205
00:59:25,040 --> 00:59:28,720
Speaker 2: be successful when everything else is failing. Will I won't fail,

1206
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 2: you know? Yeah.

1207
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:33,600
Speaker 1: So Eikman is a master still at this late stage

1208
00:59:33,600 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 1: of shaping cloud and the perception of cloud into a

1209
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 1: weapon to get what he wants. In the case of Hungary,

1210
00:59:38,040 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 1: this allows him to oversee the slaughter of at least

1211
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty seven, four hundred and two men,

1212
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,360
Speaker 1: women and children in a matter of months. That is

1213
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: the number the Nazis officially document, so the real number

1214
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 1: is higher than that. Credible estimates of the number of

1215
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: people Aikman is responsible for organizing to kill in a

1216
00:59:54,680 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: matter of again months range up to almost six hundred

1217
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 1: thousand out of a pre war population of seven hundred

1218
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 1: to eight hundred thousand. Jesus, this is the most complete

1219
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:07,360
Speaker 1: and fastest extermination of a Jewish population in Europe during

1220
01:00:07,360 --> 01:00:12,280
Speaker 1: the war. Fucking christ Horst Grel, the adviser on Jewish

1221
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: affairs for the Budapest Embassy, later claimed that during this time,

1222
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:18,160
Speaker 1: Aikman bragged the enemy had promoted him to war criminal

1223
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: number one, and he's not super exaggerating at this stage, right.

1224
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:25,640
Speaker 1: He would then repeat a German saying that translates to

1225
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:29,040
Speaker 1: many enemies much honor. The more people are talking about

1226
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:31,080
Speaker 1: me as a monster, the more honor I have for

1227
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 1: what I've done. Eikman was so good at what he

1228
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:37,000
Speaker 1: did that other ss men begin using his name in

1229
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:39,920
Speaker 1: the same way he used Himmler's. When Kurt Becker, one

1230
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:43,320
Speaker 1: of Eikman's professional rivals, got stalled in negotiations over the

1231
01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:47,080
Speaker 1: expropriation of Jewish property, he threatened to get Aikman involved.

1232
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:50,840
Speaker 1: After the war, Eichman himself would brag every department was

1233
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze everything possible out of the Jews, to

1234
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: winkle it out by threatening them with the big bad Aikman.

1235
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:58,520
Speaker 2: He must have fucking loved that.

1236
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: He does, but he also he's smart enough to know

1237
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:05,040
Speaker 1: we're not gonna win. And so now this reputation, the

1238
01:01:05,040 --> 01:01:08,320
Speaker 1: fact that I'm getting accredited for crimes I hadn't committed,

1239
01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: which is happening because I wanted that, right.

1240
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:14,000
Speaker 2: And I used to take credit for them.

1241
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a problem now right now that like,

1242
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: you know, we're not gonna win.

1243
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 2: The fact that you're getting blamed for shit you didn't

1244
01:01:21,880 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 2: even do is an issue, right, Well, well, well if

1245
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 2: it isn't the consequences of my ass.

1246
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:31,439
Speaker 1: Right right, by early forty five, he knows these days

1247
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 1: are numbered, and everyone including Iikman, increasingly knows that. Right.

1248
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: This is part of why colleagues like Becker are eager

1249
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:38,960
Speaker 1: to use his name. It's not just that it gets

1250
01:01:38,960 --> 01:01:41,240
Speaker 1: shit done, but it allows them to divert their own

1251
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 1: responsibility for genocide onto Iikman.

1252
01:01:43,360 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 2: Right.

1253
01:01:43,760 --> 01:01:48,040
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Iikeman's the guy making this happen. It's all Hikman,

1254
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 1: not me.

1255
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the difference between swinging from the end

1256
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:54,800
Speaker 2: of a rope or doing like five years in prison

1257
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 2: and then being a government job in West Germany. Yeah, man,

1258
01:01:57,440 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 2: oh boy, Holocaust was off.

1259
01:02:00,400 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 1: You know, we were all it's like that scene in

1260
01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 1: a hot Rod where his friend's stolen the TV and

1261
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:06,760
Speaker 1: he's like, boy, riots are so terrible. You just got

1262
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,080
Speaker 1: to get out as fast as you can. Right, Everyone's like, wow,

1263
01:02:09,160 --> 01:02:12,240
Speaker 1: the Holocaust awful. Can you believe what that Iikman guy

1264
01:02:12,320 --> 01:02:12,760
Speaker 1: made me do?

1265
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 2: Fucked up? Incredible.

1266
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:20,040
Speaker 1: So, in the last months of the Reich, as it

1267
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:22,760
Speaker 1: becomes clear to everyone what's happening, Eikman's going to become

1268
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,520
Speaker 1: a pariah within the sd right, people are like, oh,

1269
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 1: I don't want to be associated with this motherfucker any

1270
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:30,480
Speaker 1: more directly than I have to. And we'll talk about

1271
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 1: that and how he gets himself out of this for

1272
01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:36,920
Speaker 1: a shocking length of time in part four. But first, Joe,

1273
01:02:37,200 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: let's talk about how you're gonna get yourself out of

1274
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:43,040
Speaker 1: this podcast by plugging your pluggables.

1275
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:46,840
Speaker 2: I am the host of the Lions of My Donkey's podcast.

1276
01:02:46,880 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 2: We talk about military history and history of genocides, war crimes,

1277
01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:52,600
Speaker 2: other uplifting things like that. So if you want to

1278
01:02:52,600 --> 01:02:55,680
Speaker 2: hear more about Stalingrad. We did hours upon hours about

1279
01:02:55,720 --> 01:02:59,800
Speaker 2: that or other genocides like Rwanda, or the Armenian genocide

1280
01:02:59,880 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 2: or her Aeronama genocide, things of that nature. All we've

1281
01:03:02,520 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 2: talked about that as well, So come listen to it,

1282
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 2: and it will not improve your mood.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, yeah, speaking of things that won't improve your mood.

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Speaker 1: The next episode of this podcast coming out Thursday.

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Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

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Speaker 3: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

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Speaker 3: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

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Speaker 3: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

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Speaker 3: at Behind the Bastards