Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards of podcasts
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history. We
Speaker 1: are talking about Adolph Eichman this week and last week.
Speaker 1: Last week we got through his childhood and his early
Speaker 1: rise through the SD, which is the ss' Security Division,
Speaker 1: to become the in his words, czar of the Jews
Speaker 1: for Nazi Germany. And today, with our guest Joe Kasabian,
Speaker 1: we're talking about what happens to Iikman as the war
Speaker 1: moves towards its final phase.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Joe?
Speaker 1: Excited to hear about this guy. I think he's gonna
Speaker 1: finally break good in this last two parts.
Speaker 2: I gotta say I'm not super optimistic that he's gonna
Speaker 2: have a redemption arc. I dressed up for this episode
Speaker 2: because I I was surprised last time, so now I'm
Speaker 2: just wearing a shirt. This has all pain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm treating this like people were treating like the
Speaker 1: second half of and Or, where they were hoping their
Speaker 1: favorite like Monster Imperial characters, like oh, this guy's going
Speaker 1: to totally turn out good at the end, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is our moment like that for Iikman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most Nazis are not in fact, the one from
Speaker 2: the Pianist No No.
Speaker 1: Where we left off in part two, he had gone
Speaker 1: on a fact finding mission to eastern Europe, and the
Speaker 1: fairly early stages of Operation Barbarossa were the first parts
Speaker 1: of what we now know as the actual killing stage
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust began, which was a mix of you know,
Speaker 1: gas bands showing up outside of various villages and Eindset's
Speaker 1: group and units just doing mass shootings. Well, Iikman's watching
Speaker 1: all that, and he's taking notes, and he's figuring out,
Speaker 1: how do you actually kill a lot of like a
Speaker 1: shitload of people, like more people, like as many more
Speaker 1: people than would have died in a war a generation
Speaker 1: or two ago. We've got to like figure out to
Speaker 1: get rid of while we're fighting a war.
Speaker 2: How do we do that? Right?
Speaker 1: And all of this is preparation for a big old
Speaker 1: meeting they're going to have called the Vonse Conference in
Speaker 1: early nineteen forty two. So that's where we are right now,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's what we're hurtling towards at the moment.
Speaker 1: And the problem the Nazis are dealing with as the
Speaker 1: war in the East starts to turn against them is
Speaker 1: they've got a logistical hurdle on their hands. They have
Speaker 1: captured way more Jews than they know how to handle,
Speaker 1: and they have no real process for dealing with them.
Speaker 1: If you think back to the numbers we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the first parts of this series, they're dealing
Speaker 1: with a couple one hundred thousand people at a time.
Speaker 1: As you know, they take over Austria, as they take
Speaker 1: over Czechoslovakia, and then you know more when they take
Speaker 1: over Poland. But now they've captured this huge chunk of
Speaker 1: what had been the Soviet Union. They got millions of
Speaker 1: people on their hands, right, and these earlier decisions they
Speaker 1: had to make about what should we do? Do we
Speaker 1: deport these people? Do we find a place for them?
Speaker 1: The decision moves towards like all we can do is
Speaker 1: annihilate them, right, But we we have a limit in
Speaker 1: our war material and a limit in how many soldiers
Speaker 1: we can have actually kill people.
Speaker 2: And not to mention, like how many people are willing
Speaker 2: to drive insane, right and drink themselves to death by
Speaker 2: turning them into executioners.
Speaker 1: That's a major problem for the SS at this stage.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So many of the sources that you'll find on Eichmann
Speaker 1: will point out that he never really wrote policy, right,
Speaker 1: he was just an implementation guy. And this is accurate
Speaker 1: technically in some ways, but I don't think it is
Speaker 1: in a way that matters, right.
Speaker 2: I think policy wonk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really kind of was right. He's not the
Speaker 1: author of a bunch of stuff, but he's like, he's
Speaker 1: part of the process of authoring a lot of things.
Speaker 1: And he does help create policies, particularly like where the
Speaker 1: treatment of people with partial Jewish as history is concerned.
Speaker 1: And he's got this foundational role in how the Nazi
Speaker 1: state interacts with captured Jewish communities and deports them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And that's he's not literally writing out policies all the time,
Speaker 1: but he is effectively making policy in all but name. Now,
Speaker 1: that said, he doesn't give the order to start the Holocaust, right,
Speaker 1: that's obviously not his call. That happens way above his head,
Speaker 1: which begs the question, then who does right you would
Speaker 1: expect in an organization as hierarchical as the Nazis, there's
Speaker 1: someone we could trace to like and this is the
Speaker 1: moment the order was given. Right, We don't actually, we
Speaker 1: don't directly have that, right. We know Eichmann helps organize
Speaker 1: and facilitate the von Se conference where it's planned, and
Speaker 1: this is on orders of his boss, Reinhardt Heidrich, and
Speaker 1: Heydrich takes his orders, you know, from Himmler and from Hitler.
Speaker 1: But we don't have any record of Himmler or Hitler saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's time to do the Holocaust now, right, because that's
Speaker 1: just not the way any of this works, right.
Speaker 2: And man man has that led to a lot of
Speaker 2: problems and then Holocaust denial and Hitler rehabilitation and right,
Speaker 2: you fucking name it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have no evidence of Hitler saying we've got
Speaker 1: to do that, and that kind of feeds into at
Speaker 1: the time, a lot of people in Nazi Germany who
Speaker 1: were often annoyed or even horrified by aspects of the regime,
Speaker 1: by things the s S and the SD did, right,
Speaker 1: would be like, well, but Hitler clearly doesn't know about this, right,
Speaker 1: like he's got he can't have any idea this is
Speaker 1: going on, and this is something Hitler, you know, this
Speaker 1: is the smart way to play shit. As a totalitarian dictator,
Speaker 1: you don't want your name attached to everything the regime
Speaker 1: is doing, especially shit that's not going to work out
Speaker 1: or that's more experimental. You need plausible deniability, right, even
Speaker 1: if you're Hitler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not every tyrant or dictator is going to have
Speaker 2: a camp called like the Hitler Camp for undesirables.
Speaker 1: Right, right, that's that's just bad business. And the Nazi
Speaker 1: regime again, there's this attitude and this really is something
Speaker 1: that causes people who even aren't trying to do Nazi
Speaker 1: apologia to do apologia for regular people under the Nazi system,
Speaker 1: there's this errand idea that like, well, normal people had
Speaker 1: no choice but to go along with what the regime
Speaker 1: has doing. It was so dangerous. Any degree of resistance
Speaker 1: would have gotten you killed, would have gotten your family
Speaker 1: wiped out. At no point in the history of the
Speaker 1: Nazi regime was that true.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There were no no, no members of the Nazi state
Speaker 1: and like were ever executed or punished for just refusing
Speaker 1: to take part in the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: Right, Most of them were out, yes, and people could
Speaker 2: take it, right, Like the Nazi reserve police battalions had
Speaker 2: to volunteer, yes, to do the Holocaust by bullets, and
Speaker 2: they overwhelmingly volunteered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And people who said no didn't have their families
Speaker 1: killed or themselves killed.
Speaker 2: Right, they didn't even get demoted, they just got moved
Speaker 2: somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So much choice was involved and being part of the
Speaker 1: worst aspects of the regime, and there was in fact
Speaker 1: internal criticism inside Nazi Germany, and the regime even buckled
Speaker 1: under that criticism at times. When word of the T
Speaker 1: four euthanasia program broke out, which was basically the gassing
Speaker 1: of you know, to say, people by the Nazi state,
Speaker 1: there was backlash among German civilians, and that backlash was
Speaker 1: significant enough that it made Hitler number one. They backed
Speaker 1: away publicly on the program, and it made Hitler wary
Speaker 1: in the future of putting further policies of mass murder.
Speaker 1: In writing, and I want to quote from an article
Speaker 1: by Kevin Sweeney in the journal Constructing the Past. Here,
Speaker 1: between nineteen forty and nineteen forty one, the German people's
Speaker 1: negative reaction became increasingly vocal and vehement, culminating in Hitler
Speaker 1: being openly jeered by a crowd watching mentally challenged patients
Speaker 1: being loaded onto a trade at a rail station in Hoff,
Speaker 1: Bavaria in nineteen forty one. Ultimately, this negative public reaction
Speaker 1: to the T four program in Hitler's sanctioning of it,
Speaker 1: bolstered by denunciations from Catholic and Protestant church leaders, forced
Speaker 1: Hitler to publicly cancel the program in August of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, though it continued in secret until nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: So again people yelled at Hitler over this and he
Speaker 1: backed down, right, Like, that's such a critical part of
Speaker 1: the story of how this regime worked.
Speaker 2: Do you also think this is something that is batted
Speaker 2: around a bit in my field of research, where it's
Speaker 2: just like, this is the one that was taking average
Speaker 2: Germans family members away as well. Yes, everybody was connected
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, And there were other times where that happened, Right.
Speaker 1: There was a moment where they started deporting people who
Speaker 1: had like one Jewish relative but weren't like religiously Jewish
Speaker 1: and were married into you know, gentile German families. They
Speaker 1: were protests, and they had to publicly back off of
Speaker 1: that because Germans were like, well, but these guys aren't
Speaker 1: really Jewish, right, what are you doing here?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, moments like that happened, and the state was
Speaker 1: always conscious of how far they were pushing people, right,
Speaker 1: which meant that the state could be pushed now because
Speaker 1: of all of this, there's not a clear order to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Hitler signed this paper saying kill everybody, right, and this
Speaker 1: has led even within it. And again, these are none
Speaker 1: of these people are what you'd call denialists. But there
Speaker 1: was a debate for a very long time, like half
Speaker 1: a century between historians who specialized in the Holocaust between
Speaker 1: what are generally called intentionalists and functionalists. And the intentionalists
Speaker 1: argue that Hitler personally instigated the final solution. The functionalists
Speaker 1: argued that it arose naturally as a result of the
Speaker 1: structure of the Third Reich. Now this debate is mostly done.
Speaker 1: We don't really this is like I think people will
Speaker 1: talk about in terms of the history of how we
Speaker 1: looked at this. There's not much argument here anymore. A
Speaker 1: preponderance of evidence that exists today proves that Hitler that
Speaker 1: basically aspects of both of these are very true.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I was actually going to point that out.
Speaker 2: There's more, there's a third camp, which I generally fall into, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is like Hitler ordered it. However, a lot of
Speaker 2: it arose from the structure. It was not the state. Yeah,
Speaker 2: both of the did it would have happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hitler premeditated on the slaughter of European jewelry. And
Speaker 1: also the functionalists have some very good points. One piece
Speaker 1: of evidence for the intentionalists that often get cited that
Speaker 1: is important when we talk about Hitler's premeditation is an
Speaker 1: interview Hitler gave in nineteen twenty to a journalist where
Speaker 1: he said, once I really am in power, my first
Speaker 1: and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews,
Speaker 1: as soon as they.
Speaker 2: Have the power to do so.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's like, I.
Speaker 1: Will have the gallows built in rows and the Jews
Speaker 1: will be hanged indiscriminately until all of Germany has been
Speaker 1: completely cleansed of Jews. That's pretty hard. That's like not
Speaker 1: you know, we can state that is pretty clear evidence
Speaker 1: of intent, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And mine Komf also kind of really lays it out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's not a lot, there's there's a it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue he didn't say regularly what he planned
Speaker 1: to do, right.
Speaker 2: It's what he's known for, it's his bit.
Speaker 1: It's his whole thing. And obviously the fact that he
Speaker 1: said all this doesn't mean Hitler wrote out the plan
Speaker 1: for Auschwitz or ever. Like, he's not the guy. He
Speaker 1: didn't tell everyone, Okay, we're gonna do an Auschwitz and
Speaker 1: here's how it's gonna work. Right, He was like, we
Speaker 1: got to kill these guys. Figure it out. I'm Hitler,
Speaker 1: I got Hitler stuff to do, right, Like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of tasks on my hand. You
Speaker 1: guys locked down how we're going to handle this, right,
Speaker 1: And there were always other possibility up until you know,
Speaker 1: things start to turn for them in the East. It's
Speaker 1: not a guarantee that mass slaughter is the only thing
Speaker 1: that we've done for all of these captured people. I
Speaker 1: think there was a point in which something like the
Speaker 1: Madagascar plan, if that itself was never really feasible, could
Speaker 1: have been done for some amount of people, right.
Speaker 2: But at a.
Speaker 1: Certain point, the only thing they were going to do
Speaker 1: was was genocide. And Hitler had repeatedly countenanced that and
Speaker 1: urged that throughout his career. In nineteen thirty nine, he
Speaker 1: told the Czech Ford and Minister, we are going to
Speaker 1: destroy the Jews. They are not going to get away
Speaker 1: with what they did. On November ninth, nineteen eighteen, the
Speaker 1: Day of Reckoning has come. Eichmann himself would later claim
Speaker 1: under interrogation that Reinhard Heidrich had told him about plans
Speaker 1: for the Holocaust as early as August nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1: And this is Heydrich talking to an interrogator. The war
Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union began in June nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1: I believe it was two months later that Heydrich sent
Speaker 1: for me. I reported he began with a little speech,
Speaker 1: and then the fearer has ordered physical extermination of the Jews.
Speaker 1: Then Heydrich said, go and see ss ober group and
Speaker 1: fuer otto Globotschnik. The fur has already given him instructions.
Speaker 1: And you know that doesn't mean that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: because Eichman lies under interrogation. But there's a good amount
Speaker 1: of evidence to suggest that's pretty much what happened. Right,
Speaker 1: we haven't talked. We'll talk about Globoschnik one of these days.
Speaker 1: He's a really interesting Nazi, And from what we know
Speaker 1: of Hydrich and of him, this is pretty feasible, right,
Speaker 1: that something like this is basically what went down. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of outside kind of evidence that this is
Speaker 1: pretty close to what happened.
Speaker 2: Those ideas definitely would have flowed through hydrich.
Speaker 1: Yes yes, through hydric and probably through globotschnik too, in
Speaker 1: a similar way to how it's described here. And Bettina
Speaker 1: Stangneth basically argues that Eichman was given the job of
Speaker 1: planning the vonse conference, nothing to coordinate all the different
Speaker 1: government branches. He'd played a role in the genocide because
Speaker 1: he'd made himself the Reich's gopher in anything related to
Speaker 1: the Jewish question. He's just the guy you reach for
Speaker 1: when you're like, well, we need someone to pull all
Speaker 1: of these things we've been doing together and plan the
Speaker 1: execution of the Holocaust. You've got Eikman, right. You already
Speaker 1: know he knows how to do this kind of shit,
Speaker 1: so you pull for him. Stengneth writes when others were
Speaker 1: at a loss, he was the man they called on.
Speaker 1: For example, a professor at Strasburg University was adamant he
Speaker 1: wanted the schools of Jewish Bolshevik commissars to add to
Speaker 1: a collection of skeletons, despite the fact that they were
Speaker 1: still alive. And Eikman's the guy who gets pulled in
Speaker 1: to do that. He's just already been the kind of
Speaker 1: we need someone to handle this unpleasant implementation that's going
Speaker 1: to involve killing a lot of people, right, Well, iikmans,
Speaker 1: who does that?
Speaker 2: You know? Of course that's a collection that existed at
Speaker 2: a German univers That's a German university's collection, right, I
Speaker 2: mean recently a German university I forget which one, maybe
Speaker 2: it was Salzburg discovered Oh we still have all these
Speaker 2: boxes of human skulls right from the Herrero and Nama
Speaker 2: jediside just like oops, oops, yeah, oops skulls.
Speaker 1: Look, you don't want to go too deep into the
Speaker 1: into the archive section of any German or British university
Speaker 1: or any American university than a certain age.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I should, I should point out due to my
Speaker 2: family's land deeds. Or Turkish university, yeah, or Turkish universites.
Speaker 1: Very few old universities do you want. And honestly, the
Speaker 1: Vatican sub basements, we don't really want to get into
Speaker 1: those too deep either.
Speaker 2: Those stay locked. Yeah, those.
Speaker 1: Us, Yeah, there's some there's some fucking first Indiana Jones movie.
Speaker 1: Shit if you go deep enough in that. So as
Speaker 1: the death camps spun up to full operation in the
Speaker 1: years following Von Say Eichmann was set to the task
Speaker 1: of organizing the registration, collection, and eventual deportation or evacuation
Speaker 1: of captive Jewish populations to the camps. By this point,
Speaker 1: he was highly placed enough and the job was big
Speaker 1: enough that he often sent out trusted subordinates to handle
Speaker 1: the on the groundwork for him, involving himself directly if
Speaker 1: he felt their progress was too slow, and acting as
Speaker 1: a wrecking ball whenever his people encountered resistance from local
Speaker 1: government officials. And this resistance is usually not we have
Speaker 1: a moral issue with what's happening. Sometimes it's actually later
Speaker 1: in the war it's a mix of that, or they're
Speaker 1: just worried that they'll get blamed for it because they
Speaker 1: could see where things are coming. But a lot of
Speaker 1: the times it's more, well, we need supplies for other things,
Speaker 1: right Like, we have issues that are a bigger priority
Speaker 1: to us in the general government of Poland or whatever
Speaker 1: than the annihilation of these people, And why are we
Speaker 1: focusing on this? And Eichman will come in and say,
Speaker 1: fuck off, this is the priority, right Like. That's kind
Speaker 1: of part of his job, and one of his personal
Speaker 1: obsessions is ensuring that no individual Jews are exempted from
Speaker 1: the final solution. This is more of an issue than
Speaker 1: you might expect. It was often said that every Nazi
Speaker 1: had their good Jew, or even recognized a handful of
Speaker 1: good Jews that ought to be spared. And in fact
Speaker 1: this extends to Hitler, as I bring up on this
Speaker 1: show every now and then, he interviewed personally to save
Speaker 1: his childhood doctor, a Jewish man who he viewed as
Speaker 1: a decent person.
Speaker 2: Right, and his personal driver, Emil Maurice.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, there were guys, right and ladies right that
Speaker 1: every even a lot of the worst of the Nazis had,
Speaker 1: they would be like, well, this, this person should be spared.
Speaker 2: Eichmann.
Speaker 1: One of the things that makes him noteworthy is he
Speaker 1: doesn't have these people, right, and he actually sees it
Speaker 1: as his personal job to make sure none of the
Speaker 1: like every even the worst of the ss are soft
Speaker 1: towards a Jew here and there. I have to make
Speaker 1: sure those people don't escape the drag net as much
Speaker 1: as possible.
Speaker 2: Right, that's supposed to be more evil than the most
Speaker 2: evil men.
Speaker 1: Hitler, Yeah, that's part of his job here. I've got
Speaker 1: to be harder even than the boss. You know, Hitler's
Speaker 1: you know he's too soft. He could be soft on
Speaker 1: this issue, take up the slack. Yeah, you know, Hitler
Speaker 1: real soft of the Jewish issue. Yeah, yeah, at least
Speaker 1: softer than he's willing to be. And this is a
Speaker 1: thing that comes down from Hydrich to Heydrick's very much
Speaker 1: similar in this attitude, right, So, and again it's kind
Speaker 1: of when we talk about his complicity. He doesn't order
Speaker 1: any of this, but his job is to make sure
Speaker 1: it's as total a victory for the Nazis as he
Speaker 1: can manage. And while his role here is important, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't neglect a highlight other major figures behind the final solution,
Speaker 1: including Aikman's childhood friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, as well as Heinrich Mueller,
Speaker 1: Theodore Daniker, Dieter Weslinsky, Franz Novak, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other young men in Hitler's SSNSD. And it's really worth
Speaker 1: emphasizing how young a lot of the people doing this are.
Speaker 1: That the Holocaust is committed primarily from an implementation stage
Speaker 1: by very young, ambitious men. An article for the National
Speaker 1: World War II Museum by doctor Jason Dawesy notes of
Speaker 1: Eikman's peers quote. None of them had reached the age
Speaker 1: of thirty five when World War two ended. They exhibited
Speaker 1: a terrifying combination of attention to detail and steadfast commitment
Speaker 1: to the core ideas of Nazism. Reynhard Heidrich himself, Eikman's boss,
Speaker 1: was thirty eight when he was killed by Czech partisans
Speaker 1: in June of nineteen forty two, just a few months
Speaker 1: after the Vonse Conference. We've already covered Hydrich in other episodes,
Speaker 1: and there's not enough time in these ones to discuss
Speaker 1: all of Eikman's subordinates and colleagues, the guys at his level.
Speaker 1: But we should talk about one of his men in
Speaker 1: order to kind of tell the story of several others, right,
Speaker 1: because I don't want it to look like I never
Speaker 1: wanted to be like a great man thing where Eikman's
Speaker 1: the only one kind of at this level of importance.
Speaker 1: There are other guys who are at similar levels, and
Speaker 1: one of them is his subordinate, Theodore Daniker. Right, And
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about Daneker, both because he's
Speaker 1: a monster worth knowing and because his story tells us
Speaker 1: something important about how Eikman operated. Daniker was born in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen thirteen in Tubingen, southwest Germany. His father
Speaker 1: was a member of the comfortable middle class, as a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys are, and was a businessman until
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen eighteen fighting for the Kaiser. Theodore
Speaker 1: was raised by his mom and he grows up number
Speaker 1: one angry about the war, believing in the stabbed in
Speaker 1: the back myth like all of these guys do. And
Speaker 1: other than that, he's kind of mediocre, right. His family
Speaker 1: was used to being more comfortable than they are after
Speaker 1: the war. He wants to do better. He feels like
Speaker 1: he's owed it, but he's not very good at anything,
Speaker 1: like eichmansocre student, right, he makes no real impact on
Speaker 1: his professors, and there's no signs that he's going to
Speaker 1: go on to have a really significant career. He's just
Speaker 1: kind of mid. Right. These are all very young, very
Speaker 1: mid guys who are given in their only chance to
Speaker 1: be excellent is with the Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: Man, that is unfortunate. We need some kind of jobs
Speaker 2: program for dudes who are solidly mid.
Speaker 1: It's this thing I come up with with, like guys
Speaker 1: like Ben Shapiro, like all of these dudes in the
Speaker 1: right wing media who try to make it in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood and can't because they're mediocre. We need like a
Speaker 1: fake Hollywood where we like, we give these guys fake
Speaker 1: fans and let them pretend like they've got a TV.
Speaker 1: This is what we can use AI for, just generate
Speaker 1: their shitty scripts.
Speaker 2: Robert, this already exists. It's the Hallmark Channel. It's the
Speaker 2: Hallmark Channel. Thank god.
Speaker 1: We'd be in so much worse shape if it weren't
Speaker 1: for the Hallmark Channel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Ben Shapiro could be cranking out or like
Speaker 2: the Dannekers of today, big balls who works at Dose. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: to just be just be cranking out the world's worst
Speaker 2: Christmas movies year round for a Hallmark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we use AI to give a bunch of
Speaker 1: fake fans so they feel like they're really making it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean on a serious level, it is important,
Speaker 1: you understand. People always a lot of people get this
Speaker 1: wrong when they act like, oh, well, the Nazis were this.
Speaker 1: They came out of the middle class, or they came
Speaker 1: out of like the poor in the working class, these
Speaker 1: people who had endured privation and that was you know,
Speaker 1: there's there were these real legitimate you know fear and
Speaker 1: anger of this this group of people who were really
Speaker 1: suffering that fed into Nazism. Some of those guys existed
Speaker 1: and part of this guy Hitler was that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Hitler really did suffer. He had a terrible early life, right.
Speaker 2: He had a shitty fucking life. Dog shit, that's very
Speaker 2: few Nazis, right. Unfortunately, that shitty life did not kill him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Hitler was that guy. But like his inner circle, his
Speaker 2: the people at surroundam absolutely. Word, there's like, now, a
Speaker 2: lot of these guys were young, like you said, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them were mid.
Speaker 1: Fucking Gary was like famous and kind of well off, right,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of guys were like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of these dudes are doctors, yes, doctors, lawyers,
Speaker 2: you know, PhDs, Yeah, fucking engineers, lawyers. He's surrounded himself
Speaker 2: by Germany's elite.
Speaker 1: Eichmann comes from oil and gas, like his dad was
Speaker 1: comfortable from oil and.
Speaker 2: Gas money, right.
Speaker 1: Daniker comes from like a comfortable, middle class business owning background.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: These are not guys who are poor, but they are
Speaker 1: guys who are not doing as well as they think
Speaker 1: they ought to be doing. And they blame that on
Speaker 1: whoever's convenient, which turns out to be the Jews and
Speaker 1: the communists, right, So that's Danni.
Speaker 2: They would own a like they would own like a
Speaker 2: Mitchibhi dealership today, right right, not a great MITSUBC dealership,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 1: An education dealership, but not a great great right, Like.
Speaker 2: They don't own a Ford. They don't own like a
Speaker 2: Chevy dealership. They're like, we have to look family, we
Speaker 2: have to settle for selling. I don't know, evil lancers
Speaker 2: or fucking whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're spokesman is like a fucking amateur baseball star.
Speaker 1: Like it's just not that good. So speaking of amateur baseball,
Speaker 1: don't watch amateur baseball listen to the rest of this podcast.
Speaker 3: Or watch amateur baseball while listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely don't do that. You'll turn into a fascist.
Speaker 2: Now these ads from Mitchubishi.
Speaker 1: We're back. So Theodore Danaker comes up kind of mitted everything.
Speaker 1: When he's a young adult, he starts working as a
Speaker 1: textile dealer, and like Eikman, he goes to a trade
Speaker 1: school because his grades aren't good enough for him to
Speaker 1: do anything else, and he feels pulled to far right
Speaker 1: politics from a young age, like Eikman for a similar motivation.
Speaker 1: The Nazi Party offers him a chance to remake himself
Speaker 1: in a new regime that he wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to earn a place of similar kind of importance in
Speaker 1: the wat Weimar Republic. In nineteen thirty two, he joins
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party at age nineteen. At age twenty one,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, Daniker joins the SS, initially serving
Speaker 1: in the VT or the SS dispositional Corps. These were
Speaker 1: essentially political soldiers at the direct command of Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 1: except in times of war, in which case they'd be
Speaker 1: integrated into the army. This is the unit that eventually
Speaker 1: becomes the waffen SS. Right, it isn't that yet, but
Speaker 1: he's in the proto WAFFENSS. That's Daniker. Like Eichman, Daniker's
Speaker 1: first real job for the regime is helping to guard
Speaker 1: an early concentration camp. In his case, it's Columbia House
Speaker 1: in Berlin. Now, this was the only official SS camp
Speaker 1: in Berlin, and it was built out of an empty
Speaker 1: prison in nineteen thirty three, and like most wild concentration camps,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what the first camps are called,
Speaker 1: where They're like, we've got this empty government building or
Speaker 1: school or whatever. We'll just throw some political prisoners in there.
Speaker 1: We'll torture them.
Speaker 2: Right. Columbia House is noteworthy for being where lawyer Hans
Speaker 2: Litten dies. Right.
Speaker 1: We've talked about him in the past. He's the guy
Speaker 1: who puts Hitler on trial. So it's that kind of place,
Speaker 1: and it is. Columbia House has been described by one
Speaker 1: historian and camp survivor as an agony house and the
Speaker 1: side of quote perhaps the ghastliest atrocities imaginable. It acted
Speaker 1: as an SS testing ground for promising young officers. As
Speaker 1: historian Reinhard Burbeck noted, quote, this was not just a
Speaker 1: place where people were terrorized and tortured, but a school
Speaker 1: of torture. The people who had been commanders after Columbia
Speaker 1: later turned to commanders of other concentration camps at Bukenwald,
Speaker 1: at Saxonhausen, at Majdenek, and Auschwitz. So once you had
Speaker 1: gone through concentration camp Columbia, apparently this was the perverse
Speaker 1: career step in order to stay in the SS and
Speaker 1: become a commander elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Right, oh god, it was a concentration camp trade school yes,
Speaker 2: And this is also important.
Speaker 1: We talk about how this is like less on the
Speaker 1: intentionalist side of things, right, and more on the other
Speaker 1: side of things, where you're like, well, they started building
Speaker 1: this system where you would train people up in how
Speaker 1: a concentration camp is to work. And once you've committed
Speaker 1: the kind of crimes you're committing at Columbia House, you
Speaker 1: don't go back. You only do worse and worse stuff,
Speaker 1: and you don't always have to be ordered to do
Speaker 1: that worse stuff.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You are, naturally, when you get put in charge somewhere,
Speaker 1: going to be even more extreme than you were at
Speaker 1: Columbia House, because that's just how this kind of thing works, right.
Speaker 2: Your humanity is sanded away. Even if even if the
Speaker 2: people who started off as like, you know, prison guards
Speaker 2: say what you will about them and their ethics and morality,
Speaker 2: by the time they leave this place they're just dead
Speaker 2: eyed psychos.
Speaker 1: There's nothing left of humanity in them. Right, And that's
Speaker 1: important too. No one necessarily orders that I want you
Speaker 1: to do twenty percent worse than Columbia House. You just
Speaker 1: are that person by this point, right, And so that
Speaker 1: happens naturally.
Speaker 2: Nobody's tracking fingernail metrics.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, it's like how many fingernails did you
Speaker 1: pull out this week?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You don't have to do that anymore. So eventually Daniker
Speaker 1: gets transferred over to the SS Security Office or the
Speaker 1: SD where Eikman works, and he winds up working under
Speaker 1: Eichman at the Department of Jewish Affairs in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: That same year, he writes the report urging the complete
Speaker 1: removal of Jews from political life and the Reich in
Speaker 1: order to bring Germany's Jewish question closer to its final solution.
Speaker 1: In this paper, he attacks the Gestapo for being too
Speaker 1: mild in their application of force and insufficiently committed to
Speaker 1: anti Semitism. So like, he's this guy where he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: the Gestapo really soft on the Jews. Got we gotta,
Speaker 1: we gotta get these people under control.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm really sick of our local Gestapo being
Speaker 2: so soft and gunnly, the woke Gestapo. These de I
Speaker 2: policies have ruined the Gestapo.
Speaker 1: He is that guy, though, right, And that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's why he's the kind of guy who becomes Aikman's
Speaker 1: you know, second effectively fuck. In nineteen thirty eight, after
Speaker 1: the anschlus Daniker goes with Iikman to Vienna to help
Speaker 1: expel thousands of Jews from their homes and confiscate their
Speaker 1: possessions for the state, and he brings this new expertise
Speaker 1: with him to Poland. He goes to Paris in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty after the German victory and he helps oversee the
Speaker 1: French police in their roundup of the Jewish population of Paris.
Speaker 1: Now it's not widely known or discussed that some of
Speaker 1: the most important early perpetrators of the Holocaust were local police.
Speaker 2: All over Europe. And these are not German police. These
Speaker 2: are by and large these.
Speaker 1: Are French police, right, some of whom had been part
Speaker 1: of French far right parties right.
Speaker 2: And Dutch police. Don't forget my local.
Speaker 1: Police police, right, But they're local cops, and most of
Speaker 1: them hadn't been super involved in the far right, you know.
Speaker 1: They were cops before anything else. And like basically one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of cops and basically every society, their identity
Speaker 1: as police matters more to them than the morality of
Speaker 1: whatever actions they are asked to take. Right, So you
Speaker 1: can find arguments that French police helped to shield and
Speaker 1: this is true. There are individual French police who helped
Speaker 1: to shield and hide hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. Right,
Speaker 1: there are individual French cops who act heroically to protect
Speaker 1: people targeted by the SS. But modern historiography has made
Speaker 1: it very clear, and I would say unarguable that as
Speaker 1: an institution, French law enforcement was overwhelmingly a willing tool
Speaker 1: of the Nazi genocide in late Yeah. Yeah, there's just
Speaker 1: no real argument against that. In late twenty eighteen, historian
Speaker 1: Laurent Joli published The State against the Jews, which compiled
Speaker 1: previously unknown documents about French police and government collaboration and
Speaker 1: the rounding up of tens of thousands of Jews. Per
Speaker 1: an article in France twenty four quote, Jolie told AFP
Speaker 1: that Paris police had one of the most sophisticated systems
Speaker 1: in the world to classify foreigners. Some one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand Jews were recorded in a role based
Speaker 1: on the census the Nazis demanded in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: which Jolie has said curiously remained unknown until my research
Speaker 1: because it got buried, right, of course it did. In
Speaker 1: VC France, the authorities were so eager to curry favor
Speaker 1: with their new Nazi masters that they began rounding up
Speaker 1: and handing over Jews without being asked. Per Joli, the
Speaker 1: Germans were not asking for the Jews who lived in
Speaker 1: the VC controlled part of France to be handed to them.
Speaker 1: V she was always trying to demonstrate this goodwill towards
Speaker 1: the Germans. In other words, the French police in VC
Speaker 1: France create a problem for the Nazis because they're handing
Speaker 1: over more Jews than the Nazis can process. And they're like, guys, Jesus, like,
Speaker 1: we're the Nazis, but.
Speaker 2: Come on call me out here. I mean, that reminds
Speaker 2: me of early on in the Holocaust, when the Gestapo
Speaker 2: will put out effectively it was like a hotline to
Speaker 2: regular Germans to rat out people who were hiding Jews
Speaker 2: or people they thought were Jews. And so many people
Speaker 2: were ratting out their neighbors that the Gestapo had to
Speaker 2: kindly ask them to fucking stop because they couldn't handle
Speaker 2: it all. God.
Speaker 1: And now, thankfully there's no SS analog in the US
Speaker 1: today that would put out a request for regular Americans
Speaker 1: to report their neighbors, you know, sequestering undocumented foreigners. Right, yeah, weird,
Speaker 1: how that's always what it is, right, weird, how that's
Speaker 1: what it is in Paris.
Speaker 2: You know, Remember, folks, Tiranny doesn't work without the assistance
Speaker 2: of your friendly neighbors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, the cops and local government officials and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the guy who lives next to you. Dan Aker's
Speaker 1: job in Paris was to push French authorities to arrest
Speaker 1: and deport ever greater numbers of Jews, both foreign reds
Speaker 1: us whod fled other areas the Nazis had advanced on
Speaker 1: or native French people. Some were told that these deportees
Speaker 1: would be taken to a new Jewish state being established
Speaker 1: by the Nazis, essentially a variation of the Reservation Plan,
Speaker 1: although this was known to be false by with half
Speaker 1: a brain. There had been ample reporting before the German
Speaker 1: invasion about the early stages of the kz Or concentration
Speaker 1: camp system. The first major arrest and deportation of French
Speaker 1: Jews in World War II was the Green Ticket roundup.
Speaker 1: Eikman and Daneker both helped to organize this scheme, by
Speaker 1: which almost seven thousand foreign born Jews living in France
Speaker 1: were sent a summons by mail ordering them to visit
Speaker 1: a local immigration office for review of their visas. Anyone
Speaker 1: who showed up, as around thirty seven hundred men did,
Speaker 1: was arrested and deported immediately. Now, again, you'd never see
Speaker 1: anything like this whereby people who are attempting to maintain
Speaker 1: their legal status even though they their foreign born people
Speaker 1: who have immigrated would be asked to show up at
Speaker 1: the immigration office and then arrested as soon as they
Speaker 1: show up trying to comply with the law. That would
Speaker 1: never happen here, right, you.
Speaker 2: Know, thankfully not. I can't think of any anything that's
Speaker 2: happening totally differently or before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be like, really really wrong of me
Speaker 1: to just suggest that the Department of Homeland Security is
Speaker 1: the American SS based on something like this, because they've
Speaker 1: never done anything like this, right, you know, ICE hasn't, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And ICE is certainly not the Gestapo. They would
Speaker 2: do things that are Gestapo. S. No, they're not the
Speaker 2: Department of Jewish Affairs, right, There's.
Speaker 1: Not no similarity between these organizations, right, right, exactly because
Speaker 1: we haven't started death camps yet, just like the Nazis
Speaker 1: had it in nineteen forty, right.
Speaker 2: I feel like Robert, we can really trust a guy
Speaker 2: who wears a mask and snatches people into an unmarked van.
Speaker 1: Yes, if I'm remembering properly from my Disney movies as
Speaker 1: a kid, the child catcher is a good guy.
Speaker 2: Oh Man.
Speaker 1: So despite this success and the success of Operation Green Ticket,
Speaker 1: France lags behind the arbitrary deportation quota that Eikman's office
Speaker 1: had set for them. It was Daniker's office to motivate
Speaker 1: French authorities. Eichmann came to consider Daniker almost as his
Speaker 1: right arm, someone he could drop into a new territory
Speaker 1: and trust to centralize the system by which Jews were
Speaker 1: rounded up and deported and leave it in such a
Speaker 1: way that whoever followed would be able to continue operating
Speaker 1: the system with these because it runs on its own right.
Speaker 1: That's a huge part of it. You leave as little
Speaker 1: up to chance as possible, You leave as little up
Speaker 1: to the mercy of individual members of the government as possible,
Speaker 1: all of whom are soft to some groups of people
Speaker 1: you want to get rid of. That's why you build
Speaker 1: a system that has no softness left inside it. Right
Speaker 1: that right up for the National World War Two Museum
Speaker 1: notes Danniker was a completely modern form of perpetrator, really
Speaker 1: unknown before the twentieth century. The deportation specialist.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, he's Tom Holman.
Speaker 1: He's Tom Holman. Right, this is how modern genocide is done.
Speaker 1: The primary perpetrators are not the guys who just shoot
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, right, they're the deportation specialists. That's
Speaker 1: who does a modern genocide. Is a deportation specialist.
Speaker 2: Right. Not to keep linking these two things together, but
Speaker 2: when like, one of the things that sticks out to
Speaker 2: me is in the book Ordinary Men, Yeah, one of
Speaker 2: the things that sticks out is the gerbid Reserve police
Speaker 2: officers were just normal guys who took this job because
Speaker 2: they they wanted a pension and benefits. And then again,
Speaker 2: they were voluntarily doing this that they were told multiple
Speaker 2: times they could back out whenever they wanted, but they're
Speaker 2: there pulling the trigger. Yeah, And then you got this
Speaker 2: fucking guy.
Speaker 1: And there's this this argument you get it around ordinary
Speaker 1: men too, about like, well, it's wrong to look at
Speaker 1: these as like the banality of evil, because these guys
Speaker 1: weren't banal. The things they did weren't banal, the kinds
Speaker 1: of crimes they committed, No But that's that's the point,
Speaker 1: is that that kind of hideous, mask off nightmare evil
Speaker 1: is lurking behind your neighbor's eyes. If he gets the opportunity,
Speaker 1: if it'll benefit him enough, right, if it'll get him
Speaker 1: that Mitsubishi dealership. You never know, quite just like you
Speaker 1: never know which what motherfucking guy who like seems kind
Speaker 1: of lame and boring right now could be a hero
Speaker 1: when actually called upon to shelter people from RZI. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about that judge husband and wife cop couple in
Speaker 1: New Mexico who were like destroying evidence to protect these
Speaker 1: undocumented friends of theirs who are now being tried. Where
Speaker 1: it's like you would never guess that these people would
Speaker 1: have been a heroes in a time like this, but
Speaker 1: goddamn it, you can't look at them anyway else. Right,
Speaker 1: And in the same manner, some guy who would you
Speaker 1: would never guess is anything but the dude who lives
Speaker 1: next to you could become an absolute monster if he
Speaker 1: was given the opportunity, if it would advance him personally enough.
Speaker 1: And you don't know until the chips are down, who's
Speaker 1: going to be what? Right, There's hints sometimes, but you
Speaker 1: can't know perfectly cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Just to be safe, I say, if you've ever seen
Speaker 2: them shooting a video in the cab of their pickup
Speaker 2: truck at that upward angle, probably on the bad side
Speaker 2: of things, Yeah, you just stay the funk away from there, right.
Speaker 2: Man Danaker would have loved filming himself drunk in his
Speaker 2: car ranting about movies. God, they would love that so much. Yeah, yelly,
Speaker 2: like my wife left me.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Historian Robert Gerwath describes Daniker as one of the quote young, educated,
Speaker 1: self confident, and ideologically committed men Heydrich actively courted for
Speaker 1: the Jewish desk. These men would develop the actual methodology
Speaker 1: by which Hitler's dream of a jew free Europe might
Speaker 1: be made a reality. To continue with another quote from
Speaker 1: that article, Daniker utilized in an array of weapons, the pen,
Speaker 1: the telephone, and the typewriter. Besides researching and working behind
Speaker 1: a desk, Daniker negotiated, cajoled and berated officials, coordinated with
Speaker 1: the Reich Transportation Ministry to secure rolling stock, and worked
Speaker 1: at the SSSD, Gestapo and German armed forces to ensure
Speaker 1: the efficient and orderly removal of massive numbers of Jewish men, women,
Speaker 1: and children in the spring of nineteen forty two, Daniker
Speaker 1: visited the camp at Auschwitz Berkanau. This was the same
Speaker 1: month that it transferred from being primarily a labor camp
Speaker 1: to being a straight up death camp, and Daniker is
Speaker 1: one of the very first people to see Auschwitz in
Speaker 1: full operation. He reports back to his boss about it
Speaker 1: and he immediately sets to work feeding a group of
Speaker 1: eleven hundred French Jews into the factory of death. This
Speaker 1: annihilation acts as a proof of concept. Right, this is
Speaker 1: the desth star test firing of Auschwitz, right where you're like, yep, okay,
Speaker 1: we can, we can get rid of people at the
Speaker 1: speed we need to. Here, Daniker reports back to Iikman
Speaker 1: about how Auschwitz is working, and Iikman could not have
Speaker 1: been happier. So he and Daniker spend several weeks planning
Speaker 1: a more ambitious operation to wipe out a substantial chunk
Speaker 1: of the French Jewish population. They call this Operation spring Wind.
Speaker 1: It had been initially scheduled for July fourteenth, but that
Speaker 1: was the Steel Day, and the French collaborators insisted it
Speaker 1: would be bad form to commit genocide on a holiday,
Speaker 1: So the operation is ultimately executed by friend right, we'll
Speaker 1: do this, but not on but still day. Right, we
Speaker 1: can't do a holocaust on b Steel Day.
Speaker 2: That's like the most fucking French way of like, no,
Speaker 2: you don't understand.
Speaker 1: We have the steel work, everyone's got the day off work. Look,
Speaker 1: we'll do a holocaust, but not on our day off.
Speaker 2: Right. If you if you make all the cops go
Speaker 2: in and do the genocide on the holiday, they're gonna
Speaker 2: riot and they're gonna rights. It's something that happens here.
Speaker 2: They can't do this.
Speaker 1: So the operation is ultimately executed by French police in
Speaker 1: July sixteenth and seventeenth. They break into houses and they
Speaker 1: rip whole families out of their beds, arresting thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: Parisian Jews for deportation. The police insisted in public facing
Speaker 1: communications that these people were mostly quote foreign and stateless,
Speaker 1: so they're verrely people. Course of course, of course, suck yeah.
Speaker 1: Operation spring Wind was the brainchild of a French VCH
Speaker 1: collaborator named Luis d'arkier. He had fought in World War
Speaker 1: One and become a radical far right activist in the thirties,
Speaker 1: actively participating in the nineteen thirty four far right riot
Speaker 1: that was seen by some at the time as an
Speaker 1: attempted coup deetas he had become a journalist largely to
Speaker 1: write articles drumming up anti Semitic hate among his fellow Frenchmen.
Speaker 1: When the Nazis took over, they made him Commissar General
Speaker 1: for Jewish Affairs, basically the vch counterpart to Eikman. D'arkier
Speaker 1: had suggested to denaturalize all Jews who'd acquired French citizenship
Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty seven, and he also suggested the mass
Speaker 1: arrest of stateless Jews, largely because it provided a legal
Speaker 1: coding for the general expulsion of Jews. This worked. Danniker
Speaker 1: himself noted that once this shoddy justification was in place,
Speaker 1: the cops were happy to help the SS. The French police,
Speaker 1: despite a few considerations of pure form, have only to
Speaker 1: carry out orders, right as long as it's like surprising, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just how these guys work.
Speaker 2: That's how cops are, right, and that's how cops are
Speaker 2: and France was wildly anti Semitic. Yeah, for people who
Speaker 2: don't know. One of my co hosts and producers on
Speaker 2: my show did he speaks French and did research on
Speaker 2: like French Officers magazines in the French military a little
Speaker 2: bit after this time in Algeria. Yeah, and like half
Speaker 2: half of the titles are like Lee anti Semitism, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like shit like that, Like yeah, you know, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: just subscribed to Anti Semitism Weekly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But by the way, folks watched The Battle of Algiers.
Speaker 1: Great movie. Yeah, that's all I'll say about it for now.
Speaker 1: So Daniker's role in France came to an end shortly
Speaker 1: after Operation spring Wind, which is better known as the
Speaker 1: veldiev roundup Right, his direct supervisor in the SD, a
Speaker 1: guy named Helmut Knockin, caught Daniker abusing his authority, by
Speaker 1: which I mean he was stealing shit from deported Jews
Speaker 1: that the SS wanted to steal for Germany, right, and
Speaker 1: so he was transferred back to Berlin. Right, Like, look,
Speaker 1: but steal from them, Yeah, we're stealing from them. You're
Speaker 1: stealing from us when you steal too much from them, right.
Speaker 2: Come on, man, Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, the system Daniker had built with Aikman's guidance continued
Speaker 1: to operate for the remainder of v France's lifespan. Ultimately
Speaker 1: some seventy seven thousand French Jews and Jews on French
Speaker 1: soil were deported and murdered by the Nazis under the
Speaker 1: direction of Aikman and Daniker and with the enthusiastic aid
Speaker 1: of French collaborators in law enforcement and the VC government.
Speaker 1: After the war, Charles de Gaulle and the French government
Speaker 1: that replaced the VC regime refused to apologize for the
Speaker 1: role the police played in these genocidal crimes. Their argument,
Speaker 1: all right, Their argument was that VCH France wasn't the
Speaker 1: French Republic, and the re established republic shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: apologize for the crimes of another government, right now.
Speaker 2: Never mind, all those dudes kept their fucking job, right.
Speaker 2: Isn't the case that these cops are still cops? A
Speaker 2: lot of times? Yes? But why is that our responsibility? Right?
Speaker 2: Slipping off the armband.
Speaker 1: You can't blame law enforcement as a whole for the
Speaker 1: fact that everyone in it did this, right, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: cool stuff.
Speaker 2: So you do not understand, I was not throwing a
Speaker 2: pizza of salute. I was just ashing my cigarettes very awkwardly.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 1: It was not until nineteen ninety five that French President
Speaker 1: Jacques Scharack finally admitted blame on behalf of French law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the state.
Speaker 2: Right, so you know, it's so bad that had to
Speaker 2: be Sharrock that did it, because he's like cartoonishly corrupt.
Speaker 1: He's otherwise. Yeah, but he's like a jeez, this is wow,
Speaker 1: we really fucked up here.
Speaker 2: I will steal from everybody's pension and I will get
Speaker 2: France locked soldly into the Afghan War, but I will
Speaker 2: not cover for Nazi cops.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to cover for the Nazi cops. I
Speaker 1: got too much other shit I gotta do after Paris.
Speaker 1: Daniker doesn't remain in Berlin long. He sent and he's
Speaker 1: forgiven for his misdeeds.
Speaker 2: He's sent to.
Speaker 1: Bulgaria in nineteen forty three to arrange the deportation of
Speaker 1: some eleven thousand and four Jews to farious death camps.
Speaker 1: He follows the Eichman playbook in this interfacing with a
Speaker 1: newly created Bulgarian Commissar for Jewish Affairs to arrange the deportations.
Speaker 1: In just two months, all eleven thousand people had been
Speaker 1: shipped by train to Trablinka or Auschwitz, where nearly half
Speaker 1: of them died. The dead included some two thousand children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean these guys the level of mass murderer the
Speaker 1: least of the ss men in Iikman's office commit is
Speaker 1: pretty outrageous.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine a more cursed title that
Speaker 2: we've spoken other than a Bulgarian Jewish commissar.
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh boy, like, oh your war crimes did
Speaker 1: war crimes?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This deportation met with little local resistance, as the Jews
Speaker 1: marked for expulsion were mainly from Thrace and Macedonia and
Speaker 1: thus not Bulgarian citizens. But Daniker's next move was to
Speaker 1: evacuate nearly fifty thousand Bulgarian Jews from Sophia, the capital.
Speaker 1: This was done and some forty eight thousand Jews were
Speaker 1: stripped of their property and forced into a camp outside
Speaker 1: the city. However, this sparked resistance because again, these aren't foreigners, right,
Speaker 1: these are Bulgarian, you know. Jason Dossi writes, quote outrage
Speaker 1: from Dimatarbashev, the deputy speaker of the parliament, clergy from
Speaker 1: the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and representatives of communities where these
Speaker 1: Jews resided pushed King Boris the Third to intervene Bashev,
Speaker 1: who was forced to resign his position, still appealed to
Speaker 1: the honor of Bulgaria, wanting that our nation's reputation would
Speaker 1: be stained forever and its moral and political standing forever
Speaker 1: compromised if deportations ensued. Boris acquiesced and prevented the removal
Speaker 1: of Bulgaria's Jewish populace. And we can see this as
Speaker 1: both there's legitimate heroism here which saves a lot of lives, right, right,
Speaker 1: of course, but also any pride in this has to
Speaker 1: be tempered by the fact that all these guys are
Speaker 1: only moved to act against the Nazis because now citizens
Speaker 1: were being deported, right, these Macedonian Jews and whatever, it's
Speaker 1: if they get exterminated, no one's going to speak up, right,
Speaker 1: But now you're going after Bulgarian Jews, and we've got
Speaker 1: to say something, right.
Speaker 2: Of course, they shouldn't even be here. They're like they
Speaker 2: you know, they broke the law just crossing them.
Speaker 1: I mean, Christ, you can't just break the law, right,
Speaker 1: that's fucked up.
Speaker 2: Look, I wouldn't have voted for Hitler if he was
Speaker 2: gonna start going after the good ones, right right, right,
Speaker 2: these are the good ones. You know. He was only
Speaker 2: supposed to go after the criminals.
Speaker 1: You know, and had the Nazi regime lasted, Iichman and
Speaker 1: his colleagues would have taken another stab at this group
Speaker 1: that King Boris helps to protect. As it was, things
Speaker 1: were going pretty badly for the Nazis by the summer
Speaker 1: of forty three, and the work of extermination was taking
Speaker 1: on an air of dire urgency. By this point, Danniker's
Speaker 1: qualities had been recognized outside the SD and Eichman's protege
Speaker 1: was sent by the Gestapo chief to Rome, which had
Speaker 1: just been occupied by the Nazis after Mussolini's overthrow. Eichman
Speaker 1: by this point was the most prestigious name in the
Speaker 1: genocide business. His obsessive need to stamp his name on
Speaker 1: every part of the Holocaust, even in actions at which
Speaker 1: he had little to know known involvement, insured him steady
Speaker 1: promotions and regular direct contact with Himmler. It also got
Speaker 1: him the attention of the international press. He and his
Speaker 1: friend Calton Brunner would brag to each other about their
Speaker 1: respective war criminal ranks during social events. Iichman later recalled, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how they frame it. They're like looking at for
Speaker 1: impressed and be like, ah, man, I'm a higher ranking
Speaker 1: war criminal than you now, Calton Brunner.
Speaker 2: Ha ha, Right. You know what's impressive is that I don't
Speaker 2: really think that there's like a lot of competition because
Speaker 2: nobody else wanted to put their fucking name on it.
Speaker 1: Right, everyone else is too smart to like stamp their
Speaker 1: fucking last, first and last name on this shit. Eichman
Speaker 1: later recalled quote I found the war criminals in a
Speaker 1: press review once. I was number nine, and I had
Speaker 1: a bit of a laugh about it, all right, and
Speaker 1: he will, he'll go back and forth between I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: I was nine, I was number one, right, depending on
Speaker 1: who he's talking to.
Speaker 2: After that, Oh, bro, you were never number one. Called
Speaker 2: down you were like, I'll give credit, you were easy
Speaker 2: top ten. But you know, whatever considered you number one,
Speaker 2: I'll believe nine nine is credible. Right, Yeah, you're making
Speaker 2: the playoffs. Good for you? Sure, Yeah, you're in the
Speaker 2: war crime playoffs. Yeah, you and Calton Brunner.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, as the war neared its end,
Speaker 1: Adolf Eichmann was about to do something that would skyrocket
Speaker 1: him to the top of that list. In November of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Germany had signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy
Speaker 1: and Japan, officially creating the Axis Powers, and they considered
Speaker 1: it a priority to sign on as many new allies
Speaker 1: as possible, given out things had gone the last time
Speaker 1: Germany was isolated in an international war. Hungary's regent was
Speaker 1: a guy named Admiral Niklos Horthy, and he was offered
Speaker 1: the honor of becoming the fourth member of the club,
Speaker 1: but German diplomat Joaquem von Ribbentrop tacitly threatened that Romania
Speaker 1: might be allowed to join first if Hungary dithered. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Horthy signed up, and this would prove to be a
Speaker 1: catastrophic mistake. Horthy, who had served the Old Empire in
Speaker 1: World War One, had seen World War Two as a
Speaker 1: chance to regain lost Hungarian territory and make his country
Speaker 1: great again.
Speaker 2: Right, we did some good last time, boys War one?
Speaker 1: Was I mean, if it could have worked better if
Speaker 1: we just did a couple of things different, right?
Speaker 2: I love that the Nazis are so fucking stupid, righty, Like, Look,
Speaker 2: it didn't work out for us last night, but what
Speaker 2: if we allied with brought what I've got the band
Speaker 2: back together? Yeah? Oh, man.
Speaker 1: God, you know now as you think about it, Italy
Speaker 1: really is the Pete Best of World War One, right.
Speaker 2: Or reverse Pete Best. I guess I don't know the
Speaker 2: Patrick Stump of World War one.
Speaker 1: Hungarian troops. This seemed to work at first right. World
Speaker 1: War two initially is go is kind of working like
Speaker 1: Orthy at hope. Hungarian troops get to invade the Balkans
Speaker 1: alongside the Wehrmacht, and by the spring of nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: Hungary was nearly tripled the size of where it had
Speaker 1: stood in nineteen thirty eight. Then came Operation Barbarossa and
Speaker 1: the invasion of the USSR. Hungry again sins troops, but
Speaker 1: this time there's no swift victory. Within months, thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the Hungarian army is killed or wounded too badly
Speaker 1: to fight.
Speaker 2: As tradition demands when Hungry goes to war.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're looking, if you're thinking
Speaker 1: from like a military planning standpoint, if you have lost
Speaker 1: thirty percent of your forces killed or injured, you no
Speaker 1: longer have an effective army. It sounds like seventy percent
Speaker 1: is a lot. It's not enough. You've lost too much
Speaker 1: of your command and control too much. You have to
Speaker 1: reorganize at that point before you can continue fighting effectively.
Speaker 2: Yeah. From a military historian's perspective, I must say it
Speaker 2: is not good if you're planning a war at home today.
Speaker 2: Don't lose thirty percent of your forces at a year
Speaker 2: and a half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a catastrophe. In early nineteen forty three, the
Speaker 1: entire Hungarian second Army was smashed trying to anchor the
Speaker 1: German northern flank during the Battle of Stalingrad. Only twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the army survives the retreat home intact.
Speaker 2: Hey, at least there's something in common with Romanians now, right, right, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, from Hungary in Romania wiping out eighty percent of
Speaker 1: their army.
Speaker 2: Hey, fellas, you want to meet up inside of Stalogrid
Speaker 2: and die Stalograd. That's a nice name. I think things
Speaker 2: are gonna go well for us there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Horthy at this point, showing that he's smarter than Hitler,
Speaker 1: complains the war is lost right after Stalingrad. Horthy's like, well, fuck,
Speaker 1: there's literally no way we can pull a victory out
Speaker 1: of this one. And Hitler, for his part, complains that
Speaker 1: Hungarian soldiers had doomed the Wehrmacht, which is not really correct, you.
Speaker 2: Know, not true. Yeah, that is that is not true.
Speaker 2: Over on my show Lines of by Donkeys, we talked
Speaker 2: about Stalingrad for about six hours. Yeah. Look, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying Hungary would have won the battle, but they certainly
Speaker 2: didn't lose them the battle.
Speaker 1: Things were fucked by the point at which you know
Speaker 1: they can get into action in this way. Right, if you're,
Speaker 1: for one thing, if your entire battle plan comes down
Speaker 1: to the Hungarian army holding in the field, you have
Speaker 1: fucked up.
Speaker 2: Right, mind feure the army has been churned to Gulash.
Speaker 1: So Horthy had never been a good guy. I think
Speaker 1: we've made that clear. But he's not personally genocidal towards
Speaker 1: the Jews of his nation, right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't.
Speaker 1: Left to his own devices, he had no desire to
Speaker 1: wipe out the whole Jewish population of Hungary, and so
Speaker 1: for most of World War two, Hungarian Jews were fairly safe. Right,
Speaker 1: for most of the war, this is the best place
Speaker 1: and kind of broader, the kind of broader Nazi and
Speaker 1: that's the Allied territory, one of the better places to be.
Speaker 1: But Hitler now demanded that Horthy kill or put his
Speaker 1: Jews into camps. Horthy refused. He has no issue. Like
Speaker 1: they seize Jewish property to fund the war effort. He's
Speaker 1: fine with that, but he doesn't want because he sees
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: involved in a war crime of this scale right now,
Speaker 1: because we're not gonna win. There's going to be a
Speaker 1: butcher's bill to pay. As the Russians advanced, he and
Speaker 1: other Hungarian leaders tried to make a separate peace with
Speaker 1: the Allies. Hitler finds out, and he orders German troops
Speaker 1: to conquer the country in March of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: which they do easily because the Hungarians are very bad
Speaker 1: at having an army, right, even Thermacht can take them.
Speaker 2: Hungarian's military tradition. All right, they will lose every war
Speaker 2: they go in, but they'll be goddamn just thinking of it.
Speaker 2: A genocide. Be on the side of jenociders, yes, sure, sure,
Speaker 2: but we're not that active at it. We have our
Speaker 2: standards here in Hungary, yeah.
Speaker 1: Which is, will sit by and let it happen, right,
Speaker 1: that's right now. Orthy is kept on as a puppet
Speaker 1: leader for a time and as soon as Hungary was
Speaker 1: under the German occupation Hitler orders, the Jewish population wiped out.
Speaker 1: This is no mean task. There were somewhere between seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand and over eight eight hundred thousand Jews in
Speaker 1: Hungarian territory. Sometimes you'll hear around a million. Eikman is
Speaker 1: sent over to supervise the work of an Einst's commando
Speaker 1: especially assembled for the task. Daniker and other colleagues in
Speaker 1: the SD or there as well, and they handle a
Speaker 1: lot of the ground actions while Eichman coordinates this massive effort.
Speaker 1: What followed was one of the swiftest and bloodiest mass
Speaker 1: killings in human history. Per doctor Darsy's article, what happened
Speaker 1: in Hungary in the late spring and early summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four overwhelms our fragile capacities to imagine. It
Speaker 1: was simply a frenzy of killing. In May and June
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty four, four hundred and thirty seven thousand
Speaker 1: Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz Berkanal, and three hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety seven thousand were plunged into Berkeenhow's gas chambers.
Speaker 1: Their fate exhibited just how desperate, the Nazi regime was
Speaker 1: to finish the annihilation of European Jews, even as its
Speaker 1: hopes of winning the war disintegrated. Under increasing pressure, Horthy
Speaker 1: finally halted the deportations in July, temporarily sparing most of
Speaker 1: Budapest's Jewish populace. Eikman and Daniker bided their time. The
Speaker 1: removal of Fourthy three months later opened up new possibilities.
Speaker 1: When Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg openly offered sanctuary to Jeose
Speaker 1: in Budapest as Soviet troops near the capital city, the
Speaker 1: enraged Aikman turned to Daniker to raid the safe houses
Speaker 1: established by Wallenberg. Now, first off, that term frenzy of
Speaker 1: killing is the thing to remember when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: what did Iikman do? What the Daniker do? They Aikman
Speaker 1: is the man who masterminds this. This is on him
Speaker 1: more than any other single person, right.
Speaker 2: And it's telling how important he is in the hierarchy
Speaker 2: in general and how much everybody relies on them when
Speaker 2: they're like, we have this insurmountable killing goal in mind,
Speaker 2: we have to bring in our experts. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: him and his boy Yeah, and it's Aikman arrayed against
Speaker 2: Wallenberg right in trying to Wallenberg is trying to save
Speaker 2: this Jewish population and Eikmen is trying to annihilate it.
Speaker 2: And we've done a reverse bash. It's a Christmas episode
Speaker 2: on Wallenberg. He's one of the.
Speaker 1: Great heroes our species ever produced. In the war's waning days,
Speaker 1: he was Aikman nemesis, granting fake Swedish documents to every
Speaker 1: Jew he could find. You're a Swedish citizen, you're a
Speaker 1: Swedish resident, you got a green card.
Speaker 2: They can't kill you. You're a Swede. Right the hand
Speaker 2: reaches out your hand for the paperwork and just smashing
Speaker 2: meatballs in every single fucking one nor they can't support
Speaker 2: you with a meatball in your hand. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: sure official Swedish paperwork.
Speaker 1: These are not. There's nothing legal in legitimate. Only Wallenberg's
Speaker 1: charisma is backing these documents up. But he is so
Speaker 1: good at what he's doing that a lot of ss
Speaker 1: men back off because he's like, look, if you're seen
Speaker 1: violating the law here all make sure you get your
Speaker 1: due when the war is over, right, And they're so
Speaker 1: fucking scared of him that he saves by some accounts
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people. There's a lot of debate about
Speaker 1: these numbers, but it's in the tens of thousands at
Speaker 1: the very least personally.
Speaker 2: And these men know the war is fucked at this point.
Speaker 2: No one, no one has illusions at this point, right,
Speaker 2: everybody's fully an eye have Like, look, the guy at
Speaker 2: the meat balls is telling me he's good, He's fucking good.
Speaker 1: Fucking yeah, fuck it. I don't want anymore of his
Speaker 1: guy with the meat ball. So Eikman calls Raoul the
Speaker 1: jew Dog Wallenberg and threatens to have Raoul and all
Speaker 1: other friends of Jews assassinated. Someone subsequently blows up Wallenberg's
Speaker 1: car and he only narrowly escapes. In her book Iikman
Speaker 1: Before Jerusalem, but Tina Stangneth describes Adolf Eikman in this
Speaker 1: period as almost mad, with a mix of desperation and megalomania.
Speaker 1: He could feel the walls closing in, but just as
Speaker 1: crucially as he feels the window closing, he feels that
Speaker 1: he might be losing out on his chance to achieve
Speaker 1: the only goal that matters to him at this stage,
Speaker 1: winning the war against European Jewry. And this is important
Speaker 1: you understand, the Nazis don't see this all as one war,
Speaker 1: the war against the Jews. Even though the war against
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe may be unwinnable, now the war
Speaker 1: against the Jews of Europe is still winnable. Right, we
Speaker 1: have to pull something.
Speaker 2: Out of this.
Speaker 1: Speaking of have we done our second advert?
Speaker 2: Soovie, no, here it is. We're back boy.
Speaker 1: Our sponsors really love being thrown to ads right after
Speaker 1: we talk about Aikman.
Speaker 2: Wanting to win the war against European Jewry. Well, hopefully
Speaker 2: the ad wasn't for like IBM or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Critical Partners and the Nazi war against European Jews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this ad brought to you by Hugo boss.
Speaker 1: Ah Man be a boss like Aikman. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: Nazi state was in chaos at this point. Eikman doesn't
Speaker 1: report kind of he's not technically on like an ORG chart.
Speaker 1: He's not directly reporting to Himler, but he basically is
Speaker 1: reporting to Himler. He's got regular meetings with the man,
Speaker 1: and so even though there's guys between him and Himmler
Speaker 1: on the ORG chart, Iikman outranks everyone above him except
Speaker 1: for Himmler because he's regularly talking to Himmler, and so
Speaker 1: whenever there's a disagreement, he can bring Himler in, right,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of how the Nazi state works more
Speaker 1: than like officially, here's who's reporting to who. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: but this guy can bring in Himmler, or this guy
Speaker 1: can bring in Gerring. Right, this guy could bring in
Speaker 1: Hitler directly, so he's effectively in charge.
Speaker 2: It's a whole power structure of his constant name dropping.
Speaker 1: Yes, fuck horrible, absolutely, that's how it works now. Iikman,
Speaker 1: as a show of how fucking important he is, he
Speaker 1: has access, in this late stage of the war to
Speaker 1: a private aircraft that he can travel around what remains
Speaker 1: of the crumbling Reich end That means he's a big man.
Speaker 1: And when he really wanted to impress another Nazi, Eikman
Speaker 1: would claim to have personal control over the gas chambers
Speaker 1: at Auschwitz. Right, I'm the guy running the gas chambers.
Speaker 1: That's his brag. Iikman's colleagues later recalled some of Iikman's
Speaker 1: most outrageous boasts, and these are all direct quotes from Iikman.
Speaker 1: I am a bloodhound. I'll set the mills of Auschwitz
Speaker 1: grinding and blood for goods. This was This is a
Speaker 1: reference to a promise that Iikman made. This in Hungary,
Speaker 1: aid in exchange for Jews. Right, that's the blood for
Speaker 1: goods program. You give us, Jews will give you the
Speaker 1: aid that you need to continue holding on.
Speaker 2: H Oh, God, that's like the most evil FOREI and
Speaker 2: aid package you've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Huff yeah, blood for Jews. His favorite line was simply,
Speaker 1: I'll inform Himmler, and his darkest boast was I'll do
Speaker 1: away with all the Jewish filth of Budapest. In the
Speaker 1: last months of nineteen forty four, Ikman makes constant trips
Speaker 1: back and forth from Budapest to Auschwitz, dealing with Commandant
Speaker 1: Hess personally to ensure the smooth operation of the chief
Speaker 1: genocide machine. In the Nazi Toolkit, Stangneth writes, he seemed
Speaker 1: to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Iikman talked so
Speaker 1: much and for so long that the people around him,
Speaker 1: ignorant of what was really going on, believed he might
Speaker 1: actually have been involved in the overthrow of Hungarian Reich
Speaker 1: administrator Miklos Horthy. Weslinsky claimed that in Hungary, Iikman boasted
Speaker 1: that he and Otto Globoschnik were behind the whole idea
Speaker 1: of exterminating the Jews. Eichman inflated his murderous lifetime achievement
Speaker 1: to crazy proportions and believe there was certain to be
Speaker 1: a monument erected to me in Budapest. He threatened his
Speaker 1: victims the prospect that after final victory, Hitler would make
Speaker 1: him world Commissar of the Jews. These are the things
Speaker 1: that Eichman is bragging about. And you can see this
Speaker 1: as maybe he's lost his mind a little bit at
Speaker 1: the end of the Reich, or you can see this
Speaker 1: as he knows where things are going, but he knows
Speaker 1: that these are the boasts that will give him just
Speaker 1: enough flex to accomplish his mission. Right, That's what matters
Speaker 1: to him at this stage.
Speaker 2: And I am curious, Like, he's not a dumb person,
Speaker 2: so he probably has to know that the war is lost.
Speaker 2: He sure does, But I am curious if he thought
Speaker 2: a lost war in their mind also include a complete
Speaker 2: loss of Nazi Germany itself, or if this is going
Speaker 2: to be more like a World War One situation where
Speaker 2: Germany just continues to exist. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's debatable at the point of which he knows
Speaker 1: even keeping that is not on the table anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But he, as we'll talk about in part four, he'll
Speaker 1: start he's starting to make plans in forty four for
Speaker 1: what he's going to do after the war, right, I
Speaker 1: think it really is. It just is his personal response.
Speaker 1: He feels personally a duty to kill as many of
Speaker 1: these people as he can, even though the war is over.
Speaker 1: That that's what's important to him morally, right, And it
Speaker 1: was his job, and it's his job, right, and he's
Speaker 1: going to do it.
Speaker 2: He's always been a dead eyed careerist, and if everybody
Speaker 2: else is failing, I bet he probably thinks the way
Speaker 2: to continue to stick out and feel great is to
Speaker 2: be successful when everything else is failing. Will I won't fail,
Speaker 2: you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Eikman is a master still at this late stage
Speaker 1: of shaping cloud and the perception of cloud into a
Speaker 1: weapon to get what he wants. In the case of Hungary,
Speaker 1: this allows him to oversee the slaughter of at least
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty seven, four hundred and two men,
Speaker 1: women and children in a matter of months. That is
Speaker 1: the number the Nazis officially document, so the real number
Speaker 1: is higher than that. Credible estimates of the number of
Speaker 1: people Aikman is responsible for organizing to kill in a
Speaker 1: matter of again months range up to almost six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand out of a pre war population of seven hundred
Speaker 1: to eight hundred thousand. Jesus, this is the most complete
Speaker 1: and fastest extermination of a Jewish population in Europe during
Speaker 1: the war. Fucking christ Horst Grel, the adviser on Jewish
Speaker 1: affairs for the Budapest Embassy, later claimed that during this time,
Speaker 1: Aikman bragged the enemy had promoted him to war criminal
Speaker 1: number one, and he's not super exaggerating at this stage, right.
Speaker 1: He would then repeat a German saying that translates to
Speaker 1: many enemies much honor. The more people are talking about
Speaker 1: me as a monster, the more honor I have for
Speaker 1: what I've done. Eikman was so good at what he
Speaker 1: did that other ss men begin using his name in
Speaker 1: the same way he used Himmler's. When Kurt Becker, one
Speaker 1: of Eikman's professional rivals, got stalled in negotiations over the
Speaker 1: expropriation of Jewish property, he threatened to get Aikman involved.
Speaker 1: After the war, Eichman himself would brag every department was
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze everything possible out of the Jews, to
Speaker 1: winkle it out by threatening them with the big bad Aikman.
Speaker 2: He must have fucking loved that.
Speaker 1: He does, but he also he's smart enough to know
Speaker 1: we're not gonna win. And so now this reputation, the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm getting accredited for crimes I hadn't committed,
Speaker 1: which is happening because I wanted that, right.
Speaker 2: And I used to take credit for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a problem now right now that like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not gonna win.
Speaker 2: The fact that you're getting blamed for shit you didn't
Speaker 2: even do is an issue, right, Well, well, well if
Speaker 2: it isn't the consequences of my ass.
Speaker 1: Right right, by early forty five, he knows these days
Speaker 1: are numbered, and everyone including Iikman, increasingly knows that. Right.
Speaker 1: This is part of why colleagues like Becker are eager
Speaker 1: to use his name. It's not just that it gets
Speaker 1: shit done, but it allows them to divert their own
Speaker 1: responsibility for genocide onto Iikman.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Iikeman's the guy making this happen. It's all Hikman,
Speaker 1: not me.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the difference between swinging from the end
Speaker 2: of a rope or doing like five years in prison
Speaker 2: and then being a government job in West Germany. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: oh boy, Holocaust was off.
Speaker 1: You know, we were all it's like that scene in
Speaker 1: a hot Rod where his friend's stolen the TV and
Speaker 1: he's like, boy, riots are so terrible. You just got
Speaker 1: to get out as fast as you can. Right, Everyone's like, wow,
Speaker 1: the Holocaust awful. Can you believe what that Iikman guy
Speaker 1: made me do?
Speaker 2: Fucked up? Incredible.
Speaker 1: So, in the last months of the Reich, as it
Speaker 1: becomes clear to everyone what's happening, Eikman's going to become
Speaker 1: a pariah within the sd right, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be associated with this motherfucker any
Speaker 1: more directly than I have to. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that and how he gets himself out of this for
Speaker 1: a shocking length of time in part four. But first, Joe,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how you're gonna get yourself out of
Speaker 1: this podcast by plugging your pluggables.
Speaker 2: I am the host of the Lions of My Donkey's podcast.
Speaker 2: We talk about military history and history of genocides, war crimes,
Speaker 2: other uplifting things like that. So if you want to
Speaker 2: hear more about Stalingrad. We did hours upon hours about
Speaker 2: that or other genocides like Rwanda, or the Armenian genocide
Speaker 2: or her Aeronama genocide, things of that nature. All we've
Speaker 2: talked about that as well, So come listen to it,
Speaker 2: and it will not improve your mood.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, yeah, speaking of things that won't improve your mood.
Speaker 1: The next episode of this podcast coming out Thursday.
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