WEBVTT - Part Three: Adolf Eichmann: Mr. Holocaust Himself 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:08.600 Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards of podcasts 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:13.399 about the very worst people in all of history. We 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.760 are talking about Adolph Eichman this week and last week. 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.160 Last week we got through his childhood and his early 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.680 rise through the SD, which is the ss' Security Division, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.040 to become the in his words, czar of the Jews 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:33.520 for Nazi Germany. And today, with our guest Joe Kasabian, 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.560 we're talking about what happens to Iikman as the war 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:38.680 moves towards its final phase. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:40.200 How you doing, Joe? 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:42.120 Excited to hear about this guy. I think he's gonna 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:44.600 finally break good in this last two parts. 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.000 I gotta say I'm not super optimistic that he's gonna 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:54.280 have a redemption arc. I dressed up for this episode 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.319 because I I was surprised last time, so now I'm 0:00:57.360 --> 0:00:59.000 just wearing a shirt. This has all pain. 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:04.920 Yeah, I'm treating this like people were treating like the 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.000 second half of and Or, where they were hoping their 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.959 favorite like Monster Imperial characters, like oh, this guy's going 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:12.319 to totally turn out good at the end, right, Yeah, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.200 this is our moment like that for Iikman. 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:16.800 Yeah, most Nazis are not in fact, the one from 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:18.600 the Pianist No No. 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:29.080 Where we left off in part two, he had gone 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:31.800 on a fact finding mission to eastern Europe, and the 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.399 fairly early stages of Operation Barbarossa were the first parts 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.839 of what we now know as the actual killing stage 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.320 of the Holocaust began, which was a mix of you know, 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.080 gas bands showing up outside of various villages and Eindset's 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.800 group and units just doing mass shootings. Well, Iikman's watching 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:49.840 all that, and he's taking notes, and he's figuring out, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.160 how do you actually kill a lot of like a 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.800 shitload of people, like more people, like as many more 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.160 people than would have died in a war a generation 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.200 or two ago. We've got to like figure out to 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.240 get rid of while we're fighting a war. 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:03.960 How do we do that? Right? 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:06.600 And all of this is preparation for a big old 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.160 meeting they're going to have called the Vonse Conference in 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.919 early nineteen forty two. So that's where we are right now, 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.799 And yeah, that's what we're hurtling towards at the moment. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.240 And the problem the Nazis are dealing with as the 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.760 war in the East starts to turn against them is 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.360 they've got a logistical hurdle on their hands. They have 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.920 captured way more Jews than they know how to handle, 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.760 and they have no real process for dealing with them. 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:33.679 If you think back to the numbers we were talking 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.240 about in the first parts of this series, they're dealing 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:38.600 with a couple one hundred thousand people at a time. 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.320 As you know, they take over Austria, as they take 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:45.280 over Czechoslovakia, and then you know more when they take 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.360 over Poland. But now they've captured this huge chunk of 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.359 what had been the Soviet Union. They got millions of 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:54.840 people on their hands, right, and these earlier decisions they 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:56.720 had to make about what should we do? Do we 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.119 deport these people? Do we find a place for them? 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.240 The decision moves towards like all we can do is 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:06.080 annihilate them, right, But we we have a limit in 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.760 our war material and a limit in how many soldiers 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:10.200 we can have actually kill people. 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.760 And not to mention, like how many people are willing 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:18.200 to drive insane, right and drink themselves to death by 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:20.080 turning them into executioners. 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:22.960 That's a major problem for the SS at this stage. 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:23.280 Right. 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.640 So many of the sources that you'll find on Eichmann 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.799 will point out that he never really wrote policy, right, 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:35.080 he was just an implementation guy. And this is accurate 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.120 technically in some ways, but I don't think it is 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:38.600 in a way that matters, right. 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.000 I think policy wonk. 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.560 Yeah, he really kind of was right. He's not the 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.280 author of a bunch of stuff, but he's like, he's 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.480 part of the process of authoring a lot of things. 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:52.600 And he does help create policies, particularly like where the 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:55.800 treatment of people with partial Jewish as history is concerned. 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.120 And he's got this foundational role in how the Nazi 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.360 state interacts with captured Jewish communities and deports them. 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:02.560 Right. 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.360 And that's he's not literally writing out policies all the time, 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.320 but he is effectively making policy in all but name. Now, 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.120 that said, he doesn't give the order to start the Holocaust, right, 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.080 that's obviously not his call. That happens way above his head, 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.880 which begs the question, then who does right you would 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.080 expect in an organization as hierarchical as the Nazis, there's 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:24.800 someone we could trace to like and this is the 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.599 moment the order was given. Right, We don't actually, we 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.760 don't directly have that, right. We know Eichmann helps organize 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.640 and facilitate the von Se conference where it's planned, and 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.359 this is on orders of his boss, Reinhardt Heidrich, and 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.560 Heydrich takes his orders, you know, from Himmler and from Hitler. 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.520 But we don't have any record of Himmler or Hitler saying, Okay, 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.400 it's time to do the Holocaust now, right, because that's 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:48.640 just not the way any of this works, right. 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.320 And man man has that led to a lot of 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.600 problems and then Holocaust denial and Hitler rehabilitation and right, 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:56.640 you fucking name it. 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.680 Yeah, we have no evidence of Hitler saying we've got 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.000 to do that, and that kind of feeds into at 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.040 the time, a lot of people in Nazi Germany who 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.480 were often annoyed or even horrified by aspects of the regime, 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:10.760 by things the s S and the SD did, right, 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.560 would be like, well, but Hitler clearly doesn't know about this, right, 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.520 like he's got he can't have any idea this is 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.240 going on, and this is something Hitler, you know, this 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.640 is the smart way to play shit. As a totalitarian dictator, 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.080 you don't want your name attached to everything the regime 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:27.400 is doing, especially shit that's not going to work out 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:32.080 or that's more experimental. You need plausible deniability, right, even 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:32.840 if you're Hitler. 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.080 Yeah, not every tyrant or dictator is going to have 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:40.560 a camp called like the Hitler Camp for undesirables. 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:44.120 Right, right, that's that's just bad business. And the Nazi 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.760 regime again, there's this attitude and this really is something 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.040 that causes people who even aren't trying to do Nazi 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:54.480 apologia to do apologia for regular people under the Nazi system, 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.039 there's this errand idea that like, well, normal people had 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:00.360 no choice but to go along with what the regime 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.080 has doing. It was so dangerous. Any degree of resistance 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:04.919 would have gotten you killed, would have gotten your family 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.160 wiped out. At no point in the history of the 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:08.640 Nazi regime was that true. 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:09.239 Right. 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.479 There were no no, no members of the Nazi state 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.120 and like were ever executed or punished for just refusing 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:18.560 to take part in the Holocaust. 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:22.880 Right, Most of them were out, yes, and people could 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:27.159 take it, right, Like the Nazi reserve police battalions had 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:31.360 to volunteer, yes, to do the Holocaust by bullets, and 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:33.560 they overwhelmingly volunteered. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.600 Yeah, And people who said no didn't have their families 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:38.040 killed or themselves killed. 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.719 Right, they didn't even get demoted, they just got moved 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:41.359 somewhere else. 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.039 So much choice was involved and being part of the 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.360 worst aspects of the regime, and there was in fact 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:52.760 internal criticism inside Nazi Germany, and the regime even buckled 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.040 under that criticism at times. When word of the T 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.239 four euthanasia program broke out, which was basically the gassing 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.440 of you know, to say, people by the Nazi state, 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.479 there was backlash among German civilians, and that backlash was 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.599 significant enough that it made Hitler number one. They backed 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.560 away publicly on the program, and it made Hitler wary 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.480 in the future of putting further policies of mass murder. 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.760 In writing, and I want to quote from an article 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.400 by Kevin Sweeney in the journal Constructing the Past. Here, 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:23.600 between nineteen forty and nineteen forty one, the German people's 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.440 negative reaction became increasingly vocal and vehement, culminating in Hitler 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.760 being openly jeered by a crowd watching mentally challenged patients 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.160 being loaded onto a trade at a rail station in Hoff, 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:37.240 Bavaria in nineteen forty one. Ultimately, this negative public reaction 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.400 to the T four program in Hitler's sanctioning of it, 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.960 bolstered by denunciations from Catholic and Protestant church leaders, forced 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.560 Hitler to publicly cancel the program in August of nineteen 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.560 forty one, though it continued in secret until nineteen forty five. 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.800 So again people yelled at Hitler over this and he 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.440 backed down, right, Like, that's such a critical part of 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:57.080 the story of how this regime worked. 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.320 Do you also think this is something that is batted 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:03.880 around a bit in my field of research, where it's 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.240 just like, this is the one that was taking average 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.920 Germans family members away as well. Yes, everybody was connected 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:12.280 to it. 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.400 Yes, And there were other times where that happened, Right. 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:17.880 There was a moment where they started deporting people who 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.960 had like one Jewish relative but weren't like religiously Jewish 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.400 and were married into you know, gentile German families. They 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:26.760 were protests, and they had to publicly back off of 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:28.600 that because Germans were like, well, but these guys aren't 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:30.480 really Jewish, right, what are you doing here? 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:30.920 You know? 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.200 Yeah, Like, moments like that happened, and the state was 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.040 always conscious of how far they were pushing people, right, 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.840 which meant that the state could be pushed now because 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.520 of all of this, there's not a clear order to like, Okay, 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.200 Hitler signed this paper saying kill everybody, right, and this 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:50.960 has led even within it. And again, these are none 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:53.160 of these people are what you'd call denialists. But there 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:55.720 was a debate for a very long time, like half 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.880 a century between historians who specialized in the Holocaust between 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:04.680 what are generally called intentionalists and functionalists. And the intentionalists 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.880 argue that Hitler personally instigated the final solution. The functionalists 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.360 argued that it arose naturally as a result of the 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.680 structure of the Third Reich. Now this debate is mostly done. 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:18.000 We don't really this is like I think people will 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:19.640 talk about in terms of the history of how we 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.040 looked at this. There's not much argument here anymore. A 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.680 preponderance of evidence that exists today proves that Hitler that 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.559 basically aspects of both of these are very true. 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:31.880 Right, Yeah, I was actually going to point that out. 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:36.240 There's more, there's a third camp, which I generally fall into, yeah, 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.720 which is like Hitler ordered it. However, a lot of 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:42.800 it arose from the structure. It was not the state. Yeah, 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:45.120 both of the did it would have happened. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.960 Yeah, Hitler premeditated on the slaughter of European jewelry. And 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.679 also the functionalists have some very good points. One piece 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.720 of evidence for the intentionalists that often get cited that 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.360 is important when we talk about Hitler's premeditation is an 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:00.959 interview Hitler gave in nineteen twenty to a journalist where 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.240 he said, once I really am in power, my first 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.680 and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews, 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:06.480 as soon as they. 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:07.360 Have the power to do so. 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:08.040 Yeah. 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:09.959 Yeah, And he's like, I. 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.000 Will have the gallows built in rows and the Jews 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.360 will be hanged indiscriminately until all of Germany has been 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.440 completely cleansed of Jews. That's pretty hard. That's like not 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:20.480 you know, we can state that is pretty clear evidence 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:22.080 of intent, right, Yeah. 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.480 And mine Komf also kind of really lays it out there. 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:28.319 Yeah, Yeah, there's not a lot, there's there's a it's 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.680 hard to argue he didn't say regularly what he planned 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:32.880 to do, right. 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.480 It's what he's known for, it's his bit. 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.480 It's his whole thing. And obviously the fact that he 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.160 said all this doesn't mean Hitler wrote out the plan 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.840 for Auschwitz or ever. Like, he's not the guy. He 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:45.960 didn't tell everyone, Okay, we're gonna do an Auschwitz and 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.240 here's how it's gonna work. Right, He was like, we 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.760 got to kill these guys. Figure it out. I'm Hitler, 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:52.800 I got Hitler stuff to do, right, Like, there's a 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.000 lot of a lot of tasks on my hand. You 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.760 guys locked down how we're going to handle this, right, 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.600 And there were always other possibility up until you know, 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.760 things start to turn for them in the East. It's 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.640 not a guarantee that mass slaughter is the only thing 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:08.319 that we've done for all of these captured people. I 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:10.160 think there was a point in which something like the 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.600 Madagascar plan, if that itself was never really feasible, could 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:15.520 have been done for some amount of people, right. 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:17.559 But at a. 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:19.600 Certain point, the only thing they were going to do 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.200 was was genocide. And Hitler had repeatedly countenanced that and 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.320 urged that throughout his career. In nineteen thirty nine, he 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.679 told the Czech Ford and Minister, we are going to 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:30.880 destroy the Jews. They are not going to get away 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.040 with what they did. On November ninth, nineteen eighteen, the 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.840 Day of Reckoning has come. Eichmann himself would later claim 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.199 under interrogation that Reinhard Heidrich had told him about plans 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.960 for the Holocaust as early as August nineteen forty one. 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.400 And this is Heydrich talking to an interrogator. The war 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:48.920 with the Soviet Union began in June nineteen forty one. 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.200 I believe it was two months later that Heydrich sent 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:53.640 for me. I reported he began with a little speech, 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:57.120 and then the fearer has ordered physical extermination of the Jews. 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:00.319 Then Heydrich said, go and see ss ober group and 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.719 fuer otto Globotschnik. The fur has already given him instructions. 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.840 And you know that doesn't mean that's exactly what happened, 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.640 because Eichman lies under interrogation. But there's a good amount 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.560 of evidence to suggest that's pretty much what happened. Right, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.040 we haven't talked. We'll talk about Globoschnik one of these days. 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:20.800 He's a really interesting Nazi, And from what we know 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.800 of Hydrich and of him, this is pretty feasible, right, 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:26.040 that something like this is basically what went down. There's 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.160 a lot of outside kind of evidence that this is 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:29.520 pretty close to what happened. 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.880 Those ideas definitely would have flowed through hydrich. 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.080 Yes yes, through hydric and probably through globotschnik too, in 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.760 a similar way to how it's described here. And Bettina 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:42.720 Stangneth basically argues that Eichman was given the job of 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.360 planning the vonse conference, nothing to coordinate all the different 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.160 government branches. He'd played a role in the genocide because 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.040 he'd made himself the Reich's gopher in anything related to 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.480 the Jewish question. He's just the guy you reach for 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:55.400 when you're like, well, we need someone to pull all 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.360 of these things we've been doing together and plan the 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.200 execution of the Holocaust. You've got Eikman, right. You already 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:03.800 know he knows how to do this kind of shit, 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.080 so you pull for him. Stengneth writes when others were 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.160 at a loss, he was the man they called on. 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.319 For example, a professor at Strasburg University was adamant he 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.320 wanted the schools of Jewish Bolshevik commissars to add to 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.839 a collection of skeletons, despite the fact that they were 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:20.600 still alive. And Eikman's the guy who gets pulled in 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:22.840 to do that. He's just already been the kind of 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.160 we need someone to handle this unpleasant implementation that's going 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.000 to involve killing a lot of people, right, Well, iikmans, 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:29.520 who does that? 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:31.920 You know? Of course that's a collection that existed at 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:36.440 a German univers That's a German university's collection, right, I 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:40.160 mean recently a German university I forget which one, maybe 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.480 it was Salzburg discovered Oh we still have all these 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.199 boxes of human skulls right from the Herrero and Nama 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:51.319 jediside just like oops, oops, yeah, oops skulls. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.000 Look, you don't want to go too deep into the 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:58.120 into the archive section of any German or British university 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.080 or any American university than a certain age. 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.960 Honestly, I should, I should point out due to my 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:08.280 family's land deeds. Or Turkish university, yeah, or Turkish universites. 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.640 Very few old universities do you want. And honestly, the 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.040 Vatican sub basements, we don't really want to get into 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:15.080 those too deep either. 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:17.280 Those stay locked. Yeah, those. 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:23.160 Us, Yeah, there's some there's some fucking first Indiana Jones movie. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:28.480 Shit if you go deep enough in that. So as 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.000 the death camps spun up to full operation in the 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.680 years following Von Say Eichmann was set to the task 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:37.960 of organizing the registration, collection, and eventual deportation or evacuation 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.360 of captive Jewish populations to the camps. By this point, 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:43.160 he was highly placed enough and the job was big 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.880 enough that he often sent out trusted subordinates to handle 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:48.920 the on the groundwork for him, involving himself directly if 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.320 he felt their progress was too slow, and acting as 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.160 a wrecking ball whenever his people encountered resistance from local 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.520 government officials. And this resistance is usually not we have 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.520 a moral issue with what's happening. Sometimes it's actually later 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:02.640 in the war it's a mix of that, or they're 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.520 just worried that they'll get blamed for it because they 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:06.560 could see where things are coming. But a lot of 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.560 the times it's more, well, we need supplies for other things, 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.680 right Like, we have issues that are a bigger priority 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.040 to us in the general government of Poland or whatever 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.080 than the annihilation of these people, And why are we 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.000 focusing on this? And Eichman will come in and say, 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.120 fuck off, this is the priority, right Like. That's kind 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.600 of part of his job, and one of his personal 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.480 obsessions is ensuring that no individual Jews are exempted from 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.440 the final solution. This is more of an issue than 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.960 you might expect. It was often said that every Nazi 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.920 had their good Jew, or even recognized a handful of 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.640 good Jews that ought to be spared. And in fact 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.480 this extends to Hitler, as I bring up on this 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.280 show every now and then, he interviewed personally to save 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:51.960 his childhood doctor, a Jewish man who he viewed as 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:52.800 a decent person. 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.520 Right, and his personal driver, Emil Maurice. 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:59.080 Yeah right, there were guys, right and ladies right that 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.280 every even a lot of the worst of the Nazis had, 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.400 they would be like, well, this, this person should be spared. 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:05.400 Eichmann. 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:07.520 One of the things that makes him noteworthy is he 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.360 doesn't have these people, right, and he actually sees it 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.880 as his personal job to make sure none of the 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:15.960 like every even the worst of the ss are soft 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:18.040 towards a Jew here and there. I have to make 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:20.600 sure those people don't escape the drag net as much 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:21.240 as possible. 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:23.800 Right, that's supposed to be more evil than the most 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:24.320 evil men. 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.960 Hitler, Yeah, that's part of his job here. I've got 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.120 to be harder even than the boss. You know, Hitler's 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.400 you know he's too soft. He could be soft on 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:36.120 this issue, take up the slack. Yeah, you know, Hitler 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.000 real soft of the Jewish issue. Yeah, yeah, at least 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:41.240 softer than he's willing to be. And this is a 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:43.640 thing that comes down from Hydrich to Heydrick's very much 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:48.440 similar in this attitude, right, So, and again it's kind 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.280 of when we talk about his complicity. He doesn't order 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:53.720 any of this, but his job is to make sure 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:56.000 it's as total a victory for the Nazis as he 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:58.920 can manage. And while his role here is important, we 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.240 shouldn't neglect a highlight other major figures behind the final solution, 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.119 including Aikman's childhood friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, as well as Heinrich Mueller, 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.840 Theodore Daniker, Dieter Weslinsky, Franz Novak, and a bunch of 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:14.840 other young men in Hitler's SSNSD. And it's really worth 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.120 emphasizing how young a lot of the people doing this are. 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:22.440 That the Holocaust is committed primarily from an implementation stage 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.439 by very young, ambitious men. An article for the National 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.280 World War II Museum by doctor Jason Dawesy notes of 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.440 Eikman's peers quote. None of them had reached the age 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.480 of thirty five when World War two ended. They exhibited 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:39.400 a terrifying combination of attention to detail and steadfast commitment 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:44.320 to the core ideas of Nazism. Reynhard Heidrich himself, Eikman's boss, 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:46.920 was thirty eight when he was killed by Czech partisans 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.240 in June of nineteen forty two, just a few months 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.960 after the Vonse Conference. We've already covered Hydrich in other episodes, 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.480 and there's not enough time in these ones to discuss 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.800 all of Eikman's subordinates and colleagues, the guys at his level. 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.320 But we should talk about one of his men in 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:04.040 order to kind of tell the story of several others, right, 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.040 because I don't want it to look like I never 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.200 wanted to be like a great man thing where Eikman's 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:10.679 the only one kind of at this level of importance. 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:12.919 There are other guys who are at similar levels, and 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.359 one of them is his subordinate, Theodore Daniker. Right, And 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:18.520 we'll talk a little bit about Daneker, both because he's 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.280 a monster worth knowing and because his story tells us 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:25.199 something important about how Eikman operated. Daniker was born in 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:29.119 March of nineteen thirteen in Tubingen, southwest Germany. His father 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.480 was a member of the comfortable middle class, as a 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.240 lot of these guys are, and was a businessman until 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.600 he died in nineteen eighteen fighting for the Kaiser. Theodore 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:39.720 was raised by his mom and he grows up number 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.720 one angry about the war, believing in the stabbed in 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.040 the back myth like all of these guys do. And 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.080 other than that, he's kind of mediocre, right. His family 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:52.760 was used to being more comfortable than they are after 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.600 the war. He wants to do better. He feels like 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.560 he's owed it, but he's not very good at anything, 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:03.080 like eichmansocre student, right, he makes no real impact on 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.879 his professors, and there's no signs that he's going to 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.800 go on to have a really significant career. He's just 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.280 kind of mid. Right. These are all very young, very 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.359 mid guys who are given in their only chance to 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.199 be excellent is with the Nazi Party. 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:24.159 Man, that is unfortunate. We need some kind of jobs 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:26.800 program for dudes who are solidly mid. 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.600 It's this thing I come up with with, like guys 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.000 like Ben Shapiro, like all of these dudes in the 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:33.600