Speaker 1: M hm. Hitler is a guy we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about a lot today because we're talking about The Dullest
Speaker 1: Brothers Part two, and we'll be covering their time in
Speaker 1: the war, which involves a lot of Nazis. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is you know, Behind the Bastards. You should know
Speaker 1: that this is the second episode we're doing on this series.
Speaker 1: And my guest is again Jason Targeant. Jason, how are
Speaker 1: you doing? Do some people start with part two of
Speaker 1: a series like this? Do we have to catch them?
Speaker 1: Catch them up with if they are Jason, their maniacs,
Speaker 1: and I feel no need to pay ander to them.
Speaker 1: There's a question I did want to ask though, because
Speaker 1: when you left off the two Dullest Brothers, and again
Speaker 1: just because it's been a week or whatever, You've got
Speaker 1: the elder brother, Foster Dulles, who is not yet going
Speaker 1: he's going to be Secretary of State later. You've got
Speaker 1: the younger alan Um who was later going to take
Speaker 1: over the CIA. Right now, they're not doing that. Right now,
Speaker 1: they are helping to basically negotiate the post war post
Speaker 1: World War one piece with Germany correct and the terms
Speaker 1: of that that will wind up the terms of the
Speaker 1: piece of World War One set the stage for everything
Speaker 1: that comes after, right up until today. Yes, So how
Speaker 1: old are these brothers when that is occurring, Because they're
Speaker 1: not They're not very old. No, I mean like twenty,
Speaker 1: like like Allen. Well, yeah, in there, in there there.
Speaker 1: So Foster is older. Foster starts um college. Well, no,
Speaker 1: he starts high school in nineteen o four, so he's
Speaker 1: graduated by nineteen o eight. World War One starts when
Speaker 1: he's in his early twenties. He's in his late twenties,
Speaker 1: and Alan is in his early twenties. I think. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you think about your early twenties, would you
Speaker 1: have felt confident in your ability to redraw the map
Speaker 1: of post war Europe? Done a pretty good job? I
Speaker 1: think I could have, you know, because the the only
Speaker 1: people who have their ship together, uh, in all of
Speaker 1: Europe um in my opinion, my opinion Jason um is
Speaker 1: probably gonna be I don't know, uh, fucking Bosnia and
Speaker 1: I thing's ever gotten wrong there. Let's give it all
Speaker 1: to Bosnia. Let them figure it out. I think that's
Speaker 1: how I do it. You've got Greater Bosnia and then
Speaker 1: you got Russia. There could be an entire There have
Speaker 1: been entire, unsure, horrifying books written about the way that
Speaker 1: the map when after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: and everything else, like everything that's happening all the way
Speaker 1: through al Qaeda and ISIS, and everything comes down to
Speaker 1: in many ways, how those borders were drawn by people
Speaker 1: who in many cases had never even visited the places
Speaker 1: they were. And one of the most telling things in
Speaker 1: the world if you want to know understand a lot
Speaker 1: of why people in a lot of parts of the
Speaker 1: Middle East field the way they do and why things
Speaker 1: have gone the way they do, is the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people in the United States and England and France
Speaker 1: have never heard of the Psykes Pico Treaty. Every fucking
Speaker 1: kid in Iraq, in Syria knows what Psykes Pico was. Um,
Speaker 1: because it created their fucking world. Um, And it was
Speaker 1: a treaty that you know, Sykes and Picco. I think
Speaker 1: we're British and French guys, but um, it's um yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the period that period. Well that's happening.
Speaker 1: And I will say, you know, in fairness, redrawing the
Speaker 1: boundaries of Europe as a result of this conflict. What
Speaker 1: they're doing is not the same as what's being done
Speaker 1: to the Ottoman Empire, because that's much more violent and horrible.
Speaker 1: What like they had, they understand Europe a lot better. Um,
Speaker 1: they're often negotiating with the people who are running these
Speaker 1: countries because like they you know, they for one thing,
Speaker 1: think that Europeans get to have more input into what
Speaker 1: happens with their nations than than the people of the
Speaker 1: Ottoman former Ottoman territories. Yeah, it's just it's a very
Speaker 1: consequential period of world history. The same after World War One,
Speaker 1: the whole world order kind of gets reshuffled, and I
Speaker 1: think one of which of the Dullest brothers was dealing
Speaker 1: with Germany's repayment of their foster foster. Like how that
Speaker 1: comes down, that's gonna sow the seeds of everything, everything
Speaker 1: that happens up until today. Like it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: overstate how the mistakes are made at the time, and
Speaker 1: maybe things couldn't have been anticipated. I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: a whole separate deal. It's hard to overstate how important
Speaker 1: what their work was here up through until the time.
Speaker 1: Both of these men die. Because it is a personal
Speaker 1: beef of mind that when we talk about politics in
Speaker 1: America today, when we look for a historical example, we
Speaker 1: have like two, everyone is either Hitler or uh now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's everything is either four or Hitler,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. And I wish I wish you could insult
Speaker 1: the president by saying he's like Woodrow Wilson. And I
Speaker 1: wish you could insult an administration's foreign policy by saying
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the Dulles are in charge. To
Speaker 1: the average person today, like arguing on the internet those names,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you don't mean anything. They don't. And it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that's fascinating about this that you're
Speaker 1: kind of touching on is that when the most consequenceial
Speaker 1: decisions in modern history are being made, a number of
Speaker 1: people at the table are just some dudes, grandkids, you know,
Speaker 1: like the dullest brothers are not the only people who
Speaker 1: get in this position, including like the crowned heads of Europe.
Speaker 1: You could argue, but like, how much a factor this
Speaker 1: is that the people making these calls are all buddies
Speaker 1: and relatives of each other in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: It's different because in America we're not supposed to have
Speaker 1: royalty and and so. But when you but when you
Speaker 1: look and he said, well, gosh, how are these two
Speaker 1: guys fresh out of college or fresh out of the
Speaker 1: first jobs? Like sitting at the table help redraw what
Speaker 1: the future looks like. And it's like, oh, well, they
Speaker 1: were having dinner with foreign leaders when they were in kindergarten. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's there are classes of people who when you're growing up,
Speaker 1: you have the option of saying, well, do you want
Speaker 1: to go into your father's business to be a minister?
Speaker 1: Do you want to be secretaries? Stay like your grandfather,
Speaker 1: And that's one of the options. Uh. And you're just
Speaker 1: traveling in a circle of people and you have as
Speaker 1: you mentioned the previous episode, like their jobs they were
Speaker 1: getting at the time didn't pay much at all, totally
Speaker 1: irrelevant to this class of people. That's not what it's about.
Speaker 1: Like they are destined to be names and history books
Speaker 1: and so they have the money if they want to
Speaker 1: spend a year in India or do whatever they did
Speaker 1: to see these parts of the world and all these
Speaker 1: things would influence how they see the world. They have
Speaker 1: the ability to do that. You you didn't, you could
Speaker 1: not have have taken off and just you know, traveled
Speaker 1: around and all of this and failed your way upward
Speaker 1: the way Allen did. Yeah. Um, Now, Jason, as we
Speaker 1: get into this because we into the last episode, noting
Speaker 1: that this is the period the world, the end of
Speaker 1: World War One in which communism really gets fixed on
Speaker 1: the dullest boys radar right. And of course it would
Speaker 1: like it wasn't really a massive topic of discussion until
Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution that really made it something that a
Speaker 1: lot of American conservatives were obsessed about. Um because they see,
Speaker 1: you know, you see, like the business leaders in the
Speaker 1: crowned heads of of Russia get murdered and have their
Speaker 1: stuff taken, and it it scares a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But it is worth noting as we start this episode
Speaker 1: that the hardline anti communist attitudes that were adopted by
Speaker 1: Foster and alan a List immediately after the Russian Revolution
Speaker 1: were not necessarily the default even among conservatives. Herbert Fucking
Speaker 1: Hoover is one of the most conservative presidents in US history,
Speaker 1: and during this period of time he urged Woodrow Wilson
Speaker 1: to reevaluate the Bolshevik movement and acknowledge that it had
Speaker 1: quote true social ends and roots in quote grievous injustices
Speaker 1: to the lowest classes in all the countries that have
Speaker 1: been affected. Hoover warned that in the United States, the
Speaker 1: advancement of communist causes was directly the fault of American reactionaries,
Speaker 1: who had stimulated Bolshevism by viciously attacking social welfare programs. Now,
Speaker 1: if you know what anythan about Hoover, it's wild that
Speaker 1: he's the one saying this, but he is. History has
Speaker 1: gotten rewritten. Yeah, in terms of looking backward about and
Speaker 1: and and then in the same way where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we always hated the Nazis, so like, well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about that a lot, Jason, No,
Speaker 1: uh yeah. So the idea that the communism is like
Speaker 1: always antithnical to everything America. It's godless and it's there's
Speaker 1: no freedom, and it's like, well, like Herbert Hoover was saying,
Speaker 1: these guys have a point because what it replaced was
Speaker 1: not American style. We have this thing where it's like
Speaker 1: the whole world is either America or it's communist. It's like,
Speaker 1: but I mean, to his credit, he is very astute.
Speaker 1: Lee noting that one of the thing reasons these causes
Speaker 1: are being advanced in the United States is because reactionaries
Speaker 1: are refusing any kind of meaningful social welfare. Um, so
Speaker 1: he's not entirely like that is a That is a
Speaker 1: pretty astute observation. I would say it is a level
Speaker 1: of nuance on the subject that America would have would
Speaker 1: be in no mood for a few decades later. And
Speaker 1: again from one of one of the worst presidents in
Speaker 1: American history. The guy who who just kind of steers
Speaker 1: us right into the Great Depression is staying this amazing.
Speaker 1: Herbert so Woodrow Wilson and the Dullest Brothers did not
Speaker 1: listen to Herbert Hoover. Between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: President Wilson deployed the U. S. Army to suppress labor
Speaker 1: or racial unrest twenty five times. That's the Army, not
Speaker 1: the National Guard. We don't talk about that a lot either.
Speaker 1: The Dullest Brothers enthusiastically supported this. After the war, Allen
Speaker 1: continued his diplomatic career for a while, but eventually left
Speaker 1: to join his brother at Sullivan and Cromwell. Now by
Speaker 1: that point, Foster Dullas had been made a full partner
Speaker 1: in the firm, which was more powerful than ever. As
Speaker 1: the United States grew through the nineteen twenties to become
Speaker 1: the West's pre minute power, Sullivan and Cromwell continued to
Speaker 1: do the work of weaving their corporate clients into the
Speaker 1: very fabric of American governance. In the US, Foster Dullas
Speaker 1: presided over the merger of a group of oil drillers
Speaker 1: and refiners into a Moco. He worked with mining corporations
Speaker 1: in Chile and Peru, sugar plantations in Cuba, banks in France.
Speaker 1: He specialized in helping US utility companies take control of
Speaker 1: utilities and foreign nations, generally by bribing their governments. Alan's
Speaker 1: first post World War One posting was to the U.
Speaker 1: S Embassy in Turkey. Now again, he is technically a
Speaker 1: diplomat at this point, but his real job in all
Speaker 1: these postings is to gather intelligence. He's a spy, but
Speaker 1: at this point, again not a very good one, because
Speaker 1: as soon as Alan sets up shop in Turkey, he
Speaker 1: falls for the most obvious forgery of all time, the
Speaker 1: Protocols of the Elders. Yes, grats that one off your
Speaker 1: Bengo card, and then really evaluate reevaluate your life. If
Speaker 1: you have a bingo card with the Protocols of the
Speaker 1: Elders of Zion on it, that's maybe think about. If
Speaker 1: you're a podcast listener, I'm sorry, you can't go very
Speaker 1: many podcast episodes without running into it, either in a
Speaker 1: good way or a very bad way. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot here. One day,
Speaker 1: the young American diplomat was given a copy of the
Speaker 1: Protocols of the Elders of Zion by a British reporter
Speaker 1: who had fished the scillious document out of a second
Speaker 1: hand bookstore in Istanbul's Old European Quarter. The Protocols purported
Speaker 1: to offer a secret plan for Jewish world domination and
Speaker 1: included tales about Christian children being sacrificed for Passover feast
Speaker 1: rituals and other lurid fantasies. By the time Dullus got
Speaker 1: his hands on the book, which was the creation of
Speaker 1: the Russian Czars anti Semitic secret police, the document had
Speaker 1: been widely denounced and discredited, but Dullus took it seriously
Speaker 1: enough to send a coded report about the secret Jewish
Speaker 1: plot back to his superiors in Washington, so he he
Speaker 1: sends this back to the State Department, like you guys
Speaker 1: got to hear about this? Uh incredible spy. The authors
Speaker 1: of who named that? How upset were they when they
Speaker 1: later heard the much more badass title The Devil's Chessboard,
Speaker 1: So much better of a should have called our thing
Speaker 1: the Devil's Chessboard the Devil's Chessboard. It is a pretty
Speaker 1: good book. It's actually the guy who founded Salon, which
Speaker 1: is not a website. I like a lot, But Alan
Speaker 1: Dullas got married in nineteen twenty to a woman named Clover,
Speaker 1: who he almost immediately cheated on. It was a miserable relationship,
Speaker 1: but they would stay together the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: Clover was prone to depression, while Alan barely paid attention
Speaker 1: to her and slept around constantly. His sister Eleanor estimated
Speaker 1: that he had more than a hundred mistresses, to the
Speaker 1: extent that Ellen Dulas was capable of feeling bad about anything.
Speaker 1: He seems to have felt kind of bad about this.
Speaker 1: At one point he wrote to his wife and advised
Speaker 1: her to ask her friends for advice on how to
Speaker 1: quote live with a queer duck like me. He later
Speaker 1: confessed in a letter, I don't feel I deserve as
Speaker 1: good a wife as I have, as I am rather
Speaker 1: too fond of the company of other ladies. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a degree of self awareness that he has
Speaker 1: because he's he's she is miserable, like on the verge
Speaker 1: sometimes of suicide, because he's he's just constantly sleeping with her,
Speaker 1: and like he'll tell her about it, like he's not
Speaker 1: even trying to hide it. Like he'll like brag about
Speaker 1: his new mistresses to like their kids. Like it's he's
Speaker 1: a weird dude, A weird dude who, like most narcissists,
Speaker 1: I assume, could turn on the charm when he wanted
Speaker 1: to and probably worked like a magic spell. Like that
Speaker 1: is the worst type of person to be in a
Speaker 1: relationship with when they can turn that on and then
Speaker 1: just turn it off instantly. Now, one of the chief
Speaker 1: problems in their union, as you were kind of getting
Speaker 1: at Jason, was Alan's temper. He was prone to angry
Speaker 1: rants that would provoke his wife to curl up into
Speaker 1: a fetal position. When he finally stopped, she'd leave the
Speaker 1: house and wander for hours. They were miserable together, so
Speaker 1: perhaps it's for the best that Alan spent most of
Speaker 1: his time traveling around the world ignoring her. Clover tried
Speaker 1: to make the best of a bad situation by focusing
Speaker 1: on her son and two daughters. While her husband was
Speaker 1: an arch conservative, she became obsessed with penal reform and
Speaker 1: spent a great deal of time visiting prisoners. She was
Speaker 1: known to regularly stop for long conversations with homeless people
Speaker 1: and impoverished men and women. In breadlines and letters to
Speaker 1: her family, she wrote that she felt guilty for her wealth.
Speaker 1: Alan felt no such guilt. He was known to not
Speaker 1: even pick up napkins he dropped at dinner, leaving that
Speaker 1: for his servants. So they're very different people. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, Alan started an affair with a blonde Russian
Speaker 1: immigrant whose husband was chronically ill. He did not try
Speaker 1: to hide his relationship from his wife, and in fact
Speaker 1: bragged to her and to his children about the relationship.
Speaker 1: One of his biographers later wrote, sex, it appears was
Speaker 1: to Alan dillis a form of physical therapy, something one
Speaker 1: did to keep himself fit for more important things. Clover's
Speaker 1: insistence on staying home with the children and her increasing
Speaker 1: preoccupation with prisoners rights were treated by him as a
Speaker 1: betrayal of her obligation to be his good and faithful companion.
Speaker 1: If Clover would not travel when Alan asked, then he
Speaker 1: could not really be blamed if he diverted himself with
Speaker 1: other women, always of his own class and station. So
Speaker 1: pretty cool, dude, I guess that's what I'm getting at, Jason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if he was a narcissist, as I throughout a
Speaker 1: wild guest in the previous episode, if you disagree, that
Speaker 1: is fine. If he was literally everything that happens here
Speaker 1: is totally unsurprising to you. Right. He does not conceive
Speaker 1: of anyone else. He is the main character in the
Speaker 1: story that is his life. Everyone else or extras and
Speaker 1: he it's not that he can't have feelings or emotions,
Speaker 1: but the fits of rage, the fact that when you
Speaker 1: make a narcissist angry, your humanity disappears. You are just
Speaker 1: an object. You're a receptacle for their rage. And so
Speaker 1: whatever love he felt for someone like that, it is
Speaker 1: different because he said, like, you know, I don't you know,
Speaker 1: I don't deserve a wife is as good as her
Speaker 1: or whatever. Again, he's still not thinking of her as
Speaker 1: an in you know, like a separate person with agency
Speaker 1: and the same thing with the servants and everyone else.
Speaker 1: I personally believe this is just my opinion that his
Speaker 1: whole worldview was kind of shaped by that. And the
Speaker 1: fact that we have a system where narcissists consistently bubbled
Speaker 1: to the top explains a lot about the way name
Speaker 1: name a popular figure. I'm not saying that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was a narcissist. I again, I've not spoke to the man.
Speaker 1: I I certainly couldnt make that determination. He kind of
Speaker 1: has some uh elements of one in my opinion. Again,
Speaker 1: if you disagree, those of you who know it all
Speaker 1: Trump personally, I know some of your friends, you know
Speaker 1: this has a this our our number one hot spot
Speaker 1: for listeners is Mara Lada action. Um so. But I
Speaker 1: think guys like this they can't fully conceive of consequences
Speaker 1: to themselves or to other people, like they just everything
Speaker 1: about the way and like the idea that the citizens
Speaker 1: of these other countries where they're going to do the
Speaker 1: things spoiler alert that they're going to be doing over
Speaker 1: the next few decades, the idea that the people suffering
Speaker 1: because of that, that those are actual human beings. I
Speaker 1: don't think would enter the mind of someone like al adult.
Speaker 1: I don't think he can really conceptualize that. No, I don't,
Speaker 1: And that's what I was saying earlier. I think makes
Speaker 1: him different from his brother because Foster is not the
Speaker 1: same um I think Foster has and it evolves through
Speaker 1: time an ideology. Well, actually he goes through a couple
Speaker 1: of different ones. But he he acts based on things
Speaker 1: that he believes about the world, and I think with
Speaker 1: Alan it's more he acts based on things he believes
Speaker 1: about himself or wants to have for himself. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you have the representation of what we now think
Speaker 1: of as like the modern conservative movement, where you have
Speaker 1: the Bible true believers, and then like the Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wing who's just in it for a really interesting way
Speaker 1: to look at this. And so that's how you can
Speaker 1: wind up with like a womanizer, a crazy party boy
Speaker 1: who has the loyal devotion of the studious Bible thumpers
Speaker 1: in the South. It's like, how do they have anything
Speaker 1: in common? Well, look at the dullest brothers raised by
Speaker 1: the same family at the same time in the same era,
Speaker 1: two very different people that would wind up on the
Speaker 1: same mission for in my view, totally different reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think you're right on the money with that.
Speaker 1: That is not I think a way I would have
Speaker 1: thought to bring it up. But let's get moving. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So Foster, by comparison to his brother, was utterly devoted
Speaker 1: and as far as we know, loyal to his wife Janet.
Speaker 1: But the brothers were similar in the fact that neither
Speaker 1: of them did seem to give a good goddamn about
Speaker 1: their children. David Talbot writes that Alan treated his kids
Speaker 1: as if they were quote visitors in his house, and
Speaker 1: they were both just they were both like complete workaholics.
Speaker 1: You know, I think with Alan it more he really
Speaker 1: didn't care all that much. Foster is just working all
Speaker 1: the time. They're both people who their children are number one.
Speaker 1: Then this is them being a product of their time. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the wife's job, right. Um, you know, when they're older,
Speaker 1: all helped them start their careers off and stuff, and
Speaker 1: like they'll but like it's it's her job to raise them.
Speaker 1: I have to go change the world. But neither of
Speaker 1: them are very warm fathers, you would say. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: as the Roaring twenties gave way to the Great Depression
Speaker 1: of the early nineteen thirties. The Dullest brothers grew increasingly
Speaker 1: concerned about the spread of Communist sympathy at home and abroad,
Speaker 1: and Foster this ignited a deep and enthusiastic sympathy for
Speaker 1: the Nazis, who he regarded as the best bet for
Speaker 1: stopping communisms westward advance in Europe. While he does not
Speaker 1: seem to have fallen for the protocols of the Elders
Speaker 1: of Zion like his younger brother, Foster's Nazi sympathies led
Speaker 1: him to some pretty vile behavior from the Devil's Chessboard quote.
Speaker 1: In ninety two, is Hitler began his takeover of the
Speaker 1: German government, Foster visited three Jewish friends, all prominent bankers,
Speaker 1: in their Berlin office. The men were in a state
Speaker 1: of extreme anxiety during the meeting. At one point, the bankers,
Speaker 1: too afraid to speak, made motions to indicate a truck
Speaker 1: parked outside and suggested that it was monitoring their conversation.
Speaker 1: They indicated to him that they felt absolutely no freedom.
Speaker 1: Eleanor recalled Foster's reaction to his friends terrible dilemma. Unnerved
Speaker 1: his sister There's nothing that a person like me can
Speaker 1: do in dealing with these men except to probably keep
Speaker 1: away from them, he later told Eleanor They're safer if
Speaker 1: I keep away from them. Actually, there was much that
Speaker 1: a Wall Street powerbroker like John Foster Dolas could have
Speaker 1: done for his endangered friends, starting with pulleage, pulling strings
Speaker 1: to get their families and at least some of their
Speaker 1: assets out of Germany before it was too late. And
Speaker 1: I think David Talbot is right on the money here.
Speaker 1: This is not a situation where he could have done nothing.
Speaker 1: The Nazis were extremely happy to let very wealthy Jewish
Speaker 1: people leave Europe, often with some of their assets, in
Speaker 1: order to please For indignitary stuff like that happened. A
Speaker 1: man with Foster's poll would have had no trouble getting
Speaker 1: his friends out of Nazi Germany. Many other influential foreigners
Speaker 1: did the same, and in fact Hitler himself intervened to
Speaker 1: allow a Jewish doctor who had treated his mother's cancer
Speaker 1: to immigrate from Germany with his assets. This was not
Speaker 1: an impossible thing. Um he just didn't do it. Uh
Speaker 1: it was I think he just got spooked. Um Or
Speaker 1: he didn't really care all that much, one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Now, the fact that Foster Dulas absolutely could
Speaker 1: have saved his friends is underscored by the fact that
Speaker 1: he was seen by the Nazis as one of their
Speaker 1: most valuable American friends. In fact, without Foster Dullus, it
Speaker 1: is possible that the Nazi military build up and the
Speaker 1: Blitzgraig would not have happened, or certainly wouldn't have happened
Speaker 1: in the form that it did. See and this is interesting.
Speaker 1: Foster Dulas made his fortune building and advising cartel's. This
Speaker 1: is what he specialized in for that big law firm.
Speaker 1: Cartels are groups of competing businesses who agreed to fix
Speaker 1: prices and closed their supply and distribution networks to outsiders
Speaker 1: in order to maximize profits. Now, this was not then
Speaker 1: or now a popular idea to anyone but people who
Speaker 1: invest in cartels because it increases prices and generally reduces
Speaker 1: the quality of products for everybody else. Foster defended cartels
Speaker 1: as forces for stability, and he made it like his
Speaker 1: argument that it's it protects economies from wild swings. Now,
Speaker 1: one of Foster's big clients was the International Nickel Company,
Speaker 1: which was based in the United States, Foster was both
Speaker 1: their legal counsel and a director and member of the
Speaker 1: executive board. In the early nineteen thirties, as the Nazis
Speaker 1: solidified their hold on power, Foster Doles helped merge the
Speaker 1: International Nickel Company and a Canadian affiliate into a cartel
Speaker 1: with France's two major nickel producers. In nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: he brought a German company in I. G. Farban, the
Speaker 1: largest German nickel producer, into the cartel. Stephen Kinzer writes
Speaker 1: quote this gave Nazi Germany access to the cartel's resources.
Speaker 1: Without Dullus, According to a study of Sullivan and Cromwell,
Speaker 1: Germany would have lacked any negotiating strength with International Nickel,
Speaker 1: which controlled the world supply of nickel, a crucial ingredient
Speaker 1: in stainless steel and armor plate. So without this cartel
Speaker 1: and without Foster's roll in it, it's possible the Nazis
Speaker 1: don't have access to the metal they need to make
Speaker 1: the armor for their tanks. Which is cool. And he
Speaker 1: was not unique, No, no, no, in the American business world. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to he's not unique at this stage.
Speaker 1: Certainly in nineteen this is two thirty four is when
Speaker 1: he brings an Ig Farban and a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: are working with the Nazis. Absolutely, Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: stage where in the American business, especially if you think
Speaker 1: that you're picking between the Nazis and the Communists, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that kind of came down on the side
Speaker 1: of There's a lot to be discussed there about what
Speaker 1: they knew or should have known at the time, because again,
Speaker 1: the issues that the Jews were having in Germany, like
Speaker 1: you talked to any of them, you could have found
Speaker 1: out what was coming, and Foster had you know, and
Speaker 1: Foster had and so the argument that they should have known, like,
Speaker 1: I get that we're looking back at this knowing how
Speaker 1: things turned out, and that that is not completely fair.
Speaker 1: Like there, maybe we may be getting judged just as
Speaker 1: harshly Hun did years from now from things that we
Speaker 1: expressed support for or whatever, but for Will Wheaton mainly,
Speaker 1: But of all the people on earth who probably could
Speaker 1: have should have known better, I I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Foster Dellis was was one of those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his his complicity will get deeper um at this
Speaker 1: stage thirty four. I mean, he didn't necessarily know the Germans.
Speaker 1: He couldn't have known they're going to use all of
Speaker 1: this nickel to make tanks and take over a large
Speaker 1: jump of the planet. Um, although I guess you could,
Speaker 1: you could safely argue wasn't a huge guess if you
Speaker 1: were reading the things that Hitler was putting out right,
Speaker 1: because like, it's what year didn't mind come come out? Geez,
Speaker 1: twenty four I think is when it was written at least, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is complicated territory that the exact year you're talking
Speaker 1: about matters a lot, because a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: immediately know, like well, Win was Poland invaded? Or when
Speaker 1: did it? When did they find out about the Holocaust?
Speaker 1: There is plenty of support in the thirties for Hitler
Speaker 1: in the United States at the stage we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But again, it mind comp was not dug up and
Speaker 1: discovered later. Hitler's feelings about the Jews was not something
Speaker 1: that came out later and and where he had to
Speaker 1: be canceled later on it was known. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: never okay, It's just you have to orient yourself in
Speaker 1: time to understand what's like, how he could be so
Speaker 1: callous or how he could you know, like leave those
Speaker 1: friends behind because did he know the degree of danger
Speaker 1: that those friends were in. Probably not, but uh I
Speaker 1: don't know, yep, yep, yeah, and well yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue actually with a quote from the Brothers um
Speaker 1: that talks about so he one of the guys he
Speaker 1: works with is this this guy Shocked, who is like
Speaker 1: kind of running the economy for the Nazis in this
Speaker 1: period quote. Working with Shocked Foster helped the not national
Speaker 1: socialist state find rich sources of financing in the United
Speaker 1: States for its public agencies, banks and industries. The two
Speaker 1: men shaped complex restructuring of German loan obligations at several
Speaker 1: debt conferences in Berlin, conferences that were officially among bankers
Speaker 1: but were in fact closely guided by the American and
Speaker 1: German governments, and came up with new formulas that made
Speaker 1: it easier for the Germans to borrow money from American banks.
Speaker 1: Sullivan and Cromwell floated the first American bonds issued by
Speaker 1: the giant German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Krupp. A G
Speaker 1: extended i G farban global reach, and fought successfully to
Speaker 1: block Canada's effort to re strictly the export of steel
Speaker 1: to German arms makers. According to one history, the firm
Speaker 1: quote represented several provincial governments, some large industrial combines, a
Speaker 1: number of big American companies with interest in the Reich,
Speaker 1: and some rich individuals. By another account, it quote thrived
Speaker 1: on its cartels and collusion with the new Nazi regime.
Speaker 1: So the longer he does this, the more the deeper
Speaker 1: he gets into, specifically helping the German state arm itself. Right,
Speaker 1: Canada is trying to stop export of steel because they
Speaker 1: see Germany arming Sullivan and Cromwell under Foster says, we
Speaker 1: gotta get around that. We gotta make sure these Nazis
Speaker 1: seven enough steel. Um. So his complicity deepens over time. Now,
Speaker 1: Alan actually spent a decent amount of time with like
Speaker 1: real ass Nazis, including the Nazis Nazi of them all.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, then we're talking about Allen now, not Foster. Um.
Speaker 1: And the difference between them in this is interesting because
Speaker 1: Alan actually meets hit and I don't think Foster does.
Speaker 1: Alan sits down with a fear in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: Um that said, he was not like his brother in this.
Speaker 1: Alan actually met with Hitler in his role as a
Speaker 1: diplomat and a spy. He was asked to do this
Speaker 1: by f DR and a number it's like he was like,
Speaker 1: f DR sends Alan Dules to Europe to meet with
Speaker 1: Hitler and a couple of other European leaders, and Alan
Speaker 1: and his partner in this project they're going on. A
Speaker 1: diplomat named Davis asked Hitler about reports of violence against
Speaker 1: political dissidents and Jews. Hitler claims that he was just
Speaker 1: taking action to quote protect the millions in foreign capital
Speaker 1: that are invested in Germany. So that is interesting to
Speaker 1: me that, like FDR, while Foster is actively working with
Speaker 1: the Nazis to help their economy and to help their rearming,
Speaker 1: Alan gets sent over to spy on them with FDR,
Speaker 1: and Alan asks them directly about all of the horrible
Speaker 1: Nazis ship they're doing, and Hitler says, all we're arresting
Speaker 1: these people, were putting them in camps to protect foreign
Speaker 1: capital that's invested in Germany. And it's obviously that's not
Speaker 1: entirely why he was doing it, but I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that that's the line of argument he picks with
Speaker 1: the Americans. And you can see why you think it
Speaker 1: would work, because there's guys like Foster now Alan Dulis
Speaker 1: at this stage didn't see anything unsettling about the Nazis. However,
Speaker 1: he returned to Berlin two years later in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and could not ignore the brutality of the regime. He
Speaker 1: reported back that Nazi Germany had left him with a
Speaker 1: quote sinister impression. Stephen Kinser calls Nazism quote the first
Speaker 1: and only important subject on which the Dulles brothers seriously disagreed.
Speaker 1: That said, Alan's main issue with the Nazis was not
Speaker 1: their oppression of minorities or their murder of political rivals.
Speaker 1: It was that he was smart enough to guess where
Speaker 1: the whole fashionson thing was heading, and he knew that
Speaker 1: he was pretty sure that the US is gonna wind
Speaker 1: up at war with Nazi Germany. He wanted to spare
Speaker 1: Sullivan and Cromwell the shame of being associated with the
Speaker 1: regime once war broke out. That's really interesting to me that,
Speaker 1: like of the two guys, Foster, who is driven by
Speaker 1: a moral code, gets really deep in with the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and Allan pretty quickly it's like, oh, these fuckers are
Speaker 1: bad news, and it may just be self preservation. You know,
Speaker 1: and Alan helped some German Jews out of Nazi Germany?
Speaker 1: Did he not? There's a yeah, I think there's we'll
Speaker 1: talk about what he did because it's complicated, Jason, This
Speaker 1: is all complicated at the stage because obviously neither one
Speaker 1: of the brothers were like, oh, yeah, we'll be fine
Speaker 1: with if several years from now Hitler is trying to
Speaker 1: you know, bomb the you know, England off the map.
Speaker 1: Like no one wants a world war in Europe. It's
Speaker 1: just that if it sounds like I'm not going far
Speaker 1: enough and criticizing the people friendly to the Nazis, it's
Speaker 1: because I feel like it would be very easy decades
Speaker 1: from now to look back and say, well, why was
Speaker 1: the United States so buddy buddy with China? And you
Speaker 1: can see that with every modern genocide, and there's always
Speaker 1: financial interests who often are willing to keep profiting from
Speaker 1: the regime that's doing the genocide. You know, Um, it's
Speaker 1: not it's more normal than not for for people to
Speaker 1: go along with terrible things if they're not that closely
Speaker 1: tied to them, because the alternative is rocking the boat. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think what we're talking about, Foster here is
Speaker 1: very different um because he really like his brother Alan.
Speaker 1: After thirty five is like, these guys are bad news.
Speaker 1: You know, you can argue Alan actually did have some
Speaker 1: sort of a moral compass and he was just like,
Speaker 1: this is a step too far, or you can say
Speaker 1: it was just self preservation. But he's pretty consistent after
Speaker 1: thirty five, these guys are a problem, and we need
Speaker 1: to be cut ties with them, we need to not
Speaker 1: be in business with them. What is fosterest position, then,
Speaker 1: is he's just so scared of the Communists by something else.
Speaker 1: I think he likes them to some extent. I don't
Speaker 1: think he's a Nazi, because I don't get any hint
Speaker 1: that he's like super an anti Semitism or whatever. I
Speaker 1: don't think that he wants the United States, but he's
Speaker 1: he refuses to turn his back on them, and in
Speaker 1: fact he became their most enthusiastic cheerleader in the halls
Speaker 1: of American power. He repeatedly pushed back against arguments by
Speaker 1: other members of his law firms, some of whom were Jewish,
Speaker 1: that they should reduce or end their dealings with the
Speaker 1: Third Reich. From nineteen thirty three, on all letters written
Speaker 1: from the German offices of Sullivan and Cromwell ended with
Speaker 1: Heil Hitler. Now this was required by law, but it
Speaker 1: was not something Foster had any problem with. While Alan
Speaker 1: politely uh disagreed with his brother, their sister Eleanor was
Speaker 1: much more outspoken on the matter. She too traveled to
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany and the horrors of the regime were not
Speaker 1: lost on her. She repeatedly begged Foster to stop doing
Speaker 1: business with Hitler. He ignored her, complaining that she was
Speaker 1: working herself up over nothing. When f DR denounced the
Speaker 1: repressive measures of the Nazi government, Foster Dullus denounced f
Speaker 1: DR as a demagogue trying to drum up mass emotionalism.
Speaker 1: One contemporary claimed that most of Foster's political energy in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties went towards quote rationalizing this Hitler movement.
Speaker 1: So he is not just kind of not wanting to
Speaker 1: rock the boat at a time in which it starts
Speaker 1: to be politically acceptable in common to to to go
Speaker 1: against the Nazis. He's really still on their side. And
Speaker 1: even his brother is like, dude, this ain't it, you know? Um.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen thirty five, partners of Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Cromwell hold a vote to determine whether or not
Speaker 1: they should cease representing German clients. The crimes of the
Speaker 1: Nazi Nazi regime had become too blatant and numerous for
Speaker 1: Foster's colleagues again, at least one of whom was Jewish
Speaker 1: to ignore. Foster complained that pulling out would harm the
Speaker 1: firm's prestige. His brother Alan argued that staying was unconscionable.
Speaker 1: In the end, everyone but Foster voted to suspend the
Speaker 1: firm's operations in Nazi Germany. There are some account that
Speaker 1: Foster wept after the vote, Like as soon as his
Speaker 1: partners like say we're pulling out, he just like breaks down.
Speaker 1: You know, who won't partner with the Nazi regime the
Speaker 1: products and services? Let's support this podcast. Oh we're back.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're still talking about Nazis um and
Speaker 1: namely how Foster Dolus deals with him. So in in
Speaker 1: kind of late Ish nineteen thirty five, his firm votes
Speaker 1: to stop doing business with the Nazis, he cries and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the brothers about what happens next.
Speaker 1: Later he backdated the announcement the announcement that they cut
Speaker 1: their ties with the Nazis by a year to make
Speaker 1: it appear that the firm had closed its German offices
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four rather than thirty five. He and Janet, however,
Speaker 1: continued to visit Germany as the Nazi regime tightened its
Speaker 1: grip on power, making trips in nineteen thirty six, nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty nine. Apparently nothing he saw disturbed him.
Speaker 1: He supported the Neutralist America First Committee, Sullivan and Cromwell
Speaker 1: drew up its articles of incorporation without charge and roused
Speaker 1: its members with speeches denouncing Churchill, Roosevelt, and other warmongers.
Speaker 1: Hitler impressed him as quote one who, from humble beginnings
Speaker 1: and despite the handcap handicap of an alien nationality, had
Speaker 1: attained the unquestioned leadership of a great nation. Only hysteria
Speaker 1: entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplates war
Speaker 1: among upon us, he assured businessmen at the Economic Club
Speaker 1: of New York on March twenty ninety nine. So he's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty pot committed Jason. Yeah. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: a point where there was plenty of evidence. There was
Speaker 1: a long that you if you have lived in America
Speaker 1: for five minutes, people have a way of getting dug
Speaker 1: into their positions and to how you can go from well,
Speaker 1: I don't support war all the way to well, you know,
Speaker 1: Hitler is actually a great leader. It's the way we are.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: you can get dragged down a path of someone who
Speaker 1: thinks that like they're standing up for righteousness or they
Speaker 1: just don't want war. But there's a difference between look,
Speaker 1: you know, someone like Hitler needs to be contained, but
Speaker 1: that a world war will kill tens of millions versus
Speaker 1: you know, Hitler is actually the hero and all this,
Speaker 1: which is where it felt like he landed somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely kind of the side of this that
Speaker 1: he's on. When the Nazis invaded Poland a few months later,
Speaker 1: Foster remained committed to the defending the regime. He gave
Speaker 1: a public speech where he attacked Britain for declaring war
Speaker 1: against Germany and reiterated his belief that there was no
Speaker 1: reason for the United States to get involved. Foster published
Speaker 1: an open letter where he begged for a change in
Speaker 1: the quote international status quo to prevent powerful forces emotionally
Speaker 1: committed to exaggerated and drastic change. This was interpreted by
Speaker 1: his brother Alan to be a plea for the West
Speaker 1: to embrace Nazism in order to fight communism. We've already
Speaker 1: established that Alan was something very close to it. You know,
Speaker 1: narcissis associate had. There's some stuff going on there. You
Speaker 1: could argue if you were as irresponsible as Jason and
Speaker 1: I am. Um, and we are, and this is our podcast.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do about it? You gonna come
Speaker 1: in here and tell us we're wrong. You're not, But
Speaker 1: Um Alan was actually despite whatever moral failings he has,
Speaker 1: Alan was outraged with his brother's behavior at this point,
Speaker 1: and he tried to appeal to his brother's religion, asking
Speaker 1: how can you call yourself a Christian and ignore what
Speaker 1: is happening in Germany? It is terrible? So this is
Speaker 1: and this is really interesting to me because Foster is
Speaker 1: up to this point much more sympathetic than Alan. But
Speaker 1: Alan does a monster is being like what is wrong
Speaker 1: with you? Like? Why are you still defending the Nazis
Speaker 1: so much? Um, It's a very strange thing. It doesn't
Speaker 1: go the way you would expect it to go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and also there is some kind of a happy
Speaker 1: ending of this because again John Foster Doulas standing up
Speaker 1: for the Nazis even after they invaded Poland, he was
Speaker 1: not canceled too hard for his pro hitler, so he
Speaker 1: he was able to come back from that, uh, that
Speaker 1: embarrassing period of his life. That gaff. Now, if Twitter
Speaker 1: had existed, he would have gotten canceled, Jason. That's that's
Speaker 1: what protects us now from similar disasters. So Foster DoLS
Speaker 1: visited Nazi Germany for the last time, and I think
Speaker 1: night um. He seems to have grudgingly accepted by this
Speaker 1: point that the Nazis were not a group he wanted
Speaker 1: to be super publicly associated with, although again he would
Speaker 1: continue to defend them for a couple of years. Later
Speaker 1: in the year he decided to run for Congress. His
Speaker 1: main platform was attacking the New Deal, complaining that instead
Speaker 1: of launched in new social programs, Roosevelt should fight the
Speaker 1: depression by cutting government spending. He accused FDR of quote
Speaker 1: attempting to stir up class feeling by trying to regulate
Speaker 1: the securities market. Foster's campaign went nowhere. He was a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible politic, while terrible at getting elected Um, but it
Speaker 1: helped establish him as a political voice within the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen thirties, both Dullis brothers were working
Speaker 1: for Sullivan and Cromwell, which, despite dropping Germany had you know,
Speaker 1: continue to be the largest law firm in the United States.
Speaker 1: Historian Peter Gross argues that even calling it a law
Speaker 1: firm is reductive to the point of inaccuracy. He saw
Speaker 1: it as quote a strategic nexus of international finance, the
Speaker 1: operating core of a web of relationships that constituted power.
Speaker 1: The firm did offer legal associates to draft contracts, preserve estates,
Speaker 1: and arguing courtrooms, but this was not the profession of
Speaker 1: law as practiced by Foster and Alan Dulls. Their Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Cromwell sought nothing less than to shape the affairs
Speaker 1: of all the world for the benefit and well being
Speaker 1: of the elect their clients. It's a fascinating organization, Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Cromwell. UM, and I wonder how many listeners of
Speaker 1: yours have ever heard the name of that firm. Before today,
Speaker 1: I had only heard them mentioned and mentioned them in
Speaker 1: this show during like the Panama episodes. But even then
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. I just knew that that was
Speaker 1: like the lawyer who kind of I just you know,
Speaker 1: had an angle in Panama. Yeah, it's a kid maybe
Speaker 1: something that ought to be in a textbook somewhere for kids. Maybe.
Speaker 1: But I think even now we still think of the
Speaker 1: world as a series of competing countries, and that's so reductive,
Speaker 1: like that hasn't been true in a long time. Corporations
Speaker 1: span borders, and their interest span borders, and it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to understand that you can have two countries at
Speaker 1: war with each other but the same corporation doing business
Speaker 1: and both trying to arrange for things to follow a
Speaker 1: certain way. You don't fully understand history until you understand
Speaker 1: that element of it and the stuff we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into about going to war on behalf of fruit companies. Again,
Speaker 1: that it's you talk about like the phrase banana republic,
Speaker 1: and that's where that comes from. Right. Um, even now,
Speaker 1: I think the average person has a completely incorrect mental
Speaker 1: picture because how a law firm could have that big
Speaker 1: of a role in shaping the world seems again like
Speaker 1: the stuff of conspiracy theories. But it's really understanding that
Speaker 1: the movement of capital and what why that matters, and
Speaker 1: that how that influences the decisions that politicians make. That's
Speaker 1: not conspiracy stuff. That's the way the world functions now
Speaker 1: in a global economy, and you have to almost think
Speaker 1: of it in terms of like the these alliances are
Speaker 1: less important in many cases than the corporations that span
Speaker 1: the borders and what they're what they're trying to accomplish,
Speaker 1: and especially you come down to things like workers advocating
Speaker 1: for certain rights in certain countries and things like that.
Speaker 1: That's going to play into everything that's about to happen. Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sure is, it sure is, Jason. Not in a
Speaker 1: good way. No, not, Nothing that happens on this show
Speaker 1: is in a good way. As a general rule. That's
Speaker 1: that's behind the Bastard's Guarantee. When one of your main
Speaker 1: sources is called the Devil's chessboard, you're you're in for
Speaker 1: an upbeat episode. Good times for everybody. Oh lord, oh Jason.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And in this idea, the fact that Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Cromwell should shape the affairs of the world for
Speaker 1: the benefit of their clients. This was something the Dullis
Speaker 1: brothers agreed with right. They may have had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a debate over whether or not Zism was okay,
Speaker 1: but they were on board for this um. Now. During
Speaker 1: World War One, both brothers had kind of fully fallen
Speaker 1: under this way of will. The Wilson i um concept
Speaker 1: that's known as liberal internationalism, and the basic idea behind
Speaker 1: liberal internationalism is that international conflict arises only from misunderstandings
Speaker 1: between ruling elites, social injustices, political oppression, religious and ethnic strife.
Speaker 1: This all is a distraction from the real issue, which
Speaker 1: is people in charge of different countries not getting along.
Speaker 1: Since international conflict is just conflict between elites, then commerce
Speaker 1: is the ultimate way to guarantee peace. Right. That's how
Speaker 1: it feeds back into their ideas of capitalism, because you
Speaker 1: guarantee peace by ensuring the international movement of corporations like
Speaker 1: basically and and of financial interests. It's and this is
Speaker 1: a pretty common idea, right that if you have a
Speaker 1: two nations with McDonald's and them have never gone to war,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. I think we we've all
Speaker 1: heard like versions of this idea. Um. Now, internationalists like
Speaker 1: the Dullus brothers felt that the United States had a
Speaker 1: duty to embrace its destiny as the world's great power.
Speaker 1: American value should be spread through the world, across the
Speaker 1: world through the engine of American business. The state's main
Speaker 1: role then is to use its power, and particularly it's
Speaker 1: armed might, in order to promote and defend American business
Speaker 1: interests abroad. Foster Dullus had spent most of his life
Speaker 1: even prior to World War One, doing this job. Alan
Speaker 1: Dullas came to embrace his role as defender of the
Speaker 1: wealthy and powerful in the post war years. One historian
Speaker 1: wrote that he quote never bothered to understand the technical
Speaker 1: aspects of financial maneuverings, but under the influence of Foster
Speaker 1: in the firm, he grew sensitive to the elites goal
Speaker 1: of transnational power to generate prosperity for the world and
Speaker 1: of course themselves. Now, Foster and Alan were some of
Speaker 1: the founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations. This
Speaker 1: is something they helped to create. The CFR was established
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen twenties. And this is something you
Speaker 1: see in conspiracy theories all the time. The CFR is
Speaker 1: in a billion different conspiracy theories. Um for good reason,
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes for good reason, often for nonsense. Reasons
Speaker 1: uh now. The CFR was established in the early twenties
Speaker 1: with the goal of bringing powerful people together to further
Speaker 1: the ends of American corporate and political power. The club
Speaker 1: was invitation only, and membership became highly desired, both for
Speaker 1: prestige and because it de facto put you in a
Speaker 1: room with the wealthiest and most influential people on earth.
Speaker 1: The club's motto was a single Latin word, ubiquay, which
Speaker 1: means everywhere. So again, not hard to see why there's
Speaker 1: so many conspiracies about this group. And I think their
Speaker 1: logo was like an octopus strangling the globe. Possibly, yes,
Speaker 1: it is an octopus murdering children, um is the logo,
Speaker 1: and drinking their blood which is rich in a dren
Speaker 1: of chrome um. Jesus, Like did these people don't even?
Speaker 1: Did you? Do you not listen to yourselves? Is the
Speaker 1: question I would like to ask them, Like, look at
Speaker 1: what you how how could how would you expect people
Speaker 1: not to start turning out conspiracy theories about this ship?
Speaker 1: When you when you say ship like that? Anyway? As
Speaker 1: World War Two drew nearer, Foster devoted himself increasingly to
Speaker 1: writing articles for foreign affairs. The New Republic and the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: establishing a reputation as a sagacious foreign policy expert. Allen
Speaker 1: meanwhile found himself drifting away from legal pursuits and towards
Speaker 1: another special club called the Room. The Room was made
Speaker 1: up of thirties year old bankers are thirty Ish bankers, businessmen,
Speaker 1: and corporate lawyers with deep contacts and foreign capitals. Most
Speaker 1: of them were like Alan, men with intelligence and espionage
Speaker 1: backgrounds from the last war. Now the head of this
Speaker 1: little club, the Room, was a guy named William Donovan. Now,
Speaker 1: Donovan was a war hero slash corporate lawyer with an
Speaker 1: interest in the burgeoning field of intelligence. Donovan and Alan
Speaker 1: Dulles advised FDR on overt operations abroad in the pre
Speaker 1: World War two years, and they used their connections to
Speaker 1: arrange corporate cover for American agents headed into Nazi Europe
Speaker 1: or the Soviet Union. When the war broke out for
Speaker 1: the United States, the Room morphed rather naturally into the OSS,
Speaker 1: the Office of Strategic Services. This was the chief US
Speaker 1: spy agency of World War Two and the direct predecessor
Speaker 1: of the CIA. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Speaker 1: As the war drew nearer, Bill Donovan and a few
Speaker 1: other far sighted men saw that the United States was
Speaker 1: going to need an intelligence agency. In nineteen forty the
Speaker 1: U s had basically no intelligence set up. What had
Speaker 1: existed during World War One had basically been tossed into
Speaker 1: the trash been In the intervening years, eight different government agencies,
Speaker 1: including the FCC, gathered foreign intel in one form or another,
Speaker 1: but none of them had any idea what the others
Speaker 1: were doing. There was no Internet agency communication. Most of
Speaker 1: what the White House knew about the foreign about foreign
Speaker 1: countries internal affairs came from guys like Donovan, who the
Speaker 1: President personally and traveled around doing his you know, spy
Speaker 1: work on their own. So in the US entered the
Speaker 1: war in nineteen forty one, the OSS was established to
Speaker 1: formalize these very ad hoc intelligence networks. Alan Dullas joined
Speaker 1: the OSS, and once again he was sent to Burn
Speaker 1: for the duration of the war to get what intel
Speaker 1: he could on Nazi occupied Europe, and again he wasn't
Speaker 1: great at his job. Donovan's aids regularly complained about the
Speaker 1: low quality of the intelligence coming out of Burn. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, Alan was responsible for two hilariously inaccurate predictions,
Speaker 1: both based on bad intel. Prior to the Normandy landings,
Speaker 1: he told his superiors that the Nazi regime was quote
Speaker 1: near collapse and that the Allies would just haven't thus
Speaker 1: have an easy time in France on D Day, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've watched the documentary Saving Private Ryan,
Speaker 1: but we did not. There were some bad days after
Speaker 1: the invasion. Now, Alan Dullas was a very prominent figure
Speaker 1: by the time the os S sent him to Burn,
Speaker 1: and every German a in the country knew why he
Speaker 1: was there as soon it was like publicized that he'd
Speaker 1: arrived and that he was a spy. His guys as
Speaker 1: a spy then did not fool anybody. Nobody got tricked
Speaker 1: into thinking he was really a diplomat. By some accounts,
Speaker 1: the main reason he was put in that position in
Speaker 1: Burn at all was because his presence would draw out Nazis,
Speaker 1: and while Allen was in Burn, he didn't just spy
Speaker 1: on Nazis, he worked alongside them. See. One of Alan's
Speaker 1: buddies during this period was a guy named Thomas McKittrick,
Speaker 1: president of the Bank of International Sediments Settlements. The b
Speaker 1: i S was one of the shadiest banks in history.
Speaker 1: Although nominally Swiss, by nineteen forty the b I S
Speaker 1: was controlled by the Nazi regime. Five of its directors
Speaker 1: would later be charged with war crimes incurred, including Hermann Schmitz,
Speaker 1: who was also the CEO of I G. Farban, the
Speaker 1: chemical conglomerate that manufactured zekelon b. Schmitz, by the way,
Speaker 1: was also a client of Sullivan and Cromwell fun now
Speaker 1: tied together. All this is so the b I S
Speaker 1: became a critical partner to the Nazi regime, laundering hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars in Nazi gold that had been
Speaker 1: looted from occupied countries. Some of this gold had literally
Speaker 1: been ripped out of the bodies of concentration camp inmates.
Speaker 1: When Dulas and McKittrick started talking, one of Allen's goals
Speaker 1: was to get information about the Nazi regime from McKittrick,
Speaker 1: which is reasonable, But when he and McKittrick got to talking,
Speaker 1: they discovered a point of common interest. They both had
Speaker 1: friends and clients with assets in Nazi Germany, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to protect those assets. Now FDR and his people
Speaker 1: were aware of what Allan Doulas was getting up to,
Speaker 1: and they tried to stop McKittrick. Treasury Secretary Henry morganthal Jr.
Speaker 1: Hated the man and pushed the administration to block b
Speaker 1: i S funds from being used in the United States.
Speaker 1: McKittrick hired Foster Doulas to be his lawyer, and Foster
Speaker 1: was able to reverse Morgan Thou's order. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: McKittrick even traveled to the United States for a banquet
Speaker 1: in his honor, hosted by executives from General Motors, Standard Oil,
Speaker 1: and other companies that had profited from aiding the Nazi
Speaker 1: war effort and were grateful that McKittrick had gotten their
Speaker 1: money out of the country. Now, as World War Two
Speaker 1: drew to a close, McKittrick and Allan Dulas would collaborate
Speaker 1: on their shadiest venture yet from the Devil's Chessboard quote.
Speaker 1: In the final months of the conflict, the men collaborated
Speaker 1: against a Roosevelt operation called Project safe Haven that sought
Speaker 1: to track down and confiscate Nazi assets that were stashed
Speaker 1: in neutral countries. Administration officials feared that by hiding their
Speaker 1: ill gotten wealth, members of the German elite planned to
Speaker 1: bide their time after the war and would then try
Speaker 1: to regain power. Morgan Thaous Treasury Department team, which spearheaded
Speaker 1: Projects safe Haven, reached out to the OSS and b
Speaker 1: I s for assistance, but Dullas and McKittrick were more
Speaker 1: inclined to protect their client's interests. Moreover, like many in
Speaker 1: the upper echelons of US finance and National security, Dullas
Speaker 1: believed that a good number of these powerful German figures
Speaker 1: should be returned to post war power to ensure that
Speaker 1: Germany would be a strong bulwark against the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and working with McKittrick, Alan Dulas was hugely successful installing
Speaker 1: Projects safe Haven and ensuring that many surviving Nazi collaborators
Speaker 1: escaped the war with their fortunes intact. But you know
Speaker 1: who didn't escape the war their fortunes intact? The products
Speaker 1: and services here's here's some fucking ads. You know what
Speaker 1: we're doing here. So we're back and we're talking about
Speaker 1: how Alan Dulas helped get Nazi money out of Europe
Speaker 1: and helped Nazi collaborators escaped the war with their all
Speaker 1: their money. So Foster was also involved in the protecting
Speaker 1: Nazi fortunes game, working from New York. He used the
Speaker 1: kind of corporate bullshit math people like him are great
Speaker 1: at to hide the US assets of I. G. Farban
Speaker 1: Merk and other German cartels that legally should have been
Speaker 1: confiscated by the federal government. David Talbot writes, quote, some
Speaker 1: of Foster's legal origami allowed the Nazi regime to create
Speaker 1: bottlenecks in the production of essential war materials such as
Speaker 1: dies diesel fuel injection motors that the US military needed
Speaker 1: for trucks, submarines, and airplanes. By the end of the war,
Speaker 1: many of Foster's clients were under investigation by the Justice
Speaker 1: Department's Anti Trust Division, and Foster himself was under scrutiny
Speaker 1: for collaboration with the enemy. But Foster's brother was guarding
Speaker 1: his back from his frontline position in Europe. Allen was
Speaker 1: well placed to destroy incriminating evidence and to block any
Speaker 1: investigations that threatened the two brothers and their law firm.
Speaker 1: Shredding of captured Nazi records was the favorite tactic of
Speaker 1: Dullus and his associates, who stayed behind to help run
Speaker 1: the occupation of post war Germany. Observed Nazi hunter John Loftus,
Speaker 1: who poured through numerous war documents related to the Dullus
Speaker 1: brothers when he served as US Prosecutor in the Justice
Speaker 1: Department under President Jimmy Carter. So pretty cool brothers all
Speaker 1: all together. It's hard to overstate that the fact that
Speaker 1: even before, for people that are not World War two
Speaker 1: history bus, the fear of the Soviet Union and the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Cold War started before World War Two
Speaker 1: was over. We're not going to get off into the
Speaker 1: use of the atomic bomb, and how part of that
Speaker 1: had to do with positioning with jockey for position with
Speaker 1: the Soviets, and everyone knew what was coming next, or
Speaker 1: at least the people who pulled the strings of Howard
Speaker 1: knew what was coming next, that you were going to
Speaker 1: transition neatly from this war right into possibly Okay, when
Speaker 1: we set up the Manhattan Project, we didn't set up
Speaker 1: a project to build two bombs. We set up to
Speaker 1: build a whole bunch of them, because even though we
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't gonna take a whole bunch to defeat
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany, those were being built for whatever was coming
Speaker 1: with the Soviets. So the fact that they so quickly
Speaker 1: pivoted from okay, we've beaten the Nazis. Now we need
Speaker 1: to protect what of her business interests against the whatever
Speaker 1: is coming from the threat of communism, which is going
Speaker 1: to inform these guys entire worldview right of the next
Speaker 1: couple of decades that they're alive. That happened immediately, like
Speaker 1: as the World War Two was winding down, the people
Speaker 1: who would be the Cold warriors were already kind of
Speaker 1: getting into position. Yeah, and that's a big part of
Speaker 1: what's happening here now. The death of Franklin delan Or
Speaker 1: Roosevelt immediately prior to the end of World War Two
Speaker 1: was hugely fortunate for the Dullest brothers. David Talbot argues
Speaker 1: that had FDR survived the war, they probably would have
Speaker 1: faced criminal charges. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who served
Speaker 1: with Allan in the OSS, later claimed that both brothers
Speaker 1: were guilty of treason during World War Two, and again,
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice, you know, like not not, this is
Speaker 1: not a fringe attitude that these guys committed treason during
Speaker 1: the war. Um, but of course they were not punished.
Speaker 1: When the war ended. Alan stayed on with the OSS.
Speaker 1: His first two jobs were to gather evidence that could
Speaker 1: be used in the Nuremberg War crimes trials, and his
Speaker 1: other job was to bring Nazi spy master Reinhard Galen
Speaker 1: into the OSS to help them spy on the Soviets.
Speaker 1: So his jobs are both find evidence about these Nazi
Speaker 1: war criminals who we can prosecute them, and you know
Speaker 1: this guy who ran the Nazi secret police, hire him,
Speaker 1: not again, not the only Nazi who's going to be
Speaker 1: getting by. It was a whole it was a whole thing,
Speaker 1: whole Well, if you know American history, the line between
Speaker 1: behavior that will get you executed for treason and that
Speaker 1: will get you put in charge of the country is
Speaker 1: surprisingly blurry. Yeah, it's it really is on which side
Speaker 1: of that line you can land on any given moment.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And it's some speaking of other Nazis, there's
Speaker 1: a TV show out now called for All Mankind that's
Speaker 1: like an un alternate history of like what if the
Speaker 1: so it has gotten to the moon first? And it
Speaker 1: kind of reimagines the space race, you know, and how
Speaker 1: it would have changed as a result of that. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the guys, a real guy who was probably
Speaker 1: the single man most responsible for the U S rocket
Speaker 1: program was Werner von Brown, who built the Nazi V
Speaker 1: two rockets. UM. And there's a couple of really good
Speaker 1: scenes with Von Brown in the show, UM that I
Speaker 1: actually think, do a do do? Do him do justice
Speaker 1: to what he did? But yeah, you're right, Jason, this
Speaker 1: is a ton of guys that they do this with. UM.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to me that Alan's job is both
Speaker 1: to find evidence about Nazi war crimes and to hire
Speaker 1: a Nazi spy master. UM. And we'll talk about Reinhard
Speaker 1: Galen a little more in the next episode. UM. So
Speaker 1: Allen worked on these tasks until September, when President Harry
Speaker 1: Truman signed in order abolishing the OSS. During the war,
Speaker 1: the agency had accumulated a number of secret powers that
Speaker 1: were seen as necessary for the survival of the nation.
Speaker 1: Truman was worried that these powers in peacetime might be
Speaker 1: a threat to American democracy. He transferred the OSS research
Speaker 1: Unit to the State Department and its espionage units to
Speaker 1: the War Department. Alan, Dulis and most of his fellow spooks, though,
Speaker 1: found themselves out of a job. The years immediately following
Speaker 1: World War Two were rough ones for Alan and Foster.
Speaker 1: Allen was particularly unhappy with peace and spent his free
Speaker 1: time writing letters to old Oss comrades and saying things like,
Speaker 1: most of my time is spent reliving those exciting days.
Speaker 1: So he's actually kind of depressed after World War Two
Speaker 1: because he doesn't get to be a fun spy anymore.
Speaker 1: Foster does better in the post war years. He expands
Speaker 1: his reputation as a public intellectual. During the war, he
Speaker 1: had been overcome by a new flowering of his Christian faith,
Speaker 1: which led him to preach tolerance and forgiveness and urge
Speaker 1: peace between the warring powers. But starting in late nineteen five,
Speaker 1: he changed rapidly in the direction of a hawk. The
Speaker 1: cause was, of course, the U. S. S R. From
Speaker 1: the Brothers quote. In a series of articles for Life,
Speaker 1: he painted a steadily more frightening pa sure of the
Speaker 1: Soviet threat. His first major volley was a two part
Speaker 1: series published in June ninety six entitled Thoughts on Soviet
Speaker 1: Conduct and What to Do About It. In it, he
Speaker 1: set the urgent tone that defined how he um, the
Speaker 1: Republican and Democratic parties, and most Americans would view the
Speaker 1: world for a generation. Soviet leaders, Foster wrote, had launched
Speaker 1: a worldwide campaign that aimed to subjugate the West, to quote,
Speaker 1: eliminate what are to us the essentials of a free society,
Speaker 1: and to impose on conquered people's a system repugnant to
Speaker 1: our ideals of humanity and fair play. Already, he asserted,
Speaker 1: the Soviets had built a shadowy network of allies and
Speaker 1: non communist countries who pretended to be patriots but in
Speaker 1: reality take much guidance from Moscow. This made Soviet Communism
Speaker 1: the unseen force directing nationalist movements in Asia, Africa and
Speaker 1: Latin America. Never in history have a few men in
Speaker 1: a single country achieved such worldwide influence, he concluded, And
Speaker 1: here we go. This is a huge part of what
Speaker 1: the John Birch society becomes. Right, And he's not a
Speaker 1: fringe figure. The Birches are. He's not everything about that
Speaker 1: we kind of take for granted about the way to
Speaker 1: this day we talk about the world will eventually be
Speaker 1: either all communist or it will be all America. It
Speaker 1: will all be America. There will there will either be
Speaker 1: Chick fil A restaurants in every country in the world,
Speaker 1: or else we will all fall to China. But the
Speaker 1: the the idea that the world will eventually be all
Speaker 1: one thing or all the other. This is where it starts,
Speaker 1: and once that idea takes hold, to this day we
Speaker 1: still live under that. When you know, when nine eleven happened,
Speaker 1: there was no thought of attacking that as this is
Speaker 1: a single terrorist group and these people need to be
Speaker 1: arrested and rooted out. It's no this is worldwide Islam,
Speaker 1: that we must fight a war everywhere because the whole
Speaker 1: world will either be under the umbrella of al Qaeda,
Speaker 1: or else the whole world will be under the umbrella
Speaker 1: of American Christianity and capitalism. And there is like this
Speaker 1: idea that it's everywhere, the enemy is everywhere, and the
Speaker 1: we must therefore also be everywhere. We must have spies everywhere,
Speaker 1: we must have bases everywhere. This, in my view, is
Speaker 1: where it starts. It's so important to note that, Jason,
Speaker 1: because that didn't used to be how conflict work, right,
Speaker 1: They didn't. It didn't. It's you like, it didn't always
Speaker 1: have to be like, Okay, well, this group of people
Speaker 1: has attacked us, which means we're now in an existential
Speaker 1: struggle for the future of the entire human race. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's the only place the rhetoric goes now, Like
Speaker 1: instantly now down to the point where like people are
Speaker 1: there are people who will talk that way about like
Speaker 1: fucking cancel culture right that it's like the start of
Speaker 1: this slide into a totalitarian healthscape, because that's that's just
Speaker 1: where once you raise the rhetoric to that level, it's
Speaker 1: it's I mean, for one thing, it's unprofitable to have
Speaker 1: it be anywhere lower, right, You're just not going to
Speaker 1: get people interested, and then you don't make that sweet
Speaker 1: sub stack money. Are you gonna get on substack? Jason,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know. It's I've heard it will
Speaker 1: come down to how it's CMS is set up. Is
Speaker 1: it easy to use? I don't know, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about it. I think I think, I think I could.
Speaker 1: I could just take a Glenn Greenwald turn um do
Speaker 1: pretty well on that. You have to get canceled first,
Speaker 1: and then you have to make getting canceled your entire personality.
Speaker 1: There are people who have tried to cancel me because
Speaker 1: there's certain I'm a CIA asset um, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm doing this episode to provide good pr for my employers.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. So Foster's writing was influential and formed a
Speaker 1: major part of the glow growing belief among US leaders
Speaker 1: that the Soviet Union was hell bent on world domination.
Speaker 1: Despite his antipathy to the Dulles brothers, Truman embraced this idea.
Speaker 1: In seven he spoke before a joint session of Congress
Speaker 1: and declared totalitarian regimes imposed on free people's by direct
Speaker 1: or indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international peace and
Speaker 1: hence the security of the United States. He asked Congress
Speaker 1: for four hundred million dollars in military aid to give
Speaker 1: to nations with growing communist movements in order to suppress them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this marked the start of the Truman doctrine and what
Speaker 1: many historians will name as the opening salvo of the
Speaker 1: Cold War. Now, while Foster was beating the drums of
Speaker 1: conflict with the U S. S R. Alan and his
Speaker 1: old OSS buddies were tramping around Washington talking to any
Speaker 1: elected leader who would listen about the pressing need for
Speaker 1: a peacetime intelligence agency. The United States had never had
Speaker 1: anything like that, but Dullis and his friends went further,
Speaker 1: insisting that this new agency should have secret powers greater
Speaker 1: than even the OSS had enjoyed. This new agency would
Speaker 1: be different from anything that had insisted before then. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, the standard among national intelligence agencies was
Speaker 1: that you kept intelligence gathering separate from analysis and action.
Speaker 1: So one group of people gets the information, another group
Speaker 1: of people decides what to do about it and actually
Speaker 1: acts based on it. Right, a kind of a separation
Speaker 1: of powers, so you don't have an all powerful organization
Speaker 1: gathering information and overthrowing governments of its own accord um,
Speaker 1: you know. Not a bad idea, Uh again, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons people didn't want these things
Speaker 1: to be tied, as they thought it would lead to
Speaker 1: a situation where operatives gathering information would bias the information
Speaker 1: they gathered towards whatever actions they already wanted to take.
Speaker 1: During World War Two, the OSS had ignored this traditional
Speaker 1: dividing line and justified it because they were you know,
Speaker 1: it was World War Two. The situation was extreme. We
Speaker 1: gotta do what we gotta do. Dullis and their fellows, though,
Speaker 1: wanted this new agency Truman was establishing to retain this
Speaker 1: power in peace time. Now, after disbanding the OSS, President
Speaker 1: Truman had formed an organization called the Central Intelligence Group
Speaker 1: to advise him to advise him on intelligence matters. It
Speaker 1: had no authority to carry out operations. It was just
Speaker 1: about keeping the president informed. Alan Basically, Alan Dolis decides, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got this thing, the c i G. Maybe the
Speaker 1: way to get what I want to establish a new
Speaker 1: OSS is to expand what the c i G can do.
Speaker 1: Because Truman's already willing to make the c i G
Speaker 1: B a thing, I could just gradually push it to
Speaker 1: have more and more power. In nineteen forty six, Republicans
Speaker 1: won big and congressional elections. This gave the old OSS
Speaker 1: men like Alan the leverage they needed. In nine seven,
Speaker 1: they succeeded in pushing a bill through Congress that established
Speaker 1: a National Security Council to advise the president on foreign
Speaker 1: policy and a Central Intelligence Agency to gather intel and
Speaker 1: act on it. That's what the c i G became.
Speaker 1: According to one write up of the deliberations behind this bill,
Speaker 1: collected by Stephen Kinzer, quote, there were strong objections to
Speaker 1: having a single agency with the authority to both collect
Speaker 1: secret intelligence and to process and evaluate it for the president.
Speaker 1: The objections were overruled, and the CIA became a unique
Speaker 1: organization among Western intelligence services, which uniformly keep their secret
Speaker 1: operations separate from their overall intelligence activities. Now, the National
Speaker 1: Security Act also contained a key clause which was worded
Speaker 1: vaguely enough to give the new agency a frightening amount
Speaker 1: of leeway. The CIA was authorized to carry out not
Speaker 1: only duties explicitly spelled out by the law, but also
Speaker 1: quote such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting
Speaker 1: the national security as the National Security Council made from
Speaker 1: time to time direct This technically meant that the agency
Speaker 1: could take any action anywhere on Earth with the President's approval.
Speaker 1: And they did, and they share did Uh. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that Jason in part three, But for now,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about you. Yes, my most recent
Speaker 1: book is called Zoe Punches the Future and the Dick. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you're dissuaded by that title or by my personality,
Speaker 1: read the read or reviews. Okay, all very good, They're
Speaker 1: all good, or just pretend it's called Weathering Heights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually my fifth novel. I've got a bunch out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: The online booksellers make it very easy to find them
Speaker 1: because they'll all be gathered together. Otherwise, I'm on all
Speaker 1: of the social media platforms Just google my name. It's
Speaker 1: they'll come up. Yeah, google Jason's name, find him, find
Speaker 1: his books, find him. You know, be your own. See
Speaker 1: I be the CIA you want to see in the world.
Speaker 1: Eight