Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Ah, I don't know why it's behind the bastards. We're
Speaker 2: back is part two. Adolf Ikeman, you know, the Ikeman. Uh?
Speaker 3: Oh uh, maybe he's uh, he's the Ike from Mike
Speaker 3: and Ikes.
Speaker 2: That's rights the man. Yeah, Mike and Ikes, Mike Madonna
Speaker 2: and Adolf Ikeman together at last in a candy.
Speaker 3: Oh no, not Mike Madonna. I heard he was a
Speaker 3: nice guy.
Speaker 2: Well, I know nothing about him. He was the only
Speaker 2: Mic I could famous Mike I could come up with
Speaker 2: on a short order. Anyway, how you doing, Joe, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Any big changes in life in the last like ten minutes.
Speaker 3: No, I got up, walked around a bit, Uh, came back.
Speaker 3: Turns out Adolf ike would still piece of shit.
Speaker 2: Yes, he has not become less of one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, invented candy while I was gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yes, the candy stuff is new. A lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of researchers aren't aware of that yet,
Speaker 2: because it's a lie.
Speaker 3: You have the forbid knowledge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Nazism is based on the big lie,
Speaker 2: which you know. It's very funny to me. I get
Speaker 2: it more if you're German, right, because the German Imperial
Speaker 2: Army at the start of World War One almost certainly
Speaker 2: the best army in the world and really comes within
Speaker 2: a hair's breath of pulling it off right like they
Speaker 2: came pretty It's not like World War Two, where it's like,
Speaker 2: well past a very certain point, this was fucked like
Speaker 2: they were. They were in the fight right up until
Speaker 2: the last year there, you know.
Speaker 3: But if you're Austrian, it's just like you.
Speaker 2: Were fucked from the jump.
Speaker 3: Come on, man, this is why they only had to
Speaker 3: become German nationalists, who was like, yeah, we did, we tried,
Speaker 3: our thing didn't work out. It turns out we don't
Speaker 3: deserve it.
Speaker 2: We immediately got pantsed by both the Russians and the
Speaker 2: Serbians because the Hungarians were just like you think Germany
Speaker 2: strapped to a corpse. Boy, we're gonna go limp as fuck.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go hang out this place called Asanzo for
Speaker 3: a very long time.
Speaker 2: Let's be worse than the Italians at twentieth century war.
Speaker 2: It's not easy. So anyway, it's always funny to me that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so many Austrians got hung up on the big lives, Like, guys,
Speaker 2: you didn't need anyone else to explain your defeat and
Speaker 2: did the Germans really, But there's just a little bit
Speaker 2: more to it, with the.
Speaker 3: Germans still starting a political party that's just anti Austrian
Speaker 3: while I'm also Austrian. Because it's like, we don't deserve it,
Speaker 3: we don't deserve it.
Speaker 2: It made more sense for them to get really pissed
Speaker 2: at the Hungarians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: So by mid nineteen thirty two, Pikeman has joined the
Speaker 2: Nazi Party. He starts reading their newspapers before he officially
Speaker 2: becomes a member. He gets kind of involved in like
Speaker 2: the fan fiction expanded Nazi Universe before he takes the
Speaker 2: plunge itself. His favorite paper is Volkashobeobacter, which is the
Speaker 2: official Nazi Party newspaper edited by Alfred Rosenberg, Friend of
Speaker 2: the Pod. He's not a friend of the pod.
Speaker 3: He was friendship with Alfred Rosenberg over.
Speaker 2: Yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not going to have
Speaker 2: him on the show anymore. It was a mistake in
Speaker 2: the first place to bring him on. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to know his opinions on idiomine.
Speaker 3: They were bad.
Speaker 2: Oh we didn't run that episode for a reason.
Speaker 3: This is why you lost your Spotify deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, Cesserine reports that he was drawn in at
Speaker 2: first by these lurid stories that were printed in Nazi
Speaker 2: papers of these grand street battles between the brown Shirts
Speaker 2: and the SS and communists and other anti fascists in Berlin, right,
Speaker 2: because that was a major part of Nazi propaganda in
Speaker 2: kind of the early thirties, is these like heroic street
Speaker 2: battles that are winning us the country. And you get
Speaker 2: the sense, and Iikman never writes this, but you get
Speaker 2: the sense that he wants, like a lot of young
Speaker 2: men do some play in that martial glory, right, he
Speaker 2: wants to feel like he's got a part in it, right.
Speaker 3: Even if he didn't before. I imagine he got that
Speaker 3: kind of beaten into a skull by the Junior Veterans.
Speaker 2: Association, right, like you really need to be in a
Speaker 2: fight to be a man.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, what's interesting is he'd taken no real part in
Speaker 2: the urban combat that had existed between right and left
Speaker 2: in Austria up to this point, right, for last five
Speaker 2: or six years, there's been a ton of it. He
Speaker 2: had plenty of opportunities to get involved in like these
Speaker 2: kind of street fights, and he had chosen not to.
Speaker 3: He saw him a choice.
Speaker 2: I must say, yeah, which is, you know, shows some judgment,
Speaker 2: but he clearly is like feeling it by this point, right,
Speaker 2: like the fact that he's spent all this time in
Speaker 2: his social life and his career instead of becoming a
Speaker 2: hero to fascists. So what finally tips him over the
Speaker 2: edge into joining? While the answer seems to be simple ego,
Speaker 2: The Austrian Nazi Party had been founded by a war
Speaker 2: veteran named Alfred Proksch, who was close friends to a
Speaker 2: guy named Bolek, who himself was the gaulier or leader
Speaker 2: of the Linz Nazi Party. Boleck was friends with Eichman's dad,
Speaker 2: which again goes to his politics.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh my god, this keeps coming back to his dad.
Speaker 3: He is such a Nepo baby. He is the Nazi
Speaker 3: Nepo baby of all Nazi Nepo babies. Right.
Speaker 2: So another family friend and colleague of his father was
Speaker 2: the father of Ernst Chelton Brunner. And if you know
Speaker 2: your Nazi war criminals, Calton Brunner is a big one.
Speaker 2: He will go on to be an Austrian SS member
Speaker 2: who becomes director of the Reich Security Main Office the RSS. Right,
Speaker 2: Like it's the organization that fucking Heidrich is running for
Speaker 2: a while, right. Calton Brunner is a major member of
Speaker 2: the SS, but at this point he's a young member
Speaker 2: of the SS, which is itself a fairly new organization
Speaker 2: and it's just starting trying to like spread in Austria
Speaker 2: because Hitler's already got the Anschluss planned here. Right, So,
Speaker 2: the younger Eichmann and Calton Brunner had known each other
Speaker 2: for most of their lives. And when Eikman shows up
Speaker 2: at this Nazi party meeting, Ernst embraces him and addresses
Speaker 2: him using the familiar do form of greeting, which is
Speaker 2: a German way of basically talking to somebody like their
Speaker 2: a close friend or a member of the family. Right,
Speaker 2: A lot of hierarchy of where you actually stood in
Speaker 2: the Nazi state had less to do sometimes with your
Speaker 2: actual rank and more to do with like, can you
Speaker 2: call Hitler do right? Can you like use this intimate
Speaker 2: form of greeting with the fearor if so? Or can
Speaker 2: you use this intriment form of greeting with Himmler, you know,
Speaker 2: or with Gerring or whatever, right with somebody who's part
Speaker 2: of the high command if so you've got clout right,
Speaker 2: maybe more than someone who technically outranks you.
Speaker 3: And of course after do you have to finish it
Speaker 3: with the formal host.
Speaker 2: Right right, right? Yes, as rams it reminds us all,
Speaker 2: so I commit. I don't know if it's a good
Speaker 2: one either. I don't know German. I just know every
Speaker 2: book about Hitler talks about the people who are allowed
Speaker 2: to call him that. Right, it was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Eikman would later recall that he was kind of drawn
Speaker 2: in to the Nazi Party and to the SS as
Speaker 2: much by anything by how good Carlton Brunner's uniform looks.
Speaker 2: He's like, damn, those SS uniforms are slick, right, I
Speaker 2: want to look like that.
Speaker 3: You know. He felt for the fucking dumbest.
Speaker 2: This so many so many guys did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: He was impressed by the rapid growth of the Nazis,
Speaker 2: their ascendance in Germany, how well they marched, and how
Speaker 2: good their branding was. Then Calton Brenner told him you
Speaker 2: you belong to us, and Eikman decided, yes, yes he did. Now.
Speaker 2: At first he was a bit of an oddity at
Speaker 2: party gatherings. Unemployment is soaring in Austria right now, and
Speaker 2: most of the far right street fighters right are either
Speaker 2: out of work or working irregularly. Aikman's first impression on
Speaker 2: his colleagues is that he has money, right, He can
Speaker 2: afford to buy beer and bread for everybody, and a
Speaker 2: lot of them can't, right, So that's kind of and
Speaker 2: again that makes some sort of an oddity in this
Speaker 2: organization in this period, is that like, he's mister money
Speaker 2: bags to them.
Speaker 3: So is he a guy that gets invited to the
Speaker 3: party because he brings beer.
Speaker 2: That's both nepotism and that he has money for beer,
Speaker 2: and one has to assume cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Okay, we've all invited that guy to the party before.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Yes. In early nineteen thirty three, Aikman was
Speaker 2: laid off from his job as a result of the
Speaker 2: economic downtterm. Now, this seems to have been an amicable split.
Speaker 2: He was on the chopping block because he was unmarried,
Speaker 2: and they fired unmarried people before people who were married
Speaker 2: and thus had families to support, and his severance was
Speaker 2: generous for the time. Now, the fact that the person
Speaker 2: who lays him off as his Jewish boss makes it
Speaker 2: tempting to be like, oh, is like that an inciting incident,
Speaker 2: But he just doesn't write about this as if he's angry.
Speaker 2: His writing about it is like, yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: knew like this was happening everywhere. I knew it was
Speaker 2: going to happen eventually. I had already started looking for
Speaker 2: new options, and they gave me good separence. Right. He
Speaker 2: just doesn't doesn't really describe himself as being particularly put
Speaker 2: off by.
Speaker 3: This, and it doesn't seem to be that thing that
Speaker 3: everybody's looking for. No, it's obvious that that his anti
Speaker 3: semitism is coming while he's already in the SS.
Speaker 2: Right, he's not quite in it yet, but he is.
Speaker 2: He's heading up towards the SS. Right, he's in the
Speaker 2: Nazi Party and he clearly aspires to the SS. So
Speaker 2: he's getting more anti semitic. It's just it's careerism. I
Speaker 2: think that that inspires him to get more anti Semitic,
Speaker 2: rather than like something happening outside of that, which people
Speaker 2: seem to constantly want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's chilling with his bros who are in the SS.
Speaker 3: He's going to be anti semitic eventually, yes, or lie
Speaker 3: about it or pretending this friend's in good and getting
Speaker 3: fucking job because he just lost his.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and honestly, to a certain point, doesn't matter if
Speaker 2: you're like pretending to be anti Semitic in the SS
Speaker 2: or really anti semitic.
Speaker 3: Right, just like, oh I said that slur ironically, Yeah
Speaker 3: he did.
Speaker 2: No, No, you didn't. You're literally in the SS cabot.
Speaker 2: So the party is kind of his social safety net
Speaker 2: and it's also his backup plan when he loses his job.
Speaker 2: He goes to Calton Brenner and he's like, look, I
Speaker 2: need work now, can I get some help? And Calton
Speaker 2: Brenner pulls some strings and gets Iikman taken in by
Speaker 2: the SS. Now, Austria bans the Nazi Party not long
Speaker 2: after this, and so some of the people who had
Speaker 2: been high ranking leave and go to Germany right to
Speaker 2: participate because the Nazis are now in power in Germany.
Speaker 2: So these guys like leave Austria to help run the
Speaker 2: German government and run the SS in Germany. Calton Brynner
Speaker 2: is one of them, and he takes Eichman with him. Right,
Speaker 2: So Eichman kind of flees Austria when the Nazis are
Speaker 2: banned with Calton Brunner and gets a job in the SS.
Speaker 3: He goes through a weird Nazi birthright.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, he's doing a Nazi birthright thing, and he
Speaker 2: goes through months of military training and indoctrination and then
Speaker 2: further training on how to run and operate a concentration camp. Now,
Speaker 2: at this point, the concentration camps are not what they
Speaker 2: will be. A lot of them at the point at
Speaker 2: which he comes over are what you'd call wild concentration camps,
Speaker 2: which are we've got this old school or police building.
Speaker 2: We've got a bunch of political prisoners, communists and whatnot
Speaker 2: that we're going to torture some of them, will kill.
Speaker 2: Let's just throw them in there and have guards like,
Speaker 2: fuck them up a bunch, right. Gradually the system gets
Speaker 2: more formalized. But at this point, obviously Jews are a
Speaker 2: lot of the people being taken in, but also just
Speaker 2: a lot of like communists, a lot of political enemies,
Speaker 2: social democrats, people who are enemies of the regime are
Speaker 2: being put in camps.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't all say, Also wasn't unheard of for
Speaker 3: people to get released from the camps at this period
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 2: I know, no, most people do. These are not death
Speaker 2: camps yet, right, you get like paroles, like people die
Speaker 2: at them, but they're not death camps.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The goal of these camps is not to kill you.
Speaker 2: The goal is primarily to scare people.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: By nineteen thirty four he was working under Camp Commander
Speaker 2: Theodore Iike at Dachau. This involved a transfer to the SD,
Speaker 2: which is the SS Security Service, which at the start
Speaker 2: of the Reich is a small organization, but it's powerful
Speaker 2: and feared now. Eikman gets in too late to participate
Speaker 2: in the Night of Long Knives, but he benefits from
Speaker 2: the fact that the SD had been the sharpest of
Speaker 2: those knives, so it's kind of extra. People are extra
Speaker 2: scared of it, and it has an extra degree of
Speaker 2: prestige because of how it performed during that period. Right
Speaker 2: in the space of less than two years, he goes
Speaker 2: from being a mid level manager at an oil company
Speaker 2: on his way to unemployment to a member of the
Speaker 2: most feared security agency in the German world. His boss
Speaker 2: like the guy once he kind of gets moved to
Speaker 2: the SD. His direct superior is former Bastards POD alumni
Speaker 2: Reinhard Heydrich and Eikman. Before Jerusalem, Bettina Stangneth writes, this
Speaker 2: was a big step up in the world. Eichmann felt
Speaker 2: he had established himself a fact in his to marry
Speaker 2: and start a family, which within the SS was also
Speaker 2: a good career move. He married Vera Leebel, a woman
Speaker 2: from a lot in Bohemia, four years his junior. She
Speaker 2: and her two brothers, who worked for the Gestapo would
Speaker 2: come to profit from her husband's social climbing. And this
Speaker 2: is a big part of how shit works, right, This
Speaker 2: is like a gangster regime, a lot of the benefit.
Speaker 2: Eikman doesn't have money, right, He's still not. He's not
Speaker 2: like risk connections, but he can get married and convince
Speaker 2: them because he's got connections which will help your family out.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So like, yeah, if you I don't have enough as
Speaker 2: much money as you might want from a suitor, but
Speaker 2: I can help my brothers in law get contracts and stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, I could. I could be a Nazi job program
Speaker 3: for your shity brothers.
Speaker 2: Right, right, for your fail brothers. Yeah, that's exactly how
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff works in this period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. I mean his dad has gotten almost
Speaker 3: every job he's ever had, and now he's Calton Brunner
Speaker 3: hanging out with him. He's set. He's in the worst
Speaker 3: way possible, but he's set.
Speaker 2: He's a made man with a Nazism.
Speaker 3: Yes, he went to the local trade school on concentration camps.
Speaker 3: He's everything you're looking for. Yeah, yeah, he's perfect.
Speaker 2: So one of the things he likes most about the
Speaker 2: SD is that you don't have to wear your uniform
Speaker 2: every day. Right, you can like wear normal clothes when
Speaker 2: you're in the SD because you're like the FBI of
Speaker 2: the Nazis, right, and you don't have to. Also, you
Speaker 2: don't have to do any of the pointless drills and
Speaker 2: marching that like a lot of guys in the SS do.
Speaker 2: There's less of the paramilitarism, which is boring. Right, it
Speaker 2: kind of makes life achure.
Speaker 3: And it also is the military makes everything that can
Speaker 3: make you sick of walking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is like your fake racism military. And
Speaker 2: Reikman gets to skip the bullshit, right, And he gets
Speaker 2: to skip the bullshit in a way that makes him
Speaker 2: feel special. Right, I get to skip the bullshit because
Speaker 2: I'm like smarter and more valuable than the other guys. Right,
Speaker 2: And like his ego, he so much of why he
Speaker 2: becomes so dedicated to the Nazis. Is that Nazism feeds
Speaker 2: his ego and his belief that he's special, that the
Speaker 2: world had not really tailored to earlier in his life.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately it seems to like a lot of these guys.
Speaker 3: Of course, it's careerism. But like he was good at it,
Speaker 3: he is going to be unfortunately good at it. Yes, yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: he's very good at it. He's got a good brain
Speaker 3: for logistics. Tragically. Yeah.
Speaker 2: After April of nineteen thirty five, SS members were officially
Speaker 2: forbidden from having personal contact with Jews. This was waived
Speaker 2: for the SD because the nature of their workman that
Speaker 2: they were always on duty. Iikman decided to rebrand himself
Speaker 2: as an expert on Jews and Judaism, and he starts
Speaker 2: going undercover to Jewish civil organizations and making connections to
Speaker 2: different community leaders, and he pretends to be a liberal, right,
Speaker 2: so he'll show up at Jewish gatherings. Remember this is
Speaker 2: early in the Third Reich. These communities have not been
Speaker 2: completely disrupted or uprooted yet, and they're trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how do we protect ourselves from this government that's
Speaker 2: getting increasingly hostile towards us and Iikman starts showing up
Speaker 2: and being like, hey, man, fucked up what those Nazis
Speaker 2: are doing. I'm really curious about your faith. Would you
Speaker 2: like tell me some stuff about how things work? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he was. He would occasionally he would be open
Speaker 2: about being in the SS, but a lot of Jewish
Speaker 2: community leaders would still talk to him because they were like, well,
Speaker 2: it's useful. He's a man in the SS. We can reach, right,
Speaker 2: he seems like a decent enough guy. We can convince
Speaker 2: him that we're people, and maybe he'll provide us with
Speaker 2: some protection. Right, we can convince him of our humanity.
Speaker 2: He goes so far as to briefly take Hebrew classes
Speaker 2: from a Jewish teacher, despite being officially forbidden on two
Speaker 2: different occasions from doing so. And this is something it's
Speaker 2: going to be. It's exaggerated because he will exaggerate it.
Speaker 2: He's never a fluent speaker of Hebrew. Right. He picks
Speaker 2: up a couple of phrases that he can use and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and he likes to drop them. He likes to drop
Speaker 2: Hebrew phrases and like SS meetings and stuff to show
Speaker 2: everyone how knowledgeable he is about the Jews. That he's
Speaker 2: the expert. Right.
Speaker 3: What's really funny is I think most people, well at
Speaker 3: the time, would speak Yiddish and not Hebrew anyway.
Speaker 2: Well, he also he also picks up right, he takes
Speaker 2: Hebrew classes, but he does pick he picks up little
Speaker 2: bits of both. This year there's a the movie Conspiracy,
Speaker 2: He kind of the Aikman in that claims to have
Speaker 2: learned a lot more Hebrew than he really did. But
Speaker 2: that's also what real Aikman did to his colleagues, because
Speaker 2: none of them are able to be like, you don't
Speaker 2: really speak Hebrew, right, because they don't know they're Nazis.
Speaker 3: You know, right, I don't know the first thing about
Speaker 3: it because it's yeah, and he can make himself seem
Speaker 3: like more of a a strategic thinkers, like no, I
Speaker 3: know my enemy and such, I know my enemy.
Speaker 2: You know, he's doing his son Soux shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you see that kind of shit all the
Speaker 3: time when people are reframing these guys and making them
Speaker 3: seem like evil geniuses and not just like again a
Speaker 3: nepo idiot who was really good at logistics.
Speaker 2: The genius here is not that he was so well
Speaker 2: informed about Judaism and like Gain such a deep it
Speaker 2: was that he knew all I have to do. If
Speaker 2: I take a if I can get like a dozen
Speaker 2: words and phrases down, and I can read passages from
Speaker 2: a couple pieces of rabbinical literature. Everyone else knows so
Speaker 2: little about these people, then I will be the most
Speaker 2: knowledgeable guy about Jews in the SS. And that's probably
Speaker 2: a really good path to career advancement. No one's ever
Speaker 2: gonna call me on this shit, and I can make
Speaker 2: a place for myself in this organization.
Speaker 3: Right, He's literally the world of the blind, the man
Speaker 3: with what eyes cake, but he is what eye for Hebrew? Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Stangnet's book goes on to describe the extent of his studies. Later,
Speaker 2: Eichmann would speak of a course of study that took
Speaker 2: three years. He didn't mention that his superiors occasionally had
Speaker 2: to reprimand him for disorganization and tardiness. It would be
Speaker 2: easy to mistake his lifestyle for that of a scientifically
Speaker 2: inclined a steat with some crude political views, except that
Speaker 2: between coffeehouse chats, memos, lectures, and evening conferences with his colleagues,
Speaker 2: he was meticulously keeping denunciation files and writing anti Semitic propaganda,
Speaker 2: making arrests and carrying out joint interrogations with the Gestapo. Now,
Speaker 2: there were occasions rumors within the SS because of the
Speaker 2: way he talks, because of what he's doing, that Eikman
Speaker 2: is either sympathetic towards Jews and there even there's there's
Speaker 2: a long series of myths that he has Jewish ancestry,
Speaker 2: that he's like born Jewish, that he's born in a
Speaker 2: Jewish part of the world, right, Like, yeah, there are
Speaker 2: myths about that within the SS, but that also gets overstated,
Speaker 2: Like he dealt with a little bit of shit, probably,
Speaker 2: but the overwhelming reaction of his colleagues seemed to have
Speaker 2: been respect for his knowledge. By nineteen thirty six, Adolf
Speaker 2: Eichman was widely considered the SD's chief expert on Judaism.
Speaker 2: His mentor in the SD, ed Leervon Mildenstein, had become
Speaker 2: fascinated with Zionism and started to consider if immigration to
Speaker 2: Palestine was a possible solution to Germany. He's Jewish question, right,
Speaker 2: could we ship all these people to Palestine? Right and
Speaker 2: have that let us get rid of them?
Speaker 3: Right? It reminds me of the Madagascar Plan as well.
Speaker 2: We're about to talk about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So Eikman,
Speaker 2: you know, he's one of these guys where there's a
Speaker 2: lot of unscientific thinking and a lot of just like
Speaker 2: propaganda around the Jews that is just made out of
Speaker 2: fantasies because they're just at a certain point when they're
Speaker 2: rising to power, just throwing out as many lies as
Speaker 2: possible to scare people. But Reinhardt Heidrich and the SD
Speaker 2: is like, no, no, no, we need a scientific approach
Speaker 2: to race, and we need to have a real understanding
Speaker 2: of what's going on here. And as a result, Heidrich
Speaker 2: is going to kind of pick out Eikman and be
Speaker 2: like this, this guy is someone we need to bring
Speaker 2: further into the fold. Per an article on BBC's website
Speaker 2: titled Adolf Eichman The Mind of a war Criminal. Quote.
Speaker 2: While rabble rousers like Joseph Gebbels railed against the Jews
Speaker 2: and called forever harsher but directionless measures against them, the
Speaker 2: SD quietly promoted Jewish immigration. To this end, Eikman contacted
Speaker 2: Zionist invoys and may even made a visit to Palestine
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty seven. Now again, Eikman is going to
Speaker 2: make a lot of tea out of the fact that
Speaker 2: he's been to Palestine. This is a total nothing burger.
Speaker 2: Iikman makes it to the border of the British mandate
Speaker 2: in Palestine and the British authorities are like, are you literally,
Speaker 2: Adolf Iikeman, get the fuck out of here? What do
Speaker 2: you think you're doing? We know who you are. Get
Speaker 2: out of.
Speaker 3: Here, like out of fucking hear. Yeah, this is classic
Speaker 3: Hydric as well. It's just like he takes all these
Speaker 3: street thugs as like, Okay, I like the energy, but
Speaker 3: we need to professionalize it to make it palatable for everybody. Right,
Speaker 3: we can't. We can't all just be street clubbing racists.
Speaker 3: We have to be gentlemen racists and are really stupid
Speaker 3: hugo boss uniforms.
Speaker 2: All right, who ears read a book? Just Iikman? Okay,
Speaker 2: you're my expert. Promoted and for the rest of his career,
Speaker 2: Iikman would constantly talk about like, you know, I've been
Speaker 2: to Palestine. I've seen what the Jews are like in
Speaker 2: their natural environment, right, Like that's the way he phrases it,
Speaker 2: and it's like again, you like got to the border.
Speaker 3: The Nazi Richard Attenborough.
Speaker 2: Right, right, that's what he's trying to be. And again
Speaker 2: he has he does nothing over there, right, the British
Speaker 2: will not let this fucker in. This is where we
Speaker 2: start to see his brilliance for branding. Right. If he
Speaker 2: was coming up today, he might have been an ad man, right,
Speaker 2: because he's gonna he's going to use this very effectively,
Speaker 2: even his failures to kind of blend into this myth
Speaker 2: he's creating for himself about himself. His specific recommendation to
Speaker 2: the SD after he finishes talking to you know this trip,
Speaker 2: and he also has a lot of interviews with a
Speaker 2: bunch of different Zionists in Europe, and he makes an
Speaker 2: official recommendation that the SD should not promote the creation
Speaker 2: of a Jewish state, per that BBC article. Instead, it
Speaker 2: should encourage Jewish immigration to backward countries where they would
Speaker 2: live in poverty. And his assumption is that like, well,
Speaker 2: if we send a bunch of them over to Palestine
Speaker 2: and they like when the British leave, they make like
Speaker 2: a state, you know, with the Palestinians, that state might
Speaker 2: do well, and then there will be like a place
Speaker 2: where Jewish people are comfortable. We can only send them
Speaker 2: to places that are like completely fucked right, that's his attitude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why the first thing they came up with
Speaker 3: was called the Ohio Plan.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, Yes, So immediately after this he's promoted
Speaker 2: and sent to Vienna. Austria had just been annexed by Germany,
Speaker 2: and as the SD's duty as an expert, Eichman was
Speaker 2: put in charge of an operation to convince Austria's Jews
Speaker 2: to immigrate. Here he applied his experience from the corporate world,
Speaker 2: cutting through red tape and ordering all the different agencies
Speaker 2: who had a hand in the immigration process to combine
Speaker 2: and operate out of a single physical space to speed
Speaker 2: things up. He also does and obviously that works. That's
Speaker 2: generally better, especially in this time where you don't have
Speaker 2: the internet, if people are just like have to go
Speaker 2: down a floor to like get this paperwork stamped by
Speaker 2: another organization before this family can leave. Yeah, he also
Speaker 2: does his normal thing of and this is a big
Speaker 2: part of his logistical work. In this very early stage
Speaker 2: of the Holocaust, he is directly interfacing with rabbis and
Speaker 2: other representatives of the Jewish community in the different places
Speaker 2: he's working, in this case Vienna, right where he will
Speaker 2: sit down and say, look, there's all these different groups.
Speaker 2: You know, You've got Orthodox folks, You've got folks who
Speaker 2: are like these different kind of communities within Vienna. You
Speaker 2: all need to form a single organization to represent you
Speaker 2: and elect representatives so that I can negotiate with a
Speaker 2: representative on behalf of all of you in order to
Speaker 2: execute the plans that we're going to be executing to
Speaker 2: try to push you guys out. Right, I want a
Speaker 2: single umbrella organization, and that organization we will let raise
Speaker 2: money from rich Jews to fund the immigration of poor
Speaker 2: Jews out of Austria. Right, this is what he's doing
Speaker 2: in this period of time.
Speaker 3: And did you guys that form a government that represents
Speaker 3: you so I can get rid of you?
Speaker 2: So I can get rid of you, right. We need
Speaker 2: you to centralize because I don't want to talk to
Speaker 2: fucking forty different people to like actually like work this together. Right,
Speaker 2: And despite his antipathy towards Zionism, he starts allowing Zionist
Speaker 2: organizations to operate in Austria because he's primarily being judged
Speaker 2: on what are the number It's like you know, with
Speaker 2: ice right now, it's just how many what can we
Speaker 2: get how many numbers can we get on the board?
Speaker 2: Is the easiest thing to go after, like law abiding
Speaker 2: people who were showing up in court the way they're
Speaker 2: supposed to and just arrest them. That's easier, pumps our
Speaker 2: numbers up. What Eikman's doing is like, look these Zionist organizations.
Speaker 2: I just told everyone, I think it's a bad idea,
Speaker 2: but they're getting people out, They've got money, and all
Speaker 2: I'm being judged by is how fast Jews are leaving Austria.
Speaker 2: Right That's all that matters to me, right now, you know,
Speaker 2: right now, that's all that matters to him. In Germany,
Speaker 2: Iikman had used charm to try and convince Jewish leaders
Speaker 2: to meet with him. If that didn't work, he'd hold
Speaker 2: up the SD's bloody reputation as a threat in Austria.
Speaker 2: Armed with potent new legal authority, he simply subpoened every
Speaker 2: Jewish community leader he wanted to meet. But Tina Stangneth
Speaker 2: writes Iikman flaunted his black SS uniform, his writing crop,
Speaker 2: and his knowledge of Judaism and Zionism. It Ulfh Boehm,
Speaker 2: who had just completed the second volume of the History
Speaker 2: of the Zionist movement learned that Eikman was one of
Speaker 2: his most avid readers, who knew whole pages of the
Speaker 2: first volume from memory. Bom realized that the SS was
Speaker 2: going to use the knowledge he had painstakingly gathered as
Speaker 2: its access point to the world of Jewish organizations and
Speaker 2: as a weapon against the Jews. Eikman then explained what
Speaker 2: he expected from the third volume, a lengthy chapter about himself,
Speaker 2: Adolf Iikman as a pioneer of Zionism. The fact that
Speaker 2: Adolf Bohm couldn't bear the thought and never wrote another
Speaker 2: word tells us all we need to know, without even
Speaker 2: thinking about what happened next, that this guy.
Speaker 3: The scholar's like, wait, who's reading my boh no, I
Speaker 3: imagine doing the convention circuit and then he comes up
Speaker 3: to your desk like I retire forever. I'm not signed up.
Speaker 2: I fucked up. I fucked up.
Speaker 3: I think I need to be a cobbler.
Speaker 2: If Aikman's my biggest fan, I made a mistake. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: This was I was not doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: You have chosen poorly in life, and I say that
Speaker 3: you need to find a new venture, Like.
Speaker 2: I think we could all agree. If Adolf Eichmann is
Speaker 2: your book's biggest fan, get rid of that book. Get
Speaker 2: rid of that book.
Speaker 3: It would be like if Plins came to one of
Speaker 3: my live shows, like, yeah, show's over. I love your No.
Speaker 2: No, we're hitting the wrong demo. So the guilt and
Speaker 2: shame from this caused Boem to have a nervous breakdown,
Speaker 2: for which he was institutionalized. As you may be aware,
Speaker 2: the Nazis first started experimenting with zyklon B and with
Speaker 2: gassing in general. They weren't using zyklon B yet as
Speaker 2: part of the T four euthanasia program, which can be
Speaker 2: accurately summarized as murdering disabled people. ADOLFH. Bohm was gassed
Speaker 2: at the Hartheim euthanasia Center on April fourth, nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: His wife was gassed at Auschwitz in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 2: Both of their children escaped to the West. Right a
Speaker 2: guy that writes this book, Christ, Now, I've gotten ahead
Speaker 2: of myself a little bit here. I just it's bleak stuff.
Speaker 2: Speaking of bleak stuff, Ads, we're back. So where we
Speaker 2: are in the story. Now the anglos has just happened.
Speaker 2: Austria's Germany. Now Eichmann is currently in Vienna, tasked with
Speaker 2: getting as many Jews to leave the country as possible.
Speaker 2: Cesarini writes, quote, he established an assembly line system whereby
Speaker 2: a Jew could end up at the Central Immigration office
Speaker 2: with his papers and proceed from desk to desk until
Speaker 2: he arrived at the end with a passport and an
Speaker 2: exit visa, but stripped of his property cash, and writes,
Speaker 2: within a few months the office had emigrated one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand Jews. Now this is seen is a
Speaker 2: massive success, not just by his boss Heidrich and the
Speaker 2: SD but across the whole Nazi party. He was promoted again,
Speaker 2: and after the annexation of Czechoslovakia, was ordered to repeat
Speaker 2: his performance in Prague. He does this well, and he
Speaker 2: winds up in late nineteen thirty nine, attached to a
Speaker 2: major Gestapo office in Berlin and tasked with managing the
Speaker 2: immigration of Jews from the entire Reich.
Speaker 3: He's got great Nazis saber metrics, he really does, right
Speaker 3: like that is he's a logistics guy, right like that.
Speaker 3: His whole involvement in Zionism is all like well, these
Speaker 3: people have like a already have a path to getting
Speaker 3: folks out, even though I may not. I personally like
Speaker 3: have already expressed why I don't think that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: All that I care about is my career and this
Speaker 3: will this puts numbers on the board for me. Right,
Speaker 3: That's fundamentally who he is now.
Speaker 2: By this point, by the point time after Prague, when
Speaker 2: he's in Berlin and he's in charge of emigration out
Speaker 2: of the Reich, of all of the Jews in the
Speaker 2: Greater German Reich, he has fully become the man who
Speaker 2: will ultimately organize the mass murder of about six million Jews. Right,
Speaker 2: And Eichman loves being this guy. There is nothing banal
Speaker 2: about it. He luxuriates in the power and prestige of
Speaker 2: his position, and he describes himself as a member of
Speaker 2: the ideological elite in the SS. One Jewish witness who
Speaker 2: met him at one of these meetings described and then
Speaker 2: Eikman entered like a young god. He was very good
Speaker 2: looking at that time, tall, black, shining ugh in Iikman
Speaker 2: before Jerusalem staying death continues. His behavior too, was godlike.
Speaker 2: He was master of arresting and then releasing people, of
Speaker 2: banning institutions and then allowing them to resume. He initiated
Speaker 2: and censored a Jewish newspaper, and eventually even got to
Speaker 2: decide who could access the Jewish community's bank accounts. And
Speaker 2: he's he loves this, right, this power, this I can
Speaker 2: I can make your organization legal or illegal with a
Speaker 2: snap of my hands. I have control over your community's
Speaker 2: bank assets, right, and I get to use that to
Speaker 2: make you do whatever I want. Right. I have gone
Speaker 2: from being this middle manager to being this guy with like,
Speaker 2: I am in charge of the Jewish people in the Reich. Right,
Speaker 2: that's his position here.
Speaker 3: He seems to be basking in the globe because the
Speaker 3: banning and unbanning thing, to me is is more of
Speaker 3: a clue than the bank account thing, because yeah, he's
Speaker 3: controlling people that can come together. It's like, never mind
Speaker 3: your band, never mind he can come together. I can
Speaker 3: just do this all day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is totally within my power. By the
Speaker 2: end of the nineteen thirties, he is famous across Central Europe,
Speaker 2: not just within the small world of the SD but
Speaker 2: among the entire remaining Jewish population in Central Europe. And
Speaker 2: Eichman makes damn sure everyone knows he's the shot caller,
Speaker 2: even when he isn't He bragged that The Zionist Review,
Speaker 2: a German Jewish newspaper, was quote my newspaper because of
Speaker 2: how extensively he'd exercised control over its contents.
Speaker 3: That's Nazi stolen valor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's Yeah. Jews across the Reich wrote
Speaker 2: about him to each other and in letters to relatives
Speaker 2: and colleagues on the outside. So this is this is
Speaker 2: the like the point at which people start talking about
Speaker 2: Eichmann in newspapers and whatnot outside of Germany. And in fact,
Speaker 2: he is the first guy directly associated with like implementation
Speaker 2: of anti Jewish policies in Germany who gets discussed widely
Speaker 2: outside of Europe.
Speaker 3: Right, and somehow he's the guy that becomes the portrait
Speaker 3: of banality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's really not a Nazi rock star, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: he's like a rock star of racism. Right, there's nothing
Speaker 2: but all about it. Holocaust scholar Tom Segev pointed out
Speaker 2: that while Eichman was not very high ranking on paper,
Speaker 2: he is not a top member of the SS. He
Speaker 2: answers to Reinhard Heydrich, right, and that's not his only
Speaker 2: superior as other people who are his bosses on paper,
Speaker 2: but he's answering to Hydrich, who is very high up
Speaker 2: in the Nazi higherarchy and favored by Hitler, and Eichman
Speaker 2: is the highest ranking member of the SS to sit
Speaker 2: directly with Jews and talk to Jewish community leaders, right.
Speaker 2: And as a result, this is Segev writing, the Jews
Speaker 2: looked upon him and Hitler as the two adolfs who
Speaker 2: perpetuated the Holocaust. So part of this is he's really
Speaker 2: burnishing his image, and part of it is, you know,
Speaker 2: every Jewish survivor obviously hates Hitler, but also they hate
Speaker 2: Aikman because a lot of them were face to face
Speaker 2: with him, they saw him interacting with their He's the guy.
Speaker 3: Literally the face of their deportation misery right right exactly.
Speaker 3: This is very helpful to his career in the immediate term.
Speaker 3: It ensured he was taken seriously and that local Jewish leaders,
Speaker 3: who still believe there could be some sort of compromise
Speaker 3: with the Nazi state would bend over backwards to do
Speaker 3: what he said. This makes it easy for him to
Speaker 3: hit his quotas, which ensures his continued prestige and the
Speaker 3: rise in his career prospects. By the immediate pre war period,
Speaker 3: he'd been invited to meetings with Herman Gerring and was
Speaker 3: known personally by guys like Joseph Gebbels and Heinrich Himmler
Speaker 3: more than rank personal connection to famous figures in German
Speaker 3: leadership or what insured one's position in the Reich. And
Speaker 3: once once you see Eichmann with the literal reichs Marshal
Speaker 3: Herman Gerring, right, the guy who supposed to take over
Speaker 3: Hitler dies, right, he starts getting invited to things, right
Speaker 3: because you're like, well, fuck, this guy's this guy's in, right,
Speaker 3: we'd better if I want to be in i'd better
Speaker 3: make sure he's at my parties. And so he starts
Speaker 3: getting invited to these high end social functions. In nineteen
Speaker 3: three eight, at age thirty two, he's invited to a
Speaker 3: film industry ball in Vienna. He takes parts in parades
Speaker 3: in annex Czechoslovakia, and when he has ideas for experiments
Speaker 3: like creating forced labor camps for Jews in Austria, he's
Speaker 3: allowed to divert funds and manpower to attempt them. Now ugh,
Speaker 3: he's again, he's he's loving this right, both the flex
Speaker 3: of power and the respect that he's giving He's never
Speaker 3: the only mind behind implementation, right or execution. There's other
Speaker 3: guys in the SD who are interested in labor camps
Speaker 3: for their Jewish prisoners. But Eichmann is like the guy
Speaker 3: who's helping to pitch this, and he's also making sure
Speaker 3: his face is out in front of it because he
Speaker 3: thinks it's a good idea. He is better than any
Speaker 3: of his comrades at PR And he starts giving himself nicknames,
Speaker 3: and his favorite nickname.
Speaker 2: Is the Czar of the Jews.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh my god, we love a guy who nicknames himself.
Speaker 3: And the nicknames are always terrible awful, but it shows
Speaker 3: you how he views himself, right, and what is satisfying. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's not satisfied in this point that he's eliminating these people.
Speaker 3: He's satisfied primarily that they have to bow to him. Right,
Speaker 3: that's his first high here, right. Yeah, he probably enjoys
Speaker 3: that and the fact that people know that he's doing
Speaker 3: it more than the fact that he's doing it, because
Speaker 3: again we haven't talked about any of his like hardcore
Speaker 3: anti Semitic writings or ideological turn like. This is all
Speaker 3: careerism and self promotion. Yeah, for him, he would do
Speaker 3: this if they weren't Jewish, he would do this to
Speaker 3: some other group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he is writing very anti Semitic papers here,
Speaker 2: But I think I think that the benefits to him
Speaker 2: personally for going down this road are more a motivation.
Speaker 2: Although he does he also makes himself increasingly anti Semitic
Speaker 2: as he's doing this too, right, he is getting more
Speaker 2: and more racist and more and more hateful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I could also see this as kind of
Speaker 3: like fitting the part because before he got all these connections,
Speaker 3: people were spreading rumors about him having Jewish family members
Speaker 3: because he was, you know, having let's say, FaceTime with
Speaker 3: Jewish community leaders. So yeah, now he's like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: going to do both. And now nobody is going to
Speaker 3: be confused about this. And this is not, like, of course,
Speaker 3: a good thing. That the fact that he's willing to
Speaker 3: do this for bald face careerism is not a better
Speaker 3: or worse.
Speaker 2: No, it's not only by the time we get to
Speaker 2: the Holocaust there is more than bald face careerism.
Speaker 3: Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think that's his I think that's what
Speaker 2: a lot of this is right now.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He takes a lot of joy whenever he hears his
Speaker 2: nicknames repeated in the wild by other people because it
Speaker 2: proves that they're spreading, and he sees his name start
Speaker 2: to be in constant use in Western newspapers around the world,
Speaker 2: particularly like Socialist incliented papers, which are some of the
Speaker 2: earliest ones to report on early stages of the Holocaust.
Speaker 3: He must have loved that so much.
Speaker 2: Oh, he fucking loves it. He makes a big show
Speaker 2: about being angry at the Jewish press for calling him names,
Speaker 2: but he has his staff members comb dozens of newspapers
Speaker 2: from different countries looking for mentions of him, and like
Speaker 2: clipping them out, and he keeps them in like he
Speaker 2: has these little keepsake books for his news coverage.
Speaker 3: God just rapidly coming up with new nicknames, like he's
Speaker 3: Chris fucking Jericho.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, and these two Like these nicknames,
Speaker 2: and all of these the news clippings about him. He
Speaker 2: uses them as weapons during his endless meetings with Jewish
Speaker 2: community groups. Ben o' khone, a representative for the Jewish
Speaker 2: community in Berlin, recalled one such meeting years later. It
Speaker 2: began with a forceful attack by Eikman on the representatives
Speaker 2: of the German Jews. He had a folder of press
Speaker 2: cuttings in front of him for and of course, in
Speaker 2: which Iikman was portrayed as a bloodhound who wanted to
Speaker 2: kill the Jews. He read us excerpts from the Pariser
Speaker 2: Tagblot and asked if this was correct, and it said
Speaker 2: the information had had to come from our circles. Who
Speaker 2: spoke to Landau from the Ita It must have been
Speaker 2: one of you. And it's interesting to me that he's
Speaker 2: like he's taking these both to yell at them for
Speaker 2: like who's talking to these different newspapers? How could they
Speaker 2: possibly know? And also to show them look at how
Speaker 2: they're talking about me.
Speaker 3: Right, you need to take me seriously, right, And he
Speaker 3: guys aren't going to blink at me when I hit
Speaker 3: you with the teen vogue clipping right.
Speaker 2: And bloodhound is a common title that members of the
Speaker 2: SS get in this if they're very aggressive at pursuing Jews.
Speaker 2: And Eikman, despite what he says in this meeting, is
Speaker 2: proud to be called a bloodhound. Right. In Hungary in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, he would introduce himself in meetings by saying,
Speaker 2: do you know who I am? I am a bloodhound, right, like,
Speaker 2: that's what he's that's how he's talking about his see.
Speaker 3: Crystal Faltz character.
Speaker 2: Yes, the hero they call me right, yes, yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: Eikman was by far the best known of his comrades,
Speaker 2: and the fact that he really was deeply complicit shouldn't
Speaker 2: obscure the reality that he also exaggerated his involvement and
Speaker 2: responsibility for clout. He was not the only guy with
Speaker 2: nicknames like this. Once the Nazis invaded Poland with the
Speaker 2: ussr Amon Goeth became the head of a concentration camp
Speaker 2: in Crackow and earned the nickname Emperor of Crackow. This
Speaker 2: put him right up there with Joseph of Weitzel, one
Speaker 2: of Iikman's top employees and commandant of a camp in Doppel,
Speaker 2: which earned him the nickname the Jews Emperor of Doppel.
Speaker 2: Right Christ, Yeah.
Speaker 3: If memory Cesaray is an am on Goth the camp
Speaker 3: commander that was so corrup the Nazis fired him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe he was the one that got shit
Speaker 2: canned for being so fucking like yes, oh man, So
Speaker 2: we don't really know like how often these nicknames are,
Speaker 2: you know, things that he came up with himself. How
Speaker 2: many of them are things that like people in Europe
Speaker 2: came up to describe him because of how major he is,
Speaker 2: But he was a lot of the time he created
Speaker 2: his own nickname. Right during like, well, he's in Argentina
Speaker 2: and hanging out with other escape Nazi friends, he would
Speaker 2: brag to them that he had been nicknamed the Jews Pope.
Speaker 2: And there's no evidence of this that anyone ever called
Speaker 2: This is a nickname he made up for himself, Like,
Speaker 2: no one would have called you that, Adolph Eikman.
Speaker 3: Do you hear what they call me in Vienna? They
Speaker 3: call me Thunderbird? Right? Is that cool? Yeah?
Speaker 2: He also told friends, the men in my command had
Speaker 2: the kind of respect for me that prompted the Jews
Speaker 2: to effectively set me on a throne. Right, This is
Speaker 2: very important to him that, like he'd be seen as
Speaker 2: having been worshiped by these people who were under his thumb. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a massive deal for Adolph Eikman. Now, he's often
Speaker 2: depicted as a fanatic driven by hatred, but in deep reading,
Speaker 2: I see ego as at least as much a driver
Speaker 2: of his actions. He certainly hated and his bigotry only
Speaker 2: increased alongside his power, but I read a hunger for
Speaker 2: power and respect that drowned out other motivations A lot
Speaker 2: of the time. Eikman did not rise through the Nazi
Speaker 2: hierarchy because he was a fanatic. He became a fanatic
Speaker 2: because Nazism offered him an opportunity to be a great man,
Speaker 2: one which no other system would have afforded him. Now,
Speaker 2: the conquest of half of Poland presents a problem for Iikman.
Speaker 2: Prior to the Nazis invading, Jews had made up about
Speaker 2: one percent of the population of the Reich, which is
Speaker 2: about half a million people out of a population of
Speaker 2: sixty seven million. Significant numbers of these folks had immigrated,
Speaker 2: and in general the Austrian and Czech Jewish populations were
Speaker 2: also comparatively small, right, which had made it easy for
Speaker 2: Eikman to put up good numbers using the tactics we've discussed.
Speaker 2: Almost three and a half million Jews lived in Poland
Speaker 2: prior to World War II. This meant overnight the task
Speaker 2: on Aikman's lap increased by an order of magnitude. Per
Speaker 2: a BBC article titled Eikman, Mind of a War Criminal,
Speaker 2: Eikman explored a fresh option to porting Jews to a
Speaker 2: designated Jewish territory. He traveled to Poland to identify an
Speaker 2: appropriate location and then ordered that thousands of Czech and
Speaker 2: Viennese Jews be rounded up and sent eastward to lay
Speaker 2: the basis for this territorial solution. Within a few months, however,
Speaker 2: the plan was scrapped Eikman's office lacked the resources for it,
Speaker 2: an other SS project sad preference. At the same time,
Speaker 2: he was brutally evicting hundreds of thousands of Poles and
Speaker 2: Jews to make way for ethnic Germans transplanted from Eastern
Speaker 2: Europe into the newly annexed areas of the Reich. As
Speaker 2: a temporary measure, the displaced Jews were packed into ghettos,
Speaker 2: but where would they go? Eventually, after the fall of France,
Speaker 2: I took up a plan emanating from the German Foreign
Speaker 2: Office to ship four million European Jews to Madagascar. And
Speaker 2: he's not the author of the Madagascar Plan, but he
Speaker 2: is for a while kind of its most prominent like adherent, right,
Speaker 2: which is this idea that like, we got to get
Speaker 2: these people out of Europe, and maybe we could if
Speaker 2: they live in Madagascar, that'll be fine, right, it'll be
Speaker 2: safer for Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3: Why those movies were dangerous. They give people ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you think different things about Madagascar, includ the
Speaker 2: fact that there's already a plenty of people.
Speaker 3: There, a lot of people, yeah, famously.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now this is also the Madagascar Plan because this
Speaker 2: doesn't really happen, It never gets close to happening. But
Speaker 2: it's evidence that the Holocaust was not necessarily a given
Speaker 2: from the jump. As we'll talk about, you can find
Speaker 2: quotes from Hitler and other top Nazis going back to
Speaker 2: the twenties that can be seen as preludes to the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't a settled plan until the early forties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's something of an unfair amount of weight
Speaker 3: that gets put on the Madagascar plan. Like, no, obviously,
Speaker 3: of course with Holocaust, the diers, like the ones that
Speaker 3: acknowledge that the camps exist, that but the people died
Speaker 3: from like disease or whatever is the track that they take,
Speaker 3: Like there is these detailed plans in place to send
Speaker 3: all these people the Madagascar. Yeah, rather than it was
Speaker 3: drawings on a drunk person's napkin.
Speaker 2: They talked about a lot of shit right, that they
Speaker 2: didn't come close to doing right exactly. And Iikman, you know,
Speaker 2: the reason he gets involved is not that he is
Speaker 2: a major believer in this. It's that any new idea
Speaker 2: that comes through his office he tries to stick himself
Speaker 2: to because, like, you know, if it fails, he's not
Speaker 2: the guy who instituted it, but if it succeeds, his
Speaker 2: name's attached to it.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, it's good for him either way. He
Speaker 3: doesn't lose anything, He only has things to gain. Right.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty nine, after the invasion of Poland, Iikman
Speaker 2: briefly championed a plan to remove Jewish people from newly
Speaker 2: conquered and absorbed territory to a reservation guarded by the
Speaker 2: Nazis near Lublin. Thousands of people were forcibly transferred to
Speaker 2: what became a ghetto before the plan was abandoned in
Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen forty. And this is they were
Speaker 2: very much looking at what the US government had done
Speaker 2: to Native Americans, and we're like, well, maybe we can
Speaker 2: do something like that with the Jews, right, maybe we
Speaker 2: like we find a chunk of land that's like our
Speaker 2: Oklahoma that we don't really want, and we put them
Speaker 2: all there and we just kind of like keep them
Speaker 2: locked there. Right, that's the basic idea. And it's evidence
Speaker 2: of you know again, how much of all of this
Speaker 2: is based off of them looking at the United States
Speaker 2: and being like, well, shit, this seems to be working
Speaker 2: for them, right, Yeah, speaking of things that work for
Speaker 2: us advertising.
Speaker 3: Wow, Yeah, this ad brought to you by the Oklahoma
Speaker 3: Tourism Board.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Oklahoma, the lubland of America. Yes, sorry
Speaker 2: to both Lovelin and to Oklahoma. So as the Second
Speaker 2: World War gets a movin and Germany blazes through France
Speaker 2: and then starts tearing through big old chunks of western Russia,
Speaker 2: the fevered egos of men like Iikmen, who now feel
Speaker 2: like masters of the universe, gave a way to ever
Speaker 2: more sweeping eliminationist concepts. In September of nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: Iikman lobbied successfully to extend the definition of a Jew
Speaker 2: to include half Jews. Right. He had loud conflicts with
Speaker 2: those among the party who argued that people with just
Speaker 2: one Jewish grandparents shouldn't count, or that Jews who converted
Speaker 2: to Christianity weren't Jewish. And Iikman is on the no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's all about the blood. Any drop of it is
Speaker 2: somebody we got to get rid of, right.
Speaker 3: Once again, taking it from the United States and the
Speaker 3: one drop.
Speaker 2: The one drop rule. Right now, he moves from city
Speaker 2: to city, orchestrating the expulsion of one local Jewish population
Speaker 2: after the other. From Sizeken and Posen, he forces tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of people into ghettos far from home. The
Speaker 2: horror of forced resettlement earns him even more media attention,
Speaker 2: and uses it in meetings with Jewish leaders in other
Speaker 2: cities to say, hey, if you don't make sure your
Speaker 2: people leave when I tell them to leave and we
Speaker 2: meet our immigration quotas, I can do to you what
Speaker 2: I did in Posen. Right, you read the news, right,
Speaker 2: that was all me, baby, Right, you got to do
Speaker 2: what I You know you don't want that here. By
Speaker 2: this point in forty one, the international press is increasingly
Speaker 2: reporting on the violence and mass killing that had often
Speaker 2: followed such resettlement campaigns. Eikman's not always involved in these
Speaker 2: mass killings, and in these reasons, he's not doing all
Speaker 2: the resettlement. He's not the only guy doing this. Right,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of war crimes being committed in
Speaker 2: forty one, and he's not central to most of them.
Speaker 2: He's not running the Einset scrupin.
Speaker 3: Right on the Eastern Front, right, He's just the one
Speaker 3: that seems to be really comfortable putting his face on it, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so he gets credit for a lot of massacres
Speaker 2: in the foreign media that he was not involved with.
Speaker 2: And sometimes this was done out of pure habit right
Speaker 2: where they would be like, oh, and Eikman must have
Speaker 2: ordered this, because he's the guy everyone knows is doing
Speaker 2: stuff like this, right, And at the time, Eikman is
Speaker 2: proud to take the credit, right, He's like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I'll take the blame for that share stolen valor. Once again,
Speaker 2: he's stealing valor from even worse Nazis. Although yeah, maybe that.
Speaker 3: I'm stealing valor from Nazis so you can get a
Speaker 3: discount at Nazi Chilis, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, he's putting fake Nazi medals on is in the uniform.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: He is so proud of his reputation that when Heinrich
Speaker 2: Himler announced an exhibition celebrating the mass resettlement campaign titled
Speaker 2: The Great Homecoming, which was essentially meant to be a
Speaker 2: big pr announcement for the opening of the Holocaust. Himmler
Speaker 2: plans it with the goal of burnishing his own image
Speaker 2: right Himler's plan is like, I want to be seen
Speaker 2: as the guy who was responsible for this. But Aikman's like, hey, boss,
Speaker 2: I should get like like a room in this big
Speaker 2: thing for like the stuff I've been doing, right, Like
Speaker 2: you know I did good, didn't I shouldn't I get
Speaker 2: like a whole room. That's just about what Iikman did
Speaker 2: to help with this resettlement campaign, and Himmler eventually agrees
Speaker 2: that he'll get a special haul in the exhibit to
Speaker 2: share his achievement to the masses. Stengneth writes, the main
Speaker 2: welfare office for ethnic Germans objected, preferring to leave this
Speaker 2: section out for fear of a negative public reaction. Pictures
Speaker 2: of happy new settlers were one thing, numbers and images
Speaker 2: of people who had been expelled were another. But Eichman's
Speaker 2: pressure was for nothing. The exhibition was postponed until June
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, and having viewed it, Himmler canceled it
Speaker 2: at the last minute, putting off the experts who had
Speaker 2: provided the content until March nineteen forty two. The exhibition
Speaker 2: never took place, in part because the success that was
Speaker 2: hoped for was never achieved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't learn his lesson from Hydrake, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't show people the shit that you're doing.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, Iikeman's all in, Yeah, I want my
Speaker 2: name in a whole room, and Himmler like sees the
Speaker 2: plans for this bragging about the early Holocaust party and
Speaker 2: is like, I don't know, man, I don't think I
Speaker 2: want that shit out. I don't think I want my
Speaker 2: name attached to this. Actually, but you made head.
Speaker 3: You made Himmler uncomfortable, right right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: The only other thing that did that was Literalitz.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So the other reason this gets canceled is that by
Speaker 2: March of nineteen forty two, the Wehrmacht has gone through
Speaker 2: its first winter on the Eastern Front, and it's become
Speaker 2: obvious to any intelligent Nazis that this is not going
Speaker 2: to be a quicker, easy war right now. I don't
Speaker 2: think they're all aware that defeat is a foregone conclusion,
Speaker 2: although they probably should have. But a fear starts to
Speaker 2: set in that both allides the desire to brag about
Speaker 2: what's being done, and introduces a growing sense of desperation
Speaker 2: to solve the Jewish questions sooner than later. In early
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, Himmler had given orders to deport all
Speaker 2: remaining Berlin and Viennese Jews at the end of the war,
Speaker 2: which was expected imminently. By October, it was clear that
Speaker 2: this would not be the case, and the growing desperation
Speaker 2: of the Eastern Front acted as a justification for more
Speaker 2: extreme acts of violence. As revenge, a new deportation campaign
Speaker 2: was executed in Berlin by the SD. A Swedish newspaper
Speaker 2: at the time, described the campaign began on the night
Speaker 2: of October si seventeenth. People were pulled from their beds
Speaker 2: by the SS in order to get dressed and pack
Speaker 2: a suitcase. Then they were immediately taken away, their apartment
Speaker 2: sealed and everything in them confiscated. Those who had been
Speaker 2: arrested were taken to railroad freight depots and ruined synagogues
Speaker 2: and transported east on October nineteenth. They were all old
Speaker 2: men between fifty and eighty, women and children. They will
Speaker 2: be used for useful work in the East, which means
Speaker 2: drying out the Rokeitino marshes, the work will be done
Speaker 2: during the Russian winter by old men, women and children,
Speaker 2: and the clothes in which they were arrested. There can
Speaker 2: now be no doubt that this campaign is premeditated mass murder.
Speaker 2: The campaign leader is SS Group and Feuer Aikman, and
Speaker 2: we see in this from the switchpaper a great example
Speaker 2: of the half accurate reporting. Right, the broad strokes of
Speaker 2: the deportation are correct. Aikman is involved in it, but
Speaker 2: he's not running it. He's not the campaign leader of
Speaker 2: the program. And he's also not a group in fewer
Speaker 2: right that ranked roughly equivalents to lieutenant general, and he
Speaker 2: never reaches that high. So Stenge suspects that he gets
Speaker 2: given this rank by the press because they can't imagine
Speaker 2: someone they've heard about so much as anything but like
Speaker 2: a central spoke to the Nazi party, right, Like he's.
Speaker 3: Well connected, hanger on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think his I think his actual rank
Speaker 2: is close to like a major captive, but like that's
Speaker 2: just not high enough. We gotta bump it up, right,
Speaker 2: otherwise he's not going to seem as central as we've
Speaker 2: decided he is.
Speaker 3: I think it also owes to a lot of modern
Speaker 3: misunderstandings of how the Nazi government and the infrastructure worked.
Speaker 3: Where everyone likes to say that or believe rather that
Speaker 3: it all function a certain kind of way because you know,
Speaker 3: Germans are just very efficient, and you know, it was
Speaker 3: a militarist culture so had to be run this way.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah blah. No, it was just a bunch
Speaker 3: of weird connected barnacles. Ranks were involved, but they're mostly
Speaker 3: just window dressing for people wearing incredibly overdone uniforms. Right,
Speaker 3: but it really didn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what matters most is your connection, like who
Speaker 2: you know, right, yeah, yeah, which is you know the
Speaker 2: case with all authoritarian organizations like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, alongside the German invasion of Russia, the Indsets group
Speaker 2: and had started carrying out the first mass killings of
Speaker 2: Jews of what would come to be known as the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: Eichmann has nothing to do with organizing this part of it.
Speaker 2: But it becomes rapidly clear that just shooting millions of
Speaker 2: people is not practical. Right, there's a number. First off,
Speaker 2: bullets are going to be a problem for Germany, right,
Speaker 2: Like they don't have enough of anything, let alone bullets.
Speaker 2: Second problem, this kind of destroys your elite troops, which
Speaker 2: is what they're using. Like they're using guys who are
Speaker 2: like would be usable as fighters and shooting babies all day,
Speaker 2: even for guys who suck as much as the Insets
Speaker 2: group it does. It just kind of ruins human beings right,
Speaker 2: Like they're not able to handle it for a long Yeah,
Speaker 2: they all start killing each other. Drinking, Yeah, yeah, drinking
Speaker 2: is a major problem. And so they start experimenting with
Speaker 2: other ways. And one place they start experimenting is with
Speaker 2: the use of gas fans at a place called Helm
Speaker 2: And in that summer of like nineteen forty two, Iikman
Speaker 2: travels to the east to or of nineteen forty one, sorry,
Speaker 2: in the summer forty one, Iikman travels to the East
Speaker 2: to observe the process these first gas fans in use.
Speaker 2: He spends that summer and the later part of the
Speaker 2: year and what becomes a fact finding mission for the
Speaker 2: Vonse Conference in early nineteen forty two, which is the
Speaker 2: meeting where the Nazis are going to lay out their
Speaker 2: plan for the final solution. So Heidrich basically has him
Speaker 2: being like, hey, the East is our laboratory for killing Jews.
Speaker 2: I want you to talk to the folks doing the shooting,
Speaker 2: go see some of these gas fans and how they work,
Speaker 2: and come back to us with information on the best
Speaker 2: way to kill a lot of people at scale, because
Speaker 2: we're going to start next year ramping up the actual
Speaker 2: extermination of all of these Jews that we've gotten hold
Speaker 2: of in the parts of Europe we've conquered.
Speaker 3: He puts them in charge of the Holocaust soft launch.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, And he's largely he's like fact finding, right,
Speaker 2: so that we can we need to know how quickly
Speaker 2: can you guess people, how much does it take? What
Speaker 2: are the best kinds of guess what we need to
Speaker 2: know to start constructing these camps?
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Iikman is going to be a big part of getting
Speaker 2: that information right. And again you see both he's not
Speaker 2: what he claims. He's not leading this. Iikman didn't make
Speaker 2: the call to do a holocaust, but he's the guy
Speaker 2: who's respected intellectually as an expert, and when it becomes
Speaker 2: clear we're going to do a holocaust, they go to
Speaker 2: him and are like, hey, it off, we got a
Speaker 2: job for you. We get a guy for that, need
Speaker 2: you to gather some info you're good at that, right,
Speaker 2: You're good at gathering information. Come help us with this.
Speaker 3: Everybody's sitting around the office. We need to build how
Speaker 3: many camps? I got a guy for that.
Speaker 2: Give me my camp guy, Yeah, give me my camp guy.
Speaker 2: Bring an old ike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we sent him to concentration camp, night school. He
Speaker 3: should know how to do this.
Speaker 2: He's probably good at this by now. And yeah, well
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that and more in part three. Joe,
Speaker 2: how are you feeling?
Speaker 3: Just wonderful? Robert, Yeah, absolutely wonderful. I set myself up
Speaker 3: for failure for this one because I came to this
Speaker 3: Like last time I was on here, we talked about
Speaker 3: Lorenzi Berrier for four hours. What could you do? That's
Speaker 3: worse than that? And you've showed me, You've showed me
Speaker 3: real good.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: I've been hoisted by my own petard.
Speaker 2: We all love our patards. Are we allowed to say
Speaker 2: petard anymore? I don't know. You can't say the hard
Speaker 2: p you can't say the art fe It just sounds wrong. Great,
Speaker 2: all right, everybody, this has been behind the Bastards a podcast. Joe,
Speaker 2: do you have anything you want to plug?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I am the host of the lines of My
Speaker 3: Donkey's podcast. We talked about history, military history, genocide, you know, fun,
Speaker 3: lighthearted stuff like that. If you want to hear more
Speaker 3: about the Eastern Front in winter, we talked about the
Speaker 3: Battle of Stalingrad for I believe five hours, so you
Speaker 3: can go listen to that series and we do all
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Fantastic, excellent, All right, well, everybody, Bye bye.
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