Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peken Show.
We are continuing the series. Hey, Thomas, how are you
doing well?
Speaker 2: I'm very well man. Thanks uh again for continuing this series.
I'm very pleased. That's just how it's developed in terms
of our content. But I think the response has been incredible.
When I want to think of Ray sincerely for being
so kind in that regard, I I, uh, I that
that kind of feedback is essential, and it's been very constructive,
and it's been overwhelmingly positive, and that means a great deal.
And it also means I'm you know, we're doing things properly,
and uh that's great. So I'm very very very pleased.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to be doing something right when people
are like getting mad if you don't put out an episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well it's all though too, like this is
I've been this is literally the fifth time I've been
the platform and from Twitter like and like anytime it
seems like I'm making an impact, like they deplatform me.
So there's that too, but uh yeah, it's it's quite
a bit more positive that people who are clamoring for
more episodes and like I said that that that that
means a great deal to me man, like, I'm very
honored by that because.
Speaker 1: Well I got to catch up because I've only been
the platformed on Twitter four times.
Speaker 2: So oh you'll get my friend. But no, no, we
like hitting aside though it uh you know, I plan
to kind of transition the longer for him anyway, So
you know, I'll drop or people can find me at
the end of the show, not because I'm trying to
be a shill, but uh, you know, you're You've got
a wide audience, and i'd uh, it's just an easy
way for me to reach people or who are interested.
And you know, it's about half the content I drop
on there is is totally free, So there's that too.
Speaker 1: But okay, yeah, I'll link to anything you want me
to link to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I'll thank you, Pete, and I'll drop.
That's a conclusion of this. But I think I think,
uh yeah, I think I think we finished off. In
ninety and thirty six, we were talking about uh, you know,
mister Churchill getting access to Baldwin, I mean quite literally,
and uh you know how uh how the focus it
had come to be and now church Will became kind
of a permanent thorn in the side, not just to Baldwin,
but you know, in in in that of any establishment
figure like Tory, labor or liberally opposed the you know,
rearmament and a confrontational posture with Germany. So I think
where I think where we left off was I pointed
out that, uh, you know Churchill despite his kind of
by this point, which is nineteen thirty six, despite his
constant apologia for the Soviet Union and and it's kind
of fervent, increasingly shrill, you know, hostility to Germany, and
these these confabulated figures and statistics that the focused group
were submitting, is is actual data like always from undisclosed
undisclosed and intelligence sources. Well, all this was going on,
of course, and I I I don't want to derail
listen to a tangent, but it's a matter of material
significance to what was underway within the UK. You know,
the the Spare Civil War was raging hard at this point,
and you know that was a real, uh that that
impacted every culture and the continent, critical culture. I mean,
in a in a way that really can't be overstated.
It wasn't just a military quagmire for the for the Spaniards,
and for the for the Iberian Peninsula generally, or you know,
for the the UH the UH or for security and
the Mediterranean. I mean, it truly, truly was a Veltonshong's creek.
I'm sure buttued that pronunciation, but you know it's really
that's really where that's really there was a there was
a collision of world views between between you know, the
communists and UH and and their opponents all and sundry.
You know, some of these people were fascists in the full.
You know, there's Iron Guard volunteers from Romania. You know,
you even had like Carlists like uh, you know, monarchist
types in the ranks. You had, you had out now
you know, national socialists deployed UH with counter religion from
Germany and UH. You know you had you obviously had
at a whole uh whole population of Italian volunteers. But
also I mean basically anybody one of the reasons why, uh,
I don't want to get into the intrigues that led
Franco to being kind of the frontman, uh of the
of the nationalist cause. But Franco was somewhat apolitical. I
mean even then, even even well before you know, he
became this kind of Cold War intriguer who uh who
who was kind of all things to all people. You know,
he uh, Franco the man himself, Like much as he
might have been lampooned, this is something of a crude
figure common to the in a you know, Latin American
world as we would think of it here, you know,
like it. The way he was viewed in Europe would
be kind of the way we people would have viewed prone.
But aside from all of that, I mean, it was
more acceptable to support a figure like Franco then you
know it would have been some some kind of ideologically
committed fishes. But at the same time, there was a
certain perfidy to a Churchill coming out in support of
the nationalists. Meanwhile, you know, declaring it essential to stand
with the Soviet Union against Germany, and what he suggested
was Germany or identism. Part of this was the Republican
government under one Nagan Negron. Again I butchered pronunciations. Please
don't declare in the comments that I'm a crete and
I know that I can't help it, okay, But Negron
had support from the Soviet chikof and you know, all
kinds of police and military elements from the Soviet Union
and including a young Eric Milka who went on to
uh who went on to you know, be the Stasi
honcha over decades, but incredible brutality was carried out in
the name of the you know, Republican Cause, which was
really just the Red Cause, and and the uh in
a uh you fancy dress. Particularly clergy men and women
were targeted. Uh. You know, it sounds I'm not being
flippant about such things, but it sounds like a propagantic cliche.
But you know, none is really were aveiled, the systematic
rate and things, and you know, uh the cemeteries where
clergy people were buried were subject to destruction and their
remains were dissentered and and desecrated. Just horrible, horrible stuff.
So uh, you know, Churchill went on a record in
Parliament as well as in his very at that to
that there too four still lucrative uh newspaper contrary access
the editorial writer, you know, in support of Franco. And
that was a that was kind of an early example
I think of these kinds of competing these kinds of
competing loyalties that he was he was forced to forced
to contend with you know, I mean even I realized
in modern political life, even a man whose sympathies are
literally bought, he's got to perform something of a delicate
mini what in that regard. But this was unusual, even
considering the man in question, and even even considering, uh,
the reality is of modern political life. Uh, that this
was a bizarre circumstances, that I'm getting it, and that
the terms of debate and discourse we we're not normal
at all, even even the even the shenanigans, the focus notwithstanding,
forgive that big stretch. I just said that I just
had to shut the doward the office. But uh, now
bring it back. H It's the year ninety thirty six,
and what's happening in Berlin at this time. Erhard Milch
who we raised in the last episode, and I come
back to him a lot, not just because he was
a prolific diarist and after the war, Miltch Uh was
very open. Uh, he he was. He was. He kept
a looted of revery few people into his intimate circles,
but those that he did, he was very open with
them about his wartime activities and about what was underway
in Berlin. And the years leading up to uh the
onset of hostilities and particularly as we established, Milt was
something of a go between with the you know, the
UK and and Berlin. Unofficially, Milton was an unusual guy
as we as we raised to His father was Jewish,
so he was you know, mixed blood. He was the
CEO of Luftanza. He was a he was a he
was something of a military genius and he uh was
one of the first truly uh he was He was
in the first military man who demonstrated true attitude for
the potential of air power and its utility and particularly
as ah as regards ground assault and and uh its
utility and in terms of combined arms. Okay, well, most
of nineteen thirty six he submitted to Garing, you know
who was chief of the loot Faffa. He submitted, uh, well,
it was kind of his own strategic vision moving forward
of what Germany's defense needs were in terms of the Looftwaffa,
which you know, air forces were new then, okay, they
truly were nascose, So it was, uh, it was kind
of a statement of what you know, they should take
to the Furre in terms of what should be allocated
for them, to for them to develop and and to
staying the forces and being necessary to you know, to
credibly project power. But also uh it was a strategic
survey of of of what the next war would look like,
and it was it was exhaustive. It was titled Thoughts
on the Air War. Quite literally, there's not a single
mention of the UK or the Royal Air Force, and
it's exclusively focused on France as a probable probable adversary.
There's plenty of mentions of the Soviet Union. But at
this point there was relations between Berlin and Moscow or
at times frosty. There was always kind of a damically
sword hanging above it because the the governing ideologies were
it were truly like dialectically violently at odds of one another.
That part of where both arrived their legitimacy. But at
the same time, uh, the there there was an outward
diplomatic courting of the Soviet Union. This is one of
the reasons why stressed or had been done away with
in my opinion, But that's a tangent we can take
up later. But nor there was a scrupulous avoidance that
that that that came from Hitler that that provocation and
over provocation of the Soviet Union should be avoided unless
it's a matter of essential security. However, again there was
literally not a single mention of the UK or the
r a F. And this this was an eye is
only study. It's not as if no, who is doing
this for diplomatic reasons because he you know, he was
concerned about you know, British eyes being on it and
then and then somehow developing an idea that they were
being set up as a as as as you know,
the opposing force all but name and war gaming or something.
Now this has contrasted when the you know, not just
with Churchill's UH to the germanophobia and these in these
configularity statistics about UH about Germany arms and forces and
being and capability and intention. But the Foreign Office, the
British Foreign Office, it had most notably Lord Vance at
tarities you know, kind of become infamous, not just in
revisionist circles, but I think he's rather ugly character just
you know, in his regardless where one's politics fall, you know,
he he had a he was the permanent Chief of
Foreign Office for all practical purposes who had a quasi
view of power over whoever happened to be the foreign
Minister at any given and any given administration. But also
you know what he was able to set the tenor
of of of the diplomatic core and he and really
is these these permanent these men with permanent sinate here
in the Foreign Office. Almost to a man, they were
profoundly how Feld in Germany. And that's a complicated issue,
and some of it's attributable to the same motive they
animated the men associated with the focus, but most of
them it proceeded that it had more to do with
the kind of antipathy of the to the Germans that
was characteristic at King Georgia's era. You know, it was
kind of kind of the long hangover of the Great War,
and you know, we talked a bit about, you know,
incidents like when Wilhelm, you know, congratulated Krueger on on
a on his on his victories against the crown and
in a on the Afan Cape like it. There there
there there was a lingering and a sharp hostility to
Germany in the Foreign Office that proceeded the focus That
becomes important later, and it's just it's important if you
want to understand the British establishment at this time. I
believe this is one of the things that despite the
great power and wealth at its disposal and its ability
to kind of create propaganda infrastructure where there wasn't any.
Despite all that, I believe the Foreign Office and its
orientation towards Germany, I believe that something that emboldened the
focus to kind of develop in the first place. Now
this gets really interesting, Uh, this gets really interesting if
we look at the backdrop of what happened from nineteen
thirty five to nineteen thirty seven. Well, first of all,
let's let's uh, First of all, let it be said too,
around the same time that Mills submitted his thoughts on
air or to Gearing. Okay, I mean a lot of
revisionist positive that, including Irving, including myself. I'm obviously not
the same league as Irving. But it must be stated
that the reason I raised that is because it's it's
it's it's it's persuasive testimony about the intention of the
German regime. Okay, and ads of nineteen thirty six. And
as we say, I was before militwould be in a
position to know not just no, but he was in
a position to directly impact policy by his evaluations and
his recommendations, So his thoughts on airwar, there's not a
single mention of the UK as a as a probable adversary.
Also in ninety thirty six, Hitler himself deployed on Ribbon
Trop to London as an ambassador before Ribbon Trot became
Foreign Minister. That was instructions were uh break literally Hitler
said that Ribbon trumb bring me an alliance with the
United Kingdom, you know, Uh, Ribbon Troup is he's kind
of miss Ribbon Trout was not a particularly complex figure,
but he's he's he's unfairly lampoon and disdained this kind
of foppish ignorant like a rich man. He wasn't. He
spoke very full in English. He lived in Canada. He
was a he he was something of a globe trotting
businessman when that was rather rare, you know, for for
men in that role it was, I mean, it was
rare even for men in the government prior to uh,
you know, about mid century. But I mean, so Ribbon
trub is very worldly. There a reason Hillar had his
shortcomings and his judge ability to judge character. But in
Ribbin Tromp's case, this was not one of them, and
Ribbin Troupp actually got Ribbin Troupp actually got on reasonably uh.
He actually got on reasonably well with his counterparts. Churchhild
deliberately sought him out to uh insult him. Uh A
complications and irvings made, uh irvings made, uh irvings made
much of that. But it's even Chamberlain himself, he he
and Ribin Trout didn't that particularly warm relations. They were amiable, Okay,
But again this isn't. I raised this again because it's
an example of executive intention of Brooklyn and its disposition
to London. Now, this was part of an onoing effort
by Germany to court the UK. UH that was I've
the above board aspect of it, and uh the preceding
summer summer of nineteen thirty five, owing to this kind
of ongoing you know, rapport that Aaron hard Milch had
with the British Air Ministry, he authorized Gearing through Milch
to submit actual intelligence data on loof off of forces
and being and capabilities to London on the condition that
their counterparson in the Air Ministry not disclosed the same
fot to any other state and that it not be
announced in Parliament or anything like that. Basically it is
so it was a good faith gesture, so it's not
to be I'm conditioned to not be exploited for political purposes. Now,
the Foreign Office intercepted it and demanded Ambassador Eric Phipps
to reject it, which is incredible. Let me think about that.
Even if this data was even if this dad was
submitted in bad faith, even if it was confabulated, which
it wasn't, for record was entirely it was what appeared
to be. But you don't reject any anything from a
potential adversary, you know, or rather great power, I mean,
because the data is data, you know, and that's you
needed to build a conceptual picture of the strategic landscape.
So that gives night the fat of the Foreign Office.
They were unwilling to entertain anything that appeared to be,
you know, a good faith diplomatic overture in any sense.
That that's incredible. Okay. So Milt himself, who in many
ways was more effective than Gearing, probably Milton bypassed the
FOI in office entirely. He directly approached the Committee of
Imperial Defense, which, as we talked about was the counterpart
in many respects to the General Staff in Germany or
the American Joint Chiefs. He resented his figures, and uh,
the we the Committee of Imperial Defense in the Air Ministry,
they they validated them as as accurate, in part because
they reflected what you know, British intelligence and particularly the
Air Ministry's Intelligence arm had compiled. So in other words,
this is this was the this would be the equivalent
of state like a regime that was suspected of of
of cultivating them, you know, radio acting material for a
for a military purpose, you know, granted open access to
the nuclear reactors. Okay, that's an imperfect analogy, but it
was what it appeared to be. It was a good
faith gesture that to demonstrate, you know, we're not you know,
we're we're not developing a strategic capability with uh, you know,
London in mind, and you know we're we're certainly not
aiming to develop an air arm to you know, to
terrorize the U can't submission another by threat of force
or you know, by the application of it. It it's uh.
And like I said, even even if it was not
a even if it were disingenuous sort of Ledgermain, which
it was not. It's it's incredible that it was just
you know, utterly uh rejected out right by the Foreign Office.
But it's timachu of what of what they had in
mind and as as well as the focus you know,
again we come back to what the we come back
to the Focus statement of purpose, which was, you know,
to counter any any inference or any suggestion or any
any any appearance that anything that Berlin demands or anything
that suggests or anything it claims to desire is legitimate
on any front and any capacity. And that's exactly the
way to understand that particular that that that that that
particular situation. But the uh and what was uh. Now,
of course this uh, this uh, this data is fed
do after Chamberlain, just before he becomes are just the
day after it comes a prime minister, because Churchill and
the Focus as well as uh, you know a lot
of Chamberlain's opponents who aren't particularly associated with mister Churchill
or the Focus, but are always eager to you know,
find a way to impeach the credibility of a of
the uh of the sitting prime minister. You know, they
seized upon h you know, Chamberlain is is one, you know,
leaving the UK vulnerable based upon you know, based upon
German ambitions. So when Shamelin becomes PM, you know in
UH and he's he's very quickly advised of you know,
the UH, the UH, the Air ministries, you know, unofficial
meetings of Milch and the figures that they were availed to.
The only response from UH Lord Advance at Tarth, the
only response from Churchill, the only response from the Focus
is merely that Mills was lying, nothing more, nothing less.
You know, Germans can't be trusted. The Germans are lying,
you know. Oh. Hitler also said that you know, the
German army would not exceed half a million men, you know,
basically saying, you know, the Germans are liars because they
claim to be compliant with their side treaty, which we
later acknowledged was an unjust treaty and not sustainable. You know,
and when they when they didn't avail themselves you know,
sanctioned by either by occupation or by further you know,
instrumental reparations. You know, that means that they simply can't
be trusted in any statement that they make. I mean,
which is the most tortured form of reason that one
can imagine. But again, the figures that were submitted by
Milsh were validated by the Air Ministry and the opfoice
of Imperial Defense independently. Then the Milch said, but again,
if one yells things alluded enough from proverbial rooftops, and
you know has the as the means and the will
and the kind of bottomless coffers to the general of
bully pulpit, it really doesn't matter if the things when
is saying or are completely fabricated. And that's exactly what happened,
particularly because Chamberlain did not have a particularly strong mandate.
Now the plot thickens a bit. The Air Ministry indicating
a kind of admirable streak of independence in October of
a nineteen thirty seven, and reciprocity for the kind of
good offices as it were like demonstrated by Milch and
their counterparts, and the loof off Milt himself and and
and the German Air Force deligation is invited to toward
the Air Ministry time returned to Berlin. Melt is summoned
by by Hitler himself, and which is unique or it's
remarkable rather. You know, Milt is a guy who was uh,
he was he was he was friendly with Hitler. Certainly
Hitler followed his care you're closely, you know, but it's
not as if they had regular briefings or something. Hitler
took a peculiar interest because he wanted to relay everything
that he could about his impressions of a of his
counterparts and of the political climate in London at the time.
And Milton tested dude to Irving as Wilton his own
diaries is that hilar reiterated doing the alliance with the
UK is absolutely essential. So I mean they're if in it.
This is yet more kind of direct testimonial evidence of
of what Berlin's intensions were as of nineteen thirty seven.
And I emphasized this because we're going to get into
the what I considiately be the appeasement myth momentarily and
as a framing as the context, it's kind of necessary
to establish that foundation. I'm not just trying to bore
people with details or minutia that happens to interest me now.
November nineteen thirty seven, the focus has its uh has
its kind of greatest coup as official the obviously you know,
with with the exception when mister Churchill himself became Prime Minister,
but they Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden formally joins the Focus.
What his motivations were, I'm not an expert on Eden.
I think, uh, I think eating at certain insights, not
so much into the international situation that we had some
of those two. But I think he believed that Chamberlain
was weak. I think that he believed that. I think
he was worldly enough to realize that there was something
of a title title shift underway in uh in the
UK as do uh what kinds of factions and what
people became, you know, we're gonna become the true power
brokers moving forward. I think he preferred to have the
Focus as a friend rather than an enemy, because he
he saw the writing on the wall and he believed
at some point that you know, Churchill and the Focus
were gonna get their way and he wanted to survive that.
That's just my own opinion. I mean, I'm sure there's
gonna be guys, particularly Englishmen who know far more about
eating the man than I do in British politics, who
will probably disagree and they maybe we'll be right. That
is my own take it around uh around the same
time a few months later, ninety thirty eight, the international
situation is heating up. Churchill medis with Joe P. Kennedy,
which everybody knows was ambassador in the UK, and he'd
been in early Kennedy the senior. He'd been an early
new dealer until Ian Roosevelt became better enemies owing in
part to A Roosevelt's appointment of morganhou you know who
we we we dealt with them, the person engine character
at Morgan Fowl a couple episodes ago. But Kennedy found
himself very much at log reads with Churchill, not just
because Kennedy was a you know, a millionaire Boston irishman
and he could tell the Churchill just kind of disdained him,
owing to his racent pedigree as it were.
Speaker 1: But uh.
Speaker 2: Fdr quite clearly directed and he was not prone to
this kind of micromanagement, at least in the case of Kennedy.
Roosevelt quite clearly directed Kennedy to take you know, these
kinds of friendly luncheons with with Churchill in order to
get a sense of what exactly Churchill's intentions where was
regard of the international situation. Because it seemed it was
clear to anybody who had understanding the deep politics at play,
like what their intentions were. When I say they, I
mean church on the focus, but it wasn't clear how
exactly they were willing to insinuate their ambitions and the policy.
So Kennedy took note at Churchill was kind of perfecty
because the topic of discussion was the man of Ribbon
Trop and and uh, Kennedy said, well, you know, did
Ribbon trop not offer that you know, Germany would not
only make no claim on the British Empire, but would
all but guarantee it's continued existence so long as the
British were willing to furnished Germany once again with its colonies,
and that the UK would not interferreance. You know, Germany's
policy in the East and including that was a it
was a guarantee that, you know, the Behrmacht would not
move an inch westward. It should be noted that Hitler
had no interest in the issue of colonies, but Ribbin
Trout and the Foreign Ministry did. But that's that's kind
of a that that deserves a treatment on its own.
But much like Van Sittar, kind of lamely replied, uh.
When confronted with you know, the figures submitted by Milts,
the justestual of good faith, like Churchill merely declared that
these were all lies, that Ribbon trop was lying and
this was all German Legard Maine and Kennedy was so
much shocked by this. And I mean Kennedy was kind
of the he was kind of the king of dirty tricks.
But it's uh, it's it's uh, I mean it's telling
that uh it was I guess kind of the single
singular focus on Suing for War is what is is
what it's telling here. I mean it's not telling that
that was you know, Churchill's intention, and is is kind
of enter sense of the situation. But I that I I, uh,
this is interesting too because moving forward, we will probably
get into this in the next episode. But Joseph Kennedy
became convinced that uh that that that that that church
I might actually have him arrested on something of trumped
up charges or even haven't murdered. I I can't speak
to that, but like weihood of that. But it I
only raised that because this is one of the things
that this is one of the catalysts that led to
a lot of direct communication between Churchill and FDR himself.
You know, FDR was not a particularly accessible man, and
that well we'll get into that later, probably not in
this episode, but I wanted to drop that p foundation
and I realized also, I'm throwing a lot of unfamiliar
personages at people, and I think Joe Kennedy kind of
ties like, you know, the distant paths to the kind
of less remote pass in people's minds. If that makes
any sense. Letus I just find it interesting. Now we're
gonna move on. It's more interesting, sexiest. I hope no
one will sleep yet. But uh, the uh, the Anschluz,
the merger with Austria. Not only was that, you know,
one of the key ambitions of of Hitler and the
National Socialists and the Third Reich, but this was kind
of the this is the big foreign policy coup that
set many things in motion, including what happened at Munich
months later. Okay, this is a game changer. You know,
the UH Berlin was clamoring for UH for for the
unification of Austria and in Germany proper. The Austrian Chancellor
Purchusnig opposed this at all costs. Okay, it's uh and
then and one of the great kind of uh follies
of power politics and the gamesmanship they're in Purchusnig. On
March twelve, he announced that there will be a plebiscite
on independence March thirteen. Okay, it was taking a page
from the book of Adolf Hitler. Schusnig was gonna He
said that, you know that the Austrians that'd fight to
the last man and would never you know, accept being
a part of Germany. And you know, well, you know,
to disabuse anybody of any notion that there could be
a peaceful assimilation of Austria in the Germany. You know,
he's gonna hold his his plebiscite. Let's see what the
Austrian people favor moving forward, whether it's independence, you know,
a yes vote for independence, or whether they favor subjugation
by the you know, the boot to the German Reich. Now,
what did schism to do? He only printed up. He
ordered the only ballots containing the yes option be printed up.
He also announced that voting against the Austrian independence was
a form of a sedition and was a crime. He also,
upon learning that the average age of Austria National Socialist
Party members was twenty three. He arbitrarly raised the voting
age to twenty four. He asked me, that's a kind
of electioneering worthy of of America. In twenty twenty, EDILF
Hitler saw it was underway. It he uh, as everybody knows.
He he preempted the ash slous, He preempted this plebiscite,
and he preempted a shooting, the declaring martial law by uh,
you know, deploying forces across the Austrian frontier, and uh,
the Vermont is welcomed by the people. And UH. On
April tenth, Hitler held a referendum on the same day
as you know German elections, and uh and behold ninety
nine point seven percent of Austrian's voting in favor of
an schlus Now it must be stated that Jews, Roma's
and Gypsies and Communist Party members were not extended to vote. Okay,
otherwise though even a Life magazine, which was certainly no
friend of the third RIICHARILF Hitler, they ran on May second,
nineteen thirty eight. The election was certified as quote basically
fair like in other words, this was like a legitimate
reflection of public opinion of ethnic Germans in Austria. Now
I can only imagine this brings to mind the kind
of abject lunacy of the anglosphere and it's moral cant Like,
do you realize if I mean, the UK was not
in a position to do so, and neither was France.
But suppose it's been some kind of expeditionary force of
a British and French, the British and French army in
Congress with the like shooting things, kind of a secret police,
you know, assaulting Austria, you know, to liberate them from
you know, a position that ninety nine point seven percent
of voting adult's favored. I mean, it's it's crazy, It
defies imagination, but it it kind of it made me
think of like what Merscheimer said about uh, you know, uh,
particularly the United States and the UK, but pretty much
the entire EU, which is under you know, American dominion
in terms of its values among other things. You know,
all regimes lie. But when when literally all you stand
on is moral, can't that's totally at odds with reality.
It can lead to bizarre outcomes. You can find yourself
at war based upon some kind of mythology that that
that uh, that that that that has that does not
reflect strategic circumstances when iota and there's really no other
kind of regime like that, like dysfunctional as the East
Block was, that that wasn't something that that there there
wasn't a risk of such things. But I just I
find that fascinating.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you something about Austria. Absolutely, let's go
back a few years. Yeah, why did they assassinate Dolphus.
Speaker 2: Dolphus was a national Catholic, basically something of a clerical fascist.
I mean, I don't like that term, but that's one
way to understand it. And he'd very much uh, he
very very much apposed. He very much opposed what I
think of any of any kind of secular union with
what had been habsburg Lands. He wanted an Austrian national state.
I think it was almost kind of like a Tito figure.
I mean, yeah, he was presiding over a homogeneous population.
But he was a sport enemy of the national Socialist.
The Austrian National Socialists were particularly violent, particularly revolutionary in
their disposition. That almost tanked the concord with Hitler and Mussolini.
I believe that's one of the things that prompted Hitler
to unconditionally see the tyroll to fascist Digli the tyroll
region because Hitler was quite literally meeting with the Mussolini
when the news came in that the Dolphus had been
had been unceremeneously murdered, you know, Gangland style. That's why
it and shoot Snigga. I think Dolphus is more of
a genuine patriot than shot Snigga. But he was just
as kind of pigheadedly uncompromising as a and in terms
of in terms of political realities, like that's why it's
like it's a complicated issue. But the the main thing is, uh,
Dolphus seemed to think he could Dolvis seemed to believe
that he could stay his own course and with the
backing of the Vatican, with the backing of Mussolini, you know,
he could keep uh, he could. He could he could
keep the national socialism down, he could keep the UK
in France out, and he could keep Austria you know,
independent as a if if admittedly within you know, the
Italian orbit. That's why Hitler was infuriated that he was
murdered you know, not seeing he left for Dolphus. But
the Austrian the Austrian National Socialists were kind of we're
kind of wild guys, you know, they quitted themselves very
well in the battlefield. The Calvin Brinner, you know who
see to the hydrit he was one of the Austria
and National Socialists. And as we're as we're a lot
of especially in the later regime, a lot of them
emerged in in uh, in powerful roles. But that that's
that's the short.
Speaker 1: Answer, Okay, power power politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, indeed, indeed, yeah, and just the the when, when,
the when, the when the Halfburg Empire, you know, or
the Austro Hungarian Empire. But I mean it's it's more
probably the Halfsburg regime, you know, it when it when
it was a shattered you know, uh, in the aftermath
of nineteen eighteen. I mean it caused there's a lot
of real dysfunction there, you know. And even in states
that were actual you know, national communities that weren't just
you know, kind of hodge hodge pastiches of competing ethnic
groups and arbitrarily drawn you know, within arbitrarily drawn borders,
there was there was a problem of authority, and there
was a problem of you know what, what was the
correct political trajectory, not just in power political terms, but
in terms of sustaining any kind of legitimacy. I mean,
that's that's hard too, and that's one of the reasons
for such a small country, the it took on an
outside significance. And that's one of the reasons too, of
the Oastian national Socialists, you know, made this big impact.
That's because they were violent. There was a lot of
violent naziate actors in in in the interwar years.
Speaker 1: It didn't make a kind of impact, but there was
weird stuff that like Misus wrote about how like border
towns would be overrun by like the the neighboring population.
So it's like you had a border town that would
be Austrian and then all of a sudden it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, stuff like that. Real yeah, a real, a real,
real anarchic political situation.
Speaker 1: And his his answer to that was just give the
town up. Yeah, it's better to just give the town.
It's better to just give the town up and not
have to deal with that in your polity.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. At that point, and at that point too,
it's just a fiction, you know, I mean as yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you want to talk about you want to
get into Churchill's uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm leaving. I want to lead in a bit
to uh yeah, the the Munich situation, because it's it's
so immediately into the Anslos church On. The Focus they've
been clamoring that Chamberlain must go. You know, is is
his unwillingness to the hole fast on Austria shows that
he you know, he doesn't have the back going to
defend the empire. And and this was ironically and perversely
you know, this, this was this is the way the
Focus sold their perspective in public, is that this is
a threat to the empire. You know, Germany is a
threat to the empire. I mean that's strategically absurd. But
also I mean the one thing Britain could not do
was fight a world war and keep its empire. But
so during this time he uh this, you know, the
owing to conditions I'll dive into in a moment. You know,
people identified Czechoslovakia as the next great uh you know,
diplomatic and potential military catastrophe. You know, in the wake
of Austria, you know, core historian's claims because you know,
Hitler was this mad man. It was just on the
march and and just taking over places with hostility. And uh,
you know that's why I referred at the outset of
our discussion to the appeasement myth, because it really is
a myth. It's not me putting shade on a term
owing to my own political prejudices. It really does not
it really does not reflect what was underway. Now Chamberlain.
You know, like I said before, I Chamberlain is something
of a dull personage, and that that harmed him in
public life obviously, but he he did have a good
sense of things, and I mean in purely strategic terms.
You know, he understand the limitations and military power and
uh when uh As Churchill developed something of a quorum
around himself, not just to the of the focus, but
what of you know, hostile opposition figures. Uh. Chamblin's rebuttal was, okay,
you know, if we were to guarantee che quote guarantee Czechoslovakia.
You know the Czech the Zech frontier is essentially undefended. Okay,
so there's not forces in being there that you know
that that that any any British deployment would be kind
of beefing up. At most the UK could deploy at
that time as of ninety thirty As of summer ninety
thirty eight two divisions the RAF had only seven viable
modern fighter squadrons. You know, the UK itself to that
point it had no heavy to medium in aircraft capability.
And the big I mean, the big menace, frankly is
regardless of how combat resolved on the continent, and if
Japan and Italy joined the Fray, the British Empire was
going to be I mean it was. It was open
to assault on half of dozen fronts, you know, like
it's it would be the dimension of insanity undertake those
kinds of risks for Czechoslovakia. And it was around this
time too, interestingly, you know, we talked a great deal
about Churchill's dire financial straits and Ali was bailed out
with huge sums of money by you know, wealthy men
of factors who came to constant the core the focus.
Now it's uh it, It's got to be noted that
if the December thirty seven January thirty eight, Churchill had
lost a huge amount of money in American stocks and
Wall Street was still quite volatile even though they had
largely recovered ructurally, and then I need twenty nine crash
Hitler or Hitler church Will had not reign in his spending.
Is his uh is his prodigal Uh his son. It
was a true prodigal of the the local sort, you know,
couldn't be rained in. Churchill found himself once again nearly destitute. Uh.
Lord beaverbrook Uh, who was a kind of a who
was kind of uh Churchill's last remaining uh you know,
patron in in in the in the newspaper, in the
publication business, you know who who wasn't quite literally you know,
hanging out to him for charity, like the the focus
was in order to in order to corral him into
you know, being the frontmen of their position. Uh. Beaver
Brooks simply got sick of is more monitoring, and he
beaber Broke, among other publications, ran the Evening Standard. He
and Churchill's content canceled his contract, you know, to pride
him among other things, of substantial income. And who Churchill
found himself in such dire straits, that is his family's
ancestral estate, the chartwell was literally listed for sale. But
then what happens on March twenty eighth, nineteen thirty eight,
a man in a Morovian jew with close ties the
the Czechoslovak government, named Sir Henry Strakosh is a South
African gold mining magnate shore one of the Union Corporation Limited.
He paves all at Churchill's debts, sees with that he
can hold on. It was a state and it uses him,
according to some accounts, to that one million dollar quote alone,
but you know alone that would not accrue interests and
would never have to be paid backs away, you know,
a gift. And this is the moment at which Churchill
was truly owned by the focus. In my opinion, okay,
because how do you, I mean, how do you I
don't think one could foresee it. We come back from,
you know, as an independent political figure. After ah, you
know that the patronage of of Baruk and these other
figures were you know so solidly you know, the camp
of a of of of of an athno sectary and
ide ideology that was you know, completely odds with the
national interest. But I mean, if if there was ever
any question, I think this it was at this point
Churchill was sold as sold. It was sounding melodramatic. But
let's uh, let's return to Czechoslovakia and why why it's
it's why the Munich issue is is so gross and
as characterized. Okay, Czechoslovakia was actually it was forty seven
percent Czech Okay, more Germans than Slovaks actually lived there.
It's about twenty five percent German. That most of those
Germans were concentrated in the Sudatan region, the borderland, you know,
on the frontier with Germany, but uh, they were insinuated
throughout the entirety of the country. It was also home
to Poles, Ruthenes mag yards, you know this, these people
that never existed in under a common quality. Okay, and this,
this idea of Czechoslovak state was absurd and uh it's
had it was. It was it was a contrivance of uh,
of the of the chaos and the misguided sort of
a redrawing of the map in the wake of Farsai,
and uh it was it was solid landed Chech domination.
And I'm not gonna sit here and say negative things
about Czech people, but they're very proud nationalistic people, not
on like the Poles, not unlike most of these ethnic
groups in Central Europe. Okay, and they if you were,
if you were a non Czech under this regime, you
were not able to freely practice your culture and and
and pursue your own cultural existence other than as a
very much a kind of get a wise minority figuratively
and literally. The Cegate and Germans were quite well off comparatively,
but they were very very much resented. Uh they were.
There was the threat waxed and waned, but there was
a genuine threat of them being ethnically cleansed. An event
of you know, an event that's kind of ongoing social
hostility reached the point of real violence. This this is
a Bosnia kind of situation. Okay, if somebody wants a
comparative model, well within living memory, the uh, this is
what's so ironic, because people like church old people like
the focus people advance at tart had they've held the
Czechoslovakia as if like a entirety is essential to the
principle of self determination. It's like, well, you know, you can,
on the one hand, demand the Austro Engarian Empire be
This mantal lives with the case in Ninette. These discrete
ethnic groups, you know, do not have homogeneous states where
they can pursue their own political cultural destiny, but then
declare that this, you know, contrivance of a state. This
Frankenstein kind of passed spiche of ethnicity is ruled by
checks is somehow, you know, a reflection of self determination. Really,
the only reason came into existence was only to certain intrigues.
Now France, Uh, the Immersal folk in nineteen nineteen. One
of the things he declared Versailles is that Germany or
that France had to occupy the Rhineland and this was
non negotiable, you know. And Clement so also had said,
we need a buffer state, you know, absent, absent the
ability to defend in depth. You know, we're just too vulnerable.
The UK and the US denied the claim what Wilson
offered in in its stead because he said, look, let's
create a collective security pack of the US United Kingdom
in France. You know where in a France comes under assault.
You know, the US and the UK obligated to come
to his aid. Uh. The U s Senate correctly refused
to ratify, and when the US refused to ratify, the
UK then backed out. Okay, So what was what was
the how how are the how are the speaking of appeasement?
This is a case of real appeasement. How was the
French delegation appeased? They were appeased by the creation of
Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and part okay, a little entent if
you will, this would uh, you know, Czechoslovakia literally struck
into the territorially into the North German plane. It it availed, Uh,
it availed France. Uh uh you know, an Eastern Allied
state that it could mobilize an event of war and uh,
you know, compromise Germany's ability to to kind of like
Germany's ability to defend in depth by forcing a two
front conflict, and it created a in the Yugoslavia created
a second comment Ali that theoretically was was was was
bound to, you know, to the fight in common that
France went to war. It seems, I mean, it seems
incredibly foolish, uh to suggest that, you know, anyone would
go to war for Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia. But it I believe
the idea was that some kind of that that if
the strategic situation deteriorated enough, like fear of a an
in this German Reich would kind of bind people in
common cause I don't think that's realistic either, because in
a lot of ways, that's after what happened, and you know,
it's UH in large part worked in the axis favor.
But that's that's the backgrounds this idea. I mean, if
the Europeans are watching this, forgive me for being pantic.
A lot of Americans even weren't total dummies. I don't
know about Czechoslovakia and the fact that it's totally faked.
That's why I spent so much time there. Now as
a NINEU thirty eight, the UH president Czechoslovakia is UH
Edward benees or Venice. Now, something very very conspiratorial happened
immediately after the ALUs and it wasn't clear UH initially
what was underway. So we're gonna have to jump back.
We're gonna have to jump forward a little bit and
then back again. Okay, Mark on thirty eight. Immediately after
the An Schluze, you know, there's a there's this uproar
among the UH, you know, Germany's enemies and the focus
as well as in the British Foreign Office and in France,
which is a very very different political culture in the UK.
You know, the France and Germany's conventional enemy in UH
conventional you know, European enemy like rival power. You know, obviously, uh,
obviously there's there's not the kind of bitterness and and
and ethnic racial overtones is in the East. But you know,
I don't think people need to be uh educated elaborately
on the or in depth about you know the fact
that Franco German I still to use its like a thing. Okay,
So France obviously is alarmed by the nan Selous. They
they've got very close relation Blums uh governments, very close
relations with Bene's. Immediately after the Anchelus a h a
rumor uh emerges and uh it becomes more in a
room almost immediately it becomes a genuine war scare. Benni's
issues a statement that a German invasion of Czechoslovakia was
imminent and that the Behmont was massing forces in the
north German plane and and and and throughout the Czech frontier,
and that they were poised for assault. Bennet's then orders
a general mobilization Harris and Moscow. Both of them declare
that they will come to Czechoslovakia. The aide if the
Barmont crossed the frontier. Even Chamberlain realizing that he can't
you know, sit idly, particularly after a you know, this
kind of concerted assault in the court of public opinion
by Churchill, by the Foreign Office upon his decision making,
and now you know Anthony eatens in on the act.
Chamberlain issues are some of cryptic statement that you know
that London will not sit idly while of invasion is
staged by Germany of any sovereign state. Now, Hitler was
genuinely kind of dumbfounded by this because there there there
was no intention to assault Czegoslovakia and there had been
no deployment on under the frontier. Hitler is convinced that,
you know, this might be some kind of legerd domain
originating in Moscow. He doesn't know what to think. Yodel, General, oh, burst,
I'm sure I portsured dead pronunciation two. You know Yodel
was by this point was not a particularly close lay
of Hitler, although subsequently he became very close. He ended
up becoming a very powerful figure on the general's staff.
We know a lot about what transpired here because of
what he relayed, and he really had no reason to lie.
He knew nothing was gonna spare for a death sentence
or anything. So on a on May twenty third, what
Hitler does is the Hitler orders the Foreign Office and
the the you know, the the the diplomatic delegation in Czechoslovakia,
you know, to approach Benice as well as the as
well as you know, he dispatches, you know, his own
foreign office people in Berlin, you know, to approach the
Czech ambassador and tell him and knowing certain terms, that
Germany has no aggressive intention. You know, when they the
Germans disclosed has been there's been no changeing deployments on
the on the frontier, there's been no concentration of forces.
You know. Uh, Hitler is basically scrambling to avoid a
war by by misunderstanding or by rumor. Now you know,
Bene's to Hitler, Benny's represent representatives to the foreign to
the German foreign ministry. They act, they react with apparent gratitude,
you know. But immediately thereafter, within forty hours, Benice addresses
his country and he said that he has called the
bluff of the coward and bully Hitler, and that by
demonstrating his will to fight. And you know, the will
of the democracies to fight in the face of fascism.
You know, Hitler has been brought to his knees and
exposed at this coward. Now Hitler hit the goddamn roof,
you know, for a few reasons, because first of all,
he realized Bennis himself is the source of this rumor,
you know, and he was basically he staged the war
scare for the sake of a as a flax essentially,
you know, in order to see exactly, you know, how
he could manipulate you know, France and Moscow as well
as London, you know, to come to his aid to
preserve his government. Was frankly at no real mandate anyway.
But also you know, he he was just you know,
he wanted to He wanted to try and put on
a Mussolinia act. And that looks some kind of strong man,
you know, Hitler responded publicly, and so think of mine too.
You know, what Dennis was doing during the Great War,
he was, you know, kind of gallivanting around. One of
the reasons he became the president of Czechoslovakia is because
he was an intriguer. You know. By the today's standards,
we consider him be some kind of globalist liberal. You know,
he wasn't in the trenches. He was you know, making
he was organizing committees to you know, fund uh you know,
funded Czechoslovak government after the war, in which you know
he'd have a he had some kind of plumb uh sinecure.
And Hitler in his statement said, you know, I uh,
I spent four and a half years at the front
on fighting for my country. You know, well Bennis was
intriguing and inspiring and you know, living lavishly is you know,
we fought and died in the trenches, and there's a
lot to be said for that. Like he basically you know,
you know, you know, if you're got like Bennis, you know,
you know, you know what, I'm keeping the man out
of a man like Hitler, Like whatever you think about him,
that's I mean, that's ridiculous. Okay, that's uh. And it's
in those days, especially especially then, you know, things like
mask and honor really really manred. You know. So what
Hitler then said, the title who was another general officer
who who came to a very hype pre eminence on
the on the on the on the on the German
general staff. Later he heard titled to implement a gradual
mobilization of the German army and prepare for case green.
And case green was the code for war against Czechoslovakia,
not an immediate mobilization, not when that would be noticed
by you know, France, and certainly not when to be
noticed by Prague. But uh, Hitler realized that at some point,
you know, this was a disposition at Benet's. He was uh,
he was uh, he was quite obviously at least, you know,
I think it's clear, it's you know, he was quite
he was quite obviously hoping for a scenario that would
trigger a general war before Germany he was in any
position to see such a conflict through to victory. There's
a lot of guys, and I'm not a military vet,
and I don't know a lot about military science. Okay,
guys look back and forth and they gained these scenarios.
Could Germany have won a general war with Czechoslovakia in
nineteen thirty eight, and it becomes people becoming bettered in
their perspective. I don't have an opinion on that, but
perception was that Germany would I have no doubt that
I felt would have thought it was critical to do
so in the primpline cult he would have gone to
war with Czechoslovakia. But could Germany have won, had Moscow,
had Paris, had the UK come to fight, could Germany
have won that war? I don't know, and I'm not
taking an opinion on that. I'm just talking about the
perception as it was visa the forces and being and
everything else. But it's got to be said too. You know,
what brought this to a head, these tensions were in Chegoslava,
I mean from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty eight, which
is our you know now present the sedate Germans had
been agitating to be free of of of Czech rule.
And everybody, you know, the British, the French, the UH Moscow,
you know, everybody, the Poles, like everybody realized that this
was like a bad this is a bad decision. It
was a bad decision to you know, to uh hand
the sigate and Germans to to prog like. Nobody thought
this was sustainable. Nobody thought this was a good idea.
So like the idea that Czechoslovakia was a stable country,
that that had some kind of organic heritage, you know,
politically or culturally. You know and had and had you know,
enjoyed like strong legitimacy. That's completely false. And everybody. The
reason why Chamberlain after the Munich summit, like the reason
why he was like, you know, so congratulated is because
for twenty years people were convinced there was gonna be
a war over this issue. You know, it wasn't. It
wasn't because hil there was invading places for no reason.
And you know, and and and Chamberain just kissed his ass,
and like everybody just you know, decided to kiss Chamberlain's
ass for being a pussy or something or whatever they think,
you know, I mean even Roosevelt congratulated Chamberlain. You know,
it's like what so like FDR like love Hitler now,
like don't. It's completely asinine and the the whole uh,
you know, and what happened, uh, what happened when uh
the Citate in Land was seated to Germany. You know,
the several nationalities including you know, Slovakia, and Slovakia declared independence,
you know, and uh, the Czech's essentially invaded, you know,
the Czech state imploded, and so we're supposed to believe
the state that collapsed, that had no legitimacy with some
crime that it sees to exist. I mean is should
should should the United States have invaded Germany and the
Canadian nine because when East Germany just must exist? I
mean I and it sounds like I'm being funny, but
I mean.
Speaker 1: Really, and it sounds so familiar as to something that's
happening right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And that's kind of what I wanted to,
you know, draw in the into the UH into the
equation it. I mean, the whole thing is too what
I kind of wanted to conclude on for this episode,
and I don't want to go too far afield, but
I know that and anytime you raise these kinds of
revision as issues, there's what what people say is they
say like, well, okay, fine, you know there was there's
always political intrigues underway and and all these kinds of
competing them, all these kinds of competing UH ambitions, But well,
you know, the the German Reich was just as evil
state and it came into existence for the sole purpose
of murdering people. You can't look at it that way.
And if you look at the New York Times UH
interesting lafter the Christal knocks, which was a really prummy
thing to do. I mean, I don't need to get
on specifics of it. You know that's there was, you know,
there's there's basically not the cleansing operation and major German cities,
you know, where a lot a lot of Jews were
you know, beat up, a few relynched, and you know
Jewish property was destroyed. I mean, these kinds of things happened. Okay,
these things kind of things happened wherever there's hostility between
ethnic groups. But uh, the way Gerbel's ministry handled it
was grotesque, and I I don't think anybody would say otherwise.
But when when these interventions in the aftermath that they,
as said, did clamoring for war, you know the New
York Times, which by no means what it is today,
and certainly and then it wasn't in America first paper
or anything. But he pointed out they said, you know,
mister stalin, Soviet Union has arbitually executed exponentially more Jews
than the Third Wright has and that, I mean, that
was true. The before a shot was fired in the
Second World War, the Soviet Union annihilated approximately ten million people.
So when you're looking at what happened in the Second
World War, whether you're talking about, you know, the the
annihilation of Jewish civilians or any other kind of grotesque
the violencing and civilian populations, you're talking about the fact,
you're talking about consequences of the war, not causes. So
saying that saying, you know, the UK had to assault
Germany because the Germany was going to do bad things
to minority groups, that's like saying, like Japan had to
attack the United States because the United States is going
to wage a nuclear war on them. I mean, like,
it doesn't I'm not being up too So it's you know,
people have a completely warped sense of how the history
actually developed and what the motives were the players involved
in what was a cosmo was an effect. But it's
because uh, yeah, we've gone over an hour here. This
is the last episode. I want to dedicate just to
mister Churchill. I want to get into the war in
the next episode. We dealt with the assault on Poland already,
because we dealt with the New Deal regime. I gave him,
after Churchill so much time because it's it's a very
very complicated issue. I want to get into. We're gonna
start just next time with a little bit about Churchill's
you know, it's an actual ascendency of the office the
Prime Minister. But then we're gonna get right into the
war and from there I want to dedicated episode in
Barbarosa and went on the aftermath of Nuremberg.
Speaker 1: If that sounds good to you, that sounds good to me.
Speaker 2: Great. I hope everybody got a lot out of the content.
And if I could just plug like my substick peek,
that would be great, awesome.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find me at real Thomas seven seven
seven dot substack dot com. And uh, I'm active on
on Telegram periodically or under a private if I'm under
assault by crazy people or antitha or it does happen.
I'm not being a murdyr, but uh, you can find
me on telegram. It's a public channel. It's a key
dot me slash the THG number seven h O M
A S seven seven seven and I'll link to it.
Thank you, Pete. That's great, and thanks again for hosting me.
I can't. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate
everybody's support and kind of work. I really mean that
I'm not I'm not being polite.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, a lot of people are missing you on Twitter,
that's for sure.
Speaker 2: I got to catch up a lot, I hope, Pour,
Mike get imperium pressed a whole lot. Uh, A material
I gotta and steal Storm two is gonna drop imminently,
and I'll make a decision midsummer about social media. I
just I haven't honestly haven't decided yet. I'm not trying
to build a hype or or be a jiggo if.
I honestly have not decided if I want to get
back on social media, but I will and I will
always be on substick, I will always be on Telegram.
Speaker 1: All right, I appreciate it. Until the next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Pete.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peken Show.
We are continuing the series. Thomas, how are you done?
Speaker 2: I'm very well. Thank you, Keete. It's a pleasure once
again to be continuing as we are. And like we
talked about just before we went live here, I think
this should be the last dedicated episode to mister Churchill.
When it's a sendency and just to reiterate for the listeners,
I'm not I'm not trying to be a pedantic boor
by focusing so much on Churchill, like nor do I
have some kind of asks to grind with certain historical
personages like some historians do. I mean, if you don't
believe me, you like, read mister Kershaw on what he
wrote about Adolf Hitler. It's like it's kind of there's
a there's a there's a personal hostility invested there that
is not dignified in addition to it not being good scholarship.
But that's not why I focus so much on Churchill.
There's a political aspect to mister Churchill's career and a
sendency that is something of a missing piece of the
conceptual puzzle to underst standing World War two and what
is wrong with court history narratives as well as understanding
you know, how how Churchill was able to procure the
kind of mandate that he was and what its purpose was.
That's far more mysterious and uh intrigue laden than say
mister Roosevelt or even uh or even Stalin phrase as
that might be. But I uh, I figure will excuse me,
I figure will uh we'll dive right back in we
finished off uh last time, you know, talking about the
the Munich the Munich crisis, which was a genuine crisis.
You know, as we talked about characterizing it as is
appeasement and and and and characterizing it as you know,
a line in the sand being drawn by mister Chamberlain,
but that he you know, but that he could not
back up with force, you know, when when Hitler was
on some sort of aggressive rampage of conquest. That that's
a gross mischaracterization. It's not that's not me just putting
shine on ad off Hitler or something. It's it's a
grossly and accurate characterization. It's a propagandic characterization, and it
doesn't have anything to do with with with history as
it developed. And it was a crisis, but it was
a crisis that was entirely confabulated by the intrigues of
of of mister Bennets in UH in Czechoslovakia and elements
of the Focus and and other UH and other interested
parties who who had the means and the resources and
the deep pockets proverbially speaking, to facilitate a crisis. But
they they got far more than they bargained for, because
you know, Hitler was uh. Hitler was a very serious
individual and he was not somebody who could just be
you know, who could just be rooked or sand bagged
and in the court of public opinion, and and and
could thereby be deprived of mandate. You know, he whether
he left Hitler, hate Hitler, don't have an opinion on
on on Adolf Hitler. He was a historical personage of
incredible gravity. And that's another thing that's important for us
to keep in mind. That's not a political judgment. It's
an objective historical judgment. But moving on, as nineteen thirty eight,
the game nineteen thirty nine, Winston Churchill was somewhat quiet.
He was biting his time, probably, I mean, definitely. I mean,
in hindsight, this is clear. The Munich crisis really caused
some issues for the Focus. They realized that they had
to do a couple of things. You know, they realized
they had to take Hitler more seriously, and she was
strategic terms. You know, the Focus was singularly committed to
to getting rid of Hitler by any means necessary, and
you know, regime change in Germany, even if that meant
handing Germany over to the common they didn't care. Okay,
So they realized that Germany was essential to the political
culture of the continent and its internal situation, and they
always took that seriously. They did not, however, uh, take
Hitler seriously as a potential conqueror. I'm not using that
term punitively, but Hitler was a modern conqueror. That's not
all he was. And all of his conquests weren't accomplished
through hostility, but that's in part what he was. And
he was a historical phenomenon to himself, like somebody like
Cromwell was, or like a man like Muhammad was. That
can't be denied. And they were Hitler's enemies, particularly mister Churchill,
and the focus, they became very clear without Munich resolve. Now,
the focus came to understand that this meant it was
critical to really insinuate their cause into you know, American
policy as in a formal capacity. Now, you know, we
talked about the New Dealer Revolution and mister Roosevelt, and
we talked about a lot of these partisan figures around him,
you know, like Morgenthal and UH and UH and Bullet
and some of these other figures. So, I mean it
was fir ground obviously for the focus to kind of
to kind of intrigue allies into their orbit. However, you know,
relations between the United States and the UK were somewhat
frosty during this era. This is outside the scope of
what we're talking about here, but we take for granted that,
you know, the the UK is as as you know,
as the oral characterized at Airstrip one, as you know,
American executives from you know, really Eisenhower on we're you know,
they talk about the special relationship. Well, I mean, this
is this is the legacy of mister Churchill's you know,
uh installation into the premiership and and uh and and
him availing you know, the resources and of the UK
unconditionally to America. I mean, it becoming you know, quite
literally a client state of America. You know, this was
this was not the case from from uh, from uh,
you know, the entirety of the twentieth century until until
nineteen forty. Really, I mean, yes, you know, America collaborated
with the UK in the Great War, but you know
a lot of and that was disastrous in its own right,
and that was conspiratorial in its own right. But there
are very different reasons for that. And I even argue
that America had warmer feelings towards Paris, and I did
London even even into the you know, early twentieth century.
But so that's important to you. In nine two, what
I'm getting is that even though there was parallel policy
goals and a dogmatic anti fascism characteristic of the New
Deal regime and the Focused regime, which it was not
yet formally intingued into power but was coveting that. But
just because these goals are parallel does not mean they
intersected yet or that they formally entered into alliance yet.
And you know, mister Roosevelt certainly wasn't gonna take orders
from mister Churchill, who at this point, you know, didn't
even have a formal office, you know, despite the fact
that he become, you know, a very significant personage in
in in in in British political culture. So moving on,
uh in I instant In nineteen thirty nine, in the summer,
Churchill was visited by Felix Frankfurter. Felix Frankfurter was a
he was a a Roosevelt appointee to the Supreme Court,
very long serving judge. You know, he was he was Jewish,
and he was very involved in Jewish causes. You know,
in designs causes. He had an unusual career and he
ended up I can't remember exactly, but he was unceremoniously disbarred,
at least for a time. This was much later. I
can't remember if he was indicted or not, or just sanctioned.
But it was very strange, and it was strange for
a man of his profile to be involved in this,
in this kind of what amount of pennante sort of corruption. Okay,
So he he was a he was a man of
of of questionable character, you know, aside from politics, aside
from his ethnicity, all of that, you know, just based
upon his conduct, this can't be disputed, okay. And it's
interesting that Felix Frankfurter is the man from Roosevelt's administration
who came to visit Churchill and for the purpose of
establishing good offices. You know, like we talked about Joseph P. Kennedy,
you know who was who was the father of John F.
Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. You know it was Roosevelt had
appointed him as a bass the United Kingdom, both because
Kennedy was an enemy of Roosevelt's you know, after Roosevelt
took the oath of office, they very much had it
falling out. But also, you know, Roosevelt obviously this was
part of the kind of lingering antagonism of the UK
and that a lot of the US establishment head, you know,
sending this kind of millionaire of Boston, irishman, you know
who to London. That that was a highly antagonistic move,
you know, and that was very deliberate. But you know,
so if if, if, if, if Churchill was gonna make
intros into the New Dealer regime, it wasn't gonna be
through mister Kennedy, you know, and vice versa. If the
New Deals wanted to reach out to mister Churchill, they
weren't gonna do it through mister Kennedy. You know, just
all the table. But you know it's telling that, you know,
it's not clear to me, and I've tried to find out.
I've dug deep into the record of mainstream historians of revisionists.
I don't know who initiated contact. I don't know if
Churchill solicited Frankfurt who's visit. I don't know if he
wrote to Roosevelt, and you know, uh behooved him to
send some sort of emissary unofficially. I don't know if
Frankfurter took it upon himself and then reported back to Roosevelt.
This isn't clear. All as clear is that you know
they met, and this was very significant, and you know,
the Frankfurter, among other things, he was a very important
man in the American Jewish Committee. Okay, the American Jewish Committee.
They weren't form part of the focus, but they were
only one or two steps removed, that makes any sense.
You know. We talked about Samuel Utermeyer, who is the
New York lawyer who was a key player in the
World Jewish Economic Federation, which was then incorporated into the
Anti Nazi Council, which was the across atlantic kind of
alliance that that gave the focus, uh you know, representation
in the United States and vice versa, gave you know, uh,
Zionist power, Zionist NGOs, uh you know, power in London,
or at least representation. You know, this was done to
Saint Lutermeyer, and Saint Luchtermeyer was one of the key
players that I just said, the American Jewish Committee, and
uh he also you know, had been utilizing the American
Jewish Committee, you know, he he incorporated the World Jewish
Economic Federation, which had been uh, which had been the
driving force behind the embargo on German goods and manufacturers,
you know, and that proceeded given the chrishtaal knack that
when when when the when the National soldierst Regeni became
you know, as a matter of law like like highly
anti Jewish, you know, these n g os like went
into action, you know, immediately. And so this is the
way to understand Frankfurter, in my opinion is you know,
he was very much uh, he was very much acting
as a as an ambassador of of of this, of this,
of this faction, you know, the World Jewish and Nonal Federation,
the American Jewish Committee, you know, man like Samuel luon Termeier.
But Frankfurter because he was a jurist, you know, he
actually was friendly with Roosevelt, you know, and he was
an important man. You know. Even today, you know, even
though government doesn't have the kind of prestige it did
and it's populated by fools that we all kind of lampoon,
you know, it's Supreme Court justice has a lot of power.
You know, I'd say today the Supreme Court is even
more power than the presidency. But in those days, you know,
certainly the president seems to see a sovereignty. But if
you were any federal judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice,
I mean you you were a man with a serious clout,
you know. So this was, uh, this this is highly significant.
This wasn't just Frankfurter saying, you know, I like I
like mister Churchill, and you know, I like his style
and it's hats and even as a fat fuck, I
like the fact that he wants to, you know, set
the Jewish people free. He's I'm gonna go visit him. No,
you know, this was obviously like very very official, you know,
it was it was uh, it was he was he
was a heavy that frankfurt was a boss. You know.
I argue that he was the most powerful Jewish political
figure in the United States at the time. Okay, So Frankfurter, Uh,
immediately before his appointment, you know, when he an FDR,
we're kind of articulating, trying to feel each other out
about about common policy ambitions, you know, and goals. Frankfurter
written FDR admonishing him to always emphasize the Nazi threat.
His words, the quote Nazi threat. You know, he said,
you know, you've always got to emphasize that the Nazi
threat is responsible, you know, for you know, not just
for threatening freedom and peace on the planet. You know,
there's another catchphrase of of of Frankfurter's and that the
focus later took out and church himself took on. You know,
we talked earlier about a Churchill. You know, he's he's
he's he's uh, he's praised as being this brilliant order
or Churchill didn't write a lot of his own speeches.
You know, a lot of this stuff is propaganda copy,
you know, put out uh, you know by guys like Baruk,
by guys by Wickhams like Wickham Steed, you know, by
by organizations and then g os you know, like the uh,
like those set it up by you know, men like
Untemeyer and by Frankfurt. You know, so these these these
phrases appure again and again. It's highly or William okay,
if you'll forgive to kind of overuse the adjective, but
he uh, you know, Frankfurt is big, uh, his big
idea in terms of you know, what would you consider
to be like information warfare or perhaps disinformation or you know,
more benignly perhaps, you know, his idea for you know,
kind of selling the narrative of the New Deal was,
you know, you've got to you've got to present domestic
policy efforts as and and priorities as being inextricably bound
up with foreign policy issues, you know, particularly the threat
you know to our freedom and his you know, not
just their national security, of our prosperity, you know, and
the ability you know, if people in America you know,
to to you know, to live freely and you know,
all enjoy due process into the law. You know, we've
got to present we've got we've got to present, you know,
Berlin and Hitler and the National Socialists as this existential
threat to you know, to our way of life, you know,
and if people say that, you know, well, you know
they're a bulwark against the communists. We've got to shout
them down. And Churchill was very receptive to this, you know.
And Churchill having been silent after the you know, in
large part after the Munich fiasco, you know, he he
started he started agitating in earnest you know, once again,
you know, as as nineteen thirty eight became a nineteen
thirty nine you know, he started saying, like, look, you know,
like Chamberlain, Chamberlain took a knee because Chamberlain's weak, you know,
and he's not a man who can stand up to
We can stand up to the Nazi threat, you know.
And and Churchill literally said in ninety thirty nine time,
you know, on the floor of Parliament. You know, he said,
you know, the Nazi threat is represents immortal danger to
our quote freedom and peace. You know, that's him literally
invoking you know, the phraseology of Frankfurt orn FDR, you know,
which is interesting and you got to you gotta keep
in mind in these days. You know, we're talking about
nineteen thirty nine. You know, we're talking about when there's
not even a radio in every home. Okay, Like it's
not it's not like today, or like memes you know,
hop across the ocean within minutes, or or you know,
you've got people and you know, three in continents who
all kind of have common reference points in terms of
that they're their political vernacular or their propaganda phraseology or
or advertising slogans. You know, this is you know a
man like particularly a personage of this the status at
Churchill like literally parroting what some you know, Jewish Supreme
Portresses from America said, who himself kind of borrowed, you know,
the phraseology from the President of United States. You know
that's that's that's notable, okay. And it's indicative of very
much a relationship, a patronage, and it's indicative of a
of a very managed career, you know, in Churchill being
the managed uh uh quantity here. Okay. Now, immediately after
Frankfurt's departure from London, you know, a a this dismassive
media campaign was unleashed, okay. You know, like we talked about,
you know, church would become persona non grata with Lord
Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, you know they Rothermure, you know,
he was was in some ways, uh actually positive about
Adolf Hitler and and close to Mosley beaver Brook. I
I don't believe there's anything that could insinuate any such
you know, insinuate him into any that that same New
lou But Beaverbrook was very anti war and you know,
he he he, he recognized that church was a warmonger
and he was a cynic, you know, but other than
other than other than Rothermere, and beaver Brook, you know,
essentially refusing to give church Will a platform every other
major uh newspaper outlet was uh was was was was,
you know, giving church as much copy as as they
could muster without it, you know, to be a little
organ of some ango to coalesced to install him in office.
I mean they should have been by to modern eyes,
this is obvious. But again this was you know, nineteen
thirty nine. But the Daily Telegraph led this charge, okay,
pretty much overnight, you know, premium edge space was purchased,
you know, uh, declaring that you know, Churchill is the
only man who can protect us from the German threat,
you know, and and land Bassing Chamberlain, you know, on uh,
Chamberlain wrote to one of his intimates. I can't remember
if it was I can't remember if it was a
female cousin or just a female friend. But there's this
Chamberlain maintain a voluminous correspondence, you know, like a lot
of englishmen of the day did. And uh he wrote
kind of in shock that one day this massive billboard
appear on the strand, you know, just saying, you know,
Churchill ar man in giant letters, you know, and then
this was kind of thing was unheard of in those days.
You know, this kind of like Mussolini had pioneered some
of that, and Adolf Hitler, you know, he he'd campaigned
by aircraft, you know, hopping around Germany. But this kind
of full court press, you know, full full spectrum utilization
of print media, of movie house uh uh, visual media
of uh you know, street billboards. They've been hired. They
they there was there was women who were hired who
were sandwich boards, you know, like you know, dozens sometimes
as many as a few one hundred women to just
you know appear uh, outside Parliament wearing sandwich boards, you know,
saying Churchill or man. You know, they were all hired,
they were paid to do this, but it appeared spontaneous,
and people hadn't seen this kind of thing before, you know,
so even even people who weren't particularly sold on Churchill,
you know, or even people hadn't even followed his career
particularly closely, you know, like working people weren't all that sophisticated.
You know, this kind of climate, a conceptual environment was
created where it just seemed Churchill this inevitable. Churchill had
this inevitable momentum, and I mean he used this. This
is even though it's coming up on a century into
our past, this remains kind of the default tactic for
you know, manufacturing a mandate you know, at the ballot box. Okay,
Uh Cruis it might seem that's there's when we a
limited number of ways can to accomplish this, you know,
even if diversified as media platforms are, you know today
the morling's changed when I stay the same. So this
has got the first instance of an n g O
with tremendous you know, cloud and media and a tremendous
amount of money, you know, creating quite literally a climate
of public opinion where one man's a sendency seems inevitable,
you know, and that that's that's kind of the ultimate
bandwagon intrigue. Okay, you know it's it's almost like it's
almost like man made weather. There's a way to think
about it. You know, in the Oliver Stone movie National
Borne Killers, that's the one of the anti heroes. Uh player,
whatdy Harrelson. He's talking about media and how media creates
are like individually and collectively it literally mean effects our
image of public figures. And because it's like man made weather,
he says well as as he poignant. You know, it's
it's not just something something dropped in a lurid movie.
Now Churchill finds that, you know, as time goes on,
you know, his nineteen thirty nine drags on it, the
focus finds fertile ground because Chamberlain. There's a lot of
people are not handy with Chamberlain for all kinds of reasons.
You know, a lot of these had nothing to do
with munich O than the fact that they feel he
botched the entire affair, you know, not even people didn't
have any animates towards Germany. You know, he just did
not seem combetent to manage the power political landscape and
the tremendous stakes that were involved. And with some of
these people like Archie Sinclair, who's leader of the Liberal Party,
he just hated Chamberlain, you know, and he declared, which
is incredibly stupid, He declared that if Parliament convened earlier,
you know, in the in nineteen thirty eight and mobilized,
you know that you know something, come to some kind
of agreement and developed some kind of quorum of of
a of a you know, a war party in essence,
you know, they could have deployed the Royal Navy and
to stay able to concord Moscow and then assaulted Germany
and then you know, defeated. You know, Germany would have
gone down in defeat and they would have saved Czechoslovakia,
which is completely preposterous, and why would you want to
save Chechoslovakia? Anyway, it was, it was, it was. It
was a complete contrivance. That's like saying, you want to
save East Germany. But the fact is, you know Churchill,
like he churned up again, repeating this like a mantra.
So you had these people for cynical reasons, you know,
not just important personages like Sinclair, you know who hated
you know, you know, every man was you know, whether
it was liberal, whether he was Tory, whether it was labor,
you know, if he had an extra grind with Chamberlain.
You know, this this became his mantru. You know, Churchill
ran with it, you know. And Churchill had more exposure,
uh than a lot of these guys. Even though he's
still at this point, even if he was about to like,
he still didn't have you know, uh, he still didn't
have a formal role in government. So rightly or wrongly.
You know, the this this anxiety written public who increasingly,
you know, however unfair it may have been. You know,
they view Chamberlain's a failing PM, and uh, they all
all these important people from you know, different positions in
the proverbial aisle. You know, we're calling, we're calling for
Chamberlain to go. And Churchill kind of became, you know,
the proverbial you know, grand marcial leading that parade. You know,
it didn't matter that this was a completely cynical effort.
You know, Churchill was the Churchill was everywhere. You know,
like I said, you know, he had this tremendous media
beats behind him. So what matters the perception that reality,
and eventually perception becomes reality. You know, I don't need
to tell anybody that after what we went through with
you know, twenty two. At least, I don't think so.
But maybe I'm maybe I'm maybe I'm going olden seenile,
but I don't think so. Yeah, but at nineteen thirty nine,
what what uh? What happens? Uh? What happened in September third,
nineteen thirty nine, Well, you know, the Vermont crosses the
Polish frontier and one of the first episodes in this series.
You know, we got into that, so I don't think
we need to deep dive back into the causes of
that and the kind of and the kind of detailed
bailfield details of that. But you know it obviously, you know,
as we know the you know, London had uh had
granted war guarantee the Polish military hunto you know, which
which was incredibly foolish and it was probably exponentially more
foolish than uh, the the the overtures they'd made towards uh, Czechoslovakia.
But that doesn't matter anymore because now war is underway now. Baldwin,
to his credit, you know, who'd uh, who'd been who'd
uh you know, who'd been really kind of unfairly lambasted
as as a lame duck foreign policy executive. Uh this
only this stuck in my head and David David Irving's
simile that into Baldwin and I am too. Ramsey McDonald,
Baldwin or I think are very compelling figures. I'm both
very honorable in their own right. Baldwin's declared quote that
rhetoric is the haarlet of discourse, and he said that
Churchill is a master of of of rhetoric and fasting
and educated masses of people with rhetoric. And that's true. Uh,
that's as That's exactly what he was. And uh Churchill,
despite uh still you know, uh despite still uh still
being only equivalent to Minister without portfolio, he uh he
gives us first wartime speech. Okay, I mean it's the
day of September third, after by eleven am if Germany,
London gave Germany an ultimatum that if they did not
retreat back over the German frontier and and all offensive
operations by eleven am, that war would be declared. And
so obviously that came and went, you know, and the
UK is now at war. So Churchill takes the opportunity
to respond to Baldwin and he declares that Baldwin should
be ashamed for wuinning party before a country. Now, this
is really offensive coming from mister Churchill. I don't think
character evidence generally is is a good is a good
way to analyze the performance or the integrity of of
of a statesman. But in Churchill's case, he opens the
door to that kind of thing. Okay, because Churchill was
the one who's always going around claiming other people like integrity. Well,
church was a man who switched his party allegiance every
few years according to what you know, direction the wind
was blowing in terms of policy preferences the voting public.
He had literally been bought off by his Zionist NGO.
He was pursuing a policy of war at all costs
and agitating for ward all costs without regard to, you know,
the lives that would be sacrificed, without regard to the
impact on you know, the flower of Britain, if youth,
without regard to you know, what this would do to
the fortunes of the empire woming forward. But you know,
oblivious to anything approaching self awareness, he goes on a
record declaring that you know, well, you know, we've got
a suit for war, and anybody who disagrees with me,
like Baldwin, is just putting party before country. As a
man who literally has been bought by Zionists, like many
many of whom don't even have formal residency in the
United Kingdom, let alone allegiance to you know, Churchill's country
that he supposedly is you know, so so so devoted
to that he's willing to sacrifice anything, just to stick
it to Berlin. Now, this is characteristic at Churchill. Something
that Roosevelt, who Frank, I mean, we'll get into this
when we get into the episode in the Warriors. Roosevelt
confided when frankfurt A returned, I don't know if it's
dead words, but he said that Churchill had you a
dais to try and talk to him in other heads
of state, like he was their peers, you know. And
the Roosevelt's notion was that this this, this, this indicates
a complete obliviousness to the way diplomacy is conducted, particularly
a man at Churchill's kind of station and background, whatever
his problems are, however much he may be drinking, however
long he's been out a formal office. This is a
big full pie. You don't behave that way. It's an embarrassment.
And beyond that, being the consonant Machiavelli in FDR, what
he's really saying is this kind of shakes my confidence
in this fan bastard, you know, because he's gotta you know,
basically shore these things up. I believe this is one
of the reasons why Churchill stopped being the master of
his own copy. In terms of speeches. It wasn't just
this incident, but you can find a dozen incidents like this, okay,
where church will engage in some serious, full pa and
alienated some key personage, whether it's Roosevelt, whether it's vance Attart,
whether it was the the uh, whether it was Lord Simon.
This happens again and again, okay, And like I said,
I'm sure some people are gonna say that that's me
taking a page from the playbook and mister Kruse show,
I'm just putting shit on a historical person that you
don't like. But i that's not what I'm doing. This
this is relevant because Churchill's held out is this almost
divinely uh you know, uh, without flaw kind of figure
who sacrificed for his country and for humanity against this
kind of unspeakable evil. You know, when in reality, now,
not only was Churchill, you know, a politician and a
very corrupt man, he was probably one of the most
corrupt major political figures of the twentieth century. And he
was certainly a trader to his own people. You know,
he was literally a judas. You know. However, anybody feels
about the Third Reich or Zionism or anything else. You know,
they can't beat the night. You know, there's not there's
not is not any way you can put a gloss
on on on trees in the one's own kid and kin.
And that's exactly what Churchill did. Now moving on he
uh he uh did I I We talked before about
how uh Churchill really most of what he spoke when
he when speaking of Germany, he he mostly spoke in
terms of moral can't you know when when people would
challenge him, you know, in including Baldwin, but uh also
in more direct terms, you know, people like uh beaver
broke and challenged him. He saly declared that, you know,
the barbarity of dictatorships, you know, would you know, call
for you know, call for resistance by any means necessary.
But what exai was Churchill talking about? Here? Churchill was
the guy who in the immediate in the immediate aftermath
of the Eastern Rising, he said that, you know, we
need to dispense with you know, normal kind of customs
and laws of warfare and start you know, treating non
combatants of hostiles. And he was basically talking about ethnically
cleansing the Irish and was killing them until they stopped misbehaving.
You know, he spoke of the Indian, he spoke of
the subcontinent populations generally is just kind of subhuman, you know.
And he he declared that German anti Semitism was quote
a crime against all men. But in terms, Will didn't
care a whit when the Poles were ethnically cleansing Jews
when they passed the Nationality Act in ninety thirty eight,
you know, demanding a demanding a territorial concessions from the
Baltic under threat of a military assault, when they were
ethnically cleansing Germans under frontier, you know, when they were
doing essentially the exact same thing that the Germans did
in the passage of the Nuremberg Laws. I'm not saying
that to say bad things about Polish people or Poland
that's not the point. Like the points that you are
going to strike these moral postures, There's got to be
some sort of consistency or it's just absurd and buffoonish.
And I mean this has echoes today. You know. I'm
not saying that even Churchill had a you know, even
if the country he represented had a resume that was
kind of more in line with these before values that
they would have, you know, some kind of some kind
of weight. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm
saying that there's got to be at least some modicum
of consistency. Otherwise you're not to be taken seriously, you know,
otherwise you're obviously engaged in a kind of game, you know,
in a kind of Ledgered Maine that that appeals only
to the most kind of foolish. But uh, the.
Speaker 3: Uh the uh, you know, to that, uh, to that,
to that end, Churchill finally got his way, or not completely,
but with the uh, with the assault uh on Poland.
Speaker 2: Chamberlain had a real serious problem. I mean, Chamberla had
more problems than anybody thought. Chamberlain was actually dying cancer
and we'll tell him to that in a minute, but
he I mean, that's one of the things that I
kind of I think WARN's bit of sympathy for him,
considering what he was enduring. But regardless about Chamberlain, it
felt about you know, the prospect of war with Germany.
You know, they for better or worse. You know, London
was at war with Germany now and it was done okay,
and he needed a war cabinet now uh. The uh,
he brings Churchill into the government as Lord of the
Admiralty once again. You know which church will you know,
the Church will not enjoy that post in twenty years.
And so he was ecstatic because you know, we talked
like we talked about I think in the first episode
dealing with the church elite. He seemed he seemed to
be most happy when when uh when when he was
in a when he was in a position to play warlord,
you know, despite his his his naked ineptitude in the role.
You know. It's uh. Now, once again back to Churchill's
moral can't uh uh And this this, this is going
to tie back together when we get into the when
we get into the addendum episode dealing with Nuremberg's And
I'm not just I'm not taking a page from the
from the outrage of Manual of the Woke and trying
to list you know, kind of like you know, bad
acts or crime to the British Empire or something. But
considering the claims presented by Churchill and the focus and uh,
his purported raison veetra for his war on Germany, these
things are relevant. Now Churchill publicly endorsed what had been
agreed upon it with respect of the Panama Treaty. The
Panama Treaty declared that in the America, as the United States,
and you know, in in Central and South America, all
countries that were not combatants, you know, and there were
non combatant states and also were not colonies or dominions
of combatant states, you know, there would be there would
be no hostilities within three hundred miles of uh of
territorial wars. Well Church relation and memo immediately after publishing
publicly endorsing the idea of a three hundred mile neutral
zone extending from you know, territorial territorial waters in the Americas,
he he issued in order of anialty that the World
Navy was to completely disregard this. Okay, so this is
a man who did not have respect for the laws
and customs of war or treaty law when it did
not serve as purposes. Okay, you're limited mining Norwegian territorial wars.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He uh when uh when they uh when a German
U boat was forced to surface by a British battleship
in the North Sea. Uh the uh the men who
abandoned ship were over the course of twelve hours were
retrieved from the water and they were executed and dumped overboard.
And uh, Churchill declared that this would be odious if
the appearance it would be odious in appearance of a
hostile media actor got ahold of the story. But you know,
mind you he had no problem with these men, you know,
being summarily executed to see you not even availed to
a drum end court martial. So this was the kind
of man he was. Okay, Churchill believed in the Law
of Churchill. He didn't believe in anything else. And he
would literally say anything or do anything for money. And Uh,
he had a certain i'm aroa a term of audacity because
sometimes they indicates balls or kind of dash and recklessness
that is charming. There's nothing charming about this. It was.
It was just a pitiable man who had no principles. Uh,
literally just saying whatever he had to in the moment
in order to in order to rationalize what he was
doing in his own is, in his own naked self interest.
Churchill issues uh a radio address the first week in October.
In it, he declares that Poland has an unquenchable spirit.
It will rise again. Poland is like a rock tightly submerged.
But you know if if if the great democracy Poland
is not somehow re established, you know, our peace and
freedom will be threatened. There's that same verbage again from
a Frankfurt or mister Roosevelt, like how like a basically
racialist like military junta like in Central Europe is you know,
the kind of whole star of you know, Western freedom.
I have no idea, but apparently according to mister Churchill
and and the focus this this was the case now
mind you, and this is the last. Just for context,
once again, you've got to look at the world of
nine and thirty nine, Okay, I mean it's just as
obnoxious in twenty twenty two when the European Union goes
around on moral report cars to people, you know about
their racism or about not not not treating the developing
world equably enough. But think about this, okay, and thirty nine.
The British Empire, it was sovereign over just under four
hundred and fifty million people. Does approximately a quarter the
population of this planet? Okay, Now, just over four hundred
million of those people were non whites. Because the region
number of classed by people in the following prodigm. You're
either white and European, you're colored, you were a negro,
or you were a native and like native, and it
entailed all different kinds of racial groupings. It was kind
of like not black, like not white, not mixed race,
you're you're a native. But pretty much none of these
people had any political rights. Okay, so you're gonna sit
here and say that, you know, because the number of
laws and because Germany, which at this point is basically
at war with a Jewish dias b for better or worse,
I mean that that that's a fact the epitome me
an because they're not taller of their fellow men. Like, meanwhile,
you serve a you serve a monarchy that has subjugated
twenty five percent of this planet, and you've done so
on grounds that they're not white. Now that doesn't bother
me any because I don't approach history in those kinds
of terms. But like, think about mister Churchill, you know,
declaring these things, and think about like how this is
received on the continent, you know, I mean, think about
like the row cynicism of that, and you kind of you
kind of understand why, you kind of understand that the
Germans came to realize that what what they were contending
with was a was a a an enemy element that
was gonna sue for woral costs. Okay, I mean that
it much like, not entirely and not nearly as intense
for thank god, but it's somewhat like Russia is dealing
with today. He's a via nail. Now, interestingly, what adding
to this, uh kind of a stew of iniquity and hypocrasy.
On September seventeenth, ninety thirty nine, the Soviet Union invades Poland,
or had invade in Poland. Okay, Now, this was done
pursuant to UH the Molotov Ribbons trop Pact, which was
a secret. It was at the final example of secret diplomacy,
which is un aligned. Uh, I mean properly, I'm not
I'm not saying it's a good practice in the Eater warriors.
And nobody knew that Germany and UH that that Berlin
and Moscow. It divided up spears of influence. And not
only had Stalin demanded UH the eastern half of Poland,
but he demanded the Germany pursue a hands off pasha
on the Baltic states. And uh Moscow for seated demand
at the Baltic States plus Finland UH abide what the
euphemistically called mutual assistance treaties that meant that they had
to tolerate a red arready presence in their territorial waters,
you know, across their uh across their borders. They're respected
to assist in uh ewing hostilities in Poland and anywhere
else within theater. It was, you know, it was. It was.
It was a quote of having a gun to one's
head and then being asked to sign on the dotted
line out of your own free will. But uh, you know,
Joe Kennedy uh there and immediately after Churchill's radio speech,
he confronts mister Churchill because Kennedy was, uh, you know,
still ambassador the United Kingdom. He was, he was quite
friendly with Sir John Simon was chance Chancellor of the
Exchequer and uh Simon was another kind of not very
goot dynamic personage. But uh he I believe he was
a realist, and I believe he was basically patriotic, okay,
and he realized in some basic sense what was underway,
as did Halifax. And if you notice anybody who's seen
the film Darkest Hour, which is ironically titled because yes,
when when Winnsday Churchill ascended to the premiership, that was
the darkest hour. But uh so it's it's it's it's
I thought, I thought it was funny. But and then
even Halifax is portrayed as the villain in that film.
I'm not gonna sit here and say Halifax with some
great man or that he was like, you know, some
great great friend of the white race or something. But
he he definitely had album more integrity than then most
of his peers in as did Simon, and Joe Kennedy
had a good rapport of both these men, but though
primarily was Simon. So Kennedy puts it to Simon. He says,
you know, this isn't the wake of the the Soviet
assault on Poland. You know what exactly are you're fighting for?
You can't restore Poland to the polls, and why would
you want to do that anyway? And Simon has kind
of agreed, lamely saying no, no, we couldn't. To Kennedy's like, okay, well,
how are we discussing aggression while fantastically endorsing Russia's conquest
of Poland as well as allowing it to insinuate it's
it's it's dirty Bolshevik clause into the Baltics. And uh,
Simon did no answer to that. He said that he
said that he in Halifax, you know, stood by their
government and they hope for speedy resolution. And that to
me is the indicative. Assuming Kennedy was adamant, this other
conversation developed. And I don't see why he would have
lied about this after the war, because there's only related
this and that wouldn't exactly make him look good in
the court of public opinion. But he stated that if
if you fight this war, if you see it through,
if you wage a total war on the continent against Germany,
you will destroy your country and you will become a
shadow of your former self. If you even you know,
even if you even retain the sovereign dominion over over
your over the home territories, owing to the idea that
you know, Kennedy said on certain terms of Roosevelt, if
Adolf Hitler goes, Germany will become a garrison communist state,
and uh after that, sovil France. And uh, if you
think the UK is just going to somehow you know,
be able to to to retain some sort of sovereign independence.
Amiss uh, amiss uh. This Bolshevik super state that extends
from Lady less Stock to the Atlantic Ocean. You're you're
deluding yourself. The Halifax said he shared this view. Kennedy
returned to Washington. He uh wrote a telegram the Fdr
Emilia Pound return saying it's imperative that as the President
of the United States, he assisted Britain in any way
possible to end the war of else he still could.
I mean that shows you how out of the loop
Kennedy was. And I'm not saying that about shade on him,
but it shows you how he he uh, he just
really shut out. It's not just that he wasn't a
fellow traveler with a New Dealers, and he'd been, for
all practical purposes banished from uh the Beltway where he
could conspire against you know, Roosevelt, who is fast becoming
his political nemesis, you know, and our worst nemeses are
our former friends, if at least in political life. But uh,
he was in London, and he was in you know,
moved in the same circles as Churchill. The fact that
the fact that, uh, I mean it shows you how
unthinkable it was that the New Dealers were literally planning
from inception to wage a war of annihilation against Europe.
That even Kennedy, who did not really have illusions about
the Man of Roosevelt or is in our circle like,
couldn't even fathom this. I mean, Kenny was basically a gangster.
Okay he is now he was some feet rich guy
or you know some watching an insire. You're a self
made man, and the way he made his fortune was
not any way nice. But I want to conclude here
soon because I uh, I want us to be able
to kind of leap frog into the war years and
leave mister Churchill as a dedicated topic behind. But I
do want to pull up something that I think is
fascinating and I think the listeners will appreciate it. Okay,
Churchill's October broadcast that we referenced, and you know how
I talked about a moment ago we talked about I
don't believe Churchill's copy really originated with mister Churchill. Okay,
listen to what Churchill said. This is word for word. No,
he stated, of all the wars that men have fought
in their heart pilgrimage. None was more noble than the
Great Civil War in America nearly eighty years ago. All
the heroism of the South could not redeem their cause
from the stain of slavery, just as all the courage
and skill with the Germans always showing a war will
not free them from the approach of Nazism with its
intolerance and brutality.
Speaker 1: Now, why the hell was a something out there?
Speaker 2: Well, why the hell is the British Anniralty Lord in
nineteen thirty nine talking about the Confederacy and how bad
it is. I'll tell you who's.
Speaker 1: Very thanks guys, because it's answered. It's already entered the
zeitgeist of the.
Speaker 2: Of the focuses. But not but not of like some
lamey you know in in London in nineteen thirty nine,
I mean that the Civil War to hit what's this?
What's the American Civil War? What's the South? And this
didn't this did not go over well and and and
in in London people didn't know what he was talgging.
They didn't get the reference. A lot of them, okay,
And in America people starts out of the field. But
the uh, the anti Defamation League had literally been founded
in the aftermath of Leo Frank being lynched, and they're
they viewed the South, you know, the reactionary you know,
anti Semitic South as as their moral enemy. And this
I hear, there's no way that church will conjured up
this boogeyman of the Confederacy of the United States. Like
why why would Churchill even be why would that be
with with his his contemplation but proventual is and the
kind of direct control of the focus over him and
over everything he said. You know, uh, this this was
not twenty twenty two. I mean even today, I think
that would be strange if Borisa Johnson made some reference
like that. But in nineteen thirty nine, it was. It
was just bizarre and it uh, I've listened to part
of the speech. It sounds like weird and stilted. Like
Churchill he usually sounds almost conversational. His language is this
kind of fault soaring language. But it's not stilted, you
know that. It's a really weird speech. This whole this
whole speeches, you know. But it but that was uh,
you know, this was this was the twilight of Churchill's
Wilderness years. Though, because like we we mentioned a minute ago,
poor Chamberlain, Uh you know what, not even a year
later or right about a year later he dropped out
of cancer. Uh. You know, the UK was was you know,
and I mean the ward the sis creed had uh
had been underway, but I mean real hostilities were were
unfolding in earst that the situation was collapsing. It looked
at that point to outsiders, even though they said nothing,
even though the internal situation between Moscow and Berlin was
reaching critical mass. Outside of that Milleu, people thought that
there's a genuine concror between Moscow and Berlin. Uh, the
UK was actually losing the war. Uh. Churchill really got
the nod replaced Chamberlain because there was nobody else and
he was probably the only man, you know, the voters
really would have accepted without there you know, being a
without there you know there with without without there being
a you know, some kind of internal crisis, confidence crisis
in parliament so per Extorman conditions, you know, namely was
because Bus two at uh labor uh labor, you know,
the Tories and and then Liberals ready to their's throats
and believe in the Tories I don't believe that they
would wanted anything to do with Churchill because they a
lot highly of them. It was again, he was the
only man who who could, who could UH would fill
the role. And I mean again that owes to this
unpressed and the kind of full court press media campaign
that UH sort of insinuated him as the as the
as the the man of the hour, even though he
hadn't done anything but issue a lot of moral moral
can't and and strange radio addresses referring to the anti
Semitism of the American South, and you know, heling around
with with UH with Jewish UH movie moguls and the
Mediterranean like. But again, perception is reality, and eventually perception
becomes reality. I know, uh, I know this episode was
a little less heavy than some, but I again, I
I think it was. Uh. I Churchill's career is essential
understanding the revisionist argument, and uh I I don't think
I could have done in less than three episodes. And
I I didn't want to just dramatically, kind of jarringly
change focus and get into the war in the same episode.
But I promise we'll get into the nitty gritty when
we record again. This week of uh, you know, World
War two and UH, how how it developed and and
specifically we'll start off next session with h with Operation
Barbarossa and the the the war between the National Socialists
and and and UH and the communists. And I know
that that's something that turns everybody on, including myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds great. Since we got a couple of minutes,
I got a question. Okay, So you've brought it up
at a bunch of times. Paul and I talked about
it a little bit yesterday when we were talking I
think privately the the Nuremberg regime. Yeah, sir, how did
how did HUAC happen during the Nuremberg regime?
Speaker 2: What do you mean specifically?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it seems like it would go counter
like that that kind of thing would be shut down,
you know, searching for communists in the you know, in Hollywood,
in society, in the government. Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I understand. Wait to understand these two things. Okay,
The many aspects of the new Deal, UH were permanent Okay,
I mean, owing to a few things only to the
fact that that's just what you know, remain the priority
of the federal system. But a lot of things, particularly
the Concorde in Moscow that completely fell apart in ninety nine. Okay,
the Cold War was not supposed to happen, and uh
Truman number one hated the Russians even if you hadn't.
Stalin was not gonna take a knee and be the
junior partner in this kind of in literally this world
regime of uh you know, the United States, you know,
in Moscow, with Moscow is the junior partner, like I
just said, you know, kind of managing the planet. And
with the United States it is him in a monopoly
on nuclear weapons and and uh you know with Okay,
you know, the the Soviet Union has a they got
a permanency in the Security Council. But you know, they
can they can always be they can always be over
they can always be vetoed the jury in de facto
by you know, the United States, UK, France. They weren't
gonna tolerate that. And uh Stalin, uh Stalin as a
as you and Paul got into, I'm gonna and and
I started listen to your and Paul show, but I
he I've got a sense that we probably talked about
you know, Yaqui was onto something when you talk about
the Prague Trials, okay, I he was misconstrue that Yaqui
wasn't saying and this and in that you know, oh,
you know, the the Eastern bloc is this great thing
and they're becoming fascist. What he was saying is that,
you know, the the kind of primitives, not not primitive
and punitive terms, primitives, just speaking in the developmental terms.
You know, this primitive kind of peasant population of Slavs.
They had a common hatred of, uh, this cogmopolitan Roman
eetype regime that like the Jewish merchant class did they
collaborated to kill it. Okay, But once that threat was gone,
and then once like the Vermont was no longer, you know,
literally kicking in the door and slaughtering them, Like what what,
what reason do they have to collaborate? They were totally
at odds. And obviously, you know, the the Jewish element,
which was not better in moral terms or in terms
of attitude, but was better situated in practical and power
political terms to rule the Soviet Union. The majority wasn't
going to tolerate that anymore. And these these these Jewish, uh,
these Eastern Jewish people like saw the writing on the wall. Okay,
so they threw their lotting with the United States, and
that's one way to understand it. But just in pure
power political terms, you know, the uh, the uh, despite
the Marshall Plan, despite the kind of anti colonial overtures
of Eisenhower, which I think in this case for genuine
in a lot of ways. You know what what was
called the colored world in less sensitive times, they they
weren't really with the program. They they went to the
Moscow poll. You know, so it's uh, so you got America,
you got this Nuremberg world system, and it created it.
You know, this is fanning too, because like there's a
great boxhy a yach and Piper. You know, he was
under a death sentence and some and a half and
in nineteen and fifty six, first as death sence gets
commuted and then he sudden he just gets like he
suddenly gets clemency, and they cut loose Piper. They cut
loose all these dudes who had heavy who commanded troops
and heavy action against the Red Army. Like suddenly they're
getting cut loose. And suddenly you're seeing movies in Hollywood
about you know, Irwin Romwell, the Great Desert Fox and
he fought those dirty Reds, but he was he was
a good German, not one of those dirty Nazis. You know,
if you're gonna if it looks like you're gonna have
to fight a total war that's gonna go nuclear at
some point with Ivan, and you're gonna need the Germans
to fight on literally the front line of the inner
German border, like you're gonna have to scale back a
lot of your Nuremberg bullshit at least for a time.
And that's what happened, you know, this kind of this
kind of give and take in door it until the
Reagan administration. Man, I mean, you know, because you're you're, you're,
you're a little older than me. It's you're, I mean,
the big Berg moment, reaganhead, Okay, there's nine to eighty four. Man,
Reagan only go to Bigburg Cemetery because he wanted to,
like stir ship or because you really really want to
do He's like, Okay, well, I expect these guys like
basically absorbed the first probably nuclear blow from Warsaw packed.
I better not going up shitting underwarded. You know, I'd
better say some nice things about him. Sometimes you know,
at least better not come off with some you know,
dogmantic anti fascist dude.
Speaker 1: That was the reaction to that was insane.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The Ramones wrote a song about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, We'll go to pick Burg or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's like, I mean, that was I remember.
That was probably one of the first things I remember
as a kid of being like, wow, people really do
not I mean, well, of course they tried to kill
him three years earlier, but people really do not. But
people really do not like this guy.
Speaker 2: No, my dad really really lived. You know, my dad
really like Reagan. And my dad my dad doesn't like
Germany and nearly as much as I do. But you know,
my dad is Man, you know, because my dad's a
military vet and also he was you know, he was
a he was a big Cold warrior and he uh no,
I mean, I mean he was in the he was
a military acco missed. He and a nuclear game theorist.
He actually waved the Cold War, albeit from a desk.
But he he got mad when people tried to put
shade on the German army and stuff. You know, he's like,
even even though he's a lot more kind of conventional
in his views. But yeah, that's why it uh bust
someone who was a strange you know, why did the
the uh you know, Roy Cohnes. There is a reason
why Roy Cohne got to pick the prosecute the Rosenbergercause
Roy Cohne wasn't just he wasn't just this kind of
hot shot like young Jewish lawyer like con was like
this in your face kind of Jewish guy. Like I'm
not saying that to be crass. He was, you know,
but I mean it. So it's like, then we're gonna
have some Irish Catholic guy like McCarthy or like Bobby Kennedy,
you know, sending the Jewish people the electric cheer you
They're gonna have wise ass like obviously ethnic Roy Cone
to it. It was a delicate minuet, you know what
I mean. That's why Yaqui very early on he wrote
a few speeches for McCarthy. Now, Yaqui had no truckle
like Bircher's or like a curzy perspective. But the idea
was like, well, you know, if this is gonna draw
if this is gonna raise name in consuness among these
you know, white ethnic Catholic types about you know, the truth,
like the true face of you know, subversion. And it's
not that Moscow was, you know, the the loci of
all evil like some kind of sort of satanic for
some incarnate. It's in fact, in a large part, not exclusively,
but in a large part, you know, the the impulse
of this kind of hostilethno sectarian, the aspra. I mean, yeah,
it's a complicated issue, but that that's the short answer.
I mean, we're gonna do all the show about that
if you want to. Sure, but yeah, and uh that's
the short answer. And I gotta, I just uh yeah,
I just thought of Paul over text. I gotta. I'm
gonna listen to your guys show it tonight and I'll
give you I'll give you full feedback. Paul is. Paul
is great. He's a great friend of mine, and he's
a really brilliant kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do your plugs and well then.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh you can find me if uh, for someone
godly reason you want to No, I about half my
content is free on my substack. That was not free.
It's only five bucks a month. And even Hobo's gonna
afford that. And I know if they've been a hobo,
it's real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com.
You can find me on t gram and the t
gram mob has been growing exponentially and that is dope.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I'll share then to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a t dot E slash
the number seven h O M A S seven seven seven.
I got a couple of weeks, uh, actually more like
four weeks, like my next steel Storm novel will be dropping.
Do imperiod press. Check them out. They're great, not just
because they publish my stuff, but all their titles are great.
They got incredibly talented authors on staff, and they're friends
of ours. To please support them and not Amazon or
some outlit like that. And yeah, I want to think it.
Butody sincerely for being so kind in their compliments. I
really mean that. I'm very very honored and humbled by it.
And thank you very much, Pete.
Speaker 1: No problem, and next time we'll get into the hostilities.
I want to welcome everyone back to the Peak show.
Thomas is back.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Thomas, I'm very well, Pete. Thanks and again,
as always, I'm sure people are getting tired of repeating myself,
but I really appreciate the positive comments and support for
this ongoing series. It's really great. And I mean that's
the whole point. You know, I know what my own
ideas are and things, and I mean I like having
conversations with you, Pete, and I'm always gained for that.
But the reason we record these conversations is a benefit
of people who might not be familiar with, you know,
the body of a scholarship that we're talking about today.
I wanted to deep dive into Operation Barbarossa, which probably
most people know, though something not. That was the code
name for the for the German assault on the Soviet Union,
you know, on June twenty second, ninety forty one, and
there's an absolute cataclysmic event, you know, a clash of
literally millions of men on both sides across you know,
one thousand mile front. You know, utterly catastrophic losses, the
kind of a kind of clash of arms and men that,
without exaggeration, has never been seen before and probably will
never be seen again, and at least not for a
thousand years. This has been on my mind a lot,
you know, Like I just like we were talking about
right before we began recording. I'm certainly not a military historian.
But you know, it's a military dimension to revisionism because
it it's you know, it's a huge amount of it
is pouring through conflict literature and dealing with them, you know,
dealing with the the entirety of the political horizon. And
there's obviously there's there's there's a major military dimension to that.
But as these this this unfortunate Ukraine war that did
not have to happen, that is underweight. Now you know,
these place names and these battle spaces, these these were
the same settings of hostilities you know, during Barbarossa, and
that that's kind of fascinating to me. I'm not at ghoul,
I'm not you know, saying, oh this is exciting. I'm
happy to you know, act some kind of remote spectator
of of of hostilities. But it is fascinating how you know,
these places that have been quiet for you know, three
quarters of a century or once again a flame with
the by the dogs of war. But yeah, I want
to deep dive into that today. But first I think
there's such a huge topic and I don't think we're
gonna need to dedicate quite as much time to it
as we did the career of mister Churchill. But we
need to dive deep into the theoretical foundations of the
ideologies that created this clash. You've got to look at
the cent in World War. I mean, depending on where
you're located in terms of your nationality, you're going to
approach the Second World War differently, Like not just in
terms of the narrative, but what you emphasize. Like if
you're to talk to a Russian person, you know, he
or she'd tell you about the Great Patriotic War and
to them it didn't really ensue until June forty one,
you know, because that was the war. You know, he
talked some Englishmen and you know he's if he's kind
of accepted the narrative of court history and you know,
as presented from the bully pulpit, but probably drop some
kind of hero narrative of mister Kirschel on you where
we'll talk about Dunkirk or something like that. You know,
Americans generally people. You know, I got introduced to the
Second World War as a little little kid because my
mom's brother, he was he was twenty two years older
than her, because he was her half brother, and her
father was something of a ladies man and he you
know when he when he sired my mom, he was
supposed to fifty years old and his wife was twenty one,
which is which is great. Uh props to him. Uh
I hope, uh I hope uh as I age I
can still attract pretty ladies if if it comes to uh,
if it comes to seeming like it, it's time for
me to sire an error. But that aside, Uh, my
uncle Harold uh who who's my middle name is his namesake?
He fought on tarable against the Japanese. And you know,
when I was a little little kid, he talked to
me about fighting the Japanese, you know, and not in
a in appropriate way, I mean, but you know that
that that was common. You know, like you you had
a grandpa, you had an uncle who you know, fought
the Japs or something that that was kind of front
and center, which is why it was strange to me.
In school, how you know, owing to the owing to
the demographics where I grew up, and in the political
climate of the of the nineteen eighties, you know, we
hear all about this, you know, quote unquote Holocaust theology
and things, because that that didn't really feature loom large.
You know, and but my point is that you know,
as with all conflicts and historical apollable events, you know,
every things are emphasized, but in revisionist terms like objectively,
I agree a lot with Ern's Nolty. He talks about
he talked about the European Civil War, you know, spanning
from nineteen fourteen to nineteen forty five. You know, he
looked at it like the Thirty Years War. Okay, if
the listeners are familiar with that, you know it's kind
of terrible ongoing sectarian conflict between kingdoms and duchies, uh
characterized by shifting alliances and and kind of conflicts within
conflict and things like that. I don't wholly accept nolties.
I accept Nolty's metaphysical description of the concepts and kind
of the you know, because he's very much a Hegelian
or he was. He's dead no, in terms of in
terms of the kind of for lack of a better
way to characterize it, metaphysical causes, you know, the kind
of human causes in terms of ideas and how ideas
animated people to war. I accept basically when he posits entirely,
but I diverged somewhat from him describing it as a
conflict basically analogous to the Thirty Years of War. I
think of World War Two basically as a war between Hitler, Roosevelt,
and Stalin. Okay, the Nazi Soviet War, as is known
kind of in the anglosphere, with America even you know,
entering on the side of the Soviet Union. Very early on.
Prior to that, there was a there there was a
kind of typical of the modern era power political collision
between France and Germany, you know, owing to kind of
conventional geopolitics, and that's one of the reasons France, after
being defeated militarily, basically made real peace of Germany. You know,
we'll get into that later in the series too. But
some people might be surprised to learn that when the
Americans landed in North Africa and forty three, the first
forces that engaged them were French who were fighting on
the side of the Axis. Okay, the UK, the UK's
war against Germany, which ensued in ninety thirty nine at
you know, when when the UK declared declared war on Berlin.
I view the UK as having been defeated at Dunkirk,
and I mean after that the war was basically over
until the terror bombing was UH was initiated, you know,
by by UH, by the British bomber arm But that
really I look at the UK, it's kind of liquidating,
it's not just its assets but its sovereignty to the
United States and becoming quite literally a client regime, you know.
And then so I look at the UK as losing
its war against Germany, just as France lost its war
in ninety forty, and in the way could defeat becoming
a client of the United States in this truly global
war of the Soviet Uni United States against the German Reich,
which by that point, you know, had a million non
Germans under arms NAVAF and asas and had become really
kind of a truly European army. Leondi Grell talks about
this and a lot of right wing guys who are
go into you know, third rights history and things. You know,
I know a lot of Leondi greel okay, So that
that's my perspective. I wouldn't bore people to death with
that kind of elaborate introduction. But what I want to
get into now is what was the origin of the
German Soviet War and why did it happen? And first
I want to tackle some myths that have to be
sort of dealt with before you get into it. It's
kind of this fools canard that a lot of kind
of pop history deals with. And you know, even your people,
like barstool types, and even you know, even some you know, uh,
even some people who should know better, you know, like
history teacher types. They'll say things like, well, Hitler's big
mistake was assaulting the Soviet Union. The only way Germany
wins World War two is defeating the Soviet Union. That's
how you defeat Churchill. That's how you defeat Roosevelt. That's
how you create fortress to Europe. That's how you make
Europe a superpower that can compete on the world stage
in the era of great space politics. Okay, whatever you
consider to be the primary war ambition in objective terms,
whatever you consider to be you know, what should have
been the correct orientation military and political of Berlin. The
only way to accomplish that is the Soviet Union goes down. Okay,
So this idea that Hitler was just kind of looking
at a menu of where should I attack, and oh,
this was the wrong decision. To attack here, that's not
really a meaningful understanding of the strategic landscape. Okay, now
why do I say that? A few reasons. First of all,
everything about the Third Reich in military terms, and the
way it structured itself and the way its doctrine became
progressive to uh, the the you know, the the sort
of anticipated deployment of uh of uh of forces to
uh you know, the Hitler's g strategic vision of what
of what would secure Europe and enable it to compete
on the world stage in power political terms, everything about
that calculus owes to the reality the Soviet Union being
a burgaining superpower and its productive capacity outstripping every other
state on this planet except potentially the United States. But
even a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I even I saw this on a comment
on Twitter yesterday. You're saying it sounds like what you're
implying is is that Hitler was fighting for basically all
of Europe, where a lot of people will say Hitler
just wanted to take every country in Europe and make
it part of Germany. He wanted to make Europe all
basically under his power. So that's when when you say
it like that, it can sound like that and that's
not at all what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a couple. Here's the thing. I made
the point before that, you know, Hitler was a Habsburg Austrian,
as everybody knows, but he thought like a Prussian. Yet
somehow he also appealed to these kind of Munich Bavarian types.
Hitler had to be somewhat cosmopolitan in order to facilitate
his ascendency. And I don't think that was just a
cynical ploy. I think he believed that. But it's also
Hitler made the point again and again that nationalism was dead.
You know, cabinet warring is you know, was dead. It
was it was a dead and it wasn't gonna lead anything,
you know. And he was constantly talking about great space
paradigms as as being the future of power, political hegemony.
But also with the exception of Poland, which the Soviets
in and the and the and the the German Reich
just just destroyed as a political and cultural or as
attempt to destroy as cultural entity, he destroyed as a
political envy. Other than the undependent state of Croatia, which
really was kind of a mirror of of the of
the national socialist state, albeit with its own indigenous characteristics.
Hitler very much opposed exporting some kind of national socialist
paradigm to other political cultures. That's why Romania we were
talking about. You know, I made the point that Antonescu
was I believe Hitler's best ally in a lot of ways.
He he wasn't as close personally as to the fear
as Mussolini was, but Romania committed the relative to the
size of the population. Romania committed a huge contingent of
men to the Eastern Front. Anton Escu was a war
hero in his own right. He was a holder of
the Knight's Cross. He had a great understanding of military
strategic matters. Hitler favored Antonescu over the Iron Guard. He's like,
he did not want some radically fascist or fascist oory
regime or some national socialist type regime taking power in Romania.
You know, nordidy in in the in the in in Slovakia,
and Nordidy in Bulgaria, and ord to be in you know,
uh you could you know outside of uh out and
and and in France too. I know people talk about
d VC France. You know the uh it's notable that
uh until uh it became clear that there was gonna
be no concord and no peace between uh, the UK
and Germany. That uh, you know, the uh, the the
Germans uh it scrupulously avoided occupying, uh, occupying h France
out outside of the essentral coastal areas. I mean, they
they didn't do that because they were nice guys. But
you know, the point being that if the Germans were
hell bent and you know, kind of destroying Europe and
restructuring it in the image of of the fear of
national socialism, they that's not the way you go about that.
Speaker 1: And uh, you and Franco and Salazar would have had
something to say about that, just using two examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean it's more complicated. You know,
it's not it's not a question of whether Hitler was
a good guy or not. I mean, in but in
objective terms, that's not that that's not really the sensibility
that guided him. And I mean, yeah, there were men
in the O k W and and there certainly were
men in the in the National Socialist Party who had
a very chauvinistic view of things, you know, in in
in racial terms and in ethnic terms. But I mean
that's that's just characteristic of Europe. And you know, regardless,
even Germany today, which is you know, this runk state
shadowed its form of self, you know, Europe it orbits
around Berlin. I mean that's inevitable, you know, I mean
in some basic sense. So yeah, I if the Germans
got their way. When I say the Germans, I mean
the Third Reich, definitely nothing would have happened on the
continent within their sphere of influence and dominance without their
say so by this idea that they would have just
created puppet regimes everywhere, like you know, characteristic of the
Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union. Like, that's not the case.
And that I you know, what I'm gonna dive into
in a moment is how it wasn't just military exigencies
that you know, in the reality of power politics that
led the fur and and UH and the party as
well as you know, the military apparatus and the and
the kind of industrial national economic elite to kind of
structure UH the state UH and its productive capacities to
the combat the Soviet Union and material terms. But really,
even if you're not a Hitgelian like I am, you've
got to understand the emergence and national socialism. It can
only be understood as in dialectical conflict with communism. And
what animated people to fight against the Soviet Union wasn't that,
you know, they loved the fear so much, or they
loved Berlin, or they all wanted to be dominated by Germany.
It was because they didn't view another path to European
survival as a discrete cultural form and way of life,
you know, to say nothing of of of of politically
sovereign and independent states within what could be considered a
European you know, uh structure without uh you.
Speaker 1: Know, without confederation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for better or worse. But the point is that,
you know, you wouldn't have had you would not have
hit millions of literally, you know, a million non Germans
in the vafen SS, a good portion of which we're volunteers.
If you know, if if they were just fighting for
the you know, the on behalf of of of you know,
bringing the German boot heel down on their neck or something.
You know, I mean, it's not that that's a gross oversimplification.
And you know, German racialism, we might find it off putting.
In the twenty firth century. If I make the point
again and again, that's the way everybody on the planet thought. Okay,
not everybody thought in terms of you know, uh, we're
not so aggressively and dialectically hostile to Jews and what
they viewed as Jewish power. But you better believe that
in America, eugenics was what everybody thought was, you know,
the correct kind of application of anthropology. You better believe
everybody in the UK and everybody in Japan viewed a
hierarchy of races. Okay, so it's not it's not weird
that the Germans viewed nationality in terms of race or
had this kind of strange idea that you know, your
blood or are in our terms you know DNA. But
in those they obviously you know that the human genome
been mapped and people didn't understand those kinds of things.
But the even people who are relatively traditional minded, and
even people who had some affinity still for religion and
believe the religion took a huge hit in the twentieth century.
Thankfully that has abated, and that's the subject for another show.
But you know, it's another thing that's mischaracterized, this idea
that oh, the Germans were these crazy guys who had
this kind of biologically determinate view of human behavior. That's
that's the way everybody thought, you know. I'd argue that
Germans were somewhat less fixated that way than the Americans,
Like America literally had like Francis Galton and guys like
Lothrop Stodter, who was a journalist, you know, they they
were literally fixated on this idea that you know, morphological
characteristics or indicative of behavior and potential. Like don't get
me wrong, I believe like race is a significant biological characteristic.
I'm not saying otherwise. But they were foolish about it,
and they they talk about it in ways that don't
make sense, you know, like your your culture is not
biologically programmed or something. You know, it's not that's that's
that's nonsense. But so that's important to understand. But getting
back to uh, there's a quote I wanted to drop.
It's about one of the only things that I think
is kind of remains timely about mind comp. I made
the point before in our own discussions as well as
I think on the record, mine COMP was really an
election year screed. It's not supposed to have this perennial
enduring significance. Hitler didn't really get into either metaphysics or
kind of deep astoricism. It was it's really kind of
a an appeal of the you know, an election, your
appeal to Wymur voters that to wide the National Socialists
are gonna, you know, pursue policy that's the correct path forward.
But there is there is and was I think in
most editions it's on Peage sixty. If I'm wrong with
the addition you or anybody has, like, forgive me that.
But I'm gonna read this in a moment, and I
try and avoid like direct quoting text. But here I
think it's it's uh, it's timely. Let me, let me
find what I'm looking for, okay, itt Uh. Something Nolty
talked about was fear of what he called practical transcendence.
I mean that's somewhat there's not so much loss in
translation as there's not a deep metaphysical tradition and American
political theory, I mean owing to the owing to the
fact that you know, America so kind of bound up
with the rationals tradition and and and such that America
does have kind of a a metaphysical tradition and it's
and it's uh indigenous philosophy. It's it's basically Aristotelian and
Bible Protestant, which is my own hearth. I'm not in
any way suggesting that's bad, but it's not. It doesn't
really shed light on the European mind. Okay. Practical transcendence
and the term Nolty was talking about, it's kind of
a Hedigerian concept. It refers to conceptual horizons of the
past kind of being destroyed by collision with modern institutions
and ideas and ways of interpreting and experiencing the world
around us. You know, So whether you're talking about beloved
institutions of culture or of you know, or or social
organization or of a labor you know, becoming outmoded and
man being kind of ripped out of these environments that
has provided in not just an identity, but with a
kind of historical rootedness and and and consciousness that you know,
indoors across generations. You know. The process by which that
sort of thing is becomes remote, if not out and
out abolished, is refer with practical transcendence and within Nolties
and to some lesser great Heidegger's paradigm. Now, Hitler was
not a philosopher, and in purport to be, but he
acknowledged in some basic sense that some of this is inevitable,
because that's just you know, one of the crosses. Proverbially,
European man is the bear h not just as you
know he experiences hypermodernity, but European man, you know, kind
of being enamored with you know, the you know, the
the Faustian ethos and spirit, and being enamored with technics
and technology, he runs the real risk of losing himself
in these things. Okay, But of course, to Hitler, one
of the most insidious iterations of this tendency towards practical
transcendence was Marxism. And you know, Marxism was a perversion
of these things, deliberately and kind of weaponized iteration of
these things, because it came out of the Jewish world
of social existence. Now, Hiler wasn't saying this is a conspiracy.
He was saying that there's an intrinsic hostility of the
Jewish culture as an and the way it expresses itself
politically is always in in the form of hostile discourse.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the way Hitler described Marxism and what it represents
to European man in mind count he said, and I quote,
the Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of
nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength
by the massive numbers and their dead weight. Thus it
denies the value of personality in man. It contests the
significance of nationality and race and everybody would draw us
from humanity, the premise of its existence and culture as
a foundation of the universe. This doctrine would bring about
the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man, and
as in the Great used to all recognizable organisms, the
result of an application of such a law could only
be chaos on Earth. It can only be the destruction.
It could only be destruction of the inhabitants of this planet. If,
with the help of his Marxist creed, the jew is
victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown
will be the funeral reef of humanity, and this planet will,
as it did thousands of years ago, moved through the
ether devoid of men. That sounds very melodramatic, and it is.
You can even say it's overwrought language, but aof Hitler
believed this one, and that is the end result of
the Marxist enterprize. Even if you don't accept that it's
a Jewish idea or that it was born of, you know,
a Jewish world of social existence. I'm not here to
argue with that point or unpack that, but it's indisputable
that the removal of man from history, Marxism by it's
an unmpostulate. It seeks to literally end history and you know,
remove man from the kind of intellectual slavery in their
view of these conceits of metaphysics, or of God, or
of anything. Because in the Marxist women is paradigm. These
things are all contrivances of of of that that rationalized
power dynamics, you know, relating to labor and capital and
authority and hierarchy that's imposed the you know, to satisfy
the demands of those things. You know, it's it's it's
a it's an ideology of cultural annihilation masquerading in some
basic sense as an economic science.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Now that's not to say that Marxist all, you know,
we're rubbing their hands together and saying, oh, I want
to destroy Europe or I want to destroy white Christian civilization.
Certainly some of them did think that, but probably most
of them didn't. But we're talking about the way man
instinctively responds to a lot of them still do yes indeed,
and I say more so do now in terms of
raw percentage before. But you know the problem. The reason
why idea has developed this kind of monumental power to
animate people is because people are taken in by them
in apocabal terms, and when people are confronted by by crises,
you know particularly you know, not just the physical mortal crisis,
but at the same time, you know, a kind of
a kind of a kind of psychological psychological crisis of
their conceptual horizon. You know, not just to them personally,
but in there the entire culture. When they're mired. You
know this, this whole kind of conceptual horizon imploating on itself.
And you know, values that preceding generations can take for granted,
you know, no longer having a context, and man no
longer having any poll stars to orient himself within his
life individually or among a community in which he lives.
You know this people, people have become desperate to to
make sense of of of these chaotic, you know, circumstances,
and uh, they get they get very much taken in by, uh,
by paradigms that seem to make sense and seem to reflect,
you know, the the concrete circumstances in which they're they're found.
So that's that's essential. Uh, that's essential to understand why,
you know, the National Socialists were not just making a
boogeyman of Marxism or something, and they weren't just they
weren't they weren't just trying to rationalize what amount of
you like, a racial or tribal prejudice against the Eastern
Slavs under the under aven year of of ideology or something. Now,
there may have been an aspect of that, because there
certainly wasn't love lost between the Germans and the Eastern Slavs,
and particularly a man like Adolf Hitler, who would have
viewed Serbia essentially as responsible for the great work, you know.
And opposite Hitler within his coalition, he's Prussian off types,
you know, who would have viewed the Eastern Slavs not
unlike you know, the way like a white man in
the West would have you gepanche or something you know
in the frontier days. I mean I'm not saying that
to put shade on either Indians or Slavic people and
talking about how they were viewed as this fearful other
that was you know, somehow savage and dangerous. But the
the h if you want to understand national socialism, I mean, yes,
there was positive characteristic the only positive like this is
a laudable I'm not istwing a value judgment. I mean proactive,
spontaneous characteristics that gave rise ideology. But you know, an
equal percentage of its content was like ethically I mean
and conceptually was reactive and it would do the the
conceptual challenge posed by communism. And this was not just
something remote like we talked about in one of our
first episodes. Uh, it's you know, they look quite literally,
you know in in Berlin and Munich especially, you know
where the the Bavarian Munich Bavarian Soviet you know actually
for a brief period was was was the reigning government.
I mean, albeit they captured sovereign power through violence, but
you know this, uh, you know, and and and to
say nothing of what happened in the Baltics where you know,
you had many many German refugees, you know, owing to
fear of being ethnically cleaned when the when the the
bullshits exported the time to export the revolution there. But so,
I mean this was very This is something that uh,
German people had firsthand knowledge of. You know, it's not
just a question then becoming fearful about something remote or
that they read in the papers or whatever. But moving
on to the kind of concrete circumstances. One of the
big myths is uh of the of the German Soviet
War and Stalin's intentions opposite Adolf Hitler's, was this idea
that well, the Soviet Union was this inward looking kind
of state and it you know, the Soviets were just
you know, the Russian were just kind of primitive, and
you know, Stalin declared socialism in one country because he
had no interest in a truly global power politique. And also,
like within that kind of fatuous narrative, there's a claim
that like, well, you know, Germany was this aggressive, was
this aggressive power that was assaulting all its neighbors, you know,
like Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland, and you know, the
Soviet Union was pursuing a path of relative peace over
badly it treated people within its own borders. That that's
a bold face lie, and we're going to talk about that.
As of nineteen forty, owing to aggressive invasion and conquests
well as as was the case being of the Baltic,
as was the case with the Baltic in Romania, by
coercion and threat. By nineteen forty, the Soviet Union had
expanded its territory by four hundred and twenty six thousand
square kilometers. Okay, if you want for reference, that is
the size of the entire service area of what the
German Reich advantas of nineteen nineteen. This is a huge
amount of territory. Okay. The Soviet Union had spontaneously invaded Finland,
it had invaded Poland, you know, days weeks after that
Wehrmacht did. And I mean, as we talked about last
episode when Joe Kennedy posed to John Simon, like why why,
why why isn't it bothered? You know, mister Church older,
mister Chamberlain, that the Soviet Union assaulted, assaulted Poland too,
Like nobody can answer this question, but you know, so
you have in addition to the kind of a foundation
that we already established with respect to the you know,
the German political mind for better or worse, you know,
viewing not just Germany but the entire European way of
life coming under threat from Marxist Leninism. You had quite
literally what was becoming the worlds for superpower in the
Soviet Union, Okay, and Germany, despite the fact that they
had pretty soundly you know, defeated the British Army at Dunkirk,
Germany still was engaged in a state of war with
the UK, which still had an incredibly powerful navy in
relative terms. They still had uh, you know, a producate
capacity to reconstitute uh a strategic air arm which they
certainly did do to devastating effect. And we're going to
get into that it'll later episode. But by nineteen forty,
you know, not only to have the Soviet Union, which
as we just discussed, you know, had aggressively annexed a
huge amount of territory, Germany was engaged essentially, they had
a hostile front to defend that stretched from Norway to
the Pyrenees as a potential as a potential battle space. Okay,
they were in grave danger of losing access to Romanian petroleum,
which is really their only source of of petrol, if
you know, the fuel or war machine, as any modern
war machine is fueled by. If if Stalin had given
the order to you know, formally annexed Romania un proceed
to embargo any you know, any access, Germany would have
two essential commodities they're in. Like what I'm getting at
here is that, you know, Germany was in a position
of abject inferiority in the material terms and military terms
and geostrategics. So not only is this idea that the
Soviet Union was benign laughable, but it's it's you know,
Germany was in a very critical position. Now something interesting happened,
not just interesting, but critical, in my opinion. In November
twelfth and thirteen, nineteen forty, Stalin transmitted a series of
demands to Molotov. As I think people probably know, Malotov
was not just a man who invented a particular kind
of cocktail that people light on fire and throw it,
you know, the British police and Northern Ireland and things.
But it yeah, he was the Soviet He was the
Soviet Foreign Minister, and he was within within the paradigm
of the Soviet power. You know, until from from ninety
seventeen until you know, the fallow that Berlin Wall, there
was very very little leeway that that people had in
the foreign in the foreign policy establishment, you know, to
to to negotiate on their own terms or according to
their own instincts, you know, and particularly Stalin, he very
rigidly controlled what was said, what was guaranteed, what official
terms were from Moscow. So what I'm getting is that
whatever Molotov conveyed to Berlin, you know, whether he was
talking to ribon Trough, whether he was talking to you know,
the right chancery was, whoever he was talking to, it
was as good as coming from Stalin. Okay, that's that's
not a myth. That's it's not me simplifying circumstances to
show up a point or something. And it's inarguable, and
pretty much everybody agrees on that, revisionists or not, the
demands of Stalin transmitt We're basically this the non aggression
pack that Hitler had signed, that Reveren Traub and Molotov
had signed it at Hitler's behest, you know, the tenure
non aggression pag between the Soviet Union and Berlin. UH
Stalin periodically was issuing demands as to whatever require for
it to be honored. Now, of course, he was very
sly about the way he phrased this. He wasn't saying, okay,
you'll either a bide these demands I have or willing
to attack you. But the inference was obvious, and it
was the only inference that could be drawn. And this
will become clearer as I we get more into this conversation.
But on November twelve and thirteen, what the demands were
was uh Molotov said that in order for the Soviet
Union to be able to peaceably, you know, coexist, you know,
with Germany as well as as well as provide for
its own security and as well as the facilitated its
ability to deploy in depth, you know, it would need
to increase its sphere of influence to include Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Greece,
Yugoslavia and all of now all of Finland, not just
archangel but all of Finland and Hitler at Uh albeit
frosty but reasonably friendly relations with Gustav Mannerheim, the Marshal
of Finland, and obviously this was Stalin basically demanding that
you know, Germany had abandoned any any uh, any pretension
of a Finland of some sort of you know, line
in the sand against Soviet expansion. Right, this is incredibly
brazen and you've got to ask yourself, Okay, if supposedly
Stalin was this man kind of of the Third Reich,
or or you know, if the Soviet Union was it
was somehow weak in material terms, you know, in forces
and being a relative to the third right, you know,
how can he be issuing these demands? That doesn't make
any sense? And all. So if if Failer was this
kind of reckless maniac who just gave attack orders, you know,
without thinking, I mean, why wouldn't just be inviting an
immediate assault like no, none, This makes sense obviously, unless
one is willing to kind of reject, reject the kind
of prevailing there is now obviously this Molotov uh, these
Molotov demands, which you know, the fact that we're Stalin
demands obviously, I mean, there's really only two options here.
I mean Germany could have opted to fight, and in
the case of Germany that would have meant and did
mean a preemptive assault, or simply accept UH, Soviet hegemony
and in UH in A in the twentieth century, UH
with UH the advent of strategic arm not just not
just nuclear weapons, which of course didn't exist yet. But
there was not a full understanding in any four of
you of how strategic arms could be applied. But and
then what the what the outcome would be in military terms,
But it was understood that the battlefield techniques were going
to be able to create absolutely devastating catastrophes for the
state under assault if they did not have any countermeasures. Okay,
I mean, so what I'm getting at is that A
if Germany had remained dormant and just kind of demurred
to Soviet demands, the Soviets not, wouldn't I think the
Soviet I got out in my mind, the Soviets plan
to assault Germany. And we're gonna get into that in
a minute. But even if the Soviets had did not,
just by virtue of the fact that they would have
been so exponentially more powerful, then UH, their next strongest
strategic rival in Germany like it wouldn't have It wouldn't
have mattered. They would have, you know, in in power
political terms, Moscow would have dictated what was going to
transpire and in Europe and in Europe's orbit. Now I
rely a lot on direct testimonies. I think people have
noticed now I've been told that that's a conceptual bias
of mine because I was a lawyer. I don't think
that's the case. I think that direct testimony is one
of the only ways we can get inside the minds
of people who uh lived in these apocable moments, and
it's in in in in and understand what their perceptions were. Okay,
obviously there's an issue of how credible the declarant is.
But if you're discriminating, and I think over time, when
you see patterns and it kind of quorum emerges of
what people and in governmental roles thought, we can get
to the truth of what perception was. And uh. Jachim
Hoffmann he corralled. He's a German historian, very heterotics historian.
I highly recommend a book he wrote called Stalin's World Extermination.
But in as far as out that book are a
lot there's a lot of testimony from people in the
Soviet government and the Soviet military apparatus and people from
old walks, ok. Everybody from apparatchicks who are primarily political
commissars that you know, officers and n c os and
the Red Army to people who were defectors to the
Dermot and it's there's a basic agreement here. There's a
woman named I'm probably butchering this pronunciation. I know, I
always add that caveat, and I'm sorry if that's the
case once again, But a woman named Manda Vassilevska. She
was the chairwoman of what was called Euphemistic Lee, the
Union of Polish Patriots. Now, this was the expat Communist
League in the USSR okay, after the during the Polish
military junta and after Okay, and like a lot of
these people went on to forum kind of the core
of the you know, warsaw pat client state after the war. Now,
what she attested to do in nineteen sixty four, I
believe the first historian she disclosed this too is Robert Conquest.
But it's become You'll find this in a lot of
different treatments, Okay, not just Reviusioness treatments. But her statement
was this about the orientation on the eve of Barbarossa
within Moscow. She said, I remember that we communists regardless.
Speaker 1: Go ahead no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: Because I remember that we communists, regardless of the regardless
of the official position of the Soviet government, we were
all of the opinion that the apparent friendly attitude towards
Germany was only a tactic of the Soviet government, that
in reality the situation was entirely different. After all, I
wanted to not forget that it was already clear to
us even at that time that a German Soviet war
was approaching. Regardless of the official announcement. We believed the
war was drawing near, and we waited for it every day.
Stalin told me at that time there would be war
with the Germans sooner or later. This means that indeed,
at that time I already had the assurance of in
confirmation from the highest authority that we were right to
expect war. There's uh, like I said, there's there's I'm
not gonna endlessly relay all these testimonials, but you know,
like I said, there is there's probably half a dozen declarations,
you know, from everybody, from men in in Molotov's orbit
to uh. You know, like I said, some of the
defectors from a who went on a servant was called
the Vlassov Army. You know, these were not This was
a very diverse couterie of people, okay, And it's obviously
not of itself. I mean, it's not absolutely persuasive. But
what I think is uh, what I think is uh
indisputable in terms of its persuasive weight, is what deployments
were as in June twenty second, ninety forty one. All right,
the date of Barbarosa, Okay, but the Red Army had
deployed on June twenty second, nineteen forty one, in authensive
depoint on the western frontier and deployed in depth, you know,
behind that front. It was twenty four thousand tanks, over
one thousand, eight hundred of which were T thirty fours,
which I believe everybody stipulates was the best all around
tank platform in the war. Fifteen hundred those T thirty
fours are manufactured in the first six months of nineteen
forty one. Okay. That's an incredible production schedule, frankly for
the time. Okay, they had twenty three thousand, two hundred
and forty five military aircraft amassed since nineteen thirty eight,
and that's incredible too close to four thousand of which
we have latest design and inarguably not obsolescent. Okay, they
have one hundred and forty eight thousand artillery pieces. They
had close to three hundred submarines, you know, which is uh.
I realized that. I realized the distinction between offensive and
d defensive wars is dubious. And we'll get into that
a little bit too, But I don't think anybody can
claim that submarines are are a defensive measure.
Speaker 1: I mean I.
Speaker 2: And towards that end, the the T thirty even the
Soviet models that were viewed as inferior. And again I'm
not a military expert at all, and it's not like
fort but platforms was like the T thirty five and
the T twenty six, they were specifically designed as countermeasures
the earlier German pans Or models, and they were categorically
categorically superior to the pans Are three, if not superior
to the pans Are four. And they all had heavy
armament that was tailored to kill rmock tanks, you know,
I mean this, this is why they were developed. The
total arm strength in the weeks immediately prior May ninety
forty one. The so we said three hundred and three divisions.
Two hundred and fifty eight of those infantry, armored artillery,
in other words, ground common element were raided offensively deployed
on the frontier against the German Reich. They were supported
by one hundred and sixty five flight regiments mobilized and
direct support of the ground element. The General Staff reported
after the onset of hostilities the General Stanf of the
Red Army. It is this is August ninety forty one,
even with even with the losses incurred, which words were
catastrophic in the opening weeks of Barbaros. To keep that
in mind, so he forces and beings were between three
hundred and thirty and three hundred and fifty divisions. They
were facing off again, it's just over eighteen hundred non
obseoblescent German tanks and self repelled the salt guns and
the loof through essentially everything it had at the Soviet Union.
And we'll get into this later too, I mean the
German again. I don't want to get too much into
the nitty gritty of military hardware in minutia, but it's
relevant as the perception and forces and being and what
we can extrapolate from those forces and being to intent.
The Right deployed twenty five hundred common already German aircraft,
but overwhelmingly I mean, and then Luflafo was not did
not have a strategic capability. It really did not. That's
a other reasons by the Battle of Britain, even though
it's talked about in these catastrotic terms, it was nothing
compared to the the Area bombing raids. You know that
that killed tens of thousands in one day, you know,
of the Allies and the uh It was a completely
different orientation towards towards air war, and it was almost
exclusively dedicated to ground attack and and tactical exigencies. But
what I think is more significant is a Red Army doctrine.
I think it was in some ways, and I'm not
trying to be Carney, I think it was in some
ways as the original revolution in military affairs, the Red Army,
beginning with Lenin. You know, Lenin fancied himself a political soldier,
and he really was. He wasn't just you know, some
He wasn't just some partisan type who kind of declared
himself a general or something. He had great attitude for
certain kind of warfare and what became Red Army doctrine.
You know, from nineteen seventeen eighteen, the revolutionary days, you know,
until the last days of the Civil Union came from Lenin,
and uh Lenin declared that, you know, the Red Army
was h it's the function of the Red Army was
was was it was it was literally the armed element
of the party, you know, and it's its purpose was
the was to bring about socialist uh aims by by
armed force. That's the only reason they existed, you know,
because within the Marxist paradigm, you know, warfare is just
you know, what means by which capitalists other profit or
sustain their dominance or or or or sacrifice you know,
surplus labor and and lump and proletariat elements that you
know can't can't be disposed of in more profitable ways.
So congruous with that particular claim about history. Uh. Anyway,
you know, the the the only correct use of of
a standing army would be to implement revolutionary aims and
to aggressively export those aims towards that end. What became
official Soviet military doctrine theory rather would translated doctrine, was
the assumption that modern war is just no longer declared,
you know not. Not only is this a capitalist contrivance, and
why why why should we participate in these fictions you know,
relating to you know, treaties and the appearance of lawfulness,
but you know, the the nature of of of of
combined arms and technology driven warfare, Surprise has a paralyzing effect.
That's what the Red Army Field Duty Regulation is declared.
In the ninety thirty nine viition, it said literally, surprise
is a paralyzing effect on the enemy. Therefore, all military
action must be carried out with the greatest concealment and
greatest rapidity. And if you want to know, if you want,
if you want an example about this train lated the doctrine.
Both the Soviet attack on Poland and the Soviet assault
on Finland in nineteen thirty nine, there was no declaration
of war. There was no communication of a diplomatic nature.
There wasn't even an announcement by which you know, uh,
Finisher Polish, you know, representatives were banished from Moscow or something.
It was just a massive assault, bolt from the blue. Okay,
so there you go. I mean, this wasn't something that
was put to paper as you know by you know,
fevered revolutionary types, but didn't have any real world precedents.
So what everybody learned real quick is that when the
Red Army assaults, it is a bolt from the blue assault.
You know, they there's not gonna be early warning. You know,
there's not There's not gonna be a formal declaration. There's
not gonna be some community, some cryptic communicat even that
you know says there's no longer good offices between its Diplomatically,
you know, you're gonna know you're at war with them
because they're gonna be assaulting in numbers across your border.
You know the way, Iacham Hoffman translated a lot of
this literature, not just in the field duty regulations, but
from other official dispatches of the Red Army High Command.
And I don't speak or re Russian, but missus Herr
Hoffman certainly did. He's dead now, And what he translated
was these five points. The first was the Red Army
is an offensive army, the most offensively oriented of all armies,
them speaking of themselves, always conduct the Red Army will
always conduct war on enemy territory with fewest possible friendly
casualties and it will always aim to annihilate the enemy
completely politically and militarily. The proletariat in the hostile country
is always a potential ally of Soviet power, and they
will support the struggle of the Red Army through volts
in the rear of the enemy army. And this will
be called this must be cultivated war preparations or preparations
for attack. Defensive measurests serve solely to protect preparations for
attack and the execution of an offensive attack and the
facing direction. And finally, the Red Army must at all
costs prelude preclude any possibility of the penetration Apostle forces
into the territory of the USSR. Now again, this isn't
just minutia of interest to you know, military sociologists or
people who who have to study the Soviet Union of history.
If this is your declared military doctrine taken together with
all these other variables, I mean, what how probable is it?
How credible is it this claim that you know, the
Soviet Union was this kinna fearful garrison state that will
just we was waiting for the Germans to attack, but
hoping they would not. I mean, that would never happen.
I know this is the cliche, and I it's not
the cliche because it bears out somewhat in truth. Operationally,
the reputation of the Prussians and later the Germans was
that they jumped the gun and assault too soon. The repute,
the cliche. A reputation of the other Russians and later
the Soviets was that they wait too long. And I'd
argue this bore out in the Ukraine situation, but that's
not what we're talking about. The claim, basically of court
history is that you know, Stalin was some sort of
you know, he may have been a bad man, and
he may have been an intriguer in a machiavellian brute,
but he somehow had no designs on aggressive conquest of
Europe despite these you know that, despite this, these massive
slaughs of territory, that the Soviet Union is similar with hostility,
you know, the claim is that he was somehow fearful
of Adolf Hitler, both as as historical personage ads and
as well as you know, fearful of Germany, despite the
fact that it was it was it was grossly disadvantaged
in terms of you know, forces and being and material
assets and resources. But and also most kind of incredibly
is the claim that well, you know, yeah, maybe the
Soviets were anticipating war, but they were just waiting to
be attacked. I mean that that's totally at odds with
with not just their stated doctrine, but with the entire organization,
organizational structure, and ideological culture the Soviet Union at the time.
It's say nothing of their deployment. And again I don't sorry,
I don't want to get too deeply into military minutia,
not because it's not interesting, but it's first of all,
I'm not the guy to do that. It's not my wheelhouse.
But also it's uh, it's uh, it does have to
be said. Though, even accounting for that, you know what
the reasons the Soviets were so devastated in the early
weeks of of Barbarossa. I mean, yeah, they had problems
with command and control, you know, they they had uh,
they had uh, they had some officers, they had some
general officers who owed their role to the political reliability
rather than the aptitude. I mean, yes, the Behrmacht and
the BAF and SS were incredibly tough, incredibly game, and
incredibly brutal but the the Right Army wasn't was an
authensive deployment. They they weren't arrayed to absorb a heavy
you know, killer combined arms blow across a massive front
from the Behrmax. They just were not, you know, and
that's one of the reasons has happened. I mean, if
the Soviets were, you know, hunkered down and dug in
and and and and fearfully awaiting a Vermont assault, I mean,
we know how the Russians deploy when that's what they're anticipating.
And they deployed like they did at Curse, and uh,
It's it's textbook deep battle and it's devastating to the
attack er, you know. I mean that's you don't need
to be a military man or or some kind of
armchair general to perceive this, uh.
Speaker 1: You know, and and and you could have saw some
of that from history. I mean, just look at the
Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Franco's forces were that were killing Commis, the Communists were
killing everyone. They're they're flaying priests and nuns. I mean
they are basically, they're not while they're trying to take over,
they're also trying to punish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely awful stuff was uh was carried out. Yeah
that's not not to go too often a tangent, but
that's one of the things that really stiffened world opinion,
particularly in Europe against them, you know, the communists or
you mystial laws in Spain. It's because the it sounds
like it sounds like propaganda stuff, but the nuns really
were being reaped, and you know, the UH. You had
these cheka types going into the cemeteries where clergy people
were interred and defacing the remains, I mean, like discuffling
stuff that would only occur to somebody if they were
animated by a real hatred of of UH, of the
national culture. And yeah, so there's not I mean, that's
that's a hugely important point. I mean, not only as
we were talking about earlier, not only was with the Germans,
not not only was communism and revolutionary communism not this
remote thing that they only knew of kind of as
this abstraction that might threaten them. You know, they these
these guys in the party is like like like Rosenberg
and like shooting a Richter who fell at at Munich
in twenty three, Like these guys basically were refugees from
the Baltic because they were being ethnically cleansed. You know. Uh.
These guys who constituted the kind of backbone of the
the most dedicated Free Corps elements that you know, ended
up taking up the National Socialist banner and the ESA.
They they they fought, They fought the KPD in the street,
and they fought against the UH, the UH, the Munich
Soviet and yeah, the the UH, the war in Spain.
I mean, it wasn't some mystery as to how how
the Red Army fights, you know. I mean they these uh,
these Spanish republicans, they were you know, they they were communists.
They weren't republicans they uh, no matter what uh. You know,
some of the literature was that UH was promoted in
English speaking newspapers and things, or English language newspapers. But
the they were they were trained and outfitted by UH,
by Czechis and by Red Army officers who cut their teeth,
you know, UH fighting Zarists and things. You know. It's
there wasn't as big mystery as the as to how
the Red Army fights and what their what their doctrine was,
and the fact that their doctrine to your point, you know,
ideological commitment was wasn't separable from their tantaical orientation. But
it uh, i'll i'll uh, I'll wrap up soon and realize, uh,
we're coming up on an hour. But the something that
uh something uh two that I think Mihersheiner got into
this in one of his more recent books. I like
mirhershem right, I don't know the man, but I mean
I like his work product, and I but I think
he's I think some of his stuff is kind of
middle brow, deliberate leagues. He's trying to appeal to a
more mass audience than some political scientists are. But he
there's some pretty heavy stuff even that said in some
of his even in some of his more polemical works.
And one of his books is called Why Leaders Lie.
And you made the point that, you know, states that
are regardless, they're political, regardless, they're formal political apparatus, whatever
it's declared structure is whether it holds itself out as
a democracy. You know, whether you're talking about, you know,
a fascist state of old, whether you're talking about you know,
when he's retrobde Arab monarchies, whatever, gonna state, you're talking
about states that are approaching states that are miired in
in in existential emergencies, you know, conditions approaching out and
out war, or states that are actually mired in conditions
of total war. One thing leaders really don't do is
just tell lies publicly or to their where you can
particularly upon the truth of the matter asserted, is when
they're talking to people who conta control group rather than
military or the political apparatus. Because they tell lies in
that circumstance, not only could it lead to great consequences
of in terms of existential nancial security outcomes, but it
also means that, you know, it's it's self defeating, you know,
because a man who's not a man who's not going
to tell the truth in the life and death conditions
is not a man who's fit for leadership. So you
can rely pretty much on what Hitler and Stalin said
on the Eva Barbarosa, and certainly when it was under
way and on May fifth, nineteen forty one. I don't
know exactly how this was organized, and I'm sure some
of Russian fellas or ladies who are listening if they
want to weigh in in the comments later. I believe
there was a unitary military academy in the early Soviet
days that everybody went to. Okay, whether they were navy
or whether they were army, I don't know that for certain.
So whatever the whatever the whatever, the Red Army Military
Academy was where army officers went. Stalin appeared to much
fanfare at the graduation ceremony on May fifth, ninety forty one.
And obviously that's only a few days after you know,
May Day. It was a big, you know, gala day
for communists the UH. So Stalin addresses a speech to
this UH, to this graduating class. Now mind you, it
was this is all like young officers about to get
the commission and and UH and a bunch of party
hanchos and generals. So it's not it's not properly secret,
but it's not Stalin's not, you know, addressing you know,
the Soviet people when he's certainly not going on the radio.
He stated that these men were a strike history, these
young officer UH graduates, because the because the right Army
doction was now to quote abandoned defensive tactics and adopt
the military policy of attack operations. And he came back
to this point again and again throughout the speech that
you know, you are the spear point, as it were,
of the party, and you know we're you know, we
we were we are exclusively of revolutionary apparatus. You know,
we are not the defensive army. You know, so you
mentor astrite history because you're literally gonna, you know, bring
uh you're you're gonna bring socialism to the planet essentially,
you know. And uh, this is not hyperbole. It is
not you know, uh, some kind of motto that appears
under the heraldic hammer and sickle in the Polar Bureau.
I mean this, this is something that was taking very seriously,
you know, and this, uh, this, uh, this was really validated.
And I'll wrap up with this kind of final testimony.
And again forgive me if I'm butchering the name uh Zilinkov,
I believe the pronunciation g and Zillnkov. He was a
Communist Party official of some prominence. He rose pretty rapidly
in the hierarchy. He became a commissar in the Red Army.
He then became commander in chief of the thirty second
Army on the ground, and finally he ended up defecting
to the Wehrmacht and he served with the Vlastov army.
Vlastov was a lieutenant. I believe he was equivalent of
lieutenant in general. But the point is he he was
a big defector, and that's there's some hardline Orthodox people
who consider him a hero and almost a sanely figure. Obviously,
people sympathetic to the Soviet Union of history. I consider
him the terrible individual and the Benedict Arnold. Other Russian
people have talked he see that mixed few things about him.
But Blasov defected. Uh Vlasov, Uh he led a kind
of doomed forest of Russians. So to their credit, these
guys are very game, and they they fought at the end,
and they got slaughtered to a man, and uh Blassa
himself was executed. But Zilenkov, who served under the the
committee deliberate the peoples of Russia, I believe is what
it translated to the the political apparatus attached to the
Vlasov army. He recalled that if the honestet of Barbarossa,
you know, June twenty second, he was in Moscow and
when news first arrived that war was underway, he said,
the rumor was, oh, of course, you know, finally, you know,
we've gotten the attack order. You know, how far are
people from Warsaw? You know, how far are they from Bucharest?
You know, he's without exaggeration, the impression of everybody was
that we have assaulted. You know, we finally you know,
struck the blow against the fascists. You know, we're finally
moving on Europe and uh, you know, God be with
our people, and you know, proverbially, and you know, what's
the news from the front, you know, or or are
we winning? And what kind of you know, how are
we advancing? I mean, I know you could say that
Zill and Golf, I mean, I mean the rebuttal to
all this is like all those guys were liars. But
it's like, but I look, why why why would they
say these things? You know, particularly a guy who knows
he's going to the gallows, or I mean particularly a
guy who had no particular truckle either you know, the
National Socialists or the Soviet Union that he defected from.
Like what I mean, maybe maybe I'm naive. I just
you know, maybe I'm just worldly in all the worst ways.
I Most of the people I know don't just like
lie about stuff of that kind. Of importance. Okay, I
mean why why would they? You know what I mean?
So it's I I consider it basically credible, if particularly
because again I this kind of testimony, it comes up
again and again and again, and we're not talking about
from capitless you know, privates in the Red Army or
or some you know, random villagers in Ukraine that you
know that Behrmont stopped and interviewed on the spot. And
these are general officers and the the you know, people
who were a political commissars of who were you know
it had an audience with Stalin. I mean, I can't
see that. I can't see that all these people are lying,
and that some of Stalin was just kind of trying
to you know, what they said somehow matches up with
what Lennon declared was you know, rhet army military doctrine,
and you know, and then but he was the only
kidding or then Stalin, you know what he said about
the Red Army being an exclusively offensive apparatus of revolution.
But oh he was just trying to rile up as
these young officers, Like that's not how reality works, you know,
I mean what it I hope that this wasn't too
dry for people. This foundation is fundamentally okay, great, No,
think I will get into more kinda we'll get into
more kind of the the the nuts and bolts of
the next Elso I don't want to deal with Stulfie
and like how the Third Reich lost in the East.
I'm in them, I'm in the minority. I agree with
the late mister Stolfie. I I believe that World War
Two was decided at the Gates of Moscow in December
forty one. And we'll get into what I mean by
that next time we record. And Ukraine features essentially in this,
in this entire story, so I think it's timely also.
But yeah, I I hope you're happy with what I
laid down, and I hope the listener has got something
positive out of this. I think this was really important.
I don't I know, we can't leave no stone unturned
in terms of establishing foundation, but it's essential in order
to present history correctly, to establish the context. So that
was my reasoning.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, so great, plugs.
Speaker 2: Thank you. You can find me on substack. Uh real
R E A. L. Thomas T H O M A
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I behoove you to do so on telegram and DM me.
If for some reason you're not coming with it or
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I love, you know, meeting people and conversing with people
on topics of mutual interest. And thank you again for
all the incredible support and compliments. Everybody's been very kind
and it's really incredible, and thank you Pete very much
for this ongoing series.
Speaker 1: No problem at all till the next time. Thanks. I
want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Show. We
continue the series. Thomas, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Very well? Thank you, Pete. I want to continue today.
I mean it's a huge topic, and I mean I
realized that in this format, you know, we don't want
to we don't want to just go through some kind
of encyclopedic reading of facts, and that wouldn't really a
cops what we're trying to trying to get done anyway.
You know, we're, among other things, in addition to presenting
you know, accurate history of the conflict and of the
Third Reich generally, you know, we we want this to
be a basically revisionist exercise. And I mean a lot
of what with that entails. It's, you know, kind of
addressing the most common myths promulgated by court historians that
sort of corrupt the conceptual picture people have of things.
And so today I think the way to proceed is
to deal with Adolf Hitler and his role as warlord
quite literally, you know, and his strengths and weaknesses they're
in in that command role, some of the challenges he faced,
you know, both within the control group of the Third Reich,
you know, particularly as conflicts with you know, military leadership
in the general staff, you know, as well as the
political situation, which was you know, in some ways more
delicate than than people think, you know. And also you know,
deal with the deal with the you know, the misconception
people have about about the war against the Soviet Union,
both that it was this you know, just kind of
example of naked aggression, you know. I mean, we dealt
with that last episode, you know, in correcting the record
on that in the large part. But also there's this
idea is promulgated, including by some people who should know better,
you know, people who have a background as general military officers,
you know, this idea that the way the war was
perpetuated or even you know, deigning to launch the operation itself,
was with somehow this keyxotic, impossible mission that was just
doomed to failure, that it could not. That is not
the case at all, and Germany practically won the Second
World War in autumn of nineteen forty one, and we're
going to get into that, and I want to get
into some context first as to, you know, how operational
doctrine developed in a in terms of the general the
German general staffs outlook as well as that of Hitler himself,
and at times these viewpoints between the fear and the
general state converged. At times they were very much at odds.
But just to frame a kind of the core issues,
and I'm going to dive deeper into these as we
go along, but just in order to frame what we're
going to talk about this episode. June of July ninety
forty one. Okay, the first weeks of Barbarossa, the Rmacht had,
for all practical purposes, defeated the Soviet Union's field armies. Okay,
the utterly devastated the Soviet Union's and military capability, to
the point that it was a fourgared conclusion in the
minds of essentially everybody on both sides that the Soviet
Union was defeated. Okay, specifically or of specific significance to
the revision is as well as anybody who just wants
an accurate picture of about combat resolved in the East.
The period of August to October nineteen forty one was
absolutely critical and the Third Reich could have not just
vankers the Soviet Army, but they could have defeated the
Soviet Union. Okay, why this didn't happen owes to a
titanic error or actually a couple, but one in particular
we'll get into, you know, a decision, a decision at
the level of Supreme operational Command that that sabotaged that possibility,
you know it. The short answer is that Army Group Center,
which was the share punk of the entire assault in
the Soviet Union, on July twenty ninth, Adolf Hitler, for
all pradical purposes, halted Army Group Centers advance, diverted it
in an eccentric attack posture into Ukraine in order to
annihilate reserve forces there that he feared could be utilized
to outflank the Wehrmacht. And why And this delayed the
assault on Moscow for critical days and UH, which allowed
uh the Red Army to reconstitute, you know, allowed permitted
the weather to become totally unfavorable to mechanized forces and
H and essentially halted the assault at the gates of Moscow. Okay,
and this is something that's that's deliberately overlooked, and even
people who don't have a particularly charitable view of the Hrmacht. Uh. Again,
within six months, the Vermoncht was literally at the gates
of Moscow. So that alone should kind of raise suspicions
that you know, court history and its description of this,
of this of this massive operation as some again some
crazy keyxotic effort that was doomed to failure. I mean
that that should smash that misconception to pieces. And finally
we got to get into UH the what I think
is the myth of Blitzkrieg. Okay, Blitzkreek does describe something,
but it's not. There's not some school of warfare called Blitzkrieg. Okay. Basically,
what it describes is it describes a break with precedents
owing to UH, owing to a a dramatic innovations and
mobility and specifically, you know the ability of UH, the
ability of assaulting armies to gain advantage in ways that
theretofore was not possible. Okay, now, why what what was
blitzkreg diverting from in terms of its precedent. Interestingly, and
this shouldn't be a surprise anybody, the uh, really the uh.
The primary German contribution in political terms to what you
know and kind of you know, linear history, mainstream history
is called the Enlightenment. The primary contribution in in in
pure political terms as a body of theory was closet
withs Okay and cloudyist is the theory of war was
a theorist of warfare. Now, Cloudswitz declared, you know a
lot of things both about the nature of the politics
of warfare, and he considered politics and military activity to
be basically synonymous. And that is significant and it's all,
you know, not just generally, but it's significant to how
how Hitler approached military problems. It didn't owe to just
eccentricities of of within the mind of Hitler himself and
and and features of his own personality. But Cloudswitz also
in in in strategic terms, and how he described you know,
the battle space, the modern battle space, he declared, and
knowing certain terms that there's no shortcut to victory. Like
what he meant was that, you know, okay, there's gonna
be technological innovation, you know, there's gonna be adaptations to
you know, changing conditions going to these innovations, but that
basically in the clouds in its view, you know, the
only way that you know, what wins wars is you know,
victory and set peace battles you know that emphasize, you know,
where victors emphasize the advance of fire, you know, and
when possible, stubbs to doing firepower for man power to
mitigate you know, attrition, and through this process you know,
just you know, kind of a gradual weakening, weakening of
the defender and subbsequently exploiting you know, holes that are
paunched quite literally in the mainline of resistance, you know, uh,
basically killing enemy armies through you know, this process of
you know, brutal application of firepower and terms most likely
to create upper cotunities to breach resistance lines. Okay, patterns
of deployment he believe were constant. Again, you know, the
only thing that changes is the ability to apply to
apply fire in terms of you know, the it's destructive
force as well as it's you know, as well as
its targeted accuracy. But you know, the CloudSwitch in Mantra
is that firepower saves lies the strength of an army,
you know, is is estimated and multiplying the mass by velocity,
which was also a napoleon axiom, a Napoleonic axiom. Rather,
now this basically characterized combat until nineteen eighteen. What happened
was the advance of armor, which you know, arrived in
the battlefield in the Great War, but hadn't really been
utilized to deliberate effect other than as a kind of
you know, way of other than as a kind of
mobile firepower. What changed in the inner warriors was that
people like von sieg too uh was somewhat people like
Rommel for context, and von Manstain where the theories of
on SIGs and von Sikus. He didn't have a he
didn't he didn't he didn't have opportunity to view the
concrete particulars of armored combat, but he had a sense
of how it would resolve, how armored combat did resolve.
The textbook example is the Battle of France, okay, and
what happened there was that armored columns were able to
strike so deeply through French lines that essentially even where
even where the French were deployed in depth, they were
constantly having to regroup and try to re establish the
main line of resistance. They were unable to do that
because they kept on getting smashed and they literally could
not keep off with the advancing panzers. And when they could,
they find themselves off and in reversed lines. So this
caused like utter chaos. And on top of that, because
the armored columns overshot the infantry, which at that point
was still on foot you know, mechanized imagery, it didn't
exist yet as we know it. As they were trying
to reconcert the mainline resistance, they'd get a hit by
supporting infantry which would smash them again. So basically it's
you know, the Crudi Gras was, you know, vermocked infantry
after this kind of devastating, punishing blow. Okay, now this
is just kind of how battle developed. Okay, if you've
got a dedicated armored element in your in your ground forces,
it's not like somebody sat down, you know, whether it's
not like Irwin Rommel or Yodel or von Manstein sat
down and said, okay, the theory of warfare it's called blitzkrieg,
and like this is what it entails, and you know,
this is its doc triant to features. It's nothing like that.
And on top of that, the German Army, despite the
myth that, uh, this is really really idiotic myth that's
propagated by people who are they've got to be conceptually
illiterate or they or they just aren't interested in in
presenting a true and accurate uh picture of uh the
vermachten and and and kind of the German way of wark.
Germans practice what's called mission oriented tactics. Okay, general orders
are issued all the way down to the company level,
and commanders are given broad leeway and how to accomplish
those objectives. Okay, it's it's really kind of the opposite
of how the Russian Army today and previously the Soviet
Army does things. Where uncertainty is attempts at radicating uncertainty
is uh, there's an attempt to eradicate uncertainty by by
by treating doctrine uh, almost like regulation, you know, and
giving commander is very very little leeway. That's changing. But
that's outside the scope we're talking about. But so what
I'm getting is that you have these German armored commanders
and they're smashing through the main line of resistance at
rapid pace, and uh, they're not being told to stop.
They're being told basically to chase the enemy down and
kill them. And that's what they're doing. And before they
know what, they find themselves, you know, traversing three hundred
miles like beyond you know, the initial objective, you know,
and uh and uh and chasing chasing enemy armies, you know,
deep deep into into into territory beyond the initial objective,
you know, and their their flanks are secure because they
quite literally outran every supporting element of the opposing force.
And even if they weren't, you know again like they're
backed up by this infantry that's you know, uh, go
to a ride fresh and smash whatever whatever forces might
be trying to uh trying to perform an encircle the maneuver,
which by that point wouldn't matter anyway a lot of time,
because again, you know, they'd be dealing with reversed lines,
which caused all kinds of havoc in those days, particularly
before you know, what we consider to be you know,
with the kind of commanding control we dake for granted,
was present. So so there's not there's there's not a
school of battle called bliss Kreeg, where what it is
is it's describing what it described in the moment, was,
you know, how combat was resolving in ways that there too,
forre late, had not been experienced because the technology was
not available for any such thing like that to you know,
to UH to be decisive on the battlefield. So as
the UH, as the general stab and it Hitler observed
this UH, that changed the way they approached strategic problems
and they came to realize, as it Hillar himself, that
UH the Soviet Union, unlike the Western Front in World
War One, which created bottlenecks, was this vast step. Okay,
it's basically, you cannot ask for a better UH or
a more ideal UH, a more ideal kind of terrain,
the wage armor warfare, you know, particularly if you have
a particularly if you have certain advantages, which in large
part the Germans did. So that's important because it owes
to the conceptual UH mindset of UH of of Hitler
himself and and the general staff on on the eve
of battle. So this kind of brings us to an
overarching manner in revisionism, this idea that Hitler was this
reckless gambler in military and political terms, and that you know,
he some you know, he he he was emboldened by
the successes that he had early on, and he pursued
this kind of key quote uh crazy. Uh, you know,
at least this this this this irrational kind of war
on the and the on the Soviet Union that was
the void of strategic logic. That's totally an odditate precedent
in my opinion. We talked in the last episode about
Hitler holding back forces from the Rhineland in nineteen thirty
six rather than risking war with the UK and France.
I mean that that was characteristic of Hitler. Hitler didn't
assault Czechoslovakia, despite uh, the kind of myth of Munich
and this a and and the fact that it's kind
of become synonymous with, you know, Nazi aggression. Hitler very
adeptly was able to uh, you know, discredit not just
Benis but the entire enterprise of the Czechoslovaki and regime.
You know. And uh, by the time uh, by the
time uh it would have been opportunity to give an
assault order, you know, Slovakia had already succeeded Sedate in
Germans for all practical purposes, it, you know, had become
an independent to protectorate. You know, the Polish and uh
Ruthenian minorities were demanding their own independence, like Czechoslovakia had
ceased to exist owing to Hitler's you know, intrigues. Okay,
if Hiller was just as a gambler who you know,
favored UH favored UH, favored the gun proverbially over you know,
over over the conspiratorial UH option, I mean that this,
this would not have happened. When Hitler finally did give
it out and out assault order. It was against Poland,
and that was only after the Molotov ribbentroz packed had
been put the paper, Okay, and essentially by that, by
by doing so, and by securing the cooperation of the
Soviet Union, at least for that limited purpose, there was
no chance that Germany would get you know, forced into
a war with the Soviet Union, for they prepared before
they were for haired. But that also meant there was
no chance that you know, the UK and France would
be able to deploy in theater, you know, and and
and and turn the tide of uh turn the tide
of war. So essentially Hitler not only was he not
you know, w reckless gambler on strategic questions. He waited
until quite literally the fix was in before uh pulling
the proverbial trigger. And based on those instants, you know,
militarily cautious but politically bold. I mean, what did by
July ninety By July nineteen forty, what had Hitler done?
He defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, and France.
He'd occupied virtually all those states and defeated the British Army.
I mean, can't like they a gambler doesn't win one
hundred percent of the time. Okay, like you can't. That's ridiculous,
it's uh and uh. It was in July nineteen forty
that's when Hitler decided that the Germans were gonna preemptively
assault the USSR. I know people are gonna take exception
to that in the comments and probably other plays like
what do you mean preemptively? Okay, we dealt with that
last episode. I'm happy to argue the point with anybody
you know who wants to take it up, but I'm
not going to reiterate everything we covered because that's not
fair to the listeners. And I worry I'm going to
SEENI island repeating myself already. I don't need to do
it on purpose. But Hitler's decision of sault He was
a Samurary nineteen forty. That was really the only way
that Germany wins the Second World War. Okay, strategic terms,
it was the correct decision. You know, I'm not saying
moral terms. I'm not going to weigh in on that.
I'm not you know, I'm not saying I'm not coming
out swinging in defense of the Thirdback's political ambitions or
making something to showness to point out Germany. I'm speaking
in realist, strategic terms. It was the right decision. M
had Germany bank which the Soviet Union. Any posture the
British took, even if they still had the Empire intact,
it would be meaningless. Okay. Germany would have control of
the entire continent from the Atlantic to the Earls. They
would have had all the fuel, all the iron, ore,
all the agricultural resources of the entire continent and part
of Central Asia. Okay, I mean, even in the even
the best of all possible worlds, under that, under those circumstances, uh,
even if Britain was was the marshal all of its
resources available from the Empire, which're gonnare presuming to be
totally intact, they would have been at fundamental disadvantage, you know,
against Germany and in North Africa. It you know it
Germany could have bided its time and in uh in
defeating them piecemeal, or they could have staged simply a
mass invasion, you know, with the assistants of Italy, and
they would have had you know, they could have u
they could have knocked you the world and they out
of the Mediterranean with really without with you know, without
having to worry about you know, sacrificing resources that were
needed in any secondary theater. Okay, I mean you would
have been looking at a situation where Germany, again with
the resources of an entire continent, could have mobilized and
devoted all of its capabilities to total war against the UK. Okay,
not just that, but the reason I raised Nulty last
episode is because there is a strongly political dimension to
the Second World War. I mean, not just the obvious,
but this was an apocal uh moment. Okay. Had the
Soviet Union been annihilated, you know, not only would that
you know, destroyed for all practical purposes, the international communist movement.
It would have put the nail in the coffin of
this you know kind of new deal democracy ideology, like
all these things we take for granted as the as
the kind of conceits of the victors and their their
political value use and you know, the way they structure
the world. You know, ethically, these things would not exist,
you know, any more than you know, monarchy would exist,
or any more than you know, any other kind of
any other kind of vanquished to theology would would have,
you know, animating power to you know, to mobilize other
people or or or determine the you know, the the
configuration of states and that war at peace or anything
like that, so that they can't be overemphasized. Like the
Third Reich wins the Second World War, if the Soviet
Unions defeated, you know, the alternative is, you know, the
Third Reich remains a second rate power, you know, on
a European continent that itself is kind of failing, and
you know, it becomes it becomes either a client state
of the Soviet Union because you know, the the USSR
completes it's full mobilization potential which again was rivaled by
no state other than the United States, and it you know,
either just conquers Germany, you know, by force of arms,
or it just you know, absorb kind of become the
pivot of the continent politically, because it's so much more
powerful than it's the next strongest neighbor that you know,
there's just no there's no way that it can be
resisted by by by force and role, oil or arms
or any other ways. So it's it's it's asinine when
people act like, you know, the Germans should have just
kind of sat in their hands and none nothing, I mean,
in any case of lack of understanding of power of politics.
But also specifically the strategic situation.
Speaker 4: Of of of nineteen forty forty one, it uh it uh.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to the kind of common uh,
the kind of common refrain of court historians is that
uh Hitler is sold of the uss are owing to the
you know, some kind of hair brain scheme to defeat Britain,
because you know, that would have precluded not just you know,
the the open you know, the the the burning in Germany,
of having to fight a two front war, but also
it you know, would have sapped. Uh, it would a
sap Churchill's regime of any of any confidence that you know,
they they they could have had the benefit of of
of Soviet arms and and resources under perpetually throwing war
like that's nonsense too. Again, the Hitler did not want
to conquer the United Kingdom. There was nothing to be
gained from that. I don't think it was possible in
operational terms because the forces and being weren't there. And
even even if they were, uh, Germany did not have
a deep water navy that could have accomplished that. So
it's just it's it's a non I wanted to preempt
that before anybody raised that in the comments or something.
It's it's a non issue. But so in July twenty first, Uh,
that's when Hitler gave the order to Van Brausich to
begin drafting preparation of operating in Barbarossa. You know, again,
it was immediately after the defeat of France. It was
after you know what, in hindsight and in the epoch
as it was as it developed, was viewed as Blitzkrieg.
It was this game changing sort of a sort of
a development, you know, Uh, the advent of armor on
the modern battlefield, you know, and that that is what
emboldened not just Hitler but the general staff to pursue
the assault. Then, in addition to the fact that again
as we got into last episode, you know, the it
was critical that you know, the Germans preempt what amounted
to a massive Soviet mobilization that was underway, the purpose
of which the evidence is clear, was you know, to
assault and conquer Europe, and with Germany as the kind
of jewel in that Jewish strategic prize. And I want
to make uh, I want to make point. I wanted
to make the point too. And this is not just
a matter of semantics or something being lost in translation.
Hitler's incessant return to the concept of Lapan's wrong, like
literally living space. You've got to understand that in context,
You've got to understand that that the term is utilized
because of the polemical weight that it carries. Hitler is
not suggesting that Germany's overcrowded or something, or that you know,
it's got this burgening population like China or something. What
he was saying was a more correct term probably would
have been gross wrong. But again, Hilary had a flair
for the dramatic, and he was utilizing polemic. Germany had
to become a superpower. Otherwise it's political ambitions, it's existential destiny,
it's survival in their own view, oh, would have been compromised. Okay,
you win the Second World War by becoming a superpower. Okay,
that is how you win. You know, you don't win
it just by surviving or by hanging on by a thread,
or by becoming some client state of the Soviet Union.
And people don't understand this. Only have to look at
the look at the polical map of the planet today,
you know, and ask themselves, you know, why uh why uh.
Globally we're in this mess that we are, with this uh,
with this uh, with this American regime that you know,
although it's losing this ability, you know, as as the
capacity to project power anywhere in the world and and
slate you know, other societies for annihilation that it, you know,
does not view as sufficiently compliant with its ideological regime,
with its ideological ambitions. Okay, I mean it's we're not
talking about something academic here, We're talking about what happened.
You know, the Europe was annihilated, Japan was annihilated the
United States, and the Slovie Union divided up the world.
You know, the Soviet Union capitulated uh, owing to ah,
you know, the burdens of the strategic challenge in the
later nuclear age, and you were left for the with
a with a unit polar uh uh, political, military, ideological regimes.
So that this is not academic, you know, I don't
see how people can argue otherwise. But this brings up
this kind of the next big point. Germany did not
underestimate the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The kaiser Reich had fought for four years against the
Russian Empire, just as they did on the Western Front.
There was a huge percentage of German general officers who
had fought the Russian army. Okay, they they knew the
Russian character. They knew that the Russian people were very game,
were very tough. They knew that fighting in Russia was
an incredibly arduous and brutal experience. They nobody. This was
not some remote thing, okay, and these were not This
was not some uh, this was not some second rate
army you know that uh, that had no experience and
so of of of the enemy and the terrain that
they were planning to wage war on you know. So
that's Franz Halder. He was the chief of the General
staff of the hero and Holders. An interesting guy for
a lot of reasons. And he I mean, this man
alone couldetic could warrant the dedicated podcast or episode. But
we're not getting get into the kind of various intrigues
of a Holder. But what we what is important about
his character is that he was kind of the consummate reserved,
you know, German officer of the euro Okay, he was
now particularly ideologically inclined. He was kind of calculating. He
was not a man who went much in common with Hitler,
but uh, he wrote in his diary. He kept a
war diary, which is incredible because I mean it's like
a historical treasure trove of testimony about what was in
the minds of the General staff. He kept a diary
dedicated exclusively to preparation for Operation Barbarossa from ninety forty
when Hitler gave the order of preparation until June twenty second,
forty one, when the assault commenced, and he wrote he
wrote about the coming operation with confidence but discernible trepidation. Okay,
there's not a single remark in there that indicates he'd,
you know, he was underestimating the Soviets or the rigors,
or the brutality or the severity the coming war in
the east. Like quite the contrary. But nonetheless he had
absolute confidence that combat would resolve in the so against
the Soviet Union in six to ten weeks. Okay. On
July third, forty one, Heller stated in his diary, and
let me call it up here, quote after two weeks
of war, the Soviets have been beaten. Okay. Now why
did Helder say that? It's uh, there was a I
mean it's hard to drive home the kind of devastation
that the Wehrmacht was able to reek upon the Red Army.
Part of this was because in some of the theaters
they were fighting in, I mean this was a massive front,
you know, divided into three army groups. I remember up
north as an assaulted through the Baltics. Despite this kind
of myth that the Germans were just you know, anngting
like Genghis Khan and brutalizing the indigenous people e where
they went, that's not true at all. The Germans had
a huge number of allies among people conquered by the Soviets.
You know, thousands, amnt thousands of these men joined the
Baffin SS and no where was the symbol the more
kind of sharp than in the Baltics and Army group
North as it kind of smashed through the Baltics and
roots to its objective of Leningrad. You know, the people
in the Baltic States, you know, they rose up against
the Red Army. You know, so the Red Room was
fighting not just the Wehrmacht, it was fighting you know
people It plays like Belarus, people in the Baltic States,
people Ukraine, you know, who had risen off against their
communist overlords. Okay, like a lot of what people claim
about what's happening in the Eastern Front in the early
days is totally at odds that what actually happened the uh,
the German UH in terms of in terms of aircraft, uh,
the exchange attrition rate was something insane, like you know,
one to one and thirty one favoring the Germans. You
know they uh you know, you're talking about armun collums
striking literally hundreds of miles deep behind the mainline of resistance.
You know, within days, you know, this was unprecedented. So
what exactly happened to change this momentum will get to
that in a minute, but I want to I want
to reemphasize too. You know, we talked UH last episode
about the UH on the eve of Barbarosa. The entire
eligid sestiments and figures of Soviet deployment, you know that
were presented to Hitler himself by you know, UH, the
the the High Command of the Army, of the Navy
and of the Loofaffa. Okay, these numbers weren't accurate, you know,
I mean it was they were verified after the subsation
of hostilities. You know, Hitler was hitler holder, the ok
W commanders in the field, you know, subordinate to that
executive structure. They were proceeding based upon accurate numbers. I mean,
so it's you know, you've got you've got a Holder
who's you know, optimistic, but you know, UH exhibiting a
lot of trepidation in his own personal writings. You know,
you've got Hitler and the ok W who are planning
this operation with remarkably accurate numbers, which is a credit
to German military intel. Uh. The the ADVERA was a
disaster for all kinds of reasons. But and uh raw
military intelligence that came from the here and came from
the Kreeks Marine and aloof off. It was actually quite
it's quite incredible that they were able to render such
a such a you know, a factual picture of reality
and in you know, with the technology that they that's
difficult even today with you know, kind of the panoptic
uh vision that we have, but in those days are
truly extraordinary. So I mean the material terms, uh, the
Germans were at all levels were calculating victory odds based
on actual forces and being. And finally, and this is
a huge point, and I the only person I've ever
heard refer to this was uh Leon Degrell in any detail.
As Okay, if the Germans underestimate, you know, underestimated the
Soviet Union, why did it take one hundred and ninety
five of weeks for the Soviet Union to defeat Germany
with the with then you know, with like lavish assistants
from the United States, with terror bombing day at night
by the United States and the Royal Air Force, with
a massive invasion of Western Europe by the United States
and the UK. Like that doesn't sound like an underestimation
at all. Okay, if the Soviet Union was a juggernaut,
I mean, shouldn't have it turned the tide of marching
on Berlin within within within weeks or months? I mean
I think about that. It's it's not it's not a
political point or a Middland point. It uh it you know,
it should have. Uh if there was if there was
parody between the Hmacht and between the Red Army and
the defeat uh levied against the right, was this result
of gross underestimation or as hubris? I mean we just
established that, you know, modern warfare with the with armor
as the as the kind of as the primary variable
in ground combat. I mean the Soviet Union should they
should have they should have turned the tide and you know,
smashed smashed the German army within weeks. You know, it's
basically the Germans had done to them like once they reconstituted. Obviously,
but so why did this happen. We're gonna return to
We're gonna return to Klaus. It was for a moment.
Hitler basically was a siege commander. Okay, you know Bolden
as Hitler was by Blitzkrieg as much as you know
this kind of figured into his calculus for what the
correct strategic decision was. Hitler was a man who was
born in the nineteenth century. You know. Hitler was a
guy who fought on the Western Front. You know when
warfare essentially, I mean the body count was was was horrendous,
owing to the machine gun and owing to some other innovations.
But you know, World War One combat was basically on
Napoleonic combat, you know, set piece battles that resolved essentially
according to like Klaudswitz's dictum almost you know, to a t.
You know, you can't escape these formative experiences and how
they informed their conceptual horizon. That's the way Hitler thought
of things, Okay, at where the rubber meets the road
in terms of operational execution. Hitler was also a political leader, okay.
And I mean there's this, you know, there's this kind
of court history claim like, well, Hitler was constantly interfering
with his generals. His generals, you know, the generals know better.
You've got a serious problem if you're a civilian chief
executive and you're simply handing policy to your generals. I
mean that's called the military junta. Okay. I mean even
kind of one of the tragedies of of any man,
of any civilian executive at war, whether you're talking about
mister Putin and the president, whether you're talking about Adolf Hitler,
you know in nineteen forty one, whether you're talking about
John F. Kennedy trying to stare down on Mitchell Leay
and the Joint Chief during the human Missile crisis. There's
always a critical tension between the armed forces and civilian leadership.
And this, uh this, uh this has this corrodes operational
effectiveness because there are times when a civilian leader needs
to put the brakes on military decisionism simply to salvage
his own political mandate and prevent himself from being bulldozed,
even if then harms the rapid execution of orders in
the field. And that's a military sociology question, but it's
it bears out in all times and all epics. And uh,
Hitler was very much a civilian. Okay, his role is
worldword is kind of his critical contribution to history. But
you know, Hitler was not some career military officer, a
Prussian general, you know, he was uh, he served with
this with distinction as an n c O. But that
was the extent of his of his uh, of his
military life, you know, and that uh the uh that
that's fundamentally important and understanding why he made the decisions
he did at critical junctures. And finally, you know, in
one of the reasons. Now I'm gonna bring this back,
but this is an important point. Okay, we were talking
about Blitzkrieg. It more reflects a way that combat develops
through the application of technology and the technology of violence.
That's really characteristic of the twentieth century. And there's a
parallel with strategic nuclear war planning, where things got to
the point that command and control structure is to sustain
the capacity to wage nuclear war were so complicated and
so insinuated into oblique features of the national state, civilian
and military, that that actually makes you more vulnerable than
in more in more primitive phases of development. Historically, one
of the reasons Blitzkrieg, or perceived as Bliszberg, reaks such
habit is that if you do penetrate deep behind enemy lines,
you can wreak utter devastation on his logistics, on his
command and control. You're literally traveling faster than information. Okay,
then is now welltho. Now like I mean, you know,
in in true strategic planning during the Cold War that
the the the window of decision was reduced to minutes,
to reduce two minutes. But you know, think about a
man Adolf Hitler was born in eighteen eighty nine, you know,
I mean the fact that he he didn't he hadn't
fully adapted to the new way of warfare. I think
that I think that describes every chief of state of
a combatant nation in the war. You know, I mean,
I don't I don't think. I don't, I don't. I
think that that neither puts you know, any kind of
shine on Hitler in his command attitude, nor nor is
it some kind of growth sort of strike against him
it uh. But what is significant is that any man
who's a student of Clause which and basically every German
executive of the modern era, including Hitler's hero Frederick the Second,
you know, who's kind of the consummate, dynamic Prussian officer.
You know, you love that type the uh, the uh
that the ethos was, you know, to rapidly capture objectives,
but to reduce, to limit those objectives to what uh,
to what can be uh effectively managed and defended. And
what's telling is that Hitler paced Operation Barbarossa very deliberately
towards the objective of capturing and seizing Leningrad, you know,
and they capture Leningrad in the opening days and weeks,
in his estimation, would allow a siege line to be
created where in Germany command and control would be in
the most advantageous position available for an eventual assault at Moscow,
like meanwhile, the Soviet Baltic Fleet could be dealt with
and knocked out. What happened as Army Group North proceeded
to Moscow or they proceed to Leningrad is a Hitler
ordered elements in Army groups Army Group Center to be
diverted to back up Army Group North, because his idea
was that like, well, you know, resistance is gonna it's
gonna be too great to be rapidly overcome, and you know,
we've got to create our mainline of resistance, you know,
backed up by forces it off that you know, if
we get bogged out, we can deploy in depth, you know,
and establish you know, a defensive perimeter. You know, this
totally cuts against this kind of picture of Hitler is
like reckless warlord who uh you know who who who who?
Who pulls the trigger before loading the proverbial gun. And
eventually what happened is as Army Group Center did move
on uh Moscow, Hitler ordered to stop in his tracks.
He ordered critical elements that were the most that enjoyed
the most mobility, to be diverted to Ukraine in order
to encircle and annihilate the Red Army strategic reserves that
were based there. That cost days and weeks, that allowed
Moscow to be fortified. It allowed strategic reserve elements from
Siberia to be called upon and transported to reconstitute forces
to defend Moscow, and by that time it was too
late to breach the gates of the city because the weather.
In turn, I mean, this is what happened. Okay, it
was key decisions, that one being the most damning, but
it h that's what cost Germany the war again, which
were causing victory of the Soviet Union, which would cost
him the war altogether. You know, it's uh, it was
not uh, it was not under estimation of the enemy.
It was not you know that the uh, the German
General staff didn't know what he was doing It was
not that Hitler was crazy and the German General staff
basically invented war gaming. Okay, I mean they gained the
scenario of attacking the Soviet Union for an entire year
before you know, the assault was implemented. You know, the
idea that these men weren't drawing upon data or they
were flying by the seat of their pants. I mean,
it's it's incredibly it's it's incredibly stupid. It's almost as
foolish as people claiming I I had UH. I had
a guy who actually uh. He he told me with
the straight face. And this is a guy who liked
to tell himself out as I don't want to name him,
I think people know him. He's like this British guy.
He was like YouTube videos about uh about the Second
World War. He actually dropped the canard about you know, oh,
Germans didn't even you know, manufacture you know, winter uniforms.
It's like, okay, we're gonna assault the Soviet Union in
June and you're trying to provide your you know, you're
you're fitting to provide your army with winter gear. You're
preparing to literally lose that campaign, you know. I mean,
it's Uh, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't.
Speaker 2: You don't set about in campaigns that you know and
say like, well, we're gonna get bogged down at the
gates were objective. Then we're gonna hunker down to the winter,
and then we're gonna wait for spring and we're gonna
try and assault again and see what works at that time.
Like it's not military operations like succeed or or it's
it's disaster. You know, you don't plan for these, like,
you know, losing contingencies, you know, and if you do
is as Lincoln said about McClellan, you know, you're you're,
you're you're literally like you're literally planning to lose. And
I mean I I, uh, I.
Speaker 1: Don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think a general is planning to lose. Is
worth a lot to uh to uh to anybody in
uh in warfare. It uh I kind of wanted to uh.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there's also that the whole myth of
that Operation Barbarossa started in the winter. Yeah, people can
say that all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's totally well people, I think people too, and
I don't want to go too far a field, but
it's it's relevant. There's two things that I know. And
one of these things is something somebody raised in the
comments to me that I wanted to take up. But
first and foremost people, pretty much everybody alive today, like
nobody remembers like twentieth century general wars. Okay, they remember
these like weird managed conflicts that don't have real stakes,
and that I mean anymore these days. And the Pentagon
goes to war, it's like it's a make work enterprise.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, they're not war for power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they don't realize they don't realize too that.
You know, if you're an actual like full blow military operation,
it it it's it resolves rapidly. You know, you don't
go to war to say like, yeah, we're gonna you know,
we're gonna muck around in South Vietnam for a decade,
or you know, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna occupy
you Aghanistan for no particular reason because you know, girls
can't go to school there and people pro opio and
we're gonna stay there for twenty years, and you know,
we're getting this engine money and then you know we're
gonna run around and yeah, these guys are the Taliban.
We're gonna we're gonna tell them to stop doing what
they're doing. But it's not a military operation. And some
weird make work like operation short of war that you know,
is on that spectrum but doesn't really have any strategic objective.
I mean, if you're you know, there's a the fact
that uh, the fact that uh. But again, I mean
that's why it shows you how I mean I made
the point before that, Uh, you know, the Second World
War was actually a few different conflicts, and you know,
the Soviet Union, uh, the Soviet Union fighting the Vermount
to a stalemate that could have actually resolved a few
different ways, you know, had had had had uh kind
of the thick's had already been in between mister Roosevelt
and Stalin and say, like, you know that you had
an American regime that, even if inclined to go to
war with the Third Reich, was not really willing to
you know, to uh to generate this kind of operational
independence with the Soviets. You gotta very very easily gonna
come to the Soviets, you know, saying like, well, accept
the peace as long as you would draw to White
Russia or something, you know, or like you know, with
draw like within thirty corroborators of Ukrainian border or the
Ukrainian Russian border, and like, you know, we'll we'll set
that as you know, kind of like the the uh,
the treaty line. But it's by you know, this was
by no means like set in stone. And you know,
like I said, the fact that uh, the fact that, uh,
you know, if if Germany just were if if the
Germans were these fools and these guys who weren't drawn
upon any real data and hadn't gained you know, possible
scenarios adequately, you know, it's like, okay, then why did
it take one hundred and ninety five weeks for Moscow
to reach Berlin? You know, like they should have they
should have been Okay, the German assault failed. Here's their
army counter attack three months later. You know, there's you've
got a you've got the right army like smashing across
like the Older river, you know. I mean that's that's
so that's important too. I mean it was political conditions
that uh and and you know, uh America literally you know,
providing life support, you know, and and and uh in
the in the form of you know, really whatever whatever
was necessary was ever, whatever was necessary to sustain the
campaign that kept them in in the game, and that uh,
you know the it's also it's a testament too, you
know the reason one of the Germans were so it's
i uh people who claim to looking at the wrong
numbers of uh of opposing forces that the Behrmacht was facing.
A lot of the Red Army was incredibly tough, incredibly
gain a lot of it wasn't okay, simply having piles
of weapons, you know, we're simply having armored vehicles. You've
got to train people to fight in a modern war, Okay,
You've got to integrate your operational elements, you know, to
actually be cohesive enough that you know they can add
operationally in the way that they need to. You know,
piles of hardware don't decide wars. That's what is this
totally insane that you know, Okay, Mary's is gonna send
fifty billion dollars in military hardware Ukraine. Like to do
what like, what's that gonna do? You know what I mean?
Like it uh, it's not you can't just drop weapons
on people and something they become like trained trained, like
you know, tankers or you know something they become like
competent like infantry and CEOs. You know, you can't even
there's a lot of people running around you don't even
know like fire a gun, okay, you know like at
uh a uh any even any even if they're competent
with weapons, they're certainly not like comfortable with like some
freaking knockoff NATO like A or fifteen. I mean, why
would they be, you know, like if you never if
you haven't been habituated to that. I mean that's uh,
I mean, it's all these things. But it's uh, the
the uh the uh you know, and it's not just
uh what the side of the war was, uh was
uh was what happened in August and then you know
the failure of the assault in Moscow. But you know
the Germans also they reached Leningrad within weeks. You know,
there's this horrible siege like medieval and character for years
like what happened in Leningrad it's like horrifying, you know,
and then it was months later. But you know, the
Germans not only did they reached Stalingrad, they breached the
gates of Stalingrad. You know, the Stalingrad defenders were fighting
within Stalingrad, you know, like it was not so I mean,
it's they lost the war, but you know, they they reached,
they reached all of their objectives territorially. I mean, they
realized that that's not decisive and in terms of victory metrics.
Speaker 1: But you know.
Speaker 2: That that that that's that in them itself demoligitive. The
calculus was basically correct. I mean it uh it it goes.
It should go without saying. But another thing I wanted
to raise, Like a couple of guys in the comments,
they hear this a lot. They're like, well, you know,
the Wehrmacht lost the war because they were just everybody,
and they were doing these racist things and they were
like ethnically cleansing people. That did happen, particularly incident to
the Commissar order and other things. But you know, my
rebuttal of that man is that I and I don't
want to go too much outside the scope of the
Second World War, particularly the Os Front. But you know,
I read a lot about Pickville, which is where MELI
four was located, and I don't want to get into
some really detailed discussion of what the rules of engagement
were in Vietnam and what military law says about about
three fire zones, but Bli four was located in the
free fire zone. The people there had refused to evacuate.
There was an operational hub of the National Liberation Front,
you know, ak the viet Cong. When America Division arrived there,
they arrived there with the intent to annihilate that village.
And that's what they did. And this was above born
and stars and strikes. You know, the US Sarby newspaper,
they ran a story about it. America Division, you know,
assaulted Meli four, big victory. Oh yeah, you know, we
struck a blow against Victor Charlie. You know, it wasn't
until it wasn't until you know, a year and some
months later that you know, kind of really grew. Some
details got released by a couple of guys who were there,
you know, who began writing to a couple of anti
were senators about it. That it was splash to go
out to the Evening News. But my point is that
this is kind of the face of modern war, you know,
like Romanian and German infantry going into a Belarusian village
and and and you know and killing every killing every
commissar and every Jewish military age male. That's pretty horrible.
But I can give you just as many examples that
the French Army carried out in Algeria or the US
Army did in South Vietnam. I mean, I there's not
some like outlandish thing. And frankly two, you know, uh,
people in Kazakhstan, people in Tajikistan, people in Ukraine, people
in Belarus, people in Lati, Luthuaniana, Estonia, they joined the
vafann SS, they joined the Axis. Cause, you know, the
people forget this because now the regime is pretending that,
you know, the Ukrainians are you know, George Washington and
and the the Continental Army or whatever. But for the
last fifty years before that, you know, while we heard
was that Ukrainians are a bunch of awful brutes and
Nazis and they collaborated with you know, the Third Reich.
So I mean, it's depending on how people were treated
in theater. It depends on the people you were talking about,
It depends on what German formation was operational there. You know,
it depends on what year and month you were talking about.
I mean, there was not just one way. This is
the way that Germans treated civilian populations you know, they treated, uh,
they traded some civilian populations. It's like they would German people.
Some populations. Yeah, they they they they slaughtered them like animals.
But that's that's not strange, and it's a you know,
it does bear repeating, as I've said, and uh, we'll
get into this in the Nuremberg episode. But you know,
so that this is documented and these you know, after
the Soviet archives were thrown open in ninety one, you know,
Soviet like, by consertive estimate, the Soviet Union you know,
annihilated ten million people before a shot was fired in
the Second World War. I mean, yeah, I'm not gonna say, like,
you know that that's a good thing that the Wehrmacht
and the and the sss D were were slaughtering people,
including women and kids. But I mean it's kind of
it's you know, emphasizing you know, the instances a German
brutality and and and just kind of redacting the rest
of it. I mean, that's okay that that seems a
bit cynical and dishonest, but you know, that's that's my
take on that. And I mean, plus, it was I mean,
it was a total war. I was reading about I
was preparing some of my notes for our next episode
on the area bombing, you know, with then literally fifty
thousand people died in Hamburg or you know, all these
civilians over the course of two days. Like that's insane.
Like America is berserved of a couple thousand people die
on nine to eleven. And I'm not that's terrible, Okay,
I'm not saying that that's nothing or something, but I
mean you imagine a country, you know, like a third
the eyes America, losing fifty thousand people in one day,
like just literally having them like burned to death by incendiaries.
That's completely insane, you know, I mean, that's not There's
not any difference between you know, what the Germans doing
the Eastern Front and what the Royal Air Force and
US Army Air Corps were doing to people in places
like Hamburg and Dresden.
Speaker 1: There's not.
Speaker 2: And frankly, in fact, I mean, I'd rather get shot
in the face by the SS than like be burned
to death like in some basement in Dresden. I mean, frankly,
you know, if given a choice, which I really really
hope I would never be off with such a choice.
But that's uh, that's all. Uh, that's all I got
for this episode. And I didn't mean to get bogged
down so much in like minutia of like military science,
because it's not my wheelhouse, but it's important and I
think for context, that's kind of the evidence one must
present in order to rebut the popular myths. So I
hope that people found it informative and not too kind of,
you know, boring and down with minutia.
Speaker 1: No, there was a lot of meat in there, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that. But next well, if it's okay
with you, it's your show and I'm not for me
to dictate the program.
Speaker 1: What do you think the next next.
Speaker 2: Episode, I'd like to finish up Barbarossa and deal with
you know, the Western Allies war against the Reich, and
we'll get into things like Hamburg and Dresden. Then if
that's agreeable.
Speaker 1: That sounds good to me. That sounds good to me.
All right, give your plugs.
Speaker 2: Okay, you can find me at real Thomas seven seven
seven one word dot substack dot com. That's what my
podcast is. That's what my lawng form is about. Half
of it's free, that which is not it's only five
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afford it. I just joined mister Trump's social media Truth
Social uh Knox. I love mister Trump. I mean, I
don't hate mister Trump either, but uh, some dear friends
of mine are there. I'm hoping that might develop into something.
But if you're there, you can follow me. I'm the
real Thomas seven seven seven. There. You can find me
on gab at Real Thomas seven seven seven And if
you want to contact me directly reach out and substack.
I'll drop an email on you and we will talk
about things. And thank you again, Pete.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Till the next time. I want to
welcome everyone back to the Peak show. Thomas returns. We're
going to continue, Okay, yeah, thank you, Pete.
Speaker 2: I don't want to reiterate my gratitude everybody who supported
the series, and they's just been incredible support and feedback
and I that I find I'm very moved by that,
and that encourages me to keep going with this endeavor
and h and again, I appreciate you giving me a platform.
This has been really, really great. But I wanted to
talk a bit about today we got into kind of
the technical aspects of Barbarosa and and and rebutting some
of the myths about the military situation and how it resolved.
And I, as I indicated, I'm certainly not an expert
on military matters at all, and I've I've gotten no
military background or anything like that. What I wanted to
talk about today, I wanted to kind of deep dive
more into questions of zeitgeist. I'm not I can't think
of it that there's not like a term that's kind
of less uh exotic or or coverbsome to describe what
we're talking about in zeitgeist, you know, like literally the
spirit of the age or you know, like the kind
of the kind of animating elements of the epoch and
which people live that that that that that kind of
serves to conframe conceptually, you know, uh, the way people
view events and their role in events, and you know
what what what kind of what kind of comes to
inform uh, you know, values, and particularly when we're talking
about conditions of crises, conditions of crisis, you know, the
most kind of the most kind of punctuated and and
mortal iteration of a political crisis being general war. Uh,
that's that's kind of the most uh that that's kind
of the most intense example of uh, you know, people
being caught up in in apockable events that uh, you know,
in terms of symbolic psychology, you know, in terms of uh,
in terms of people's collective ambitions and fears, you know.
Un it can be said the constitute a sort of
cohesive you know, uh like essence you know, or spirit
of of of that epoch. And you've got to you've
got to understand, even if you're not a Hegelian like
like I am. And and even if you're kind of
like a diet in the world as secularist, you know,
to understand to understand the the German Soviet War, you
you've really got to understand the uh, this kind of
collision of worldview is okay. And and you know, even
if even if you're even if you're the consummate like
secular humanists, you probably wouldn't be watching the series. But
if you are, it's of okay, you know, you can
you can you can attribute what I what I what
I'm talking about to the you know, to to to
the phenomena of psychology. Okay, you know, but there there
is such a thing as you know, mass psychology, and
if you wanna, if you want to view it that way, fine,
but you know, what I'm talking about is a real
phenomena and the fact that things like you know, the
the war between the Reich and the Soviet Union happened
or a testament to that. And what I want to
get into today is, uh, you know how uh how
uh how the government of the Third Reich became a
truly European government in part because uh, there was apockle
changes underway in in in the manner in which you know,
people politically organize, and it was the epoch of the
superpower was nascent and looming. But also you know, the
challenge for them by the Soviet Union, you know, which
was both a burgining communist superpower. You know, this ideology
was was in in dialectical It was in violent dialectical
opposition to Europe as an idea and as a civilization,
but also ethnically and racially, if you want to think
about it in those terms. You know, the the Soviet
Union represented kind of the Oriental other, you know, and uh,
it's it's a catalyzing force, uh for unity obviously for
uh inconceptual in broad conceptual terms. If you know, if
a people are are confronted by uh by the other,
you know, uh in in in political and cultural and
and and ethnic terms. You know, like if you want,
like an ancient example, you know, the Greek city states, uh,
you know what like a catalyzing element for them to
you know, to come to view themselves as Greeks. You know,
was uh was was the challenge posed by the Persan Empire.
You know that that's and I know that that's something
that you know, uh uh military sociologist types like to
invoke a lot. But so we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna,
we're gonna dive into it a little bit forgive that
kind of long winded uh uh prologue. But I think
it was uh. I think I think it's essential the
uh the idea of the idea of a European man,
you know, kind of in lieu of uh, you know,
people politically identifying with with with petted nationalisms. This wasn't
something that that that just came about, you know in
nineteen forty one, is as German armies were fighting We're
fighting the communists, you know, in the Eastern Front. Or something.
I mean, this underscores all kinds of cultural artifacts and
of and uh in activity you know in Europe, you know,
going back centuries. You know, like there's there's there's there's
a there's there's echoes of that and everything from Beethoven
and Wagner to uh, you know, to go to uh
you know, to Hegel and like Nietzsche like overtly talked
about it. You know, what kind of it's to good
European in conceptual political terms, and what does this mean
for the future moving forward? And of course you know
the uh the uh these kind of seminal personages and
in the in the in the otter age, you know,
like first and almost Napoleon, you know, and then Napoleon
started uh, you know as a Corsican became you know
or Stardinian rather like he he became a Frenchman, and
then you know, he began thinking and you know, European
civilizational terms, and and like Adolf Hitler, you know, he
commanded armies, you know, to the east, you know, and
is is under the under the banner of a of
a of of a European imperialism, you know, not not
not not not just under the under the flag of
France or or for the glory of you know, the
French monarch or anything like that. You know, you Napoleon
was the emperor of Europe. I mean, what would what
he aspire to do? So that this wasn't some sort
of contrivance. You know, if you can motivate uh, if
you can motivate hundred thousands of man to like march
march eastward to conquer Moscow like Napoleon did, you know,
You're not You're not dealing in something that's not deeply
felt by people, or some kind of fiction that you
just contrive at a convenience. Okay, the uh, as I said,
I think that during transitional phases historically apocaly that's when
these that's that that's that's when kinds of symbolic aspects
of zeitgeist, you know, and especially in terms of identity,
like become most poignant and powerful. And that's that's what
FASc saying about the Third Reich, Like, I mean the
point in one of our earlier episodes that if you
want to understand the character of made Off Hitler politically,
you've got to you've got to sort of unpack his
December eleventh, speech to the Reichstag, which was, among other things,
the speech in which he asked for a declaration of
war against the United States, you know, in the way
of Pearl Harbor. Just a few days subsequent and one
of these Hitler said, you know, Hitler was the Habsburg
Austrian Catholic. But when he was talking about the situation
on the Eastern Front, where you know, Army Group Center
was being halted at the gates of Moscow, you know,
he said, we meaning the German people, you know, like
we faced you know, these these these dire straits before
in eighteen twelve. But what happened in eighteen twelve, you know,
the Prussian Army was fighting with Napoleon at the gates
of Moscow, and they were the only German principality or kingdom,
you know that that sided with the Okay, so hitlarly
halts through Austria, and you know, he was invoking the uh.
He was invoking a Prussian uh, a Prussian historical uh uh,
a Prussian historical a seminal Prussian historical event. And he was,
you know, he was he was assimilating that and the
you know, the the the identity of Germanness. And that's
remarkable and uh that wasn't contrived. Hit literally believed that,
you know, he really believed that there was like a
German identity that that superseded these these uh, these petty regionalisms.
And and even more than that, as time went on, he,
like Napoleon, he came to he came to consider himself,
you know, a European, a European warlord, you know, European
would be uh like emperor, like a common man who
was sended to those heights. Albeit he he didn't have
any uh, he didn't have uh he he didn't have
the same kind of retensions as as Napoleon, but he
did have certain messianic pretensions and uh that can't be
denied in more, uh, in more and more concrete terms.
If you look at the if you look at the
kind of the military leadership of the Third Reich, and
if you look at it's military culture as time went on,
there was there was kind of these there's these kind
of oppositional tendencies. You know, you had the old you
had the old Prussian officer corps, and you had the
old kind of uh you know, Bavarian like younger elite
you know that uh that that that had uh incredible
swayer with the general staff and still an incredible cultural power.
But then you also had you had you had the
s S which was very egalitarian and and very much
model like a modern army. Okay, you know, like uh
it was. It was very much merit based. You know,
there was battlefield commissions were very common. People could be
promoted rapidly if they selled in combat. And ultimately just
loll get into in a minute, was a European army,
you know it truly was it? Uh it uh? And
if you look at the if you look at the
tensions within national social studiology, you know, like we talked
about before, like one of the ironies of of uh
of when when people talk cast cast aspersions on the
kind of biological racialism of the Third Reich that was
really kind of an emulation against precedent of of of
the Anglophone world. You know, there's a kind of Darwinist rationalism,
like defining race is this kind of biological phenomenon and
describing politics and and uh anesthetic preference and culture and
in terms of things that are reducible to you know,
rationally quantifiable things you know it's stemming from biology. Like
that's that's not a German or a continental tendency. Okay,
that's that's very much ah, like I said, promotion an
anglophone rationalist tendency. But opposite that, you know, you had,
you had this very kind of metaphysical tradition that in
the case that Germany you know, goes back to to
to to a theologian like heterotogsgalologians like mais directors. I like,
it's they're a hydro to have been like in the
Advain you know, uh, the idea of you know what
what this kind of oncological idea of you know what
it what like what there being is like literally being,
you know, like that that central that sensuous presence of
of of life and how and how that and how
that has transmitted across generations, you know, to form a
kind of a kind of conceptual core of consciousness. That's
that's not that that's not restricted to individual lives, you know,
like it it's it's literally like an ongoing kind of
stream of consciousness. It's it's about to describe these things
and some things lost in translation. But it doesn't matter.
We don't need to We don't. We don't we don't
need to really concisely define that for our purposes here,
Like what the point is that, you know, it's an
example of these kind of like oppositional tendencies within the
same political culture that over to the or to the
fact that you know, the juncture at which national socialism
emerged in and and and then the point at which
you know, the the third or IICH and specifically the
Hitler regime emerged. You know that this was a period
of a profound apocaal transition and and these punctuated kind
of upheavals and things that uh, Richard Landever, I he's
a guy who's he's kind of the seminal story in
the VAF and SS and I cannot remember the damn
name of it. But he had this publication that uh
was dedicated to you know, unit histories and all kinds
of things of the SS with with with a particular
emphasis on the foreign legions of it. And he actually, uh,
he actually had some kind of fun role official role
in in the pro in the in the preeminent veterans
organization until it, you know, became defunked going to the
fact that they just you know, weren't weren't any members
left going to old age and things. But he's a
he's he's aggregated a huge amount of data about the
vaf S S. And if people think I'm overstating the
fact there was a European army like I pulled Land,
there's data and uh Western European uh in in in
Western Europe. Uh. You know there's fifty five thousand volunteers
from Holland alone, you know, the Baltic states and the
Soviet nationalities, Uh, there was one hundred thous and volunteers.
You know, ethnic Germans from outside of the right proper
its three hundred thousand men you know, from the Balkans
and UH and UH and other Slavic ethnicities. You know,
there's over one hundred thousand, one hundred thousand UH volunteers.
You know that that's not a you know, of course,
like you know, the bulk of of of of of
forces and being by the war's end were still Germans
from the right. It was you know, four hundred thousand,
you know, plurality, not a wrong majority of men and
in wearing the uniform of of the SS of often
SS but you know they can't it can't be said
that that was that that was anything but a European force,
you know, and then and that was sight unseen since
the Crusades. And that's that's that's an interesting Spanglerian point
that I know some of the some of the some
of the subscribers will will find really poignant. You know.
Spangler made a big point of uh, you know, the
the era of the Crusader era, you know, uh, as
as as being you know, kind of when the idea
when when when Europe as a kind of self conscious
culture form, you know, ossified, you know, and uh, gradually
this kind of gradually is broke down over time, and
uh it reached kind of the diseenal of its fracturing,
you know, with with the Enlightenment and and the kind
of rationalist uh, you know, the pre eminence of rationalist political, political,
and cultural tendencies. You know, that's when these that that's
that that that's when these kinds of uh, that's when
this kind of petty statism became, uh became, uh became
paramount over European identity. I mean, it's a gradual process,
but that uh, it's most people have kind of the
opposite conception of how it's developed. But you know, the UH,
it really is kind of an effort to pigeonhole identity
into uh in the kind of rationalists failure structure. You know,
there's something you can try it about that, you know,
if anything can try it's that kind of pettic nationalism.
It's not it's not it's not the idea of a
of a European man as a historical uh as as
as historically present uh, you know personage anyway, moving on, uh. Yeah,
So that's the way the character. You know, that's the
way you've got to understand the way the Germans viewed
the Soviet threat and the way Europeans viewed their situation
in the world in Jewish strategic terms as well as
in existential cultural terms. You know, they they viewed correctly.
In my opinion, I don't see how this can be denied.
They they're there, they were under existential threat, like their
form of life was was was being threatened with annihilation.
You know. Part of this was kind of the U,
the UH, the the the ideologies that were becoming dominant.
You know, if the kind of rationalists, you know, capitalist ideology,
which you know, in the in the national socialist view
went hand in glove with a with with with with
with with the Jewish world of intellectual existence, which was actuomatically,
you know, hostile in the most in the most uh,
most aggressive terms to Europe, you know. And and opposite
that was you know this uh this uh, this tendency
towards bullshit is them which sought to quite literally like
eradicate you know, uh the past and full and and
remove man from history entirely, you know, and uh and
uh and and and and and and create a new
and and created and create a new kind of reality
of life that that that was not encumbered, in their
view by by any trappings of culture uh or historical
uh existence. The the the ultimate ambition of Bolshevism was
literally to end history. And uh that's uh the as
the the ultimate consequence of that is uh is essentially
the murder of culture. And like if you murder culture
and you remove people from from uh from from these
kinds of forms of culture, like you're you're basically marooning
them in a in in in a in a kind
of spiritual sense, in their own in their own individual lives,
and uh, you're kind of your robbing their lives of
meaning as well as their deaths of meaning. And I
mean that's a little bit outside of the scope of
what we're talking about, but this is very very deeply
felt by people, by Europeans, Okay, And this is also
important because we the one of the tasks of the
revisionists is is the is the is it disabuse people
this idea that you know, by invading and waiting this
annihilation war against Europe America is liberating Europe? Like what
what was it liberating it from? Was it liberating it
from itself? Like what? You know that that doesn't make
any sense. But beyond that, you know where this isn't
just some kind of high fluting idea that you know,
revision has had or something like. European people didn't view
it that way, you know, and in very concrete terms,
you've got to understand what exactly was happening is the
Red Army got the upper hand on the battlefield and
began there began their their counter offensive into Europe proper.
Now it's uh, it's uh. I'm not gonna sit here,
and the point of what I'm gonna relay here is
not to cast some kind of shadow on on Russian people,
or to say that, oh, well, you know the third right,
you know, you call the libright evil. The Soviet Union
is way more evil. It's not what we're talking about, Okay,
I mean, perhaps that's true. But what we're talking about
is we're talking about people's conceptual horizon in that historical
moment and what they what what what what they were facing,
you know, not just h not not just in in
what they feared coming to to uh to pass, but
what actually was coming to pass, and and in in
the most you know, mortally critical terms imaginable now because
as people probably know, you know, a lot of what
is now Poland was uh was was Germany. You know,
at the time of the Third Reich, you know, in
East Prussia was uh which no longer exists. That was
always the eastern most garrison of uh of of Germany.
That this is going back six hundred years, you know it.
Uh This wasn't just a modern a modern contrivance. UH Membros. Dwarf.
East Prussia was uh was uh was was was a
garrison city within a garrison state, Okay, And the galleighter
of members Dwarf was a man in coke and he
was a very very hardline national socialist, and I mean
which made sense because the man that would be appointed
for that role would obviously have to be a man
who's very committed to the national socialist vision. Owing the
geostrategic situation. Now, on October twentieth, the Red Army, the
Red Army penetrated the Third Right proper for the first
time when they assaulted members Dwarf and Eric Coke. He
declared that no true German would allow himself even the
thought that He's Russia could fall into Russian hands. Those
are his exact words. And any able bodied male civilian
who a civilian civilian or military who tried to flee
or retreat or evacuate Eric Coke imposed a penalty of
a death sentence for it. Okay, I mean this was
a critical things were like, this was literally the line
in the sand. And after several days intense combat, uh
Berlin had lost contact with Membersdorf. And you know, this
was the time when information only traveled as fast as
a radio or a telegraph could convey it. And if
those if those commanding control lines were down, uh nobody,
uh nobody was aware of the They couldn't build an
exceptual picture or know what was happening, not necessarily as
an intense combat. The Fairmont, they really regroup, counter attack,
and they drove the Red Army back across the East
Prussian to frontier, you know. And this is a great victory,
and coming as it did at the follow ninety forty four,
it was a much needed, uh, it was a much
needed morale booster, Okay, because what what what would lay
ahead was uh the Vermont was charged, you know, Vermont
that had been utterly hollowed out but still had a
handful of crack units. They were charged with fending off
the entirety of the Red Army as well as UH
doing everything they could. Uh. The force uh Li sungky
impassed with the Western allies, you know, in the preceding
summer had assaulted and and and indated France and we're
now uh pushing their way through Belgium to uh the
pierce the heart of the Reich itself. Now back to
uh narras Dwarf. What did the Third Reich uh or
what what did the bear amount didn't cover when they
when they when they liberated members Dwarf, Uh, they found
uh an orgy for lack of a better way. He
characterized it a mass homicide and torture. The Heinrich Amberger
he was a junior officer, and he was a He
was a physician with the German army. And his testimony
he was in he was a pretty prolific diarist and
and and he maintained war journals. And uh, being that
he was a doctor, some people considered him to be,
you know, more of a respectable witness than others. He
testified the fact that uh when they entered uh members
Dorf proper quote in a farmyard, for there down the
roads to the cart, to which four naked women were
nailed through their hands in a cruciform position. Beyond to
the barn, and each of his two doors and naked
women was nailed through the hand, hands and crucified posture.
And the dwelling we found a total of seventy two women,
including children and one old man, all dead, all murder
in the beastial manner, except only a few who had
a bullet holes in their neck, some babies in their
heads bashed in and one room we found a woman
eighty four years old sitting on a sofa as with
half of whose head had been sheared off with an axe.
Every female, including girls as young as eight, had been raped.
Now the purpose that that that's a very horrible thing,
and that testimony is very disgusting and horrible. But the
reason I'm dropping it is not because again I want
to put shade on on on the Russians or something,
or because I want to fetishize, you know, warp rhymes.
But this was not what Amberger found this. This was
not an isolated incident, as would be revealed this effort.
There was literally a purposeful campaign of mass rape and
a homicide like numbering in instances the millions.
Speaker 1: Okay, they had done this, they had done this in
the Spanish Civil War too, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but to scale. I've researched this and
it's not any fun because you know, they go down
this kind of rabbit hole of sexual linolence at scale.
It's I mean, it's it's taxing on the on the emotions.
But I've tried to find precedent, uh of of of
of this conduct carried out a scale in official terms,
and and I can't find anything remotely close. There was
a it was so in uh. Amberger further attested there
was a there there was a there was a grouping
of French and British POWs who were housed there, and
they and Polish uh and and and and and and
and and polls who have been impressed into the labor
service and and these guys they they tried to protect
these these women and girls who are being raped to
death in many cases by the assaulting right army and
and they were massacred to you know, it was it
was literally a barbari in invasion and Membersdorf and uh
it was so when Berlin uh got worried of what
had happened, they were so staggered by the scope and
scale of the viciousness. The Foreign Ministry contacted Spain, Sweden
and Switzerland. Now this is fascinating, Okay they uh they
because all all all three states were officially neutral, and
uh they they asked them uh to uh to to
deploy investigators on a fact finding mission and a document
what had happened, and to publicized this to the world.
You know, now, if Germany was uh, if Germany was
this country that was just you know, singularly and solely
engaged in in in in kind of criminality, you know,
like Battlefield criminality, Like why would they be inviting that'd
be quoted inviting you and inspectors and uh, you know,
kind of pull the curtain back, okay, And at that
stage of the war, I mean, Germany was not in
any position to truly control the full of information. You know.
That was uh, that was leaving uh the right proper
or the battle spaces in which the least phenomenal control.
So I that's very fascinating. That cuts against the kind
of the kind of dominant narrative, which we'll get into
in the next episode about Nuremberg. But these uh, these
independent investigators from Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, they documented what
had happened and what was attested to just now and
the kind of horrible uh testimony that I just relayed,
and they found it to be accurate. It was true
that this has happened. You know, there's not rumor, this
was not something that was staged. You know, this the
evidence was right there playing his day, and they tried
to publicize this to the world, and uh it was
intercept you know, of course, like any information that was
gonna reach the English speaking world was basically going through
the Office of War Information in America. And they simply
refused to relay anything like the Adam Browns that you know,
gonna harm the war efforts. And uh, the UK, Uh,
the the UK was in full blown propaganda mode. I
mean there's a reason why. Or well in uh ninety
eighty four, you know, like the the five minute hate
like that, that was literally the kind of that that
that was kind of about primitive and and single minded.
You know, British propaganda had become you know, we think
of the UK as being, you know, this kind of
hyper civilized place. It was really really primitive and in
terms of it's in terms of its media narratives and propaganda,
like far more sou than America or the Third Reich
in my opinion in that regard. But that's so what
I'm getting is that there's no way that uh, what
had happened here was gonna be uh what was gonna
reach Uh, it was gonna reach a world audience, and
it uh it was it was just quickly quashed because
as also too, I mean, this this would have there
there's no way in hell that that that Roosevelt or
Churchill we're gonna, but particularly Roosevelt, we're gonna we're gonna
We're gonna say or do anything or bring attention to,
you know, any any kind of atrocities that that that
might harm the concord of Stalin, you know, and it's
it on the heels of this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We talked about the Morgenthel Plan in one of our
earliest episodes, okay, And the Morgenthel Plan it was named for,
you know, the Roosevelt Secretary the Treasury, Henry Morgenthew, who
had conceived with his top aide Harry Dexter White. You know,
both of them were ethnic Jews and radical New dealers
and men with radical Zionis sympathies. What the Morganel Plan was.
It was never formally implemented. But we'll get to why
I raised this again in the moment. Okay, on September fifteenth,
forty four, this is when Roosevelt, this is when Roosevelt
approved the Morganel Plan. It's initially it was approved. You know,
Roosevelt died in office. You have to remember, okay, what
the Morganele Plan constituted. It called it the complete destruction
of Germany. Okay, it called it the dismantling of it.
In the forest essentially, uh, micro states. We're all we're
all heavy industry. You know, the only economic activity of
productive activity would be subsistence farming. This was almost like
Premiere Rugel like and I say that without resort, I purbly. Okay.
They called the permanent closure of the mines. It called
for it called for the reduction of the rice overall
land area by half, you know, to be seated to
the Soviet Union. And uh, you know, the what was
slated to be, you know, a Polish client state of
the Soviet Union. George C. Marshall he calculated, you know,
of he calculated that that roughly two thirds of the
German population which would have come out in ninety forty
five to approximately fifty million people would die starvation in
the immediate aftermath of the Morganel Plan. And uh, this
was considered acceptable and not as acceptable. I believe that
this was, uh, this was essentially the raison detra for
the war. Okay, it was the it was the annihilation
of the Germans as a people on on on categorical
racial grounds, you want to look at it like that,
And the reason why this was not implemented. Roosevelt died
Truman became Truman became President of United States. As a
consequence of that and other intrigues, uh, you know, the
the the Washington Moscow Concord fell apart, divided Germany. He
became what everybody believed would be a future bail ground
of World War three. Uh, America needed the bundes Be
to constitute the front line of that effort quite literally, okay,
and the bundhist Republic with you know, the West German army,
the bundese Be constituting its armed element. That's what defeated
the Morganel Plan. Okay. I believe some iteration of the
the Morvale Plan was implemented. And your friend and D
Michael Jones has written extensively about that. That's a little
bit outside the scope of what we're talking about here.
But the social engineering regime aimed at, you know, kind
of breaking down the German moral core, and you know,
the whole theory of the the the authoritarian personality and.
Speaker 3: Uh, the uh, the the idea that.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, the like assaulting sexual morals and restraint
could both sabotage fertility and and and uh communitarian bonds
of family, but also you know, was a way of
kind of like derasclating people like this all stems from
this epoch. Okay, that is, you know, like sexuality, you know,
and the perversion of sexuality is as a weapon of warfare.
That is the aspect in spirit of the Morgana play,
and that was implemented real large, among many other things.
But this is a time my mind. So I know
that you and uh, I know that you and doctor
Jones dofter Jones like.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking that the whole time, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Me for being the mean, for being juvenile. But but
it was uh, it was estimated uh more than himself.
The idea was within two generations that Germany would cease
to exist. Though they are his words, not mine. And
uh if anybody thinks I'm I'm just being partisan or
uh resorting the kind of lurid, hysterical uh metaphors by
suggesting that uh, the you know, the the New Dealers
were waging a genocidal war of annihilation against Europe. I
I submit to you their own words, you know, and
they just did.
Speaker 5: Now I I I I I think that the common
defense of what happened in terms of this, this this
mass outbreak of sexual violence and homicide and brutality.
Speaker 2: Uh. I think the common the common claim of apologists
as well. These you know, there there's a disciplined problem
in the Red Army. And and you're talking about a
terrible you're talking about a terrible war that that costs
the lives of twenty million Soviet people. So they are
just men, you know, kind of without without correct military leadership,
just like acting out barbarically. I've got everything to say
about that. First of all, no matter how much you
hate your enemy, it's not normal to rape old women
and little children. That's just not something you do. Okay,
there's just spontaneously he happens, you know, just say, like
you know, me and my squad, mean, if you're gonna
rape an eighty year old none to death, I mean
that doesn't That's just not a spontaneous thing that happens, okay.
Elliott Ehrenberg was a chief uh he was a chief
propagandist of who worked handing love with the n k
v D and and had the favorite stalin himself. And
he he uh he published extensively and it did knew
his radio broadcasts uh you know uh on both Party
radio and Armed Forces radio, which reached the Red Army
in the field. He published extensively in the Red Star newspaper,
which is the rhetoray newspaper as well as he as
well as he was one of the main authors of
these mass uh these these these leaflets that were saturated
you know, throughout the battlespaces in the front. You know,
to both uh, bolster the the morale of the Red
Army or to strike fear in them so they would
not desert, but also to you know, try and try
and demoralize the the Wehrmacht. But uh it it uh
he he consistently a consistent theme of his propaganda was
that you know, this is a racial war against the
German people. The Germans are swine and the way, and
and you should rape the German women because you deserve to,
because they're the spoils of war and they're not humans anyway,
look at and like cattle. But also you know, you've
got you've got to rape German women because then the
next generation will be Russian, and you know there there
will be no more Germans. So you're doing you know,
you're you're you're you're being you're you're you're being a
good communist as well as a good soldier to you know,
to to to take these women and and and and
it's you know, force your seed into them. I know
it's like gross and trying to phrase phrase it as
delicately as I can, but I mean, this is what happened.
There's no way to push chine on it or make
make it something that it wasn't. But early on the other, uh,
the other kind of uh, the other the other kind
of rebuttal that I've come across a lot, not just
in in in guys and some girls, so I've debated
against and more or less formal circumstances about the war,
but also even other revisionists who aren't quite I guess
as uh as a knowledge. One of the topics I am,
it's suggest that the Commissar order changed everything. And you
know then in Kying, you know, the Red Army ceased
abiding you know, the world and customs of war, and
then because of because of German brutality, and you know
the the the exterminationist activities, the INSTS group and you
know they, you know, they the Red Army just responded
in kind. I don't accept that because it it turns
cause and effect on its head, like the commissar order.
That was that was that was the Fear order from
June sixth, nineteen forty one. So just literally Eve of Barbarossa.
It declared that commissars when found UH, you know, when
when commissars when captured, not only they're not entitled any
any any any Convention protections, but they should be eliminated.
You know, they're not even entitled the drumheads court, drumhead
courts martiall these matter of criminals. They're the UH, They're
the ideological enforcers of the Soviet state. The reason for
their presence at the platoon level is to UH is
to make sure that UH is to make sure that
the Red Army continues to fight, and then it continues
to fight specifically in accordance with with UH, with the
edicts of UH, of the Red Army and of Marxist Leninism. Now,
why did Hitler issue this order and why did you
make it formal? Well, that's an interesting question, and it's
not as simple as you think of just old Hitler
was this kind of wild man who hated Ivan. It's
the Soviet Union made a big show of refusing to
sign the Geneva Convention. In nineteen twenty nine, because, like
we talked about last episode or two episodes ago, the
Red Army doctrine was inseparable from from communist ideology. And
you know, as we talked about the UH as a
man as a matter of formal UH, as a matter
of formal UH the protocol, the Red Army declared, you
know it, It was declared by the High Command. You know,
the Red Army is a purely offensive army. You know,
the Red Army does not formally declare war because you know,
their mandate is a historical mission to liberate the proletariat,
you know, across this entire planet. You know, the laws
and customs of war are contrivances of capitalism in order
to favor a system that is propped up by the
needs of capital. I mean all of these things. Okay,
So the Russian Empire had had signed the Hague Conventions
of eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven, but the
Soviet Union came into existence by literally murdering that government
and declaring that it had been a criminal regime and
had no legitimacy. So we can't claim that the Soviet
regime is entitled to the Protections Act there are several
protections ACQUI asked to buy the Tsar's regime when they
turned around and murdered, literally the czar who had put
the put pen to paper on that convention. Now, the
letter of our Lady two of the Geneva Convention claims
that you know, the fact that a state is not
a party signatory to it does not mean that one
can escape liability from you know, not honoring. The protection
is that they're personnel are are entitled to be afforded
in the convention. I hate to be the barrabads news.
It's not how treaties work. Treaties are always permissive, not compulsory,
because their contracts. You know, there's not some higher authority
no matter what Rachel Maddow might tell you, or whatever
mister Biden might mumble about in between. You know, soiling
is uh, it depends or what or what some you
know uh or some Berkeley professor might tell you about,
you know, kind of the universality of of of human rights.
There is no sovereign authority that's higher than the government
of a national state, and national states become parties to
treaties based upon a meeting of the mind it's just
like people who you know, uh, just like people who
agree to uh to to to a contract. If there's
no meeting of the minds, it's because there's no moral consensus.
There's no moral consensus, Uh, there's there there's no willingness
to abide the strictures of a treaty that only exists
when when such a meeting that minds exist. So this,
this is this is the origin of the commiss our order.
And beyond that, I mean it kind of went without
saying anyway, because uh, you know, the the the Soviet
Union it had had in a lot of ways. It
it was a rejection of the of the of the
kind of Peterism, you know, the red of the Peter
the Great a preceding a couple of centuries. It was
succeeding from Europe just outright, okay. In addition to the
Marsi's Leninist ideology that you know underlay it it, the
idea that you're obligated to extend you know, Geneva Convention
protections to the Soviet Union was somewhat ridiculous, okay. But
the uh, the uh, the uh, the commissar order and
and the the acts of the Einsets group and like
make make a mistake. I mean that was a that
was incredibly uh, I mean incredibly brutal. Stuff was carried
out inner the office of that. But it's not as
if you know, that's what prompted the Red Army's brutality.
The first instance I have found of a reported atrocities
on the Eastern Front July one, ninety forty one. Now,
mind you, this is just weeks after uh, this is
just weeks after Barbarossa. They're BRANICKI Ukraine. I'm sure I'm
butchering that pronunciation. I'm sorry about that. Don't say snarky stuff.
I realize I'm bad with these things, but I I
cannot announce the Slavic stuff. It's too constant, heavy, and
I just I don't speak these languages. Near Broniki, the
Red Army captured one hundred and sixty German lancers uh
at junior Baffin SS officer candidate named Hans Voltersdorf. He
uh He attested to the fact that all these men,
with the exception of a few who'd been quite literally
gutted uh and and and hadn't yet expired, had been
severely tortured before being murdered by having their throats cut
or their heads basing their rifle rifle butts. Uh, these
men at their eyes gouged out, they were castrated. I mean,
all these things that lay were alive, Okay, and uh obviously,
uh this inflamed the passions and kind of of of
these of these bobin has doesn't barn troopers, and I
you know, moving forward in the conflict, it's really as
august the as A as a you know, as as
all the army groups closing their objectives. I mean, there
was there's myriad reports of of categorical you know, massacres
by by the very monk and Bob and assess the
same nothing of the Asins group, Like I'm not I'm
not clearing Otherwise, I voted the testament of of of
of Volta stores because again it robusts the idea that like, well,
the Red Army was fighting a clean war or was
behaving like a normal military force. And then oh, you know,
the commissar order will begin was implemented, uh at scale,
and while that all bets are off, that's that's nonsense.
I mean, there there was a unique brutality to the
Red Army. Is that I'm getting at. Okay, And again,
this isn't what about is? But I I it's this
is something that's missing from the court history record, okay,
or it's something that does not dealt with at all,
in part because they're they're there. It's it's imperative in
order to substantiate the Cordustry narrative, the posit that the
Hrmacht and the baff and SS was was uniquely uh
was was was uniquely brutal and and and had contempt
for the laws and customs of war in a unique
way that that stands apart from all other conduct of
all combatments in the war. That's why I raised this
as well as like I said that from the outset
of this discussion, it's essential understanding concrete terms the European
view of the war against the Bolsheviks. It's essential, you know,
this wasn't this was stuff that was being encountered by
landers in the field and and and was ubiquitous. This
was not this was not comfortable to like you know,
horror stories of you know, of of of nineteen seventeen
of you know, oh, American was intervene in the Great
War because you know, the dirty hunt is crucifying. French boy,
He's like, that's not We're not talking kind of think
at all. We're talking about documented acts of horrendous brutality
outside of any any any kind of normal, uh combat operation.
But it's also what I gotta say too, is again,
I'm sure that there's gonna be a lot of Russians
and maybe just other Slavic people who are gonna think
that and being bigot it or just trying to be
mean or something. And there's not the case at all.
And I will say this, and uh von Manstein uh
in his his people have mixed feelings about but it's
important to pay attention to to his testimony, whether you
love or hate the guy, or think he was a
great man or think he was a trader to his
fere and to his people. Uh, that's not important for
him about to drop. But if I'm managed to drop
consistently that the Red Army, Russian soldier, he loomed large
in the minds of all Europeans under arms just because
he was incredibly game and incredibly tough.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's endless there's as many there's just as many anecdotes
and eyewitness testimony about the incredible gameness and toughness and
ability to endure pain and hardship and deprivation and still
fight effectively of the other Red Army troop, or as
there is about his repentency for you know, horrible, horrible
violence against against vulnerable populations, whether POWs or female non
combatans or what have you. So that's not our purpose
here is to just bash the Russians, you know, suggests
that they're inferior or something at all. I just wanted
to make that clear. And the fact that they were,
the fact that they were and are so tough and
game is one of the reasons why, uh, you know,
they were such a feared adversary. You know, it's uh,
anybody canna be brutal. In fact, often like brutality is
the recourse of h of the weakling. But I uh,
I uh yeah, I think I think, uh, I think
it's maybe a good point to kind of stop, because
I the rest of my notes and the rest of
them was on my mind that I'd kind of be
jumping into stuff that I want to cover in the
next episode because it deals specifically with always alleged nerve
verdunto the testimony there and if I drop it now,
it's kind of gonna it confused the narrative. What I'd
like to talk about next though, I'd like to talk
about the war in the West in terms of how
it resolved in the combat, kind of like we did
last episode with Barbarossa, but also the strategic bombing campaign
by RIF and US Army Air Forces, because that's important
and it bears not just on the context of how
combat developed in the Western Front, but it also comes
to bear on how the Nuremberg indictment was structured and
crafted and what was redacted and what was not. And
then after that episode, will will probably two episodes to
deal with the Nuremberg UH Tribunal because there's such a
huge topic. And then it's totally up to you because
it's your show. I want to do kind of a
final episode of this series where we can just like
feel questions that people want to know about. I mean,
we'll take a question before and obviously, but like some
of the like some of the some of the British
studs who follow you and follow my stuff, like, uh,
like these English and Scottish dudes they want us to
talk about like North Africa and that would be a
great freaking topic. And like other guys wanted to talk
a little bit more about about uh you know about
kind of the uh the hillovers of stress or like
intrigues and things and that, I mean that'd be great too.
I mean, it was totally up to you, but I
think that might be worthwhile and they would kind of
get people involved.
Speaker 1: I look forward to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, but that's uh, that's uh.
I think this is a good stopping point if.
Speaker 1: You're working, plug what you want to plug in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I'm every report. My manuscript for the next
deal Store is practically finished. Uh. This is about two
weeks late later than I wanted it to be, but
that's gonna be dropping eminently this summer. It makes me
very happy, said, it'll soon be available. Uh. You can
find me at uh. I'm on I'm on t gram
uh t dot M E slash the number seven H
M A S seven seven seven. You can find me
on substack uh real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack
dot com. Uh. You can find me on gab uh
at real Thomas seven seven seven. I'm actually on truth
Social now uh uh not not because I've gone like
mega or something. But I've got a couple of friends
there on the interest of to see what mister Trump
is saying, because there's been this farther than tell, like
no real coverage of election of season, which is strange
at the stage in the game. But you can find
me there, I mean, the real Thomas seven seven seven.
I'm not really active there, but any of my content
like this I posted up there, I posted on gab.
You can always find it on t gram. But that's
that's how to find me. And if you want to
get hold of me personally, hit me up on t
gram by direct message. I'll give you an email or
a phone number.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, manun till the next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Pete