Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.
Speaker 2: I haven't said that in a while. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't really have an intro for you here. This
Speaker 1: is more of a straight up audio version of something
Speaker 1: I've written, an essay that has been published by the
Speaker 1: very good people over at Marion West, which I recommend
Speaker 1: you all go check out. I will leave a link
Speaker 1: in the show notes, but I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: this message got out to as many people as possible
Speaker 1: because given the I don't want to call it drama,
Speaker 1: but I can't really think of anything else to call it.
Speaker 1: That is kind of broken out in the history content
Speaker 1: creation community of sorts that I find myself in, I
Speaker 1: figured it would be time for me to say something
Speaker 1: about it. And because it directly impacts me to a
Speaker 1: much less degree than other people I know, thankfully, but
Speaker 1: it does impact me, and it has impacted a number
Speaker 1: of people that I know. So without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: get into it. I have for many years recommended Daryl
Speaker 1: Cooper's hit podcast Martyrmaid to the relative handful of people
Speaker 1: kind enough to listen to my own show and read
Speaker 1: my thoughts on various publications, including my own substack and
Speaker 1: not to fully bury the lead. I still do recommend Martyrmaid,
Speaker 1: though admittedly with a little more reservation than I might
Speaker 1: otherwise have only a month earlier. The reason why there
Speaker 1: is any reservation on my part can actually be summed
Speaker 1: up in the following email I received just a few
Speaker 1: days before writing this essay. You've previously recommended The Fear
Speaker 1: and Loathing, a new Jerusalem series by the Martyr Maaide
Speaker 1: podcast is a good resource for learning about the Israel
Speaker 1: Palestine conflict. In light of Daryl Cooper's recent Holocaust denial,
Speaker 1: would you still recommend that podcast? This is one among
Speaker 1: several messages that I have been receiving in the past
Speaker 1: week or two. I was not surprised when they started
Speaker 1: coming in. I've been producing a historical podcast since twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen and occupied a similar space at least until twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one as Daryl Cooper for just as long, a
Speaker 1: space that we might presumptuously call the Dan Carlin school
Speaker 1: of podcasting. You know, the long form episodes lasting from
Speaker 1: anywhere from two to six hours. In case people forgot,
Speaker 1: I even have collaborated with Darryl once in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and he and I had developed something of a friendly
Speaker 1: relationship and occasionally but playfully antagonistic banter online. This friendly
Speaker 1: relationship was actually solidified when he offered to fly me
Speaker 1: back across the country to my hometown of Minneapolis in
Speaker 1: the wake of George Floyd's death to be with my
Speaker 1: mother while what they were calling neighborhood incursions were taking
Speaker 1: place in my childhood homes immediate vicinity. For context, in
Speaker 1: case some of you haven't heard me talk about this elsewhere,
Speaker 1: I actually grew up five blocks from where George Floyd
Speaker 1: was killed. I know exactly where it is.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously, by then, when Daryl made this offer to me
Speaker 1: to fly me out, I knew he and his work
Speaker 1: were controversial. I had recommended it, but I knew that
Speaker 1: he was considered controversial. But as best I could and
Speaker 1: can tell, does that not matter less than someone who
Speaker 1: would offer a kindness like he did that he had
Speaker 1: no obligation to offer. Now, thanks to this experience, I
Speaker 1: find myself as a historical podcaster with at least some
Speaker 1: audience crossover with Cooper's in a bit of a strange space,
Speaker 1: namely after Tucker Carlson's now infamous interview with Cooper has
Speaker 1: been given time to gestate and be reacted again. I
Speaker 1: had known that Daryl was going to discuss World War
Speaker 1: Two from the German perspective for some time at that
Speaker 1: point when that interview went up, and while I thought
Speaker 1: it was a potentially interesting and illuminating angle on which
Speaker 1: to tackle our world's most infamous conflict, one that I'm
Speaker 1: covering myself at least the corners of it, I immediately knew
Speaker 1: this would not go over smoothly whenever it happened. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to September two, twenty twenty four. It did, indeed happen,
Speaker 1: and not in a way that I believe Daryl necessarily
Speaker 1: wanted or was fully prepared for, at least in the
Speaker 1: Free Press on September fifth, only three days later, Barry
Speaker 1: Weiss referred to Cooper as a quote unquote pseudohistorian with
Speaker 1: quote a disgust toward Judaism that has inspired him to
Speaker 1: turn Hitler into a misunderstood figure unquote. On the same
Speaker 1: day and in the same publication, so Rabbamari wrote that
Speaker 1: Cooper was someone who had long since quote made known
Speaker 1: his nutty views about the Jews, as well as his
Speaker 1: sympathy for the Third Reich unquote, and linked him to
Speaker 1: what he called the barbarian rite catch you name, regardless
Speaker 1: of what you think, which enjoys membership of figures and
Speaker 1: groups as diverse and unlikable as Nick fuentes Is, Grouper's
Speaker 1: movement and Ray science peddlers like Steve Sailor. Similarly, and
Speaker 1: perhaps most harshly, historian Neil Ferguson called Cooper quote a
Speaker 1: nasty little Nazi apologist unquote that engages in quote unquote
Speaker 1: anti history. Joshua Trevigno, writing in Armas, didn't even directly
Speaker 1: reference Cooper or Carlson, but said very plainly that he
Speaker 1: believed we were living through end quote abrupt resurgence of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism unquote, relating to quote the generation that experienced
Speaker 1: anti Semitism's most horrific episode in the Holocaust being mostly gone.
Speaker 1: Constantine Kissin wrote on his substack that this whole affair
Speaker 1: confirmed his thesis on a new quote unquote woke right,
Speaker 1: while referring to Cooper's interview as quote so historically illiterate
Speaker 1: that every major claim he made was debunked on ex
Speaker 1: itself within hours, with community notes and in articles published
Speaker 1: by prominent historians. Some criticisms were less sweeping, but no
Speaker 1: less seemingly damning, including Winston Churchill scholar Andreas Correas tweeting
Speaker 1: that quote Cooper knows nothing about Winston Churchill unquote, followed
Speaker 1: by several points of refutation against some of Cooper's subsequent claims.
Speaker 1: Even the White House chimed in, calling the interview quote
Speaker 1: unquote Nazi propaganda that was quote disgusting and a sadistic insult.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: So with all that context in mind, it has become
Speaker 1: quite obvious that Darrell's claims are full of interpretations that
Speaker 1: many reputable historians of the Second World War, Winston Churchill
Speaker 1: and the Third Reich and the Holocaust would consider inaccurate,
Speaker 1: and that his use of sources is questionable at best. Now,
Speaker 1: I still consider Daryl a friend, and I do not
Speaker 1: believe that he is some rank bigot like some of
Speaker 1: his detractors have claimed. And I do not even believe
Speaker 1: that we are living through some era of Hitler reappraisal
Speaker 1: just because Darryl is being lumped in with the insanity,
Speaker 1: the objective insanity that is Candice Owens's recent obsession with
Speaker 1: the Francis.
Speaker 2: Or whatever it is that she was talking about.
Speaker 1: However, I also believe that it is not unreasonable for
Speaker 1: someone who does not know him, or especially is not
Speaker 1: familiar with his previous work, as many of his critics
Speaker 1: have stated about themselves admitted might be a better way
Speaker 1: of putting it, it's not unreasonable for people like that
Speaker 1: to feel differently. And this was thanks to how he
Speaker 1: presented his claims both on Tucker Carlson's show and in
Speaker 1: his immediate response following. He has since added more clarity
Speaker 1: to his approach on the Martyr Made substack, which is
Speaker 1: worth reading for a fuller picture. However, his initial claims
Speaker 1: are always going to be his first impression on this
Speaker 1: particular topic, and thus they require challenging, especially on their
Speaker 1: merits and more importantly, on their sourcing. This will help
Speaker 1: provide the necessary context or grain of salt, however you
Speaker 1: want to look at it for when he actually finishes
Speaker 1: and releases the work that he has now officially announced.
Speaker 2: To begin.
Speaker 1: While the interpretations of Winston Churchill's quality as a leader
Speaker 1: are certainly up for debate, some of Cooper's significant contentions
Speaker 1: that arose in his follow up thread to the interview
Speaker 1: on X have been directly refuted by scholars of the
Speaker 1: Old Lion and the Second World War. One relatively minor
Speaker 1: example was Cooper's claim that Churchill quote unquote in insisted
Speaker 1: on the use of mustard gas on the quote unquote
Speaker 1: uncivilized tribes of Iraq, which in nineteen nineteen to nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty the British Empire was at work pacifying. The problem
Speaker 1: is that this quote is inaccurate. Now, Churchill did indeed
Speaker 1: refer to Iraqi tribes as uncivilized and in need of gasing,
Speaker 1: but in the departmental minutes presented by the International Churchill
Speaker 1: Society revealed that Churchill advocated for the use of lacrymatory.
Speaker 2: Gas, that is, tear gas, and.
Speaker 1: That quote it is not necessary to use only the
Speaker 1: most deadly gases un quote. This is a fundamental error
Speaker 1: of context that while small harms the overall picture attempting
Speaker 1: to be painted of Churchill as someone possessed with bloodthirstiness,
Speaker 1: are there not better examples? Well, Cooper seems to believe so,
Speaker 1: and yet those examples have their own issues in explaining
Speaker 1: how wretched conditions became in Germany during and especially after
Speaker 1: the First World War, which did indeed contribute to the
Speaker 1: conditions that would allow for such a reactionary populist movement
Speaker 1: as national socialism to gain ground. Cooper also claimed that
Speaker 1: this was due to a long, unprecedented tactic of starving
Speaker 1: out Germany's civilians with naval blockades. Now, he is right
Speaker 1: to point out that quote unquote, up to seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand Germans would starve to death, and scholars
Speaker 1: agree typically that the number is likely lower, but Daryl's
Speaker 1: phrasing is appropriately careful here. But it's basically reasonable to
Speaker 1: say that hundreds of thousands of Germans starved to death
Speaker 1: thanks to blockade. However, Cooper's framing is wrong with his
Speaker 1: use of Churchill's explanation that quote the blockade treated the
Speaker 1: whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress
Speaker 1: and avowedly sought to starve the whole population unquote, serving
Speaker 1: as evidence for the then First Lord of the Admiralty's
Speaker 1: unique cruelty. Cooper was not necessarily incorrect in pointing out
Speaker 1: that this tactic was problematic at best, But the problem
Speaker 1: is that this tactic was not unique Germany's own infamous
Speaker 1: U boat campaign, which frequently sank unaligned and civilian ships,
Speaker 1: was in response to the blockade, but its goal was
Speaker 1: also to starve out the British before the blockade devastated
Speaker 1: Germany the way it ultimately did. Therefore, the only thing
Speaker 1: that makes Britain appear more like a villain in this
Speaker 1: case is the fact that they won World War One
Speaker 1: and Germany lost. In other words, had Germany won, there
Speaker 1: would be people doing revisionism, likely making the opposite claim,
Speaker 1: which ultimately reveals equally little about moral complicity, except that
Speaker 1: everyone involved in warfare is complicit in their intentions. Now
Speaker 1: likely anticipating this, Cooper dismissed the argument that quote unquote
Speaker 1: wars he had in order to make his broader point
Speaker 1: that Churchill and the British were uniquely nefarious in this regard,
Speaker 1: by claiming that quote for two and a half centuries,
Speaker 1: Europeans had refrained from tactics like mass starvation and other
Speaker 1: means of targeting civilian populations when they fought each other.
Speaker 1: This is likely in reference to the modernizing efforts taken
Speaker 1: up by the Prussian military in the mid seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: in which Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg deemphasized the use
Speaker 1: of mercenary soldiers and tried to professionalize the military. According
Speaker 1: to historian HW Coch, quote one innovation finding general approval
Speaker 1: was the introduction of severe discipline in the army, in
Speaker 1: which quote any act of plundering would be punished by hanging,
Speaker 1: and quote any officer who physically attacked a civilian will
Speaker 1: be stripped of his rank for a year and have
Speaker 1: to carry the musket as a common soldier. This frames
Speaker 1: the Prussian military and thus early modern European military standards
Speaker 1: as being both noble and disciplined, too morally upstanding to
Speaker 1: engage in anything resembling a war crime, or, more to
Speaker 1: the point, a hunger blockade. Now noble as this was.
Speaker 1: Naval blockades occurred in Europe well after this time, the
Speaker 1: one I just spoke of, and well before the British
Speaker 1: blockade of Germany during World War One, to say nothing
Speaker 1: of Germany's aforementioned unrestricted U boat warfare. Napoleon engaged in
Speaker 1: wartime blockades of Britain known as the Continental System, in
Speaker 1: which English industries were harmed in the process. While one
Speaker 1: can quibble with the intent behind such blockades, being different,
Speaker 1: It's simply not accurate to claim that these blockades were
Speaker 1: not designed to put pressure on warring nations civilian populations,
Speaker 1: whether through starvation or unemployment. In addition, during the Franco
Speaker 1: Prussian War of eighteen seventy, the siege of Paris by
Speaker 1: Prussian forces was in essence a blockade against the city,
Speaker 1: resulting in a massive death to ward of civilians. According
Speaker 1: to historian Jeffrey warrou quote, in three weeks of firing,
Speaker 1: the German gunners that hit hospitals, schools, churches, prisons and
Speaker 1: apartment houses, but were still far behind the death toll
Speaker 1: wrought by cold and hunger, which were killing three thousand
Speaker 1: to four thousand Parisians every week in January. The blockade
Speaker 1: against Germany by Great Britain in the First World War
Speaker 1: was no doubt significant in its effects and arguably cruelty.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that can necessarily be disputed, at
Speaker 1: least not that much. But it was by no means
Speaker 1: unprecedented in European history. In fact, to my eyes, it
Speaker 1: kind of seems like the norm the framing cooper engaged
Speaker 1: in also neglected to reckon with the German airship bombing
Speaker 1: campaigns of the First World War against England, specifically, which
Speaker 1: began before the British blockade of Germany and Austria Hungary
Speaker 1: started this framing involving Germany's late war misery. We also
Speaker 1: neglected one of the largest blind spots in the history
Speaker 1: of the First World War and its effects. And I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily blame Darryl for missing this because a lot
Speaker 1: of people have missed it, and it gives me a
Speaker 1: chance to sort of gloat a little about my own
Speaker 1: work that I've done on this very subject, which was
Speaker 1: ultimately the devastation wrought by the so called Spanish Flu.
Speaker 1: If a recall, the Spanish Flu ultimately killed German soldiers
Speaker 1: at far higher rates than British or French troops. It
Speaker 1: arguably cost them the war and its effects in Germany
Speaker 1: at home even correlated with later support for the National Socialists,
Speaker 1: as shown by the scholar Andrew Price Smith in his
Speaker 1: excellent book Contation and Chaos. These areas of neglect and
Speaker 1: others just sort of demonstrate a deeper issue with Cooper's
Speaker 1: initial framing, a skewed perception of historical agency in favor
Speaker 1: of motivated reasoning, in which Churchill the chief villain of
Speaker 1: his framing was given full agency, and later on Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 1: his nemesis, was given none. We can see this with
Speaker 1: how Cooper explained the relationship between Churchill and Hitler as
Speaker 1: late as nineteen thirty seven, which he characterized as quote
Speaker 1: unquote not hostile because Churchill said, of the dictator quote
Speaker 1: those who have met Hitler face to face have found
Speaker 1: a highly competent, cool, well informed functionary with an agreeable manner,
Speaker 1: a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a
Speaker 1: subtle personal magnetism. Now this is actually a selective quotation,
Speaker 1: and one likely derived from the paleoconservative writer Pat Buchanan
Speaker 1: in his own two thousand and eight revisionist book Churchill,
Speaker 1: Hitler and the quote unquote Unnecessary War, How Britain lost
Speaker 1: its empire in the West lost the World, which Cooper
Speaker 1: has since happily admitted is one of his sources. It's
Speaker 1: also worth pointing out that Darryl has since done some
Speaker 1: deeper digging into his sources and has admitted that this
Speaker 1: quote was not put in the proper context when he
Speaker 1: found it and used it, so credit where credits due,
Speaker 1: of course, but the full context of this quote in
Speaker 1: Buchanan's book was missing from his account, in which Churchill
Speaker 1: was expressing, as Scott Manning puts it, quote awe and
Speaker 1: caution unquote, not reverence or respect. Bu canon claim that
Speaker 1: Churchill ended his analysis of the Fure on a quote
Speaker 1: unquote hopeful note when nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: Churchill ended his essay with a note of caution, if
Speaker 1: not outright fear, for what Hitler's Germany was coming to
Speaker 1: mean for Europe. As Churchill wrote, quote, the great wheels
Speaker 1: revolve the rifles, the canon, the tanks, the shot and shells,
Speaker 1: the air bombs, the poison gas cylinders, the aeroplanes, the submarines,
Speaker 1: and now the beginnings of a fleet flow in ever
Speaker 1: broadening streams from the already largely war mobilized arsenals and
Speaker 1: factories of Germany. Quote now, was this not hostile? Well,
Speaker 1: perhaps not, but it was certainly not friendly. And letting
Speaker 1: not hostile do the heavy lifting certainly implies such now.
Speaker 1: This led to Cooper's implication that Churchill's anti Semitism was
Speaker 1: little different than Hitler's, which he accomplishes by claiming that, quote,
Speaker 1: like Hitler, Churchill blamed Jews for communism. While it certainly
Speaker 1: is true that Churchill trafficked in what we would today
Speaker 1: consider anti semitism once writing that quote, they have been
Speaker 1: partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer unquote,
Speaker 1: this made him a little different than many world leaders
Speaker 1: at the time, especially in the West. As you guys
Speaker 1: might remember, I've made the case that Franklin Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: a little different. However, as Churchill scholar Andreas Careis explains,
Speaker 1: Churchill's contention quote was that though many many Bolsheviks were Jews,
Speaker 1: few Jews were Bolsheviks unquote. Though certainly politically incorrect to
Speaker 1: such sweeping statements today, Churchill also stated that quote, some
Speaker 1: people like Jews and some do not, but a not
Speaker 1: thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are, beyond
Speaker 1: all question, the most formidable and most remarkable race that
Speaker 1: has ever appeared in the world. Frankly, this sounds remarkably
Speaker 1: unlike Hitler's quote from around that same time, where he
Speaker 1: called Jews a quote race tuberculosis of the people's quote.
Speaker 1: Churchill's feelings on the Jews visa VI. Hitler's treatment of
Speaker 1: them also contradicts any idea or even implication that Hitler
Speaker 1: did not have any problems with him or England with
Speaker 1: how he reacted to what ultimately was a snub from
Speaker 1: Churchill over the so called Jewish question. In August of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, he ran into Hitler's press secretary Ernst
Speaker 1: Putzi Hunpstengel, who asked if Churchill would meet with Hitler.
Speaker 1: In response, Churchill stated, quote, why is her chief so
Speaker 1: violent about the Jews? I can quite understand being angry
Speaker 1: with Jews who have done wrong or who are against
Speaker 1: the country, and I understand resisting them if they try
Speaker 1: to monopolize power in any walk of life. But what
Speaker 1: is the sense of being against a man simply because
Speaker 1: of his birth quote? In response to Churchill's challenge, Hitler
Speaker 1: refused to meet with him that day, and Churchill later
Speaker 1: stated that quote Hitler then lost his only chance of
Speaker 1: meeting with me later on, when he was all powerful.
Speaker 1: I was to receive several invitations from him, but by
Speaker 1: that time a lot had happened, and I excused myself. Now,
Speaker 1: Cooper's implication of Winston Churchill as an anti Semite of
Speaker 1: similar caliber as Hitler was self evidently problematic. Thanks to hindsight,
Speaker 1: but it is also demonstrable of selective application of historical agency.
Speaker 1: To bring that up again, the problem is that this
Speaker 1: appeared to be applying agency based on, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning, rather than a more coherent view of human
Speaker 1: motivation and interaction. Churchill and Hitler made their own choices,
Speaker 1: both in response to one another and independent of one another.
Speaker 1: It is a deterministic fallacy to believe, as Cooper seemed
Speaker 1: to be doing in his assessment, that Hitler was pushed
Speaker 1: into the choices that he made by the choices that
Speaker 1: Churchill made. That is, that Churchill possessed all the agency
Speaker 1: in the world and that Hitler possessed none, or at
Speaker 1: least significantly less. This framing can be seen from Cooper's
Speaker 1: original claim in the Carlson interview that quote Churchill wanted
Speaker 1: a war, he wanted to fight Germany unquote, while claiming
Speaker 1: in his follow up thread that quote Hitler said.
Speaker 2: He did not want war unquote.
Speaker 1: Now, taking the notoriously dishonest Hitler at his word, especially
Speaker 1: with the benefit of hindsight, is a curious choice. But again,
Speaker 1: the real point is that it suggests motivated reasoning at
Speaker 1: work rather than an examination of the evidence from the history,
Speaker 1: it's quite clear that Hitler wanted war, but just not
Speaker 1: with Britain, at least not right away. Churchill also likely
Speaker 1: wanted war, but as we have seen, it was thanks
Speaker 1: to a growing distrust of the then obviously dishonest dictator's
Speaker 1: motives and openly admitted desire for more Laban's realm. What
Speaker 1: Churchill understood then, just as many of us more clearly
Speaker 1: understand now, is that a push for territorial acquisition is
Speaker 1: never going to be peaceful, not really, especially when it
Speaker 1: involves people that you frequently and loudly designated as undesirable
Speaker 1: at best and subhuman at worst.
Speaker 2: One might point to the.
Speaker 1: Fact that the head Nazi racial theorist Alfred Rosenberg didn't
Speaker 1: speak very ill of the Slavic peoples to the east,
Speaker 1: but he was constantly made fun of and criticized for
Speaker 1: that view by who else, Adolf Hitler. Now, you could
Speaker 1: be your average aristocratic anti Semite like Churchill supposedly was,
Speaker 1: and still understand the potential for monstrous consequences at appeasing
Speaker 1: such a regime's actions. However, according to Cooper, the British
Speaker 1: essentially involving themselves in the affairs of Poland after it
Speaker 1: was invaded and ripped apart by Europe's reigning totalitarian forces
Speaker 1: that is Nazism and Stalinism. That was their biggest crime.
Speaker 1: This is because by the British guaranteeing war that is
Speaker 1: World War this was really what placed the crosshairs on
Speaker 1: the backs of Jews and millions of other civilians in
Speaker 1: the Eastern territories. It does not take the responsibility off
Speaker 1: of Hitler for doing so, and Cooper does not make
Speaker 1: that argument. He actually makes it very clear was Hitler's responsibility,
Speaker 1: But he still makes a causal claim, a deterministic claim
Speaker 1: that had it not been for the behavior of Winston Churchill,
Speaker 1: none of that would have happened. By linking Britain's involvement
Speaker 1: in churchills supposed bloodthirstiness to how the Second World War
Speaker 1: and thus the Holocaust turned out in the East, Cooper
Speaker 1: revealed not just another in my opinion, major blind spot
Speaker 1: in the history of the conflict, but also let himself
Speaker 1: get sucked into the most controversial part of his analysis.
Speaker 1: In the interview with Carlson, Cooper claimed the following, you.
Speaker 3: Know Germany, look, they put themselves into a position, and
Speaker 3: Adolf Hitler is chiefly responsible for this, but his old
Speaker 3: regime is responsible for it that when they went into
Speaker 3: the East in nineteen forty one, they launched a war
Speaker 3: where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions
Speaker 3: and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners
Speaker 3: and so forth that they were going to have to handle.
Speaker 3: They went in with no plan for that, and they
Speaker 3: just threw these people into camps and millions of people
Speaker 3: ended up dead there.
Speaker 1: You know, you.
Speaker 3: Have like letters as early as July August nineteen forty
Speaker 3: one from commandants of these makeshift camps that they're setting
Speaker 3: up for these millions of people who were surrendering or
Speaker 3: people that round it up and there, so it's two
Speaker 3: months after month or two after Barbara Rooscha was launched,
Speaker 3: and they're writing back to the high command in Berlin saying,
Speaker 3: we can't feed these people. We don't have the food
Speaker 3: to feed these people. And one of them actually says,
Speaker 3: rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter,
Speaker 3: wouldn't it be more humane to just finish them off
Speaker 3: quickly now? And so this is like two months into
Speaker 3: the invasion, right, and like my view, on this. You know,
Speaker 3: I argue with my Zionist interlocutors about this all the
Speaker 3: time with regard to the current war in Gaza. Book man, like,
Speaker 3: maybe you, as the you know, the Germans, you felt
Speaker 3: like you had to invade to the east. Maybe you
Speaker 3: thought that Stalin was such a threat, or that if
Speaker 3: he wants a surprise attack and sees the oil fields
Speaker 3: in Romania, that you would now not have the fuel
Speaker 3: to actually respond and you'd be crippled and all of
Speaker 3: Europe would be under threat, and whatever it was, whatever
Speaker 3: it was that like, maybe you thought you had to
Speaker 3: do that. But at the end the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you launched that war with no plan to care for
Speaker 3: the millions and millions of civilians and prisoners of war
Speaker 3: that were going to come under your control, and millions
Speaker 3: of people died because of that.
Speaker 1: The characterization there was, to put it, mildly striking, and
Speaker 1: it was understandable that, along with the comments that Cooper
Speaker 1: made about Churchill, that many observers were so offended by
Speaker 1: this because it seemed to demonstrate a willingness to offer
Speaker 1: the Nazis the benefit of the doubt, where it has
Speaker 1: long been agreed that there is no evidence to support that.
Speaker 1: The open ended phrasing also allowed people to easily use
Speaker 1: their imaginations on what was being implied, since it sounded
Speaker 1: very similar to things that had been stated by people
Speaker 1: like David Irving, the famous British historian of World War
Speaker 1: Two who was eventually outed as an outright Holocaust denier. However,
Speaker 1: what Cooper was saying was spoken off the cuff, and
Speaker 1: he elaborated a little further in its response over on X,
Speaker 1: writing that quote. Would Germany have eventually attacked the Soviet Union, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but they would not have done so in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one if England had agreed to end a
Speaker 1: war which had no hope of victory, short of expanding
Speaker 1: it into a much larger conflict by bringing in the USA,
Speaker 1: USSR or both. That's a little better in terms of clarification,
Speaker 1: but the claim is still very broad, as it remains
Speaker 1: in Cooper's much more fleshed out explanation on his sub stack.
Speaker 1: He concludes his explanation there in a similar way, arguing
Speaker 1: that quote. The second objection is that Hitler had always
Speaker 1: had his eyes set on the East and would have
Speaker 1: eventually invaded regardless of what the allies did, and that
Speaker 1: may be true. Jim Jones and the hostage taking father
Speaker 1: may have killed their families no matter how much they
Speaker 1: were appeased, but maybe not, and agree or disagree that
Speaker 1: maybe is worthy of discussion. While Cooper is certainly entitled
Speaker 1: to his own open mindedness on this question, specifically related
Speaker 1: to Hitler's intentions, and I do respect him for that,
Speaker 1: unless he's actively avoiding the vast majority of available evidence
Speaker 1: that exists on this subject while doing the main research
Speaker 1: for this series he's working on, he's not likely going
Speaker 1: to come away with a much different conclusion than that
Speaker 1: of the mainstream once he stacks up all of that
Speaker 1: available evidence. This is because there is less evidence suggesting
Speaker 1: maybe or maybe not about what Hitler planned for the
Speaker 1: East than there is the amount of evidence suggesting that
Speaker 1: Hitler absolutely knew what.
Speaker 2: He was going to do with the East.
Speaker 1: Similarly, there is no evidence suggesting that there was no
Speaker 1: plan for what to do with the people who already
Speaker 1: live there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The context that Daryl provided in his follow up post
Speaker 1: was welcome, and his speaking off the cufftering the Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson interview is not going to be the best representation
Speaker 1: of his interpretations. However, because that phrasing is what set
Speaker 1: this controversy off to begin with, it really is worth
Speaker 1: unpacking with as much clarity as possible. To imply that
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and then later the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union was carried out with no plan and done only
Speaker 1: because of Britain's in transigence is simply untrue. Obviously, that
Speaker 1: is an oversimplified presentation of what Daryl was saying, but
Speaker 1: that is the essence of how most people interpreted it
Speaker 1: because of how it was phrased. The thing that needs
Speaker 1: to be understood and was not clearly understood based on
Speaker 1: how Daryl phrased everything when he was talking about this stuff,
Speaker 1: is that the Nazis from Hitler on down always had
Speaker 1: a plan, and one that was largely independent of anything
Speaker 1: Great Britain set or did. That doesn't mean they weren't
Speaker 1: impacted by what Great Britain set or did, but their
Speaker 1: plan was independent of that, and the problem for them
Speaker 1: was not that there was no plan, it was that
Speaker 1: their plan kept changing, thanks largely to circumstances created by
Speaker 1: the choices made by the Nazi leadership. It is important
Speaker 1: to reiterate here that These choices made by the Nazi
Speaker 1: leadership were not merely made as reactions to other leaders choices,
Speaker 1: as Cooper suggests with his claims about Winston Churchill like
Speaker 1: I was saying, they made their own choices. The best
Speaker 1: example of this was something we talked about on History
Speaker 1: Impossible in one of the episodes of the Balkan Inferno trilogy,
Speaker 1: specifically about the decision by Hitler to send thousands of
Speaker 1: troops and aircraft into Yugoslavia on April sixth, nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: and subsequently partitioning the kingdom and divving it up among
Speaker 1: the Axis powers. Hitler was not compelled to issue Feodor
Speaker 1: Directive number twenty five on March twenty seventh, nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one by Winston Churchill's belligerence or desire to spill German blood.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was because he was so enraged by
Speaker 1: a poorly executed and badly planned coup de ta that
Speaker 1: had been launched by Yugoslav military leaders opposed to the
Speaker 1: absolutist Serb monarchy that had been making promises to the Germans.
Speaker 1: You might remember this quote from that episode where we
Speaker 1: talked about that from William Shire's The Rise involved the
Speaker 1: Third Reich, where he wrote of the Furi's reaction as
Speaker 1: follows quote. The coup in Belgrade threw Adolf Hitler into
Speaker 1: one of the wildest rages of his entire life. He
Speaker 1: took it as a personal affront, and in his fury
Speaker 1: made sudden decisions which would prove utterly disastrous to the
Speaker 1: fortunes of the Third Reich. He hurriedly summoned his military
Speaker 1: chieftains to the Chancellery in Berlin on March twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: and raged about the revenge he would take on the Yugoslavs.
Speaker 1: The Belgrade coup, he said, had endangered both the planned
Speaker 1: invasion of Greece and even more the planned invasion of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. He was therefore determined, without waiting for
Speaker 1: possible declarations of loyalty of the new government, to destroy
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia militarily as a nation. No diplomatic inquiries will be made,
Speaker 1: he ordered, and no ultimatums presented. Yugoslavia, he added, would
Speaker 1: be crushed with unmerciful harshness unquote. It is important to
Speaker 1: note that Hitler did accuse Britain of quote unquote pulling
Speaker 1: the strings with this coup and it would actually turn
Speaker 1: out that they did play a role in setting the
Speaker 1: tone for the coup to happen. As you might recall,
Speaker 1: we covered a bit in the first episode of the
Speaker 1: Bulkan Inferno trilogy. But here's the thing. In nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: Hitler had already been at war with Britain for nearly
Speaker 1: two years, and ultimately he took his rage out on
Speaker 1: the Yugoslavs, whose coup plotters were already planning on making
Speaker 1: a deal with the Axis, which they had made pretty clear.
Speaker 1: And ultimately it was Yugoslav citizens who would suffer tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of casualties in Germany's initial invasion, never mind
Speaker 1: the chaos that was unleashed by the subsequent partition of
Speaker 1: the Old Kingdom. The point remains that Hitler made his
Speaker 1: own choice and was based on rage and wounded pride,
Speaker 1: and it was not one that he had to make
Speaker 1: to begin with, and he could have simply continued his
Speaker 1: plan to unleash Operation Barbarossa in May of nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: not altering the timetable as his Yugoslav adventures ultimately did.
Speaker 1: Now it has been claimed by some historians, including by
Speaker 1: William Shire, that the Yugoslav partition operation is what caused
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany the ability to make the necessary headway for
Speaker 1: Operation Barbarossa to be a success. That is certainly debatable,
Speaker 1: and I'm not here to weigh in one way or
Speaker 1: the other, but what this demonstrates is quite the opposite
Speaker 1: of what Cooper appeared to be claiming in the Tucker
Speaker 1: Carls interview that instead of there being no plan, there
Speaker 1: were actually many plans, and oftentimes they were changing at
Speaker 1: a rapid pace and at the whim of one out
Speaker 1: of control man. The fact that there were plenty of
Speaker 1: plans in place when it came to the invasion of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union is also very well known, refuting the
Speaker 1: implication that Nazi Germany simply threw together an invasion with
Speaker 1: no notion of what kind of actions would be quote
Speaker 1: unquote necessary when it came to their ultimate goal of
Speaker 1: territorial expansion, and as a consequence, what ultimately became millions
Speaker 1: of civilians and prisoners of war.
Speaker 2: Quote unquote ending up dead.
Speaker 1: That phrasing that Cooper used, ending up dead, also carries
Speaker 1: with it a pretty obvious moral error, but there was
Speaker 1: very careful, especially in his follow up posts to make
Speaker 1: it clear that the Nazis did not just basically accident
Speaker 1: their way into the Holocaust. That was not what he
Speaker 1: was saying. However, the emphasis on a lack of preparedness,
Speaker 1: as well as the idea of the Nazis believing that
Speaker 1: summary execution was a mercy given that lack of preparedness,
Speaker 1: just does not track with the multitudes of evidence that
Speaker 1: is available. The evidence that Cooper used does support this
Speaker 1: framing to be fair, namely the letter from SS administrator
Speaker 1: Rolf Heinz Hoopner to Adolf Eichmann that Cooper quoted both
Speaker 1: in his response thread and his follow up post. In fact,
Speaker 1: the celebrated historian Christopher Browning wrote that he believed this
Speaker 1: memo from Hoopner was among the first pre vancie confirmations
Speaker 1: of what would ultimately be the fate of Europe's Jews.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that is not completely at odds with Cooper's interpretation, since,
Speaker 1: as he wrote in his follow up post, quote lack
Speaker 1: of food was at the very least used as an
Speaker 1: excuse for murder, one which may have helped overcome the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of men like this Hoopner, who did not seem
Speaker 1: overjoyed at the prospect of mass killing.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: However, even with the at the very least qualifier, there
Speaker 1: still does appear to be an implication that mass killing
Speaker 1: was not necessarily part of the original plan, and if
Speaker 1: that's the case, that simply does not hold water. As
Speaker 1: Christopher Browning also notes, quote, immediately after the invasion of
Speaker 1: the USSR, Himmler and Hedrick traveled together behind the advancing
Speaker 1: German lines, inciting and sanctioning the execution of Jews and
Speaker 1: recruiting killing units beyond the Einsatzgrup, And for this task
Speaker 1: after Midsummer, both Hadrick and Himmler gave instructions to different
Speaker 1: units to now target Jewish women and children. Although the
Speaker 1: onset of the Final Solution in Soviet territory Midsummer nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one sealed the fate of Soviet Jews, the fate
Speaker 1: of the rest of European Jewry remained undecided. Hadrik did
Speaker 1: not need a new authorization to continue his previous planning.
Speaker 1: He procured one from Gourring on July thirty one to
Speaker 1: submit a plan for a final solution for the Jews
Speaker 1: and the rest of the German sphere in Europe. Precisely
Speaker 1: because he faced a new task determining if and how
Speaker 1: the final Solution underway on Soviet territory could be extended
Speaker 1: to the rest of Europe. Cooper was right to point
Speaker 1: out that Hupner did not like what was being implied
Speaker 1: by the realities staring at him in the face. In
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen forty one, however, as Browning points out,
Speaker 1: mass executions were already taking place, primarily from the infamous
Speaker 1: ss Einstotskropen squads. These forces were indeed set in directly
Speaker 1: behind the Wehrmacht, specifically with the orders to massacre what
Speaker 1: ultimately became about a million and a half people, a
Speaker 1: third of which were killed within six months, and they
Speaker 1: were eventually done with the help of the reserve police
Speaker 1: battalions that Browning covered in his masterpiece Ordinary Men Reserve
Speaker 1: Police Battalion one oh one. In The Final Solution in Poland,
Speaker 1: Browning explains that he believes consensus on the so called
Speaker 1: Jewish question was reached in October of nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: but that is merely consensus. As we have seen, there
Speaker 1: was already plenty of clarity among Hitler's inner circle on
Speaker 1: what must be done with the broad category of quote
Speaker 1: unquote enemies of the Reich that the Nazi forces came
Speaker 1: across and their pushed.
Speaker 2: To the east.
Speaker 1: As Berleg and Hipperman point out in their monograph on
Speaker 1: Nazi racial policies, Hitler ordered the execution of Soviet functionaries
Speaker 1: who were quote less valuable Asiatics, Gypsies and Jews quote
Speaker 1: by the insets good open squads. There is no doubt
Speaker 1: about the intentions of such orders, and as Neil Ferguson
Speaker 1: pointed out in his two thousand and six book War
Speaker 1: of the World, quote from the outset, Hitler had determined
Speaker 1: that his campaign against the Soviet Union would be fought
Speaker 1: according to new rules, or rather without rules at all.
Speaker 1: It was to be, as he told his generals on
Speaker 1: March thirtieth, a quote unquote war of extermination in which
Speaker 1: the idea of soldierly comradeship would have no place. This
Speaker 1: meant the quote destruct of the Bolshevik kammissars and the
Speaker 1: Communist intelligentsiaquote. The decision systematically to shoot certain Red Army prisoners,
Speaker 1: foreshadowed by the brutal way the war in Poland had
Speaker 1: been fought, was taken on the eve of Operation Barbarosa
Speaker 1: and subsequently elaborated on during the campaign. The Guidelines for
Speaker 1: the conduct of Troops in Russia issued on May nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, called for quote ruthless and vigorous measures
Speaker 1: against the Bolshevik insiders, gorillas, saboteurs and Jews, as implied
Speaker 1: by what was being stated in that quote from Neil Ferguson.
Speaker 1: But important to really dwell on for a moment. The
Speaker 1: atrocities against civilians were already occurring well before Operation Barbarosa,
Speaker 1: mere days into the invasion of Poland on September one,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. These atrocities had already been set into
Speaker 1: motion before the invasion thanks to the quote unquote famously
Speaker 1: thorough SS practices put in place by Heinrich Himmler and
Speaker 1: Reinhardt Hadrich. To use the words of historian Richard Rhodes
Speaker 1: in his book Masters of Death, the s S Einsatzgruppen
Speaker 1: and the Invention of the Holocaust, Rhoades quotes from an
Speaker 1: SS officer who explained their indexing system as quote a
Speaker 1: series of lists including the names of every active member
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party, as well as quote all of
Speaker 1: the non party intelligentsia and listings of scholars, teachers, writers
Speaker 1: and journalists, priests, public officials, upwardly mobile peasants, and the
Speaker 1: most prominent industrialists in bankers. And it also listed quote
Speaker 1: relatives and friends in case any subversive scum tried to hide.
Speaker 1: Given the Nazi's propensity for collective punishment measures even in
Speaker 1: response to mere suspicion, one can see what the policy
Speaker 1: would lead to if it was not yet clear enough. However,
Speaker 1: Quotes from an englishwoman eye witness to one of the
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fourteen mass executions that occurred after the
Speaker 1: German invasion of Poland, this one in the town of
Speaker 1: bid Gushed, which would come to be known as the
Speaker 1: Valley of Death.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: The first victims of the campaign were a number of
Speaker 1: boy scouts from twelve to sixteen years of age, who
Speaker 1: were set up in the marketplace against a wall and shot.
Speaker 1: No reason was given. A devoted priest who rushed to
Speaker 1: administer the last sacrament, was shot too. He received five wounds.
Speaker 1: A pole said afterwards that the sight of those children
Speaker 1: lying dead was the most piteous of all the horrors
Speaker 1: that he saw.
Speaker 2: That week.
Speaker 1: The murders continued thirty four of the leading tradespeople and
Speaker 1: merchants of the town were shot, and many other leading citizens.
Speaker 2: End quote.
Speaker 1: Tosses water on any notion that there was any sense
Speaker 1: of necessity or a lack of proper planning in place.
Speaker 1: This is clearly the thirst for blood. There are other reasons,
Speaker 1: more specific reasons that the idea of there being no
Speaker 1: plan or poor planning, even when it comes to the
Speaker 1: Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, simply do not stack
Speaker 1: up in the face of the historical record. For one
Speaker 1: of those specific reasons, the basis of Operation Barbarossa's territorial acquisitions,
Speaker 1: known as the AA line referring to Archangelskan the North
Speaker 1: an Ostra Khan in the South, was put forth by
Speaker 1: Hitler on December eighteenth, nineteen forty, under the name Feuire
Speaker 1: Directive twenty one, a full six months before the actual
Speaker 1: invasion was set to take place, and even longer after
Speaker 1: the delay that was caused by the invasion of Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: The AA line in that directive can be traced even
Speaker 1: further back to a military study drafted by General Eric
Speaker 1: Marx published in the summer of nineteen forty, a full
Speaker 1: year before Operation Barbarossa was supposed to take place. However,
Speaker 1: it is clear that there were already plans for an
Speaker 1: invasion of the Soviet Union in place, with it also
Speaker 1: being made clear, at the very least through strong implication
Speaker 1: that it would be a war of extermination. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, Hitler spoke to his generals of engaging in
Speaker 1: a racial war with the Soviets, as we've covered, while
Speaker 1: Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's propaganda machine was putting out NonStop
Speaker 1: content depicting the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as a
Speaker 1: land populated with racial undesirables. The propaganda film that Iviga
Speaker 1: Yuda the Eternal Jew was released on November twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, and contained the now infamous visual comparisons of
Speaker 1: Jews and vermin. A Nazi reviewer of the film even
Speaker 1: wrote that the film made it clear that quote we
Speaker 1: are the initiators of the fight against world Jewry, which
Speaker 1: now directs its hate, its brutal, greed, and destructive will
Speaker 1: toward us. We must win this battle for ourselves, for Europe,
Speaker 1: for the world.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: This was merely one film and one reviewer's interpretation of it,
Speaker 1: but both were one among many. The strong implication of
Speaker 1: what the Nazis must do in response to their so
Speaker 1: called Jewish problem could not be clearer. What seems to
Speaker 1: be a constant in Cooper's skepticism is the idea that
Speaker 1: there was preemptive intentionality when it came to the destruction
Speaker 1: of Europe's Jews. In other words, he seems to want
Speaker 1: to avoid saying that that it was intended, especially from
Speaker 1: early on. This is actually at root why I do
Speaker 1: not believe he is a Holocaust denier, as has been accused.
Speaker 1: He has not and still does not deny that the
Speaker 1: Nazis killed the Jews in the numbers that they did,
Speaker 1: and that they hated the Jews. He made that very clear,
Speaker 1: and not just his response to this, but in past
Speaker 1: episodes he has talked about this. It is his connection
Speaker 1: between that hatred and that killing that comes across as
Speaker 1: weak to me, though, because, like I was saying, he
Speaker 1: has shown no indication that he believes the Nazis set
Speaker 1: out to eliminate the Jews from Europe by any means
Speaker 1: necessary from day one, or at least before the war
Speaker 1: even started. This is the old functionalist versus intentionalist argument,
Speaker 1: though I don't think there's really much debate left to
Speaker 1: be had about that. Now, this could be construed as
Speaker 1: a type of revisionist prudence, but given the problems with
Speaker 1: his interpretations, combined with the evidence that is already available
Speaker 1: and well known by scholars, I believe that his skepticism
Speaker 1: or prudence, whatever you want to frame it as on
Speaker 1: this point is unwarranted. It also requires some unpacking. A
Speaker 1: frequent argument brought into this conversation with anyone who wants
Speaker 1: to revise the history of the Second World War is
Speaker 1: the so called Madagascar Plan, in which the Nazis would
Speaker 1: ship Jews under their sphere of control to Madagascar in
Speaker 1: order to be rid of them. While this is obviously
Speaker 1: a form of ethnic cleansing on paper, it also does
Speaker 1: not come across as monstrous as what eventually happened in
Speaker 1: places like Auschwitz, and of course that comes across as
Speaker 1: significantly less terrible. Those who wish to blame Great Britain
Speaker 1: for the jews ultimate fate will also point to the
Speaker 1: fact that had Britain not gunn for war in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, their control of Mediterranean Sea lanes, which the
Speaker 1: Germans expected to have taken by nineteen forty would not
Speaker 1: have prevented the Madagascar Plan from being dead in its
Speaker 1: crib and thus prevent the necessity of the gas chambers. However,
Speaker 1: this is a simplistic interpretation that, like a lot of
Speaker 1: things in this controversy, places far to which charity in
Speaker 1: the minds of the Nazi leadership. According to historian David Blackburn,
Speaker 1: the Madagascar Plan was welcomed across the board by just
Speaker 1: about everybody, including Eichmann, Headrich Himmler and Hitler himself. However,
Speaker 1: as Blackburn writes, quote, it hardly needs to be said
Speaker 1: that implementation of the Madagascar Plan would have meant high
Speaker 1: death rates by attrition, and it was intended to. After
Speaker 1: the abortion of the Madagascar Plan, places like the Pripet
Speaker 1: Marshes and even the Arctic Circle were suggested. The former
Speaker 1: was considered quote arable land yet to be cultivated unquote.
Speaker 1: According to a Reich Office of Regional Planning report discussing
Speaker 1: the use of forced labor, which had been implemented into law,
Speaker 1: it should be noted in nineteen thirty nine, and the latter,
Speaker 1: given the environs of the Arctic Circle was little different
Speaker 1: than the Turk sending the Armenians into the desert in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, As Blackburn writes, quote, there is no doubt that,
Speaker 1: like the Madagascar Plan before it, the idea of forcing
Speaker 1: Jews to quote unquote settle and perform forced labor here
Speaker 1: or in the Arctic Circle was an intentionally genocidal proposal unquote.
Speaker 1: Genocide by expulsion to inhospitable land, genocide through attrition, or
Speaker 1: genocide by gas chamber, all with the purpose of eliminating
Speaker 1: a so called racist people. Genocide is genocide, especially when
Speaker 1: the purpose of complete elimination is as clear as it was.
Speaker 1: This attitude can be seen in a speech given at
Speaker 1: a Nazi Party reception given in Lublin in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, where to raucus laughter, the head of
Speaker 1: the German General Government and occupied Poland, Hans Frank said, quote,
Speaker 1: whether they go to Madagascar or somewhere else, none of
Speaker 1: that that interests us. We are clear that the best
Speaker 1: thing for this mismash of Asiatic progeny is that they
Speaker 1: slouched back to Asia where they have come from. The
Speaker 1: plan to take the lands in the east and replace
Speaker 1: the people who existed in those lands came long before
Speaker 1: war was even declared in nineteen thirty nine. Adolf Hitler
Speaker 1: himself had been speaking of invading and taking the lands
Speaker 1: to the east, namely Russia, for over a decade and
Speaker 1: a half by the time Operation Barbarossa began and analyzing
Speaker 1: mine Kampf Rodrik Stackelberg explained in his nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: book Hitler's Germany Origins Interpretations Legacies that Hitler's designs for
Speaker 1: Russia were quite clear by nineteen twenty five, especially when
Speaker 1: he spoke of the need for adrang nach Austen or
Speaker 1: drive to the East, writing to mine Kampf that quote,
Speaker 1: it is eastwards only and always eastward, that the veins
Speaker 1: of our race must expand. It is the direction which
Speaker 1: Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples.
Speaker 1: It is therefore extremely doubtful that this meant simply stopping
Speaker 1: in Poland when General Plan ost placed the Ural Mountains
Speaker 1: as the natural border against which the new Third Reich
Speaker 1: would abut. And this view that he was expressing as
Speaker 1: early as nineteen twenty five was not some fringe view.
Speaker 1: In isolation, the German geographer Martin Buergener was instrumental in
Speaker 1: providing quote unquote natural justifications to Germany taking these lands,
Speaker 1: particularly when describing them in his travels there in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen thirties as a quote unquote gray dark wilderness
Speaker 1: where the masses that is, Slavs and Jews were quote
Speaker 1: vegetating in hopeless apathy. According to Burgener, the main impediment
Speaker 1: to developing these lands were the Jews and Slavs living
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: They were the reason the lands were so fettied and disgusting,
Speaker 1: as he saw them, Thus their removal and replacement with
Speaker 1: quote unquote healthier Germans would be necessary. This was all
Speaker 1: derived from German naturalistic explanations that have been circulating through
Speaker 1: the German academies for nearly a century by then, and
Speaker 1: they were enthusiastically incorporated into what David Blackburn describes as
Speaker 1: quote the national socialist vocabulary of blood, soil, living space,
Speaker 1: and above all race unquote. Given all this and much
Speaker 1: more that exists in the scholarship, there is plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence to suggest that something, and it's quite clear what
Speaker 1: if you ask me, was always in the works regarding
Speaker 1: the Eastern territories at some level within the Nazi leadership.
Speaker 1: It is also extremely doubtful that there was not an
Speaker 1: awareness of who was already living in these places, what
Speaker 1: was already thought about them as a people, and what
Speaker 1: would be necessary in order for the long held dream
Speaker 1: of Dragnach Austin to be completed. There is simply no
Speaker 1: evidence for a lack of a plan, and there is
Speaker 1: a wealth of evidence for their being perhaps an overabundance
Speaker 1: of plans. There is also no evidence that avoiding war
Speaker 1: with Britain and France would have somehow quelled such savage
Speaker 1: violence to be unleashed on the men, women and children
Speaker 1: that the Wehrmacht, the SS and Reserve Police battalions came
Speaker 1: across when they pushed east, not when the evidence that
Speaker 1: is available suggests the exact opposite. It is important to
Speaker 1: point out that there is an element of truth in
Speaker 1: discussing the lack of appropriate preparation the Nazis had when
Speaker 1: it came to their quote unquote Eastern operations, but it
Speaker 1: was not necessarily in the way that Cooper had described it.
Speaker 1: The problem that the Nazi leadership was not prepared for
Speaker 1: was a psychologue told that such mass murder was going
Speaker 1: to take on soldiers, both volunteers and especially conscripts. Christopher
Speaker 1: Browning's famous work that I mentioned earlier, Ordinary Men, paint
Speaker 1: an incredible picture of this. Hence why I recommend it
Speaker 1: among many other books about this subject, because it illustrates
Speaker 1: both the horror that many of these men felt and
Speaker 1: more to the point, the eventual resignation that they experienced
Speaker 1: and taking part in such ghastly atrocities thanks to the
Speaker 1: simple brutal realities of self imposed social pressure. In this
Speaker 1: narrow sense, the Nazis were not prepared for anything like
Speaker 1: that Battalion and obviously many others experienced as they butchered Jews,
Speaker 1: Polls and Russian POWs by the hundreds of thousands. This was,
Speaker 1: in large part, along with a push for efficiency and
Speaker 1: a desire for slave labor, what led to the construction
Speaker 1: of extermination factories like Auschwitz, Treblinka, helm No Sobibor Belzek.
Speaker 2: And my Dank.
Speaker 1: The thinking went that it would be much easier to
Speaker 1: kill multitudes of unwanted civilians by shoving them behind a
Speaker 1: sealed door and letting them be gassed, and then having
Speaker 1: more slaves disposed of the bodies, rather than shooting them
Speaker 1: all in the back of the head into open pits. However,
Speaker 1: the point remains the same. Even if there is an
Speaker 1: element of poor planning in that regard the plan or
Speaker 1: plans changed, that does not mean there was no plan
Speaker 1: or even poor planning, and that does not mean that
Speaker 1: the Nazis were not operating with literal genocidal intent. That
Speaker 1: has been proven in every way possible. However, imperfectly the
Speaker 1: plans to accomplish this outcome are what changed. As Victor
Speaker 1: Davis Hansen has written that even though quote some of
Speaker 1: the invading Wehrmacht officers may have been disturbed, the sheer
Speaker 1: mass of captives and Germans inability to offer even the
Speaker 1: bare essentials of humane treatment their deaths were consistent with
Speaker 1: prior Feurier directives for the future resettling of Western Russia.
Speaker 1: What never changed, unlike the plans that were put in place,
Speaker 1: was what came to be known colloquially as Hitler's prophecy
Speaker 1: that appeared in his speech before the Reichstag on January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. In his speech, he made it clear
Speaker 1: who he was blaming for the coming conflagration that he
Speaker 1: already knew was going to happen, and it was not
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill or the British Empire quote. If international finance
Speaker 1: Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the
Speaker 1: nations once more into a world war, the result will
Speaker 1: not be the bolshevisation of the Earth and thereby the
Speaker 1: victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race
Speaker 1: in Europe. Now one may ask, why do we take
Speaker 1: Hitler and by extension, the Third Reich itself at his
Speaker 1: and their word here and not when he was supposedly
Speaker 1: making his overtures toward peace, Because what he said here
Speaker 1: lines up with what led up to and happened in
Speaker 1: the Second World War in the Holocaust, and what he
Speaker 1: said in his peace overtures did not, both obviously after
Speaker 1: the fact as well as before, along with the multitudes
Speaker 1: of other evidence of what Hitler's long term intentions for
Speaker 1: the Eastern territories clearly were, and along with the propaganda
Speaker 1: and rhetoric that he was engaging in. He was not
Speaker 1: simply saying the Jews would be to blame for another
Speaker 1: World war for the first time or the last time.
Speaker 1: He had reportedly said it in private meetings in the
Speaker 1: wake of Christallnacht in nineteen thirty eight, and he continued
Speaker 1: to say it in the years that followed. As Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Hurf noted in his own monograph on the subject, the
Speaker 1: Jewish enemy Nazi propaganda during World War II. In the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: Hitler was very upfront about how he felt about what
Speaker 1: was happening to the Jews, stating in a speech on
Speaker 1: September thirtieth, nineteen forty two, quote, the Jews in Germany
Speaker 1: once laughed about my prophecies. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: are laughing today or if the laughter has already gone
Speaker 1: out of them. I can promise only one thing, they
Speaker 1: will stop laughing everywhere, and with this prophecy as well,
Speaker 1: I will be proved right unquote. The fact that there
Speaker 1: are still people questioning whether or not the Holocaust would
Speaker 1: have happened as it did is not necessarily an indictment
Speaker 1: on them or their questions. I think that assumption is unfair,
Speaker 1: because the Holocaust, with its deliberate industrialized nature and sheer
Speaker 1: scale and cruelty, along with its fundamental tether to the
Speaker 1: ideology of national socialism itself, is truly unthinkable. It's unimagined.
Speaker 1: It's not capitulation to a corrupt establishment or the marvel
Speaker 1: cinematic universification of history.
Speaker 2: To state this.
Speaker 1: Now that the throat clearing like that might be irritating
Speaker 1: and a waste of time, as Cooper suggested in his
Speaker 1: substack post from September seventh, twenty twenty four, explaining this
Speaker 1: whole thing and fair enough, but asking such questions about
Speaker 1: the motives at work in the Holocaust in a way
Speaker 1: that diminishes the obvious villainy of Adolph Hitler, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is not nuance, nor is it even forbidden. All it
Speaker 1: really does is it tends toward basic moral contrarianism that
Speaker 1: is already very familiar, and it continues to have fundamental
Speaker 1: problems with its sourcing. If the problems with Cooper's analysis
Speaker 1: of Churchill, the Second World Wars causes, and the intention
Speaker 1: behind the treatment of the Eastern peoples under the boot
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich were frustrating, than the sourcing he
Speaker 1: seemed to have used for such claims initially was even
Speaker 1: more so. As already mentioned, he admitted that he found
Speaker 1: inspiration in Pat Buchanan's work on the subject. However, it's
Speaker 1: important to point out that most scholars and critics seemed
Speaker 1: to be attributing Cooper's claim in the Tucker Carlson interview,
Speaker 1: which he has since somewhat walked back. I should note
Speaker 1: that is Cooper has that Churchill was in debt and
Speaker 1: had Zionist backers willing to bail him out as a
Speaker 1: potential quid pro quo on the Israel question, that claim
Speaker 1: these scholars and critics have been pointing out is most
Speaker 1: likely attributed to David Irving. Now, so I was complete
Speaker 1: in my research on this. I did my own digging,
Speaker 1: even making use of pro level AI to see where
Speaker 1: Cooper's comment about some people having made this claim, which
Speaker 1: is I believe the phrasing he used in the interview
Speaker 1: where it actually came from, and the original source actually
Speaker 1: seems to be Joseph Goebbels himself and the propaganda he
Speaker 1: had produced during the war. Now, I don't have any
Speaker 1: of David Irving's books myself, so I couldn't confirm or
Speaker 1: refute this. But considering he has a seven hundred plus
Speaker 1: page biography of Goebbels, it is not unreasonable to assume
Speaker 1: that's the main secondary source where this claim gets repeated. However,
Speaker 1: Daryl did not cite Irving directly he could well be
Speaker 1: planning to cover this controversy, this claim in this series
Speaker 1: and in a critical way. We just don't know, so
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessarily fair, at least for me
Speaker 1: at this stage to outright claim or agree that he
Speaker 1: is getting his information from Irving, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting, is not necessarily a bad thing. It
Speaker 1: just depends on how you approach it information that is,
Speaker 1: with the appropriate amount of skepticism. The same goes for
Speaker 1: citing Goebbels or any historical figure directly, Regardless, until Darryl
Speaker 1: starts citing the notorious historian known more for his Holocaust
Speaker 1: denial than the admittedly good work he had done in
Speaker 1: the past, a lot of historians did use him because
Speaker 1: he provided value. But until Darrell starts citing him directly,
Speaker 1: I see no reason to make such bad faith implications
Speaker 1: or claims. However, the citation of Buchanan does seem to
Speaker 1: be indicative of a trend seemingly present in this interpretation
Speaker 1: of the secondary sources from which Cooper was initially pulling.
Speaker 1: His other main secondary source, which he cited both in
Speaker 1: his ex response thread and in his follow up post. Thus,
Speaker 1: reasonably suggesting its importance in coming to the conclusions that
Speaker 1: he has come to this far is the book Human Smoke,
Speaker 1: The Beginnings of World War II The End of Civilization,
Speaker 1: written by the erotic novelist and self described pacifist Nicholson Baker.
Speaker 1: Now this is not to say that Cooper has not
Speaker 1: used other secondary sources in his research or looked directly
Speaker 1: at many of the primary sources he's used that are
Speaker 1: also found in Baker's book book. However, given the importance
Speaker 1: that Baker's work took in Cooper's later explanations of his comments,
Speaker 1: we are forced to assume that Baker's work is one
Speaker 1: of the main sources of information that he was using. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, even though I highlighted the fact that
Speaker 1: Nicholson Baker is an erotic novelist and pacifist rather than
Speaker 1: a historian, citing a non historian is not a crime,
Speaker 1: nor is it even completely pointless. The celebrated British novelist
Speaker 1: Martin Amos wrote a book called Cooba The Dread Laughter
Speaker 1: in the twenty million, and, for all of its historical
Speaker 1: faults and the riff that it caused between Amos and
Speaker 1: Christopher Hitchins, for a little, while it's still a very
Speaker 1: good book, and as far as I'm concerned, Nicholson Baker's
Speaker 1: work is no different. As a piece of nonfiction literature,
Speaker 1: it often tugs at the heartstrings, even in its clinical
Speaker 1: use of primary source documents. However, if one source has
Speaker 1: been criticized by multiple historians and journalists one month, at
Speaker 1: the very least acknowledge such controversy for the sake of transparency,
Speaker 1: especially if it's the only source one is actively citing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how I see it. At least, and
Speaker 1: at most, one should perhaps cite the criticisms and counter
Speaker 1: arguments themselves and let the reader or listener decide on
Speaker 1: their own. Now, it is impossible to say whether or
Speaker 1: not Cooper plans to do this with his upcoming podcast
Speaker 1: series on the subjects, so we shouldn't assume too much.
Speaker 1: But working with what we do have, the use of
Speaker 1: Baker's Human Smoke as the source to support the claims
Speaker 1: being made suggests a fundamental weakness in the scholarship at work.
Speaker 1: When Human Smoke was released in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: it faced an avalanche of criticism. Most pointed among them
Speaker 1: was the aforementioned Christopher Hitchins, who wrote The New Statesman
Speaker 1: that the title of the book alone was either quote
Speaker 1: very courageous or very tasteless, or conceivably both unquote. And
Speaker 1: this was not a compliment, because, as he continues, quote,
Speaker 1: I myself grew increasingly impatient with Baker's assumption of his
Speaker 1: own transgressiveness quote because quote I still detect something smug
Speaker 1: and vacant in the superior attitude struck by the peace lover.
Speaker 1: Hitchins's ultimate criticism, and one that I think resonates most
Speaker 1: relevantly to the current controversy, is this that those in
Speaker 1: the anti war faction quote underestimate and understate the radical
Speaker 1: evil of Nazism and fascism. They forget that many peace
Speaker 1: loving forces did the same at the time, and they
Speaker 1: are absolutist in their ahistoricism unquote. However, Hitchins, as a journalist,
Speaker 1: was not alone in his criticisms. Historians like Noel Malcolm,
Speaker 1: who people might recall I use a fair bit in
Speaker 1: my Bosnia related episode, as well as Piers Brandon, Dominic Sandbrooke,
Speaker 1: one of the co hosts of the Rest Is History podcasts,
Speaker 1: I should add, and Lewis Minand all had very strong
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, fair criticisms of the book's selective
Speaker 1: use of primary sources in order to promote a self
Speaker 1: described pacifist agenda. Noel Malcolm even went so far as
Speaker 1: to write for The Telegraph that Baker either engaged in
Speaker 1: quote unquote, incompetence or malice, but that quote so far
Speaker 1: as the reliability of this strangely childish book is concerned,
Speaker 1: it hardly matters which unquote. And Similarly, Sambrook expressed frustration
Speaker 1: in the same publication because while he quote dearly wanted
Speaker 1: to like this book because quote it is right and
Speaker 1: healthy for historians to puncture the patriotic myths of the
Speaker 1: Second World War, quote, he found it to be a
Speaker 1: quote self righteous book that cheapens the serious moral arguments
Speaker 1: Baker tries to make. Peers Brandon and Lewis Minand were
Speaker 1: both slightly less harsh, but no less pointed in their
Speaker 1: criticism that Baker had made some pretty serious errors in
Speaker 1: his sourcing, to the point that it had become fair
Speaker 1: to question his motives when writing the book in.
Speaker 2: The first place.
Speaker 1: As Minand wrote, quote, Baker's presentation may seem empirical. These
Speaker 1: things happened. You can look them up. No varnish has
Speaker 1: been applied, but the effect is entirely emotional because there
Speaker 1: is no nesting argument, no narrative to give events a context.
Speaker 1: This can be seen most I don't want to use
Speaker 1: the word devastatingly, but it's pretty bad. In Baker's selective
Speaker 1: use of a quote that Cooper also used in his
Speaker 1: response threat on X about Winston Churchill or Churchill stated
Speaker 1: that Leon Trotsky, in the end quote was still a Jew.
Speaker 1: Nothing could get over that quote. This was almost certainly
Speaker 1: meant by Baker to suggest that Churchill was as virulent
Speaker 1: an anti Semite as Hitler, or at least untrustworthy as
Speaker 1: a figure to be venerated as a friend of the Jews.
Speaker 1: And yet when looking at the full quote Baker used,
Speaker 1: it was clearly Churchill suggesting something different. Quote in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, so great was the appreciation among the military
Speaker 1: for Trotsky's personal attitude and system that he might well
Speaker 1: have been made dictator of Russia by the armed forces,
Speaker 1: but for one fatal obstacle. He was a Jew. He
Speaker 1: was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that hard fortune.
Speaker 1: When you have deserted your family repudiated your race, spat
Speaker 1: upon the religion of your father's, and lapped Jew and
Speaker 1: gentile in a common malignity. To be bulked of so
Speaker 1: great a prize for so narrow minded a reason, such intolerance,
Speaker 1: such pettiness, such bigotry, were indeed hard to bear unquote.
Speaker 1: This suggests not a malice towards Trotsky for being a Jew,
Speaker 1: but rather a broader appreciation of the circumstances in which
Speaker 1: Trotsky found himself. That is a notoriously anti Semitic Russian empire.
Speaker 1: The robbery of context in the original quote from Baker is,
Speaker 1: to put it bluntly galling. This is all to say
Speaker 1: that sourcing does matter. As Compact writer Jeff Schullenberger wrote
Speaker 1: in his own reaction to this affair, quote, this is
Speaker 1: a good illustration of why certain scholarly standards exist, even
Speaker 1: if they're often not well respected in current academia unquote,
Speaker 1: and that there is a broader pattern of quote the
Speaker 1: person who repudiates institutions only to reproduce the same errors
Speaker 1: he finds there mythmaking on a grand scale, and without
Speaker 1: any of their self correction mechanisms. As of right now,
Speaker 1: it is not clear how much of Cooper's sourcing is
Speaker 1: up to snuff, at least when it comes to making
Speaker 1: the claims that he has made publicly, and thus is
Speaker 1: running the risk of becoming what he is repudiating. Until
Speaker 1: he makes it perfectly clear what all of his sources
Speaker 1: are on this subject, what he ultimately claims will need
Speaker 1: to be taken with a very large grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Taking the word of a noted paleoconservative politician like Buchanan,
Speaker 1: or again an erotic novelist at Nicholson Baker simply is
Speaker 1: just not going to cut it, no matter how compellingly
Speaker 1: the points are made or the stories are being told,
Speaker 1: especially when it's clear both have engaged in selective quotation
Speaker 1: for their motivated reasoning. This is also because there are
Speaker 1: many other, far more reputable books that have been written
Speaker 1: about the Second World War from the German perspective. These
Speaker 1: include several memoirs that have been translated into English, some
Speaker 1: being controversial but definitely worth looking at, including the famous
Speaker 1: The Forgotten Soldier by Gie Mumino, Blood and Soil, the
Speaker 1: Memoir of a Third reich Brandenberger by Sep the Gianpietro,
Speaker 1: or Blood, Red Snow, The Memoirs of a German Soldier
Speaker 1: on the Eastern Front by Gunter Korscherrek and sol Dot
Speaker 1: Reflections of a German Soldier in nineteen thirty six to
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine by Zigfried Nappa. There's also no shortage
Speaker 1: of second andary sources, including Jonathan Triggs through the GERMANI
Speaker 1: series of books, An Aftermath Life in the Fallout of
Speaker 1: the Third righte nineteen forty five to nineteen fifty five
Speaker 1: by Harold Yanner. They're even broader cultural and social histories
Speaker 1: like Conrad yarro Ush's Broken Lives How Ordinary Germans Experienced
Speaker 1: the twentieth Century, which pulls together dozens of memoirs by
Speaker 1: Germans born in the nineteen twenties, and then, for an
Speaker 1: added twist of complexity, the memoirs that I used for
Speaker 1: one of my own episodes of Afro German Hans Massaqua
Speaker 1: destined to witness growing up black and Nazi Germany. If
Speaker 1: one wants to understand why Germans did what they did
Speaker 1: and why so many Germans believed in the nobility of
Speaker 1: the national socialists, all without the baggage of hindsight, modern
Speaker 1: contrarianism and motivated reasoning. This is where you start. You
Speaker 1: gather the leads found within all of these pages, and
Speaker 1: then connect them to further evidence that might have otherwise
Speaker 1: been missed as part of a larger picture. I find
Speaker 1: it very hard to believe that Daryl doesn't understand this process,
Speaker 1: or even that he has not already accumulated these sources
Speaker 1: as part of his research. He's obviously very smart and
Speaker 1: a well storced storyteller, but he has not yet demonstrated
Speaker 1: this with this particular story, and has instead taken a
Speaker 1: more zoomed out generalist view of the conflict that has
Speaker 1: already been discussed and described by previous authors who have
Speaker 1: a questionable at best credibility. It is therefore not completely
Speaker 1: fair to judge what has yet to come out, namely
Speaker 1: his planned podcast series, but it is fair to wonder
Speaker 1: where he will be getting his information and its overall quality,
Speaker 1: given what he has shown so far. It's worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that he has since said that he's using Nicholas Stargart's
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen work The German War, A Nation under Arms
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five, John Tolin's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six home Adolf Hitler and Thomas Fleming's two thousand
Speaker 1: and one book The New Dealer's War Franklin D. Roosevelt
Speaker 1: in the War within World War Two, and the use
Speaker 1: of these sources suggests that despite Buchanan and Baker still
Speaker 1: topping his list of must reads, which they are in
Speaker 1: the list that included these three books that I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that Buchanan and Baker are the
Speaker 1: only ones who he has cited directly for the things
Speaker 1: that he has said, he is pulling from some higher
Speaker 1: quality secondary sources than it initially seemed. However, if he
Speaker 1: was to follow my advice, which he has no obligation
Speaker 1: to do, he would be even better suited if he
Speaker 1: hired a research assistant, perhaps a graduate student of history
Speaker 1: over in Germany, who has direct access to the archival
Speaker 1: material and most importantly, a fluency in German. If you
Speaker 1: ask me, this is not a tall ask, especially considering
Speaker 1: the financial enrichment that he has achieved from all of
Speaker 1: his work that he's done, especially from this incident alone,
Speaker 1: And perhaps he is already planning to do something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, none of us have any way of knowing,
Speaker 1: but one like me can still hope When I reached
Speaker 1: out to Daryl for comment, he explained that, given all
Speaker 1: the noise that this is created, he would prefer to
Speaker 1: let his work speak for itself when it is finally finished,
Speaker 1: so that a proper debate on the subject can be had. Now,
Speaker 1: it is reasonable to be frustrated at this, since that
Speaker 1: was arguably a more advisable course of action to begin with,
Speaker 1: especially given the topic we're talking about here. However, the past,
Speaker 1: as they say, is the past, and his overall point
Speaker 1: in saying letting his work speak for itself is sound.
Speaker 1: We can only wait for his final word on this,
Speaker 1: while treating his now immortalized comments as the proper grain
Speaker 1: of salt that they are. When it comes to Daryl's comments,
Speaker 1: I believe it is vitally important and fair to someone
Speaker 1: who I consider to be a good person, and who
Speaker 1: I am glad to know at least somewhat to be
Speaker 1: as charitable as possible with the way he initially expressed
Speaker 1: himself as critical as I have been. Thankfully, he has
Speaker 1: a deed elaborated on his thinking and has stated the
Speaker 1: following in his aforementioned substack post quote. Even if the
Speaker 1: deaths were largely the result of resource deficiencies in poor planning.
Speaker 1: It does not change the fact that the Jews were
Speaker 1: targeted for death under circumstances that forced a choice between
Speaker 1: those who would eat and those who would starve. The
Speaker 1: built in anti semitism of the Third Reich guaranteed that
Speaker 1: Jews would be among the last in line. That is
Speaker 1: not to say that Jews were not massacred. Of course,
Speaker 1: Jews were massacred. People of all ethnicities were massacred, and
Speaker 1: it would have been quite a mystery if the Jews
Speaker 1: were an exception, doubly so given the Third reces unique
Speaker 1: antipathy toward them. This is a far cry from the
Speaker 1: implications many people saw in the Tucker Carlson interview because, frankly,
Speaker 1: the way Darryl communicated his ideas there were deeply disturbing
Speaker 1: to many people. While the attempts to make this interview
Speaker 1: a facet of a growing trend of Holocaust visionism and
Speaker 1: anti semitism are crude and unfair, the topic does remain
Speaker 1: hot button, and people's propensity to misread things poorly expressed
Speaker 1: is understandable. It's frustrating, but it's understandable to wit using
Speaker 1: phrasing like no plan or people ended up dead while
Speaker 1: never once saying the word holocaust or genocide or even
Speaker 1: murder unless you're claiming that Vladimir Selinsky has had his
Speaker 1: political opponents murdered, is inevitably going to create tension, to
Speaker 1: put it mildly, And never mind the fact that the
Speaker 1: person interviewing Daryl, that is Tucker Carlson himself, and really
Speaker 1: the main reason this whole story became such a firestorm
Speaker 1: in the first place, kept saying and implying that you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk about this because apparently you can
Speaker 1: get arrested even in the United States for such talk.
Speaker 1: But such talk about what exactly what is it that
Speaker 1: gets you arrested in other countries? Which does happen and
Speaker 1: I don't believe should happen, But that's another country that's
Speaker 1: not the United States. But what is it that gets
Speaker 1: you arrested in those other countries for discussing? Frankly and
Speaker 1: in the open, that unanswered question, paired with the lack
Speaker 1: of ever saying the word holocaust or genocide, is just
Speaker 1: going to stick out, and it would be naive to
Speaker 1: pretend it would not. While it has always been Carlson's style,
Speaker 1: the fact that He never once pushed back or even
Speaker 1: asked more difficult follow up questions than why would they
Speaker 1: do that, and just merely nodded along. Was just going
Speaker 1: to make the backlash all the more inevitable. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make it deserved, but it does make it inevitable. Now,
Speaker 1: perhaps it is because of my own bias toward Cooper
Speaker 1: as somebody I think is a good dude, But the
Speaker 1: responsibility for such imprecise talk is something I placed on
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, not on his interview subject. Anyone who knows
Speaker 1: Daryl Cooper will tell you that he is unfailingly polite and,
Speaker 1: as I suggested from the outset, someone who does sincerely
Speaker 1: care about the people in his life, even people he
Speaker 1: does not know very well, and he shows it through action,
Speaker 1: not words. Tucker Carlson is the reason Darryl's as famous
Speaker 1: as he is. While I believe Daryl deserves his success
Speaker 1: for his storytelling abilities on extremely complicated and controversial subjects,
Speaker 1: the fact remains that had Carlson not read Daryl's viral
Speaker 1: Twitter thread from twenty twenty one about why so many
Speaker 1: Americans believe to stop the steel narratives, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: in case anyone missed. It led to former President Donald
Speaker 1: Trump actually name checking Daryl of his speeches. Daryl just
Speaker 1: would not have the scale of reach that he does,
Speaker 1: and he knows that and likely considers Tucker Carlson a
Speaker 1: friend and someone to whom he owes everything he currently
Speaker 1: has and enjoys. So why jeopardize that or make it
Speaker 1: awkward by pushing back against Carlson's lack of pushing back.
Speaker 1: There is certainly something honorable in that, but it is
Speaker 1: also frustrating, especially when discussing controversial interpretations of history in
Speaker 1: such a public way. Darryl's strength is not in off
Speaker 1: the cuff interviews, as he himself has admitted more than once.
Speaker 1: His strength is in well written, well considered long form storytelling.
Speaker 1: Putting aside the quality of some of his conclusions, but
Speaker 1: we're not obligated to agree with everyone all the time.
Speaker 1: I think he is a brilliant and unique storyteller, and
Speaker 1: his podcasts, when they are at their best, offer us
Speaker 1: one of the best entry points to some of the
Speaker 1: most difficult historical topics of our time, from the Israeli
Speaker 1: Palestinian conflict to the Jonestown massacre to Dostoyevsky his episode
Speaker 1: The Underground Spirit is really my favorite episode he's ever done,
Speaker 1: and probably one of my favorite podcasts I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: I would even wager that had he not been speaking
Speaker 1: off the cuff in this interview with Tucker Carlson and
Speaker 1: simply letting this upcoming project speak for itself, it might
Speaker 1: have served that purpose admirably. However, until he demonstrates a
Speaker 1: better and more transparentability at sourcing and drawing reasonable, non motivated,
Speaker 1: non overtly provocative conclusions, it is unlikely that as many
Speaker 1: people will take this project as seriously as they perhaps
Speaker 1: should have, and that's too bad. There's also a greater scrutiny,
Speaker 1: which is not necessarily a bad thing facing historical podcasters
Speaker 1: right now, but given how it has been framed, especially
Speaker 1: in places like The Atlantic, where they had the patently
Speaker 1: ridiculous headline the Dangerous Rise of the podcast Historians, this
Speaker 1: kind of scrutiny could just as easily become a type
Speaker 1: of delegitimization of the entire medium. That's something that hasn't
Speaker 1: really been talked about since all this happened. One might
Speaker 1: call this growing scrutiny and criticism elitist, but frankly that
Speaker 1: is small comfort to the creators who do not make
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year, and it's not much comfort
Speaker 1: to those who do probably either. I have it on
Speaker 1: good authority that Dan Carlin isn't too happy about this
Speaker 1: headline either. Nevertheless, calling Daryl Cooper an unabashed Holocaust denier,
Speaker 1: as the Wall Street Journal did, is just not true.
Speaker 1: It helps nobody, and frankly, it's really insulting and it
Speaker 1: just makes things worse for everyone in historical podcasting. A
Speaker 1: final note, Darryl Cooper is known for encouraging empathy with
Speaker 1: his listeners and has spoken many times about how that
Speaker 1: is his goal. At his best, he demonstrates that we
Speaker 1: can have some measure of empathy for monsters, like someone
Speaker 1: like Jim Jones, for example. He reminds us that we
Speaker 1: can even try and live in the heads of monsters
Speaker 1: in order to better understand them. Now, this can be
Speaker 1: a noble goal, but I've always had problems with this
Speaker 1: way of doing things, and that's just me. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he should be doing things differently. I'm just explaining
Speaker 1: my perspective. I do believe this can be a noble goal,
Speaker 1: but that does not mean that we have to try
Speaker 1: and prove or even imply, that these people were not
Speaker 1: actually monsters, which is a risk that comes with empathy,
Speaker 1: that in and of itself proves the limitations of what
Speaker 1: we call empathy. In my opinion, if the empathy we
Speaker 1: feel is merely to serve the contrarian impulses so many
Speaker 1: of us possess, and I'm speaking from experience here, then
Speaker 1: what kind of empathy is that it certainly does not
Speaker 1: appear to foster a greater, more complex understanding of the
Speaker 1: human condition. In fact, to me, it really just sounds
Speaker 1: like a typical way to shift loyalties from one narrative
Speaker 1: over to another. We have seen this happen many times before,
Speaker 1: especially with the likes of the Gnome Chomsky's and the
Speaker 1: Howard Zins of the world, just reflexively believing that the
Speaker 1: supposedly oppressed can do no wrong because oppressors were the
Speaker 1: ones who wrote the history. This is not just a
Speaker 1: wrongheaded way to approach history and simply not true. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of quote unquote losers of history who have written
Speaker 1: their views of things, But I also believe it's a
Speaker 1: wrongheaded way to perceive the world in general, and simply
Speaker 1: breeds distrust and paranoia. While an honest examination of power
Speaker 1: imbalances in both the past and present can be illuminating,
Speaker 1: especially if they're counterintuitive, it is a far too reductive
Speaker 1: way to look at the world as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of complex historical processes. That is what
Speaker 1: creates a selective application of agency that I was bemoaning
Speaker 1: earlier on. In all this, ultimately, that is not history,
Speaker 1: that is politics. This is not to say history cannot
Speaker 1: be political in nature or should not inform political positions today,
Speaker 1: not at all, but pushing politics, especially without the utmost
Speaker 1: transparency while discussing history, is skipping a step politics blinds
Speaker 1: human beings to the truth of the present, even more
Speaker 1: so when it comes to our interpretations of the past.
Speaker 1: We would and have said the same thing about the
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning that fuels the decolonialist crowd. We have yet
Speaker 1: to see what Daryl Cooper will produce with his finished product,
Speaker 1: so we must withhold full judgment, and I would hope
Speaker 1: stop impugny motives on him that no one can possibly know.
Speaker 1: Despite my significant reservations with the early interpretations that he
Speaker 1: has shared, I look forward to seeing what he creates,
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope that my concerns are proven wrong.