Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. How are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well. Thank you for let me back.
It's always a pleasure, particularly going so soon back to back.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Well. I want to have you on a few times,
especially for this one subject, because I know it's your specialty,
it's of great interest to you. And World War two
is absolutely fascinating. I don't even think, well, we can
even bother getting into the Pacific at this point. Let's
stay in you know, let's stay in Europe. But in
your where do you start? Most people, when they a
lot of good historians start with the Treaty of Versailles
and say, the Treaty of Versailles basically was the foundation
for what led up to World War two? So what's
your take on that?
Speaker 2: That certainly is what created the political culture of vie
are so, I mean, that's that that was an essential catalyst,
But it wasn't the sole approximate cause. I really it
was the Bolshevik Revolution, which was an international phenomenon. Like
I know, I don't want to I don't want to
jump the gun or go too far afield into a
kind of theoretical topic that's not totally material to what
we're what's right in front of us. But you know,
I saye Ernst Nulty a lot because he gets into
the the psychological as well as kind of the metahi
historical context of the war, and a lot of people
people don't like him for out of reasons. I'm not
gonna flesh out all those reasons right here, notause it's controversial,
but because again I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I've read two of his books. I think I understand why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but the people who, uh, people who people
who attack him. One of the things that they emphasize
is they say, like, well, you know, the the Russian Revolution,
and that was happening in in you know, in in
Moscow and Saint Petersburg, you know, to a lesser degree,
and and uh, you know in these kind of frontier territories,
the Baltic it's like that. I mean, it's not really true.
I mean, yeah, obviously, I mean those were primary theaters,
but you know, in Bavaria there was an actual Communist revolution,
and in Berlin, I mean the Communists were fighting, uh
the Stalholm and in the Free Corps in the street.
Quite literally, it's a it's a really really stupid movie.
It was this TV movie from about twenty years ago.
It's got Peter Stormeyer as as Captain Rahm, which is
kind of cool. But it's called Hitler Rise of Evil.
I mean that that that's that's a that's an overwrought
title if there ever was one Rise of Evil. But
there's a scene in munich uh where the where they
you know, the communists are literally shooting it out with
Peter stormeraz ram and and these Stalholm type guys. And
that's not Hollywood stuff. I mean that really happened. You know,
it was a civil war situation. So the you know,
the national socialists, I mean yeah, like that was the
only reason there were like the treae ever saw in
the fact that it became clear, you know that the
Allies weren't really interested in creating some kind of workable
political order that the you know, combatant states it could
or the former combat and states could live with. They
were they were basically interested in looting Germany. I mean, yeah,
that that was essential. But national socialism. To understand antial
socialism and understand the twentieth century generally, you've got to
understand communism and you gotta understand the fact that it
was a revolutionary paradigm underway, and like Noldy said, it
was like a European civil war was underway, and and
that and that's so, I mean, yeah, but I but again,
and the treaty conditions were such that I mean that
that should not be that should be indisputable to people,
I mean, wherever they fall in the issue, where whatever, however,
even if they had a very very putative view of Germany,
you know, and I mean incidentally too, that's I've gone
to I've gone to bad for Wilson before because I
think Wilson was a good man, or because I think
he was a great president or something. But you can't
really hang responsibility for Versailles and and the kind of
disaster of the of the of the punitive peace on Wilson,
you know, Wilson's fourteen points. I mean that might seem
kind of high falutin and silly and from a real
politic perspective, but Wilson didn't want to punish Berlin. He
he was disgusted by the Treaty of Versailles, and he
threw his hands up instead. I you know, he he
because he realized that you know, he basically he basically
bailed out quite literally, you know the uh like like
London and Paris, and then they paid him back by
saying like, Okay, you know, now's our chance to loot
Germany and and not remedy the the conditions that gave
rise to the war in the first place. So yeah,
I mean, that's that's correct. I don't really, I don't really,
But at the same time, it's important not to reduce
things just to that. Like I've heard, I know, people
like Ian Kershaw, they they act like Adolf Hitler was
was some gonna con man who just capitalized and these
these kinds of grievances that were were kind of middling.
I mean, first of all, Viima early was tailored directed
the German economy like that was its point. It wasn't
just this misunderstanding or you know, this kind of this
kind of somewhat objectionable piece that you know, the these
crazy German chauvenates just decided to fixate. And you know,
the you're gonna you're you're you're gonna you're gonna provoke
some kind of you're gonna provoke some kind of hostile
reaction if you impose something like that on a people.
I mean and I and plus why why would you
do that? The you know, even if you're even if
you hate the Germans, you don't care or you just
don't care about their fortunes as a people. I mean,
why you if if you're gonna, if you're gonna subject
people to a starvation regime. I mean, you're you're not
you're not looking forward to a workable piece. You're you're
gonna just generate structural instability. So yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems that whymar one of the easiest ways
to destroy it, that was the way they always do
it through the banks.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also the thing with World War One is this,
I I object strongly. People are always uh, people think
they're being smart, you know when they Smedley Butler and
they're like, yeah, you know, wars just about you know,
Wall Street, Like it's really not true. I mean, wars
are bad for business generally. The fact that the fact
that there's firms and individual men who find ways to
profit from war, or the fact that there's guys like
Dick Cheney and like Helliburton who where that's basically their
mo I mean that that you know, there's guy there's
guys who had some kind of who are on the
make in all kind of sectors of political life. But
on its face, you know, Wall Street is never shit
hot to go to war because this is some way
to make money. But at the same time, like crazy
as it might sound to us, I mean, because we
take kind of informational awareness for granted, there was a
strong financial aspect to the Great War as regards America
and JP Morgan. They they extended a huge amount of
unsecured credit to the British Crown, and the British had
essentially said this diplomatic delegation that also had this kind
of high flying banker types with them, and they'd approached
they'd approached Wall Street, you know, in nineteen fifteen, when
of being clear that you know, kind of a quagmire
was setting in, you know, and they secured all this,
all this unsecured They secured this, you know, the huge
unsecured line of credits, basically saying like, look, you know
that that we you know, just a few months, you know,
we'll have broken the back of the German war machine
and then we're all gonna get paid. And then it
became clear that wasn't gonna happen, and JP Morgan essentially
got on the on the phone quite literally the telegram
telegraph as it were, probably the Colonel House, and and
Wilson had said, you fix this right now. You know
you cannot. You're not gonna let London lose this war,
and you're not gonna let us eat this loss. I mean,
that wasn't the sole reason why Wilson went to war,
but I mean that was a big part of it,
you know, So, I mean it was there's a whole
lot of there's a lot of very very corrupt stuff
going on, and that was and it was a little
more opaguean what happened in the Second World War, Like
people lie about the Second World War a lot and
say crazy things about it, and you know, there's ethno
sectarian narratives about it that are nakedly political, but it's
it's more it's more kind of clear cut, like the
Great War doesn't really make a lot of sense. It
was a strange example of of of of security paradigms
kind of not really matching up with the technology the day,
like the killing technology, I mean of the battlefield. And
it was like a basic failure at the turns I
mean that's why it's really interesting. Frankly, it uh, you know,
and I think I genuinely think, you know, the last
we take for granted because you know, the War between
the States like really really really screwed things up in
America for decades. You know, it did, like America didn't
really normalize until the turn of the century. By Europe,
Europe after Waterloo didn't really fight any major wars. I mean,
there's a Crimean War, but I mean that was kind
of localized in theater, like literally in the Crimea, you know,
and there was the Fraango Prussian War, which you know
was a this like this kind of incredible you know,
German victory. I mean, I realized pressure wasn't Germany yet,
but you know, the modern German state is the Prussian
state until ninety forty five in my opinion. But point being,
it's not like Europe had fought some like heavy, heavy
conflicts in the in the in the nineteenth century, and
we're developing a sense of of of what that modern
battlefield was going to look like and how it was
going to impact you know, uh, national economies and things,
and how it was going to create shortages, and how
it was basically just gonna slaughter people. I mean, so
that was part of it, even on even uh in particular,
like the I think the German high command, I think,
I think the Kaiser right. And this isn't just because
I've got a warmer view of Germany than i do
the other combatant states. I think it's in disputable. They
had a bit a better idea of how things were
going to develop. And that's one of the reasons why Khovig,
the Chancellor, was beside himself when it became clear that
France was gonna go to work, because I think he
despite he wasn't any kind of military man, but he
he knew that some kind of slaughter was gonna happen.
But I think you know, if you if you read
the kind of internal memorandums, I mean, what what amount
of internal memorandums and kind of internal debate and discussion
in London and in Paris, and to a lesser degree
like within the within the Czar's kind of inner circle.
But that's a bit more complicated. Like these guys really
didn't get it. They thought this was kind of they
thought it's gonna be kind of a brushfire or affair
and that or they thought that, you know, they they
thought that, you know, the Germans just basically wanted to
like force force some kind of concessions on their on
their key uh, on their key demands. And but you know, okay,
well you know, we'll just fight for a little while
and then you know we can come to the table
and position a strength. That's not that's not at all
the way that the Kaiser right saw it. And they
certainly didn't think that they were gonna lose you know,
a million people. Uh, But they they didn't think it
was you know, it's gonna be as you know, four
year long as you know kind of like and was
destructive affair. So yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: So what most people know about why mar is there's
two things. One that it became really degenerate and morally,
and two the money supply got inflated to the point
where people were, you know, needed wheelbarrows full of money
in order to buy a loaf of bread, which is
probably you know, just lore, but I hope it's low.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: What do you see as what's your understanding of what
was going on there?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like I said, the the uh, like
we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, the but was it like, I mean,
it almost seems like, you know, how now we have
these people, it's like, oh, we have to teach kindergarteners
about queer theory. Yeah, things like it. I mean, it's
like it almost seems when you think about it, when
you look back and you if you know anything about
the history of Prussia and then you go forward to Wymar,
it's like, that looks planned. That looks like somebody injected
that into their on purpose. Even the degeneracy, even you know,
the whole the whole idea of siphoning and looting the country,
which I think in the modern day we can talk
about Ukraine. It seems like it's the same exact thing.
But it seems like that was all planned. You know
that it was sure a lot of people are going
to load a lot of countries, but I mean they
made sure that it was that it was going to
be catastrophic because they not only defeated them, destroyed their
money supply, but they destroyed their morality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And uh, well, it's also to the starvation blockade
endured for once after the cessation of hostilities. With regard
to the kind of moral debiency. Yeah, I mean it
wasn't essentially orchestrated as us as was the case post
ninety forty five and in the bundest Republic, the Boonese
Republic and particularly West Berlin was flooded with pornography after
the Second World War, and that if you read Wilhelm Reich,
he was this. He was this German Jewish, a psychologist.
He wrote about that about about about breaking the moral
foundation of people's in order to essentially make them melble.
Obviously that this is more about bored than he will think,
but that that there definitely wasn't. Yeah, there definitely wasn't
intentional subversion in their regard. But it it's like I
generally agree with Ian Michael Joan is what he wrote
about this, and I'm not going too far afield because
it's it's material to what we're talking about in a
very direct way, you know, you, Michael Jones, I was
coming back to the idea that you know, look like
Marquis de Sade was actually he considered himself to be
a political thinker. You know, he wasn't just this, He
wasn't just this kind of sick individual. So of the
degenerate aristocrat, like writing pornography and writing about sex, because
that's what kind of decadent aristocrats do. I mean, yeah,
that is what they do. But he was widely publishing
this stuff because his notion was that, you know, well,
you know, the the foundation of what I don't like
in France and in Europe generally is this kind of
thrown in altered sensibility where you know, you've got this,
you've got this kind of you know you've got this, uh,
you've got Roman Catholicism propping up the see of sovereignty
and the monarchy, and and it derives us authority, it
drives us a leg intimacy from a claim that it
reflects providential design, and the basis of that is the
pre eminence of reason over passion and irrational things. So
it wasn't just that you know, Dasad didn't like females
and he didn't or that he was a statist and homosexual,
or that he you know, he wanted he wanted to
kind of screw with people's morals and horrify them, like
he wanted to do all of those things. But his
idea was also that, well, if I get people to say,
you know why why do I want to privilege reason
over over my passions? I just want to you know,
I just want to do things that feel good, or
I want to pursue, you know, sexually diving stuff. Or
why why should I be a family man when I
can you know, visit prostitutes or you know, why why
would I want to be involved with women anyway when
I can go with men and just kind of do
whatever I want. You know, I mean that this this
idea that sexuality and like social morals like aren't political,
Like that's nonsense. So yeah, I mean that was part
of it. And it also you know, I mean people
in Germany were it wasn't just like far right guys
and stuff. I mean, feel very cognitive these things in
those days, you know, like now because they were a
bunch of prudes or did weren't you know, worldly or something,
you know, if any think people then were like a
lot more worldly than now because like life and death
was kind of like in their everyday life. And particularly
then you had you know, you had millions of guys
milling about in Germany who kind of come they you know,
they'd spent their formative years, you know, in the military.
You know, it's not this idea that Germany was this
provincial kind of place. Who and they freaked out about
sex like that's ridiculous, obviously, but they you know, they
so not only German. They saw what was going on
in terms of that kind of subversion. But it's also
you know, the the National Socialists are better or worse.
They they they were not conservatives and they didn't pretend
to be. And you know the reason why, speaking of Ram,
the reason why guys like Rahm or in their ranks,
particularly the revolutionary phase. You know, it's like Hitler said,
you know, when people objected to some of these characters
being in uh in his milieu, He's like, you know, yeah,
Ron might be a degenerate guy, but he's great under fire.
And I think Hitler said, you know, the Essay is
a tough fighting force. It's not a finishing school for
young ladies. So I don't give a shit what these
guys do in their off time, as long as they're
loyal and uh, they're willing to fight. And so my
point is that it's not like, it's not like Hitler,
and it's not you know, or even Strass or any
of these guys. It's it's not the National Socials didn't
become popular because these guys are a bunch of you know,
kind of moralizing conservatives. And it's not like they it's
not like they you know, just fixated on pornography and
and socially deviant things because they they were these uptight conservatives.
Like I'm not saying there's anything wrong with conservativesm or
objecting those things. Obviously those things are bad. And my
point is that this stuff is kind of so extreme
and so nakedly political. I mean, that's why the National
Socialists were We're reacting to it so strongly because you know,
it was you know, I mean to to Jones's point,
I mean that that kind of stuff is always political.
It's never it's never truly just secular, never truly just
you know, incidentally political occurrences. But it was it was
so it was so negatively uh, tailored to attack the
kind of prevailing social order and and things, that it
became a priority to remedy it to the kind of
the kind of radical right, the radical you know, national
socialist right. So yeah, I mean, that's that's very true.
Speaker 1: You had already mentioned that you talk about rom fighting
in the streets basically have civil war in the streets
in uh in Germany in the twenties. So how does
the wey mar how do how do the national Socialists
come out of this? And what's what's the direction in
the twenties.
Speaker 2: I mean, my opinion is that Germany was a Germany
was doing a little bit better. Uh Gustav Stressman. He
he found a way of kind of mirror compliance with
the reparations payments, and he was also able to draw
Germany even at its worst. You know, people have confidence
and its ability to produce and get a return on
their investment. It's a Stressman who was you know, Chancellor.
He gets kind of a bad rap. I'm not saying
he was a good man or that he was like
on the side of his own people like the way
he should have been. But he can't just like dismiss
him as this like race trader or bad guy. And
he understood economics very well, and uh Schumpeter actually praised him.
And I'm a big Schumpeter guy if I mean that,
and not that I am some kind of authority on economics.
But point being, Stressman was able to garner a fair
amount of direct foreign investment such that it. I mean,
there wasn't the kind of complex interdependence in those days
that we did granted today, but the name national economy
was bouncing back to a degree. Uh. Germany was kind
of beginning to come to terms a bit with UH,
with London, not so much in Paris. But then the
but then the nineteen twenty nine financial crisis happened, collapse happened,
rather wasn't as a crisis, and that through that through
Germany into a tail spin in a lot of ways,
and all all the kind of ground they excuse me,
all the kind of ground they gained seemed to have
evaporated overnight, and that really that really put the National
Socialists back on the map. And plus the uh, the
international situation was getting more critical too, you know, it
became I think it was around I mean twenty nine,
nineteen thirty that uh, it started to become clear. I mean,
even though the Soviet Union was nothing like it was
ten years subsequent, but it became clear that the Soviet
Union was gonna was becoming a superpower. That though those concepts,
those kind of jew tradgic concepts weren't really in people's
mind yet, but they people understood the power potential of
of America. And and and they understand I mean especially
the Germans because they fought the Americans. You know, they
they take in the full front of the US Army,
which is not any fun thing, especially in those days.
But you know, so it was but the the power
potential of the suet Union was becoming was becoming a
parent I mean, aside in the fact that Bolshivism was
it had become something of a psychological contagion. I'm not
saying that It's not melodramatic. It was the best way
can describe it. You know. It there was like the
apocall the conditions of the epoch seem to be favoring
communism and people really freaked out. So yeah, it was
it was all of those things. And and like I said,
it wasn't It wasn't just that the nineteen twenty nine collapse.
It it didn't just kick people's asses like it I
mean it like I mean it did people all across
the planet, but I mean every major developed economy. But
it it was especially brutal to the Germans because they'd
actually they've been making ground, you know, uh, after a
after a in in the in the wake of uh,
you know, the guitastrophe in nineteen eighteen, and then and
then they suddenly just you know, all those games devaporated
overnightth and you know, it was it was kind of
like the final uh nailing the cough and the people's
willingness to to accept you know, that there was some
sort of like parliamentary democratic solution to their problems, and
that that's my view of a perfect storm of stuff.
Speaker 1: So around the time of the crash in twenty nine,
What's where's Hitler at? What's he doing?
Speaker 2: That was a national Socialist big break that was their
first big breakthrough, you know, and it was uh, you know,
I mean, people it all felt learning a lot of
was he pioneered kind of what we can what became
kind of you know, modern campaigning techniques of the twentieth century.
That's why I'm in the you know, trying for the will.
You know how there's this It opens up with this
you know, aerial shot of of Hitler's aircraft descending out
of the airfield, you know, like breaches the clouds. I mean,
that's just like a really cool shot, you know, and
it was kind of like, uh, like the camera work
was pretty radical, uh like not radical like it was cool.
Like I mean it was that too, like radical like
it hadn't really been done before. But uh, the reason
why that's a big deal, it wasn't. It wasn't just Hitler,
you know, trying to flex about like how cool like
is his pr staff was, Ah, that was part of it.
But like Hitler was the it was the first national
political figure to you know, like shoot all over the
place in the plane so that you know that he
campaign face to face, you know, and that was a
big deal because people didn't do that before, you know.
I mean, Hitler was basically campaigning his ass off. And
that's what my confidence too. I'm always telling people to
read Hitler's second book that was unpublished. It's just called
the second Book, even though it never actually was a book.
It was just a manuscript because it was it was
discovered after the day of defeat. But that that's that's
basically Hitler's geopolitical book, like my cop is is like uh,
it's basically uh, it's Hitler like meeting his case to
the German voter as the wife you should vote to
the National Socialist. That's what that goofy when you get
these losers. Whether it was you know, old Chrissy Hitchens
or whether it's uh Ian Kersha, It's like, oh, mine
cop is a terrible book. It's like, well, bro, it's not.
It's not supposed to be Shakespeare. It's like it's it's
it's it's a man who's you know, running for political
office saying why you should vote for his party. I
mean that that it's that's not gonna be you know,
like compelling reading, you know, a century after the fact,
because I mean that can't that point can't be overstated.
Like people act like people that people act like the
National Socialists put like pulled the wooll over everybody's eyes
by like pretending to be this above board party. It's
like they they were, they were they were a political party.
I wanted people to vote for them, and people did.
They accomplished the parliamentary parliamentary already. They were the finangle
the chancellorship out of it. Their primary up, their primary
opposition was engaged in a war against uh the legitimate,
against the seat of government. It was entirely legitimate to
ban the KPD. It's like, you don't have to like Hitler,
or you don't have to like national Socialism, but unlike
the UH, I mean, unlike the Bolsheviks and you know
in Russia who just kind of killed people because to
get what they wanted, the National Socialists were the legitimate
government in Germany. I mean that I don't want I
don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. I mean,
that's that That's one of the interesting things about other
than Nuremberg narratives tailored. I mean that this idea that
you know, the government in Germany was illegitimate. I mean
you could you could say it was an evil government.
I guess if that turns you on, But it wasn't
this illegal or really, you know, illegitimate government. The election
returns that the National Socialists got were I mean above board.
That's not super important anyway. Like the point I made,
you know, uh, the plebiscite that made Hitler to fear
the fear uh Hitler added something totally insane, like eighty
nine point three percent of German voters I thought he
was great. Like people loved Adolf Hitler. They didn't like
love the National Socialist Party. I mean they they had
the national eldi plurality. But the key takeaway is that
the Germans loved Adolf Hitler, not that they loved the
party that he represented, but that's you know, that's uh,
that's basically what Adolf Hitler was doing. Uh. I mean
really when he when he got cut loose from Landsburg prison,
I mean, that's just what he said about doing. He said, well,
we're gonna he uh. I mean. It was an interesting
given take between him and in the Weimar government. On
the one I mean, on the one hand, on the
one hand, he literally, you know, he and he and
shooting a Richter and uh Ludendorff, who in those days
was still an ally of of Hitler. You know, they
literally merged into the against the guns of of Weimar.
But when Hitler found himself in court, they they actually
treated him pretty uh. I mean they treated him really really,
not just effic cashously. I mean, they really showed him
a lot of slack. So I mean, I I mean,
I think Hiler realized the writing was on the wall
and that there wasn't some kind of he wasn't going
to be able to duplicate when Mussolini had done in
Rome in nineteen twenty two. It was a part of
that was pragmatic. It wasn't Hitler being a nice guy
or something. But part of it was also that, you know,
he realized the he he wasn't going to be marginalized
by you know, being locked away for twenty years or
you know, being banned from public life or something. So
it's like, well, you know, the it would have been,
it would have been un seemly for him to continue
on a revolutionary course after that, and it probably would
have been counterproductive absent some kind of absent, some kind
of situation like happened in the Baltic States where you know,
the you really did have you know, a kind of
uh bloody civil war and their conditions of parody. Germany
was dealing with a revolutionary paradigm on the ground, but
it was localized, you know. That's that's why, that's why,
that's why the that's why the Munich Soviet was the
big was the communist big coup, because I mean that's
where they that's where they could pull it off. They
they didn't have the they didn't have the political capital
of the forces. And being a pull it off nationwide,
that does not mean it was any less of an
existential threat. And owing to the international situation, it didn't
matter if most Germans weren't communists. It's like, okay, I mean,
if if the communists can they they could have, if
they could carve out these fiefdoms in places like Bavaria,
if they could control the Berlin Street. You know, it
didn't you know. And and in Germany was a fracturing
mess anyway, owing to Weimar, and you know, the occupation
of uh the occupation of the Ruar and things, and
you know, they they wouldn't have been able to resist
Soviet designs. I mean, it's it's a a good situation,
but yeah, it's that. That's essentially what Hitler was doing.
You know, he was campaigning like a modern politician, which
Hyler was many things. And I agree with Russell Stovely,
like I said out on my podcast the other week,
that you know, I think Hitler was a messianic sort
of figure historically speaking, not in religious terms. Obviously he
wasn't a he wasn't just a typical politician, but he
was well the Mayas he was a modern politician. Then
he did that very well. I mean, so that's that's
what it was doing during the twenties.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into the thirties a little bit, and I
wanted to talk a little bit more about Europe. You
had talked about how you constantly bring up the Bolsheviks.
I mean they that nineteen seventeen revolution looms large over
the whole twentieth century. I mean, it's right there. And
what I think a lot of people don't realize is,
and maybe you can talk to this is just how
much sway and just how much they were infiltrating European countries.
I mean they were I mean obvious one Spanish Civil War,
but pretty much every country had a communist kind of
movement in it. I mean just anyone who's read anything
about nineteen twenties Italy can can see who the anti
fascists were.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they had a remarkable momentum. I mean both
the terms they're kind of forces and being might not
be the right way to characterize it, but they had
they attrimendous reached, particularly particularly for that that time, you know,
a century ago. It wasn't like today. I mean there was,
there was, There was more interdependence than people might think,
and especially in Europe. I mean people cross national frontiers
pretty much as a matter of course. You know, it's
not like there wasn't. There wasn't this kind of monatic
and celerity to things. But the Communists were very very
good at at political warfare, and they were very good
at at at at a waging political war with this
kind of cadre structure very effectively, even when they didn't
have majorities on the ground or even pluralities. I think
part of that ows to the radical commitment to the
people he did have, I think as a force multiplier.
But it's also one of the reasons that there's nulty.
It's not just because I think that he describes the
phenomenon what happened during the war and with with some
of these really brutal, kind of categorically homicidal events, but
he also it can't really be overstated the agree to
which communism seemed to have the force of apocaal history
behind it. That's why, like last time you're kind enough
to invite me on the podcast, I made the point
that or you made the point that people like to
rate James Burnham over the coals and a lot of
these other political fingers of the era an economists because
they talk about they talk about communism like it was
just this perennial thing, and that its victory was imminent.
People weren't saying that because they loved Joseph Stalin or
because they thought communism was great or something. I mean, yeah,
some people thought that way, but it uh, the uh,
the nineteen twenty nine collapse, it wasn't just an economic
crisis of the sort that you know, you you deal
with when the world situation isn't is deteriorating, or when
there's some kind of punct weighted shock going to you know,
owing to like you know, shortages or famine or something
like happened before. You know, food insecurity got remedied globally
in the fifties and stuff. It was like basically essentially
like the banking structure as it existed at that point failed,
you know, so people like, well, all right, you know,
capitalism and private industry can't deliver it scaled, you know,
it can't provide people they what they need, and there's
too much uncertainty. You know, you can't just leave it
in the in the hands of in the perobial hands
of all these you know, discrete decision makers that aren't coordinated.
So this just doesn't work anymore. So some kind of
central planning is going to have to take the place
of the free market. Like everybody thought that way, Like
even right wing guys thought that way, you know, because
what was the alternative? They they they didn't understand. Okay,
I mean it wasn't a lot of these guys. It
wasn't that bad faith thing. They just didn't really get
it because in the in the moment, you can't understand
what's happening in historical terms, particularly with something as complex
as as twentieth century economics. So that was underway, and
so it says he appeared to everybody like the man
in the European street like this is you know, there's
basically communists at the force of history behind them. You know,
it's almost it's almost like a crusade or some sort
of like fervor that's you know, sweeping millions of people
up in it. So how do we stop this? And
that was that was that, I mean, that was a
big part of the string of Madolf Hitler too, and
that that's Stove's point about him being a messianic figure.
You know, then that was a big That's what's fancinating too,
because like people are I'm always taking the issue with
people is say like, well, you know, Hitler was his
gutter snipe who just you know, exploited anti Semitism. Hitler
almost never, even in as early as he almost never
mentioned Jews. I can think of two speeches where he
referred to international Jewelry. I can think of another one
where he talked about Jewish bullshitism. But that's it, you like,
he just didn't bring it up, not because he was
afraid of being politically incorrect or upsetting people. But that's
not that just wasn't really his orientation, you know. I mean, yeah,
hilar took for granted that if you were a national socialist,
you viewed Jews as your mortal enemy. But this idea
that you know, Hitler was getting people cluding to his
program and cited by talking about Jews, like, that's not true.
I mean, I guess you could turn on say this
because it would have been redundant, because everybody understood he
was talking about Okay, but you know, the the uh,
the kind of a the kind of shared premises that
people were responding to with with with what he was
presenting to them, had to do with he he made
them believe that they weren't inevitably going to be swept
up in this kind of mass homicidal like workers revolt
that then was just gonna kind of transform everything into
this sort of you know, this sort of giant like
labor camp that were you know, the trappings of national
life and and social capital have been kind of stripped away,
and you know, things have been kind of just like
reduced at bear survival. And if you weren't privileged within
the administration at that new regime, you know, you just
were kind of gonna live a pointless life of relative deprivation.
You're the only consolation being that, you know, you'd be
assured that if you were politically reliable, you wouldn't starve
or not at housing or something. I mean, that's that's
really what was underway. And if people don't believe me
on that Irid Oral was nineteen eighty four like that,
that's that's basically that you know, but name that's a
that's a stalinist dystopia that a guy who came of
age in the epoch like that was the big fear
of every European including you know, even even middle class
Tory types like mister orwell, Okay, so I mean that's
this wasn't this like weird thing that paranoid artists, you know,
self felt shaman. Mister Hitler just kind of came up
with so that that I can't really emphasize that enough.
Speaker 1: You mentioned orwell, and I mentioned the Spanish Civil War?
Speaker 2: So howmedy Catalonia?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the okay, So nineteen thirty two and nineteen thirty
three we have the election of two people who will
fundamentally dick tate what the next even what we're dealing
with today. So Hitler comes to power and the King
for Life FDR comes to power. Yeah, and from what
I understand, mister FDR was not exactly He wasn't averse
to what Mussolini or what Hitler we're talking about in
the UH in their respective countries, was he.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Roosevelt still no, I like I've uh
you know, like I said before, uh last time we
uh we were discussing the twentieth century. The one of
the reasons I like Thomas Fleming not not the Rockford
Institute guy. For clarity, if people aren't familiar with the
other Thomas Fleming, he was this East Coast Irish guy,
and we're not gonna hold it against him that he's
irish because he was a really good author. But he uh,
he was this independent scholar story and he he he
wrote kind of the seven or critical biography of of
Roosevelt as well as of the of the UH, the
the Roosevelt administration called the New Dealers War, and like
hap Arnold helped him write it. Like all these personages, uh,
some of whom were Roosevelt's allies, some of whom were
his enemies, you know, guys in the in in the
diplomat and guys in the State Department, guys in the
military apparatus, you know, then War department. You know, he
had he had access to all this direct testimony and
all these documents. But his core uh, I mean, obviously
he's got nothing nice to say about Roosevelt. But his
core thesis, the brass tacks of it is is what
I said last time, that the New Deal regime was
as much of was as much a revolutionary paradigm as
UH implemented in Berlin and and what Stalin did in
the Soviet Union. And it's foreign policy, Like you better
believe that Roosevelt basically is raised on detro was to
what you know, what was to implement in a progressive socialist,
an anti fascist political order, you know, and I kind
of ground up, you know, restructuring socially and politically and ultimately,
I mean it's great foreign policy coup was you know,
the destruction of Germany and the destruction of fascism. That
was its whole raise on Vetro, just as much as
Hitler's raised on Detro was to smash Bolshevism. And that's
I'll make the point again and again if you want
to understand not just not just Hitler, but the uh
the but like his orientation towards history. The last, the
last real speet before the Reichstag that Hitler made was
the December eleventh, ninety one speech, but since incidentally, was
also the formal declaration of war against the United States.
And Hitler didn't talk about Stalin in it at all.
Like you mentioned communism, he didn't mention Stalin. He mentioned
Churchill very fleetingly and kind of, you know, in kind
of a condescending way. He talked about Roosevelt. He did
two things. He identified. He was he talked about the
situation in the east where the assault on Moscow was
was halt was being halted, and which in my opinion
was what the side of the war. But he said
Hitler said two things. He said, well, you know this
is this is this isn't an He's like, we've been
through this before in eighteen thirteen. Now when he said
we okay. In eighteen thirteen, Prussia was fighting along with
Napoleon in the in the Russian Empire, and Prussia was
the only German state that went to war on Napoleon's side.
So Hitler, the Habsburg Catholic, was basically saying, we the
German people are the Prussian legacy state. And that's fascinating.
And it's keen understanding Hitler and why why everybody was
okay with him, you know, from his own kind of
tried you know, the the Bavarian Munich types as well
as you know, the Prussian officer types and everybody else.
That's key, and that wasn't Hitler actually believed that that
wasn't an affectation or something. But secondly, what Hitler said
was he said, you know, this was a European war
and it did not have to be a global war.
And basically, mister Roosevelt, we tried to come to terms
with with with America over and over again, you know,
and there was no reason. We have no interest in
common with America. We have also no conflicts with them
in common, you know, basically, like why is you know,
Roosevelt basically is forcing us to fight America. And that's
actually true. You can claim that, you know, well, Germans
are evil and Hitler's an evil man. So I think
it's good that America went to war with Germany. And
I mean that you can, okay, I mean that if
that's your position, that's fine, But so aligned with the
Soviet Union and resulting Germany, and make the mistake. Uh,
September eleventh, the nineteen forty one, that was the other
September eleventh, that's when Roosevelt declared unrestricted naval war against
all German flag military vessels. I mean, like America went
to war with Germany long before there was ever a
German war declaration, long before there was ever Pearl Harbor,
you know, And that was that didn't make any sense strategically,
you know, it was it was an ideological political decision,
you know. So it's that's that's the key takeaway it on.
But I wrote some law and form on this too.
I mean, if you want to understand if you want
to understand hitlerver is a stalin. Yeah, there's a man
a key in aspect to that, and it's almost it's
you know, it's almost kind of mythical. And the enmity
between UH, Germany and the Russian people is really horrible
and tragic. I'm not like making a light of that,
but you know, the Germans in the Eastern slot, that's
gonna fight, like even absent bullshitism, like that's just something
that's going to happen. Hitler's real kind of ideological nemesis
was rose developed because again, like there there wasn't any
reason for America to fight Germany other than the fact
that Roosevelopt and his and his patrons UH slated Germany
for annihilation. And I mean in political terms, I mean
that's the definition of enmity. You know, it a man
you don't have any objective strategic conflict with that's forcing
you with you know, in the confrontation. It's quite literally,
you know, he slated you for destruction for some ideological
commitment or reason. So yeah, that's an important Uh, that's
an important point. And everybody, you know, when when in
talking about Hitler and his intentions. You know. It's it's
kind of like people are constantly talking about what's in
the Constitution or what's in the Bible, but they never
ever read either, so they don't actually know. Like people
always talking about like things Hitler said and didn't thought,
but they never actually bother or read things he said,
you know. And it's David Irving made the point that,
you know, Hitler was a very rare political figure the
twenty twentieth century because he basically did everything you said.
You know, he didn't really have a filter for better
or worse. So it's the there's there's you know, he
was pretty it's pretty above board if you want to
like trace Hitler's strategic decisions as well as uh his
political sensibilities, because he said these things in public, you know,
with without his exceptions of things that you know, required
secrecy in order to succeed. But you know, there wasn't
this wasn't some like secret program or something. Or there's
there's not there's not some complexity to I mean, yeah,
there's a lot of complexities laid off Hitler, but there's
not there's there's not some there's not some great mystery
to or alledger name or you know what what what
what his political commitments were and what he wanted to accomplish.
So yeah, I think that's important too.
Speaker 1: Well, what I was saying about FDR is it's not
a his secret that a lot of people who are
around him have said after that that through the thirties,
when the German economy was seemingly doing very well, that
he looked upon it. And you know, as he's doing
the new Deal, which as he's putting together a new
deal and just passing all these laws, all these what
do they call those things that presidents just right executive
or yeah, like three thousand of them or four thousand,
I think that he was looking and he was like, well,
if if they have a managed economy over there, we
can have a mind managed economy here.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was we part of it. And Adam
Two's he's a really interesting guy. He's an economic historian,
and this uh that those guys tend to be really brainy.
I mean, like economics is, uh, if you can write
in an economic history, have any modern state. I mean
that that's just like a kind of a lebon task.
But he I don't really know what tuss politics are.
I mean I'm sure, I'm sure they probably I probably
would not see the eye eye to eye with him.
He's like a typical kind of British university type guy.
But you wrote a book that's a history of the
the Third Rug economy called The Wages of Destruction. That's
a really exhausting book and it's got a huge amount
of data and uh, yeah, the U if you want
to understand uh, if you want to understand national social's economics,
I mean it's basically it's basically traditional you know Hamilton
Frederick Wist kind of stuff. I mean with you know,
with a with a with a with a with a
bias for heavy industry and and and mass subsidies, the
that that that privileges terrestrial man you know, heavy terrestrial
manufacturing over other sectors. But I mean that's the German
economy today is not really radically different. I mean, we
we'd uh it's a stupid term. But with economists in
the eightieses the twelve quote picking winners and losers like that,
you know that the German economy is a lot more
like that of Japan than it is like America or
the UK. That's why this name. There's a fast thing,
one of these like Goldman Sex losers after a after
awake he uh he he dropped. It was in that
he was. It was not Rolling Stone piece by Matt
Tybee or Tavy or what the fuck he pronounce his name,
And it was like Goldman sachs Rapp. He shows up
in Berlin in like two thousand and five or something,
and he starts like making his pitch, you know, and
uh about uh you know, basically trying to turn these
German firms onto onto uh you know, uh, binding up
their pension system with you know, Goldman Sex for one
k's or something. And like, I guess these these these Germans.
Let me laugh at him. We're like, look, get out here.
You know, we don't we don't invest in derivatives, you
know what I mean, So that that sensibility remains, but
it uh yeah, that's what that's what that that that's
exactly what uh what Roosevelt did, and that I mean,
but it's also too I mean, people, you know, the
New Deal didn't actually accomplish anything I mean in terms,
I mean politically, it got Roosevelt everything you wanted, and
they didn't share shaking consequences. But basically it's you know,
Roosevelt didn't do it. Rosevel didn't stimulate you as economy
you're like breathing new blood into it. Or and he's not.
It's not you know, Roosevelt's administration before ninety forty one
isn't some isn't some testament to how you know, isn't
some testament to you know, to how demand side paradigms
work are true? It all he did, he he he
literally put people to work digging holes for no reason
and essentially paying I mean governments in food stamps, you know,
so that you didn't have you didn't have unemployed guys
milling about, you know, every in the middle of the street,
you know, begging for food or something like. And you
didn't you didn't have riots because people you know, people
couldn't buy a loaf of bread because there was no
work to be had. You know. It was that, That's
what it was. I looked down the street from Skoque Lagoons,
which is a big nature breserve, and like, don't me wrong,
it's pretty dope. But like you know what skogy La
Goons is. It's this giant it's these giant man made
lakes just like down the street and from me that
Roosevelt had a bunch of guys digging for no reasons
that he could like you know, basically give him food stamps.
I mean that that's why it's there.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's what the Snowy Conference kind of the
c c C was like in other states, you'll come
across stuff like that. I mean, Skugu La goons is uh,
it's it's more. Uh, it's it's it's more. It's more
scale than a lot of these things. But you'll come
across stuff like that. You know, these these kinds of
nature preserved things and these kinds of these kinds of
uh you know, like man made lakes or whatever, and
there'll be some plaque or something saying like yeah, don't
by like the Civilian Conservation Corps you know of Oklahoma
and like then thirty five. So I mean that's just
like a side point. But I come back with it.
I think they teach like I did. People who have kids,
like teenagers, and like when they ask me stuff like
they're you know, their teenage son or dar will be
like but yeah, you know, like in like tenth grade
public school whatever. They told me that, like you know,
because Roosevelt, you know, put people to work and then
you know, let's saved's economy. It's like, no, that doesn't
happen if I pay you to dig a hole and
give you food stamps. I'm paying you to dig a
hole and giving your food stamps. I'm not. I'm not.
I'm not breathing new life into I'm not. I'm not creating,
you know, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not stimulating. I'm
not stimating the national economy through its centives. But I mean,
I don't know, Thank god, I haven't set foot in
the public school in decades, but I gleaned that that
is what is underway. I don't have kids on my own,
but I I mean, I like young people anyway. But
I also kind of us also kind of use them
as like human intelligence. So I like, what what's happened
is like what's happening you know, you know, and inbo
schools and stuff. I mean, I'm only yeah kidding, like
I actually do. But yeah, that that to your point.
If if Roosevelt had been anything all other than this
kind of crazy zionist guy, who would you know, look
who wanted to you know, destroy Europe and alliance at Moscow.
If it was something like you know, if it was
something like America first guy, you'd been like undertaking these
these kinds of steps ruled by ruling, by executive order
and kind of you know, uh, situating himself as like
a law and to himself. Yeah, people with people would
have gone crazy then, and they even today, they'd be
they'd be acting like he was maybe acting like he
was Darth Vader or something. So yeah, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 1: Look at the way they treat the Santus in Florida.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly like the s and and unlike mister
Roosevelt is saying it doesn't make people arrested who disagree
with him. But yeah, so.
Speaker 1: In the thirties, who were who were Germany's biggest allies.
Speaker 2: I would say, I mean it's a complicated situation because
prior to I mean, obviously you've got to look at
Germany and Austria as one as one political culture. I'm
not saying that like that. I'm not saying that that
like Austrians can't think of themselves that there's not things
unique too, you know, I mean Austria is very different
than Germany proper, Okay, but it The reason why the
Absolutz was able to go off out a hitch was
uh was because of what I just said it uh
and instead of that, really I after after the after, after,
after Dolphins was murdered, and after Hitler kind of smoothed
over that potential in house crisis that that could have
caused Mussolini, and the can said, the bigges sension get
a Mussolini was he he offered him the Tyrol region,
which was a huge that that was that was unprecedent,
especially for I mean, Hillary supposed is a huge German nationalists.
He basically you know, he handed he handed German speaking
lands over to Italy, and that quite literally outright as
a concession. So from like thirty six thirty seven onward,
it would it would it would be Italy. And I'm
of the belief that Romania was the first and foremost
uh Germany's best ally. They they they they committed a
huge contingent of men in scale terms to uh the
Eastern Front. And Uh anton Escu, Uh you know, he
was the uh he was the Marshal of Romania. I Antonescu,
he was a holder of the knights Cross and and
just a real badass but also he uh, he really
had Hitler's back and vice versa, and people, you know,
Romania was essential too, because Barbarosa was staged essentially from
Romania in key ways. If if you understand how thing's
broke down in terms of deployment and things, you understand that. So,
I mean, Romania's not Romania is not just just like insignificant,
dumb little country or whatever people think. It's situated in
a way that's key. And I mean that's also why
that's such a strange regime during the Cold War and stuff.
I mean that's like outsaid the scope we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I lived there for a little while. It's
that's awesome. Yeah it's a strange, like I've never been there.
But if Romania kind of fascinating, Oh no, you'd love that.
You love buch a good time.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they got they got really really pretty ladies.
And uh, it's a it's a weird collision of like
crazy Slavic ship and crazy Latin stuff. And then that's
I just think that's really cool. Maybe it's kind of
like a square Protestant guy or something. Look, yeah, I
that that's that's freaking awesome. I like, I genuine want
to hear about that sometimes it but yeah, so I
I mean forgive the tangent, but yeah, I mean Italy
because it goes out saying and yeah, i'd say Romania
for not just because the Romanians were like, we're like
very very committed to the program. But uh, Antonesco himself
was uh. I mean, he was just an honorable guy
and like I said, a real badass, but he he
just really had Hitler's back, and Mussolini did too. I mean,
Mussolini is a guy. Mussolini had a lot of flaws,
and I think Mussolini, like Lenin was Uh. I think
he was kind of a master intriguer and kind of
a political genius. And in terms of, you know, as
a political soldier, I mean, I don't think he was
really I don't think he was cut out for uh,
you know, gross warm politique if we can look at
it that way. He just wasn't. But I think, you know,
I know, Musolena said degenerate have it's I know he
was a big womanizer and kind of a sex fiend,
and he he he whacked his own son in law,
you know, Count Chiano. I don't I don't think that's
a great thing to do. I mean, that's that's like
crazy Labin stuff, I guess. But I'm not saying that
to be mean or prejudice, but.
Speaker 1: But it's it's also, like you said in a recent
episode of Yours, Mussolini had this swagger about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did a ge.
Speaker 1: Smell about him. He had a you the average man
in the street probably believed that Mussolini could kick his ass. Yeah,
that's true. But Hitler didn't have that.
Speaker 2: No, No, Hitler was Uh. That's why Hitler Hussolini are
kind of It's it's odd that they became like personally
really tight because they weren't similar kinds of men, you know,
like Hitler was this Uh, Hitler was actually I mean,
Hitler was like a tense guy, but he was very subdued,
you know when he Hitler when he he'd never Hitler
made the point he didn't like wearing a uniform. Sometimes
he felt he was necessary, particularly during you know, like
the revolutionary phased aniately after, but Hitler were just you know,
a well tailored but modest suit, you know, and he'd
wear u he'd wear his iron cross for his class,
but and his party Lapel like his party badge, you know,
and he didn't uh you know Hitler, you know, yeah,
he had Avia Bram who was very beautiful and a
lot younger than him, but you know she was his
only girl, like he didn't you know, yeah, he was uh,
he was very very different than Mussolini. There was but
I mean it's straight like men have become friends. It's
kind of strange. I mean, like there's guys that you
wouldn't think would would become such close allies than they do.
But I think that's the case with Hitler and Mussolini.
But it's all Hitler took great risks, including you know,
deploying Scorseney to bail Mussolini out, like literally to spring
him from that the Alpine h redocks where he was
being imprisoned. I mean, I like Hitler the other because
you know, owing to either his his his kind of
a sensibility as a combat veteran NCO were or just
as a political soldier, you know, hilar a lot of
his decisions were informed by his personal loyalties. But Antonescu,
Hillar and Antonescue like they were personally tight, but it's
also they Antonescu was a great ally and and yeah
that that's a point that should be fleshed out more.
And the Romanians actually fought. They fought really hard. I
mean they and they got they got decimated, you know,
they they h it's not you know, the Romanian army
is not like it something like storied for us. But
they they had a until they got chewed to pieces.
They in ninety forty one, early ninety forty two, the
the Romanians did really well. I mean for that, I
mean as well as gonna be expected. You know, they didn't.
They were at certain disadvantages, but they you know, it's uh,
it's not it's no small thing. Croatia was a great
ally in Germany too, and then and the cross Uh,
you know, the crawatz uh Man for Man were probably
the best uh like minor access nations soldiers. The crawad
uh the Crows were incorporate, the Croats were incorporated into
the into the here like officially they weren't. They weren't
like they weren't Bob and s s or some kind
of auxiliary formation. And uh, they they were the only
non German, they were the only non German element that
breached the gates at Stalingrad, you know, like uh and
they they they were they were super tough, but uh
and yeah, uh Pavolic was a was a. It was
a rare example too of uh like independent State of
Croatia and like the USTA, they really were like like
a client regime of the Third Reich, and that was rare.
You know, like if people notice that, you know, the
like Berlin and and the SD and and uh, they
they part clearly Himmler he was always trying to kind
of insinuate these like proxy sort of parties, even ones
that didn't really have any on the ground support, and
Hitler was like, no, we're not gonna do that. To
the point, speaking of Romania, you know the uh Antonescue himself,
he's the one who put down you know, the Iron
Guard revolt and probably personally ordered uh Kodriano to be murdered.
And like the SS though was uh they were inviting
aid and comfort to these Iron Guard guys. Meanwhile, Berlin's
policy was, you know that these guys are like enemies
of the state. So you had like you had like
Berlin and the German Army saying you're doing one thing.
Then in the S s saying like, no, these guys
you're like arresting and himage shot or are guys and
helping them, so which is really crazy. But by the
point being independent state of Croatia is it's a rare
example of them, and that that owes the intrigues of
uh what happened uh in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and
and what amount to do a kind of chit nik
coup and all but name on the eve of Barbarossa.
But it Yeah, so Croatia was a was a rare
uh kind of like true like client regime of a
national of a fascist or fascist type country. So yeah,
forgive me if that was like too tangential.
Speaker 1: No, no problem, I want to wait until the next
time we talked to actually get into the war. But
one thing, one thing I wanted to ask was was
it because of American influence or was it because of
Soviet influence that he didn't have more European countries that
he could consider to be allies, because I mean, Spain
seems like it could be a natural ally, especially at
that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the both cells Are and Franco were intriguing for
their own purposes. I mean, I think Franco is kind
of an idiot, unlike sellas Are. I think was U
was a great man in a lot of ways, and
cells are there's nothing all cells Are could do rather
than kind of like trying to strike this tense like
middle path between you know, the British Empire, the third
right elite. But Frank Franco I think was a the
fucking moron and he uh, you know, Franco. But Franco
is a great survivor, and up touse men often are
good at surviving even if they're you know, kind of
not good and much else. But the way I understand
Franco is that the real like the Falangists who were
real like harden Vast national socialists or fascists, uh you know,
he he he sent them off to fight the Soviet
unions that they were out of Spain and hopefully wouldn't
come back. And that's kind of what happened. But it
you know, Frank people, uh you know, France actually was
a fascist state like and that would like they were,
you know, organically like they that's why people communiately forget that,
you know, an operating torch and American troops landed in
North Africa. It was they were opposed by France who
fought them, Okay, like and uh, Commandant Darlin new I
think Roosevelt probably had murdered you know. Uh that was
uh basically Roosevelt was faced. So they ha going to
try and bribe Darlin into like quitting the war. I mean,
like the fact that France fought Germany. They fought that
they fought Germany beau they didn't want to be under
Berlin's dominion like they were. They were fascists basically, you know,
like a third like it, about about a third of
France were rads and they like refused to fight. But
it you know, the idea that the other that the
quote VC regime was like this total total contrivance is
not true. It's complicated by the fact they were under occupation.
But you know, I I think, I mean, I've thought
a lot about that too, I mean to your point
about uh why uh, but I mean Hitler specifically said,
you know, there was there was a meeting of of
of of what was supposed to be a fascist international
of sorts, I think in nineteen thirty six, but I
have to double check it, and I cannot remember what
the host venue was. But uh, it didn't really go
anywhere because again the you know that there was no
National Socialist delegation and without a Berlin delegation representing Hitler,
it was kind of like a big whatever. But it
uh I it uh. Hitler himself always made the point that,
you know, I mean that's when I made the point
about the independent State of Croatia, because Hillar himself said that,
you know, the the National Socialist program in paradigm, it's
it's not this ideology that is intended to be exported
as some sort of you know, it's some sort of
answer to to Bolshevism or something, and that's important. I mean,
I think Hitler did pretty I think Hiller did pretty well.
I mean I uh in terms of in terms of
wooing allies, it uh he uh people uh in some
of these smaller states, uh, you know, you know it's
father Tiso and Slovakia. You know, Tisa was this kind
of uh, I guess what most people would considered to
be like a clerical fascist type. You know, that was
like the big that was that was that was the
big coup against Benice is that you know, Czechoslovakia wasn't
it wasn't just it wasn't dismantled him out by the
by the cruel machinations that evil harr Hitler. You know,
the as soon as the as soon as the Slovakians
like saw the opportunity, they declared in the penance, They're like,
we've got no truck with Zenter price. Zechoslovakia is a contrivance.
And Tisa was very much on board with the third right,
and simply because I mean Hillar made his case effectively
and and uh and managing evince uh, managing convince him
of of of victory odds. So I mean, I think
it's uh, but it's also you gotta the Europe, Europe
kind of orbits around I mean the whole Europe, orbits
around Berlin, I mean kind of geo strategically as well
as conceptually. I mean I think that's I think that's
part of it. I mean I think Hitler understood, you know,
I mean basically basically, people even people who didn't particularly
fancy taking standing orders from Berlin. I mean, it was
understood that like well, I mean, and you know, what
happens in Berlin has got ramifications throughout the continent, and
you know the kind of that that's that's kind of
the the heart of political life. So I think that's
part of it too. It was just understand, you know,
let's say, if you know, let's say in this in
autumn or December ninety forty one, you know, let's say
Moscow did fall, and you know, NCIG was realized. It's like, okay,
I whether people were at you know, whether they were
in Prague or whether they were in Paris, or whether
they were in Madrid or in uh, you know, wherever
they were, I think I would to say, like, well, okay,
you know this is this is this is kind of
the new political culture. So that's you know, we'll abide that.
I think that's why it h that. Uh. Also, I
mean I I I really like, I really like new
To Hampson. You know, he was the Norwegian bother. He
was like this agrarian, romantic type guy. He wrote a
book Growth of the Soil, which is a really great book,
as well as aut of Hunger, which is kind of
a auto biographical take of his early life. As you know,
like he was literally kind of like a starving author.
But uh, Hampson made the point. Uh. He wrote a
eulogy to Hitler when after the forty five and you
know there there was there was a million. There was
a million, quite literally a million, like in one point
one million foreign volunteers and then ss you know, from
from all nations, from Ukraine to the Netherlands to Belgium
to Spain, the you know, it's it really was like
this in European army. And these guys weren't conscripted a
gun point or something. I mean, you know, I so
I think there was I think I think there was
more of a pan European the leagues.
Speaker 1: Was that because of anti American sentiment or anti Soviet sentiment, I.
Speaker 2: Mean primarily the latter. I think people outside of the
Germans understood that they were in big trouble with regards
to Roosevelt because he was targeting them for destruction. I speculate,
and I think it's pretty well substantiated by kind of
statements of other of other chief executives at the time
in Europe, I think America wasn't really on people's radar
in the same way in a prior to the Cold
War and prior to the kind of you know, destruction
of Europe and it's dimming up between the super powers.
If if you were, unless you were situated in the
UK or in Germany, if if you were a European
if you were a European head of state, or if
you were in the executive kind of branch of a
European state. I mean, in the early twentieth century, like
America wasn't really at the forefront of your thoughts. I mean, yeah,
you had a sense of it's great power capability, and
you know, you had you had an understanding that it's
intervention or that intervention could make or break outcomes, particularly
in geopolitical terms, but it it was just kind of
this remote thing, you know. So yeah, I mean most
most I I guarantee you that most guys, like foreign
fighters who joined the VAFAN did so if they wanted
to kill Ivan and they hated Communists, not because you know,
they're like, we love national socialism, although some of them did.
But at the same time, I mean, it doesn't matter
because it owes to what I said. I mean it,
you know, European political life orbits around Berlin. So it's like, well,
you know we're we're going to you know, we're gonna
we're going to war with the communists, you know, so
you know, Berlin's gonna leave us, you know, and if
if the access in one, it's like okay, well you
know it, uh, you know, whether people like it or not.
You know, it's like basically the tenor of pug A
life would have originated in Berlin. I mean, where else
is it going to come from? It It's a fancying issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can understand why why the Spanish
would hate the Communists, But if they have, why do
you think people were coming from all those other countries?
I mean, what was the Because we aren't taught this.
I mean you talked about it last time you were
on here. Nuremberg just basically put a nail in the
coffin for being right wing. And if your right wing
nowadays you have to be middle of the road right
wing and you just have to bow down to whatever
the left says. But what was it about certain people
in Europe who would be willing to go and fight
for a foreign army? They hated communism so much? I
mean it was obvious in some countries, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean generally it's like, I mean, back to
the point about uh what Nolphi was saying. It these
German guys, I mean Hiler himself, but also, uh, you
know this idea Germans had that that Bolshevism is this
you know, homicidal paradigm that you know is the is
being foisted upon us and implemented by radicals and and
you know Jews who want to kill us. I mean,
you can say that's crazy, year, that's a bad way
to think about things. That's basically the way people thought
about it. You know, nobody's really neutral on communism, whether
you were with the program or you viewed it like
I just said. And I mean in the case of
people I talked about Father Tiso, or in the case
of people like these Slovak guys who joined the Bob
and s s, they would have done it because they're like, well,
you know, the this is basic a peasant population of
Biaus Catholics know, like you know, the Communists are they're
gonna do to us that they did the Kolos. And
they're also gonna just you know, they're gonna burn our
churches down and kill our priests. You know, funck that
you know, we're we're we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna
burn them to the ground. First in the case of
a more developed country like France, you know, and I
mean the last defenders of uh, the guys who the
Battle of Berlin, the guys who are literally defending the
Reichstag with a French off on as this. Okay, you
got a situation like that, it's you know, you'll have
guys who basically would have viewed it the same way
that the Germans did. You know, Guys from like a
developed kind of you know, cosmopolitan we can call it
that European state, they would doude. Communism is like you know,
so much, so much uh uh you know, kind of
Jewish radicalism aimed at you know, kind of annihilating our
national existence in favor of this, in favor of this
uh you know, paradigm of enslavement quite literally done. But
I'm and it's not, you know, it's I uh, I've
got an idea. I mean, I don't want to go
too far a field and bring it into the uh,
bring it into the round the polemic. But it's the uh,
you know, it doesn't really at the end of the
I mean, I think the point a lot that I mean,
you know, anti fascion. You have this idea that I mean,
I'm not saying you, but like a lot of people
this idea because I mean from my Aliwood or whatever,
from public school that like people were just like revolted
by like Nazism or something like they weren't, you know,
I mean, even if you weren't like a big national
socialist eve even't like think Hitler was great, even if
you didn't even if you didn't uh love.
Speaker 1: Nor fascist movements in every country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean even people who didn't, particularly.
Speaker 1: Mosley was in the Mosley was an MP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, even if you are particularly
keen to that, it's not like you looked at it
as something revolting or horribly evil. You know. It's like
you if you were like the middle of the road
like conservative type or just kind of like a working
man who you know, was a was a bleeving cat,
like you probably look at fascists like, well, these guys
have some strange ideas and I think their pageantries a
bit silly, but they want to kill the communists and
you know, they want to get Jewish finance capital off
our back. So yeah, I'm with that. You know, that's
a good thing. I mean, that's the way they would
have looked at it. And I think that's basically the
way most guys looked at it. I mean that's what
the uh you know, like I said, the way to understand, uh,
the way to understand, say, for example, to state like France,
the way that people looked at the Germans is they're like,
we don't like being under occupation by Berlin. But they
they didn't never, they didn't like disdain the fact that
these guys were fascists. They're like, they they didn't care
about that. I mean, I'm min already did of you know, partisans,
But I mean that's that's a different thing. You know.
The average man in the street fighting German occupation wasn't
a commy. He was just what I said, he was
a guy who didn't you didn't want you know, some uh,
he didn't want some German capo, you know, telling him
his business. It's not that he hasn't got principal objection
to the fascists, and he probably was a fascist himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of the It's funny that some of
the people even that I know, will today talk about how,
you know, Israel involvement and how much of our foreign
policy is based off of is Israel involvement. We need
to get out of it, and we need to cut
them off, cut off funds, cut everything, just cut cut
them loose. And a lot of these same people can't
even look back to the thirties and see that people
had the same arguments. They were just coming from a
different direction. You're talking about banking, you know.
Speaker 2: Well it's a little too I mean the fact that
I mean the point it's you know, the there's real
there's real sectarianimity between between between people identify with with
Judaism and everybody else. Now, I mean, does that mean
that everybody else on the planet is like this big
racist and just like hate people for no reason, or
or does this mean that you know, there's there's there's
a real problem with with the with the kind of
with the kind of intrinsic politics of of Jewish identity.
I mean, I you know, uh I that's why I
you know, yeah, I mean you can't you can't have
an honest conversation.
Speaker 1: At length about it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly like he was conscious kinds of the stuff. No,
people can't have People can't have grown up conversations about
such things. So yeah, I mean it's it's it's and
it's amazing with people, even otherwise intelligent people, they can't, Yeah,
they can't like draw these connections between things like it's, uh,
it's really really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's end it there so that we can get
into the war the next time we talk.
Speaker 2: No, no, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, I didn't mean to
go out with too many tangents. But yeah, if.
Speaker 1: You know, okay, yeah, that's what I love tangents.
Speaker 2: I I appreciate you, man, and yeah, I I I mean,
it's it's a complicated issues, like I want to make
sure I don't I don't want to just gloss over
things that are our material to understanding the issues presented.
But yeah, no, well whatever you want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Promote your substack. Promote your substack, because I.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I've gotten to the point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've gotten to the point where I basically survive
on what people people give me for my substack, what
people just send to me because they love the show.
They love they love what the people that I have
on the conversations, I have my crazy I want you yeah,
I want you to get you know you deserve. I mean,
you only have I think it's five episodes of your
podcast that are exclusive on substack and every.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been trying to drop it by weekly and
I'm gonna. I've been in the like the second uh
the second installing my science fiction brand. I I'm having
a double down on that because I gotta get it
to Imperium Press. But I I what I'm getting is
I gotta I gotta start putting more long form written
content on my substacks. I haven't don about a month,
and I promise I'm gonna I'm going to bear down
on that in earnest. But yeah, my substack is Real
Thomas seven seven seven Real R E A L T
H O M A S seven seven seven dot substack
dot com. And uh, it's about half free content, about
half subcontent like a podcast a subscription, and there's a
like premium long form stuff that subscription. But there's also,
like like I said, about half of the law enform
stuff on there is free, and like my print stuff,
like for my sci fi brand, there's always like previews
there that are free of like sample chapters and things
like that. So if you like what I do, go there.
And yeah, it's only five bucks a month too, so
it shouldn't break your bank and you can read everything.
If you can't afford five books a month, you shouldn't
be sitting around reading my substick. You should be to survive.
So but no, in all seriousness, I yeah, I really
really really appreciate the figure that people take an interest.
But yeah, no again, man, this was great and yeah,
well we'll get into the war years whenever you want.
Just let me know and we'll we'll get bicked to it.
Speaker 1: It'll be real soon. Thank you. I want to welcome
everyone back to the Pekanonas show, returning for the third
time less than a month. Thomas seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: It's gone on, man, Hi Pete, thanks for hosting me
yet again. It's only a pleasure, and I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1: Last time tried to explain what was happening in Germany
that was leading up to We went from Versailles, even
backed a little bit to the Bolshek or evolution and
came forward to what would lead up to World War two.
But before we started that, I wanted to ask you
a question because this is a question that I've heard
arguments on, and debate on, and watch lectures on for
five six years now. The National Socialists in Germany, would
they be considered left wing or right wing?
Speaker 2: I mean the problem is that in America, and part
of this owes to part of this, part of this
ows the two things. Part of it ows the Keynes
and the kind of ideological baggage of Keynes, and part
of it owes to the subsequent Cold War Americans. Into
a lesser degree, you find this in the UK as
well as the rest of the kind of Anglophone cultural
sphere be able. This idea that the right left wing
divide has something to do with economics, or it has
something to do with, you know, people's view of you know,
how the government interfaces with with with the free market
or the like, or with what purportally is the free market.
I mean everybody knows is not. There's no such thing
as a kind of purely like free market, you know,
like that that that just exists, like in stasis, like
Newtonian physics just exists or something. But I mean that
that's a been too abstract for what we're talking about here.
But the you know, the way the Europeans, if you
want to understand what the right left divide originally meant,
like conceptually, You've got to look at the French Revolution
and what gave rise to those clefts. It has to
do with political values. It has to do with what
you consider like how how you view authority, how you
view the legitimacy of authority, and what what you view
as as the proper you know, domain of a of
a of the state, and and of culture, and where
where the dominion of one begins and the other ends,
and what the content of those things is. Okay, it's
not Wait when you find these libertarian types who claim, like, oh,
Adolf Hitler was a left winger because he believed in
high taxes or something. I mean, that's that's other deliberately
up to some kind of a an effort to sabotage
the conversation on purpose, or or it's just really really
provincial and ignorant, you know, the the the only one
unders say national socialism is is I mean, there's something
to the the A. J. B. Taylor's view of it,
as as Sonderveg is, you know, owing to the the
kind of peculiar like dialectical course of Germany that gave
rise to it, like it would it wouldn't really have
emerged in another state I believe that, and that's also
why it's important to distinguish it from fascism and other
kinds of autocratic movements that UH that developed kind of
cominantly with it. But it, you know, the the fact
of the matter is it it was. It was. It
was an effort to salvage what UH culture from what
Hyder called practical transcendence. And what Haider said transcendence, he
didn't mean, you know, like we think about in a
Christian sense or like in a plate in a sense.
He meant that modern life and the challenges of it,
and particularly the emergence of technology and other things, and
the kind of tensions and tensions inherent they're in, you know,
one of which was class warfare, or one of which
culminated in class warfare. Rather, it's not spontaneously occurring thing
desplay what mister Merk said, this leads to the destruction
of certain practices values, for Lagab to phrase it, or
characterized orientation points for the way people live their lives
individually and severally or severally and in common with others,
you know, in communitarian ways. So the national socialism had
if everyone like boil it down to a like, say
like three principles. It was, you know, to restore German sovereignty,
you know, and deliberated from the from you know, being
yoked by its enemies, you know, to to preserve the
German culture and guarantee the posterity of its people. And
and then you know, the German race, if if you
want to characterize it that way, as people in the
twentieth century tended to think about things in biological material
terms and to eradicate communism, you know, for all time,
and and basically all iterations of of of left wing
thought and practice that you know, we're facilitating those first
two things that I mentioned. So it's an existential proposition,
you know, the idea that you know, there's a check
like it's the same thing on like Americans talking about democracy,
like there's a checklist, and you know, if you identify
certain factors like oh, that's democracy or this is not democracy.
You know, it's like, let's look at it. Idolf Hitler
in the National Socialist German Workers Party. You know, if
I check off, I know, off in the socialist box,
that means it's left wing. Or if I check off
enough here it's right wing, that's not really the way
political theory develops, and that that's not the way, that's
certainly not the way people can sceptualize it in Europe.
So you know, the only the only way to look
at national socialism is that is as a radical right
wing tendency, kind of like the ultimate radical right wing tendency,
and in in Hegelian terms. And whether you accept Hegel's
view of things or not, and is you know, his
his his idea about the cunning of reason and history
all that aside, even if you're rejected as metaphysics outright.
You know, the Germans themselves I'm talking about you know, uh,
people like like ordinary men involved in political life, not
just high flighting academics. They basically accepted Hegelian paradigms and
they thought they they thought of politics itself as a
dialectical process. So there weren't even even national socialists on
the strass Or side, who you know, were had a
conciliatory view of the Soviet Union in relative terms, and
who you know, incorporated a lot more of kind of
class antagonism, sorts of paradigms into their program. They they
viewed themselves, they viewed themselves as radically right wing and
as the radical right wing response to subversive elements from
the other side and the other side being left. So
in that sense, you're talking about people who, in existential terms,
look at themselves as the right wing vanguard. So it
can't be anything other than the right wing. Like, if
that's what you view yourself as in political terms, that's
what everybody else views you as. You know, the enemy is, uh,
who is willing to kill you and who you're willing
to kill in kind like views you as that that's
what you are. So I mean, that's that's uh, that's
the best way you can characterize it. And there's no
like argument there in my opinion. But like I said,
it's uh, it's uh, it's it becomes convoluted because part
of this is uh, you know, pe people view their
left right divide in America, and part I mean, like
I said, I mean, Teams is really toxic and all
kinds of ways. And I think he was a fraud
and a pseudo intellectual at base as much as Marx was.
But there's a there, there's ideological baggage, the Keynes and
and the kind of and you know, and and the
kind of demand side paradigm it's it's basically, uh, it's
got what we would consider it to be today, you know,
like a like a like a social justice ethos baked
into it that is essentially hostile to everything that came
before it, and that suggests that, you know, the the
role of government is to you know, resolve like certain
inequalities that are just inherently unjust and need to be remedied.
But that's not what that's not what socialism at based
it is, Okay, I mean you want to Spangl himself
made the point that you know, Prussia, particularly, you know,
in particularly like Bismarck's model of good government was highly socialistic.
I mean, if you think if you think that, if
you if you think that you know Bismarck had something
in common with you know, uh like nineties the nineteen
seventies Labor Party in the UK, you have something wrong
with you or you're in idiots, you know. I mean,
it's not or if you think that you know the
or if you think that you know the the the
Prussian ethos was held something in common with with the
with with euro Communism that came later, I mean that's
absurd too, you know, I mean it's it's nonsense. I
don't see anybody can think otherwise. But you know, that's
that's the way to understand it. Werner Sombart is kind
of the key. If you want to understand right wing
socialism such as such that it is, that's probably the
wrong way to characterize it. But if you want to
understand socialism not of the Marcist left, you should read
Verner Sombard. You should probably read oz Wald Spangler. But
I don't even I don't even think you need to
get that esoteric. I mean all socialisms it's are kind
of European exiomatically, because the origins of Europe as a
kind of cultural socio political form, this come develops on
a medieval mind, Okay, and uh, there's a there's there's
an interdependence between casts there that uh was shattered by
the modern age. Uh. Part of this was deliberate, but
part of it just is was was inevitable, owing the
you know, emergent modalities of of labor, of production, but
also of you know, just patterns of living and and
and what people and the authority, what people recognize as authority,
and like what authority they appeal to for justice and
things like that you know, when when there's no more
lord in the manner and there's there's no more there's
no more uh, there's no more subsistence agriculture. That that
changes everything and the whole kind of the whole theory
of socialism, whoever you pay it on the political spectrum,
whatever iteration you're talking about, it's basically it's basically an
effort to uh, to restore the social capital that was
shattered by the emergence of a of a of modern life.
It's more complicated than that, but that's kind of the
basic brass tacks of it. That's the best answer I
can give.
Speaker 1: We'll let people chew on that, all right. So Germany
invades Poland? What leads up to that? Why does that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, Poland was essentially ruled by a military junta that
was somewhat unstable, not just in the way that I
mean conditions that lead any military junta kind of taking
power or unstable, but it uh, there was a kind
of great power intrigues the destabilized that situation. You know,
like I raised before and on on Bronze Age Perverts podcast,
we deep dive into this what became to be known
is the Polish documents are uh something will need to
pay attention to if they want to understand why Poland
did what it did in terms of refusing to come
to terms with Germany. Essentially, what Germany demanded of Poland
was they demanded uh dedicated access to uh Danzig. They demanded,
you know, uh that their people uh be guaranteed uh
certain rights of self determination what was called the Polish Corridor,
and UH they wanted uh some kind of guarantee that
they could deploy, uh they could deploy to accomplish defense
and depth like on Polish soil in common with Poland,
like an event that you know, the Soviet Union mobilized
with hostility, but they were willing to let the Poles,
you know, retain uh sovereign control over Danzig song as
the Germans had dedicated access and so long as the
so long as the so long as the ethnic Germans
there uh had you know, had uh at formal political rights,
and UH I believe Poland would have come would have
accepted those terms because they were entirely reasonable and they
were precedented at that point. The Germans weren't even demanding that,
you know, the territories that have been seated the Poland
never the Great War, have you decoupled from Poland and
given back to them? I mean, this was a very
moderate set of demands, frankly, and these demands, oh the
basic national security exigencies that I whatever whatever regime was
in Berlin, would have basically demanded the same thing. A
couple of links happened to frame this and conict as
do why is the why war kind of became ineutable
in my opinion, Like I said, the Polish documents a
UH a UH after the invasion UH of Poland by
the Wehrmacht. A UH an SS battalion sees these documents
from UH from UH. I can't remember it was the
Foreign Ministry or if it was UH, or if it
was somewhere else, but in any event, the crux of
these documents was that they've been diplomatic UH overtures to Poland.
We're in UH. Roosevelt, through William Bullet, had given Poland
the formal guarantee it if they held out against Germany
like they would support them an event of war, and
that I believe probably UH stiffen the resolve even more
than Chamberlain's guaranteed did I mean, obviously Chamberlain's guarantee was
above board, and uh the Roosevelt that the New Dealers
guarantee was not. But you've got to consider in context
what have been going on between the New Dealers in
Poland leading over to that point, Uh Ambassador Uh Potowski
Potowski I always always butchered the pronunciation of these Slavic names.
But when he'd been in Washington several months before the
outbreak of hostilities, you know, late nineteen thirty eight, really
ninety thirty nine, I think it was around holiday season
nineteen thirty eight, he ran across William Bullet. William Bullet
was a bassador of France, but he was something of
a minister without portfolio and Roosevelt's administration, he was kind
of the defect of Secretary of State like Cordell Hall.
It was always kind of sidelined, but it it was
understood even at the time that Bullet he wielded disbortionate power.
He was considered not ridicularly serious guy. He was kind
of this foppish guy, like a man about town, you know.
He was one of Roosevelt's kind of aristocratic con seats
came out in some of these associations, he maintained. And
nowhere was that more evident thing with William Bullet. But uh,
when Potowski ran across a Bullet, he voices he said
that he relayed back to Warsaw. Patowsky did that, you know,
Bullet was characterizing a you know, the Soviet Union in
completely benign terms. Uh, Roosevelt was, Uh was was speaking
of Germany and in such jinguistic language that you know,
it was having the effect of of of of kind
of a kind of facilitating a crisis where they didn't
necessarily have to be one. Basically, what Potoski said was
that the New Dealers were facilitating a kind of war
fever by their abilification of Germany, and on top of
it that they were kind of, you know, they they
were placing Poland at the right precarious position vis a
vis the Soviet Union because they were assentially demanding that
Poland started looking at the Soviet Union as a strategic
ally when, according to Patowski, like these people, meaning the
Soviets were a greater threat it's essentially to Poland and
the Germans were and uh, it it indicated a real
contempt for for Roosevelt and in the entire foreign policy apparatus
in Washington. In Potowski's view, he said that, you know,
you was in their financial years. These are his words,
not mine. We're uh, we're we're trying to orchestrate a crisis,
and at the same time, you know, build a more
coalition against Germany, just you know, for the sake of
smashing Germany without regard to you know, what that would
do to the geostrategic landscape in Europe and the fact
that there'd be no uh, there'd be no bulwark against
the Soviet power which was increasingly you know, uh being
asserted by Stalin, both directly and implicitly at the same time.
I mean, so in other words, you uh, you had
these you had natural conditions of tension extent between Germany
and Poland. I mean they go back probably a millennia,
and uh, the Polish government was doing basically nothing to
stop what amounted to a burgaining kind of race war
in the ground. Uh, the post majority was ethnically cleansing Jews, Russians, uh, Germans,
other people that they didn't like. Uh. You know, the
uh you had uh, you you had you had some
moderates in Warsaw within the military government. You had others
who were uh incredibly uh incredibly jinguistic, and we're looking
for the opportunity to uh, you know, essentially sue from
war in order to grab even more land uh from Germany.
On top of that, which ever even seated to them,
you even had some elements who were who believe that
Germany's back had been broken so much by the defeat
nineteen eighteen and by the subsequent uh uh you know,
by the by the by the subsequent you know, sanction
of Versailles and everything else that you know, if if
if it came to war, they they were even those
who believe that, you know, the Polish army would you know,
be able to march on Berlin within weeks, I mean,
which seems totally insane. This is history in the rearview mirror,
and it's amazing what people can convince themselves of when
they're when they're convinced the rightness of their cause as
it were, so, I mean, basically all of those reasons
and its uh I believe too, the uh what was
always within the contemplation. And both John Toland and David
Irving make this point, neither of whom are military historians,
but They're both were incredibly I mean, Irving is still alive,
but you know, Irving's kind of the seminal historian of
the Third Reich who everybody feels about him in tooland
tooland is unique had unique insight into the personage of Hitler,
I believe, and he had a good understand I think
he's probably the best documentarian of Hitler's relationship with the
O k W. And you know, the the General staff
rather it uh, the UH very much within the contemplation
of of of Hitler was UH the Soviet Union and
its power projection potential and the UH. One of the
reasons Hitler was so eager until it became clear that
this was just totally off the table. The super peace
with the Western allies is because you know, like AJB.
Taylor to you know, bring up him again as I
did about the sunder vague point a moment ago, Hitler
didn't really have any interest in the West. I mean, yeah,
like any kind of any kind of German superpower, you know,
was going to dominate Europe as a little pivot politically
and militarily of the continent. But this idea that you know,
the this idea like the German had some sort of
designs on France or something. I mean, well, in naked
geo strategic terms, you know what exactly would that accomplish?
You know, nothing really is of like thirty nine nineteen forty.
So if you want again is that if you want
to understand the Polish situation too, Like, aside from all
these intrigues and just intrinsic tensions, you've also got to
understand what the Soviet Union was doing. The Soviet Union
was amassing the largest military force the world the planet
had ever seen it. Uh. It was a burgaining superpower
as much as the United States was in military terms
obviously not in not in productive terms, and in UH
in terms of UH, you know, in terms of uh
economic wealth and the ability to translate its natural bounty
into value added you know, manufacturers. Obviously that wasn't there.
But it's capacity to make war in protect power was
was absolutely in a part with the United States potentially,
but the anything Germany wanted to do if if there
if it could not, if Germany could not reach them
a sort of concorde with Poland in the form of
mutual defense pact or at least you know, some kind
of right of parlay in terms of you know, deploying
uh in depth across the Polish frontier in common with
the Polish Army. If that couldn't be achieved, Jerry would
not be able to come to terms with Poland, because
that would mean that there was you know, they were
just constantly, essentially at a risk of assault by the
Soviet Union with no naturally defensible boundaries between them and
the Soviet Army. And Poland would have been in a
position too where they could essentially and definitely play off
the Soviet Union against Germany and vice versa in order
to get what they wanted. I mean, it would not
be a tenable situation, that's why. But moving forward as
late as as late as October nineteen thirty nine, you know,
like several weeks into the several weeks into the invasion,
William Roach Davis, who was this kind of industrialist type.
Uh he was. He was not a new dealer, but
nor was he in America first or he uh he made
overtures to Berlin at the behest of a Department of
State to see what you know, as a civilian, which
is and you know not not as not not any
physical capacity. This was very unofficial diplomacy. But Davis approached
Hitler through UH weisacer at UH, you know, the Foreign
Ministry in Berlin, and asked, UH what Germany was willing
to offer, you know, if uh if, if if America
was willing to step in and try and you know,
negotiate some sort of peace, and UH Germany said that
they'd allow Poland to remain sovereign so long as it
became a uh as, so long as it adopted a
former neutrality visa the Germany and the Soviet Union. So
long as the territories that have been lost during the
Great War were decoupled and incorporated back into the German Reich,
you know, so long as the Germans got Damzig, and
you know, so long as so long as h you know,
so long as those conditions were met, basically like they
they would would draw you know, they would draw up
beyond you know, what would be the new German borders,
which are basically what they'd been in nineteen fourteen. Okay,
which is not a great deal for the polls, but
it's better than what became of the polls. And frankly,
the Germans didn't have to offer anything. And then when apparently,
when Davis returned to Washington, Roosevelt refused to meet him.
Cordell Hull refused to meet him, and he was basically stonewalled.
And everybody in Roosevelt's regime pretended as if these conversations
never happened. Now, the cynic in me wants to believe
that Roosevelt was trying to hedges bets looking forward to
his uh re election, But uh, I mean, who the
hell knows? Davis said, no reason to lie about this?
Uh what he what he said was uh what the
It was pretty well documented by by Tom Fleming in
the New Dealers War and as well as by uh
Mark webber At I h r, he's he's he's, I
mean what I'm dropping this force that people can look
it up if they want to. They don't need to
just take my word for it. But I mean, this
was the post situation was very very murky. In other words, Okay,
that's what, but it was, uh you know, it was
the primary catalyst was, uh, you know, the the power
political paradigm between Germany and the Soviet Union, which is
why I mean, that's what did what What did Berlin do?
What did Berlin's last year alf Hitler do before U
before giving the assault order. I mean they sat down
with UH ribent troup and you know, Stalin's UH delegates
what authority to negotiate in UH such capacities, and you know,
divvied up like what you know, the what what what
the map would look like after this, after thees stage
in hostilities of Poland, because and that wasn't an accident.
I mean, that wasn't just you know, Germany being a
good neighbor and in power political terms, I mean that
was this was a catalyst for the war. I mean,
you know, it was it was a geostrategic contest between UH,
the Reich and the Soviet Union and and the Poles
thought that they could gamble and somehow profit and that
was incredibly foolish. But like I said, it was an
unstable regime. He made the point that one of the
more bizarre things is I mean, yeah, okay, I realized
that there's always there's always UH fictions that are confabulated
in order to rationalize, you know, and intervention and things,
and in these in these power political affairs, and you know,
there's there's always there's there's ever honesty that a foot
when I'm America decided to go to war, But holding
out the Polish regime of nineteen thirty nine is some
sort of beacon of democracy or some kind of a
you know, or some sort of is there some sort
of victim of uh, of the intrigues of authoritarian states.
I mean, that's particularly absurd, you know, Like I said,
it was, this was literally a military junta that was
ethnically cleansing people, uh that it uh that it didn't
think belonged, and it's uh and it's uh and it's
a national state. So that's the best summary I can profer.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the fact that
we are taught nowhere when we're growing up, when we're
in school, that the Soviet Union and communism at that
point was a great threat to Europe. I mean you saw, yeah,
you already had the we talked about the last time,
the Spanish civil all the all the stuff that was
happening in Spain and all these fascist movements rising up
in certain countries because they felt the heat of this Germany,
Germany being right there, What did they really did Germany
really feel like the Soviet Union was going to push
forward and basically take Europe if they wanted.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely. And I mean Germany's problem going back
and Jermany's probably going to make centuries was always Russia, Okay.
I mean, just if you take communism out of it,
that would have changed everything, okay in terms of the
world situation and the ideological persuasion of the state actors
involved and everything else. But Germany always had geostrategic existential
problem visa v. Russia. That that's just inevitable, okay, because
that's that's the tragedy of of of great power paradigms,
and particularly Europe, where I mean one of the problems
of Europe is that, uh, you know, Europe is basically
a peninsula. If you look at it, I mean in
geographic terms. I mean you know this, you looked at
maps and you're a learning guy, it's essentially it's essentially
it's an undersized yeah, and there's no there's no natural
way to defend it, you know, And then you have
this there's nothing standing between there's nothing standing between Europe
and and you know, the barbaric East if you want
to look I don't look at it that way, but
I mean that's the view and that's the kind of
the mythology of of Europe and it's existential concerns and fears.
So I mean there's that, and I you know, the
uh the Communists had gone on the march uh immediately
after the Great War or and they basically got stopped
in their tracks, you know, by the Poles. And that's
one of the reasons why you know, the Polish army
had this kind of misplaced confidence as people might view it,
you know, uh, Intrinsically communism, as I made the point
last time we spoke, communism is not just intrinsically homicidal,
its intrinsically internationalist. And it's it's kind of like the
practice of it is to tear down national borders in
frontiers and uh expand almost like uh almost almost like
a plant germinates its surroundings or something. I mean, I'm
not trying to sound shrill or resort to luridi perbole,
but I mean there's there's all these considerations. You know,
there was like the Apocao uh uh reality that you know,
Bolsimism truly had this this kind of uh this this
this kind of this momentum, this this dialectical momentum that
it's difficult for people to kind of identify with these
days because there's nothing comparable but it. But on top
of all those things, too, uh, is Stalin was mobilizing
uh a massive military force that, you know, as I said,
was the largest that up to that point it ever existed.
I mean well, and they were situated in offensive deployment
by the time of Barbarossa two years subsequent, just shy
A two years subsequent to, uh, the assault of Poland.
I mean, what what is that he was a Sovietunion
planning on doing with this? I mean they you know
I It's never benign I mean you never you never uh,
A state never, I mean, even aside from all these
other variables we just mentioned, you, a state never mobilizes,
particularly a state with you know, superpower potential like the
Soviet Union was. A state never mobilizes for benign purposes.
You know. It's uh, it's equaling as is it going
to draw down on somebody and saying, well, don't worry,
I'm only pointing this weapon at you for defensive purposes.
I mean that's great, but it you know, the it
doesn't change the fact it's an existential menace and it's
also too, I mean, I believe that was part of
the problem with There's he was there was a I
don't want to we can deep dive into this at
some other time if you want. But like the Hitler
Strasser cleft, which in some ways is the radical rights
equivalent to the Trotzky Stalin cleft. It's an imperfect uh metaphor,
but I'm kind of intrigued by it. The parallel, uh
the uh, I mean that's there was there was a
there's an international aspect to that, because I mean, Strasser
was certainly no friend of the of the Russians or
of communism in the Soviet Union, but he realized, you know,
we've got to somehow come to terms with these people.
And uh. The response to that, like the Hitler factions
of you you was basically the Prussian view, which was like, okay,
I mean, even if even if you come to some
kind of concord with Stalin and with the Russians just
by just by a kind of osmosis, you know, Germany
is gonna become a fiefdom of Russia's last Soviet Union.
You know, you can't. You're gonna be junior partner just
an existential terms in any kind of UH, in any
in any uh sort of diplomatic political concord of that nature.
You know, so it's not gonna matter because you know, whatever,
whatever whatever Germany does in terms of power of projection
or in terms of existential political decisions, you know, of
a of a military nature is is gonna be dictated
by Moscow. And if not dictated, you know, Moscow is
gonna have the ultimate veto over it. Then, you know,
in in existential like realist terms. So I mean, there's that.
And finally, I write a lot of my lawn form
as people who read me, I I I'm sure of
gleaned about the fact that I believe that, you know,
roose Develt in the United States was Germany's primary existential
enemy in UH. I mean, yeah, I realized there was
a man a key in kind of uh ideological collision
between the German Reich and the Soviet Union and uh
the uh you know, Bolshevism and national socialism. He merged
out of a you know, a common dialectical process and
they they can't be overstated in the significance of that.
But uh, in terms of the true kind of Uh,
in terms of the true kind of enemy of the
German Reich. Uh, I'd say that was America. And uh,
looking forward, that definitely was in Hitler's contemplation. Like I said,
just read the text of the December eleventh speech. And
if you're gonna, if you're looking forward, you know, and
the Germans did think in millennial increments. Okay. I mean
you can say that there's grandiose and crazy, but it's
really not. That's the way ancient people's view the world,
and it h historical time. In the twentieth century. Uh,
people began to think and these kinds of dargantuan terms. Okay,
I mean that's all the major all the major powers did. Okay,
it wasn't just the Europeans. It wasn't just Hitler's kind
of you know, artist romanticism taking hold of his taking
hold of his fascinations. But if you're gonna, if you're
gonna steal yourself from some ongoing kind of Cold war
with the United States or some kind of great power
competition with with America, I mean, you've got to become
a superpower yourself. And you know, we're back to the
the Hitler strass Or problem. Like we just mentioned, Okay,
I mean you can ether become you ether become a
fiefdom of the Soviet Union, or you can smash it
and uh, you can create a European superpower that you know,
that stretches from the Atlantic coast to the earls and
is basically the United States of Europe, like replete with UH,
you know, comparable population and UH and a power productive
capacity and and UH and bounty of natural wealth and
and you know in petroleum and energy and farmland and
everything else. I mean that's that's the way to look
at it. So it either way, UH, Germany doesn't. Germany
doesn't survive unless unless UH it becomes a superpower and
it becomes a superpower by smashing Ivan. So there's that
even taking like I said, the even taking the ideological
UH aspect out of it, and and the dialectical process
that gave rise to the kind of intractable murderous tension
between UH Berlin and Moscow out of it, and UH
taking the race war aspect out of it. I that's
what's what's important to consider.
Speaker 1: So Germany goes in in nineteen thirty nine into Poland,
and what do they start setting up to as a
cudgel against the Soviets.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there was a non aggression. There was
a non aggression pack. There's I think they're not a
non aggression packed, which uh and people you know, the
Molotov Riymatrop packed, and I mean people who like to
put Shane in the Third Reich, you know, they like
to say, like, oh, what you know, Hilo was this
horrible man for you know, breaching a non aggression packed,
you know, less than two years later. But you don't
sign non aggression packs of your friends. You sign non
aggression packs of your enemies, because I mean it should
be obvious to anybody. And uh, I mean they, like
I said, they they'd you know, uh, the the Reich
had approached uh, it approached Stalin and uh and uh
in Ribbon Trop's ministry, and in established that the demarcation
lines would be in uh and the and the Hrymach
literally met the Red Army in you know, Poland Central.
I mean that's what that's that's what the hedge was.
And uh it was it was less than perfect. I mean,
you still have the Red Army in your frontier. And uh,
Poland is not a small country, but in the terms
we're talking about, and with the mobiles Asia potential of
the Soviet Union, and with the way modern kamee resolves
and combined arms. I mean that you know that that
still doesn't constitute a hell of a lot of defense
and depth. You know, if if if you're facing off
against uh, if you're facing off against the Soviet Union
in the center of Poland, rather than I mean, certainly
better than having them. Uh. It's certainly better than having
him on the North German plane or something. But it's
it's certainly less than ideal. But that's I mean, that's
why Barbarossa happened when it did. I don't want us
to get ahead of ourselves, but it uh looking looking uh,
looking eastward, that's exactly what the Germans saw, and that's
what uh I mean, I believe Victor Suberov wrote a book. UH.
He's a controversial guy. Not just Corey. Historians dislike him
because they don't like the fact that he's basically a revisionist.
A lot of revisionists don't like him because they just
they disagree with some of his takes, because they think
he's an eccentric kind of Russian. And then there's yet
other people don't like him because he was a g
r U defector, And there's always people who I mean
defectors really don't and people don't look favorably upon that, okay,
I mean, regardless of how they feel about the regime
from whence the person in question came.
Speaker 1: But I always questioned defectors because the first thing that
they do is they get debriefed by the State Department
of whatever country they're defecting too. Yeah, yeah, and they
always they always end up having housing and transportation out
of nowhere. Yeah, how did this happen?
Speaker 2: No, And it's just not I I'm not saying people
should uh yeah, it's not an animal thing to do.
I mean, regardless of I mean, every every circumstance is different.
But yeah, I understand the suspicion people have for Misterov
and and others. I get it. But what uh In
in very in very in very particular terms, what what
Suvarov said about what What's what was in Stalin's contemplation
in the UH weeks and months leading up to Operation Barbarosa,
I think is I think is inarguable the people today
they we we take for granted the way combined arms.
Modern combat resolves you know, rapidly, and uh, we take
for granted that, you know, the France's back was kind
of broken in political terms by the Great War, and
they they weren't really situated and they you know, politically
they were fractured. You know, they weren't really in a
position to wage a general war against the German Reich.
And plus it didn't it didn't really make a lot
of sense. You know, the whole the whole issue with
the war guarantee like was to prevent what happened, which
was you know, Germany's assault on Poland and you know,
the alteration of strategic conditions in Europe. So like, once
that happened, it's like, okay, well the the you know,
it's already failed in its purpose, you know, the mechanism
in place, you know, that threat of war. So it's
like why white white bothered even go through with it
at this point. So there was a lot of issues
presented by France's decision to declare war on Berlin. But
people did think with the exception of a handful of uh,
mostly armored commanders who were very forward thinking. I mean
Ramel is kind of first among them, because he's a
real stud in this regard. But there were others too,
but they were the minority. My point is that even
people who put German victory odds is all but inevitable,
they thought it would be a pretty long slog from
from you know, the the Franco German frontier to the
parish as it were, including Stalin. So you know, the
idea is that, you know, as Germany's like, it's Germany's
hemorrhaging men in the materiel on the Western front. You know,
this is when the Soviets will strike from the east,
and you know, Germany was not particularly in nineteen forty,
you know, the end of the onset of hostilities with
the with France in the UK, I mean that of
the onset of actual hostilities. I mean the war declaration
had come, you know, months and months earlier, but war
declarations rather, but the Germany was not really in a
position to Germany just was not in a position to
wage some sort of like you know, protracted to front attrition.
War just wasn't. I mean, that's this is the ongoing
existential night mirror that Germany always had in in tournsm
its military quagmires, or potential military quagmars. And uh, when uh,
when Germany smashed uh France within several weeks, you know,
and not in lieu of you know, several months, this
really uh, this really gave the Soviet Union pause and uh,
this is a when it uh became that that's when
Stalin realized he had to strike immediately, essentially by autumn
of of nineteen forty one. And that's super Off's point,
and I accept that, and that's that's also why the
Germans struggle when they did. I mean, I I believe
with the East, and I'm not any gun of military expert,
but i know something about politics and uh and the
way governments behave at war, and I know something of
the historical record in this regard, and during this unfortunate
Ukraine situation, I made the point of people a few
times that historically, uh, historically, the Russians wait too long
to act and then they only deploy when they're sure
they can win. And traditionally the Germans, you know, in
the Prussians before them, but the modern German state is
the was the Prussian state. Traditionally they kind of jumped
the gun. Arguably, I think that really played out in
nineteen forty one. But that's that's basically what I understand it.
I mean, the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union was
an existential threat in military, if not political terms, to
Germany and do uh, the entire continent. That's inarguable. Uh,
it doesn't matter how anyone feels about aoff Hilller, it
doesn't matter how anyone feels about the German right. Uh.
That I don't see how that. I don't see how
that's arguable. I mean, there's there's certain variables that when
present make not just war inevitable, but they they render
certain political conditions inevitable, and they they stay as parameters
of how states are going to interact. And a the
a A had a one or two things is going
to happen. Either you would you know, like we just
talked about at the outset of our conversation, you know,
there would have been a Soviet dominated Europe. Either by
default it was existentially you know, it was the only
proximate superpower of the continent, or you know, because Stalin
just simply went all in and you know, absorbed Europe,
you know, by force of arms. You know, because the
historical moment was his as it were, like owing to
the momentum of Marcus Leninism and the kind of revolutionary
further they're in, you know, only to the fact that
you know, America still needed a few years to mobilize
and uh, thus the you know, the opportunity would never
present itself again because you know, Stalin's other writing on
the wall too, in terms of in terms of you know,
what military preparadness you know, and what and what the
implications for that were, you know, in the in the
in the in the in the epoch and what's you
know called grosser on politics, I mean, all these things
all all it was. It was a convergence of circumstances.
You know, circumstances really do conspire sometimes, and that's that's
that's the way to understand it. I believe, even if
we take the ideological uh uh features out of the equation,
but you know, his ideological features, Oh to these historical
phenomena as well. You know, they don't emerge out of
nothing or just you know, they don't just manifesting people's minds,
you know, uh, out of the ether, you know, independent
of historical conditions and things like that. I realize that
seems to reabstract.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what how is America being drawn into the war.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like I said, I Roosevelt had a problem,
and I mean the New this is. We can do
a dedicated show about the New Dealers if you want,
and I think we should. But Roosevelt was trying to
insinuate America into a war with uh, with the German
Reich really from the moment he took office. Okay, but
he had a problem. Uh. Public opinion was solidly against that.
To the as of A nineteen thirty nine it was
something like eighty percent. It was in that it was
in the high seventies eighties. People opposed a general war
with Germany, apps in some sort of direct assault upon America. Okay,
this was not the case for Japan, which is very interesting,
but uh, for our purposes, let's let's not get into
that right now. But and you had uh, you know,
Senator Nai, the NI Committee had uh had UH had
closed up shop in thirty six to thirty seven, having
concluded that you know, what are the approximate caused of
the First World War was JT. Morgan bank rolling the
crown and demanding that they get, you know, a return
on their investment as it were, or not before to
eat the loss. And you know, Niu n I had
gone on national television and said, you know, we've concluded,
you know that that banking interests as well as the
armaments industry quite literally conspired to you know, to to
the greatest circumstance which they could profit, you know, to
the cost of you know, fifty thousand dead American boys
in combat, then another and equal that number, you know,
dead from disease, you know, shipboard and filthy trenches and things.
You know, people were not going to get behind Roosevelt
going to war with you know, white Christian Germany just
because you know, we don't like those Germans, but you know,
the communists or our friends, this wasn't gonna work. So
what happened was so I think very interesting happened on
I mean, there's two key takeaways here. The first key
takeaway obviously that Pearl Harvard was a godsend for for
the New Dealers, but they still had a problem because
they couldn't fully insinuate that as across this belly against Germany,
much as they would have liked to. What happened on
December fourth, December fourth, ninety forty one, Robert McCormick, you know,
he was the arch America first or owner of the
Chicago Tribune. Somebody leaked to him what was called the
Rainbow five War Plan, and it was splashed all over
the Tribune, and then you know, every other news service
picked it up rapidly. The Rainbow five War Plan was
commissioned by Roosevelt in nineteen forty and it was a
real war plan. It was the war plan, and it
was a war plan that had only one purpose, and
that was the wage war on Germany. It called for
the mobilization of ten million men, It called for an
invasion of Europe. It called for the mass production of
four engine bombers to devastate the German right from the air.
And it was very clear that it would take it
till nineteen forty three for this mobilization table to be affected,
at which point point the Rainbow five War Plan would
be implemented. And uh, General Wiedemeyer, who then I believe
was a captain, he was responsible for the Rainbow five
war Plan. Uh. Kind of the brass TACKSI but he
was something of a logistics genius and sort of like
an Omar Bradley type, but with a lot more integrity
and character. And we admire it had a connections to
America first, and we admire as he relayed to him
to not just his biographer, but to uh, a couple
of different historians who chronicled UH these events, including Tom Fleming.
He was visited by the FBI as well as the
Department of the Army, and they were accusing him of
the league, and UH he didn't leak it, and UH
he approached half Arnold in later years, and half Arnold
apparently told him and this became somewhat of the consents
of the Army that it was Roosevelt. People themselves leaked it.
Crazy as that might seem, but it that is really
what convinced Germany that they were going to be under
imminent assault by the United States. And if you read
the December eleventh speech by Hitler to the Reichs Dog,
the concrete incidents that he references, I mean, like I
made the point before, Like Hitler really does not mention
Stalin in there, and he mentions church Will only in
the most dismissive terms. He talks about Roosevelt as a
mortal enemy of the German Reich. He talks about there's
no reason for this war to happen, and he talks
about America as you know, as being as having been
captured by a conspiratory, a conspiratorial uh cadre whose ambition
was and is to wage total war on Germany. And
this is what he was talking about, Okay, And I
don't see you know honestly too. I mean there were
a buttle to what people there are a buddle of
wheedam Meier and and half Arnold and Fleming himself, is
that you know, well nobody would do that because of
the national security implications. It's like, well, you know, there
there really was only one way from America to wage
war and the German Reich, and that was just you know,
to mobilize completely and then assault Europe. You know, it's
not like there's some big secret either. America was gonna
do that the political war. The political will was there,
and the material and the men were there or they
were not. So I mean it's not as if it's
we're not we're not talking about the leaking of nuclear
secrets or something. So there's that. I mean number two, Uh,
there wasn't really any other way to get America into
the war, you know, other than telling Germany in around
about plausibly deniable way we're going to assault you, and
then you know, making sure that Germany returns the serves
that were by you know, declaring war and kind but
them doing it officially. You know. Then the President came
over for Congress and say, like, you know, a war
has been declined. You know, war has been brought to
our shores. You know, we we haven't done anything to
provoke this. I mean, mind you, America is that war
with Germany for years before that, you know, and most
recently before the League September eleventh, that this was the
first September eleventh, ainety forty one. Roosevelt uh declared, U.
Speaker 1: Un think I could think of a September eleventh before that.
They tried to kill they tried to kill Massolinia on
September eleventh.
Speaker 2: And uh and uh September eleventh, nineteen seventy three was
a Pinochet's uh siezure of power. So it's one of
those haunted dates. In November ninth. Yeah, that's a good
I didn't even think of that. Yeah, you're absolutely right,
but it uh but December uh but yeah. No. September eleventh,
forty one, Roosevelt declared the unrestricted UH naval war a
faregans Germany. You said, all German military vessels, when encountered,
you know, alantegotion will be fired upon. That's not deviation,
no war, Like I don't know what it is. You know,
it's like, you know, committing acts of war is a
constructive declaration of war. I mean, so there's all of uh,
all of them, all of these things. I mean that
was what because any people, this is what's fasting about,
like kind of pop history, like because that's what people say.
You know, you can bring up to people if you
sell the Rainbow five in case to people, they were like,
boll but Pearl Harbor happened. That's what broad American in
the war. It's like, yeah, but nobody knew Pearl Harbor
was gonna happen. I think it. I think it appeared inevitable.
That's a whole other issue. But the point is too,
that doesn't get into war in Germany. I mean, despite
what Rose's people were trying to sell for years, like, oh,
anything that happens in Tokyo is coming from Berlin. You know,
those those little yellow Japanese there there aren't few years
it's the Germans anyway telling them what to do. Like
nobody believed that, and nobody particularly wanted to you know,
wage war on Germany just because you know, I mean
it's uh, no matter what Japan did it that wasn't
gonna somehow, you know, that wasn't gonna somehow allow the
the New Deal regime to you know, gets war declaration
into Germany. But jam we were the host of Congress,
and like I said, we got to look at the
political climate, you know, look at the NI Committee, like
look at what people were thinking about, Like we talked
about last time we held one of these discussions, you know,
at like World War One was viewed as it was
viewed as basically the Iraq War of the time. Like
people did not trust the government anymore. You know, they
view World War One as a con you know, they
view they what any anytime some war department type or
some or some state department type you know, came on
the radio in those days and started to say, you know,
trying to bang the war drums. You know, people said, like,
you know, we're not you know, going to who We
won't be fooled again, you know, I mean that people
they've got this idea that uh, they got this idea
of you know, because they see like these this kind
of ticker tape parade footage of h and things, uh,
you know, like the sailor kissing the pretty nerves and
stuff that like, oh, World War two is when everybody
was you know, you've got war fever and jumped on
the bandwagon. Like that's not the case, you know at all,
and uh it uh it was not easy for the
New Dealers to to get a general war declaration against
the German Reich out of this. Like it really wasn't
and there wasn't. It's not as if you know, the
Germans are very cunning too. Uh. Hitler made sure that
there was not gonna be some kind of some kind
of Lucidania event. Like one of the things that one
of the early clefts between him and Raider, you know,
it was the gross odmoral later replaced by Donne's. I mean,
there's a lot of things that led to that dismissal,
but Raider was saying, like, you know, look like if
my if my, if my men encounter American vessels, we're
gonna we're gonna fire on them, and Hitler's like, yea,
absolutely or not. You're not gonna do anything unless you're
defending yourself. You know, we're not gonna give We're not
gonna give the Americans, you know, some some pretext to
you know, to declare war on us. I mean that
the Germans are very content of this, you know, like
it wasn't it wasn't uh, it wasn't something that was
was beyond their comprehension. And despite what how the al
Hitler himself and the okw or are presented, these were
not like provincial guys who didn't understand, you know, the
way that America did business in terms of war and
peace questions. I mean, they fought America not you know,
just you know over twenty years before and in historical time.
That's dropping the bucket. You know, this isn't this isn't
something uh, this isn't something that that that was not
on their mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I remember twenty years ago like it
was yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly nine eleven, Yeah, exactly exact. Yeah, So
people people act like, among other things, they act like
the Germans were ignorant or provincial number one, but also yeah,
they act like, uh, they act like you know, the
Great War was one hundred years previous or something, you
know it the uh it and plus two. I mean
it the German Uh, the German general staff was full
of guy who literally fought the US army. You know,
I mean it's this wasn't uh, this wasn't something remote
to them. You know, they knew what America could do.
They they fought. They fought it, you know, I mean it, Uh,
it was not theoretical. They had no illusions about this.
Speaker 1: So Hitler declares war on the United States. And then
how does the United States enter into the battle officially?
Speaker 2: I mean really for all practical purposes, I mean, America
there was no This is interesting too, because I mean
you had like the as everybody knows, there were the
do little raids over over Japan, uh wherein you know,
the pilots of these these bomber craft literally had to
bail out because they couldn't refuel and then be you know,
retrieved later. America did that because it was view as imperative,
you know, kind of like return the serve after Pearl Harbor.
You know, America didn't actually engage at Wehrmacht until forty three,
like in North Africa, you know, and that was that's
fascinating too because you had Darlan who was uh I'm
trying to remember what his formal title was. I mean
he was basically the he was the equivalent like the
military a procurator or like what would have been in
in the German rank, the gall layer of a and
he was the military district commander of you know, uh,
French Algeria basically okay, and that it was French force
Operation Torch. Uh. When America landed in North Africa, it
was uh they traded ustile fire with uh, with fascist
French forces, you know, not with the Merrimacks, and uh
the uh Casserine was the first uh it was the
first engagement uh with the Averga Corps and America got uh.
America was handily defeated. It wasn't until El Guitar months
uh months subsequent that uh, that America was able to
attack like a victory over German forces on the board
as it were. And that was that's put Paden on
the map. Interestingly, like I don't know, I don't know
if people to watch the movie Pat and like when
I was a kid and I'm sure when you were
a kid, you know, it was always on TV, like
we Pad with George Scott and like, yeah, yeah, which
theirs I ever bought? Oh wow, okay, yeah, I mean
it's it's a dope movie. It's my dad's favorite movie.
So I've seen it a bunch. But you know, they
get they get uh, they get into that. You know,
that was that was Patton's big coup is that. You know,
we he defeated the Africa Cordial guitar and the I
mean the writing was on the wall already, you know,
like rama wasn't terrible, it was in terrible trouble. But uh,
but just the same I mean the average or even
on their worst day were I mean they were, they
were incredibly freaking squared away. It's not any uh, that's
not any uh, that's not any small thing. But I'll uh,
if you want to get into uh, if you want
to get into the uh, if you want to get
into the US War in Africa, on the US War
like in on in in the West, I would love
to do that, but I liked to do another dedicated
hour today. We even do it tomorrow if you want,
But frankly, you want to brush it up on my
nose if that's okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, Yeah, that's fine. Do you want to hit
anything else before we go?
Speaker 2: Now? Unless you have any more questions?
Speaker 1: Man, no, I think that's enough for people to uh
people deal with.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, let's let's hit up the next time. Though
it doesn't have to be tomorrow, but I'm willing to
go tomorrow if you want. But yeah, whenever you want to,
let's hit up the uh the opposite of like actual
hostilities in terms of America engaging with the Wehrmacht and
go from there.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds good. Remind everybody about your substack and
we'll get out of it, sir.
Speaker 2: Indeed, my substick is real Thomas seven seven seven dot
substick dot com. I put long form up there. I've
gotten a podcast down there, and it's only five dollars
a month. Then, so even if you're a hobo, you
can afford it. Maybe you're a hobo you shouldn't be
signing up for substicks, but uh I, but my point
is that it's very affordable. I I'm active on Twitter
at number seven h o m as seven seven seven.
I'm active on gab at real underscore Thomas seven seven seven,
and I'm all over YouTube's now thanks to people like
my friend Pete, who uh who put me on here,
which is dope, and moving forward, I may get my
own YouTube channel. I haven't decided yet, but I gotta
I gotta catch up on my uh. I gotta get
you on my print long form before I make any
other moves. But at any event, I can't thank you enough, Pete.
I mean, I really enjoy these conversations and I'm really
just on their own terms and we're friends, but also
I really really appreciate the exposure. It's dope, So thank
you very much.
Speaker 1: No problem at all, until maybe tomorrow that would be great.
And we're back with Thomas seven seven seven.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, sir. I'm doing very well, Pete.
Thanks for having me back. I'm very much enjoying these,
uh these sessions that we're having. And thanks for commenting
me the hast two days. I was really kind of sideline.
I was quite sick, so thanks for the comedy in
the delay, and I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1: No problem at all. So last time you had touched
on Pearl Harbor, you had mentioned it for a second
and then a couple comments came in and said, hey,
ask Thomas about Pearl Harbor and how that plays into
the whole war effort both theaters. So you want to
talk a little bit about Pearl Harbor and did they
see it coming, did they know what was coming? Was it?
Did they cause it?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple of ways we can look at that,
and I don't want to go too far outside the scope.
But Admiral Kimmel, husband Kimmel, that was his name, husband Kimmel.
I mean, you know how and then Epoch like particularly
waspy people had very strange memes, you know. Admiral Kimmel
was was one of those types. And the the big criticism,
I mean a lot of people claim, particularly on the right,
you know that doesn't the right they claim that, well,
you know, the Pacific Fleet was deployed as it was
at Pearl Harbor essentially to bait the Japanese into assaulting it.
I don't think that was true. I mean, yeah, it
was a provocative act to deploy that way, but I
don't I do not think that. I don't think Roosevelt
the I don't think some of their wells, I don't
I don't I don't think Morgan though. I don't think
their idea was We're going to deploy in this kind
of a ray and you know the Japanese is gonna
assault Hawaii and that that's that's gonna get us into
the war. I don't think that for a few reasons.
But back to Admiral Kimmel, he himself has really hung
out to dry and he was actually uh courts marcaled
and he was acquitted, but he Kimmel was really he
was really kind of burning effigy, and that wasn't entirely misplaced.
I I'm not a military vet, but I do know
some things about how institutions work and that are scaled,
like you know, institutions that scale. Granted, I'm talking about
the private sector, not the military. But I read this
whole treatment of this book called Groupthink, which it's it's
one part kind of military sociology, and it deals with
the cub missile crisis, it deals with Pearl Harbor. It's
basically about a collective decision making can lead to very
very productive or very disastrous outcomes depending on the present
reactions to certain variables, depending upon the trust and confidence
among the men in the group. I mean all those things, okay,
but one of the case studies was Pearl Harbor, Okay,
and the way this other cast though, the kind of
culture of these officers and their wives and Hawaii, it
almost struck me as you ever see in the old
you ever seen Apocalypse now Reducs where there's the there's
a deleted scene where these kinds of French aristocrats, Yeah,
and they're like pretending like the war's not really going on,
and you know, they're still hosting their dinner parties and
talking about, you know, the potential of a colored revolt
and stuff. It almost seems like that, like Kimmelin and
these these kinds of flag officers, they they knew something
terrible might happen, but it's it's just, well, we're the
United States Navy. What could possibly happen? So I think
there was an aspect of that, but everything everything Washington
and the War Department, and Roosevelt's the many most trusted
and the men who most wanted to insinuate America into
war around you know, in his inner circle. They kept
coming back to the fact they were singularly focused on Germany. Okay,
they just were, And there was talk and I'll get
to this in a minute. That ultimately led to real
intrigues when it became clear that there just wasn't a
political will in America to go to war with Germany,
you know, just whether that you know, saved the UK
or to defend democracy or to or to or to
fight against fascism. When it became clear and when the polls,
when the poll i mean, government by pole really kind
of began under Roosevelt, okay, and consistently about fully about
eighty percent of Americans as late as April nineteen forty one,
like we're opposed going to war with Germany. Japan it
was a little more complicated, okay. People did not like
the Japanese. Some of this was for racial reasons, some
of this was for there was tensions between America and
Japan that definitely did not need to approach anything that
led to this horrible war. But there's real tensions between
American Japan. It was not only American Germany, but still
there was a solid majority against that that was opposed to,
you know, pursuing a policy of aggressive posturing, let alone
war with Japan. But they began to be talk in
New Deald Quarter of uh provoking a war in Japan
as a back door to war with Germany, especially after
the Tripartite Packed for obvious reasons, which for those who
don't know, was a pack between Germany, Italy and and
the and UH and in the Empire of Japan that
if any if anyone was UH was attacked, the other
two would would would would come to the would come
to the aid of the other, you know, basically a
mutual defense pack. But it was framed in defensive terms. Okay,
not that that means anything in power politics and actual
military terms, but in political terms it's highly significant. But
in any event, I don't believe given that climate, it
just does not seem credible to me that, you know,
Kimmel's command, the four and the forces under his command
were deliberately a raid in order to provoke a Japanese attack.
I don't believe that, And especially considering you know, the
we we talked about the Rainbow five League and our
last segment, and the reason why people generally don't know
about that and the reason why it kind of became
a nullody is because Pearl Harbor made it a nullody.
It was not a nullody. An actual it caused an
effect term, because that's to provoke the fear of the
Third Reich. Eof Hitler did declare war against America. I mean,
it was. It was many things too, was the Atlantic Charter.
It was the fact that America was literally bankrolling the
communist war against against the Third Reich. It was it
was because you know, as of September eleventh, nineteen forty one,
America had quite literally declared a naval war against Germany.
I mean, with all these things, but Rainbow five was
really what pushed the German the OKW gearing raider, the
fear himself, like the entire control group of the Third
Reich's military decision making apparatus. This is what pushed them
towards war with the United States. This is what put
them over that Rubicon is at war. Okay, But in
terms of American perception, in American public opinion, it didn't
figure because the Rainbow five leagues happened in December fourth,
not even three days later. You know, two and a
half days later, Pearl Harbor happens. And after Pearl Harbor happened,
you know, war fever jumps off. Americans are outraged, they're frightened,
Roosevelt goes into radio and declares that, you know, the
jaban he was sold in Pearl Harbor was planned by
Adolf Hitler, which is ridiculous in all kinds of ways.
Hitler was a surprise as Roosevelt. At Pearl Harbor. There
was not good to There was good offices, there was
between Tokyo and Brilliant. There was not what we consider
good diplomacy and good communication. And they're sure as hell
was not military coordination at all. And this was not
just going to the distance of the day and in
the absence of telecom tech that we take for granted. Okay,
that's that's that's that's absurd. But when the UH getting
back to UH, getting back to UH Pearl Harbor and
and the political intrigues surrounding it on UH. Also on
December fourth incident UH simultaneous with you know, the same
day as Rainbow five was leaked, something very very strange
happened at the UH. The Manila waterfront, the Philippines was
America's largest overseas holding in Asia. People may or may
not know that. That's why the that's why the assault
on the Philippines was such a disaster and there's a
huge amount of casualties and and and in tens of
thousand that people suffered horribly, including of course you know
a huge number of American servicemen. Just awful stuff. But
on December fourth, uh Admiral Hart who was uh who's
the commander of the Menil Lake Garrison and the Minula Waterfront,
I think it was known as here a young lieutenant
named Kemp Tali to take command of an obsolescent schooner
called the Lanikai or the Atlantikai, to outfit it with
a Spanish American war Eric cannon, a couple of machine guns.
He swore in about half a dozen Filipinos as temporary
as temporary enlisted in the US Navy, and Lieutenant camp
Tally was ordered to pilot this schooner to the coast
of Cameron Bay, just off of what was Japanese territorial
waters because Cameron Bay is and what's now Vietnam and
the Japanese were occupying it. Then Kemp Tally was given
an envelope and he was told to open it upon
reaching his objective, which was immediately outside the continue was
on at Cameron Bay, Okay. He got these orders in
December fourth. On December seventh was when Tally undertook this
effort because the Atlanta Kai had been outfitted for the purpose.
And before he reached his destination, he was called back
to the Manila waterfront because the assaultant Pearl Harbor had happened,
and Case Orange or Plant Orange, which was the code
name for war with Japan was he was informed that
this was now underway. Okay, destroy the envelope, destroy the message.
He did. Years later, Admiral hart I, even if I
refused to talk about this for a couple of decades,
Tali told h Thomas Fleming, who wrote an incredible history
of the New Deal regime in the Royal Hill administration,
as well as World War Two and Roosevelt's role there
in He actually interviewed Camp Tally by time A Heart
was dead. Heart told Tali has Heart point blank. He said,
was I sent on a suicide mission to provoke essentially
amounted to a Gulf of Tonkin kind of incident with
the Japanese Imperial Navy. And Heart said, well, why else
would you? Why else would you have been deployed there?
You know, He's like, I can't tell you for certain
because I didn't read the message I gave you because
it was from the President and it was you know,
eyes only or whatever the military equivalent is. But why
else would you be sent there other than as a decoy,
you know, So take that for what it's worth, because
I mean again, the Roosevelt had a real problem on
a the Placentia Bay conference with the Roosevelt between Roosevelt
and Churchill, that was suppose sly Roosevelt's big coup, you know. Uh,
the the UK's war effort was not going well against
the Third Reich, I mean to say the least. I mean,
it was a disaster. That's when the Atlantic Charter was
declared and Roosevelt said, you know, we stand with Britain,
with Great Britain and the Atlantic Charter, you know, set
out a series of points, almost will sony and sounding
points about what the post war democratic order would look
like once fascism was defeated, which to me again is
like another declaration of war in all but name against
the Third Reich and he The minutes are of the
of the of the conference between Churchill and Roosevelt as
a documented that Roosevelt said that he was going to
continue to wage war against the German Reich without declaring war,
and that he was continued he was going to continue
to provoke the Third Reich in the declaring war in
the United States. The pole returns after the Placentia Bay Summit,
after the Atlantic Charter, after this whole media push for
you know, this this kind of anti face, just crusade,
there was still solidly between seventy and eighty percent of
the the the of the country opposed entering a war
with Germany, and about six between sixty and seventy percent
opposed war with Germany, even if the UK fell and
even if the Soviet Union was defeated. And incidentally, I
believe and George Kennon kind of danced around this issue,
but with Kennon wanted to kind of read between the lines.
Roosevelt never particularly went over great with Catholic voters for
obvious reasons. But once he uh once, after after the
after the the EF, the Barbarossa operation ensued, you know,
June twenty second, forty one, and Roosevelt unconditionally declared alliance
with Moscow. I mean that that was it, you know,
like he he lost, he lost Catholic America. You know,
like how how could you stand with how could you
stand with communism? You know, we don't care who's in
the We don't care who's sitting in the in Berlin.
As you know, we don't care what what Hitler is.
We don't care if he's a monster. Even you, you
can't stand with communism against Europe. You know, that's insane,
that's madness. But I what I'm getting at is that
Roosevelt realized by by late forty one, he realized he
just was not going to get some He was not
gonna be able to stir up war fever against the
German right. He just was not gonna happen absent some
kind of mass assault by German absent some kind of
third right's version of Pearl Harbor against America. And that
would never happen because even as late as uh as
late as days were Pearl Harbor, there's you know, the
like we talked in the last session about one of
the major reasons for the cleft between the Furor and
and granted Grand Admiral Ray was that Hitler, in no
uncertain terms, said like, we are not going to provoke
the United States and Evy and you know we your
men will defend themselves and they're fired upon. But you know,
we are we we are not going to provoke uh
a confrontation in North Atlantic. And what Donnads said later
and granted, I mean Donna's was us didn't and hear
A commanded the Crasy Marine until until years subsequent, but
I mean he he was in a position to know.
He maintained in his own memoirs as well as at
Nuremberg that, uh, most of the incidents in which most
of the incidents prior to December forty one, when German
U boats did fire upon American vessels, these American vessels
were we're moving in tight formation uh with the with
Royal Navy warships and were indistinguishable. They are in you know,
I mean, and and I've got a reasonab believe that
that's exactly they would have deployed, I mean, especially in
the wake of the Atlantic Charter. But I mean they've
been doing that for years by that point, I mean
at least two years. So that was that was I
mean that, that's that's my take on Pearl Harbor and
uh it uh you know the way you understand too,
Like we were talking before we went to Air, I mean,
one of the one of the real moral indictments of
of the New Deal regime. If if your policy, particularly
in America, I mean, I think this is just I
think this goes just generally okay, but especially in America
where there's purposeful structural hedges against overreach, particularly executive overreach.
Almost the point I think of of a sort of
self defeating anxiety about it. You know, if you have
a president who is pursuing a course uh that that
a purposeful course to sue for war, said he can
said said he can uh derive political gain, personal power,
and or impose an ideological vision in the wake or
or presumed aftermath and victory within that war. I mean,
that's that's a kind of gross uh breach of public
trust and and potentially catastrophic just I mean not just
an apoca historical terms, but for the for the forcens
of the country and it's people that that that that
potentially can endure the consequences which can endure for centuries.
And Roosevelt Secretary of State, was a man named Cordell
Hull uh kind of a cipher the guy taught of
a list in uh. Roosevelt was known to make fun
of him and the presidence of witnesses. Roosevelt considered them
an insufferable moron. Uh Sumner Wells, the under Secretary of
State was a was was kind of the real It
was that the was the shadow Secretary of State, the
real diplomat. And there's a kind of the universal consensus
even among the the uniform consensus even among court historians,
is that uh deploying a hull to Uh to negotiate
with the the Japanese ambassador in the mora, who is
this very kind of upright retired naval admiral Uh. Hall's
role was kind of just too obstruct and to sort
of in the sort of scream moral can't quite literally
yet the moor and instruct him that the Japanese, you know,
we're not you know, we're we're not. We're not. We're
not we're not we're not proceeding acceptably in power politics.
Like Meanwhile, this was as America was quite literally destroying
the Japanese economy, you know, purposefully. You know, it's the Japanese.
The whole memo Memorandum was Ah there much has been
made about that by some historians, and it was basically
the final Nomura's final effort to achieve peace with the
United States. Japan was in a strange position politically. You
had these kind of frightened civilian politicians who were who
were incessantly worried for good reason, they'd be assassinated if
they ran a follow of the military. You had an
army that was very, very radical. Eed, you had a
navy that was a lot more reasoned and probably America's
best bet for for reaching some kind of negotiated settlement
in terms of sphere of influenced parameters in the Far East.
The Moor offered u. He said, look, he's like, why
don't we have a ninety day hiatus of any deployment
by the United States or Japanese forces in theater. You know,
we will agree to withdraw from southern Indo China, which
would would be southern Vietnam and parts of Cambodia and Laos.
But by that point most of the Japanese codes have
been broken. So Washington messaged to Hall and said that, well,
you know, we've got intercepts that we've you know, the
codes have been broken and indicating the Japanese uh they
have plans to reinforce h into China eminently. So obviously
negotiating in bad faith, that doesn't make any sense. Like
obviously you're gonna you're gonna hedge your diplomatic efforts with
you know, the ability to deploy in depth to defend
if need be. I mean that this is obvious. But
that so Hall responded essentially by you know, just reiterating
terms to Japan, and there were terms that obviously we're
not gonna be abided. You know, they were if if
if Japan wanted the embargo lifted, if Japan wanted to
be able to access its assets which have been frozen
and it could not be recovered from for all practical
purposes in the United States, you know, they they'd have
to they have to withdraw completely from into China. They'd
have to, you know, they basically have to like they'd
have to end the war with uh with the Chinese
mainland essentially like seed, like all the territory they conquered,
the chank I check as you know, kind of like
the American proxy, like client proxy. It's just like ridiculous
terms I mean, in in about it, Bransonale of what
was underway, I mean, and it's that's that's that's my point.
You know, if you're not, and there's there's a parallel
today wherein you know, the the State Department doesn't actually
practice diplomacy. It just it just shrieks at people, you know,
and and pursues uh provocative and like provocative lines of
uh of of for these just issues, the progative declarations
that are and they're the only purpose which is to
be provocative then to preclude resolution short of hostilities. I mean,
thankfully America likes to put go will enforce them being
to wage a war against Russia. But I mean, you know,
unfortunately for the Japanese and ultimately for the for the
United States that that wasn't the case in ninety forty one.
But that was that was that was my point.
Speaker 1: What was what was FDR's deal with Germany? It it
seems to me that Germany is a more likely ally
for the United States then Soviet than the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Is I think.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. I mean not even an ally,
but just a trade ally. Just it doesn't make any sense.
You know that you are going to alienate so many
people by sitting down with Stalin.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, I mean this goes back it's
it's not approximate cause, but there was a parallel. You know,
going back Christopher Clark, and he's a historian I invoke
a lot because he's he's written some really interesting stuff
on World War One and and he wrote a whole
history of Prussia that's it's huge value, but it's really dope.
But I mean he made the point that the uh,
the kind of absolute enmity, like the real hatred that
developed between Kaiser Wilhelm and King George. I mean, both
of these men were insufferable people. It's part of it,
but it Yeah, there's really no there's really no reason
for America, the UK, and Germany to have been at
anything but to have been at odds at all, if anything, like, Yeah,
they should have been allies, even notwithstanding Communism in the
monster that was Joe Stalin. That's kind of the natural
alliance against you know, the Russia and the East. I mean, yeah,
it the best I mean a little wrong guy. I
mean he was not a little known at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead, but haven't haven't some historians gone as
far as to say that basically that Hitler was an
angler file that he just wanted to be He wanted
a partnership with England.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, unconditionally. A half dozen times he offered the
UK unconditional peace. I mean that that's its own thing.
Like next session, I want to cover that. We'll get
into the UK's we'll get into the Churchill War against
the Reich. But it there was a there's a guy
named Harry Hopkins. He's kind of forgotten history now, but
he certainly was not unknown in his epoch. Uh. He
was sort of the Colonel House of the Roosevelt administration.
And he it might have been Nigh or it might
have been Burton Wheeler. It was. It was one of
the kind of arch nemeses of Roseenvelt himself who came
to call Hopkins the American rescutant. Respect have been a
secondary of Commerce on lay Need forty and he uh,
he was forced to resign because the uh, because he
made some frankly extremist statements both you know what what
what could only be construte is in supportive communism, like
overtly in supportive communism. And he published in April forty one.
He was no longer a Secretary of Commerce, but he'd
been literally moved into the White House. And the cover.
The claim for this was, well, he's in poor health,
and he was that mister Roosevelt takes care of his people.
It's like, okay, so why is he living in the
White House? You know? And he wasn't exactly a man
without means, so I mean, I mean, the obligations obvious,
you know, he was. He was quite obviously, you know,
kind of Roosevelt's closest, you know, advisor. The fact that
wasn't worried. But he uh, he declared in the April
forty one uh two things he said. Well, first of all,
he said, uh, in response to people who criticized the
you know, criticized the the the kind of anti business
climate that had emerged in America. I mean, there's a
real threat of capitalism kind of being relegated to the
ashmen in history, not by circumstances or anything of a
historical nature of a because of some kind of truly
socialist revolution in America. This is not impossible. This is
not a fantasy, Okay. Hopkins response to that was, well,
you know, America is in danger of a quote fascist
revolution by big business. I mean he literally said this,
and he said that we need a quote New Deal
for the world. He said that the world's under threat
by fascism. Adolf Hitler is the architect of it. If
we do not go to war to destroy it, off
Hitler and his German Reich and Mussolini and the in
parre of Japan, who in his mind too, were all
conspiring together and responsible for everything bad that happened anywhere.
You know, it's this was some of like trotsky As nonsense,
you know, like fascists and big business or conspiring to
enslave us all. And if we don't, you know, we
you know, if if we if we don't export the
New Deal abroad and annihilate our enemies, you know, will
you know what, will just be a garrison state. You know,
we'll be a city on the hill, but will be
a besieged city on the hill. I mean, this is
truly insane stuff. And it's and frankly, if you're white
and Christian and not some kind of deranged communist, I mean,
that was like, on its face treason. And Harry Hopkins
died shortly after. But if you're asking what I believe,
this is how Roosevelt thought. Roosevelt was not a stupid man,
and I think Roosevelt himself this thought was a little
more nuanced. But uh, Roosevelt wasn't a wasp literally he
was Dutch, but he I mean he was a wasp culturally. Okay.
He was an upper crust New Northeast Protestant and uh,
people who disdained him would call him behind closed doors
obviously a trader to his class. All right, Uh, there's
something to that. Uh. My take on it is that
Roosevelt believe these things. I think he was a crazy
anti fascist. Okay, I mean he it's it wasn't just uh,
it wasn't just what people like uh Burton Wheeler said.
I mean, Wheeler was a good man on me wrong,
but wasn't just a guy who was in personal power.
I mean he was, he was interested in that, and
I think, uh, I think he became intoxicated by hubris,
as many men do. But I think he literally believed
what Hopkins elucidated in, uh, in this kind of anti
fascist screed that he that he that he both wrote
and that he he explicated in public life until he
was kind of sideline on grounds of you know, the
liability that he become for kind of saying these things
above board that we're not supposed to be said, that's
my view of it. It's a crazy thing. I mean, crises,
crises can didn't mister kid Inders say never let a
crisis go to waste? And I think he was paraphrased.
I think he was paraphrasing Metternich. And people put a
lot of shade on Kissinger. And I'm more friendly to
Kissinger than people might think. And I'm not saying that that,
but I mean, just speaking in terms of in objective terms,
I mean that true structural crises, and particularly it at
uh a key historical apocal junctures, there's great potential for
for for for you know, remarkable things as well as
like really terrible things. And I think I think that's
that that's how you that was kind of the Roosevelt moment.
But uh, you know, the uh, the war among the
things allowed the New Deal to really become the New
Deal because that allowed to be a permanent regime, you know,
is as total wars do I mean that that's my view,
you know, I.
Speaker 1: Did anyone like at that point talking about Roosevelt like
said basically, if you if you take the side of
the Soviet Union, you that Spanish Civil War, you were
on the side of the communists and the same. I mean,
it's basically just I mean, it's hard to ignore that
you've basically taken the side of people who throughout the
thirties were causing insane the twenties and thirties twenties in
Italy and then insane bloodshed all over freaking Europe.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I and that's what that's what the Canalyst
was for America first, then for Father Coughlin, and I
mean there was huge opposition to this. What's fastanding is
that Nai himself. Uh, there's a huge America first rally.
On the night of December seventh, okay, Ni's uh, somebody
came into the auditorium and said, you know, the damn
Jaffs just attack Pearl Harbor. Like what do you think now,
you know, satat Or and I and people thought the
guy was a heckler who was removed. And then some
news it was either a newsman or an aid or
came over, you know, ran up and handed a telegram
Deny and he reads it and he said, you know, stupified,
this is the this is the worst news I've heard
in twenty years. And then he said, the Empire Japan
is assaulted Pearl Harbor, you know, and then like all
these gasps go through the room, and that was like
a game changer. And like Lindbergh said, like not in public,
but he he said to one of his confidants, you know,
he said, well, Roosevelt got us in the back door.
I mean at that point, there's still ah at that point,
I mean, the die was cast. You know, it's like
you can't you can't, you can't reason with people who
are who are swept up in that kind of war fever.
And and you know, in particularly like I said, like
the you know, the especially considering the racial overtones of
the Japanese American War, Like I'm not that that's not
some woke take like oh racist America. I mean there's
there wasn't. There was, in fact a two way hostility
between East and West, Ocaden and Orient, you know, the
white man and the yellow man. He kind of look
at it in those terms. That was very real, Okay,
I don't think that can be denied. And obviously that
was very much cultivated too by people who hated the
Empire of Japan for cynical reasons. But that That's what
changed everything. And that's also why Hitler in the ok W,
they really according to a ribbon trop and according to Garring,
both of them I considered to be credible, particularly Garing.
You can say a lot of things about Garry. The
guy wasn't a liar. And and plus he knew he
was gonna be hanged. Remember what he said, It's like,
why would he lie about this anyway? He said, like
Hitler was shaken when he got the news that Pearl
Harvard had been assaulted, you know, he said, he said
that it's very rare you saw Hitler genuinely shaken. He's like,
you saw Hitler angry at fair amount. You know, you
saw him like upset and somewhat agitated, but like shaken
up like that. That was not something you generally saw,
like even when conditions were pretty catastrophic, you know. And
he he was genuinely like, you know, this is this
is very very bad, you know, is what is what
Geary was getting at. And it was but that that's
that's what changed everything, you know, And that's why I
mean obviously too, I mean, it was absurd that everybody
from everyone from very different I'll be it for very
different reasons. But everybody from uh Roosevelt to MacArthur was
was saying like, oh this, you know this, this was
the crowds who like plotted this, you know, the Pearl
Harbor assault. I mean, that's that's obviously ridiculous, but for
a no other reason. I mean, the last thing, the
last thing berlind And made off Hitler wanted it was
for you know, America to have some kind of catalyst
like Pearl Harbor to freaking you know, uh, issue a
general mobilization order and finally get the at least, if
not a sweeping war mandate, at least an adequate consensus
in order to pursue a war against against the Reich.
I mean, they sure was held didn't want that, Like,
how what the hell could they possibly gain from that?
That that put him in their nightmare quagmira of a
true two front war. I mean, Thomas Fleming makes the point,
and I profoundly disagree with this, but he he says, uh,
you know, if if the behamaxt was drawn to quote
a winter line, I mean this presumes some kind of
armistice with Stalin two that could have freed up one
hundred divisions at that point as the December nineteen forty
one best case America in the UK can I've only
mustered twenty divisions to assault North Africa? You know. The
Fleming's take is that like, well, you know, the the
kriegs Marine could have you know, could have swept the
Royal Navy out of the out of the out of
the Mediterranean. The Germans could have fortified, uh, the Atlantic Wall,
absorbed Sweden as well as uh, you know, the Iberian Peninsula,
and then you know, like assaulted North Africa full of boar.
But I mean that that that that basically presumes that
you know, the Soviet Union no longer exists. Okay, it's like, okay,
what are the Soviets doing during this time? They're reconstituting
and then in Germany is dead. Hitler was not an
amateur strategist. He was absolutely right. The way, the way,
the only way Germany wins the Second World Wars is
the annihilation of the Soviet Union. That was the only
way out. I mean that's kind of a tangent, but
that's what what what defeat in America first? Uh was uh,
what what allowed Rose? What was Roosevelt out was a
was a was a Pearl Harbor attack and nothing else like,
make no mistake?
Speaker 1: Do you want to stay on the New Dealers a
little bit more? Do you want to jump into I
mean you already mentioned once Barbarossa. Where do you want
to go?
Speaker 2: I'd like to stay with the New Dealers for the
duration last episode and then yeah, we'll jump into whatever
you want next UK, next session, whether it's the UK's
war against the Rajiker, whether it's operating Barbaros.
Speaker 1: Do you tell me, okay, all right, well, if we're
gonna if we're gonna stay on this. I mean, it
seems to me that I've read not all of them,
but I've read a good amount of about how the
Supreme Court was just basically redone in the thirties. I've
read some cases. I mean, Ashwanda versus Tennessee Valley Authority
is a very famous case, and you just start seeing
this whole different The courts are interpret things differently, And
it almost seems like you talked about how he he
would do anything to get into to start a war,
and it almost seems like he set up the court
system that if it came to a court decision, he
had the court on his side.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and I think Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter was somewhat
nuanced in his thought. He you can't just dismiss it
as like as left wing Jewish judge or as this Zionist,
but he definitely was essential in a new deal regime
that goes out saying and yeah, I mean Roosevelt quite
literally tried to pack the court. I mean, speaking of overreach,
I mean he he literally tried to uh he he
literally tried to uh alter the alter the paradigm of
a of the separation of powers by by uh you know,
with with with the court packing bill, which was defeated.
But yeah, the gunn of Huberts indicated there is is unbelievable.
But it's also even if they had somewhat complicated because
the I made the point again and again to people
that and John yu, who I think is a brilliant guy.
I don't want to go too far a field, but
people want to understand the judiciary and and how it
became kind of the truly seed, the true seed of
sovereignty post Watergate, in my opinion, even though the seeds
were laid before they had, if not sown. John you
was a good guy to read to learn about this topic.
But Roosevelt, I believe if he had a hostile judiciary
that would have made that would have made that would
have that would have presented him some obstacles. But you know,
in the twentieth century, presidents didn't just abide this idea
that you know, they you know, I may I make
the point again and again that you know, the the
judiciary was almost an appendage of executive power, whether it
was you know, an executive like Eisenhower deciding that he
had to force integration in order to uh fight the
Cold War on on the socio political front, and then
literally backing up that decision at the point at with
you know, at gunpoint, like he did in Arkansas. Opposite Farbus,
I think if I think if Roosevelt had been dealing
with a hostile Supreme Court that had been you know,
had been doing what it could to strike down strike
down the kind of more flagrantly uh heavy handed, to
be charitable aspects of the New Deal, I think Roosevelt
would have just ignored it, or you know, he uh,
he would have just he would just focus on the
foreign policy fraud and even more earnest to trigger the war,
you know, and then it would have been a done deal.
You know. It's like, Okay, America's mobilized for a total war.
I'm you know, I'm I'm I shit man. I mean,
I President Lingcoln's suspended Havieus corpus during the war in
the States, the Supreme Court, what's that where this is
a national emergency? You know, you don't exist anymore, you know,
I'm the law in a national emergency under Article too.
It's a fascinating question. Frankfurter later ran a fl for
kind of for a very he's a strange man, like
in all kinds of ways, like he he like I
can't remember he got formally indicted, but he got this
barred if I remember, right, like like later in life,
for like simple corruption just like literally taking bribes. I
mean a guy that's stature, Like that's very weird, Like
think about that, like even the kind of even the
kind of losers in the Supreme Court today, Like it'd
be weird to hear about one of them just like
taking a bribe like some kind of like some jerkwater
governor or something like. I mean, it's it's weird. But yeah,
that that definitely uh Frankfurt. Uh Frankfurt is cooperation, I
mean not just has support, is I mean, is theological
agreement with Roosevelt the man, as well as the entire
New Deal enterprise. I mean, I think that was essential
to it. I mean it, Uh, Roosevelt was a master
Machiavellian and he'll be remembered. Is that I made the
point before that the real one of the reasons I
write so much longer form about Roosevelt and Hitler. It's
not just because, like I made the point before, I
think they were each other's true nemesis. But uh, I mean,
Roosevelt might have been a bad man, uh, but he
was a political genius. He wasn't a slob like Churchill.
You know, he wasn't just a gangster like Stalin. I mean,
I've got Stalin's a fascinating guy, but he he was
very much a gangster. I mean, Roosevelt had something of
a gangster in him. Roosevelt and Hitler are definitely the
most interesting executives in World War Two, I think. I mean,
I don't believe it's just like conceptual bias because I'm
you know, uh, an American type it. Uh, but yeah,
Roosevelt was h It's it's pretty amazing what he was
able to get done. I mean, and part of that
ohe the circumstances that fell in his lap, like par Harbor.
But some of it didn't, you know. I mean there's
a lot of guys who tried to accomp who have
who have aimed to accomplish similar things and it just
blew up on their face. You know, most people can't
do that. Roosevelt was not a particularly nice guy. I mean,
he was a charismatic guy all day, but he was
kind of a bully. He was kind of a nasty individual.
I mean, it's not but he commanded real loyalty from people,
you know, as and Hitler did too. I mean that's that.
Like I said, man, I I I think they're both.
I think I think they're the most interesting players on
the Grand Chess board of the time.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that if considering you had the
New Deal, and then people are looking at New Deal
programs and they're like, this is border you know, words
like socialism, in terms like socialism start getting thrown around.
It seems to me that when he decides that he's
going to back the Soviet Union and he's going to
meet you know, he's in it, the famous pictures with
him Stalin and Churchill. That a lot of people at
home really had to be worried about the direction that
the United States was going, because we are all these
programs that have never been in existence before, and they
were just basically pushed through by FIAT all through the thirties,
and then all of a sudden, he's climbing into bed
with like, you know, an arch communist, and well, it's a.
Speaker 2: Couple of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good.
Speaker 2: The degree to which there was a systemic failure and
Murray Rothbart, like we talked about a couple of sessions ago.
Rothbart's history the Great Depression is outstanding, and I think
it's key to understanding what happened. The degree to which
the degree to which people believed that capitalism had failed
in structural terms and could no longer and i could
no longer be adapted to modern conditions at scale. This
was a universal People just accepted this. You know. That's
why even the right wing was was socialistic in the
fact that they believe in the corporate state. You know, like, oh,
obviously you know you need you need something re essential
planning in the economy just because you know, there's too
many inputs to manage without catastrophes, and there's too many uncertainties,
you know, and and capital can't be efficiently allocated, you
know when when you're talking about you know, when you're
talking about the modern uh, when you're talking about modern
national economics, Like everybody thought this, Okay, so people were
more habituated that that kind of thinking was easier to
swallow than it would be today. But also, yeah, to
your point, people still hated communism for a good reason.
But that's one of the reasons why, I mean the
point to people before. But that's also one of the
reasons why the Nuremberg regime had to be implemented, okay,
in the in the in the literal ashes of the war.
And that's also the concord. I mean, I think Truman
just hated the Russians anyway, and Stalin also was trying
to puld him over because Stalin viewed kind of that
this is his moment, you know, like a time of
transition always is, like particularly if an executive dies in
office like Roosevelt. But yeah, that's the red the cold
wort jumped off rapidly, I mean to your point. Part
of that was public opinion and people saying, like, why
the hell are we in bed with stalin? You know, uh,
particularly when uh it is forced to poised to you know,
to march all the way to you know, to the
to the rivi Era, and is in this why we
like fought the war in the first place, supposedly to
like you know, freak captive name from fascism. But it's
okay if they go red, you know, what the hell
is this sound was part of it, but it it's
also uh the uh half of uh, well, well, it's
not really accomplished with a new deal, Yeah, I mean,
I mean in terms of like the the federal programs,
like the works programs and the subsidies and things, it
did basically nothing to to stimulate uh recovery, like like
structural recovery. What it did do was it meant like
guys weren't starving anymore, and people, you know, you didn't
cities weren't like choked with like with uh with with
like young men and women and boys and girls like
wandering aimlessly because they had no work and they were starving.
You know, it gave them something to do and it.
You know, even if you're just paying them in food stamps,
they get buy a loaf of bread and like a
plant of milk like that. When people are no longer hungry,
they that takes their mind off things. They just assume
that you know, whoever is providing them with these things
knows better. I'm not like putting shade on on Americans
the era. I'm just saying people in all times think
that way, not because they're stupid. I mean sometimes they are,
but it uh the degree to which the middle and
worrying classes got just wiped out. There's some insaying statistic
it was something like like something like forty percent of
the national wealth, like God, just like wiped out by
like the bank failure. Okay, like people had nothing. You know,
you you had millions of people who just got overnight
they had nothing anymore. Like what do you do? You know,
It's like I especially if you're some guy like a
wife and kids, you know, it's like I you know,
I got I got some I got some kid. I'm
terrified it's like gonna come out with polio or like
you know, die from malnutrition. You know, like I'm worried
that my wife's gonna have to resort to, like, you know,
literally like selling or pussy or something on the streets
we can eat. You know. It's like, I if mister
Roosevelt's gonna like hand you like ripped to buy government
cheese for digging a hole from no reason, Like you're
gonna be cool with that, okay, even if you know,
and you'll the rational side of your mind is gonna
work out later that like, well, why did this happen?
And stuff? But in the moment, you know, it's that's
all you're thinking, you know. So I mean that was, uh,
it was all of those things. But yeah, to your point,
I mean, that's why the that's why, that's why that
enterprise full of the Washington Moscow concord just fell apart rapidly.
I mean, and and that was a I mean, much
as Roosevelt did have have incredible political instincts, I mean objectively,
I'm not putting shine on him as like a good
man obviously, but that was a big blind spot of
his is because he obviously thought, I mean, Roosevelt wasn't
bad hell of hiss all adult life. He knew, he
knew he was gonna live to be an old man.
And I mean so, I mean, he he he obviously
believed that like oh this, you know that what hell
where the League of Nations failed? You know this, this
kind of American Soviet concord is just going to endure,
you know, because we see eye to eye, like even
though you know, the Russians might be brutal when they
you know they might, they might approach you know, uh,
political reality and and and differently than we do. But
you know, this is just going to endure because hey,
we you know, we we defeated fascism and you know
we we brought people, you know, uh we we we
were elevating man and things like he he. And I
don't know how anybody can believe that that, I mean,
the American and Russia would always be at odds in
some basic way. It's absurd that there's this and this
enmity right now, always that and no sectarian hostility of
a of a very very powerful minority. That the great
deal of power in America, particularly visa the foreign policy.
I don't want to get into that right now because
it's too off topic. But I'm not saying that it
makes any sense that America is at loggerheads of Russia
perpetually these days. But there would never be some kind
of friendly concord between Washington and Moscow no matter what,
particularly considering you know, when you had the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, you know, is is the regime there? Like,
that's ridiculous. But so that's one of those big blind spot.
But he did think that.
Speaker 1: Even somebody like Paton understood. He at the end of
the war, he's like, well, the armies are here, let's go,
let's march to Russia. And then he gets what two
weeks later, he gets hit by a car and he dies.
It's not very long after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I've heard a lot of guys in the right,
particularly like a good a good, a good buddy of mine.
He's an Iraq warvett. He's a really cool Peckerwood kind
of guy. But he's you know, he was in the
Marine Corps, not in the army, but he he really
likes to read about these these uh, these military figures
obviously because I mean he's he's a military type, and
that's dope. I really like that those guys participate on
my platforms. But he's asked me more than once like, well,
I mean he's convinced that Patten was murdered on account
of the fact that, Yeah, to your point, I mean,
Patton really was not at all with the program, and
I mean Patton goes problems for for civilian leadership as
well as the military brass anyway. But I'd have to
deep dive into it more. I mean, I know the
circummends that he died. I know that it's weird. I'm
not prepared to go as far as to say he
was murdered because I think that's impossible, but because I
I'd have to spend more time with the evidence. But yeah,
it certainly is strange. There's a there's a lot of
fastening stuff at Piper's Yak, and Pipers like a hero
of mine, you know, the leap stend Art, the commander,
not overall commander. I mean he was a quote of
a colonel, but uh he uh. You know, he originally
was under a death sentence that Doacout trials, these trials
whatever he held. There were some of the second and
there the second wave of war crimes trials. They were
actually held at the doc Out camp. They're not called
the Dagout trials because it was. It wasn't a trial
of the of the of the KZ types who who
guarded Duco. It was it was the leap stand dark
boys of as guys who and they were tried like
at that facility. Okay, that's why. But uh, this American
captain whose name eludes me, he was he was captured
during the batil of the Bulge, and uh he got
to know Peeper pretty well. This comp grew conf grew
Peeper like it captured him. And yeah, he he relayed that, uh,
he and Peeper became pretty good friends. And uh he
told uh Danny S. Parker, who wrote a couple of
great books on Yack and Peeper, and this this captain
relayed to him and and kind of Parker kind of
took his oral history and he said that, yeah, he's
like he's like, I'm not gonna lie, you know. He's like,
I I'm like, you know, Peeper is a great guy.
I I I frankly like the Boiser's command, Like how
am I shooting at these guys alliance with the Ivans?
And granted this guy was a cap young calf that
he wasn't a general, but I, yeah, I don't I don't.
I I I I I can't imagine that those thoughts
are not into the minds of any remotely you know,
grounded man under arms in the European theater on the
American side. I mean, I'll get it not but yeah,
what do you Uh, let's we're coming up in an hour.
Let's like wrap this up and then next session will
take up whatever you want. But yeah, what what do
you want to deal with the closing or did we
miss anything? I don't think so, man, I just want
to make sure that, like I said, I've taken steps
to to kind of progress more linearly. I've got kind
of a scattershot mind. I mean, I hope it doesn't
mean I'm going senile, but I uh I uh, I
take I take criticism seriously. The responsibile over been overwhelmingly
positive to this series. That is dope. I'm very honored
by that, and I take great pride in that because
that's whole point. But uh, I've taken steps to to
proceed more and more linear terms so it's easier to follow.
And I also want each hour we do to kind
of cover a different aspect of things, and it's your
show quite literally. So next session. Yeah, I think we
should have recover the like Churchill's war against Hiller, we
should cover Barbarossa. Either one is fine, but.
Speaker 1: I think I think the England, England's play in all
this probably should come into because there's a lot of
interesting There's a lot of interesting stuff there. Hitler wasn't
particularly like the biggest fan of the United States, but
he he did like England.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and there's the whole Hess flight to the UK.
A lot of intrigues and fanc anting stuff there. Yeah. No,
that had like nothing more man than they covered it. Cool.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, remind everybody about your substack and we'll
end it.
Speaker 2: Okay. You can find me a few different places. You
can find my substick at real Thomas seven seven seven
dot substack dot com. You can find me on Twitter
at number seven h O M A S. Seven seven seven.
You can find me on gab at real Thomas seven
seven seven. I've got a book out, uh science fiction brand.
I'm eminently releasing another one in the series through Imperium Press.
It's called steel Storm. I think you should read it.
It's dope. I know it is because people tell me
it is. I didn't think anybody would read it, but
they did, and that is that is great. But yeah, yeah,
that is what I do, and that is where you
can find me.
Speaker 1: Until the next time. Thank you everyone. Back to the
Pea Show, Thomas is Fact.
Speaker 2: What's gone on? Man? Okay, thanks for hosting once again.
I'm really enjoying these discussions, and I think it's important
for posterity, not because I have any kind of you know,
profound wisdom to drop on people, but I think the
record from a revisionist perspective, it's important to get that
out there. And like too many of these sources, I mean,
even if they're a lot more accessible now than twenty
or thirty years ago, you know, they remain kind of esoteric.
And I think we're kind of doing God's work by
you know, making these things more immediately available to people,
or at least, you know, at least introducing them to
the modes of thought, you know, a scholarship that maybe
they're not familiar with, you know, because there is a
bully pulpit of of bad history that has disseminated everywhere
and it's almost like the weather, like man made weather
or something. So yeah, I think this is important. What
we're doing. It's not just because I enjoyed talking to
you when you're my friend and I like doing this
kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm going to figure out someplace to put all of
these episodes as like a series. That's I think I
know where I'm gonna do it too.
Speaker 2: All right, So.
Speaker 1: Before we started recording, you had mentioned that we had
talked about the US getting into the war on the
last episode, and you want to talk today, which is
probably you said it's probably gonna be two episodes about Churchill,
but you said you wanted to do some mop up
on that on the last episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to just kind of just kind of
an addendum to the to the New Dealer Revolution, which
is I mean, mainly we were talking about we'll get
more into kind of the nuts and bolts of the
ethics of the American War and and some of those things,
you know, kind of when we get into the aftermath
in Nuremberg, because I think that they would be the
more proper way to treat it. Because I'm not a
military science guy or like a military officer or something,
you know, so I don't really get into the I mean,
if people want to talk about them military side of
things like that's dope as fascinating. I'm probably not the
guy to really get into that. I'm, you know, a
political theory guy and a revisionist, but I kind of
wanted to explore, like all the policy facets of the
New Deal and convey that it was truly a revolutionary
enterprise and it touched and concerned every aspect of American life,
you know, socially, politically, economically, all of that. And I
think we covered that pretty completely last episode. But you know,
kind of the final kind of the final uh feature, uh,
not just in linear terms of what we were talking about,
but kind of the uh kind of the ultimate kind
of the penultimate act of the New of the New
Dealers and Roosevelt himself was uh, the unconditional Surrender declaration,
and incident to that what was called the Morgent Foul Plan,
and the latter did not actually become policy, but something
like that was perceived by the X's powers as what
America's ultimate intention was. So we're gonna talk about how
they were, We're gonna talk about how Germany, Japan, and
wills a degree Italy responded to Roosevelt's declarations and American
moves and why they didn't you know, quote unquote surrender
uh before they were utterly devastated. This is fundamentally important
to understand. Okay, there's this common myth that I run
into all the time. And Thomas Fleming, who was my
favorite historians, he's deceased now, but he and David Irving
are about the only historians who really addressed this directly. Uh.
There's just war theorists and in Article two kind of
constitutional scholars like John you who deal with it and
very kind of legalistic terms, but in truly historical and
ethical terms and existential terms. Uh, it's not something that's
really addressed. I'm constantly hearing guys who are otherwise learned
declare that, oh, well, you know, the Jabs were crazy,
they wouldn't surrender. You know. It's like, Okay, something happened
at the Costablanca conference I think forty three Roosevelt and
Churchill and mister Stalin, although Roosevelt made the proclamation, declared
that nothing short of unconditional surrender would end the Second
World War? Like, what does the unconditional surrender mean? People
would ask Roosevelt this, and he said that, well, you
know what means you know, total and unconditional capitulation to
the allies, you know, or or face utter annihilation. Well,
America cut off all diplomatic relations with the Axes. So
it's like, what does then mean? That means you're gonna
endlessly attack us until you decide to stop attacking. I
mean that makes that that makes it literally impossible to surrender.
And if you want to understand why the Germans literally
fought to the last man, it was two things. It
was number one, because the alternative was, uh, they were
trying to get as many of their people out of
the East as as the as the Red Army carried
out this this mass campaign of rape, homicide and just
utter devastation, and they wanted to get as many the
people west as they could. Okay, because whatever the Americans
were gonna do, it was not that bad. Okay. Secondly,
if uh, if if the opposing force neither Officer Corps,
Northern Military Leadership, Northern Civilian leadership, Northern Diplomatic Office is
will speak to you, it's quite literally impossible to surrender,
you know, I mean, like, what do you do when
they're when when there's a thousand bomber raid over your
city you're supposed to run outside and wave a white flag.
You know, like you're like what, like, how does that
actually work? So essentially, the Second World War stopped what
American decided it was gonna stop. I mean, in Europe
had stopped, uh, you know, in the Red Army conquered
Berlin and there was nobody left aventially, like who was
capable of taking up arms or profiting meaningful resistance. And
I mean when when the hammer and sickle was hoisted
above the ruins of the rices dog, I mean that,
I mean, that was it. I mean in the case
of Japan, you know, there's this there's this mythology that like,
well we had to nuke Japan or this people are
constantly banning that, well we would have lost a million
US servicemen invading Japan. It's like, okay, why would you
have to invade Japan? Japan and no capacity to make war,
it was starving, it was defeated. Incendiary incendiary raids were
being run over Tokyo where one hundred thousand people were
dying in forty hours. Like what the hell is Japan
and to do to you? You know, like and how
why why you need to invade and occupy it or nuked,
you know, the way in the West for about two
thousand years, the way we waged war, not counting things
you know, like the like the Greek Oregans, the Persians,
or the Romans, warrigons, courthage, you know, the way the
way we raised wars. We come to terms with the
defeated enemy. We don't simply assault them until there was
none of them left, or you know, declared that we
will not accept their surrender and then claim that they're
crazy and refuse a surrender by not fighting a way
to not not not finding a way to lay on
their arms, and we refuse to accept, uh we when
we refuse to accept that, uh that kind of capitulations,
I mean, that's that's that's that's crazy, you know, of itself.
And but it uh so, I mean that that really
really stiffened Axis resolve. But it also was a show.
I mean, the whole the whole raison detch of the
New Deal was was the annihilation of of of certain
forms of culture and political modalities together which constitute fascism
in the mind of the New Dealer. That's what it was.
And I brought up the Morgan Vow Plan because Henry
morgan Thow, who's the Treasury secretary, which seems like kind
of a middling cabinet position to a lot of administrations.
But like we talked about, in the New Deal regime,
there's a lot of posts in none of themselves would
not seem to confer great power upon the man in
the post. But you know, you had people close to
Roosevelt who didn't even have any kind of formal cabinet post.
They were his minister without portfolio, or they were guys
like Somener Wells who you know, weren't they were you
know who in his case was under Secretary of State,
but he was the defacto will kind of chief diplomat. Well,
Henry Morgan Thout is this piping secretary of the Treasury.
He had tremendous authority in structuring policy and everything in
the New Deal, from its foreign policy to its machinations
to uh, you know, bringing America to war with Japan.
When it became clear that there probably was not going
to be some sort of there was not going to
be some sort of a Lusitania type incident with the
Third Reich, that would you know, provide a catalyst, you know,
everything from that that those kinds of intrigues to the
civilian conservation core to the uh the kind of quasi
you know, Keynesian uh economic corporative scheme that that was
devised you know, early on in the in the regime.
I mean that a lot of this came from Henry
Morgan though, and Morgan thou developed uh what he what
he considered to be a uh a post uh victory
regime for Germany called the Morganel Plan. That was entailed
was basically ethnically cleansing Germany, uh, you know, reducing its
population by about a third. He wasn't specific about how
this would be done, but one can imagine, you know,
we talked about suppressing the birth rate and things like this,
like an unofficial capacities and one can imagine what that
would mean. Uh. He wandered a strip but of all
of all of all modern industry and divided into basically
four states. Uh, like many states, the only economic activity
would basically be subsistence farming. You know. Uh, you want
to restrict people's education to like basic literacy, like essentially
like Margatha, he was a crazy Zionist type who wanted
His plan for Germany was basically what Himlin's plan was
for for for for the Russian hand Land. Okay, he
basically wanted to create like a population kind of half
literate agrarian slaves. It would have like never rise up again.
And uh, this is totally insane for all kinds of reasons,
particularly because at that point I think it could still
be said that America was, at least in terms of
the constitution of its population, was still you know, like
a white Western Christian country. And I that that's not
just rotesque, it's it's crazy. And even even Churchill, like
kind of awful brute that he was, said, this is
totally insane, and like how would this be workable anyway?
And you know it London to the to the to
the credit of uh some of the people in churchill
dinner circle, they said, look, if you're gonna do that,
you might as well just see the entirety of you know,
of of Germany to Ivan and and let the Soviets
do what they want with it, because like, what's the
point of this, you know, is it other other than
the basil you know, ethnically claims and punish the Germans.
But you know that's that's not that that's ethics, aciety,
that's that's not that's not viable. And in the in
the in the emerging strategic landscape, and somebody's the UK
was more realistic about the Soviet Union than on than
the United States was, I mean, which which is ironic,
but I as we get into the person of mister Churchill,
I think it maybe go up parent as to why
that is. But I just I wanted to clarify some
of those final points because I I was pretty certain
that that people would have called me on it had
I not. And UH, I just think it. I just
think it was an important addendum UH to UH to
the UH to the New Deal, UH to the New
Deal regime. Do you want to get into you want
to get into in Churchill's War? Yeah, just jump right in, Okay,
the UH. I think the way I'm saying Churchill, I mean,
for for this segment we're laying down today, I kind
of want to get into the man of Churchill and
without being too speculative or or needlesy punitive kind of
his character not I I don't generally delve into that
in history, even when we're talking about wartime executives. But
in Churchill's case. I think it's essential, Uh the person
at Churchill is this essential understanding the UK's war. It's
the New Deal ideology of anti fascism is essential understanding
the American War. One of the one of the one
of the bizarre things about Churchill, and I even people
who had it basically amiable relationship with him made the
point that Churchill basically was not at all consistent in
his sympathies, in his statements. Things almost seem to be
something of a game to him in an almost cliched way.
I think it was David Irving. I can't remember where
I read this initially, but it's It's been sourced by
a few people, but I think I read it in
David Irving's two value treatment of Churchill. In March nineteen
forty six, Churchill went on the Churchill went on a
speaking tour of the United States because he was very
much in demand. I mean, America has always had this
kind of peculiar fascination with the UK, and I mean
the Churchill cult was already well established then, not just
you know, in the UK proper, but in America. And
I believe that endors to this day excuse me. Churchill
was speaking in Fulton, Missouri. He began unconditionally praising Stalin.
You know, Stalin is a great man. He's the one
true like you know, true humanist in Russia. You know,
like he really understands, you know, what, why why we
fought the war, and people were kind of like it gasped,
you know, like in this audience, you know, because this
is Middle America, you know, and even even people who
were basically similar to Roosevelt and the New dal Enterprise.
I mean, first of all, mifter Rosevelt was in the
grave by this point. Secondly, i'd speculate, I mean, it
goes out saying I mean even even people who who'd
been very much on board with the war effort, you know,
they were not they were not gonna respond well to
to these these kinds of glowing uh suggestions about the
character mister Stalin. So Churchill discerns that his audience is uh,
it's kind of he's losing his audience. So he quickly
recovers this is oh, I mean, I mean, I just
meant the Communist Party of very discipline and very brave men,
you know, when we we know this because of their
great sacrifice in Berlin to defeat fascism. But of course,
you know, a mister Churchill, you know, as you all know,
like I commanded White armies against the Bolsheviks in nineteen nineteen,
you know, and I you know, my, my, My credentials
in this regard are impeccable. You know. I'm I'm a
defender of freedom, you know. I I've never had any
truck with socialism. So John Davenport, who was this at
the time, he was kind of a kind of a
well known journalist, kind of like a thinking man's kind
of like a thinking man's welder crime play. And that
makes any sense. I can't think of a better way
to characterize him. It was at church he says, Okay,
you know there's a Churchill, and that's the case. How
would you how do you capitulate we did a Yalta
Like how did you basically hand the world to Stalin?
You know? In terms of us waited off and said, oh, well,
the war had to be ended at all costs, you know.
But the thing is yelt didn't end the war, and
the Soviets really didn't do anything to bring down the Japanese.
They seized, they seize the carle Islands. I'm sure I'm
butchering that pronunciation, but I mean posti alta, I mean
Okinawa happened, Ewo Jima happened. You know, America America dropped
two nuclear bombs on Japan, atomic bombs or rather like,
oh you know how there this end the war. I
mean it might seem like a middling thing to focus on,
but it's you know, Turtle's kind of like this master
of like effusicading actual issues, you know, like it wasn't
he He managed always answer questions with this kind of
grand flourish without actually saying anything. And if you want
to understand his political career, you gotta consider Churchill had
a bizarre background. His father was uh descended from the
Duke of marl Moroa, and his mother wasn't American, and
and and kind of a loose woman by all accounts,
like I believe, I believe when Churchill was there in
Turtle's brief time in the army, his his mother was
that you know then potioning fifty he was involved with
some kind of foppish young off or type was about
Churchill's age. I mean, that's there's something wrong there. I mean,
one doesn't need to be it'sond of moral prude or
something to recognize that there was something great dysfunctional yere,
particularly for a society woman in the UK of you know,
the turn of the century. I mean, that's this is strange.
You know, Churchill's father drang himself to death and apparently
demented for some time before then Churchill, uh Churchill in
May nineteen oh four, he uh, he abandoned what you know,
his his family's Tory heritage, declared that he hated the
Conservatives and that Balfour was you know, unworthy of of
high office, let alone, uh, you know, let alone the
office of the Prime Minister. He defected at the Liberal Party,
nominally on grounds that he supported free trade and that
you know, Belle four's protectionism was sabotaging the you know,
the the prosperity that that that was needed to compete,
not just with the United States, which that at that
time was not in particularly good terms with the UK.
I mean, that's whole another issue I don't want to
digress into. But also it's got to be it's also
got to be mentioned that the Liberals won a landslide
in nineteen oh six relatively and uh, Sir Henry Bannerman
made uh Churchill Undersecretary for the Colonies, and then later Uh,
it's some kind of like like minister. It's he sign's
not gonna ru in the Ministry of Trade. Okay. So basically,
I mean he Churchill saw an opportune moment and he
sees it. Okay.
Speaker 1: Uh he Uh.
Speaker 2: By this point the family did not its fortunes were waning.
What it kind of salvaged things at this point was
that a lot of the women in Churchill's family had
married into wealth, including uh Churchill's aunt Fanny, who's kind
of well known because there's this endless correspondence between Churchill
and Fanny, which is not particularly interesting, but historians make
a lot out of this. What is interesting is that
Fanny's sister, Uh, she married a guy who, in today's terms,
what would be a billionaire. I believe you know, he
was like on the order of like Carnegie in terms
of the wealth. Okay. He was like some some iron
mogul in the UK. And he was an arch enemy
of a He had been an arch enemy of a Chamberlain,
John Chamberlain, the first Chamberlain and his terriff regime, and uh,
so suddenly, uh aunt Fanny and uh and her sister
is throwing all this money at dear Winston, who now
is you know, a liberal member of parliament, you know,
I mean and this characterizes churchill entire life, Okay, kind
of like going where the money is, changing his strife
whenever he has to. And during this period two uh
churchill one stipulation he did make to John Chamberlain is
uh Churchill said, at all costs, We've got to avoid
another European war. We've got to find some way to
come to terms with Germany. We've got to find some
way to build, you know, a ramp erst defense against
the colored world and the communists. See this is fascinating,
isn't it? Because this is this isn't mister Churchill in
the aftermath of the Boer War. And he's positively talking
like uh, like Lothrop Stoddard or Madison Grant, you know,
I mean, uh, dare I say? He even sounds like
what people would call a fascist, you know, And I
mean this is his uh, this is his entire angle.
This is basically how he's making a living. Lo and behold, uh,
lo and behold. By nineteen eleven, Yeah, nineteen eleven, Churchill's uh,
he's a he's appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. This
had always been something of any ambition of his and uh,
he insinuated himself. He insinuated himself into that role. Mind you,
after almost a decade of you know, advocating peace on
the continent and and a conciliatory view towards the kaiser Reich,
you know, suddenly he suddenly Churchill changes the stripes completely
and says, you know, there we we've got a real
problem with naval rightiness. You know, we're not where the
uh the high Seas Fleet to Germany as you know,
a threat to the UK. You know, we we we
we we we can't count on on on on our own,
you know, technical supremacy any longer. And one thing to Churchill,
Churchill's big crew was uh, the conversion of coal to
oil firing UH ships. As it turned out in the
war that like a lot of these a lot of
these Dreadnought class ships like did not have added what urnaments.
But that's another kind of military eso tereriica. But it
did become an issue at UH at the Dardanells. Look
at that in a minute. But any event, so this
is about the third time in fifteen years Churchill has
done a one to eighty in terms of his purported
political sympathies, and and and and made and staked his
career fortunes on a position that that you know, only
a few years previously. It was he was a complete
opposite of what he purported to believe, you know, I mean,
in some ways, Churchill was kind of like the first lobbyist.
You know, there's uh, there's this famous uh, there's there's
this famous uh anecdote you know about uh, the first
Gulf War. And then Senator al Gore he's like waiting
in the atrium of the Senate of the Heart Senate
building or something, and he's like waiting. He's waiting for
like exit poll data to come in to decide if
he should, like, you know, vote for the war resolution
to go to war and whether Iraq or not. You know,
I mean that that that that's very much kind of
the I mean, I mean, al Gore was kind of
a he he was kind of easy to He was
kind of easy to lampoon because the name was a
fool and he uh had a tendency to do things
like wear more pancake makeup and a Portuguese hooker. But
it's the I uh that the point being that like
this Churchill was kind of like the first of this
type in the in the Anglo sphere, I mean, yeah,
there was always political corruption, Yeah, there were always people
there was There was always men who you know, were
we were morally compromised by by the prospect of money,
your promotion or or uh or all of the above.
But you know, this this guy like like being a
career politician who literally changes his stripes owing to the
you know, owing to the currents of public opinion or
uh or or or by literally following the lobbying money
of industry as true, Like like that really was not
something that was done. You know, Like guys like Churchill,
you know, kind of lesser nobility types, they kind of
insinuated themselves into a role and like that was role.
You know, So that that's kind of this kind of
gave people pause within elite circles in the UK, Churchill's
tenure as Lord of Admiralty frankly was disastrous. The uh
Churchill fancied himself despite having no meaningful military experience other
than about six months and uh in India, where he
didn't discern any real opportunity for battlefield heroism or anything exciting.
You know, he quickly became bored with that and resigned
his commission. Nonetheless, he fancied himself some great military mind
or commander. He uh there was a disaster when he
saw it to strike the German right flank and the
ant bridgehead, you know, there was the UK's assault forces
were totally under strength. This repeated in nineteen fifteen at
the Dardanels, which is well known to people. You know,
it's it was a very very dark incident for the Empire.
It was a slaughter. The aid was a pulverize ottomant
fortifications and capture captured Constantinople. Churchill gambled on on uh
on Royal Navy guns being able to outrange the Turks.
As I understand it, Then again, I'm not any kind
of military authority. This was another disaster. There weren't There
was not adequate imagery forces and being to uh facilitate
the follow up assault. Those that were available had been
rushed through training. When finally deployed in March nineteen fifteen,
it was a slaughter. This however, has become a would
become a characteristic at Churchill. This kind of like failing upward.
He was dismissed, yet six months later he was assigned
to France the Italian commander. He was recommission as lieutenant
colonel with the Royal Scotts Fusilaiers. Lloyd George basically intervened
to save him. George is, I'm gonna find this for
the man I owing probably the I don't know, the
you know whatever. It's hard to discern the kind of
sympathies of in habits of these in these kind of
aristocratic circles, particularly the last century. But I mean Lloyd
George has become a patron of his in a very
real way Churchill. George backed off though, around nineteen nineteen
because Churchill showed up quite literally now, mind you, Churchill
at this point was a Minister of Munitions and a
Secretary of State for War, which is kind of like
a meaningless sinecure. Yet Churchill shows up in France in
Paris in nineteen nineteen in full uniform, swaggering around drunk
like so I'm gonna cut dillo I. He declares that
he demands the intervention of all allies against the Bolsheviks,
and he will lead this expedition. And I mean, this
was an embarrassment and it was bizarre, you know. So
that basically ended Churchill's public life, I mean for the time.
Five years later and twenty four, Churchill suddenly re emerges.
He he's reinvented himself as like he's rejoined the Conservative Party,
you know. And I guess memories being short and Churchill
being a Churchill being able to sell illusory promises even
better than a Vegas showgirl can to a lonely businessman.
You know, he he got into lease on life. He
went from he went from he went from a From there,
he began demanding a general rear, a general naval build up,
presumably because he was trying to cultivate, you know, allies
and the Admiralty we'd alienated through the aster's performance as
Lord of the Admiralty. He started demanding, you know, Britain
Riconstudio's battleship fleet, you know, railing against the the uh
what uh what what became the uh what became the
Washington Naval Treaty. Then once again he reverses himself by
by nineteen twenty six, he's saying that we've got to
cut you know, defense expenditis of the bone, because I mean,
this was the way the currents were going once again.
And he he obviously did not he didn't find himself
welcome back into the into the Admiral le Fraternity. In
nineteen twenty eight he declared there's no chance that in
his lifetime that there would be any war with Japan.
He said in his he said, in his words, it's
unthinkable and did not foresee the slightest chance of it.
He said in nineteen twenty six and in nineteen twenty
eight that Britain should should adopt a ten year policy
that owing to the fact that war is unthinkable, with
any other years, that defense that cut down to the
bare minimum. It was around this time that uh Lord Esher,
who was an interesting figure and he died before the
Second World War, but he was a historian. He had
some arguably socialist symbo these but I think his discussion
of the person just of the time and his lifetime.
He wrote in enduring stuff, interesting stuff on Disraeli, he
wrote some really interesting stuff on Bellfore on Churchill, he
said Churchill is a flim flam Man. He said, the
guy's a showman. He's totally devoid of substance. Were as
he handles subjects and rhythmical language and quickly becomes enslaved
to his own phrase or by his own phrases, he
deceives himself into thinking he is taking broad views when
his mind is fixed on one comparatively small aspect of
the question. I'm wanna say one thing about this, and
I'll give it over to you, because I don't want
to suckle the air out of the room. I've heard
people say a lot as I'm sure you have two
as everybody has is exposed to kind of pop history
in this country. Oh you know, and there's this film,
this obnoxious film, Darkest Hour, with Gary Oldman, who otherwise
is like a dope actor. I was sad to see
him feature in this propaganda piece, but everybody must make
a living, including actors. But you know, the big praise
that people are, the big shine people put on mister
Churchill is like, well he was such a great order,
you know, being some showman order Like that's not really
a great thing to be, uh, A man like Calvin
Coolidge or like Abraham Lincoln. I know, people have mixed
feelings about Lincoln. I do too, But Lincoln actually was
a plain spoken individual. He was not some kind of showman.
The reason why the Gettysburg address stood out is because
the on grounds with the brevity is because Lincoln was
not He was not some hustler who went out there
and you know, kind of entertained ignorant people owing to
the uh, owing to the emergency. You know, one man
won vote. And the fact that you know, politicians by
the late nineteenth century literally become salesmen like Churchill, uh
he he the fact that he treated question time in
Parliament as some sort of as the Winston Churchill show. Like,
I don't really see what that's admirable, you know it?
Uh That's why I see parallels wing Bill Clinton and
Winston Churchill. Like you're not You're not some You're not
some great man or some man of the people. If
if your whole angle is you believe in nothing, you know,
you have the soul of the pig, you have absolutely
no principles. But hey, you like you really really really
entertain people with like Q was about eighty five, I mean, like,
why why is that admirable? You know? I mean like
and that's basically what Churchill had going for him. And
if you listen to I'm always making a point that, uh,
you know, I like we talked last session or last discussion,
I was making the point that whatever we can say
about Roosevelt, and I think Roosevelt in some ways was
a profoundly evil man, Roselt was a was a brilliant guy.
I mean it was a he was a ruthless machiavellian.
But if he wasn't at roosevelt speeches, I mean, yeah,
the guy's lying his ass off. But you can tell
that there's like a a complicated intellect there. Like Churchill,
It's like it's it's it's ridiculous, you know, I mean
you can really Like David Irving made the point that Churchill,
when he was early twenty literally played with toy soldiers,
you know, and he he uh, Lloyd George was disgusted
because I'm the during the Battle of Epra, church was
like running around like like literally a bubiliate that you know,
he was he was getting to play war, you know,
and everybody in the everybody else in the chain of commands,
civilian military, was beside themselves and here was this fat man,
who's you know, acting like a twelve year old playing
with his g I Joe's I mean, it's there's something
grotesque about that. But yeah, I uh, I didn't mean
to uh, I didn't mean a monopolized a discussion.
Speaker 1: No, So you pretty much brought us up to nineteen
thirty two, nineteen thirty three, when two elections happened that
changed the course of the world. So how is what's
Churchill doing at this time?
Speaker 2: Essentially Churchill made his uh he uh, he staged his
final comeback by uh by fabricating a lot of forces
and being numbers about the Vermont and particularly the loof
off of Churchill realized there wasn't a lot of Churchill
realized very quickly, I mean as everybody did that, you know,
alarmism like admiralty at least in the sense that he've
been able to finangle his way into rule in a
positions of real power in the in the First War
like that that was no longer going to carry the day.
What he was uh, he was he was busily he
was he was he was busily agitating for ah by flating,
you know, inflating the purported threat posed by Germany to
uh to uh to t u K the UK supremacy
on the con and dan in the in the colonies,
and uh the way he was doing that, Oh uh
what what you gotta understand first, you gotta understand who
is funding Churchill. And we're gonna get more into that
next session. But the Churchill between the time that he
uh he left uh or was forced out of his
post the Admiralty and he stayed his comeback, as I
can certain member of parliament, Jorge had become quite wealthy
as a as a historical author. He published his own memoirs,
which I mean, we're incredibly self serving. He posed the
issue of the British empire, this multi valume uh, this
multi volume uh kind of magnum opus and for the
time that made him quite wealthy. He uh he became
a firebrand against UH Germany owing to UH the convergence
of a what we consider a political action committee in
uh today's terms called UH that called that quite literally
called itself the focus group. It was a it was
a combination, uh, I mean the people in its ranks.
I mean it was a diverse coalition. I mean not
not I mean by today's in today's political cultures. We'd
take this for granted, but at that point it was
somewhat novel. You know. You had like out and out
Zionus types who uh you know obviously had ethno sectarian
reasons for hostility to the German Reich. Uh. You had
uh industrialists who uh owing to the Washington Naval Treaty
and Britain's defense expenditure is being cut down to the
like literally to the bone, had you know, found themselves
really kind of put out a business. I mean even
before the one nine crash, I mean hit the UK
very hard, arguably as hard as the United States. But
even even notwithstanding that, British heavy industry was was having
they were looking at real problems in terms of solvating
their fortunes. And uh, the uh the the end uh
the the end the end of defense subsidies, particularly naval
subsidies really really really hurt them. You know. So you
had typical kind of military industrial interests. You had, uh
he had people like Vantasaratudah not him himself, with people
like him who just had a kind of hostility of
the German right. I mean dating back to I mean
you raised I don't want to go too far a field.
But I mean you raised, uh in our last discussion,
you know, why why did the UK develop this kind
of enmity towards Germany. That's a complicated issue when I
we do need to delve into that a little bit
just for context here, you know, like we've like we
talked about a moment ago. You know, John Chamberlain, the
first Chamberlain, I think him as a good Chamberlain. Although uh,
although Nevill Chamberlain, I think it's kind of unduly maligned.
He was not a good executive. But the fact that
he's a he's got to burn an effigy, I think
is misguided. But John Chamberlain, he quite literally said, uh,
you know, in strategic terms, the most sensible alliance would
be that between you know, London, Washington and then against
Moscow and in the east, you know, the Anglo Japanese alliance.
Will you know, further hedge against both China and Russia,
which makes perfect sense. And this is what years are
fascinating young kaiser Villehelm. You know, when he'd only ascended
to the to the throne the fears previously he said
that Chamberlain's vision would never come to fruition because the
UK and France would never be able to put their
differences aside and behold like within a few years.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The uh, the the entent is what h is what
truly poisoned uh Anglo German relations. But I think what
if there was one single approximate cause. I mean people say,
people like to drop everything from you know, King George
and uh and ville Elm we're both kind of insufferable personalities.
And uh, Wilhelm never felt like the Germans are being
respected by the UK, and that's probably true. And there's
a man, there's a there's a man a key in
aspect to this. So like George and Wilhelm like look
literally like doppelgangers. It's bizarre, you know. I mean they
were related, but they literally looked like twin brothers, you know.
And it uh the Boer War, Uh. I think the war,
more than any single catalyst, was what uh what set
this enmity in motion. The uh, the German Reich really
strongly identified with the Bors and vice versa. I mean,
owing not just the fact that outside in the maybe
a Germany didn't really have holdings in Africa that they
felt the great power should and the Boers were kind
of their clients. But in cultural terms, there's there's commonality
between the basically Dutch Boers and the Germans. Added that
like the very, very kind of strong communitarian racial identity
that developed, going in part to the fact that the
Boers were quite literally believed by the whole continent of
racial others. But this kind of a this this kind
of warrior calvinist faith that sustained them. And I've got
this whole idea that there's a pieous dimension and national
socialism that's unique to the German character and Germanic people generally.
But all that esoterica aside. The British began using the
Boar War as an excuse to board and search and
in many cases detain German ships under auspices of well,
you know, we and any ships from the continent, you know,
traveling to the cape, you know, we've got to make
sure that they're not they're not furnishing weapons and munitions
and supplies to the Boers. But somehow it's always German
ships that are being you know, corralled in this way.
And the Germans weren't stupid, and Willhelm was not without fault.
I mean, he the High seas fleet, in my opinion,
and Holwig later the chance of the German Empire, who
I think was probably about the only good guy on
the evil World War One, But that's another issue. And
it howag always maintained that the Bluewater Navy, what the
Germans called their high siased fleet, it was designing to
two things. Germany could be strangled and it was by
a starvation blockade, and I want to get into that
in a minute in our discussion to mister Churchill. But
also Germany in nineteen four, in nineteen fourteen and nineteen
twenty four, in nineteen forty four and nineteen eighty four
always viewed Russia as its primary adversary. And if if
in the nineteen teens you're Willhelm the second you're looking
eastward and you're saying, I've got to be able to
dominate you know, I've got to be able to dominate
the Baltic and UH and essentially, you know, cut the
Russian fleet off at the knees. I'm gonna win a
general war against Russia. And that makes sense. I don't
think there's I don't think there's a realistic I don't
think there's a strategic I don't think a strategic challenge
to the UK by the German Empire in ninety fourteen
like made really any sense in general terms. I just don't.
But in the UK there was a there there there
the strawberry Gamel's bag was the Boer War. And one
of the thinks villa Helm did Paul Krueger the kind
of great boor uh revolutionary as he was running raids,
you know, against the British in the in the trans
ball and the Orange Free State or whatever. Uh, Kaiser
villa Up sent him, sent him a telegram congratulating him.
And this was not this is not good form and
like gooviy that sounds now, but uh, in those days, Uh,
these guys are diplomatic slaps in the face were viewed
almost like acts of war. I mean, like these days
were like diplomatic language become meaningless, you know, unless you're
unless you're quite literally detonating ordin answer, you're carrying on
terrorist acts or opening fire on people. Like nobody cares
what you say. Uh, I mean the Cold War gonna
change that, but it but you better believe if you
were if you were some radical boar farmer like mister Krueger,
you know, and you were you were playing viet Cong
with UH, with the British Empire, and uh, a European
United State was like sending you formal praise for doing that.
Like this was viewed in the gravest terms. It really was.
And uh nobody said that villain ham was uh an
intelligent man or that he made wise decisions. And it's like,
I'm always playing bad at the point. There is the
reason why aof Hitler denied him a state funeral when
the old man died, you know, when ninety forty, I
think it he died in exile in Hollan and then
but there's a reason, you know, I mean, and it uh,
it was it was big that it was big that
hitler'mally considering Hiller fought in the Great War. I mean
it was a it's telling that he he wouldn't even
know the guy he buried with like state honors. I mean,
that's you know, and it's not accidental. And uh, it's
not just owing to the fact that he grows he
mismanaged the war, you know, I mean it, Uh, if
you're that kind of despised by by your own people.
The problem generally is you. But in any event, I
raised the h Churchill's kind of final act. I mean
this was in his role as uh, this was in
his role as war minister that I was kind of
extended beyond all reasonable parameters. In his post as Lord
of Ameraldy, Churchill was the one who imposed the Starvation
Blackade on Germany. And literally was a starvation blackcade nineteen sixteen.
There's food riots all over it's the German Empire because
people were starving, okay, particularly elderly kids. You know, it
was a disaster. All told, about three quarters of a
million people died between nineteen fifteen and nineteen nineteen. And Churchill,
in his post a Secretary of War, Secretary of State
for War, rather he he extended, he demanded, and he
got his way. The Blackcad was extended through nineteen nineteen,
resolving I believe in on eight three thousand dead for
that year. And why was this done. This was done
so that Germany accept the war war guilt clause of
the Versailles Treaty. And that's really what truly discussed the
American delegation. It demanded the German accept full guilt for
the war, you know, to film to pay thirty two
billion in gold bollyon for them to pay. Churchill demanded
that it be included that they paid that Germany pay
the pensions of British soldiers who fought on the Western Front.
I mean, this was totally insane, and it demanded the
Kaiser be arrested, prosecuted as a war criminal. And of
course the German said they're not going to sign that.
So Churchill demanded and got his way, that the starvation
blockade be sustained until they capitulated. And of course the
US said it to its eternal credit, refused the refuse
to endorse the Versaie treaty. It wasn't really worth the
paper was written on when America bowed out of it
and refused to ratify it or force it. And uh,
you know that entire you know, Germany's unwillingness to comply,
and and and and kind of Anglo Anglo French impotence
therein like pasturing about the ability to actually deliver on
threat by the Western Allies had a lot to do
with the about still is nineteen thirty nine, and we
will get to that, but I forgive the out of
sequence some discussion of uh, the starvation blockade. I just
it's a rare instance of something that's truly unconstable. And
like Herbert Hoover said, I I recommend the other day
on my Twitter, my gab timeline this biography of Herbert Hoover,
and I think it is really dope. And Hoover is
a guy. He was he was a very decent guy,
and he was actually a pretty good president. And uh
he's uh he's burned fgy and and and held responsible
for the great to pro which is grossing misguided. But
Hoover said, we don't starve. He said, in America, we
don't starve for many kids. And we don't kick a
man when he's down after we've defeated him. And uh,
and he's right, Okay, I mean there's something you're not.
You're you're not you're not being some you're not being
some liberal pussy or you're not being some you know
some uh some social justice humanist or something to say
that you know, you don't you don't impose draconian, draconian peace,
not just on another white Christian country, but even uh,
you know, even on even even even up an alien
power that's outside the culture completely So long as you're
not engaged in an existential war against them for for survival.
That's just you don't treat people that way in defeat.
There's no honor in it. And uh, honor matters, and
ethics matter, and the killing a non combedness matters too,
And we're gonna take that up in a more complete
uh uh capacity uh when we deal with the Nuremberg
addendum to our discussion. But what I want to well,
I want to give back to you in a moment,
but I what I want to do uh in our
next uh discussion, which uh we are recording any time
you said Saturday, I want to get into uh. I
want to get into the focus as we talked about,
which was really the first, in my opinion, modern uh
political action committee. It really was. That's not some that's
not some uh hokey metaphorm invoking or some imperfect analogy.
You you really did not. You did not have dedicated
committees to raise money, you know, to advance discrete policy initiatives,
to elect like an individual man and promote that man
is like the face of these policies. Like you had lobbyists,
you know, all in sundry and you had for you know,
a couple of centuries by that point, you know, you
had men who who owed their political career to basically
big representatives of you know, either you know, industry or
agriculture or you know, military interests, so so that they
could be said to exist in the early modern era.
But Churchill is really, he really was the first man
where you got a bunch of wealthy people and work
and organizations that represented wealthy people saying, you know, here
here are policy demands. You know, we're gonna cooperate to
realize these demands, and we're gonna select this man, you know,
and we're gonna see to it that he has installed
in office, you know, to implement these demands as policy.
I've researched, it's thoroughly and Churchill is he is like
he is, he is the original example of this. I'm
sure there's gonna be people in the comments who were like,
oh no, there was you know, Lord so and so
from eighteen fifty or whatever. It's not the same thing, okay,
And especially considering there's a literally a modern national media
apparatus buying Churchill, you know, if you want in a
central bank, yeah, yeah, and we're gonna deep dive into
that now. I don't want to know, because we've been
going for almost an hour, and frankly I want to
kind of organize my thoughts a little better for the
second part.
Speaker 1: But what do you want Let me let me ask
an opinion question.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did they get behind him because they knew that
he was not the smartest man in the world, and
he just seemed like he could be a good puppet.
Speaker 2: I think there's a few things here. Okay, Churchill was
a weird guy. I mean, he was weird in terms
of personal habits and stuff. But he also, like I said,
Churchill had this kind of promiscuous, glamorous mom who was
an American. He had this dead who literally drank himself
to death and was and was crazy. Churchill like straddled America.
In the UK, he hung around a bunch of neuvau
reef type guys and like rich Jewish guys. But he
also he also was a He also was a lesser noble.
He literally was descended from, you know, the Lord of Marlborough,
so like he knew how to move in aristocratic circles too.
Like you take for granted these days that there's this
kind of citizen of the world types, you know, who
are insinuated into high places, and a lot of them
are mediocrities, as I think Churchill was. But that's not
the point. Like the point is that guys like that
weren't real common in the United Kingdom of you know,
nineteen thirty. So Churchill was, he had rare characteristics in
that way. But it's also it's also like it's it's
also like we discussed during the hour, like church was
a guy who literally would defect at the drop of
a nine. You know, he was for sale. And that's
why compared to Bill Clinton, there's a lot of guys,
and myself included. I mean, I'm a Christian, I'm a
center like every other man and woman is, and I'm
not better any worse. You know, no man is any
better any worse in this regard. And all men can
be bought basically if they're in political life, that's why
they're there. But there's very few guys that were they
literally have no principles at all, and if you dangle
money in their face, still basically shill for whatever you want,
like whatever you want. You know, that's that is rare,
and uh, I think it's indicative of being some kind
of a psycho path. Frankly, I'm not just saying that. Like,
you can say what you want about Hitler. Hitler believed
in everything he was doing. You can say Roosevelt was
an evil guy. Roosevelt actually believed everything he said. I
don't think Church will believe in anything. Yeah, Like, I
really don't. And either that or it's and I'm not
I'm not just dropping a cheap shot owing to his alcoholism.
I mean owing to some of my own issues in
the past that have been recanted about. I'm the last
person who're cann like trash people for having like drug
or alcoholic problems. Okay, but if you're a lifelong drug
addict or alcoholic, it does like start to make you
go crazy. And I've considered the fact, and David Irving
dropped this in his two value mystery, like Church was
probably starting to lose his mind by the time he
was like our age, you know, like in his forties.
I mean, you can't. You can't. You can't be a
drunk for three years and have that not take its toll.
You know. I'm sure that that must have had something
to do with it. And again that's not some that's
not gonna cheap. You know that sounds some sort of
cheap slander on mister Churchill. It just doesn't. I mean,
I I know guys who I know, guys who portrayed
your own principles, you know, uh, for profit. I've never
met a guy who is like mister Clinton or like
Winiston Churchill, where it's you know, one day they're aviating
for this, you know, two years later they're advocating for
the precise opposites, and then a year after that they're
arguing for something totally posed to both like that. That's
that's literally insane, you know. Or at a Churchill today
would not be able to pull that off, because he'd
be people have the memory of a house by these days.
But he would have been caught him in some scandal
and or it would have just been like he would
have just not been making seriously anymore. But you could
reinvent yourself in nineteen twenty four, nineteen thirty four, you know,
when there wasn't now there was an the twenty four
hour media cycle. There wasn't even television then, you know,
I mean, there was radio, if asull. There there was
a global media developing but it was it was not this.
You could you could disappear for years, reinvent yourself and uh,
if you've got to control people's access to you, and
if you had like Churchill did, like a real media
and and and money apparatus behind you, you kind of
like literally like reinvent your history. Okay, but uh, we're
gonna uh, we're gonna get into the focus uh next
uh next uh session and uh and the Warriors and
will specifically deep dive into that.
Speaker 1: Then this may be somebody's first. They're just dropping in
on this one. They haven't heard a previous one. So
plug plug your stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, Pete. You can find me on Twitter
that uh that awful, awful platform, but I've got high
hopes for it moving forward thanks to mister and other things.
You can find me there at number seven hom As
seven seven seven. You can find me on gab at
real underscore Thomas seven seven seven. You can find me
on substack at real Thomas seven seven seven dot subseack
dot com. We've got a podcast there, we've got long
form stuff there. We've got all kinds of stuff there,
and you can join it for only five dollars a month,
and unless you're like a bona fide hobo, you can
afford that. I'm not in a position yet where can
just drop stuff for free. I'm trying to get there,
Like I'm not just saying that, I genuinely am, but
right now, every subscription helps, and it'll it'll never be
more than five bucks a month. But uh, like I said,
that comes out of something like seventeen cents a day.
That's cheap than feeding one of those fucking African kids
like on those late night fucking inframarkets. And I, you know,
like those average kids got NGO is helping them out.
I don't have NGO. Was like, I'm like an fucking
Peckerwood like writes playly in correct stuff like no one's
gonna like fucking no one's gonna drop fucking paper on
me if you don't. So there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anybody who anybody who comes up to us offering
us large amounts of cash to write, you to write
or produce, We're gonna be like, what the hell?
Speaker 2: What all right? What are we being set up for?
You know exactly? And forgive me, Uh, I'm getting over
a big ra a flair up that. So I'm not
like dying of freaking COVID or AIDS or something like.
I'm forgetting me for sniffling and cough. I know it's gross,
but I wanted to. I want to make sure we
recorded a today and uh, I yeah, we're uh, we're
gonna well, let's let's record part two of uh of
church and Churchill's War on Saturday, and we'll go for
an hour and a half if need be, then okay,
and then yeah, subsequent to that we'll get into Barbarosa
and then the addendam will be like Nuremberg and like,
you know, a summary of you know, the the political
intrigues of the war and just kind of like a
summing up, you know, the the Nuremberg World Order and
the raison Decker for the war itself. And again, I
can't thank you enough, sincerely, and thanks for commodating me.
Like I said, I was real sick the past few
days and you're you're very kind man and understanding. I
appreciate that.
Speaker 1: No problem at all. All right, So the next time,
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekenana show.
By request, people have been making comments. We are going
to pick up where we left off with Thomas seven
seven seven, has it gone Thomas very well?
Speaker 2: Thank you Pete again, thank you for thank you for
continuing to host me and for participating in this discussion series.
Like I indicated last time, I think it's important for
posterity and just to kind of disseminate revisionist perspectives in
a way that's more accessible. And I think we're doing
very good things here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm The way I'm going to do this is
once we record the last episode, all of the episodes
I put on my substack are private, their early releases.
I'm going to put these on my substack and make
them public, and just make these public so anyone can
go to them. Anyone can get the the RSS feed
from the substack and can listen to them. So that'll
be I think that's a good idea, and I trust
that substack is going to be there for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my primary platform anymore, because I'm mean, I
get deplatformed a lot, because I think people know I've
never been censored or deplatformed or warned by substack. I
believe the only thing that they crag down on is
obviously pornography, you know, threats of violence or criminality, and
I do. I have heard people say that they've they've
they've they've had issues if they if they allow racially
inflammatory language out out of context. You know, just I
mean things, and I generally shoot acts. That's it's not
generally something I include anyway. I mean, not because I
care if people talk that way, but it's I don't
really do that. But yeah, substack is is there's a
reason why I am associated with them. I've been very happy,
all right.
Speaker 1: So when we finished off last time, we got up
to we're talking about Winston Churchill nineteen thirty two, and
it seems like right about nineteen thirty three he with
he along with a couple other people, really start to
rise to prominence and power.
Speaker 2: So jump in nineteen thirty two was really that, I
mean Churchill remain Churchill's wilderness years really remained from nineteen
thirty two, probably until nineteen thirty six, but ninety thirty
two especially, he was not behaving like a man of
his portfolio. Okay, a lesser nobleman who had served in
government and was considered something of a prodigy. Yearly on
I mean rightly or wrongly, he he began writing really, really,
really what amounts to hack copy for pretty much anybody
who would publishes his essays for a time. And this
is incredibly bizarre. He found this American publishing house that
was you know, as we talked before about Churchill kind
of playing a character quite literally, particularly in American media.
As you know this this kind of John Bull like
literally like the manifestation of John Bull, like he he
was almost like this mascot of Old Blighty, and this
publisher was paying him to write classics of English literature
is reinterpreted by Winston Churchill, So it's wins in Churchill
literally writing kind of the comic book cliffs Notes version
of things like weathering Heights, with his own kind of
snarky commentary, interspersed in jokes like why anybody want to
read that? I have no idea. They didn't sell particularly well.
I mean, Churchill pretty much was living the advancements from
things like that. He still had a good relationship with
the Daily Mail, which soured very rapidly shortly thereafter. We're
gonna get into why that was. But I mean that'd
be like it's an imperfect analogy, but imagine a guy
like John Kerry or like Mitt Romney, one of these
guys just kind of bounces around the swamp like a man.
If you started writing kind of cheap romance novels, you know,
kind of men's adventure novels and it just started publishing
op eds and wappo and you know, on the daily
beast like that, that would seem strange, I mean, would
it not. I mean that seems strange today. It's really
strange for you know, nineteen thirty nineteen thirty one. So
he was. My point is that, you know, this, this
is not a man who I mean, not only was
he not particularly liquid and wealthy, but he wasn't just
a man in the kind of genteel poverty that a
lot of you know, kind of lesser noblemen found themselves
in the in the hustle and bustle twentieth century. I mean,
this was a guy with real problems. You know, he
was very, very very addicted to alcohol. He had a
son who couldn't seem to make his own way in
the world, and you know it was a degenerate gambler.
You know, he had a daughter who suffered from depression.
And there's nothing funny about that. And I'm not making
fun of that. Or saying that that's grounds for prejudice
or something. But you know, he this was not a
family that was doing well, okay, And and Churchill really
was his ability to degenerate income was supporting not just
himself and his wife, but his adult children and all
these hanger ons like it wasn't this this this this
was not a responsible man, okay. And I mean I
as a it's I know, in America people like to
draw this kind of distinction between private and public life,
and in some ways that's appropriate. But if you look
at the way a man governs his private affairs, if
he does that in a grossly irresponsible way, you can't
say that. Oh. But in public life, he's entirely responsible,
and he's you know, not at all his passions, and
you know, he's constantly able to discern the correct courts
even if he fails time and again, and and affairs
of the heart and personal matters. I mean, I think
that's important. I mean, I don't know, that's not just
me putting shade on Churchill because I think that he's
not an admirable figure. But bring it back kind of
the hard and fast facts of the thing. In uh,
Frederick Lindeman and they're aout nine nearly two. If Frederick
Lindaman was kind of Churchill was only really close associated.
Lindaman had a background someone like Churchill. He was German born.
He was the Lord of Charwaal and probably butchering that pronunciation.
He was something of a gadfly. He shared kind of
Lord van Sattart's hostility to Germany. But at the same
time he was quite anti Jewish, anti Zionist, and he
was dogmatically anti communist. But Churill's association with him, uh,
both he and Churchill, they kind of made a habit
of of of constantly assailing Ramsey McDonald who was then
Prime minister. And McDonald, Uh, I think he's an interesting
prime minister brief as his tenure was. But he made
a lot of enemies among industrialists and and and and
among old empire loyalist types because you know, the guy
was viewed as being, you know, not just friendly to
trade unionism, but you know, people people accused him of
being read. People accused him of having these radical social assemblies,
which he really didn't. I mean, he was something of
a grand coalition builder. He fancied himself as that that
included uh, that included uh, being somewhat cozy with radical elements,
but he certainly was not a communist. He certainly was
not you know some uh, some sort of radical, but
McDonald was uh, you know one of his uh, one
of his big policy points was disarmament. I mean, this
was a global movement towards disarmament. Okay, the League of Nations,
that was its purported Raizon detra. But McDonald he actually
took that seriously and he said, why the hell, what
what are we arming for war against? You know, he's like,
Germany right now is pro strate, and even were it not,
there's really no reason for us to to collide with
them on strategic matters. You know, even even with even
with the situation in Vymar and with the then you know,
ascending national socialists. You know that this is not some
clear and present threat to the to the United Kingdom
or its empire. That's ridiculous. He avoided discussion of the
Soviet Union, but that was pretty common among any labor
politician then this and you can say that that's not
a particularly flattering tendency as as as such that has existed,
but he was not unique in that. But The point
is McDonald was not its simply trying to stick it
to the these arm these armaments concerns and these munitions
manufacturers and UH the very very strong UH Admiral t lobby.
He he really believed in this, and you know, he
believed that this was viable. And frankly, what killed the
enterprise in nineteen thirty three was when the Germans formally
withdrew from the League of Nations. But by that point
in McDonald's efforts had been had really had really been
tanked by the fact that it was becoming increasingly clear
that you know, proposals like the Washington Naval Treaty and
you know what the French are demanding as regards collecting
and security and the continent. You know, it meant disharmament
for for thee but not for me. And even if
Hitler had not been at the Helm by then, I
think whoever was Chancellor would would have done the same thing.
You know, the Japanese and ceremoniously withdrew after, you know,
in the in the wake of the Washington Naval Treaty,
and and in there, you know, in their words, they
were being treated like coolies. And then there's some truth
to that. I mean, however, anybody feels with the Japanese Empire,
they were they were essentially being dictated to that. You know,
they could only uh, they can only maintain uh a
fraction of the military maritime tonnage that the United States
and the UK would And I mean nobody, you're you're
you're essentially you're not practicing diplomas. To you, when you
issue those kinds of ultimatums, you know, you're you're you're
aiming for diplomacy to fail on purpose, to rationalize your
own continued, of course the best policy, and it's exactly
what happened. But during this time, uh, Churchill's other patron
that he picked up, probably for cynical reasons only in
large parts we just mentioned is continued to saals On McDonald,
Lord Rothmere, who uh uh.
Speaker 1: Was he was?
Speaker 2: He was He was a newspaper magnate, Okay, like he
was kind of I'm trying to think of a good counterpart,
uh to uh kind of kind of a Robert McCormick
sort of figure. Okay, Rothmer lost two sons in the
Great War, you know, he so he it was he
he very much had an interest in reaching a conqueror
with Germany. That was personal, not just because he was
kind of an old line patriot. Yeah, he developed uh,
a fairly amiable corresponding Tyler, which there was a very
very few people Taylor correspond mostly with another one. But
he was very selective in his contexts. There's not a
lot to this correspondence other than Rothmere stating that, you know,
he he sees no reason why uh, the Tories uh
or the Liberals, if that or is flipped into office,
why they would not continue a course of you know,
reconciliation with Germany. However, in the euthemistic language Rothnier employed,
you know, there were elements that wanted to see this fail.
I mean, you can read the you can read the
entirety of the correspondence, I believe on the Wilson Center's website.
I'm not endorsing the Wilson Center, but I believe it
is there. If not, there's other places you can find it.
But my point is there's not some there. There's not
some remarkable nuggets of historical truth in these things. I
only I bring it up because it's significant to uh
addressing the rift between Churchill and Rothmere as a as
as Churchill's UH kinda kind of anti German polemic UH
reached increasingly fevered piss fevered pitch. Uh. Rothmer finally got
so affronted by it that he uh he he ended
any any any association with Churchill. He refused to pay
him for any more content. You refuse to run anything
secondhand that had been penned by Churchill? Or was it
all sympathetic to his uh, to his uh position? And
so again? I mean Churchill was a if not so
much casting in the wilderness politically as he had been uh.
He was once again without a financial patron and extended him,
you know, loans the world you know pretty gives all
the name and church we uh it started a patent
thirty four and whatever his god for big Church he
got being seen in hold On, we're losing.
Speaker 1: Hold On, We're losing You're you're going in and out.
Your connection, Your connection is weak.
Speaker 2: Okay, how about now I don't see the It sounds better, Yeah,
just might were trying to restore the connection. Okay, okay,
how about now it sounds better.
Speaker 1: It's I'm still reading it as weak, but that doesn't
mean anything. It just matters how it sounds okay.
Speaker 2: I'm coming through. Okay, yeah, keep going. Okay. So Churchill's
yachting in the Mediterranean, you know, uh, at least giving
him appearances. It makes the acquaintance of him man named
Alexander Korda Alan core is the Hungarian jew. He's emigrated
literally to Hollywood. Okay, like he was the early uh
talkie films. Okay, he was very prominent in this nascent industry,
a bunch of business at this time. Okay, there probably
uk perruption. Coffee from Perruption was come. I can't go
on the film the Spring type much of it. I
have no idea of the quality of it, but it
was manasically probable. Quarter became incredibly wealthy. Quarterbacks church is
acquaintance and he bails him out. He quite literally pays
his debts and he want me to do so, okay,
go ahead before by cutting you know, bai literally my
Carlo uh bails out Churchill, I believe to the tune
of ten thousand pounds sterling, which was a huge amount
of money in those days. Okay, later, really weeks later,
owing to Churchill, Spencer Dways, he approaches Korda asks for
more money. Okay, you know, you know there's another infusion
of of cash even hire Churchill's daughter for a no
work job. Okay, because church Will kind of confided to him,
you know, I'm worried about my daughter and you know
the man she's carrying on with, that's a whole other story.
I don't want to get into a digression. But so
you know, not only is Corda paying Churchill's bills, he's
covering on his gambling debts and he's hiring Churchi's wayward,
kind of say it, butter with these with these psychological problems,
which again are no fault of her own. But you
know he's, uh, he's literally hiring the man's family for
these no show jobs. You know, it's something a mafiosi
what or something. Corda Ferd gets a joks in. Churchill
tells him, Hey, look, I'm gonna give you a job.
You know, He's like, I don't need to pay up
the money I gave you, but I'm gonna give you
a job. I'm gonna commission you to write a screenplay
on you know, the life of George. The fifth Hitdled Jubilee,
because you know, the the Jubilee celebration at George the
fifth is coming up. You know, this would just be
so great, and this will put you on the map again,
and you know you can kind of rebuild some respectability
as you know, not not not just a man of title,
but a man of means, and you know who's kind
of engaged with you know, the the twentieth century. And
this will be great, you know. And Churchill does that
kind of out and off. You know, he writes this
screenplay that never comes to fruition, but there's much made
and kind of like society pages like O Churchill's under
the film industry, like what a great what a great
thing this is, you know, and look he's you know,
he's this man about tout to mister Korda and oh wow,
you know, like you know, Winston's not just this kind
of stuffy old uh you know, descend into the the
House of Marlborough or whatever. He's you know, really on
the he's really he's really doing great things for national
prestige and and all this other stuff. I mean, uh
so throughout uh nineteen thirty four, it's going to Churchill's
new patron Court introduces Churchill the Bernard Baruk uh Bernard
Baruk is a anchor quite literally. You know, he's a
Wall Street financer. He's also a huge Zionist. Okay, his
UH is his whole, his old cause, his whole kind
of life outside of business finance and and UH. And
this kind of wheeling and dealing is UH, you know,
procuring uh a racially pure if we can, you know,
used the familiar terms of the era. UH created Jewish
state in Palestine, you know, in a homeland for the
Jewish people where that would be for them alone. And
you know he's UH. When he's not editing for this,
he's you know, he's funding myriad Jewish causes and you
know in in in the United States and in Europe.
You know he's UH. He's active with the Nascent and
Anti Defamation League, which was you know, it'd come into
existence in the nineteen teens atter the Leo Frank incident,
which UH, I don't want to get into here. People
strong feelings about that in my own opinion, but that
you know, my point is that he was as as
Jewish power in America became institutionalized, he was an instrumental
figure in this. Okay, Churchill became so tight with Baruk
and with Coorda later on, I mean the jump ahead
just for a moment, and I forty two Korda was
made a knight by Churchill or Churchill sponsored and essentially
demanded his knighthood. Now this is what I heard of
for a film industry personage. Okay, it was the first
time the titleman conferred on anybody like that. All right,
but this gives you an idea of the degree to
which they were their their kind of fortunes were insinuated. Okay,
this was not just some you know, temporary marriage of
convenience like Churchill's. Churchill's job basically became, you know, acting
in the employee of this man and his associates very quickly.
Uh after Uh, this is kind of solidified Churchill kind
of singular focus. He begins declaring that German air powers
and mortal foots the British Empire. He begins stating that,
you know, owing to these intelligent sources that he never discloses,
you know, Germany's by by nineteen thirty five, Germany will
have five thousand assault aircraft. You know, these aircrafts can
drop these aircraft and one sortie can drop five hundred
tons of bombs on London. You know, in contrast, you
know there's a there's not a single uh you know,
the Royal Air Force doesn't even have the capacity to
reach the European continent, which was nonsense by that time,
even prior, even even before the Lancaster bomber. Go to
the drawing board, like the RAF nine and thirty four
to thirty five, they could have easily reached the low
countries and even the rarer. Okay, so I meany this
was just an out and out confabulation. This is large
you met with derision, but it gains an audience with
the people sympathetic to the politics of people like like
baruqu and Quorda, a man Desmond Morton, businessman industrial as
another wealthy patron. He establishes what weaken through a political
action committee. It's called the Industrial Intelligence Center. I mean
that sounds innocuous, right and neutral and you know, like
some kind of source you'd go for you go to
for data on the world around you and particularly on
you know, the capabilities of nations, actually your potential. He
starts this Industrial intelligence in this Industrial Intelligent Center, it
begins presenting figures in data, once again based on undisclosed
sources in the intelligence community. He again reiterates, He says
that you know, by in the nine thirty five there
will be five thousand German assault aircraft. You know, the UK,
even at max On production, you know, could only field
nine hundred. You know, mind you there's never these these
statistics were never cited. There's never any discussion of the
make or models aircraft. There's never any discussion of their quality.
There's never any discussion of their arrange. There's never any
discussion of their armaments. You know, nothing or do they claim,
you know, if London was targeted and one day there'd
be thirty thousand dead, you know, within sevent days of assault,
possibly double that. You know. Uh. Chamberlain, to his credit,
publicly stated you know, there's no information banking Churchill's claims.
But uh, you know, even before uh, even before Chamberlain
became this kind of figure that was burning effigy, you know,
after after the Munich, after the aftermath of the Munich
Summit and and subsequent you know, history that that that
that is, you know, assigned him this kind of villain's role,
you know, Chamberlain and out of the public profile Churchill
did nor did he have the backing, you know, nor
did they have the uh, the ability to disseminate rebuttals
to what Churchill was saying. You know, Churchill didn't quite
have a bully pulpit. He wasn't even in government at
this time. But if your friends are all millionaires, I mean,
by today's standards, that'd be billionaires. You know, they're insinuated
in media, you know, they're they're they They've got power
and authority on Wall Street. I mean, you can get
a lot done. And if you go around yelling things
from that perobial rooftops, even if it's nonsense, you're gonna
people are gonna listen to you if you say it enough. Okay,
it doesn't matter if you've got Ramsey McDonald, you know,
it's kind of on his way out anyway, and we're asking,
you know, no voting no confidence. It doesn't matter if
you got you know, mister Chamberlain kind of kind of
kind of stuffy, dull mister Chamberlain saying, well, actually this
isn't true in citing the facts and figures to rebut it.
You know, it comes down to presentation. It comes down
to saturation of the of the conceptual landscape. I mean,
we see this today, you know, people say totally insane
things about Vladimir Putin and Russia, like even if you
don't like the Russians or don't like mister Putin or
sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, whatever that may be, the
things that are said about this situation don't make any sense.
It's like, okay, well, it was the same thing in
those days, and I'd argue it was even more insidious
because you didn't you couldn't get in the Internet and
fact check, you know, and you didn't. You didn't you
didn't have alternative sources of media. You know, you basically
had whoever could yell aloud is to read the most
outlets that would be receptive to the publicizing and disseminating
these statements. That was the opinion that won out ninety
thirty five. The German air cords German air codes, at
least the lower operational air codes are actually broken by
British intelligence. UK Foreign Secretary John Simon. He says what
Churchill saying is nonsense. The number of extant, actually existing
German aircraft he's talking forces and being was five hundred
and seventy eight. UK Foreign Secretary John Simon, he met
with Erhard Milch in March at ninety thirty five. For
those that don't know, Milts was the first CEO and
he was really the He was the founder of Luftanza.
He later became a field Marshal. He was the hero
of the Battle of Narviik. He was ethnically part Jewish.
He's an interesting guy. David Irving wrote a great body
few of them, but Uh, Simon met with Milt because
Miltch was something I mean, he wasn't just he didn't
just have military rank. He was a diplomat of his
in his own right, as much as business mobiles are
because they have to be. Uh. Milt was a guy
who was genuinely well liked, Unlike unlike UH, Unlike the
unlike the official Foreign ministry, a lot of these figures
in the UK actually liked dealing with Miltch. Okay, that's
it seems strange for him to be meeting with the
Foreign secretary. That's why Simon wanted to meet with him
to discuss the up the forthcoming naval talks, the UH
after the UH after the UH after what happened, you know,
with the Kaiser's high seas fleet and in terms of
provoking anxieties which led to an arms race, which in
turn was an contributing factor to the Great War. There
was great concern and more responsible policy circles about transparency
in in armament and maritime armaments. Okay, that was the
context of that. Milt wrote down in his diary, his
personal diary after the meeting with John Simon, quote, we
are banking on Britain's assistance against Russia. That is important. Okay.
That actually is an essential kind of nugget at truth
like buried in this kind of murky miasma of of
of diplomatic and military intrigues of the era. Okay, I
mean Milt really not only was he close to Adolf Hitler.
He was even though jashaunakat At at that point and
ernst Udet had more formal authority within the LOOFWAFFA. I
would argue that Milts was probably closest to Gerring in
operational terms. Okay. The fact that Milts not only is
he striking a non confrontational poshu or towards the UK,
he's openly you know, writing in his private diary that
an essential aspect of his strategic vision, and thus Berlin's
strategic vision is bringing the UK into its strategic fold
as an ally against the Communis East. I believe that
says it all, Okay, I mean I I don't see
how anybody can rebut that, you know, or or how
it can be said that, like well, Miltch is not
in a position to know what the actual intentions of
Berlin or his fear were, or what the OKW actually
had in mind. I mean I but that is something
of a tangent. November nineteen thirty five, the British Airstaff
Convenes issued an internal and issued an internal memorandum stating
unequivocally that German forces and being was no more than
five hundred and ninety four aircraft. They did not single
out Churchill as the target of this rebuttal, but they
didn't make mention of irresponsibly inflated figures. Okay, named the
location here as obvious. Churchill wrote in response to this,
the Committee of Imperial Defense, which was the UK, did
not have a general staff like like the Wehrmacht did,
and you know in our equivalent in this country would
be the Joint chiefs of Staff the Committee of Imperial
Defense was basically that equivalent. Okay, So Churchill addresses the
Committee Imperial Defense, and he wrote, rather ominously, is my
sincere hope that this figure will not be made public,
as it would certainly give rise to misunderstandings and challenges.
So think about that, some guy who has become the
kind of errand boy a bunch of billionaires, I mean,
some of whom are frankly pretty dangerous people. They've they've
got ties to militant Zionism, they've got ties the armaments industry,
they've got ties to Wall Street. They've got this kind
of media bully pulpit that's just kind of coming into existence,
you know, on account of you know, movie house visual
media becoming kind of a dominant propaganda platform. They're writing you,
you know, they're they're writing the letters saying, you know,
we we really don't think you should publish certain data
that that would cause misunderstandings. I mean, you don't. You
don't need to be prone to conspi ritorial thinking or
a paranoiac to understand that there's the implied threat they're in. Okay,
I mean, uh, this is really incredible to me that
I that that any you know, but I mean the
the the UK, I mean kind of uh. And I'm
not trashing English people, but they're for all their reputation
for subtlety and and kind of and kind of nuanced
and irony, they they they they tend to speak rather
plainly when they plan to threaten people. And I think
this is in a way that would not be the
case in America. Opposite perception is that may be November
nine thirty five, UH is a seminal uh that that
that that that this is a seminal month and year
of Churchill. Because the Conservatives are swept into power. This
is no surprise to anybody. Baldwin becomes the prime minister.
He has no time for Churchill. He's committed to peace. UH.
He's uh, he's got no interest in in in in
uh in pandering to the arment's lobby. He's got no
interest in in villainizing Germany. Uh so as a substantiate
a general mobilization or a military build up. Okay the uh.
During this time, UH, as we mentioned Lord Rothmere, he
was still in connect with Adolf Hitler. I believe this
was his second to last correspondence with him. He wrote
to Adolf Hitler clandestinelye he said that if, if, if, if,
Hitler could broke her a peace between Italy, which was
then at warwith Ethiopia Abyssinian Empire, as it was then
known that that could bring beneficial diplomatic uh overtures from
the new government in London. I find Hitler's respond somewhat fascinating.
Let me bring it up here, but I'll read a
word for word. Hitler replied, for a hundred million years,
this earth has moved around the sun. During that long time,
it has always been filled with the struggle of human
beings for nourishment and later for dwellings and clothing, et cetera.
Countless influences have brought constant changes in the dispution of property.
And now, in a certain year, after millions of years
in which the earth has moved around the sun, an
American professor who claims the formation of a diplomatic league
of partly heterogeneous nations with completely opposite interests with a
view to banishing future change from the world can effectively
banish any change. And that sounds ominous, but that's also
a very Hitler statement. I mean, essentially, Hitler was saying
what's going to happen is going to happen. You know,
I have no reason not to. You know, see if
he'll do I'll be responded to peace overtures. But this
will not change anything. And you've all people should know
better considering you're you know, you're mister empire loyalist. That
seems like a very stilted statement from Hitler, but you
gotta understand the way that Brittish aristocrats wrote and the
way that Hitler, the kind of Habsburg German artist wrote
reading between the lines, this is a fascinating response. But
the point is that, uh, you know, it was not
just uh, it was not just kind of degenerate, eccentric
royals who who were making friendly overtures to directly to Berlin. Okay,
I mean it was there was there was an active
correspondence between Rothmere and uh a Rodmer himself was an
unusual person and he wasn't some outlier. Okay, I just
I wanted to drop that for context. Forgive me if
it was kind of a tangent. But what Hitler also
said was that uh, not to Rothmere, but when he
was asked, uh, I believe by Ribbon try because riybon
Trop always had Riybond Tropp's the foreign minister of the
Third Reich, the chief diplomat. When he asked, uh, you know,
he said, okay, now now with the you know, with
with what remains of League of Nations. That's why trying
to progress, I'm gonna peacewe in Italy and a Ethiopia.
You know, would now be the time to you know,
push for reclamator of colonies in Africa. Hitler said, I
don't want to get the slightest impression that I'm trying
to capitalize on a crisis, which is interesting to me
because Hitler's opposedly is the man who, you know, like
mister Kissinger said, never let a crisis go to waste. Now,
of course, Hitler didn't hesitate to act or strike when
he felt that circumstances were favoring the moment in military
political terms. But the point being, you know, if Hitler
was this guy who was held bent and weakening the
British Empire, like, why wasn't the Vermacht also in Ethiopia,
Why wasn't Hitler doing exagger rybin Trop said, saying like, hey,
we demand a stake in Africa, you know, I mean,
he could have been doing all these things and he wasn't.
He was basically saying he was. He was kind of
dropping these cryptic philosophical statements on Rawr. You're telling Ribbon traump, Hey,
I don't want to provoke a London. I mean, this
is not These are not the ants. These are not
the antics of a man who's trying to exploit a
weakness and we'd use as an enemy. It is not,
especially when considers that Baldwin, the Conservatives swept into power
with a pretty strong mandate. But Baldwin himself, a British
Prime Minister, is not like a US president. Okay, it's
not the man Baldwin. It's not like he. You know,
it's not like the voters were voting for Baldwin. They
were voting for the Tories. I mean. But moving on,
five goes in thirty six Churchill angles for the position
a Minister of Defense, which seems strange considering Baldwin's kind
of antivity to him. But the sponsorship that Churchill led
behind him, you know, people like Baruk, people like Corda.
He probably assumed that that the both the prestige and
the BLI like threat or menace of that would carry him.
He's unceremoniously passed over William C. Bullet, who will be
a familiar name to people who followed this series, you know,
the arch new dealer Rose Built, the Bastard of France,
a man who, for all practical purposes, was kinda chief
diplomat without formal title. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah,
we're good. Okay, yeah, yeah, I gotta okay, yeah, I
said from d my single cut out. But Bullet wrote
to Churchill when he was in London when this was underway,
you know, uh, when the new Baldwin government was was
swept to power and Sheridan was continuing these kinds of
deranged and annex claiming that the Germans are going to
kill us all. He said that, he said the FDR quote.
Strangely enough, all the old anti Bolshevik fanatics like Winston
Churchill or trumpeting the Bolshevik thesis and are advocating an
intente with the Soviet Union, and he wasn't being funny,
you know at and uh, bear in mind in nineteen
twenty and you'll still find this among wolk types who
don't really understand that there their own kind of ideological heritage,
you know. Nineteen twenty, Churchill was the man was saying that,
you know, we've got to stand with Europe at all
costs against Bolshevism. He was showing up in Paris, you know,
proverbially waving a saber around, saying that he wanted to
lead an army against the you know, the Reds and
and all of this. And incidentally too, he was saying that,
you know, the Jews are the source of all of
this radicalism. You know, very very interesting. Now he's on
the payroll of American of American zionist millionaires. But what
energized Churchill's propaganda efforts probably more than anything, rightly or wrongly.
I'm not saying this was warrant that I'm saying this
in terms of public opinion. Marts ivy thirty six is
when the barabat under the Rhineland. Okay, this, really, more
than anything, was Hitler's big gamble. Okay, Hitler was not
really a military gambler. Politically, yes, militarily No, the subjects
for another show. But this was the real test of Versailles,
and what remained of the political will to enforce it okay.
And when the French did not act, when London did
not you know, stage of diplomatic cup and uh and
put pressure on Paris to do something or offer, if
not direct military, you know logistical and you know Maritimes
support for the effort. It was it was clear that
Versailles was dead. Okay. This energized Churchill to say, see, see,
I was right all along. You know, the Germans of
these made a dentists it uh it it uh and
and I mean that that that can't be overstated. Okay,
I mean again, this certainly not like so a seat
of war fever in in in in the in uh
on the London street or something. But it did, it did.
It did give people pause, particularly people who had frankly
something of a backwards looking view of strategic matters and
viewed France as the kind of key ally of the empire.
And for context too, at this time France was viewed
as the pre eminent European army and like land powers
and generally okay, like they were not. They were not
views of paper tiger, they were not views of state
that you know, due to political fracturing, like lack the
will to fight at general war with Germany. Okay, I
mean so even people who had a more cynical view
of politics and did not accept this kind of Germanophobic,
you know, kind of prosionists view that was just intraguically
hostile to Germany. It would have given them pause regardless
of it seemed as if, you know, war between France
and Germany was looming and a lot of them would
have been sympathetic to France. And that's what I meant.
But by uh, by the end of UH, by the
end of nine and thirty five, you know, as we
talked about UH, we talked about Churchle's financial difficulties and
UH the fact that he was quite literally rescued from
destitution by UH by Baruch and Corda by the end
of nineion thirty five. Another uh, another kind of figure
like Enard Churchill's orbit. Uh. Leonard Montefore he was president
of the Anglo Jewish Association, which was exactly what it
sounded like, but it wasn't. It wasn't just an ethnic
lobbying group, you know, like the ad L. I mean,
it was that too, but it's big thing was kind
of having like an international presence, and it was there
was an advocacy group for German Jews and German Jews.
I'm just speaking candidly here. There was a great deal
of enmity between German Jewelry and obviously the Third Right government,
but also many German people. Okay, I'm not saying that's
right or wrong. I'm not trying to just come on
here and see bad things about Jewish people. But this
is a fact, okay. And those sectarian conflict happens in Europe,
as it happens in America, as it happens anywhere on
this planet. The Jews were very the Jews of Germany
were very much at odds with the broader culture. And
people who claim like this was not the case or
deluting themselves, okay, because they were people who claim that
Hiller just confabulated this narrative and out of nowhere are
deluting themselves. So that is the context, Lord Leonard monte
Fore he facilitates the introduction, and not only does it
become another one of Churchill's monetary patrons. So let's say
it's the introduction at Churchill to what was called the
Anti Nazi Council. It was quite literally called the Anti
Nazi Council. Okay, what was the Anti Nazi Council? A
man named you can Spire or you can spire Okay,
he was the chief financer of it. He was for
all practical purpose as a Jewish refugee. In later years, interestingly,
spire uh. He published an autobiography and a testimonial basically
of the inter war years. This is after the Second
World War, okay, spire. Basically he was writing this kind
of testimonial. This is my life, this is how I founded,
you know, as financier, you know, the Anti Nazi League,
which became the focus. And we'll get into what the
focus was in a minute, you know. And he he
made much of the fact thinking he was praising him, like, oh,
and you know, I brought mister Churchill into the indo
our service. Essentially, Churchill begged him not to publish it,
and according to some viable Churchill threatened to suit a
prevent it being PubL I don't know if that second
allegation is true of the further fact jacket, but it
is documented that Churchill zealously oppose the publication of this testimonial.
And that's very very interesting, you know, like why if
if Churchy was so you know, this man who was
just so committed in his in his opinions, and they
you know, they they they were so grounded and right,
and you know, against the grain of public opinion, like
why would he care? You know, it's it's very very interesting.
But uh, the Ani Nazi Council, it did not actually
originate in uh in uh in London society circles. It
originated in New York City. Spire again financed it, you know,
did a lot of the kind of legwork brought people
into its orbit. But uh, a New York City attorney
named Samuel Intermeyer. He was chairman of the World Jewish
Economic Federation, which uh, you know it was again I
mean it was an ethno sectarian advocacy group, but kind
of more business oriented, more commerce oriented, less of a
focus on you know, kind of traditional Ethno political lobbying,
although that was also a strong interest of it. But
which Amyer incorporated it. And uh, what put the World
Jewish Economic Federation on the map is that the Jewish
Economic Federation, the World Jewish Economic Federation, they organized a
trade boycott on German goods and manufacturers upon the uh,
the national socials as sendency to governments and now you're
thirty four. They approached a man named Sir Walter Citrine.
He was chairman of the Trades Union Congress. Okay, which
seems an odd alliance. Okay, These kinds of these kinds
of ethnic lobbyist type guys you know, who were high
flying Wall Street attorneys in America, you know, in kind
of big shot London financiers, you know, very very capitalistory
and the people, you know, they address this trades union guy,
you know, Citrin, who's got a you know, reputation for
being you know, red. But uh, interestingly, they they they
they they incorporate together the Trades Union Congress becomes one
with the World Jewish Economic Federation. And what do they
incorporate is they quote non sectarian, anti Nazi Council for
Human Rights. That's a mouthful of nonsense if I've ever
heard it.
Speaker 1: When you were when you were saying about capitalists getting
together with like the trade unionists and everything, Yes, there
anyone anyone who studied what happened with election laws up
to the twenty twenty election will recognize that.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely, definitely I was being halfway fastacious, But I
mean for people who don't know, like I'm not making
fun of people don't know the history of this, but
it's it's on its face it seems bizarre if one
doesn't understand the kind of intrigues and the stimp of
these the people involved. But yeah, the the World Jewish
Economic Federation under Sam Untermeyer and you know, bankrolled by
you know, London millionaires, and it incorporates with the Trade Union,
the Trades Union Congress as the non sectarian anti Nazi
Council for what for Human Rights? So what we have
here is we have a we have what amounts to
it's one half anti defamation League type ethno nationalist lobbying organization,
one half kind of foreign policy pressure group to make
war on Germany. And it's this odd constellation a kind
of crazy Zionist biggots, Jewish businessmen who yeah, definitely have
Zionis sympathies, but also are like you know, looking to
get paid out now communists, a handful of disgruninled to
disgruntled Tories, just like regular world Englishmen who hate the
Prime Minister Baldwin and are willing to basically you know,
burn down anything to stick at to Baldwin. Crazy as
that seems uh. You know, Wall Street financi yeers are
in this circle of all stripes, a lot of a
lot of Jewish individuals among them, but not exclusively. And
then you got these regular World War profiteers, industrialists, you know,
who were who who who Old Ramsey McDonald. It's stuck
it to with disarmaments, you know. And they don't they
don't care who's footing the bill. They don't care if
it's Zionists, they don't care if it's Tories, they don't
care if it's Piggy Winston Churchill and another crusade. All
they know is that we're all gonna get rich, you know.
And we and times have been bleak for us for
the last twenty years. We had we've had a succession
of hostile uh of hostile prime ministers. They didn't give
us what we want. And even the ones who had
more Bellicoast posture towards Berlin said, there's just not the
money you're to give you what you want. Now. Interestingly,
as this anti non sectary and anti Nazi council becomes
more and more bounded with mister Churchill, and Churchill becomes
more and more vocal, and it becomes more and more
publicly associated with you know a lot of these kind
of significant figures in the Jewish community of powerful you know, pedigree,
the Board of Jewish Deputies, which was the oldest Zionist
NGO basically in the world. Okay, they got a little
bit nervous, you know, and they're like, look, we should
probably avoid this kind of we should probably avoid this
kind of overly aggressive lobbying, you know, because it looks unseemly.
Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was kind of the American counterpart,
he basically just told these people like, you're out of it.
You're really gonna go. You're either gonna go along with
this and you're gonna go along with our strategy, or
we're gonna destroy you. You know, We're gonna say, if
you have your funding, we're gonna discredit you in media.
You're you're just gonna be nothing. You're gonna cease to exist.
He founds the rival World Jewish Congress based in Geneva.
And what precedes is all these elements that had been
brought into the this non security nan and Nanti Council,
you know, basically closed ranks uh against the Board of
Jewish deputies and it's holdouts, okay, and and basically just
crushed like any opposition within their own house ruthlessly okay.
And what followed this was highly conspiratorial. Okay. So basically,
now we have a quorum of all these elements with
it decided, and with a decided to the zionis bent politically.
Mister Citrine, the trade union leader, the trade union congress leader,
he's seen, he's documented to be dining regularly with representatives
both of the UH, the the now cowed UH or
the or the now dominant world Jewish Congress. He's seen
in their company at the same time of a chairman
of major industrial and chemical combines, which is interesting because
a lot of these people they were looking forward to
the next war thinking that chemical munitions were gonna be
a thing, but they weren't in terms of battlefield utility.
But as well as you know, weapons manufacturers, representatives of
munitions combines, you know, industrial lobbyists. You know, it's like
like literally can't like make this stuff up. It's like
something you're seeing like some quirky superhero movie of like
all these evil guys at the table. You know, here's
some mafiosi here's the mayor, here's the three congressman. I'm
not trying to be silly, but this is like literally
what this literally goes underway, you know, I mean it's
it's it seems like something out of a movie or
or something kind of cheap pamphlet commissioned by harr Gebbels
to try and make British policy look like it had
been co opted entirely by Jewish interest or something. But
this is in fact what happened, you know, after UH,
even after the UH, even after after and after the
Rhineland UH occupation. Interestingly, the UH but but but Congress,
with its with its charter, the Labor Party still flatly
opposedery armament. They said, we're not gonna be militarize, you know,
We're not. We're not gonna strike at Belago's posture against Germany.
We're not gonna seek the term and through through a
globilization of arms. Basically, okay, so UH, the UH, the
Anti Nazi Council, which is now increasingly called the focus
in their communications to one another, which could have which
could be intercepted. Obviously, the youphanism they utilized was the focus.
And so when you run across in Churchill's own writings
or if you run across and documentary evidence carelled. But
people like David Irving and like Thomas Fleming references to
the Focus. This is what they're talking about, and later
the Anti Nazi Congress of Human Rights. You know, it
was later formally incorporated as the Focus, but at this
point it was still an unofficial moniker. But when the
Labor Party in the wake of the Ryanland occupation and
Flatley announces that, you know, even as the opposition, where
you're not, you know, we're not going to criticize Baldwin's
unwillingness to rearm. It's just not on the table. The
Focus convenes a meeting organized by Satrine man named Henry
Wickham Steed with the keynote speaker. Steed had been on
the payroll of the Prague governments, which even in the
best of times, had a tenuous grip on power owing
to the ethnic and political situation. Steed declared that he
was going to take this war chest, which had to
be substantial because the year nineteen twenty three ninety twenty
four a loan even paid the equivalent of between two
hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred thousand pounds sterling
by Prague for political activity, so jumping out in nineteen
thirty six, if he was still being paid anything like that,
he had a huge amount of money at his disposal.
At this meeting, it's decided that Steed, utilizing his contacts
diplomatic and otherwise his to approach potentially what he called
potentially sympathetic politician, not just in a labor party, when
they could serve in liberal parties as well, and see
if he can change their mind about the rearmament, you know,
which is obviously youth misn't for buying legislation. Okay, As
all this is underway, Baldwin, the Prime Minister, realizes he's
a problem. Okay, the man wasn't a fool, and he
realized that Churchill was in real danger of garnering some
kind of quar um against him and that amounted to
a war party. Okay. Baldwin decides is gonna try and
neutralize Churchill by granting him what's called a deputation that's
essentially a minister without portfolio. What would be considered that
on the continent, but in the British government, which seems
kind of byzantine even to me, and I know something
about it. It's basically one part minister without portfolio, one
part unofficial advisor. Okay, so Churchill now has access to
bald when when he wants. Like I said, I believe,
and I realize every story and speculates, but I think
this is pretty clear. I believe Baldwin had two things
in mind. I believe that would neutralize Churchill's vanity because oh,
now you know he's got a role in government. But
it also Churchill couldn't keep his mouth shut. Okay, he
wasn't just a bragger, but he was an alcoholic and
he he just said things that he should not have said,
you know, both in terms of insulting people and in
terms of it's kind of disclosing what he was doing.
And Baldwin knew that because he knew the man very well. So,
mister Churchill's plotting against you, it's kind of better to
have him coming by your office and slugging down, you know,
jin and kind of talking to you about what's on
his mind than to have him out doing god knows
what I mean. Silly as that sounds, it's not a joke.
I mean, it's it's a real thing, you know, I
mean it kind of in old times. But Churchill sort
of an almost comical example of a man who you
subject to that sort of a who you netral attempt
to neutralize in that way. Okay. Right at this time
is when the a n C you know, the Anti
Nazi Council for Human Rights, it begins formally referring to
itself as the Focus. Churl says, look, we we can't
have people thinking that, you know, we're a pressure group. Okay,
And this made sense because Churchill did have good Machiavillian instincts,
you know it. Not to be crude about it, but
he realized, I can't be seen about town hanging around
a bunch of rich Jews calling themselves the Anti Nazi Congress. Okay. Meanwhile,
I'm you know, ducking into mister Baldwin's office and telling
him his business. Okay, this, this would not be a
good thing. So from then on, uh, what's now? The
Focus becomes exponentially more powerful, but in some ways more profile.
There's no more of these lunchtime meetings between you know, uh,
you know, millionaire industrialists and chemical concerns and armaments factories
who you know, are meeting with you know, uh, you know,
some New York City rabbi. He's also you know, got
his hands in Wall Street and all whom, you know,
are talking about how we can pressure the Baldwin government
to really really you know, sock into Germany. That's not
gonna happen anymore because now they're getting their way and
uh congruous with this wickham Steed, he sets up a
what's called a research section or what they called a
research section for the Focus. Now what does that mean
in practical terms, Well, that meant dissemination of propaganda and
men doing things like formally disseminating you know, facts and
figures on Nazi re armament to the press. You know,
it meant declaring from undisclosed sources, you know, intelligence sources.
Oh these are the this is Germany's intention or you know,
these are our forces and being versus the Germans, and
you know this is our aircraft gap. You know, things
like this. Basically a propaganda office. Okay. Now, Ah Richards,
who was I don't believe he was Jewish, but he
was kind of the frontman for the what it for,
the Anti Nazi Congress going back some years and he
was the organizing secretary, he was the money man. So
his wickham Steed kind of proudly announces, I'm setting up
the research section. Richards says, you know, without really thinking
where's the money going to come from? From this, Churchill
suddenly became visibly livid and Richard's quickly was kind of
ushered out of the room, and according to him in
later years, was instructed, Look, you are never to inquire
about funding and you are never to insult mister Churchill
like that again, okay, especially not in the presence of witnesses.
All you need to know is that rest assured all
expenses have been taken care of, and if any of
our benefactors ask, you tell them that it's not a problem, okay,
that this will be paid for. All We needed them
to contribute their time and efforts then to basically, you know,
carry out a requests. Whether that's arranging meetings for who
we need to meet with, you know, whether that's you know,
issuing statements to the newspaper outlets that they're familiar with
and friendly with, you know, or whether it's seeking me
out friends across the Atlantic, you know, who might be
sympathetic to our plight, but you never ever raise money,
and you never ever addressed mister Churchill directly on such matters.
And that's very interesting too, because basically, by this point,
which would come as no surprise considering the resumes of
the men who constituted it, church was the frontman of
an organization that basically had a bottomless worships. Okay, within reason,
but for what it needed to accomplish. You can buy
a lot of legislation for tens of millions of dollars
in nineteen thirty six, Okay, I mean that's that's and
people misunderstand. I mean the days these days where we
talk in terms of billions of dollars, and you know,
we talk about guys like Elon Musk, you know, throwing around,
you know, tens of billions of dollars, like we lose
sight of this. But you know, if you had when
the average person was making a few hundred dollars a year,
I mean, if you were talking about tens of millions
of dollars, you might as well have been talking talking
about all the money on this planet. I mean, that
was an obscene amount of money, you know, I mean
it was not it was it was not any small thing, okay,
I mean, and nothing even came close and to that
to demonstrate that the funds for the research group under
speed were in fact they were arranged by the board
by the Board of Board of Deputies of British Jews.
The vice president of the Board of Deputy Board of
Deputies of British Jews was a man named Sir Robert
Whaley Cohen, who was Sir Robert Whaley Cohen right, whiley
Cohen was the chairman of Shell you know Shell where
you get your gash, formerly known as the British Shell. Okay,
that Shell. At a meeting of Cohen's home July twenty second,
he donated fifty thousand pounds sterling for any expenses needed
by the focus. The rest of the membership of the
Board of Deputies of British Jews they cut checks for
twenty five thousand pounds sterling and they pledged to match
that anytime was needed. Okay, Now for context, to give
kind of life to what I just said. This was
five times the budget of the British Council. The British
Council was the top foreign policy lobbying organization in the
British Empire. It was bankrolled literally by the Royal family.
The British Council was okay, it was kind of like
the Council on It was kind of like the Council
on Foreign Relations of the British Empire. Okay, the focus
they had five times their budget. Let's think about that
for a minute. So basically, there was there was no
pressure group, no lobbying group, no organic government, no kind
of tentacle of the Royal family that that could that
could affect your England's policy that came anywhere close to
this NGO that Churchill had behind him, like nothing probably
on this planet, the other than like the US War
Department and the kind of several industrial concerns that constituted that.
I mean, if that, if we could even you know,
make comparison, because obviously they hadn't even mobilized for war yet.
So I'm just trying to give an idea of like
the kind of bottomless nature of this budget, you know,
and without exaggeration, it was that vast. But whiley while
the Waley Cohen's patronage came at a price, what was
that price? He said he wanted to have authority, final authority,
over all, all, all all official statements on policy by
the Focus. Okay, he wanted the opportunity to edit or
sense or any policy statements anything Churchill took to Baldwin,
any declaration within the Focus itself not for public assumption.
That was considered to be, you know, an essential uh
policy ambition. He was the final authority on that, okay,
he was. He even redacted later on, he'd redact entire
section to Church's speeches because he didn't like the way
it read. Now, what was his uh beyond being a
control freaker or just wanted to know where his money
was going? Like? What was mister Cohen's rationale? Cohen said
that he said at base, he said, the policy the
focus has to be to refute the claim that there
were any redeemable aspects of the German Third Reich and
its regime, and that there were any redeemable aspects of
Adolf Hitler, and that there was any legitimacy to any
policy they pursued or any claim they issued. It kind
of sounds like the American orientation towards Putin's Russia, today,
doesn't it. That's very interesting, But I uh, I think
I've kind of dropped a lot here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, literally, yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: What I I kind of want to conclude, uh, I
want I kind of want to wait until our next session.
I want to get into Churchill becomes Prime Minister, or
before that, I want to go to Munich Churchill becomes
Prime Minister, the war years. That'll take about half an hour,
I think, and then half our forty five minutes, and
then we'll get into the onset of Operation Barbarosa and
switch our photos to the Soviet Union, and then in
our final episode before we get into the aftermath of
the war and the Nuremberg will deal with kind of
the convergence of policy, Nudio policy, Churchill in the focus
stalin Soviet Union. I realize the teams are getting bogged
on in Minutia, especially on the issue of Churchill in
the UK, but there's an incredible amount of detail and
complexity here, and it's a lot more conspiratorial than what
happened in America or the Soviet Union. Does that sound agreeable?
Sounds good to me? Okay? And again I'm so sorry
we had to delay this particular session. But if you
want to, if you want to jump back on onto
content on Saturday or anytime. The re after that would
be just fine.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, when we stop recording, i'll talk. I'll talk
to you about that. Okay, Yeah, plug your substack real
quick and uh we'll end this.
Speaker 2: I shall do so. I get deplatformed a lot, so
don't look for me on Twitter if I probably won't
be back there. You can find me on substack real
Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com. I've got
a lot of print content coming out imminently and a
lot of long form I'm gonna be posting up more
regularly on the substack, so please follow it, please join it.
The podcast drops every other week. It's only five dollars
a month. It'll never be more than that unless you're
truly like in dire freaking hobo straights like joint for
five dollars a month, please it helps. That's all I got.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it until the next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Pete. Thanks