Timesuck with Dan Cummins - BONUS 3 - Hitler's Third Reich: How Did It Happen?
Episode Date: March 10, 2017How did Hitler and his Nazi Party ever gain political power in 1930s Germany? Why didn't the German people revolt? Why didn't America or any other countries intervene? How did the Jewish persecution b...egin? The foundation for Hitler and WWII examined and explained on this bonus episode of Timesuck!
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Are you willing to die for your beliefs? Seriously, you willing to watch your wife die? Your husband? Your parents? Your children?
We'll end to see them tortured and killed because you refused to succumb to the demands of an insane and violent tyrannical dictatorship.
That was the situation many Germans in the mid 1930s found themselves in.
And the pressure to conform increased year after year until suddenly it was virtually impossible to resist.
It's easy to look back and say,
you'd stand up for the Jewish people.
Easy to say that you wouldn't look the other way
when human beings were rounded up like cattle
to be slaughtered and taken to concentration camps,
but eventually it became apparent during the 1930s
that to stand up to Hitler regardless of your social
or even political status resulted in your complete
and total destruction.
By the time most people realized how dangerous he truly was, he'd solidified his strangle
hold on Germany and then Europe soon after that.
But during the infancy of his rise to power and the ascent of the Nazi party in general
could he have been stopped?
When he was ranting and ravening little beer halls in Germany in the 20s. A minor player and a new minor political party.
Would you have stopped him then?
Or would you as most Germans,
you know, who disagreed with them or saw him then,
just ignored him.
Could he have been stopped?
Sure, hindsight's 20-20.
You could have been stopped pretty easily back in the mid-20s,
you know, even in the late 1920s.
You could have been stopped in the mid-1930s
by other countries who knew what he was up to,
countries like America.
So why do we wait?
Why did so many people have to die before we stepped in?
Well as is usually the case, it's fucking complicated.
And now what's done is done, long since done.
We can't go back to 1925 and shut Hitler down, but we can learn from what he did, how
he got to the place where he was able to do what he did, the warning signs, the red flags,
they were all there for those who chose to pay attention. And we can study them so we can recognize
new warning signs as they show up. Other blood thirsty, dangerously ambitious zealots will come along.
They always do. History does truly repeat itself. Now you know the words Hitler and not to get thrown
around a lot these days. During my adult life time time every new president, every time they take office,
I've listened to the comparison to Hitler.
You know, he's trying to disarm the general population.
I'm just like Hitler, that's like the Nazis.
He's trying to control the media, that's Hitler, that's just like Hitler.
The police had no right to trespass on that guy's property.
They just went up to like a Gestapo, just like a bunch of Nazis.
Now, maybe I've heard this kind of stuff so much because I'm from Northern Idaho
Where belief that the government is out to get you and take away your freedom and fundamental rights is as ingrained in the local culture for some reason
It's firmly as a desire to fish and camp and hunt. I have and just have no
Contact with the outside world whatsoever if possible. I don't know why that is, but it does seem to be the case
I was I was excused from class in high school to go to a militia meeting one time didn't realize how fucking weird that was until later in life
I also was told by one of my
Teachers in high school that the as he told the class he told the whole class the best investment
Any of us could make was to buy a bunch of guns as many as we could get and bury them in our yard because they're coming to take them.
That was 20 years ago, they still haven't fucking taken them.
But anyway, I decided to do some research, find out how one of the worst dictators in the
world's history and his political party came to be.
Like we all know what the Nazis eventually did, all right?
But how did they put themselves
into a position to do it?
The rise of the third Reich explored and explained
in what is so far the most interesting
and I think important episode of Time Suck.
You're listening to Time Suck.
Yeah.
Welcome to Time Suck, everybody. Hope this makes the beginning of your week a little brighter, even though the subject today could hardly be darker. Dark week on Time Suck. First, H.H.
Holmes, now Hitler, fact, Jesus. I will spend my weekend trying to conjure up a demon.
Maybe stomp some puppies to death. Just see how much evil I can cram into one week. Gonna have to change it up next week for sure. Maybe talk about unicorns or
pixies, maybe some candles that smell like fresh laundry, maybe maybe chalk tip cookies,
with little walnut chunks in them, or not, that sounds terribly boring. Maybe just palette cleanse
with some Anya, little brandy carlile. I love me some Brandy Carlyle. She pops up on the new old 97's album,
Graveyard Whistling.
If you're into a little old country,
I just picked that up and I enjoy it.
Thanks again for all the kind words,
email to me via timesockpodcast.com.
A lot of you send a lot of stuff that says,
you make me look forward to Mondays.
A lot of love this podcast,
a lot of keep up the good work,
also a lot of keep second, keep second in,
love it, love how much you time suckers suck.
Love sucking, you guys, so much suck you guys,
so much deep hard second going on.
And I like how many of you tell me
that you spread the suck,
getting friends and coworkers to listen,
subscribe and rate the podcast,
get them to go down the rabbit hole
to random knowledge, a lot of messages about how fun get them to go down the rabbit hole to random knowledge.
A lot of messages about how fun it is to learn all this stuff too. That feels good. Yeah, it does feel good, right?
If only teachers were allowed to be a little reverent.
No, they got, they say the words I say and you know, some kind of a parent, and I'm not necessarily for a new woman.
There has to file a complaint. He said, shit, he said fuck.
No interest in the contact in which it was said adults can be so silly, right? there has to file a complaint. He said, shit, he said fuck.
No interest in the contact in which it was said,
adults can be so silly, right?
It's so worked up and offended over a few silly words,
over semantics.
I think teachers should be allowed to curse sometimes.
I do, not constantly, you know?
Classroom shouldn't be like an episode of Deaf Jam,
you know, something like that,
but not every other word, you know,
but maybe like two fucks a day,
maybe three or four shits, all right?
Maybe like one, one-cond to quarter.
You get one-cond to quarter.
You can drop it at a PTA meeting if you want,
if you save it.
Some outrage, apparently.
How dare you call me a cunt.
Listen, dude, I've been saving that word since last semester
and I knew I'd use it on you.
Your kid's a dick.
You clearly don't help him with his homework.
He flips me off.
Whenever I face a chalkboard. I can see his reflection.
In the mirror, he single-handedly
making the entire class dumber
with his constant disruptions.
And I'm pretty sure he'll protect
the teacher's allowance toilet.
But I'm getting off topic.
What I meant to say is it feels good
to have a deeper understanding of things.
I was only vaguely familiar with before
and talk about those subjects
with an audience of like-minded people.
You guys, I love it.
Like in my life, who do you who Dini got brought up last week?
Conversation because it's a friend of mine. It's comic Robert Hawkins very funny, dude
He's in the magic all of a sudden. He's in the short shorthand magic or close-up magic
I don't know whatever the hell is called card tricks, you know and
And so I bring up a few Dini he's talking about Hedini and I knew so much
I was like the goddamn rain man of Houdini trivia. It made me feel good.
I love having interesting conversations about interesting stuff.
You want to talk about the weather?
You want to talk about how rainy is going to be tomorrow?
Shut the fuck up.
I don't want to talk about that.
I want to talk about space lizards.
I want to talk about flat earth idiots.
I want to talk about Billy the Kid.
Right now I'm going to talk about Hitler.
Let's get interesting.
Thanks to Time Sucker, Jake Stith,
for recommending the book in the Garden of Beasts,
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
by Eric Larson, for your time,
so I can email for this week's episode.
I read the whole thing.
It was huge help.
Gave me a much deeper understanding
of 1930s Germany.
Eric Larson, by the way,
also wrote Devil in the White City,
a book about Monday's topic,
AJ Chomes.
It's like Eric Larsen week here at Time Suck.
Not even intentional at all.
So Eric Larsen, if you happen to be listening,
you totally suck.
Thank you for that.
OK, so now, before I dig into some third rike,
I got to fess up to a mistake I made.
A couple of them, my last two episodes.
Drawing to my attention and some time sucker updates.
Rup dates, get your time sucker updates.
If you listen to the Billy the Kid or the HH Holmes episode,
you know that a lot of people ended up getting hung,
which is not a thing.
It's not the right word in that situation.
When referring to an object that has been placed on a wall,
for example, you say hung.
Like, I like how you've hung that picture
above the fireplace.
What you don't say is HH Homes was sentenced to death
and then hung, unless you're an idiot like me.
No, the past tense of hang, when it comes to killing a person,
is actually hanged.
HH Homes was hanged.
Really, the kid was sentenced to be hanged.
Not sentenced to be hung.
Fucking English language man.
Two different past tense versions of the same word.
How do I know that?
Well, I have a time sucker to think.
Got an email from Emperor of the Dark Galaxy.
That's what name shows up because had the best
weirdest names.
Subject is, you really need a dictionary, dude.
The body of the mess says,
I may not have graduated from Gonzaga,
but I did change my major from theology to pussy and beer,
and then subsequently fail out of a backwoods Kansas University.
Even with my dubious education, I know that the past tense
of hang is hanged when speaking of a person
being suspended by the neck with rope until dead.
Here come the spoons, motherfucker.
That's so great.
Thank you, Emperor.
Thank you, Emperor of the Dark Galaxy.
I gotta get a better email handle.
Man, mine is just a boring old name.
Also, fact check on episode 13, The Dead Do-Tale Tales.
I referenced the Princess Bride as being directed
by Mel Brooks, which is not true. The Princess Bride as being directed by Mel Brooks,
which is not true.
The Princess Bride is directed by Rob Reiner.
I think I should have fact-ticked this fact.
No, I did actually.
It is.
Mel Brooks did have a close friendship with Rob Reiner
and cast carry-oals and Robin Hood men and tights.
This would explain many of the similarities
that may be confusing, shows how much I pay attention
to directors.
And by the way, that came in from Mary Zelner, from the V of the Time Suck message board,
saw a couple posts there, Mary, thank you for being involved.
And I will work on referencing directors properly in the future as you wish.
And that is this week's Time Sucker Updates.
Thanks, Time Suckers.
I needed that.
We all did.
All right, let's do this.
Let's do some Hitler.
Let's do some Germany.
Let's get into some Deutschland.
To understand the seeds of Germany's involvement in World War II
and to grasp why the Nazi party was ever allowed to be
going in the first place, you got to look at pre-World War I,
Germany, World War I itself, and it's immediate aftermath.
So first off, pre-World War II, Germans fucking love to go to war.
Holy shit, they love it.
Just constantly fighting, like so much war.
Germanic, chiefed and led tribe stopped the spread of the Roman Empire
and to Northern Europe by defeating the Roman expansion.
In a series of battles, they started way back in 6 BC.
I'm sure they were fighting with each other before that.
Germans were a huge thorn in the old Roman Empire.
It was barbarians, man. It just couldn't crack them.
Roman Emperor Augustus eventually established a chain of bases on the lip and viscer rivers between 6 BC and 4 AD.
And after getting his ass kicked in the series of battles, the Romans went from pushing further
into Germany to just trying to keep the Germans from coming down in sack and Rome for
like the next 400 years.
They were a huge problem.
And then beginning in the 5th century, various German tribes would make alliances with
Romans to fight off the Huns.
You may have heard of them. good old Attila, and his crew, the Spill into France, as a kingdom
under King Clovis in the sixth century, making modern France their headquarters, making modern
France their bitch, much of French culture originated from German culture, like the Franks,
right?
The Franks, the Franks, pretty similar. French, the Franks, the French, pretty similar.
The Vandal tribe of Germans fought their way into Spain and North Africa in the fifth century.
The Visgots, that tribe of Germans,
they took over the area that is now southwestern France
from the fifth to the eighth centuries.
Various Germanic kings and kingdoms
controlled most of Europe for centuries.
King Charlemagne, he was German,
took over pretty much all of Europe in
the 8th century. He became the first Holy Roman Emperor and the first emperor recognized in Western
Europe since the fall of the original Roman Empire three centuries earlier. And when he was crowned
Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800, he kicked off a period of history Germans
later referred to as the first Reich, Reich meaning regime or empire.
I didn't know that, did not know that.
King Frederick I ruled most of Europe in the 12th century during the first Reich.
King Frederick II turned the Germanic state of Prussia into one of the Europe's greatest
military powers in the 18th century.
And there were many battles.
And you know, there were high points, there were low points in between, you know, all
the high points in every century in between.
And the first Reich lasted until August 6th,
1806, when Emperor Francis II abdicated the throne.
So Germans, man, they got battling their blood.
Probably due to geography.
You're in the center of Northern Europe.
You're surrounded by so many other ancient civilizations
and cultures trying to make their market history.
You get the Huns and Ottomans and Russians
and other empires, you know, to the East.
You get the goddamn Vikings up north above you.
You know, trying to rape and pillage all the time.
You get the Brits, other pesky French
and Spanish kingdoms to the West.
Get the Romans, wholmus of other kingdoms
throughout the years to the South.
I mean, you're quite literally being attacked on all sides.
You gotta be scrappy.
You gotta be scrappy to survive.
All this fighting, by the way, is what led to European countries dominating the world throughout
colonization.
There's a great book.
I'm just off the top of my head right now.
It's like Guns, Germs, and Steel.
I cannot remember the author, but if you Google it, you figure it out.
It's just about like why Europeans colonize other places.
And a lot of it is because the concept fighting, they had to develop their warfare skills.
Unlike some, you know, Polynesian little fish and tribe in Tonga
That's tropical paradise. You know, there's no need for an industrialization there
You know, you don't got to fucking find food to last you through the winter. You got fish. You have sweet ass fish year round
You know my mind you can just wait out and fucking whistle form and they just swim over to you
That's how beautiful it is there. You just
Get over here fish. I fish, come here.
And then the fish, like, oh yeah, no, there's no problem.
And they don't even care.
They sing while you eat them.
You know, you're just fed by beautiful maidens.
It's just what they want to do.
That's what life is there, Tonga.
It's tropical paradise, you guys.
You know, they're just, you just sleep under palm trees.
Maybe you just, you know, you bend down a little palm tree
and grab yourself a little coconut.
Throw a straw, you made out of some twigs.
Maybe a bird dropped it off of you.
Bird was like, I'll get that.
I'll grab, you want to, you want to different size twig?
You just flies up and you just drops a little,
little twig for you to use it for your coconut.
It's beautiful there.
But yeah, there was like, there's no need for complex structures to keep warm in the
winter.
No need for horses and cattle.
Yet fish, you have so many fish.
Probably got pigs too.
I don't know if that's true.
You got something.
You've got wounded birds.
I don't know.
You can get some other kind of, you don't even need me.
Fish is fine.
You can have fish.
You have coconuts.
And you can have whatever the hell else they got there.
But I know they got stuff, I do know that.
That's good.
You know, you're not constantly fighting off people
from 20 other nearby islands,
who want to wipe you off the fucking face of the earth.
Germans and Spaniards and Brits,
you know, they show up in a boat,
it's like Mike Tyson in his prime.
He showed up to spar with a five-year-old,
just put on boxing gloves for the first time.
That's why all those islanders didn't stand a chance.
Anyway, in a hard
fighting area of the world, the Germans were some of the toughest motherfuckers there are.
Well the Germany Hiller was born in 1889, 1889, was shaped by the Franco-Prussian War of
1870 and 1871. When a coalition of German states led by Prussia and Prussian Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck defeated Napoleon, I've heard of him, and the French, Prussia and Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, defeated Napoleon, I've heard
of him, and the French. Prussia had just got done beaten Austria in 1866 after the French
surrendered in Paris on January 28th, 1871, King William I of Prussia was proclaimed the new German
emperor at the Palace of Versailles, former palace of the kings of France. It was a great day
in Versailles for the Germans to begin of the Second Reich, which would last until the Palace of Versailles, former palace of the Kings of France. It was a great day in Versailles for the Germans beginning of the Second Reich,
which would last until the end of the First World War,
when the Germans would have a super shitty day in Versailles.
Prior to 1871, after the end of the First Reich in 1806,
Germany was a little collection of 25 German-speaking states, city states,
Duchess, sandwiched between France, Russia, and the North Sea coast.
So they had a little period of being kind of disorganized
and now they're back.
Now they're back, and they're back into the second Reich,
the second realm, you know?
Okay, so the Franco-Prussian War,
that's how the seeds for World War I,
to the Victor Gilles Boils in the Germans
took the roughly 5,000 square mile area known as Al-Zaz, Lorraine, in the war.
It's kind of like part of the Rhineland referred to by Germans later.
It's a little territory in your present-day Luxembourg, in between France and Germany,
and the French never forgot about it.
Not happy to say goodbye to some of their homeland.
It's like if Mexico took Texas last year.
A lot of Americans would still be irritated.
A lot would also be happy, because year, a lot of Americans would still be irritated. A lot would also be happy,
because Texas, Texas know a lot of people.
You know, it's very polarizing,
some people can't stand Texans, but you get the idea, you know?
You'd be like,
but I wanted to watch Dallas Cowboys this season.
And they'd be like, well, tough, tough shit.
Now they're the Dallas Vajeros,
and they kick around a soccer ball.
And then you'd be like,
I fucking hate soccer,
just two hours and nothing happened
and with 30 seconds of highlights thrown in.
You get like one good kick every fucking five games.
And they're like, well, we like it
because we're fucking insane.
And because we started watching it a long time ago
before better sports like American football were invented.
So tough shit.
And by the way, no more hot dogs, no more cheeseburgers.
Now, it's burritos and churros.
How do you like that?
And you'd be like, well, actually I do like that.
I get, actually that's probably better food
than the burgers and the hot dogs.
That part's cool, I like that part.
Okay, I'm not sure what I'm talking about anymore.
That analogy got away from you there at the end.
But for the next four and a half decades,
a very unstable piece exists between France
who had never stopped wanting their land back
and Germany, because they had the same imperialistic ambitions,
they've had off and on for centuries.
That's what they do.
They go for conquer stuff.
And I know this is a lot of backstory,
but I really think it helps contextualize 1930s Germany.
I'll talk about a little economy.
The economy does well during Germany's late 19th century
unification.
Domestically, Germany is now riding this economic and technological
boom for most of the late 1800s. You know, because the unification Germany boosts industrial
growth and railway construction. No more little separate German independent countries.
You don't work together anymore. Uh-uh. One big Germany now. Uh-huh. Gonna keep it like the Kaiser.
Right? Cold production, iron or mining, foreign investment all spiked during the mid-19th century.
The government adopts policies to encourage industrial growth.
Unification removes the border tariffs and trade duties, which existed before 1871.
German banks are forming, growing quickly, providing credit and investment opportunities
for new ventures.
With its large and rapidly growing population, 40 million in 1880, 58.5 million by 1910,
a lot of doing it.
Germany was able to meet the labor needs of industrialization.
By 1900, German steel production exceeded Britain's
and was second only to the United States and the entire world,
making that German steel money.
The economy, the economy itself, is hardest steel.
And then as they get stronger to get cockier,
as countries often do.
Now there's still that tension with France,
but they wouldn't mind slapping around again.
Maybe take a little more of that old Germanic
King Charlemagne soil back.
And they're getting a little tense with Russia to the east,
fucking Ruskies, always irritating someone in Europe.
Okay, so cut to June 1914.
Adolf Hitler's 25 years old, Livin' and Munich,
and listed in the Bavarian Army.
Eight of us actually born in Austria, Hungary, in 1889,
had tried to do a list on the Austrian Army in 1913,
didn't pass his physical, because he was a tiny little
whimper of a man with the creepy mustache.
Yeah, he was, but that's probably not why.
I don't think the mustache got him canned.
He just didn't pass physical.
He wasn't kind of a wimpy dude looking dude though.
You know, he's like around five nine
and unathletic, 155 pounds.
He likely got under the Bavarian army
as an administrative error
since he should have been sent back to Austria
as he was not a citizen.
Now, if you're confused as to why an Austrian
wouldn't even fight for the Germans,
remember that the Germanic people were spread out
over many Germanic tribes
throughout central, north, and west Germany.
Ancestry wise, portions of France, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Belgium, etc.
Had a huge, if not predominantly, Germanic population, it's heritage wise, aka Aryan.
The Scandinavian countries as well have Germanic roots, the Goss, the Burgundians, the Vandals,
early Germanic peoples, settled all those countries.
The English and Scandinavian languages have Germanic roots. Remember the 25 different municipalities I referenced earlier,
prior to 1871. Lots of Germanic people, but very fragmented. Also, municipalities,
oh God, I can't even say it. Municipalities is our pants word of the day. Municipalities, plural noun of municipality,
a primarily political unit having powers of self-government,
or the governing body of a municipality, for example.
The municipality approved the new budget for the coming year.
There were plenty of money for donuts for Big Ted,
money to build a new statue of a giant otter in the park to celebrate
the extremely costly preservation of three local otters,
money to redesign several government buildings that should have been designed properly the first time,
and no money whatsoever for local schools.
To cover the upcoming local school budget,
the municipality's homeless shelter will be sold to a wealthy local citizen
who plans on kicking out all those lazy hobos
and converting it into a modern art gallery
full of pretentious overpriced horse shit.
Sons of bitches!
Sons of bitches!
So there you go, municipalities.
And throughout all those little municipalities
and cities and states, the 19th century,
there have been various movements in cries for a unification
based on language, culture, race, and power.
Reclaim the military dominance that the Germanic people
had previously tasted.
The dominant German takes experience under the first Reich.
Hitler himself had heard tons of pro-Aryan,
led to United Germans against speeches
growing up in Austria.
He was also exposed to a fair amount of anti-Semitic views
there, that was always one of the byproduct amount of anti-Semitic views there. That was always
seems, you know, one of the byproducts of the pro-Aryan movement. And all this plays in the Hitler's
idea of racial purity and a unified German people, you know, and unified them throughout Europe,
which we'll get into soon. So Hitler fights for Germany in World War I on the Western Front,
where he is injured twice and where he'll receive the Iron Cross first class for bravery and battle.
But how did World War I begin?
How did Germany get involved with World War I?
Well, the simplest answer is the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria
Hungary, by way of a Serbian nationalist.
He's killed on June 28th, 1914, and that same day Austria Hungary decides they don't like
it.
One of their guys has been killed. One of their little prince guys. In 1914, in that same day, Austria-Hungary decides they don't like it.
One of their guys has been killed. One of their little prince guys.
Archdukes. And they declare war in Serbia.
A few days later, on August 2, 1941, the Ottoman Empire, aka Turkey,
signs a secret treaty of alliance with Germany.
Now, Germany already has an alliance with Austria-Hungary,
who's attacking Serbia. And then Germany decides, you know, fuck it.
We're going to attack some people too. They still hate the French and the next day Germany just declares war on France.
And the day after that August 4th, 1914, Germany invades Belgium leading Britain to declare war in Germany,
less than a week later on August 10th Austria-Hungary invades Russia, shit is all like Donkey Kong.
Eventually 70 million military personnel would be involved in the epic European war that would claim the lives of over 16 million people.
Now, how did that domino effect
that just described happened?
And how did it lead to all these other countries
fighting throughout Europe?
Well, it's because earlier in 1914,
the major powers of Europe had settled into two major groups.
Britain, France, and Russia formed the triple-Untant,
who had become known as the Allies.
While Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Italy comprised the triple alliance known as the Central, while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
comprised the triple alliance known as the Central Powers.
And a lot of historians feel like Germany
was just waiting for an excuse to use their new,
kind of unified Allied might to reclaim
the glory of the first Reich.
They wanted Europe, you know, at least all of Europe
of Germanic origin under their rule.
But it didn't work out well for them in the end.
A time suck needs to be done someday,
I just would one alone.
Maybe several time sucks to really explore that war.
It's causes, effects, battles, all that kind of stuff.
I've given a very simplified version here
to kind of stay on task with this episode.
So initially the Germans do well in the war.
They defeat Russia in 1917, when the Russian government
collapses in March, they sign a treaty of surrender,
conceding a lot of land to Germany,
and removing themselves from further battle.
But then the Germans, you know, they try to push the war
further on the western front, fight war on two fronts,
kill them in both world warrants, never fight a war
on two fronts unless you're America.
And you can beat the Japanese to the west
and the Germans to the east, fucking pow!
USA!
We have kicked some serious ass in the past.
No denying our military might.
Not that I had
shit to do with any of it. I just I feel like whenever I say something like that I have to say
super enthusiastically. The Germans have no powers. Their forces push west all the way to the
to the Marne River in France not far from Paris but then the Allies in the 100 days offensive in
1918. They push Germany the fuck back out of France to the Hindenburg Line until the German surrender and signed a Treaty of Versailles.
Now this Treaty of Versailles directly led in my opinion to what happened in Germany
during the 1930s, and then eventually led to World War II.
There was an article in this treaty, which the Germans signed under a little duress,
they just got to rass kicked.
They're not in a good place to negotiate.
And basically, this article 31, and the treaty blames Germany and kind of only Germany
for the war.
I don't know how Austria-Hungary snuck out of it,
but it said that the Allied and associated, this is quote,
the Allied and associated governments affirm
and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany
and her allies for causing all the loss and damage
to which the Allied and associated governments
and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression
of Germany and her allies.
So for some reason, Germany, they just get all of the blame.
And this treaty forces Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, pay
reparations to certain countries that had formed the on-tongued powers.
In 1921, the total cost of these reparations
was assessed at 132 billion marks.
That was then 31.4 billion.
Roughly equivalent to $442 billion in today's US money.
At the time, economists notably John Maynard Keens,
one of the most important economists of all time,
predicted that the treaty was too harsh.
And that's not good, man.
But she wounded animal and killed a corner, a prideful wounded animal, and it might lash back out.
You know, especially a big scary war-hardened animal like Germany.
So now, Hitler and many Germans are living in a recently defeated Germany,
who has seen its economy grind to a halt in the war's aftermath.
The Second Reich has come to a very abrupt end.
Their new nation is saddled with enormous debt, stripped of military strength, forced to disarm, and the Germans
are pissed. Many of them didn't feel that Germany should be responsible for the whole
war. And then to add a little salt to the wound in 1921, when Germany can't make good on
some of its payments, France and Belgium, some French and Belgian troops, they come over,
occupy the rur and just take some goods and raw materials. They're just like, all right,
we're just going to repossess some shit then.
We're just going to take some of your stuff.
During the 1923, or excuse me, during 1923, Germany got desperate enough
to print more money to pay striking workers and try to save their economy.
And then hyperinflation results, wipes out the value of Germany's citizen savings.
Shit was rough. It was despondency in Deutschland.
Well, then, in the beginning of 1924,
American banks and investors see an opportunity
to make some money as America's economy is kicking ass.
You know, they could loan Germany,
say money to get back on their feet,
you know, with some high-interest loans,
give them economic resurgence, you know,
you know, make some of that profit back later, right?
No, nope, they're not gonna do that
because now the US stock market crash is 1929.
So now the money stops pouring into Germany
and even worse, when US banks want their loans repaid,
the ripple effect of the stock market crash
has caused Germany's propped up economy to tank again.
Because they weren't like living within their budget,
they were just getting that influx of foreign money.
Sounds familiar, right?
Kind of like the US.
And it doesn't make me fucking nervous.
Like if the World Bank ever wanted to demand
repayment from us, I don't even know what would happen.
National debt, our national debt,
and other good times have to get into.
So much shit to suck on out there.
So anyway, so, you know, Germany's economy,
you know, just falls back into shambles.
So let's recap real quick.
I got a lot of info flying at you on this one.
The Germans are very proud
and the storied race of people who are well aware of their history of kicking most of Europe's
ass off and thoroughly in hard for centuries. The Romans couldn't defeat them in the first few
centuries of the A.D. era. They virtually owned Europe during the first Reich. When the German
King Charlemagne became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the 8th century, King Frederick the
first ruled much of Europe in the 12th century.
King Frederick II turned the German kingdom of Prussia into one of the greatest powers of Europe in the 18th century.
Various other kingdoms, rule and the Germans are constantly deteriorating back into little regional kingdoms in between all these high points.
But overall, done very, very well.
Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, unifies Germany under Prussia, kicks some ass in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871,
ushering in the prosperous period of the Second Reich,
and now after seeing the Second Reich end to defeat,
the proud German people are beholden to the rival French.
Their military has been gutted,
and thanks to the enormous debt it was saddled with in the Treaty of Versailles
and the US economy, stock market crash,
they're an economic just despair.
And they don't think the war was their fault.
That big old European-ass kicking boot is now stuck so far up their asses that they could
reach into their mouths to tie the laces.
And they don't like the way that feels, and they're not used to it.
And so what often happens when someone is having a hard time in life, someone who is
once prosperous?
They find somebody to blame for their recent troubles, right?
It's not my fault I'm suddenly poor.
It's a government.
It's the man holding me down.
It's not my fault I can't get a job.
God damn Mexicans are taking all our jobs.
It's not my fault everything's been outsourced to India.
They're getting our jobs.
It's the Asians.
They're the ones buying all over land,
driving the prices up, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
And countries can be like people.
You know, like a national personification of individual feelings and attitudes,
and Germany, they want somebody to blame for all these recent troubles,
and then Hitler came along, and he handed them the European Jews.
Now, anti-Semitism was not like Hitler's novel idea in Germany,
or Europe at all in the 30s.
There was very, very, very deep roots of anti-Semitic feelings over in Europe during the
Black Plague of the 14th and 15th century Europe.
For example, when that horrible disease killed anywhere from 30 to 70% of various European
populations, the Jews ended up getting blamed.
They began blamed for a long fucking time.
There was rumors that there were poisoning city wells, trying to kill all the Christians,
and then so now these these pogroms, these organized massacres of the Jews took place.
A few hundred Jewish communities are annihilated.
Over 2,000 Jews were burned in Strasbourg, Germany, on Valentine's Day, 1349, for example.
Holy Christ, I thought Capone's St. Valentine's Day massacre was bad.
It's time, so 22. Why were they blamed? I was speculating a little bit here, all right?
But I think for the same reason that they were killed during the crusades of the 11th century in Europe,
because they weren't Christian. And again, it seems like I'm always picking on Christianity,
but I'm not trying to, but history is what it is, right? It's just there. I can't ignore it. Most of AD,
European history is completely intertwined and founded on a lot of Christian ideals and Christianity
itself. The Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Pope, Martin Luther, and what did Christians
want to do to people who weren't Christians, convert them? And when those people didn't want to be
converted, they generally weren't treated well. Read a little bit about Native Americans
when colonization began to see how that worked out.
Check out the crusades, another time suck.
I gotta do one of these days,
goddamn, there's so many.
And they didn't want to be converted
because they already had a religion.
And not only did they have a religion,
they had a religion tied very closely
to the religion that didn't care for them.
The Torah, the Jewish Bible, is the first five books
of the Christian Bible in the Old Testament, Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Christianity and Judaism are very closely related
and also this is important, very opposed.
Huge difference in the two that historically
has not worked out at all for Jewish people.
The Jewish people believe that God will send a Messiah
to deliver them from evil,
as predicted by God in the Old Testament slash Torah.
Christians believe that the Messiah already came,
that he was Jesus.
And essentially, Jews don't buy Jesus.
They don't believe that he was the right dude.
So the Jewish faith without trying to be confrontational
inherently thinks Christianity is built upon a false prophet. Now I'm sure some rabbis
and priests might word all this very differently but come on let's cut the
bullshit. You're not going to love the guys who think you made the wrong fucking
call when it comes when it comes to your soul and salvation. Common sense will
just tell you that and unfortunately for the Jews Christians became way more
prevalent and powerful than they did in Europe. So you have this cultural minority who believe that the religion of the cultural majority
is terribly misguided. I mean, there's no other way to put it. That obviously is going to lead to a
lot of fucking tension, you know? And add to that, the Christians believe various Jewish leaders
were the ones back in the day who helped the Romans kill Christ, that the Jewish people killed
your Messiah, you're gonna have some friction.
Man, now to a secular, not a religious person,
this is also silly.
Now, if you're religious, just bear with me for a moment
and allow yourself to imagine the possibility
that there is no Christian or Jewish God.
Just think for a second about all the dumb shit
that has been done in the name of something
nobody can prove is real.
To me, all of these old religious beaves and wars are as silly and pointless as one group
of people who think that blue is obviously the best color killing another group of people
because they think that red is the better color.
It's fucking ludicrous.
It's like people who believe in unicorns killing other people for not believing in unicorns.
Okay, so we're done with that. Now, another thing that I think really harmed
the Jewish people in Europe is this social identity,
oh, God, social identity theory of the us
versus them mentality.
It's Henry Toffle, a Polish psychologist who fought
for the French against the Germans in World War
II, nearly escaped death due to his Jewish heritage, his greatest contribution to psychology
based partly upon his experience with the war and his witnessing of the Holocaust is the
us versus them theory, which I believe in very strongly.
Tafel proposed in 1979 that the groups, for example, social class, family, football team,
which people belong to were an important source of pride and self-esteem.
Groups give us a sense of social identity, a sense of belonging to the social world.
In order to increase our self-image, we enhance the status of our group.
For example, Americans, thinking America is the best country in the world, why do many
of us think that?
Well, mostly because we live here.
And people like to think the place they live in is the best.
And then we can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudiced views against the outgroup,
those who are not part of our group. For example, the concerns, the serians, bunch of losers,
all of them. Well, no, they're not. There's some people that suck over there, just like
there's some people that suck here, and a lot of people who just want to live their lives.
Now, the central hypothesis of social identity theory
is that group members of an in-group
will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group,
again, enhancing their self-image,
prejudice views between cultures may result in racism.
In extreme forms, racism may result in genocide,
such as what occurred in Germany with the Jews.
Typhal proposed that stereotyping is based
on a normal cognitive process, the tendency to group things together and doing so we tend to exaggerate,
you know, A, the differences between groups and B,
the similarities of things in the same group.
I do think that people do this all the time, you know.
We rationalize negative behavior by a member of our group as some exception to the norm,
you know, you know, negative behavior by a member of another group is typical of that group.
Representative of that group, like, for example, your friend,, your friend, some other member of your race or whatever drives
poorly, you know, it's probably because they weren't paying attention, they were texting
or something, but a member of another race drives poorly, you know, it can be viewed as
well, you know, all blanks are just shitty drivers. I feel like those kind of thoughts are
fairly human, you don't like to talk about them, but they go on all the time. And this makes
sense with the Jewish people in 1930's Germany
compared to the large cultural majority
of German Christians, Jews are different.
They look different physically, non-Aryan features.
They go to a different church.
They sometimes speak a different language.
They sometimes go to a Hebrew school instead of a regular,
whatever Christian school or a secular school.
There's a cultural emphasis on education.
And a lot of Jewish culture culture at least perceived to be.
They're perceived to have better jobs
in the average area, doctors, lawyers, dentists, et cetera.
And there weren't that many of them.
According to the census of June 16, 1933,
the Jewish population of Germany
was approximately 505,000 people
out of a total population of 67 million.
That's somewhat less than, you know,
0.75 percent. So, you know, it's easy to blame and pick on a group of outsiders when they represent
less than 1% of the total population. And that's exactly what Hitler did. Now, Hitler, as I stated,
you know, earlier, he fought World War I, and he was disappointed and outraged by Germany's
surrender and signing that treaty. He felt that the country had been deceived into signing it and deceived into surrendering,
betrayed by some civilian and Marxist forces.
Just like some people today believe that some secret, a secret of Illuminati type group
is pulling the strings, Hitler believed that some group had pulled the strings against
Germany.
He came to believe that group was Jewish and communist.
If that can come, he's, you know.
There was actually no evidence that the Jewish German people were any more communist than
the average Aryan German person, but you know, made for good speeches.
So after World War I, Hitler returns to Munich and he continues to work for the military
as an intelligence officer while monitoring the activities of the German Workers' Party,
DAP.
The acronym, Hitler adopted many of the anti-Semitic nationalist and anti-Marxist ideas of the party founder, Anton Drexler.
Hitler then joins the group, a group he's been monitoring since September 1919.
How where does that? It's like getting assigned by the FBI to monitor some area nation gang and then thinking,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.
These fellows are out of something. I mean, I mean, I mean, you know, they throw a lot of kick-ass parties.
A lot of blonde hair, blue-eyed beauties, which I do enjoy, and they got fucking cool boots.
Ha ha! Ha ha! I mean, do it.
Weird, yeah.
So what really makes this extra interesting is that a lot of historians think Hitler was a quarter Jewish himself.
His father, Alois, is thought to have been the illegitimate offspring of a maid called Maria
Schichelgruber and a 19-year-old Jewish man called Frankenberger.
Oh, she's fucking German names. If I have ever heard them.
Schichelberger and Frankenberger, he wouldn't qualify as Aryan under the law.
He laws heat-lighter paths. But when he was being a hypocrite,
oh, sorry, but when has been a hypocrite
south of the politician from preaching about some bullshit,
sorry, that weird pause there was,
I wrote in that of my notes there,
and for some reasons, spell check,
I must have, I can misspelled a hypocrite
and it changed it to hypocratic.
So I was thrown, I was like,
what does the hypocratic oath have to do with any of this?
To increase its appeal, the DAP changes names,
the National Socialist German Workers' Party,
often abbreviated to Nazi.
Hitler personally designed the party banner.
He got to use some of his old art school skills,
appropriating the swatzka symbol,
placing it in a white circle on a red background.
He soon gained notoriety for his vitriolic speeches
against the tree of Versailles, rival politicians,
Marxist Jews, and then in 1921, he replaces Drexler
as the Nazi chairman.
Hitler was an incredibly passionate and charismatic
speaker and he gave a nation of Aryans
someone to blame for the problems.
A couple of people, Marxist Jews, especially Marxist Jews.
I guess they were the worst.
It was the fucking commies and the Jews who ruined the second Reich.
It was their meddling and conniving that destroyed Germany's destiny of prosperity.
Make Germany great again.
Make Germany great again.
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
The correlation is too strong there.
I mean, even if you're a Trump supporter, you have to at least admit
that there's a message, similarity, you know.
Give the poor and the struggling and simple solution to a complex problem.
Something you can put on a bumper sticker
or a netback hat.
History shows this works time and time again.
It's a tried and true method for political victory.
So Hitler's fervent beer hall speeches,
he's doing around the country now,
began attracting regular audiences.
Early followers include Captain Ernest Rom,
the head of the Nazi paramilitary organization,
the crazy German word that is referred to in English as the Stormtroopers, the SA,
which protected meetings and frequently attacked political opponents.
Now on November 8, 1923, Hitler and Rom's Stormtroopers, they take it to the next level,
and they storm a public meeting featuring Bavarian Prime Minister Gustav Carr
at a large beer hall in Munich.
The beer hall pooch Hitler renounced
that the national revolution had begun
and declared the formation of a new government.
Well after a short struggle that led to several deaths,
the coup failed.
Hitler's arrested, tried for high treason.
He served nine months in prison during which time he dictated most of the first volume of
mine comp.
My struggle to his deputy Rudolph Hess.
A work of propaganda and falsehoods to book laid out Hiddler's plans for transforming
German society into one based on race.
Since when do you get nine months for high treason?
That's fucking crazy to me.
Hiddler himself would later punish those accused of treason against him with death, like
quick death.
If only that same punishment had awaited him, maybe the Holocaust would have never happened.
Well, when Hitler was released from prison, he got back to his fiery speeches.
With millions unemployed now, remember the economies and shambles, the Great Depression
Germany provides a political opportunity for Hitler to capitalize on.
Germans are ambivalent to their new parliamentary for public.
They got a new kind of a brand new government in place.
It's not doing well.
So they became increasingly open to extremist options
to save their economy.
In 1932, Hitler runs against 84-year-old Paul von Hindenburg
for the presidency of Germany.
Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election,
garnering more than 36% of
the vote in the final count. Now the results established Hitler, he didn't win, but as a
strong force in German politics. So strong that Hindenburg reluctantly agrees to appoint
him as chancellor in order to promote kind of political balance. Now Americans often say
that German people elected Hitler to power best, that's not accurate. Actually it was
a small click of businessman, estate owners, bankers, high ranking civil servants, and army officers who convinced the president, Paul von Hindenburg,
to name Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
For these traditional conservatives, the Nazis were, there were uncouth, low class,
kind of broods, undisciplined, yet these same conservatives made a political bargain with
the Nazi party because of their popular appeal.
Making deal with the devil.
Give them a little power so they don't want to try for more.
When does that ever work?
Well, General Hindenburg, he remained popular in Germany
and beat Hitler in the presidential race,
despite losing the war because he had shifted the blame
for Germany's defeat away from the military and himself,
pushing propaganda that Germany had been betrayed
at home by socialists and the Jews.
So it wasn't just Hitler. Like, this is the thing a lot of people are saying. Again, unfortunately, the small
minority of people, they're just getting fucking blamed for everything. And that they were
the only reason Germany had to settle for peace. This attitude towards the Jews is partly
why later, Hindenburg would do so little to stop Hitler's new legislation, new anti-Semitic
legislation.
So the blame game on the Jews, it's all propaganda.
It's a dirty nasty lie.
Hitler pushed it further on his speeches
to great effect traditional conservatives,
including Hindenburg, found the rhetoric highly appealing.
The traditional conservatives themselves
were by and large, anti-Semitic as well.
In the Vimar period, this is the Vimar Republic, they tended not to share the murderous tendencies by and large, anti-Semitic as well.
In the Vymar period, this is the Vymar Republic,
they tended not to share the murderous tendencies
of the Nazis, though that would later change
in the Third Reich, but they didn't like the Jews.
And they thought the Jewish presence in German public life,
they found it overbearing, distasteful,
Germany in the common view of conservatives,
faced a flood of foreigners, Jewish people in particular,
who exercised degenerative influence on the German people and the German society,
the quote Jewish spirits, the quote Jewish threat to the national character,
quote the degenerative Jewish race, Jews as the embodiment
of financial capital as opposed to productive German capital,
all this marked the language that joined the traditional as well
as the radical right. So this attitude brings up another psychological phenomenon to work against the German Jews.
People don't like change.
Think about why America's push back right now on Mexicans and Muslims.
Mexicans have just as much right to immigrate here as the rest of us.
We're all descendants of immigrants.
All of us, not even Native Americans can bitch about Mexicans.
They immigrated here too.
Everyone, you go back far enough, you can trace your path back to immigrants.
And Muslims are not any worse than Christians or Jews or any other religious group.
That's such a fucking nonsense.
Do they have violence and extremism written into their religion?
Yeah, they do.
But you know what, so does the Bible.
So does the Torah.
Read a little Leviticus, you know, get familiar with your own books.
Leviticus 29, quote,
for everyone that curseth his father or his mother
shall be surely put to death.
He has cursed his father or his mother.
His blood shall be upon him.
You fucking hear that?
Rude kids should be killed.
That's the Bible.
That's the Torah.
So the next time you hear some argument against Islam,
just realize this bullshit.
Yes, extremists suck.
And not in a good way, not in a time suck way.
Geodists are misguided pieces of shit, big time.
But I don't think that's why there's so much anti-Muslim rhetoric.
I think most people, most white Americans,
they just don't like it because they're different, you know?
They're not wearing fucking trucker hats.
They're wearing turban hats that look fucking weird to us. We're not used to them.
And people don't like different.
People don't like their neighborhood changing.
They don't like names like Patty and John being replaced with names like Habib and Muhammad.
It's human nature, man.
So back to Germany.
On the one side, you got to Germans supposedly rooted in place, exemplars of moral rectitude,
intelligent and productive, across the divide, beyond the palewood Jews, lacking a state of their own, they were everywhere and nowhere, predators
and exploiters who dispoiled Aryans.
This is all propaganda that's floating around.
Cartoons and all kinds of stuff against them.
The ultimate sin which Nazi's propagated so effectively was to associate Jews and Communism,
which again had no bearing in reality.
and Communism, which again had no bearing in reality. So now, in 1933, as I just said earlier,
Hitler is chancellor.
Let's explain what that means.
OK?
Prior to World War I, the new German state was a monarchy.
The reign of its last king or Kaiser
was Wilhelm II, and it ended with the end of World War I.
They throw a new constitution together pretty quick,
get it signed in
1919 and so now they're a representative democracy. They have a parliamentary system of government. They have a president,
you know elected president the World War I general
Hindenburg and he's responsible to parliament similar to how a president is beholden to Congress and the Senate in the US
Unlike the US though the German parliament was composed of a shit ton of
in the U.S. unlike the U.S. though, the German parliament was composed of a shit ton of different political parties in the wake of World War I. The Nazis were one of just many, and this
was no good, because if you think watching the Democrats and Republicans not get along
as frustrating, the bogs things down, imagine watching 40 different groups not get along.
That's how many there were, 40. And it gets worse. Germany also has a chancellor, a position
similar to Britain's prime minister, a politician
who is beholden to both the president and to the parliament, like to the Congress.
And chancellor can be replaced by the president, who can issue emergency degrees and bypass
the parliament whenever he wants to, but he also tends to be kind of hands off, he lets
the chancellor basically run things like be his administrator on his behalf, it's a very
overcomplicated, unnecessary and ridiculous system.
There was also vice-chancellors,
tons of other redundant titles,
just typical political bullshit.
You know, it's like governments love creating more government,
don't they?
Just get more people who couldn't hack it
in the private sector of Buckingham paycheck.
Okay, so in the wake of demilitarization,
different paramilitary organizations are springing up,
kind of like the Versailles demilitarization
decree kind of loophole.
Think of them like volunteer militias.
These different militias would be beholden to different leaders because you have the storm
troopers led by Nazi party member Ernest Ruhm.
I think I said Ruhm earlier, Ernest Ruhm.
They were the party's paramilitary branch.
Eventually Hitler and Ruhm would become rivals and the stormtroopers would go away,
be replaced by the SS.
The SS started off as Hitler's personal bodyguard detachment,
kind of like the Secret Service in the US.
They evolved to become a full-fledged military branch
in another themselves.
The Gestapo, that was the Secret Police.
Another paramilitary slash police branch
of the Nazi party, eventually led
by Henrik Himmler, who terrorized citizens, rounding up and disposing.
If anyone considered a threat to Germany to the Nazis, creating an atmosphere of constant
fear, everyone looking over their shoulder, neighbors, ratting out neighbors for nothing,
so they didn't get ratted out first for nothing.
And then you got the German military.
You still have a German army loyal to the president,
a force that refused to completely go away
despite the Versailles Treaty.
And there was other factions, quite a few.
There was other groups loyal to other political parties.
Remember, there's 40 parties,
a lot of them have their own little militia,
like the Iron Front, the Battle League,
the Steel Helmet, the fucking floating around Germany.
So how did Hitler and the Nazis go
from one of these little political parties
floating around to controlling Germany? How did Hitler go from Chancellor to Führer?
That explanation calls for time-subtimeline.
Shrap on those boots soldier, we're marching down a time-sub timeline.
1932. In November 1932, Hitler's name chancellor for reasons I've already described, takes office
in early 1933 and escalates the anti-Semitic rhetoric he's been spewing around Germany
since around 1919.
Like here's a quote from a speech he gave way back in 1920, the overall theme being
getting out from under the sanctions of the Versailles Treaty and that the Jews are
the problem, quote, for us,
it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover
its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really
be eradicated.
Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease
without killing the carrier, without destroying
the Basilis.
Don't think you can fight racial tuberculosis
without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier
of that racial tuberculosis.
This Jewish contamination will not subside.
This poisoning of the nation will not end until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished
from our midst.
Wow, so it's speeches.
Early on, people should have known this guy was a fucking nut.
But culturally, the Jewish people are not well loved.
So that's one of the major reasons he wasn't stopped.
1933 interview.
Here's an excerpt interview he gave to a German American magazine
in 1933.
Why does the world shed crocodiles tears
over the richly-married fate of a small Jewish minority?
I ask Roosevelt.
I ask the American people, are you prepared to receive in your midst
these well-poisoners of the German people
and the universal spirit of Christianity?
We would willingly give everyone of them a free steamer ticket
and a thousand mark note for traveling expenses
if we could get rid of them.
Holy shit!
And make note of that reference to the well-poisoner, right?
That's from the medieval anti-Semitism.
So clearly, anti-Semitic attitudes have been prevalent in Germany for a long, long time.
They didn't, they never faded away.
In 1933, anti-Semitic legislation.
Hitler doesn't waste time upon appointment as chancellor to start pushing an anti-Semitic
agenda and also get a stranglehold over German politics.
Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the leaders
of the new government, a coalition of Nazis and German nationalists, moved quickly to suspend
basic civil rights for all Germans.
After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, on February 28, 1933,
the government claims falsely that the fire was a signal for a communist effort to overthrow the state.
It proclaims a state of emergency in a decree that suspends constitutional civil rights
and enables Hitler to decree further legislation without parliamentary confirmation.
So now, Hitler has incredibly ways, Chancellor, to pass whatever laws he fucking basically
wants to.
And just like that, boom, the third Reich is born, the reign of the Nazis. March 31, 1933. The decree of Berlin, city commissioner for health,
suspends Jewish doctors from city's charity services. April 1, 1933. The stormtroopers
initiated a campaign to encourage boycott of Jewish-owned businesses across Germany, small
Jewish stores were dobed with stars of David
or painted with slogans like don't buy from the Jews.
Holy shit.
Stormtroopers lingered menacingly
outside larger businesses owned by the Jews,
including department stores, cinemas, banks.
There were several instances of Jews being assaulted
on property, they're having their property destroyed.
This boycott was reported as being the work of the stormtroopers rather than Nazi government,
nevertheless, the government did very little to halt to restrain it.
April 7th, right?
Same year, law for the reestablishment of the professional civil service removes Jews from government
service.
Also on April 7th, 1933, law on the admission to the legal profession forbids the admission of Jews to the bar.
April 25, law against overcrowding in schools
and universities limits the number of Jewish students
in public schools.
July 14, denaturalization law revokes the citizenship
of naturalized Jews and undesirables.
That's a quote, that's not me saying that.
October 4, law on editors,ans, Jews from editorial posts.
I mean, at the national level, the Nazi government revoked
the licenses of Jewish tax consultants imposed
to 1.5% quota on admissions of non-areans to public schools,
universities, fires, Jewish civilian workers from the Army,
1934 for Bids Jewish Actors to perform on the stage or screen.
I mean, local governments are also issuing regulations that affect other spheres of Jewish life like in Saxony. The Jews can no longer
slaughter animals according to ritual purity requirements. So you know preventing them
from obeying Jewish dietary laws, stormtroopers, SS soldiers randomly begin to attack Jewish
citizens, nothing's done to stop it. People began disappearing to concentration camps.
They went to death factories, they'd soon become,
but people did get killed.
And why weren't Aryans friends of the Jews defending them?
Well, partly because laws were passed also
that made political descent illegal.
You could literally be thrown into a concentration camp
for criticizing the government and executed without a trial.
That was in 30s, standing out for a Jewish citizen,
constituted criticism of the government.
There was a huge propaganda movement, very much a,
you are with us or against this movement.
That's why I never liked when fucking George W.
would throw that phrase around.
You know, you're either with us or against us.
Nah, that's, again, that's dictator language, man.
Fucking calm down in that shit.
Nazi emblems were thrown around all public buildings,
and then soon private buildings as well.
If you weren't waving the Nazi flag, you were an enemy.
And I read about numerous accounts of stormtroopers
marching down the street and just beating people
who either looked Jewish or didn't salute them.
You just get beat for not giving them
the fucking HAL Hitler.
Constance speeches about those who aren't in favor
of new Germany's policies or enemies in the state.
There's speeches about how they should be limited.
And a lot of Germans don't seem to mind because their lives aren't directly impacted by any of this.
Remember, over 99% of the population is not Jewish. Also, when Jewish opportunities and jobs are taken away,
Aryan Germans benefit. They get those positions now.
So late 1933 and late 1933 marriage between Jews and Aryans wasn't yet illegal, but strongly discouraged by the Nazis. In the fantastic Eric Larsen book about Germany in 1933 and 1934, in the Garden of Beasts,
Martha Dodd, daughter of America's ambassador to Germany at the time, witnessed a scene in
Nuremberg where stormtroopers were parading a woman, young woman down the Milo street,
broad daylight, they'd shave in her head, cover her face and powder to make her look like
some sick clown, and they hung a sign around her neck saying,
quote, I gave it up for a Jew.
Her crime being engaged to a Jewish man in Germany in 1933.
She cried as she was being pushed along
and the crowd just laughed.
Bartender later told Martha Dodd
that the woman had simply been taught a lesson.
I mean, that's the fucking cultural attitude going on.
And part of that is because a lot of propaganda is being shoved down their throats.
Before the German people themselves seemed too overly complicit in all of this, I should
also mention the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Founded on March 14, 1933, it was led by Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels and Goebbels
used to control all the German news, media, literature, visual arts, film making,
theater, music and broadcasting.
When a woman was dragged to the streets like I just mentioned, it didn't make the papers.
It didn't make the news, it didn't catch the attention of the outside world either.
Hitler completely controlled the media.
He controlled the narrative of Germany.
Knowing this makes me cringe when I hear Trump refer to the media in general as fake news
or when he tweets about wishing he could pull SNL off the air.
Now look, if you get all fired up right now, I don't think Trump is Hitler, I really don't.
But the best way for a dictator or a dictatorship to rule how they see fit is to control the
media.
That's fucking terrifying.
Anyone who even talks about wanting to do that.
You know, make it seem like no one's speaking up against him.
You know, can't take criticism.
And Hitler had that kind of control back in 1933.
And between that and the whisperings
that people who did speak up against him disappeared,
killed for quote resisting arrest.
They were killed by the Gestapo
or sent to a concentration camp
for being a political dissident.
Hitler was able to make it appear
as though the whole nation was with him,
which they actually weren't.
There was one really cool thing I read that was, you know,
maybe I think very highly of some of the German people to be brave enough to applaud
this at this time.
There was a man, 1934, Franz von Papen.
Now he was the vice chancellor.
So he was like, you know, the vice president to whatever Hitler's president, even though
there was a president above them.
Again, fucking weird political system.
But on June 17th, 1933, he's had enough a Hitler,
and he gives a speech at the University of Marburg,
and he says regarding Hitler's ruthless control
over every aspect of government, quote,
the government is well aware of the selfishness,
the lack of principle, the insecurity,
the unshivalrous behavior, the arrogance,
which is on the increase, under the guise
of the German revolution, end quote. Now, the speech was which is on the increase, under the guise of the German revolution."
Now the speech was met with thunderous applause, clearly showing that a lot of people were
afraid to stand up to Hitler, but wanted to do so if given the opportunity.
But the speech doesn't make it out to the general population, doesn't make it past this
college audience because Hitler's propaganda minister blocks publication.
Papers then threatened to tell President Hindenburg himself that Hitler had silenced him, had
overstepped his bounds as Chancellor, and Hindenburg was the one man who could still remove Hitler
from power like the only dude.
A man who had curiously stood by and allowed Hitler to do everything he'd done at this
point, but again, he's anti-Semitic himself, and dudes 86 years old and suffer from lung
cancer.
He doesn't want to fucking bother with a whole Hitler situation.
He wants to, I don't know, have a little bit more sauerkraut and sausage and fucking
Diana mansion or something.
Well, paper never gets a chance to rat out Hitler to Hindenburg anyway, which he told
Hitler he was going to do.
Hitler had paper seized by Goring, the man who had founded the Gestapo, and then Hitler
enacted a purge against all political rivals on June 30.
Between June 30 and July 2, 1934,
a purge that became known as the Night of the Long Knives
could stop O in SS forces, kill Stormtrooper Luter Room,
Stormtrooper Luter Room, many of Papens' associates,
various other Nazi party higher-ups who either were considered
to be against Hitler or considered to be hungry for his power,
at least 85 people are killed in an official estimate,
unofficially the number of thoughts to be closer to 800.
And then Hitler spins this whole thing
to President Hindenburg as he tried to stop a coup.
He did a brave thing.
And then he doesn't want to kill for some reason.
Nobody really knows fully why, PAPIN.
He sends PAPIN to Austria to redeem himself
by helping the party manipulate
the Austrian government.
And then on August 1, Hitler gets word that Hindenburg was on his deathbed.
He has the cabinet pass the quote law concerning the highest state office of the Reich, which
stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the offices of president and chancellor would
be merged under the title of leader and chancellor, the furor.
And then no one can stop him.
No one challenges this because they know
to challenge him now is certain death
after the night of the long nights.
So 1935, in 1935 with Hindenburg out of the way,
the government now is totally under Hitler's control.
Hitler says, fuck it, I'm going full furor.
Until this point, he's been hiding the militarization
of Germany from the rest of Europe,
you know, because it's a brazen violation of the Versailles Treaty.
He's been hiding among the guys of paramilitary, you know, militia type groups, like I said.
He's been using his control of the media to claim he seeks only peace internationally.
But then in March 1935, he begins a mandatory conscription of German men into the military.
He starts a draft, essentially, a direct violation of the treaty.
He's no longer going to hide the power of the Third Reich.
In May 1935, he bans non-areons from military service.
In September, he passes the Nuremberg laws, a series of more severe anti-Semitic laws.
The first deprived Jews of citizenship, the second made marriage, two or sexual relations
with a Jewish person, legal.
Other laws prohibited Jewish people from working in the homes of aliens.
It was illegal now for a Jew to hold a German flag.
Fuck.
And so on and so on.
Basically, the first few couple hundred thousand
Jewish people not fortunate enough to flee Germany
by this point had lost all their rights.
1936, Germany takes back the land they lost to France
and the Treaty of Versailles.
Remember that?
The annex the Rhineland back into Germany. By 1938, Jewish children won't even
be allowed to go to school at all. By 1939 Hitler was giving speech of
stating very directly publicly not trying to hide this with his propaganda
minister that he wants to wipe the Jewish race from the entire fucking planet.
And then in September 1939, Germany invades Poland and officially starts World War
II.
Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. So there you have it, time suckers. That is
how the Third Reich came to be. And they reigned until May 8th, 1945,
V-Day, when the Nazis surrendered unconditionally
to Allied forces in World War II.
Pre-existing anti-Semitic attitudes
created the perfect scapegoat for a prideful nation,
hungry for power, who just had their ass hit
and their economy destroyed.
Hitler stepped into the situation,
made the German people feel strong again.
Unfortunately, he did it by making,
you know, the German people believe that everyone else was weak. Everyone else was unworthy untrustworthy
They were the reason Germany was suffering and Germans would have their revenge and if anyone didn't like that message
They were suppressed or eliminated. I always wondered why America didn't step in sooner to stop Hitler
We had an ambassador over there ambassador Dodd reporting on all the stealthy that was going on in 1933, 1934. We knew exactly what he was doing, but it
was during the Great Depression. America was a lot more concerned with saving
its own ass than helping the Jewish people. And we just finished fighting a war,
it cost millions of lives. And being totally honest, we were fucking super
racist. We were super anti-Semitic. I kid me the same anti-Jewish sentiments from
Europe and colonized America for all the same reasons already laid out. Like, think We were super anti-Semitic. I kid me. The same anti-Jewish sentiments from Europe
had colonized America for all the same reasons
already laid out.
Like think about America in 1930s.
We weren't letting African-Americans vote.
We were stopping them from voting.
We weren't standing up for them with lynchings
in the South.
There was segregation.
Why the fuck are we going to help out
somebody else being segregated?
Why are we going to help the European Jews out?
We're not helping in the African-Americans at home.
I mean, we weren't practicing racial equality ourselves. We're not going to help the European Jews out? We're not helping in the African Americans at home. I mean, we weren't practicing racial equality ourselves.
We're not going to defend it somewhere else.
Now take this episode back to beginning.
Do I think Trump is Hitler asked a little, a little he loves.
He loves shot in a simple message.
He loves to blame and others for our problems.
You know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but erecting a wall
and kicking out Muslims in Mexicans.
That's not going to get your factory job back. That shit fucking sailed, right? That era is over.
He also despises the media for reporting fake news when a reality they're just scrutinizing him,
like they do every president. It makes himself an easier target than most politicians.
It says a lot of stupid shit and they get mad when people point it out. And I'll stop fucking tweet
and buddy. He's a power hungry narcissist.
Now, do I think he would throw political opponents in jail
like Hitler, if he could?
Yeah, I do.
What do you mean, what do you control the media?
Like Nazis, if he could?
Yeah, of course he would.
But luckily it's not the 1930s.
Information's a lot harder to suppress,
secrets are a lot harder to hide.
And we have a better system government
that Germany did in 1933.
It's more established, more balanced.
No president can just run shit past the Senate and Congress
all willy-nilly.
We have a Supreme Court.
So for you alarmists out there, calm the fuck down, Trump's not going to be Hitler or any
other type of dictator.
It's not going to happen, but it is good to know what red flags to look for, isn't it?
And even if you love Trump, I hope you're not butt hurt right now.
Don't be a bitch about it.
You know, the most important thing you can do in a free country is disagree.
I've always believed that.
All those people who say, uh, never fucking stops pissing me off.
Well, if you don't love it, won't you leave?
If you don't like it, why don't you get out?
No, you're the kind of person that needs to get the fuck out.
If you just want to agree with the government, move to North Korea.
You simple mind to dip shit.
Dictators love some foolish ass who always agrees with majority.
Now, the duty of a citizen of a free nation
is to constantly scrutinize the government.
Keep it in check.
This country was built in revolution
in case you fucking forgot.
Always be a little distrustful of it.
Faith that it's always going to be okay
is how you end up in a cult
or how you end up having a Hitler for a ruler.
Turning a blind eye, it's never a good plan with government.
I was reminded of a lot of this putting this time suck episode together.
Keep an eye on the government, don't be afraid to speak up for what you believe in, don't
be afraid to protest, don't be afraid to march, don't be afraid to disagree with others.
Even if they're the majority, especially if they're majority, don't think of people in terms
of a group.
Remember, there are individuals.
Some Muslims are terrorists, for example, most of which, most of them are not.
That's stats.
You can't fight that.
Well, I hope you got something more just than trivia out of this one.
I know it wasn't the funniest time suck, but man, heavy subject, but I really feel more
enriched researching this than I have about any other time suck.
So I hope you got something out of it as well.
And now it's time, time suckers. It's time for some top five takeaways
time suck
Number one Germans love a war holy shit do they love a war?
rightly or wrongly they were blamed for World War one and they were definitely
Blame for World War two totally correctly
You know we've had two world wars and they caused both of them, one country.
It caused both of them, but they also gave us, many of us, our language.
And they invented aspirin, cocaine, that's right.
That's not going to German chemist came up with how to get the cocaine powder going.
The binary number system used in computer coding, the automobile, the harmonica.
You couldn't have a coped up John Popper,
fucking playing blues traveler,
wasn't for the Germans.
So you know, not all bad.
I have no idea, by the way,
of John Popper's story coke.
Number two, careful how you judge another group of people.
Just because they don't talk, dress, or worship,
like you do, doesn't mean they're bad or threat.
Don't be yourself up about it.
Tumonature do that, but left unchecked,
it can grow and has grown into genocide.
Number three, stormtroopers were originally
the paramilitary branch of the Nazis.
And here all these years, I just thought they were
the evil empires, foot soldiers, and the Star Wars franchise.
I had no idea that that was a Nazi reference.
I wonder if there's another Nazi reference
in those movies or maybe multiple.
Is Darth Vader Hitler?
Is the Emperor Hitler?
Is the Federation the Jews?
Are the Ewoks the Jews?
I don't know.
Lot of questions.
Not very many answers.
Number four.
When Adolf Hitler kicked off the third Reich,
it was King Charlemagne who kicked off the first Reich.
I had no idea what a Reich was before this episode.
A realm King Charlemagne has nothing to do by the way
with DJ and MTV Guy Code dude Charlemagne the God.
You ever heard of that guy?
His real name is Leonard McKelvie.
Man, talk about taking your name to the next level
from Leonard to Charlemagne the God.
I don't know really anything about that guy, other than he's very successful. He has a lot of Twitter followers.
Despite having maybe the most pretentious name I've ever heard somebody give
themselves, which makes me sad for our culture.
This somebody who seems to be that big of a douche is very popular.
And number five, Trump is no Hitler.
Don't kid yourself into thinking things you're gonna get that bad.
They won't, they will not,
but if you don't like what he's doing, then protest.
Again, nothing more is more American than protest.
And if you don't like protesters, go fuck yourself.
If you anti-American fake patriot,
again, this country was built on protest.
Also, Trump doesn't have a thick mustache.
And if he did grow one,
and he started doing the whole Hile Hitler stiffer thing,
all that would happen from that is Alec Baldwin
getting like 10 more good sketches at a SNL.
Time suck, tough, five, take away.
All right, well thank you for listing everybody.
I hope that was a good bonus episode for you.
And happy to say we're already well on our way
to the next bonus episode, which is going to drop the Friday
after there's 400 iTunes reviews. Thank you so much to say we're already well on our way to the next bonus episode, which is going to drop, you know, the Friday after there's 400 iTunes reviews.
Thank you so much to everyone who has already rated and subscribed. You're the best around.
No, was it begun to take it down? I don't even know if that's the right word for that song. I don't even know what that song is.
They're just fucking came into my head like a missile.
The next bonus episode is going to be about Scientology.
Let's piss off some
Scientologists. Let's get me some death threats. Let's get into some Elrond
Hubbard. Get into getting clear. Get into some Tom Cruise. Talking some crazy talk.
Oh yes sir. That one's going to be a funny one. Oh that was going to be a lot of
inappropriate jokes on the Scientology one. If you're a Scientologist, yeah, you may as well stop listening to the
podcast now because you're not going to fucking like it. Well, that's it. That is it. And
if you're listening, right, when this is dropped, have a good weekend. If not, have a good
week, have a good whatever date is. Also some tour dates, albeit hyenas in Dallas March 16 and 18 and 17 I don't know why I skipped 17 March 16 to the 18th
Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Florida comedy club and Jacksonville Florida March 23rd through 25th
albeit hilarities in Cleveland April 14th to 16th full tour calendar available at Dan Cummins.tv and more
podcast episodes and link to the tour calendar.
Info about the episodes at timesubpodcast.com.
Keep on sucking!
Thank you.