Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where Jon Schools Me About Fascism

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session guys guys

00:00:09.840 i've imported a teacher 20th century history teacher from alabama and i think we're just

00:00:17.960 pretty much going to change the world right now fix everything in canada in the united states

00:00:22.720 yes that's what we're trying to do over to jonathan right here i'm going to let him give

00:00:27.060 his bio, who he is, where he stands, and his expertise. But guys, I'm going to be the student

00:00:32.920 today because his expertise and his focus is so incredible and so significantly important right

00:00:41.880 now that I'm going to kind of, I'm just going to hand over a mic a little bit here, Jonathan. So

00:00:46.180 give the listeners or the watchers a little bio, a little background in who you are.

00:00:51.740 so my type five of who am i is type five i like it is in over my head it's how i would describe it

00:00:59.140 i'm a high school history teacher that started posting history book reviews for fun on tiktok

00:01:04.660 and then the algorithm grabbed me and now i have a quarter million followers crazy i've been like

00:01:09.280 working with the history channel read some books um it's it's been a weird ride but like i started

00:01:16.220 reading obsessively about nazism and the holocaust i really wanted to understand i'm fascinated by

00:01:22.340 systems i'm really fascinated by like how do bad guys make bad guy things work and then before i

00:01:29.640 knew it um i had a master's in my field and i've been teaching the 20th century with an emphasis

00:01:36.060 on nazism and the holocaust for the better part of 10 years and i now now i'm coming on to cool

00:01:42.180 people's podcasts to say how frightened I am by things being relevant. You know what I love about

00:01:47.720 that? I love about that because it started with you doing something authentic to you that you

00:01:53.900 loved that drove you. And it just expanded who you were. And as you expanded who you were,

00:01:58.840 you just brought everybody along for the ride. I honestly believe that that's such an incredible

00:02:03.940 possibility if people let it be of social media in general right rather than trying to fit into

00:02:12.600 something or do something because you think that people are going to like it or they're going to

00:02:15.660 respond to it you just authentically do what drives you what you're interested in

00:02:20.220 and people and apparently so will the history channel it'll flop yeah that's amazing

00:02:26.840 way. That's amazing. So grade 11's your specialty. And how long you been a teacher for? What did you

00:02:33.900 say? This is year nine in the classroom. Year nine. And how, how's that going for you? What

00:02:39.960 are we? I love it. I love it. I'm almost nervous about the direction that all of the media stuff

00:02:46.820 is going. It's like, I don't want to leave the classroom. And there are opportunities I'd be a

00:02:51.580 fool not to take. But at the same time, like I love my students. I love the relationship I've

00:02:55.400 gotten to build with them. My colleagues are awesome. And it's let me be prepared for this

00:03:02.760 moment that we're all kind of struggling through right now. I feel like I have a responsibility

00:03:07.640 to answer that preparation with action. Oh, it's incredible. Now, why would you have to step away

00:03:14.620 from the classroom just in the sense of the History Channel's knocking at your door saying,

00:03:17.520 you're going to write this book, you're going to do this documentary. You're like, I can't do both.

00:03:20.660 or are you, do you ever feel a little limited? I know some people do by being a teacher and

00:03:28.480 doing this at the same time. It's that it's the latter. It's things are moving in a positive

00:03:35.460 enough and consistent enough direction of like people that I'm meeting and opportunities that

00:03:39.740 have been available to me. And it's like, we're, we're not at the point yet where we quit the day

00:03:44.540 job and do this full-time. We're not, we're not there yet, but if things keep moving at this pace

00:03:49.620 for say another year then i will be there and that'll be a big choice to make and of course

00:03:54.100 i gotta bring my whole family along with that choice and like yeah make sure we're all in

00:03:57.380 agreement like this is what we want to do right um okay now what so you you you've decided to focus

00:04:04.020 on i want to know what made you go down that road number one number two i want to get to what's

00:04:11.220 life like in alabama right now given the entire context and then i want to talk a little bit about

00:04:18.580 how what you've studied and the systems that you've studied and how we can talk maybe about

00:04:24.520 applying that to today and what we should be watching for. So what got me into it is I had

00:04:30.720 a dear friend that I served with in the Marine Corps who fell down some really- I'm sorry. I'm

00:04:36.860 sorry. You left, you were a Marine out of the story? Yes. I guess I left that one out of the

00:04:40.940 story. What are we doing here? So, okay, wait, wait, wait. Before you get into my friend in the

00:04:45.540 Marine. So how long did you serve? Some people don't want to talk about necessarily experiential

00:04:52.780 stuff, but just to give us a bit of background. I was for six years with Kilo Battery 214 based

00:04:59.100 out of Huntsville. It's a high Mars battery, so smart rockets. Wow. Holy cow. Big explosion.

00:05:05.440 Big explosion. Six years. Is that like a tour? How long do you decide to stay in for six years

00:05:14.600 and and then you got out is that yeah yeah so you you take it an enlistment at a time um and you can

00:05:19.860 do different lengths of contract and when mine was coming up I had to like assess where I was in my

00:05:24.900 life and I mean the thing that did it for me like we were doing our our like our hikes on the end of

00:05:30.900 this field exercise and my joints were screaming at me and I was like I'm 24 and my joints hurt

00:05:37.920 and I think I'm good I think it's time to do something else and that would that have just

00:05:44.300 been the job the job just put that that strain on your body or yeah yeah i mean there's a lot of uh

00:05:51.500 part of it is just the physical demand of like carrying a pack doing physical exercise to pass

00:05:57.260 your fitness tests um but part of it is the culture of like you don't really ask for help

00:06:01.740 when you're hurting you you tough through it you shoulder through it sure and so like little bumps

00:06:05.900 and scrapes tend to manifest as worse things when you do that uh so there's a lot of guys that i

00:06:10.940 served with who are just like carrying a bum shoulder around and it's like you should probably

00:06:15.020 go get that looked at i don't need it i don't need no that sure sure i'm good i need it i need i need

00:06:20.700 to solve yeah yeah well you know and and it sounds like you needed i feel like you probably needed

00:06:26.300 something else too i i feel like the road that you decided to go down i don't think it's any

00:06:32.140 coincidence that you served for six years and at that level and for that particular you know what

00:06:38.220 what i mean and then understanding i want to couple this with this other kind of learning

00:06:43.020 and this other kind of experience i i have no doubt they subconsciously go hand in hand

00:06:48.300 so how did you so you're talking to marine guy yeah friend and friend of mine he so he fell down

00:06:54.620 a pretty noxious online rabbit hole and i didn't know what exactly was happening to him um i just

00:07:01.180 know that he and i disagreed on lots of things and i'm yeah i wear it on my sleeve i'm very left

00:07:07.500 leaning politically he was always very right leaning called himself a libertarian and i enjoyed

00:07:12.220 that we had really spirited disagreements and he enjoyed that too so we would talk you know

00:07:17.100 way into the wee hours of the morning arguing with each other it was great and over time it just got

00:07:21.340 worse and worse and worse and the things he said got more and more nasty and and then he started

00:07:28.620 being just pretty openly anti-semitic um and i wondered what you know what happened to my friend

00:07:35.660 like this is somebody that i really enjoyed being around and now i can't okay it's too painful i

00:07:40.060 can't be around him anymore and i started digging um started reading and then one book led to

00:07:48.540 another led to another i was already in a history program uh for undergrad and so i started moving

00:07:54.940 my academic direction that way to try and take it more seriously and the more the more i learned

00:08:01.660 about nazism and the way that fascism sort of worms its way into otherwise well-meaning people

00:08:06.700 uh the more i became curious about systems more i'm being curious about how do you take

00:08:11.180 an otherwise decent person and you make them a cog in this murder machine i mean that's what

00:08:19.440 the hitler government was this this machine that produced death factories right and the

00:08:26.000 overwhelming majority of the people who were a part of it were otherwise normal reasonable people

00:08:32.160 who in any other circumstance would have lived normal reasonable productive lives and i wondered

00:08:36.600 so much about like why does that happen and along the way i think i found some answers to that

00:08:43.040 question and of course there's way better scholars than me have been trying to answer that question

00:08:47.600 since like the late 40s so i'm hoping that the expertise that i i sort of stumbled into being

00:08:54.320 really interested in can be useful in helping us navigate the sort of uh authoritarian moment that

00:09:00.240 we find ourselves in absolutely so okay so so let's take this from an academic sort of standpoint

00:09:06.080 then i mean i think a lot of people feel as though they have a relatively good perspective

00:09:13.360 or knowledge base let's say on sort of the ally side of world war ii

00:09:18.320 and what went on over there um i know that when i teach about world war ii

00:09:24.320 i definitely i mean i start at 1923 even though i could go further back than that and um you know

00:09:31.900 my kids are always very sort of confused even though i do the full gambit and they're just

00:09:36.220 like why are we going why are we starting so far back i'm like because this is the moment

00:09:39.580 because 1923 he gets put in prison and when he gets put in prison i think there's a moment there

00:09:48.060 where he's done stuff before, obviously, but he gets put in prison because, and I definitely

00:09:56.540 want your opinion on this, in the absence of real honesty and authenticity from our

00:10:05.400 leaders, we will accept pieces of it and then coded the rest in lies.

00:10:11.880 Because I think what he did very unfortunately well in that trial is, and for those who are listening, I'm talking about when he's put on trial for treason, trying to overtake the government, he said something to the effect of, when they gave up in World War I, they gave up on the country, and that was treasonous.

00:10:33.500 What they did was treasonous. And for people that had been so beaten down by the Treaty of Versailles, I feel like a country went, what? Like, let me listen to this guy a little bit more. Right? And then you had reasonable people go, okay, this is a weird... And then he goes to prison. Everybody else is cutting deals. And this guy goes, no, I'll go to jail. I'm not going to... No, he only went for nine months. Right?

00:10:59.580 but uh and we start talking about the cult of personality that it takes um in order to

00:11:09.140 manifest the beginnings right you know a lot of people be like well what would you do if you could

00:11:15.260 go back you know that story if you go back in in history and get rid of one person everybody's

00:11:20.460 always like his hitler and i'm always like well what about the guy that would have been smarter

00:11:25.500 and better than him. I'm terrified of that because Hitler did horrific things, but thank God he was 0.95

00:11:30.920 crazy. He pushed himself, you know what I mean? Do you have steps that you would follow? Do you 0.94

00:11:39.340 have moments in, how would you analyze that? Yeah. I would push it back before 1923. I think

00:11:46.600 it's really important to understand that in any other timeline where any other number of events

00:11:54.420 happen, Nazism does not happen. That so many things had to go the exact wrong way to get us

00:12:03.300 to that trial in 1923 and then the subsequent failure of the Weimar Republic following that

00:12:08.640 trial to do anything about the paramilitarism that Hitler was inspiring around himself. 0.63

00:12:14.100 And so I wouldn't start it at 23. I would really start it back into the late 1800s. There's a lot 0.68

00:12:21.900 of things happening at once that all sort of melt in the wrong direction. So on the first end,

00:12:29.060 all of the Western world is industrializing. Right. And what this means in practice is that

00:12:33.980 a lot of people are leaving their small town environment and moving to the city because the

00:12:39.060 wages are stabler and the conveniences are better and the hospitals are more reliable. Right. And

00:12:43.840 when they get there, they find all those conveniences are very much true. And all of the

00:12:48.180 ease of access to life is very much there but they've replaced a kind of work that they were

00:12:53.200 doing that was very directly related to themselves and very intimately related to themselves and

00:12:58.600 their family history with being just another face on an assembly line and all of the community that

00:13:04.760 they had built in these small towns around europe around the united states is being replaced by

00:13:10.400 really long work hours that go year round where on the farm they would have been used to working

00:13:15.880 during the farming season and then mainly just taking care of their home when they're not farming

00:13:20.080 so they get a lot of rest during the year and then that goes away on the assembly line uh access to

00:13:25.120 hard liquor is much easier and much cheaper and so they're replacing beer with liquors you get a lot

00:13:30.140 of alcoholism you get a lot of narcotics abuse because i mean this is the you get cocaine tooth

00:13:34.360 drops at the convenience store right right right and amid all of these new modes of living they've

00:13:41.440 lost a really essential sense of community and belonging that they had in the farming town and

00:13:49.860 and so they're experiencing a no me or this this sense of smallness the sense of loss and they're

00:13:54.580 looking to find meaning and so in the late 1800s we have this burst of social organizations it's

00:14:00.360 no coincidence that the NAACP is forming at the same time as the suffragettes are really gaining

00:14:06.360 steam in the American context at the same time as the labor union movement is really taking

00:14:11.360 off around the Western world at the same time as all of these socialist political organizations

00:14:15.960 are forming up, eventually communist sort of vanguard movements around the Western world

00:14:21.500 forming up. And all of this is a way for these people to navigate that sense of loneliness

00:14:28.240 that they're all feeling and find that they are a part of something bigger, that they're a part

00:14:33.080 of something they can really get their hands on and feel a sense of self in. But along with those

00:14:38.800 more positive social organizations like suffragettes and NAACP, you also get in the United

00:14:43.880 States things like the Klan as a way to attach identity to race. And it's here in the late 1800s

00:14:51.000 where we have two really big thinkers kind of explode onto the scene in the middle of this

00:14:57.040 loneliness, in the middle of this loss, in this middle of searching for meaning. And one is the

00:15:02.740 father of eugenics, Francis Galton. And so Galton argues, I know you know this part, but for your

00:15:08.520 listeners um no you just you keep listen and right now just so everybody's watching me if you see me

00:15:13.500 looking down i'm taking notes kids i don't know why you don't have your pencil out either like i

00:15:18.180 am taking step-by-step notes because i'm already at a point where i'm like oh no what what about

00:15:24.520 today oh no i see this happening today so you you keep going so there will be a test later so

00:15:31.520 There will be a test. Pull it together, folks. Yeah.

00:15:34.520 So Galton creates this more scientifically justifiable model for racialist ideas that had been dominant for hundreds of years.

00:15:44.540 This notion that cultures are superior and inferior, and it is the white man's burden to civilize the savage. 0.66

00:15:52.320 And so the Europeans have been going out and colonizing. 0.57

00:15:55.140 america was beginning its major sojourns west all in the name of like we're bringing civilization

00:16:00.260 to savage we're following the white man's burden and galton i guess institutionalizes this notion

00:16:06.660 and says no it's not cultures it's not this like woo woo we all grew up together yeah yeah genetic

00:16:12.500 destiny that you were born better and others are born worse and so the neat the notion of like

00:16:18.100 helping them is pointless because their genetics make them that way and so galton is giving a more

00:16:23.540 scientific sounding veneer over racialism really building scientific racism as a way of viewing

00:16:29.540 others and at the same time friedrich nietzsche is writing in europe and nietzsche is contesting that

00:16:38.340 the old world of decadent fat slovenly nobles have created this crisis of meaning and they have done

00:16:48.580 it because they have been duped and nietzsche builds this theory of ethics that there are three

00:16:54.180 kinds of people there are the masters the slaves and the priests and in nietzsche's conception the

00:17:01.780 masters run the world by force and they've always ran the world by force and there were no ethics

00:17:07.780 in the ancient world and nietzsche's wrong about this he was nuts right like by the late 1800s he's

00:17:12.580 like drooling on himself he's not like actually but genuinely has a psychotic break he needs 0.83

00:17:17.460 full assistance crazy yeah like he has a full psychotic break his sister has to like change

00:17:22.100 his diaper um and nietzsche is building this theory of ethics that there were no ethics in

00:17:29.220 the ancient world the masters ruled by force and the slaves obeyed and that is the natural law

00:17:34.340 and then along come the priests and the priests were this balm to justify what the masters were

00:17:40.900 doing by giving it a divine coding and the priests eventually started siding with the slaves and

00:17:47.300 convinced the masters that they should not be brutal that they should not rule by force and

00:17:51.700 terror but instead they should give alms to the slaves and eventually emancipate their slaves

00:17:56.900 and that the masters started believing this notion and it's created this crisis of ethics in our 0.52

00:18:02.420 modern time and this theory excuse me this theory of the world fits really well inside of eugenics

00:18:11.300 thinking to say oh excuse me um that there was this natural order and the natural order is gone

00:18:21.620 and so of course you feel lonely and small and afraid and of course things don't make sense

00:18:27.540 because the natural order that you were very comfortable in is gone now nietzsche is roundly

00:18:33.060 rejected by academic institutions at the time but he becomes this sort of like parlor shop bar room

00:18:40.020 philosopher that people who typically aren't engaged with academic thinking get really invested

00:18:46.980 in and it's no coincidence that those people who are getting really invested in nietzsche

00:18:51.460 are the newcomers to the cities which also yeah i want to pause and feel very comfortable i think

00:18:56.820 a lot of people there's two things that i think a lot of people associate with nietzsche i mean

00:19:00.980 it would be the superman and god is dead and both of which they take wrong like most of the time

00:19:05.940 when people quote him and people have an idea of who they'll say well he was an atheist no no 0.96

00:19:11.460 no no he was saying just like you described i think this is super important that we killed him

00:19:17.300 yeah god we've killed him we have killed god because of this new sort of reigning um academic 0.83

00:19:24.500 and philosophic kind of focus on exactly what you've described. And the idea of a Superman, 0.95

00:19:31.180 it isn't this notion of a savior. It's a notion of some men are just built better and we all need

00:19:37.400 to accept it. And until we accept it, we're going to be lost in the woods kind of thing.

00:19:42.280 So I just wanted to point that out. Yeah, no, you're right. We'll get wrong all the time.

00:19:46.960 And so these ideas are really gaining, not mainstream, eugenics is very much mainstream,

00:19:52.240 But Nietzsche is not. Nietzsche is this sort of cult figure. And all these ideas are metastasizing alongside this even more fringe notion of occultism that is really moving into the mainstream as people are leaving their hometown churches and trying to find a sense of what happens after I die.

00:20:10.980 what does it mean to be a good person what is the spiritual center i'm looking for where their

00:20:15.220 pastor would tell them that before but now their pastor is a harder character to find in the cities

00:20:20.820 and you get this just wave of scam artists who are doing seances and tarot card readings and horoscopes

00:20:28.420 and they start all sort of forming their own version of this story that fits very well into

00:20:38.660 nature and fits very well into galton as humanity used to be this advanced race and then some

00:20:48.340 cataclysm struck and the advanced people traveled the world giving religion philosophy and technology

00:20:54.740 to the ancient peoples and this sort of closes the gap that you might have when you're looking 0.98

00:21:00.500 at eugenics and saying well if the non-white people are worse then why were the pyramids

00:21:06.660 as engineering marvels in Egypt and in Latin America and not in Europe? Why were the really 0.69

00:21:13.400 incredible structures of the ancient world in other places besides Europe? Well, if there is

00:21:19.380 this advanced original man that gave technology to all of these people, suddenly those questions

00:21:26.600 are answered. And it's like, oh, well, the ancient people received wisdom from the first men. They

00:21:30.560 received wisdom from these first people. And then you add on all kinds of layers of like,

00:21:34.440 they were worshipped as gods and the old gods of all the tribal societies were these advanced men

00:21:39.580 who brought them science and technology and this is like super super super fringe but what matters

00:21:46.080 is who latches on to those stories because people like Heinrich Himmler the head of the SS

00:21:52.600 were fully invested in these sort of old ancient and Himmler just adds the Nazi veneer on top of

00:21:59.700 bit of like oh the ancient peoples were Aryans and that makes sense as to like why Germany is 0.56

00:22:04.680 culturally superior but we're beset on all sides by enemies because the ancient calamity was caused 0.88

00:22:09.460 by the Jew and the Jew has been stalking us ever since and and so it's not that the occultism ever 0.89

00:22:16.880 breached containment into more than just like a parlor trick that most people didn't believe

00:22:21.200 it's that the people who did start taking it seriously were very high up in the Nazi party

00:22:26.400 that's right okay wait wait before we go any further so let's just let's just break that down

00:22:31.360 for a second because it's incredibly important to have both of those things happening at the same

00:22:39.040 time and they'd have to happen at the same time a dependency on stability and religion

00:22:45.840 like it or hate it it's always been it's always been something humans have sought after what

00:22:51.760 happens why am i here those big meaning questions i don't care what religious route you take or what

00:22:56.880 spiritual route you take it doesn't seem to matter i think there's something intrinsic to

00:23:02.560 a human spirit that searches for those answers and i think in order to not feel lost because

00:23:09.120 none of us want to we very much want to latch on we very much want to hold very very tightly to

00:23:14.800 something and then as you're describing industrialization and the loss and i think

00:23:19.200 this is quite beautifully said too we lost a piece of our humanity with industrialization and i know

00:23:25.280 that marx will end up talking about it later but this alienation from who we are and who our spirit

00:23:31.200 is as we go to work for eight ten hours a day and we're just a cog in a machine of a wheel and we

00:23:37.120 do this tiny little piece and we never have full control of our labor we're never connected to a

00:23:41.920 thing we create and we we sell or we trade or whatever there's we're very removed from that

00:23:48.720 creativity and i do think there's a loss of our humanity there and what you're saying

00:23:56.160 is that and there always is something ready to move in especially people who see the loss and go

00:24:03.760 i can capitalize on that i i got something for that and and whether that's subconscious or not

00:24:10.160 and or or purposeful because i do think sometimes things are subconsciously driven um i think the

00:24:16.960 people in power they'll pick it up purposefully like it will work for them right and that's that's

00:24:24.240 what we're talking about this too i can't help but think of indiana jones i don't know why

00:24:27.760 well yeah i mean andy fought the nonsense all i think about is raiders the last ark and opening

00:24:33.440 the ark of the covenant and hitler chase it's all i think about it's all we just needed you know

00:24:38.240 harrison ford back in that day anyway so okay so we're at we're at the head of the ss picking up

00:24:44.240 on the occult and what year are we talking about at this point when he really himler is going to

00:24:50.080 latch on to occultism probably somewhere in his early 20s and what year would that be 19 oh god

00:24:58.800 that would be that would be in the 19 teens that would probably be right after world war right

00:25:03.440 after the war yeah and that's that's really where i want to situate us is in world war one because

00:25:07.760 Because industrialization, for all of its problems, social organizations do form, and people do get accustomed to new modes of living, and they do find community and belonging and new ways to reorient their lives.

00:25:20.180 And so the amount of people that are in this stage of absolute loss and disparaging is small compared to the whole of the amount of people in Western society.

00:25:32.820 What you need to really make it go is a catalyzing event, something that will reignite this mass sense of loss now that all of these ways that you can make identity, aside from your family on the farm, have fully matured.

00:25:47.680 So you can identify with your race.

00:25:49.020 You can have the sense of mysticism.

00:25:50.680 You can join a paramilitary.

00:25:52.400 What you need is some major catalyst to really drive that loss back into the mainstream. 0.59

00:25:57.260 It's the Great War.

00:25:58.480 It's the Great War.

00:25:59.160 World War I.

00:25:59.760 Yeah. 0.56

00:26:00.280 So when we get to the Battle of Verdun, and I think this is the place, if I was going to stick a pin in like, where does Nazism come from, rather than these nebulous ideas that ultimately align to become precursors to fascism, I would pin it right on Verdun.

00:26:18.100 so the western front hasn't moved it's 1916 there are losses at a scale that no government is really

00:26:25.300 capable of comprehending we have massive morale drain on all sides of the war there are food

00:26:31.420 shortages at home on all sides of the war there's this like when's america going to jump in is

00:26:36.240 america going to jump in and at the battle of redone we meet this guy named falkenheim

00:26:40.820 and general falkenhayn is a german officer who is telling the kaiser that he can get a breakthrough

00:26:48.160 on the western front if the kaiser gives him sufficient resources and the kaiser agrees more

00:26:53.900 than just giving him the manpower and giving him the machinery he also sends the crown prince to

00:26:58.640 verdun so he sends his son to verdun and what falkenhayn is telling the kaiser is hey hindenburg

00:27:05.780 is just stacking them up in the east we're winning in the east if you let me really take a

00:27:12.540 gamble here in verdun i'll get you a breakthrough in the west and we'll win the war falkenhayn is

00:27:17.540 lying falkenhayn knows that he cannot get a breakthrough at verdun he knows that what he

00:27:22.380 plans to do what he's only telling his closest confidants is quote i will bleed the french army

00:27:27.460 white he believes that the morale in france is significantly lower than the morale in germany

00:27:35.580 And if he can visit enough casualties on the French army by forcing them to fight at Verdun to hold him off, then the French army will collapse, its morale will completely disintegrate, and Germany will overwhelm the Western Front.

00:27:48.480 And he's not telling the Kaiser any of this because he knows that his casualty rates will be higher, and they are.

00:27:55.220 and what we see is a germany that begins to sort of celebrity status falkenhayn because he gets

00:28:02.740 some meaningful victories and he does move the line forward at verdun he seizes this major

00:28:06.680 fortress at verdun and once falkenhayn is in the fortress he becomes completely and poignantly

00:28:13.940 aware that he cannot hold it that the french and the british are massing north of his line for the

00:28:19.140 psalm offensive and they can keep pulling reserve units from the planning of the psalm offensive

00:28:24.180 psalm was a disaster but they can keep pulling those reserve units preparing for the psalm

00:28:30.940 onto verdun and so falkenhayn keeps sort of dragging it out and the emperor is getting

00:28:35.400 really impatient he's like so when are you going to get me this breakthrough we've been here for

00:28:38.600 a long time now and you said you you had it in the bag and we're losing you know we're in the

00:28:42.240 300 000 men casualty range like where's my breakthrough the emperor gets fed up and he

00:28:47.980 brings in paul von hindenburg and hindenburg is this celebrity soldier he's nigh undefeated on

00:28:53.560 the eastern front the eastern front is going really well for germany and so you get this

00:28:57.400 really weird morale gap where all of the eastern front guys who've been fighting under hindenburg

00:29:02.640 are convinced they're about to win the war because they've just been clobbering the russian empire

00:29:07.140 and all the western front guys are like i'm in hell let me go home so hindenburg comes in celebrity

00:29:13.920 soldier he's going to save the day he's going to win verdun and hindenburg is incredibly intelligent

00:29:18.360 as like a tactical and strategic thinker and he knows right away i can't hold verdun but what do

00:29:25.300 you do the german people have been told and they like did a national holiday about it when verdun

00:29:31.400 fell when the verdun fortress fell and like kids were a lot of school and there was a work stoppage

00:29:35.580 and they drained some reserves of food to do this big feast in all the cities and here comes

00:29:40.200 hindenburg and he's going to win and hindenburg's like i can't it's not possible so what we see at

00:29:46.680 verdun is this sort of slow pulling away where the french can't get a breakthrough and neither can

00:29:52.500 the germans and so both forces just slowly start peeling off of the fortress until it becomes just

00:29:59.180 this shell cratered slop heat in the in the middle of no man's land and what hindenburg walks away

00:30:05.260 from verdun with is this notion of like we're gonna lose and it doesn't matter that i've been

00:30:10.820 winning over in the East, we're going to lose. And if we lose, the reputation of the German army

00:30:17.780 goes and my reputation goes. And so he begins trying to concoct a scheme to prepare Germany 0.64

00:30:26.840 for defeat in a way that keeps the reputation of the army intact. And so as the opponents of the

00:30:34.340 Kaiser in the Reichstag are preparing to draft a new constitution and propose like, hey, we need

00:30:40.720 to like really limit the powers of the emperor and we need to find some way to settle this war

00:30:45.780 and the food shortage crisis is getting out of hand and the casualties are too high and we're

00:30:49.660 risking like revolution we're risking general strike we have to find a solution now and they're

00:30:54.340 going to the town of Weimar to try and set this new constitution Hindenburg finds his out of use

00:31:01.520 his reputation to give that republic its fire because the thing that they can't manage is if

00:31:09.920 we give the kaiser this constitution and say we want out of the war then he'll just say no i have

00:31:16.160 the army i don't have to listen to you but if hindenburg is on our side the kaiser doesn't

00:31:22.080 have the army hindenburg has the army and so because of hindenburg's loyalty shifting from

00:31:29.760 kaiser to weimar the emperor is forced to abdicate and step down from power and microseconds after

00:31:37.280 After that happens, Hindenburg starts pushing the stab in the back line because there are all these reactionary newspapers talking about how it will, if we only fought harder, if we only were more aggressive, if only the people had the true spirit of 77 and they were these old, you know, Kaiser Reich old guard that fought under Bismarck, then we would win this war.

00:31:55.700 And Hindenburg is like, yes, yes, that's true.

00:31:59.280 You're being betrayed. 0.98

00:32:00.820 The socialists and the communists and the Jews, they're betraying you.

00:32:04.360 And the reactionary newspapers just devour this narrative. And it serves Hindenburg incredibly well. He gets a German Republic that he will eventually be the president of. And he's beloved and respected by the soldiers and the civilians alike. He's a hero for the cause of peace because he helped resolve the conflict in a way that made the fighting stop.

00:32:23.500 But he's an old guard, true warrior because he fought to the bitter end. And so he gets to thread this needle of being the perfect sort of embodiment of the new, more liberal faction and the old right, the old aristocratic right in Germany.

00:32:39.480 and it's in that last gasp of the great war where the kaiser is sort of frantic the kaiser

00:32:46.160 stepping down and hindenburg is pulling the army back that we meet all of the people who will lead

00:32:52.500 the nazi party herman goering is flying with the red baron and he is traumatized by losing someone 0.84

00:32:59.760 that he incredibly respected when the red baron got shot down and he knows that like the red

00:33:03.720 baron was his meal ticket that was his way to fame and glory was like i was one of the squadron

00:33:08.220 members for the Red Baron. And now the Red Baron's gone and I have nowhere to hang my hat.

00:33:13.060 I need to join one of these upstart political movements and see if I can't make a name for

00:33:16.440 myself that way. You get Adolf Hitler who wakes up from essentially a coma in a hospital to find 0.75

00:33:25.520 out that the war is over. A war he was convinced he was winning when he entered that field hospital 0.66

00:33:30.960 from a gas attack you get Heinrich Himmler who was always the second favorite son whose brother

00:33:39.220 got to go and do hero stuff and got to go and fight on the front while he was a reserve soldier

00:33:44.560 because he was too young to fight and brother comes home broken and now here's little Himmler

00:33:50.420 becoming a man for the first time and dealing with this mishmash of like well brother got to

00:33:57.360 go and be a hero, but he also lost, but I've idolized him my whole life, but dad also idolized

00:34:03.340 him. So I'm kind of glad that he got his, but then I never got to get mine. And maybe if I was

00:34:08.080 there, things would be different. And this obsession with military identity that he never

00:34:12.440 really got to embody. All of these people are ripped in two in that morale gap where the Eastern

00:34:20.500 Front soldiers go back home and say, well, of course we were stabbed in the back. Of course we

00:34:26.140 We were going to win. And all of the Western front guys are like, the hell are you talking about? We were getting pounded day in and day out. There was no winning. Nobody was going to win. We were all just going to lose.

00:34:38.220 And it's in this sort of political misunderstanding of how the German people negotiate what World War I was and what its conclusion meant inside a world where Nietzsche is talking about the overman who used to rule by terror, inside a world where Francis Galton's ideas talk about racial supremacy.

00:34:57.840 and the germans already had a really strong sense of like cultural superiority over the other powers

00:35:02.640 in europe and nazism and the fascism boiling over in italy just latches oh yeah for sure

00:35:10.480 then they watch that right okay so we get to the end of world war one

00:35:18.240 you have the treaty of versailles that everybody talks about sort of famously as being

00:35:22.560 sort of well will be i think the the the unfortunate perfect end to get to world war ii

00:35:30.720 that you're gonna you're gonna speak to in a second but but i it's so great like it's such

00:35:36.800 an incredible piece of history all the things that you're describing because when we start talking

00:35:42.240 about the treaty of versailles and you have like guys like woodrow wilson going whoa whoa whoa

00:35:46.480 this is too much you're you're punishing this country too much it's too they can't take everything

00:35:52.560 you can't take away their army you can't take away their colonies you can't make them pay

00:35:56.160 everything back you can't give them all the guilt you can't do all that to one nation

00:36:01.360 but from listening to you it's like you might have been able to if all of that backstory hadn't

00:36:09.120 happened that you just described yeah and i think wilson is a wilson is a master statesman right he

00:36:14.720 really really knows um the international situation and i think wilson sees and i think england also

00:36:21.440 sees that the german militarism doesn't go away when the military goes away no you just don't

00:36:27.920 have anywhere to put it that's right you have all of that that rage and you have all of that

00:36:33.760 superiority you have all of those thoughts but you don't have anywhere to negotiate it now

00:36:38.720 Now, when does it happen? Because listening to you, you would think Hitler would ally himself 0.88

00:36:47.020 to some degree with Hindenburg, right? Against the old, against, because he believed that, 0.81

00:36:55.120 right? Yes. Oh, yeah. He was an early adopter of stabbed in the back. Yeah. 0.84

00:36:58.980 Yeah. He loved the stabbed in the back. I'm on your side. When did that shift? When Hindenburg

00:37:04.800 thought he was an idiot and didn't like him? Or when Hindenburg saw that Hitler could have been a 1.00

00:37:08.220 bit of a a bit of a wrench in his plan now that he had ascended to the presidency yeah that's the 0.86

00:37:13.540 that's the trouble is i think what we see a lot of out of hitler's early moves in politics of

00:37:20.680 course this is after he has the chancellorship is we get again it's a perfect storm right of like

00:37:25.360 if anything goes differently nazism doesn't happen so if we and we end up skipping a lot

00:37:29.580 here but i understand we're you know we don't have to go back we don't have to skip a lot go

00:37:33.320 back to where you were yeah thank you so much you take your time okay this is important i don't care

00:37:38.760 how long this goes i got i got hours so we get to post-war germany is like an economic nightmare

00:37:47.160 we're talking a thousand percent month over month inflation um phrases like useless eater are

00:37:53.160 getting pushed around as a way to reference unemployed people like it's a really aggressive

00:37:57.320 almost petty culture of grievance that is building and this is especially true among

00:38:03.480 these world war one veterans who now are buying into the stab in the back theory and they're

00:38:07.320 coming home and they're looking at their countrymen who wanted the war to end and were right

00:38:12.680 to want to end and they're saying you screwed us and now you're asking for a government handout so

00:38:18.240 you can feed yourself we were on the cusp of victory and like like we were talking about just

00:38:23.040 a second ago, the militarism doesn't go away when the military does. And this is especially

00:38:27.700 poignant for the Weimar Republic that understands that the Kaiserreich had not made really many

00:38:33.620 friends, and all of the friends it had made were gone. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed,

00:38:39.480 the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, the Italians switched from the central powers to the Entente

00:38:44.000 at the end of the war. So Germany's kind of alone in Central Europe, and it needs some kind of

00:38:50.660 military to protect itself, at least it feels it does, but it can't field an army. So the solution

00:38:56.760 is to sort of look the other way as Fry Corps units or free soldier units, mercenary companies.

00:39:04.200 Paramilitary. We're talking about paramilitary. God, I'm getting more scared of right now

00:39:11.060 as you talk than I have been, but please. So you start seeing the rise of the paramilitary

00:39:18.980 as an outlet, right? That's what we're talking about. The Freikorps units start popping up and

00:39:24.700 they become quite useful to a Weimar government that is rather conservative. It's not the old

00:39:31.880 right aristocracy conservative, but it is a conservative government. And when you get these

00:39:36.160 left-wing labor movements that start popping up, it's organizations like the Steel Helmets,

00:39:40.920 a Freikorps unit that puts down an attempted general strike. When politicians need bodyguards,

00:39:47.000 they hire fricor units and so it becomes a way for these unemployed deeply traumatized world war 0.99

00:39:53.000 one veterans to find work because they're having trouble reintegrating into normal life the french

00:39:57.720 occupation of the rhineland has made it hard for them to access the factory jobs that they would

00:40:02.040 have had and so they they end up going for uh for fricor jobs and among these fricor units are

00:40:08.760 deeply anti-semitic deeply reactionary thinkers that are gobbling up the new media these zines

00:40:15.400 they're one and two page newspapers you can do multiple print runs a day they cost a penny

00:40:20.280 and the zines are publishing just stab in the back nonsense at all times they're publishing

00:40:27.320 anti-african racism because it's black colonial troops that are occupying the rhine the french

00:40:32.200 leave colonial troops behind and we see this odd i guess it seems odd at first glance and it starts 0.62

00:40:41.000 to make a lot of sense but there's a lot of sexual impotence among these guys that they

00:40:46.280 have been in the trenches for a very long time without access to women and they come back home

00:40:51.560 and they can't yeah they're they're broken men and they can't start a family perfect sense now

00:40:55.480 yeah yeah of course they can't start a family and so they bite into like the reason you can't start 1.00

00:41:00.200 a family is because all of these jews are corrupting your women and they're bringing 1.00

00:41:04.840 they're bringing jazz culture from america into germany and they're bringing the hollywood queer 1.00

00:41:09.880 seen from america into germany and they're bringing black people from america into germany 0.99

00:41:14.840 and the colonial troops are raping your women and so all the wives that you would have are sullied 0.98

00:41:19.000 and ruined and you wouldn't want them anyway and so you get these dudes who are like the most 0.97

00:41:23.880 sexually frustrated people who have ever lived and they're also broke and they have no formal

00:41:30.360 employment and the only thing they have to do all day is hang out with other dudes like them

00:41:36.120 in the fry corps talk about each other up

00:41:39.880 oh my god Jonathan yeah yeah yeah I don't drink but I'm thinking yeah like you need a cigarette

00:41:52.900 huh oh my god yeah the and we're gonna get to all of that I'm gonna let you get through

00:41:59.680 I'm gonna let you get through because we're gonna get to what we think the points of you know

00:42:06.340 because i mean they're pretty evident but i think we should go through point by point by point talking

00:42:12.160 about all these things because okay so the incel is born basically yep um amazing

00:42:20.180 they need somewhere to put it you have propaganda being fed to them at next to no cost that they can

00:42:28.140 have direct access to they spend all their time in echo chambers gassing each other up talking

00:42:33.900 about the good old days when we used to have power we used to be able to do things figuring out who is

00:42:38.780 to blame for all of it that can't possibly to be themselves or the war or the government that forced

00:42:44.140 the war upon them it has to be something else because that's what everybody's been saying for

00:42:48.940 so long yep holy yep so it's in this world where we get young addy right we get little adolf and

00:42:56.940 adolf is one of the few guys that gets to say that all i can think about is that youtube video

00:43:01.820 you know you know the little little hitler have you ever seen that video

00:43:06.300 yeah he's like and he's in a classroom he keeps taking the czechoslovakian desk and he keeps

00:43:11.100 taking the it's one of the best it's probably the only thing i've ever loved okay so you get young

00:43:16.140 adolf what are we what age are we talking about here so he is in his i want to say he's in his

00:43:21.500 his late 20s at this point his late 20s early 30s and he is one of the few guys that gets to keep

00:43:28.300 his job in military intelligence and he was a he was a runner in world war one he was a letter

00:43:33.180 carrier and that's that sort of translates into intelligence work and his job is as a spy he goes

00:43:39.180 to these young political upstart parties because there are dozens and dozens of little ones and

00:43:43.740 reports back as to whether or not they're radical revolutionaries the weimar government is paranoid

00:43:48.380 of overthrow and they're right to think so because you have an attempted revolution from the left 0.75

00:43:54.060 right after the war that the seal helmets put down and then you have an attempted revolution

00:43:57.980 from the right in the cap putsch that was led by erich ludendorff who was another major german

00:44:02.940 general and so the weimar government is paranoid about attempted coups and so hitler's job is to

00:44:08.780 as i should be their right to be and the hitler's job is to go to these small parties and report

00:44:13.500 back on like do they seem serious do they seem like they're actually going to try and do violence

00:44:18.780 and it's at these little spy operations that he meets a dude named dietrich eckhart and eckhart

00:44:24.380 is a playwright and he's an occultist he is full all the way into like the ancient aryan supermen

00:44:30.700 had magic and they gave religion and technology to the ancient peoples and they migrated up

00:44:36.040 through um through the mediterranean and they traveled to india and they settled in germany

00:44:42.080 and that's why germany has always been superiors they're the direct descendant of these these 0.94

00:44:45.740 supermen who were destroyed by their ancient enemy the jew and hitler bites all the way in

00:44:51.860 he starts speaking at these party meetings and he very quickly promotes in this party so he goes to

00:44:58.980 spy on somebody to tell on them to to to inform on them to the government and he ends up getting

00:45:05.780 drawn in yes he bites all the way he's supposed to be and he is stepping into this world of new 0.52

00:45:12.740 right politics at the same time as himmler at the same time as getting at the same time as goebbels

00:45:18.180 and they're all sort of adrift and finding somewhere to be they're all finding little

00:45:22.580 paramilitary pockets they can worm their way into and when hitler starts doing public rallies

00:45:28.660 and shifts the branding to the national socialist german workers party or the nazis

00:45:34.100 when he shifts the branding to this is not a left-wing movement this is not a right-wing

00:45:39.220 movement in his conception this is the third position this is the future right and and this

00:45:45.620 notion and he's described as the man with fire in his eyes and so over time all of these future

00:45:52.020 party leaders they wander into the rallies that he's putting on and they're just enthralled by him

00:45:56.880 and he really did he has commanding speaking voice he spoke in in the sort of language of

00:46:00.760 the common people because he didn't have a higher education um he was addicted to methamphetamine he

00:46:07.060 was he was always drinking and so like he's he's this sort of rough and tumble guy from the street

00:46:11.820 he's like me and they're really drawn in by that and what what happens is some of these paramilitaries

00:46:19.740 start attaching themselves to him and he gets in really good with the steel helmets he gets in

00:46:25.020 really good with the storm the brown shirts and the brown shirts become a part of the uh the nazi

00:46:31.660 party as their official paramilitary arm the brown shirts are led by ernst rome and it's here before

00:46:38.460 the beer hall putsch where the sort of constellation of the nazis worst people form and begin digging

00:46:45.180 in in their leadership position goebbels is this failed newspaper guy failed movie writer guy

00:46:50.860 um he's always been they all just want to be playwrights and movie stars and artists for the

00:46:55.980 love of god give them the arts maybe this doesn't happen yeah my solution to our modern problem is

00:47:02.380 like a state mandated girlfriend and automatic entry into art school if you apply and like

00:47:08.460 you're in it's just like oh you're in draw here's a partner go learn something

00:47:13.820 remember kim sean un used to have those photos of it was always like a rap video photos like

00:47:23.500 it was always in the v formation the way they stood i'm like just give the guy a movie he'd 0.98

00:47:30.260 stop being such a pain in everybody's ass i don't think he wants dictatorship i think he wants you 0.94

00:47:36.020 a three-picture deal in a rap album yeah just like let him be a k-pop star this is what i'm 0.99

00:47:42.100 okay okay so you get um you get these different strains of nazism in this really early period 0.63

00:47:50.420 you have rome's permanent revolution where he wants the non-stop street violence at all times

00:47:56.500 there's not some grand plan and it seems like his ultimate goal is to worm his way into the

00:48:02.740 wehmacht into the german army and sort of make the army the brown shirts make the brown shirts the 0.98

00:48:07.940 army the army hates him they're disgusted by him he's a drunk he is openly practicing homosexual 0.79

00:48:13.860 man um they are they are really weirded out by um and so he's not really getting anywhere beyond 0.95

00:48:19.620 head of the brown shirts but his brown shirts worship him then you get heinrich himla who has

00:48:24.980 been obsessed with all these medieval stories and the mysticism and the seances and he wants like

00:48:31.380 a return to the old supermen and he forms the ss the the shoot stoffel the protection squad

00:48:37.700 as like his better essay his better brown shirts and they have really strict entry requirements

00:48:44.020 and they have military style uniforms that are designed by hugo boss so they're meant to look

00:48:49.220 like really imposing really intimidating they take a lot of strenuous uh physical and mental

00:48:55.540 education they do a lot of propaganda and indoctrination and they're meant to be like 0.98

00:48:59.540 this better example of the brown shirts who are all seen as these drunk thugs and hitler almost 0.95

00:49:06.660 accidentally really cements himself as like he's the guy you have to impress because if he shuns

00:49:13.940 you then the party shuns you and this creates a competition that always puts hitler above

00:49:21.700 these sycophants who tend to have violent men at their back and call and want to impress him and

00:49:28.340 often want to eat the other ones. So then you get the beer hall putsch and Hitler's very frustrated. 0.67

00:49:33.980 The Nazis had a really bad turnout in their first big election run. He sees potential opening in 0.86

00:49:39.500 Bavaria where he got the strongest votes. He thinks if he goes down there in a show of force,

00:49:44.440 then the state government in Bavaria will just hand him power. And it goes about as badly as

00:49:49.760 it possibly can. Hitler himself puts a gun in. I want to say it was the provincial governor,

00:49:54.720 but I couldn't, I'm just blanking on like who specifically it was, but like Hitler's leading 0.78

00:49:58.720 this charge up to the state house. He puts the gun in the guy's face and he's like, you're going

00:50:02.420 to hand me the government. And the guy is like, no, I'm not. I've already called the army. Like

00:50:07.580 I'm not handing you the government. And the army shows up and a bunch of Nazis get shot and Hitler 0.76

00:50:11.640 gets arrested. And a bunch of the other ones get arrested too. And what begins to happen while 0.63

00:50:18.780 hitler is in jail is that rivalry between himler and rome starts to flare because rome has become

00:50:26.040 the sort of spiritual leader of the nazi party in absentia because the party is banned their

00:50:30.200 uniforms are banned their symbol is banned for um for the next election cycle and him when rome

00:50:35.300 keep feuding feuding feuding feuding feuding when hitler is released and he's had time to write his 0.64

00:50:39.960 manifesto it takes off and all of these nietzsche obsessed eugenics obsessed dorks around the world

00:50:48.920 just gobble it up they gobble it up like henry ford buys like a half a million copies of the

00:50:55.180 thing and distributes it to people right and the nazis spend the rest of the 20s seen as a joke

00:51:01.960 there are moments where they might even give up the whole thing because their election numbers

00:51:06.380 are like sub 10% and then the Great Depression happens. And the Great Depression happens and it

00:51:12.160 hits German manufacturing really hard. And this return to economic prosperity and this rise of

00:51:18.420 the German roaring 20s evaporates overnight. And here's Hitler saying, I told you so. 0.94

00:51:24.760 I told you so. 0.66

00:51:25.520 You called me a radical, but the international financiers ruined your life, didn't they?

00:51:30.500 But what's particularly important here is that the German working class was initially hit really

00:51:36.100 hard by the great depression the german aristocrats in the middle they were all initially hit really

00:51:41.300 hard by the depression but it's the german middle class that suffer the most from it because even

00:51:47.860 once the economy begins to stabilize their savings have already been wiped out by the inflation

00:51:54.740 and so they're looking for a person to blame they're remembering the lean years of the early

00:52:00.420 weimar period they're looking at their children and saying oh my god my kids are going to have

00:52:04.820 to go through the same suffering that i went through and like maybe this guy isn't so crazy

00:52:10.980 and they're able to write off what i find is really fascinating in the book what we knew um

00:52:16.500 by by ruban in what we knew uh the ruban does a lot of polling of people who lived through

00:52:23.780 the hitler government germans who lived through the hitler government and one of the polling

00:52:26.660 questions he asked is assume you don't know anything about the second world war and assume

00:52:32.900 you never learned anything about the holocaust why did you support hitler when it started why

00:52:38.420 did you vote for the nazis in 32 33 and all of them said the overwhelming majority say economic

00:52:44.820 anxiety and less than five percent say anti-semitism racism or um any kind of international

00:52:52.420 issues it's almost all entirely restore the glory of old germany and fix my bank account

00:52:58.020 and ruban concedes that a lot of these people were probably lying because after the holocaust

00:53:04.240 you don't admit that you were on board with it but a substantial number of those people 0.71

00:53:10.040 are probably quite honest in that it was economic anxiety that drove them into the arms of the nazis

00:53:15.500 and once the nazis take power and they suspend elections it's worth it's really worth noting

00:53:21.100 that before they begin implementing any of their program elections go first and you replace

00:53:27.580 elections with plebiscites that are managed by the party. So there will be public opinion polls

00:53:32.720 and they're open ballot. There is a brown shirt in the polling booth with you. There are hundreds

00:53:39.120 of reports of Germans being told when they showed up for these opinion polls that they were handed

00:53:44.320 a completed ballot and told to put it in a drop box. And then the brown shirt would walk them to

00:53:49.980 the drop box. And so once the elections are suspended, the Nazi program begins to be rolled 0.89

00:53:55.000 out, then Himmler makes his move. He offs Ernst Röhm. He absorbs the Gestapo into the SS. He

00:54:02.820 absorbs the Sturmbattailung into the SS. And so now the Nazis have the actual state. They have a 0.87

00:54:10.260 state within a state in the SS that is managing arrests and organizing prisons and conducting

00:54:16.360 street rallies. They have their own party newspaper that is absorbing all of the free press that was

00:54:22.240 active in germany so now the only place you can get your media is from the party the criminal

00:54:26.800 justice is handled by the party the elections don't exist and any plebiscites are managed by

00:54:32.720 the party and so after 1936 especially when you say well what did the average german think like

00:54:39.920 not when it was elected but like as the regime is going and my answer to that is it doesn't matter

00:54:44.800 it doesn't matter what they thought they were not allowed to think anymore all of the social

00:54:49.680 organizations had been absorbed everything horrible started happening it was already done i mean and we

00:54:54.960 skipped over the burning of the reichstag right which really sort of i would expect solidified

00:54:59.840 the enemy whoever the enemy is and then people are just handing them power like it's going out

00:55:03.760 a bit take it take it take it you're going to save us and so here we come back to here we come back

00:55:07.520 to rome so the reichstag is burned and everybody knows it's a farce uh when we read uh garden of

00:55:12.800 beasts by eric larson and this is a biography of america's ambassador to germany um what that

00:55:18.000 ambassador is writing back to the state department what dr dodd is writing back to the state department

00:55:22.240 is everybody i talk to says that this is a show trial they don't believe the official story they

00:55:26.560 know the nazis are lying the the sort of general wisdom on the street is like this is the end of

00:55:30.960 hitler he's finally gone too far he's framing somebody for this tragedy he's gone too far

00:55:35.840 what rome or excuse me not what rome sees what hindenburg sees and what vice chancellor pappen 0.99

00:55:41.360 sees is this Hitler guy's a lunatic. Everybody thinks he's an idiot. We're going to use him 1.00

00:55:48.480 and we're going to use him up. So we're going to sick him on the left and we're going to give him

00:55:54.880 these emergency powers and he can have the Reichstag decree and Hindenburg is not going to

00:55:58.620 call up the army. He's not going to use his power to vacate and clear the chancellery.

00:56:02.100 He's going to let Hitler Tucker himself out. I need you to repeat that. Everybody thinks 0.91

00:56:07.040 Hitler is a what? Like Hindenburg thinks Hitler is a lunatic. A lunatic. And an idiot. And an 0.99

00:56:14.200 idiot. Yet Hindenburg and Papen are both aligned of like, we can use him. He is useful. We will 1.00

00:56:19.840 use him until he collapses. And then he will eventually push himself too far. And that will

00:56:25.000 be our excuse. He will break something important and we will say, ah, but I Hindenburg, a man of

00:56:29.720 the people have the interest of Germany at heart. And as president, I will vacate the chancellery

00:56:33.740 and we will do new elections. And so what we see is this tidal wave of violence unleashed on the

00:56:39.340 left. It's unleashed on the communists. It's unleashed on the socialists. It's unleashed on

00:56:43.520 left-leaning social Democrats. It's unleashed on Catholics. Anybody that had any sort of left-wing 0.87

00:56:49.220 sympathies whatsoever finds themselves nabbed up and hauled to a concentration camp. We get the

00:56:53.560 outpouring of initial waves of anti-Semitic violence, anti-immigrant violence. There are

00:56:58.700 accounts of tourists who are just falling face forward into embassies because the gestapo

00:57:06.380 snatched them up because they weren't like patriotic enough when the the brown shirts

00:57:10.580 walked by uh doing a street march and the gestapo just beat them senseless and then put them back 0.53

00:57:15.300 out on the street and so the international community is saying like this hitler guy is

00:57:19.860 like give hindenburg five more minutes and he's gonna sack him we can't keep having this this is

00:57:23.280 an international incident one after the other hindenburg's gonna sack him and then hindenburg

00:57:27.660 dies yeah he never dies he's he's old and he's died yeah so no there's no there's no putting 0.62

00:57:35.820 the poison in his tea kind of thing like no wild that he just dies though well hitler doesn't need

00:57:41.180 him to die um rather hitler needs him to die to assume the powers of the presidency and the

00:57:47.180 chancellor drop the title and become the purer he needs that to happen but i really want to emphasize 0.98

00:57:53.420 that shift from chancellor to fuhrer by the time it happens it's basically a technicality semantic

00:57:59.900 yeah he has a paramilitary that far outnumbers the actual military he has all of the organs of

00:58:06.700 the state he has party members in all of the positions of bureaucratic power he has support

00:58:11.500 from the german courts that were this old right aristocratic conservative being bent anyway um

00:58:18.460 and so the last piece is like whenever hindenburg dies that's when i i take the official title and

00:58:24.460 i officially control the army even though now that wrong is dead the army respects me because they

00:58:31.020 saw me as handling wrong and that's what they wanted so oh my god so um by virtue of the treaty

00:58:39.580 of versailles dismantling the military but not dismantling or stopping or negating militarism

00:58:46.140 that they allowed they created the space with which these individuals could create a paramilitary

00:58:54.460 to take over the state with nothing to protect the state or democracy as it very much existed

00:59:01.680 in germany from being eradicated

00:59:04.920 nail on the head well you know it's you know that's the only silver lining so far of where

00:59:14.840 we're sitting right now a little bit yeah there's lots of silver linings do not be hopeless as long

00:59:20.920 as the military does what i'm hoping the military will do you know what i mean like there's no

00:59:26.200 outplaying the american military um so there's a couple of a couple of points of hope and i will

00:59:33.080 call i will call our present moment a fascist moment but i want to emphasize that it's not the

00:59:37.720 same kind of fascism just like the liberalism of today is not the same liberalism of the founding

00:59:42.920 fathers. What we see out of the fascists' original recipe in Italy and in Germany is that a lot of

00:59:51.840 the party leaders are these incredibly highly educated, incredibly intelligent men. And what

00:59:57.260 we see out of our modern burst of fascism is its podcast hosts and its talk show guys and its people

01:00:03.020 who wrote children's books. Reality TV, yes. Reality TV stars. It's people who were the

01:00:10.000 original recipe guys all of them suffered and sacrificed and risked life and limb to secure

01:00:16.900 their power several of them died in the attempt of securing power because they genuinely believed

01:00:23.160 in this mass movement of fascism as the solution to the modern world and so many of our current

01:00:30.200 run of thought leaders on the far right are con men who don't believe in anything right when

01:00:35.100 when charlie kirk gets assassinated and of course it's horrifying that a public figure

01:00:40.680 gets popped in broad daylight of course it's horrifying um we see it's immediately used to

01:00:45.940 milk money before he's even in the ground t-shirts t-shirts his wife yeah i saw a guy wearing a t-shirt

01:00:52.360 two days after it happened a memorial t-shirt and and the logistics of that shirt existing

01:00:57.560 mean that someone designed and printed it the minute it happened like the dude died and then

01:01:03.180 someone immediately got on canva and started doing design um and so my my sense of hope here is

01:01:09.380 several pronged first our constitutional order is really really well built to resist authoritarians

01:01:15.360 that was kind of the point of doing it is our founders didn't want another king the other point

01:01:19.820 is that a lot of the people leading this authoritarian surge are entirely in it for

01:01:24.260 themselves and we see it over and over the minute things get wobbly they bail they cash their bag

01:01:28.880 they bail um and it's also being driven at the ground level at the foot soldier level by people

01:01:36.000 who are so atomized and isolated and brain melted that you do get acts of incredible violence and i

01:01:44.160 don't want to i don't want to dissuade from like the people like kyle rittenhouse that are out

01:01:49.040 there opening fire on people or the people like um oh my god he was the the christ church shooter

01:01:54.640 who got radicalized on 4chan right right right yeah yeah yeah what we don't see are incredibly

01:02:00.640 well organized military style paramilitaries staffed by people who were military veterans

01:02:06.000 who follow a robust chain of command and have connections to the state yeah that's we do have

01:02:11.120 even if we compare it to ice right like even if i mean a lot of people are listening to this

01:02:15.440 comparing it to ice but even compared to ice what we're seeing with i'm not seeing when you see the

01:02:22.080 videos whether they're horrific and somebody gets shot nine times or whether you're just seeing

01:02:26.720 these guys operate the last thing i see the last thing i see is organized intelligent command

01:02:34.480 driven and actual military men you see disorganization fear and and screaming

01:02:45.280 they lose they lose and they're losing and that's what i think is really important for

01:02:50.560 for us to understand is they are losing that ice pulls back from minnesota that the trump

01:02:57.060 administration goes to court when it tries to overreach with its excuse me again uh where it

01:03:02.560 tries to overreach with its power and it loses it loses in court when it does that the constitutional

01:03:07.920 order is being strained the hardest it's ever been strained yes it's still holding and if i could

01:03:14.640 give your viewers and i know we're kind of coming up on time if i could give your viewers a thing

01:03:18.500 to take away. Again, as long as you have nowhere to go, this is the most, I feel I've just been

01:03:23.200 educated about seven years right now. So you take your time. You don't look at the, unless you have

01:03:27.660 to go, you don't worry. I'm a dad and it's getting on bedtime. I got you. I got you.

01:03:34.420 If I could give your, your viewers something to take away with them. The reason that Nazism 0.80

01:03:41.440 succeeded was not the amount of people that were evil and did bad. It was the amount of people who 0.92

01:03:48.200 saw what was happening and they talked to their friends and they oh this hitler guy's a lunatic 0.73

01:03:53.000 and he'll be out and oh i can't stand that guy and oh this guy and that's all they did

01:03:57.440 evil succeeds when good men do nothing i'm not to you at home i'm not saying you have to be

01:04:04.360 the first in line on the protest i'm not saying you have to donate all your money

01:04:08.580 i'm saying you have to do something and as long as enough of us do something then we win

01:04:16.060 i'm gonna leave it there i'm gonna leave jonathan this was by far the most fascinating

01:04:26.060 educational incredibly important hour i have spent in a very long time i would love to have

01:04:33.360 you back anytime you have time around bedtime before bedtime uh my channel is your channel

01:04:40.300 i will talk about anything you are incredible please tell everybody where to find you

01:04:45.800 and and where to watch more of what you have to say okay um so pluggy the pluggies um yes you can

01:04:52.880 find me on tiktok at johnster truck like monster truck with a j you can find me on instagram at

01:04:59.260 johnster truck monster truck with a j you can find me on youtube where i do longer form stuff

01:05:03.680 and more documentary style videos you can find me on patreon again all of that is johnster truck

01:05:08.620 and if you would like to read my science fiction where i try to apply um a really academic approach

01:05:14.680 to authoritarianism to a setting that has laser guns and spaceships and magic, then you can check

01:05:20.580 me out on Amazon. My books are The Night Sky Darker, Fire in the House of God, and The Stars

01:05:25.060 Themselves Shall Weep. Book one just got finished with its audiobook on Audible. Oh my, and by the

01:05:30.560 way, for everybody listening to that and you couldn't take all those notes so fast, I am going

01:05:33.600 to put that, he's going to send it to me. I'm going to put that all in the description section

01:05:37.440 so you can go to the description section. You can find it. You don't have to be worrying about

01:05:41.180 taking all of those notes. But that is incredible. Jonathan, thank you so much for spending an hour.

01:05:47.700 I truly appreciate it. I welcome you back anytime you want. And thank you for the moments and the

01:05:55.360 pieces of hope that we are now standing in, because I think that's incredibly needed.

01:06:01.640 And to everybody who's listening, thanks for hanging out with us.

01:06:04.500 And I will see you next time. Same bat time, same bat channel.

01:06:09.080 Dismissed. 1.00

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - February 10, 2026

The One Where Jon Schools Me About Fascism

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