Behind the Bastards - Behind the Insurrections - Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Part 2

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

In Part Two, we continue to discuss Hitler's disastrous beer hall putsch. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Still Hitler, I'm Robert Evans. Yeah man, this is part two of our episodes. Why Robert, why? Cause it's a Hitler episode. You gotta give the red meat to the base. It's like one of the only episodes where this flies. So like, if you wanna do it one more time, it's fine. I did it, two times is enough.

Two is enough, two is enough. My next Hitler episode. I give your version, I give Robert Mishity's like no. Welcome back to behind the insurrections. This is part three. We had an episode started off with an episode on the March on Rome. Now we're doing a two-parter.

This is part two of our two-parter on Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch. And then we will continue with other fascist attempts to seize power and talking about anti-fascism and we'll have a few more episodes to do. So strap in, buckle up, eat some rice. Rice seems like a good thing to eat. Get some rice.

It's good for you. Get some rice. They get that brown rice that's got like the extra, you know, the vitamins and shit in it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, don't skin your potatoes if you're eating potatoes. That's where all the vitamins are. And get ready. I actually enjoy potato skins.

I love potato skins. You know who didn't love potatoes? Actually, Hitler did love them. He was a vegetarian. Actually he did. Yeah, huge, huge fan of vegetables. Anyway, here's the story. Yeah, as soon as von Lasso and Carr and Cicer are free,

they immediately warn Berlin and call for military reinforcements from the rest of Bavaria and try to organize the rest of the police who aren't on Hitler's side into some sort of counterpunch. Now this would... Can you imagine them looking at each other

right when they step out of the room like, I can't believe that worked? We're not coming back, right? Like, no, we're gonna kill these people, right? Kill these people, right? I can't believe you believe this. Like, I can't believe that worked. You know, I think I know why we lost the war.

That guy might not be very smart. He's sort of a dumbass, ain't he? Yeah, I can't believe you thought for that. Yeah, yeah. So now while this is happening, it's gonna take time, right? Shit doesn't turn on a dime. You know, this is nighttime on the 8th

when they get free and start warning everybody. It's gonna take hours for them to like actually get a counterpunch force in place to fight the Nazis. And so for the rest of the night of November 8th, the Nazis find themselves in total control of a German city for the first time in history and they very predictably did Nazi shit. Yeah, yeah.

Members of Stostrupp Hitler first swarmed the offices of the Munchner Post, a social democratic paper which they considered a Jewish paper. They threatened the business manager at gunpoint in order to gain entry and then they destroyed everything inside, throwing ink on the walls,

cutting phone lines, smashing desks, destroying 380 panes of glass. One Nazi later recalled, we forced open the doors of this place, ransacked the building and flung all the printed stuff we could lay hands upon out into the street.

Now, during the assault, a police officer arrived. Not to stop the Nazis, but to make sure they didn't damage the printing presses because Hitler wanted those because he wanted to take them and give them to one of his newspapers. Hey, hey, hey, hey, you ruffian. Hey, hey, we're stealing that.

Don't break it. Yeah. I mean, we're all Nazis here. Just don't break the, that's valuable. Carry on. Don't break the printer. Beat those people. Fine, just don't hurt the printing presses.

Those cost money. Yeah. They're all scared like, oh no, kill that dude. I'm saying don't break the printer. Yeah. No, you're not under arrest. Of course not. Yeah.

Yeah. So they looted everything of value, including an estimated six trillion German marks, which is, you know, even at that point, a decent amount of money. While they were raiding, they found the home address of the paper's editor, who's a Jewish man.

So they broke into his home next and they threatened his wife at gunpoint. Now, he was already in hiding, but the Nazis did not leave right away. And I'm gonna quote again from the trial of Adolf Hitler. This guy's name is Auer. Auer's elder daughter, Sophie, asked the intruders to be as quiet as possible

because her own two-year-old daughter was sleeping. Maurice, ignoring the request, asked who the father was as he rummaged through their closets, laundry, and bedding. He then smashed up a cupboard and turned over bookshelves, apparently looking for weapons as much as any clue for the whereabouts of the editor. We are the masters and we govern now, Maurice boasted.

And that guy, Maurice, would wind up being Hitler's valet, like he was his driver and shit in bodyguard for a while. Yeah. Now, attacks continued through the night, led by different gangs of Nazis. One small group was led by a bank clerk named Ernst Hübner, who got drunk at the start of the push

and went off with friends in search of quote, Jews and other enemies of the people to attack. They broke into restaurants and hotels, demanding that Jews exit, beating people and kidnapping them. At least 24 Jewish people were kidnapped and held hostage during this period. Numerous others were beaten. Businesses were ransacked.

Nazis, in other words, did Nazi shit. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's fun about this is in the wake of all this, stories will come out, like police will claim that, police who were members of the Nazi party will claim that while this was happening, Hitler condemned the violence against Jewish people.

And the kernel of truth in that is that Hitler condemned the fact that some of his Nazis took off their swastika armbands while they were beating new Jewish people. So we didn't condemn the violence as much as he was like, why didn't you wear, that's good, it was a branding opportunity, guys. It's still a brand, fellas.

Come on. Come on. We got these armbands for a reason. We pay good money for this shit. What are you doing? You're supposed to wear it. Yeah. So by the early morning, Hitler and his closest lackeys realized what Ludendorff had done

and gradually came to understand that Berlin had been called and the army was coming for them. This brought a wave of hopelessness to some. The rash nature of the push, the fact that the timeline had been moved up two days at the last minute, the poor communication,

and the fact that a lot of time had been spent giving long Hitler speeches to rooms full of drunk people and beating up random Jewish people in the street. Instead of securing Munich, meant that the Nazis were about to face off against the Bavarian army without full control of the city. They kind of got drunken out of control

and failed to do the things that were necessary to actually defend their territory, you know? Yeah, y'all ain't think that through, man, Nazi shit. Yeah, Nazi shit. So Ludendorff was aghast when he realized that General von Lasso had not kept his word. He is very brokenhearted by this. He can't believe it.

He actually like tries to call him and be like, come on, you promised, man. Hey, man. Hey, man. What about that word? You said you were gonna come back, bro. Yeah, come on, man. You know, I gotta tell you, man, I'm hurt.

I'm hurt, I'm personally hurt, man. I'm not angry, I'm disappointed, you know? Bro, man, we're supposed to have some sort of code. Come on, man. So funny. It's extremely funny. So Ludendorff, yeah, is horrified. Hitler's just angry.

And he insists that the Nazis go on with what most people now realize is a hopeless push. Hitler rants that he's prepared to fight for the cause and not a coward. He also screams that by betraying him von Lasso and the other members of the triumvirate had forfeited their quote, right to exist. Oh, God.

Hardcore Nazi guy. I mean, he's like, you know. Yeah, they just be saying like, if it wasn't so violently dangerous, again, it's like the goofball thing, where I'm just like, why are you such a drama queen, bro? Like, they revert their right to exist. Like, hey, man.

And you know Hitler was wearing those corny ass cargo short shorts when he said it, too. Right? Oh, yeah. Just like, hey, man, you just, I'm going to fling my trench coat off and I got my two crosses in there. Like, bro, the theatrics, man?

Like, look, bro, was this unnecessary theatrical anyway? Yeah, it's just Nazi shit. Like, OK, man, just if you're going to shoot the place up, shoot the place up. You ain't got to do all what is all it is anyway. He's Nazi shit. You know, so at this point in time, Hitler's organized forces in Munich number around 4,000.

Whereas the government in Munich only has about 2,600 troops and police combined. And obviously, a lot of the police are Nazis. Yes. Now, reinforcements were on their way rapidly. And so some of Hitler's men suggested retreating outside of the city with the forces they had to a small town where they had a strong base of support.

Ludendorff argued against that and instead insisted that they needed to carry out a public show of strength and march through Munich in numbers to rally the people of the city to their banner. So like, that's kind of Ludendorff city is like, no, we can't retreat. If we start marching, the people will join us. We'll start the march on Berlin now.

And yeah, I'm going to quote from the trial of Adolf Hitler here. Perhaps a show of popular support would convince Carr, Lasso, and Cicer to abandon their intention to oppose them. Surely, too, it was reasoned. The army would not shoot at a procession led by such a popular national figure as General Ludendorff.

The heavens will fall before the troops fire on me, Ludendorff had told a colleague the previous day. The soldier's would, it was hoped, flocked to the banner of the swastika. With a little luck, nationalist momentum might push Hitler to Berlin just as it had propelled Mussolini to Rome. It didn't.

It didn't. Hitler gathered about 2,000 men at the burger brow. And he did, in fact, march them to the center of the city. And for a little while, things went well. 15 minutes into the march, the Nazis approached a group of 30 police officers with heavy machine guns. And the police tell the Nazis to stop.

And Herman Gehring yells back at them, don't shoot your comrades. And then right after saying, don't shoot your comrades, like a trumpet blows, and the Nazis charge the police and take their guns and beat them unconscious with their own rifle buds. Which is, again, some serious DC on the sixth energy right there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are your friends? Wham! It's beating a cop with a Blue Lives Matter flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that a thin blue line rag? You just tied around that man's neck to choke him? So, yeah, the police were taken captive.

The Nazis beat them and take their guns and send them back to the beer hall. And Nazi propaganda would describe this assault on the police as police fraternization, right? Like, it's us being friendly with the cops. Yeah. Now, this early success would not prove to be how the rest of things went.

Eventually, the crowd reached a barricade of 100 police officers set up in a narrow street where their flanks were protected. The Nazis advanced. And while it's not known who started shooting, a gun battle ensued. Four police officers and 16 Nazis were killed. Hitler was pulled to the ground by his bodyguard

and his shoulder was dislocated. Gehring was shot in the groin and the leg. And this is actually why Hermann Gehring, in the pictures you see of him as like when he's in power, is like heavily overweight. It's why he becomes a morphine addict. Like, he's horribly injured and he gets addicted to painkillers. Yeah, and then he like starts overeating

when he can't be on painkillers in order to deal with. Like, he's badly hurt by this. Now, there's a couple of different stories about what happens with Ludendorff. The most common one that like Ludendorff backs is that while all of this gunfire is going on, he marches like straight back unharmed up to the police line and is taken into custody,

just completely unfrightened of bullets. Historians tend to suspect that like, no, he was a soldier like Hitler and everyone else who had military experience. He dove for the ground when the shooting started. That's what you do, right? Like, you don't stand up, yeah. No one stands up.

You go to the fucking ground. Like, that's what, yeah. And Hitler gets really messed up by this too. Like I said, his shoulder is like really badly dislocated. He doesn't get shot though. And as soon as it's clear that his men, because the Nazis fire back and they kill some cops, as soon as it becomes clear

that the Nazis are gonna lose this giant gunfight, Hitler runs like fuck. And Nazi propaganda would later claim that he sees like a 10-year-old boy who gets wounded by the police and he like picks him up and runs him to safety. Oh my God. This is a, for one thing, his arm didn't work.

Yeah, so that didn't happen. Like it's a complete lie. He ran because he didn't wanna die. He did what every, what they all did. Literally anyone would do. Yes, yes. Is you, oh, they're shooting. I should not get shot.

I'm out of here. Yeah. I really ain't signed up for this. I just wanted to, yeah, no. So he flees and he eventually takes a car to his friend's Puzzi's manor in rural Bavaria. And of course, as we talk about it in another episode, he tries to shoot himself there

and Puzzi's wife, Helena, who he has a crush on, like stops him, takes his gun and like throws it into a barrel of flour. Which is, you know, maybe not the best call anyone ever made. Yeah, it was one of those like short-term, goodness, long-term. Like in the moment, that was probably the right thing to do.

Yeah, but didn't end up well. So, yeah, Hitler eventually gets arrested and he's charged with, you know, trying to overthrow the government. Now, the maximum sentence for a guilty verdict would have been life imprisonment. And even if he wasn't put away for life, Hitler wasn't a German citizen.

And the law code at the time stipulated that foreigners convicted of high treason should be deported after serving their sentence. Now, when he was brought to jail, Hitler was initially despondent, telling one police interviewer that he wanted to just shoot himself and get it over with.

But as the days and weeks went by, it became clear that most of the Bavarian government, and many of its people, were at best ambivalent about prosecuting Hitler. He was extremely popular. Nazi protesters took to the streets immediately after he was arrested, like shouting Heil Hitler and down with a car.

Even a lot of the cops and soldiers who had put down the rebellion were broadly pro-Hitler. They didn't wanna see him punished. Now, this was kind of compounded by the fact that the press, even the left-wing press, didn't take Hitler seriously because the Putsch had failed. The New York world ignored Hitler's role in it for the most part and declared it Ludendorff's Putsch

and depicted Hitler as a bumbling sidekick who'd gone off half-caught and dragged the general down with him. A major Berlin paper described it as a Ludendorff Putsch and compared it to a childish prank rather than a severe attempt to destroy democracy. The New York Times probably had the best coverage. They made a pointed note that Hitler was a skilled orator

and very charismatic. They laid out his skill at weaving the nation's resentments and racial bigotry into a cohesive political platform capable of getting people out into the street. You know, the New York Times falls down on the job a lot later with Hitler. But at this point, at least that writer sees the danger,

you know? Now, meanwhile, in France, a left-wing paper, the Republic François, yeah, the French Republic, I guess is the name of the paper in French. Yeah, and this is a very socialist paper. It warns its readers that the real victim of the Putsch was not the Nazis, but the Bavarian government who had brutally suppressed a popular uprising.

The trial of Adolf Hitler notes, it was instead a war between two different visions of dictatorship and the most dangerous one, it believed, was not the one suppressed. Several papers on the left agreed with this assessment. Hitler, in his defeat, looked ludicrous and less menacing than the state authorities who had stopped him.

The illusion would only grow in the coming months. So like, no, no, the state's way worse than Hitler, you know, like he's just a silly dude. Again, the lesson of history is that no one has ever learned a lesson from history. Ever. Not a single person. Not a, God damn it, man. God damn.

And the idea, the part that's so chilling is like, you know, him sitting in prison almost, the idea of him almost checking out and being like, maybe let's not do this. And then the streets rise up for him. And he's like, wait, what? Wait, y'all like me? All right, let's, let's, let's, let's push on.

You know, like that, that's, that part is so chilling where it was just like, he almost stopped. Yeah. He could have been stopped. And this is, the story at this point is why he wasn't, you know? Yeah. Like, like why he didn't,

why this wasn't the end of his political career. Because the big question of the Munich beer hole putch isn't why didn't it work because it was a terrible idea from the start, right? It was doomed from, it was badly planned and organized. Y'all ready? Yeah. It is instead, why didn't this putch end Hitler's career?

And the answer to that question comes once again, down to the justice system. Law enforcement, the police in Munich in particular were critical in allowing the Nazis to rise to power in the first place. And in 1924, the year of Hitler's trial, the justice department would prove critical in keeping his ambitions alive or the justice system,

I don't know what they call it in Germany, whatever. So, Hitler goes to court. And as a note, they take him to court in like a military academy. And the academy is empty because all of the young soldiers being trained in the military academy were part of Hitler's putch. So like, yeah, I like to show you how, yeah.

Yeah, is this the trial? So I read that the democracy. Yes. So is this the trial where the judge was essentially like, I don't give a shit, I like the guy. This is one of those, the democracy I think is talking about the trial with a different, like there were a couple of trials like that.

It happened more than once. Okay, cool. This is the first time, well actually, it's not the first time. No, no, no, no. It's not the first time with this judge as we're about to talk about. Okay, go ahead.

So the presiding judge in Hitler's case was a guy named George Nighthart. Now, Nighthart had a reputation for opposing democracy and liberalism and just loving himself the far right. He was a monarchist in his bones and he took his rage at Weimar democracy out on left wing, like what you might call it,

people like on the left who wound up in his docket. Now, this was not an isolated phenomenon in Germany. Most judges were very much far right. Statition Emile Gumbel analyzed murder trials in Weimar Germany from 1918 to 1922. He found, quote, right wing defendants received a not guilty verdict, no fewer than 326 of 354 cases.

There were no death penalties and only one life sentence. Left wing defendants, by contrast, were judged innocent only four of the 22 cases, receiving 10 death penalties and three life sentences. The length of the sentence also confirmed the double standard, 15 years on average for the left, four months for the right.

God. We're back. Now to bring this back to modern history, the UK Guardian just conducted a study on last year's protest, involving 13,000 left and right wing demonstrations and found that police were like four times as likely to use force on left wing demonstrators

and three and a half times as likely to use force on left wing demonstrators during protests where there was no destruction of property or looting. So this is not a the left like loots more. This is a win in right wing protests where there's no violence and left wing protests where there's no violence.

The police are three and a half times more likely to use violence against the left. Cool stuff. Cool shit. It's the same. It's all the same. Broadly speaking, like we do, like our judges and DAs and stuff are kind of,

well, in some areas are less like the Nazis were, right? For one thing, they didn't transition from being under a king to a democracy and weren't all angry about that, which is not the whole Justice Department is stacked towards the right, but it's not as bad as it was for Weimar, but it's pretty bad.

Now, Nighthart had actually ruled on a case involving Hitler once before in January of 1922, when Hitler had attacked a rifle politician giving a speech at another beer hall. Hitler had faced three to six months in prison then, and Nighthart had ordered him to serve just a month, although he'd also put him on probation. And Hitler was on probation

when he tried to overthrow the government in 1923. He was on probation. Wow. They're already on probation. Tag, you're like, oh, I know the judge, we good. The judge, who knew that Hitler was on probation, didn't bring this up at all during the trial, didn't form the jury, made sure no one knew

that Hitler was on probation when he tried to overthrow the government. Oh my God. That's a lot. It's extremely funny. It's rad as hell. Don't, yeah, no notes. So, yeah, the website's famous trials

gives a good overview of how the case opened, and it makes it clear just how stacked the deck was in Hitler's favor. The presiding judge called Hitler to the stand, consistent with German procedure at the time, the questions came from the judge, not the prosecutor, although they were written largely by the prosecution. In the afternoon session,

Hitler gave a nearly four-hour opening statement that dazzled spectators. He began by telling his life story, then shifted to his political vision. He was animated, his voice rising and falling as he laid out his vision of the country's problems and hopes for the future. He was unsparing in his criticism of racial minorities

and left-wing ideologies, calling communists not even human. He blamed the government in Berlin for the economic crisis, saying it had practically robbed the people of the last marks from their pockets. He said, policy is made not with the palm branch, but the sword.

Hitler's words were reported around the world. Hitler claimed to want only the best for his people, and said he alone bore the responsibility and also every consequence for the failed push. He compared the Bavarian leaders who turned on him to a horse that lost its courage before the hurdle. So, four hours of this shit? Yeah, and one of the main impacts of this is that

he gets to speak for hours and lay out his entire political philosophy at a trial that is internationally reported on. So suddenly this guy who was unknown outside of Bavaria becomes known worldwide. Yeah. Because the judge lets him just say whatever he wants. Just let everyone,

can you imagine being a prosecution in this situation and being like, is he done? Point of order? This is four hours. It's four hours, dawg. You not even talking about the case. Yeah. Are you serious?

Yeah. So when sensitive matters were addressed, matters whose disclosure might be especially embarrassing to the government or suggest a violation of the Versailles Treaty, like all of the machine guns being given to militias, the court went into secret session. So for example, Hitler's testimony that his party's stormtroopers

were trained with the knowledge and support of Bavarian authorities, a clear violation of the treaty was never heard or reported by the international press. So the fact that like, before Hitler tried to overthrow the government, the army had trained and given guns to his militias, they just hid that.

Talk about that. Because it's a violation of international law, you know? We just, we broke our, yeah. We broke everyone's laws. I think everyone's laws, dawg. So a bunch of fucked up stuff came out during the trial, including the fact that the Bavarian police commissioner had been promised by Hitler one week before the push

that he would not do a push. Like Cicer went to Hitler and was like, are you planning to overthrow the government? And there was like, no, of course not. Why is everybody just trusting each other? Me? Hitler overthrow a government? No. Come on, man. Hey, we're good, bro.

You're good. We're good. Don't even trip. We're good. Can I have some more machine guns? Like 30 more, maybe tops, right? Just 30 more machine guns for duck hunting, you know? I tell you what, pass medium guns, promise you everything's cool. These are not overthrowing the government guns. They're, you know, like, you know, just walking around guns

just for style, you know? I'm a collector. I'm a collector of machine guns. Yes. God, dawg. So why is everybody, why everybody in power just believe the other dudes? Like, hey, homie, you gonna come back, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. You're not gonna do this, right?

You're not gonna overthrow the government, are you? We're good. Come on, y'all, man. This is why they needed women in power, because we would have been like, trust issues, no. Absolutely not. No, no, no, no. Then there's been, there's been multiple times that my wife has been absolutely correct about stuff that I was completely like, nah, it's cool.

It's cool. She was like, no, it's not. And I'm smart enough after this many years to listen to her. Now, no one listened to anyone smart when they put Hitler on trial. There was a good member of the prosecution, who really wanted to put him away, but other members of the prosecution were actually sympathetic to Hitler.

One of the prosecutors described Hitler's desire to institute a military dictatorship as a high, perhaps morally legitimate goal. Although he added that this did not justify his use of criminal means. Hey, man, you were right to overthrow the government to institute a dictatorship, but did you have to use violence?

Hey, man, not like this, bro. Peaceful protest, Hitler, come on. Come on, man, not like this. The prosecution, some of the prosecution at least, praised Hitler's honest efforts to inspire belief in the German cause and said, as human beings, we could not withhold our respect from Hitler.

What the? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I am growing, trying to grow in empathy here, but I'm just like, okay, I know hindsight's 20-20, but fam, you, for real? You know who's not getting enough respect? This Hitler fella. This guy.

No respect. You know, I've been reading this guy. I heard him talk for 22 days cause he ain't shut up the whole 22 days. And I think something in there. I think this guy might be a pretty good Hitler. Might be our best Hitler, you know? Yeah.

Let's give him a shot. Wow. On March 27th, Hitler gave his final statement as defendants were allowed to do under German law. Hitler told the court that his goal was never to become a minister. Instead, I wanted to be the destroyer of Marxism. He said he was born for politics

and just as a bird must sing because he is a bird, he had to engage in a political life. He felt he had the duty to step forward and save Germany. The push was not a failure, Hitler said. On the contrary, it raised people to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. He predicted the hour will come when the masses who stand in the streets

under our swastika flag will unite with those who fired on us at us on November 8th. He said, the army we have formed is growing from day to day. Hitler's words moved a number of people in the courtroom to tears. Hitler argued that the government

was prosecuting the wrong people. For it is not you gentlemen who pronounce judgment upon us. Instead, the judgment of the eternal court of history will pronounce against this prosecution which has been raised against us. That's a quote from famous trials. Yeah, it's pretty great shit.

They just let him say that. Kind of rad, rocks. To be honest. And he was dead ass serious. That like, yo, I'm not done, y'all. It's only the beginning. Oh no, I'm gonna keep Hitlering. That's what Hitlers do.

Yeah, they just keep it. ABH baby, you know me. ABH, yeah. The big, big, big Hitlerese, you know what I'm saying? Is that a new T-shirt too? Yeah, can we get an always beaten? Probably not, huh? Probably not, okay.

Yeah, let's not do that. I don't know if you can invoke. I don't know if you can invoke the old hits, putting on the hits. That's the shirt. Putting on the hits. Where you could go, don't touch and sits. Putting on the hit, Lers.

So, Hitler and his co-defendants were found guilty. Most of them were sentenced to five years in prison which was the absolute minimum sentence and they would all be eligible for parole in six months. Ludendorff was acquitted on all charges. Judge Nighthart justified the lenient sentences by citing Hitler's purely patriotic, noble and unselfish motive of wanting to be

the supreme ruler of all Germany. This guy's not selfish, he just wants to be the dictator. Can you imagine having that much funness? Yeah, it's amazing. Okay, okay, so hear me out. I know I did this and I know a lot of people died but I'm also trying to take over the country. Yeah, in my defense, I wanted to be the dictator, you know?

Yes, in my defense. And I'm trying to save you from an imaginary enemy. Yeah, you might not have a dictator if I'm not your dictator, you know? You don't want to deal with that. You might get a dictator if I won your dictator. So some observers at the time recognized how preposterous and terrifying all of this was.

They probably confided in their wives, continue. Yeah, one German journalist called it a political carnival and pointed out that the judge allowing Hitler to make repeated flowery speeches just turned the trial into an ad for the Nazi party. And it seems to have worked. That spring, despite the party being officially banned, three of Hitler's 10 co-defendants

were elected to the Reichstag. So when I think about like, yeah, when I think about the fact that like, okay, so we've gone through another impeachment trial, it's people still on Donald Trump's side. Like when I just imagine myself being a senator and just when it's my time to talk, just being like, did we all not almost die Tuesday?

What is the fucking holdup? We just, we all here, we was all here, right? Did I didn't imagine this? Did we almost die on Tuesday? What are y'all talking about? Like, I just imagined that. So I imagined somebody in, you know, the Weimar Republic at the time going, did y'all just here?

Did my only one have just heard this? Yeah. Did y'all just, y'all heard that? This is a bad idea. How come nobody else here that this is a bad idea? Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of the repeated story of fascism in a lot of countries.

Because humans never learn anything. Not a single lesson. Is that the name of your next podcast after this, Humans Never Learn Anything? No one learns anything. So why listen to this show? Just download it so I get the ad dollars and just stumble forward.

I don't know. So it was sent to Lansberg Prison. And Lansberg Prison had two parts. There was a normal prison, which was like a panopticon. One of those big prisons where like the guards in the middle can see everything everyone does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's a big castle

that's like a luxury hotel. And Hitler gets sent to the luxury hotel part of the prison. Of course this motherfucker gets sent to the luxury hotel. The Germans had a whole chunk of their justice system that was luxury prisons for mainly right-wing terrorists. Oh yeah, he went to club fed.

Like what you call, you know what I'm saying? Count Arcovalley, the guy who shot Eisner, went to this prison and got like, and gets like, he lives in like a nice, like a condo basically. Yeah, exactly. Hitler gets. I might go rob somebody so I can go back.

Oh no, you gotta try to overthrow the government as a fascist to get to go here. So Hitler gets a private apartment at this castle. He's given tea, coffee, nice food, a liter a day of beer and all the books he wanted to read. His time was on his own. He was allowed to spend five hours a day walking through the garden and stuff, deep in thought.

All of his friends were in jail with him and they got to like party and play music. It was less prison and more being locked in a nice castle with your friends for less than a year. I was like, you're on a retreat, bro. A lot of people would pay for this, you know? Sounds like a frat house. I was gonna say like a TikTok influencer house.

Yeah, it's a hype house. Which is probably where our next fascist dictator will come from. I'm so proud of both of you for knowing those references. Oh yeah. I've been reading Taylor Lawrence's work. Good job, guys. Yeah.

Go hip. Aw. Ah, we're back. The worst thing about Hitler's sentence was that all of the comfortable free time that he got in Landsberg gave him space to work on his ideology. Here we go.

1924 would, as a result, go on to be one of the most important years in Hitler's life. I'm gonna quote now from a write-up by Douglas Linder. By July, Hitler was hard at work on a work that would be both autobiography and political manifesto. The completed work would be called Mein Kampf. It would be 782 pages long, and it would sell 12 million copies by 1945.

In the book, Hitler developed the two great themes that would mark his later career. First, he defined world history as a struggle between races and saw Aryans as the culture-creating race and Jews as the culture-destroying race. Second, he lays out a case for the imperative of German territorial expansion to the east. He called it living space for Germans or Levensraum.

On December 19th, the Bavarian Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hitler's parole. Hitler was released the next day. He said, when I left Landsberg, everybody wept, by which he means the guards, but not I. Hitler said his time in prison gave him that fearless faith, that optimism, that confidence in our destiny, which nothing could shake thereafter.

He said that the prison had given him a frenzy of liberty and that, without my imprisonment, Mein Kampf would never have been written. Yeah. What? Good shit. Damn it. Good shit.

I felt like as soon as you named the prison, if this was a movie, that's when like the single key of the haunting song starts. Yeah. That you think it's over and then the music builds and then it's having him walking around the thing with his hands behind his back just kind of chilling and then it zooms in on him writing.

You know, top of that, it says Mein Kampf and we're just like, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Dun, dun, dun. To be continued. Dun, dun, dun. Yeah.

Yep. It's good stuff. So. Yeah. Prop. Oh, God, that means you're stopping right there. Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's the push, you know? That's the story of the push and what happened after.

We're going to talk more about anti-fascism in Germany in a later episode of this mini series and stuff because we didn't really, a lot of that hadn't started yet, you know? Yeah. But after. Yeah, I got my names wrong because I thought this was the one when they set,

when he set the building on fire. No, and that's the Reichstag fire. That's the Reichstag fire. He's already in power when that happens. At that point, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

No, this is, this is his first attempt to take power and the fact that he receives no meaningful punishment from it is why he winds up in power. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like, huh. It's rad. So you should probably punish somebody.

You can't let this shit ride. Okay. Yeah. Maybe if a fascist tries to overthrow your government they should face severe consequences for it. You can't let it ride. Yeah. You can't let it ride.

For the sake of unity. You're not a big fan of the justice system or you want unity because it'll come back on you eventually. Yeah. Of course. Maybe. Possibly. Propitpop.com.

Yeah. Yeah. Those are my plugs. Kay. Yeah. And my plug is nothing. I have no plugs. I refuse to plug.

I will fight to the death anyone who tries to make me plug. So if you- He will put the plug, the plugs. Have I, have I missed a plug? No, it's your funeral. All right. Well. Bro, the thing is like you have so many things to plug.

Yeah, it's like- That I get it. I get it. It's exhausting. I have- Plug's free, Robert. All right. All right.

All right. Plug me. Plug me. Robert is at, I write okay on Twitter. He has a book called The Brief History of Vice. Uh-huh. He has a podcast called It Could Happen Here. Uh-huh.

The worst year ever with Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston. Yup. Uprising, which he did, which is with a local journalist and activist from Portland on the Portland uprising. Oh, I'm so tired. Behind the police with this beautiful man prop as well. West, west. Yup.

God damn it, Robert. Why did we do so many shows? I know, I've got that book. You got the one about the women- Oh, the women's war. The women's war. Which is when he went to Syria, I'm so tired. You're a machine, fool.

At T-Public for our merch. You could get the logo shirt for this podcast behind the insurrections there, and you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at BastardsPod. Hey, as a funny- You nailed it. You nailed it.

I also have a book. I also have a funny book. Oh, yeah. I heard the first episode today. Oh, you did. Oh, good. I listened to it. That was dope.

It's, you can find it in the behind the bastards feed. Yeah. We'll be coming out with the rest of it as a separate thing, and it'll also be available in EPUB form, so you can read it if you want to read it. So it'll be out. Somebody did say on my comments, which was so hilarious. Well, I don't want to drag the guy

because I appreciate they followed me. But about the artwork for this podcast, because I'm pretty sure there wasn't a fire there. So you guys putting a fire on there is pretty deceptive. There was a fire. I'm like, guys, it's, it's, number one, they turned around the logo in like two days.

And this was the best thing we could think of. And it looks pretty good. The original logo idea that I had that if somebody wants to create for me, like, I love you so much. It was a fun idea, yeah. My favorite idea ever is I wanted to take like, like in regards like the show Friends

when they're on that couch and on a fountain, but the fountain at the US Capitol, and then it's like Franco, Mussolini, Trump and Hitler sitting on the couch. I think that would have been fun. If somebody could do that for me, like, you'll make my, you'll make my like month. Yeah.

And also it's just, look guys, it's just, it's just the artwork. It's just, it's just the artwork. What are you gonna, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Yeah. It's fine. So to get across that this is history

of behind the insurrection that happened at the Capitol. And we have like an inch wide thing to do it in. It's fine. Deal with it. It's fine guys. What do you want? What do you want? Come on.

This fountain is free. It's free. None of you are paying for this. No. Come on. Unless you're buying our wonderful products and services. In which case, thank you very much. Yes. Thank you very much.

We love, we love products, services, all that stuff. All right, episode's over. Have a nice day.