Julian Dorey Podcast - #259 - "4th Reich" - Sinister NAZI Money Inside World's Largest Companies | David de Jong

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ David de Jong is an investigative journalist, bestselling author, and a news correspondent, currently based in the Middle East. Dating back to his time at Bloomberg, his stories are known for holding the rich and powerful accountable, particularly those in Germany. In 2022, his first book, "Nazi Billionaires," was published by HarperCollins PATREON https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey DAVID'S LINKS WEBSITE: https://daviddejong.net/ BOOK: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/nazi-billionaires-david-de-jong?variant=39935148359714 LISTEN to Julian Dorey Podcast Spotify ▶ https://open.spotify.com/show/5skaSpDzq94Kh16so3c0uz Apple ▶ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trendifier-with-julian-dorey/id1531416289 ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - David De Jong, “Nazi Billionaires”, Bloomberg Reporter, Living in Berlin 10:48 - Interest in WW2, David’s Relatives Escaping Nazi (Gestapo), Meeting WW2 Vets 18:49 - Working Bloomberg Reporting Family Offices, Saving BMW from Bankruptcy 27:41 - Germany’s Most Powerful Donors (Nazi Heritage), Hard Quant Hidden Wealth 37:03 - Corruption, Dutch Collabs w/ Nazi, Denazification, SS Officer at Porsche 50:39 - Is Germany Anti-Nazi Today? 59:37 - Blackmail & Nazi Power, Student Protest in Germany 1:05:49 - 1990s Nazi Germany Exposure Post-USSR, Companies Prior to Treaty of Versailles 1:19:59 - Main Families Pre-Hitler Rise 1:29:13 - Private Businesses Funding Nazi war Machine, BMW Dachau Concentration Camp 1:36:17 - Satellite Concentration Camps Running Them 1:45:21 - Litigating the Past 1:56:46 - Why Bloomberg wanted book, German Culture, Company w/ Nazi Ties Cleans House 2:08:59 - Crazy Case of Nazi Billionaires, Operation Paperclip Nazi’s 2:16:07 - Generations Held Responsible Until When, South American Rat Lines 2:27:13 - Hate Ideologies Rise 2:39:21 - Operation Ajax, Tracking Wealth & Where 2:46:11 - Living in Israel & Studying Middle East Conflict, 2-State Solution w/ Trump’s Cabinet 3:00:39 - Seeing Gaza w/ Dutch AirDrop, Julian’s Interest in Benjamin Netanyahu 3:12:25 - David's next projects CREDITS: - Host & Producer: Julian D. Dorey - In-Studio Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@alessiallaman Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 259 - David de Jong Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, I heard from our mutual friend Ari that someone wanted to come in and talk about Nazis, billionaires, and the Middle East. And I was like, say less, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So let's start unpacking this a little bit. You wrote a book, I guess, a couple of years ago. Yeah, two and a half years ago. Literally called Nazi Billionaires. Yes, that's literally what it's called. And from my understanding, you spent like four years deep on this, doing nothing but this research.

And I'm going to give the general idea here, but you're going to break it down like you basically traced modern money from major companies international companies back to old third reich money yeah how did how did you even like get the idea to do this in the first place yeah yeah i was i was a reporter at bloomberg news in new york and i was hired on this new team which investigated family offices, family-owned businesses, family, you know, non-stock exchange listed companies, which was really a blind spot for Bloomberg because they really focus on companies that are listed

or that are publicly traded on the stock exchange. And I was hired as a North Americaica reporter even though i'm dutch but soon my american bosses asked me um oh do you want to uh can you cover the german-speaking countries um they assumed me being dutch that i spoke fluent german which i certainly did not at that point which of course is a 25 year old reporter i didn't have the heart or i didn't dare to tell them they just said yes and i'm and you know and and went for it you go to german classes i would i did no i i did not i did later now i did later before i moved to germany but what i did was i would spend a month between thanksgiving and and christmas i would spend in the bloomberg bureaus in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

And the stories I always came back with were this mix of the financial and the historical and the business side of things. And what really struck me in my reporting was that companies like BMW or Porsche or Audi, mainly car brands, which is really the backbone of the German economy still today, but more importantly, the families that control them today,

uh, you know, they would celebrate their fathers and grandfathers for their business successes, but they would leave out any, you know, any mention of their mass war crimes, of their Nazi affiliations, of their SS memberships, uh, after they had purported to have reckoned with these crimes. So, they would be, you know, major global foundations named after them, you know, media prizes,

museums, academic chairs, corporate headquarters, you name it, celebrating these men without any transparency from where the money came from. And I thought that was such a wide wash of history such a brazen distortion of history that i ended you know first ended up reporting about it for bloomberg and a series of articles and then actually my colleagues were said you know you should write a book about this and actually my old boss matt he came up with the title nazi billionaires already back back in 2017 which really you know is very very to the point very

factual and i actually ended up leaving bloomberg in 2017 and moving to berlin for four years and really to immerse myself in the research in the archival research you know interviewing people you know trying to talk to these families we're really diving into the history in order to tell the contemporary cover-up story basically so and at this point you speak pretty good and at that point so so luckily when i moved to berlin which is such a great city i don't know if you have a video if you've ever been i've flown through it i've never been there it's it's it's one of my favorite cities uh on the planet and you know luckily for, luckily for me, I got, you know, the group of friends I made that were German,

and, you know, the Germans, you know, they force you to speak German. So, you know, they don't, you know, so I couldn't, you know. Initially, I was pretty nervous. So, you know, I kept to English, but, you know, I soon felt comfortable enough to speak in German. And, you know, that, you know, sustained to english but it you know i soon felt comfortable enough to to speak in german and you know that you know sustained me for four years having to work through

you know it was tough it was you know reporting out a book on such a sensitive and and and and secretive topic while being you know a native dutch speaker writing a book in English based on German sources was one of the hardest things I've ever did. And I'm very happy with the result. Yeah. Now, going back for one sec before we go to the investigation, you mentioned how your issue was the way... Hi there. I'm Ryan Reynolds,

and I have a list of things I like to have on set. It's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs scrambled with crispy hash brown, sausage crumble, and creamy chipotle sauce from Tim Hortons. From my rider to Tim's menu, try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box. A question of like the current generations leaving out that part about the older generations, which is interesting because it's all like, and this is a bit of a hypothetical for you sure but it's almost like let's say the current generations but didn't celebrate the old generations at all yeah just kind of was like they weren't good people we're here now doing our thing do you think you would feel differently going into the investigation because there would be like a sense of recognition there that like all all right, this is not something that was good at all.

And- Totally. I mean, either way, you know, I wouldn't have focused on the families I focused on, which ended up coincidentally being what is today, what are today Germany's wealthiest and most powerful business dynasties or some of the worlds, you know, had they not so brazenly or cravenly, you know, championed these men

for their business successes and leave out any trace of their war crimes, you know? If they had not mentioned it or if they had been, you know, transparent about it in the first place, I would have never had a chance to write about them, you know? But they, you know, acted with such impunity with regards to kind of the lack of more responsibility towards history that I thought that I really wanted to shine a light on that, you know, as a journalist,

you know, as a European, as a citizen of the world, you know, I thought it was just to kind of show their, uncover their hypocrisy and show that to the world i thought it was i thought it was pretty important how much had you studied lse are you having an audio issue over there yeah all right hold on one second everybody we'll be right back all right sorry about that we're back what i was going to ask there before we stopped was how much had you you a student of regular World War II history and stuff growing up? Was that always like an interest of yours? So you were kind of drawn back to it or not? So not as much actually I would say as a particular interest to me.

I think my family history – my family has tens of millions of other European families, right? I mean they had their own experiences during the war you know my grandfather um he was a very avid sailor and he was 25 years 25 years old when he decided to sail to england with his best friend to join the royal air force during world war II. And he was blown, they were blown back to shore on the second attempt and they were arrested by German soldiers and sentenced as political prisoners. He spent 20 months doing slave labor

in a German steel factory. Whoa. Yeah. And he was, you know, he was a tall Dutch guy, six foot five, you know, and he came out weighing a hundred pounds, you know, barely alive. What weighing 100 pounds, you know, you know, barely alive. What's up, guys, if you haven't already, please smash that subscribe button and hit that like button on the video. And if you don't have time to watch this episode

right now, I'd really appreciate it if you saved it to your watch later playlist on YouTube. Finally, if you'd like to follow me on Instagram or X, those links are in my description below. And was he in there with like other prisoners of the state? Yeah, yeah. Meaning like Jews or anything like that? I mean, that is unclear what, you know, what their background was. All I know from his stories and, you know, he didn't, you know, I was lucky enough to get to know him until I was 20.

And he was really kind of my hero growing up. He was really this kind of, you know, you know, he was super tall and this kind of you know proud dutch patriot you know but he really for him it was such a traumatizing experience right and um you know especially what he saw as you know the germans coming in and occupying his country it's just you know and he wasn't yeah he was he was christian you know it wasn't you know he he was persecuted not for his religious beliefs but he was persecuted because he tried to to flee the country to to to to and to then you know uh hopefully liberate his country right um and you know he you know he was he went to a sanatorium in switzerland afterwards where because he had tuberculosis.

He was emaciated. He was barely alive. And I think he always made jokes about the Germans growing up. That was his way to deal with what he'd been through. And he lived in a super small farming village, 300 people in the South of the Netherlands near the beach where all the Germans would always go. So he would always like make jokes like there's another invasion incoming

and, you know, and but, you know, I think that story and also the story of my other grandparents, my grandfather hid in Amsterdam, center of Amsterdam for three and a half years. He hid there? Yeah, he hid there because he was Jewish so so he he hid uh and my grandmother together with my three-year-old aunt fled to Switzerland where she was from and uh and they were with a traveling companion a painter and they were arrested by the Gestapo by the Nazi secret police on the French Swiss border and the Gestapo officer

took pity on my grandmother and my three-year-old aunt um because she you know because because my aunt was young and you know and and said i'll report back tomorrow with implicit message you know flee tonight and and and they made it over the border uh into switzerland a cassava officer yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but did this this competitor traveling companion this painter he he was he he reported back the next morning he was deported and murdered in a death camp yeah yeah so so certainly those experiences right both you know from both sides of my family uh very much informed me about history and and that i think also pushed me to you know wanting

to have transparency you know wanting to give transparency to to these histories right and and i thought it was also kind of this having this you know kind of this this righteous anger about about about their about their cover-up which sustained me doing research for four years in german documents yeah absolutely yeah that's some serious ties very different experiences as well on both sides totally absolutely you can absolutely in some ways like obviously you didn't live it but you lived through it you lived through those experiences because those are people that you were close to absolutely yeah i was very lucky enough to to get to know three of the four of my grandparents and hear their stories, and that very much just informed me about history.

But it was actually my maternal grandfather, the one who was locked up by the Germans, who was certainly in a way more, you know, I would say traumatized by it, but also in a way, but not in a way that hindered him in any way in his life but he was able to to channel it through humor which I think is the kind of the best the best remedy if you can if you can do that sure yeah and he also as you explained seemed to compartmentalize it because he didn't necessarily like talking about the experiences which I can imagine it's it's so crazy to me when

i sit up sometimes like as i get older we do get farther away from it yeah still yeah it's we're recording this at the end of 2024 yeah it is still just 79 years yeah since quote-unquote like the end of this war which that means obviously there's people who were still alive we actually just recorded with two world war two veterans and stuff which is so cool but like that is it's a whole different world technologically world order wise everything and yet this insanity that today would be viewed as like what yeah you know was happening just then yeah totally and and you know i I just gave a talk in Morrisson, New Jersey, and I met, you know, 100 year old veteran, you know, Sid Levitt, who was, you know, who was like, sharp as a razor, and it's just incredible meeting him. And, you know, he was part of

the liberation of Europe and, you know, thanking him for his service and be I was I was so impressed by by him. And, you know, look at my own family. Now, you know, we have our first enlisted officer, he's a US Marine, and he just deployed to Okinawa. And, and, you know, look at my own family now, you know, we have our first enlisted officer, he's a US Marine and he just deployed to Okinawa. And, yeah, so he's, you know, so as far as I know, it's the first one, particularly in these generations where, you know, we're serving, you know, we're signed up and are serving to protect our country

and protect the freedom of the world. So I yeah really greatly indebted to that you know i also think sometimes you know especially like it gives you perspective but we got to meet some of them obviously you got to meet one as well but even when you just listen to some of these guys who are still alive talk it's like we have so we fight over so much now yeah in society and i understand you know there's there's things we got to have progress on and move forward and stuff and there's going to be political fights that's always existed but it's like the perspective of those guys and the guys from england france and all the allies who saw like you know the bottom of the abyss so to speak not that long ago it's always important

to me to remember that because it's like they get and your grandparents understood the difference between like that fine line between like literal freedom and you're done you know everyone can just die yeah and sometimes in society i feel like we we lose that perspective because we cry wolf on every issue and we ignore the issues that actually you know maybe could devolve to something like that yeah we take things for granted so much and And we're also in that sense, particularly, I would say, in Western Europe and maybe other parts of the West, we're a bit spoiled in that sense of taking our freedoms. Agreed.

And our liberty for granted. And that's something, you know, the story of my family is the story of tens of millions of other Europeans, you know, and of millions of Americans who will, you know, help liberate Europe or, you know, or settle in the U.S. after the war, you know. And it is, you know, these are micro stories of my family, right? But this is a story that, again, that tens of millions of families have all across the world. Absolutely. Now, when you came into Bloomberg, you were saying that they put you on the family office

track and all that and trying to investigate the money that's not on the public exchanges, which to me is really fascinating. And I want to make sure everyone else out there can appreciate that and follow that. So just so you know a little bit of my background i came from wall street before i did this so i'm not a family office expert but it's something i came into contact with sometimes you know with some of the money that was sloshing around and it was always so fascinating to me because it was like this ivory tower kind of system yeah you'd have you'd just have like this little family tree and it's like oh they, they have their own set of people working on something.

And of course, it sounds like a Bond movie every time. That's not necessarily the case. But like when you were going to look into this, like how do you investigate or report on family offices? Yeah. Back when I – so when I started, you know, this was late 2011, November 2011, actually the week of Thanksgiving 2011, so exactly 13 years to the week. And the family office space was pretty nascent at the time.

It didn't get the scrutiny that it gets today, or it's not as big as an industry as it is 13 years on. But at the time, you would meet, it's not as big as an industry as it is you know 13 years on right but you know at the time you just you you would meet with you know it's what journalists do you you know you you say hey you know i'm new to this beat can i meet so and so you know and i think especially when you work for bloomberg you know you you get a foot in the door people want to talk to you either on the record on background background, off the record. You get an insight into an industry, which is indeed very closed off and secretive. But now the family offices have grown so big, right? Look at Elon Musk or Zuckerberg or any of these guys or families. They team up with a lot of uh private equity firms to do big

deals right so it's become more and more public as a force of nature and also in deal making and like a lot big deal making uh big mergers and acquisitions rather or takeovers rather than just you know building the money web you know building out or building out or sustaining multi-generational wealth through investing in stocks or bonds and real estate and private equity and hedge funds and you name it, right? Or art. Yeah. Oh, art's a huge one too.

Yeah, huge, huge class. I still don't understand all that because it's like you have it just so you can hide it for taxes and you don't enjoy it, but it's somewhere in a warehouse and that's on your balance sheet. Which is like sad, right? I mean, you should, if you buy, if you buy beautiful art, you should hang it up on the wall. Yeah, Steve Cohen hangs it on his wall. Exactly, exactly, exactly. He does, he does, he does. Yeah.

Yeah. And in his office. Yes. I've heard that but like you know the other thing that happens a lot in society now obviously across the western world and i think probably even in the eastern world but i should i know less about that but you know there's this whole kind of like elites versus everyone else battle that goes on and naturally things like this are in the middle of that understandably so but like sometimes i try to talk with people who just throw around the keywords i'll give you an example like they'll just say like oh blackrock's taking over the

world or something and my thought more is like i've seen these companies up close they're enormous corporations they're people who have emails that be like, you know, I have a hard stop at five and stuff like that. And what I try to talk with people about is if you want to talk about where there could be pieces of more sinister, you know, money running the world or things like that, I always say like, look at some of the very, very high end private, private equity firms and like some of the family offices they work with and it sounds like that's pretty much what you were doing totally because because actually the way into the story was that i found a or to my first story was that i found this kind of opaque looking website of a of a german family office which is called the harold

quant family office yes and they had 18 billion in assets under management and it turns out that harold quant is that bmw so it is bmw it's it's it's it's there there there it's two branches of the quants okay they're the main family in my book one branch uh controls the BMW group which is not only BMW but it's also a meaning and Rolls-Royce and and they it's two siblings they're the Germany's or Europe's wealthy siblings they have an estimated net worth each of 30 35 40 billions 40 billion you know liquid depending on the depending on the market and you know and they get it each they get a billion euro dividend every year from bmw right a billion euro dividend yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that'll do yeah that'll do that will do yeah we'll do sir

and and there's the other branch which is is the Harald Quandt branch, where Harald Quandt's mother was the late Magda Goebbels, so the propaganda lady, the wife of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Third Reich. Didn't they kill themselves? Yes, absolutely. And the kids. Absolutely. So Joseph and Magda Goebbels killed their six children in the Führerbunker on April 30th, 1945, right? But Magda Goebbels had a child from her first marriage to Günter Quandt, which was one of the biggest industrialists in Germany.

And he survived. Harald Quandt, which was one of the biggest industrialists in Germany. And he survived. Harold Quandt survived. He survived as a prisoner of war. He was a paratrooper, and he survived. He was in a British prison of war camp in Benghazi, of all places. In Benghazi. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he survived. And he and his older half-brother, the one who ended up rescuing BMW from bankruptcy and made his family the richest in Germany, they became two of Germany's largest post-war industrialists.

And they were Nazis. And Harald actually wasn't. This is the crazy thing. So Harald grew up in the most fanatic Nazi family, right? I mean, your stepfather is a Nazi minister of propaganda. Your real mother is referred to as the unofficial first lady of the Third Reich. Hitler is in love with her, but says, i need to be celibate because i'm married to the german people right so i have this has this arrangement where market and joseph goebbels serve

as this kind of perfect example of unity to to the germans they definitely had a lot of threesomes they they well they had a lot of affairs the two of them they had they they cheated on each other so much right but that these six uh they had the six children and then there was the older then there was harold from her first marriage who was also this you know this this this blonde kid who who fitted the these bizarre aryan ideals right so but he but he was just you, to put it bluntly, he was kind of a spoiled rich kid who wasn't interested at all in Nazi ideology. And he could get away with not joining the Nazi Party because his stepfather was Joseph Goebbels.

So he actually ends up becoming a paratrooper during World War II and does all these kind of daring behind enemy line drops on the Eastern Front in Italy you name it he's not a knot and he's not he's not a Nazi his half brother because that's the way I got into also got into the book his half brother Herbert was a huge Nazi who built you know concentration camps in German occupied Poland who exploited thousands of men and women in a battery factory in uh in Berlin including female concentration camp captives you know from Auschwitz who acquired companies stolen from Jews of France today BMW has a foundation named after him with the motto

inspire responsible leadership Herbert quant BMW Foundation, Inspire Responsible. That is BMW's largest foundation. Like that is their consumer facing foundation. Name- I fucking love BMWs though, that's the problem. Okay, well. You won't after this. You won't after this, believe me. So that was really, you know,

that's why the Quandts also became the main, the vocal point of the book, because they are still Germany's most powerful, you know, biggest political donors, you know, own, you know, it's arguably one of its most prominent car brands globally. Right. But they have these two branches with these two different stories right which make it so interesting do they do I'm just curious politically because like the Nazis were like fascists right wing did they donate to right or left wing or everything no they don't they donate now these families now or at least the BMW quants as I call them um the one with the Nazi father and grandfather uh they donate to the the christian conservative party so it's the conservative party which is like angela merkel's party okay it was like the establishment it's like the business establishment party okay got it there's no continued continuity as far as we know with regards to them supporting the far right or any or any or

the far left or whatever well you know they want to be they want to see they want to they want to show themselves as being you know uh decent people quote unquote yeah so um so that's what was really so that discovery of that family office that was a website you said it was a website it's up. It's like a one-page website. Can we pull it up? Yeah, yeah. I think so. Yeah, for sure. It's like a Halt Quant family office.

H-A-R-A-L-T and then space Q-U-A-N-D-T. Yeah. And then family office. Let's see if we can look at this bad boy. Here where we protect all our money. And absolutely all of it is 100 legitimate all right yeah that first one does that look like i think i think that might be the first one i think that might no no go go back to all go back to all yeah yeah yep see the first one hit that perfect yeah that's it that's the one yeah we have this on we have it on the screen that's the one

harold quant family office manages to pooled assets of the heirs of harold quant passed away in 1967 furthermore the harold quant family holds sole shareholdings and respectively one majority shareholding in several financial service companies hq capital hq equita hq trust hq asset servicing these financial services companies have a total of approximately US $17 billion assets under management. It's a couple bucks. The core competencies are in the development of global portfolio strategies backed by solid experience and alternative investment classes. There's a bunch of mumbo jumbo to say we're really rich. Yeah, basically. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And we have a lot of dozens of people working for us.

We're investigating, including a huge office in New York. york now what about so you just came across this i came across this and then i looked into because right because one of my mandates was to look into hidden wealth and bloomberg bloomberg yeah so it was so it was family offices family-owned businesses non-stock exchanges and hidden wealth what do they mean by hidden wealth hidden wealth is like offshore wealth like family offices right things that are not again the the non-listed family-owned companies to family offices kind of wealth that is not you know not like the Facebook guys who have an IPO and and you know you know their shareholding right but it is what they're it's basically what their investment vehicles do. It's kind of what goes on slightly behind, what you have to dig into to tell the audience, basically.

Not what's in an SEC filing. So like fly a drone over Switzerland, basically. Yeah, something like that. Gotcha. Or send me your human drone. Yeah, a human drone. Yeah, how do you go? You're a journalist, a talented journalist.

You got the Bloomberg backing. That's great. But how do you even get into places to try to find this stuff? So Germans are obsessed with the US. Okay. So which is kind of strange because – well, I would say most of us are European but kind of strange in the sense that you know we've also been occupied you've also been occupied by for five years but so so when i said hey i'm a reporter from new york i work for bloomberg you know like a lot of doors that i think for a lot of german or other european reporters they closed opened uh that was really

the experience because they would love to talk to bloomberg and they wanted to get exposure you know because there's a lot of money here maybe they could get some investors because they do also they work with a lot of institutional investors right so so they get some of that american get some of that american money sloshing around right so it opened a lot of doors actually that's really what i what i noticed if you say hey i work for bloomberg i'm based in new york you know i'm coming to germany because they based in New York, you know, I'm coming to Germany. Because they're also like, because, you know,

the Germans have this perverse mix of superiority and self-hatred. And so they have this kind of inferiority complex. So when somebody from the, you know, when an American report goes up and be like, hey, I want to talk to you guys. They're like, yeah, sure. When do you want to meet?

So even if it's like a portfolio manager of a major family office? when the American report goes up and be like, hey, I want to talk to you guys. They're like, yeah, sure. When do you want to meet? So even if it's like a portfolio manager of a major family office? Well, yeah, it's a CEO of a family office. Yeah, because they're thinking, oh, it's Bloomberg. You know, they're focusing on investments. They're not going to rake up our entire Nazi history. I mean, that seems a little short-sighted.

Well, yeah, but I think there is a certain confidence in Germany where they think, oh, they're not, this is all bad. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's taxes extra. I think for a lot of these families, I think this is an ancient history.

This is like, you know, I think there is also this cognitive dissonance on their side where they think, hey, this is something we dealt with, right? This is, you know. They donated a house, a museum, called it that. Yeah, basically. Basically. Basically. Basically. Yeah.

It is also this implicit whitewashing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the destruction, again, yeah, yeah, yeah. the people there seems to be a cognitive dissonance of you thinking that you earned it now does that

not mean that some of these people who inherit it end up being very well educated and like actually are smart and provide value to the economy yeah some of them do but they have this thing where they they ignore whatever went into that and in this, it's like in the most sinister way because we're talking about literal financing of like World War II cars. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I understand that though, right? Because well, first of all, as I've also noticed with working on these people, working or reporting on these people

is that the more money there is, the farther one is away from reality, right? Because you're surrounded by yes men and women, and you don't often have people who say no to you or who criticize your decisions, right? So that's already a problem. Now, second of all, of course, they didn't make that money. So their entire identity is kind of shaped as heirs, right? So they stand in the shadows of their fathers and grandfathers. So to kind of go out and publicly disavow them, that would also mean what is left of your own identity

if you're coming out and criticizing the person who your entire identity is built around on, right? So they find it exceptionally difficult. Thirdly, particularly know, particularly, but the families are right about, we have this huge consumer-facing companies like BMW and Porsche and Audi and Lamborghini and Seat and Skoda and Rolls-Royce and Mini

and you name it. Wait, Lamborghini's tied up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're Italian. Yeah, I know, I know, but they were bought by the Volkswagen Group. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, i'm sorry i'm

sorry i had to break the news to you all right continue you know they're so worried about you know they have to protect the brands at all costs right and and and to anything you know to hit to hurt the shares the share price or the sales or the standing of the brand you know that you know they they don't you know coming out coming out and saying, hey, yeah, okay, the man who made the brand big was actually an SS officer who was trained at Dachau concentration camp. You know, you can't really, you know, or build concentration camps himself,

or like is responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands, or the mass exploitation of tens of thousands. You know, I mean, that's, yeah, you don't wanna have have that as part or they don't want to have as part of their corporate history but it is a fact of life so i always you know i think they should argue for for you know i think they should implement radical transparencies is what i'll be arguing for i wonder if part of the psychology because like

you know when they're alone in a room i'm sure you know these people know their family history and i'll also give the benefit of the doubt to a percentage of them at least they probably totally disagree with it they probably think this was horrible for sure you know so let's give yeah let's give at least some of them that credit yeah but like most of them i would say even you ever seen godfather 2 i have yeah okay so there's a scene early on in that movie where michael corleone's in his office and he's talking with that senator from nevada and the senator's like i don't like your kind you come out here with your silky suits and olive oil hair and you know what

this is the last time we're going to deal together don't ever call me again i expect my payment yada yada yada and michael corleone is sitting there listening, not saying a word, smoking a cigarette. The guy finishes and he goes, Senator, we're both a part of the same hypocrisy. And there's a part of me that when I hear a story like this also has to recognize that like, okay, these companies that, you know, removing what they did may have made great products and lived on and still make great products today but have a sinister past they could sit there and say well what about the fact that like america did operation paperclip and took all these nazis in the gotcha to the fucking moon and you know and improved all your science and things like that because they were scientifically talented in that way yeah right you know it's like no matter where you turn you have you have some sort of very dark past listen i mean i completely agree with

you on that right i mean it's um not to engage in like what about ism but you know if you if you if you look at my own native netherlands right we never like dealt with our like horrific uh horrific pass of colonialism slavery and collaboration with the germans too right what was the collaboration with the germans what's the history you know i would say the most people no relative to population to most people and the most jews in in western europe were deported from the netherlands uh and it's only third behind hungary and poland um or poland and hungary uh overall relative to population how many people were deported deported and murdered right was that by force or you're saying like they collaborated yeah they collaborated a lot of people out right um you know they you know they kept they kept this

we were more german than the germans even though we fashioned ourselves always like oh everybody was in the resistance you know um and you know that that's not something that they didn't try you know you know the netherlands are still very reluctant to own up to its own past on many levels i just ended up focusing on the germans uh because i'm intrigued because i'm because it because you know it's the third you know it's uh one of the large economies in the world right the third behind behind the u.s and china pardon uh japan actually china's still smaller per gdp per capita per capita exactly yeah and um you know and it's it's it's you know it's the it was you know it's not doing so great right now

but or it is still relative the economic powerhouse of europe you know it sustains europe and politically too in a way right even though it's a mess politically um so you know i just focus on the germans i you know i do think people are also more interested in in in reading about the germans than they are about i would say the dutch you know so and and these brands you know they're you know they're global right and and it's also creating a sense of awareness generally not only with regard to german products you know the money you spend on something, you know, could end up as dividends to these families and go towards the sustaining of a major global foundation named after a Nazi war criminal, right?

It is creating a certain sense of awareness. But, you know, I would never argue for any kind of, you know, I think people should really choose and do whatever they want, you know? I mean, it's not a call to boycott or something like that it's it's a call for for transparency i think that's kind of a minimum one can ask for how much did you like in your research study the denazification period from say 45 to 60. yeah a lot i mean it was a major part of it it was a major part of it because you know the families that i ended up choosing you know are what are today still germany's wealth dynasties and i ended up picking five and kind of the contemporary criteria were that they had to have

global consumer-facing companies and or massive family offices that invested billions globally. So not families like Krupp, like the Steele dynasty, or Thyssen, like the Steele dynasty, which have died out as dynasties. They need to still be, or they are no longer relevant on a global business stage. Secondly, that these dynasties lived on, right? That there's another generation which can kind of reckon or that can kind of come clean about the past.

And thirdly, that, you know, I focus on those with small shareholder groups. So like with the BMW, with the BMW Quants, it's like two, right? Or with the Porsche-Pierre dynasty, it's like a dozen. So they have effective economic control over over you know the policies over company policy so they can steer direction for example you know you have companies like siemens or hankel which have 200 300 400 500 600 family shareholders you know so it's that high yeah yeah so they don't really have a say in their company anymore right i mean it's they can't really steer their companies anymore so those are the contemporary criteria which for which led me

to to these five six dynasties in the book but you know the historical criteria was a that they profited from from mass armaments production b uh that they um you know profited from the expropriation of of business families whether they were jewish or other otherwise gentile you know in either in germany or in german german occupied territories um and of course thirdly the mass exploitation of forced slave labor an estimated 12 to 20 million europeans were forced into forced slave labor you know including concentration camp captives but also millions from eastern europe and you name it and you know most importantly that they got off you know by and large scott free after the war these men um and they were all men and they were all men and they were

all men yeah yeah the industrialists were the patriarchs were because germany had like you know it was a very manned society back then around the world but germany had like some prominent women and other stuff too like they were they were a little progressive on that right right exactly like margaret goebbels and laney riefenstahl you know it's like yeah yeah um so you know so when it comes to the nazification right i mean there were these three so you have the nuremberg trials which ended up being for many you know the cold war starts and the truman administration decided so the Cold War starts in early 1947 and the Truman administration decides, you know, the Nazis and Nazi Germany, they're

all ancient history. You know, we need to rebuild West Germany as a viable economy and as a bulwark against encroaching communism and, you know, and the Soviet Union and occupied, the Soviet occupied Eastern Germany. encroaching communism and and you know and the soviet union and occupied the soviet occupied eastern germany so we need to make it into we make western germany into viable economy and into like a liberal democracy whatever you name it so the the gaze turns from you know punishing nazis into how we're going to rebuild west germany So the scope of the Nuremberg trials, the subsequent Nuremberg trials were really limited, became really limited because the Americans

didn't wanna put capitalism on trial because it became a war of ideologies. Oh, I see, okay. Because the Soviet Union, which had been part of the first Nuremberg trial, they were now in a battle of ideology. So you're saying, if i'm understanding correctly you're essentially saying that means the nuremberg trials focus literally on the members of the nazi party but not the enabler or those that they

enabled around they did but they were very limited and i've been three industrialist trials at nuremberg against one of my main characters, Friedrich Flick, which later became the controlling shareholder of Daimler-Benz. Julius Streicher, too, right? Streicher was in the first Nuremberg trial with all the military and political heads. But just business-wise, it was against Friedrich Flick and his managers. Flick ran the largest steel coal and weapons conglomerate right during the third reich you know was the germany's richest man 1933 45 and again 1960 after having been sentenced to war crimes and crimes against humanity because the sentence was commuted by john j mccloy the american high

commissioner of occupied germany why because because because they needed germany they needed west germany as an ally in in you know in the battle against the against the call against communism and he also knew the korean war you know so so it was it was a decision of political expediency that mccloy let off or commuted the senses of all the industrialists that were sent to nuremberg but even more importantly of many high-ranking s SS officers who had murdered hundreds of thousands who had been sentenced to death at Nuremberg, their death sentences were commuted to life sentences, and then by the mid-1950s,

they were released back on the streets of Germany. Why were they commuted to life sentences first? Because McCloy needed to appease west germany for for a variety of reasons first of all with the start of the korean war you know first truman and then eisenhower and negative war defense act so american uh you know factories are busy producing for the war and there's this kind of consumer goods gap which west germany is now re-industrialized. West Germany is perfect to kind of fill in and produce these consumer goods.

So they become, you know, that brings them even nearer, right? Because that is also, of course, the production of consumer good, important part of kind of also the ideological battle of capitalism versus communism. The then German chancellor says, yes yes but you're keeping our men you know you're keeping our men locked up on our territory you know we want to be your partner in fighting communism we want to be your partner in the Korean War we want to be your partner in NATO we want to have our own army again you know in order to do that you know I think it would be really great if you could release the men um that that are still being held on our soil release our nationals that are

still being held by by you guys on our soil so mccloy who was you know as you know who was really you know politically again i say nicely i say politically expedient. Let's keep it that way. He's a professional reporter. Right, exactly, exactly. And he starts, again, first commuting sentences of the industrialist sentence at Nuremberg, followed by the high-ranking SS officer's sentence to death. Now, of course, some had to be executed,

some had committed atrocities so big or so because it was a lot about symbolism right if their names were too well known or too much attached to certain um to certain crimes or atrocities they they were they were but but there were a lot of ones who were kind of you know know, they were, you know, not as well known, and they were the ones whose death sentences were commuted, life sentences were commuted, released by the mid-1950s, yeah. But even those who had murdered, you know, American soldiers, right, like the Malmedie Massacre, you know. What was the Malmedie Massacre?

The Malmedie Massacre was a massacre in Belgium, in the Ardennes of, I think, 83 American prisoners of war by Nazi soldiers in 1944, I believe. And the guy who ordered their murder, right, as prisoners of war, American prisoners of war, Joachim Peiper, when he was released in 1955, after his death sentence had been commuted um became the head of marketing at porsche was immediately hired off the street right from from from from defro right to into the marketing marketing director at porsche another great car but why was he what made him qualified to be a marketing director of porsche as an ss officer because ferry porsche who made the brand porsche big globally uh wasn't the honorary ss officer and his man did his best friend one of his close friend guy named joachim prinzing the two of them introduced porsche to the us where it became a

huge hit in the early 1950s and And basically, Perry Portia surrounded himself with former high-ranking SS officers in the Portia boardroom. And his princeling, his best friend, was kind of tasked with doing the recruiting among former SS comrades to bring them into Portia. That they were like, hey, if you get released, we have a good position for you.

And generally, these people were, you know, highly educated, you know, unfortunately, highly intelligent and had a position waiting for them once they were released. Would you describe Germany? I feel like I know the answer to this question, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. Would you describe Germany today as very, very anti-Nazi, anti – their past, if you will? That's such a good question. I think they – as I said earlier, the Germans have this perverse mix of superiority and self-hatred what they want to do is they want to say it's our history like we did that you know we atoned for it but there is this kind of sense that you know they're being still confronted with it day in day out right so in a sense they're still inundated with

with also new revelations regarding the history and they're slightly desensitized in a way to it as well but i think you know in many ways you know it's it's also in a way saying it is our history we did that you know and and yeah they're anti-nazi but i don't know i mean are they you know if you look now you have the the large you know germany's swinging very much to the right i mean there's um there's a huge um large opposition party alternative for germany which is great like anti certain groups yeah they're anti-immigration anti-islam they're anti you know anti you know they have some anti-semitic tendencies you know they're they are you know they they are very much about kind of um you know they're very much into kind of holocaust revisionism in and they're very much into kind of uh you know yeah again whitewashing

history i mean the end part of my book is also about the rise of the afd because one of the members so you earlier asked about what kind of family what kind of political parties do these do these business dynasty support so there's one example in my book of the family this kind of aristocratic family which co-founded allianz of munich greece or the largest world the world largest insurers and reinsurers back then and today right and they also had this private bank called mcfink and father the father you know idealized hitler you know became hitler's main fundraiser for this big museum in munich and then was allowed to expropriate the rothschild bank in in vienna and the drivers bank in in in berlin as a thank you for his for his service to the nazi regime

and his son actually became one is suspected to be one of the founding funders of the afd so that's the one example in my book of a continuation of you know of of far-right yeah far-right support uh from flower to sun, but that's really the exception to the rule in these families, right? I mean, that's usually they just support the establishment conservatives. The reason I ask,

or I asked at the beginning of this part of the conversation about the specific 1945 to 1960 denazification period and then how it relates to today is because i haven't spent time in germany but you hear a lot of things about how hardcore even like legally they are with not letting some of these ugly things come back through the door right like annie jacobson wrote a book yeah obviously operation paperclip yes very not pro-nazi opposite but the

the cover had a swastika on it and she like couldn't even take it into the country so did so did mine so so does mine the American edition of my book also has a huge swastika on the cover but not the German edition not the German edition because that's forbidden right and also you know my book in in English called Nazi billionaires in. In German, it's called Braunes Erbe, which means like dark inheritance, basically. Oh, wow. So they even changed the language. Yeah. Okay.

But also Nazi Milliardäre doesn't really sound in German. So I think it's also for aesthetic reasons. But like point being, you know, you laid it out well. The United States intelligence and bureaucratic regime immediately shifted towards the Cold War and kind of said, okay, let's put this behind us. And therefore, over the next 10, 15 years, they let a lot of people fall through the cracks, if you will, like wittingly. Yeah. And some of these people, you've already laid out some examples, but I know there's even more that get into politics, ended up having power in the rebirth of Germany. Yeah. And these are people who were literally a part of Nazi Germany. So the question is like, all right, maybe a lot of society is now against Nazism, but

they're being led by some people or implicitly changed by some people who have power positions who still believe in them yeah for sure and and i actually didn't answer your question because because the nuremberg trials were one more one part of it but denazification right so what ends up happening is that in early 1947 the americans start handing over thousands of suspected nazi war criminals and are the and Nazi sympathizers who weren't big enough to be indicted and tried at Nuremberg back over to West German authorities for the so-called denazification trials.

And of course, there was no incentive on the side of West German authorities to judge their fellow compatriots on crimes they had committed themselves and on sympathies they had held themselves. So these, you know, these denazification trials or committees or proceedings, however you want to name them, quickly devolved into show trials and not of the Stalinist kind, but of the kind that everybody went scot-free including many of the industries that i write about who you know were under the radar who could have been indicted before nuremberg

but were just you know because of the symbolic limitation because they only limited the nuremberg trials to three industrialist trials again flick uh krup and his managers and the entire executive board of ig farben um you know many of them just went through the notification proceedings and and were you know deemed fellow travelers got a 2000 uh deutsch mark fine and and and their frozen assets were returned to them and their board position returned to them yeah yeah they weren't expropriated at all except for in easter in west germany they could they could keep everything in east germany they were of course by the communists they were wholesale expropriated and we all became very good but but the allies returned everything to them because again you

know you want to you they want to rebuild west germany and for that you need you need you need the industrialists you need you know you need you need the companies going again you need industrialists, you need, you know, you need, you need the companies going again. You need, yeah, these large companies as well. This was part of this kind of bulwark of this buffer against communism, right? If West Germany is doing well, then, you know, communism won't spread. And, you know, I get behind, I understand those reasons, but where it went horribly wrong was that at least, right, the Allies should have supervised these enunciation proceedings and trials because, you know, there was just a continuation of money and power from the

Third Reich to West Germany in this kind of vacuum of five years between 1945 and 1950 where the allies could have done a good job of you know at least attempting to denazify germany because that's what really one of the myths that i tried to dispel this book as well is denazification never happened not only not in a business no not only not in the business world but but on every on every level of german society you know on on education in the legal world in a medical world in education and legal world because because you know all germans had to go through denazification and and because there was no oversight you know it became it became you know people weren't properly denied people weren't properly denazified. So you had judges who were prominent judges in the Third Reich

resuming their positions in West Germany, in the new Federal Republic. Or you had a Nazi journalist who could continue on without any kind of repercussion or recourse or any kind of proceedings. Because denazification failed. without any without any kind of repercussion or recourse or any kind of proceedings because these notification because denazification failed because there was no such thing as an effective as effective denazification to play like slight devil's advocate i think i agree with your point but i just want to like is the term steel man this a little bit and we'll figure it out but like is it possible that i mean judges is a tough but like, let's use the journalist example.

Yeah, sure. Is it possible that there were some journalists who were Nazi journalists who were completely blackmailed, you know, under the threat of death of their family to not write what the Nazis told them to write, meaning they actually didn't believe in it. And now, you know, they wanted to report on the other end of stuff no but i mean because if you're already under that match risk i wouldn't even like you become a journalist you know you would be you're a bard right because because because gobbles made sure as minister of propaganda and enlightenment that only people were allowed to be journalists who fully subscribed to the to to the ideals if there was any hint of doubt you would be scrapped as a journalist you couldn't work for the next 10 years so you look at it like denazification never happened one one pushback maybe i'd have there and again i say this is

someone who's never spent time in germany so it's a little hypocritical to talk to someone who spent going to spend a lot of time there however you know if if society let's say by 1975 didn't feature a lot of people by percentage i'm saying in germany who still believed in nazi ideology couldn't you at least say that some of it worked we've already laid out all the holes in the system for sure like it wasn't perfect by any means but some of it got denounced no yeah but well well in a way it's a process of you know it's a process of aging and people dying off right but the big but the big cultural class in germany and in wider europe became it was in 68 with the student protests who started right we started raising rising up to the generation before them and asking questions what did you know my parents and

grandparents do during the third reich what happened here i don't know so so 68 it was really you know there was a huge student protest in germany in france you name it where there was a big clash of cultures between kind of the conservative old guard and the new you know hippie-ish you know not hippies is a bit you know pejorative but like people were people were concerned with history and and and and so i saw a lot of things get get swept under the rug or saw their elders not speaking about what they did uh in the past and this this this culture class erupted where they were asking for more openness and transparency and as a result there was some violent you know just like you had here in the us you know society was sds which did

which perfection became the weather the weather underground right which which did these bombings and and and these these these attacks and and and you name it um in in in in germany you had the red army faction for example which which um and great movie has been made about it as well you know which um killed higher you know killed high-ranking industrialists or kidnapped high ranking industrialists or bankers with it with an ss or a nazi pest yeah yeah yeah that's kind of cool yeah wow wow and there's even three generations of them you know there's even even crazy enough there's even recently three red army faction members who had been on the run for, I think, 30 years were recently arrested in Berlin after some, you know, they'd been living completely undercover. What, for doing the society a service? I mean, Jesus.

Right, right. But they also, you know, they did it with such, you know, they did it with such violence. I think, you know, you were also Innocence hit and it was, yeah, it was, you know they did it with such volume i think you know you were also innocence hit and it was it was yeah it was you know it was uh and i think the first generation was this kind of i decided the ideological purity but then the second and third generation they they just you know sustained themselves by robbing banks and shooting innocent people you know so yeah during the the key periods of the denazification, though, one thing I keep thinking about is

obviously there were multiple countries involved in this and prominently among them the U.S. where, meaning you had people in these rooms who were involved in prosecutions or processes to put in place who were Jewish as well. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. So was there like pushback behind the scenes in some of this, you know, paper pushing that was

going on from some people like, hey, wait a minute, like we, you know, these guys were killing my people like we need some justice here. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, unfortunately, you know, so few, you know, so few people came back or survived, you know, that stayed in Germany. That those who, you know, those families who did stay, you know, they just kept their head down and there weren't really they didn't play major factors of of but what about like some of the American Jewish lawyers and there was another guy I'm forgetting his name it was not American I believe he was actually German but he was like one of the prosecutors at nuremberg like guys yeah Ben Ferencz right you became 101 the guy who passed away two years ago yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know this great silence enveloped germany you know west germany following following 1950 right following the nazification following the establishment of the federal republic

and germany was doing great economically and politically became such an important ally to the u.s so there was no really need in germany nobody pushed them to talk about it and even men you know brave men like ben ferrantz or whoever you know who did try to make these cases or try to initiate um compensation compensation or rest institution cases against some of the industrialists you know the you know it's just like man this is history you know there's no need you know we we're free we're thriving there's there's no need for us to to have to deal with this or we're just completely in denial uh to begin with so it doesn't really it doesn't really become an issue until the 1990s when germany yeah yeah when germany is reunified right the iron curtain has fallen the soviet union

has disintegrated at the same time you have two forces happening at the same time in the us survivors of concentration camps but also force and slave labor or both start filing mass claims against major german companies um and at the same time you have you know millions of eastern europeans who are freed behind freed from the iron curtain and from the clutches of the soviet union and saying well hey we live for 45 years we're oppressed by by by the Soviet Union but you know during World War II we were also exploited by the Germans and you know we we want to have you know there needs to be some kind of reckoning here there needs to be some kind of recourse so what happens is that the Clinton administration in the late 1990s starts negotiating with the German federal government for a compensation for surviving forced enslaved laborers.

And the settlement that is agreed upon ends up where the German federal government donates five billion euros to this compensation fund, to a foundation actually, and German business. Five billion? Five billion. Okay. Five billion. So about five billion USD at the time. And German business as a whole pays up five billion euros, five billion USD into this foundation. Now, of the money paid by German business,

60% is paid by only 18 companies like BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, you name it, all the big German brands. Thousands of companies have also greatly profited from forced and slave labor only paying like 500 euros, like a symbolic amount. And then you have the payout to surviving for a concentration camp captive or surviving slave and forced

forced slave laborers is at the highest is is a one-time payment lump sum of 10k of ten thousand dollars you know which is pittance for what they have for what they had to go through and what they were robbed of by the way exactly exactly um and most importantly what happens there's a clause in the settlement where german business where the german companies say well uh we don't have to acknowledge any kind of wrongdoing culpability or guilt for the crimes that occurred uh in our factories and mines during the Third Reich. So they pay money, and not very much to begin with, but they don't take any actual responsibility for history. They don't take any moral responsibility for history, right?

Because they don't have to acknowledge any wrongdoing or culpability or any form of guilt so they can pretend now from from 2000 onwards like nothing's ever happened they're there they've got legally right which in turn allowed these families that i ended up writing about to pretend like nothing happened and and and pretend that their father was indeed very successful in business but leave everything else up and i think you know that you know they they it was tabula rasa you know they they they got a clean bill of health and and they could pretend nothing nothing bad had happened basically and and allowed them to cover up history uh in plain sight and and i think that's why

you know they act with such impunity when it comes to history because because they got a legal way out literally of the companies that you looked at and the families that you looked at in the various industries they were in how many of them were around prior to the Treaty of Versailles? That's a good question. Of the main families, the two main families I write about in the book, so it's the Kwants, the BMW Kwants, and the Flix, the controlling shareholders of Daimler, or the former controlling shareholders of Daimler Benz.

They really made, you know, one of the other myths I tried to dispel with the book was that, you know, they say, oh, people say, oh,

all these families made their money during the third Reich. That's just not true. You know, with the exception of the Porsche-Pierre family, because of the creation of Volkswagen, which Ferdinand Porsche, you know, was commissioned by Hitler to to develop and we really laid the base for their for their wealth during the Third Reich all these other families were already incredibly wealthy before

Hitler seized power in January 1933. so many of them to to go back to your question you know laid the foundation of their wealth during World War One for example uh by producing like in the case of the quants the uniforms for the for the for the german for the army of the german empire right or to for like flick um run steel factories which created you know ammunition or or you know was used steel was used to create armaments you name it which which by the way i'm sorry to cut in here but an important distinction i think just for people out there is like in world war ii you have hitler who i don't have to explain that and his ideology and what that is world war one obviously germany was at fault and it was fucked up that like this whole war went down and everything but there wasn't the the ethnic hatred or anything like that it was more just like a

fucked up war so meaning to me like and disagree with me if if this is wrong but like companies that happen to be from that country who are helping in the war effort like it is what it is that's not like yeah a horrible historical yeah yeah i mean the germans were just ended up being on the losing side which then you know were to your point you know were uh received these draconian right uh you know like the treaty of frisai which which you know in in many ways was contributed to to the rise of hitler and and and and you know and everything that happened after that. So of these companies, like the Quants, for example, they owned many, like Flick and Quant, during the hyperinflation of the early 1920s of the Weimar Republic in Germany,

they buy up a lot of companies on the cheap because Germany is in bad dire straits economically hyperinflation you know they made a lot of money the quants inflicted during world war one they can use that to buy up with speculating buy up company totally undervalued companies um like for example quant bought up uh a company that is now very well known battery company as varta which produces the batteries in uh in airpods um you know it was a huge battery company for example I use those right I use those too I use those two. Guilty as charged. You know, he buys that on the cheap, right? He buys one of the largest weapons companies in Germany on the cheap.

So these were companies that had been around prior to the Treaty of Versailles, you know, that had been around since the late 1890s. Of course, their post-Second World War II wealth allowed them, or the fact that the Allies allowed them to keep all their money then, is what ended up them buying BMW, or their controlling stakes in BMW and Daimler-Benz, and you name it. I just wanted to ask that question.

It's like kind of a prequel here, so we can trace this history, because it's important in the sense that I've always – probably once every 12 to 18 months, I study something different about Hitler's rise because it's so – it was so fast. Right. And like the cyclone of things that were happening around him for it to occur, like these are the kinds of things I try to study to make sure history doesn't repeat itself not that i have control over that but you know when you look back on it you just mentioned it yourself so much of the fuse was lit by that treaty of versailles yeah and so i had danny sheehan in here for episodes 245 and 246 who's like this longtime legendary attorney who knows so much about all these things but he broke down some of it but for for people out there who didn't hear

that episode or don't know the specifics of the treaty that was signed and treaty were signed in in 1918 like what about that fucked germany like specifically and and how did that impact them in in the Weimar Republic so it was it was you know I would say twofold but the one thing is they they had to pay we they they imposed um the Treaty of Versailles imposed these draconian costs to be paid back by germany basically to the us to england the cost for the war to france uh to to russia the cost for the war basically which is you know they could never they could never pay that back right right so so rather than they had lost the war okay you, let bygones be bygones, they had to kind of compensate uh the allied forces for uh for their losses or or you know it was it was it was an added punishment you know with total adverse effects secondly they had to disarm uh completely right and one of the things that hitler does breaks um is is initiate the

largest rearming that the world had ever seen you know and and of course what the industrialists and the financiers bought into in 1933 when hitler comes to comes to power is and what he initially also delivers on is this you know is economic stability because is economic stability because because there's huge economic and political upheaval during the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1933. where you have hype you have Treaty of frisai you have hyperinflation and it's bookend that's one book and say 1918 to 2022. yeah well germany loses status as an empire aristocracy is abolished you know um the imperial family has to flee and on the other bookend you have the great depression uh you have a huge on both sides of it huge enormous economic upheaval if i understood correctly though when

i study this correct me if i'm wrong here you and i think you just said it so this i feel like this is right but you said 1918 to 1922 hyperinflation they're burning fucking deutschmarks for fire exactly 1929 comes that's what led to hitler's really rise because for some reason even though germany was still not where they had been and stuff things did settle down from 22 to 20. absolutely right absolutely absolutely they did they did they settled down for sure what absolutely was like how did they settle down because like you said like the treaty of versailles was crazy yeah i mean they ended up not paying it but there's such resentment right there's such resentment there becomes this myth of being stabbed in the back many of the you know many of kind of prominent uh jewish citizens are being blamed so kind of the the anti-semitic tendencies are like

the fire is fueled for that you know so but but but the resentment lingers there right so that also explains because hitler you know kind of rise is also in that or initial rise is in this period of stability. That's correct. Of, I say, you know, 1923 to 1932 to 1933. And, you know, there is this, yeah, there's this center, there's the myth of being stabbed in the back. But it all goes back to being declass as a world power. Having lost its status as an imperial empire,

which Bismarck had spent so much time doing from 1870 and then the imperial family until 1918. I mean, Germany between 1870 and 1918 was a world power and suddenly it's reduced to nothing. You know, it loses its identity. It loses its, you know, it's demasculated in a way, you know, it's also these identities of kind of being humiliated and, you know, demasculated,

you know, and that of course, that discontent, that resentment fuels this really dangerous fire, which leads to the rise of Hitler. But, of course, you know, when we take then 1929 and millions of Germans becoming unemployed, you know, and there's, again, there's enormous economic upheaval and political upheaval because you have three governments there's there's there's election every year every six months you know and you know even though you know and the nazi party you know smartly plays into that with with gobbles as his chief propagandist

you know giving easy answers to very difficult problems right blaming everything on the communist socialists and the jews basically where are let's say let's say like 1929 1930 so a few years before hitler actually gets power yeah where are these main families at the time vis-a-vis hitler and the nazis are they starting to cozy up with them behind the scenes yeah yeah well behind the scenes yes but that really starts from 1931 onwards why 31 because that's when hitler decides to make inroads with the industrialists because he had no business but he had he had no business backing except for two industrialists um one fritz tyson was this steel mogul and and hugenberg was this media mogul and and you hugenberg was this media mogul okay um but the quant and flick for example get first introduced first introduced to hitler in in 1930 1931 when hitler decides to make in decides

to make inroads uh it says we need money um because there's going to be a there's going to be a power grab by the left which never occurs um and we need to raise money from the industrialists so they're all being called up and you know the main characters in my book are all being called up to the suite in Berlin where they first meet Hitler and they're like no this this guy is this is not you know they're conservative they're establishment conservatives this guy this guy is, this is not, you know, they're conservative, they're establishment conservatives. This guy's white, he's far, he's too far out there. And it is only when he, you know, grabs power on January 30th, 1933

and summons the industrialists and financiers and business CEOs and business heirs, you know, to this meeting on February 20th, 1933, where Goering, his right-hand man, sends out a telegram saying, oh, the new chancellor is going to, you know, Hitler is going to explain his economic policies. Be here or die, basically. Exactly.

But what it ends up being that meeting is where both hitler and goering very expra very clearly you know tell the industrialists and or the assemble businessmen uh the elections of march 5th 1933 is going to be less selection in Germany for the next 10 to 100 years. 10 to 100? Yeah. What a range. What a range indeed, yeah. It would have, so right, 100 years on, so right, so 2033.

So they're very explicitly, very explicitly promised the end of German democracy. And they all get out their checkbooks and write over checks for the last election campaign of March 5th, 1933. Now, how did they feel about doing that at the time? Was it just strictly they felt like, well, I pretty much have to? Or were some of them like, you know, we're on board with this? No, they were on board. They were clearly on board with it. they were clearly on board with it they were clearly on board with it they wanted to be on the good side they wanted to be on the side of of of you know of the ruling party they wanted economic stability

and they wanted to make this simplest you know they bought into this kind of devil's pact of you know wanting to profit you know they were in there were buying you know most of the band I write about were were few exceptions there were opportunists yeah right not ideologues and who are some of these men in that room so it's good your quant um it's Friedrich flick it's I was one thing so good at that time heFA, the battery company, and DWM, which is Germany's largest armaments company at the time, or one of them. Friedrich Flick is in charge of his steel coal and weapons empire. August von Fink is the one who is the, his family co-founded Allianz and Munich Re, re the insurers and he also owns his private bank and there's the ceos of um you know of uh ig farber and of deutsche bank um you know there's siemens there's group there's all the big there's all the big german names basically are assembled

there big room big room big room two dozen men you know dozen men, two dozen businessmen, and I would say a handful of Nazis in Berlin. How much like is the – because obviously he didn't bring any Jews in there or anything. No. None of those guys from that. So were a lot of these guys on board with the incoming anti-Semitic policies too? That's not be so hitler doesn't mention that in his speeches right he talks about the default definitive battle between the left and the right he talks about you know ending labor unions he talks about you know

rearmament but he doesn't talk about you know um you know anti-semitic policies why because a lot of them had you know jewish board members or bankers or lawyers you name it you know of course they quick start to quickly fire in the months thereafter but at that point that's not what hitler uh promises to them so yeah why did hitler what was the ideology behind hitler hating labor unions so much that's always like kind of skipped over we just mentioned yeah we hated labor unions yeah what was his thought there because they were made up of mostly socialists and and communists you know they fought for the labor's interests and and um and that's why i hated them and and that is, you know, something that, you know, listen, I mean, you had the Soviet Union nearby, you know, there was a communist takeover which was you know not an unthinkable idea which was which was in the realm of possibilities so people should understand how

kind of that specter of fear was hanging over them uh as well you know again on the tail end of the great depression um you know them buying into uh what Hitler to sell them but of course you know it doesn't start with criminal it devolves into criminal behavior right because it starts with rearm German rearmament and and and initiating the world's largest rearmament program the world had ever seen so you soon have by late 33 early 44 have billions of rice marks flowing into the coffers and the companies of these industrialists and you know the machines the factories are churning uh you know are churning again you know profits are good but it is only when the you know when the policies you know when the nuremberg race laws come into effect in mid-1935 when you have this process of you know this this perversely cynic term called aryanization which is the removal of any jewish ownership from any

asset right that and like education too right and education right but but you're right that there's also about ironization in the business context is is is really which also the veneer of legality is really removing jewish ownership from an asset whether there was companies equities bonds art jewelry you name it got it which also starts with a veneer of legality you know you have business families were getting coerced by the nazi authorities or by their competitors saying you know sell to us you know at a fire sale price or else right uh or families wanting to sell it because they wanted to get the hell out of the country um but the second half of, as persecution ramps up over the second half of the 1930s,

this devolves into outright theft and robbery. And this was a practice that really was continued in the German occupied territories, no matter what your religious beliefs or background or political beliefs were. It just became outright robbery and seizure of course and you know with the low point of of the mass enslavement uh of of an estimated 12 to 20 million uh forced enslaved laborers you know how like today in politics the worst kept secret is that all these people who are politicians that are up there regardless of where they are what country right they're propped up by the real business people behind them who are paying the money and donating to them right right so obviously at the beginning in hitler's rise the leverage of power here is on

his end because he's like get on board or else but then and i think it remains that way i just kind of want to make sure here but like as the 30s go on and these machines start pumping and making billions of dollars or whatever, you know, was there ever a point where any of these guys maybe behind the scenes off the record actually held sway over Hitler or anyone in the government on certain issues? Or was it just always they needed each other right because because the nazi regime needed them to churn out weapon weaponry and you know these were not you know they also denounced also tried to build some state enterprises with varying degrees of success but they were mostly reliant on private business to feed the nazi war machine um so you know the industrialists the financiers the bankers you name them also had a lot of leverage uh over the regime it was an interplay right but of course the you know the businessman needed needed you know be on the right

side of the regime in order to keep safe and there's one example because people always ask me you know did they have a choice right did they have any agency and i always give the example fritz thesen who i mentioned earlier this you know this the steel the steel muggle was one was the except one of two exceptions who backed the nazi party already from 1925 financed them becomes you know is is appointed uh even as a member of parliament in his defunct nazi parliament in berlin and it makes a stand when germany invades poland in september 1933 at 1939 to say I'm against this war votes against it subsequently flees to Paris has an American journalist write this kind of whitewashing biography of him titled I paid Hitler and is subsequently arrested

once and I do the Germans invade France thrown into a concentration camp and loses entire steel Empire to is given in in is given to uh Flick's right hand man this this this Arden SS officer called Steinbrink did the guy die in the concentration he did not he survives and what ends up happening is that because he was one of the first backers of hitler the allies also uh indicted him and sentenced him to three years in prison so he gets it both he gets he gets punished twice right so all these guys would just end up saying nothing and just profiting right yeah they get off scott free and this guy who actually makes a stand before the war and the war ends

actually gets punished twice by nazis and the allies and actually ends up dying quickly after his release from allied uh captivity in a car accident 1950 um car accident no yeah yeah yeah i'm a firm believer in that you know he didn't know, he didn't have much to hide at that point. There's been some interesting car accident stories in the studio. Oh, I'm sure. So I always got to make sure. I'm sure. I haven't delved into that one.

Maybe I should. Maybe I should delve into the distant car accident. You delve and get back to us. Yeah, I will. I will. the distant car accident you delve and get back to us yeah i will i will so they throughout the 30s as the arianism laws are coming in and all the other laws we hear about that that happened in germany these companies are pumping up money and it sounds like based on your reporting pretty much all of them whether it was just well we have to go along with it or like we're very excited to

go along with this they just pumped right into world war ii and were the main drivers behind everything from well i don't know the specifics some of your companies but like obviously hugo boss made the uniforms you know mercedes-benz was involved in in vehicle productions bmw siemens ig farm and they also had some of them you know had specific arrangements with the SS they would that they would get so-called satellite concentration camps or satellite yeah sub or satellite concentration camps built on their factory complexes where they would lease and this is really this is really horrific but they would lease from the SS concentration camp captives they would pay of course these men and women and were enslaved right so they would lease from the ss concentration camp captives they would pay

of course these men and women and were enslaved right so they would lease them they would lease them they would pay the ss uh four ice mark per day for an unskilled concentration camp captive and eight eight ice mark for a skilled concentration camp captive what was the difference and and well that's a good question right some some had particular skills that that that these companies like bmw or ig farben or siemens or krupp or or the quantum flick companies or or utker which another family i write about would pay dss to uh to to hire to to to to do to perform certain things in in their factories right of course dss would then build a a sub concentration camp or satellite construction camp on the factory premises

which would guard them you know the of course the conditions in the camps were horrific but they would also guard the factories close by and you know people would be horrifically abused have most horrible work and injuries you know would die you know in factories as well and and and that's really i would say also in terms of the you know at the bottom rung of the of the so-called force and slave labor hierarchy where the concentration camp captives were leased out or were leased by the ss uh or leased out by the ss uh to various german companies um and there's there's many kind of famous collaborations between auschwitz and egypt farben between between bmw and dachau what was bmw and daco i'm not familiar with yeah it was it was the daco would deliver or dss running of

course all these concentration camps and extermination camps would deliver would lease out concentration camp captives in in concentration camp daco to a bmw factory where they would you know where they would be enslaved and perform labor. They were there, yeah. And being beaten and malnourished in the process. Was like BMW, for example, I'm just thinking out loud here, during the war, are they just producing cars for the army? No, everything's being retooled as an arms factory, right?

So they're just building like- they're building yeah they're building they're building parts for tanks they're building you know they don't they're not there's not a lot of civilian there's not any there's very little civilian um production going on it's all for to feed the nazi war machine not only bmw but you know daimler bands you know yeah all the everything everything is for military purposes basically this this feels like a dumb question but i do find myself always thinking this when i look through when i hear about the history or read about it like how did they build so many of these camps and as you just throw a new term out there like satellite camps so quickly also seemingly like half the time in the middle of like a war that they were fighting on at one point like four fronts yeah yeah that's

a very good question i mean they you know the satellite the complex of satellite construction camps i mean they numbered thousands right and many of them were only held you know the satellite did the complex of satellite site concentration camps I mean they did a number of thousands right and many of them were only held you know only held you know a few hundred concentration camp captives that were leased out to a specific company right but it was you know you didn't need many guards or that many people to guard people that were enslaved and malnourished and you know and and and held captive right so no but but but they let the slaves build to build the camp themselves right so you had 12 or 16 guards you know have the concentration camp captives build build the camp and then

subsequently once it finished you know imprison them there and then uh have them exploit them in in in effect in the nearby factories right and there were countless of examples of major ones a major example is for example um the volkswagen factory uh which was at the time it was the largest car factory in the world, which was modeled after the River Rouge factory in Detroit, Michigan. Because, you know, Hitler idealized Henry Ford. I think he idealized him, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

It was mutual love. Yeah, it was mutual, exactly. And, you know, Hitler has tasked Ferdinand Porsche to build out the Volkswagen, you know, has tasked for an on Porsche uh to to to build out the Volkswagen you know the people's car which doesn't end up going to the people under the Nazi regime you know the 500 cars that are delivered will go to the Nazi Elite instead by the way oh you know what go ahead no let's let's let's finish this point because it's a separate point um fernand porsche and his son and law anton pierre were the two patriarchs of what is now the porsche pierre dynasty

you know end up running the volkswagen factory in the center of germany and you have tens of thousands of forced enslaved laborers there the poor included yeah the porsche okay yeah including hundreds uh including thousands of concentration camp captives and they have all these mini concentration camps on the on the premises of the folks on factory and you even there and that's really horrific you know women who were pregnant you know they had to give up their babies and you ended up having about 365 babies dying from malnourishment in a in an orphanage close to volkswagen factory uh under the most horrific circumstances right in addition to the thousands of people that that die uh from malnourishment

and maltreatment at the volkswagen factory and the people overseeing this are people who have foundations named after them yeah that's heavy it's i i get how you can compartmentalize like okay well this is the past whatever but i i don't understand the stupidity of not removing those names like why not name it after the sons of them or something who weren't there right or just rename it the bmw foundation sure yeah but i but i always think so my argument so i'm you know i think it it's, I argue for radical transparency. So if you, because I think often renaming is also a way of, you know, removing the past, right? So I think if you so want to name whatever, you know, Global Foundation or, you know know museum or you name it after these men then

then at least at the bare minimum just own up to history because you only learn from history by showing the good and the bad right if you only show the good it's it's it's it's a whitewash and if you don't want to commit to that which is not you know nobody's asking for more money you don't have to pay anybody you just have to own up to history you have to take responsibility for that learn from it you have to learn from it exactly so if you don't have to pay anybody you just have to own up to history you have to take responsibility for that learn from it you have to learn from it exactly so if you don't want to do that you should rename it but i think the first choice particularly to these private families these private businesses right we have very little leverage over you know you say you you make it private you make it you you it's a simple offer it's a simple simple uh uh it's a

simple offer you know you don't it's not like with municipalities or cities or you name it where you have um you know where you have where you where you can through the ballot box or you can where you can you know complain at uh you know at a city council no these, these are private families, these are private companies. I mean, you can buy a share, and you can go to an annual general meeting and say, hey, what about, you know, can I have a quote, you know, what about this and that?

But other than that, there's very little leverage that one has over the controlling shareholders of a company, except through public scrutiny. Or, you know, sunlight is the best disinfectant, you know, absolutely. Am I by asking them? Yeah, yeah, I agree with you entirely. Like, that that's a huge problem I have in the way we talk about history and modern society, like, you know, people either want to just focus on all the good or they want to focus on all the bad it feels like and it's like you just have to put out what

happened and let everyone see that for everything that's i mean everything that could possibly be you know downstream effects or you know even within great empires or whatever you want to call them, where terrible things happen, you know, we had slavery in this country. That's pretty fucking terrible thing, you know, or in places that were evil, where like nothing good happened, like Germany, where, you know, probably the only, I mean, like autobonds or something, I guess is like pretty impressive, but there's not like they, they were, they were this, this quick, very quick rising movement that said something about human nature that we can learn from to see how quickly people can get behind things. And what's so fascinating about the angle you take

is you're looking at it from the thing that unfortunately it's tacky to say, but it's a hundred percent true. When you look at human nature. You're looking at it from the thing that it always comes back to, which is follow the money because that is what people – that is what motivates people. who are opportunists, who have some level of power through the industry they have, who are simply looking at the dollars and cents of their bottom line to get behind whatever's going to happen next without thinking about all the downstream effects of murder and devastation that they're going to cause to tens of millions of people around the world. And that's the part of this history that should not be lost. And think that's really i mean you hit a key thing because it's really that day there is a complete like i think what shocked me the most in doing the research and maybe i went into it naively is a complete lack of reflection

on the side of the patriarchs right well again they would have thrived in any political system you know they thrived in the german empire they thrived in the weimar republic they thrived in nazi germany they thrive thrived in allied well they thrived in west germany they thrived in in in reunified germany and i i would argue they would have even come up come up come out on top in in a communist system right um is that their their only focus was profit and the complete lack of regard of lives and life and people's livelihood you know is is what really shocked me you know both during the events themselves between 33 and 45 as well as post-war the post-war total unwillingness of any kind of acknowledgement, you know, when they're faced with restitution or compensation claims, you know, that they fight them on jurisdictional issues,

they would fight them to finial, you know, and just a complete lack of acknowledgement and which is something that also trickled over to their heirs which we talked about earlier where it becomes more of an identity issue or a standing uh issue or or a um you know a you know almost a pr management issue which they are which they are so afraid to to engage you in and and rather have it swept under the rug than than come clean about it you also have a a not parallel but what's the word i'm looking for there there seems to be a rising issue today with re-litigating the past in unfortunate ways. And let me explain what I mean by that. We're going to get to, a little later, some of your current work where you're

reporting on the ground in Israel, which obviously has a lot going on right now. And there are people who are very upset about these various wars around the world. There's two big ones going on, one of them being Israel, and there's people who are upset with Israel's government right now. And so a downstream effect of that that I'm seeing, and don't get me wrong, I appreciate free speech and the ability to litigate these things in public, but that's what I'm going to do right now. A downstream effect of what I'm seeing is people are rewondering about some of the history of World War II. And what I mean by that is you are seeing a movement, for example, of people saying that like, ooh, actually Winston Churchill was the bad guy in World War II, not Hitler. And they're not even saying like not Hitler. They're like, well, he was bad too, but Winston Churchill had every chance to stop these wars and just said,

no, let's do it. And what I always say is is like there's no one in history who's perfect there's no one especially given the time and the things that are going on like there are human flaws drastic human flaws at every point of history you study but isn't it pretty like concerning that people are now trying to change the narrative to potentially like you talk about all these families with their money whitewashing history but now even the people that they were associated with who were the power structures causing this whole thing we have a subset of society that's trying to say like well maybe they were actually you know some of this was bad but they had a point or two like isn't it isn't that a

long-term problem if we continue that pattern that's terrifying but i mean it it is unfortunately is also natural development and you were just saying earlier about hey it's only it's only 79 years ago right i mean we have we we we get to meet and interview world war ii veterans you know who hold so much wisdom and have fought for our lives to be, and our families' lives to be as good as they are today, right? But the unfortunate thing is that as time progresses, these things are forgotten. And that's also, especially in a time of incredible misinformation,

globally, you know, it's why it's so important to hold the most powerful actors in the world accountable for history and and and and and not demand too much as well because you know you know ask for a bare minimum which is is is you know when you hold such power the least you can do is be honest about your history yes that's really that's really the least and nobody's asking anything else of you you don't have to pay money there's nothing there's no more you don't have to apologize for anything it's just you just have to be honest about history that's it yeah because it's so important in this day and age where people are forgetting things rapidly. People are intentionally, unintentionally misconstruing things for their own benefit, for their own purposes. And that's very dangerous because that's where misinformation comes from yeah and and and

and you know to ask that from the most powerful actors in the society is is is again it's a bare minimum and i think that you know that that's like one of the very few things they can commit to they should commit to well i want to get to your investigation like we've been we've been getting there all day with the context but we talked about this at the very beginning you had essentially like a four-year deep dive you ended up so you leave bloomberg in 2017 and you moved to berlin yeah yeah i leave new york and i moved to berlin uh october 2017 and you know with a book contract and an advance and i just dive into the research in in Germany so you had written articles on I've written exactly exactly the the base of the book proposal was

the series of articles that I wrote about these families and these companies and that was from originally seeing that website yes basically the first one from 2013, which had, which is a headline, Nazi, Nazi gobble step grandchildren are hidden billionaires, which is also like, you know, I think it was like the most, it was juicy. I think it was the most read, or the second most read story of Bloomberg for 2013, you know because it was just such a it was yeah it was a great headline was that the year the samsung story came out what was the story where they where they did like the whole i forget his name but the leader of samsung and how he rebuilt the whole company it was like this long 30 page story or something it was like one of their cover ones i wonder if that was the other one that was like the most I know the other most what I remember was uncovering the oh just the woman who owned in and out burger as one of the richest women in America I wasn't the story that was my even more so under covering uncovering

hidden money was essentially the theme of the book. Yeah, I did. I got you. They love, especially Bloomberg readers love reading about that. Oh, yeah. Because it's always, but who has more money, basically. So that's your first one, though, and then you write a series more. Yeah, then I write about the Oetker family, which is also one featured in the book. They're really Nazi ideologues. They own, the Oetker dynasty owns Germany's largest beer brewer. They own, you know, a slew of luxury hotels around the world,

but they're mostly known for their pudding mixes and baked goods. But they're really a family full of Nazis. And the patriarch was actually an SS officer who was trained at Dachau concentration camp. And so that was – and frozen pizzas is another one of their staples. In Germany? Yeah. That's got to be shitty pizza.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a staple among students. Dr. Oetker pizzas pizzas they're huge in the uk um that's the only one of the families where their products aren't as big in the us but they're like big in canada they're big uh all over europe and in many other parts of the world um so that was the second if you ever bring german pizza in here just on the basis of culture you're fired i just want to throw that out there but go ahead

fair enough fair shout julian um yeah and thirdly i wrote about the flick dynasty so the former controlling shareholders of of um of daimler benz and one branch of them has the world youngest twins as billionaires and it goes into kind of the refusal of that branch to pay into any kind of compensation or restitution funds um when were when did the twins rise to power like uh they were born in i think 1999 yeah they're like 25 oh so they're young yeah exactly they're young yeah and their mother is kind of this evil matriarch who refuses to acknowledge anything. And her father, whatever. Her father-in-law was the one, was Friedrich Fleck, was the guy who was sentenced to, at Nuremberg, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And actually ended up for the book because, of course, I reached out to all the families. I asked them, or I got a lot of decline to comments,

the interview requests declined. Spokespeople who gave such non-answers to my answers that it was really, it didn't really, it was total double speak or like corporate speak. But there was one grandson of Friedrich Flick was 80, who I think was very telling in his complete lack of distance about the inability to distance himself from his grandfather when he said, yes, many bad things have come out about my grandfather, mind you again, he was,

yes, he germany's most legendary industrious of the 20th century but he was also a nuremberg sentenced war criminal but he gave us so much more than wealth alone right so he was you know he was he was quite candid in the conversation that i had with him over over email and uh such but he he wasn't able to distance himself from it. And even as somebody as reflective as he was, if he already couldn't distance himself from his grandfather's legacy, you know,

then, you know, from those children, like the BMW Quans or the Utsgers or the Porsches, will like celebrate their father so much, you know, and also having done these horrific crimes, you know, did they have complete seeming lack of distance to the subject? Before you got to the book and you were writing the three articles, at least that you mentioned. Yeah.

What did you have also? So you had family sources. Yeah. And what, what, what other kinds of sources were you tracking down to be able to put the case together? So what these families always do, which is a super interesting MO, is that whenever kind of a scandal breaks in Germany about beloved company X or beloved patriarch Z, is that, oh, we're going to open up our archives. We're going to commission an academic study. An academic study. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to open up our archives and we're going to commission an academic study yeah yeah and you know we're going to lay it all out there so what happens they quickly pacify the

subject right four or five years later you have an academic tome published in you know 1200 pages in academic german which of course never reaches a audience in germany which is again inundated and desensitized alone you know on the daily because they're not going to read a 1200 page book on some family right yeah right so it's only discussed in academic circles they're never translated so the details never reach a global audience they don't have spark notes in germany right yeah i'm sure that i'm sure they do the germans are so diligent you know i'm sure they have spark notes i'm so happy you got that by the way i was really worried that was going to be before your time that's good that you know spark notes thank you and uh you know so there so these so these academics which are

very well done right but they're now the family can say, hey, listen, we have this study that nobody's ever read. You know, we've done all our due diligence. You know, it's all there. Nobody ever reads it. And they can go and pretend, again, on a global consumer-facing level, like nothing's ever happened before. So these studies were a a big help you know um archives some of them again as part of these studies have donated their archives somewhere in germany have their own archives so access those which is a big part of the book research um you know and just interviewing

a lot of people you know money managers academics you know journalists in in germany meeting with them and and getting you know getting the inside story and bring it to a global audience what were what were some of the higher-ups at bloomberg saying as you were publishing these articles over those few years i mean they were obviously doing well so they like that but like were they the ones pushing like oh you should really do the book on this or did was that more no it was more my colleagues you know i mean my higher ups just wanted more of those kind of stories they they loved they they they you know my editors my my bosses they they they loved that but it was more my my call my fellow reporting colleagues who said hey you should really you're on to something

here you should you should really um write a book on it so you decide to write the book you leave bloomberg in 2017 you moved to berlin and you spent four years on it now you already had like it sounds like friends and contacts in in germany no not really no i arrived there i didn't i really because you know also sorry yeah i went in mckay i went in blind yeah i went in blind um you know because i growing up even though it's our neighboring country right i would i would never really go to i would never really go to germany i didn't go to germany until i was 18 you know um you know to berlin which i really loved no i've never been to Oktoberfest.

I'm so embarrassed to admit this. I've been to Munich so many times. I've never been to Oktoberfest. I've wanted, I was so close to going like twice or three times and it just never, I just never ended up going. It'll happen for you. I hope so. I hope so. I have my, I have my Junker and I'm not going to wear it later.

That's too much. But I have my Bavarian jacket ready. There you go. It's the, yeah. It's a cool jacket, actually. So you had to build this network from scratch. I had to build this network from scratch. But the funny, the weird thing is that I ended up in this group of friends in Berlin.

There was a lot of ties to the past there. One was like a great grandson of uh of of the chancellor who put hintler into power like von papen yeah yeah um it became a good friend of mine eric um you know and and and there was this other woman who was the granddaughter of uh von ribbentrop the nazi foreign secretary and you know they would all you know I got to know them in Berlin and they were this kind of social group and and I kind of fell in with them and they were all super intrigued about my research and they knew many of the families I wrote about of course but it was that was super weird so all like the grandkids and great-grandkids of like the evil people are friends yes basically and

you're friends yes and i'm friends with that are friendly with them this is like the anti-avengers or something yeah there you go yeah it's like a new new season of the boys you know but they like but they like the research they like the research yeah because it wasn't about their families because they were generally by and large, they were impoverished aristocracy or- They're like, get the blame off us. Exactly, exactly, exactly. They weren't part of these business dynasties, although they often intermarry, right?

Like, because the business people want the aristocracy, they want the castle, the castle people don't have the money, so they want the money, they want the aristocrat they want the castle the castle people don't have the money there so they want the money they want the stable uh dividend annual dividends you know that that's often marriage of convenience that often still happen in germany you know germany is very good at pretending to be a class aside not to be a class society even though it very much is they try to pretend not to be yeah yeah but if if they're marrying each other, it's obvious. Yeah, but people like the 85 million people in Germany,

they don't really know about this world. So they don't have like a New York Times marriage section? No, no, no. Where you see all the powerful people. No, no, no, no, no. Exactly, exactly, exactly. I don't do that. You know the Germans are so discreet, right?

The Germans are so discreet. I didn't know that. Oh, the Germans are super discreet. No, I'm not like... Especially compared to the Americans. It's like, yeah, they're – no, I would say they are the opposite of the U.S. in that way. They're super low-key. They never want to show their wealth.

They're terrified of it. Yeah, because I still see that today and I'm like, it'll be like the son of this billionaire married – I'm like, I don't think I'd i'd want that in the papers these days like just the way society is you know that's true so they're not doing that in germany but you but point being some of these people who are descended from yeah from central characters are helping introduce you to at least like ideas or potential sources sometimes sometimes they say hey you should talk to this or this person, but it was generally me, you know, going after. They would often have like anecdotes of people they had met at a party

who were from the families I wrote about that they could say so, so, and so. They could share their own experiences with me about some of these people that they had met, which I loved. So they're not just like opening up like a nazi phone book or something yeah it's not yeah all right no that doesn't exist no you can tell me no one's no no yeah exactly no there's there's no no nazi phone book or at least not that i'm aware of i'm i'm sorry yeah okay yeah so how did like did you have a moment because it's's a long period, four years. But I don't know, in the first year there or something, did you have, like, a really memorable breakthrough moment where you're like, whoa, we got something here? It was, I'm going to have to disappoint everybody, but it was really kind of just a day-to-day grind.

Day-to-day grind. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like. What are you doing? It's just constructing a narrative, you know. It's reading through documents it's reading books it's like how you know how how have we come to this moment kind of how how how did we right because the history kind of served as a back story to

the contemporary cover-up yeah so it's it's reconstructing that and being super you know being you know very detail-oriented that everything checks out so it is i feel that in the end you know i felt that i think closer to publication book came out in late april 2022 i felt close to publication. I published an essay for New York Times, for example, and or that's an excerpt in Forbes about the pushing out of Porsche's Jewish co-founder. This is a guy called Adolf Rosenberger, where I felt like, okay, these were, you know, these are stories that nobody's ever heard before.

And they were resonant. Porsche had a Jewish co-founder? Wow the rest from who was erased from company history so you had fairing on Porsche we talked about right the guy who who um you know who is commissioned by Hitler to develop the Volkswagen you have his son-in-law anton pierre who's a competitive legal counsel but the third co-founder of the porsche car design firm was it was a commercial director was jewish guy named adolf rosenberger who was a former race car driver too and the three of them established porsche or the porsche car design firm in 1930. out of rosenberg was pushed out in 1935 for being a jew he has to give up his 10 stake in porsche to fernand porsche's son a guy named ferry porsche who later makes the porsche into

this global brand right rosenberg is subsequently erased from uh from porsche company history did he flee the country he did he fled to the us he established himself he lands in los angeles um and in the end you know in 1950 because he wants you know he wants you know he wants to be compensated for being pushed out of it for having a stake arianized and being pushed out of the company his lawyers settle with the porsche pier clan behind his back where he gets 50 000 deutschmark and a choice between a porsche sports car or volkswagen beetle gee thanks and you know his 10 stake in porsche would be would have been worth $7 billion today. Because at the time my book was published in April 2022,

Porsche is in the process of spinning out, or the Porsche Pierre clans are in the process of spinning out Porsche from the Volkswagen Group and listing it separately on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. So they were doing uh road shows so they were they were meeting investors institutional investors in the u.s in the uk and pitching porsche to them hey invest you know become a cornerstone investor uh in our company right one of the most recognizable brands in the world but my story my my my book

hits my the my essays published in the times and um institutional investors particularly in the u.s start asking you know uh the porsche peers and their bankers and lawyers if you're going to lie about your history are you also going to lie about your finances so the sec document of the porsche listing has a clause saying revelations regarding the period from 1933 to 45 may come out that may adversely impact the share price yeah and as a result of the book the Porsche Pierre clan settled made this moral settlement with the heirs of out of Rosenberger um where they provided for his moral settlement where because the financial settlement had happened already in 1950 where they would rewrite Rosenberger back into Porsche history oh they did yes well they

are in the process of doing that because the settlement was happened late october sorry uh october 1st 2022 it's going to happen in 2025 and even and and as a result and and there was also the forbes excerpt that i wrote and and as part of the times i say you know i was recently contacted by the automotive automotive hall of fame in dearborn michigan they said they have pretty strict protocol and i said well we've inducted we've inducted fernand porsche and anton pierre in our hall of fame and we wanted to induct ferry porsche but actually we work on a chronological base and we found your article on out of rosenberger and Rosenberger and we're actually now considering to

induct him into the Hall of Fame him being one of the original co-founders of Porsche that's kind of cool that is cool and I think you know for somebody who made such a huge contribution as well to automotive history you know

and was erased from that history. Because of the Nazis because of who he was, you know, is I think, you know, I think it's I think he's finally getting the credits that he deserves. All right. So there's one. Yeah, there's a positive outcome. Okay, positive. That's one positive. Yeah, because so much this is dark. That's, that's,'s that's a good thing to say so i guess we'll see that finish in the next year or two as far as like officially exactly exactly so they commissioned the study

you know uh porsche that's porsche financed with the with the um your contributions of the heirs of out of rosenberg who live out in claremont california and and you know there's going to be an english edition and and you know where out of rosemary is getting his rightful place in history back but you know that is only because the porsche ps felt the financial pressure fellow that had something to lose in his ipo yeah right they were you know they were being confronted with their past in uncomfortable ways which forced them to clean house. Now, that is, of course, a very exceptional case. Another case in the book, which is an even crazier story, I give that at the end of the book as a kind of counterexample

to all the other families I write about, is about a family called the Reimans, and they own all these American consumer brands. They own 7-Up, Snapple, Gregory Mountain, Einstein's Bros Bagels. All the shit that's poisonous. Exactly. Krispy Kreme Donuts.

Robert F. Kennedy somewhere like, we got to get them out of this country right now. Panera Bread. And many other brands. I like Panera Bread. That one I like. Sorry. So they're owned by

the rhymes and the rhyme is at this insane story where their father and a grandfather were these huge uh virulent anti-semites huge nazi sympathizers um and which all is revealed in 2019 they're confronted with it germany's largest tabloid breaks the story on their dark Nazi history. Three months later, they come out with a major interview in the New York Times saying,

yes, our father and grandfather were Nazis, but actually our father, and this is where it gets really crazy, their father was married, had a childless marriage,

and had a relationship on the side with a woman, we fathered three uh three children with they are the controlling shareholders today of this entire consumer goods empire oh the three bastards are exactly yes their grandfather was murdered in the holocaust for being a jewish as a jew so so the one side so they're oh the material the maternal the the paternal side were the nazis the maternal side their grandfather was a jewish man was murdered so they stem from both perpetrator and victim right that's the put that one in the shrink's office right exactly and and not only that you know they're germany's new wealthiest dynasties, you know, making all that money of Krispy Kreme donuts, Einstein Bros bagels, you name it. And next year, they end up putting their money where their mouth is and renaming their foundation after the man who was murdered, after their grandfather, funding it in perpetuity for 250 million euros every 10 years, but also being transparent.

It's a lot of money. Yeah yeah it's a lot of money yeah they're good they're going to have a lot of money estimated at 40 billion um you know and and and and and they're still transparent about who they're you know who their nazi father and grandfather was now of course is that that case is you know can be replicated right there's no there's no other German business dynasty with a story like that. But at least that's also a positive example of some folks who did good. Yeah, I guess that is. That's just like – I mean, look, listen. You don't have control over where you're born or how you're born.

Exactly, totally. I understand that. So you do with what you can with what you got and at least they're they seem to be doing the right thing but they're also motivated by the fact that they are simultaneously like familial victims of it exactly right and and and they run this empire with with you know with brands where in the of course where you know if you're a nazi family you own einstein bros bagels you know that's not a that's not a that's not a great look you know that's not a great look yeah so oh that's so bad yeah oh i didn't even think of the name on that one oh yeah but all the headlines by like all the

it was like crisp don't owners of crispy cream donuts you know confess to their nazi past and things like that it was yeah it was they ate it up yeah you know side point here why did i don't know if you like came across this in your studies but why did the nazis not like i don't know forcibly imprison people like albert einstein and let them fly i mean i'm glad they did let them flee but like let them flee when you know they were jewish so they didn't like them obviously but they had useful talents that they could have put to work in like slave labor yeah yeah i mean they did einstein had already gotten out before the nazi seized power or yeah or i did or i think it's like 1933 or 34 right people could arguably still flee well they could flee as you know if if they successfully attempted so you know even

during the war but but you know most of them had to flee before 38 39 before the war broke out okay because i know they didn't obviously they did end up putting people of you know you mentioned earlier like guys who were engineers might have been used as slave labor factories and stuff like that but there were some brilliant like world-changing scientific minds that like you know they like walk out the door and i'm glad they did it's just like it's almost strange to me yeah yeah because i guess they weren't that forward-thinking, right? Yeah. I mean, they didn't have this – there was not that grand plan in mind of how it all should end up. You know, those decisions only came during the war. Yeah, there's also – I always struggle with the simultaneous stupidity, you will scientifically speaking of some of these nazis in the sense that to put an example on it you have a guy like warner von braun right who

objectively speaking when it comes to rocketry and that stuff was a fucking genius he was the best in the world and later you know was operation paper clipped over here but that guy at the same time seemingly from all the evidence we can review, was able to, as a scientific mind, get behind some of the Nazi ideology of like, you know, racial disparities and all that stuff to the point that, you know, he was a guy who enslaved Jewish people in the slowest one and shoot. Right. You know what I mean? Oh, I didn't realize that. So like you have – I think that was him. We can check that. But some of these guys, they were like that. It's like you ever think about how a guy like that smart could also be that fucking stupid at the same time?

Yeah. And evil? Yeah. I mean some people just ate up the propaganda, right? Or they became just brainwashed by being just too much you know too deep in with the regime but it's interesting because a guy like fernand porsche for example right who was you know hitler called like the greatest engineer of of the nazi regime and etc you know he was received all these awards but he would never you know he was clearly a sole opportunist right

he was not I mean he would do everything in that opportunism to get ahead you know and he didn't mind it didn't matter to him whether he you know whether he killed thousands of the people in uh in his factory as a result of it but but but but there was not there was not you know contrary to his son-in-law or his actual son who both joined the ss voluntarily you know and were really you know just ideological nazis uh he was somebody who you know stayed clear steered clear of the of the ideological part by and large you know but still was responsible for the murder of of thousands of people yeah can't get away from that well you were mentioning a little bit ago that one like email back exchange back and forth with the grandson right yeah who was that again who was his

grand so he is the friedrich flix he's going to free reflex his grandson okay um you know and he was the only one to to correspond on the record with me for the book uh so he was the only one yeah on the record of the heirs right okay of the heirs so the question would be without going into things that are off the record that you can't share of the let's say unnamed people off the record that you spoke with background yeah so i'm assuming this is like kids or grandkids or nephews stuff like that what were was were there any conversations that also stood out like that one and particularly without devolving the exact details here obviously um you know they all follow a similar pattern right a few of them

want and i i do have to say as i view it and that's also where the book ends you know i think it is up to those it is up to the current generation so i'm not saying our generation right but it is up to those who were born directly after the war or as late as... The fourth generation, for example, has nothing to do with taking responsibility for these crimes anymore. It is, in my view... The fourth generation? Yeah, because at one point you're too far away from it.

And again, these people shouldn't're not, it's not, you know, these people shouldn't inherit the sins of their father. It's about the responsibility one has for their fortunes and kind of coming clear with that, you know, coming in too clean with that. And I do think it is up to, and that's also kind of the the argument i make at the end in the epilogue of my book uh of of the of of the children and grandchildren of those uh patriarchs that i'm writing about to do sub to to to implement this this you know this moral responsibility towards history

but i think at one point you know for the next generation or or the current generation you know it's already too far removed so i i wasn't gonna write about you know when i write about the heirs it's about the children of those that are there are reneged that the children of those patriarchs that that if these foundations and and and all these other institutions are named named after or grandchildren um but the next generation in my view you know it's too far to to i think you reckon with it yeah i i i think there has to be a line somewhere i mean if if if we didn't have one we'd be blaming people for like what some king did exactly 100 years ago exactly exactly exactly exactly exactly there's also just you know again it's not about the money right it's

about the responsibility towards history which is way more immediate with the children and the grandchildren who you know have still experienced their parents or or grandparents and have decided to honor them in such perverse ways right and and i think the fourth generation has nothing to do with that anymore so that's why it needs to be solved now that's why kind of our there's also this immediacy uh or more immediacy to it. Because you also relieve your next generation from this issue, right? Absolutely. You don't have to burden them with that anymore.

I think it's also really unfair to do so. Did you track, did any of your investigations end up running into somehow or like through rabbit holes into the rat lines and South America so the clothes I got to that so this was I talked about this Edgar guy right is the guy who was trained as an SS officer in um in Dachau who becomes one of Westany's largest uh most prominent and wealthiest industrialists after the war so he actually uh teams up with his former or finances his former ss comrades through this thing called silent help which was founded by co-founded by himmler's daughter to help the to help either imprisoned ss men after their release or have ss men who were on the run flee to things like south from a place like south america and so there's you know i found this conversation of where this Oetker guy, actually with his best friend, who is this Rudolf von Ribbentrop, who is the son of the Nazi, of the foreign secretary, right?

So the uncle of this woman I got to know in Berlin, you know, they're talking about the best way to donate in the 1950s talking about the best way to donate money uh you know where it's still like where you could expense it like where where they could funnel it through the corporation so they said they could expense their donations to this SS to this to the silent help uh thing where it was more text where it was fiscally friendly to donate it via the corporation. And they could access it wherever they send it. Well, exactly. Well, the people could, you know, then if they donate to say if they got it to Silent Help, right still, it was called there are the people would be responsible for dispersing it to to whomever.

How do you know how they would do that? Are these like Kurt like, you know, couriers? Yeah, it's probably a courier thing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that history blows my mind the rat lines will never cease to amaze yeah it's incredible yeah yeah philip sands i mean to book the red line you know and you know there's a third because east west street is the first of his trilogy then the red line and i think there's a third one coming i mean these were incredible so he's alive philip sands philip sands is alive yeah philip sounds like good guy i got him on the show yeah we gotta get him in here yeah he's in he's in england he's a he's a he's a human rights lawyer

he's a he's a big deal he's he's great he's an incredible author yeah okay so i i've told this story a few times on various podcasts so for people people who've heard this, just bear with me. But I feel like for context, you should hear this one. So I have one contact who is kind of like a jack of a lot of trades, to put it that way. So he gets called. This is two or I think like three years ago now. He gets called by a major, major league public company about an inkling they had. And so what happened was they had just purchased or merged, however you want to say it, another recognizable major company to bring within their company. And essentially the, the executive board there, the chief executives were going to be brought on to be that at the, at the new conglomerate, if you will, and be very high up and be involved in both operations. So what, what the contact said to my guy is, you know, the, the CEO of this thing really rubs me the wrong way.

I can't, I can't place my finger on it, but I think he's a Nazi. And that's exactly the, the reaction that my friend had. What the fuck you mean? He's a Nazi. And they're like, well, he's German and he's from South America. And so my friend's like, all right, you know, there's a lot of Germans in South America. Yes, there are some that are Nazis. But what like is he wearing a swastika in his wallet? Like what's going on? They're like, no, he's like the nicest guy ever. Perfectly dressed, polite to everyone.

He just rubs us the wrong way. Like there's something below there. So my friend says to him, listen, I'm a capitalist. Like I'll take your money, but like I'm going to tell you, please don't pay me. Like this is a total waste of time. Like I'm sure it's fine. He's running. He was looking at the companies like he's running this amazing company.

Look to everyone else like on the board there. They're clearly not from South America, not Nazis. So he's like, there's no fucking way. And they keep bothering him about it like over and over. They're like, come on, please. And he's like, all right, fuck it. You bothering him about it like over and over they're like come on please and he's like all right fuck it you know all right give me 50 grand whatever waste of your money let's go fucking guy was a nazi card carrying whole bit like like the shit that my guy uncovered to this was like it was like the movie scene where you're like like indiana jones holy shit and like they got

him out of there but it just goes to show you there was really other than this person obviously having an incredible gut yeah there was no evidence to show that this dude was that or it actually i'll even take a step farther because i don't know as much as did he march always when he was walking around you know i mean is? Was that maybe the giveaway? I don't know. But I don't even know if there – you would think there's something sinister to the fact that he was running this company. But I've never been able to put that together. Like, oh, what would he be – how would that like, you know, help the cause of the fourth Reich? Maybe there's something.

I'd have to ask my guy about that. You should have him on the show. Yeah. See, I don't think he would ever do it because he's like the kind of dude whose entire life has been made on like people not knowing who he is. Yeah, of course. But it's a great story but also like kind of scary because it goes to show you like some of these people really are there. Is it like this rampant thing and like they are starting a forthright i don't know about that but you know when you can get someone at that high a level to be in there

totally inconspicuously and then like they're that guy in in this case like 2021 that i mean that's like three this guy was probably like 50 years old so this is like a third generation kind of dude meaning it's been passed down that much and here he is like you don't hear that maybe extending the cause yeah that's that's not i mean you you rather hear these stories right of continuation but i do think unfortunately you know that's why you have neo-nazis you know many of them you know recognizable some less so some in the boardroom

and that's nuts just subscribing to that it's hard to wrap your head around it why do you think ideologies like that never fully go away? They always kind of rise up. Not just neo-Nazis, any kind of hate ideology. Yeah.

I think people always want to believe in something that can be easy. It's easy to subscribe to because it excludes certain people or the ideas are kind of it's it's you know it's it's easy i mean democracy is difficult right democracy yes democracy you need you need a lot for democracy liberal democracy is not unfortunately is not the you know is history has shown us that you know liberal democracy might be the blip and it might be a blip in history and autocracy and and and all kind of you know more of the authoritarian ideologies are often the ones who win out because they're more homogeneous.

They are less complex in a way. It allows for a strong man or a strong woman and people to rally around their ideas of of one person or of one ideology you know where the ideas are pretty are are quite you know simple is it might not be the right word but they're easy to understand democracy is hard democracy is difficult you know it's a hard thing to execute it's a hard thing you know it it's worth protecting but it's but it but it's difficult the democratic process is very difficult you know and more and more people seem to have a problem

with it unfortunately yeah i mean america i always think about this in the context of the world it's a it's an infant you know it's about to be 250 years yes that's nothing and like we're like this birthplace of like the democracy republic meeting each other to create the three chambers of government yeah three parts of government and everything yeah it's a very cool thing but you look around the world i'll just use one anecdotal example right now like you look at the middle east we'll just use one anecdotal example right now. Like you look at the Middle East. We've talked about this on other podcasts before, including like with Andrew Bustamante. It's like, you know, you have this collegiate culture where they are like historically across thousands of years, the culture itself gravitates towards a strongman leadership.

But Europe too. Sure. Exactly. And Europe's like trying the democracy thing but when you look at their that's you took the words out of my mouth when you look at their history you go back you know 100 years it's the same thing as the collegiate culture you know a different format but same idea like people are like oh all right let's go to this guy yeah yeah but i think it's also just human. I think that is also human nature.

Yeah. That is easier to get behind. It is simply easier. You don't have to think too much. Thinking is hard. That's a good way to put it. You talked about earlier the denazification not necessarily working on a big part of that being like the united states political interests with the cold war and and fighting the soviet union

have you ever read devil's chessboard by david talbot i have not no enlighten me you would like that okay so he basically it's it's focused around alan dallas no right of course and the founding of cia and everything. And Alan Dulles is effectively, there were other people involved, but he's like the godfather of Operation Paperclip or whatever. And so when I'm, you know, just listening to you provide all the context today of these different German companies and everything, obviously like some of the whitewashing in history and the families,

they certainly deserve their blame. But it's hard for me to not draw the the conclusion that there is a hardcore enabling from the united states and like particularly our intelligence services seeing as guys like alan dallas worked with hitler and worked with some of these companies before the war and then i think this is like the most fitting symbolism ever he operated out of switzerland yeah during the war right which is like the neutral place exactly where my grandmother was from and and fled to right and so she was that that was her way to get back into safety my grandmother and on to go to bacteria native switzerland right where my great-grandparents were and yeah i mean

because it was neutral and it was the most you know kind of opportunist country in terms of profiting from both sides right right getting the gold in getting the what the gold you know the nazi gold right you know and all you know and banks keeping keeping the nazi checking accounts yeah but point being like it's fair to... And having dollars as well, and then hosting dollars. Right, so it's fair to say that there is certainly blame in the results of your investigation as far as these places existing

that exist within the power structures of the United States. Absolutely. And actually, my most recent investigation, which was published only in the October issue of Vanity Fair this year, is about what is currently German's wealthiest man, a man named Klaus-Michael Kühne, who is 87 years old. How do you spell that?

Kühne. Klaus-Michael Kühne. It's... If you do um yeah david young vanity fair you'll have it up in no time okay it's about a man who is 87 years old he has a network of about 44 billion he's the largest shareholder of uh kuna nago which is the largest world's largest freight forwarding company. It's the largest shareholder of Lufthansa Group, the big airliner.

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$0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. One of the largest shipping companies in the world. He's a large shareholder of Brandtag, is the big chemical distributor he just bought up greyhound buses or the company that owns grand buses he's 87 he's um he doesn't have any kids he doesn't have any hours he got married when he was 51 52 to his wife was also 51, his wife was 51. And his father and uncle profited greatly from the Third Reich by transporting the goods of families that had been deported to death camps and concentration camps by their houses or all their goods being emptied out and kuna nagel and kuna family or

the kuna siblings transporting those goods to Germany those looted goods to Germany um for to be auctioned off to be sold off at fire sale prices to be given to families that uh you know whose houses have been bombed by the allies etc um and you know this happened of tens of thousands of families mainly jewish in the netherlands in france in belgium in luxembourg they greatly profited from it they go through they get denazified um and there's a letter in in the notification files that I found during my research which says Alfred Kuhne needs to be denazified as a matter of National Security for in the American occupation some blah blah what turns out is that kunanayo offices were used as cover firms by uh the CIA backed West German intelligence operation um so there was so so they and that's also in the article I mean they they um we will link this article in the description the day you know the the kunis went

off scott scott free from profiting directly from genocide right because of their intel because of their import because of their company's importance to uh american brit and british intelligence because they served as a cover firm because of a freight forwarding firm right there you have companies all over the world and they could have spies in there who have you know freight forwarding firms is the most boring thing ever right so you have spies nobody suspects you but you have hundreds of offices around the world and and they could operate it and it was again in the context of this fight against communism that as a result they they go off scot-free um um for for they're not for for for their profiteering of uh of genocide because of their usefulness to allied interests and and his son now and that's that's the reason why

why i wrote the article is that he actually shelved the commission a shelf the commission study because it mentions uh his father's and his uncles and his company's activities during the third reich so that's why the company the story is called the billionaire secret and um you know and and and if he dies and he doesn't since he doesn't have any heirs you know he um he doesn't, since he doesn't have any heirs, he doesn't have heirs or doesn't have heirs that we know of? No, he doesn't have any heirs. Well, he doesn't have any heirs we know,

but what is gonna happen with his fortune, which is a low estimate is 44 billion, it's more close to 50 to 60 billion, is it's going to his own family charity, right? And it's gonna be one of the world's largest foundations now so and he is refusing he just refusing to to do any kind of reckoning and it's curious to see once he dies and he's 87 so it's probably not going to happen for too long from now um what the foundation board is going to do uh with the history of uh of that fortune right so um i mean this is you know one

of the largest transportation fortunes in the world one of the things i struggle with all the time and it's something that throughout this whole conversation is in the back of my mind whenever we talk about serious shit like this where you know horrible things happen and maybe didn't get a tone for or weren't you know people ended up getting rewarded for it as as you've laid out today but one of the things i always think about is like the trade-offs and this is why i could never do these jobs but it's like the world is a really fucked up place yeah and bad shit happens all over the place you you've spent your career reporting and seeing a lot of it and some of the – again, some of the stuff we'll talk about in a few minutes that you're seeing right now. And I do recognize that sometimes – and I don't mean this even in a sinister way, though sometimes it is.

You will have dudes who got to make a decision sitting in an office based on private intelligence of what's going on where they see on one side somebody evil and on the other side somebody evil let's just keep it simple and they do have to say the long-term ramifications of taking the side of the maybe lesser evil here therefore letting this evil over here get a w in that way is better and there's something in our human nature especially in mine and a lot of people listening right now that just can't sit with the fact that this one over here gets off yeah and it and i wonder how many situations today that you've been able to investigate there actually were in those back rooms you know an actual worse evil that they chose yeah you know think about what the dallas brothers did for example with operation ajax i don't know if you've ever uh looked into an ajax

which was the which was the ousting of the democratically elected president of iran in the early 1950s yes of course and putting the shah in his place which you know ends up basically setting the stage for the islamic revolution in 1979 that's right so you know i mean if you could say that you know you know it might be too too too short-sighted to say well you know the americans created the or the dallas brothers created the design regime but but you know it was active american intervention in aatically elected process which put the Shah in power you know horrifically repressed represses people and 27 years later you know uh Ayatollah Hamanei um seizes power or chases the Shah away or his troops did and and since then you have you know the most

one of the most horrific regimes of the Middle east repressive regimes of the middle east you know yeah and like sometimes and i'm not a fan of the dullest brothers to be clear right but sometimes you'll look at like an example like that and you may say hindsight 2020 on some things like sure what could they have really known 25 years later no no of course not of course no no no no carelessness sometimes exactly who you may put in there. The hubris. The arrogance. Absolutely. You know, or like the, you know, I mean, it's really playing God.

It's playing God. Yes. It is actually playing God. Look at Afghanistan. Yeah. Look at who we put in there. Yeah. And that only took that full, that full like context was 20 years.

Yeah. Yeah. And there were guys who knew in 2011 exactly how that was going to go yeah like by within 10 years they're like oh yep this is how it's going to end and they called it back now and that's what that's what it did i mean it's it's messy man it's i'm i'm not envious of the people who have to be in those rooms sure and sometimes it's the wrong people in those rooms of course yeah we're making very insidious decisions. Yeah. Yes. Now you I mean, you've mentioned this, like throughout

some of the conversation today, but as far as looted wealth, right, you know, because the transfer of wealth that happened with the Nazis, illegally taking wealth from from people that they were enslaving was like the biggest in human history have you uncovered some of that being literally assets under management if you will being tied back to some of these families i mean it's it's it's pretty much impossible to you know to go back and or to say now well you know this amount of euros was or dollars was was was part of that what I can say is you know I mean the

decision the larger decision by the allied for by by the allied occupation authorities by the Americans to let them you know to make the again political expedient decision to let them keep their assets following the nazification you know that that just provided provided the fertile groundwork for the research of germany and allowed them to just keep their fortunes to begin with what they had robbed what they had taken what they had you know procured uh during the war uh on the backs of of you know millions of of of forced enslaved laborers um you know taking people's lives and livelihood um that one can say by and large now of course when it comes to the matter of art for example right I

mean if you look at the the the restitution case that are still going on it's about art and it's about real estate mostly but you have some good examples well for example you know the the Kunigawa wrote about like Kuninagel one of the things they did in in addition to transporting you know the the diluted the empty diluted empty contents of people's houses would be murdered and deported they would also transfer looted art very valuable looted art and would sometimes even lose it yes this very famous uh telegram that i found in a report by the OSS a predecessor to the CIA of a couldn't I go losing like a you know 16 paintings like five by Picasso you know by Cezanne by man I mean by all the big

impressionists you know and and and and these paintings never resurfacing uh again so what happened to these paintings right you know it's so it's it's um you know they're still in terms of actual concrete hidden wealth you know people are finding investigators are finding still cashes particularly of art you know that that or error or people are coming forward who have you know where the where the provenance of a piece of art are not clear 80 years onwards right and and that of course constitutes you know this this art constitutes you know you know major we're talking about billions if not tens of billions of of of course hidden of hidden wealth yeah

there's also that period immediately at the end of world war ii that i personally think is one of the most underreported periods in journalistic history where you have the three allies britain u.s and the ussr all descending from different angles deep into Germany. And it was a massive basically like treasure hunt race. Who could uncover the most shit and probably never tell anyone about it. Exactly. And bring it back to a museum in St. Petersburg or Moscow or an archive. And no one knows about it.

In D.C. or you name it yeah yeah i know that that's you know because most of these you know going back to my research right i mean i dug a lot in into german archives where of course of course it was mostly focused on on these families but for the broader picture so much of it was also in american archives where the allied occupation authorities just took everything back took documents back to the US and like all caches of reams of documents at the National Archives in Washington DC where you know I found I got to discover so much you know and and and and there are still so much left to be uncovered.

I mean, this is going to be a period of time where in 20 years there will still be major revelations. No doubt about that. I agree. And I think there's many things that are lost to history forever. Yes, unfortunately, too. And I think it's a way larger percentage than most people realize. Totally. Totally.

It's true. It's a good point. But it's amazing, amazing reporting, man. And obviously we're going to have your book linked in the description for people to check out. But you're a jack of a few different trades here. You're also – you've now been in the Middle East for three years. And if I understand correctly, you're living in Tel Aviv? That is correct, yes.

What ended up getting you there? Yeah. yes what ended up getting you there yeah um so so when i was in germany so i actually ended up um my former partner is german and we moved to tel aviv uh together uh because she became a tv correspondent uh for german tv and tell them in tel aviv they let them yeah as a correspondent yeah yeah a lot of the germans they want to make for German TV. In Tel Aviv? In Tel Aviv. They let that happen? Yeah, as a correspondent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of the Germans, they want to make it right.

Yeah. And I started writing as a Middle East correspondent for a Dutch newspaper. So, yeah, so we moved out there and I started covering the entirety of the middle east so you know world cup soccer in qatar you know presidential election in turkey economic crisis in lebanon oh everything yeah everything yeah yeah because i don't have i didn't have you know i think i found the narratives in the larger middle east to be more interesting than uh

then you know focusing at that time you know on you know israel or west bank or or gaza 2021 pre-october 7th now you know the the um you know i've been and i ended up being you know i wasn't tel aviv on october 7th and i ended up being the first dutch correspondent to be in in the kibbutz and you know i'd never seen that people you know or never seen you know seeing you know hamas you know you know dead bodies in in ditches or being in these kibbutzim where you wait you were there yeah i was there yeah yeah three days after the or two 72 hours after the attack began yeah there was i've never been in war zone before i mean on october 7 i transferred i transformed from a regional financial correspondent or regional business correspondent to a local war correspondent oh wait so the for okay so the first couple years

when you were covering things across the middle east it was all financial ben yeah because i was working for like the dutch financial daily i was working for a dutch financial newspaper i mean it's i'm trained as a financial no no sorry i didn't i didn't explain it well i was working for i am still working for a dutch financial newspaper as their middle east correspondent but of course the focus became yes on the place where i happened to be based i mean i could have been based in beirut or or islam or cairo or dubai yeah but i was based in tel aviv so you know yeah so now the bulk of your reporting i would imagine since then has obviously been on that particular crisis totally and you're there so first of all you're living in tel aviv

there's all there's got to be like all kinds of like constant rocket alerts and stuff coming yeah yeah what's that near daily yeah no it's i mean in the beginning it's scary um at the beginning it's scary um you know but you get you get unfortunately even that even prior to octoberth I had never heard a rocket alarm go off so in the two years that I'd lived there prior to October 7th I'd never heard a rocket alarm and I remember waking up the morning of October 7th at about

6.30am local time and you know getting woken up by the rocket sirens. And it became immediately clear from the footage that was filtering in that one didn't understand the size of the attack, but one did understand there was gonna be war.

That became, I remember texting my boss or sending my boss a WhatsApp message saying, this is gonna to be war there's there's rockets over there's you know there's armed men in the streets of various uh you know israeli streets you know there's there's dead bodies everywhere you know this is going to be war that was they came up with the clear they were there for hours right they were there for days yeah well there were days yes yeah i mean they found i think you know according to israeli army estimates 3 800 hamas fighters crossed the border that day and i think about 2 200 civilians and i even found like 2 200 civilians yeah yeah yeah yeah

because you know the the the the unprotected or the you know the other wall came you know the fence was was was was broken down and people could get through and and what people tend to forget now but there were a lot of protests at that border in the days running up to the in the weeks running up to the attack which was more local reporting thing but But yeah, so a lot of civilians got through too. And I think even months later, they found two, whether it was civilians or Hamasniks is unclear, but they still found two people somewhere holed up in a Bedouin village somewhere.

I'll never, for the rest of my life i'll never forget that day because it was a very weird lineup of the universe but i there's this guy mark turner who i had been talking with for months to come on and do a podcast and he is he is a scottish jewish u.s former recon marine so quite the quite the combo there and i think he did like 11 years in the military and then started a foundation called the overwatch foundation where he goes around the world to various war zones and trains you know the resistance or whatever yeah and this kind of started with the whole Ukraine thing he was there like on the ground in Ukraine like a day in because one of his buddies

in the U.S was Ukrainian and had to go back yada yada yada so we had set up this podcast where you know he was going to come in and talk all about his experience in Ukraine which was very nuanced because he was like this war is really up like we got to stop this but here's what's happening and in when we were talking about this he was telling me how he was currently training idf soldiers on the gaza border so wow i book him a flight maybe beginning of september i book him a flight from chicago he's going to be back in the u.s for a week so i book him a flight for saturday october 7th at 7 a.m and he lands here at 9 a.m or whatever and this is when it's all breaking out and everything no it's it's that's 2 a.m israel time right so 9 a.m be uh israel's ahead so israel seven oh you're totally right yeah what am i saying it's completely

the reverse something like pardon me pardon me my my my math is off you're absolutely right you want people here because i have a friend who got married uh who's who's american israeli and we got married here on october 7th in new york and they live in tel aviv he lives with his argentinian american wife in tel aviv and they got married in october they went through with the wedding but they woke up and one of his cousins was also killed on october 7th and they they woke up um to the news so you're absolutely right pardon me yeah so so i you know he's he's working with these guys so he's in here like unless he remembers it like in between like when we're taking bathroom breaks he's in here like – unless he remembers it, like in between – like when we were taking bathroom breaks, he's like going through the WhatsApp and we're hearing like the audio like on the ground, like getting some video of it and shit.

I mean it was a crazy time. But point being, a lot has happened since then. Yes. There is – this is like the most nuanced crisis in the world as far as like that long-term disagreement over the land and everything. This is as old as time. Yes. But like you get to see within 72 hours up close the destruction of that event, which there's no doubt it was horrific on every level. in the you know year plus of 15 months since then like what what do you think of where this at right now where this is at as as a war so just before we came in right there was a ceasefire uh announced with lebanon uh or pardon and that's a you know the israeli prime minister is putting

forward a ceasefire proposal between Hezbollah and or bringing it to his security cabinet for approval. I think it's a 30-day ceasefire. There doesn't seem to be an end to the war. It doesn't seem like Netanyahu is going to stop the war in Gaza, which his own generals and his Minister of Defense Yoav Golant, who we just fired, has said,

we have achieved war military objectives in Gaza. It is unclear what we are doing there. We're losing soldiers. Forget about how the rest of the world is responding to this but just from their perspective right and and you know too many it seems that

nothing I still has three corruption cases simmering against him on the background his intent to stay in power no matter what there's you know he said he would establish a um national committee of inquiry regarding the security fears of october 7th right none of that has happened yeah because he says well the war's still going can't have an air commission of inquiry so for him personally staying in power is incredibly beneficial or pardon continuing the war is very beneficial to him staying in power now of course israel is so dependent on American military aid yes and with a new administration coming in January 20th 2025 you know and also it it the the the the unpredictability of of of the incoming or the return of the of the next commander-in-chief who knows what that might happen you know who knows um he likes israel though he does but you know but but he had a big he had a big falling out with nathaniel and nathaniel

frank biden uh or congratulate biden uh um in yeah but they're good now they're good now okay well yeah i think he's already visited him and already spoke three times i think since his re-election but who you know maybe listen you know the abraham accords did happen uh in his previous administration right it it it could mean it could mean a global it could mean a regional shift. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. I look at things intrinsically positive. I like that. It could mean good things,

but if I look at his incoming cabinet uh appointees with regards to who's good mike huckabee becoming the ambassador to israel for example the american ambassador to israel who doesn't believe palestine exists exactly exactly for example or who doesn't even call refers to the west bank as the west bank because of judea and samaria um you know it is it is hard with those men in in in power i think uh to reach anything on the two-state solution now what that means with regards to iran policy what it means vis-a-vis hasbullah you know and what it means for the normalizations of relations between israel and the saudis which i think both sides are still very keen on and i could see the new administration making headway on that even though the saudis have said there needs to be palestinian state first but we'll see whether mbs will actually hold to that or or give way you know he was trump a chip

for kashogi too that's the other problem you know what i mean right well i was in the chip in the sense that that because trump helped him get off that yeah yes yes yes yes yes correct yes yes so you know and and and they and they're and they you know they have rapport you know uh um mbs um and trump that much is clear and and trump's son-in-law too who's not going to be part of the new administration but with his new private equity venture has raised it has received 2 billion um from the saudi sovereign wealth fund and other golf uh wealth funds sovereign wealth funds so you know my you know my my i think the the major concern concern is regarding BB's lack of taking responsibility for the security for for the security lapses that led to October 7th and just thinking all about you know about the fate of the 101 hostages that are still being held the uh civilian situation in the Gaza Strip I I got to you know foreign journal of journalists

in general are still not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip independently your either go embedded with the Israeli army I joined a Dutch military aid mission for a drop a drop a food drop above Gaza to see to you know after in April this year and to see the destruction with my own eyes. Wait, so you were flying? Yeah, I was in Gaza in the airspace for four minutes. That's as close as you're allowed to go. That's as close as I was allowed to go.

You can go with an Israeli, you can go embedded with the Israeli army, but then, you know, you're not getting shown the full picture. So, you know, the Dutch don't have any skin in the game. So I could do that. I could see the destruction and you get a good view because we're pretty close to the ground.

And for four minutes, seeing the leveling of northern Gaza, of Gaza City, which is the largest city within the Strip, you know, back in April. And, you know, we're eight months later. And, yeah, the situation has, shall we say, has regressed even further. So, you know, it seems that Netanyahu, with the ceasefire that's being announced today,

is giving kind of a chip saying, hey, you know, we've made peace now with Hezbollah. We will see if it lasts, or we've made a ceasefire with Hezbollah, but I want to continue the war in Gaza without any military, again, without, you know, with the military leaders saying our objectives have been achieved. without any military, again, with the military leaders saying our objectives have been achieved. But of course, the objective of the release of the Gossages has not been achieved, but that is,

that objective has to be released through negotiations, which are also ongoing. um you know i you know there are you know many think that there needs to be a you know we've been talking this whole episode about taking responsibility right you know and and many people feel that that uh netanyahu needs to take responsibility um for for what has led for what has led to the occurrence of October 7, and the security lapse in the first place. And debt, reckoning debt responsibility is not yet happening, you know, and it comes at the detriment of literally have millions of millions of people, you know, and and it is.

And you saw that up close from the earth as close as you get from the sky. I saw that as goes in, you know, I speak to many Gazans, those that are, you know, as part of my reporting. I keep in touch with many of the hostage families with the Gazans that are, you know, still in the Gaza Strip that are outside of Gaza. I go to the West Bank a lot. And I mean, it is, you know, or to the border with Lebanon. And it is, you know, it is a very bleak situation. And with no signs of improving.

And there's also seems to be... You know, recently my home city of Amsterdam, you know, was kind of the scene for, you know recently my my home city of amsterdam you know was was was was was kind of the scene for for you know i'm a huge soccer fan you know i'm a huge ix amsterdam fan and i was super excited watching the ix uh tel aviv game in a bar in tel aviv and then being called up saying oh netanyahu is sending two planes which turned out to be which he retracted you know and also complete lack of nuance yes uh in that discussion you know the american president this is a pogrom you know at one hand other people say the other side saying you know only hooligans got beat up that is just not true you know the people who got beat up were like grandfathers with their with with their grandchildren we just wanted to go to a game

you know um and complete lack of news and the hate you know i found it to be so weird having reported on this on this conflict now for for 15 months full time did my own home city suddenly the conflict is exported and the same kind of narratives, competing propaganda narratives that each side are benefiting or trying to leverage or to, you know, for their own benefit. I found that to be such, I found to be really just uh maddening and and perverse and and really uh you know really self-serving and i found yeah i was you know i um i've been super busy with

reporting on that and also the events that that what actually happened rather than everybody rushing to judgment and and judging things on on you know video imagery and and and you know people were beat up in the most horrific way it is still unclear what started it's clear that there was no pre-meditation days in advance um but it is also clear that that that there you know, that innocence got beat up. And, you know, yeah, it was very strange to see it suddenly play out in the streets of my hometown. I can imagine. And, you know. Also when you're so informed, by the way.

Yeah, but that's tough because, you know there's a lot of i found as well you know so many in my also my personal surroundings so many kind of social media warriors who just re have no have never been to the region i've never been to the middle east i've never been to israel i've never been to gaza i've never been to the west bank i've never been to lebanon i've never been to jordan right uh or to you name it or the gulf and they just rush to judgment and they and they dehumanize the other yeah this is there is there is you know it is so important and that is what lacks it is seeing the other and seeing the other spain and the refusal to see that you know and is is is and and the hatred that is that that is feared upon

one another i mean it is really yeah it is it is it is it you know it it breaks it it breaks my heart as you know a human being who is you know as a professional you know i don't have any skin in the game in the in the car you know i'm there you know had don't have any skin in the game in the economy you know i'm there you know had it not been for my ex i would have never moved to the region right you know i'm doing the best i can with abilities but there is no it is it is um you know it is it is incredibly frustrating uh and and you know which is also a fact of war i learned you know it is it is incredibly frustrating uh and and you know which is also a fact of war i learned you know this first conflict that i've been covering um is that you know war is just also just is you know propaganda is is is as important in war as as as anything else you know

yeah it's amazing that in in the world now where everyone has this to hold up and suddenly take a video, it has made propaganda 10 times worse because the context of what the screen shows here and doesn't show here and here for any side of any of these conflicts we see is insane. And you are such a fascinating guy to be covering it because you got baptism by fire if you will no i was about to set my fire right it was a total baptism by fire literally and you have now seen you have seen the worst of the at least of what we know of the destruction of both sides of this and i really appreciate the nuance with which you talk about it because i get yelled at all the time by people for speaking nuanced on this issue i see good and

evil on both sides simultaneously i also see you know the let's say like the the hostage of the moment as well no pun intended there right what what i would mean by that is like for example i would say anecdotally israel's current government is not the greatest government and i have a lot of a lot of issues with that that doesn't mean that that extent the people of israel are their government and that that extends to them i i think netanyahu like it's kind of odd to me that the year leading up to october 7th i could have obviously never predicted this but i studied the shit out of israel and netanyahu in particularly and i had just finished i read a biography that was like kind of an anti-netanyahu biography biography yes i think i think that was he's a great reporter and then i read netanyahu's own words and i had

finished his book about two weeks before October 7th. And let's just go off of what he said himself. This is a guy who has strong beliefs. Okay, that's fine. You can do that. But his personal history with Gaza itself goes way back. He literally resigned as finance minister because that deal was going through where they were giving gaza away and i understand that like israel's kind of stuck between a shit and a fart

when they did that because they have a lot of people in there who don't like them and they share one two two borders with them and a sea border with them and then the south is the sinai right and it's like i always say to people i'm like if, if in 2006 Iraq were where Mexico is, we'd probably close our border too. So it's a tough spot to be, but you also create a 20-mile zone of people who have no economic opportunity and are going to turn towards whatever says some glimmer of hope there, who may also say, by the way, down with Israel or whatever, and this is how you get what you get so it's this self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps happening and it does unfortunately you know make me cynical about ever seeing some sort of peace in that region because it's just this giant circle over and over there's you know the leaders in power

are not making decisions in the in the best interest of the people that they're good that they're governing or in you know in the case of Hamas also you know holding hostage I mean now Gaza such ruins that you can't really speak of a you know a working regime anymore by and large but that you know Hamas is very much still there Islamic jihad is very much still there other you know the militant factions are still there but it's become more of kind of a roving band of of gangsters but you know it is it is it is abundantly clear that it is a retaining of power rather than the people's benefit the people's interest that is being that is being that is

that is being prioritized yes so decisions are being made that are in the self-interest of survivals of leaders and not in the interests of the people that are being governed and and that is you know it yeah it does it break one ex extremely cynical i mean it is not um you know it is it's not my position to share that cynicism, but it is hard not to get, you know, it's hard not to get downcast or jaded from the events that one seems to inspire in front of them and the radicalization on all sides and the hardening of senses on all sides.

And who knows? Hopefully, you know, um the next few years are going to provide a thaw in that i i i you know again you know i i see there's always you know i've been watching say nothing um this this uh a book uh uh this series based on the book by patrick redden keith on the travels in northern travel travels in northern ireland yeah i don't know about this though yeah it just came out on fx or hulu uh okay and it's a nine-part series and you know it's about the troubles in northern ireland and and and the you know the ira uh first year british army and and you know i mean this is also a this is a this is a conflict that was resolved eventually right and nobody ever thought it would be resolved but it was also leaders making hard and also making

decisions in their own interests but to to extend the hand to the other side yes um which a lot of people didn't agree with but they push it through and and look at look at you know look at northern ireland now look at ireland now and ireland is absolutely thriving you know it's one of the best performing economies in europe globally um in the end england shot itself in the foot with brexit but that's a different story you know um but which did let you again to return a little bit of sectarian tensions but you know who knows you know i think there's so many actors in in the middle east who don't have the best interest at hand and and we're just interested in retaining power and repressing their own people or gaslighting their own uh uh people in order to retain power but you know i the only thing you know i can do is is bring a nuanced view and and try to tell the

stories on all sides uh to the best of my abilities you know to the public and and and and hope and pray for better days i mean that is that is literally it, you know? And a ceasefire is already, is hopefully a step or a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is hopefully a step in the right direction and not, you know, another cynical play that comes to the detriment of whomever, whether it's the hostages or the Palestinians

or the Israelis or the Lebanese. Gut feel, do we get a ceasefire in Gaza in the next year well in the next year in the next year I think so I think even I think even sooner I think we could see a ceasefire or at least a initial new hostage exchange or hostage exchange a hostage release for um a hostage release um with uh then you know palestinian prisoners uh being uh exchanged in return for um you know for for for as as a opening as an opening as a start right it's exactly a year ago since the last uh hostages were released by by negotiations right i mean there was a rescue mission a few months ago they released four um and you know there has to be a ceasefire in Gaza because else, you know, it will mean that tens of thousands of more people will die if that doesn't happen.

So I would say, I can say, you know, we're late November now, we're closing in on Thanksgiving. I could say within three months there will be a ceasefire in gaza i hope you're right yes i think that'd be i think that'd be amazing if you get that first step yeah absolutely david and the release of the hostages david your work's amazing man this this was fucking awesome the information you got and the research you did on your book is incredible and obviously you're reporting now in the middle east is really important and good stuff. And I appreciate all the thoughts there.

So I really, really enjoyed this, man. Thank you for doing it. Thank you. Well, thank you for the fantastic, informed and deep conversation, Julian. I really appreciate that. Of course. Thank you for your work. We're definitely gonna have to do this again in the future. Deal. So link to the book down in description, Nazi Billionaires. It's like the greatest title of all time. You got to buy it So thank you david and everybody else. You know what it is. Give it a thought get back to me Thank you guys for watching the episode before you leave Please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video

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