Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Nazi Mind with Laurence Rees

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

In this conversation, Anthony interviews historian Lawrence Rees about his book 'The Nazi Mind: 12 Warnings from History.' They discuss the relevance of historical lessons in today's political climate, the fragility of democracy, the role of ordinary people in the rise of authoritarianism, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad. I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits.

So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Lawrence Rees. He's an award-winning historian. He's written a couple of great books, almost on the charisma of Adolf Hitler.

That's how I first met you, sir, through that book. And then my good friend, Alistair Campbell, handed me a book a few months back. Before it was published here in the United States, Lawrence, the title of the book is The Nazi mind, 12 warnings from history. And I have to tell you, sir, I read the book in two days. I found it to be incredibly fascinating, eerie, in terms of how things go down and can go down in a population. It's an honor to have you on. Your work on this topic, I think, is up there with William Shire.

Okay. And I, and I, obviously, the rise and fall of the Third Reich. but let's talk about the Nazi mind. What made you want to write that book now? And I know you've written about Hitler before. Well, I've been, as you know, I've been working in this area as a documentary filmmaker and also as a writer for over 30 years now. And the great privilege I had because of the period in which I was interested in this was

that I got to meet a large number of people who lived through the war, not just people who suffered in Nazism, but Nazi perpetrators, former Nazi perpetrators as well. And the reason that I wanted to come to this book was because I was increasingly thinking that people feel that history isn't relevant. I live here in Britain in a country which is historically illiterate because most people give up the study of all history at the age of 13 or 14. And I think there's a sense with young people, especially, that history doesn't have any value to them. So I've always thought this history's got value in a particular way.

And so I wanted to try and write a book to demonstrate that. I've got the book open here on my desk. I'm going to read some of the table of contents. Okay. Are you ready, sir? I'm ready. Okay. Spreading conspiracy theories.

Using us against them. Leading as a hero. Coniving with the elite, attacking human rights, valuing enemies, escalating racism. I mean, there's more stoking fear. So I took a snapshot of your table of contents. I put it up on the social media sites. and it didn't go over too well for me with the MAGA people. So I just wondering, what happened there, sir?

Where's the connection? Is there a connection? Well, as you know, if you read the book, I mean, I'm very careful in it to try and draw these warnings from it. But what I don't do is say, oh, this applies to Trump or this applies to Erdogan or this applies to South Korea, whatever. And I don't do that for two reasons. I don't do that. One, because it's incredibly presumptuous of me. I mean, I've spent all this time trying to understand this history.

How dare I come along and say, I mean, my goodness, you know better than anybody if you're talking about Trump. You know, how can I possibly say anything of value in terms of this is how this works specifically in this environment? I mean, it would be wrong. But secondly and almost more importantly is what I've found is that if people read a work like this, they make their own connections in their own mind as you did. So they make their own connections. They go, hey, you know, that reminds me of this or that. And so the book's been published in all over the world from France, in Croatia, I don't know, all over.

And in each territory, I've had people email saying, yeah, you know, this reminds me of this or that in a way that I couldn't possibly have written in. So you've read it. And you've made the connection with all of those different things as to what's happening in your country. And that's the valid connection because it. came through you and your own knowledge. So I want to test a few theories on you,

and then we're going to get into the book. But I feel that we had an America First Movement. We had a specter and a rise of fascism. I'm going to go into whether people can call Trump a fascist or not. I do a podcast, pretty popular in your country, called The Rest is Politics U.S. In addition to that one. And my co-host, Katty K,

If I used the word fascist and Trump in the same sentence, she hits the James Bond ejection seat on me. And I'm left somewhere in the countryside. She believes that that's a bridge too far. Dominic Sandbrook, the historian, believes it's a bridge too far. We'll get there in a second. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.

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We had 9-11 years later, but we're talking about in the war where we were just, dealing with fascists, dictatorships, the U.S. was never invaded, a result of which we have no wartime memory of this. And I guess the question I'm asking, explain the petri dish of a population that could be susceptible to this type of behavior. Because it's a Nazi mind, sir, but, you know, your book really something I thought about was it's a Nazi hive mind. I mean, you can't just have one Nazi. You've got to have a whole collection of them. to make something happen. Yeah, and it's a book about being human.

I don't believe for a second that only Germans could do this in that particular time. It's about being, it's about what human, it's about what human beings are capable of doing in certain specific situations. And I think that you can point to the specific situations around this history that I think are, as I say, are warnings. They're not lessons in the sense, like a science books, a lesson, you know, this, this, is proved here. History can't work that way. But I think their warnings, like if you go to the doctor and you're smoking 100 cigarettes a day, he's going to say, it's not a good idea. And you can say,

well, my granddad lived to be 98 of smoking. And he can say, yeah, he's the lucky one. So it's a warning in that in that sense. But I think that what you've got to see is that someone like Hitler comes out of crisis. They only get 2.6% of the vote in 1928. And yet five years later, he's down to the of Germany at the head of the biggest party. What happens in between? Well, primarily what happens in between isn't just the Wall Street crash

and the terrible depression. It's the failure of democracy to deal with the problems that, quote, ordinary people, unquote, feel they've got. And so that's, I think, a key warning that you can see is to the kind of way that a figure like that can come through. It's the failure of democracy,

perceived failure, to deal with the problem or problems that many, many people feel. And I think you can point to that. But right across the board, often, often, it's because they've stoked fear about this dichotomy of them and us. And talking, which I did for the first time with this book, to neuroscientists and psychologists, is the power within us to immediately try and separate people into them and us

is one of the reasons we human beings evolved because we're immediately suspicious in particular situations of, well, what's that? Who's that? And we categorize instantly. And so the sense that there's a crisis and not just a crisis, failure of democracy, and it's not your fault.

The message from these type of leaders is, don't worry, you didn't get into this. It's these people over here. It's this conspiracy. Or it's this group of people. of easily identified people that's causing you or your problems. So I think you can begin to see kind of how those sorts of messages can actually bring someone to the fork.

Yeah, I mean, it struggles them because the democracy is cumbersome, not to use a cliche on you, sir, but we know what Churchill said. It's the worst form of government until you look at the other governments. But there's something that happens where people feel that they need a strong person. to come in and flex. They need a person to clear the field for them. And usually it's a person, as you describe in the book, that's able to create that division, you're able to create that scapegoat, stereotype, if you will. I guess the one thing that blew me away, and it always haunts me, is the very ordinary people, very ordinary people can take to this. It's not

sadists. It's not fascist. It's not masochists. It's a group of ordinary people that are like frustrated with their lives or they feel left out of something or they feel some type of economic desperation. And so they're like, okay, let's wreck it. Let's wreck everything. So it's also I think that, yeah, I mean, that's the other really fascinating thing that I don't think people realize about this, that in 1932, just a few months before Hitler comes to power, there's an election in Germany. And a majority of people in voting for either the communists or the Nazis, that's a majority of Germans in voting for either of those two, knowingly vote for political parties that are openly committed to destroying democracy. So if you just think of, get your mind

around that, this is a cultured nation at the heart of Europe. And a majority of people know that they're voting to not have the right to vote again. So, So, you know, that's not something. I always remember when they talk about democracy building in the Middle East or whatever, you think, oh, well, once it happens, we put democracy, there it is. My God, democracy is fragile. And so what can happen with that is something else, which is really troubling, which is both those parties were violent, the communists and the Nazis.

So you find that many people who despise and are frightened of violence, these kind of ordinary people as you categorize them, they're going to vote for a violent party in the Nazis and they're going to vote for that violent party because they think that the best way of overcoming violence is to have this violent party deal with the other one and sort it out. So actually, there's a paradox that they're voting for a party committed to violence

and yet they're completely against violence. I don't know. It's almost like a self-inflicted wound and you can see it out. People forget this about Roosevelt, but he lived in Germany in his teenage and early late adolescent years and read German. And so he heard the speeches from Hitler in German. I think you actually point that out in your last book. And so he knew the trouble that was coming.

And so how do you get this? Like where is the warning sign? Obviously, you could read your book, of course. And you can get it and say, okay, well, there's the warning sign. Those are the 12 chapters of what people do to get themselves in this situation. But where's the light that goes on to the bathroom? I think if I look back over the whole of everything, meeting all these people who suffered or who perpetrated or whatever, as they say at the very end, the overwhelming feeling I have is that people do not understand.

They don't understand how inherently fragile pretty much everything around them is. that the huge tendency for people is to be complacent. And, you know, we're complacent about our own health. Most of us, we're complacent about our relationships. We're complacent about everything around us. But crucially, we're complacent about the institutions around us. We think that you see these big buildings like the parliament building or the capital building. I mean, I visited America a year before the kind of insurrection.

And, you know, we were taken around the capital and, you know, there's Washington on the ceiling and that, you know, and you think this is, this is a solid. And I remember looking at the going round and seeing, you know, one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, you know, and you're looking at that. And I'm thinking this is the great statement of the Enlightenment. I mean, you know, this is the beacon here. Extraordinary. I mean, extraordinary thing to have achieved there. And I could not have. dreamed that you'd see people storming that building. Couldn't have dreamt it in a million years. And yet I'm the one who's going around, bleating about, oh, everything's so fragile. You know? So it's like, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a terrifying situation, I think, because we don't, people, people don't fully understand that. So I think the thing is, is to, is to be aware of the tiny things when it happens. It's a bit like, you know, what was it, the mayor in New York who dealt with graffiti because it's the first sign, graffiti or broken windows.

You don't, you know. And I think it's like that, but with politics, once you see all these things beginning to happen in politics, you scream and shout about it. And you're not complacent about it because, you know, Hitler gets 2.6% of the vote in 1928. I've seen reports, Prussian secret police reports, dismissing him as a joke. Yeah, no, what a joke, no chance. And yet, look, what happens.

So that's the, if there's one fundamental thing that cuts through it all, it's that. Yeah, I mean, so you're, you're sparking so many things in my head, I guess the real, the real thing I'm feeling is some level of sadness because I think, and again, I said, I mentioned you're taking this, but I subscribe to the great man or great woman theory of victory. three, people can move things if they're in the right seat, you know, and he understood this. The reason I find your book so fascinating is I've been with Trump, work with Trump. There are good parts of him. There are bad parts of him. He is human. But there's a collection of activity that's happening around him that are the building blocks

of this foundational fascism, if you will. Now, I'm not going to call it fascism because you're a Brit and Caddy will take my head off. But there's levels of authoritarianism creeping in. And what blew me away about your book is that it's human, sir. It happened. I'm not here condemning it as much as I am. You're observing it. And then the question I have for you, because I do believe in the single man theory of history or single woman,

what type of leader can combat this? What type of leader has the skill set? You know, one of Roosevelt's ambassadors said, you know, he had the cunning of a dictator, but he was on the side of the angels. He believed in that democracy. He believed in those parchments that you were visiting. So I'm just for this new project I'm doing, I'm just been reading again the whole way in which he dealt with the British from 39 through to Pearl Harbor.

And it's incredibly interesting because I don't think there's been almost a more skilled politician than him in terms of how he he operated. It's quite extraordinary because he keeps kind of vaguely leading Churchill on about whether he's coming into the war in 1940 or not or back, you know, and the whole way he manages this is quite extraordinary. And I think that the key thing is there was some quote where he said, I remember something like, you know, you've got to be careful because it's a terrible thing to turn around as a leader and see that people aren't following you. You know, and he was completely aware of that, that actually he needs to take people

with with him. So he's got an end goal over here. Yeah. And then he's truing his best to manipulate public opinion so that he closes the gap between the goal, the goal and where public opinion is like that. So what he never does is say, that's my goal. Come to me. He's always just moving along like that.

And I think that's the crucial thing that you, you know, to go back to, I think one of the key reasons Hitler gets to power, which is that there's things that the people want that ordinary politics aren't delivering and democracy isn't delivering. That's the situation above all you've got to make sure you don't have. So if you are a kind of politician in a liberal democracy, you can't go, you know, you can't go around with policies that actually. actually are aspirational out here, and you've got a massive people back here who simply aren't with you. Because if you do that, there'll be this disconnect. And somebody back here, another, you know, pseudo-Hitler, somebody back here is going to lead them. And you're stuck out in the future. I'm stuck out here. It's so brilliant. And I'm going to tell you a quick story, which I think you'll enjoy. This is from H.W. Brands's book, a traitor to his class. And it's about the 1940

election. And so there he is. He gets wheeled into the radio area of the White House, where the microphone is and all the radio tubes, and he's going to broadcast. And it's a little bit of a campaign speech prior to the election, a few days before the election. And he just says, I want to remind my fellow Americans that in this hour of peril and this time of war, we're not going to war. Okay? And then they click off all the radio dials and tubes, and they wheel him back into a study. And James Roosevelt is there his son and he's shaking a gin martini in his wheelchair with a cigarette. So, wow, I just told a really big lie to the American beef. And James says, what do you mean, Dad?

So I had to do it. He said, I know we're going to war, but they're not ready. And they're going to go, you know, if Wilkie beats me, they're going to go to war anyway. But I want to be the guy that leads them through this war because I love the American people. and I'm going to help them lead them through the war to victory with minimal casualties, right? This is this whole idea about Len Lees and so forth. So, yeah, so this is a brilliant part of where I think we need to find our leadership today. Yeah, I mean, in fact, I can tell you just what I, for the series I did about,

and book I did called World War II Behind Closed Doors, which is all about Roosevelt Stalin and the dealings with the Allies and so on. I talked to Robert Dalek, you know, the great professor, big expert, academic expert. He was the consultant on the series. And I was having real problems trying to work out. He's very hard with Roosevelt because often he is saying things that they're not right. I mean, in 1942, he tells Molotov that they're going to come, we're going to come, you know, essentially we're going to come into the war with D-Day that year.

And Marshalls are going, no, no, no, he's just going, no, we're going to manage it. And so I'm going to, I said to Dada, I said to Professor Stun like, what, you know, just how do you make sense of this? And he said, Lawrence, you're overcomplicating. Just imagine you've got a voice in your head, 99% of the time, saying, how will this play with the American people? Right. Amen. Amen. So, so takeaway, warning.

I sort of feel like the book gives us some very real warning. So let's say that you were advising a leader. Let's say I gave you a few minutes with a political leader, and the leader came to you and said, Lawrence, and I'm worried there's a specter of authoritarianism creeping into all these societies now, whether it's Orban, if it's Erdogan, if it's some weird things going on in the West. What would you say to me? How would you advise me? Well, I'd essentially say number one, what I was saying before.

which is that what is the big thing that they're focusing on that people, the majority of people, large numbers of people want that politics isn't delivering. And how can we address that? Amen. And can we address that in a way that isn't going through them and us, isn't going through conspiracy theories, isn't going through kind of deal breaking and so, you know, but how do we actually do what Roosevelt, as you rightly say, did? which is start first and foremost with where public opinion is now and move it.

But move it, move it, move it as gradually as we can to where we need to be. Because the problem is that, that if, especially in a crisis, and this is where a lot of these things come out, and they can be fake crises, because also a kind of would-be autocratic leader is going to manufacture the crisis. Hitler, you know, Hitler was always full of this. he always was saying either or at his rhetoric. Either we deal with the Jewish threat or we're exterminated, either this or that. So the incredible emotional heightening of fear.

I mean, I discovered a quote in a speech Hitler gave, which I hadn't come across. I don't know as well known enough in 1926, where he said it was talking to people in private, in a private meeting. And he said, you've got to understand hate is the only state. emotion. Hate is the only stable emotion. And I think that's what, if you see a common thread through a lot of these things.

So Hitler, it's how do Hitler say that too? He was at a private members meeting in Hamburg in in 1926, I believe. Incredible. Sir, I could talk to you for hours, but, you know, we, we at Goal Hang, or we limit these things to about 30 minutes because otherwise people don't listen. You know, they have short attention. So I've got five words, phrases. At the end of each one of these podcasts, my producer and I pick out a couple of things. And I want you to give a sentence if you don't mind on each. Okay, you ready?

Sure. I'll try out. A history. History. What we can learn from the past. Yeah. Yeah. And we need to learn more of it, right?

I think we both realize there's a vacuum, which is one of the reason why I'm inspired. Well, if you live only your own life, you're immensely impoverished. A load of people done it before and they were human too. Right. Amen. Okay. WW2, World War II, of the single most bloody and important struggle in the history of the world.

But led to an era of peace and prosperity. Well, only for the West. You tell that to the polls and they're not going to believe you. Okay. All right. Well, my ego, centurism creeping. You're right. If you're a poll, at the end of the war, you swap one dictator for another.

one, and you weren't free until 1989, 1990. Right. It took 40 years of the policy. Yeah, so, well said. Yeah, I have to check myself on that. Hitler. Oh, one of the most extraordinary and unspeakable and appalling leaders, the world's ever seen.

Nazi. Or as Churchill would say Nazi, remember, he didn't like to pronounce the word. No. One of, if not the most repulsive ideologies in the history of the world. Okay. Well, the Nazi mind, sir. The Nazi mind. Well, the Nazi mind, I would say, is an aspect of the human mind and one that we need to study to understand how it can happen in order to try and think how it doesn't happen again, although aspects of it obviously are happening again.

Well, I mean, this was an amazing interview for me. I so looked forward to this interview. I loved your book. I loved your book about the charisma of Hitler because it's a reminder that he was humans. We have a tendency now 80 years later to demonize him because I read that book a few years back. I was like, okay, this man is brilliant because he's reminding us that Hitler was a human being. He's not a bibook. He's not a golem. He's not a demon. He was on earth with us. He had his grievances. He was cunning. He had a deep voice. He had a voice for oratory. It wasn't just the yelling and screaming that we see in some of these propaganda movies. There was a thought process behind him that gravitated people to him. And so I applaud you for that as well. And thank you so much for joining us today in Open Book. The title of the book is The Nazi Mind, 12 warnings from history. And that table of contents has gotten me in trouble here in the United States, Lawrence Rees. But I appreciate you writing it the way you did. And thank you for sharing your time today. I appreciate it.

It's been a privilege. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends. and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram.

I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.