Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/12/24 Darryl Cooper on WWII, the Holocaust and Winston Churchill

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Scott interviews history podcaster Darryl Cooper about his infamous interview with Tucker Carlson. Scott and Cooper dive deeper into the claims and arguments that he mentioned on Tucker’s show that generated a massive, and mostly bad faith, negative reaction. They reflect on why Darryl’s comments made people so angry, recommend a lot of books on WWII, present the proper way to learn from historical atrocities and more. Discussed on the show: Cooper’s interview with Tucker Carlson Cooper’s response to the freakout The German War by Nicholas Stargardt Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War" by Patrick J. Buchanan Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath by George H. Nash Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography by John Toland Wilson's War by Jim Powell Darryl Cooper is the creator of The MartyrMade Podcast, jumping headfirst into the fever dreams of human history, never checking the depth until he’s in over his head. He is also the co-host of The Unraveling podcast w/Jocko Willink. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show man you guys last tuesday's two minutes hate was lit But even as we grasp of victory, there is a cancer, an evil tune, growing, spreading in our mixture. Shout the hand.

Shout out his name. Oh, things! You're a good thing. What's the world of the world is. Nothing about it dance is good. Even the warrants. The country wants you to believe the other way so as to keep in the organization is away from the right-for-intosh way. See what you can be able to be able to get it.

John! Jack! Heard! because you're out there. The idea of age of us. He was a good. He's got. It's a great for a good.

Oh, man. Everybody was so upset. Well, I happen to have Emmanuel Goldstein on the line to comment on some of the criticisms that came down at last Tuesdays, two minutes, hey. Welcome to the show, Gerald Cooper. How are you, man? I'm doing great, believe it or not.

Thank you. It's always great to be with you, Scott. very good to have you here man um wow so what a riot that was huh uh martyr made podcast the number one podcast in america and for very good reason it should have been all along but now it is and um and all because you got yourself and some hot water on the tucker carlson show previously the number one podcast in america uh when you guys got into a discussion of Winston Churchill and World War II. So, yeah, people misunderstood you.

Some of them, okay, like almost all of them in bad faith, but maybe some of them not. Maybe some of them only fell for bad faith smears against you. So I thought, you know what? You gave a little rebuttal on your substack there, but I thought I'd have you on the show to talk a little bit about what you said and what you meant and how they took. you wrong so you know sure yeah absolutely and and i will say too that i think um the people who

the people who understood me just fine uh in a lot of ways were probably the ones who felt most threatened and and that might be for for good reason because when you're dealing with a when you're dealing with a load-bearing myth like the world war two story that really has so much that rests on it, you know. So there's so much that, you know, having to do with geopolitical power, I mean, class relations, relations between different kinds of groups. The way people in the West and the rest of the world understand, you know, their recent history and their role in the world, everything,

there's so much that depends on that story remaining a sort of guarded myth. And, you know, the people out there who, who attacked me in bad faith, which was the, I think the majority, they're just, you know, doing what people on the internet do. The people out there who understood like, you know, that on some level that, that when we begin to question load-bearing myths like that, you know, sometimes there are unpredictable consequences, but, but, you know, you have to try to look at the truth. Yeah. Well, I certainly agree with that. Well, all different parts of that and especially the whole thing about, you know, though the heavens fall, you can't just, you know, live a lie.

It's like Jebediah Springfield, you know, and I guess maybe sometimes. Lisa held her tongue on that one. But listen, yeah, not so much Churchill and the World War, because it is the foundational myth of the American World Empire, as you guys talked about on the show there, that George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln are really irrelevant. now. It's FDR and Truman and I guess Eisenhower are the real founding fathers of modern America as it exists and all based on the kind of hero myth of World War II. And I have no idea who I'm talking about anymore, but I saw some guy say or right years ago that he was explaining the World Wars to his children. And he found that it was really easy to explain World War II. The bad guys were unmitigated evil. The Imperial Japanese and the German Nazis,

they had to be stopped. And we're the good guys, obviously, compared to them. And we whop their ass good, which is what you're supposed to do with a bad guy. But World War I is kind of harder to explain because you have like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire. And it seems like it's all a bunch of empires. And all these people were killed and the best explanation is that it was a big accident and that they blundered into it because they stupidly abided by their treaties and their previous military schifenged plans and so forth that just kicked it all into gear in a giant fight that everybody wished that they had never really fought pretty hard to explain that to a 10 year old i don't know but world war two i mean come on tojo and hitler whose side are you on darrell and i know that you're a name maybe veteran. So a built-in American patriot. And obviously, no matter what they say, a real ass and extremely accomplished historian. So, I don't know, why don't you give us the basics of what could you possibly have to revise about our understanding of Winston Churchill in the Second World War?

Well, I think it's important to understand. And this is really common sense once you bring it to mind, right, is anytime you have a story that, a historical event that becomes a myth of the kind I'm talking about. And when I say a myth, you know, people say something's a myth. They mean it's a lie. It's not true. That's not what it means. It means it's become a symbol that is really designed to, like it's attached to a whole constellation of emotions and, and, um, responses that, you know, really are drilled down into all of us by education, by media, by parents, by the whole society from a very, very early age. You implant these symbols in children and continue to reinforce them as they grow up so that

when those, so that those symbols, once they enter the adult world, can be activated to put a society of people on the same page regarding, you know, an issue that. that is considered sort of central to what the society is trying to do, whether that's maintained its cohesion or identity or if it needs to be mobilized, right? So in World War II is one of those things. World War I is not one of those things. You know, it's not a myth. And again, that doesn't say that our version of the history is any more true or false.

Again, I just want to reinforce us. It's not what that means. It just means it's not important to our self-understanding. It's just not, you know, the things that the American Revolution is not particularly important to our self-understanding anymore, you know, it's a, you know, I think as time has passed and the demography of the country has transformed to a degree that, you know, the people who have a direct attachment to the American Revolution, the founding fathers have sort of moved on and become smaller, that that has really lost its powers. So you can go tear down a

statue of George Washington. And, you know, depending on the city you do it in, you won't even be prosecuted. But if you were to go tear down a statue of Martin Luther King, say, then, you know, or squill your tires out in an intersection with a rainbow flag painted on it, you're going to be prosecuted for a hate crime. And so those things are protected in a way that, you know, the non-mythologized events are not protected. And whenever you have an event like that, and I would say ours are the Civil War, World War II and the civil rights movement, which if you notice the way people talk about them, they're talked about really as like one long war, you know, for the same two sides, fighting over the same two issues, and the

Civil War was, you know, we won the battle domestically. World War II was we had to go win this same battle globally. And then the civil rights movement was sort of, you know, going around shooting the survivors. It was like the cleanup afterwards. And or the post-war reconstruction, I guess. And that's kind of how people really do view it. And so whenever you have historical events that are protected like that, I mean, in Europe, again, Tucker and I talked about this.

I mean, in Europe, World War II, the official version of events is, like, literally protected by law. And it doesn't mean you can't question anything about it, but there are things that you cannot question about. I, you know, if I lived in Austria right now, I would probably be in some, you know, legal hot water, at least in danger. And so when you have something like that, it is inevitable. It is completely obvious, I would say, that there are going to be. gaps in our understanding of that event, you know, because to really get a full understanding of any event, there have to be room, not just to have, you know, sort of very informed reason debate about things. There needs to be room to like, for people to ask stupid questions and for

people to put out theories that, you know, maybe just get slapped down, like, that process is how we get to the truth of any of these things. And that's why, you know, if you, if you, if you look at like any other war like you know a war besides world war two in the civil war in the u.s you have this sort of same you have this sort of same uh mythologization uh process that takes place for a while you know if you were to go in 2004 and maybe it was starting to change already by then 2003 in the lead up to the war and you were against the iraq war I mean, you're going to have David Frum write a piece about you in National Review and get you written out of a conservative movement and essentially just cast out, you know, as a leper from polite society. That's how it started after a little while as things changed and as it moved away and it became, you know, it lost that power.

World War II has not lost that power at all. And we're sort of still in that 2003 mode where if you say that like, you know, this war was a bad idea, things could have been done differently or that, you know, we took some actions that, uh, that may have been responsible for contributing, you know, to, to the current situation, um, you know, you get that same, you get that same reaction that you would have gotten for the Iraq war in 2003. So, um, that's, you know, the problem though is, I mean, we're talking presumably here about grown adults over the age of 18. And, certainly a self-described historian ought to be able to talk about history without people getting emotional about it I mean who in the world I mean maybe on some ridiculously commie campus somewhere but not really like there it doesn't exist where there are Americans who side with Ho Chi men or with Saddam Hussein or David Koresh or

Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin. It's just that they're criticizing things that our presidents and our politicians and our military officers do, right? Our spies and the blowback they cause. None of that means that you're on the side of whatever bad guy de jour. And it's the same with Germany and the Nazis too. like you got to be able to talk about it and certainly you know censorship doesn't work it's a even like self-imposed informal censorship like this it just backfires anyway you really think

only a bunch of pro-hitler Nazis ought to be able to talk about world war two from any point of view other than you know saint fDR won that war by himself um that's a bad idea right you don't want to see the argument to people who, you know, like, and in fact, here's an example. Roseanne Barr got in trouble because, as everyone knows, she's Jewish, and she used to be anti-Zionist and is now like very pro-Zionist, and she was in an interview or something, and she was paraphrase, she was rambling a bit, but she was clearly paraphrasing the old joke about the only people who deny the Holocaust or people who wish it had happened. And they took her saying that as though she was saying that.

And went after her for that. And it's like, they just want to make the whole, any kind of, uh, a discussion of the subject so radioactive. But then you're just leaving it open to people who wish it had happened to talk all about it and be the ones, you know, who deny it and wish it had happened to be the ones to discuss it. Yeah, you could do that for a long time. And, uh, if, you know, the effect was, you know, it was just, it was very different

than it is today, right? Because back until very recently, the ability to, for large institutions to control the narrative on anything and access to information on anything was extremely powerful, you know? And so the fact that there might be a little, you know, a cult of people over here who are way off the reservation, you know, neo-Nazi group or something, you know, and they're the only one's talking about a revisionist World War II story. You know, in 1970 or whatever, it wasn't, most people never going to hear about those guys, they're never going to meet those guys. The problem is that now with the Internet, you know, you have, and I've seen this happen

with people before, people online, you know, they learn something that's not part of the official narrative, but is true, something that like, you know, if you were to go read all the mainstream historical books and put the information together, you would, you would find the information, you know, at least everybody talking around it a little bit. You could put that picture together, but it's something that's not, you know, just take an example, something I brought up, like the fact that Hitler offered peace to Britain in France several times after the invasion of Poland and then to Britain several times after the invasion of France and the conquest of Western Europe. You know, it's not like Neil Ferguson or Andrew Roberts,

denies that or anything and if you go read their books on it like it's in there but when you know but it's it doesn't filter into the popular understanding and it's not something that you bring up in like a discussion about world war two unless you know and the idea is unless you're you're trying to make some some revisionist point like in support of hitler the nazis right and so the problem is when people start to learn learn things or they hear things that are not spoken about by, you know, the sort of official sources. They go out looking for the information and they find on the Internet and some comment section on a website they probably never should have gone to

that there's, you know, those are the only people who seem to be willing to talk to them about this and tell them the truth about it. And they gain credibility with these people. And, you know, the mainstream historians who seem not to want to talk about it or even punish people who do, they start to lose credibility with those people. And then, you know, you see them start to veer off. I mean, we're all, you know, very exposed to this. If you're on Twitter or any social media now that, you know, you see these people who get

completely sucked into the, that just the, whatever you want to call that, the anti-Semitic sort of World War II revisionist, pro-Hitler. mind virus thing they get obsessed with it you know in a way that they don't with other issues and i think that that is like that's a product of of this particular narrative being at being so protected that i mean if you go you know if you listen to my interview with tucker i mean i'm really just regurgitating pat buchanan circa 2007 you know points things that are you know maybe i could have been a a little more clear on certain things or something, but nothing that you can't find in a book that was published by St. Martins or McMillan or something like that. It just wasn't a single

thing I said that can't be found in any mainstream book. And we saw the nuclear explosion that happened as a result, you know. I got denounced by the White House. I got denounced by the Democrat Party's, you know, Jewish caucus in Congress. And like every major network, every newspaper. In the Washington Post editorial board? Yeah. I mean. And so, you know, when people see that, you know, there's a counter, there's always going to be a counter reaction to something like that. And, uh, and unfortunately, you know, we, we see that just very strongly because of what you said, we leave the, we leave the questioning to people who really do have bad intentions, you know, who really do want you to take a view that, uh, that, that, that, you know, for your own,

for your own well-being you'd be better off not taking right and then so and it sucks because when they isolate the argument to just cooks then when somebody who's not a cook brings the argument up they just pretend that you're with them when it's just not true and they did try to do this to pat you can and it's he's such a mainstay of american society at that time it's pretty hard to say that the guy's anything but a patriot god he's ronald regan's guy and in his book churchill the book is called Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. And that part's in quotes because the unnecessary

war, that's a quote from Winston Churchill. And he's the one who called it that at the end of the war and said, oops, it looks like we stuck the wrong pig, he said. And so the argument is

pretty obvious. In fact, Truman, Senator Truman made the argument at the time that America should fund Hitler. He went that far. America should not just stay out. We should fund Hitler as long as he's losing. And then as soon as he starts winning, we should start funding Stalin. That was what he said. But the idea was let them fight. Why in the world would Churchill want to force in a way? And this is how Buchanan's book reads. He sort of twists Hitler's arm and makes him invade and destroy all the Western

democracies first to secure his Western flank before he goes after his nemesis Stalin, which is just, which he had apparently no intention of doing until Churchill made it clear that your Western flank will not be secure if you go east. So you're going to have to do something about that first. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, look, people are going to, people will object to that by pointing to, or you're asking specifically about the western flank? That's definitely true. I mean, Hitler had absolutely no intention and no desire to fight Britain or France. I mean, that, and again, that's not, that's really not even disputed by any mainstream historian that I'm aware of. And so, you know, and they'll say that's just because he, you know, wanted to preserve his

forces to go east and commit genocide or whatever but the fact is he did not want to fight them and so you have to look at the you know whenever you're engaging in counterfactuals obviously it's always rocky road but sure when you when you have a situation where the outcome that happened was pretty much the worst thing that ever happened right where you know what 60 million people killed maybe For Britain, for Britain, the British lost their empire as a result of World War II, you know, turned over the world to, you know, two large empires in the Soviet Union and the United States. Just a total transformation. It was not at all the Britain's benefit or Europe's at all. And so when that's the case, and it just resulted in so much carnage, I mean, just an unbelieve, I mean, something that may. made us forget World War I, like almost literally, right? The worst, the great war, the worst

thing that ever happened in Europe, it pretty much has made people almost forget about it. It's like, that's how terrible it was. And so when the outcome that we got is that bad, you have to engage in some alternative history and some counterfactuals and say what might have happened if, you know, if, just as an example, I mean, if you go, you know, my criticism at Churchill, let me just put it this way first, too. I said at the beginning, I was being kind of provocative and hyperbolic when I brought up Churchill specifically, because, you know, Churchill, you can hold him personally responsible for a lot of things. I think he should be. But, you know, he was enacting British policy. And if he would have gone strong, if he would have, if he would have made peace with Hitler or tried to in 1940, in June 1940, as he suggested actually at one point to the to the war cabinet, He said that, you know, he suggested that maybe they should accept the offer that Hitler had sent.

He changed his mind the next day. But there were several others, you know, in the war cabinet who thought that was the case, that they should do that. If he would have done that, he would have been out of office, you know, and somebody else would have been put in who would have carried out British policy, which was to continue and escalate the war. So, you know, pinning it on him personally is, you know, it's sort of a version of pinning the Iraq war on. George W. Bush instead of the U.S. security establishment in general. Which, again, is what you said in the part that nobody included in your quote, that like, hey, guys, I'm kind of being provocative picking a fight here to get you to think about it a little differently for a change, you know, kind of thing. That's quite a disclaimer before you say

something like that for them to just pretend you didn't say. Right. And so with that disclaimer, you know, the questions really are, you know, if you have a situation, where, I mean, if you go to the summer of 1940 after Hitler has conquered France, cleaned up Western Europe, I mean, you could, and after the British have evacuated at Dunkirk, you can make the case. And there were, again, there were elements within the British establishment. Lord Halifax was one of them who did make this case that, look, the war's over and we lost. You know, there's no opposing force. on the European continent that is forget being capable of fighting against Germany and like going and taking this territory back and turning the tides of this war there isn't one period there simply is not he's

you know he's apparently buddies with Joseph Stalin right now he's friends with Mussolini like there's nobody on the continent who's going to oppose him who can oppose him and so we you know the reasonable thing to do would be to come to the table and see what we can figure out, especially when, you know, Germany's advancing peace offers that say outright. We don't want you to give up any of your colonies.

We want the British Empire to be strong because we need it strong. It's good for the world. We need it to, like, help oppose communism. I mean, you know, these are things that, again, you know, people look back on today and they don't deny that these offers were out there. What they deny, of course, is that any of them were sincere. year or that the British had, you know, because of Munich, because of, you know, what later happened with, you know, betraying the Soviets in 1941, that these were just clearly lies,

clearly, you know, meant to buy time or preserve their forces for their eventual crimes and they, whatever it is, but they were not in good faith. And so the British had no obligation to take them to take them seriously. And the thing is, like, that could be true, for sure. Like, that could definitely be true. Like that Winston Churchill or the British could have made peace after Dunkirk. And, you know, in 1941 or 1942, whatever, Hitler eventually just invades East and kills all the Jews and does everything. Like, all that's possible for sure. But the example that I gave in that response piece you mentioned, you know, is I said, imagine like this is a, imagine you have a police standoff. And inside the house is a father who's like,

completely hopped up on meth, you know, Hitler was obviously, or not obviously, but as a lot of people know, you know, was using amphetamines very, very heavily for the last several years in the lead up to and during the war to keep himself going. And, you know, anybody who's read about the effects of long-term amphetamine, heavy amphetamine abuse like that, you know, it leads to paranoia. It leads to often delusional psychosis. It definitely warps your, you know, your view of the world. You put on top of that, that the German people themselves, you know, who Hitler really feels himself to sort of be the embodiment of at this time. You know, that really is what kind of the furor principle was.

These is just a profoundly traumatized people, you know, people who came. out of the First World War with the sense of betrayal and defeat, went through the social and economic and cultural degradation of the 1920s while the rest of the Western world was having a big, you know, a big party. And then to come into the Great Depression and to have a guy like Adolf Hitler come along and take over and things actually do begin to stabilize and improve, you know, this is, and right as they start to stabilize and improve, the entire world starts to sort of place them under political siege, which is what happened very early in the National Socialist regime's reign.

And by the time you get up to the war, you know, you have a people, and this is like you could read like Nicholas Starkard's book, The German War, which again is a mainstream book. It's not some revisionist work. It just uses a lot of letters and diaries between Germans. German people themselves between, you know, this galiter and this party official and whatever to get an idea of like how this looked to the people in Germany at the time. And obviously there were a diversity of views like any time.

But he really conveys the sense that like they believes that they were the ones under siege and under attack, like they, which to us is crazy, right? That's just insane. Like they are obviously the ones trying to conquer the world and make us all speak German. And they seriously didn't see it that way. And the regime itself didn't see it that way. And so if you have, to go back to my metaphor, the police outside, and there's a guy inside who's hopped up on amphetamines and he's holding a gun on his wife and kids threatening to kill everybody. And that guy in there is paranoid.

That guy feels like the whole world is surrounding him and the walls are closing in. and you know if that if that situation ends in a murder suicide and the grandparents of that girl the woman who died and the grandparents the parents of the woman who died the grandkids are the kids who died in that situation find out that this guy was saying look I'll come out and let everybody go if you do this if you only do that if you only do this and maybe all of those maybe all of those were in bad faith. Maybe none of his demands were acceptable to any reasonable person or something. But if you were to find out that the police, not only that they just refused to even engage him on it,

and that in fact, whenever he did put one of these things out, they would just insult him and throw him back in his face. And like continually, you know, literally like Churchill made a habit out of when Hitler would advance one of these peace proposals. to escalate the level of bombing on civilian targets like that night or the next night. I mean, this was intentional. This was a response to like to that. You know, after Hitler's June 1940 call for peace, sort of his, you know, his final appeal broadcast that they broadcast across the English channel because they wanted to try to get directly to the British people

because they knew that obviously the official information sources were censored like they were everywhere in the war. You know, the BBC broadcasted back in German, you know, we throw your peace off or back in your evil-smelling teeth. And so imagine you're the, you know, the parents of the woman who died, the grandparents of the kids who died in that horrible situation. And you find out that that's the way the cops were behaving toward, you know, that's how they were romantic. you'd be you'd have some questions you know and the cops could say look this guy was crazy he killed his wife he killed himself and his kids like uh how are how are we responsible for what this crazy man did and the thing is you're you know you're not responsible in the sense like you didn't kill anybody but when you're the responsible party in a situation like that you know you have a

certain obligation to try to de-escalate. Like, your job should be to try, like, it's not the guy in the house's job to get the woman and the children out safely. It's your job. You know, you see this, like, it's very similar, like, you see similar rhetoric with the current Gaza conflict, you know, where people will say, like, you'll criticize behavior of the IDF in Gaza. And the first question is always, why don't you?

you talk more about Hamas? Why don't you talk about, well, what are they doing? Well, hey, there's one easy way to, uh, to end this whole situation. And that's Hamas surrenders and gives up all the hostages. And then guess what? We would have peace. It's like, dude, like, Hamas is holding the hostage. It's not their responsibility to like get those people out safe. They're the ones with the gun at their heads. You know, it's, it's everybody else's responsibility to try to find a way to get those people out safe. Yeah. And, and to. say that is not to lift responsibility from like the primary perpetrator

has nothing to do with that right and as you also said in there it look everybody knows that Hitler's a bad guy like do I really have to say that part two hey you guys coming up this October 7 through the 11 join Miguel Thorup host of the

expat money podcast the heroic Ron Paul the great Tom Woods Doug Casey Mark Faber Tom Luongo myself and many other great speakers for the online Ex-Pet Money Summit, 2004. My presentation will be on the subject of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine,

which is not quite out yet. And learn how you can reclaim your freedom by moving abroad, legally reduce your tax bill, and protect your assets. More than 8,000 people attended last year. And it's free. My guy's Kyle Anzlone and Dave DeCamp from the Institute and Anti-War.com will be joining a panel discussion as well. Just go to 2024.xpatmoneysummit.com for all the info. That's 2224.xpatmoney summit.com.

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time. I drank so much coffee I turned into some. Hey, guys, check out the Scott Horton Show's special blend at moondoseartisan coffee.com. It's a blend of organically grown Ethiopian and Sumatran coffee beans. Two very different coffees combined to create a unique blend. Ethiopia is smooth and medium-bodied, Sumatra, rich, heavy-bodied coffee, and it's got caffeine, lots of it, which is good for if you have to drive drunk or get up in the morning. Click through from the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org to save 10% on your order. It's the Scott Horton Show blend from Moondos Artisan Coffee.

Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house, so I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bars. safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug assault or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org. So keep that in mind. And don't worry about the mess. Your wife will clean it up. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free.

Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org, or go to scotthornton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. The same thing with the father holding his own wife and children hostage? Like, yeah, dude, we already agreed the guy's a criminal. In this case, we already agreed that he's a mad dictator and who already was putting his own people in camps and all of this stuff. You know what I mean?

I mean, come on. That wasn't in dispute whether the Nazis were totalitarians or whether they were saints. Yeah, and the metaphor might seem extreme. But, I mean, actually, like, a lot of the national socialist leadership, like, in their own writings to each other in their diaries and things, they talked to. about the Jews of Europe that were under their power as hostages. But that's actually how they thought of it because they really did believe. And again, you know, it doesn't matter if the guy inside the house is delusional and paranoid or whatever. Like, that's not the point.

Yeah. You know, if you understand that that's who you're dealing with, you have to treat the situation as it is, not as if, you know, he was, he was as you wish he would be. Right. And they really did believe that, you know, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union were under control of the international Jewish, you know, Jewish power and that they were behind this great worldwide siege of Germany, you know, and when, you know, when there's actually, there's actually internal discussions in writings you can read where, you know, Hitler and a lot of his, a lot of his upper leadership. when when Churchill and the British just continually refused to to even discuss terms of peace, when they continued to escalate the war when they had no army, no ability to cross the channel and like actually fight the Germans, they were basically just engaging in terrorism against civilian targets through the air and then the starvation blockade, of course.

they thought the British were crazy like that's like the word that was used he thought he thought Winston Churchill was crazy and the British were had lost their minds or something but what that eventually the explanation they eventually settled on was not that they were crazy but that they were under the control of somebody else because clearly this is not in the interest of the British Empire to keep doing this like why so why else are they doing it well it's the it's what we always knew it's the international Jewish conspiracy etc so you have people who are thinking that way talking about the Jews under their power as hostages, you know, to hold off this like international conspiracy and like, you know, something to threaten them with if you come at a, and then you just escalate and escalate and escalate and refuse to talk to that person. Like that to me is just, it's completely irresponsible, you know? And people transform the discussion into if you think we should have tried to make peace with Germany. That means you want to. all the Jews to die, when what it really means, and I think this, again, this is like, if you step back from it a bit, that this is, you know, that this is what's being said, that what you're

saying is if, you know, the British, if you're saying the British should have tried to make peace, and maybe it would have been impossible if they would have tried to make peace in 1940, try to avoid war after, you know, Hitler had conquered Poland and offered to give all the rest of pulling back except for uh you know the corridor to danzig and everything um that they should have tried it doesn't mean you want all the jews to die or anybody else to die it means that you think and i do think that this is a possibility at least it's something that's worth discussing that if they had tried to do that maybe those jews wouldn't have died maybe fewer jews would have died you know maybe few certainly fewer people would have died yeah all right so few things

First of all, this is just great. It's like listening to your podcast. Hitler didn't have grand designs or anything. I love talking with you about this stuff. Okay, so there's, I've only read three books on this subject. I'm no World War II historian at all, but I read A.J.P. Taylor and I read Pat Buchanan. The first one is on the origins of the Second World War. Buchanan's is Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.

And then I also read a book by a guy named Nicholson Baker called Human Smoke, which is just news clippings it's uh it's i forget if he he has little summaries at the bottom or something just explaining what it is and so it's just like reading the news in the run up to you know britain and germany's war and then the book ends with now america is going to get involved and the way it looks in there darrell is that what hitler was saying and i'm not putting the blame on fDR here for this germany declared war on the United States first in a major blunder, hoping that they would get Japan to declare war on the Soviet Union, which didn't work. But that they said if America gets involved in the war,

then they're going to kill all their Jewish hostages and that it was really American intervention because they knew just from their experience in World War I that if America's coming, they're doomed. And so if that being the case, then they're going to have their revenge against every civilian Jew they can find in every last little village between there and Lithuania. Yeah. And my contention, you know, on Tucker's show and ever since and always before that, with that, when you have people, when you have somebody, leaders, a country, something like that who are thinking that way, then it's incumbent on the rest of us to try to try to,

to maneuver it, you know, to do everything we can. Nobody's saying you have to like turn the whole of Europe over to them or something. Like, but you have to, you have to be, to come out of it with a clean conscience, you know, in my opinion, we need to be able to look at 60 million people dead and millions of Jews and other ethnicities killed, et cetera, after in the aftermath and say, did we do everything we could on our end to reasonable, to avoid this situation from happening? happening. And I just think when you look at the run up to World War II, I mean, I think I might have, like, turned you on to that Baker book. Like, I encourage everybody to go read Baker's book,

human smoke, and just read it honestly and tell me if, if, you know, Britain, the United States, if we did everything we could on our end to try to avoid the scenario that ended up happening. Well, look, you're a real historian, Daryl. I'm not. And I'll just tell you, you read Buchanan and Churchill just comes off his George W. Bush. And it's just, oh, I get it. All these leaders are just the same as each other. You know what I mean? There's no reason.

There's no hero there. There's no genius there. Again, unnecessary war. That was what Churchill himself said. Oops. I guess we shouldn't have done that. That's pretty nuts right there. I mean, I don't know the whole context of Churchill's.

sorry i i don't know the whole context of churchill's quote with that like i you know he may have been saying that if only we'd attack germany in 1933 then we wouldn't have to do this i don't know i'm not sure i don't think so i'd have to go back but it's it's in buchanan's book and i certainly don't remember it that way but wait so let me i got to nail you down on this and we we maybe should have started with this or had this closer to the beginning of the interview here because this is an important point and this is where you got in a little bit of hot water in that interview to was you started to talk about the Holocaust, but then you went off on a tangent making a comparison to what's happening in Gaza and the responsibility of the Israelis for the

poor Palestinian civilians there. And then y'all got off on whatever other things from there, and you didn't have a chance to go back. So some took what you were saying. Because see, in context, you had just slammed Churchill. And then you were saying, on the other hand, hey, it ain't like I'm apologizing for the Germans. Boy, they were terrible. And then you were, so it wasn't like you were, this was part of your slamming of Churchill was that you were like apologizing for Germany. This was the on the other side of the coin.

The Germans were, of course, also horrible. However, what you did say and then what was left unsaid made it seem like you were saying that the Holocaust was just what happened when the Germans ran out of food. but then I know that that's not what you think because I've listened to fear and loathing in the New Jerusalem and I've heard you read the woman's statement from witnessing the massacre at Babiniar in Kiev and talking not too in depth about it because it was sort of a side issue but you did I think you know a major segment of one of those podcasts about the Holocaust so I don't know everything that you know and think about it and i don't want you to spoil your whole upcoming podcast series on this but just for in the uh with a decent respect for the opinions of mankind would you tell us exactly what you meant about that and then elaborate as far as you want yeah because you're because you're right about the tucker interview i'm sure anybody who's listening to this right now uh is is aware of like

when i i don't do interviews very often i like doing interviews with you and dave and stuff because you guys are my friends but I you know I turn down almost every other interview because I mean as people probably here I jump around I leave points sort of half finished lose my train of thought I just am not particularly it's not it's not a skill set that's particularly strong with me I much prefer to sit down in my basement and read my books and prepare exactly what I want to say in the form like in a long form podcast to get it out there it's just not my preferred format and honestly like even though I would, one thing I would correct is Tucker and I didn't mention the, we didn't mention the Holocaust specifically. I just said the atrocities that took place in the East.

And so I was, you know, I was, I was taking all of just everything that happened over there, like outside the war fighting. And what I was trying to get to with that, and I, you know, and again, I don't honestly, like, there's a lot of bad faith out there. I don't, I don't really blame. a lot of people for taking this the way they did is one of the things I brought up is that as early as July 1941 you have SS officials in the camps that are being set up as the Germans are moving writing back to the high command in Berlin and this is in Nicholson Baker's book saying we don't have any food for these people they're all going to starve by winter all of

the Jews that, you know, that you're sending us are all going to starve by winter. Wouldn't it be more humane to finish them off quickly by some quick acting means, they say, rather than letting them all slowly starve to death in the winter? Now, people took that as, you know, the only reason that any Jews died in, you know, Poland or Ukraine or Belarus is because the Germans happened to run out of food. There was two things I was trying to accomplish with that. First, and this one I didn't get back to it all. The second part I did get back to a bit is that, you know, the hunger blockade was something that it really was biting, you know, the civilian population throughout Europe at the time. And people were coming to Churchill and telling him, Herbert Hoover, which is, this is

actually funny because the three big historians who they sort of commissioned to, uh, to, to, to do rebuttals to my to my to my interview were Neil Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and Victor Davis Hanson and they're all from the Hoover Institute. And if any leader from that time would agree with my assessment of Churchill, it would be Herbert Hoover. He was he was going around the world, going to England, trying to figure out a way for the British to allow food shipments to go in that would be managed. He was trying, look, it'll be managed by a neutral country like Sweden to make sure it only gets to civilian populations in these occupied countries, et cetera, and they just refused. And so Churchill was getting warning.

You know, I have his book, by the way, Freedom Betrayed. Have you read that one? No, it's right here on my shop. I haven't gotten to that one yet. Yeah, I haven't either, but it's been recommended to me as like a real eye-opener. And, you know, And so people are telling Churchill, telling the, you know, the British government, hey, this is going to lead to mass starvation. It's not going to affect the German army because they're going to get first dibs on the food they have. It's probably not going to affect the German civilian population. It's going to affect all of these occupied populations and specifically the ones that the Germans don't need or don't like. You know, and so it's going to fall on the people who are old.

it's going to fall on women and children. It's going to fall on people like the Jews who, you know, are obviously like if there's a food shortage in a German prison, the people who are going to be at the bottom of the list, you know, to the back of the line, you know, for lunch are going to be the Jews. And so just because they're, you know, just the way they thought about them, like that's, that's obvious. And so these messages were going up to the British government and they were aware. and they looked at it as an acceptable cost of continuing the war. Now, does that mean that they're not murdering those people necessarily, like in the same sense that like a German SS guard is murdering somebody when he shoots them?

But are they responsible for it at all? Because when you look at that letter from that SS officer at Posen, the camp in Posen, you know, you get the impression that like, this guy's, not 100% comfortable with this. Like he's at least he's not a hundred percent comfortable with just mass killing. And he's thinking, you know, in order for him to justify this to himself, he has to put it in terms that make it the more humane option. And so at the very least, the lack of food and resources was used as a justification to push people like him over the line, you know, and, and make it seem like it was just a wartime necessity. And so there's at least that.

And you know, Darrell, I mean, you just barely mentioned it in context there, but I think it's not in evidence. Most people don't know about this blockade. And this is something that, you know, really made an impression on me in Nicholson Baker's book is that the only heroes in the book are the Quakers. They're the ones who are doing everything they can to try to smuggle in grain to poor starving, you know, ghettoized concentration campized people in the occupied territories there. And they're being thwarted, as you say, by the British at every turn. Yeah, it would be something like, you know, it would be something like if, you know, with the current situation in Gaza right now, if the food shortage got really bad, like worse than it was and worse than it is. And then we found out afterwards that a lot of the Israeli hostages, either starved to death or died of hunger-related diseases or were just killed by Hamas because, they didn't have any food and they were dying of hunger, whatever it is, you know, does that mean that the Israelis enforcing the food blockade are responsible for the deaths of those Israeli soldiers, maybe not? But it definitely, it definitely, the responsibility for it, it's a discussion worth having, you know, especially in terms of shaping our decision making and behavior in future situations.

So that was the first point. I was trying to get to is just to say that like, look, you know, the British were very aware that this was going to lead to mass starvation among the civilian and vulnerable populations and specifically the people who were being rounded up and putting camps in the east, the most vulnerable people. And they chose to continue it anyway. So you can have discussions about whether that was the right call or whatever, but the fact is they knew it was going to happen and they chose to continue it. That's the first point. The second point, the second point, I was trying to make, and this is the one I did sort of get to on the back end of the discussion

in the Tucker interview, in the Tucker interview, is I was trying to address, like, the, the, the perspective and the points that are made by like the real revisionist, right? Because you'll find people out there who will say that, you know, these people died of typhoid, they died of starvation due to lack of food. Hey, if, you know, the Japanese had managed to successfully invade the west coast of the United States and we were just being pushed back in a chaotic manner and there was no food because crops were being destroyed and all our rail lines were bombed, what do you think would have happened to all those Japanese people in the internment camps? They all would have starved to death or whatever and the same thing would have happened.

Like these are the revisionist points that people try to make, right? And my point was to take those and say, look, even if all of that is true, and this, as you said, like this whole part of the discussion started when I was with a preface that said, you know, this isn't to defend the Germans. This is like they are responsible is that even if all of that is true, the fact remains that they made the decision to invade to the East without any plan whatsoever for what to do with, for the care. of the millions of people that were going to come under their power and specifically they were going to take prisoner in other words you were saying you were saying at the very least this is their responsibility for the most generous interpretation of events like for the national socialist is still murder that was my that point that point was lost that you were sort of going with you know arguing you know to that uh angle yeah and and people see see people, again, people listening see why it takes me a long time to get to a point. Sometimes I lose the thread

halfway through or when I'm halfway through the, you know, trying to make it, Tucker, somebody else interjects and I end up going in a different direction. It's, you know, again, it's not a strength. It's why I like working on long form prepared material better than sort of, you know, live discussion stuff because it's just common that I leave myself open to misinterpretation, misunderstanding. And I don't particularly blame people for that one. Well, no, I mean, look, I do. Because clearly, you know, okay, let's say I don't know you. And I think that you just said some pretty Holocaust-dena-sounding things to me.

I'm not just going to go turn around and say, this guy's a Nazi. and try to destroy your life before I even Google it and even figure out who you are at all when like anyone who's listened to fear and loathing knows that you're not an anti-Semite and that that's not where any of this stuff comes from and hell I mean I listen to the anti-humans and all of these things um as you said to Tucker well when I decided to do fear and loathing what I did was I read a few hundred books about it that's not what anti-Semites do that's what historians do and clearly you're being a professional and doing your best and but as you say you sit down at an interview things go off the rails and then but people should always especially in this day and age

people should always be charitable about what they think that they're hearing instead of just falling for the two minutes hate i mean i'm just ashamed of people he go oh this terrible terrible guy and it's like man you don't know want to you start with, geez, I don't know, but I heard that he was a terrible, terrible guy. Why don't you just say that instead of you already bought it? It's just, it really is pathetic and shameful that it's just so easy for people to get their chain jerk. Whether you said what you said in absolute perfect syntax and without a Palestine tangent or not, you know what I mean? But anyway, so here's the thing. It's one of the reasons that I, uh, when the Gaza conflict started,

people started hitting me up they wanted to debate me on it you know you remember when when you went on timpool with will chamberlain yeah i told the people directly i told will chamber chamber chamberlain this when he wanted to debate me but i said look man this is not that's not my strong suit like i sit down with the books i you know write my notes i do a prepared project you know about it uh sitting down across a table and going back and forth like in two minutes say it's just not my strong suit if you really want someone to debate go talk to my buddy scott horton dave smith and so like you know the way i put it with dave is like you know it's like uh you know like i my my fear and loathing in the new jerusalem series that he that he learned a lot from

is sort of it's like giving a trained sniper you know uh an arctic warfare magnum sniper rifle and sending them out into the field on my behalf you know i do my part i uh you know you You know, I smith the weapon for him maybe or help smith the weapon for him. But send somebody out who's actually good at that stuff because it's just, it's just not my strong suit. Well, look, I think that you're overstating that. I mean, yes, your strong suit is being a historian, but you're not a bad interview. I'm having a good time. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Robertson Roberts, Brokerage, Inc.

Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore. Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts. Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like it always has been.

Now, Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own. Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. Look up Roberts and Roberts at rrbi.co. That's rrbi.co. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com, and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh?

Scotthortonshow.substack.com Hey, y'all, libertosbella.com is where you get Scott Horton's show and Libertarian Institute, shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers and things, including the great top lobstas designs as well. See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's Libertasbella.com. Hey, y'all got kids or nephews or anything? You know about the Tuttle Twins books, right? Libertarian lessons about life, liberty, truth, and the state.

It's really great stuff. And hey, did you guys know I'm a Tuttle Twin? Or, well, I'm a character in their world now. Skater Scott, local vert dog, and anti-government know it all. They introduced me in a short book last year, and I hear they're going to develop my character's story a bit more in the future. Cool, right? Anyway, they're now celebrating 10 years and having sold millions of these books, and now they're giving away free magazine at Tuttletwins.com slash 10 years. There's no shipping charge, and they're not going to ask for your credit card.

It's just a free magazine. The gimmick is that inside the magazine, they've got a really great deal to get all the books, the best deal they've ever offered, which you will certainly want to take them up on. So go to Tuttletwins.com slash 10 years for your free. magazine, and someday, hopefully soon, you and your kids will be reading all about the libertarian antics of Cartoon Me, along with all my new pals. That's tutel twins.com slash 10 years. Hey, y'all, Moondose coffee has a new flavor, jazzy raz. It's top of the line, Central American coffee with wild raspberries and things.

It's really good. But I warn you, if you let your mama have a mug, she might run off with the whole bag. Moondose Coffee. It's really good. make sure and click the link in the margin at scott horton dot org but so now let me ask you though do i have my timeline right again i'm not expert on world war two i really am not um but i have my timeline right that the want to see conference was in what january february of 1942 so this is something that came up when i talked with buchanan you know i think i didn't even quite have it

through my head that i just thought that geez if there hadn't been a war in the west then the Nazis and the commies would have ended up oil and water going to war anyway in Poland. They're sharing a border in Poland now. Only the worst can happen at some point kind of thing. And he was like, no, I don't know. I don't think so. And this was his ultimate argument against the Holocaust. It wasn't, he was saying that it didn't happen. He was saying it didn't have to happen at all. That in fact, the Holocaust was caused by the war. No war? No Holocaust. And this is, you know, what? Timothy Snyder from Yale calls the bloodlands is this unfortunate area, including the pale of settlement, between Germany and Russia, where if these two Goliaths are fighting, then all the little David's in the middle are going to get crushed, right? Like, it's, um, and did. And so, but then, and I've been writing about Ukraine, and there's a whole backstory to the Nazis of Ukraine, which includes their participation with the Germans in perpetrating the Holocaust, what they call the Holocaust of bullets before the exhaust pipes and gas chambers.

It was just they went around massacre and everybody, round up the Jews, drag them to the edge of town, and shoot them all and dump them in a pit. And they did this. They killed something like 800,000 Ukrainian Jews. And I don't know how many polls, tens and tens of thousands of polls as well. and then I don't know what all happened in the Baltics and in Belarus and in Poland and all of that. I do know from, I have a few friends who have looked deeply into this and one of them was telling me that a big part of it was there were very few Jews, or not very few, but relatively few Jews in Germany. It was like 3% of the population or something like that.

And I believe 30,000 of them had already been put in concentration camps or something before the world. warhead ever broke out. But then when they got to Poland, there were Jews everywhere, millions of them. And so then, as you're saying, they're taking responsibility for all these people, including millions of people who they absolutely despise. And so, as you were saying before, they're definitely going to the bottom of the list when it comes to getting fed at the, at the prisoner camp compared to, I guess, polls or whoever else. But what else can you tell us? Again, I don't want you to spoil your whole upcoming podcast series for us, but I do want to know what you know and what you think about the Holocaust

and, you know, the deliberate part, the death camps and the gas chambers and the massacres and whatever that took place during that time. In fact, I guess one more thing is I've heard it said that it would be amazing. It'd be amazing if six million Jews didn't get killed in that war, considering 40 million people did. And they were the targets of the Nazis in that way. look we have german generals diaries from literally from september 1939 like the month that poland was invaded we have german generals diaries complaining about jews being rounded up into barns and shot en masse right so like

there shouldn't be any doubt about about that and i don't know how anybody who understands the you know the third rites leadership that their view of of the jews would have any uh would have any problem understanding that you know it's something that we have ample we have ample proof of that the jews were massacred you know uh now in terms of whether it could have happened without um and i'll say one other thing is that a lot of people were massacred over there and so the people who insist that the Jews weren't massacred. Like, okay, so you're saying that the not, the people that the national socialists hate the most were the one group that like didn't get massacred, that didn't feel like prompted their wrath. That just makes no sense, right?

Million, you have, you have all these polls being killed, Ukrainians, everybody else. Of course, the Jews were massacred. And when you, you know, when you look at the third rights attitude toward them, of course, they were specifically targeted. I think the more interesting point is the one you brought up, the one Buchanan, Pat Bukin brought up, which is could this have taken place without the cover of a world war in which millions were already being killed? You know, or and or would the Germans have felt the sense of, you know, siege and the walls closing into the point that they would shoot the hostages? You know, there's a sort of, like, the popular understanding of these events, right, is that, like, the national socialists were in a pub in Munich in 1922, and they wanted to kill all the Jews. And so they had to plot first we have to take over the government of Germany, then we have to start a big war and conquer all the areas where the Jews are so that we can, like, that was like the point of all this.

And I don't think that's the case. I think it was an outgrowth of the war. And it's, it's, you know, look, you could say the same thing about, about the, like say the Armenian genocide. Does it let the Turks off the hook to say that if we hadn't been, if there hadn't been a world war that everybody was focused on, it was, you know, millions were being killed, that that wouldn't have happened, you know,

that if all of a sudden the global press erupted with this massacre of the Armenians, it was taking place because that was really kind of the only thing going on or whatever that it would have been treated differently or just maybe not happen that way at all. I don't think that's necessarily true, but that's definitely worth, that's worth thinking about it. And I mean, the fact is before 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, most of the Jews were not under their control. Most of the Jews were in the eastern part of Poland, in Ukraine, places that were still under the control of the Soviet Union. And so they didn't even have access to these people. And so then the question becomes, and again, like, there's, there's no question that Hitler's

antipathy toward communism and the Soviet Union went way back before 1941. But there's also, you read John Tolan's biography of Hitler, and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there about, you know, attitudes toward the Soviet Union. Union were becoming at least somewhat more ambivalent by like in the late 30s. Not that, you know, not, you know, that's not to say that the Molotov-Ribbentra pact was, you know, a reflection of like a real detente between these powers or anything like that, but it was starting to shift a little bit. And you were starting to see discussions being had behind the scenes among third-right leaders that, you know, maybe the capitalist world is really like,

the true enemy here. Maybe the Soviet Union has more in common with us than we actually think, especially, you know, as, again, like when, you know, the purges in the late 1930s under Stalin, you know, fell very heavily on the Jews in the Soviet Union. I mean, very heavily on the Jews and the Communist Party and just in general. And, you know, part of that was just, you know, Stalin getting rid of a lot of the original people and a lot of them happen to be Jews. A lot of it had to do with sort of the spread and the rise of Zionist ideology and going after

those people. But if you look at, for example, like the historian Yuri Schleskin talks about this, I think Timothy Snyder actually talks about this in Bloodlands. If you go to like 1935, 40% of all the high ranking officers in the NKVD, 75% of all NKVD officers out of the Kiev office dealing with Ukraine were Jewish. You go after the purge, so you go to like 1940, those numbers are all down in the single digits, like a lot of times 2, 3% or something, like more reflective of just their numbers in the population. And so after that starts to happen, you do see some change in the third rights discussions

about maybe what the nature of the Soviet Union, at least now under Stalin, really is. And so there's some question, I think, about whether that invasion would have taken place. Only some question, you know, because there are a million reasons for them to fight each other, for sure. But when you go to the summer of 19, like, here's, I think, the really one of the, this is the really interesting question, is would they have invaded in the summer of 1941, right? that's really like the interesting one if they had not if britain had made peace in 1940 would they have invaded the soviet union and specifically in 1941 you know i think that if you look at their situation germany's situation in 1941 they have millions of men in the field that they can't send back home to go to work because they're still at war britain will not

will not make peace. They're bombing us, so we can't demobilize. But also, you can't just keep millions of people in the field indefinitely, just economically you can't do that. Politically and socially, you can't do that. And so we've got this giant army in the field that we can't demobilize, that is battle hardened and this communist threat to the east that we all kind of know we're probably going to have to fight sometime anyway, and they're getting stronger all the time.

and so what better time than now, right? And so I think like the pressure of the continued war with the British may have been the, say, the proximate cause or justification for, you can add on to that that, you know, they were thinking, and we know this again from their internal discussions, that one of the reasons the British were keeping the war going is that they were hoping maybe eventually the Soviet Union would jump in and then they could hit it from both sides.

So let's just take that off the table and then maybe the British will stop all this. And so if it hadn't happened in 1941, you know, if the Germans had, like, again, go to 1940 when Hitler made his final appeal. If he had, if the British had made peace and the German army, everybody started to demobilize, it's not as if you can just overnight decide you're going to invade the Soviet Union one day. That's another full mobilization. That's a big process to do something like that. And it's a question whether it would have happened at all just because, you know, if you, they couldn't have caught the Soviet Union off guard the way they did in 1941, except under the specific circumstances it existed.

If they had tried that when peace, when there had been peace for two or three years in 1944 or something, thing, it would have had a very different outcome. And so it's a question whether it even would have begun in the first place. And so, you know, again, all these are these are counterfactuals that, you know, the ultimate response to all of them is, you know, you're just, you're engaging in fantasy and all we really know is that Hitler did invade and he did kill these people. But when the outcome was was so horrible, I think it's, I think it's fruitful to engage in those. discussions yeah i mean here's one is that if they went to war then at least the western democracies would have been there for the jews to escape to or maybe even the germans might have transferred

them to the west send them to france rather than just murder them all yeah because that's that is another misconception that people have is um you know it people really struggle with this because again they think that it more really relativizes this you know the the ultimate outcome which it doesn't. But killing these people was not, I mean, it's undeniable when you read the internal communications and discussions and diaries of the German leadership. Killing these people was not their first option. It was not like their first choice. You know, they were going to deport them to Madagascar or someplace like that, but then the British blockade prevented it and closed that off. Well, we're going to conquer the Soviet Union. We're going to send them all east of the

at your own mountains, but then obviously they got turned back and that wasn't working. And I mean, that's not to say that when you point that out, that's not to say that they love the Jews and didn't want to, you know, anything but nice things that happen to them. I mean, they wanted to violently expel these people from their territory. So that's not what it's saying. They wanted to ethnically cleanse these people from Europe. Sure. But ethnic cleansing doesn't, you know, necessarily have to have to turn into genocide.

Well, and look, even even if. If they didn't want to go through the expense of building a railroad to France and send them to the West, still at least some of them could have escaped to the West, right? Even if the Germans weren't cooperating in that, even if the Germans were doing their Holocaust. There would have at least been somewhere to go if they could sneak through a forest or climb over a mountain or somehow get through, you know, Austria. In Baker's book, he quotes this author that, or he quotes a conversation. that an author had back at the time with a friend who thought that, you know, he was making, his friend was making the case that, that England ought to at least entertain Churchill's peace offers because he said, you know, once a war starts, the thing to do is to end it as soon as

possible. And that should be the only thing that, you know, anybody involved in a war is concerned with. And is, so yes, I would, I would negotiate with Hitler. And so the author, who's the other side of the conversation says well but you can't negotiate with hitler see because you can't trust anything he says and so his friend says yeah maybe but a day of peace is a day of peace and if he goes back on his word tomorrow what have we lost we can always restart the killing again and that's sort of how i feel about it yeah makes perfect sense and see it's worse though because back where we started is this is now the founding myth of the American Empire, and now everybody's Hitler. So even though Hitler is Hitler, and you know what, maybe sometimes you can appease people,

but definitely not this meth head, right? He's crazy. He wants to conquer the whole world. He's so out of control that, you know what, really, the lesson of Munich is, we should have launched a preemptive war in 1936 or whatever it is that they teach in high school. Okay, fine. But now that applies to every enemy of the American Empire. Nobody can be appeased ever. And you know what's interesting about this, too, is that they'll also teach you in school, or at least back when I was in school, that this is all Woodrow Wilson's fault. Or if they don't specify that, but American entry into World War I is what tipped the advantage towards Britain and France so badly that they were able to put all their punitive measures against. against Germany in the Versailles Treaty and stripped them of all their outlying territories, including access to Danzig and all the rest of this stuff and led to the rise of the Nazi Reich

in resentment. And it's in the great book Wilson's War by James Powell that Hitler began every speech denouncing the traitors of 1918. You were, you know, and it wasn't even the militarists who signed the treaty. Woodrow Wilson insisted that only a Democrat was good enough to sign a treaty with them. So the guys who weren't responsible for the war were the ones who had to sign the peace treaty. And so then were the scapegoats. And yet, even though everybody knows that it was the Versailles Treaty that led to these consequences, still you can't appease anyone, even when you know it's kind of sort of your fault. Like, say, for example, overthrowing the government of Ukraine and provoking a war with Russia. And you know that you.

You kind of did that, but still, nope, as Biden would put it, he's FDR, Putin is Hitler, and he cannot be a peace. We have to fight. Yeah, and the parallels in that situation are actually pretty remarkable. And when I say that, it's not to say that, and people who know my views on that issue, know that I'm not saying that the Russians are Nazis or that Putin is Hitler. But just when you look at the historical circumstances that led to the situation is you had a war, quote unquote with the Cold War, but, you know, yet a conflict end in a way that allowed the losing side to feel like they were betrayed and misled into laying down their arms

at a time, you know, when they thought the other side was offering to be more magnanimous than they were going to be. They both go through a decade of just total cultural, humanitarian and economic destruction, you know, in Russia and the 90s, Germany, and the 20s, as the rest of the, you know, the victorious powers, quote-unquote, use their country as a playground, basically, and a looting operation. And then you have a guy come along, who takes power and puts the legitimacy of the state back together. And, you know, all of a sudden things are at least stable and actually, like, kind of prosperous. And the people. And the people. have a lot of a lot of loyalty to a guy like who dragged their country out of that situation and they also noticed the fact that it's as soon as this guy took power as soon as we started to get back on our feet and started to reassert ourselves on the international level that all of you turned on us again and you've been you've you've been after us ever since and you know look the the russians whether or not you agree the russians the russians

Vladimir Putin, I guarantee you, and, you know, you talk to people who have spoken to him, I've spoken to people who have spoken to him directly about this, you know, that he felt backed into a corner where invading Ukraine was the only thing that he could reasonably do. You don't have to agree with that, but that's how he viewed the situation. The Germans, you know, by the time you get up to, excuse me, 1941, they felt that way about, you know, being under siege and feeling like they were the ones under attack and responding to what everybody else was doing, not that they were the active agent that everybody else is responding to. And so when you have those situations, you know, it's not that you have to agree with them or say that, well, they, you know, made the only reasonable choice. or that they were okay to invade or anything like that's just it's not about that you know it's that you have to look like the goal here is not the goal here should have been to get as few people killed

as possible right that should have been the goal and sometimes it's unavoidable sometimes a war happens and there's nothing you could have done that wouldn't have led to a similar outcome but i think that whether or not that's the case it's always like the only it's it's it's always the only discussion worth having in the aftermath, you know? And I know that after the guy in the house kills his wife and kids and then kills himself, the only, you know, alternative scenario that anybody's going to want to hear is the cop who was saying we should have sent the SWAT team in right at the beginning like I told you. And that's only that anybody's going to want to hear. Nobody's going to want to hear that we should have been more conciliatory to that guy or maybe

like nobody's going to want to hear that. And I understand, obviously. But, you know, these are, I mean, this is why we have a discipline like history where, you know, it's supposed to be. And it does serve these purposes when it comes to historical events that are not, you know, part of the founding myth, is that we're supposed to have this discipline set off that's not a part of that, you know, hyper-emotional, like, really invested perspective that people who are directly involved are going to. this is a sort of a cordoned off area where you are allowed to ask any question you want and look at this from any angle you want to try to see if there's something here that we could learn that you know that otherwise we wouldn't hey you know what darrell we can do that in the pacific in the same damn war we can talk all about the various incentives behind japan attacking pearl harbor whether fDR turned a blind eye or not leave aside for the moment but just the

question of the politics of power and economics and oil and steel in the pacific that's what caused that war and nobody's apologized for tojo you know he forced march my great uncle f him right but like so that nobody thinks that that war happened because japan was evil and that's all you need to know about it yeah and it's actually you know i i thought it was very interesting that uh You know, all the people who are so worked up about my criticism of Churchill, you know, you can, you could probably get away with tearing down a Churchill statue if your manifesto said you were upset about the Bengal famine or something like that, you know, but, and those people wouldn't have been at least nearly as upset as they, as they pretend to be it.

You got to remember to bring that up next time, you know? yeah i didn't we didn't get the i mean that's the thing too you know go ahead and i didn't talk about that i didn't know we were going to talk huh will you talk about the bangladesh thing uh you know i i only honestly so here's here's sort of my process when i when i uh start podcasts like this right well there's two things i would say um The first thing I do is I go out and I get all the mainstream sort of like survey course level books that, you know, if you haven't read these, then you're not really serious about the topic. And I read all of those. And sometimes I read them over and over until I get to the point where, you know, at least the timeline of events is all firmly set in my mind. And then I can go out and, you know, go on tangents and read about specific events more deeply. And I have like that scale. scaffolding to hang everything on. Once I've done that, I start working on the first episode.

And, you know, the first episode of this series that I'm working on now about World War II, it takes, it's, you know, it's about the modern history of the German people, their position in Europe, the history of Prussia, and the history of the national wars in Europe and Germany up through like the aftermath of the First World War. And that's pretty much all I've been reading and thinking about for like the last six months or so. And so the Bengal famine is, you know, it's something I know, again, just like the survey course level of. And there's dispute about the British responsibility for it. I have not looked that deeply into the controversy, to be honest. Like, partly because I'm not there yet in this podcast, not at

1943, but also partly, you know, the whole, I mean, the name of the podcast is enemy, the Germans war, because I think it would be interesting to try, you know, one of the things I've always tried to do in my podcast, and people who like it or don't like it, usually, usually at least call this a noble endeavor, is I try to see, I try to put myself in the shoes of everybody in the story, you know, and I did that with the Israel Palis. Palestine podcast. I did that with the Jim Jones podcast where I really like force myself into the shoes of this psychopathic suicidal drug addicted cult leader who led 900 people, innocent people to their deaths, right? And I felt like to tell the story properly, I had to get inside the heads

of these people and understand why, how their decisions made sense to them at the time. And everybody thinks that's great. Everybody thinks that's a noble endeavor. And my decision to do this upcoming series was sort of okay well everybody likes that approach i'm gonna i'm gonna challenge you on that you know i'm gonna take basically the devil you know the hitler and the national socialists have replaced the devil and his legions of demons uh in like the modern secular consciousness i'm gonna i'm gonna do the same thing that i've been doing with jim jones with the israel palestine podcast and everything i did with lieutenant calli and the mili massacre And I'm going to do that with the thing that, you know, that really is going to push your tolerance of that to the farthest point.

And so, you know, that's what it is. It's the story of World War II from the German perspective. And so something like the Bengal famine, I'm sure I'll mention it in there. It'll come up, you know, in terms of the way people in Germany were viewing Winston Churchill and in the British and so forth. but yeah i i don't know enough to discourse on it right now man this thing is going to be something else do you have in mind like the whole thing is sort of storyboarded out about how many episodes it'll be and that kind of thing yes but um you don't want to tell me that's okay no no not that i don't want to tell you it's that uh you know i thought maybe the is real palestine

podcast would be like two episodes and it turned into six right yeah and so if i'm being serious about it like um this will probably be about six or seven episodes six or seven long episodes and uh you know and the the the the thesis of which is simply is very simple which is you know it's that you know the the story of the second world war where you have the germans who are a normal uh people a cultural superpower in Europe that suddenly turned into demons for 15 years. And then after that, they actually went back to normal and they're normal today. That that's very obviously a myth. These are people.

People did these things. And we need to understand how and why people would do these things. And to do that, you have to look at the situation through their eyes. And people can be delusional. People can be paranoid. People can have bad information. All of these things. They can have experiences.

that, you know, make resentment and vengeance, like the guiding forces in their, in their consciousness. It lead them to do terrible things. But Jim Jones was a person, you know, all of any, any Palestinian suicide bomber or heartless like IDF general, you know, was an innocent three-year-old kid who didn't even know there was a conflict, you know, yet at one point in time. And so to try to understand like how did human beings in their in their time and through their own eyes get to into a situation that is like so extreme and so outside like you know the the the realm of experience of those of us who are just you know going to work and living our lives yeah man it's going to be great you know it would be really interesting

I'd like to hear you and I'd like to hear your take on Pol Pot and the Camer Rouge. Next year. Yeah, I mean, that would end up, you know, again, it's one of those things that I've, you know, I've read a lot about in works that are not specifically about it. And then I've read maybe three or four books specifically about it. So, so not deep research or anything. But my, I can tell you my initial impression is that a lot of it would be about the

Americans. Yeah. Oh, I know. Talk about domino theory. I'll tell you who's knocking over dominoes over there. even just knowing I know the bare minimum about it and it's too much

what a horror show man all right well listen you know I listen to everything that you do even though I don't even have time to listen to podcasts but every time I'm in the car listening to your stuff you do such great work

blacks and Jews fear and loathing in the New Jerusalem Jim Jones and the People's Temple of course oh the anti-humans boy if you're a nightmare's having type don't listen to the anti-humans by martyr made

holy moly communism is you're not anti-communist enough out there young man you hear me be more anti-communist and there's more which ones am I leaving out you've got some real greats

well you know the one that is it's not about Russians and Germans or Israelis and Palestinians shooting at each other, kind of went off the beaten path is number 20, the underground spirit, which is about the parallel biographies and the related work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky. That's probably my favorite episode. It's a lot of people's favorite episode, but it is different, but I really like it. Oh, that's cool. I don't think I've heard that one, man. Well, I know. Yeah, I would, I always ask

people to make time for that one because it's probably the only one that you know i i'm the type person when i come out of any interview like this one uh or anytime i finish an episode i just shake my head like oh my god that was terrible yeah the the underground spirit is uh is really the only one that i don't feel that way about so i always ask people to listen to listen to that oh that's cool well listen now you're great man that's why everybody loves your stuff so much including me. So, by the way, I really appreciate you doing the show today. It's been great. Anytime. Like I always say, man, anytime for you. All right. You guys, that is Daryl Cooper. On every podcast platform, especially substack, he is martyr-made.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertary. Institute.org