The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1332: The Thirty Years War - Part 7 - The Finale - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

50 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas concludes a series on the 30 Years War, which many historians count as the most important European conflict prior to the 20th century. Radio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Buy Me a CoffeeThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas' WebsiteThomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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It's all because of you. And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you. The Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignana show. Thomas is back and we are going to conclude the series on the 30 Years War. How are you doing, Thomas?

I'm doing well. Thanks for hosting me. there's a significance that I emphasize within any study of the conflict that may differ from what others might. I said at the outset, I wasn't going to make this a deep treatment or discussion of pike-and-shot military methods or of the early modern period generally. the first and foremost, as I think any revisionist is, you know, I'm a political theorist. I'm not a historian. So I always fall on the conceptual side of things. There's a running discussion, and obviously people in the continental tradition differ from people in both the analytic tradition, as well as people who favor a more progressive view.

of historical processes, and only progressives has been people read the Washington Post and you know, can't pee correctly. I mean, you know, people used to be considered in sort of the Whig historicist tradition, you know, obviously if you fall on that side of things, you're going to view the conceptual lens

that people came to frame the conflict in and subsequent political development as being a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. People develop certain conceptual biases only to the nature of sectarian combat and then extrapolated those epistemic priors to

all subsequent conflict iterations where the primary dyad was sectarian or what have you. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, There was this ongoing tension within Christendom between perspectives, one of which was primarily Latin and one of which was primarily Germanic and broad strokes. I'm talking about the way things were conceptually devised within respective cultural minds. I'm not talking racially or something.

I believe this culminated on the continent. Sectarianism is a bit different in Britain. This culminated on the continent with the 30 years war and the sectarian conflict died generally. And this wasn't really resolved, I don't think, until Bismarck. And I think it was. was largely by necessity and it was the fact of Europe becoming a true global power and to itself that was on the cusp of overcoming the warring states phase of its political

development and entering the world stage in a way that had been unthinkable in prior epochs and obviously that power political affairs within that truly global schema within Veltpolitik was ex-estentially menacing in a way that was very binary. And obviously, that's what allowed the sectarian divide to finally be overcome, those kinds of existential realities. That's what always allows for sectarian divisions to be overcome. one side annihilates the other or it's resolved. Okay, not to wing this off

onto a tangential discussion, but that's what's allowing the sectarian rift to heal in Northern Ireland, I believe. It was the existential threat posed by the occupation regime that they're trying to ethnically cleanse, you know, white Christians. You know, you have an existential, threat that subjugates all other conflict paradigms to the critical imperatives

emergent they're written and this isn't just Monday morning quarterbacking as it were it were, if you read, you know, historical accounts from the era and the testimony of declarants who were participants to the events in the immediate aftermath of Westphalia, you can tell what's coded into their conceptual horizon culturally is this sort of post-Roman understanding on one side of the other of the nature of authority and where it derives. I mean, and this isn't just a case of cherry picking either, because I'm anticipating that that'll be one of the claims presented in rebuttal. There was an all-encompassing intensity to the 30-year-s war that tended towards both myth-making

in military and political terms, but also tended to characterize discourse conceptually, just because how could it not? There is a parallel between it and the Second World War and its destructiveness, but also its formative, its ontologically formative aspects. You know,

and we talked, I think, last time, and if memory serves, there was a, these same considerations were on the minds of people in Britain also. I mean, don't get me wrong. There were English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish mercenaries who participated in the conflict directly, even though the respective kingdom is from that they called home weren't engaged as formal combatants. but in terms of the reigning political horizon,

this was as much characteristic in essential capacities in Britain as it wasn't a continent. And that's suggestive of a matter of apoccal or historical significance, not just something derivative of the, you know, the, subjective impressions of accidental observers. This idea, too, of the need of a secular sovereign, and not in a colloquial sense, but in the conventional, literal definition of it, to act as arbiter between ambitious factions

and sectarian motivations that didn't somehow spontaneously emerge with Hobbes, I mean, the real genius of Hobbs was some of his musings on the symbolic psychological aspects of statecraft and the relationship of man is a discrete individual, contra the sovereign, and how that relationship is primarily psychological. It's not grounded in material quantities. I mean, there's, Hobbs stands, is a, it was an intellectual. giant for all kinds of reasons. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But this idea that he was the one man who understood that there was a profound

existential aspect to the new politics and that the military aspect of that was becoming unmanageable unless some sort of Leviathan agent that enjoyed universal legitimacy could establish dominion over it with the requisite will to brutality that would be so required. And I don't think that's deniable. But there's obviously all these things show up people's understandings of the what constitutes the state's legitimacy and where it derived from what is the ultimate source of authority and the way people talked about that changed precipitously after westphalium it but it also the framing device of it even though the concrete particulars were different

and the way power was understood and its potentialities were understood couldn't have been more extreme, as it were, or pronounced, or severe. But the conception of people being situated as regards statecraft in what amounts to a post-Roman world and attempting to determine what the ideal state. is within realistic parameters and more significantly what its relationship is to ethical considerations and how it can reconcile its own legitimacy contra you know god's dominion and ultimate authority of god over man that that's what that that oh do what i mentioned that the onset of this discussion was competing understandings of sovereign authority and the pious man's, the Christian man's relationship to these things. You know, Christian, St. Paul's, the Pauline view literally as authority comes from God only and alone, but the authorities that hold sway are of God's

ordinance, even if they're evil men. You know, a magistrate, it doesn't, it's not as if he's acting outside of the purview of God or outside of the authority of God, even if he acts against Christian principles, you know, and man does have a duty to obey the laws of the polity. So long as that quality itself is not patently illegitimate. There's a lot that's written on this extrinsic to scripture, obviously. That's something that's interesting contra Islam, because obviously within the Quran there's a great deal written about what a pious Muslim owes to secular authorities and what the discrete parameters are within, you know, the legitimacy of, um,

a secular office christianity is more complicated than islam metaphysically and otherwise i'm not saying that pejoratively that's just a fact but um nevertheless you know that the issue was far from settled even when europe could properly be said to have been christianized um which i I think people follow me of probably glean that I essentially accept Spangler's timeline. We can talk about Christendom existing at approximately 1,000 AD. I realized that as early as the 4th century AD, European peoples were converting to Christianity in substantial numbers. But even after the...

the Roman Empire was ashes. What you think of as the majority of civilized Europe, it still had a Latin stamp on it. In terms of the languages people spoke, and some of their cultural and wars, in terms of their legal codes, in terms of their habits, the foods they ate, and most significantly our discussion,

their view of government. And a lot of peoples, particularly in the, Europe Central and a disproportionate number of them Germanic. Their commitment to Christendom was probably nominal. The Nicene Creed came about by necessity, okay, because the Aryan heresy, not Aryan, Arian, A-R-I-A-N, that had become indemn endemic because a lot of in part because a lot of missionaries were willing to accept a nominal obedience or a sort of ceremonial acceptance of formal protocols and things and if these people

remained basically pagan and rejected the divinity of the Christ so be it that's why this came about and this endured for centuries. People forget that, you know, it was well into what we'd think of as the later Middle Ages. There were crusades being waged against European pagans. This didn't just go away. But even among the pious Germanics, they had a very different concept of where authority comes from. This was exacerbated by pagan influences, obviously, but that wasn't the essential aspect of it, nor the sole proximate cause. Even the way these things are framed in some of the Pauline letters and the early church fathers,

characterizing the Roman state as diabolical or demonic. I mean, that was true. But to some Germanic Yaleman who, until a few generations back, had been worshipping the tribal gods and things, in his mind, how could authority be diabolical? You know, authority comes from an ascending source. it doesn't descend from the emperor. It's validated by, you know, bonds of blood and soil and by shared affinity for the same God.

So to such a man, these controversies would seem to be either totally irish and incomprehensible or a sort of exercise in logic games, almost like mathematics on a purely theoretical level. That doesn't directly translate to either recognizing or rejecting a belief in the divine origin of political authority. but it does force the question as to what possible obligation would a subject people have to an emperor who doesn't speak their language, who doesn't practice their ways, who claims nominally to worship the same God, but who doesn't speak their language, but who doesn't practice their ways, who claims nominally to worship the same God, but whose iconography and liturgical aspects are totally alien to the

congregate in question. A lot of this is the source of the schism between Protestant sex and the Roman Church, at least if we're talking about Lutherans especially and reformed. There's probably a more cultural aspect to the former and political conceptual aspect that's paramount to the latter. But I don't think that can be denied. You know, and I read, there's this really interesting book. I read it my first year in law school, not because it was assigned or anything.

They don't deal with complex legal theory in law school, at least not at like a shit law school like I went to. But this is before you could download, you know, PDFs for free and stuff. So I'd haunt the library. And the law library of John Marshall, we shared the library. with the Chicago Bar Association who was actually a really good library. And I found an Oxford history of Western legal theory.

Now, because it was written by an Oxford guy the first edition in the 50s or something. And the body of it had substantially, at least in a sudden terms, endured through seven subsequent editions or whatever. He makes much of what he views

as the sort of civic method of the Federalist papers. I disagree with some qualifications on that take. He objected to all kinds of things, but a particular interest to me was the critique he levied against Hamilton and John Jay, because Tory types tend to be more favorable to Hamilton and Jay for reasons that I think aren't mysterious.

Hamilton opposed the kind ofication of a written constitution at all. and he essentially viewed he viewed constitutional government as some happy medium between Republican and monarchist tendencies he viewed the President of the United States

is basically an elected monarch for those that don't know I'm not trying to be pedantic a lot of people don't know about the controversies of the founding father that doesn't make you stupid or not educated or something it's it's very complicated

But Hamilton and Jay, they both wrote about the fact that the legitimacy crisis of the King of England, it largely derived from the fact, they basically viewed it as emergent from the time of the Norman conquest, because the Germanic people were subjugated by Latin overlords, who were linguistically, culturally, and culturally, different and who practiced a totally different religion for all practical purposes. And the American Revolution was Angles-Saxonem reclaiming their political rights as a discreet folk. And Germanic people elect their kings.

you know, the nobles decide who's the king. And, you know, the king of England in the Hamilton, J. View, reading from the lines, has essentially made himself a pope and an emperor. And that's the distilled essence of tyranny. And it's also a deeply, a deeply, heretical posture. So the American Revolution was a German revolt in substantial measure, at least in political terms,

I guess Latin oppression. And worse than that, by a Latinized king who has also made himself a pope. So there's just two layers there of tyranny and illegitimacy. And I'm the first to stipulate. There's many Americas. You know, people recommend the book a lot,

Albion's seed in our quarters. At least a lot of the Southern guys do and a lot of the northern guys who have heritage, American roots and things. And it's not a bad book. And I agree in substantial measure

with the basic anthropology that it lays out culturally but it's complicated I believe and I intend to write on this moving forward I believe that the war between the states

and the war of three kingdoms there was a causal relationship there and I think the war of three kingdoms and the third year's war there was a causal relationship there and the American Revolution and the war between the states, there was a sectarian aspect of both. And there

is myriad nuances there. But I, Hamelin and Jay also weren't wrong. You know, and this was, this really endured until the 20th century, even, and it wasn't just laws cause historians or something. You'd have, you know, you have guys like Lothrop Stoddard, talking about, you know, the Angles, Saxon character of America. You had European progressives on both sides. You had Marxists and national socialist talking that way. This was a real thing. Okay, I mean, whether, and at some point,

if these things become a self-fulfilling prophecy, I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't think this was an imagined or confabulated identity or phenomenon. But even if it was, well, if you're building a new, political culture that's based entirely on the rejection of the British crown that's got certain implications. And E. Michael Jones, I mean, Dr. Jones is a good dude, you know, and he was nice enough to come on the mind phaser pod. And we had a good talk with on and off the record. You know, like we were talking about, I mean, he overstates his case and I love the guy, but I think

He's got a persecution complex of a sort like a lot of our big city Irish friends do. But he's not wrong that America is probably the most anti-Catholic country that ever existed other than the UK. And that doesn't come from nowhere. And it doesn't just emerge because we're all a bunch of crazy, you know, Holy Roller Taliban types who want to be mean to Catholics. I mean, yeah, I'm sure to this day you find some people who are bigoted because they've got weird ideas. But there's a deep doctrinal and philosophical objection to Roman Catholicism in this country, and it comes from exactly what we're talking about. It's deeply identitarian. And if you want to parallel, I'm always making the point, because I think it's relevant.

in it's a direct rebuttal to a postulate of court historians beginning with uh william shire and and enduring to the present there's this and it's not just crazy zionists who say this there's this mythology and this canard that well you know the national socialist party there was a bunch of catholics who are emulating roman catholic uh rights and rituals and trying to secularize the faith. And, you know, it was, they were a bunch of reactionaries who were angry at the modern world.

And they were just cloaking this ideology and the trappings of secular racialism. Okay, the National Socialist's heartland was the Protestant rural and semi-rural north. Okay. The, I mean, obviously, Munich. Nuremberg they they had a deep and sacred significance to the movement and they had a

hardcore of partisan political soldiers there but in the electoral map if you're talking with the national socialist heartland you're you're talking about the protestant north of germany and that makes perfect sense okay i mean one of the one of the reasons why Hitler was an unusual personage. He was this Habsburg Catholic who identified, within his program, he identified the new Germany as the legacy of the Prussian state. And he had the support of both a bunch of Catholic Juncker's and a bunch of Swabians and Prussian officers.

And meanwhile, there was this Protestant Yale menry who were his most dedicated. followers. Like, that shouldn't make sense. But that's why it worked in terms of an electoral coalition. And there literally was a Catholic party and a Catholic center party at real clouds. The story after people act, like, I don't want to spend this off into a discussion of what's wrong with court history on the National Socialist Revolution and things. But there's also this claim that, oh, well, well, first of all, they claim that, that, that, um, the Reichstag arson was a was a false flag and that's ridiculous because it's it I mean it's it's it's it's it's it's just beyond belief okay uh but the claim is also oh and then after that you know the

kpd was banned so there was nobody to challenge national socialist the national socialist plurality which was now a raw majority in the Reichstag that's totally an odd to the reality and Hitler had to basically make concessions to the Catholic Center Party because that's how much power they had. You know,

I mean, which makes perfect sense. But I believe the German pietist tradition and in Protestantism generally, different as I'm the first to acknowledge and advocate for the reality

because I think a lot of Catholic partisan deliberately ignore this, there's profound differences between Protestant sex. There's not this thing called Protestantism or a Protestant church. But one of the commonalities is the emphasis on the congregation, not just in terms of ecclesiastical governance and function, but the congregation is the basis of communitarian life. Community life is the basis of, you know, the, the, the congregation of Christ. You know, so without it and without those communitarian aspects, you know, the Christ church on earth isn't realizable. That's why, you know, Nimrod was a very bad man, not just because.

because he, you know, he was a tyrant, but the whole story of the Tower of Babel, Nimrod, not only did he say that he could build a tower to the heavens, said he could become a God himself, but he said that it was incorrect for there to be discreet races and ethnicities and languages, so he's going to wipe all that away. I mean, if that's your position, you're against God. You're saying creation is incorrect. and the way that people are incorrect you know and that's lost in the shuffle i mean people who lie about scripture lie with all kinds of things but that's that's one of their uh talking points

that's one of the ways you know they don't actually read scripture ever you know this idea that it's incorrect for people to have a congregational affinity for their own kind or to develop of communitarian bonds on a shared heritage. That's the essence of Christianity. But be as it may, and don't get me wrong, obviously the Roman Catholic Church takes congregationalism seriously. That's why liturgies are delivered in local languages and stuff. But it's a different thing.

There's not, even within the same confession, you'll find reformed churches that are very, very, very different from each other. I mean, that's the big criticism that Roman Catholics, who actually are thinking people have, is, you know, where, so there's got to be some sort of, you know, final authority on doctrine. And obviously to us, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, with, uh, you know, and, and, uh, and, uh, in, and, uh, in, uh, and, uh, in the Christian religion is, uh, uh, you know, there, people have this idea that Calvinists don't take, uh, authorities authorities seriously. that's not true um obviously you should read the early church fathers and you know you should read kelvin but uh you know the point being that in uh in the view of people um in the view of the roman confession and the roman catholic confession it there's a built-in schism or schismatic tendency to you know lutheranism or um reform theology but

Because as it may, among Lutherans, this idea of pietism and the inner witness is the ultimate, you know, the inner witness brings you to Christ. And also that's the, that's both the arbiter of acts of conscience and the source of pious impulses. but that also is you know deeply personal in a way that's historically coded and I think

I don't think that's mysterious and what I mean you know so this idea of this sort of pious commitment this congregationalism you know a pious commitment to the inner witness and a sort of shared understanding of the source of of, you know, moral learning being that inner witness among a community of, you know, confessional

agreement deriving from those aforementioned principles, you know, that's inextricably bound up with a kind of very Germanic patriotism. that's strongly racialized potentially, particularly under conditions of existential conflict, actual or emergent. And that's, you know, the Kulterkopf, that term doesn't origin, people think that term originated in the inner warriors or something,

or that it described the reaction against the gross immorality of Vimar. It didn't. I mean, it's used in all kinds of capacities, and it's not a malapropism. I mean, it literally means culture struggle. But it came about owing to the, you know, at post-unification, it referred to the, you know, tenancy of the ruling House of Honson, learned to pursue a policy of, of, of, uh, nakedly sectarian, how much an Aidean government. You know, like I said, I don't know if this is true or not, but Wilhelm's, supposedly

Wilhelm's wife wouldn't even let Catholics in her house, you know, and, uh, these culture comp tendencies didn't come about because Prussians were so, strongly sectarian that they just couldn't abide, you know, anything suggesting a true power-sharing arrangement with the Roman Catholics. It's because Prussianism and pious Lutheranism is so they're inextricably bound up. One can't be divorced from the other. If you're talking of Prussianism, you're talking about pious Lutherism. And, you know, if you're talking about national socialism, you're talking about

a Prussian ethos. That was presided over again by a Habsburg Catholic who was very, much of that heritage. You know, people forget two, Hitler was, I don't know exactly how it breaks down in Europe in terms of the education system before, like in the days they have for empire and things. But what I do know is that Hitler was raised by seminarians in his education, you know, until he went to, until he went to high school or equivalent. You know, it's just really teachers were all priests.

and the church was the center of communitarian life. What I'm getting is that Hitler wasn't just nominally Catholic. He was very Catholic, you know, culturally, if not, in terms of his inter-confessional belief structure. But, you know, this, ultimately, I think this touches and concerns every aspect of conceptual political life from, I don't know, the Mervoringen era until 1945, this idea of concentrated authority within a ruling element or sovereign, and the emerging complexity or the shifting of the proverbial sands within the extent paradigm causes

that sovereign or that ruling element to have to devise away the sustainous legitimacy or assert its power and that's rationalized on grounds of descending authority ordained by the Christian God. you know, that that whole narrative is inescapable. And not just that, but I think it's just positive in what developed. And even in America, that's

what informs this myth of the imperial executive and this idea that a constant vigilance is required to preclude such a thing from emerging. You know, and

the 30 years' war was such a catastrophic culmination of these factors that even if people rejected the, you know, suggested immutability of that paradigm that I'm describing, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy regardless. You know, and that's the significance of the 30 years war, and that's the core essence of why, I mean, it's such a huge topic, you know, and I think it's imperative that this stuff be discussed. And I did the best I could with this series, you know, but I can only speak from my own base of knowledge and expertise. And I'm not, I mean, I'm not a military guy. I even look at me, obviously. But I, and I think I know something about, I mean, I know I know I know something about, you know, modern warfare.

and game theory. And, you know, the relevant inputs and variables, particularly as regards 20th century conflict paradigms and stuff. But I don't, I'm not a military historian, and I'm not one of these people who, I'm not like a documentary and historian either, where I try and identify every aspect of a historical phenomena or paradigm, and then leave those discrete,

variables into a sort of pastiche that can convey a true understanding of the epoch. You know, I deal in concepts of a playable theorist, so I'm always going to fall on the side of what's arguably, you know, more, what's arguably an undue emphasis on, on more abstract and symbolically psychological aspects of the subject matter. But that's all I got in a 30-year's war. I realize I haven't been going a full hour, but I apologize for that. It is when it is. It's all good.

It's all good. We'll get together over the next couple days and figure out, well, the next series is going to be. So we'll schedule that out. Yeah, that'd be great, man. Yep. And I'll remind people to go over to Thomas's substack.

That's real Thomas 777.com or to go to Thomas777.com where the T is a 7. You can connect with them there. Go support them on substack. And yeah, Thomas, thank you. This was, I think I, I think one or two people asked for this series, but it was definitely some I wanted to do. So, you know, I just want to thank you personally. You're welcome. Thanks for hosting me. And I want to think of the subs for their feedback and their kind compliments.

I really appreciate that. And, I mean, feedback's essential because I, I mean, it really is. Otherwise, I don't know if I'm doing my job. And plus, I also want to cover things that people find interesting. You know, that obviously, you know, I mean, it's a prerequisite that it's got to be something that I know about and I can speak on with some meaningful expertise. But no, people have been very nice in praising this series. And I really appreciate that. All right.

Talks you in a couple of days. Thank you.