The Pete Quiñones Show - The World War Two Series: Episode 6-10 w/ Thomas777 - 2/4

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

5 Hours and 9 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Here are episodes 6-10 of the World War 2 series with Thomas777 in one audio file.Episode 6: The Origin and Rise of Winston Churchill Pt. 3 - 1936-1939 w/ Thomas777Episode 7: Winston Churchill Becomes a Warlord - Part 4 of 4 w/ Thomas777Episode 8: Dispelling Myths, and an Introduction to 'Operation Barbarossa' w/ Thomas777Episode 9: Laying Out the Details of 'Operation Barbarossa' w/ Thomas 777Episode 10: The Conscience of the War (WW2) Wagers and Planners w/ Thomas777Thomas' SubstackThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas 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.

Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting. You're ready, turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI that transforms how you work. Nostra delivers secure, innovative and reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. Visit Nostra.com.I.E. to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow.

At Tesco, we're delighted to announce our brand new Belmain Express store is now open, where the quality you've come to expect from us is now just down the road. Pick up some great value essentials, along with some high-quality meats and fresh fruit and veg, plus some tasty treats from our in-house bakery, serving you up freshly baked goodness. Tesco, every little helps. Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting. You're ready, turning concern into confidence.

From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI that transforms how you work. Nostra delivers secure, innovative and reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. visit nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Kenyana show. We are continuing the series. Hey, Thomas, how are you doing? Hello, I'm very well, man. Thanks, again, for continuing this series. I'm very pleased, not just with how it's developed in terms of our content,

but I think the response has been incredible. I want to thank everybody sincerely for being so kind in that regard. that kind of feedback is essential and it's been very constructive and it's been overwhelmingly positive and that means a great deal and it also means we're doing things properly and that's great so I'm very very very pleased yeah you have to be doing something right when people are like getting mad if you don't put out an episode yeah yeah well it's all go too like this is I've been this is literally the fifth time I've been deplatforming from Twitter like and And, like, anytime it seems like I'm making an impact, like, they de-platform me.

So there's that, too. But, yeah, it's quite a bit more positive that people are clamoring for more episodes. And like I said, that means a great deal to me, man. Like, I'm very honored by that because, uh, um. Well, I got to catch up because I've only been the platformed on Twitter four times. So, you'll get there, my friend. No, no, we, like, kidding aside, though, with, um, you know, I, I plan to, um, you know, I plan to kind of transitioned to longer form anyway, so

I'll drop where people can find me at the end of this show, not because I'm trying to be a show, but you know, you've got a wide audience and it's just an easy way for to reach people who are interested, and you know, it's about half the content I drop on there is totally free, so there's that too.

Okay. I'll link to anything you want me to link to. Yeah, yeah, no, thank you, Pete. And I'll drop that. If I can conclusion of this but um i think uh i think uh yeah i think i think i think i think i think i think i think i think i think i think we were talking about uh you know mr churchill getting access to baldwin i mean quite literally and uh you know how uh how uh how the focus it had come to be and how churchill became kind of a permanent thorn in the side not just of baldwin but you know in

in um in that of any establishment figure like tory laborer liberal who opposed the you know rearmament and a confrontational posture with germany so i think what i think what we left off was i pointed out that you know churchill uh despite his kind of by this point which is 1936 despite his constant epilogia for the soviet union and it's kind of fervent increasingly shrill you know hostility to Germany and these confabulated figures and statistics that the focus group were submitting as actual data, like always from undisclosed intelligence sources. Well, all this was going on, of course, and I don't want to derail us into a tangent, but it's a matter of material significance to what was underway within the UK.

You know, the Spanish Civil War was raging hard at this point, and, you know, that was a real, that impacted every culture on the continent, political culture, I mean, in a way that really can't be overstated. It wasn't just a military quagmire for the Spaniards and for the, for the Iberian Peninsula generally or, you know, for the, or for security in the Mediterranean. I mean, it truly, it truly was a Velton-Shang's Creek. I'm sure I've butchered that pronunciation. But, you know, that's really where, um, that's really where, um, that's the same.

really there was a collision of world views between uh between um you know the communists and uh and um and their opponents all in sundry you know some of these people were fascists in the flange you know there was iron guard volunteers from romania um you know you even had like carless like uh you know margous types in the ranks um uh you had you had out and out you know national socialist deployed uh with condor legion uh from germany and uh you know you had You obviously had a whole population of Italian volunteers. But also, I mean, basically anybody, one of the reasons why I don't want to get into the intrigues that led Franco to being kind of the frontman of the nationals cause. But Franco was somewhat apolitical.

I mean, even then, even well before, you know, he became this kind of Cold War intriguer who, who, who, um, who was kind of all things to all people. You know, he, uh, Franco, the man himself, like much as he might have been, and Pooned is something of a crude figure common to the kind of, you know, Latin American world. Um, as we would think of it here, you know,

like it, it, uh, the way he was viewed in Europe would be kind of the way we, people would have viewed Perone. Um, but aside from all of that, I mean, it, it was more acceptable to support a figure like Franco than I, you know, it would have been some kind of ideologically committed fascist. But at the same time, there was a certain perfority to Churchill coming out in support of the nationalists. Meanwhile, declaring it essential to stand with the Soviet Union against Germany, and what he suggested was Germany or redentism.

Part of this was the Republican government under Juan Negan, again, I butcher pronunciations. Please don't declare in the comments that I'm a Creighton. I know that I do it. I can't help it, okay. But a Negroan had support from the Soviet chickah and, you know, all kinds of police and military elements from the Soviet Union, including a young Eric Milka, who went on to, you know, be the Stasi Hanjo for decades. But incredible brutality was carried out in the name of the, you know, Republican cause, which was really just the red cause. in a fancy dress um particularly clergy men and women were targeted uh you know um it sounds i'm not being flippant about such things but it sounds like a propaganda cliche but

you know nuns really were revealed the systematic rape and things and um you know uh the cemeteries were clergy people were buried were subject to destruction and their remains were disintered and desecrated, just horrible, horrible stuff. So, you know, Churchill went on a record in Parliament as well as in his very, to that, there too far still lucrative newspaper contracts with an editorial writer, you know, in support of Franco. And that was kind of an early example, I think, of these kinds of competing, these kinds of competing loyalties that he was forced to,

force to contend with you know I mean even a I realize a modern political life even a man who's sympathies are quite literally bought um he's got to perform something of a delicate mean you what in that regard but um this was unusual even considering the man in question and even even considering the realities of modern political life uh this was a bizarre circumstance what I'm getting at and that the terms of debate and discourse what were not normal at all um even even the even the even the shenanigans the focus notwithstanding um forgive that big stretch um i just said i just had to shut the door to the office now um bringing it back uh it's the year nineteen thirty six and what's happening in

berlin at this time uh erhard milch who we raised in the last episode and i come back to him a lot not just because he was a prolific diarist. And after the war, Milch was very open. He was, he was, he kept very few people into his intimate circles. But those that he did, he was very open with them about his wartime activities and about what was underway in Berlin and the years leading up to the onset of hostilities. That particularly, as we established, Milch was something. have a go between with uh you know the uk and and berlin unofficially milts was an unusual guy as we as we raised to his father was jewish um so he was you know

mixed blood uh he was the CEO of luftanza he was a uh he was a he was something of a military genius and he uh um was one of the first truly uh he was in the first military man who true aptitude for the potential of air power and its utility and particularly as a as regards ground assault and and a it's utility in terms of combined arms okay well most in in 1936 he submitted to garing you know who was chief of the lufufa he submitted uh was kind of his own strategic vision uh moving forward and what germany's defense needs were in terms of lufthofa which you know air forces were new then, okay?

They truly were nascent. So it was a, it was kind of a statement of what, you know, they should take to the furor in terms of what should be allocated for them to, for them to develop and sustain the forces in being necessary to, you know, to credibly project power. At Tesco, we're delighted to announce our brand new Belmain Express store is now open, where the quality you've come to expect from us, is now just down the road.

Pick up some great value essentials, along with some high-quality meats and fresh fruit and veg, plus some tasty treats from our in-house bakery, serving you up freshly baked goodness. Tesco, every little helps. Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving.

With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reaction. You're ready, turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI that transforms how you work, Nostra delivers secure, innovative and reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. Visit Nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. But also, it was a strategic survey of what the next war would look like.

And it was exhaustive. It was titled Thoughts on Air War, quite literally. There's not a single mention of the U.K. or the Royal Air Force. It's exclusively focused on France as a probable adversary. There's plenty of mentions of the Soviet Union, but at this point, there was relations between Berlin and Moscow were at times frosty. there was always kind of adamically sword hanging above it because the governing ideologies were truly like dialectically violently at odds of one another as part of where both derived their legitimacy but at the same time there was an outward diplomatic courting of the Soviet Union this is one of

the reasons why Strasser had been done away with in my opinion but that's a tangent we can take up later but nor there was a scrupulous avoidance that that that came from Hitler that provocation over a provocation of the Soviet Union should be avoided unless it's a matter of essential security however again there was literally not a single mention of the UK or the RAF and this this was an eyes only study it's not as if military is doing this for diplomatic reasons because because he was concerned about, you know, British eyes being on it and then somehow developing an idea that they were being set up as a, as, as, you know, the opposing force and all but name in war gaming or something. Now, this is contrasted when the, you know, not just what Churchill's sort of Germanophobia in these, in these confagulated statistics about German rearmament and forces in being and capability and intention, but the foreign office, the British foreign office, it had, most notably Lord Bansitarities, you know, kind of become infamous, not just in revisionist circles, but I think he's a rather ugly character, just, you know, on his,

regardless were one's politics fault you know he he had a he was the permanent chief of foreign office for all for radical purposes who had a quasi-deal power over whoever happened to be the foreign minister at any given in any given administration but also you know he was able to set the tenor of of the diplomatic corps and he and really is these these permanent these men with permanent sinicure in the foreign office, almost to a man, they were profoundly hostile to Germany, and that's a complicated issue. And some of it's attributable to the same motive that animated, the men associated with the focus. But most of them, it proceeded that. It had more to do with the kind of antipathy to the Germans that was characteristic of King George's era. You know,

it was kind of a long hangover of the Great War. And, you know, we talked a bit about, you know, incidents like when Belhom, you know, congratulated Kruger on on his, on his victories against the crown and in the Avrian Cape. Like it, there, there was

a lingering and a sharp hostility to Germany in the foreign office that preceded the focus. That's, becomes important later and it's just it's important if you want to understand the British establishment at this time. I believe this is one of the things that

Despite the great power and wealth at its disposal and its ability to kind of create propaganda infrastructure, where there wasn't any, despite all that, I believe the foreign office and its orientation towards Germany, I believe that's something that emboldened the focus to kind of develop in the first place. Now, this gets really interesting, this gets really interesting. if we look at the backdrop of what happened from 1935 to 1937. Well, first of all, let's, first of all, let it be said, too, around the same time that Mills submitted his thoughts on the Erwin and Gearing, okay, I mean, a lot of revisionists posit that, including Irving, including myself. I'm obviously not the same league as Irving, but it must be stated that the reason I raise that is because it's persuasive testimony.

about the intention of the German regime, okay, and as of 1936. And as we say, I was before, Militz would be in a position to know, not just no, but he's in a position to directly impact policy by the evaluations and his recommendations. So his thoughts on air war, there's not a single mention of the UK as a probable adversary. Also in 1936, Hitler himself deployed von Ribbentrop to London as an ambassador. as a ambassador. This was before Ribbentrop became foreign minister. Now, his instructions were, literally Hitler said to Ribbon Trump, bring me an alliance with the United Kingdom. You know, uh, Ribbentrop is, he's kind of mis, Ribbentrop was not a particularly complex figure,

but he's, he's unfairly lame-pun and disdained and this kind of foppish, ignorant, like rich man. He wasn't. He spoke very full in English. He lived in Canada. Um, He was something of a glow-trotting businessman when that was rather rare, you know, for men in that role. It was, I mean, it was rare even for men in government prior to, you know, about mid-century. But, I mean, so Ribbentrop was very worldly. There's a reason, Hitler had his shortcomings and his ability to judge character, but in Ribentrop's case, this was not one of them. And Riventrop actually got, Ribbentrop actually got on reasonably,

he actually got unreasonably well with his counterparts. Churchill deliberately sought him out to insult him a couple occasions, and Irving's made, Irving's made, Irving's made much of that. But even Chamberlain himself, he and Ribentrop didn't have particularly warm relations they were amiable okay but um again this is an i raise this again because it's an example of executive intention of berlin and its disposition to london now this was part of an ongoing effort um by germany to court the uk that was obviously the aboveboard aspect of it in the preceding summer, summer of 1935, owing to this kind of ongoing, you know,

rapport that Erhardt Milch had with the British Air Ministry, he authorized Gehring through Milch to submit actual intelligence data and loose off of forces and being and capabilities to London, on the condition that their counterperson in the Air Ministry, not disclose this info to any other state, and that it not be announced in Parliament or anything like that. Basically, it was a good faith gesture, so it was not to be on condition and not be exploited for pliable purposes.

Now, the foreign office intercepted it and demanded Ambassador Eric Phipps to reject it, which is incredible. I mean, think about that. Even if this data was submitted in bad faith, even if it was confabulated, which it wasn't for the record, it was entirely it was what it appeared to be but you don't reject any any from a potential adversary you know or other great power i mean because data is data you know and it's that's you need it to build a conceptual picture of the strategic landscape so that gives night the

fact of the foreign office um they were unwilling to entertain anything that appeared to be you know a good faith diplomatic oversure in in any sense that's incredible okay um so milch himself uh who in many ways was more effective than gearing probably milt bypassed the foreign office entirely he directly approached the committee of imperial defense which as we talked about was you know the counterpart in many respects to the the general staff in germany or the american joint chiefs he presented his figures and uh the uh look the committee of imperial defense in the air ministry, they validated them as accurate, in part because they reflected what, you know, British intelligence, and particularly the Air Ministry's intelligence arm had compiled.

So in other words, this was the, this would be the equivalent of, say, like a regime that was suspected of, of cultivating, you know, radioactive material for a, for a military purpose, you know, granted open access to the nuclear reactors, okay. That's an imperfect analogy, but it was what it appeared to be. It was a good faith gesture to demonstrate, you know, we're not, you know, we're not developing a strategic capability with, you know, London in mind. And, you know, we're certainly not aiming to develop an era arm to, you know, to terrorize the Ukrainian submission, either by threat of force or, you know, by the application. of it um it's uh and like i said even even if it was not a even if it were disingenuous um at tesco we're delighted to announce our brand new belmain express store is now open where the quality

you've come to expect from us is now just down the road pick up some great value essentials along with some high quality meats and fresh fruit and veg plus some tasty treats from our in-house Bakery, serving you up freshly baked goodness. Tesco, every little helps. Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting, you're ready turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you

grow and AI that transforms how you work. Nostra delivers secure, innovative, and reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. Visit Nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. Sort of ledger main, which it was not. It's incredible that it was just, you know, utterly rejected out right by the foreign office. But it's demarchive of what they had in mind, as well as the focus. You know, again, we come back to what the, we come back to the focus statement of purpose, which was, you know, you know to counter any any inference or any um suggestion or any any appearance that anything that

berlin demands or anything it suggests or anything it claims the desire is is legitimate in on any front in any capacity and that's exactly the way to understand that particular um that that that particular situation but um the uh and what was uh now called course this uh this uh this uh this dad has fed to mr chamberlain just before he becomes uh or just uh just after he becomes a prime minister because uh churchill and the focus as well as uh you know a lot of chamberlain's opponents who aren't particularly associated with mr churchill or the focus but are always eager to you know find a way to impeach the credibility of uh of the sitting prime minister that you know they seized upon you know chamberlain is one you know leaving the uk vulnerable based upon you know based upon

german ambitions um so once anyone becomes p m you know and uh and um he's he's very quickly advised of you know the uh the uh the air ministries um you know unofficial meetings with milch and the figures that they were available to the only uh response from uh lord bansitar's the only response from church or the only response from the focus is merely that mills were lying nothing more or nothing less you know germans can't be trusted the germans are lying you know oh hitler also said that you know the german army would not exceed half million men you know basically saying you know the germans are liars because they claim to be compliant with the her side treaty which we later acknowledged was an unjust treaty and not sustainable you know and when they when they

didn't avail themselves they you know sanctioned by either by occupation or by further you know insurmountable reparations you know that means that they simply can't be trusted in any statement that they make i mean which is the most tortured form of reasoning one can imagine but again um the figures that were submitted by milch were validated by um the air ministry um in the office of imperial defense independently anything milch said but again if one yells things loud enough from proverbial rooftops um and you know has the as the means and the will and uh the kind of bottomless coffers to uh to generate a bully pulpit um it really doesn't

matter if uh the things one is saying are or are completely advocated and that's exactly what happened particularly because um chamberlain did not have a particularly strong mandate the plot thickens a bit the air ministry indicating a kind of admirable streak of independence in October of a 1937 and reciprocity for the kind of good offices as it were like demonstrated by milch and their counterparts in the lufufa milch himself and and the german air force delegation is invited to tour the air ministry um time return to bring when milt is summoned by by hitler himself and which is unique or it's remarkable rather you know notes was a guy he was he was friendly with hitler um certainly hitler followed his career closely

you know um but it's not as if they had regular briefings or something um Hitler took a uh a peculiar interest because he wanted most to relay everything that he could about his impressions of uh of um of his counterpart into the political climate in in in London at the time and what militia tested too to Irving as well as in his own diaries is that Hitler reiterated to one that alliance with the UK is absolutely essential um so I mean there if this is yet more kind of direct testimonial evidence of of what Burlington tensions were as of 1937 and um I emphasize this because we're going to get into the what I

consider to be the appeasement myth momentarily and as a framing, as the context, it's kind of necessary to establish that foundation. I'm not just trying to bore people with details or minutia that happens to interest me. Now, November 1937, um. Zambriero, your favorite feel-good mix is giving away 100,000 free burritos worldwide to celebrate donating 100 million meals through plate for plate. Grab your free burrito and celebrate with us at your local Zambrero on Wednesday, December 17th, between noon and 2pm. T's and C's Apply. Zambrero, feel good mix. Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting. You're ready turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI. that transforms how you work. Nostra delivers secure, innovative, and reliable IT for Ireland's

leading businesses. Visit Nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. The focus has its kind of greatest coup. As regards official, though, obviously, you know, with the exception when Mr. Churchill himself became prime minister, but... Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden formally joins the focus. What his motivations were? I'm not an expert on Eden. I think Eden at certain insights, not so much into the international situation

that we had some of those two, but I think he believed that Chamberlain was weak. I think that he believed that, I think he was worldly enough to realize that there was something of a title, a shift underway in the UK as to what kinds of factions and what people became, you know, we're going to become the true power brokers moving forward. I think he preferred to focus as a friend rather than an enemy because he saw the writing on the wall. And he believed at

some point that, you know, Churchill and the focus were going to get their way. And He wanted to survive that paradigm. That's just my own opinion. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be guys, particularly Englishmen, who know far more about eating the man than I do in British politics who will probably disagree. I mean, maybe we'll be right. That is my own take. It, uh, around, uh, around the same time, um,

a few months later, 9038, the international situation is heating up. Churchill meets with Joe P. Kennedy, which, as everybody knows, was ambassador in the U.K., and he'd been an early, Kennedy, the senior, he'd been an early new dealer until he and Roosevelt became better enemies, owing, in part to Roosevelt's appointment of Morgenthau, you know, who we, we dealt with the personaging character at Morgenthau a couple episodes ago, but Kennedy found himself very much at Lodge of Churchill, not just because Kennedy was a, you know, a millionaire boss and Irishman, and he you tell that Churchill just kind of disdained him going to his recent pedigree as it were but uh um fDR quite clearly directed and he was not prone to this kind of micrmanagement um at least in the case of Kennedy he quote was quite clearly a directed Kennedy to to take you know these kinds of friendly luncheons with with Churchill in order to get a sense of what exactly Churchill's intentions were as about the international situation, because it seemed, it was clear to anybody who had an understanding of the deep politics at play, like, what their intentions were.

When I say they, I mean, Churchill in the focus, but it wasn't clear how exactly they were going to insinuate their ambitions into policy. So, Kennedy took note of Churchill's kind of perfidy. the topic of discussion was the man of Ribbentrop and and Kennedy said well you know did Ribbentrop not offer that you know Germany would not only make no claim on the British Empire but would all the guarantee its continued existence

so long as the British were willing to furnish Germany once again with its colonies and that the UK would not interfere in its you know Germany's policy in the east and including that was a was a guarantee that you know that Bergmoch would not move one inch westward um it should be noted that Hitler had no interest in the issue of colonies but um Ribbentrop and the foreign ministry did but that's that's kind of a that deserves a treatment on its own but um much like Van Satart kind of lamely replied when confronted with um you know the figures submitted by milts the district of good faith

like church one really declared that these were all lies that rippantrop was lying and this was all german ledgerd main and kennedy was somewhat shocked by this um and i mean Kennedy was kind of the he was kind of the king of dirty tricks but it uh it's um it's um it's uh it's uh i mean it's telling that uh it was um i guess kind of the singular focus on suing for war is what is is what is telling here it i mean it's not telling that that was you know churchill's intention and his kind of inner um sense of the situation but i that i i i uh this is interesting too because moving forward we will probably get into this in the next episode but um

Joseph B. Kennedy became convinced that Churchill might actually have him arrested on something to trumped up charges or even haven't murdered. I can't speak to that, the likelihood of that, but I only raise that because this is one of the things that, this is one of the catalysts that led to a lot of direct communication between Churchill and FDR himself. You know, FDR was not a particularly accessible man, and that, we'll get into that later. probably not in this episode, but I want to drop that for foundation. And I realize also, I'm throwing a lot of unfamiliar personages at people. And I think Joe Kennedy kind of ties like, you know, the distant past to the kind of less remote past in people's minds. If that makes any sense. Plus, I just find it interesting.

Now, we're going to move on to some more interesting sexy stuff. I hope no one's asleep yet. But the Anschluss, the merger with Austria, not only was that, you know, one of the key ambitious. of Hitler and the national socialists and the Third Reich but this was kind of the, this is the big foreign policy poo that set many things in motion

including what happened at Munich months later. This was a game changer. You know, Berlin was clamoring for the unification of Austria and Germany proper. The Austrian

Chancellor schusnig opposed us at all cost okay um it uh and one of the great kind of uh follies of power politics and the gamesmanship they're in kirk schisnig on march 12th he announced that there be a plebiscite on independence march 13 okay it was uh taking a page from the book of adolf hitler schusnig was gonna he said that, you know, the Austrians that fight to the last man and would never, you know, accepting a part of Germany and, you know, well, you know, to disabuse anybody of any notion that

there could be a peaceful assimilation of Austria into Germany, you know, he's going to hold his plebiscite to see what the Austrian people favor, moving forward, whether it's independence, you know, a yes folks for independence, or whether they favor subjugation

by the, you know, to the boot of the German Reich. Now, what did you chisnick do he only printed up he ordered that only ballots containing the yes option be printed up he also announced that voting against austrian independence was a form of a sedition and was a crime he also upon learning that the average age of austria national socialist party members was 23 he arbitrarily raised the voting age to 24 um if you ask me that's a kind of electioneering worthy of a of a america in 2020 um ed off hitler saw it was underway um it uh he uh as everybody knows he he preempted the ash loose um or he preempted his plebiscite and he preempted uh chusin

declaring martial law by uh you know deploying forces across the uh ashean frontier and uh the vermouth is welcomed by the people and uh on april 10th hitler held a uh a referendum on the same day as you know german elections and uh lo and behold 99.7 percent of austrians voted in favor of an chluse now it must be stated that um jews romas and gypsies and communist party members were not extended to vote okay otherwise though even a life magazine which was certainly no friend of the third right off hitler they ran on may second 1938 the election was certified as quote basically fair like in other words this was like a legitimate reflection of public opinion of ethnic germans in austria now i can only imagine this brings to mind the kind of the kind of abject lunacy of the anglosphere and its moral can't like do you realize if i mean the uk was not in a position to do so and and and neither was france but suppose it's been some kind of expeditionary force of a of um a british and french

the british and french army in congress with uh like schuzenegg's kind of secret police you know assaulting austria you know to liberate them from you know a a position that 99.7 percent of voting adults favored i mean it's it's crazy it's It defies imagination, but it, it kind of, it made me think I like what Mearsheimer said about, you know, particularly the United States and the UK, but pretty much the entire EU, which is under, you know, American dominion in terms of its values. Zambrero, your favorite feel-good mex, is giving away 100,000 free burritos worldwide to celebrate donating 100 million meals through plate for plate. Grab your free burrito and celebrate with us at your local Zambriot. Zambrero on Wednesday, December 17th, between noon and 2pm. Tees and C's Apply.

Zambrero, feel good mix. Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting. You're ready, turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI that transforms how you work, Nostra delivers secure, innovative, and. reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. Visit nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. Among other things, you know, all regimes lie, but when literally all you stand on

is a moral cant that's totally at odds with reality, it can lead to bizarre outcomes. You can find yourself at war based upon some kind of mythology that does not reflect strategic circumstances one iota and um there's really no other kind of regime like that like dysfunctional as the east block was that that wasn't um something that um that there wasn't a risk of such things but i just find that fascinating can i ask you something about um austria absolutely let's go back a few years yeah why did they assassinate dulfus dulfus was a national catholic basically uh something of a clerical fascist i mean i don't like that term but that's one way to understand it and um he very much uh he very much opposed he very much opposed what i think of any kind of

any kind of secular union with what had been hapsburg lands he he wanted an austrian national state i think it was almost kind of like a tito figure i mean yeah he was presiding over a homogenous population but he was a sworn enemy of the national socialist the austrian national socialists were particularly violent particularly revolutionary in their disposition that almost tanked the Concord with Hitler and Mussolini. I believe that's one of the things that prompted Hitler to unconditionally cede the Tyrol to Bachelors Diddley, the Tyrol region, because Hitler was quite literally meeting with Mussolini when the news came in that Dolvis had been unceremoniously murdered, you know, gangland style.

That's why. In Shusig, I think Dolvus is more of a genuine patriot than Shusenig, but, you know, he was just as kind of pigheadedly on compromising as a in in terms of in terms of political realities like that's why it's like it's a complicated issue but the the main thing is uh delphus seemed to think he could delvis seemed to believe that he could stay his own course and with the backing of the vatican with the backing of mussulini um you know he could keep uh he could he could keep the national socialists down he could keep the UK and France out and he could keep Austria you know independent as a if if admittedly within you know the Italian orbit um that's why um Hitler was infuriated that he was murdered you know not because he didn't he left

for Dolphus but it the Austrian the Austrian National Socialists were were kind of we're kind of wild guys you know they quoted themselves very well in the battlefield um the uh Kaltenbrunner you know who succeeded a hydrant he was one of the Austrian national socialists and um as were um as were a lot of especially in the later regime a lot of um emerged in in in powerful roles but that that's that's the short answer okay power power politics yeah yeah indeed indeed and just the the when the when the when the when the when the Hasburg Empire, you know, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but I mean, it's more probably the Hasburg regime, you know, when it, when it was a shattered, you know, in the aftermath of 1918, I mean, it caused, there's a lot of real dysfunction there, you know, and even in states that were actual, you know, national communities that weren't just, you know, kind of hodge-podge pastiches of competing ethnic groups and arbitrarily drawn, you know, within arbitrarily drawn borders. There was a problem of authority, and there was a problem of, you know, what was the correct political trajectory, not just in power political terms, but in terms of sustaining any kind of legitimacy.

I mean, that's part of it. That's why the reasons for such a small country, it took on an outside significance, and that's one of the reasons to see what the Austrian National Socialists, you know, made this big impact. It's not just because they were violent. There was a lot of violent, non-state actors in the interwar years that didn't make that kind of impact. but there was weird stuff that like Mises wrote about how like border towns yeah would be overrun

by like the the neighboring population so it's like you had a border town that would be Austrian and then all of a sudden it's not yeah yeah stuff like that a real yeah a real anarchic political situation yeah and his

his um answer to that was just give the town up yeah it's better to just give the town it's better to just give the town up and not have to deal with that in your polity yeah yeah yeah at that point and at that point too it's just a fiction you know i mean yeah yeah yeah you want to um talk about you want to get into churchill's uh yeah i'm leading i want to lead in a bit to uh yeah the the munich situation because it's it's um so immediately into the airs we've church on the focus, they've been clamoring that Chamberlain must go, you know, his, his unwillingness

to hold fast on Austria shows that he, you know, he doesn't have the backbone to defend the empire. And this was ironically and perversely, you know, this is the way the focus sold their perspective in public, because this is a threat to the empire. You know, Germany's a threat to the empire. I mean, that was strategically absurd, but also, I mean, the one thing Britain could not do was fight a world war and keep its empire but so um during this time um he uh this you know the uh owing the conditions i'll dive into in a moment you know people identify chico slovakia as the next great uh you know diplomatic and potential military catastrophe you know um in the wake of austria you know, court historians claim

it's because, you know, Hitler was this madman, who was just on the march and just taking over places with hostility. And, you know, that's why I referred at the outset of our discussion to the appeasement myth, because it really is a myth. It's not me putting shade on a term, only to my own political

prejudices. It really does not reflect what was underway. Now, Chamberlain, you know, like I've said before, right chamberlain is was something of a dull personage and that that harmed him in public life obviously but he he did have a good sense of things and um i mean in purely strategic terms you know he understood the limitations of military power and uh when uh as churchill developed something of a quorum around himself not just of the of the focus but but of you know hostile opposition um

years, Chamberlain's rebuttal was, okay, you know, if we were to guarantee, quote, guarantee Czechoslovakia, you know, the Czech frontier is essentially undefended, okay, so there's not forces in being there that, you know, that, that, that any, any British deployment would be kind of beefing up. At most, the UK could deploy at that time as of 1930, as of summer 9038, two divisions. the RAF had only seven viable modern fighter squadrons you know the UK itself to that point it had no heavy to medium in aircraft capability and the big i mean the big menace frankly is regardless if our combat resolved um on the continent if Japan and Italy joined the fray the British Empire was going to be I mean it was open to assault on on half of those fronts you know again it's the it would be the definition of insanity to undertake those kinds of risks for chicoslovakia and it was around this time too interestingly you know we talked a great deal about churchill's dire financial straits and how he was bailed out

with huge sums of money by you know wealthy benefactors who came to costly the core of the focus um Now, uh, it's, uh, it's got to be noted that if this, it, it, it, in December 37, January 38, Churchill lost a huge amount of money in, you know, in American stocks. And, uh, Wall Street was still quite volatile, even though it had largely recovered structurally in the 1929 crash. Um, Hitler, or Hitler, Churchill had not reigned in his spending is, is, uh, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, his prodigal, his son was a true prodigal of the local sort, couldn't be reined in. Churchill found himself once again, nearly destitute. Lord Beaverbrook, who was kind of Churchill's last remaining, you know, patron in the newspaper.

in the publication business, you know, who wasn't quite literally, you know, paying out to him for charity like the focus was in order to, in order to corral him into, you know, being the frontman of their position. Beaverbrook simply got sick of his warmongering, and he beaver broke, among other publications, ran the evening standard. He banned Churchill's content, canceled his contract, you know, deprive him among other things, of substantial income. and who

Churchill found himself in such dire straits that his family's ancestral estate at the Chartwell was literally listed for sale but then what happens on March 28th, 1938 a man in an Amarovian Jew

with close ties to the Czechoslovak government named Sir Henry Strakosh. He's a South African gold mining magnate, chairman of the Union Corporation Limited. He pays all the Churchill's debts, sees with that he can hold on with his estate, and it fuses him, according to some accounts, for that $1 million, quote, alone, but a loan that would not accrue interest and would never have to be paid back. So, you know, a gift. And this is the moment at which Churchill was truly owned by the focus.

my opinion, okay? Because how do you, I mean, how do you, I don't think one could foreseeably come back from, you know, as an independent political figure after, you know, the patronage of Baruch and these other figures who were, you know, so solidly in, you know, the camp of a, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, completely at odds with the national interest. But I mean, if, if there was ever any question, I think this. It was, at this point, Churchill has sold his soul. It was sounding melodramatic. But let's return to Czechoslovakia and why the Munich issue is so grossly mischaracterized. Zambrero, your favorite feel-good mex, is giving away 100,000 free burritos worldwide to celebrate donating 100 million meals through plate for plate. Grab your free burrito and celebrate with us at your low. Local Zambrero on Wednesday, December 17th, between noon and 2pm. T's and C's Apply. Zambrero, feel good mix.

Every click, every connection, every moment your business is online, a threat is evolving. With Nostra as your trusted technology partner, you're not just reacting. You're ready, turning concern into confidence. From cybersecurity that protects what matters most to cloud solutions that scale as you grow and AI that transforms how you work, Nostra delivers secure, innovative, and reliable IT for Ireland's leading businesses. Visit Nostra.i.e to find out more. Nostra, securing today, shaping tomorrow. Okay. Czechoslovakia was actually, it was 47% Czech. Okay, more Germans than Slovaks actually lived there. There's about 25% German. That most of those Germans were concentrated

in the Sudeten region, the borderland, you know, on the frontier with Germany. But, they were insinuated throughout the entirety of the country. It was also home to Poles, Ruthines, Magyars. You know, these people had never existed under a common polity, okay? And this idea of a Czechoslovak state was absurd. And it's had, it was a contrivance of the chaos and the misguided sort of redrawing of the map in the wake of their sight. And it was solidly under Czech domination.

And I'm not going to sit here and say negative things about Czech people, but they're a very proud nationalistic people, and I don't like the polls, not unlike most of these ethnic groups in Central Europe, okay? And if you were non-checked under this regime, you were not able to freely practice your culture and pursue your own cultural existence, other than as very much a kind of get a wise minority.

figuratively and literally um the sedate and germans were quite well off comparatively um but they were very very much resented uh they were there was a the threat waxed and waned but there was a genuine threat of them being ethnically cleansed an event of um you know an event that's kind of ongoing social hostility reached the point of real violence um this this is a bosnia kind of situation okay if if somebody wants a comparative model well within living memory um the uh this is what's so ironic because people like churchill people like the focus people at vans at tart had they'd held a chicoslovakia as if like its integrity is essential with the principle of self-determination it's like well you know you can on the one hand demand the ultra-ungarian empire be disbandal

lives with a case in 1919 these discrete ethnic groups you know do not have homogenous states wherein they can pursue their own political cultural destiny but then declare that this you know contrivance of a state this Frankenstein kind of pastiche of ethnicities ruled by checks is somehow you know a reflection of self-determination um really the only reason came into existence was only to certain intrigues Now, France, the Immershal Folk in 1919, one of the things he declared at Versailles is that Germany, or that France had to occupy the Rhineland, and this was non-negotiable. You know, and Clemens O'Alsoe also had said, we need a buffer state, you know, absent the

ability to defend in depth, you know, we're just too vulnerable. The UK and the U.S. denied the claim what Wilson offered in its stead was he said. said, look, let's create a collective security pact of the U.S., the United Kingdom and France. You know, wherein a France comes under assault, you know, the U.S. and the U.K. are obligated to come to its aid. The U.S. Senate correctly refused to ratify, and when the U.S. refused to ratify, the U.K. then backed out. Okay, so what was the, how were the, how were the, speaking of appeasement, this is the case of real appeasement, how was the French delegation appeased they were appeased by the creation of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in part, okay, a little entente, if you will. This would, you know, Czechoslovakia literally struck into the, territorially, into the North German plain.

It availed France, you know, an eastern ally state that it could mobilize an event of war and, you know, compromise Germany's ability to, to my journey's ability to offend in depth by forcing a two-front conflict um and it created a it in a u.s lobby it created a second continental ally that theoretically was was was was was was bound to you know to the fight in common if france went to war um it seems i mean it seems incredibly foolish uh to suggest that you know anyone would go to war for Chico-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, but it, I believe the idea was that some kind of, that if the strategic situation deteriorated enough, like fear of an era in this German Reich would kind of bind people in common cause, I don't think that's realistic

either, because in a lot of ways, that's exactly what happened, and, you know, it in large part worked in the access favor but um that's that's the backgrounds this idea i mean i europeans are watching this forgive me from you panic a lot of americans even weren't total dummies like don't know about czechoslovakia and the fact that it's totally fake that's why i spent so much time there now as in 1938 um the uh president chico slovakia is uh edward bennes or Benis. Now, something very, very conspiratorial happened immediately after the Anschluse.

And it wasn't clear initially what was underway. So we're going to have to jump back. We're going to have to jump forward a little bit and then back again. Okay. Marks 9038, immediately after the Anschluse, you know, there's this uproar among, you know, Germany's enemies in the focus as well as in the British Foreign Office. in France, which was a very, very different political culture in the UK, you know, the France and Germany's conventional enemy, um, in a conventional, you know, European enemy, like rival power, you know, obviously, uh, obviously, um, there's not the kind of

bitterness and, and ethnic racial overtones is in the east, but, um, you know, as I don't think people need to be, uh, educated elaborately on the, or in depth about, you know, the fact, you know, the fact, that franco german i still would use like a thing okay so um france obviously is alarmed by the annesluse um they uh they've got very close relation blums uh government has a very close relations at bennes um immediately after the anis a rumor uh emerges and uh it becomes more than a rumor almost immediately it becomes a genuine war scare Venice issues a statement that a German invasion of Czechoslovakia was imminent and that the Vermont was massing forces on the North German plane and throughout the Czech frontier

and that they were poised for assault. Venice then orders a general mobilization. Paris and Moscow, both of them declare that they will come to Czechoslovakia to aid if the Vermont crosses the frontier. even chamberlain realizing that he can't sit idly particularly after uh you know this kind of concerted assault in the court of public opinion by churchill by the foreign office upon his decision making and now you know anthony eatans in on the act um chamberlain is a somewhat cryptic statement that you know that london will not sit idly while an invasion is staged by germany

of any sovereign state now hitler was genuinely kind of dumbfounded by this because there was no intention to assault Czechoslovakia and there had been no deployment on onto the frontier um Hitler is convinced that uh you know this might be some kind of ledger domain originating in Moscow he doesn't know what to think um yodel general oberst i'm sure i bursured that pronunciation too you know, Yodel was

by this point, was not a particularly close ally of Hitler. Although subsequently he became very close. He ended up becoming a very powerful figure on the general staff. We know a lot about what transpired here because of what he relayed. And he really had no reason to lie.

He knew nothing was going to scare him from a death sentence or anything. So on May 23rd, what Hitler does is the Hitler orders the foreign office and the, you know, the, the, the, the diplomatic delegation in Czechoslovakia, you know, to approach Venice as well as the, as well as, you know, he dispatches, you know, his own foreign office, people in Berlin, you know, to approach the Czech ambassador and tell him in known certain terms that Germany has no aggressive intention, you know, and the Germans disclosed. There's been, there's been no change in deployments. on the on the frontier there's been no concentration of forces you know uh hit hit was basically scrambling to avoid a war by by misunderstanding or by rumor now you know bennes to

hitler um bennes representatives to the foreign to the german foreign ministry um they act they react with apparent gratitude you know but immediately they're after within 40 hours This Christmas give the gift that lasts all year with Irish Country Magazine subscribe now for 40 euro and receive two

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With no ordering fees on purchase and easy activation, MeToU gift cards are the safe and secure choice. Find us online at me to you.i, me to you, supporting Irish retail. And he said that he has called the bluff of the coward and bully Hitler. And that by demonstrating his will to fight and, you know, the will of the democracies to fight in the face of fascism, you know, Hitler's been brought to his knees and exposed at this coward. Now, Hitler hit the goddamn roof, you know, for a few reasons. Because first of all, he realized Venice himself was a source of this rumor. You know, and he was basically...

He stayed the war scare for the sake of a, as a flex, essentially, you know, in order to see exactly, you know, how he could manipulate, you know, France and Moscow as well as London, you know, to come to his aid to preserve his government, which frankly, he had no real mandate anyway. But also, you know, he was just, you know, he wanted to, he wanted to try and put on a Mussolini Act, and that looks some kind of strong, man. you know Hitler uh responded uh publicly and so thank you in mind too you know what bennis was doing during the great war he was you know kind of gallivanting around um one of the reasons he became the president of chicoslovakia because he was an intriguer you know by today's standards we consider to be some kind of globalist liberal he wasn't in the trenches he was you know making he was organizing committees to you know fund uh you know fund a chico slovak government after the war in which you know he'd have he had some kind of plum sinecure.

And Hitler in his statement said, you know, I spent four and a half years at the front fighting for my country, you know, while Benis was intriguing, conspiring, and, you know, living lavishly as, you know, we fought and died in the trenches. And, you know, there's a lot to be said for that. Like, he basically, you know, you don't,

if you're really like Venice, you don't impugn the man out of a man like Hitler, like whatever you think about him. That's, I mean, that's ridiculous. Okay, that's, uh, and it, um, in those days, especially, especially then, you know, things like masculine honor really mattered, you know, so what Hitler then said to Keitel, um, who was another, uh, general officer who came to, uh, a very high preeminence on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the German general staff later.

Heard titled to implement a gradual mobilization of the German army and prepare for Case Green. And Case Green was the code for war against Czechoslovakia, not an immediate mobilization, not when that would be noticed by, you know, France, and certainly not when they'd be noticed by Prague. But Hitler realized that at some point, you know, if this was the disposition of Benes, he was a... he was quite obviously, at least, you know, I think it's clear. You know, he was quite obviously hoping for a scenario that would trigger a general war before Germany was in any position to see such a conflict due to victory. There's a lot of guys, and I'm not a military bet, and I don't know a lot about military science, okay?

Guys go back and forth, and they gain these scenarios. Could Germany have won a general war with Czechoslovakia in 1938? and it becomes people becoming better in their perspective. I don't have an opinion on that. But perception was that Germany would, I have no doubt

that if Hitler thought it was critical to do so in the preemptant of South, he would have gone to war with Czechoslovakia. But could Germany have won? Had Moscow, had Paris, had the UK come to fight, could Germany have won that war? I don't know. And I'm not taking an opinion on that. I'm just talking about the

perception as it was vis-a-vis forces in being and everything else. But it's got to be said, too, what brought this to a head, these tensions, were in Czechoslovakia, I mean, from 1920 to 1938, which is our, you know, now present, the Sudanian Germans have been agitating to be free of a Czech rule. And everybody, you know, the British, the French, the Moscow, you know, everybody, the polls, like everybody realized that this was like a bad, this is a bad decision. It was a bad decision to, you know, to hand the significant Germans to Prague. Like nobody thought this was sustainable. Nobody thought this was a good idea. So like the idea that Czechoslovakia was a stable country that that has, some kind of organic heritage, you know, politically or culturally, you know, and had, you know, enjoyed, like, strong legitimacy that's completely false. And everybody, the reason why Chamberlain, after the Munich summit, like, the reason why he was, like, you know, so congratulated is because

for 20 years, people were convinced there was going to be a war over this issue. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't because Hitler was it in beating places for no reason, and, you know, and Chamberlain just kissed his ass and like everybody just you know decided to kiss Chamberlain's ass for being a pussy or something or whatever they think you know I mean even Roosevelt congratulated Chamberlain you know it's like what so no or do we like FDR like what Hitler now like I don't it's completely asinine and um the um the whole uh you know and what happened uh what happened when uh the city in land was seated to Germany um you know there's several national

including, you know, Slovakia, Slovakia, declared independence, you know, and the Czechs essentially invaded, you know, the Czech state imploded, and so we're supposed to believe the state that collapsed, that had no legitimacy with some crime that it ceased to exist. I mean, should the United States have invaded Germany in 1989, because when East Germany just must exist. I mean, I, and it sounds like I'm being funny, but I'm really not. And it sounds so familiar as to something that's happening right now. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of what I wanted to, you know, draw into the equation. I mean, the whole thing is, too, what I kind of wanted to conclude on for this episode, and I don't want to go too far afield, but I know that I'm,

and anytime you raise this kind of revisionist issues, there's what people say is they say, like, well, okay, fine, you know, there's all these political intrigues underway and and all these kinds of competing um all these kinds of competing uh ambitions but well you know the the the the the german reich was just this evil state and it came into existence for the sole purpose of murdering people you can't look at it that way and if you look at the new york times uh interestingly the christendacht which was a really crummy thing to do um I mean, I don't need to get into specifics of it. You know, that's, there was, you know, there's basically nothing cleansing operation in major German cities, you know,

where a lot of Jews were, you know, beat up, a few were lynched and, you know, Jewish property was destroyed. I mean, these kinds of things happen, okay? These things happen wherever there's hostility between ethnic groups. But the way Gerbil's ministry handled it was grotesque, and I don't think anybody would say otherwise. but when these interventionists in the aftermath of that they started clamoring for war, you know, the New York Times, which by no means what it is today, and certainly then it wasn't in America first paper or anything, but they pointed out they said, you know, Mr. Stalin's Soviet Union

has arbitrarily executed exponentially more Jews than the Third Reich has. And that, I mean, that was true. The, before a shot was fired in the Second World War, the Soviet Union annihilated approximately 10 million people. So when you're looking at what happened in the Second World War, whether you're talking about, you know, the annihilation of Jewish civilians or any other kind of grotesque violence against civilian populations, you're talking about consequences of the war, not causes.

So saying that, saying, you know, the UK had to assault Germany because Germany was going to do bad things to minority groups. that's like saying like japan had to attack the united states because the united states is going to wage a nuclear war on them i mean like it doesn't i'm not being up to so it's you know people um have a completely warped sense of of how the history actually developed and what the motives were the players involved and what was the cause and what was an effect but it's because uh yeah we've gone over an hour here this is the last episode when i dedicate just to mr churchill i want to get into the war in the next episode we dealt with

the assault on poland already because we dealt with the new deal regime i gave mr churchill so much time because it's it's a very very complicated issue i want to get into we're going to start just next time with a little bit about churchill's you know it's actual ascendancy of the office the prime minister but then we're going to get right into the war and um from there i want to i dedicate episode of barbarosa and went on the aftermath of nuremberg if that sounds good to you Sounds good to me. Great. I hope everybody got a lot out of the content.

And if I could just plug, like, my substack peak, that would be great. Awesome, please. Yeah, you can find me at RealThomas-777.com. And I'm active on telegram. Periodically, I render a private. I'm under assault by crazy people or Antifa. It does happen. I'm not being a murder.

But you can find me on telegram. It's a public channel. it's a t dot m e slash the t h-h-e number seven h-o-m-s-7777 and i'll link to it thank you pete that's great and thanks again for hosting me i can't i really appreciate it i really appreciate everybody's support and kind words they i really mean that i'm not i'm not being polite well yeah a lot of people are missing you on twitter that's for sure I got to catch up a lot I owe poor Mike and I'm pretty impressed a whole lot

of material I got to and Steel Storm 2 is going to drop imminently and I'll make a decision midsummer about social media I just I haven't honestly haven't decided yet I'm not trying to build a hype or be a jago if I honestly have not decided if I want to get back on social media but I will

and I will always be on substag I will always be on telegram all right i appreciate it until the next time thank you pete i want to welcome everyone back to the pete canyana show we are continuing the series thomas how are you doing i'm very well thank you pete it's a pleasure once again to be uh continuing as we are and um like we talked about just before we went live here i think this should be the last dedicated episode to mr churchill and his ascendancy. And just to reiterate for the listeners, I'm not trying to be a pedantic board

by focusing so much on Churchill. Like, nor do I have some kind of axe to grind with certain historical personages. Like, some historians do. I mean, if you don't believe me, you, like, read Mr. Persia on what he wrote about, Adolf Hitler. It's like, it's kind of, there's a personal hostility

invested there that is not dignified in addition to it not being good scholarship. But that's not why I focus so much on Churchill. There's a political aspect to Mr. Churchill's career in a sentencing that is something of a missing piece of the conceptual puzzle to understanding World War II and what is wrong with court history narratives as well as understanding how Churchill was able to procure the kind of mandate that he was and what its purpose was. that's far more mysterious and intrigue-laden than, say, Mr. Roosevelt or even Stalin, as far as that might be. But I figure we'll, excuse me, I figure we'll dive right back in. We finished off last time, you know, talking about the Munich crisis, which was

was a genuine crisis, you know, as we talked about characterizing it as appeasement and characterizing it as, you know, a line in the sand being drawn by Mr. Chamberlain, but that he, you know, but that he could not back up with force, you know, when, when Hitler was on some sort of aggressive rampage of conquest, that's a gross mischaracterization. It's not, that's not me just putting shine on Adolf Hitler or something. It's a grossly inaccurate characterization. It's a propaganda characterization. It doesn't have anything to do with history as it developed. And it was a crisis, but it was a crisis that was entirely confabulated by the intrigues of Mr. Benes in Chego-Slovakia

and elements of the focus and other interested parties who had the means and the resources and the deep pockets, proverbially speaking to facilitate a crisis but they got far more than they bargained for because you know Hitler was a very serious individual and he was not somebody who could just be you know who could just be rupt or sandbagged in the court of public opinion and and could thereby be deprived of his mandate you know he whether you love Hitler hate Hitler don't have an opinion on

on Adolf Hitler he was a historical personage of incredible gravity. And that's another thing that's important for us to keep in mind. It's not a political judgment. It's an objective historical judgment. And now a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At air grid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland.

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Find us online at me2u.i. Me2U, supporting Irish retail. But moving on, as 1938 became 1939, Winston Churchill was somewhat quiet. He was biting his time, probably. I mean, definitely. I mean, in hindsight, this is clear. the Munich crisis really caused some issues for the focus

they realized that they had to do a couple of things you know they realized they had to take Hitler more seriously in geo-strategic terms you know the focus was singularly committed to getting rid of Hitler by any means necessary and you know regime change in Germany even if that meant handing Germany over to the communists they didn't care okay so they realized that Germany was essential to the political culture the continent and its internal situation and they always took that

seriously they did not however to take Hitler seriously as a potential conqueror I'm not using that term punitively but um Hitler was a a modern conqueror that's not all he was and all of his conquests weren't accomplished through hostility but that that's in part what he was and and he was a historical phenomenon and to himself like somebody like Cromwell was or like a man like Muhammad was that can't be denied. And they were Hitler's enemies, particularly Mr. Churchill and the focus. This became very clear without Munich resolve. Now, the focus came to understand that this meant it was critical to really insinuate their cause into, you know, American policy as in a formal

capacity. Now, you know, we talked about the New Dealer Revolution and Mr. Roosevelt, and we talked about a lot of these partisan figures around him, you know, like Morgenthau and, and, and Bullitt and some of these other figures. So, I mean, it was fertile ground, obviously, for the focus to kind of, to kind of intrigue allies into their orbit. However, you know, relations between the United States and the UK were somewhat frosty during this era. This is a lot outside of scope of what we're talking about here, but we take for granted that, you know, the UK is as, you know, as oral characterized at Airstrip 1 as, you know,

American executives from, you know, really Eisenhower-on-word, you know, they talk about the special relationship. Well, I mean, this is, this is the legacy of Mr. Churchill's, you know, installation into the premiership and and him availing you know the resources and of the UK unconditionally to America and it becoming you know quite literally a client state of America you know this was this was not the case from from from you know the entirety of the 20th century until until 1940 really I mean yes you know America collaborated with the UK and the Great War but you know a lot of and that was

disastrous in its own right, and that was conspiratorial in its own right, but there were even reasons for that. And I'd even argue that America had warmer feelings towards Paris and it did London, even into the early 20th century. So that's important to you mind, too.

What I'm getting is that even though there was parallel policy goals and dogmatic anti-fascism characteristic of the New Deal regime and the focus regime, which it was not yet formally insinued into power, but was coveting that. But just because these goals are parallel is not me they intersected yet or that they formally

entered into alliance yet and you know mr roosevelt certainly wasn't going to take orders from mr churchill who at this point you know didn't even have a formal office um you know despite the fact that he become you know a very significant personage in in in in british political culture so moving on um uh in 1939 in the summer churchills visited by felix frankfurer um felix frankfurter was uh he was a a roosevelt appointee to the supreme court um very long-serving judge you know he was he was jewish and he was very involved in jewish causes you know and zionist causes um he had an unusual career and he ended up i can't remember exactly but he was unceremoniously disbarred at least for a time this was much later i can't remember if he was indicted or not or just saying

but it was very strange and it was strange for a man of his profile to be involved in this in this kind of what amounted of any anti sort of corruption okay so he he was a he was a man of of questionable character you know aside from politics aside from his ethnicity all that you know just based upon his conduct this can't be disputed okay and it's interesting that Felix Frankfurter is the man from Roosevelt's administration who came to visit um churchill and for the purpose of establishing good offices you know like we talked about joseph p kennedy you know who was who was the father of john of kennedy and robert kennedy you know it was roosevelt had appointed him as ambassador united kingdom both because kennedy was an enemy of roosevelt's you know after roosevelt took the oath of office they very much had it falling out but also you know roosevelt obviously this was part of the kind of lingering antagonism to the UK that a lot of U.S. Establishment had, you know, sending this kind of millionaire boss and Irish men, you know, who, to London, that was a highly antagonistic

move, you know, and that was very deliberate. But, you know, so if, if, if, if Churchill was going to make inroads into the new dealer regime, it wasn't going to be through Mr. Kennedy, you know, and vice versa, if the new deals wanted to reach out to Mr. Churchill, they weren't going to do it through Mr. Kennedy. You know, it was just, the table. But, you know, it's telling that, you know, it's not clear to me, and I've tried to find out. I've dug deep into the record of mainstream historians, of revisionists. I don't know who initiated contact. I don't know if Churchill solicited Frankfurter's visit. I don't know if he wrote to Roosevelt and, you know, behooved him to send some sort of emissary unofficially.

I don't know if Frankfurter took it upon himself and then reported back to Roosevelt. This isn't clear all is that you know they met and this is very significant and um you know the frankfurter among other things he was a very important man in the american jewish committee okay the american jewish committee they weren't formally part of the focus but they were only one or two steps removed that makes any sense you know we talked about samuel intermeyer who was the new york lawyer who was a key player in the world jewish economic federation which was then incorporated into the anti-Nazi Council, which was the across-eatlantic kind of alliance that gave the focus of, you know, representation in the United States and vice versa gave, you know, Zionist power,

Zionist NGOs, you know, power in London, or at least representation. You know, this was done through St. Utremeier. And St. Utremeier was one of the key players that I just said the American Jewish Committee. And he also, you know, had been utilizing the American Jewish Committee. you know he he he incorporated the world jewish economic federation which had been uh which had been the driving force behind the embargo on german goods and manufacturers you know um and that proceeded even the christendok that when when when the when the national socialist regime became you know as a matter of law like like highly anti-jewish you know these NGOs like went into action you know immediately and um so this is the way to understand frankfurter in my opinion is you know he

was very much uh he was very much acting as a as an ambassador of this of this of this faction you know the world jewish national federation the american jewish committee you know men like samuel utermeyer but frankfur because he was a jurist you know he actually was friendly with roosevelt you know and he was an important man you know even today you know even though government doesn't have the kind of prestige it did and it's populated by fools that we all kind of lampoon you know a supreme court justice has a lot of power you know i'd say today this is very Court has even more power than the presidency. But in those days, you know, certainly the presidency was a CSRRD, but if you were any federal judge, let alone the Supreme Court justice, I mean,

you were a man with serious clout, you know. So this was, this is highly significant. This wasn't just Frankfurters saying, you know, I like Mr. Churchill and, you know, I like his style and his hats and even though he was a fat fuck. I like the fact that he wants to, you know, set the Jewish people free, so I'm going to go visit him. No. You know, this was obviously, like, very, very official. you know it was it was it was he was a heavy that frankfur was a boss you know i'd argue that he was the most powerful um jewish political figure um in the united states at the time okay so frankfurter uh it immediately before his appointment you know when he and fDR we're kind of articulating you're trying to feel each other out about about common

policy ambitions and goals frankfurter written fDR admonishing him to always emphasize the Nazi threat, his words, the quote, Nazi threat. You know, he said, you know, you've always got to emphasize that the Nazi threat is responsible, you know, for, you know, not just for threatening freedom and peace on the planet. You know, it's another catchphrase of Frankfurs and that the focus later took on and Churchill himself took on. You know, we talked earlier about a Churchill, you know, he's, he's praised as being this brilliant order. Churchill didn't write a lot of his own speeches. You know, a lot of the stuff as propaganda copy, you know, put out, you know, by guys like Baruch, by guys by

Wickham, like Wickham Steed, you know, by organizations and NGOs, you know, like the, like those headed up by, you know, men like Untermeier and by Frankfurter, you know. So these, these phrases appear again and again. It's highly or william. Okay. If you'll forgive, it kind of overused. And now, a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid

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adjective. But he, you know, Frankfurt's big, his big idea in terms of, you know, what we consider to be like information warfare or perhaps disinformation or, you know, more benignly, perhaps, you know, his idea for, you know, kind of selling the narrative of the new deal was, you know, you've got to present domestic policy efforts and priorities as being inextricably bound up with foreign policy issues.

You know, particularly the threat, you know, to our freedom and this, you know, or not just our national security, but prosperity, you know, and the ability, you know, of people in America, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to live freely and, you know, all enjoy due process under the law. You know, we've got to present, we've got,

we've got to present, you know, Berlin and Hitler and the national socialist as this existential threat to, you know, to our way of life, you know, and if people say that, you know, well, you know, they're a bulwere against the communists, we've got to just shout them down. And Churchill was very receptive to this,

you know, and, Churchill, having been silent after the, you know, in large part after the Munich fiasco, you know, he started agitating in earnest, you know, once again, you know, as 1938 became 1939, you know, he started saying like, look, you know, like Chamberlain took a knee because Chamberlain's weak, you know, and he's not a man who can stand up to, who can stand up to the Nazi threat, you know, and Churchill literally said in 1939, springtime, you know, on the floor of parliament, you know, he said, you know, the Nazi threat represents an immortal danger to our, quote, freedom and peace. You know, that's him literally invoking, you know, the phraseology of Frankfurt or

FDR, you know, which is interesting. And you got to keep in mind in these days, you know, we're talking about 1930. You know, we're talking about when there's not even a radio in every home, okay? Like, it's not like today or like memes, you know, hop across the ocean within minutes or, or, you know, got people on, you know, three of incontinence who all kind of have common reference points in terms of their political vernacular or their propaganda phraseology or, or advertising slogans, you know, this is, you know, a man, like, particularly a personage of the status at Churchill, like, literally parroting what some, you know, Jewish Supreme Court Justice is from America said, who himself kind of borrowed, you know, the phraseology from the

President of the United States, you know, that's, that's notable, okay, and it's indicative of very much a relationship of patronage and it's indicative of a very managed career you know and Churchill being the managed uh uh quantity here okay now immediately after frankford's departure from london you know a this massive media campaign was unleashed okay and you know like we talked about you know Churchill would become persona persona and lord rothermia and lord beaver brook you know they Rothramir, you know, he was, was in some ways actually positive about Adolf Hitler and close to Mosley. Beaverbrook, I don't believe there's anything that could insinuate any such, you know, insinuate him into any, that same milieu. But Beaverbrook was very anti-war, and, you know, he recognized that Churchill was a warmonger, and he was a cynic.

You know, but other than, other than, other than Rothramere and Beaverbrook, you know, essentially refusing to give church, platform every other major newspaper outlet was was was was you know giving Churchill as much copy as they could muster without a you know to be a literal organ of some NGO to coalesce to install him an office I mean they should have been in it by to modern eyes this is obvious but again this was you know 1939 but the Daily Telegraph led this charge okay Pretty much overnight, you know, premium ad space was purchased, you know, declaring that, you know, Churchill's the only man who can protect us from the German threat, you know, and lambascing Chamberlain, you know, on a Chamberlain wrote to one of his intimates. I can't remember if it was, I can't remember if it was a female cousin or just a female friend, but there was this Chamberlain maintained a voluminous correspondence, you know, like a lot of Englishmen of the day he did.

and he wrote kind of in shock that one day this massive billboard appeared on the strand you know just saying you know Churchill our man in giant letters you know and that this kind of thing was not heard of in those days you know this kind of like Mussolini had pioneered some of that and Adolf Hitler you know he he campaigned by aircraft you know hopping around Germany but this kind of full court press you know full full spectrum utilization of print media of movie house uh uh visual media of uh you know street billboards they've been hired they they there was there was women who were hired to were sandwich boards you know like you know dozens sometimes as many as a few hundred women to just you know appear uh outside parliament

wearing sandwich boards you know saying churchill are man you know they were all hired they were paid to do this but it appeared spontaneous and people hadn't seen this kind of thing before you know so even even people who weren't particularly sold on churchill you know or even people hadn't even followed his career particularly closely you know like working people or not sophisticated you know this the kind of climate a conceptual environment was created where it just seemed Churchill this inevitable momentum and i mean used this this is even though it's coming up on a century into our past this remains kind of the default tactic for you know manufacturing a mandate you know at the ballot box okay uh crudes it might seem

I mean, there's only a limited number of ways you can accomplish this. You know, even as diversified as media platforms are, you know, today, the more things change when they stay the same. So this is got to the first instance of an NGO with tremendous, you know, clouded media and a tremendous amount of money, you know, creating quite literally a climate of public opinion where one man's ascendancy seems inevitable, you know, and that's kind of the ultimate bandwagon intrigue. And now, a look at the forecast.

We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid. Looking for the right buyer for your business, start your next chapter in confidence with a successful Irish entrepreneur who's ready to invest. At SME Nextchapter.com, we understand succession is not just a sale.

It's about protecting your customers, your staff, and your legacy. If you are an SME with a strong management team, a genuine minimum EBITDA of one million euro or more, or an advisor ready for a private chat, please get in touch. Begin your next chapter at SME Nextchapter.com. A confidential conversation. you can trust. Okay, you know, it's almost like, it's almost like man-made weather is the way to think about it. You know, the Oliver Stone movie, National Born Killers, that's one of the anti-heroes player Woody Harrelson. It's talking about media and how media creates are like individually and collectively, it literally manifests our image of public figures. And because

it's like man-made weather, he says. Well, it's actually poignant, you know, it's not just something, something dropped in a lurid movie. movie. Now, Churchill finds that, you know, as time goes on, you know, as 1939 drags on, the focus finds fertile ground because Chamberlain, there's a lot of people are not happy with Chamberlain for all kinds of reasons. You know, a lot of these have nothing to do with Munich other than the fact that they feel he botched the entire affair, you know, not even people who didn't have any animus towards Germany. You know, he just did not seem confident to manage the power political landscape and the tremendous stakes that were involved

and with some of these people like Archie Sinclair who's leader of the Liberal Party he just hated Chamberlain you know and he declared which is incredibly stupid he declared that if Parliament convened earlier you know in the in 1938 and mobilized you know the you know something come to some kind of agreement and develop some kind of quorum of of of a of a

you know a war party in that sense you know they could have deployed the royal navy and established concord with moscow and then assaulted germany and then you know defeated you know germany would have gone down and defeat and they would have saved chagoslovakia which is completely preposterous and why would you want to save chagoslovakia anyway it was it was a it was a complete contrivance that's like saying you want to save east germany but the fact is you know Churchill like he churchill began repeating this like a mantra so you had these people for cynical reasons, you know, not just important personage is like Sinclair, you know, who hated, you know, every man was, you know, whether he was liberal, whether he was Tory, whether he was

labor, you know, if he had an extra grind with Chamberlain, you know, this, this became his mantra. You know, and Churchill ran with it, you know, and Churchill had more exposure than a lot of these guys, even though he's still at this point, even though he was about to, like, you still didn't have, you know, he still didn't have a formal role in government. So rightly or wrongly, you know, the, this anxiety-ridden public who increasingly, you know, however unfair it may have been, you know, they view Chamberlain is a failing PM and they, all these important people from, you know, different positions in the proverbial aisle, you know, we're calling for Chamberlain to go. And Churchill kind of became, you know, the proverbial, you know, grand marshal leading that parade. You know, It didn't matter that this was a completely cynical effort. You know, Churchill was everywhere. You know, like I said, you know, he had this tremendous media apparatus behind him.

So what matters is perception, not reality. And eventually perception becomes reality. You know, I don't need to tell anybody that after what we went through with, you know, 2020, at least I don't think so. But maybe I'm going old and senile, but I don't think so yet. but in 1939 um what what uh what happens uh what happens uh what happened september 3rd 1939 3939 well you know the vermic crosses the polish frontier and one of the first episodes in the series you know we got into that so i don't think we need to deep dive back into

the causes of that and the kind of and the kind of detailed bail field details of that but you know it uh obviously you know as we know the you know london had uh had granted a war guarantee you get a Polish military junta, you know, which was incredibly foolish. And it was probably exponentially more foolish than the, the overtures they've made towards Czechoslovakia. But that doesn't matter anymore because now war is underway. Now Baldwin, to his credit, you know, who'd been, you know, who'd been really kind of fairly lambasted as a lame duck.

foreign policy executive uh and uh this only this stuck in my head and david erving's sympathetic to baldwin and i am too i rams mcdonald and baldwin are i think are very compelling figures and both very honorable in their own right baldwin's declared quote that rhetoric is the harlot of discourse and he said that churchill's a master of of rhetoric and fasting uneducated masses of people with rhetoric and that's true uh that's as that's exactly what he was and uh churchill Despite still, you know, despite still being only the equivalent of ministered out portfolio, he gives his first wartime speech, okay? I mean, it's the day of September 3rd.

By 11 a.m., if Germany, London gave Germany an ultimatum, that if they did not retreat back over the German frontier and all offensive operations, by 11 a.m., that war would be declared. So obviously that came and went, you know, and the UK is now at war. So Churchill takes the opportunity to respond to Baldwin, and he declares that Baldwin should be ashamed for putting party before country.

Now, this is really offensive coming from Mr. Churchill. I don't think character evidence generally is a good way to analyze the performance or the integrity of a statesman. But in Churchill's case, he opens a door to that kind of thing, okay? Because Churchill was the one who was always going around claiming other people lack integrity. Well, Churchill was a man who switched his party allegiance every few years according to what direction the wind was blowing in terms of policy preference of the voting public. He had literally been bought off by his Zionist NGO.

He was pursuing a policy of war at all costs and adjudging for war at all costs without regard to the lives that would be sacrificed, without regard to the impact on, you know the flower of british youth without regard you know what this would do to the fortunes of the empire moving forward but you know oblivious to anything approaching self-awareness he goes on a record declaring that you know well you know we've got a sue for war and anybody who disagrees with me like baldwin just putting party before country as a man who literally has been bought by zionists like many of whom don't even have formal residency in the united kingdom let alone allegiance to you know, Churchill's country that he supposedly is, you know, so, so, so devoted to that he's

willing to sacrifice anything just to stick it to Berlin. Now, this is a characteristic of Churchill, something that Roosevelt, who, frankly, I mean, we'll get into this, when we get to the episode on the Warriors, uh, Roosevelt confided the, when Frankfurt returned, I don't of his exact words, but he said that Churchill had you audacity to try and talk to him and other heads of state like he was their peers. You know, and Roosevelt's notion was that this indicates a complete obliviousness to the way diplomacy is conducted. That particularly a man to Churchill's kind of station and background, whatever his problems

are, however much he may be drinking, however long he's been out of formal office, this is a big faux. You don't behave that way. It's an embarrassment. And beyond that, being the consummate Machiavellian, FDR, what he's really saying is this kind of shakes my confidence in this fat bastard, you know, because he's got to, you know, basically shore these things up. I believe this is one of the reasons why Churchill stopped being the master of his own copy in terms of speeches. It wasn't just this incident, but you can find a dozen incidents like this, okay, where Churchill engaged in some serious foie pa and alienated some key personage, whether it's Roosevelt. whether it was vansettart whether it was um the uh the uh whether it was lord simon um this happens again

and again okay and like i said i'm sure some people are going to say that that's me taking a page from the playbook of mr kershaw and just putting shade on a historical person that you don't like but i that's not what i'm doing this this is relevant because churchill's held out is this almost divinely uh you know uh without flaw kind of figure who sacrificed for his country and for humanity against this kind of unspeakable evil you know when in reality not only was Churchill you know a politician and a very corrupt man he was probably one of the most corrupt uh major political figures the 20th century and he was certainly a traitor to his own people you know it was literally a judas you know however anybody feels about the Third Reich or Zionism or anything else,

you know, they can't be denied. You know, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not any way you can put a gloss on on treason to one's own kith and kin, and that's exactly what Churchill did. Now, moving on, he, uh, he, uh, he, uh, did it, I, I, we talked before about how, uh, uh, Churchill really, most of what he spoke, when speaking of Germany, he mostly spoke in terms of Moral Kant. You know, when people would challenge him, you know, including Baldwin, but also in more direct terms, you know, people like Beaverbrook had challenged him. He simply declared that, you know, the barbarity of dictatorships, you know, would, you know, call for, you know, call for resistance by any means necessary. the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come and a long-term outlook that's

bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid.i.e. Looking for the right buyer for your business, start your next chapter and confidence with a successful Irish entrepreneur who's ready to invest. At SME Nextchapter.com, we understand succession is not just a sale. It's about protecting your customers, your staff, and your legacy. If you are an SME with a strong management team, a genuine minimum EBITDA of 1 million euro or more, or an advisor ready for a private chat, please get in touch.

Begin your next chapter at SME Nextchapter.com. A confidential conversation you can trust. But what exactly was Churchill talking about here, Churchill was the guy who, in the immediate aftermath of the Easter rising, he said that, you know, we need to dispense with, you know, normal kind of customs and laws of warfare and start, you know, treating non-combatants as hostiles. And he was basically talking about ethnically cleansing the Irish and just killing them until they stopped misbehaving. You know, he spoke of the Indian, uh, he spoke of the subcontinent populations generally as just kind of subhuman, you know, and he, he declared that, German anti-Semitism was quote a crime against all men. But Churchill didn't care a wit when the polls were ethnically cleansing Jews, when they passed the Nationality Act in 1938, you know, demanding a territorial concessions from the Baltic under threat of military assault, when they were ethnically cleansing Germans on their frontier, you know, when they were doing essentially the exact same thing that the Germans did in the passage of the

Nuremberg laws. I'm not saying this to say bad things about Polish people or Poland. That's not the point. Like the point is if you're going to strike these moral postures, there's got to be some sort of consistency, or it's just absurd and buffoonish. And I mean, this has echoes today. You know, I'm not saying that even if Churchill had a, you know, even if the country represented had a resume that was kind of more in line with these before it values that they would have, you know, some kind of, some kind of weight. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying that there's got to be at least a modicum of consistency. Otherwise, you're not to be taken seriously. You know, otherwise you're not to be taken seriously. You know, otherwise, you're obviously engaged in a kind of game, you know, and it kind of led your name that appeals only to the most kind of foolish. But the, you know, to that, to that, to that end, Churchill finally got his way, or not completely, but with the, with the assault, on Poland, Chamberlain had a real serious problem. I mean, Chamber had more problems than anybody thought. Chamberlain was actually dying cancer,

and we'll delve into that in a minute. But I mean, that's one of the things that kind of, I think, warrants a bit of sympathy for him, considering what he was enduring. But regardless about Chamberlain, it felt about, you know, the prospect of war with Germany. You know, for better or worse, you know, London was at war with Germany now, and it was done.

Okay. and he needed a war cabinet. Now, he brings Churchill into the government as Lord of the Admiralty, once again. You know, which Churchill had not enjoyed that post in 20 years. And so he was ecstatic because, you know, like we talked about, I think in the first episode dealing with Churchill, he seemed to be most happy when he was in a, when he was,

in a position to play warlord you know despite is is is is naked and aptitude in the role you know it's uh now once again beg to churchill's moral can't uh and this this this is going to tie back together when we get into the when we get into the addendum episode dealing with nuremberg's i'm not just i'm not taking a page from the from the outrage uh manual of the woke and trying to list you know kind of like you know bad acts or crimes of the british empire or something but considering the claims presented by churchill and the focus and uh his reported raison d'etra for his war on germany these things are relevant now churchill publicly endorsed uh would have been agreed upon it with respect to the panama

treaty the panama treaty declared that um in the america as the united states and you know in in central and south america all countries that were not combatants you know and there were non-combatant states and also were not colonies or dominions of combatant states you know there would be there would be no hostilities in 300 miles of uh of territorial waters well church relation to memo immediately after publicly endorsing the idea of a 300 mile neutral zone extending from you know territorial waters in the Americas he issued an order of admiralty that the world navy was to completely disregard this okay so this is a man who did not have respect for the laws and customs of war or treaty law when it did not serve his purposes okay you're

recommended mining Norwegian territorial waters. You know, he, uh, when, uh, when a, uh, when a German U-boat was, uh, forced to surface by a British battleship in the North Sea, uh, the men who abandoned ship were, uh, over the course of 12 hours were retrieved from the water and they were executed and dumped overboard. And, uh, Churchill declared that this would be odious. if it would be odious an appearance of a hostile media actor got hold of the story. But, you know, mind you, he had no problem with these men, you know, being summarily executed to see not even availed to a drumhead court marshal.

So this was the kind of man he was. Okay, Churchill believed in the law of Churchill. He didn't believe in anything else. And he would literally say anything or do anything for money. And he had a certain, I'm rather than use the term audacity because sometimes it indicates balls or kind of dash and recklessness. that is charming. There's nothing charming about this. It was, it was just a pitiable man who had no principles. I literally just saying whatever he had to in the moment in order to, in order to

rationalize what, what he was doing in his own, is in his own naked self-interest. And now a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid.I.E.

Looking for the right buyer for your business, start your next chapter in confidence with a successful Irish entrepreneur who's ready to invest. At SME nextchapter.com, we understand succession is not just a sale. about protecting your customers, your staff, and your legacy. If you are an SME with a strong management team, a genuine minimum EBITDA of one million euro or more, or an advisor ready for a private chat, please get in touch. Begin your next chapter at SME Nextchapter.com.

A confidential conversation you can trust. Churchill issues a radio address. The first week in October. over. And if he declares that Poland has an unquenchable spirit, it will rise again. Poland is like a rock. Tightly submerged. But, you know, if

the great democracy, Poland is not somehow reestablished, you know, our peace and freedom will be threatened. There's that same verbiage again from from Frankfurt or Mr. Roosevelt. Like, how, like, a basically racialist,

like military junta, like, in central Europe is, you know, the kind of whole star of, you know, Western freedom. I have no idea, but apparently according to Mr. Churchill and the focus, this was the case. Now, mind you, and this is the last, just for context, once again, you've got to look at the world of 1939, okay? I mean, it's just as obnoxious in 2022 when the European Union goes around handing up moral report cards to people, you know, about their racism or about not, not, not treating the developing world equitably enough. But think about this, okay? In 1939, the British Empire, it was sovereign over just under 450 million people. There's approximately a quarter of the

population of this planet, okay? Now, just over 400 million of those people were non-whites. because the rich number of class-white people in the following paradigm. You're either white and European, you're colored, you were a Negro, or you were a native. And, like, native entailed all different kinds of racial groupings. It was kind of, like, not black, like, not white, not mixed race. You're a native. But pretty much none of these people had any political rights. Okay.

So you're going to sit here and say that, you know, because of the Nuremberg laws and because Germany, which at this point is basically at war with the Jewish dias, for better or worse I mean that that's a fact you're the epitome of evil because they're not taught of their fellow men like meanwhile you serve a you serve a monarchy that has subjugated 25% of this planet and you've done so on grounds that they're not white now that doesn't bother me any because I don't approach history in those kinds of terms but like think about mr. Churchill you know declaring these things and think about like how this is

received on the continent you know I mean think about like the ross cynicism of that um and you kind you kind of understand why well you kind of understand that the germans came and realize that what what they were contending with was a was a uh an enemy element that was going to sue for war no cost okay i mean that it it much like not entirely and not nearly intense for thank god but it's somewhat like russia is dealing with today vis-a-vis the nail um now interestingly what adding to this uh kind of a stew of uh iniquity and hypocrisy on september 17th 1939 the soviet union invades poland or had invaded poland okay now

the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was a secret. It was kind of the final example of secret diplomacy, which was so maligned, I mean, properly. I'm not saying it's a good practice. And he had our warriors. And nobody knew that Germany and, that Berlin and Moscow, it divided up spheres of influence. And not only had Stalin demanded the eastern half of Poland,

but he demanded the germany pursue a hands-off posh on the baltic states and uh moscow proceeded demand at the baltic states plus finland abide what the euphemistically called mutual assistance treaties that meant that they had to tolerate a red army presence in their territorial waters you know across their uh across their borders they're respected to assist in uh onwing hostilities in poland and anywhere else within theater. It was a quote of having a gun to one's head and then being asked to sign on the dotted line out of your own free will.

But, you know, Joe Kennedy, and immediately after Churchill's radio speech, he confronts Mr. Churchill. Because Kennedy was, you know, he was still ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was quite friendly with Sir John Simon. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer. and uh simon was another kind of not particularly dynamic personage but uh he i believe he was a realist and i

believed he was basically patriotic okay and he he realized in some basic sense was what was underway as did halifax and if you notice anybody who's seen the film darkest hour which is ironically titled because yes when when vincent Churchill ascended to the premiership that was the darkest hour but uh the so it's it's it's it's i thought it was funny but um and then even halifax has portrayed as the villain in that film and i'm not going to sit here and say halifax with some great man or that he was like you know some great great friend of the white race or something but he he definitely had a lot more integrity than um than uh most of his peers as did simon and joe kennedy had a good rapport of both these men but it primarily was simon so kennedy

puts it to Simon, he says, you know, this isn't the wake of the Soviet assault on Poland. You know, what exactly are you fighting for? You can't restore Poland to the Poles, and why would you want to do that anyway? And Simon just kind of agreed, lamely, saying, no, no, we couldn't. To Kennedy's like, okay, well, how are we discussing aggression while we're tacitly endorsing Russia's conquest of Poland, as well as allowing it to insinuate it's dirty Bolshevik claws into the Baltics. And

Simon had no answer to that. He said that he in Halifax, you know, stood by their government and they hoped for speedy resolution. And that to me is indicative assuming Kennedy

was adamant that this other conversation developed. And I don't see why he would have lied about this after the war because there's only relayed this and that wouldn't exactly make him look good in the court of public opinion but uh he's stated that if if you fight this war if you see it through if you wage a total war on the continent against germany you will destroy your country and and you will become a shadow of your former self if you even you know even if you even retain the sovereign dominion over over over your over the home territories owing to the idea that you know Kennedy said no

in certain terms of Roosevelt if Adolf Hitler goes Germany will become a garrison communist state and uh after that so will France and uh if you think the UK is just going to somehow you know be able to to retain some sort of sovereign independence amidst uh amidst uh this Bolshevik super state that extends from from Vladivostock to the Atlantic Ocean, you're diluting yourself. Halifax said he shared this view. Kennedy returned to Washington. He wrote a telegram to FDR, Emilie upon return,

saying it's imperative that, as the president, the United States, he assists Britain in any way possible to end the war while she still could. I mean, it shows you how out-of-the-loop Kennedy was, and I'm not saying that about shade on him, but it shows you how he just completely shut out. It's not just that he wasn't a fellow traveler with the New Dealers, and he'd been, for all practical purposes, banished from the Beltway where he could conspire against, you know, Roosevelt, who is fast becoming his political nemesis. You know, and our worst nemeses are our former friends,

at least in political life. But he was in London, and he was in, you know, moving in the same circles as Churchill. The fact that, I mean, it shows you how unthinkable it was that the new dealers were literally planning from inception to wage a war of annihilation against Europe that even Kennedy, who did not

really have illusions about the man of Roosevelt or his inner circle couldn't even fathom this. I mean, Kennedy was basically a gangster, okay? He's not like he was some a feat, rich guy or, you know, some watching an insider. You're a self-made man and the way he made his fortune was not any way nice.

But I want to conclude here soon because I want us to be able to kind of leapfrog into the warriors and leave Mr. Churchill as a dedicated topic behind. But I do want to pull up something that I think is fascinating, and I think the listeners will appreciate it. Okay, Churchill's October broadcast that we referenced. And, you know how I talked about a moment ago, we talked about how I don't believe Churchill's copy really originated with Mr. Churchill. Okay, listen to what Churchill said. This is word for word now. He stated, of all the wars that men have fought in their hard pilgrimage, none was more noble than the great civil war in America nearly 80 years ago. All the heroism of the South could not redeem their cause from the stain of slavery.

This says all the courage and skill with the Germans always shown a war will not free them from the reproach of Nazism with its intolerance and brutality. Now, why the hell is a... Leaving something out there. Well, why the hell is the British Admiralty Lord in 1939 talking about the Confederacy and how bad it is? I'll tell you who was very fixing on it. Because it's answered, it's already answered the zeitgeist of the...

of the focus. Yes. But not of like some lymie, you know, in London in 1939. I mean, the Civil War to hit, what's the American Civil War? What's the South? And this did not go over well. And in London, people didn't know what he was talking. They didn't get the reference, a lot of them.

Okay? And in America, people started out of left field. But the anti-defamation league had literally been founded. in the aftermath of Leo Frank being lynched. And they're, they viewed the South, you know, the reactionary, you know, anti-Semitic South as, as their mortal enemy.

And there's, I guarantee, there's no way that Churchill carved up this boogeyman of the Confederacy of the United States. Like, why would Churchill even mean? Why would that be within his contemplation? But it shows provincialism and the kind of direct control of the focus over him and over everything he said you know uh this is this was not 2022 i mean even today i think that would be

strange if boris johnson made some reference like that but in in 1939 it was it was just bizarre and it uh i've listened to part of this speech it sounds like weird and stilted like churchill he usually sounds almost conversational his language of this kind of foe soaring language but it's not stilted you know that this it's a really weird speech this whole this whole speeches, you know, but it, but that was, you know, this was, um, this was the, the twilight of Churchill's wilderness years, though, because like we, we mentioned a minute ago, poor Chamberlain, uh, you know, uh, not even a year later, or right about a year later, he, he dropped dead of cancer, uh, you know, the UK was a, was, you know, I mean, the war, the six, it's

had uh had been underway but i mean real hostilities were were unfolding in a risk the situation was collapsing um it looked at that point to outsiders even though this had nothing even though the internal situation between moscow and berlin was reaching critical mass um outside of that milu people thought that there's a genuine convert between moscow and um and berlin uh the uk was actually losing the war uh churchill really got the nod replaced chamber because there was nobody else and he was probably the only man you know the voters really would have accepted without there you know without their you know without their you know without there without without there being a you know some kind of internal crisis confidence crisis in

parliament so per extraordinary conditions you know namely was because plus two at a labor labor you know the Tories and then liberals ready to those throats and believe me the Tories I don't believe that they wanted anything to do with church um because they thought highly of him it was again he was the only man who who could who could uh it would fill the role um and i mean again that owes to this unprecedented kind of full court press media campaign that uh sort of insinuated him as the as the um as the demand of the hour even though he hadn't done anything but issue a lot of moral moral cant and strange radio addresses referring to the anti-Semitism of the American South

and, you know, halling around with Jewish movie moguls in the Mediterranean. But again, perception is reality, and eventually perception becomes reality. And now, a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's Bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland.

Learn more at airgrid.i. Looking for the right buyer for your business, start your next chapter in confidence with a successful Irish entrepreneur who's ready to invest. At SME next chapter.com, we understand. succession is not just a sale. It's about protecting your customers, your staff, and your legacy. If you are an SME with a strong management team,

a genuine minimum EBITDA of $1 million or more, or an advisor ready for a private chat, please get in touch. Begin your next chapter at SME nextchapter.com. A confidential conversation you can trust. I know this episode was a little less heavy than some, but I, again, I think it was a, Churchill's career is essential to understanding the revisionist argument, and I don't think I could have done in less than three episodes, and I didn't want to just dramatically kind of jarringly change focus and get into the war in the same episode.

But I promise we'll get into the nitty gritty when we record again this week of World War II and how it developed. And specifically, we'll start off next session with Operation Barbarossa and the war between the national socialists and the communists. And I know that that's something that turns everybody on, including myself in 19-10. Yeah, that sounds great. Since we got a couple of minutes, I got a question. Okay, so you've brought it up a bunch of times. Paul and I talked about it a little bit yesterday when we were talking, I think, privately. the Nuremberg regime.

Yes, sir. How did Hueck happen during the Nuremberg regime? What do you mean specifically? Well, I mean, it seems like it would go counter. Like, that kind of thing would be shut down, you know, searching for communists in the, you know, in Hollywood, in society, in the government. Okay, okay. Yeah.

I understand. The way to understand is two things, okay. Many aspects of the New Deal were permanent, okay, I mean, only to a few things, only to the fact that that's just what, you know, remain the priority of the federal system. But a lot of things, particularly the Concord and Moscow, that completely fell apart in in 19449, okay? The Cold War was not supposed to happen. And Truman, number one, hated the Russians.

Even if he hadn't, Stalin was not going to take a knee and be the junior partner in this kind of, and literally this world regime of, you know, the United States, you know, in Moscow, with Moscow was the junior partner, like I just said, you know, kind of managing the planet. And with the United States, it's having a monopoly on nuclear war. weapons and and uh you know with okay you know the the soviet union has a they got a permanent seat in the security council but you know they can they can always be they can always be old they can always be vetoed de facto by you know the united states uk france um they weren't

going to tolerate that and uh Stalin uh Stalin um as a as you and paul got into I mean, and I'm, I sort of listen to your Impulse show, but I, I've got a sense of what he probably talked about. You know, Yaki was on to something when he talked about the Prague trials, okay, I, people misconstrued that. Yaki wasn't saying, and this, and that, you know, oh, you know, the, the Eastern Bloc is this great thing, and they're becoming fascist. What he was saying is that, you know, the, the kind of primitives, not, not primitive and punitive

terms, primitives just speak. speaking in the developmental terms. You know, this primitive kind of peasant population of Slavs, they had a common hatred of this cosmopolitan Romanov type regime that, like, the Jewish merchant class did. They collaborated to kill it, okay? But once that threat was gone, and then once like the Vermont was no longer, you know, literally kicking in the door and slaughtering them, like, what reason do they have to collaborate? were totally at odds. And obviously, you know, the, the Jewish element, which was not better

in moral terms or in terms of aptitude, but was better situated in practical and power political terms to rule the Soviet Union, the majority wasn't going to tolerate that anymore. And these Jewish, these Eastern Jewish people like saw the writing on the wall. Okay, so they threw their lot in with the United States. And that's one way to understand it. But just in pure power political terms, you know, the, despite the Marshall Plan,

despite the kind of anti-colonial overtures of Eisenhower, which I think in this case were genuine in a lot of ways, you know, what was called the colored world in less sensitive times, they weren't really with the program. They went to the Moscow poll. you know so it's uh so you got america you got this nuremberg world system and it created it you know there's a great biography of yak and piper you know he was under a death sentence and something happened in 1996 versus death sentence gets commuted and then he suddenly just gets like

he suddenly gets clemency and they cut loose piper they cut loose all these dudes who had heavy who commanded troops and heavy action against the red army like suddenly they're getting cut loose And suddenly you're seeing movies in Hollywood about, you know, Erwin Rommel, the Great Desert Fox, and he fought those dirty reds, but he was a good German, not one of those dirty Nazis. You know, if you're going to, if it looks like you're going to have to fight a total war that's going to go nuclear at some point with Ivan,

and you're going to need the Germans to fight on literally the front line of the inter-German border, like you're going to have to scale back a lot of your Nuremberg bullshit, at least for a time, and that's what happened. you know this kind of this kind of give and take and door it and tell the reagan administration man i mean you know because you're you're you're a little over than me so i mean the bitburg moment reagan had okay there's an idea four man raggan only going to bitburg cemetery because he wanted like stir shit or because he really really want to do he's like okay well i i i expect these

guys like basically absorbed the first probably nuclear blow from warsaw pact i I better not go around shitting underworded. You know, I better say some nice things about them sometimes. You know, at least better not come off

like some, you know, dogmatic anti-fascist. Dude, that was, the reaction to that was insane. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the Ramos wrote a song about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Box, it'll go with a big bird or whatever.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, I mean, that was, I remember, that was probably one of the first things I remember as a kid

of being like, wow, people really do not. I mean, well, of course, they tried to kill him three years earlier, but people really do not, but people really do not like this guy.

No, I mean, my dad really, really living. You know, my dad really like Reagan and my dad, my dad doesn't like Germany nearly as much as I do, but, you know, my dad is mad, you know, because my dad's a military bet, and also he was a, you know, he was a big cold warrior and he, uh, not, I mean, he, I mean, he was in the, he was a military economist, he, and a nuclear game theorist. He, he actually waved the cold war, albeit from a desk, but he, he, he, he, he, he, he got mad when people tried to put shade on the German army and stuff you know he's like um even even though he's a lot more kind of conventional in his views

but yeah it um that's why it uh plus somebody was a strange you know why did the uh you know roy cone there's a reason why roy cone got picked to prosecute to rosenberg because roy cone wasn't just he wasn't just kind of hot shot like young jewish lawyer like cone was like this in your face kind of jewish guy like i'm not saying that to be crap he was you know but i mean it so it's like they were going to have some irish catholic guy like mccarthy or like bobby kennedy you know setting these jewish people the electric chair you know they're going to have wise ass like obviously ethnic roy cone to it it was a delicate minuet you know i mean that's why yaki very early on he wrote a few speeches for mccarthy now

yaki had no trouble like birchers or like the mccurdy perspective but the idea was like well you know if this is going to draw if this is going to raise genuine consciousness among these you know white ethnic Catholic types about you know the true like the true face of you know subversion and it's not that

Moscow was you know the the locoe of all evil like some kind of sort of satanic force incarnate it's in fact in large part not exclusively even in large part you know the the impulse of this kind of hostile ethnocectarian

um the asper i mean yeah it's a complicated issue but that that's the short answer i mean we can do all show about that if you want to sure sure um but yeah that that's a short answer and i got to i just uh yeah i just thought up all over text i gotta i gotta listen to your guys show it tonight and i'll give you i'll give you full feedback um paul is great he's a great friend of mine and he's a really brilliant kid yep do your plugs and well then okay uh you can find me if for some ungodly reason you want to um no i about half my con it's free at my substack that was not free it's only five bucks a month and even hobo is can afford that and i know because i've been a hobo um it's real thomas seven seven seven seven dot substack

com you can find me on tgram and the t gram mob has been growing exponentially and that is dope it's uh i'll share the link to it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a t dot m e slash the number 7 hOMAS 777 um i got a couple weeks uh actually more like four weeks like my next steel storm novel will be dropping do imperium press check them out they're great not just because they publish my stuff but all their titles are great they got incredibly talented authors on staff and they're friends of ours so please support them and not amazon or some outlet like it. And yeah, I want to thank everybody sincerely for being so kind in their compliments. I really mean that. I'm very, very honored and humbled by it. And thank you very much, Pete.

No problem. And next time, we'll get into the hostilities. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cunegna show. Thomas is back. How you doing, Thomas? I'm very well, Pete. Thanks. And again, as always, I'm sure people are getting tired of me repeating myself. But I really appreciate the positive. comments and support for this ongoing series. It's really great. And I mean, that's the whole point. You know, I know what my own ideas are and things. And I mean, I like having conversation with you, Pete. And I'm always game for that. But the reason we record these conversations is a benefit of people who might not be familiar with, you know, the body of a scholarship that we're

talking about. Today, I wanted to deep dive into Operation Barbarossa, which probably most people know, though, some may not, that was the code name for the German assault on the Soviet Union, you know, on June 22nd, 1941. And there's an absolutely cataclysmic event, you know, a clash of literally millions of men on both sides across, you know, a thousand mile front, you know, utterly catastrophic losses, the kind of clash of arms and men that without exaggeration has never been seen before and probably will never be seen again and at least not for a thousand years this has been on my mind a lot you know like i just like we were talking about right before we began recording

i'm certainly not a military historian but you know it's a military dimension to revisionism because it it's you know it's a huge amount of it is pouring through conflict literature and dealing with um you know dealing with the the entirety of the political horizon and there's obviously there's there's a major military dimension to that but as these this this unfortunate ukraine war that did not have to happen that is underway now you know these place names and these battle spaces these these um were the same settings of hostilities you know during barbarosa and that that's kind of fascinating to me i'm not a ghoul i'm not you know saying oh this is exciting i'm happy to you know act as some kind of remote spectator of hostilities but it is fascinating how

you know, these places that have been quiet for, you know, three-quarters of a century or once again, a flame with the, by the dogs of war. But, yeah, I want to deep dive into that today. But first, I think there's such a huge topic, and I don't think we're going to need to dedicate quite as much time to it as we did the career of Mr. Churchill, but we need to dive deep into the theoretical foundations of the ideologies that created this clash. you've got to look at the Second World War. I mean, depending on where you're located in terms of your nationality, you're going to approach the Second World War differently. Like, not just in terms of the narrative, but what you emphasize. Like, if you're to talk to a Russian person, you know,

he or she'd tell you about the great patriotic war. And to them, it didn't really ensue until June 41, you know, because that was the war. You know, he taught some Englishmen, and, you know, if he's kind of accepted the narrative of court history, and, you know, as presented from the bully pulpit, he'll probably drop some kind of hero narrative of Mr. Churchill on you where we'll talk about Dunkirk or something like that.

You know, Americans, generally people... And now, a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid.I.E.

The Go Mile, supported by AIB, has been helping families around the world for over 40 years. This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favourite Christmas tradition. Search AIB Go Mile to see where you, your family and your friends can find your local Go Mile event. AIB for the life you're after. You know, I got introduced to the Second World War as a little kid because my mom's brother, he was 22 years older than her because he was her half-brother and her father was something of a ladies man and he, you know, When he, when he sired my mom, he was supposed to 50 years old, and his wife was 21, okay? Which is great.

Crops to him. I hope, as I age, I can still attract pretty ladies if it comes to, if it comes to, seeming like it's time for me to sire an error. But that aside, by nowgo Harold, who, my middle name is his namesake. he fought in Tarawa against the Japanese and you know when I was a little little kid he talked me about fighting the Japanese you know and not in an inappropriate way I mean but you know that that that was common you know like you had a grandpa or you had an uncle who you know fought the japs or something that that was kind of front and center right which is why it was strange to me in school how you know owing to the owing to the demographics where I grew up and in the political

climate of the of the 1980s you know we hear all about this you know quote unquote holocaust theology and things because that that didn't really feature loom large you know and but my point is that you know as with all conflicts and historical apoccal events you know different things are emphasized but in revisionist terms like objectively um i agree a lot with urns nolte he talks about um he talked about the european civil war you know um spanning from from 1914 to 1945, you know, he looked at it like the 30 years war, okay? If the listeners are familiar with that, you know, it's kind of terrible ongoing sectarian conflict between kingdoms and duchies characterized by shifting alliances and any kind of

conflicts within conflict and things like that. I don't wholly accept Nolte's, I accept Nolte's metaphysical description of the concepts and kind of the, you know, because he's very much a Higelian, or he was, he's dead now. In terms of the kind of, for like a better way to characterize it, metaphysical causes, you know, the kind of human causes in terms of ideas and how ideas animated people to war. I accept basically what he posits entirely, but I diverge somewhat from him describing it as a conflict, basically analogous to the 30 years of war. think of world war two basically is a war between hitler roosevelt and stalin okay um the nazi soviet war

as is known kind of in the anglos here um with uh america even you know entering on the side of the soviet union very early on um prior to that um there was a there was there was a kind of typical of the modern era power political collision between france and germany you know owing the kind of conventional geopolitics. And that's one of the reasons France, after being defeated militarily, basically made real peace with Germany. We'll get into that later in the series, too, but some people might be surprised to learn that when the Americans landed in North Africa in 43, the first forces that engaged them were French, who were fighting on the side of the Axis, okay? The UK, the UK's war against Germany, which ensued in 1939, when the UK declared

declared war on Berlin, I view the U.K. as having been defeated at Dunkirk. And, I mean, after that, the war was basically over until the terror bombing was initiated, you know, by the British bomber arm. But that really, I look at the U.K., it's kind of liquidating. It's not just its assets, but its sovereignty to the United States and becoming quite literally a client regime.

You know, and then, so I look at the U.K. is losing its war against Germany, just as France lost its war in 1940, and in the wake of defeat, becoming a client of the United States in this truly global war of the Soviet Union, United States, against the German Reich, which by that point, you know, had a million non-Germans under arms in the Vof and SS and had become really kind of a truly European army. Leon de Grell talks about this.

And a lot of right-wing guys who are into third-right history and things, I know a lot of Leon DeGreel. Okay, so that's my perspective. I wouldn't bore people to death with that kind of elaborate introduction. But what I want to get into now is what was the origin of the German-Soviet war and why did it happen? And first, I want to tackle some myths that have to be sort of dealt with before you get into it.

There's kind of this fools canard that a lot of kind of pop history deals with. And you'll even hear people like barstool types and even, you know, even some, you know, even some people who should know better, you know, like history teacher types. They'll say things like, oh, well, Hitler's big mistake was assaulting the Soviet Union. The only way Germany wins World War II is defeating the Soviet Union. that's how you defeat Churchill that's how you defeat Roosevelt that's how you create Fortress Europe

that's how you make Europe a superpower that can compete on the world stage in the era of great space politics okay whatever you consider to be the primary war ambition in objective terms what have you considered to be what should have been

the correct orientation military and political of Berlin the only way to accomplish that is the Soviet Union goes down okay um so this idea that hitler was just kind of looking at a menu of where should i attack and oh this was the wrong decision to attack here that's not really a meaningful understanding of the strategic landscape okay now why do i say that a few reasons first of all everything about the third rike in military terms and the way it structured itself and the way its doctrine

became progressive um to uh though the you know the the the sort of uh anticipated deployment of uh of uh forces um to uh you know to hitler's strategic vision of what of what would secure uh europe um and enable it to compete on the world stage and power political terms everything about that calculus owes to the reality the Soviet Union being a burgeoning superpower and a productive capacity outstripping every other state on this planet except potentially the United States. But even though I saw this on a comment on Twitter yesterday, you're saying it sounds like what you're implying is that Hitler was fighting for basically all of Europe.

where a lot of people will say Hitler just wanted to take every country in Europe and make it part of Germany. He wanted to make Europe all basically under his power. So that's when you say it like that, it can sound like that, and that's not at all what happened. Well, there's a couple, here's the thing. I made the point before that Hitler was a Habsburg Austrian, as everybody knows, but he thought like a Prussian, yet somehow he also appealed to these kind of Munich-Bavarian types. Hitler had to be somewhat cosmopolitan in order to facilitate his ascendancy. And I don't think that was just a cynical ploy.

I think he believed that. But it's also, Hitler made the point again and again that nationalism was dead. You know, cabinet warring was, you know, was dead. It was a dead end. It wasn't going to lead anything. You know, and he was constantly talking about great space paradigms. being the future of power political hegemony but also with the exception of Poland which the Soviets and the and the the German right just just destroyed as a political and cultural

or the attempt to destroy as a cultural entity and destroyed as a political entity other than the independent state of Croatia which really was kind of a mirror of the of the national socialist state albeit with its own indigenous characteristics Hitler very much opposed exporting some kind of national socialist paradigm to other political cultures. That's why Romania, we were talking about,

you know, I made the point that Antonescu was, I believe, Hitler's best ally in a lot of ways. He wasn't as close personally to the furor as Mussolini was. But Romania committed relative to the size of the population, Romania committed a huge contingent of men

to the Eastern Front. Antonescu was a war hero in his own. right. He was a holder of the Knights Cross. He had a great understanding of military and strategic matters. Hitler favored Antonescu over the Iron Guard. He did not want some radically fascist or fascist

regime or some national socialist type regime taking power in Romania. You know, Nordady in Slovakia, nor did be in Bulgaria, nor do be in, you know, you could, you know, outside of out, and in France, too. I know people talk about Vichy, France.

You know, it's notable that until it began clear that there was going to be no concord and no peace between... And now, a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland.

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This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favourite Christmas traditions. search AIB Gold Mile to see where you, your family and your friends can find your local Go Mile event. AIB for the life you're after. The UK and Germany that, you know, the Germans, scrupulously avoided occupying France outside of the essential coastal areas. I mean, they didn't do that because they were nice guys, but, you know, the point being that if the Germans were hell-bent and, you know, kind of destroying Europe and restructuring it in the image of the furor of national socialism, they, that's not the way you go about that. And Franco and Salazar would have had something to say about that, just using two examples.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's more complicated, you know, it's not, it's not a question of whether Hitler was a good guy or not. I mean, but in objective terms, that's not, that's not really the, the sensibility that guided him. And, I mean, yeah, there were men in the OKW, and there certainly were men in the national socialist party who had a very chauvinistic view of things, you know, in racial terms and in ethnic terms. But, I mean, that's just characteristic of Europe. And, you know, regardless, even Germany today, which is, you know, this runk state shadowed its form of self, you know, Europe. it orbits around Berlin. I mean, that's inevitable, you know, I mean, in some basic sense. So, yeah, if the Germans got their way, when I say the Germans, I mean, the Third Reich, definitely nothing would have happened on the continent within their sphere of influence and dominance without their say so by this idea that they would have just created puppet regimes everywhere, like, you know, characteristic of the Warsaw Pact vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, like that's not the case.

and that I, you know, what I'm going to dive into in a moment is how it wasn't just military exigencies that, you know, in the reality of power politics that led the furor and the party as well as, you know, the military apparatus and the kind of industrial, national economic elite to kind of structure the state and its productive capacities to combat. the Soviet Union in material terms, but really, even if you're not a Higalian like I am, you got to understand the emergence of national socialism. It can only be understood as in dialectical conflict with communism. And what animated people to fight against the Soviet Union wasn't that, you know, they loved the furor so much, or they loved Berlin, or they all wanted to be dominated by Germany it was because they didn't view another path to European

survival as a discrete cultural form and way of life you know to say nothing of politically sovereign and independent states within what could be considered a European you know structure

without a confederation yeah yeah for better or worse but the point is that, you know, you wouldn't have had, you would not have had millions of literally, you know, a million non-Germans in the Vof and SS, a good portion of which were volunteers if, you know, if they were just fighting for, you know, the, on behalf of, you know, bringing the German

boot heel down on their neck or something, you know, I mean, it's not, that's a gross oversimplification. And, you know, German racialism, we might find it off-putting in the 20th century, you, but I make the point again and again, that's the way everybody on the planet thought. Okay, not everybody thought in terms of, you know, we're not so aggressively and dialectically hostile to Jews and what they viewed as Jewish power. But you better believe that in America, eugenics was what everybody thought was, you know, the correct kind of application of anthropology. You better believe everybody in the UK and everybody in Japan viewed a hierarchy of races. okay so it's not it's not weird that the germans viewed nationality in terms of race or had this kind of strange idea that you know your blood or in our terms you know DNA but in those days obviously you know that human genome had been mapped and people didn't understand those kinds of things but the even people who are relatively traditional minded and even people who had some affinity still for religion and believe me religion took a huge hit in the 20th century thankfully that has debated and that's the subject for another show but you know it's another thing that's

mischaracterized this idea that oh the germans were these crazy guys who who had this kind of biologically determinants view of human behavior that's that's the way everybody thought you know um i'd argue the germans were somewhat less fixated that way than the americans like america literally had like francis gulton and and guys like lathrop stoddard who was a journalist you know, they were literally fixated on this idea that, you know, morphological characteristics were indicative of behavior and potential. Like, don't really wrong, I believe, like, race is a significant biological characteristic. I'm not saying otherwise, but they were foolish about it.

And they talked about it in ways that don't make sense. And now, a look at the forecast. We're seeing lots of wind, plenty of sunshine to come, and a long-term outlook that's bright for Ireland. At Airgrid, our forecast is for a sustainable energy future. We're upgrading the electricity grid so every home, business, and community can benefit. We're powering up Ireland. Learn more at airgrid.i.

You know, like your culture is not biologically programmed or something. You know, it's not, that's nonsense. But that's important to understand. But getting back to There's a quote I wanted to drop It's about one of the only things that I think is kind of remains timely about mind comp I made the point before in our own discussions As well as I think on the record

Mind comp was really an election year street It's not supposed to have this perennial enduring significance Hitler didn't really get into either metaphysics or kind of of deep historicism. It was, it's really kind of a, uh, an appeal of the, you know, an election year appeal to a Vimar voters that's why the national socialists are going to, you know, pursue policy that's the correct path forward. But there is, there is and was, um, I think in most editions, it's on page 60. Um, if I'm wrong with the addition, you or anybody has, like, forgive me that, but I'm going to read this in a moment.

and i try and avoid like direct quoting text but here i think it's it's uh it's timely let me let me find uh what i'm looking for okay it uh something nulti talked about was fear of what you call practical transcendence i mean that's somewhat there's not so much lost in translation as there's not a deep metaphysical tradition in american political theory i mean owing to the to the fact that you know America's so kind of bound up with the rationalist tradition and and such that America does have kind of a metaphysical tradition and it's in its indigenous philosophy it's it's basically Aristotelian and Bible Protestant um which is my own heritage I'm not in any way suggesting that's bad but it's not it doesn't really shed light

on the European mind okay um practical transcendence And the term Nolte was talking about is kind of a Heidegarian concept. It refers to conceptual horizons of the past kind of being destroyed by collision with modern institutions and ideas and ways of interpreting and experiencing the world around us. You know, so whether we're talking about beloved institutions of culture or, you know, or of social organization or of labor, you know, becoming. outmoded and man being kind of ripped out of these environments that's provided them not just an identity but with a kind of historical rootedness and and consciousness that you know indoors across generations you know the process by which that sort of thing is becomes remote if not out and out abolished is referred to as radical transcendence and within nulties and to some lesser degree

heidegger's paradigm now it helped there was not a philosopher and in purport to be but he acknowledged in some basic sense that some of this is inevitable because that's just, you know, one of the crosses proverbially European man is the bear, not just as, you know, he experiences hyper modernity, but European man, you know, kind of being enamored with, you know, the, you know, the Faustian ethos and spirit and being enamored with techniques and technology. He runs a real risk of losing himself in these things, okay? But, of course, to Hitler, one of the most insidious iterations of this tendency towards radical transcendence was Marxism. And, you know, Marxism was a perversion of these things deliberately, and it kind of weaponized iteration of these things because it came out of the Jewish world of social existence. Now, Hitler wasn't saying this is a conspiracy, but he was saying that there's an intrinsic hostility of the Jewish culture. And the way it expressed itself politically is always in a form of hostile discourse, okay?

So the way Hitler described Marxism and what it represents to European man. In mind comp, he said, and I quote, the Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value,

of personality and man. It contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraw us from humanity the premise of its existence and culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable than man. And as in the greatest of all recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos.

On earth, it could only be the destruction of the inhabitants of this planet. if with the help of his Marxist creed the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will as it did thousands of years ago move through the ether devoid of men that sounds very melodramatic and it is you can even say it's overwrought language

but AOF Hitler believed this 100%. And that is the end result of the Marxist enterprise, even if you don't accept that it's a Jewish idea or that it was born of, you know, a Jewish world of social existence. I'm not here to argue for that point or unpack that, but it's indisputable that the removal of man from history, Marxism by its own posture,

it seeks to literally end history and, you know, remove man from the kind of intellectual slavery in their view of these conceits of metaphysics or of God or of anything because in the Marxist witness paradigm these things are all contrivances of of of the that rationalize power dynamics you know relating to labor and capital and authority and hierarchy that's imposed uh you know to the satisfied the demands of those things you know it's it's it's a it's an ideology of cultural annihilation masquerading in some basic sense as an economic science.

Now, it's not to say that Marxists all, you know, we're rubbing their hands together and saying, oh, I want to destroy Europe or I want to destroy white Christian civilization. Certainly some of them did think that, but probably most of them didn't. But we're talking about the way man instinctively responds to...

A lot of them still do. Yes, indeed. And I'd say more so do now in terms of raw percentage than before. But you know the problem the reason why idea has developed this kind of monumental power to animate people is because people are taken in by them in apocal terms and when people are confronted by by crises you know particularly you know not just a physical mortal crisis but at the same time you know a kind of a kind of psychological crisis of their conceptual horizon you know not just to them personally but of the entire culture which they're mired you know this this whole kind of

conceptual horizon imploding on itself and, you know, values that preceding generations can take for granted, you know, no longer having a context, and man no longer having any pole stars to orient himself and in his life, individually or among a community in which he lives, you know, this people, people become desperate to make sense of these chaotic, you know, circumstances. And they get, they get very much taken in by, by paradox. that seem to make sense and seem to reflect, you know, the concrete circumstances in which they're found. So that's essential to understand why, you know, the national socialist were not just making a boogeyman

of Marxism or something, and they weren't just, they weren't, they weren't just trying to rationalize what amount of like a racial or tribal prejudice against the Eastern Slavs under a veneer of ideology or something. Now, there may have been an aspect of that because there certainly wasn't level-off between the Germans and the Eastern Slavs and particularly a man like Adolf Hitler who would have viewed Serbia essentially

as responsible for the Great War and opposite Hitler within his coalition, these Prussian officer types, who would have viewed Eastern Slavs not unlike, you know, the way, like a white man in the West, what if you, the Apache or something, you know, in the frontier days. And I'm not saying that to put shade on either Indians or Slavic people and talking about how they were viewed as this fearful other that was, you know, somehow savage and dangerous. But the, the, if you want to understand national socialism, I mean, yes, there was positive characteristics. they don't mean positive like this is laudable i'm not issuing a value judgment i mean proactive

spontaneous characteristics that gave rise ideology but you know an equal percentage of its content was uh like ethically i mean and conceptually was reactive and oh do the uh the the the conceptual challenge posed by communism and this was not just something remote like we talked about on one of our first episodes it uh it um it you know they look quite literally you know in in in berlin in munich especially you know where the the bavarian munich bavarian soviet you know actually for a brief period was was the reigning government i mean albeit they captured sovereign power through violence but you know this uh you know and and and to say nothing of what happened in the baltics where you know you had many many juran refugees um you know who

owing the fear of being ethnically cleansed is when the when the the bullshit it's exported attempt to export the revolution there but um so i mean this is very this is something that german people had firsthand knowledge of you know it's not just a question then becoming fearful about something remote or that they read in the papers or whatever but moving on to the kind of concrete circumstances one of the big myths is of the of the of the of the german soviet war and and Stalin's intentions opposite adolf hitlers was this idea that while the soviet union was this inward looking kind of state and it you know the soviets were just you know the russian were just kind of primitive and you know Stalin declared socialism in one country because he had no interest in a truly global power politic um and also like within that kind of fatuous narrative. There's a claim that like, well, you know, Germany was this aggressive was this aggressive power that was assaulting all its neighbors, you know, like Austria

and Czechoslovakia and Poland and, you know, the Soviet Union was pursuing a path in relative peace over badly. It treated people within its own borders. That's a bold face lie. And we're going to talk about that. As of 1940, Owingue aggressive invasion, Asian in conquest, as well as, as was the case, being of the Baltic, as was the case with the Baltic in Romania, by coercion and threat, by 1940, the Soviet Union had expanded its territory by 426,000 square kilometers, okay? If you want, for reference, that is the size of the entire service area of what the German Reich had been as of 1919 this is a huge amount of territory okay uh the soviet union it spontaneously invaded finland it had invaded poland you know uh days weeks after um the vermark did and i mean as we talked about last episode when joe kennedy posed uh to john simon like why why why doesn't it bother you know mr churchill or mr chamberlain that uh the soviet union

assaulted Poland too like nobody can answer this question but um you know so you have uh in addition to the kind of a foundation that we already established with respect to the you know the German political mind for better or worse you know viewing not just Germany but the entire European way of life coming under threat from Marxist Leninism you had quite literally what was becoming the world's for superpower in the soviet union okay um and germany despite the fact that they had pretty soundly you know defeated the the british army at dunkirk germany still was engaged in a state of war with the uk which still had an incredibly powerful navy in relative terms um they still had a you know a priority capacity to reconstitute

a strategic air arm, which they certainly did do to devastating effect. We're going to get into that at a later episode. But by 1940, you know, not only to have the Soviet Union, which as we just discussed, you know, had aggressively annexed a huge amount of territory, Germany was engaged essentially they had a hostile front to defend that stretched from Norway to the Pyrenees as a potential as a potential battle space. okay they were in grave danger of losing access to romanian petroleum which is really their only source of um of petrol um if uh you know to fuel their war machine as any modern war machine is fueled

by if if stalin had given the order to you know formally annexed romania and proceed to embargo any you know any access germany would have um to uh essential commodities they're in like what what i'm getting out of here is that you know germany was in a position of abject inferiority in material terms and military terms and geostrategic terms so not only this idea that the soviet union was benign laughable but it's you know germany was in a very critical position um now something interesting happened not just interesting but critical in my opinion um In a November 12th and 13, 940, Stalin transmitted a series of demands to Molotov. As I think people probably know, Malatov was not just a man who invented a particular kind of cocktail that people light on fire and throw it, you know, the British police and Northern Ireland and things.

but uh he uh he uh he was the soviet uh he was the soviet foreign minister um and uh he was uh within um within the paradigm of the soviet power you know until from from 1917 until you know the fall of the brown wall there was very very little leeway that that people had in in the foreign in the foreign policy uh establishment you know it's a to to to negotiate on their own terms or according to their own instincts you know and particularly Stalin he very rigidly controlled what was said what was guaranteed what official terms were from moscow so what i'm getting is that whatever a molotov conveyed to berlin you know whether he was talking to riventrop whether he was talking to you know the right chance or he was whoever he was talking to it was as good as coming from Stalin okay that's that's not a myth it's not me simplifying circumstances to show up a point or something it's an arguable and pretty much everybody agrees on that revisionist or not um the demands that Stalin transmitted were basically this um the non-aggression pact that hitler had signed or the

that Riventraub and Molotov had signed at Hitler's behest, you know, the 10-year-non-aggression tag between the Soie Union and Berlin. Stalin periodically was issuing demands as to whatever require for it to be honored. Now, of course, he was very sly about the way he phrased this. He wasn't saying, okay, you'll either abide these demands I have or are willing to attack you, but the inference was obvious and it was the only inference that could be drawn. And this will become clear as we get more into this conversation. But on November 12 and 13, what the demands were was Molotov said that in order for the Soviet Union to be able to peaceably, you know, coexist, you know, with Germany as well as, as well as provide for its own security and as well as facilitate its ability to deploy in depth, you know, it would need to increase its sphere of influence.

to include Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Yugoslavia, and now all of Finland, not just Archangel, but all of Finland. And Hitler, albeit frosty, but reasonably friendly relations with Gustav Manorheim, the Marshal of Finland. And obviously, this was Stalin basically demanding that, you know, Germany abandoned any, any pretension of of Finland of some sort of line in the sand

against Soviet expansion this is incredibly brazen and you've got to ask yourself okay if supposedly Stalin was this man kind of lived in fear of the Third Reich or if the Soviet Union was somehow weak

immaterial terms and forces in being relative to the Third Reich how could he be issuing these demands that doesn't make any sense And also if Hitler was this kind of reckless maniac who just gave attack orders, you know, without thinking, I mean, why wouldn't this be inviting an immediate assault? Like, none of this makes sense, obviously, unless one's willing to kind of reject, reject the kind of prevailing there. Now, obviously, this Molotov, these Molotov demands, which, you know, de facto were Stalin demands.

Obviously, I mean, there's really only two options here. I mean, Germany could have opted to fight, and in the case of Germany, that would have meant and did mean a preemptive assault or simply accept Soviet hegemony. And in the 20th century, with the advent of strategic, arms, not just nuclear weapons, which of course didn't exist yet, but there was not a full understanding in 1994 how strategic arms could be applied and what the outcome would be in military terms, but it was understood that the battlefield techniques were going to be able to create absolutely devastating catastrophes for the state under assault. if they did not have adequate countermeasures okay i mean so what i'm getting at is that

a uh if germany had remained dormant and and just kind of uh demurred to soviet demands is the sovi's not wouldn't i think the so i go out in my mind the soviest plan to assault germany you know we're going to get into that in a minute but even if the soviets had did not just by virtue of the fact that they would have been so exponentially more powerful than their next strongest strategic rival in Germany like it wouldn't have mattered they would have you know in power political terms Moscow would have dictated what was going to transpire in in Europe and Europe's orbit now I rely a lot in direct testimony I think people have noticed now I've been told that that's a conceptual bias of mine because I was a lawyer

I don't think that's the case. I think that direct testimony is one of the only ways we can get inside the minds of people who lived in these apocal moments and understand what their perceptions were. Obviously, there's an issue of how credible the declarant is, but if you're discriminating and I think over time when you see patterns and it kind of quorum emerges of what people and in governmental roles thought um we can get to the truth of what

perception was and uh yakim hoffman he corralled um he's a german historian very heterodox historian I highly recommend a book you wrote called Stalin's War of Extermination. And as per se out of that book is a lot of testimony from people in the Soviet government and the Soviet military apparatus and people from all walks, everybody from apparatchiks who are primarily political commissaries to, you know, officers and NCOs in the Red Army, to people who were defectors to the Dermot. And it's, there's a basic agreement here. There's a woman named, and I'm probably butchering this pronunciation.

I know I always add that caveat, and I'm sorry if that's the case once again, but a woman in Manda Vasilevska. She was the chairwoman of what was called euphemistically the union of Polish patriots. Now, this was the expat communist league in the USSR, okay, after the, during the Polish military junta and after, okay, and like a lot of these people went on to form, kind of the core of the, you know, Warsaw Pact client state after the war. Now, what she attested to do in 1964, I believe the first historian she discloses to is Robert Conquest, but it's become, you'll find this in a lot of different treatments, okay, not just revisionist treatments, but. Her statement was this about the orientation on the eve of Barbarossa within Moscow. She said, I remember that we communists, regardless, go ahead. No, no, no.

She says, I remember that we communists, regardless of the official position of the Soviet government, we were all of the opinion that the apparent friendly attitude toward Germany was only a tactic of the Soviet government. that in reality, the situation was entirely different. After all, I want to not forget that it was already clear to us, even at that time, that a German-Soviet war was approaching. Regardless of the official announcement, we believed the war was drawing near, and we waited for it every day. Stalin told me at that time there would be war with the German sooner or later. This means that, indeed, at that time, I already had the assurance of and confirmation from the highest authority that we were right to expect. war um there's a like i said there's there's there's i'm not going to endlessly relay all these

testimonials but you know like i said there's um there's probably half a dozen uh declarations you know from in Molotov's orbit to, you know, like I said, some of the defectors from who went on a serving was called the Blassov Army. You know, these were not, this was a very diverse coterie of people, okay, and it's obviously not itself. I mean, that's not absolutely persuasive, but what I think is, what I think is indisputable

in terms of its persuasive weight, is what deployments were as of june 22nd 1941 all right the date of barbarosa okay what the red army had deployed on june 22nd 1941 in offensive deployment on the western frontier and deployed in depth you know behind that front it was 24 000 tanks over 1,800 of which which were T-34s, which I believe everybody stipulates was the best all-around tank platform of the war. 1,500 those T-34s are manufactured in the first six months of 1941. That's an incredible production schedule, frankly, for the time, okay?

They had 23,245 military aircrafts amassed since 1938, and that's incredible too. close to 4,000 in which were of latest design and inarguably not obsolescent. Okay. They're 148,000 artillery pieces. They're close to 300 submarines, you know, which is,

I realize the I realize the distinction between offensive and defensive war is dubious and we'll get into that a little bit too, but I don't think anybody can claim that submarines are a defensive measure. I mean, I And towards the end, the T-30, even the Soviet models that were viewed as inferior, and again, I'm not a military expert at all, and it's not my forte, but platforms like the T-35 and the T-26, they were specifically designed as countermeasures to earlier German PANZER models, and they were categorically superior to the PANZER 3, if not, superior.

to the Panzer 4 and they all had heavy armament that was tailored to kill thermoc tanks you know I mean this this is why they were developed the total armed strength in the weeks immediately prior May 15 1941 the Soviets had three hundred and three divisions uh 258 of those infinite entry, armor, artillery, in other words, ground common element were a raid offensively deployed on the frontier against the German Reich. They were supported by 165 flight regiments mobilized in direct support of the ground element. The general staff reported after the onset of hostilities, the general staff of the Red Army

that is, this is August 1941. Even with the losses incurred, which were catastrophic in the opening weeks of Barbaros, to keep that in mind. Soie forces and beings were between 330 and 350 divisions. They were facing off against

just over 1,800 non-obsolescent German tanks and self-propelled assault guns. and the Lufov threw essentially everything it had at the Soviet Union and we'll get into this later too I mean the German again I don't want to get too much into the nitty gritty of military hardware

and minutia but it's relevant as to perception and forces in being and what we can extrapolate from those forces to being to intent the the Reich deployed 2,500 commentary German aircraft but overwhelmingly I mean

and the Lufthof was not did not have a strategic capability it really did not that's all the reason by the battle with britain even though it's talked about in these catastrophic terms it it was nothing compared to the the area bombing raids you know that they killed tens of thousands in one day you know um of the allies and uh the uh it was a completely different orientation towards um towards air war and it was almost exclusively dedicated to ground attack and tactical

exigencies. But what I think is more significant is a Red Army doctrine. I think it is in some ways, and I'm not talking to be corny. I think it's in some ways as the original revolution in military affairs.

The Red Army, beginning with Lenin, you know, Lenin fancied himself a political soldier, and he really was. He wasn't just you know some um he wasn't just some partisan type who who kind of declared himself a general or something he he had great aptitude for certain kind of warfare um and uh what became red army doctrine you know from 1917 18 the revolutionary days you know until the last days of the Soviet Union came from Lenin and uh Lenin declared that you know there

the red army was uh it's the function of the red army was was was it was it was literally the armed element of the party you know and it it's its purpose was to was to bring about socialist aims by by armed force that's the only reason they existed you know because within the marxist paradigm you know warfare is just you know a means by which capitalists either profit or sustain their dominance or um or or or sacrifice you know surplus labor and and lump in proletariat elements that you know can't um can't be disposed of in in more profitable ways so um congress with that particular claim about history uh anyway you know the the only correct use of a standing army would be to implement revolutionary aims and it aggressively export those

and aims um towards that end what became official soviet military doctrine theory rather which translated doctrine was the assumption modern war is just no longer declared you know not only is this a capitalist contrivance and why why should we participate in these fictions you know relating to you know treaties and and the appearance of lawfulness but you know the the nature of of of combined arms and technology driven warfare um surprise has a paralyzing effect that's what the red army field duty regulation is declared in the 1939 vision it said literally surprise is a paralyzing effect on the enemy therefore all military action must be carried out with the greatest concealment and greatest rapidity and if you want to know if you want um if you want

uh an example about this translated the doctrine both the soviet attack on Poland and the Soviet assault on Finland in 1939 there was no declaration of war there was no communication of a diplomatic nature there wasn't even an announcement by which you know Finnish or

Polish you know representatives were banished from Moscow or something it was just a massive assault boat from the blue okay so there you go I mean this wasn't something that was put to paper as you know by you know fevered revolutionary times

but didn't have any real world precedence. So what everybody learned real quick is that when the Red Army assaults, it is a bolt from the blue assault. You know, there's not going to be early warning. You know, there's not going to be a formal declaration. There's not going to be some cryptic communicate even that, you know, says there's no longer good offices between us diplomatically. You know, you're going to know you're at war with them

because they're going to be assaulting in vast numbers across your border, you know um the way uh jacquem hoffman translated a lot of this literature not just in the field duty regulations but from other official dispatches of the

red army high command um and uh i don't speak or re-russian but mr harr hoffman certainly did he's dead now and what he translated was uh these five points uh the first was

the red army is an offensive army the most offensively oriented of all armies them speaking of themselves the red army will always conduct the red army will always conduct war on enemy territory with few as possible friendly casualties and it will always aim to annihilate the enemy completely politically and militarily

the proletariat in the hostile country is always a potential ally of Soviet power and they will support the struggle of the red army through a bolts in the rear of the enemy army and this must be cultivated. War preparations are preparations for attack. Defensive measures serve solely to protect preparations for attack and the execution of an offensive attack

in the facing direction. And finally, the Red Army must at all cost preclude any possibility of the penetration of hostile forces into the territory of the USSR. are. Now, again, this isn't just minutia of interest to, you know, military sociologists or people who like to study the Soviet Union of history. If this is your declared military doctrine taken together with all these other variables, I mean, how probable is it, how credible

is it, this claim that, you know, the Soviet Union was this kind of fearful garrison state that was waiting for the Germans to attack, but hoping they would not. I mean, that would never happen. I know this is the cliche, and it's not as the cliche, because it bears out somewhat in truth. Operationally, the reputation of the Prussians and later the Germans was that they jumped the gun and assault too soon. The cliche or reputation of the Russians and later the Soviets was that they wait

too long, and I'd argue this bore out in the Ukraine situation. but that's not what we're talking about um the claim basically of court history is that you know Stalin was some sort of you know he may have been a bad man and he may have been an intriguer and a Machiavellian brute but he somehow had no designs on an aggressive conquest of europe despite these you know despite this these massive swast of territory that the soviet union is similar to hostility the claim is that he was somehow fearful of adolf hitler both as as as historical personage and as and as well as you know fearful of germany despite the fact that it was it was it was grossly disadvantaged in terms of you know forces in being and material

assets and resources but and also at most kind of incredibly is the claim that well you know yeah maybe the soviets were anticipating war but they were just waiting to be attacked I mean, that's totally at odds with not just their stated doctrine, but with the entire organizational structure and ideological culture of the Soviet Union at the time. To say nothing other deployment, and again, I don't, sorry, I don't want to get too deeply into military minutia, not because it's not interesting, but it's, first of all, I'm not the guy to do that. it's not my wheelhouse but also um it uh it's uh it uh it does have to be said though um even accounting for that you know why the reason the soviet were so devastated in the early weeks of barbarosa i mean yeah they had problems with command and control you know they they had uh they had uh they had some officers they had some officers they had some

general officers who owed their role to the political reliability rather than aptitude. I mean, yes, the Vermeacht and the Boff and SS were incredibly tough, incredibly game, and incredibly brutal. But the Red Army was an offensive deployment. They weren't arrayed

to absorb a heavy killer combined arms blow across a massive front from the Burmocks. They just were not. And that's one of the reasons this happened. I mean, if the Soviets were, you know, hunkered down and dug in and and and and and fearfully awaiting a

barmaq assault i mean we know how the russians deploy when that's what they're anticipating and they deploy like they get it cursed and uh it's it's textbook deep battle and it's devastating to the attacker you know i mean that's you don't need to be a military man or or some kind of armchair general to proceed this And you know, and you could have saw some of that from history. I mean, just look at the Spanish Civil War. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Franco's forces were that were killing commies.

The communists were killing everyone. They're flaying priests and nuns. I mean, they are basically, they're not, while they're trying to take over. also trying to punish. Yeah, definitely. Awful stuff was carried out. And yeah, that's not to go too often a tangent, but that's one of the things that really stiffened world opinion, particularly in Europe against them, you know, the

communist or euphemistically laws in Spain. It's because the, it sounds like, it sounds like propaganda stuff, but the nuns really were being raped. And, you know, the, you had these checka types going into, cemeteries were clergy people were interred and defacing the remains. I mean, like disgusting stuff that

would only occur to somebody if they were animated by a real hatred of the national culture. And yeah, so there's not, I mean, that's a huge important point. I mean, not only, as we're talking about earlier, not only was where the Germans not,

not only was communism and revolutionary communism, not this remote thing that they only knew of kind of was this abstraction that might threaten them you know they these these guys in the party is it um like um like um like um like like um like shooting a richter who fell at um at uh munich in 23 like these guys basically were refugees from the baltic because they were being ethnically cleansed you know uh these guys who constituted the kind of backbone of the of the most dedicated free core elements that you know ended up taking up the national socialist banner in the s a they they they fought they fought the

kpd in the street and they fought against the uh the uh the munich soviet and yeah the the war at spain i mean it wasn't some mystery as to how how the red army fights you know i mean they these uh these spanish republicans they were um you know they they were communists they weren't Republicans they uh no matter what uh you know some of the literature was that uh was promoted in english speaking newspapers and things or english language newspapers but the they were they were trained and outfitted by uh by checkis and by red army officers and cut their teeth you know uh fighting czaris and things you know so it's there wasn't this big mystery as the as to as how uh the red army fights and what their what their doctrine was and the fact that their doctrine to your point

ideological commitment wasn't separable from their tactical orientation but it I'll I'll wrap up soon to realize we're coming up on an hour

but the something that something that something too that I think Mirosheny got into this

in one of his more recent books I like Mirushine right I don't know the man but I mean I like his work product and I

but I think he's I think some of his stuff is kind of middle brow deliberately because he's trying to appeal to a more mass audience than some

political scientists are but he there's some pretty heavy stuff even that's said in some of his even in some of his more polemical works

and one of his books is called Why Leaders Why? You made the point that you know states that are regardless of their political regardless their formal political apparatus, whatever it's declared structure is, whether it holds itself as a democracy, you know, whether you're talking about, you know,

a fascist state of world, whether you're talking about you know, what he's retrograde Arab monarchies, whatever a state you're talking about. States that are approaching, states that are mired in existential emergencies, you know, conditions approaching out and out war, or states that are actually mired in conditions of total war, one thing leaders really don't do is just tell lies publicly, or to their, where you can particularly rely upon the truth of the matter asserted, is that is when they're talking to people who contacted control group, either the military or the political apparatus, because they tell lies in that circumstance,

not only could it lead to great consequences of in terms of existential national security outcomes, but it also means that, you know, it's self-defeating. You know, because a man who's not

going to tell a truth in life and death conditions is not a man who's fit for leadership. So you can rely pretty much on what Hitler and Stalin said on the Eva Barbarossa and certainly when it was underway. And on May 5th, 1941, I don't know exactly how this was organized. And I'm sure some Russian fellows or ladies were listening if they want to weigh in in the comments later. I believe there was a unitary military academy in the early soviet days um that everybody went to okay whether they were navy or whether they were army i don't know that for certain so whatever the whatever the

red army military academy was where army officers went Stalin uh appeared to much fanfare at the graduation ceremony on may 5th 941 and obviously that's only a few days after you know may day was the big you know gala day for communists um the uh so Stalin addresses a speech to this uh to this graduating class now mind you it's this is all a young officer who's about to get a commission and um and a and a bunch of party hanchos and generals so i mean it's not it's not properly secret but it's not you know addressing you know the soviet people and he's certainly not going on the radio he stated that these men were a stride history these young officer graduates because the because the derrary doctrine was now to quote abandoned defensive tactics and adopt the military policy of attack

operations and he came back to this point again and again throughout the speech that you know you are this spear point as it were of the party and you know we you know we were we are exclusively a revolutionary apparatus. You know, we are not a defensive army, you know, so you meant to restrite history because you're literally going to, you know, bring, you're going to bring socialism to the planet, essentially, you know, and this is not hyperbole, this is not, you know, some kind of motto that appears under the heraldic hammer and sickle in the Politburo. I mean, this is something that's taken very seriously, you know, and this, uh, this was really validated and I'll wrap up with this kind of final testimony. And again, forgive me if I'm

bouchering the name. Zillenkov, I believe the pronunciation. G. N. Zillenkov. He was a communist party official of some prominence. He rose pretty rapidly in the hierarchy. He became a commissar in the Red Army. He then became commander-in-chief of the 32nd army um on the ground and finally he ended up defecting um to the vermacht and he served with the vlasov army vlasov was a lieutenant uh i believe he was the equivalent of lieutenant general but the point is he he was a big defector and that's there's some hardline orthodox people who consider him a hero and almost a saintly figure um obviously people are sympathetic to the sovieting the history you like consider him the terrible individual and benedict

arnold uh other russian people i've talked who've seen had mixed feelings about him but blasov defected um uh uh vlasov uh he led a kind of doomed force of russians who to their credit these guys were very game and they they fought at the end and um they got slaughtered to a man and uh blasov himself was was executed but who served under the committee to liberate the peoples of Russia, I believe is what it translated to do, the political apparatus attached to the Vlasov army. He recalled that at the onset of Barbaroso,

June 22nd, he was in Moscow, and when news first arrived that war was underway, he said the rumor was, oh, of course, you know, finally, you know, we've gotten the attack order, you know, how far are people from Warsaw, you know, how far are they from Bucharest? You know, he said, without exaggeration, the impression of everybody was that we have assaulted, you know, we finally, you know, struck the blow against the fascists, you know, we're finally moving on Europe. And, you know, God be with our people and, you know, proverbially. And, you know, what's the news from the front,

you know, are we winning? and what kind of, you know, how are we advancing? I mean, I know you could say that Zillengov was, I mean, the rebuttal to all this is like, oh, those guys were liars, but it's like, but I, look, why? Why would they say these things? You know, particularly a guy who knows he's going to the gallows, or, I mean, particularly a guy who had no particular truck with either, you know, the National Socialists or the Soviet Union that he defected from, like, why?

I mean, maybe, maybe I'm naive, I, you know, maybe I'm just worldly in all the worst ways. most of the people I know don't just like lie about stuff of that kind of importance okay and I mean why would they you know I mean so it's I I consider it basically credible if particularly because again I this kind of testimony it comes up again and again and again and we're not talking about from hapless you know privates and in the Red Army or or some you know random villagers in Ukraine that you know that very mock stopped and interviewed on the spot these are general officers and the you know people who were a political connoisseurs of who were you know had an audience with Stalin I mean

I can't see that I can't see that all these people are lying and then some of Stalin was just kind of trying to you know what they said some of matches up with what Lenin declared was you know red army military doctrine and you know and then but he was only kidding or then Stalin you know

what he said about the Red Army being an exclusively off offensive apparatus of revolution but oh he was just trying to rile up as these young officers like it's not how reality works you know i mean but it i hope that this wasn't too dry for people i this foundation is fundamentally okay great no thank you i i will get into more kind of we'll get into more kind of the the the nuts and bolts of the next i was going to deal with stolfi and like how did third rike law in the east. I'm in the minority. I agree with the late Mr. Stolfi. I believe that World

War II was decided at the gates of Moscow in December 41. And we'll get into what I mean by that next time we record. And Ukraine features essentially in this entire story. So I think it's timely also. But yeah, I hope you're happy with what I laid down. And I hope the listeners got something positive out of this. I think this was really important. I know we can't leave no stone unturn in terms of a establishing foundation, but

it's essential in order to present history correctly to establish the context. So that was my reasoning. Sounds good. So plug. Plugs. Thank you. You can find me on Substack Real,

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Everybody's been very kind and it's really incredible. And thank you, Pete, very much for this ongoing series. No problem at all. Until the next time. Thanks. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. We continue the series. Thomas, how are you doing today?

I'm very well. Thank you, Pete. I want to continue today. I mean, it's a huge topic. And I mean, I realized that in this format, you know, we don't want to, we don't want to just go through some kind of encyclopedic reading effects. And that wouldn't really accomplish what we're trying to, trying to get done anyway. You know, we're, among other things, in addition to presenting, you know, an accurate history of the conflict. of the third right generally, you know, we, we want this to be a basically revisionist

exercise. And, I mean, a lot of, what, what that entails, it's, you know, kind of addressing the most common myths promulgated by court historians that sort of corrupt the conceptual picture people have of things. And so today, I think the way to proceed is to deal with Adolf Hitler and his role as warlord, quite literally, you know, know, and his strengths and weaknesses therein in that command role, some of the challenges he faced, you know, both within the control group of the Third Reich, you know, particularly his conflicts with, you know, military leadership and the general staff, you know, as well as the political situation, which was, you know, in some ways more delicate than people think, you know,

and also, you know, deal with the, you know, the misconception people have about, about the war against the soviet union both that it was this you know just kind of example of naked aggression you know we dealt with that last episode you know and correcting the record on that in the large part but also there's this idea is promulgated including by some people who should know better you know people who have a background as general military officers you know this idea that um the way the war was perpetuated or even you know deigning to launch the operation itself was was somehow this quixotic impossible mission that was doomed to failure that that could not that is not the case at all and germany practically won the second world war in in autumn of 1941 and we're going to get

into that and uh i want to get into some context first as to you know how um operational doctrine developed in uh in terms of the general the german general staff outlook as well as that of Hitler himself um and some at times these viewpoints between the fur and the general state have converged at times they were very much at odds but just to frame of kind of the the core issues and um and i'm going to dive deeper into these as we go along but just in order to frame what we're going to talk about this episode june to july 1941 okay the first weeks of barbarossa The Vermont had, for all practical purposes, defeated the Soviet Union's field armies. Okay, the utterly devastated the Soviet Union's military capability to the point that it was a foregone conclusion in the minds of essentially everybody on both sides that the Soviet Union was defeated, okay?

Specifically, or of specific significance to the revisionist, as well as anybody who just wants an accurate picture of our combat resolved in the East. The period of August to October, 1941, was absolutely critical. And the Third Reich could have not just vanquished the Soviet army, but they could have defeated the Soviet Union. Okay, why this didn't happen, always do a Titanic error, or actually a couple. But one in particular that will get into, you know, a decision, a decision at the level of a supreme operational command that sabotaged that possibility. Um, you know, it, uh, the short answer is, uh, that, uh, army group center, which was the scherpunct of, uh, the entire assault in the Soviet Union.

On July 29th, uh, Adolf Hitler, for all practical purposes, halted army group centers advance, diverted it in an eccentric attack posture into Ukraine in order to annihilate reserve forces there that he feared could be utilized to outflank the vermouth and why and this delayed the assault on moscow for critical days and uh which allowed uh the red army to reconstitute you know allowed permitted uh the weather to become totally unfavorable to to mechanized forces and uh and essentially halted the assault at the gates of moscow okay and this is something that's that's deliberately overlooked um and even people who don't have a particularly charitable view of the vermouth uh again within

six months the vermouth was literally at the gates of moscow so that alone should kind of raise suspicions that you know court history and its description of this of this of this massive operation as some again some crazy quixote effort that was doomed to failure i mean that that should smash that misconception to pieces and finally um We got to get into what I think was the myth of Blitzkrieg, okay? Blitzkrieg does describe something, but it's not, there's not some school of warfare called Blitzkrieg. Okay, basically what it describes is it describes a break with precedent owing to, owing to a dramatic innovations and mobility, and specifically, you know, the ability of the ability of assaulting armies to gain advantage. in ways that there to four was not possible okay um now why what was blitzkrieg diverting from in terms of

its precedent interestingly and this shouldn't be a surprise anybody the uh really the uh the primary german contribution in political terms to what you know and kind of you know you know linear history, mainframe history is called the Enlightenment. The primary contribution in pure political terms as a body of theory was Clausowitz, okay? And Clausius was a theory of war, was a theorist of warfare.

Now, Klausowitz declared, you know, a lot of things, both about the nature of the politics of warfare, and he considered politics and military activity to be basically synonymous. And that is significant and it's all you know not just generally but it's significant to how how hitler

approached military problems it didn't owe to just eccentricities of of within the mind of hitler himself and and and features of his own personality but clauswitz also in in strategic terms and how he described you know the the battle space the modern battle space um he declared in no uncertain terms that there's no shortcut to victory like what he meant was that, you know, okay, there's going to be technological innovation, you know, there's going to be adaptations to, you know, changing conditions or one to these innovations, but that basically in the clouds of its view, you know, the only way that, you know, what wins wars is, you know, victory in set peace battles, you know, that emphasize, you know, where victors

emphasize the advance of fire, you know, and when possible, substituting firepower for manpower to mitigate, you know, attrition. And through this process, you know, just, you know, kind of a gradual weakening of the defender and subsequently exploiting, you know, holes that are punched quite literally in the main line of resistance, you know, basically killing enemy armies through, you know, this process of, you know, brutal application of firepower in terms most likely to create opportunities to breach resistance lines, okay? Patterns of deployment, you believe, were constant again you know the only thing that changes is the ability to apply to apply fire um in terms of uh you know the it's destructive force as well as it's you know as well as its targeted accuracy

but uh you know the cloud's witching mantra is that firepower saves lives the strength of an army you know is is estimated in multiplying the mass by velocity which was also a napoleon uh axiom and a polionic axiom, rather. Now, this basically characterized combat until 1918. What happened was the advance of armor, which, you know, arrived on the battlefield in the Great War, but hadn't really been

utilized to deliberate effect, other than as a kind of, you know, way of, other than as a kind of mobile firepower. What changed, in the inner warriors was that people like von seat who was somewhat people like ramel for context and von manchstein were the theories of van cites and von sikhs he didn't have a he didn't he didn't he didn't he didn't have opportunity to view the concrete particulars of armored combat but he had a sense of how it would resolve how armored combat did resolve the textbook example is the Battle of France, okay, and what happened there was that armored columns were able to

strike so deeply through French lines that essentially, even where the French were deployed in depth, they were constantly having to regroup and try to reestablish the main line of resistance. They were unable to do that because they kept on getting smashed, and they literally could not keep up with the advancing panzers. And when they could, they find themselves often and reversed lines so this caused like utter chaos and on top of that um because the armored columns overshot the infantry which at that point was still on foot you know mechanized infantry didn't exist yet as we know it as they were trying to reconcerned the mainline resistance they'd get hit by supporting infantry which would smash them again so basically it's you know the crew de

gras was you know vermarked infantry after this kind of devastating punishing blow okay now this is just kind of how battle developed okay if you've got a dedicated armored uh element in your uh in your ground forces it's not like somebody sat down you know whether it's not like irwin ramel or yodel or uh or um von manstein sat down and said okay the theory of warfare it's called blitzkrieg and like this is what it entails and you know this is its doctrinal uh feature It's nothing like that. And on top of that, the German army, despite the myth that, there's this really, really idiotic myth that's promulgated by people who are, they've got to be conceptually illiterate, or they just aren't interested in presenting a true and accurate picture of the Vermecht and kind of the German way of war. Germans practice what's called mission-oriented tactics.

General orders are issued all the way down to the company level, and commanders are given broad leeway in how to accomplish those objectives. It's really kind of the opposite of how the Russian army today and previously the Soviet Army does things, where uncertainty is attempts at eradicating uncertainty is an attempt to eradicate uncertainty by treating doctrine almost like regulation, you know, and giving commanders very, very little leeway.

That's changing, but that's outside the scope what we're talking about. So what I'm getting is that you have these German armored commanders and they're smashing through the main line of resistance at rapid pace and they're not being told to stop. They're being told basically to chase the enemy down and kill them, and that's what they're doing. And before they know what, they find themselves, you know, traversing 300 miles like beyond, you know, the initial objective,

you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, chasing enemy armies, you know, deep, deep into territory beyond the initial objective. You know, and their flanks are secure because they quite literally outran every supporting element of the opposing force. And even if they weren't, you know, again, like they're backed up by this inventory that's, you know, go to a ride fresh and smash whatever forces might be trying to perform an encirclement maneuver, which by that point wouldn't matter anyway a lot of time because, again, you know, they'd be dealing with reversed lines, which caused all kinds of havoc in those days particularly before, you know, what we consider to be, you know,

with the kind of commanding control we take for granted, it was present. So there's not, there's not a school of battle called Blitzkrieg. it is as it's describing what it described in the moment was you know how combat was resolving in ways that therefore like had not been experienced because the technology was not available for any such thing like that to you know to uh to be decisive on the battlefield so as the uh as the general stab and a similar observed this uh that changed the way they approached strategic problems and they came to realize, as it Hitler himself, that the Soviet Union, unlike the Western Front in World War I, which created bottlenecks, was this vast step. Okay, it's basically, you cannot ask for a better, or a more ideal, a more ideal kind of terrain to wage armoured warfare, you know, particularly if you have, particularly if you have certain advantages, which in large part the Germans did.

So that's important, because it owes the conceptual mindset of Hitler himself and the general staff on the eve of battle. So this kind of brings us to an overarching matter in revisionism, this idea that Hitler was this reckless gambler in military and political terms and that, you know, he was emboldened by the successes that he had early on and he pursued this kind of quixotic crazy you know he unleashed this this this irrational kind of war on the on the Soviet Union that was devoid of strategic logic that's totally an odds of precedent in my opinion um we talked in the last episode about um Hitler holding back forces from the Rhineland in 1936 rather than risking war with the UK and France. I mean, that was characteristic of Hitler. Hitler didn't assault Czechoslovakia, despite the kind of

myth of Munich and the fact that it's kind of become synonymous with, you know, Nazi aggression. Hitler very adeptly was able to, you know, discredit not just Venice, but the entire enterprise the Czechoslovakian regime, you know, and by the time, by the time it would have been opportune to give an assault order, you know, Slovakia already succeeded the state in Germans for practical purposes, you know, had become an independent protectorate. You know, the Polish and Lithuanian minorities were demanding their own independence. Like Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist only to Hitler's, you know, intrigues. Okay, if he was just as a gambler who, you know, favored the gun, proverbially over, you know, over, um, over, uh, the conspiratorial, uh, option. I mean, this, this would not have happened.

When Hitler finally did give it out and out assault order, it was against Poland, and that was only after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had been put to paper, okay? and essentially by that by by doing so and by securing the the cooperation of the soviet union at least for that limited purpose there was no chance that germany would get uh you know forced into a war with the soviet union before they were prepared before they were prepared but that also meant there was no chance that you know the uk and france would be able to deploy in theater you know and and and and turn the tide of uh turn the tide of war so essentially he Hitler, not only was he not a reckless gambler on strategic questions, he waited until quite literally the fix was in before pulling the proverbial trigger. And based on those instincts, you know, militarily cautious but politically bold, I mean, what did by July 1940, what did Hitler done? He defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, and France. he occupied virtually all of those states and defeated the British army.

I mean, a gambler doesn't win 100% of the time, okay? Like, you can't. That's ridiculous. And it was in July 1940. That's when Hitler decided that the Germans were going to preemptively assault the USSR. I know people are going to take exception to that in the comments and probably other places. Like, what do you mean preemptively? Okay, we dealt with that last episode.

I'm happy to argue the point with anybody who wants to take it up, but I'm not going to reiterate everything we covered because that's not fair to the listeners, and I worry I'm going to Sino Island repeating myself already. I don't need to do it on purpose. Hitler's decision with the U.S.S.R. in 1940, that was really the only way that Germany wins the Second World War. In strategic terms, it was the correct decision. you know i'm not saying in moral terms i i'm not going to weigh in on that i'm not i'm not i'm not

saying uh i'm not coming out swinging in in in defense of of the third rex political ambitions or making something to show when it's the point about germany i'm speaking in a realist strategic terms it was the right decision um had germany vanquished the soviet union any posture the British took, even if they still had the empire intact, it would be meaningless. Germany would have had control of the entire continent from the Atlantic to the Earls. They would have had all the fuel, all the Iron War, all the agricultural resources of the entire continent and part of Central Asia. Okay, I mean, even in the best of all possible worlds under that, under those circumstances,

even if Britain was to marshal all of its resources available, from the empire, which you're going to are presuming to be totally intact, they would have been at fundamental disadvantage, you know, against Germany. And in North Africa, you know, Germany could have bided its time in defeating them peacemeal, or they could have staged simply a mass invasion, you know, with the assistance of Italy. And they would have had, you know, they could have knocked the World Navy out of the Mediterranean with really without you know

without having to worry about you know sacrificing resources that were needed in any secondary theater okay I mean you would have been looking at a situation where Germany again with the resources of an entire continent could have mobilized and devoted all of its capabilities to total war against the UK okay

not just that but the reason I raised Nolte last episode is because there is a strongly political dimension to the Second World War. I mean, not just the obvious, but this was an epochal moment. Had the Soviet Union been annihilated, you know, not only would that have

destroyed for all practical purposes the international communist movement, it would have put the nail in the coffin of this kind of New Deal democracy ideology, like all these things we take for granted as the kind of conceits of the victors and their political values. You know, the way they structure the world, you know, ethically, these things would not exist.

You know, any more than, you know, monarchy would exist or any more than, you know, any other kind of, any other kind of vanquished ideology would have, you know, animating power to, you know, to mobilize other people or, or determine the, you know, the configuration of states and that war at peace or anything like that. So that they can't be over-emphasized. like the Third Reich wins the Second World War if the Soviet Union is defeated. You know, the alternative is, you know, the Third Reich remains a second-rate power, you know, on a European continent that itself is kind of failing. And, you know, it becomes either a client state of the Soviet Union because, you know, the U.S.S.R. completes its full mobilization potential, which, again, was rivaled by no state other than the United States. And it, you know, either just conquers Germany, you know, by force of arms,

or it just, you know, absorb, kind of becomes the pivot of the continent politically because it's so much more powerful than its next strongest neighbor that, you know, there's just no, there's no way that it can be resisted by force and moral will or arms or any other way. So it's, it's, it's, it's asinine when people act like, you know, the Germans should have just kind of sat on their hands and none and nothing. I mean, it indicates a lack of understanding of power politics, but also specifically the strategic situation of um of uh of uh of 1940 41 um it uh it uh it uh and that brings us to the kind of common uh refrain of court historians is that uh hitler assaulted the USSR owing to the

you know, some kind of hairbrain scheme to defeat Britain, because, you know, that would have precluded, not just, you know, the, the, you know, the, the burning in Germany of having to fight a two-front war, but also, you know, what has sapped, it would have sapped Churchill's regime of any, of any confidence that, you know, they, they, they could have had the benefit of, of Soviet arms and resources, and to perpetuate their own war. Like, that's nonsense, too. Again, the, Hitler did not want to conquer the United Kingdom. There was nothing to be gained from that. I don't think it was possible in operational terms because the forces in being weren't there. And even if they were, Germany did not have a deepwater navy that could have accomplished that. So it's just, it's a non, I wanted to preempt that

before anybody raised that in the comments or something. It's a non-issue. But so on July 21st, That's when Hitler gave the order to von Broussich to begin drafting preparation for Operation Barbarossa. You know, again, it was immediately after the defeat of France. It was after, you know, what in hindsight and in the epoch as it developed was viewed as Blitzkrieg. It was this game-changing sort of development, you know, the advent of armor on the modern battlefield. know, and that that is what emboldened, not just Hitler, but the general staff, to pursue the assault then, in addition to the fact that, again, as we got into last episode, you know, it was critical that, you know, the Germans preempt what amounted to a massive Soviet mobilization that was underway, the purpose of which the evidence is clear was, you know, to assault and conquer Europe and with Germany.

as the kind of jewel in that geostrategic prize, and I want to make I want to make point, I wanted to make the point two, and this is not just a matter of semantics or something being lost in translation. Hitler's

incessant return to the concept of Lapensrom, like literally living space, you've got to understand that in context, you've got to understand that that term is utilized because of a polemical weight that it carries. Heller was not suggesting that Germany's overcrowded or

something or that it's got this burgeoning population like China or something. What he was saying was a more correct term probably would have been Gross Rom. But again, Hitler had a flare for the dramatic and he was utilizing polemic. Germany had to become a superpower.

Otherwise, it's political ambitions, its existential destiny, its survival in their own view, would have been compromised. okay you you win the second world war by becoming a superpower okay that is how you win you know you don't win it just by surviving or by hanging on by a thread or by becoming some client state of the soviet union um and people don't understand this and we have to look at the look at the political map of the planet today

you know and ask themselves you know why uh why uh globally we're in this mess that we are with this uh with this with this American regime that although it's losing this ability as the capacity to project power anywhere in the world and slate other societies for annihilation that it does not view as sufficiently

compliant with its ideological with its ideological ambitions okay I mean it's we're not talking about something academic here we're talking about what happened you know the Europe was annihilated Japan was annihilated United States and the Soviet Union divided up the world

you know the Soviet Union capitulated owing to you know the burdens of a strategic challenge in the later nuclear age and you were left with a unipolar political military ideological regime so that this is not academic you know I don't see how people can

argue otherwise but the spring that's kind of the next big point Germany did not underestimate the Soviet Union, okay? The Kaiser Reich had fought for four years against the Russian Empire just as they did on the Western

Front. There was a huge percentage of German general officers who had fought the Russian army, okay? They knew the Russian character, they knew that the Russian people were very game, were very tough. They knew that fighting in Russia was incredibly

arduous and brutal experience they nobody this was not some remote thing okay and these were not this was not some uh this was not some second-rate army you know that uh that had no experience of of uh of the enemy and the terrain that they were planning to wage war on you know so that's Franz Halder he was the chief of the general staff of the here and Halder's an interesting guy for a lot of reasons and he I mean this man alone could warrant the dedicated podcast or episode but

we're not getting into the kind of various intrigues of a holder but what we what is important about his character is that he was kind of the consummate reserved you know German officer the year okay he was not particularly ideologically inclined he was kind of calculating he was not a man who had much in common

with Hitler but he wrote in his diary he kept a war diary which is incredible because I mean it's like a historical treasure trove of testimony about what was in the minds of the general staff he kept a diary dedicated exclusively to preparation for Operation Barbarossa

from July 1940 when Hitler gave the order of preparation until June 22nd 41 when the assault commenced and he wrote he wrote about the coming operation with confidence but discernible trepidation okay there's not a single remark in

there that indicates he'd on you know he was underestimating the soviets or the rigors or the brutality or the severity of the coming war in the east like quite the contrary but uh nonetheless he had absolute confidence um that combat would resolve in the so against the soviet union within six to ten weeks okay on july 3rd 41 heller stated in his diary and let me call it up here quote after two weeks of war the soviets have been beaten okay now why did the hell just say that it's uh there was a i mean it's hard to drive home the the kind of devastation that the vermouth was able to reek upon the red army part of this was because in some

of the theaters they were fighting in i mean this this was a massive front you know divided into three army groups our group north is assaulted to the balkics the uh despite this kind of myth that the germans were just you know acting like angus khan and brutalizing the indigenous people everywhere they went that's not true at all the germans had a huge number of allies among people conquered by the soviets you know thousands about thousands of these men joined the baff and s s and nowhere was the sympathy more kind of sharp than in the the Baltics. And Army Group North, as it kind of smashed through the Baltics and route to its objective of Leningrad, you know, the people in the Baltic states, you know, they rose up against

the Red Army, you know, so the Red Army was fighting not just the Dermacht. It was fighting, you know, people in places like Belarus, people in the Baltic states, people in Ukraine, you know, who had risen up against their communist overlords, okay? Like, a lot of what people claim about what was happening in the Eastern Front in the early days was totally at odds of what actually happened um the uh the german uh in terms of in terms of aircraft uh the exchange attrition rate was something insane like you know one to 131 favoring the germans you know they uh you're talking about uh armored palim striking literally hundreds of miles deep behind the main line of resistance you know within days you know this was unprecedented um

so what exactly happened um to change this momentum we'll get to that in a minute but i want to i want to reemphasize too you know we talked uh last episode about the uh on the eve of barbarosa the intelligence estimates and figures of soviet deployment um you know that were presented to Hitler himself by, you know, the high command of the army of the Navy and of the Lufvafa. Okay, these numbers were accurate. You know, I mean, they were verified after the cessation of hostilities. You know, Hitler was, Hitler, Halder, the OkW, commanders in the field, you know, subordinate

to that executive structure, they were proceeding based upon accurate. numbers. I mean, so it's, you know, you've got, you've got a holder who's, you know, optimistic, but, you know, exhibiting a lot of trepidation in his own personal writings. You know, you've got Hitler and the OKW who are planning this operation with remarkably accurate numbers, which is a credit to German military intel. The Avvara was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, but and raw military intelligence that came

from the hear and came from the creek's marine and the lufo it was actually quite it's quite incredible that they were able to render such a such a you know a factual picture of reality and you know with the technology that day um that's difficult even today with you know kind of the panoptic vision that we have but in those days it was truly extraordinary so i mean in material terms uh the germans were at all levels were calculated in victory odds based on actual forces in being um and finally and this is a huge point and i the only person i've ever heard refer to this was uh leon de grell in any detail i'm okay if the germans underestimated the soviet union

why did it take one hundred and ninety five weeks for the soviet union to defeat germany with the with like lavish assistance from the United States, with terror bombing day at night by the United States and the Royal Air Force, with a massive invasion of Western Europe by the United States and the UK. Like, that doesn't sound like an underestimation at all.

Okay, if the Soviet Union was a juggernaut. I mean, should it have it turned the tide of marching on Berlin within within weeks or months? I mean, like, think about that. It's not a political point or a middle in point. it uh it you know it should have uh if there was if there was parity between the vermouth and between the red army

and the defeat uh levied against the rite was as a result of gross underestimation or hubris i mean we just established that you know modern warfare with uh with armor as the as the kind of as the primary variable in ground combat. I mean, the Soviet Union, they should have turned the tide and, you know, smashed the German army within weeks, you know, as basically the Germans had done to them. Like, once they reconceptive unit, obviously. But, so, why did this happen?

We're going to return to Klausowis for a moment. Hitler basically was a siege commander, okay? You know, emboldened as Hitler was by Blitz-Krieg, as much as, you know, this kind of figured into his calculus, for what the correct strategic decision was, Hitler was a man who was born in the 19th century. You know, Hitler was a guy who fought on the Western Front.

You know, when warfare essentially I mean, the body count was horrendous owing to the machine gun and owing to some other innovations, but, you know, World War I combat was basically on Napoleonic era combat, you know, set piece battles that resolved essentially

according to like Clauswitz's victim, almost you know, to a T. You know, you can't escape. these formative experiences and how they inform your conceptual horizon that's the way hitler thought of things okay um at where the rubber meets the road in terms of operational execution hiller was also a political leader okay and i mean i there's this you know there's this kind of court history claim like well hitler was constantly interfering with his generals his generals you know the generals know the generals know you've got a serious problem if you're a civilian

chief executive and you're simply handing policy to your general I mean, that's called a military junta, okay? I mean, even kind of one of the tragedies of any man, of any civilian executive at war, whether you're talking about Mr. Putin and the president, whether you're talking about Adolf Hitler, you know, in 1941, whether you're talking about John F. Kennedy trying to stare down Mr. LeMay and the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there's always a critical tension between the armed forces in civilian leadership and uh this uh this uh this uh this has this corrods operational

effectiveness because there are times when a civilian leader needs to put the brakes on military decisionism simply to salvage his own political mandate and prevent himself from being bulldozed even if that harms the rapid execution of orders in the field and that's a military sociology question but it um it bears out in all times and all epics and uh hitler was very much a civilian okay um his role as world lord is kind of his critical contribution to history but you know hitler is not some career military officer a prussian general you know he was uh he served with distinction as an nCO but that was the extent of his of his uh of his military life you know on that the uh that that's fundamentally important and understanding why he made the decisions

he did at critical junctures and finally you know in uh one of the reasons i'm going to bring this back but this is an important point okay we were talking about a blitzkrieg it more reflects a way that combat develops through the application of technology and the technology of violence that's really characteristic of the 20th century and there's a parallel in strategic nuclear war planning where things got to the point that command and control structures to sustain the capacity to wage nuclear war were so complicated and so insinuated into oblique features of the national state, civilian and military, that actually makes you more vulnerable

than in more in more primitive phases of development, historically. One of the reasons Blitzkrieg, or what's perceived as Blitzkriek wreaks such havoc is that if you do penetrate deep behind enemy lines, you can wreak utter devastation on his logistics, on his command and control. You're literally traveling faster than information, okay, than is now. Although now, like, I mean, in true strategic planning during the Cold War,

that the window of decision was reduced to minutes, reduced to minutes. But, you know, think about a man, Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. You know, I mean, the fact that he hadn't fully adapted to the new way of warfare, I think that describes every chief estate of a combatant nation in the war. you know i mean i don't i don't think uh i don't i i think that that neither puts you know any kind of shine on hitler in his command aptitude nor is it some kind of gross sort of strike against him it uh but what is significant is that any man who's a student of klausowitz and basically every german executive of the modern era including hitler's hero frederick the second you know

know, who was kind of the consummate dynamic Prussian officer, you know, of that type. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, to reduce, to limit those objectives to what, uh, to what can be, uh, effectively managed, um, and defended. Um, and what's telling is that Hitler paced operation Barbarosa, very deliberately towards the objective of capturing and seizing Leningrad. You know, and they capture Leningrad in the opening days and weeks, in his estimation, would allow a siege line to be created, wherein German command and control would be in the most advantageous position available for an eventual assault at Moscow. Like, meanwhile, the Soviet Baltic fleet could be dealt with and knocked out.

what happened as Army Group North proceeded to Moscow or proceeded to Leningrad is Hitler ordered elements of Army Group Center to be diverted to back up Army Group North because his idea was that like, well, you know, resistance is going to be too great to be rapidly overcome and, you know, we've got to create our main line of resistance, you know, backed up by forces enough that, you know, if we get bogged out, we can deploy in depth, you know, and establish, you know, a defensive perimeter. know this totally cuts against this kind of picture of Hitler as like reckless warlord who uh you know who who who who who who who pulled the trigger before uh loading the proverbial gun um and eventually what happened is as army group uh center did move on uh moscow hitler ordered stopped in its tracks he ordered critical elements that were the most that enjoyed the most mobility to be diverted to Ukraine in order to encircle and annihilate the Red Army Strategic Reserves that were based there that cost days and weeks that allowed Moscow to be fortified.

It allowed strategic reserve elements from Siberia to be called upon and transported to reconstitute forces to defend Moscow. And by that time, it was too late to breach the gates of the city because the weather had turned. i mean this is what happened okay um it was key decisions that one being the most uh damning but uh it uh that's what cost germany the war with the it was causing victory of the soviet union which would cost them the war altogether you know it's uh it was not uh it was not underestimation of the enemy it was not you know that the uh the german general staff didn't know what it was doing it was not that hitler was crazy

and the german general staff basically invented war gaming okay i mean they game the scenario of attacking the soviet union for an entire year before you know the assault was implemented you know the idea that these men weren't drawing upon data or they were flying by the seat of their pants i mean it's it's incredibly it's incredibly stupid um it's almost as foolish as people claiming i i had a i had a guy who actually uh he told me with a straight face and this was a guy who like tell himself out is uh i don't want to name him i think people know him he's like this british guy he was like youtube videos about uh about the second world war um he actually dropped the canard about you know oh germans didn't even you know

manufacture you know winter uniforms it's like okay if we're going to assault a Soviet Union in June and you're trying to provide your you know you're fitting to provide your army with winter gear you're preparing to literally lose that campaign you know I mean it's

you don't you don't set about in campaigns that you know and say like well we're going to get bogged down at the gates for our objective then we're going to hunker down to the winter and then we're going to wait for spring and we're going to try and assault again and see what works at that time like it's not military operations like succeed or it or it's it's disaster you know you don't plan for these like

you know losing contingencies you know and if you do is as lincoln said about mcclellan you know you're you're you're literally like you're literally planning to lose i mean i i uh i don't think a general planning to lose is is worth a lot to uh to uh to anybody in uh in warfare it uh it to uh well i mean there's also that the whole myth of that operation barbarossa started in the winter yeah you're people say that all the time yeah it's totally well people i think people too and i don't go too far a field but it's it's relevant there's two things that i know and one of these things is something somebody raised in the comments to me that i wanted to take up but first and foremost people uh pretty much everybody alive today like nobody remembers like 20th century general

wars okay they remember these like weird managed conflicts that don't have real stakes and that any more these days and the pentagon goes to war it's like it's a make work enterprise well yeah they're not war for power yeah and they don't realize too they don't realize too that you know if you're an actual like full-blown military operation it it it resolves rapidly you know you don't go to war to say like yeah we're gonna you know we're gonna you know we're gonna muck around in south Vietnam for a decade or you know we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna occupy Afghanistan for no reason because you know girls can't go to school there and people grow opium and we're going to stay over 20 years and you know we're getting this NGO money and then you know we're going to run

around and yeah these guys are the Taliban we're going to we're to tell them to stop doing what they're doing but it's not a military operation it's some weird make work like operations short of war that you know is on that spectrum but doesn't really have any strategic objective i mean if you're you know there's uh the fact that uh the fact that uh the fact that But again, I mean, that's why it shows you out, I mean, I made the point before that, you know, Second World War was actually a few different conflicts. And, you know, the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union fighting the Vermont to a stalemate, that could have actually resolved a few different ways. You know, had had kind of the fix not already been in between Mr. Roosevelt and Stalin and say, like, you know, that you had an American regime that, even if inclined to go to war with the Third Reich,

was not really willing to, you know, to generate this kind of operational independence with the Soviets. You're very easily going to come to the Soviets, you know, saying, like, we'll accept a peace as long as you would draw to white Russia or something. You know, or, like, you know, withdraw, like, within 30 kilometers of the Ukrainian border or the Ukrainian Russian border and, like, you know, we'll set that as, you know, kind of like the treaty line. But it's, you know, this was by no means, like, set in stone.

and um you know like i said the fact that uh the fact that uh you know if if germany just were if the germans were these fools and these guys who weren't drawn upon any real data it hadn't gained you know possible scenarios adequately you know it's like okay then why did it take a hundred and ninety five weeks for moscow to reach berlin you know like they should have they should have been okay the german assault failed here's the rarmy counterattack three months later you know there's you've got uh you've got the Red Army, like, smashing across, like, the Oder River. You know, I mean, that's, that's, so that's important, too.

I mean, it was political conditions that, and, and, you know, America literally, you know, providing life support, you know, in, in, in the form of, you know, really whatever, whatever was necessary to sustain the campaign that kept them in, in the game. and it's uh you know the um it's also it's a testament to you know the reason why the germans were so it's i uh people who claim to looking at the raw numbers of uh of opposing forces that the vermouth was facing a lot of the red army was incredibly tough incredibly game a lot of it wasn't okay simply having piles of weapons you know or simply having armored vehicles you've got to train people to fight in a modern war, okay?

You've got to integrate your operational elements, you know, to actually be cohesive enough that, you know, they can act operationally in the way that they need to. You know, piles of hardware don't decide wars. That's what it is. It's totally insane that, you know, okay, Mary's just going to send $50 billion

in military hardware to Ukraine, like, to do what? Like, what's that going to do? You know, I mean, like, it's not, you can't just drop weapons on people, and something they become, like, trained, like, you know, tankers. or, you know, suddenly they become, like, competent, like, infantry and COs, you know, you can't even...

There's a lot of people running around who don't even know how to, like, fire a gun, okay? You know, like, it's, uh, and even if they're competent with weapons, they're certainly not, like, comfortable with, like, some freaking knockoff NATO, like, A.R. 15, I mean, why would they be, you know? Like, if you haven't been habituated to that, I mean, that's, uh, I mean, it's all these things, but it's, uh, the, um, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, the, uh, uh, you know, and it's not just what decided the war

was what happened in August and then, you know, the failure of the assault on Moscow. But, you know, the Germans also, they reached Leningrad within weeks. You know, there's this horrible siege. It was like medieval in character for years. Like, what happened in Leningrad is like a horrifying.

You know, and then it was months later, but, you know, the Germans, not only did they reach Stalingrad, they breached the gates of Stalingrad. You know, the Stalingrad defenders were fighting within Stalingrad you know like it was not so i mean it's they lost the war but you know they they reached uh they reached all of their objectives territorially i mean i realize that that's not decisive in terms of victory metrics but you know that that that that's that of itself to my

argument the calculus was basically correct i mean it uh it um it goes it should go without saying but another thing i wanted to raise like a couple of guys in the comments, they hear this a lot. They're like, well, you know, the Vermeck lost the war because they were just killing everybody and they were doing these racist things and they were like ethnically cleansing people. That did happen, particularly incident to the Commissar Order and other things. But, you know, my rebuttal of that, man, is that I, and I don't want to go too much outside the scope of the Second World War, particularly the Ostfront, but, you know, I read a lot about

Pinkville, which is where Milai 4 was located. And I don't want to get into some really detailed discussion. of what the rules of engagement were in Vietnam and what military law says about free fire zones, but B.L.I.4 was located in the free fire zone. The people there had refused to evacuate. That was an operational hub of the National Liberation Front,

you know, a.k.a. the Viet Cong. When the Ameri-Division arrived there, they arrived there with the intent to annihilate that village, and that's what they did. And this was aboveborn. And Stars and Stripes, you know, the U.S. Army newspaper, they ran a story about it. America All Division, you know, assaulted mili four big victory hell yeah you know we we struck a blow against victor charlie you know it

wasn't until it wasn't until uh you know a year and some months later that you know kind of that which really gruesome details got released by a couple guys who were there you know who began writing the through a couple anti-war senators about it that it was splashed across the evening news but my point is that this is kind of the face of modern war you know like romanian and german infantry going into a belarusian village and and you know and killing every killing every commissar and every jewish military age male that's pretty horrible but i can give you just as many examples that the french army carried out in algeria the u.s army did in south vietnam i mean i there's not some like outlandish thing and frankly too you know uh people in kazakhstan people

in tajikistan people in ukraine people in belarus people in latheilithuania they joined the off in SS. They join the access cause. You know, the people forget this because now the regime is pretending that, you know, the Ukrainians are, you know, George Washington and the Continental Army or whatever. But for the last 50 years

before that, you know, well we heard was that Ukrainians are a bunch of awful brutes and Nazis and they collaborated with, you know, the Third Reich. So, I mean, it's depending on how people were treated in theater, it depends on the people you were talking about. It depends on what German formation was operation.

there you know it depends on what year and month you were talking about i mean there was not just one way this is the way that germans treated civilian populations you know they treated uh they traded some civilian populations it's like they would german people some populations yeah they they they slaughter them like animals but that's that's not strange and it's uh you know it does be repeating as i've said and uh we'll get into this in the nureberg episode but um you know So, this is documented, and these, you know, after the Soviet archives were thrown open in 91, you know, the Soviet, like, by a conservative estimate, the Soviet Union annihilated 10 million people before a shot was fired in the Second World War.

I mean, yeah, I'm not going to say, like, you know, that's a good thing that the Vermeck and the, and the SSSD, were, were slaughtering people, including women and kids. But, I mean, it's kind of, it's, you know, emphasize. you know the instance is a German brutality and and just kind of redacting the rest of it I mean that okay that that seems a bit cynical and dishonest but you know that's um that's my take on that and I mean plus it was I mean it was a total war I was reading about I was preparing some of my notes for our our next episode on the area bombing you know within literally 50,000 people died in Hamburg you know all those civilians um over the course of two days like that's insane Like, America was preserved of a couple thousand people die on 9-11, and I'm not, that's terrible. Okay, I'm not saying that that's nothing or something, but, I mean, can you imagine a country, like, a third the size of America, losing 50,000 people in one day, like, just by literally having them, like, burned to death by incendiaries. That's completely insane. You know, I mean, that's not, there's not any difference between, you know, what the Germans were doing the Eastern Front and what the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Corps were doing to people in places like Hamburg and Dresden.

There's not. and frankly in fact i mean i'd rather get shot in the face by the SS than like be burned to death like in in some basement in dresden i mean frankly you know if given a choice which i really really hope i would never be able to have such a choice but it um that's uh that's all uh that's all uh that's all i got for this episode and um i didn't mean to get bogged out so much in like minutia like military science because it's not my wheelhouse but it's important and I think for Connix, that's kind of the evidence one must present or to rebut the popular myths. So I hope that people found it informative and not too kind of, you know, boring and bogged down with minutia.

There was a lot of meat in there. Yeah, I appreciate that. But next, well, if it's okay with you, it's your show, and it's not for me to dictate the program. What do you think? The next episode, I'd like to finish up Barbarossa. and deal with, you know, the Western allies war against the Reich. And we'll get into things like Hamburg and Dresden then, if that's agreeable. It sounds good to me.

That sounds good to me. All right. Give your plugs. Okay. You can find me at real Thomas 7771.1.com. That's what my podcast is. That's what my long form is. About half of it's free.

That which is not, it's only five bucks a month. so don't be a hobo you can afford it um i just joined mr trump social media truth social uh not because i love mr trump i mean i don't hate mr trump either but some dear friends of mine are there i'm hoping that might develop into something but if you're there you can follow me i'm the real thomas seven seven seven seven there you can find me on gab uh at real thomas seven seven and if you want to contact me directly, reach out and substack. I'll drop an email on you, and we will talk about things. And thank you again, Pete.

I appreciate it. Until the next time. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekina show. Thomas returns. We're going to continue. Okay, yeah. Thank you, Pete. I don't want to reiterate my gratitude to everybody who supported this series.

And there's just been incredible support in. feedback and I find I'm very moved by that and that encourages me to keep going with this endeavor and again I appreciate you giving me a platform this has been really really great but I wanted to talk a bit about today we got into kind of the technical aspects of Barbarossa and and rebutting some of the myths about the military situation and how it resolved and I as I indicated I'm certainly not an expert on military matters at all and I have not I've got no military background or anything like that. What I wanted to talk about today,

I wanted to kind of deep dive more into questions of zeitgeist. I can't think of a, there's not like a term that's kind of less exotic or cumbersome to describe what we're talking about than zeitgeist, you know, like literally the spirit of the age or, you know, like the kind of, the kind of animating elements of the epoch in which people live, that that that that that that kind of serves to frame conceptually you know uh the way people view events and their role in events and you know what what kind of what kind of comes to inform of you know values and particularly we're talking about conditions of crises conditions of crisis

um you know the most kind of the most kind of punctuated and and mortal iteration of a political crisis being general war uh that's that's kind of the most uh that's kind of the most intense example of, you know, people being caught up in apoccal events that, you know, in terms of symbolic psychology, you know, in terms of, in terms of people's collective ambitions and fears, you know, can it can be said to constitute a sort of cohesive, you know, like essence, you know, or spirit of that epoch. And you've got to understand, even if you're not a Higalian like I am and even if you're kind of like a dyed in the wool like secularist you you know to understand to understand the the the German Soviet war you've really got to understand the uh

this kind of collision of worldviews okay and and you know even if even if you're the even if you're the constant like secular humanist you probably wouldn't be watching the series but if you are it's like okay you know you can you can attribute what I what I'm talking about to the you know to to the phenomena of psychology okay you know but it there there is such a thing as you know mass psychology and if you want to if you want to view it that way fine but you know what I'm talking about is a real phenomenon and it the fact that things like you know the the war between the Reich and the Soviet Union happened or a testament to that and what I want to get into today is uh you know how uh how uh how the government of the

Third Reich became a truly European government, in part because there was apocal changes underway in the manner in which, you know, people politically organized. And it was, the epoch of the superpower was nascent and looming, but also, you know, the challenge presented by the Soviet Union, you know, which was both a Bergen and communist superpower. You know, and this ideology was in dialectical, it was in violent dialectical opposition to Europe. Europe as an idea and as a civilization, but also ethnically and racially, if you want to think about it in those terms, you know, the Soviet Union represented kind of the Oriental Other, you know, and it's a catalyzing force for unity, obviously, in conceptual, in broad conceptual terms, if, you know, if a people are confronted by the other, you know, in political and cultural and ethnic terms, you know, like a, if you want an ancient example, you know, the Greek city states, you know, like a catalyzing element for them to, you know, to come to view themselves as Greeks, you know, was the challenge posed

by the Persian Empire, you know, that's, I know that's something that, you know, military sociologist types like to invoke a lot. But so we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to dive into it a little bit, forgive that kind of long-winded prologue, but I think it is uh i think i think it's essential the uh the idea of the idea of a european man you know kind of in lieu of uh you know people politically identifying with with with petted nationalisms this wasn't something that that that just came about you know in in 1941 as german armies were fighting we're fighting uh the communists you know in the eastern front or something i mean this underscores all kinds of cultural artifacts and of in uh and activities

you know in europe you know going back centuries you know like there's there's there's there's there's echoes of that and everything from beethoven and wagner to uh you know to go to uh you know to hagel and like nietzsche like overtly talked about it you know what kind of it's a good european and conceptual political terms and what does this mean for the future moving forward um and of course you know the the uh these kind of seminal personages in the in the modern age you know like first of all Napoleon, you know,

Napoleon started, you know, as a Corsican, became, you know, or Sardinian, rather, like he became a Frenchman,

and then, you know, he began thinking in, you know, European civilizational terms. And, and like Adolf Hitler, you know, he commanded armies,

you know, to the east, you know, and is under the, under the banner of, of a European imperialism, you know, not, not,

not, not just under the, under the flag of France or, or the glory of, you know, the French monarch or anything like that, you know,

was the emperor of Europe. I mean, what do you aspire to do? So this wasn't some sort of contrivance, you know? If you can motivate, uh, if you can motivate 100,000 men to like March eastward to conquer Moscow, like Napoleon did, you know, you're not, you're not dealing in something that's not deeply felt by people or some kind of fiction that you just contrived out of convenience. Okay, um, the, uh, as I said, I think that during transitional phases, historically, apocally, um, that's when these, that's, that's when these kinds of symbolic aspects of zeitgeist, you know, especially in terms of identity, like, become most

poignant and powerful. And that's what's the fantastic thing about the Third Reich. Like, I made the point in one of our earlier episodes that if you want to understand the character of Adolf Hitler politically, you've got to sort of unpack his December 11th steep to the Reichstag, which, among other things, the speech in which he asked for a declaration of war against the United States, you know, because it was in the wake of Pearl Harbor,

just a few days subsequent. And one of these Hitler said, you know, Hitler was the Habsburg-Austrian Catholic. But when he was talking about the situation on the Eastern Front where, you know, Army Group Center was being halted at the gates of Moscow, you know, he said, we, meaning the German people, you know, like we faced, you know, these dire straits before in 1812. But what happened in 1812? You know, the Prussian army was fighting with Napoleon at the gates of Moscow. And they were the only German principality or kingdom, you know, that sided with Napoleon. Okay, so Hitler, the Hathsburg-Austrian, you know, he was invoking a, he was invoking a Prussian historical, a Prussian historical event, and he was, you know, he was assimilating that and then, you know, the, the identity of Germanness, and that's remarkable. And that wasn't contrived. Hitler really believed that. You know, and he really believed that there was, like, a German identity that superseded these, these petty regionalisms. And even more than that, As time went on, he, like Napoleon, he came to consider himself, you know, a European, a European warlord, you know, a European would-be-like emperor, like a common man who ascended to those heights, albeit he didn't have any, he didn't have the same kind of pretensions as Napoleon, but he did have certain messianic pretensions, and that can't be denied.

in more concrete terms if you look at the if you look at the kind of the military leadership of the Third Reich and if you look at its military culture

as time went on there was there was kind of these there's these kind of oppositional tendencies you know you had the old you had the old Prussian officer corps and you had the old kind of you know a Bavarian like Juncker elite

you know that that that had incredible sway with the general staff and still an incredible cultural power but then you also had you had the vaughnesss which was very egalitarian and very much model like a modern army okay you know like uh it was uh it was very much merit based you know there were battlefield commissions were very common people can be promoted rapidly if they excelled in combat and ultimately as well get into in a minute the vaughn s s was a european army you know it

truly was it uh it uh it uh and if you look at if you look at the tensions within national social this ideology you know like we talked about before like one of the ironies of of uh of when people talk cast aspersions on on the kind of biological racialism of the third right that was really kind of an emulation against precedent of the anglophone world you know there's a kind of Darwinist rationalism like defining race is this kind of biological phenomenon and and describing politics and and aesthetic preference and culture in terms of things that are reducible to you know rationally quantifiable things you know uh stemming from biology like that's that's not a german or a continental tendency okay that's that's very much a uh like i said almost an anglophone

rationalist tendency but opposite that you know you had you had this very kind of metaphysical tradition that uh in the case of germany you know goes back to to to it's a theologian like heterodox theologian like meister record i consider a heider to have been like in that vein you know uh the idea of you know what what this kind of ontological idea of you know what it would like what their being is like literally their being

you know like this that sensuous presence of uh of uh of life and how and how that how that is transmitted across generations you know to form a kind of a a kind of conceptual core of consciousness that's that's not that's not restricted to individual lives you know like it it it's it's literally like an ongoing kind of stream of consciousness it's

it's it's able to describe these things and some things you lost in translation but it doesn't matter we don't we don't we don't we don't need to really concisely define that for a purpose is here like what the point is that you know it's an example of these kind of like oppositional tendencies within the same political culture that over the over the fact that you know the juncture at which national socialism emerged and and and and and then the point at which you know the the third right and specifically the hitler regime emerged you know this this was a period of a profound apoccal transition and and these punctuated kind of upheavals and things um that uh richard landver i he's a guy who's right he's kind of a the seminal historian of the

baffan s and i cannot remember the damn name of it but he had this publication that uh was dedicated to you know unit histories and all kinds of things of the baffn s with this with a with a particular emphasis on the foreign legions of it and he actually uh he actually had some kind of full role official role in the in the in the in the preeminent vaughness as veterans organization until it you know being up to farm going to the fact that they're just you know weren't weren't any members left going to old age and things but he's a he's aggregated a huge amount of data about the vaughness and if people think i'm overstating the fact there was a european army like i pulled land vera's data and uh western european uh in in in western europe uh there's

there's 55 000 volunteers from holland alone you know the baltic states and the soviet nationalities uh there's a hundred thousand volunteers you know ethnic germans from outside of the right proper was 300 000 men you know from the balkans and uh and uh and other slavic ethnicities you know there's over a hundred thousand a hundred thousand uh volunteers you know that's not a you know of course like you know the bulk of of forces in being by the war's end were still germans from the right it was you know 400,000 you know plurality not a raw majority of men in wearing the uniform of the SS they've often assessed but you know they can't it can't be said that that was that was anything but a European force you know and that and that

was sight and seen since the crusades and that's that's that's that's interesting Spanglerian point that I know some of the some of the some of the subscribers will find really poignant you know spangler made a big point of uh you know the the era the crusader era you know uh as as as being you know kind of when the idea when when europe has a kind of self-conscious culture form you know ossified you know and uh gradually this kind of gradually this broke down over time and uh it reached kind of the disease of its fracturing you know with the Enlightenment and the kind of rationalist, you know, the preeminence of rationalist political and cultural tendencies,

you know, that's when these, that's, that's when these kinds of, that's when this kind of petty statism became, became paramount over European identity. I mean, it's a gradual process, but that it's most people have kind of the opposite conception of how it's developed. But, you know, it really is kind of a, effort to pigeonhole identity into a kind of rationalist was phalian structure you know there's something can try it about that you know if anything is been tried it's that kind of petted nationalism

it's not it's not it's not the idea of a of a european man as a historical uh as as historically present uh you know personage um anyway moving on uh so that's the way the character you know that's what you've got to understand the way the germans viewed the soviet threat and the way europeans viewed their situation in the world in geostrategic terms as well as an existential cultural terms you know they they viewed correctly in my opinion i don't see how this can be denied they they're they were under existential threat like their form of life uh was was was being threatened with annihilation you know um part of this was kind of the uh the uh the uh the uh the ideologies that were becoming dominant, you know, of the kind of rationalist, you know,

capitalist ideology, which, you know, in the national socialist view, went hand in glove with the Jewish world of intellectual existence, which was axiomatically, you know, hostile in the most, in the most aggressive terms to Europe, you know, and opposite that was, you know, this tendency towards Bolshevism, which sought to quite literally, like, eradicate, you know, the past in full and remove man from history entirely you know, and and, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and create a new, and create a, create a new kind of morality of life that, that, that, that was not encumbered in their view by, by any trappings of culture or, uh, or historical, uh, existence. The, the, the, the, the ultimate ambition of Bolshevism was literally to end history. And, uh, that's, the, as, as, the, the ultimate consequence of that is, is, uh, is essentially the murder, is essentially the murder of murder of culture and like if you murder culture and you remove people from from from from

these kinds of forms of culture like you're you're basically marooning them in a in a in a in a kind of spiritual sense in their own in their own individual lives and uh you're got you're robbing their lives of meaning as well as their deaths of meaning and i mean that's a little bit outside the scope of what we're talking about but this is very very deeply felt by people by europeans okay and this is also important because we we the one of the tasks of the the revisionist is the is the is it disabuse people this idea that you know by invading and and waiting this annihilation war against europe america was liberating europe like what was it liberating it from what was it liberating it from itself like what you know that doesn't make any sense

but beyond that you know this isn't just some kind of high-fluting idea that you know revisionist had or something like european people didn't view it that way you know and in very concrete terms you've got to understand what exactly was happening as the red army got the upper hand on the battlefield and began their, began their counteroffensive into Europe proper. Now, it's, I'm not going to sit here and the point of what I'm going to relay here is not to cast some kind of shadow on Russian people or to say that, oh, well, you know, the third right, you know, you call the third right evil, the Soviet Union is way more evil. It's not what I'm talking about, okay?

I mean, perhaps that's true, but what we're talking about is we're talking about people's conceptual horizon in that historical moment and what they what what what what they were facing um you know not just uh not not just in and what they feared coming to to uh to uh to pass but what actually was coming to pass and in in the most you know mortally critical terms imaginable now because as people probably know you know a lot of what is now poland was uh was was was germany you know at the time of the third right you know east prussia was uh which no longer exists that was always the eastern most garrison of uh of of of germany of this is going back 600 years you know it uh this wasn't just a modern a modern uh contrivance uh nemersdorf east prussia

was uh was uh was was a was a garrison city within a garrison state okay and the gall lighter of nemerstorf was a was a man named Eric Koch, and he was a very, very hard-line national socialist. And, I mean, which made sense because the man that would be appointed for that role would obviously have to be a man who's very committed to the national socialist vision on the geostrategic situation. Now, on October 20th, the Red Army penetrated the Third Reich proper for the first time when they assaulted Nemersdorf. and uh eric coke he declared that no true german would allow himself even the thought that he's

trussia could fall into russian hands so there was exact words and uh any able-bodied male civilian who uh civilian or or military who tried to uh flee or retreat or evacuate um ericoke uh imposed a uh a penalty of a death sentence for it okay i mean this was how critical things were like this was literally the line in the sand And after several days of intense combat, Berlin had lost contact with Nemersdorf. And, you know, this was the time when information only traveled as fast as a radio or a telegraph could convey it. And if those commanding control lines were down, nobody was aware of the, they couldn't build a conceptual picture or know what was happening. Now, there's certainly as intense combat, the Fairmock, they were able to regroup counterattack and they drove the Red Army back.

across the east prussian frontier you know and this was a great victory and coming as it did at the fall of 94 it was a much needed uh it was a much needed morale booster okay because uh what would what would lay ahead was uh the vermouth was charged you know a vermic that had been utterly hollowed out but still had a handful of crack units they were charged with fending off the entirety of the red army as well as uh doing everything they could uh the force uh at least some kind of impasse with the western allies who you know in the preceding summer and assaulted and invaded France and we're now pushing their way through Belgium to the pierce the heart of the Reich itself. Now, back to Neversdorf. What did the Third Reich,

or what did the Vermont uncover when they, when they liberated Nemersdorf? They found an orgy for lack of a better way to characterize it of mass homicide and torture. The Heinrich Amberger he was a junior officer and he was a he was a physician with the German army and his testimony because he was a pretty prolific diarist and and he maintained war journals and uh being that he was a doctor some people considered him to be you know more of a respectful witness than others he testified the fact that uh when they entered uh numbers north proper quote in a farm yard further down the roads to the cart to which four naked women were nailed through their hands in a cruciform position.

Beyond to the barn into each of its two doors, and naked woman was nailed through the hands in a crucified posture. In the dwelling, we found a total of 72 women, including children and one old man, all dead, all murder in the bestial manner, except only a few who had a bullet holes in their neck.

Some babies had their heads bashed in. In one room, we found a woman, 84 years old, sitting on a sofa. That was with half of whose head had been steered off with an axe. Every female, including girls as young as eight, been raped. Now, the purpose of that, that's a very horrible thing. And that testimony is very disgusting and horrible. But the reason I'm dropping it is not because, again, I want to put shade

on the Russians or something or because I want to fetishize, you know, war crimes. But this was not what Amber found, this was not an isolated incident. As would be revealed, this was an effort. there was literally a purposeful campaign of mass rape and homicide like numbering in instances than millions okay they they had done this they had done this in the Spanish Civil War too oh yeah yeah yeah but to scale I've researched this and it's not any fun because you know they go down this kind of rabbit hole of sexual violence at scale it's I mean it's it's taxing on the on the emotions but I've tried to find precedent of of this conduct carried out a scale in official terms.

And I can't find anything even remotely close. There was a, it was so in, Amberger further tested, there was a, there was a, there was a, there was a grouping of French and British POWs who are housed there and they in Polish uh and and and in and in and in and in and in and in and in and in and these guys they tried to protect these these women and girls who are being raped to death in many cases by the assaulting red army and and they were massacred too you know it was it was literally a barbarian invasion in Nemersdorf and uh it was so when berlin uh got word of what had happened they were so staggered by the scope and scale of the viciousness the uh the foreign

ministry contacted spain sweden and switzerland now this is fascinating okay they uh they because all all all three states were officially neutral and uh they they asked them to uh to uh to deploy uh investigators on a fact-finding mission and a document would have happened at a public this to the world you know um now if germany was uh if germany was this country that was just you know singularly and solely engaged in in in kind of criminality you know like battlefield criminality like why would they be inviting that'd be equivalent inviting u.n inspectors and uh you know kind of pull the curtain back okay um and at that stage of the war i mean germany was not in any position to truly control the flow of information you know that was uh that was leaving uh the uh the uh the right

proper or the battle spaces in which they at least have nominal control so i that's very fascinating that cuts against uh the kind of the kind of dominant narrative which we'll get into in the next episode about nuremberg but these uh these independent investigators from spain sweden and switzerland they documented what had happened and what was attested to just now and that they kind of horrible uh test somebody that i just relayed and uh they found it to be accurate it was true does this happen you know this was not rumor this was not something that was staged you know this the evidence was right there plain as day and um they tried to publicize this to the world and uh it was intercept you know of course like any information that was going to reach the english

speaking world was basically going through the office of war information in america and they simply refused to relay anything like they had on grounds that you know going to harm the war efforts and uh the uk the uk was in full-blown propaganda mode i mean there's a reason like orwell in uh 984 you know like the the the five men to hate like that that was literally the kind of that that was kind of a primitive and and single-minded you know british propaganda had become you know we think of the uk as being you know this kind of hyper-civilized place it it was really really primitive and in terms of it's in terms of its media narratives and propaganda like far more southern america or the third rike in my

opinion in that regard but that's so what i'm getting is that there's no way that uh what had happened here um was going to be uh was going to reach uh was going to reach uh was going to a world audience and it uh it was it was just quickly quashed because also too i mean this this would have there there's no way at hell that that that roosevelt or churchill we're gonna but particularly roosevelt we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna say or do anything or bring attention to you know any any kind of atrocities that that that might harm the concord of Stalin you know and it um it uh it uh on the heels of this kind of thing you know uh we talked about the morganthal plan in one of our earliest episodes okay and um

the morganthau plan it was named for you know the the roosevelt secretary of the treasury henry morganthow um who had uh conceived with his top aide harry dexter white um you know both them were ethnic jews and radical new dealers and and men with radical zionist sympathies what the morgan though plan was uh it was never formally implement but we'll get to why I raise this again in a moment okay on September 15th 44 um this is when Roosevelt uh this is when Roosevelt approved the morgan the plan initially it was approved you know Roosevelt died in office you have to remember okay but the morgan the plan constituted it called for the complete destruction of Germany okay it called for the dismantling of it into four

essentially uh micro states we're all uh we're all heavy industry you know know the only economic activity or productive activity would be subsistence farming this is almost like commier rouge like and i say that without resort to hyperbole okay it called the permanent closure of the mines it called for uh it called for the reduction of the rights overall land area by half you know to be seated to the soviet union and uh you know the what was slated to be the polish client state of the soviet union um george c marshall uh he uh he calculate you know the of a he calculated that uh that roughly two-thirds of the german population which would come out in nineteen forty five to approximately 50 million people would die of starvation in the

immediate aftermath of the morgan health plan and uh this was considered acceptable and not as acceptable i believe that this was uh this was essentially the raise on detra for the war okay um it It was the annihilation of the Germans as a people on categorical racial grounds. You want to look at it like that. And the reason why this was not implemented, Roosevelt died. Truman became President of the United States. As a consequence of that and other intrigues, you know, the Washington Moscow Concord fell apart. Divided Germany became what everybody believed.

would be a future battleground of World War 3, America needed the Bundeswehr to constitute the front line of that effort, quite literally. Okay, the Bundes Republic, with, you know, the West German Army, the Bundeswehr constituting its armed element. That's what defeated the Morgenthau plan. Okay. I believe some iteration of the Morgonel plan was implemented, and your friend E. Michael Jones has written extensively about that.

That's a little bit outside the scope of, what we're talking about here but the social engineering regime aimed that you know kind of breaking down the german moral core and you know the whole theory of the the the authoritarian personality and uh the uh the uh the idea that uh you know the like assaulting sexual morals and restraint uh could both sabotage fertility and and and uh communitarian bonds of a family but also you know was a way of kind of like derasiting people like this all stems from this epoch

okay um that is you know like sexuality you know and the perverting of sexuality as as a weapon of warfare um that is the aspect in spirit of the morganile playing that was implemented real large among many other things but

this is just how my mind so I know that you and uh I know that you and Dr. Jones Dr. Jones like I kept thinking that the whole time we're letting me for being for being you know

but it was it was estimated more than himself the idea was within two generations that Germany would cease to exist though they're his words not mine and if anybody thinks I'm just being partisan

or resorting the kind of lurid hysterical metaphors by suggesting that the new dealers were waging a genocidal war of annihilation against Europe, I submit to you their own words.

Now, I think that the common defense of what happened in terms of this mass outbreak of sexual violence and homicide and brutality um i i i think the common the common claim of uh apologists as well these you know there was a discipline problem in the red army and and you're talking about a terrible you're talking about a terrible war that that cost the lives of 20 million soviet people so these these are just men you know kind of without without correct military leadership just like

acting out barbarically i got everything to say about that first of all no matter how much you hate your enemy it's not normal to rape old women and little children that's just not something you do okay that just spontaneously happens you don't just say like you know me and my squad me if we're going to rape an 80 year old and under death i mean that doesn't that's just not a spontaneous thing that happens okay ilya erenberg was a chief uh he was a chief propagandist of um who worked hand and globe with you nkbd and had the favorite Stalin himself and he uh he uh he he uh he published uh extensively in addition to his radio broadcasts uh you know uh on both party radio and armed forces radio which reached the red army in the field he published extensively in the red star

newspaper which was the red area newspaper as well as he probed uh as well as he was one of the main authors of these mass uh these these these these leaflets that were saturated you know throughout uh battle spaces in the front um you know to both uh bolster the the morale of the red army or to strike fear into them so they would not desert but also to try and um try and demoralize the the bermacht but uh it um it uh he he consistently a consistent theme of uh his propaganda was that you know this is a racial war against the german people the germans are slying and the way and and you should rape the german women because you deserve to because they're the spoils of war and they're not humans anyway look at them like cattle but also

you know you've got you've got to rape german women because then the next generation will be russian and you know there there'll be no more germans so you're doing you know you're you're being a you're you're you're being a good communist as well as a good soldier to you know to to take these women and and and you know force your seed into them i i know it's like gross and try to phrase it as delicately as i can um but i mean this is why happen there's no way to put shine on it or make make it something that it wasn't but early on um the other uh the other kind of uh the other kind of rebuttal that i've come across a lot um not just in in guys and some girl so i've debated against in more or less formal circumstances about the war

but also even other revisionists who aren't quite i guess as uh as uh knowledge one on the topic as i am they suggest that the commissar order changed everything and um you know then in kind you know the the red army ceased abiding you know the rules and customs of war and then because of because of german brutality and you know the the the exterminationist uh activities the the einths group and you know they you know the red army just responded in kind i don't accept that because it it turns cause an effect on its head like the commissar order um that was that was the furor order from june 6th 1941 so just literally eve of barbarosa it declared that commissars when found And, you know, when commissars, when captured, not only they're not entitled any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, they're not even entitled to drum heads court, drumhead court's marshal. These men are criminals. They're the, uh, they're the, they're the ideological enforcers of the Soviet state. Um, the, they're, the reason for their presence at the platoon level is to, uh, is to make sure that, uh, is to make sure that, uh, is to make sure that the red army continues to fight. And then it continues to fight.

specifically in accordance with with the edicts of the Red Army and of Marxist Leninism. Now, why did Hitler issue this order and why did it make it formal? Well, that's an interesting question and it's not as simple as you think of just, oh, Hitler was this kind of wild man

who hated Ivan. The Soviet Union made a big show of refusing to sign the Geneva Convention in 1929. It was like we talked about last episode, or two episodes ago the red army doctrine was uh inseparable from from communist ideology and you know as we talked about the uh as a matter of formal uh as a matter of formal uh protocol uh the red army declared you know it was it was declared by the high command you know the red army is a purely offensive army you know uh the red army does not formally declare war because you know

their mandate is a historical mission to liberate the proletariat you know across this entire planet you know the uh the uh the uh the laws and customs of war are our contrivances of capitalism in order to favor a system that is propped up by by the needs of capital i mean all of these things okay so um the russian empire had had signed the hay conventions of 1899 and 1907 But the Soviet Union came into existence by literally murdering that government and declaring that it had been a criminal regime and had no legitimacy. So we can't claim that the Soviet regime is entitled to the protections. The reciprocal protections acquiesced to buy the Tsar's regime when they turned around and murdered literally the Tsar, who had put pen to paper on that convention. Now, the letter of Article 82 of the Geneva Convention claims that, you know, the fact that a state is not a party signatory to it does not mean that one can escape liability from, you know, not honoring the protection is that their personnel are entitled to be afforded under the convention.

I hate to be the bear of bad news. It's not how treaties work. treaties are always permissive not compulsory because they are contracts you know there's not some higher authority no matter what rachel maddo might tell you or whatever mr biden might mumble about in between you know soiling is uh this depends or what uh or what some you know uh or some berkeley professor might tell you about you know kind of the universality of of human rights um there is no sovereign authority that's higher than a the government of a national state and states become parties to treaties based upon a meeting of the minds just like

people you know just like people who agree to do a contract if there's no meeting of the minds it's because there's no moral consensus there's no moral consensus I there's no willingness to abide the strictures of a treaty that only exists when when such a meeting that minds exist so this this is this is the origin of the commiss our order and beyond that I mean it kind of went without saying anyway because uh you know the the uh the the soviet union it had had in a lot of ways it it was a rejection of the of the of the kind of peterism you know the rather than the peter the great a preceding couple of centuries it was deceding from

europe it just outright okay in addition to the margous leninist the theology that you know underlay it the idea that you're obligated to extend you know geneva convention protections to the union was somewhat ridiculous okay but the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the uh the connoisseur order and the the activity of the insets group and like make make a mistake i mean that was a that was incredibly uh i mean incredibly brutal stuff was carried out of the officers of that but it's not as if you know that's what prompted the red army's brutality the first instance i have found of reported atrocities on the eastern front July 1st, 1941. Now mind you, this is just weeks

after, this is just weeks after on Barbarossa. They're Branniki, Ukraine. I'm sure I'm butchering that pronunciation. I'm sorry about that. Don't say snarky stuff. I realize I'm bad with these things, but I cannot enunciate slavic stuff. It's too constant and heavy. I just, I don't speak these languages. near Bruniki, the Red Army captured 160 German Lancers. A junior Baffin-SS officer candidate named Hans Woltersdorf.

He attested to the fact that all of these men, with the exception of a few who'd been quite literally gutted and hadn't. yet expired had been severely tortured before being murdered by having their throats cut or their heads bashed in the rifle bus these men had their eyes gouged out they were castrated i mean all these things they were alive okay and uh obviously uh this inflamed the passions and kind of of these of these bobb and as lyrmont troopers and i you know moving forward in the conflict as early as august uh as uh as a as a as a you know as as all the army groups close on their objectives I mean there's myriad reports of categorical you know massacres by the Burmaq and the Wapha and Sess

the same other than the Imsons group and I'm not I'm not claiming otherwise I invoke the testament of of Volterstor's because again it robust the idea that like well the Red Army was fighting a clean war or was behaving like a normal military force

and I know you know the Commissar order began was implemented at scale and well that all bets were off. That's this nonsense. I mean, there was a unique brutality to the right army is what I'm getting at, okay?

And again, this isn't what aboutism, but I it's, this is something that's missing from the court history record, okay? Or it's something that's not dealt with at all. In part because it's imperative in order to substantiate the court history narrative have to posit that the vermic and the boffin s s was was uniquely brutal and in contempt for the laws and customs of war in a unique way that stands apart from all other conduct of all combatants in the war that's why i raised this as well as like i said that from the outset of this discussion um it's essential understanding concrete terms the the european view of

the war against the bullshit it's essential you know this wasn't this was stuff that was being encountered by ladgers in the field and and was ubiquitous this was not comparable the like you know horror stories of you know of

of 1917 of you know oh America must intervene in the great war because you know the dirty hunt is crucifying French boys like that's not we're not talking about the kind of thing at all we're talking about documented acts of horrendous brutality outside of any kind of normal combat operation.

But it's also, what I've got to say too is, again, I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of Russians and maybe just other Slavic people who are going to think and being bigoted or just trying to be mean or something. There's not the case at all. And I will say this. And Von Manstein, who people have mixed feelings,

about but i it's important to pay attention to do his testimony whether you love or hate the guy or think he was a great man or think he was a traitor to his furor and to his people um uh that's not important for him about to drop but if i managed to drop consistently that the red army russian soldier he loomed large in the minds of all europeans under arms just because he was incredibly game and incredibly tough. There's endless, there's just as many anecdotes and eyewitness testimony about the incredible gameness and toughness and ability to endure pain

and hardship and deprivation and still fight effectively of a other Red Army trooper as there is about his propensity for you know, horrible, horrible violence against against vulnerable populations, whether they're POWs or female non-combatants or what have you so that's not our purpose here is to just bash the Russians or you know suggest that they're inferior or something at all I just wanted to make that clear and the fact they were they were and are so tough in game is one of the reasons

why you know they were such a feared adversary you know with uh anybody can be brutal in fact often like brutality is the recourse of uh of the weakling but um I I Yeah I think I think I think

I think it's maybe a good point to kind of stop because I The rest of my notes and the rest of the number is on my mind That I kind of be jumping into Stuff that I want to cover in the next episode because it deals Specifically with what was alleged Nuremberg into the testimony they're in

If I drop it now it's kind of going to and confuse the narrative. What I'd like to talk about next, though, I'd like to talk about the war in the West in terms of how it resolved into combat, kind of like we did last episode with Barbarossa, but also the strategic bombing campaign by REF and U.S. Army Air Forces,

because that's important, and it bears not just on the context of how combat developed in the Western Front, but it also comes to bear on how the Nuremberg indictment was structured and crafted and what was redacted and what was not. And then after that episode, we'll probably

be two episodes to deal with the Nurember Tribunal, but it's such a huge topic. And then it's totally up to you because it's your show. I wanted to do kind of a final episode of this series where we can just like feel questions that people want to know about. I mean, we'll take your question before and

obviously, but like some of the like some of the some of the british studs who follow you and follow my stuff like uh like these english and scotch dudes they want us to talk about like north africa and that would be a great freaking topic um and like other guys want to talk a little bit more about um about uh you know about kind of the uh the hiller was a stress or like uh intrigue and things and that i mean that'd be great too i mean there's a totally up to you but i think that might be worthwhile and it would kind of get people a little more involved i look forward to it yeah yeah hell yeah Okay, yeah, but that's, that's, I think this is a good stopping point.

All right. Plug your work and plug what you want to plug and, yeah. Okay, I'm having a report. My manuscript for the next steel store is practically finished. This is about two weeks late, later than I wanted it to be, but that's going to be dropping eminently this summer. It makes me very happy, so it'll soon be available. You can find me at, I'm on T-Gre. t.m.m.

slash the number seven, H-O-M-A-S-777. You can find me on Substack, realthomas-777. That's substack.com. You can find me on Gab at Real Thomas-7-777. I'm actually on true social now.

Not because I've gone to, like, mega or something, I've got a couple friends there and I'm interested to see what Mr. Trump is saying because there's been, as far as I can tell, like no real coverage of election season, which is strange at this stage in the game. But you can find me there.

I mean, the real Thomas 777. I'm not real active there, but any of my content like this, I posted up there, I posted on Gab. You can always find it on T-Ram, but that's how to find me. And if you want to get hold of me personally, hit me up on T-Gram by direct message.

I'll give you an email or a phone number. I appreciate it, man. Until the next time. Yeah, thank you, Pete.