1 00:00:00,420 --> 00:00:05,140 Greetings, listeners and friends of the Overlap podcast. This is Joshua coming to you. 2 00:00:05,540 --> 00:00:10,300 If you are just tuning in this week, this is actually part two of a two-part episode. 3 00:00:10,920 --> 00:00:19,200 So, if you go back to the last episode about Hitler and Nazis and making Germany great again, 4 00:00:19,540 --> 00:00:23,640 part one, you want to go back to next week, listen to that whole thing, and join us right back here. 5 00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:28,160 If you have already listened last week, and this is not your first time, 6 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:30,660 welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. 7 00:00:30,740 --> 00:00:32,160 I hope you shared it with one of your friends. 8 00:00:32,560 --> 00:00:37,880 I hope you rated us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. 9 00:00:38,460 --> 00:00:43,880 We are going to take a deep dive, and we have been taking a deep dive into Germany, 10 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:48,860 right up into the World War I and World War II eras. 11 00:00:49,020 --> 00:00:55,540 Will and I are kind of talking back and forth through the perspective of a handful of typical German citizens at the time 12 00:00:55,540 --> 00:00:57,940 through journals and diaries and things of that nature. 13 00:00:57,940 --> 00:01:01,360 Without further ado, check it out. 14 00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:22,620 Yeah, so Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 30th, the very end of January 1933. 15 00:01:24,020 --> 00:01:30,740 The Enabling Act was passed on March 23rd of that same year. 16 00:01:30,980 --> 00:01:32,560 Less than two months. 17 00:01:32,660 --> 00:01:38,220 It wasn't even 60 days from becoming chancellor to the Enabling Act. 18 00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:45,400 And then two months later, two months after that, he created a law against the founding of new political parties. 19 00:01:45,400 --> 00:01:52,440 He formally dissolved every other political party and made the Nazi party the only legal party in Germany, 20 00:01:53,020 --> 00:01:55,940 creating a one-party state, right? 21 00:01:56,480 --> 00:02:05,380 So now the chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi one-party state has absolute power secured. 22 00:02:05,380 --> 00:02:12,400 The regime moved to silence every single piece of dissent. 23 00:02:12,820 --> 00:02:15,940 The first target was the free press, right? 24 00:02:16,020 --> 00:02:18,560 First, they gave it a label. 25 00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:24,820 The Nazis branded the critical press as the enemy of the people or the Volksfind. 26 00:02:26,820 --> 00:02:28,960 There we go. Volksfind. 27 00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:35,660 And Joseph Goebbels, the new minister of propaganda, this would be like Stephen Miller in our time, 28 00:02:36,260 --> 00:02:39,920 accused journalists of spreading malicious lies to weaken the nation. 29 00:02:40,220 --> 00:02:44,920 So this framed journalism not as a public service, right? 30 00:02:44,980 --> 00:02:53,040 Like not as a way for the public to be informed of what was happening in their own leadership and government. 31 00:02:53,460 --> 00:02:56,840 Journalism was now framed directly as treason. 32 00:02:57,220 --> 00:03:03,520 Now, newspapers had been critical of Hitler, like the Munich Post that called, actually called the Nazis the poison kitchen. 33 00:03:04,260 --> 00:03:06,700 They were obviously the first to go, right? 34 00:03:07,140 --> 00:03:08,960 Then came the legal purge. 35 00:03:09,760 --> 00:03:10,680 October 4th. 36 00:03:10,940 --> 00:03:12,480 Now, if you're, we're still in the same year. 37 00:03:12,620 --> 00:03:14,860 Like all of this was, is within one year. 38 00:03:15,220 --> 00:03:21,580 The regime passed the, here we go, Schriftliedergesetz or Editor's Law. 39 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:29,340 This law required all journalists to register with the propaganda ministry and prove they were Aryan. 40 00:03:29,820 --> 00:03:37,720 It was basically, you know, like, hey, sign this contract that you agree to participate in all of these rules. 41 00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:42,320 And then you'll also have to produce the documentation that you are Aryan. 42 00:03:43,100 --> 00:03:45,020 Of white descent, Germanic descent. 43 00:03:45,020 --> 00:03:47,320 Otherwise, you're going to take away your press pass, right? 44 00:03:47,620 --> 00:03:47,840 Yeah. 45 00:03:48,300 --> 00:03:53,420 We'll take away all your press badges and you won't be allowed to come to the press corps meetings any longer. 46 00:03:53,640 --> 00:04:10,880 So that single act actually purged thousands of Jewish and liberal journalists from their job because either they refused to join the propaganda ministry or register with the propaganda ministry, or they couldn't produce documentation that proved they were Aryan. 47 00:04:10,880 --> 00:04:15,660 So from then on, the journalists were directly accountable to Goebbels. 48 00:04:15,860 --> 00:04:24,300 The law basically told them that they had to keep anything out of the newspaper that weakened the strength of the German Reich. 49 00:04:24,520 --> 00:04:27,920 So it was vaguely worded that way on purpose. 50 00:04:28,160 --> 00:04:31,980 Anything essentially that would weaken the strength of the German Reich. 51 00:04:33,120 --> 00:04:40,320 The final nail in the coffin in the silencing of the stint was the destruction of ideas. 52 00:04:40,960 --> 00:04:52,720 On May 10th, again, same year, we're all in 1933, in Berlin and other university towns, students and essay members held massive book burnings. 53 00:04:52,720 --> 00:04:56,680 Over 25,000, quote, un-German books. 54 00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:01,920 Works by Jewish authors like Albert Einstein, if you've heard of him. 55 00:05:03,180 --> 00:05:06,860 Pacifists like Eirik Maria Remarque. 56 00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:12,000 And Americans like Helen Keller were thrown into bonfires. 57 00:05:12,260 --> 00:05:15,420 Just giant book burnings in large cities. 58 00:05:15,420 --> 00:05:23,300 With those book burnings, Goebbels said that this is the end of an era of extreme Jewish intellectualism. 59 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:26,120 And it's now at an end, end quote. 60 00:05:26,420 --> 00:05:34,380 From the United States, Helen Keller actually wrote a defiant letter to the students of Germany saying, you know, history has taught you nothing. 61 00:05:34,380 --> 00:05:44,140 If you think you could kill ideas, you can burn my books, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. 62 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:51,140 Now, this war on ideas was matched by a brutal attack on people. 63 00:05:51,140 --> 00:05:59,820 The SA and the new Gestapo, the secret state police, the Blackshirts, were free to crush all political opposition. 64 00:06:00,740 --> 00:06:02,320 You spit, we hit. 65 00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:04,960 Opponents were dragged from their homes. 66 00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:15,240 They were beaten, tortured, and thrown into literally the concentration camps that created our familiarity with the word concentration camps. 67 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:19,920 By July 14th, 1933, everything was complete. 68 00:06:20,440 --> 00:06:23,760 They created a new law that banned all other political parties. 69 00:06:24,100 --> 00:06:26,020 That was the one party state we were talking about earlier. 70 00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:30,620 Chaotic, multi-party democracy. 71 00:06:31,620 --> 00:06:33,880 That was called the Weimar Republic. 72 00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:36,540 Was replaced by silence. 73 00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:38,900 And fearful conformity. 74 00:06:38,900 --> 00:06:42,900 Now it's time to figure out what the new normal is going to be like in the Volksgemeinschaft. 75 00:06:43,820 --> 00:06:48,420 So you can't just leave the vacuum here now that life has been completely, life has been destroyed. 76 00:06:48,540 --> 00:06:49,780 Life as they know it has been destroyed. 77 00:06:50,460 --> 00:06:51,120 Multiple times over. 78 00:06:51,120 --> 00:06:51,360 Freedom, anyway. 79 00:06:52,100 --> 00:06:53,040 Yeah, freedom is gone. 80 00:06:53,220 --> 00:06:57,360 You're not allowed to hear any facts that are not favorable to the current government. 81 00:06:57,580 --> 00:06:59,360 They have to fill the vacuum with a new normal. 82 00:07:00,100 --> 00:07:04,920 And for many Germans who weren't targeted as enemies, now, I mean, life just goes on, right? 83 00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:12,040 I guess, at the very least, there's now not quite so many people competing for limited resources, because many of them are in concentration camps. 84 00:07:12,280 --> 00:07:19,400 But the life of the average German citizen went from the chaos of the Weimar years to apparent order, right? 85 00:07:19,580 --> 00:07:20,840 To some semblance of order. 86 00:07:21,620 --> 00:07:26,260 The economy began to recover, because any economic policies could be backed with threat of force. 87 00:07:26,840 --> 00:07:33,400 And anybody opposing them or anybody challenging them was subject to being thrown in a concentration camp. 88 00:07:33,920 --> 00:07:40,380 So, to some extent, to the average German citizen, it appeared that there was a return to normality, to order. 89 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:43,900 Yeah, eggs were a specific price. 90 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:44,760 Right. 91 00:07:45,100 --> 00:07:48,660 Gasoline could be purchased at lower prices than ever before. 92 00:07:49,400 --> 00:07:53,560 Normalcy started to return to Germany beneath the surface. 93 00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:53,920 Right. 94 00:07:54,680 --> 00:08:00,600 And beneath that sort of calm surface, you have a deep change that's happening. 95 00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:07,420 And what's happening is that the Nazi party, led by Hitler, wasn't just content to have control of Germany. 96 00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:15,240 They wanted to reshape German society in their image, creating a new reality built entirely on propaganda, spectacle, and conformity. 97 00:08:15,420 --> 00:08:20,460 They wanted everybody to look and think like them and to follow along like good little drones. 98 00:08:20,980 --> 00:08:28,360 And the way they built that was basically just a whole new mythology, a whole new story of who the German people are and what it meant to be German. 99 00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:37,260 This Aryan idea of, you know, sort of basically saying what it meant to be a good German from a genetic perspective. 100 00:08:38,260 --> 00:08:47,520 And the guy in charge of this new reality and in charge of fabricating it out of a whole cloth was this person who's already mentioned, Dr. Joseph Garibalds, the minister of propaganda. 101 00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:49,660 They weren't even hiding it. 102 00:08:49,740 --> 00:08:50,560 Like it was just there. 103 00:08:50,860 --> 00:08:51,080 Right. 104 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:54,100 They're just like, he's the one who does the propaganda. 105 00:08:54,620 --> 00:08:54,800 Right. 106 00:08:54,860 --> 00:08:55,040 Of course. 107 00:08:55,180 --> 00:08:56,220 He's the propaganda guy. 108 00:08:57,660 --> 00:08:59,040 He's the one, the storyteller. 109 00:08:59,880 --> 00:09:02,400 So they took control of everything. 110 00:09:02,740 --> 00:09:08,420 I mean, you name it, art, music, films, books, radio, and of course the press, as we've already said. 111 00:09:08,920 --> 00:09:13,580 And their goal was to create an environment where the Nazi worldview was the only one available. 112 00:09:14,300 --> 00:09:15,780 It's either our way or the highway. 113 00:09:16,620 --> 00:09:19,620 If you're not on the Volkswagen, you know, get out of the way. 114 00:09:20,500 --> 00:09:24,580 So they sort of repeated this story so many times it just became truth. 115 00:09:24,660 --> 00:09:25,980 Like you're hearing it over and over again. 116 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:32,420 Everywhere you turn on a radio, you go to a theater, you read a book, whatever books are left. 117 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:42,700 They're all now sanitized and they tell the truth that the Nazi party was putting out there or they were repeating that worldview so often that people just began to believe it. 118 00:09:42,700 --> 00:09:58,600 And again, you know, you think this can't happen, but it happens over and over again throughout history where these authoritarian governments basically wipe out any memory of the past, any connections to the past, and start with a new narrative. 119 00:09:58,700 --> 00:10:14,500 And this propaganda was designed, again, like Hitler's speeches, to appeal not to reason, not to facts, but to emotion, to feelings, to perceived slights, and to awaken the imagination of the public and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. 120 00:10:14,720 --> 00:10:18,320 The ultimate expression of this was the Nuremberg rally, the annual rally. 121 00:10:18,480 --> 00:10:19,760 These weren't political conventions. 122 00:10:19,980 --> 00:10:26,580 They were religious festivals for the Nazi faith, carefully choreographed to create a sense of overwhelming power and unity. 123 00:10:26,780 --> 00:10:29,080 To show people this is the might of Germany, right? 124 00:10:29,180 --> 00:10:37,260 To parade, literally parade the might of Germany in front of the people to remind them who was in charge and who was here to save Germany from embarrassment and further ruin. 125 00:10:37,580 --> 00:10:39,440 So the experience was a sensory overload. 126 00:10:39,820 --> 00:10:44,600 I mean, it was essentially a concert or a festival, like you might think of a religious festival. 127 00:10:44,600 --> 00:10:49,920 You know, they had their own, the marching soldiers, the Wagnerian music, right? 128 00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:54,160 You know, the, was it the March of the Valkyries or the Flight of the Valkyries? 129 00:10:54,940 --> 00:10:59,740 You know, you can, you can hear the music basically in the background of these Nuremberg rallies. 130 00:11:00,700 --> 00:11:06,280 And they're basically overwhelming the people's senses and chanting, you know, creating chants about the leader. 131 00:11:06,420 --> 00:11:14,040 You know, I'm sure there were chants of lock them up for the, uh, the, uh, disgraced former journalists. 132 00:11:14,620 --> 00:11:16,460 But the visuals were even more powerful. 133 00:11:17,580 --> 00:11:24,340 Um, the rally grounds were set up as a giant stage with massive stone structures designed by the architect Albert Speer. 134 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:33,340 Um, the rallies featured huge synchronized formations of people, seas of uniforms, forests of swastika banners, and torchlight parades. 135 00:11:34,060 --> 00:11:42,960 The most famous effect was Speer's Cathedral of Light, or Lichtdome, where 130 powerful searchlights pointed straight up, creating a temple of light beams. 136 00:11:43,780 --> 00:11:44,380 You can imagine. 137 00:11:44,580 --> 00:11:48,980 The effect was to make every person feel like a small but important part of a vast, powerful collective. 138 00:11:49,940 --> 00:11:52,740 The Volksgemeinschaft, or people's community. 139 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:59,980 At the center of it all was the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler himself, whose dramatic entrance and speeches were the climax of the ritual, right? 140 00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:09,120 So they would whip the people into a frenzy, and then Hitler would take the stage with his compelling speeches and push them over the edge, reinforcing this cult of personality as the savior of the nation. 141 00:12:09,120 --> 00:12:14,720 So he appeared on stage at the end to sort of talk about the glorious future of, of, uh, Germany. 142 00:12:15,260 --> 00:12:19,280 And this focus on spectacle and emotion replaced any rational debate. 143 00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:21,280 There was no debate that was happening here. 144 00:12:21,340 --> 00:12:22,640 This was all pageantry. 145 00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:28,940 And the feeling of belonging to a unified, invincible movement became more powerful than any policy discussion ever could be. 146 00:12:29,680 --> 00:12:32,840 The rally was a performance of the leader's mystical connection to the people. 147 00:12:33,560 --> 00:12:37,080 A show of overwhelming support that projected an image of strength and inevitability. 148 00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:45,760 This model, using mass rallies to forge a direct emotional bond between the leader and his followers, has proven to be a lasting and powerful tool for populists. 149 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:51,680 This is where Hitler essentially wrote the playbook for the populist takeover of an existing democracy. 150 00:12:51,880 --> 00:12:56,920 And then, of course, not to be outdone by Mr. Mussolini. 151 00:12:56,920 --> 00:13:01,060 Hitler had his own version of the future of the Third Reich, the Hitler Youth. 152 00:13:01,760 --> 00:13:05,140 Dr. Rima, tell us a little bit about how they indoctrinated the children of the age. 153 00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:06,320 Absolutely. 154 00:13:06,740 --> 00:13:11,240 So, ultimately, their goal was a thousand-year Reich, right? 155 00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:18,720 This Nazi party knew that it had to capture the minds of the next generation. 156 00:13:19,160 --> 00:13:24,020 This generation, they had to use the techniques of war, right? 157 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:28,220 Absolute power, might to crush dissent. 158 00:13:28,900 --> 00:13:37,160 But they knew that if they were to hold it for the thousand years, they had to capture the minds of the youngest in the bunch, right? 159 00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:42,440 After 1933, the entire educational system was changed. 160 00:13:43,160 --> 00:13:46,180 Teachers had to join the Nazi Teachers League. 161 00:13:46,440 --> 00:13:49,320 And if you didn't, you weren't politically reliable. 162 00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:50,700 You were fired. 163 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:53,340 And good luck to you. 164 00:13:53,480 --> 00:13:59,780 Because now all schools are owned by the Nazis. 165 00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:02,960 The curriculum, entirely rewritten. 166 00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:08,780 It focused on the shame of Versailles and the heroic rise of the Nazis. 167 00:14:09,860 --> 00:14:15,140 Biology was entirely replaced by the Rassenkunde, or race knowledge. 168 00:14:16,180 --> 00:14:27,040 It's this weird pseudoscientific belief that kind of taught that Germans were the superiority of the Aryan race 169 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:32,200 and the inferiority of other races, especially the Jewish people. 170 00:14:32,920 --> 00:14:45,400 Even math, even math was Nazified with word problems designed to instill ideology, like calculating the financial burden of caring for the disabled, right? 171 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:49,340 To frame them as a drain on the state. 172 00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:54,540 Now, this was reinforced by total control over the free time of the kids. 173 00:14:54,540 --> 00:14:56,400 There was no recess. 174 00:14:56,700 --> 00:14:58,700 There was no unstructured playtime. 175 00:14:59,400 --> 00:15:04,700 By 1939, six years later, membership in the state's youth organizations were mandatory. 176 00:15:05,060 --> 00:15:08,520 For boys, it was the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth. 177 00:15:08,620 --> 00:15:15,140 For girls, it was the Bundesumadl, Mädel, or BDM, not to be confused with BDSM. 178 00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:18,780 Life in these groups was a subtle process of conditioning. 179 00:15:18,780 --> 00:15:24,980 It wasn't as very, you know, very Einzweig as, this is the way it will be and we will enforce it with all of our rules. 180 00:15:25,300 --> 00:15:27,300 This was very subtle. 181 00:15:27,520 --> 00:15:33,680 For boys, the focus was on discipline and conformity and pre-military training. 182 00:15:34,120 --> 00:15:35,880 Make sure you keep your faces shaved. 183 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:39,380 Make sure you can pass PT exams at least twice a year. 184 00:15:39,820 --> 00:15:42,560 They did paramilitary drills. 185 00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:43,500 They marched. 186 00:15:43,980 --> 00:15:46,220 And, of course, competitive sports, right? 187 00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:49,440 So that there can be this hierarchy of winner and loser. 188 00:15:49,720 --> 00:15:52,780 And then they also learned about racial hygiene. 189 00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:55,780 This takeover of their lives, I mean, it had a purpose, right? 190 00:15:55,820 --> 00:15:59,400 It was to break down the structure of the family. 191 00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:03,700 The state wanted to be the primary influence in a child's life, not their parents. 192 00:16:04,080 --> 00:16:10,620 Children were even encouraged to actually report their parents if they criticized the regime, kind of like, you know, DARE. 193 00:16:10,860 --> 00:16:20,820 If you're in the millennial category, we were asked to report our parents for doing drugs or if we thought anything was a drug to report it into our DARE police officer. 194 00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:37,500 This process transferred authority from the family to the state, basically making sure that all of this Nazi ideology, this propaganda would be deeply embedded in the next generation so that you're not having to control them. 195 00:16:37,500 --> 00:16:43,380 They're predisposed to believe what you're telling them. 196 00:16:44,060 --> 00:16:49,460 And this sort of coordination and control is referred to as the Gleichschaltung. 197 00:16:49,900 --> 00:16:51,100 Tell us about the Gleichschaltung. 198 00:16:51,100 --> 00:17:02,560 Yes, the Gleichschaltung, a term that meant coordination or bringing the line, was the methodical extension of Nazi control in every corner of public and private life. 199 00:17:02,880 --> 00:17:09,520 So to see how this worked, we can look at a single town, Northein, as documented by the historian William Sheridan Allen. 200 00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:14,000 In a town like Northein, Gleichschaltung was a swift takeover. 201 00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:18,280 First, as with the national government, the political parties were shut down. 202 00:17:18,840 --> 00:17:20,920 No other parties other than the Nazi party. 203 00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:22,580 But it went deeper than that. 204 00:17:22,580 --> 00:17:29,980 The local veterans association, the singing society, the sports club, all were either dissolved or had their leadership replaced by loyal Nazis. 205 00:17:30,700 --> 00:17:36,120 So if you wanted to continue to be a going concern, you would just sign your rights over to the Nazi party. 206 00:17:36,740 --> 00:17:37,820 Otherwise, you were shut down. 207 00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:39,320 The economy was coordinated. 208 00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:46,120 Going back to this first year, May 2nd, 1933, all independent trade unions were abolished. 209 00:17:46,660 --> 00:17:47,920 So no, you know. 210 00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:49,400 Where do we know about that from? 211 00:17:50,020 --> 00:17:50,060 Right. 212 00:17:50,220 --> 00:17:59,180 These labor unions were all replaced because, of course, those are the sources of this vile, you know, communist and socialist methodology and teachings. 213 00:17:59,440 --> 00:18:00,460 So they were all shut down. 214 00:18:00,540 --> 00:18:12,620 The regime created the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or German labor front, a single massive organization that nearly all workers were forced to join, of which had its purpose not to advocate for these workers, but to enforce industrial discipline. 215 00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:16,720 So they basically became a self-policing force controlled by the Nazi party. 216 00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:20,900 So you had one labor union, but ruled by the political people in power. 217 00:18:21,140 --> 00:18:24,440 What was remarkable is how quickly this happened and how many people went along with it. 218 00:18:24,580 --> 00:18:26,800 In fact, Hitler was surprised as well. 219 00:18:26,860 --> 00:18:30,860 He didn't think it was going to happen this fast, noting that everything is going much faster than we ever dared to hope. 220 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:32,520 This wasn't just top-down force. 221 00:18:32,700 --> 00:18:39,140 Many Germans engaged in more self-coordination, where these people were eager to fit in or protect their careers. 222 00:18:39,380 --> 00:18:45,380 You know, again, these are people who had just dealt with hyperinflation and the loss of everything, all their wealth and all their established resources. 223 00:18:46,140 --> 00:18:49,880 And now the fear of losing that again made them sort of want to self-police. 224 00:18:50,100 --> 00:18:52,720 So these organizations voluntarily aligned with the new regime. 225 00:18:53,100 --> 00:18:54,700 They could see which way the wind was blowing. 226 00:18:55,500 --> 00:19:04,620 And so people like Klaus, our shopkeeper, might have joined the local Nazi-affiliated retailers association, not because he believed in their cause, but because it was a practical thing to do. 227 00:19:05,240 --> 00:19:10,100 If you wanted to keep your doors open, you signed up with the local Nazi party for whatever your job was. 228 00:19:10,260 --> 00:19:12,720 You know, if you're a shopkeeper, you join the Nazi shopkeepers union. 229 00:19:13,560 --> 00:19:20,020 If you're a factory worker, you join the factory workers union, which is all really under the control of the Nazi party. 230 00:19:20,340 --> 00:19:32,400 Because otherwise, it was, you were basically opting out of society and they were going to shut you down and either ship you off to a concentration camp or let you die on the vine from just being cut off from any other resources. 231 00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:39,180 You know, good luck getting anybody to sell you goods or give you any resources when you were on the outs with the Nazi party. 232 00:19:39,580 --> 00:19:50,280 So through this mix of force and voluntary, air quotes, their voluntary coordination, the diverse fabric of German society was rewoven into a single monolithic brown. 233 00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:53,380 So then we had the reckoning, right? 234 00:19:54,460 --> 00:20:00,740 This time of the rise again to power that Germany never was kind of coming out of this propaganda. 235 00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:08,040 And it was actually for a brief period of time, kind of an exciting time for people who were part of the central power. 236 00:20:08,300 --> 00:20:11,400 They actually got to enjoy the benefits of that for a little while. 237 00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:12,980 Can you tell us about that, Joshua? 238 00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:14,560 Yeah, sure. 239 00:20:14,740 --> 00:20:20,320 So we saw, we saw this behavior in the Stanford prison experiment, essentially, right? 240 00:20:20,420 --> 00:20:26,540 Once you're, once you're given a little bit of power, you sort of start to internalize it and take it seriously as, as part of who you are. 241 00:20:26,540 --> 00:20:32,100 In the late East, for many Germans, if you were a Nazi, right? 242 00:20:32,640 --> 00:20:35,740 This was a time of thrilling success. 243 00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:39,100 The economic misery was gone. 244 00:20:39,660 --> 00:20:42,840 We was replaced by full and total employment. 245 00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:48,960 Now, that full and total employment also included work camps that you didn't actually receive money. 246 00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:55,500 But the political chaos had actually given way to this powerful sense of national unity. 247 00:20:55,500 --> 00:21:05,780 And this, this humiliation from Versailles was basically being torn apart by a man who never seemed to make a mistake. 248 00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:15,720 From the perspective of citizens like Friedrich, Germany was finally standing up for itself and being the power that it was meant to be. 249 00:21:16,120 --> 00:21:16,640 Right? 250 00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:22,680 So this kind of led us to this kind of foreign policy as propaganda. 251 00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:24,880 Hitler's foreign policy. 252 00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:24,920 Hitler's foreign policy. 253 00:21:25,440 --> 00:21:28,320 It was, it was a series of bold gambles, right? 254 00:21:28,320 --> 00:21:31,540 Each one literally breaking international treaties. 255 00:21:31,720 --> 00:21:34,620 Each one stunningly successful. 256 00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:41,180 Which basically boosted this, this myth around the man at home in Germany. 257 00:21:41,180 --> 00:21:46,640 In March 1936, he created this remilitarization of the Rhineland. 258 00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,800 Which was clearly in opposition to the Versailles Treaty. 259 00:21:51,140 --> 00:21:54,380 He sent troops back into the demilitarized Rhineland. 260 00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:56,960 His own generals were scared, right? 261 00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:06,200 They were convinced that the French army, because at the time the French, basically each of the allies had, had a place, had a territory in Germany. 262 00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:09,780 You had the French section, the Belgian section, the United States section. 263 00:22:09,900 --> 00:22:13,920 All of these, these areas at the time Rhineland was controlled by the French. 264 00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:17,080 So they were afraid that the French army is going to, going to rise up. 265 00:22:17,180 --> 00:22:19,160 Now we know the French are really good at two things. 266 00:22:19,340 --> 00:22:21,040 Croissants and waving white flags. 267 00:22:21,260 --> 00:22:24,160 Hitler kind of judged the mood correctly, right? 268 00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,840 France wouldn't act without the British. 269 00:22:27,220 --> 00:22:30,280 And Britain was perfectly happy to do not a thing. 270 00:22:30,500 --> 00:22:32,520 Their reaction in Germany was ecstatic, right? 271 00:22:32,580 --> 00:22:36,520 They had, they had giant parties and celebrations just sweeping the whole country. 272 00:22:36,860 --> 00:22:43,680 And Goebbels used that triumph to accelerate the propaganda machine. 273 00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:48,880 He created posters talking about the return of national pride to the economic recovery. 274 00:22:49,620 --> 00:22:50,840 All of these parts. 275 00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:59,260 Now, in that two year period between March 36 and March 38th, they decided to annex Austria. 276 00:22:59,880 --> 00:23:02,100 The Anschluss with Austria. 277 00:23:02,380 --> 00:23:05,200 Hitler's homeland was Austria. 278 00:23:05,580 --> 00:23:08,140 It was portrayed as, as a joyous reunion. 279 00:23:08,140 --> 00:23:11,220 Like German troops were met by cheering crowds. 280 00:23:11,460 --> 00:23:17,020 The event was framed under the slogan, Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer. 281 00:23:17,500 --> 00:23:20,100 One people, one empire, one leader. 282 00:23:20,900 --> 00:23:27,740 And now vote was actually held in Austria to unionize their territory back with Germany. 283 00:23:28,140 --> 00:23:34,080 99.75% of Austrians supposedly voted for the union with Germany. 284 00:23:34,420 --> 00:23:40,820 Now, this achieved, was achieved through this, both the enthusiasm and this intense propaganda. 285 00:23:41,340 --> 00:23:46,760 Of course, it barred Jews and people who weren't Nazis from voting. 286 00:23:46,900 --> 00:23:48,000 They just weren't allowed to. 287 00:23:48,120 --> 00:23:53,080 At the time, you couldn't even get an identity document unless you could prove that you had Aryan heritage. 288 00:23:53,460 --> 00:24:03,480 So, propaganda posters showed a sea of raised hands and a Nazi salute or, you know, the normal Roman salute of an electric car manufacturer billionaire. 289 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:13,280 Sort of reinforcing the story that the support of Germany invading, essentially, or annexing Austria was unanimous. 290 00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:21,120 And each of these things, each of these successes sort of built on the inaction of Britain and France, right? 291 00:24:21,180 --> 00:24:22,700 So, they just weren't doing anything. 292 00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:24,220 France wouldn't act without Britain. 293 00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:29,200 Britain wouldn't act because they didn't have the support of the United States. 294 00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:31,560 Communication had kind of broken down by this time, right? 295 00:24:31,860 --> 00:24:39,000 You also had this sort of rush after World War I for intelligence and information between the communists and the allies. 296 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:48,060 So, basically, haunted by World War I, right, the French and the British, they sort of pursued this idea of appeasement, right? 297 00:24:48,140 --> 00:24:52,260 So, failing to enforce the treaties that Hitler openly defied. 298 00:24:52,540 --> 00:25:03,320 Not on purpose, but because they were all recovering from this giant first ever great war, this war to end all wars, right? 299 00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:11,780 So, for the German public, this kind of solidified the image of Hitler, yet again, as a political genius. 300 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:20,000 Nobody could work out deals like this guy that could restore German honor and didn't even have to use the army. 301 00:25:20,140 --> 00:25:26,540 There was no tanks, no weapons, no shots, no, you know, shot fired across the tank. 302 00:25:27,580 --> 00:25:32,240 This pattern didn't actually satisfy the regime, unfortunately. 303 00:25:32,700 --> 00:25:34,980 It actually emboldened them. 304 00:25:35,380 --> 00:25:44,100 It made future larger aggression seem inevitable because the thirst for power was a thirst that could not be quenched. 305 00:25:44,300 --> 00:25:49,820 Now, like all expansions of territory, we're going to have some conflicts. 306 00:25:50,220 --> 00:25:51,800 Will, tell us about this next one. 307 00:25:51,800 --> 00:26:00,060 So, it turns out you couldn't get 99% of Poland to vote for joining this growing German, this new Germany, right? 308 00:26:00,180 --> 00:26:06,700 So, since the Poles weren't going to go quietly, September 1st, 1939, Hitler decided to invade. 309 00:26:07,140 --> 00:26:10,980 So, September 1st, 1939, he invades Poland, starting World War II. 310 00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:17,200 But the real goal became evident on June 22nd of 1941 when they invaded the Soviet Union. 311 00:26:17,360 --> 00:26:20,780 That was not a small, like, that was not a battle that could be ignored. 312 00:26:20,900 --> 00:26:23,280 At this point, they were taking on a vast country. 313 00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:29,120 And anybody who's played risk, right, knows you don't go into the Soviet Union. 314 00:26:29,260 --> 00:26:30,260 You don't invade Russia. 315 00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:32,320 Certainly not in the winter. 316 00:26:33,300 --> 00:26:33,760 That's right. 317 00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:52,120 But in the warm days of June, mid-summer, beginning of summer here, Hitler was emboldened by his string of victories and his recent pretty complete and uncontested takeover, virtually uncontested takeover of Poland, to go into Russia and invade the Soviet Union. 318 00:26:52,940 --> 00:26:54,240 And this wasn't a normal war. 319 00:26:54,340 --> 00:26:57,860 This was a Wernischungskrieg, or War of Annihilation. 320 00:26:57,860 --> 00:27:09,320 It was an ideological crusade to destroy the Judeo-Bolshevism, this mythological Judeo-Bolshevism, and conquer Labenschrown, or the living space for the German people. 321 00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:17,840 This was just a secure enough land for the German people to spread out and accomplish their manifest destiny of, you know, ruling the world anew. 322 00:27:18,060 --> 00:27:24,400 And now this is where our story shifts from the political battlegrounds to the real frontlines of World War II. 323 00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,080 And we're going to tell that story through the letters of the soldiers who were fought there. 324 00:27:30,060 --> 00:27:33,980 This initial advance into Soviet territory seemed to promise another quick victory. 325 00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,880 You know, again, as with all wars, they start with a, oh, it'll be over in a couple months, right? 326 00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:40,280 It'll be over in no time. 327 00:27:41,180 --> 00:27:43,020 And yet it didn't work out that way. 328 00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:53,860 So, although that promise began that way, when the Germans began, the German 6th Army began to push towards Stalingrad in late 1942, the war changed. 329 00:27:54,220 --> 00:28:04,080 And we have here the diary of William Hoffman, a German soldier, who gives a chilling account of the descent into hell that was the siege of Stalingrad. 330 00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:07,320 July 29th, 1942, Hoffman writes, 331 00:28:07,420 --> 00:28:10,380 The company commander says the Russian troops are completely broken. 332 00:28:10,980 --> 00:28:12,360 Victory is not far away. 333 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:14,780 September 20th, 1942. 334 00:28:15,500 --> 00:28:16,240 A few months later. 335 00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:19,320 Our regiment is involved in constant heavy fighting. 336 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:20,860 You don't see them at all. 337 00:28:20,940 --> 00:28:24,540 They have established themselves in houses and cellars and are firing on all sides. 338 00:28:25,300 --> 00:28:25,780 Barbarians. 339 00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:27,140 They use gangster methods. 340 00:28:27,780 --> 00:28:29,620 The Russians have stopped surrendering at all. 341 00:28:29,620 --> 00:28:36,720 And that's pretty accurate, given that the Russians were told if they surrendered, they'd be shot by their own fellow soldiers. 342 00:28:37,580 --> 00:28:41,740 By October 22nd, 1942, Hoffman reports, 343 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:43,700 Our regiment has failed to break into the factory. 344 00:28:44,300 --> 00:28:45,440 We have lost many men. 345 00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:48,140 Every time you move, you have to jump over bodies. 346 00:28:48,660 --> 00:28:51,740 The soldiers are calling Stalingrad the mass grave of the German army. 347 00:28:52,660 --> 00:28:54,860 That's a very different tune than we heard back in July. 348 00:28:55,640 --> 00:29:13,000 The Germans were masters of the open field blitzkrieg, but they were not prepared for the brutal house-to-house urban warfare that they discovered that the Soviet soldiers, far from being the racially inferior Untermensch, you know, this is the way the Nazi propaganda painted them. 349 00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,660 They were not just people who were going to be pushovers. 350 00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,780 They were not barbarians with sticks and rocks. 351 00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:24,280 They were soldiers who were going to do, who were going to give everything to protect their homeland. 352 00:29:25,420 --> 00:29:33,020 And they learned this the hard way in November of 1942, when a massive Soviet counteroffensive surrounded the entire German 6th Army. 353 00:29:34,020 --> 00:29:39,600 Hitler, in an act of supreme arrogance, forbade any attempt to break out, promising the army to be supplied by air. 354 00:29:40,340 --> 00:29:41,300 They said, just hold out. 355 00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:42,860 You know, you're surrounded, but don't worry. 356 00:29:42,940 --> 00:29:44,360 We've got aircraft. 357 00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:46,720 We can deliver all the resources you need via air. 358 00:29:46,820 --> 00:29:49,800 When in reality, that was a fantasy on Hitler's part. 359 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:51,440 He thought he couldn't lose, right? 360 00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:53,600 I mean, he had this track record of winning everywhere. 361 00:29:53,860 --> 00:30:01,380 And so he foolishly thought there was no way that these filthy Russian barbarians could do anything to the mighty German army. 362 00:30:02,220 --> 00:30:08,420 And yet, in reality, as they were trapped in the ruins of the city that they had managed to capture through the brutal Russian winter. 363 00:30:08,700 --> 00:30:11,920 But by this point, we're in that winter, a time when you don't ever want to be in a land war in Russia. 364 00:30:12,140 --> 00:30:14,900 And the 6th Army essentially starved and froze to death. 365 00:30:15,340 --> 00:30:19,400 On February 2nd of the following year, in 1943, what was left of the 6th Army surrendered. 366 00:30:20,460 --> 00:30:25,120 Of the nearly 300,000 men trapped, only about 5,000 would ever see Germany again. 367 00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:27,600 Let me repeat that. 368 00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:33,400 Of the 300,000 men trapped there, only 5,000 of them would ever see Germany again. 369 00:30:33,740 --> 00:30:37,200 The news of the defeat of Stalingrad was a profound shock to the German home front. 370 00:30:37,660 --> 00:30:42,680 It shattered the myth of the army's invincibility and planted the first deep seeds of doubt about the Führer's genius. 371 00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,240 So Hitler's first loss, and no one to blame it on. 372 00:30:46,540 --> 00:30:47,900 Where do we turn next, Joshua? 373 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,820 Yeah, so after Stalingrad, the war actually came home to Germany. 374 00:30:53,580 --> 00:31:01,200 The Allied bombing campaign escalated into just a brutal and never-ending assault on Germany's cities. 375 00:31:01,900 --> 00:31:12,440 So the destruction that Germany had brought to Warsaw and London, right, now actually visited upon its own people at an apocalyptic scale. 376 00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:18,640 The civilian experience was one of nightly terror. 377 00:31:19,180 --> 00:31:29,000 They firebombed Dresden on February 13th, 14th, 1945, which actually became sort of a symbol of this, the type of destruction we're dealing with. 378 00:31:29,540 --> 00:31:33,880 Margaret Freyer, a resident, described the scene as, quote, 379 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:57,880 Another survivor, Gerda Drews, recalled the phosphorus, white-hot phosphorus from incendiary bombs running down buildings like, quote, snakes of fire. 380 00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:07,300 The raids created a firestorm, literally a firestorm, a vortex of fire that sucked in the oxygen and generated hurricane-force winds. 381 00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:14,480 People in shelters suffocated or were baked alive, and those people who ran into the streets were turned into human torches. 382 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:17,140 The devastation across Germany was immense. 383 00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:24,380 The campaign destroyed 3.6 million homes and killed 300,000 civilians. 384 00:32:24,380 --> 00:32:25,560 These weren't military. 385 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:27,300 These weren't fighters. 386 00:32:27,580 --> 00:32:30,400 These were just people and families and children. 387 00:32:31,140 --> 00:32:34,140 The psychological impact of this was just as profound. 388 00:32:34,140 --> 00:32:45,180 The constant fear and these invading thoughts of loss, it had a devastating effect on the morale of these people. 389 00:32:45,420 --> 00:32:55,640 After the war, the U.S. did a survey and found the main effects of this to be defeatism, depression, despair, fear, helplessness, fatalism, and apathy. 390 00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,420 Of all those, apathy to me is probably the most surprising. 391 00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:04,920 But the regime's promises of victory rang hollow with the German people. 392 00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:06,400 They were angry. 393 00:33:06,860 --> 00:33:13,200 And it wasn't directed at the Allies necessarily, but increasingly at Nazi leadership. 394 00:33:13,620 --> 00:33:19,580 They promised them victory and delivered ruin and destruction. 395 00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:24,180 That was the downfall of the Guterdammerung. 396 00:33:24,180 --> 00:33:33,520 So the final months of the regime in the spring of 1945 were a Guterdammerung or a twilight of the gods, right? 397 00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:35,580 A complete societal collapse. 398 00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:41,600 The most honest account of this time comes from the anonymous diary, A Woman in Berlin. 399 00:33:42,140 --> 00:33:46,600 As the Soviet Red Army fought its way into the capital, all order vanished, right? 400 00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:53,660 The diary describes the terror of the final battles with civilians hiding in cellars as the city is destroyed. 401 00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:57,700 With the city's surrender, a new horror began, right? 402 00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,140 Years of brutal warfare and propaganda. 403 00:34:01,620 --> 00:34:08,020 Soviet soldiers engaged in a mass wave of rape against German women. 404 00:34:08,020 --> 00:34:11,820 The diarist describes the ordeal with pretty stark clarity. 405 00:34:11,820 --> 00:34:19,800 Recounting how she and other women tried to survive by hiding and finding a single high-ranking Russian officer to, quote, 406 00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,780 protect them from the random violence of others. 407 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:29,580 In the face of total defeat, the ideology that held the nation together for 12 years imploded. 408 00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:34,620 For the most fanatical, the only answer was suicide. 409 00:34:35,260 --> 00:34:39,140 Hitler and Goebbels killed themselves in the Berlin bunker. 410 00:34:39,500 --> 00:34:42,460 But this wasn't limited to the leadership across the country. 411 00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,140 A mass wave of suicide swept through the civilian population. 412 00:34:47,300 --> 00:34:55,580 Entire families, terrified by propaganda about the subhuman Bolsheviks, chose to die rather than face defeat. 413 00:34:55,820 --> 00:35:02,140 The immense suffering of the German people in 1945 was the direct result of the choices made in 1933. 414 00:35:02,140 --> 00:35:13,620 The same people who cheered for national greatness were left to fend for themselves alone in a landscape of total physical, economic, and moral ruin. 415 00:35:13,820 --> 00:35:17,820 The grand promises had ended in rubble, starvation, and shame. 416 00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:26,860 And we now return to, I mean, we can hear these numbers about the hundreds of thousands who died, and that sort of makes it a faceless mass of people. 417 00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:35,900 But if we bring it home to our characters we've created here, we have our soldier Friedrich, who survived the trenches of World War I, 418 00:35:36,460 --> 00:35:42,260 only to die in the frozen mud outside of Stalingrad, one of the millions sacrificed for a madman's dream. 419 00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:50,500 Klaus, our shopkeeper who feared economic chaos, and who was forced to join the Nazi union to keep his store open, 420 00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:53,680 is now buried in the rubble of his store during an air raid. 421 00:35:54,040 --> 00:36:01,580 Sebastian, our law student, fled into exile, spending his life trying to explain how the nation of poets and thinkers had embraced barbarism. 422 00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:06,060 And Doris, our young woman who just wanted to be a star, well, she survived. 423 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:12,380 Traumatized and hungry in a city of ghosts, she learns the brutal math of survival in a conquered land, 424 00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:16,080 her dreams of glamour replaced by the daily fight for a piece of bread. 425 00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:20,680 One historian described this historical event as a storm passing over the lake of private life. 426 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:27,100 Sometimes it's just a shadow and nothing moves, other times it whips the lake into a fury, and sometimes it drains the lake completely. 427 00:36:28,020 --> 00:36:30,100 For Germany, this storm would drain the lake. 428 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,200 The story we followed is one of a nation's deep wounds, 429 00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:37,700 of humiliation, economic despair, and a crippling fear of the future. 430 00:36:38,580 --> 00:36:43,060 The story of a seductive appeal of a powerful voice that promised simple solutions, 431 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:48,780 identified clear enemies and offered the return to a mythical past of strength and unity. 432 00:36:49,180 --> 00:36:51,260 And this is the story of a slow surrender of freedoms. 433 00:36:51,260 --> 00:36:53,460 Each one given up for security and order. 434 00:36:53,940 --> 00:37:02,680 Again, keep in mind, these were people who had seen their daily ordinary lives completely upended following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, 435 00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:10,960 and now had given up their freedoms one by one for the promise of this heroic Germany to rise again and reclaim its rightful throne. 436 00:37:11,300 --> 00:37:13,600 And they were willing to trade their freedoms for that possibility. 437 00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:17,560 And instead, they were left with neither their freedoms nor that hope. 438 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,580 And finally, it's the story of the terrible price paid not by the leaders in their bunkers, 439 00:37:21,780 --> 00:37:26,280 but by the ordinary people in their cellars, on the frozen plains of Russian cities, 440 00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:31,600 and the price paid by the very people who were promised greatness and who so desperately wanted to believe. 441 00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:32,640 That story's over. 442 00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:33,940 That history's written. 443 00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,140 But it leaves us with questions still today. 444 00:37:37,020 --> 00:37:44,740 These questions are not a shout from the past, but a constant, quiet hum just beneath the surface of our own noisy, complicated times. 445 00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:51,500 As we watch inflation get out of control, as we watch the threat of economic devastation arise, 446 00:37:51,900 --> 00:37:53,920 we're going to ask ourselves these same questions. 447 00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,320 We're going to be faced with these same questions that face the German people. 448 00:37:56,540 --> 00:37:58,020 What are we hearing when we choose to listen? 449 00:37:58,240 --> 00:38:02,820 So as Will says, when we choose to listen, what are we actually hearing, right? 450 00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:04,320 Like, what's the purpose of these stories? 451 00:38:04,860 --> 00:38:09,900 I think the purpose is that we understand the past to avoid repeating it. 452 00:38:10,100 --> 00:38:12,960 Now, there's lots to be taken from this one. 453 00:38:13,260 --> 00:38:14,880 There's lots to be taken from the last one. 454 00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:24,700 But unfortunately, this is not the last of the totalitarian, authoritarian regimes that we have inside of this series. 455 00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:26,880 But I don't know about you, Will. 456 00:38:26,940 --> 00:38:29,680 I don't know that I really have a commentary for the end of this one. 457 00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:34,160 So much as just to go ahead and end it here and let it speak for itself. 458 00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:44,680 I would just say that the siren song of order and stability and maybe even glory for some still reemerges. 459 00:38:45,300 --> 00:38:53,140 It never really goes silent, but it certainly can be heard in these uncertain times when fear reigns and chaos seems to be at every turn. 460 00:38:53,620 --> 00:39:00,620 That siren song of safety and order and familiarity, the glorified past, calls to all of us. 461 00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:02,840 And the question is, are we willing to answer its call? 462 00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:15,480 Are we going to crash our ships on the wrecks or the rocks of the sirens when they call with promises of order and glory or promises of returns to better times? 463 00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:19,160 Are we willing to trade our freedoms for the hope of that future that's promised? 464 00:39:19,940 --> 00:39:23,820 Or do we choose another path that remains to be seen? 465 00:39:24,060 --> 00:39:29,340 And what will be of either path is the hard to feel. 466 00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:29,840 Yeah. 467 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:32,300 And that is something that rings true for all of us. 468 00:39:32,820 --> 00:39:33,460 That's why. 469 00:39:34,140 --> 00:39:35,260 That is the overlap. 470 00:39:35,500 --> 00:39:38,140 Thanks for joining me today, Will, for this podcast. 471 00:39:38,540 --> 00:39:39,420 It was a dark one. 472 00:39:40,100 --> 00:39:40,420 It was. 473 00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:44,160 I was going to say it was a pleasure, Joshua, but I don't know if that accurately describes this. 474 00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:45,820 I wouldn't describe it as a pleasure. 475 00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:47,400 It's a pleasure to see you. 476 00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:48,580 It's a pleasure to be with you. 477 00:39:48,580 --> 00:39:52,500 It's not a pleasure to deal with this sort of depth and weight. 478 00:39:53,180 --> 00:39:53,580 Yeah. 479 00:39:53,980 --> 00:39:56,500 But somebody's got to do it and it falls to us. 480 00:39:57,220 --> 00:39:57,620 Exactly. 481 00:39:58,060 --> 00:39:58,820 Well, make sure. 482 00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:01,440 I almost want to say don't like this podcast. 483 00:40:01,580 --> 00:40:03,880 If you wouldn't mind, give us a review, maybe a share. 484 00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:05,540 You don't have to like this one. 485 00:40:05,700 --> 00:40:06,460 We don't like it. 486 00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,820 But it is part of the rise of fascism. 487 00:40:10,060 --> 00:40:10,560 That's it. 488 00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:11,760 Goodbye. 489 00:40:12,240 --> 00:40:13,200 We'll see you next time. 490 00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:43,180 Thank you.