German Reich

But if you look at the history of the German Federal Republic or Germany, you would see that since 1800, we had seven changes of Germany.

Deutscher Bund, Deutsches Reich, Weimarer Republik, Hitler, small Germany, united Germany.

So seven ruptures, seven state ruptures.

Look at France.

After breaking nearly every excavation rule in the book, he brought the remains back to the museum, where even more archaeological rules were broken, thanks to who was in power.

The old German Reich must now unite in Nuremberg.

The National Socialists, otherwise known as the Nazis, were a year into their rule under Adolf Hitler, who delivered speeches like this one, which promoted the idea of a Germanic master race.

The German Reich will stand firm.

Archaeologists were a big part of Hitler's nation-building propaganda program, and they were looking for evidence that Aryans came from Germany, and that's why the Nazis sent their archaeologists to this museum.

They quickly declared these remains, which were likely those of a member of Europe's Indo-European ancestors, to be instead those of an Aryan man from the Neolithic period.

And there was very good offices between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti al-Husseini, who despite what propaganda and mainstream history suggests, He came from a lineage that very much had a claim to the mantle of leadership in Palestine and from a very proud lineage that was and remains very respected among Palestinians across the sectarian divide, Christian and Muslim.

In order to understand that relationship, though, it's important to deal with the relations between the German Reich and the Islamic world generally.

Early on, the Third Reich viewed the Islamic world not in reductionist terms, but as very much a political force that had momentum.

the historical process but that also was an important ally to be cultivated in the war against bolshevism and and and jewry as they viewed it and this wasn't just pragmatic there was a basic affinity there with some qualifications and this is important and uh it's impossible to talk about this with people in a rational manner because they just go berserk if you mention Islam.

That's one of the reasons I haven't submitted it for formal editing to a publisher yet.

There's this myth, some of which derives from the testimony of Albert Speer, which I consider to be not remotely credible, obviously.

He described the final months of the German Reich as Hitler developing this sort of nihilistic apathy punctuated by fits of rage and an impulse to sort of burn everything down.

Hitler's actions don't indicate that.

You're painting a picture here.

I can start to understand why the Nazi state are gonna get involved in this is because they want future Germans for their German Reich, and they want to replenish dwindling birth, um, levels.

And obviously it's about pushing this idea about we are the superior race, so we're gonna make sure that, that only the best people are having babies.

And then conversely to that, they are now sterilizing people that they deem as undesirable.

But, um, you know, and also too, like I-- it's not most of these counterfactuals, there isn't something around it, but I'll get into the, the, a more kind of coherent, um, narrative in a moment.

But a lot of these counterfactual, um, speculations about what would have happened in, you know, if, um, Edward VIII hadn't abdicated and if the War Party hadn't prevailed in the UK, or alternatively, if Sea Lion had actually been a seriously devised mission to conquer the United Kingdom, you know, by, by, by force of arms, by the German Reich.

Um, like, like Mosley absolutely, like would have been the man that the Reich looked to, to, you know, um, to, um, act as, as kind of like a proxy regime, you know, in no small measure.

Because Mosley, um, he, he, he wasn't really a fringe figure, you know, like he w- he was like a, a very respectable guy.

But, you know, they got, they got fought, they were, they were beaten back by this kind of rainbow coalition of people who realize that's not international character.

Like, that's a weird way to come at the BUF because they really weren't, like, don't get me wrong.

Um, the BUF absolutely was, uh, was, um, you know, um, favorable to the German Reich.

And, and they certainly viewed, um, they certainly viewed Jews as the enemies of the empire in political terms.

You know, not just the plan specifically, but, you know, the kinds of sympathies and the ethno-sectarian prejudices and And, and kind of radical viewpoints that gave rise to that, uh, sort of, uh, that, to that sort of thinking in the first place.

You know, there really was a core of, uh, of extremists, you know, who had a, a, a, a great historical, uh, animosity, uh, made all the more, uh, made all the more vicious by, you know, the excesses, uh, um, that, that were underway in the, in the most recent hostilities, you know, between, uh, uh, between, you know, European Jewry and, and, uh, and the German Reich and its allied states.

And, uh, there was a, a coterie of men in Roosevelt's orbit who were very, very powerful, you know, not the least of which was, uh, was Henry Morgenthau, um, the Treasury Secretary, who was, uh, you know, the author of the Sonnen plan.

Um, so these, these, these circumstances were really not precedented, in my opinion, except perhaps, uh, in the, uh, case of the thirty, in, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, which obviously was what had established the preceding paradigm, as we talked about, that had endured more or less for, uh, about three hundred years preceding.

And [coughs] Truman very much had a notion that he wanted the Nuremberg proceedings, particularly of the major war criminals...

I mean, if you recall, as I'm sure you do, but also the, the viewers and listeners, you know, uh, we discussed in the last episode how this distinction between major war criminals and minor war criminals, this had, uh, this had an independent legal significance in terms of what the victors wanted to accomplish.

Because they were trying to characterize the leadership of the German Reich and its control group as not ordinary actors in the service of a state, but as parties to a kind of criminal conspiracy that was not precedented in modern statecraft.

And thus, you know, it was not, you know, the men who constituted this control group, you know, should not be afforded the protections or the presumed, uh, you know, legitimacy and, uh, and, uh, and, and prophylactic assumptions that, you know, allow them to be spared, uh, you know, personal liability for acts of state that would ordinarily be extended to a government, okay? Now, that's however one-- what everyone's politics are, I mean, that's a very dramatic orientation, okay? And it's very much a break with precedent, particularly in the modern a- modern era, okay? Particularly in the era of Westphalian peace and subsequent.