Wehrmacht

Specifically, Franco needed to transport the Moroccan legions who were sympathetic to the nationalist cause from North Africa to the Spanish mainland to rapidly reinforce.

and um hillary convened gearing erhard milch albert kesselring who i made the point you know kesselring was finally his final command was um you know uh the defense of uh italy and uh he was never um his forces were never defeated you know they the war ended so i mean the the vermont the And the Luftwaffe just went home.

But Kesselring at that time was the Luftwaffe's chief of staff.

Milch, who was an absolutely brilliant guy in all kinds of ways, and in operational terms, he was second to none.

It's, uh, it's kind of nostalgic, you know, um, but the, uh, but at the same time, I mean, no matter how much you exalt the, you know, the, the kind of law of the blade and the barrel of a gun over, you know, that of the per real pen and paper of, um, you know, money and buying your way, um, to, to, um, you know, policy realization, um, no matter how much you're enthralled with violence, um, and coercion as sort of the currency of, of, uh, of authority at some point that, that, that sort of runs its course, you know, and it develops, it develops a crisis of legitimacy, you know, and then people just get sick of it.

Um, and this is exactly what happened.

And, uh, the, uh, the, again, once again, to the exaltados were overthrown by, by the French army, uh, on uh which which became you know it's it's interesting because a peculiar kind of a peculiar kind of uh interdependence developed like like these multiple french military interventions you know this wasn't this wasn't like the vermont like assaulting the soviet union or like the soviet union like you know assaulting poland or something i mean yeah there's always like there's always categorical hostility like the jury in effect though when you're talking about you know armed men um under the status of alienage crossing a sovereign frontier but after Waterloo there just became one of the checks on anarchy as Spain went through this painful 19th century was a tolerance if not out and out acceptance of French interventionism beyond their common border when things appear to be careening towards open civil war.

That's a tangent, but it is interesting.

Um, it, uh, he, uh, as everybody knows, he, he preempted the ash loose.

Um, or he preempted this plebiscite and he preempted, uh, choosing the declaring martial law by, uh, know deploying forces across the uh austrian frontier and uh the vermont 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 van schluess Now, it must be stated that Jews, Romas and Gypsies and Communist Party members were not extended to vote.

Okay, otherwise though, even Life Magazine, which was certainly no friend of the Third Reich, right off Hitler, they ran on May 2nd, 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.

Elliot Ehrenberg was a chief, uh, uh, he was a chief propagandist of, um, uh, who worked hand in glove with the NKVD and, and had the favor of Stalin himself.

And he, uh, He published extensively, in addition to his radio broadcasts, you know, 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 Army newspaper, as well as the Pravda, as well as he was one of the main authors of these mass, these leaflets that were saturated, you know, throughout battle spaces in the front, you know, to both... bolster the the morale of the red army or to strike fear into them so they would not desert but also to you know try and um try and demoralize the the vermont but uh it um It he he consistently a consistent theme of his propaganda was that, you know, this is a racial war against the German people.

The Germans are sly and in the way and you should rape the German women because you deserve to because of the spoils of war.