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- [00:00]
Evan Ross Katz
Hi, this is Evan Ross Katz from Shut Up, Evan. And before the curtain rises on Wicked For Good, make sure you've got the star of the night, Absolute's limited edition sequin sleeve bottle, shimmering pink to green in true Asian fashion. Get yours@absolute.com or a store near you and mix up something magical like an ospresso martini or Osmopolitan made with Absolut vodka. Don't miss Wicked For Good, now in theaters. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Enjoy responsibly. Absolut vodka, product of Sweden, 40% alcohol by volume. Distilled from grain. Copyright 2025. Imported by Absolute Spirits Co. New York, NY, Universal City Studios, LLC.
- [00:40]
Peter Frankopan
Hello and welcome to Legacy. Today we're continuing with our look at the terrible legacies of the First World War. Last time, we looked at how horrors on the front lines and the cold realities of the economics of war had first led to devastating military defeat and then to a catastrophic post war settlement.
- [00:57]
Afua Hirsch
For Germany imposed at Versailles. But also in other parallel talks at Trianon, had deep legacies that still scar not just Germany, but the world today. The creation of a swathe of states across the Middle East. Pieces of Europe that had never been joined together rammed into single entities like Yugoslavia. And some of the supposed victors were left with grievances, too. Peter?
- [01:22]
Peter Frankopan
Yeah, so I was reading about how the Italian Prime Minister is reduced to tears because his country is not being treated as it should be. Italy were on the side of the Allies, but weren't given what they'd been promised. And that anger helps fuel the rise of fascism and of Mussolini. And I'm sure we're going to look at him too. But today we're continuing our look at the rise of the Nazis and to see how some of that tinder that has been laid is going to catch fire.
- [01:48]
Afua Hirsch
I think this is an interesting, interesting subject for us to tackle, Peter, but not for the reasons you'd expect. So I can't think of a better documented and more frequently discussed period of history than the Nazis and Hitler. And actually, the grievance I had with history education in Britain for a lot of my life was that it was so obsessed with the rise of the Nazis with the Second World War that it completely neglected basically everything else we've ever discussed. You know, if you've listened to Legacy, we've done Napoleon, we've done Marie Antoinette, we've done Haiti and colonialism, we've done the civil rights movement, we've done so many things. We've done Kwame Kruma and decolonization. These are all things that were not part of my history education because most of it was so focused on the Second World War. But here we are talking about the rise of the Nazis. PETER and I think it is important because in a topic that's become so familiar, almost part of the culture, there are actually really important lessons that for me feel they're underexplored.
- [02:46]
Peter Frankopan
I think it's also that there are really interesting new things to say as well. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this topic is because there've been some amazing new pioneering work by historians that help explain the things that perhaps sometimes we don't ask enough about, about how Hitler particularly rises to power and where. So we're going to talk a bit about that today and think about what we can learn about the rise of the Nazis in particular, thinking about through the legacies of disease and of religion. And so I'm going to have. It's going to be great to talk about that. AFUA and let's see where we can get to about, as you said, one of the best known stories in history and hopefully tell it in a way that will be revelatory for people listening. From original Legacy Productions, I am Peter Frankopan.
- [03:38]
Afua Hirsch
I'm Afwa Hash.
- [03:39]
Peter Frankopan
This is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
- [03:56]
Afua Hirsch
This is the rise of the Nazis. How disease and religion paved the way for evil.
- [04:08]
Peter Frankopan
So we left you last time at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, a place that is culturally blossoming, but economically, socially and politically, not just chaotic, but on the verge of anarchy. This all comes to a head in 1923, when there's fertile ground for extremists of all kinds. By this time, Germany's economy has collapsed under hyperinflation. But things then get worse when the Ruhr is occupied by French and Belgian troops after the Germans fall behind on reparations and and Paris and Brussels decide that the way to get their money back is to send in the army. Unemployment and hunger and despair and humiliation are all spreading. And as one Munich newspaper writes at the time, the people's pockets are empty, their hopes are exhausted. They look for saviors in every direction, that that combination could be deadly. AFWA in times of crisis, people are looking for heroes and for saviors.
- [04:59]
Afua Hirsch
In Bavaria, for example, right wing paramilitaries and nationalist groups thrive and the Bavarian authorities tolerate them, hoping that they can at least use this force against Something they fear more, which is Communism. And so it's in this atmosphere that one man named Adolf Hitler and the nationalist Socialist German Workers Party plot to seize power. They're inspired by Benito Mussolini's March on Rome, which, as we heard in the last episode, is also linked to the events of the Treaty of Si and the settlement at the end of the First World War. Inspired by that, the Nazis also aimed to march on Berlin after first securing control in Bavaria.
- [05:40]
Peter Frankopan
So Hitler is a total non entity. He's an artist of little repute who's volunteered for the Bavarian army in 1914, had served as a messenger on the Western Front, was twice decorated for bravery as well as being wounded in 1916. And in 1918 he'd been temporarily blinded in a gas attack. But like many others, he'd been angered by the armistice which had devastated him. I couldn't weep, he said. I sensed that all was lost. And after the war, Hitler goes back to Munich and joins the German workers party in 1919, which is a very obscure right wing party supported mainly by weirdos and misfits.
- [06:18]
Afua Hirsch
By 1921, though, it has a new name, one that will be familiar to listeners, the National Socialist German Workers Party. And Hitler is now its leader. But that's not saying much. It's not a prominent party and he's barely known outside Bavari. But in Munich, its capital, he is already becoming a powerful presence. Charismatic observers often commented on his intense eyes and his spellbinding voice. One journalist, Conrad Haydn, who saw him speak that year, recalled, when he spoke, it was as though the words were flames. The crowd was swept along and he.
- [06:53]
Peter Frankopan
Caught the attention of the police as well. His ability to turn resentment into fervor. So one police report says he speaks with passion against Versailles, against the Republic and against the Jews. His audiences respond with thunderous applause. So basically he realizes, and he's not the first or the last politician to do that, that blaming other people is a good product to be selling, particularly at a time of crisis.
- [07:17]
Afua Hirsch
And there's no shortage of other disillusioned war heroes for Hitler to recruit because so many people felt alienated, betrayed by the settlement at Versailles. One of them is Erich Ludendorff, who'd effectively run Germany's war effort between 1917 and 1918 and who'd emerg from the defeat. Embittered and radicalized, he too embraced the stab in the back myth, the idea that Germany had not been defeated militarily, but betrayed by anyone and everyone. And he now becomes somebody who drifts into nationalist Politics and befriends Hitler.
- [07:52]
Peter Frankopan
Well Ludendorff is drifting into nationalist politics too, giving his prestige as a war hero. But Hitler is an incredibly unremarkable, unimpressive man. He's got that clit moustache that's so famous, he wears ill fitting clothes. He has got something about how he speaks that galvanizes and attracts and he attracts Ludendorff because both men see the Weimar Republic as illegitimate and Versailles as being intolerable. And for Hitler of course Ludendorff, one of the most famous men in Germany is the symbol of military glory and as a high ranking officer who is famous and is respected by veterans. So on the evening of 8th of November 1923 we have what's called the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. AFW, tell us a bit about that.
- [08:34]
Afua Hirsch
Well a big part of my GCSE history education. On 8 November 1923 Hitler and armed supporters stormed the Berger Brauchelle. It's a large Munich beer hall and anyone who's been to Munich knows that beer halls are a big part of Munich architecture and social events. And this beer hall is one where Bavarian officials are meeting. Hitler storms in, fires his pistol to the ceiling and declares the national revolution has begun. The hall is surrounded by 600 men, no one is leaving. And he forces Gustav von Karr, the State Commissioner of Bavaria to agree to his plan under duress. Basically it's a stick up. Are there really 600 men surrounding the beer hall? Peter?
- [09:17]
Peter Frankopan
I mean look, it's pretty infantile. I mean you point your gun into the ceiling and pull the trigger. I mean what is it you're actually expecting? You reckon that if you can get somebody to sign something that therefore everything is going to go in the way that you want. I mean not surprisingly the coup unravels incredibly quickly. Carr and all the other leaders are in there withdraw their support. The following day Hitler and Ludendorff get 2000 supporters and lead on a march through Munich hoping to rally the army and the police. They're carrying the swastika flags and singing patriotic songs but as soon as they reach Odionplatz armed police block their way. And then there's a standoff. Sixteen Nazis and four German policemen are killed in an exchange and then Hitler falls and dislocates his shoulder and then runs off before. Ludendorff keeps on going but is then arrested too. And it's basically a total fiasco. There's no way in which this could be taken seriously. And Hitler, although he becomes famous for it later is arrested and charged with high treason on 11 November, which is a terrible offence in any country.
- [10:20]
Afua Hirsch
But like so many demagogues and fascists before him and since, including some of our contemporary ones in Britain, putting Hitler on trial, actually, rather than destroying his credibility, just gives him a bigger platform. And rather than apologizing, Hitler uses the criminal proceedings against him to denounce the Weimar Republic, something that falls on very receptive ears to denounce the Treaty of Versailles and to really big himself up as this martyr figure. I alone bear the responsibility, he says, but I am no traitor. I only wanted the best for my country. And it's not only sympathizers in the audience who are receptive. The judges are sympathetic, too. There's a lot of conservative nationalism in Bavaria, and many regard Hitler not as a criminal, but as a patriot. According to the press in Munich, the accused was not in the dock, he was on the podium.
- [11:11]
Peter Frankopan
And Hitler presents himself as a victim, but also as a man of destiny. So he says, if I'm guilty, then I'm guilty of loving my people too much. If you believe I'm a criminal, then I accept your sentence. But history will equip me here. I think we're probably still waiting for the verdict on that one, if he's still hoping for it. But in April 1923, he is sentenced to five years imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, and it's the minimum possible sentence for treason. But it's still a black mark to have broken the law.
- [11:39]
Afua Hirsch
It reveals so much about Weimar Germany, and as the great historian Alan Bullock later observes, it was not so so much Hitler who was on trial, but the Republic. And the Republic was found guilty, because here we have someone who violently attempted to seize power against the law in the republic and faced only the most lenient justice, instead finding that many of even the officers of state were sympathetic to his attempt. And this is really a fair reflection of the atmosphere in Germany at this time.
- [12:10]
Peter Frankopan
Peter well, also, his prison sentence isn't actually all that bad. You know, although technically incarcerated, he's allowed visitors, he gets gifts and letters, he has a private room. As one guard later says, Herr Hitler was treated more like a distinguished guest than a prisoner, because although the Beer Hall Putsch had ended in failure, lots of people, like you said, were sympathetic with Hitler's complaints against the weakness of the state and how decisive action need to be taken. And that trial, as you also mentioned, gave him a podium and a platform that turned him from a fringe agitator into a national figure. And so the movement was defeated as One Nazi newspaper says, but it was victorious in the court of public opinion. And so that platform, that notoriety that Hitler gets, he uses to maximum effect.
- [12:57]
Afua Hirsch
By the time Hitler walks through the gates of the Landsberg prison nine months later, he's lost neither ambition nor his platform. And on the contrary, he. He's gained a reputation as a man who dares to defy the Republic and pay the price. The attempted coup has paradoxically laid the foundation for his rise to power. And this is actually only the very beginning of that story.
- [13:20]
Peter Frankopan
Peter it's just the start. And the big question now is who, if anyone, would support this strange, angry former soldier who had little political experience and now also has a criminal record?
- [13:44]
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- [14:15]
Evan Ross Katz
Hi, this is Evan Ross Katz from Shut Up, Evan. And before the curtain rises on Wicked for Good, make sure you've got the star of the night, Absolute's limited edition sequin sleeve bottle, shimmering pink to green in true Asian fashion. Get yours@absolute.com or a store near you. Then mix up something magical like an ospresso martini or osmopolitan made with Absolut vodka. Don't miss Wicked for Good, now in theaters. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Enjoy responsibly. Absolut vodka, product of Sweden, 40% alcohol by volume. Distilled from grain. Copyright 2025. Imported by Absolute Spirits Co. New York, NY, Universal City Studios, LLC.
- [15:03]
Afua Hirsch
So it's now 1924. Hitler, after his failed Beer Hall Putsch, is imprisoned at Landsberg Fortress Prison. And he's not a broken conspirator who's been discredited. On the contrary, he's the man who has gained stature, popularity, and a platform. He's been convicted of high treason, but his sentence is relatively light. Five years, with eligibility for parole after six months. In practice, he served only nine. And Peter, he found a way to use the time very productively for his ends.
- [15:37]
Peter Frankopan
Well, he's described as being relaxed and talkative and he's certain that the future belongs to him. So he recognises that he's going to thrive in the attention that he's got. But he spends his time, according to the prison governor, Otto Leibeld, as being disciplined, studious and convinced of his mission. And he exerts a strong influence on his other inmates. So ironically, his imprisonment enhances his reputation and he starts to be hailed as the man who dared where others faltered. So that risk taking is quite embedded with Hitler early on. But he's walking up and down for hours, he's very restless and he's a hard worker, Hitler. So he thinks he's doing what, what one of a fellow inmate says is doing great work for Germany. And amongst the things he does, afwa, most notorious of all is he writes.
- [16:25]
Afua Hirsch
A book, Mein Kampf, which translates into English as My Struggle, is published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926. It's a notorious publication. It's part autobiography, part political manifesto and it's really a book that sets out Hitler's worldview. And Peter, I'm actually curious whether you've read Mein Kampf and also if you could tell us anything about its status, because growing up and learning about the Nazis, I was always taught that it's banned, it's. It's a book that's not available. And, you know, that I always thought was so interesting because it suggested that it still has this potency that, you know, authorities are still scared enough of a message, which to me seems so couldn't be more discredited, but there was this sense that it's still too dangerous to let people read it in case they're influenced by or attracted to its ideas.
- [17:16]
Peter Frankopan
I think the notoriety is in part on its content, but it's above all about who it was written by and how Hitler's message changes the world from the 1920s until his death in 1945 and beyond. So I think that's part of it. I mean, I remember reading it as part of my school projects when I was young and finding it badly written, difficult to understand, not incoherent, but you'd expect that the thesis would be set out much more clearly. It's one of those books in which there are quite a few that gets cherry picked for individual lines, which are all absolutely grotesque. It's also difficult to read books like this in the context of what happens in the Holocaust and how antisemitism takes root and establishes itself. But, you know, I'm not one of those People like Donald Trump, who apparently has a copy of it by his bedside. That's what one of the news reports said about Trump.
- [18:05]
Afua Hirsch
I just looked it up and Mein Kampf is still banned in Austria, the Netherlands. In Germany, the copyright is held by Bavaria, which banned it until 2016. But now there's a scholarly annotated edition. It's never been formally banned in the United States, which is presumably why someone like Trump can proudly declare that he owns a copy. And I guess we'll come back to this. But the idea that it's a relevant book for contemporary political leaders is completely astonishing. And, you know, it's something you would only expect if it was in the context of them wanting to study the catastrophic legacy of anti Semitic fascist Nazism. But I suspect that's not the reason it's experiencing a bit of a resurgence.
- [18:47]
Peter Frankopan
Well, what I don't want to do is to read out some of the poisonous antisemitic comments that, that he makes throughout the text. So I think with that I'll leave that to listeners to find for themselves. But, you know, he rails against Jews consistently and repeatedly and in language that I think is absolutely horrifying and leaves your blood turning cold because of what happens in the 1930s and 1940s. But he rails against the Versailles Treaty. He calls it the so called peace was nothing but a diktat to throttle the German people. He understands and is working out. You can see him working out the role of propaganda in dovetailing messages. So all propaganda must be popular, he writes, and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence, which is pretty terrifying that, you know, he's trying to reach the people who are the most stupid in society. He's also got lots of ideas about the primacy of race blending in ideas about natural selection, about Aryanism, about supremacies.
- [19:42]
Afua Hirsch
Those are really interesting, partly because, you know, as we know, the swastika is something that he kind of hijacked from, from Indian and other Eastern cultures, but got it the wrong way around. Aryans, as I've read in your work, Peter, you know, AS actually refers to Indian heritage. It's all kind of this upside down racial logic. But if anyone listening to this has read the book by Isabel Wilkerson Cast, who's an incredible American academic, she documents in some detail how the Nazis were influenced and inspired by Americans in their own time because of the quite dominant racially superior ideas about white supremacy, about segregation, about the inferiority of black people. So the Nazis weren't just drawing on this Kind of traditional German anti Semitism. They were also inspired by other forms of racism against other races around the world and kind of incorporated this all into their theory that put white Aryan, blonde haired, blue eyed Europeans kind of at the top of this social hierarchy and, you know, ranked everybody else lower down, depending on how much they deviated from that ideal.
- [20:51]
Peter Frankopan
But Mein Kampf is published in two volumes, first in July 1925 and then in December 1926. And, and it doesn't sell many copies, about 23,000 copies in the first three or four years, which is not much for a country of 60 million people who in those days had no screens or iPads or no TikTok reels to look at. So books were sold in bigger volumes. Of course, the reviews are generally pretty poor, so the Frankfurter Zeitung dismisses it as a tiresome book of endless repetition. And as Ian Kershaw, the great historian of Nazism and of Hitler, writes, Until 1930, Mein Kampf was pretty much a party scripture, you know, read by the devotees rather than a popular book. But because Hitler's becoming so visible and so famous, eventually when he takes power, it becomes mandatory reading gets read in the millions and many millions of copies. But the big turning point for Hitler and for the rise of the Nazi party is of course, the Great Depression triggered by the Wall street crash of 1929. So Hitler's come out of prison. His book hasn't really sold. He's popular with a bunch of weirdos and lunatics, but he's really not particularly well regarded and nor is he a real political force. What about the elections of 1928? Tell us about those and how Hitler then does start to come to power.
- [22:07]
Afua Hirsch
The Nazis, as you were saying, Peter, have been a fringe force in German politics. And in the 1928 Reichstag election, for example, they win just 2.6% of the vote. A Berlin police report around that time says Hitler speaks with great emotional force. His words have a hypnotic effect, particularly on the youth and the lower middle class. So perhaps an indication of where things are going. And they do go, because in 1929, the Great Depression plunges an already hyperinflation battered Germany into economic crisis. Now unemployment that soars to more than 6 million. A factory worker at this time wrote in his diary. In Germany, we live on soup and hope. But hope is vanishing. This is a golden opportunity for the Nazis. They thrive on desperation, on hopelessness, on the yearning for some kind of radical new vision. But instead of this leftist Bolshevik vision that we heard was competing for German hearts and minds at the end of the First World War. The Nazi vision is patriotic. It's promising national revival, it's promising an end to the humiliation of Versailles, an end to Marxism, which in the Nazi worldview is poisoned by the influence of Jews on the left. So he is offering a kind of coherent worldview in which Germany gets what it deserves. The German people get to feel proud dignity again, to rise out of their current material problems with conveniently him at the helm.
- [23:39]
Peter Frankopan
And that combination, that toxic cocktail of the promises he's making and the targets he's identified falls on fertile ground, which is helped by, as you said, afwa, by the Great Depression and the fact the economy's got now even worse. So although in 1928 his party wins almost no votes, in 1930 the Nazis leap to almost 20% of the vote, becoming the second party, the second largest party, which creates a big shockwave. And then two years later, yet another set of elections. The Nazis win 37% of the vote, making it the largest party altogether. And Hitler demands to be made Chancellor. The movement is now the nation. I am the nation's will. And one of the things that plays to his strengths, afwa, is that he's dismissed and not taken seriously by the powers that be.
- [24:24]
Afua Hirsch
President Hindenburg calls Hitler that Bohemian corporal and is still not really getting the memo about how much popularity he's building among the German people. Behind the scenes, conservative elites like Franz von Papen, who'd been Chancellor before Hitler and has now accepted the position of Vice Chancellor, spot an opportunity. But again they underestimate Hitler. They think they can harness Hitler's popularity while keeping him in check so that he is feeding their agenda and not the other way around. Von Papen says we've hired him. Within two months, we'll have pushed him so far into a corner that he'll switch squeal. That is not going to go down as a prophetic quote in history, Peter, no.
- [25:07]
Peter Frankopan
So on the 30th of January 1933, Hitler's appointed Chancellor. And crowds fill the streets with torchlight parades lighting up the night. And one Nazi newspaper exalts, the Fuhrer has taken power. Germany awakens. So in this short period of time of seven or eight years between the release from prison and 1933, Hitler's transformed himself from a failed putsches of desperados and misfits into the leader of the largest party in Germany. And he's done that through organization, through propaganda, through exploitation of economic despair. But he's also managed to ride a wave that he's had no control over. As the historian Harold Dickinson puts it, the Republic had dug its own grave. Hitler merely stepped into it. But he needs something to be able to consolidate his power and to push all those old God out of the way. How does that all work?
- [25:58]
Afua Hirsch
Work? Well, conveniently, just when Hitler's looking for an excuse to crack down on democratic freedoms, a fire. A catastrophic fire engulfs the Reichstag building in Berlin, which is the seat of the German parliament. Firefighters battle the blaze for hours, but much of the chamber is destroyed. And even more conveniently, there's a Dutch communist found hiding inside the building who is the perfect scapegoat. Marinas van der Lubbe. He confesses to. To starting the fire. It's never been established whether he did, whether he did it alone, whether he was part of a wider plot. But Hitler is not really that fast, because as far as he's concerned, this is the opportunity he wants. He tells the people that this fire is the beginning of a communist revolution and therefore he needs to suspend key civil liberties, freedom of speech, press, assembly, privacy of mail and phone communications to clamp down on this terrible, violent threat. This sounds so familiar, Peter. This is classic fascist playbook. When there is a disaster, whether or not the fascist had a role in creating it, they then maximize the opportunity and use it as an excuse to further cement their power and clamp down on liberties.
- [27:13]
Peter Frankopan
So in the following days, thousands of people are arrested. Communists, socialists, trade unionists, party newspapers are banned. And you have historians like the great Richard Evans saying without the Reichstag fire decree, which is passed by Hindenburg at Hitler's urging, the Nazis couldn't have eliminated their opponents so quickly or so thoroughly. So it gives Hitler and the Nazis the opportunity to take their party apparatus, shut down everybody else and get that wind in their sails that then allows Hitler to consolidate power and to get rid of the all, all his rivals. It helps that Hitler has around him the set piece rallies and that impress so many contemporaries. He has a propaganda meister with Joseph Goebbels who portrays Hitler as Germany's savior. And also the economy slowly starts to get better, which makes people more sympathetic to him. So unemployment falls from 6 million in 1932 to under 1 million in 1937. And you find factory workers writing in the mid-30s saying, for the first time in years, I have steady wages, my children are being fed. We have the Fuhrer to thank for this. And a lot of those are well massaged messages that are being pumped out from the center. There's no question that Hitler is encouraging and managing to get working Germans to see him as someone who's going to lead them to salvation.
- [28:33]
Afua Hirsch
I think this is such an important point, Peter, because, you know, we're speaking in an era where there is again a rise of fascism, of populism, of these extremely far right intolerant ideas that promote hate to ethnic groups, immigrants, others. And you know, one thing that people say in defense of some of these far right politicians is that they're actually offering economic benefits. You know, they'll say things like, it's not that I hate immigrants, it's just that I, you know, want to be able to afford a nicer house or I want to be able to cope better with the cost of living. And you know, I think people forget that many Germans didn't support Hitler because they loved anti Semitism, they loved what he was promising in terms of economic benefits. He made the trains run on time. He allowed them to feel national pride. He made it socially acceptable to celebrate your country and feel good about your identity. And you know, it's so frustrating for me that people have forgotten the lessons that if you are so distracted by short term material gains that you decide to consent to fascism, you will always ultimately end up in the same place. And Hitler is the best example of that. Because during this period, nobody's thinking about gas chambers. You know, nobody is imagining the catastrophic war that's coming. Instead, people are beginning to support Hitler because they like the way their quality of life is improving.
- [29:57]
Peter Frankopan
And what's interesting in all of this is that the rest of the story of Hitler, maybe we'll do on a different occasion, that story into the 1930s I think is pretty well known and well established. The people line up behind Hitler, they convinced that he's going to leave them to security rather than through disaster. The people are bewitched by him. That's what contemporaries say. Victor Klepperer, a Jewish diarist living under persecution, says the people of Bewitched, they cheer for him, they cheer for bread, they cheer for the victories of the future. And Hitler's blend of repression and propaganda and success breathe the support that then leads to catastrophe in the late 1930s and 1940s.
- [30:38]
Afua Hirsch
And it's interesting that you mentioned Victor Klemperer, the Jewish Darius, because during this period many Jewish people are really beginning to see how serious the danger ahead is. You know, while other Germans are really bewitched and seduced by this kind of message of hope, a lot of Jewish people see the writing on the wall and they begin to leave. You get mass immigration to America. You get people fleeing to other parts of Europe. My own family, my grandfather, my great uncle, my great grandmother and her husband fled in 1938 because they could see that things were getting worse. Intensification of antisemitism so it's a very bifurcated experience at this time. Many people are falling under Hitler's spell. But Jewish people are becoming increasingly clear that this is no joke and actually that the antisemitism isn't just propaganda. It isn't just rhetoric. It isn't just a rhetorical scapegoat. It's very real.
- [31:40]
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- [31:59]
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- [32:22]
Peter Frankopan
So the targeting AFWA of minorities, it's not just Jews, is it?
- [32:26]
Afua Hirsch
No. There were many people of African heritage in Germany. It had had many African colonies that were taken away as part of the Treaty of si. You had a generation of mixed race people. They were also targeted, often forgotten that they faced similar persecution. They were taken to concentration camps and murdered by the Nazis later as well. People who were Roma, anyone who didn't fit with the idealized view of heteronormative Aryan Nazi stock, people who were homosexual, people who had disabilities, all found themselves at the really sharp end of the Nazi ideal, which promised the world to those who fell within it and was willing to suspend all humanity to people who fell outside.
- [33:13]
Peter Frankopan
Okay, so, so much, so clear. Hitler is obsessive. He understood how to take advantage of Germany's trauma of the First World War. He played on the Depression. He targeted minorities. He blamed Jews and Marxists. He created a set of circumstances that allowed him to take power and then enforce that by eliminating all rivals and getting an iron grip on power. He understood the power of mass media, particularly with film, but also through journalism, through radio and massive rallies. But what we're really interested in talking about here are a couple of big new pieces of research which is about who actually voted for him. And there are some amazing things to say. And one of the explanation lies in pandemic disease and the Spanish Flu. Talk us through the origins of Spanish flu. AFWA.
- [34:01]
Afua Hirsch
Well, this is newly resonant, you know, after 2020 and what we went through with COVID lockdown. You know, I always knew about the Spanish flu. It was this idea that, you know, Europe suffered all this catastrophic death and suffering during the First World War, only for even more people to die of this influenza outbreak at the end of the war. But when I learned the origin story of the name, it began to hit that the way that we were kind of talking about this pandemic wasn't totally transparent, Peter. And the name is because of the way that Spain was neutral in the First World War, that it meant that it was one of the very few countries that had a kind of free and open press at the time.
- [34:40]
Peter Frankopan
Yes. And in fact, the origins of the Spanish flu are still not completely clear. Some scholars argue that began in Haskell County, Kansas in early 1918 and spread through U.S. army camps and then across the Atlantic with troops in the First World War. Others think it might have originated in northern France during the wet weather and through a jump across from avian flu. Some think maybe from China, where wartime Labour is also 300,000 Chinese transported to Europe to serve and fight in the First World War. But what's clear is that the conditions that are created by war, crowded trenches, troop movements, weakened immune systems as a result of malnutrition, allows the virus to spread at unprecedented speed.
- [35:21]
Afua Hirsch
The first wave in the spring 1918 was relatively mild, with symptoms similar to seasonal flu. The second wave, beginning later that year, Aug. 19, was far more lethal. It caused sudden violent illness, victims developing severe pneumonia, dying within days. And then a third wave struck in early 1919, and scattered outbreaks continued into 1920 and 1921. But one of the most striking features of the pandemic throughout these waves was the really unusual age profile of its victims.
- [35:52]
Peter Frankopan
Yeah, that's right. Usually influenza kills people who are old and infirm or suffering from underlying disease already. But Spanish flu disproportionately killed young adults aged 20 to 40. And probably this is because of overreaction to the immune system and the so called cytokine storm that again we'll have heard about during COVID which hit healthier younger bodies hardest. But mortality rates around the world, they vary dramatically, but the numbers are absolutely astronomical. So estimates in the US almost 675,000 people died in Britain, 228,000 in India. With crowded cities and more modest medical resources, some estimates have deaths at 10 to 18 million in some parts of Africa. And the Pacific Islands, whole communities were devastated. So Western Samoa, that's been well studied, loses about 22% of its population. And the global death toll is far greater than combat mortalities during the First World War. But tell us, Hafa, what does this mean for Germany?
- [36:53]
Afua Hirsch
Well, I was going to ask you, Peter, So, you know, it's clearly a really extreme plague that's sweeping the world, but why are we talking about it in a series about the rise of the Nazis?
- [37:05]
Peter Frankopan
It's based on this amazing new research by Christian Bickel, who's at the US Federal Reserve, and a correlation between pandemic mortality and the ways in which cities and municipalities chose to spend and invest in the years that followed. And when you gather together statistics on budgets, on looking at things, on spending, for example, on schools, on police, on culture or amenities, the data seems to show that cities that had higher levels of mortality from Spanish flu, so where more people died, that they spent less per capita on their inhabitants in the 1920s and the 1930s. So places that were already economically stressed spent less money on primary schools, for example. So places where more people died reduced their spending by between 39 and almost 70 Reichsmark per pupil. So that meant that the younger generation's voice was weakened after suffering disproportionately high losses.
- [38:04]
Afua Hirsch
So this is really interesting because until now, we've kind of been more aligned with the conventional narrative which explains the rise of the Nazis in the context of the humiliation of Versailles, the suffering at the end of the First World War, the hyperinflation and depression of the 1920s, and this yearning for a reassertion of German pride. But actually, this theory is drawing a direct link between the effects of a pandemic, its disproportionate weakening of a younger generation with a tendency to vote for the far right, in this case the Nazi Party. So the research you're referring to shows that cities that had a higher than average death toll from the flu pandemic were the same cities that gave the Nazis up to 2 percentage points more votes in the 1930s, and that this didn't just benefit all extremists, because the opposite happened with the Communists. So areas with higher flu death rates gave the left fewer votes. So it was not just fueling extremism, it was pushing people to the radical right. I can see why you feel like this might be a relevant lesson to learn today, Peter.
- [39:14]
Peter Frankopan
I mean, it's fascinating from law. I mean, it doesn't have to be relevant today. I mean, as it happens, listeners might realize and think that it is, but you know, these small swings of 1.6 to 2% percentage points that they don't sound like a lot, but in elections and spread across millions of people, they amount to millions of votes and they amount to proper, proper ways in which decisions that the ballot box flow through. So basically when crisis hits these already poor and stressed communities before that have suffered from economic deprivation, suffering in warfare, etc. But also were badly hit by higher mortality rates then those the places are more inclined to look towards Hitler and towards the Nazis as a savior. And you know, you might wonder, might this just be a coincidence? Maybe cities that just had bad flu outcomes were also just poor, or maybe they were badly governed or maybe they already had deep histories of antisemitism. So luckily, because Bilkle is an economist, you can test this by adding in a bunch of other control factors to see what happens. And funnily enough, higher unemployment levels are also correlated to more Nazi votes. But even when that's factored in, flu deaths still matter. So it's an amazing piece of research that shows that it's not just that everybody is voting the same way or everybody's persuaded by Hitler, it's trying to look down, to look at individual households, cities, to see who's most persuaded and why that message falls on such fertile ground.
- [40:42]
Afua Hirsch
There's another piece of recent research, Peter, that I think has very interesting lessons for the legacy of the rise of the Nazis and what we can learn from it. And that is research by Sacha Becker and Hans Joachim, both looking into what they call religious shallowness in interwar Germany. I cannot help but relate to this in our current time. So this study was looking at regions one where Christianity had weak historical roots. There was kind of shallow Christianity, less adherence to traditional church beliefs. And on the other hand into that you could describe it as a spiritual vacuum alternative or older kind of off mainstream spiritual beliefs were thriving. So superstition, folklore, these kind of alternative, we might now call them New age or ritualistic or even pagan belief systems. Now people who had those ideas were more likely to vote for the Nazis, and not just a little bit, but in the 1933 elections in Germany, shallow Christianity, as these researchers describe it, was associated with a 3 to 4 percentage point increase in Nazi vote share. Now the reason I find that interesting is that some of the far right movements that we're seeing now have these allegiances that it can seem quite counterintuitive. For example, they often appeal to people who are interested in healthy food, people who are vaccine deniers, people who distrust modern science and medicine. And I think I went through a phase of thinking of those things as quite incompatible. You know, I imagine people who have those alternative spiritual and health beliefs as being kind of lefty and progressive. But actually this research is showing that there is a tradition of people with that worldview supporting the far right. Fascinating.
- [42:38]
Peter Frankopan
What this all means in practice is that places where church attendance is low or where parents are not giving traditional Christian names to their children and also ones that have high confidence in off being beliefs about clairvoyance and superstitions, whatever voted more strongly for the Nazis in 1930, in the 1933 election. And this link isn't just statistical, it's also cultural. I mean, there's a reason why Nazi propaganda employs overtly religious language. You know, party rallies, they're like mass religious experiences. There are cathedrals of light created by anti aircraft searchlights. You know, the idea that the Hitler Youth are singing songs like we have no need for Christian virtue for Adolf Hitler is our intercessor and our redeemer, not Christ do we follow but horsed vessel. You know, these ideas that there's a messianic complex is that the Nazis are representing an alternative to religion. So, you know, looking at 20,000 party members, Becker and Woff note that ordinary members of the Nazi party are less likely to have Christian names than their peers. And amongst high officials that deviation is even more so. People named things like Herman or Adolf or Heinrich are typical amongst high command. And those with more standard Christian names like Johannes or Peter, for example, less so. So this pattern about who is voting for the Nazis who are seeing salvations, it blends into lots of ideas that historians have had for a while where there's been a correlation, for example, between looking at how Protestantism has been connected to Nazism because we've long noted that Protestants were more likely to vote Nazi while Catholics resisted. And this new research reframes that pattern. I mean, it's amazing, amazing to think about how we can think about the past in a different way.
- [44:27]
Afua Hirsch
It's so complex because there also is lots of information that's emerged since the Second World War about how the Catholic Church, for example, collaborated with and enabled the Nazis. So we're not saying that Christian religious institutions protected people against believing in or supporting or collaborating with the Nazis. It's something that seems more on a kind of meta level about people's belief systems and whether they are seeking ideas outside the mainstream that that leaves them vulnerable to these kind of political mavericks. Who may be offering what seem like solutions to the things they're interested in, but are actually often exploiting the lack of institutional structure or mainstream offering to their beliefs. And I find that very resonant. I know lots of people who are very receptive to alternative healings and alternative medicine and holistic approaches. And, you know, I'm also very receptive to those ideas. But I found it really unnerving how vulnerable some of those same people I know are to the far right and are willing to overlook some of the incredibly dangerous ideas the far right have about treatment of minorities, treatment of women, about racism. But as long as they're saying we won't make you get vaccinated or we'll take the toxins out of food, these people are quite supportive. So that for me is really interesting and I feel like there's more to be done looking into that and how it might apply in a contemporary setting.
- [45:54]
Peter Frankopan
Historians often don't like to answer the question or play with the question of what if? But you know, I think the connection between the First World War, Versailles and the rise of Hitler are all very well established. But I think if there had been no Spanish flu, would the Nazis have been so dominant without the Reformation and Martin Luther, without long term anti Semitism in Germany in particular, would the outcome have been the same? But I think that's what's great about doing these kinds of discussions, afwa because that's what legacy makes it such an interesting question. It's about what are long term consequences that can play out in these amazing and unexpected ways.
- [46:28]
Afua Hirsch
This has been such a fascinating, ironically, slightly alternative exploration of the rise of the Nazis and its legacy. It's such a huge history that we might come back to it for other legacies of other parts of this story. But for this one I have learned a lot. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Peter. You've been listening to Legacy with me.
- [46:48]
Peter Frankopan
AFWA Hirsch and me, Peter Frankerpan, and hope to see you soon.
- [47:20]
Afua Hirsch
Painting.
- [47:31]
Peter Frankopan
Offer to valid and boost mobile Punto Com Diesel Meslos primeros dos mesas Despoisement.