The Martyr Made Podcast, Ep. 25: Enemy: The Germans’ War, Pt 1 – "We Are the War"

Host: Darryl Cooper
Date: October 21, 2025

Episode Overview

In this deeply researched and harrowing episode, Darryl Cooper kicks off a major series exploring the experience of the German people and soldiers in World War I. The primary theme centers on what it means—in all its physical, psychological, social, and moral dimensions—to truly lose a war. Drawing from memoirs, literature, and first-hand accounts, Cooper vividly reconstructs the suffering, endurance, and ultimate defeat of Germany on the Western Front, and the way this loss shaped the German psyche—planting seeds for the catastrophes to follow. The episode pays particular attention to the experience of ordinary soldiers, the home front during the British blockade, and the psychological toll of starvation and battlefield slaughter. Cooper also weaves in the stories of key figures like Hitler and Ernst Jünger to illuminate the transformation of German society through the crucible of war.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Reflections: Exhaustion With Politics and Renewed Historical Focus

• Darryl Cooper begins by reflecting on personal burnout from contemporary politics, returning reinvigorated to his historical work:
  • “I’ve just really, truly had enough of politics… All it’s done is exhaust me and distract me from the only thing I’m actually good at, and from the only people I actually work for, which is you. Well, that is over.” (00:38)

2. A Story About Losing a War (03:07–09:00)

• Cooper shares an anecdote from his time in East Africa: a run-in with an ex–South African special forces veteran.
• The bartender’s words to the belligerent Americans linger:
  “You Americans don’t know what it’s like to lose a war… Bob’s mates died for a country that don’t even exist no more… You will forget.” (07:17)
• This launches the idea that the real trauma of defeat is something Americans and victors can’t fathom.

3. The Undefeated Loser: National Trauma and the Moment of No Return

• Quotes William Faulkner on the ancestral Southern American memory of Gettysburg, relating it to moments of existential gamble in war.
  “Every country that’s lost a war, I mean really lost one the way Bob’s country lost one…they have moments like that.” (09:00)
• Draws parallels to Ukraine, Gauls vs. Caesar, and Jerusalem vs. Rome—lost bets of history.

4. Germany in 1917–18: On the Brink of Victory… or Catastrophe

• Reviews the dramatic near-victory of the Central Powers after the collapse of Russia, Italy’s near-defeat, and breakdowns on the French and British sides.
• Emphasizes the precariousness: Germany still had the best army, but “they were still at a disadvantage in almost every area. Every area except one.” (23:12)

5. The Nightmare of Trench Warfare

• Dives into the daily grind of life and death on the Western Front.
• Vivid, extended depictions of:
  • Rotting bodies, omnipresent mud and water, rats, lice, constant shelling, disease, hunger, and psychological collapse.
• Key literary and historical quotations from Ernst Jünger, Henri Barbusse, and others describe the dehumanization and terror of trench combat. E.g.:
  • “The trench soldier was stamped with the mark of the animal, the mark of the uncertain, the fateful and the elemental…” – Ernst Jünger (36:35)
• The illusion of agency is gone; war as “a mere romantic legend” replaced by “day laborers of death rooted in a bloody everyday life.” (44:13)
• Horror stories: bodies in the trenches, soldiers sitting on corpses, rats eating the dead and wounded alive.
  • “The rats could afford to be picky, often eating just the eyes and burrowing in to get at the liver…” (57:00)
• Artillery described as hell on earth.
  • “Each shell seems meant for your body. Each explosion says, this one is yours…” (1:19:55)

6. German Starvation: The British Blockade & Home Front Collapse

• The British blockade leads to mass starvation—"800,000 people, 1% of the German population, died of starvation or causes directly linked to malnutrition." (2:02:55)
• Memoir accounts of daily hunger, food riots, and moral unraveling.
  • “We are all growing thinner every day, and the rounded contours of the German nation have become a legend of the past..." – Princess Blücher (2:05:53)
• Describes the psychological and societal toll: families reduced to scavenging, old social bonds dissolving under pressure of hunger.

7. Transformation of the Soldier: Ernst Jünger and Adolf Hitler

• Detailed stories of Jünger and Hitler’s transformations from idealistic young men to hardened soldiers.
• Hitler’s reinvention and the birth of his mythos in the crucible of total war:
  • “We cannot deny, as some would have it, that war, father of all things, is also in us… this war will be its axis. He has educated us to fight, and we will remain fighters as long as we live.” – Ernst Jünger (2:17:31)
• Stories of both men repeatedly volunteering for the most dangerous assignments, and being changed by violence and deprivation.

8. "We Are the War": The Spirit of the German Soldier

• Cooper weaves in first-person and third-person histories that capture the tenacity, fatalism, fanaticism, and camaraderie of the German frontline troops, even as the society behind them collapses.

9. German Tactics and 1918 Offensive

• Detailed breakdown of Operation Michael and subsequent offensives.
• The shift from human wave attacks to stormtrooper infiltration tactics.
• Jünger’s accounts of the initial German success, the overwhelming artillery barrage (“In five hours… 1,160,000 shells at the enemy. That’s more than 60 shells a second for five hours.”) (3:55:35)
• The emotional and moral exhaustion as the breakthroughs fail to secure victory.

10. Descent Into Defeat, Revolution, and Betrayal

• The final German offensives burn out; starvation, disease, and Bolshevism erode morale.
• Catastrophic collapse on the home front: the Kiel Mutiny, immediate Nazi mythology of “the stab in the back,” the abdication and flight of the Kaiser.
• The German army never routed, yet "stabbed in the back" by revolution at home.

11. Unending Violence and Mythic Memory (“We Are the War”)

• Episode closes on the idea that, even after the armistice, the war continues in the souls of the defeated.
• Evocative closing quote:
  • “We were told the war was over. That made us laugh. We are the war.” (4:00:30)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On defeat:
  • "'You Americans don't know what it's like to lose a war.'… 'No, you haven't. Not really. Bob's mates died for a country that don't even exist no more.'" (07:17)
• On Faulkner’s “last moment”:
  • "That moment doesn’t need even a 14-year-old boy to think, this time, maybe this time…" (09:00)
• On German starvation:
  • “We are all growing thinner every day… All color was gone, and the tufts of hair… seemed dull and famished, a sign that the nervous vigor of the body was departing…” – Princess Blücher (2:05:53)
• On the dehumanization of trench warfare:
  • “Like werewolves, we rushed forward through the night to drink blood. Without difficulty. We crossed through a ragged tangle of barbed wire and jumped in one leap over the first trench. Like a series of ghosts…” – Ernst Jünger (3:56:25)
• On defeat’s aftermath:
  • “Still blind and recovering in the hospital, Adolf Hitler wept for the first time since he’d stood over his mother’s grave.” (3:57:38)
• On war’s persistence:
  • “…the streets of Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Moscow and Istanbul flowed with blood. The Red army was already on the march…In Ukraine, Poland and Germany, millions were starving and soon millions would be murdered…” (3:59:12)
• On mythic memory:
  • “We were told the war was over. That made us laugh. We are the war.” (4:00:30)

Timestamps of Major Segments

• 00:38 – Cooper’s opening reflection and podcast ethos.
• 03:07–09:00 – Story of the special forces veteran and “what it means to lose.”
• 12:00–25:00 – The hope and despair of the Central Powers, 1917–18.
• 36:00–1:29:00 – Daily horror of trench warfare; mud, bodies, rats, disease, artillery.
• 2:02:00–2:35:00 – Starvation on the German home front, social collapse.
• 2:36:00–2:50:00 – The psychology of the German soldier: Ernst Jünger, Hitler in the trenches.
• 3:00:00–3:46:00 – The final German offensives, new tactics, and exhaustion.
• 3:53:00–4:00:00 – Endgame: revolution, abdication, and collapse.
• 4:00:30 – Closing reflection: “We are the war.”

Tone & Style

Cooper’s tone is brooding, grave, and at times, poetic, matching the epic scale and brutality of events. He lets the words of participants—especially Ernst Jünger, Henri Barbusse, and others—carry much of the atmosphere, often using long, unbroken quotations to evoke the rawness of primary experiences. The podcast is immersive, emotionally taxing, and unflinching in its willingness to dwell in the misery and ruin of total war.