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I am here again with Thomas. 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well, Pete, thanks again. As I said before, it's a great, great honor to be able to record, record these episodes. And I think we're doing God's work in the interest of posterity and historical truth. I'm not saying that'd be melodramatic. I, I really do believe that. And yeah, today what I wanted to get into, we dealt quite a bit with the battlefield situation the last few sessions, which is important. And I mean as I stipulated, I'm certainly not a military veteran and I, I'm not a military science expert, but I do know something about, I do know something about the political history of the war. And I, I drew upon guys who do have expertise and military matters to clarify points of fact that I was not entirely clear on. So I, I hope people got a lot out of that. I, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I appreciate that. But you know, again, just. I want to kind of reiterate after the fact, you know, I'm not. Military science is not really my wheelhouse. But what we're going to get into today, we're going to return to the, to the, to the, to the political situation as the war came to its, its kind of terrible conclusion. And the uh, the uh, particularly the political concord between Washington and Moscow is what gave rise to you know, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the lesser tribunals, like the Dachau trials of, of the men of 1st SS, which is quite a bit lesser known than the NURA proceedings. But it was by no means a foregone conclusion that, that, that, that, that these kinds of, you know, quasi courts Marshal, by, by the Allied authorities is what would, you know, conclude hostilities and, and kind of say set the foundation for the, for the New World Order, know quite literally. And when I use the, I use the term New World Order deliberately. That's not just, that wasn't just some campaign trail neologism that Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush coined in you know, 1988, 89. Conceptually, it was owed its origin to, you know, the, the writings of, uh, of Cordell hall and, uh, Henry Morgan, th. Who's, you know, an ominous character who we, we, we've discussed in earlier episodes, as well as Justice Frankfurter and Justice Jackson, who we're probably not going to get too much into this episode. But my point is that the idea of an old World order, which was the emergent with, you know, kind of the, the, you know, the, the not just what's known as the Enlightenment era, kind of in, in, in in commonly accepted court history, but also like the age of exploration, you know, and kind of the conquest of the planet quite literally by European powers. What was implemented therein and how affairs were managed between states, you know, particularly matters of war and peace. That kind of body of theory and practice, you know, in law and custom and you know, came to be known as, you know, the Old World Order, you know, the new world order being, you know, what, what superseded it at Nuremberg and thereafter and, and really kind of, really kind of erased everything that had come before it as we're going to kind of get into here. So this is, this is highly theoretical, but I've, I've tried to distill it down as much as possible. I don't want anyone to feel like they're sitting in some, some, some painful college lecture. But in order to understand what, what. In order to understand how the war resolved in political terms and in order to understand what the world system that exists today, although it's deteriorating, because it's not particularly suited to, you know, to addressing the power paradigms of, of the post Cold War system. But it's, this isn't just some, you know, kind of. This, this isn't just, you know, factoids we're dealing with or trivia. This is essential to understand the political map and, you know, to understand the kind of presumptions that are, that are, you know, they characterize decision making in, in power political corridors. So with that said, let's, let's dive into it. Carl Schmidt, I'm gonna invoke a couple times here, uh, not because Schmidt's the ultimate final authority in anything, but Schmidt did. His book Nomos of the Earth, really did kind of. It's the best sort of capsule summary of international law in the modern era that I've come across. Okay. And so when I'm, when I'm relying upon his analysis, I'll, I'll, I'll indicate that. But I, I'm. Schmidt's conclusions are not particularly partisan. Okay. So I Know, some people are going to claim that, you know, I'm striking a partisan posture anyway, and that's fine. But it, you know, I, I invite any of them to challenge what, what, what, what Schmidt posited about the character and structure of international law. What is nomos or nomos, like most Greek terms, does not have a simple hard and fast definition at base almost means law, but more than law. It describes kind of an aegis in totality. You know, the Greek, the, the primary, the organizational mode of, of, of classical Greece, you know, was the city state, the polis, okay? Within the polis people weren't just a veiled to a law. Like, you know, there were, there was, there was a whole set of customs, normative practices, you know, values, you know, presumed features of public morality, you know, aesthetic preferences, you know, all these things, okay? There's kind of this total agreement of, of, of. Of Moors, okay, like across political, juristic, cultural lines. You know, you know, there's moral criteria within there obviously too, some of a public nature, some of a personal nature. This kind of consensus in total is, could be, is kind of what nomos like constituted. Okay? Now obviously, you know, before the age of discovery as we think of it, you know, the world of the west was, was a much smaller place. We were basically talking about, we're basically talking about Europe. We were talking about territories peripheral to Europe, you know, like during the, you know, places like the near east, like during the, during the era, the Crusades, you know, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, you know, which I think was established in the 1095 A.D. one of the fellows laying in the comments, if I'm wrong, it's, it's a peripheral point, but even in these territories that were, you know, peripheral to Europe and outside of, you know, the continent, it's outside of the territorial space of Europe itself. European law was quite literally extrapolated to these areas. You know, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a European kingdom. You know, the fact that it happened to be, you know, in the near east, outside of the land mass of continental Europe didn't matter. You know, it was administered by Europeans. It was, you know, populated by Europeans. You know, the, the rights and duties imposed upon the people who live there, like owed to parentage and faith. Know, obviously, you know, obviously Christians had, you know, had, had place of privilege under the law. So I mean, you couldn't even. Places that were spatially remote from Europe were in a concrete way, like built into the European fabric, owing not just, you know, the race and ethnos, the people there but the structures they created, okay, before the age of discovery, it was never an issue was that how do we relate to people, you know, thousands of miles outside of, you know, outside of the continent, you know, outside. Not just, you know, our territorial sovereignty, but, you know, with whom we. There cannot be sort of consensus, you know, agreement on, you know, on, on matters of public or private law. This was handled a number of ways. And if, you know, if you want to, the father of kind of the old world order was in a very true sense, it was Hugo Grotius, okay? He was a Dutchman. And as some people probably know, I mean, I'm not being condescending, like, nobody learns anything in public school anymore. And unless you sit around studying history, you're probably not really going to know a lot about, you know, the political map of hundreds of years ago. And, you know, what, what kind of, what kind of thought paradigms characterize if Hugo Grotes was a Dutchman, okay, he was born in 1583. He died sometime. He died sometime before the. He died sometime before the end of the thirty Years War, okay? But he was a Dutch jurist, polymath type. You know, the Netherlands in those days, they, they really were like a trade empire, okay? I mean, it's. Despite the fact that the Netherlands is tiny and it's literally just kind of like this, this, this kind of like literally sinking principality in the north of Europe, like, they, it had. It accrued tremendous, well, tremendous power and the kind of wars and practices of maritime trade and other things that were kind of founded by, by the Dutch became just, you know, normative across Europe. Okay? The Dutch were the, they were master ship builders. They, they had a strong and proud military tradition, which is one reason the bores were so damn tough in South Africa. But primarily, I mean, they. If like, like with the Germans, word of warcraft and like what Italians are to like, find food and, and sports cars, the Dutch are to, you know, the maritime trade. Look at that way, if you want a somewhat silly analogy. But groches had an idea that the, that the way to understand war between states was the way that one could understand, you know, conflicts between persons, okay? And not unlike John Locke Grodius, he posited states as, you know, consisting of, you know, emerging out of the aggregate decisions and acquiescence of individuals. Okay? Now just like an individual avails himself to the sovereignty of the state by surrendering his private right to punish people, you know, to whom he's. He's entitled to satisfaction and ceding that right to the State. Okay, well, you know, similarly in matters
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in matters extrinsic to the, you know, to the eternal situation, you know, the state can assert violence, you know, outside of its parameters as well. You know, when it's, it's. When it's people, when it's, it's institutions, you know, when it's, when it's, when it's economic well being is threatened from without. Okay. So Groves is basically looked at this as a built in kind of remedy to the state system, you know, in the absence of a higher authority to appeal to. He almost fell, he almost looked at, you know, this was kind of like a proto version of like the invisible hand idea of which is kind of like, you know, the, it's E. Michael Jones always saying, you know, the idea of the invisible hand is. Is. Is. Is congruous in a basic way, symbolic, psychological way with, with. With the idea of Newtonian physics. This idea that there's kind of like this intrinsic order, you know, not just, not, not not just the physical world, but you know, to man's affairs. Grotes very much the same could be said of him. Okay. Because his idea was, well, you know, states like man are self interested, you know, and the self interested aggregate decisions of you know, thousands of people who are available to sovereignty of the state, you know, that's what constitutes the national interest. So it's, you know, so states, you know, states are only going to go to war with each other, you know, if, you know, a. If. If the remedy is likely to result in satisfaction of. Of. Of. Of what's owed, so to speak or if it's likely to result in you know, the. In. In. In. In eradicating or mitigating, you know, the threat to. To. To. To what they aim to protect. And you know, the states, States are discouraged from pursuing, you know, irrational wars that you know, harm the common good because they're basically their cost prohibitive. Okay. Now of course this depends on that, that model that he laid out is all good and well, but it, it's highly contingent upon a kind of basic moral consensus between the parties to this system. Okay. Like basically what Grudges was talking about was he was talking about how. How political entities within a common federation wouldn't will handle problems. And because most of his writing was done during the thirty Years War, he was obviously looking forward to a time beyond sectarian conflict and the kind bloodletting that was facilitated therein. You know, he was imagining a time when, okay, you know, like the state can somehow, you know, when we can kind of have like this common like lingua frank of politics, you know, wherein you know, the several polities of Europe, you know, can kind of join in this federation, you know, wherein there's a common, you know, kind of, there's, there's, there's a, there's a consensus in common on, on how mayors of war and peace can be resolved. Okay. But it was also developing as he put this to paper, you know, 30 years war went on for decades and it, you know, like all like old wars, that kind of, that kind of drag on beyond the point at which, at which any kind of, any kind of profit is said to be had. You know, like the ways to mitigate, you know, future iterations of this, of the, of the same phenomenon go to the forefront of the intellectual cast. Okay, that's a good example of this. Okay. Now subsequently, as things like the divine Ready Kings came into question and you know, the a. What Grou has kind of envisioned as ideal did in fact come to pass in practice in at least in, in, in the Netherlands and in, in France and the uk which is one reason this did come to pass. I mean that's one of the reasons why the, the trauma. The French Revolution was so punctuated and destructive. But that's outside the scope in any event.
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Well, we just. What we just talked about is this kind of a moral consensus of if nothing else, of a practical nature between European states. This came to be known in German speaking lands as a Volcan. Okay. Or the Jewish Publicum Europum. Okay. This is the body of positive law, cognitive and customary, that ordered relations between states, you know, derived from the Westphalian Peace. And it basically endured until the first World War. It was challenged by the French Revolution which we could develop a year's worth of podcast to the French Revolution. Okay, I, I don't want to deep dive too much into that, but the fact is that, you know, obviously what had been normative according to Volcarak and the just public of Europa was reinstated after French Revolution, after Waterloo. So we can't say that it ended in, you know, 1789 or 1813. Okay. And if nothing else, the Congress of Vienna reconstituted it. Okay? And if you want to look, okay, so even if you accept that there's a break in, in the, in the just publicum Europum was it was, it was, it was reinstated by, by. By consensus for another century. Okay. Now as a couple of things happened is that that really disrupted the ability to sustain. The ability to sustain the, you know, the volcan. Those two things were the colored world, as Spangler referred to it, and as you know, was kind of what we called, you know, non European cultures in, you know, less delicate times began to develop a political consciousness unto themselves. You know, it can no longer be said, you know, by, by the, by the end of the 19th century, it can no longer be said that, you know, people in Southeast Asia, people in Africa, people in Latin America, you couldn't just dismiss these people's ambitions and their ways of life as well. These people are barbarians. And you know, even if we, even if we have a certain affinity for them and a fatherly concern, they're not capable of politics. I mean, that just could not be said anymore. They were organizing in according to parameters the modern state. They were practicing a form of statecraft, at least within their geographic neighborhood that was in common with the way Europe had conducted politics since the thirty years War. Now, okay, that may have been the direct progeny of, of of their European overlords, you know, the fact that they even had these such concepts in mind. But that didn't matter because for practical purposes, you could not just dismiss these, these features, the strategic landscape as meaningless or you know, you cannot hope to. If nothing else, even if you didn't view these, you know, the, the, the, the ambitions and, and, and politics of the colored world is legitimate. You couldn't just condescendingly dismiss these things and, and hope to maintain anything approaching peace within these dominions, okay? And particularly, particularly the ascendancy of Japan, which had never been, you know, truly colonized obviously, but it become, you know, a great power. You know, this, this posed a question as the, you know, how do you, how, how can you consider, how can you consider a great military power like Japan, which arguably is even more advanced than, you know, a state like Spain or Russia? How can you claim that there's some outside the, you know, know, the community of civilizing the nation is just because they're not white. And it wasn't, it wasn't man who were, you know, it wasn't just woke types of the tie of the day suggesting this are progressives. It was people who had a very practical view of Things, you know, like Japan is a great power, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to, are we going to abandon any, any predex that just publicly Europa? Are we going to extend to them equality of status? You know, what, how exactly this going to be managed? Well, kind of the Anglo American view of things was that it owed entirely basically the ability to project power. Okay. And that was the second kind of feature of what, what, what changed things and, and no, and made the just public of Europa no longer truly sustainable. Okay? Because conceptually, you know, not only is the law, as we talked about with Nomos, not only does it owe to this kind of absolute consensus, you know, culturally, aesthetically, ethically, juristically, but it, the polis is an actual concrete place. It's, it's like literally and figuratively, like was the center of, you know, ancient Greek life, just like the state became the center of national life for say, you know, France or for Germany post unification. Okay? So we can imagine, you know, a king or we can imagine a chancellor, you know, subsequently, or some combination thereof as the seat of sovereignty. And that's almost a model for how we think of God, okay? You know, in symbolic terms, even though one's not particularly religious. And the palace or the state, you know, it's quite literally the physical dominion of that sovereignty, okay? So, and the degree to which that sovereign keeps, know, can extend his authority, that's basically the parameters of, of, of the national state. You know, it's the pr. That's the parameters of that government's authority. Okay? Quite literally in physical space you can draw a line to which it extends to. Okay, this presents a problem. If you take a state like the United Kingdom or if you take a state like America was becoming, that had a, that had and has a blue water navy, you know, that can project power anywhere on this planet with fairly devastating results even back then, and which also has interests of all kinds in all sorts of far flung locales. Some of these interests are political, some are military, so are strictly economic. Okay, so on what basis on, on what? On, on what basis does, does, does a state such as that, you know, derive its authority to intervene? Well, as Schmidt pointed out in the case of the UK and the United States, it did so in the, in, in, in. In terms of, you know, what is a creditor and what is a debtor? There's a, there was a deeper mythology in the UK than there was in the United States, because in the United Kingdom and any kind of credit extended to any institution or people or Nation, you know, derived from the sovereignty of the monarch. And therefore, you know, the, this, the subject debtor population wasn't a very real way availing itself to that sovereignty. But even if we redact that, the United States, the way it characterized the Monroe Doctrine basically was that, you know, there's you know, hemisphere what facilitates as American wealth, you know, all these lesser states, you know, within the Americas partake of American wealth. And in order to avail those states to a monarchy would be to appropriate wealth in that dominion as far as the monarch could assures authority. And that's unacceptable. Later on a military, a strategic military imperative came to characterize the Monroe Doctrine and its legitimacy far more than a trade and creditor debtor imperative. But initially it was exactly what Schmidt said and exactly what I just relayed as to where sovereignty was derived from. So understandably this creates a very, very kind of confused situation as to what the parameters are of sovereign authority and what even should what even could be said to be the consensus of, you know, laws and customs of war. So there was a somewhat anarchic circumstance brewing on this planet in conceptual terms, even removing the kind of discret power political interests of these various actors, some state actors, some non state actors that gave rise these catastrophes. The first and second World War and the second World War, obviously a, not just a draconian piece, but a, an incredibly brutal and broad based and unprecedented effort of social engineering was undertaken. And it was done so under the auspices of a new world order that replaced and swept away what we just talked about. And the only reason that was possible is, is because in conceptual terms what I just described here was no longer conceivable. It no longer had a context. Even if it did have a context, there was no way to implement it any longer. Now the first kind of chinks in, in the sort of, in the sort of structure of the Volca Rex, the just public of Europa informal terms in, in 1899 and 1907, the, there was, there was two, there was two peace conferences held in the Hague. And those are first ever to decouple law and, and the law of war and peace from any sovereign authority or territorial imperative. Like conceptually the claim was, you know, the Volcan is no more. The, the world truly has been incorporated into, you know, into various polities that can be said to span the planet in terms of the interests that are, you know, that they're, that they, that interdependence has created, you know, of an economic, military, political nature. You know, the only way that we can Manage the colored world, these ascended states as well as, you know, manage, you know, overlapping interests of the European powers and the colored dominions and you know, the kind of nascent national identities that are extending those dominions between each other. What's up fools? Main event J USO here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one.
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You know, it's the kind of issue in a quality of status that's just universally binding. Okay, now this is important. What I'm about to say to the. To. To the. To Schmidt's paradigm, which I'm going to draw, which I'm going to draw upon again to make a point which I is for purposes of. Under. Of existential understanding, not polemical. Okay, if you're going to declare now or in 1907 that, you know, I, I'm going to declare, you know, I'm going to draft a treaty document. I'm going to declare that, you know, there, there's equality of status between all states. You know, no state has, has more power than another on the road to manipulate, you know, outcomes, you know, war. And p. War is illegal, you know, and you know, in any, any, any, any aggressive war is a criminal act according to the community of nations. I mean, who, whose values am I. Am I declaring that in the name of. I mean. And any state that have the power to enforce such a paradigm, hypothetically, would be. What would be a superpower, if not a unipolar hegemon. It would be a superpower. And just the, the very existence of these kind of power disparities between a state that acts as the lawgiver state and the subject states, like, means that you're dealing with the ruler and the ruled. And all, all, all legal paradigms that are functional or can be said to exist, rely at least in part or partake at least in part of coercion. So added to that, either the state that's issuing these, the edicts as the lawgiver state, or you know, a state that's assigned separate from it as the enforcement Mechanism of this, you know, edict issued by the lawgiver, one of those two is going to by default be the sovereign owing to its monopoly on violence. You know, even if all states voluntarily seated their, you know, acquiesced to this by seating their, their maintenance of arms to the singular authority, you know, that you still would not be dealing with a situation of equality. Your consensus, you know, just existentially that's not possible. There's some people, particularly on the left, not the radical left because generally they tend to accept some bastardized version of that paradigm I just explained, but who claim that what I just stated is, is, is, is cynical or that it's, it's, it's a polemical idea that know, just, just, just on to a certain disdain for, for supranational institutions. That's not the case at all. It's an existential matter. And it, it doesn't matter. It, it doesn't matter who or what is in the role of lawgiver. There is a, there is, there is an element of coercion and any element of coercion creates a disparity of status. We there, there cannot be said to be equality within such a system. And absent that enforcement mechanism, once again you're dealing with anarchy and you're dealing simply with a permissive set of guidelines that if states choose to abide, they will abide. And if they do not, it, the agreement is, is an illusory promise because it has no mechanism of enforcement. Now, as, as a, this, this seems like a highly academic kind of highly abstract argument, but in the aftermath of the first World War, this became very much an issue, okay? Because the claim was what underlay the Kellogg Brion Pact, which in the aftermath of the unwillingness of the United States to acquies the League of Nations, the Kellogg Brion Pack was it, it outlawed war quote as a instrument of national policy. Okay? But again, this was a very Eurocentric conception. And, and it, and it partook actually, despite its pretensions of representing a new order, it partook in existential terms of the old world order. Because if you utilize war as a policy, policy instrument, you're talking by definition about a war of choice. You know, you're talking about a cabinet war in order to, in order to coerce a rival power into acquiescing to some demand or another. Or you're talking about, you know, you're talking about a war within the colored dominions to manage, you know, a, a colony remote from the primary seat of sovereignty. You know, these are wars which are waged by choice, you know, in order to derive some sort of profit or benefit, you know, an existential war for national existence. One doesn't have a choice in whether or not to wage such a war. And the stakes, not profit or, you know, discouragement from, you know, seeking the path to war on account of, you know, some kind of, you know, some kind of, some kind of potential sanction, you know, you're talking about existence or non existence, you know, so such things presume not just, you know, the, the kind of perennial nature of a, of a Eurocentric order and the kind of permanent subjugation of the colored world, you know, which in turn presumes not just the political will but the material means to do so, but it also, it characterizes, you know, a, a very peculiar kind of warring that really didn't have precedent outside of the early modern period in Europe. You know, I mean, it wasn't nascent. Great powers like Japan weren't waging wars of choice. And states like Prussia that, you know, had been at war for 600 years owing to, you know, them being on the frontier of, of Europe, quite literally, they were, they weren't fighting wars of choice against, you know, the Ottomans, the Mongols or the, or the Russians and later the Soviet Union. I mean, these, these were wars of national existence and in the most bleak and intense terms, you know, race wars. So that aside from the fact that these things like a Kellogg Briond Pact, unlike League of Nation itself, it's time. The fact that they were premised on, on kind of progressive fictions, they, they, they, they didn't describe war as was actually developing and exigencies that, that, that, that were giving rise to the need for this kind of discussion in the first place. Now I'm going to bring us back to the Second World War. I, I felt it was important to drop that background, extensive and in detail as it may have been, because otherwise, otherwise the, the kind of, the conceptual horizon of the, of the victors doesn't really make sense. Now as we kind of talked about, I mean, as we did talk about, we, we talked about in the preceding episodes, you know, the kind of origin of, of the war party in the U.K. you know, the focus which had a, a deep, deep sectarian, ethno, sectarian hatred of Germany. Okay. And we talked about, you know, how they capitalized on the indigenous element like Vance, Dance Attard and others, you know, who, who had a kind of atavistic fear of Germany, you know, owing to a number of things, including the Fact, in my opinion, they kind of, these people were kind of decadent aristocrats who realized they were sort of in the twilight of their existence as, as an elite cast. And they associated, you know, the kind of this, kind of this kind of nightmare image of goose stepping Prussians, you know, backed up by, you know, modern combined arms as, as some. It was kind of like their fear of like, you know, the new order embodied, okay. Or one potential new order that would render them totally obsolescent. I mean, it sounds silly, but I really believe that this was something that was present in the minds of people outside of the, you know, dominant ethnic group of the focus. Because otherwise I, I can't think of why they would take on such prejudices. But there's a tangible spirit of revenge. Okay. In the United States, among the New Dealers, we talked about Henry Morgan Thou and his outsized role. His outsized role and setting policy in the Roseville administration. Okay. We're talking about the Morgan plan. Well, Morgan thow continued to advocate for the Morgan thou plan throughout 1943 and 1944. Okay. And as time went on and Roosevelt's health began to fail, Roosevelt's mind began to fail in large part. And who had access to Roosevelt really could expect, you know, kind of his, his own policy initiatives to be greenlit. Opposite Cordell Hull or opposite, opposite Morgenthau, was Henry Stimson Secretary of War. We've not talked a lot about Stimson and I don't think Stimson was any kind of hero. But compared to his fellows in the Roosevelt White House, I think he was fairly admirable. He was Secretary of War, okay. Stimson was the token Republican. I missed the New Dealers. He, he certainly, he certainly didn't run interference with any New Deal policies and he certainly never hesitated to execute the orders of his commander in chief. But he was, he was more than can be said of anybody else in the camp in the resolution of Canada. He was there on grounds of merit, okay? That's the reason he was, that's the reason why he was allowed as party affiliation, okay. He was noting fitting in late 1944 not just to General, not just to General George Marshall, who was Roosevelt's Chief of Staff, but in his own diary that it was pretty clear that, you know, in the territories that were slated to be ceded to Poland, you know, German death. Germans, they were going to be the Germans, they were going to be ethnically cleansed, okay? You know, we were talking about 2 to 3 million people and this happened, okay? But he made the Stimson made the point that, you know, not only is this it was clear that Poland was going to be delivered to the Soviets on a silver platter. So in the court of history, America is going to be, you know, held responsible for better or worse for the ethnic cleansing of Germans from central Europe, you know, just as it's claiming that it's waging this war, you know, of, of democratic self determination for all European peoples and in order to liberate Poland from tyranny, you know. And in those days the Department of State and the entire diplomatic corps from which a lot the Department of war derived a lot of its key figures know, these were guys who generally were privileged and they, they very much pursued the career they did only the fact that they had a very strong historical orientation. Okay. They were motivated by what they believed the historical record would reflect based upon their actions. Okay. This wasn't contrived whatever say Stimson. These are things he wrote in his private diary as well as said confided to people like Marshall. So I think we can rely on its legitimacy. He wasn't, he, he wasn't just speaking kind of soaring terms to exonerate himself and missed what he realized was a pretty, a pretty morally questionable administration. I, whatever we can say, I, I, I, I rely on Stson a lot because for that reason I, I believe we can take his testimony at face value. Okay. Particularly concerned because Cordell hall, his counterpart in department of State had essentially taken on the Morgenthau view. Like why it's not entirely clear. I've got my own views on that. I think Hull was one of these types who went immersed around strong personalities like, like Morgan thou and immersed. This whole would have been and kind of the culture the focus because he was meeting with Churchill's people all the time. I think he took on the prejudices of some of these people and I see this today a similar phenomenon and I think we saw that in men like Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney. Frankly, I don't think I need to spell it out further, but Lord Halifax, who as I've noted before, I think was a fairly, fairly reasoned individual, at least compared to, compared to his prime minister. He, he certainly was. He, he attested a Marsh in 1943 he met with Cordell hall and Hull seemed positively unhinged when the issue of the German leadership came up and he stated that the entirety of the German political and military leadership down to the lowliest officer should be liquidated. You know, and obviously Halifax's first thought Was my God, this man is essentially suggesting we should do what Stalin did, you know, not just within his own general staff and then ultimately you know, do the entirety of the, of the military apparatus down to the company level. But you know, what, what the Soviets did in Eastern Poland at Katy and know this, this people like Halifax realized that this wasn't just some kind of fog of war quagmire that you know, really, you know, the, the enterprise he was involved in was, was not popular by man to be said to be advocating, you know, taking the moral high ground. Okay, Eisenhower was, I, I think Eisenhower was certainly decent compared to people like, like, like Morgan thou, but unlike Marshall, I think Eisenhower was somewhat, somewhat small minded. Okay. I think he's a military genius. I think he was one of the smartest men in terms of IQ ever sit in the White House. But in terms of the historical implications of, of this punitive regime that was being advocated and quite literally planned, I don't think he fully grasped that. He said to, he said to, he said to Stimson and I'm paraphrasing that he relayed to Helifax and to Stimson on July 10th, 1944. Interestingly, this was just before the July 20th plot that you know, where Hitler got blown up and survived of course. But he said the rights leadership be shot even without the benefit of a drumheads court martial on grounds that the German people must be made to feel a sense of personal responsibility. That's a very peculiar thing for a military man. You say okay, and I believe again Eisenhower certainly wasn't a milk toast but I, I think he basically, he basically left political decisions and analyses to what he viewed as, you know, to who he viewed as you know, kind of, kind of the men most qualified to render those decisions. And despite Eisenhower's surname and disadheritage, I, I, you know, he was a northern military officer. I think he was naive about the kind of reality of, of ethno sectarian politics that caused European war in the first place. However, Eisenhower did, Eisenhower did oppose the excesses of the Morgenthau plan because the Morgan plan was literally a plan to exterminate the German people. And Eisenhower raised this to Morgenthau. And in part Eisenhower was looking forward to the occupation wondering first of all I, Eisenhower, because he was a basically decent individual, he wasn't going to avail his men as the exterminators of, of, of the German race. Okay, Number two, it's not even clear like how such an occupation slash final solution would would be implemented. And according to Morgenthau, when Eisenhower challenged him or thou said, quote, the whole of the German population is a synthetic paranoid. There is no reason for treating a paranoid gently. The best cures let the Germans stew in their own juice. Meaning essentially in metaphorical terms, you know, that, that the Germans are constitutionally evil. I mean, this is dressed up in the language of psychology, psychiatry, which as we get into the next episode, we'll, we'll get into how that played into the kind of entire normal paradigm and the subsequent occupation. But Morgan thou, he was able to get an audience with the President roosevelt again in August 1944. It was immediately on his return from Europe to Washington. And he had great concern that, uh, Morgenthau did that, that, that some sort of, uh, that that some sort of normal peace would be you know, realized with, with Germany holding other national security exigencies or just the fact that, you know, people were revolted by the suggestion that Germany should literally be starved and depopulated. In particular, Morgan thou was concerned that Churchill would object to the Morindale plan. Not, not because Churchill a moral person or because he cared about whether Germans lived or died. But the UK would have, would, would have, would have, would have been an existential jeopardy if Germany was simply wiped off the map. Okay? And looking forward, and particularly considering the, you know, the cozy relationship between Stalin and, and, and Roosevelt, of which Churchill had increasingly been frozen out, he was, he was looking, this was a self interested concern, okay? But what, what Roosevelt said was, and this is a direct quote, we've got to be tough with Germany. And I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You have to castrate the German people. We have to treat them in such a manner so that they can't go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past. That's metaphor comes Rosal returned his metaphor a few different times and so did Morgenthau. I don't know who filched it from who. This. We have to castrate the German people. Now, I'm not trying to be lurid, but that's an incredibly strange metaphor. And I've never in my life invoked the metaphor of castrating something or somebody if it speaks of a real, of a real moral sickness. I think I, I don't think that I, I don't think that my own prejudices to color my opinion on this. And there's something very like or, or like organically brutal about it. You know, the, the, even the metaphorical language of the of. Of. Of the Morgan now plan. They're, they're talking about it literally in, you know, like they, like, like they're exterminating vermin or they're, or they're precluding some insidious bloodline in, in a, in a population of cattle from know. From reproducing itself. It's, it's really quite sick. And you know, not even, not, not even like in, in the, in the memoirs of, of guys who fought in these like the Creek War and these like horrible like race wars in, in America. Have I ever come ac. I never run across anybody saying that we got to castrate the Red Indians like that. It's profound. I mean, t is profoundly sick. I'm sure some people will disagree and say that I'm, I'm just deliberately trying to emphasize that point to cast a punitive light on Mr. Roosevelt. I don't accept that. But Stimson, secondary with Stimson, what he, the way he handled this. He approached General George Marshall. And in those days, even with a, a chief executive as powerful as Roosevelt, the, the chief of staff, the army chief of staff, he had tremendous power, okay? And Stimson, uh, neither Stimson nor uh, nor Marshall were Jewish. And uh, that was kind of a common bond. I, I mean just only the fact that, you know, so many people in, you know, organize orbit and were animated by ethno sectarian passions. But Morgan, though, But Morgan though, Marshall also, because he was a military man and Stimson was a secretary of War, you know, they, they had a common interest not just in policy, but, you know, there was, there was, there was, there was a mutuality of interest there, okay? And what Stimson wrote in his diary about stems of the proletic diarist, like a lot of men of this era were, which is a, a tremendous resource for people like me who are kind of lay historians. But since it wrote about his meeting in fall 1944 with Marshall, he said, I relayed to Marshall, I quote, I found around, I found an atmosphere of personal resentment against the entire German people without regard to individual guilt. And I was very much afraid it would result in our taking mass vengeance on the part of our people in the shape of clumsy economic action. And that really spoke to Marshall the technocrat, among other things. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think Marshall had more of a conscience than most of his peers in this administration. But he also, Marshall was an officer, a general officer, cut from the same kind of cloth as blackjack cursing had been. And Those that don't know among other things Blackjack person was a logistics genius and like a lot of West Point types was an engineering genius. And the modern interstate highway system was basically the brainchild of Pershing. So if you approach Marshall and say look you know the you know Roosevelt is, is having late night conversations with Morgan thou about like literally castrating the Germans as a people. And on top of that you know if we, if we annihilate Germany and and kill 80 million of them and leave this kind of void in the center of Europe that you know we're gonna not only will the world economy not recover, we're going to plunge ourselves probably into another Nightmare. C in 1929. This is the kind of thing that very much got Morgan th's attention. Okay or not Morgan th Marshall. I'm sorry, I'm tired so but owing to again one of the fact that Morgan though greater access to to Roosevelt probably not just instead probably than anybody he Maratha also had had Harry Dexter White who who was personally close to Roosevelt in a way that a treasury secretary's assistant ordinarily would not be. And incidentally White was later accused of being a Soviet agent. And there was some. There was a substantial evidence to that effect. But FDR at this point is in failing health. He's presented with the final, he's presented the final proposal of the Mora plan by Harry Dexter White. Okay. What it relayed, what it suggested was that first and foremost Germany had to be demilitarized and stripped of any national army or paramilitary element independent of allied control authority. But in addition to those fairly normal punitive demands, it was suggested that 18 to 20 million able bodied Germans be deported to Africa essentially as slave laborers. And the way Harry Extra White sold it was the Tennessee Valley Authority which was you know, part of the one of the mass New deal projects it undertook these massive hydroelectric projects, infrastructural projects that for a time employed close to half the able bodied male population United States. So the idea was the final Morgan now playing iteration you know we could basically take every every able bodied German man who survived. You know 1945. We can work on a death in Africa and carve out some kind of
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Basically, we can like, realize Cecil Rhodes is a dream with German slave labor. We can kill off, you know, German manhood and then we can reap the profits of this kind of, you know, of, of the dark continent, you know, as, as, as a modern. As a modern, you know, interdependent economy, which is a, a totally insane idea. And frankly, it's not, it's not morally any different than, than, than Himler's and, and, and uh, and, and the SS and the SD's plan for the Slavic east. Except arguably in their case, you know, there's the exigency of, you know, Germany having a developed superpower capability to survive the people. Now, Stimson and Marshall, what they, what they did. What they did was they, they. They approached Felix Frankfurter, which on his face seems peculiar, owing to Frankfurt's heritage and his sympathies and his involvement with the folks and everything. But it actually was a stroke of genius for what they were trying to do. Frankfurter was shocked and reacted with great disdain at the Morgandel plan, frankly, because it was so obviously punitive and amateurish. Frankfurter, he said, you know, obviously, any. Whatever we decide moving forward in terms of the, in terms of the occupation regime and, you know, the liquidation of, of, you know, the national Socialist element and the control group within Germany, you know, we've got to maintain the appearance of law and order at all costs. You know, this was Frankfurter's big. This was his big. You know, this was, this is what he kept returning to. Okay. Morgan Thou was essentially rooked owing to Stimson and Marshall's ability to get the year of Frankfurter. The Frankfurter respected both of them, even if they weren't particularly friendly. You know, Frankfurter was able. One of the few men who could go over Morgan Val's head. And by that point Roosevelt was practically, you know, on his deathbed anyway. And Frankfurter and his people were able to essentially keep Morgan Thou from getting an audience with the president again or from literally, you know, being alone with him and getting him to put, you know, his hand to paper and, you know, signing off with the authority of the, of the executive on whatever, whatever machinations Darwin and White had in mind. And thank God for that, when ensued, was not particularly great, but it certainly is better than the alternative. So the result of this was on October 30, 1944, the Allies issued what can be called the Moscow Declaration. What the Moscow Declaration did was it distinguished between, quote, major war criminals and minor war criminals. Minor war criminals were retreated like war criminals traditionally had been. Okay, only the laws and customs of war. Like, for example, a company commander who, you know, allegedly carried out a massacre, say, in Italy. You know, he'd be extradited to Italy. Like a local court would present evidence against him. You know, a, a, a military jury would be impaneled, you know, considering a man who, like, fought in that theater. You know, they would render a decision based upon, you know, the evidence presented. And, and that would be that major war criminals, however it was said, you know, regardless at expense there to be brought back to stand trial within, you know, Occupied Allied Control Council occupied territory. Because, you know, the quote, unquote, crimes that they committed were not, were not bound any territory or locality. Okay? So basically, if you were, if you were judged to be a major war criminal based on a criteria that was, you know, fairly arbitrary, even as the, even as developed, finally, a year later, on the eve of the proceeding itself, it was never entirely clear, like, what made one a major war criminal. And we'll get into that next episode. But basically, the Moscow Declaration, it attempted to have it both ways. Okay. On the one hand, it, it said, you know, okay, you know, for, for people who are not particularly interested in, you know, politically or for people who, you know, the trial which won't facilitate any, you know, directly political end, you know, we're going to treat them like, you know, we always would, you know, a man in uniform accused of, a, accused of a breaching of laws and customs of war. But for people whom we consider it imperative, you know, to, to, to, to, to try for political purposes, you know, there, there's no limitation to where they're charged, how they're charged, what serent authority places them on trial. And, you know, what, what, what, what, what the content of the indictment information against them constitutes because, you know, they, they, they've simply offended against moral principles that, you know, are held by all men. Not. This is a polemic. This isn't a theory of law. And it doesn't even really purport to be other than a superficial way. In my opinion. That's the, that's kind of what remained directly of the, of the kind of Morgenthau Plan sensibility like that's It Shining Through. And in our next episode. I want to wrap up in a minute because I think I Just threw a lot at our listeners. I want to talk about how Justice Jackson, who quite literally was a small town American lawyer who became a judge, never graduated law school incidentally, because once upon a time you learn to practice law by practicing law and then you, you know, were admitted by a bar. They acted kind of like a guild of source. You know, nobody went to law school. But that's interesting in its own right because I, I, I, that that's a huge change compared to the way things are structured today. But you know, we'll get into the actual proceedings and we'll probably go a little bit longer then they already kind of started my notes like in my, and like organizing in my mind. We're probably gonna go for like 90 minutes. But yeah, I think, I think this might be a good stopping point. Man, I hope that wasn't too like scatter shocked or dry. Like I said, I think it's important for context. Otherwise doesn't, it doesn't really. It's hard to convey like what the significance of these proceedings were, if that makes any sense. Right. No. You started out by laying down what historical law was, how it was structured, and then you showed how it was basically dismantled for the 20th century and we see the fruits of it up until today. Great. Yeah. If you're happy and if the, if the listeners are, then I'm happy. Yep. So give your plugs and we'll end it. Yeah, we'll do. And I would report that telegram just as a platform, it seems to be blowing up a lot. Like Trump's on there now and he's pretty active, as are a bunch of people in our thing. We've got some good discussions there. You can find my telegram channel. It's t me slash the t h e number 7 h o m a s 777. You can find me on Substack where my long form is as well as my podcast. It's real. R E A L Thomas T H O M A S777.substack.com you can find me on GAB at Real Thomas 777. I generally just back up on GAB. You know what I post on Telegram. But if you like gab and if you contact me there, I will answer it. Well, that was great. I guess going to do this again next week and I've been trying to put them out on the same day like I was trying to do Wednesday. Then we got caught up this week. Like you weren't feeling well. I'm not really feeling well. I'M I'm trying to get over something that was. That's been bugging me. So. Yeah, this allergy season. I think a lot of people are hard by that. Yeah. So we'll record next week and we'll be back. Thanks, man. That's great, Pete. Thank you. I am here with Thomas. 777. How are you doing, Thomas? Very well, thanks. What I want to get into today, I realized in the last episode we delved rather deep into the theoretical foundation of international law and what supplanted what had been precedent, you know, the preceding 300 years really. And that wasn't. I wasn't just trying to, you know, showcase some sort of, you know, knowledge of esoteric subjects. That really is essential if you want to understand what, what. What came to pass in the immediate aftermath of. Of the war and, and what the objectives were of, of the victors and how and why it was such a house divided. And today we're going to continue to lay foundation but in more in more concrete terms as to what was a raid against the vanquished states and what sort of narratives were were prioritized in order to, in order to, you know, substantiate the legitimacy of. Of. Of the burgeoning new order. Because as we've talked about, we, we. We haven't discussed as extensively as we might on a dedicated. On a series that's, you know, dedicated specifically to the topic. But you know, we've gotten into how.
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You know, the victors in of 1918 they had a notion to implement a punitive regime that would favor their, their political hegemony and their ability to. To, you know, to, to. To. To vanquish Europe in perpetuity in terms of its ability to reconstitute and challenge, you know, the hegemony of, of the Vickers. And that was not possible owing to, you know, material considerations of a power political nature. But also there really was a revolt, you know, within the United States, you know, politically at the ballot box. I mean, you know, the, it was very much viewed as the, the voting public. I mean they very much viewed what what Paris and London had in mind for Europe as, as being a very cynical ploy, you know, that really had nothing to do with. With substantial justice or with establishing a paradigm that. That, that, that that would guarantee, you know, a balance of power, that. That. That wouldn't lead to these disasters, as was the case in 1914. It had nothing to do with that. That had everything to do with, you know, weaponizing, you know, the. The apparatus of international law in order to. In order to accomplish political goals. And, you know, goals of that inevitably were motivated by hostility. By the end of the second war, things are very different in no small measure, because as we talked about, you know, the 1933 New Dealer regime really, really did implement a revolutionary paradigm, you know, domestically as well as abroad. And one of the things that substantiated this was a near total control of information and the ability to shape public opinion that theretofore was unprecedented. You know, particularly now with just the advent of, you know, almost every home having access to radio. But, you know, the. The advent of visual media, which was exploited to great effect by all major combatant powers. You know, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, the U.K. japan and the United States. So what I'm getting at is that the world situation of 1945 was very, very different. And on top of that, the, you know, Germany had been utterly devastated in, you know, in a way, that was not the case in 1918. I mean, Germany had suffered terribly, not just in the battlefield, but on ground of the starvation, blockade and other things. But they literally were being subjected to. They literally been subjected to a genocidal assault, you know, owing to the race war that, you know, where they. They gave as. As brutally and as thoroughly as they got proverbially against the Soviet Union. But, you know, the. The United States and the United Kingdom were. Were. Were. Were offering no quarter in terms of their bomber offensives and, and the goals they're in. I mean, make a mistake. The objective was to massacre as many. As many German civilians as possible. And they accomplished that to very macabre effect. And we're going to get into that later probably next episode in more detail. And finally, we talked in detail throughout this entire series about the Morgenthau Plan. You know, not just the plan specifically, but, you know, the kinds of sympathies and the ethno sectarian prejudices and kind of radical viewpoints that gave rise to that sort of. To that sort of thinking in the first place. You know, there really was a core of. Of extremists, you know, who had a great historical animosity made all the more. Made all the more vicious by, you know, the excesses that. That were underway in the in the most recent hostilities, you know, between, between, you know, European jewelry and, and, and the German Reich and its allied states. And uh, there was, uh, a coterie of men in Roosevelt's orbit who were very, very powerful, you know, not the least of which was, uh, Henry Morgan, thou. The treasury secretary, who was, you know, the author of the Sonin plan. So these, these, these circumstances were really not precedented in my opinion, except perhaps in the case the 30. In the 30 years war, which obviously was what had established the preceding paradigm as we talked about that it endured more or less for about 300 years proceeding. But moving on to the kind of concrete particulars, the person of Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court justice, he was selected by Truman to lead the American delegation at Nuremberg. Okay. And this was very deliberate. Truman. People have mixed feelings about Truman, including myself, obviously. I've got no truck with his politics, but I think Truman was a lot more admirable than Roosevelt, which isn't setting the bar very high. But I, I think he was, he was, he was a pragmatic realist and he understood, he certainly was no New Dealer, whatever the shortcomings or limitations of his viewpoint or whatever his prejudices may have been. And 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, we discussed in the last episode how this distinction between major war criminals and minor war criminals, this had, 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, you know, legitimacy and, and, and prophylactic assumptions that, you know, allow them to be spared, you know, personal liability for acts of state that would ordinarily be extended to a government. Okay. Now that's, however, what everyone's politics are 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 was feeling peace and subsequent. And Truman realized that. So Truman, his notion was a couple of things in, in choosing Justice Jackson. First of all, he wanted this. He wanted the Nuremberg proceedings to be conducted in the name of the quote United nations, like obviously, United nations as, like an, as, as. As an intergovernmental institution. You know, who's the, who's the, the. The. The. The founder states of it, you know, hope for it to become a kind of world government. You know, obviously that hadn't been established yet. You know, it would be established a few years later. But conceptually, this idea of, you know, the victor states acting, you know, in, in the name of the United nations, this was, this was very much a Truman. This was, this was, this was very much part of Truman's nomenclature, okay? And the right man had to be chosen in order to sort of lead that initiative or at least, you know, be the front and center in the public mind. Okay? So Robert A. Jackson, despite being a Supreme Court justice, you know, and having, and, and that in that role then, is now having tremendous, you know, prestige behind it. Like I've said, arguably there's even more esteem then than today despite, you know, the fact that, despite the fact that you know, arguably, you know, post 1973 or so, the, the seat of sovereignty is shifted to the judiciary. There's a great mystique afforded to the federal judiciary, okay? And there's a reason why Jackson got selected and not, you know, a man like Frankfurter who, you know, despite what, you know, despite his intelligence, despite his qualifications, despite his Machiavellian, despite his aptitude for Machiavellian intrigues, know, Frank Fter was very much, you know, like an East Coast Jew. And like he, he had al. Although. Although he was far more balanced on. On political questions than some of his coreligionists of the day. You know, he was very much a Zionist. You know, Tran realized he can't have a man like this out front. Okay? That's, that's going to raise the ire of, of. Of not just the vanquished and, and have him reject the legitimacy of it outright, you know, even more than they, you know, it's not as if they, they were affording a great deal of, of validity to begin with. But, you know, even though even the, even the party. Even the party states to, to. To the Nuremberg Tribunal, you know, France, the UK The Soviet Union, you know, they, they certainly would view this as bad optics. Okay? So Robert Jackson, he was born in Pennsylvania, small town Pennsylvania, in 1892. He was born in a township that his great grandfather literally had founded. Okay? Like, this is very Norman Rockwell kind of stuff, okay? Jackson, which was common to, to litigation attorneys of that. Of that generation. He never, he never went to law school or Took a law degree. He learned the practice, you know, by doing, you know, and by being an apprentice to, you know, learned men that were, you know, that had known his father and his grandfather. And he developed, you know, he demonstrated, he demonstrated a real confidence for litigation. Know. And that's how he got admitted to the bar. I mean that's, that's the way things were done, you know, in, in decades past. I mean that's a whole subject for another dedicated POC probably. But he became a solo practitioner I think in 1913. But he had a high profile, not just owing to his lineage and things, you know, and, and kind of being a descendant of the, the kind of, the kind of town fathers where he grew up. He, he was an arch New Dealer, okay. And this, you know, this, this, you know, wealthy Protestants on the east coast didn't think that way, like even if they were liberal. Okay. You know, and he developed a reputation as a kind of, as a, as a go to lawyer for trade unionists, you know, who had socialist friendly, socialist friendly, you know, politics and associations. So he was not a, he was not. He, I know on the surface he seemed, you know, very much a, a kind of a blue blooded American, like furtively and literally, but his politics were anything but. And, and demolished. Over that was the fact that his career took off in 1934 because Henry Morgenthau himself, you know, here's Morgenthau again, invited him to become general counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Okay. Now obviously, you know everybody, the, the Internal Revenue Service today has great power, but everything related to tax authority, you know, decades back, you know, since the Wilson administration, it's been a great way to, to, to attack one's political enemies, okay. In less than, in less than savory ways. Okay? So it, you, what I'm getting at is that it's not an accident that Morgan thou took this young lawyer, but a reputation for, you know, being friendly with the trade union movement and who, who had some radical inclinations that he, he demonstrated that he was committed to, in, in his own professional and personal life. It's not an accident that Morgan Fell solicited his talents for the Bureau of Internal Revenue. You know, the Roseville administration, like many administration is subsequent. This is one of the, this is one of the, this, this is one of the, this is one of the offices of the executive branch that would be turned loose on their enemies. Okay, so Jackson, what I'm getting at is despite his kind of squeaky clean reputation and kind of, you know, like I said, this almost sort of like Norman Rockwell sort of image of him that, that, that, you know, would. Which contributed in large part to Truman appointing him, you know, to lead the American delegation jurists to the, to the Nurburgr Tribunal. This, this was not really his nature. Okay? Like, he, he was very much, he very much had radical sympathies. Okay. You know, he very much had anti fascist sympathies. You know, he very much was, was on board with, with the New Deal enterprise and its ideological orientation. You know, like it's, it's, it's, it's revisionists like everybody else, you know, they, they've got to take measures to be balanced in their, in their analysis of, of historical events. And it's important not to just render, you know, the actors and history, you know, to into caricatures themselves. And you know, not every, not, not every New Dealer was some crazy, you know, with some crazy New York City, you know, zealot or some, or some crazy Jewish guy who, who didn't, you know, like, who, who hated the Vatican and hated the Germans and hated, you know, and considered every, every, you know, every, every every descenter Protestant American to be some, you know, lynch happy Klansman. Like some, some of these people were men like Robert Jackson who owing to their ethnicity and faith and everything else like you would not assume had these sympathies, but some of them did. Okay? That's important to keep in mind. One of the, one of the, one of the reasons Truman was enamored with Jackson as well was that. Excuse me, Jackson very much was a voice in the wilderness around the time that Roosevelt had died. Okay? Like we talked about how the Morgenthau plan, even when Roosevelt was literally on his deathbed, Morgenthau was still intriguing and conspiring to have the Morgenthau plan issued as an executive order, you know, he'd literally already gotten Roosevelt to sign off on it and through Roosevelt, Churchill to literally initial it at, at the, at the, at Yalta. And it, it. But it had not become, you know, in executive order. And why Roosevelt was, you know, dragging his feet on this, as some people might view it as not clear. I mean, whether it owed to poor health, you know, and just disengagement therein because Roosevelt's mind was failing. Whether Roosevelt, you know, he wasn't having pegs of conscience about the fate of the German nation and people, but he may have realized at the 11th hour that politically this was not going to be feasible in implementing the post war, post war order because it would have it would have robbed the victors and particularly, you know, the American delegation. The appearance of legitimacy and, and fair and even handedness. But you know, whatever it was, you know, there was there was there when Roosevelt was alive. As we talked about in the last episode, Stimson and George Marshall, they were, they were kind of the sole men of portfolio as so as, so to speak.
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conditions 21 plus, you know, who were demanding that, you know, some sort of formal, formal juristic process be afforded, you know, to the, to the men who had been identified, however arbitrarily as major war criminals. Now, a big coup for that perspective was, was, was the appointment of Jackson. Was the appointment of Jackson because despite Jackson's limited horizons, he'd never travel outside the United States. He was not particularly worldly, despite his politics that we talked about. You know, he was, he was, he was, he was known as, as, as, as one who sympathized with, with Reds, you know, to, not to be crude about it, but his, he was adamant that he, he, he was adamant that the structure and the procedure of whatever ensued as regards the major war criminals could not be ad hoc. It had to be fully imagined. It had to be fully fleshed out and developed. It, it couldn't just be some 11th hour, you know, decision, you know, like the Soviets had carried out, you know, intermittently to purge their own ranks as well as that of vanquished people. And we'll get into that in a minute. Or you know, like what the, what the Germans dealt with in the Night of the Long Knives, where potential insurrectionists were just taken out and shot. You know, they had to, you know, it was understood because Truman understood optics very well. It was understood that, you know, the appearance of due process had to absolutely be honored, you know, if there was going to be any legitimacy to this enterprise at all. And this becomes clearer and I'm hopping ahead, but just to make this one point, and we'll get to this later, when you look at the, the earliest government of, of the Bundes Republic with Adenauer at the helm, Adenhauer was certainly not a friend of, of the German people and he certainly was a man who, who had come across the anti fascist, but he was, he was exactly the he was exactly the man who should have been installed at the helm. And, and the reasons why are. Are due to the fact that at least, at least the center right and at least. And what had been. You know, the uh. The national conservative element in Germany was willing to get on board with this enterprise owing to the fact that the appearance of due process was maintained. And you can say that that's, you know, the people went along with this were lacking in principles or ethics or, or, or, or, or, or inner fortitude, and I'd agree with that. But it at least allowed them to publicly take this position and retain some semblance of honor. You know, again, it doesn't matter if it's. If objects are superficial. You know, the appearance of such things must be maintained at all times, particularly when you're talking about power political affairs. Now what, what. What's interesting is that FDR and Stalin as early as 1943 had been contemplating what really in the, really the aftermath of. Really in the aftermath of. Of. Of Kursk. Okay. Because Kursk was sort. I mean I, As I indicated earlier in our, in our series, I I think. I think the Second World War in the east was decided in 1941. But owing to. Owing to politics and owing to the fact that no man, you know, truly is an auger in terms of what will develop in the battlefield, the. The fate of the Third Reich in military terms was very much sealed at cursed. Okay? That was the last time Germany had the initiative offensively against the Soviet Union. Okay. So it's not surprising that around December 16, 1943, that's when the Soviets had first impanel a war crimes tribunal, okay, formally and they did so with. Because they. There was three German officers specifically who been taken prisoner at Stalingrad. Like more the overwhelming. The overwhelming majority of of of German PS were Were, were were sent to goags which were, you know, during the war as they were prior and after essentially death camps from where virtually nobody returned.
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But it was, it was unprecedented for, for. For German officers to be. To be availed in any kind of any kind of trial, okay at least is the process of which would be familiar in the west. Okay. Part of that was because Stalingrad that was the first time that you know, any, any general officers had fallen into. In, in any meaningful numbers had fallen into the Soviet hands. But part of it was because the Soviets were looking ahead and this is important, okay, why these men were. Why these men were availed to this, to this kind of perfunctory courts. Marshall. The three men in questions were accused of murdering Russian civilians by means of poison gas trucks. Okay? And whether you accept that or not, whether you accept that these apparatus were being employed or not isn't important for the point I'm trying to make. And for the purposes of a revisionist analysis, the reason why these men on these charges were, were, were availed to this, this, this court's Marshall procedure that became really the model for Nuremberg two years later on, you know, on a, it was on a small scale. It's what was implemented on a grand scale. It owed in part to the unique character of the charges. Okay. I mean obviously there's something even, you know, there's something that seemed preposterous even before the true extent of Soviet brutality was, was, was known. Even before, you know, anybody, everybody, you know within, within the area of operations of, of the Eastern front was aware of the degree of Soviet violence against non combat POWs alike. It was well known throughout Europe. It was well known, you know, in America. It was, it was, it was, it was known throughout this planet that millions of people had been exterminated by the Soviet Union before shops even fired in the Second World War. Okay. It would have appeared absurd just in some basic way for anything approaching the Soviets to be bringing people up on formal charges for any conduct that could reasonably be, you know, recognized as kind of familiar goings on in, within a modern battle space. Okay. I think this is very important. I don't think. I know it's very important. Okay? So keep that in mind. This was the first iteration of, of a, of, of a dedicated war crimes tribunal being impaneled. Was, was these, was, was, was these three general officers and the subject of the information of the, of the, of the informational charging instrument was, was literally gassing trucks. Okay, now what this was, uh, these, get. These men were of course sentenced to death. Okay. These German officers, they were executed in a very public square in Kov. There's a crowd of some people have claimed 30,000 people, some 50,000. The, the settled number of most revisionists and court historians alike is 40,000 people. So I mean, this was a big event. Okay. What's also significant, it was, it was meticulously documented and filmed and heavily edited into an actual propaganda film. Okay. You know, emphasizing of course an anti fascist political message. You know, it was, it was emphasizing, you know, the, the, you know, the barbarism of fascism and it's, it's inherently, you know, exterminationist character. You know, but what was a particular emphasis to anybody viewing it from Outside the Soviet Union was the Soviet reliance on confessions. Like often very elaborate confessions, you know, literally drawn out, you know, pages long, you know, the, the accused would be forced to take the stand, you know, and they often, you know, appearing dead eyed and disheveled, you know, showing signs of obvious torture and you know, sensory deprivation. You know, sometimes for, you know, as, as long as an hour or longer, you know, there'd be, there'd be these, these elaborate drawn out confessions. Okay. Almost ritualized. Okay. And the Soviets seem to think that this conferred some basic legitimacy. It didn't matter. Like I'm not just speculating here because this pops up again and again, both before the Second World War and after, but specifically this kind of paradigm. I'm talking about this, this fact of reliance upon, you know, the direct testimony of the accused as somehow neutralizing any inference of, of, of. Of coercion or of, or of due process not being honored. Okay. And the. Jackson himself and his staff were availed to a screening of this trial execution film on May 17, 1945. So literally this was, you know, a week after the cessation of hostilities in Europe. Okay, not even or. No, it was. Yeah, no, it was a week, A week and two days. Jackson's response was in, in, in. In typical diplomatic double speak, which obviously, you know, was, was very per. He was being very purposeful in choosing his words. He said it was quote, a very interesting exposition of the Russian method of proving a case by the defendants. Interestingly and somewhat against what's presented in most kind of popular histories of Nuremberg. There's this. It's characterized sort of implicitly that, you know, the United States and the UK were kind of in one camp, so to speak, the Soviets were in another camp. And the Soviets just wanted to, you know, kind of murder everybody without even the appearance of, of. Of of process or, or, or, or, or, or, or juristic protocol. And the French are just kind of in the background and not really a party to things. That's very much at odds with the facts of what developed. It was Churchill who initially was very much opposed to any sort of trial being a, for like a show trial or not just like any sort of any, any, any, any, any war crimes proceeding being afforded to, to the defendants who had, had been assigned the status of major war criminals. Why he was so adamantly against this, one can speculate. Some of it has to do with the murky kind of dealings that led to his own ascendancy. Part of this had to do. And we're going to get into this later, as we get into probably next episode, the discrete specific counts of the charting instrument at Nuremberg. Part of this had to do with ways that not just Churchill, but the entire warcam that had mischaracterized certain acts of the German High Command as suggesting that, you know, German strategic bombing of London was just spontaneous and it hadn't been deliberately provoked. Some of this had to do with, you know, not Bomber Command because to their credit, and specifically to Bomber Harris's credit, he, he was entirely candid about the operations undertaken by the, the forces under his command. The. There was at least two occasions where Churchill include. One of which was the, the, the assault on Nuremberg and. Or they sell them Dresden in February 45. There were two, there were two documented occasions where he claimed that, you know, incendiary raids that had killed tens of thousands of people had not been carried out by the ir, by the raf, but were exclusively operations of the US Army Air Forces. When he knew this to be false. Okay, part of it might have been, and again this is me speculating a bit that looking forward, Churchill knew that there would be real problems that the empire had, I mean obviously was falling apart from the center. Only the fact that it bankrupted itself and surrendered not just a good deal of its political sovereignty but also its actual material wealth. It just would not have had the forces and being or the ability to reconstitute and manage revolts and the colored dominions. But also politically that was increasingly becoming unthinkable owing to the world situation and the kind of fevered anti fascist narrative that was infecting all quarters. You know, as, as, as, as the kind of literally fiery end of the, of, of the war was emerging. It, I mean it, it, it or it could have just been that it, it could have just been that, you know, Churchill had been infected very much by the, the sort of prejudices of his, of his, of his patrons by that point. And he, you know, he, as we talked about before, you know, he. Churchill seemed to view kind of brutality and manliness as being synonymous, which was sort of peculiar to a man of his cast and station. But he was a peculiar individual. It's not clear. But my point is that Washington and Moscow were very much on the same page. That there had to be some sort of, that, that there had to be some sort of formal precedent laid down and there had to be a very public trial of the major war criminals. It was the UK that was the holdout. The only really point of agreement until, until, until after the death of Roosevelt, which we'll get to in a minute. As late as March 9, as late as March 13, 1944. The only thing that the War Cabinet would abide in terms of agreement with the Soviet diplomatic corps and, you know, the American Department of State. And this is according to Stimson, you know, the Secretary of War, who was uncornable with the entire enterprise in relative terms, the war. The Churchill's war cabinet declared that it would. It would select a list of, you know, major war criminals of Japanese, German, and within the Japanese, German and Italian commands, it'll be not less than 50, not more than 100 names. It would be understood that every one of these men would be liquidated. And it was stated that the Ford office was going to make clear that the men on the list would be distinct from those who'd be said to be guilty of war crimes and any conventional understanding of the concept. Rather, the criteria for selection would be, quote, responsibility for bringing about the war. Now, this is interesting too, and this is remarkable, okay, because as we talked about in the last episode, Nuremberg was a major breach of precedent because we talked about no mas, you know, moral consensus being, you know, the absolute essential character of international law. You know, international law only exists so far as a meeting of the minds is presence and there is a moral agreement and a really a constellation of. Of moral agreement between the parties to the Convention. Figuratively and literally. The Nuremberg enterprise from inception was tailored to constitute a new order, quite literally, you know, premised upon the hegemony of. Of a world regime, you know, with the United States at the helm, you know, the Soviet Union as its junior part, as the junior partner, you know, in the UK is. Is kind of this client state of. Of America that, you know, was. Was sovereign in name only, but like, nevertheless would. Would benefit from certain privileges within that new order in a way that, you know, the. The continent would not being as in part because it was. Because, you know, the latter would be under direct occupation. The former would not. But it's also too, it owes the kind of. We talked about the difference between, you know, the. The Anglophone sense of. Of. Of sovereign legitimacy not being bound up with concrete spatial concepts and territorial parameters, but at base with. With. With. With moral concepts that really were boundless and. And only. Only limited by the ability of. Of. Of the sovereign to project force. And that was part of it too, just kind of this basic discomfort not with the idea of, you know, declaring acts of state to be criminal, but with putting any kind of restraint upon sovereign violence at all in any formal capacity. But also, as was being hinted at throughout these conversations between not just the diplomatic core but the, the, the cabinets and their equivalent know of the big three, the Soviet Union, United States and the uk. It presented a problem being that America, the UK and the Soviet Union and had just waged a total war against, against the Axis powers and really nothing had been off the table in terms of what instrumentalities were, you know, considered legitimate in waging that war, including ultimately nuclear assault on a pro straight Japan. This presents some difficulties in establishing one's own moral credibility. If we're just going to talk, if we're just going to treat this enterprise as a, as, as a conventional issue of war crimes. Okay, Aside from the fact that again, you know, it, it's, it's, it's, it's fast all to talk about, you know, it's fast all talk about the laws and customs of war when there's been a complete breakdown in the moral consensus between the combatant parties or if there never was a consensus to begin with. But it's, it's, it's, it's absolutely facile if, you know, you're going to declare that the vanquished states, you know, are, are guilty of, know, breaching the laws and customs of war by engaging in conduct which you yourself have, you know, are, are, are identically cable for, you know, within the common battle space. So. And that, that continues. It continues till today. Very much so. Very much so. Yeah. Assad is a terrible person who, you know, killed and then you, you look and you're like, okay, so is there any way ever a, an American president would be charged with war crimes? Right. No, but, but every one of their quote unquote enemies would be if they had the chance or, and that's why in some ways, I think like I said, in some ways the UK's reluctance was born of, of, of Churchill's own idio. Idiosyncrasies. Part of it was in fact quite cunning and well thought out because, and what ultimately ended up, what ultimately ended up being the core of the, of the charging instrument, it was very, very careful to not be framed like an ordinary war crimes indictment. That's why we return again to a lot of people misunderstand and I don't want to get into the language of the indictment right this minute because that's going to be for the next episode, but I do want to lay the foundation explicitly. There's a reason why, and it was not just in order to, it was not just for structural reasons. Okay. There's a compelling reason why the Nuremberg Indictment does not treat the defendants as ordinary state actors or men in the service of a normal government. And it treats them as men who are operating outside of the law know both the law of man and natural law who had conspired from the inception of from the time that Hitler became Chancellor to perpetuate this secret conspiracy of mass homicide which was completely at odds with not just conventional military objectives and and and vagaries of statecraft and the ambitions therein. But that was in fact a a truly criminal conspiracy that was would not be within the contemplation of any any legitimate regime. Now that seems on its face a difficult case to make if you have the Soviet Union impaneled as you know with with with with an equal say as as the UK France and and that there is no perfect. There is no perfect way to to establish. There would have been no perfect way to establish this you know new order regime going forward. But there is an actual within the boundary rationality of the Nuremberg Indictment. There was a certain brilliance to it even if I even one considers the entire thing to be absurd from inception. Which brings us to what exactly became of the Morgan Val Plan. We got Morgan Valky continues to pop up again and again. I mean he was a key figure in in. In the New Deal regime and his what he wanted for the for the post war order. That's what really set the debate in motion as do what the the future of Germany would look like. And part of this was decided by circumstances owing to the deterioration of of relations between Moscow and Washington. The part of it like we talked about to the credit of Stimson and to General Marshall who sought about to see you know, develop a quorum against Morgan thow and and his quite literally genocidal plan for the German people. You know their genocide and their enslavement including I might add sterilization of the. Of the population of childbearing age. But the Morgana plan was was sort of. This was sort of this this creature that that wouldn't die. And it was chimeric in some ways. Like Morgan fell as a zealot. He had a great deal of power just owing to his office and he said any treasury any treasury secretary wheel substantial authority within the cabinet. But Morgan thou had more power than even an ordinary secretary of the Treasury. He was very well connected. He was very much a zealot. He had the confidence not just of his own people but I'm speaking in ethno sectarian terms as well as political terms. You know he was a force to be reckoned with and he very much had the confidence of Roosevelt. Stimson and Marshall were able to poach Frankfurter as we talked about, into their camp, which was a big coup as it were. But as of September 1944 the Morgan L Plan was still very much alive and well. Part of the Yalta Conference. As we talked about. Roosevelt and Churchill both initialed the plan and Lord Simon, you know, the viscount Simon. Drew McIntyre here from WWE. 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Casino he drafted a memorandum guaranteeing the summary execution of Adolf Hitler without trial as well as ribbon trop as well as Himmler as well as Gearing. As noted earlier, you know Stimson and Marshall were completely opposed to any summary execution or drumheads court martial or you know of, of, of any, of any head of state, you know under the auspices of a moral right. And what really settled the issue of, of of the top leadership headed off Hitler been. I mean Hitler never would have let himself be taken into custody. But ultimately when word of this memorandum, when word of the Simon memorandum came out, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force you know headed up by Eisenhower he got wind of it and he said the American people would not tolerate. He's like he said quote the American people not tolerate the extermination of Germany like nor they tolerate you know gangsterism of just you know hanging, you know Adolf Hitler. I mean obviously this became a nullity because all these men were g. All these men safe for gearing were dead by by the time, by the time it became you know possible to to implement such measures anyway. But the final act of of Morgan thou and his plan on 04-11-1945 mor th FDR was literally on his deathbed at this time. Okay Morin th somehow was able to gain access to fdr but you know by, by himself I which, which that's which itself goes to show you the power this man wielded Morgan. I mean 1940s weren't like today where I mean a chief executive was A lot more accessible then. But I mean Roosevelt was, was more, was more king than president. And getting an audience alone with the President as Treasury secretary, I mean that's. You're talking about a man of, of remarkable high profile if he was able to pull that off, particularly considering the state of the man's health. Well, the Commander in Chief, you know, look, you know I, I fought hard for this and this is what I'm fighting for. You know, I'm fighting for a just peace. This is what we are fighting for. You know, this is what we fought for since 1933. And he handed Roosevelt supposedly a finalized version of Morgan Thou plan. Roosevelt took the plan, didn't sign it, you know, dismissed Morgan Thou very next afternoon Roosevelt died. Okay. And Harry Truman was sworn in as President of the United States. Now Truman's a lot of things like we talked about. Truman did not trust the Soviets. He had a particular contempt for Stalin. You know, Truman as a senator was the one who said that didn't FDR die in Georgia? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. So this would all been happening in Georgia. Yeah, yeah. It, but Truman when he was a senator, you know, he'd said that if, if the, if the, if, if the communists get the upper hand as the America should support the Third Reich, you know, and he was, he was a dogmatic realist in power politics in some ways and he, he had a particular disdain for the Soviets and he, he, you know, he very much had an anti fascist streak within himself, but it was, I mean more than a streak. I mean, but he, he had no love for, for Morgan thou. When he, he certainly wasn't going to, he certainly wasn't going to play ball with the Morgan now plan. You know, I mean there was. That died with Roosevelt although aspects of it were, were insinuated into the occupation. And we'll get into that by the last episode. But the, the uh. What ultimately, if you want to understand how. What ultimately brought. What ultimately brought the UK to the table, I believe, I believe it was the fact that Lord Viscount was unceremonious. Viscount Lord Simon was unceremoniously dismissed before the, before the British delegation was impaneled, owing in part to the fact that he, he'd reverse himself on, on the question of war policy when he'd served a prior governments and been a mouthpiece for the Liberal Party. Okay. He was very much looked upon as somebody who adapted his, his beliefs to the, you know, the, whatever the governing current was, you know, or whatever public opinion would abide. Okay. And the, what ultimately was created instead largely at the behest of Anthony Eden rather than this kind of was what ultimately was, what ultimately was convened in the stead of just kind of this, this uh, this um, committee of one, you know, being Viscount Simon was a British war crimes executive. Okay. They were the ones who really came up with the proposal of you know, what became the Nuremberg Court, you know, the four power representation. What was vetoed in their proposal was they suggested it would consist of nothing but high, but high ranking general officers, you know, and they, they, they established the question of war guilt in two phases. You know, the first being to establish that general conspiracy had, had existed aiming to conquer, you know, Europe and the whole world and then to identify which man had been a party to this conspiracy. That again as we talked about and this was an essential characteristic of the entire Nurburgr enterprise. This enterprise, you know, had been outside of the scope in contemplation of, of, of any sort of normal government or any kind of legitimate, you know, state actor. America considered it, I mean not just Truman himself and, and Jackson, but even uh, even when Morgan thou had uh, had been at his zenith in terms of his ability to sway people in Roosevelt's orbit to his perspective, it was never facilitating organizing the Nuremberg Tribunal as, as, as a glorified courts marshal, you know, and having military men, you know, sit as judges, that was something that America never was, was going to seriously entertain for a lot of reasons. Some were the only thing to be explicated the UK is not, it's very different than the continent at this. I think everybody will agree. But there's, there's also basic differences between you know, America and the UK than is now. It would have been unseemly, not just you know, in, in the court of world opinion, but for domestic consumption. If, if, if America just you know, deployed military brass to preside over this like, like some sort of ordinary proceeding. But also, I mean like I, like, like, like, like we just established the entire narrative of, of, of the Nuremberg Tribunal was that it wasn't the normal proceeding. You know, it was outside the of it was completely outside the scope of ordinary statecraft and owing to its, you know, the exceptional nature of, of what was under judgment, know, it was something that, you know, required unique sorts of men to, to preside over it. Like I don't accept that mythology obviously, but that was the suggested raison detro. Okay? So I don't think you ever would have seen, you never would have. Whether or not whoever was in the White House, even if Roosevelt had lived, you would not have seen where ultimately transpired, you know, being a tribunal presided over by. By a bunch of military brass. It's. And the man who really. The man who really kind of was able to. Placate all these competing tendencies in structural terms was a guy named Samuel I. Rosenman. He was Roosevelt's kind of legal advisor. Another. We talked many episodes ago about how Roosevelt in his orbit, he had many men who one could think of as a minister without portfolio. Rosenman was another one of these types. He was a judge. He was a longtime friend and legal advisor. He going to Yalta. And Roosevelt essentially directed him in last months of Roosevelt's life to travel London and try and. And try and hash up some kind of. Some kind of agreement with British on a course of action on the war criminals. And that's exactly what Rosen did. And owing, I guess, to his aptitude for. For politics, you know, of. And specifically the politics of the swamp. When Roosevelt died, Rosenman was able to insinuate himself into Truman's orbit with, you know, very seamlessly. He. He was. He in fact was the one who telephoned the invitation to Justice Jackson at the Supreme Court in order to, you know, relay Truman's offer to him to head up the American delegation. I mean, that's. Rosenman is. Is. Is often discussed just as a footnote or a minor player. But he's. He's not it. There's a lot of this you need to read. Read between the lines. Rosenman was a man, uh. One could argue very much of the same sympathies of Morgan thou. But he had the. The finesse that his cor. Religion as Morgan thou did not. And he had a zealousness that the kind of plotting Frankfurter didn't. That. I mean this. I. I believe people can understand what I'm getting at. And it. Yeah. That. All I think I want to add is until the next episode where I want to break down the actual proceedings. And I realize this may have been dry this episode, but it's. It really is essential understanding everything that comes subsequent. And I. I want this in part. The reason why I think it's important we're doing here is to convey a very complete understanding and what. What. Yeah, no, I think we can. I think we can end here. I don't want to get into what I. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to get into the. I was going to say, mind you, these negotiations were underway prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and that was something of a game changer. But Obviously, even though Manhattan Project truly was, you know, of the most secret nature imaginable within the executive orbit, within the national security apparatus, there were men who would have been privileged to this information about what the Manhattan Project entailed, at least theoretically, including Truman himself. That's something of a sideline. We'll get into that in the next episode, but keep that in mind too, because I'm sure some people are going to be thinking like, well, what were all these committees doing, you know, talking about these kinds of nuances and how to insinuate, you know, a kind of moral particularism into, you know, into the Allied war effort versus the German war effort, you know, with the issue of the atomic bomb and like, you know, how come people weren't paying attention to that? They were. And we, we'll get into that next time. But I hope this was, I hope this was satisfactory content, man. Like I said, it's, it's a. One's got to strike a balance between, you know, what to leave out because it truly is minutia and what to include. And I, I think this is what was essential in order to provide adequate foundation. And like I said, the nitty gritty of the, the charging instrument we're going to get into next time, as well as some pretty controversial topics that a lot of people are very sensitive about. I think everyone knows what I'm talking about, but. And then after that, I want to do a dedicated episode to Hess and kind of the rebuttal that was not permitted to the indictment. If that sounds agreeable to. Sounds good. You, Mr. Pete. And thank you again, man. And I want to thank everybody for continuing to, to listen and, and drop these wonderful compliments on us and on the entire series. Do your plugs. Okay. You can find me at. On Telegram. We got a very active community there, which is great. It's t me number 7 HMAs or the number 7H 777. You can find me on substack@the real thomas777substack.com you can find me on gab, which I'm not terribly active on, but that I do pretty much back up everything I, I, I, I post or write at least. You know, I include a link to.
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plus sponsored by champacasino on my gab. My gab ID is just at the real Thomas 777 and that is how you can find me. I had somebody asked today about the follow up to Steel Storm. Oh yeah, it's. I'm hoping to have it off to my dear friends at Imperium like literally in the next few days after the fourth of July. But I got sidetracked with some other projects and that set me back about two weeks. But yeah, like at the latest it, it, it, it. The manuscript will be off for publication literally in a week or two, I promise. Awesome. All right. Until the next time. We are returning with Thomas 777. How are you doing Thomas? Hi Pete. I'm very well and thanks as always for continuing to host me what I wanted to get into today. I know these past two sessions, you know, we, we've been deep diving as kind of a. It's kind of a denouement to our treatment of the war with the Nuremberg Tribunal and what it represented in terms of, you know, laying the foundation for the, for the, for the, for the prevailing world order subsequent which now is in some ways being dismantled. I mean not, not owing to the, you know, not by. By choice of, of those who've inherited its, its. Its levers of power from its architects, but just owing to circumstances and, and the lack of, and the lack of the, the power of the mythology that was established there to animate people anymore in terms of their values or in terms of, you know, their, their, their. Their concepts of, of. Of legitimacy and statecraft and any and everything else. You know, it's kind of losing its primacy that had really for three centuries. I mean that's a bit outside the scope, but I want to it for this episode and for the next one too, at least we're part of it. I think we've got to deal with the man of Rudolph Hess. He's not just an interesting personage, but the case of Hess really in some ways kind of shines a light on the entire. Not just the Nurbur proceeding, but the, the way that the Third Reich was treated then by the victorious Allies in terms of, you know, how they characterized it and how it took on this kind of quasi religious dimension and, and was not. Was. Was not neither the regime itself nor the men who had served it were retreated as, as. As. As. As as was precedented as was precedented to treat a vanquished enemy or a. Or soldiers or political officers who'd served an enemy regime like after the cessation of hostilities. You know, everything about this is peculiar. And when we talk about a political theology surrounding, you know, the Second World War as it's characterized in anti fascism, you know, taking on characteristics of an ideology unto itself, almost a secular religion, Hess, the way the case of Hess is, is, is a very concrete example of what I'm talking about. And also there's many mysteries that Hess took to the grave and there's many intrigues surrounding Hess that I think have to be addressed. Everything from whether Operation Sea lion as it was, uh, codenamed, which was, you know, the alleged planned invasion of the United Kingdom by, by the Third Reich that was a strategic ruse, is what all the evidence indicates, based on direct testimony from Adolf Hitler himself, from Joseph Goebbels, uh, uh, uh, private diaries that, you know, were not intended for anybody's eyes but his own, as well as, uh, as well as features of, of, of, of deployment, uh, patterns, you know, from uh, from May 1940 through, through the eve of Operation Barbarosa. But Hess has himself defected to the United Kingdom owing to his belief that he could act as an emissary of peace. And this is, this is kind of dismissed by people, you know, court historians who claim that, well, Hess was just a madman who believed in astrology or he had all these strange ideas or he was just an insane person. And I mean, the record does not demonstrate that at all. I mean it proves that Hess was something of a prodigy. He was an intellectual unlike a lot of his comrades in, in the early nsdap. The kinds of circles that he moved in were, were very, very educated people. And first and foremost among those was Professor Hauschofer, who him, both him and his sons feature very prominently in this kind of tragic narrative that we're going to, going to dive into. So I, I want to deal with, just kind of dive into that now when we're going to deal a bit first with just kind of Hess's biography in his early life. But before I do that, I, I, I want to discuss the end of Hess's life to kind of tie it into, tied into the, the proceeding to discussions we've had has languished in spandau prison for 46 years, or not for 40 years, but before, prior to that he was, he was held at spando itself from July 18th, 1947 until August 17th, 1987. Previously he'd been housed at May Hill Barracks immediately upon his capture, which was in Glasgow, then Buchanan Castle, which was a disused castle Keep, which I think had been in Surrey, England, which I think had been used by the Territorial army, but I'm not sure. Subsequently he was held at my ship place it, or before that he was held at the Tower of London. And I believe briefly when he was at the Tower of London, I think it was the last political prisoner ever held there. Although some of the Englishmen and ladies who have been watching this series can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Hess was the last political prisoner held there as such, finally he ended up at my place, which was designated Camp Z. It was a fortified country mansion and very strange things happened there. Hess wasn't tortured in the sense we'd think of, you know, in some kind of a horror tale kind of way or like Winston SMITHER in, in 1984, you know, he wasn't beaten, he wasn't, he wasn't physically starved, but he was psychologically tortured in a very deliberate way. And, and there's a, there's, there's voluminous documentation about the regimen he was being subjected to to try and drive him to the breaking point. Okay, what we can, what we would consider to be enhanced interrogation, okay, today. And this went on for quite literally years. And by the time he arrived at Nuremberg, you know, the jail adjacent to the, to the, the ad hoc courtroom has appeared to be quite literally out of his mind. But mind you, this was after years of incarceration being subjected to this regimen that was very much tailored to break down his, his, his psychological faculties and, and, and kind of inner core of personality. And for the record, within the years subsequent, when he ended up at Spandow, he became more and more rational as he aged. Okay. And obviously that's not, you know, no, unless he's Benjamin Button, that's not the way things work. But anyway, has languished at his fin for over 40 years at, at his final, his final in, in, you know, jail at Spando. Now, Spando is the listeners gonna understand Spando is not a normal jail. It wasn't like a prison you think of in a, in America or in Europe. And it wasn't even like a barracks. It literally was a castle. It was a disused castle that had been built in 1876 by the Prussian army, okay, As a one part training ground, one part a military detention center. But it truly was this looming castle, okay? And it, the, it, it house was housed. There was only six other men. So there's these six defendants who had not been hanged at Nuremberg. You know, they received sentences, you know, Ranging from you know, seven to 10 years to you know, 25 years. 20 years in the case. I believe everybody who got over 20 years eventually was had their sentence partially manumented owing to Adrian Firmity. But the point is in this, in this kind of massive looming castle keep you had these seven men housed there and that's it. They were Constantine von Nurath, who he was the Reich Foreign Minister before ribbon trop. He was out of office by 1938. So I mean obviously you know sentencing him was, was purely a matter of vengeance. Grand Admiral Eric Rader who'd been head of naval command until 1943 when he was 1-43-13-13 when he was replaced by Carl Donitz donates who is, was, he was the chief of uh, the kriegsmarine uh from January 43 until the day of defeat. And Donitz, which not everybody knows was Adolf Hitler's successor as head of state. And Hitler by, by Hitler's last will and testament, which is very interesting and that was in my opinion a very appropriate decision. And Donnis, and there is an interesting case because uh, a lot of the British Admiralty protested the fact that he was even brought up on charges. The remaining prisoners were Albert Spear, who I think is well known to most people. You know, the Armaments Minister, um, Walter Funk, Reich Minister of Economic affairs and Balder von Schurach who was the Galliter of Vienna and the national leader of the Hitler Youth.
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So this is an odd collection of men and the fact that there was only seven of them there is bizarre. I, I've told people I think of Rudolph Hess as, as the, the real man in the High castle. And for 22 years he was the last prisoner here. So this was one man in this literal castle complex. Now the another bizarre thing. You could not make this up. Spandau Prison. It was the responsibility of, of, of the, of of the Allied control. So all four powers had equal dominion over it. The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. Now all the other four power organizations had, had, had, had, had been, had been dismantled between 1947 and summer 1948 owing to the fact that the British and American zones were combined and then the French zones assimilated into that and the Soviets ejected Vociferously and then with the introduction of a, a national currency, that being the Deutsch mark, into the Western occupation zone. The Soviets simply, they refused to cooperate from then on with, with any ally Control Council derived institution, except for Spandau's administration and air traffic safety over, over Berlin divided Berlin. So to even an idea of how bizarre this was, okay? Now because of that every three months the, there would be a, there would be a changing of, of the guard, like quite literally as of which power was responsible for Spandau Prison, you know, and there'd be, there, you know, there'd be an exchange of flags, you know, the new flag, whether it be Soviet, the Union Jack French flag or you know, Stars and Stripes be hoisted above the prison and an entire new cadre of guards would come in and just like think of the expense of this, okay? But this kind of formality until the day that has died was never done away with, okay? And some people speculate like, well that was one way the Soviet Union could, could keep their, could keep a presence on the ground in West Berlin, you know, and this, and this had certain advantages owing to, owing to espionage related activities. That, that's a very specious argument. And by that rationale there was any number of other ways they could have insinuated themselves into la Control Council derived institutions, okay? It just, it's that, that doesn't make any sense. Okay? So we had, you know, for the last, for the last, you know, two decades of this old man's life. He was a single man, you know, imprisoned in a castle under very tight restrictions. And uh, there were literally the armies of four nations at intervals guarding him. You know, I mean, and anytime there's discussion of him being released, there was kind of this bombardment of, of, of, of, of opponents, you know, talking about, you know, the kind of, you know, the, the human tragedy, the Second World War and the criminality of the regime, which, okay, even if I accept that, it's like, but what does that have to do with this elderly man who defected the United Kingdom before uh, you know, before the events in question. Uh, with the exception of, of conspiring to wage aggressive war with, you know, with that exception, every, every other count of, of the indictment, these were, these were acts that were carried out and, and or, or planned, you know, when, when, when he was. After he'd already, you know, defected and, and obviously no longer held any, any kind of uh, a formal office, rank, title or power within, within his former, within his former fatherland. Now to understand this, to understand oh, and for the record, you cannot visit Spando Prison because literally, the moment that Hess was declared dead, there were bulldozers on standby that destroyed the entire premises, you know, as if it was, uh, it's like something out of, like a horror movie or something about some evil artifact or some, you know, I mean, I don't. I'm not resonating a hyperbole when I describe it this way. You know, this is incredibly strange. And when I was a little kid, I remember when the news story broke, and I, you know, I, I remember think I, I couldn't conceptualize it in particularly developed terms then, but I, It's. It struck me how strange this was, you know, and I don't. It defied all rationality. And nobody, nobody, even people who were kind of the staunchest defenders of, of the status quo as it had been, could really rationalize, like, why it had been, why it had been, why they've been dealt with this way. But let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's deal now with the man of real pesto. Like, who was Hess? He was born in 1894, uh, in Alexandria, Egypt. Uh, his father had been a wealthy businessman who'd inherited an import export firm and had grown it substantially. And his mother was the. Was a Thuringian, and I believe her father had been a fairly successful textile magnate, at least locally. Has lived in Egypt until he was 14 under conditions of substantial wealth. And for those who don't know, from 1882 onward, Egypt was a. What was called the availed protectorate of the Crown, of the British Crown. So Hess grew up under the dominion of the British Empire. Okay? It, There's a. There's a substantial amount of devolved rule. You know, local Arabs had, you know, ran the government and things. And it's not as if. It's not as if the Crown had had its proverbial heel on their necks, but there was always a substantial garrison of British troops there. And it, it, it was, it was clear that, you know, a transgression of its borders were considered an act of war against the Crown itself. So as far as people can say about some members of the right government, you know, that these were provincial people or something, or that they didn't have education or that they weren't worldly. One can't say that about Hess. Okay? And as. As we'll get into, that's one of the reasons why he was courted the way that he was by Adolf Hitler and others. But interestingly, There's David Irving in his biography of Hess. He corralled a bunch of Hess's letters because, you know, Irving, among other things, he's kind of the king of, of direct testimony. And me, because my background is as a lawyer and I, I, some people telling me that means I'm too prone to inductive reasoning and dealing with historical evidence. And that may be true. I don't think so. Because if we're trying to get into the minds of the people we're studying, what better way than their direct testimony? And even if you don't consider them to be reliable to clearance, that itself tells us something about them. But after Hess ended up at Spandau post sentencing, you know, he wrote many letters to his wife and he wrote a fair amount to his mom. And he wrote to his mom that one of the ways he dealt with his time in Spanda was he, he tended the garden there. There was this courtyard area because it was set up again. It was, you know, a castle keep that had been a military barracks and he maintained a garden. And he said it reminded him of, of learning how to, how to cultivate flowers and, and vegetables from, you know, the Arab servants and that they, that they lived with in Egypt. But any event, young Hess, he was availed private tutors, you know, and he learned to speak English again because he, you know, was, was, was well familiar with though a majority of other white Europeans, he, he was, he would have been exposed in early life, would have been English men and women. Okay, so he spoke English with a heavy accent, but he spoke fluent English. And that's I believe is a key. It's not just trivia that's a key, uh, uh, point, uh, not just of interest but of relevance as we'll get into later. But after age 14, uh, Hess, uh, attended uh, high school or secondary school, whatever the Europeans call it in the era in Switzerland and uh, when the first war, when the first world war broke out, he joined the Bavarian infantry. August 1914. He was in a heavy action at Verdun. Personnel records indicate that he, you know, just, he got stellar reviews from commanding officers. They did indicate a kind of maniacal recklessness, well under hostile fire, but it was tempered by disciplined self control. All the squad mates relayed in later years that like the guy was just incredible under fire. You saw heavy action at the Psalm. He was ultimately wounded in Romania. So he had an experience of, with the exception of Africa, obviously. He had, he had, he cut his combat teeth in every possible front during the Great War. And what's really kind of remarkable is that when he was convalescing he just, he, he was literally laid up in a hospital. He volunteered for flight training as a, as a combat aviator. And owing to his record and I'm sure his, you know, quasi aristocratic pedigree helped, he was accepted. He was accepted to flight training, completed it. By the time he deployed as an aviator, the arm assistance was only three weeks away. So he never flew in action, but he became a crack pilot. He kept up his flight skills in the years and decades after, um, up to an. Including the point as we'll get to later, like by, by the time of his, his fateful flight to the Scotland. I mean he, he was capable of flying like what was then cutting edge military aircraft, you know, which is remarkable when one considers that he didn't even learn to fly until he was, you know, an adult, you know, and it's, this was a new technology anyway. It's not as if, it's not as if he was learning from men who had, you know, decades of experience behind them. So in 1919, Hess arrives in Munich. And Munich was what was to become not just the heartland of the, of the, of the National Socialist German Workers Party, but it was, uh, you know, it was, it was a stronghold of the kpd, arguably to the kpd, and Munich was, was more aggressive and favorite direct action more than the Berlin cell did. Part of that owed the fact that, you know, they were, they, they, they, they were challenged in the street by organizations like the Stahlhelm and like the national socialists. But in 1919, the, the Munich Soviet was declared as Bavaria was for all practical purposes conquered by the communists. So Hess joins the Free Corps and at the same time he joins the Thule Society, which, which this, you know, this claims that, you know, this was evidence of Hess being some kind of occultist. It's a, it's a topic for a dedicated podcast or episode. But far too much is made of this. Like, yes, the Thule Society had strange occultic ideas, but as we've talked about generally, this kind of thing was popular in, in throughout the Western world at the time. Conventional religion had taken a tremendous hit. I made the point before. Those are familiar, you know, in the book the Great Gatsby. How the kind of, the kind of, the kind of dopey west egg, you know, decadent rich types, they talk about going to seances and stuff like this is something people did then. Okay, it's the fact that, the fact that the kind of right wing propaganda zine of the Time put up by the Thule Society was full of kind of like occultic stuff and references. That's. I mean, yeah, that's weird, but it's. On its face, that kind of thing is weird. It's not evidence of some kind of, you know, freemason or satanic conspiracy or, or evidence that Hess was a crazy man who believed in, in Viking gods or something. But, you know, this is. The only reason it's really relevant is because this is kind of. When this is kind of where Hess's, you know, he, he didn't even spend most of his early life in Germany. It's kind of formative experiences and later adolescence and as an adult man are, you know, on the battlefield in the military and then in Munich where the communists have taken over and declared, you know, declared, you know, the, the, the Munich Soviet, okay, this, this, this, this led to men being radicalized who are nearly. Would not have been susceptible to that, to those sorts of persuasions. Well, Hess is in the free core. He continues to hone his skills. He continued to hone his skills as an aviator. He also enrolled at the University of Munich. And this is fundamentally important because other than Adolf Hitler, the man who kind of impacted Hess's life more than any other was a man named Carl Hauschofer. Who is Carl Hauschofer? He was, he was a professor of geopolitics. And geopolitics in those days was taken very. It was something of a nascent discipline, both in military academies as well as, you know, in. In conventional university curriculums that dealt with war and peace questions and political economy and all those kinds of things. House Offer has been somewhat redacted owing to. House Offer is not a National Socialist, and we're going to get into that in a minute. But the kind of milieu in which he was situated has led to him being redacted in a way he would not have been otherwise. That's something to keep in mind. Geopolitics, particularly as it. As, as it was impacted by technology and the ability to project hard power. This obviously in the 20th century had huge implications, you know, not just in the first half, but even more so in the atomic age and critically so by the end of the Cold War, when delivery mechanisms that could span thousands of miles and reach their target within, you know, within minutes in some cases. This, this cast a whole new, uh, significance on geostrategic questions and, you know, kind of the interface of, of politics with these kinds of questions and, and how such things can be managed. House was born in 1869, he was a career artillery officer. He commanded a brigade in World War I, retired as a major general. But he was not a traditional military officer. He was the son of an economist, strongly academic from, from a young age. He taught at the war college. He was an expert on Japan, interestingly, and he was a military attache there. He met a bunch of people in the Shoah government and in the Japanese army. He published extensively on Japan from the Meiji Restoration onward. He wrote a lot about Japan's, you know, inevitable ascendancy to world power status. He viewed Japan as a far better hedge against the Soviet Union than he did China. And that was a minority view at that time. How the third right came to favor Japan over China is an interesting topic, but it was. How Shaul Offer was a very heterodox thinker is the key takeaway here and the fact that he, he and has become very, very close. Okay, so again, this kind of cuts against, this kind of cuts against, uh, Hess being cast as wild eyed crank who sat around reading star charts and things. You know, House Offer was a,
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mean we don't have public intellectuals anymore in America, but think about a guy who's kind of at the top of his game. Like, think about, like, think about a guy like John Mearsheimer, okay? Like he, he could, howsoever he be considered a guy kind of in that role. You know, men like that don't go around befriending radicals. You know, they just, they just don't. I mean, even in the, even in, even, even in, even in critical conditions of, of, of revolutionary unrest, it just really doesn't happen. And incidentally, how Shaer did not involve himself in politics directly. And his wife was Jewish. She was of Jewish parentage, I believe maternally. Okay. And this was well known. So that becomes an issue a little bit later, owing to some of the intrigues around Hess. It's, it's circumstantial evidence kind of in favor of, of what I'm going to suggest about some of his overshares to the U. S. Diplomatic corps. But in any event, summer of 1920, this is, you know, kind of at the zenith of uh, of Hess's free core activity as well as, you know, after he's befriended and become, uh, very close to House Offer. Rudolph has me Sadolf Hitler, um, it's not clear exactly when he did, but on July 1, 1920, has joined the National Socialist party. He was member number 16. So Hess was kind of the old fighter of old fighters. Okay. House Offer did not Join the Nash did not join the Nazi Party. Has very much proselytized the party. House Offer did something interesting, though. He periodically, as has been closer and closer to Adolf Hitler. House Offer would ask for Hitler's opinions, particularly in geostrategic questions. Hess would relay those opinions as. As much as he was aware of them. And he confided to Hitler he was above board about the fact he was close to House Offer and Hitler didn't seem to have a problem with that. And House Offer would respond to some of the things Hitler said through Hess. So it's like House Offering Hitler had this kind of strange, like, quasi dialogue going that neither man seemed to be willing to acknowledge was underway with kind of Hess as the intermediary or not. So it's intermediary as kind of the messenger. It's. It's very strange. But in, in context, it makes sense, if nothing else, how Shaer could tell early on that. That Hitler was going to be a significant personage. I don't think anybody really could have guessed his ascendancy would become his total and meteoric as it was. But it's clear that House Offer took him seriously, you know, otherwise why would he have bothered? Interestingly, we talked before about the kind of abuse of language deliberately, but also just somewhat, you know, as a matter of course, due to things being lost in translation. We talk about the term Lebensraum, how polemically it has one meaning, literally, you know, meaning living space. You know, people envision, you know, this kind of. This kind of march eastward, annihilating every indigenous element in their path and, you know, quite literally repopulating the east as living space. Or the envision is this kind of myth of, of. Of the natural soldiers claiming Germany was so overpopulated. Again, that's not what they were saying, and it's not what Laban's wrong means. It's. It's difficult to translate adequately. A better, A better. A better way to characterize it would be to think of it as culture space or like space where we are dominant, you know, but even that's kind of imperfect. But House offer. House Offer utilized the term Laban's wrong pretty liberally. You know, not. Not in. Not in giving stump speeches or something saying this is what Germany needs. But he'd use it to refer to the process by which, you know, cultures become dominant after appropriating, know, territory, you know, through conflict or through insinuating themselves in way short of conflict yet that utilize hard power, the threat of it, and then slowly but Surely become, you know, quite literally the dominant political organism in that space. Okay, so was this just a common term in the kinds of things that Hitler read and House offer read also? Was it something Hitler picked up from House Hoffer through Hess? Very likely, in my opinion, because it's not, it's, it's not, it's not some totally obscure term or it wasn't in the epoch, but it's not as if it was something that was that common. So I find that very interesting. And as time went on, has still developed something of a hero worship of Hitler. And again, you know, this was a pretty worldly individual. He, you know, he, he'd been born abroad. He, he traveled all over the place. He was good pals with House Offer was kind of his father figure. And, you know, he displayed no signs of mental instability. But he consistently, in his letters and in his own diaries refer to Hitler as the Tribune, you know, not as Herr Hitler, you know, not at the fur, but as the Tribune, which is an interesting choice of words. Hess was kind of, he, he was kind of, he had kind of a dilettante's fixation with, with Roman stuff. But I believe in this case this, that's too obscure a term for. To be some. For him to be like, looking for gravitas, where, you know, maybe it's not there. Tribune can be translated in a number of ways. You know, it's somebody who speaks for the people. You know, it's somebody who is kind of like the figure who most embodies the zeitgeist and is sort of a messianic hero in like the Carlisle sense. It's, it's, it's got a priestly connotation in some ways. So keep that in mind. I think that that's very instructive. And nobody else to my knowledge, referred to Hitler in those terms. I mean, Hester recalled Hitler there to his face or spoke of him that way around party comrades. He, he called him the Tribune in his diary and he called him the Tribune when he'd write to his, his wife. One of the ways he described Hitler. Let me pull it up. I found this paragraph to be telling. This is what he, this is what he said in a letter to. He wrote a paper when he was at university and he said you sent excerpts of it. The House offer. The paper actually won an award. This was when he was most active with the free corps. And the subject of the paper was a polemical paper for some kind of, you know, some kind of public speaking course. And the exercise Was, you know, describe. Describe what. What type of man would be. Would be the ideal leader of Germany, you know, and this was in 1921. So obviously the model that. For this. For this archetype that has. Is referring to as Hitler. What he says is, quote, the deeper the Tribune's original roots are anchored in the broad masses. And the better he understands their psychology, the less workers will mistrust him and the more followers he will win among these most energetic ranks of the people. He himself has nothing in common with the masses. He has a personality in his own rights like every great man. When necessity. When necessity dictates, he does not recoil from bloodshed. Great issues are always decided through blood and iron. And our issue is to go under or to rise anew. Again, that might sound overwrought because often things do when translated from German to English. But people. I try and emphasize the people, regardless of the. Regardless of their dialect. People just wrote differently in those days. Like, I read letters from the era of In. In English, you know, and they. They seem. The language doesn't seem corny and stupid and soaring like when these, like, morons in Washington try and talk these days. But it seems, like stilted, but at the same time, like, packed with emotion to the point where it's. It seems un. Like unseemly. But that's just the way people wrote, you know, so that's something to bear in mind. But I. I mean, regardless, too. I mean, whatever. However, when it feels about heads or however. However anybody feels about his kind of worshipful view of Adolf Hitler, what's significant is this is what has thought, okay? And if we're kind of. If we're gonna unpack his motives, which, you know, going on three quarters of a century now, people have speculated about and said all kinds of strange things about. I'm prone to take what has said at face value, okay? Because why. Why else would he have said it? You know, These are things he wrote to his intimates. These things. These are things he wrote to his father figure. Things he wrote to his, you know, girlfriend or they became his wife. Things he wrote in his own diary. I mean, like, who was he? Who exactly was he? If this was an invitation, like, who was he trying to impress? You know,
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But it we're really going to put Hess on the map. In the NSDAP is 1922. Hess had joined the SA and he established a student battalion. And these guys at the forefront of confrontation with the kpd. GU was able to poach not just a lot of his, a lot of his veteran buddies. But you know, there was, there was a right wing, there's a strongly right wing subculture to, to, to universities in those days. I'm making a point. I make a point. A lot of people, there's, there's the caricature, the kind of hospital caricature of the right and of fascists, like in its epoch was that these kinds of weird, violent guys who like, read too many books and were like, you know, believe in crazy things because they spent all their time, you know, kind of kind of debating esoterica and coming up with, you know, insane ideas and they'd go out and fight with people. Like this idea of them being like ignorant guys who never read anything like that was kind of, that was more the reputation of the kpd. You know, you had guys who worked on assembly lines in the KPD basically going to fight like demobilized soldiers who are now going to college, like in Weimar. But so you can say a lot of things about these guys, probably a lot of which aren't flattering. But it, it's, there's something a little, a bit ridiculous. Like then it's now when antifascists like act like, you know, act like the extreme right is like a gang of illiterates or something. It's not, that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense. And it's not the ranks from which they draw. But at the same time, there was not a hell of a lot of, you know, even, even in kind of the failing, the failed and failing state of Weimar, you know, college wasn't like it is now, where it's just kind of like, where it's just kind of like what the middle class does with their kids before they can figure out, you know, like where, you know, where, where they're trying to find him a job. You know, basically if you were upwardly mobile, you know, you went, you went to a big C university, you know, and it was more egalitarian in a place like, than in America or especially in the uk. But point is like these. There was something still viewed as unseemly about, you know, getting involved in like, street politics. So guys like Hess were doing like God's work for the party, but basically poaching these college guys and you know, not just getting them involved. It's kind of like the political vanguard and for the sake of optics and everything else and building, you know, cultural momentum and cachet, but, you know, these are the guys also who you want to crack heads against the kpd, you know, because they're young and full of piss and vinegar. So that. That led to him becoming. Becoming he and Gearing, I'd say in those. Him Gearing, Max von Schubner Richter, who died at a. At. At Munich in 1923 at the Pooch and Captain Rom. I'd say we're probably Hitler's inner circle at that point. And at the. At the Munich Pooch. It's complex. We can at some point. But I want to reiterate all the intrigues that led to it. But. And that were underway as it was initiated by Hitler and uh, and Ludendorff and uh, and. And allies, I was gonna say, and friends. That makes it sound like, like, Like, I don't know, like Bwinkle and Rocky or something. But it, but the. The Munich pooch. Hess was assigned the responsibility to arrest the. The key ministers, the Munich City Council and essentially coerced them into, you know, supporting the. The Pooch and telling, you know, and, and. And there's Hitler. Hitler gave this responsibility to has because, I mean, Hess was. Was civilized. There's no chance he was going to, you know, brutalize or shoot these guys. And the idea too was that it has. Was he had. They got a pedigree to be able to communicate with these people. Okay. And this becomes significant later that these were kind of the characteristics that were. Were coveted that has exhibited by the party. I mean, I, I think in a lot of ways that's a tragic because I think. I think it was reused frankly by the Party. But it. We'll get into that too. But point being, Hess executed these orders. He did so correctly. He did so without some kind of disaster, like any of them. Any of the city councilmen being murdered or anything else. And after, After Hitler was arrested, you know, after. After the Pooch ended in disaster and uh, and you know, and. And their comrades died charging the police cordon, Gearing went into hiding in Austria and so did Hess. And as the trial of Hitler and those who'd been taken into custody was underway and coming to a close has self surrendered to the Munich authorities. The kind of court history view is that had he not done that, you know, he would have been convicted in absentia and the case would have been referred probably to another jurisdiction and he could have been looking at a decade behind bars. I think I, I don't accept that. And if you look at the way Hitler and the rest of the, the rest of the, the rest of the, the, the 1923 revolutionaries are treated, I, I don't, I don't think that's credible. My opinion is that it wasn't his loyalty to Hitler, but that was paramount. Hess wasn't going to let Hitler go to prison while he's remained in the free world. But it has basically has, was an upper middle class guy. He had a basic respect for law and order. He's the kind of guy who goes to college in those days who joins the army, becomes you know, a valued nco, you know, collects a whole row of medals and goes on to be you know, a businessman of, of so, of, of, of a, of a worldly profile like his father. You know, I mean guys, guys like they had turn themselves in because that's the right thing to do, you know. Like he wasn't a gangster like Rom, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't a swashbuckling lunatic like hair gearing, you know. Like he basically was a decent guy, you know, I mean like for better and for worse, you know, and has as everybody knows, he drew an 18 month sentence. Hitler drew a five year sentence but ultimately served 264 days in Landsberg. Okay, so basically Hitler and has their sentence ended up being right about the same. I think Hess walked out of prison, I think something like 10 days after Hitler did. But while they were in prison, Hitler was not a skilled typist as most people weren't in those days. Has good. Hess was, was a skilled typist and he also had a knack for editing. Hitler dictated Mein Kampf and has transcribed it onto his typewriter which he had brought in because the Landsberg prison administration was actually like pro National Socialist. So they were doing easy time. I mean being in prison is horrible no matter what. But it, you know, it, we're, we weren't the prison that uh, the, the prison experience of Landsberg was not sadly and rather tragically like the prison experience of Hess later in life. I mean it, it was an easy regime and he was allowed things Like a typewriter. And during this period I believe I, you know, when you collaborate with people on, on writing, you know, even whether you're, I don't know what it's like for like literary types, but you know, even political academic writing and things, you know, that's something that's, you've got everyone's trust in your editor and you've also, that creates like a certain, like bond. I mean has it proven to, has it proven to Hitler that he, you know, he, he was a political soldier. But also I think they're true kind of meeting in the minds like Ham and Landsberg. Like I really think that and you know, I, I, I think that's just kind of a basic human characteristic. And I, you know, I, I further was, I consider myself a writer. So I think I, I understand it and understand how people relate to one another within the medium. I, I don't think I'm just speculating. But interestingly, during these months that hesit transcribing mind comp, her house offer brother house offer came to visit Hess no less than eight times, always on a Wednesday, always remaining through the morning and even into the afternoons. So basically like all day. So again, owing to what we know before, you know, in the free world about you know, this kind of strange quasi communication between Hitler and Househofer, like as, as Hess was writing Mein Transcribing Mein Kampf, he had to be relaying, you know, even it was just House saying, what are you working on? And you know, he saying like, oh, the Tribune has me writing, you know, his, his autobiography. Oh, like what? Tell me about it. You know, you got to, there had to be some kind of cross pollination there, right? I don't believe there was not. You know, so it's, that's not to say how was a National Socialist at all, but a lot of the, the geopolitical takes in Minecamp, as well as some of the historical observations are what is kind of most meaty and most relevant. The rest of it's basically an election year screed and you know, kind of the grievances of, you know, 1923, you know, but that I can't prove it and it sounds like conjecture no matter what, but circumstantially I, I believe, and I think there's a pretty good case to be made that more than a little bit of House offer is in mein hump. And I find that fascinating. The most interesting anecdote to me from Hess's time in Landsberg with Hitler, he really has relayed this to his wife. And this is kind of thing, obviously, that you wouldn't relate anybody else. Hitler was a kind of like a. Kind of like a typical Bavarian. You know, Hitler was a lot more emotional than, say, like a Prussian in the way he expressed himself. But, you know, there's even the southern Germans and even the Bavarians and even the Austrians, there is a kind of stoicism. They're not emotional in the sense that Latin people are or something. Okay. And I'm not saying that negatively. I'm just making an observation. So, I mean, Hitler was not prone to. To displays of emotion. I mean, there were people he. His intimates wrote that he'd become agitated or angry, but he. He's a guy really close to the chest. And Hess is the only person other than. Other than Krebs and Bergdorf, which I think is somewhat dubious because I think they were trying to cast a sort of dramatic scene. Has claims he saw Hitler cry once because the. Hitler came into. Has his cell and he began, you know, reading out passages that he'd, you know, written down that he wanted transcribed into the book, which became Minecamp. And he began talking about the Great War. And Hitler didn't discuss this, apparently. Like, even when. Even when the rest of the comrades in Landsberg were talking about the front and their experiences, Hitler didn't really say anything. And what Hester laid, he said, Hitler came in. It said. He said Hess said the Tribune, which again was, you know, is his idiosyncratic term for Hitler, he said, came into my cell. And he began reading slower and slower and more and more haltingly. His face expressionless, he groped around a seemingly boundless concept. The pauses grew longer and more frequent until he suddenly put down the pages, dropped his head into his hands and appeared to be weeping. After a while, continued to. Hitler pulled himself together and burst out. I shall exact a pitiless and terrible revenge on the first day I can. I shall take revenge in the name of all whom I shall then see before my eyes. And for Hess, apparently this was a turning point, because something can't be emphasized enough is that pretty much every man by the 1920s, pretty much every man under 40 years, a. 40 years of age or so in Germany, like, had been at the front. This is like a formative experience of their lives. And it. It created this huge wedge between them and everybody else. And, you know, to some guys, this was like their. Their. Their only experience of adult life, you know, was like being sent off to the army and then, you know, going to the front for four years. You know, it's not like they were rotating out after eight months or something. The degree to which, like that experience is. Was the core of the nsdap, like really can't be overstated. And the only. The only. The only party luminary who didn't serve at the front in the. In the Great War was Helmar Shocked. Which is interesting. He was. He was the. He was the chairman of the. The Reichsbank. And. Well, uh, we'll get into that when we get in the meet in Nuremberg. But I. Go ahead.
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Michael Jones talked about Shocked. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Nakonic's a usury, I'm sure. And, and yeah, but it's. Well, the inflate. The whole inflation thing too. Yeah, yeah. Like how much shocked he. How much shot was older. He was older than most of the men in. In the party, but he also. He. Something that was part of it. But he. He never. It's not like he avoided military service. It just wasn't. I think. I think he was beyond the normal age for. Yeah, I mean, he was beyond the draft age. He was also beyond the age to get a commission. Like generally, you know, he had. It. He had. No, it wasn't. His military service wasn't in his lineage, but he. That's one of the shocks. Was respected for his intellect and he never pretended to be something he wasn't. But he was. You could tell. He was always. You could tell he was always just like, at odds. I. Correct. Let me correct myself, Goebbels. Himmler was too young. So Himmler didn't serve at the front. Himmler, though, became a. A very close. It became very close to Ernst Ron, in part because Himmler. Himmler was in heavy action with the free core against the kpd. And I mean, Rom really was a brute and really was a gangster. Okay? Him. Himmler dropped bodies. If he gained the respect of Ron, there's no way that he didn't. Okay. So I gotta consider him to be an exception. Goebbels. The case of Goebbels is interesting. Goebbels was a too. But it. That, that's. That's. That. That's. That's an entire, uh. That's an entire other issue. But my point is it was. It was. It was. It was exceptional. Okay? And this. The. The mythology of the Great War, even for a guy, even for. Even for a man like Himmler who, Who came of age literally, you know, as. As the as the armistice was implemented, you know, he, he grew up in the aftermath and he grew up fighting in the street with men like Rom. Like as, as is kind of as his, uh, as his kind of role models. So the point stands. Even though, yeah, I just want to, I, I, I know another way somebody's gonna be like, what are you talking about? You know, Himmler didn't serve the front, neither Goebbels. So yeah, I corrected myself, but that, that, but has, has told, uh, has told, uh. He wrote in similar to his wife that in so many words that this is a turning point. Like I'm now like beholden to this man and his, his, his cause being basically. Okay, like it has viewed this in, in, in very messianic terms. Okay? For better or worse, it, it doesn't matter what any think, what anybody thinks of that. That's what Hess thought. Okay? And it, we, we hear this again and again from people who were within M and Forest as well as this mortal. There was a, A very, there, there was a, there was an otherworldly characteristic to the way that he affected people, you know, and that, that, that, that some things like that can't be contrived. Okay? But Hess is released from Landsberg in 1925. As we just mentioned, like, owing to Hitler's sentence being manumitted, he and Heller were released within a week of each other or something like a week or 10 days. And as we're discussing before we, we, we began recording has became really the face of the nsdap. You pointed out that in Triumph of the Will, Hess is everywhere. Like, Hess was a handsome guy for the time, but not, not in some, not, not in some way like a matinee idol that would seem, you know, contrived. You know, he was, he was, uh, he was a guy who was, uh, he was a guy who looked good on camera, but in kind of a rugged, you know, like, relatable sense, you know, and he was a war hero. You know, the, and more and more has became one of the most popular speakers that, that the party had. You know, like Gary could always whip up a crowd, but, you know, Gearing really wasn't. Gearing really was an aristocrat. And Gearing also, there was something of a, of a thuggishness about Gearing, you know, like during. Related. Great. He related really, really well to these a feat types. You know, Gearing literally was raised in a castle, okay. Like he knew he was one of these odd guys who, or maybe it's not so odd. You know, he he was perfectly at home around gangsters as well as around aristocrats, you know, and he, and the men who served under him like, loved Gearing. They thought he was great. But he's not, he's not a guy who the common man found particularly relatable, you know, which is understandable. But Hess and later Goebbels, people really, really responded to them, you know, and, and unlike Goebbels was a short, you know, like an attractive guy. Like, but I mean by his own admission, like he was aware of it. It's not punitive to say that, you know, Hess was a guy who, who was attractive to people, you know. And like Hess was very much, this was very much faithful to, to Ilsa who became his wife. And he wasn't any kind of womanizer, but like, you know, broads liked him a lot. You know, like he, he, he became the face of the party. And as we'll get into that, that, that, that, that became significant now around this time. Has, has took a, he took a forum position on curl House Offer staff, which is interesting. And what was convened incident to that was a, a kind of think tank, as we think of it today called the Deutsche Academy was founded in Munich in 1925. It was one part three think tank. It was one part kind of public policy NGO in one part strategic forum, you know, dealing with geopolitics, the Burgunding era strategic competition. And it also acted as something of a lobbying group and a representative agency for ethnic Germans abroad. Okay. And the Third Reich was later and, and the, the NASA and nsdap, they, they took a very strong interest in, in, in, in the German diaspora for a lot of reasons, including the fact that this was politically exploitable. And you know, with the emergence of a truly global kind of politique, you know, ethnic lobbies were coming into their own. I mean we saw this dramatically with the gaze of Churchill, but this was, this was not just, you know, part of the German Reich. The German Reich's fixation on race and particularly the NSDAP's kind of fixation on, you know, on bloodline and it being, you know, kind of dispositive of political outcomes and things. I mean this, this made sense. And House Offer again was, was not, was not, was not any kind of National Socialist or even radical. Now the way other people viewed Hess, there's not a lot from House Offer himself about Hess like would like, but based on their ongoing relationship which in some ways became remote as, as the party came to power. But it as, as we'll get into. Has continued to continue to advocate not just for a house offer, but for his family. And as we, as we mentioned, Alex offers wife was Jewish and, and his house offers sons who has been close to, I mean under the, under the, under the relevant laws of the Third Reich. You know, they were racial Jews. So we'll get into that in a minute. But Albert Krebs was the party gal lighter in Hamburg and he, he come across, he'd come across Hess a lot because I mean this was, this is the party was finally breaking through. You know, late 1920, 1930 was, you know, the, the mass breakthrough. But you know, 1925, 1926, you know, after, after Hitler's release from Landburg Prison, this was an era of really fevered, you know, kind of, kind of politicking, you know, at the, at the ballot box. I mean they, Hitler himself, you know, had declared early in his prison sentence that, you know, through Rosenberg that, you know, we, we've abandoned, you know, the bayonet for the ballot book box. So Hess, he, he became something of an intimate of Albert Krebs. And in Krebs own words he wrote, Hess was no primitive simpleton or hide or hidebound fanatic, but was almost what was almost bordering on the pathological and subtle sensibilities. He could listen calmly to contrary opinions. His foul and his thoughts followed impeccable and legal lines. But it was Hess who innocently created the image of a furor, who was an infallible individual. When he spoke of our furor, the millions would adopt the phrase precisely because Hess himself was so intensely believable, which I think is interesting. David Irving had a. Irving was the first Western historian to translate Goebbels diaries which were voluminous. You know, we're talking like thousands and thousands of pages. The Goebbels diaries had been discovered in, in a literally a bank vault underneath Berlin. A few blocks from would have been the Fur bunker, okay, by the Red Army. And these Red army troops found it, you know, all these boxes and boxes, everyone's diaries, and they sent it back to Moscow. It ended up in, it ended up in the NKVD archives, which then became the KGB Archives, which then became the FSB in 1991. And David Irving being the candy Englishman that he is, he always had a good relationship with the Russians somehow, even during the Cold War. I've got my own thoughts on that, but that's. It would sound conspiratorial, but Irving, my zone account in 1991, he's in Moscow. He's at the FSB archives. He's talking to this lady, you know, who's a. A Russian government liaison there, and he's telling her that, you know, I really wish, you know, there was more documentary evidence on Goebbels by his own hand and things, you know, and she, like, matter of fact, they told him, like, oh, you know, we have the girls diary, so you can see him if you want. Like, you thought she was joking. And sure enough, she, like, you know, shows it to him. And he said that he, like, he's like, you know, he was trying to. Was trying to quash like, any. Any. Any kind of visible reaction to. Of hype or like, anything because he's like, you don't want him to suddenly change their mind. But he literally translated the Geral Diaries, you know, and excerpts of that became his book on Geral. But he extrapolates a lot from that testimony of just Geral's writing in his private diaries to kind of inferring things about Geral's takes and his views on things. What Gerbil said about Hess, and all he said directly about Hess was that he said, he found. I found him to be, quote, most defiant, friendly, clever and reserved. He is a kind fellow. And what Irving said was, he said that this was like, gerbil speak for, you know, this guy. This guy's a very nice guy, but he's a chump.
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You know, Goebbels was something of a gangster. Okay. He even looked the part I made, you know, like a lot of. Like a lot of, like a lot of John Cazale or what was his name? The guy who played Fredo in the Godfather. Yeah. And the guys in the Deer Hunter. Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He looks like Goebbels, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. I can. Yeah, Goebbels, like, a lot. And, you know, girls always dressed to the Nines. He was like the best dressed guy on deck. You know. Like he Goebbels in some ways like a lot of like Goebbels wasn't from the Tyrol, but like like those kinds of people. He was like basically like an Italian guy who spoke German okay. Pretty much, yeah. I got to imagine I, I, yeah. I can't imagine Goebbels thinking yeah thinking like you know, yeah, this, this, this, this husky like he's all right but he's you know, he's a square. Forget about it. And Goebbels was also 5. 5. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah. He was girls was a short guy. Girls is an enigma too like for a guy. Yeah for like a short guy with, with a bad leg who like frankly was not an attractive guy. Like he not only were people terrified of him, but he was like a big ladies man. Like he, he really was, he really was like a gangster. Like I, strange that might seem and I mean frankly whether people like it or not, I mean we forget the digression. But what, what we what you can what people consider to be kind of like convention in, in, in, in the way media interfaces with political campaigns. Like I mean Goebbels frankly started a lot of that. You know, I mean it just like a lot of modern film like goes to Lenny Rifenstahl, you know. I mean it that people shouldn't feel good or bad about that. It's just a fact. But yeah, the, but it has as, as the party's fortunes uh, improved, so did hess's. He By 1930, you know, he had, he had a salaried position. You know, that was the year that the NSDAP broke through with over 6.3 million votes. The liberal. Centrist. Liberal and centrist voters are made wary of them. But nevertheless this was a true milestone and much that owed to has being the face of the party in the public mind. Like I really believe this has also he got, has got to know Willie Messerschmidt because he you know the, the aircraft designer and he has secured a twelve thousand dollar Reichsmark loan and, and purged a plane from Messerschmitt so that he could keep up you know with, with uh, so they could keep his aviation shops with you know then current aircraft designs. Which is fascinating. Just like I mean Hess was a remarkable guy. Like nobody can deny that but he, he What I want to, I want to conclude this in a minute frankly. Like I, I was hoping I'd kind of get farther in my account, but I don't want to next episode will conclude this this Hess treatment and deal with his flight to, to London and or to Scotland and, and his incarceration and, and, and begin to dive into the Nuremberg indictment. But I do want to add finally in 1930, after the NSDAP breakthrough, Hess wrote, he wrote to House Offer this kind of cryptic letter. House Offer was visiting London the following month and what Hess said to him was quote, you'll probably be asked in England for your views on us, us being the, you know, the Nazi party and the situation in Germany at large. He says, describe us as we are a wall against Bolshevism. As for the meaning of Bolshevism, you can tell the British about that from what you saw before your very eyes. Meaning like they're in, you know, in Munich, you know, in days past. The movement, you know, meaning the National Socialist movement is the last hope for millions of people. It is of universal importance for the whole of Europe is threatened by Bolshevism. How our National Socialist movement is assessed abroad and particularly in Britain is of fundamental importance. And you will probably be coming into contact with influential men over there. And interestingly as we talked about or actually I'll, I'll say that for the next time because it gets into the diplomatic intrigues that I believe proximately cause in part Hesses flight. But, but yeah, I hope, I hope the listeners don't view this as too much of like a digression tangent. I don't really do it as a tangent because like I said it's, it's essential to, it's essential to understanding the, the disposition of the Allies in, in juristic terms with what, how Hess was treated and what status he was availed and, and, and, and what have you. But also like what was in his mind in my opinion and what his intentions were are essential to judging kind of the merits of, of the indictment and just I'm going somewhere with this which I think will become clear like our next session. But I, I, I, you know, the response so far has been outstanding to our series and I've got you to thank for that. So once again I really really appreciate it man. We can, we can continue anytime you want after this weekend. Sure Plugs and yeah, you can find me my sub stack is uh, uh, real thomas777.substack.com you can find us on Telegram. We've got a very active community there. It's TME the number 7H777. You can find me on Gab as well, but I generally just use gab to back up my other platforms. It's just at the real. Thomas777. In coming weeks, I'm hoping for summer's end, we're going to launch a formal YouTube channel. I don't want to get into that here, but we are developing a, a larger footprint in terms of, in terms of diversified media. So I, I, I hope that people are excited about that. I am. But yeah, I, again, I can't thank you enough and I can't thank the listeners and viewers enough. Continuing talking about Mr. Rudolph Hess is Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well. Thank you again, Pete. I'm trying to recall where we left off last episode. I think we were talking about some of the intrigues or I wanted to get into some of the intrigues related to Hess and the Househoffer family. Carl House Offer, the father, you know, who is Hess's mentor and, and, and, and Hess's father figure in many ways has had a good relationship with his father, but his father was in, that was, was in Egypt, you know, still that's where he resided permanently. And after, after Hess went to boarding school and then, you know, into the Bavarian army, you know, he, he and his father literally remote, they, they mostly related by correspondence. So Carl House Offer and you know, remained probably other than Adolf Hitler, probably the most important like, male figure in Hess's life. And House Offer, the younger Carl's son, Albrecht, he took, he, he, he became a key figure not just in terms of Hess's efforts to court the United Kingdom, which as, as much as, as the furor himself and Ribbentrop consider this to be an e. Objective. Hess was, was zealously committed too, probably even more so, almost. He is kind of, you know, as we discussed Hess, one of the things that created the strong bond between him and House Offer was, you know, Hess was very much a student of geopolitics, which in the early to mid 20th century was really coming into its own, you know, due to the convergence of political questions and, and, and geostrategic power, political ones. And, and there was a decidedly military aspect to this too, owing to the world situations and technologies that had, had, had rendered distance that previously would have, you know, precluded, uh, you know, deployment of, of, uh, of offensive weapons across national frontiers. Obsolescent, you know, like the world became a much smaller place and you know, being within striking distance of a state's capital in, in metrics of the hundreds of miles, obviously owing to the advent of strategic aircraft or at least the potential they're in, you know, changed everything. So that's one thing to keep in mind about Hess's orientation towards the world as he experienced it and, and what he was charged with in his official role as, you know, within the party and, and within government. And Albrecht Carl House offers son he was something of a young prodigy and we'll get into the fact that a lot of his ascendancy and he, he was a very, he enjoyed some very privileged postings in, in university life prior to, during the late Weimar period and into the, the, the Third Reich National Socialist era. And on more than one occasion he'd had an audience with Adolf Hitler. Okay. Not all of these meetings were amiable, particularly after Hess's flight. He was one of the people that was called to task to explain what had happened. And that certainly was not a, a friendly exchange. But my point being that how Shawford the Younger, especially kind of his proximity to Hess and his ascendancy to these professional heights into these coveted positions within the Third Reich, it it kind of shoots the pieces. The, the narrative that there was just kind of one singular policy, you know, towards people who were of Jewish heritage or that there was a singular kind of inflexible standard that was always abided, it was always irrational and, and could not, could not be, you know, could not be compromised or, or nor exceptions rendered. You know, it's, it's indicative of the fact that there was, there was far more nuance and complexity here. So we've, and what this all comes back to is that Hess's flight has to not lose his mind and you know, nor, nor is he under the, nor is he under the influence of crazy astrologers or something. Hess's flight to, to, to the UK was very calculated and it was very sincere and it was very well thought out and the fortunes of everybody's in, in Hess's orbit owed to that. So that's, that's kind of why I'm emphasizing these figures like the House offers who in a lot of kind of court mainstream history treatments are just treated as sort of peripheral figures. That's, that's. You cannot get a complete picture unless you deal with these dynamics and the, in the, in the character of the personalities involved now moving forward with T.O. has himself after the leading up to and subsequent to the National Socialist ascendancy to power. Hess was in. We, we talked last session about, you know, Hess sort of was a man who owing to his kind of middle class morality and his overall sort of decency was not really cut out for political warfare. I mean, the man was obviously not a physical coward, nor was he afraid of violence. You know, he was a war hero. He'd. He'd fought the KPD in the streets as a. As, you know, as. As an essay battalion leader. But the kind of. The kind of Machiavellian ruthlessness that was called for to, you know, to quell revolutionary uprisings within the party, as we'll see, you know, with the Night of Long Knives, as well as just kind of the intriguing that that was required against men who had been his comrades, you know, in the. In the immediate past, in order to consolidate, you know, the power of the. Of the Hitler wing of the Party, you know, to which Hess was sublimely loyal. Like, he didn't really have the stomach for that. And Hitler, I believe, whatever else can be said of the man Hitler was. He had learned a tremendous understanding of social psychology and, and what, What. What people were capable of in terms of their. In. In terms of their moral conscience. And he tended to reserve duties and obligations owing to his evaluation of these things. So Hess found himself insinuated into the role of, quote, deputy furor and, And. And head of the Reich Chancery. And that was kind of an ideal role for him because. Called for a very human touch, you know, in. Because it was a. It was a public relations role, but also, you know, in terms of maintaining. Establishing and maintaining a quorum within. Within the party ranks. You know, Hess was a man who people intrinsically liked and trusted. Okay? And in some ways, Hess was a perfect National Socialist. And in the Third Reich, unlike in a state like the Soviet Union, there really was a cliff between the party and the state. It was not a fiction as it was in these communist regimes. You know, the National Socialist Party was not the government of Germany, and vice versa. Things became that way as time went on. And the ultimate objective of Hitler himself and of some of these ambitious functionaries within. Within the executive branch, like Himmler, they definitely aimed to insinuate the party apparatus formally into the state structure in a way that it was. One was indistinguishable from the other. But this is not really an organic process. And like I said, it was not just some kind of fiction that was maintained. So Hitler, Hitler maintaining Hassan, his role as kind of, you know, supreme executive over. Over party affairs, second only to himself, made sense. And it's, It's. It's anecdotal.
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See terms and conditions 21 evidence of, of. Of what I just suggested about the character of Hess as those who were his intimates attested to and I think as the historical record substantiates. So on April 21st, 1933, Hitler issued the following decree. He, he said, I appoint the director of the Political Central Commission, Rudolph Hess as my deputy and authorize him to decide all matters concerning the direction of the party in my name. Now the establishment of the Central Commission itself, obviously in some ways that's mirroring, you know, the central committee structure of Marxist Leninist parties. That was not accidental. And again too like we talked about in previous episodes, that's not somehow, that, that's not somehow derivative in some callow sense. People really did look to the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, whatever else they might have thought about it in terms of its ethics and in terms of political values. Structurally it was viewed as a very progressive and I say proximate value neutral terms organization for, for a party apparatus. And that's like I said. But in the case of the, in the case of the Third Reich, two there's the added variable that you know, again there was nothing. There was not some organic union of, of the party in the state, you know, the, the latter preceded the former, you know, by centuries in the case of Germany in some form or another. And nor was it really within the, within the National Socialist charter to try and replace the state with itself. That, that came to pass owing to political realities. But I think the point stands. Hess did confide during, shortly after this appointment and this kind of formal disclosure or testament of his role that he did resent the fact that, you know, he did not have any formal power within the government, only within the party. And Gearing, you know, and has had amiable relations. They were both old fighters and, and but just generally has really didn't have any enemies during himself. I mean in addition to being a very, a very, a personage of extraordinarily high profile within the party. Gearing uh, had been appointed Prime Minister of Prussia after the uh, after the uh, National Socialist ascendancy to power, in addition to its chief of police and the origins of the Gestapo were in the Prussian police force which under Gehring became a political police force that had dominion over the entirety of the Reich and then later it was assimilated into the, the SS and Gary stepped away from, you know, his role as any kind of police executive. But that's in part because he was slated for bigger and better things. But in any event, during Gary approaches Hitler and he suggests that, you know, it has to be given a role in, in government, you know, rather than just being relegated to purely administrative matters of the party. So on June 29th, 1933, Hitler issued a decree allowing her to attend all meetings of the right cabinet. The rationale being to guarantee the quote, unity of party and state and thereby confer in equality of status, in equality of status at least informal terms and party functionaries to that of, or with that of state office holders. So Hess became a Reichs Minister without portfolio. So that's, that's significant also because that obviously because you know, Hess was sitting in on, on, on, on, on affairs, on cabinet affairs. So he'd been a. He, his, his, his information, his situational awareness of the, of the dealings of government were rather complete, which is important in analyzing his motives for the flight to the uk. He would. The only, the only matters, the only substantial policy matters that would have been hidden from his purview would be military ones. But that was really the case for everybody except the, the High command and Hitler himself and some aspects of the SS who are liaising with the, with the regular army and of course later the ss. You know, owing to the, owing to the might of the Vaan SS and its forces in being and its assimilation into the Vermont command structure, you know, they, they more than just liased with, with, with the German Eye Command, they became essentially part of it. But that's not moving on though. That's not to say Hess was with. Hess was not without real authority. It was. And his ideas were taken seriously. That's, was really the, the German Labor Front was really his brainchild and the Labor Front was a real thing. It wasn't. It wasn't just this kind of paper organization that had been suggested and then created, you know, to kind of, you know, to kind of provide some sort of ready alibi to offset criticism that, you know, after the, after the trade unions had been, it had been smashed and, and a lot of, you know, a, a good number of labor leaders had been investigated and, or arrested for uh, for communist activity or Marxist sympathy. This, you know, the, this, the Labor Fund was a real thing. It wasn't just, you know, the, it wasn't just the right government saying oh no you know, we. We. We've got a formal. We've got a formal structure of Of. Of you know of labor representation within the. Within the party apparatus. It actually had real power. And Robert Ley, who was. Who became as the war especially during the war years, he became instrumental in dealing with the exigencies of production and and addressing labor shortage needs, uh, in some ways not particularly ethical. But he didn't personally enrich himself by these measures. They were just rather brutal. But le was a serious personage and it has a pointed way. You know, the House was not afraid of strong personalities within his orbit and within his immediate. As his immediate subordinates. And a lot of men in. In power positions are even those were you know even ones who are talented sometimes has also had responsibility for attending the knee to the Volks. The Volk Deutsche Volkso were ethnic Germans outside the. Outside the boundaries of the Third Reich or outside of its. Outside of its borders. And as we talked about last session as a. As a political force extrinsic to the. To Germany proper, uh, I mean it wasn't just a German emphasis on blood in the national community and you know defending the national community wherever it whoever it may be found. But also in the pre war era there was an understanding of, you know that nascent as it was the great power of, you know, mobilized ethnic lobbies, particularly in Europe, but also to. In the United States and Central and South America. And that. That. That was. So that was an important. That was. That was an important role. Hess did appoint Wilhelm bowl, who later on to become a gal lighter, um and became something of. A. Something of an adversary to has and we'll return to that. But interestingly, on October 27, 1933, as. As the. As the right government was going to consolidate, it was, you know, it was consolidating power and uh, gaining more confidence and implementing its ideological program obviously because you know it uh. Had sustained a mandate now for you know, several months has invited Al Houser, the son of Carl House offer, who has said intervene with a quote, certificate of protection, you know, a formal document attesting to his good character and uh, indicating that uh. He you know, any. Any. Any deprivation of. Of liberty or property owing to his heritage. House offers, that is, you know, House offer being, you know part Jewish in his. In his maternal line. He was quite literally just that under. Under the protection of the deputy fear it. And and. And not only was he open about his allegiance and friendship with the House offers, but he appoint. He formally appointed Albert Househofer to preside over a council charged with addressing policy questions relating to the Volksdeutsch and the geopolitical situation. So I mean, not only was he above board about, you know, again, his affinity for and friendship with these people, but he was giving them real power in the regime, at least within the, within the dominion of it, that you know, it has wielded authority. And bear in mind too, this, this was the party we're talking about, not the state apparatus. And that just as incidental to. Incidental to the kind of main points of discussion here, this kind of cuts against the entire, you know, like a Holocaust narrative of this inflexible, unrelenting rigidity that simply categorized people, you know, according to biological criteria and from which there were no exceptions allowed. And there was just, you know, complete absence of reason. You know, wouldn't the censors to that just say that these people were collaborators looking to say. But I mean, why in a party. In a party, in a, in. In a party office though of this kind of prestige, why, why would, why would hesit form. Why would it has its fellow National Socialist tolerate the presence of these people? You know, if in fact this was this unheard of thing or that, you know, this kind of, this principle that just could not be compromised, you know, I mean, Hess was openly associating with people who were quote, racial Jews under the Nuremberg laws. And nobody really seemed to care about it, you know, and there's nothing in the record indicating that, you know, this caused problems for him or for the house offers in any real capacity. What did happen is, is William Bull, who by this point was a galiter, he was affronted that a formal advisory council could be. Would be dominated by non party men. And that was his big issue with it, more so than that how Hoffer the Younger was, you know, a racial Jew. What Ball did was he demanded a seat for himself on the, on the advisory council. And he got it, the support of Martin Borman. Borman's an interesting case because Hess, he was Hess's edutant and his personal secretary and uh, he was second in command of the uh, the Reich, uh, other right chancery. And he'd come to, even as early as 1933, he'd come to. He'd come to be a sort of law unto himself on, on matters of party authority. Hess was a. Borman was a head of genius for organization and he was a workaholic and he was a fanatic. And he, the, he. The. He was an old fighter who, who'd. Who sort of Cut his teeth as it were, in terms of demonstrating his loyalty, loyalty to the party by murdering a, a communist, a communist deputy. And he, he served time for it. You know, he was a very, very, he was a, he was a very serious person. But also it, you know, uh, not an overt rival. That has his power though, which is interesting. And this comes up again and again in the, in the career of Borman. His relationship to Hess I think was mirrored later on and when he took on Hess's role quite literally and you know, his, his relationship to Hitler mirrored his earlier relationship with Hess in terms of his dynamics, I believe. But that's a bit of a tangent. What's most significant about, about Albrecht House offer, you know, House offer the younger at this time is throughout the summer and autumn of 1933 incident or at the same time as, you know, as he took on this appointment granted to him by Hess, he began to work the secret emissary abroad for, for Hess. Why he did this? Yeah, part of this was out of, you know, loyalty to Hess and you know, the relationship, you know, between his father and Hess. But part of this was out of a, out of, out of a sense of, of patriotism. You know, I mean obviously House Offer was not a national Socialist, but he, you know, this to say he wasn't just that, you know, he was looking out for his own physical safety and trying to be comfortable within this regime that was, you know, basically hostile to. What's up fools? Main event Jay USO here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one ish. And that means it's Chumba time. 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to, you know, to racial jewelry. As it was, he, he had some basic affinity for this regime. I mean otherwise, you know this, he would not have undertaken these activities. Thus that summer house offer. He ended up attending talks in Danzig and negotiating serly with uh, the U. S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd, as well as putting out fears to the United Kingdom, uh, on Hess's behalf. That's that August House offer directly intervened too on behalf of Heinrich Bruning, who was an academic that both the House offers admired. He was called the last of the Weimar chancellors by kind of, you know, uh, somewhat derisively. Uh, he was, uh, he was kind of the last, uh, he was kind of the last. The last. The last Chancellor who, who was a true kind of vibrant Social Democrats permitted to remain in government and a standard and fur of the. In the SA name. Schoenberg just hated him. And uh, he. Albrecht house offer was worried that his friend Dr. Bruning would quite literally be murdered and has directly intervened and resolved the situation and bringing Bruining, you know, under, under his protection as it were, you know, as he done in, in far less critical circumstances for the House offers. But you know, and again, this is another example of Hess being able to intervene without protest on behalf of a man who, you know, by virtue of his heritage or his station or profession or politics would have been categorically, or was in fact at odds with the regime. Yet there was no formal protest when you know, has intervened to, to prevent his, you know, deprivation of any of his substantial rights or, or liberties. And again, I, I'm not just, I'm not just singling out discreet instances to try and extrapolate some, some kind of broader point that's at odds with evidence. I think it can't be overstated that Hess was his, his, his, his. His domain of authority was the National Socialist Party. You know, he was not some political secularist. You know, he was not, you know, some conservative who found himself in government and owing to, you know, a long pedigree, just, you know, could kind of, you know, operate with a free hand. I mean he, Hess was the kind of National Socialist, of National Socialists, okay? And he's intervened behalf of his Jewish friends and, and these, these kinds of socially liberal university professors. And he's not just getting away with it. It's not causing many problems. But the real test of Hess's metal. I, I don't, I don't want to sound flippant, perhaps it's the wrong way to describe it. But you know, we talked about Hess and you know, he, he had a, he had a very developed political conscience and, and moral sensibility, but also just, he had very frankly bourgeois ethics and values. I don't mean that negatively. I mean people when they want to be obtuse these days and they talk about, you know, bourgeois like it's some kind of dirty word or something like, what I mean is that know Hess was not a gangster and you know, he was perfectly comfortable with, with violence when it was Necessary. But he, he did not enjoy or condone, you know, gratuitous bloodletting. And so coming around to, you know, June 1934, the night of the Long Knives, the, this, this caused a real crisis for him. I don't want to, I don't want to deep dive into the, into the Rom pooch and the, the kind of burgundy civil war between the SA and, and, and the, and the conservative elements that had backed the party, including Hindenburg himself, and we'll get into that in a minute. But for those that don't know the sa, owing in part to the need to kind of pull the wool over the eyes of, of the international community to demonstrate superficial compliance with Versailles, uh, the SA had swelled due to do ranks, the ranks that swelled over 2 million men. And they did not demobilize after the, after the National Socialist ascendancy to power. Rahm himself was an anarchic individual. You know, he was, I mean, he was, he was a real war hero and a great soldier and a remarkable officer, but he also was, he also was a, was a real gangster. You know, he was an open homosexual. He of the, of the most kind of brutal sort. You know, he was, he, he favored what he called a permanent revolution, you know, not in the sense that one might see a parallel in, in Trotsky, like I said, there really was a kind of, there really was a kind of gangsterish nihilism to Rom, and I think he really got excited at the prospect of the German Reich becoming, becoming a battlefront unto itself in perpetuity. And I, I, I think he really foresaw kind of a bloodbath wherein, you know, conservative elements who'd, and anybody else who stood in the way and the national social ascendancy would be slaughtered. I don't think that was just propaganda after the fact to, to rationalize what was done. And we'll get into what was done in a moment. But even if you have a more charitable view of Rom, regardless of you, of Rom, there were, there were many men like Gregor Strasser who were, who got a bullet in the head or, or, or their throat cut literally on, on in June 1934, like, like owing just to political intrigues or the fact that, you know, they'd been denounced by, by, by ambitious rivals within the party, and, and, and Hess was well aware of this and some of these men were his friends and he, he had no love for Rom, and he was in a lot of ways appalled by him and what he represented. But he, he could not abide in Moral terms, what was done. And, uh, it's interesting because, you know, and again, this is. Has always seemed to favor reconciliation in lieu of violence, at least within. Within. Within the party's own house as well as in his personal life. And like I. I believe it's attested to his bourgeois origins. Uh, Victor Lutz, or Lutza, he succeeded Rahm as. As chief of the sa, at least for a time. Some of the German guys or girls were. Or just some of the other revisionists who are keen to the Third Reich who are watching this will correct me if I'm wrong, but I know, but Lutza, he was a confidant of Hess in the sa, and he brought the Hess direct testimony that was reliable relating to Rom's plans to overthrow the regime. You know, but still Hess urged a meeting of the. Of the party Gers that he wanted to convene in, uh, in, uh, in Mecklenburg. You know, the. To, you know, to at least give them a chance, something approaching due process or at least you know, some. A chance at some sort of reconciliation that would. That would allow for a remedy other than just, you know, eliminating these men by. By taking their lives. You know, but they would. By that point, it. It. Lutza told him that, you know, the. The thing had been decided. You know, Rom had made too many enemies. They'd gotten Heinrich Himmler on board, and Himmler and Himmler and Gearing had been incredibly close. And that's. This is what's fascinating too is that this is what really made a lot of the personages in the. In the National Socialist Party sep. Dietrich. He actually. He actually pulled the trigger and killed Rom. Uh, all the, uh, all the trigger men, uh, all the SS triggermen went on to kind of, you know, really storied careers within the party. And the, uh. And it's also, I think it's. I think like I said, this is what kind of broke has, of course, of. Of his willingness to just, you know, abide the trajectory of. Of. Of events without trying to stop what was in motion. That's not to say that, you know, the. The war between the UK and Berlin was owed to Oda, the Fuhrer's decisions. I, I think Hitler did everything he possibly could to avoid hostilities with the uk. When you're confronted by an enemy who is simply going to pursue a policy of war at all costs, I mean, there's not. Your hands are tied. But I believe that this. I. I believe that in. In addition to the fact that I think it has. Casts some kind of shadow over what he had at one time perceived as the inevitable fortunes of the party and state that he served. Okay, let me put it that way. And I also think in some ways it gave him an out. I don't think that was his primary motivation, but it was part of it. But the. It's also too. And this is the last. All this is the last all this. This is the last kind of substantive matter I'll address relating to the Night of the Long Knives because it's kind of too much of a tangent, but the, you know, Hindenburg at this time was the Reich President and people. One of the things these, you know, court, court historians, in addition to being liars and, and being, you know, kind of peddlers of, of hysterical moral cant, they're, they, they deal in fictions. And this idea that Adolf Hitler was some law unto himself in 1934 is nonsense. And the Reich President, Hindenburg, probably not, not the sole proximate cause, obviously, but kind of, you know, the first among many essential causes of, of the bloodletting was Hindenburg demanding that the National Socialists basically pay the cost of Hitler's Chancellorship and blood, you know, and clean out their own house because it was unacceptable for men like Rom to be in uniform. And it was unacceptable for an organization like the SA to be declaring that it was the armed force of the German Reich. Okay? And in a. Despite we kind of perceive that, we kind of perceive the Weimar regime as being this toothless regime that had no real mandate. And, and it was in a lot of ways, but it was also organized around the sovereign executive, okay? And Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, it literally, it expressly delegated the authority to declare an exceptional state of emergency by the Reich President and to essentially take whatever steps he deemed necessary to, to remedy or annihilate the clear and present threat. Now, of course there was a, a built in remedy to, you know, perceived overreach in that a majority vote in the Reichstag could, could veto that declaration, but the Reich President in turn could dissolve the Reichstag. But my point is that Hindenburg was very much kind of the, the master of these events and he was at the end of his life. You know, he died later that summer, that autumn rather. But you know, he, what happened on June 6, 1934, it was an Article 48 emergency remedy in everything but formal declaration. And the hidden hand of the knives that were, were wielded was Hindenburg's. So this idea that this was just lawless Nazi gangsterism or something is Ridiculous. And also there's the fact that Rom actually did plan Rom. They actually did have a private army of millions of men. He was a psychopath and he did plan over. He was, did in fact plan to overthrow the government. I mean when I, you know, I mean I, I again I don't want to, I don't want to. I don't want to hijack a conversation of Hess, but you know there precedent in our own country for what sorts of measures the executive is willing to resort to when similar conditions are present. And it's just as bloody and, and unrelenting and outside of the normal scope of what we consider to be, you know, acceptable remedies. So that's just, that's. That's just something that has always disturbed me is the way that it's characterized. But it getting back, I promise that was the last uh. Um. Oh, you know, digression that's that far outside the scope. But Hess's adantant at the time was a. A fellow named Alfred Lin. And he. A lot of his testimony is available and some which is prosaic, some which is very, very significant. And the most significant to me is that on. He was, he was, he was with Hess in Bavaria on June 30. I said, I said June 6 earlier. I was thinking, I was thinking like Normandy. Yeah. June 30, 1934 is another long night. So forgive me, I promise I'm not going senile. But life getting said that he said uh, the Rom Pooch was quote probably one of the worst strains on Hess. He was in Munich at the time. He fought tooth and nail with Hitler to save some of those men and refused to be intimidated even by the most violent outbase outburst from Hitler. He saved a lot of men's lives. We'll never know how many. End quote. Supposedly too according not just the light again but other witnesses the. Has. Has argued with. With Hitler for. For several hours. You know this went on throughout the day that you know the. These men were our comrades. You know, we. We've got to come to some kind of. We. We can't. We can't as unceremoniously. We can't as unceremoniously shoot them in the street. Literally. You know, they, they. It. It's just something he couldn't abide. And I mean that's you know, it the. This in some ways the seminal. You know like I said, if you want to understand ultimately who became the key personages in the third in the Reich government and who. And who was sidelined from then on or who just, you know, everything. You know, their conceptual horizon of the conceptual relationship to the regime just changed fundamentally. In the case of Hess, the. June 1934 is. Is kind of what the. It was. Was kind of the. The crucible of that. And that's. That's. That's not. That's not emphasized enough. It has his own, uh. In his letters to his wife, as well as in his own diary, he had that. That's a Hess. That is. He. He likened the massacre on the Night of the Long Knives to the Roman practice of decimation, that is, quote, the execution of every 10th man, irrespective of whether he was guilty or innocent. And he. He came back again and again to the. To the case of Gregor Strasser. And Strasser's a fascinating guy. I mean, for those that don't know, Strasser's cast as representing the. The quote, left wing of the National Socialist Party. Yeah, that's true to some degree. I mean, he had more in common with, you know, the. The. The revolutionary conservative element in Weimar. You know, people like Ernst Younger himself. He envisioned a kind of, uh. He envisioned a kind of devolved socialism that actually had more in common kind of the Catholic distributism and. And Third way economics than it did, you know, with the. With the traditional left wing. He wanted some sort of concord with the Soviet Union. Not for. I mean, this was a geostrategic evaluation. This was not only the sympathy with Mercer's Leninism, but Strasser was, uh, among other. I mean, aside from, you know, his. His service to the party and everything else, he had early on been the. The party organization leader. Okay. I mean, during the years of struggle. So he. He. He had had Hess's job. Like, he'd been like, in Hess's role early on, you know, when he was. He was one of the most valued old fighters of. Of the early. And. And he'd been. He'd been with the party since. Since its earliest days. I can't remember if he. He. He joined after Drexler had. Had stepped aside, but I'm not. I think. But I'm not certain. But regardless, you know, he'd been. He. He'd been a National Socialist from. From the beginning. Okay. And it. That stressor, of all people could. Could have ended up just unceremoniously shot, you know, in the middle of the night, you know, especially because the man quite literally was in, you know, the role that Hess said himself was in at that moment. Hitler, interestingly, though, July 27, you know, so a full, about a full month after, after the Night of the Long Knives and, and Hess's kind of very public within party, uh, corridors and vocal protest and kind, you know, moral outrage. Uh, Hitler actually increased, uh, Hess's uh, mandate substantially. Hill decreed that he had the aim of streamlining the party and the state and thus that, you know, it has as, as, as essentially, you know, chairman of the party in a de facto sense, you should have a say in the drafting of all future legislation, you know, of major laws that, you know, in things that were, you know, impactful throughout the entire Reich and that dealt with basic issues of national security or with, you know, the integrity of, of the national community and things like that. You know, so like introducing conscription, stuff like the race laws frankly too, uh, they would be, they would bear Rudolph Hess's formal signature. Now he didn't really have time to scrutinize these things. It's almost like in those old movies about the later Roman Empire where you know, there's some, there's some dictatorial Roman procurator or Caesar type and he's just literally being handed like parchments and stamping them without reading it. I mean that's a silly metaphor, but it's actually not that far off. Like the sheer volume of data that Hess was charged with managing was, was incredible. And you know, him putting him. I mean this was real authority that he had owing to the, this July 27th decree. But it's not as if Hess was sitting there, you know, acting like, you know, acting like a library lawyer and you know, scrutinizing everything that came across his desk from, uh, from uh, you know, from whatever, from whatever quarters, you know, most of his time too. You know, as, as the party fully consolidated. You know, we talked about, we talked about the Party Chancery being in many respects a public relations office, you know, an early example of a modern political party truly, truly maintaining a permanent presence, you know, intermediary presence with, with the public. So has spent a lot of time quite literally just cutting ribbons or you know, uh, or showing up to award, you know, the, the mother's cross to, to uh, you know, to, to German ladies who, you know, had four or five and six kids, you know, or, uh, or, or, or you know, or, or giving accolades to, you know, great war veterans who were wounded, you know, on, on, on, on, on significant dates and things like this. You know, it's, I mean that's a full time job like then as it is now. I mean it's, you Know, Nixon lamented that in a, you know, Nixon was in a very different role than Rudolph Hess. But you know, Nixon was a man who actually wanted to next was interested in waging the Cold War and he was interested in, you know, kind of restructuring policy. He was not interested in, you know, kissing babies and you know, putting his arm around old ladies and, and you know, flashing toothy grins at the cameramen. But that's, you know, has very much, has very much. The more, the more his power, uh, the more his power increase, kind of the more his role as a politician sort of mitigated Its, its actual, his, his actual ability to, to exercise that power. And this is interesting too because in 1934, 35, Hitler was putting some distance between himself and the, the National Socialist Party. And this was not accidental. Part of this was because even though Hindenburg, you know, was in the grave by, you know, autumn 1934, there was still a lot of national conservative elements who were very suspicious of the National Socialists.
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Casino and the German public overwhelmingly loved Hitler. You know, Hitler had like, you know, over 90% of the, of the German electorate, you know, supported Hitler. But the National Socialist Party was not especially popular. I mean they had a mandate and they weren't unpopular, but their fortunes were not at all synonymous. Those are the fur and those are the National Socialist Party. So during this kind of intermediary period between the years of struggle and you know, the kind of, the kind of post, uh, consolidation phase immediately before the onset of hostilities and in 1939, you know, you had this, you had the strange circumstance where kind of Hitler was getting, it was, it was kind of, was kind of learning to swim proverbially as an executive. And you know, he was, he was identifying more and more with the, with, with, with the German state and, and behaving and behaving like uh, in a lot of ways like a very traditional German executive, you know. And so part, you know, Hess's uh, role as the face of the party, you know, and kind of the, and kind of the man almost embodied the National Socialist Party circumstantially, you know, this, this, this kind of increased, you know. But again, like we mentioned before too, the subtext of this Was that the staggering volume of work, Well, a lot of it was being delegated to Martin Borman and, and Borman, crude as he was, cunning as he was, uh, conspiring as he was, he was an organization. He was an organizational genius. And this becomes significant later because Borman, the Borman. In many ways Borman was the antithesis of Hess. But his power in later years owed very much the proverbial house that Hess built. Now moving on, I'm gonna try and bring it back. So I realize I can't keep you all afternoon. Bring it back to the househoffers and how Hess's relationship with them relates to his ultimate flight and tragic, you know, effort. Uh, it is a piece, emissary. On April 7, 1934, Hess met privately with the Japanese naval at that one, Admiral Yendo, and he met with him on Professor House Hoffer's property on Kohlberger Strauss, and has made for all practical purposes an official overture to him. And this was significant because at this time, this big early 1934, most of the National Socialist Party, at least the aspects of it and the personages within it who had any control over the trajectory of foreign policy, as well as the majority of the army general officer corps as well as uh, the kind of careers in the foreign Ministry, they strongly preferred China to Japan for political reasons, for geostrategic reasons, Hess, the House offers Ribbentrop. They were the minority that really favored an alliance with Japan. The. And Hess apparently, which was out of Curim, he threw caution in the wind. And invoking the furor's name in. To. To validate his own authority, he said, quote. Well, I can inform you, speaking now to Admiral Yendo and in speaking in the name of the fur, that we sincerely want Germany and Japan to draw together. But I must stress that this can't involve anything that might jeopardize our relations with Britain. So again, first and foremost, what is Hess's. What is Hess's priority? It's, it's to bring, it's the. It's to bring the UK to terms not just in terms of uh, non aggression but in terms of uh, you know, formal alliance moving forward. This was the lynchpin of, of. Of every uh, of every issue that he contemplated relating to geostrategic, uh, questions. And that's essential to adjudicating in the, in the kind of court of historical opinion as it were, uh, what Hess's motives were and uh, what uh, what the kind of overall disposition of uh, of uh, of Adolf Hitler was because uh, different as they were, you know, has his. Hess's emotional and ideological intimacy relative to the fur. It wasn't just a case of, you know, hero worship or whatever punitive light people cast it as. And nor is Hess, you know, some kind of slavish follower, you know, aside from any kind of messianic pretensions that has assigned to Adolf Hitler. He, he was in basic agreement on, on his, on in. In matters of worldview, okay. Particularly of a strategic power political nature. And this is essential to, to understanding, you know, not just the kind of discreet fact of what animated has to do what he did, but it also shoots the pieces. The kind of obnoxious darkest hour myth where, you know, Churchill was just this put upon man who was, you know, leading this country that, you know, is being threatened by Nazi aggression. That's, that's the, that's the term you were getting to get. Nazi aggression. I mean it, it's just, it's. It's not just, it's not as a misstatement of history. It's. It's the literal opposite of what happened. But the what. And Hess. Hess's, uh, has his dumb dealings with uh, with the Japanese, uh, with the Japanese admiralty. Uh, that really was kind of. I mean arguably that was the first step towards what became the Anti com turn pact which was signed November 1936. The German Reich and Japan were the original signatories. Italy didn't join until 1937. And that's hugely significant. And a lot is made by people, you know that. Well, the, you know, the Germans and the Japanese, they, they didn't, they didn't coordinate well at the operational level and they didn't integrate politically. I think they did as much as can be expected. Japan even more so than the German Reich or in Congress. The German Reich, which I think was remarkably united at this point and into the, into the era that of. In. Into the war years. You know, Japan really was a house divided, held together kind of only by the emperor in political terms. I mean. And there really was, I mean there, there was, there was just a fact of distance. I mean, I mean literal like you know, geographic distance. I. It's. It's not. In the anti. Commander impact. That was a real, it was a real, it was a real thing. I mean it wasn't an affectation. And the fact. It's got to be, it's got to, that's got to be considered too in, in. In understanding. Uh, you know, we talked about, we talked in an earlier episode about the mythology that, you know, the Non aggression pack represented some kind of quote unquote alliance between Moscow and Berlin. I mean it's absurd for a lot of reasons. You don't, you don't, you don't declare that you're not going to like assault and try to destroy your allies. I mean that doesn't need to be said. But the, the anti commoner impact was what really, what really such that it existed. And again, I, I, we'll get into this another time. It, that really is what created the, the Axis alliance. And I believe like I said that that Hess's Hess in the House offers overtures to Japan or what facilitate like made that possible quite literally during this time too. And in the years immediately subsequent, um, Albert Hauschoffer was spending a great deal of time in the UK And House offer had become increasingly, you know, anti Nazi, not in a, not an anti fascist sort of capacity, but owing to his own, you know, parentage obviously, but also just kind of the, you know, he was how Shoffer was an acid. He was, he was a geo, he was a geopolitical analyst like his father. But he, he kind of, he coveted uh, the role of diplomats, you know, and uh, these were not uh, he, he was not a man of a character even aside from his parentage and everything else, so I think would have really identified with, with uh, with the National Socialists. But he was a patriot and he did love Germany and he did agree with, with Hitler's sentiment. As the Fur quite literally stated in Mein Kampf quote, no sacrifice should have been too great in winning Britain's friendship. Plus two. It was. He, he had a great esteem House offer did for the UK like a lot of younger Germans did. And this is one of the things that, I mean he and Hess they, they would have had a personal affinity for one another owing to their, you know, Owen of the fact that, you know, Hess has had great love for, for a house offer. The younger's father Carl, but you know, has, has had literally been born under British rule in Egypt and this is where he grew up. You know, he, Hess was, Hess was a. Has, was kind of the good European in the, in the terms described by Nietzsche. Okay. I mean I, I know some of the, our audience really digs that sort of sentiment. I'm not, I'm not being condescending or something. I take that seriously. But you know, it has kind of straddling, has kind of straddling the, the Anglophone world and you know, esteeming the kind of majesty of this, of this great, you know, white empire of, of. Of. Of. Of Britain, you know. Well also will also being you know, the consummate. The consummate, you know, kind of Teutonic, uh, German, uh, patriot, you know, who, who views uh, who views the world uh, in uh, in, in. In kind of kind of nakedly historicist terms, you know, in, in. In. In Hegelian terms. That's, that's something that. That's something that. That's got to be accounted for to understand the dynamic between the Younger House. Hoffer and Hess. I believe the uh, Huer, uh, the Albrecht, I mean the Younger, he. He rode a lot in, in. In. In political and academic journals. One of which I can't remember the name of it. It was, it was a monthly geopolitical journal that there were myriad publications like that in the era. But this was kind of the top uh, this was kind of the top uh. That this was kind of Most uh, prestigious one. And he wrote in April of, of 1934 the ultimate decision on the fate of Europe lies today in English hands, just as it did in the 10th years, the turn of the century when the British Empire and the Kaiser's Reich after vain attempts to steer a common course began to drift apart. Now for about four years subsequent from 1935, 36 to 1940. Basically. Yeah, basically from 1935 until the, the formal onset of hostilities when the UK and and. And France declared war on the German Reich. Has an Eldrich House offer owing to uh, Owing to how Shaer's connections that he'd made in his. In his kind of secret diplomacy missions. They arranged private meetings with British visitors, dozens of whom flocked to Berlin in the mid-30s because for. For no other reason. They were eager to witness the National Socialist revolution firsthand. You know, whether you loved or hated the German Reich, it was a government and a mod of political organization that was on the cutting edge of. Of statecraft. Okay. There were German transcripts interestingly and not, not, not unintentionally these were destroyed by Allied command after the war. There were voluminous records of Hitler's meetings with these people that hasn House offer had courted and arranged for the fear to meet people like Leo Amory, Lord Londonderry, Lord Beaverbrook, which should come as no surprise. I mean we, in our discussion at Churchill we kind of deep dived into his, his career and his sympathies. Stanley Baldwin's secretary looking for a little Hollywood style fun.
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by Champa Casino Tom Jones. Not to be confused with the, with the singer. And I mean these are people of serious pedigree and authority. Okay? And I mean it was probably. There may have been a dozen more that they're, you know, the. There. There was no record of or the record of which was never duplicated before being destroyed. So we, we don't even know. But the. And to jump ahead for a minute after I mentioned that when we first began this discussion today, that you know, Albrecht house offer. He had had an audience with Hitler on a few different occasions, the last of which was two days after Hess's flight in May 1940. And house offer. Hitler basically demanded interior house offer and, and humanity. He reveal all of his, all of his contacts and activities, you know, relating to the UK over the preceding, you know, months and, and couple of years. And how Shauford would he listed for Hitler the names of those on whom he personally. Those whom he personally tried to cultivate successful successfully or not to try to sway. Sway the, the. The trajectory of. Of policy in, in. In. In the uk. This was uh, what he called a quote, a leading group of younger conservatives. He mentioned Lord Clydesdale. Now this, he, Lord Clydesdale later became the Duke of Hamilton. Okay. This was the man who Hess was attempting to contact when he flew to the uk so this is significant. And it becomes more significant, as will be revealed in a moment. But another, Another name that house offer listed for the furor was the Prime Minister's parliamentary private secretary, Lord Dunglas Herod, Harold Balfour, Kenneth Lindsay, undersecretaries of the Air Ministry, the Education Ministry in the Scottish office. Hamilton's brother, who was related to uh, who was related to Queen Elizabeth and uh, and uh, Hamilton's mother in law who. Who is similarly related to I guess the House of Windsor. I know like people are keen to. Royals will correct me if if I misstated who uh, who. Who sits on the throne in Limey Land. But uh, be as it may, in the same circle were uh, where Lord Aster, Samuel Horror, uh, Oliver Stanley. I mean the list goes on and on. Okay? And. This, this went on for years. That House Shaer was cultivating these people, okay? And in the case of uh, in the case of Hamilton, uh, they became very close friends. They went on vacations together. They, they maintain a voluminous correspondence. Okay. At least some of these People had to have been swayed to House offers enterprise or at least his point of view. Okay? And even if none of them had Hamilton again, he became a close, intimate confidant, companion, if you will, of House Harford the younger. You can't tell me accounting for all this, that has simply one day lost his mind and, and flew to the, flew to the UK out of cowardice or because, you know, his, his astrologer told him to. Like that doesn't, that just doesn't. That just doesn't pass uh, the uh, the straight face test. But I realize this has sort of sub chapter has been going on for a long time. I promise next session we will wrap it up. We'll devote like half an hour to Hess's flight and then we will weave his incarceration experience into the treatment of the actual trial because that's not just an effort at, towards. And then there's me, you know, deciding to abrogate the discussion. Here's the brevity. Makes sense to do it that way. But I thought that his background was important, especially because he has to still kind of lampoon and made a caricature in, in kind of in kind of court history. So I, I hope nobody was bored by it or resented the tangent. It's, it's an essential foundation that needs to be addressed to understand the subsequent proceedings, which is, you know, the big kind of finale to this entire, this entire series of discussions. So I hope you're pleased with what we covered today, Pete. All good. Give your plugs and we'll end. Yeah, indeed. You can always find me at my substack. It's Thomas 7. It's real Thomas777 substack.com It's about half the content. There's free, it's long form essays and that's where our podcast is posted about every other week. We got a very active community on Telegram. It's T me slash the number 7H1S777. You know, and like I said, that's, that's my primary social media platform. I mean that's the only one I really utilize. I do back things up on gab, even though I'm not purely active there. You can find me there at Real Thomas 777. And just to plug some of my print long form, I completed my second novelette in my ongoing science fiction brand called Steel Storm. I completed the manuscript just the other night. I'm sending it off within 48 hours to imperium Press where great people, people and great friends of ours and that'll be available for purchase within weeks. And I, I, I was, I was incredibly, you know, moved and uh, inspired by the positive uh, response to the first uh, to the first uh, book in the series. So that is uh, where you can find me and where you can, where you can get up on what I do. All right. Until part three. Take care Thomas. Back to the Pika show continuing the series. I am here with Thomas 777. How are you Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks again for hosting me as always. Sure. There's some things I need to discuss today relating to the strategic situation as well as the diplomatic one that led to Hess's flight. And I know it seems like that it may seem like I interrupted what was a very coherent narrative series for the sake of an esoteric tangent. That's not my intention and I don't think that's what I'm doing. I think, I think the, I think the case of Rudolph has, is very ill understood and such that people do contemplate it, they contemplated it in terms of how strange it is and what became of Mr. Hess. You know, literally the, the real man in the High Castle. Or they deal with the fact that which I plan to when we finally get around the unpacking the Nuremberg Trials, the actual proceedings. People such that they do give has any consideration a revisionist perspective. They generally just deal with the fact that he was even within the, even if one accepts the, you know, if one accepts for the sake of argument the bounded rationality of you know the, the Nuremberg indictment, even, even within those parameters, it's, it's very difficult to make the case that has, it should have been there in the first place and under indictment or any kind of jeopardy at all as a matter of law. But what became imperative to me when I first started studying these topics. I'm talking like literally 30 years ago, even before there was a as great a great as great of access to source documents and things and, and academic resources and contemporaneous testimony. You know, because this was pre Internet. Something that did jump out at me such that Hess did figure in revisionist literature was that the narrative around his flight didn't make any sense on its face. You know, I, I generally, I generally there's a subtext to a lot of the Hitchcock movies, you know, where if, if it's alleged that somebody simply went mad and that's. That explains their behavior. Generally that's generally you're dealing with something rather conspiratorial because sometimes people go mad and behave Totally irrationally, but generally they don't. And when such things are suggested, particularly if you're talking about, you know, truly apocalypse, that's generally not. That's generally not something that should be taken at face value. But what, What a point I want to emphasize as we kind of get into the substance, what we're going to talk about today. You know, Rudolph has, as his public profile, for lack of a better way to characterize it, increased, you know, after. After the National Socialist revolution. You know, as we talked about before, his responsibilities within the party administration grew exponentially and he became very, very visible as literally the face of the Party. And in fact, that was, in fact his role, I mean, in it as a matter of law. I mean, he. He was, he was situated at the. At the. At the, at the head of the Reich Chancellor. I mean, this wasn't just. This wasn't just public relations. I mean, there was that aspect to it, too. Even in Triumph of the Will, I think you see him more than you see Hitler. Yeah, yeah. And he became very much the face of the party like we talked about, because he was very relatable to people, which I think makes sense. I mean, he seems. I mean, it has seemed like a worldly guy, but he also seemed kind of provincial. I mean, that. And to Americans, like in the 21st century, they might be like, well, this guy seems like a bumpkin. Or it's like, well, yeah, maybe, but I mean, that you've got to put yourself in. In. In, you know, in the, in the minds of. Of viewers in that culture and in that epoch. But. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But Hess also, it's, you know, like we talked about before, the distinction between the party and the state and the Third Reich, it became blurred, particularly as rel. As regards the police apparatus, quite literally, but that's its own issue. But it. This wasn't a contrivance like in the Soviet Union or like later in, like the German Democratic Republic. Like the National Solist Party really was an entity into itself, and the German state was an entity unto itself that had centuries of precedent behind it. You know, and, and the National Socialist Party was elected. You know, it wasn't. It didn't. It didn't take power by. By way of a violent revolution, and it didn't insinuate itself into an executive role, you know, after. In some kind of. In some kind of crisis situation of where, you know, of a failed state, you know, like, like the war three kingdoms or something centuries before in the UK or, or arguably like Napoleon did so I mean you, when, when a. This distinct, this distinction between, you know, what was within the party's authority and domain and what was, you know, exclusively, you know, the. Under the authority of the state. This wasn't some kind of fiction like in the Soviet Union, you know, so that's important to consider. Okay. But at the same time as, as, as the Second World War got underway, Hess's war, Hess's role in the war really was rather minimal. And this kind of irritated the ever ambitious Martin Borman. You know, as we talked about, Borman was literally Hess's successor, even though Hess's office was done away with after, after his ill fated flight. But Borman was number, was the number two man at the Chancellery. And uh, he, you know, he, he, he got, he got Hess's job, you know, after the, after the, you know, has, his, has his flight when he became literally unpersoned, among other things. But you know, Borman, Borman became incredibly powerful within the apparatus of government. And in an indirect way, Borman had a lot of ability to impact the war. We'll get into that on another episode where it seems more proper. But as of 1941, um, 1940, 1941, you know, has, did not, it has felt increasingly shut out. I don't think that was entirely deliberate. I mean like we talked about, Hess's character was not like that of Goebbels, nor was it like that of Gearing. It certainly was not like that of Himmler. There was an app. Despite the fact that, you know, the, the man was a decorated combat veteran and he had been a street fighter in the days of struggle, he was not a particularly ruthless man. And he, you know, like we, like we talked about too. It was credit in my opinion. He, he, he was very much possessed of a middle class morality. And no matter what regime you serve, you know, the when, when, when, when war arrives, uh, the uh, the war cabinet around the executive, you know, de facto and de jure becomes, it becomes a, it becomes a very, very close fraternity. And who is included and who is, who is included and who is excluded from that cadre that, that doesn't necessarily owe to how one is perceived by his fellows and in terms of whether he's well liked or not. Okay. I mean a lot of it owes to what's perceived about his character.
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just kind of instinctive ways people respond to others when, when crises kind of force a you know the, the recognition of a very. Of very formal hierarchies. But it be as it may, you know, Hess was close to Adolf Hitler and he remained close to the center of power. So he was in a position to discern the trajectory of policy in a basic way and Detroit and, and he was better. He was better situated probably than anybody save. Yeah, probably, probably than anybody at this time save maybe the OKW to. To divinate like what Hitler's intentions were. But Hitler was notoriously canny and in revealing his actual intentions. And I think some of that was purposeful but other times I, I think it just owed to his basic nature. This is possible to be taciturn with one's emotions in a way that is instinctive, if that makes any sense. But the. It has clearly wanted to take a more active role. At first he tried to convince the Fjord given permission to fly sorties with the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot, which Heydrich later uh, pulled off on uh, the eastern front. Then after getting shot down, uh, finally, finally Hitler said we're not, you know, we're not going to allow, you know, we're not going to allow men in these executive roles that go on these you know, combat LS of. Of this nature. So s didn't get that opportunity. But as, as the war dragged on and Britain wouldn't come to terms this came to the forefront of. Of Hess's mind like he no longer, he no longer was possessed of that kind of patriotic fervory. His own correspondence, particularly with the house offers, you know, with Carl and increasingly with the Sun Albrecht, which we'll get into in a moment because that's very significant to discerning the motives for Hezbol's flight. You know, the United Kingdom was really all that was on his mind. Now keep in mind that's not because Germany was in some perilous military position at all. Germany was very much winning the war. Throughout 1940, German troops had had occupied Scandinavia to forestall Churchill's own plans to assault there, which would have been a gross violation of, you know, of uh, of Norwegian sovereignty and, and, and that at Denmark. But you know, it's as usual, like, whenever Churchill does something, it's okay. It's when everybody else does it that it's, you know, some. Some sort of slight against. Against, you know, the laws of God and man. But the, you know, the. This was. This was after Dunkirk where, you know, the British Expeditionary Force had, uh, had been chased off the continent. The. The battle in Narvik. There was a series of pitch battles in 1940 there. And that was actually. That's actually, uh, Earhart Milch. Uh, that's. He. He was awarded the Knight's Cross owing to his, uh, command of, uh. Going to his command of the loof off of there. And then that's when he was also promoted to field Marshal. So it's significant for a lot of reasons. But my point is that Germany had tremendous momentum in. In. In military terms. Okay, so Hess's concern was not as someone suggested that, you know, he viewed the furor as a madman who was leading Germany to ruin. Like, it's not what was on his mind at all. What was on his mind was he viewed. Has took entirely seriously as we talked about what Hitler described in Mein Kampf as his. Not just, you know, has. Has obsessed with geopolitics. And this owed a lot to his affinity for the house offers, which was reciprocal. But also has viewed. Has viewed, uh, you know, coming to terms with the UK to be essential, uh, in. In historical terms and apocal terms. In his words, you know, it would be suicide for the white race for the UK and Germany to make war with one another. But that's also, I think, owing in part to his worldliness because, you know, as we talked about, he was raised in Egypt. He had a. Despite his kind of earnest naivete when it comes to, you know, it's kind of hero worship of Adolf Hitler and other things. I think he had a better sense of geostrategic realities than a lot of men of his generation, frankly know. He was an aviator. And that, that, that, that. That affords people a unique conceptual horizon, particularly in those days. Has realized that, you know, even if everything continued to go, you know, even if the gods continue to, proverbially speaking, continue to favor Germany on the battlefield, having the UK Refuse to come to terms could lead with catastrophe. But more than that, I believe that it has thought that Sea lion was a. What was. Would become a reality. Now, I don't want to go do overfield. But what was Sea Lion? Operation Sea lion was a series of steps and fewer orders relating to. Relating to order of battle and deployment. That indicated The. A battle plan to invade the United Kingdom. Okay. I believe, and I'll get into why I believe this here, you know, shortly, but also in later episodes, I believe this was a strategic ruse when it became. Which was undertaken by Hitler when it became clear that the Soviet Union was, uh, indeed, um, had every intention to, to assault Germany at the, at the earliest opportunity. And when Hitler decided that, you know, he was going to, he was going to offset that, uh, that threat, you know, by striking, uh, the Soviet Union first, uh, before it's, uh, before it, uh, before it could adjust its own, uh, its own deployment to defend in depth. But Hitler very much other than a handful of. Other than a handful of admirals and, and, and field marshals, Hitler maintained this, uh, illusion. And I don't think it has. Was privy to the fact that this was in fact, uh, a strategic ruse. So Hess, putting yourself in the mind of Hess in 1940 into 41. Hess believed that at some point Operation Sea lion was, Was going to be ordered and there's going to be an invasion of England. And this would be a bloodbath, I don't think. And it's, it's kind of outside of my wheelhouse. And I also don't want to get into some heavy counterfactual discussion in military matters on this episode, but I think Sea lion would have been impossible, okay. For a lot of reasons, including the fact that if you're going to invade the United Kingdom in 1940 or 41, you've got to sink the Royal Navy, and then you've probably got to land at least, at least 60,000 men ashore in order to establish, you know, a, A meaningful, uh, A meaningful foothold, you know, and, and to. And to hold it until you can reinforce in inadequate numbers to affect a real occupation. I mean, I, I just, I do not think it was possible, but that's not the point. Uh, had it been implemented, uh, that definitely would have been a bloodbath. And it, uh, that seal line itself could have proved catastrophic had it been attempted. But that's something to keep in mind. We'll return to that in a minute. And again, forgive me for being a bit scattershot, but it was, it was in, in. In June 1940, Hitler. Hitler was dining with Hess. And, uh, this was just before the French campaign began. Or, uh, yeah, this is in May, rather forgive me. This is for the French campaign. Has to ask Hitler over lunch. Do you still hold England in the, in the same esteem you used to? Do you still think that we can come to peace come to terms with them, you know, can we find a basis for peace with the uk you know, and Hitler said, you know, absolutely, but, you know, that depends on what man is in it. It is. That depends on what man is in office, you know, and if, if it's a man like Mr. Churchill, it's a man like van de Sart, like, that will not be possible. Okay. And as we know, has basically took what the furor says gospel. Not just on, not, not just on its own terms that, you know, everything Hitler said to him when in response really direct question, you know, has took it at face value and is entirely sincere. But, you know, he, he believed it to be as good as, you know, a statement of policy. This seems like a throwaway kind of conversation, but it has mentioned it to Krista Schroeder in like the first week in June, which she wrote in her own diary, you know, about, about Hess's grave concern over the, you know, the future of. Of diplomatic potential with the UK And I mean, alarmed her. You know, she thought it was remarkable enough to take note of it. I believe this is the moment at which kind of the seed was planted in Hess's mind. Okay. As we get more into the character of the man and this, this comes out, ultimately it is trial. So I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but these things are important in, in, in. In construct reconstructing the motives of people in a central role and under decision making. These kinds of subtle perceptions. In the case of a man like Hess, like tell us a lot of things. Has noted another time to the house offers this is around the same time around June 1940, has having, you know, has having come from the, the. The Egyptian British protectorate, his parents have been dispossessed of their property with the concept of. With uh, with the conclusion of uh, of the, of the Great War. And then further with uh, with the onset of, uh, with the onset of hostilities in 1939, you know, the remaining assets they had that had been protected were seized. So this is obviously a sore spot for has. And it has said that it has put it to Hitler, you know, are you going to demand that the. That the crown return to us everything that it took from us, you know, and is this going to be an obstacle to peace? And Hitler said very candidly, you don't impose, you don't impose harsh conditions on a country you want to win around to your side. And I mean that kind of further, you know, that, that entire line of questioning, I believe was Hess trying to tease out what was the, what was in the mind of his furor, you know, and it's not, it's not some kind of Teutonic caricature to say that, you know, Hess really did view what the furor said is gospel. That is true. I, I, I think it's misplaced the way people again try and kind of caricature German culture as being this kind of mindlessly authoritarian, almost despotic in the Oriental sense, you know, militaristic sort of, you know, social order where, you know, adherence to superior orders kind of stands and stands in for judgment at all times. But it gives a Hess there really was, you know, that's not caricature. And his reasons for those sympathies and tendencies I think are more personal and cultural. But I, I just want to clarify that for people who might misread why I consider that important. July, uh, 1940, uh, July, August 1940 was a critical period. The reasons why, I mean, it was critical just, you know, for, it was critical for a relations between London and Berlin and uh, the possibility for any kind of peace. It was critical in Hess's decision making. Uh, and it was critical and what, what ultimately developed in uh, in uh, and what, what ultimately did develop, what didn't develop in terms of the progress of the war. On July 19, Hitler issued one of his last direct speeches to the Reichstag after 1941. He didn't directly address the Reichstag again. And of course the 1941 speech was the declaration of war against the United States. The July 19, 1940 speech, Hitler declared it, quote, the last appeal to reason. Now, something that's little known because it's deliberately redacted and when you pose a question to court historians about the matter, they tend to, they tend to employ weasel words or they tend to, they, they, they, they tend to profer any number of answers that don't really address the question. But upon the onset of hostilities, formal hostilities after the UK declared war on Germany, you know, in concert with France in 1939, Hitler absolutely prohibited the bombing of London. It was an absolute embargo. Even when you are, even if, because at that point hadn't happened yet, the RAF targeted civilian centers in Germany, uh, Hitler forbade any targeting of, uh, of civilian centers, uh, in the United Kingdom in retaliation, including London. This presented a problem for Mr. Churchill for a few reasons. As we talked about a Moment ago, summer 1940, the UK was actively losing the Second World War, you know, and the, the, what had happened, what had happened in Scandinavia and particularly the Final. The reversal at Narvik that made a hero of, of Earhart Milch, among other things. You know, Churchill was looking, Churchill was coming. Churchill was beginning to look like a fool, like in military terms, you know, because he, the focus had catapulted him into office obviously. But Churchill been banging the war drums, you know, on two grounds. You know, first of all, this inflated, these inflated figures and claims about the forces and being of the German Reich, you know, claims about their capabilities and intentions. But also he was declaring incessantly that, you know, the UK could, you know, wage this. That the UK and you know, could wage with its expeditionary forces, you know, with the support of the Royal Navy, you know, that they could fight and win on the continent. I mean that's. Otherwise, you know, he would not have gotten the war mandate that he got. And Churchill was suffering defeat after defeat after defeat. You know, it. So he had a real problem here, you know, not just that, you know, he, he was, look, he'd be, you know, moving forward. He, he was, he was looking at a no confidence vote. But also, I mean, frankly, it wouldn't have even had to come to that if, if his entire uh, it was entire foreign policy and war cabinet, you know, basically, you know, as a policy coup, decided to like sue for peace, you know, which in the, which in the, which in the English system is very possible, you know, in a way that is not in the United States. Even, if even, even a guy like Churchill who's got a lot of, he's got a lot of. He's got a lot of international money behind him and a lot of intrigues that put him there, this is a very real possibility. So Churchill basically, and this, this should really disgust people. But Churchill basically decided from then on he was going to find a way to provoke Germany into assaulting London. I mean that'd basically be like a guy that basically be like if George W. Bush had tried to find, had sought out a way to like make 911 happen instead he get a war mandate. Like he didn't do that. I don't want 911 truthers to jump all over the comments. Like, imagine like if he did that, you know, and like that Churchill literally conspired, set about as a matter of policy to find a way to provoke an attack on London or undoubtedly, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people would die, you know, in the initial salvo, because that's just the kind of guy piggy Churchill was. But the July 20, the day after Hitler's address, the Reichstag, Churchill Ordered plans to Bomber Command, uh, for the mass bombing of Berlin city center with all available forces. Now mind you, four engine bombers, you know, the Lancaster of which it was, you know that was kind of the UK's equivalent of the, of the, of the, the super fortress type aircraft. The other one, they get like devastating hurt on the target area. They hadn't been fielded yet and stuff. Like the Avro Manchester, which was the two engine heavy bomber, those didn't fly until November. But the aircraft that were available, like the Vickers Wellington, they, they were very, very effective in what we consider in it to be counter value targeting. Okay. They could basically wreck a target area very, very effectively. And something to keep in mind too. And again, forgive me if I'm being too scattered on this episode, but this is important. You know, one of the big reasons, one of the, the key reason why the Battle of Britain failed if in fact its purpose was to bring the UK to terms. I don't think that Hitler had in mind that that was possible. I think the decision was political. I think some, I think Gearing's bow stuff and, and Gearing's declarations of what was operationally feasible that definitely had an impact on those decision making. You know, he had an inflated sense, Hitler did of, of the effectiveness of, of, of Gearing's operational plans. But the, the Luftwaffe did not have a strategic capability. It was a, it was, it was a tactical fighting force, it was a ground assault force to be utilized in, you know, as a combined arms element. You know, the, it tells you something that from that, from, from the outset, you know, from the moment that, you know, from the moment that the, from the moment that uh, the, the war party as it were, you know, before Mr. Churchill was even insinuated into office, you know, when the focus was uh, was uh, you know, was, was. Was merely one of many, albeit you know, a very powerful one, but one of many kind of lobbying concerns, the research and development of, of British war industry was very, very oriented towards developing a strategic bombing capability. And that I think that that's relevant particularly if, when we get into the, particularly when we get into the, the charging instrument at Nuremberg. And uh, this isn't just something that I, it kind of pulled out of the record in order to you know, hold wave around at some kind of. As some kind of rebuttal point. Bomber Harris made that point himself, as did Curtis LeMay in a very different way. But you know, if the as is cast, uh, you know, uh, in, in court history, know if the Germans were these people who Were you know, the, the. The claim is that you know, the Germans terror bound Rotterdam, which is ridiculous for a lot of reasons. You know, this claim is that, you know the, that the, you know, the Germans just spontaneously assaulted London for no reason. And they did so because they had this like mighty air force that was tailored basically to you know, to. To. To terrorize civilian populations, you know, with counter value assault. That's really, really at odds with facts. And frankly the, I mean over. I'll, I'll bring it back to the, the topic in a minute, but over, over the entire battle of Britain, I think something like 55000 people perished, uh, like civilian casualties, uh, in the UK now I'm not gonna be, I'm not being flippant or crass, you know, because that's a tremendous loss of life in absolute terms. But there was the. When the Allies started hitting Hamburg and Dresden, they were, they were killing 50, 000 people in one day. You know. And the. Over Tokyo, Over Tokyo over a hundred thousand people were burned to death in 20, 26 or 28 hours. Okay. Like over months. You know, the kind of attrition that Luofa achieved, that's nothing. That's pathetic. You know, I mean that, that's, that's, that's proof positive of the f. Of. Of you know, lacking a strategic capability at all. And the. Interestingly, uh, at least I think so. I mean if the. When a Luft 4 engine bomber finally was developed, it really didn't have an impact. And it was the reason it was designed. It was to strike industrial targets beyond the Earls, which had been uh, beyond range of uh, of extant aircraft. You know, it wasn't uh. It wasn't even designed for a proper strategic bombing role as we would think of it. So I mean and, and it. Then it wasn't fielded in, in inadequate numbers to have made a difference anyway. But I think that that is important. The, that August, August 2nd has uh, rekindled his uh, his, his close dealings with Albrecht Househoffer. I mean they'd always been close, they remained close. But Albert Taucho offered. Becomes something of an important personage. I mean he's really. He was relegated mostly to academics postings. I mean these are prestige academic postings. But uh, you know, he didn't have any official political roles. I mean for some, some. The reasons. For some of those reasons are obvious, others are not so obvious. But Alberta Schaufer was traveling all over the place and he was making all kinds of connections with, with various diplomatic representatives. You Know, actual ambassadors, you know, representing the United States, the United Kingdom and people who, uh, were acting as unofficial couriers. And he was spending in particular a lot of time in Sweden. Sweden was one of nine neutral states during the war. If people didn't know. But Drew McIntyre here from WWE.
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We'll come in a moment. We'll come back to like, who exactly these people were that Albrecht had been making contact with. But he was out of the country a lot of the time. Okay. And has obviously, you know, despite the fact as we talked about, you know, Hess's respons. Responsibilities had in some ways, you know, had been lessened by the onset of. Of, of war. He nonetheless still had a very busy schedule of, you know, formal responsibilities to the party. Now, uh, Hess's, uh, basically what it became clear from his conversation with the House Offer, in my opinion, is that he, at the top of his mind was the concern that sea lion was going to become a reality. House offer said. What House Offer relayed to his father was that Hess said, you know, although Hitler was loath to force a showdown with Britain, you know, Hitler will. Hitler will try to destroy the UK if his hand is forced. You know, I mean, what would he be describing other than sea lion? Okay, and has he said he, he appealed the house offer? You know, who were the. Who are the. Who are the Britons? Who are the. Who are the men in British society of vision with whom we can talk, you know, who, you know, even those who aren't, you know, who, who, who are not, you know, apologists for the, for our regime. And, and even those who, you know, are still kind of smarting from what they feel is, you know, the humiliation of, of Munich, you know, like, who, who are the men will be receptive at least to, you know, some, some. Some, you know, some, some kind of peace to, to prevent this bloodbath at Sea Lion. Okay, now, how. Sha's response was very interesting and to me, it. David Irving has, Has an optically charitable View of a House offer. My view of him is a bit more so House offer said that the problem with the British government is that it's not one of principles. It's one of. It's not one of personages. It's one of principles. Okay. He said how she ever told has that he didn't that the British, you know, your average, average British lord or your average, Your average foreign Office type he viewed anything, anything, any. Any promise Hitler gave is not worth the paper it's written on. And it's kind of. And it's kind of in. In kind of his earnest, uh, you know, simplicity at the way he looked at. At power political affairs has. Couldn't seem to get his mind around this. Okay. He pointed out, he's like. But, you know, the, you know, we, we acted in good faith in, in Munich. You know, it was Bennis who created a, who created a crisis, you know, through, through what amount of disinformation and how Shauver said. No, I realize that, but this is the way it's being presented. You know, these are the, These are the conceptual prejudices of, Of. Of, you know, of men in government, in, In Anglophone societies, you know, he said the Americans will back him up on this, even though there's, you know, the. There, There's. There's a, There's a less hardened view in the eyes of the man in the street in America than in the UK of, Of. Of Germany and Germans and particularly the Hitler regime. You know, he said, you know, house offer. He kept coming back to this point that it's, you know, it's not, it's not a question of, Of. Of addressing the right man. You know what I mean? I think that, that, that kind of, that kind of fixation with moral, with moral platitude is. That's a very English thing. Okay? I'm not just saying that to be punitive. I'm saying that there's something, there's something profound in cultural terms about this sort of lack of shared premises vis a vis what Hess was trying to convey to House Offer about, you know, what he believed would facilitate coming to terms and how Shauffers trying to explain to him in vain that these, These. Whether, you know, even if it's me, even if we view it as mere moral cant. The. This is what. This is basically like what makes, you know, this is the stuff that fuels, uh, English political culture and why that is. Is complicated. I've got my own view on that. I think it owes to the experience of the war Three kingdoms and a lot of other things. But basically a House Offer was telling him without telling him. You know, the die is cast and the only way. The only way Germany wins this war is with a battlefield victory. And yeah, I will. I'm the first person to make the point that you know, political problems can't be solved by military measures generally. But a. A stunning overwhelming battlefield victory does settle questions within certain paradigms in very absolute terms and that this was one of those cases. Now of course, of course sea lion was never going to become a reality. And even. Even were that the intention, which it wasn't, I don't believe it was possible again. But you know, as. As we talked about some episodes back, a you know, a victory over Moscow in 1941, that would have been. That required victory and that would have settled the war because it would have nullified anything the UK could possibly do. House Offer in Irving's mind was. Was basically a fifth columnist and was. Was basically, you know, trying to play both sides of the coin. Was trying to try, you know, acting as something of a disinformation agent to. Because you know, he was trying to feed Hess, you know, kind of defeatist, uh accounts of uh, you know both the uh. The possibility of uh. Of coming to terms with. With London as well as you know, trying to disabuse has of any notion that you know there's. That. That a military victory was possible. I don't believe that to be the case. I, I think House offer was what he appeared to be and uh. I'll. I'll explain why as we get more uh. Get deeper into. Into these uh. Into the. Into the circumstances that characterized uh offers secret diplomacy. As the Battle of Britain dragged on, it wasn't until the 25th of August that Hitler lifted. Hitler lifted all uh. All restriction on uh. Bombing London and any other civilian targets. Churchill knew that by the way that of this prohibition because uh. The Luftwaffe command uh codes had been deciphered and uh. It uh. It. It was. It was. Well uh. It. It was known basically from an. Know from the outset of hostilities that that which. That you know there was this prohibition that emerged from the fur himself. And so there. There can be no doubt that it was absolutely Churchill's ambition to provoke. Provoke uh retaliation. The uh. The RAF uh. That night had changed the picture dramatically. 25th of August, uh with a mass assault on Berlin. Hitler then ordered the planning of the bombing of. Of Of London. But he had not. He did not yet give the order. The order was issued on the night of the 28th and the 29th, that was a second RAF mass assault on Berlin. Uh, the people were outraged. Uh, Hitler gearing told him. And Hitler didn't even need convincing at that point. You know that we, we're going to lose our man, we're going to lose our mandate if we don't act now. And I believe that's exactly what happened. Hitler left Eagle's Nest over Salzburg the following afternoon. He went to Berlin and he stayed there because he wasn't going to hide out when Berlin was under siege from the air. Unlike Churchill who would run to his country estate, uh, upon the detection of uh, incoming uh, German assault aircraft. Uh, putting that out there. He General Thomas of the Vermont G. Georg Thomas High Command. He recorded in his war journal. Uh, you know that's basically that Dave's finally here. You know, the, the public mood is of outrage. The fear himself is indignant in a way I've never seen him. You know, the raid, the planning for, you know mass retaliation on London is, is. Is underway. And Thomas's war journal was full of tasks to turn minutiae. The fact that he documented this, I mean tells you kind of the gravity of it. I mean at least in my opinion. I mean it goes without saying. But. The. Hitler is still. And this is in common with you know, Hess's kind of uh, in con with Hess's uh, sort of misunderstanding of the enemy's political culture. Uh, Hitler was. He was constantly talking about, you know, he had the adver which was largely useless in terms of. And I mean ultimately uh, it's Canaris who is the head of uh, you know, foreign intelligence with the adverb Was. I mean ultimately was revealed to be a fifth columnist. But uh, the adver got a lot of good intelligence out of the UK for whatever reason. Got my own thoughts on that. There's a lot of former navy men who joined the ab there and there was, There was a, there's. There's a kind of common lingua franca in diplomatic terms between admiralty, you know, at least in those days, Hitler's refusal to authorize the you know, attacks on London until it became absolutely, it became absolutely, you know, necessary. He, he kept on mentioning, he kept on mentioning Lord Lothian who was the, the. The. The. The British ambassador to the United States and Washington. He'd served as a private secretary of Lloyd George and he was unfinly terms of Ramsay McDonald. You know, Hitler claimed uh, that you know, he had info that you know he wanted. He, he was willing to, you know, make peace Overtures if he could, you know, build a quorum within his own, you know, within his own. Within his own circles, you know, and that. That would have been that those would have been the men to approach if such thing was going to be possible. You know, McDonald. Anybody who'd been close to McDonald, which Lothian wasn't particularly close to him, but he, he had amicable enough relations with him to, you know, be McDonald gone out of his way to afford him a role in government. He really came to his own under Lloyd George. But these guys who are decidedly outside of the focus and outside of Churchill's kind of orbit, you know, these. This would have been the, the kind of coterie to approach Lord Halifax, who. His undersecretary at the foreign Office. He'd been a long time critic of the war party in he. He named the focus and all, but I mean it's. He. He discussed the focus and all but name as, you know, as. As being a party of. Of. Of. Of warmongers and basically, you know, foreign elements that are intriguing against the national interest. This is uh. So Hitler's notion in part was that, you know, if we blitz London, that's going to kill any potential of. Of. Of.
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Of capitalizing on. On this. On this diplomatic potential. And again, that makes sense in a certain way, but goes to show you, I mean Hitler was quite a bit more worldly on these matters than Hess. But I, I again there's that kind of. That kind of lack of understanding of. Of kind of Anglophone society as opposed to kind of, you know, governance and way of. Way of diplomacy and everything else. It's. It would have. The. The only way in. In the like. The only. The only way peace would have been achieved if Churchill was out of office. You know, the, the way to achieve peace wouldn't have been to remove Churchill from office by developing a quorum against him, because that would not have been possible. I guess that's what I'm getting at. But it's. It's interesting the, the. And the fact that I mean Hitler was. Hitler was more. He was more wise to the kind of internal dynamics both of the United States and uh. And of uh, you know, and of uh, end of the UK that he's credited with. I made that point of people before and I mean that's why I've written some long form on. The fact is significant. Hitler identified Roosevelt as his nemesis, you know, not Churchill, not Stalin. And that owes the. The fact that, you know, there were the animus between the United States and Germany was a matter of pure ideology. So. But I, I digress. In any event, uh, while this was going on, uh, Hitler, he'd gone as far as to renew there's a burden. There's a Berlin lawyer named Ludwig Weiss Hauser, and Hitler did not trust the Foreign Ministry. His own Foreign Ministry, I mean, von Ribbentrop's ascendancy, uh, didn't really mitigate that Hitler trusted von Ribbentrop, even if they didn't always see eye to eye on geostrategic questions. But the Foreign Ministry, it was. It was shot through with, With. With. With. With Hindenburg appointees and, you know, people who are really, really rigid in their thinking. It was kind of a repository of. Of. Of. Of old aristocrats, you know, who, who look down on the National Socialist Party just you know, as a. As a kind of matter of. It kind of. As a matter of, you know, what they thought was correct social graces. But also, you know, it. It's hard to. It's. It's difficult to emphasize. And I mean, Henry Kissinger, of all people made this point. And I, I know that people get upset when I say Kissinger because he's somebody that a lot of people like to burn an effigy, apparently. But his observations on diplomatic cultures and various states is fascinating. And there was a real rigidity to the. The foreign offices, particularly these continental powers that even, like. You don't have to like Hitler or like the National Socialists or the Third Reich to imagine that, you know, whoever was at the helm, unless, you know, unless he was. Unless he was, you know, like I said, like, unless he was Hindenburg himself or some. Or somebody comparable who'd been, you know, whose patronage had insinuated the men in control of the. The diplomatic core, you know, to whom they owe their. Their position, it would be really kind of impossible to. To trust that they were acting in good faith, you know. And Hitler deployed a vice officer to Stockholm and again Sweden, owing to its strategic situation, but also the fact that it was a neutral country. There's a lot of. There's a lot of diplomatic intriguing going on there, uh, by all, uh, by all combatant states. Uh, he directed Vice Officer Mallet, who's. The UK Mallet, apparently. And I've never. Mallet was known to be, uh, interested in, uh, at least creating some kind of avenue, uh, to. To peace with Germany of an unconditional sort. I'm sure he wasn't under any illusion that again, like, you know, even if he developed a quorum against the war party that Churchill could somehow just be, you know, unceremoniously removed from office. But it's not an accident. My vice officer contacted him, you know, and, uh, vice arson was deployed, no less by Hitler himself to do so. So I speculate, and this is totally unfounded, Edward VIII was the guy who would have made this happen. And Edward had been. Had abdicated back in 1936, but. And he. He ended up somewhere in the Caribbean, I think, and some kind of sinecure role after he married Wallace Sampson, Wallace Simpson. But I thought about this a lot, and I don't see who else could have. I mean, who would have had, like, who would have had the cloud and kind of the context, you know, to get in touch with somebody like Mallet and then convey to Hitler, you know, Hitler's not exactly easy to get an audience with. Okay. I mean, and so I, I speculate strong that Edward VIII was behind some of the secret diplomacy in terms of arranging, you know, making these meetings possible. Okay. But again, I can't. I, I cannot prove that, and I've never seen any evidence that effect. But it's just by process of elimination, I don't. I don't see who else he would have been going through, okay. To be making, Making these things happen. But at any event, what vice officer and, and this was the German position, what he relayed to Mallet is that Germany withdraw all forces from France, all forces in the Low Country. It would only retain those territories in Poland and Czechoslovakia, you know, which had been. You know, which. Which had been Germany's before, uh, before the, The. The Versailles Treaty dismantled, decoupled them, and Germany would assist the British Empire against all enemies, including Japan, and that was it. I mean, that's an unconditional peace offer. Uh, he, Mallet, he. He. He sent, uh, he relayed the telegram to London. He didn't identify. He didn't identify who his conduct was, but, you know, he was a man who had enough authority that, you know, he, He. If he said that this was, you know, an official. An official offer, I mean, it would be taken as such. And the fact that he contacted London in the first place, and the fact that he phrased it as he did, I mean, it was clear that he deduced that this was an offer coming from Adolf Hitler. And, you know, London just unconditionally said no, you know, like, it wasn't even, it wasn't even taken to. It wasn't even taken to Downing street, you know, And I mean, how. Like, like that's inconceivable. I Mean, even if you have no intention of. I mean it just goes to show you that like the, the focus. I mean if it's not clear by now, and it's not clear to anybody who reads the, the, you know, the, who goes over the evidence with an eye for, you know, any kind of discreet detail that, you know, the entire, the, the entire focus position, its only policy position was war at all costs. I mean that, you know, then that's not, that's not that, that's not that. That is never a legitimate course unless, unless you know, unless you're truly engaged in, in a, in, in a kind of uh, velt and songs Krieg that is, you know, has been, it's been decoupled from any, from any kind of, uh, any kind of reasoned, uh, geostrategic imperative. Now. Later, as summer 940 came to a close, Albrecht Albert Tower arrived back in Bavaria it. And again, like Albrecht, uh, he claimed, he claimed to be attending to business interests, you know, when he was, you know, doing this globe trotting. But he and Ian has met and met in Vienna, which is, which is. It's interesting too. Not as interesting, but I think it's significant. Then it became rarer and rarer for the house offers and has to meet in, in Germany proper. And when they did it was almost always in Munich or thereabouts, never Berlin it. But on, on September 3rd, Carl House offer typed a letter to his son, uh, who he'd known had been, you know, back in, uh, back in close contact with Hess. And uh, he uh, he stated, uh, as you know, quote, everything is set for a very, very harsh assault on the aisles in question. So all the top man has to do is press the button and reading within the lines. It's this. This validates what I suggested. When we began this, when we began this episode, Hess was absolutely convinced that sea lion was going to become a reality. He conveyed this to, he conveyed this to Albert to offer who conveyed this to his father. And both of them found that to be credible. And that also adds another layer and we won't have time to get into it in this episode and forgive me, because I realize I'm throwing a lot of tangential data out there, but I think it's important and essential to understanding the Hess issue in any complete way. But so, I mean, keep this in mind as we do get into that though, like not only. Not only was Hess acting in good faith and the defector, but arguably Hess was trying to spare English lives as much as he was German ones. I mean, he believed sea lion was going to be implemented. Carl House offer continued his letter. And this is key as well, wouldn't you say? He was speaking, still speaking. And obviously this kind of cryptic language of amateur espionage, quote, wouldn't you say that there's a way of overtaking such possibilities with a middleman on neutral ground? Perhaps with the old General Ian Hamilton, or quote that other Hamilton, meaning Lord Clydesdale, who was the Duke of Hamilton and we talked about last time, was ultimately Hess's intended point of contact and who was, you know, a close friend of Albrecht.
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So this is all coming together. Okay, as to why Hess was doing like, what was in his mind, why he selected Scotland as his target area, why he was even. Why the, you know, why Clydesdale, the, the Duke of Hamilton was even within his contemplation, why he considered it essential, why he considered essential, uh, to, you know, to, to act as, as soon as possible before, uh, you know, sea lion became, um, a, a reality. And bear in mind too that, you know, like we talked about, because, because Hess obviously did not know, as almost nobody did, it was only a handful of general officers and admirals who kind of by nuance, Hitler disclosed to them that sea lion was a strategic ruse. But you know, Hess, Hess believing that, you know, he would have been witnessed, he would have been. Hess would have been privy to forces and being in some basic way, even though he was not sitting in on OKW briefings or anything like that, you know, and looking around him, he would have been, he would have seen, you know, the all indications of, of mobilization towards uh, uh, you know, a, uh, an assault across the English Channel. And this becomes clearer and clearer the more one dives into it. And I, it does, I don't, I don't see anybody can claim like we take, we take informational awareness for granted today in a lot of ways. But you know, even today I, I people really are kind of quarantined in their own areas of responsibility. And you know, particularly, you know, Hess didn't have. I mean Hess, he was respected. You know, he, he was a war hero. But Hess didn't have a H, wasn't H. Didn't have a military rank at that time. You know, he was. There's not any reason why he would have been privy to these things unless he had, you know, a. A source within, within the Kriegs Marine or within the Vermont who for some reason decided to. Decided to disclose to him the, the nature was actually underway. But I, I don't think anybody disclosed that. Like I said, I believe those who came. I, I'm even speculating that. I believe Eric Raider and I, I believe Yodel and I believe a few others were. Were privy to this. Like I said, owing to kind of, you know, discerning the nuance and what the furor told them and, and by having a kind of complete operational picture. I don't even, I don't think anybody stated this is strategic ruse. I don't think there was some like, you know, I don't think there was you know, some, some document, Eyes only document laying it all out or anything like that. So doesn't, it doesn't cast Hess as a fool for, for thinking that. Quite the contrary. September 4th, 1940. Uh, that's when Hitler addressed 10,000 Berliners at the Sports Palace. The sports polished as people might know in 1943. That's where. That's where Geral gave the total war speech. Which is ominous because on September 4, Germany having suffered more British raids and, and Hitler having finally, you know, given the order to retaliate. This is where he addressed Berliners and he said if, you know, they proclaim they'll attack our cities, you know, we, we shall wipe their cities out. You know, I mean this was a real. This, this wasn't just Hitler. This wasn't just Hitler bluster and, and anger. I mean that was part of it. But there was and there's like a genuine sorrow here. Like there's no. There was absolutely. No, there's absolutely no reason for, for the, for the British war against the Reich to continue. Know. I mean like I said, I'm convinced that as, as. As you know, in centuries subsequent to now, I mean it, it'll be viewed as a rare instance. The UK I mean and the, the Churchill regime. It. It'll be. It'll be understood as a rare instance of uh, of a, of a. Of a state taking leave of reason and waging war against like Quite literally against the national and material interests. Just it, you know, it's, it's a rare case of, of, of not even, of, of not even being, you know, considered in any way justifiable even in terms of the bounded rationality of, of then, uh, extant conditions. But uh, I believe that uh, this is when Hess decided to take his flight end of August into September. This, that same week, September 7th, the luff off several hundred Lufa attack aircraft bombed the port of London and assaulted the East End and lit up the night sky. You know, the East End was burning. And this, this changed everything. There was, it's, it, you know, that coupled with, you know, his discussions with the House offers and his, you know, this disclosures therein and, and vice versa, I, I, I believe this is the moment at which it occurred. You only tell me that's speculative, but I mean it based on the record as uh, what's available. And it has this case, uh, there's, there's, there's quite a voluminous amount of direct testimony not just from him, you know, and his, his correspondences, but you know, from these other parties to these intrigues like the House offers. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think I'm reaching. But again, forgive me if this was kind of scattershot man. Like I, I, uh, I, I, I had to kind of fit this all in. And otherwise some of the things that emerge later aren't gonna have a context. So I hope I didn't bore anybody or anything like that. What do you think? The next episode. What are we looking at? We gotta deal with Hess's flight. The first half. In the second half, I want to begin the Nuremberg charging instrument and how it was decided who would be charged and named on that indictment. And the, the fate of, has played very prominently in that. So I think it's kind of a natural like segue, if that makes sense. Okay into that because it's definitely. It was not a foregoing conclusion that Hess was going to be charged with anything. I mean if, what do you do with prisoners of war after the war? Don't you send them home? I mean, and Hess wasn't even a POW in any, in any traditionally interested sense. I mean he, he came to them. I mean he was a defector if anything. But yeah, that's Hess's ill, Hess's flight, his capture and the charging that Nuremberg indictment will return to Justice Jackson and, and the uh, and the American delegation and how they decided, uh, how they decided, uh, who would be charged. And that, that, uh, that plays into uh, Samuel Untermeyer and some of these characters of the focus who were based in the United States, you know, primarily New York City, but not exclusively. They reemerge in terms of their contacts with the American delegation in Nuremberg and wielding quite a bit of undue influence in terms of what, what conduct would, would be brought under the penumbra of, you know, the charting instrument and stuff like that. So that, that's, that's what I'd like to cover. Okay. Give your plugs please. Okay. You can find me at, on Substack. That's where our podcast is. As well as various long form essays, all in Sundry. It's real thomas777.substack.com you should hit. You can find us on T Gram. We got a very active community there. It's T Me slash the number 7H777. And I back, I back up most of our stuff on gab. I'm not real active there, but you know, if you want to find these videos that Mr. Pete and I do here or you know, any of my, any of my podcast appearances and live streams and things, I generally put them up on Gab. It's, you can find me on gab at Real Thomas 777. Till the next time. Thank you. All right, thank you, Pete. We're starting to come to the end. Thomas, how are you doing? And I want to reiterate again that I really, really appreciate you granting me the opportunity for this series. You know, not just for posterity, but to, you know, kind of raise awareness about revisionism and what it entails. Can I say something before we start? Yeah, you're, I recently listened to your stream with Academic Agent on the Troubles. Okay, that was great, man. Thank you very much. That was great. Anybody? I'll put, I'll try and put, remember to put that in the show notes. Anyone who wants to learn about what was happening in Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland, that was especially having, what's your name, Lady Charlotte there. Yeah, she's, she's, she's really great, man. She's pure class and just a really, really intelligent, really gracious lady. And I mean, I, I, it's a, it's a sensitive issue. I mean, obviously, because I mean those were horrible times. And you know, I, I, I was, I was somewhat hesitant when I got a gage and asked me to speak on it because, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an Ulsterman and you know, I'm very Much an outsider. I'm very interested in the subject area, but I, I didn't want anybody to feel disrespected or like the topic was being treated flippantly or somehow, somehow exploited for some, for some sort of, you know, political purpose or something. You know, in a. But so far the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive and, and yeah, I really appreciate that man. And Agatha Mccation is a great, great guy and a great content creator and I'm always, I always appreciate him inviting me. So, yeah, thank you for that endorsement. No problem at all. So we're going to finish off, we're going to finish off the story of Rudolph has today. Yeah, I, I want to do just as a kind of introductory statement. You know, I focused so many episodes on, on the person that Hess. He's one of these people who, you know, I, I, I've, I've referenced Carlisle a lot and you know, Carlisle is a, is, was very impactful in my own thinking and still is, you know. And you know, Carlisle deals with, you know, heroic personages as a, is a primary. They hold us. That's central to his theory of history. Okay. And, and historiography. But there's, there's men who aren't conventionally heroic, you know, but who, who, who are very much, who are very much astride the zeitgeist of, of their epoch and are instrumental in the development of seminal events. They're in. And I consider it has to be one of those people. I mean, like I said, I wasn't just looking for some, the sort of. I wasn't just looking for some sort of snarky title. When I, when I said that Hess really was the, he was the real man in the High Castle. I mean there's nothing funny about that. Like, the fate of Hess is actually really horrible. And it, it's, it's like something out of science fiction. It's totally bizarre. And so he does, his story is important beyond, you know, the man himself. Although I frankly I, I think, I think there was an earnest, I think there's a kind of naive earnestness to Hess that's admirable. Okay. I mean, and nobody has to share my opinion on that. But he's, and he was, he was central to the intrigues in, in terms of uh, you know, the efforts uh, toward to find, uh, to accomplish a peace, uh, with the UK which obviously Mr. Church on the focus we're not going to allow to happen. But this was by, it's been very, has been really deliberately slandered as some as some crazy, as some crazy man, you know, consulting star charts, who went on some suicide mission for no apparent reason. He's out of his mind. And this, that's not just a gross insult to Hess and his, his family, but does violence to, to historical truth has, Was anything but insane. And as we're going to dive more into or delve more into today, what motivated us to take his ill fated flight in the first place was the fact that there, There was fertile ground at, you know, and it was a really critical. Not only was, Was, was there a receptive, was there a potentially receptive audience among the, the British elite to find a way out of the war, but it was a critic. It was a truly critical juncture. I mean, these are the, these are the weeks immediately prior to Barbarossa, okay? So Europe was on the brink. And that's got to be, that's got to be accounted for. And, and what was, what was known by Churchill is again essential here because as we'll get into shortly when we get to that point, you know, it's, it's another, it's another case of Churchill, you know, deceit, quite literally deceiving his countrymen and acting at odds, kind of perfectly at odds with the national interest under auspices of, of, of falsehood. Okay, so we'll, with that, we'll, we'll move on. Um, what happened immediately before Hess's flight, um, in the, in the, in the early months of 1941 are essential. Now, we talked before about how the Househoffers, you know, not just Hess's mentor, Carl, but Albrecht Househoffer, you know, the son who, who, who, who Hess became just as close to in, in many respects as to the father. You know, he was very much in. First of all, he was insinuated into the Foreign Ministry, as we talked about, and the Foreign Ministry, it was, was quite independent within the Third Reich. And, you know, the Ribbentrop replaced what was a basically hostile kind of, uh, professional diplomatic class. But Ribbentrop was not at all a yes man. Okay? He clashed with, with the furor a great deal, and he had his own, he had his own geostrategic vision that, that was, that was very much his own. Okay? So House offer, you know, being half Jewish and you know, being very independently minded, it makes sense that, you know, he, he would have, he would have a very active role there, okay. And that in and of itself, kind of anecdotally defeats a lot of assumptions and slanders about the German Reich. Now, of course, Albert Taufer didn't have any formal. He didn't have any formal political office, but, you know, academics wielded a lot of authority, okay, in, in the German Reich, as was the case, you know, throughout the continent. Okay. And that's, that's somewhat alien to us here because in America, when we did have, have public intellectuals, they, they generally were in the center. We are such that they still exist or can be said to exist, you know, or people in the sciences and things, you know, when. Who, who are experts in, in, in. In things that, you know, are, are relate to applied technologies and things. Okay, but, and so how Shaw for the younger. He was very much engaged as we got into last episode, in secret diplomacy, you know, both on the continent and uh, as well as, uh, you know, making overtures, reciprocal overtures to people in the United Kingdom who wanted to bring an end to the war and who, you know, despite a lot of whom, despite nominal loyalty to Churchill, you know, understood exactly what was underway, if not the extent of the, of the conspiracy as regards the focus. You know, they, they understood. They've always been presented about the inevitability of conflict with Germany and the justness of the war. The necessity of it was not true. Okay. So many, many intrigues around, around people in Hess's intimate circle. Okay. And as we talked about before, you know, Hess's ultimate intended contact, you know, Lord Hamilton was, was a close personal friend of Albert Taushoffer. That's why this man was on Hess's mind in the first place. Okay. Now interestingly, you know, we talked about Edward Bennis, you know, the last, uh, the last, the last, uh, President of uh, Czechoslovakia, you know, and he was very much a. He was very much a. A, A client of, of the United Kingdom now he was in exile and he was in very close contact with, uh, with British intelligence, particularly the sis. Now what he recorded in his own, uh, private diaries was that SAS had relayed to him that they were, quote, expecting somebody in the form of a high profile deflector. You know, and what. It's important not to read too much into these statements, especially if there's not like a context written into them. But, you know, obviously these people that Benis was talking to at high levels in, in secret intelligence were. They were convinced that there was going to be some sort of. There was going to be some sort of emissary arriving and either as a defector or as a, or as an unofficial peace emissary, you know, I mean, it's the only thing that's going to be inferred from that, like did they know that that man would be Hess? I, who knows? But you know, this was something that the people within what we consider today, the deep state, they seem to be anticipating this. Okay? And that's not, this wasn't, this wasn't wild speculation on their part. I mean everything, everything indicated, everything indicated that sort of development. There was no objective strategic reason for the UK and Germany to be at war. Unlike say France and Germany. I think France and Germany. France's declaration of war against Germany was very ill fated and it will considered it wasn't just splendidly at odds of the national interest. Okay. The, as we, as we've got in, as we got into quite extensively in, in the, you know, the series we did on Churchill earlier, you know, this, this really was not at all, in no way could this be strategically rationalized. Okay. It was, it was very much a moral crusade that was based very much on, on dubious premises and ill defined objectives. You know, that, you know, kind of just came back again and again to the, the moral cant and rhetoric quite literally of Mr. Churchill. Now what's, I, I know a lot of our listeners probably and many and, and there's actually a lot of revisionists like including David Irving who I've got incredible esteem for. Okay. But that part ways with him on some, on some issues and one of those is Hess Irving, Irving's got a very conspiratorial view of the theory's knowledge of Hess's intent. The, and he bases us on the fact that there was people, there's people very close to Hess, including his adjutant and we'll get into that in a minute who upon Hess's flight relayed that they believed that the fear was, was feigning surprise and that he, he was not disclosing what he actually knew. Okay. And people on, on Adolf Hitler's staff, some of them relayed the same thing. I don't accept that and I'll get into why I don't accept that shortly. But you know, I, I, I, I think it's essential to, to understand, to understand Hess's motivations. I mean the, the fur was in the dark about this as was essentially everybody except the House offers and, and possibly Billy Messerschmit, although that's dubious. We'll get into that in a minute. And, and like I said, it has his personal staff, but the diaries of Aldrich Albrecht Hauschofer and some of the personal journals of his father, they were seized by the Allies in 1945 from the House Offer Estate. Okay. Albert House. Offer. He was the primary link between Hess, Hitler, the. The various secret diplomacy intriguers, you know, within the UK establishment. So, I mean, this was fundamentally important stuff, okay? Just not just for historical posterity, but for putting together a picture of what in fact developed in. In, you know, the. The months preceding May 1941. Now, these diaries have simply never been seen again. Historians who sought them out, including Irving, they were. They were. The Department of the army claim they have no idea what their ultimate fate was. The National Archives claim the same thing as far as I understand it. Although I've never. I've never presented a formal inquiry, you know, to like the Wilson center or anything. Oss, you know, later CIA. They. They claim that they don't have any knowledge of this whatsoever. It. And similarly the Duke of Hamilton himself, The Air Ministry, The UK Air Ministry maintained a file on the Duke of Hamilton. And it'll be become clear why this was. So as we go on in a little bit, I don't want to jump ahead, but it's not important right now. What is important is that this file was maintained on him. Okay? An intelligence file. This has been entirely redacted, okay? This entire section is documenting the three months prior to the Hess flight in the Hamlin file. They're simply absent from the file. And it's not redacted in the ordinary way. You know, there's not paper inserted in its stead indicating, you know, eyes only, national security imperatives or anything like that. It's simply not there. And we only. We only know of this file. It really came to light owing to the papers, the Hamilton family itself, okay. And like what they disclosed around the time of Hess's death, as I understand it. So, I mean, this is. This is all very strange, okay? Beyond mere. Beyond the mere kind of, you know, clumsy sort of pointless secrecy that characterizes intelligence agencies. It does. Here, give me a second. I want to call up a citation. The. We made a lot of. We made a lot of. Of the. Or people make a lot of the fact that, you know, just owing to Hess's. Owing to his behavior, it should have been pieced together, you know, what. What his intentions were. But, you know, people don't understand that Hess was. Hess was insulated in. In a peculiar way. You know, he was not a member of the military. You know, he was. He was the top. You know, he was essentially the top party official. But, you know, and he had. He had very much a personal audience with Hitler when he wanted it. But, you know, his fear Of. Of a formal authority. It. Where it really. Where it really was most indicated was in his ability to, you know, make sure people like Albrecht Househoffer had no problems. Okay. Or you know what we'll get into in a moment. You know, when he. When he approached Billy Messerschmidt and said that, you know, he wanted a special plane to be outfitted for him, Messerschmitt simply did it and didn't ask questions. I mean, there's no doubt he was an incredibly powerful man. But
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Terms and conditions apply in terms of. In terms of the. The particular. The concrete particulars of. Of military planning and, you know, of the security state and things like this. Like. Like Hess was very much in the dark about these things because, you know, the. The Third Reich was. Was very much a government of fiefdoms, okay? Like, it wasn't. It was not a revolutionary state like the Soviet Union, you know, where it had been conquered by vanguard that overthrown the regime. You know, it. It was. It was a party that was democratically elected, you know, that was charged with insinuating itself, you know, into a. A state that was incredibly complex and wellestablished and, you know, really kind of rigid in terms of its structural authority. And that kind of tended to, uh. That kind of tended to feed the structure of the German state itself. Kind of. Kind of served to fuel the already sort of agonistic pluralism between, you know, various factions and departments and then within the National Socialist Party. So it's not. It doesn't defy. It's not hard to believe that, you know, nobody in the military or in, you know, or in Himmler's security apparatus or on the fears, you know, staff would be suspecting, you know, things about Hess and also, too, concerning how powerful Hess was, you know, in. In. In. In terms of his clout. You know, spying on a man like Hess would be kind of unseemly. Like, I have no doubt that the Gestapo did, you know, spy on Hess here and there, because that's just. I mean, there's no way. They did not. But like shadowing him or something like that would have, that would have been unseemly and that would have had consequences. Okay, so, but it, it's not, it's not, not. It's not hard to believe that Hess was able to keep his, his comrades in the dark about this. To that point though, there was another. I mean there's an added, there's an added kind of layer of, of secrecy afforded him by accident of fate has approached. Uh, Ernst Udith, who is uh, UDIT was, he was part of the Richtofen squadron and he was an old comrade at Gearing's. You know, he was a, he was an air ace, really tragic guy. He came to, he committed suicide. And his, his suicide note, he wrote. He strolled on the wall of his apartment and then he, he, he professed love for his girlfriend who'd left him. And he, he said to Herman Gehring, you abandoned me. Iron Man. That was, you know, the name that the Richtoff and Squadron had for Gearing. Udet was a, he's the Director of Air Armament and I mean he was really, he was really, he really was not up to the task. Okay. And Milch, it took Milch literally years to undo the damage he had done. Udith and Jashanic did, had a horrible effect on the CAP combat effectiveness of the Lufafa in terms of its strategic capabilities. I mean, obviously no one can say that the tactical capabilities of Luke Fo were some of subpar. But in any event, at this point, despite the fact that, you know, he, he was still in his role as Armaments Minister for Aircraft, he was circling the drain. You know, he was, he was drinking himself to death. He was, you know, carrying on with women of ill repute. He was, he was actively self destructing. So when it has approached him and said, you know, I need you to, I need you to contact Messer Schmidt and have him make a, make a plane available for me, which ended up being the Messerschmitt's 110, which was a cutting edge two engine attack aircraft. Udak was too mired in his own problems and, and kind of curled up in a liquor bottle to really like do anything in terms of saying why does Hess want this plane? Okay, even if, I mean again, I maintain that a certain kind of, a certain kind of privacy was presumed, you know, when we were talking about, you know, people of Hess's portfolio in the Third Reich. But even, even if Udo was particularly disengaged, it's owing to what I just said. So I mean he was kind of the perfect. He was kind of the perfect man. And you know, did he actually point of contact where it has to kind of keep his business private. And to that point, Udet had initially said, even long before Hess said had any. Had any notion of. Of. Of undertaking this ill fated mission and before even you know, the onset of hostilities from the UK and and the German Reich, you know, Hess was an active flyer, you know and uh, even during the years of struggle, you know, he'd flown a plane uh, you know, to disrupt like communist rallies and things. You know, like, like kind of funny stuff. I mean, I think so. But it, but he, I mean just as a, you know, he was an adventurous guy and he wanted to keep up his skills but you know, Hitler ordered him to stop flying basically because it's, you know, you're not, you know, just like later he did a hydra. He ordered him grounded because he's, you know, you're, you're senior party men can't be taking these kinds of risks. And also it seemed like unseemly, you know, kind of like, it seemed like cowboy stuff were kind of like glory hounding. Know. But Udet. Udet said, you know, well I'll have to, you know, I'll take a dispensation of the fur and has just kind of finessed and was like well we, you know, we don't really need to do that and do we? Like why, why should we bother the fur with this? And you know, UD continued to, you know, kind of nag him periodically and but you know, I mean has said has had real rank over Udad. Eventually it just became a non issue, you know, it. So Hess got his way. Billy Messer Schmidt, who was really kind of an eccentric, you know, genius, but not particularly engaged in politics, I mean at all. You know, he's kind of like the theory portion like of. Of. Of aircraft. I mean I, this is the way I think of them. He relayed that has turned up at the Augsbury aircraft plant. And he just stated openly, you know, I want, I want, I want to be grant. I want to be given flying instruction on the Messerschmitt 110, you know, which again was you know, the cutting edge long range twin engine attack aircraft, you know, and, and message in message from its mind. I mean what he relayed to his subordinates. So what he wrote in his own personal journal. I mean he, he took this as like a huge, you know, I go wow, you know the, you know Deputy Furor, you know, Hair Hessie, you know, he's so impressed with what we're doing. You know, he actually wants to take, you know, the, he wants to take our new kind of flagship fighter aircraft out for a spin like so to speak. You know. So we, Messer Schmidt immediately took one out of production just for Hess, you know. And ever a few practice flights, you know, has became competent at it, you know and has really. I mean like we talked about, Hess never flew in combat in the Great War. But you know he, after convalescing from his injuries, you know, he did, he did get receive flight training and he was going to deploy to a fighter squadron when the armistice happened. You know. And so he was a very, he was a very skilled pilot and he mastered the Messer Schmitz 110 within weeks. And he started issuing odd demands. He said the range was too limited, so needed fuel tanks built into the wings. He said he needed better radio equipment. You know, we, he. Navigating in those days was very difficult. Military aviation wasn't much beyond, you know, navigating by sight according to terrestrial features, you know. And uh, radar was in its infancy, you know, radar and uh, ground control communication was, was primitive but it was essential and there wasn't really a backup for these things, you know. So it's, but at the same time, you know, it's like I, you know, Messer Schmidt's alibi could be what he indicated. You know, Hess just was taking an interest in you know, Armin's production. The man was a pilot himself. He was kind of an eccentric. He was probably just interested in capabilities or I mean for all he knew from Messerschmitt knew like the party had, you know, Hitler had sent Hess to kind of see what was going on, you know, was kind of a, you know, an issue, a kind of off the books report on, on what he, what he viewed as a, the capabilities of the new aircraft. Obviously like daring wasn't going to render an objective, an objective view to his fear because you know we, his, his, his, his role depended on it, you know. And Gary was a great man a lot of ways, but he had quite an ego. And Gary had a problem with exaggerating things like his, you know, uh, it's kind of in uh, in accordance with his larger than life Persona. You know, he was kind of like he himself was kind of an exaggeration. But uh, luckily too, you know, another fortuitous kind of accident of, of personnel situation. The, the. One of the deputy directors of the, the Message plant was a theocronies, uh, Hess had known, uh, during the First World War, you know, he was in the squadron. He was in his training squadron. And he, he was able to get the improvements made without, you know, any undue. Without any undo, you know, investigation as to why or anything like that. And towards that end, it, uh, in Jan. The. The, uh, the, uh, the factory files from, uh, from Billy Messerschmidt himself. There's entries from, you know, like January 1941. The first. Yeah, the first, the first week in January. And kidding, you know, real FS is, you know, Messerschmiths 110, you know, is, you know, is gonna. Is soon gonna be ready. You know, it is an old type heating system, but this needs to be, you know, remedied. Blah, blah, blah. You know what. And this is key, this period of time in terms of, uh, the Hess flight and its implications. That being. This is January 1941, okay. As we talked about in earlier episodes, specifically January 7th and January 8th, those are the days that Adolf Hitler first briefed his field marshals and generals on the strategic plans for. For the Soviet Union. Okay, the nominal or the COVID reason for the. For the briefing was, you know, the. It was to set up strategic plans for the Balkans and you know, in the war in North Africa. And that was addressed too. But it, it was, it was, it was, you know, it was. It was informing the, you know, the General Staff and others of Operation Barbarossa know, and it was, it was in, you know, and they received the order to begin planning it. And this was. Absolutely nobody outside of the military was privy to this, okay, except Antonesu, you know, the, The Grand Marshal of Romania, who Hitler, in my opinion, had had the most, uh, kind of amicable relations with out of any other head of state, say Mussolini. He was advised, obviously, and you know, the Romanian coordination in operational terms with the Vermont was incredibly tight. But this was not. Again, like, kind of people who have a kind of a dilettantish interest in. In. In Reich history, In World War II history, they act like this is crazy that, you know, Hess would not have known of Operation Barbarossa. It's not crazy at all. Like, in fact, like he absolutely would not have known. It was not something that was within his sphere of authority. And the nature of the operation was remote, was remarkably secretive, even more so than would ordinarily be for a grand military undertaking. And in a large part, and we're going to get into the imp. Implications of this, Hitler is doing everything in his power to, you know, by way of ledgered main, you know, feigned deployments and, and things like this, you know, to convince, to, to convince onlookers that Operation Sea lion, you know, which was the code name for the planned invasion of the United Kingdom, was actually underway. Now this was a ruse, okay? It was never underway, but the intended, it was intended to, it was intended to deceive the Soviet Union. Okay? This was its, this was its raison Dietra, okay, was not aimed at the German people. It was not aimed at, uh, trying to force the UK to come to terms. Churchill exploited this, uh, massively. And we're gonna get into that in a minute. But, uh, this, uh, the fact is that the. For Operation Barbarossa to work it there had to be no indication that, that, that the Reich was planning a, an assault against the Soviet Union. Okay? So it. And this also, I mean, this is, this is tremendously significant in terms of Hess's own motivations because as we talked about, in Hess's mind, Operation Sea lion is imminently going to be ordered, you know, not only is he working to, you know, bring, bring London and Berlin to terms because, you know, the, you know, he, he like his hero Househofer and like his other hero, Adolf Hitler, you know, not only does he believe in geostrategic terms that an alliance between the United Kingdom and the German Reich is essential, you know, he's also, he also has a notion of, of, of racial solidarity that, that he believes is essential. But also, you know, in Hess's mind, the clock is ticking until there's an assault order to invade the United Kingdom. And this will be a bloodbath. And this will also leave, you know, Germany vulnerable to assault by the Soviet Union, which is its, you know, which is its true enemy to the East. So this is, you know, it's important, it's not as important. It's essential to put oneself in the mind of these historical actors, you know, in the moment and in Hess's mind, in the minds of millions of other people. Operating Sea lion was a real thing. You know, it there. He had no concept of, you know, within, you know, by summertime this massive assault was going to be, was going to be ordered against the, against the Soviets. You know, it's now on January 10th. This is, this is significant, has his personal agitant, who I mentioned a moment ago, his name was Carl Heinz Pinch. Now Pinch had been driving has to during these excursions to the Messerschmitt's factory and into the factory airfield at Augsburg And I mean, frankly, for Hess's mission to work, there was. He had to take some people into his confidence. I mean, as few people as possible. I mean, hasn't even tell his wife. Okay. But, you know, he, he did need somebody to act as courier for his, you know, final communications that he was issued before he. He was to depart. But also just, you know, for something like this and considering the nature of it, you know, which is a diplomatic peace mission by an emissary of the right government, there. There had to be somebody. There had to be. So there had to be at least one trusted person to bear witness. Like if for, I mean, training number of contingencies, including, you know, let's say like Hess's plane had gone down over the North Sea and has never heard from again. Okay. Because we clarify things, you know, for posterity. So Hess took Pinch into his. Into his confidence. And on the 10th, this was Hess's first in what it has confined. What became clear later is that this was Hess's first attempt to undertake the mission to Scotland. It was aborted owing to the weather. Okay. Flying over the North Atlantic is incredibly perilous, okay, in those days. And bad weather could make it impassable due to like, no, you know, it. You would be blinded. Okay. But has had every intention on the 10th of. Of leaving. And when on that day, when Pinch accompanied him to the Augsburg field, he handed. Has handed him two letters. One was addressed to the furor and the other, he instructed Pinch to open in four hours time if. Has it not yet returned. As it, as it happened, after two hours flying time, the. The. The weather did turn and, you know, it literally thickened and has said to abort the mission. When he landed Augsburg, he found that, uh, Pinch had opened the instructions, okay. Uh, already revealing, uh, you know, that, that, that hasn't flown to Britain, which of course he didn't, but that was his intent, you know. And what it said was the vulgar letter was that his intention had been to fly to Scotland. Leonard Dungaville. So the Duke of Hamilton, upon locating him, and he had, you know, he, he knew where his. His estate was, this family estate, has intended to present to him his visiting card from Albert Horsehofer. Now, what a visiting card was like, you know, what everybody knows a business card is. The business card is kind of. It's kind of like the. It's kind of like the. It's kind of like the madman era, like imitation of. Of the. Of the visiting card, okay? With the visiting card was by the bourgeoisie. I Mean types, you know, the visit European aristocrats and men of portfolio and government. They. They issue what's called visiting cards. It basically means that, like, whoever's holding it, like, you know, they're. They're. They're there with, you know, the. With. With the blessing and in the good offices of whoever, you know, is indicated on the card. You know, so obviously, you know, Hamilton and House offer being close friends. You know, Hess shows up, he presents the card. You know, I'm House offers man. You know, let's negotiate. I mean, that was. That was the idea. I just want to add that because, like, I realized probably no one with the hell a visiting card is these days, because, like, why wouldn't it? But that. That kind of customary stuff, I find someone fascinating. But Pinch, he kept. Has his confidence. Uh, he didn't disclose, uh. He didn't disclose, uh, the plan to anybody. I mean, like, after Hess's flight, you know, months later, he disclosed what he knew. But the fact that he didn't tell anybody, I think that's anecdotal evidence. I mean, I know it is. It's. It's firm evidence of the existence of a circle of intriguers for peace, like a genuine secret diplomacy coterie. Okay? I mean, if this was just, you know, if Hess was truly, you know, losing his mind or something, which, among other things, people can't plan complex aircraft missions if they're in that state. But that aside, you know, it. Pinch wasn't. On the one hand, Pinch was horrified when, you know, he read Hess's letter. But on the other hand, you know, because the danger of it and because he had no idea, obviously, how the furor would respond, but the substance of it and the motivation of it, he understood completely. Okay? And, I mean, absent a. Absent or receptive, absent the potential for some kind of reciprocity, like, you know, in terms of diplomatic good offices, secret or not like that, that would not have happened. Okay? I mean, it's just not the way. I mean, if. If it. It's just not, okay, it would have. If Hess was compromised or he. Pinch, would have revealed immediately what, you know, what. What he knew. Now, what did happen is. Is. I mean, who he did confide to. Pinch, I mean, Max Hoff Weber, he was. He was another, uh. He was another one of Hess's comrades from, uh, the. The Great War in his training squadron. He. He came to Berlin to visit Hess. When he briefly excused himself to take a call, Pinch confided to Hoff Eber what. What Hess's intention was swarmed to secrecy. But Hof Weber too, I mean he, he realized what Hess's intention was, you know, and it was, he didn't respond as one would do, you know, the ravings of a madman. What he did do is he called upon Carl Hauschofer and he called him on house offer to reason with Hess. You know, not to tell him like, you know, this is insane, but to tell him like wait till the moment is right. And this is frankly, this is frankly a, you know, A, an incredibly dangerous gamble, you know, owing as much of the internal situation in the United Kingdom as to, you know, how this would be perceived by, by Adolf Hitler. Now house offer, Carl House offer. One of the reasons Hess was so drawn to him as a father figure. It's not just because, you know, he was a, was a general and he was this, you know, kind of great warrior type and a, a brilliant mind on geostrategic affairs. But you know, he was very much something of a mystic. House offer was in the tradition of Meister Ers, you know, house for had a tendency to speak somewhat in riddles and you know, he was known for his unironic romanticism. The way he appealed to has and obviously he couldn't, he couldn't disclose it hoff ever and through, you know, pinch and had advised him of what is his intentions were. He appealed to Hess's own tendency towards, you know, heroic mysticism. And he told Hess, he said he had a dream wherein Hess found himself in a great English castle having risked everything to bring peace between the two great nations. You know, he asked Hess like what he thinks this means, you know, and Hess listened intently like didn't say anything. And it certainly didn't betray that he planned to fly to England. I find it kind of, I, I, I, I, I don't, I don't believe in augury or anything but I, I, I find it, I find it kind of fascinating and, and kind of, and kind of creepy that how Shaer was having visions of Hess in some castle. Obviously that was the fate of Hess but in a, in a kind of monkey's pod Damon Moir like it was, you know, not at all what how chauffeur has himself would have imagined it was his castle prison. But Hess has began drafting and redrafting his, his letters to Hitler. There was two of them. One was short stated his purpose, you know, and why so that you know, to disabuse the furor anybody else of any notion that, you know, he was a defector or something or that he was just looking for a way to escape his, his, his role within the regime. I mean, which would, you know, unless he had actually taken leave, a reason like the defecting wouldn't be the way to go about that. But the other, the other letter, uh, ran to some 14 pages and Ribbentrop, when asked about it, contemptuously kind of just said. He dismissed it as saying it was a long and crazy manuscript.
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But by the time Ribbon Trop was asked about this, you know, that, that was kind of the, that was like the official claim about Hess, because the way the Third Reich, the way, the way the propping animal durable as well as the fur himself rationalized Tesla's flight was, was very, was very defamatory. Okay. And in a, that doesn't make it right, but you know, in a calculated way, like there's nothing else Ribbon TRO would have relayed. So I, I think we can take, I, I don't think we can take that as an accurate rendering. Whatever the letters said, I speculate that it was impersonal testimony about, you know, that he believed was honoring Hitler's wishes on grounds that, you know, he knew Hitler's strategic mind rather than anybody else going back to the Landsberg prison days. That's what I speculate and probably disclosing without putting them in jeopardy. Some of his, you know, dealings with the, the context of the House offers had created a diplomatic contacts. I. But I mean, who's to say what I, what I don't believe is that it was what Ribbentrop said it was. Not because Ribbon Trop's an unreliable witness, but in context, I, I don't think any party official d can be trusted really to relay purely and accurately what any intercepted communications by has indicated. Now, there's a three month delay, obviously between Hess's first attempt to reach Scotland and his actual flight. Now, part of that owed to inclement weather which was very temperamental and unpredictable, but part of that was that part of that was because the Italian army was getting hit hard in North Africa by the British. It had been suffering serious reverses. You know, it had begun a long retreat from Egypt to Libya. And it was only the arrival of the Africa Corps and the command of then Lieutenant General Irwin Rommel ended the counter offensive he launched in April that you know, turn things around. And then Hess waited a little longer still because Germany had just all but won in mainland Greece by the end of April. And all that was really left was the, was the mop up remaining British resistance in Crete and the, the Balkans campaign would be uh, would be over. And he, he wasn't going to make any has being a, a patriot. He wasn't going to make any peace overtures or attempts even in secret that might be interpreted in London as a sign of weakness. I mean that, that makes perfect sense. And I think it also is a testament to, has this kind of purity of intentions. You know, like I said, there's an almost naive earnestness to Hess that I think isn't actually, is actually an endearing characteristic. But you know, it, there was not really any lying in him. You know, I mean I think that the, I think we, I, I think that's the characteristic of. That's the traded character that kind of most comes out and has okay, not just in his own testimony, but in that of everybody, everybody, you know, intimately familiar with him. You know. And those weeks that Hess delayed his mission, there was, there was more vague peace orchards from the other side. Alhofer received a message from Carl Jacob Burkart. You know, he's the international Red Cross honcho. He asked, he asked how to offer to come to Geneva.
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he said that he had cordial greetings. These are house offers words that Burkhardt said to him. He had quote, cordial greetings from old friends in England. House offer indicated that to the Gestapo because obviously later he was interrogated aggressively and extensively unfortunately. But you know, he, I, I believe this was, this may have been a direct reference to the Duke of Hamilton himself has certainly interpreted that way. Burkar was a former League of Nations official. That's how he got the Red Cross job. I mean obviously, especially in those days that's. This isn't a job that would just go to an ordinary diplomat. You know, Burker wasn't. He was known to favor, you know, a compromised p. A cop, a peaceful compromise. And this put him very much at odds with, you know, with the focus and with Churchill, but also with, you know, even people Kind of even more on the fringes of the war party, you know, not as. Not as zealous in their. In their. In their insistence upon war at all costs. So, you know, Burkhart was kind of the. He was kind of the perfect man to act as go between for this kind of secret diplomacy. House offer did. Did in fact meet with Burkhart on April 28, 1941, in large part at the behest of Hess. Hess was insistent upon. Upon this meeting. And what House offer relayed was that Burkhardt was very, very torn between desire to promote, you know, a European piece before it was too late, and again, for all Burkhart knew, like, you know, virtually everybody else, with the exception of Mr. Churchill, and we'll get into that in a minute. Burkhart would have been just as. As convinced as. As millions of other people that Operation Sea lion was imminent. Okay, so. But at the same time, you know, he had terrible anxiety that his name was going to be bandied out in public. You know. Now that would have cost him his. His. His role, okay, his official role in the Red Cross. And that would have. That would have brought down the. Rather, the focus on him. I mean, he. I. There's no doubt he would have been cast as, you know, either a duplicate of some, you know, sort of. Sort of fifth columnist, you know, or at worst, as some sort of German agent. You know what I mean? The Churchill and his cronies and his paymasters and those and his handlers were really capable of anything. You know, I mean, that's something to keep in mind too. The way he left it. Burkhart, that is, with the young House Hoffer was. He said he had a meeting in Geneva from a. A man who's well known in, uh, London's leading conservative circles. He didn't release his man's name, but he said that this unnamed, you know, Tory type who was committed to, you know, accomplishing peace and in doing so, defeating the focus, said that, uh, you know, there was a strong desire, uh, of men in high places to review peace prospects, you know, and in the kind of in. In. In the kind of soft pedal, subtle way that the English kind of communicate this to me. I mean, I understand why. Why. I understand why has would read that as basically green lighting his mission. Okay. And how Shaer downplayed that in his interrogation. But I. I mean, what else is there to really glean from that? You know, I mean, it's. And it's. I realize in the intelligence game, particularly at such a critical juncture like that apocalypse. I mean people are gonna, people are gonna be speaking at both sides of their mouth all the time. That's, that's one of the reasons why, that's one of the things that's effective about films like Tinker, Sailor Soldier Spy. Even if you don't like that genre very much, the confused atmosphere makes sense because nobody's really, nobody's really saying what they mean in, in espionage circles. And even if you're talking to friendlies, you know, like how it would be Burkhart and even in, even in the context of secret diplomacy, like nobody really trusts anybody and it's, you know, nobody wants to be pinned down to do any, any concise statement of fact. So I, I, you know, it, it's almost impossible prospect to have full confidence in deciphering the meaning of a statement by a man like Burkhart to you know, young house offer in Geneva on the eve of what they think is gonna be a massive invasion by the Reich of the UK And Burkhardt's sitting around thinking like am I being watched right now by you know, British intelligence? Am I gonna, you know, am I gonna get a bullet in the back of the head for this meeting? I mean you know, they like how Shauffers thinking like, you know, for all he knows ab there or SD types, you know, might be watching or listening and saying like why, why is this half Jewish, you know, university professor, you know, like meeting with, meeting with these English society types, you know. I mean it's uh, so keep that in mind too. And the kind of opaque nature of, of this, of his testimony that's it's difficult to put piece together. But like I said, I, I, at the end of the day one has to ask like what the purpose of such meetings would be in the first place and in context. I believe that I'm right and I, I It, it was not a reach for hest to believe that this was something of a, something more than just a dog whistle signal for him to pursue some kind of open ended, open ended efforts. I, I believe it. It's perfectly reasonable that he decided this was a, a, an occult occulted as it may be a communication telling him to, you know, go and seek out Lord Hamilton quite literally. Interestingly, how shall offer me the point that Burkhart's views on a post armistice view were kind of close to, close to Hesses and his own. The British. The British, those among the British kind of elite and aristocracy who wanted to pursue peace. Their notion, I mean aside from the ideological component that you know, obviously they were appalled by the, you know, the e. Logical opponent, the anime, the focus. I mean which appalled these genuinely patriotic, you know, British conservatives. The CY man in simple strategic terms. They. They viewed Britain's interest in eastern and southeastern Europe as really purely nominal. Which it was. Okay. And interestingly Burkhart, as did Ribbentrop and as did. As did. As it's some of the Foreign Office pipes that preceded a Churchill ascendancy. They kept coming back the, they kept coming back to the. The kind of incentive of uh, of giving Germany its colonies back. And you know, Hitler had no interest in that. And uh, neither did, neither did most of the other men in his inner circle, military and civilian. It's telling to me that the British, even those who are basically fair minded, like their idea was that, you know, well, you know, we should. You know, it's like they could only envision like their idea of granting Germany an equality of status within like the new world system was basically Germany behaving kind of like the UK and that's. That betrays a kind of lack of understanding of. Of power political realities in the 20th century. And you know, the emergence of the superpower as you know the, as the is. Is the seminal actor on the world stage. I just find that really interesting. Like maybe that was their way of coping with like the latent anxiety of like the fact that you know, the kind of empire, like even if even the British had not had, you know, even. Even if Britain had not been captured by the focus and you know, led down this kind of suicide path, empire building of the other type, you know that afforded the UK its great power and wealth was, was dead. And it, you know, what, what were colonies like that? You know, it's a fool's errand. I just read that tangent. I just think it's an important point and it's often overlooked but on, on May 1st has visited Willie Messerschmith again. And David Irving is kind of hard on. On Messer Schmidt because Message documented that in his diary. You know, he said that was asking like, you know, question about the radius curve if autopilot was engaged. You know, like he was asking all these like, you know, questions about basically like, you know, he's like, you know, I wanna. Is it possible for me to like outfit, you know, the second seats, oxygen bottles like into those like the pilot and like, you know, all these, all these like all these very particular requested modifications and inquiries about possibilities for modification that would seem to indicate nothing if not, you know, an intent to fly the plane on a high risk mission. But again, at the same time, I mean, I. Message may very well have believed that he was being, you know, kind of that he, you know, that, that, that Hitler was keeping an eye on him and, and, and what the, what the new aircraft were capable of. And I mean, Hitler too, like, you know, Hitler was fixated on hardware and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of it. You know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, you know, this is what, this is what was afoot. And plus two, I mean, in this, in, in, in a culture like the Third Reich, if, you know, deputy furor, like Reich's administrator, like Hess shows up, you. You just kind of do what he says, like, within reason. You know, I mean, it's like people neglect that too. Like, it's, you know, I, I don't know. I don't, I don't plus me like what. I don't know what an Irving's view, like Messerschmitt was supposed to do. And I mean, again, I've got, I've got mad respect for Irving. I think he's the greatest of all revisionists in most respects. But like, what, what, like, what's the message done? Like, even he came to some conclusion should be like, taking on billboard space and like, hey, Hess was gonna fly, to fly to the uk, like that crazy bastard. I mean, like, it's like, who would he call anyway? Like, I. What would the impact be like on Hess's life? And I mean, frankly, Mr. Schmidt, like, pretty much everybody liked Hess. You know, he didn't want to, didn't want to cause problems for him. I mean, I don't know, it's. But that's, that's something to keep in mind too, because everybody, not just Irving, but everybody who kind of reaves up on the, on the, on the entries around Heather's flight or like, well, how could, how could Messer Schmidt, of all people, like, like, what the hell would he think Hustle's gonna do? It's like, I don't know, man. Like I, you know, the, like, I mean, even those people in this country, it's like, it's like if, if you're like doing your thing, you know, like, let's say you're like an auto designer or something. Or let's say, like, I feel like Elon Musk or like Donald Trump like, showed up and started saying he wanted you to, like, you know, crank out some specialty item form. Like, you'd probably just be like most people, like What? You know, even though these guys don't have the kind of cultural cloud and prestige that a man like Hesswood in that, in, in that epoch and that government, like most people just be kind of like starstruck and be like, oh this is great. You know, he's interested in what we're capable of at this facility. And you know, I mean, I don't. That's something to keep in mind. Okay. I mean, because it's a common refrain from not just from Irving and not just from the English, but pretty much from everybody and a particular concern and I or I raises. What's the, the light stall. I'm probably butchering the pronunciation. The light stall device was, it was a navigational device that interfaced with the navigation beam that had to be shot out so that assault aircraft could find their path. Okay. This device was temperamental. It was cutting edge tech at the time. It was difficult to use. It's really extraordinary that it has, could master the new Messer Schmitz aircraft and that he was totally comfortable with all these new technologies. Like that's really, really amazing. You know, Hess was obviously like a prodigious warrior type. Among other things, he was like an infantry war hero. He, he, he, he was a gifted pilot. You know, he was totally comfortable with these, you know, kind of nascent technologies that were incredibly complicated and required the pilot, among other things, to do pretty advanced calculations in his mind, including potentially in the heat of combat. And interestingly, Ernst Udit, you know, poor Udit, again, he, he was one of the first World War's greatest aviators. I mean he was the Richtoff and squadron did not have any second rate combat pilots. And Udet was one of the best of the best. That's why despite his difficulties, Gearing, you know, gave him the job that he did. But Udet said he was trying to reassure Hitler that Hess could not have completed such a risky flight. And Gearing also said he doubted it and that he, he said that, you know, it was almost certain that, that, that Hess had, you know, ditched and the aircraft and drowned. And Hitler disagreed. Hitler said one of, one of Hitler's secretaries, it might have been Krista Schroeder, said, uh, quote, the Fuhrer believes in Hess's ability. And apparently what Hitler said to Gearing and to Udet and all assembled was when Hess gets his teeth into something, he does it properly. You know, Hess wouldn't have flown to. If Hess was going to fly to Scotland, it was because he, it was something that he could do. You know, he would have found a way. I mean that's just again that cuts against, I mean I realize that there's this quixotic eccentrics who, who sometimes undertake kind of crazy daredevil missions but that, you know, we're talking the complexity and the danger and the skill required to fly as Messerschmitts across, across the North Sea. That's really, really remarkable. And it's something most combat pilots cannot pull off. You know and Hess was a middle aged man and he, you know he, he, he hadn't flown in combat. You know, he basically, you know he got trained, he got trained on the old prop planes, the Great War and you know these, this two engine fighter, this messagemitz 110, you know, again this is the cutting edge of, of German war tech and he mastered it within weeks. You know that's remarkable. And I don't think that's something a crazy person could do. I mean I, I just don't, you know, that's something to keep in mind too. 5-4-1941. The rights victory in the Balkans was complete. Airborne Luftwaffe troops were mobilized to assault Crete as we talked about. And they were, you know they were poised to wipe out the final British army stronghold. Hitler. At this Hitler's famous crawl opera house speech was issued on this date. Was it was the assembled Reichstag deputy deputies, National Socialist Party luminaries, many other people at the Crow opera house. The speech is broadcast across all of Europe. Hitler was accompanied by Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior Gearing Himmler and Hess. And in the speech Hitler savage church. Here we could. It was, it was basically a flex, you know he, he contrasted the vermo's prowess with you know, Churchill's bumbling retreats, you know in the failure in Norway and Greece and North Africa, you know and he, you know he said it was, the speech was less restrained than in the past vis a vis Britain. And uh, this prompted, it has in my opinion this was prompted the query has to ask for the final time he put it to Hitler personally at the, at the conclusion of the speech. You know he's, he asked him if you know his pal if Hitler's policy vision towards the UK remained what was set out in Minecamp all those years back in Landsburg. And Hitler was being rushed away by his entourage and, and by his uh, stafel escort because he was, he was on his way to, he was on his way to go to Hoffton to inspect the new battleships, the Bismarck and the Turpits. He briefly Told Hess, yes, of course, you know, this doesn't change anything. And uh, incidentally, that's the, that's, that's, that's the last time the house ever saw or spoke to Adolf Hitler. It's like that was just, that was the final. You know, he needed that clarity that, that clarification that this was in accordance with the will of the fuel, literally, you know, to bring peace between United Kingdom and the German Reich. It, you know, May 9, Interestingly, has telephoned Gerhard Klepper. He was, he was a legal expert on the staff of Borman, you know, and Borman was Hess's number two. And Borman, one of the ways he became so powerful wasn't because of his ruthless nature and is, is this kind of meticulous obsessive like workaholism, but, you know, because Hess was the public face of the party, among other things, the, the kind of. The nitty gritty of the Chancellor and, and you know, kind of interface of policy with, with the execution of the law and of policy and the relationship of policy to the law. Borman, really, really, this was kind of his role. Okay, so Borman had this army of lawyers, quite literally like under him to, you know, to the kind of constantly giving feedback on what was possible, what was not. You know, what had to be done to kind of finesse the, the machinery of party and state into a singular effective apparatus that wasn't, you know, gonna step on anybody's toes or alienate some needed, you know, kind of state office or whatever. But what has to have clop for is a he. He asked him basically what the foreign position was in policy terms. The King of England, you know, what, what ability did he have to negotiate policy on war and peace matters. On matters diplomacy. Like what is his role? What is his position? Quite literally. Clever was taken aback. He said, you know, but Hess was, I mean, has. Was Hess, he, you know, he, he said, I can't answer that at once. You know, he said, I'll get information. You know, he's like a. I'll have to consult, you know, university professor. But I, I'll call you back. So, I mean, looking ahead.
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Hess was obvious like why the only reason make note of this is, I'll. Has obviously viewed himself as potentially having an audience with the British monarch, okay. And on his face like nutty as that seems. There's an internal logic to it that I don't think is perverse. You know, has always planned to return assuming he didn't die. And you know, the, the Battle of Britain was underway and he was flying an assault aircraft across the North Atlantic. So I mean there was, aside from just the dangerous mission itself, if he didn't go down North Atlantic, there was a chance that he'd be intercepted and shot down. He did time his flight in part behind a large German blitz assault. Said he basically like had cover, okay, in the form of uh, of attacking aircraft. And this, this was incidentally the last, the last large scale aerial blitz by, by the Luftwaffe against London. But you know, it's failing. Has dying has said every, he had every expectation he'd be returning at some point. He was flying to an enemy country as a parliamentary courier conveying terms of truce to an honorable foe. And this was a time honored usage. Hitler himself had accepted such emissaries at Warsaw in subsequent campaigns. Hess didn't consider that he needed any kind of special dispensation or like a letter of authority. Neville Chamberlain didn't need some special dispensation or invite, you know, when he came to, when he came to Munich and Gotesburg, you know, to negotiate with the furor about, you know, German, you know, about the, you know, status of hostilities between, you know, Germany and Czechoslovakia. So why, why, why would Hess require such things? I mean, okay, yeah, that, that's naive to think that he could be able to speak in terms of equality of status in that way. But it's not, it's not totally outlandish and has, has had a, a loofah captain's uniform made because he, if he flew as a civilian, he'd have no protections under the Geneva Conventions and he could be treated as a spy. I mean this was very, this was very thought out, okay, according to the letter of what was law and custom for the time and that's another reason why I've emphasized this the story of the head so much going into the episode or episode dealing with the process of Nuremberg and how and how the indictment was, was, was drafted and litigated. The some days earlier, Prior to May 9. Tesla's flight was on May 10. But some days earlier, you know, Albrecht had returned. Albrecht house offer, the younger house offer. He'd returned from Geneva where he'd met Burkhart again. He had instructions to return to Switzerland where, quote, he would be flown to Madrid and have a conference with. With Samuel Horror. Horror was the British ambassador of Spain. Horror had he. He was very much. He had a very conciliatory view of Germany, which is fascinating to me. And that owes in part undoubtedly to the fact that he was very proximate to the Spanish war. Okay. And if that didn't insinuate at least a passing sympathy for the German Reich, I. I don't really see what could. Unless somebody was ideological zealousness that unfortunately it. When, uh. When word finally did come from Madrid, that was after Hess's departure and Albrecht it was in the custody of the Gestapo, okay? So that was that. That potential avenue of peace is fascinating as. As anecdotal and in part test. Testimonial evidence of, uh. Of, uh, you know, the feasibility of this or the existence as well as the feasibility of this. This secret diplomacy effort that was underway. But it, you know, it obviously that avenue was cut off by Hess's flight, ironically, has some. Has wrote a farewell letter to his parents, to his brother, to his wife. Ilsa has had a young son. And it's, uh. Elsa said that she thought something was peculiar because on May. On May 9, uh, Hess said, uh, Alfred Rosenberg and Hess had a close friendship. And in some ways they had a similar background. Rosenberg was a Baltic German, you know, Hess grew up in Egypt. They were both worldly in a way that I think kind of was a tie that bound them together. Rosenberg was actually a brilliant guy. He's a. He's either presented as something of a milquetoast or some kind of neopagan prank. He was neither of those things. But so, you know, has said he had lunch with. With Rosenberg and then, you know, he put his son down for a nap. But then like about an hour later, like, you know, he got his son back up so he could, like, play with him some more, you know. And I, I find that really tragic and sad, you know, but it. I don't know, it humanizes Hess in a way, in a basic way, but it has to all throw a letter to Heinrich Himler. Part of that was practical because he wanted. He. He. He's, you know, he wanted to make it clear. He's like, look, my men, my staff didn't know what I was going to do. They're not responsible for anything. He didn't. He wanted to make sure that his, you know, no friends of his were implicated. But also it's. I. Has had. Has had some kind of admiration for Himmler. You know, strange that might seem to people, you know, it's you really. It reveals a certain complexity of character to both men, I guess. But it. I, you know, in the. The house offers had a. Had a very, uh, Had a very bad time of things from this point onward. You know, uh, how Shaw for the elder said, you know, years later, towards the end of the war, he said, you know, he wished that Hesse confided with him, confided in him, you know, more directly and, and more candidly, Because if anybody, if anybody could have talked him out of the mission, probably would have been house offer. But some of the whole thing is tragic. In a letter to Albrecht has apologized to him, which is interesting. I mean, I think he realized that things are going to be difficult, even the best of circumstances, things are going to become pretty difficult for the house offers family, and he couldn't protect them anymore. He said in the letter to Albrecht, he said he was sorry. And he said, you only saw one possible solution to the, quote, Gordian knot of this unhappy entanglement. Hess in 1950. These are Hess's words. And again, I mean, people can take this for what it's worth just at face value. Again, I think it pretty. It pretty clearly defeats any inference of. Of madness. Has said, quote, I'd lived those months. He means those months leading up to the flight. In a whirl of instruments, cylinder head pressures, jettison fuel containers, auxiliary oil pumps, coolant temperatures, radio beam widths which didn't even work when the time came. The heights of the Scottish mountains and God knows what else. I put blinkers that shut out everything else around me, apart from the broad reality of the war and daily politics today, I'm glad to have been driven like that into finally taking the plunge over there. After a desperate struggle to extricate myself from an obstinate charger that felt refused to let me go. True, I achieved nothing. I couldn't stop this lunatic struggle between nations. I couldn't prevent what came and what I saw was coming. I was unable to bring salvation. But I'm glad at least that I tried. Now, something. I'll wrap this up because I realize we've been going for a minute, but something that I'm sure people are going to raise about the treatment of Hess and the bizarre, not just draconian and brutal, but bizarre treatment of him. People are going to say. People are going to say, well, you know, for all Mr. Churchill knew, you know, this was. This was some sort of precursor to the sea lion Invasion. You know, Churchill knew that there would be no invasion owing to his code breakers. He knew that Germany was mobilizing for war against, against the Soviet Union. He didn't even tell Anthony Eden this, his foreign minister. And he went on the radio claiming that, quote, part of Hitler's invasion plan is to terrorize women and children. And you know, you know, he. What did he say? You know, as part and parcel the quote, ferocious onslaught she's preparing. You know, the, the. He's trying to. This monster, meaning Adolf Hitler is trying to break us by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. I mean, just typical, typical shrieking moral cant by Piggy. But there's like something, you know, it's just so, it's so characteristic, you know, the, the fewer issues of general prohibition on bombing London. So Churchill orders Germany, Churchill orders Berlin to be bombed over and over and over again until, until the prohibition's lifted over to like public outrage of the fact that Berlin is not bombing London back. So then Churchill declares that, you know, they're being subjected to unprovoked attacks to slaughter women and children. You know, then like lo and behold, Churchill maintains a lie he knows to be a, A, a ruse of sea lion for the sole purpose of perpetuating a war against the national interest. You know, like I said, it's just, it defies, it defies all reason that it's. This was literally a man, you know, acting against the national interest and in doing so just lying to tens of millions of his countrymen day after day after day. It's, it bottles the mind and it's a kind of historical Stockholm syndrome that this, this man is, is, he's like, he's like worshiped by a population of, of the descendants of those that he, he deceived. It's incredible. But in any event, the, the as kind of the final, the final kind of piece of this, of uh, of this particular story. November 19th. Yeah, November. In November 1940, a letter from Albrecht Haushofer to the Duke of Hamilton was intercepted by UK postal censors, which were very active in the war years. Okay. Which makes sense, you know, I mean, especially considering that, uh, you know, traditional mail was, you know, the primary, you know, communication modality across national frontiers. But it was written in a light code. At first it seemed to be anonymous. It was actually a letter. It was a note sent by an unidentified man who identified himself as A from a city called B, like literally asking a Ms. Violet Robbers the forward and lowest three page message. The Duke of Hamilton. And the. The letter upon them kind of decode, like I said, was like this light kind of cipher. It said, my dear Douglas, even there's only a slight chance the letter should reach you in good time. There's a chance and I'm determined to make use of it. Letter offered condolences on the deaths of Hamilton's father and brother in law. He it contained like the bulk of it. What's important is he continued saying, quote, if you remember some of my last communications in July, you and your friends and I places may find some significance in the fact I'm able to ask you whether you could find time to have a talk with me somewhere in the outskirts of Europe, perhaps in Portugal. I could reach Lisbon anytime and without any difficulties within four days after receiving news from you. Of course I do not know whether you can make your authorities understand so much that they give you leave, but at least you may be able to answer my question. This letter was passed on to MI5, which was in turn passed on to the Air Ministry where Hamilton was at. It was fantasy airmen because Hamilton was an RAF officer by that time. Okay. And finally in, in February, a. An RAF group captain, uh, obviously it, you know, some kind of liaison to, between MI5 and Air Mystery Intelligence. One captain stammers, he wrote a letter to the Duke saying that the ministry was anxious for a chat with him, uh, when he was next in London. And uh, apparently in March, Hamilton met uh, this Captain Stammers at the, uh, at the Air Ministry. And he asked him about the letter. You know, he said, like what? You know, do you, you know, do you, do you, do you still have the letter? Is that the most recent one? And Hamilton said, yes, you know, I've been totally open about this, you know. Stammer said, yeah, you know, we, we're aware of that. But then he said, it seems to us that House offer is pretty significant. Hamilton agreed. And House offer, you know, a particular interest the stammers was that House Shoer was insinuated into the Foreign Ministry, which as we talked about was a moderating influence even, and perhaps even more so into Ribbentrop's ambassadorship. Okay. Stammer said, quote, that it might be of considerable value to make contact with Haush Hoffer. And again, as we talked about everything relating to the Hamilton's correspondence with the House offers and everything related to the months prior to Hess's flight have been redacted or just totally removed from House offers Intelligence file with the Air Ministry. But this information is all in the personal family papers of the Duke's family. And that's where we got all. That's how we know about this. Otherwise it would have been completely lost. So there's that too. And what I just relayed, these are the notes incident to the letter, the original letter, MI5, and the air Ministry of copies that, that was included in, in the Hamilton family record. So, I mean, take that for what it's worth. I think there's not any, there's not any case to make that a reasonable doubt in history. We're talking about, you know, people's motivations and things and possibilities, you know, rather than concrete occurrences. But the case that has to responding to reciprocal overtures and there's real potential of, of peace terms being arrived upon, arrived at. I, I think that is irrefutable. So that. I know I threw a lot at the listeners this episode, but it was important. And this also ties Sea lion into, you know, the overall strategic picture. But yeah, that, that, that concludes, I think, the story of Mr. Hess, at least as a dedicated, uh, subject. You know, uh, we're gonna get into the, the actual trial of, uh, of the Nuremberg, uh, defendants next episode. And obviously like, we're going to get into like, the treatment of Hess and, you know, how his trial resolved and all of that. But I. This, this will be the last dedicated episode of the man himself. So you, these were negotiations that were, they were real. They, they thought that they could. Was there any way that this was going to defeat the focus? I mean, it, I mean, there's been some kind of, if, if there had truly been like a Tory insurgency and if the Foreign Ministry had been put in touch, let's say Duke of Hamilton and a bunch of his aristocratic buddies, you know, all of whom are serving the RAF and the army at that time. So, I mean, you couldn't question their, you know, patriotism. If a true quorum developed among the British aristocracy, which still had tremendous authority then, like socially, I mean, and they said, you know, we've talked that, you know, we've been dealing with, you know, the, the eminent, you know, young house offer, who himself is half Jewish, who is, you know, insinuated into the Foreign Ministry and, you know, he's, he's got access to, you know, hair Ribbentrop himself and they're offering us unconditional peace, you know, and this, you know, I, I, I, I don't see how in the wake particularly again, too like by that point, you know, Churchill made a fool of himself at, I mean, this was in the way this is the Dunkirk as well as Church made a fool himself with this ill fated Norway operation. The British just been defeated in the Balkans in Greece. You know, uh, Churchill was uh, the Church was bombing Germany uh to. For the sole purpose of provoking a counter value assault on his own people so that like public outrage could, you know, he could exploit that to keep him in, keep, keep the UK in the war. Like he was in a very perilous position, you know. I mean so yeah, I think it could have. It +2 like the British aristocracy was insinuated into the military in ways that could have. I mean they've, they're situated in key ways. Okay. And it's, they could have. If anybody could have derailed the Focus Enterprise, they could have. Especially because again you know it was. Churchill was actively losing the war. I mean like in battlefield terms. Like not just you know in, in terms of it being against the, you know, the, the historical and strategic interest. You know. It was. He was just, he was just chalking up a series of, of, of kind of devastating losses, you know, one after the other. So I mean it's a good, it's an interesting question, but plus two of these things are being kept from the pe. These things are being kept from the, the, the British population. Like you know, I mean it's like if there's you know, if, if the secret diplomacy became like above board and there's people that you know, men of like literal title, you know, who, who, who had the esteem and trust of the, of the people in England and Scotland, you know. And they were saying look, you know, the Germans want unconditional peace. Like why are we fighting them? Like our foreign policy has been hijacked by an alien element. I mean what would be the rebuttal of that? Like there was nothing. There wasn't, there was nothing to it. But moral can't I like, like the, the, the Focus narrative. It was like, it was literally the, it was the epitome of style over substance. You know. It, it's like today like the kind of ever pitiable Joe Biden. Like I remember like even before, I mean even before the United States and it's, it's master class. You know, launches were sitting against Russia. Like pitiable. Joe Biden was going on TV talking about how proud himself he was that he was, that he was insulting Glamir Putin to his face, you know, like calling him a killer and a monster or something. Like why. Why would you even do that? That's, that's bizarre. It's kind of like ritual. He's like shrieking at people how evil they are. Like, that's, that's, that's both very Semitic and it's very left. Pure leftism. Yeah. It's very counterproductive and it's like. But it's also like devoid of substance. You know, it's like I'm gonna go on TV and I'm go on the radio and scream about how the Germans are monsters. You know, I'm going to insult Vladimir Putin to his face. Like, it. I, I mean, that's, that's not politics, but I, it's, it's cathartic for certain types of people. But. Yeah, but what it's not is, it's not strong. It's not strong ethical or, or philosophical ground to stand on. And you know, so it would, over time, it would have, it would have raised questions that I don't think the focus could have, could have neutralized just by more like, you know, kind of moral can't and whatever. All right, well, do your plugs and we will leave. Yeah, certainly. As I'm very excited to say that the second installment my science fiction series is going to be released by Imperium Press imminently. You'll be able to buy it through Imperium and please do that instead of ordering it through Amazon or something because if her impress are great friends and you know, they're doing, they're doing God's work and Jeff Bezos doesn't need. Need our money. So I'm very excited about that. I've been getting a little bit active on Truth Social and I'm gonna be more so as kind of election season gets underway. Not cause I'm some like mega partisan, but I think it's important to kind of get a sense of what's going on in that sort of, you know, domain. I'm, I'm on Truth Social just at real Thomas777. You can find me on Substack. That's also where you can find our podcast. About half the content. There's free subscriptions though, are only five bucks a month. It's Real Thomas777.subsect.com you can find me on Gab at Real Thomas 777. And we've got a very active telegram channel. It's T me slash number seven H O M A S 777. And we, we've got a, you know, we, we've got a really good community there and it's very active and even when I can't be active, you know, like a few days ago. I mean, I'm active there at least every. Every other day or so. But, you know, in the days I'm like, I can't be up in there dropping new stuff. Like, people are very active and keep it live. So that's really great. It Please dip in there and, you know, just kind of share your perspectives. And that would be a. That would be a real, real blessing. Until the next episode. Thank you very much, Pete.
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Summary8 min read

The Pete Quiñones Show

WWII Series: Episodes 11-16 with Thomas777 — Parts 3 & 4

Recorded: August 2, 2026
Host: Pete Quiñones
Guest: Thomas777 (historian, writer, revisionist)

Episode Overview

This extensive installment in The Pete Quiñones Show’s WWII Series features Thomas777 exploring the transformation of international law in the 20th century, culminating in the Nuremberg Trials, and an in-depth biographical analysis of Rudolf Hess—dubbed "the real man in the high castle." The discussion is rich in historical theory, legal paradigm shifts, high-level diplomacy, and the political intrigue that shaped the postwar order.

Main Themes:

The collapse of the pre-1914 "Old World Order" of international law and the creation of a "New World Order" amid the aftermath of WWII.
The rivalry and eventual collaboration between the Allied powers regarding the fate of Germany and the framework for prosecuting Axis leaders.
The moral, legal, and personal complexities behind Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain, his motivations, and his subsequent treatment by the Allies.
The prevalence of political myth-making and its lasting influence on global institutions.

Key Discussion Points

1. Shift from Old World Order to Postwar International Law

[00:30–16:00]

Thomas introduces the shift from the “Old World Order” (centered on European sovereignty) to a new paradigm in international law, referencing thinkers like Carl Schmitt and Hugo Grotius.
Explains "nomos" as not just law but a total system of customs, values, and moral consensus within European polities.
Outlines how the emergence of non-European powers, notably Japan, challenged this consensus and accelerated changes.

“It was by no means a foregone conclusion that these kinds of, you know, quasi courts marshal ... would set the foundation for the New World Order — quite literally.” (Thomas, 03:00)

2. The Anarchic World System and Hegemonic Lawmaking

[16:03–26:50]

Describes how global power projection and economic interests, especially by the UK and US, complicated the definition and enforcement of sovereignty.
Discusses the illusion of legal equality in international law post-WWI and the reality of coercion and power disparities.
The Hague Conventions attempting to universalize legal norms, yet implicitly empowering those with enforcement capability—i.e., superpowers.

“Any legal paradigm ... relies at least in part on coercion. So, added to that, either the state that's issuing the edicts as the lawgiver or ... as the enforcement mechanism ... is going to by default be the sovereign, owing to its monopoly on violence.” (Thomas, 27:00)

3. Formulation of Postwar Policy — The Morgenthau Plan

[26:50–52:41]

Details the intense debate within the Roosevelt administration between punitive and pragmatic approaches to Germany’s postwar fate, notably between Henry Morgenthau, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall.
Reveals discussions of mass deportation and even extermination plans for German civilians (Morgenthau Plan), and the “Moscow Declaration” as a compromise distinguishing "major" and "minor" war criminals.

“Roosevelt said—and this is a direct quote—we've got to be tough with Germany, and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis ... You have to castrate the German people.” (Thomas, quoting FDR, 48:00)

4. The Quest for Legal and Political Legitimacy (Nuremberg and Beyond)

[63:06–83:14]

Explains why the Nuremberg Trials were designed as more than courts martial: to legitimize a new world order and criminalize acts of state in a way wholly unprecedented.
The role of Justice Robert H. Jackson, personally chosen by Truman for his perceived balance of New Deal radicalism and All-American imagery.
The Soviets’ show trials and ritualized use of confessions strongly influenced the Nuremberg legal process.
The moral paradox — Victory's justice vs. the Allies' own brutality.

“The Nuremberg enterprise from inception was tailored to constitute a new order, quite literally ... with the United States at the helm, the Soviet Union as junior partner — and the UK as, kind of, this client state.” (Thomas, 80:45)

5. Rudolf Hess — Life, Myth, Motivation

[119:48–238:42, 253:49–393:00]

Detailed biography: Born in colonial Egypt, Hess’s cosmopolitan upbringing, war record, mentor Carl Haushofer, and unique philosophical/political worldview.
Highlights Hess's role as the party’s face and his profound loyalty to Hitler — referred to as “the Tribune.”

“Hess was kind of … the old fighter of the old fighters … He consistently, in his letters and in his own diaries, refer[red] to Hitler as the Tribune.” (Thomas, 146:25)

Intricate relationship between the National Socialist Party and German state; Hess's personal decency and efforts to protect Jewish acquaintances and political adversaries within the Party.
The Night of the Long Knives — Hess’s moral aversion to the bloodletting and his efforts to save victims.

“He fought tooth and nail with Hitler to save some of those men and refused to be intimidated even by … outbursts from Hitler. He saved a lot of men's lives.” (quoting Alfred Lin, 218:51)

Hess’s Peace Mission to Britain

Motivations: Deep anxiety about an Anglo-German race war, belief that a diplomatic solution was possible, and that Operation Sea Lion (the planned invasion of Britain) was imminent (not realizing it was a strategic ruse).
Secret diplomacy: The crucial role of the Haushofer family, ongoing backchannel communications with British elites, and Househoffer’s documented meetings with UK aristocrats and diplomats [254:00–320:44].
Planning and execution: Outlines Hess’s technical preparations for his solo flight, secrecy, and the network of supporters and confidants.

“When Hess gets his teeth into something, he does it properly. Hess wouldn’t have flown to Scotland if it wasn’t something he could do.” (Hitler, as recounted by Thomas, 372:54 for context)

Outcome: On May 10th, 1941, Hess parachuted into Scotland to contact the Duke of Hamilton, expecting to negotiate peace. His mission was received with suspicion and subsequently buried in official secrecy.

Allied Handling of Hess

Describes Hess’s imprisonment for decades at Spandau; psychological “enhanced interrogation”; the destruction of Spandau immediately after his death.
Suggests the real motivation for his isolation was to preserve the myth of the war and suppress alternative historical narratives.
The tragic fate of the Househoffers (friends and confidants of Hess), targeted as a result of his mission.

6. Philosophical Reflections and Historical Revisionism

Throughout, Thomas and Pete discuss the persistent myth-making around WWII and its moral narratives — especially regarding the actions of Churchill and the “focus”/war party.
Reflection on power, historical memory, and the impossibility of true legal equality under international law, given ongoing realities of enforcement.

“This is a rare case of a state taking leave of reason and waging war … against the national and material interest. In no way could this be strategically rationalized.” (Thomas, 321:14)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

On the Purpose of Allied War Tribunals:
“The entire narrative of the Nuremberg Tribunal was that it wasn’t a normal proceeding … It was something that, owing to the exceptional nature of what was under judgment, required unique sorts of men to preside over it.” — Thomas, [104:24]
On Roosevelt’s attitude toward Germany — Morgenthau Plan:
“We’ve got to be tough with Germany, and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis … You have to castrate the German people.” — FDR, via Thomas, [48:00]
On Churchill’s war policies:
“Churchill basically decided from then on he was going to find a way to provoke Germany into assaulting London … that’d basically be like if George W. Bush had tried to find, had sought out a way to make 9/11 happen instead.” — Thomas, [273:00]
On Rudolf Hess’s motivations:
“I’m glad at least that I tried … I couldn’t prevent what came and what I saw was coming. But I’m glad at least that I tried.” — Rudolf Hess, via Thomas, [398:00]

Episode Structure & Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |---------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Introduction, Old World Order, Carl Schmitt, etc. | 00:30–16:00 | | Shift to Hegemonic Lawmaking, Hague Conventions | 16:03–26:50 | | Roosevelt Admin/Morgenthau Plan | 26:50–52:41 | | Nuremberg, Jackson Appointment, USSR Show Trials | 63:06–83:14 | | Main difference post-WWI/WWII, occupation policy | 83:14–104:24| | Hess, Spandau, Biographical Foundations | 119:48–238:42| | Hess’s Political Ascendance, Night of the Long Knives | 197:16–238:42| | Househoffer, Secret Diplomacy, Pre-Flight Intrigue| 238:42–321:14| | Hess Flight, Aftermath, Reactions | 321:14–398:00| | Reflection, Could Peace Have Happened? Closing Plugs | 398:00–End |

Recurring Themes & Tone

High-level, detailed, and often academic: Thomas’s lengthy expositions intentionally ground the listener in the structure and evolution of political, legal, and moral frameworks, referencing primary sources, diaries, and revisionist scholars.
Revisionist and polemical edge: The speakers challenge established mainstream/orthodox interpretations, especially regarding the motives and conduct of leading Allied statesmen.
Sympathetic reconstruction of Hess: Hess is presented as sincere, tragic, and rational—his actions depicted as those of a man striving for peace, not a madman.
Consistently skeptical of myth and propaganda: Regular critique of postwar myth-making and the suppression of alternative historical perspectives.

Summary for New Listeners

This episode offers a deep, unorthodox dive into both the macro shifts in global legal-political structures around WWII and the microcosm of Rudolf Hess’s tragic mission to avert total war. Thomas777 and Pete argue that much of what is accepted as modern international law, atrocity narratives, and the “lessons of WWII” is founded on deliberate myth-making by victors. The story of Hess is raised as a lens into the real possibilities and obstacles for peace, the brutal logic of war, and the subsequent burying of inconvenient histories.

For history buffs and revisionists, this conversation offers:

New context for the Nuremberg Trials and the contemporary world order
Rare insights into the personal politics and moral dilemmas of the Nazi upper ranks and their Western counterparts
A passionate case for reassessing the fate and motivations of Rudolf Hess and the lost possibilities for a different postwar world.

Links & Plugs

Telegram: t.me/the7HOMAS777
Substack: realthomas777.substack.com
Gab: @RealThomas777
Science fiction series "Steel Storm" via Imperium Press

For the next session, expect a detailed discussion of the Nuremberg indictment itself, the fate of Hess at the trial, and broader implications for international law and postwar memory.

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Transcript75 lines

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I am here again with Thomas. 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well, Pete, thanks again. As I said before, it's a great, great honor to be able to record, record these episodes. And I think we're doing God's work in the interest of posterity and historical truth. I'm not saying that'd be melodramatic. I, I really do believe that. And yeah, today what I wanted to get into, we dealt quite a bit with the battlefield situation the last few sessions, which is important. And I mean as I stipulated, I'm certainly not a military veteran and I, I'm not a military science expert, but I do know something about, I do know something about the political history of the war. And I, I drew upon guys who do have expertise and military matters to clarify points of fact that I was not entirely clear on. So I, I hope people got a lot out of that. I, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I appreciate that. But you know, again, just. I want to kind of reiterate after the fact, you know, I'm not. Military science is not really my wheelhouse. But what we're going to get into today, we're going to return to the, to the, to the, to the political situation as the war came to its, its kind of terrible conclusion. And the uh, the uh, particularly the political concord between Washington and Moscow is what gave rise to you know, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the lesser tribunals, like the Dachau trials of, of the men of 1st SS, which is quite a bit lesser known than the NURA proceedings. But it was by no means a foregone conclusion that, that, that, that, that these kinds of, you know, quasi courts Marshal, by, by the Allied authorities is what would, you know, conclude hostilities and, and kind of say set the foundation for the, for the New World Order, know quite literally. And when I use the, I use the term New World Order deliberately. That's not just, that wasn't just some campaign trail neologism that Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush coined in you know, 1988, 89. Conceptually, it was owed its origin to, you know, the, the writings of, uh, of Cordell hall and, uh, Henry Morgan, th. Who's, you know, an ominous character who we, we, we've discussed in earlier episodes, as well as Justice Frankfurter and Justice Jackson, who we're probably not going to get too much into this episode. But my point is that the idea of an old World order, which was the emergent with, you know, kind of the, the, you know, the, the not just what's known as the Enlightenment era, kind of in, in, in in commonly accepted court history, but also like the age of exploration, you know, and kind of the conquest of the planet quite literally by European powers. What was implemented therein and how affairs were managed between states, you know, particularly matters of war and peace. That kind of body of theory and practice, you know, in law and custom and you know, came to be known as, you know, the Old World Order, you know, the new world order being, you know, what, what superseded it at Nuremberg and thereafter and, and really kind of, really kind of erased everything that had come before it as we're going to kind of get into here. So this is, this is highly theoretical, but I've, I've tried to distill it down as much as possible. I don't want anyone to feel like they're sitting in some, some, some painful college lecture. But in order to understand what, what. In order to understand how the war resolved in political terms and in order to understand what the world system that exists today, although it's deteriorating, because it's not particularly suited to, you know, to addressing the power paradigms of, of the post Cold War system. But it's, this isn't just some, you know, kind of. This, this isn't just, you know, factoids we're dealing with or trivia. This is essential to understand the political map and, you know, to understand the kind of presumptions that are, that are, you know, they characterize decision making in, in power political corridors. So with that said, let's, let's dive into it. Carl Schmidt, I'm gonna invoke a couple times here, uh, not because Schmidt's the ultimate final authority in anything, but Schmidt did. His book Nomos of the Earth, really did kind of. It's the best sort of capsule summary of international law in the modern era that I've come across. Okay. And so when I'm, when I'm relying upon his analysis, I'll, I'll, I'll indicate that. But I, I'm. Schmidt's conclusions are not particularly partisan. Okay. So I Know, some people are going to claim that, you know, I'm striking a partisan posture anyway, and that's fine. But it, you know, I, I invite any of them to challenge what, what, what, what Schmidt posited about the character and structure of international law. What is nomos or nomos, like most Greek terms, does not have a simple hard and fast definition at base almost means law, but more than law. It describes kind of an aegis in totality. You know, the Greek, the, the primary, the organizational mode of, of, of classical Greece, you know, was the city state, the polis, okay? Within the polis people weren't just a veiled to a law. Like, you know, there were, there was, there was a whole set of customs, normative practices, you know, values, you know, presumed features of public morality, you know, aesthetic preferences, you know, all these things, okay? There's kind of this total agreement of, of, of. Of Moors, okay, like across political, juristic, cultural lines. You know, you know, there's moral criteria within there obviously too, some of a public nature, some of a personal nature. This kind of consensus in total is, could be, is kind of what nomos like constituted. Okay? Now obviously, you know, before the age of discovery as we think of it, you know, the world of the west was, was a much smaller place. We were basically talking about, we're basically talking about Europe. We were talking about territories peripheral to Europe, you know, like during the, you know, places like the near east, like during the, during the era, the Crusades, you know, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, you know, which I think was established in the 1095 A.D. one of the fellows laying in the comments, if I'm wrong, it's, it's a peripheral point, but even in these territories that were, you know, peripheral to Europe and outside of, you know, the continent, it's outside of the territorial space of Europe itself. European law was quite literally extrapolated to these areas. You know, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a European kingdom. You know, the fact that it happened to be, you know, in the near east, outside of the land mass of continental Europe didn't matter. You know, it was administered by Europeans. It was, you know, populated by Europeans. You know, the, the rights and duties imposed upon the people who live there, like owed to parentage and faith. Know, obviously, you know, obviously Christians had, you know, had, had place of privilege under the law. So I mean, you couldn't even. Places that were spatially remote from Europe were in a concrete way, like built into the European fabric, owing not just, you know, the race and ethnos, the people there but the structures they created, okay, before the age of discovery, it was never an issue was that how do we relate to people, you know, thousands of miles outside of, you know, outside of the continent, you know, outside. Not just, you know, our territorial sovereignty, but, you know, with whom we. There cannot be sort of consensus, you know, agreement on, you know, on, on matters of public or private law. This was handled a number of ways. And if, you know, if you want to, the father of kind of the old world order was in a very true sense, it was Hugo Grotius, okay? He was a Dutchman. And as some people probably know, I mean, I'm not being condescending, like, nobody learns anything in public school anymore. And unless you sit around studying history, you're probably not really going to know a lot about, you know, the political map of hundreds of years ago. And, you know, what, what kind of, what kind of thought paradigms characterize if Hugo Grotes was a Dutchman, okay, he was born in 1583. He died sometime. He died sometime before the. He died sometime before the end of the thirty Years War, okay? But he was a Dutch jurist, polymath type. You know, the Netherlands in those days, they, they really were like a trade empire, okay? I mean, it's. Despite the fact that the Netherlands is tiny and it's literally just kind of like this, this, this kind of like literally sinking principality in the north of Europe, like, they, it had. It accrued tremendous, well, tremendous power and the kind of wars and practices of maritime trade and other things that were kind of founded by, by the Dutch became just, you know, normative across Europe. Okay? The Dutch were the, they were master ship builders. They, they had a strong and proud military tradition, which is one reason the bores were so damn tough in South Africa. But primarily, I mean, they. If like, like with the Germans, word of warcraft and like what Italians are to like, find food and, and sports cars, the Dutch are to, you know, the maritime trade. Look at that way, if you want a somewhat silly analogy. But groches had an idea that the, that the way to understand war between states was the way that one could understand, you know, conflicts between persons, okay? And not unlike John Locke Grodius, he posited states as, you know, consisting of, you know, emerging out of the aggregate decisions and acquiescence of individuals. Okay? Now just like an individual avails himself to the sovereignty of the state by surrendering his private right to punish people, you know, to whom he's. He's entitled to satisfaction and ceding that right to the State. Okay, well, you know, similarly in matters
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of,
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in matters extrinsic to the, you know, to the eternal situation, you know, the state can assert violence, you know, outside of its parameters as well. You know, when it's, it's. When it's people, when it's, it's institutions, you know, when it's, when it's, when it's economic well being is threatened from without. Okay. So Groves is basically looked at this as a built in kind of remedy to the state system, you know, in the absence of a higher authority to appeal to. He almost fell, he almost looked at, you know, this was kind of like a proto version of like the invisible hand idea of which is kind of like, you know, the, it's E. Michael Jones always saying, you know, the idea of the invisible hand is. Is. Is. Is congruous in a basic way, symbolic, psychological way with, with. With the idea of Newtonian physics. This idea that there's kind of like this intrinsic order, you know, not just, not, not not just the physical world, but you know, to man's affairs. Grotes very much the same could be said of him. Okay. Because his idea was, well, you know, states like man are self interested, you know, and the self interested aggregate decisions of you know, thousands of people who are available to sovereignty of the state, you know, that's what constitutes the national interest. So it's, you know, so states, you know, states are only going to go to war with each other, you know, if, you know, a. If. If the remedy is likely to result in satisfaction of. Of. Of. Of what's owed, so to speak or if it's likely to result in you know, the. In. In. In. In eradicating or mitigating, you know, the threat to. To. To. To what they aim to protect. And you know, the states, States are discouraged from pursuing, you know, irrational wars that you know, harm the common good because they're basically their cost prohibitive. Okay. Now of course this depends on that, that model that he laid out is all good and well, but it, it's highly contingent upon a kind of basic moral consensus between the parties to this system. Okay. Like basically what Grudges was talking about was he was talking about how. How political entities within a common federation wouldn't will handle problems. And because most of his writing was done during the thirty Years War, he was obviously looking forward to a time beyond sectarian conflict and the kind bloodletting that was facilitated therein. You know, he was imagining a time when, okay, you know, like the state can somehow, you know, when we can kind of have like this common like lingua frank of politics, you know, wherein you know, the several polities of Europe, you know, can kind of join in this federation, you know, wherein there's a common, you know, kind of, there's, there's, there's a, there's a consensus in common on, on how mayors of war and peace can be resolved. Okay. But it was also developing as he put this to paper, you know, 30 years war went on for decades and it, you know, like all like old wars, that kind of, that kind of drag on beyond the point at which, at which any kind of, any kind of profit is said to be had. You know, like the ways to mitigate, you know, future iterations of this, of the, of the same phenomenon go to the forefront of the intellectual cast. Okay, that's a good example of this. Okay. Now subsequently, as things like the divine Ready Kings came into question and you know, the a. What Grou has kind of envisioned as ideal did in fact come to pass in practice in at least in, in, in the Netherlands and in, in France and the uk which is one reason this did come to pass. I mean that's one of the reasons why the, the trauma. The French Revolution was so punctuated and destructive. But that's outside the scope in any event.
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Well, we just. What we just talked about is this kind of a moral consensus of if nothing else, of a practical nature between European states. This came to be known in German speaking lands as a Volcan. Okay. Or the Jewish Publicum Europum. Okay. This is the body of positive law, cognitive and customary, that ordered relations between states, you know, derived from the Westphalian Peace. And it basically endured until the first World War. It was challenged by the French Revolution which we could develop a year's worth of podcast to the French Revolution. Okay, I, I don't want to deep dive too much into that, but the fact is that, you know, obviously what had been normative according to Volcarak and the just public of Europa was reinstated after French Revolution, after Waterloo. So we can't say that it ended in, you know, 1789 or 1813. Okay. And if nothing else, the Congress of Vienna reconstituted it. Okay? And if you want to look, okay, so even if you accept that there's a break in, in the, in the just publicum Europum was it was, it was, it was reinstated by, by. By consensus for another century. Okay. Now as a couple of things happened is that that really disrupted the ability to sustain. The ability to sustain the, you know, the volcan. Those two things were the colored world, as Spangler referred to it, and as you know, was kind of what we called, you know, non European cultures in, you know, less delicate times began to develop a political consciousness unto themselves. You know, it can no longer be said, you know, by, by the, by the end of the 19th century, it can no longer be said that, you know, people in Southeast Asia, people in Africa, people in Latin America, you couldn't just dismiss these people's ambitions and their ways of life as well. These people are barbarians. And you know, even if we, even if we have a certain affinity for them and a fatherly concern, they're not capable of politics. I mean, that just could not be said anymore. They were organizing in according to parameters the modern state. They were practicing a form of statecraft, at least within their geographic neighborhood that was in common with the way Europe had conducted politics since the thirty years War. Now, okay, that may have been the direct progeny of, of of their European overlords, you know, the fact that they even had these such concepts in mind. But that didn't matter because for practical purposes, you could not just dismiss these, these features, the strategic landscape as meaningless or you know, you cannot hope to. If nothing else, even if you didn't view these, you know, the, the, the, the ambitions and, and, and politics of the colored world is legitimate. You couldn't just condescendingly dismiss these things and, and hope to maintain anything approaching peace within these dominions, okay? And particularly, particularly the ascendancy of Japan, which had never been, you know, truly colonized obviously, but it become, you know, a great power. You know, this, this posed a question as the, you know, how do you, how, how can you consider, how can you consider a great military power like Japan, which arguably is even more advanced than, you know, a state like Spain or Russia? How can you claim that there's some outside the, you know, know, the community of civilizing the nation is just because they're not white. And it wasn't, it wasn't man who were, you know, it wasn't just woke types of the tie of the day suggesting this are progressives. It was people who had a very practical view of Things, you know, like Japan is a great power, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to, are we going to abandon any, any predex that just publicly Europa? Are we going to extend to them equality of status? You know, what, how exactly this going to be managed? Well, kind of the Anglo American view of things was that it owed entirely basically the ability to project power. Okay. And that was the second kind of feature of what, what, what changed things and, and no, and made the just public of Europa no longer truly sustainable. Okay? Because conceptually, you know, not only is the law, as we talked about with Nomos, not only does it owe to this kind of absolute consensus, you know, culturally, aesthetically, ethically, juristically, but it, the polis is an actual concrete place. It's, it's like literally and figuratively, like was the center of, you know, ancient Greek life, just like the state became the center of national life for say, you know, France or for Germany post unification. Okay? So we can imagine, you know, a king or we can imagine a chancellor, you know, subsequently, or some combination thereof as the seat of sovereignty. And that's almost a model for how we think of God, okay? You know, in symbolic terms, even though one's not particularly religious. And the palace or the state, you know, it's quite literally the physical dominion of that sovereignty, okay? So, and the degree to which that sovereign keeps, know, can extend his authority, that's basically the parameters of, of, of the national state. You know, it's the pr. That's the parameters of that government's authority. Okay? Quite literally in physical space you can draw a line to which it extends to. Okay, this presents a problem. If you take a state like the United Kingdom or if you take a state like America was becoming, that had a, that had and has a blue water navy, you know, that can project power anywhere on this planet with fairly devastating results even back then, and which also has interests of all kinds in all sorts of far flung locales. Some of these interests are political, some are military, so are strictly economic. Okay, so on what basis on, on what? On, on what basis does, does, does a state such as that, you know, derive its authority to intervene? Well, as Schmidt pointed out in the case of the UK and the United States, it did so in the, in, in, in. In terms of, you know, what is a creditor and what is a debtor? There's a, there was a deeper mythology in the UK than there was in the United States, because in the United Kingdom and any kind of credit extended to any institution or people or Nation, you know, derived from the sovereignty of the monarch. And therefore, you know, the, this, the subject debtor population wasn't a very real way availing itself to that sovereignty. But even if we redact that, the United States, the way it characterized the Monroe Doctrine basically was that, you know, there's you know, hemisphere what facilitates as American wealth, you know, all these lesser states, you know, within the Americas partake of American wealth. And in order to avail those states to a monarchy would be to appropriate wealth in that dominion as far as the monarch could assures authority. And that's unacceptable. Later on a military, a strategic military imperative came to characterize the Monroe Doctrine and its legitimacy far more than a trade and creditor debtor imperative. But initially it was exactly what Schmidt said and exactly what I just relayed as to where sovereignty was derived from. So understandably this creates a very, very kind of confused situation as to what the parameters are of sovereign authority and what even should what even could be said to be the consensus of, you know, laws and customs of war. So there was a somewhat anarchic circumstance brewing on this planet in conceptual terms, even removing the kind of discret power political interests of these various actors, some state actors, some non state actors that gave rise these catastrophes. The first and second World War and the second World War, obviously a, not just a draconian piece, but a, an incredibly brutal and broad based and unprecedented effort of social engineering was undertaken. And it was done so under the auspices of a new world order that replaced and swept away what we just talked about. And the only reason that was possible is, is because in conceptual terms what I just described here was no longer conceivable. It no longer had a context. Even if it did have a context, there was no way to implement it any longer. Now the first kind of chinks in, in the sort of, in the sort of structure of the Volca Rex, the just public of Europa informal terms in, in 1899 and 1907, the, there was, there was two, there was two peace conferences held in the Hague. And those are first ever to decouple law and, and the law of war and peace from any sovereign authority or territorial imperative. Like conceptually the claim was, you know, the Volcan is no more. The, the world truly has been incorporated into, you know, into various polities that can be said to span the planet in terms of the interests that are, you know, that they're, that they, that interdependence has created, you know, of an economic, military, political nature. You know, the only way that we can Manage the colored world, these ascended states as well as, you know, manage, you know, overlapping interests of the European powers and the colored dominions and you know, the kind of nascent national identities that are extending those dominions between each other. What's up fools? Main event J USO here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one.
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You know, it's the kind of issue in a quality of status that's just universally binding. Okay, now this is important. What I'm about to say to the. To. To the. To Schmidt's paradigm, which I'm going to draw, which I'm going to draw upon again to make a point which I is for purposes of. Under. Of existential understanding, not polemical. Okay, if you're going to declare now or in 1907 that, you know, I, I'm going to declare, you know, I'm going to draft a treaty document. I'm going to declare that, you know, there, there's equality of status between all states. You know, no state has, has more power than another on the road to manipulate, you know, outcomes, you know, war. And p. War is illegal, you know, and you know, in any, any, any, any aggressive war is a criminal act according to the community of nations. I mean, who, whose values am I. Am I declaring that in the name of. I mean. And any state that have the power to enforce such a paradigm, hypothetically, would be. What would be a superpower, if not a unipolar hegemon. It would be a superpower. And just the, the very existence of these kind of power disparities between a state that acts as the lawgiver state and the subject states, like, means that you're dealing with the ruler and the ruled. And all, all, all legal paradigms that are functional or can be said to exist, rely at least in part or partake at least in part of coercion. So added to that, either the state that's issuing these, the edicts as the lawgiver state, or you know, a state that's assigned separate from it as the enforcement Mechanism of this, you know, edict issued by the lawgiver, one of those two is going to by default be the sovereign owing to its monopoly on violence. You know, even if all states voluntarily seated their, you know, acquiesced to this by seating their, their maintenance of arms to the singular authority, you know, that you still would not be dealing with a situation of equality. Your consensus, you know, just existentially that's not possible. There's some people, particularly on the left, not the radical left because generally they tend to accept some bastardized version of that paradigm I just explained, but who claim that what I just stated is, is, is, is cynical or that it's, it's, it's a polemical idea that know, just, just, just on to a certain disdain for, for supranational institutions. That's not the case at all. It's an existential matter. And it, it doesn't matter. It, it doesn't matter who or what is in the role of lawgiver. There is a, there is, there is an element of coercion and any element of coercion creates a disparity of status. We there, there cannot be said to be equality within such a system. And absent that enforcement mechanism, once again you're dealing with anarchy and you're dealing simply with a permissive set of guidelines that if states choose to abide, they will abide. And if they do not, it, the agreement is, is an illusory promise because it has no mechanism of enforcement. Now, as, as a, this, this seems like a highly academic kind of highly abstract argument, but in the aftermath of the first World War, this became very much an issue, okay? Because the claim was what underlay the Kellogg Brion Pact, which in the aftermath of the unwillingness of the United States to acquies the League of Nations, the Kellogg Brion Pack was it, it outlawed war quote as a instrument of national policy. Okay? But again, this was a very Eurocentric conception. And, and it, and it partook actually, despite its pretensions of representing a new order, it partook in existential terms of the old world order. Because if you utilize war as a policy, policy instrument, you're talking by definition about a war of choice. You know, you're talking about a cabinet war in order to, in order to coerce a rival power into acquiescing to some demand or another. Or you're talking about, you know, you're talking about a war within the colored dominions to manage, you know, a, a colony remote from the primary seat of sovereignty. You know, these are wars which are waged by choice, you know, in order to derive some sort of profit or benefit, you know, an existential war for national existence. One doesn't have a choice in whether or not to wage such a war. And the stakes, not profit or, you know, discouragement from, you know, seeking the path to war on account of, you know, some kind of, you know, some kind of, some kind of potential sanction, you know, you're talking about existence or non existence, you know, so such things presume not just, you know, the, the kind of perennial nature of a, of a Eurocentric order and the kind of permanent subjugation of the colored world, you know, which in turn presumes not just the political will but the material means to do so, but it also, it characterizes, you know, a, a very peculiar kind of warring that really didn't have precedent outside of the early modern period in Europe. You know, I mean, it wasn't nascent. Great powers like Japan weren't waging wars of choice. And states like Prussia that, you know, had been at war for 600 years owing to, you know, them being on the frontier of, of Europe, quite literally, they were, they weren't fighting wars of choice against, you know, the Ottomans, the Mongols or the, or the Russians and later the Soviet Union. I mean, these, these were wars of national existence and in the most bleak and intense terms, you know, race wars. So that aside from the fact that these things like a Kellogg Briond Pact, unlike League of Nation itself, it's time. The fact that they were premised on, on kind of progressive fictions, they, they, they, they didn't describe war as was actually developing and exigencies that, that, that, that were giving rise to the need for this kind of discussion in the first place. Now I'm going to bring us back to the Second World War. I, I felt it was important to drop that background, extensive and in detail as it may have been, because otherwise, otherwise the, the kind of, the conceptual horizon of the, of the victors doesn't really make sense. Now as we kind of talked about, I mean, as we did talk about, we, we talked about in the preceding episodes, you know, the kind of origin of, of the war party in the U.K. you know, the focus which had a, a deep, deep sectarian, ethno, sectarian hatred of Germany. Okay. And we talked about, you know, how they capitalized on the indigenous element like Vance, Dance Attard and others, you know, who, who had a kind of atavistic fear of Germany, you know, owing to a number of things, including the Fact, in my opinion, they kind of, these people were kind of decadent aristocrats who realized they were sort of in the twilight of their existence as, as an elite cast. And they associated, you know, the kind of this, kind of this kind of nightmare image of goose stepping Prussians, you know, backed up by, you know, modern combined arms as, as some. It was kind of like their fear of like, you know, the new order embodied, okay. Or one potential new order that would render them totally obsolescent. I mean, it sounds silly, but I really believe that this was something that was present in the minds of people outside of the, you know, dominant ethnic group of the focus. Because otherwise I, I can't think of why they would take on such prejudices. But there's a tangible spirit of revenge. Okay. In the United States, among the New Dealers, we talked about Henry Morgan Thou and his outsized role. His outsized role and setting policy in the Roseville administration. Okay. We're talking about the Morgan plan. Well, Morgan thow continued to advocate for the Morgan thou plan throughout 1943 and 1944. Okay. And as time went on and Roosevelt's health began to fail, Roosevelt's mind began to fail in large part. And who had access to Roosevelt really could expect, you know, kind of his, his own policy initiatives to be greenlit. Opposite Cordell Hull or opposite, opposite Morgenthau, was Henry Stimson Secretary of War. We've not talked a lot about Stimson and I don't think Stimson was any kind of hero. But compared to his fellows in the Roosevelt White House, I think he was fairly admirable. He was Secretary of War, okay. Stimson was the token Republican. I missed the New Dealers. He, he certainly, he certainly didn't run interference with any New Deal policies and he certainly never hesitated to execute the orders of his commander in chief. But he was, he was more than can be said of anybody else in the camp in the resolution of Canada. He was there on grounds of merit, okay? That's the reason he was, that's the reason why he was allowed as party affiliation, okay. He was noting fitting in late 1944 not just to General, not just to General George Marshall, who was Roosevelt's Chief of Staff, but in his own diary that it was pretty clear that, you know, in the territories that were slated to be ceded to Poland, you know, German death. Germans, they were going to be the Germans, they were going to be ethnically cleansed, okay? You know, we were talking about 2 to 3 million people and this happened, okay? But he made the Stimson made the point that, you know, not only is this it was clear that Poland was going to be delivered to the Soviets on a silver platter. So in the court of history, America is going to be, you know, held responsible for better or worse for the ethnic cleansing of Germans from central Europe, you know, just as it's claiming that it's waging this war, you know, of, of democratic self determination for all European peoples and in order to liberate Poland from tyranny, you know. And in those days the Department of State and the entire diplomatic corps from which a lot the Department of war derived a lot of its key figures know, these were guys who generally were privileged and they, they very much pursued the career they did only the fact that they had a very strong historical orientation. Okay. They were motivated by what they believed the historical record would reflect based upon their actions. Okay. This wasn't contrived whatever say Stimson. These are things he wrote in his private diary as well as said confided to people like Marshall. So I think we can rely on its legitimacy. He wasn't, he, he wasn't just speaking kind of soaring terms to exonerate himself and missed what he realized was a pretty, a pretty morally questionable administration. I, whatever we can say, I, I, I, I rely on Stson a lot because for that reason I, I believe we can take his testimony at face value. Okay. Particularly concerned because Cordell hall, his counterpart in department of State had essentially taken on the Morgenthau view. Like why it's not entirely clear. I've got my own views on that. I think Hull was one of these types who went immersed around strong personalities like, like Morgan thou and immersed. This whole would have been and kind of the culture the focus because he was meeting with Churchill's people all the time. I think he took on the prejudices of some of these people and I see this today a similar phenomenon and I think we saw that in men like Donald Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney. Frankly, I don't think I need to spell it out further, but Lord Halifax, who as I've noted before, I think was a fairly, fairly reasoned individual, at least compared to, compared to his prime minister. He, he certainly was. He, he attested a Marsh in 1943 he met with Cordell hall and Hull seemed positively unhinged when the issue of the German leadership came up and he stated that the entirety of the German political and military leadership down to the lowliest officer should be liquidated. You know, and obviously Halifax's first thought Was my God, this man is essentially suggesting we should do what Stalin did, you know, not just within his own general staff and then ultimately you know, do the entirety of the, of the military apparatus down to the company level. But you know, what, what the Soviets did in Eastern Poland at Katy and know this, this people like Halifax realized that this wasn't just some kind of fog of war quagmire that you know, really, you know, the, the enterprise he was involved in was, was not popular by man to be said to be advocating, you know, taking the moral high ground. Okay, Eisenhower was, I, I think Eisenhower was certainly decent compared to people like, like, like Morgan thou, but unlike Marshall, I think Eisenhower was somewhat, somewhat small minded. Okay. I think he's a military genius. I think he was one of the smartest men in terms of IQ ever sit in the White House. But in terms of the historical implications of, of this punitive regime that was being advocated and quite literally planned, I don't think he fully grasped that. He said to, he said to, he said to Stimson and I'm paraphrasing that he relayed to Helifax and to Stimson on July 10th, 1944. Interestingly, this was just before the July 20th plot that you know, where Hitler got blown up and survived of course. But he said the rights leadership be shot even without the benefit of a drumheads court martial on grounds that the German people must be made to feel a sense of personal responsibility. That's a very peculiar thing for a military man. You say okay, and I believe again Eisenhower certainly wasn't a milk toast but I, I think he basically, he basically left political decisions and analyses to what he viewed as, you know, to who he viewed as you know, kind of, kind of the men most qualified to render those decisions. And despite Eisenhower's surname and disadheritage, I, I, you know, he was a northern military officer. I think he was naive about the kind of reality of, of ethno sectarian politics that caused European war in the first place. However, Eisenhower did, Eisenhower did oppose the excesses of the Morgenthau plan because the Morgan plan was literally a plan to exterminate the German people. And Eisenhower raised this to Morgenthau. And in part Eisenhower was looking forward to the occupation wondering first of all I, Eisenhower, because he was a basically decent individual, he wasn't going to avail his men as the exterminators of, of, of the German race. Okay, Number two, it's not even clear like how such an occupation slash final solution would would be implemented. And according to Morgenthau, when Eisenhower challenged him or thou said, quote, the whole of the German population is a synthetic paranoid. There is no reason for treating a paranoid gently. The best cures let the Germans stew in their own juice. Meaning essentially in metaphorical terms, you know, that, that the Germans are constitutionally evil. I mean, this is dressed up in the language of psychology, psychiatry, which as we get into the next episode, we'll, we'll get into how that played into the kind of entire normal paradigm and the subsequent occupation. But Morgan thou, he was able to get an audience with the President roosevelt again in August 1944. It was immediately on his return from Europe to Washington. And he had great concern that, uh, Morgenthau did that, that, that some sort of, uh, that that some sort of normal peace would be you know, realized with, with Germany holding other national security exigencies or just the fact that, you know, people were revolted by the suggestion that Germany should literally be starved and depopulated. In particular, Morgan thou was concerned that Churchill would object to the Morindale plan. Not, not because Churchill a moral person or because he cared about whether Germans lived or died. But the UK would have, would, would have, would have, would have been an existential jeopardy if Germany was simply wiped off the map. Okay? And looking forward, and particularly considering the, you know, the cozy relationship between Stalin and, and, and Roosevelt, of which Churchill had increasingly been frozen out, he was, he was looking, this was a self interested concern, okay? But what, what Roosevelt said was, and this is a direct quote, we've got to be tough with Germany. And I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You have to castrate the German people. We have to treat them in such a manner so that they can't go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past. That's metaphor comes Rosal returned his metaphor a few different times and so did Morgenthau. I don't know who filched it from who. This. We have to castrate the German people. Now, I'm not trying to be lurid, but that's an incredibly strange metaphor. And I've never in my life invoked the metaphor of castrating something or somebody if it speaks of a real, of a real moral sickness. I think I, I don't think that I, I don't think that my own prejudices to color my opinion on this. And there's something very like or, or like organically brutal about it. You know, the, the, even the metaphorical language of the of. Of. Of the Morgan now plan. They're, they're talking about it literally in, you know, like they, like, like they're exterminating vermin or they're, or they're precluding some insidious bloodline in, in a, in a population of cattle from know. From reproducing itself. It's, it's really quite sick. And you know, not even, not, not even like in, in the, in the memoirs of, of guys who fought in these like the Creek War and these like horrible like race wars in, in America. Have I ever come ac. I never run across anybody saying that we got to castrate the Red Indians like that. It's profound. I mean, t is profoundly sick. I'm sure some people will disagree and say that I'm, I'm just deliberately trying to emphasize that point to cast a punitive light on Mr. Roosevelt. I don't accept that. But Stimson, secondary with Stimson, what he, the way he handled this. He approached General George Marshall. And in those days, even with a, a chief executive as powerful as Roosevelt, the, the chief of staff, the army chief of staff, he had tremendous power, okay? And Stimson, uh, neither Stimson nor uh, nor Marshall were Jewish. And uh, that was kind of a common bond. I, I mean just only the fact that, you know, so many people in, you know, organize orbit and were animated by ethno sectarian passions. But Morgan, though, But Morgan though, Marshall also, because he was a military man and Stimson was a secretary of War, you know, they, they had a common interest not just in policy, but, you know, there was, there was, there was, there was a mutuality of interest there, okay? And what Stimson wrote in his diary about stems of the proletic diarist, like a lot of men of this era were, which is a, a tremendous resource for people like me who are kind of lay historians. But since it wrote about his meeting in fall 1944 with Marshall, he said, I relayed to Marshall, I quote, I found around, I found an atmosphere of personal resentment against the entire German people without regard to individual guilt. And I was very much afraid it would result in our taking mass vengeance on the part of our people in the shape of clumsy economic action. And that really spoke to Marshall the technocrat, among other things. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think Marshall had more of a conscience than most of his peers in this administration. But he also, Marshall was an officer, a general officer, cut from the same kind of cloth as blackjack cursing had been. And Those that don't know among other things Blackjack person was a logistics genius and like a lot of West Point types was an engineering genius. And the modern interstate highway system was basically the brainchild of Pershing. So if you approach Marshall and say look you know the you know Roosevelt is, is having late night conversations with Morgan thou about like literally castrating the Germans as a people. And on top of that you know if we, if we annihilate Germany and and kill 80 million of them and leave this kind of void in the center of Europe that you know we're gonna not only will the world economy not recover, we're going to plunge ourselves probably into another Nightmare. C in 1929. This is the kind of thing that very much got Morgan th's attention. Okay or not Morgan th Marshall. I'm sorry, I'm tired so but owing to again one of the fact that Morgan though greater access to to Roosevelt probably not just instead probably than anybody he Maratha also had had Harry Dexter White who who was personally close to Roosevelt in a way that a treasury secretary's assistant ordinarily would not be. And incidentally White was later accused of being a Soviet agent. And there was some. There was a substantial evidence to that effect. But FDR at this point is in failing health. He's presented with the final, he's presented the final proposal of the Mora plan by Harry Dexter White. Okay. What it relayed, what it suggested was that first and foremost Germany had to be demilitarized and stripped of any national army or paramilitary element independent of allied control authority. But in addition to those fairly normal punitive demands, it was suggested that 18 to 20 million able bodied Germans be deported to Africa essentially as slave laborers. And the way Harry Extra White sold it was the Tennessee Valley Authority which was you know, part of the one of the mass New deal projects it undertook these massive hydroelectric projects, infrastructural projects that for a time employed close to half the able bodied male population United States. So the idea was the final Morgan now playing iteration you know we could basically take every every able bodied German man who survived. You know 1945. We can work on a death in Africa and carve out some kind of
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Basically, we can like, realize Cecil Rhodes is a dream with German slave labor. We can kill off, you know, German manhood and then we can reap the profits of this kind of, you know, of, of the dark continent, you know, as, as, as a modern. As a modern, you know, interdependent economy, which is a, a totally insane idea. And frankly, it's not, it's not morally any different than, than, than Himler's and, and, and uh, and, and the SS and the SD's plan for the Slavic east. Except arguably in their case, you know, there's the exigency of, you know, Germany having a developed superpower capability to survive the people. Now, Stimson and Marshall, what they, what they did. What they did was they, they. They approached Felix Frankfurter, which on his face seems peculiar, owing to Frankfurt's heritage and his sympathies and his involvement with the folks and everything. But it actually was a stroke of genius for what they were trying to do. Frankfurter was shocked and reacted with great disdain at the Morgandel plan, frankly, because it was so obviously punitive and amateurish. Frankfurter, he said, you know, obviously, any. Whatever we decide moving forward in terms of the, in terms of the occupation regime and, you know, the liquidation of, of, you know, the national Socialist element and the control group within Germany, you know, we've got to maintain the appearance of law and order at all costs. You know, this was Frankfurter's big. This was his big. You know, this was, this is what he kept returning to. Okay. Morgan Thou was essentially rooked owing to Stimson and Marshall's ability to get the year of Frankfurter. The Frankfurter respected both of them, even if they weren't particularly friendly. You know, Frankfurter was able. One of the few men who could go over Morgan Val's head. And by that point Roosevelt was practically, you know, on his deathbed anyway. And Frankfurter and his people were able to essentially keep Morgan Thou from getting an audience with the president again or from literally, you know, being alone with him and getting him to put, you know, his hand to paper and, you know, signing off with the authority of the, of the executive on whatever, whatever machinations Darwin and White had in mind. And thank God for that, when ensued, was not particularly great, but it certainly is better than the alternative. So the result of this was on October 30, 1944, the Allies issued what can be called the Moscow Declaration. What the Moscow Declaration did was it distinguished between, quote, major war criminals and minor war criminals. Minor war criminals were retreated like war criminals traditionally had been. Okay, only the laws and customs of war. Like, for example, a company commander who, you know, allegedly carried out a massacre, say, in Italy. You know, he'd be extradited to Italy. Like a local court would present evidence against him. You know, a, a, a military jury would be impaneled, you know, considering a man who, like, fought in that theater. You know, they would render a decision based upon, you know, the evidence presented. And, and that would be that major war criminals, however it was said, you know, regardless at expense there to be brought back to stand trial within, you know, Occupied Allied Control Council occupied territory. Because, you know, the quote, unquote, crimes that they committed were not, were not bound any territory or locality. Okay? So basically, if you were, if you were judged to be a major war criminal based on a criteria that was, you know, fairly arbitrary, even as the, even as developed, finally, a year later, on the eve of the proceeding itself, it was never entirely clear, like, what made one a major war criminal. And we'll get into that next episode. But basically, the Moscow Declaration, it attempted to have it both ways. Okay. On the one hand, it, it said, you know, okay, you know, for, for people who are not particularly interested in, you know, politically or for people who, you know, the trial which won't facilitate any, you know, directly political end, you know, we're going to treat them like, you know, we always would, you know, a man in uniform accused of, a, accused of a breaching of laws and customs of war. But for people whom we consider it imperative, you know, to, to, to, to, to try for political purposes, you know, there, there's no limitation to where they're charged, how they're charged, what serent authority places them on trial. And, you know, what, what, what, what, what the content of the indictment information against them constitutes because, you know, they, they, they've simply offended against moral principles that, you know, are held by all men. Not. This is a polemic. This isn't a theory of law. And it doesn't even really purport to be other than a superficial way. In my opinion. That's the, that's kind of what remained directly of the, of the kind of Morgenthau Plan sensibility like that's It Shining Through. And in our next episode. I want to wrap up in a minute because I think I Just threw a lot at our listeners. I want to talk about how Justice Jackson, who quite literally was a small town American lawyer who became a judge, never graduated law school incidentally, because once upon a time you learn to practice law by practicing law and then you, you know, were admitted by a bar. They acted kind of like a guild of source. You know, nobody went to law school. But that's interesting in its own right because I, I, I, that that's a huge change compared to the way things are structured today. But you know, we'll get into the actual proceedings and we'll probably go a little bit longer then they already kind of started my notes like in my, and like organizing in my mind. We're probably gonna go for like 90 minutes. But yeah, I think, I think this might be a good stopping point. Man, I hope that wasn't too like scatter shocked or dry. Like I said, I think it's important for context. Otherwise doesn't, it doesn't really. It's hard to convey like what the significance of these proceedings were, if that makes any sense. Right. No. You started out by laying down what historical law was, how it was structured, and then you showed how it was basically dismantled for the 20th century and we see the fruits of it up until today. Great. Yeah. If you're happy and if the, if the listeners are, then I'm happy. Yep. So give your plugs and we'll end it. Yeah, we'll do. And I would report that telegram just as a platform, it seems to be blowing up a lot. Like Trump's on there now and he's pretty active, as are a bunch of people in our thing. We've got some good discussions there. You can find my telegram channel. It's t me slash the t h e number 7 h o m a s 777. You can find me on Substack where my long form is as well as my podcast. It's real. R E A L Thomas T H O M A S777.substack.com you can find me on GAB at Real Thomas 777. I generally just back up on GAB. You know what I post on Telegram. But if you like gab and if you contact me there, I will answer it. Well, that was great. I guess going to do this again next week and I've been trying to put them out on the same day like I was trying to do Wednesday. Then we got caught up this week. Like you weren't feeling well. I'm not really feeling well. I'M I'm trying to get over something that was. That's been bugging me. So. Yeah, this allergy season. I think a lot of people are hard by that. Yeah. So we'll record next week and we'll be back. Thanks, man. That's great, Pete. Thank you. I am here with Thomas. 777. How are you doing, Thomas? Very well, thanks. What I want to get into today, I realized in the last episode we delved rather deep into the theoretical foundation of international law and what supplanted what had been precedent, you know, the preceding 300 years really. And that wasn't. I wasn't just trying to, you know, showcase some sort of, you know, knowledge of esoteric subjects. That really is essential if you want to understand what, what. What came to pass in the immediate aftermath of. Of the war and, and what the objectives were of, of the victors and how and why it was such a house divided. And today we're going to continue to lay foundation but in more in more concrete terms as to what was a raid against the vanquished states and what sort of narratives were were prioritized in order to, in order to, you know, substantiate the legitimacy of. Of. Of the burgeoning new order. Because as we've talked about, we, we. We haven't discussed as extensively as we might on a dedicated. On a series that's, you know, dedicated specifically to the topic. But you know, we've gotten into how.
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You know, the victors in of 1918 they had a notion to implement a punitive regime that would favor their, their political hegemony and their ability to. To, you know, to, to. To. To vanquish Europe in perpetuity in terms of its ability to reconstitute and challenge, you know, the hegemony of, of the Vickers. And that was not possible owing to, you know, material considerations of a power political nature. But also there really was a revolt, you know, within the United States, you know, politically at the ballot box. I mean, you know, the, it was very much viewed as the, the voting public. I mean they very much viewed what what Paris and London had in mind for Europe as, as being a very cynical ploy, you know, that really had nothing to do with. With substantial justice or with establishing a paradigm that. That, that, that that would guarantee, you know, a balance of power, that. That. That wouldn't lead to these disasters, as was the case in 1914. It had nothing to do with that. That had everything to do with, you know, weaponizing, you know, the. The apparatus of international law in order to. In order to accomplish political goals. And, you know, goals of that inevitably were motivated by hostility. By the end of the second war, things are very different in no small measure, because as we talked about, you know, the 1933 New Dealer regime really, really did implement a revolutionary paradigm, you know, domestically as well as abroad. And one of the things that substantiated this was a near total control of information and the ability to shape public opinion that theretofore was unprecedented. You know, particularly now with just the advent of, you know, almost every home having access to radio. But, you know, the. The advent of visual media, which was exploited to great effect by all major combatant powers. You know, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, the U.K. japan and the United States. So what I'm getting at is that the world situation of 1945 was very, very different. And on top of that, the, you know, Germany had been utterly devastated in, you know, in a way, that was not the case in 1918. I mean, Germany had suffered terribly, not just in the battlefield, but on ground of the starvation, blockade and other things. But they literally were being subjected to. They literally been subjected to a genocidal assault, you know, owing to the race war that, you know, where they. They gave as. As brutally and as thoroughly as they got proverbially against the Soviet Union. But, you know, the. The United States and the United Kingdom were. Were. Were. Were offering no quarter in terms of their bomber offensives and, and the goals they're in. I mean, make a mistake. The objective was to massacre as many. As many German civilians as possible. And they accomplished that to very macabre effect. And we're going to get into that later probably next episode in more detail. And finally, we talked in detail throughout this entire series about the Morgenthau Plan. You know, not just the plan specifically, but, you know, the kinds of sympathies and the ethno sectarian prejudices and kind of radical viewpoints that gave rise to that sort of. To that sort of thinking in the first place. You know, there really was a core of. Of extremists, you know, who had a great historical animosity made all the more. Made all the more vicious by, you know, the excesses that. That were underway in the in the most recent hostilities, you know, between, between, you know, European jewelry and, and, and the German Reich and its allied states. And uh, there was, uh, a coterie of men in Roosevelt's orbit who were very, very powerful, you know, not the least of which was, uh, Henry Morgan, thou. The treasury secretary, who was, you know, the author of the Sonin plan. So these, these, these circumstances were really not precedented in my opinion, except perhaps in the case the 30. In the 30 years war, which obviously was what had established the preceding paradigm as we talked about that it endured more or less for about 300 years proceeding. But moving on to the kind of concrete particulars, the person of Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court justice, he was selected by Truman to lead the American delegation at Nuremberg. Okay. And this was very deliberate. Truman. People have mixed feelings about Truman, including myself, obviously. I've got no truck with his politics, but I think Truman was a lot more admirable than Roosevelt, which isn't setting the bar very high. But I, I think he was, he was, he was a pragmatic realist and he understood, he certainly was no New Dealer, whatever the shortcomings or limitations of his viewpoint or whatever his prejudices may have been. And 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, we discussed in the last episode how this distinction between major war criminals and minor war criminals, this had, 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, you know, legitimacy and, and, and prophylactic assumptions that, you know, allow them to be spared, you know, personal liability for acts of state that would ordinarily be extended to a government. Okay. Now that's, however, what everyone's politics are 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 was feeling peace and subsequent. And Truman realized that. So Truman, his notion was a couple of things in, in choosing Justice Jackson. First of all, he wanted this. He wanted the Nuremberg proceedings to be conducted in the name of the quote United nations, like obviously, United nations as, like an, as, as. As an intergovernmental institution. You know, who's the, who's the, the. The. The. The founder states of it, you know, hope for it to become a kind of world government. You know, obviously that hadn't been established yet. You know, it would be established a few years later. But conceptually, this idea of, you know, the victor states acting, you know, in, in the name of the United nations, this was, this was very much a Truman. This was, this was, this was very much part of Truman's nomenclature, okay? And the right man had to be chosen in order to sort of lead that initiative or at least, you know, be the front and center in the public mind. Okay? So Robert A. Jackson, despite being a Supreme Court justice, you know, and having, and, and that in that role then, is now having tremendous, you know, prestige behind it. Like I've said, arguably there's even more esteem then than today despite, you know, the fact that, despite the fact that you know, arguably, you know, post 1973 or so, the, the seat of sovereignty is shifted to the judiciary. There's a great mystique afforded to the federal judiciary, okay? And there's a reason why Jackson got selected and not, you know, a man like Frankfurter who, you know, despite what, you know, despite his intelligence, despite his qualifications, despite his Machiavellian, despite his aptitude for Machiavellian intrigues, know, Frank Fter was very much, you know, like an East Coast Jew. And like he, he had al. Although. Although he was far more balanced on. On political questions than some of his coreligionists of the day. You know, he was very much a Zionist. You know, Tran realized he can't have a man like this out front. Okay? That's, that's going to raise the ire of, of. Of not just the vanquished and, and have him reject the legitimacy of it outright, you know, even more than they, you know, it's not as if they, they were affording a great deal of, of validity to begin with. But, you know, even though even the, even the party. Even the party states to, to. To the Nuremberg Tribunal, you know, France, the UK The Soviet Union, you know, they, they certainly would view this as bad optics. Okay? So Robert Jackson, he was born in Pennsylvania, small town Pennsylvania, in 1892. He was born in a township that his great grandfather literally had founded. Okay? Like, this is very Norman Rockwell kind of stuff, okay? Jackson, which was common to, to litigation attorneys of that. Of that generation. He never, he never went to law school or Took a law degree. He learned the practice, you know, by doing, you know, and by being an apprentice to, you know, learned men that were, you know, that had known his father and his grandfather. And he developed, you know, he demonstrated, he demonstrated a real confidence for litigation. Know. And that's how he got admitted to the bar. I mean that's, that's the way things were done, you know, in, in decades past. I mean that's a whole subject for another dedicated POC probably. But he became a solo practitioner I think in 1913. But he had a high profile, not just owing to his lineage and things, you know, and, and kind of being a descendant of the, the kind of, the kind of town fathers where he grew up. He, he was an arch New Dealer, okay. And this, you know, this, this, you know, wealthy Protestants on the east coast didn't think that way, like even if they were liberal. Okay. You know, and he developed a reputation as a kind of, as a, as a go to lawyer for trade unionists, you know, who had socialist friendly, socialist friendly, you know, politics and associations. So he was not a, he was not. He, I know on the surface he seemed, you know, very much a, a kind of a blue blooded American, like furtively and literally, but his politics were anything but. And, and demolished. Over that was the fact that his career took off in 1934 because Henry Morgenthau himself, you know, here's Morgenthau again, invited him to become general counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Okay. Now obviously, you know everybody, the, the Internal Revenue Service today has great power, but everything related to tax authority, you know, decades back, you know, since the Wilson administration, it's been a great way to, to, to attack one's political enemies, okay. In less than, in less than savory ways. Okay? So it, you, what I'm getting at is that it's not an accident that Morgan thou took this young lawyer, but a reputation for, you know, being friendly with the trade union movement and who, who had some radical inclinations that he, he demonstrated that he was committed to, in, in his own professional and personal life. It's not an accident that Morgan Fell solicited his talents for the Bureau of Internal Revenue. You know, the Roseville administration, like many administration is subsequent. This is one of the, this is one of the, this, this is one of the, this is one of the offices of the executive branch that would be turned loose on their enemies. Okay, so Jackson, what I'm getting at is despite his kind of squeaky clean reputation and kind of, you know, like I said, this almost sort of like Norman Rockwell sort of image of him that, that, that, you know, would. Which contributed in large part to Truman appointing him, you know, to lead the American delegation jurists to the, to the Nurburgr Tribunal. This, this was not really his nature. Okay? Like, he, he was very much, he very much had radical sympathies. Okay. You know, he very much had anti fascist sympathies. You know, he very much was, was on board with, with the New Deal enterprise and its ideological orientation. You know, like it's, it's, it's, it's revisionists like everybody else, you know, they, they've got to take measures to be balanced in their, in their analysis of, of historical events. And it's important not to just render, you know, the actors and history, you know, to into caricatures themselves. And you know, not every, not, not every New Dealer was some crazy, you know, with some crazy New York City, you know, zealot or some, or some crazy Jewish guy who, who didn't, you know, like, who, who hated the Vatican and hated the Germans and hated, you know, and considered every, every, you know, every, every every descenter Protestant American to be some, you know, lynch happy Klansman. Like some, some of these people were men like Robert Jackson who owing to their ethnicity and faith and everything else like you would not assume had these sympathies, but some of them did. Okay? That's important to keep in mind. One of the, one of the, one of the reasons Truman was enamored with Jackson as well was that. Excuse me, Jackson very much was a voice in the wilderness around the time that Roosevelt had died. Okay? Like we talked about how the Morgenthau plan, even when Roosevelt was literally on his deathbed, Morgenthau was still intriguing and conspiring to have the Morgenthau plan issued as an executive order, you know, he'd literally already gotten Roosevelt to sign off on it and through Roosevelt, Churchill to literally initial it at, at the, at the, at Yalta. And it, it. But it had not become, you know, in executive order. And why Roosevelt was, you know, dragging his feet on this, as some people might view it as not clear. I mean, whether it owed to poor health, you know, and just disengagement therein because Roosevelt's mind was failing. Whether Roosevelt, you know, he wasn't having pegs of conscience about the fate of the German nation and people, but he may have realized at the 11th hour that politically this was not going to be feasible in implementing the post war, post war order because it would have it would have robbed the victors and particularly, you know, the American delegation. The appearance of legitimacy and, and fair and even handedness. But you know, whatever it was, you know, there was there was there when Roosevelt was alive. As we talked about in the last episode, Stimson and George Marshall, they were, they were kind of the sole men of portfolio as so as, so to speak.
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conditions 21 plus, you know, who were demanding that, you know, some sort of formal, formal juristic process be afforded, you know, to the, to the men who had been identified, however arbitrarily as major war criminals. Now, a big coup for that perspective was, was, was the appointment of Jackson. Was the appointment of Jackson because despite Jackson's limited horizons, he'd never travel outside the United States. He was not particularly worldly, despite his politics that we talked about. You know, he was, he was, he was, he was known as, as, as, as one who sympathized with, with Reds, you know, to, not to be crude about it, but his, he was adamant that he, he, he was adamant that the structure and the procedure of whatever ensued as regards the major war criminals could not be ad hoc. It had to be fully imagined. It had to be fully fleshed out and developed. It, it couldn't just be some 11th hour, you know, decision, you know, like the Soviets had carried out, you know, intermittently to purge their own ranks as well as that of vanquished people. And we'll get into that in a minute. Or you know, like what the, what the Germans dealt with in the Night of the Long Knives, where potential insurrectionists were just taken out and shot. You know, they had to, you know, it was understood because Truman understood optics very well. It was understood that, you know, the appearance of due process had to absolutely be honored, you know, if there was going to be any legitimacy to this enterprise at all. And this becomes clearer and I'm hopping ahead, but just to make this one point, and we'll get to this later, when you look at the, the earliest government of, of the Bundes Republic with Adenauer at the helm, Adenhauer was certainly not a friend of, of the German people and he certainly was a man who, who had come across the anti fascist, but he was, he was exactly the he was exactly the man who should have been installed at the helm. And, and the reasons why are. Are due to the fact that at least, at least the center right and at least. And what had been. You know, the uh. The national conservative element in Germany was willing to get on board with this enterprise owing to the fact that the appearance of due process was maintained. And you can say that that's, you know, the people went along with this were lacking in principles or ethics or, or, or, or, or, or inner fortitude, and I'd agree with that. But it at least allowed them to publicly take this position and retain some semblance of honor. You know, again, it doesn't matter if it's. If objects are superficial. You know, the appearance of such things must be maintained at all times, particularly when you're talking about power political affairs. Now what, what. What's interesting is that FDR and Stalin as early as 1943 had been contemplating what really in the, really the aftermath of. Really in the aftermath of. Of. Of Kursk. Okay. Because Kursk was sort. I mean I, As I indicated earlier in our, in our series, I I think. I think the Second World War in the east was decided in 1941. But owing to. Owing to politics and owing to the fact that no man, you know, truly is an auger in terms of what will develop in the battlefield, the. The fate of the Third Reich in military terms was very much sealed at cursed. Okay? That was the last time Germany had the initiative offensively against the Soviet Union. Okay. So it's not surprising that around December 16, 1943, that's when the Soviets had first impanel a war crimes tribunal, okay, formally and they did so with. Because they. There was three German officers specifically who been taken prisoner at Stalingrad. Like more the overwhelming. The overwhelming majority of of of German PS were Were, were were sent to goags which were, you know, during the war as they were prior and after essentially death camps from where virtually nobody returned.
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But it was, it was unprecedented for, for. For German officers to be. To be availed in any kind of any kind of trial, okay at least is the process of which would be familiar in the west. Okay. Part of that was because Stalingrad that was the first time that you know, any, any general officers had fallen into. In, in any meaningful numbers had fallen into the Soviet hands. But part of it was because the Soviets were looking ahead and this is important, okay, why these men were. Why these men were availed to this, to this kind of perfunctory courts. Marshall. The three men in questions were accused of murdering Russian civilians by means of poison gas trucks. Okay? And whether you accept that or not, whether you accept that these apparatus were being employed or not isn't important for the point I'm trying to make. And for the purposes of a revisionist analysis, the reason why these men on these charges were, were, were availed to this, this, this court's Marshall procedure that became really the model for Nuremberg two years later on, you know, on a, it was on a small scale. It's what was implemented on a grand scale. It owed in part to the unique character of the charges. Okay. I mean obviously there's something even, you know, there's something that seemed preposterous even before the true extent of Soviet brutality was, was, was known. Even before, you know, anybody, everybody, you know within, within the area of operations of, of the Eastern front was aware of the degree of Soviet violence against non combat POWs alike. It was well known throughout Europe. It was well known, you know, in America. It was, it was, it was, it was known throughout this planet that millions of people had been exterminated by the Soviet Union before shops even fired in the Second World War. Okay. It would have appeared absurd just in some basic way for anything approaching the Soviets to be bringing people up on formal charges for any conduct that could reasonably be, you know, recognized as kind of familiar goings on in, within a modern battle space. Okay. I think this is very important. I don't think. I know it's very important. Okay? So keep that in mind. This was the first iteration of, of a, of, of a dedicated war crimes tribunal being impaneled. Was, was these, was, was, was these three general officers and the subject of the information of the, of the, of the informational charging instrument was, was literally gassing trucks. Okay, now what this was, uh, these, get. These men were of course sentenced to death. Okay. These German officers, they were executed in a very public square in Kov. There's a crowd of some people have claimed 30,000 people, some 50,000. The, the settled number of most revisionists and court historians alike is 40,000 people. So I mean, this was a big event. Okay. What's also significant, it was, it was meticulously documented and filmed and heavily edited into an actual propaganda film. Okay. You know, emphasizing of course an anti fascist political message. You know, it was, it was emphasizing, you know, the, the, you know, the barbarism of fascism and it's, it's inherently, you know, exterminationist character. You know, but what was a particular emphasis to anybody viewing it from Outside the Soviet Union was the Soviet reliance on confessions. Like often very elaborate confessions, you know, literally drawn out, you know, pages long, you know, the, the accused would be forced to take the stand, you know, and they often, you know, appearing dead eyed and disheveled, you know, showing signs of obvious torture and you know, sensory deprivation. You know, sometimes for, you know, as, as long as an hour or longer, you know, there'd be, there'd be these, these elaborate drawn out confessions. Okay. Almost ritualized. Okay. And the Soviets seem to think that this conferred some basic legitimacy. It didn't matter. Like I'm not just speculating here because this pops up again and again, both before the Second World War and after, but specifically this kind of paradigm. I'm talking about this, this fact of reliance upon, you know, the direct testimony of the accused as somehow neutralizing any inference of, of, of. Of coercion or of, or of due process not being honored. Okay. And the. Jackson himself and his staff were availed to a screening of this trial execution film on May 17, 1945. So literally this was, you know, a week after the cessation of hostilities in Europe. Okay, not even or. No, it was. Yeah, no, it was a week, A week and two days. Jackson's response was in, in, in. In typical diplomatic double speak, which obviously, you know, was, was very per. He was being very purposeful in choosing his words. He said it was quote, a very interesting exposition of the Russian method of proving a case by the defendants. Interestingly and somewhat against what's presented in most kind of popular histories of Nuremberg. There's this. It's characterized sort of implicitly that, you know, the United States and the UK were kind of in one camp, so to speak, the Soviets were in another camp. And the Soviets just wanted to, you know, kind of murder everybody without even the appearance of, of. Of of process or, or, or, or, or, or, or juristic protocol. And the French are just kind of in the background and not really a party to things. That's very much at odds with the facts of what developed. It was Churchill who initially was very much opposed to any sort of trial being a, for like a show trial or not just like any sort of any, any, any, any, any war crimes proceeding being afforded to, to the defendants who had, had been assigned the status of major war criminals. Why he was so adamantly against this, one can speculate. Some of it has to do with the murky kind of dealings that led to his own ascendancy. Part of this had to do. And we're going to get into this later, as we get into probably next episode, the discrete specific counts of the charting instrument at Nuremberg. Part of this had to do with ways that not just Churchill, but the entire warcam that had mischaracterized certain acts of the German High Command as suggesting that, you know, German strategic bombing of London was just spontaneous and it hadn't been deliberately provoked. Some of this had to do with, you know, not Bomber Command because to their credit, and specifically to Bomber Harris's credit, he, he was entirely candid about the operations undertaken by the, the forces under his command. The. There was at least two occasions where Churchill include. One of which was the, the, the assault on Nuremberg and. Or they sell them Dresden in February 45. There were two, there were two documented occasions where he claimed that, you know, incendiary raids that had killed tens of thousands of people had not been carried out by the ir, by the raf, but were exclusively operations of the US Army Air Forces. When he knew this to be false. Okay, part of it might have been, and again this is me speculating a bit that looking forward, Churchill knew that there would be real problems that the empire had, I mean obviously was falling apart from the center. Only the fact that it bankrupted itself and surrendered not just a good deal of its political sovereignty but also its actual material wealth. It just would not have had the forces and being or the ability to reconstitute and manage revolts and the colored dominions. But also politically that was increasingly becoming unthinkable owing to the world situation and the kind of fevered anti fascist narrative that was infecting all quarters. You know, as, as, as, as the kind of literally fiery end of the, of, of the war was emerging. It, I mean it, it, it or it could have just been that it, it could have just been that, you know, Churchill had been infected very much by the, the sort of prejudices of his, of his, of his patrons by that point. And he, you know, he, as we talked about before, you know, he. Churchill seemed to view kind of brutality and manliness as being synonymous, which was sort of peculiar to a man of his cast and station. But he was a peculiar individual. It's not clear. But my point is that Washington and Moscow were very much on the same page. That there had to be some sort of, that, that there had to be some sort of formal precedent laid down and there had to be a very public trial of the major war criminals. It was the UK that was the holdout. The only really point of agreement until, until, until after the death of Roosevelt, which we'll get to in a minute. As late as March 9, as late as March 13, 1944. The only thing that the War Cabinet would abide in terms of agreement with the Soviet diplomatic corps and, you know, the American Department of State. And this is according to Stimson, you know, the Secretary of War, who was uncornable with the entire enterprise in relative terms, the war. The Churchill's war cabinet declared that it would. It would select a list of, you know, major war criminals of Japanese, German, and within the Japanese, German and Italian commands, it'll be not less than 50, not more than 100 names. It would be understood that every one of these men would be liquidated. And it was stated that the Ford office was going to make clear that the men on the list would be distinct from those who'd be said to be guilty of war crimes and any conventional understanding of the concept. Rather, the criteria for selection would be, quote, responsibility for bringing about the war. Now, this is interesting too, and this is remarkable, okay, because as we talked about in the last episode, Nuremberg was a major breach of precedent because we talked about no mas, you know, moral consensus being, you know, the absolute essential character of international law. You know, international law only exists so far as a meeting of the minds is presence and there is a moral agreement and a really a constellation of. Of moral agreement between the parties to the Convention. Figuratively and literally. The Nuremberg enterprise from inception was tailored to constitute a new order, quite literally, you know, premised upon the hegemony of. Of a world regime, you know, with the United States at the helm, you know, the Soviet Union as its junior part, as the junior partner, you know, in the UK is. Is kind of this client state of. Of America that, you know, was. Was sovereign in name only, but like, nevertheless would. Would benefit from certain privileges within that new order in a way that, you know, the. The continent would not being as in part because it was. Because, you know, the latter would be under direct occupation. The former would not. But it's also too, it owes the kind of. We talked about the difference between, you know, the. The Anglophone sense of. Of. Of sovereign legitimacy not being bound up with concrete spatial concepts and territorial parameters, but at base with. With. With. With moral concepts that really were boundless and. And only. Only limited by the ability of. Of. Of the sovereign to project force. And that was part of it too, just kind of this basic discomfort not with the idea of, you know, declaring acts of state to be criminal, but with putting any kind of restraint upon sovereign violence at all in any formal capacity. But also, as was being hinted at throughout these conversations between not just the diplomatic core but the, the, the cabinets and their equivalent know of the big three, the Soviet Union, United States and the uk. It presented a problem being that America, the UK and the Soviet Union and had just waged a total war against, against the Axis powers and really nothing had been off the table in terms of what instrumentalities were, you know, considered legitimate in waging that war, including ultimately nuclear assault on a pro straight Japan. This presents some difficulties in establishing one's own moral credibility. If we're just going to talk, if we're just going to treat this enterprise as a, as, as a conventional issue of war crimes. Okay, Aside from the fact that again, you know, it, it's, it's, it's, it's fast all to talk about, you know, it's fast all talk about the laws and customs of war when there's been a complete breakdown in the moral consensus between the combatant parties or if there never was a consensus to begin with. But it's, it's, it's, it's absolutely facile if, you know, you're going to declare that the vanquished states, you know, are, are guilty of, know, breaching the laws and customs of war by engaging in conduct which you yourself have, you know, are, are, are identically cable for, you know, within the common battle space. So. And that, that continues. It continues till today. Very much so. Very much so. Yeah. Assad is a terrible person who, you know, killed and then you, you look and you're like, okay, so is there any way ever a, an American president would be charged with war crimes? Right. No, but, but every one of their quote unquote enemies would be if they had the chance or, and that's why in some ways, I think like I said, in some ways the UK's reluctance was born of, of, of Churchill's own idio. Idiosyncrasies. Part of it was in fact quite cunning and well thought out because, and what ultimately ended up, what ultimately ended up being the core of the, of the charging instrument, it was very, very careful to not be framed like an ordinary war crimes indictment. That's why we return again to a lot of people misunderstand and I don't want to get into the language of the indictment right this minute because that's going to be for the next episode, but I do want to lay the foundation explicitly. There's a reason why, and it was not just in order to, it was not just for structural reasons. Okay. There's a compelling reason why the Nuremberg Indictment does not treat the defendants as ordinary state actors or men in the service of a normal government. And it treats them as men who are operating outside of the law know both the law of man and natural law who had conspired from the inception of from the time that Hitler became Chancellor to perpetuate this secret conspiracy of mass homicide which was completely at odds with not just conventional military objectives and and and vagaries of statecraft and the ambitions therein. But that was in fact a a truly criminal conspiracy that was would not be within the contemplation of any any legitimate regime. Now that seems on its face a difficult case to make if you have the Soviet Union impaneled as you know with with with with an equal say as as the UK France and and that there is no perfect. There is no perfect way to to establish. There would have been no perfect way to establish this you know new order regime going forward. But there is an actual within the boundary rationality of the Nuremberg Indictment. There was a certain brilliance to it even if I even one considers the entire thing to be absurd from inception. Which brings us to what exactly became of the Morgan Val Plan. We got Morgan Valky continues to pop up again and again. I mean he was a key figure in in. In the New Deal regime and his what he wanted for the for the post war order. That's what really set the debate in motion as do what the the future of Germany would look like. And part of this was decided by circumstances owing to the deterioration of of relations between Moscow and Washington. The part of it like we talked about to the credit of Stimson and to General Marshall who sought about to see you know, develop a quorum against Morgan thow and and his quite literally genocidal plan for the German people. You know their genocide and their enslavement including I might add sterilization of the. Of the population of childbearing age. But the Morgana plan was was sort of. This was sort of this this creature that that wouldn't die. And it was chimeric in some ways. Like Morgan fell as a zealot. He had a great deal of power just owing to his office and he said any treasury any treasury secretary wheel substantial authority within the cabinet. But Morgan thou had more power than even an ordinary secretary of the Treasury. He was very well connected. He was very much a zealot. He had the confidence not just of his own people but I'm speaking in ethno sectarian terms as well as political terms. You know he was a force to be reckoned with and he very much had the confidence of Roosevelt. Stimson and Marshall were able to poach Frankfurter as we talked about, into their camp, which was a big coup as it were. But as of September 1944 the Morgan L Plan was still very much alive and well. Part of the Yalta Conference. As we talked about. Roosevelt and Churchill both initialed the plan and Lord Simon, you know, the viscount Simon. Drew McIntyre here from WWE. 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Casino he drafted a memorandum guaranteeing the summary execution of Adolf Hitler without trial as well as ribbon trop as well as Himmler as well as Gearing. As noted earlier, you know Stimson and Marshall were completely opposed to any summary execution or drumheads court martial or you know of, of, of any, of any head of state, you know under the auspices of a moral right. And what really settled the issue of, of of the top leadership headed off Hitler been. I mean Hitler never would have let himself be taken into custody. But ultimately when word of this memorandum, when word of the Simon memorandum came out, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force you know headed up by Eisenhower he got wind of it and he said the American people would not tolerate. He's like he said quote the American people not tolerate the extermination of Germany like nor they tolerate you know gangsterism of just you know hanging, you know Adolf Hitler. I mean obviously this became a nullity because all these men were g. All these men safe for gearing were dead by by the time, by the time it became you know possible to to implement such measures anyway. But the final act of of Morgan thou and his plan on 04-11-1945 mor th FDR was literally on his deathbed at this time. Okay Morin th somehow was able to gain access to fdr but you know by, by himself I which, which that's which itself goes to show you the power this man wielded Morgan. I mean 1940s weren't like today where I mean a chief executive was A lot more accessible then. But I mean Roosevelt was, was more, was more king than president. And getting an audience alone with the President as Treasury secretary, I mean that's. You're talking about a man of, of remarkable high profile if he was able to pull that off, particularly considering the state of the man's health. Well, the Commander in Chief, you know, look, you know I, I fought hard for this and this is what I'm fighting for. You know, I'm fighting for a just peace. This is what we are fighting for. You know, this is what we fought for since 1933. And he handed Roosevelt supposedly a finalized version of Morgan Thou plan. Roosevelt took the plan, didn't sign it, you know, dismissed Morgan Thou very next afternoon Roosevelt died. Okay. And Harry Truman was sworn in as President of the United States. Now Truman's a lot of things like we talked about. Truman did not trust the Soviets. He had a particular contempt for Stalin. You know, Truman as a senator was the one who said that didn't FDR die in Georgia? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. So this would all been happening in Georgia. Yeah, yeah. It, but Truman when he was a senator, you know, he'd said that if, if the, if the, if, if the communists get the upper hand as the America should support the Third Reich, you know, and he was, he was a dogmatic realist in power politics in some ways and he, he had a particular disdain for the Soviets and he, he, you know, he very much had an anti fascist streak within himself, but it was, I mean more than a streak. I mean, but he, he had no love for, for Morgan thou. When he, he certainly wasn't going to, he certainly wasn't going to play ball with the Morgan now plan. You know, I mean there was. That died with Roosevelt although aspects of it were, were insinuated into the occupation. And we'll get into that by the last episode. But the, the uh. What ultimately, if you want to understand how. What ultimately brought. What ultimately brought the UK to the table, I believe, I believe it was the fact that Lord Viscount was unceremonious. Viscount Lord Simon was unceremoniously dismissed before the, before the British delegation was impaneled, owing in part to the fact that he, he'd reverse himself on, on the question of war policy when he'd served a prior governments and been a mouthpiece for the Liberal Party. Okay. He was very much looked upon as somebody who adapted his, his beliefs to the, you know, the, whatever the governing current was, you know, or whatever public opinion would abide. Okay. And the, what ultimately was created instead largely at the behest of Anthony Eden rather than this kind of was what ultimately was, what ultimately was convened in the stead of just kind of this, this uh, this um, committee of one, you know, being Viscount Simon was a British war crimes executive. Okay. They were the ones who really came up with the proposal of you know, what became the Nuremberg Court, you know, the four power representation. What was vetoed in their proposal was they suggested it would consist of nothing but high, but high ranking general officers, you know, and they, they, they established the question of war guilt in two phases. You know, the first being to establish that general conspiracy had, had existed aiming to conquer, you know, Europe and the whole world and then to identify which man had been a party to this conspiracy. That again as we talked about and this was an essential characteristic of the entire Nurburgr enterprise. This enterprise, you know, had been outside of the scope in contemplation of, of, of any sort of normal government or any kind of legitimate, you know, state actor. America considered it, I mean not just Truman himself and, and Jackson, but even uh, even when Morgan thou had uh, had been at his zenith in terms of his ability to sway people in Roosevelt's orbit to his perspective, it was never facilitating organizing the Nuremberg Tribunal as, as, as a glorified courts marshal, you know, and having military men, you know, sit as judges, that was something that America never was, was going to seriously entertain for a lot of reasons. Some were the only thing to be explicated the UK is not, it's very different than the continent at this. I think everybody will agree. But there's, there's also basic differences between you know, America and the UK than is now. It would have been unseemly, not just you know, in, in the court of world opinion, but for domestic consumption. If, if, if America just you know, deployed military brass to preside over this like, like some sort of ordinary proceeding. But also, I mean like I, like, like, like, like we just established the entire narrative of, of, of the Nuremberg Tribunal was that it wasn't the normal proceeding. You know, it was outside the of it was completely outside the scope of ordinary statecraft and owing to its, you know, the exceptional nature of, of what was under judgment, know, it was something that, you know, required unique sorts of men to, to preside over it. Like I don't accept that mythology obviously, but that was the suggested raison detro. Okay? So I don't think you ever would have seen, you never would have. Whether or not whoever was in the White House, even if Roosevelt had lived, you would not have seen where ultimately transpired, you know, being a tribunal presided over by. By a bunch of military brass. It's. And the man who really. The man who really kind of was able to. Placate all these competing tendencies in structural terms was a guy named Samuel I. Rosenman. He was Roosevelt's kind of legal advisor. Another. We talked many episodes ago about how Roosevelt in his orbit, he had many men who one could think of as a minister without portfolio. Rosenman was another one of these types. He was a judge. He was a longtime friend and legal advisor. He going to Yalta. And Roosevelt essentially directed him in last months of Roosevelt's life to travel London and try and. And try and hash up some kind of. Some kind of agreement with British on a course of action on the war criminals. And that's exactly what Rosen did. And owing, I guess, to his aptitude for. For politics, you know, of. And specifically the politics of the swamp. When Roosevelt died, Rosenman was able to insinuate himself into Truman's orbit with, you know, very seamlessly. He. He was. He in fact was the one who telephoned the invitation to Justice Jackson at the Supreme Court in order to, you know, relay Truman's offer to him to head up the American delegation. I mean, that's. Rosenman is. Is. Is often discussed just as a footnote or a minor player. But he's. He's not it. There's a lot of this you need to read. Read between the lines. Rosenman was a man, uh. One could argue very much of the same sympathies of Morgan thou. But he had the. The finesse that his cor. Religion as Morgan thou did not. And he had a zealousness that the kind of plotting Frankfurter didn't. That. I mean this. I. I believe people can understand what I'm getting at. And it. Yeah. That. All I think I want to add is until the next episode where I want to break down the actual proceedings. And I realize this may have been dry this episode, but it's. It really is essential understanding everything that comes subsequent. And I. I want this in part. The reason why I think it's important we're doing here is to convey a very complete understanding and what. What. Yeah, no, I think we can. I think we can end here. I don't want to get into what I. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to get into the. I was going to say, mind you, these negotiations were underway prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and that was something of a game changer. But Obviously, even though Manhattan Project truly was, you know, of the most secret nature imaginable within the executive orbit, within the national security apparatus, there were men who would have been privileged to this information about what the Manhattan Project entailed, at least theoretically, including Truman himself. That's something of a sideline. We'll get into that in the next episode, but keep that in mind too, because I'm sure some people are going to be thinking like, well, what were all these committees doing, you know, talking about these kinds of nuances and how to insinuate, you know, a kind of moral particularism into, you know, into the Allied war effort versus the German war effort, you know, with the issue of the atomic bomb and like, you know, how come people weren't paying attention to that? They were. And we, we'll get into that next time. But I hope this was, I hope this was satisfactory content, man. Like I said, it's, it's a. One's got to strike a balance between, you know, what to leave out because it truly is minutia and what to include. And I, I think this is what was essential in order to provide adequate foundation. And like I said, the nitty gritty of the, the charging instrument we're going to get into next time, as well as some pretty controversial topics that a lot of people are very sensitive about. I think everyone knows what I'm talking about, but. And then after that, I want to do a dedicated episode to Hess and kind of the rebuttal that was not permitted to the indictment. If that sounds agreeable to. Sounds good. You, Mr. Pete. And thank you again, man. And I want to thank everybody for continuing to, to listen and, and drop these wonderful compliments on us and on the entire series. Do your plugs. Okay. You can find me at. On Telegram. We got a very active community there, which is great. It's t me number 7 HMAs or the number 7H 777. You can find me on substack@the real thomas777substack.com you can find me on gab, which I'm not terribly active on, but that I do pretty much back up everything I, I, I, I post or write at least. You know, I include a link to.
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plus sponsored by champacasino on my gab. My gab ID is just at the real Thomas 777 and that is how you can find me. I had somebody asked today about the follow up to Steel Storm. Oh yeah, it's. I'm hoping to have it off to my dear friends at Imperium like literally in the next few days after the fourth of July. But I got sidetracked with some other projects and that set me back about two weeks. But yeah, like at the latest it, it, it, it. The manuscript will be off for publication literally in a week or two, I promise. Awesome. All right. Until the next time. We are returning with Thomas 777. How are you doing Thomas? Hi Pete. I'm very well and thanks as always for continuing to host me what I wanted to get into today. I know these past two sessions, you know, we, we've been deep diving as kind of a. It's kind of a denouement to our treatment of the war with the Nuremberg Tribunal and what it represented in terms of, you know, laying the foundation for the, for the, for the, for the prevailing world order subsequent which now is in some ways being dismantled. I mean not, not owing to the, you know, not by. By choice of, of those who've inherited its, its. Its levers of power from its architects, but just owing to circumstances and, and the lack of, and the lack of the, the power of the mythology that was established there to animate people anymore in terms of their values or in terms of, you know, their, their, their. Their concepts of, of. Of legitimacy and statecraft and any and everything else. You know, it's kind of losing its primacy that had really for three centuries. I mean that's a bit outside the scope, but I want to it for this episode and for the next one too, at least we're part of it. I think we've got to deal with the man of Rudolph Hess. He's not just an interesting personage, but the case of Hess really in some ways kind of shines a light on the entire. Not just the Nurbur proceeding, but the, the way that the Third Reich was treated then by the victorious Allies in terms of, you know, how they characterized it and how it took on this kind of quasi religious dimension and, and was not. Was. Was not neither the regime itself nor the men who had served it were retreated as, as. As. As. As as was precedented as was precedented to treat a vanquished enemy or a. Or soldiers or political officers who'd served an enemy regime like after the cessation of hostilities. You know, everything about this is peculiar. And when we talk about a political theology surrounding, you know, the Second World War as it's characterized in anti fascism, you know, taking on characteristics of an ideology unto itself, almost a secular religion, Hess, the way the case of Hess is, is, is a very concrete example of what I'm talking about. And also there's many mysteries that Hess took to the grave and there's many intrigues surrounding Hess that I think have to be addressed. Everything from whether Operation Sea lion as it was, uh, codenamed, which was, you know, the alleged planned invasion of the United Kingdom by, by the Third Reich that was a strategic ruse, is what all the evidence indicates, based on direct testimony from Adolf Hitler himself, from Joseph Goebbels, uh, uh, uh, private diaries that, you know, were not intended for anybody's eyes but his own, as well as, uh, as well as features of, of, of, of deployment, uh, patterns, you know, from uh, from May 1940 through, through the eve of Operation Barbarosa. But Hess has himself defected to the United Kingdom owing to his belief that he could act as an emissary of peace. And this is, this is kind of dismissed by people, you know, court historians who claim that, well, Hess was just a madman who believed in astrology or he had all these strange ideas or he was just an insane person. And I mean, the record does not demonstrate that at all. I mean it proves that Hess was something of a prodigy. He was an intellectual unlike a lot of his comrades in, in the early nsdap. The kinds of circles that he moved in were, were very, very educated people. And first and foremost among those was Professor Hauschofer, who him, both him and his sons feature very prominently in this kind of tragic narrative that we're going to, going to dive into. So I, I want to deal with, just kind of dive into that now when we're going to deal a bit first with just kind of Hess's biography in his early life. But before I do that, I, I, I want to discuss the end of Hess's life to kind of tie it into, tied into the, the proceeding to discussions we've had has languished in spandau prison for 46 years, or not for 40 years, but before, prior to that he was, he was held at spando itself from July 18th, 1947 until August 17th, 1987. Previously he'd been housed at May Hill Barracks immediately upon his capture, which was in Glasgow, then Buchanan Castle, which was a disused castle Keep, which I think had been in Surrey, England, which I think had been used by the Territorial army, but I'm not sure. Subsequently he was held at my ship place it, or before that he was held at the Tower of London. And I believe briefly when he was at the Tower of London, I think it was the last political prisoner ever held there. Although some of the Englishmen and ladies who have been watching this series can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Hess was the last political prisoner held there as such, finally he ended up at my place, which was designated Camp Z. It was a fortified country mansion and very strange things happened there. Hess wasn't tortured in the sense we'd think of, you know, in some kind of a horror tale kind of way or like Winston SMITHER in, in 1984, you know, he wasn't beaten, he wasn't, he wasn't physically starved, but he was psychologically tortured in a very deliberate way. And, and there's a, there's, there's voluminous documentation about the regimen he was being subjected to to try and drive him to the breaking point. Okay, what we can, what we would consider to be enhanced interrogation, okay, today. And this went on for quite literally years. And by the time he arrived at Nuremberg, you know, the jail adjacent to the, to the, the ad hoc courtroom has appeared to be quite literally out of his mind. But mind you, this was after years of incarceration being subjected to this regimen that was very much tailored to break down his, his, his psychological faculties and, and, and kind of inner core of personality. And for the record, within the years subsequent, when he ended up at Spandow, he became more and more rational as he aged. Okay. And obviously that's not, you know, no, unless he's Benjamin Button, that's not the way things work. But anyway, has languished at his fin for over 40 years at, at his final, his final in, in, you know, jail at Spando. Now, Spando is the listeners gonna understand Spando is not a normal jail. It wasn't like a prison you think of in a, in America or in Europe. And it wasn't even like a barracks. It literally was a castle. It was a disused castle that had been built in 1876 by the Prussian army, okay, As a one part training ground, one part a military detention center. But it truly was this looming castle, okay? And it, the, it, it house was housed. There was only six other men. So there's these six defendants who had not been hanged at Nuremberg. You know, they received sentences, you know, Ranging from you know, seven to 10 years to you know, 25 years. 20 years in the case. I believe everybody who got over 20 years eventually was had their sentence partially manumented owing to Adrian Firmity. But the point is in this, in this kind of massive looming castle keep you had these seven men housed there and that's it. They were Constantine von Nurath, who he was the Reich Foreign Minister before ribbon trop. He was out of office by 1938. So I mean obviously you know sentencing him was, was purely a matter of vengeance. Grand Admiral Eric Rader who'd been head of naval command until 1943 when he was 1-43-13-13 when he was replaced by Carl Donitz donates who is, was, he was the chief of uh, the kriegsmarine uh from January 43 until the day of defeat. And Donitz, which not everybody knows was Adolf Hitler's successor as head of state. And Hitler by, by Hitler's last will and testament, which is very interesting and that was in my opinion a very appropriate decision. And Donnis, and there is an interesting case because uh, a lot of the British Admiralty protested the fact that he was even brought up on charges. The remaining prisoners were Albert Spear, who I think is well known to most people. You know, the Armaments Minister, um, Walter Funk, Reich Minister of Economic affairs and Balder von Schurach who was the Galliter of Vienna and the national leader of the Hitler Youth.
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So this is an odd collection of men and the fact that there was only seven of them there is bizarre. I, I've told people I think of Rudolph Hess as, as the, the real man in the High castle. And for 22 years he was the last prisoner here. So this was one man in this literal castle complex. Now the another bizarre thing. You could not make this up. Spandau Prison. It was the responsibility of, of, of the, of of the Allied control. So all four powers had equal dominion over it. The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. Now all the other four power organizations had, had, had, had, had been, had been dismantled between 1947 and summer 1948 owing to the fact that the British and American zones were combined and then the French zones assimilated into that and the Soviets ejected Vociferously and then with the introduction of a, a national currency, that being the Deutsch mark, into the Western occupation zone. The Soviets simply, they refused to cooperate from then on with, with any ally Control Council derived institution, except for Spandau's administration and air traffic safety over, over Berlin divided Berlin. So to even an idea of how bizarre this was, okay? Now because of that every three months the, there would be a, there would be a changing of, of the guard, like quite literally as of which power was responsible for Spandau Prison, you know, and there'd be, there, you know, there'd be an exchange of flags, you know, the new flag, whether it be Soviet, the Union Jack French flag or you know, Stars and Stripes be hoisted above the prison and an entire new cadre of guards would come in and just like think of the expense of this, okay? But this kind of formality until the day that has died was never done away with, okay? And some people speculate like, well that was one way the Soviet Union could, could keep their, could keep a presence on the ground in West Berlin, you know, and this, and this had certain advantages owing to, owing to espionage related activities. That, that's a very specious argument. And by that rationale there was any number of other ways they could have insinuated themselves into la Control Council derived institutions, okay? It just, it's that, that doesn't make any sense. Okay? So we had, you know, for the last, for the last, you know, two decades of this old man's life. He was a single man, you know, imprisoned in a castle under very tight restrictions. And uh, there were literally the armies of four nations at intervals guarding him. You know, I mean, and anytime there's discussion of him being released, there was kind of this bombardment of, of, of, of, of opponents, you know, talking about, you know, the kind of, you know, the, the human tragedy, the Second World War and the criminality of the regime, which, okay, even if I accept that, it's like, but what does that have to do with this elderly man who defected the United Kingdom before uh, you know, before the events in question. Uh, with the exception of, of conspiring to wage aggressive war with, you know, with that exception, every, every other count of, of the indictment, these were, these were acts that were carried out and, and or, or planned, you know, when, when, when he was. After he'd already, you know, defected and, and obviously no longer held any, any kind of uh, a formal office, rank, title or power within, within his former, within his former fatherland. Now to understand this, to understand oh, and for the record, you cannot visit Spando Prison because literally, the moment that Hess was declared dead, there were bulldozers on standby that destroyed the entire premises, you know, as if it was, uh, it's like something out of, like a horror movie or something about some evil artifact or some, you know, I mean, I don't. I'm not resonating a hyperbole when I describe it this way. You know, this is incredibly strange. And when I was a little kid, I remember when the news story broke, and I, you know, I, I remember think I, I couldn't conceptualize it in particularly developed terms then, but I, It's. It struck me how strange this was, you know, and I don't. It defied all rationality. And nobody, nobody, even people who were kind of the staunchest defenders of, of the status quo as it had been, could really rationalize, like, why it had been, why it had been, why they've been dealt with this way. But let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's deal now with the man of real pesto. Like, who was Hess? He was born in 1894, uh, in Alexandria, Egypt. Uh, his father had been a wealthy businessman who'd inherited an import export firm and had grown it substantially. And his mother was the. Was a Thuringian, and I believe her father had been a fairly successful textile magnate, at least locally. Has lived in Egypt until he was 14 under conditions of substantial wealth. And for those who don't know, from 1882 onward, Egypt was a. What was called the availed protectorate of the Crown, of the British Crown. So Hess grew up under the dominion of the British Empire. Okay? It, There's a. There's a substantial amount of devolved rule. You know, local Arabs had, you know, ran the government and things. And it's not as if. It's not as if the Crown had had its proverbial heel on their necks, but there was always a substantial garrison of British troops there. And it, it, it was, it was clear that, you know, a transgression of its borders were considered an act of war against the Crown itself. So as far as people can say about some members of the right government, you know, that these were provincial people or something, or that they didn't have education or that they weren't worldly. One can't say that about Hess. Okay? And as. As we'll get into, that's one of the reasons why he was courted the way that he was by Adolf Hitler and others. But interestingly, There's David Irving in his biography of Hess. He corralled a bunch of Hess's letters because, you know, Irving, among other things, he's kind of the king of, of direct testimony. And me, because my background is as a lawyer and I, I, some people telling me that means I'm too prone to inductive reasoning and dealing with historical evidence. And that may be true. I don't think so. Because if we're trying to get into the minds of the people we're studying, what better way than their direct testimony? And even if you don't consider them to be reliable to clearance, that itself tells us something about them. But after Hess ended up at Spandau post sentencing, you know, he wrote many letters to his wife and he wrote a fair amount to his mom. And he wrote to his mom that one of the ways he dealt with his time in Spanda was he, he tended the garden there. There was this courtyard area because it was set up again. It was, you know, a castle keep that had been a military barracks and he maintained a garden. And he said it reminded him of, of learning how to, how to cultivate flowers and, and vegetables from, you know, the Arab servants and that they, that they lived with in Egypt. But any event, young Hess, he was availed private tutors, you know, and he learned to speak English again because he, you know, was, was, was well familiar with though a majority of other white Europeans, he, he was, he would have been exposed in early life, would have been English men and women. Okay, so he spoke English with a heavy accent, but he spoke fluent English. And that's I believe is a key. It's not just trivia that's a key, uh, uh, point, uh, not just of interest but of relevance as we'll get into later. But after age 14, uh, Hess, uh, attended uh, high school or secondary school, whatever the Europeans call it in the era in Switzerland and uh, when the first war, when the first world war broke out, he joined the Bavarian infantry. August 1914. He was in a heavy action at Verdun. Personnel records indicate that he, you know, just, he got stellar reviews from commanding officers. They did indicate a kind of maniacal recklessness, well under hostile fire, but it was tempered by disciplined self control. All the squad mates relayed in later years that like the guy was just incredible under fire. You saw heavy action at the Psalm. He was ultimately wounded in Romania. So he had an experience of, with the exception of Africa, obviously. He had, he had, he cut his combat teeth in every possible front during the Great War. And what's really kind of remarkable is that when he was convalescing he just, he, he was literally laid up in a hospital. He volunteered for flight training as a, as a combat aviator. And owing to his record and I'm sure his, you know, quasi aristocratic pedigree helped, he was accepted. He was accepted to flight training, completed it. By the time he deployed as an aviator, the arm assistance was only three weeks away. So he never flew in action, but he became a crack pilot. He kept up his flight skills in the years and decades after, um, up to an. Including the point as we'll get to later, like by, by the time of his, his fateful flight to the Scotland. I mean he, he was capable of flying like what was then cutting edge military aircraft, you know, which is remarkable when one considers that he didn't even learn to fly until he was, you know, an adult, you know, and it's, this was a new technology anyway. It's not as if, it's not as if he was learning from men who had, you know, decades of experience behind them. So in 1919, Hess arrives in Munich. And Munich was what was to become not just the heartland of the, of the, of the National Socialist German Workers Party, but it was, uh, you know, it was, it was a stronghold of the kpd, arguably to the kpd, and Munich was, was more aggressive and favorite direct action more than the Berlin cell did. Part of that owed the fact that, you know, they were, they, they, they, they were challenged in the street by organizations like the Stahlhelm and like the national socialists. But in 1919, the, the Munich Soviet was declared as Bavaria was for all practical purposes conquered by the communists. So Hess joins the Free Corps and at the same time he joins the Thule Society, which, which this, you know, this claims that, you know, this was evidence of Hess being some kind of occultist. It's a, it's a topic for a dedicated podcast or episode. But far too much is made of this. Like, yes, the Thule Society had strange occultic ideas, but as we've talked about generally, this kind of thing was popular in, in throughout the Western world at the time. Conventional religion had taken a tremendous hit. I made the point before. Those are familiar, you know, in the book the Great Gatsby. How the kind of, the kind of, the kind of dopey west egg, you know, decadent rich types, they talk about going to seances and stuff like this is something people did then. Okay, it's the fact that, the fact that the kind of right wing propaganda zine of the Time put up by the Thule Society was full of kind of like occultic stuff and references. That's. I mean, yeah, that's weird, but it's. On its face, that kind of thing is weird. It's not evidence of some kind of, you know, freemason or satanic conspiracy or, or evidence that Hess was a crazy man who believed in, in Viking gods or something. But, you know, this is. The only reason it's really relevant is because this is kind of. When this is kind of where Hess's, you know, he, he didn't even spend most of his early life in Germany. It's kind of formative experiences and later adolescence and as an adult man are, you know, on the battlefield in the military and then in Munich where the communists have taken over and declared, you know, declared, you know, the, the, the Munich Soviet, okay, this, this, this, this led to men being radicalized who are nearly. Would not have been susceptible to that, to those sorts of persuasions. Well, Hess is in the free core. He continues to hone his skills. He continued to hone his skills as an aviator. He also enrolled at the University of Munich. And this is fundamentally important because other than Adolf Hitler, the man who kind of impacted Hess's life more than any other was a man named Carl Hauschofer. Who is Carl Hauschofer? He was, he was a professor of geopolitics. And geopolitics in those days was taken very. It was something of a nascent discipline, both in military academies as well as, you know, in. In conventional university curriculums that dealt with war and peace questions and political economy and all those kinds of things. House Offer has been somewhat redacted owing to. House Offer is not a National Socialist, and we're going to get into that in a minute. But the kind of milieu in which he was situated has led to him being redacted in a way he would not have been otherwise. That's something to keep in mind. Geopolitics, particularly as it. As, as it was impacted by technology and the ability to project hard power. This obviously in the 20th century had huge implications, you know, not just in the first half, but even more so in the atomic age and critically so by the end of the Cold War, when delivery mechanisms that could span thousands of miles and reach their target within, you know, within minutes in some cases. This, this cast a whole new, uh, significance on geostrategic questions and, you know, kind of the interface of, of politics with these kinds of questions and, and how such things can be managed. House was born in 1869, he was a career artillery officer. He commanded a brigade in World War I, retired as a major general. But he was not a traditional military officer. He was the son of an economist, strongly academic from, from a young age. He taught at the war college. He was an expert on Japan, interestingly, and he was a military attache there. He met a bunch of people in the Shoah government and in the Japanese army. He published extensively on Japan from the Meiji Restoration onward. He wrote a lot about Japan's, you know, inevitable ascendancy to world power status. He viewed Japan as a far better hedge against the Soviet Union than he did China. And that was a minority view at that time. How the third right came to favor Japan over China is an interesting topic, but it was. How Shaul Offer was a very heterodox thinker is the key takeaway here and the fact that he, he and has become very, very close. Okay, so again, this kind of cuts against, this kind of cuts against, uh, Hess being cast as wild eyed crank who sat around reading star charts and things. You know, House Offer was a,
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mean we don't have public intellectuals anymore in America, but think about a guy who's kind of at the top of his game. Like, think about, like, think about a guy like John Mearsheimer, okay? Like he, he could, howsoever he be considered a guy kind of in that role. You know, men like that don't go around befriending radicals. You know, they just, they just don't. I mean, even in the, even in, even, even in, even in critical conditions of, of, of revolutionary unrest, it just really doesn't happen. And incidentally, how Shaer did not involve himself in politics directly. And his wife was Jewish. She was of Jewish parentage, I believe maternally. Okay. And this was well known. So that becomes an issue a little bit later, owing to some of the intrigues around Hess. It's, it's circumstantial evidence kind of in favor of, of what I'm going to suggest about some of his overshares to the U. S. Diplomatic corps. But in any event, summer of 1920, this is, you know, kind of at the zenith of uh, of Hess's free core activity as well as, you know, after he's befriended and become, uh, very close to House Offer. Rudolph has me Sadolf Hitler, um, it's not clear exactly when he did, but on July 1, 1920, has joined the National Socialist party. He was member number 16. So Hess was kind of the old fighter of old fighters. Okay. House Offer did not Join the Nash did not join the Nazi Party. Has very much proselytized the party. House Offer did something interesting, though. He periodically, as has been closer and closer to Adolf Hitler. House Offer would ask for Hitler's opinions, particularly in geostrategic questions. Hess would relay those opinions as. As much as he was aware of them. And he confided to Hitler he was above board about the fact he was close to House Offer and Hitler didn't seem to have a problem with that. And House Offer would respond to some of the things Hitler said through Hess. So it's like House Offering Hitler had this kind of strange, like, quasi dialogue going that neither man seemed to be willing to acknowledge was underway with kind of Hess as the intermediary or not. So it's intermediary as kind of the messenger. It's. It's very strange. But in, in context, it makes sense, if nothing else, how Shaer could tell early on that. That Hitler was going to be a significant personage. I don't think anybody really could have guessed his ascendancy would become his total and meteoric as it was. But it's clear that House Offer took him seriously, you know, otherwise why would he have bothered? Interestingly, we talked before about the kind of abuse of language deliberately, but also just somewhat, you know, as a matter of course, due to things being lost in translation. We talk about the term Lebensraum, how polemically it has one meaning, literally, you know, meaning living space. You know, people envision, you know, this kind of. This kind of march eastward, annihilating every indigenous element in their path and, you know, quite literally repopulating the east as living space. Or the envision is this kind of myth of, of. Of the natural soldiers claiming Germany was so overpopulated. Again, that's not what they were saying, and it's not what Laban's wrong means. It's. It's difficult to translate adequately. A better, A better. A better way to characterize it would be to think of it as culture space or like space where we are dominant, you know, but even that's kind of imperfect. But House offer. House Offer utilized the term Laban's wrong pretty liberally. You know, not. Not in. Not in giving stump speeches or something saying this is what Germany needs. But he'd use it to refer to the process by which, you know, cultures become dominant after appropriating, know, territory, you know, through conflict or through insinuating themselves in way short of conflict yet that utilize hard power, the threat of it, and then slowly but Surely become, you know, quite literally the dominant political organism in that space. Okay, so was this just a common term in the kinds of things that Hitler read and House offer read also? Was it something Hitler picked up from House Hoffer through Hess? Very likely, in my opinion, because it's not, it's, it's not, it's not some totally obscure term or it wasn't in the epoch, but it's not as if it was something that was that common. So I find that very interesting. And as time went on, has still developed something of a hero worship of Hitler. And again, you know, this was a pretty worldly individual. He, you know, he, he'd been born abroad. He, he traveled all over the place. He was good pals with House Offer was kind of his father figure. And, you know, he displayed no signs of mental instability. But he consistently, in his letters and in his own diaries refer to Hitler as the Tribune, you know, not as Herr Hitler, you know, not at the fur, but as the Tribune, which is an interesting choice of words. Hess was kind of, he, he was kind of, he had kind of a dilettante's fixation with, with Roman stuff. But I believe in this case this, that's too obscure a term for. To be some. For him to be like, looking for gravitas, where, you know, maybe it's not there. Tribune can be translated in a number of ways. You know, it's somebody who speaks for the people. You know, it's somebody who is kind of like the figure who most embodies the zeitgeist and is sort of a messianic hero in like the Carlisle sense. It's, it's, it's got a priestly connotation in some ways. So keep that in mind. I think that that's very instructive. And nobody else to my knowledge, referred to Hitler in those terms. I mean, Hester recalled Hitler there to his face or spoke of him that way around party comrades. He, he called him the Tribune in his diary and he called him the Tribune when he'd write to his, his wife. One of the ways he described Hitler. Let me pull it up. I found this paragraph to be telling. This is what he, this is what he said in a letter to. He wrote a paper when he was at university and he said you sent excerpts of it. The House offer. The paper actually won an award. This was when he was most active with the free corps. And the subject of the paper was a polemical paper for some kind of, you know, some kind of public speaking course. And the exercise Was, you know, describe. Describe what. What type of man would be. Would be the ideal leader of Germany, you know, and this was in 1921. So obviously the model that. For this. For this archetype that has. Is referring to as Hitler. What he says is, quote, the deeper the Tribune's original roots are anchored in the broad masses. And the better he understands their psychology, the less workers will mistrust him and the more followers he will win among these most energetic ranks of the people. He himself has nothing in common with the masses. He has a personality in his own rights like every great man. When necessity. When necessity dictates, he does not recoil from bloodshed. Great issues are always decided through blood and iron. And our issue is to go under or to rise anew. Again, that might sound overwrought because often things do when translated from German to English. But people. I try and emphasize the people, regardless of the. Regardless of their dialect. People just wrote differently in those days. Like, I read letters from the era of In. In English, you know, and they. They seem. The language doesn't seem corny and stupid and soaring like when these, like, morons in Washington try and talk these days. But it seems, like stilted, but at the same time, like, packed with emotion to the point where it's. It seems un. Like unseemly. But that's just the way people wrote, you know, so that's something to bear in mind. But I. I mean, regardless, too. I mean, whatever. However, when it feels about heads or however. However anybody feels about his kind of worshipful view of Adolf Hitler, what's significant is this is what has thought, okay? And if we're kind of. If we're gonna unpack his motives, which, you know, going on three quarters of a century now, people have speculated about and said all kinds of strange things about. I'm prone to take what has said at face value, okay? Because why. Why else would he have said it? You know, These are things he wrote to his intimates. These things. These are things he wrote to his father figure. Things he wrote to his, you know, girlfriend or they became his wife. Things he wrote in his own diary. I mean, like, who was he? Who exactly was he? If this was an invitation, like, who was he trying to impress? You know,
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But it we're really going to put Hess on the map. In the NSDAP is 1922. Hess had joined the SA and he established a student battalion. And these guys at the forefront of confrontation with the kpd. GU was able to poach not just a lot of his, a lot of his veteran buddies. But you know, there was, there was a right wing, there's a strongly right wing subculture to, to, to universities in those days. I'm making a point. I make a point. A lot of people, there's, there's the caricature, the kind of hospital caricature of the right and of fascists, like in its epoch was that these kinds of weird, violent guys who like, read too many books and were like, you know, believe in crazy things because they spent all their time, you know, kind of kind of debating esoterica and coming up with, you know, insane ideas and they'd go out and fight with people. Like this idea of them being like ignorant guys who never read anything like that was kind of, that was more the reputation of the kpd. You know, you had guys who worked on assembly lines in the KPD basically going to fight like demobilized soldiers who are now going to college, like in Weimar. But so you can say a lot of things about these guys, probably a lot of which aren't flattering. But it, it's, there's something a little, a bit ridiculous. Like then it's now when antifascists like act like, you know, act like the extreme right is like a gang of illiterates or something. It's not, that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense. And it's not the ranks from which they draw. But at the same time, there was not a hell of a lot of, you know, even, even in kind of the failing, the failed and failing state of Weimar, you know, college wasn't like it is now, where it's just kind of like, where it's just kind of like what the middle class does with their kids before they can figure out, you know, like where, you know, where, where they're trying to find him a job. You know, basically if you were upwardly mobile, you know, you went, you went to a big C university, you know, and it was more egalitarian in a place like, than in America or especially in the uk. But point is like these. There was something still viewed as unseemly about, you know, getting involved in like, street politics. So guys like Hess were doing like God's work for the party, but basically poaching these college guys and you know, not just getting them involved. It's kind of like the political vanguard and for the sake of optics and everything else and building, you know, cultural momentum and cachet, but, you know, these are the guys also who you want to crack heads against the kpd, you know, because they're young and full of piss and vinegar. So that. That led to him becoming. Becoming he and Gearing, I'd say in those. Him Gearing, Max von Schubner Richter, who died at a. At. At Munich in 1923 at the Pooch and Captain Rom. I'd say we're probably Hitler's inner circle at that point. And at the. At the Munich Pooch. It's complex. We can at some point. But I want to reiterate all the intrigues that led to it. But. And that were underway as it was initiated by Hitler and uh, and Ludendorff and uh, and. And allies, I was gonna say, and friends. That makes it sound like, like, Like, I don't know, like Bwinkle and Rocky or something. But it, but the. The Munich pooch. Hess was assigned the responsibility to arrest the. The key ministers, the Munich City Council and essentially coerced them into, you know, supporting the. The Pooch and telling, you know, and, and. And there's Hitler. Hitler gave this responsibility to has because, I mean, Hess was. Was civilized. There's no chance he was going to, you know, brutalize or shoot these guys. And the idea too was that it has. Was he had. They got a pedigree to be able to communicate with these people. Okay. And this becomes significant later that these were kind of the characteristics that were. Were coveted that has exhibited by the party. I mean, I, I think in a lot of ways that's a tragic because I think. I think it was reused frankly by the Party. But it. We'll get into that too. But point being, Hess executed these orders. He did so correctly. He did so without some kind of disaster, like any of them. Any of the city councilmen being murdered or anything else. And after, After Hitler was arrested, you know, after. After the Pooch ended in disaster and uh, and you know, and. And their comrades died charging the police cordon, Gearing went into hiding in Austria and so did Hess. And as the trial of Hitler and those who'd been taken into custody was underway and coming to a close has self surrendered to the Munich authorities. The kind of court history view is that had he not done that, you know, he would have been convicted in absentia and the case would have been referred probably to another jurisdiction and he could have been looking at a decade behind bars. I think I, I don't accept that. And if you look at the way Hitler and the rest of the, the rest of the, the rest of the, the, the 1923 revolutionaries are treated, I, I don't, I don't think that's credible. My opinion is that it wasn't his loyalty to Hitler, but that was paramount. Hess wasn't going to let Hitler go to prison while he's remained in the free world. But it has basically has, was an upper middle class guy. He had a basic respect for law and order. He's the kind of guy who goes to college in those days who joins the army, becomes you know, a valued nco, you know, collects a whole row of medals and goes on to be you know, a businessman of, of so, of, of, of a, of a worldly profile like his father. You know, I mean guys, guys like they had turn themselves in because that's the right thing to do, you know. Like he wasn't a gangster like Rom, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't a swashbuckling lunatic like hair gearing, you know. Like he basically was a decent guy, you know, I mean like for better and for worse, you know, and has as everybody knows, he drew an 18 month sentence. Hitler drew a five year sentence but ultimately served 264 days in Landsberg. Okay, so basically Hitler and has their sentence ended up being right about the same. I think Hess walked out of prison, I think something like 10 days after Hitler did. But while they were in prison, Hitler was not a skilled typist as most people weren't in those days. Has good. Hess was, was a skilled typist and he also had a knack for editing. Hitler dictated Mein Kampf and has transcribed it onto his typewriter which he had brought in because the Landsberg prison administration was actually like pro National Socialist. So they were doing easy time. I mean being in prison is horrible no matter what. But it, you know, it, we're, we weren't the prison that uh, the, the prison experience of Landsberg was not sadly and rather tragically like the prison experience of Hess later in life. I mean it, it was an easy regime and he was allowed things Like a typewriter. And during this period I believe I, you know, when you collaborate with people on, on writing, you know, even whether you're, I don't know what it's like for like literary types, but you know, even political academic writing and things, you know, that's something that's, you've got everyone's trust in your editor and you've also, that creates like a certain, like bond. I mean has it proven to, has it proven to Hitler that he, you know, he, he was a political soldier. But also I think they're true kind of meeting in the minds like Ham and Landsberg. Like I really think that and you know, I, I, I think that's just kind of a basic human characteristic. And I, you know, I, I further was, I consider myself a writer. So I think I, I understand it and understand how people relate to one another within the medium. I, I don't think I'm just speculating. But interestingly, during these months that hesit transcribing mind comp, her house offer brother house offer came to visit Hess no less than eight times, always on a Wednesday, always remaining through the morning and even into the afternoons. So basically like all day. So again, owing to what we know before, you know, in the free world about you know, this kind of strange quasi communication between Hitler and Househofer, like as, as Hess was writing Mein Transcribing Mein Kampf, he had to be relaying, you know, even it was just House saying, what are you working on? And you know, he saying like, oh, the Tribune has me writing, you know, his, his autobiography. Oh, like what? Tell me about it. You know, you got to, there had to be some kind of cross pollination there, right? I don't believe there was not. You know, so it's, that's not to say how was a National Socialist at all, but a lot of the, the geopolitical takes in Minecamp, as well as some of the historical observations are what is kind of most meaty and most relevant. The rest of it's basically an election year screed and you know, kind of the grievances of, you know, 1923, you know, but that I can't prove it and it sounds like conjecture no matter what, but circumstantially I, I believe, and I think there's a pretty good case to be made that more than a little bit of House offer is in mein hump. And I find that fascinating. The most interesting anecdote to me from Hess's time in Landsberg with Hitler, he really has relayed this to his wife. And this is kind of thing, obviously, that you wouldn't relate anybody else. Hitler was a kind of like a. Kind of like a typical Bavarian. You know, Hitler was a lot more emotional than, say, like a Prussian in the way he expressed himself. But, you know, there's even the southern Germans and even the Bavarians and even the Austrians, there is a kind of stoicism. They're not emotional in the sense that Latin people are or something. Okay. And I'm not saying that negatively. I'm just making an observation. So, I mean, Hitler was not prone to. To displays of emotion. I mean, there were people he. His intimates wrote that he'd become agitated or angry, but he. He's a guy really close to the chest. And Hess is the only person other than. Other than Krebs and Bergdorf, which I think is somewhat dubious because I think they were trying to cast a sort of dramatic scene. Has claims he saw Hitler cry once because the. Hitler came into. Has his cell and he began, you know, reading out passages that he'd, you know, written down that he wanted transcribed into the book, which became Minecamp. And he began talking about the Great War. And Hitler didn't discuss this, apparently. Like, even when. Even when the rest of the comrades in Landsberg were talking about the front and their experiences, Hitler didn't really say anything. And what Hester laid, he said, Hitler came in. It said. He said Hess said the Tribune, which again was, you know, is his idiosyncratic term for Hitler, he said, came into my cell. And he began reading slower and slower and more and more haltingly. His face expressionless, he groped around a seemingly boundless concept. The pauses grew longer and more frequent until he suddenly put down the pages, dropped his head into his hands and appeared to be weeping. After a while, continued to. Hitler pulled himself together and burst out. I shall exact a pitiless and terrible revenge on the first day I can. I shall take revenge in the name of all whom I shall then see before my eyes. And for Hess, apparently this was a turning point, because something can't be emphasized enough is that pretty much every man by the 1920s, pretty much every man under 40 years, a. 40 years of age or so in Germany, like, had been at the front. This is like a formative experience of their lives. And it. It created this huge wedge between them and everybody else. And, you know, to some guys, this was like their. Their. Their only experience of adult life, you know, was like being sent off to the army and then, you know, going to the front for four years. You know, it's not like they were rotating out after eight months or something. The degree to which, like that experience is. Was the core of the nsdap, like really can't be overstated. And the only. The only. The only party luminary who didn't serve at the front in the. In the Great War was Helmar Shocked. Which is interesting. He was. He was the. He was the chairman of the. The Reichsbank. And. Well, uh, we'll get into that when we get in the meet in Nuremberg. But I. Go ahead.
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Michael Jones talked about Shocked. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Nakonic's a usury, I'm sure. And, and yeah, but it's. Well, the inflate. The whole inflation thing too. Yeah, yeah. Like how much shocked he. How much shot was older. He was older than most of the men in. In the party, but he also. He. Something that was part of it. But he. He never. It's not like he avoided military service. It just wasn't. I think. I think he was beyond the normal age for. Yeah, I mean, he was beyond the draft age. He was also beyond the age to get a commission. Like generally, you know, he had. It. He had. No, it wasn't. His military service wasn't in his lineage, but he. That's one of the shocks. Was respected for his intellect and he never pretended to be something he wasn't. But he was. You could tell. He was always. You could tell he was always just like, at odds. I. Correct. Let me correct myself, Goebbels. Himmler was too young. So Himmler didn't serve at the front. Himmler, though, became a. A very close. It became very close to Ernst Ron, in part because Himmler. Himmler was in heavy action with the free core against the kpd. And I mean, Rom really was a brute and really was a gangster. Okay? Him. Himmler dropped bodies. If he gained the respect of Ron, there's no way that he didn't. Okay. So I gotta consider him to be an exception. Goebbels. The case of Goebbels is interesting. Goebbels was a too. But it. That, that's. That's. That. That's. That's an entire, uh. That's an entire other issue. But my point is it was. It was. It was. It was exceptional. Okay? And this. The. The mythology of the Great War, even for a guy, even for. Even for a man like Himmler who, Who came of age literally, you know, as. As the as the armistice was implemented, you know, he, he grew up in the aftermath and he grew up fighting in the street with men like Rom. Like as, as is kind of as his, uh, as his kind of role models. So the point stands. Even though, yeah, I just want to, I, I, I know another way somebody's gonna be like, what are you talking about? You know, Himmler didn't serve the front, neither Goebbels. So yeah, I corrected myself, but that, that, but has, has told, uh, has told, uh. He wrote in similar to his wife that in so many words that this is a turning point. Like I'm now like beholden to this man and his, his, his cause being basically. Okay, like it has viewed this in, in, in very messianic terms. Okay? For better or worse, it, it doesn't matter what any think, what anybody thinks of that. That's what Hess thought. Okay? And it, we, we hear this again and again from people who were within M and Forest as well as this mortal. There was a, A very, there, there was a, there was an otherworldly characteristic to the way that he affected people, you know, and that, that, that, that some things like that can't be contrived. Okay? But Hess is released from Landsberg in 1925. As we just mentioned, like, owing to Hitler's sentence being manumitted, he and Heller were released within a week of each other or something like a week or 10 days. And as we're discussing before we, we, we began recording has became really the face of the nsdap. You pointed out that in Triumph of the Will, Hess is everywhere. Like, Hess was a handsome guy for the time, but not, not in some, not, not in some way like a matinee idol that would seem, you know, contrived. You know, he was, he was, uh, he was a guy who was, uh, he was a guy who looked good on camera, but in kind of a rugged, you know, like, relatable sense, you know, and he was a war hero. You know, the, and more and more has became one of the most popular speakers that, that the party had. You know, like Gary could always whip up a crowd, but, you know, Gearing really wasn't. Gearing really was an aristocrat. And Gearing also, there was something of a, of a thuggishness about Gearing, you know, like during. Related. Great. He related really, really well to these a feat types. You know, Gearing literally was raised in a castle, okay. Like he knew he was one of these odd guys who, or maybe it's not so odd. You know, he he was perfectly at home around gangsters as well as around aristocrats, you know, and he, and the men who served under him like, loved Gearing. They thought he was great. But he's not, he's not a guy who the common man found particularly relatable, you know, which is understandable. But Hess and later Goebbels, people really, really responded to them, you know, and, and unlike Goebbels was a short, you know, like an attractive guy. Like, but I mean by his own admission, like he was aware of it. It's not punitive to say that, you know, Hess was a guy who, who was attractive to people, you know. And like Hess was very much, this was very much faithful to, to Ilsa who became his wife. And he wasn't any kind of womanizer, but like, you know, broads liked him a lot. You know, like he, he, he became the face of the party. And as we'll get into that, that, that, that, that became significant now around this time. Has, has took a, he took a forum position on curl House Offer staff, which is interesting. And what was convened incident to that was a, a kind of think tank, as we think of it today called the Deutsche Academy was founded in Munich in 1925. It was one part three think tank. It was one part kind of public policy NGO in one part strategic forum, you know, dealing with geopolitics, the Burgunding era strategic competition. And it also acted as something of a lobbying group and a representative agency for ethnic Germans abroad. Okay. And the Third Reich was later and, and the, the NASA and nsdap, they, they took a very strong interest in, in, in, in the German diaspora for a lot of reasons, including the fact that this was politically exploitable. And you know, with the emergence of a truly global kind of politique, you know, ethnic lobbies were coming into their own. I mean we saw this dramatically with the gaze of Churchill, but this was, this was not just, you know, part of the German Reich. The German Reich's fixation on race and particularly the NSDAP's kind of fixation on, you know, on bloodline and it being, you know, kind of dispositive of political outcomes and things. I mean this, this made sense. And House Offer again was, was not, was not, was not any kind of National Socialist or even radical. Now the way other people viewed Hess, there's not a lot from House Offer himself about Hess like would like, but based on their ongoing relationship which in some ways became remote as, as the party came to power. But it as, as we'll get into. Has continued to continue to advocate not just for a house offer, but for his family. And as we, as we mentioned, Alex offers wife was Jewish and, and his house offers sons who has been close to, I mean under the, under the, under the relevant laws of the Third Reich. You know, they were racial Jews. So we'll get into that in a minute. But Albert Krebs was the party gal lighter in Hamburg and he, he come across, he'd come across Hess a lot because I mean this was, this is the party was finally breaking through. You know, late 1920, 1930 was, you know, the, the mass breakthrough. But you know, 1925, 1926, you know, after, after Hitler's release from Landburg Prison, this was an era of really fevered, you know, kind of, kind of politicking, you know, at the, at the ballot box. I mean they, Hitler himself, you know, had declared early in his prison sentence that, you know, through Rosenberg that, you know, we, we've abandoned, you know, the bayonet for the ballot book box. So Hess, he, he became something of an intimate of Albert Krebs. And in Krebs own words he wrote, Hess was no primitive simpleton or hide or hidebound fanatic, but was almost what was almost bordering on the pathological and subtle sensibilities. He could listen calmly to contrary opinions. His foul and his thoughts followed impeccable and legal lines. But it was Hess who innocently created the image of a furor, who was an infallible individual. When he spoke of our furor, the millions would adopt the phrase precisely because Hess himself was so intensely believable, which I think is interesting. David Irving had a. Irving was the first Western historian to translate Goebbels diaries which were voluminous. You know, we're talking like thousands and thousands of pages. The Goebbels diaries had been discovered in, in a literally a bank vault underneath Berlin. A few blocks from would have been the Fur bunker, okay, by the Red Army. And these Red army troops found it, you know, all these boxes and boxes, everyone's diaries, and they sent it back to Moscow. It ended up in, it ended up in the NKVD archives, which then became the KGB Archives, which then became the FSB in 1991. And David Irving being the candy Englishman that he is, he always had a good relationship with the Russians somehow, even during the Cold War. I've got my own thoughts on that, but that's. It would sound conspiratorial, but Irving, my zone account in 1991, he's in Moscow. He's at the FSB archives. He's talking to this lady, you know, who's a. A Russian government liaison there, and he's telling her that, you know, I really wish, you know, there was more documentary evidence on Goebbels by his own hand and things, you know, and she, like, matter of fact, they told him, like, oh, you know, we have the girls diary, so you can see him if you want. Like, you thought she was joking. And sure enough, she, like, you know, shows it to him. And he said that he, like, he's like, you know, he was trying to. Was trying to quash like, any. Any. Any kind of visible reaction to. Of hype or like, anything because he's like, you don't want him to suddenly change their mind. But he literally translated the Geral Diaries, you know, and excerpts of that became his book on Geral. But he extrapolates a lot from that testimony of just Geral's writing in his private diaries to kind of inferring things about Geral's takes and his views on things. What Gerbil said about Hess, and all he said directly about Hess was that he said, he found. I found him to be, quote, most defiant, friendly, clever and reserved. He is a kind fellow. And what Irving said was, he said that this was like, gerbil speak for, you know, this guy. This guy's a very nice guy, but he's a chump.
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You know, Goebbels was something of a gangster. Okay. He even looked the part I made, you know, like a lot of. Like a lot of, like a lot of John Cazale or what was his name? The guy who played Fredo in the Godfather. Yeah. And the guys in the Deer Hunter. Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He looks like Goebbels, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's. I can. Yeah, Goebbels, like, a lot. And, you know, girls always dressed to the Nines. He was like the best dressed guy on deck. You know. Like he Goebbels in some ways like a lot of like Goebbels wasn't from the Tyrol, but like like those kinds of people. He was like basically like an Italian guy who spoke German okay. Pretty much, yeah. I got to imagine I, I, yeah. I can't imagine Goebbels thinking yeah thinking like you know, yeah, this, this, this, this husky like he's all right but he's you know, he's a square. Forget about it. And Goebbels was also 5. 5. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah. He was girls was a short guy. Girls is an enigma too like for a guy. Yeah for like a short guy with, with a bad leg who like frankly was not an attractive guy. Like he not only were people terrified of him, but he was like a big ladies man. Like he, he really was, he really was like a gangster. Like I, strange that might seem and I mean frankly whether people like it or not, I mean we forget the digression. But what, what we what you can what people consider to be kind of like convention in, in, in, in the way media interfaces with political campaigns. Like I mean Goebbels frankly started a lot of that. You know, I mean it just like a lot of modern film like goes to Lenny Rifenstahl, you know. I mean it that people shouldn't feel good or bad about that. It's just a fact. But yeah, the, but it has as, as the party's fortunes uh, improved, so did hess's. He By 1930, you know, he had, he had a salaried position. You know, that was the year that the NSDAP broke through with over 6.3 million votes. The liberal. Centrist. Liberal and centrist voters are made wary of them. But nevertheless this was a true milestone and much that owed to has being the face of the party in the public mind. Like I really believe this has also he got, has got to know Willie Messerschmidt because he you know the, the aircraft designer and he has secured a twelve thousand dollar Reichsmark loan and, and purged a plane from Messerschmitt so that he could keep up you know with, with uh, so they could keep his aviation shops with you know then current aircraft designs. Which is fascinating. Just like I mean Hess was a remarkable guy. Like nobody can deny that but he, he What I want to, I want to conclude this in a minute frankly. Like I, I was hoping I'd kind of get farther in my account, but I don't want to next episode will conclude this this Hess treatment and deal with his flight to, to London and or to Scotland and, and his incarceration and, and, and begin to dive into the Nuremberg indictment. But I do want to add finally in 1930, after the NSDAP breakthrough, Hess wrote, he wrote to House Offer this kind of cryptic letter. House Offer was visiting London the following month and what Hess said to him was quote, you'll probably be asked in England for your views on us, us being the, you know, the Nazi party and the situation in Germany at large. He says, describe us as we are a wall against Bolshevism. As for the meaning of Bolshevism, you can tell the British about that from what you saw before your very eyes. Meaning like they're in, you know, in Munich, you know, in days past. The movement, you know, meaning the National Socialist movement is the last hope for millions of people. It is of universal importance for the whole of Europe is threatened by Bolshevism. How our National Socialist movement is assessed abroad and particularly in Britain is of fundamental importance. And you will probably be coming into contact with influential men over there. And interestingly as we talked about or actually I'll, I'll say that for the next time because it gets into the diplomatic intrigues that I believe proximately cause in part Hesses flight. But, but yeah, I hope, I hope the listeners don't view this as too much of like a digression tangent. I don't really do it as a tangent because like I said it's, it's essential to, it's essential to understanding the, the disposition of the Allies in, in juristic terms with what, how Hess was treated and what status he was availed and, and, and, and what have you. But also like what was in his mind in my opinion and what his intentions were are essential to judging kind of the merits of, of the indictment and just I'm going somewhere with this which I think will become clear like our next session. But I, I, I, you know, the response so far has been outstanding to our series and I've got you to thank for that. So once again I really really appreciate it man. We can, we can continue anytime you want after this weekend. Sure Plugs and yeah, you can find me my sub stack is uh, uh, real thomas777.substack.com you can find us on Telegram. We've got a very active community there. It's TME the number 7H777. You can find me on Gab as well, but I generally just use gab to back up my other platforms. It's just at the real. Thomas777. In coming weeks, I'm hoping for summer's end, we're going to launch a formal YouTube channel. I don't want to get into that here, but we are developing a, a larger footprint in terms of, in terms of diversified media. So I, I, I hope that people are excited about that. I am. But yeah, I, again, I can't thank you enough and I can't thank the listeners and viewers enough. Continuing talking about Mr. Rudolph Hess is Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well. Thank you again, Pete. I'm trying to recall where we left off last episode. I think we were talking about some of the intrigues or I wanted to get into some of the intrigues related to Hess and the Househoffer family. Carl House Offer, the father, you know, who is Hess's mentor and, and, and, and Hess's father figure in many ways has had a good relationship with his father, but his father was in, that was, was in Egypt, you know, still that's where he resided permanently. And after, after Hess went to boarding school and then, you know, into the Bavarian army, you know, he, he and his father literally remote, they, they mostly related by correspondence. So Carl House Offer and you know, remained probably other than Adolf Hitler, probably the most important like, male figure in Hess's life. And House Offer, the younger Carl's son, Albrecht, he took, he, he, he became a key figure not just in terms of Hess's efforts to court the United Kingdom, which as, as much as, as the furor himself and Ribbentrop consider this to be an e. Objective. Hess was, was zealously committed too, probably even more so, almost. He is kind of, you know, as we discussed Hess, one of the things that created the strong bond between him and House Offer was, you know, Hess was very much a student of geopolitics, which in the early to mid 20th century was really coming into its own, you know, due to the convergence of political questions and, and, and geostrategic power, political ones. And, and there was a decidedly military aspect to this too, owing to the world situations and technologies that had, had, had rendered distance that previously would have, you know, precluded, uh, you know, deployment of, of, uh, of offensive weapons across national frontiers. Obsolescent, you know, like the world became a much smaller place and you know, being within striking distance of a state's capital in, in metrics of the hundreds of miles, obviously owing to the advent of strategic aircraft or at least the potential they're in, you know, changed everything. So that's one thing to keep in mind about Hess's orientation towards the world as he experienced it and, and what he was charged with in his official role as, you know, within the party and, and within government. And Albrecht Carl House offers son he was something of a young prodigy and we'll get into the fact that a lot of his ascendancy and he, he was a very, he enjoyed some very privileged postings in, in university life prior to, during the late Weimar period and into the, the, the Third Reich National Socialist era. And on more than one occasion he'd had an audience with Adolf Hitler. Okay. Not all of these meetings were amiable, particularly after Hess's flight. He was one of the people that was called to task to explain what had happened. And that certainly was not a, a friendly exchange. But my point being that how Shawford the Younger, especially kind of his proximity to Hess and his ascendancy to these professional heights into these coveted positions within the Third Reich, it it kind of shoots the pieces. The, the narrative that there was just kind of one singular policy, you know, towards people who were of Jewish heritage or that there was a singular kind of inflexible standard that was always abided, it was always irrational and, and could not, could not be, you know, could not be compromised or, or nor exceptions rendered. You know, it's, it's indicative of the fact that there was, there was far more nuance and complexity here. So we've, and what this all comes back to is that Hess's flight has to not lose his mind and you know, nor, nor is he under the, nor is he under the influence of crazy astrologers or something. Hess's flight to, to, to the UK was very calculated and it was very sincere and it was very well thought out and the fortunes of everybody's in, in Hess's orbit owed to that. So that's, that's kind of why I'm emphasizing these figures like the House offers who in a lot of kind of court mainstream history treatments are just treated as sort of peripheral figures. That's, that's. You cannot get a complete picture unless you deal with these dynamics and the, in the, in the character of the personalities involved now moving forward with T.O. has himself after the leading up to and subsequent to the National Socialist ascendancy to power. Hess was in. We, we talked last session about, you know, Hess sort of was a man who owing to his kind of middle class morality and his overall sort of decency was not really cut out for political warfare. I mean, the man was obviously not a physical coward, nor was he afraid of violence. You know, he was a war hero. He'd. He'd fought the KPD in the streets as a. As, you know, as. As an essay battalion leader. But the kind of. The kind of Machiavellian ruthlessness that was called for to, you know, to quell revolutionary uprisings within the party, as we'll see, you know, with the Night of Long Knives, as well as just kind of the intriguing that that was required against men who had been his comrades, you know, in the. In the immediate past, in order to consolidate, you know, the power of the. Of the Hitler wing of the Party, you know, to which Hess was sublimely loyal. Like, he didn't really have the stomach for that. And Hitler, I believe, whatever else can be said of the man Hitler was. He had learned a tremendous understanding of social psychology and, and what, What. What people were capable of in terms of their. In. In terms of their moral conscience. And he tended to reserve duties and obligations owing to his evaluation of these things. So Hess found himself insinuated into the role of, quote, deputy furor and, And. And head of the Reich Chancery. And that was kind of an ideal role for him because. Called for a very human touch, you know, in. Because it was a. It was a public relations role, but also, you know, in terms of maintaining. Establishing and maintaining a quorum within. Within the party ranks. You know, Hess was a man who people intrinsically liked and trusted. Okay? And in some ways, Hess was a perfect National Socialist. And in the Third Reich, unlike in a state like the Soviet Union, there really was a cliff between the party and the state. It was not a fiction as it was in these communist regimes. You know, the National Socialist Party was not the government of Germany, and vice versa. Things became that way as time went on. And the ultimate objective of Hitler himself and of some of these ambitious functionaries within. Within the executive branch, like Himmler, they definitely aimed to insinuate the party apparatus formally into the state structure in a way that it was. One was indistinguishable from the other. But this is not really an organic process. And like I said, it was not just some kind of fiction that was maintained. So Hitler, Hitler maintaining Hassan, his role as kind of, you know, supreme executive over. Over party affairs, second only to himself, made sense. And it's, It's. It's anecdotal.
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See terms and conditions 21 evidence of, of. Of what I just suggested about the character of Hess as those who were his intimates attested to and I think as the historical record substantiates. So on April 21st, 1933, Hitler issued the following decree. He, he said, I appoint the director of the Political Central Commission, Rudolph Hess as my deputy and authorize him to decide all matters concerning the direction of the party in my name. Now the establishment of the Central Commission itself, obviously in some ways that's mirroring, you know, the central committee structure of Marxist Leninist parties. That was not accidental. And again too like we talked about in previous episodes, that's not somehow, that, that's not somehow derivative in some callow sense. People really did look to the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, whatever else they might have thought about it in terms of its ethics and in terms of political values. Structurally it was viewed as a very progressive and I say proximate value neutral terms organization for, for a party apparatus. And that's like I said. But in the case of the, in the case of the Third Reich, two there's the added variable that you know, again there was nothing. There was not some organic union of, of the party in the state, you know, the, the latter preceded the former, you know, by centuries in the case of Germany in some form or another. And nor was it really within the, within the National Socialist charter to try and replace the state with itself. That, that came to pass owing to political realities. But I think the point stands. Hess did confide during, shortly after this appointment and this kind of formal disclosure or testament of his role that he did resent the fact that, you know, he did not have any formal power within the government, only within the party. And Gearing, you know, and has had amiable relations. They were both old fighters and, and but just generally has really didn't have any enemies during himself. I mean in addition to being a very, a very, a personage of extraordinarily high profile within the party. Gearing uh, had been appointed Prime Minister of Prussia after the uh, after the uh, National Socialist ascendancy to power, in addition to its chief of police and the origins of the Gestapo were in the Prussian police force which under Gehring became a political police force that had dominion over the entirety of the Reich and then later it was assimilated into the, the SS and Gary stepped away from, you know, his role as any kind of police executive. But that's in part because he was slated for bigger and better things. But in any event, during Gary approaches Hitler and he suggests that, you know, it has to be given a role in, in government, you know, rather than just being relegated to purely administrative matters of the party. So on June 29th, 1933, Hitler issued a decree allowing her to attend all meetings of the right cabinet. The rationale being to guarantee the quote, unity of party and state and thereby confer in equality of status, in equality of status at least informal terms and party functionaries to that of, or with that of state office holders. So Hess became a Reichs Minister without portfolio. So that's, that's significant also because that obviously because you know, Hess was sitting in on, on, on, on, on affairs, on cabinet affairs. So he'd been a. He, his, his, his information, his situational awareness of the, of the dealings of government were rather complete, which is important in analyzing his motives for the flight to the uk. He would. The only, the only matters, the only substantial policy matters that would have been hidden from his purview would be military ones. But that was really the case for everybody except the, the High command and Hitler himself and some aspects of the SS who are liaising with the, with the regular army and of course later the ss. You know, owing to the, owing to the might of the Vaan SS and its forces in being and its assimilation into the Vermont command structure, you know, they, they more than just liased with, with, with the German Eye Command, they became essentially part of it. But that's not moving on though. That's not to say Hess was with. Hess was not without real authority. It was. And his ideas were taken seriously. That's, was really the, the German Labor Front was really his brainchild and the Labor Front was a real thing. It wasn't. It wasn't just this kind of paper organization that had been suggested and then created, you know, to kind of, you know, to kind of provide some sort of ready alibi to offset criticism that, you know, after the, after the trade unions had been, it had been smashed and, and a lot of, you know, a, a good number of labor leaders had been investigated and, or arrested for uh, for communist activity or Marxist sympathy. This, you know, the, this, the Labor Fund was a real thing. It wasn't just, you know, the, it wasn't just the right government saying oh no you know, we. We. We've got a formal. We've got a formal structure of Of. Of you know of labor representation within the. Within the party apparatus. It actually had real power. And Robert Ley, who was. Who became as the war especially during the war years, he became instrumental in dealing with the exigencies of production and and addressing labor shortage needs, uh, in some ways not particularly ethical. But he didn't personally enrich himself by these measures. They were just rather brutal. But le was a serious personage and it has a pointed way. You know, the House was not afraid of strong personalities within his orbit and within his immediate. As his immediate subordinates. And a lot of men in. In power positions are even those were you know even ones who are talented sometimes has also had responsibility for attending the knee to the Volks. The Volk Deutsche Volkso were ethnic Germans outside the. Outside the boundaries of the Third Reich or outside of its. Outside of its borders. And as we talked about last session as a. As a political force extrinsic to the. To Germany proper, uh, I mean it wasn't just a German emphasis on blood in the national community and you know defending the national community wherever it whoever it may be found. But also in the pre war era there was an understanding of, you know that nascent as it was the great power of, you know, mobilized ethnic lobbies, particularly in Europe, but also to. In the United States and Central and South America. And that. That. That was. So that was an important. That was. That was an important role. Hess did appoint Wilhelm bowl, who later on to become a gal lighter, um and became something of. A. Something of an adversary to has and we'll return to that. But interestingly, on October 27, 1933, as. As the. As the right government was going to consolidate, it was, you know, it was consolidating power and uh, gaining more confidence and implementing its ideological program obviously because you know it uh. Had sustained a mandate now for you know, several months has invited Al Houser, the son of Carl House offer, who has said intervene with a quote, certificate of protection, you know, a formal document attesting to his good character and uh, indicating that uh. He you know, any. Any. Any deprivation of. Of liberty or property owing to his heritage. House offers, that is, you know, House offer being, you know part Jewish in his. In his maternal line. He was quite literally just that under. Under the protection of the deputy fear it. And and. And not only was he open about his allegiance and friendship with the House offers, but he appoint. He formally appointed Albert Househofer to preside over a council charged with addressing policy questions relating to the Volksdeutsch and the geopolitical situation. So I mean, not only was he above board about, you know, again, his affinity for and friendship with these people, but he was giving them real power in the regime, at least within the, within the dominion of it, that you know, it has wielded authority. And bear in mind too, this, this was the party we're talking about, not the state apparatus. And that just as incidental to. Incidental to the kind of main points of discussion here, this kind of cuts against the entire, you know, like a Holocaust narrative of this inflexible, unrelenting rigidity that simply categorized people, you know, according to biological criteria and from which there were no exceptions allowed. And there was just, you know, complete absence of reason. You know, wouldn't the censors to that just say that these people were collaborators looking to say. But I mean, why in a party. In a party, in a, in. In a party office though of this kind of prestige, why, why would, why would hesit form. Why would it has its fellow National Socialist tolerate the presence of these people? You know, if in fact this was this unheard of thing or that, you know, this kind of, this principle that just could not be compromised, you know, I mean, Hess was openly associating with people who were quote, racial Jews under the Nuremberg laws. And nobody really seemed to care about it, you know, and there's nothing in the record indicating that, you know, this caused problems for him or for the house offers in any real capacity. What did happen is, is William Bull, who by this point was a galiter, he was affronted that a formal advisory council could be. Would be dominated by non party men. And that was his big issue with it, more so than that how Hoffer the Younger was, you know, a racial Jew. What Ball did was he demanded a seat for himself on the, on the advisory council. And he got it, the support of Martin Borman. Borman's an interesting case because Hess, he was Hess's edutant and his personal secretary and uh, he was second in command of the uh, the Reich, uh, other right chancery. And he'd come to, even as early as 1933, he'd come to. He'd come to be a sort of law unto himself on, on matters of party authority. Hess was a. Borman was a head of genius for organization and he was a workaholic and he was a fanatic. And he, the, he. The. He was an old fighter who, who'd. Who sort of Cut his teeth as it were, in terms of demonstrating his loyalty, loyalty to the party by murdering a, a communist, a communist deputy. And he, he served time for it. You know, he was a very, very, he was a, he was a very serious person. But also it, you know, uh, not an overt rival. That has his power though, which is interesting. And this comes up again and again in the, in the career of Borman. His relationship to Hess I think was mirrored later on and when he took on Hess's role quite literally and you know, his, his relationship to Hitler mirrored his earlier relationship with Hess in terms of his dynamics, I believe. But that's a bit of a tangent. What's most significant about, about Albrecht House offer, you know, House offer the younger at this time is throughout the summer and autumn of 1933 incident or at the same time as, you know, as he took on this appointment granted to him by Hess, he began to work the secret emissary abroad for, for Hess. Why he did this? Yeah, part of this was out of, you know, loyalty to Hess and you know, the relationship, you know, between his father and Hess. But part of this was out of a, out of, out of a sense of, of patriotism. You know, I mean obviously House Offer was not a national Socialist, but he, you know, this to say he wasn't just that, you know, he was looking out for his own physical safety and trying to be comfortable within this regime that was, you know, basically hostile to. What's up fools? Main event Jay USO here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one ish. And that means it's Chumba time. 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to, you know, to racial jewelry. As it was, he, he had some basic affinity for this regime. I mean otherwise, you know this, he would not have undertaken these activities. Thus that summer house offer. He ended up attending talks in Danzig and negotiating serly with uh, the U. S. Ambassador Thomas Dodd, as well as putting out fears to the United Kingdom, uh, on Hess's behalf. That's that August House offer directly intervened too on behalf of Heinrich Bruning, who was an academic that both the House offers admired. He was called the last of the Weimar chancellors by kind of, you know, uh, somewhat derisively. Uh, he was, uh, he was kind of the last, uh, he was kind of the last. The last. The last Chancellor who, who was a true kind of vibrant Social Democrats permitted to remain in government and a standard and fur of the. In the SA name. Schoenberg just hated him. And uh, he. Albrecht house offer was worried that his friend Dr. Bruning would quite literally be murdered and has directly intervened and resolved the situation and bringing Bruining, you know, under, under his protection as it were, you know, as he done in, in far less critical circumstances for the House offers. But you know, and again, this is another example of Hess being able to intervene without protest on behalf of a man who, you know, by virtue of his heritage or his station or profession or politics would have been categorically, or was in fact at odds with the regime. Yet there was no formal protest when you know, has intervened to, to prevent his, you know, deprivation of any of his substantial rights or, or liberties. And again, I, I'm not just, I'm not just singling out discreet instances to try and extrapolate some, some kind of broader point that's at odds with evidence. I think it can't be overstated that Hess was his, his, his, his. His domain of authority was the National Socialist Party. You know, he was not some political secularist. You know, he was not, you know, some conservative who found himself in government and owing to, you know, a long pedigree, just, you know, could kind of, you know, operate with a free hand. I mean he, Hess was the kind of National Socialist, of National Socialists, okay? And he's intervened behalf of his Jewish friends and, and these, these kinds of socially liberal university professors. And he's not just getting away with it. It's not causing many problems. But the real test of Hess's metal. I, I don't, I don't want to sound flippant, perhaps it's the wrong way to describe it. But you know, we talked about Hess and you know, he, he had a, he had a very developed political conscience and, and moral sensibility, but also just, he had very frankly bourgeois ethics and values. I don't mean that negatively. I mean people when they want to be obtuse these days and they talk about, you know, bourgeois like it's some kind of dirty word or something like, what I mean is that know Hess was not a gangster and you know, he was perfectly comfortable with, with violence when it was Necessary. But he, he did not enjoy or condone, you know, gratuitous bloodletting. And so coming around to, you know, June 1934, the night of the Long Knives, the, this, this caused a real crisis for him. I don't want to, I don't want to deep dive into the, into the Rom pooch and the, the kind of burgundy civil war between the SA and, and, and the, and the conservative elements that had backed the party, including Hindenburg himself, and we'll get into that in a minute. But for those that don't know the sa, owing in part to the need to kind of pull the wool over the eyes of, of the international community to demonstrate superficial compliance with Versailles, uh, the SA had swelled due to do ranks, the ranks that swelled over 2 million men. And they did not demobilize after the, after the National Socialist ascendancy to power. Rahm himself was an anarchic individual. You know, he was, I mean, he was, he was a real war hero and a great soldier and a remarkable officer, but he also was, he also was a, was a real gangster. You know, he was an open homosexual. He of the, of the most kind of brutal sort. You know, he was, he, he favored what he called a permanent revolution, you know, not in the sense that one might see a parallel in, in Trotsky, like I said, there really was a kind of, there really was a kind of gangsterish nihilism to Rom, and I think he really got excited at the prospect of the German Reich becoming, becoming a battlefront unto itself in perpetuity. And I, I, I think he really foresaw kind of a bloodbath wherein, you know, conservative elements who'd, and anybody else who stood in the way and the national social ascendancy would be slaughtered. I don't think that was just propaganda after the fact to, to rationalize what was done. And we'll get into what was done in a moment. But even if you have a more charitable view of Rom, regardless of you, of Rom, there were, there were many men like Gregor Strasser who were, who got a bullet in the head or, or, or their throat cut literally on, on in June 1934, like, like owing just to political intrigues or the fact that, you know, they'd been denounced by, by, by ambitious rivals within the party, and, and, and Hess was well aware of this and some of these men were his friends and he, he had no love for Rom, and he was in a lot of ways appalled by him and what he represented. But he, he could not abide in Moral terms, what was done. And, uh, it's interesting because, you know, and again, this is. Has always seemed to favor reconciliation in lieu of violence, at least within. Within. Within the party's own house as well as in his personal life. And like I. I believe it's attested to his bourgeois origins. Uh, Victor Lutz, or Lutza, he succeeded Rahm as. As chief of the sa, at least for a time. Some of the German guys or girls were. Or just some of the other revisionists who are keen to the Third Reich who are watching this will correct me if I'm wrong, but I know, but Lutza, he was a confidant of Hess in the sa, and he brought the Hess direct testimony that was reliable relating to Rom's plans to overthrow the regime. You know, but still Hess urged a meeting of the. Of the party Gers that he wanted to convene in, uh, in, uh, in Mecklenburg. You know, the. To, you know, to at least give them a chance, something approaching due process or at least you know, some. A chance at some sort of reconciliation that would. That would allow for a remedy other than just, you know, eliminating these men by. By taking their lives. You know, but they would. By that point, it. It. Lutza told him that, you know, the. The thing had been decided. You know, Rom had made too many enemies. They'd gotten Heinrich Himmler on board, and Himmler and Himmler and Gearing had been incredibly close. And that's. This is what's fascinating too is that this is what really made a lot of the personages in the. In the National Socialist Party sep. Dietrich. He actually. He actually pulled the trigger and killed Rom. Uh, all the, uh, all the trigger men, uh, all the SS triggermen went on to kind of, you know, really storied careers within the party. And the, uh. And it's also, I think it's. I think like I said, this is what kind of broke has, of course, of. Of his willingness to just, you know, abide the trajectory of. Of. Of events without trying to stop what was in motion. That's not to say that, you know, the. The war between the UK and Berlin was owed to Oda, the Fuhrer's decisions. I, I think Hitler did everything he possibly could to avoid hostilities with the uk. When you're confronted by an enemy who is simply going to pursue a policy of war at all costs, I mean, there's not. Your hands are tied. But I believe that this. I. I believe that in. In addition to the fact that I think it has. Casts some kind of shadow over what he had at one time perceived as the inevitable fortunes of the party and state that he served. Okay, let me put it that way. And I also think in some ways it gave him an out. I don't think that was his primary motivation, but it was part of it. But the. It's also too. And this is the last. All this is the last all this. This is the last kind of substantive matter I'll address relating to the Night of the Long Knives because it's kind of too much of a tangent, but the, you know, Hindenburg at this time was the Reich President and people. One of the things these, you know, court, court historians, in addition to being liars and, and being, you know, kind of peddlers of, of hysterical moral cant, they're, they, they deal in fictions. And this idea that Adolf Hitler was some law unto himself in 1934 is nonsense. And the Reich President, Hindenburg, probably not, not the sole proximate cause, obviously, but kind of, you know, the first among many essential causes of, of the bloodletting was Hindenburg demanding that the National Socialists basically pay the cost of Hitler's Chancellorship and blood, you know, and clean out their own house because it was unacceptable for men like Rom to be in uniform. And it was unacceptable for an organization like the SA to be declaring that it was the armed force of the German Reich. Okay? And in a. Despite we kind of perceive that, we kind of perceive the Weimar regime as being this toothless regime that had no real mandate. And, and it was in a lot of ways, but it was also organized around the sovereign executive, okay? And Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, it literally, it expressly delegated the authority to declare an exceptional state of emergency by the Reich President and to essentially take whatever steps he deemed necessary to, to remedy or annihilate the clear and present threat. Now, of course there was a, a built in remedy to, you know, perceived overreach in that a majority vote in the Reichstag could, could veto that declaration, but the Reich President in turn could dissolve the Reichstag. But my point is that Hindenburg was very much kind of the, the master of these events and he was at the end of his life. You know, he died later that summer, that autumn rather. But you know, he, what happened on June 6, 1934, it was an Article 48 emergency remedy in everything but formal declaration. And the hidden hand of the knives that were, were wielded was Hindenburg's. So this idea that this was just lawless Nazi gangsterism or something is Ridiculous. And also there's the fact that Rom actually did plan Rom. They actually did have a private army of millions of men. He was a psychopath and he did plan over. He was, did in fact plan to overthrow the government. I mean when I, you know, I mean I, I again I don't want to, I don't want to. I don't want to hijack a conversation of Hess, but you know there precedent in our own country for what sorts of measures the executive is willing to resort to when similar conditions are present. And it's just as bloody and, and unrelenting and outside of the normal scope of what we consider to be, you know, acceptable remedies. So that's just, that's. That's just something that has always disturbed me is the way that it's characterized. But it getting back, I promise that was the last uh. Um. Oh, you know, digression that's that far outside the scope. But Hess's adantant at the time was a. A fellow named Alfred Lin. And he. A lot of his testimony is available and some which is prosaic, some which is very, very significant. And the most significant to me is that on. He was, he was, he was with Hess in Bavaria on June 30. I said, I said June 6 earlier. I was thinking, I was thinking like Normandy. Yeah. June 30, 1934 is another long night. So forgive me, I promise I'm not going senile. But life getting said that he said uh, the Rom Pooch was quote probably one of the worst strains on Hess. He was in Munich at the time. He fought tooth and nail with Hitler to save some of those men and refused to be intimidated even by the most violent outbase outburst from Hitler. He saved a lot of men's lives. We'll never know how many. End quote. Supposedly too according not just the light again but other witnesses the. Has. Has argued with. With Hitler for. For several hours. You know this went on throughout the day that you know the. These men were our comrades. You know, we. We've got to come to some kind of. We. We can't. We can't as unceremoniously. We can't as unceremoniously shoot them in the street. Literally. You know, they, they. It. It's just something he couldn't abide. And I mean that's you know, it the. This in some ways the seminal. You know like I said, if you want to understand ultimately who became the key personages in the third in the Reich government and who. And who was sidelined from then on or who just, you know, everything. You know, their conceptual horizon of the conceptual relationship to the regime just changed fundamentally. In the case of Hess, the. June 1934 is. Is kind of what the. It was. Was kind of the. The crucible of that. And that's. That's. That's not. That's not emphasized enough. It has his own, uh. In his letters to his wife, as well as in his own diary, he had that. That's a Hess. That is. He. He likened the massacre on the Night of the Long Knives to the Roman practice of decimation, that is, quote, the execution of every 10th man, irrespective of whether he was guilty or innocent. And he. He came back again and again to the. To the case of Gregor Strasser. And Strasser's a fascinating guy. I mean, for those that don't know, Strasser's cast as representing the. The quote, left wing of the National Socialist Party. Yeah, that's true to some degree. I mean, he had more in common with, you know, the. The. The revolutionary conservative element in Weimar. You know, people like Ernst Younger himself. He envisioned a kind of, uh. He envisioned a kind of devolved socialism that actually had more in common kind of the Catholic distributism and. And Third way economics than it did, you know, with the. With the traditional left wing. He wanted some sort of concord with the Soviet Union. Not for. I mean, this was a geostrategic evaluation. This was not only the sympathy with Mercer's Leninism, but Strasser was, uh, among other. I mean, aside from, you know, his. His service to the party and everything else, he had early on been the. The party organization leader. Okay. I mean, during the years of struggle. So he. He. He had had Hess's job. Like, he'd been like, in Hess's role early on, you know, when he was. He was one of the most valued old fighters of. Of the early. And. And he'd been. He'd been with the party since. Since its earliest days. I can't remember if he. He. He joined after Drexler had. Had stepped aside, but I'm not. I think. But I'm not certain. But regardless, you know, he'd been. He. He'd been a National Socialist from. From the beginning. Okay. And it. That stressor, of all people could. Could have ended up just unceremoniously shot, you know, in the middle of the night, you know, especially because the man quite literally was in, you know, the role that Hess said himself was in at that moment. Hitler, interestingly, though, July 27, you know, so a full, about a full month after, after the Night of the Long Knives and, and Hess's kind of very public within party, uh, corridors and vocal protest and kind, you know, moral outrage. Uh, Hitler actually increased, uh, Hess's uh, mandate substantially. Hill decreed that he had the aim of streamlining the party and the state and thus that, you know, it has as, as, as essentially, you know, chairman of the party in a de facto sense, you should have a say in the drafting of all future legislation, you know, of major laws that, you know, in things that were, you know, impactful throughout the entire Reich and that dealt with basic issues of national security or with, you know, the integrity of, of the national community and things like that. You know, so like introducing conscription, stuff like the race laws frankly too, uh, they would be, they would bear Rudolph Hess's formal signature. Now he didn't really have time to scrutinize these things. It's almost like in those old movies about the later Roman Empire where you know, there's some, there's some dictatorial Roman procurator or Caesar type and he's just literally being handed like parchments and stamping them without reading it. I mean that's a silly metaphor, but it's actually not that far off. Like the sheer volume of data that Hess was charged with managing was, was incredible. And you know, him putting him. I mean this was real authority that he had owing to the, this July 27th decree. But it's not as if Hess was sitting there, you know, acting like, you know, acting like a library lawyer and you know, scrutinizing everything that came across his desk from, uh, from uh, you know, from whatever, from whatever quarters, you know, most of his time too. You know, as, as the party fully consolidated. You know, we talked about, we talked about the Party Chancery being in many respects a public relations office, you know, an early example of a modern political party truly, truly maintaining a permanent presence, you know, intermediary presence with, with the public. So has spent a lot of time quite literally just cutting ribbons or you know, uh, or showing up to award, you know, the, the mother's cross to, to uh, you know, to, to German ladies who, you know, had four or five and six kids, you know, or, uh, or, or, or you know, or, or giving accolades to, you know, great war veterans who were wounded, you know, on, on, on, on, on significant dates and things like this. You know, it's, I mean that's a full time job like then as it is now. I mean it's, you Know, Nixon lamented that in a, you know, Nixon was in a very different role than Rudolph Hess. But you know, Nixon was a man who actually wanted to next was interested in waging the Cold War and he was interested in, you know, kind of restructuring policy. He was not interested in, you know, kissing babies and you know, putting his arm around old ladies and, and you know, flashing toothy grins at the cameramen. But that's, you know, has very much, has very much. The more, the more his power, uh, the more his power increase, kind of the more his role as a politician sort of mitigated Its, its actual, his, his actual ability to, to exercise that power. And this is interesting too because in 1934, 35, Hitler was putting some distance between himself and the, the National Socialist Party. And this was not accidental. Part of this was because even though Hindenburg, you know, was in the grave by, you know, autumn 1934, there was still a lot of national conservative elements who were very suspicious of the National Socialists.
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Casino and the German public overwhelmingly loved Hitler. You know, Hitler had like, you know, over 90% of the, of the German electorate, you know, supported Hitler. But the National Socialist Party was not especially popular. I mean they had a mandate and they weren't unpopular, but their fortunes were not at all synonymous. Those are the fur and those are the National Socialist Party. So during this kind of intermediary period between the years of struggle and you know, the kind of, the kind of post, uh, consolidation phase immediately before the onset of hostilities and in 1939, you know, you had this, you had the strange circumstance where kind of Hitler was getting, it was, it was kind of, was kind of learning to swim proverbially as an executive. And you know, he was, he was identifying more and more with the, with, with, with the German state and, and behaving and behaving like uh, in a lot of ways like a very traditional German executive, you know. And so part, you know, Hess's uh, role as the face of the party, you know, and kind of the, and kind of the man almost embodied the National Socialist Party circumstantially, you know, this, this, this kind of increased, you know. But again, like we mentioned before too, the subtext of this Was that the staggering volume of work, Well, a lot of it was being delegated to Martin Borman and, and Borman, crude as he was, cunning as he was, uh, conspiring as he was, he was an organization. He was an organizational genius. And this becomes significant later because Borman, the Borman. In many ways Borman was the antithesis of Hess. But his power in later years owed very much the proverbial house that Hess built. Now moving on, I'm gonna try and bring it back. So I realize I can't keep you all afternoon. Bring it back to the househoffers and how Hess's relationship with them relates to his ultimate flight and tragic, you know, effort. Uh, it is a piece, emissary. On April 7, 1934, Hess met privately with the Japanese naval at that one, Admiral Yendo, and he met with him on Professor House Hoffer's property on Kohlberger Strauss, and has made for all practical purposes an official overture to him. And this was significant because at this time, this big early 1934, most of the National Socialist Party, at least the aspects of it and the personages within it who had any control over the trajectory of foreign policy, as well as the majority of the army general officer corps as well as uh, the kind of careers in the foreign Ministry, they strongly preferred China to Japan for political reasons, for geostrategic reasons, Hess, the House offers Ribbentrop. They were the minority that really favored an alliance with Japan. The. And Hess apparently, which was out of Curim, he threw caution in the wind. And invoking the furor's name in. To. To validate his own authority, he said, quote. Well, I can inform you, speaking now to Admiral Yendo and in speaking in the name of the fur, that we sincerely want Germany and Japan to draw together. But I must stress that this can't involve anything that might jeopardize our relations with Britain. So again, first and foremost, what is Hess's. What is Hess's priority? It's, it's to bring, it's the. It's to bring the UK to terms not just in terms of uh, non aggression but in terms of uh, you know, formal alliance moving forward. This was the lynchpin of, of. Of every uh, of every issue that he contemplated relating to geostrategic, uh, questions. And that's essential to adjudicating in the, in the kind of court of historical opinion as it were, uh, what Hess's motives were and uh, what uh, what the kind of overall disposition of uh, of uh, of Adolf Hitler was because uh, different as they were, you know, has his. Hess's emotional and ideological intimacy relative to the fur. It wasn't just a case of, you know, hero worship or whatever punitive light people cast it as. And nor is Hess, you know, some kind of slavish follower, you know, aside from any kind of messianic pretensions that has assigned to Adolf Hitler. He, he was in basic agreement on, on his, on in. In matters of worldview, okay. Particularly of a strategic power political nature. And this is essential to, to understanding, you know, not just the kind of discreet fact of what animated has to do what he did, but it also shoots the pieces. The kind of obnoxious darkest hour myth where, you know, Churchill was just this put upon man who was, you know, leading this country that, you know, is being threatened by Nazi aggression. That's, that's the, that's the term you were getting to get. Nazi aggression. I mean it, it's just, it's. It's not just, it's not as a misstatement of history. It's. It's the literal opposite of what happened. But the what. And Hess. Hess's, uh, has his dumb dealings with uh, with the Japanese, uh, with the Japanese admiralty. Uh, that really was kind of. I mean arguably that was the first step towards what became the Anti com turn pact which was signed November 1936. The German Reich and Japan were the original signatories. Italy didn't join until 1937. And that's hugely significant. And a lot is made by people, you know that. Well, the, you know, the Germans and the Japanese, they, they didn't, they didn't coordinate well at the operational level and they didn't integrate politically. I think they did as much as can be expected. Japan even more so than the German Reich or in Congress. The German Reich, which I think was remarkably united at this point and into the, into the era that of. In. Into the war years. You know, Japan really was a house divided, held together kind of only by the emperor in political terms. I mean. And there really was, I mean there, there was, there was just a fact of distance. I mean, I mean literal like you know, geographic distance. I. It's. It's not. In the anti. Commander impact. That was a real, it was a real, it was a real thing. I mean it wasn't an affectation. And the fact. It's got to be, it's got to, that's got to be considered too in, in. In understanding. Uh, you know, we talked about, we talked in an earlier episode about the mythology that, you know, the Non aggression pack represented some kind of quote unquote alliance between Moscow and Berlin. I mean it's absurd for a lot of reasons. You don't, you don't, you don't declare that you're not going to like assault and try to destroy your allies. I mean that doesn't need to be said. But the, the anti commoner impact was what really, what really such that it existed. And again, I, I, we'll get into this another time. It, that really is what created the, the Axis alliance. And I believe like I said that that Hess's Hess in the House offers overtures to Japan or what facilitate like made that possible quite literally during this time too. And in the years immediately subsequent, um, Albert Hauschoffer was spending a great deal of time in the UK And House offer had become increasingly, you know, anti Nazi, not in a, not an anti fascist sort of capacity, but owing to his own, you know, parentage obviously, but also just kind of the, you know, he was how Shoffer was an acid. He was, he was a geo, he was a geopolitical analyst like his father. But he, he kind of, he coveted uh, the role of diplomats, you know, and uh, these were not uh, he, he was not a man of a character even aside from his parentage and everything else, so I think would have really identified with, with uh, with the National Socialists. But he was a patriot and he did love Germany and he did agree with, with Hitler's sentiment. As the Fur quite literally stated in Mein Kampf quote, no sacrifice should have been too great in winning Britain's friendship. Plus two. It was. He, he had a great esteem House offer did for the UK like a lot of younger Germans did. And this is one of the things that, I mean he and Hess they, they would have had a personal affinity for one another owing to their, you know, Owen of the fact that, you know, Hess has had great love for, for a house offer. The younger's father Carl, but you know, has, has had literally been born under British rule in Egypt and this is where he grew up. You know, he, Hess was, Hess was a. Has, was kind of the good European in the, in the terms described by Nietzsche. Okay. I mean I, I know some of the, our audience really digs that sort of sentiment. I'm not, I'm not being condescending or something. I take that seriously. But you know, it has kind of straddling, has kind of straddling the, the Anglophone world and you know, esteeming the kind of majesty of this, of this great, you know, white empire of, of. Of. Of. Of Britain, you know. Well also will also being you know, the consummate. The consummate, you know, kind of Teutonic, uh, German, uh, patriot, you know, who, who views uh, who views the world uh, in uh, in, in. In kind of kind of nakedly historicist terms, you know, in, in. In. In Hegelian terms. That's, that's something that. That's something that. That's got to be accounted for to understand the dynamic between the Younger House. Hoffer and Hess. I believe the uh, Huer, uh, the Albrecht, I mean the Younger, he. He rode a lot in, in. In. In political and academic journals. One of which I can't remember the name of it. It was, it was a monthly geopolitical journal that there were myriad publications like that in the era. But this was kind of the top uh, this was kind of the top uh. That this was kind of Most uh, prestigious one. And he wrote in April of, of 1934 the ultimate decision on the fate of Europe lies today in English hands, just as it did in the 10th years, the turn of the century when the British Empire and the Kaiser's Reich after vain attempts to steer a common course began to drift apart. Now for about four years subsequent from 1935, 36 to 1940. Basically. Yeah, basically from 1935 until the, the formal onset of hostilities when the UK and and. And France declared war on the German Reich. Has an Eldrich House offer owing to uh, Owing to how Shaer's connections that he'd made in his. In his kind of secret diplomacy missions. They arranged private meetings with British visitors, dozens of whom flocked to Berlin in the mid-30s because for. For no other reason. They were eager to witness the National Socialist revolution firsthand. You know, whether you loved or hated the German Reich, it was a government and a mod of political organization that was on the cutting edge of. Of statecraft. Okay. There were German transcripts interestingly and not, not, not unintentionally these were destroyed by Allied command after the war. There were voluminous records of Hitler's meetings with these people that hasn House offer had courted and arranged for the fear to meet people like Leo Amory, Lord Londonderry, Lord Beaverbrook, which should come as no surprise. I mean we, in our discussion at Churchill we kind of deep dived into his, his career and his sympathies. Stanley Baldwin's secretary looking for a little Hollywood style fun.
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by Champa Casino Tom Jones. Not to be confused with the, with the singer. And I mean these are people of serious pedigree and authority. Okay? And I mean it was probably. There may have been a dozen more that they're, you know, the. There. There was no record of or the record of which was never duplicated before being destroyed. So we, we don't even know. But the. And to jump ahead for a minute after I mentioned that when we first began this discussion today, that you know, Albrecht house offer. He had had an audience with Hitler on a few different occasions, the last of which was two days after Hess's flight in May 1940. And house offer. Hitler basically demanded interior house offer and, and humanity. He reveal all of his, all of his contacts and activities, you know, relating to the UK over the preceding, you know, months and, and couple of years. And how Shauford would he listed for Hitler the names of those on whom he personally. Those whom he personally tried to cultivate successful successfully or not to try to sway. Sway the, the. The trajectory of. Of policy in, in. In. In the uk. This was uh, what he called a quote, a leading group of younger conservatives. He mentioned Lord Clydesdale. Now this, he, Lord Clydesdale later became the Duke of Hamilton. Okay. This was the man who Hess was attempting to contact when he flew to the uk so this is significant. And it becomes more significant, as will be revealed in a moment. But another, Another name that house offer listed for the furor was the Prime Minister's parliamentary private secretary, Lord Dunglas Herod, Harold Balfour, Kenneth Lindsay, undersecretaries of the Air Ministry, the Education Ministry in the Scottish office. Hamilton's brother, who was related to uh, who was related to Queen Elizabeth and uh, and uh, Hamilton's mother in law who. Who is similarly related to I guess the House of Windsor. I know like people are keen to. Royals will correct me if if I misstated who uh, who. Who sits on the throne in Limey Land. But uh, be as it may, in the same circle were uh, where Lord Aster, Samuel Horror, uh, Oliver Stanley. I mean the list goes on and on. Okay? And. This, this went on for years. That House Shaer was cultivating these people, okay? And in the case of uh, in the case of Hamilton, uh, they became very close friends. They went on vacations together. They, they maintain a voluminous correspondence. Okay. At least some of these People had to have been swayed to House offers enterprise or at least his point of view. Okay? And even if none of them had Hamilton again, he became a close, intimate confidant, companion, if you will, of House Harford the younger. You can't tell me accounting for all this, that has simply one day lost his mind and, and flew to the, flew to the UK out of cowardice or because, you know, his, his astrologer told him to. Like that doesn't, that just doesn't. That just doesn't pass uh, the uh, the straight face test. But I realize this has sort of sub chapter has been going on for a long time. I promise next session we will wrap it up. We'll devote like half an hour to Hess's flight and then we will weave his incarceration experience into the treatment of the actual trial because that's not just an effort at, towards. And then there's me, you know, deciding to abrogate the discussion. Here's the brevity. Makes sense to do it that way. But I thought that his background was important, especially because he has to still kind of lampoon and made a caricature in, in kind of in kind of court history. So I, I hope nobody was bored by it or resented the tangent. It's, it's an essential foundation that needs to be addressed to understand the subsequent proceedings, which is, you know, the big kind of finale to this entire, this entire series of discussions. So I hope you're pleased with what we covered today, Pete. All good. Give your plugs and we'll end. Yeah, indeed. You can always find me at my substack. It's Thomas 7. It's real Thomas777 substack.com It's about half the content. There's free, it's long form essays and that's where our podcast is posted about every other week. We got a very active community on Telegram. It's T me slash the number 7H1S777. You know, and like I said, that's, that's my primary social media platform. I mean that's the only one I really utilize. I do back things up on gab, even though I'm not purely active there. You can find me there at Real Thomas 777. And just to plug some of my print long form, I completed my second novelette in my ongoing science fiction brand called Steel Storm. I completed the manuscript just the other night. I'm sending it off within 48 hours to imperium Press where great people, people and great friends of ours and that'll be available for purchase within weeks. And I, I, I was, I was incredibly, you know, moved and uh, inspired by the positive uh, response to the first uh, to the first uh, book in the series. So that is uh, where you can find me and where you can, where you can get up on what I do. All right. Until part three. Take care Thomas. Back to the Pika show continuing the series. I am here with Thomas 777. How are you Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks again for hosting me as always. Sure. There's some things I need to discuss today relating to the strategic situation as well as the diplomatic one that led to Hess's flight. And I know it seems like that it may seem like I interrupted what was a very coherent narrative series for the sake of an esoteric tangent. That's not my intention and I don't think that's what I'm doing. I think, I think the, I think the case of Rudolph has, is very ill understood and such that people do contemplate it, they contemplated it in terms of how strange it is and what became of Mr. Hess. You know, literally the, the real man in the High Castle. Or they deal with the fact that which I plan to when we finally get around the unpacking the Nuremberg Trials, the actual proceedings. People such that they do give has any consideration a revisionist perspective. They generally just deal with the fact that he was even within the, even if one accepts the, you know, if one accepts for the sake of argument the bounded rationality of you know the, the Nuremberg indictment, even, even within those parameters, it's, it's very difficult to make the case that has, it should have been there in the first place and under indictment or any kind of jeopardy at all as a matter of law. But what became imperative to me when I first started studying these topics. I'm talking like literally 30 years ago, even before there was a as great a great as great of access to source documents and things and, and academic resources and contemporaneous testimony. You know, because this was pre Internet. Something that did jump out at me such that Hess did figure in revisionist literature was that the narrative around his flight didn't make any sense on its face. You know, I, I generally, I generally there's a subtext to a lot of the Hitchcock movies, you know, where if, if it's alleged that somebody simply went mad and that's. That explains their behavior. Generally that's generally you're dealing with something rather conspiratorial because sometimes people go mad and behave Totally irrationally, but generally they don't. And when such things are suggested, particularly if you're talking about, you know, truly apocalypse, that's generally not. That's generally not something that should be taken at face value. But what, What a point I want to emphasize as we kind of get into the substance, what we're going to talk about today. You know, Rudolph has, as his public profile, for lack of a better way to characterize it, increased, you know, after. After the National Socialist revolution. You know, as we talked about before, his responsibilities within the party administration grew exponentially and he became very, very visible as literally the face of the Party. And in fact, that was, in fact his role, I mean, in it as a matter of law. I mean, he. He was, he was situated at the. At the. At the, at the head of the Reich Chancellor. I mean, this wasn't just. This wasn't just public relations. I mean, there was that aspect to it, too. Even in Triumph of the Will, I think you see him more than you see Hitler. Yeah, yeah. And he became very much the face of the party like we talked about, because he was very relatable to people, which I think makes sense. I mean, he seems. I mean, it has seemed like a worldly guy, but he also seemed kind of provincial. I mean, that. And to Americans, like in the 21st century, they might be like, well, this guy seems like a bumpkin. Or it's like, well, yeah, maybe, but I mean, that you've got to put yourself in. In. In, you know, in the, in the minds of. Of viewers in that culture and in that epoch. But. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But Hess also, it's, you know, like we talked about before, the distinction between the party and the state and the Third Reich, it became blurred, particularly as rel. As regards the police apparatus, quite literally, but that's its own issue. But it. This wasn't a contrivance like in the Soviet Union or like later in, like the German Democratic Republic. Like the National Solist Party really was an entity into itself, and the German state was an entity unto itself that had centuries of precedent behind it. You know, and, and the National Socialist Party was elected. You know, it wasn't. It didn't. It didn't take power by. By way of a violent revolution, and it didn't insinuate itself into an executive role, you know, after. In some kind of. In some kind of crisis situation of where, you know, of a failed state, you know, like, like the war three kingdoms or something centuries before in the UK or, or arguably like Napoleon did so I mean you, when, when a. This distinct, this distinction between, you know, what was within the party's authority and domain and what was, you know, exclusively, you know, the. Under the authority of the state. This wasn't some kind of fiction like in the Soviet Union, you know, so that's important to consider. Okay. But at the same time as, as, as the Second World War got underway, Hess's war, Hess's role in the war really was rather minimal. And this kind of irritated the ever ambitious Martin Borman. You know, as we talked about, Borman was literally Hess's successor, even though Hess's office was done away with after, after his ill fated flight. But Borman was number, was the number two man at the Chancellery. And uh, he, you know, he, he, he got, he got Hess's job, you know, after the, after the, you know, has, his, has his flight when he became literally unpersoned, among other things. But you know, Borman, Borman became incredibly powerful within the apparatus of government. And in an indirect way, Borman had a lot of ability to impact the war. We'll get into that on another episode where it seems more proper. But as of 1941, um, 1940, 1941, you know, has, did not, it has felt increasingly shut out. I don't think that was entirely deliberate. I mean like we talked about, Hess's character was not like that of Goebbels, nor was it like that of Gearing. It certainly was not like that of Himmler. There was an app. Despite the fact that, you know, the, the man was a decorated combat veteran and he had been a street fighter in the days of struggle, he was not a particularly ruthless man. And he, you know, like we, like we talked about too. It was credit in my opinion. He, he, he was very much possessed of a middle class morality. And no matter what regime you serve, you know, the when, when, when, when war arrives, uh, the uh, the war cabinet around the executive, you know, de facto and de jure becomes, it becomes a, it becomes a very, very close fraternity. And who is included and who is, who is included and who is excluded from that cadre that, that doesn't necessarily owe to how one is perceived by his fellows and in terms of whether he's well liked or not. Okay. I mean a lot of it owes to what's perceived about his character.
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just kind of instinctive ways people respond to others when, when crises kind of force a you know the, the recognition of a very. Of very formal hierarchies. But it be as it may, you know, Hess was close to Adolf Hitler and he remained close to the center of power. So he was in a position to discern the trajectory of policy in a basic way and Detroit and, and he was better. He was better situated probably than anybody save. Yeah, probably, probably than anybody at this time save maybe the OKW to. To divinate like what Hitler's intentions were. But Hitler was notoriously canny and in revealing his actual intentions. And I think some of that was purposeful but other times I, I think it just owed to his basic nature. This is possible to be taciturn with one's emotions in a way that is instinctive, if that makes any sense. But the. It has clearly wanted to take a more active role. At first he tried to convince the Fjord given permission to fly sorties with the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot, which Heydrich later uh, pulled off on uh, the eastern front. Then after getting shot down, uh, finally, finally Hitler said we're not, you know, we're not going to allow, you know, we're not going to allow men in these executive roles that go on these you know, combat LS of. Of this nature. So s didn't get that opportunity. But as, as the war dragged on and Britain wouldn't come to terms this came to the forefront of. Of Hess's mind like he no longer, he no longer was possessed of that kind of patriotic fervory. His own correspondence, particularly with the house offers, you know, with Carl and increasingly with the Sun Albrecht, which we'll get into in a moment because that's very significant to discerning the motives for Hezbol's flight. You know, the United Kingdom was really all that was on his mind. Now keep in mind that's not because Germany was in some perilous military position at all. Germany was very much winning the war. Throughout 1940, German troops had had occupied Scandinavia to forestall Churchill's own plans to assault there, which would have been a gross violation of, you know, of uh, of Norwegian sovereignty and, and, and that at Denmark. But you know, it's as usual, like, whenever Churchill does something, it's okay. It's when everybody else does it that it's, you know, some. Some sort of slight against. Against, you know, the laws of God and man. But the, you know, the. This was. This was after Dunkirk where, you know, the British Expeditionary Force had, uh, had been chased off the continent. The. The battle in Narvik. There was a series of pitch battles in 1940 there. And that was actually. That's actually, uh, Earhart Milch. Uh, that's. He. He was awarded the Knight's Cross owing to his, uh, command of, uh. Going to his command of the loof off of there. And then that's when he was also promoted to field Marshal. So it's significant for a lot of reasons. But my point is that Germany had tremendous momentum in. In. In military terms. Okay, so Hess's concern was not as someone suggested that, you know, he viewed the furor as a madman who was leading Germany to ruin. Like, it's not what was on his mind at all. What was on his mind was he viewed. Has took entirely seriously as we talked about what Hitler described in Mein Kampf as his. Not just, you know, has. Has obsessed with geopolitics. And this owed a lot to his affinity for the house offers, which was reciprocal. But also has viewed. Has viewed, uh, you know, coming to terms with the UK to be essential, uh, in. In historical terms and apocal terms. In his words, you know, it would be suicide for the white race for the UK and Germany to make war with one another. But that's also, I think, owing in part to his worldliness because, you know, as we talked about, he was raised in Egypt. He had a. Despite his kind of earnest naivete when it comes to, you know, it's kind of hero worship of Adolf Hitler and other things. I think he had a better sense of geostrategic realities than a lot of men of his generation, frankly know. He was an aviator. And that, that, that, that. That affords people a unique conceptual horizon, particularly in those days. Has realized that, you know, even if everything continued to go, you know, even if the gods continue to, proverbially speaking, continue to favor Germany on the battlefield, having the UK Refuse to come to terms could lead with catastrophe. But more than that, I believe that it has thought that Sea lion was a. What was. Would become a reality. Now, I don't want to go do overfield. But what was Sea Lion? Operation Sea lion was a series of steps and fewer orders relating to. Relating to order of battle and deployment. That indicated The. A battle plan to invade the United Kingdom. Okay. I believe, and I'll get into why I believe this here, you know, shortly, but also in later episodes, I believe this was a strategic ruse when it became. Which was undertaken by Hitler when it became clear that the Soviet Union was, uh, indeed, um, had every intention to, to assault Germany at the, at the earliest opportunity. And when Hitler decided that, you know, he was going to, he was going to offset that, uh, that threat, you know, by striking, uh, the Soviet Union first, uh, before it's, uh, before it, uh, before it could adjust its own, uh, its own deployment to defend in depth. But Hitler very much other than a handful of. Other than a handful of admirals and, and, and field marshals, Hitler maintained this, uh, illusion. And I don't think it has. Was privy to the fact that this was in fact, uh, a strategic ruse. So Hess, putting yourself in the mind of Hess in 1940 into 41. Hess believed that at some point Operation Sea lion was, Was going to be ordered and there's going to be an invasion of England. And this would be a bloodbath, I don't think. And it's, it's kind of outside of my wheelhouse. And I also don't want to get into some heavy counterfactual discussion in military matters on this episode, but I think Sea lion would have been impossible, okay. For a lot of reasons, including the fact that if you're going to invade the United Kingdom in 1940 or 41, you've got to sink the Royal Navy, and then you've probably got to land at least, at least 60,000 men ashore in order to establish, you know, a, A meaningful, uh, A meaningful foothold, you know, and, and to. And to hold it until you can reinforce in inadequate numbers to affect a real occupation. I mean, I, I just, I do not think it was possible, but that's not the point. Uh, had it been implemented, uh, that definitely would have been a bloodbath. And it, uh, that seal line itself could have proved catastrophic had it been attempted. But that's something to keep in mind. We'll return to that in a minute. And again, forgive me for being a bit scattershot, but it was, it was in, in. In June 1940, Hitler. Hitler was dining with Hess. And, uh, this was just before the French campaign began. Or, uh, yeah, this is in May, rather forgive me. This is for the French campaign. Has to ask Hitler over lunch. Do you still hold England in the, in the same esteem you used to? Do you still think that we can come to peace come to terms with them, you know, can we find a basis for peace with the uk you know, and Hitler said, you know, absolutely, but, you know, that depends on what man is in it. It is. That depends on what man is in office, you know, and if, if it's a man like Mr. Churchill, it's a man like van de Sart, like, that will not be possible. Okay. And as we know, has basically took what the furor says gospel. Not just on, not, not just on its own terms that, you know, everything Hitler said to him when in response really direct question, you know, has took it at face value and is entirely sincere. But, you know, he, he believed it to be as good as, you know, a statement of policy. This seems like a throwaway kind of conversation, but it has mentioned it to Krista Schroeder in like the first week in June, which she wrote in her own diary, you know, about, about Hess's grave concern over the, you know, the future of. Of diplomatic potential with the UK And I mean, alarmed her. You know, she thought it was remarkable enough to take note of it. I believe this is the moment at which kind of the seed was planted in Hess's mind. Okay. As we get more into the character of the man and this, this comes out, ultimately it is trial. So I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but these things are important in, in, in. In construct reconstructing the motives of people in a central role and under decision making. These kinds of subtle perceptions. In the case of a man like Hess, like tell us a lot of things. Has noted another time to the house offers this is around the same time around June 1940, has having, you know, has having come from the, the. The Egyptian British protectorate, his parents have been dispossessed of their property with the concept of. With uh, with the conclusion of uh, of the, of the Great War. And then further with uh, with the onset of, uh, with the onset of hostilities in 1939, you know, the remaining assets they had that had been protected were seized. So this is obviously a sore spot for has. And it has said that it has put it to Hitler, you know, are you going to demand that the. That the crown return to us everything that it took from us, you know, and is this going to be an obstacle to peace? And Hitler said very candidly, you don't impose, you don't impose harsh conditions on a country you want to win around to your side. And I mean that kind of further, you know, that, that entire line of questioning, I believe was Hess trying to tease out what was the, what was in the mind of his furor, you know, and it's not, it's not some kind of Teutonic caricature to say that, you know, Hess really did view what the furor said is gospel. That is true. I, I, I think it's misplaced the way people again try and kind of caricature German culture as being this kind of mindlessly authoritarian, almost despotic in the Oriental sense, you know, militaristic sort of, you know, social order where, you know, adherence to superior orders kind of stands and stands in for judgment at all times. But it gives a Hess there really was, you know, that's not caricature. And his reasons for those sympathies and tendencies I think are more personal and cultural. But I, I just want to clarify that for people who might misread why I consider that important. July, uh, 1940, uh, July, August 1940 was a critical period. The reasons why, I mean, it was critical just, you know, for, it was critical for a relations between London and Berlin and uh, the possibility for any kind of peace. It was critical in Hess's decision making. Uh, and it was critical and what, what ultimately developed in uh, in uh, and what, what ultimately did develop, what didn't develop in terms of the progress of the war. On July 19, Hitler issued one of his last direct speeches to the Reichstag after 1941. He didn't directly address the Reichstag again. And of course the 1941 speech was the declaration of war against the United States. The July 19, 1940 speech, Hitler declared it, quote, the last appeal to reason. Now, something that's little known because it's deliberately redacted and when you pose a question to court historians about the matter, they tend to, they tend to employ weasel words or they tend to, they, they, they, they tend to profer any number of answers that don't really address the question. But upon the onset of hostilities, formal hostilities after the UK declared war on Germany, you know, in concert with France in 1939, Hitler absolutely prohibited the bombing of London. It was an absolute embargo. Even when you are, even if, because at that point hadn't happened yet, the RAF targeted civilian centers in Germany, uh, Hitler forbade any targeting of, uh, of civilian centers, uh, in the United Kingdom in retaliation, including London. This presented a problem for Mr. Churchill for a few reasons. As we talked about a Moment ago, summer 1940, the UK was actively losing the Second World War, you know, and the, the, what had happened, what had happened in Scandinavia and particularly the Final. The reversal at Narvik that made a hero of, of Earhart Milch, among other things. You know, Churchill was looking, Churchill was coming. Churchill was beginning to look like a fool, like in military terms, you know, because he, the focus had catapulted him into office obviously. But Churchill been banging the war drums, you know, on two grounds. You know, first of all, this inflated, these inflated figures and claims about the forces and being of the German Reich, you know, claims about their capabilities and intentions. But also he was declaring incessantly that, you know, the UK could, you know, wage this. That the UK and you know, could wage with its expeditionary forces, you know, with the support of the Royal Navy, you know, that they could fight and win on the continent. I mean that's. Otherwise, you know, he would not have gotten the war mandate that he got. And Churchill was suffering defeat after defeat after defeat. You know, it. So he had a real problem here, you know, not just that, you know, he, he was, look, he'd be, you know, moving forward. He, he was, he was looking at a no confidence vote. But also, I mean, frankly, it wouldn't have even had to come to that if, if his entire uh, it was entire foreign policy and war cabinet, you know, basically, you know, as a policy coup, decided to like sue for peace, you know, which in the, which in the, which in the English system is very possible, you know, in a way that is not in the United States. Even, if even, even a guy like Churchill who's got a lot of, he's got a lot of. He's got a lot of international money behind him and a lot of intrigues that put him there, this is a very real possibility. So Churchill basically, and this, this should really disgust people. But Churchill basically decided from then on he was going to find a way to provoke Germany into assaulting London. I mean that'd basically be like a guy that basically be like if George W. Bush had tried to find, had sought out a way to like make 911 happen instead he get a war mandate. Like he didn't do that. I don't want 911 truthers to jump all over the comments. Like, imagine like if he did that, you know, and like that Churchill literally conspired, set about as a matter of policy to find a way to provoke an attack on London or undoubtedly, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people would die, you know, in the initial salvo, because that's just the kind of guy piggy Churchill was. But the July 20, the day after Hitler's address, the Reichstag, Churchill Ordered plans to Bomber Command, uh, for the mass bombing of Berlin city center with all available forces. Now mind you, four engine bombers, you know, the Lancaster of which it was, you know that was kind of the UK's equivalent of the, of the, of the, the super fortress type aircraft. The other one, they get like devastating hurt on the target area. They hadn't been fielded yet and stuff. Like the Avro Manchester, which was the two engine heavy bomber, those didn't fly until November. But the aircraft that were available, like the Vickers Wellington, they, they were very, very effective in what we consider in it to be counter value targeting. Okay. They could basically wreck a target area very, very effectively. And something to keep in mind too. And again, forgive me if I'm being too scattered on this episode, but this is important. You know, one of the big reasons, one of the, the key reason why the Battle of Britain failed if in fact its purpose was to bring the UK to terms. I don't think that Hitler had in mind that that was possible. I think the decision was political. I think some, I think Gearing's bow stuff and, and Gearing's declarations of what was operationally feasible that definitely had an impact on those decision making. You know, he had an inflated sense, Hitler did of, of the effectiveness of, of, of Gearing's operational plans. But the, the Luftwaffe did not have a strategic capability. It was a, it was, it was a tactical fighting force, it was a ground assault force to be utilized in, you know, as a combined arms element. You know, the, it tells you something that from that, from, from the outset, you know, from the moment that, you know, from the moment that the, from the moment that uh, the, the war party as it were, you know, before Mr. Churchill was even insinuated into office, you know, when the focus was uh, was uh, you know, was, was. Was merely one of many, albeit you know, a very powerful one, but one of many kind of lobbying concerns, the research and development of, of British war industry was very, very oriented towards developing a strategic bombing capability. And that I think that that's relevant particularly if, when we get into the, particularly when we get into the, the charging instrument at Nuremberg. And uh, this isn't just something that I, it kind of pulled out of the record in order to you know, hold wave around at some kind of. As some kind of rebuttal point. Bomber Harris made that point himself, as did Curtis LeMay in a very different way. But you know, if the as is cast, uh, you know, uh, in, in court history, know if the Germans were these people who Were you know, the, the. The claim is that you know, the Germans terror bound Rotterdam, which is ridiculous for a lot of reasons. You know, this claim is that, you know the, that the, you know, the Germans just spontaneously assaulted London for no reason. And they did so because they had this like mighty air force that was tailored basically to you know, to. To. To terrorize civilian populations, you know, with counter value assault. That's really, really at odds with facts. And frankly the, I mean over. I'll, I'll bring it back to the, the topic in a minute, but over, over the entire battle of Britain, I think something like 55000 people perished, uh, like civilian casualties, uh, in the UK now I'm not gonna be, I'm not being flippant or crass, you know, because that's a tremendous loss of life in absolute terms. But there was the. When the Allies started hitting Hamburg and Dresden, they were, they were killing 50, 000 people in one day. You know. And the. Over Tokyo, Over Tokyo over a hundred thousand people were burned to death in 20, 26 or 28 hours. Okay. Like over months. You know, the kind of attrition that Luofa achieved, that's nothing. That's pathetic. You know, I mean that, that's, that's, that's proof positive of the f. Of. Of you know, lacking a strategic capability at all. And the. Interestingly, uh, at least I think so. I mean if the. When a Luft 4 engine bomber finally was developed, it really didn't have an impact. And it was the reason it was designed. It was to strike industrial targets beyond the Earls, which had been uh, beyond range of uh, of extant aircraft. You know, it wasn't uh. It wasn't even designed for a proper strategic bombing role as we would think of it. So I mean and, and it. Then it wasn't fielded in, in inadequate numbers to have made a difference anyway. But I think that that is important. The, that August, August 2nd has uh, rekindled his uh, his, his close dealings with Albrecht Househoffer. I mean they'd always been close, they remained close. But Albert Taucho offered. Becomes something of an important personage. I mean he's really. He was relegated mostly to academics postings. I mean these are prestige academic postings. But uh, you know, he didn't have any official political roles. I mean for some, some. The reasons. For some of those reasons are obvious, others are not so obvious. But Alberta Schaufer was traveling all over the place and he was making all kinds of connections with, with various diplomatic representatives. You Know, actual ambassadors, you know, representing the United States, the United Kingdom and people who, uh, were acting as unofficial couriers. And he was spending in particular a lot of time in Sweden. Sweden was one of nine neutral states during the war. If people didn't know. But Drew McIntyre here from WWE.
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We'll come in a moment. We'll come back to like, who exactly these people were that Albrecht had been making contact with. But he was out of the country a lot of the time. Okay. And has obviously, you know, despite the fact as we talked about, you know, Hess's respons. Responsibilities had in some ways, you know, had been lessened by the onset of. Of, of war. He nonetheless still had a very busy schedule of, you know, formal responsibilities to the party. Now, uh, Hess's, uh, basically what it became clear from his conversation with the House Offer, in my opinion, is that he, at the top of his mind was the concern that sea lion was going to become a reality. House offer said. What House Offer relayed to his father was that Hess said, you know, although Hitler was loath to force a showdown with Britain, you know, Hitler will. Hitler will try to destroy the UK if his hand is forced. You know, I mean, what would he be describing other than sea lion? Okay, and has he said he, he appealed the house offer? You know, who were the. Who are the. Who are the Britons? Who are the. Who are the men in British society of vision with whom we can talk, you know, who, you know, even those who aren't, you know, who, who, who are not, you know, apologists for the, for our regime. And, and even those who, you know, are still kind of smarting from what they feel is, you know, the humiliation of, of Munich, you know, like, who, who are the men will be receptive at least to, you know, some, some. Some, you know, some, some kind of peace to, to prevent this bloodbath at Sea Lion. Okay, now, how. Sha's response was very interesting and to me, it. David Irving has, Has an optically charitable View of a House offer. My view of him is a bit more so House offer said that the problem with the British government is that it's not one of principles. It's one of. It's not one of personages. It's one of principles. Okay. He said how she ever told has that he didn't that the British, you know, your average, average British lord or your average, Your average foreign Office type he viewed anything, anything, any. Any promise Hitler gave is not worth the paper it's written on. And it's kind of. And it's kind of in. In kind of his earnest, uh, you know, simplicity at the way he looked at. At power political affairs has. Couldn't seem to get his mind around this. Okay. He pointed out, he's like. But, you know, the, you know, we, we acted in good faith in, in Munich. You know, it was Bennis who created a, who created a crisis, you know, through, through what amount of disinformation and how Shauver said. No, I realize that, but this is the way it's being presented. You know, these are the, These are the conceptual prejudices of, Of. Of, you know, of men in government, in, In Anglophone societies, you know, he said the Americans will back him up on this, even though there's, you know, the. There, There's. There's a, There's a less hardened view in the eyes of the man in the street in America than in the UK of, Of. Of Germany and Germans and particularly the Hitler regime. You know, he said, you know, house offer. He kept coming back to this point that it's, you know, it's not, it's not a question of, Of. Of addressing the right man. You know what I mean? I think that, that, that kind of, that kind of fixation with moral, with moral platitude is. That's a very English thing. Okay? I'm not just saying that to be punitive. I'm saying that there's something, there's something profound in cultural terms about this sort of lack of shared premises vis a vis what Hess was trying to convey to House Offer about, you know, what he believed would facilitate coming to terms and how Shauffers trying to explain to him in vain that these, These. Whether, you know, even if it's me, even if we view it as mere moral cant. The. This is what. This is basically like what makes, you know, this is the stuff that fuels, uh, English political culture and why that is. Is complicated. I've got my own view on that. I think it owes to the experience of the war Three kingdoms and a lot of other things. But basically a House Offer was telling him without telling him. You know, the die is cast and the only way. The only way Germany wins this war is with a battlefield victory. And yeah, I will. I'm the first person to make the point that you know, political problems can't be solved by military measures generally. But a. A stunning overwhelming battlefield victory does settle questions within certain paradigms in very absolute terms and that this was one of those cases. Now of course, of course sea lion was never going to become a reality. And even. Even were that the intention, which it wasn't, I don't believe it was possible again. But you know, as. As we talked about some episodes back, a you know, a victory over Moscow in 1941, that would have been. That required victory and that would have settled the war because it would have nullified anything the UK could possibly do. House Offer in Irving's mind was. Was basically a fifth columnist and was. Was basically, you know, trying to play both sides of the coin. Was trying to try, you know, acting as something of a disinformation agent to. Because you know, he was trying to feed Hess, you know, kind of defeatist, uh accounts of uh, you know both the uh. The possibility of uh. Of coming to terms with. With London as well as you know, trying to disabuse has of any notion that you know there's. That. That a military victory was possible. I don't believe that to be the case. I, I think House offer was what he appeared to be and uh. I'll. I'll explain why as we get more uh. Get deeper into. Into these uh. Into the. Into the circumstances that characterized uh offers secret diplomacy. As the Battle of Britain dragged on, it wasn't until the 25th of August that Hitler lifted. Hitler lifted all uh. All restriction on uh. Bombing London and any other civilian targets. Churchill knew that by the way that of this prohibition because uh. The Luftwaffe command uh codes had been deciphered and uh. It uh. It. It was. It was. Well uh. It. It was known basically from an. Know from the outset of hostilities that that which. That you know there was this prohibition that emerged from the fur himself. And so there. There can be no doubt that it was absolutely Churchill's ambition to provoke. Provoke uh retaliation. The uh. The RAF uh. That night had changed the picture dramatically. 25th of August, uh with a mass assault on Berlin. Hitler then ordered the planning of the bombing of. Of Of London. But he had not. He did not yet give the order. The order was issued on the night of the 28th and the 29th, that was a second RAF mass assault on Berlin. Uh, the people were outraged. Uh, Hitler gearing told him. And Hitler didn't even need convincing at that point. You know that we, we're going to lose our man, we're going to lose our mandate if we don't act now. And I believe that's exactly what happened. Hitler left Eagle's Nest over Salzburg the following afternoon. He went to Berlin and he stayed there because he wasn't going to hide out when Berlin was under siege from the air. Unlike Churchill who would run to his country estate, uh, upon the detection of uh, incoming uh, German assault aircraft. Uh, putting that out there. He General Thomas of the Vermont G. Georg Thomas High Command. He recorded in his war journal. Uh, you know that's basically that Dave's finally here. You know, the, the public mood is of outrage. The fear himself is indignant in a way I've never seen him. You know, the raid, the planning for, you know mass retaliation on London is, is. Is underway. And Thomas's war journal was full of tasks to turn minutiae. The fact that he documented this, I mean tells you kind of the gravity of it. I mean at least in my opinion. I mean it goes without saying. But. The. Hitler is still. And this is in common with you know, Hess's kind of uh, in con with Hess's uh, sort of misunderstanding of the enemy's political culture. Uh, Hitler was. He was constantly talking about, you know, he had the adver which was largely useless in terms of. And I mean ultimately uh, it's Canaris who is the head of uh, you know, foreign intelligence with the adverb Was. I mean ultimately was revealed to be a fifth columnist. But uh, the adver got a lot of good intelligence out of the UK for whatever reason. Got my own thoughts on that. There's a lot of former navy men who joined the ab there and there was, There was a, there's. There's a kind of common lingua franca in diplomatic terms between admiralty, you know, at least in those days, Hitler's refusal to authorize the you know, attacks on London until it became absolutely, it became absolutely, you know, necessary. He, he kept on mentioning, he kept on mentioning Lord Lothian who was the, the. The. The. The British ambassador to the United States and Washington. He'd served as a private secretary of Lloyd George and he was unfinly terms of Ramsay McDonald. You know, Hitler claimed uh, that you know, he had info that you know he wanted. He, he was willing to, you know, make peace Overtures if he could, you know, build a quorum within his own, you know, within his own. Within his own circles, you know, and that. That would have been that those would have been the men to approach if such thing was going to be possible. You know, McDonald. Anybody who'd been close to McDonald, which Lothian wasn't particularly close to him, but he, he had amicable enough relations with him to, you know, be McDonald gone out of his way to afford him a role in government. He really came to his own under Lloyd George. But these guys who are decidedly outside of the focus and outside of Churchill's kind of orbit, you know, these. This would have been the, the kind of coterie to approach Lord Halifax, who. His undersecretary at the foreign Office. He'd been a long time critic of the war party in he. He named the focus and all, but I mean it's. He. He discussed the focus and all but name as, you know, as. As being a party of. Of. Of. Of warmongers and basically, you know, foreign elements that are intriguing against the national interest. This is uh. So Hitler's notion in part was that, you know, if we blitz London, that's going to kill any potential of. Of. Of.
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Of capitalizing on. On this. On this diplomatic potential. And again, that makes sense in a certain way, but goes to show you, I mean Hitler was quite a bit more worldly on these matters than Hess. But I, I again there's that kind of. That kind of lack of understanding of. Of kind of Anglophone society as opposed to kind of, you know, governance and way of. Way of diplomacy and everything else. It's. It would have. The. The only way in. In the like. The only. The only way peace would have been achieved if Churchill was out of office. You know, the, the way to achieve peace wouldn't have been to remove Churchill from office by developing a quorum against him, because that would not have been possible. I guess that's what I'm getting at. But it's. It's interesting the, the. And the fact that I mean Hitler was. Hitler was more. He was more wise to the kind of internal dynamics both of the United States and uh. And of uh, you know, and of uh, end of the UK that he's credited with. I made that point of people before and I mean that's why I've written some long form on. The fact is significant. Hitler identified Roosevelt as his nemesis, you know, not Churchill, not Stalin. And that owes the. The fact that, you know, there were the animus between the United States and Germany was a matter of pure ideology. So. But I, I digress. In any event, uh, while this was going on, uh, Hitler, he'd gone as far as to renew there's a burden. There's a Berlin lawyer named Ludwig Weiss Hauser, and Hitler did not trust the Foreign Ministry. His own Foreign Ministry, I mean, von Ribbentrop's ascendancy, uh, didn't really mitigate that Hitler trusted von Ribbentrop, even if they didn't always see eye to eye on geostrategic questions. But the Foreign Ministry, it was. It was shot through with, With. With. With. With Hindenburg appointees and, you know, people who are really, really rigid in their thinking. It was kind of a repository of. Of. Of. Of old aristocrats, you know, who, who look down on the National Socialist Party just you know, as a. As a kind of matter of. It kind of. As a matter of, you know, what they thought was correct social graces. But also, you know, it. It's hard to. It's. It's difficult to emphasize. And I mean, Henry Kissinger, of all people made this point. And I, I know that people get upset when I say Kissinger because he's somebody that a lot of people like to burn an effigy, apparently. But his observations on diplomatic cultures and various states is fascinating. And there was a real rigidity to the. The foreign offices, particularly these continental powers that even, like. You don't have to like Hitler or like the National Socialists or the Third Reich to imagine that, you know, whoever was at the helm, unless, you know, unless he was. Unless he was, you know, like I said, like, unless he was Hindenburg himself or some. Or somebody comparable who'd been, you know, whose patronage had insinuated the men in control of the. The diplomatic core, you know, to whom they owe their. Their position, it would be really kind of impossible to. To trust that they were acting in good faith, you know. And Hitler deployed a vice officer to Stockholm and again Sweden, owing to its strategic situation, but also the fact that it was a neutral country. There's a lot of. There's a lot of diplomatic intriguing going on there, uh, by all, uh, by all combatant states. Uh, he directed Vice Officer Mallet, who's. The UK Mallet, apparently. And I've never. Mallet was known to be, uh, interested in, uh, at least creating some kind of avenue, uh, to. To peace with Germany of an unconditional sort. I'm sure he wasn't under any illusion that again, like, you know, even if he developed a quorum against the war party that Churchill could somehow just be, you know, unceremoniously removed from office. But it's not an accident. My vice officer contacted him, you know, and, uh, vice arson was deployed, no less by Hitler himself to do so. So I speculate, and this is totally unfounded, Edward VIII was the guy who would have made this happen. And Edward had been. Had abdicated back in 1936, but. And he. He ended up somewhere in the Caribbean, I think, and some kind of sinecure role after he married Wallace Sampson, Wallace Simpson. But I thought about this a lot, and I don't see who else could have. I mean, who would have had, like, who would have had the cloud and kind of the context, you know, to get in touch with somebody like Mallet and then convey to Hitler, you know, Hitler's not exactly easy to get an audience with. Okay. I mean, and so I, I speculate strong that Edward VIII was behind some of the secret diplomacy in terms of arranging, you know, making these meetings possible. Okay. But again, I can't. I, I cannot prove that, and I've never seen any evidence that effect. But it's just by process of elimination, I don't. I don't see who else he would have been going through, okay. To be making, Making these things happen. But at any event, what vice officer and, and this was the German position, what he relayed to Mallet is that Germany withdraw all forces from France, all forces in the Low Country. It would only retain those territories in Poland and Czechoslovakia, you know, which had been. You know, which. Which had been Germany's before, uh, before the, The. The Versailles Treaty dismantled, decoupled them, and Germany would assist the British Empire against all enemies, including Japan, and that was it. I mean, that's an unconditional peace offer. Uh, he, Mallet, he. He. He sent, uh, he relayed the telegram to London. He didn't identify. He didn't identify who his conduct was, but, you know, he was a man who had enough authority that, you know, he, He. If he said that this was, you know, an official. An official offer, I mean, it would be taken as such. And the fact that he contacted London in the first place, and the fact that he phrased it as he did, I mean, it was clear that he deduced that this was an offer coming from Adolf Hitler. And, you know, London just unconditionally said no, you know, like, it wasn't even, it wasn't even taken to. It wasn't even taken to Downing street, you know, And I mean, how. Like, like that's inconceivable. I Mean, even if you have no intention of. I mean it just goes to show you that like the, the focus. I mean if it's not clear by now, and it's not clear to anybody who reads the, the, you know, the, who goes over the evidence with an eye for, you know, any kind of discreet detail that, you know, the entire, the, the entire focus position, its only policy position was war at all costs. I mean that, you know, then that's not, that's not that, that's not that. That is never a legitimate course unless, unless you know, unless you're truly engaged in, in a, in, in a kind of uh, velt and songs Krieg that is, you know, has been, it's been decoupled from any, from any kind of, uh, any kind of reasoned, uh, geostrategic imperative. Now. Later, as summer 940 came to a close, Albrecht Albert Tower arrived back in Bavaria it. And again, like Albrecht, uh, he claimed, he claimed to be attending to business interests, you know, when he was, you know, doing this globe trotting. But he and Ian has met and met in Vienna, which is, which is. It's interesting too. Not as interesting, but I think it's significant. Then it became rarer and rarer for the house offers and has to meet in, in Germany proper. And when they did it was almost always in Munich or thereabouts, never Berlin it. But on, on September 3rd, Carl House offer typed a letter to his son, uh, who he'd known had been, you know, back in, uh, back in close contact with Hess. And uh, he uh, he stated, uh, as you know, quote, everything is set for a very, very harsh assault on the aisles in question. So all the top man has to do is press the button and reading within the lines. It's this. This validates what I suggested. When we began this, when we began this episode, Hess was absolutely convinced that sea lion was going to become a reality. He conveyed this to, he conveyed this to Albert to offer who conveyed this to his father. And both of them found that to be credible. And that also adds another layer and we won't have time to get into it in this episode and forgive me, because I realize I'm throwing a lot of tangential data out there, but I think it's important and essential to understanding the Hess issue in any complete way. But so, I mean, keep this in mind as we do get into that though, like not only. Not only was Hess acting in good faith and the defector, but arguably Hess was trying to spare English lives as much as he was German ones. I mean, he believed sea lion was going to be implemented. Carl House offer continued his letter. And this is key as well, wouldn't you say? He was speaking, still speaking. And obviously this kind of cryptic language of amateur espionage, quote, wouldn't you say that there's a way of overtaking such possibilities with a middleman on neutral ground? Perhaps with the old General Ian Hamilton, or quote that other Hamilton, meaning Lord Clydesdale, who was the Duke of Hamilton and we talked about last time, was ultimately Hess's intended point of contact and who was, you know, a close friend of Albrecht.
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So this is all coming together. Okay, as to why Hess was doing like, what was in his mind, why he selected Scotland as his target area, why he was even. Why the, you know, why Clydesdale, the, the Duke of Hamilton was even within his contemplation, why he considered it essential, why he considered essential, uh, to, you know, to, to act as, as soon as possible before, uh, you know, sea lion became, um, a, a reality. And bear in mind too that, you know, like we talked about, because, because Hess obviously did not know, as almost nobody did, it was only a handful of general officers and admirals who kind of by nuance, Hitler disclosed to them that sea lion was a strategic ruse. But you know, Hess, Hess believing that, you know, he would have been witnessed, he would have been. Hess would have been privy to forces and being in some basic way, even though he was not sitting in on OKW briefings or anything like that, you know, and looking around him, he would have been, he would have seen, you know, the all indications of, of mobilization towards uh, uh, you know, a, uh, an assault across the English Channel. And this becomes clearer and clearer the more one dives into it. And I, it does, I don't, I don't see anybody can claim like we take, we take informational awareness for granted today in a lot of ways. But you know, even today I, I people really are kind of quarantined in their own areas of responsibility. And you know, particularly, you know, Hess didn't have. I mean Hess, he was respected. You know, he, he was a war hero. But Hess didn't have a H, wasn't H. Didn't have a military rank at that time. You know, he was. There's not any reason why he would have been privy to these things unless he had, you know, a. A source within, within the Kriegs Marine or within the Vermont who for some reason decided to. Decided to disclose to him the, the nature was actually underway. But I, I don't think anybody disclosed that. Like I said, I believe those who came. I, I'm even speculating that. I believe Eric Raider and I, I believe Yodel and I believe a few others were. Were privy to this. Like I said, owing to kind of, you know, discerning the nuance and what the furor told them and, and by having a kind of complete operational picture. I don't even, I don't think anybody stated this is strategic ruse. I don't think there was some like, you know, I don't think there was you know, some, some document, Eyes only document laying it all out or anything like that. So doesn't, it doesn't cast Hess as a fool for, for thinking that. Quite the contrary. September 4th, 1940. Uh, that's when Hitler addressed 10,000 Berliners at the Sports Palace. The sports polished as people might know in 1943. That's where. That's where Geral gave the total war speech. Which is ominous because on September 4, Germany having suffered more British raids and, and Hitler having finally, you know, given the order to retaliate. This is where he addressed Berliners and he said if, you know, they proclaim they'll attack our cities, you know, we, we shall wipe their cities out. You know, I mean this was a real. This, this wasn't just Hitler. This wasn't just Hitler bluster and, and anger. I mean that was part of it. But there was and there's like a genuine sorrow here. Like there's no. There was absolutely. No, there's absolutely no reason for, for the, for the British war against the Reich to continue. Know. I mean like I said, I'm convinced that as, as. As you know, in centuries subsequent to now, I mean it, it'll be viewed as a rare instance. The UK I mean and the, the Churchill regime. It. It'll be. It'll be understood as a rare instance of uh, of a, of a. Of a state taking leave of reason and waging war against like Quite literally against the national and material interests. Just it, you know, it's, it's a rare case of, of, of not even, of, of not even being, you know, considered in any way justifiable even in terms of the bounded rationality of, of then, uh, extant conditions. But uh, I believe that uh, this is when Hess decided to take his flight end of August into September. This, that same week, September 7th, the luff off several hundred Lufa attack aircraft bombed the port of London and assaulted the East End and lit up the night sky. You know, the East End was burning. And this, this changed everything. There was, it's, it, you know, that coupled with, you know, his discussions with the House offers and his, you know, this disclosures therein and, and vice versa, I, I, I believe this is the moment at which it occurred. You only tell me that's speculative, but I mean it based on the record as uh, what's available. And it has this case, uh, there's, there's, there's quite a voluminous amount of direct testimony not just from him, you know, and his, his correspondences, but you know, from these other parties to these intrigues like the House offers. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think I'm reaching. But again, forgive me if this was kind of scattershot man. Like I, I, uh, I, I, I had to kind of fit this all in. And otherwise some of the things that emerge later aren't gonna have a context. So I hope I didn't bore anybody or anything like that. What do you think? The next episode. What are we looking at? We gotta deal with Hess's flight. The first half. In the second half, I want to begin the Nuremberg charging instrument and how it was decided who would be charged and named on that indictment. And the, the fate of, has played very prominently in that. So I think it's kind of a natural like segue, if that makes sense. Okay into that because it's definitely. It was not a foregoing conclusion that Hess was going to be charged with anything. I mean if, what do you do with prisoners of war after the war? Don't you send them home? I mean, and Hess wasn't even a POW in any, in any traditionally interested sense. I mean he, he came to them. I mean he was a defector if anything. But yeah, that's Hess's ill, Hess's flight, his capture and the charging that Nuremberg indictment will return to Justice Jackson and, and the uh, and the American delegation and how they decided, uh, how they decided, uh, who would be charged. And that, that, uh, that plays into uh, Samuel Untermeyer and some of these characters of the focus who were based in the United States, you know, primarily New York City, but not exclusively. They reemerge in terms of their contacts with the American delegation in Nuremberg and wielding quite a bit of undue influence in terms of what, what conduct would, would be brought under the penumbra of, you know, the charting instrument and stuff like that. So that, that's, that's what I'd like to cover. Okay. Give your plugs please. Okay. You can find me at, on Substack. That's where our podcast is. As well as various long form essays, all in Sundry. It's real thomas777.substack.com you should hit. You can find us on T Gram. We got a very active community there. It's T Me slash the number 7H777. And I back, I back up most of our stuff on gab. I'm not real active there, but you know, if you want to find these videos that Mr. Pete and I do here or you know, any of my, any of my podcast appearances and live streams and things, I generally put them up on Gab. It's, you can find me on gab at Real Thomas 777. Till the next time. Thank you. All right, thank you, Pete. We're starting to come to the end. Thomas, how are you doing? And I want to reiterate again that I really, really appreciate you granting me the opportunity for this series. You know, not just for posterity, but to, you know, kind of raise awareness about revisionism and what it entails. Can I say something before we start? Yeah, you're, I recently listened to your stream with Academic Agent on the Troubles. Okay, that was great, man. Thank you very much. That was great. Anybody? I'll put, I'll try and put, remember to put that in the show notes. Anyone who wants to learn about what was happening in Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland, that was especially having, what's your name, Lady Charlotte there. Yeah, she's, she's, she's really great, man. She's pure class and just a really, really intelligent, really gracious lady. And I mean, I, I, it's a, it's a sensitive issue. I mean, obviously, because I mean those were horrible times. And you know, I, I, I was, I was somewhat hesitant when I got a gage and asked me to speak on it because, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an Ulsterman and you know, I'm very Much an outsider. I'm very interested in the subject area, but I, I didn't want anybody to feel disrespected or like the topic was being treated flippantly or somehow, somehow exploited for some, for some sort of, you know, political purpose or something. You know, in a. But so far the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive and, and yeah, I really appreciate that man. And Agatha Mccation is a great, great guy and a great content creator and I'm always, I always appreciate him inviting me. So, yeah, thank you for that endorsement. No problem at all. So we're going to finish off, we're going to finish off the story of Rudolph has today. Yeah, I, I want to do just as a kind of introductory statement. You know, I focused so many episodes on, on the person that Hess. He's one of these people who, you know, I, I, I've, I've referenced Carlisle a lot and you know, Carlisle is a, is, was very impactful in my own thinking and still is, you know. And you know, Carlisle deals with, you know, heroic personages as a, is a primary. They hold us. That's central to his theory of history. Okay. And, and historiography. But there's, there's men who aren't conventionally heroic, you know, but who, who, who are very much, who are very much astride the zeitgeist of, of their epoch and are instrumental in the development of seminal events. They're in. And I consider it has to be one of those people. I mean, like I said, I wasn't just looking for some, the sort of. I wasn't just looking for some sort of snarky title. When I, when I said that Hess really was the, he was the real man in the High Castle. I mean there's nothing funny about that. Like, the fate of Hess is actually really horrible. And it, it's, it's like something out of science fiction. It's totally bizarre. And so he does, his story is important beyond, you know, the man himself. Although I frankly I, I think, I think there was an earnest, I think there's a kind of naive earnestness to Hess that's admirable. Okay. I mean, and nobody has to share my opinion on that. But he's, and he was, he was central to the intrigues in, in terms of uh, you know, the efforts uh, toward to find, uh, to accomplish a peace, uh, with the UK which obviously Mr. Church on the focus we're not going to allow to happen. But this was by, it's been very, has been really deliberately slandered as some as some crazy, as some crazy man, you know, consulting star charts, who went on some suicide mission for no apparent reason. He's out of his mind. And this, that's not just a gross insult to Hess and his, his family, but does violence to, to historical truth has, Was anything but insane. And as we're going to dive more into or delve more into today, what motivated us to take his ill fated flight in the first place was the fact that there, There was fertile ground at, you know, and it was a really critical. Not only was, Was, was there a receptive, was there a potentially receptive audience among the, the British elite to find a way out of the war, but it was a critic. It was a truly critical juncture. I mean, these are the, these are the weeks immediately prior to Barbarossa, okay? So Europe was on the brink. And that's got to be, that's got to be accounted for. And, and what was, what was known by Churchill is again essential here because as we'll get into shortly when we get to that point, you know, it's, it's another, it's another case of Churchill, you know, deceit, quite literally deceiving his countrymen and acting at odds, kind of perfectly at odds with the national interest under auspices of, of, of falsehood. Okay, so we'll, with that, we'll, we'll move on. Um, what happened immediately before Hess's flight, um, in the, in the, in the early months of 1941 are essential. Now, we talked before about how the Househoffers, you know, not just Hess's mentor, Carl, but Albrecht Househoffer, you know, the son who, who, who, who Hess became just as close to in, in many respects as to the father. You know, he was very much in. First of all, he was insinuated into the Foreign Ministry, as we talked about, and the Foreign Ministry, it was, was quite independent within the Third Reich. And, you know, the Ribbentrop replaced what was a basically hostile kind of, uh, professional diplomatic class. But Ribbentrop was not at all a yes man. Okay? He clashed with, with the furor a great deal, and he had his own, he had his own geostrategic vision that, that was, that was very much his own. Okay? So House offer, you know, being half Jewish and you know, being very independently minded, it makes sense that, you know, he, he would have, he would have a very active role there, okay. And that in and of itself, kind of anecdotally defeats a lot of assumptions and slanders about the German Reich. Now, of course, Albert Taufer didn't have any formal. He didn't have any formal political office, but, you know, academics wielded a lot of authority, okay, in, in the German Reich, as was the case, you know, throughout the continent. Okay. And that's, that's somewhat alien to us here because in America, when we did have, have public intellectuals, they, they generally were in the center. We are such that they still exist or can be said to exist, you know, or people in the sciences and things, you know, when. Who, who are experts in, in, in. In things that, you know, are, are relate to applied technologies and things. Okay, but, and so how Shaw for the younger. He was very much engaged as we got into last episode, in secret diplomacy, you know, both on the continent and uh, as well as, uh, you know, making overtures, reciprocal overtures to people in the United Kingdom who wanted to bring an end to the war and who, you know, despite a lot of whom, despite nominal loyalty to Churchill, you know, understood exactly what was underway, if not the extent of the, of the conspiracy as regards the focus. You know, they, they understood. They've always been presented about the inevitability of conflict with Germany and the justness of the war. The necessity of it was not true. Okay. So many, many intrigues around, around people in Hess's intimate circle. Okay. And as we talked about before, you know, Hess's ultimate intended contact, you know, Lord Hamilton was, was a close personal friend of Albert Taushoffer. That's why this man was on Hess's mind in the first place. Okay. Now interestingly, you know, we talked about Edward Bennis, you know, the last, uh, the last, the last, uh, President of uh, Czechoslovakia, you know, and he was very much a. He was very much a. A, A client of, of the United Kingdom now he was in exile and he was in very close contact with, uh, with British intelligence, particularly the sis. Now what he recorded in his own, uh, private diaries was that SAS had relayed to him that they were, quote, expecting somebody in the form of a high profile deflector. You know, and what. It's important not to read too much into these statements, especially if there's not like a context written into them. But, you know, obviously these people that Benis was talking to at high levels in, in secret intelligence were. They were convinced that there was going to be some sort of. There was going to be some sort of emissary arriving and either as a defector or as a, or as an unofficial peace emissary, you know, I mean, it's the only thing that's going to be inferred from that, like did they know that that man would be Hess? I, who knows? But you know, this was something that the people within what we consider today, the deep state, they seem to be anticipating this. Okay? And that's not, this wasn't, this wasn't wild speculation on their part. I mean everything, everything indicated, everything indicated that sort of development. There was no objective strategic reason for the UK and Germany to be at war. Unlike say France and Germany. I think France and Germany. France's declaration of war against Germany was very ill fated and it will considered it wasn't just splendidly at odds of the national interest. Okay. The, as we, as we've got in, as we got into quite extensively in, in the, you know, the series we did on Churchill earlier, you know, this, this really was not at all, in no way could this be strategically rationalized. Okay. It was, it was very much a moral crusade that was based very much on, on dubious premises and ill defined objectives. You know, that, you know, kind of just came back again and again to the, the moral cant and rhetoric quite literally of Mr. Churchill. Now what's, I, I know a lot of our listeners probably and many and, and there's actually a lot of revisionists like including David Irving who I've got incredible esteem for. Okay. But that part ways with him on some, on some issues and one of those is Hess Irving, Irving's got a very conspiratorial view of the theory's knowledge of Hess's intent. The, and he bases us on the fact that there was people, there's people very close to Hess, including his adjutant and we'll get into that in a minute who upon Hess's flight relayed that they believed that the fear was, was feigning surprise and that he, he was not disclosing what he actually knew. Okay. And people on, on Adolf Hitler's staff, some of them relayed the same thing. I don't accept that and I'll get into why I don't accept that shortly. But you know, I, I, I, I think it's essential to, to understand, to understand Hess's motivations. I mean the, the fur was in the dark about this as was essentially everybody except the House offers and, and possibly Billy Messerschmit, although that's dubious. We'll get into that in a minute. And, and like I said, it has his personal staff, but the diaries of Aldrich Albrecht Hauschofer and some of the personal journals of his father, they were seized by the Allies in 1945 from the House Offer Estate. Okay. Albert House. Offer. He was the primary link between Hess, Hitler, the. The various secret diplomacy intriguers, you know, within the UK establishment. So, I mean, this was fundamentally important stuff, okay? Just not just for historical posterity, but for putting together a picture of what in fact developed in. In, you know, the. The months preceding May 1941. Now, these diaries have simply never been seen again. Historians who sought them out, including Irving, they were. They were. The Department of the army claim they have no idea what their ultimate fate was. The National Archives claim the same thing as far as I understand it. Although I've never. I've never presented a formal inquiry, you know, to like the Wilson center or anything. Oss, you know, later CIA. They. They claim that they don't have any knowledge of this whatsoever. It. And similarly the Duke of Hamilton himself, The Air Ministry, The UK Air Ministry maintained a file on the Duke of Hamilton. And it'll be become clear why this was. So as we go on in a little bit, I don't want to jump ahead, but it's not important right now. What is important is that this file was maintained on him. Okay? An intelligence file. This has been entirely redacted, okay? This entire section is documenting the three months prior to the Hess flight in the Hamlin file. They're simply absent from the file. And it's not redacted in the ordinary way. You know, there's not paper inserted in its stead indicating, you know, eyes only, national security imperatives or anything like that. It's simply not there. And we only. We only know of this file. It really came to light owing to the papers, the Hamilton family itself, okay. And like what they disclosed around the time of Hess's death, as I understand it. So, I mean, this is. This is all very strange, okay? Beyond mere. Beyond the mere kind of, you know, clumsy sort of pointless secrecy that characterizes intelligence agencies. It does. Here, give me a second. I want to call up a citation. The. We made a lot of. We made a lot of. Of the. Or people make a lot of the fact that, you know, just owing to Hess's. Owing to his behavior, it should have been pieced together, you know, what. What his intentions were. But, you know, people don't understand that Hess was. Hess was insulated in. In a peculiar way. You know, he was not a member of the military. You know, he was. He was the top. You know, he was essentially the top party official. But, you know, and he had. He had very much a personal audience with Hitler when he wanted it. But, you know, his fear Of. Of a formal authority. It. Where it really. Where it really was most indicated was in his ability to, you know, make sure people like Albrecht Househoffer had no problems. Okay. Or you know what we'll get into in a moment. You know, when he. When he approached Billy Messerschmidt and said that, you know, he wanted a special plane to be outfitted for him, Messerschmitt simply did it and didn't ask questions. I mean, there's no doubt he was an incredibly powerful man. But
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Terms and conditions apply in terms of. In terms of the. The particular. The concrete particulars of. Of military planning and, you know, of the security state and things like this. Like. Like Hess was very much in the dark about these things because, you know, the. The Third Reich was. Was very much a government of fiefdoms, okay? Like, it wasn't. It was not a revolutionary state like the Soviet Union, you know, where it had been conquered by vanguard that overthrown the regime. You know, it. It was. It was a party that was democratically elected, you know, that was charged with insinuating itself, you know, into a. A state that was incredibly complex and wellestablished and, you know, really kind of rigid in terms of its structural authority. And that kind of tended to, uh. That kind of tended to feed the structure of the German state itself. Kind of. Kind of served to fuel the already sort of agonistic pluralism between, you know, various factions and departments and then within the National Socialist Party. So it's not. It doesn't defy. It's not hard to believe that, you know, nobody in the military or in, you know, or in Himmler's security apparatus or on the fears, you know, staff would be suspecting, you know, things about Hess and also, too, concerning how powerful Hess was, you know, in. In. In. In terms of his clout. You know, spying on a man like Hess would be kind of unseemly. Like, I have no doubt that the Gestapo did, you know, spy on Hess here and there, because that's just. I mean, there's no way. They did not. But like shadowing him or something like that would have, that would have been unseemly and that would have had consequences. Okay, so, but it, it's not, it's not, not. It's not hard to believe that Hess was able to keep his, his comrades in the dark about this. To that point though, there was another. I mean there's an added, there's an added kind of layer of, of secrecy afforded him by accident of fate has approached. Uh, Ernst Udith, who is uh, UDIT was, he was part of the Richtofen squadron and he was an old comrade at Gearing's. You know, he was a, he was an air ace, really tragic guy. He came to, he committed suicide. And his, his suicide note, he wrote. He strolled on the wall of his apartment and then he, he, he professed love for his girlfriend who'd left him. And he, he said to Herman Gehring, you abandoned me. Iron Man. That was, you know, the name that the Richtoff and Squadron had for Gearing. Udet was a, he's the Director of Air Armament and I mean he was really, he was really, he really was not up to the task. Okay. And Milch, it took Milch literally years to undo the damage he had done. Udith and Jashanic did, had a horrible effect on the CAP combat effectiveness of the Lufafa in terms of its strategic capabilities. I mean, obviously no one can say that the tactical capabilities of Luke Fo were some of subpar. But in any event, at this point, despite the fact that, you know, he, he was still in his role as Armaments Minister for Aircraft, he was circling the drain. You know, he was, he was drinking himself to death. He was, you know, carrying on with women of ill repute. He was, he was actively self destructing. So when it has approached him and said, you know, I need you to, I need you to contact Messer Schmidt and have him make a, make a plane available for me, which ended up being the Messerschmitt's 110, which was a cutting edge two engine attack aircraft. Udak was too mired in his own problems and, and kind of curled up in a liquor bottle to really like do anything in terms of saying why does Hess want this plane? Okay, even if, I mean again, I maintain that a certain kind of, a certain kind of privacy was presumed, you know, when we were talking about, you know, people of Hess's portfolio in the Third Reich. But even, even if Udo was particularly disengaged, it's owing to what I just said. So I mean he was kind of the perfect. He was kind of the perfect man. And you know, did he actually point of contact where it has to kind of keep his business private. And to that point, Udet had initially said, even long before Hess said had any. Had any notion of. Of. Of undertaking this ill fated mission and before even you know, the onset of hostilities from the UK and and the German Reich, you know, Hess was an active flyer, you know and uh, even during the years of struggle, you know, he'd flown a plane uh, you know, to disrupt like communist rallies and things. You know, like, like kind of funny stuff. I mean, I think so. But it, but he, I mean just as a, you know, he was an adventurous guy and he wanted to keep up his skills but you know, Hitler ordered him to stop flying basically because it's, you know, you're not, you know, just like later he did a hydra. He ordered him grounded because he's, you know, you're, you're senior party men can't be taking these kinds of risks. And also it seemed like unseemly, you know, kind of like, it seemed like cowboy stuff were kind of like glory hounding. Know. But Udet. Udet said, you know, well I'll have to, you know, I'll take a dispensation of the fur and has just kind of finessed and was like well we, you know, we don't really need to do that and do we? Like why, why should we bother the fur with this? And you know, UD continued to, you know, kind of nag him periodically and but you know, I mean has said has had real rank over Udad. Eventually it just became a non issue, you know, it. So Hess got his way. Billy Messer Schmidt, who was really kind of an eccentric, you know, genius, but not particularly engaged in politics, I mean at all. You know, he's kind of like the theory portion like of. Of. Of aircraft. I mean I, this is the way I think of them. He relayed that has turned up at the Augsbury aircraft plant. And he just stated openly, you know, I want, I want, I want to be grant. I want to be given flying instruction on the Messerschmitt 110, you know, which again was you know, the cutting edge long range twin engine attack aircraft, you know, and, and message in message from its mind. I mean what he relayed to his subordinates. So what he wrote in his own personal journal. I mean he, he took this as like a huge, you know, I go wow, you know the, you know Deputy Furor, you know, Hair Hessie, you know, he's so impressed with what we're doing. You know, he actually wants to take, you know, the, he wants to take our new kind of flagship fighter aircraft out for a spin like so to speak. You know. So we, Messer Schmidt immediately took one out of production just for Hess, you know. And ever a few practice flights, you know, has became competent at it, you know and has really. I mean like we talked about, Hess never flew in combat in the Great War. But you know he, after convalescing from his injuries, you know, he did, he did get receive flight training and he was going to deploy to a fighter squadron when the armistice happened. You know. And so he was a very, he was a very skilled pilot and he mastered the Messer Schmitz 110 within weeks. And he started issuing odd demands. He said the range was too limited, so needed fuel tanks built into the wings. He said he needed better radio equipment. You know, we, he. Navigating in those days was very difficult. Military aviation wasn't much beyond, you know, navigating by sight according to terrestrial features, you know. And uh, radar was in its infancy, you know, radar and uh, ground control communication was, was primitive but it was essential and there wasn't really a backup for these things, you know. So it's, but at the same time, you know, it's like I, you know, Messer Schmidt's alibi could be what he indicated. You know, Hess just was taking an interest in you know, Armin's production. The man was a pilot himself. He was kind of an eccentric. He was probably just interested in capabilities or I mean for all he knew from Messerschmitt knew like the party had, you know, Hitler had sent Hess to kind of see what was going on, you know, was kind of a, you know, an issue, a kind of off the books report on, on what he, what he viewed as a, the capabilities of the new aircraft. Obviously like daring wasn't going to render an objective, an objective view to his fear because you know we, his, his, his, his role depended on it, you know. And Gary was a great man a lot of ways, but he had quite an ego. And Gary had a problem with exaggerating things like his, you know, uh, it's kind of in uh, in accordance with his larger than life Persona. You know, he was kind of like he himself was kind of an exaggeration. But uh, luckily too, you know, another fortuitous kind of accident of, of personnel situation. The, the. One of the deputy directors of the, the Message plant was a theocronies, uh, Hess had known, uh, during the First World War, you know, he was in the squadron. He was in his training squadron. And he, he was able to get the improvements made without, you know, any undue. Without any undo, you know, investigation as to why or anything like that. And towards that end, it, uh, in Jan. The. The, uh, the, uh, the factory files from, uh, from Billy Messerschmidt himself. There's entries from, you know, like January 1941. The first. Yeah, the first, the first week in January. And kidding, you know, real FS is, you know, Messerschmiths 110, you know, is, you know, is gonna. Is soon gonna be ready. You know, it is an old type heating system, but this needs to be, you know, remedied. Blah, blah, blah. You know what. And this is key, this period of time in terms of, uh, the Hess flight and its implications. That being. This is January 1941, okay. As we talked about in earlier episodes, specifically January 7th and January 8th, those are the days that Adolf Hitler first briefed his field marshals and generals on the strategic plans for. For the Soviet Union. Okay, the nominal or the COVID reason for the. For the briefing was, you know, the. It was to set up strategic plans for the Balkans and you know, in the war in North Africa. And that was addressed too. But it, it was, it was, it was, you know, it was. It was informing the, you know, the General Staff and others of Operation Barbarossa know, and it was, it was in, you know, and they received the order to begin planning it. And this was. Absolutely nobody outside of the military was privy to this, okay, except Antonesu, you know, the, The Grand Marshal of Romania, who Hitler, in my opinion, had had the most, uh, kind of amicable relations with out of any other head of state, say Mussolini. He was advised, obviously, and you know, the Romanian coordination in operational terms with the Vermont was incredibly tight. But this was not. Again, like, kind of people who have a kind of a dilettantish interest in. In. In Reich history, In World War II history, they act like this is crazy that, you know, Hess would not have known of Operation Barbarossa. It's not crazy at all. Like, in fact, like he absolutely would not have known. It was not something that was within his sphere of authority. And the nature of the operation was remote, was remarkably secretive, even more so than would ordinarily be for a grand military undertaking. And in a large part, and we're going to get into the imp. Implications of this, Hitler is doing everything in his power to, you know, by way of ledgered main, you know, feigned deployments and, and things like this, you know, to convince, to, to convince onlookers that Operation Sea lion, you know, which was the code name for the planned invasion of the United Kingdom, was actually underway. Now this was a ruse, okay? It was never underway, but the intended, it was intended to, it was intended to deceive the Soviet Union. Okay? This was its, this was its raison Dietra, okay, was not aimed at the German people. It was not aimed at, uh, trying to force the UK to come to terms. Churchill exploited this, uh, massively. And we're gonna get into that in a minute. But, uh, this, uh, the fact is that the. For Operation Barbarossa to work it there had to be no indication that, that, that the Reich was planning a, an assault against the Soviet Union. Okay? So it. And this also, I mean, this is, this is tremendously significant in terms of Hess's own motivations because as we talked about, in Hess's mind, Operation Sea lion is imminently going to be ordered, you know, not only is he working to, you know, bring, bring London and Berlin to terms because, you know, the, you know, he, he like his hero Househofer and like his other hero, Adolf Hitler, you know, not only does he believe in geostrategic terms that an alliance between the United Kingdom and the German Reich is essential, you know, he's also, he also has a notion of, of, of racial solidarity that, that he believes is essential. But also, you know, in Hess's mind, the clock is ticking until there's an assault order to invade the United Kingdom. And this will be a bloodbath. And this will also leave, you know, Germany vulnerable to assault by the Soviet Union, which is its, you know, which is its true enemy to the East. So this is, you know, it's important, it's not as important. It's essential to put oneself in the mind of these historical actors, you know, in the moment and in Hess's mind, in the minds of millions of other people. Operating Sea lion was a real thing. You know, it there. He had no concept of, you know, within, you know, by summertime this massive assault was going to be, was going to be ordered against the, against the Soviets. You know, it's now on January 10th. This is, this is significant, has his personal agitant, who I mentioned a moment ago, his name was Carl Heinz Pinch. Now Pinch had been driving has to during these excursions to the Messerschmitt's factory and into the factory airfield at Augsburg And I mean, frankly, for Hess's mission to work, there was. He had to take some people into his confidence. I mean, as few people as possible. I mean, hasn't even tell his wife. Okay. But, you know, he, he did need somebody to act as courier for his, you know, final communications that he was issued before he. He was to depart. But also just, you know, for something like this and considering the nature of it, you know, which is a diplomatic peace mission by an emissary of the right government, there. There had to be somebody. There had to be. So there had to be at least one trusted person to bear witness. Like if for, I mean, training number of contingencies, including, you know, let's say like Hess's plane had gone down over the North Sea and has never heard from again. Okay. Because we clarify things, you know, for posterity. So Hess took Pinch into his. Into his confidence. And on the 10th, this was Hess's first in what it has confined. What became clear later is that this was Hess's first attempt to undertake the mission to Scotland. It was aborted owing to the weather. Okay. Flying over the North Atlantic is incredibly perilous, okay, in those days. And bad weather could make it impassable due to like, no, you know, it. You would be blinded. Okay. But has had every intention on the 10th of. Of leaving. And when on that day, when Pinch accompanied him to the Augsburg field, he handed. Has handed him two letters. One was addressed to the furor and the other, he instructed Pinch to open in four hours time if. Has it not yet returned. As it, as it happened, after two hours flying time, the. The. The weather did turn and, you know, it literally thickened and has said to abort the mission. When he landed Augsburg, he found that, uh, Pinch had opened the instructions, okay. Uh, already revealing, uh, you know, that, that, that hasn't flown to Britain, which of course he didn't, but that was his intent, you know. And what it said was the vulgar letter was that his intention had been to fly to Scotland. Leonard Dungaville. So the Duke of Hamilton, upon locating him, and he had, you know, he, he knew where his. His estate was, this family estate, has intended to present to him his visiting card from Albert Horsehofer. Now, what a visiting card was like, you know, what everybody knows a business card is. The business card is kind of. It's kind of like the. It's kind of like the. It's kind of like the madman era, like imitation of. Of the. Of the visiting card, okay? With the visiting card was by the bourgeoisie. I Mean types, you know, the visit European aristocrats and men of portfolio and government. They. They issue what's called visiting cards. It basically means that, like, whoever's holding it, like, you know, they're. They're. They're there with, you know, the. With. With the blessing and in the good offices of whoever, you know, is indicated on the card. You know, so obviously, you know, Hamilton and House offer being close friends. You know, Hess shows up, he presents the card. You know, I'm House offers man. You know, let's negotiate. I mean, that was. That was the idea. I just want to add that because, like, I realized probably no one with the hell a visiting card is these days, because, like, why wouldn't it? But that. That kind of customary stuff, I find someone fascinating. But Pinch, he kept. Has his confidence. Uh, he didn't disclose, uh. He didn't disclose, uh, the plan to anybody. I mean, like, after Hess's flight, you know, months later, he disclosed what he knew. But the fact that he didn't tell anybody, I think that's anecdotal evidence. I mean, I know it is. It's. It's firm evidence of the existence of a circle of intriguers for peace, like a genuine secret diplomacy coterie. Okay? I mean, if this was just, you know, if Hess was truly, you know, losing his mind or something, which, among other things, people can't plan complex aircraft missions if they're in that state. But that aside, you know, it. Pinch wasn't. On the one hand, Pinch was horrified when, you know, he read Hess's letter. But on the other hand, you know, because the danger of it and because he had no idea, obviously, how the furor would respond, but the substance of it and the motivation of it, he understood completely. Okay? And, I mean, absent a. Absent or receptive, absent the potential for some kind of reciprocity, like, you know, in terms of diplomatic good offices, secret or not like that, that would not have happened. Okay? I mean, it's just not the way. I mean, if. If it. It's just not, okay, it would have. If Hess was compromised or he. Pinch, would have revealed immediately what, you know, what. What he knew. Now, what did happen is. Is. I mean, who he did confide to. Pinch, I mean, Max Hoff Weber, he was. He was another, uh. He was another one of Hess's comrades from, uh, the. The Great War in his training squadron. He. He came to Berlin to visit Hess. When he briefly excused himself to take a call, Pinch confided to Hoff Eber what. What Hess's intention was swarmed to secrecy. But Hof Weber too, I mean he, he realized what Hess's intention was, you know, and it was, he didn't respond as one would do, you know, the ravings of a madman. What he did do is he called upon Carl Hauschofer and he called him on house offer to reason with Hess. You know, not to tell him like, you know, this is insane, but to tell him like wait till the moment is right. And this is frankly, this is frankly a, you know, A, an incredibly dangerous gamble, you know, owing as much of the internal situation in the United Kingdom as to, you know, how this would be perceived by, by Adolf Hitler. Now house offer, Carl House offer. One of the reasons Hess was so drawn to him as a father figure. It's not just because, you know, he was a, was a general and he was this, you know, kind of great warrior type and a, a brilliant mind on geostrategic affairs. But you know, he was very much something of a mystic. House offer was in the tradition of Meister Ers, you know, house for had a tendency to speak somewhat in riddles and you know, he was known for his unironic romanticism. The way he appealed to has and obviously he couldn't, he couldn't disclose it hoff ever and through, you know, pinch and had advised him of what is his intentions were. He appealed to Hess's own tendency towards, you know, heroic mysticism. And he told Hess, he said he had a dream wherein Hess found himself in a great English castle having risked everything to bring peace between the two great nations. You know, he asked Hess like what he thinks this means, you know, and Hess listened intently like didn't say anything. And it certainly didn't betray that he planned to fly to England. I find it kind of, I, I, I, I, I don't, I don't believe in augury or anything but I, I, I find it, I find it kind of fascinating and, and kind of, and kind of creepy that how Shaer was having visions of Hess in some castle. Obviously that was the fate of Hess but in a, in a kind of monkey's pod Damon Moir like it was, you know, not at all what how chauffeur has himself would have imagined it was his castle prison. But Hess has began drafting and redrafting his, his letters to Hitler. There was two of them. One was short stated his purpose, you know, and why so that you know, to disabuse the furor anybody else of any notion that, you know, he was a defector or something or that he was just looking for a way to escape his, his, his role within the regime. I mean, which would, you know, unless he had actually taken leave, a reason like the defecting wouldn't be the way to go about that. But the other, the other letter, uh, ran to some 14 pages and Ribbentrop, when asked about it, contemptuously kind of just said. He dismissed it as saying it was a long and crazy manuscript.
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But by the time Ribbon Trop was asked about this, you know, that, that was kind of the, that was like the official claim about Hess, because the way the Third Reich, the way, the way the propping animal durable as well as the fur himself rationalized Tesla's flight was, was very, was very defamatory. Okay. And in a, that doesn't make it right, but you know, in a calculated way, like there's nothing else Ribbon TRO would have relayed. So I, I think we can take, I, I don't think we can take that as an accurate rendering. Whatever the letters said, I speculate that it was impersonal testimony about, you know, that he believed was honoring Hitler's wishes on grounds that, you know, he knew Hitler's strategic mind rather than anybody else going back to the Landsberg prison days. That's what I speculate and probably disclosing without putting them in jeopardy. Some of his, you know, dealings with the, the context of the House offers had created a diplomatic contacts. I. But I mean, who's to say what I, what I don't believe is that it was what Ribbentrop said it was. Not because Ribbon Trop's an unreliable witness, but in context, I, I don't think any party official d can be trusted really to relay purely and accurately what any intercepted communications by has indicated. Now, there's a three month delay, obviously between Hess's first attempt to reach Scotland and his actual flight. Now, part of that owed to inclement weather which was very temperamental and unpredictable, but part of that was that part of that was because the Italian army was getting hit hard in North Africa by the British. It had been suffering serious reverses. You know, it had begun a long retreat from Egypt to Libya. And it was only the arrival of the Africa Corps and the command of then Lieutenant General Irwin Rommel ended the counter offensive he launched in April that you know, turn things around. And then Hess waited a little longer still because Germany had just all but won in mainland Greece by the end of April. And all that was really left was the, was the mop up remaining British resistance in Crete and the, the Balkans campaign would be uh, would be over. And he, he wasn't going to make any has being a, a patriot. He wasn't going to make any peace overtures or attempts even in secret that might be interpreted in London as a sign of weakness. I mean that, that makes perfect sense. And I think it also is a testament to, has this kind of purity of intentions. You know, like I said, there's an almost naive earnestness to Hess that I think isn't actually, is actually an endearing characteristic. But you know, it, there was not really any lying in him. You know, I mean I think that the, I think we, I, I think that's the characteristic of. That's the traded character that kind of most comes out and has okay, not just in his own testimony, but in that of everybody, everybody, you know, intimately familiar with him. You know. And those weeks that Hess delayed his mission, there was, there was more vague peace orchards from the other side. Alhofer received a message from Carl Jacob Burkart. You know, he's the international Red Cross honcho. He asked, he asked how to offer to come to Geneva.
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he said that he had cordial greetings. These are house offers words that Burkhardt said to him. He had quote, cordial greetings from old friends in England. House offer indicated that to the Gestapo because obviously later he was interrogated aggressively and extensively unfortunately. But you know, he, I, I believe this was, this may have been a direct reference to the Duke of Hamilton himself has certainly interpreted that way. Burkar was a former League of Nations official. That's how he got the Red Cross job. I mean obviously, especially in those days that's. This isn't a job that would just go to an ordinary diplomat. You know, Burker wasn't. He was known to favor, you know, a compromised p. A cop, a peaceful compromise. And this put him very much at odds with, you know, with the focus and with Churchill, but also with, you know, even people Kind of even more on the fringes of the war party, you know, not as. Not as zealous in their. In their. In their insistence upon war at all costs. So, you know, Burkhart was kind of the. He was kind of the perfect man to act as go between for this kind of secret diplomacy. House offer did. Did in fact meet with Burkhart on April 28, 1941, in large part at the behest of Hess. Hess was insistent upon. Upon this meeting. And what House offer relayed was that Burkhardt was very, very torn between desire to promote, you know, a European piece before it was too late, and again, for all Burkhart knew, like, you know, virtually everybody else, with the exception of Mr. Churchill, and we'll get into that in a minute. Burkhart would have been just as. As convinced as. As millions of other people that Operation Sea lion was imminent. Okay, so. But at the same time, you know, he had terrible anxiety that his name was going to be bandied out in public. You know. Now that would have cost him his. His. His role, okay, his official role in the Red Cross. And that would have. That would have brought down the. Rather, the focus on him. I mean, he. I. There's no doubt he would have been cast as, you know, either a duplicate of some, you know, sort of. Sort of fifth columnist, you know, or at worst, as some sort of German agent. You know what I mean? The Churchill and his cronies and his paymasters and those and his handlers were really capable of anything. You know, I mean, that's something to keep in mind too. The way he left it. Burkhart, that is, with the young House Hoffer was. He said he had a meeting in Geneva from a. A man who's well known in, uh, London's leading conservative circles. He didn't release his man's name, but he said that this unnamed, you know, Tory type who was committed to, you know, accomplishing peace and in doing so, defeating the focus, said that, uh, you know, there was a strong desire, uh, of men in high places to review peace prospects, you know, and in the kind of in. In. In the kind of soft pedal, subtle way that the English kind of communicate this to me. I mean, I understand why. Why. I understand why has would read that as basically green lighting his mission. Okay. And how Shaer downplayed that in his interrogation. But I. I mean, what else is there to really glean from that? You know, I mean, it's. And it's. I realize in the intelligence game, particularly at such a critical juncture like that apocalypse. I mean people are gonna, people are gonna be speaking at both sides of their mouth all the time. That's, that's one of the reasons why, that's one of the things that's effective about films like Tinker, Sailor Soldier Spy. Even if you don't like that genre very much, the confused atmosphere makes sense because nobody's really, nobody's really saying what they mean in, in espionage circles. And even if you're talking to friendlies, you know, like how it would be Burkhart and even in, even in the context of secret diplomacy, like nobody really trusts anybody and it's, you know, nobody wants to be pinned down to do any, any concise statement of fact. So I, I, you know, it, it's almost impossible prospect to have full confidence in deciphering the meaning of a statement by a man like Burkhart to you know, young house offer in Geneva on the eve of what they think is gonna be a massive invasion by the Reich of the UK And Burkhardt's sitting around thinking like am I being watched right now by you know, British intelligence? Am I gonna, you know, am I gonna get a bullet in the back of the head for this meeting? I mean you know, they like how Shauffers thinking like, you know, for all he knows ab there or SD types, you know, might be watching or listening and saying like why, why is this half Jewish, you know, university professor, you know, like meeting with, meeting with these English society types, you know. I mean it's uh, so keep that in mind too. And the kind of opaque nature of, of this, of his testimony that's it's difficult to put piece together. But like I said, I, I, at the end of the day one has to ask like what the purpose of such meetings would be in the first place and in context. I believe that I'm right and I, I It, it was not a reach for hest to believe that this was something of a, something more than just a dog whistle signal for him to pursue some kind of open ended, open ended efforts. I, I believe it. It's perfectly reasonable that he decided this was a, a, an occult occulted as it may be a communication telling him to, you know, go and seek out Lord Hamilton quite literally. Interestingly, how shall offer me the point that Burkhart's views on a post armistice view were kind of close to, close to Hesses and his own. The British. The British, those among the British kind of elite and aristocracy who wanted to pursue peace. Their notion, I mean aside from the ideological component that you know, obviously they were appalled by the, you know, the e. Logical opponent, the anime, the focus. I mean which appalled these genuinely patriotic, you know, British conservatives. The CY man in simple strategic terms. They. They viewed Britain's interest in eastern and southeastern Europe as really purely nominal. Which it was. Okay. And interestingly Burkhart, as did Ribbentrop and as did. As did. As it's some of the Foreign Office pipes that preceded a Churchill ascendancy. They kept coming back the, they kept coming back to the. The kind of incentive of uh, of giving Germany its colonies back. And you know, Hitler had no interest in that. And uh, neither did, neither did most of the other men in his inner circle, military and civilian. It's telling to me that the British, even those who are basically fair minded, like their idea was that, you know, well, you know, we should. You know, it's like they could only envision like their idea of granting Germany an equality of status within like the new world system was basically Germany behaving kind of like the UK and that's. That betrays a kind of lack of understanding of. Of power political realities in the 20th century. And you know, the emergence of the superpower as you know the, as the is. Is the seminal actor on the world stage. I just find that really interesting. Like maybe that was their way of coping with like the latent anxiety of like the fact that you know, the kind of empire, like even if even the British had not had, you know, even. Even if Britain had not been captured by the focus and you know, led down this kind of suicide path, empire building of the other type, you know that afforded the UK its great power and wealth was, was dead. And it, you know, what, what were colonies like that? You know, it's a fool's errand. I just read that tangent. I just think it's an important point and it's often overlooked but on, on May 1st has visited Willie Messerschmith again. And David Irving is kind of hard on. On Messer Schmidt because Message documented that in his diary. You know, he said that was asking like, you know, question about the radius curve if autopilot was engaged. You know, like he was asking all these like, you know, questions about basically like, you know, he's like, you know, I wanna. Is it possible for me to like outfit, you know, the second seats, oxygen bottles like into those like the pilot and like, you know, all these, all these like all these very particular requested modifications and inquiries about possibilities for modification that would seem to indicate nothing if not, you know, an intent to fly the plane on a high risk mission. But again, at the same time, I mean, I. Message may very well have believed that he was being, you know, kind of that he, you know, that, that, that Hitler was keeping an eye on him and, and, and what the, what the new aircraft were capable of. And I mean, Hitler too, like, you know, Hitler was fixated on hardware and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of it. You know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, you know, this is what, this is what was afoot. And plus two, I mean, in this, in, in, in a culture like the Third Reich, if, you know, deputy furor, like Reich's administrator, like Hess shows up, you. You just kind of do what he says, like, within reason. You know, I mean, it's like people neglect that too. Like, it's, you know, I, I don't know. I don't, I don't plus me like what. I don't know what an Irving's view, like Messerschmitt was supposed to do. And I mean, again, I've got, I've got mad respect for Irving. I think he's the greatest of all revisionists in most respects. But like, what, what, like, what's the message done? Like, even he came to some conclusion should be like, taking on billboard space and like, hey, Hess was gonna fly, to fly to the uk, like that crazy bastard. I mean, like, it's like, who would he call anyway? Like, I. What would the impact be like on Hess's life? And I mean, frankly, Mr. Schmidt, like, pretty much everybody liked Hess. You know, he didn't want to, didn't want to cause problems for him. I mean, I don't know, it's. But that's, that's something to keep in mind too, because everybody, not just Irving, but everybody who kind of reaves up on the, on the, on the entries around Heather's flight or like, well, how could, how could Messer Schmidt, of all people, like, like, what the hell would he think Hustle's gonna do? It's like, I don't know, man. Like I, you know, the, like, I mean, even those people in this country, it's like, it's like if, if you're like doing your thing, you know, like, let's say you're like an auto designer or something. Or let's say, like, I feel like Elon Musk or like Donald Trump like, showed up and started saying he wanted you to, like, you know, crank out some specialty item form. Like, you'd probably just be like most people, like What? You know, even though these guys don't have the kind of cultural cloud and prestige that a man like Hesswood in that, in, in that epoch and that government, like most people just be kind of like starstruck and be like, oh this is great. You know, he's interested in what we're capable of at this facility. And you know, I mean, I don't. That's something to keep in mind. Okay. I mean, because it's a common refrain from not just from Irving and not just from the English, but pretty much from everybody and a particular concern and I or I raises. What's the, the light stall. I'm probably butchering the pronunciation. The light stall device was, it was a navigational device that interfaced with the navigation beam that had to be shot out so that assault aircraft could find their path. Okay. This device was temperamental. It was cutting edge tech at the time. It was difficult to use. It's really extraordinary that it has, could master the new Messer Schmitz aircraft and that he was totally comfortable with all these new technologies. Like that's really, really amazing. You know, Hess was obviously like a prodigious warrior type. Among other things, he was like an infantry war hero. He, he, he, he was a gifted pilot. You know, he was totally comfortable with these, you know, kind of nascent technologies that were incredibly complicated and required the pilot, among other things, to do pretty advanced calculations in his mind, including potentially in the heat of combat. And interestingly, Ernst Udit, you know, poor Udit, again, he, he was one of the first World War's greatest aviators. I mean he was the Richtoff and squadron did not have any second rate combat pilots. And Udet was one of the best of the best. That's why despite his difficulties, Gearing, you know, gave him the job that he did. But Udet said he was trying to reassure Hitler that Hess could not have completed such a risky flight. And Gearing also said he doubted it and that he, he said that, you know, it was almost certain that, that, that Hess had, you know, ditched and the aircraft and drowned. And Hitler disagreed. Hitler said one of, one of Hitler's secretaries, it might have been Krista Schroeder, said, uh, quote, the Fuhrer believes in Hess's ability. And apparently what Hitler said to Gearing and to Udet and all assembled was when Hess gets his teeth into something, he does it properly. You know, Hess wouldn't have flown to. If Hess was going to fly to Scotland, it was because he, it was something that he could do. You know, he would have found a way. I mean that's just again that cuts against, I mean I realize that there's this quixotic eccentrics who, who sometimes undertake kind of crazy daredevil missions but that, you know, we're talking the complexity and the danger and the skill required to fly as Messerschmitts across, across the North Sea. That's really, really remarkable. And it's something most combat pilots cannot pull off. You know and Hess was a middle aged man and he, you know he, he, he hadn't flown in combat. You know, he basically, you know he got trained, he got trained on the old prop planes, the Great War and you know these, this two engine fighter, this messagemitz 110, you know, again this is the cutting edge of, of German war tech and he mastered it within weeks. You know that's remarkable. And I don't think that's something a crazy person could do. I mean I, I just don't, you know, that's something to keep in mind too. 5-4-1941. The rights victory in the Balkans was complete. Airborne Luftwaffe troops were mobilized to assault Crete as we talked about. And they were, you know they were poised to wipe out the final British army stronghold. Hitler. At this Hitler's famous crawl opera house speech was issued on this date. Was it was the assembled Reichstag deputy deputies, National Socialist Party luminaries, many other people at the Crow opera house. The speech is broadcast across all of Europe. Hitler was accompanied by Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior Gearing Himmler and Hess. And in the speech Hitler savage church. Here we could. It was, it was basically a flex, you know he, he contrasted the vermo's prowess with you know, Churchill's bumbling retreats, you know in the failure in Norway and Greece and North Africa, you know and he, you know he said it was, the speech was less restrained than in the past vis a vis Britain. And uh, this prompted, it has in my opinion this was prompted the query has to ask for the final time he put it to Hitler personally at the, at the conclusion of the speech. You know he's, he asked him if you know his pal if Hitler's policy vision towards the UK remained what was set out in Minecamp all those years back in Landsburg. And Hitler was being rushed away by his entourage and, and by his uh, stafel escort because he was, he was on his way to, he was on his way to go to Hoffton to inspect the new battleships, the Bismarck and the Turpits. He briefly Told Hess, yes, of course, you know, this doesn't change anything. And uh, incidentally, that's the, that's, that's, that's the last time the house ever saw or spoke to Adolf Hitler. It's like that was just, that was the final. You know, he needed that clarity that, that clarification that this was in accordance with the will of the fuel, literally, you know, to bring peace between United Kingdom and the German Reich. It, you know, May 9, Interestingly, has telephoned Gerhard Klepper. He was, he was a legal expert on the staff of Borman, you know, and Borman was Hess's number two. And Borman, one of the ways he became so powerful wasn't because of his ruthless nature and is, is this kind of meticulous obsessive like workaholism, but, you know, because Hess was the public face of the party, among other things, the, the kind of. The nitty gritty of the Chancellor and, and you know, kind of interface of policy with, with the execution of the law and of policy and the relationship of policy to the law. Borman, really, really, this was kind of his role. Okay, so Borman had this army of lawyers, quite literally like under him to, you know, to the kind of constantly giving feedback on what was possible, what was not. You know, what had to be done to kind of finesse the, the machinery of party and state into a singular effective apparatus that wasn't, you know, gonna step on anybody's toes or alienate some needed, you know, kind of state office or whatever. But what has to have clop for is a he. He asked him basically what the foreign position was in policy terms. The King of England, you know, what, what ability did he have to negotiate policy on war and peace matters. On matters diplomacy. Like what is his role? What is his position? Quite literally. Clever was taken aback. He said, you know, but Hess was, I mean, has. Was Hess, he, you know, he, he said, I can't answer that at once. You know, he said, I'll get information. You know, he's like a. I'll have to consult, you know, university professor. But I, I'll call you back. So, I mean, looking ahead.
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Hess was obvious like why the only reason make note of this is, I'll. Has obviously viewed himself as potentially having an audience with the British monarch, okay. And on his face like nutty as that seems. There's an internal logic to it that I don't think is perverse. You know, has always planned to return assuming he didn't die. And you know, the, the Battle of Britain was underway and he was flying an assault aircraft across the North Atlantic. So I mean there was, aside from just the dangerous mission itself, if he didn't go down North Atlantic, there was a chance that he'd be intercepted and shot down. He did time his flight in part behind a large German blitz assault. Said he basically like had cover, okay, in the form of uh, of attacking aircraft. And this, this was incidentally the last, the last large scale aerial blitz by, by the Luftwaffe against London. But you know, it's failing. Has dying has said every, he had every expectation he'd be returning at some point. He was flying to an enemy country as a parliamentary courier conveying terms of truce to an honorable foe. And this was a time honored usage. Hitler himself had accepted such emissaries at Warsaw in subsequent campaigns. Hess didn't consider that he needed any kind of special dispensation or like a letter of authority. Neville Chamberlain didn't need some special dispensation or invite, you know, when he came to, when he came to Munich and Gotesburg, you know, to negotiate with the furor about, you know, German, you know, about the, you know, status of hostilities between, you know, Germany and Czechoslovakia. So why, why, why would Hess require such things? I mean, okay, yeah, that, that's naive to think that he could be able to speak in terms of equality of status in that way. But it's not, it's not totally outlandish and has, has had a, a loofah captain's uniform made because he, if he flew as a civilian, he'd have no protections under the Geneva Conventions and he could be treated as a spy. I mean this was very, this was very thought out, okay, according to the letter of what was law and custom for the time and that's another reason why I've emphasized this the story of the head so much going into the episode or episode dealing with the process of Nuremberg and how and how the indictment was, was, was drafted and litigated. The some days earlier, Prior to May 9. Tesla's flight was on May 10. But some days earlier, you know, Albrecht had returned. Albrecht house offer, the younger house offer. He'd returned from Geneva where he'd met Burkhart again. He had instructions to return to Switzerland where, quote, he would be flown to Madrid and have a conference with. With Samuel Horror. Horror was the British ambassador of Spain. Horror had he. He was very much. He had a very conciliatory view of Germany, which is fascinating to me. And that owes in part undoubtedly to the fact that he was very proximate to the Spanish war. Okay. And if that didn't insinuate at least a passing sympathy for the German Reich, I. I don't really see what could. Unless somebody was ideological zealousness that unfortunately it. When, uh. When word finally did come from Madrid, that was after Hess's departure and Albrecht it was in the custody of the Gestapo, okay? So that was that. That potential avenue of peace is fascinating as. As anecdotal and in part test. Testimonial evidence of, uh. Of, uh, you know, the feasibility of this or the existence as well as the feasibility of this. This secret diplomacy effort that was underway. But it, you know, it obviously that avenue was cut off by Hess's flight, ironically, has some. Has wrote a farewell letter to his parents, to his brother, to his wife. Ilsa has had a young son. And it's, uh. Elsa said that she thought something was peculiar because on May. On May 9, uh, Hess said, uh, Alfred Rosenberg and Hess had a close friendship. And in some ways they had a similar background. Rosenberg was a Baltic German, you know, Hess grew up in Egypt. They were both worldly in a way that I think kind of was a tie that bound them together. Rosenberg was actually a brilliant guy. He's a. He's either presented as something of a milquetoast or some kind of neopagan prank. He was neither of those things. But so, you know, has said he had lunch with. With Rosenberg and then, you know, he put his son down for a nap. But then like about an hour later, like, you know, he got his son back up so he could, like, play with him some more, you know. And I, I find that really tragic and sad, you know, but it. I don't know, it humanizes Hess in a way, in a basic way, but it has to all throw a letter to Heinrich Himler. Part of that was practical because he wanted. He. He. He's, you know, he wanted to make it clear. He's like, look, my men, my staff didn't know what I was going to do. They're not responsible for anything. He didn't. He wanted to make sure that his, you know, no friends of his were implicated. But also it's. I. Has had. Has had some kind of admiration for Himmler. You know, strange that might seem to people, you know, it's you really. It reveals a certain complexity of character to both men, I guess. But it. I, you know, in the. The house offers had a. Had a very, uh, Had a very bad time of things from this point onward. You know, uh, how Shaw for the elder said, you know, years later, towards the end of the war, he said, you know, he wished that Hesse confided with him, confided in him, you know, more directly and, and more candidly, Because if anybody, if anybody could have talked him out of the mission, probably would have been house offer. But some of the whole thing is tragic. In a letter to Albrecht has apologized to him, which is interesting. I mean, I think he realized that things are going to be difficult, even the best of circumstances, things are going to become pretty difficult for the house offers family, and he couldn't protect them anymore. He said in the letter to Albrecht, he said he was sorry. And he said, you only saw one possible solution to the, quote, Gordian knot of this unhappy entanglement. Hess in 1950. These are Hess's words. And again, I mean, people can take this for what it's worth just at face value. Again, I think it pretty. It pretty clearly defeats any inference of. Of madness. Has said, quote, I'd lived those months. He means those months leading up to the flight. In a whirl of instruments, cylinder head pressures, jettison fuel containers, auxiliary oil pumps, coolant temperatures, radio beam widths which didn't even work when the time came. The heights of the Scottish mountains and God knows what else. I put blinkers that shut out everything else around me, apart from the broad reality of the war and daily politics today, I'm glad to have been driven like that into finally taking the plunge over there. After a desperate struggle to extricate myself from an obstinate charger that felt refused to let me go. True, I achieved nothing. I couldn't stop this lunatic struggle between nations. I couldn't prevent what came and what I saw was coming. I was unable to bring salvation. But I'm glad at least that I tried. Now, something. I'll wrap this up because I realize we've been going for a minute, but something that I'm sure people are going to raise about the treatment of Hess and the bizarre, not just draconian and brutal, but bizarre treatment of him. People are going to say. People are going to say, well, you know, for all Mr. Churchill knew, you know, this was. This was some sort of precursor to the sea lion Invasion. You know, Churchill knew that there would be no invasion owing to his code breakers. He knew that Germany was mobilizing for war against, against the Soviet Union. He didn't even tell Anthony Eden this, his foreign minister. And he went on the radio claiming that, quote, part of Hitler's invasion plan is to terrorize women and children. And you know, you know, he. What did he say? You know, as part and parcel the quote, ferocious onslaught she's preparing. You know, the, the. He's trying to. This monster, meaning Adolf Hitler is trying to break us by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. I mean, just typical, typical shrieking moral cant by Piggy. But there's like something, you know, it's just so, it's so characteristic, you know, the, the fewer issues of general prohibition on bombing London. So Churchill orders Germany, Churchill orders Berlin to be bombed over and over and over again until, until the prohibition's lifted over to like public outrage of the fact that Berlin is not bombing London back. So then Churchill declares that, you know, they're being subjected to unprovoked attacks to slaughter women and children. You know, then like lo and behold, Churchill maintains a lie he knows to be a, A, a ruse of sea lion for the sole purpose of perpetuating a war against the national interest. You know, like I said, it's just, it defies, it defies all reason that it's. This was literally a man, you know, acting against the national interest and in doing so just lying to tens of millions of his countrymen day after day after day. It's, it bottles the mind and it's a kind of historical Stockholm syndrome that this, this man is, is, he's like, he's like worshiped by a population of, of the descendants of those that he, he deceived. It's incredible. But in any event, the, the as kind of the final, the final kind of piece of this, of uh, of this particular story. November 19th. Yeah, November. In November 1940, a letter from Albrecht Haushofer to the Duke of Hamilton was intercepted by UK postal censors, which were very active in the war years. Okay. Which makes sense, you know, I mean, especially considering that, uh, you know, traditional mail was, you know, the primary, you know, communication modality across national frontiers. But it was written in a light code. At first it seemed to be anonymous. It was actually a letter. It was a note sent by an unidentified man who identified himself as A from a city called B, like literally asking a Ms. Violet Robbers the forward and lowest three page message. The Duke of Hamilton. And the. The letter upon them kind of decode, like I said, was like this light kind of cipher. It said, my dear Douglas, even there's only a slight chance the letter should reach you in good time. There's a chance and I'm determined to make use of it. Letter offered condolences on the deaths of Hamilton's father and brother in law. He it contained like the bulk of it. What's important is he continued saying, quote, if you remember some of my last communications in July, you and your friends and I places may find some significance in the fact I'm able to ask you whether you could find time to have a talk with me somewhere in the outskirts of Europe, perhaps in Portugal. I could reach Lisbon anytime and without any difficulties within four days after receiving news from you. Of course I do not know whether you can make your authorities understand so much that they give you leave, but at least you may be able to answer my question. This letter was passed on to MI5, which was in turn passed on to the Air Ministry where Hamilton was at. It was fantasy airmen because Hamilton was an RAF officer by that time. Okay. And finally in, in February, a. An RAF group captain, uh, obviously it, you know, some kind of liaison to, between MI5 and Air Mystery Intelligence. One captain stammers, he wrote a letter to the Duke saying that the ministry was anxious for a chat with him, uh, when he was next in London. And uh, apparently in March, Hamilton met uh, this Captain Stammers at the, uh, at the Air Ministry. And he asked him about the letter. You know, he said, like what? You know, do you, you know, do you, do you, do you still have the letter? Is that the most recent one? And Hamilton said, yes, you know, I've been totally open about this, you know. Stammer said, yeah, you know, we, we're aware of that. But then he said, it seems to us that House offer is pretty significant. Hamilton agreed. And House offer, you know, a particular interest the stammers was that House Shoer was insinuated into the Foreign Ministry, which as we talked about was a moderating influence even, and perhaps even more so into Ribbentrop's ambassadorship. Okay. Stammer said, quote, that it might be of considerable value to make contact with Haush Hoffer. And again, as we talked about everything relating to the Hamilton's correspondence with the House offers and everything related to the months prior to Hess's flight have been redacted or just totally removed from House offers Intelligence file with the Air Ministry. But this information is all in the personal family papers of the Duke's family. And that's where we got all. That's how we know about this. Otherwise it would have been completely lost. So there's that too. And what I just relayed, these are the notes incident to the letter, the original letter, MI5, and the air Ministry of copies that, that was included in, in the Hamilton family record. So, I mean, take that for what it's worth. I think there's not any, there's not any case to make that a reasonable doubt in history. We're talking about, you know, people's motivations and things and possibilities, you know, rather than concrete occurrences. But the case that has to responding to reciprocal overtures and there's real potential of, of peace terms being arrived upon, arrived at. I, I think that is irrefutable. So that. I know I threw a lot at the listeners this episode, but it was important. And this also ties Sea lion into, you know, the overall strategic picture. But yeah, that, that, that concludes, I think, the story of Mr. Hess, at least as a dedicated, uh, subject. You know, uh, we're gonna get into the, the actual trial of, uh, of the Nuremberg, uh, defendants next episode. And obviously like, we're going to get into like, the treatment of Hess and, you know, how his trial resolved and all of that. But I. This, this will be the last dedicated episode of the man himself. So you, these were negotiations that were, they were real. They, they thought that they could. Was there any way that this was going to defeat the focus? I mean, it, I mean, there's been some kind of, if, if there had truly been like a Tory insurgency and if the Foreign Ministry had been put in touch, let's say Duke of Hamilton and a bunch of his aristocratic buddies, you know, all of whom are serving the RAF and the army at that time. So, I mean, you couldn't question their, you know, patriotism. If a true quorum developed among the British aristocracy, which still had tremendous authority then, like socially, I mean, and they said, you know, we've talked that, you know, we've been dealing with, you know, the, the eminent, you know, young house offer, who himself is half Jewish, who is, you know, insinuated into the Foreign Ministry and, you know, he's, he's got access to, you know, hair Ribbentrop himself and they're offering us unconditional peace, you know, and this, you know, I, I, I, I don't see how in the wake particularly again, too like by that point, you know, Churchill made a fool of himself at, I mean, this was in the way this is the Dunkirk as well as Church made a fool himself with this ill fated Norway operation. The British just been defeated in the Balkans in Greece. You know, uh, Churchill was uh, the Church was bombing Germany uh to. For the sole purpose of provoking a counter value assault on his own people so that like public outrage could, you know, he could exploit that to keep him in, keep, keep the UK in the war. Like he was in a very perilous position, you know. I mean so yeah, I think it could have. It +2 like the British aristocracy was insinuated into the military in ways that could have. I mean they've, they're situated in key ways. Okay. And it's, they could have. If anybody could have derailed the Focus Enterprise, they could have. Especially because again you know it was. Churchill was actively losing the war. I mean like in battlefield terms. Like not just you know in, in terms of it being against the, you know, the, the historical and strategic interest. You know. It was. He was just, he was just chalking up a series of, of, of kind of devastating losses, you know, one after the other. So I mean it's a good, it's an interesting question, but plus two of these things are being kept from the pe. These things are being kept from the, the, the British population. Like you know, I mean it's like if there's you know, if, if the secret diplomacy became like above board and there's people that you know, men of like literal title, you know, who, who, who had the esteem and trust of the, of the people in England and Scotland, you know. And they were saying look, you know, the Germans want unconditional peace. Like why are we fighting them? Like our foreign policy has been hijacked by an alien element. I mean what would be the rebuttal of that? Like there was nothing. There wasn't, there was nothing to it. But moral can't I like, like the, the, the Focus narrative. It was like, it was literally the, it was the epitome of style over substance. You know. It, it's like today like the kind of ever pitiable Joe Biden. Like I remember like even before, I mean even before the United States and it's, it's master class. You know, launches were sitting against Russia. Like pitiable. Joe Biden was going on TV talking about how proud himself he was that he was, that he was insulting Glamir Putin to his face, you know, like calling him a killer and a monster or something. Like why. Why would you even do that? That's, that's bizarre. It's kind of like ritual. He's like shrieking at people how evil they are. Like, that's, that's, that's both very Semitic and it's very left. Pure leftism. Yeah. It's very counterproductive and it's like. But it's also like devoid of substance. You know, it's like I'm gonna go on TV and I'm go on the radio and scream about how the Germans are monsters. You know, I'm going to insult Vladimir Putin to his face. Like, it. I, I mean, that's, that's not politics, but I, it's, it's cathartic for certain types of people. But. Yeah, but what it's not is, it's not strong. It's not strong ethical or, or philosophical ground to stand on. And you know, so it would, over time, it would have, it would have raised questions that I don't think the focus could have, could have neutralized just by more like, you know, kind of moral can't and whatever. All right, well, do your plugs and we will leave. Yeah, certainly. As I'm very excited to say that the second installment my science fiction series is going to be released by Imperium Press imminently. You'll be able to buy it through Imperium and please do that instead of ordering it through Amazon or something because if her impress are great friends and you know, they're doing, they're doing God's work and Jeff Bezos doesn't need. Need our money. So I'm very excited about that. I've been getting a little bit active on Truth Social and I'm gonna be more so as kind of election season gets underway. Not cause I'm some like mega partisan, but I think it's important to kind of get a sense of what's going on in that sort of, you know, domain. I'm, I'm on Truth Social just at real Thomas777. You can find me on Substack. That's also where you can find our podcast. About half the content. There's free subscriptions though, are only five bucks a month. It's Real Thomas777.subsect.com you can find me on Gab at Real Thomas 777. And we've got a very active telegram channel. It's T me slash number seven H O M A S 777. And we, we've got a, you know, we, we've got a really good community there and it's very active and even when I can't be active, you know, like a few days ago. I mean, I'm active there at least every. Every other day or so. But, you know, in the days I'm like, I can't be up in there dropping new stuff. Like, people are very active and keep it live. So that's really great. It Please dip in there and, you know, just kind of share your perspectives. And that would be a. That would be a real, real blessing. Until the next episode. Thank you very much, Pete.
[423:28]
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The World War Two Series: Episode 11-16 w/ Thomas777 - 3/4

The World War Two Series: Episode 11-16 w/ Thomas777 - 3/4

The Pete Quiñones Show

WWII Series: Episodes 11-16 with Thomas777 — Parts 3 & 4

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points

1. Shift from Old World Order to Postwar International Law

2. The Anarchic World System and Hegemonic Lawmaking

3. Formulation of Postwar Policy — The Morgenthau Plan

4. The Quest for Legal and Political Legitimacy (Nuremberg and Beyond)

5. Rudolf Hess — Life, Myth, Motivation

Hess’s Peace Mission to Britain

Allied Handling of Hess

6. Philosophical Reflections and Historical Revisionism

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

Episode Structure & Timestamps

Recurring Themes & Tone

Summary for New Listeners

Links & Plugs

The Pete Quiñones Show

WWII Series: Episodes 11-16 with Thomas777 — Parts 3 & 4

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points

1. Shift from Old World Order to Postwar International Law

2. The Anarchic World System and Hegemonic Lawmaking

3. Formulation of Postwar Policy — The Morgenthau Plan

4. The Quest for Legal and Political Legitimacy (Nuremberg and Beyond)

5. Rudolf Hess — Life, Myth, Motivation

Hess’s Peace Mission to Britain

Allied Handling of Hess

6. Philosophical Reflections and Historical Revisionism

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

Episode Structure & Timestamps

Recurring Themes & Tone

Summary for New Listeners

Links & Plugs