While many argue that Adolf Hitler was “made” upon the 1939 outbreak of World War II or his 1933 accession to the Chancellorship of Germany, one historian reasons that the ordinary man became Führer in 1923. With the French occupying industrial portions of Germany, the economy fell into a tailspin and political radicalism skyrocketed. This led a rabid German corporal with a toothbrush mustache to orchestrate the infamous Beer Hall Putsch. Join me and Professor Mark Jones as we discuss the rarely considered origins of Adolf Hitler in his book, 1923.
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In the wake of Bonito melini’s march on Rome Nazi newspaper editor Herman Essen exclaimed to a Rowdy Munich Beer Hall quote what a group of courageous men were able to do in Italy we can also do in Bavaria we also have a man like Italy’s molini his name is Adolf Hitler
The Parliamentary Swindle must be brought to an end in its place must come a national dictatorship close quote Mark Jones on his latest book 1923 the chaotic year that gave rise to a monstrous dictator Now my name is Todd Warner and this is the evangelization and culture podcast from word on fire Professor Mark Jones is an assistant professor in history at University College Dublin he’s the author of founding viar violence and the German Revolution of 1918 1919 and his second book is
1923 he lives in Dublin Ireland with his family Mark Jones welcome hi Todd thanks for having me on your podcast I’m looking forward to the discussion today segment one why 1923 matters the late Charles Hill a seasoned Diplomat and Yale professor of grand strategy warned that while historians
Are becoming der in their teaching students are left fundamentally unformed quote we have changed our education in the last 30 or 40 years so that students are really not being taught history they are not being taught what it was that got us here history gave way to being
Taught issues and issues are something abstract they’re just out there they just somehow show up that is the fundamental reason why we have this seeming obliviousness and ignorance about the way the world has to be managed in order to make everything else work well if we don’t know history then
It’s all going to fall apart close quote so Mark let’s start start with the the fundamental question someone might ask picking your book up off the the the bookshelf why should anyone care about 1923 it’s a great question um I think my answer to that is you know I you
Mentioned I I wrote my my first book on start of the viar Republic and the viar Republic is the state democracy liberal democracy that’s created in Germany in the winter of 1918 1919 to replace the German Empire German Empire is it’s a little bit authoritarian it’s not a full
Democracy it’s not as bad probably as people think um but viar is is much much more liberal place it’s a constitutional uh Republic and in January 1919 um around 75% of the German electorate vote for parties that support that uh political system support the Constitution and then in January
1933 um vr’s is dead as a political system um Adolf Hitler is is appointed as Chancellor January 1933 in September 1939 he starts this the second world war and and we we know the violence that comes out of his regime including violence of the Holocaust violence of the second world
War it takes the combined strength of the United States British Empire and the Soviet Union to destroy the regime he he he creates and you know I started working in in in German history because I want to try to understand where does this violence come from where does this
Disorder come from why does that liberal regime that’s created in v where’s that moment of Hope fail and I published my first book in 2016 and at that point in time I wanted to walk away from the topic of viar because I’ve been doing it for several
Years and I want to work on on another another topic and then a whole series of events started taking place I don’t want to say they’re the same but the Echoes from that time just kind of Drew me back you know we we of talk about living
Right now in an age of disinformation democracy and that’s really made me think well what is vmar Germany everybody used to say it’s Germany’s first democracy you know it’s the Democracy that replaces the the authoritarian is and German Empire but I think a better title is say it’s the
First age of disinformation democracy first time we have a disinformation democracy collapses and so you know I was experiencing what we’ll call the crisis of liberal democracy in the United States in in Britain in Europe in the Wier world since 2016 Through The Eyes of a person who studied the Vima
Republic for a long time and instead of walking away from thinking and reading and researching vimar I was pulled back into it because everybody kept asking me when I talked about my book on 19819 like what’s going on now explain it to us and that was that was my my starting
Point and then you you anyone who who’s familiar with with history books and reading a lot of history books will know there are a lot of books on the end of the vimar Republic and since 2016 for obvious reasons there were a surge of new Publications on the end of the viar
Republic books about you know the last days of democracy and books about the first days of the third Rank and they’re all great I don’t want to be saying my book is better than other people there’s loads of brilliant books out there to read but I said I want to do something
Different I don’t want to write another book about 1932 or 33 because I want to write a book about when the democratic system faces all the challenges and faces people trying to destroy it like hermana who you mentioned in the opening segment and survives and so I I thought
You know 1923 is a perfect laboratory for kind of understanding how does a democratic system survive of a poly crisis of of uh unprecedented proportions with threats from the inside and outside all you know all being sufficiently powerful that realistically uh might not survive or should not
Survive and so how does that survive that became the question that was Fascinate fascinating me to go back into the archives and say I’m going to write about 1923 to explain this story of this year as being both a history of the year that Hitler became a thing you know
Hitler at the end of 1922 is the leader of a Rel really tiny group uh you know by by by by the eve of the put he’s got 50,000 people in his in his movement it’s grown from being like between five and 10,000 in the end of the winter 22
23 he’s become a national figure that the example I would use is in in in in the Autumn of 1922 in the Bavarian Parliament remember Germany’s a federal federal state in in in vimar as today so this would be a bit like an American State legisl Legislature so in that
Parliament somebody says at a crisis when they’re choosing the next next Premier Minister of the state of Bavaria somebody says it can be had of Hitler and everybody laughs you know because that that idea is ridiculous but a year later Hitler has become so so important that he he can actually threaten the
State no one is laughing at him even though his put is ultimately defeated so it’s his breakthrough year so I want to tell the story of Hitler’s breakthrough year the Year Hitler becomes a thing but I also wanted to say this story doesn’t end with Hitler being Victorious it ends
With him in prison it ends with him depressed it ends with the Democracy still in place the Democracy survives and I think the contrast between why the Democracy survives in 1923 with why it fails in 1932 and 33 is a story worth worth telling and you know if we’re able
To learn from history if history is about more than H you know studying issues as you’ve said in that opening quotation and it’s about learning about politics and how political systems work and how the International System shapes stability of people lives uh that 1923 is just a great year to actually look at
All of those events and to do so in detail because a lot of listeners and and readers of History will be familiar broadly with the events in in Europe and the world between 1914 and 1945 but there there aren’t other books that go into the detail that you can do
As a writer and researcher when you take the lens and say I’m going to lower it down to just look a 12 months it’s an extraordinary book and and I yes there are as you said there’s been a number of others that have been release surrounding the end of the vimar
Republic and and so on what’s interesting to me is so many people talk about you know this day and age and they say 1930s you know Germany 1930s Europe and so on for you to bring us back to 1923 and I’m going to ask you this question here we are five years after
World War I we’re four years after the conclusion of the Versa treaty were 10 years before Hitler’s unlikely rise of the Germans Germany’s chancellorship um one might say why am I in this this kind of vacuum uh of kind of it’s the Roaring 20s it’s the age of great G the Great
Spe it’s before the Great Depression you know things are on the men from World War I I mean there can’t be much interesting that’s happening in in uh in Europe and yet it is the embryonic stages of disorder and also radicalism and like you said um what what Hitler uh
Fitler Hitler ends in abject defeat and 10 years later he’s in this in in this profound position of power the most unlikely position of power one might have managed for someone like Hitler um I want to ask so so so you really I I really commend people to read what is a
Seminal year uh in a seminal time that really starts to unfold the origins of what we’re all a gast at uh that is 1933 Hitler’s rise that led to ultimately World War II and so on I want to ask you so so so going into that I want to I
Want to just have you give us a little bit of a of a prim around what what is sort of the state of postwar Germany and the German people and tell just give us a little bit more about the vimar Republic how did this this it was kind
Of established in 1918 but give us a few words about the the the the tenor and the politics of the time brilliant and I think you know I I think that’s a great question to lead in off but I want to just say the Roaring
20s in my you know if you’re taking a time machine to go back for for a night out in in in Germany in Berlin in the 1920s not that Gatsby It’s Not Great Gatsby it’s you’re gonna go for 1927 28 more more than for 1923 unless you’re
Real has ardous Gambler because 1923 is a great year to be a gambler you know because it’s a year the people who gamble are winning and that’s kind of joking aside 1922 is also the year TS Elliott publishes a poem which becomes a classic which is called the Wasteland
And it’s you know Europe where you know he he describes Europe as a decaying dying continent you know where the dead men you know uh Decay and the the the the the L there’s a line in that poem about you know the rats and the trenches and it really captures this sense of
Malays and so 1922 um there’s an International Conference at the start of the year in genua in Italy and they choose genua because it’s a port city and the leader of the conference British Prim Minister David Lloyd George he picks genua because he wants to get the delegates
From all the other countries that are in attendance to see a Harbor City with ships container ships with nothing on them that aren’t moving because the world economy has slowed down stagnant and the e economic recovery after uh the first world war and after Versa has not
Kicked off remember we think of the you know the set the the second post-war year in the 20th century we think of the Marshal plan we think of the you know the economic growth you know the 50s aren’t as good as the 60s but there is a
Kind of Roar in 50s already taking place the 20s aren’t like that in their initial period it’s you know mass unemployment in Britain Mass economic problems in France fascism coming in in in in in Italy now econ economics doesn’t explain the rise of fasis in its
Entirety H but it’s a rolent and then Germany where the economic instability is is such that the viar Republic is born of an economic crisis and it’s born within you know a crisis starts in 1914 and ends in late 1923 and early 1924 which is the in Crisis crisis of
Inflation and that crisis of inflation the starting point for that is every country in the first war has the challenge of how do the powers that b finance a war of that scale as we probably know or maybe need reminding Britain borrows money from the United States the United States lends to
Britain Britain then takes the money it borrows from America and it lends it to all of the countries fighting on the British side so the British don’t just have their own debts in 1918 to the Americans they also have the debts that they’ve are that they’re what we call
Third party debts they’ve lent on to other countries so Britain and France are heavily indebted Britain has gone from being the world’s creditor to being a major debtor the United States its economic power has been transformed entirely because of this situation France seen the size of its territory
That’s the equivalent of the ne Netherlands completely destroyed by fighting in the first war all of that needs to be reconstructed it needs to be rebuilt and huge trenches of central eastern Europe are left in 1918 1920 in continuous Civil War the violence of the Russian Civil War is still ongoing
Bolism is is coming into being in 1918 and by 1922 it’s F firmly established so that conference I was talking about at genua is the first time where the bolik actually turn up as representatives of a state invited by the Victor Paris which is a which is a moment you know I would
I say to my students this this would be like you know bringing the Taliban into a conference in Washington you know it’s like these guys and and I’m not joking when I say that that’s these that the actual delegates have blood on their hands they’ve been committed to overthrowing the capitalist system
They’ve been trying to kill people that uh sitting opposite for much of their political careers and that the point has come where the Western leaders led by Britain have come to realize we aren’t we aren’t going to get rid of the biks we have to do do business with them and
And so you have this and on top of that it’s important to remember Lloyd George isn’t just doing that because he can’t get rid of them he’s also doing it because East West Trade which was really important before the first war has stopped as a consequence of it so you
Have this huge economic uh potential in what was the Russian Empire which is there to be rediscovered and reopened in 22 and so that’s Lloyd George’s vision is we can recreate East West Trade that doesn’t happen politics of nationalism politics of wartime mentalities mean that and and also the the interests of
The Russians push back and Germany in the middle of this is facing this crisis of well the British and the French they financed the war by lending and borrowing so borrowing from the United States and Britain then lending to other countries the Germans financed it by borrowing from their own
Citizens so if you’re a middle class German in 19 14 the Patriotic thing to do um and not just middle class also if you have little savings on your working class the Patriotic thing to do is to put your son or your husband onto a
Train send him off to the front and then go and take your family savings and buy war bonds and the war bonds are IUS where the state says when we win the war you’re going to get repaid with goodies that we basically take from the French
When we beat them and so when we beat the French in the war we’re going to get all of their weal and we’re going to redistribute to all of the Germans who bought the bonds and those bonds are issued throughout the war um that’s one way they finance it and that of course
Leads to a lot of resentment when Germany loses the war and the inflation that takes place um during the war and after and the early V Republic raises the value of those bonds so people lose their Savings in that way the other way they finan the war in Germany is by
Printing money and they what they do in the start of 1914 I don’t know how many people will be familiar with this the world is attached to the the gold standard to the idea that the the paper notes in circulation are matched by physical reserves of precious metals
Held by central banks it’s not quite one to one they’ve come away from the idea of of you know an equal measure in gold for each note but it’s it’s a similar system whereby each note has an equivalent value in gold and precious metals and in 1914 the start second war
Literally the days the first days of the war the German Central Bank R Central Bankers in charge throughout this period he have his name is Rudolph havin he says we’re coming away from from from uh the gold standard we got to print money and they start printing money and they
Increase printing money increase amount of money in circulation to pay for the war as the war proceeds and as the war becomes you know the war like there’s a totalizing logic to every decision made in the world you need to do something bigger to win each time each challenge
It’s we’ve got to be bigger build a bigger missile to get through the enemy trench concrete you know involve more soldiers make the attack bigger it’s always got to be up scaling and that’s what’s happening on the financial side too it’s upscaling we more money to build more stuff to pay pay for
Everything and so by the by 1918 at the end of the war Germany’s defeated and its currency has no resemblance to what it had at the start of the war and but that a drug the drug that is inflation for policy makers has them all hooked because the vimar Republic is a promise
To create a new political order and it’s a promise to alleviate the clash between capital and labor and one of the ways to do that is to spend more money on building the size of the state build new houses for workers build Health Care build uh you know increase workers
Salaries and inflation allows a defeated state to do all of that because they can print more money and they can use that money to fund social programs to buy social loyalty and in a time when they when they’re terrified with good reason that the balik idea is going to take
Over Germany too and in 1919 there are red uprisings in Munich and Berlin and Hamburg these are Big industrial cities Berlin is is is uh is a city on the scale of New York in the 1920s it’s a major Urban Metropol but it has a huge huge working class it’s an industrial
City in the 1920s no longer the case after 1945 and anybody who’s visited Berlin today won’t get that that back in the 1920s it was a massive massive massive industrial city with a huge R so they have these fears that there’s going to be a revolution another Revolution
Not just to create a democracy but a revolution to take that democracy into the Socialist balic version of democracy and so buying back the Loyalty by printing money makes sense so by 19 1920 the German government is looking at this situation they’re saying we have to move back to stability economically because
At some point this inflationary cycle is going to explode and we’re going to crash everything um the analogy with drugs makes sense it’s after the high there will be some kind of big come down that will will make the high not be worth of and so that’s the situation and
I think without the issue of reparations Germany was on the pathway led by um Finance Minister called Matas urger to actually restore its economic stability because one thing they did during the war which wasn’t which was um sensible was at the same time as they started printing money and left the gold
Standard and started issuing bonds the German Central Bank also said to its citizens give us your gold give us your precious metals so I said at the start there you know a good citizen sent the Sun to the front bought the bonds the other thing they did was they took their
Gold watches their gold necklaces their silver broches they took Granny’s gold and they put brought it in and handed it over to the state and said that’s our gift to you you need those materials to answer the call of the nation in a time of struggle and an existential crisis
And so by the early 1920s Germany’s Germany there’s a policy of being addicted to you know continuous inflation H but also the central bank has a huge huge arsenal of precious weap precious metals that it can use when the decision is to be made we need to return
To the we need to return to stability we need to return to some kind of gold gold standard and urger is bringing Germany gradually down he’s bringing them down off this and stabilizing the currency gradually but the issue is it’s nothing is happening at a speed that can satisfy
The French or the British because they want reparations from Germany to pay for their War costs France wants to pay for that reconstruction of the area the size of the Netherlands Britain wants to pay for its interwar debts France wants to pay for its an inter Allied debt I
Should say for its its wartime debts and all of them want to pay the United States and Britain also wants money from Germany to pay for its soldiers pensions because they’ve mobilized so many soldiers so everybody wants money from Germany it’s you know make the Germans
Pay is the is the slogan of the time and the Germans have you know there are people in the German government Like Walter ranau and others who recognize we’re we are a really strong economy ranous um you know he he’s an industrialist he recognized Germany’s economic potential to pay reparations
He’s not they’re not out to not pay reparations but they believe that the amounts being asked of them and the rate that they’re being asked to pay are completely unreasonable so like any any debtor facing to an aggressive creditor they put their hand up and they say I
Want to pay you back I just can’t pay you back at the pace you want me to pay give me give me a little breathing space please guys we’ll sort this out give me a little breathing space that’s the German position and the French position is then you guys are taking the absolute
You know insert your adjective there that I won’t say out of us because you’re not being serious because you are hiding your wealth to avoid paying us the money that we want from you and so that’s pushing Germany back towards a financial crash and faith in the investments in Germany starts to decline
In 1922 so I want to introduce your listeners to the idea of American reparations to Germany because in 1918 American credit holders are looking for places to put their money where they can get a great return on their investment and they’re looking at Germany and they’re saying well Germany’s they have they
Have inflated the value of their currency massively in the last few years they are going to return to the gold standard in some form or another in the coming future that is a place where we can change American dollars for huge amounts of German Mark right now and
When that German Mark returns to the value uh attached to gold based on the the hordes of money that the hordes of precious metals the Germans have brought together in the first world war it’s going to go up and we’re going to win we’re going to make a huge winning on on
On German Investments so it’s a bit like Germany is the hot real estate of 19 2021 in the international climate because it’s expected that its economic power will come back to bring the currency back to where it should have been if the war didn’t happen okay and
So Americans are I don’t say flooding is maybe too strong a term but something like flooding Germany with Investments and then in 1922 they get jittery because they start thinking this this idea we had a while ago that Germany was going to return to stability and be a good bring be a k
Bring us a killing that was actually pretty stupid let’s get our money out of there let’s get rid of our Mark Holdings and so in 1922 the German markets already under massive pressure against the dollar and that pressure wor worsens dramatically in the summer of 1922 when
The German foreign minister Walter R who I mentioned before is you know an industrialist he’s he’s a Visionary he sees Franco German coroporation as the solution to all the problems in the inter War period he’s also a Visionary his family has been Visionary his family brought Thomas Edison’s technology of
The light bulb to Germany they literally lit up German cities by putting in place uh Light Street Lighting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries H creating um the company AEG in the process and in the process going from themselves transforming to being one of you know
Being major industrial um family and extremely wealthy H you know he’s and he’s turned his back on that career to become a politician Because he believes in Liberal democracy but he’s Jewish which means that for the German German far right he’s always been always had a
Mark on his back and in the summer of 1922 they gone him down in the streets of Berlin and that message goes through the world and goes to the capitals of Paris London and and Washington and the financial capit of New York and it says
Viar is not safe it’s not a safe bet get your money out and to the French it says you can’t trust these people their foreign ministers just been killed their currency is unstable they’re hiding their assets they don’t want to pay their reparations we’ve talked enough
It’s time for us to act to use the power where we have it because you know coming back to that question what’s Europe like in the few years after the 1920s in its International political sphere France has is economically weak because it owes money to Britain and Via
Britain to to the United States and directly to the United States but it’s military strong because the French haven’t sent home all of their troops so their army is the strongest army in the world at this time so the French prime minister man called raymon poner he
Looks at this situation he says I don’t have the ability to economically Force Germany to pay but I have an army that I can send in to take what I want and so in the summer of 22 that idea goes from being something the French Hawks have always thought about and wanted to
Possibly do since 1919 to being something that F says we’re doing it make and so he says to the generals make the plans one final thought on this Todd before we go is just what’s it like to be an ordinary person in all of this and
It depends where you are in the social strata if you’re middle class in the early years of the viar Republic you’re feeling kind of your feeling of the state is leaving you behind if you’re working class you’re probably feeling a bit better about the state but those attitudes are going to change
Dramatically in the year 1923 because what I’ve described up to now it’s you know let’s say let’s use the analogy it’s heavy waves but what’s coming in 1920 you know it’s heavy waves don’t go out into that water for a swim don’t go surfing and what’s coming next is a
Tsunami that’s going to make 22 look like a year of C you know you’ve built up segment two so well that I I almost wanted to stop you and I’m like I don’t have to you’re just doing a great job of this before I I I I want to make sure I
Say this and you and you’ve just done a wonderful job of unfolding the the the milu in which everything is happening it’s like that it’s like that ticking clock in Dunkirk the movie Dunkirk that’s going on here that you just or or you want to say the kettle
That’s on the stove and the water’s starting to bubble and the whistling is starting I mean the hyperinflation that’s happening here the assassination of Walter rathan now who I think was as you said I think he was foreign minister at the time but he had been a a
Visionary um he was Jewish um we had and then the factionalization when you when you walk into this book right away you’re running into the Assassin the Gunning down of Walter rnel and those who come leap to his defense um and and cry out that this is a a horrible
Injustice which it was and then those who celebrate it and you see this splitting um of these these factions into violent moods and and if that’s not enough you have uh France looking over the border and saying I don’t think we’re getting our stuff fast enough here
Guys and and or or getting it at all segment two the anger of France French prime minister rayon raymon P ponore once said whenever you have taken a consiliary approach to Germany she has abused it on the other hand on a on each occasion that we have shown firmness she has yielded in
January 1923 under that same prime minister’s Direction the French invaded and occupi Germany’s industrial Rich rur Valley so Mark you I I almost didn’t want to interrupt you because you just got you’re just rolling us right into it what is the significance of the rure valley for those who’ have never heard
Of it and and tell us a little bit about both the French invasion of the region and also the German reaction to that Invasion brilliant I mean the the the RAR Valley so it’s it’s a river is the first thing to say and um it’s the river
Where Germans get their coal that Valley is where the coal Germans are getting it is from so it’s the heart of the source of energy in Germany in the first half of the 20th century H nowhere is important for it in terms of the sourcing of coal and after the first
World war it becomes even more important because Germany loses co- producing areas in the East so the rure is the coal mining District we are talking hundreds of thousands of men under the ground every day working in mines extracting coal in extremely difficult conditions for for working um you know
There shifts it can take them one to two hours to get to the point where they’re extracting the C that’s 1 to two hours underground to get into where they actually are working uh Out again8 hours in there and there’s a huge argument among the working class as to what the
Working hours should be and so the creation of the Republic says an eight hour day and for minors that includes the time taken to get into and out of the pit which massively reduces the time they spend under the ground that’s why the RAR is important I think in in the
Book I use a description from a journalist from Berlin who goes there in January 1922 to describe uh to try and bring readers into the sense of what this place is like and this this this man his name is Eric D brosi he later founds the Frankfurt algam minet item
Which is one of the most important newspapers in Europe in Germany after 1945 in 1923 he’s he’s sent from Berlin as a correspondent for a liberal newspaper in Berlin and he describes how the train pulls into the rur valley um at at dawn you know and he’s looking out
The window as the sun is rising in the distance and he says you can see chimney after chimney after chimney Tower after Tower the lights go by nowhere else in the world is like this is what he says and then he says you have to have been
Born here to feel at home here it’s so different um it’s a and that I think that like Dum brosi is maybe stylizing that a little bit for his audience as as you know journalists tend to sometimes do and don’t want to get all the journalists giving out for saying that
But some journalists do stylize a little bit but I think everyone can appreciate the sense that this is a place that’s really different it’s got hundreds of thousands of men working under the ground it’s where the energy is coming from and so it’s the heart of the German
Economy and and and so its future will determine Germany’s economic power remember the Versa treaty has taking away Germany’s military power the Versa Treaty of course is a consequence of German’s defeat in 1918 so defeating the war has taking away Germany’s military power so all Germany has left in terms
Of its power is it’s economic power and if they take the RAR then that that power can be weakened and so this is one of the questions about P we’ve talk about France’s anger p is angry are the Germans going to pay are they deliberately going to are they
Deliberately weakening their economy so they don’t pay us the reparations but then there’s a bigger question which is what do what do FR French Hawks want to do with Germany really so when ponker says if we show firmness she will yield what exactly does that mean and
I would argue that there’s not a fixed idea in P’s head there’s a certain number of General ideas which is that he wants to be the French leader who the French people look up to and say he was the man who dealt with Germany after the war that’s a personal and a political
Thing for p because in 19 be before 1914 he’s been prime minister and he’s been foreign minister of France but during the war he’s French president now to Americans listening to this program that might sound great because the president has the power right but not in the
French political system in the ER of the first world war the president is a symbolic figurehead it’s the Prime Minister who has the power and in the war it’s the generals who have the power and so P’s wartime writings his wartime experience his experience as a wartime
Leader is to be at the party but not to be a part of he is he he’s he knows he’s not involved in the decision- making when it matters and then he’s got a very fragile ego he’s a little bit of a narcissist who’s been spurned by the
Public because people see Clement so the general and the generals as being the wartime leaders and P hates Clement so they despise each other when there’s an attempt to assassinate Clemens so you can read in P’s writings that he’s like he’s disappointed wow Clem so hasn’t
Been killed you know he knows he has to visit him in hospital but he like they hate each other they talk about openly murdering other two other people like they have they have they have that level of political rivalry which so it’s not new it’s not new it’s it’s and so claro
Is in is in in in in charge of the Paris peace treaty and ponr is on the sidelines and then ponr comes back into becoming prime minister of France in uh early about a year before the rur occupation and so he’s determined when he’s come in he’s the reason he’s got
Back into onto into office is he’s spoken very aggressively about dealing with Germany um that’s his public speech I think privately he’s come to terms to a degree with the Versa treaty now historians will debate this and argue about it does p want to only defend the
Treaty using the maximum Force to do so or does he want to actually radicalize the international order to make the treaty uh to to replace the treaty with an international order in Europe which is even more in favor of France and my I think those two ideas float between P’s between pker between
The man of of the summer of two who makes a decision we’re going to go into the RAR and the man who occupies the r on the 11th of January and the man who over the course of the next year maintains a policy of harshness during the occupation and and as as the
Occupation goes on he becomes more harsh and so his goals become more aggressive because if France has got a really strong military but it’s not as strong economically as Germany what’s the best way for for France to become economic Al as strong as it is militarily while weakening the Germany and the obvious
Answer is take the r occupy don’t just occupy the r colonize the r take over you be France is an Empire at this point in time in the world’s history it’s the second most powerful Empire in the world it’s a good bit behind the British because the British Empire is just so
Vastly bigger than every else but it’s still an imperial power P has lived his whole life in a French Republic that has been taking Imperial possessions and transforming them taking ownership of them get getting their values you know getting their economic vales so it makes perfect sense for him to say let’s look
At Germany the way we would look at a territory that we were colonize and take ownership of the RAR and as the German policy is towards the French occupation become more aggressive H that you know the the force it’s taking France to achieve its goals means that France
Needed a bigger prize to make that worth of so that becomes more and more realistic in in in my view of p is thinking that P is starting to move more and more towards a position of we’re going to occupy the RO permanently we’re going to Annex it to France and one of
The ways that we know this is the case is that the French set up a railway Network Railway company in the RAR a French Railway Network which is you know a first step to taking ownership of the infrastructure of the r the reason they do that is because Germany you know you
Ask what’s the occupation like on the 11th of January and France Nally goes into the RAR to secure that to secure its reparations payments in kind so reparations aren’t just money they’re also reparation PS and C coal obviously there’s lots of coal in the r and wood
So they send in a a technical Commission of around a 100 Engineers to examine how much Germany is returning to them in coal and whether the Germans are being truthful about what reparations in kind they have but to accompany their hundreds 100 engineers in their technical Expedition they send in about
100,000 soldiers and so the Germans see the 100,000 soldiers coming in they March through the streets town by town they occupy them in about four days from the from the 11th of January uh they you know they humiliate the local population they are there’s no there’s no shooting there’s no guns
Being fired but there are guns being pointed at civilians there are tanks there are you know there is a show of force we would all call I think we’d all understand the idea of a show of force an army moving into town showing its force and then occupying taking up um uh
PL staying in schools houses the French military commander go to the town of Essen and they go to the Villa of kup kup is the industrialist one of the most important industrialists in Germany and he his family’s become incredibly wealthy in the 19th century they’ve built a spectacular residence a
Spectacular Villa kind of Vera type castle and of course the French generals go that’s where we’re going to stay when we’re here um so they occupy like that and there’s a huge resistance of the mind on the German side there’s no resistance in terms of shooting uh
Initially um there’s no German army that can fight back against this invasive Force but there is a resistance of the mind and that can be demonstrations it can be singing it can be theater uh and it can be going on strike if you’re a worker so the workers initially refuse
To cooperate with the French and this all happens in a really short period of time and once the rulers of Germany and Berlin realize we’ve got the working class here really angry with France’s occupation of the RAR they’re not going to rebel against us they’re not going to
Be the revolutionaries that they were two or three years ago they’re going to be nationalist Patriots in this moment and that all creates a platform where the German leadership in Berlin can declare a state of resistance that they call passive resistance so they Proclaim Germany is going to passively resist the
Occupation and that means for the working class those miners are not going to get into the pits they’re not going to dig the coal they’re not going to put the Cal on trains train drivers are not going to drive the trains H the economic e economy of the is going to shut down
Completely so that France doesn’t doesn’t get what it wants the French France’s occupation will be economically resisted rather than militarily resisted and here’s where we come back to inflation because the German Central Banker havin he looks at this and the government look at him and they say how
Are we going to do this how are we going to pay for this because workers are going on strike companies close we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people with no income suddenly being asked to do nothing to stop the French getting their goal and that’s when printing
Press again is the solution because we can print money to pay for the cost of passive resistance and havin looks that and he says in in January we can do this print money pay them money the value of the mark against the dollar we can manipulate that because we’ve got
Reserves and so when it comes to we can prop up the value of the German Mark in International Exchange markets in Germany in particular by manipulating the value by spending our money to keep our currency at a manageable level and for about four months that works but in
August sorry August excuse me aa April in April 1923 the dam bursts he has no more reserves left and that’s the point when the inflation that was Galloping up until that point becomes the hyperinflation but by April by the time the the Reich Bank says we can no longer
Protect the value of our currency to any degree by that point in time politically there’s been so much radicalization in terms of a refusal to countenance any kind of compromise on the German side with the French and a refusal to countenance any kind of compromise on the French side with the Germans that
Means that it’s better to put the currency at risk and watch it burn than it is to stop passive resistance because by April May the German R rulers in Berlin are looking at the situation with the ru saying if we give up now we will lose the r we will lose our economic
Power and they will dismember our state you know we will know we will split with the state Unity will fall to pieces and that means we have to put everything behind the unity of the state and let the if the economy Burns it let it burn because it’s more important to maintain
The unity of the state in the face of French aggression and the Germans are also betting that at certain point Washington and London the two big International Powers with influence over Western Europe at this time they’re betting at some point the British or the Americans will come to our Aid and will
Recognize what the french are doing to us is appalling they are treating us really badly uh they’re putting the International System the international economy at risk and so they will need to eventually come and say Paris ease back on what you’re doing to Germany so that’s their logic in the summer as to
Why they’re holding on to what otherwise from a distance looks like a sheer mad policy of printing money in ever bigger notes and because the inflation starts to to during the time of hyperinflation we’re talking you know you buy a cup of coffee in a cafe it costs several
Million by the time you go to pay after you’ve drunk it cost several billion that level of price increase happening and and we’re going to get into that I this is you’re again you’re leading wonderfully into my next segment I want to I want to say one thing too if I can
Uh Mark a couple things um again the the the ticking clock the the whistling cattle on the stove you just hear it building and building here and and what what what is so well characterized in this uh in this book first of all is the
Notion that I I think a lot of us have I guess a lot of us probably in America and getting our European history we have nodes that we jump to in history well the big ticket items so there’s well there was you know we had you know some
Battles that happened in the 1800s or the Revolutions in 1848 and then we have kind of let’s skip forward we get to World War I and let’s skip then we the Versa treaty and then we have you know musin rise then Hitler becomes Chancellor we skip some of these things
That are enormously seminal in the formation of tensions that can lead to things and and what’s interesting is the chapter between the Versa treaty because everybody’s like well the Versa treaty created Hitler well there’s there’s aspects of that to the the to to the reparations and the frustrations and
Also Hitler’s just anger that he thought it was a stab in the back uh you know by Communists and and Jewish uh members of society this is Hitler’s notion of why Germany needs to strike back at domestic enemies as well as foreign enemies but but for for you to
Unfold this chapter about the French moving into the RAR the the passive and active resistance the whole chapter by the way which unfortunately we won’t have time to talk about too much because we’ll move on to the next segment but the chapter the occupiers Revenge about as which is a grueling reflection on
Sexual assault as a weapon of occupation um and how the French enacted sexual assault among German women and so on as as revenge for whatever was happening by Germans amongst the French during World War I Etc to to understand these lesser publicized lesser historically explained um events that absolutely poured gas on
The fire of whatever resentments came at the end of World War I whatever resentments came from verside treaty Here Comes this chapter of the rural occupation the hyperinflation that comes out of it the radicalization of the left the radicalization of the right and then you have then you have a set of leaders
Some who are better than others saying how do I walk this fine line without getting shot and without collapsing our governments um and without giving to the foreign the the foreign enemies but also giving into the domestic radicals how do I walk this line and and again this is
The whistling Kettle this is the ticking clock that you have building and building page after page in this which is why this is not just a story about Hitler’s beer hall pushed which is definitely covered in this book it’s about how does something like that come
About and it’s it literally is is hair raising um to to kind of watch this drama sort of unfold hi I’m Todd Warner managing editor of evangelization and culture the Journal of the word on fire Institute where on fire is a global Evangelical community that exists to provide our
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Culture segment three chaos the market woman who demanded in dry tone 100 billion marks for a single egg had lost during inflation her ability to be amazed at any anything anymore since that time nothing was so mad or so atrocious that it could have caused any awe in people anymore the
Millions who were then robbed of their wages and savings became the masses with whom Nazi Dr gobl was to operate having been robbed Germany became a nation of robbers so Mark maybe you can reflect on what I said in the last segment at the
End there but I also want to say as 1923 proceedes we see the formation and dissolution of Germany’s political coalitions the unseating and resting of chancellors from outside Nations and from inside factions how on Earth can order be restored in such a cauldron of instability it’s a br brilliant question
I mean thinking back you know that occupation I took about radicalization is really important it’s it’s violence violence From Below small incidents what might seem small incidents in terms of the numbers are massive have massive have a massive power H you know one or two people shot on a given occasion can
Leave a legacy of bitterness the the the the the an incident like Bloody Sunday in in Essen which nobody remembers when French soldiers open fire on workers at at the crup factory in Essen and kill more than 10 H without incurring any losses on their side an atrocity for the
Germans an act of self-righteous defense and Brilliant uh fighting of for the French you know they create incompatible meanings about what’s going on and that radicalization through acts of violence makes each side hate each other more and and that’s not to speak of the the the sexual
And the use of the body of of women as being a means to demonstrate power and its instrumentalization um which you know it was a horrible chapter to write because the testimonies of women involved are are really chilling really really really um really you know it’s it’s it’s really
Really touching H you know it hits you when you when you read their words and and it was hard to to to research actually because I I only use cases where I could find evidence from the French side French archives that confirmed what the Germans were saying on the German side because otherwise
There’s a risk that you’re just repeating one side propaganda whereas you know when you have a French officer saying that the men under his command uh committed these acts and they’re to be punished for it you know this is AC really happened um so it’s a complex
Story and and that that all powers that bitterness and so then the challenge is you know how does reason you know reason how does a deescalation happen how do people come to their Cent and say nobody’s actually winning in this scenario and in a way the crisis
Has to burn itself out and so at the international level in the summer in July 1923 um Germany sees the first change which is uh gusta stman vr’s um greatest Statesman in the words of his his biographer Jonathan Wright and he becomes Chancellor and what’s happened is the previous
Chancellor a man cuno who’s a business leader who doesn’t have a majority in the Reich tag and he by the summer has lost in 2,000 for the position he wants he wants an out strategy in the summer of July he is there’s a wave of strikes
And riots and there’s a lot of rioting in Germany on payday because workers get their pay and their pay is indexed to inflation so they’re getting huge jumps in their salary each each on each payday but there’s nothing in the shops to buy because farmers nobody no no farmer is
Going to sell food for notes that are worth nothing in a few hours time so the farmers are hoarding their food and so there’s a social division it’s a war of all against all everybody feels like everybody else is doing better those on fixed income older people older civil
Servants in particular those who are suffering most because their pensions are stuck their is their fixed incomes are stuck they’ve lost assets during the war they are losing the most those who are in debt are actually potentially winning quite well and because inflation means that that you know the debt on a
Farm farm debt is completely eradicated through this through this year um they they seem they they’re winning sometimes this happens sometimes people are in the same boat you know you could be uh losing on your um on your income as a shop owner because people aren’t buying
Stuff because you nothing to sell but you could be paying off your debt as a shop owner that you have encountered to build up your business but generally the sensus that everybody’s losing and that people and that people the wrong people are winning so people are fixated with
The idea that you know somebody from the the low social classes is suddenly making lots lots of lots of money so that’s happening in the internal level it’s giving rise to these riots called the Kuno strikes people have been killed in these riots you know it’s um it’s
It’s more than a hundred people are killed in in the Kuno strikes in in in in in July 1923 and at the end of that Kuno resides and stman becomes Chancellor and stman is has the foresight he’s a supporter of and passive resistance in January 1923 just
As stran is a supporter of Germany’s military policies during the first world war but the reason he’s a great Statesman is because he changes his policies in accordance with the demands of the situation rather than digging down further into the hole and not rowing back from a bad policy he can recognize
A bad policy for a bad policy and say we’re going in a different direction this isn’t going to work and so he frames it in the language of uh language of what I would call reason you know he will stand up and he will say the nationalists are screaming that we must
Continue the to passively resist we must never surrender and he says it is not a sign of weakness to recognize that you’ve been def defeated it’s not a mo you’re not betraying your nation saying we’re defeated and we must we we must change policy that’s not actually a sign of
Defeat he he redefines what is you know expected of a leader to say we have to find solutions to these crisis rather than resist until the end because it’s getting us nowhere and that is his language of of reason deescalation and he also speaks about Europe ideas about Europe
As a whole as you know Europe sinking itself and he speaks about the Democracy the need the legitimacy of the democracy is something that he cares about he uses that language to say this this system if we we cannot continue to resist because if we continue to resist we will
Eventually destroy our system as a as as a whole because those on the far left they’re gaining support those on the far right they’re gaining support and they’re all coming going to come together at some point in the second half 2023 to move against the state to destroy the Democratic Republic as a
Whole so that’s Stan’s domestic situation when he becomes Chancellor at the start of August he’s ready to reverse the policy and to move away but he doesn’t do so immediately because I said at the very start uh German’s policy has always been to hold out for intervention from either Washington
Which has always been unlikely because the Americans have stood back since December 1922 kind of wisely in a way and and and have said look the French and the Germans are at loggerheads we got to let them burn burn out their fight and when they’ve imagine two
Boxers just punching each other to the point where the end of the fight they kind of ready to sit down that’s when we’ll get into the ring you know that’s the point we’ll get into the ring and end the fight because otherwise you know they’ll keep they’ll want to keep going
At it and there’s no point in getting in in before that H so that’s kind of the American position but the British position has always been closer and more involved and the British have always given subtle hints little hints they are might be leaning more towards the German
German position first of all in January 1923 they’ve said they’ve said their policy is neutrality they’ve annoyed the French by not actually joining in the occupation of the r ponker is hopeful in January the British will join in the occupation of the r he’s got Belgium on
Board so he’s hopeful that Britain will join too British say no and then August just at the time when strasman becomes Chancellor British foreign secretary a man called lord kuron former vice vice Roy of of India so again Colonial background he makes a speech in which he says that
The occupation of the rur is illegal and he says international law is on the side of Germany which is what the Germans have maintained throughout the year the French have argued no international law permits this div verai treaty permits this H and the germs said it doesn’t and the actual legal legal
Battle isn’t of interest to us there because it’s all about a technicality of how you read the versite treaty the politics is what matters and the politics in August is the British say it’s a K says it’s illegal and so Str man in that moment he cannot turn around and
Say we’re ending passive resistance we raise the White Flag we’ll come to a trce with the French will negotiate an end to this this this uh crisis or be it an end that will put France in the driving seat because it’s better to save the unity of the nation at this point
That to continue h fighting a lost battle he cannot do that that is politically impossible so Str Man’s first task in government is to say we need to hold on for a little bit longer even though the factors that have brought me to be Chancellor were those
That destroyed my my um um my my predecessor’s ability to ruin rule this country I’ve got to just hang in here for a matter of weeks if necessary to see what the outcome is of the international crisis doesn’t matter what’s happening domestically I’ve got to hold on because
The international crisis could be about to turn in Germany’s favor because a dreamer in Germany and there are lots of people who are thinking this way is thinking if the British actually lose faith in the French they could lose faith in the French to the point that
They could look for an alliance between London and Berlin and a London and Berlin solution to the crisis could push France out to the cold and could actually lead to an end of the political order created by the Versa treaty because if Britain was to walk away from
The Versa treaty and negotiate say a New London Berlin agreement at the expense of the French Germany could be an entirely new position again so it’s split your enemy split your enemy camp it’s so they’ve got to hold on for that so Str man is saying in August September
We’ve got to hold on and this is where the British uh problem London becomes a problem for Germany because the kuron is one part of the British government he’s foreign secretary he’s not prime minister the prime minister is a man called Stanley Baldwin and much like ponker and Clemens so don’t like each
Other Baldwin and um Baldwin and kuron they hate each other too because Kon has been a polit political figure for a lot longer and he thought he was going to be the next um chancellor of Britain uh he didn’t get that job earlier in the year when his predecessor fell ill and his
Predecessor got got cancer and had to had to resign and so Kon thought I’m stepping into 10 Downing Street as Chancellor and the conservative party leadership actually said no you’re not because you’re too aristocratic too oldfashioned and too out of touch with modern politics we need a younger person
Who will get the voters of the working class that’s fought the War and so Lord kuron sorry but your aristocratic backgr is not a winning strategy for politics mass mass mobilization of politics in the 1920 20s so and so Kon really resents the Prime Minister and so it’s
Kind of a go alone in August when he says it’s illegal and at that point in time when London needs to come together and you and if this happened today I can imagine this would well maybe not but you would imagine that it would be decided quite
Quickly that Britain needs to issue a communicate what its actual position is that doesn’t happen in the summer of 1923 in the summer of 1923 in August uh the Prime Minister goes on holidays to France so stran has to wait until the British prime minister holiday ends for
Him to be certain of what the British position is and every day he’s on holiday Germany is burning the economy is tanking the Nazis are gaining support the conspirators are meeting preparing to get ready for a PCH against the state it’s a Now or Never moment for every political extremist in Germany where
They’re thinking now is the time when we can destroy this Republic and replace it with our vision of a fascist dictatorship our vision of an authoritarian dictatorship some of them want to bring the Kaiser back some of them want to introduce communism some some of them want to break away from
Germany and create independent republics every for one of a better term every political crazy in Germany right now is turned on to the point of we are inches away from being victorious in our struggle against the vi vmer Republic stman at this point is saying no you’re
Not H but I can’t end the printing of money and restabilize the currency and declare the end of passive resistance in the RAR until I’m certain what London’s position is and that comes at the end of September and 26th of September because British prime minister Baldwin stops in
Paris on his way home from his holiday in the south of France he meets with ponker and Pon is about 20 years older than him he’s got a lot more political experience than him and he schools him he leaves him in absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he is H he causes Bluff
He says if you want the if you declare the occupation to be illegal do something to prove it and Baldwin says I never said that that was Kur on and they issue a communic at the end which basically says Britain agrees entirely with France and and there’s no line that says and
Britain has secured its interests in the following way it’s not it’s it’s just not there because they’ve literally just he’s literally just sat there and said yes sir okay sir you’re the prime minister of France I I will do what you say there’s my communicate sign the form
I’m going back to London do what you want and this is the point actually where this would be hilarious it’s funny but the reason it’s not hilarious is because people are suffering massively like in Germany there is starvation as a result of the breakdown of the economy
Man one of his reasons for wanting to end the crisis is that he fears there’ll be no food in Germany during the winter of 23 24 because the Harvest has been bad currency is not functioning they don’t you know farmers are hoarding food because they’re not going to give it
Away for for nothing people in the cities are walking onto the countryside to steal food creating like huge divisions between land land and cities in the RAR District itself the occupation has has created near famine likee conditions children have been shipped out of the r and a in a like a
Save the children type operation the reason I say save the children there Charities actually responded active other Charities are are respond I should say to American audience the Quakers are providing food to Germans uh you know millions of bows of soup are being given out by American
Aid per day in Germany in 1923 we don’t tend to think of American food Aid keeping Europeans Western Europeans alive in the 1920s but that is the that’s this is the start of American human humanitarian intervention in the 20th century this is where it’s coming from so you know you know probably tend
To think of American foreign policy mainly being you know military foreign policy and Military intervention we we also forget the US has this really long history of actual humanitarian Aid too and that’s there in the in the 20 23 for Germany Switzerland other European countries are also pumping in Aid um to
Keep keep German children fed because German children actually experien famine likee conditions and historians have done done the work on on on the medical history of this children in Germany are not growing properly in 1923 because there’s a lack of food and so that’s the consequence of this on on the ground and
But at the political level stresman is left saying we’ve got to end this and when he does pker has the Victory and this is why I say it would be hilarious because pker having waited from January to September to get the victory he wants against against German to get the
Germans to concede end passive resistance to n they cooperate in the world they do it France wants and at that point in time if Punker was a smart thinker and if he was calm he would say to stran Let’s Meet immediately next week you and me Paris Berlin an international meeting of the
Two leaders of the two countries and let’s agree to our reach an agreement on our differences here and now just the two of us and ponker a doesn’t do that because in the moment of victory in the moment of elation he wants more so he doesn’t agree to meet with strasman he
Pushes for more aggressive policies including the breakup of the reinland which is the Western District of Germany on the border with France so he wants to create an independent state there that’s no longer part of the German Republic that will be effectively a puppet state acting in the interest of France and he
Has some supporters on the ground who will do that these are Rin Landers who see themselves as being of a different ethnic race to the prussians and the East prussians who rule in their view Berlin H and so he pushes that agenda for a month and in that time H he loses
The opportunity to negotiate a victory over over Germany where he would have been alone with strasman in the in the negotiating room and instead he gives Paris sorry he gives London and Washington a chance to respond to the situation and London responds first and it responds fast
Because London looks at the breakup of Germany and it says we don’t want that we do not want to see France dismember Germany create a republic in the reinland split Germany up into lots of of weak states that it can bully and dominate because that means we’ve gone
To war in 1914 to stop Germany from being the the most powerful Nation on the continent but we’ve ended it a decade later Millions dead France being too powerful the nation on the European continent we can’t have that so the British position in this instance is really really clear it’s the messages to
Paris you will not split Germany up you will not create a republic in the reinland and we will put our soldiers if necessary who are some of whom are in parts of the reinland in your way okay so it’s very very clear it is not the language of subtlety it is not the
Language of disunity from London it’s a very clear language of do not do this Paris full stop understood and so that creates that moment whereby Washington looks at the same situation and says we need to come in too the British need our help we need to create stability the
Economics of it is finally starting to put pressure on those on the governments in Washington and in London too because businesses are looking at Europe and are saying the German economy is tanking it’s funny to see them suffer but actually we need to trade with them yeah
You know we need even though they were enemy even though we hate them we did tra they were our biggest trading partner before the first world war so we need to get them back to be traders to be a trading Nation again we can’t have
It that this Bas Cas is here in Europe we can’t have it that there’s a mass fam in Germany we can’t have the bism takes over in Germany we can’t you know we we’ve got to get stability and so at that point in time instead of there being a conference
Between lond between Berlin and Paris there becomes a conference between London Washington Paris and Berlin and so it’s the four powers that decide what the future of Germany will be and that gives strz and friends in the meeting to negotiate a way out of the crisis which gives Germany a partial Victory gives
Germany some some some def some uh some something to hold on to gives the Republic something to hold on to that’s the that’s his his his first achievement his second one is he recognizes that they can reform the currency and do so quite quickly and making a really complex economic story
Really simple here Mr strasman says we need an interim currency between what we have now and a stable currency based on gold in the future and we’re going to create this inter currency and we’re going to back it up against food against agricultural Holdings so instead of backing your paper money up against
Precious metals you’re backing it up against materials Goods Foods agricultural Holdings and everybody in Germany believes in it so it works literally it works because people believe that the new currency is value has a value and so it simply works it’s an act of faith on
The part of German people to to to maintain that uh to create that um uh new currency and so that’s a success story in Germany and then in the winter of 2324 that the the the States agree that they’ll solve the problem of reparations by creating a technocratic commission of
Uh prominent individuals with technical expertise and that they will meet in Paris and they will come up come up with a plan for reparations for stabilizing the German economy and they do this and it’s led by a man called Charles do who’s an American banker and he comes up
With something that’s called the do plan and the doors plan is the economic model that sees United States loan to Germany to create stability in Germany and Germany uses those loans to pay back reparations to France and Britain which in turn pay back to the United States which creates stability and creates the
FR International framework for the Roaring 20s in the in in from from 1924 onwards that’s the way the crisis ends it’s through International cooperation and through recognizing that your the other nations have vital interests too and that you can trade them off and that everybody can win together the downside
To it in the longer term is nobody predicts what will happen if America suddenly becomes in a position that doesn’t want to lend into Germany in the form of the Dos plan because nobody in the United States can see the 29 crash coming so that’s that’s the downside to
It but in the for the five years to follow 1924 it puts stability uh it begins really the Americanization of of Germany you know the 20th century in Western Europe is an American Century life becomes more American for Europeans with each passing decade and that’s point in time when it really begins in
In Germany obvious obviously declines in the 30s and 40s before returning in the 50s and 60s and so on um that’s the situation that creates the international stability it’s the domestic challenge that is the next s it is you let us in very well I want to and a
Couple things I want to say because again you just you articulate this so well reading this book first of all one might say why are we doing a book on 1923 for a podcast on evangelization culture because this is all about human nature there’s a profound story of human
Nature and this is chess if you read this book whether it’s strasman or or Pon K or Baldwin or Hitler or the leaders of you know ranau or whoever you you start to see how well people do in reading the room how how how well they
Do in negotiating how how much ego plays a role how much appetite plays a role Mis misplayed hands wellplayed hands um and and the apprehension of human nature or the absolute disdain for human nature it all unfolds and as you see in this story the figures are are larger than
Life but the ramifications of the decisions of those figures is what has profound impact on on millions of lives economically militarily Etc so it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a profound story of of decisions by people and and there significant ramifications I because I’ll
Have to refer to the book on this but I want I want people to read in the book also how the nation has to contend with three radical factions that Rose in the midst of this and you’ve alluded to them the Ryland separatist the Communists and then the German German nationalists that
Are being led by National soci Socialist Adolf Hitler um and then also how how they how some of those specifically the separatists and the Communists in their movement and ultimately the na the Nazis get sort of um diffused or suppressed or or or shut down by decisions uh of of
Leaders uh but also by changes in the fortunes of the economy the second thing I want to say too is which is really interesting here is people everybody kind of knows about the Marshall Plan the rebuilding of Europe after World War II and to some extent you’re reading
This book and saying what is the where’s the light of the end of the tunnel for for for for Europe where is where’s the the offramp from this crisis and it is as you’ve said it’s it’s American Loans that ultimately provide a lifeline and so to some extent as my understanding
There was a 1920s Marshall Plan for for for the rebuilding and and the rebuilding of Germany the the recovery of the German economy um along with the the British and the French postwar and so on and what’s interesting again is is how um stability economically is a is
It’s not a perfect antidote but it is it is somewhat of an antidote to chaos that when things are going better The Fringe The Fringe groups lose their power when things are going worse The Fringe The Fringe groups kind of really kind of kind of grow and so on so before we move
To the next segment would you agree with that yes and I think you know I love the bit where you you spoke about you know how you know human psychology in this this moment and what I would say is like I think you don’t need to be interested in
History at all to know that you don’t know someone until you’ve experienced a crisis with them you have to experience a real crisis where things are going badly where people show their real nature and that is what we see when we look at this time in history you see how
The actors in society how they respond how the international leaders respond what long-term identities that maybe have been kept in h maybe have been held back come to the four and one of the ones that we haven’t talked about maybe enough that we should talk about it
Comes to the four in this 19 in the year 1923 is Hitler doesn’t just gain supporters magically because the economy is not going well he ba he gains supporters because he can blame somebody for everything that’s going wrong and the figure that he blames for everything
Going wrong is the Jew the Jews are responsible for this and what distinguishes Hitler in January 1923 from all the other political parties they all rally against the French the French are leading the occupation of the war they’re out to punish Germany they’re insult us Hitler speeches are
Different because he almost respects the French his Target is not Paris he’s in his talks he he’s saying he basically is saying France is behaving the way a great power would behave it’s treating us badly because we’re weak and it’s not the French’s fault that they’re behaving
This way it’s our rulers in Berlin it’s the social Democrats it’s the in inverted commment here it’s the Jew Republic who are responsible for our weakness they’re the enemy the internal enemy is the Real Enemy that have made us weak they have made us vulnerable and
We need to get them before we can defend oursel against the French I was going to say that which is incredibly that that’s so clear in your you can see the tone change when for a long time during this crisis it is a unifying Factor within Germany and pointing over at France and
As Hitler and and the various Splinter groups on the right are emerging they’re not like you said they’re not pointing at France they’re pointing to Berlin their ire is for it’s sort of back to that world we we we lost in World War I because we lost our nerve and we lost
Our nerve because we got stabbed in the back by Jews and Communists that are undermining everything domestically and so on so uh you were about to say so that’s exactly it so they’re they’re pointing but they’re not just pointing at the abstract Republic they’re pointing at the street in their
Town where there’s a Jewish shop where there’s a Jewish community so Jewish population of Germany in 19 the 1920s about 1% of the overall population uh and it’s concentrated in certain places so you know City like Munich city like Berlin will have Jewish districts already and so they’re pointing at these
Places that’s where they’re that’s where they are you know so that so what we see through the year is you see an increase in individual small micro acts of violence a Jewish man walking across a square suddenly being surrounded by a group of rightwing thugs being attacked
H this kind of frustration coming in this language of aggression the language of they are responsible for everything ‘s one one right-wing leader agitator Nazi who’s a woman her name is Andrea ellent her husband is a is a is an officer in the German Navy in the first
World war and he gets killed and she then in in the early 1920s is a a Firebrand speaker in rural Germany going into agricultural regions in particular talking about you know the crops are bad because the Jews R now is responsible you know but she also then and this is
Important she then speaks to female audiences only and she speaks about topics related to female reproductive Health you know your Jewish doctor is responsible for the miscarriage that you had she puts those ideas into people’s heads it’s really personal it’s really hard it’s really hard to disprove if
People want to believe and you know people in time of Crisis will believe anything because they’re desperate for Solutions that’s not to excuse it by the way H it’s just to help us understand why these ideas grew in power the idea of you know the preacher coming into a
Town being a kind of healer uh is something that appeals to them and in this case the message of those those preachers it’s someone like Ellen or Hitler is a message of hatred it’s hate your enemy and we will eventually all succeed Hitler’s language is really radical throughout the year he’s you
Know I talk in my book about what I call Gallows moments where he’s fantasizing openly in front of everybody about killing lots of PE of his political enemies putting them up on the Gallows so he’s saying early in the year you know it’s either us or them I know I’m
On Extreme ground but it’s either us or them and and and and it won’t be us it’ll be them one of his speakers the the editor of the focus book Bor who proclaims Hitler as the German musolini H who we mentioned at the start start of the program he speaks to an audience
Where he says we can solve the rur occupation all we need to do is tell 50,000 Jews in Germany to assemble with a bag with clothing and supplies for a few days and we’ll put them into a an imprisonment camp and then we’ll tell par we will send 50,000 people to a higher
Power which is very clear euphemism for we will do away with them we will kill them and once we do that the Jews who rule the world according to their conspir conspiratorial thinking will intervene to end the occupation of of the of the RO so that’s the kind of
Radical fantasies of violence that are on the far right the left are looking at this in the summer of 1923 they see the big strike waves talk about the Kuno strikes earlier and they think this is it this is the time and they look you know lenon sees power in inverted commas
Because he didn’t really seize power in this month but he staged the first step in the process to the bics taking over the state of Russia in October 1917 so they’re looking at it and they’re thinking Red October such a great you know we remember the film right Red
October is this great great idea for them so they’re thinking it’s time for the German Red October let’s get ready October 1923 is going to be the month when communism is take power in Germany they start planning for a large ins simultaneous insurrections in working-class strongholds across Germany
And I should say the geography really matters here and because you you’ve got to remember Germany’s got federal system Prussia in the north with capit Berlin is a Social Democratic liberal supporting state that supports the Republic barar in the South about eight million people out of a population of of
Of 60 odd million so it’s a really conservative State it’s where Munich is it’s where Hitler’s getting making being most successful uh it’s where the reaction is going to Triumph if it’s going to Triumph anywhere and in between those two states you’ve got smaller States called Saxony and turingan and they are
And I always have to get this right for American audiences they are in the context of viar politics red states which means they support communism and the left wi of the social democracy that’s what we mean when we say they’re red States they’re they’re they’re leaning towards becoming places where
Communism Communists could take over and in the in the crisis the social democratic governments there even create coalitions that include the Communists and that is suddenly a massive alarm Bell for Berlin because they’re saying we can’t include those guys in the government you cannot put a communist in
Charge of the Interior Ministry of a state because that means they will turn the police against the state and infiltrate it with Communists they will arm the working class which they do and the in in those States the reason they say we’re arming the working class is they’re creating PR Arian they’re called
Proletarian hundreds divisions of men from the working class armed to fight against an attempt from the reactionaries in the South to destroy the Democracy that’s what they say they’re arming them for their critics say you’re arming those men because when the time comes you’re going to blow a whistle and you’re going to
Seize the state and launch a Communist Revolution and the geography really matters because if the north is going to march on the south it’s going to go through saxonian tanum and similarly vice versa which is much more likely if the reactionaries are going to take control of Munich and Hitler’s going to
Take over Munich and March North to take control of Berlin to do a musolini to march on Berlin which has been part of his script for the whole year he’s got to March through Saxon and turingan because they’re the states that are in the way which means if a civil war is
Going to happen and lots of people are have putting their money it’s completely worthless of course at this time but they’re putting it on the idea of a civil war happening as the next most likely thing to happen it’s going to happen at the border between Bavarian
Saxon and T turingan where the black so-called black Army you know the right are that’s against the state and the um Nazis and their supporters after they can take take control of Munich are going to March North and they’re going to smash into the the armed proletarians in saxonian turingan and that’s where
The Civil War is going to break out and anyone’s guess as to who wins if the if the fascists win they’re going to march in Berlin and if the petarian hundreds win well they will probably march on Berlin too but the outcome and the outcome of either of those victories
Will be a dictatorship either Communist dictatorship or a fascist dictatorship so that’s the crisis of October 1922 on top of which you have the crisis of separatism in in in the western regions where with the support of France you have groups of armed armed nationalists proclaiming a republic of the Rin and so
Stradman’s task is while I reform the currency and get stability and save the food supply by creating economic stability I’ve got to deal with each of these these three Mo movements and the separatists is the easiest one to deal with um now I should say each of these crisis separatism communism and fascism
On its own would be a major crisis facing the state all of them happening together is a cluster of an enormous cluster of problem and and so that is the separatists fail they try they they the they end up in a fight with the police possibly the police been ordered to
Shoot them to show the state’s power and and they fail because French support for their movement is lukewarm and the International System takes away the support that would have given them the the only chance them to be successful is is if France can push its agenda through which it can’t and we’ve already
Discussed that the Communists withdraw from the game of Revolution because their leadership contrast to our expectations is actually quite strategic they recognize that they don’t have the power to win so in Saxon and turingan they initially start talking the talk of Revolution but they realized that the
Working class there is not is not going to uh come not going to follow their call for Revolution and so the plan for the October the Red October in Germany Fizzles out in most places in Germany with the exception of Hamburg and Hamburg is different because its
Leadership is more radical and it’s kind of so attached to the idea of Revolution that it stands up and tries to take power in Hamburg on its own anyway but this the forces of democracy can defeat that communist pch in Hamburg because they’re it’s happening in an in
Isolation in sax turning they step back that leaves you with Nazism and the conspiratorial rights were the conspiratorial groups and here’s where Hitler fits in this story because Hitler is one part of a group of right-wing putchers aspiring rightwing pests I personally believe that Hitler wants to end the year very much as
Chancellor himself as some kind kind of future dictator uh that he sees himself as the the winner the king at the end of the battle in charge of everything that’s his his goal and he’s trying to find allies and so he gets invited to meet with conspiratorial groups
Including Generals in the right spere including other fig figures anti-republican figures and all of these meetings happen in the background they’re in secret they’re highly conspiratorial you know this is the silent PCH it’s the one you don’t see and you wake up in the morning sudden
They’re in charge of the state but that group looks at the scenario and while Hitler is 100% committed to Revolution in the name of nationalism and destruction of democracy Now the other people on the at the table look at the situation and they say if it comes to a
Fight we are the weaker side the people supporting democracy in the state of Prussia have more people there are lots of veterans of the first world war in there ranks they know how to fight and they will defeat us remember the reair is not that big strong powerful force
That people would like to think maybe imagine when we think of the German Army in the 1920s in 1923 it only has 100,000 men it’s a weak it’s a weak Mark Mark just to clarify for people the reiches Weare is the is the existing Armed Force of Germany is that correct yeah correct
Yeah correct it’s been it’s been limited to 100,000 by the Versa treaty so it’s sort of this small fledgling state milit and it’s not super strong exactly so the the Army is not not not strong and if you think of the the working class you know the SPD has
Around a million members it’s party that’s that’s a social democrats for people who are yeah yeah social so apolog getting myself here so so the social the Social Democratic party which again it’s hard to explain that to an American audience today it’s a reformist socialist party so it doesn’t believe in
Communism it hates the Communists to be honest most of its leadership pretty much hate Communists and they’ve they’ve sent in soldiers to kill Communists communist Uprising leaders of communist Uprising they’ve been very violent to get to to deal with Communism in the early years of the Republic but they
Equally dislike the right and they’re the most loyal to their idea of the democracy and the Constitution as being the ideal form of government and the big criticism of them in the year 1923 is that they they don’t go as harsh against the political right as they have done
Against the the far political left in earlier years that’s the big criticism of them their Defenders argue that they choose the the the way out of the crisis that’s most Humane and that will and result in the least loss of life that’s an open debate as to whether whether
That’s the right strategy strategy or not and I discussed that more in the book but their their situation is so the rights fa stand back and they say Prussia democracy and push is too strong we will lose so let’s not let’s we’ll abandon the plan for PCH we’ll abandon
The plan for a conspiratorial move against the state Hitler this is where the psychology becomes so important Hitler cannot do that in the year 1923 by the Autumn because since January his entire movement has only been about what we would call today you know um mobilizing the base radicalizing
The base you know getting getting people on his side true extremely violent language promising violence calling his supporters out he’s promised some blood shed for the whole year and so by October he has to deliver us and that’s what causes him at the end of October and in early November to conclude we’re
Going to Stage a putch we’re going to seize power in Munich where if we have the rights where with us privately and in secret brilliant if we don’t doesn’t matter once we start marching the soldiers will join us anyway he believes that segment four Hitler’s PED in November 1923 as Adolf Hitler and
His Nazis held a beer hall full of political leaders and power Brokers at gunpoint tensions mounted that is until Hitler gave a speech as Mark Jones writes it was remembered as quote an oratorical Masterpiece that would have done any actor proud close quote despite threatening violence Hitler’s use of nationalist anti-republican rhetoric
Gained him cheers and Applause from the assembled audience an audience I might add that was originally held at gunpoint so Mark I want you to continue again the flow has been great tell us about Hitler is now at the he’s the opportunity the speeches about about Rising against a nation have been out
There the blood the blood lust of the of the the movements is at a fever pitch um he sees his his some of his allies kind of growing cold to the idea and here it is in November of 1923 and you’re saying Hitler is looking at this as kind of a
Now or Never movement so so tell us about the unfolding of the beer hall ped which is a coup for those who don’t understand a p as you’ve said a conspiracy against the state effectively it’s it’s a coup if if I’m not incorrect in saying that yeah it’s it’s it’s
Exactly that there it’s completely correct it is it it is it’s an attempt to use Armed Force to take control of the state um first in Bavaria and so the American equivalent today would be to um you know to take control of say Texas and March from there on Washington and and and
Apologies to Texas as choosing that state as the the example but that’s the the kind of um the way to to think about it um and so you know um Hitler on the 8th of November he chooses that date because the leadership of Bavaria is
Going to be listening to a speech by a man called Gustav Ritter von car who’s effectively the political leader in charge of the state of Bavaria as a response to the emergency conditions that have as that have occurred as the situation has worsened economically over the years so Bavarian Parliament has
Been suspended Von car has been made em given emergency Powers he’s effectively the dictator of Bavaria he’s also anti-semitic he’s a nationalist and he’s trying to out be more Nationalist and be more anti-semitic than Hitler and he calls the leadership of Bavaria to the Beer hole to listen to him give a speech
On the future of Bavarian Politics on the anniversary of the revolution in Bavaria in on the eth of November 1918 when a Jewish socialist called Kurt Eisner took power in Bavaria um and Proclaim Pria a republic um which his and his rule didn’t last very long
Because he have a strong parab base and he was eventually he was executed on the streets of Munich in February 19 1919 so it’s a it’s a symbolic date a date loaded with symbolism Hitler turns up outside this meeting with his his um his assault troops they’re armed he goes
Into the building first he waits in the foyer he drinks a beer Hitler still drinks beer at this time and then when his men surround the building they March into into the Assembly Hall somebody fires a pistol into the ceiling later C say it’s Hitler I’m not sure it’s
Actually Hitler somebody fires one creates this dramatic effect he gets up they start speaking he forces vanar H and the leader of the the Bavarian reair so the Bavarian Army the varying divisions of the re into a side side room and and and and and together with with another senior political figure
Triumph who basically rule Bavaria alongside with with with Von car he forced them into a room and gunpoint he convinces them to join sides with him while he’s inside doing that on stage Herman Goring later the second man in the Third Reich is speaking to the audience and he starts insulting them
He’s saying like you know stop giving out you have your beer don’t be worried you know and they all Jer at him and then when Hitler comes back he gives a great speech where he says we’ll all die or a new Germany’s being born tonight and the emotions capture at least
According to the accounts of this event emotions capture everybody this great Elation there’s a sense we’ve found Unity we’re going to regenerate Germany from this point and then In This Moment Hitler makes a massive massive mistake because the putch has to be out more than just taking ownership and control
Of the beer hole after all a beer hole is not the central Nexus of power in the state the police Ministry police stations Ministry for justice these are the places the Army Ministry in Munich these are the buildings that you have to control the barracks they’re the
Buildings you have to control if you’re going to take power and hold power in the city and that applies to Munich in in in 1923 in November during the N the 8th to 9th of November so Hitler starts moving Hitler leaves the beer hole and he leaves the political leadership of
Munich in the hands of a man called Eric ludendorf ludendorf was the main leader of the army during the first world war and even though he led an army to defeat uh The Cult of ludendorf is so great among the far right and among what we call the crazy Fringe of German politics
In The Early viar Republic that ludorf is still honored as a God so ludendorf simply has to to to turn up and they will all be in awe of him so he Le Hitler leaves fonar under the command of ludendorf while he goes with the the with the Stormtroopers into Munich to
Try and take control of other buildings and the places where power is really held in the city of Munich ludendorf looks at Von car and Von car says can I go and ludendorf says yes and ludendorf later says that he cannot believe that a German officer would betray him he
Thought his word was his good was his BMP so once Von car is out he switches sides again and he says to the authorities in Munich we’re not with the pists when we said we were with them on the stage it was because we were at gunpoint and we’re betraying we’re we’re
We’re not with them they betrayed us the Nazis later say vanar betrayed us and in 1933 um when Hitler comes to power he has v car’s number and in 1934 during the Romo vanar is executed as as primary revenge for for for this moment of
Betrayal but in the night of the 8th to 9th of November that means that about 3: a.m. the message is circulating around Munich via radio new technology at this time and Via print that the state of Bavaria is against the Nazis and that means that when what’s happened up to
That point in time when Nazis have gone up to barracks and said we’re in charge we taking over the barracks the soldiers in the barracks have said no you’re not and both sides have looked at each other and either side has been willing to open fire on the other because the soldiers
Aren’t going to open fire on the Nazis because broadly speaking they have similar political agenda and the Nazis aren’t going to open fire on the soldiers because broadly speaking they see them as their brothers on the wrong side and so they’re waiting waiting to come together so it’s kind of standof
Without gunfire and so because of that the Nazis don’t take control of many buildings but once it becomes clear by the early hours of the morning that the standoff is over and the those in the barracks are not on the same side as the Nazis the PCH is effectively defeated as a
Serious threat to the establishment to the state’s rule in Bavaria and the question for the Nazis in at like 56 in the morning in the bear beer hle is what do we do next we haven’t taken control of buildings with one exception and uh we haven’t got much territory under
Control what do we do some of them I should say during the early hours in the morning simply go out hunting Jews and I used that ter it’s a terrible term what a terrible line to say they go out hunting that is basically what they do
They go to Jewish areas and they drag Jewish uh men out of their homes H sometimes they just look at the name on the door and they that’s a Jewish name we’ll go in and we’ll find who who whoever it is and the people they find in those homes can sometimes be old
Individuals old men you know they take them out in some cases they let them go when their wives you know scream at them what are you doing leave my husband give them back other cases they bring them to the Beer hole hope them captive for some
Time and then later on they get released they have an idea that they have to go after the Jews once theyve come to per and other stuff that’s the important point But at the time they don’t know technically about exactly how they’re going to do it and so that’s happening
In the early hours of the morning what also happens in the early hours in the mornings is Hitler and the leadership putch decide we’ll March into the city tomorrow morning and as we March to the city Munich is ours remember Thomas man who at the start of the previous segment
We had the quote from Thomas man and and you know the the woman in the in the market and Thomas man has C Munich the city of Hitler in in in the year 1923 so Hitler beli leaves he has the support in the streets and once his supporters
Start marching the crowds will join with them so around 11: a.m. he leads a crowd of a group crowd is the wrong term a group of about 2,000 paramilitaries including mostly young men all armed all in some kind of paramilitary uniform out to March through the center of Munich to
Seize power and Hitler is at the front he stands out because he’s wearing civilian clothing wears everyone else in some kind of uniform they are linking arms one of the men alongside Hitler is a man called um Baron von um uh Von foron he has a constitution for the new
State that will come into being if the Nazis sees power that Constitution includes plans for Mass violence against Jews social Democrats everybody the Nazis oppose it includes the provisions to have to that the death penalty will be the punishment for anybody who’s not Jewish but German who helps a Jewish
German to escape the Nazis Provisions that’s the level of vindictiveness and the level of violent fantasy that they have got going on in in in them nobody’s heard of that by the way because that man gets shot in a few minutes as the story proceeds and and he Hitler’s at
The front the first time they encounter the forces of the state they uh succeed because this the man commanding those soldiers on a bridge H refuses to let his soldiers open fire he later says we were over you know they they came on us too quickly so we didn’t know we didn’t
Get a chance to fire weapons in time Witnesses watched how you know this the assault troops out of Hitler which is later going to become the SS charge across the bridge run up to those men and disarm them and had they opened fire they possibly would have defeated the P at that point
Instead they don’t the PCH then moves on to the next to the center of Munich um where in a Central Square it encounters the first forces of the state which is a combination of police and some Bavarian Reich faere and that group fires exchanges fire with the pists it’s never
Been established who fires the first shot but once the firing starts the put is over in about two minutes because the 2,000 armed Nazis led by radical Hitler who’s always speaking about violence once the violence starts they scarper Hitler himself is at the very front of
The PCH The Man He’s linked arms with is calleded Ain v v schner rer and vonner richer gets hit with a bullet and is killed and as he falls to the ground he’s linked arms with Hitler and he brags Hitler to the ground ground alongside him Hitler dislocates his
Shoulder in this fall if that bullet had been just a few inches in the other direction Hitler would today be as unknown as everyone V schner rer and vonner rer is is one of the the Dead pches four police are killed one passer by is killed and then around a dozen
Nazis are are killed in the in in the gunfire there’s another exchange of gunfire at one of the barracks later but that is basically that the putch is over within less than 24 hours it’s about 20 is Al together the Nazis only ever control a handful of buildings H and in
The aftermath the Republican leaders are angry in Berlin that this P has taken place but because it’s been in a way such a first they think that’s the end of Hitler I think Hitler is you know Hitler’s something we will forget about I mentioned earlier and D
Brosi going into Frankfurt or going into the RAR District on the train he looks back at the end of 1923 and he he predicts we’ll never see Hitler again he predicts that our descendants will look back at this time and ask what was this what was the story with the chauvinism
And nationalism of those times that’s the way he looks at this this scenario at at the at the end of the at the end of the the the year and Hitler himself returns to Munich a decade later to celebrate the putch as being birth of his movement and the start of the the
The you know the the founding moment of the Third Reich and there’s lots of political myths that come with it the nazzis later claimed to have the flag that one of their flag bearers was carrying at this at the head of the PCH and they claim this flag fell on one of
Their men as he was shot and soaked up his blood the blood of a Dying Nazi Marthur and then they call that flag the blood flag and that that’s Central to their C ceremonial life H for the duration of the Third Reich in 1935 they exume the bodies of the Dead Nazis from
The put they reberry them in a massive ceremony in Munich which underground observers from the Social Democratic party which by this time is banned and an opposition H write about and they they openly speak of the their despair of how popular this is you know 12 years
Later but when it actually happened it’s not nearly as significant as what we think it what what it becomes which is actually the frightening thing for today h because it’s a reminder that something that we consider Fringe irrelevant unlikely to be influential in the past because we think they’re a
Little bit crazy can actually come back and be much more powerful than than and this the we here I say we supporters of liberal democracy um and our current constitutional order can underestimate uh those opponents and and the ability with which historical forces can change everything in the space of a
Decade and you know pull the carpet that is such an important point and I think that you know the exploration in your book and and there’s obviously others that dive even deeper into the beer hall P but the notion of something that was actually I mean it was there was deaths
And there was hatred but it was such a flop of a of a pushed that you would think yeah I mean people had they they had his Epitaph written that his his political obituary that Hitler has done and by the way it is a story of Hitler’s political career of being underestimated
Again and again and again and again he’s a joke he’s a he’s a Carnival Barker he’s a demagogue you know will control him etc etc and he played this is again the human nature thing he played to his his opponent’s weaknesses allowing them to underestimate him and then out foxing
Them again and again and again what what many people don’t understand and should understand is what Hitler failed to violently achieve in 23 he did through a democratic process in 1933 like you said just a decade later which is absolutely utterly striking secondly what I think is interesting is as you’ve described
This the the lore and the legend and the propaganda spin surrounding the way they would retell this story Hitler would retell the story you know with all the Pomp and Circumstance and the blood flag and the righteousness and if you go to Munich you can see those kind of uh I
Don’t know if they Stone Temple Greek you know Ro Romanesque um works that are now overgrown with weeds when I went there years ago were the kind of the the the the the resting places of the Nazi Martyrs and so on I mean it it’s just I
I can only imagine when all Hitler’s Powers were unfolding those who wrote him off were a gast at how wrong they were if they ever fully understood the blind spots they had so Mark I want to step back I want to pull ourselves uh back from the kind of zoom in of history
That you focused so well on in 1923 and I want to talk about history in general just for a a few minutes um I want I want to hearken back to that original quote I had in segment one where Charles Hill was talking about the the problem with history taught nowadays is it’s
Taught as issues as opposed to context and and I want to ask you as a professor of History um for college students in Ireland I want to ask you what is your sense about the importance of why context matters it’s a great question and I think one thing
Is you know the sentence and observation about you know history and maybe liberal arts programs in the United States being more about issues than maybe being context and power politics that’s a debate that’s happening in America a lot more than it is here um now some people
Would say well that’s Mark Jones and he’s at University College Dublin and University College Dublin is you know a conservative Traditional School which is not actually true it’s a it’s the largest place for teaching history in the island island of Ireland and it has historians to do a little bit of
Everything um and so I personally think you know you have to focus on the context the history the time itself to understand it uh and to understand that historical experience answer question about history you have to look at all the layers so we’ve spoken in the last
Um while about issues that would be consider to be classic diplomatic history we’ve talked about high politics we’ve talked about stris and punk we’ve talked about the inter International System we’ve talked then about violence intimate intimate violence and sexual violence we’ve talked about you know individual actions involving one or two
People and we’ve tried to scale between those places and all of those have been showing the context of the 1920s uh and how they how everything that happened then was unique to that time so that’s how we’ve been trying to trying to do history in this conversation absolutely
I think and I hope you’d agree that’s that’s a a really productive way of doing it and then when you think well what can we teach students from this about the past on its own terms I think we can teach them a lot it’s history is hard it’s hard to explain why things
Happened why did actions happen and history is an experience so we’re telling people what was it like to be in a French army of Revenge marching into the roof what was it like to be a minor under the ground campaigning for the eight- hour day what was it like to be a
Woman scared that the knock was going to come at night and it’s going to be French soldiers who are going to come and and uh and and and subtitute to sexual violence you know what were those experiences like so we’re doing these these right um contexts at multiple
Levels and and then you know when we say what are the lessons or what can we teach ourselves for today about this some might say on the one hand we don’t need to draw lessons from the past because the past is fascinating challenging enough we should study it in
Its own right and I think that’s important but I started by saying like I keep finding parallels and Echoes and I think that’s uh something that history offers that that that you know what we are seeing in the world today is is a series of Crisis a crisis of ideas crisis of identities
Um loss of power in in forming new political movements and I think we can draw Echoes I’ve used that term a lot Echoes from the past that can help us understand a little bit um what the context is for our world you know we there’s a lot of difference between now and then
1923 is not 2023 but at the same time we should should never kind of think that we’re somehow smarter than the world was a hundred years ago and that we won’t fall for the same traps and same mistakes and my take on kind of those debates in US history departments uh
Where and I mean some of your listeners might be familiar with this where where some some historians have argued that there’s not enough politics there’s not enough High politics not enough classic traditional history is that there’s an element of there’s a grain of Truth to that in in US in US schools
And you know I think the politics the high politics is the context for everything else and it’s everything is connected so we’ve got to draw the connections and I think a good historian has no kind of single method or Focus or interest interest in everything right I
Would also I would also Echo that just in reading your book you do such do diligence in telling the story of the woman walking down the street in French occupied rur Valley or the stman or uh po care uh in the highest Halls of power I mean you’re talking about the human
Experience at the very the very street level as well as the the level of the greatest Halls of power and I think there’s so much to be said about that as a scaffolding that doesn’t that doesn’t leave any part of the story I mean there’s so much you so much you can Plum
Obviously forever and ever and ever there could be many more volumes to to add what you’ve written but you do such a nice and fair job of covering it from many different angles I think that’s great the other thing I want to ask you is since we’re talking about a little
Bit of the debates within the the field of history and this may be an elementary debate for a non-historian to raise to you a historian um but you think about Hitler and how Hitler was formed if you will do you reflecting upon the debates do you subscribe to a theory of History
Being shaped by vast and personal forces or do you have a sense about the great or notorious individuals known as the great man theory of history is that sort of a is that a is that sort of a debate that’s been done to death or is there is
There a legitimacy to saying it’s a it’s a tension between these two worldviews um no it’s it it belongs more on this side or we’re focusing more on that side or there’s another side no one’s talking about what’s your sense about that I it’s a question that none of us will
Ever be able to really answer so I I always think you know whether whether it’s actually and I love the phrase scaffolding so whether it’s the person at the bottom of the scaffolding or at the top of the scaffolding who’s who’s the force who has the force of History
You know who has the ability the power to change things and what powers changes the in power changes the individual so I always think um there’s a novel called snow by the Turkish writer ort pamuk and he in it he writes about you know humans are like like um snowflakes um people
Will laugh conations of that term don’t Google that so but what he what he means in that analogy is that like every single snowflake if you put it under under a microscope is entirely different no two are the same but there are certain families if the wind is at a certain direction certain
Strength if a the temperature is a certain temperature below zero you know the snowflake will have certain characteristics that are similar to others and I think that’s a bit like history historical forces will shape people in a time and space even though every single individual in that time and
Space is different every single story is unique but the themes are the same in some way and that’s the challenge for the historian is to say how do those themes create a mindset a collective mindset and how does that Collective mindset then create an opportunity for a single individual to exercise such power
So what is it about the 1920s mindset in Germany that makes a figure like Hitler who is let’s you know very very unique in terms of who he is what what what creates that wider landscape and wider social moment that makes so many people find his message appealing and that’s
The challenge for the historian is to show how those different parts of the scaffolding are connected together and and and you know whether we say the great man theory of history or whether we talk about you know a a kind of you know a a method of of doing it I think
It’s always it always comes down to each puzzle in some way unique and and we have to like use different tools uh different tools different approaches to each part of the puzzle to analyze each part of the scaffolding and and I think that helps understand you know what is
It about the 1920s that makes Hitler so popular it’s a moment of great social ner nervosity there’s a great deal of anxiety society’s just come through a tremendous tremendous War a lot of change has happened very fast so there’s a sense PE there’s this sense this ISM I
Get the sense from Reading sources from this period for a really long time and obviously you know what I say to people you know my job as a historian is not to take you you know you can’t come to the archive with me every day for for five
Years you can read my book and in the book I will give you a story that I have found in the archives so that you don’t have to go there and the sense I get from the archives is that viar ger are very ner nervous Place H there’s a lot
Of ner there’s a lot of you know and sometimes that that nervosity gives this sense of optimism that we you know something great is about to happen because we we we we’ve gotten rid of an old order we’ve created a new order we have a space of creativity and there’s a
Kind of glass half full sense and that’s the kind of what we get when we think of the Roaring 20s the glass half full this is a great moment we’ve left the the worst aspects of the past behind us and we find that at the end of the year 1923
Where we have people I mentioned D Broski earlier where we have people are saying like you know we’ve overcome the crisis now let’s let’s you know let’s create stability we’re we’re we’re Progressive modern subjects but alongside that you’ve got the sense of Despair the glass is half
Empty you know this period is going to come to an end and be replaced by some something worse and and I think like the challenge for the historian is to kind of show how those different layers of scaffolding make me wonderful answer by the way let me finish by asking you Mark
Um what made you go to the archives to begin with what what makes you love the study of history and love the teaching of History yeah great question um I think you know it’s a kind of biographical question and you know you’ve just asked a question about you know what what what
Forces shape an individual and so if I can ask those questions about other people in the past I can ask them about myself and people who’ve stayed with us for the whole podcast will know that I’m capable of creating an answer to suit my audience um you know in the same way
That a political leader will tell you a story we want to tell stories that make people like us and make people want to have faith in our in in our and their decision-making capacities maybe the answer is you know random random flukes random things happened and I ended up
Working on as a historian maybe that’s the simplest answer or maybe I say my my my my my narrative is I’ve always been fascinated by it it was my favorite subject in school you know I was a super nerd I’m not going to lie I was a super nerd in
School um I don’t don’t don’t worry I had a lot of fun in college I was much less of a nerd in college but by the time I got to college I was already studying history and so you know and I went to Germany and I was always
Fascinated by German history I found Irish history the history of the island where I’m from where I grew up to be something that was too close to me so I tried to convey that in the acknowledgements to the book how you know I become a historian of violence in
Germany if I was to write a biography of myself I would say probably because in the 1980s when I was a child in the first half of 1990s when I when I became teenager H there was a lot of violence in the news the violence you know violence taking place in Northern
Ireland which is only an hour an hour drive away from from where I live you know people being killed bombs going off and as a child you you were exposed to that through media through news through things like rumors you know there’s a rumor that there’s going to it’s coming
Up to Christmas there’s a rumor there’s going to be a bomb in Dublin this weekend there was never bomb in Dublin in any time in my other but there rumors were there so that was part of the air you know it’s part of the environment
That I grew up in and as a historian it didn’t I didn’t ever kind of want to kind of study that I was kind of like I don’t I don’t know why I don’t I want to study somewhere else Germany’s much much a different place the challenge of
Studying a culture which I had no connection to and so when I was in college um the opportunity came up to do something called arasmus which is a year abroad program it’s like a study abroad program with been American colleges offer and I went to Germany in the summer of
200 one and I I started a German course in Berlin in June and I studied really intensely learning German and then I started college in Germany in in September and so I actually you know it was it was it was a curious time you know I flew to Germany on the 12th of
September 2001 so it was a massive date in in the world’s history um um and and I and I was there for the year and and I learned German learned to read German reasonably quickly to speak it quite well and and and from that point I was
You know I have the skills to be historian of Germany Germany’s the country that fascinates me I wasn’t particularly interested in Hitler for a very long time because I always thought I’m more interested in forces from below and but actually the older I get the more I start thinking actually you
Know like it or Lumpa the key decision makers have so much ability to shape historical moments and historical times and that’s why you know if there’s a message for contemporary uh citizens in Liberal democracies is you know remember the person that you vote for if they become
The key decision maker they can shape lives for millions of people I don’t want to tell anybody who to vote for that’s their own choice people make up their own choices you know but I would always just say like there they these officers have so much power um and so we
Have to choose carefully why we vote for who we vote for and and that’s our our job as historians maybe to to to remind people particularly historians of of viar Germany is to remind people that the the electorate played a huge role in the downfall of viar Germany um
It created conditions and you know that that allowed person like Hitler to to be be seen as the best choice of Chancellor for for Germany Professor Mark Jones teacher historian and author of the wonderful book 1923 thank you so much for spending your time with us it’s been
A pleasure talking to you my my pleasure Todd absolutely an AB an absolute pleasure and um just to any listeners we coming up to late evening in Dublin but it’s still the middle of the day and Todd Todd Todd’s going to work further
Today but I am I am not I’m I’m going to like throw an Irish stereotype out right now I going to the P thanks so much Mark my pleasure thank you Talk so I’ve been thinking I know I know who would have ever thought the year 1923 would be anything but boring in 1923 the first world war had been over for a half a decade the stock market crash was still six years away Hitler’s consolidation of power was still a
Decade off and the opening salvos of the second world war was even further Out Of Reach in 1923 even the wealthy Jazz Age Sion J Gatsby found himself a washed with an inexplicable malaise was he bored maybe but maybe it was because he was living in 1923 and then I read Mark Jones
Captivating book about what in fact turns out to be a seminal year in the history of the 20th century 1923 unfolds a riveting drama a festering French hatred for the Germans boiling German resentment in turn for the French Rising tit fortat violence between the the two proud but angry
Nations and the crystallizing of radical German factions that is Communists separatists and National socialists bent on destroying the fledgling viar Republic and seizing power for themselves as the French Vice squeezed ever tighter during their iron occupation of Germany’s industry-rich rur Valley the German resistance grew increasingly violent as the German
Government cranked out more and more papier marks to pay for strikes and sabotage one can almost hear the high-pitched whistle of an unavoidably crashing currency and out of this boiling cauldron emerged Adolf Hitler and his failed attempt to violently overthrow the viar Republic a failure that would paradoxically launch his meteoric
Political career and route to becoming the fear of the Third Reich this was 1923 Mark Jones 1923 attends to the age-old question is history the product of Great Men or great individuals as we now say or is it merely at the mercy of vast impersonal forces to my way of thinking 1923 shows
In no uncertain terms that history is a story of people and Circumstance each forever tied in an inextricable relationship of cause and effect chance and contingency as this story of figures and forces unfolds the drama is always found in each individual’s soul and if we can’t penetrate the soul of Walter ran
Now or Gustaf stresman or Adolf Hitler which is often the case then we can at least witness how they think and what they believe by what they do in Reading Albert C’s novel The Plague i frequently tell my medical students plagues in the end are boring
To be sure they are tragic but in their means of murder and Devastation they prove themselves to be stereotypic that is one plague kills or mes again and again in the same fashion the real drama the true narrative is found in human reaction what happens to people is one
Thing what they do in response is quite another that’s where the magic is in Reading gripping history and compelling literature let us find ourselves swept up in the Soul’s work and not just the forces that act upon the soul let us ask what role do the characters play in the
Historical narrative but even more what role do they play in God’s plan in the theod drama in asking this question about the history you read and the literature you enjoy you will begin to ask yourself and even more relevant question namely what is your role in unfolding history once you ask that fundamental
Question you will begin to live with renewed vibrancy and that story will be anything but boring and one last thing for this week’s book I would of course recommend Mark Jones’s 1923 but I would also like to re recommend to you Ian Kershaw’s magisterial two volume work on Adolf
Hitler volume one hubris covers from 188 9 to 1936 and volume 2 Nemesis delves into Hitler’s life from 1936 to 1945 krha does a magnificent job like Mark Jones of fleshing out the person of Hitler and the milu in which a Hitler can happen in a hot bed of economic
Hardship wounded national pride and folkish blood and soil philosophy arose a crafty narcissist with Messianic self-confidence and Titanic oratorical skills the rest as they say rather Darkly is history to dismiss Hitler as a monster or an aberration is to let one’s guard down something that in an age of
Appetite and ideology we simply cannot afford to do read Kershaw’s biographies and be transfixed thank you once again for joining me on the evangelization and culture podcast I’m Todd Warner and until we meet again keep bringing Christ to a hungry culture [Applause]
2 Comments
This was wildly interesting, i plan on picking up the book after listening. As a fellow history lover, I, too, see parallels in the past and where we are now. May God bless our future and peace prevail.
Wrong. Read Alice Miller.