Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Oh boy, hottie, we're back having a good
time and uh, everything's good. Uh podcasting about Alfred Hugenberg,
a great asshole who at this point in time, has
helped make World War won a reality, which you know,

(00:24):
I hope to one day make World War one a reality,
so uh you.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Are you're keeping its memory alive every.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Day, every day. As soon as this call finishes, Amanda Montel,
our great guest and the author of Coldish, as soon
as we finish this recording, I'm going to get back
on the phone with Emmanuel Macron over in France and
try to sell them some new machine guns. You know,
I'm gonna tell the Germans, you know what Macron is doing?
Holy shit?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
What that moment? That that moment when you become your
podcast that's right, where do you end? And it would
Gin's look subject burbergreement.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I don't know, what's the one thing everyone agreed in
nineteen on, in nineteen thirteen and today too many young
people in Europe. You know, we're gonna knock that problem
out right away. Just make a new Western Front exactly exactly.
You know, it's good for the economy. Harold destroys the

(01:23):
whole we are at the point at which World War
One is underway, millions of boys are dying in an
industrial form of slaughter heretofore unknown to the human race,
and as Germany feeds its future into a steel maw
of British and French bullets, Alfred Hugenberg has an idea.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
The job he's working at this point is pretty close
to what we'd call a hedge fund manager today, right,
not in terms of the way he's moving his money,
but in the fact that he is the guy who
other rich people give their cash to and he tells
them what to do with it in order to make
the most of it.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
And he's always been very bullish on German expansion. That's
kind of his whole deal, Like what if we had
more Germany? And he's always felt like Germany deserved a
bigger piece of the pie that was Africa. And at
this point world War One, arguably Germany's best military commander
of the entire war is in Africa, like a very

(02:21):
actually like innovative insurgent kind of commander running a truly
ingenious insurgent campaign. And after the initial first few weeks
of heady advances through Belgium and eastern France. Everything gets
bogged down for the German army in the West, and
so Africa is going to be one of those places
that Germans can look to for like the kind of
glorious martial stories of military cunning and courage that you know,

(02:45):
make good propaganda because like and then another boy died
in the mud, not great stories, you know, not super
not super inspiring, right, so true, So Hugenberg is like, naturally,
when we Germans win this war, we're going to need
to expanded our African possessions. And for an idea of
what it would have looked like had Hugenberg got his wishes,

(03:06):
we don't have to look back much further than like
the period that we're in right now, nineteen fourteen. In fact,
we just have to go back to January of nineteen
oh four, which is when the Herrero people of modern
day Namibia, led by a chief sit named Samuel Mahari Maherero,
launched a rebellion against their German colonizers. Right, so Germany

(03:26):
already has Namibia. Hugenberg is looking at because he wants
to take basically British African possessions and make them German right.
And what had happened ten years before this in Namibia
was the Herrero had rebelled, they'd killed about one hundred
and twenty something German settlers, and zue Germans had responded
by bringing the armed might of They have the most

(03:47):
powerful army on the planet at the time to bear
against these guys who don't have an army. They just
have some men who are warriors, right, So it's not
like a military with like an industrial state by it.
And this does not go well for the Herrero and
the actual fighting, the battle is won quite quickly because
the Germans have artillery, and as a general rule, if

(04:09):
one side has artillery and the other side has not,
that the side with artillery wins. This is one of
the fun rules of warfare that's been generally true. German
soldiers pursue the fleeing civilians after they kind of break
the fighting forces, they continue to pursue because like the
Herrero flee they try to get the fuck out of Namibia,
right sure, and these colonial soldiers pursue these fleeing civilians

(04:34):
into the desert and massacre thousands of them, a mix
of just shooting them to death, end mass and poisoning
their well. So they'll be in like the desert and
they'll poison like a water supply to kill more of them.
Oh my god, it's a genocide. This is a genocide. Yeah,
this is universally recognized as a genocide. You know, like

(04:54):
Germany was doing genocides well before Hitler got into power,
right and around this time. They are also going to
have a hand in the Armenian genocide during World War One,
so they're not clean on that either. In October of
nineteen oh four, a German commander gave this order to
Herrero civilians seeking to return home to Namibia. Quote, within

(05:14):
the German borders, every male Herrero, armed or unarmed, will
be shot to death. I will no longer take in
women or children, but I will drive them back to
their people or have them fired at. These are my
words to the Herero people from the Great General of
the mighty German Kaiser.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Okay, wait, I have a question. So one of the
like mind blow moments for me from our part one
was the context that so much of German nationalism hinged
on them being jealous of Britain's colonization of various territories.
Oh yeah, were there still, though Germany's attitude seems especially belligerent,

(05:58):
like they were there other nations that had like newly
embraced nationalism around this time that aspired to the level
of colonization and brutality that Germany was extracting.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
A great example would be Japan, who is starting they're colonizing.
Who's starting to colonize right around I mean in World
War One, they take a bunch of German possessions. This
is a big part of Japanese colonial expansion, and they're
going to be hideously genocidal everywhere they the Empire of
Japan spreads to And obviously the British have been doing
colonizing a lot longer, but one of the first big

(06:34):
acts of British colonialism was to kill by some counts,
tens of millions of people in Bengal through a famine
that was largely the result of business choices made by
a British corporation. So the fact that Germans get a
colony in Namibia and almost immediately do a genocide, this
is very much the norm, right constantly, Yes, shit, yeah,

(06:57):
this is not at all like a freak in set.
This is not just the Germans right, this is a product.
This is just how colonialism always works. Yeah, but he
sure is aware of what the Germans are doing in Namibia.
This is reported on and his whole attitude is we
need to be doing this to way more of Africa
to make room for a bunch of German farmers. You know,

(07:17):
let's let's let's get on it. We've got better guns
than these people. Wiping them out will be no problem.
So when he talks about needing to expand to Africa,
I just I wanted to tell that story because that's
what he's talking about. Right now, Africa. Things are I
wouldn't say they're going well for Germany in the war,
but it's one of the areas where they can take

(07:38):
a lot of pride because they've got this like very
innovative commander doing very innovative things over there. That's a
lot sexier than what's happening on the Western Front. Past.
To point, the other big win the Germans had had
right at the start of the war was that they
had conquered Belgium. Right now, this is actually a big
part of why they lose the war on a strategic level,
because Belgium is an independent, neutral nation right. The Germans

(08:01):
take Belgium because they need it as a road to
get to France, because this plan they have says that
that's the best way to do these things. And the
British are like, if you go through Belgium, we don't
maybe maybe we don't have a dog in this fight,
but if you go through Belgium, then you're gonna be
fucking with us, right, And they go through Belgium and
the British get involved, right. So this is it's one

(08:23):
of those things where the Germans are very proud to
have a Belgium, but also it kind of is a
big part of what fucks up over But Hugenberg is
not really thinking about that at the time. He sees
Belgium as an investment opportunity and he's very glad to
have it. And he sees the same as you know,
Germany has taken a good deal of French territory at
this point in eastern France, which includes this one recent

(08:45):
region of like southeast France that Germany has occupied, is
where the French keep a big chunk of their minds. Right,
It's like a heavily resourced inns region, right. So he's
looking at these new conquests and seeing them as permanent,
even though the war is very much doubt. He's like,
you know, the smart man needs to be thinking, how
are we going to take advantage of this right? What

(09:06):
are we going to turn these new possessions that we
have as a people into. So as the war grinds forward,
the Pan Germanic League works overtime propagandizing that these new
conquests are now German territory forever by right of blood,
and no peace can even be negotiated if giving up
Belgium or any French territory is required. This is a

(09:27):
big part A lot of people wonder, well, it became
very quickly obvious no one's going to win this easily.
It is bleeding everyone white. You're all wiping out whole
generations of young men to fight this war. Why don't
we just stop? Right? And a big part of why
is the Allies, you know, Britain and France are like, well, okay,
like we'd be happy to end the war. I'm not.

(09:49):
They're not initially like this, but there's a lot of
willingness to end the war. But Germany has to give
up the places they took, right, Like you could just
keep all this France like fuck, he just can't Belgium
and the Germans. And this is a big part of
why the German state and the Kaiser refused to go
along with this is you've got these this very influential

(10:10):
Pandermanic league being like, absolutely, under no circumstances can we
compromise on these territories. Right. Again, that's not all of
why this happens, but they're not an They're not a
small part of why there is no willingness to compromise,
which could have ended the war at least a year
or two earlier. Right, maybe in a way that would
have been less overall calamitous to the German economy, right

(10:31):
because a negotiated peace wouldn't have involved Germany completely surrendering.
You know, maybe they would have they would have had
to lose give back a bunch of this territory, but
they they could have maintained being a functional state and
not had it wouldn't have been like a Treaty of
Versailles situation. Right, Potentially it's a much better future, but
Hugenberg and his ideological simpaticos are like, the fuck, give

(10:54):
up Belgium, we have all sorts of all sorts of
plans for Belgium.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Then I gets, as an Italian man, my natural enemy
is the Belgian you know, as Caesar said, oh gall
is divided into three parts, and one of those motherfucking
parts is the Belgians.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
And I got us, I got a quarrel with them.
I'm still hoping to take Belgium one day. I think
I think I could.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
As an Italian, I thought your your your number one
enemy was not eating lunch.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, not eating lunch, seven hour dinners. The Persians. Yeah,
we have a lot of enemies. We Italian so also
healthcare CEOs apparently anyway.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Oh yes, oh yeah, the Italians. They're everywhere and they're
doing a.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Most Famous Italian?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Oh my god, is that true? Is that mean?

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Who's the mo? What Italian is more famous than that guy?
Right now? Berlascone? Absolutely not, no, no way.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
I feel like Luigi has even overtaken, like the Luigi
from Mario.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah's that he's definitely he's more famous than Mussolini now,
which I gotta say is a huge win for Italian Americans.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
You know, honestly, whoa massive weird? What a weird? What
a weird?

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Pr strategy or.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Like, h, we're looking a lot better these days. Now.
You got to remember, so the war is on and
while he's kind of he's a part of this group
that's pushing we can't give any of this up. His
job is running this like organization made up of all
of the rich guys with mines and arms companies putting

(12:38):
pooling some of their money together. This organization is called
the zeken Verband Uh and it's an association of industrial businesses,
mines and crop like. There's companies like Krupp in there too,
so it's not just raw material producers, people who use
those raw materials, and basically just everybody with a big
business in the Ruhre. In this industrial heartland region, the

(12:59):
zeke their Bund had been founded in nineteen oh eight
to represent their common interests. In pre war this had
mainly meant fucking with labor unions, and up through the
end of the war, the Zekenverbund was successful at ensuring
no one mine union could work with any other mine
union right. They they basically made seerer legislatively. Unions could
not ally right, so that you can strike at one

(13:22):
mine or one factory, but you can't organize any kind
of general strike, right, And the ziegen Verbund also had
a strike fund, but for mine owners themselves, so that
if the workers at any mine went on strike, other
minds that were their competitors would pay to keep them going,
because it was more important to fight the labor Right

(13:44):
now that the war is going on, there's suddenly a
lot more on the line than just like you know,
fucking with labor unions. The good news for these guys
is that profits fucking sore because Germany needs a lot
more weapons now, right, And the people were making the
raw materials, bullets and cannons, they're doing great. That people
making the weapons are great. This is a good time

(14:04):
to have stock in Krupp. Hugenberg helped gently direct the
eyes of his hungry fellow mine owner, or of these
hungry mine owners towards all of the territory in France
and Belgium that they might be able to exploit in
the future. He's like, hey, guys, I know we're making
bank now. The war's got it end someday, but we
just got all this new French territory, a lot of

(14:25):
mines there, Belgium, a lot of mining potential in Belgium,
we should start investing now in being able to take
advantage of that once the war ends and we still
own all it. And so, from Hugenberg's perspective, the thing
he is most frightened of in nineteen late nineteen fourteen,
nineteen fifteen sixteen, the thing that scares him is peace,

(14:46):
because if peace goes wrong, I was gonna say, he's
gonna lose a lot of investments that he started to make, right.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Okay, as my question like just sort of nervous system wise.
I can't late at all to these motherfuckers, because.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well you shouldn't. They're monsters. They're ghouls for sure.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
But even if I'm like at my most empathetic and
I'm like, let me get into the mind and body
of an arity type just to see what's what's making
him tick, I can't. I can't. I still can't understand
how one could reconcile wanting wartime and wanting conflict because

(15:29):
it will be good for your wallet, but like, we're not. Yeah,
I just don't get it how it works.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Part of it is because they also tell themselves we're
not being selfish, we're we're patriots and this will be
better for Germany. Right, the sacrifices.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Justify the philosophy.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
But the other thing, I think, if you want to keep,
if you want to get into your head, how these
people can be so greedy? I think there's a microway
of kind of looking at it. There was a time,
I'm sure in your life, Amanda, the same is true
of me. It seems it's going to be true of
most people listening. Where you made a lot less money
than you currently make, right, you know, when you're nineteen
or whatever, and you survived right had you paid rent

(16:10):
and you ate food. Right now, you make I'm presuming
more money than you did when you were eighteen or nineteen,
and you're still surviving. But you also probably still have
a lot of things, like have a lot of economic
anxiety even though you have a lot more, which is
very common, and that psychological process doesn't stop just because

(16:32):
you have more money than you can ever spend right.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
Enough to get to exactly right right right, like if
you get if you get a billion dollars, statistically the
thing you want to do most most people, not everyone,
like time from my.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Space, seems you've a witted this, but statistically a lot
of people who get a billion dollars. The main thing
on their mind is now I want to get two.
I need to get ten, I need to get right.
Like that's that's just kind of like you know, it's
it's it's why again, it's why you need to have
like societal restrictions that stop people from accumulating like that,
because once the process starts mentally, very few people can

(17:11):
avoid continuing down that road, even to some extent, even
if they're reasonably good people ahead of you. Ye, it's
just kind of it's a poison. It's a drug. It's
a drug. It's like giving someone a heroin. Right, sometimes, yes,
you give them a heroin, they might get addicted, even
if they don't want to, because like that's what drugs do?
You know?

Speaker 2 (17:30):
I know, it just keeps reminding me of. I mean, obviously,
we have like cultural lessons and axioms and proverbs that
try to convince us to resist those impulses. And the
one I always think of is that Edward Abbey quote
that's like growth for growth's sake is the ideology of
a cancer cell.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yes, but like absolutely it's.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
So hard to internalize messages like.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
That and again, and that's why that's why there's there's
gotta be just actual like you have to as at
the at the kind of collective level rules to stop
that because individual people are not not that. No one
can avoid this because there are people who have strong
enough sense of self and moral centers that yeah, likely
the option won't get that Brich won't let it happen.

(18:18):
But usually this does not happen the Hugenberg route where
people are like because and again you have to again
to go back to the heroin comparison the amount of
money they start making because of the war, like they
they don't want to give that up period, right, Like
that is it's like pop loves Dog.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's like, if money comes because of war, let's do
more war.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Delicious, delicious, I love it all. Yeah, So Hugenberg convinces
these guys, the only threat to our future profits is peace,
particularly the wrong sort of peace, And if we want
to make that impossible, I need you to give me
some of your money and we're going to start buying
up newspapers, right because that's how we can stop we

(19:00):
can kill the peace movement because from the beginning, once
this war starts wiping out generations of young men at
there's an anti war movement brewing even within Germany, a
pretty sizable one, and they're like, this is all the
fault of like Bolshevik propaganda. We need to start buying
the newspapers and then we can convince everyone their son's
dying is a good idea. So the four largest of

(19:23):
the companies that are in this organization that Hugenberg's heading,
the Zeichenwerband, including Krupp, which is still managed by Hugenberg,
send representatives to act as spokesman for the creation of
a private association, the vertschaftlicht Geslschaft, and this is a
trust fund regularly topped off by profits from war profiteers
and used to quote countermand threatening dangers in the economic

(19:46):
and social fields. Leopold and his biography of Hugenberg continues
through the use of diverse bank accounts and holding companies
administered by additional trustees. Hugenberg and these industrial leaders masked
their control. The Ousland established a night teen fourteen became
one of their key corporations, the Vertschaft deinst GmbH, incorporated
in May of nineteen sixteen, concealed investments made for the

(20:08):
improvement of economic news service and the management of press corporations.
A third firm, the Deutsche Gewerbahaus AG, established in February
of nineteen seventeen, officially managed funds for the erection of
business offices for the varied associations of German industry. Its
larger purpose, however, was to participate in various businesses and
measures which appeared suitable to the corporation for the advancement

(20:32):
of general German industrial and national interests. So they are
buying up newspapers, and they're creating organizations to manage newspapers
as a group, and they're hiding through these shell companies
the fact that they own all of these papers and
that it's Hugenberg pulling the strings. Now, this of course
means you're going to you need to bribe a lot
of people, and you need to make the kind of

(20:52):
investments that act as bribes. But a large chunk of
the tens of millions of reichs Reichsmarks that are raised
in this period are put to towards the purchase directly
of media organs. The fund set its beady eyes and
a large Berlin publishing house, the August Schurrel Company, named
after a right wing newspaper entrepreneur. He was basically the
equivalent of the German William Randolph Hurst or the guy

(21:16):
who created the Daily Mail back in the UK. Like
he's that kind of guy. These are these are conservative papers.
This is like the Fox News of its day in
Germany and the situation and so these guys buy it right.
The Scheryl Company's two big publications are Der Todg, which
is for intellectuals in the capital, and Berlin or Locale Anzinger,

(21:36):
which is about ten times larger in terms of its
readership and is aimed more at the working class. Schurrel
also ran a.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Series Robert, were you always as good at reading and
pronouncing German words? Or has? The podcast?

Speaker 1 (21:49):
People are going to be talking so much shit about
how I'm saying these things.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Oh, I mean it sounds like super confident. You're not
even like bum I.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
I you know, I don't do well with this. People
are going to be going.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
To be to be convinced you're pretty good at Ukrainian words.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
But like other than.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
That, I don't know if I'd say that, but oh.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Does that say something about you that's fascinating?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
So Cheryl ran a bunch of small weekly papers all
over the country, all of which are united only by
a shared conservative view of reality and politics, and this
stood not position. The August Schrol Company is the big
conservative publisher. The two bigger publishers in Germany are the
Rudolph Moss Masse Company and the Ostein Company, both of
which are pro democratic and generally liberal. August Scheryl the

(22:36):
company had been profitable until nineteen fourteen when the war
broke out. Because everything gets more expensive when the war
breaks out, there's massive inflation, it's very difficult to afford
to put out a newspaper. And part of why people
stop reading the August Scheryl publications in nineteen fourteen is
that up to the war starting, they've been telling everyone, Hey,
this is going to go great. You're going to love

(22:57):
the war. We're going to be done in a couple
of months. Everyone will be back at home by Christmas.
And when that doesn't happen, people are like, well, maybe
I don't like this paper. Now that all four of
my sons are dead, perhaps I will stop reading these guys.
So they're kind of he's a Hugenberg's able to buy
this shit on the cheap in nineteen sixteen, using these
pooled industry funds. Now, by the time the August Cheryl

(23:22):
company sells to Hugenberg, things are bad enough that they
need like seven million marks just to settle their debt,
and then there's they got to put a couple Hugenberg
has to put a few million more into it in
order to actually like invest so that the company can
be profitable again.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
But he doesn't ca can't like chump change to him.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yes he is. He is all essentially a billionaire at
this point, right, Like not literally because like nobody had
that much at that point, really, but he is essentially
a billionaire for our terms, he would have been a
billionaire if we're kind of like adjusting shit, right. Schuryl agrees,
because again this is chump changed to him, and he
doesn't care about profits. His condition is that if he

(24:02):
buys this thing and gets them out of debt, he
has full, absolute personal control over the publishing house and
what they publish. So the show company inks in agreement,
and Hugenberg puts one of his friends from the Pan
Germanic League in charge of the holding company that manages it. Instantly,
Scherl's papers go from being conservative to adopting the exact

(24:24):
same line on war, aims that Hugenberg and his fellow
war profiteers wanted no peace unless we get everything, and
also no piece while there's a buck to be made.
One of Hugenberg's friends laid out the motivation of this
cartel in buying these papers very directly in a letter
at that This is one of Huggenberberg's friends writing in
a letter about what they're doing. Well, Waite, the gentleman,

(24:46):
this is who he's writing to, should not believe that
we were involved to have a good investment. We knew
that nothing would come out of this, and we wanted
to have political influence for our money. In other words,
we're not we're gonna make money off of these. This
is a lost leader. It's like, you know, the We're
gonna pump money into this, not because it'll make us money,
but because it'll change the culture in a way that
makes us money.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Oh my god, they're poisoning wells in so many ways.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, they do the fucking ah, the Germans and Well
poisoning big Well, poisoning culture at this point in.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
Time, speaking of poisoning the well.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Speaking of you know who loves poisoning. Nope, uh, here's ads.
We're back. And you know what, I just put strychnine
in a well and I gotta say it feels good.
You know, it's a hoot. Doesn't hurt anybody except for
the people who drink from the well, and I don't

(25:42):
know them. So yeah, you know what, I get it.
I you know, I'm a German nationalist now, long live
the Kaiser. Anyway, in addition to pushing an extreme Sophie
you always say every time I try to give the
Kaiser praise, you just hate Kaisers for some reason. What
about Kaiser permanente? Wonder what? No, Yeah, that's even worse

(26:04):
than the last Kaiser.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, that's a really bad Kaiser. I got the fuck
out of that Kaiser.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Some fucking guy sat down was like, I want to
be a Kaiser, but I want to kill more people
than the last. I know, I'll become a health insurer.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Oh my god, would probably do a better job. Yeah, totally.
I think I'm going to go.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
I think I'm going to go from a no m M.
I think we should let him give it a shot. So,
in addition to pushing an extreme line on war aims,
The papers were also set to the task of attacking
the left, which it defined as anyone supportive of democracy.
Alfred didn't write his own propaganda, but he was very
involved at the operational level, investing in several major papers

(26:51):
to push them further right, and also establishing a separate
fund to shotgun money off to little nationalist papers all
over the empire. So they're not just buying papers, they're
giving away money to small independent papers to keep them
afloat during World War One. So all of like the
centrist papers are going out of business because it's a
terrible time to be in business in Germany, so are

(27:11):
a lot of the left wing ones. But the right
wing press thrives because he's paying it with war money.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Right, Oh my god, oh my god. Is this what's
happening in conservative media right now? Because yes, I don't
know exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, yeah, that's what was The Daily Wire might be
going bankrupt now, but you know, the oligarchs got what
they needed out of them, right. Yeah. It's this thing
of like, wow, it's hard to be an honest newspaperman
trying to report accurately on things, and also those people
are dangerous to us. What if we made the only
profitable kind of news, right wing news, using our infinite moneies. Yeah,

(27:49):
oh my god.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Did you see that infographic or like some Yeah, I
mean I saw it in the form of an talking
about how like yeah, the like biggest thought leaders and
pundits right now, like podcasters are all conservatives except for
like one exception, that being Trevoranoa. And I was just like,
this feels like a conspiracy.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, I mean it was. It's just a very obvious one. Right.
You put a lot of money into Audience City and
put you get people on the boards of the social
media company, so they make sure the algorithms support it,
you know, same as it ever was. So Hugenberg's support
of war aims that held German expansion is non negotiable

(28:30):
led him to back the political ambitions a field Marshal
Paul v On Hindenberg and General Eric Ludendorf, both of
whom are going to be key players in Hitler's rise.
Hindenberg is the guy who hands over control to Hitler
when he dies, and Ludendorf is the general who marches
with Hitler during the beer hall push. Now, by this point,
and the war is still on, right, now there's a

(28:51):
huge anti war movement right by nineteen seventeen, a lot
of Germans are like, what if we stopped killing our sons,
we can call these the sane people. And so Hugenberg
hates these folks and he helps develop and advertise a
right wing counterpart, the German Fatherland Party. Now the only
real demand of the German Fatherland Party is that Germany

(29:13):
should annex everything and keep fighting until the rest of
used to let them keep it.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
You just stop that name, as I was triggered, but
I did not enjoy that name.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
That was bad.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, it's okay. Where we're like three years away from
the American Fatherland Party, Sophie, it's going to be great.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
I think we're there.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
We might be now. While he's also playing the part
of arch propaganda baron of the right, Alfred starts taking
investment money from his friends, with the end goal of
exploiting all of those resources Germany was definitely going to
control entirely once the war ended. For John Leopold quote
he established three companies which would help Germany exploit Belgian resources. Similarly,

(29:50):
at the end of nineteen seventeen, he formed a company
to develop the post war settlement of French territory, which
he expected the Reich to annex. Much more elaborate plans
were formulated for the Colonists of the East, which were
incorporated in nineteen eighteen after the Russian defeat. Now, if
you know your history, you know that investing in Germany
continuing to control France, Belgium and Western Russia in nineteen

(30:15):
seventeen not a good investment about to really really go
badly for Hugenberg. But I read this because by the
end of World War One he has become a bookie
for war on a continental scale. He's taken everybody's cash
right like this, you know, and all the cash of
the people who are betting on we're going to keep
all this shit right. He takes in some thirty seven

(30:39):
million marks to establish cooperative funds aimed at settling German
farmers on conquered land, and then of course Germany loses
the war. Now again, it is one hundred percent agreed
by absolutely everyone who, every professional historian, every military history
and even the German ones that Germany simply could not
continue to fight. The moment they made peace was the

(31:01):
last moment they could have done it without the army
shattering entirely and leaving a clear path to Berlin, and
by the way, without a full scale like anti socialist
revolution overtaking the country, right, and they almost have one anyway,
Like Germany is absolutely out of gas. They have fucking
nothing left. But if you're looking at a map like

(31:23):
a dumb person, it looks like Germany gives up when
they're winning. They're still in France, they still have Belgium,
and they've got a lot of Russian territory. Germany's the
biggest it's ever been. It's the largest continental empire that
I think it existed, certainly since the era of the
Roman Empire. It might have been large. I don't recall precisely,

(31:45):
but it looks really good on a map if you're
not aware of the fact that all of their soldiers
are about to drop dead where they're standing right now.
Hugenberg is not a dumb man. He understands the army
literally could not have kept fighting, but he can't that
intellectually because that would mean that he'd been wrong, and
he just is not the kind of guy who can

(32:06):
be wrong. So he convinces himself, we've been stabbed in
the back somebody fucked this up for us. It wasn't
me and the other people running this fucking country. And
he sets his fast propaganda apparatus. He now controls the papers,
and he sets the papers to convincing the country of
what we now call the big lie. Right, Germany didn't

(32:28):
lose because we got out fought and outlasted, and we
pissed off the Americans, And boy, maybe we shouldn't piss
off the people who have literally all of the resources
on planet Earth behind them. Possibly a bad idea would
wear Germany. We lost because a sinister alliance of Jews,
socialists and liberal Democrats stabbed the Fatherland in the back.

(32:50):
You know, that's why all this happened. It's not that
we picked a fight with a man who was three
feet taller than us and made of solid steel. Again,
I'm talking about the US in this period of time,
after we were already beaten so bloody that our eyes
had swollen shut. You know, it's not that it's the Jews.

(33:10):
You know, the August Cheryl Company plays a substantial role
in spreading this lie, and their propaganda falls on welcome ears,
not just among the same group of people where the
nation Nazi Party did most of its recruiting at this time.
He focused a lot on the Buildings Burgertum right, the
younger members of that class, these university students, many of
whomen are too young to fight right, and this spelled

(33:34):
the final end of liberalism within the Buildings Burgertum. As
Hermann Beck lays out in his book The Fateful Alliance,
students preceded the established Buildings Burgertum in appropriating a new conservatism.
Before the German defeat in the First World War and
the subsequent economic turmoil and inflation, this cultivated bourgeoisie had
enjoyed significant material security and comfort, as well as greater

(33:55):
social prestige than its counterparts in other European countries. To them,
the more in the war was more than a military disaster.
It signified personal humiliation and the loss of the distinct
cultural identity. As a result, large sections of the educated
elite moved further to the political right.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, there's nothing that turns like a generous, intellectually rigorous
class of people. Conservative like bitterness like bitterness, Yeah, loss
aversion suddenly statorialism.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
I thought I was promised more than this. It must be.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Someone's exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Now, Huggenberg's papers aren't just geared towards these people, and
in fact he's got a bunch of papers that are
geared towards different segments of the population. But because number one,
I mean, he's from this group, they're best at messaging
to these people. Right. You know, it takes less than
two years after the end of the war for like
this rage in Mania that's being drilled into German conservatives

(34:56):
via Hugenberg's propaganda to really start to flourish. And one
of the conservatives who is influenced by this stuff and
is going to have a big impact on things is
a fellow traveler of Hugenberg's named Wolfgang Cap. Now. Cap,
interestingly enough, had been born in New York City because
his family fled during the eighteen forty eight revolutions. There's

(35:17):
this wave of left wing revolutions all around Europe in
eighteen forty eight. They don't succeed in toppling the German government,
but it's scary. CAP's family comes from money and they
leave to be in New York for a while, right,
but he moves back. He since spends his youthful years
in Germany, and he is kind of sculpted from conception
to be a right wing culture warrior. Right, his family

(35:38):
and his wife's family are nationalists. They have strong far
right pedigrees, and Cap grows up to run an agricultural
credit union. He used his position to argue against debt
relief for starving farmers, and in World War One full
throatedly endorsed the impossible war aims of Hugenberg and his ILK.
He was also very bullish on unrestricted submarine warfare. You can't.

(36:00):
This guy thinks, you know what'll win us World War
one is if we just shoot everybody's shipping all the time. Yeah,
you know what never pisses off again? For example, the
United States is killing a bunch of their citizens and boats.
They love having their citizens killed in boats. Let's do

(36:21):
a lot more of that, right, It doesn't work out
very good. Not a great thing for Germany. Yeah, So
after the war, Cap co founds the German Fatherland part
or at the end of the war he Cap is
the co founder of this German Fatherland Party, right that
Hugenberg is backing, alongside a guy named Admiral Turpets. And

(36:43):
it was in this position that Cap first makes contact
with the Pan German League. Germany had been entirely overtaken
by a socialist revolution. Of the aftermath of the war,
the whole country barely stops from going socialist because the
Weimar government that gets put in place after the Kaiser
leaves basically like is a compromise government meant to avoid

(37:08):
full civil war, and they, to his significant extent, make
kind of a deal with a lot of these right
wing forces, with the military, with the Fry Corps, which
is are these groups of like veterans who fought against
the left, that's kind of all happening in this period
in order to like put that down. And these Free
Corps units that develop. These guys aren't yet Nazis, because
Nazis don't exist yet, but a lot of them will

(37:29):
be later, and they basically are the inspiration for the
Brown Shirts or the essay. And Cap sees these this paramilitary,
these paramilitaries that formed to crush the left in you know,
the immediate post war period, and he realizes, like, there's
a lot of potential here. We can mobilize these people
not just to do violence for us, but as like
a voting block. Now, the problem is Cap is not

(37:52):
good at waiting for his moment. So once he gets
he forms this umbrella organization to lump these paramilitaries together,
and he gets General Ludendorf to agree to join, right,
and then he tries to overthrow the government. And one
thing that's funny is that Ludendorf gets on board with
this plan a few years later in nineteen twenty three.

(38:14):
Because this is nineteen twenty he's going to do the
same thing with Hitler. Ludendorf loves trying to overthrow the
Weimar government, is no good at it, but loves yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's his cigarettes. So CAP's whole idea he is called
the cap Pusch, and it's the same basic plan that
in a lot of ways that Hitler's going to try

(38:35):
to execute, although different logistically. He's really focused on Berlin
from the start. He wants to try to take the capital,
and for our purposes today, I'll just say it doesn't
work right. And what's relevant to Hugenberg, who's our focus,
is that the League is definitely aware that Kapp is
planning this putsch and they give him a little bit

(38:56):
of quiet support. But as soon as it becomes clear
that he's not going to win, the League disavows him
and is like, we never supported oh my god, treason,
absolutely not us, and Ludendorf kind of does the same thing,
and they all walk away unscathed. Almost no one is
punished for trying to overthrow the government. Cap even is

(39:17):
allowed to go into exile in Sweden. Right, nobody wants
to piss off the far right by punishing them for
trying to overthrow the government and institute a dictatorship. And
a lot of these same guys are going to do
it again. Fascinating how that works. So Hugenberg and his
fellow plutocrats, you know, they make the public noises they
have to make. You know, that's like, oh, that's how horrible.

(39:40):
Why would anyone try that? But Hugenberg is also already
trying to figure out how can I overthrow the Weymar government.
And he's not a putsch guy. He doesn't want to
have a bunch of dudes with guns do it. He's
going to overthrow Vymar democracy through the ballot box. Right,
that's his plan. Had left Krupp finally in nineteen eighteen

(40:02):
with a gargantuan fortune and a lot of influence. In
nineteen twenty two, Germany defaulted on her reparations repayments, which
led to a cascading series of problems. The French occupy
the Ruur, this industrial heartland. If you're not going to pay,
we're going to take the money out of you by
occupying the place where you make everything. The government, in
order to counter the French back's a general strike, you know,

(40:24):
in order to so no one's going to work in
the rum, then it's not worth it for you to
occupy it. And the effect of all this is the
economy fucking nosedives, right, and since people aren't working, the
government starts printing more money to try and keep things going.
And you know that's how you get hyperinflation. Right. We're
all aware that this is the thing people generally know

(40:45):
about Vuyimar, and you know this is bad for basically everyone,
but it's really good for Hugenberg because he's got a
lot of liquid assets and everything is basically for sale
in Germany for pennies on the dollar. So he buys
up basically all of the remaining newspapers that he didn't own.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
And wanted to own, my god.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
And now they're his personal property. He's not just owning
them through this organization he's helping to run. He's just
the guy who owns all these fucking papers. By the
mid nineteen twenties, he is the single largest media magnate
in Germany. He has unparalleled reached. No one, probably no
single person had ever had as wide a reach for

(41:27):
disseminating their ideas to a culture as Alfred Hugenberg has
in this period of time. He has total control.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Oh my god, So he's back to his roots.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
He's back to his roots. He's spent or whatever. Yeah,
well he does. He purchases the largest German cinema chain,
so he runs the movie theaters too, which means he
gets to pick like what sort of newsreels go on
ahead of movies in Germany. Like this guy has owns the.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Media ideology of a cancer.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
That's right, exactly, he's fucking cancer. In nineteen twenty eight,
he compounds all of that by purchasing his very own
political party. Now he doesn't like literally by it, but
he uses his wealth and influence and control of the
press to become the chairman of the German National People's Party.
This is the largest right wing nationalist party in the

(42:22):
country at the time, and his plan is.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Going to be.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
I want to shift it even further right, and I'm
going to read from an article by Sea and Truman here.
In nineteen thirty one, he produced the party's new manifesto.
Hugenberg called for the immediate restoration of the monarchy, the
tearing up of the Treaty of Versailles, much greater contact
between Germany and Austria, compulsory military service, a new German Empire,

(42:46):
and a reduction in the perceived economic power the Jews
had in Weimar's economy. Hugenberg's most immediate target was Chancellor
Heinrich Grinning, who he believed was pushing Weimar inexorably towards socialism.
Hugenberg was one of the most influential men at the
nineteen thirty one Harsburg Front Conference, which met with the
specific aim of trying to persuade the aging President Hindenburg

(43:08):
to sack Brunning. So he is a major part of
the conditions that formed to allow Hitler's rise in this
period of time, and he is also he wants to
be Hitler. His goal is to put himself in charge
of the company of the country by buying this party,
right like, that's kind of how he is thinking at

(43:29):
this period of time. Now, unfortunately, he's not.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Getting tired, like, oh no, get tired for a while.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah, I mean again, cocaine is available over the counter.
It's a lot easier to energy. I guess, so fair.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
I'm just thinking like he must be experiencing back pain
by now.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, oh yeah, No, he can't be moving too well,
although he's never had to work physically a day in
his life, so maybe he's doing okay.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah, it's a lot of sun though.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
True. Now under Hugenberg, the National People's Party actually shrinks
because there's a lot of conservatives who are like conservatives,
but they're not super anti Semitic or even I mean
some of them might have just been actual like Jewish conservatives,
and they're not going to stick around as he makes
the party much much worse on that. And there's also

(44:21):
a chunk of conservatives who are like economic conservatives but
like military nationalism. We just had a horrible war. I'm
not really down for it. So the party shrinks under Hugenberg,
and the folks who leave tend to join either the
Conservative People's Party or the largest like the Center Party.
Others rejected the monarchist bent, and they saw what Hugenberg

(44:41):
was doing as watered down nationalism, so they just went
and joined the Nazi Party, who in this point in
time consider Hugenberg and the Conservatives one of their big
enemies because at their route, the Nazis are a poor
workers party in this period, and while they have wealthy
elites backing them, the whole capital class has not yet
gone in for the Nazis. Right the early There are

(45:04):
some early rich backers of the Nazis, like Hitler's friend Putsi, right,
that guy haunch Stengel, who's like a very rich guy
who helps bankroll the Nazis early. But most of the
early rich people who bankroll the Nazis are socialites, and
they get in board with the Nazis because the Nazis
are cool and transgressive and they want to be cool too,
right Yeah. Hitler's first real inroad to wealth, to like

(45:28):
serious money was an industrialist industrialist named Fritz Tyson. Now
that last name, Tyson Tyssen. If you go into an
elevator right now, walk into basically any elevator in the
world wherever you happen to be, and look around, you
will see somewhere in that elevator almost certainly. The name
Tyson Krupp. Krupp, of course, is the arms company that

(45:51):
we talked about earlier. Tyson is the company of Fritz Tyson.
They merge at a certain point and they make all
the elevators as well as submarines that get sold to THEYS.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
I was already considering taking the stairs more.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
That's right, take the stairs fight time. I mean, you know,
they're just kind of a boring company now, but this
is these are these are the origins of all of that, right.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I don't like those roots. I'm taking those stairs. Good
for the blues, good for the soul.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
So Fritz Tyson had been social with Hitler for a
while from like the twenties, so they become like kind
of friends. But Fritz is also like, I don't know
if this guy's going anywhere. He's kind of extreme. I'm
not going to like go whole ho again. But in
the in the thirties, he's like, you know what, this
guy is the best speaker I've ever seen. He calls
he's enthralled by what he calls Hitler's oratorical gifts, and

(46:40):
he says, what impressed me most.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
I don't get that either. Okay, I want to hear
what impressed in most. Let's hear that first.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
What impressed me most was the order that reigned in
his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers. Okay,
it's hard to tell Hitler's charisma as a Western watching
these speeches.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
It is it is. I do not get it. It's yelly,
it's it's one note. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't
doesn't follow the rules of like classical dynamics. You know,
it's like a bad pop song that's just for tissimo
the whole way through. Sure, it's like where did lets
so Piano go?

Speaker 1 (47:22):
You know, people say that about Trump and it works.
You know, it's true. It's true.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
The populist yelling.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Hitler's really good at it, tweaking the amigdala of his followers,
and it promising them vengeance. And if you can do
those two things effectively, you can get about anything you
want out of a pody.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
So true, it's cathartic, it's right sthartic.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
So, Tyson has been kind of shotgun. He's been funding
the Nazis as a little as a side hobby for
a while in the late twenties been in January of
nineteen thirty two. He looks out the Communists are also
climbing in the polls right, and the Nazis actually look
like they're kind of bottoming out, like they've reached their height.
But the Communists are still getting more popular, and he

(48:05):
can see that things are reaching a terminal juncture in Ymar.
Something is going to break soon, and he wants it
to break for the right. And he's like, Hitler's my
best bet. So he invites Hitler to speak in Dusseldorf
before an assembly of industrial magnates. After the speech, all
of the richest guys in Germany, the people who own,
you know, all of the factories, all the big businesses,

(48:26):
whose donations had usually gone to like the Center Party
or to kind of one of the center right parties,
they start sending money to the tune of ournd TiO
million marks a year to the Nazis. And because they
don't want to be seen directly funding the Nazis, they
reach out to a guy they all knew and had
worked with who was really good at funneling money, Alfred Hugenberg.

(48:47):
And it's going to be Hugenberg who funnels the money
from these industrialists directly into the Nazis. Now in this
he is playing the same role he'd done earlier, but
he's not a Nazi himself. He does not like hit
He hates Hitler as a matter of fact. He thinks
he's gross. He's a poor he's poor, he's a corporal,
right like, he's not as good as me. He doesn't

(49:08):
have an education, he's and.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
A lot doesn't look like squid words exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
It looks like a little one of those bars you
put over someone's dick if they're naked. Though, absolutely not.
I'dn't convinced at this point that like, well, I'll hold
my nose because Hitler, in these Nazis, they can be
a good weapon against the left, and obviously that's what
matters most, is crushing the Yah.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
There's so much of that happening in through these years. Yeah,
a lot of nose holding.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Not a lot. Yeah, And it'll happen elsewhere soon. So
Hugenberg doesn't stop running his own political party, and in
fact he gets in the Reichstag like, he gets elected
to office, and his message, which is not as effective
as the Nazi message is in part not as effective,
because he's really speaking mostly to this educated upper middle

(49:57):
class that buildings Burgertom. As Hermann wrote in The Fateful Alliance,
the educated elite's fate had been closely aligned with that
of the Empire. With the empire's demise, it suffered a
decline in reputation that increased its alienation from Weimar, to
which inflation added the grievance of material destitution. The inflation
broke the economic spine of the buildings Burgertom, whose lifestyle

(50:18):
had been supported largely by their savings, as regular salaries
rarely sufficed to maintain the material of coutrama that went
with their exalted social position, such as domestic servants and
a costly education for their offspring. Probably no part of
the German population felt the humiliating changes in everyday life
more deeply than the educated elite. None felt more distant
from a republican regime with which reconciliation seemed impossible. Again,

(50:43):
he's like, hey, you guys are angry because your treats
are gone. You can't afford servants anymore. Like that's what
he's promising, Whereas Hitler's promising workers, I'll get vengeance. For you,
for all these people who have made your life's hard,
and I'll make sure you have jobs, and not just jobs,
you'll get vacations. You know. The big thing the Nazis
did was like made it possible for like working class people.

(51:04):
They had like funded vacations. Like yeah, that's who he's
talking to. Hugenberg's talking to like the sort of rich
who were now sort of poor and like saying I'm
going to bring I'm gonna fix things for you. Right So,
for a time, because this is not that large a
chunk of the population, it seemed as if Hugenberg was
destined to watch his party shrink while the Nazis grew

(51:24):
and grew right alongside the Communists. And while he is
responsible for funneling some money to Hitler, he refuses to
compromise within the party, right Like he is not willing
to change what the German National Party is saying because
he wants it to be his mouthpiece. And in fact,
when he gets rid of so many of his rivals
that like the party is insolvent, like he's gotten rid

(51:46):
of enough so many people that were funding it, that
like it can't be funded anymore, he just pays for
the whole party himself.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yes, now they're still He's like just this sad dude
with no friends and.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
No friends all the money. Again, so familiar to a
certain plutocrat we all know and are frustrated by today.
Now speaking of people with no friends, if you want
to have friends, make friends with these sponsors. We're back.

(52:21):
So Hugenberg is shotgunning some money the Nazis in the
early thirties, and he's got his party, which is winning
seats in the Reichstag. It's actually like doing better and
better in kind of thirty two. Not enough to control anything,
but enough to be like part of a coalition. But
he knows that, like you know, the Left is also

(52:42):
still growing, and I want to win this larger battle
for control of the German state. And so he kind
of admits, I have to work more directly with the Nazis. Right,
It's not enough to just kind of like help get
some money to them. I have to actually start helping
them out using my resources. So Hugenberg diverts his vast
media apparatus to the cause of boosting Hitler. By this

(53:05):
point he has a degree of control in some fourteen
hundred newspapers and also owns the largest movie studio in Germany.
One reporter at the time for a centrist paper described
Hugenberg as the great disseminator of national socialist ideas to
an entire nation through newspapers, books, magazines, and films. And
he's doing this because he envisions his party governing alongside

(53:29):
the other right wing party and the Nazis as a coalition.
And so he's like, well, the more votes the Nazis get,
the better our coalition can crush the left together, but
will be in a coalition together, right. And it's in
this brief period thirty two to thirty three that Hugenberg
is going to reach the apex of his evil talents.

(53:50):
By this point, he was simultaneously the bag man for
the whole far right. He's funneling wealth from Germany's capitalist
to the Nazis. He's funding his own party, and he's
running this vast media empire. And he's also sitting in
the Reichstag as an elected member and directly pushing his
own political agenda. And I'm going to quote here from
an excellent article in the Atlantic by Timothy Riibeck. Hugenberg

(54:12):
practiced what he called catastrophan politique the politics of catastrophe,
by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the
political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them entirely
fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage. According to
one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and
selling them to its allies in order to service its

(54:34):
war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center,
political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse.
As a right wing delegate to the Reichstag, Hugenberg proposed
a freedom law that called for the liberation of the
German people from the shackles of democracy and from the
onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The law called for

(54:55):
the treaty's signatories to be tried and hanged for treason,
along with government officials involved with implemating the treaty provisions.
The French ambassador in Berlin called Hugenberg one of the
most evil geniuses in Germany.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Oh my god. Okay, so you said, like way way
earlier in this recording that Hugenberg was not necessarily the
most introspective motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
He was like for his own person, No.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Not right. So what do you think he thinks is
the justification for all of this at this point? Like
how is he not feeling cognitive dissonance or guilt or
like how is he I'm just curious how.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
I mean, why would he feel guilt? You know? He
believes number one, it's moral for Germany to be to
take its place in the sun. He believes the Jews
are a force for evil. He believes the poor need
to be ruled by men like him, and he sees
his bottom line as tied to this. I don't think
it goes any deeper than that, I think. I mean, yeah,
is this guy like associate, like, could you diet? Could

(56:01):
he have been diagnosed as a psychopath? I don't know,
but like, this is not a man whose conscience troubles
him for what he's doing overmuch?

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Okay, Yeah, clearly.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
In nineteen thirty two, the Nazis carry the affluent Germans
of the Berlin suburbs for the first time, which is
a sign that some of the stuff that's going on
here to push them, to boost them is working now.
Joseph Goebbels does not want credit to go to Hugenberg, right,
even though Hugenberg is a part of why this happens,
because Goebels, who is Hitler's propaganda guy, despises Hugenberg and

(56:33):
he is repeatedly trying to turn Hitler against Hugenberg, which
actually wasn't really necessary because one thing Alfred can't do.
He can't suck up. Maybe he can to richer guys,
but he can't suck up to Hitler because Hitler's again
some poor asshole who got wounded in the trenches, like
an idiot. Right, that's how Schugenberg looks at these people.

(56:53):
He's a social inferior. So Hitler doesn't like Hugenberg I
just because no one does.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Right, yeah, no one does.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
No, he's a but does.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
You are not understand the exactly but like does Hugenberg
not understand the power of youthful cool?

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Because no, no, no no, And in fact there's a
good bit here. So for words, a socialist paper en Weimar,
Germany had taken to drawing Hugenberg as a bloated frog
in glasses like that was their caricature of him. But
even Hugenberg's friends had mean nicknames for him. Like the
people close to him called him the hamster. Hitler, for

(57:36):
his part, called Hugenberg Wow Wow or wolf Wolf right,
like he's a he's a barking dog. Right, he won't
shut the fuck up. He's annoying the hell out of me. Now,
that same year, Alfred opposed Hitler in the presidential election.
So again he's been putting money into Hitler and his
propaganda has been boosting the Nazis, but he is still

(57:56):
trying to oppose him politically, and he I forget who
he backs, it doesn't matter, but he backs someone who's
not Hitler for the presidential election. And during this election,
for the first time, his party actually takes seats from
the Nazis, which does force Hitler to come to the table. Right.
Hitler is like, Okay, well, I guess I do have
to work with this guy who I don't like very
much because he just took some seats from me and

(58:19):
my party's kind of maybe starting to bottom out. The
meetings go by, they try to see if they can
work out an agreement to govern together, and they absolutely
can't because the Hitler's line, and he always sticks to this,
is that we'll form a coalition government but every ministry
has to be headed by one of our people, right,
we need them all, no compromise, and Hugenberg's not willing

(58:43):
to compromise yet on that. Hugenberg himself is convinced that
since his party has managed to capture a lot of seats,
he and other Conservatives, if they work with Hitler can
quote box Hitler in right, So if we let the
Nazis rule with us, we can kind of surround them
and we'll stop him from doing any crazy shit. Will
be the adults in the room. Right. So by late

(59:06):
nineteen thirty three, Hitler and Hugenberg are trapped in this
incredibly difficult situation where Hitler has the ability to become
chancellor because you know, he's got Hindenburg's kind of starting
to support the idea, like his party's got enough electoral success,
but he can't. He needs Hugenberg's support to cross that line, right,

(59:26):
both his money and his kind of voting support. Right,
Hugenberg can't be chancellor on his own. He doesn't have
nearly the votes, so he can help make Hitler the chancellor,
but he can't. He has no chance of getting that
for himself, and the Nazis sure shit aren't going to
make him chancellor. So a compromise is reached. Right, as

(59:47):
one of Hitler's friends put it, Hugenberg had everything but
the masses. Hitler had everything but the money and that
excellent piece. Yeah, exactly, and that excellent piece. For The Atlantic,
author Timothy Rybeck describes what happened next. After cantankerous negotiation,
a deal was reached. Hugenberg would deliver Hitler the chancellorship
in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as

(01:00:08):
head of a superministerium that subsumed the ministries of Economics, agriculture,
and nutrition. Once in the cabinet, Hugenberg didn't hesitate to
meddle in foreign relations when it suited him. Reinold Quats,
a close Hugenberg associate distilled Hugenberg's calculus as follows. Hitler
will sit in the saddle, but Hugenberg holds the whip.

(01:00:28):
In other words, I am writing Hitler to a success,
and I can whip him if I need him to
move in a direction.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Oh god, now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
There is Immediately everyone gets scared when Hitler winds up
directly in power in Germany. And then Hugenberg gets this
position where he's running all the ministries, and all of
the dumb papers do the same thing they're doing today
with Musk, where they're like, ha, you are so scared
of this Hitler guy. This Hugenberg dude is running things obviously.

(01:01:00):
The New York Times publishes a column where they describe
Huggenberg as an arch capitalist who quote stood in strongest
discord with economic doctrines of the Nazi movement. Right, and
they're like, well, he's running the finances, this Nazi Schmatzi,
Like Nazi Schmazi. They're not gonna be that scary. This
guy is gonna run things, right, and not when.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
You put Schmatzi after it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, and the New York Times the name of a
little poodle. They're usually wrong about stuff like this, but
even the left gets confused. The communist daily paper in Berlin,
The Red Banner, argues that Hugenberg is in charge, not Hitler.
In fact says that Hitler's socialist mask has slipped. Hah,
he revealed his cards. It's the evil capitalists running things,

(01:01:42):
you know, just like we said, and they're they're doomed
to fail and then it'll be our turn next. The
Weekly Journal dae veltpun described the new government as Hitler,
Hugenberg and co. Roughly a day after Hitler was appointed chancellor,
Hugenberg is said to have talked to a friend, the
mayor of Leipzig, and hold him, I've just committed the
greatest stupidity of my life. I have allied myself with

(01:02:04):
the greatest demagogue in the history of the world. So well,
everyone else is like, oh, thank god, Hugenberg's running things.
That crazy Hitler guy is just a figurehead. Hugenberg who
is has a lot of power right now, but has
become aware enough and is smart enough to be like,
oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, this this could go badly.
Like this guy I might not be able to control

(01:02:26):
for long.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
And is that just was it really just like Hitler's personality,
Like everyone underestimated him and then just got fucking clovered
by the guy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Well, the thing that people don't it's the same thing
with Trump, right, I always get I always try to
push back when people talk about how dumb Trump is
or you know, what an idiot he is. He's not.
He doesn't know a lot of things, you know, but
he knows his business, which is getting number one populist support.
And also he is really good at maneuvering through organizations

(01:03:03):
to crush dissent and reform them in his image. And
Hitler has a similar Hitler is a genius politician. He
is extremely skilled. This is an intellectual skill. He is
not lucky. I mean, he's got luck behind him too.
It's always a factor. But he is not accidentally succeeding.
He is succeeding because he's better at the stuff that

(01:03:24):
matters than the people opposing him that gets too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
One of the reasons why people call Trump stupid is
because of data that will come out from time to
time saying that he like speaks at a third grade
reading level, whereas like the average presidential candidate speaks at
a tenth grade reading.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Whatever fucking new? Right? Yea, yeah? You know who beats
a bunch of people who read it like at twelfth
grade level, a bunch of people who read at a
fifth grade level with more guns like come on now,
who gives it? Yeah and it. Hitler's the same. Hitler's
very good at what he does. He's good at building
personal loyalty, and he's good at keeping his people in lockstep.

(01:04:06):
They don't act without his approval. Right. So that said,
right after Hitler becomes Chancellor and Hugenberg has made this
economic minister, he is a kid in a candy store.
Right for the first few months of the Third Reich,
Hugenberg has nominal control over the entire German economy. He
describes himself as the economic dictator of Germany, and his

(01:04:30):
first big step is to fire every government employee he can,
trying to wipe out the entirety. He does a doge.
He's trying to wipe out as all of the administrative state. Right,
so he had because he's angry that he has had
to pay for taxes for public so he wipes out
every public employee he can, and at the same time
he starts executing a one man war against workers' rights.

(01:04:52):
He cuts his own employee wages by ten percent across
the board, he gives everyone a pay cut as soon
as he gets into power, and he guts labor rights
the right to strike across Germany. All of this he
justifies as necessary in order to get the German economy
back into shape, and he uses his vast network of
newspapers to manufacture consent for extremist policies that damaged the

(01:05:13):
average German. One of his pet columnists wrote at the time,
the real battle against unemployment lies singularly and alone in
re establishing profitability and economic life. Parroting Alfred's personal beliefs,
this editor argued that the goal of state policy should
be to rescue the merchant middle class aka small business owners,
no matter the costs to everyone else. Now, the focus

(01:05:36):
on the middle and upper middle class was reflected in
the few good moves that Hugenberg made, including he puts
in a temporary foreclosure moratorium. Now he doesn't do an
eviction moratorium, and that should tell you who he's working for, right,
the people who are this kind of middle class that
has just lost everything. He sees them as his base
of support. He doesn't give a fuck about the renters,

(01:05:58):
the people who are really poor. Right, there's a foreclosure moratorium,
not an eviction moratorium. He also launches a limited debt
jubilee calculated to support struggling members of the buildings Burgertum.
And again, it's just kind of worth looking at sort
of some of the stuff that he's doing, because it's
not some of these policies. You could look at it
a vacuum is good, but his overall goal is fuck

(01:06:21):
the poor. I'm going to build support among this kind
of educated, upper middle class elite. And of course, Hugenberg
also pursues a tariff program focused mainly on agricultural goods
in an ill conceived attempt to rescue German farmers. If
I tear if all of these foreign agricultural goods, then

(01:06:41):
Germans will farm and be profitable. It'll be great now.
The only result to these tariffs was that they skyrocket
the cost of living. People who couldn't afford food can
now afford food even less, and it goes so badly
that Hitler has to intervene. At one point, he blows
up during a meeting with Hugenberg and says, it just
won't do that. The financial burdens of these rescue measures

(01:07:03):
fall only on the poorest. Like when a Hitler is
speaking exactly, Wow, this is unjust you're a real day seriously,
so Hugenberg alf for his part, Hugenberg is not afraid
to argue with Hitler, and he says, quite literally, we
have to let the poor suffer. That eventually will even

(01:07:27):
out the hardships, but they have to suffer first. This
does not work more. Germans go hungry. The economy, which
had recovered a lot from the hyperinflation a few years back, plunges.
One of the few papers Hugenberg didn't control that was
still allowed to operate, nicknamed him the Confusions Rat or
Confusion Consultant. As is the case today, the mean nicknames

(01:07:51):
don't hurt Hugenberg's feelings. Rybeck describes him as being utterly
calloused to the idea of being despised. And it was
true that they hate God, right right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
I don't know, how do I get like just the
tiniest little bit of that inerg Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah. I mean it's you have to
write if you're going to do anything. Unfortunately, he is
ignoring the fact that people are angry because he's making
them starve. Right now, it was true that the left
hating him. That doesn't really hurt Hugenberg in this point.
They don't have any.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Teav anymore them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
But he makes a major tactical error at this point
because he chooses to believe my money, which Hitler needs,
will protect my position relative to Hitler. I'll always be
co equal with him because I'm rich, And that just
ain't the way it's going to play out. I want
to quot from Rybeck again, summarizing what happens next. In

(01:08:47):
late June nineteen thirty three, Well Hitler was trying to
assuage international concerns about the long term intentions of his government.
Hugenberg appeared in London at an international conference on economic development.
To the surprise of every one, including the other German
delegation members present, Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for
economic growth through territorial expansion. The first step would consist

(01:09:09):
of Germany reclaiming its colonies in Africa, Hugenberg explained. The
second would be that people without space would open areas
in which our productive race would create living space. The
announcement made headlines around the world. Reich asks for return
of African lands at London parlay, reads one New York
Times headline, below that a subhead continued also seeks other territory,

(01:09:32):
presumably in Europe. Such a funny way to write about
what World War two is gotta be. They won Africa back,
also some other stuff, maybe in Europe. Who knows.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Christ today we can say, well Hugenberg, which has given
everyone a very accurate warning about what was about to happen.
That is what goes down next, right, But Hitler and
everyone else Hitler's furious, so was everyone in German government.
For one thing, they don't have an army yet, right, Like,
the German army is bullshit at this point. Now it's

(01:10:06):
strong enough that it could overthrow Hitler, which is a
big thing he's scared about, but it cannot conquer anything
right now. So they're like, what you're threatening people, You're
like threatening to punch somebody, and our arms are both
still in fucking traction. Like we can't. You can't be
doing this yet, like we have, there's steps before we
start acting like this. And so Hitler has his other

(01:10:29):
top people try to pull back from hugenberg statements. A
bunch of other like cabinet members start being like, no,
of course, we're not gonna take any year up. We're
not gonna we're gonna get back, and we're just trying
to fix Germany. Baby. You know, Hugenberg is incapable of
reading a room, and he doubles and then triples down.
He keeps talking about how Germany is going to try
to conquer everyone around them, and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Oh fuck yeah, keep that shit on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
The down low. Ultimately, the conflict culminates in a cabinet
meeting with Hugenberg on one side and everyone else on
the other. With this tells you how bad things are.
Hitler's the mediator.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Okay, okay, God, I can't think of a worse mediator
in all of human history Hitler.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
If Hitler's the guy in the middle trying to keep
everybody calm, things are not going to go well.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Hitler's like meeting gently without Buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Nobody is angry, you know. So Hitler still at this
point has some hesitation of totally dispensing with Hugenberg, and
he tries to insist, like, hey, if you'll stop, everything's forgiven,
you know. He tells the other people in the room
what already happened is no longer of interest. But Hugenberg
again refuses to read the room and he doesn't mediate

(01:11:55):
his language at all, and ultimately Hitler forces him out
of his job as economic dictator in late June nineteen
thirty three. You know, Hugenberg technically resigns, but it's obvious
what happened. And this is the end of Alfred's major
period of influence in the Nazi regime. He will spend
the remainder of the Third Reich living at his estate

(01:12:15):
as essentially a small local dictator, right, Like, he's got
this little country home with some towns around it, and
he just kind of runs things there, right, And the
Nazis more or less leave him alone. They make him
sell off all his newspapers. He has to sell his
media empire, but he gets a good price for it, right.
His party is dissolved pretty quickly after this, but he

(01:12:36):
gets to remain a guest member of the Reichstag, which
isn't really in charge of anything anymore. It's just sort
of a we'll let you keep this because we don't
really want to have a fight with you. His wealth
and connections did protect him from the Night of Long Knives.
He's never purged, but he clearly understands it. I have
to stay out of the spotlight if I don't want
to lose my money and my nye shit. And that's

(01:12:57):
what he does for the remainder of the Third Reich. No, Yeah,
he's just kind of chilling. And when Hitler shoots himself
in that bunker and the Third Reich falls, Hugenberg had
been out of direct power long enough that the Allies
don't really focus on him as a danger.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
He doesn't get up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Yeah, no, they kind of. He does get arrested in
forty nine as part of like this denotification process, but
he gets he gets basically ruled to be like, ah,
you weren't really a Nazi, you know what.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
He's really old by then.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
He's old. He dies two years later, but he's never
upun it. He's allowed to keep his possessions in his business.
And he dies, you know, peacefully, on March twelfth, nineteen
fifty one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Oh did he ever have a family?

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he had some.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
Oh he do.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
I don't think. I don't think. I don't think he
thinks much about them. So whatever, I'm not gonna Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
I'm sure they hated his guts. He sounds he.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Sounds like a real dick.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
They they might not have been great themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Whoa wow. What a random piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Yeah, I mean he's a piece of shit that is
very much crafted by his social class and his time,
and he's very much again he's he is there there,
Elon Musk. He's this guy who as soon as the
fascists come into power, gets the job of wiping out
the administrative state and completely fucking the economy, and then

(01:14:28):
I guess shit canned right as soon as he's no
longer useful.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Yeah, yeah, And I mean it is true that like
a major difference between him and Elon is that he
came from not nothing, but nothing compared to Elon, and
so no rich rise exactly, and so like his rise
is a little scary because there was like no warning.

(01:14:52):
He was just like bobin and weave and Bobbin and
weavin his way to this like opportunistic position, and it
kind of inspires to feelings like holy ship, like who's
going to be the next this guy? And wow, I'm
kind of like soothed that more people like this are
are not coming up already.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
I mean they are, and this is what got a
little bit of I think the difference is that number one,
most of those guys don't didn't bother to buy a
political party of their own. Instead, we're like.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Get involved with weapons manufacturing and like selling weapons.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Really, I mean Peter t Alan's palanteer, Yeah, I mean
it's a it's a kind of weapon system.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Right right, right, right right.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Yeah, And that Musk hasn't so much gotten involved in
that entirely.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
But like you know, but I guess define weapon in
the digital exactly. Yeah, damn, okay, fuck whoa, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Always the same people.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Oh and it's always a dude who has weird, weird face.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Yep, it's always it's always a fucking yeah, some busted
weird asshole.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
What a bastard? Yeah wow, thank you for regelling me
with that tail. It was a roller coaster. I'm I'm
I keep thinking back on this. On this art exhibit
I went to in Zurich where what was his name,
clumped glop.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, was it climped? Crupt was the
arm manufacturer, but I think there was a there's a
yeah artist clip yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Oh, not not climt. I'm talking about the weapons manufactured,
the arms manufacturer.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Yeahrupt k r U p P Yeah oh Crup Yeah yeah,
there's a Crup family collection of artwork. Yeah that traveled
around massive. Yes, well, then that's where their money came from.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Yeah, that's that's wild. I was just like pondering the
how weird, how weird it was, and this was like
the point of the exhibition to like admire these beautiful artworks.
I mean there were like Monaise in there and Desgades
in there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
You have the money to buy them.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Yeah, And like he was like celebrated as an art
collector like this amazing taste or whatever, and like the
reason he was able to acquire that artwork was because
he was like making weapons that did World War two
or made World War two possible and.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
World War one and two because CRUP is arming Germany
in both. But every one of those paintings represents a
pile of corpses of Yeah, yeah, teenage boys primary, Oh
it's good, it's good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Yeah, you love to see it?

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
You don't, but you see it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
No, you do see it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Speaking of what you see, where can people see you?

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Yeah? Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
I love, I love well, I love and I hate
and feel, I feel icky, and I feel great about
knowing stories like the one you just told me. And
if people want to know stories that will make them
chortal and also feel a little disturbed, they can find

(01:18:39):
me at sounds like a cult pod wherever you stream podcasts.
I have another podcast called Magical Overthinkers, and I got
a bunch of books. Cult dish the age magical overthinking.
I love talking about social science in a cheeky way.

Speaker 1 (01:18:53):
Uh huh, excellent. All right, we'll check out Amanda and
her work and check out our modern Alfred Hugenbergs as
they engage in the process of flaming out and getting
forced out by the fascists who are going to use
the power given to them by these people to do
god knows what. Hopefully, uh not as much as the

(01:19:17):
last ones. We'll see everybody had a great weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(01:19:45):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany