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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel after the revolution is available for preorder now from AK Press Org. Now, if you go to akeypress.org, you can find after the revolution just googleakpress.org. After the revolution, you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre-order now from either of these independent bookstores or from AK Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please Google, AKA Press after the revolution, or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it. You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy. Ohh, Sophie. This plate of behind the ******** is so heavy as we walk through this hallway. Oh my gosh, is that David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds with with a with a heavy plate of of the dollop? Oh no. Oh no. I'm losing control. Oh God, you guys are slipping too. How was how was that house so bad? So bad? I couldn't disagree more, but that was the most organic, just real thing I think I've ever heard. Yeah, it was. Yeah, like you're really. Only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates. So I'm wondering how. I was wondering, as I started it, are they gonna join in or am I gonna just have to commit fully to this? And now that's something where if it's me, I just let you go and then let you hang in silence for a long time. I was a dog and a yard that wanted to leave it, but was like, I'll get I'm not supposed to leave. So I was on the other end I wanted to join. Ohh gosh. Well, this is this is just a wonderful time, obviously. Again, you are Dave Anthony, Gareth Reynolds, hosts of the dollop. The podcast that invented being funny about history on the Internet. Thank you so much for for sitting down with us today. Thank you. We've always for a long time I've wanted to do something with you. So and we've talked about this, but yeah, yeah we have. This has been like bouncing back and forth for a while and it was just one of those things where it's like, well, when we finally do our six part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going to be the worst thing we've ever had to do. Yeah. I have a therapy. I have a therapy session set up. Right afterwards. Dave married a therapist in preparation. That's good. Really putting in the deep work to make this, to make this series of success. Yeah. So my working title for this, which they probably won't let us use, is Henry Kissinger, a big sack of donkey balls. What's wrong with that before? Can we do that so far? I'm perfectly fine with that. What are you talking about? What do you guys know like I I kind of think we maybe it's a good idea to start with like what what's your your cliffs notes we'll have we'll have you do it Dave because because you're the one who reads things normally. I mean I think that's your course notes of Kissinger. Yeah you know Kissinger the thing that you know obviously stands out is Vietnam and Kim and Cambodia and you know that's just reprehensible beyond all words but he's really been a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions and had his. He's always getting in there. He's always a part of the business release was I don't know if he is now but for a long time he was always a guy who would come in and go, why don't you do the worst thing. Yeah. And that's that's the thing that's that's interesting and even a little bit difficult about talking about him because he's not one of these guys. He's not like you can't say with him like you can without a Saddam Hussein like oh he ordered he started this war On this date, you know or he he ordered this man. I mean you can actually Umm, but he's. He's not like a he's not on paper supposed to be a warlord or an elected leader. The thing that he is good at doing is getting the ability to do stuff that warlords and dictators do by sitting in the back rooms with people who are the ones who on paper hold the power and convincing them to let him do stuff. And he's the best at that there's ever been. We've had a couple figures on our podcast who I would relate to like, and I would say maybe Kissinger is like the war crimes, Forrest Gump. Yeah, it's like, yeah, just kind of you're like, ohh yeah, he was there. He invented **** happens. I don't know. He invented that phrase. Yeah, that's that's incredibly. That's that might. I mean, that's honestly a better title than when I came out. That is the favorite title is, I mean it. Obviously Forrest Gump is, is, is blameless and Kissinger is not. But it does get at the fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's just in every ******* photo of like, guys doing a war crime, like, it is baffling. The number of things he's connected to, I should probably just Start Stop selling it. But I I do kind of want to talk about the fact that he is, he is this kind of backroom figure in a lot of the worst things that happened in the 20th century because we're going to spend episode one by the time this episode is over. He's not, you know, in the White House. He's not running ****. This is an episode where we talk about, like, his early life and his ideological roots, because that's what, that's what underpins all of the things that he does. He's not a guy people talk about, like what Kissinger believes, and Kissinger himself has written a bunch of books about what he believes. My opinion as an amateur guy studying this dude is that I don't think he believes things as much as he beliefs and ideas are weapons that he uses in order to get people to let him do horrible things. And he is the master of using beliefs and and moving between different groups of people who on paper are ideologically opposed and getting them all to agree with whatever ******** he wants to do. Because he's really good at talking about ideas. Like a ******* philosopher. Like that's his superpower. They might just have trouble understanding him. I know I have. Sure. Whatever. What did we agree to? Ohh, God, I I was going to ask Gareth, before we get started here, is your German accent locked and loaded? I mean, listen, as to the disgust of the German people. It is. That's fine. That's fine. They I I think we can all agree. After the 20th century, the Germans lost. The right to be angry when people, that's how they're it's like Texans, you know? Everyone can do a Texan. Yeah, that's how I feel. I don't think I can. I can make any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish and yet can't do English. It's really just sort of this amazing ability to. See, whenever I do a non American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point. Like 100% of the time. Yeah. Oh my God. Well, this is your time now. You can shine with what's going on. I know, I know. I'm ready to just yuck it up over. Yeah, Speaking of which, there's a number of routes of what's happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can type actions. Quite clear it is I mean that's that's a little bit less his his the area that he ****** around in but he did some ******* around there like one of the things we are spending 6 episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and we're leaving some **** out. Wow yeah you you have to I mean he's been around so many years I mean just the fact that he was still palling around with Hillary Clinton in the election and you're like what is that guy doing there don't you know he's bad and and he's the the thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that he he does have this equal he's. Equally good at talking to like people who would call themselves liberals and progressives as he is to like far right Neo cons like he's he's he's. I mean you could, I think you could say that part of what that reveals is that the ruling class in this country are all in agreement about things more often than they disagree about things. But part of it is just that like he is so charming. We will be talking a bit about Kissinger as a sex symbol, which is a thing that happens and I am so sorry that we have to discuss it. No, I was hoping that you would say this because I've wanted. I've wanted to **** him for so long. Like, that's one of the main things. He's hot. That's what every ******* chair I've always wanted to go kiss is not enough for me. Yeah, that's that's just the taste of what I'm after. Ohh boy. Well, AB test the the Forrest Gump and the Fluckinger title and yeah, we'll just see what what plays best in Poughkeepsie. So Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27th, 1923 in the city of Firth, Germany. The Kissinger's were a Jewish family and so given that this is Germany in the early 20s, you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right? This is, this is not going to be a story that begins in a particularly pleasant place. He was born in a very chaotic world. The Great Year was like 5 years past. When he comes in onto the planet, everything is falling apart in Germany and a lot of other places the year he's born. Primo de Rivera. Seized power as the dictator of Spain, Mustafa Kemal took power in Turkey. The Bulgarian Prime Minister was assassinated in a coup like it was a troubling time to be a baby. But Heinz's mother and father had some reasons for optimism. While Firth was not an attractive city, in fact, one contemporary described it as stifling. In its narrow dreariness are unguarded city, city of soot. You know, it's it's a city, it's city, it's city, it's a working class factory town. But because of that, and this is the period in which the working class. There's a lot more left wing than you know folks tend to give it credit for being today. It's a very it's like a haven for Democrats not like our Democrats, but people who support democracy as opposed to want to go back to having a Kaiser, you know? So first is wouldn't want to go back to having a Kaiser. He was so I worked so good. Yeah, I want to have a king who gets us into World War One and, like, wax off about his moms hands. That sounds great again. Well, now that I know what we're talking about, let's dance. I'm in. I want to, Kaiser. So Firth is, in some ways you could see it. It's reputation in Germany as being kind of like Portland today. It's a very left wing town. It's seen as a haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma, AL, during the Civil rights era because Firth has a very large Jewish population. And the period in, like, the late 1800s is when a lot of, like, there's a, there's essentially apartheid against Jewish people in Germany for a long time. So Firth is the city that has Germany's first Jewish lawyer and it has a bunch of their other first Jewish, you know, exes person who does this. Job because it's it's this very progressive city with a very integrated Jewish community. So it it's this mix of. Hmm. You the Nazis aren't going to like this town, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like Portland. Yeah. Like Portland. Yeah. It's it's got some similarities between a couple of things. So Heinz's parents, Paula and Lewis, had grown up in Imperial Germany where Jews were restricted from holding certain jobs, going to certain schools, living in certain homes. And this had ended by the time the Kaiser had. So Louis Kissinger, Henry's dad, came of age in a period in which a Jewish. Boy could actually build a professional life. For the first time in mainstream German society. He was a member of the 1st and almost the last generation that this would be true of. Why? What happens? Right. We may need to do it. A separate podcast series. Never read any German history. Oh my God, it's so exciting. So he starts work Lewis as a teacher in a secular private school when he's 18 and he holds the job for 14 years, and he was a very patriotic person. He's he's also an like, he is an Orthodox Jew, so he's very religious, but he considers himself a German for first and foremost, and his family is very patriotic. His brother fights in World War One. So does his wife's dad, two of his cousins. By fighting for the Kaiser and when the war ends in German defeat you know there's all these rumors spread throughout the far right that the nation's been stabbed in the back by an alliance of Jewish boogeymen. Heinz or sorry Louis kind of. He sees this as happening but he doesn't think that it's ever going to like take hold. He's Henry would later recalled that his father would regularly say we live in an age of tolerance so his dad is not not right. I'm sorry, are you talking about America in 2022 or are you talking about. But Germany? Yeah, we are talking about this on the day that Texas just announced a fun new law. Yeah, this is this is like, you know, Henry's wrong about a lot of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a much sadder reasons. I guess there was a psychic gene in the family. I see us being tolerant for our generation generally will be a watchword for tolerance. We will be a bastion for all types. Ohh, poor buddy. Yeah, so he's a. It's interesting because, like, the Zionist movement is is rising in this time, and Kissinger's family rejects this wholeheartedly because they're so German, right? Like, they don't. They don't want to ever leave. So obviously the Nazi Party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially safe from this. Just a few months after Heinz is born in September of 23, the Nazis and other far right organizations hold a German day in Nuremberg, several caravans of them passed through birth. Sort of like Nazis do today in a lot of places. And you know, they were looking for a fight when they drove there. They went through first because it's the town where you can get a fight and they got one. This is like right after Henry is born, a mob of brown shirts are assaulted by 100 strong crowd screaming kill them and down with Hitler, which is pretty, let's end the story there. I love it. It's a great end. That's the tale of Henry Kissinger. A kid who was a baby when some dudes did some rad stuff, right? So Firth was integrated enough that Heinz initially attended a public school with Christian classmates, which was not common. Wow. For Jewish kids in this time, yeah, he's like going to school with with other like kids who are not Jewish. Eventually, his dad puts him in a private school, but that's also an integrated private school. So while his education is secular, her family, his family's very strict orthodox. He attended Hebrew school, which he hated. I found a quote from another Jewish guy who grew up in Firth at the same time that gives an idea as to why Henry was not a big. A fan of his early religious education quote religion was a study and not a pleasant 1A lesson taught soullessly by a soulless old man. Even the day I see his evil, conceded old face in my dreams he thrashed formulas into us antiquated Hebrew prayers that we translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language. What he taught was paltry, dead, mummified. And that, I think is broadly in line with how Henry feels because he's not doesn't grow up very religious. So Henry is, is is a little kid, you know, he he does a lot of religion stuff. But. He grows older. He rejects his father's passion for faith and his dad's interests in classical music and theater. Instead, Henry Kissinger falls in love with soccer. He is a huge soccer head. Oh yeah, **** is happening. I know. Ohh. Wow. Earth has like a locally renowned team. They're one of the best teams in Germany and so like their kids. Teams which are feeders into this, whatever team are, are very competitive too. Henry starts playing in a Youth League when he's six years old and he later recalled quote. I wasn't really very good though. I took the game seriously. But now what about soccer? We should just talk about that. Oh, sorry, never mind. So his real prowess early on was in strategy, as this quote from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger. Like the guy makes clear, though no great athlete, Heinz Kissinger was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team a system that, as he, as it turns out, is the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to drive the other team nuts by not letting them score, by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very hard to score when ten players are lined up in front of the goal. So immediately Henry Kissinger is a kid is like, you know what will help us win and also make this game. No fun at all. Yeah. We need to poison their water. Henry, what are you talking about? Police must fire bombs the homes. We know what to do. The dynamite under their keeper. I know we are six, but we will park the bus. There will be no joy in soccer. But remove the keeper's hands. He is. He is is a 6 year old doing the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and his father actually bans him from playing for a while. The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts with his dad. And so I think that no one else has ever experienced. And yeah, he would regularly, after fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of a friend who later recalled he liked he liked being with us. It seems to me he had a problem with his father. If I'm not mistaken. He was afraid of him because he was a very pedantic man. His father was always checking Heinz's homework. Kept a close watch on him. Heinz told me more than once that he couldn't discuss anything with his father, especially not girls. So his dad's not, like, hitting him or anything. He's just like a really, really annoying to him. And just like and just, like, pay attention to your studies beyond anything else. Like, I think I like this girl. Like, well, she doesn't. She's not going to the same school. Her focus, Henry. Focus. Yeah. And he's he's clearly * **** who's like, you know, you can't be a professional soccer player. Eight. You have to go to school. Like, he's clearly an *******. Dad. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely the villain of the story. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So Henry is magnetic to women from a while. Girls at this point from a very young age. What in the **** is happening? I know, it's really weird. It's weird. And this is from the quotes about, you know, girls really liking him at this age come here, his father. But like, this also happens when he's in his 40s and the Secretary of State. So I'm going to say his father's probably telling the truth. I mean, at no point have I seen any version of Henry Kissinger. Like, man, I mean it is weird that got memory holed because there were there were New York Times stories about how much women like Henry Kissinger because he looks like a lump of clay. You could mold into anything potentially. That would be good. No. Yeah. No no, no. But I it's it's weird. I mean, yeah he's the guy. Like, yeah we'll talk about some of the things he said about sexuality later. I know you're all getting real excited for that episode. Yeah. Where's the Cambodia. Yeah, yeah. At one point, one of his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with him because he had, quote earned a reputation as a skirt chaser, and this is like when he's nine. Wow. Early little little Henry come rocket Kissinger. First time I I sex was not so you know like at this point he's rebelling against the family religion. He's hanging out with girls. He's playing a hell of a lot of soccer, which seems like a decent childhood, but obviously you know the Nazis. So in the mid 20s the German nation goes on strike against some ****. France was doing Versailles stuff we don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right? This is the wheelbarrows full of cash time. This hurts the Kissinger family badly because if you're like a if you're a private. Labor if you're working for a private company, you can generally like strike and organize to get your salary adjusted to like deal with inflation. Somewhat. Like it's still bad, but it's less bad if you're a public servant, you don't get ****. Your salary stays the same while inflation jumps up. So this is really a disaster for the singer family. And of course economic trouble coincides with a constant acceleration of far right violence later is an adult Kissinger would note without emotion that he was somewhat regularly chased through the streets and beaten up by Nazi thugs. As a child. Yeah, that's tough. No punch lines. No, no punch lines. But there is something weird about that because he's talked about this a few times, but every time he talks about this, it is so that he can emphatically state that this part of his life had no impact on him. Yeah. If you're really weird, it's very strange. Literal impact of fists had no impact upon him. Yeah. Yeah. And in 1958, he declared, quote My Life, and Firth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions. You don't get to say that. By the way, I feel like you don't like, I feel like you don't. I feel like I said that to a shrink once about my parents divorce and then wept. He didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. I mean, what's this? What's this fluid coming out of me? And it's like, yeah, in 1974, when discussing the times he was beaten in the streets by Nazis, he insisted to a reporter quote, that part of my childhood was not a key to anything. I was not consciously unhappy. I was not acutely aware of what was going on for children. These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now to explain everything, psychoanalytically. But let me tell you, the political persecutions of my childhood are not what control my life, which is really interesting, right? And so I know, right? Like, I'm sure the reporters like, I'm ready to ask follow-ups. Whatever. He stops talking. Just like anyway, you know, you're not supposed to remember from before 10 anyway. I mean, I wouldn't know. That's how I can kill. I went numb at 9. I don't feel anything. It is. It's like, you know, I got assaulted by a Nazi when I was 33 and it left a mark. Any but anytime. It's just growing up in that environment without being assaulted is gonna leave psychological damage. If your parents assault you completely safe from street violence, it would. It could not. Yeah. And it's like, Henry, this is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you, but it's fine. If being beaten by Nazis as a child left a mark on, it's the only time you wanna Matt Damon, him with your Robin Williams arm. Yeah, like it's OK, man. Yeah, it's interesting. The way he explains, the ways he explains why this didn't leave any mark on him are very interesting. And I want to quote from Henry Kissinger in 2004 now. I experienced the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people of my age so that I did not find it traumatic. I have resisted the psychiatric explanations which argue that I developed a passion for order over justice and that I translated it into profound interpretations of the international system. I wasn't concerned with the international system. I was concerned with the standing of the football team of the town in which I lived, which you can't do both. You can't pay attention to soccer, obviously, as as as no one thinks, Henry, that as an 8. Year old, you were like, well, this is going to impact the way that I believe state power should be used when I'm Secretary of State and several decades Ohio, and I'm an adviser to Dixon. Just like if you have a car accident as a kid, you're not thinking, well, this is going to make me unable to let other people touch me when I'm 33, right? You know, like, I'll hate, I'll hate freeway merging. Like like, obviously man and I don't know like there's a degree to which in in terms of this is the period in which you can be sympathetic to him. I do think there's probably something to be said that if you have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the Nazis anything, you know, even the the like this left an impact on me, right. Because like, **** them. I don't want to say that it had an influence on me, which I I get. No, having grown up in a traumatic, you know, sort of childhood, you you can shut it down and tell yourself that you're fine. Like you he he. The way he survived it was to to shut his emotions down a little bit and tell him himself that he was fine, when it actually it is by far probably the most traumatic thing there and and created a ******* monster because he didn't get any psychological help. I'm a monster, naturally. It is not nature versus nurture. Yeah, I would have killed just as many people as I worked for the not despicable ***** ** **** either way. Don't judge my family. Now, as the 20s rolled to an end, the political situation in the Weimar Republic gets correspondingly more dire. In 1925, during a Nazi rally in Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel of the Jews. The local response at that point in 25 is overwhelmingly negative, and in 1927 only 200 people in Firth were members of the Nazi Party. Hitler visited the city again in 1928, to little effect. The party just got 6.6% of the vote in local elections that year. But the Great Depression. Rescues at the end of the 20s, rescues the Nazis, flagging poll members. As for its economy collapses, people grow more willing to listen to the fascists. In the 1930 elections, Nazis surged from 2.6% of the vote nationwide to 18.3% in first they won 23.6% of the vote, which is 4 times better than they've done two years earlier, and very frightening for a lot of relevant reasons to today. Yeah, uh Nazis electoral successes continue to pace the next year and by 1933 more than 22,000 furthers were Nazi voters. I want to quote from Niall Ferguson's book again. On April 9th 193215 SA men were set upon by iron front members as they left the Pro Nazi Yellow Lion pub. Two months later Nazi supporter Fritz Reiner Gruber was beaten up for being a swastika list. The same fate befell another Nazi caught selling the NSDAP newspaper, the Voca Shibao Bacter. The police watched helplessly on the evening of July. 30th as a mob through potatoes and stones at a Nazi motorcade going from the first airport to the Nuremberg Stadium. The car carrying Hitler himself was among the vehicles. But just a year after, Hitler's car gets pelted after the Nazis began to consolidate power. When Hitler's the chancellor, the mood is very different. On March 3rd there's another torchlight parade by the Nazis through birth, and on the evening of March 9th a crowd of between 10 and 12,000 peoples gathers outside one of the the bars there to watch the raising of the red Nazi flag. So. You know it it gets bad pretty fast. Can I can I just flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock throwing event? Yeah, I feel like he turned first. Yeah, yeah, we're doing rocks. Ohh, I'd know that was a drawing of a rock. Those look like potatoes now. Lord, you know what? I'm gonna say it right now. If that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler. We could have we could have avoided that butterfly effect. The guy? Yeah. Yeah. For want of a rock. World War Two. Did you guys see my potato hit that car? It really smushed it. I do love the idea that he also boiled it before. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't wanna look weird. So Louis Kissinger lost his job teaching once the Nazis came to power. Henry, again, who'd never gotten along with his dad, watches his father collapse into what biographer Thomas Allen Schwartz describes as a quote, state of immobility and psychological depression. Louis withdrew into his study, according to Henry's brother Walter, while the world outside veered closer to nightmare. In his book Henry Kissinger and American Power, Schwartz writes, Kissinger and his brother saw the progressive segregation, isolation, and. Humiliation the Jews of Firth experienced, even their attempt to watch soccer games came with the risk of there being beaten by a young Nazi thugs. The world of Hinz's childhood rapidly collapsed, and his parents and the older generation of first Jews could not protect their young from the hatred around them. After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Kissinger's mother began to look for a way to leave Germany. A cousin in the United States was willing to provide the financial support that would allow the Kissinger's to immigrate in August of 1938, after a last visit with Paul's elderly parents in leadership. Where Heinz saw his father cry for the first time, the family headed to New York. Only three months later, during Kristallnacht, the synagogue and Firth, like hundreds of others throughout Germany, burned to the ground in a night of orchestrated violence. So once, yeah, I mean, that is crazy. When Henry leaves 4th, there are 2000 Jews in the Jewish community. At the end of World War Two, there are 40. Oh my God. Yeah. And three months is. So, I mean, that is barely. I mean, really, that's like, they stay as late as they possibly can. Yeah, at least 13 members of Kissinger's family would perish in the Holocaust. Obviously, it being what it is. I don't know that you can. It's easy. It's not super easy to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as devastated as you would expect of a German Jewish family. And he does acknowledge for the first time he likes admits that, like some part of this had an influence on him. It was moving away from Germany and like going across the world to the United States and he says, and this is, I think, him being somewhat. Honest that the deepest impact of all this was, quote, all the things that had seemed secure and stable collapsed. And many of the people that once had that one had considered the study examples suddenly were thrown into enormous turmoil themselves and into fantastic insecurities. People will say, we'll talk about this later. He's very much in order obsessed guy and like, OK, yeah, I get it. Like I get where that came from, you know? Right. Yeah. I mean that's very common for that happened in, you know, Chile and other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism. They. There's a lot of people who are like, I just want it to be the same. Yeah, well, and yeah, you you hear that all the time here, too. I mean, not not like that, obviously. It's far. It was far more dire. But there are a lot of people I know who keep saying that **** here, who keep being, like, I just wanted to go back to normal. And you're just like, that ship has ******* sailed. That is not, you know? Yeah, it never does. It never can. But we all do it. Like, even the the kind of, like, obsession with 90s nostalgia is evidence of that, and not because the 90s. They're like a perfect time. But because like, yeah, you didn't you weren't aware of is how ****** like, like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into like an unable to handle him. Just like limp biscuits, too aggressive. And I'm like, Oh my God, we don't have money. Yeah, yeah, you went from, Oh my gosh, you know, the OJ Simpson trial. What a mess to well, now what plague has killed 1,000,000 people? Oh my God, it's very better. Give me that time capsule, yeah. It's it's so funny that parallels because I'm I literally am writing a dollop right now and and the guy turns into his own authoritarian and his dad shot himself in his house and isolated. It's so it's so weird how these things I mean how should if you I mean, just to continue off of that Dave Hitler's dad dies when he's a little kid, pledges the family finances and situation and insecurity and chaos. Yeah yeah. You. Yeah. It's it. When when something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses. Perhaps it has an influence ohgod yes, ma'am. Yeah, despite what Kissinger said. Despite what Kissinger said. But you know what? Henry Kissinger loves? The products and services that support this podcast, Robert. Well, I look. Henry is one of the few VIP's on. Island where you can hunt children anytime he wants. He gets a free 3 bedroom apartment on the child hunting island. Sophie. That knows? Yeah, because for some ******* reason he is still alive. Yes, well let's be honest here, this is essentially his eulogy because when we finish this podcast and it's published, Kissinger should die. It's possible. I'm planning a darker coat ritual using. My own blood in a candle I bought in Mexico to deal with. Like, I mean, like, I'm not gonna say I'm not doing it, you know? It's a it's a voodoo doll podcast. Yeah. Anyway, here's here's some ads. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Families start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. From behind now, a word from our sponsor better help if you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy. And better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at anytime. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about, or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ah, we're back. Have you guys gone to the island where you can hunt little kids for sports? It's it's amazing. It's all so fresh. It's very yeah, the brisket expected to be that fresh. Hmm. So good. So Kissinger today has I. Sophie's checker. Kissinger today has idyllic recollections of his early years in the United States. He often talks about walking down the streets of his neighborhood, seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing the street because he's, you know, he's afraid he's going to get beat. Yeah. Like. And then he would realize, like, oh, that doesn't happen here. Which obviously did another part beating those boys. Yeah. They're just wearing brown shirts because they like brown. Yeah. Yes. Henry, this is a country where some people who wear brown art Nazis. Some of them aren't. Some, some of them are Henry, yeah. Different did not mean easy, though. The Kissinger spent their first years in a crowded Bronx apartment, living with family. Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to take control of the family and handle ****. She became a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline. The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish families with a familiar background. A lot of them were from other parts of Germany, and so the Kissinger's benefited from the help of several community organizations and getting back on their feet. He he he benefits a lot from the fact that, you know, there's not really a government. Support network but the people other Jewish refugees who have come over from Europe have built support networks to make it easier for new folks coming right. Henry's teen years were a mix of school and synagogue. He failed his first driving test but excelled at soccer. And he grew to admire many aspects of his new home, including, quote, American technology, the American tempo of work, and American freedom, which I might say is in direct opposition to the American tempo of work. But whatever, Kissinger was frustrated to the cat. Though by the casual approach to life that he saw in his new peers, he thought they were superficial. He wrote at the time that quote, no youth my age has any kind of spiritual problem that he's seriously concerns himself with, which, well, yeah. OK, Henry. All right, Hank. Fair. I like if you come over from Nazi Germany and you're like, people here seem carefree and shallow, it's like, yeah, probably, yeah. And your schooling was basically like some old dude being like, you didn't read these, right? You know, like, you're gonna be like, jeez, these guys are really not. Focused on what matters. Yeah. Look, I think maybe I don't wanna. I don't wanna be too critical, but New York could use a little bit of Nazism, you know what I mean? It's a little loose. Yeah. Good Lord. So because of all of this, this is. This is why one of his biographers, Schwartz, describes young Henry as socially inept. He's not not great at talking to. It's not great at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again, though. First a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nerenberg. But most of his focus was on schoolwork and soccer. Kissinger graduated George Washington High School and started at the City College of New York. He took classes at night so he could work during the day at a brush cleaning factory. Some of his cousins owned these brushes off. Filthy boys. Keep going. It's the most amazing. Like old timey job ever invent. Amazing. Basically like all I can picture is just like the jobs are either like pressing sheets or washing brushes. These brushes are not going to clean themselves, gentlemen. How many times do I have to tell you? Well, and the corollary is some mom being like Billy. You didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. What she gonna do now? It's very funny. Everything old timey is funny and people are going to think this in the future about, I don't know, having water. So at this point Henry's ambition in life was, to get, quote, a nice job, likely an accounting one, biographer noted quote nothing that happened to Kissinger during those years encouraged him to read more widely. His historical interests were as underdeveloped when he was twenty as when he arrived in New York as a boy of 15, which is the first normal. Thing about him that like, yeah, dude, he's he's you know, whatever. Like he's a kid. Yeah. We're about to get in the studio 54 years, I feel like, yes. So World War Two happens starts for the United States, at least. It started elsewhere a bit earlier, but for for the US, right. We'll do it when Henry is 21. He did not initially feel called to volunteer for service, but when he got his draft notice in 1943, he complied and joined the roughly 16 million Americans who became soldiers. During this. And if it weren't for this, Henry Kissinger probably never would have been a figure of historical importance. Again. He just kind of wanted to be an accountant. But being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for a quiet, boring life and thrust him into the world that says it all. Yeah, it's not. Maybe don't draft this guy, right? Now you could be like you don't. I did not actually see your Venmo this year, so I tried to make a process. Yeah, there's a future where he just has really strong opinions on W twos. Yeah, exactly. You know, you put yourself as 1099, but I feel like it was actually more like W4. Hmm. Yeah. Or he does like a Bernie Madoff thing. But either way, it's a much better future than the one we got. We'll take the Madoff ending form for sure. Yeah, fine. So we have letters that Henry sent to his brother Walter. During training. He he purported to like the quote middle Americans. He met there, but warned his sibling, don't become too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there. Well, hello. Hello, I did pick up. He did pick up a little song from the Nazis. It turns out he's a little bit right. Yeah, he also. He also advised against having sex with the quote filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific to have been random. I think Kissinger had a bad experience with the with the camp following me with the idea that like everyone at camp has syphilis. It's all about doing what? Your nose for three. Every girl I ****** had syphilis. I ****** one girl got syphilis. Everyone of them has it. That's why they're Commission zero of the syphilis epidemic, right? Yes, that's why it's so you're surrounded by councillors. So the army administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and he earned entrance into a special training program that sent particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship in 1943 while he was at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months, and Henry and Henry finished twelve engineering classes. During his off hours, he would hitchhike home and see his girlfriend. He was a brilliant student, recognized by his roommates as the quote brainiest of a very intelligent Class 1 classmate, recalled. He didn't read books. He ate them with his eyes, his fingers, and with his squirming in the chair or bed and with his mumbling criticism. She's right. That's use more salt if I'm being picky, but other than that, he sounds like a book. This is really weird way to describe it, dude. It's kind of what, what? The way it looks now is like he eats books. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. Kind of one had like a visual, like, ohh, reaction to that, to that line. Like, ooh, cringe. I now kind of want the story of that classmate. Like, yeah, what caused you to describe a dude reading books that way? Well, and my college I ate analogies. I just would just just devour them. I need them like a synonym, you know? His professors would use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers. And for a brief period of time, he had status and respect which he'd begun to crave as a young man. His time in this program was cut short because, you know, D-Day we we decide America is like, we're going to do us a Normandy landing. And the army is like, well, we probably don't need smart people for that. So let's pull these kids out of the class and show them how to get shot by guys like you. Want to talk to you over here about something totally different? If you guys? No, no, not you. Not you. Dad, you stay right there, Chad. Talk about these other guys. Thank you. Good luck. So Henry and his classmates get sent back to basic training where the drill sergeants, according to Henry, took Glee and tormenting the college kids. Which I don't know, probably true. While he was preparing to go overseas and this is what my grandpa was doing in World War Two, and I hope he bullied Henry Kissinger. I I hope my grandpa got a chance to give Henry Kissinger some ****. Fingers crossed, right? He did. He did. He did. Absolutely. So while he was preparing to go overseas, his biographer Schwartz writes. Even in the misery of Camp Claiborne, however, Kissinger stood out, selected by his commanders to provide soldiers with a weekly briefing on war news. Although he did the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older German refugee in an American uniform, Fritz Kramer, who came to Camp Claiborne in May 1944 to speak about the meaning of war. After Kramer's impassioned talk, Kissinger wrote him a note. Dear Private Kramer, I heard you speak yesterday. Yeah, because yeah, he literally like, it's like, I I like what you had to say. Can I help you? Something like it's that's literally what what? The notice scare notebooks? Yeah. Kramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter returning a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation and dinner, insisting they speak in German, not English. The Lutheran Kramer later said that he was taken with this quote, little Jewish refugee he had met, who he believed as yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow, that's an interesting way to describe him. It sounds like a guy who eats books. Yeah. And this got Kramer is Kramer is oppression, which I don't know the degree to which that that means anything to a lot of people. The pressions. So there was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from the left. Once the Nazis got into power, the resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian. Not because they were good dudes, but because they were way too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we wanted to fight on takeover all of Europe. Like, with a Kaiser who has royal blood. Not this, like, gross, little corporal and stuff. And it's complicated because, like, a lot of those Prussians got murdered by the Nazis. And as a general rule, your sympathy is with the people who get murdered by the Nazis. But it's also like, you got murdered by the Nazis for the wrong reasons, right? Right. Yeah, right. They were like, we have one small note, but everything else is working great for us. They were the guys who were like, Hitler's bad because he's not gonna win the war against Russia. Right. Wow. OK. Yeah. So this guy, Fritz. Cramer would be, in Henry's words quote the greatest single influence on my formative years since Fritz was a Prussian conservative. So for an idea of how ******* German Fritz Kramer is, he wears a monocle to make his wow, I work harder to make his weak. I work better, like, Oh my God. I am the craziest ******* ever. Wow, what the ****? And you know Fritz hated the Nazis, which good, good. He also hated the Communists, which you have to think there was some some some some such stuff there. Yeah, you know, Communists is a mixed bag like everybody, but I don't think he's very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits for its with expressing quote, a respect for international law and emphasis on the moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by the moral basis of civilization is not the same as what I think. Maybe you or I might be. Yeah. OK yeah. Now that yeah. I think the most important influence Kramer had was he's Kramer is very conservative and he, Henry is kind of a natural conservative and Kramer really reinforces this feeling in Henry which is expressed by a growing sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of the political median. Right. Which you get why he has a tendency towards this if your life if your childhood is this like battle of extremes in your hometown. I get why you would kind of veer towards the middle and this guy Kramer really turns that up to 11 in him one write up in The New Yorker notes quote he warned Kissinger not to emulate clever Ling intellectuals and their bloodless cost benefit analysis believing Kissinger to be musically attuned to history. He told him only if you do not calculate will you really have the freedom which distinguishes you from the little people. So that's bad so that's going to go really bad I mean you really are like I mean this is his Morpheus we're just starting to be like. OK. This is yeah. By the way, have you thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going with the wand that is so much like? Finish your week. Eye. You must punish the week even when it comes to your eyes. Yeah, yeah, he is. He has found a kid who, like, has a problematic history of starting fires and is now teaching him how to build a fertilizer bomb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a bad influence. Yeah, he matches us. So so but have you ever seen a Zippo? Yeah, it is a great. So Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the 84th entrant for Infantry Division as it moves towards Nazi Europe. His division sees a decent amount of combat. He does not. He's a back ranker, he handles administrative and management tasks, and he finds the power and authority he gets through his time in the service, intoxicating though he never again. He doesn't fight directly. He does earn a bronze star for valor because he helps catch and take out a Gestapo sleeper cell, primarily due to the fact that, like, he's just, you know, a very observant dude in 1945. Participates in the liberation of a concentration camp alum Ahlem. I'm not 100% sure how to pronounce it. 1 prisoner at the camp remembered him as the young American who announced you are free for Kissinger. The overwhelming memory of this experience was seeing inmates he described as being barely recognizable as humans and feeling the instinct to feed them before learning that some were so starved that solid food would kill them shortly thereafter. Yeah, I mean one thing you got to say he did. He does not like it. Got a sheltered upbringing. And you, I mean, like, if you wouldn't be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that made him be like, ohh, you know, you can, there's, there's good you can provide, like provide the people who are tortured and starved. Some, you know, help you, you could take away from this. Like, my God, war is evil and we should do everything we can to prevent, right? As opposed to yeah, baby. Well, let's see how it plays out. Dave, settle down. Maybe this is the 6th part behind the ******** episode about a cool dude who does nice things. Yeah. Yeah, I just brought you guys here to talk about a chill guy. Yeah. So, shortly after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on his experience where he asks, quote, who was lucky? The man who draws circles in the sand and Mumbles I am free, or the bones that are interred in the hillside. He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in the 20th century. So I mean an understandably bleak take from liberating a concentration camp. Yeah, like that. That's fair. You know what is a bad time to move to an ad plug? I I didn't think you were gonna be brave enough to do this, but fair enough. Ohboy wow. Yeah, you know what makes me hungry? Yeah. Probably shouldn't go too far down that Rd. Let the ads do the talk and let the ads do the talking. The ads are gonna come and win the same way the Soviet Union did there by throwing wave after wave of men into Nazi trenches. Anyway, I think we lost it. We had it for a minute there. I took it too far, you know, I took it there. Here we go. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and. That meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy. At mintmobile.com/behind now a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just, you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy. And better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try. Better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey. And if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behindbetter. Com behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? That's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ohh, we're back. So when the war ends, World War Two, you know, that is. Sergeant Henry Kissinger finds himself as, quote, the absolute ruler of a small village named Bensheim. He enjoys this experience he really starts to like having. One thing that we're getting here is that he he he adores having power over people. Yeah, he really likes it. In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly to his family that he has, quote, absolute authority to arrest people. Jesus. And it's this is I'm a baby Kaiser. This is problematic because of what he does. Later I will say if you are a Jewish kid who has to flee Germany and then you come back and get made like the the military head of a town that's full of former Nazis, I get reveling in it a little bit, you know? Well, I for me, I'm having beheading Tuesdays, if that's me. Yeah. So again, he's not because of what he does later. This is unsettling, but like. That's understandable in the moment, yeah. Yeah. He appropriates a luxury home and a fancy car, both of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which is like, it's what you do, right? Yeah, fine. He gets a Butler. He he brags back to his family that he's Nazi. Butler's a ******* Nazi Butler. Absolutely. That's what arrested for not giving me butter. Yeah. That is, that is obvious. Now, that said, he's also, to his credit, really aware of not wanting the Germans in town to identify this guy who was absolute ruler as being Jewish, I think because he doesn't want it to make things a problems for people whose Jewish people who stay behind in Germany. He makes other soldiers refer to him as Mr Henry rather than by his last name. He's conscious. He doesn't want them to think, quote, that the Jews were coming back to take revenge, and he had a reputation in general as being more objective. As a as a ruler in this kind of. Than most Jewish veterans and similar positions in General, Henry counseled accommodation and rapprochement, with one exception. Communists as the Civil War, of course, right? I know we got this, like, understandable. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to upset the Nazis, but these comics. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And that's literally what happens. So the Cold War, you know, early stages in 1946, but already in that. Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left wing sympathies. I do, yeah. Why? Nazis just did this thing, like did conservatives. Yeah, that the leftist dude the left is due. He doesn't want them. He also wants to ban communists from teaching at the local schools, which again it's like, what the ****? How he and he he went straight Nazi all of a sudden now? Yeah, he's he's difficult, let's say fascist, let's let's say fascist, OK, yeah, yeah, fascist. Now he's a fascist. He he does a bit, he does a bit of Henry. He starts dating a Gentile German girl during this. Cause again, he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though, because they don't like this at all, they're they're like you're losing your your faith and Henry gets very combative. With them he sees them as a rational writing quote to me. There is not only right or wrong, but many shades in between. The real tragedies in life are not choices between right and wrong. Real difficulties bear difficulties of the soul, provoking agonies which you and your world of black and white can't begin to comprehend. How's the dog? How's the dog? Love you mom. Love you mom. Also how scruffs it's crafts good. Is his tail better? And his parents? His parents have the reaction we all did. Where they're like, hey, how are you? Hey, but it seems like the war may have. This call you Mr Man had an effect on you. I've, I've said this ever since you met the monocle guy, but you're really intense. Yeah, maybe, maybe all of the things you've seen have had an impact on you. And he responds to this by getting enraged and saying not everybody came out of this war as a psychoneurotic. Ohh, that shows him. That'll teach him that. That's exactly, that's fine. That's fine. That's exactly that's the exact right reaction of a non psychoneurotic when you're when you're screaming. I'm not a psychoneurotic. Letters? You're a psychoneurotic. I got syphilis from Garland Camp. If all they're saying is like, hey Henry, do you think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental scars that you need to, like, heal from? Hey, maybe I should draw that to the toilet. OK. Alright, buddy. Alright, pal, we're just we're just tough. We're just write letters here, buddy. We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. It's one of those things. This is a period of time, obviously, like every like one of the things that causes what happens later in American history is that. 16 million Americans go to war, and a bunch of them get traumatized, and they come back to a world where, like, their dad was always like, if you talk about your feelings, I'm going to hit you. Yeah. Henry's family doesn't seem to be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you want to talk about your feelings? And he's like, I'm not crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, obviously, the fact that this is a time in which, like, men don't ******* do therapy does have an impact on it. But I think his family's probably more understanding than well, he also has no, I mean, even now he has no acknowledgement of like, his trauma, so he probably even in the actual moment. I mean, you're probably even more defensive, you know? Yeah. In 1947, Kissinger finally decides to leave Germany for the second time on Fritz Kramer's advice he applies. He applies late to Harvard and he was accepted, winning one of the two national scholarships. School gave New Yorkers each year. Wow. Now Chapo Trap House did a tournament of evil people from Harvard. It's awesome. And Kissinger won, so that's yeah, that makes sense. Ohh boy, the Ivy League's good at producing bad people. Maybe we should look into that one, so, one of his classmates recalls. And he obviously he does like, it's Henry Kissinger. He's very good at school. One of his classmates recalls that he, quote, worked harder and studied more than anybody else on campus. He studies school. He ate school. Couldn't stop him from shoving pencils in his mate the campus like Godzilla would have. He nearly died. He almost died from lead. His studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him. He made quote no lasting friendships with other students. He seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered around him. So Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer had started him off on. He agreed with Gertha, I believe, is the as the name of the German philosopher that if he quote, had to choose between justice and disorder on the one hand, and injustice in order on the other, I would always choose the latter. So, well, there we go. He's made his choice. That's. Yeah. Very telling. Like, we we know. We know, we get. Yeah. Yeah. It's just nice to know where, like, around the time, like, OK, so he was pretty defined. OK. So, Henry, you know some other people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah. They had an impact on your child. Yeah. Yeah. No ****. Yeah. Right. But, you know, it's just such trauma works, too. It's a strange thing that he it's so conscious. Like, he. Yeah. He's so completely aware of it. Yeah. But he's like a psychopath. He might be. I mean I I think if you're we I I try not to do too much like the psychoanalyzing people but like ******* maybe, right. Well psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about giving people over in the room. You know ladies, man. Like there is a they they learn how to be a human and then they sort of and a lot of you got syphilis at camp and a lot of them get syphilis at camp like Henry Kissinger. Yeah. Well Sophie can we let's green light some Henry kiss some some T-shirts? That are just Henry Kissinger with his face riding off from syphilis. People are gonna want to wear that. Ohh, just pictures. He's making the kissy kissy lips and his lips are falling off. You're like a Kissinger ohh let me French Kissinger you. So he meets his second mentor at Harvard. Henry Kissinger has a lot of mentors. And this is maybe a lesson to never mentor anybody you never know. They might become Henry Kissinger. Yeah. Don't teach people things. Sabotage them at every step. Right? Next time you drive past a kindergarten, throw them a textbook. That's all lies, you know, just slow them down. So his second mentor is this guy, William Yandell Eliot, and Elliot has is, is a professor at Harvard. He's also, like very politically connected. He had advised several US presidents on international matters, and Kissinger was drawn to this guy because not only is he a respected educator, but he's really well connected to people with power. And Elliot, one of the things that, like, he is famous for being a big advocate of is what is what's called real politique as embodied by, you know. In particularly the guys that Kissinger grows up admiring and that Elliott, you know, helps teach him to admire our men like Clausewitz and Bismarck. These, these, these guys who are like, Bismarck is the dude who makes Germany right. We have it. We get a Germany because Bismarck orchestrates over a period of of like, I think it's decades. Gradually he, he welds all these different German principalities and kingships together and then helps to orchestrate this war, which out of which emerges Germany. Like, that's the kind of dude that Otto von Bismarck is, and he is. Kind of the master of the kind of politics that Kissinger comes to respect and he Kissinger calls Clauswitz and Bismarck philosophers of history. That's how he sees this guy, these guys, which is not really what I would call autovon Bismarck. Like, he's very good at what he does, obviously, but but not, I wouldn't call him a philosopher. I want to quote now from the book Kissinger's Shadow, by Greg Grandin. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his own view of how history operated. It was not a story of liberal progress. Were of class consciousness, or of cycles of history, or of cycles of birth, maturity, and decline. Rather, it was a series of meaningless incidents, fleetingly given shape by the application of human will. As a young infantryman, Kissinger had learned that victors ransacked history for analogies to Guild, their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out historical causes of their misfortune. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know stuff. It's it's maybe not. Yeah. Yeah, you can think about that however you want, so. A lot of folks who analyze the the Kissinger in this. Season one sentence in Kissinger's undergraduate thesis and his thesis is titled The Meaning of History. But they can kind of explains a lot of what comes to be going down old paper. It is, right. I mean, honestly, he's not a dude who makes like little leaps, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do we love? This is the line. The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience. Which is? You know, read it. Read it again. The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience. Wow. And this is, this is a like a heavily influenced by France French existentialism. His thesis cites Jean-paul Sarte a lot. And both Sart and Kissinger think that morality is is not an inward thing. It's determined by actions, which is not an unreasonable thing to believe, right, that like what matters is what you do, you know, where is that line from the Bible? You're not damned by what goes into your head, but like what you know comes out right. Like that's not an unreasonable thing to believe, Sart, he believes that like action creates the possibility of intellectual, individual and collective responsibility, right, that morality is determined by action, but that our actions create this possibility of like individual and collective moral responsibility for things. Kissinger does not come to that conclusion. Kissinger believes that morality is determined by action, but he also thinks that like you, moral indeterminacy is a condition of human freedom. It's this idea that. You can't be bound by morality and be free. If you want to freely act, you have to be able to act above morality, right? Lord, that's yeah, so that's that's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts. That's how I mean a lot of his intellectual development is him and I'll you know also a lot of this is obviously all of this. One of the things that you have to account for is all of this analysis of like his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things like so sure retrospective from him and from like the people who are sources who are saying this is what he was like as a kid. There is that degree of biasing, right like that this is after he is the person that he is because if he had gone on to like just be a professor, nobody would have given a **** about what Henry Kissinger, the accountant. That would be like, yeah, look, just would you what do I owe? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me what the IRS gets, man. Yeah, I I don't. I don't need another lecture on this. Yeah, and and Kissinger's the fact that he becomes so kind of. Moral relativism is the word I've used. I don't even know if that's right, but like this idea that, like freedom and morality are kind of, like inherently opposed. This upsets a lot of people around him, including people who are like his big supporters, including that Professor Elliott Guy at his retirement party, Henry Kissinger, Elliott's retirement party, Henry Kissinger, and a number of students gathered to, like, bid him farewell. And journalist David Halberstam wrote that Elliott had positive things to say about almost all of his students who had gathered there, but when he reached Kissinger? He said this, Henry, he began. You're brilliant, but you're arrogant. In fact, you're the most arrogant man I've ever met. Kissinger became Ashen faced. Mark my words, Eliot continued. Your arrogance is going to get you in real trouble one day. That is amazing on so many levels, like at your retirement party to be like, hey, and you listen, **** *** yeah, chill out. And then for that also to be totally incorrect, like, you know, I saw this, like clip of some, some guy in, like Atlantic City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well, what does make, what makes a Native American? And the guy just goes, Sir, I'm glad you're never going to get into any real power. And you're like, no dude, oh dude. Well, and one of the things like this. Professor Elliott is like one of the guys who helps get him his first big gigs and ****. Like, he's a major bass. And I think this is kind of him belatedly being like, well, no. Whoops. Whoopsie. Whoopsie poopsie. I'm going to go patronize a Cambodian restaurant just to make myself feel a little better. Yeah, right. Real well, everybody went to, like, Vietnamese food. Just give me the tip slip. Don't even need the food. Just give me the tip slip. I owe you guys. I'm not gonna tell you why. There you go. Don't worry about it. Take my take everything. Here's my gonna hang. I gotta go. Do you know if there's a Bangladeshi restaurant nearby? I'm actually hitting a lot of spots tonight. And not eating. I'll be honest. Long list. I'm going to a lot of places. No, no, not German. No, not German. No, no, not German. You know what? They're actually fine. I don't think I need. Yeah. So his thesis that that thing that that he says to Kissinger it it should be what happens but our society rewards psychopaths above anybody else. And so to be fair most societies. Yeah so they think should be is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world which isn't what this is and it's it's one of those things. This is something like that it kind of more into anthropological thinking but like one of the reasons. People will say, like, why we have psychopaths is that if you're in a band of 70 people who are like hunter gatherers starving through the winter, yeah, it's it's helpful to have a guy like Henry Kissinger can say like, well these these six people are too old and sick and we have to let them die. Otherwise we'll all starve, right? That's a situation in which it's good to have a psychopath because you need someone who just doesn't give a **** about certain things. When you have a Society of billions that's global, it becomes a problem because that kind of thinking is not so useful. And and tends to just get millions and millions of people killed. Yeah, it's it's not great. Anyway, Henry's thesis is published in 1950, at roughly the same time Harry Truman decides to send troops to Korea and to aid French forces in Vietnam. Professor Elliott told Kissinger that the Korean War was an example of the East quote testing the civilization of the West. Yeah, people doing their own thing in their own country is a test to us, you know? The Koreans and the Vietnamese having completely their own **** going on as a test of us in the United States. How dare you? You know, Ho Chi. Men not wanting to be ruled over by the French is really a test of American power. It's very insulting. I mean, obviously they see that, like, the Soviet Union was orchestrating all of this, and the Soviet Union is involved too, but, like, it's not. They'll look at us in the eyes. They've got their own **** going on. Dude. They are on the same level. How dare they do this? So as the US increased its commitments to a growing series of wars in Southeast Asia, Kissinger grew more dedicated to the work of a guy named Oswald Spengler Spengler's book. The decline of the West is not something I am well equipped to describe or explain in detail, but Greg Grandin is. So I'm going to quote from him again. Spangler waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality. He insisted that there existed a higher plane of experience that was inaccessible to rational thought, a plane where instinct and creativity reigned. We have, Spengler thought, hardly yet an inkling of how much in our reputedly objective values and experiences is only disguise, only image and expression. To get behind image and expression, to penetrate perceived material power and interests and grasp what spingler called Destiny, one needed not information, but intuition, not facts. But hunches not reason, but a soul sense, a world feeling often enough. A statesman does not follow, does not know what he is doing, Spengler wrote. But that does not prevent him from following with confidence. Just the one path that leads to success. Oh my God. And that is George W Bush. Crawl out of a pile of goo now, like. I mean this. I hate us for our freedom. George Bush, like, pops out of Henry Kissinger's back as a polyp. Yeah, right, that's like, that's like Doctor Pimple Popper, posted Rumsfeld. Bush like thing like, we know where they are. They're in the east, West, North and South. Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating. But he did disagree with Spingler about Spengler's primary contention, which is that civilizational decay was inevitable. Spengler argued that civilizations had spring summers, autumns and winters, right. That they proceed through kind of like inevitable stages. And there's not really any way to stop this procession, right. Which is, I think a pretty reasonable like, yeah. And symbolization is going to have like a life cycle, right? That's a thing. Like, historically, you can argue pretty well, Kissinger doesn't believe this. Everything dies. Yeah. Of course that's actually not what. Yeah. And of course, of course, the man who is, like, living way beyond his shelf life is, like, told you so, yeah. Doesn't die. So here's Grandon again, talking about Kissinger, how Kissinger grapples with this aspect of Spangler having lost a sense of purpose. Civilizations lurch outward, define meaning. They get caught up in a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by history's cosmic beat power for power's sake. Blood for blood imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote, summing up the decline of the West's argument, an outward thrust to hide the inner void. Kissinger accepted spring Spangler's critique of past civilizations, but rejected his determinism. Decay was not inevitable, Spengler, Kissinger said, merely described a fact of decline and not its necessity. There is a margin, he would write in his memoirs, between necessity and accident, in which the Statesman, by perseverance and intuition, must choose, and thereby. Shape the destiny of his people so spingler's like, yeah, it seems like when civilizations lose their purpose and start to age, they lurch out. Would engage in wars of imperial conquest and a search for meaning, and that leads to disaster, which destroys them and Kissinger's life. But what if you did the wars right? Yeah, but what if you were good at it? But what if I was involved in everyone? If I was like a Mickey in the corner of Rocky, yeah it's it is an amazing like this guy being like here is what happens to empires every single time there's an empire. This is a thing you can go through history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years. And Kissinger is like, no, I can do it right. But to be like, no you're. You're pretty close. You're pretty close. Bye. Yeah, I'm. I'm so I'm just thinking kill more like I heard what you said. Ups and downs, but I think you wipe everybody out. You know, you tried drinking their blood. It is the same logic I have seen every time I've seen more than one person get get stuck in the mud. It's always either one person gets stuck in the mud or 52 because one person gets stuck in the mud and the other 49 go, well, I saw it happen to that guy, but I think I can figure it out. I can get around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost like when you enter Congress. I've got a plan. I've got a plan. Ohh, I get money. Oh, never mind. I don't have a plan to lose my plan. Yeah, well, I have a plan, but it's a different one. And you are not going to like it a lot more about a pool. Yeah. In 1951, Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the Army on Psychological Warfare while he finished his graduate studies. Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not seem overly relevant to politics, but its first sentence had discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts of British and Australian that the efforts the British and Austrians made to contain Napoleon might be useful in handling the Soviet Union. I might argue, did Napoleon have a way to end all life? On Earth, if things went badly, what containers hand? Was that a factor in Napoleon wasn't that? Damn it. So a sword. Kissinger believes. He sees that containment and is a failure, which it is because people do not like being colonies. And if the the opposition to being a colony is communism, they'll be like, well, let's try communism. Being a colony seems to suck. So Kissinger sees that containment is a failure, but he also believes, believes not that like, well why don't we just like, let people do things and like just take care of our own ****. He's like, no, because containments. A failure war with the Soviet Union is inevitable. Now when Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the actions of the United States, but is instead quote, because of the existence of the United States as a symbol of capitalist democracy, it is literally the early extent of like, well, they hate us for our freedoms, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, that's that's that's where he's starting down. Obviously a lot of people are saying **** like this, right? This is not a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the John Birch Society, all sorts of ****. Yeah. On this. I don't wanna give too much credit there. It's clear by this point that Henry was going to get into politics, although law enforcement was a possibility too, because when he might, God, he gets, he starts being a professor at Harvard, right? Like after he graduates and stuff, he starts like helping out his stuff and teaching some classes. And at one point the school hosts an international seminar and when he hears that, like a bunch of foreign. Academics are coming to Harvard. He calls the FBI and volunteers to spy on people for this amazing as as I mean, honestly that it is so amazing with his background to be like to have that attitude. It just is. It really is. It's hard. It's hard to get there. It he you gotta give him credit. The man covers some ground. The man is a Batman villain. Yeah, he really is. So yeah, his love of politics and his first attempt to build. Influence at Harvard is by starting a journal named Confluence. Now this is extensibly, a journal that exists to create what he calls an international forum for discussion. Right. I just want to get good people talking from all around the world. You know let the ideas flights I got Ted talk kind of pitch. But he's he's really vague about he doesn't really seem to care about what particular discussions he encourages. And his critics would later claim that this journal was quote a fake, primarily an enterprise designed to make Kissinger known to powerful people, right. Yeah. Like he he just giving letting powerful people write. Circles. Because then then he gets him and he gets their their phone number. Right? He gets there, right. They're mailing. It's not working. Yeah, he's not working. Confluence leads to Henry's first mention in the pages of the New York Times, and despite what his critics claim, which is probably broadly accurate, the journal did also published some really significant figures, including Reinhold Neighbor and Hannah Arendt. But while he claimed commitment to free discourse, Kissinger had a real tendency to publish right wing ********* including Enoch Powell, a conservative British politician. Name is for comparing immigration to quote Rivers of Blood. Well, that's fair. I mean, I've always agreed with that. I mean, that is just so she like blood rivers. I love a blood river. Oh my God. Is the less the laziest of rivers? Hmm. Yeah, because you float real good. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's it's molasses. That's freedom if you can, if you can say immigrants are like a river of blood. It's that's the freedom he's talking about. That's the freedom. You want to know what other kind of freedoms he's interested in? Oh my God. I'm going to quote from Niall Ferguson from the book Kissinger here, an article by Ernst von Salomon, a right wing German writer who had been convicted for his role in the assassination of Walter Rathenau, a German foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an angry letter from Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation, who had provided money for both the International Seminar and the Journal. So first note, he publishes a guy who's basically pretty close to a Nazi. A far right German. Terrorist in the in the Weimar years. And it's so upsetting that a representative of the Ford Foundation complaints. I mean, if you can upset the Ford Foundation crossing that line, if the Ford Foundation is like your connection to a Nazi worries me, hey you. And that's coming from us. Who are really cool with that, who we are. We're like super fit into that. Look, I have the protocols of the Elders of Zion tattooed on my chest, but I'm also Ford Foundation employees. But throw a flag. The play I'm still flagging the play and our new cars coming out, the Ford swastika. Ohh man so. Quote Stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by a criminal and a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for, considering him a damned soul driven by the Furies. Demonstrating a remarkable self-confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on the side of two great tolerance, partly because I believe our readers sufficiently mature to make their own judgments. Kissinger argued that what Solomon represented was a symptom of certain tendencies of our age, but that. By appearing in a liberal journal like Confluence, Solomon was the one who was compromised Kissinger was not simply defending free speech he had solicited the article from Solomon tell telling the German about quote having long admired your writings even if I could not share your point of view what so it gets better and more relevant to today because when there's an outcry against this Kissinger writes a letter to his friend Kramer and says I have now joined you as the Cardinal villain in liberal demonology Oh my God this is. Ohg, it's just, he's just doing it now. Well, he's just doing it now. He's got the monocle now, too. It's like you're Glenn Greenwald. Talked to Joe Rogan. Yes. It's like, what the how? How is this still happening? How are you the pioneer of this, Henry Kissinger? How are you the pioneer of this? That's his explanation. If you're, if you're me, just listening to like, OK, OK, not sure what he's saying, but alright. OK, so we gotta hear from this Nazi who shot a dude. You OK? Because you alright, well, it'll anger the libs as long as you said it's cool. And next next month we have. Ed Gein is doing a little number. Ed Gein's gonna walk us through lamp workings. So, hmm. And then we're having the Zodiac killer on to teach us about proper parking techniques. Huh? Pentagrammic and coding. He'd actually be pretty good at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So once he had finished his dissertation, graduated, Henry found himself in need of like aesthetic. He's doing like he wasn't a professor at that point, he was, but he was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to teach, whatever. I didn't do a college. So but you know how grad students teach **** and stuff, but he wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get a an actual full time job as an assistant professor, but he's not able to because most people don't like Henry Kissinger. Any reason why that you can? A lot of people at Harvard are not loving it, not, not a huge for not loving the Nazi publishing Jew from Germany. Yeah, they are. They are they they consider him slightly problematic, and that's what it drifts for a bit. He's unable to find work, you know, and he's still, he's still doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's like, not, he's, he's, he's he's kind of adrift in his career until in 1954, he runs into a friend, Arthur Schlesinger, junior at Harvard, slashing her head, a letter in his possession from a former secretary of the Air Force. Defending Eisenhower, the Eisenhower administration standard of threatening massive retaliation for the so to the Soviets. Now, the gist of this idea that the Eisenhower administration really kicked off was that if we promised the Soviets that if there's ever a confrontation we will immediately like send out a world ending hail of nukes, right, then those lines won't get crossed, right? We won't have any kind of fight at all. If like that, if everyone knows those are mistakes, then nothing will happen, right? That's the idea. Kissinger disagrees with this take. Right. Which is reasonable to disagree with. Right. There's a lot of problems with the we will end the world if there's any kind of issue. I'm worried where he's gonna take it. He's gonna make it worse. He's gonna make it worse. He used the guys. He sure does. That's exactly what he does, Gareth. Because Kissinger yeah, we'll talk about what he does in a bit, but he writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this and he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower. He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller, but sure. Of course. Every everyone is in this. All the cool people. When the President rejects Kissinger's analysis at the advice of John Foster Dulles, Rockefeller resigns, and he resigns from his job with the administration, which, like temporarily like, closes a door to Henry. But the letter that Kissinger had received was well enough, like popular enough among other thinkers in Washington, that it earns him a job offer, heading a study group at the Council on Foreign Relations, studying nuclear weapons and foreign policy. But of course, Henry's problem with massive retaliation wasn't that using nuclear weapons was unconscionable. It was that the world ending nature of the threats the Eisenhower administration was making meant they would never nuke anybody. And Kissinger thought this was a terrible idea. Absolutely thought that nuclear weapons should be used tactically to secure battlefield victories against the communists. What's happening? What? Thinks he thinks it's bad to have nukes and not use them. He's yeah, that's his. That's his angle. Yeah. What in the ****? It's good. Yeah, it's wild that in this argument between, if there's a fight, we'll kill everybody. Or what if we just try using nukes a little bit, the kill everybody guys have the more reasonable take. I mean it. Really. You're close. You're close together. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We can get off a couple of ticks much faster. It's it's incredible. And also, but like, again, this is this, he's the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration. Nelson Rockefeller is not a right winger who's, like, this guy's got some **** going on, you know, we should listen to him. And, like, he's a lot of people who are not like, you know, hard, right? Dudes are like, yeah, maybe it makes sense. We got to be using these, like, tactical. Otherwise, you should at least consider the possibility. You know, he makes a good point. He uses smart words and he quotes from nuking folks. You've got a lot of words. Ohh. So that is part one of our epic series Henry Kissinger. Jesus Christ, dude, maybe become an accountant guy. What a guy. In Part 2, we'll talk about how he gets into power. So that's going to be a hoot for everybody. But feel like before we do that, you guys do you guys like do like a like a like a like a giant, influential. The popular podcast that maybe this this podcast is is heavily influenced by. Is that something you guys do? Are you talking about Rogan? Yes, yes. You are both Joe Rogan, right? Yeah. The dollop, yes, the dollop. Cast. It is your podcast. Your we believe in using the nukes we? Yes that that was that. Your six part series. The dollops. Why we need the nuke people. Yeah, go for it. Check out the dollop if you have not already. Just a a ******* very, very funny podcast. You guys wanna plug anything else before we we roll out into Part 2? I mean my ears a couple of times during this, but yeah. Well, you can go to dollarpodcast.com. We're on tour all over the place in Australia and and domestically soon. That will be very exciting. I am excited toward touring to exist again. Thing in our lives? Yeah, fingers crossed. Until Part 2, go home and read some Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way that makes you much, much worse. Yep. Yes. Yeah, put the monocle on the bad eye. Yeah. Correct. Hi everybody, Robert Evans here and my novel after the revolution is available for preorder now from AK Press Org. Now if you go to Akuressa org, you can find after the revolution just Google apress.org. After the revolution you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book, and if you pre-order now from either of these independent bookstores or from AK Press, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also pre-order it in physical or in Kindle form from Amazon or. Pretty much wherever books are sold, so please Google AK, Press after the revolution, or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre-order it. You'll get a signed copy and you'll make me very happy. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting. Dreams let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Survive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. The monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.