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Why Would Anyone Want to Appease Hitler? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:14
Speaker 2: Chuck and we're just goose stepping to Jerry's orders like
0:17
Speaker 2: usual here on stuff you should do. Oh no, no, no,
0:22
Speaker 2: thank you. I'm glad you cleared that up for the
0:24
Speaker 2: new listeners who are like, oh, these guys are Nazis.
0:26
Speaker 2: They hadn't realized.
0:28
Speaker 1: No, this is I really enjoyed studying this one because I,
0:32
Speaker 1: as you know, am not the biggest student of war,
0:37
Speaker 1: so I never like sat around and watched the History Channel,
0:39
Speaker 1: and this one is very much a History Channel type
0:42
Speaker 1: of episode. So I feel like I have a much
0:44
Speaker 1: better understanding of the lead up to World War Two.
0:48
Speaker 1: And also it's amazing how much this reflects modern times
0:53
Speaker 1: and what's going on with Russia and Ukraine for real,
0:55
Speaker 1: for real, I kept going like, oh, oh, oh.
0:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's there's a very clear line you
1:01
Speaker 2: can draw between what the Allies did to a peace
1:04
Speaker 2: Hitler and what a lot of people are concerned that
1:07
Speaker 2: the West is doing to appease Putin right now. And
1:10
Speaker 2: you can also see, though, I think there's another lesson
1:12
Speaker 2: to be learned too, where once you kind of understand
1:16
Speaker 2: what the Allies did pre World War Two, why they
1:19
Speaker 2: were trying to appease Hitler, which in retrospect from our
1:22
Speaker 2: position here in history, seems like the dumbest, most cowardly
1:25
Speaker 2: thing you could have done. Yeah, if you understand what
1:27
Speaker 2: their actual reasoning was for that, and also that they
1:30
Speaker 2: didn't have the benefit of hinde in sight, yeah, then
1:33
Speaker 2: you can kind of understand a little more like what
1:35
Speaker 2: a weird position we're in right now, you know, or
1:37
Speaker 2: why people would even consider doing that to putin.
1:40
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah for sure. Yeah, so I guess broadly we
1:45
Speaker 1: should just say that appeasement was an official policy leading
1:50
Speaker 1: up to World War or you know, they didn't know
1:51
Speaker 1: there was going to be a World War Two. But
1:53
Speaker 1: looking back once again, leading up to World War Two
1:55
Speaker 1: that the Western Allies took where in a nutshell they
1:59
Speaker 1: were basically like, you know what, let's sort of let Germany,
2:04
Speaker 1: and we need to point out we're going to over
2:06
Speaker 1: and over that they did not know Hitler was the madman.
2:08
Speaker 1: We know him now, but.
2:09
Speaker 2: No, they mistook him terribly.
2:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like, let's let Germany. I think Hitler
2:13
Speaker 1: just wants to kind of get Germany back on footing
2:16
Speaker 1: after World War One and after the Treaty of Versailles
2:19
Speaker 1: kind of wrecked Germany, and we need a strong Germany
2:22
Speaker 1: in Europe, and like, let's give him what he wants
2:24
Speaker 1: and he says he'll stop there, and we believe him.
2:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you said, they took Hitler to be
2:31
Speaker 2: just like any other statesman leading a European power, which
2:36
Speaker 2: was that he was a patrician colonizer who at the
2:40
Speaker 2: end of the day answered to the aristocracy of his country. Yeah,
2:44
Speaker 2: and that really he was more a threat to other people,
2:48
Speaker 2: lesser people throughout the world whose lands he wanted to
2:52
Speaker 2: turn into colonies. And we just needed to bring him
2:54
Speaker 2: into the normal European way of doing things and Germany
2:58
Speaker 2: will be back on its feet again. What was the
3:00
Speaker 2: kind of the darker explanation of appeasement. Another explanation was
3:04
Speaker 2: they had just been through World War One, yeah, a
3:06
Speaker 2: dozen years before when all this really kind of started,
3:09
Speaker 2: and no one was in the mood for a second
3:13
Speaker 2: World war. So appeasement was the official policy by the
3:17
Speaker 2: UK and France and then some of their supporters over
3:19
Speaker 2: time that said, if we give you the stuff, you're
3:23
Speaker 2: asking for now, we're hoping that eventually you're going to
3:26
Speaker 2: reach your limit, you're going to get what you wanted,
3:28
Speaker 2: and you're just going to be calm and everything's going
3:31
Speaker 2: to be cool. From that point on, we won't have
3:33
Speaker 2: to get in your way militarily, thus will avoid war.
3:38
Speaker 2: So let's try this instead. So ultimately it was a
3:40
Speaker 2: way to prevent World War Two. That was the entire
3:43
Speaker 2: point of appeasement really from the outset.
3:46
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because I mean, at the time, like you said,
3:48
Speaker 1: after World War One, none of these countries what would
3:51
Speaker 1: end up being the Western Allies were in a great position.
3:55
Speaker 1: They were still trying to build up armaments, some slower
3:58
Speaker 1: than others. A Germany wasn't in a great position. So
4:01
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. At the end, we're going to
4:03
Speaker 1: go over a couple of like alternate histories of different
4:06
Speaker 1: tacks that could have played out, or different plans that
4:09
Speaker 1: they could have taken, and who knows how it would
4:11
Speaker 1: have worked out. But I guess we should start with
4:13
Speaker 1: the Treaty of Versailles, right, Yeah, for sure. So this
4:17
Speaker 1: was after World War One and the Treaty of Versailles
4:21
Speaker 1: came along and was signed, and it really it really
4:24
Speaker 1: pounded Germany, and some historians even say like it went
4:29
Speaker 1: too far as far as being punitive. Germany had to
4:32
Speaker 1: reduce their army from one point nine million troops to
4:35
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand, They had to get rid of most
4:38
Speaker 1: of their navy, and they had to hand back territories
4:42
Speaker 1: that it had taken over the last hundred years and
4:45
Speaker 1: then pay hundreds of billion dollars in reparations.
4:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. So not only was it like financially strapping them,
4:51
Speaker 2: remember this is the time when German hyper reinflation happened
4:54
Speaker 2: during the Weimar Republic, which is allion World War one
4:57
Speaker 2: and two. This is why. And then also it was
5:00
Speaker 2: like demoralizing. It was meant to basically smack Germany down
5:04
Speaker 2: and be like you're lesser. Now we're punishing you. And
5:08
Speaker 2: so I saw a quote I forgot to send it
5:10
Speaker 2: to you. I don't remember who said it, but essentially
5:12
Speaker 2: they said, this is not a treaty, this is an
5:14
Speaker 2: armistice for twenty years. And it was somebody who looked
5:17
Speaker 2: at this in nineteen nineteen and twenty years later World
5:20
Speaker 2: War two broke out. Because it was so punidle, there
5:23
Speaker 2: was no way that the German people were not going
5:25
Speaker 2: to eventually rise up in retaliation for this, and we
5:28
Speaker 2: were going to have a second World War. So a
5:30
Speaker 2: lot of people point to that treaty as being the
5:33
Speaker 2: thing that didn't necessarily directly lead to World War two,
5:37
Speaker 2: but it laid all the groundwork to create a populace
5:40
Speaker 2: that was in a vengeful mood, that would be willing
5:42
Speaker 2: to support somebody with such nationalistic fervor as Hitler.
5:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what Hitler was cooking up from the beginning.
5:50
Speaker 1: He was basically like, Hey, we want to get Germany
5:53
Speaker 1: back together. We need to get all of our rightful
5:55
Speaker 1: lands basically where any Germanic peoples are and where anybody
5:59
Speaker 1: is speaking German. And also, as we'll see, help out
6:03
Speaker 1: any German minorities to our east, you know, which is
6:07
Speaker 1: Russia and the Soviet Union at the time, because they're
6:10
Speaker 1: going to come into play. And he whipped up this
6:13
Speaker 1: nationalistic fervor that everyone in Germany got behind, and that's
6:18
Speaker 1: you know what eventually would of course lead to World
6:20
Speaker 1: War Two. But I guess we should take it sort
6:23
Speaker 1: of chronologically, because there were a series of appeasements starting
6:27
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, kind of one after the other
6:30
Speaker 1: until finally, you know, they could take no more.
6:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just bear this in mind. Well, you're hearing
6:36
Speaker 2: all of these like high points of how we moved
6:39
Speaker 2: toward World War two thanks to Germany. Hitler followed this awareness,
6:45
Speaker 2: or this belief by the UK in France that what
6:48
Speaker 2: Germany really wanted to do was climb back out of
6:51
Speaker 2: from under the Treaty of Versacience, just get back to
6:53
Speaker 2: where they were before. So Hiller followed that to a t.
6:56
Speaker 2: All of his demands, all of the aggressions that he
7:00
Speaker 2: made were based on the Treaty of Versailles. And yet
7:03
Speaker 2: in retrospect now we realize now these were he was
7:05
Speaker 2: always going to try to go way further than that.
7:08
Speaker 2: He was just playing upon the suppositions of the Allies
7:12
Speaker 2: at the time.
7:13
Speaker 1: Oh god, I mean, after studying all the stuff, he
7:16
Speaker 1: played them for such suckers he did.
7:19
Speaker 2: And what makes it a little worse though, too, is
7:21
Speaker 2: he wrote all this stuff out in nineteen twenty five,
7:24
Speaker 2: and top it's all laid out that push to the
7:27
Speaker 2: east you're talking about where he wants to make more
7:30
Speaker 2: room for German nationals that are outside of Germany, the
7:33
Speaker 2: lebens Schrom, which basically says we're going to Russia eventually,
7:36
Speaker 2: Like they knew this for ten years before he really
7:39
Speaker 2: became a huge problem, and everybody just ignored it.
7:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, he's like I wrote a book about it,
7:45
Speaker 1: and I guess you guys don't read German because I
7:47
Speaker 1: basically said what I was going to do, right, all right.
7:50
Speaker 1: So nineteen thirty five was the first sort of wave
7:52
Speaker 1: of appeasement, and this was the Anglo German Naval Agreement,
7:56
Speaker 1: basically where Britain said, you know what, we know that
8:01
Speaker 1: you're breaking the Treaty of Versailles because we know you're
8:03
Speaker 1: building up your navy even though you were supposed to
8:05
Speaker 1: scuttle your navy and go ahead and build a new fleet.
8:09
Speaker 1: A lot of people saw that as just sort of
8:11
Speaker 1: an initial surrender to what Hitler wanted. But Britain knew
8:15
Speaker 1: that they were cheating already. They had six on the ground,
8:19
Speaker 1: specifically an agent named Carl Krueger in their U boat
8:22
Speaker 1: design office, which was a secret program at the time,
8:26
Speaker 1: and they thought, hey, maybe we can get them to
8:30
Speaker 1: build fewer U boats by endorsing them building these really big,
8:34
Speaker 1: expensive battleships. It costs a lot of money and a
8:36
Speaker 1: lot of raw materials, and it'll kind of kill their
8:39
Speaker 1: U boat program. It didn't exactly work. They were supposed
8:43
Speaker 1: to build seventy two submarines and ended up building fifty four.
8:47
Speaker 1: But I don't know if they were like hooray about that.
8:51
Speaker 2: So yeah, that in and of itself is a problem.
8:54
Speaker 2: Like this grand policy of like making them spend resources,
8:57
Speaker 2: it really didn't lead to that big of a reduction
9:00
Speaker 2: politically speaking. It basically said the UK was endorsing now
9:04
Speaker 2: Germany breaking the Treaty of Versailles by agreeing with them
9:08
Speaker 2: that Germany could build its navy back up. Yeah, there
9:11
Speaker 2: was also another thing that had nothing to do with Germany,
9:14
Speaker 2: but really played into this later on. France was led
9:18
Speaker 2: by a couple of different appeasement pro appeasement prime ministers
9:23
Speaker 2: or premiers during this time, and they were good friends
9:27
Speaker 2: with Italy, and Italy invaded Ethiopia, as you'll remember from
9:31
Speaker 2: our Holly Selassie episode in nineteen thirty five, and France said,
9:36
Speaker 2: you know what, go with it, Italy, we don't care
9:39
Speaker 2: about that. Just promise us that if things go down,
9:41
Speaker 2: if the S hits the Fan or le S hits
9:45
Speaker 2: Lifhan you will be on our side against Germany, and
9:49
Speaker 2: Italy said, yes, definitely, you got it one hundred percent,
9:52
Speaker 2: and then they just went and ravaged Ethiopia.
9:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we all know how that turned out in the.
9:57
Speaker 2: End, exactly.
10:00
Speaker 1: That was those first two were thirty five. In nineteen
10:02
Speaker 1: thirty six, Germans west the Rhineland. They wanted to remilitarize
10:09
Speaker 1: that area. That again went against the Treaty of Versailles,
10:12
Speaker 1: because that was supposed to be a buffer zone the
10:14
Speaker 1: western part of Germany. And they had there was a
10:17
Speaker 1: chance here to force fully respond here because they had
10:21
Speaker 1: Czechoslovakia and Romania saying like, hey, you know, we got
10:26
Speaker 1: your back if you want to do anything, but France
10:29
Speaker 1: had Britain basically did nothing.
10:30
Speaker 2: No Again, Frances kind of said, nah, we're kind of
10:33
Speaker 2: busy with our own stuff, as we'll see, right, And
10:36
Speaker 2: a lot of people also and who were heading the
10:39
Speaker 2: politics in Western Europe at the time, were like, yeah,
10:42
Speaker 2: good on them. Germany. They got that taken away from
10:44
Speaker 2: him in the Treaty of Versailles. Let him have it back.
10:46
Speaker 2: That's Germany, you know.
10:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:48
Speaker 2: There was also the Anschluss, which was a different category
10:53
Speaker 2: after the remilitarization of the Rhineland because this was where
10:57
Speaker 2: they annexed Austria. Austria was a sovereign it was not
11:01
Speaker 2: a part of Germany before World War One as far
11:04
Speaker 2: as I know, Please God, don't let me be wrong
11:06
Speaker 2: about that one. And Germany just said, Austria, you're now
11:09
Speaker 2: part of Germany. You guys are Germanic by heritage, so
11:13
Speaker 2: you're just part of Germany now. And the world just
11:16
Speaker 2: turned their heads and said, yeah, I guess that's fine too.
11:19
Speaker 2: You know, Germany's doing it's Germanic thing.
11:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we're going to talk a little
11:24
Speaker 1: bit about public opinion here and there. But at the time,
11:27
Speaker 1: this was March nineteen thirty eight, and this was Nebel
11:30
Speaker 1: Chamberlain as PM in Britain, and the Bridge didn't want
11:34
Speaker 1: to get involved. There was about a twenty five percent
11:36
Speaker 1: in a survey were in favor of, you know, a
11:40
Speaker 1: determinate policy, so you know, I guess that's not aggression,
11:44
Speaker 1: but determine.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, most people were in favor of continuing to just
11:48
Speaker 2: kind of go along with Germany restabilizing or regaining what
11:52
Speaker 2: it had before the Treaty of Versailles. Because again, this
11:54
Speaker 2: is what people are thinking. But if you'll notice, we
11:57
Speaker 2: started to pick up speed a little bit here, like
11:59
Speaker 2: bigger things are so var to happen. That was March
12:01
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty eight when they took over Austria, and
12:04
Speaker 2: then in September Hitler had been basically making speeches where
12:09
Speaker 2: he was saying, hey, there's this part. He called it
12:11
Speaker 2: the rump of Czechoslovakia that butts up against Germany. That's
12:15
Speaker 2: really actually Germany. It's called the Sudan Land, and it's
12:19
Speaker 2: just basically this mountain range. Czechoslovakia doesn't care about it,
12:22
Speaker 2: but we care about it because we're reuniting Germany again.
12:26
Speaker 2: So we want that and we're going to go take it,
12:29
Speaker 2: whether you want us to or not. And Neville, Chamberlain
12:32
Speaker 2: and PM Edouard de Dalier all ran to Mudich to
12:37
Speaker 2: meet with Hitler on his own ground and said here,
12:40
Speaker 2: what do you want. Well, let's make a deal.
12:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Hitler said, well, I've told you what I want.
12:45
Speaker 1: I want this northwestern part of Czechoslovakia. We call it
12:49
Speaker 1: the Sudetan Land. And they said, all right, you can
12:53
Speaker 1: have that, but you got to promise, like, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: put your hand on this Bible, raise your right hand,
12:59
Speaker 1: and you got to promise you to do anything else.
13:00
Speaker 1: In Czechoslovakia. That's it. It stops there. And this is
13:03
Speaker 1: where things are really I feel like echoing what's going
13:07
Speaker 1: on in Ukraine like a putin. You know, eventually you're
13:11
Speaker 1: going to get this stuff that you've conquered, but you're
13:15
Speaker 1: going to stop there, right, And that's what happened back then.
13:18
Speaker 1: The Czechs were an ally to France. In Britain at
13:20
Speaker 1: the time, they were not even invited to the summit,
13:23
Speaker 1: again echoing things that we see going on today. And
13:27
Speaker 1: at the time there were even some German generals that thought,
13:30
Speaker 1: like early on in September thirty eight when this happened,
13:33
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, listen, if the Allies get behind
13:36
Speaker 1: Czechoslovakia here, we could be in trouble. So there was
13:40
Speaker 1: some kind of bluff calling happening basically, but Britain kind
13:44
Speaker 1: of said no, let's let them do this, and they
13:46
Speaker 1: steered France to do the same and pressure Czechoslovakia to submit,
13:50
Speaker 1: and that's what happened.
13:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Czechoslovakia is like, fine, they can have the
13:53
Speaker 2: sue date and land. We weren't even invited but we'll
13:55
Speaker 2: go along with it because our ally, France is telling
13:58
Speaker 2: us to keep in mind, an ally is not just
14:01
Speaker 2: like we're friends with you, we think you're pretty cool,
14:03
Speaker 2: and ally means like you usually have some sort of
14:05
Speaker 2: documents or treaties saying, Okay, somebody tries to take part
14:09
Speaker 2: of your country, we're going to come back you up militarily.
14:12
Speaker 2: And when the Chips came down, France said no because
14:15
Speaker 2: Great Britain was steering them. And one other point about
14:18
Speaker 2: all this that's kind of hidden in there. Great Britain
14:20
Speaker 2: was in a position to steer France because you could
14:23
Speaker 2: make an argument that it was still the world's superpower.
14:26
Speaker 2: The Empire was on the wane, but still by the thirties,
14:31
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of the global population and twenty percent
14:34
Speaker 2: of the earth's land masks were under British control. So
14:38
Speaker 2: Britain was in a global position to basically set the
14:42
Speaker 2: stage of how to deal with Germany, and the UK
14:45
Speaker 2: decided appeasement was the way to go, so everybody else
14:48
Speaker 2: kind of follow it along.
14:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So that's September of thirty eight. They
14:53
Speaker 1: give them the you know, they say you can have
14:55
Speaker 1: this portion of Czechoslovaki as long as you promise not
14:57
Speaker 1: to go in seven months later in March of nineteen
14:59
Speaker 1: thirty nine, and he went into the rest of Czechoslovakia
15:02
Speaker 1: just like he wrote in his book basically, so you know,
15:05
Speaker 1: Hitler renigged on that promise of course to leave Czechoslovakia
15:08
Speaker 1: the rest of it alone. And that was like the
15:13
Speaker 1: real decisive moment because I think I feel like that's
15:15
Speaker 1: when Hitler was probably like, man, these guys are are
15:18
Speaker 1: cowards and they're letting me do whatever I want. And
15:22
Speaker 1: very quickly thereafter that was March of thirty nine. September
15:25
Speaker 1: of thirty nine is when he invaded Poland, and then
15:27
Speaker 1: it was on.
15:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even before he invaded Poland, once he renegged
15:31
Speaker 2: on the Czechoslovakian deal, the Munich Agreement, he showed the
15:36
Speaker 2: world like you like I'll tell you whatever you want
15:38
Speaker 2: to hear, I'm not going to back it up. So
15:41
Speaker 2: he immediately destroyed the policy of appeasement. Like appeasement policy
15:46
Speaker 2: had about as much traction as like yesterday's non winning
15:51
Speaker 2: lotto ticket that you'd find in the gutter, covered in
15:53
Speaker 2: gum and maybe a little bit of blood from somewhere Yeah,
15:58
Speaker 2: like that was appeasement. After we'll put after the invasion
16:01
Speaker 2: in Czechoslovakia, I got there eventually.
16:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, Poland was invaded, and that's really
16:07
Speaker 1: what kicked off. Like the beginnings of World War two.
16:11
Speaker 1: Hitler tried to provoke war with Poland by saying, hey,
16:13
Speaker 1: I want Danzig, not the band, no, but still the
16:18
Speaker 1: city of Danzig and Prussian territory that was granted to
16:21
Speaker 1: you in nineteen nineteen after World War One. We feel
16:23
Speaker 1: like it is ours. And Britain and France, you know,
16:26
Speaker 1: they made guarantees to Poland at the time. But in August,
16:31
Speaker 1: it was pretty shocking at the time, the Nazis and
16:33
Speaker 1: the Soviets signed a pact to partition Poland out and
16:37
Speaker 1: basically said you come in from the east, we'll come
16:40
Speaker 1: in from the west, and Poland is ours. And two
16:43
Speaker 1: days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
16:46
Speaker 2: Yep, and I think that is a great place to stop.
16:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, what a robust set up.
16:53
Speaker 2: We'll be right back, So chuck where we left off.
17:20
Speaker 2: Hitler had just invaded Poland and the UK and France
17:26
Speaker 2: declared war on Germany. It took a lot what that
17:32
Speaker 2: showed everybody was that appiasement was dead. The whole policy
17:34
Speaker 2: had just shifted down to either containment or out and
17:38
Speaker 2: out war now that they had had declared war. But
17:42
Speaker 2: this was like there was a lot of reasons for
17:45
Speaker 2: appeasement to have been tried. We talked about some of them,
17:48
Speaker 2: but a big one was the UK was really holding
17:52
Speaker 2: on to that that world's greatest superpower status as hard
17:56
Speaker 2: as they could, and another world war put that in
17:59
Speaker 2: like real Shepard put him in a precarious position.
18:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they were, you know, everybody was trying
18:05
Speaker 1: to rearm themselves, like I said earlier, since World War One.
18:09
Speaker 1: Some a little quicker than others. I think the United States,
18:12
Speaker 1: as will learn, wasn't making the greatest rearmament effort because
18:15
Speaker 1: Congress is kind of chilling the purse strings back when
18:19
Speaker 1: they could do stuff like that. But the writing was
18:23
Speaker 1: on the wall for the UK. They were like, we
18:26
Speaker 1: were not in any position, even though we're supposedly the
18:29
Speaker 1: world's greatest superpower to fight Germany, Japan and Italy all
18:32
Speaker 1: at the same time to prevent them from expanding their territories.
18:35
Speaker 1: Like that's just not a possibility. And we might have
18:39
Speaker 1: to enter an alliance with the US. If worst comes
18:43
Speaker 1: to worse, we might have to enter into an alliance
18:45
Speaker 1: with the USSR. And that's just gonna make them, I mean,
18:49
Speaker 1: that's gonna lessen their their their stance and their power
18:53
Speaker 1: worldwide if they have to do stuff like that.
18:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with their their prestige or power lessened like
18:59
Speaker 2: on world stage, that's the kind of thing that can
19:02
Speaker 2: spark decolonization movements. So they were worried about Jamaica, they
19:07
Speaker 2: were worried about India, they were worried about Nigeria. All
19:09
Speaker 2: of a sudden, being like the UK has overextended itself,
19:12
Speaker 2: now's the time to declare independence from the UK. And
19:16
Speaker 2: not just the prestige that was lost, but more to
19:18
Speaker 2: the point, the resources or aw materials, all the stuff
19:21
Speaker 2: that Great Britain extracted from these colonies that would be
19:25
Speaker 2: lost as well. So what Great Britain wanted was no
19:28
Speaker 2: war please, at least in part to preserve its empire.
19:33
Speaker 2: Other people who were in the British Parliament and the
19:36
Speaker 2: government basically said, we're going to have to go to war,
19:39
Speaker 2: it's inevitable, but we're supporting appeasement right now because we
19:44
Speaker 2: need to stall for time to rearm ourselves, like you
19:46
Speaker 2: were saying.
19:47
Speaker 1: Right, which, as we'll see, also allowed Germany to do
19:50
Speaker 1: the same yea, either through rearmament by building things or
19:54
Speaker 1: by storming Czechoslovakia and all of a sudden they had
19:56
Speaker 1: all their stuff. But appeasement was popular for a long time.
20:02
Speaker 1: Throughout most of the nineteen thirties. The public didn't want
20:06
Speaker 1: to go to war again. They were shaking off of
20:08
Speaker 1: World War One hangover. Still, no one wanted to go
20:12
Speaker 1: to a war that was more technologically advanced, like pretty
20:14
Speaker 1: rapidly since World War At the end of World War One,
20:17
Speaker 1: for a second World War, I think in nineteen thirty seven,
20:21
Speaker 1: sixty two percent of British men said they wouldn't volunteer
20:24
Speaker 1: and seventy eight percent of women said they would not
20:27
Speaker 1: urge their husbands to go fight mm hm. And even
20:30
Speaker 1: after the Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was left hanging out
20:34
Speaker 1: to dry, seventy five percent still approved of appeasement in
20:39
Speaker 1: Great Britain.
20:40
Speaker 2: Yes, and so there was like a lot of anti
20:43
Speaker 2: war anxiety. Apparently people had died by suicide, there were
20:47
Speaker 2: mental health problems. All of the appeasement pro appeasement sentiment
20:52
Speaker 2: was also bolstered by the Times and I believe the
20:55
Speaker 2: BBC two, which portrayed Hitler as a moderate, basically saying
20:58
Speaker 2: like it could get way worse than that, let's just
21:01
Speaker 2: deal with this guy. And then the reason why this
21:04
Speaker 2: matters is because at the time Britain had recently enfranchised
21:08
Speaker 2: it's women, like more and more people were voting, so
21:10
Speaker 2: the public opinion about stuff mattered more and more to
21:14
Speaker 2: the people calling the shots politically. And we'll also see
21:17
Speaker 2: that also turned the politician's views against appeasement as public
21:22
Speaker 2: opinion changed on appeasement. Two.
21:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and you know there was a string
21:27
Speaker 1: of pms that were all for it. Neville Chamberlain was
21:30
Speaker 1: the third British PM. He was in there from thirty
21:34
Speaker 1: seven to forty during this time of appeasement, so it
21:36
Speaker 1: wasn't just Chamberlain. I think he's kind of There's two
21:40
Speaker 1: things I feel like from Great Britain that are remembered
21:43
Speaker 1: is and you know, it depends on how you want
21:46
Speaker 1: to look at it, but I think a lot of
21:47
Speaker 1: people eventually framed Neville Chamberlain as a coward and Winston
21:52
Speaker 1: Churchill as a hero because he was one of the
21:55
Speaker 1: only ones that was like this guy Hitler, like, I
21:58
Speaker 1: don't think you guys see the right on the wall here,
22:00
Speaker 1: He's not going to stop and this appeasement thing is
22:03
Speaker 1: no good.
22:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. And he also, I mean he still alone basically
22:05
Speaker 2: in his party. The conservatives were like, yeah, we're all
22:09
Speaker 2: pro appeasement at least at the time. So he definitely
22:11
Speaker 2: stood on his own in France. France also had lost
22:16
Speaker 2: a lot of people and a lot of money in
22:19
Speaker 2: World War One and was not very eager to do
22:23
Speaker 2: a redo of it. But they were still anti Germany.
22:26
Speaker 2: Like France was not a friend of Germany. They did
22:29
Speaker 2: not want to be friends of Germany. Their alliances were
22:31
Speaker 2: against Germany. But ultimately, and this is what's crazy to me,
22:37
Speaker 2: it was racked by far right and far left internal
22:41
Speaker 2: political conflict.
22:42
Speaker 1: Yeah at the time, yeah, yeah, they were kind of
22:44
Speaker 1: in an inter stalemate almost, right.
22:48
Speaker 2: And so they were whether they wanted to be or not.
22:50
Speaker 2: They were fairly drawn into domestic affairs rather than foreign affairs,
22:56
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until Edouard d' laudier became Prime minister
23:00
Speaker 2: that they really started to branch back out into foreign affairs.
23:04
Speaker 2: But even then they were pretty pro appeasement, so they
23:07
Speaker 2: didn't really have much of a stomach for going into
23:09
Speaker 2: a second World War, understandably, but they didn't feel like
23:12
Speaker 2: they were in a place to do anything, so essentially
23:15
Speaker 2: they just went on the defense. They did not they
23:18
Speaker 2: weren't going to go into a policy of containment or
23:21
Speaker 2: anything like that.
23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, as far as the US goes, at the time,
23:25
Speaker 1: we had FDR in there, Roosevelt was in there, and
23:29
Speaker 1: he endorsed appeasement, like officially, he endorsed the Munich Agreement.
23:35
Speaker 1: They were into isolationism at the time and trying to
23:37
Speaker 1: stay neutral. And we were also in no position militarily because,
23:41
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, we were kind of you know, we
23:44
Speaker 1: were also depleted by World War One and moving along
23:46
Speaker 1: a little slower than even other eventual Allied countries because
23:50
Speaker 1: Congress was kind of pulling those purse strings a little
23:52
Speaker 1: tight as far as building the military back up.
23:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that you can make a case
23:56
Speaker 2: that any country that was involved in World War One
23:59
Speaker 2: really lost its appetite for war after that, like, yeah,
24:03
Speaker 2: to an amazing degree, understandably for sure. And then there
24:07
Speaker 2: was another group of pro appeasers who was the Britain's aristocracy,
24:13
Speaker 2: and the reason why is because they wanted things to
24:15
Speaker 2: just basically, let's just go back to where we colonize
24:17
Speaker 2: other places. And really it's the aristocracy running things. And
24:21
Speaker 2: we're all related, and I'm your cousin, you're my cousin,
24:23
Speaker 2: and we're all three somehow married, but we all run everything.
24:26
Speaker 2: We're all just crazy rich let's keep doing that. And
24:30
Speaker 2: they saw Hitler as somebody who could help keep that
24:33
Speaker 2: kind of status quo or get back to that kind
24:36
Speaker 2: of status quo. The group that was opposed to Hitler though,
24:40
Speaker 2: they were the Soviets, and they were communists, and the aristocrats,
24:44
Speaker 2: who enjoy wealth inequality do not typically like communism more communists,
24:50
Speaker 2: so they wanted to steer Britain away from any kind
24:52
Speaker 2: of alliances with the USSR that could support communists or
24:56
Speaker 2: socialists in Britain and their causes, and more towards Hitler
25:00
Speaker 2: because Hitler's policies kind of jobbed with the aristocracy's views
25:04
Speaker 2: a little more.
25:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean they were sort of actively courting
25:07
Speaker 1: one another because they saw Hitler as somebody who could
25:11
Speaker 1: you know, like you were saying, kind of let them
25:13
Speaker 1: keep their their lifestyle in check right and Hitler in
25:17
Speaker 1: Germany did nothing to make them think otherwise. You know,
25:20
Speaker 1: they were playing on those peers of communism for sure.
25:22
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, you got a lot of dough.
25:24
Speaker 1: You know what happens when communism happens, And that, you know,
25:27
Speaker 1: sent a chill through the British aristocratic scene.
25:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. They were known to say, croiky.
25:32
Speaker 1: Right, break time or shall we go on with Churchill?
25:38
Speaker 2: Give me a break, Chuck, break me off a piece
25:40
Speaker 2: of that ad break bar, Oh.
25:44
Speaker 1: Boy, we'll be right back all right. So that might
26:10
Speaker 1: have been the best ad segue ever.
26:12
Speaker 2: With the R.
26:13
Speaker 1: So I just I didn't see an allusion to kit
26:17
Speaker 1: kat oh in this episode.
26:19
Speaker 2: Thanks all right.
26:21
Speaker 1: So we mentioned Churchill sort of briefly before. Churchill was like,
26:24
Speaker 1: we said, one of the sort of few outspoken dudes
26:30
Speaker 1: that was like, no, we can't do this. He visited
26:32
Speaker 1: Germany in nineteen thirty two and he was like, these
26:35
Speaker 1: Nazis mean business. I don't think you guys understand what's
26:37
Speaker 1: happening here. And he said, if we can see to Hitler,
26:41
Speaker 1: things are going to get much worse. We have to
26:42
Speaker 1: re arm ourselves, you know, quicker and get those factories
26:45
Speaker 1: to work. But you know, that's the kind of thing
26:48
Speaker 1: that can wreckon economy. So that's if people are wondering, like, well,
26:51
Speaker 1: why didn't they all just rearm as fast as they could,
26:53
Speaker 1: it's because it costs a ton of money and people.
26:56
Speaker 1: So it's not great for the economy to have to
26:58
Speaker 1: build that war machine backup. But he was founding the
27:01
Speaker 1: drum to do so.
27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his whole take on Hitler, including the Munich Agreement,
27:06
Speaker 2: which he called a total and unmitigated defeat. This is
27:09
Speaker 2: where the Allies went to Hitler and said, we'll let
27:11
Speaker 2: you have part of Czechoslovakia, just don't invade the rest
27:14
Speaker 2: of Czechoslovakia. He like, when Neville Chamberlain came back to
27:18
Speaker 2: the UK, he was like basically waiving the agreement and
27:22
Speaker 2: saying he had negotiated a peace for our time that essentially,
27:25
Speaker 2: like aggression from Germany was done. We were all going
27:28
Speaker 2: to live in peace again. And it lasted a year
27:30
Speaker 2: before we were at war with Germany. So it made
27:32
Speaker 2: Chamberlain look pretty bad. It made Churchill look like very
27:36
Speaker 2: foresightful and exactly the kind of guy that you would
27:39
Speaker 2: want to fight Hitler. So essentially, after they got rid
27:42
Speaker 2: of Chamberlain, the UK went to Churchill and said, you
27:46
Speaker 2: don't like Hitler. We understand that we don't like Hitler
27:49
Speaker 2: anymore now and so Europe.
27:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know a lot of people said that
27:55
Speaker 1: was his aim, was to increase his political profile, and
27:58
Speaker 1: you know who knows it. That was his aim, but
28:00
Speaker 1: it worked. He took overs PM in nineteen forty after Chamberlain,
28:04
Speaker 1: like you said, and he wanted he basically later on
28:09
Speaker 1: was like, hey, if we would have had a policy
28:11
Speaker 1: of deterrence instead of appeasement, we might have prevented this
28:14
Speaker 1: war to begin with. You know, Britain and France should
28:18
Speaker 1: have strengthened our relationship, and that was our best hope
28:21
Speaker 1: was maybe to form what he called a grand alliance
28:23
Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union, even in eastern European countries. But
28:28
Speaker 1: the Soviet you know, there was a lot of distrust
28:30
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union, especially you know, like we mentioned
28:33
Speaker 1: the aristocracy who wanted to hang on to their pounds,
28:38
Speaker 1: and of course what Stalin was doing, you know, they
28:41
Speaker 1: didn't trust that either. So he was not going to
28:43
Speaker 1: get support from the British or the French to sort
28:48
Speaker 1: of be tougher.
28:49
Speaker 2: No, but as we'll see later, it was not a
28:51
Speaker 2: bad plan. Could have changed things dramatically. Yeah. One of
28:55
Speaker 2: the other things that made Churchill such a strident voice
28:59
Speaker 2: about opposing Germany is that he had intelligence. I guess
29:03
Speaker 2: as a Minister of Parliament, he had men on the inside. Yeah,
29:07
Speaker 2: and he had an intelligence report from somebody in Germany
29:10
Speaker 2: saying that Germany had a mean spirit of revenge, brutality,
29:14
Speaker 2: amounting in many cases to best reality and complete ruthlessness.
29:19
Speaker 2: And this is at a time when Chamberlain and Daladier
29:23
Speaker 2: are basically saying, like, Hitler's our friend, we just need
29:26
Speaker 2: to keep keep negotiating with him. He's getting reports about
29:29
Speaker 2: how they're just brutal and ruthless, and those panned out
29:32
Speaker 2: to be true.
29:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh. We mentioned FDR in the US earlier that
29:37
Speaker 1: officially they supported a peacement because they would not, you know,
29:42
Speaker 1: sign any kind of formal agreement with the UK or France.
29:44
Speaker 1: But on the inside, the administration was definitely trying to
29:49
Speaker 1: kind of say, hey, UK, you gotta you got to
29:51
Speaker 1: change your stance here. You gotta, like Hitler means business
29:54
Speaker 1: and only your military can can deter this guy. At
29:58
Speaker 1: this point, but on the outside they were, you know, officially, like, hey,
30:01
Speaker 1: we're not involved. This appeasement sounds pretty good to us.
30:05
Speaker 1: And like we said, you know, the people of Britain
30:08
Speaker 1: were largely for it, and most of the people were
30:11
Speaker 1: didn't want to go back to war until the Crystal
30:14
Speaker 1: Knacht on November nineteen thirty eight. That's when Germany, you know,
30:18
Speaker 1: for the first time, attacked its own citizens and destroyed
30:22
Speaker 1: Jewish businesses and synagogues, killed about one hundred Jews and
30:26
Speaker 1: arrested about one hundred thousand. And that's when the public
30:30
Speaker 1: at large, kind of all around the world was like, oh, okay,
30:33
Speaker 1: that's what this guy's about. This cannot stand right.
30:36
Speaker 2: And remember now with the UK having all of these
30:39
Speaker 2: new voters, their opinion mattered, so that helped change things too.
30:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish I knew how to say too late
30:48
Speaker 1: in German.
30:49
Speaker 2: You don't. You didn't learn that in high school.
30:53
Speaker 1: No. I was trying to think of I.
30:54
Speaker 2: Can think, can you sound it out letter by letter?
30:57
Speaker 1: No?
30:57
Speaker 2: Oh wait, you'd have to know the word to do that.
30:59
Speaker 1: No. I remember what Canuts in the Mouse did and
31:03
Speaker 1: at Hans Peter's house because I remember reading that chapter
31:06
Speaker 1: over and over and over.
31:08
Speaker 2: What did he do?
31:10
Speaker 1: I really don't remember, but that the my friend Rad
31:13
Speaker 1: and the cartographer in Montana. He'll be the only person
31:17
Speaker 1: in the world that gets that joke, because it was
31:20
Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff about canuts in the mouse
31:22
Speaker 1: and his owner Hans Peter, who was you know that
31:25
Speaker 1: German textbook stuff?
31:26
Speaker 2: Okay? Was that like the German high school classes equivalent
31:29
Speaker 2: of the Little Prince in the French Probably gotcha, I
31:34
Speaker 2: understand exactly what you mean.
31:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun on a big show like this to
31:37
Speaker 1: make a joke for one human.
31:38
Speaker 2: So why not. So there's one other group, chuck that
31:43
Speaker 2: we didn't talk about what they thought of a peace man.
31:46
Speaker 2: That was the Nazis themselves in Hitler, and they loved it. Yeah,
31:50
Speaker 2: probably not a big surprise. They saw it as a
31:53
Speaker 2: clear sign of weakness by the world's leading powers, that
31:57
Speaker 2: they that Hitler in Germany could do whatever it wanted
32:01
Speaker 2: and France and the UK were just gonna bow their
32:05
Speaker 2: knees and their heads in front of Hitler and the
32:08
Speaker 2: people of the of Germany itself also picked up on
32:12
Speaker 2: this too, like Hitler had, remember, he had taken power.
32:16
Speaker 2: It wasn't like you know he wasn't fully supported yet.
32:19
Speaker 2: There was like a courtship period that was still things
32:22
Speaker 2: were up in the air. But when he came back
32:24
Speaker 2: and said, I got back the Rhineland, I got back
32:27
Speaker 2: to dayton Land, I got us Austria. What's next, you know?
32:33
Speaker 2: And I did it all without a single shot fired. Yeah,
32:36
Speaker 2: these guys just gave it back to us because that's
32:38
Speaker 2: what they think of Germany. With me leading it, the
32:41
Speaker 2: German people just went nuts. And Hitler was was the guy.
32:44
Speaker 1: He was Derfer.
32:46
Speaker 2: That was the day Hitler became der Feurer.
32:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it, man, You just walked off of a
32:52
Speaker 1: History Channel show. You dropped the mic in the sound
32:55
Speaker 1: studio and left. One thing we can say is that
32:58
Speaker 1: appeasement did achieve the aim of rearmament. That was kind
33:02
Speaker 1: of one of the goals, Like we said a few times,
33:04
Speaker 1: is that, you know, everyone was trying to put this
33:05
Speaker 1: off so they could build back up their war stock
33:08
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that happened. Britain spent less on arms
33:12
Speaker 1: than Germany did from nineteen thirty five to nineteen thirty nine,
33:15
Speaker 1: but they had the highest proportion of their GDP devoted
33:19
Speaker 1: to building up their armaments in nineteen forty, and in
33:24
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty they rebuilt the navy to the you know,
33:26
Speaker 1: once again the world's strongest navy. Shout out to British Seapower,
33:29
Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands. And early on, you know,
33:34
Speaker 1: they had outpaced Germany. And you know, we're going to
33:37
Speaker 1: talk about the alternate histories here shortly, like what if
33:40
Speaker 1: they had done something. They're in a pretty good position.
33:42
Speaker 1: They between Britain and France. Their coalition had a five
33:46
Speaker 1: to one armament superiority over Germany early on and France.
33:52
Speaker 1: The fallow of France in nineteen forty apparently, and I
33:55
Speaker 1: don't know enough about this stuff, but from what I've read,
33:58
Speaker 1: it wasn't because they were unprepared and didn't have enough
34:01
Speaker 1: bombs and things. Apparently it was about poor leadership at
34:03
Speaker 1: that point.
34:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. I couldn't find enough by that myself to speak
34:06
Speaker 2: confidently on it. All I know is that France did
34:09
Speaker 2: not put up much of a fight from what I
34:11
Speaker 2: remember from the history books. Yeah, well, let's talk about that, Chuck,
34:14
Speaker 2: Let's talk about those alternate histories, especially with the view
34:17
Speaker 2: of armament. Because Neville Chamberlain, when he basically couldn't get
34:22
Speaker 2: a coalition government together anymore after Hitler rinegg Don the
34:25
Speaker 2: Munich agreement, and he was replaced like we saw with
34:28
Speaker 2: by Winston Churchill in nineteen forty. That same year he
34:32
Speaker 2: died of cancer after Chamberlain was removed. But he spent
34:36
Speaker 2: that time basically saying like I bought us time. Appeasement
34:40
Speaker 2: bought us time to rearm. And he's right, like you
34:44
Speaker 2: showed like Britain did have a chance to rearm. But
34:47
Speaker 2: there was a really critical window that we know about
34:50
Speaker 2: now where that policy of appeasing in order to rearm
34:56
Speaker 2: didn't make sense, and that was about nineteen thirty to
35:00
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine. And the reason was is because France
35:04
Speaker 2: and the UK were rearming at a rate close to
35:06
Speaker 2: Germany and were actually even overtaking it a little bit,
35:09
Speaker 2: and they could have put up a fight against Germany
35:13
Speaker 2: and probably one especially together combining their stuff in nineteen
35:17
Speaker 2: thirty eight. By nineteen thirty nine things had changed. Germany
35:21
Speaker 2: had gone even further overdrive into war production, but more
35:24
Speaker 2: to the point, they had taken over Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had
35:29
Speaker 2: all sorts of munitions factories. Czechoslovakia had all sorts of
35:32
Speaker 2: people you could could script into free labor aka slave labor.
35:37
Speaker 2: There's all sorts of stuff that happened when they took
35:39
Speaker 2: over Czechoslovakia and it tipped the balance whipped way up
35:44
Speaker 2: in favor of Germany's military after that. So that period
35:47
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight to nineteen thirty nine, appeasement did the
35:50
Speaker 2: exact opposite, and it made the war way worse than
35:53
Speaker 2: it would have been had the UK and France said
35:56
Speaker 2: this is as good as going to get we gotta
35:57
Speaker 2: go now.
35:59
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and you know, it also possibly made the
36:03
Speaker 1: war worst and a lot of people say it definitely
36:05
Speaker 1: made the war worse than it would have been because
36:07
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty Britain's holding out against Germany and they're
36:11
Speaker 1: both seeking resources all around the world that you needed
36:15
Speaker 1: to get to win a world war, and that just
36:19
Speaker 1: expanded the war basically made it into a global thing,
36:22
Speaker 1: a much larger thing than it might have been otherwise. Right,
36:25
Speaker 1: deterrence might have avoided all of that if they would
36:27
Speaker 1: have formed a grand alliance and bonded their powers early on.
36:32
Speaker 1: You know, because I mentioned earlier there were even generals
36:35
Speaker 1: within Germany's it's kind of a bluffing game. Like, hey,
36:38
Speaker 1: if these guys get together, like, we're not the best
36:41
Speaker 1: position right now. And so while they were buying time,
36:44
Speaker 1: it helped Germany increase their war chest. And yeah, that's
36:49
Speaker 1: the rest is history.
36:50
Speaker 2: Right, But speaking of alternate histories, there were other options
36:54
Speaker 2: that the UK had on the table, and now speaking
36:58
Speaker 2: about them, like in retrospect, it's mind boggling to even think.
37:02
Speaker 2: But the first one's a little more understandable or palatable.
37:06
Speaker 2: Had the UK simply just not declared war after Germany
37:09
Speaker 2: invaded Poland, that was an option to them on the table.
37:12
Speaker 2: They didn't have to do it. France had already set
37:14
Speaker 2: the precedent of not backing up Czechoslovakia when it was
37:18
Speaker 2: taken over by Germany. The UK could have just not
37:21
Speaker 2: done that too. And one thing that could have backed
37:24
Speaker 2: this up, that could have supported actually that position in
37:28
Speaker 2: the UK just sit back and let it play out
37:30
Speaker 2: on its own, because it was inevitable essentially for the
37:35
Speaker 2: USSR in Germany to clash because of that Lebenschrom policy.
37:40
Speaker 2: That policy of the East actually belongs to Germany and
37:43
Speaker 2: we're going to go take it right.
37:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know that played out by eventually with
37:50
Speaker 1: Operation Barbarossa with the invasion of the Soviet Union in
37:53
Speaker 1: June nineteen forty one. Some people say like, and you know,
37:57
Speaker 1: of course this sounds completely ridiculou to think up now
38:00
Speaker 1: with hindsight. But some people are like, you know, the
38:03
Speaker 1: UK could have allied with Germany early on. They I mean,
38:09
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons they didn't. It's not
38:11
Speaker 1: because they knew this Hitler guy was a madman. Again,
38:13
Speaker 1: that came later. It was because of the colonies that
38:16
Speaker 1: you were talking about that they had all over the world, right,
38:18
Speaker 1: Germany also had colonies all over the world, and they
38:22
Speaker 1: had a conflict. I think Britain wasn't gonna say here,
38:28
Speaker 1: why don't you, why don't you take our African colonies?
38:30
Speaker 1: And Germany definitely didn't like the way Britain looked at race.
38:35
Speaker 1: They had a pretty different idea on that. And so
38:38
Speaker 1: if they had any kind of alliance, they would have
38:40
Speaker 1: had surrendered their liberal imperialism and they really weakened their
38:46
Speaker 1: status as in international superpower.
38:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would have had to fall in line with
38:49
Speaker 2: basically the way Germany viewed the world. Yeah, just wrapping
38:53
Speaker 2: your mind around that is not easy to do. Like
38:55
Speaker 2: the UK doing that, and Kyle, who's our man on
38:59
Speaker 2: the end in the.
39:00
Speaker 1: UK, right, Yeah, he's right in I six agent exactly.
39:03
Speaker 2: He pointed something out that I thought was pretty interesting
39:06
Speaker 2: too that he basically said, the fact that Crystal knocked
39:08
Speaker 2: and the news of what the Germany had done to
39:11
Speaker 2: its own Jewish citizens, Yeah, how that turned British public
39:15
Speaker 2: opinion just basically showed like, even if Britain did try
39:18
Speaker 2: to allie with Germany, it was never going to work out. Yeah,
39:21
Speaker 2: it was probably the least likely of all of it.
39:23
Speaker 2: And then also, Chuck, you can't help us being Americans
39:26
Speaker 2: to wonder could America have sat out World War two?
39:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we declared war after Pearl Harbor on
39:34
Speaker 1: Imperial Japan. That followed or following that, Germany declared war
39:39
Speaker 1: on US in December nineteen forty one, and you know,
39:43
Speaker 1: maybe we could have evaded getting involved in the European theater.
39:49
Speaker 1: We definitely got mired in the Pacific theater with Japan.
39:53
Speaker 1: We weren't really It's not like the US wasn't on
39:55
Speaker 1: the Nazis radar, but we weren't really a big part
39:58
Speaker 1: of their foreign policy in the nineteen thirties. Yet right,
40:01
Speaker 1: because again, isolationism was kind of our bag at the time.
40:04
Speaker 1: Our army wasn't very big. We had in nineteen forty
40:07
Speaker 1: we had five divisions compared to Germany's one hundred and
40:09
Speaker 1: forty one. And Congress definitely was not going to like
40:14
Speaker 1: get behind Roosevelt entering the European theater at the time.
40:18
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of reasons why it looked
40:21
Speaker 1: like the US maybe could have avoided that mess.
40:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, but historians say probably we were going to get
40:29
Speaker 2: drawn in one way or another, because, like you said,
40:32
Speaker 2: Germany did declare war on the US essentially to show
40:36
Speaker 2: Japan like, hey, we're in this together. You guys, just
40:38
Speaker 2: handle the US. So that was going to happen, whether
40:40
Speaker 2: we tried to stay out of it or not. And
40:43
Speaker 2: then he also knew that we were a threat and
40:47
Speaker 2: that we would eventually be online armament wise to really
40:51
Speaker 2: make a significant contribution. He predicted by nineteen forty two.
40:55
Speaker 2: I think we started before then. And then even more
40:57
Speaker 2: than that, Roosevelt was already giving permission for US battleships
41:02
Speaker 2: to shoot and destroy U boats that were operating in
41:06
Speaker 2: the Atlantic because they had started targeting American shipping and
41:09
Speaker 2: Hitler was not very happy about that, So the US
41:12
Speaker 2: was probably not going to be able to stay out
41:14
Speaker 2: of World War two.
41:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
41:17
Speaker 2: The alternate history, I guess that gets meatchuck is was
41:21
Speaker 2: the earliest when Germany remilitarized the Rhineland and flagrant violation
41:26
Speaker 2: of the Treaty of Versailles. Had the UK and France intervened,
41:32
Speaker 2: this is nineteen thirty six. I mean, imagine if they
41:35
Speaker 2: had just done something then and contained Hitler then, and
41:39
Speaker 2: remember there was this courtship period or whatever, where you know,
41:42
Speaker 2: Germany hadn't really wasn't really sure about Hitler at the time.
41:46
Speaker 2: Had he been undermined that thoroughly on the international stage,
41:49
Speaker 2: who knows would have happened to him as the leader
41:52
Speaker 2: of Germany, right, And they could have done something because
41:56
Speaker 2: at the time France had one hundred thousand troops near
41:59
Speaker 2: the border with Ryanland. Germany only moved thirty five thousand
42:03
Speaker 2: troops into the area. Prints could easily repel that and
42:07
Speaker 2: been like, it's your move, Germany, what are you gonna do?
42:09
Speaker 2: And Germany might not have done anything. And even if
42:13
Speaker 2: Hitler had done something, it probably would have been against
42:17
Speaker 2: the advice of his military advisors. So now he would
42:21
Speaker 2: have personally been taking Germany to war. That's a lot
42:24
Speaker 2: to seek your reputation on. And that one thing in
42:28
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six could have completely avoided the death of
42:32
Speaker 2: tens of millions of people and it didn't do it
42:36
Speaker 2: because of internal left right politics.
42:40
Speaker 1: Wow, oh man, that that was good stuff. Like this
42:44
Speaker 1: is my favorite kind of stuff. You should know when
42:46
Speaker 1: forty five minutes later, like I know, probably one hundred
42:50
Speaker 1: percent more than I knew before about World War Two.
42:52
Speaker 2: Very nice, Chuck. Yeah, I didn't know almost any of
42:55
Speaker 2: this either. I love that stuff too. And I know
42:58
Speaker 2: we just talked about the US and in the UK
43:00
Speaker 2: and France's alternate history. But if you want to come
43:03
Speaker 2: up with an alternate history of for World War Two
43:05
Speaker 2: in your country, let us know, hit the history textbooks
43:09
Speaker 2: and come back with what you got. And we'd love
43:11
Speaker 2: to get that kind of thing. In the meantime, while
43:13
Speaker 2: we're waiting for your listener mail, we'll listen to Chuck
43:16
Speaker 2: with a new listener mail.
43:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody just sends this man in the High Castle
43:24
Speaker 1: no plagars and please, which I never saw or read.
43:28
Speaker 2: I didn't either, but it's supposed to be pretty good.
43:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe I'll check that out at some point. It
43:32
Speaker 1: sounds like it'd be right up my own.
43:33
Speaker 2: It's too depressing for me, that kind of stuff. That Yeah,
43:36
Speaker 2: and like things that normalize billionaires, I can't take it anymore.
43:41
Speaker 1: Like d Snyder, All right, what is this? This is
43:46
Speaker 1: from Chris? Oh yeah, this is just a nice thing. Hey, guys,
43:49
Speaker 1: wanted to write in for a while now. First of all,
43:53
Speaker 1: I always appreciate the wide variety of topics you cover,
43:55
Speaker 1: especially the ones born of your own natural curiosities. As
43:58
Speaker 1: a former middle school science teacher, I saw my primary
44:00
Speaker 1: role as instilling curiosity in my students and modeling for
44:03
Speaker 1: them how to chase those curiosities, and your approach really
44:06
Speaker 1: resonates with me. But the one thing I didn't pay
44:09
Speaker 1: enough attention to back when I was in the classroom
44:10
Speaker 1: was the art of communication that you guys display in
44:13
Speaker 1: every episode. If I still had a classroom full of students,
44:16
Speaker 1: I would use your show not only for the content,
44:18
Speaker 1: but also for lessons in respectful communication. So much discourse
44:22
Speaker 1: we hear today is loud and angry and doesn't give
44:24
Speaker 1: people space to express themselves without being interrupted, mocked, or
44:27
Speaker 1: refuted somehow, you guys seamlessly pass the baton of communication
44:32
Speaker 1: to one another without speaking over one another, contradicting each
44:34
Speaker 1: other's in complete thoughts or negotiating the communication flow through
44:39
Speaker 1: general awkwardness. Even when one of you have a follow
44:42
Speaker 1: up comment that may provide a differing or correcting perspective,
44:45
Speaker 1: you always give space for the other to finish their
44:47
Speaker 1: thought before weighing in, and the follow up comments are
44:50
Speaker 1: thoughtfully delivered and received. Thanks so much for all you do.
44:54
Speaker 1: I appreciate your authentic, respectful delivery of interesting content. You
44:58
Speaker 1: guys keep my brain awake and smiling. And that is
45:00
Speaker 1: from Chris Christine Sewell in Bloomington, Illinois And Chris. One
45:05
Speaker 1: of the reasons is because we almost always agree with
45:09
Speaker 1: each other on this stuff. I disagree, so it makes
45:12
Speaker 1: it kind of easy.
45:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure. And that's something that still kind
45:17
Speaker 2: of surprises me to this day, where like just our
45:20
Speaker 2: common view is so in step with one another. Where
45:25
Speaker 2: I mean, like there's so many things that are different
45:28
Speaker 2: about It's like our personalities are pretty different.
45:31
Speaker 1: Bladly different.
45:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, will we sure, I'll go with that, Okay,
45:34
Speaker 2: But when you come down to like, what do you
45:37
Speaker 2: think about this? What do you think about this? What
45:38
Speaker 2: do you think about that? It's generally in the same
45:41
Speaker 2: not even ballpark, in the same hot dog stand of
45:43
Speaker 2: the same ballpark.
45:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think the show would have worked for
45:46
Speaker 1: so long if you and I just were sort of
45:48
Speaker 1: at odds over every little thing. And I think that
45:50
Speaker 1: stuff that Christine is talking about too is so much
45:54
Speaker 1: of media today is set up to do that because
45:56
Speaker 1: that gets ratings, I guess. So they'll put people that
45:59
Speaker 1: they know have different viewpoints and put them down in
46:01
Speaker 1: chairs next to each other and that's just like.
46:03
Speaker 2: The Yeah, but it's like the Simpsons taught us, if
46:07
Speaker 2: you just don't look, it'll eventually go away. So you
46:10
Speaker 2: don't like that kind of media, just don't watch it.
46:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
46:14
Speaker 2: Well, thank you Chris. That was really really nice. We'd
46:17
Speaker 2: love hearing that kind of stuff. That's just a really
46:20
Speaker 2: kind email, and we thank you for it. If you
46:22
Speaker 2: want to be like Chris and send us a kind email,
46:23
Speaker 2: we are always open to receiving one of those. You
46:26
Speaker 2: can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
46:32
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
46:35
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46:39
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