Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Weimar And The Terrifying Speed Of The Nazi Takeover Of Germany | Katja Hoyer

Transcript

Weimar And The Terrifying Speed Of The Nazi Takeover Of Germany | Katja Hoyer · The Smart Cookies podcast

0:04
Katja Hoyer is a German -British historian, journalist
0:06
and the author of the international bestseller
0:08
Beyond the Wall, as well as Blood and Iron. She's
0:12
a visiting research fellow at King's College
0:14
London and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
0:17
Her latest highly anticipated book, Weimar, Life
0:21
on the Edge of Catastrophe, which is coming out
0:23
May 7, will be in our crosshairs today. Katja,
0:26
welcome to the program. Thank you for having
0:28
me. Okay, so given the... picturesque city of
0:33
Weimar is renowned for being the birthplace of
0:36
the German Enlightenment, the residence of Goethe,
0:39
Schiller and of Bauhaus, I suppose the conversation
0:41
we're going to have will be about the extremely
0:44
cozy and relaxing period between both world wars,
0:47
where nothing all that much really happens, right?
0:52
Yeah, almost. I think that was certainly the
0:55
plan in 1919 when they went to that place of
0:58
culture and decided to relaunch a new kind of
1:01
Germany from there after the First World War.
1:04
But that's not really how it panned out. I'm
1:07
sorry, this podcast is infamous for its bad openings
1:10
and for the fact that I never really know how
1:13
to open or begin a conversation. I do apologize.
1:16
But for better or for worse, I did it now so
1:19
we can actually dig in. However, before we turn
1:22
our attention to the city itself, I think it
1:25
would be a good idea to clear up the mist that
1:28
settled in at the end of the First World War,
1:30
because this was a really murky period in Germany,
1:33
full of uprisings, mass protests, and revolution.
1:38
basically i know it's a massive ask but can you
1:41
sort of sketch the chain of events between the
1:44
infamous revolt of the sailors in in 1918 and
1:48
the signing then of the weimar constitution a
1:50
year later when things finally seem to calm down
1:53
a little bit yeah i mean i'm glad you asked that
1:56
because i spent a bit of time in the book as
1:58
well looking at the first world war even though
2:01
I set out to tell the story of the town between
2:03
1919 and 1939, but I don't think you can understand
2:07
what happened next unless you understand what
2:09
happened during the war and afterwards. Basically
2:14
from 1916, about 1916 onwards, people became
2:17
really unhappy with the way that the war was
2:20
going. It was affecting civilians really badly,
2:23
supply problems, and just life got worse and
2:27
worse and worse. And the military elites wouldn't
2:29
stop fighting this war, even though people were
2:32
sort of at that point already beginning to...
2:34
asked them to just end the war and even if Germany
2:37
didn't get anything out of it and so by 1918
2:39
this reaches a sort of boiling point really where
2:42
you begin to see soldiers refusing to go out
2:45
when they're asked to be going to the front lines.
2:49
And we get this infamous mutiny that you just
2:52
alluded to at Kiel in the north of Germany, where
2:55
basically sailors are being asked to have a last
2:59
go with the Grand Fleet of Britain. And they
3:01
say, what's the point? We've lost the war at
3:03
this stage, so they don't do it. And then you
3:05
begin to see a real kind of revolutionary fervor
3:08
rolling through Germany. They look at the Russian
3:12
Revolution, which we mustn't forget. happened
3:15
only the previous year in 1917. So you have a
3:18
real kind of workers and soldiers movement there
3:22
that has an obvious role model. And so they think
3:25
maybe the same thing can happen in Germany as
3:27
well. And you begin to see local uprisings all
3:29
across Germany. This is something that's called
3:31
the German Revolution in 1918. In the end, the
3:34
German Kaiser, the emperor, is convinced that
3:37
he needs to step down and abdicate. And so do
3:40
the rest of the German nobility. So people who
3:43
are still like dukes and other kings, the king
3:46
of Bavaria, for example, the king of Saxony,
3:48
they all step down. And a republic comes out
3:51
of that, the first German republic. And this
3:54
all happens in the course of just a few days,
3:58
really, in the autumn of 1918. And then the question
4:01
is, what happens next? meaningful way forward
4:06
is to build some form of democracy. So have people
4:09
vote. And then this very first set of elected
4:12
people's representatives come up with the constitution
4:14
for a new kind of Germany. And that's really
4:17
where Weimar comes into the story. Why was Weimar
4:22
chosen as the city where the new constitution
4:24
gets signed? Why not Berlin? Yeah, I mean, it
4:26
is an odd place, really. Weimar is quite a small
4:28
town. People may not be familiar with it. To
4:30
most people, really, when you say Weimar, they
4:32
associate... Weimar Republic immediately with
4:35
it. Many people don't even know that Weimar is
4:38
actually a place, a town. And so it seems a bit
4:42
random, but basically Berlin wasn't safe. You
4:44
know, all these uprisings I just talked about,
4:46
that really has Berlin in its grip. There's a
4:48
massive attempt, mainly by communists and far
4:52
left revolutionaries to try and overthrow. the
4:56
authorities that are still in place and Berlin
4:58
is the scene of really quite violent street battles
5:02
many people being killed in them it's certainly
5:04
not a safe place to sort of sit there and try
5:06
and kind of convene an assembly of politicians
5:10
I mean you're really making yourself a target
5:12
and so they're looking around for other places
5:14
and there are discussions whether to go to Frankfurt
5:18
for example which has a a strong place in Germany's
5:21
democratic history because of its role in the
5:24
1848 kind of revolutions. We won't go into that
5:28
too much, but there's a case for Frankfurt, other
5:31
cities like Bayreuth, where the composer Richard
5:34
Wagner at his sort of base is in the running
5:38
and lots of other places. And Weimar is in the
5:40
end chosen for various reasons. One is in the
5:43
middle of Germany. And this may seem as a small
5:45
reason, but really it makes it a central place
5:47
for everyone to get to. It really is almost exactly
5:50
in the center of the country. Two, it is not
5:54
Berlin. And so therefore, there's a real argument
5:58
there to say, you know, you're starting afresh.
6:00
It's a new project. Berlin had been the Prussian
6:04
capital previously, and then it became the German
6:06
capital because of Prussia's role. in the process
6:09
of Germany setting up as a state. So to go away
6:13
from the Prussian capital to somewhere that isn't
6:15
Prussia or Bavaria or any of the other big German
6:18
states had an appeal. It's kind of a fresh start.
6:21
And then on top of that, Weimar is well known
6:23
as a cultural center. So where Germany, even
6:27
throughout the First World War, Germany always
6:28
claimed it's this culture. nation this cultural
6:31
nation and that really Weimar encapsulates that
6:35
because you have really famous kind of thinkers
6:37
and philosophers and poets and you know you already
6:40
mentioned Goethe and Schiller the two sort of
6:42
national poets of Germany, but you also had Friedrich
6:47
Nietzsche, the philosopher, Liszt, the composer,
6:50
Bach, basically you name it, people who had a
6:54
sort of name in European culture. A lot of them
6:57
spent some time in Weimar, and so this appealed
6:59
kind of going away from the militaristic Germany
7:01
and towards a more civilized, more cultured setup.
7:05
So it ticked all the boxes, really. It was safe,
7:08
it was central, and it gave the right kind of
7:11
vibe and image to this new Germany. Speaking
7:15
of Berlin again, though, those 14 years that
7:17
the Weimar Republic lasted are practically synonymous
7:20
with a sort of never -ending cocaine -snorting
7:24
cabaret fest, at least in the popular imagination,
7:26
and in my imagination, to be honest. You know,
7:28
this kind of Babylon Berlin vibes, if you've
7:31
seen the TV show. Two questions. Number one,
7:35
as someone who used to live there and miss it
7:36
dearly, I want to know how sassy was it really
7:40
back then? And number two, if it was, did that
7:42
go for the rest of the country? So places like
7:45
Weimar as well? Or were people there too busy
7:47
designing chairs? I mean, Berlin is really, really
7:53
distinct and specific in this time period. You
7:55
don't even find the same vibe you just described
7:58
in, say, Munich or Hamburg or Cologne and other
8:01
big cities. You just don't. It's the Berlin,
8:04
a specific kind of Berlin vibe of that time,
8:07
this kind of hedonism, the creativity, this almost
8:10
dizzying kind of... feeling that nothing matters,
8:14
so you might as well try out kind of cultural
8:17
and drug -infused sort of forms of creativity.
8:21
So that is very, very specific to Berlin, which
8:24
is why it has such an appeal, I think, both at
8:27
the time for people coming in, but also in hindsight,
8:31
I think, because it's a distinct kind of cultural
8:34
orbit. And if anything, other cities find this
8:36
and other towns, and especially rural areas as
8:39
well, find this quite frightening and appalling.
8:42
it's amoral, it's un -German, it's internationalist,
8:45
you know, all of this. The culture in particular,
8:50
where you have quite a lot of kind of androgynous
8:52
dancers and a big gay scene. And as you say,
8:56
the drugs, the dancing, the American culture
8:58
that comes in, all of that is abhorred by many
9:01
more kind of conservative and traditional Germans.
9:04
I mean, people often forget that the majority
9:06
of Germans actually during that time did not
9:08
even live in big cities, never mind in Berlin
9:10
specifically. They live in small towns and in
9:13
rural areas and they are a lot more conservative.
9:15
And in a way, Weimar is... also establishing
9:18
itself as a kind of counterpoint to that it's
9:21
kind of saying this is where the proper the culture
9:23
germany is at home and where we're going to push
9:25
back against this um kind of modernism if you
9:28
will so it's a bit of a counterpoint really ironically
9:30
because people associate the word weimar more
9:33
with berlin at the time than they do with with
9:37
weimar itself last question about berlin then
9:41
i'm going to stop i promise since i recently
9:43
read the christopher isherwood's novel goodbye
9:46
to berlin after the first world war why did the
9:48
city suddenly begin to attract all of these like
9:51
you said delightfully eccentric and creative
9:53
characters from all over the world um i think
9:56
partially is it's because it's the sort of um
9:59
vibe that was there before the first world war
10:02
so berlin grows incredibly quickly it overtakes
10:06
vienna as the biggest um German -speaking city
10:09
sort of round about the turn of the century.
10:12
So really, it has that vibrancy about it already.
10:15
And then at the end of the First World War, when
10:17
it's suddenly the hub of a... defeated nation
10:20
of a nation that is deeply traumatized and deeply
10:22
violated by this war as well let's not forget
10:25
that these men who come back from the front lines
10:27
have all done and seen terrible things the women
10:30
at home and had to deal with children dying with
10:33
with their husbands not coming back or coming
10:35
back completely physically and mentally changed
10:38
so in a way you already have a kind of urban
10:41
vibrancy going and then you add this really dark
10:43
um traumatized kind of aspect to it as well.
10:47
And that, you know, on top of that, the crises
10:50
of the early 1920s hit, like hyperinflation,
10:53
for example. And that combination gives a real
10:56
kind of hedonistic vibe to the whole thing. Like
10:59
nothing matters anymore. Let's just live. And
11:02
that, I think, is something that is unique to
11:04
Berlin at the time and why so many people find
11:07
that quite appealing. And Isherwood is an example
11:09
of someone who's kind of drawn by that, almost
11:12
infascinated by this kind of dark. um excitement
11:16
that the city exudes it's funny how how kind
11:21
of like almost a repeat then happens at the end
11:24
of the 80s with the with the fall of the wall
11:26
no and you know when i moved there people said
11:29
oh you missed all the good times you know all
11:31
the crazy parties and everything uh that happened
11:33
in the 90s you know with all of these like empty
11:36
lots and empty buildings and and cheap rents
11:39
and stuff Yeah, you get a bit of that again.
11:42
You're right. And also the sense that, again,
11:44
a traumatic kind of, in this case, divided past
11:47
had been overcome at this point. And, you know,
11:51
it was there's a brief moment where history seems
11:53
to just hang in the balance and it's not entirely
11:56
clear yet what happens next. And that there's
11:59
a there's a strange kind of liberal freedom to
12:01
that that people, you know, seem to sort of enjoy
12:04
and be drawn by. Your new book. focuses its attention
12:10
on the city of Weimar between the two world wars.
12:13
Besides the famous Bauhaus art school established
12:16
there in 1919 by Walter Gropius, what else did
12:19
the city have kind of going for it? What was
12:22
the overall vibe to the place during the 20s?
12:25
Well, I was drawn to it as a historian because
12:28
it seems to me that all the stuff that happened
12:31
between 1919 and 39 seems to come to a head there.
12:35
It all kind of seems to have... a kind of concentrated
12:39
form in Weimar so it's where the republic was
12:41
founded in 1919 where all these parliamentarians
12:45
come to create the very first democratic republic
12:48
so that's exciting then you have the Bauhaus
12:51
coming in drawn by the same idea kind of a cultural
12:54
relaunch of Germany and let's do it from a new
12:57
place and from this place that's associated with
13:00
German kind of civility and high culture. The
13:03
same idea of relaunching a new kind of Germany
13:06
also appeals to socialists. So there's a giant
13:09
socialist congress going on in the early 1920s.
13:12
And then it also strangely appeals to the right.
13:15
So you get Hindenburg, for example, once Hitler's
13:18
in prison, he comes in. Ludendorff, the two kind
13:22
of military leaders of the First World War, they
13:25
both try and... sort of rally the troops, as
13:28
it were, in Weimar, the nationalist right. Then
13:31
Hitler obsesses over Weimar and begins to visit
13:34
more and more often. Again, the idea of it being
13:38
a kind of launch pad for his rebirth of Germany.
13:41
They're all, you know, from the far left to the
13:43
far right and everyone in between, they're all
13:46
drawn to Weimar. And that's why the whole history
13:49
of that place, if you want to get, because it's
13:50
so complex and so complicated. And I think we
13:52
often talk about it in abstract terms. Seeing
13:55
it all unfold in one small town in a compact
13:58
place with concrete specific people doing specific
14:01
things in specific places, I think really helps
14:04
kind of visualize and empathize with what happens
14:08
in that time period. And then later on, once
14:11
the Nazis are in power, Weimar doesn't lose its
14:13
status. It kind of remains a central Nazi stronghold
14:18
and it gets altered quite severely by new Nazi
14:20
architecture, by them trying to make it a Nazified.
14:24
kind of culture center of Weimar. And then in
14:27
the end, this whole thing culminates with the
14:29
Buchenwald concentration camp being built on
14:32
the outskirts of Weimar as well, which is one
14:34
of the largest, some say the largest concentration
14:36
camp on German, as in within the original German
14:40
borders on German soil. So really everything
14:44
that marks this period out and this collapse
14:48
from the high ambition of the early 1920s to
14:51
the absolute catastrophe of... sort of Nazism
14:53
and genocide, you have that all represented in
14:56
one town. And that's why I thought it's a fascinating
15:00
place to sort of go to and mentally spend some
15:03
time in because it visualizes all of this stuff
15:06
really clearly, I think. In the book, you tell
15:10
the story of Weimar through the lives of some
15:12
of its more colorful inhabitants. I imagine you
15:16
must have spent a lot of time digging through...
15:18
the archives and through personal documents of
15:20
these people. Which one of these stories kind
15:23
of stayed with you or struck you the most? I
15:27
mean, I did spend a lot of time in Vienna itself
15:30
as well. It was just, I arrived there in the
15:32
town archive kind of quite naively saying to
15:34
the archivist what I was planning and did he
15:38
have any specific... ideas as to what kind of
15:41
people i could use and he and i was just sitting
15:43
there and he came up with one box after another
15:45
it was just this pile of people's just lives
15:47
around me you know and you obviously you don't
15:50
get a neat story you get people's birth certificates
15:52
god how do you even sift through that i know
15:55
it was taking 85 years there was a point at which
15:58
i thought i can't do this because you know you
16:01
just sit there and um spend a lot longer and
16:04
it took me ages to get the basic setup basically
16:06
right to decide which people I wanted to use
16:10
and why, because, you know, you could choose
16:12
from hundreds, really. So my central character
16:16
is the one who is probably the sort of closest,
16:18
because I spent so much time with him in his
16:21
diary. His name is Karl Weyrich, and he's a bookbinder
16:27
by trade and runs a stationery shop right in
16:30
the center of Weimar. And what makes him quite
16:32
an intriguing person is that he's so normal.
16:35
He's kind of just a lower middle class guy. gets
16:38
a shop in 1914, sets up, and then just wants
16:42
to really have a quiet, quite non -political
16:44
life. And obviously it's impossible at that time
16:46
to be an apolitical person one way or another.
16:50
The events, be that the economic crises or the
16:53
politics of the times, they come back to you.
16:56
You can't stay out of them. And that's something
16:58
that makes this time quite distinct. And he keeps
17:01
a diary all the way through it. Initially, it
17:02
was quite a thing at the time. People kept...
17:07
like a log of the of the walks and the kind of
17:10
sunday out things that they did so you'd kind
17:12
of say On Sunday, the 4th of July, 1924, I went
17:17
hiking on this and that mountain and I had a
17:20
coffee at the top. And that was sort of the thing
17:22
that people did. And you can just see it merge
17:24
from there to like a chronicle of what was going
17:27
on at the time, because he clearly felt he wanted
17:29
to record this somehow. Just for himself, it's
17:32
very obvious that he didn't want this published.
17:34
And it wasn't a diary that was supposed to. There's
17:38
moral questions around what I'm doing here in
17:41
terms of using it in the way that I have. But
17:44
it's clear that it's his personal recollections
17:47
of what was going on, basically. And that was
17:49
really quite fascinating. And then some of the
17:52
other characters, they really pose some complex
17:55
moral questions. And that's what I find fascinating.
17:58
So to give you one extreme example, there's Rosa
18:01
Schmidt, who ran a hotel with her husband right
18:04
by the train station. and the Hohenzollern. And
18:08
she was Jewish and her husband was not. He's
18:12
a World War I veteran, highly decorated, kind
18:15
of from a Protestant Weimar family. And they
18:17
moved to his hometown basically and set up the
18:19
shop. And because she is a highly assimilated,
18:22
as many German Jews were, highly assimilated,
18:24
kind of outwardly just German woman, nobody really
18:28
knows that she's Jewish and neither do the Nazis
18:31
when they start coming to Weimar. And Hitler
18:33
stays at her hotel several times in the 1920s.
18:36
And you just think, you know, as a Jewish woman
18:39
running that place, she must have heard the anti
18:42
-Semitic rants, the speeches that he gave. And,
18:46
you know, it's hyperinflation. It's the crisis.
18:49
They couldn't really pick and choose who was
18:51
going to stay at their hotel. If she wasn't Jewish,
18:55
you would immediately think of her as at the
18:57
very least a bystander, if not even somebody
18:59
who was. helping hitler or certainly not preventing
19:02
him from coming to weimar and and staying in
19:05
a hotel and being kind of accommodated for but
19:07
being jewish she's later on you know by definition
19:11
a victim of the nazi regime and that really complicates
19:14
those categories quite a bit and it also shows
19:17
i think to some extent that people didn't really
19:19
necessarily know the full implications of what
19:22
was coming their way what was hitting them if
19:24
even she didn't have any qualms about him staying
19:27
at her hotel. So there are complex stories like
19:30
that in there as well, which really stuck with
19:32
me, I think, as I was researching them. Did she
19:36
survive the war? No, she didn't. She managed
19:40
to hide her Jewishness for quite a long time.
19:44
So I found in 1938, she still applied for a new
19:47
passport. And by that point, Jews were supposed
19:49
to have a red letter J. for Jews stamped into
19:53
their passports. And she managed to get one still
19:56
in 1938 without the J in it, basically by just
19:59
pretending that she didn't have Jewish heritage.
20:02
But the net was getting kind of tighter and tighter
20:05
around German Jews. So for example, there was
20:07
a research, sort of Nazi research institute that
20:10
was also set up in Weimar, which looked into
20:12
people's racial records and baptismal records
20:17
and that sort of stuff. So they were trying to
20:18
work out if people were pretending. to be non
20:22
-Jewish when actually they had Jewish ancestry.
20:24
And eventually she's found out, her family's
20:26
found out, or somebody grasped them up. Maybe
20:28
we don't really know, but they find out. And
20:31
she ends up on the last train that sent people
20:35
from Weimar, Jewish people from Weimar to Auschwitz
20:37
and gets murdered there. And the fact that her
20:40
husband even then still sent a letter to the
20:44
camp commandant of Auschwitz and asked for her...
20:47
personal belongings to be sent back so he's asking
20:50
for the wedding ring and and the ashes and her
20:53
coat um you know when you think you as a historian
20:57
you know what auschwitz looked like at the end
20:59
of 1944 you know the chaos the absolute murderous
21:03
like madness of it all and he's sending this
21:07
formal letter to the camp commandant to ask you
21:10
know can i have her things back and you're just
21:12
saying yeah people did know that bad stuff was
21:14
going on but i don't think they realized the
21:16
full horrific detail and extent of it because
21:19
that only came out after the war and later on
21:22
basically as people raked through this and again
21:24
it throws up all sorts of moral questions apart
21:27
from just being a heartbreaking story it really
21:30
is awful when you go through the documents and
21:32
you see that letter and you just think that just
21:34
to sheer despair and he died just a few weeks
21:36
after um his his daughter thought of heartbreak
21:39
of just not being able to cope with it And they
21:41
have this gravestone. Because obviously they
21:44
didn't get the ashes back or anything. There
21:47
was nothing to be sent back. They ravaged the
21:49
victims to the umpteenth degree. So they had
21:53
a symbolic funeral for her and then he died shortly
21:56
after. And they're both, their gravestones are
21:58
on the Weimar Cemetery now. Heartbreaking. Please
22:03
tell me that my man Karl, the bookbinder, survived.
22:07
Yeah, I mean, I start the book with him at the
22:10
end of the war. So he does get through this.
22:13
And it's interesting, though, because when Weimar
22:16
gets occupied by the Americans, they find Buchenwald
22:19
and they immediately decide they need to show
22:21
people this. So, you know, before they start
22:23
clearing up and demolishing the camp, they need
22:26
to show German civilians what they... facilitated
22:30
and what they tolerated. And so it's decided
22:33
that on behalf of kind of all German civilians
22:35
everywhere, the people of Weimar need to march
22:38
up to the Buchenwald concentration camp and see
22:40
it. It was in walking distance. And Karl is one
22:43
of the people that gets sent up. to Buchenwald
22:46
to see it. And he describes in his diary just
22:49
the horrific nature of it. And he says, again,
22:52
you know, in private, clearly not thinking anybody
22:53
else would ever read this, that he was ashamed
22:56
at our German downfall. He writes this as an
22:58
ours, as a nation, as Germans. And how ashamed
23:02
he was in his heart to see all of this. And I
23:06
found that really interesting that he says that
23:08
and then goes on to sort of at various points
23:10
in his diary to say, oh, we're but small. you
23:14
know individuals in the big course of history
23:16
and what are we supposed to do at no point does
23:18
it occur to him to ask for his own personal responsibility
23:22
or the person the responsibility of the people
23:25
of Weimar or you know any on that level he clearly
23:29
believed there was absolutely nothing that he
23:30
could have done even though he doesn't push that
23:33
responsibility away from Germany as a nation
23:35
he doesn't really accept that he has a personal
23:39
responsibility for this as well and this really
23:41
got me thinking you know if somebody who would
23:43
in any other time he would have led a perfect
23:46
perfectly ordinary life but he ended up living
23:48
in the 1920s and in the 1930s um what does this
23:53
mean for people like you and me you know what
23:55
this is really what got me thinking of if he
23:58
as an ordinary person lived that way and just
24:00
accepted that there was a concentration camp
24:02
on his doorstep literally would we have done
24:05
the same thing you know this is really what what
24:07
um i think is a It's an interesting question.
24:10
Were the Americans right to say to these people,
24:13
you need to all go up there and see what you
24:14
have done. This is your responsibility. And if
24:18
so, what does this mean for us today and for
24:21
the things that we perhaps tolerate or allow
24:23
to happen around us? Yeah, totally. We all think
24:27
for ourselves, oh, I would be the most moral
24:29
person in that age and in that place. But I think
24:33
history shows over and over again that that's
24:36
usually not the case. Unfortunately. Oh, we have
24:41
to talk about one last character, if that's okay
24:45
with you, which is Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth.
24:48
Just for a second, because her life was so out
24:50
there as to beggar belief. Reading about her,
24:53
I thought this material could be made into a
24:56
fantastic, if somewhat demented, European arthouse
24:59
film or something. Please do tell us a little
25:02
bit about her. Yeah, no, she is really fascinating.
25:04
So Elisabeth Nietzsche was Friedrich, the philosopher
25:08
Friedrich Nietzsche's sister. And initially,
25:12
I mean, the two kind of grow up together in a
25:15
small village near Leipzig. And then they go
25:19
their separate ways, more or less, as one does
25:20
when you grow up. And she, as you say, her life
25:24
is bizarre. She marries this... deeply anti -semitic
25:28
teacher who believes that the german nation and
25:32
the german kind of people's body as in the physical
25:34
nature of germans the ethic ethnic nature of
25:37
germans is being threatened by these foreign
25:40
jewish influencers and so he wants to set up
25:43
a colony in south america just for Germans, for
25:47
Aryans, as he puts it. This is in the 19th century
25:50
still. So we're talking kind of decades before
25:53
the time period when I start my story. So she
25:56
moves with her anti -Semitic husband, Bernhard
25:59
Förster, to South America and they set up a colony
26:02
called Nueva Germania, which is supposed to be
26:05
a pure Aryan village where Aryans can be amongst
26:08
themselves and sort of have Aryan children and
26:11
create this ethnic... pure ethnic society. And
26:14
then this whole thing, as it was bound to collapses,
26:17
it just doesn't work. There's not enough money.
26:18
The whole thing just doesn't work. And Bernhard,
26:21
her husband, poisons himself in a hotel room
26:25
and basically kills himself. And so then she's
26:28
left alone. She's widowed, Elisabeth. So she
26:30
returns to Germany and suddenly finds that her
26:33
famous, her brother, who'd been a kind of quite
26:36
penniless philosopher, has suddenly gone A, famous.
26:40
There's this Nietzsche cult being developed at
26:42
the end of the 19th century. And B, he's had
26:44
a nervous breakdown, as in a mental breakdown.
26:47
He's literally insane. And so she suddenly has
26:51
to look after him and after his estate. And at
26:54
the same time as estate, his writings are becoming
26:56
quite valuable because people are after them.
26:59
And so she decides to become his caretaker, his
27:02
nurse. She looks after him and feeds him and
27:06
dresses him and so on. And at the same time,
27:09
begins to gather and collate and edit his work,
27:12
his writings, which are messy. He's got these
27:15
kind of, you know, kind of just sketchbooks where
27:18
he writes things. And apparently even his most
27:20
famous work, which is really Elizabeth's collation
27:24
of his work rather than his actual work, The
27:27
Will to Power. And apparently he wrote various
27:30
different titles down and was thinking about
27:32
writing a book by that title and then dismissed
27:34
the idea and wrote a shopping list on the back
27:36
of it. You know, that just goes to show, I think,
27:39
how crazy Nietzsche's kind of way of working
27:43
was in the end. And she gets all of this kind
27:45
of really quite mad, the notes, the pages, the
27:47
books and so on, and starts... setting up a Nietzsche
27:51
archive. And to give this enough cultural gravitas
27:54
so that people know that this is a serious project,
27:57
she drags poor, incapacitated Nietzsche to Weimar
28:00
and sets up a Nietzsche archive in Weimar on
28:04
a hill on the southern outskirts of the city.
28:06
It's still there today. And basically he dies
28:09
there. He dies in Weimar deliberately so that
28:12
she can then run his archive in the... in the
28:16
kind of wake of all of this cultural glory that
28:18
we talked about earlier. And that makes her a
28:20
really fascinating character. So she's quite
28:22
old by the end of the First World War and really
28:25
keen to make sure that this Nietzsche archive
28:27
survives financially and culturally that it has
28:30
an impact because she believes she's now the
28:32
caretaker of Nietzsche's. body of work, of his
28:35
thought. And then suddenly everyone wants to
28:37
use his thinking to explain why the First World
28:40
War happened, what was going on with German society.
28:42
So it really has a bit of kudos going in the
28:45
1920s. And she's trying to find a way through
28:49
managing that, basically getting donations and
28:51
things. So that makes her a fascinating character.
28:53
She's really quite a cultural dinosaur at this
28:55
point, because she wants the old Germany back.
28:57
She wants the Kaiser back. She wants that kind
28:59
of Germany that she grew up in and that she loved.
29:02
to come back, but there's no chance of it coming
29:04
back after the Kaiser was toppled. And so she
29:07
looks for kind of an alternative and initially
29:10
is really fascinated with Mussolini in Italy,
29:14
who's beginning to set up his dictatorship. And
29:17
then eventually the Nazis find Nietzsche and
29:19
find that concepts like the superhuman, so like
29:22
the elevated human beings that Nietzsche had
29:24
envisioned as an intellectual idea. So Nietzsche
29:27
believed that some people had... exceptional
29:29
kind of intellectual and personal qualities and
29:32
that these people should lead society so he called
29:35
these people like sort of super humans the nazis
29:38
made the master race out of that you know the
29:40
idea that there's kind of ethnically superior
29:42
people so they appropriated his ideas and and
29:45
elizabeth eventually lets them and and basically
29:49
facilitates that and There's a lot of moral complexity
29:52
again to that because you can kind of see her
29:55
thinking in this and her reluctance initially
29:57
to go with the Nazis because she thinks they
30:00
are too crude, not intellectual enough, too violent.
30:04
She has many Jewish friends, so she isn't entirely
30:06
okay with it. Despite her anti -Semitic husband,
30:09
she isn't entirely happy with this kind of Arabid
30:12
anti -Semitism that they bring in. So again,
30:15
a highly fascinating character, how she sits
30:17
there on her hill on the outskirts of Weimar,
30:19
China. find someone basically to take on her
30:23
brother's legacy and finance it. The first part
30:27
of the story, the whole Paraguay escapade has
30:29
such strong Fitzcarraldo vibes from Werner Herzog.
30:33
I'm surprised he didn't make a movie out of it
30:36
yet. Yeah, there's still room. Yeah, there's
30:40
still time. 8 .24, the studios should look into
30:43
this. If we return to the national stage for
30:46
a bit. The Nazi Party was founded, I believe,
30:49
in 1920, but for a long time they were a complete
30:52
non -factor politically. Even in 1928 federal
30:56
elections, I believe Hitler secured only 2 .8
30:59
% of the vote. How does he finally manage to
31:04
tap into broader levels of public support? Yeah,
31:08
I mean, they were a small movement and they're
31:11
kind of growing locally as well in Bavaria and
31:14
Munich initially where... Hitler's convinced
31:17
that everyone really thinks like him and he just
31:20
needs to break through and start some sort of
31:21
revolution and then people will come along with
31:24
that because you know from his point of view
31:26
he speaks in like beer halls and circus tents
31:29
and things like that and basically believes that
31:32
because where he goes there's say a few hundred
31:35
people who or even thousands of people who are
31:38
basically fervent Nazi supporters. And that's
31:41
the world that he operates in. So he believes
31:43
that so long as he gets more reach, people will
31:45
follow him. And that's why he starts his first
31:49
attempt to overthrow the state in 1923, because
31:52
he believes basically with a violent coup, the
31:54
so -called Munich Putsch, that people will...
31:57
will just join in and they don't and then then
32:00
it fails and so really the i think what happened
32:03
in between in these so -called golden years of
32:05
the weimar republic when the hyperinflation of
32:08
1923 is sort of overcome and the american money
32:11
comes in in large numbers as loans and grants
32:15
and things stabilize he doesn't give up he's
32:19
so convinced of his own greatness and his destiny
32:22
that he just carries on consolidating the movement
32:25
even though there's one a kind of electoral slap
32:28
after another it's not just a national election
32:30
that you just in 1928, but also regional elections,
32:35
local kind of on state level. Germany is a federal
32:37
state at this point, so the states all have their
32:39
own parliaments, and he loses a lot of them quite
32:42
badly as well, despite putting everything into
32:44
it, because life's just reasonably stable at
32:47
this point, and people just don't want extremist
32:49
politics. But what he does do in that time is
32:51
he really consolidates the movement. He builds
32:53
up local chapters. The Nazi party grows. He has
32:57
things like the Hitler Youth set up. Um, there's
33:00
also kind of women's organizations and a Nazi
33:03
union of, of lawyers, one for teachers, you know,
33:06
all of these kinds of different organizations
33:07
are all set up and in place. There's an electoral
33:10
map of, um, of Nazi Gower of sort of Gower's
33:14
a regional like constituency and the Nazi party
33:18
basically divides the entire landscape of Germany
33:20
into these Gower. And then. um does kind of a
33:24
localized election campaign in each gaol and
33:26
that's quite a new i mean we're used to that
33:28
now because politicians do this now but at the
33:31
time that's quite a revolutionary thing that
33:32
you might want to say something different in
33:34
bavaria compared to say hamburg or that when
33:37
you go to an urban area you might want to tone
33:39
down the anti -semitism a bit because people
33:42
are surrounded by Jewish friends and neighbors
33:44
and colleagues, and they don't want to hear that.
33:47
Whilst you go somewhere in a kind of deeply conservative
33:49
rural area and tell people it's the Jews who've
33:52
done this economic damage, then there's more
33:56
mileage in that. And all these things are already
33:59
in place. And then when the Wall Street crash
34:01
hits in 1929 and suddenly causes abject misery
34:06
in Germany, then he's ready because he's got
34:09
all these kind of structures in place and worked.
34:12
non -stop really in the mid -1920s to get these
34:15
things going. And that's very different, say,
34:17
to what the communists are doing or other nationalist
34:21
movements, because he's got all his ducks in
34:23
a row by the time that the opportunity comes
34:26
to soak up people's despair and anger. It's a
34:30
combination of those two things. And then the
34:32
third factor I will just quickly mention is that
34:35
Plenty of kind of middle and upper class people
34:37
are really, really frightened of the communists.
34:40
Anybody who had any wealth to lose really worried
34:43
about a communist revolution. And he soaks that
34:45
up as well and basically says, you know, I'm
34:48
the only thing that stands between us and the
34:51
communist revolution. I'll squash these people.
34:53
And so he gets a lot of money from industrialists
34:56
and kind of support from, for instance, media
34:59
figures and other people who'd rather see the
35:02
Nazis than the communists in power. And that's
35:04
why. you also begin to see, especially after
35:07
the Wall Street crash hits. It's not, people
35:09
always think unemployment goes up, so therefore,
35:12
you know, it's these unemployed people are voting
35:14
for Hitler. They're not on the whole. A lot of
35:17
these people are former workers because they've
35:19
been made unemployed and they're still with the
35:21
communists and the socialists and the social
35:22
democrats. On the whole, they always stay lower
35:25
in their support for Hitler than middle and upper
35:28
class peoples, especially the lower and middle
35:30
middle classes, because of their fear of what
35:33
these unemployed workers will do. you know, vote
35:35
for Hitler basically to try and get a counterpoint
35:38
there. And that's what allows this to spiral
35:41
basically up after 1929. One thing I never really
35:46
understood was the following. In the beginning,
35:49
we talked about the massive revolts and uprisings
35:50
at the end of the First World War. Germany had
35:54
2 million casualties and 4 million wounded. I
35:58
read, I'm pretty sure most of the families were
36:00
affected by the war somehow. And so in... 1918,
36:04
first the sailors and then the soldiers and then
36:06
eventually the people themselves clearly wanted
36:08
the war to end fast, like you said. So why did
36:12
they eventually buy into the whole stab in the
36:15
back myth, which purports that Germany was actually
36:19
winning the war, but was betrayed from the inside?
36:22
Well, the answer is from what you just said.
36:24
So if you lose 2 million people and even if...
36:27
say your husband hasn't died he still came home
36:30
either with limbs missing face destroyed mind
36:34
destroyed like nobody came back to a whole family
36:38
or to the to the place that they left um when
36:41
when they left for the front lines it affected
36:43
absolutely everyone it was horrific and then
36:46
i found even as i was researching i mean People
36:49
know about the Spanish flu and that there were
36:51
diseases around, but I hadn't quite anticipated
36:53
what this actually meant once you drill down
36:55
on it. Almost everyone lost somebody to tuberculosis
36:59
and the Spanish flu, and all of that was really
37:02
rampant as well. Death was really everywhere.
37:04
It was really, really bad. So to assume that
37:06
all of this was for nothing is psychologically
37:09
incredibly difficult to take, to sort of sit
37:13
there and say, Like I lost my husband or my son
37:16
or whatever for nothing. Nothing came out of
37:18
this. If you're British or you're French or American,
37:22
you could say to yourself, this was for liberty.
37:25
This was to keep our families safe. This was
37:28
to stop an invasion that would have hit us and
37:31
changed our lives forever. So yes, it's still
37:34
difficult and there's still a lot of darkness
37:36
in those societies as well. But you still have
37:38
a purpose there, basically. You can say afterwards,
37:41
this is what the sacrifice was for. And you can
37:43
still see this in the way that these wars are
37:46
remembered in those countries. So in Britain,
37:48
for instance, when you see Remembrance Day every
37:50
year, you kind of see the gravitas that that
37:53
carries and the memory of that. It's completely
37:55
different to Germany, which had to sort of sit
37:57
there and say, well, we sacrificed all of this.
38:00
Not only did we get nothing out of it, we came
38:02
out worse than we were in 1914. some bad kind
38:09
of cheating was going on there and Germany didn't
38:11
actually lose, but they were tricked out of or
38:13
cheated out of their kind of rightful victory
38:16
is quite psychologically quite appealing to a
38:18
lot of people. And that's why I think it took
38:21
on and it worked because it then meant that rather
38:24
than feeling kind of grief and despair, you could
38:26
channel that into anger and resentment. And that's
38:29
a preferable emotion, I think, to feel for a
38:31
lot of people. I found it quite interesting that
38:33
when the Weimar Republic didn't really know how
38:36
to mark, the war, you know, when kind of anniversaries
38:40
came along, what do you do? Do you grieve? Do
38:42
you celebrate? You know, what is it when Britain
38:45
is already starting kind of this remembrance
38:47
tradition? And so the only time that they try
38:50
this is the basically anniversary of the start
38:56
of the war. So in 1924, they have a sort of...
39:00
day to remember the war and its victims and in
39:03
Weimar the church opens and initially they try
39:05
and get only as many people in as they've got
39:08
seats and then suddenly the church just fills
39:10
up with people and you've got everyone there
39:12
from like democratic liberal democratic minded
39:15
people workers you got all the nationalist groups
39:19
are there in their uniforms and in there it's
39:21
bizarre kind of people who would otherwise be
39:23
absolute enemies are suddenly all there in the
39:26
church celebrating this well, not celebrating,
39:29
I suppose, but remembering this moment and the
39:31
sacrifice that they made because they've all
39:33
gone through it. And so that's quite a unifying
39:35
factor as well and quite a powerful thing when
39:37
Hitler then says, I'll undo this sort of thing
39:41
that was done to us and I'll reverse our fortunes
39:44
again and give us another chance to sort of make
39:47
up for it and restore ourselves as a nation.
39:52
Last year, I talked to Timothy Ryback about his
39:55
excellent book, Takeover, which is about kind
39:57
of... more like Hitler scheming his way into
39:59
the chancellery. And during the conversation,
40:01
we couldn't avoid the shocking levels of street
40:04
violence that became the norm in Berlin during
40:06
the Nazi march to power. Did Weimar become a
40:09
literal background where the Nazis and the communists
40:12
were slugging it out openly as well? No, and
40:16
this is part of the reason why Hitler spends
40:18
so much time in Weimar. It's safe, it's quiet.
40:21
He avoided Berlin, did he? Yeah, I mean, he literally
40:24
did sometimes. For example, when he becomes,
40:27
or the Nazi party becomes the largest party in
40:30
parliament, and he's demanding the chancellorship.
40:33
So this is the kind of... between 1930 and then
40:36
1933 when he eventually comes into power. There
40:39
are various points in time where he holds negotiations
40:42
over joining into a coalition government, his
40:46
Nazi party, and eventually declines because he
40:49
wants the chancellorship and it's not given to
40:50
him. But there's one incidence where he's on
40:53
the train from Munich to Berlin. And he just
40:56
decides, you know what, I can't be dealing with
40:58
this. And he just stops halfway and just goes
41:00
to Weimar and sits in his favorite restaurant
41:03
in the Hotel Elephant and just doesn't go to
41:06
Berlin because he just can't be bothered with
41:09
it. And that, I think, is quite a telling thing
41:11
about what Weimar was, really. It was a safe
41:13
place for him and his movement. Elsewhere, you'd
41:16
have angry workers. throwing stones at his car
41:19
or trying to assassinate him. In Weimar, he could
41:22
go into a cafe. He didn't even have the cafes
41:24
cleared when he went in. Even later, once he
41:26
was the Fuhrer of Germany, he knows he's safe
41:31
there because it's a place where even if people
41:33
were opposed to Nazism, they were still kind
41:35
of middle -class Germans. They wouldn't throw
41:37
stones at him or set his car on fire or something.
41:41
Also, it just didn't have the urban... Like workers,
41:44
you know, the kind of communist socialist people
41:46
who did join the kind of resistance, they just
41:52
weren't big enough in Weimar. They only had one
41:53
factory, which produced sort of like wagons and
41:57
carts and things like that for trains and things
42:01
like that. So there's only one factory there
42:02
and it's only got a few kind of hundred workers.
42:05
So it's not, you don't get this kind of urban.
42:08
anti -fascist sort of movement that you do get
42:10
in Berlin. And Berlin was called Red Berlin at
42:13
the time for a reason. It really was quite kind
42:15
of socialist communist, which is why Joseph Goebbels,
42:18
Hitler's most sort of talented propaganda guy,
42:22
is being put in charge of the GAU of Berlin.
42:25
Initially, Goebbels thinks it's an insult and
42:28
then he realizes actually you should take that
42:29
as a compliment that he gets given the most sort
42:32
of complex and most anti -Nazi. to try and win
42:37
over kind of Red Berlin. And that just doesn't
42:39
happen in Weimar. It always remains a safe haven.
42:42
There's also an interesting argument there in
42:47
that when Hitler attempts his coup in 1923, the
42:51
Nazi party is banned nationwide for a while after
42:55
that, because obviously it had just tried to
42:58
overthrow the government. It's clearly anti -constitutional.
43:01
But it doesn't stop the Nazi MPs from standing
43:04
either as independents or under a different party
43:08
name. Obviously, you can't ban people, you can
43:09
only ban the parties. So in Thuringia, the state
43:13
of which Weimar is the capital at this point,
43:16
you get six Nazi MPs in parliament in 1924. And
43:21
they are needed for centre -right, far -right,
43:25
conservative majority, basically, those six MPs.
43:29
make the difference between them being able to
43:31
run the state or not. So the conservatives go
43:34
to them and say, right, what is it that you want
43:36
for your corporation? And they go, well, we want
43:38
you to lift the ban on the Nazi party in Thuringia,
43:41
and they have to do that or else they can't run
43:43
the country. So Weimar becomes once again, in
43:45
1924, the only place really, Thuringia and Weimar
43:49
itself, where the Nazi party isn't banned and
43:52
where it can relaunch its movement, you know,
43:54
whilst Hitler is still in prison. And that's
43:56
also quite... telling, you know, of kind of why
43:59
this becomes so central to Hitler as well. It's
44:03
sort of a place where he can start campaigning
44:05
again, where he can speak, where he's allowed
44:07
to operate at a time when he's still shunned
44:10
in many other places. Even though he's staying
44:13
in a partly Jewishly owned hotel. Yeah. And I
44:18
mean, that brings home the entire, I think, atmosphere
44:21
at the time is that people just obviously how
44:23
they had no... hindsight they didn't know what
44:25
was coming or even that he was taking over the
44:27
government one day he just seemed an incredibly
44:30
radical you know but niche individual at the
44:33
time and you know we're talking with 1920s as
44:36
i say hyperinflation is just over the the hotel
44:38
owners really couldn't sit there and say we're
44:40
not having this whole large group of people coming
44:43
in or risking them not coming back the next time
44:46
when they just couldn't afford to. And they were,
44:50
I mean, many people were kind of nationalist
44:51
without being Nazis. They were sort of, you know,
44:54
deeply conservative, patriotic, if you want to
44:56
call it that. And when Hitler talked about the
45:00
ignominities of the Treaty of Versailles and
45:02
those kinds of things, many people could go along
45:04
with that without sharing the same. you know,
45:06
sort of radicalism. And that's, I think, a danger
45:09
as well, that obviously they didn't know what
45:11
he was going to do once he's in power. When you
45:14
were doing research for your book, did you come
45:16
across any, I don't know, very private diary
45:19
entries or writings of any sort from people living
45:22
in Weimar describing how they felt when they
45:26
realized that some of their neighbors or friends
45:29
or even family members, perhaps, came out as
45:32
proud nazis because that must be such a uniquely
45:35
dispiriting feeling yeah i think i mean people
45:38
didn't necessarily say that so much but there
45:40
are incidents where you do see that they're shocked
45:43
by certain things so for example carl my book
45:47
binder he um initially is quite like many germans
45:51
were initially is quite hopeful that hitler might
45:53
solve all of the problems um you know with with
45:57
kind of hyperinflation with sorry with the great
45:59
depression and so on so he he writes in his diary
46:03
in in 1933 oh and now we're putting all of our
46:06
hopes in this new young chancellor called a hitler
46:08
and i was like no carl not you um you know because
46:11
as i say he's just an ordinary guy and then suddenly
46:14
um he writes something like that in the diary
46:17
he also joins for a while um there's a a way
46:21
of supporting the ss the hitler's sort of private
46:24
army without joining it so it's like a subscription
46:28
basically so he pays one mark a month um and
46:32
gets a magazine uh sent to him and he's in that
46:34
for a few months and then he quits it again which
46:37
i found interesting and then in the mid -1930s
46:40
he starts grumbling about having to go to all
46:43
these political rallies and you know he skives
46:46
off some of them kind of just shows his face
46:48
and then goes again because everyone is supposed
46:50
to attend things like may day and big kind of
46:53
you know because hitler wants the numbers there
46:54
he wants to be seen kind of standing there in
46:57
front of tens of thousands of people and carl
46:59
begins to sort of go there and then leave as
47:02
quickly as he can because he's just not into
47:04
it all that much anymore and it's beginning to
47:06
the shine's beginning to wear off and then when
47:08
Kristallnacht happens so the the sort of night
47:13
of the broken glass, this really quite violent
47:16
attack on synagogues and on Jewish shops and
47:19
on Jewish people themselves. He writes, he's
47:22
deeply religious. He writes in his diary that
47:24
this is a blasphemous act. This is not something
47:27
that God will condemn and we'll all suffer for
47:29
it one day. And that kind of ominous thing that
47:33
for him as a religious person, as a Protestant.
47:37
um that he knows that this is morally wrong and
47:40
he writes that in his diary that one day kind
47:42
of germany will get its comeuppance for it that
47:44
was a moment that quite struck me because there
47:46
isn't much commentary on how he actually feels
47:48
in this diary it kind of just seeps in every
47:51
now and then and in that moment he was clearly
47:53
shocked enough to write that in there and sort
47:55
of say this this is horrendous this shouldn't
47:56
be happening and but doesn't do anything about
47:59
it and i think that's also what um what is the
48:02
case for many other germans who do see in So
48:06
for example, the Social Democrats, once Hitler
48:08
comes into power, most of them either keep their
48:11
heads down or they leave the country and set
48:13
up opposition outside. And there's a group in
48:16
Prague of German Social Democrats. And they write
48:20
so -called Germany reports where they basically
48:22
have informants in Germany telling them what
48:24
was going on and how the mood is in the country
48:26
because they're waiting for a moment when they
48:28
can stoke resistance. And even they write that
48:31
Kristallnacht was a turning point for a lot of
48:33
Germans. They kind of looked at that and the
48:35
outright sheer brazen violence against people,
48:39
shops, property is something that really quite
48:41
shocks people. But again, they don't take...
48:44
the view from that that they should be doing
48:46
something about it. A lot of them believe they
48:47
can't. And they're quite happy for Jews to be
48:50
pushed out of businesses and out of Germany.
48:52
They just don't like the violence. And that's,
48:54
again, a moral complexity there that is quite
48:57
hard to pin down. But that was a moment that
49:00
was quite striking to me when Karl, as I say,
49:02
doesn't normally comment all that much on what
49:04
he sees. And in this case, he did. Must be a
49:09
crazy feeling. when you're spending so much time
49:12
with somebody's kind of inner thoughts that they
49:15
wrote down and then you read something like that
49:17
i got shivers running down my spine i can't imagine
49:20
what you felt like like spending i don't know
49:23
months or even years with carl and then you read
49:25
something so poignant and and dramatic yeah it's
49:28
the same with with some of the others as well
49:30
when when you sort of follow their their story
49:33
and you have to piece it together quite often.
49:35
In Carl's case, he wrote a meticulous diary,
49:38
so you're literally reading through his own life
49:40
as though it was kind of like a bullet -pointed
49:44
novel almost, in that for each day he kind of
49:47
just wrote an entry of what he did. So that's
49:50
separate. But Rosa, for example, the Jewish woman
49:53
by the station, I've got the hotel records and
49:57
that letter I mentioned earlier from her husband
49:59
and those kinds of things, but it's really quite
50:01
a complex thing to piece together. how they lived
50:04
and what they did and what they thought. Because
50:06
I'm not somebody who fills in the gaps. So if
50:09
I don't know, because I'm a historian, not a
50:12
novelist, I don't write it. It's not there. And
50:15
those gaps are there as well sometimes. And it's
50:18
just something where in your mind you think,
50:20
or you try and close those gaps basically in
50:23
your mind and try and imagine what they did or
50:25
what they... thought or felt but obviously you
50:28
can't write these things but still you know they're
50:30
there in your mind and they do keep occupying
50:32
your mind as you as you go so when it comes what
50:37
does the nazi takeover of weimar look like when
50:41
do those scary flags go up everywhere so it happens
50:44
earlier compared to them this is again what makes
50:47
weimar fascinating is they get the first nazi
50:49
minister in thuringia in that state that by most
50:51
capital of in 1930 And it's Wilhelm Frick who
50:56
will later become the interior minister. So really
50:59
quite a high ranking, quite extreme, even within
51:02
the Nazi movement, quite an extreme man who was
51:05
already involved in the Munich Putsch in the
51:07
1920s. And Hitler basically parachutes him in
51:11
the moment there's a chance to join the Thuringian
51:14
government, and he does. And you see a lot of
51:17
the... policies that are later rolled out on
51:19
a national basis. They try them out in Thuringia.
51:22
It's sometimes called the experiment or sort
51:24
of field. Thuringia is their first experiment
51:27
or their first try at running a government. And
51:31
because Frick is also the education and culture
51:34
minister in Weimar, he begins to change the way
51:37
that schooling works. He introduces quite sort
51:40
of hateful, aggressive Five of them that the
51:44
students have to say at the end of the school
51:45
day. One of them is kind of the shame about the
51:48
Treaty of Versailles will forever burn in our
51:50
hearts and things like that. So from the beginning,
51:53
it's obvious what they will do, you know, once
51:56
they become kind of a national government. And
51:59
it's interesting that when they eventually get
52:01
kicked out of the Thuringian government for being
52:03
too extreme. So eventually even that conservative
52:05
alliance that is held together with Nazi participation.
52:10
It becomes too extreme for them and they bring
52:12
down this Nazi government with a vote of no confidence.
52:16
And frick goes. And then I saw one journalist
52:19
writing in a local newspaper, oh, at least people
52:22
have now seen what these people are like and
52:24
what Thuringia had to suffer whilst the Nazis
52:27
were in power. So at least it serves as a warning.
52:30
Oh God, you know, you got this so wrong. You
52:33
know, because it obviously then still rolled
52:35
out exactly by the same playbook once they're
52:37
in power. They also start chucking out, you know,
52:40
political opponents out of the civil service
52:43
and out of public positions. Even when like hospitals
52:46
need new doctors, they put Nazi people in place.
52:49
The police is completely changed. So, you know,
52:53
when the Nazi government goes, those positions
52:55
don't suddenly go. So if you've been appointed.
52:58
say, director of the police in Weimar, and you
53:00
were a loyal Nazi, and that's why you got the
53:02
job in 1930, you don't lose it just because the
53:05
government changes. And so, you know, this is
53:07
the biggest damage is there already in that that
53:09
entire state's basically being Nazified in this
53:13
early Nazi government, and you begin to see a
53:16
kind of playbook unfold that they then... basically
53:20
put into action one -to -one once they're in
53:21
power and on the national stage so short answer
53:24
to your question is from 1930 or more it's basically
53:26
you begin to already see um kind of weimar being
53:30
nazified last two questions uh katya probably
53:36
the most terrifying symbol of the things to come
53:39
like you already said was the construction construction
53:42
of the buchenwald concentration camp just outside
53:45
weimar i believe in 1937. now it wasn't uh an
53:49
extermination camp, I believe, but nevertheless
53:51
around 60 ,000 people died there and it did have
53:54
a crematorium. How does the camp impact life
53:58
in the city? Are most people in Weimar acknowledging
54:01
it or are they simply pretending it isn't? Yeah,
54:04
no, that's a big question that I asked myself
54:07
as well when I started researching this. So to
54:10
put this into perspective, so Weimar is on a
54:12
flat plain, geographically speaking, and there's
54:16
only one hill on the outside of it, and that's
54:18
called the Ettersberg. And on that hill, they
54:21
built the concentration camp. So it's outside
54:24
the town, but it's so close that people could
54:27
walk there and did walk there, which is why the
54:29
Americans walked them up there in 1945. And it's
54:32
also because it's the only hill nearby. It's
54:35
where people used to go hiking and in the winter
54:37
where they go sledging and skiing. And it's a
54:39
popular kind of Sunday destination. Karl goes
54:43
there all the time. I was quite surprised. I
54:46
was wondering as I was reading his diary, will
54:48
he still go up there from 1937 onwards when there's
54:51
a concentration camp there in the woods? And
54:54
the answer is yes, he did. And there's one point
54:57
even when they... start constructing it and expanding
54:59
it, they have to cut off some of the footpaths
55:02
so that people wouldn't accidentally walk into
55:04
the concentration camp. And there's one reference
55:08
to that in Carl's diary where he just goes, oh,
55:10
that's stupid concentration camps making all
55:12
the walking routes inaccessible. And you think
55:15
it's just a sign of how people get used to it.
55:17
But again, this is before Auschwitz. People see
55:21
concentration camps as sort of open air prisons.
55:24
They know they're terrible places and they know
55:26
you don't want to end up there. but they do see
55:28
them as prison -type establishments. The British
55:31
had used them before, and they're very much,
55:33
even the term concentration camps, very much
55:35
associated with British colonial policy at the
55:39
time. And so they don't have that absolute abject
55:43
horror attached to them in the way that we think
55:46
of them today. And people think of them as places
55:49
where communists and other troublemakers are
55:52
basically... locked up. And that begins to change
55:55
in 1938 when, for the first time, Jewish people
55:59
are being rounded up en masse as part of the
56:02
Night of the Broken Glass. The Weimar train station
56:09
is being used for that because Buchenwald doesn't
56:11
have its own train station. So people see literally
56:14
10 ,000 Jewish men arrive within just a few days
56:19
in November 1938 and they know that they're being
56:22
kind of beaten onto lorries and then the lorries
56:25
take them up the hill to the concentration camp
56:28
and so they know at that point they just see
56:30
kind of relatively wealthy because the wealthiest
56:32
Jews were chosen for that because they were extracting
56:35
their property and their money from them in order
56:37
to release them again. So people see that these
56:40
are ordinary civilians you know arriving in coats
56:42
and in with their bags and things. And, you know,
56:46
they see that these aren't communist criminals.
56:48
And that's something, a turning point for a lot
56:51
of people. But the way that, even when you look
56:53
at the records, you kind of see that, for instance,
56:55
children were taunting each other in Weimar.
56:57
They would say, oh, if you don't behave, they
56:59
take you up to Buchenwald. People knew it was
57:02
there and they were kind of, you know, casually
57:04
beginning to almost live with the idea of this
57:06
camp kind of looming over their town. And you
57:10
say about the crematorium, that was installed
57:12
later on? in, I think it was 1941 or 42. So initially
57:18
when people died in the camp, of the really terrible
57:22
conditions there, like you get diseases running
57:24
rife, also people just being shot outright or
57:26
tortured to death, it racks up the body count
57:29
very quickly and it doesn't have a crematorium.
57:31
So they make a deal with the town of Weimar,
57:34
DSS, who run the crematorium, who run the concentration
57:38
camp, and they take the bodies down into the
57:40
Weimar civilian. crematorium on the cemetery
57:44
so people can see you know kind of coffins being
57:49
taken down the hill through their town and they
57:52
can see the crematorium basically working non
57:54
-stop and racking up the body count they know
57:56
and again we know this because there are rumors
57:59
going around at the time that one of these transports
58:02
apparently the the cart with the coffins kind
58:06
of keeled over and the coffins were supposed
58:09
to have opened and the bodies were supposed to
58:11
have tumbled out onto the streets. Whether that's
58:14
true or not, we don't know. But the fact that
58:15
this rumor was going around already tells you
58:18
that people have a notion of what's going on.
58:21
you know, up there, up in Buchenwald. And also,
58:24
as I say, these really dark jokes and things
58:25
like that that were going around. And the Nazis
58:27
weren't making a secret out of it either. I mean,
58:29
they found one newspaper article from, I think
58:32
it's 1938 as well, where they showed an American,
58:35
German -American tourist group. the concentration
58:38
camp so they took them up there to kind of prove
58:41
that it was a proper kind of prison establishment
58:44
and it was run and everything else was just propaganda
58:46
um so people were deliberately supposed to know
58:49
that it's there it was used as an instrument
58:51
of terror basically to say to people if you misbehave
58:54
you end up there so it's a combination of that
58:56
and not really but by carl's honest shock in
58:59
1945 i can also see that while people knew that
59:03
this camp was there they didn't really i think
59:05
understand the complete and utter horrific reality
59:09
of what this actually meant and what it actually
59:11
looked like. And I think maybe they didn't want
59:13
to understand either. I get the feeling that
59:15
a lot of people would rather just not think about
59:17
it too much, carry on with their own lives and
59:19
not be too concerned about what was going on
59:21
up there. So it's again, it's a really kind of
59:23
gray area in terms of how much people actually
59:26
knew and specifically whether they wanted to
59:28
know or not. Which brings us to the present day.
59:32
A lot of stuff going on, which a lot of us also
59:36
don't kind of want to think about. even though
59:38
we have a lot of information coming our way.
59:40
Safe to say that we are living in some pretty
59:42
unhinged times as well, times characterized by
59:44
evident democratic backsliding. A lot of people
59:48
seem to be drawing parallels between the Weimar
59:52
Republic and the state of things in the West
59:55
today. You're probably the most qualified person
59:58
in the world who can tell me if that's indeed
1:00:01
the case. I don't know about that. I'm not sure.
1:00:04
Anyone can give you a specific... If you don't
1:00:07
know, then nobody knows. So I have to ask you.
1:00:10
Let's go with that. Well, I think, I mean, I
1:00:13
try not to overdo it in the book with kind of
1:00:15
references to the current day because I think
1:00:18
there's a lot of danger in oversimplifying and
1:00:21
making political points and choosing the kind
1:00:23
of historical realities to go with that rather
1:00:26
than the other way around. So... So I do think
1:00:31
that there are some parallels. So, for example,
1:00:33
the way that the economic uncertainty has an
1:00:37
impact on the way that people feel and that they
1:00:39
become more pessimistic about the future. I think
1:00:42
there's always a huge danger in that when people
1:00:45
don't believe fundamentally that things will
1:00:46
get better for their children and grandchildren.
1:00:48
I think that's always a big, big political. problem
1:00:52
when you can't convince the population that what
1:00:55
you're doing is leading to a better future because
1:00:57
then people will stop voting for you and they'll
1:00:59
look for alternatives and if the mainstream doesn't
1:01:02
kind of deliver that optimism or can't get enough
1:01:06
trust for that then that's a big problem and
1:01:08
I think that there's a similarity in that people
1:01:11
didn't trust the government eventually in the
1:01:13
Weimar Republic either anymore to you know solve
1:01:17
the problems of the day. And I think the sort
1:01:21
of other big similarity that I see is just the
1:01:23
polarisation. So this idea that people who vote
1:01:26
for a different party or believe in a different
1:01:29
thing from you can't be your friends or your
1:01:32
neighbours anymore and you just don't want anything
1:01:33
to do with them. So there's kind of living in
1:01:35
bubbles, as we call it today. I think you see
1:01:38
that there as well in the Weimar Republic, where
1:01:40
people just stop associating with the others,
1:01:43
basically, and you begin to see people sliding,
1:01:45
communities sliding apart. along those lines
1:01:48
and that's a big risk as well that i think is
1:01:50
there um the big big difference between us and
1:01:54
then is that you don't have the first world war
1:01:57
um and that's a big factor the fact that as certainly
1:02:01
as western societies we're not traumatized by
1:02:05
a collective war experience in the way that people
1:02:07
were after the first world war as you mentioned
1:02:09
the violence earlier i mean it's absolutely unthinkable
1:02:12
today for all the horrors that we've got that
1:02:15
you have like a machine gun nest on the streets
1:02:16
of berlin you know where where kind of communist
1:02:19
workers are being gunned down by nationalist
1:02:22
violent kind of troops that have just come back
1:02:24
from the first world war and don't care if they
1:02:26
kill another person and they've just already
1:02:28
killed 100 on the battlefield that just doesn't
1:02:31
exist and this idea that assassinations are kind
1:02:34
of a normal part of kind of the political landscape.
1:02:36
I mean, the finance minister was assassinated.
1:02:39
It's just absurd to us today, I think, to think
1:02:42
along those lines. And that's a fact that's often
1:02:45
forgotten. It's just a sheer brutalization. This
1:02:47
is the factor that allows Hitler to amass a private
1:02:49
army, the Stormtroopers DSA, which in the end
1:02:53
is four million strong. And basically, if he
1:02:57
hadn't been elected into power, he could have
1:02:58
used that to try and overthrow the government.
1:03:00
That's often a factor that's forgotten. And that
1:03:03
violence is a key factor in how Hitler comes
1:03:06
to power and how he consolidates his government
1:03:09
afterwards. And then just one more thing I think
1:03:12
that people also, or that is also very different
1:03:15
today, is that our crisis, the various problems
1:03:19
that we've got today, I think they're eminently
1:03:21
fixable. I think most people are frustrated with...
1:03:24
the choices that their governments have made
1:03:26
with political choices that can be unmade if
1:03:30
people choose to unmake them. Whilst I think
1:03:32
something like the Wall Street crash or the Great
1:03:35
Depression or this immense fracturing of the
1:03:39
political landscape that we see, then yes, we
1:03:41
have milder versions of those today, but they
1:03:44
don't amount to this. uber crisis that people
1:03:47
had to deal with at that time um i think they're
1:03:50
eminently more fixable and it just takes a bit
1:03:52
of kind of political vision and a political will
1:03:54
to do that um so there's a note of optimism from
1:03:57
me here i think that when we when we do this
1:03:59
unexpectedly hopeful note well certainly compared
1:04:02
to this conversation yeah oh well i could use
1:04:07
some um thank you very much katya um the book
1:04:11
comes out May 7th, I believe, we're going to
1:04:13
include the link in the description on YouTube
1:04:17
below. Thanks again. I would love to talk to
1:04:21
you next time in the near future about your book,
1:04:23
Beyond the Wall. Since I was born in Yugoslavia,
1:04:26
I think that would be an interesting conversation.
1:04:29
It might well be. Thanks again. Thank you. It
1:04:31
was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank
1:04:33
you so much for listening, Darlings. Please subscribe
1:04:35
to the podcast on YouTube, follow and rate on
1:04:37
Spotify and Apple. Also, feel free to support
1:04:40
me on Patreon. This is a one -person podcast.
1:04:42
I do everything by my little old self. You'd
1:04:44
be surprised by how much work gets poured into
1:04:47
this, especially with no team, no ads, and no
1:04:49
marketing. But you can help by hopping on Patreon
1:04:51
and finding the Smart Cookies podcast on there
1:04:54
and giving me your money, of course. And then
1:04:56
last but certainly not least, I have to thank
1:04:58
my existing patrons. Without you, there is no
1:05:00
Smart Cookies podcast, which makes you not only
1:05:03
absolute legends, but also, in effect, actual
1:05:06
producers. of this show so eternal thanks goes
1:05:09
to The list is getting long. Now that I'm complaining
1:05:43
quite the opposite, I am very, very touched.
1:05:45
Why am I wearing sunglasses? Thanks, Amil. It
1:05:49
means a lot. Please keep listening.