Ep. 53- Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Holocaust with Michael S. Bryand and John J. Michalczyk

Among the books that many people talk about but few have read, certainly Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is one.  But it IS a difficult read.  How do we interpret this book?  How significant is it?  And what does it tell us about the Holocaust?  These are some of the questions we tackled in this episode with the editors of a new volume on the subject.

In this episode, I talked with Michael S. Bryant and John J. Michalcayk about this important book and how to understand it.

Michalczyk, John J, Michael S. Bryant, and Susan A. Michalzyk. Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and the Holocaust: A Prelude to Genocide(2022)

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman Beorn (00:01.005)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Born. And today we are talking about a book that is very, very important in history, particularly history of the Holocaust. It's a book that lots of people have ideas about and have talked about. But I would suspect that actually very few people have read it all the way through from cover to cover, myself included. And that is Mein Komp.

Hitler's, well, I don't know what, I don't even know what we should call it, but we'll talk about that as well during the course of this conversation. His book, we can call it other things as well. And I have two great scholars who have written or co-edited a volume focusing on Mein Kampf and also in particular the way that Mein Kampf is related to

or influences the Holocaust. And so I have Michael Bryant and John Miklcik here. And Michael, John, thank you so much for coming on.

John J. Michalczyk (01:09.24)
Thank you for the invitation.

Michael S. Bryant (01:11.328)
It's our great pleasure. Thanks for having us on, Whiteman.

Waitman Beorn (01:13.891)
Yeah, so can you guys, each of you, maybe just start by telling me, telling our audience, you know, how you got interested in this particular topic that led to this volume.

Michael S. Bryant (01:28.074)
John, you want to go ahead?

John J. Michalczyk (01:29.774)
Okay, well, it really all started with a conference. And back about five or six years ago, we knew that the Critical Edition was going to come out. So we were getting prepared for it. So I went to Munich and I met with two of the editors of the Critical Edition and I invited them to Boston College.

for part of this conference and they couldn't make it. But one person did make it and Utmar Pluckinger was an editor. I didn't meet him then. And he said he would be able to come to the conference, speak at it, speak at Brandeis University and also write a chapter.

of this book that you were referring to. This is the edited edition on Mein Kampf. And what we wanted to see in it was a type of prelude to genocide, prelude to the Holocaust. And Mike could certainly answer more concretely on that topic of how it does prepare for the Holocaust in many different responses.

So we held a conference. We asked each person to contribute one chapter and then we assembled it. And Mike was really behind all the fact checking and everything else. My wife helped with some of the editing. I did some of the editing. We put it all together and we presented it as a edited work.

for Bloomsbury. So that's how it got to its place, you know, step by step in this order.

Waitman Beorn (03:33.212)
Great. And maybe we can start at the, at sort of the very beginning, which is, can we talk a little bit about the creation of Mein Kampf? You know, what, when is it written? what are the circumstances behind it? How is it done? These kinds of things.

Michael S. Bryant (03:53.409)
Sure, I'll jump in on this one. Yeah, key point here is that Mein Kampf was a work in process. It was not a single volume work. It was actually a two volume work. There's been a lot of confusion, I think, about the publication of Mein Kampf. The single volume was published in 1930. But prior to that time, the first edition was published in two volumes. The first was written

During Hitler's time in Lonsburg Prison, your listeners I'm sure know that Hitler tried to overthrow the state in November of 1923 and was put on trial for that and convicted and sent to Lonsburg Prison for what was supposed to be a five-year prison term. He only served a total of 13 total months, including pretrial detention there.

But he was there for a while, for a very short while. And during that time, he wrote volume one of Mein Kampf on a typewriter. The second volume was written after he had been released from prison in 1925 and 1926 in the Oberzeltzberg, which he was fond of resorting to, of kind of retreating into. And it was dictated there to his secretary.

and then published in 1927. think it's important to keep in mind just the circumstances that produced this work and we'll delve a little bit later into some of his rhetorical purposes and didactic purposes in the book. it's important for people to understand that Hitler was really considered, widely considered at this time to have been a spectacular failure. He had...

unsuccessfully tried to overthrow the state. The whole proceeding was a fiasco. He and his associates were arrested and put on trial and jailed. His party was banned. He himself was in prison. And it very much looked like his star had fallen. The authorities at the time were actually talking about deporting him to Austria after his release from Lansburg.

Michael S. Bryant (06:05.884)
So Hitler was clearly aware of the of the precarity of his situation. And I think that his awareness of where he was in terms of the low point of his career and the potential that he could serve a long prison term as many as five years in prison. And then by the time he got out, that he could be sent packing back to Austria. All of this, I think, conditions the scope of Mein Kampf.

I think he wanted to avoid a too belligerent tone and it was pretty belligerent as it was, but I think he could have made it far sharper and far more vitriolic if he had want to. I think he actually toned it down so as to be able to justify his getting out on parole and then seeking to resurrect his political party, which had been banned throughout much of Germany.

Waitman Beorn (07:02.019)
Do we know anything about his process in the sense of like, I mean, guess obviously we probably don't have these archival documents, but does he edit it? Does he go through volume? Did they go through different versions of it? Or is this kind of in his mind sort of inspired, you know, a one shot thing where he writes it all down and it's perfect.

John J. Michalczyk (07:21.166)
Well, the background I think, you know, is that he's relying heavily upon the zeitgeist. So it's not really original. He mentions very few sources, if at all. So any scholarly work would have footnotes or a bibliography. This fails to do so. It's jumbled. And he types it up, you know, in prison, you know, on his Remington typewriter.

and is able to put together almost a mishmash of ideas. I think of the first page, he talks about Lebensraum. He's already thinking of Austria that has the same blood. And he feels, you know, that it should be affixed annexed to Germany. And obviously he pulls that off in 1938. But then, you know, he talks about

you know, the issues of Jewish presence, both in Austria and in Germany. He'll talk about propaganda. And I think some of his ideas stick because that's what Goebbels did in terms of putting into practice some of the reflections about speaking to the masses. You don't want an intellectual audience. This is not for intelligentsia.

You you have to rely on, you know, what you can, you know, read almost at a fast pace so that you can spread your message of national socialism. But I think, you know, from our conference and from, you know, my own readings, you know, I read it through twice, cover to cover. And I think, you know, Mike has read, you know, both volumes, you know, in German.

the new critical volume. you know, he would have, you know, a lot more input on this in terms of the sources. But I think in terms of the zeitgeist, it's the social Darwinism, it's eugenics, it's the right wing literature that was present. It was anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism. So all of that.

Waitman Beorn (09:42.605)
Well, this is something that we'll talk about, you know, each of those sort of areas, because the edited volume is actually really accessible, by the way, for listeners. It's written in a way that isn't sort of super, super lofty academic stuff. It's really good. But I guess I'm asking, you know, one of the things that comes through, and we'll talk about this as well, is that Hitler doesn't...

seem to have a lot of particularly new ideas in the book. And so one of the things we can talk about is what does he have that it might be new. also goes, it's worth mentioning that his imprisonment, I think I'm right here, right? Because it's in Landsberg, it's Fortress Prison. So it's actually kind of like a much more sort of comfortable existence. And does that mean that he has a library, for example?

for him to sort of rely on, does he, excuse me, or is he just so well versed in a lot of these different things that he can sort of put them into his work without needing to refer to sort of the originals?

Michael S. Bryant (10:53.716)
Yeah, could I just build on some of what John was talking about and also kind of respond a little bit to your question here. I think it's critical to see that Hitler was not a writer. By his own admission, he says that he actually confesses that he's an awkward writer. It's hard to believe that an egomaniac like Hitler would actually confess to being something less than a glorious anything, right? He had a very

Waitman Beorn (10:56.11)
Yep.

Michael S. Bryant (11:22.922)
very high opinion of his abilities. But he actually said in a remarkably candid self-assessment, he said that, I'm not a good writer. I just cannot really connect with people through the written forum. Instead, he said that he was a speaker and made the comment that he felt that he owed his people, words that are spoken rather than words that were written.

And it's interesting that many other people shared within the Nazi movement shared his opinion, even Joseph Goebbels, who in his diaries says that Hitler just was not a very effective writer, that his talent was through the spoken word. So there really is very little in terms of.

Hitler going back and reworking the manuscript and the manuscript going through multiple editions over time that Hitler meticulously labored over. That wasn't his style. was oracular and mantic. He thought of himself as a prophet.

And prophets don't spend a lot of time agonizing over the text of their pronouncements. They just speak and they move on. And I think that's reflected in the book, is, as John said, kind of a disorganized farago of right-wing ideas that were quite common at the time in Germany. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (12:53.135)
Yeah, I suspect that there's also an element of sort of, I if I'm putting it the right way, but kind of like the anti-intellectualism of like, know, Hitler is a doer and a leader, not a person that writes books, you know, kind of thing.

Michael S. Bryant (13:08.616)
Yeah, his book, which is notorious, I mean, is there a more infamous book of the 20th century than this one? But it's not the kind of book that you would turn to for penetrating insights into his personality and into events of his biography. And we can talk more about that perhaps in subsequent questions that you ask.

John J. Michalczyk (13:14.254)
He

Michael S. Bryant (13:36.737)
It's a book that was very flat-footed. As I was reading through it, I kept thinking, as a scholar, I said, I'm just thinking, this is a very badly constructed book, very poorly argued book. You would think that his editors would have been a little more sensitive to the discontinuities, the radical ruptures in logic. He'll interpolate a 30-page rumination on syphilis into the middle of a geopolitical,

discourse.

John J. Michalczyk (14:11.446)
find it like a stream of consciousness, as you were saying, because you have this jumble of juxtaposition of ideas that were incoherent. But what I do see, and that maybe points a little to your question, is that he was well-read before prison and he also had some access to books. People brought him books, gifts, the typewriter, and

Waitman Beorn (14:14.093)
Yeah.

John J. Michalczyk (14:40.334)
Timothy Ryback's book, and I've heard him speak and he's been very, very good on the pre-imprisonment period of Hitler. And what he says in the book is that he had great access to a lending library in Munich. And Timothy Ryback's book, Hitler's Library, is, I think, essential to understanding

how some of these ideas were already in Hitler's mind, but he sort of let it flow. you know, any editor would have made a little more sense of how you structure the book. But what he does is try to communicate exactly how he would speak, you know, at the Brauhaus, so that, you know, you have something that could be incoherent at times.

And, you know, I try to follow it. You know, I don't have, you know, a scholarly understanding of German, but I did read the German as well. So I think that he assembled what was in the air, claimed it as his own, as original. And, you know, some people think it might be original, but it isn't. But what he structured was an idea

of a movement that would go into the future. And I think it, you from what I understand, it's laying the groundwork for a future Third Reich and maybe the foundation for the Holocaust as we could address a little later on.

Michael S. Bryant (16:25.802)
John's point is right on target and it's a point that Tim Rybak makes. You just referred to Tim Rybak's book on Hitler's library, It's interesting that Traudl Junger, who was a secretary of Hitler's later recalled that every time she saw Hitler, he had a book. He was constantly reading. And I think Hitler really was a voracious reader so far as I can tell.

But of course he had a certain method of reading and he talks about this in Mein Kampf. He said that he wrote in order to confirm his pre-existing biases. So he wasn't reading for the purpose of improving his mind or expanding his mind or the reach of his thinking. He was reading to confirm the ideas that he already believed.

Waitman Beorn (17:14.671)
which are obviously correct, right? Because he is this inspired leader. you know, he's kind of looking for people that have noted that what he thinks is accurate. I mean, I guess this is a great time to ask the question that I think is really important from the beginning, you know, and I stumbled over it, but it's good that I stumbled over it in the introduction because I haven't, you one of my writings about preparation for this episode is what is this book? You know, is it?

Is it an autobiography? Is it purely propaganda? Is it a plan? Is it, excuse me, political theory? Is it a manifesto? I mean, what, what is this thing? Because it, you know, as, as John's pointed out, and you've also pointed out, you know, Michael, that, know, it's, it's kind of a mess in terms of organization and thesis. And, know, it would not get a passing grade for undergraduate, you know, in one of our, in one of our courses.

So what is this thing? Or maybe two parts of the question, what is it or what is it intended to be?

Michael S. Bryant (18:22.688)
John, you want to take that, then I'll chime in.

John J. Michalczyk (18:24.59)
Okay, you know, I think it's almost all of those things. He starts out with, you know, a little biography in Vienna, 1905, but that was like 20 years earlier. And, you know, from reading his friends' relationship, Hitler in Vienna, you understand that some of these things were a bit off. He misremembered things about Vienna.

But that's where he says he got this spirit of saying Jews as the downfall, you know, a striker, Julius Striker would say in their sturmur, the Jews are our misfortune. So he picked up all of that. So that's part of the autobiography. It's propaganda. He has two, you know, very good chapters dealing with some of the propaganda.

is racism par excellence? I think his work on the chapters, nation and race really show you the influence of eugenics and, social Darwinism when he talks about, you know, blacks, disabled, Negroes in, from France, were, you know, African.

you know, occupying the Rhineland, the Rhineland bastards, as they were called. All of that is thrown in. And then what I see is almost like the manifesto you're talking about. What could be done to, you know, make Germany great again? And, you know, it's with leadership, it's with his propaganda. And then you'll see how forceful things have to be, which we

bring on the violence, you know? So all of that, I think, is thrown in. That's why we're saying it's almost like a mishmash. It's a stream of consciousness, but it gets in all of the ideas that have been building up. You know, when the 20 points, you know, were presented as a platform in 1920, he builds on some of those. So he takes, you know, those ideas of

John J. Michalczyk (20:46.606)
socialism, or not social, national socialism. In 1920, already, you know, he's saying Jews are not citizens. So already, you know, it prefigures the 1935 laws, the Nuremberg laws. So already, you know, that's there. So that's part of his, you know, background that he's going to be building on politically.

So I think it's part of a manifesto, what could you do? And I think above all, might call them, you know, he's a great prophet. Well, he's also seeing himself as the Messiah because, know, in 1934, when you see him at the Nuremberg rally and triumph of the will, he comes in from the heavens and he sees that, you know, he is the salvation of Germany.

So I think all of those things that you had mentioned blend together in a way that is the first volume.

Michael S. Bryant (21:54.537)
Yeah, could I just supplement some of what John is referring to? I don't know if I can improve on his response or not,

John J. Michalczyk (21:54.766)
I'm sorry.

Michael S. Bryant (22:04.532)
I think it's important for all of us to understand that the book was not any one single thing, as John indicated. It's a prison book, right? There's a genre of writing called prison books, and this is a prison book, which reflects his mentality during his time that he was in prison. It was intended as a political manifesto, without a doubt. It was an autobiography of sorts, although one that was larded with all kinds of untruths and-

falsehoods and self-stylizations. And then finally, and this is a point that Susanna Heschel made in our Mein Kampf in the Holocaust book in her essay. It is a Bildungsroman, it's a German term. And by that, Susanna meant it was a book of development.

a book in which it's a 19th century genre of literature that Hitler, think, was tapping into the notion of the young, naive

Michael S. Bryant (23:14.42)
You can edit that out, think. It's a building's roman. This is a genre of 19th century literature that portrays a young person, typically a male, begins in a state of undevelopment, of immaturity, and then over the course of the novel develops into this extraordinary person. I think that what Susanna's point was is that

Waitman Beorn (23:16.269)
Yep, let me write that down.

John J. Michalczyk (23:17.688)
Bye, I didn't sir.

Michael S. Bryant (23:43.837)
Mein Kampf is very much cast in the tone and in the style of a 19th century German Bildungsroman. And I think that's right. I mean, to a large extent, it is the story of this naive guy from the provinces who has this extraordinary discovery when he goes to Vienna. And this extraordinary discovery then becomes the key to his future in

becoming the savior for Germany and delivering Germany from its distress after World War I. it has, Mankov has multiple identities and multiple purposes, all of which I think ultimately serve his interests in presenting himself as the future leader of the country.

Waitman Beorn (24:30.019)
And then it also functions, I think, in some ways as like an origin story. It's his, if we consider him in his mind to be sort of a superhero or a super villain in our minds, it's his origins. It's where does he come from? Where does he come from in his sort of quest for greatness? What I think is really interesting as well is that, having looked at other scholarship, his

Nothing, nothing, none of his sort of anecdotes are very viable. You know, it's, it's, it's, we have to take his word for it. You know, that, that he was walking down the street one day in Vienna and he saw an Eastern European Jew and just thought, my gosh, you know, this is the, this is the existential threat. You know, that, that fits very nicely into the, into the origin story of the buildings. Roman like the, know, of, where is he coming from and where is he going? but of course,

No one's paying attention to him really in those years because he's not, you know, he's not important. and so we have to kind of, this is why I asked the question, you to what extent is he being honest in this? And we can, I guess, talk about different meanings of honesty here, because on the one hand, it is this sort of memoir thing, or at least he it's written in the style of.

at times. But as both of you note and others in the book, it's clearly aimed at a public audience. You know, this is something he wants people to read because he wants to theoretically get information out there. And so then that automatically adds another party here. And then, you know, we have to question, you know, this idea of of honesty. So, I mean, I guess that's a place to move is is

You know, how much of what he's writing, do you think he, he really, fervently believes and are there things that he's writing that he's writing for public consumption because he thinks that they will be helpful in his sort of political campaigns because it's worth pointing out as well. and then I'll be quiet, but you know, one of, one of Hitler's lessons after the beer hall putch is that he can't take power in a sort of unlawful.

Waitman Beorn (26:56.399)
violent way. He has to do it via ballot box, via sort of getting voters to vote for him and that kind of thing. So it changes, I think, his calculus about he's not going to be Mussolini, so he has to figure out a different way of doing things.

John J. Michalczyk (27:10.946)
You know, I think that, you know, it really is a step by step from that origin story you're saying. You have to say how he, you know, had a mindset early on. might not have been a focus, but he develops that, you know, about the Jew and the caftan and the smell and understands what Judaism is as an enemy. But then I see, you know, what he does.

gradually when he comes out of prison is to use propaganda to build up some of the ideas that he has in Mein Kampf. And then the next stage is the law. Once he becomes chancellor and then Fuhrer, he's using the laws that were built on what he had imagined or prophesied as Mike was saying, he's a prophet in some respect.

And then he builds on that, you know, like the Nuremberg laws, the race laws, everything else. And then the next stage I see is how to ensure that that will be acted upon. And that's through violence, the Gestapo, the SS and so on. So all of those are the steps that you already see in seminal form here.

And I could look at one section and say, well, this is how it came out because we know the end result. So then the last stage is what I see in the Vonsade Conference is putting all of that together and saying, we have it all. We have the laws, we have the violence, have, you know, issues of propaganda. And even though all of that was almost undercover,

from the conference, it's all acted on to almost show what was coming in my comp. And I see, know, when he's talking about, and Mike could talk more about, you know, the functionalism part of it and so on. But what I see is that, you know, he takes a few steps, backs off, takes a few more steps as, you know, the disabilities and...

John J. Michalczyk (29:33.068)
you know, euthanasia. So I see a growth from what he writes and thinks about in prison and how he can enact it once he's in power.

Michael S. Bryant (29:48.127)
Yeah, if I might, I agree, of course, with what John is saying. I might take it a step further and just underscore the falsehoods that are legion in Mein Kampf. And I would also emphasize that Hitler was not concerned about truth. And he's quite clear about this in Mein Kampf. For him,

Truthfulness is not necessarily a virtue. What's important is to gain power. And what is important is to become the leader of this movement. And it was not just the movement of the Nazi party at the time, but also the folk national, the Fokish movement, which was much larger than the Nazi party. And he wanted to become the leader of this. And he thought he was convinced that he and this larger folk national movement

would then sweep to power and then transform Germany into the Volksgemeinschaft, into the pure racial state that he he dreamt of. So adherence to truth counted for very little. And so much of Mein Kampf is in fact false. And the assertions he makes in Mein Kampf are false, which is why the editors of the volume published by the Institute for Contemporary History,

were so intent on balancing the falsehoods against their own footnotes and endnotes. 3,500 footnotes were, most of the text of the reissue of the book was footnotes. The footnotes actually were longer than the text of Mein Kampf itself because the editors felt they had to counteract and neutralize the dozens and dozens and dozens of lies that are told in the book. And it wasn't that Hitler was just getting the facts wrong.

it wasn't important to him. He wasn't trying to write necessarily a truthful account. Now that doesn't mean that everything in the book is fraudulent. And John picks up on this quite well, I think. What he was essentially doing was telegraphing his values that he wanted to pursue once he came to power. And in that regard, Mein Kampf is really, really helpful. And I think even to a certain extent, a must read for anybody who was serious about studying Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust.

Waitman Beorn (32:10.927)
I mean, it's just.

John J. Michalczyk (32:11.15)
You know, I think a lot of that is reflected, what you say Mike, in the section on propaganda. What does propaganda appeal to? You know, it doesn't appeal to truth. It appeals to everything else, to move the masses. And I think that's what I see. It doesn't have to be accurate. It could be, you know, misinformation. It could be just a guide.

Michael S. Bryant (32:23.797)
No.

John J. Michalczyk (32:40.546)
But in the end, I see it as simply a step, the propaganda is a step to getting your movement of moving, as it were.

Michael S. Bryant (32:54.284)
Just to add to that too, John, so the book is shot through with falsehoods and lies, there were points at which he'd simply lies and misrepresentations. But Victor Klemper actually wrote, you know, after the war that Mein Kampf was extraordinarily candid in many respects.

I mean, listen, life is complicated. You can have a document that is shot through with lies that also from time to time reveals the inner workings of the person's mind. And in that respect is actually truthful and self-revealing. Hitler himself came to repent some of what he had written. He thought that he had shown too much of his hand, especially with regard to France. And there's a real anti-

anti-French sentiment or animus that comes out in Mein Kampf. And then he comes to power in 1933 and French journalists were interviewing him and saying, hey, what did you say about your hatred for the French in Mein Kampf? Should we expect war between Germany and France now? And he had to walk that back and he actually repented of his honesty. He blamed his...

vindictive comments about the French on the fact that they had occupied the Ruhrgebiet.

John J. Michalczyk (34:14.146)
Yeah, and that was true when he talked about that whole section on rhino and bastards, because it ties in very well. Well, with the idea of racial mixing, because he felt that if you have a black African occupying your country who makes moves on women, you know, they have children and they are the bastards that are.

mixing the pure Aryan race. So that's why I think he was, you know, pretty much down on France in one section there with the Rhinelands.

Waitman Beorn (34:55.885)
Well, and, and very much, I think for, for that period, you know, the, the African, the African, French African troops and, the children, their father, that that's kind of the culture wars, you know, that's the DEI, you know, anti-trans. mean, it's the, it's the thing that, that you can really sort of rile people up about, you know, that it's not a, it's not a massive issue really. but it's one that sort of has an outsized.

influence amongst sort of good, a white German, you know, populations. Um, it's something for him to sort of generate, generate heat with, think it was just part of, you know, why he's mentioning it. I mean, one of the things that I wanted to ask before we move on into, into some of the, sort of the Nazi period, um, can you maybe Mike, can you just lay out a little bit of the people that he's plagiarized because

You know, one of the things that was really interesting to me that you do a good job of pointing out in the book, you know, is that again, as I said at the outset, Hitler isn't really, Hitler is not a theorist. He's not, you know, he's not a Marx and Engels. He's not like thinking really through how everything works. He's basically just lifting various strands of right wing racist

nationalist thinkers, and using that potentially in scare quotes there, but of the 19th and early 20th century. Can you talk about sort of some of those people who he's basically parodying as if it's his own revelation as part of his sort of coming of age, the buildings Roman that you mentioned?

Michael S. Bryant (36:42.848)
You know, absolutely, I'd be happy to. And maybe, John, you too could jump in here just to supplement some of what I'm talking about. Because you've actually written about this in your essay. Key factor is really what you've already said, Whiteman, is he is not an original thinker. He's not a philosopher. He's not an academic. He's not a scholar. He is somebody who wants to come to power.

and wield political authority and he wants to wield it in an absolute manner on behalf of this supposed racial state that he wants to create. So almost everything in his arsenal was taken from other people. So let's start just with the folk national right in Germany and in Austria. One tenet, one idea, one motif after another.

starting with antisemitism, which was obviously so foundational to his whole worldview. You the idea that the Jews had co-opted and Judaized German culture. That was a common belief of the folk national right in Germany and Austria. Hitler takes that over.

to a considerable degree, just a facsimile of the folk national right in this regard, equating leftist politics with the Jews. The Jews were supposedly behind social democracy and also behind communism on this theory. That's a folk national belief that Hitler acquired from those circles. The notion that Jews were liars, you know, that didn't.

did not tell the truth and use lies to advance their agendas. Another folk national idea that Hitler acquires, the idea that the Jews control the press, that they were materialistic, that they were incapable of higher spiritual values. Those were all just bedrock principles, the folk national right in Germany and Austria, both before and after World War I. Their anti-Weimar sentiment, their hatred of democracy in the Weimar period also.

Michael S. Bryant (38:47.196)
absorbed by Hitler. And then finally, their imperialism, especially among the pan-Germans who wished to expand Germany's borders in search of what Hitler will later call Lebensraum or living space. These are all really common ideas in Germany and Austria among the ultra right wing. And Hitler absorbs these influences from them.

Hitler of course was also influenced by certain medieval antisemitic ideas, the ideas that Jews were dirty, that they smelled bad, that they didn't bathe. Those were old medieval ideas that Hitler will also pick up on. Theodor Fritsch, another influence on him. Theodor Fritsch was a crank writing, antisemitic crank writing in the late 19th, early 20th century.

and his book, the Handbuch der Judenfrage, the Handbook of the Jewish Question, was enormously influential on Hitler. He actually writes about this in Mein Kampf, talks about Fritsch and the influence of Fritsch, especially his idea that there was a conspiracy consisting of Jews and Freemasons and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses who were trying to control the governments of the world.

mean, Fritsch actually went so far as to publish lists, actual lists of Jewish names that he accused of committing heinous crimes in Germany. Fritsch's notion that revolutionary tactics were needed to deal with the Jewish menace. This is an idea that's going to be very influential on Hitler. You have to use extreme measures. He talks about this in Mein Kampf over and over and over again.

You just can't deal with the Jews with kid gloves. The gloves have to come off and you have to use really tough measures to deal with the Jews, including revolutionary kinds of measures to cope with the threat that they posed to Germany. Keep in mind that Fritsch's ideas were out there among the public for some time, but he was always regarded as being just a fringe sort of individual until...

Michael S. Bryant (41:01.344)
know, the aftermath of World War I. In military defeat and the emotional upset over that, I think really opened the door to many of his ideas becoming more mainstream in Germany. They never became totally mainstream, but certainly among the right wing, they became much more popular. And...

And so Fritch's star began to rise and Hitler himself encountered Fritch's writing later on and it influenced his thinking, especially his hatred of the Jews and the notion that conventional political methods could be used to deal with them. no, no, Hitler says revolutionary tactics were needed to deal with the Jews. He's already writing about this in Mein Kampf, 1924 and 1925.

Waitman Beorn (41:47.439)
I think this is the central tension in the edited volume, right? Because, you know, Mein Kampf is one of those, it's also kind of a Rorschach test in a certain sense for Holocaust historians. And some of them, you know, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, but you know, those that are the, what we call the intentionalists, right, are the ones that sort of look at Mein Kampf and they say, here's a roadmap.

or a blueprint, you know, and that this shows that from the very beginning, um, Hitler intended to, intended to, to, to solve the so-called self-imposed Jewish question, um, by murdering the Jewish population. And then the other extent of the spectrum, you have the functionalists who sort of say, well, no, this is the result of a series of changes, choices, reactions to, to the situation.

that eventually led them to make the decision for a physical solution. So I guess, can you talk a little about where you see Mein Kampf falling, you know, terms of, at the extreme, it's a blueprint versus a much more general idea that Hitler wants to get rid of the Jews and then, you know, ends up on

the solution as it were, the final solution that we see in the Holocaust.

John J. Michalczyk (43:19.906)
You know, let me answer your first question about some of the sources. And this is what I actually learned from Mike when we're filming about racism, Arthur Gobineau. And Mike mentioned to me, and in our first documentary, someone mentioned that, and I passed it along until Mike about three years ago mentioned that. So.

In my chapter, I showed how some of the seminal ideas of race and the divisions of race and levels of race, you know, are already defined by 19th century Arthur Gobineau. And then a second thing that I came across even more recently, the protocols of the Elder of Zion that Hitler mentions a few times in Mein Kampf.

the forged materials that came to be, you know, almost reinforcing the ideas of what Mike had said. Jews are liars, Jews are wealthy, they're gonna control the media, and all of those things are fabrications in the elders of Zion. And even some of the Nazis saw this, you know, as, you know,

complete hogwash. So the German edition, the first German edition, I think came out between 1903 and 1905, if I'm not mistaken. you know, that those two ideas, you know, to me, along with Houston Chamberlain, Madison Grant on race, and I think besides the anti-Semitism, this was the racial kernel.

of some of Hitler's thought. Not original, because all of these were various forms of information that were absorbed by Hitler, so they're not original. But what I'd like to hear is, know, Mike's talk about, and he mentioned this on several different occasions, intentionalist versus functionalist. Mike is very good on that. So, Mike, what do you say?

Michael S. Bryant (45:46.143)
Yeah, I will address that in just a moment. just build a little bit for a moment on your point about Gobino. So important, right? Magnus Brecken, who contributed to our volume, the deputy director of the Munich Institute for Temporary History, also talked about the importance of Gobino, whom Hitler absorbed vicariously. didn't, insofar as I know, he didn't read Gobino, Richard Wagner did. And Houston Stewart Chamberlain did.

John J. Michalczyk (45:46.35)
Thank

Michael S. Bryant (46:14.504)
Stuart Chamberlain got Gobineau through Wagner. Chamberlain actually married into the Wagner family. Yeah, and it was actually Wagner's son-in-law. And so he can sort of move freely within the circles in Bayreuth. And it was there that Wagner was popularizing Gobineau's work. And so Chamberlain then acquires Gobineau through Wagner. And then Hitler, of course, reads both Wagner

And of course, Wagner's operas listens to Wagner's operas like Parsifal, which is like an operatic version or instantiation of Goebbino's theories of the Aryan, the supreme figure who embodies perfect leadership and stalwartness. he comes by, Hitler comes by this through Wagner, but also through Chamberlain in Hitler's reading of

Foundations of the 19th century by Chamberlain. But to get back to your question, Waitman, about functionalism and intentionalism, again, I don't know how much your listeners would be aware. You had a very nice sort of summary of the differences between these two groups. This was a controversy that really, I think, for the first time broke out, and maybe in the 1970s. It's been around for a while. It goes back to Lucy Davidovitz and her book, The War Against the Jews.

Davydovitz staking a very hard, so-called hard, intentionalist argument that Hitler resolved to murder the Jews already in 1918, perhaps earlier, but certainly going way back into the early phases of his career. According to Davydovitz, he had wanted to murder the Jews and then simply bided his time and waited until he had an opportunity to do so later. The functionalist, of course, as you said, Waitman.

take a very different view. They believe that sure Hitler was anti-Semitic, but his goals were goals of segregation and isolation followed then by immigration and expulsion and only through the stresses of the war did the Nazi government move towards a genocidal solution. There's even a hard functionalist position associated with Hans Momsen who even doubts that there was ever a Hitler order for the final solution and that all of the

Michael S. Bryant (48:37.61)
pressures for it and the consummation of the final solution was done by lower ranking regional Nazi figures in the Vataland and the general government in Western Russia. So he would even, he goes so far as to even question whether Hitler had anything to do with the final solution. think that's, mean, Mormon's a great historian, but I think that's insupportable. think the evidence just massively contradicts that hard functionalist position.

Waitman Beorn (48:59.663)
That's a bit much. Yeah.

Michael S. Bryant (49:08.234)
But in my own view, and I came to this through just reading, really reading Mein Kampf and studying the time period, studying the 1920s, looking at the 30s and 40s, and then going back and reading Hitler's interviews that he gave in the 1920s, reading his speeches, reading points in time, even before the Beer Hall Putsch in which he talked openly about murdering the Jews. He actually told one journalist in 1921,

that when he came to power, he would see to it that all the Jews were hanged from lampposts and he would go from one city to another and just hang the Jews until there were no Jews left in Germany. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Dr. Freud said. And it seemed to me that these constant expressions of wanting to murder the Jews, which he said in an interview with a Catalonian journalist, Oigini Jean-Mar in 1923, just before the Beer Hall Putsch.

John J. Michalczyk (49:52.974)
you

Michael S. Bryant (50:07.572)
He says that the best solution for dealing with the Jews in Germany is to murder them all, to kill them. Then he says, well, we can't do that because of international pressures and complications that would create for our international relations, but really the best solution would be to murder them. Well, you know, really? That's just rhetoric. No, I came to the point where reading about this one speech after another, one interview after another, which he expresses these...

so-called murder fantasies. You don't have to be a psychoanalyst and get somebody on a couch to realize that when they talk constantly about murdering somebody, they might actually mean it. And then if later on they organize a killing program to destroy the people that they'd been talking about killing 20 years earlier, it was always in their mind. I kind of started, I guess, as a mild functionalist of sorts when I was a graduate student reading this history.

even as an early scholar in the field, but having the opportunity with John to engage with this text, to read it beginning to end, and then to read the interviews, the speeches that Hitler gives, and then to read police reports of the Munich police who covered the rise of the Nazi party in the early 1920s. Police reports in which the cops actually say, 1920, 1921, went to this...

This meeting of this nascent German workers party and they were all talking about wanting to murder the Jews. I mean, come on. To me it's...

Waitman Beorn (51:42.179)
I mean, this is what's interesting. think, and again, I, I, for, for, for the record in the interest of openness, I'm, I'm a model. would say I'm a moderate functionalist and remain that way. but I will say that I was not aware of some of the things that you just mentioned, those interviews. and I think it, I think.

Michael S. Bryant (52:03.262)
Me either. I discovered them over time.

Waitman Beorn (52:06.487)
And I mean, I think that they're, really powerful and they actually are more powerful than what sort of the, the hardcore intentionals point to actually in mind comp, which is this, the only time he really sort of most directly talks about this kind of thing is he says that it would have been better if several thousand Jews have been held under gas during the first world war. But what he's really talking about there is a different antisemitic trope about Jews not serving in the front lines. And, and because they're sort of

John J. Michalczyk (52:25.976)
Yeah, right.

Waitman Beorn (52:36.845)
you know, cowardly behind the scenes, even though that's empirically false. They actually served above the percentage of the population. But that's the one thing out of my comp that often is is brought up as people saying, aha, here's a smoking gun. But that's actually, I think, a gross misinterpretation. However. know, however, I think what's really interesting then, and I don't actually I think this is, you know, for our listeners before we get all nerdy about

John J. Michalczyk (52:40.046)
It's totally false.

Michael S. Bryant (52:54.184)
I agree. Couldn't agree more with you on that. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (53:07.099)
you know, intentional and functionalist, you know, really the intentional is functionalist debate is a classic sort of thesis antithesis synthesis, I think, you know, where, most of us today is Holocaust historians are definitely in the middle where we recognize, you know, the antisemitism ideology plays a central role in the Holocaust, but so do contingencies, right? Because then you have the situation of, you know, if

If Hitler intended to murder all the Jews from the beginning after he's in power, why does he let half the German Jews leave? For example, you know, why? Why are they very seriously trying to work out other other solutions that are not murdering? Right. I think. But I think that what actually you pointed out as as clues to the fact that maybe he really does personally want to kill them just adds to it makes history more complex. You know, that that

He may have wanted to do this in a perfect world, but even Hitler is also influenced by potentially other things. And there is this interplay between center, periphery, and all these kinds of things that are taking place. that these two things can both be true at the same time.

Michael S. Bryant (54:23.616)
Yeah, it's important to kind of move beyond the binary of functionalism and intentionalism. mean, and again, I was in criminal law. was a criminal lawyer for years and prosecutor and then a criminal defender for years. And so you come to appreciate the complexity of human beings and their intentionality, right? You can...

as I believe Hitler did, I think he had a murderous animus toward the Jews. And he expressed that on several occasions, even before the Beer Hall Putsch he was talking about it. But he also hastened to say that we can't kill them. We would like to kill them, that's the best solution, but we can't because we face constraints. And one of the constraints is international relations. We have relations with these other countries. They would not allow us to get away with it, is essentially what he tells Jean-Marc. And that continues to be the case for...

the next decade and a half, even after he comes to power. He's always, he's, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (55:19.087)
And of course, even even, you know, the the the Third Reich doesn't prevent Jews from emigrating until October 1941. again, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is the this is the. Yeah.

Michael S. Bryant (55:29.354)
Think of the timing of that. Think of the timing of that. That's really important. The timing is crucial. And I try to argue in my essay that there's a reason why it's decided the fall of 1941. He thought that he had won the war or was on the verge of winning the war in the East in particular.

John J. Michalczyk (55:44.598)
Stalingrad, of course. But I think also around 1938, the big issue of making Germany Judenfrei. And there was a big talk and Magnus Brechtin, you know, wrote a long piece for me. He wrote a whole book on it that there were many ideas of just clearing out the Jews to make things more stable and pure racially. And so

Michael S. Bryant (55:46.144)
See

John J. Michalczyk (56:12.942)
Madagascar becomes a very important topic in 1938. And then a second thing is that what you're mentioning, Whiteman, that, and Mike did too, you know, when Hitler hits a stone wall, he packs off a little bit and then he moves again. And I really see this in, you know, what I have been studying about the 1936 Olympics and how

Germany had to be cleared of all anti-Semitism in newspapers, in kiosks, in speech, so that it, you know, as you know, Mike was mentioning about countries to have their respect, an international respect. And he wanted to have Germany take the Olympics for the image. And I think that was very important because

He has to back off all the antisemitism that was rampant at the time. And after 1936, it all came back. So, you know, the two discussions, 1936 and 1938, what do we do with the Jews? You know, and, you know, I think also, you know, with, you know, after the Nuremberg laws.

things really started to move in a direction toward the Jews, to make them non-citizens, to kick them out of the country and maybe deport them because they're not adding to our country. They're detracting from our purity as Aryans. And we just have to get rid of them that way. So I think

Those are all things. But the other thing that, you know, I saw in terms of, you know, what Hitler had in mind for the Jews, he did lay the foundation of an intense hatred of Jews. I mean, he's calling them vermin, the plague, the worst thing that ever happened to Germany. So that's already the basis. And then when

John J. Michalczyk (58:33.74)
You see the distribution of Mein Kampf. I don't know if anybody read it at the time, including the married couples who would get a copy. know, but all of that is there in laying the groundwork. So, you know, that's where I see again, I'm in the middle trying to say, well, did he, you know, what Mike was saying about the journalist asking questions about that and seeing what he's saying got to kill the German.

And I think a lot of it came from the stab in the back myth after the war, blaming the Jews on everything. The social ills, the unemployment, the loss of the war, all of that was put on their backs as scapegoats.

Michael S. Bryant (59:23.316)
Yeah, John, refer to the equation of Jews with the snakes, poisonous snakes, and the Black Death, and vampires. He accuses them of being vampires. You're reading this in Mein Kampf, and I read it in the original, the one that was published by the Munich Institute in 2015. And suddenly, I had this realization as I was reading it. He did not mean any of this metaphorically.

John J. Michalczyk (59:34.909)
yeah, vampires too.

Michael S. Bryant (59:51.189)
He was asserting that they really are vampires and that they really are responsible for the Black Death and they really are like a pathogen or bacterium that infects the body of the people and poisons it. So if there is such a dire existential threat to not just to Germany, but really to all of world civilization, to all of humanity posed by the Jews.

Seems to me, as he says in Mein Kampf, we have to take revolutionary tactics to deal with this menace. There is an implicit genocidal animus dwelling within the pages of Mein Kampf. I came to that realization as well. so, trying to think about how this relates then to the functionalist, intentionalist debate, think we came, and John, I don't wanna speak for you, but I can speak for myself.

It just seemed to me that a really deep reading of Mein Kampf can at the very least alert us to the idea that Hitler, in my opinion, was already entertaining these ideas. Now, were they programmatic? Absolutely not. There's no hint of gas chambers, or there's no hint of firing squads, or genocide per se. But as John rightly points out, there is this mentality.

this hateful, vindictive, just fulminating kind of mentality, anti-Jewish mentality, anti-Semitic attitude that comes across in the pages of Mein Kampf. It is simply poisonous. he is lashing out at the Jews every opportunity that he has. His is an unbalanced mind. Some people who read Mein Kampf actually accused him of suffering from mental illness.

And he probably was mentally ill. I'm not a psychologist. I couldn't diagnose anyone, 100 years after the fact. But I think that if somebody, skilled psychologist, could have gotten him on the couch to talk about his issues, there was probably some sort of a mental illness associated with this. it was a fixed idea.

John J. Michalczyk (01:02:04.11)
It was a total obsession.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:06.159)
I I think I would push back slightly because I think it's not required. I don't think he needs to have a mental illness to be a rabid racist.

Michael S. Bryant (01:02:18.986)
to believe that the Jews are not just like the Black people, but they are authors of the Black black tab. They are vampires. mean, you don't think that requires a little milk? I mean, listen, we can interpret it.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:22.423)
I think they're, I guess I would say I think they're, I think they're.

Well, I I think, I guess I would say that having, you know, spent lots of time looking at Nazi perpetrators, you know, that 99 % of them are, are psychologically normal human beings. you know, they're not, I mean,

Michael S. Bryant (01:02:43.274)
But is Hitler psychologically normal? We're not talking about Nazi perpetrators, we're not talking about the Einsatzgruppen, we're talking about Hitler.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:48.319)
No, it's true. mean, but I guess I don't I don't think he needs to be insane. think somehow I think

Michael S. Bryant (01:02:53.918)
No, no, mentally ill is different from insanity. Those are two different standards, right? You can be mentally ill and be sane.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:56.783)
I think meant, mean, you've rightly, you've rightly pointed out that we can't, you know, we can't diagnose him, you know, and this is why I have a special place for psycho history, which I think is, is deeply problematic for all the reasons you pointed out. Um, you know, but I think, you know, and I'm not going to, I'm not going to name names, but I think there are, there are lots of people that are.

are powerful politicians around even today who have some delusions but are not necessarily mentally ill. I guess is narcissism a mental illness or is it just a personality trait?

Michael S. Bryant (01:03:30.752)
Yes, it is. So far as I know it is, I get a metapsychologist. My wife would be in a much better position too. She knows the DSM-5 inside and out as a social worker, lights and social worker.

Waitman Beorn (01:03:39.727)
But I mean, it's interesting. I think the narcissism is something we haven't talked about a lot, but I really appreciate the conversation about about the extent to which. You know, this is a road map, right? Because the the way that the. The way that the functionalist derived the sort of intentional view is to say, you know, there's no straight line, right? But obviously.

when we're at this synthesis phase, we're not drawing a straight line. That's the point, you know, is that it's not. But what I think, you know, going back to the, just really quickly, because I think one of things that was an insight that I've picked up from reading your volume, because I think a lot of times the way that we, as Holocaust scholars, least speaking for myself as Holocaust scholar, you know, I go into my comp and I'm looking for certain things. So, you know, the parts that I'm most familiar with, for example, are when he talks about

what he wants to do in Europe and how he relates that to what the British do in India, what the Americans are doing in the West. But so I'm familiar with those particular portions, but I haven't read the whole thing. And so, you know, I think a lot of us go in looking at certain parts. And one of the parts that came out of your volume that I thought was really interesting is his complete and total disgust for the people that he wants to lead in the sense of the masses.

Right? Like he, just thinks that like ordinary people who he wants to sort of follow him without thinking are just rubes. You know, they're, they're just, they're just these dumb people that he needs. But he says this, as you point out in the volume, like he says this in the book, you know, the, the, people are kind of stupid and you just got to tell them, you know, a couple of things and let them get, and fire them up and let them follow me. Can you just talk really briefly about that, that element? I thought that was really interesting because of course, one of things that he does

Also that you've talked about is he begins by with his story. And then he says, what we really need is a leader. And he describes the ideals that this leader would embody, which is clearly him. Right. And I, and he, by the way, I happen to be this person. but can you tell me just about this, about this, this, the way he looks at, at the, at the masses? I thought there was a really interesting portrait of a populist that I hadn't really considered before.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:00.239)
before I read the volume.

John J. Michalczyk (01:06:02.434)
You know, I think when he talks about that specific thing, you need a strong leader. The masses, this is very chauvinistic. The masses are like women. They need someone to guide them, push them, teach them. And you need a strong leader to preside over that. And that's where the propaganda comes in. That's where the belief system is in this messianic

role that you're talking about. He's going to be what Mike was talking about, the Jews as germs, bacilli and so on. He's the doctor, the physician who's going to heal Germany of all those ills. And one of them is the Jews.

Michael S. Bryant (01:06:53.45)
Yeah, just to flesh out John's idea a little more. And you asked specifically about his view of the masses. He's quite clear about this in Mein Kampf. He regarded the masses, as John said, as being akin to women. He uses gendered language. He refers to them as being feminine. And they need to be...

They need to be led and they need to be led by a heroic leader. And this is where we get into this distinction in Mein Kampf between the mass and the personality. This is a fundamental binary in his thinking. The mass is this feminized conglomeration of people who are chaotic, they're shambolic.

They're lacking in any creativity. They cannot even organize themselves. This is why they really have to have to follow a great personality. A man, of course, and one who is going to seize them and direct them in the direction that will be profitable for and glorious for restoring Germany's reputation and putting it back at the head of the community of nations across the world.

So this is the reason why, among many others, he's going to reject democracy. You can't go to the masses and ask them to ratify who the leader is going to be. That's simply inadmissible. The masses will simply interfere with the great leader's historic mission. And what is that mission? It is to unify society and to restore greatness to it. And only the great man,

This is an old romantic idea going back to the 19th century, the idea of the great figure who imposes his will on history and points and directs it in a certain favorable kind of direction. He is going to be that leader. And you see this then with the development of the Fuhrer principle, the Fuhrer principle.

Michael S. Bryant (01:08:55.998)
and the idea that the leader must be followed under all circumstances, and that everybody below the leader owes unconditional obedience to the leader on the top.

that goes directly out of his concept of leadership and the idea that it's the leader who seizes the masses almost by the throat. It's kind of a violent relationship with intimations of, I would suggest, intimations of rape or at least of coerced or sexual dimensions to it. But it's a strong man who just grabs the masses and forces them to do what he wants them to do. And of course, that will ultimately redound to Germany's greatness. He's going to put them back in charge.

John J. Michalczyk (01:09:34.734)
You know, the idea of women to all the way through education, once the Third Reich begins, the males are to be taught to be militaristic and swear allegiance to Hitler. The women are only perceived as breeders. So they were separated. The educational system is based on that. The racial question is introduced very, very early on in the children's readers.

All of that, you know, is really what I see as, you know, laying the groundwork for how this one leader, even though, you know, after Stalingrad, he believes he has these great forces, these many units, you he's delirious, but he still thinks that he's the savior of the country, you know, and that ties in with, you know, I don't know if one of the

great books, the women, it was the fatherland. Yeah. Mothers of, yeah. And the same idea, you know, they have their little chart, how many kids they could spawn. know, geez. So again, when you say, you know, what I was just mentioning too, the masses are feminine and demand a strong, masculine leader.

Michael S. Bryant (01:10:36.416)
about this in the following.

Waitman Beorn (01:10:37.873)
Claudia Coons is book or

Michael S. Bryant (01:10:40.026)
mothers mothers than the fatherland.

Waitman Beorn (01:11:02.819)
Yeah, I mean, and we didn't really get to it, which is fine. People should definitely go out. This is definitely what a volume that people should go get because it really tackles all the different elements. And of course, one of them we haven't really talked about is kind of the apocalyptic worldview, right? Which is, you

Hitler talks about it when they invade the Soviet Union. This is a, you know, a clash of civilizations from which only one will emerge and this kind of thing. you know, but again, it's this idea of, leading, you know, leading people, but then in a certain way at the end, it's a way of him, I think shirking responsibility for, for the, the, the laws, because he sort of says, well, you're

you know, in, in Berlin, when the, when the bunker is collapsing, he sort of saying, you know, you, the Germans deserve this because they didn't, they didn't, you know, live up to, to what they were supposed to do. And I think that's a nice, that ties back in to the, to again, to his sort of ultimate, disgust for the masses, you know, that he, relied on them and they kind of let him down because they were these feckless kind of, you know, Germans that didn't have the proper dedication to what, what he needed.

sort of, to of take place. mean, we, could have talked about like a thousand other things. but I, I, I'm conscious of the time. And so I do want to close by asking our question that we always ask. and this time we get two select two selections because we have two guests. can, can you recommend one book, to our, to our readers on the Holocaust that you found influential or you think is, particularly important or worthwhile reading?

John J. Michalczyk (01:12:45.774)
Do you have one? I have one.

Michael S. Bryant (01:12:48.02)
Yeah, I do. actually, in my inability to make a decision on this, I mentioned, I wrote down several in my notes in preparation for our interview. I'll mention the one and then maybe I'll make brief reference to the others. It was last year for the first time I read Mark Mausauer's wonderful book, Hitler's Empire, and it left such an impression on me. It was just so gracefully written.

And he covers so much material and does so nimbly and readably. I thought for a scholarly book, this thing was published by Penguin, I believe. I'll go back and double check that. I think it was Penguin. But it's a very readable book, and it's a superb analysis of the Nazis in power, specifically in Eastern Europe during the war. So this is one that I would recommend to readers who may not be familiar with it. And then just very quickly,

I really liked Peter Langerich's biography on Hitler, which I read in the original one in German, which I thought was really, really first rate. And a couple of other books, general books on a general book on Holocaust history by Mary Fullbrook called Reckonings. And I like that so well because she really tries to take into account not just the history of

of the Holocaust, but also its after effects up until the present day in the traumas that it has inflicted upon generations of people who have been scarred by it. And then finally, Francine Hirsch's book on the Soviet Union and its role in the Nuremberg war crimes trial, thought it was really, really good.

Waitman Beorn (01:14:24.729)
Great, mean, and I would recommend a lot of those as well. I mean, I think Hitler's empire is great because it makes you think about the Third Reich as an imperial power, which I think it was. It's really important to sort of have those conversations. Sorry, John, go ahead.

John J. Michalczyk (01:14:24.974)
You know, I...

John J. Michalczyk (01:14:40.748)
Yeah, the, and it's lesser pertinent to the Holocaust, but it raises the issue of how we perceive race in general. And during COVID, and then now I'm teaching a lot about it, Isabel Wilkerson's cast, when she puts it into the bigger perspective as race and cast,

With India, Nazi Germany, and America's Jim Crow era, I see that the bigger issue is how we perceive people. And it's already in Mein Kampf, you know, as Mike was mentioning about how we perceive, you know, the masses, and that was well defined. And how, you know, these three civilizations,

all come to the same point about the other. And I think that is what is the buildup to the Holocaust because who is the other? Definitely the Jews. And then all the political, you know, individuals who don't agree with, you know, Hitler's policies, you know, the Marxists, the homosexuals, the disabled.

All of them are thrown in under the umbrella of the Holocaust, but it's the notion who is the other. And that's asked right from the beginning. We want to take over another country, Austria. We want to take over the masses. We want to take over democracy, Weimar Republic. And it's all in this idea of

creating a better Germany by getting rid of the other.

Waitman Beorn (01:16:44.559)
I mean, I think it's a great recommendation again. And one of the things that Mein Kampf is, I think, and is in a certain sense, as we conclude here, one of the things that I think Mein Kampf is a good example of is the diversity of Nazi propaganda messages that

can, can touch on lots of different demographics and lots of different interest groups. And so, you know, if you're looking for sort of the most vulgar anti-Semitic stuff, that's in there. If you're looking for the eugenics stuff, that's in there. If you're looking for the anti-communist, stuff that's in there. If you're looking for sort of the destruction of degenerate culture, in, in, Germany, that's there. if you're looking for plans,

for conquering, you know, landing Eastern Europe. It's all there. And again, I'm recommending this volume because it, each of the chapters really deals in depth on things. Some of those issues, you know, for their own, for their own sake. So I really, really do recommend, if you'll get a chance to check it out, to check it out. thank you guys so much, for coming on and, for my listeners. again, thank you so much for listening.

as always, I say the same thing every week and I need you like my students. Sometimes I need you to listen more, but no, can you please, leave us a comment, leave us a like, I'll give you an a for the day, participation grade. and again, John and, Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and talk to me today.

John J. Michalczyk (01:18:25.282)
Most welcome.

Michael S. Bryant (01:18:26.785)
It's been great to be with you, Waipin. Thank you.