Part One: Kissinger

You can also preorder it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google a k press after the Revolution um or find an indie bookstore in your area and pre order it. You'll get assigned a copy and you'll make me very happy. Sophie, this plate of behind the Bastards is so heavy as we walk through this hallway. Oh my gosh, is that David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds with with a with a heavy plate of of the dollarp?

Oh no, oh no, I'm losing control. Oh god, you guys are slipping too. How was how was that? I couldn't disagree more? That was the most organic, just real thing. I think I've ever heard that. It was, yeah, like you're the only thing I'm noticing is you didn't have plates. So I'm wondering how I was wondering as I started it, are they going to join in? Or am I going

to just have to commit fully to this? And now that's something where if it's me, I just let you go and then let you have I was a dog in a yard that wanted to leave it, but I was like, I get I'm not supposed to leave, so I wanted to join. Oh gosh, well this is this is just a wonderful time. Obviously. Again you are Dave Anthony Gareth Reynolds, hosts of The Dollarp, the podcast that invented being funny about history on the Internet. Um, thank you so much for for sitting down with us today.

Thank you boys. For a long time, I've wanted to do something with you so and we've talked about this, but yeah, we have. This has been like bouncing back and forth for a while and it was just one of those things where it's like, well, when we finally do our six part series on Henry Kissinger, it's going to be the worst thing we've ever had to do. Therapy. I have a therapy ses right afterwards, Dave married a therapist in preparation. That's good, really putting in the deep

work to make this, to make this series of success. Um. So my working title for this, which they probably won't let us use, is Henry Kissinger Comma a big sack of donkey balls? Um before can we do that? So funny? Perfectly fine? What are you talking about? Um? What do you guys know? Like I kind of think we may be it's a good idea to start with, like, what what's your your cliffs notes? We'll have We'll have you do it, Dave, because because you're the one who reads

things normally, I mean I think that's of Kissinger. Yeah, you know Kissinger, the thing that you know obviously stands out of Vietnam and camp and Cambodia, and you know that's just reprehensible beyond all words. But he's really been a part of just so many horrific foreign policy decisions and had his He's always getting in there. He's always a part of the business release was. I don't know if he is now, but for a long time he was always a guy who would come in and go,

why don't you do the worst thing. Yeah, and that's um, that's the thing that's that's interesting and even a little bit difficult about talking about him because he's not one of these guys. He's not like you can't say with him like you can without Saddam who's saying like, oh, he ordered he started this war on this date, you know, or he um, he ordered this man. I mean, you can actually, Um, but he's he's not like he's not on paper supposed to be a warlord or an elected leader.

The thing that he is good at doing is getting the ability to do stuff that warlords and dictators do by sitting in the back rooms with people who are the ones who on paper hold the power and convincing them to let him do stuff. Um. And he's the best at that there's ever been. We've had a couple of figures on our podcast who I would relate to like, and I would say, maybe Kissinger is like the war Crimes Forrest Gump, where it's like it's kind of you're like, oh, yeah,

he was there, invented shit happens. I don't know that phrase. Yeah, that's that's incredibly that's that might. I mean, that's honestly a better title than I mean, obviously, Forrest Gump is blameless and Kissinger is not. But it does get at the fact that he's just like, he's just there. He's just in every fucking photo of like guys doing a war crime. Like it is baffling the number of things he's connected to. I should probably just start stop selling it, but I do kind of want to talk about the

fact that he is. He is this kind of back room figure in a lot of the worst things that happened in the twentieth century. Because we're going to spend episode one. By the time this episode is over, he's not, you know, in the White House, He's not running shit. This is an episode where we talk about like his early life and his ideological roots, because that's what that's

what underpins all of the things that he does. He's not a guy people talk about like what Kissinger believes, and Kissinger himself has written a bunch of books about what he believes. My opinion, as an amateur guy studying this dude, is that I don't think he believes things as much as he beliefs and ideas are weapons that he uses in order to get people to let him

do horrible things. And he is the master of using beliefs and and moving between different groups of people who on paper are ideologically opposed and getting them all to agree with whatever bullshit he wants to do, because he's really good bit talking about ideas like a fucking philosopher, Like that's his superpower. They might just have trouble understanding him. I know I have whatever. What did we agree to? Oh god, I was going to ask Gareth before we

get started. Here is your German accent locked and loaded? I mean, listen as to the disgust of the German people, it is. That's fine, that's fine they I think we can all agree. After the twentieth century, the Germans lost the right to be angry when people That's how It's like Texans. You know, everyone can do a Texan. Yeah, that's how. I don't think I can. I can make any accent sound kind of English and sort of Spanish,

and yet can't do English. It's really just sort of this amazing ability to see whenever I do a non American accent, it just drifts Russian at some point of the time. Yeah, oh my god, well this is your time. Now you can shine with what's going on. I know, I know, I'm ready to just yuck it up over speaking of which, there's a number of roots of what's happening between Ukraine and Russia right now that you can

type action. I mean, that's that's a little bit less his his the area that he fucked around in, But he did some fucking around there. Like one of the things. We are spending six episodes talking about Henry Kissinger and we're leaving some ship out. Yeah you have to. I mean, he's been around so many years. I mean, just the fact that he was still paling around with Hillary Clinton in the election, and you're like, what is that guy

doing there? Don't you know? He's bad? And and he's the thing that is so interesting about Kissinger is that he he does have this equal He's equally good at talking to like people who would call themselves liberals and progressives as he is to like far right neo CON's like he's he's he's I mean, you could I think you could say that part of what that reveals is that the ruling class in this country are all in agreement about things more often than they disagree about things.

But part of it is just that, like he is so charming. We'll be talking a bit about Kissinger is a sex symbol, which is a thing that happens. And I am so sorry that we have to discuss it. No, I was hoping that he would say this because I've wanted I've wanted to funk him for so long, Like that's one of the main things. He's hot. Everyone, sucker, I've always wanted to kiss. Is not enough kiss that's just the taste boat. I'm at the boy will a b test the Forest Gump and the Fuckinger title, and

we'll just see what plays best in Poughkeepsie. Um so Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on nineteen twenty three in the city of firsth Germany. The Kissingers were a Jewish family, and so given that this is Germany in the early twenties, you can tell we're not off to a great start already, right, this is this is not going to be a story that begins in a particularly pleasant place. Um. He was born in a very chaotic world. The Great Year was like five years past when he comes onto the planet.

Everything is falling apart in Germany and a lot of others. The year he's born Primo de Rivera seized power as the dictator of Spain Mustafa Kamal took power. In Turkey, the Bulgarian prime minister minister was assassinated um in a coup. Like it was a troubling time to be a baby. But Heinz's mother and father had some reasons for optimism. While Firth was not an attractive city. In fact, one contemporary described it as stifling and its narrow dreariness are

unguarden city city of soot Um. You know, it's it's a city, it's city, it's city. It's a working class factory town. But because of that, and this is the period in which the working class is a lot more left wing than you know, folks didn't give it credit

for being today. Um, it's a very it's like a haven for democrats, not like our democrats, but people who support democracy is opposed to want to go back to having a kaiser you know, Um, so first I wouldn't want to go back to having a ki was worked so good? Yeah, I want to have a king who gets us into World War one and like wax off about his mom's hands, that sounds great again now that I know what we're talking about Let's dance I'm in So Firth is in some ways you could see it.

It's reputation in Germany is being kind of like Portland today. It's a very left wing town. It's seen as a haven for socialists. But it's also kind of like Selma, Alabama during the Civil Rights era because Firth has a very large Jewish population and the period and like the late eighteen hundreds has win a lot of like there's there's essentially a partheight against Jewish people in Germany for

a long time. So Firth is the city that has Germany's first Jewish lawyer, and it has a bunch of their other first Jewish you know, X's person who does this job. Because it's it's this very progressive city with a very integrated Jewish community. So it's this mix of the Nazis aren't going to like this town, right, Yeah, Yeah, like Portland. Yeah, it's it's got some similarities between a

couple of things. So Heinz's parents, Paula and Lewis, had grown up in Imperial Germany, where Jews were restricted from hold certain jobs, going to certain schools, living in certain homes. And this had ended by the time the Kaiser had so Lewis Kissinger, Henry's dad Kim of Agent, a period in which a Jewish boy could actually build a professional

life for the first time in mainstream German society. He was a member of the first and almost the last generation that this would be true of Um, what happens, oh day, we may need to do it a separate podcast. Seriously, never read any German history, Oh my, kind of exciting. So he starts work Lewis as a teacher in a secular private school when he's eighteen, and he holds the

job for fourteen years. And he was a very patriotic person. Um, he's he's also like he has an Orthodox jew so he's very religious, but he considers himself a German first and foremost, and his family is very patriotic. His brother fights in World War One, so does his wife's dad. Two of his cousins die fighting for the Kaiser. And

when the war ins in German defeat. You know, there's all these rumors spread throughout the far right that the nation has been stabbed in the back by an alliance of Jewish boogeman um hinz or sorry, Louis kind of he sees this as happening, but he doesn't think that it's ever going to like take hold. He's Henry would later recalled that his father would regularly say, we live in an age of tolerance. So his dad is not right. Yeah,

I'm sorry. Are you talking about America? Are you talking Germany? Yeah, we are talking about this on the day that Texas just announced a fun new Um. Yeah, this is this is like, you know, Henry is wrong about a lot of stuff. His father is also wrong, but for a much sadder recent because there was a psychic Jane in the family. I see us being tolerant for generation. Germany will be a watchword for tolerance. We would be a

beast gent for all types. Oh poor buddy. Um yeah, so he's Uh, it's interesting because like the Zionist movement is rising in this time and Kissinger's family rejects this wholeheartedly because they're so aman right. Um, like they don't they don't want to ever leave. Um. So obviously, the Nazi party rises consistently through Henry's childhood. Firth was initially safe from this. Just a few months after Hines is born in September of twenty three, the Nazis and other

far right organizations hold a German Day in Nuremberg. Several caravans of them passed through Firth, sort of like Nazis do today in a lot of places. Um. And you know they were looking for a fight when they drove through. They went through first because it's the town where you can get a fight, and they got one. Uh. This is like right after Hinton he is born, a mob of brown Shirts are assaulted by a hundred strong crowd screaming, killed him and down with Hitler, which is let's end

the story. It's a great and there's the tale of Henry kissing Jeris a kid who was a baby when some dudes did some rad stuff. Um. So Firth was integrated enough that Hines initially attended a public school with Christian classmates, which was not common for Jewish kids in this time. Yeah, he's like going to school with with other like kids who are not Jewish. Um. Eventually his dad puts him in his private school, but that's also an integrated private school. So while his education is secular

her family, his family's very strict Orthodox. He attended Hebrew school, which he hated. I found a quote from another Jewish guy who grew up in Firth at the same time. That gives an idea as to why Henry was not a big fan of his early religious education. Quote. Religion was a study and not a pleasant one, a lesson taught soulless lye by a soulless old man. Even the day I see his evil conceded old face in my dreams. He thrashed formulas into us, antiquated Hebrew prayers that we

translated mechanically without any actual knowledge of the language. What he taught was paltry, dead, mummified, and that I think is broadly in line with how Henry feels because he's not. He doesn't grow up very religious. So Henry is as is a little kid, you know, he does a lot of religion stuff. But as he grows older he rejects his father's passion for faith um and his dad's interests in classical music and theater. Instead, Henry Kissinger falls in

love with soccer. He is a huge soccer head. Oh yes, um Firth has like a locally renowned team. They're one of the best teams in Germany, and so like their kids teams which are feeders into this whatever team are very competitive to Henry starts playing in a youth league when he's six years old. Um, and he later recalled quote, I wasn't really very good, though I took the game seriously. But what about soccer? We should talk about that. Sorry.

So his real prowess early on was in strategy, as this quote from Nile Ferguson's Kissinger, a book named Kissinger Like the Guy, makes clear the no great athlete Heinz Kissinger was already a shrewd tactician, devising for his team a system that, as he as it turns out, is the way the Italians play soccer. The system was to drive the other team nuts by not letting them score by keeping so many people back as defenders. It's very hard to score when ten players are lined up in

front of the goal. So immediately Henry Kissinger as a kid, is like, you know what, we'll help us win and also make this game no fun at all. Yeah, Henry, what are you talking about? Fire bombs er? I know we are six, but we will park the bus. There will be no joy in soccer. Remove the keeper's hands. He is he is, as a six year old doing the soccer equivalent of carpet bombing. So he gets so into soccer that he starts to neglect his studies and

his father actually banns him from playing for a while. Um. The older he gets, Henry has more and more conflicts with his dad. So I thing that no one else has ever experienced. Um and Yeah, he would regularly, after fighting with his father, bicycle over to the home of a friend who later recalled he liked he liked being with us. It seems to me he had a problem with his father, if I'm not mistaken, he was afraid

of him because he was a very pedantic man. His father was always checking Hines his homework and kept a close watch on him. Hines told me more than once that he didn't discuss anything with his father, especially not girls. So his dad's not like hitting him or anything. He's just like really really annoying to him, and just like, just like, pay attention to your studies beyond anything else. Like I think I like this girl, Like, well she doesn't.

She's not going to the same school. The focus handed it focus. Yeah, and he's clearly a dick who's like, you know, you can't be a professional soccer player eight you have to go to school, like he's clearly an asshole. Yeah yeah, I mean he's definitely the villain of the story, no doubt, no doubt. So Henry is magnetic to women from a well girls at this point, from a very young age. But the funk is happening. I know, it's

really weird. It's weird. And this is the quotes about you know, girls really liking him at this age come from his father. But like, this also happens when he's in his forties and the secretary of State. So I'm going to say his father is probably telling the truth. I mean, at no point have I seen any version of Henry kissing very like man. I mean, it's weird.

That's got memory hold because there were there were New York Times stories about how much women like her because he looks like a lump of clay you could mold into anything potentially that would be good. No, yeah, no, no, but it's it's weird. I mean, yeah, he's the guy like, yeah, well, we'll talk about some of the things he said about sexuality later. Um, I know you're all getting real excited

for that episode. Yeah. Yeah. At one point one of his friends was actually ordered not to hang out with him because he had quote earned a reputation as a skirt chaser. And this is like when he's nine, little little Henry come Rocket Kissinger. The first time I sex was nine, So you know, like at this point, he's rebelling against the family religion, he's hanging out with girls, he's playing a hell of a lot of soccer um, which seems like a decent childhood. But obviously you know

the Nazis. So in the mid twenties, the German nation goes on strike against some ship fans was doing Versailles stuff. We don't need to get into it. Inflation goes crazy, right, this is the wheelbarrows full of cash time. Um. This hurts the Kissinger family badly because if you're like, if you're a private laborer, if you're working for a private company, you can generally like strike and organize to get your salary adjusted to deal with inflation somewhat like it's still bad,

but it's less bad. If you're a public servant, you don't get ship, your salary stays the same while inflation jumps up. So this is really a disaster for the Kissing Singer family. And of course economic trouble coincides with a constant acceleration of far right violence. Later as an adult, Kissinger would note without emotion that he was somewhat regularly chased through the streets and beaten up by Nazi thugs as a child. Um, yeah, that's tough. No punch lines, no,

no punch lines. But there is something weird about that. Because he's talked about this a few times, but everything time he talks about this, it is so that he can emphatically state that this part of his life had no impact on him. Yeah, it's you're really weird. It's very strict, literal impact of fists had no impact upon him. Yeah. In nineteen fifty eight, he declared, quote, my life and firth seems to have passed without leaving any deeper impressions.

You don't get to say that, by the way, that you don't like, I feel like you don't. I feel like I said that to a shrink once about my parents divorce and then wept. I didn't do anything. What's this? What's this coming out of it? And it's like Yeah. In nineteen seventy four, when discussing the times he was beaten in the streets by Nazis. He insisted to a reporter quote that part of my childhood was not a

key to anything. I was not consciously unhappy. I was not acutely aware of what was going on for children. These things are not that serious. It is fashionable now to explain everything psychoanalytically. But let me tell you, the political persecutions of my childhood are not what control my life, which is really interesting. Right and so I know, right, like I'm sure the reporter is like, I'm ready to ask follow ups whatever he stops talking. You're not supposed

to remember anyway. I mean, I wouldn't. That's how I can kill I went not at nine. I don't feel anything. It is It's like, you know, I got assaulted by a Nazi when I was thirty three, and it left a market any but any time, it's just growing up in that environment without being assaulted is going to leave psychological damage. If your parents you completely safe from street violence, it would it could not. Yeah, It's like, Henry, this is the only time I'm going to speak sympathetically to you.

But it's fine. If being beaten by Nazis is a child left a market, it's the only time you want to Matt damon him with Robin Williams are, yeah, like it's okay, many, Um, It's interesting the way he explain, the ways he explains why this didn't leave any mark on him are very interesting. And I want to quote

from Henry Kissinger in two thousand four. Now, I experienced the impact of Nazism, and it was very unpleasant, but it did not interfere in my friendship with Jewish people of my age, so that I did not find it traumatic. I have resisted the psychiatric explanations which argue that I developed a passion for order over justice and that I translated it into profound interpretations of the international system. I

wasn't concerned with the international system. I was concerned with the standing of the football team of the town in which I lived, which, like, you can't do both. You can't pay attention to soccer. Obviously, as as a no one thinks Henry that as an eight year old you were like, well, this is going to impact the way

that I believe state power should be used. What I'm Secretary of State in several decades, I'm gonna just like if you have a car accident as a kid, you're not thinking, well, this is going to make me unable to let other people touch me when I'm thirty three, you know, like I'll hate I'll hate freeway merging like like obviously man, and I don't know, like there's a degree to which in terms of this is the period

in which you can be sympathetic to him. I do think there's probably something to be said that if you have this childhood, maybe you don't want to give the Nazis anything, you know, even the like this left an impact on me, right because like funck him, I don't want to say that it had an influence on me, which I get. No having grown up in a traumatic

you know, it's sort of childhood. You can shut it down and tell yourself that you're fine, like you he The way he survived it was to to shut his emotions down a little bit and tell him self that he was fine when it actually is by far probably the most traumatic thing there and and created a fucking monster because he didn't get any psychological help. Naturally, it did not nature versus nurture. I would have killed just as many people if despicable piece of ship. Either way,

don't judge my family. So as the twenties rolled to an end. The political situation in the Weimar Republic gets correspondingly more dire. In nineteen twenty five, during a Nazi rally and Firth, Hitler himself had called it the citadel of the Jews. The local response at that point in twenty five is overwhelmingly negative, and in nineteen twenty seven only two hundred people in Firth were members of the Nazi Party. Hitler visited the city again in nineteen twenty eight,

to little effect. The party just got six point six percent of the vote in local elections that year. But the Great Depression rescues the end of the twenties rescues the Nazis flagging poll members. As first economy collapses, people grow more willing to listen to the fascists. In the nineteen thirty elections, Nazis surged from two point six percent

of the vote nationwide to eighteen point three percent. In first they won twenty three point six percent of the vote, which is four times better than they've done two years earlier and very frightening for a lot of relevant reasons. To today. Um yeah uh. Nazis electoral successes continue to pace the next year and by nineteen thirty three, more than two were Nazi voters. I want to quote from

Nil Ferguson's book again. On April ninth, ninety two, fifteen s A men were set upon by Iron Front members as they left the pro Nazi Yellow Lion pub. Two months later, Nazi supporter Fritz reine Gruber was beaten up for being a swastikist. The same fate Befell another Nazi caught selling the n s d AP newspaper the Vocabeo Bactor.

The police watched helplessly on the evening of July thirty as a mob through potatoes and stones at a Nazi motorcade going from the First Airport to the Nuremberg Stadium. The car carrying Hitler himself was among the vehicles. But just a year after, Hitler's car gets pelted. After the Nazis begin to consolidate power, when Hitler's the Chancellor, the

mood is very different. On March three, there's another torchlit parade by the Nazis through Firth, and on the evening of March nine, a crowd of between ten and twelve thousand people's gathers outside one of the bars there to watch the raising of the red Nazi flag. Um, so you know it gets bad pretty fast. Can I just flag the person who brought the potatoes to the rock throwing event? Yeah? I feel like he turned first. Yeah we're doing rocks. Oh I know that was a drawing

of a rock. Don't look like potatoes? Al good lord? You know what I'm gonna say it right now. If that guy had brought rocks, he might have killed Hitler. Could we could have avoided the guy for want of a rock? World War two? Oh you guys, see my potato hit that car. It really smushed it. I do left the idea that he also boiled it before. Yeah, well, I don't want to look weird. So Louis Kissinger lost

his job teaching once the Nazis came to power. Henry, again, who had never gotten along with his dad, watches his father collapse into what biographer Thomas Alan Schwartz describes as a quote state of immobility and psychological depression. Lewis withdrew into his study, according to Henry's brother Walter, while the

world outside veered closer to nightmare. In his book, Henry Kissinger and American Power, Schwartz writes, Kissinger and his brothers saw the progressive segregation, isolation and humiliation the Jews of Firth experienced. Even their attempt to watch soccer games came with the risk of their being beaten by the young Nazi thugs. The world of Heinz's childhood rapidly collapsed, and his parents and the older generation of First Jews could

not protect their young from the hatred around them. After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in nineteen thirty five, Kissinger's mother began to look for a way to leave Germany. A cousin in the United States was willing to provide the financial support that would allow the Kissingers to immigrate. In August and of nineteen thirty eight, after a last visit with Paula's elderly parents in Ludershausen, where Heinz saw his father cry for the first time, the family headed

to New York. Only three months later, during Christal Knocht, the synagogue and Firth, like hundreds of others throughout Germany, burned to the ground in a night of orchestrated violence. Yeah, I mean that is when Henry leaves first. There are two thousand Jews in the Jewish community at the end of World War Two, there are forty Oh my god, yeah, three months is so, I mean, that is fairly mean.

That's like they stay as late as they possibly came. Um. At least thirteen members of Kissinger's family would perish in the Holocaust, obviously, it being what it is. I don't know that you can it's easy. It's not super easy to get exact numbers. But like, his family is as devastated as you would expect of a German Jewish family. And he does acknowledge for the first time, he likes it, admits that like some part of this had an influence on him. It was moving away from Germany and like

going across the world to the United States. Um. And he says, and this is I think him being somewhat honest, that the deepest impact of all this was quote, all the things that had seemed secure and stable collapsed, and many of the people that once had that one had considered the steady examples suddenly were thrown into a enormous turmoil themselves and into fantastic insecurities. People will say, we'll

talk about this later. He's very much an order obsessed guy, and like Okay, yeah, I get it, Like I get where that came from, you know, um yeah, I mean that's very common for that happened in you know, Chile and other places where it all falls apart into authoritarianism. They there's a lot of people who are like I just wanted to be the same. Yeah, well, and yeah you hear that all the time here too. I mean, not not like that. Obviously, it's far It was far

more dire. But there are a lot of people I know who keep saying that ship here, who keep being like I just wanted to go back to normal, and you're just like that ship that's sucking sale. That is not you know, yeah, it never does, it never can, but we all do it. Like even the kind of like obsession with nineties nostalgia is evidence of that, and not because the nineties were like a perfect time, but

because like, yeah, you didn't. You weren't aware of how fun like like Henry, like your dad hadn't collapsed into like and unable to handle him just like look, it's too aggressive and like oh my god, we don't have money. Yeah, you went from oh my gosh, you know, um, the O. J. Simpson trial, what a mess? Too. Well, now a plague has killed a million people. Oh my god, it's Arry.

Better give me that time capsule. It's it's so funny that parallels because I'm I literally am writing a dollar right now, and and the guy turns into nor authoritarian and his dad shut himself in his house and isolated. It's it's so weird how these things if you, i mean, just to continue off of that, Dave hit, there's dad dies when he's a little kid, pluges the family finances

in situation and insecurity and chaos. Yeah, yeah, it's it when when something that seemed stable from your early childhood collapses, perhaps it has an influence. Yes, despite what Kissinger said, Despite what Kissinger said, but you know what, Henry Kissinger loves the products and services that support this podcast. Look, Henry is one of the few v I p s on its island where you can hunt children anytime he wants. He gets a free three bedroom apartment on the child

hunting Island. Sophie. That yeah, because for some fucking reason he is still alive. Yes, well, let's be honest here. This is essentially as eulogy because when we finished this podcast and it's published, Kissinger should die. It's possible. I'm planning a dark occult ritual using my own blood and a candle I bought in Mexico to deals like I'm not gonna say I'm not doing it, you know. Um anyway,

here's here's some ads. Ah, we're back. Have you guys gone to the island where you can hunt little kids? First sports? It's amazing. It's also fresh. It's very the brisk, expecting to be that fresh. So good. Um. So Kissinger today has I sofish just shaker. Kissinger today has idyllic

recollections of his early years in the United States. He often talks about walking down the streets of his new neighborhood, seeing a group of boys walking towards him and crossing the street because he's, you know, he's afraid he's going to get beata like um. And then he would realize like, oh, that doesn't happen here, which obviously, yeah, he's just wearing brown shirts because they like brown. Yeah, Henry, this is a country where some people who wear brown aren't Nazis.

Some of them are, some of them are, Henry. Um. Different did not mean easy. Though the Kissinger spent their first years in a crowded Bronx apartment living with family, Lewis got sick and even more depressed. Paula had to take control of the family and handle ship. She became a caterer and started a business that became the family's lifeline. The neighborhood they lived in was dominated by Orthodox Jewish

families with a familiar background. A lot of them were from other parts of Germany, and so the Kissingers benefited from the help of several community organizations and getting back on their feet. He he benefits a lot from the fact that, you know, there's not really a government support network, but the other Jewish refugees who have come over from Europe um have built support networks to make it easier for new folks coming um. Henry's teen years were a

mix of school in synagogue. He failed his first driving test but excelled at soccer, and he grew to admire many aspects of his new home, including quote American technology, the American tempo of work, and American freedom, which I might say is in direct opposition to the American tempo of work. But whatever um Kissinger was frustrated to the though by the casual approach to life that he saw in his new peers, um he thought they were super.

He wrote at the time that quote, no youth my age has any kind of spiritual problem that he seriously concerns himself with, which, well, yeah, okay, Henry, al right, Hank Fair. I like, if you come over from Nazi Germany and you're like people here seem carefree and shallow. Probably yeah, and your schooling was basically like some old dude being like you didn't read this right, you know, like you're gonna be like, jeez, these guys are really

not focused on what matters. Yeah. Look, maybe I don't want to I don't want to be too critical, but New York could use a little bit of Nazism, you know what I mean. It's good lord. So because of all of this, um, this is this is why one of his biographers, Schwartz, describes young Henry as socially inept. He's not not great at talking, too, He's not great

at dealing with his new peers. He did start dating again, though, first a girl who was a refugee from nearby Nuremberg, but most of his focus was on schoolwork in soccer, Kass, since you graduated, George Washington high school and started at the City College of New York. He took classes at night so he could work during the day at a brush cleaning factory. Some of his cousins owned these brushes fail They've always keep going. It's the most amazing like

old timey job. Ever, it's basically like all I can picture. It is just like the jobs are either like pressing sheets or washing brushes. These brushes, I'm not going to claim themselves, gentlemen, how many times do I have to tell you? Well, in the corollarya is some mom being like, Billy, you didn't take your sister's brushes to the cleaning shop. Now, it's very funny. Um, everything old timey is funny. People are going to think this in the future about I

don't know, having water. So at this point him Rey's ambition in life was to get quote a nice job, likely in accounting. One biographer noted, quote nothing that happened to Kissinger during those years encouraged him to read more widely. His historical interests were as underdeveloped when he was twenty as when he arrived in New York as a boy of fifteen, which is the first normal thing about him that like, yeah, dude, he's you're you know whatever, like

he's a kid. Yeah, we're about to get to the studio fifty four years. I feel like, yes, So World War two happens, um starts for the United States at least it started elsewhere earlier, but for for the US, Right, we'll do it ye when Henry is twenty one. Um. He did not initially feel called to volunteer for service, but when he got his draft notice in nineteen forty three, he complied and joined the roughly sixteen million Americans who

became soldiers during this period. And if it weren't for this, Henry Kissinger probably never would have been a figure of historical importance. Again, he just kind of wanted to be an accountant, but being drafted successfully disrupted his plans for a quiet, boring life and thrust him into the world. Yeah it's not maybe don't draft this guy, right, I

did not actually see your venmo this year, so the process. Yeah, there's a future where he just has really strong opinions on W two's Yeah, exactly nine, But I feel like it was actually more like W four or he does like a Bernie made Off thing. But either way, it's a much better feature than the one we got. We'll take the maide off ending for him for sure. Um. So we have letters that Henry sent to his brother

Walter during training. He purported to like the quote middle Americans he met there, but warned his sibling, don't become too friendly with the scum you invariably meet there. He did pick up, he did pick up a little something from the Nazis. He's a little bit right, yeah. Um. He also he also advised against having sex with the quote filthy syphilis infected camp followers, which is too specific

to have been random. I think the Kissinger had a bad experience with the camp follow Everyone at camp as syphilis. Every girl I had syphilis, one girl that syphilis. Every one of them has it. That's why they zero of the syphilis epidemics. You're surrounded by counselors. So the Army administered a series of tests, which Kissinger excelled at, and he earned entrance into a special training program that sent

particularly bright soldiers to college. He received his American citizenship in nineteen forty three while he was at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The program lasted just six months, and Henry and Henry finished twelve engineering classes. During his off hours, he would hitchhike home and see his girlfriend. He was a brilliant student, recognized by his roommates as the quote brainiest of a very intelligent class. One classmate recalled he

didn't read books. He ate them with his eyes, his fingers, and with his squirming in the chair or bed, with his mumbling criticisms. More salt if I would be other than the sounds like a book. This is really a weird way to describe it, dude. It's kind of what but the way it looks now is like he eats books. What had like a visual like reaction to that, to that line, like I kind of want the story of that classmate. Like caused you to describe a dude reading

books that way? Well, in my college, I ate analogies and I just would just just devour them. I eat him like a synonym, you know. Um. His professors would use Henry to explain complicated concepts to the other soldiers, and for a brief period of time, he had status and respect, which he'd begun to crave as a young man.

His time in this program was cut short because you know, D day we decide America's like, we're going to do us a normandy landing, and the army is like, well, we probably don't need smart people for that, So let's police kids out of the class and shine how to get shot by guys actually want to talk to you over here about something totally different. No, no, not you, not you, Chad. You stay right there, Chad talking about

these other guys. Thank you. Good luck. So Henry and his classmates get sent back to basic training with a drill sergeants. According to Henry took glee and tormenting the college kids, um, which I don't know, probably true while he was preparing to go overseas. And this is what my grandpa was doing in World War Two. And I hope peoplelied Henry Kissinger. I hope my grandpa got a chance to give Henry Kissinger's some ship. Did he did?

He did, absolutely so, while he was preparing to go overseas, his biographer Schwartz rights, even in the misery of Camp Claiborne, however, Kissinger stood out. Selected by his commanders to provide soldiers with a weekly briefing on war news. Although he did the job well, Kissinger was more impressed with another older German refugee in an American uniform Fritz Kramer, who came to Camp Claiborne in May nineteen forty four to speak

about the meaning of war. After Kramer's in passion talk, Kissinger wrote him a note, Dear Private Kramer, I heard sorry basically yeah, he literally like it's like I liked what you had to say. Can I help you something like? It's it's literally what the note is scared Yeah. Um. Kramer responded almost immediately to the simple fan letter, returning a few days later to seek Kissinger out for conversation

and dinner, insistently speak in German, not English. The Lutheran Kramer later said that he was taken with this quote little Jewish refugee he had met, who he believed as yet knows nothing, but already he understands everything. Wow, that's an interesting way to describe him. It sounds like, yeah, and this guy Kramer is um. Kramer is a Prussian, which I don't know the degree to which that that

means anything to a lot people, the Prussians. So there was most of the resistance to the Nazis was from the left. Once the Nazi has gotten to power, the resistance to the Nazis that meant anything was Prussian, not because they were good dudes, but because they were way too conservative for Hitler. They were like, well, we want to fight on take over all of Europe, but like with a kaiser who has royal blood, not this like

gross little corporal and stuff. And it's complicated because like a lot of those Prussians got murdered by the Nazis, and as a general rule, your sympathy is with the people who get murdered by the Nazis, but it's also like, yeah, you got murdered by the Razi Nazis for the wrong recent's yeah. They were like, we have one small note, but everything else is working great for They were the guys who were like Hitler's bad because he's not going

to win the war against Russia. Okay, So this guy, Fritz Kramer would be, in Henry's words quote, the greatest single influence on my formative years, since Fritz was a Prussian conservative. So an idea of how fucking German Fritz Kramer is. He wears a uncle to make his wife I work harder, to make his weak eye work, Like, my god, I'm the craziest asshole. Ever, and you know, Fritz hated the Nazis, which good good. He also hated the Communists, which you have to think there was some

some some some stuff there. Um, you know, Communists as a mixed bag like everybody, but I don't think he's very nuanced about it. Schwartz also credits Fritz with expressing quote a respect for international law and emphasis on the moral basis of civilization. And what Fritz Kramer means by the moral basis of civilization is not the same as what I think maybe you or I might mean, yeah

now that Yeah. I think the most important influence Kramer had was he's Kramer is very conservative, and he Henry is kind of a natural conservative. And Kramer really reinforces this feeling in Henry, which is rest by a growing sort of revulsion in Kissinger towards any ideas outside of the political median right. Um, which you get why he

has a tendency towards this. If your life, if your childhood is this like battle of extremes in your hometown, I get why you would kind of veer towards the middle. And this guy, Cramer really turns that up to eleven in him. One right up in the New Yorker notes quote he warrant Kissinger not to emulate cleverling intellectuals and

their bloodless cost benefit analyzes. Believing Kissinger to be musically attuned to history, he told him, only if you do not calculate, will you really have the freedom which distinguishes you from the little people. So that's bad. So that's gonna go really bad. I mean you really are like, I mean, this is his Morpheus. We're just starting to be like, okay, this is by the way, have you thought about maybe just losing the glasses and just going with the Wand that is so much like punish your

weak eye. You much punished a week, even when it comes to your eyes. Yeah, yeah, he is. He has found a kid who like has problematic history of starting fires and is now teaching him how to build a fertilizer bob. Yeah, he's a bad influence matches so so, but have you ever seen a zippo? Yeah? Great. So Kissinger finishes training and is deployed with the eighty four Entrant Infantry Division as it moves towards Nazi europe Um. His division sees a decent amount of combat, He does

not he's a back ranker. He handles administrative and management tasks um, and he finds the power and authority he gets through his time in the service intoxicating. Though he never again he doesn't fight directly, he does earn a bronze star for a valor because he helps catch and take out a Gestapo sleeper cell, primarily due to the fact that like he's just you know, a very observant dude. Um. In nineteen forty five, he participates in the liberation of a concentration camp alum um a h L E M.

I'm not sean how to pronounce it um. One prisoner at the camp remembered him as the young American who announced you are free. For Kissinger, the overwhelming mem of this experience was seeing inmates he described as being barely recognizable as humans and feeling the instinct to feed them before learning that some were so starved that solid food

would kill them shortly thereafter. Yeah, I mean one thing you got to say, he does not like, he's not a sheltered upbringing, and you I mean, like you would be like, oh, maybe that could be the influence that made him be like, oh, you know, you can there's there's good you can provide, like provide the people who are tortured and starved some you know, you could take away from this like my god, war is evil and we should do everything we can as opposed to Yeah, baby, well,

let's see how it plays out, Dave. Maybe this is the sixth part behind the Bachard's episode about a cool dude who does nice things. I just brought you guys here to talk about a chill guy. Um. So, shortly after liberating this concentration camp, Kissinger writes an essay on his experience where he asked, quote who was lucky the man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles I am free? Or the bones that are interred in the hillside. He concludes from the experience that this is humanity in

the twentieth century. So, I mean an understandably bleak take from liberating a concentration Yeah, like that, that's fair. Um, you know what is a bad time to move to an ad plug. I didn't think you're gonna be brave enough to do this, but fair enough, boy, Yeah, you know what makes me hungry. Probably shouldn't go too far down that road. Let the ads do the talk. Let the ads do the talking. The ads are gonna come and win, the same way the Soviet Union did, wave

after wave of men into Nazi trenchet. Anyway, I think we lost it. We had it for a minute right there. I took it too far, you know, I took it there. Here we go. Oh we're back. So when the war ends, World War two, you know that is uh. Sergeant Henry Kissinger finds himself as quote the absolute ruler of a small village named bin Shim. He enjoys this experience. He really starts to like having power. One thing that we're getting here is he adores having power over people. Yeah,

he really likes it. In his letters, he celebrates repeatedly to his family that he has quote absolute authority to arrest people. Um, and it's this is this is problematic because of what he does later. I will say, if you are a Jewish kid who has to flee Germany and then you come back and get made like the military head of a town that's full of former Nazis, I get reveling in it a little bit. Yeah. Well

for me, I'm having beheading tuesdays if that's yeah. So again he's not because of what he does later this is unsettling, but like it's understandable in the moment. Yeah, he appropriates a luxury home in a fancy car, both of which had to have belonged to some Nazi, which is like, it's what you do, right. He gets a butler. He brags back to his family that butler, a fucking Nazi butler. That's artested for not giving butler. Yeah, that

is that is obvious now. That said, he's also, to his credit, really aware of not wanting the Germans in town to identify this guy who's absolute ruler as being Jewish. I think because he doesn't want it to make things up problems for people who's Jewish, people who stay behind in Germany. He makes other soldiers referred to him as Mr. Henry rather than by his last name. He's consciou. He doesn't want them to think quote that the Jews were

coming back to take revenge. Um. And he had a reputation in general as being more objective as a as a ruler in this kind of period than most Jewish veterans and similar positions in general. Henry counseled accommodation and rapprochema with one exception Communists as the civil of course, that's like understandable period, yeah, the Nazis, but the coming yeah,

and that's literally what happens. So the Cold War, you know, early stages in nineteen forty six, but already in that period, Kissinger advocates strict surveillance of German civilians for left wing sympathies and Nazis just like, yeah that the leftist due, the leftist due. He doesn't want them. He also wants to ban Communists from taching at the local schools, which, again, what the fuck? He went straight Nazi all of a sudden. Now, yeah,

he's he's definitely well, let's say fascist. Let's let's say fascist. Okay, he does a bit. He does a bit. He starts dating a gentile German girl during this period, because again he's not very religious. His letters home to his parents though, because they don't like this at all. Um, They're they're like, you're losing your your faith, and Henry gets very combative with them. He sees them as a rational writing quote, to me, there is not only right or wrong, but

many shades in between. The Real tragedies in life are not choices between right and wrong. Real difficulties, bare difficulties of the soul, provoking agonies which you and your world of black and white can't begin to comprehend. How's the dog? How's the dog? Love you? Mom? Good is his and his parents? His parents have very actually we all did, where they're like, hey, how are you, Hay, But it seems like the war may have had an effect. I've said this ever since you met the monocle guy, but

you're really intense. Maybe maybe all of the things you've seen have had an impact on you. And in response to this, by getting enraged and saying not everybody came out of this war as a psycho neurotic. Oh, that shows him. That'll teach them that that's exactly. That's fine, that's fine, that's exactly. That's the right reaction of a non psycho neurotic when you're when you're screaming, I'm not a psycho neurotic. In letters, you're a psychoneurotic. Garland Camp.

If all they're saying is like, hey, Henry, do you think maybe seeing a concentration camp has left some mental scars that you need to like heal from. Maybe I should draw that to the toilet. Okay, alright, buddy, alright, Pa, We're just okay, just tough. We're just writing letters here, buddy. We're just writing some letters. That's all we're doing. That's

what those things. This is a period of time obviously, like every like, one of the things that causes what happens later in American history is that sixteen million Americans go to war and a bunch of them get traumatized, and they come back to a world where like their dad was always like, if you talk about your feelings, I'm going to hit you. Pory's family doesn't seem to be like that. His parents are like, hey, do you want to talk about your feelings, and he's like, I'm

not crazy. Yeah. Um. Obviously, obviously the fact that this is a time in which like men don't fucking do therapy does have an impact on it. But I think his family is probably more understanding than well. He also has no i mean even now, he has no acknowledgement of like his trauma. So he probably even in the in the actual moment, I mean, you're probably even more defensive, you know. Yeah. Um. In seven, Kissinger finally decides to leave Germany for the second time. On Fritz Kramer's advice.

He applies, He applies late to Harvard, and he was accepted, winning one of the two national scholarships the school gave New Yorkers each year, and tramp House did a tournament of evil people from Harvard's and Kissinger one that makes sense. Boy, the IVY League good at producing bad people. Um, maybe we should look into that one. So one of his classmates recalls, and he obviously he does like it's Henry Kissinger.

He's very good at school. Um. One of his classmates recalls that he quote worked harder and studied more than anybody else on campus. He stays school. He school's been stop him from shoven pencils in his mate the campus like Godzilla would have. He nearly died from lead. His studies so absorbed him that he ignored the people around him. He made quote no lasting friendships with other students. He seemed scarcely aware of the extraordinary range of people gathered

around him. So Kissinger's ideology evolved along the lines Kramer had started him off on. He agreed with Girtha I believe is the as the name of the German philosopher that if he quote had to choose between justice and disorder on the one hand, and injustice and order on the other. I would always choose the latter. So well, there we go. He's made his choice. That's very telling, Like we know, we know. Yeah, it's just nice to know where like around the time, like, okay, so he

was pretty defined. Okay, so Henry, you know some other people who thought that order was more important than justice. Yeah, had an impact on you. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just such a it's a strange thing that he it's so consciously like he he's so completely aware of it. Yeah, like he's like a psychopath. He might be. I mean, I think if you're I try not to do too much like the psychoanalyzing people, but like fucking maybe right, Well, psychopaths are very good at the stuff you talked about,

leaving people over in the room. Um, you know ladies, man like is they they learn how to be a human and then they sort of and a lot of you got syphilis ad camp and a lot of symphilicit camp like Henry Kissinger. Well, Sophie, can we let's green light some Henry kissing some some T shirts that are just Henry Kissinger with his face riding off from syphilis. People are gonna want to wear them. He's making the kiss. He kiss he lips and his lips are falling off.

What you like a kissing? Let French Kissinger you. So he meets his second mentor at Harvard. Henry Kissinger has a lot of mentors. And this is maybe a lesson to never mentor anybody. Um, you never know they might become Henry Kissinger. Don't teach people things. Sabotage them at every step. Right next time you drive past a kindergarten, throw him a textbook that's all lies, you know, just slow him down. So his second mentor is this guy,

William Yandel Elliott. And Elliott has is a professor at Harvard. He's also like very politically connected. He had advised several US presidents on international matters. Uh. And Kissinger was drawn to this guy because not only is he a respected educator, but he's really well connected to people with power um

and Elliott. One of the things that like he is famous for being a big advocate of is what is what's called real politique UM as embodied by you know and particularly the guys that Kissinger grows up admiring and that Elliott, you know, helps teach him to admire I mean, like Klauswitz and Bismarck, these these these guys who are like Bismarck is the dude who makes Germany right, we have it, We get a Germany because Bismarck orchestrates, over a period of like I think it's decades, gradually he

welds all these different German principalities and kingships together and then helps to orchestrate this war, which out of which emerges Germany. Like that's the kind of dude that Otto von Bismarck is, and he is kind of the master of the kind of politics that Kissinger comes to respect. And he Kissinger calls cloud Fits and Bismarck philosophers of history.

That's how he sees this guy, these guys um, which is not really what I would call out of on Bismarck, Like he's very good at what he does, obviously, um, but but not I wouldn't call him a philosopher. UM. I want to quote now from the book Kissinger's Shadow by Greg Grandon. From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his own view of how history operated. It was not a story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of

cycles of history, or cycles of birth, maturity, and decline. Rather, it was a series of meaningless incidents fleetingly given shape by the application of human will. As a young infantryman, Kissinger had learned that Victor's ransacked history for analogies to guild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out historical causes of their misfortune. So yeah, yeah, you know stuff, it's it's maybe not yeah, yeah, you can think about however

you want. So a lot of folks who analyze the Kissinger in this period sees on one sentence in Kissinger's undergraduate thesis, and his thesis is titled The Meaning of History that they can kind of explains a lot of what comes to be going down. It is, right, I mean, honestly, he's not a dude who makes like little leaps, right, yeah, yeah,

why do we love? This is the line The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience, which is you know, we read it again, The realm of freedom and necessity cannot be reconciled except by an inward experience. Wow, and this is this is

a like a heavily influenced by French French existentialism. His thesis cites Jean Paul Start a lot, and both Start and Kissinger think that morality is not an inward thing, is determined by actions, which it is not an unreasonable thing to believe, right that, like what matters is what you do. You know is that line from the Bible. You're not damned by what goes into your head, but like what you know comes out right, Like, that's not an unreasonable thing to believe. Start Um. He believes that

like action creates the possibility of intellection, individual and collective responsibility. Right, that morality is determined by action, but that our actions create this possibility of like individual and collective moral responsibility for things. Kissinger does not come to that conclusion. Kissinger believes that morality is determined by action, but he also thinks that, like you, moral indeterminacy is a condition of

human freedom. It's this idea that you can't be bound by morality, and to be free, if you want to freely act, you have to be able to act above morality. That's just giving yourself an excuse to do heinous acts. I mean a lot of his intellectual development as him. And you know, also a lot of this is obviously

all of this. One of the things that you have to account for is all of this analysis of like his development intellectually comes after he does all the horrible things, so including from him and from like the people who are sources who were saying this is what he was like as a kid. There is that degree of biasing, right, like that this is after he is the person that

he is. Because if he had gone on to like just to be a professor, nobody would have given a ship about what the accountant said that I would be like, yeah, look, just would you what do I owe? Yeah? Yeah, tell me what the I R S gets man, I I don't. I don't need another lecture on this um and Kissingers, the fact that he becomes so kind of moral relativism is the word of use. I don't even know if that's right, but like this idea that like freedom and

morality are kind of like inherently opposed. This upsets a lot of people around him, including people who are like his big supporters, including that professor Elliott guy at his

retirement party, Henry Kissinger. Elliot's retirement party, Henry Kissinger in a number of students gather to like bid him farewell, and journalist David Halberston wrote that Elliott had positive things to say about almost all of his students who had gathered there, but when he reached Kissinger, he said this, Henry, he began, You're brilliant, but you're arrogant. In fact, you're the most arrogant man I've ever met. Kissinger became ashen faced.

Mark my words. Elliot continued, your arrogance is going to get you in real trouble one day. That is amazing levels, like at your retirement party to be like hey and you listen, chip bag, chill out, and then for that also to be totally incorrect, Like you know, I saw this like clip of some some guy in like Atlantic City talking to Trump when Trump is going like, well, what is what makes a native American? And the guy just goes, sir, I'm glad You're never going to get

into any real power and you're like yeah, dude, oh dude. Well, and one of the things like this, the Professor Elliott is like one of the guys who helps get him his first big gigs and ship like he's a major bags and I think this is kind of him belated Lee being like, Boo, I'm gonna go patronize a Cambodian restaurant just to make myself feel of them. Yeah. Real, Well, Ever, when he went to like, just give me the tip slip, don't, I haven't did just give me a tip slip? I

owe you guys. I'm not going to tell you why you go. Don't worry about it. Take my take everything. Here's my hang. I gotta go. Do you know if there's a Bangladeshi restaurant nearby. I'm actually having a lot of spots tonight and not eating. I'll be on a long list. I'm going to a lot of places. No, no, not German, No, not no, not German. You know what,

They're actually fine. I don't think I need Yeah. So his thesis that that thing that that he says to Kissinger, it it should be what happens, but our society rewards psychopaths above anybody else, and most societies, yeah should be is the opposite. What he's talking about is a just world, which isn't what this is. And it's it's one of

those things. This is something like that kind of more into anthropological thinking, but like, one of the reasons people will say, like why we have psychopaths is that if you're in a band of seventy people who are like hunter gatherers, starving through the winter, it's it's helpful to have a guy like Henry Kissinger. You can say, like, well, these these six people are too old and sick, and

we have to let them die otherwise we'll all starve. Right, that's a situation which it's good to have a psychopath because you need someone who just doesn't give a shit about certain things. When you have a society of billions that's global, it becomes a problem because that kind of thinking is not so useful and and tends to just get millions and millions of people killed. Um. It's it's not great. Um Anyway. Henry's thesis is published in nineteen fifty.

It roughly the same time Harry Truman decides to send troops to Korea and to aid French forces in Vietnam. Professor Elliott told Kissinger that the Korean War was in a example of the East quote testing the civilization of the West. Yeah, people doing their own thing in their own country is a test to us, Like the Koreans and the Vietnamese having completely their own ship going on

as a test of us in the United States. Damn you you know, Ho Chi Min not wanting to be ruled over by the French is really a test of American I mean. And obviously they see that like the Soviet Unions or frustrating all of this, and the Soviet Union is involved too, but like it, they're looking at us in the eyes. They've got their own ship going on. Dude,

they are on the same level. How dare they do this? So, as the US increased its commitments to a growing series of wars in Southeast Asia, kissing you more dedicated to the work of a guy named Oswald Spangler. Spangler's book The Decline of the West is not something I am well equipped to describe or explain in detail, but Greg Grandin is, so I'm gonna quote from Hi again. Spangler waged a relentless assault on the very idea of reality.

He insisted that there existed a higher plane of experience that was inaccessible to rational thought, a plane where instinct and creativity reigned. We have, Spangler thought hardly yet an inkling of how much in our reputedly objective values and experiences. Is only disguise, only image and expression. To get behind image and expression, to penetrate perceived material power and interests,

and grasp what Spengler called destiny. One needed not information but intuition, not facts but hunches, Not reason but a soul, sense, a world feeling. Often enough, a statesman does not follow, does not know what he is doing, Spengler wrote, But that does not prevent him from following with confidence. Just the one path that leads to success. Oh my god, and that is George W. Bush crawl out of a pilogoon. Now like this for our freidom. George Bush like pops

out of Henry's Kissinger's back. Is a poll that's like since it's like dr headed rumsfeld Bush like thing like where they are there in the east, west, north, and south um Kissinger finds this logic intoxicating, but he did disagree with Spengler about Spengler's primary contention, which is that

civilizational decay was inevitable. Spengler argued that civilizations had spring, summers, autumns, and winters right, that they proceed through kind of like inevitable stages, and there's not really any way to stop this procession, right, Um, which is I think a pretty reasonably like, yeah, any civilization is going to have like a life cycle, right, that's the thing. Like historically you can argue pretty well Kissinger doesn't believe this everything. Yeah,

that's actually not what kissings. And of course the man, of course, the man who is like living way beyond his shelf life is like told you so, yeah, doesn't die. So here's Grandon again talking about Kissinger. Kissinger grapples with this aspect of Spengler having lost a sense of purpose. Civilizations lurch outward defined, meaning they get caught up in a series of disastrous wars, propelled forward to doom by history's cosmic beat power for power's sake, blood for blood.

Imperialism is the inevitable product of this final stage, Kissinger wrote, summing up the decline of the West's argument an outward thrust to hide the inner void. Kissinger accepted Spangler's critique of past civilizations, but rejected his determinism. Decay was not inevitable. Spengler, Kissinger said, merely described a fact of decline and not

its necessity. There is a margin, he would write in his memoirs between necessity and accident, in which the statesman, by perseverance and intuition, must choose and thereby shape the destiny of his people. So Spengler's like, yeah, it seems like when civilizations lose their purpose and start to age, they lurch outward, engage in wars of imperial conquest and a search for meaning, and that leads to disaster which destroys them. And Kissinger's like, but what if you did

the wars right? But what was involved in everyone? But if it was like Mickey in the corner of Rockie, Yeah, it's it is an amazing like this guy being like, here is what happens to empires every single time there's an empire. This is a thing you can go through history and see constantly occurs through thousands of years, and kiss You're just like, no, I can do it right. But to be like, no, you're You're pretty You're pretty close.

You're pretty close. So I'm just thinking kill more. Like I heard what you said ups and downs, but I think you wipe everybody out. You know, it is the same logic I have seen every time I've seen more than one person get get stuck in the mud. It's always either one person gets stuck in the mutter fifty two because one person gets stuck in the mud and the other forty nine Go, well, I saw it happened to that guy. But I think I can figure it out and can get around. Yeah. It's almost like when

you enter Congress. I've got a plan. I've got a plan. Oh I get money. Yeah, well, I have a plan, but it's a different You're not going to like it a bit more about a pool. Yeah. In nineteen fifty one, Henry got a gig working as a consultant with the Army on psychological warfare while he finished his graduate studies.

Kissinger's doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna did not seem overly relevant to politics, but his first sentence had discussed nuclear weapons and proposed to readers that the efforts of British and Australia, and that the efforts the British and Austrians made to contain Napoleon might be useful in handling the Soviet Union. I might argue, did Napoleon have a way to end all life on earth if things

went badly? Was that a factor in them? A sword A Kissinger believes he sees that containment is a failure, which it is because people do not like being colonies. Um. And if the the opposition to being a colony is communism, they'll be like, well, let's try communism. Being a colony seems to suck. Um. Sokissinger sees that containment is a failure. Um, but he also believes believes not that, like, well, why don't we just like let people do things and like

just take care of our own ship. He's like, no, because containments of failure. War with the Soviet Union is inevitable. Now, in Kissinger's view, this has nothing to do with the actions of the United States, but is instead quote because of the existence of the United States as a symbol of capitalist democracy. It is literally the early extent of like, well they hate us for our freedom. Yeah, Like that's

that's that's where he's starting down. Obviously, a lot of people are saying ship like this right, this is not a Kissinger invention. You know, you've got the John Birch Society, all sorts of ships on this period. I don't want to give him too much credit there. It's clear by

this point that Henry was going to get into politics. Um. Although law enforcement was a possibility too, because when he gets he starts being a professor at Harvard, right like after he graduates and stuff, he starts like helping out his stuff and teaching some classes. And at one point the school hosts an international seminar, and when he hears that like a bunch of foreign academics are coming to Harvard, he calls the FBI and volunteers to spy on people

for as as. I mean, honestly that it is so amazing with his background to be like to have that attitude. It just is, it really is. It's hard. It's hard to get there. You gotta give him credit. The man covers some ground. Man is a Batman villain. Yeah, so yeah. His love of politics and his first attempt to build influence at Harvard is by starting a journal named Confluence. Now, this is ostensibly a journal that exists to create what

he calls an international forum for discussion. Right, I just want to get good people talking from all around the world, you know what the ideas fly. It's like a Ted Talk kind of pitch. But he's he's really vague about he doesn't really seem to care about what particular discussions he encourages Um, and his critics would later claim that this journal was quote a fake, primarily an enterprise design

to make Kissinger known to powerful people. Right, Like he's just giving let powerful people write articles because then then he gets them and he gets their their phone number. Right,

it's they're they're mailings. Yeah, he's not working um. Confluence leads to Henry's first mention in the pages of The New York Times, and despite what his critics claim, which is probably broadly accurate, the journal did also publish some really significant figures, including Reinhold Neighbor and Hannah A. Rent.

But while he claimed commitment to free discourse, Kistener had a real tendency to publish right wing ship heads, including Enoch Powell, a conservative British politician famous for comparing immigration to quote rivers of blood. Well, I mean I've always agreed with that. I mean that is like blood rivers. I love a blood river. That's the laziest of rivers. Yeah, because you float real good. Yeah, it's molasses. But that's freedom. If you can, if you can say immigrants are like

a river blood, that's the freedom he's talking about. That's the freedom. You want to know what other kinds of freedoms he's interested. I'm going to quote from Nile Ferguson from the book Kissinger. Here an article by Ernst von Solomon, a right wing German writer who had been convicted for his role in the assassination of Walter Rathanaw, a German foreign minister in the Weimar Republic. The article provoked an angry letter from Shepard Stone of the Ford Foundation, who

had provided money from both the International Seminar and the Journal. So, first note, he publishes a guy who's basically pretty close to a Nazi, a far right German terrorist in the in the Weimar years, and it's so upsetting that a representative of the Ford Foundation complaints. I mean, you're crossing that if the Ford Foundation is like, your connection to a Nazi worries me. And that's coming from us, who

are really who we are? Like to pfend that. Look, I have the protocols of the Elders of Zion tattooed on my chest. But Ford Foundation and eployees to throw a flag on the play, I'm still flagging the play and are there cars coming OUTA? Yeah? Oh man? So quote. Stone was appalled that Kissinger would publish an article by a criminal and a Nazi sympathizer like Solomon. Kissinger told Stone he disliked Solomon and opposed what he stood for,

considering him a damned soul driven by the furies. Demonstrating a remarkable self confidence for a graduate student, Kissinger defended himself for publishing the article. I may air occasionally on the side of two great tolerance, partly because I believe

our readers sufficiently mature to make their own judgments. Kissinger argued that what Solomon represented was a symptom of certain tendencies of our age, but that by appearing in a liberal journal like Confluence, Solomon was the one who was compromised. Kissinger was not simply defending free speech. He had solicited the article from Solomon, telling the German about quote, having long admired your writings, I could not share your point of view. What so it gets better and more relevant

to today because when there's an outcry against this. Kissinger writes a letter to his friend Kramer and says, I have now joined you as the cardinal villain in liberal demonology. Oh my god, he's just doing it now. What he's just doing it now? He's got the monocle now too. It's like you're Glenn Greenwald talked to Joe Rogan. Yes, it's like, what the how? How is this still happening? How are you the pioneer of this? Henry Kissinger? How

are you the pioneer of this? That's his explanation if you're if you're me just listening to like, Okay, I'm not sure what he's saying, but all right, okay, so we got to hear from this nazi who shot at Okay, because alright, is it will anger the lips? As he said, it's cool. And next next month we have ed Gean is doing a little number and Gaine's gonna want us through lamp workings. So and then we're having the Zodiac Killer on to teach us about proper parking technique pentagram.

He actually be pretty good at that. Yeah. So once he had finished his dissertation graduated, Henry found himself in need of like a steady guy. He's doing like he wasn't a professor at that point. He was, but he was like doing like graduate students, you know, helping to teach whatever. I didn't do a college, so but you know how grad students teach it and stuff, but he

wants like a full on gig. He's trying to get an actual full time job as an assistant professor, but he's not able to because most people don't like Henry Kissinger. I wanted any reason why. A lot of people at Hervard not loving it, not not a huge fan of loving the Nazi publishing. Yeah, they are, they are. They

consider him slightly problematic. Drifts for a bit, he's unable to find work, you know, and he's still he's still doing some stuff at Harvard, but he's not not he's he's he's kind of a drift in his career until in nineteen fifty four he runs into a friend, Arthur Sleshinger Jr. At Harvard. Sleshinger had a letter in his possession from a former Secretary of the Air Force defending Eisenhower. The Eisenhower administration standard of threatening massive retaliation for the

so to the Soviets. Now, the gist of this idea that the Eisenhower administration really kicked off was that if we promise the Soviets that if there's ever a confrontation, we will immediately like send out a world and in hale of nukes. Right, then those lines won't get crossed. Right, we won't have any kind of fight at all. If like that, if everyone knows those are the stakes, then nothing will happen. Right, that's the idea. Um. Kitschinger disagrees

with this take right, which is reasonable to disagree with. Right, there's a lot of problems with the we will in the world. If there's any kind of issue, he's gonna make it worse. He's gonna make it worse. He shared us. That's exactly what he does, Gareth, because because Kissingers, yeah, well, we'll talk about what he doesn't a bit. But he writes a letter kind of writing out some critiques to this, and he has his friend Nelson Rockefeller send it to Eisenhower.

He's friends with Nelson Rockefeller. But every everyone is in this period. Um. When the President rejects Kissinger's analysis, at the advice of John Foster Dullus, Rockefeller resigns and he resigns from his job with the administration, which like temporarily like closes a door to Henry. But the letter that Kissinger had received was well enough, like popular enough among other thinkers in Washington that it earns him a job offer heading a study group at the Council on Foreign

Relations studying nuclear weapons and foreign policy. But of course, Henry's problem with massive retaliation wasn't that using nuclear weapons was unconscionable. It was that the world inding nature of the threats the Eisenhower administration was making meant they would never knew anybody, and Kissinger thought this was a terrible idea. He thought that nuclear weapons should be used tactically to secure battle field victories against the communists. What's happening? He thinks?

He thinks it's bad to have nukes and not used them. He's yeah, that's his that's his angle. What in the fuck? Yeah, it's wild that in this argument between if there's a fight, will kill everybody or what if we just try using nukes a little bit to kill everybody, guys have the more reasonable take. I mean, really, you're close, you're close together. Yeah, it's it's incredible. And also, but like again, this is this he's the people he's arguing with is the Eisenhower administration.

Nelson Rockefeller is not a right winger who's like, this guy's got some ship going on, you know, we should listen to him. And like he's a lot of people who are not like, you know, hard right dudes are like, yeah, maybe it makes sense. We've got to be using these like tactical nuclear what should the possibility? You know, he makes a good point. He uses smart words and helotes about nuking folks. You've got a lot of words. So that is part one of our epic series Henry Kissinger

Jesus Christ dude, maybe become an accountant? Um what a guy. In part two we'll talk about how he gets into power. So that's got to be a hoot for everybody. But I feel like before we do that, you guys, do you guys like do like um like a like a like a giant influential popular podcast that maybe this this podcast is heavily influenced by. Is that something you guys do? Are you talking about Rogan? Yes, yes you are both Joe Rogan Right. The Dollar? The Dollar? It is your podcast.

We believe, yes that that was that your six part series The Dollars, Why we Need the Nuke people? Go for it. Check out with the Dollar if you have not already. Um, just a very very funny podcast. You guys wouldn't plug anything else before we we roll out into part two. I mean my ears a couple of times during this, but well you can do podcast dot com. We tore all over the place in Australia and uh and domestically soon that will be very exciting. I am

exciting toured touring to exist again in our lives. Uh, fingers crossed until part two. Go home and read some Oswald Spangler and then disagree with it in a way that makes you much much worse. Yes, put the monocle in the bad eye. Yeah, all right, Hi everybody. Robert Evans here and my novel After the Revolution is available for pre order now from a k press dot org. Now, if you go to a k press dot org you

can find After the Revolution. Just google a k press dot org After the Revolution you'll find a list of participating indie bookstores selling my book. And if you pre order now from either these independent bookstores or from a k us, you'll get a custom signed copy of the book, which I think is pretty cool. You can also preorder it in physical or in kindle a form from Amazon or pretty much wherever books are sold. So please google a k press after the Revolution um or find an

indie bookstore in your area and preorder it. You'll get assigned a copy, and you'll make me very happy.