Also media.
It's the podcast that it is on election day, but you won't hear this on election day. You know how the election has gone? You listening have information in December? Yeah, yeah, probably in December, which hopefully means the election is over by then. But god willing, Yeah, god willing, the election is almost certainly over, which means, you know, find a way to communicate to the past and let us know so that we can gamble on it. That's That's what
I'd like you to do. Anyway, speaking of gambling, you know who knows all of the words to the classic song The Gambler. Our guest today, Molly Conger. Molly, do you know when to hold him? Oh?
I know when to fold him. That's as much of that song as I know.
D well done.
Oh my god, I think I only know that from Info Wars.
I do love watching Alex Jones sing that and the Highwayman, Poncho and Lefty.
You know, you're just grooving. It's things are going well for als when he's doing that.
That's the most jealous I ever am of him. Because we're not allowed to use we have no licensing agreement with any company that owns songs. Yeah, he must, otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to air them like that. I think there because there are like there are like like ways that you as a broadcaster can just like make a deal for access to you know, they have X number of songs and we can use them for whatever. I think that exists. I think that's got to be what you were somewhat correct.
But that doesn't mean that Alex Jones has a deal with them. He could totally be grifting, because yeah, that's what you do.
I think he'd have been sued before then about this.
Maybe they're so chiper today, Robert Yep, I'm I'm chipper.
I'm doing good.
How many did you get, Bud?
I had like six last night. I tried to get to bed early, but I really couldn't get to sleep before like three thirty in the morning. I don't know. Uh, well, it's behind the bastards and we're all trying not to obsess over the election, and I thought, you know, we all might be hoping that history goes a different way depending on what happens today, So why not read a work of alternate history? Uh? You know, we love doing book episodes over here because it's lets me rest a
little bit. The trouble is finding a book. You can't just use any book, and it's sometimes hard to figure it out. And thank god I got very lucky. Margaret Killjoy was over at my house recently, not bragging, although I am kind of bragging.
You know some celebrities.
I know some celebrities. I know a famous kill Joy who's also a famous Margaret, And she brought me a book that a fan had given her at an event, because our fans are unhinged and have just decided sometimes we should hand one member of the team an absolutely terrible piece of literature to give to another member of the team. And the book that I have received is nineteen forty five by Newt Gingridge.
Mollie, Wow, what if things had been different?
What if things had been different? Do you know much about old Newt in this book?
So I did not realize and this is this is on me entirely. You know, I know a little bit about you know, old Moon based Newt. But question was he had written like thirty works of fiction.
He has written a lot of things.
Where does he find the time?
I mean, he doesn't spend a lot of his political career, does not take up a lot of time.
Okay. You know usually when you see like, oh, you know, this politician has written a book, men want memoir or whatever, and it's like, okay, well, like a campaign staffer wrote that. That's for pr No, this is his passion. Yeah, he's writing these Yeah, this is what he really wanted to do.
And my god, it's a I wish we had some sort of program in place where when we find some guy who has like an artistic dream but also weird right wing politics, we just kind of like swallow our pride and fund, like, have a have a government agency buy up copies of their books so they feel like a success. Anything to keep them from running for office. Right, Hitler pain?
Yeah, what if let Hitler paint. Let Ben Shapiro make his dog shit TV show about fucking law students.
And just sort of like a Truman Show type experience encapsulate them safely.
We have to Truman show these people, right, run a fake. You know that White House Correspondence dinner that supposedly got Trump committed him to run for office. Hold a fake one of those where everybody just talks about how nice he is and how much they admire him, you know, like, yeah, we really have to put these people in bubbles. It's the kindest thing for all of us. Oh man, So yeah, we're going to be reading nineteen forty five. As you
might guess, it is a World War two alternate history. Yeah, of course, Sophie, what else could it be? What else could it be? And this it's a particularly.
That but I did not process it. I was like, I was like, that's not what it is.
Oh yeah, of course of course, and it's a wild one. I'm going to tell you that, right right, So our author for today, I'm going to go through a little bit of a scripted portion. Here is Newton, Leroy Gingrich, le Roy, Yes, king Rich. Yeah, you can't not do the Leroy Jenkins thing, which is just going to be incomprehensible for anyone in our audience that's like younger than their mid thirties. You don't know who Leroy Jenkins was?
Remember the old Times pieces as shit? Sorry anyway, there's a post in the subreddit now saying that I'm an old man and all my references are old man references, and the thing that makes me angriest is they're like, he never references the Simpsons, for many episodes later than the year two thousand and I'm sorry I never referenced the Simpsons episode from later than nineteen ninety eight, because that's when they stopped being good.
You're not an old man.
Thank you, Sophie. But you called me an old man on the show.
Yeah, that's that's because I'm allowed to It's okay when I do it.
They're not allowed to do that.
You are used to them. To me, you are anxious.
I'm not. They haven't even seen Alien four. These scrubs, these babies. None of them know what Sequest DSV was. Molly, did you watch sequest.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Oh my god, Oh my god. Go get a learner's permit.
Anyway, I think we're the same age.
We might be, but mentally. Newton Leroy Gingrich was born two years before the title of his novel, on June seventeenth, nineteen forty three. Knut's father was a career soldier, but Newt takes a different path. He's actually an art student. He gets like an ma in the mid sixties, and like any guy who could. During the Vietnam War, he gets a deferment from being drafted by arguing that he
was a student and a young father. Remember that, because there's going to be a funny code of that a little bit later in this story.
Well, we all know Nuts a family man.
We all know Nuts of family man. We all know nuts big not fighting in wars, but not a big not having wars. Guy Newton is elected to Congress in nineteen seventy nine. In an address to college Republicans before his election, he said, I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful. In all those boy scout words, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they've done a
terrible job, a pathetic job in my lifetime. In my lifetime I was born in nineteen forty three, we have not had a competent national Republican leader, not ever. And it's very clear from that context that a competent leader is a mean one, right, Like that's what he's missing, Like Richard Nixon's just too nice.
And politics really needs is more vitriol.
Yeah, needs more real assholes. I think that's interesting because it makes a case that I think is an important thing to understand if you're trying to like puzzle out why we are where we are now in American politics, And the basics of that case is well, because Republicans lost their minds when Nixon had to step down, and everything they've done since then has been dedicated to stopping making sure that no other Republican would ever have to
leave office, no matter what crimes they committed. Right, And yeah, no modern press for that. So in nineteen eighty five, as a congressman, Newton told an interviewer I think from the Washington Post who asked about his deferment during Vietnam, quote, given everything, I believe, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over. Oh if only Newton, I do wish you had gone to fight in Vietnam. Now.
That same year, when President Reagan held a summit with Soviet pre Premier Gorbachev, Newton called it quote the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in nineteen thirty eight at Munich. And I love the idea like Gorbachev is a Hitler figure, This guy who wouldn't even shoot back during the protests that overthrew his government is like a Hitler, you know, the future Pizza Hut spokes their Gorbachev as a Hitler kind of figure.
Areddie Hitler, you would have loved Pizza Hut.
That does tell you where our boy Newt is. Unlike the political alignment chart, right, he sees Ronald Reagan as a fucking Neville Chamberlain type. Now, that same year, Gingridge made the news for comparing a house race that was in question in Indiana to the Holocaust. Here's a quote about it. Hey, I'm going to read you the quote, Molly. Here's a quote about it, as relayed by an article in Mother Jones, and it starts with Newt.
Here.
We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the Holocaust, about the incredible period in which Nazi Germany killed millions of people and in particular, came close to wiping out
European jewry. If someone said to me two days ago, talking frankly about the McIntyre affair in which Democrats refused to seat the winner of a house race until they conducted a recount, and the efforts by the Democratic leadership to not allow the people of Indiana to have their representative, but instead to impose upon them someone else, something in which he quotes, something in which he quotes German poet Martin Eemuhler. I have never quite until tonight, been able
to link it together. Or Niemuler, the great German theologists said at one point when the German, when the Nazis came for the Jews, I did nothing, And when the Nazis came for me, there was no one left, right, I think, sorry, I think it's Ni Muler, But this like, so basically the Democrats are like, well, until we finish a recount, we're not going to sit this guy because there's questions about the election and fucking nude is like, this is the same as the holocausts?
So at what point did millions of people die? Did they kill all the voters?
Did they murder everybody? It just kind of seems like they were doing a thing that legally is a part of the election, like having a recount, waiting to seat the elected leader until you do their recount. Is that the same as killing millions of people in factories of death?
There needs to be a swear jar for people who abuse the knee Mueller poem. Yeah, yeah, you need to put a dollar in the jar, because that was not appropriate.
I think anytime you reference it you have to lose, Like it should be like a Yukuza thing where you have to give up one of the joints of a finger, right, And maybe that'll cause people to be like a lot more care about when they deploy that bad boy.
I heard it in closing arguments at a trial last month, a trial for a man who is a white nationalist, and his lawyer's argument was, you know what with this, this is free speech. You're trying him for his free speech, and it is closing arguments. He's, you know, he refers to the nimo or poem, except you know, the poem starts first they came for the Communists, and I said nothing because I was not a Communist. And then they came for the Jews, and I said nothing because I
was not a Jew. And he says, he's going to quote the poem, but he says, first they came for one group, yeah, and then they came for another group, and it's like, what are the groups?
A group is a Nazi? Yeah, first thing came for the Nazis, and I did not speak out because I was not a Nazi man. It's abuse. It's very funny, Okay, so let's get back into it. Newts served as the Republican Speaker of the House from nineteen ninety five to ninety nine. Gigrich was the arc at of the Republican victory in the nineteen ninety four congressional election, which legitimately set the stage for nearly everything the right has been
able to accomplish since. Without the Contract with America and his retaking of the House, it's possible we see it's possible that we see no George W. Bush presidency, no right wing Supreme Court today, and at least a lot less of a right wing drift on behalf of the Democrats who stumbled to fight him. Right, this is a major move in US politics. I don't think a lot of folks who you know, whose awareness of politics has sort of started since the Trump years, know much about this.
But you had, you know, slick Willie stop George H. W. Bush from getting a second term. It drove these people crazy. You have briefly the Democrats in control of government, and then in ninety four Newt leads I think they pick up fifty four House seats. It's this massive sweeping victory that comes with this thing called the Contract with America, which is basically Newt introducing what becomes kind of the
neocon platform. Right, And this is like a really I mean, it's it's one of the most important moments in modern electoral history. Right. Newt is one of the first conservatives to see a real promise in creating a right wing system of education to push conservative values. In nineteen ninety three, he crafted a college course taught at Reinart College called Renewing American Civilization. We're looking at this as like sort of a proto what's that fucking guy who does the Little Kids TV? Bullshit?
Oh?
Like the university Prager University. Yeah right, this is a precursor to Prager University. Right, I mean he was on the Hillsdale track.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, And it's eventually televised in a cable channel called Mind Extension University.
I don't like that.
Yeah, you got to extend your mind now. Obviously, he was a ferocious opponent of gay rights and the degradation of American values in the modern era. He talked a lot about how you know people today, especially because of you know, democrats gaining such cultural dominance are just you know, awful compared to you know, the the glorious greatest generation who really understood morality. He also cheated on his second wife with a staffer who became his third wife, while
he was advocating for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over infidelity. Now, this should not have been surprising to anyone who knew that. In nineteen eighty nine, in an interview with The Washington Post, he explained that he fought with his second wife not because it mattered to him what they were fighting about, but because he had a habit of dominance that had
been stoked by his time in politics. He estimated to the Post that his marriage had a fifty three to forty seven percent chance of making it.
Oh Man.
Family values fifty three forty seven. I mean that's I wouldn't met on those odds.
Fascinating, fascinating odds to give your own maya. Now, Newt has a long and fascinating history, and I do recommend reading that. There's a twenty twelve Mother Jones article with some of his best quotes that will link in the show notes if you want a better understanding of the man. Though, you know that's a good way of getting it. But for our purposes today, we're going to be focusing on
the novel nineteen forty five, which he co authored. It is set in an alternate world where the US defeated Japan, but Hitler never declared war on the US and so we never got involved in a war with Germany. The Nazis won their war with the Soviets. They took most of their European holdings and forced them to accept a piece.
They then boxed the Brits into a corner. A few years later, they carried out a surprise attack on the United States in order to kill our nuclear scientists and stop the completion of what in our universe we know is the Manhattan Project. Now, because of where this takes place, i'll spoil it for you, Molly. This book centers around the Waffen SS invading East Tennessee. That's what this book is about.
How they get all the way to Tennessee.
They've got their wonder weapons, They've got these newt Is. Again, he's like a History Channel history buff, right, So a huge part of this book is like the Nazis building all of these wonder weapons that were mostly theoretical during the actual war, including this like massive you know, bombing type plane that they had kind of been talking about making that probably never would have worked out. Like it's all sorts of like nonsense sci fi weapons, right, And.
What didn't they want with Tennessee specifically.
It's where the nuclear program was headed.
That's true.
Well, actually I think it was initially before they moved to Los Alamos. I think they had it was somewhere in like the southeast before they moved to Los Alamos that they had like the early stages of the nuclear program. And I think he's just kind of positing a much more primitive nuclear program. But I'm going to pull up the book, Molly, because at this point you should see this bad boy. Look at this. Look at this.
Look at that cover art.
There we go, there we go, full cover art. Look at the size of his name. There it looks king Ridge nineteen forty five. Yeah, like it's a book about a two year old Newt Gingrich and kind.
Of that's like a sci fi fielder. If a listener, you know, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I don't ever go to YouTube dot com. I'm not watching this on YouTube. The cover of the book is on the books Wikipedia page, and it has kind of a sci fi vibe to it.
Yeah, now I want you to look at the back here. First off, Nut's smaller than I expected when you see him in a photo like this. This is a picture of him with his co author, William R. Forstun Uh and with Jim Bain, who is the owner of Baine Publishing. And we're going to be talking a lot about Baine Publishing.
I also related to Baine Capital or Bane. The Batman villain no.
Not at all spelled differently, has not broken Batman's back. I do. I do really like the hitler on the back here. You can see him here. He's he just looks so happy.
You hold it up to me on camera, on camera, other camera.
Yeah, it's hard to figure out here, Yeah that way, Yeah, there we go. Wow, that's a good hitler. Look at him. Look at him.
The choice Spokinger.
Is six feet tall. How big are those other men?
Oh wow? Because yeah, I thought he was actually tall so these guys. So I think it's William Forst. It is just kind of a fucking mountain of a man. Yeah, he's got to be like six three sixty four. It's a big guy. Jim Bain not a big guy, also has the and I say this with all loved pornographers, he has the smile of a pornographer, right like, look at that. That's a man who's looking at you naked. Like there's no, there's no, there's no other way to
describe the look on Jim Bayin's face. Speaking of people who look at you naked. Our sponsors don't they would never do that. They're gentlemen, you know, or gentle thems, because I think they probably don't identify as a binary gender given the bar raytheon is definitely non binary. Yes, speaking of non binary, here's more ads and we're back. So I want to get into the book jacket of this, of this mammajama. Let's let's see what this is about.
And you can tell right away on the inside. This was a nineteen ninety five, twenty four US dollars That is kind of pressing way way too much money to spend on Newton Gingrich's nineteen forty five Holy.
Shit, twenty nine to ninety nine for that hardback today would be pushing it.
Yeah, yeah, this is like maybe like a fifteen dollars book. Man, that's a lot. That's a lot, So introducing Lieutenant Commander James Martel. He's the right man in the right place at a very bad time. The year is nineteen forty five. In Europe, the Third Reich reigns triumphant, the Soviet Union is a fragment of its former self, and Britain has accepted a dictated armistice in the Pacific after a brief, sharp war with Japan. America is the only significant military
presence now. The world's two superpowers a ee each other, warily across an Atlantic Ocean that daily grows smaller. The big show is about to start. Who will win? The Americans with their formidable industrial base and superior logistical techniques, or the Germans with their science fiction super weapons that turn out not to be fictional. After all, only one thing is certain. If America is beaten, this alternative Reich
will last one thousand years. Join Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and fellow historian William all Our Forestune and a world that, save for Adolf Hitler's inexplicable hot folly and prematurely declaring war in the United States in nineteen forty one, would have been.
Just revisiting the timeline here. So he's not writing this in his spare time, like in his retirement, or this is speaker.
This is a year after he like orchestrates a complete upending of US electoral politics.
Should he be focusing on like the government?
No, No, I think we can all agree this was a better use of his time to doing his job. Also, I just find it very funny that he describes himself and his co author as fellow historians, because, as a spoiler, they are not. Neither of them are historians. Well, Forestine is a little bit of a historian, but he's like a historian who went immediately into writing alternate histories. He is a professor of history at Montreat College in north
But that's not a yeah, look, I'll give it. I'll give a partial to Forestin right, because again, he spends most of his career like his big job is writing a bunch of articles for Boys Life magazine as well as young adult novels. And does that make you a real historian. I'm going to put that. I'm gonna put that on the cusp. But fucking Newt Gingrid certainly is
not a real historian. Forstin's main publisher was Bain, who back in the early to mid nineteen nineties was a major purveyor of of pulp sci fi and alternate history books. That changed as a result of nineteen forty five, which, due to Gingrich's star power, was expected to be a major hit. You can tell that just just by the look of this cover, right, Nut's name is massive. They're charging twenty four fucking dollars for this thing, and yeah,
it's a catastrophe, Molly. It's one of the greatest disasters in fucking alt history publishing. If you read online forums where alt history fans discuss this book, the rumors, credible ones are that Newt promised Baine he was going to devote a lot of time using his platform. Newt is a famous pr house, right, He's constantly talking to the Washington Post. He's willing to say like shitty stuff about himself to them, as we've kind of covered earlier, because
his attitude is I should always be in the Post. Right. So Bain is like, well, old Newt, he knows how to get all the attention. We need to move some real copies. Let's buy like a hundred thousand copies of this fucking.
Book sells a thousand cos I know it's so funny and yeah, Newton fails to do the actual pr that he had promised to do, and as a result, nineteen forty five is one of the biggest flops in publishing history.
According to The Washington Post, for every hundred copies of this book that were sent out by Bain, eighty one were returned unsold, leaving the publisher with almost one hundred thousand copies sitting around their warehouse. The scuttle butt is that this was such a flop it nearly killed Bain entirely. Well, I was doing my presearch for this episode, I found a thread on a forum titled alternatehistory dot com from two thousand and seven. Users speculated about why the sequel
never came to pass. One user bco wrote, nineteen forty five practically bankrupted Baine books. They assumed a prominent figure is Gingridge, would lead to huge sales, printed up a lot of books, couldn't sell many of them. The idea
of a sequel was out of the question. Another user, Amerigo Vespucci, replied with added context to make matters worse, there was a falling out between Jim Bain and Forstin over creative differences in the story and part Forston wrote the story as a single volume, but in order to better capitalize on the name on the cover, Baines split it into two volumes. There were other differences as well, and bain never really discussed the matter in public and
left a bad taste in his mouth. Even with Bain's passing, I doubt we'll ever see the second volume. It'd be too many legal problems surrounding it. Your best bet might be to wait twenty years or so until Forston is dead too. He is still alive into a law school to become a Crackerjack lawyer and publicist, and then start negotiations to have the second volume released from his estate. I love the thought of a man who's that dedicated
to a nineteen forty five sequel. It's a thirty year plan to get that book.
Does Hitler die?
Hitler is still alive at this.
In the sequel, How does it end for Hitler?
I think the way this book is supposed to explain things with Hitler is that like he's in a horrible plane crash and forty one and so he gets all fucked up and his people are able to like negotiate a piece with the USSR, and as a result, he kind of loses his mind. Like he's just like this damaged, broken figure of a man in the book.
But he was so mentally normal.
He Yeah, he was doing so great before because this is an alt history thing, and because Newt is the kind of dude that he is. The main Nazi in this is a guy named Otto Skorzeny, who is a lot of people. He was a real guy. He was one of the fathers of like modern special forces tactics, like Screzenny is a major figure in the development of like that kind of shit. I did find in a there's a Fucking U Orlando Sentinel book review that says that he died during an attack on crete, which is
not true. He lived until the seventies. He moved to Spain so that Franco would protect him, and he lived a fairly long life for a dude like him. But yeah, I wanted to start here with one of them. I was probably the most famous passage in this book, right, the opening scene, which features a high powered DC politician who happens to be If I'm not mistaken, the speaker of the House.
So this is self insert.
Yes, this is Newt's self insert. And remember nineteen ninety five. This is right around when Newt Gingrich is attacking Clinton and saying that he should be impeached because he.
Describing self insert character as like very handsome.
He describes his self insert character as having an affair while he, as the real Speaker of the House, was in this moment having an affair.
Okay, we have some honesty.
And specifically, the point of this chapter is his self insert character hands over the secret to a Nazi spy who is the person he's having an affair with that the US is working on creating an atomic weapon like the inciting incident in this is his self insert being compromised and giving up nuclear secrets in order to get laid and.
He is, in the real world the Speaker of the House.
The Speaker of the House, and having an affair with a statu it'sund trustworthy to me. It's amazing stuff. September first, nineteen forty five, Washington, DC. Also, I don't know why they do this, but they spell prologue wrong.
That's not so any ways to spell that.
At the end of this I've only ever seen it spelled with an E at the end of it. I don't understand why they're doing it this way, But Darling, Germany and the United States are not at war. What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of gossip. Surely you don't think that I a loyal Swede? The question trailed off in a lethal paser as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly mock innocent appeal in her eyes. Still, he mustn't let her see just
how much she moved him. A relationship had to have some balance. He stretched, in turn, reached out over his for his cigarettes and gold plated ronson on the Art deco nightstand with its tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure what to say, he made a production out of lighting up and enjoying that first luxurious after bout inhalation. What an unsexy way of talking about the aftermath of.
Sex, just to say Prologue NOE is a declarative programming language designed for developing logic based AI applications.
I think, okay, so this is oh maybe this is what open ai used to create their AI. Is it all based on.
Gingrich saying, here, that's exactly what ian.
What a nightmare, What a hideous, hideous nightmare. So he's having after sex smokes with this lady who's very obviously Nazi spy.
Yeah, she's not even being kind of sly about it. She said, what if we just if you really loved me, you'd tell me national defense information?
Yeah? Yeah, now here is Newt not at all talking about his actual marriage and actual infidelity. Playfully to drive home the potential law, she bit his shoulders than kissed it better. Ah, hell, I don't want to. I wish I could just divorce miss little Goody two shoes. I like this arrangement, she laughed softly. Mistress to the chief of staff of the president of Oh, sorry, the chief of staff. So it's not exactly him, right, it's just basically him. A nice title. Don't you think such a
book I could write? Mayhew shuddered at the thought. Don't even joke about it. But he could trust her to be discreet. He was sure he could trust her more to cover his moment of doubt than for any other reason. He harked back to her initial gambit. One thing, we really don't have to worry about is a war between Germany and the United States. It just isn't in the cards. There's no way it could happen within the next year or so. And after that we'll take it from me.
But nobody is going to dream of messing with the United States, not even Adolf Hitler. I don't think there's going to be a war either. But you seem so sure. What is your big secret? You were so excited about it when you came in here, and now you won't tell me. Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana, the huntress. Tell me, she hissed. Mayhew looked at his delicious interrogator for a moment. Her intensity almost frightened him.
Then he was overcome by it by her. His had been a strict and starchy upbringing, and his marriage had not been born of love but of political opportunity, though his wife didn't know that, so he capitulated. Besides, he wanted to tell. What good were secrets if you couldn't share? Okay, I surrender, Lucky for you, she purred, then left, such games we have, she whispered, in his year, you play wonderfully. Now tell Having given in characteristically, he stalled, Sure, you're
not looking for a story for your Swedish newspaper. She just looked at him. He could tell she was tiring of the delay. And then he tells her that we're making a nuke.
Uh missed the annual training that they give men in the government that like, beautiful women do not want to with you with their tops off? Now women aren't just aren't doing that?
Yeah, no, they never would. Uh. I think that's very funny. I think there's so much, so many, so much off putting language in this book, like thinking of Newt Gingridge writing the word sex kitten gives me like physical shivers up and down my spine, and it should do the same to you. But you know what doesn't make me shiver?
How cute my dog is in the background of this video.
That gives me a little shiver. That gives me a little shiver, but like a joy shiver, right, yeah, joy shiver? You know? Sure? Why not?
Uh?
The products and services that support.
Our pod, but do they support my dog?
Uh?
No, they're neutral, they're neutral. They're cat people.
She left. Uh huh the second you said no, she left?
Yeah?
Wow, Standra Brown Anderson.
And weird.
You can really tell this is election day?
Yeah, yeah, we're really We're half asking our nineteen forty five episode.
So I can't wait to find out what happens when she doesn't do anything with that secret.
Yeah, well, well she does and Hitler invades East Tennessee.
Which is funny because there is a guy who does love Hitler who has a compound in East Tennessee.
There's a lot, Molly, there's more than one guy who loves Hitler and has a compound in East Tennessee. God, so there's a Gizmoto article I found called newt Gingrid should go back to writing science fiction. Yes, we should, kind of urging him to finish this book. It has some interesting stuff to say about this piece of fiction. In any case, whether nineteen forty five is as historically dodgy as many have claimed, it contains several vile elements
of total awesomeness. For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany spends its time developing what the back cover describes as science fiction super weapons. You think I'm kidding? How about rockets that are remotely guided via television cameras or superjets with drop tanks to provide ground support. Plus super rockets and hydrogen powered submarines, plus every villain in front of a real you got to stick super in front of it, otherwise people won't know that it's better than the normal
kind of thing. Every villain in this book is hideous and crazy. At some point, Scorzenny gets injured and loses an eye so he can get an eyepatch or maybe some kind of cyborg guy. In this passage, our hero the square jaw Jim Martel, tries to shoot down Scorzenny's plane and fails. Now ammunition gone, he can only watch is the second and then the third plane lifted off.
Unlike the second plane, the third stayed low as the pilot pushed it in just enough lefts rudder to cause the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass strips that it passed by, not twenty feet away from where Jim stood otto. Skorzeny looked down, grinning demonically, and James Martel finally understood the meaning of hatred. There's apparently like three or four times where a character learns the meaning of hatred, and that's because Newt Gingridge is an
educator likes it when people expand their minds. For a little bit more coverage of some of the awkward lines in this book, I'm going to turn to an Orlando Sentinel piece titled as a writer, Gigrich makes a good Politician. Good title for a book review. Nineteen forty five is cluttered with awkward lines, like the exhaust vapors that swirled in through the car's open windows stank like hell itself. Then there's this, the scene brought to Martell's mind, the
absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby. Much of the free puff, what's bringing that to mind? Why would that bring that to mine? Have you ever seen that? Is that a thing you can picture because you've witnessed it? You know what this reminds me of? Yeah, you know, this reminds me of a thing no one's ever seen
much of. Yeah, it's very funny. Much of the pre publication hoopless surrounding nineteen forty five involved it supposedly steamy sex scenes, some of which were exerpted last year in The New York Times magazine when the book was still in draft form. Gingrich vowed to tone down the sex. He succeeded, for example, in bed with his Yeah, I mean, we just read that passage. But I love that there were leaks of this that were too horny and he had to change the final draft. There's also a lot
of tweaking these. It's got to be newde right, who else would lead these? Right, He's just testing the water. How can we get a good amount of George HW. Bush slander in this? Gingrich talks about like has a character who knew him when he was a pilot, because George H. W. Bush fought World War Two, who says, if you needed someone to lead a group straight into enemy black, he was your man, which is funny because
he was in fact shot down during the war. And he had to also edit those portions to be nicer to George H. W. Bush, which is cowardly new like you, you've blown up any sort of legitimacy your book had when you do stuff like that. Anyway, I want to move to a passage midway through the book that's set in Winston Churchill's office because one of the things that happens while the Germans and vad East Tennessee Rommel conducts the landing in Scotland. Of course they're moving down through
the Desert Fox is going to the Desert Fox. No one, no one's better, no one better to conduct a war on the Scottish Mors than the Desert Fox. Just poort the Africa Corps right on over. They'll appreciate the breeze. So I want to talk about this just because there's a little bit here that's kind of relevant to modern politics. Here's Winston Churchill talking uh and one of his aids.
I've both made the same face where we're like, oh no, uh huh.
He's talking to one of his aides again named Andrew. For my part, I've ordered a secret alert for the Royal Air Force starting at midnight. Also, the Army will move on spring maneuver schedule up so as to increase troop strengths throughout England. I'm also going to make a speech before the House next week accusing Hitler of preparing to launch an attack against US. Winston, I wish you wouldn't do that. Why because the America First crowd will
go to town on you. That's why they claim it was part of an ongoing plot to drag US into yet another European conflict. They'll say it was a repeat of what you and Roosevelt tried to do in forty and forty one. They'll say you're deliberately trying to provoke Hitler, that you came back to office intending to do just that to finally drag us into a showdown with Germany. If you make that speech, I won't be able to back you up. A cold, static laden silence was the
only response. Even Roosevelt didn't start to move openly until after the forty elections. You know, Andrew continued, after a moment's pause. You know that I agreed with him one hundred percent. I could see the threat as far back as the denownment Versailles and the move into the Rhineland. I knew then, and I know now that the maniac son of a bitch would never stop on his own, and that nothing short of a full scale war with the United States could stop him. We should have been
in it back in forty one. If it hadn't been for that damned accident, he'd have declared war on us after Pearl Harbor. He all but told me that himself in forty one we'd have won easily. Now he's ten times more dangerous. I just love that the America first guys are the bad guy in nineteen ninety five, and fucking Gingrich is absolutely going to wind up on that
side here. Yeah. Now, there's a couple other fun moments in another chapter not long after this, we go to Rommel talking with some of his people, and there's a line here that's very funny. Americans would be startled to discover the degree of camaraderie that existed not just between different ranks within the German officer corps, but between officers and rankers. The practice had its roots in the mutinous conditions prevalent in the German military at the end of
the Great War. Perhaps Germans could afford the informality because German society was early status conscious, whereas Americans soone ready to grant superior superiority to anybody needed the outward manifestations of rank, because otherwise they would lose track of who issued orders and who took them. It's an interesting description of American culture.
A strange read of Germans. I don't know that there was informality in ranks.
Yeah, informality in the German military. I think he's trying to talk about like Alftrig's tactic, which was this kind of anti It was this kind of flattening of military hierarchies in certain specific ways that came about as a result of like combat in World War One, where you were saying basically, like unit leading officers should have a lot of freedom to like conduct advances and kind of carry out attacks in a way that sort of they see fit, rather than having to follow orders to the
letter from above, right.
It was.
I just don't know that translated into sort of the social I don't know that.
I would say the German military was particularly informal between officers and civilians, especially since, like the Prussian younger officer class was still a major part of the German military in this period.
So what happens when they get to Tennessee, is it like a ground invasion?
I think they, I mean they come in from the air, right of course. And then I mean I can tell you what happens, which is that Sergeant Alvin York and a bunch of elderly veterans formal militia and stop the Nazis. Largely, that's who saves the day. Because Newt's got to have his like pro Second Amendment stuff, so he like puts it in the mouth of like an elderly sergeant York fighting.
Off old men of Appalachia.
Just look by that can buy that. I mean, the SS proved in the actual World War two that they were not very good at fighting an insurgency, and I think that Appalachia is worse terrain to fight an insurgency than anywhere in western Russia. So I'm going to say, yeah, probably, probably that would have gone bad for the Nazis.
So this could conceivably have been an interesting alternate history, the Waffen SS trying to like fight their way down to town through apple Achian just getting their shit wrecked.
Well, the problem with this book because that isn't it, And that's a book I would read, especially if someone like that, someone less problematic, like Harry Turtledove had written
The Fucker. But that's not like Nute actually Nute and Forstune kind of fall for a standard pitfall in writing fiction here, writing particularly like speculative past fiction, is you have this point that's the actual thing that you want to get that's actually interesting, which is like an insurgent war in apple Atchia between the Nazis and like elderly American World War one veterans. That's a fun premise, but you don't get to it until the very end of
the book. Right by the end of the book, Hitler's you know, geared up for a full scale invasion and we're actually getting ready to have like you know that he's set up like a navy conflict between like US carrier groups and Nazi like the German navy. Like there's a lot of cool stuff that's happening by the end potentially, but it's not really a part of the story because he feels the need to like go back much fur it.
Like you should always start a book at the thing that's most interesting to you, right, Like you don't actually want to waste a lot of time building up to that, even if you're like, well, people are gonna want to know how we got here, No they're not. They don't give a shit. Start at whatever's most interesting. You know, it's a rookie mistake. Maybe if Newton hadn't been so busy being the Speaker of the House, he'd have been able to get it right.
So what you're saying is the sequel is probably a banger, and.
Need to get a sequel as a banger. It was all apparently intended to be one book that's too long. But yeah, you know, I don't know. We probably don't need to go through this whole thing, especially because I it's the election and I.
Don't think thatst Jim Martel right the.
Story march Al Martinal, you know the name, yeah, yeah, yeah, also played by Christopher uh what's his name? From The Lord of the Rings. I don't know. I think I'm good on this book. We had forty five minutes, right, that's all we owe you on our on our off week. This is an off week. We're taking. We're taking a breather. We're trying not to focus too much on the news
because nothing interesting is going to happen yet. You in the future know, so just scream at past Robert and Molly about what happened.
And if I don't get any message from the future, I will assume that we all die this week.
Yeah?
Please? Is it for the whole world? Thank god? Thank goodness. Anyway, Molly, how do you feel about the alternate past? What's you what's your favorite World War two counterfactual? Do you spend much time thinking about, like, for example, what if the Germans hadn't invaded Russia but had focused all of their military might on North Africa.
You know, as a woman, Robert, I'm going to say, no, I have never thought about that.
All.
That's a shame. I spent a lot of time doing World War two counterfactually.
Now I could run get my partner. I think probably could talk about this for hours. I think this is the thing that men like to think about. Oh yeah, but no, no, I have never considered this.
So are you more of a World War one counterfactual guy? Like? What if? What if Serbia had had taken over the Austro Hungarian Empire? What if? What if by World War two the great land power in Europe was the Serbian Empire?
What if?
I'm always I'm always asking myself like that, Sylvia, aren't you always asking about that?
I'll tell I'll tell you one thing. We never would have stopped putting cigarettes in movies. Right If Serbia is like a China sized like market for American television and film, cigarettes don't ever get cut out of Hollywood now, So that's good. That's my prediction.
Anyway, Molly, do you have anything you want to plug?
Yeah, you should listen to my podcast Weird Little Guys assuming no acts of terrorism happened this week, I won't have any new news to cover in there.
But there have already been five bob threats against poling locations in Georgia.
Oh, they did pick up a guy the other day with an armed bomb about to blow up the power grid in Nashville. So it does keep happening To.
Say there will be no acts of terror rism.
Yeah, well, you can tune into Weird Little Guys to hear about these kind of weird little guys who do things like that.
Yeah, speaking of weird little guys, Newt Gingridge probably a lot littler because he's extremely old now, so he's weird.
Check out Knut's wife's Instagram. She photoshops her face to be completely smooth in every picture.
It's in beautiful, beautiful, and presumably, if this book is true, she's plying him for nuclear secrets. She's, you know what, the.
Ambassador to the Vatican. She's not anymore.
Wow, And that is what a do nothing job. I know, Make me ambassador to the Vatican, because you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get into those catacombs. I'm going to steal some saints bones. You know I'm gonna have.
A bigger I'm getting the Coronavisor. Oh oh wow, hops time machine.
Yeah, of course.
Anyways, time machine hopefully.
I love I love the idea that the Pope has a time machine because my imagination is, rather than doing like anything that would help the Catholic Church, he just repeatedly goes back in time to like put a thumbnail on Martin Luther's chair, like he's just constantly fucking with Martin Luther a little bit.
I don't think the Coronavisor allows you to manipulate the past only to view it.
Oh oh well, then I would go look at dinosaurs, obviously, That's that's the only thing I would be interested. I'm proud to say I wouldn't stop any historical crimes with a time machine. I'm doing nothing but dinosaur related stuff if I get access to a time machine. Yeah yeah, anyways, so I'm go have sex with nude Gangridge and get secrets from him. I hope there's only one way to learn.
I hope future everybody is okay, yeah.
Okay, and you know where a rubber you don't know where Nut's been, doesn't know where.
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