Welcome to the libertarian Institute Channel, and Keith
Knight. Don't tread on anyone today.
I'm joined by Thaddeus Russell, the founder of unregistered
Productions, Renegade University, the host of the
unregistered podcast and author of a renegade History of the
United States today. We'll be discussing World War
Two. The great blowback.
This is a class. Mr. Russell will be doing June
6, 13 20th, and 27th link will be in the Scription below.
Dr. Russell. Thank you so much for your time.
Oh Keith. Thanks so much for having me on.
I love talking about this. Dr. Russell, why is history
important? You know, I dislike so many
things about my profession which is the historical profession.
I'm a Columbia PhD in history and I have been our history.
Professor for almost three decades.
Now, I I dislike so much of it, mostly the content, the politics
of it, the narrowness of the ideology that's represented in
the historical profession on. And on, however, there's certain
things that I really love about. My profession and the study of
history and for us or historians, I think this is
almost Universal Among Us. You know, we we believe that
nothing is trans historical. Meaning that nothing is eternal
and permanent and never unchanging, we believe that
everything is historical in that sense.
Meaning that it is contingent upon real people and events and
ideas in history, changing over time.
We believe that change is constant that there's never been
been anything that is static, certainly not in the realm of
ideas or culture politics or economics.
And so that's what. So, there is always more to look
at because there is nothing. But dynamism in the past, there
is nothing but constant change in every quarter of society.
And even outside of society, things are always changing.
And so, our jobs are never done, but that's what makes it
beautiful. That's one reason.
I love history. The other is that I actually
psychologically, I get transported into the past by
doing it and it's almost like it's in a form of escapism for
me. I really love it.
I really feel better when I'm studying and researching his
green reading it. I feel like I'm not quite in
that place in the past, but I certainly don't feel like I'm in
this place anymore. And that's nice.
It's nice to be thinking about people who were so long dead
that there's no sort of feelings about them dying or about, you
know, any of the tragedies, you know, Necessarily the third
reason and this is why I started with not why I became a
historian is that I was interested in politics like you
and like many of our friends people in our world as a very
young person and I pretty soon saw that the people who knew
history won all the arguments that if you knew history you
could win virtually any political argument and that's
true. It's really, it's very
difficult. It's actually quite annoying to
As someone who knows a lot of history.
And when you don't understand that as well because it's
impossible. Right?
If they have this old Trove of information that you're simply,
don't have access to. It's impossible to really engage
with them on any serious way, in any serious way.
So historians those of us who actually do, spend the time,
doing the research on the stuff. We always have an upper hand on
the argument. Doesn't mean we're right.
It just means we have a big advantage and so I can't there
is no political question to me. That isn't best answered by
looking at. History.
Imagine you have to hire a soul historian for Renegade
University. They're in charge of all the
history when looking for when looking at potential historians,
what would you say differentiates a good historian
from a bad historian just quick. Correction.
I am no longer with Renegade University.
So it's my all my courses are at the unregistered Academy on my
patreon, but just so, you know, it's a brand-new thing.
I don't blame you. I was with, are you for a long
time? Time I did found it but we just
I went in another Direction just recently.
So you can go to patreon.com/scishow unregistered
for all the things that I'm now offering.
So what, what kind of historian would I not hire?
Well, I just hired David Beto, who's a very important
libertarian historian at the University of Alabama, who's
written four or five, very important books that have been
almost completely ignored by the historical establishment because
he's got the wrong politics. David's books are immensely
important their unique and they add tons.
Understanding of mutual Aid among poor and Working Class
People. The history of armed
self-defense by African-Americans self-help by
African Americans under Jim Crow.
He's now got a new book. He's working on on Franklin,
Roosevelt's full-on assault on civil liberties.
These are the things that you're not allowed to really talk
about, you know, in the left liberal establishment, which is
Academia and David's, managed to carve out a little corner and
have a job and Alabama, but no one ever pays attention to his
book. So that's why he's on my podcast
right now. This week.
He's a new episode and he and I will be teaching a big course,
five-part course, June and July and June and July on the JFK
assassination. Very various theories about it
and both David. And I were not that interested
in it before, but there's a lot of brand new workout, that makes
it much more interesting and suggest that there was a lot
more to it than than standard historians like us have been led
to believe the reason I hire a historian like David Beto.
Is the David asks he asks questions that no one else is
asking. He has he's curious about things
that other historians are not curious about He's not afraid of
making any argument. He's not afraid of letting the
evidence, determine what the argument will be.
He wants to just tell a different story and he sees a
different. He just sees a different history
than typical historian. So the kind of story and I
wouldn't ever hire as someone who simply in curious.
I mean, that's but that goes for anyone.
I don't like to have friends who were in curious.
I don't want to have anybody teaching me or anybody else
who's in curious, and that is most of the academic profession.
And my, my opinion, they are actually in Curious people.
They're not curious about ideas that are contrary to their own.
They're mostly propagandists. Not all.
There are some there are some professors I've known.
Who are genuine authentic intellectuals, who really love
ideas and themselves, but for the most part, they're not
they're interested in advancing a particular politics.
And so they're not really curious or not interested in
really listening to ideas that are fundamentally different than
their own. They don't mind Dickering around
the edges, but they will not ever go at the big questions
about the welfare state or about the Empire or about capitalism
or about socialism, you know, on those big questions, they all
agree and there's Has no point discussing it.
So yeah, other than that, I don't care.
I want someone, who's who's very curious who's relentlessly
curious and wants to know about everything in the past and is
not afraid to follow the evidence evidence where it
leads. It's so interesting because all
arguments that I had heard for World War.
Two were bad history arguments in the sense of they were just
boring predictable narratives. So instead of, you know, citing
primary documents or anything. It was always well, you don't
want to go into Syria. Well, you know who else didn't
want to fight? Neville Chamberlain, so you're
kind of an idiot in a coward. Assad is like Hitler, but if you
want to go to war with Assad and maybe even Russia and Iran,
you're like Winston, Churchill, the greatest of the great.
The greatest breadth that ever lived.
What is why our historical narratives so important as
opposed to just laying out facts?
What, why do narratives matter to people?
Well, because narratives become the truth, right?
So once once people buy into a narrative, once they believe in
narrative, they then internalized it and then the
culture, internalizes it, and then it becomes catechism.
It becomes religious religious, you know, I mean that and that's
true for any society. America is not alone.
Loan By Any Means in this. So the narratives that are
established about history over time.
What's great about them. Is that and this is this is
where Michelle Foucault comes in.
He's the he and the French post-structuralist and
postmodernist identified. This, they noticed that the the
narratives about history change over time that you know, the
ruling Elites change, their view of what happened in the past
constantly, they're always revising, you know, what
actually happened in the past which leads us to believe that
maybe there isn't one single true.
Narrative write one single truth about the past.
But yeah, so if you control, this is not the first person to
say this, if you control history, you control everything.
If you control The Narrative of what happened in the past, you
control Society because you can fashion that story to fit your
own particular requirements for power.
So for instance, you know, in the United States in the last 50
or 60 years, one of the ways in which the Democratic party has
maintained, its control has been to To use this mythology,
mythological sort of redneck right-wing figure.
This usually southern white man who has a Confederate flag
somewhere in his house, or on his truck and owns guns, and
he's racist etcetera. And he votes for Trump, and
because of date because they exist and because of the long
lineage of racist white men like that.
The Ku Klux Klan the Confederacy and slavery.
Yada yada. We must have the following 29
programs to help African-Americans and nowadays
to keep down the Trump. Is, so that's the narrative.
I mean, the Democratic party, what would the Democratic party
be without that Narrative of of racist US history.
I mean they have nothing. That's almost every single
policy has to be filtered through that narrative for them,
you know, to get it passed. And so that's just one example,
you know, I mean Trump, make America great again.
Well, okay. So there's a lot of talk among
Trump stirs about how great America was in like the 40s and
50s, you know, World War Two. To and, you know, the great
Prosperity after World War 2, when there was people made
enough money that Mom could stay at home and be a housewife, and
it's this nostalgic thing and the Trump movement again, you
know, they control, they control their own narrative or they have
their own narrative that's different.
Again, the virtually the entire troop movement is dependent upon
that narrative. Without that Nostalgia.
What are they? What are they fighting for mean?
That's what it says. On the have make America great
again. So it's a nostalgic movement
from the beginning. The requires on a particular.
Oracle narrative to me, both narratives, the Trump narrative
about America being a wonderful Paradise, 50, or 60 years ago,
and the liberal left Democrat Democratic narrative, that the
United States has always just been a racist country bent on
killing black people. They are equally true to me.
They're equally true equally untrue.
They really are just narratives. Now, there's and there's
evidence. There's lots and lots, and lots
of evidence. There's books and books, and
books, and stacks. Worth of evidence to support
either narrative. You can in fact look at the
1950s America and say yes, in fact, you know much of the
working class was getting paid better than ever before and
Working Class People for the first time in human history
owned houses. And this is this was really
good. We also know that this was the
during Jim Crow and not everybody was wealthy and not
all of the working class was so wonderful.
And by the way, the jobs that that made them wealthy or
relatively wealthy as working class.
They were in factories, like, steel factories, and automobile
factories, or 8 10, 12 hours a day basically, as machine.
So, you know, anyway, you get my point here, then controlling the
narrative establishing, controlling, and disseminating a
narrative effectively is the surest path to power.
Great points. Because of course, they never
Embrace any humility or any complexity, when pushing such a
narratives, they don't say, well, or the example, I'd uses
the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Richard Haas. He doesn't even say, you know,
in my opinion, I think the benefits of the invasion of
Afghanistan outweighed. The cause he just says, well, we
know that we had to go into Afghanistan.
Our hands were tied. We had no choice but a rack is
where there might be a gray area.
Notice how they've sold you. Already on the main bill of
goods. That whenever there's a problem.
We need major major State intervention and we're going to
have to kill tons of people. Look, you don't like it go away
and live in Fairyland. This is the reality.
Moving on, they never even questioned it.
So that's the power, they did the power of the narrative.
They don't even see that. Here is an opinion on putting
forward. They just see it as a absolute
reality, that can go unquestioned and that's why I
love places that are able to bring.
Us courses, like World War Two, the, the great blowback.
What is blowback? Well, I mean, it's so, this is a
concept that was invented by Chalmers Johnson.
Who's a scholar mostly East Asian politics and US porn for
foreign policy. He was not a Libertarian.
He wasn't an anarchist. He was a pretty Normie.
I think liberal ish his scholar, but he saw Especially in US
policy in the in East Asia over the last 50 to 100 years
policies. That produced a lot of
anti-americanism Dollar Diplomacy rigging the rigging,
the system writing deals, you know, under the threat of
bombardment, with these, with gum with governments in in Asia,
you know, that basically allowed us corporations us business
interest in the government itself, to rip people off.
Laughs, you know, that kind of thing, losing sovereignty.
How many how many nations essentially lost their
sovereignty to the United States.
Japan is just one of them when Admiral Perry, you know, sailed
into Tokyo bay and said, hey sign is Trade Agreement or else
they sign the trade agreement, you know, and a lot of people in
Japan after that. We're anti-American.
How strange? And then they were anti-western
how strange and by 1900 guess what 41 They were really
anti-American, you know, so there's your blowback are just
in that case, Pearl Harbor was blowback for decades and Decades
of severe mistreatment of Japanese people.
We haven't even talked about what Americans did to what the
United States I should say, did to Japanese in America in the
20s and 30s. Everybody knows about the
internment. Okay, everybody knows about that
atrocity. They don't know that every
Japanese person in California was, was had their their land
and property seized by the state of California.
And then, given over to White farmers in the In 20 is called
the alien land laws, right? They don't know that the San
Francisco Public Schools were segregated between Japanese and
white students. They don't know that there were
pogroms, essentially lynchings of Japanese people in the
streets here, where I live in California, in the 20s and 30s
long before the internment. So Japanese people had a lot of
reason to hate the United States, by the time Pearl Harbor
came around. So that's just one example of
blowback, but World War Two in general for me.
He is not all of it, but I would say most of it, most of the
deaths in World War, two were caused by the US entry into it.
I, my estimate is about two-thirds of the 65 million.
The current, the current best estimate is about 65 million.
People were killed, as a result of World War Two.
And my estimate is that something about something like
two thirds of, that would not have happened.
Two-thirds of those. People would not have died.
If the US had not entered the war in the way that it did.
So that's blowback, you know, something like 40 million
people, I think dead the way that Europe was divided.
After the war where the Soviet Union controlled half of it and
the United States controlled. The other half was not ideal for
the United States or the world. Certainly not for the people
living there. That's below back.
Half a million American men. Dead fighting, that's blowback.
You know, it goes on and on, I mean, the you established, after
World War Two, they gave Independence, they gave
Independence to Vietnam, and then took it away.
And then the people in Vietnam became nationalists, and Ho Chi
Minh a rose, and there's your blowback, their anti-americanism
in Vietnam, became the Vietnam War, same, and same in Korea,
tons of anti-americanism in Korea, largely as a result of
what the United States did after the war and during it.
Yeah, but the biggest blow back the biggest blow back of all Is
the Holocaust. So I am the first American
historian to make this argument explicit, but there are many
British and German historians who have been making it for many
years and some ways. I'm borrowing from their work.
The Holocaust was not caused by the United States ending the war
but its fulfillment was guaranteed by the United States
entering the war. What people don't know is that
every year from the time Hitler took power in 1933 until the
final solution began in late 1941.
Every year Hitler gave a public speech in the reichstag intended
for Western governments to here in which he said the following.
I have the Jews that you love so much.
I will deliver them to you on our boats on luxury liners if
you want it. Will you take them West, if you
don't take them and you stop us from retaking the land that was
stolen from us in the Versailles, treaty after World
War one, which included pieces of Poland.
And then also, he had designs on Western Russia, which was not
part of that. But anyway, he wanted to take
those areas it of you. Stop us from taking that land.
We will then kill the Jews so you can take him now.
I'll give him to you. But if you intervene militarily
to stop us from getting what is our ancestral land, we will then
kill them. He was using them as hostages.
Well, the West every single year from 1933 to 1941 the United
States state department, France Britain, every single one of
them refused to take any significant number of Jewish
refugees from the Third Reich over and over and over again.
You had Jewish organizations begging Roosevelt, daily daily,
you'd rabbis going to the White House.
Daily begging them to let Jewish refugees from Nazi.
Germany, come into the United States.
No denied The only Jews were allowed into the United States
from the Third Reich or people like Albert, Einstein, who were
scientists, who were useful in building building bombs.
So there's that. And then Hitler kept saying, we
are going to take Poland much of which did absolutely belong to
Germany. Most almost everyone agrees.
I mean, even the left wing and Germany agreed with Hitler on
much of his territorial designs ambitions.
And he launched the invasion of Poland in September 1939.
The United States, of course, and the Allies intervene
militarily, the United States through Aid to the Allies Etc.
And then Hitler eventually did enact the final solution in
1941, but the thing is the plan for the for the Nazis and Hitler
from the 19 teens until late. The one was to expel Jews.
They did not want to exterminate them, the final solution for
Hitler, and the Nazi leadership was always to move them out,
forced forced migration, move them out of Germany, and out of
the Third Reich, when they took over Austria.
That's what they want to because they wanted to keep them as
hostages. They wanted to keep that power.
Right? And when the unite, when the
United States ultimately intervened and the west
intervened, then Hitler no longer had used for these Jews
and that's when he gave the order for the final solution.
So this is in the late fall or early winter of 1941.
This is after Pearl Harbor. This is after the declaration of
war by the United States on Germany.
And the first gassing of Jews, the first killing of Jews in an
extermination camp at Camp. That was designed for this was
in Chelm. No Poland.
The day after the day after the United States, declared war on
Germany. Now, people will say, and people
often do say that there was mass killings of Jews before then,
and that is absolutely correct. It happened during Operation
Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia of the Soviet Union,
which began in June of 41. This is when the German He just
went hog-wild, rushing through Poland taking as much as
possible, and killing as many people as they could.
But this was not the, the, the, the killings of Jews that
happened at that time. We're actually against against
the direct orders of Berlin that Hitler and the leadership of the
Nazi party did not want that. They wanted to kill a lot of
them. They wanted to kill all of the
Polish leadership, and they wanted to kill all the Polish
intellectuals. The Jews were just, they were
not. Important in this campaign.
And so and and Hitler didn't want.
He didn't want his soldiers spending their time running
around sadistically shooting Jews in the head which many of
them did. He wanted them to focus on the
job at hand which was to seize this country and get rid of the
political leadership of Poland was not Jewish.
So we know this, we know this was policy.
We know that Berlin did not order the killings of Jews, not
in the way that was done that. They were interested in taking
Poland and eliminate liquidating, the ruling class of
Poland and taking it over, but that was not.
The plan was to put the Jews in ghettos, which they did and then
in an orderly way, March them out or train them out of third
of the Third Reich to any country that would take them.
And here's the thing that many people don't know Hitler and the
Nazi party of Germany. In the 1930s co-founded,
essentially, the state of Israel because there was a program by
which the the Nazi government gave gave material assistance
and training to any Jew in Germany who was willing to move
to Palestine and settle there. So, that was just an
agricultural area. So they were, they had farming
programs for Jews. The Nazis ran programs that
train Jews. How to run Farms so that they
could move to Palestine. It paid some of them Cash Money,
it provided them with the transportation Palestine, many,
many thousands of Jews with the direct assistance of the Nazi
government. Moved to Palestine and helped
found the state of Israel. Because this is what they
wanted. They wanted the Jews to get out.
They were not interested. Din, Mass extermination.
Why? Not mass extermination?
Mass extermination was what was done or attempted by Russian,
anti-semites famously before Hitler, was anything important,
right? Is the famed, the infamous
pogroms in Russia, which had been going on for centuries and
where the specially common in the late 19th century and early
20th century Hitler looked down on that, you know, he didn't
like slobs. You thought Slavs were racially,
inferior people, Russians were inferior.
And he saw that as irrational. He called it irrational.
Emotional anti-Semitism. He said what we do, the German
the Nazis us we are rational anti-semites.
We don't run around, cutting off people's heads and shooting him.
Dead in the street. We line them up.
Put them in cattle cars, and move them out of the country
forever. So they spent did not see
leadership spent seven eight years in the 1930s.
After taking power. Looking for places to put the
Jews. They sent many of them to
Palestine. Winston, Churchill, stop that.
By he started bombing the ships that were taking the Jews to
Palestine. By the way, once that ended,
then they look to Madagascar. The Nazis spent a lot of time
investigating Madagascar. They sent missions down there to
investigated. They were going, they were
getting ready to send Jews on ships, to Madagascar.
They kept begging the United States, and France, and Britain,
and all the Allies to take the Jews.
They kept saying, no, so they had nowhere to go.
The Jews were trapped there, and then Winston Churchill in 1939
after the Invasion of Poland. He established a naval blockade
of Germany. No one.
No person could go in or out of Germany.
After that time. Winston, Churchill trap, those
people in Hitler's house. They refused to take the
refugees and then he trapped them inside the house.
As Hitler was burning it down. Oh, and then they started
dropping bombs. The British RAF starts bombing
the cities. During this time, the German
civilians, all that happens. This is blowback.
Of course, when you start bombing people The civilians in
that country tend to tend to gather Ken to tend to Rally
around the leader in that country during wartime.
That's all it. Did.
It helped Hitler's. Cause, and it did nothing except
ensure that the Jews and that country would die.
And we have just some of the most heart-wrenching Memoirs and
letters from Jews, living in Berlin, and other cities.
During that time who said they said at the time that especially
that, the United States in 41 was going into the was coming
into the war. They said, now that the United
States is coming to the war. We are dead.
We are dead because Hitler has no reason to keep us around
anymore. And that's exactly what happened
the day after the United States. Declared war on Germany.
They started gassing Jews in the final solution began.
Niall Ferguson has attempted to summarize the response by Henry
Kissinger to the concept of blowback.
So he said, in his book as Kissinger pointed out to Ariana
felici, the history of things that didn't happen needs to be
considered before. We may pass any judgment on the
history of things that did happen.
We need to consider not only the consequences of what American
governments did during say the Cold War.
But also The probable consequences of the different
foreign policies that might have been adopted looking at it that
way. Is there anything that might
come to mind and say, well, yes, technically, if the US doesn't
go in but then again. What if Germany?
Took basically from France to Russia, with Franco running
Spain, Salazar later in Portugal and Mussolini in Italy and
Hirohito in Japan, how would the look?
The world look thin. Yeah, all of those guys would be
dead and the regimes would be long dead.
So I spent a lot of time in the book that I'm working on
examining the political economy of Nazi Germany, people.
Don't do this nearly enough, it is it's if it weren't so
horrific. It would actually be comical.
So Nazism as a governing ideology is a snake eating its
tail. There is Virtually no way for it
to sustain itself. So the anti-Semitism alone was
nearly lethal for the entire German population.
Why? Well, what's the first thing
that Nazis did? When they came to power in 33,
they removed all the Jews from the professions, all the
professions. Okay.
So Germany in 1932 1932 33 Jews in Germany.
Any occupied, which professions? Well, let's start with the
medical profession. So, something like half of all
the doctors in Berlin were Jewish and overnight.
They were removed from their jobs.
So there were half as many doctors now in Berlin.
Oh gosh. Okay.
Jews were also very prominent in the food industry.
Not the agriculture production side, but at the retail side and
the warehousing side, They removed all of them from the
food industry in Germany. Okay, so, Was the consequence of
that starvation. The average height of the German
child declined during the Nazi rule in the 1930s, the average
height of every other European country went up.
During that time people couldn't get enough food.
They couldn't get enough medicine because they remove the
people who are providing those things.
Oh, here's a good one. German Jewish doctors pioneered,
the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
They were the first ones to do this.
Really heroic people, actually saving people from awful
diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea.
Almost all the research and all the treatment for that in the
world at the time was going on in Berlin by Jewish doctors
90-plus, percent of the doctors in Germany who were treating
sexually. Transmitted diseases were
Jewish. Well, they got removed to guess
what happened, Keith the rates of syphilis and gonorrhea, I
mean, these are things that cause blindness they are.
Debilitating, they can kill you. Stay skyrocketed.
So the German people are suffering tremendously from the
lat. Of Jews, their society.
I mean, people who were providing essential Services
essential essential Services. We haven't even talked about the
intellectuals and the banking sector, the financial sector,
removing the Jews from from German society.
That point was kotak catastrophic in itself.
But then then the logic of Nazism is, we must have living
space laban's realm. Everyone knows this, right?
That was that was the justification.
Partial, justification for taking Poland and West, Germany.
Hitler believed that the cities were too crowded yada yada.
So we've got to go east and get new land, right?
So we can put our people in places where they have more
Breathing Room. Living space.
Okay. Well that requires a very large
military. Okay.
Well, the thing is you've got to stop that military and the thing
is the military requires things like copper for its bullets.
Bullets had copper in them, right?
You don't have a bullet. If you don't have copper.
Well, promise, Germany had no copper.
The other thing, the Germany insisted on at this time Nazi.
Germany was to be completely self-sufficient.
Autarky was what it was called. So they cut off Imports.
They didn't want imports from any foreign corrupting
influence. Right?
Well, they stopped and they no longer were important copper
now, so that meant they had to invade furthermore countries.
The agricultural sector in Germany to define the copper in
the natural resources. The agricultural sector in, in
Germany was denuded of Labor, to build the bombs and tanks to
invade Poland with. So, that's another reason people
are going hungry in Germany. There weren't agricultural
workers. They were being used for
military production. So starvation's happening in
Germany. We have to invade More Country.
We have to invade more of pull and more of Western Russia.
More of other places to get the agricultural Goods to get the
produce to feed our people, right.
It's an impossible, and impossible task, and so Hitler,
so Nazi, Germany was collapsing. Internally.
It was imploding from the moment of its Inception from 1933 on,
for many reasons. It could not sustain itself.
It was doomed to fail doomed to its demise.
In fact, I'm quite Sure that have the United States and the
Allies. Not intervened.
It all it would have died long before 1941.
When someone looks at the second world war.
As I said earlier, the common thing is it they always say WWII
teaches us that appeasement never works.
How do you respond to that mindset?
Yeah, appeasement. Yes.
I mean, so this is what they always use against us, right.
Every time we oppose a war. We are we are Chamberlain will?
Yeah, and, and also, whenever the police tell you to do
anything, you have to obey immediately, you can never not
appease the police or else they can.
You everyone else. You have to vigorously stand up
to for every single one of your rights, except the people that
violate them the most good point.
Yes, indeed. Yeah.
Well, I mean, so, it's so what we had circa 1940 one was
basically to very vicious Regional Wars going on very
vicious. The one in the East between
Germany and Russia Operation, Barbarossa that war is that
alone? Just that piece of World War
Two? Ooh is still the most lethal
catastrophic war in human history?
So I'm not minimizing it and then Japan and China, you know?
And and then of ultimately Japan invading other countries as
well, but mostly China, brutal Invasion, the Rape of Nanking.
We know about the enslavement of countless people, awful terrible
Wars going on, but these were Regional Wars.
They were limited in scope. And Historians are virtually
unanimous in agreeing that Hitler's Ambitions were never
Global. They weren't even european-wide.
He didn't even want to control Western Europe.
As I said, he wanted Poland and he wanted Western Russia, which
he considered to be Teutonic territory.
Meaning the ancestral home of his people.
You know, all racialist nonsense, and of course, I would
have been thousand percent opposed him doing any of that
too. But that's all he wanted for
people who living in Poland and Western Russia.
This is not a small matter. But that is all he wanted.
He did not want Western Europe. He went into Western Europe as a
defensive ploy to shore up his western front so that he could
go east. He was trying to he was trying
to stop the Allies in the west so that he could push Eastward.
That's why he took Western Europe.
He had no intention of keeping France.
He never wanted London. Couldn't take London.
He had no landing craft. People don't know the ver
mocked, the British, the German Navy had not a single landing
craft. How on Earth were they going to
invade England and then the United States without landing
craft. They have no troop transport
ships. They couldn't transport any
number of troops across the ocean anywhere.
Not even the English Channel. This is how we know.
He had no intentions of going outside of his domain.
In Japan and China. We've all I mean, it's clear as
day. Japan, never had any designs on
any other part of the world. They certainly want to China
because they were dependent on the resources.
And China. Japan is a volcanic rock.
It has no natural resources. They have to go outward to get
their stuff, especially agriculture stuff and labor.
That's why they were in China. That's why they were brutally
controlling and dominating China, but that's all they
wanted. They did not want to control the
United States. They didn't want to invade South
America. They Want anything other than
that, they were going to become a strong power, just in their
sphere. They would never be able to be
dominated Again by the West as they had been.
If they could maintain, if they can maintain their control of
China with the natural resources and build their military and
Industry in that way. So again, both regimes, horrible
murderous brutal and imperialist, of course, but
they're imperialism. All I'm saying is much more
limited than what WWII became what the United States.
Entry into World War Two did, was it converted Regional to
Regional Wars into a global war? And that's why I say of the 65
million or so, who died? As a result of the war, roughly
two-thirds of those were outside those spheres.
The other reason, the United States entry into the war was so
lethal and accounted for so many deaths.
Is that many, many of the weapons that were used to kill
people in this war, on all sides on all sides were produced in
the Good Ol USA. In places, like Detroit and Long
Beach, even the Germans, you know, they used they would
capture American weapons and use them to kill people with same
with the Japanese. But, you know, they were
flooding. The United States was flooding,
the world with weapons. All of the Allies, all of the
allies and are many allies were using u.s.
Made weapons. The Soviet Union was using u.s.
Made weapons, by the end of the war.
They were killing lots of people.
So, just the death count, the body count.
The United States is responsible in some way or another directly
or indirectly, I believe for about two-thirds, but certainly
a major part of it. Another one of the primary
things that someone will say is well look the u.s.
Didn't want the war, but our hands were tied after Pearl
Harbor. This is another result of
isolationism as Ben Shapiro loves to remind us, here is a
book published in 1947 the story of the secret War Pearl Harbor
by George Morgenstern in his diary entry of November 25th, 13
days before the Pearl Harbor attack Stimson.
Secretary of War, expressed the Lemma in its broadest.
Terms describing the war cabinet meeting in the white house.
He stated there the president brought up entirely, the
relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that
they were likely to be attacked possibly, as soon as next
Monday. For the Japanese are notorious
for making an attack without warning and the question was
what we should do. The question was, how we should
maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without
allowing too much Danger. ER, to our selves.
What do people need to know about Pearl Harbor?
What people need to know about Pearl.
Harbor was that it is what Franklin Roosevelt?
And mr. Stimson and many others who
ended up in Roosevelt's cabinet. Had been wishing for Keith.
I kid you not since they were teenagers.
So I devote a significant portion of the book to a
biographical study of Roosevelt and his crew.
And he was reading about thinking about talking about and
writing about war with Japan, when he was in high school.
He was reading a man named Admiral, mahan's books, Admiral
Mahan. Is a very famous military
theorist of the 19th century, who wanted the United States to
be the global hegemon. He was unabashed about it.
But the thing about my hand was he was mostly concerned about
Japan. He said over and over in his
books that Japan must be confronted and defeated for the
United States to control the Pacific.
Roosevelt was a huge fan of his books.
As were many people in what was, then the foreign policy
establishment and he started reading them when I was in high
school when he was in boarding school, 16 years old.
He was writing home about it and talking about the Japs and how
we needed to do something about the Japs etcetera, Etc.
When he was assistant Secretary of, Navy, the Navy under the
Wilson Administration and the 1910s.
He was calling for war against Japan and Wilson and Wilson's
cabinet who are Arch and interventionist as well were
horrified by this guy. This young Lincoln Roosevelt
guy. They try to kept trying to calm
him down. We don't need war with Japan.
So he was going for war with Japan.
As I said, since he was a child literally, the very first
cabinet meeting of the Roosevelt administration.
The Franklin Roosevelt administration, the very first
cabinet meeting Franklin. Lays out maps and plans for what
a war with Japan would look like.
And we have Diaries of his cabinet members saying, what the
hell was this? We weren't expecting this at
all. That was his first.
This is the height. This is the height of the Great
Depression. He had a lot of stuff to do,
right? His first thing was, we got to
go to war with Japan and how here's how it's gonna go.
It was going to be launched from the Aleutian Islands and Alaska
and certain islands in the Pacific.
And he knew how to wear the Navy was going to be stationed.
And where the Air Force is gonna be stationed and how they had to
have particular, airfields, built-in islands in the Pacific
so that the launch attacks directly into, I mean, he had it
all planned out before he became president and he had been
dreaming dreaming of a war. Japan, as I said, since he was
about 16 years old. Unbelievable stuff.
I have just two more pieces of evidence here cuz you would not
believe the emails. I get every time I mentioned,
Pearl Harbor. This is really difficult for a
lot of people to accept here. Here is the New York Times.
An article titled War entry plans.
Later Roosevelt published, January 2nd, 1972.
Here is Churchill's own Diaries. The president's orders to these
US. Navy, escorts were to attack any
German U-Boat, which showed itself.
If it were 200 or 300 miles away from the Convoy, everything was
to be done to force an incident. The president had taken this
very well and made it clear that he would look for an incident
which would justify him opening hostilities.
Churchill told his War cabinet. And then finally, there was a
document titled. The McCullen memo which lists
about eight things that the US should do in relation to Japan.
The document Ends by saying if by these He's means Japan could
be led to commit an overt Act of War.
So much the better at all events.
We must be fully prepared to accept the threat of War.
So this was obviously intentionally provoked.
So with what we've dealt with Pearl Harbor, but unfortunately,
we're in the war. And what are you going to do
now? We had to drop to nukes on
Japan, just to end this hell on Earth that killed 65 million
people after the nukes, the war ended, therefore nuking, Anne
was justified. What's saying?
Dr. Russell? I have talked to many World War
Two veterans, who are very, very happy about the atomic bombs
being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Because if they hadn't been dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki
those guys might have been sent in into a Mainland invasion of
Japan. Okay.
Now, what would they have been met with if they had gotten to
Japan because by that point every city in Japan and people
don't know this every single City and I'm talking about 52.
60 major cities including Tokyo had that point by 1945 had been
burned flat to the ground. Tokyo was a tabletop.
They had firebomb firebomb, firebomb campaign after one,
after the other. There you go.
There were many of them throughout the years of the war
and Tokyo was didn't exist anymore.
As did most of the Japanese military, but 1945, but 19 1945.
The Japanese military was depending on teenage boys.
The defense. Production factories where they
were building the bombs and the tanks again staffed by teenagers
during this time in 1945. So, a Mainland invasion of Japan
would not have been fun. I'm sure there have been many,
many casualties, but would there have been fewer casualties than
in her ocean and Nagasaki? I don't know.
Would they would Japan have surrendered?
Avenge eventually, if they were surrounded because by that
point, Mainland Japan was surrounded by the US Navy.
Bye. 1945 the US Navy has taken all the all the islands around
Japan and all that was left was the mainland.
So, you know, and we know that there was a lot of talk of
surrender in the Japanese High command.
By that point. I think it's quite likely that
there would have been a surrender and if not, they would
have been much less resistance at that point from the Japanese
military. Then, there have been on all
those islands, all those awful, you know, brutal battles, on all
those islands in the Pacific. By that point because it's
simply they were operating. Really the dependent on children
the military that point to make their stuff and to fight and you
know, the US Military and the Allies are not going to have too
much trouble with that. So I as as I'm not going to ever
say to a veteran u.s. Veteran, who would have gone to
the mainline. I'm not going to say to him,
you're better off, you know, you would have been better off if we
hadn't dropped the nukes but from a macro level society-wide
level. I do believe that fewer people
would have died. I wish you would have met my
uncle. I think he passed away at 100
years old. He finally opened up about his
WWII experience. He was conscripted and he's
sitting there. Gosh land, his late nineties
talking to me about this and I asked him.
Did you kill anyone in the war and his you know, his face goes
blank and he goes, well, he explained that he was part of
the Air Force and while he was flying, He attacked a Japanese
fighter pilot and unfortunately was able to see his face just
before he killed a guy. And here he is decades later,
talking to me about it. Half a century later.
Crying about it against the Japanese, who with all the
propaganda. The average person is still able
to feel this compassion. He starts crying and said he was
drafted, probably just like, I was he should have had kids just
like I did. Why did you know his face?
His firing, miss me, a little, and mine hit his.
It's just unbelievable stuff. So I'm yeah, Keith.
I'm really glad you brought up conscription and this is another
thing that people don't understand every single military
that was in World War Two, every single one, majority conscript
Army, every single one, the United States with 2/3.
Conscripts what are conscripts their slaves?
We need to get over this. I mean, problem with calling it
slavery at mean if Not slavery. I don't know.
It is not only is it slavery? It's the worst form of slavery.
Is it? Not?
Because you are not being forced to pick cotton, you're being
forced to fight, and die for a cause you may not care about it
is the worst form of slavery. And that's exactly.
It was 2/3 of Americans in the war were conscripts in places.
Like Germany. The Vermont was 90%.
The German military was 90%. Conscripts.
This is why I get furious when people describe all Germans as
not sick. Not Aziz during that time, or
they say the Nazi army, or Nazi Soldier. 90% of those guys were
not Nazis, and a lot of them were anti-nazi.
Same with all of them, British. They all relied on the Soviets.
They all relied on conscripts. Absolutely slavery.
So tells you tells you the support for the war, fighting
this war on all sides on all sides, was not so great.
Yeah, it's not exactly. France and Germany went to war
know, a few Elites enslaved, some people in their
jurisdiction, same thing happened on the other side and a
bunch of people got killed. Yes, sir.
Exactly. Ok, ok perfectly.
So it's amazing. This by the way is referred to
as the good War. You would think that the good
War would be like, I don't know, Serbia 1999 or sore like Iraq
war one. Something that had like, very
few casual. I shouldn't say.
Serbia had very few. Something you would think that
just had so few. Little T's and the costs were so
small. And the benefits were so big,
but 65 million deaths. You can't question this.
It's inherently good. Here is tell me if I'm reading
this incorrectly. I want to know what you hear in
this statement. Here is Churchill in March of
1948 in a book, titled the Gathering Storm Volume.
One of his Memoirs one day. President Roosevelt told me he
was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war
should be called. I said it once the unnecessary
War, there never was a war one. Easy to stop then that which has
just wrecked. What was left of the world?
From the previous struggle, the human tragedy reaches its climax
in the fact that after all, the exertions and sacrifices of
hundreds of millions of people and the victories of the
righteous, cause we have still not found peace or security and
that we lie in the grip of even worse, perils than those, we
have surmounted. That's that's the that's one of
the greatest mass murderers and history saying that too.
By the way Winston Churchill. As I said, as I said, he trapped
the Jews inside of Germany. He refused to take the refugees
and then he put a blockade around Germany.
I mean just think about that. He's soda, pop Tate around
Germany in the first world war as first Lord of the admiralty.
That's right. A starvation block.
So he's starving everyone and trapping the Jews inside as
well. Yeah, and hit the thing about
Churchill was he boy, he was absolutely ruthless.
He just did not care much. All about killing lots of
civilians. To achieve a particular War and
the costs of the of the second world war besides the Holocaust
and everything else you've mentioned.
But what else do you say to get people to say that this isn't
the Great War? There were a ton of unintended
consequences. What would you say?
Those were if you had to lay them out?
Yeah, well, I mean, the, you know, the tens of millions of
people as I said, you know, who died.
I think I think because either directly or indirectly, because
of us entry into the war. The planet was reshaped.
I mean countries were were created, other countries were
dissolved. People found themselves,
overnight being citizens of a new country that they previously
didn't belong to or didn't want to belong to.
You have half the Half of Europe, half of Eurasia now,
behind an iron curtain under communism under a brutal
stalinist dictatorship. You know in Russia alone.
So I went to the Soviet Union. I was in the Soviet Union in
1987 that's in its last year's and they took us to a military
cemetery. Just WWII it was a WWII
Cemetery. This is in Moscow.
And it was so big. You couldn't see the edges of it
when you were standing in it and went off to the Horizon in every
direction, and it was one Mass grave.
After another each Mass grave was the size of a football
field. So just a raised sort of
rectangle of dirt about 100 yards long and maybe, you know,
whatever that is 50 30, 40 yards wide and there's just one after
the other, after the other of those going off into the Horizon
that many mass Graves, each Mass grave.
Contained ten thousand bodies in it, ten thousand each one.
So we know that more than 20 million people in Russia were
killed in that war. Would Hitler have invaded.
Western Russia, the Soviet Union the way that he did and the way
that he did and would as many people have died, if the US have
not been involved, he would have invaded, he probably would have
lost, their probably would have been fewer casualties, but
Again, it became a World War, as a result of us intervention.
The war, the war shape, the world in all sorts of ways that
I mean, in a lot of positive ways, you know, a whole lot of
Technology came out of it that we still use today with and
that's something that sort of Libertarians need to Grapple
with. You know, Wars are very
modernizing phenomena. They accelerate Innovation and
production and Technology. Technological advances.
You know, can we could we have achieved all those things
without killing 65 million? 65 million people.
I don't know. The other result of the war.
Of course, is what Liberals are very proud of and happy about
and they're defending every single day which is the
establishment of the post-war liberal order.
We call it which is dominated by the United States.
So, you know, NATO and the UN and Gat and the World Bank and
the IMF, and all the thing, all the ways in which the United
States, upholds, its Empire. Was a result of the world of
World War Two, and that was all planned in advance.
This Council on Foreign Relations began making plans in
Earnest in 1939. They entered into an agreement
with the state department. Shortly thereafter to make
secret plans, for how the United States would emerge from the
World War Two, as the dominant superpower on the globe and they
got it. They got all the all that they
wanted. Now you could say that was a
good thing because there have in fact been fewer deaths by War
since Five in the world. It's been a relatively peaceful
time at least in modern the modern era.
But you know, we do have Korea. We do a Vietnam.
We do have Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's just American wars.
I'm talking about. It's been quite a bit of killing
was the Cold War, a good thing for the world, seems hard to
maintain that, you know, half the world under communism and
half the world. Under a u.s.
Puppet regime. Is some sort often dictators who
were as brutal as any communist ever was.
You had Cold War? He's across the country across
the world that became often hot Wars across the third world,
vicious, vicious Wars and Africa.
Latin America. They were fought around this
because of it communism was doomed to fail.
We now know that communism as a system is not sustainable.
It was just like Nazi Germany, Nazism.
It couldn't be sustained on its own and that's all we needed to
do. Leave it alone.
George Kennan said this. George Kennan said in his in his
famous tell along. 1947 basically, they're crazy.
They don't know how to run anything.
Talking about the Soviets. They're paranoid.
Delusional. Their system is falling apart
all the time. All we got to do is contain
them, keep them from moving outward and it'll fall apart on
its own. That didn't happen.
So three years later, the NSC National Security, Council
rights NSC, 68 saying, no. As a matter of fact, we've got
to do everything. We can to roll back.
The Communists, take an aggressive position to invest
heavily in the military to build a lot of tanks and bombs, and
airplanes, and to go hard and to actually do everything we can to
foment Revolution within the Soviet Union regime change is
what we need and that was the policy and has been the policy
still to this day since 18:50 NSE 68 I think is still in
effect. They are trying to roll back
Russia still. It's just now it's Putin.
It's not communism but it is still Russia.
The Russian Bear which has been getting in the way of America's
globalist Ambitions for more than 100 years now.
And that's why the Russia has always been an art sites for,
you know, many decades because of that.
They wouldn't play ball with the American global, managed
capitalist regime. Thank you so much for your time.
Have two more questions for you. Every time there is a war, the
intellectual class will tell you that the other side just can't
be reasoned with Saddam. Can't be reasoned with you can't
negotiate with Putin, can't negotiate with Hitler.
You could not have negotiated with the Soviets except during
WWII at Yalta and Tehran, but after that, they couldn't be
reasoned with here is a summary of how a Oswald Garrison,
Bollard the editor of the nation.
Wrote in the great armaments were the road to Fascism.
He says, they bring with them. Increased worship of the state
increased nationalism, increased State service, and therefore,
play into the hands of those like Hitler and Mussolini who
declare that the citizen is made for the state and not the state
for the citizen. He said, July 2nd 1938 when
you're dealing with this fascist mindset, is there a way to
reason with in? Enemy, so to speak, that does
not involve going to war. Hmm.
You mean when when the enemy is fascist get there a way to deal
with them as if the u.s. Regime isn't fascist, but you
get what I'm saying? Okay, so half of my book is
about an alternative to military intervention and the alternative
in the United States has been to let Hollywood continue making
movies to let to let the music industry in this country.
Continue making Music and sending it abroad.
Sending it to other countries, to let Levi Strauss.
Continue making blue jeans and sending them to other countries
to let American Media be broadcast through satellite
dishes. Now, previously through radios
and TVs, you know everywhere so that they can see how we live
and how they could live whether by moving here or by adopting
some of our own practices and it turns out that American popular
culture. ER American material culture,
not the culture produced by the government not or the military,
but American pop culture, the stuff that we all like to do and
buy and play with has been really really really popular all
over the world for more than a century.
And in fact, it turns out that things like real housewives is
more much more influential among Iranian women these women these
days. Then Sharia law, then the Quran
is There's a westernization going on at a rapid Pace in
places, like Iran, and that's largely, because people can
watch our TV shows and listen to our music and wear our clothes.
So you just let the beauty the glory, The Liberation, the
freedom, the pleasure of American popular culture, go out
there and that will subvert any authoritarian ascetic regime
instantly because a Muslim regime, a Communist Regime, a
fascist regime, any kind of regime requires the discipline
of its subjects of the citizens of the people living in that
place. It requires, most importantly
that they subsume their individual interest and identity
to what the interest and identity of the nation states.
Well good ol American popular culture.
Whether it was jazz or rock and roll or Kim Kardashian has
always been about your individual pleasure and Fun and
Freedom. Not about some collective
obligation. So, that's why American pop
culture has been the great anti-authoritarian solvent in
modern world history. And that's the main theme of my
book. That's the argument of it.
So years ago you correctly said shame is the health of the state
and with this topic World War Two, it's always shame.
Anytime you go to question. Oh, you're a Nazi sympathizer,
what you think we should just appease Japan after they
unprovoked kingly kill. So Soldiers at Pearl Harbor.
Could you be any more evil? It's all of this guilt and
shame. What do you mean the in a at a
meta level when you say shame is the health of the state, shame
is what's used to keep people in order to discipline them to make
them go to war. To make or at least support a
war. Oh, you don't want it.
You don't support the war in Ukraine your pro-putin, you're a
bad person. And people clearly many of them
think that and they feel bad and then they wear the blue and
yellow flag and then they vote to send 40 billion dollars to
Ukraine. Boom.
There you go. That's from shame.
That's what all the blue and
yellow flags are about, right. It's to shame.
Those of us who don't want to do this, who are not interested in.
Like we're like, wait, what? Where's Ukraine?
What why is this important to us?
How much money? Going and where is it going up?
Yeah, that's those are bad people.
Bad people ask questions about that.
We know that Ukraine is a victim and Putin is the villain.
And so what's the point of talking about it?
We just have to do it but it is. It is shame.
Makes the world go around four states states, love shame.
That's how they get people to put on uniforms and March, and
fight and die. Unfortunately, there's a as more
to it to, I mean, they they are also offered them belonging, you
know, it's not just shaming, but you you're dying for.
Or your family, you know, they they create they present the
nation-state as your family. There's no difference between
you and United States. You are America.
America, is you So that gives people has given people cause to
die and fight, you know that they really believe in and I
think that's actually genuine and authentic.
I just would rather see less of it among people, right?
I don't think it's imposed on them.
I think people really buy into that genuinely and I really want
to be part of this thing, and many of them have been willing
to kill and die for it. And I would just like to give
them other alternatives. The course is World War 2 with
the great blowback by dr. Thadeus Russell appears to be a
guy for part live webinar. Monday's, June 6, 13 20th, and
27th link will be in the description below.
Anything I missed on that. Know.
So the main course description is Thaddeus Russell.com courses,
but also go to my patreon. If you become a patron at the
fifty dollar level, you can take this course and all the courses
for free. So that's it.
Patreon.com slash on registered. Thank you everyone for watching
Keith and I don't try it on anyone any libertarian
Institute. Dr. Russell.
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Keith.
This is fun.