5/28/23
Newsletter #350
The Crack of Dawn
I’ve liked Arnold Schwarzenegger since I first saw him in the documentary, Pumping Iron (1977), which remains his best film. Even though he’s a Republican, I still think his heart is in the right place. So, he’s got a video right now that’s sort of a PSA warning against the rise of white supremacist groups, and how it can lead to Nazi Germany. Arnold’s shocking admission in the video is, “My father was a Nazi.” He then goes on to make it clear that he’s Austrian and not German, but admits that “Hitler was part Austrian.” Hitler wasn’t part Austrian; he was entirely Austrian. Not only that, Arnold’s middle name is the same as Hitler’s father’s first name, Alois. Throughout Adolf Hitler’s life, all Germans knew he wasn’t German, and they all thought he had a “cute” or “quaint” Austrian accent.
Everybody in Germany (and Austria) between 1933 – 1945 were not Nazis. There were never more than a million members of the Nazi party. If you were an 18-year-old German boy and were inducted into the German Army in 1939, that didn’t make you a Nazi; that made you a German soldier. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father, Gustav, was a Nazi. Gustav tried to join the Nazi brownshirts, the SA, in 1924, and that’s the very beginning. The SA (Sturmabteilung) were like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys during Hitler’s insurrection, the Beer Hall Putsch, in 1923.
That’s another thing that Arnold said that confused me. He likened the January 6 insurrection to Crystal Night or Kristallnacht, when the Nazi government declared full-scale war on the Jews, in 1938. The January 6 insurrection wasn’t like Kristallnacht at all. On Kristallnacht, Jews’ windows were broken all over the country, then Jews began being arrested wholesale and shipped out on cattle cars to concentration camps. There’s no connection.
But the January 6 insurrection was a lot like the Beer Hall Putsch. Both were truly half-assed attempts at coup d'états, and in both cases the planning was so bad that they didn’t even come close to achieving their objectives. And in both cases, even if they had achieved their objectives of taking over the Capitol, or the Reichstag, then what were they going to do?
Having read about and written about the Beer Hall Putsch, that’s all that I was thinking about on January 6, 2021. However, the coup d'état really only works if you control the army, and you’re willing to use them. In Hitler’s case, he had about 20,000 SA brownshirts (sans Arnold’s dad), the cooperation of a top general, Erich von Ludendorff, and the second-best German air ace of WWI (after the Baron von Richthofen), Herman Goring. But Hitler didn’t have the German Army behind him. Hitler led his giant gang of drunken rowdies to the square where the war ministry building was located – which Hitler had cleverly already taken captive. However, when he finally got there (hours late) he found that it was completely surrounded by the German Army, as well as barbed wire. The army had also blocked off every entrance into the square with barbed wire and trucks.
Hitler, Goring, von Ludendorff, etc. found a blockade of trucks and barbed wire. Hitler and the commanding officer actually argued for about an hour before the officer got fed up and had his soldiers just open fire on Hitler and his people. Herman Goring took a bullet in the thigh (thus beginning his morphine addiction), and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. Hitler only ended up serving ten months, which was enough time for him to learn how to type, and write his absolutely terrible “autobiography,” Mein Kampf.
The book Mein Kampf, which is as bad of an autobiography as has ever been written – and what’s worse is that Hitler had an interesting story to tell about trying to be an artist in Vienna and failing, which he doesn’t mention – was a huge bestseller, and made Hitler rich. By 1939 the book had sold 5.9 million copies in 11 languages, and the motherfucker is unreadable. Depending on your edition, it’s 700 to 900 pages of “the Jews and the Bolsheviks did it,” over and over again in uninspiringly flat prose. When the Nazis took power in 1933, Mein Kampf became required reading in German public schools, and Hitler continued to charge for it. Giving a copy of the book as a present was to go-to thoughtless gift. Nobody got through the book, and it’s so bad that it was a joke amongst many Germans. Mein Kampf was a measure of dullness. Hitler realized that he was being laughed at and said, "If I had had any idea in 1924 that I would have become Reich chancellor, I never would have written the book."
It is often written that Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolph Hess at Landsberg Prison. But I’ve read, and it seems more plausible, that Hitler borrowed a typewriter, taught himself to type, and actually wrote Mein Kampf himself. It’s a such an idiotic rant, and he had every day for ten months, so it could easily have been him. But he does admit that he was not an Antisemite in any way, nor was his family, previous to 1919, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and the official end of WWI, when many Germans – as opposed to taking responsibility for losing – decided to blame it on the Jews. This was when they devised the “Stabbed in the back” theory – the Jews stabbed us in the back – which is akin to the “stolen election:” a palatable, idiotic lie.
If we weren’t such a kind society, such a thoughtful, woke society, and the Capitol Police were allowed to use their weapons like the German Army was, you’d have seen a massive stampede in the other direction. I’m just saying.
Coup d'états frequently fail. Ten years later, in 1933, Adolf Hitler was voted into power. Although he had been turned down in 1924, Gustav Schwarzenegger applied again to the SA in 1939, and was finally admitted.
Therefore, the point here, apparently, is if you persevere, you may finally succeed.
Good on ya.