Hitler’s Panzer Generals (Guest: David Stahel)
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Tim Benson:Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, a national free market think tank. We are in episode 100 and 40 something. I'm not sure exactly what episode number. Sorry about that, guys.
Tim Benson:I never remember the episode numbers. Bad fault of mine. But, anyway, point being, we're not a very new podcast anymore. But if, this is your first time listening to the podcast, basically, what we do here is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on something or someone or some ideas, some events, etcetera, that, we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about. And then hopefully at the end of the podcast, you, give the book a purchase and give it a read.
Tim Benson:So if you like this podcast, please consider giving illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show and also by sharing with your friends because that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today is doctor David Stahl, and doctor Stahl is a senior lecturer in European history at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. His books include Retreat from Moscow, a New History of Germany's Winter Campaign, 1941, 42, The Battle for Moscow, Operation Typhoon, Hitler's march on Moscow, October 1941. I'm sensing a theme here. Kiev, 1941, Hitler's battle for supremacy in the east, and Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East.
Tim Benson:And he is here to discuss his latest book, Hitler's Panzer Generals Guderian, Hepner, Reinhardt, and Schmidt Unguarded, which was published last May by Cambridge University Press. So, doctor Sale, thank you so so much for coming on the podcast. I do appreciate it.
David Stahel:Thanks very much, Tim. Great to be here.
Tim Benson:Oh, no problem. But, anyway, before we get to the book, just got to, I have to send out thanks to you, for your I'm just gonna sort of, make you a proxy of the entire nation of Australia and, just say as a father of a 4 year old son, we cannot thank you enough for, Bluey, the cartoon
David Stahel:Yeah.
Tim Benson:Which is a phenomenon in our house. And, and apparently, it's a phenomenon here in the United States with a bunch of my other parent friends. And, I'm assuming it's as just as huge down there, maybe even bigger than it is here.
David Stahel:It is huge in Australia, but you're right. And I only discovered, I think, about 2 months ago that someone said to me, no. It's a worldwide phenomenon, and it's generating huge amounts of not just the money for the people who make it, but it's bringing Australian culture to the world. And we're getting all this. Now they're starting to change the advertising of what Australia to try and relate it to Bluey.
David Stahel:You know, the country of Bluey, that country. Come over there. See. Mhmm. Which is kind of a bit ridiculous because it takes a lot of the Australian tropes as though that's just what everybody does.
Tim Benson:Oh, sure.
David Stahel:I mean, some of it is kind of true, and that's partly why it's funny. But what I didn't understand was, that that that people would sometimes get that. You know, it seems like that's humor that people get. And I thought, isn't that Australian? No.
David Stahel:Isn't that quintessentially Australian? Isn't that why we find that funny? Anyway, so great to hear.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. No. It's they deserve every penny they're getting. That show is fantastic.
Tim Benson:Absolutely. I I was I was surprised when you know, because my kid just, like, were flipping through stuff, and he's like, oh, blue dog. Put that on. I'm like, alright. Well, we'll try this out.
Tim Benson:And then it was like, oh, this is pretty good. And I was like, oh, wow. This is actually fantastic. Like so now, I watch, like, Bluey episodes even when he's, like, not around. I will throw on Bluey.
Tim Benson:And, no. But I just found out actually a couple, like, last week that they apparently, that Disney, that they change a lot of stuff around. Like, there's some stuff that they, like, censor, from Australia, and, like, they changed some words around and stuff like that. So that's actually horrified me. So now I've actually gone out and bought the Bluey on DVD because they're they're the actual Australian episodes.
Tim Benson:I wanna make sure I have the the real thing and not the battle royce version. Like, I think they cut the word dingleberry out of an episode Okay. Which which is what we use here too. Like dingleberry, it's the same thing, you know, here as in Australia. But I don't know.
Tim Benson:I guess Disney thought the word dingleberry was inappropriate for toddlers in
David Stahel:Maybe. The the only thing I could think of is there is a lot of it is a surprising amount of Australian slang, and I I can't speak to the show too much. I've I've only seen probably 20 episodes. My brother's got young kids, so I've seen a few of them with him. But but, but, you know, there is a surprising amount of Australian slang.
David Stahel:I once found a book on, you know, Australian slang at a bookstore. And I thought, well, that's what is this? A whole book on it? It can't be that much. As I flipped from page to page to page, I just kept thinking, oh, god.
David Stahel:Yeah. Oh, yeah. That. Uh-huh. God.
David Stahel:No one would know what that means. And I realized just how much of a vocabulary we've got. I'm not sure how much of that is in the show, but if there is that and it would have started as a show for Australians. I don't think anyone had any concept
Tim Benson:of this. I'm sure. I'm sure it's not. No. I mean, they use stuff like Jox and, How'd you they?
Tim Benson:I'm trying to think off the top of my head just some, stuff that they use. Not now I'm blanking, but, I mean, I'm I'm somewhat familiar with like I said, I have a buddy from Australia, so I'm somewhat familiar with a lot of the stuff. Like, I know that the whole drop bear thing is bullshit. So so whenever I go to Australia, they tell me to look out for the drop bears. I know that pull my leg and all that sort of stuff.
Tim Benson:But, Yeah. It's, Bluey is it's it's so great. Like, it's, I think it's probably, like, the best kids show, like, since Sesame Street. I think that's I mean, like, since, like, the original Sesame Street when, like, Jim Henson was still alive and, you know, Frank got. Not not the horrible, soulless version that it is now, but, no.
Tim Benson:Yeah. You obviously
David Stahel:know a lot more than I do at this point.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I'm I'm well versed, and I mean, it's one of the things yeah. I mean, it was actually, having a kid was funny because, like, there was a lot of, like, kids movies, that came out when I was an adult that, like, I just never saw, like, like, Despicable Me and all, like, all those Minions movies and, like,
David Stahel:some
Tim Benson:of the Pixar stuff too, like movies that I just hadn't seen that just didn't interest me. And now, like, I've seen them all, I'm like, oh, this is actually, you know, not bad.
David Stahel:So Indeed.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Anyway, alright. Enough, shop talk. Anyway but, so the book itself, Hitler's Panzer Generals, which is, basically, the template for it is using these letters that these 4 guys, were writing back home to their wives, to sort of just, you know, glean what we could, of their personalities and, you know, and how they conducted war, etcetera, etcetera, by those letters. But, but what was the genesis of the book?
Tim Benson:What what made you wanna write it?
David Stahel:Yeah. That's a good question. I think, you know, when you do the intro the way you did, and that's kind of appropriate for for this question, you know, to anyone who's just discovering what I do, isn't it the case that you've sort of done all these campaign histories and then hang hang on a book on the German generals? You know, is it possible there's cross pollination? Like, really, if you ask these, you know, deep questions, is there a whole book in this?
David Stahel:Is this something unique and different? Because the truth is all of these 4 guys, are major features of this, big Barbarossa campaign, this this invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. And a lot of lot of the letters that I have are from that year. So so, really, what is new? And maybe to be a little bit more, pointed, how come doctor Stahl you didn't use them if you didn't use them in those other books or you just what's going on there?
David Stahel:So there's a bit of an explanation just to back up. When I first started writing on this campaign, I found Guderian's letters. They were in his private papers and I couldn't read them. Now, the reason I can't read them is actually the same reason why Germans can't read them. Believe it or not in the late 19th century, German children, so when the German generals were kids, they learned to write the alphabet.
David Stahel:It depends on where you were, but with this it's the same alphabet, but you form the letters in kind of a choose your own adventure way.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I didn't know this. This is fascinating.
David Stahel:Okay. So, yeah, you've read all that. Mhmm. Yeah. I think it's just important context for, like, why did I do this book or why hadn't I done it previously?
David Stahel:Why are the letters so different or so new? So make a long story short, because, you know, of course, Germany is only Germany since 18/71. And if you go back, you know, to even sort of late medieval, everyone had their own education system. Right? So when does that all get reformed?
David Stahel:Did they basically start doing it in places like Prussia in the early 20th century, where they come up with something called Zitalin, but that's not even what they write in because they learned the alphabet previously. And even Zitalin doesn't form the letters. Some of them look like the letters we would recognize. Some of them are hieroglyphics, completely different. Right?
David Stahel:So the problem I had is I'm sitting there looking at this and beyond just difficult handwriting, which is something you can see in English letters where you look at people's handwriting and think, what the hell is this? But of course, you could transcribe an English letter. You really can't hear. And even Germans look, I showed it to a couple of friends and they were like, no clue what this is saying. So what I did is, at that time I thought, okay, I could spend as a young graduate student, a lot of money to go and get these things transcribed, and then I would have them.
David Stahel:Well, that would still be a reason to do it because you you you do need to have the source material if you're gonna write highbrow academic studies. Right? But there's another factor that correlates with this. And that is there is something called the ordinance on communication, which basically stipulates what a German soldier can write in his letters. It's very strict.
David Stahel:You cannot mention where you are. You cannot mention who your, your commanding officer is, even if he's just a lieutenant. Right? Wouldn't be a huge secret there, but, nope, you're gonna not allowed to mention anything going on in the campaign. You're not allowed to mention the enemy propaganda you're subject to.
David Stahel:It's very restrictive. Right? So knowing that, my basic supposition was, a, I'm gonna have to spend a lot of money to transcribe these letters, and, b, when I get them, these are generals. They're not even general, you know, everyday soldiers. There'll be nothing in them.
David Stahel:They're just gonna have to say things like, well, you know, I hope, you know, your your mother's varagus veins are doing better to you know, they're writing to their wives or whatever. There'll be nothing of of any real value. So I'll end up spending a lot of money and getting nothing for them. Besides that, this was an incorrect supposition. I assume when I read this is in the nineties.
David Stahel:When I read, other historians who'd been published earlier, they hadn't used them. So I thought, oh, they might've done their homework and looked into them, or maybe they can even read the script. So I didn't do it anyway, years later, you know, I've, I've written books and, and don't, don't underestimate my previous books, They're they're campaign history. So you need war diaries. It's not really a it's not a biography that those books were.
David Stahel:They were they feature the generals. They've got a ton of paperwork to reconstruct what's going on. So they're not they're not light on in terms of research. But years, years, and years later, I'm in the archive for different project. And I just saw the knuckle the the private papers for Quadarian.
David Stahel:And I thought to myself, you know what? Now in a different stage of life where I have more disposable income, I get research money from the university. We're we're we're well looked after in this part of the world. So I decided let's do it. Let's just see what they are.
David Stahel:And I had much less faith that the previous generations of historians would have all looked at these and decided to against them. And what did I discover when those when those transcriptions came come in came in? They're they're an absolute gold mine. And I really sat there and thought, oh, no. Oh, no.
David Stahel:And then I started looking at the others. Reinhardt's got letters. Schmidt's got letters. Hooper has got letters. I wonder if they're talking about the campaigns, because that's the thing.
David Stahel:They don't they don't observe any of these, communication ordinances that they couldn't care less. They couldn't tell them. Yeah. Completely. It's in fact, hard to find a letter that actually goes into, you know, mainly into personal stuff.
David Stahel:There's usually something at the end, maybe something at the beginning. Most of it is complaining about the war or talking about one issue or about a general. So for a historian, they're really valuable. And it just started to make me think, at first, I did have that thought. I wish I'd used these for the campaign histories.
David Stahel:But the more I started to think about it, the better it was that I hadn't because there was so much information. I started to think there's a whole book in this, and it's not a book about the campaigns anymore. It's a book about these guys. We don't just need to know, you know, the general. What what I think the evolutions are more and more people wanna know about you.
David Stahel:But who are the guys behind the generals? Who are these guys? Not just the orders they issue. This is private. And unlike an American general in Afghanistan today, who would who is writing letters to his wife and we got them, we would probably assume these letters were written with a view to one day being public.
David Stahel:But I think for these guys, that is very different. They had no concept that someone was one day gonna be reading these as a a view to historical sort of source material. So they're very unfiltered, which is great for us.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It's, fantastic. Like you said, they, they they disregard that order. But I I really like the one letter. I think it's from, was it from Schmidt, I think, where he's like he basically says, I can't tell you where I am.
Tim Benson:It's strange his wife. But it starts with, like, you know, the letter p or something like that. And then, like, in the and, like, then it's, like, PS. I'm in Poznan or something like that. You know what I mean?
Tim Benson:Like, something like that. I'm driven to that part. Yes. I think I used that as
David Stahel:the example of just how how much they disregard it. They obviously are aware of these rules. So you say, I can't mention where I am, but then couldn't care less. Like, 2 seconds later, I'm in blah blah. Oh, oh, whatever.
David Stahel:Just keep going. You know?
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. So, the other thing I was I was kinda struck by too, the, afterward in the book, you said the original plan for the book was to include, these, unabridged annotated appendices appendices of all the, of all the letters from the different, from Guderian, from, Guderian's wife, from, you know, Hefner, Reinhart, Schmidt, and Harvard. But that fell through. Tell us a little bit, like, how what that happened there because that's a very interesting story about why that didn't get included.
David Stahel:Yeah. The, I mean, the value of a book like mine, I'd be quite honest as much and also I think I've got something to say, and some people would definitely wanna read that. I hope they wanna read that. But the value is the letters themselves. I could imagine that there's many people, also researchers, but everyday people, there's a lot of interest generated by, you know, military history and so on.
David Stahel:And I thought, well, these letters, they're so rich, people would want to read them in the original. So part of the idea for the book was, yes, I want to do a study of these letters and, you know, contextualize them, but there would be a percentage of people who would think, yeah. Okay, great. All very well, Doctor. Stahl, but I want to read them.
David Stahel:I want to read them in their original form. So that was the idea for the book. Now there's a process there because, you know, unlike just war files, these are in private papers. There's just different rules in the archive about that. I need to ensure that there was no stipulations from the family about what would happen with these letters when they're donated.
David Stahel:So it could have been that they said, oh, look, these are not for publication. Obviously, they're giving them to an archive for research purposes. I can look at them, but maybe they just can't be reproduced. Now the frustration for me, because that final little 2 pager is a bit of a critique of the German archives. Look, I get along with them in the sense that I work with them a lot and so on.
David Stahel:But this I found, ridiculous that there was no check of the box saying you can't publish these. Right? So nothing like that. Part of their problem though, is, and I understand this is, yeah, but some of these letters got donated back in the eighties before they'd asked these questions. So they never asked.
David Stahel:I think Hoepen is with the first donate. No, no Reinhardt's with the first donated, but Hoepen is I think was the example they gave in the eighties, early eighties, when his letters came to them, no one asked these questions. So we don't really know what we can do with them. And I said to them, how come that's a big deal? Like who's who's who's in control of this history?
David Stahel:Are we devolving this to German generals' families? Are they in control of this? Because if we are, we're saying these people own this. They have done what? They have donated them to the German archive.
David Stahel:I would say that's, evidence enough for me that they can be put out there. Now, if you're wanting to be secure in that, because you know, you haven't actually got anything that's given that authorization, then we have to also imagine the longer this goes on. I mean, that's the eighties, right? Like I interviewed Guderian's grandson about 20 years ago, not for this project. I didn't know I was going to do this.
David Stahel:Well, he has since died. Now that's Guderian's grandson. How many generations are we devolving this to and who are these people? Right? Because I can tell you when I make Guderian's grandson, I'll tell you 2 things about him actually.
David Stahel:1, which was, you know, I'm not this is just something I'd heard before I interviewed him. He was actually a bank robber. He dropped the bank and he went to prison and everything. And when I asked him about, you know, his grandfather, he told me a lot. Do you know what he told me?
David Stahel:A lot of the myths. He was this. He was that. He was all these great things. When I said to him, oh, do do you know about anything to do with you know, was he involved in any of the criminality in any way?
David Stahel:And he absolutely not categorically not. Now demonstrably untrue, right? We could talk about that. There's an amount of evidence that shows no, no, he's complicit. Of course he is.
David Stahel:You can't be Panzer group commander on the Eastern front, with orders issued by the army, not even Hitler, not the SS, to kill all commissars. We have categorical evidence that 100 were killed in his Panzer Group. What did he write in his memoir? Nah. Never passed it on.
David Stahel:Never happened. Not on my watch. Yeah. But we can't I've
Tim Benson:heard of things, but I never yeah. But I heard of things in other units. But
David Stahel:Exactly. I mean, mass killing Jews, tens of 1,000 in 1941. It's happening inside his Panzer Group. We can trace all of this. He doesn't write about that in the memoir.
David Stahel:Not at all. Not a word. Right? So if your question is, are they criminal? Yeah.
David Stahel:They definitely are. If the families are deluded about that, okay. I don't have to change their minds. That's up to them. But we cannot, or at least the archive should not, devolve to these people the when when the choices have been made to donate these letters, they can do whatever they want if they're private, about what can and can't happen with them.
David Stahel:So, ultimately, I signed a a an agreement saying, oh, you you take on all responsibility if they sue. I'm like, I'll sign that. I don't care at all. I'm more interested in the history than anything. And I don't see, I also don't assume most German generals, you know, descendants aren't diluted.
David Stahel:I mean, it's just a mountain of evidence. What, what world do you want to live in? Right? And then after this is becoming a big long story, I'll end it now though. A couple of months later, they emailed me and said, yeah, that's not no longer good enough.
David Stahel:No, no, no, no. We're just gonna evoke German copyright law. We don't care what you sign. We're too worried about this. So at German copyright law, which basically meant I couldn't really publish any of them except for because he had died in 1944 because German copyright law basically stipulates you have to wait 70 years until after the person has died before that it comes out of copyright.
David Stahel:So suddenly, I could only put Hoepeners in there, and I sort of thought it's awkward to just put one of the guys. He's not a household name by any means. So I thought, no. What I will do is I will publish these letters, but I'll publish them in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, which is kind of the best journal for all things Eastern Front. But when they come out of the copyright, so they will be available at least to researchers.
David Stahel:It's you can't just freely search that journal without a subscription. I know that's terrible, but, you know, maybe one day we can do a book it to someone ever wants to do a book on it or something. But we won't even have Rhinehart's until another, I don't know what it is. I kind of count all this stuff in my head, 14 years, 12 years or something. So, so, you know, the idea of the book couldn't work, but I couldn't, I couldn't resist to take the last page or 2 and just write something about, Hey, what is by the way, you know, it take take a little bit of a a principal position.
David Stahel:These letters should be owned because the legacy of these men, first and foremost, is a hell of a lot of destruction, a lot of aggressive war, and frankly, a lot of criminality. So step up German archive, recognize that, Stop prioritizing stupid privacy. The privacy of who? The German generals? You mean those Nazi criminals?
David Stahel:Because they're all shoulder to shoulder. Right? There's no there's no fact that no one's gonna convince me they're not. I mean, just there's a whole chapter on their criminality. It's pretty ubiquitous.
David Stahel:So yeah.
Tim Benson:Now I'm with you. I mean, it seems very strange to me that they that, like, if if the family would I mean, so they have this veto in perpetuity, basically. So if it's like if it's like Reinhardt's great great great great great great great grandson, you know, 400 years from now, that, he's can still we can still, you know, give him a thumbs down because I I don't know. That seems fair.
David Stahel:Think about the other side to that. Like, there would be many descendants, potentially. So what if one says yes and one says no? Who's got who owns this? And there's people like Schmidt.
David Stahel:He never had any hang on. Am I getting this right? Yeah. Schmidt had no kids. So who does own it?
David Stahel:I don't know. Is it some distant second cousin or something, you know, many generations removed? And, yeah, it's deeply problematic. But, anyway, look, you know still gonna publish them. I'll just I'll just take a little bit longer.
Tim Benson:Yeah. That's fine. So, again, we were just talking about this a little bit before we started. Just the again, with this book, you know, we know a lot about what these men did and how they did it, but we don't know a lot about why. And that's why these letters are, in a way so revealing.
Tim Benson:And it lets us look, you know, get past that, you know, the you know, there's a great deal of myth making about the the panzer generals, not just in Germany, but in here in the UK and everywhere that, you know, the the the image the average person would have of, you know, a German Wehrmacht Panzer commander, you know, dashing and inventive or intuitive and daring and bold and steely eyed, maybe a scar, you know, dueling scar or something. But that's not I mean, but that again is all sort of myth, and it's a myth that, you know, the generals themselves played into, you know, to advance their careers and and their celebrity and so forth. So that's one of the nice things about the book is letting us sort of peer in, you know, sort of behind the behind the curtain like in The Wizard of Oz. Right? You know, like, the there's the show generals and then the generals on the inside.
Tim Benson:We could see a little bit of that.
David Stahel:Definitely. Yep. No. Maybe just a word or 2 on that. Look, you know, the the one of the things we teach our students when we talk about history, I'm not going to get into a lecture or anything, but it, you know, it's important to chart the historiography because the reason we have that picture is kind of a, it I do understand why we got to that point.
David Stahel:When I was a boy reading about this, I was the same. I had no context through which to to view them critically. And frankly, the biographies being written, a lot of them for people like Guderian and even Hoepner in places were being written in the seventies eighties. This is also a time when the US military was kind of, like, enamored with them. Right?
David Stahel:Oh, these guys. So great. And a lot of the work on the war of annihilation, that's what that's what we kind of call. It's a catchall term, vreniktungskrieg in German, for all this criminality because there's so many different types of criminality, and it put it all together in this catchall term. But a lot of that research hadn't yet been done.
David Stahel:And and and so the reason is after the war, keep in mind, there are no archives. They they exist, but they've all been, you you know, they're either in the Soviet Union or the Americans have a lot of them, but they're not public. So historians kind of can't go and reconstruct anything. What do we get as primary material with which to write the histories of the 2nd World War and especially about the German generals? Dozens of them write memoirs, And it's great for them because they're the first going into print.
David Stahel:And I have to you know, for whatever anyone might say to me about, oh, David Stahl is very critical of these generals. You know? He always has to talk about the criminality. And, frankly, I'm not a big fan of them even if we just talked about their generalship. Right?
David Stahel:Forget everything else. Let's just talk about them as generals. Well, frankly, yeah, there's a hell of a lot of problems there. They are not the guys we've been sold as for a lot of reasons that I think are are very defensible. But if, you know, being fair minded, frankly, Guderian, in particular, is brilliant.
David Stahel:He is brilliant at reinventing himself. And if you think about a guy like that, his career begins in the Kaiserreich. He does very well. Okay. He's a very junior guy then.
David Stahel:He's not exactly selling himself to a big audience and there's a lot of lieutenants and so on. But then end of that, he makes it into the, you know, the new very small German army, only 4,000 offices. He transitions into that. He's got a lot of war experience, but he does very well there too. That's a different Germany.
David Stahel:What happens when it changes again in 1933? You know, this is now Hitler's Germany. Boudarian does extremely well there too. That's it. That's another cultural, political, you know, social context that he is, that he is managing extremely well.
David Stahel:He knows his world. He reads it in real time. And what happens then? 1945, it's all over. Guderian has been one of the principal commanders.
David Stahel:He was the acting chief of the army general staff, the the second last one. And he got that in when? 1944. There are no such things as non Nazi German generals getting promoted to be in the room with Hitler, who haven't got their their credentials on show and haven't sold themselves in every which way. And by the way, you're really suggesting to me if anyone does, or he didn't know what was going on in 1944.
David Stahel:He knew what was going on in 1941. And, and and at this point, it's it's post, July plot. So now they're they're they're killing their own officers. He's on the what does it call the, the the the the the the small panel of guys who are vetting these guys and and basically sending them off to be convicted. The the Wehrmacht, you know, I can't remember what it's called.
David Stahel:He he in 1944 Christmas, who does he have Christmas with? Of all the people he could have Christmas with, he goes to Himmler's private Christmas. Right? So he is shoulder to shoulder with this. In 1945, he's then captured, he goes into American captivity, and we've got the the the interrogation records.
David Stahel:Oh, Guderian recognized super fast, maybe a lot faster than some of his contemporaries. The world has changed. We're in a very we're back to those, you know, democratic ideals and all this high minded stuff. Suddenly, he's no longer in a he throws all those guys and no idea what's going on. He knows what tune to play.
David Stahel:So we should not be surprised that when he comes to writing his memoir, and he gets coached a bit by Little Hart and some of these other guys who are enamored with him and want him to write, you know, about how great they were. Oh, you know, I had all these interwar ideas about and you guys enacted them. That's also highly problematic. But Guderian's learning in real time, and he's he's very good at this, unlike some of the other parts of his career, at reconstructing himself. And in the absence of any corrective being the archives, he goes into print and it's a really readable book.
David Stahel:Honestly, I teach at a military I teach at the Australian Defense Force Academy, although I'm at a university, but I teach there. And I've had students turn up saying, oh, David Guderian was so great. Wasn't he? And I realized in that moment, I've got a you you've done your homework. You you think you're reading a primary material, and you're sort of in this position of, well, buddy, you're gonna have to understand that he he's selling you a lot of propaganda.
David Stahel:Right? And he's very good at it. I get it. I read that book too as a young guy and had no context to debate it because there wasn't as many good scholarly books at that point around this. So, yeah, it's deeply problematic, but that's, you know, that's that's the journey of history.
David Stahel:Right? It's why people, especially older generation might have a different view of who these guys are.
Tim Benson:Sure. I've often thought about I mean, I understand the German how Germans wanted to find examples or, in post war, that they could sort of hang on to to show that, like, see, we're not all bad. Like, there was still some light in this and, you know, there's still some people who acted honorably and, and that sort of thing. And I understand Cold War politics get involved in it too, but I've I've never really quite understood, you know, the eagerness to, sort of rehabilitate or some of these generals, or guys like Speer or something like that, you know, in the decade or 2 after the war. Because it's just you know?
Tim Benson:I mean, because it was the vastness of the holocaust and all the other, killing that went on in the east. I mean, it was just so monumental that it's like you can't there's no I mean, for anyone German to say, well, I didn't know. You know? Like, no one like, we didn't know. We were, you know, we were in the home front or or or any soldier, you know, from private to general to say, I had no idea.
Tim Benson:I mean, I heard some whispers here and there, but I didn't see anything. Definitely didn't participate. Yeah. This is for example, as sort of like a side so, my buddy was telling me about, The Australian Guy. He was, in his younger years, was an actor, and he had, like, a bit part or he was, like, an actress.
Tim Benson:I can't remember. In I guess there was a Superman film that they filmed down in Australia. It was the one where, Kevin Spacey was Lex Luther. Right? So he so he gets to set one day, whatever the scene is, and someone, came over and, like, told him was, like, hey, just a heads up, like, might wanna stay away from space.
Tim Benson:He's a little he's a little handsy with the young actors. Right? And then, so he told me this story years before the whole Kevin Spacey Me Too thing happened. And it's just like, and then you hear all these stories, or especially like Harvey Weinstein and all that where people are like, Yeah, I worked with them, but I never saw anything, or He didn't act that way around me, or anything like that. And it's like, look, if I know this stuff and, like, I'm, you know, 6 degrees removed from any sort of, like, like, if I knew what's going on, like, all of you guys knew what was going on.
Tim Benson:Like, there's no so, you know, that excuse from any general or any anyone who served in the east, I've just never found that a compelling, I I just think that's total complete bullshit. You know?
David Stahel:Yep. I think anyone who these days defends them is, there's only really 2 explanations. It is no, no. I literally have just, you know, if you looked at their library, you would find the greatest hits of the 19 sixties, seventies, and eighties. Because in that time, especially the Anglo American stuff, it we were we were we were able to separate these guys, and we didn't see a problem with it.
David Stahel:When I say separate them, I mean, you know, aren't they generals? Aren't we interested in war or campaigns, battle history? That stuff sells. People love that stuff. And people would write books exclusively on that.
David Stahel:And if someone had said something about, yeah, but don't you know there was a holocaust going on? They would say, completely different book. I didn't buy a book on the holocaust. I bought a book on the campaigns, and that's what I want. Now we don't separate those things today.
David Stahel:And I and I
Tim Benson:think that's a
David Stahel:good reason. No one would write a book today saying, Goebbels? No. Oh, I'm not interested in the anti semitism. I'm not interested in the holocaust.
David Stahel:I'm not interested in all the Nazi stuff. Let's just look at him as a great propaganda minister. Let's look at how we how we revolutionized things. You couldn't write that book. And and and part of the cell is the ability to do the things oh, hang on.
David Stahel:I'm just getting cold here. I'll just turn that off. I'm not sure if you can hear that. That's, someone in the university. So, you know, no one would write that book.
David Stahel:And, and yet, you know, when we also identify, keep in mind that, you know, these aren't separate things that are going on. It's not like, okay. Yeah. But there's Auschwitz in the background. Isn't there?
David Stahel:That's not the German generals. No. That's not how the Holocaust works. So Auschwitz exists, of course, you know, as a killing institution, actually, it does exist in as a killing institution, but very small in 1941. Then it, you know, really ramps up in 42 and so, But the Holocaust begins with boards.
David Stahel:Right? And it begins with Einsatzgruppen. That's these mobile killing squads. Where are they? They're at the very front of the eastern front.
David Stahel:They're not in the rear. Who's at the front of the Eastern front. The Eastern front has basically kind of 2 German armies as they're invading the Soviet Union. There are these small relative to the rest of the German army, small Panzer Groups, which is to say, out of a 150 divisions, about 30 of them are motorized or panzer divisions. When you see those lines on the map, June, July, August in 1941 as the Germans are driving in, Those lines are where your panzer groups are.
David Stahel:The rest of the 120 odd divisions are a different army because it's infantry literally marching. You look on a map between where is the Polish border, Belarus, Russia, there are guys walking that distance. There's no trains, no trucks. They're not motorized in any way. They've got horses.
David Stahel:There's 650,000 horses in this thing. I don't know how many wagons. Everything's being pulled in slowly. So they're kinda 2 armies invading. And as they're driving forward, these Panzer Groups, the small elite, highly mobile, they're the ones fighting the battles, enacting the encirclements, destroying the Soviet armies.
David Stahel:They're they're they're the important part. They're the tip of the spear for the German army. But it's also the case that this 3 and a half 1000 divided up into many, many small groups, Einsatzgruppen, they're following these guys in order to get at their targets as quickly as possible. That's their remit. The order, by the way, isn't from the 22nd June.
David Stahel:They're not mandated to kill all Jews. They are formed before the campaign, but their mandate is more limited. They're just supposed to kill agitators and and it's very ambiguous. So there's still a lot of killing going on, but we haven't yet got the order. We don't know exactly what date.
David Stahel:I think it's probably late July, comes through orally to these guys that now you must kill every last Jew man, woman, and child in the villages. And we actually have the reports. They send back reports of, like, in this village, we killed 762. And they list how many from which genders and all this kind of stuff. So we, we know it's on and where are they doing it?
David Stahel:They're doing it in the rear area of the Panzer Groups, where are they getting their ammunition from? Panzer Groups. Where are they getting the fuel from? Panzer Groups. They're coming through their supplies.
Tim Benson:Their supply chain. Yep.
David Stahel:Supply chain. So the idea that these guys don't know, and in fact, Herpena is one of our guys. He's a Panzer Group 4 commander. They he's going up through the Baltic states. He, we don't have, something from him, but we have the commander of Einsatzgruper a that's his, equivalent in the SS.
David Stahel:He writes about Hoopin, and says, oh, he's great. He's so he's we we don't just have a good relationship. We have a really good relationship. Is it not the case that Hopin had doesn't know what he does? Of course he does.
David Stahel:Just Hopin had a problem with that? Not really. And yet and yet there'll be people out there who probably, if they're really well aware of Hopin, he's not a well known general, but if they were, they might say 2 things about him. Hang on. Wasn't he one of the anti Nazi generals?
David Stahel:Yeah. Because in 1944, he is part of the plot. He's going to get killed by the Nazis because he's part of the plot. And even if, you know, talking a little bit about his letters, he is, let's just say not completely enamored with Hitler. He does something extraordinary in his letters.
David Stahel:He refers to him as Adolf. Now that if you understand how people normally German is a bit more of a formal language, and you would never write about someone with their first name, especially the head of state. He's their future. Right? Or, you know, hey, Hitler or something.
David Stahel:But you do not have the temerity to ever use Adolf. Right? He does. So he's clearly got a problem on one level with whatever that is about, you know, his, his brand of politics or whatever the corporal running the show here, but not to the point where he wouldn't run a campaign, a murderous campaign. That's not his problem.
David Stahel:It might be other things. And certainly after 1942, because he's been fired early 1942, he's fired and in some disgrace. Right? He's stripped of a few things and then the army is having to try and, you know, the army is saying, you can't just take his pension. You can't.
David Stahel:So it's a bit of a thing. Ultimately, then he will join the conspiracy. But in the heady days of building your career, and if that requires mass killing Jews or whoever else, and by the way, it's not just in the east. There's a, a major massacre of about a 130 British soldiers in the French campaign. It's not on his orders, but it's done under his command by some SS rogue unit that just decides they're gonna kill all these guys.
David Stahel:And then he writes and basically says something about, what did you do that for? We don't do that. But there's no punishment. He's not gonna actually there's no I mean, we're
Tim Benson:not gonna do anything about it. At the end
David Stahel:of the day, they've just killed a couple of of the enemy. Right? Yeah. So you you start to see the wayward morals of these guys. Because the the only corrective I'm aiming for here with perhaps a very small part of the audience, if they have any views at all, is that people sometimes say, certainly this older generation, oh, they're just like our guys.
David Stahel:They wore a different uniform. They spoke a different language, but they were the generals like it. And they were very good at that. Oh, no. They weren't.
David Stahel:I I think that that trumps one trumps the other. And if we wanted to talk about the military side of it, which is a whole other conversation, I think there's a lot of reasons to believe why, people always say the mantra is they're not very good strategically, the German generals, but they were very good tactically and operationally. Well, they don't fight tactics because they're generals. Right? So whatever that means.
David Stahel:But on the operational sides, that's that middle level of commands or corps, you know, divisions. Sure. If you're talking about the Australian army, corps and divisions are strategic, but in the German army, they're a much bigger army, and Panzer groups as well. People have that was the old stuff. Yeah.
David Stahel:They're very good at that level. I don't you see what they do though. No. It's deeply problematic, especially in the east. We won't go into all that unless, you know, you wanna discuss No.
Tim Benson:I I just wanna say, you mentioned there in all of these letters from all 4 of these generals, there is not one mention in any of them of just like, oh, man. Like, this is, you know, these poor Jews are you know, this is really what's going on is terrible or, you know, breaks my heart or blah blah blah blah, anything like that, never once is it, you know, does does that sentiment ever, you know, come out of their mind under the pen into the pen, under the paper. You know, that might be for different reasons just because the the letters had a to their wives that are having a different there's a there's a role that the, we I guess we can talk about that. The the role of the the the wife that the wife was expected to fulfill, and there was the role that the the the general that the demand was supposed to fulfill, like, how he's supposed to appear to his wife, how he was supposed to, you know, discuss these things with his wife and how his wife was, you know, basically, there's there's sort of, like, unwritten rules on how Definitely.
Tim Benson:These things are supposed to be supposed to be handled. So, so they might not be confessional in some way. But again, you know
David Stahel:That's extremely telling. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And just, you know, because, I guess, they're smart enough probably not to put down their, you know, their crimes on paper. You know?
David Stahel:Well, I go one better than that. I think you're absolutely right. One of the things we teach graduate students is look for silences. Right?
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
David Stahel:So it's not just what your source material tells you that's evidence. Right? I'm looking for evidence. It's also what's not there. Now imagine if something extraordinary was happening.
David Stahel:They're killing tens of thousands. They're trying to wipe in 1941 to 42, they're gonna kill 600,000 people mass murdered into anti tank ditches. Yeah. Now it is extraordinary that this is happening in their area that no one thinks to mention it. Now that's, first of all, the signs.
David Stahel:We have something like to go on your point there, between all 4 of them, about a 130, I can't remember off the top of my head, a 130 something letters in that time. If not a single one mentions it, 2 things are apparent there. Why are they not mentioning it? And then it raises a different question. How trustworthy are these letters?
David Stahel:I mean, really, should we be believing them? Because, what are the what are the chances what are the chances these letters aren't the whole story? What
Tim Benson:And there's there's gaps in the correspondence too.
David Stahel:Yeah. That's it. I mean, that was one of my problems is right? Because people are gonna ask me in this scholarly world, well, are you just? I mean, if these guys are what I said, you know, 20 minutes ago, they're really good at reconstructing their past.
David Stahel:Don't we have to ask the question, well, how is it that these letters are the ones that got donated when, yeah, not surprisingly, they never mentioned the Holocaust. Is that a problem for the veracity of these letters? Absolutely. It is. And, you know, it took me actually a while to figure out how could I ever prove this?
David Stahel:I tried to ask questions. Obviously, I'd I'd even tried to, you know, ancestry.com. See if I can find any other descendants. As I said, Grandarian's grandson had died. I did try to reconnect with him, but turned out he died.
David Stahel:And and, you know, maybe there's some stories or something else in the never got onto any of them. I located a few people who turned you know, Reinhardt's a common name. Schmidt's unbelievably common. Couldn't find a Hoop and a, Guderian, no luck. So and I, and I did write to a few people.
David Stahel:They never wrote back. So maybe I did reach them, but they thought I'm not talking about my famous grandfather. They wanna go into it. Fair enough. So but it raises this question and and and it was interesting.
David Stahel:I was sitting there. I'll never forget. And I kind of came up with a bit of a solution to this. I suddenly thought, hang on. This might prove my point just by sitting here.
David Stahel:So what I do is I basically look at, okay, I've got whatever it is for good, Darren, or or any one of them. It's about the same number for all of them, something like low thirties in terms of the number of letters. So let's say 33 letters. What I can quickly do is just, you know, do a calculation. We're talking about a 6 month period, the Barbarossa campaign, by the way, before I interrupt myself, but there are letters from other parts of the war.
David Stahel:The book is largely focused on this because two reasons, this is the period where the bulk of the letters exist, and they're all Panzer Group commanders at the same time on the same front. So they're directly comparable. That's important for his biographical reasons, which I won't go into going into the rest of the war. They're in different commands, different areas. Some of them aren't commanders anymore, and the letters are a lot thinner on the ground.
David Stahel:So this is the golden period. Right? So I wanna compare I wanna find out what is the veracity of these letters? How how how much can we trust them? And I just I just plotted.
David Stahel:I did a calculation. 30 whatever it is, 33 letters divided by x number of days for the 6 months. That would mean a letter is written every 5.5 days. Okay. So now I list down all the dates of all the letters.
David Stahel:Now, theoretically, they should be every you know, roughly, it might be a bit of difference here and there. Every 5.5 days or every 4 days or every 6 days, there's gonna be a letter. That's the frequency, you know. And what did I discover? Huge gaps.
David Stahel:I mean, Quadarian has a whole 5 week period where he does not write a letter. Now you might think then, okay. Maybe he's busy running the campaign. But then I went to the letter after the next one we have, which I think is Gap is in sort of, late or mid mid August to sort of, like, end of September or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but it's around there.
David Stahel:And I and I quickly looked. Does he start his letter with, oh, my dear Margaret. I'm so sorry. I haven't written in weeks. I've been so busy.
David Stahel:Not a word. No. It just rolls in as though and then I looked because Guderian is unique. In his private papers, we have 13 letters from his wife. It's the only ones I had.
David Stahel:And I was I transcribed hers, and I had to read of those. And she then has something in one of hers where she talks about thank you so much for your letter on 17th. I quickly went through all the letters that I had from Clarion, not a single one on that date. So what do we know? We know 2 things.
David Stahel:We know that they were sending letters back. It's not that they got lost in the post. These letters made it. They were received. They were read.
David Stahel:But for some reason, they were never included in the collection. Now maybe they got lost, but there's not little kids running around the Guderian household where things could get lost. They all the other letters survived. Theoretically, they would all be kept together. It seems highly likely they were, you know, in a in a in a world where these guys recognize, oh god, the world has changed.
David Stahel:What did I put in these world war 1, these world war 2 letters that I was writing? If I wrote about, oh my God, they they're finally enacting the end solution, for the Jews and thank God we'll be rid of them. If they wrote things like that, oh, they're gonna be smart enough to know that's gotta go. And Reinhardt, actually has in one of his letters, which he denoted his in the 19 sixties or someone did after he died. So, you know, different time.
David Stahel:I think they probably did tolerate a bit more anti semitism then. He wrote something along the lines of it's the one of the only ones where you can see, you know, blatant, anti semitism. He writes something like, I can't remember what the exact context is, but something about, the Soviet, you know, generals or something. They're also Jewified. The antisemitism is explicit for a brief moment.
David Stahel:Right? And and and that's even post war. And they know about the holocaust. It's a it's a big revelation that you would still write that kind of thing. Yeah.
David Stahel:But, yeah. So I mean, in that sense, I think there's a there is a question about these letters, but when there is still as much as there is to discuss the criminality from their own letters, if you went into other different parts of it, the commissar order and so on, and there's still elements in there, that that allude to their views, it's, yeah, particularly revealing.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And I just wanna say, maybe people listen to this podcast would know. But I think for most people in the west, least in America, I don't I don't know how it is down there. I mean, I think they tend to think of, the fight against Germany or basically the same, you know, the allies in the west, the German I mean, the the Americans and the British and the French and whoever. Sort of the same thing in the east, but the east the eastern front is almost entirely sui generis.
Tim Benson:I mean, not just for the war itself, but, I mean, for war in history. It's a total, completely different ballgame going on in the east than what is happening in the west. I mean, it you know, the the Germans often, you know, talk about, like, a war of annihilation, and and that's basically I mean, on the ground, that's what it was. I mean, it it was, just the amount of death and cruelty and savagery, at least in modern times, incomparable. And just the scope of of the war in the east too, I don't think people really can wrap their heads around it.
Tim Benson:I mean, you know, I think the front in Barbarossa was something like 1800 miles long, something like that, which is basically if you're here in the United States, that's basically from, like, the tip of Maine all the way down to, you know, to the start of the Florida Keys, basically. It's just, you know so imagine the entire East Coast of the United States all being, you know, a war zone. And not just a war zone, but just a massive killing field where, you know, no one no one on both sides really gives a shit about civilian casualties or anything like that. You know? It was just a complete, just nightmare of of of a war.
Tim Benson:You know?
David Stahel:Well, that's part of where the the the the, I guess, the the historiography is at. Right? Like, among serious people who work on this war, there is zero debate. Are these guys criminally complicit? Of course, they are.
David Stahel:I mean, where Joe Blow Public is, I don't know always. But even those guys, I mean, credit to people who read these books, whatever the debate was among, you know, the people who are on the, whatever the world war 2 websites are, I think it would have been very different 30 years ago, but those people read stuff. They read. So I've met people who are everyday people who I, I just, I, I review books on Amazon. It turns out they've reviewed like 300 books.
David Stahel:They actually have read more, I think, sometimes than some of the academics out there because the academics get overwhelmed with university teaching and all, you know, admin and all that kind of stuff. They're not sitting around all day just reading. Right. I wish that was the life of the mind, but it's, it's kind of different. So credit to them.
David Stahel:They do know a lot and, and, and, and they're following the historiography. So that debate is, is long since decided where the debate has moved is if you imagine a military is obviously a pyramid is the guys at the top and it filters down in the nineties, Germany started a very famous, traveling exhibition. I don't think they had any idea what Pandora's box they were opening. It was basically a couple of people who'd started doing, you know, one of these institutes, a project on criminality of the Wehrmacht, but they weren't talking about the generals anymore. That was, you know, not so interesting.
David Stahel:They're interested in the average everyday German soldier. Now in the nineties, that last generation, of Wehrmacht generals, who'd been young men at the time was still alive. Right? And that was just too much for modern Germany because a lot of people were of the view and not just even the guys who'd served their, their children. Well, you know, there was the SS doing all the terrible things.
David Stahel:There was the camps. That was the Nazis, you know, it was Gustavo, all these terrible things. A few, you know, rotten eggs in the German Vermont, but the average soldier, you know, my dad or me, I've not me. We don't put me don't do not say that. And it's been years telling those family stories that they were the good Germans.
David Stahel:Right. And in some ways, also the victims of all this kind of stuff, which is extraordinary for us to hear. Like, what do you mean you're a victim? And when you guys marching into everyone's country and doing the killing, you know, the destruction, facilitating it, even if you weren't doing it, but this exhibition was going further. It was saying, no, no, no criminality of the Wehrmacht average soldiers.
David Stahel:And it was, it was a photographic thing. So it was 100 of photos. Now they would say, there was 18,000,000 guys who served in this year. You can come up with a couple 100 photos. That doesn't prove anything.
David Stahel:This is and the when I say opening a Pandora's box, there were demonstrations that they broke into it and smashed it up at one point. I mean, this was, this was a and then some, historians got into it. You know, this there's all different shades of gray in historians as well who went through these photos. And what did they find? They found 3 or 4 that were mislabeled.
David Stahel:Oh, this is those lefty historians trying to tar and oh my god. So a whole big commission that was all closed down. A big commission was set up with a whole bunch of other historians who hadn't built the thing to, you know, verify it because this was a big public debate. This is in the newspapers. This is going on for years.
David Stahel:Right? What did they discover? Yeah. Among the hundreds of photos, a handful of them were mislabeled, right? This can happen 3 or 4.
David Stahel:It did not change the veracity of everything else. And, and of course, separate to all of this, a lot of work since the nineties in all kinds of targeted areas, you have to imagine this war of annihilation, the catchall term, it's a 1000000 different things, right? It's scorched earth policy, anti partisan warfare, sexual violence. You know, you can just go on hunger policy. So denying people food, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
David Stahel:You can just keep going on. There's a whole subset of, you know, fields that people work in. Time and again, what do we discover? Lots of stuff and even work I've done. I I did a whole book on German soldiers' letters.
David Stahel:Right? It's Yeah. It's it's kinda ubiquitous. Right? And you have to understand, you know, I'm not trying to paint them all as evil people.
David Stahel:They're being told this. Right? That you go through the the Hitler youth. What are you being told? Right?
David Stahel:What's in the newspapers? It's it's you're in franchise. And as one guy, Thomas Kooner did a lot of work on the, the, the, the unit and how it works. Basically, if you start saying the wrong thing, you got to think about what happens there. It's not like there's a political officer.
David Stahel:They don't do that. Well, from 1943, they do have a few of those guys, but they're not in the local units. What's happening is on the Eastern front. It's an extremely dangerous world, not just at the front, in the rear areas. There's a lot of partisans, right?
David Stahel:It's a dangerous world. If you start being the guy who starts saying, I don't know about all this violence, They're looking at him as, are you going to endanger us by not taking the harshest possible tone? And if you're going to start critiquing us, if you find yourself outside that primary group, you're in a world of hurt because you need those people just to prepare your food, to keep you safe. And if they ostracize you, the social sanction is huge. Right?
David Stahel:So it is a lot of, sort of social factors as well as just intrinsic things that these guys are just raised to believe in a sense.
Tim Benson:Yes. Well, I mean I mean, that's guess that's the scariest part of the whole thing is that, you know, where you would like to it would be nice if it just happened to be that it was the SS, you know, the Einsatzgruppen and whatnot that went around and did everything, because they were the fanatics and they were the die hards and, you know, they were morally bankrupt and, you know, just immersed in evil and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, we could just sort of walk, you know, all the blame on them, but it really wasn't. And it's it's frightening to think how quickly people can just rationalize away things or just compartmentalize. Mhmm.
Tim Benson:Or, you know, I mean, this whole and then, you know, the whole thing, you know, obviously, it starts from Hitler on down where it's like, hey. We give you permission. You know, here's before we even start, this is gonna be a war like anything else. So you guys gotta be you gotta, you know, get morality out of your minds. This is a total this this enemy is completely different, and they're trying to destroy us, and we have to destroy them first.
Tim Benson:And so this is gonna be a harsh war and know that going in. And, so there was a permission structure all the way down. But Yeah. You know, there but there's still the guys can be like, well, wait a minute. Like, we don't, you know, is that wise?
Tim Benson:Like, should we maybe, like, win first, you know, before we start, you know, executing civilians left and right. Should we maybe bring the civilians around in case this, you know, this, turns out to be not such a quick battle? You know, that so that way, all these guys don't go, you know, immediately hate our guts as well as the Soviets. I mean, because there's a lot of I mean, like, in, you know, Ukraine and and the Baltic states and everything. You know?
Tim Benson:Obviously, they're not, you know, big fans of the Soviets. But just it it's scary to think, anyway, just how, like, it's clear from this from the east that while, like, the sort of the circumstances and everything are sort of uniquely German with the army and the the antisemitism and, you know, National Socialism and all that. And so, you know, that whole stew. Mhmm. But, I mean, you really can see that, like, this could happen elsewhere.
Tim Benson:This is not just a, you know, a uniquely German thing that happened. Like, you know, dollars to donuts, this could happen anywhere else in the world, you know, with any advanced society.
David Stahel:Agree. I mean, I've been saying to someone my I mean, again, I teach in a military institute, but I don't care. In fact, I think we need to confront harsh truths. Frankly, Australian special forces in Afghanistan, we've now gone through this whole thing and it's rolling on. Turns out we're, committing.
David Stahel:Right? And what happens there? It's, it's, it's not shocking to those of us who've studied the long history of warfare. Warfare is a brutalizing process. What's a little bit shocking or maybe more worrying is that our highest trained guys, it turns out what basically transpired is there was the the the the the number one guy in the the unit who was the biggest kick ass guy, and he went out there and his basic thing was, you know, if you're gonna win a war, you don't need all these crazy rules of engagement.
David Stahel:You need to go out there and doing what needs to be done. And my god, that's what we're gonna do. And if these guys are Taliban and we know they are, cause we know, you know, however he knows, he knows we're just gonna take the actions that no one else can, and we'll do what needs to be done. And so it became a free for all And all kinds of things were now licensed because, you know, there's that stuff they teach back in the day and the pieces of paper that the paper shufflers write and whatever they teach it, whatever place about the, you know, ethic. Welcome to the real world, my friends, and this is how we're gonna fight the war.
David Stahel:And then Oh,
Tim Benson:it's like, you've seen like A Few Good Men, I'm assuming. I assume you've seen
David Stahel:I have seen that film. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, you want me on wall, you need me on that wall. You know, the the old person. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
David Stahel:And and that's the process. Right? That that there's a self justification. They see it as I'm keeping people safe and, you know, we know and and look at Vietnam, same thing. We know who the VC are, don't we?
David Stahel:You know, they've moved into May Line massacre. We're just gonna take care of it. You're supposed kill the enemy. Right? Yeah.
David Stahel:It's extremely difficult. And I get this as a real military problem, not justifying in any way. If you know when your best mate was killed last week walking through a rice paddy on a mine, and then you walk into the village and you find some weapons, but they all say, no, I'm not VC. You're like, I've got the weapons here. My mate was just killed.
David Stahel:What are the chances that in, you know, even professional soldiers take law into their own hands? They're living in a violent world anyway. They're not allowed to do it. No justification, but that is the reality of these kinds of conflicts. Now, if you're in franchises, the German army is to, take them, just take whatever action you need as in wipe out a village.
David Stahel:Not only is it allowed, it's kind of the instruction. If you lose a vehicle, go into the nearest village, and that is what you do. And it becomes almost like if you don't do it. You're anchoring everybody.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And if you're the general, who is not like, hey. We're looking at the the number of, you know, liquidated commissars here. How come, you know, this army group has this many, this army group has this many, and you only have this many? Are you not as, you know, what's the word they would use?
David Stahel:Committed.
Tim Benson:Committed to the to the to the National Socialist, you know, to this defeat of altruism or or what have you. So if you don't do it, you're gonna stick out and, you know, there goes your career. I mean, that's a lot of the the thing really was I mean, who knows deep down what these guys really thought about all the extrajudicial killings in the east, the, you know, the the un the unordinary parts of war in the east, the the crimes and whatnot. But there the individual success of these men is tied to the success of the Nazi regime. So if the order from Hitler, you know, whether on paper or verbal or whatever, is to do this, then, well, you know, I I don't wanna get a scans of the Fuhrer because, you know, then there goes and then a lot of these guys, which another thing I didn't know about, until I read this book, that Hitler was actually sort of the there was a lot of generals, colonel generals on up that he was providing, a monthly stipend to, basically, out of his own pocket.
Tim Benson:So not only Yeah. Are these guys I mean, so I mean, he's literally paying them himself. So you don't wanna get a scans of the fear because not only does your career might suffer, in whatever post war world, because these guys all assume that they're gonna win, you know, going in. So that so whatever happens after this, you know, with your career, that might stall, and then you lose a lot of money too. I was
David Stahel:gonna say, it's a lot of money. And maybe to be clear for people, these guys get paid, as generals, obviously, this money that you're referring to. I mean, it's, it's basically a bribe. It's not official. It's not coming through their normal army pay.
David Stahel:It's, it's it's just being transferred to you, and it's coming very much from sort of Hitler's private secretary. It's only available to field marshals. There's only, I think, 13 of them, and colonel generals. They get a lesser amount. There's more of them, but it's an extremely small number.
David Stahel:Right? Now if you're, no longer on active service when people like Hoop and it get kicked out, it's not just that you're not a general and doing all the you know, being a a real man fighting at the front with a great career ahead of you. You're also, you know, standing to lose financially a very large summits. I think 4,000 Reich marks for a field marshal in 2,000, and this is per month for a, colonel general. So it's half the amount.
David Stahel:That is an enormous amount. I can't remember the figure, but some somewhere it's somewhere in my head that that an average worker earns 700 rush marks a year. I think that's right. Maybe someone should check that, but it's around that ballpark figure. So you get an idea of just how much money this is.
David Stahel:These guys are wealthy because of it. And the problem that constitutes when you are having to write reports and give advice, do you wanna be the guy if you understand how the cultural milieu works, if you're being asked, you know, can you can you seize that objective? Do you wanna be the guy in this kind of hyper masculine world say, yeah. Yeah. No.
David Stahel:It can't be done. No. I don't have enough fuel. I don't have enough because that's not how it works. They're they're looking for the you're the naysayer.
David Stahel:I mean, if you think about what does Hitler say in all those long speeches he gives, he doesn't sit there and say, well, I've had a lot of luck actually because this depression things worked out really well for me and then blah blah blah. You know, it's not about economic factors or people who helped him or advantages Germany might've had or post war settlements that have infused to the German people with a certain sense of victimhood or whatever. No. No. No.
David Stahel:It's me. Me, me, me. It's all the Fuhrer. He did it. He led Germany.
David Stahel:He and the basic ethos and the message being given is if we had a country of 80,000,000 people with the self belief, so part of this this this this it's almost religious idea is the primacy of will. I will will this to victory. What we need in those generals is not the naysayers, the, can't do it, can't do it. Don't talk to me about the fuel or the. That's just you making excuses.
David Stahel:Show me the man who's gonna step up and say, yes, money dry. Do this. And those guys are there too. Right? And there is a whole cultural kind of part that it's not completely new that Germany believes in, you know, comes, come for Villa and, and, and, and, and, and Sieger's Villa and all this.
David Stahel:So the will to victory and that these are older ideas. Now, what I would say is under National Socialism, these things get put on steroids and they're so you can find that stuff too in the American military. You do need, you know, self this is why it's not it's hard. It's you can understand it as a concept. The problem is if someone says to you, let's operate the u boats in the South Atlantic.
David Stahel:Hang on a second. This is a Central European country of 80,000,000 people. Hang on. How far is that with the technology at the time? They're gonna do it, but it's not really feasible in the same way that take the German armies that fight in Poland or that it's a continental power that fights in Central Europe.
David Stahel:That's where it's had its success. That's where Germany has won its previous wars. Now you're going, where? We're going to Stalingrad? Where is that exactly on how many thousands of kilometers is that?
David Stahel:That might be different for a more modern army with with, you know, other means and so on, but that's deeply problematic. You just can't keep going. It must be the staff work has to be done that makes whatever you plan tangible, and that's where the degree of separation happens. They do the the commanding, I will set the objectives, and then we send it down the line not to be based on what is possible. No.
David Stahel:I'm telling you what we're doing now. Make it happen. And if that lowly supply officer says, I can't do it. He doesn't really get to say it because he's not in franchise to say it. And if he does say it too loudly, we clearly need to replace him because he just doesn't believe, you know.
David Stahel:And then what are the propaganda stories they put out there of the of the, you know, the guy with 2 vehicles who went and seized the bridge and that's what gets sold. Right? Oh, the amazing commander. The fact that they do this stuff all the time and get killed although I'm printing that because that that didn't work out at all. You know, so everything is this self belief.
David Stahel:Everything is the celebration of the can do guy. It's again what when I talked earlier about Guderian is selling, he's selling. That's why the steely eyed you summed that up really well, steely eyed guy and everything. The reality is, and this is something from those letters, over that 6 months, Guderian becomes a broken man. Whatever people think of the man of mine and all those photos and everything, that is absolutely not who he is.
David Stahel:And we only get that through his letters. He is becoming quite depressive. In fact, another one of the senior Luftwaffe guys comes to visit him in early December. He's gonna get fired in December from the Eastern Front, and comes to see him, and he he writes in his own diaries as a contemporaneous source. He says, I'm so low.
David Stahel:I feel so terrible. I've gone to Guderian, the great panzer commander, because I actually want a bit of a he'll be he'll he'll pump me up again. And I encountered a man as as he wrote his diary. At the time, I encountered a man more broken than myself. Guderian is.
David Stahel:He's only a rubber lion. Right? This is and and I ended up pumping him up because he was so depressed. Right? That's not what he projects in the orders.
David Stahel:That's not what you see from the photos, but, you know, that's the reality of the eastern front.
Tim Benson:Yeah. You can, speaking of that, you mentioned in the book the just the psychological stress of the campaign and everything. And then, you know, in the autumn, obviously, you know, through the summer, Germans are picking butt taking names, taking hundreds and hundreds of you know, thousands and thousands hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory, millions of prisoners, you know, etcetera. And then things in the autumn and winter start to go bad for them. And, you know, you mentioned the, decline in the sort of the the in mentally with these guys, but you can actually see it in their handwriting as the you mentioned as the campaign goes on, the handwriting in these letters becomes more and more harder more harder more harder.
Tim Benson:Excuse me. It becomes harder to read because it becomes more legible. And, you know, but just because it's, I guess, stress, you know, makes you write shittier.
David Stahel:Yeah. No. I I and and, I mean, it could also be that they have, I don't know, less time. It could be other things that account for that, but there there are multiple ways to track that. Another one of the the ideas that sort of, you know, it's funny working on a book like this.
David Stahel:It was only sometimes months into the project that you would you would just think about the same things you've been reading. I forced myself to go back and read all the letters again every 6 months because I was reading so much contextualizing non historical actually, it's not non historical. It was just interdisciplinary stuff. So as a military historian, that's what I've always thought of myself as I spent my life reading military accounts because I think, you know, those are good context. For this project, it was different.
David Stahel:For this project, I forced myself to think, okay. What is some of the stuff we've hit on? Right? Like, what is masculinity for that time? I don't really know much about it, but people do all kinds of studies on this stuff.
David Stahel:So I'm gonna read those kinds of books. Right? And you get context. Right? I read about social psychology.
David Stahel:So why do people do what they do? I read about, you know, history of sexuality. This is a different field for me. Some people would say, oh, David, you're reading all the woke stuff or whatever. Yeah.
David Stahel:I don't care. I I don't care. You know what I'm interested in? I'm interested in learning. Right?
David Stahel:And I don't care what it is. And the reality is, I don't mind saying, I turn pages on some of these books and thinking sometimes I sat there and thought, I have no idea what you're talking about here. I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I have no clue what that is.
Tim Benson:Oh, the jargon you mean? The academic jargon?
David Stahel:Sometimes it's stuff I would think. I'd understand fully what you're saying. I think it's BS. Right? I don't care though.
David Stahel:I don't care. What I'm looking for is the gold because sometimes I would turn the page and say, now that is absolute gold. And I because I'm reading these letters, this is you've just given me context that none of us would think about. Right? We don't work in these fields.
David Stahel:It's the virtue of doing this kind of stuff. Right? And the reality is it's the same in military history. Right? You turn pages on military history books, there's rubbish, there's rubbish, there's gold.
David Stahel:It's it's the same thing. Right? So the the more the better. But the virtue of doing that and then forcing myself to reread the letters because I was reading outside my area, I would constantly see things in the letters. And so one of the things that I came up with at one point was hang on.
David Stahel:Hang on. Hang on. Religion is a thing. That's a kind of coping mechanism if you're feeling bad as well. What I found was there's there's only x number of references to God and the almighty, and these guys are 2 of them at least are quite pious.
David Stahel:But as the war goes on, the references become more frequent, and they become more than just a reference. It become the the lord almighty will, you know, hopefully in our hour of need. And I remember the passage where and you can start to see, you know, you default more into these higher powers in this. If you're in a if you believe you're carrying or before you're about to go for another victory parade and I'm getting the as it is the case in July, it's it's few and far between. They're not really leveraging the almighty or thinking about their faith.
David Stahel:That's very different, very different in November December. Says a lot about their mental states. Says a lot about how they feel. They're looking for much more inspiration. And then in a subtle way, in a way that even I didn't think when I first started reading them, but I started to look for that stuff.
David Stahel:And as I would read them again, I came now really tracking. How do they engage with their faith? Oh, that's becoming a much bigger deal. Not surprisingly, if that's what we're now understanding. And, and that happened in a lot of different ways, sometimes explicit where they're talking about how their feelings are, you know, because they're talking to their wives.
David Stahel:And sometimes it was perhaps more subtle, but it's clearly tracking a, you know, a mental state.
Tim Benson:Are you one of the and I know there's the debate sort of, between historians in in this field about whether or not the Germans whether the war was lost in the east for the Germans in 1941 in the winter when they didn't get to Moscow and all that or 1942, you know, with Stalingrad and that whole thing. Are you a 41 guy or a 42 guy?
David Stahel:I am most definitely a 41 guy. So the my very first book is called Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East and the Big Theses because that was actually my PhD, and I did I studied in Germany, so I it was all there. And the the funny thing about an a German PhD, which is very different from Anglo American, is there is no word limit. In fact it was kind of a funny thing, because I'd done my, well, my postgraduate study in Germany. I lived there for 10 years.
David Stahel:I kind of lost a bit of Anglo American perspective on all this. I never did it. I didn't engage with those kinds of students because it was all German. Right. And then I got back to this uni well, I was at this university.
David Stahel:I was teaching now and I was walking just past our cafe one day. I'll never forget this with 1 of the PhD students. And he said something about, I'm really struggling with the workload. Sorry, with the word count. And I said, oh, now come on.
David Stahel:You gotta know, in a PhD, there is no such thing as a word count. Right? You're allowed to write as much as you want. And he just paused and said, no. I'm pretty sure there's a word count.
David Stahel:I said, no. There's no and then I suddenly thought, is there in a strict would there be a word count?
Tim Benson:I don't know I don't know if the story is true or not, but I heard, that or I think it was yeah. Harvard put in place a, like, a word count or a page limit on dissertations from students because, when Kissinger was at Harvard in his first book basically, his dissertation, he turned to his first book, and his dissertation was like like 500 pages long or something like that. Yeah. And so after that, they were like, no, from now on and, you know, he's a German, so I mean, just from that sort of Yeah. So they were like, no.
Tim Benson:We're gonna cap this at, like, you know, a 150 or something like that.
David Stahel:It is very, very true though. My professor said the same thing to me. I'll never forget it when we're having one of our first meetings. He said, you know, he he probably wasn't even aware that there were word limits in the Anglo American world. He was very German German guy.
David Stahel:Never spent any time outside, you know, that I think he went to one conference in an Anglo American country once. But, he said to me, I don't want a 1,000 pages, hairstyle. And I just remember thinking, I don't even know if I can write a PhD. I never tried anything, anything like this stuff. A 1,000 pages, you've gotta be kidding me.
David Stahel:But, you know, I I think that's perhaps a critique potentially of the German system. What a what a what a word count does do is force you to stop going through, you know, you can do 2 pages of evidence and I've made the point right now. We're going to go into the analysis. You can do 7 pages of evidence. And I think some of these books that do get they do center, I'm just gonna include everything.
David Stahel:And and and too much is sometimes the case there. And and and look,
Tim Benson:I've gotta say yeah. I just wanna, now that I think of it, pretty much every book in my library that is written by a German historian is a doorstop. I'm just looking at them like I'm like, yeah. I don't know if there's any one of these that is, like, under 800 pages. You know what I mean?
David Stahel:I would even go so far as to say, maybe I'm overstepping my boundaries here because I don't claim to be German. I just lived there for a long time. But Mhmm. There is a little bit of a, you know, maybe a little bit of a bias against a a very thin. If you did present, 80,000 words, I think that's the minimum for us.
David Stahel:If you presented that at a German university, I wonder if there is in a bit of a sense that this is minimal, even though that it might still be for a certain topic, well, I mean, 80,000 is still a lot to an average person. They probably sitting here that's been a lot. But the I I do wonder. I mean, you see that in a lot of different areas of Germany that, you know, there is a, a bias against an educated person who's perhaps not got great English. I I'm, I numerous times encountered Germans who would be, you know, in social functions, you know, it would sometimes speak German, but sometimes they would speak English depends on who was there.
David Stahel:And you would sometimes hear people say, oh, my my is not very good as though it's a bit shameful. And but after a while, you start to pick up on these cultural dimensions and you realized, yeah, in educated circles, there's definitely these things. Right? So
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yes. Anyway, we've gone a little long already. I just wanna ask you about, I guess, one more thing, you know, because there's lots of stuff we didn't get to, but I wanna keep you too long. But one thing I was sort of struck by, reading the book or, you know, especially these letters, is how, catty these men were, with, there's just so much this seems almost like a constant stream of complaining, you know, about their superior officers or about their, colleagues.
Tim Benson:You know, this guy is trying to steal my limelight or, you know, the the damn general staff, you know, is is, you know, trying to they're out to get me or they're trying to take away my glory or, you know, they can't do this, they can't do that. Everyone's everyone else is the problem. If only I had what I needed, and if only they just got out of my way, I could do this and that and this and that. Yes. And, so I get I guess Germans aren't unique with that.
Tim Benson:I'm sure that's, you know, basically I'm sure every, you know, officer corps. No matter what army you are in the world, it's probably like that to some degree. But is it is it more pronounced maybe with the with these guys, especially with the the the, the Panzer the Panzer generals just because of their their their self conception and, that sort of thing?
David Stahel:Absolutely. So it's kind of good that our previous discussion has set this up and it's kind of also good. I'm glad you kind of asked the question just because I I imagine if some people would chit, you know, look at a podcast on Hitler's Panzer journals. And we've talked about a lot of things, but some people want to see it military stuff right now. What we were saying before, if one accepts that idea that these guys are not enfranchised, and I don't even think in their heads, they're not playing three-dimensional chess here.
David Stahel:This is also how they see the campaign. They're not understanding it. This is what I said before about I don't really rate them as operational generals. They are they are they are not very good at this stuff because why? Because you need to be cognizant as a very good general, which I believe others in the in the World War 2 context, if you look at some of these allied commanders, are better at.
David Stahel:Yeah. It seems obvious to us, but it's actually not the case that you would validate your intelligence or you would validate, logistics or you would validate, you know, the the the the fuel stock relative to your next objectives, all these kinds of things that you would look at. Right? Now they don't do that. They they they they they are not focused on those sorts of things.
David Stahel:Again, you can go through the letters and just look at with a sizable amount, How many references are there to things like logistics? Right? Nakhshoop. You can look up these words. You can do a word search.
David Stahel:Right? And and read through the letters of you realize it's very small. It's remarkably small for a campaign that is based on enormous distance.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So we're even sorry to interrupt. Or even just their their lack of, curiosity about the enemy of the fighting, you think, like, you know, you want to know as much as you possibly could about, you know, the the army you're facing in front of you. But there seems to be, with whom, very little, curiosity about anything about the Red Army.
David Stahel:Yeah. The Red Army has no agency. They're not a factor in success and failure. No. We're doing this.
David Stahel:We're deciding everything. What they do doesn't matter at all. Yet, again, a good commander is very interested in what what are they doing, what are they learning, how do they what are our intelligence telling about what they how do we manage that? And and and but there's no interest for that. And so what ends up happening in their heads, and this is quite genuine, is they believe success on failure has nothing to do with these other external factors as as a as a well trained general staff officer might think, and we just impose ourselves often on these things because we're products of a modern world.
David Stahel:In fact, we're products of very much that early modern enlightenment to rational thought and all that. I think we need to be a little bit careful with these guys. Nazism is its own worldview. They've abrogated the enlightenment. I don't care about morality.
David Stahel:What are you talking about? We do what we need to do. I don't care about the law. We make the law. This is our laws now.
David Stahel:And if can you therefore say with abrogated clause of it, you know, this great military strategist and so on. I found some indications. I was just reading something recently that Guderian, had no knowledge really of his. I there's a there's a there's a one of the other Panzer Group commanders who's not in this book. There's only 6 of them in 1941.
David Stahel:One of them is called Clyst. I found in one of his post war interrogations, he said quite openly, I've heard of Clausewitz and never read him. So, okay, that's interesting. I would have assumed that's core business for you guys. Clearly not.
Tim Benson:Even I've read that book. Like, how I
David Stahel:was gonna say this this this is and I teach at the military. We're trying to get that stuff on our students. Right? It's like Yeah. Yeah.
David Stahel:And they're low level guys. These are generals. So if if that's the world we're at with these gentlemen and they're operating in a in a in a world where in order to be promoted, you need to be the can do kind of guy, then what explanation do you have if you are slowing and not really getting your objective? I can't and I maybe even don't even think to talk about, yeah. Well, the Red Army is doing x or hey.
David Stahel:I haven't given so it becomes and it's kinda natural for them to make it all about, yeah, I wasn't and they're all prima donnas. Right? So that you really can't underestimate how strong willed a lot of these guys are. And even this book, having done a lot of books on this area, this book changed my mind a little bit about how I think about command areas, because I still look at a chain of command and so on. And I started to think very much as I was doing the same thing you were.
David Stahel:I was reading these letters and just how ubiquitous these kinds of statements, how vicious they are about each other, and it started to crystallize in my mind. We have to stop thinking about these in front of this chain of command. Hang on. There's orders. You gotta follow them.
David Stahel:And think about it more as kind of, again, this huge scope. You gotta imagine how big this all is. They control independent fauldoms like kind of medieval lords. Lords. They're in command of everything.
David Stahel:I don't care what the orders are. I am doing this. And if I'm not having much success, you know why that is? It's not because of my brilliance. It's I don't think in any other terms.
David Stahel:It's because I'm not being preferenced with supply. I am the poor cousin here. I have got the hardest sector. I have got the worst of everything. Nobody understands.
David Stahel:They're complaining to their wives about just how hard it is for them. And the point is, when you've joined all the dots, and I think this is one of the things I hope a reader gets is, if they're all saying this, yeah, welcome to the Eastern Front. It's it's a poor man's war, and it's not that you're the special poor guy. This is what it is. The Germans have started something that that they can't end.
David Stahel:And the result of being on this on this campaign for months at a time with enormous it's not just length, it's depth as well. Hundreds of kilometres that these supplies have gotta come through partisan infested territories without a very good rail network that keeps getting blown up and all the rest of it. And now you're gonna be on the eastern front managing a high intensity war under resourced. And if you think that's the fault of, the commanders or the guy next to me is getting all my resources, well, that's self delusional. It's not helping you solve, and people up the chain have got to recognize, what is the response to this?
David Stahel:Yeah. Not a very good one, partly because they can't really see the problem. I don't think there's ever recognition enough. And even if there was recognition, well, what are you gonna do about it? Who do you go to to complain?
David Stahel:Because, ultimately, if the the ultimate decision maker is Hitler, well, you're part of the problem, so we'll get rid of you. And those guys down the down the line complaining, they need to man up. They need to man up and do what needs to be done, which is, you know, attack the enemy. Keep going.
Tim Benson:Go back. It goes back to anything.
David Stahel:Well, yeah. Of will. You know, it's kind of like it's a logic that in a national socialist sense makes sense. If you if you believe in that kinda it's almost religious in a weird way. And I've written a whole lot about in one of the books, earlier about what I call National Socialist Military Thinking.
David Stahel:I think what we're what I'm trying to bring people to is we need to divest ourselves from all this classical thinking then, you know, because they do staff work, don't they? They they're like us. They they they introduce some of these concepts. Yeah. They do, but they're grafting on more and more of these, what I can only describe as kinda National Socialist ideals.
David Stahel:It's not it's not implicit in all of them. We've got some generals who are actually a bit more real world. It's not one size fits all, but a lot of them and certainly the Panzer Troopa, they are very far down this this this line, both in terms of the killing, but also in terms of just what it means for military operations, in any case.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. Well, we've been going much longer than planned on. No. It's fine.
Tim Benson:No. It's fine. No. No. No.
Tim Benson:It's fine. No. I've just I I feel bad for keeping longer than I said I would. Anyway, so before like, again, there was a lot of stuff we didn't we did talk about, but there's usually one exit question I normally ask everybody that comes on, the podcast, and that is, you know, what what would you like the audience to get out of this book, or, you know, what's the one thing you'd want a reader to take away from it having having read it?
David Stahel:I would say probably 2 quick things. You know, if I delineate audience into there'll be people who, never read anything on this, in which case, you know, I hope that they find it interesting and and and enjoyable and and all the rest of it. But I imagine most of it's accepted because there's no context to not agree with it. And then it'd be a different audience for whom some of this is, I guess, kinda challenging because it's, it is a departure from, you know, your classic German generals books. Actually, there hasn't been a lot of them written in the last sort of 20 years.
David Stahel:They're sort of been one of those things that just people haven't really been in vogue. It's not to say there hasn't been some in German that are, that are, that people aren't reading those. But in the Anglo American world, a lot of the ones you find are older. And so, I think for people encountering some of this sort of thing, I hope there's 2 things. I hope there's a corrective on that military side, but I hope there's also enough of an explanation to understand we have to start seeing these guys in a holistic way.
David Stahel:I who they were their private size, a whole chapter called the private generals is as relevant in my view to understanding the decisions they make and and and the and the and the success or otherwise that they have as the strictly military stuff. Because I think we default into we're only interested in military. And I think this book is an attempt to try and say, hey. For the future of this this area and and how we do these sorts of things, we need to try and get beyond just, you know, what orders did they issue and where did they serve? Besides, I think a lot of people know that stuff.
David Stahel:There's been so much military history written that the the new avenue is to get behind that. And that's why private letters are so vital, so it's so important. So, you know, that's that's at least where my headspace is, and and and and I I guess that's what I'd hope people get out of it. Alright.
Tim Benson:Great. Well, before we go, is there anything else you wanna plug while you're here? Anything you wanna any projects or appearances or social media, anything like that you wanna
David Stahel:Not really, mate. I'm not on any social media. It's not a good thing. I'm just I just I never started, and I got a 1000000 things to do. And people say, you should get on it.
David Stahel:And then I've had a whole other No. And that was, like, 10, 15 years ago. And then other someone else said to me years later who'd been an advocate early on about, it's so great. You connect with everybody. And I was like, oh, I got a lot of connections as it is.
David Stahel:I don't feel lonely. And then 10 years later or something, this person said to me, don't
Tim Benson:do it.
David Stahel:It's bloody terrible. And I read more for young kids and stuff, you know, what it can be as a dangerous place and how vicious it all is and how and I just sort of thought, yeah, why would I start? Actually, Cambridge did say to me, we haven't got a couple books of it. You should get on to promote, promote, promote. And I was like, yeah.
David Stahel:No. I can't be bothered. I don't Yeah. Well, I
Tim Benson:don't blame you. I'm I'm in the same boat. I did have I was in, I did have a Facebook account. I did have a Twitter account for, like, a hot minute too, but I deleted that. But, I had, you know, Facebook back when, like, Facebook was you could basically only be on Facebook if you were at certain, like, universities and had, like, the university address.
Tim Benson:So, like, when I was I think, like, my senior year of college or something like that, like, Facebook It's like but never, like, you know, but Instagram didn't exist and all this other, you know, MySpace was still around. And then I was on Facebook for a little bit, and then it was just like, you know, it was just like scrolling through when I was like, all this shit is just so fake. Like, I like, I know this is fake. Like, I know, like, this, like, that this family here, like, this what they're presenting right here. There's that's not the case.
Tim Benson:You know what I mean? Like, this is all, like, show. And it's, like, nice that, like, yes, you keep in touch with, like, people you wouldn't normally keep in touch with. I guess that's, like, one nice thing about it. But then it's like, well, if I don't keep in touch with them outside of Facebook, like, we don't really have a relationship to begin with.
Tim Benson:So, like, what's the you know? Anyway, I'm with you on that. So, I mean, I do have I have a Twitter account that, like, I use to, like, lurk and just, like, find news and stuff like that, but I never, like, actually tweet. I mean, we do have a Twitter account for this podcast, but I just basically just, like, threw up the episode.
David Stahel:Yeah. No. I mean, I I also think I should be a little bit careful there. Like, I'm I'm not a preachy person. Knock yourself out.
David Stahel:Most of my family are at some level.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody I know is, I'm, like, the only I'm, like, the hermit in the the cave, basically, not on social media. So
David Stahel:But I hear what you say too. The the same friend, when I asked her, I said, what's wrong with it, though? You still love it. You still love it. And I just remember the one thing she said probably everyone knows this stuff.
David Stahel:It's just new for me. But but she one thing she gave us an example, which I thought it was actually a bit of a revelation at the time, is she said exactly what you said. She said, Dave, the problem is I go on and everyone's got a perfect life, and I see that I don't. And I went, what does that mean, everyone's got a perfect life? She said, it's an advertisement for their lives.
David Stahel:And I was like, what does that mean though? And she says, they put up my great holiday, my this, my this. No one posts negative because you're selling your life. And I suddenly thought about it. I thought, I could imagine how that is.
David Stahel:If you're watching that stuff every day and everyone's perfect and life is not perfect, I could see how that would work. But I'd never really occurred to me at that point. And, again, I'm not on it. But, yeah, another reason perhaps
Tim Benson:Well, the other thing is too, there are, like, some people, like, you would, like, be friends with on it who would just be, like, entirely negative, just be, like, you know Oh, okay. Complaining about, like, everything. You know? And, like, and then it's like, oh, I don't really need to hear all this.
David Stahel:You know
Tim Benson:what I mean? Like, I don't I don't need to be involved in all the drama of your of your life. You can keep us all out of it. I think, in general, I think everybody just needs to shut up more. You know?
Tim Benson:Just, like, we don't need your, you know no one needs to hear my opinion all the time. No one needs to hear yours.
David Stahel:I just That's it.
Tim Benson:Everybody just needs to, like, cool it and just go outside and,
David Stahel:you know, like I do think and Or watch bluey. Oh, watch bluey? We just we can end where we started. I and I this is also, you know, I'm not trying to make a pitch for scholarship or anything. Let's be honest.
David Stahel:People like me, you know, as my as one of my students said, David, you wear glasses and a cardigan. I said, what does that tell you? And he goes, I'm just saying you're not like me. And I'm like, I'm not like you at all. But, no, I didn't take it badly at all.
David Stahel:I think that's great that he's so honest. But but but, but the the the difference is I wonder sometimes is, yeah, if you've got things in your life, like, these books do not write themselves and I actually really love it. And I just gotta be alone. And I gotta read up my archives. I gotta think about this stuff.
David Stahel:I gotta write all this stuff. There's not time for people said to me, I spend a every day, you know, some of the students. I spend I spend hours on the phone doing this stuff, but what app is it? I don't know. Just the feed.
David Stahel:I think the good thing about being busy and having projects in life and and and being devoted to things is, yeah, I really don't feel, a, I don't feel like I'm missing anything, but, b, I I just don't have the time. I couldn't do it. I can't write these books and do all this stuff. Whatever it is, knock yourself out. Go surfing.
David Stahel:My brother's a surfer. Right? So I would say to him, he always thinks I'm the highbrow. And I'm like, Andy, you know everything there is to know about surfing. You know everything about it.
David Stahel:The world things, how much wax do you need, what kind of boards. You're an intellectual. It's just that the society validates the stuff I do and says, oh, you can get a PhD in that, buddy. You can be highbrow. And yours is, you know, just a surfer.
David Stahel:You're just the tattooed guy with the dreadlocks who hangs out at the beach. What a lay layabout. But, actually, you're an expert in the way I am, and you're pursuing the new knowledge in the way I am. He said, I like the way you think, Dave. And I thought, mate, and let's not bring all this social validation into this world that we live in.
David Stahel:You do your thing, I do my thing, and that's the end of it. Right? And happy happy happy happy lives.
Tim Benson:I gotta say, I think, you know, you brought up surfing. I think surfers pound for pound maybe the most interesting people I've met. You know what I mean? Like, that there's, especially the the guys who are really, really, you know, into it. They're or, like, the sole servers and that sort of thing.
Tim Benson:Like, I was completely off topic, but there's a lot I mean, like
David Stahel:We're long passed off now. Yeah. Sorry, everyone. You can leave. We're just Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Well, yeah. No. But there's just it's almost like a totally it's hard to explain to somebody who's outside of that culture. There's just a complete different, like, worldview and not your value structure, but it's I don't really know how to explain it.
Tim Benson:It's, but they're just there's something very unique about that pastime, which is different from, like, any other well, I guess, like, sailors or or, you know, like, guys who, like, sail or something like that. They they have, like, something to do. But it's, like, different for, like, athletes where, like, sort of, like, no matter, like, what sports you are, like, baseball, soccer, football, basketball, whatever, like, athletes are all just kind of, like, athletes. You know what I mean? It does They're all sort of the same.
David Stahel:Different. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I I I don't I'm struggling to explain it, but they're No.
David Stahel:No. I think that I I I I've seen I mean, Australia is also a very beachy country, and Yeah. And, you know, I I don't claim to know it either. I'm totally a non beach person, so I'm anomalous even by Australian standards, but whatever. But I think you're right.
David Stahel:I think there's a spiritual component there if I can be so honest. And, and what it also has led to my brother 20 years ago would have said, I'm apolitical. Don't care at all. That's not the case. It's not the case now.
David Stahel:And it's what he's done is he connects that, hey. If I love the beach and I love this outdoors and I love all this world, hang on a second. We gotta protect all this. Partly also because the kids, also because there's just greater awareness of of, you know, climate change and what that's going to do. And on a spiritual, I wanna protect this.
David Stahel:I wanna keep this world, and I need it almost because this is so part of my core being. This is kind of my my thing, my detox, my everything else. So I'm now invested. My brother these days is is is no way he's apolitical. He is very clear on what we need to protect both because of the next generation, but also because, goddamn it, it just makes sense.
David Stahel:And he is seeing in real time, hey. These things are changing, and this is not right. That we gotta we gotta be careful and focused. And yeah. And I I tend to agree.
David Stahel:And I was always the one 25 years ago who definitely was the political one of the family. Like, oh god. He's gonna have any view on this. Yeah. I totally did.
David Stahel:And and and and and and fine. Other people didn't. But I I think, you know, in a weird way, his his his surf either. And you know what? It's also true of that whole group.
David Stahel:The the surfers these days aren't the seventies sitting on the beach, you know, smoking dope and and surfing. These days, they recognize we've gotta protect it because of urbanization and because of all this stuff. We gotta protect it. And my god, they're doing that. Right?
David Stahel:These guys are active out there and in a really good way because they're not the boring academics or the politicians. They're real world people saying, no. No. No. No.
David Stahel:I don't give a shit about your conservative bullshit climate denying nonsense. Probably not saying this to an American audience because some people will hate me for it. Couldn't care less anyway. But but they're right. They're right.
David Stahel:This is a real thing and we're all in it. Right? And you can have whatever politics you want. My dad's a conservative. Right?
David Stahel:I love him to death. Right? Can believe in whatever tax system he wants. I really don't care. But when it comes to climate change, no.
David Stahel:No. No. No. That's everyone. That's the grandkids.
David Stahel:So, buddy, you are wrong, and you gotta know why. You gotta know why. And credit to my dad because we're not so polarized as in the United States. He's actually on board with it these days. He's like, yeah.
David Stahel:I do get it. You can't argue with science, can you? Even I as an engineer, I gotta give in. Yeah. It's happening.
David Stahel:It's happening. And I'm like, credit to you, buddy. You're on the evolution. Right? That that's that's we're getting there
Speaker 1:in the end.
David Stahel:Anyway, now I'm preaching. I am preaching now, everyone. You should have turned off 10 minutes ago. Well, yeah.
Tim Benson:That that's that that, you might get a little pushback on,
David Stahel:from
Tim Benson:some parties. Yeah.
David Stahel:I got a public email. Say what you want. That's why I'm not on social media. Say what you want. I'll delete it.
Tim Benson:But yeah. But I I get I'd, I'll say, I think, generally, like, surfers are, like, the most stand up dudes I know, like, as a group. You know what I mean?
David Stahel:That's pretty cool.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Anyway alright. So sorry if everybody way off topic. You can
David Stahel:edit that at at the
Tim Benson:point where we You can you can join us. You can join us for our our newly, newly released surfing podcast that we're gonna
David Stahel:Well, I'm well, I'm the the proxy of my my brother. Let's just get him on here. He'll be doing Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Well, that'll be our first guest.
David Stahel:No.
Tim Benson:So, anyway, once again, the book is Hitler's Panzer generals, Guderian, Hepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt unguarded. Really, really, fascinating, look, into and sort of depressing look into the, sort of the inner world of of these guys who, you know, let's just face it, are not good guys. But, but there's so much mystique around, the Fairmont World War 2 and especially the the Panzer troop and, these generals that it's nice to get beyond that and really, get a sense more of what these men were actually like and sort of strip away and all that stuff. So, really, it's a fantastic job of that, and it's a, you know, like I say, it's a, what is it? It's a fun read, but in a a depressing I know what you mean.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but I highly, highly recommend it to everybody out there. Once again, it's Hitler's Panzer generals, Guderian, Hepner, Reinhardt, and Schmidt, Unguarded.
Tim Benson:And the author is doctor David Stale. And, doctor Stale, thank you, so so much for coming on the podcast and discussing, the book with me and and Bluey and Australian things and surfing and whatnot. I really, really appreciate it. And thank you, so much for, you know, taking the time to, actually write the book and let us, all enjoy the the the fruits of your labors.
David Stahel:No worries. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Benson:Oh, no problem. And, again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And if you have any, books you'd like to discuss with us on this podcast, you can always reach out to me at, tbenson@heartland.org. That's tbens0n@heartland.org. Or for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org.
Tim Benson:And, like I said before, we do have our little, Twitter account on for the podcast, Twitter x, whatever Twitter. This is gonna be Twitter forever. No one's ever gonna call it x. That's never gonna catch on. So you can reach out to us there at illbooks@illbooks is our little handle.
Tim Benson:So, yeah, if you have any questions, comments, I'd like to you know, any recommendations or books you like to see on the podcast, anything like that, feel free to reach out to us there. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. So we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening, everybody. Take care.
Tim Benson:Love you, Robbie. Love you, mom. Bye bye. I can
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