Thread by @JimmyFalunGong

this episode's pretty heavy on both economics, and (as a treat) some of that spooky shit, with a mass ritual held near Germany's most haunted mountain, discussed at the end of the episode

Hoover, Smuts, and Keynes all nightwalking in Paris, worried about how fucked up the Versailles Treaty was, back in 1919

Bernard Baruch and John Foster Dulles were sleeping just fine

longish discussion of heavy and light industry

Walther Rathenau comes up again - it's likely that he was killed, among other reasons, as German heavy industry reasserted its interests over light industry

oh, and we talk about myths about Reichsbank hyperinflation - it wasn't so accidental, after all. hyperinflation served heavy industry

Hugo Stinnes more or less said as much, lol

General von Seeckt carried out the secret rearmament program

the Ruhrlade, German heavy industry's secret political slush fund, had Paul Reusch, Gustav Krupp, Fritz Thyssen, Paul Silverberg,

Albert Vogler, and a few other guys. they'd meet under cover of hunting parties at their estates and castles, lol

the Young Plan to renegotiate war debts

Franz Xaver Schwarz, the Nazi party accountant. very, very interesting story with this guy.

we talk about Ernst Rohm again, mainly to note him going to Bolivia to train their military 👀and how Hermann Goering outed him in the press to solidify his own position in the Nazi party

we cover the Hawley-Smoot tariff, crucial to understanding how poorly German exports were fairing at the time.

Reed Smoot was the senator from Utah, and a polygamist, lol. he was blocked from entering Congress for years, and was not popular.

the Ruhrlade gave their funds to Walther Funk, the Nazi party's economist, to strengthen his position in the party.

then the entire political right held a massive rally in the Harz Mountains

near the Brocken, which is a very interesting place

for one thing, there's the Brocken Spectre, an optical illusion that takes place there

what's more, it's always been a key site for Walpurgisnacht/Hexennacht, and the image on the right is known as 'Hexentanzplatz' in the Harz Mountains

Faust specifically mentions the Brocken as a site for witch sabbaths

it doesn't stop, either. the Brocken was an inspiration for Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which was itself a scene in Fantasia, which...you know...

Night on Bald Mountain was also used in the Tower scene in the Wizard of Oz, which...you know...

the Brocken also had the world's first tv station, which broadcast the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, as well as tons of radio stations - art thanks to Suzanne Treister and her work, Hexen 2039

during the Cold War, the DDR ran the Brocken

the Brocken section of Treister's schizophrenia poster

oh, and how could I forget? Slothrop visits the Brocken and experiences the Brocken Spectre in Gravity's Rainbow

the entire political right held a mass rally, but the climax was Dr. Hjalmar Schacht making a speech calling into question the Weimar Republic's monetary policy, which I submit, was done in a ritual fashion

President Hindenburg suffered a mental breakdown and had to be briefly institutionalized upon hearing about Schacht's speech. his breakdown was itself covered up as a state secret.

check it out!