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.
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a journalist observed Tukhachevsky carving a "scary idol from colored cardboard", with "burning eyes", a "gaping mouth", and a "bizarre and terrible nose"
Tukhachevsky said “This is Perun. A powerful person. This is the god of war and death."
a lot of us probably know that Nazism was an explicit bargain made to keep Germany from going red, but like, did you know Hitler knew it too? and sold it as such to German heavy industry?
there was an Indonesian restaurant in NYC whose holding company was trading at like millions more than one restaurant was worth, right? and they didn't hold any other property
represented by this young buck, who defended them from the SEC