December 5, 2024 • 49 mins
Robert sits down and explains former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's alt-history novel to Molly Conger. If you've ever wondered what would happen if the Nazis invaded Tennessee well, here it is.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast that it is on election day, but
you won't hear this on election day. You know how
the election has gone? You listening have information in December? Yeah, yeah,
probably in December, which hopefully means the election is over
by then. But god willing, Yeah, god willing, the election
(00:30):
is almost certainly over, which means, you know, find a
way to communicate to the past and let us know
so that we can gamble on it. That's That's what
I'd like you to do. Anyway, speaking of gambling, you
know who knows all of the words to the classic
song The Gambler. Our guest today, Molly Conger. Molly, do
(00:53):
you know when to hold him? Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I know when to fold him. That's as much of
that song as I know.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
D well done.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Oh my god, I think I only know that from
Info Wars.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I do love watching Alex Jones sing that and the Highwayman,
Poncho and Lefty.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
You know, you're just grooving. It's things are going well
for als when he's doing that.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
That's the most jealous I ever am of him. Because
we're not allowed to use we have no licensing agreement
with any company that owns songs. Yeah, he must, otherwise
he wouldn't be allowed to air them like that. I
think there because there are like there are like like
ways that you as a broadcaster can just like make
a deal for access to you know, they have X
(01:39):
number of songs and we can use them for whatever.
I think that exists. I think that's got to be
what you were somewhat correct.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
But that doesn't mean that Alex Jones has a deal
with them. He could totally be grifting, because yeah, that's
what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I think he'd have been sued before then about this.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Maybe they're so chiper today, Robert Yep, I'm I'm chipper.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm doing good.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
How many did you get, Bud?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I had like six last night. I tried to get
to bed early, but I really couldn't get to sleep
before like three thirty in the morning. I don't know. Uh, well,
it's behind the bastards and we're all trying not to
obsess over the election, and I thought, you know, we
all might be hoping that history goes a different way
(02:25):
depending on what happens today, So why not read a
work of alternate history? Uh? You know, we love doing
book episodes over here because it's lets me rest a
little bit. The trouble is finding a book. You can't
just use any book, and it's sometimes hard to figure
it out. And thank god I got very lucky. Margaret
(02:46):
Killjoy was over at my house recently, not bragging, although
I am kind of bragging.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know some celebrities.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I know some celebrities. I know a famous kill Joy
who's also a famous Margaret, And she brought me a
book that a fan had given her at an event,
because our fans are unhinged and have just decided sometimes
we should hand one member of the team an absolutely
terrible piece of literature to give to another member of
the team. And the book that I have received is
(03:18):
nineteen forty five by Newt Gingridge.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Mollie, Wow, what if things had been different?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What if things had been different? Do you know much
about old Newt in this book?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
So I did not realize and this is this is
on me entirely. You know, I know a little bit
about you know, old Moon based Newt. But question was
he had written like thirty works of fiction.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
He has written a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Where does he find the time?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I mean, he doesn't spend a lot of his political career,
does not take up a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Okay. You know usually when you see like, oh, you know,
this politician has written a book, men want memoir or whatever,
and it's like, okay, well, like a campaign staffer wrote that.
That's for pr No, this is his passion. Yeah, he's
writing these Yeah, this is what he really wanted to do.
And my god, it's a I wish we had some
(04:17):
sort of program in place where when we find some
guy who has like an artistic dream but also weird
right wing politics, we just kind of like swallow our
pride and fund, like, have a have a government agency
buy up copies of their books so they feel like
a success. Anything to keep them from running for office. Right,
Hitler pain?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, what if let Hitler paint. Let Ben Shapiro make
his dog shit TV show about fucking law students.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And just sort of like a Truman Show type experience
encapsulate them safely.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
We have to Truman show these people, right, run a fake.
You know that White House Correspondence dinner that supposedly got
Trump committed him to run for office. Hold a fake
one of those where everybody just talks about how nice
he is and how much they admire him, you know, like, yeah,
we really have to put these people in bubbles. It's
the kindest thing for all of us. Oh man, So yeah,
(05:13):
we're going to be reading nineteen forty five. As you
might guess, it is a World War two alternate history. Yeah,
of course, Sophie, what else could it be? What else
could it be? And this it's a particularly.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
That but I did not process it. I was like,
I was like, that's not what it is.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Oh yeah, of course of course, and it's a wild one.
I'm going to tell you that, right right, So our
author for today, I'm going to go through a little
bit of a scripted portion. Here is Newton, Leroy Gingrich,
le Roy, Yes, king Rich. Yeah, you can't not do
the Leroy Jenkins thing, which is just going to be
(05:51):
incomprehensible for anyone in our audience that's like younger than
their mid thirties. You don't know who Leroy Jenkins was?
Remember the old Times pieces as shit? Sorry anyway, there's
a post in the subreddit now saying that I'm an
old man and all my references are old man references,
and the thing that makes me angriest is they're like,
(06:12):
he never references the Simpsons, for many episodes later than
the year two thousand and I'm sorry I never referenced
the Simpsons episode from later than nineteen ninety eight, because
that's when they stopped being good.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
You're not an old man.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Thank you, Sophie. But you called me an old man
on the show.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, that's that's because I'm allowed to It's okay when
I do it.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
They're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
You are used to them. To me, you are anxious.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I'm not. They haven't even seen Alien four. These scrubs,
these babies. None of them know what Sequest DSV was. Molly,
did you watch sequest.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh my god, Oh my god. Go get a learner's permit.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Anyway, I think we're the same age.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
We might be, but mentally. Newton Leroy Gingrich was born
two years before the title of his novel, on June seventeenth,
nineteen forty three. Knut's father was a career soldier, but
(07:18):
Newt takes a different path. He's actually an art student.
He gets like an ma in the mid sixties, and
like any guy who could. During the Vietnam War, he
gets a deferment from being drafted by arguing that he
was a student and a young father. Remember that, because
there's going to be a funny code of that a
little bit later in this story.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well, we all know Nuts a family man.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
We all know Nuts of family man. We all know
nuts big not fighting in wars, but not a big
not having wars. Guy Newton is elected to Congress in
nineteen seventy nine. In an address to college Republicans before
his election, he said, I think one of the great
problems we have in the Republican Party is that we
don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to
(08:02):
be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful. In all those
boy scout words, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they've done a
terrible job, a pathetic job in my lifetime. In my
lifetime I was born in nineteen forty three, we have
not had a competent national Republican leader, not ever. And
it's very clear from that context that a competent leader
is a mean one, right, Like that's what he's missing,
(08:24):
Like Richard Nixon's just too nice.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
And politics really needs is more vitriol.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, needs more real assholes. I think that's interesting because
it makes a case that I think is an important
thing to understand if you're trying to like puzzle out
why we are where we are now in American politics,
And the basics of that case is well, because Republicans
lost their minds when Nixon had to step down, and
everything they've done since then has been dedicated to stopping
(08:51):
making sure that no other Republican would ever have to
leave office, no matter what crimes they committed. Right, And yeah,
no modern press for that. So in nineteen eighty five,
as a congressman, Newton told an interviewer I think from
the Washington Post who asked about his deferment during Vietnam, quote,
given everything, I believe, a large part of me thinks
(09:13):
I should have gone over. Oh if only Newton, I
do wish you had gone to fight in Vietnam. Now.
That same year, when President Reagan held a summit with
Soviet pre Premier Gorbachev, Newton called it quote the most
dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with
Chamberlain in nineteen thirty eight at Munich. And I love
(09:35):
the idea like Gorbachev is a Hitler figure, This guy
who wouldn't even shoot back during the protests that overthrew
his government is like a Hitler, you know, the future
Pizza Hut spokes their Gorbachev as a Hitler kind of figure.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Areddie Hitler, you would have loved Pizza Hut.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
That does tell you where our boy Newt is. Unlike
the political alignment chart, right, he sees Ronald Reagan as
a fucking Neville Chamberlain type. Now, that same year, Gingridge
made the news for comparing a house race that was
in question in Indiana to the Holocaust. Here's a quote
about it. Hey, I'm going to read you the quote, Molly.
(10:19):
Here's a quote about it, as relayed by an article
in Mother Jones, and it starts with Newt.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the Holocaust,
about the incredible period in which Nazi Germany killed millions
of people and in particular, came close to wiping out
European jewry. If someone said to me two days ago,
talking frankly about the McIntyre affair in which Democrats refused
to seat the winner of a house race until they
conducted a recount, and the efforts by the Democratic leadership
(10:46):
to not allow the people of Indiana to have their representative,
but instead to impose upon them someone else, something in
which he quotes, something in which he quotes German poet
Martin Eemuhler. I have never quite until tonight, been able
to link it together. Or Niemuler, the great German theologists
said at one point when the German, when the Nazis
came for the Jews, I did nothing, And when the
(11:06):
Nazis came for me, there was no one left, right,
I think, sorry, I think it's Ni Muler, But this like,
so basically the Democrats are like, well, until we finish
a recount, we're not going to sit this guy because
there's questions about the election and fucking nude is like,
this is the same as the holocausts?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
So at what point did millions of people die? Did
they kill all the voters?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Did they murder everybody? It just kind of seems like
they were doing a thing that legally is a part
of the election, like having a recount, waiting to seat
the elected leader until you do their recount. Is that
the same as killing millions of people in factories of death?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
There needs to be a swear jar for people who
abuse the knee Mueller poem. Yeah, yeah, you need to
put a dollar in the jar, because that was not appropriate.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I think anytime you reference it you have to lose,
Like it should be like a Yukuza thing where you
have to give up one of the joints of a finger, right,
And maybe that'll cause people to be like a lot
more care about when they deploy that bad boy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I heard it in closing arguments at a trial last month,
a trial for a man who is a white nationalist,
and his lawyer's argument was, you know what with this,
this is free speech. You're trying him for his free speech,
and it is closing arguments. He's, you know, he refers
to the nimo or poem, except you know, the poem
starts first they came for the Communists, and I said
nothing because I was not a Communist. And then they
(12:22):
came for the Jews, and I said nothing because I
was not a Jew. And he says, he's going to
quote the poem, but he says, first they came for
one group, yeah, and then they came for another group,
and it's like, what are the groups?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
A group is a Nazi? Yeah, first thing came for
the Nazis, and I did not speak out because I
was not a Nazi man. It's abuse. It's very funny, Okay,
so let's get back into it. Newts served as the
(12:55):
Republican Speaker of the House from nineteen ninety five to
ninety nine. Gigrich was the arc at of the Republican
victory in the nineteen ninety four congressional election, which legitimately
set the stage for nearly everything the right has been
able to accomplish since. Without the Contract with America and
his retaking of the House, it's possible we see it's
possible that we see no George W. Bush presidency, no
(13:18):
right wing Supreme Court today, and at least a lot
less of a right wing drift on behalf of the
Democrats who stumbled to fight him. Right, this is a
major move in US politics. I don't think a lot
of folks who you know, whose awareness of politics has
sort of started since the Trump years, know much about this.
But you had, you know, slick Willie stop George H. W.
(13:39):
Bush from getting a second term. It drove these people crazy.
You have briefly the Democrats in control of government, and
then in ninety four Newt leads I think they pick
up fifty four House seats. It's this massive sweeping victory
that comes with this thing called the Contract with America,
which is basically Newt introducing what becomes kind of the
(14:00):
neocon platform. Right, And this is like a really I mean,
it's it's one of the most important moments in modern
electoral history. Right. Newt is one of the first conservatives
to see a real promise in creating a right wing
system of education to push conservative values. In nineteen ninety three,
he crafted a college course taught at Reinart College called
(14:23):
Renewing American Civilization. We're looking at this as like sort
of a proto what's that fucking guy who does the
Little Kids TV? Bullshit?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Like the university Prager University. Yeah right, this is a
precursor to Prager University. Right, I mean he was on
the Hillsdale track.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, yeah, And it's eventually televised in a cable channel
called Mind Extension University.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, you got to extend your mind now. Obviously, he
was a ferocious opponent of gay rights and the degradation
of American values in the modern era. He talked a
lot about how you know people today, especially because of
you know, democrats gaining such cultural dominance are just you know,
awful compared to you know, the the glorious greatest generation
(15:12):
who really understood morality. He also cheated on his second
wife with a staffer who became his third wife, while
he was advocating for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over infidelity. Now,
this should not have been surprising to anyone who knew that.
In nineteen eighty nine, in an interview with The Washington Post,
he explained that he fought with his second wife not
because it mattered to him what they were fighting about,
(15:34):
but because he had a habit of dominance that had
been stoked by his time in politics. He estimated to
the Post that his marriage had a fifty three to
forty seven percent chance of making it.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Oh Man.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Family values fifty three forty seven. I mean that's I
wouldn't met on those odds.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Fascinating, fascinating odds to give your own maya. Now, Newt
has a long and fascinating history, and I do recommend
reading that. There's a twenty twelve Mother Jones article with
some of his best quotes that will link in the
show notes if you want a better understanding of the man. Though,
you know that's a good way of getting it. But
for our purposes today, we're going to be focusing on
(16:19):
the novel nineteen forty five, which he co authored. It
is set in an alternate world where the US defeated Japan,
but Hitler never declared war on the US and so
we never got involved in a war with Germany. The
Nazis won their war with the Soviets. They took most
of their European holdings and forced them to accept a piece.
(16:39):
They then boxed the Brits into a corner. A few
years later, they carried out a surprise attack on the
United States in order to kill our nuclear scientists and
stop the completion of what in our universe we know
is the Manhattan Project. Now, because of where this takes place,
i'll spoil it for you, Molly. This book centers around
the Waffen SS invading East Tennessee. That's what this book
(17:02):
is about.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
How they get all the way to Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
They've got their wonder weapons, They've got these newt Is. Again,
he's like a History Channel history buff, right, So a
huge part of this book is like the Nazis building
all of these wonder weapons that were mostly theoretical during
the actual war, including this like massive you know, bombing
type plane that they had kind of been talking about
(17:27):
making that probably never would have worked out. Like it's
all sorts of like nonsense sci fi weapons, right, And.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
What didn't they want with Tennessee specifically.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It's where the nuclear program was headed.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Well, actually I think it was initially before they moved
to Los Alamos. I think they had it was somewhere
in like the southeast before they moved to Los Alamos
that they had like the early stages of the nuclear program.
And I think he's just kind of positing a much
more primitive nuclear program. But I'm going to pull up
the book, Molly, because at this point you should see
(17:58):
this bad boy. Look at this. Look at this.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Look at that cover art.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
There we go, there we go, full cover art. Look
at the size of his name. There it looks king
Ridge nineteen forty five. Yeah, like it's a book about
a two year old Newt Gingrich and kind.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Of that's like a sci fi fielder. If a listener,
you know, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I
don't ever go to YouTube dot com. I'm not watching
this on YouTube. The cover of the book is on
the books Wikipedia page, and it has kind of a
sci fi vibe to it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, now I want you to look at the back here.
First off, Nut's smaller than I expected when you see
him in a photo like this. This is a picture
of him with his co author, William R. Forstun Uh
and with Jim Bain, who is the owner of Baine Publishing.
And we're going to be talking a lot about Baine Publishing.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I also related to Baine Capital or Bane. The Batman
villain no.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Not at all spelled differently, has not broken Batman's back.
I do. I do really like the hitler on the
back here. You can see him here. He's he just
looks so happy.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
You hold it up to me on camera, on camera,
other camera.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, it's hard to figure out here, Yeah that way, Yeah,
there we go. Wow, that's a good hitler. Look at him.
Look at him.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
The choice Spokinger.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Is six feet tall. How big are those other men?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Oh wow? Because yeah, I thought he was actually tall
so these guys. So I think it's William Forst. It
is just kind of a fucking mountain of a man. Yeah,
he's got to be like six three sixty four. It's
a big guy. Jim Bain not a big guy, also
has the and I say this with all loved pornographers,
he has the smile of a pornographer, right like, look
(19:47):
at that. That's a man who's looking at you naked.
Like there's no, there's no, there's no other way to
describe the look on Jim Bayin's face. Speaking of people
who look at you naked. Our sponsors don't they would
never do that. They're gentlemen, you know, or gentle thems,
because I think they probably don't identify as a binary
(20:11):
gender given the bar raytheon is definitely non binary. Yes,
speaking of non binary, here's more ads and we're back.
So I want to get into the book jacket of this,
of this mammajama. Let's let's see what this is about.
(20:31):
And you can tell right away on the inside. This
was a nineteen ninety five, twenty four US dollars That
is kind of pressing way way too much money to
spend on Newton Gingrich's nineteen forty five Holy.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Shit, twenty nine to ninety nine for that hardback today
would be pushing it.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, this is like maybe like a fifteen dollars book. Man,
that's a lot. That's a lot, So introducing Lieutenant Commander
James Martel. He's the right man in the right place
at a very bad time. The year is nineteen forty five.
In Europe, the Third Reich reigns triumphant, the Soviet Union
is a fragment of its former self, and Britain has
(21:11):
accepted a dictated armistice in the Pacific after a brief,
sharp war with Japan. America is the only significant military
presence now. The world's two superpowers a ee each other,
warily across an Atlantic Ocean that daily grows smaller. The
big show is about to start. Who will win? The
Americans with their formidable industrial base and superior logistical techniques,
(21:34):
or the Germans with their science fiction super weapons that
turn out not to be fictional. After all, only one
thing is certain. If America is beaten, this alternative Reich
will last one thousand years. Join Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich and fellow historian William all Our Forestune and
a world that, save for Adolf Hitler's inexplicable hot folly
(21:55):
and prematurely declaring war in the United States in nineteen
forty one, would have been.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Just revisiting the timeline here. So he's not writing this
in his spare time, like in his retirement, or this
is speaker.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
This is a year after he like orchestrates a complete
upending of US electoral politics.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Should he be focusing on like the government?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
No, No, I think we can all agree this was
a better use of his time to doing his job. Also,
I just find it very funny that he describes himself
and his co author as fellow historians, because, as a spoiler,
they are not. Neither of them are historians. Well, Forestine
is a little bit of a historian, but he's like
(22:40):
a historian who went immediately into writing alternate histories. He
is a professor of history at Montreat College in north
But that's not a yeah, look, I'll give it. I'll
give a partial to Forestin right, because again, he spends
most of his career like his big job is writing
(23:02):
a bunch of articles for Boys Life magazine as well
as young adult novels. And does that make you a
real historian. I'm going to put that. I'm gonna put
that on the cusp. But fucking Newt Gingrid certainly is
not a real historian. Forstin's main publisher was Bain, who
back in the early to mid nineteen nineties was a
major purveyor of of pulp sci fi and alternate history books.
(23:25):
That changed as a result of nineteen forty five, which,
due to Gingrich's star power, was expected to be a
major hit. You can tell that just just by the
look of this cover, right, Nut's name is massive. They're
charging twenty four fucking dollars for this thing, and yeah,
it's a catastrophe, Molly. It's one of the greatest disasters
in fucking alt history publishing. If you read online forums
(23:49):
where alt history fans discuss this book, the rumors, credible
ones are that Newt promised Baine he was going to
devote a lot of time using his platform. Newt is
a famous pr house, right, He's constantly talking to the
Washington Post. He's willing to say like shitty stuff about
himself to them, as we've kind of covered earlier, because
his attitude is I should always be in the Post. Right.
(24:11):
So Bain is like, well, old Newt, he knows how
to get all the attention. We need to move some
real copies. Let's buy like a hundred thousand copies of
this fucking.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Book sells a thousand cos I know it's so funny
and yeah, Newton fails to do the actual pr that
he had promised to do, and as a result, nineteen
forty five is one of the biggest flops in publishing history.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
According to The Washington Post, for every hundred copies of
this book that were sent out by Bain, eighty one
were returned unsold, leaving the publisher with almost one hundred
thousand copies sitting around their warehouse. The scuttle butt is
that this was such a flop it nearly killed Bain entirely. Well,
I was doing my presearch for this episode, I found
a thread on a forum titled alternatehistory dot com from
(24:58):
two thousand and seven. Users speculated about why the sequel
never came to pass. One user bco wrote, nineteen forty
five practically bankrupted Baine books. They assumed a prominent figure
is Gingridge, would lead to huge sales, printed up a
lot of books, couldn't sell many of them. The idea
of a sequel was out of the question. Another user,
Amerigo Vespucci, replied with added context to make matters worse,
(25:21):
there was a falling out between Jim Bain and Forstin
over creative differences in the story and part Forston wrote
the story as a single volume, but in order to
better capitalize on the name on the cover, Baines split
it into two volumes. There were other differences as well,
and bain never really discussed the matter in public and
left a bad taste in his mouth. Even with Bain's passing,
I doubt we'll ever see the second volume. It'd be
(25:43):
too many legal problems surrounding it. Your best bet might
be to wait twenty years or so until Forston is
dead too. He is still alive into a law school
to become a Crackerjack lawyer and publicist, and then start
negotiations to have the second volume released from his estate.
I love the thought of a man who's that dedicated
to a nineteen forty five sequel. It's a thirty year
(26:04):
plan to get that book.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Does Hitler die?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Hitler is still alive at this.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
In the sequel, How does it end for Hitler?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I think the way this book is supposed to explain
things with Hitler is that like he's in a horrible
plane crash and forty one and so he gets all
fucked up and his people are able to like negotiate
a piece with the USSR, and as a result, he
kind of loses his mind. Like he's just like this damaged,
broken figure of a man in the book.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
But he was so mentally normal.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
He Yeah, he was doing so great before because this
is an alt history thing, and because Newt is the
kind of dude that he is. The main Nazi in
this is a guy named Otto Skorzeny, who is a
lot of people. He was a real guy. He was
one of the fathers of like modern special forces tactics,
like Screzenny is a major figure in the development of
(26:57):
like that kind of shit. I did find in a
there's a Fucking U Orlando Sentinel book review that says
that he died during an attack on crete, which is
not true. He lived until the seventies. He moved to
Spain so that Franco would protect him, and he lived
a fairly long life for a dude like him. But yeah,
(27:17):
I wanted to start here with one of them. I
was probably the most famous passage in this book, right,
the opening scene, which features a high powered DC politician
who happens to be If I'm not mistaken, the speaker
of the House.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
So this is self insert.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yes, this is Newt's self insert. And remember nineteen ninety five.
This is right around when Newt Gingrich is attacking Clinton
and saying that he should be impeached because he.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Describing self insert character as like very handsome.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
He describes his self insert character as having an affair
while he, as the real Speaker of the House, was
in this moment having an affair.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Okay, we have some honesty.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And specifically, the point of this chapter is his self
insert character hands over the secret to a Nazi spy
who is the person he's having an affair with that
the US is working on creating an atomic weapon like
the inciting incident in this is his self insert being
compromised and giving up nuclear secrets in order to get
(28:20):
laid and.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
He is, in the real world the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
The Speaker of the House, and having an affair with
a statu it'sund trustworthy to me. It's amazing stuff. September first,
nineteen forty five, Washington, DC. Also, I don't know why
they do this, but they spell prologue wrong.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
That's not so any ways to spell that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
At the end of this I've only ever seen it
spelled with an E at the end of it. I
don't understand why they're doing it this way, But Darling,
Germany and the United States are not at war. What
harm is there if we share the occasional bit of gossip.
Surely you don't think that I a loyal Swede? The
question trailed off in a lethal paser as his beautiful
(29:01):
and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly mock innocent appeal
in her eyes. Still, he mustn't let her see just
how much she moved him. A relationship had to have
some balance. He stretched, in turn, reached out over his
for his cigarettes and gold plated ronson on the Art
deco nightstand with its tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure
what to say, he made a production out of lighting
(29:22):
up and enjoying that first luxurious after bout inhalation. What
an unsexy way of talking about the aftermath of.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Sex, just to say Prologue NOE is a declarative programming
language designed for developing logic based AI applications.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I think, okay, so this is oh maybe this is
what open ai used to create their AI. Is it
all based on.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Gingrich saying, here, that's exactly what ian.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What a nightmare, What a hideous, hideous nightmare. So he's
having after sex smokes with this lady who's very obviously
Nazi spy.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, she's not even being kind of sly about it.
She said, what if we just if you really loved me,
you'd tell me national defense information?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah? Yeah, now here is Newt not at all talking
about his actual marriage and actual infidelity. Playfully to drive
home the potential law, she bit his shoulders than kissed
it better. Ah, hell, I don't want to. I wish
I could just divorce miss little Goody two shoes. I
like this arrangement, she laughed softly. Mistress to the chief
of staff of the president of Oh, sorry, the chief
(30:30):
of staff. So it's not exactly him, right, it's just
basically him. A nice title. Don't you think such a
book I could write? Mayhew shuddered at the thought. Don't
even joke about it. But he could trust her to
be discreet. He was sure he could trust her more
to cover his moment of doubt than for any other reason.
He harked back to her initial gambit. One thing, we
(30:50):
really don't have to worry about is a war between
Germany and the United States. It just isn't in the cards.
There's no way it could happen within the next year
or so. And after that we'll take it from me.
But nobody is going to dream of messing with the
United States, not even Adolf Hitler. I don't think there's
going to be a war either. But you seem so sure.
What is your big secret? You were so excited about
it when you came in here, and now you won't
(31:12):
tell me. Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana,
the huntress. Tell me, she hissed. Mayhew looked at his
delicious interrogator for a moment. Her intensity almost frightened him.
Then he was overcome by it by her. His had
been a strict and starchy upbringing, and his marriage had
not been born of love but of political opportunity, though
his wife didn't know that, so he capitulated. Besides, he
(31:35):
wanted to tell. What good were secrets if you couldn't share? Okay,
I surrender, Lucky for you, she purred, then left, such
games we have, she whispered, in his year, you play wonderfully.
Now tell Having given in characteristically, he stalled, Sure, you're
not looking for a story for your Swedish newspaper. She
just looked at him. He could tell she was tiring
(31:55):
of the delay. And then he tells her that we're
making a nuke.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Uh missed the annual training that they give men in
the government that like, beautiful women do not want to
with you with their tops off? Now women aren't just
aren't doing that?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, no, they never would. Uh. I think that's very funny.
I think there's so much, so many, so much off
putting language in this book, like thinking of Newt Gingridge
writing the word sex kitten gives me like physical shivers
up and down my spine, and it should do the
same to you. But you know what doesn't make me shiver?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
How cute my dog is in the background of this video.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That gives me a little shiver. That gives me a
little shiver, but like a joy shiver, right, yeah, joy shiver?
You know? Sure? Why not?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
The products and services that support.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Our pod, but do they support my dog?
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
No, they're neutral, they're neutral. They're cat people.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
She left. Uh huh the second you said no, she left?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Wow, Standra Brown Anderson.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
And weird.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
You can really tell this is election day?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, yeah, we're really We're half asking our nineteen forty
five episode.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So I can't wait to find out what happens when
she doesn't do anything with that secret.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, well, well she does and Hitler invades East Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Which is funny because there is a guy who does
love Hitler who has a compound in East Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
There's a lot, Molly, there's more than one guy who
loves Hitler and has a compound in East Tennessee. God,
so there's a Gizmoto article I found called newt Gingrid
should go back to writing science fiction. Yes, we should,
kind of urging him to finish this book. It has
(33:59):
some interesting stuff to say about this piece of fiction.
In any case, whether nineteen forty five is as historically
dodgy as many have claimed, it contains several vile elements
of total awesomeness. For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany
spends its time developing what the back cover describes as
science fiction super weapons. You think I'm kidding? How about
rockets that are remotely guided via television cameras or superjets
(34:21):
with drop tanks to provide ground support. Plus super rockets
and hydrogen powered submarines, plus every villain in front of
a real you got to stick super in front of it,
otherwise people won't know that it's better than the normal
kind of thing. Every villain in this book is hideous
and crazy. At some point, Scorzenny gets injured and loses
(34:41):
an eye so he can get an eyepatch or maybe
some kind of cyborg guy. In this passage, our hero
the square jaw Jim Martel, tries to shoot down Scorzenny's
plane and fails. Now ammunition gone, he can only watch
is the second and then the third plane lifted off.
Unlike the second plane, the third stayed low as the
pilot pushed it in just enough lefts rudder to cause
the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass
(35:03):
strips that it passed by, not twenty feet away from
where Jim stood otto. Skorzeny looked down, grinning demonically, and
James Martel finally understood the meaning of hatred. There's apparently
like three or four times where a character learns the
meaning of hatred, and that's because Newt Gingridge is an
educator likes it when people expand their minds. For a
little bit more coverage of some of the awkward lines
(35:24):
in this book, I'm going to turn to an Orlando
Sentinel piece titled as a writer, Gigrich makes a good Politician.
Good title for a book review. Nineteen forty five is
cluttered with awkward lines, like the exhaust vapors that swirled
in through the car's open windows stank like hell itself.
Then there's this, the scene brought to Martell's mind, the
(35:45):
absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby. Much
of the free puff, what's bringing that to mind? Why
would that bring that to mine? Have you ever seen that?
Is that a thing you can picture because you've witnessed it?
You know what this reminds me of? Yeah, you know,
this reminds me of a thing no one's ever seen
(36:07):
much of. Yeah, it's very funny. Much of the pre
publication hoopless surrounding nineteen forty five involved it supposedly steamy
sex scenes, some of which were exerpted last year in
The New York Times magazine when the book was still
in draft form. Gingrich vowed to tone down the sex.
He succeeded, for example, in bed with his Yeah, I mean,
(36:27):
we just read that passage. But I love that there
were leaks of this that were too horny and he
had to change the final draft. There's also a lot
of tweaking these. It's got to be newde right, who
else would lead these? Right, He's just testing the water.
How can we get a good amount of George HW.
(36:47):
Bush slander in this? Gingrich talks about like has a
character who knew him when he was a pilot, because
George H. W. Bush fought World War Two, who says,
if you needed someone to lead a group straight into
enemy black, he was your man, which is funny because
he was in fact shot down during the war. And
he had to also edit those portions to be nicer
(37:08):
to George H. W. Bush, which is cowardly new like you,
you've blown up any sort of legitimacy your book had
when you do stuff like that. Anyway, I want to
move to a passage midway through the book that's set
in Winston Churchill's office because one of the things that
happens while the Germans and vad East Tennessee Rommel conducts
the landing in Scotland. Of course they're moving down through
(37:32):
the Desert Fox is going to the Desert Fox. No one,
no one's better, no one better to conduct a war
on the Scottish Mors than the Desert Fox. Just poort
the Africa Corps right on over. They'll appreciate the breeze.
So I want to talk about this just because there's
a little bit here that's kind of relevant to modern politics.
(37:53):
Here's Winston Churchill talking uh and one of his aids.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I've both made the same face where we're like, oh no,
uh huh.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
He's talking to one of his aides again named Andrew.
For my part, I've ordered a secret alert for the
Royal Air Force starting at midnight. Also, the Army will
move on spring maneuver schedule up so as to increase
troop strengths throughout England. I'm also going to make a
speech before the House next week accusing Hitler of preparing
to launch an attack against US. Winston, I wish you
wouldn't do that. Why because the America First crowd will
(38:25):
go to town on you. That's why they claim it
was part of an ongoing plot to drag US into
yet another European conflict. They'll say it was a repeat
of what you and Roosevelt tried to do in forty
and forty one. They'll say you're deliberately trying to provoke Hitler,
that you came back to office intending to do just
that to finally drag us into a showdown with Germany.
If you make that speech, I won't be able to
back you up. A cold, static laden silence was the
(38:48):
only response. Even Roosevelt didn't start to move openly until
after the forty elections. You know, Andrew continued, after a
moment's pause. You know that I agreed with him one
hundred percent. I could see the threat as far back
as the denownment Versailles and the move into the Rhineland.
I knew then, and I know now that the maniac
son of a bitch would never stop on his own,
and that nothing short of a full scale war with
the United States could stop him. We should have been
(39:10):
in it back in forty one. If it hadn't been
for that damned accident, he'd have declared war on us
after Pearl Harbor. He all but told me that himself
in forty one we'd have won easily. Now he's ten
times more dangerous. I just love that the America first
guys are the bad guy in nineteen ninety five, and
fucking Gingrich is absolutely going to wind up on that
side here. Yeah. Now, there's a couple other fun moments
(39:32):
in another chapter not long after this, we go to
Rommel talking with some of his people, and there's a
line here that's very funny. Americans would be startled to
discover the degree of camaraderie that existed not just between
different ranks within the German officer corps, but between officers
and rankers. The practice had its roots in the mutinous
conditions prevalent in the German military at the end of
(39:54):
the Great War. Perhaps Germans could afford the informality because
German society was early status conscious, whereas Americans soone ready
to grant superior superiority to anybody needed the outward manifestations
of rank, because otherwise they would lose track of who
issued orders and who took them. It's an interesting description
of American culture.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
A strange read of Germans. I don't know that there
was informality in ranks.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, informality in the German military. I think he's trying
to talk about like Alftrig's tactic, which was this kind
of anti It was this kind of flattening of military
hierarchies in certain specific ways that came about as a
result of like combat in World War One, where you
were saying basically, like unit leading officers should have a
(40:43):
lot of freedom to like conduct advances and kind of
carry out attacks in a way that sort of they
see fit, rather than having to follow orders to the
letter from above, right.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
It was.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I just don't know that translated into sort of the
social I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I would say the German military was particularly informal between
officers and civilians, especially since, like the Prussian younger officer
class was still a major part of the German military
in this period.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
So what happens when they get to Tennessee, is it
like a ground invasion?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I think they, I mean they come in from the air,
right of course. And then I mean I can tell
you what happens, which is that Sergeant Alvin York and
a bunch of elderly veterans formal militia and stop the Nazis. Largely,
that's who saves the day. Because Newt's got to have
his like pro Second Amendment stuff, so he like puts
it in the mouth of like an elderly sergeant York fighting.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Off old men of Appalachia.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Just look by that can buy that. I mean, the
SS proved in the actual World War two that they
were not very good at fighting an insurgency, and I
think that Appalachia is worse terrain to fight an insurgency
than anywhere in western Russia. So I'm going to say, yeah, probably,
(42:00):
probably that would have gone bad for the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
So this could conceivably have been an interesting alternate history,
the Waffen SS trying to like fight their way down
to town through apple Achian just getting their shit wrecked.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Well, the problem with this book because that isn't it,
And that's a book I would read, especially if someone
like that, someone less problematic, like Harry Turtledove had written
The Fucker. But that's not like Nute actually Nute and
Forstune kind of fall for a standard pitfall in writing
fiction here, writing particularly like speculative past fiction, is you
(42:34):
have this point that's the actual thing that you want
to get that's actually interesting, which is like an insurgent
war in apple Atchia between the Nazis and like elderly
American World War one veterans. That's a fun premise, but
you don't get to it until the very end of
the book. Right by the end of the book, Hitler's
you know, geared up for a full scale invasion and
(42:56):
we're actually getting ready to have like you know that
he's set up like a navy conflict between like US
carrier groups and Nazi like the German navy. Like there's
a lot of cool stuff that's happening by the end potentially,
but it's not really a part of the story because
he feels the need to like go back much fur it.
Like you should always start a book at the thing
(43:16):
that's most interesting to you, right, Like you don't actually
want to waste a lot of time building up to that,
even if you're like, well, people are gonna want to
know how we got here, No they're not. They don't
give a shit. Start at whatever's most interesting. You know,
it's a rookie mistake. Maybe if Newton hadn't been so
busy being the Speaker of the House, he'd have been
able to get it right.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
So what you're saying is the sequel is probably a banger, and.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Need to get a sequel as a banger. It was
all apparently intended to be one book that's too long.
But yeah, you know, I don't know. We probably don't
need to go through this whole thing, especially because I
it's the election and I.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Don't think thatst Jim Martel right the.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Story march Al Martinal, you know the name, yeah, yeah, yeah,
also played by Christopher uh what's his name? From The
Lord of the Rings. I don't know. I think I'm
good on this book. We had forty five minutes, right,
(44:19):
that's all we owe you on our on our off week.
This is an off week. We're taking. We're taking a breather.
We're trying not to focus too much on the news
because nothing interesting is going to happen yet. You in
the future know, so just scream at past Robert and
Molly about what happened.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And if I don't get any message from the future,
I will assume that we all die this week.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Please? Is it for the whole world? Thank god? Thank goodness. Anyway, Molly,
how do you feel about the alternate past? What's you
what's your favorite World War two counterfactual? Do you spend
much time thinking about, like, for example, what if the
Germans hadn't invaded Russia but had focused all of their
(45:03):
military might on North Africa.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
You know, as a woman, Robert, I'm going to say, no,
I have never thought about that.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
All.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
That's a shame. I spent a lot of time doing
World War two counterfactually.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Now I could run get my partner. I think probably
could talk about this for hours. I think this is
the thing that men like to think about. Oh yeah,
but no, no, I have never considered this.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So are you more of a World War one counterfactual guy? Like?
What if? What if Serbia had had taken over the
Austro Hungarian Empire? What if? What if by World War
two the great land power in Europe was the Serbian Empire?
Speaker 4 (45:40):
What if?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
I'm always I'm always asking myself like that, Sylvia, aren't
you always asking about that?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I'll tell I'll tell you one thing. We never would
have stopped putting cigarettes in movies. Right If Serbia is
like a China sized like market for American television and film,
cigarettes don't ever get cut out of Hollywood now, So
that's good. That's my prediction.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Anyway, Molly, do you have anything you want to plug?
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, you should listen to my podcast Weird Little Guys
assuming no acts of terrorism happened this week, I won't
have any new news to cover in there.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
But there have already been five bob threats against poling
locations in Georgia.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Oh, they did pick up a guy the other day
with an armed bomb about to blow up the power
grid in Nashville. So it does keep happening To.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Say there will be no acts of terror rism.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah, well, you can tune into Weird Little Guys to
hear about these kind of weird little guys who do
things like that.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, speaking of weird little guys, Newt Gingridge probably a
lot littler because he's extremely old now, so he's weird.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Check out Knut's wife's Instagram. She photoshops her face to
be completely smooth in every picture.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
It's in beautiful, beautiful, and presumably, if this book is true,
she's plying him for nuclear secrets. She's, you know what, the.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Ambassador to the Vatican. She's not anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Wow, And that is what a do nothing job. I know,
Make me ambassador to the Vatican, because you know what
I'm going to do. I'm going to get into those catacombs.
I'm going to steal some saints bones. You know I'm
gonna have.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
A bigger I'm getting the Coronavisor. Oh oh wow, hops
time machine.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Anyways, time machine hopefully.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I love I love the idea that the Pope has
a time machine because my imagination is, rather than doing
like anything that would help the Catholic Church, he just
repeatedly goes back in time to like put a thumbnail
on Martin Luther's chair, like he's just constantly fucking with
Martin Luther a little bit.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
I don't think the Coronavisor allows you to manipulate the
past only to view it.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Oh oh well, then I would go look at dinosaurs, obviously,
That's that's the only thing I would be interested. I'm
proud to say I wouldn't stop any historical crimes with
a time machine. I'm doing nothing but dinosaur related stuff
if I get access to a time machine. Yeah yeah, anyways,
(48:19):
so I'm go have sex with nude Gangridge and get
secrets from him. I hope there's only one way to learn.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
I hope future everybody is okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Okay, and you know where a rubber you don't know
where Nut's been, doesn't know where.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Behind the bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(49:03):
at Behind the Bastards
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast that it is on election day, but
you won't hear this on election day. You know how
the election has gone? You listening have information in December? Yeah, yeah,
probably in December, which hopefully means the election is over
by then. But god willing, Yeah, god willing, the election
(00:30):
is almost certainly over, which means, you know, find a
way to communicate to the past and let us know
so that we can gamble on it. That's That's what
I'd like you to do. Anyway, speaking of gambling, you
know who knows all of the words to the classic
song The Gambler. Our guest today, Molly Conger. Molly, do
(00:53):
you know when to hold him? Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I know when to fold him. That's as much of
that song as I know.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
D well done.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Oh my god, I think I only know that from
Info Wars.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I do love watching Alex Jones sing that and the Highwayman,
Poncho and Lefty.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
You know, you're just grooving. It's things are going well
for als when he's doing that.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
That's the most jealous I ever am of him. Because
we're not allowed to use we have no licensing agreement
with any company that owns songs. Yeah, he must, otherwise
he wouldn't be allowed to air them like that. I
think there because there are like there are like like
ways that you as a broadcaster can just like make
a deal for access to you know, they have X
(01:39):
number of songs and we can use them for whatever.
I think that exists. I think that's got to be
what you were somewhat correct.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
But that doesn't mean that Alex Jones has a deal
with them. He could totally be grifting, because yeah, that's
what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I think he'd have been sued before then about this.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Maybe they're so chiper today, Robert Yep, I'm I'm chipper.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
I'm doing good.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
How many did you get, Bud?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I had like six last night. I tried to get
to bed early, but I really couldn't get to sleep
before like three thirty in the morning. I don't know. Uh, well,
it's behind the bastards and we're all trying not to
obsess over the election, and I thought, you know, we
all might be hoping that history goes a different way
(02:25):
depending on what happens today, So why not read a
work of alternate history? Uh? You know, we love doing
book episodes over here because it's lets me rest a
little bit. The trouble is finding a book. You can't
just use any book, and it's sometimes hard to figure
it out. And thank god I got very lucky. Margaret
(02:46):
Killjoy was over at my house recently, not bragging, although
I am kind of bragging.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
You know some celebrities.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I know some celebrities. I know a famous kill Joy
who's also a famous Margaret, And she brought me a
book that a fan had given her at an event,
because our fans are unhinged and have just decided sometimes
we should hand one member of the team an absolutely
terrible piece of literature to give to another member of
the team. And the book that I have received is
(03:18):
nineteen forty five by Newt Gingridge.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Mollie, Wow, what if things had been different?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
What if things had been different? Do you know much
about old Newt in this book?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
So I did not realize and this is this is
on me entirely. You know, I know a little bit
about you know, old Moon based Newt. But question was
he had written like thirty works of fiction.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
He has written a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Where does he find the time?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I mean, he doesn't spend a lot of his political career,
does not take up a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Okay. You know usually when you see like, oh, you know,
this politician has written a book, men want memoir or whatever,
and it's like, okay, well, like a campaign staffer wrote that.
That's for pr No, this is his passion. Yeah, he's
writing these Yeah, this is what he really wanted to do.
And my god, it's a I wish we had some
(04:17):
sort of program in place where when we find some
guy who has like an artistic dream but also weird
right wing politics, we just kind of like swallow our
pride and fund, like, have a have a government agency
buy up copies of their books so they feel like
a success. Anything to keep them from running for office. Right,
Hitler pain?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, what if let Hitler paint. Let Ben Shapiro make
his dog shit TV show about fucking law students.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And just sort of like a Truman Show type experience
encapsulate them safely.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
We have to Truman show these people, right, run a fake.
You know that White House Correspondence dinner that supposedly got
Trump committed him to run for office. Hold a fake
one of those where everybody just talks about how nice
he is and how much they admire him, you know, like, yeah,
we really have to put these people in bubbles. It's
the kindest thing for all of us. Oh man, So yeah,
(05:13):
we're going to be reading nineteen forty five. As you
might guess, it is a World War two alternate history. Yeah,
of course, Sophie, what else could it be? What else
could it be? And this it's a particularly.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
That but I did not process it. I was like,
I was like, that's not what it is.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Oh yeah, of course of course, and it's a wild one.
I'm going to tell you that, right right, So our
author for today, I'm going to go through a little
bit of a scripted portion. Here is Newton, Leroy Gingrich,
le Roy, Yes, king Rich. Yeah, you can't not do
the Leroy Jenkins thing, which is just going to be
(05:51):
incomprehensible for anyone in our audience that's like younger than
their mid thirties. You don't know who Leroy Jenkins was?
Remember the old Times pieces as shit? Sorry anyway, there's
a post in the subreddit now saying that I'm an
old man and all my references are old man references,
and the thing that makes me angriest is they're like,
(06:12):
he never references the Simpsons, for many episodes later than
the year two thousand and I'm sorry I never referenced
the Simpsons episode from later than nineteen ninety eight, because
that's when they stopped being good.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
You're not an old man.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Thank you, Sophie. But you called me an old man
on the show.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, that's that's because I'm allowed to It's okay when
I do it.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
They're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
You are used to them. To me, you are anxious.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I'm not. They haven't even seen Alien four. These scrubs,
these babies. None of them know what Sequest DSV was. Molly,
did you watch sequest.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh my god, Oh my god. Go get a learner's permit.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Anyway, I think we're the same age.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
We might be, but mentally. Newton Leroy Gingrich was born
two years before the title of his novel, on June seventeenth,
nineteen forty three. Knut's father was a career soldier, but
(07:18):
Newt takes a different path. He's actually an art student.
He gets like an ma in the mid sixties, and
like any guy who could. During the Vietnam War, he
gets a deferment from being drafted by arguing that he
was a student and a young father. Remember that, because
there's going to be a funny code of that a
little bit later in this story.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well, we all know Nuts a family man.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
We all know Nuts of family man. We all know
nuts big not fighting in wars, but not a big
not having wars. Guy Newton is elected to Congress in
nineteen seventy nine. In an address to college Republicans before
his election, he said, I think one of the great
problems we have in the Republican Party is that we
don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to
(08:02):
be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful. In all those
boy scout words, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they've done a
terrible job, a pathetic job in my lifetime. In my
lifetime I was born in nineteen forty three, we have
not had a competent national Republican leader, not ever. And
it's very clear from that context that a competent leader
is a mean one, right, Like that's what he's missing,
(08:24):
Like Richard Nixon's just too nice.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
And politics really needs is more vitriol.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, needs more real assholes. I think that's interesting because
it makes a case that I think is an important
thing to understand if you're trying to like puzzle out
why we are where we are now in American politics,
And the basics of that case is well, because Republicans
lost their minds when Nixon had to step down, and
everything they've done since then has been dedicated to stopping
(08:51):
making sure that no other Republican would ever have to
leave office, no matter what crimes they committed. Right, And yeah,
no modern press for that. So in nineteen eighty five,
as a congressman, Newton told an interviewer I think from
the Washington Post who asked about his deferment during Vietnam, quote,
given everything, I believe, a large part of me thinks
(09:13):
I should have gone over. Oh if only Newton, I
do wish you had gone to fight in Vietnam. Now.
That same year, when President Reagan held a summit with
Soviet pre Premier Gorbachev, Newton called it quote the most
dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with
Chamberlain in nineteen thirty eight at Munich. And I love
(09:35):
the idea like Gorbachev is a Hitler figure, This guy
who wouldn't even shoot back during the protests that overthrew
his government is like a Hitler, you know, the future
Pizza Hut spokes their Gorbachev as a Hitler kind of figure.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Areddie Hitler, you would have loved Pizza Hut.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
That does tell you where our boy Newt is. Unlike
the political alignment chart, right, he sees Ronald Reagan as
a fucking Neville Chamberlain type. Now, that same year, Gingridge
made the news for comparing a house race that was
in question in Indiana to the Holocaust. Here's a quote
about it. Hey, I'm going to read you the quote, Molly.
(10:19):
Here's a quote about it, as relayed by an article
in Mother Jones, and it starts with Newt.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the Holocaust,
about the incredible period in which Nazi Germany killed millions
of people and in particular, came close to wiping out
European jewry. If someone said to me two days ago,
talking frankly about the McIntyre affair in which Democrats refused
to seat the winner of a house race until they
conducted a recount, and the efforts by the Democratic leadership
(10:46):
to not allow the people of Indiana to have their representative,
but instead to impose upon them someone else, something in
which he quotes, something in which he quotes German poet
Martin Eemuhler. I have never quite until tonight, been able
to link it together. Or Niemuler, the great German theologists
said at one point when the German, when the Nazis
came for the Jews, I did nothing, And when the
(11:06):
Nazis came for me, there was no one left, right,
I think, sorry, I think it's Ni Muler, But this like,
so basically the Democrats are like, well, until we finish
a recount, we're not going to sit this guy because
there's questions about the election and fucking nude is like,
this is the same as the holocausts?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
So at what point did millions of people die? Did
they kill all the voters?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Did they murder everybody? It just kind of seems like
they were doing a thing that legally is a part
of the election, like having a recount, waiting to seat
the elected leader until you do their recount. Is that
the same as killing millions of people in factories of death?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
There needs to be a swear jar for people who
abuse the knee Mueller poem. Yeah, yeah, you need to
put a dollar in the jar, because that was not appropriate.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I think anytime you reference it you have to lose,
Like it should be like a Yukuza thing where you
have to give up one of the joints of a finger, right,
And maybe that'll cause people to be like a lot
more care about when they deploy that bad boy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I heard it in closing arguments at a trial last month,
a trial for a man who is a white nationalist,
and his lawyer's argument was, you know what with this,
this is free speech. You're trying him for his free speech,
and it is closing arguments. He's, you know, he refers
to the nimo or poem, except you know, the poem
starts first they came for the Communists, and I said
nothing because I was not a Communist. And then they
(12:22):
came for the Jews, and I said nothing because I
was not a Jew. And he says, he's going to
quote the poem, but he says, first they came for
one group, yeah, and then they came for another group,
and it's like, what are the groups?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
A group is a Nazi? Yeah, first thing came for
the Nazis, and I did not speak out because I
was not a Nazi man. It's abuse. It's very funny, Okay,
so let's get back into it. Newts served as the
(12:55):
Republican Speaker of the House from nineteen ninety five to
ninety nine. Gigrich was the arc at of the Republican
victory in the nineteen ninety four congressional election, which legitimately
set the stage for nearly everything the right has been
able to accomplish since. Without the Contract with America and
his retaking of the House, it's possible we see it's
possible that we see no George W. Bush presidency, no
(13:18):
right wing Supreme Court today, and at least a lot
less of a right wing drift on behalf of the
Democrats who stumbled to fight him. Right, this is a
major move in US politics. I don't think a lot
of folks who you know, whose awareness of politics has
sort of started since the Trump years, know much about this.
But you had, you know, slick Willie stop George H. W.
(13:39):
Bush from getting a second term. It drove these people crazy.
You have briefly the Democrats in control of government, and
then in ninety four Newt leads I think they pick
up fifty four House seats. It's this massive sweeping victory
that comes with this thing called the Contract with America,
which is basically Newt introducing what becomes kind of the
(14:00):
neocon platform. Right, And this is like a really I mean,
it's it's one of the most important moments in modern
electoral history. Right. Newt is one of the first conservatives
to see a real promise in creating a right wing
system of education to push conservative values. In nineteen ninety three,
he crafted a college course taught at Reinart College called
(14:23):
Renewing American Civilization. We're looking at this as like sort
of a proto what's that fucking guy who does the
Little Kids TV? Bullshit?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Like the university Prager University. Yeah right, this is a
precursor to Prager University. Right, I mean he was on
the Hillsdale track.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, yeah, And it's eventually televised in a cable channel
called Mind Extension University.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, you got to extend your mind now. Obviously, he
was a ferocious opponent of gay rights and the degradation
of American values in the modern era. He talked a
lot about how you know people today, especially because of
you know, democrats gaining such cultural dominance are just you know,
awful compared to you know, the the glorious greatest generation
(15:12):
who really understood morality. He also cheated on his second
wife with a staffer who became his third wife, while
he was advocating for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over infidelity. Now,
this should not have been surprising to anyone who knew that.
In nineteen eighty nine, in an interview with The Washington Post,
he explained that he fought with his second wife not
because it mattered to him what they were fighting about,
(15:34):
but because he had a habit of dominance that had
been stoked by his time in politics. He estimated to
the Post that his marriage had a fifty three to
forty seven percent chance of making it.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
Oh Man.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Family values fifty three forty seven. I mean that's I
wouldn't met on those odds.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Fascinating, fascinating odds to give your own maya. Now, Newt
has a long and fascinating history, and I do recommend
reading that. There's a twenty twelve Mother Jones article with
some of his best quotes that will link in the
show notes if you want a better understanding of the man. Though,
you know that's a good way of getting it. But
for our purposes today, we're going to be focusing on
(16:19):
the novel nineteen forty five, which he co authored. It
is set in an alternate world where the US defeated Japan,
but Hitler never declared war on the US and so
we never got involved in a war with Germany. The
Nazis won their war with the Soviets. They took most
of their European holdings and forced them to accept a piece.
(16:39):
They then boxed the Brits into a corner. A few
years later, they carried out a surprise attack on the
United States in order to kill our nuclear scientists and
stop the completion of what in our universe we know
is the Manhattan Project. Now, because of where this takes place,
i'll spoil it for you, Molly. This book centers around
the Waffen SS invading East Tennessee. That's what this book
(17:02):
is about.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
How they get all the way to Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
They've got their wonder weapons, They've got these newt Is. Again,
he's like a History Channel history buff, right, So a
huge part of this book is like the Nazis building
all of these wonder weapons that were mostly theoretical during
the actual war, including this like massive you know, bombing
type plane that they had kind of been talking about
(17:27):
making that probably never would have worked out. Like it's
all sorts of like nonsense sci fi weapons, right, And.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
What didn't they want with Tennessee specifically.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It's where the nuclear program was headed.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Well, actually I think it was initially before they moved
to Los Alamos. I think they had it was somewhere
in like the southeast before they moved to Los Alamos
that they had like the early stages of the nuclear program.
And I think he's just kind of positing a much
more primitive nuclear program. But I'm going to pull up
the book, Molly, because at this point you should see
(17:58):
this bad boy. Look at this. Look at this.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Look at that cover art.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
There we go, there we go, full cover art. Look
at the size of his name. There it looks king
Ridge nineteen forty five. Yeah, like it's a book about
a two year old Newt Gingrich and kind.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Of that's like a sci fi fielder. If a listener,
you know, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I
don't ever go to YouTube dot com. I'm not watching
this on YouTube. The cover of the book is on
the books Wikipedia page, and it has kind of a
sci fi vibe to it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, now I want you to look at the back here.
First off, Nut's smaller than I expected when you see
him in a photo like this. This is a picture
of him with his co author, William R. Forstun Uh
and with Jim Bain, who is the owner of Baine Publishing.
And we're going to be talking a lot about Baine Publishing.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I also related to Baine Capital or Bane. The Batman
villain no.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Not at all spelled differently, has not broken Batman's back.
I do. I do really like the hitler on the
back here. You can see him here. He's he just
looks so happy.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
You hold it up to me on camera, on camera,
other camera.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, it's hard to figure out here, Yeah that way, Yeah,
there we go. Wow, that's a good hitler. Look at him.
Look at him.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
The choice Spokinger.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Is six feet tall. How big are those other men?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Oh wow? Because yeah, I thought he was actually tall
so these guys. So I think it's William Forst. It
is just kind of a fucking mountain of a man. Yeah,
he's got to be like six three sixty four. It's
a big guy. Jim Bain not a big guy, also
has the and I say this with all loved pornographers,
he has the smile of a pornographer, right like, look
(19:47):
at that. That's a man who's looking at you naked.
Like there's no, there's no, there's no other way to
describe the look on Jim Bayin's face. Speaking of people
who look at you naked. Our sponsors don't they would
never do that. They're gentlemen, you know, or gentle thems,
because I think they probably don't identify as a binary
(20:11):
gender given the bar raytheon is definitely non binary. Yes,
speaking of non binary, here's more ads and we're back.
So I want to get into the book jacket of this,
of this mammajama. Let's let's see what this is about.
(20:31):
And you can tell right away on the inside. This
was a nineteen ninety five, twenty four US dollars That
is kind of pressing way way too much money to
spend on Newton Gingrich's nineteen forty five Holy.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Shit, twenty nine to ninety nine for that hardback today
would be pushing it.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, this is like maybe like a fifteen dollars book. Man,
that's a lot. That's a lot, So introducing Lieutenant Commander
James Martel. He's the right man in the right place
at a very bad time. The year is nineteen forty five.
In Europe, the Third Reich reigns triumphant, the Soviet Union
is a fragment of its former self, and Britain has
(21:11):
accepted a dictated armistice in the Pacific after a brief,
sharp war with Japan. America is the only significant military
presence now. The world's two superpowers a ee each other,
warily across an Atlantic Ocean that daily grows smaller. The
big show is about to start. Who will win? The
Americans with their formidable industrial base and superior logistical techniques,
(21:34):
or the Germans with their science fiction super weapons that
turn out not to be fictional. After all, only one
thing is certain. If America is beaten, this alternative Reich
will last one thousand years. Join Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich and fellow historian William all Our Forestune and
a world that, save for Adolf Hitler's inexplicable hot folly
(21:55):
and prematurely declaring war in the United States in nineteen
forty one, would have been.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Just revisiting the timeline here. So he's not writing this
in his spare time, like in his retirement, or this
is speaker.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
This is a year after he like orchestrates a complete
upending of US electoral politics.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Should he be focusing on like the government?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
No, No, I think we can all agree this was
a better use of his time to doing his job. Also,
I just find it very funny that he describes himself
and his co author as fellow historians, because, as a spoiler,
they are not. Neither of them are historians. Well, Forestine
is a little bit of a historian, but he's like
(22:40):
a historian who went immediately into writing alternate histories. He
is a professor of history at Montreat College in north
But that's not a yeah, look, I'll give it. I'll
give a partial to Forestin right, because again, he spends
most of his career like his big job is writing
(23:02):
a bunch of articles for Boys Life magazine as well
as young adult novels. And does that make you a
real historian. I'm going to put that. I'm gonna put
that on the cusp. But fucking Newt Gingrid certainly is
not a real historian. Forstin's main publisher was Bain, who
back in the early to mid nineteen nineties was a
major purveyor of of pulp sci fi and alternate history books.
(23:25):
That changed as a result of nineteen forty five, which,
due to Gingrich's star power, was expected to be a
major hit. You can tell that just just by the
look of this cover, right, Nut's name is massive. They're
charging twenty four fucking dollars for this thing, and yeah,
it's a catastrophe, Molly. It's one of the greatest disasters
in fucking alt history publishing. If you read online forums
(23:49):
where alt history fans discuss this book, the rumors, credible
ones are that Newt promised Baine he was going to
devote a lot of time using his platform. Newt is
a famous pr house, right, He's constantly talking to the
Washington Post. He's willing to say like shitty stuff about
himself to them, as we've kind of covered earlier, because
his attitude is I should always be in the Post. Right.
(24:11):
So Bain is like, well, old Newt, he knows how
to get all the attention. We need to move some
real copies. Let's buy like a hundred thousand copies of
this fucking.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Book sells a thousand cos I know it's so funny
and yeah, Newton fails to do the actual pr that
he had promised to do, and as a result, nineteen
forty five is one of the biggest flops in publishing history.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
According to The Washington Post, for every hundred copies of
this book that were sent out by Bain, eighty one
were returned unsold, leaving the publisher with almost one hundred
thousand copies sitting around their warehouse. The scuttle butt is
that this was such a flop it nearly killed Bain entirely. Well,
I was doing my presearch for this episode, I found
a thread on a forum titled alternatehistory dot com from
(24:58):
two thousand and seven. Users speculated about why the sequel
never came to pass. One user bco wrote, nineteen forty
five practically bankrupted Baine books. They assumed a prominent figure
is Gingridge, would lead to huge sales, printed up a
lot of books, couldn't sell many of them. The idea
of a sequel was out of the question. Another user,
Amerigo Vespucci, replied with added context to make matters worse,
(25:21):
there was a falling out between Jim Bain and Forstin
over creative differences in the story and part Forston wrote
the story as a single volume, but in order to
better capitalize on the name on the cover, Baines split
it into two volumes. There were other differences as well,
and bain never really discussed the matter in public and
left a bad taste in his mouth. Even with Bain's passing,
I doubt we'll ever see the second volume. It'd be
(25:43):
too many legal problems surrounding it. Your best bet might
be to wait twenty years or so until Forston is
dead too. He is still alive into a law school
to become a Crackerjack lawyer and publicist, and then start
negotiations to have the second volume released from his estate.
I love the thought of a man who's that dedicated
to a nineteen forty five sequel. It's a thirty year
(26:04):
plan to get that book.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Does Hitler die?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Hitler is still alive at this.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
In the sequel, How does it end for Hitler?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
I think the way this book is supposed to explain
things with Hitler is that like he's in a horrible
plane crash and forty one and so he gets all
fucked up and his people are able to like negotiate
a piece with the USSR, and as a result, he
kind of loses his mind. Like he's just like this damaged,
broken figure of a man in the book.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
But he was so mentally normal.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
He Yeah, he was doing so great before because this
is an alt history thing, and because Newt is the
kind of dude that he is. The main Nazi in
this is a guy named Otto Skorzeny, who is a
lot of people. He was a real guy. He was
one of the fathers of like modern special forces tactics,
like Screzenny is a major figure in the development of
(26:57):
like that kind of shit. I did find in a
there's a Fucking U Orlando Sentinel book review that says
that he died during an attack on crete, which is
not true. He lived until the seventies. He moved to
Spain so that Franco would protect him, and he lived
a fairly long life for a dude like him. But yeah,
(27:17):
I wanted to start here with one of them. I
was probably the most famous passage in this book, right,
the opening scene, which features a high powered DC politician
who happens to be If I'm not mistaken, the speaker
of the House.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
So this is self insert.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yes, this is Newt's self insert. And remember nineteen ninety five.
This is right around when Newt Gingrich is attacking Clinton
and saying that he should be impeached because he.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Describing self insert character as like very handsome.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
He describes his self insert character as having an affair
while he, as the real Speaker of the House, was
in this moment having an affair.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Okay, we have some honesty.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And specifically, the point of this chapter is his self
insert character hands over the secret to a Nazi spy
who is the person he's having an affair with that
the US is working on creating an atomic weapon like
the inciting incident in this is his self insert being
compromised and giving up nuclear secrets in order to get
(28:20):
laid and.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
He is, in the real world the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
The Speaker of the House, and having an affair with
a statu it'sund trustworthy to me. It's amazing stuff. September first,
nineteen forty five, Washington, DC. Also, I don't know why
they do this, but they spell prologue wrong.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
That's not so any ways to spell that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
At the end of this I've only ever seen it
spelled with an E at the end of it. I
don't understand why they're doing it this way, But Darling,
Germany and the United States are not at war. What
harm is there if we share the occasional bit of gossip.
Surely you don't think that I a loyal Swede? The
question trailed off in a lethal paser as his beautiful
(29:01):
and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly mock innocent appeal
in her eyes. Still, he mustn't let her see just
how much she moved him. A relationship had to have
some balance. He stretched, in turn, reached out over his
for his cigarettes and gold plated ronson on the Art
deco nightstand with its tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure
what to say, he made a production out of lighting
(29:22):
up and enjoying that first luxurious after bout inhalation. What
an unsexy way of talking about the aftermath of.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Sex, just to say Prologue NOE is a declarative programming
language designed for developing logic based AI applications.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I think, okay, so this is oh maybe this is
what open ai used to create their AI. Is it
all based on.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
Gingrich saying, here, that's exactly what ian.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What a nightmare, What a hideous, hideous nightmare. So he's
having after sex smokes with this lady who's very obviously
Nazi spy.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, she's not even being kind of sly about it.
She said, what if we just if you really loved me,
you'd tell me national defense information?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah? Yeah, now here is Newt not at all talking
about his actual marriage and actual infidelity. Playfully to drive
home the potential law, she bit his shoulders than kissed
it better. Ah, hell, I don't want to. I wish
I could just divorce miss little Goody two shoes. I
like this arrangement, she laughed softly. Mistress to the chief
of staff of the president of Oh, sorry, the chief
(30:30):
of staff. So it's not exactly him, right, it's just
basically him. A nice title. Don't you think such a
book I could write? Mayhew shuddered at the thought. Don't
even joke about it. But he could trust her to
be discreet. He was sure he could trust her more
to cover his moment of doubt than for any other reason.
He harked back to her initial gambit. One thing, we
(30:50):
really don't have to worry about is a war between
Germany and the United States. It just isn't in the cards.
There's no way it could happen within the next year
or so. And after that we'll take it from me.
But nobody is going to dream of messing with the
United States, not even Adolf Hitler. I don't think there's
going to be a war either. But you seem so sure.
What is your big secret? You were so excited about
it when you came in here, and now you won't
(31:12):
tell me. Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana,
the huntress. Tell me, she hissed. Mayhew looked at his
delicious interrogator for a moment. Her intensity almost frightened him.
Then he was overcome by it by her. His had
been a strict and starchy upbringing, and his marriage had
not been born of love but of political opportunity, though
his wife didn't know that, so he capitulated. Besides, he
(31:35):
wanted to tell. What good were secrets if you couldn't share? Okay,
I surrender, Lucky for you, she purred, then left, such
games we have, she whispered, in his year, you play wonderfully.
Now tell Having given in characteristically, he stalled, Sure, you're
not looking for a story for your Swedish newspaper. She
just looked at him. He could tell she was tiring
(31:55):
of the delay. And then he tells her that we're
making a nuke.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Uh missed the annual training that they give men in
the government that like, beautiful women do not want to
with you with their tops off? Now women aren't just
aren't doing that?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, no, they never would. Uh. I think that's very funny.
I think there's so much, so many, so much off
putting language in this book, like thinking of Newt Gingridge
writing the word sex kitten gives me like physical shivers
up and down my spine, and it should do the
same to you. But you know what doesn't make me shiver?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
How cute my dog is in the background of this video.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
That gives me a little shiver. That gives me a
little shiver, but like a joy shiver, right, yeah, joy shiver?
You know? Sure? Why not?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
The products and services that support.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Our pod, but do they support my dog?
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
No, they're neutral, they're neutral. They're cat people.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
She left. Uh huh the second you said no, she left?
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Wow, Standra Brown Anderson.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
And weird.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
You can really tell this is election day?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, yeah, we're really We're half asking our nineteen forty
five episode.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So I can't wait to find out what happens when
she doesn't do anything with that secret.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, well, well she does and Hitler invades East Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Which is funny because there is a guy who does
love Hitler who has a compound in East Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
There's a lot, Molly, there's more than one guy who
loves Hitler and has a compound in East Tennessee. God,
so there's a Gizmoto article I found called newt Gingrid
should go back to writing science fiction. Yes, we should,
kind of urging him to finish this book. It has
(33:59):
some interesting stuff to say about this piece of fiction.
In any case, whether nineteen forty five is as historically
dodgy as many have claimed, it contains several vile elements
of total awesomeness. For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany
spends its time developing what the back cover describes as
science fiction super weapons. You think I'm kidding? How about
rockets that are remotely guided via television cameras or superjets
(34:21):
with drop tanks to provide ground support. Plus super rockets
and hydrogen powered submarines, plus every villain in front of
a real you got to stick super in front of it,
otherwise people won't know that it's better than the normal
kind of thing. Every villain in this book is hideous
and crazy. At some point, Scorzenny gets injured and loses
(34:41):
an eye so he can get an eyepatch or maybe
some kind of cyborg guy. In this passage, our hero
the square jaw Jim Martel, tries to shoot down Scorzenny's
plane and fails. Now ammunition gone, he can only watch
is the second and then the third plane lifted off.
Unlike the second plane, the third stayed low as the
pilot pushed it in just enough lefts rudder to cause
the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass
(35:03):
strips that it passed by, not twenty feet away from
where Jim stood otto. Skorzeny looked down, grinning demonically, and
James Martel finally understood the meaning of hatred. There's apparently
like three or four times where a character learns the
meaning of hatred, and that's because Newt Gingridge is an
educator likes it when people expand their minds. For a
little bit more coverage of some of the awkward lines
(35:24):
in this book, I'm going to turn to an Orlando
Sentinel piece titled as a writer, Gigrich makes a good Politician.
Good title for a book review. Nineteen forty five is
cluttered with awkward lines, like the exhaust vapors that swirled
in through the car's open windows stank like hell itself.
Then there's this, the scene brought to Martell's mind, the
(35:45):
absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby. Much
of the free puff, what's bringing that to mind? Why
would that bring that to mine? Have you ever seen that?
Is that a thing you can picture because you've witnessed it?
You know what this reminds me of? Yeah, you know,
this reminds me of a thing no one's ever seen
(36:07):
much of. Yeah, it's very funny. Much of the pre
publication hoopless surrounding nineteen forty five involved it supposedly steamy
sex scenes, some of which were exerpted last year in
The New York Times magazine when the book was still
in draft form. Gingrich vowed to tone down the sex.
He succeeded, for example, in bed with his Yeah, I mean,
(36:27):
we just read that passage. But I love that there
were leaks of this that were too horny and he
had to change the final draft. There's also a lot
of tweaking these. It's got to be newde right, who
else would lead these? Right, He's just testing the water.
How can we get a good amount of George HW.
(36:47):
Bush slander in this? Gingrich talks about like has a
character who knew him when he was a pilot, because
George H. W. Bush fought World War Two, who says,
if you needed someone to lead a group straight into
enemy black, he was your man, which is funny because
he was in fact shot down during the war. And
he had to also edit those portions to be nicer
(37:08):
to George H. W. Bush, which is cowardly new like you,
you've blown up any sort of legitimacy your book had
when you do stuff like that. Anyway, I want to
move to a passage midway through the book that's set
in Winston Churchill's office because one of the things that
happens while the Germans and vad East Tennessee Rommel conducts
the landing in Scotland. Of course they're moving down through
(37:32):
the Desert Fox is going to the Desert Fox. No one,
no one's better, no one better to conduct a war
on the Scottish Mors than the Desert Fox. Just poort
the Africa Corps right on over. They'll appreciate the breeze.
So I want to talk about this just because there's
a little bit here that's kind of relevant to modern politics.
(37:53):
Here's Winston Churchill talking uh and one of his aids.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I've both made the same face where we're like, oh no,
uh huh.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
He's talking to one of his aides again named Andrew.
For my part, I've ordered a secret alert for the
Royal Air Force starting at midnight. Also, the Army will
move on spring maneuver schedule up so as to increase
troop strengths throughout England. I'm also going to make a
speech before the House next week accusing Hitler of preparing
to launch an attack against US. Winston, I wish you
wouldn't do that. Why because the America First crowd will
(38:25):
go to town on you. That's why they claim it
was part of an ongoing plot to drag US into
yet another European conflict. They'll say it was a repeat
of what you and Roosevelt tried to do in forty
and forty one. They'll say you're deliberately trying to provoke Hitler,
that you came back to office intending to do just
that to finally drag us into a showdown with Germany.
If you make that speech, I won't be able to
back you up. A cold, static laden silence was the
(38:48):
only response. Even Roosevelt didn't start to move openly until
after the forty elections. You know, Andrew continued, after a
moment's pause. You know that I agreed with him one
hundred percent. I could see the threat as far back
as the denownment Versailles and the move into the Rhineland.
I knew then, and I know now that the maniac
son of a bitch would never stop on his own,
and that nothing short of a full scale war with
the United States could stop him. We should have been
(39:10):
in it back in forty one. If it hadn't been
for that damned accident, he'd have declared war on us
after Pearl Harbor. He all but told me that himself
in forty one we'd have won easily. Now he's ten
times more dangerous. I just love that the America first
guys are the bad guy in nineteen ninety five, and
fucking Gingrich is absolutely going to wind up on that
side here. Yeah. Now, there's a couple other fun moments
(39:32):
in another chapter not long after this, we go to
Rommel talking with some of his people, and there's a
line here that's very funny. Americans would be startled to
discover the degree of camaraderie that existed not just between
different ranks within the German officer corps, but between officers
and rankers. The practice had its roots in the mutinous
conditions prevalent in the German military at the end of
(39:54):
the Great War. Perhaps Germans could afford the informality because
German society was early status conscious, whereas Americans soone ready
to grant superior superiority to anybody needed the outward manifestations
of rank, because otherwise they would lose track of who
issued orders and who took them. It's an interesting description
of American culture.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
A strange read of Germans. I don't know that there
was informality in ranks.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, informality in the German military. I think he's trying
to talk about like Alftrig's tactic, which was this kind
of anti It was this kind of flattening of military
hierarchies in certain specific ways that came about as a
result of like combat in World War One, where you
were saying basically, like unit leading officers should have a
(40:43):
lot of freedom to like conduct advances and kind of
carry out attacks in a way that sort of they
see fit, rather than having to follow orders to the
letter from above, right.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
It was.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I just don't know that translated into sort of the
social I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
I would say the German military was particularly informal between
officers and civilians, especially since, like the Prussian younger officer
class was still a major part of the German military
in this period.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
So what happens when they get to Tennessee, is it
like a ground invasion?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I think they, I mean they come in from the air,
right of course. And then I mean I can tell
you what happens, which is that Sergeant Alvin York and
a bunch of elderly veterans formal militia and stop the Nazis. Largely,
that's who saves the day. Because Newt's got to have
his like pro Second Amendment stuff, so he like puts
it in the mouth of like an elderly sergeant York fighting.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Off old men of Appalachia.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Just look by that can buy that. I mean, the
SS proved in the actual World War two that they
were not very good at fighting an insurgency, and I
think that Appalachia is worse terrain to fight an insurgency
than anywhere in western Russia. So I'm going to say, yeah, probably,
(42:00):
probably that would have gone bad for the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
So this could conceivably have been an interesting alternate history,
the Waffen SS trying to like fight their way down
to town through apple Achian just getting their shit wrecked.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Well, the problem with this book because that isn't it,
And that's a book I would read, especially if someone
like that, someone less problematic, like Harry Turtledove had written
The Fucker. But that's not like Nute actually Nute and
Forstune kind of fall for a standard pitfall in writing
fiction here, writing particularly like speculative past fiction, is you
(42:34):
have this point that's the actual thing that you want
to get that's actually interesting, which is like an insurgent
war in apple Atchia between the Nazis and like elderly
American World War one veterans. That's a fun premise, but
you don't get to it until the very end of
the book. Right by the end of the book, Hitler's
you know, geared up for a full scale invasion and
(42:56):
we're actually getting ready to have like you know that
he's set up like a navy conflict between like US
carrier groups and Nazi like the German navy. Like there's
a lot of cool stuff that's happening by the end potentially,
but it's not really a part of the story because
he feels the need to like go back much fur it.
Like you should always start a book at the thing
(43:16):
that's most interesting to you, right, Like you don't actually
want to waste a lot of time building up to that,
even if you're like, well, people are gonna want to
know how we got here, No they're not. They don't
give a shit. Start at whatever's most interesting. You know,
it's a rookie mistake. Maybe if Newton hadn't been so
busy being the Speaker of the House, he'd have been
able to get it right.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
So what you're saying is the sequel is probably a banger, and.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Need to get a sequel as a banger. It was
all apparently intended to be one book that's too long.
But yeah, you know, I don't know. We probably don't
need to go through this whole thing, especially because I
it's the election and I.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Don't think thatst Jim Martel right the.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Story march Al Martinal, you know the name, yeah, yeah, yeah,
also played by Christopher uh what's his name? From The
Lord of the Rings. I don't know. I think I'm
good on this book. We had forty five minutes, right,
(44:19):
that's all we owe you on our on our off week.
This is an off week. We're taking. We're taking a breather.
We're trying not to focus too much on the news
because nothing interesting is going to happen yet. You in
the future know, so just scream at past Robert and
Molly about what happened.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
And if I don't get any message from the future,
I will assume that we all die this week.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Please? Is it for the whole world? Thank god? Thank goodness. Anyway, Molly,
how do you feel about the alternate past? What's you
what's your favorite World War two counterfactual? Do you spend
much time thinking about, like, for example, what if the
Germans hadn't invaded Russia but had focused all of their
(45:03):
military might on North Africa.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
You know, as a woman, Robert, I'm going to say, no,
I have never thought about that.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
All.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
That's a shame. I spent a lot of time doing
World War two counterfactually.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Now I could run get my partner. I think probably
could talk about this for hours. I think this is
the thing that men like to think about. Oh yeah,
but no, no, I have never considered this.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So are you more of a World War one counterfactual guy? Like?
What if? What if Serbia had had taken over the
Austro Hungarian Empire? What if? What if by World War
two the great land power in Europe was the Serbian Empire?
Speaker 4 (45:40):
What if?
Speaker 3 (45:40):
I'm always I'm always asking myself like that, Sylvia, aren't
you always asking about that?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I'll tell I'll tell you one thing. We never would
have stopped putting cigarettes in movies. Right If Serbia is
like a China sized like market for American television and film,
cigarettes don't ever get cut out of Hollywood now, So
that's good. That's my prediction.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
Anyway, Molly, do you have anything you want to plug?
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, you should listen to my podcast Weird Little Guys
assuming no acts of terrorism happened this week, I won't
have any new news to cover in there.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
But there have already been five bob threats against poling
locations in Georgia.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Oh, they did pick up a guy the other day
with an armed bomb about to blow up the power
grid in Nashville. So it does keep happening To.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Say there will be no acts of terror rism.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah, well, you can tune into Weird Little Guys to
hear about these kind of weird little guys who do
things like that.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, speaking of weird little guys, Newt Gingridge probably a
lot littler because he's extremely old now, so he's weird.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Check out Knut's wife's Instagram. She photoshops her face to
be completely smooth in every picture.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
It's in beautiful, beautiful, and presumably, if this book is true,
she's plying him for nuclear secrets. She's, you know what, the.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Ambassador to the Vatican. She's not anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Wow, And that is what a do nothing job. I know,
Make me ambassador to the Vatican, because you know what
I'm going to do. I'm going to get into those catacombs.
I'm going to steal some saints bones. You know I'm
gonna have.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
A bigger I'm getting the Coronavisor. Oh oh wow, hops
time machine.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Anyways, time machine hopefully.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I love I love the idea that the Pope has
a time machine because my imagination is, rather than doing
like anything that would help the Catholic Church, he just
repeatedly goes back in time to like put a thumbnail
on Martin Luther's chair, like he's just constantly fucking with
Martin Luther a little bit.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
I don't think the Coronavisor allows you to manipulate the
past only to view it.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Oh oh well, then I would go look at dinosaurs, obviously,
That's that's the only thing I would be interested. I'm
proud to say I wouldn't stop any historical crimes with
a time machine. I'm doing nothing but dinosaur related stuff
if I get access to a time machine. Yeah yeah, anyways,
(48:19):
so I'm go have sex with nude Gangridge and get
secrets from him. I hope there's only one way to learn.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
I hope future everybody is okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Okay, and you know where a rubber you don't know
where Nut's been, doesn't know where.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Behind the bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
(49:03):
at Behind the Bastards
Behind the Bastards News
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Robert Evans
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