 What's up guys evil deer here and today I'm going to talk about another historical aspect of the Esperanto community in this video I'll be talking about Esperanto and the rise of the Nazis now. This is a really big topic It's something that I'd like to go in depth with so I'm going to have to split it over several videos This video will only deal with the point of when Hitler starts to become a little bit known up to the point Where he actually takes power and how the Esperanto community fared during that period of time and how they reacted to the Changing world around them. I wanted to make a video on this topic because every now and then when I talk about Esperanto in the Nazis I get pushed back from Esperanto speakers who say well, Hitler didn't actually kill Esperanto speakers now I think this is really disingenuous and it's too black and white and you'll see why by the end of this Presentation why I think it's too black and white. Okay, as I said, it's not black and white It never is history is never black and white and this has proven due to the fact that there was Jewish people who worked in the SS and Were known by Hitler. Here's a perfect example. Emile Maurice was a mixed Jewish and German heritage SS officer. He was known for being mixed heritage He was found by Himmler the guy who hated Jews more than anyone and he wanted to actually expel this guy from the SS But this guy had the support of Hitler who said, you know what? I'm just going to declare him an honorary Aryan so from that point on doesn't matter that he was Jewish. So it's never black and white It's not just oh, you're an Esperanto speaker. Therefore you die. It's usually several things Related to it. So maybe you're an Esperanto speaker Maybe you're Jewish or maybe you're an Esperanto speaker and maybe you're an Internationalist or maybe you're an Esperanto speaker and maybe you're gay There could be so many reasons and it's never just one thing. It was never just one thing for the Jews There was many reasons for why they were executed and it was more just Escaping and Hitler making sure that he had power So as I said, I'm going to start with the first appearance of Hitler because he was basically the guy who really kicked this whole Thing into motion. So Hitler was aware of Esperanto and the first real mention of him and Esperanto came in September 1922 when he was giving one of his public rallies where he just gave his speeches out to the public and I don't have it in German and again, I don't speak German so I couldn't read that but I've got the Esperanto quote here So he was basically dissing Marxism he was dissing Freemasons and then he came to Esperanto and he said Esperanto was Something that was going to make it easier to misunderstand each other But then came his most famous work Mayan Kampf and it was written why he was imprisoned The idea was that he write this book you make a lot of money and then he can cover his legal costs when he got out of prison Now it was published on the 18th of July 1925 and he wrote in there a mention to Esperanto And this is what he said and remember Mayan Kampf was basically just him hating on the Jews And there's a lot more of other stuff that he wrote in there But that's basically what this part of his autobiography was about So he said as long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples He is forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not But the moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew it would have to learn some other language Esperanto for example so that by his means the Jew could dominate all more easily So basically he's saying Esperanto is the language of the Jews. We cannot let the Jews take power Therefore we cannot allow Esperanto so his ideas on Esperanto were very clear because he put it into his autobiography Which when he took power became one of the most read books in all of Germany was on the best-selling list Continuously it was basically required reading among anyone who considered themselves a good German So anyone who read this was aware of what Esperanto was and was well aware of his thoughts on Esperanto Now he was not the only one who looked at Esperanto in a negative light for instance this guy here Professor Doctor and I can't pronounce his name So this dude was a professor and a doctor he published in an extreme right-wing magazine at the time That bastard language without roots in the life of the people without any type of literature Having come out of life and he just basically continued on going on insulting the language and then saying it was sort of part of some big Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and make everyone a slave so you can see if you've got the intellects talking like this You got Hitler talking like this Esperanto is obviously not being seen in a very good way And this dude wasn't just mentioning Esperanto on the side in this magazine There was a whole article dedicated to Esperanto now up to this point Hitler wasn't the main man at this time He was a growing figure within German community, but he was still kind of seen as a little bit of a fringe politician So Esperanto speakers in general just kind of ignored it and just figured you know, we ignore the rhetoric or go away But at this point the Balvarian Parliament actually had a debate that happened on the 21st of January 1928 we're getting closer to when Hitler took over and they were discussing Esperanto a proposal or a petition was put forward by two Esperanto groups and they were basically saying hey We would like to introduce Esperanto into high schools here as an elective subject You don't have to study it and we're looking for some money in order to make this happen Now this caused a bit of an uproar within the Parliament first on the left-hand side We had the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party who actually supported giving some money to the Esperanto speakers to teach Esperanto in schools But we had fierce negative reaction from the German National People's Party now Hermann who was a deputy of the German National People's Party. He basically went off about Esperanto and this wasn't his first disliking or mention of Esperanto previously to this He'd given little speeches where he mentioned Esperanto here and there on the side, but he said that Esperanto is purely a mechanical thing It's a soulless creation and it's a simple code and it's a fake language things We still hear to this day, but strangely he then went on to compare Esperanto meetings to displays of nudity like a nudity beach Then you had Rudolf Buttmann who eventually worked with the Nazis But at this time he was only a local faction leader of the National Socialist Party, which became the Nazis He actually said that Esperanto was this thing that was made by members of the Jewish race who in their Incapability to create anything that was creative or interesting and because of their dislike of German culture Created this language as a tool that prepared the path for Latinization of the German language. So as this rhetoric picked up more and more and as the Nazi Party grew Basically your requirement was you dislike the Jews and by extension because Hitler had established this you dislike Esperanto And Esperanto was kind of stuck in this weird place because some members of the Nazi parties or supporters of the Nazi parties Were Esperanto speakers and they were trying to distance this whole Jewish aspect from the Esperanto community. So some Esperanto speakers were unsure well pretty much every Esperanto speaker was unsure of what to do But most decided we'll just ignore the rhetoric. It will go away Obviously, that's never a good solution and others actually started turning around these were Esperanto speakers who turned around said Well, maybe the issue is our own pacifism maybe we should be a little bit more patriotic and there was articles being sent around In the German Esperanto Association and their official Magazine basically trying to discuss how to approach this situation So they'll stuck in a hard place because some were supporters of the Nazi Party for other reasons Some of them weren't some of them were Jewish some of them weren't and then they also had the fact that people outside of Germany Were starting to comment other Esperanto speakers will start in the comment on how they were dealing with this situation For instance, the Austrian Esperanto speakers stated that German Esperanto speakers were trying to flatter Nazi supporters and Nazism in an attempt to you know, make themselves not part of you know This whole Jewish conspiracy, but at the same time they're basically putting themselves at the disposal of fascism Now this is the point where Hitler comes to power and this is where it goes bad for Esperanto speakers As I mentioned previously, I'll discuss this a more depth in my next video So if you like this video like it share it around sub to this channel and I'll see you all in the next video