 Earning to breathe free. Give me your tired, huddled masses. Earning to breathe free. And so today on Think Tech, on American Issues Take Two, we're going to talk about some of the issues and very troubling aspects of American society that we learned from Ken Burns' which is actually, I think it's called Earning to Breathe Free. There are three episodes and the title for all of them is the United States and the Holocaust. At first, when I was watching number one and two, I thought, well, this is about the Holocaust because it involved footage and analysis that I had never seen before. Really, in all these years, I'd never seen that kind of graphic footage in this Burns' documentary. It was extraordinary. But then in episode three, I realized last night, I realized that it wasn't really about the Holocaust as it was about what was going on in the US. And it wasn't really limited to the 20s, 30s, 40s about the American perception of what was happening in Germany and support of what was happening with the Nazis. It was also about America. It's also about the strain of racism that exists in America that did during that period and still does. And about how Trump leverages that. So interesting, so interesting. Well, we have Tim Apachele today, my co-host and Stephanie Stolldahl and our regular contributor to talk about this, Earning to Breathe Free, comparing today with Hitler's rise, comparing the American perception of what was happening in Germany and what that tells us about the core values. And maybe it's very iconoclastic because it ain't what you thought. So Tim, you saw some of this series, Ken Burns series. What's your reaction? What are the great lessons that we can take away from that series? Well, yesterday I had a show called The Mega GOP, A Race to the Bottom. And I'm reminded of a ripple effect that the Nazi regime in the 1930s, the ripple effect that affected the United States of America, particularly our immigration policies and then anti-semitism. Specifically, the Johnson Reed passed law about immigration was that it was a quota-based system. So those countries with the Aryan or the Nordic type populations, their quota numbers to allow immigration in the United States in the 30s was much, much higher than those countries associated with Southern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern or African nations. The quotas allowed for immigration from those countries was a mere trickle. So obviously, this came to be quite the problem when in the 1930s, those Germans who figured out that as a Jew, their life was going to be pretty bad or worse. And so they tried to get out and immigrate to the United States. Well, the first wave got in, but the second, third, fourth, fifth wave of people trying to get out of Germany were denied access into the United States. And I'm thinking similar to how our immigration policies now are similar where those who are applying for asylum, for political, legal asylum, are being treated as if they were part of a quota system and they're not wanted and allowed or they're going to be flown to Martha's Vineyard because they're looked down upon and they're despised. And we had this vitriol feeling for not only the Jews in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, but also anyone who came from the Southern Mediterranean region. The Italians, the Greeks, people from the Middle East, they're all looked down upon. So I'm drawing a lot of parallels to what Ken Burns' documentary is into our current immigration system and how we're treating legal asylum seekers and how we've been treating immigrants in the past with Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy to rip the children away from the parents' arms at the southern border. I mean, these are horrific Nazi-esque type activities. Well, I gotta say that the series was really shocking to me because in all of my years I hadn't seen footage like that and I wasn't aware of just exactly how brutal and inhumane is the operative word. Hitler and his generals were completely dedicated to wiping out the Jewish people through the last person. And in fact, they killed two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, two-thirds. And if they had had more time, they would have killed them all. They're the last person. And I didn't know that. But you know, let me interject something. It took babies to get to that point. There was a whole litany of atrocities that started on a smaller scale and grew. And as we said before the show, like a psychopath, once they get away with something, they try something a little bit more bolder to see if they can get away with it. In this case, Hitler did exactly that. It didn't happen with a light switch all of a sudden. And he tried hard to keep it secret. Of course. You know, these prison camps now, these concentration and death camps that are in the series, were death machines. But he kept it secret in large part. And when it popped up in American newspapers, it was on the sixth page. And only after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and we had a declaration of war that FDR made, and then we had a subsequent declaration of war against the United States by Germany and Italy just a few months after that. That's when people started to realize that they really want to stop sympathizing with the Nazis. Because there were a lot of sympathizers in this country. Thousands and thousands of them. There were a lot of anti-Semites making public speeches that were really horrendous. And it was only when, you know, this information started to leak out when public sentiment changed. But it actually did not change all that much. That Roosevelt had a problem. He was sympathetic. Eleanor Roosevelt was sympathetic to the plight of the Jews who were being murdered in extraordinary numbers. But he couldn't do what he wanted to do, because there were so many anti-Semites in government at the time. And he was really afraid he'd have pushback and they would blame him for representing the interests of the Jews instead of the interests of the country. And as you always talk about propaganda, Tim, this was a battle of propaganda from the beginning. Goebbels and Hitler were doing propaganda in order to, you know, get Germany all organized around these lines. And there were people in this country who were doing propaganda. And Roosevelt was unable to beat that back until it started to get out into the newspapers. Stephanie, did you see any of the program? Are you familiar with it? It's an extraordinary series. I will. They'll run it again. But maybe I should have mentioned it sooner. But I did attend a University of Hawaii function last night here in Washington, D.C. The president was here of UH Minoa and he had this reception. And it was wonderful of him to take that time and to invite people who were alumni or associated. So I was there. But I have known people who were in the camps as children. And this was always a hugely compelling topic in my young years. And as I mentioned earlier, we read there's a huge body of literature. And like Mila 18 and, you know, they're just numerous bestselling books that Americans have read since the war. But the conundrum or the problem is how people were so surprised. I mean, even General Eisenhower, and when you see the films of the Americans coming into these camps and confronting these piles of human remains and obviously just a totally wasted bodies, but people were surprised. And as you said, when the news was first leaking out, nobody believed it. And they put it on page six. And also from what I've read and seen in television programs, all of these camps started out as labor camps, something else. It all went very slowly before they really kicked into getting at the final solution. And especially once they thought they might not have enough time, it really ramped up. So you're absolutely right, Jay. All you see is it was that was a final. They were going for everybody. And and those camps in those towns were had been some of them were in towns that already were homes to people. They just built them up. They weren't that far from where all of the officers that ran them and the other people, personnel that were involved lived nearby. So they were engulfed, you know, with the fumes from from the ovens. And I mean, they knew very well what was going on there. So there was a mass, a mass turning a blind eye, right? Something like that was happening. And I think we have to, you know, people, they're trying to come to terms with the thing, even till till now, the German people and about how to educate their youngsters. That's been another topic that has been an interesting read about how they decided to handle this, you know, for the second generation after the war. But they haven't done a full, a full finish of expiating their guilt or, you know, making us understand how we move, move ahead with this and learn from it and confront what are these demons in our humanity that that permit us to be dragged into these things. And we're actually we're in the, in my opinion, we're in some of that process now, but you know, we humans have got these other aspects of ourselves that can be ignited. And we have to learn more about that. And we have to learn how we can handle that so much better. So that was the chakaroo, as I mentioned, you know, it was worse than I ever knew, to watch this, the brutality, the willful, pathological killing of people, the organized program to kill every last few in Europe was just absolutely incredible. And what they did in those camps and how they dehumanized, these were ordinary middle class people who had homes and cars, who had children in school and art, some of them were wealthy, not all of them, but some of them. And, and, and they were reduced from that, you know, step by step to having nothing, and having, and having their families killed around them. You see the profile of these people in the camps, you see the profile of the people wearing the stars and being marched down the street. And you think those poor slobs, they weren't slobs at all. They were well educated. They were, they were people who were having a reasonable life. And they were reduced step by step to being these pathetic individuals and then killed. The other, the other part, and I'm sure you caught this, Tim, is that there were no options. Some of them got out because they saw, they had the, they had the, the, the intelligence, the, the, the, the vision to know what was coming down the pike from him. But a lot of them didn't. And, and so it was like, yeah, you can leave, you can go to Eastern Europe, where we'll kill you there. But we're not going to let you out. And we're going to make it increasingly more difficult for you to live here. So the world was that the walls were coming in on them. And there was no choice. Most of them didn't get out. Most of them got killed. Well, it is funny. There's parallels happening right now. You know, not only did they have the smarts to get out, but they also had the financial resources to get out. And it takes money to just up and rip yourself out of your, you know, your, your society and the home that you've been for generations takes money. Look at Russia right now. People are dying to get out of Russia because they know something's a miss that, that Putin's ability to call in 300,000 may well mean a national draft. So right now it does mean a national draft for sure. Yeah. Plain fairs right now have gone from a few euros to 9,000 year old for a one way trip out of Russia. So people know there's something, there's something wrong and they're getting out. So not dissimilar to what was happening in the 1930s in Germany, those who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall, but also had the financial resources to get their families out. And sometimes they couldn't get their families out because they couldn't get the visas because we are under a quota system. So maybe one member of the family got a visa and he had to desperately try to get his family out by any means possible. You know, the tragedy of the St. Louis. You remember the St. Louis, it was the ship that couldn't land anywhere. The United States wouldn't take them. No, and nobody and there were some really hard boiled anti-Semites bigots in the State Department of the United States. So when you talk about the, you know, the greatest generation, you're talking about a certain percentage of the people, a lot of them drafted into the American Army, who were the greatest generation, but there were people in government all around FDR, who were anti-Semites, bigots, racists, and the like, who were actually had a tremendous amount of power. They were not the greatest generation. Well, I just want to say one more, I just want to bring your attention to the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, D.C. if you visited or not, but one of the shocking experiences of going there is to actually see one of the train cars that these people were put in. And to see the size and the dimensions and the absolute just wooden board sides of it, nothing there for any comfort whatsoever. And the most poignant moment in my viewing of TV programs about this has been one where an American got caught up in this for some reason and was accused of being a whatever in part Jewish or whatever had a great grandfather's. And she was caught in this travel to the, to Ashwitz or whatever work camp they were going to. And that people were starving. I mean, they're dying, standing there. Days went by, no water, no food. There was no way to go to use a bathroom. They just, they tried to hold up blankets, but that kind of fell away after a while. And it was absolutely utterly and completely demoralized and even worse than you would treat the cattle that had once run, you know, been handled in that car. But what happened is at the end of this movie when she was on her way, you know, she was at just the lowest level possible and with the child too, who wasn't going to last long. And one of the things that she tried to, you know, strengthen herself and get her mind under control in this thing. And what it was is at the end of it at what she ended up doing is she raised her arm up and, and with her, her fist and she just started screaming, I am an American. I am an American. We're going to make this work. I am an American. And it was a hopeful moment at the end of this absolutely devastating portrayal of the circumstances of just the transportation of these people. Well, Stephanie makes the point, Tim, that, you know, in Germany, we saw the bottom, your term yesterday, you know, race to the bottom. And I guess the question is, and we know too, from this series, very clearly that, that we had huge racism and bigotry in this country. And we know from what Trump appeals to, that we still do. Yeah. And the question I put to you was that all of that considered all that we know, you know, and all that has been discussed, could this happen here? Well, my short answer is Joe Biden already said it, that the MAGA, GOP, and again to make a distinction between MAGA, GOP, the Trump diehards versus decent, honest GOP Republicans, there's a difference. And Joe Biden, the president of the United States, referred to him as semi-fascist. Again, you know, Nazi Germany didn't happen overnight. It grew into its horrific state. It was one step at a time. And I see those early, early steps taking place in this country. And what are those steps? Well, the denial of a free and fair election, the denial of the rule of law, not wincing or blinking an eye that you're having atrocities take place at the border of Mexico and the United States of ripping children from their arms or their parents. These are the hallmarks of fascism in its early stages. And we're in a slow move to fascism. And President Biden was spot on. And he's been taking a lot of criticisms for that terminology, but I don't think he should take any criticism for it. I think he caught it like he saw it. And that's what's happening. Just to address your other point that you made, you know, when news reports of the killing machine in Poland, now remember, Dachau and Auschwitz, they were more of this to send people to die because they've been overworked or, you know, they're on their way out. Those weren't really killing operations like they had in Poland. But when those news reports did get out, you accurately stated they were, they were stated on page six or seven of America's newspapers. Well, some newspapers put it on page one. And the amazing thing is people read and go, no, that can't be. That's not so. It's hyperbole from Jewish organizations. These are these are inflated propaganda numbers. And the bottom line is they weren't. And it took only two or three years later for everyone to acknowledge, oh, what was reported earlier years earlier, was actually accurate news of the Holocaust. And so we'd like to turn a blind eye to that, which we think couldn't happen. And that's also happening right now in this country. We turn a blind eye to January 6th saying, oh, well, that's not what it was. It was something else. It was a tourist outfit. We can really whitewash the reality of deplorable things happening in this country because that's not America. Therefore, I won't acknowledge that they're happening. And they do happen. And and that's what this documentary is showing that United States went along with the plan and turned its eye to the plight of the Jews, not only in Germany, but of all of Eastern Europe. Well, your point is so good, Tim, because of the brutality that day is is describing that what we're not aware of, because people would come would stand on the sidewalk and stand by and see this happening to their neighbors. And they knew that if they intervened, they too would be beaten. And they wouldn't and they tell us and people said, no, well, that they're not doing that. They're just and it's exactly the same situation we're in now. You're just being excitable and you're just extremely exaggerating. This doesn't make any sense. You know, calm down. It was one was one, I want to say witness, who lost his whole family than who spoke often in all three of these episodes. And at the end, they asked him, you know, what what do you if you could fix it, what would you do? And his answer, I hope you remember this, Tim, his answer was, well, it's one thing to punish them. I don't consider the Lerberg trials adequate. But it's another thing you have to look at the fundamental causes, because Hitler had trained people through a variety of deceptions and devices who accept what he was doing. And like a good psychopath, every time he succeeded, he drilled down and did did more of it and worse of it. And the people around him were yes, men who were very psychopathic. And they had photographs of them. And boy, you don't want to meet those guys on a dark street. They were really monsters. But my point, though, is at the end, he said, you have to look at the fundamental causes. You have to attack hatred and bigotry in your society. It's not a matter of punishing it after it takes place. It's a matter of making really sure that it never happens again. So I give you this, Tim, we already know that there are people in this country who have in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and thereafter engaged in a life of hatred and bigotry and would now and Trump brings them out. What do we do about that? Well, what we do about is what we used to do about it. And that is a severe campaign of education of the history of this country and the history of what we've experienced prior to the Civil War and how slavery became part of our ingrained nature of our country and how we get getting ourselves out of it, but it's taken 240 years. So we're a nation in progress. But it's not just that, but it's also a shame factor. There needs to be a shame factor assigned to those who are willing to outwardly support bigotry and racism and cruelty to other human beings. And I think of DeSantis and his little stunt to fly people, legal asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard. He's being applauded for his quick wit to embarrass the Democrats and the liberals of the East Coast. Well, no, it's an act of cruelty and he needs to be shamed for it. And those who support DeSantis in this need to be shamed for it and they need to be called out as it's deplorable. As Hillary Clinton said during her campaign, and I wish she hadn't backed down, but they are a basket of deplorables and they need to be labeled as such. And once that gets out, maybe they'll go under the rock in which they came from. So we can't give an acceptance to bad behavior and bad words and an acceptance by the general populace or in this case, the MAGA GOP who support these things. We need to put them and force them back under the rock in which they think from and came from. That's what it's necessary right now in this society, in this country. It's about time we came of age. There are those who feel that the whole thing about bigotry and racism was built into the founders, into the Constitution. It existed then and it survived the Civil War. We're not going to get, okay, John Wahey, we had him on a show about two months ago. And the most profound thing he said was Donald Trump gave his followers the permission to act poorly and badly and in an deplorable way. He gave them permission and that's exactly what we're dealing with is their sense of permission to overtly say horrible things about race and support horrible things. So we need to again, I'll say it again, we need to shame these GOP, MAGA GOPs back under the rock. We're never going to get rid of racism. We're never going to get rid of discrimination, but we can't force it back under the rock. So to keep it out of play and out of sight. One thing that Hitler did is created a Hitler youth and he trained these kids to follow him no matter what from the early 30s was one of the first things he did. And it always troubles me to see the GOP trying to pervert our educational system. I'm sure that bothers you a lot, Stephanie, you're an educator. But what happens here is when you burn books and there were segments about burning books, when you try to convince kids, young kids, that they should engage in hatred and bigotry and beat up on Jews and the like in this country now, today, it gives them license to go in and get an assault rifle. All these things are connected. Get an assault rifle and go blow up, go shoot people in a synagogue. So it goes back to the same question, you know, how do you stop that? And in Hitler's case, he had roughly seven or eight years of Hitler youth before he was ready to launch a European war. How do we do that? And mind you, the GOP is still really busy trying to pervert our educational system. This is a, it is fearful. But you've covered so many of the fundamentals, Jay. I mean, we have got, we've got these tendencies as humans. We have to acknowledge that these inclinations exist and that they can be ignited. We know a lot about that in psychology. I mean, so we have a lot to bring to problem solving this. And I believe it should be ratcheted up to the level of the United Nations. I mean, at that level, where these should be, as we have with human values, other human values, civil rights, I mean, we need to get control of these tendencies that have been shown historically to end in destruction of mankind. And just as any weapon, it's not just nuclear weapons, we can do this by acting mean to each other and killing each other. And we're in a place in this country now that I hope, as we ever resolve it in hopes that we do, we're going to learn a little bit more about how to get to reviewing and correcting what we know the founders didn't do. They didn't do everything that they needed to do in the write-up of our Constitution and in getting our paperwork down. I mean, we've got fabulous paperwork from these gifted men. I'm sorry. From these men, and we need to finish the job. We'll never finish the job, but as we discover what's interfering with it is an obstacle to our life, liberty and happiness in this country and the fulfillment of our democratic goals, we need to work on those specifically and not just assume it's all going to work out because I don't think we can do that. You know, Tim, I was profoundly affected by the series Ken Burns series. The largest reason was when I was a kid, my mother always told me, thank God you were born in the United States. This is the greatest country on earth. And it's the same kind of mythology where we talk about the greatest generation and all that. But you watch this series and you feel differently about this country. We managed to win World War II. FDR managed to get the propaganda going, you know, more to more truth about what was going on in Europe. But there were so many people who were openly bigoted and prejudiced and fought against that that it really makes you wonder whether this is or was the greatest country on earth. And when you look at Trump, who has half the vote, and that means that they will conglomerate around issues about hatred and bigotry and the like, you wonder, is there something wrong here? Well, it's not the greatest country on earth. It's real. People have got these tendencies and we are going around thinking our better angel natures are going to, you know, overcome it. But what I was saying is that it looks like we need to work harder on this and it needs to be higher priority. I mean, if you read the story of Anne Frank, and I've lived with that since she played large in the series, who turned them in? They were on the last train out of Amsterdam. They were the last arrivals. And of course, once they got there, one of the things that gotcha, too, was getting sick. They got typhoid first, the older sister. But the pitiful report of the last sight of her was she was walking around in a blanket and she had taken off and her the clothing that they gave in those striped pajamas, because they were so full of fleas and everything that she was uncomfortable. Anyway, the woman who saw her through a fence and then talked to her for a while knew that the older sister was very, very ill and Anne Frank wasn't feeling good at all. And she told her, go get something on because you must stay warm. But she was left with no resources and no one to even guide that whatever she was 15 at the time, 14 young girl to know that she had to stay warm if nothing else. Anyway, it's just how the tragedies abound. Yeah, let me answer your question there, Jay, because in my mind, and you correctly have stated that Donald Trump has churned the spigot of deplorability on our nation and they are those who have answered his call. So by that definition, we are not the greatest nation in the world. We have some serious problems that we're going to have to reconcile with and correct. But you know what? It doesn't take a psychopathic nation to follow a psychopath's plan. And I point out to Jim Jones or the Stalin's or the Hitler's of the world, where decent, decent human beings were corrupted. And as Stephanie said, their better angels were not called upon, but they're more darker inner inner, I don't know what the word is, their inner self that took control of their lives and their beliefs and their support. And it's those people that are fellow neighbors and Americans that I wish to address to say, stop, realize what you're doing. If you're a Christian, is this Christian like, if you're a decent human being are the things you support in Donald Trump and his like, are those things that you are proud of? And really, do you really want to support that and have that as a legacy for your family in the future? So think about what you support and the hatred and the bigotry and the vitriol you hold within your heart as you move forward, either in this election or the next election, and how you treat your fellow neighbors that differ from your political views. Think about what you're thinking and thinking what you're saying and what you support. Well, you know, I wanted to mention that this is the best reason to offer a liberal arts education to make sure that people have a liberal arts education because the founding fathers had that sort of background and steeped in philosophy, familiar with John Locke's writing and a familiar with Hobbes's writing too. So you have these philosophers that have been discussing this, Tim, since you were walking around in Greece, excuse you, Greece, they were talking about all of these things thousands of years ago, and then they wrote them down and during the Enlightenment, they were published and and most of the nations were looking at those as they were building nationhood, but that, but we, but they were shown, you know, it's John Locke and what it can be it's platonic good, but there's also Hobbes who deals with and other philosophers, those other sides of our natures that government is obligated to do something about. That's an obligation, a duty of government is to help with that control. Seems to me this is the fundamental point of really all our conversations. We are at an inflection point, whether our better angels will prevail or our darker angels will prevail, darker devils will prevail. And I guess you can apply that to every major issue that we've been talking about. You know, it's kind of catching in the sense that if you join the GOP, you know, you oppose gun control, you oppose abortion, you oppose voting rights, you oppose democracy, you oppose action on climate change, all of those things, all of which we're going to cover on September 30th in a webinar. But my point, my point is that this one seems to be the core point. Are we going to listen to our better angels like Tim says, or are we going to go down the other side of that inflection point? And by the way, whatever happens here will have huge effect on other places. Anyway, so we're out of time, but I do want to ask you for less comments. Stephanie, what would you leave with people about this in the context of, you know, our conversations, our American issues take one, take two? Yeah, well, we need to be educated and we need to be steeped in the knowledge base that there is now by and that has been created by very talented humans and that there are these things that this is part of our existence. And I think we need to know it and acknowledge it. And we can only do that through education and through study. So I just make a comment then for, you know, the liberal arts being important in whatever way as well as the civics. That's a good point. James, your last comment. The last comment is I'll make a distinction between the decent GOP, the decent GOP of years ago versus the mega GOP, the deplorable basket of now. Fascism was on the rise in the 1930s. I think Joe Biden, President Biden made an accurate description of the mega GOP as semi-fascist and fascism may be well on the rise right now in 2022. Yes, sir. Tim Appichella, Stephanie Stolldahls, and thank you so much for this really interesting conversation on American Issues Take Two. We'll see you next week. 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