I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquanino show.

We are back.

Thomas is here, and we are starting a new series today.

Thomas, take it away.

Yeah, we're going to be discussing the 30 years war, which isn't just a subject matter of trivial interest historians.

It was the form of event of the European modern era until World War II.

And even as recently as the 60s, in the Bundes Republic, they polled university-educated people from presumably different walks of life.

And they said, what was the most catastrophic event ever to befall Germany?

And worse than World War I,

worse than the bubonic plague,

worse than even the Weimar starvation years,

was a 30 years war.

And into the Third Reich era, it's interesting,

Gerbils, Speer, and the furor himself all referenced the 30 years were consistently

in public addresses.

Okay.

All told that it killed between 8 and 12 million people, which was a massive attrition rate,

a huge percentage of which were civilians

the battleground

was the German kingdoms

and it truly was a war fought by

it truly was a European civil war

...