Welcome back to the show. How are you doing?

I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me back.

It's always a pleasure, particularly so soon, back to back. I really appreciate it.

Well, I want to have you on a few times, especially for this one subject, because I know it's your specialty.

It's of great interest to you. And World War II is

absolutely fascinating. I don't even think, well, we can even bother getting into the Pacific at this

point. Let's stay in, you know, let's stay in Europe. But in your, where do you start? Most people, when they, a lot of good historians

start with the Treaty of Versailles and say the Treaty of Versailles basically was the foundation

for what led up to World War II. So what's your take on that?

That certainly is what created the political culture of Weimar.

So, I mean, that was an essential catalyst, but it wasn't the sole proximate cause.

I really, it was the Bolshevik revolution, which was an international phenomenon.

Like, I know, I don't want to, I don't want to jump the gun or go too far afield into a kind of theoretical topic that's not totally material to what we're what's right in front of us but um

you know i cite ernst nolte a lot because he he gets into the the psychological as well as kind

of the metahistorical context to the war and a lot of people don't like him for other reasons. I'm not going to flesh it all those reasons right here. Not because it's controversy, but because again, I don't want to. I've read two of his books. I think I understand why. Yeah, yeah. But the people who, people who attack him, one of the things that they emphasize is they say like, well, you know, the Russian Revolution that was happening in, you know, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, you know, to a lesser degree. And, you know, in these kind of frontier territories, the Baltic. It's like that, I mean, it's not really true. I mean, yeah, obviously, I mean, those were primary theaters, but you know, in Bavaria, there was an actual communist revolution. And in Berlin, I mean, the communists were fighting the Stahlhelm and the Free Corps in the street quite literally. It's a really, really stupid movie. It was this tv movie from about 20 years ago it's got

peter stormer as captain rome which is kind of cool but it's called hitler rise of evil i mean that

that that's that's a that's an overwrought title if there ever was one rise of evil but there's

a scene um in munich uh where the, you know, the communists are literally

shooting it out with Peter Stormer's Rahm and these Stahlholm type guys. And that's not

Hollywood stuff. I mean, that really happened. You know, it was a civil war situation. So the, you know, the

national socialist, I mean, yeah, like, that was

the only reason there were

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