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Hello everyone. My name is Wesley Levisay from the History of the Second World War podcast.

Join me on a journey through the most destructive conflict in human history, a journey that will

take us not just through the famous campaigns and cataclysmic battles, but also to the lesser

well-known corners of the

war that touched millions all over the world, as we try and answer not just the questions of what

and where, but how and why. You can find History of the Second World War on all major podcast platforms

or at History of the Second World War.com. Welcome to those who can't teach anymore, a narrative podcast series that explores why teachers are leaving education and what can be done to stop the exodus. This season, we're getting a look at the year and the life of teachers from across the country through their audio journals. I am Darcy Oster-Miller. This is Megan Obergoff. This. This is Sophie V. Charlie Blackwood. This is Taylor Barrett. This is Iva Mosh Redman. David Whisker. Dan Morris. This is Amanda Smith. Look for those who can't teach anymore, season two. A different kind of the same thing. August of 1936, as Berlin hosted the world's greatest athletes for the 11th Olympic Games.

I think a way to look at what happened to Germany in the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism there

is to look at it through the viewpoint of the author Thomas Wolfe. He's an American author. He's a southern author, he's a bestseller at this point.

International visitors were warmly welcomed, but behind the pomp and pageantry were ominous signs.

And he loves Germany, and he's been there before, and he really goes in 1936 to get drunk. It's the land

of his ancestors, as he says. But slowly, but surely, his conversion begins, and he sees what's going on.

He had heard stories, and he didn't really believe them. And it all culminates in him seeing a single man's

face, a man being mistreated by the regime, and even has a near encounter with Hitler himself.

Music with Hitler himself. When he looked from the windows of the train next morning, the hills were there, they towered immense and magical into the blue weather, and suddenly the coolness was there. The whiny sparkle of the air and the shining brightness.

Above him loomed huge shapes, the dense mass green of the wilderness.

The cloven cuts and the gulches of the mountain passes.

The dizzy steepness.

With the sudden drops below, he could see the little huts stuck to the edge of the mountain passes, the dizzy steepness. With the sudden drops below, he could see the little

huts stuck to the edge of the bank, hollow and toy small, far below him in the gorges. The everlasting

stillness of the earth now met the intimate, toiling slowness of the train.

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