This week, we'll continue digging into the story of infamous Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, beginning where we left off last week with the Reichstag Fire, a suspicious incident that led to the destruction of democracy and withdrawal of civil liberties in Germany. As you'll see, once those civil liberties were gone, Hitler was free to do as he pleased and what "he pleased" happened to include a world war and the mass murders of millions. We'll examine how it all went down, how he was finally stopped, and assess the risk of another Hitler-like monster rising to power today.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• National WWII Museum "How did Adolf Hitler Happen?"
• History.com "Adolf Hitler"
• BBC "Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster"
• Time Magazine "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938"
• The Atlantic "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days"
• The Conversation "Understanding how Hitler became German helps us with modern-day extremists"
• The Atlantic "What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler"
• History Extra "Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis"
• The Globalist "Trump and Hitler: How Accurate a Comparison?"
• Vanity Fair "Hitler's Doomed Angel"
• BBC "Hitler's Appointment as Chancellor, 1933"
• Wikipedia "Hitler Family"
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum "How and why did ordinary people across Europe contribute to the persecution of their Jewish neighbors
• Jewish Virtual Library "When Did the World Find Out About the Holocaust?"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The True Story of the Reichstag Power and the Nazi Rise to Power"
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum "The Reichstag Fire"

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Throughout all of history there is one name that rises above all the others possibly as the most depraved, heinous, vile human being ever to have walked the planet. Humans worldwide almost unanimously agree, some from the start but most in hindsight, that this man was pure evil. Yes, I am talking of course about the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. BBC writes quote “Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. His hands are stained with the blood of millions killed in the devastation of the Second World War and the horror of the Holocaust. But Hitler was not born a brutal tyrant, he became one,” end quote. He became one. Well that begs the question, of course, how did he become one? How does a normal Austrian boy born to a family of modest means come to take over another country’s government so fully that he acquires the power to engage the entire world in a bloody war while simultaneously murdering millions of innocent men, women, and children? Oh, what, you thought Hitler was German? Turns out, there’s a lot the masses don’t know about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. And as we well know, to forget history is to risk repeating it. Let’s fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• National WWII Museum "How did Adolf Hitler Happen?"
• History.com "Adolf Hitler"
• BBC "Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster"
• Time Magazine "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938"
• The Atlantic "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days"
• The Conversation "Understanding how Hitler became German helps us with modern-day extremists"
• The Atlantic "What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler"
• History Extra "Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis"
• The Globalist "Trump and Hitler: How Accurate a Comparison?"
• Vanity Fair "Hitler's Doomed Angel"
• BBC "Hitler's Appointment as Chancellor, 1933"
• Wikipedia "Hitler Family"

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In April of 1722 Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen and his crew stumbled upon a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They sailed for the Dutch West India Company in search of Terra Australis Incognita, a hypothetical undiscovered continent that doesn’t actually exist. The land they found instead was just a 64 square mile speck some 1,200 miles from the nearest island and over 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. This island, which they spotted on Easter Sunday, was incredibly small and incredibly remote. And yet, remarkably, there seemed to be people living there. Roggeveen and his crew were confused, as were the handful of Europeans who made occasional landfall in the centuries that followed. None of them could understand the mysterious people of Easter Island. Where did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they carve massive stone heads? How did they move them? There were so many unanswered questions that have led to a complete lack of answers even today. But the real mystery is, why didn’t anyone just ask the Rapanui people themselves? Perhaps, if they had, Easter Island, Rapa Nui wouldn't be the mystery it is today. Join me this week to finally learn about Rapa Nui. We’ll examine recent DNA evidence that completely debunks past theories and we’ll finally listen to the Rapanui people whose rich oral traditions, storytelling, have survived despite it all.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• UNESCO "Rapa Nui National Park"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The Secrets of Easter Island"
• Smithsonian Magazine "Easter Island's Ancient Population Never Faced Ecological Collapse, Suggests Another Study
• Nature "Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas
• EBSCO "European Discovery of Easter Island"
• Wikipedia "History of Easter Island"
• PBS NOVA Online "Secrets of Easter Island"

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