ЧУДО ВЫЖЖЕННОЙ ПУСТЫНИ. ГЕРМАНИЯ. ОТ НЕНАВИСТИ К ЛЮБВИ.

Hi. Here's the thing. We have one such law in our country. Its keynote is very simple. In our country, it's forbidden to promote Nazism, fascism, Nazi symbols, and so on. And we fully agree with it. But still, we want to spell out a few moments. All people who took part in creating this video, disapprove directly and very clearly any form of Nazism, as well as all Nazi leaders. And everything that would be happening next isn't any propaganda. We know you didn't doubt us a second, but we decided

to spell it out in our disclaimer. Nazism is, of course, fucking bullshit. Germany. Yes, in twenty-twenty-two, we decided to publish this video. Frankly speaking, we planned it earlier on. Back in twenty-twenty-one. When we thought that vaccine and masks in trains are two of our biggest problems in life, at that horrible and hard time, we moved "The Germany" to twenty-twenty-two. It was a secret, right. Because we wanted very much to publish the video on the June the twenty-second in four a.m.

Once more, without war declaration, Germany invades the territory of the Russian YouTube. Such a joke it was, yeah. But in February twenty-twenty-two, we were like, "Ah, we won't publish it on June the twenty-second at four a.m. Thank you very much, yeah. We invent some jokes, entertain some folks, and you start some wars. Is it so hard to ask for permission? You wouldn't have mine. Nevertheless, we wanted to publish "The Germany". Because, of course, it's the central work of our Rolling R Stori

es. We've been beating around a bush for a while, we didn't know how to do it. But now we decided. Yes, you could say that the modern context isn't the best working for this video, and that we'd better shut up or made it about something else. You know what? Fuck off if you think that. I believe that now, on the contrary, it's the right time for this work. It's high time to tell you the German story. About the very Germany that did what it did in the twentieth century. As commonly cited, it's the

country that started two world wars where about hundred millions people died due to different reasons. Someone died on the battlefield. someone - due to bombs, people starved to death or died in capture - it doesn't matter. It matters that the both world wars are the blackest pages in the book of human history At this point. It seems like it's Germany that is to blame. And also, Germany is the country that invented fascism. Or rather, when we say the world "fascism" or "Nazism", Germany would b

e the first association in our head. Of course, fascism is Italian - ahh, okay, forget it, always with your details and facts. Don't bother. And also, each of us has an image of a German soldier in our head. All of us know how he looks. I don't even need to show him to you. I do even think that the uniform of a German soldier is more familiar to us than that of a Soviet one. And obviously, the German soldier isn't the person you would want to meet in real life. And in the end of the World War Tw

o, Germany was almost levelled with the ground. Yes, all the Europe was lying in ruins at that time. But especially Germany. Because everything was destroyed, plundered and sacked till the last nut. And what do we know next? It seems like there was some kind of the Berlin Wall. And the country was divided into two parts. One was Eastern, one was Western, and then - fuck, German vehicles. Each of us has an image of Hitler in our heads, and of German fascists serving as absolute evil. It's not onl

y us, it's all Europe. But concurrently, if we come now into some medical clinic, we want it to be equipped with German gear. And we wanna buy a German vehicle. I'm sure that even the biggest fans of Japanese and American vehicles would hardly reject a new X-five or Cayenne. Or M-five, RS-six or a new Nine-Eleven. Oh so very hardly. I have a question. All of those modern technological things were made by other Germans? Well, physically, they are other Germans, other generation. But could people

change so hard after seventy years? And if you agree that people could change so drastically, then why do we live in the Soviet Union still, huh? You do also face it every single day. As if we are still living in the Soviets. But, if people changed so much there, well, look, we also had to have changed much. Or your answer will be like, Well, where is Germany, and where are we, a backward nation where nothing's been ever changing for two thousand years. From that point of view, I still don't und

erstand how to answer if people change or not. One more thing. In our modern world, when we look at North Korea, we have two feelings. First - we fucking pity people living out there. Well, they live in North Korea, you know what I mean. Second, Kim Jong-un is so fucking funny. I honestly don't have a heart to call him a dictator. Well, you could only chuck him under chin, like, Who's a little dictator? Coochie-coochie, do look at him. Come on, go play with uranium. But when we also look at the

Naxi Germany, we don't have any pity for them, much less tenderness. And military parades in North Korea are hilarious, and in Hitler Germany, they were horrifying. Why such difference? Because Germans killed something about twenty-six million Soviet people, and North Korea didn't kill anyone? For the time being. But if this country brought us so much suffering, and if we're still grieving, after almost hundred years, why is it better to grieve in German cars, than in Russian? Or any other Europ

ean. Why do we ride "The Lastochka" or "The Sapsan", look at the window with the word "Siemens", and we're feeling safe 'cause we know that the train is German? That means, it's really okay. If you didn't know, Siemens are German. And Lastochka and Sapsan are Siemens. A Thyssenkrupp elevator? A great elevator. You're riding it happily. A Metro trading company? You go shopping in there happily. Metro is also German, if you didn't know. And Bayer medicine in the pharmacy? Great. They're normal, to

o. And if you could buy for your home something by Bosch, Braun, Miele, Kärcher, Liebherr - you should buy it. Аnd BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche are just saint. I'd like to tell a couple of jokes about the German company Adidas, but my teeth are more precious than jokes. To hell with some fancy technologies. Haribo bears are also German. And now, after I wrote this scenario, I'm looking at a pack of Haribo bears, and a bear cub on it says, "Original since 1922." And I'm thinking here, if I'm not

mistaken, red bears appeared in your line after 1945, or not? And especially for all music fans, I'll just say that Rammstein, Scorpions, Scooter, Oomph, Hans Zimmer, Marlene Dietrich and Tokyo Hotel are also Germans. We like to listen to them. Even Tokyo Hotel. And I think that no man could be deemed as a true heterosexual, if he never had a teen boner for Tokyo Hotel songstress. Who got it, they get it. Yeah. If you don't get it, don't get it, leave this joke in 2007. And so, we don't have a p

roblem in our head that all German is good, and German people as people are evil. Or at least, not so long ago, they were evil and so hardly went straight. They're pretending. Today, we're gonna try to understand it. And of course, we will try to understand how the hell the scorched desert of the World War Two gave birth to cars that made the whole world love them. But before we start, I'd like to say a word. First of all, when we wrote the script, it was obvious that we had a problem. A very bi

g and serious problem. Hitler. Hitler, Hitler, fucking cunt. Yes, that is the problem. Not Hitler, no. Hitler is okay. He's dead. This animal is the problem. This is Von Stason Herr Kringe. It's a gay-lesbian, transsexual activist, a German porn actor and militant feminist born in Hitler's body. I'm a real attababe. Hot mama. And as I'm a real moron, unfortunately, and I don't know shit, we just need a real certified specialist on German reality and German movements that will lead us along tangl

ed paths of German history. And Von Stason Herr Kringer is like that. Every German has racial superiority, pride in nation and asshole. And in 1945, they… Yes, jokes will be really bad. You don't need to guess to know. But let's admit right now. All of us wanted Germans to be like that. All of us were sitting and like, Mmm, I'd like to see homo Hitler, right? Usually, so that no one could bother us with complaints like we insult someone, disparage and want to inflict great moral suffering, for t

hat, we write a big and long text disclaimer. It's always about everyone of the restless to relax, pour themselves some wine and sit on something cold to avoid such a butt hurt. They simply shouldn't take it personal. Nobody wanted to hurt anyone. But people with such mentality should sit on something cold in order not to breed. But I have a feeling that in this video, I will have to say a few things with actual words. To say it so that it would be clear. We are very respectful to all the religi

ons, to all orders of the day, to all the points of view at living this life right. To liberals, communists, capitalists, feminists, activists, to all the people on this planet. I'm not messing around, I'm absolutely serious. I actually treat all the human beings the same way regardless of where they live, of their color, of the length of their nasal hair and of their preaching's. All are great. And equal. And we love you all. I have one request for you all. Whoever you were, relax your asshole.

We don't want to offend or to hurt your feelings. We don't put such intentions in any line of this text. We simply want to tell a difficult story nice and easy, to take you off your routine for one night and to give you entertainment. We think all of you to be simply adult people with sane minds. The only purpose of this video is to wake some interest in you, so that you snorted and laughed in the process. Everything else could be fucked. I have something for that case. Oh my. And it turned out

that way that we're making a historical video in the fucking year 2022 about no less fucking Nazi Germany and everything that it did in the past century with its Hitler's, Goebbels' and giant piles of bodies over all the Europe on one hand, and the most magnificent vehicles on the other hand. Exactly in this video, you could look at it from another angle - with irony, cursed humor, and with simple interest for the events of the past. Sorrows because of tragedies and commotions are enough in our

life. And because of wars, too. And yes, today, we'll read together some of the blackest pages in human history. Not only we have to dive in them, we have to understand that logic. It may sound scary but it was there. And we'll find it. As well as lots of pain, horrors and destroyed human fates. But as we're still going on in there, and as all of us are grown people. Well, we could laugh. To be honest. Did you see Hitler's moustache? I can't disregard it at all. You didn't think how mustached H

itler could eat pussy? Actually, if Hitler eats your pussy, who are you? Who? Stalin? Fuck, we just started, and he says that Hitler eats up Stalin. But imagine, he lies bask satisfied, and says, "Okay. Don't shoot him down. He's self-sustained. I hope I explained correctly that we are just having fun, and nothing more. The second thing I'd like to say right now, is how I feel. It's the first case in our documentaries when I can curse in this video, with pleasure and really genuinely. Without wo

rrying about comments, like, "Look, I could show it to my kinds if not those words." Don't you fucking show it to your kids. Well, fuck, they should grow up normal. Because we would be wondering at the savvy of engineers who invented a very efficient flamethrower. And how cool people got burnt. And we would ask ourselves whether it counts as Bavarian sausage. So please, don't show it to your children. Even I say, fuck children up. LET'S SUPPOSE I mean, like an audience. CLASSY I'll shut up. That

was a joke. Just a joke for example. No one touched any kids anywhere. I don't recommend it. At all events, everything we would like to achieve now, are your inquiring, happy, joyful, or even sad eyes. And today, we want to tell a story that has no competitors by event density. At some point, you might think there is a bit more country context than usual. and you'd be right. There will be a bit more country context than usual. German vehicles could be conceived only through context. They are fu

cking great. That we know. And what was the reason that Germany was able to produce them? It's more complicated. That's why we need context. All the better. The history of the German car industry and of Germany itself, it's a whole range of human feelings, sensations, finesse, intellect, experience, wins and losses, personified in our beloved iron things with four wheels. And obviously, as German vehicles are the heart of all vehicles as they are, I have a thrilling and sometimes creepy Rolling

R Story. Today, you will learn: how a simple coffee vendour without his knowing changed our planet once and for all; why the French, the Englishmen and the Germans are one and the same; what so important is in this paper number three-seven-four-three-five; and why the first gasoline cars appeared in Germany; what Napoleon had to do with it; why the hell people on German factories stocked fire with money; why no one would mess with Skoda in the first half of the past century; what connects Hitler

and the Mercedes racing team; how five people on a bike changed the European car world; why they kept cows on German car factories; why Opel belongs to General Motors, and what politics has to do with it; and how one of the most extraordinary minds of the car world served to Adolf Hitler personally. Asafiev. Rolling R Stories Divine Integration Manystasyevo Village My lord. My lord. Don't punish me. Listen to my words. I make bast shoes as a bondman. My father made them, my grandfather, too. Wh

at did my grand-grandfather make? Perhaps, them. Earlier, our neighbors came to us, bought bast shoes, and now they are needless. They're not a good bet. They're not a pig food. How could I pay you my rent? You don't take the payment with bast shoes anymore. What, bast shoes are needless, huh? Perfect rot. We don't go barefoot. My lord. And you do wear bast shoes, or? Well, what do you want? Let's buy a factory, huh? People of Astafievo bought one. They make some mirrors already, glass out there

, and all the people come to them. They've already built a real stone village. What factory? What are you saying? Do you trust yourself? That bear trusted himself, and where is he now? Who's gonna control it? Who's gonna work in there? Would it be you, bondman? Toss him out on his butt. Don't be angry, my lord. We can produce anything. Either self-moving wage or steel shed, or weaving shed. And we're gonna work there. Have you gone crazy or what now? My lord, there is a special place. Alabuga Po

lytech is its name. They have so many factories that you have no fingers to count on. They could make any wondrous things that your lordship could fancy in all your life. They will help you with your factory. And teach you to work and to control. Well, fat chance. Spending money on their education. - There's no budget. - You don't have of pay anything. All the tutoring is completely free. And students live in chambers right for lords. All the students also get scholarships. They teach them in re

al life. Not on paper. What do you say about paper? Well, education is beyond telling or writing. You make something real so you could have experience. My lord, you could be a real CEO like this. Or you could open your own factory. You mean, they will turn you to executives and CEOs, give you a roof and also pay some money? Right. Why are you here still, then? Well, indeed. What for do I need you now? I can go to Alabuga and turn to a lord myself. You also can. The link is down below. He's so in

solent. Write it down. Link him into exile. My lord. What link? I have a QR-code. Rolling R Stories Chapter One. A Time to Cast Away Stones What do we now about Germany? In our modern world, it's not a riffraff. One of the biggest and most influential European countries. By the precise data, Germany is a country number two by population in Europe. Russia is number one. By economy, we also stand near each other, just the opposite. Germany is the fifth world economy, we are the sixth. There are ma

ny Germans, they have money and power. At first sight, there is nothing strange about it. Because Germany is an ancient European state, they've been building their society for centuries, their economy, politics and so on. If you're an ancient country, then in our modern world, things have to be well underway. But on the map of Europe in the seventeenth century, there is no Germany to discover. As we won't discover Germany in the thirteenth century, or in the eighth century. And only in the late

nineteenth century, the German Empire appears out of nowhere and makes it hot for all the Europe at once. And if you try to understand those European entanglements with a swoop now - who came from where, who had what borders, what those inside squabbles - it's really just a can of worms. And any Indian script writer would be jealous to know who was whose brother, uncle, relative, and why some people tried to kill others, and moreover, why all of them slept with one sister. But we're gonna try to

understand the necessary moments. At the very least, those sister orgies. Sister Adolfina - oh. There is not far to seek. Don't worry - around the corner, and then' we'll go back. The Roman Empire, guys. Yeah, we are here now once again. Yeah. But don't worry, we won't drag on those 2000 years for a long while. I've got simple terms. And now, I will be brief and quick. If we look at the wake of millennia, that's B.C., before the zero year, in that area, there was Roman Empire, Greece and all th

e rest. All the rest in Europe was a fucking ton of different tribes we don't have much info about. The only more or less normal description of the Western European tribes are written by Roman and Greek chroniclers who always tried to describe tribes living on the other bank of the Rhine. The Rhine is a huge river in the Western Europe. And Roman Empire occupied territories to the south and the south-west of the Rhine, and lands on the other side belonged to God knows who and were populated by G

od knows who. There is no God but Herr Kringe. And here we have a huge territory near the Roman Empire. There was definitely no state out there because no one sent any messengers. But periodically, some dudes crawled out of the forest, gave the locals a smack in the teeth, took everything they could and left for the forest. And Romans called all those comers from the North - Germans. Basically, all German tribes were a cross between barbarians and Vikings. Imagine a standard barbarian or a vikin

g - it's the same, but watching German porn in the woods. I have a feeling, just a small one, at this point, I should explain what I mean under a bunch of tribes you couldn't make anything of. If we take ancient works of the very ancient historian Strabo… Strap-on? Strabo. With a B. With no asses. Chronicler of the Roman Greece. That's a man. There was such a chronicler in Greece when Greece was under the Roman Empire. Hence the name the Roman Greece. And that was the turn of times from B.C. to

A.C., the zero years, right. He described this period pretty detailed, and at the same time, he tried to describe tribes who always made some fuss in the North. If we take the names of the tribes like Strabo described, I bet my virginity that you wouldn't ever remember them at the first try. And if you want to try it - come on, go ahead. Bructeri, Gutes, Gambrivii, Hermunduri Chauci, Campsiani Caulci, Cimbri, Suebi, Sugambri, Semnones, Sibini, Lugii, Langobardi, Marcomanni, Mugilones, Chaubi, Ch

atti, Chattuarii and Cherusci. There. Did you remember anything? I didn't, too, although I read it ten times. And this was only on the border with the Empire. What was happening to the North - go fucking figure. Whatever chronicler you read - and they were many both in the Roman Empire and in Greece, - you read them all, and they write, "Okay. The ones, the others, still others and the fifths. Also the twenties, the tens, and sixty-others. And also, minus forties, the seventh, and one million an

d three hundredths. Right. And only behind that bush. Okay, there is that. All the territory to the North of the Empire was inhabited by a bunch of tribes, and it's impossible to find out who was who. And no one needed it. The only thing we could say really certainly that all those tribes were evolved right. They had commodity relations, writing systems, religion and all the things needed to the state back then. Of course, the Roman sources wrote that they were sitting on the trees, ass-naked. A

t the same time, they ate squirrels and weren't really humans. But excavations tell us that the Germans knew how to process metals, they made figurines and house utensils. and the scientists claim that they were the first on the European continent who domesticated dogs. If you're a wolf, you're a wolf. Anyway, the Germans were definitely just alright. Moreover, periodically, they busted the shit out of the Roman Empire, and no one could handle them. The fun began in the fifth or the fourth centu

ry, when several events happened at the same time. First, a huge crowd of Hunns came to the European continent from the East. Hunns were like Mongol-Tatars in the thirteenth century but Hunns. As angry as they were, with horses, and ready to beat the locals. Secondly, the global cooling just began. It lasted for four hundred years. And yes, it happens in the nature that first, there are long periods of cooling and then, long periods of warming. And all over again. Ecologists, sorry. Earth won't

ask your permission to get cool or to get warm. And, in the fifth century, the average annual temperature dropped. That means winters became colder. And back then, living in a cold climate was much harder than in the modern world. You don't have a normal house that would be warm. Plus, you don't have any food because of snow everywhere. And if you won't find some animal and catch it - that's it. You don't have anything to eat. And when, on one hand, you have a bunch of visitors - like a huge cro

wd of Mongol-Tatar-Hunns - go figure who they are, and it's simply freezing outside, you, as a normal dude on a tree, say, "Well, fuck my fucking life." You climb down and go to seek out better life. And so, because of the cold and Hunns raids, the Migration Period began. Fuss and merriment all over the continent because people all over Europe were trying to find just a bit comfortable place to live where they could defend against their enemies and the cold. Without going into detail, the result

s of all that circus were following. First, the Roman Empire crumbled and ceased to exist. Second, the Germans were the masters of the continent. For several decades, people were chopping each other. Now Hunns attacked, now a civil war in the Roman Empire began, now someone began to fight because they were bored. But step by step, in all that chaos, the German tribes began to unite in order to defend themselves. As the result, they were the most powerful on the continent. At first, they defeated

the Hunns and sent them on their way, and then, they finished the half-dead Empire. And it seems to be the perfect moment to sit down, to rack your brains and to found a new mighty state. Because you're a bunch, the Roman Empire crumbled, and there is no army that compares to your might. Just come where you want. Take what you want. Do what you want. No one would tell you a word. But people were so tired of a century of war, hunger and constant moving back and forth that they wanted to settle d

own, create their home and live in peace. And technically, the German tribes went every which way. The huge German tribe of Anglo-Saxons gathered together, crossed the Channel, landed on the British Isles, mixed with the locals and, basically, they created Britain. Don't be confused with the name, they were a German tribe. That's right. They knew about the British Isles because they had been a part of the Roman Empire. The second huge German crowd settled down in the West of Europe. And as the t

ribe was called the Franks, they created their own Frankish country in those lands, with bonjours and baguettes. Of course, after a while, it turned to France. Technically, both the English and the French people are based on the German tribes, both of them. A large part of the Germans stayed in the center of the former Roman Empire. Together with the locals, they created Italy. Technically, what do we have? No German country was created back then. Although the German tribes were the main militar

y force out there. All of those tribes dissolved in the rest of the peoples and countries. If at the turn of the millennia, there was the Roman Empire and all the rest, then after the Migration period and the imperial collapse, everything changed a notch. There was the Frankish country and all the rest. All other countries don't matter to us, we don't want spend any time, because here are two pictures. The borders of the Frankish country in the five-hundreds. And in the eight-hundred and fifties

. Everyone else were la fucked by the French. Oh thank God, we don't have to dive deeper in the Frankish country. We would have spent another two hours there. But still, as the Roman Empire was still fresh in people's minds, the Frankish rulers wanted to repeat very much. They repeated. The only funny moment I'd like to tell about shortly, very shortly, was that all those rulers were one dynasty. Dad, son, grandson et cetera. And one of the most active and successful conquerors in that family ch

ain was the dude that was called Pepin the Short. The terror of Europe. One of the toughest and luckiest warlords named Pepin the Short. Not important, just fun. Yes, this is exactly my level of intelligence. I'm thirty one, and I laugh at Pepin the Short. So what. So what if Pepin is short? NOT FUNNY AT ALL Anyway, the Frankish state quickly grew up to be an empire. As quickly as it crumbled by state standards. Around eight-hundred-and-fifty, the it divided into three parts. The western part wa

s to became the modern France in the coming years. The southern piece became the modern Italy. And the eastern part became the modern Germany. Well… Not at once, but it did. In the modern worlds, France, Italy and Germany are completely different countries. But once, they were parts of one country that was called the Frankish Empire. I fucked you. But. A question now. Why the heck I'm telling you about this ancient carnival? And how this prehistoric shit would help us to understand the German ca

r industry? Oh, we need all of this. Well, I'm a professional. Anal? Who said anal? At that point, in Western Europe, the main players appeared that would be sharing power over the continent through the rest of the time. Those were England, France and something resembling Germany. Something resembling Germany was something resembling Germany just because it wasn't called Germany. But it was on the territory of modern Germany. It was called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. At first, it

was only the Holy Roman Empire, added by the German nation. Perhaps, they thought that the three-word-name was plain, and they made five. This strange shitty kind of country lasted for a long time, eight hundred and fifty years. Till the very moment when Napoleon came and fucking conquered them. But the Holy Roman Empire of the German fucking nation not only had a strange name; inside, there was God knows what. Now, for simple terms. If you ask yourselves what a country is, you could realize th

at a country is just some territory. Some piece of land inhabited by some people. And those people think of themselves as a part of something big that is called a country. Some cherish belonging to the nation, some - religion, some - white birches, some - the flag, some - the word "homeland". And some cherish it all. It doesn't matter. Another thing matters - that any person you would now come up on the street, almost in any developed country on our planet, will tell you who they are and why the

y think so. Any English would explain to you why they are a citizen of the UK and proud of it. Any Japanese would also explain to you why they are a citizen of Japan and proud of it. I'll explain why I think of myself as a citizen of Russia and I'm proud of it. Don't ever come up to me. I'm a threat. But all of it exists right now. All of us were explained who we are, what we are, where we are from and why we are. Back then, there were no such ideas. You were born God knows where and lived God k

nows with who. There was Uncle Mike, there was Granny Betty. That was all. Just, periodically, some armored guys came and said, they were power now. And you were like, "Okay, please, rule as you wish just don't fucking burn everything here". But we just wanted to know what a country is and why people get attached to their countries, and if we look closely at England, France and something resembling Germany, they are just different. After around, let's say, the tenth century, England and France w

ere founded, they were like, "Look here. Here is our land. Right. The French lived in France. The English lived in England. Both had their own language: the French spoke French, the English spoke English. Both had their own religion. The French were Catholics, the English were Anglicans. Both had capitals. The French had Paris, the English had London. The borders of the states were almost unchanged for a thousand years. Yes, there constantly were small conflicts, revolutions, and so on, but the

base of the country - language, religion, certain territory, capital and nation - were unchanged. Neither the French nor the English had any questions of where they lived. Let's have a quick look at the Holy Roman Empire of the German fucking nation. As its name was, as it was inside. Go figure what it was, where it belonged and why it lived. The nation. Or nations. We have mostly the French people in France, the English in England. A question: who lived in the Holy Roman Empire of the German na

tion? Holy-Roman Imperial German Nazis? Are you nuts? Though I'm wearing a wrong costume to ask it. I can get my tail through my ass. Although the name of the country had the word "Empire" in it, and the Emperor sat on the throne, but technically, it was not an empire but a union consisting of Germans, Italians, Romanians, Serbians, Hungarians, Czechs and blah blah blah. One giant bunch of different people and countries. Go figure why they were united and who was in charge. As your country is in

habited by a huge crowd of different nations, you have a bunch of problems. Language is the first. I remind you, French in France, English in England. Those were official languages and population spoke on them in real life. And by that logic, what language had to have the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation? As the empire is Holy, perhaps, we should take Latin. Or we could take Italian because the empire is, like, Roman. Although, the center of the empire was in the German kingdom - perhaps,

we should take German? Or, actually, Polish? There were many of them, too. You have one guess, what language was official? All together, you're right. Latin, German, Italian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. Right. And half the country was also speaking French. As it was the land of the former Frankish state. My Panzerkampfwagen will send you bonjour. Would you look in the muzzle? Now, for religion. Back then, any ruler of a country was certainly the God's vicar. They said, "There is God, we are his

children. And we have a God's bro on the throne. He's holy, his family is holy, and all of them are half-gods, half-humans." That's a very simple idea that could easily tell us, "Why on fucking Earth the power is his, not mine?" You look at the king and see a son of God. You look at yourself, and you're a son of Jane, you don't have any questions. In this video, Jane's sons actually receive the least questions. You're a different thing. Clean butt? And all of that works perfectly only with one

condition: If there is no fucking Pope in your country. And the was the Pope in the Holy Roman Empire of the German fucking nation. Not some outsider but the real, original one. With his sheet and strange hat, and direct contact with the higher management. We have an Empire with the real Pope in Rome, and the Emperor is God knows where. And the presence of the Pope himself just rains on your parade because there is another question: "And who is this?" Herr Kringe. Not you but the Pope. The Pope

Herr Kringe. Also, this question perfectly works on both sides. As soon as you say you're an emperor, God's son, with the right to rule, they come and ask, "Who's sitting out there, in white sheets? With a Whatman paper as a hat. Who's this, should we listen to him?" And as soon as the Pope says something like "It's all in God's hands." - they poke him at once, like "What kind of a clerk is in the German kingdom?" He even doesn't know Latin and doesn't know heads nor tails of pizza. He's like, s

chnell, schnell, Schweine, Schweine. And he's family to the Lord? They weren't united in the matter of religion. There was just an eternal shitstorm and inside wars, and as the result, Italy just left the Empire. As you could guess, there was no capital. Well, just on paper, for the first hundreds of years, the Aachen city was the capital. Here, in German lands, just in case. But try to say to the Pope that Rome wasn't a capital. You'd be sick to pray your sins off. Then, the capital was moved t

o Prague. And to Vienne. And when the parliament appeared, they seated it in Regensburg. There was also Berlin, and Munich, and they were trying to prove they were in charge. In Germany only. I remind you, there were also Czech, Hungarians, Polish and all the other guys. Anyway, the slogan of the Holy Roman Empire throughout its whole existence was about like that: Go figure who all those people are, who's in charge, and what for it all is. I can see what for it all is. And… Ah. Fuck, you're goo

d. The situation is illustrated the best by this picture of the political order in the Holy Roman Empire. Especially, if we zoom in. The country was so much split into a million of little princedoms, estates, towns, little countries or alliances of some peoples. Each color and each circle is something separate, with its order, its power, foundations, and so on. A typical situation for feudal societies, but Germany was the worst fragmented country all over Europe. The more so when North Italy put

the Pope and Rome under arm, like, "Come on, puppies, we're leaving". At that point, although the Holy Roman Empire was called like that, it was neither Holy, nor Roman, no fucking Empire. There was only the German nation. Fragmented by pieces, mixed with a bunch of locals, with Polish, Hungarians, Czechs. No common religion, no common idea, no common country - nothing in common. The only thing in common was the plague in the fourteenth century. Half the people just died. But. Anyway, vacuum of

power and of ideas can't last forever. Humans are destined by nature to unite around something and for the sake of something. And if the country represented a very viscous crumb, there were always some people who wanted something real and hard. Step by step, by the fourteenth or fifteenth century, there were strong ruling feudal clans in the country. And actually, they didn't want to serve the central power anymore because they felt their might. And they began to kick out. Some regions demanded

better terms for themselves, blah blah blah. The most bright regions that didn't even care for the central power were Austria and Prussia. Despite the fact they both were situated in the Holy Roman Empire, those were self-sufficient countries with their management, their economy, their everything. At some point, Prussia even said, "Okay. Eh, you could do what you like, but we're a separate country now. You're all good here, of course, but now we're going to crown our own king, and to beat the s

hit out of Bavaria. They went to war with Bavaria. Kinda, it was like if the Tambov region would say, "We are here Tambov. We're going to beat the shit out of Voronezh." And Voronezh is like, "What did you say, you Tambov cunt? Come here, you mongrel." And between them Lipetsk is like, "Oh fuck, how can I crawl away now?" It sounds crazy but that was the deal of the Holy Roman God knows what legal entity. How could you hold it? When you have a billion little states in your state, when everyone i

s haggling over local power, when the country has no united resources, efforts and thoughts, how'd you protect it? Right you are. No way. Napoleon thought and conquered those fuckers. And yes, it ended just like this. The French conquered everything. For almost a thousand years, guys in the Empire tried to invent some form of existence for a state that looked like a blanket out of many small cloth shreds. Until a well-orchestrated war machine came and conquered all that magnificence. It was impo

ssible to put something up against the French because the country was behind on resources, people, technologies, qualified assets, motivation, everything. And despite the fact that Germany, though a piece of the empire, existed for nine hundred years, they still had to go back to square one. To gather their people, under their flag, and to take the path which one nation would like to go, not a catch-all soup from a bunch of peoples, cultures, religions and lines. Time to gather stones together.

And in order for the country to exist and to claim its place in this world, Germany needed to be united and strong. Divine Integration Super Stasio. Autothecia. Start You don't have a car now. Pick another one. Accept mission. Warning. This car seems to have worked as a taxi. What if you would be its twelfth owner? What if it's in pawn? What if it survived an accident, and the run was fixed? Congratulations. You bought an Autotheca report. Use the Autotheca report. The owner sells this car. Seve

nty thousand kilometers run. It was attended by the dealer. Maintenance in time. No taxi, no carsharing. You can boldly go and look for yourself. If you'd like everything, then buy it. Choose your car on Avito and check it through Autotheca. The link is down below. Rolling R Stories Chapter Two. The German Question Okay, we are now in the nineteenth century when all Europe was already raided by Napoleon; he conquered everything he could, and then he ran back as fast as he came. Napoleon is of sm

all interest. He's too short for us. What matters is what was happening on German lands after Napoleon. At that time, everyone realized they had something to do with Germany. Napoleon came, conquered it all, established his rule. Later, at same point, he got beaten, and all the conquered lands became free once more. And once again, we have a fucking lot of small princedoms that could piss on each other. And they needed to gather them back together in some kind of a state. It was such an importan

t and large problem, that it has its own name in history. The German question. And for us to move on calmly, here we have to take our simple terms. Look here. It's all so simple. There were two situations that people couldn't left alone, they had to something. First. Germans wanted to have their own state very much. Those guys looked at Britain and France and realized that if Germans wouldn't become strong, they would be conquered. Britain was constantly moving its fleet back and forth, and Fran

ce and Napoleon showed how you could practically conquer all Europe. What about Germans? And Germans had a bunch of little princedoms incapable of anything. Technically, they were nobody from nowhere. And so, the idea was in the air that Germany had to unite and become as mighty as its enemies. Well, I mean, business partners and neighbors. I wonder if my neighbors have salt. I'll go and ask. - Poland. - O kurwa. The second situation. When a very huge and a teeny-tiny countries are neighbors, so

oner or later, the big country would try to swallow the little one. It has always been and will be the case. And here we have a fricking pile of small princedoms in the middle of Europe, and along the edges, there are huge France, Austria, Russia and Britain. Each one wouldn't mind to take a bite. But at the same time, everyone knew that if they would've carved up Germany altogether, then, sooner or later, the empires would have clashed and a big massacre began. That's why, they had somehow to g

ive the Germans their own state, and also to do it in that way to prevent any more wars in Europe. Well, as far as possible. How are you, offsprings? Cheering like a bomb? And so, after the Napoleonic wars, rulers of important countries had a general assembly that was called the Congress of Vienna. All the big bosses came - from England, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and so on. During that assembly, they had to decide how to prevent appearances of other Napoleons. They tried it only once and

didn't like it. Let's bake no such cakes anymore. Let's bake something else later. And also, at that Congress, borders of all states were remade. and as those changes were too many, we won't talk about other countries, only Germany matters. Only Aryans. When the Holy Roman Empire crumbled, German lands represented three important parts. Austria, Prussia, and three hundred small entities. About three hundred small princedoms - that was no joke. They were really so many. And so, big countries that

made decisions didn't think too long and said, Okay. Class seven B. Okay, you gather together and don't muddy the water. You're another country now, live as you want but with one condition. We make not a country of you - a confederation. And later, you would handle everything yourselves." And it was the beginning of the German Confederation. Spoiler. It was even stranger and funnier shit that the Holy Roman - you know. So that you'd understand why the German Confederation was a really strange a

nd dead-born idea, let's think of some apartment house. Imagine now, we have a house with one entrance lobby, and in that lobby, we have about three hundred flats. All of that must be managed somehow. You have to change the entrance door, to paint walls in the lobby periodically, to make renovations, to improve the playground, maybe to plant some flowers and so on. And how usually looks the dealing with these matters? We have some senior leader in the lobby, they always calls the tenants for mee

tings, holds votes on important questions - like, for example, "Eh. Do we change the entrance door or not?" And everyone is like, "Yes, we do." And the leader is like, "Okay, good." They collect money, finds a contractor, has the door changed, and life's gets better. And such things go on and on all the time. People gather on meetings, majority decides, and the lobby leaders do what the meeting decides. And now, imagine that the German Confederation is the same entrance lobby but with several ru

les. First of all, any decision, any law or something like that must be passed unanimously I mean, if at least one crazy granny lives in your house who's just sitting and yelling on a bench, then no renovations would ever happen, until you convince the hag. And Johnny from the flat forty-four would go on the booze and disappear - that's it. Wait for Johnny. You can't do anything without his consent even if everyone else with that crazy granny would agree. Second, the union is termless, without e

gress. That means, if at some point, you'd have enough of this nuthouse, and you still want the walls to be painted, and a new door, and that hag to be silent - you have only one way: to shoot yourself. You can't move anywhere. You're here forever and ever. The union is termless. Third, there is no head of the government. In our case, there is no lobby leader. No one answers for the result. Even if, by some miracle, all the tenants would gather in one big pile on their own, and in some wondrous

way, they decide that all three hundred people want a new door and are ready to put their money in it, there is no person that would look into that matter. Neither government, nor executives. Just a crowd near the house is yelling at each other. I'm not having fun, they actually made that kind of state. You couldn't even get at them: were lands united on paper? They were. And their inability to normally exist inside those rules isn't our problem. It turns out that they started with the honours t

o make a normal state for Germans, but then, they bend them over again. Can you do it a bit stronger? AND WHO IS THIS? Do I look like a pussy? Anyway, it was clear that yet again, the Germans had not a state but shit. It was high time to send to hell all the foreign diplomats muster all strength and really unite. With real leaders, with common goals, and to rush to their bright German future pride intact. But here's a question: What leader did they have to unite? At that point, somewhere around

the eighteen-thirties, there was such a power landscape in German lands. There were three stools. The first one was bullshit called the German Confederation. The second one was Prussia. The third one was Austria. That was all. The difference between Prussia and Austria was only one: Prussia was just a German country with German population, and Austria was a catch-all soup from Germans, Polish, Hungarians, Slavs, and blah blah. The Germans composed the half the population. There was a situation.

An idea to unite all the Germans somehow. There were two strong countries, and a large pile of God knows who, kinda Confederation. Guess at once, how did that end? Fuck, you're so fucking… Yes, of course, it ended with a war. Not at once. First, they had to choose a leader that could gather all the country together. At that moment of history, the stage was taken by him. Otto von Bismarck, One of the brightest politicians of Prussia, like, ever - and you definitely know this man, I'm sure. If you

have an image of a gray-haired German with moustache and a helmet with a pike… Just like that. Oh, fear me. You open your wardrobe, and I'm in there. Ha. that is exactly him. Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck is a legendary figure. You can spend hours talking about his life, but thankfully, we don't need that. His truth was something like that: he was like, "Eh, I'm Prussian. That's why I am the Great Prussia, and we will be in charge right now, y'all. If anyone doesn't agree, I will get my tools and

knock everyone's teeth in. THE TOOL If all Europe back then was, like, "Oh. How could we do it so mildly, not to hurt anyone? God forbid, we'd hurt someone's feelings. We don't want to have any big wars, and all of that. We want to live in equality, blah blah blah." But Bismarck was like, "Equality? What the hell is equality? We're Germans, that means we're in charge. And you will respect us whether you want it or not." Bismarck's political career lasted for over forty years, and he spent all h

is life trying to gather all German lands together. To some lands, he brought his influence using blackmail. Sometimes, threats could work. Sometimes, he had to make a deal, or to cause trouble between neighbors to take control of them both, and so on. The main thing was, Bismarck did all of that like a real brilliant politician. The cost is irrelevant, the goal is what matters. But you should know that Bismarck made threats left and right not without a reason. He could do that only because ther

e was a strong army in the country. After Napoleon's invasion, the government made necessary conclusions, and after some decades, they totally changed all the economy, improved the industry and made enough money to have a very strong army. That's why, when their neighbor, Austria, also a pretty big country, was like, "By the way, we also want to take all German lands for ourselves." Prussia and Bismarck were like, "Now you'll cease to want." They came, busted the fuck out of them, And after Aust

ria's capitulation, Bismarck became the biggest man on the German block. He created his empire. The German Empire. Well, finally. After over a thousand years of searching for their path and great suffering about their own country, the Germans actually managed to get their own land and became their own masters. But I have one question for Bismarck. Rather, I always have the same question when I study old chronicles, photos and so on. Just imagine. You're Bismarck. One of the most serious politica

l leaders on the continent. You came from real lowlife, from the most ordinary family, and you could build an empire, in the literal sense of the word. You're a man of such level. A question. Why did you, Otto von Bismarck, were married to Frodo Baggins? This is your family photo. In what Middle-earth did you find him? The Lord of the Thongs. Perhaps, some of you would think right now that long historical tale is very strange, although we were going to speak about ordinary vehicles. But we're do

ing it right way. And all this gibberish really matters. Because in all that political situation and in that aligning of forces, in gathering of lands, there is an answer to the question, why did car appear in Germany? And finally, after an hour of light introduction, we can move to the thing that gathered us here. The first German vehicles. Divine Integration - Hello to you. - Hello. - Did you call? - I did. - What's wrong? - I think I have a leak. Under the sink. Okay, come on, show me your le

ak. - Should I take my shoes off? - Nah. Ah, alright. I think your waterpump is dead. You know, eh… And this pump is all alright. You have such a pretty phone. What a shame, my pump is broken. You don't need a pump to buy the most actual gadgets. I didn't have it myself. Do you need to be a plumber for that? Nah. I have a business, you know. Plumbing is my labor of love. Does the word "car" mean anything to you? - It's so big. - Geek-dot-ru. The latest wares with yummy prices, and those managers

would help you with shopping and answer any questions. Click the link down below and choose any gadget. They even have LEGO there. By the way, any item on the website Big-Geek-dot-ru could be a present for any person for any reason. But you don't need a reason, right? So, my gift to you is the promocode "Pump". Shopping with it would be nicer. And you really have a good pump. Rolling R Stories Chapter Three. The First Sprouts While writing Rolling R Stories, we have a very simple principle: Not

hing happens just like that. Everything has its logic and its line of events. If something happened, that means something preceded it. This is the main principle of management and of scripts as well. Here we have a situation. Germany is the homeland of any cars. Everyone knows it. But when you ask anyone, why the heck cars appeared in Germany exactly, usually, you hear something like that, "Well, eh, they're Germans. They are, well, engineers. Eh. They love rulers, wank off centimeters. Nah?" An

d hardly there would be other arguments. Well, it just happened for no reason. Who are the Germans? At-ta-boys. That is all. That is all. Nevertheless, the first self-moving machines appeared in France. We told about it in Rolling R Stories about France. There were also many steam engines in England, and someone even tried to put them on some waggons. But still, the homeland of gasoline cars is Germany, no other land. Why so? Why not Portugal, Italy, England, France, Belgium, Russia, Japan, the

US, someone else? There is an answer. Because Germany was technologically backward Some of you would say something like, "Ohhh. Right. That's it. Get new Stas, this one is broken. Are you nuts or what? How could you invent the most groundbreaking technology of that time being technologically backward? With such arguments, only you are backward here." - I mean, I. - And I. It's alright, I didn't misspeak. I will explain the logic. And I hope even those who are backward will catch up. Ah, ah, what

a pun, alright? Backward. Catch up. Ah. We are in the nineteenth century once again. In the middle of the Industrial Revolution. All the advanced countries frantically began to replace hand labor with machines, factories began to appear, steel industry began to develop with frantic pace, and every facility had even more machinery, assembly lines, blah blah blah, you know it all. And if you don't know it, I've spent the last three years of my life God knows what for. And instead, I could have se

x, drugs, rock-n-roll. Oh, your sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. You wanked off a balalaika and went to sleep. HELL OF A PARTY I'm watching. No balalaikas. Once is no custom. In order for the industrial revolution to take place in your country, you need four things. First of all, you need resources. The most essential, at least. At the very least, you need fuel for your factories. Those are coal, oil and gas. And also, metal. God save Valery Kipelov. He is free now. But you are apprehended. To search

your ass. Second, you need skill sets. You need educated people who will be developing technologies, developing projects, controlling processes, thinking about efficiency and blah blah And, the more educated population you have, the more chances you have to get some super unique people that would invent something really groundbreaking. Groundbreaking? Return him from the inspection. I have an idea. Now, third, pretty prosaic, you need manpower. Right. It is not enough to build, they also have t

o work at those facilities. And fourth, a traffic network. You need rail roads to transport raw materials, building materials, people and production all over the country. The more effective your means of transport are, the quicker is the development of the industry and the economy. Well, there's that. You take resources, you raise competent people, build transport infrastructure - and go developing. Reality is a bit more complicated, but in simple terms, that's the point. The more effective and

the quicker, the better. You musnt' forget your competitors. All other countries do about the same. And if you will be slow, then, the more effective and developed neighboring country, sooner or later, would smack you in your teeth and gain control. For Germany, or rather for Prussia, that became obvious when Napoleon conquered it. At those times, the king of Prussia was Frederick William the Third. This guy. He was humiliated during that conquest. Here you go, a few examples for clarity. When N

apoleon conquered Prussia, he couldn't care less about what William could think about the ruling of the country. Napoleon sent a message to our emperor, Alexander the First, and he was like, "Ehh, Alex. Go solving the Prussian matter." He and Alex just agreed, like, there was the French Empire, and there was the Russian Empire. And Prussia would be just some dressing room between two large states. Like, if someone would like to attack someone, then they had to go through Prussia. That would take

time, and the second party would manage to prepare for war. And the king of Prussia wasn't allowed to those negotiations. No one asked any opinion from the green. And second, after negotiations with our Emperor, Napoleon was like, "Can I have the king's wife right here, please" I want to spend an evening with her. And the king Frederick William was kinda like… Take me instead, my cake. But Napoleon ordered to keep him out of the tent. Let him stand outside. And they really did that. The king of

Prussia, Frederick William the fucking Third was circling around the field tent of Napoleon while he was doing something with his wife. After humiliation, and after the country was freed from Napoleon, the king knew that everything must be reformed, remade, built anew, and that had to be made in such a way, so that no one else could ever humiliate the royal family and the country in that way. At least, they had to make such an army and such industry that no one would even think to get at Prussi

a. And later on, they could unite all Germany. - And fuck them all. - Just you wait It's a bit early. We have a question now, how a middling country could be a match to industrial giants. Of course, you could hang a bunch of slogans from business coaches, like, "Anyone could be anyone. Just believe in yourself, and that will happen." but that wouldn't do with the management of a country. Especially, when you start with the basics and look closely at the field map of oil, gas and everything like

that. There were almost zero resources at the Prussian territory. Nothing important for the heavy industry. No iron, no oil, no ores - no shit. Only cotton fields, grain and textile industry. That's all. What do you do? How do you make a cannon? Of a man of straw? All ravens are fucked. But if you don't have many resources, it's only a part of the equation, you could squeak through and think of something. The transformation idea was simple. We work with what we have, we don't fuck our brains. Ou

r resources are grain and textile. That's alright. Okay, we give freedom to peasants, give them chance to earn money, create competitive environment, allow them to trade just as they want, and after several decades, we have the agricultural industry that supplies half Europe with grain. What about textile? We do the same shit. And in the late nineteenth century, by volume of textile production, Prussia was toe to toe with England that was a global leader back then. All the money made don't go in

to our pockets; we invest them into education, into army, into railroad development, and into industrial development. Besides, the government not only pours money everywhere, it controls every penny. German God forbid you from snatching something. They would stake you in a flash. What matters most: when you build from scratch, not in the first ranks, you could go to your neighbors to see where they fucked up exactly. What their mistakes were, what did they do backasswards. You can draw some conc

lusions and build your manufactures alright. About the same thing is with our bank apps and our bank service. They are really one of the best in the world. Just because we made them later than everyone else. We have learnt, looked who suffered, how and where, and just made it better. About the same thing was really with Prussia. The Germans regularly sent their engineers, scientists and managers all over Europe to all the factories and all possible exhibitions so that they learnt who had what an

d thought how to make it better. The merriment began. In the middle of the 19 century, beginning somewhere with eighteen-fifties, Germany just began its frantic development. They were building railroads all over the country, buying the cutting edge equipment and building really huge industrial facilities. The focus of the German vector was only on the industry. And details don't matter for us, unlike the environment. All the country was overwhelmed with technological and scientific fun. Construc

tion sites were everywhere as new manufacturers, they were implementing modern technologies and inventing new wares, and blah blah blah. Here I have several company names which appeared in Germany of that time, for the sake of the scale of the commotion. BASF. One of the largest chemical factories till today. It means Baden Aniline and Soda Factory. At first, those guys were really making aniline and soda. Right. And later, ammonia, sulphuric acid, dyestuffs, fertilizers, blah blah. The facility

grew up so quickly, that in the year nineteen-hundred, it produced eighty percent of dyestuffs all over Europe by itself. And during the World War One, they converted just a little to chemical weapons and explosives. It was a straight fire. Flames, a bomb, huh. Bayer. The same shit as BASF. They also wanted to do dyestuffs, but suddenly, they invented aspirin and went to the pharma. Now, they are one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Siemens. Communications, yeah. In the nin

eteenth century, it was the largest company in Europe that was busy with telegraph cabling. All the telegraphs and telegraph cables in the Russian Empire were made by Siemens. Just in case you don't know; and almost all the telegraph cables in Europe were also layed by Siemens. Also, they were building subways, hydro power stations, biplanes and everything that could be invented in electrical science back then, it was done by Siemens. AEG. The equipment for electrical grids. Henkel. Chemistry, w

ashing powders, glue, plastic products. In our modern world, Persil, superglue, Pemolux - those are Henkel. - Bosch. - My gosh. Also founded in the nineteenth century, and at once, it was a huge factory producing electrical technologies, ignition systems and blah blah. Here I name only the most famous and big ones that survived till today. And if we're talking about all the companies, there were hundreds of them. And all of that in a very short segment of time. And when you, a person with brains

, and with some engineering education, are living in such a country at such time, you are just sensing those possibilities. On your fingertips, you feel if you'd invent something or improve something existing, you would fly to space at once. All your inventions will surely have the call. And as all the engineering world knew that engines were the future, as all the things about them, Germany just couldn't stand idly by. They had to rise to the edge of technologies. Chapter Four. The German Imper

ial Patent If we take absolutely all founding fathers of the German car world, we will have the set of practically identical stories. He was born in a German village, always loved technologies, either got the specialized education or managed to see into the matter himself. At some point, he locked himself in his garage, invented some thingy, found a partner with money, organized production, and he was great. Right. That is actually all. Right. That's the story. Yeah. We've been writing the scrip

t for half a year, it was a deep work like never before, we're tired and have to relax. As always, huh. You put your make-up for two hours. Thirty seconds, and he's asleep. He's snoring, fucker. I can't sleep. And I also have to mop his drool later. I will, though. That's okay, me and Lisa have been in historical records for a reason. Yeah. We dug out some interesting stories for you. Although all the necessary biographies are alike at first sight, we have something to tell. Meet Nick. Well, I'm

not joking, he's Nick. Nicholas is his full name. He was born in eighteen-thirty-two, and you could easily guess, in the 1850s and 1860s, Nick was twenty-five years old. The German economy began to soar up, industrial factories and ships all around. Nick looked at it, and he was like, "Well, eh, if I were clever, I would've be inventor. It's a piece of cake when you're clever, right? Right. Now. But I'm not clever, I am savvy. I'll hook up with something. Although he was in love with technologi

es, Nick didn't have such education. As he didn't have any money. He came from an average family, and he made his money trading some goodies. Well, I mean, tea, sugar, coffee. Like, usual groceries. Nick was a usual trade commissioner, in terms of the modern language. For his job, he was travelling across Western Germany and often visited France. And if he had an option to visit a technological exhibition and to see what was happening, then Nick was definitely the first in line. One day, at such

an exhibition, Nick met a French guy that was standing near his booth, and he was like, The steam engine? Oh, it's fucking shit. In a hundred years, we'd invent Peugeot. That would be some shit, but right now, steam engines are much worse than Peugeot. We must do something with it." Nick saw the guy talking business. He came up to meet him, agreed to be in touch if that guy would invent something interesting, "Well, you know my number, I will come, and we'll make something up." Well, you know,

there's Poland… - And there isn't. - Oh kurwa The guy's name was Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir. I'll call him Johnny so you could remember. Johnny thought that steam engine was outdated and had to be replaced. It was unclear with what exactly, but something had to be done. Johnnies can do it, you know. Tell you all is fucked but don't know what instead. And if we speak to the point, the point of complaints was the low efficiency because of high thermal losses. Don't faint right now. My simple terms

would explain it in one bit. Okay. Imagine a usual kettle. The most average one, it's on fire and whistling when it begins to boil. Why is it whistling? Because water begins to boil, it turns to steam, and pressure rises in the kettle, and the steam is rushing through the whistle. Even the lid on the kettle could jump a bit because of the pressure. And the steam engine is built on the same principle. We have a big water tank. You put a fire under the tank. The water is boiling. Steam is rushing

through the pipe and pushing some shit that is attached to that pipe. A very simple principle. But the problem is, when you're heating your kettle on your gas stove or on fire, you're also greatly heating your kitchen. Because the open fire is heating the air in the room. The open fire is heating the air in the room. Sound ideas. And if for our little kitchen or relaxing by fire, it's good, then it's not very good for engines and industry. The engine fuel is a resource. And it's not free becaus

e coal and wood also cost some money. And why should we waste fuel, like coal or wood, just to get the air warm? Correct, we don't need it. It was the point of Lenoir's complaints. He wanted to take away the stove from the engine. First, because of such a construction, very much heat just went into the air. Second, the open fire wasn't very safe. And so, Lenoir wanted to put the process of the fuel combustion inside the engine, not to lose a bunch of heat. And for that, he had to invent a totall

y different construction, because chopping woods inside the engine and igniting them wasn't very convenient. Technically, Lenoir was the first inventor of the real ICE concept. Well, if we look closely at the wording, it means exactly that. Internal combustion engine is a thing where fuel burns inside the engine. And steam engines were ECEs. It means "the external combustion engine". Wood was burning outside. Lenoir didn't have any solution. But he promised to think something up certainly. And h

e did, scumbag. Several years later, Nick heard a rumour that Lenoir managed to invent a working something. And as Nick was good with commerce and sales, he knew that if he would be the first to catch the opportunity to produce new engines, then his success would be assured. But he had a problem: he couldn't make a deal with Lenoir. Either he put some ungodly price for his idea, or he didn't want to work with Germans - the history is silent. But Nick was already so enthusiastic about engines, th

at he ran to his brother and said they needed, by hook or by crook, to get either schematics, or the engine, and it was able to work, they needed to put it to production. They didn't manage to get the engine. But they could find its schematics somewhere, and they tried to make the same thing in their garage. They simply copied it. As like as two peas, but with their hands. It was a shocker, but they did it. The engine creaked, farted but worked. And all that magnificence worked on a mix of coal

gas and some other combustible shit. And it didn't matter. What mattered, it was ugly but it worked. Nick happily ran to the Prussia patent office to apply all the necessary documents for the engine production. But they simply told him to get lost. because Lenoir already applied all the documents in the French patent offices; he was legally entitled to that engine and permitted everyone to produce it. - What a Jew. - He's French. I don't give a shit. Just imagine, you're Nick. A self-taught engi

neer, without education, without money, but somehow, you still managed, at bench scale, to build an engine after several months with your brother in your garage. And for the year eighteen-sixty, it was a great fucking achievement by itself. Besides, you built it by schematics, from mud and straw from behind your toilet, and it worked. But when you ran to the patent office, they fairly sent you to hell with this idea. What're you gonna do? You could blow it off. Yes. You could say to yourself som

ething like, you had an attempt. Attaboy. You did all you could. You could easily move on. Selling coffee, sugar. Right. As pretty many people did. They try, they fail, they don't care. Is it a solution? Of course. But you could give a shit. And, by any means possible, try to continue your work. As you could guess, Nick chose the second path. And he gets a like for that. We remember that he worked as a vendour of tea, coffee and so on. And the company Nick was working on belonged to a giant suga

r mogul. Nick came to his son, Eugen Langen, and he was like, "Eugen, look here, Here's one case. You know your technologies, and I do, too. I have an engine, and you have money. And your dad has a lot of money. And what do we both have? Right. Brains. Maybe we could, kinda… Piston, cylinder, go? Eugen thought the idea to be more than upcoming, and so they shook hands and decided to open a company. But only on one condition: if the guys managed to refine the engine so that the patent office coul

d let it pass. Plus, Lenoir's engine had a very interesting feature. It exploded. Right. It's logical if you were the first in the world to fill the engine with gas or some combustible liquid and to ignite it there. Yes, the engine worked. But if you let it run at least for an hour, or a couple of hours, it could explode at any moment. And they said, "Well, yeah. Normal technology, it's fine. The mechanic has one arm now. It's normal. Why did you need that arm, actually? You have a second one. F

or now." The guys spent four years to refine the engine to be coherent. And in the year eighteen-sixty-four, they opened the first company in Germany that manufactured internal combustion engines that was called by the name of the founder that could build that engine in his garage at bench scale. "Otto and Partners." Nick's full name was Nicolaus August Otto. Otto's engines found their market practically at once, and the production line began to work nonstop. Yes, of course, it wasn't a huge fac

tory but a small workshop. But I remind you, there was the year 1864. There were no cars. All the engines were ordered for some manufactures to replace manpower there. Three years later, in the year eighteen-sixty-seven, Otto presented his engine at the same exhibition where he met Lenoir back in the day. And he got his golden medal for engineering achievements. Despite the fact, that his engine was based on the same principles Lenoir invented back then. The main thing was, Otto managed to make

this engine work stable. And basically, Otto's engine was the first stock internal combustion engine on gas. Yes, of course, you could argue that some dude in some garage built some prototype much earlier, but it doesn't matter. Because inventors weren't able to handle the manufacturing and to make the engine work stable on long distance. And Otto was. And seven more years later, in eighteen-seventy-four, Otto patented the new construction of the four-stroke engine that provided the basis of all

the modern gasoline engines. At this point, I should explain. 'Cause it's a pretty important moment as I think. Look here. Any engine's design is kinda following: We have a piece of metal with a hole inside. It's called a cylinder. Inside of it, there's another, trickier piece of metal that is called a piston. It can crawl along that cylinder back and forth. And so, for the piston to make back and forth, you either move it with your hands, or you move something else. Hands are no option 'cause

the engine has to work by itself. Well, what's the point in the engine if you're moving it with your hands? In order to move a piston, engineers just decided to burn something up. In steam engines, they heat the water tank. Water is boiling, turning to steam; steam is running through special pipes and pushing this poor piston. In internal combustion engines that work on gas, gasoline, diesel, God knows on what fuel, it ignites inside the cylinder, explodes, and because of sudden expansion in the

cylinder, pushes the piston. That's the principle. If you made the piston move back and forth, you're fricking great. Then, later, you attach to that piston a metal stick; because of its movements, that piston begins to rotate that stick; and you attach this rotating stick to whatever you want, and here you have a working machine. If you attach it to the car wheels - you have a moving car. If you attach it to the assembly line on the factory - you have a moving conveyor belt. You attach a prope

ller to it, put it in the water - you have a boat. Or a ship. That is the principle. And if you take Lenoir's engine or the first Otto's engine, they were two-stroke ones. And Nick didn't like it. Let's take our simple terms. If we take just the word "two-stroke", we will know that this means two strokes. Right. I hope I don't have to explain the number. But I should explain what the stroke is. One stroke is one movement of the piston in the engine. Here it goes up. It's a stroke. Here it goes d

own, this is another stroke. Like music: one - two, one - two. And the two-stroke engine is such an engine where the fuel explodes every second stroke inside the cylinder. That means, the first stroke up, explosion; because of that, the second stroke down. Then again, one stroke up, fuel explosion, and the piston goes down again. And the engine works like this. One - boom - two, one - boom - two. But after some working time, those engines just exploded. They either gave out, or got flooded with

fuel, or exploded. Otto's engine worked better that Lenoir's, but still, it wasn't perfect. Nicolaus looked at that and said, "One, two, one, two. What the hell, the engine died. Let's do it again. One, two, one two… Fuck, it exploded." And at some point, Nick realized that the engine exploded or gave out because the two-stroke base didn't allow it to clean itself out of those gasses, not burnt fuel and all that shit that appeared because of combustion. And when shit like that was piled too many

, the engine couldn't endure and went sideways. And Nick was like, "We have to make four. We have to make four strokes. We'll be like, one, two, three, four. Fucking gas, you have to floor it. Gasoline. It was like that. Yes. Anyway, Nicolaus tried to remake that engine for four strokes for seven years. And in the end, he really did it. In the year eighteen-seventy-four, the first four-stroke engine working on gas saw the light, and its name was Silent Otto. Just because, compared to the two-str

okes of that time, Otto's four-stroke engine worked much quieter. Also, it consumed less fuel, heated less and actually worked as a dream. That's why, if you hear the term "four-stroke" once again, you should know Nicolaus Otto invented it. And if you have an air-breather in your car, it likely works in such a way how Otto thought it to, almost a hundred and fifty years ago. No one could invent anything better till today. And Nicolaus could. An average guy, without engineering education, without

money and seemingly without possibilities. But he didn't need them. Nicolaus did it himself. He became history. Yet while alive, he received an Honorary Doctorate. And in the modern world, in 1996, Nicolaus August Otto was included into the Automotive Hall of Fame. as one of the fathers of the car world. But here we have a teeny-tiny discord. I have nothing against Nicolaus Otto in the Automotive Hall of Fame. All the modern air-breathers are built based on his construction. You bet your ass. B

ut strictly speaking, Otto's engines were never present in vehicles. Otto's factory produced stationary engines. And stationary engine means - well, if you need to make the assembly line move itself at your factory, then you put an engine on the floor, attach it to the assembly line, and voila. The engine is working; the assembly line is moving. It would seem that no one would need such engines. But the manufacturing rate of Otto's factory was no joke. The factory produced twenty or thirty thous

ands of such engines a year. and not one of them was built into a car, 'cause it were the eighteen-seventies. And if you think it was a bit strange to produce only such engines, the factory didn't see anything strange in it. I'll go you one better and say that it lives till today. It is called Deutz in the modern world, and it still produces engines for plants, factories and all of that. But in the year eighteen-seventy-two, a couple of years before Otto made his four-stroke engine, two guys cam

e to his company to be executives. For a flair, let's call them Joe and Billy. Just imagine two people that were as thick as thieves, something like Jack and Jill, but Jack and Jack. Well, Joe and Billy were like that. Without Jill, yeah. They were so happy. They came to Otto in order to remake all the technological processes inside, to recompile the company and to think how to make everything efficient. A question. Why the heck some fellas came to someone's company and why the heck they began r

emaking everything? Well, at least, I asked it myself while researching the archives. But we remember that Otto opened his company not alone. His partner was the son of a rich sugar mogul. And Otto wasn't the man who was in charge. Rather, many people were in charge. And Otto was only one of them. In time, as the company was growing, the number of participants in the company management also grew because they had to control more processes and more people. And Otto's responsibility was always only

the operating division, only the products. He wasn't allowed to go higher. The company top staff always came up to Otto, and said, my bro, come on, maybe, let's invent something else, m? Perhaps, we should make some engines for boats, or else, you'd invent some new construction and put it in a waggon or something like that? Perhaps, you'd hurry with your inventions, and we'd put a new product on the market?" With any means, those guys wanted to fill the market with new wares, new services, some

thing new to scale up their production. Otto sent them to hell. He was like, "Here's my brilliant engine. Here, we have it. We produce only it. That's all." Just you wait, I'll invent another brilliant engine, and we will be producing as many as two of them." He spent nine years for it. And the company executives looked at all of that and realized they were fucking up their chances. Yes, their business was good, they produced the engines, the demand was great. But they could do better. They coul

d do more and cooler. Plus, they knew that Otto wasn't an educated engineer, and they were like, "Perhaps, we have to ask for advice by some people who know this shit? Who received an education? How's about that?" After that, they opened a vacancy, tested a bunch of applicants, and at some point, they met Joe and Billy. At that point, they'd been working for one of the biggest manufacturer of locomotives and train cars. Joe was a CTO with the executive committee, and Billy assisted him. Ah, okay

, I get it, get it… I don't get it. The CTO with the executive committee really means that it was the man in charge of the whole production. He answered for the work of the factory, for the flawless production, for implementing new technologies, and developing new products. A production man. Top staff of Deutz, Otto's company, I mean, came to Joe, and they were like, "Come to us. We'll give you creative freedom and free rein. You can do anything you like. And you'd help us grow the company." Joe

was like, "I will come to you only with Billy. Either you take both of us or no one. And if I'm the CTO, Billy would become the chief engineer." And those guys shook hands. As soon as Joe and Billy came to work, Otto, shell-shocked, came to the executive meeting, and was like, "What the fucking fuck is this? What the skanks are going through my workshops and explaining to everyone, me included, how to live this life? What the fuck?" Honestly, I would like very much to see the eyes of all the re

st Otto's business partners at that time because, I think, all of those people were like, "Fuck, didn't anyone warned Otto? You didn't tell him that?" It's like "The Silence of the Lambs", only the silence of the dicks. Anyway, from Otto's point of view, it was the hell of a cringe. A couple of dudes in suits suddenly came, began to nose into all the technological processes Otto devoted his life to, and they began to tell him it was bullshit and had to be remade. As the matter of fact, the decis

ion to hire them was totally correct. Because those two guys weren't some alien, street-tough guys but two of them were brilliant engineers. Joe's real name was Gottlieb Daimler. And Billy was Wilhelm Maybach. Daimler and Maybach were actually the most dynamic duo that could be in the whole car world. It's very difficult to find another tandem like that in the car industry because those two guys worked side by side through their whole lives, and never left each other, ever. Just so you know, jus

t in case, a little note, they weren't lovers. Wives, children, all of that - they had it. They almost fell out because of a woman once. They were normal guys. They worked well with each other. But at first, when you read biographies of Maybach and Daimler, it seems very strange. Because it's a perfectly normal situation when people unite for any project, and then, they break up. Either the project is outdated, or someone is sick and tired, and they want something new. We have a reverse situatio

n. The one and only condition of getting into whatever projects is doing it together. And if at least one of them didn't like something in some work, the other one automatically took his side. For example, if Daimler wanted to leave, it was absolutely impossible without Maybach. At first, I couldn't understand why that was happening. But I found the answer. The age gap between them was twelve years. And they met when Daimler was twenty-seven, and Maybach was fifteen. I'll add some fuel: eh, they

met in a church. I was thinking, you know, why do church boys have such high voices? I couldn't guess. Daimler, at that point, by his 27 years, - tick off your fingers. Since he was fourteen, he was working as apprentice in an armorer shop, and learning to deal with metal while going to school at the same time. He graduated from the School for Advanced Training in the Industrial Arts, and he was working at the factory that produced steam engines for locomotives. By his twenty-two, when he gradu

ated, he was already a foreman at the factory. But his study was over. He wanted to study further - at Stuttgart's Polytechnic Institute while also working with trains. Then, he left to Paris for a year; to London for another. And in each city, he took a job with some manufacture to see how things were going out there. Only after that, he went back to Germany and took a job with the Württemberg factory of metalwares. The Württemberger factory sounds really scary, like everything in German. But i

t's just a factory where they make spoons and forks. If you see such a logo somewhere, that would be it. Just so you know - some long time ago, young Gottlieb Daimler set up the production there. And when he was twenty-seven, Daimler already had employment history in three countries, he had two engineering educations, and he'd been leading people for seven years. And you still don't know who you wanna be when you grow up. When you grow up, you'd be bent over. While Gottlieb was working at WMF, h

e took under his wing a small workshop near the local Christian church, just being philanthropic. Honestly, I didn't find any information that Daimler was especially religious. He was an engineer to the bone, and, as all engineers, he didn't care for religion. But still, I think, from humane motives, he decided to do some additional good to the society. He took under his patronage the workshop by the Bruderhaus church. The Bruderhaus church wasn't a church in its classical form. It was something

in the middle between orphanage, community and church. What was that? If you live in the nineteenth century and you have lost your family, relatives or at least some kin, most likely, you are fucked. If you are alone in the modern world, despite all the social services, support, medicine and blah blah, that wouldn't also be so fun. And if you're an orphan in the nineteenth century, well, good luck. You decided to play this life at the insane level. Even elementary survival wouldn't be so easy a

task. And for those people whose life went into a downward spiral, there were communities where you could be accepted, warmed, fed, given a roof, and you could even keep living there as the community member. And Bruderhaus was such a community. And you were told that God loved you, yes, He watched over you. But the main thing was, people got the second chance for a normal human life. And as the church accepted mostly some orphaned teenagers, of course, they had classrooms and workshops so that

kids could learn something out there. and find some worthy job in the future for themselves. Those workshops were taken under Daimler's wing. Daimler was tutoring children, teaching them engineering, bringing equipment and trying to give the kids as much as he could. I remind you, he was just 27. And he was teaching kids, supporting the workshop by the church, and leading the technical personnel of the factory. Without Telegram, WhatsApp, Zoom and "ouch, I'm burnt out". At some point, a fifteen-

year-old teenager appeared, whose both parents had died. Besides, he also had three younger brothers. The name of that teenager was Wilhelm Maybach. Despite Wilhelm being a son of an ordinary carpenter, by his fifteen, he was already good at engineering. And of course, he didn't have any specialized education. He was savvy since his early childhood. And in the orphanage, he suddenly became Daimler's student. Daimler worked at the orphanage for six years. During all those six years, Maybach had b

een his favorite student showing very cool results. And when Daimler realized that he had to look for some new place of work and to move on, he took Maybach with him. Technically, for the rest of his life. Whatever project that couple got in the future, they had one and the same condition, over and over. They had to work together. In that scheme of things, the devotion of the partners is perfectly obvious. That is some rare example when the teacher and the student could work together through the

ir whole lives without finding out who was smarter. Daimler was like a second father to Maybach. And Maybach was the most devoted and main student of Daimler's whole life. As I've said, after several years, they changed their place of work for the locomotive factory. At that factory, those guys from Otto's company found them. Relations between Otto and that couple turned sour from the start and didn't normalize later. They were constantly fighting inside the company. That was only natural. Daiml

er and Maybach believed that steam engines were dead. And ICE was clearly great, but making only huge stationary engines was also a dead-end job. They wanted to develop some little engine that could be attached to a waggon or a boat. And Otto told them to fuck off. That was also logical. You devote your whole life to the development of your own engine. Many years later, you are successful. And then, some strange dudes are coming that haven't invented anything, and say, "That's bullshit, Nick, ge

t a new one. You've been toiling many years. You 'great, of course. But we don't like it. Let's send all of this to the shithole, and now we're toiling as we say." And what's your issue here, sugar? I can understand both sides. But the point stands. Daimler and Maybach were so eagerly voting for production of little and light engines that could be attached to different waggons. And Otto told them, "Fuck off, I'm in charge here." Those things proceeded eight years. Do you know what else happened

when you were eight? They weren't sitting and fighting those eight years from dusk till dawn. Daimler and Maybach were working very hard to improve processes, to refine the engine constructions, improved the working cycle, and all of that. They did some fine and big work. According to the production quality and volumes the factory began to produce, they performed colossal work. The main thing remained unchanged. The factory kept on producing stationary engines for manufactures. Otto had absolute

ly no intention to change things. And also, Otto was a bit sleazy by claiming any innovations that Daimler and Maybach invented in his company. If Gottlieb and Wilhelm invented something new or somehow improved machines that already existed, only Otto was listed in all the new patents. Just because he could. And at some point, Daimler and Maybach were like, "Oh, you drive us nuts, for holy God's sake, that's really all. Everything we could do with your engines, we did. Thank you for you work. Bu

t now we branch out on our own." Well, at least, the official version is like that. Like those guys were just tired from work, from differences, and they just decided to walk off into the sunset. But reality, as usual, was a bit trickier. As Daimler was in the company's high management, he got a part of his bonus as small parts of company shares. Well, this is a standard practice of keeping a good executive. You give him either his share, or a block of stocks, or some other shit, and the executi

ve gets greatly motivated in seeing the company grow. just because with it, his capital will grow. But at some point, Daimler realized two things. First, he found a loop in Otto's patent documents, and he knew that he could make his own engine. And for his engine, he could use some of Otto's know how because patents were bad, and no one could prevent his production. Second, his share in Deutz and all his know how in the company cost very impressively, and if he sold them, he and Maybach would ha

ve money for development, patents and building their own manufacture. As soon as Gottlieb combined those two things in his head, he came to Maybach and said, "Get your rear in your gear now." On the next day, Daimler sold his share in Deutz, to the same founders, for one hundred and twelve thousand golden marks. He grabbed Maybach under his arm, and they left. Such a sum in golden marks is a bunch. Right. The golden mark is the German currency in the 19 century that was directly connected to gol

d. That meant, for one mark, you could receive some certain amount of gold. One hundred and twelve thousand golden marks were equivalent of forty kilo of gold at that time. Today, a kilo of gold costs three and a half million rubles or fifty-three thousand dollars. After simple calculations, we can tell that forty kilos of gold is more than two million dollars. For one workshop, that'd be enough. Our dynamic duo bought a whole house for their workshop and began to invent the future there. As tho

se guys had enough experience in project engineering, and they both realized what they wanted, they developed their engine after only three years. At first, in 1883, they showed the first sample of the new generation engine. And in eighteen-eighty-five, they already presented to the world the refined engine that was compact enough to be implemented in something that was moving. Gottlieb and Wilhelm called that engine in the German way, romantic, Standuhr. That means in English "standing clock".

Because the engine was resembling the standing clock. The standing clock. You days are numbered. And it began. In the same year, the couple managed to attach the engine to a big bicycle, and technically, that was the first motorcycle in the world. They called it Reitwagen. To prove its working capacity, Maybach was riding it across the neighborhood picking up speed of insane twelve kilometers per hour. Such rides proved the best that their idea was working and the age of the transport with the I

CE was nearby. Another year later, the couple showed a machine that was called Stahlradwagen. And technically, it was one of the first vehicles with the combustion engine in the whole world. The fun thing was, the phrase "one of the first" isn't random. Because in the same year, 1886, in the same place, almost out of the nearest workshop, a guy rode out a waggon with another compact ICE that was called simply Motorwagen. If we translate it verbatim, it's just a waggon with an engine. And riding

this waggon with an engine, covered in masut, and very happily smoothing his moustache down, there was its creator. That little guy named Karl Benz. He built his Motorwagen literally a few months before Daimler and Maybach. That's why he was the first to receive his own patent. The German imperial patent number three-seven-four-three-five. The first patent in Germany for a self-moving waggon with an ICE. And despite the fact that Benz was in advance of Daimler and Maybach, they still didn't have

any legal problems with their invention because first, their engines were different; and second, the Motorwagen had three wheels. As long as Karl Benz remembered himself, he was building bicycles. And his path in life was just classical. First, he got education, he went working there, then he went working here, began to make his own things, to make bicycles but he believed in the idea of self-moving waggons and created this magnificence. But Daimler and Maybach built their vehicle with four whe

els at once because earlier, they worked with locomotives. They just didn't know why anyone could need three wheels. And Benz, didn't know why anyone needed four wheels when attaching the third wheel to the bike was really great. Both Benz and our Dynamic Duo brought their waggons to all the exhibitions of technological achievements at once, and received their first orders - both for engines and for vehicles. Logically, their vehicles weren't called for much yet because they were some super fanc

y shit. But their engines began to go off like hot cakes. Someone bought them to install into their bicycles; someone for boats, but that didn't matter. What mattered, it happened. And in 1886, there was something new on this planet. Even the creators didn't know what pot they stirred. Officially, with those three people, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and Karl Benz, a new German age began. The age of German vehicles with the combustion engine. The same German vehicles that would drive people

mad for a century and a half. Chapter Five. Golden Years In the early nineteen hundreds, Europe had the first symptoms that showed cars to be not just yet another innovation by the Industrial Revolution but something more interesting. On the streets of the big cities, people could here claps and backfirings of engines, and happy dudes with their ladies began driving here and there. Also, a bunch of garage workshops appeared, and each of them tried to invent things of their own and to build a be

tter car than other people. How could you find out whose car were cooler? In motor racing. There were no traffic lights back then yet, and so, that kind of races were quite a difficult task. But grandiose races across all Europe - there you go, hands down. Basically, each month in some European region, there was something happening. The biggest amount of races was held in France because the French invented them - but one way or another, people were racing everywhere. Somewhere, there were bold s

hort range races for a couple of kilometers or something like that. Or people were driving up the hill. And somewhere, you just had to drive gracefully past the crowd. But the big races was the coolest. When the start was in one country, and the finish - in another one. We told about it in "France". But in this video, I'd like to point out that races were just an amazing show of that time. Those races gathered some impossible crowds in city centers because everyone wanted to see the conquerors o

f those mechanical beasts that they drove from God knows where. And we need to talk about races: well, technically, it was the only way to promote vehicles. Because people didn't understand why they had to change their horsed waggon for some difficult and expensive shit. For example, when Karl Benz invented his magnificence, his Motorwagen, and proudly presented it on the fair of technological achievements in Paris, of course, he gathered a bunch of prizes and all of that. But what do you think,

how many his great Motorwagens he sold? I remind you, the fair was large-scaled. Tens of thousands of people from the target audience walking back and forth, and also one could find some important dude who all alone could give you such an order that you would have spent several years for it. What are your assumptions? How many cars Benz could have sold on such an event? A thousand? Well, I don't mention ten thousands, one would be good already. Forget that thousand. He just had to have sold, we

ll, two or three hundreds. One. Just one. What he brought, that he sold. And he sold it very cheap to avoid driving it back. And he didn't get any orders for new cars. You would think you were great, you had a breakthrough in the future, here is your handshake for that. No money, sorry. You should have invented a bicycle. He had to answer them, "Oooh, fuck, just buy it, bitches." And they would have. And Karl didn't understand how to promote his products 'cause a year and a half after the fair,

he sold zero cars. But Daimler and Maybach couldn't boast about their sales either. Daimler mostly kept selling engines. And Benz kept selling his bicycles and engines, too. No one had a clue how to sell a vehicle. When a man doesn't get something, who comes to help? Correct, women. Benz' wife, Bertha Benz, took her husband's car without his knowing, took her kid under her arm and drove to her mother to the nearby town. A hundred kilometers away from their city. Without a mechanic, without assis

tance, just a woman with her kid - and with that thing. Just a ride for a hundred kilometers. That is, in the year eighteen-eighty-eight. Without asphalt highways and all this stuff. When Benz found out, he was shocked twice. First, because of her; second, he began to receive orders for his Motorwagen because people were like, "Well, if a woman with a child could handle this, we can certainly use it." But not a child. A car. We can use the child later. Thanks to this act, during the next couple

of years, Benz sold as many as twenty-five vehicles. It was still not much. But I remind you, twenty-five is twenty-five times more than one. The effect of such an ad was visible. The promotion worked like that, and races worked like that. They announced some kind of a race, a crowd of respected gentlemen gathered, a bunch of cars gathered - and went smashing against the trees. Benz, Daimler and other car manufacturers participated in such events, they gathered their clientele and gained popular

ity. But in the year nineteen-oh-one, for one race over the hills near the some unknown dude came driving a very new and very strange vehicle. He went to start with an absolute poker face. And then that scumbag won the race. And everyone was like, "Eh, what is that? Well… what is that car, what the fuck, who is this dude, who is he?" The unknown man turned to them, and said, "I'm Henry." And when you research this brand, you're like… I've already seen this. I've already seen this." Because all o

f us already know, especially in Toyota club, that to gain success with vehicles, what you must do? Right, you must make sewing machines. Once, Toyota had been making sewing machines - and look where it is now. Where? On the post. Such a joke. We remember that Germany had quite a good textile industry. They had great deal of cotton, fields, tools, manufactures, and textile in general was very monetary at that time. At the height of development of the textile industry, in eighteen-sixties, some d

ude called Adam opened a garment factory. It was not the Adam who lived without a rip, made a bold snake cry and stole our paradise. He was not that Adam. This German Adam is of interest to us because his family name was Opel. And we realize that we can't see any paradise with this Adam. As you are an adult audience, you're about twenty-five or thirty-five years, like me, you have certainly seen by your grannies such sewing tables. Not the case with a separate sewing machine but when this machin

e is an entire table. You have some pedals below, that shit is made of metal, and it's still standing in your flat because it weighs like a bridge and you can't throw it away. If you throw it out of the window, it will fly through the ground to Australia. I swear to God, last thing we need here are fucking Opel's. Have all of you seen those sewing thingies? Adam made sewing machines about like that. A hundred and fifty years ago. His bestseller, his crown jewel, his fifth symphony was that. Opel

Perfecta. I'm not laughing now. Well, I'm laughing but not laughing. Really, it's a bestseller. - Opel Perfecta. - And you're not. He was making sewing machines and chilling alone. No one could let him touch them with such a name. But, jokes aside, machines were great. They didn't tear strings, didn't break, had the call, just great. And Opel's company was really huge and giant because Adam was one of the fattest market players back then. But at some point, he noticed some commotion with person

al means of transportation, like everyone suddenly rushed to make some bicycles, waggons, to attach some engines to them, and he was stuck with his sewing machines. Moreover, Adam travelled a lot across Europe and saw with his own eyes how bicycles gained popularity in other countries, like hell. And he certainly decided to go into that zone in order to conquer the market before that moment until other, more smart companies would come. But he chickened out to go into the fat theme, car building.

It was unclear, some development was needed - fuck them, start with bicycles, look what would happen, and then, we'll see about that. And as initially, Opel had enough money, he built a bicycle factory just at once, immediately, and began to produce his own bicycles. But at that moment, Adam faced one classic trouble that awaits every Opel. - He died. - And he was rotten. Yes. Thank God, Adam Opel still managed to touch someone in his life, and then he had five sons. Look how happy they are. He

re they are, from left to right. They're sitting on their own bike, by the way. As you could guess. Looking at that photo where five happy guys are sitting on a long thingy together, you could guess that if those brothers decided to make cars, those would be fun at least. And then, they'll rot. The family business went to those guys. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that was the rare case when children of an industrialist happily developed their family business. Because guys grew up on their fathe

r's factories, and by their teenage years, each of them had been already making something, helping, doing errands and all of that. And as they became adult and adequate, all of them were experienced and professional managers. And when their dad was still alive, they'd been helping to rule all the factories and family companies. When Adam Opel died - and that was the year 1895 - the Opel company was the biggest company in Europe that produced sewing machines. And also, the biggest company in the

world that produced bicycles. The first bike was produced in eighty-seven. In eighteen-ninety-five, they were the biggest bicycle makers in the world. They reached that position after eight years. But, jokes aside, Opel made really great bikes. They'd better go on. And as Opel was the biggest producer of both bicycles and sewing machines at that time, and neither of them could be called cheap wares, that meant the company had a lot of money. And also, the company was controlled by five young guy

s. All that together was a really perfect mix to involve in some venture. And that car that won the race over the hills with the enigmatic Henry behind the wheel was the first Opel automobile. And Henry was Heinrich von Opel, One of the brothers. The guys quickly found some engineers, who managed to design a vehicle. And as the guys were good productionists, they managed to build it in no time. If Daimler, Maybach, Benz, all of those guys spent eight or ten years each to design the engine, chass

is, the body of the waggon, and blah blah blah, Opels' idea became a real vehicle after over a year. In eighteen-ninety-eight, they signed a contract with Friedrich Lutzmann, the design engineer that developed the car. And in eighteen-ninety-nine, they already showed the finished car that by that time had a really magnificent name - Opel Patentmotorwagen "System Lutzmann". Perhaps, the Opel brothers got used they were five, and the name of their car had to consist out of five words. As many as c

hromosomes. But it became obvious quickly that despite the car was finished within a short time, such a quickly development had its problems. And Opel Patentmotorwagen fucking "System Lutzmann", besides the obvious problems with naming, had problems with its engine. One hundred and twenty years passed, and nothing changed. Being pure entrepreneurs, not self-taught inventors that held so important that everything was just like they thought, and only self-developed, and all of that, brothers pulle

d the plug on slops, went to France and signed a contract with the Darracq car manufacturer. By that time, and that was the year nine-hundred, Darracq held ten percent of the whole automobile market in France being the most technological car manufacturer at that time. By that moment already, Darracq was trying to turn to fully machine production. Not for the factory to produce only machines, but for machines to work on the factory instead of the living manpower. All the cars were being built man

ually at that time. And Darracq implemented special tools to make car chassis out of pressed steel for the production to be quicker and cheaper. I think that was the reason why the Opel brothers signed the contract with Darracq. Just because they knew what a good productionist he was. Technically, we could say the Opel brothers were one of the first who invented the term "platform". They bought chassis and engines from Darracq, and put their own body on it. And they sold it with the name "Opel-D

arracq". They sold a lot. The first Opel-Darracq model was ten-twelve PS that accelerated up to the impossible forty-five kilometers per hour. After four years in production, Opel Darracq Ten-twelve was the first car in Germany that passed the mark of a thousand sold vehicles. And at that point, the brothers found apparent that they hit the jackpot. Technically, they didn't became the market leaders with that vehicle. By that time, the leader was Benz, who already managed to develop his producti

on till several hundreds of cars a year. At the same time, it was obvious, that the competition would become stronger because Daimler and other car producers were ready. Moreover, sooner or later, they waited the French cars to come, and those also were their competitors. They didn't wish to compete. They wished to dominate. And so, brothers made one more decisive step that any tidy and conservative manager wouldn't dare to do. They were, like, "Okay. We have the following strategy. First of all

, we should change while everything is well. Or else, if we'd wait until a crisis, we wouldn't have enough money to hold the company afloat. That's why, right now, in the good times, we have to remake the company. Second, we should send the French to hell and develop everything by ourselves because now we depend on Darracq as they supply us. And if their head gets scorched, we are fucked, and our business would crumble. And so, let's go to development and do it ourselves. And third. As we begin

to develop, we need to avoid any competition. We have to sit and to think carefully what car could we make so that it actually won't have any competitors." They found the answer quickly. They had to make cheap vehicles. You should know that at that time, in nineteen-oh-seven or nineteen-oh eight, a vehicle was a fucking great luxury. A carriage with a horse for personal transportation was already expensive. And a car was something very exorbitant for very rich people. But the guys decided to mak

e a bet for making maximally cheap vehicles. They didn't care how it would look, what it would be made of; it only had to drive not to break at the corner - already overreach for Opel - and cost the least possible sum of money. They did everything right. In the year nineteen-oh-seven, in a one-way fashion, they stopped their work with Darracq. Opel invested all their resources into development of a new car that would be called Four-eight PS. Or, as people called it later, Doktorwagen. Those vehi

cles were sold by thousands. In 1909, the car was presented to the public, and when the company named the price, people thought they were joking. The price was three thousand and nine hundred marks. Just so you know, the tackiest Benz of that time cost fifteen or seventeen thousand marks. And Benzes were not the most expensive vehicles, they were just simple, tough, average cars. And they cost seventeen thousand marks. And those - almost four. The idea of the Opel brothers was to turn cars not t

o luxury articles for evening rides through the city center or some car races, but for life. A simple, average car for life. For doctors riding back and forth, for social services, for cab drivers, for lawyers - for life. So that people could ride comfortably for the least sum of money possible. Thanks to that idea and that courageous step, in nineteen-twelve, Opel turned to the biggest car manufacturer in Germany. They were the first to pass the mark of ten thousands sold cars. And in nineteen-

fourteen, the yearly company tempo was about three, three and a half thousand vehicles a year. It was just out of reach for everyone else. In such a way, Opel achieved everything it was made for: the full dominance on the European car market. All that because of the Opel brothers who spent their lives on their father's manufactures. And thanks to that, after their father died, they were able to turn just a big company into a great company. The company that presented Europe with the first afforda

ble cars. The brothers left their mark in history and took their place in the Automotive Hall of Fame. All five Opel brothers - Karl, Heinrich, Wilhelm, Fritz and Ludwig - are in the Automotive Hall of Fame, rightfully and deservingly. All in all, everything was great. The world was evolving. Manufactures were built. Economy was growing. More and more cars were appearing on the streets. Races of all kinds were constantly held across Europe. Big crowds were becoming fans of speed, the first car c

lubs and communities were appearing. Everything was just magnificent. And so, as it's so great, we can start a war. Chapter Six. Clash of Empires The war was coming. All knew it. Not like only diplomats, rulers who were aware, but everyone at all. That was in the air. They were speaking of war, discussing the war, and by people's testimonies, as awful it may sound, they wanted the war. Mostly Germany. The detailed events of the war don't really matter to us, we must find out why it happened, how

people felt at that moment, and what was happening with the car industry. In simple terms, in the early past century, several important parallel events were converging. The main feature of that time was appearance of working class. The commotion began because of it. In all cities, they were building a huge amount of factories, warehouses, manufactures, and crowds of villagers were rushing to big cities who wanted to work at factories and to live in towns. And you were like, "Well, they built a

couple of factories. So what? There's anything wrong with it." But, technically, life simply went upside down. I'll give you an example. The population of Paris in eighteen-seventy was one-point-eight million people. And in nineteen-eleven, there were three million people. In course of forty years, the city practically duplicated. And if we take Berlin, the picture was even funnier there. Because in eighteen-seventy, there were nine thousand people living there. And in nineteen-hundred - two-poi

nt-seven million. And if Paris duplicated in forty years, Berlin, in thirty years, triplicated. And when a fucking huge crowd of people is packed in your city like sardines in a tin, of course, they would think something like, "Why do we have to live like that?" Especially, if you know how the market demand works. Because when a real crowd comes in one limited place, what would happen first of all? Real estate prices grow. Yes, In case of Berlin, they really multiplied because the population sca

led up massively. But would your salaries also multiply? That is an important issue because if you have more manpower than you need, salaries wouldn't grow 'cause people are aplenty. Yes, everything would regain balance in time, there would be normal prices and affordable housing, but the first generations lived very shitty. People lived on top of one another, in dorms or barracks right on the territories of the factories in creepy conditions. That was not because factories wanted to let all the

workers rot, but nobody just knew how to organize such a life. It was the first appearance of the way of worker's life, and of course, at first, everything went ass-backwards. Like any time. And if the cities were earlier populated by important people - nobles, military, craftsmen and so on, and others lived in the country, at those times, in one place, just nearby each other, there lived aristocrats and severe and dirty workers. Workers were watching through pretty show-cases at the rich life,

later, at their own life, and there were some differences. And logically, in those terms, among that quickly growing segment of the people, ideas appeared about socialism, communism, fascism, nazism and blah blah blah. The point of all new ideas was about the same: "We need a way for all to live like kings." Everyone must have everything: food, money, possibilities, everything. Or, if it would be impossible to give palaces to all the peasants, those palaces mustn't exist at all, like ever. It d

oesn't matter if you stole your fortune or turned an honest penny - people don't care. If you have anything, we will take it from you. Because fuck you. Everyone has to live fucking well. Aside of rulers. And of nobles. Servants are out of luck. Entrepreneurs, bankers, facility owners and other executives - impale their ass. And wealthy doctors wouldn't help them from the next stake. We have to trash everyone who has money. Money is evil. We will save you from it. Genius. I know, the sketch ling

ers on. I wanted to show that not only rulers suffered but all the people that had, like, anything, although it wasn't their fault. But the sketch isn't working, here's a meme. Here. Anyway fucking bunch of new ideas appeared about remaking the society. And not one of those ideas supposed to keep monarchy alive. That's why all Europe was constantly blazing here and there. Now people went protesting here, now they destroyed something there, now they tried to overthrow the government - and so on.

Second, here, on the map, we have five giant empires at that time. Germany, Austria-Hungary, England, France and the Russian Empire. There was the Ottoman Empire, but it was breathing its last and didn't count. Here we have five empires. All of them had to grow and evolve. There was no room. In the course of previous centuries, England and France had been conquering other countries in Africa or India and so on and turning them to colonies, and Germany was trying to come together and all, but the

game was over. Wherever you went, it belonged to someone. But they had to expand. France wanted to take a piece from Germany, and Germany wanted to tear a piece from France. Plus, all the empires, both France, both Britain, both Russia wanted the Balkans. And Germany didn't want to pass this carve-up by. Those want one thing, these want another. Can't you tell right? Whom should I bust? If you don't know, the Balkans were here. A bunch of poor countries, mountains and a big amount of base metal

s deposits. And if a bunch of poor people is in some place, and rich deposits just happen to be around them, that is a very powerful argument in order to send your most democratic armies out there. So that they could stand there for no reason. And there is no way anyone could pass it by because natural resources are the keystone. And any state wouldn't be against having some additional mines for themselves. Even I would very like to have mines with base metals. You know. The press, of course, dr

essed it up in the garb of the Balkans were home for such poor Balkan peoples, they needed to be freed and protected from our enemies, and of course, the troops had to be sent in there. So that no one could attack those poor dear Balkans. Well, all of us are aware now how it's done. Plus, beside the Balkans, Germany wanted to take away Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics from the Russian Empire. Yet again, for resources. And Russia was like, "What the fuck is this? It's actually mine." It's strange

to talk in twenty-twenty two that Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine are ours. Let's wait for a few years. Even I don't feel it's okay. Although I'm a certified fag- When you have on the map five giant empires nearby, then, sooner or later, there will be either some big fight, or a holy fucking pit of hell crazy big fight. Third, everyone wanted to try new technologies because all the countries were on the edge of the Industrial Revolution. All of them but Russia. We were going to fight with moss,

logs and swearing. They wanted to fight with my ex. And everywhere there was steam, coal, giant factories manufacturing different guns, cannons, warships, the first battle planes - just a ton of lethal weapons. Each country was self-confident. Especially Germany. As for the level of armament: at that point, France had four and half thousands artillery units. Those were cannons, howitzers and all of that. Like some ancient cannons from the World War Two are standing in your city centers, - just l

ike those, but four and a half thousand of them. And two hundreds of that number were like some heavy weaponry. The difference between heavy and usual artillery is this: when a usual cannon hits you, that's okay, you could live. And the heavy weapon would hit you to the fullest. Like my ex. Well, he hit my shoulder, and my doctor told me to stretch it… Fuck. You bitch. Also, France was really one of the most armed countries in Europe. But then you look at Germany, and - ahh, it wasn't. Germany h

ad almost ten thousand artillery units, and three thousand of them were heavy. Germany had a bit less heavy artillery than the whole amount of all artillery in France. The German military industry could produce almost two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of ammunition a day. but the English military industry - only ten thousand a day. Like a one centimeter dick - and twenty-five centimeters. - Both will fit. - On we go. Just in theory, Russia could make eleven thousand cannons a year. but Germa

ny - sixty thousand. Sixty thousand cannons a year. And they were making them. Ammunition, ships, artillery, planes - they were making it all. And when one produces military goods in such volumes, one will use it appropriately, sooner or later. Or else - well, you've been working, toiling, producing, you can't throw them away. It definitely went bad. - That's for you, French. - Merci. And plus, at the beginning of the war, in Germany, there were almost four million of professional soldiers under

arms. Among population with sixty-five million people. And during the war, the amount of the military increased up to ten million. That meant, every sixth citizen went under arms. If we cross out women, old people, children and all of that - at least the half of the people who in theory could hold a gun held it eventually. And on the border nearby, almost four million French were standing. Austria-Hungary had two and a half million of effective forces. And Russia had six million soldiers. And a

ll that giant crowd was producing weaponry to the fullest. Like, we make as much as we could make, we will use it anyway. And all of that shit just couldn't help but explode at some point. All countries were looking at each other wild-eyed, froth at the mouth, saber rattling, and were just waiting who would attack first and where. They needed an excuse. The official occasion of the World War One was this guy. Franz Ferdinand. He was the heir of all the Austro-Hungarian empire. Right. It was some

thing like that. At some point, with some sort of important business, he wanted to go to Sarajevo. Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And Bosnia and Herzegovina are such a pimple on the Balkan ass. I remind you, those are the Balkans. And Sarajevo actually looks what it sounds. Just a usual capital of a small but very mountainous country. And that Franz was like, "Eh, what is happening in Europe now? People are afraid. Riots are everywhere, radicals, tra-la-la. I'm a prince and a

n heir of the empire. From the family of the monarchs everyone is arguing against. Right. Now I'm going to ride across all the intense places in Europe in an open-top car. Right, to give a wave to all. Hello, smartass. Yes, the dude was simply shot down on the street. Just because - well, there he is. Come on, shoot as much as you like. And that kinda started the war, although it's lie and provocation. First of all, just because there were much more murders. Practically at the same time, Jean Ja

urès was killed, that was the French politician who was vocally opposed to the war. The Russian ambassador in Serbia also was killed who came to a meeting to the Austrian embassy and never, ever left. Et cetera. Many people were killed before the war. The murder of the prince was the fattest cause. And second, it was clear that no one cared about that fucking prince. When interests of several empires clash in one and the same place, you could fuck each other as you want, but what has to happen,

will happen. And since, by the purest accident, the prince was killed exactly in the Balkans, everyone wanted to fight for, right after that incident, Austria and Germany declared war on Serbia; France, Russia and Britain stood up for Serbia, the chain reaction, everyone declared war to everyone, and everything was fucked up. It's a special pleasure to read the European press of that time. It's fascinating, I recommend it to all of you, especially in the modern context. By that time, newspapers

already became a tool that could affect the citizens' minds very well. And as soon as everyone knew that the war was imminent, all the papers began aggravating the situation. The British wrote how the German army was preparing to give hell to Europe. The French wrote how the Germans were trembling before the mighty French army. And the Germans wrote that the whole world was united to destroy Germany and to bring the great Germans to their knees again. Everyone was pumping each other up and depic

ting their potential enemies like real demons who wanted to consume this Earth and to put up the domain of darkness. Only our newspapers published the same headlines: "We don't give a fuck, we're with God and luck." But technically, the war began before the moment when the first bullets and bombs flew away. Any war always begins with the mass media that have been long and systematically preparing the public to the upcoming show. Everyone was doing exactly that. Germany was preparing for war more

than a year. More than one decade. Technically, all that economic expansion in the late nineteenth century and the sudden launch of manufacturing of everything were needed only to go to war eventually, and nothing else. And of course, a big part of it was simple math, like, "The country needs to expand. We can't make colonies. Let's conquer everything our neighbors have behind the fence." Although that didn't prevent anyone to divide China and Africa. And of course, Germany was also a participa

nt. But China and Africa are boring and far away, let's fight here, locally, that's much more interesting." But along with it, the mood of the nation also played a crucial role. The Germans wanted a war. Rather, they didn't want blood, killings and all of that. The Germans simply wanted to return their supremacy on the continent which they believed to be their legal right. Let's put ourselves in the place of a standard German that was born in the year eighteen-seventy or something more or less a

round. Your parents and grandparents are constantly telling you that the Germans were a great nation, but they didn't have a country of their own till recently. They were divided and fighting each other although they were one and the same nation, and it was totally fucked up. Later, when you were a little twat, the country began to unite, and during that process of gathering, there was a certain amount of small conflicts, yes, but all those conflicts were very swift and victorious. And as soon a

s the country agglomerated as a whole, there was a global transformation, economy began to grow wildly, and the quality of life began to grow, too. And when you are already grown up and adequate, you're living in the strong Germany, with the first economy in Europe at that time, and your quality of life is one of the best in the world. And everything is evolving around you, you have giant factories, ships, cars, parades. All of that. And they're telling you that's only because of two reasons. Fi

rst, 'cause we're together. Second, because you're German. And as such, you deserve all the best in the world. And in that moment, you don't have a short circuit in your head. 'Cause you just saw with your own eyes how the country united and became the best. Just like that. And you as ordinary German were like, "Yes. That's right." Not because of the management. Not because of strict political decisions, several wars to conquer territories and strict policy at the local level. Nah. That's becaus

e you're German, and you're worthy of everything. But with one condition: if we're together. As a whole. And we will hit them back for any infringement outside. Tough and mighty, as we can. That's their propaganda. And it worked fucking great. Here are some examples of that time's rhetoric, for clarity. Back then, the country was governed by this man, the emperor Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert of Prussia. How they loved longer names. Those names always sound like a beginning of a joke. You know

, once, Friedrich, Albert, Wilhelm and Viktor entered one man. For easier spelling, he'll be Wilhelm the Second. He ruled the country since eighteen-eighty-eight till nineteen-eighteen. His government ended because of the lost war. In order to understand what a person he was and what goals he pursued, one citation of his would be enough, from the speech he gave ascending the throne: "Even the slaughter of eighteen army corps and forty-two million Germans would be better that to renounce some par

t of German territorial acquisitions." That was fucking good. Better all of us gone, that we give at least one our farm to someone. An absolutely even trade. And Wilhelm spoke that way both about colonies that Germany had in some amounts, and about German territories on the continent. He was constantly praising his army and navy, wearing the military uniform, and he was a classical tough war dog. The country was flourishing under his rule, and all the German nation saw him as a strong, severe an

d beloved ruler that was doing so much for the country and wasn't afraid of anything. The ruler that could protect the land with sword and shield if needed. By the way, when it became obvious that the war was imminent, strange as it was, the Germans were happy. Because they felt there it was, the last step so that the German nation, finally, after centuries of disunity, would take its rightful place of the masters of the world. And no one ever would say another word against the German wishes any

more. The press was full of headlines like, "The very, the long-expected time had come. We're about to gain happiness as soon as we crush our enemies." And no one doubted that. They had succeeded for the last thirty or forty years, and they would succeed now, too. And no one remembered the fightings with Napoleon anymore. The generation had changed; and no one wanted to remember because Germany was humiliated with any means possible. And now we are strong. We will show the world who's in charge.

Will we lose? Oh, no chance. And when the full mobilization was announced, first of all, half of the country signed up as patriotic volunteers, and second, they were seen off to the front as to a party: flowers, banners, parades, and absolute feeling for that to be not a war but a light and victorious stride across the European continent. But the war happened to be as it happened. The most brutal and bloody in the human history. In the nineteenth century, all the countries agreed upon the fact

that nothing like the Napoleonic wars should ever happen again. Back then, at that time, the wild Napoleon set all Europe aflame and paid with three and a half million lives for that. And technically, that wish for that not to be repeated came true. Napoleon was not a patch on the World War One. Three and a half million victims were just a kindergarten compared to the amount of killed during that very war. Air bombardments, cities razed to the ground, chemical weapons, position warfare in trench

es, heavy artillery and bloody massacre up till total drain on the resources - all of that happened for the first time. And also, for the first time in history, all the planet was burning. Both Europe and Africa and China: everywhere you could have waged wars, the war was going on. And all the participants knew as the conflict turned into such a blood bath, there would be no mercy for the losers. They fought up to the last ditch. They didn't have another choice. No one counts exact losses. If yo

u look in the sources, both ours and foreign, the numbers will raise up to nineteen till twenty-five million soldiers and civilians. And in absolutely every source, you fill find such a line, "You cannot count how many people really died." It's simply impossible. No one knows how many people were buried in mass graves where piles of corpses were thrown down. No one could ever count common population back then. You can't dream about precise data about losses in the world war. But anyway, be as it

may, even if you take the most conservative estimates - and 25 million are the most conservative estimates, - you just can't comprehend that number. Especially considering that in the early 20 century, four times less people lived on Earth than now. So, for the planet and for all the participants, that was a natural nightmare. The first nightmare that was waiting for our planet in the past century. And in the end, the German Empire and its allies, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, were cr

ushed by all the other countries. And all those three empires ceased to exist. Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire divided into a bunch of small countries, and they were fine, more or less. But Germany… It had a hard time. As Germany was deemed as the main aggressor, and after the war, you throw the book at the loser, of course, - then Germany has to pay all the debts for that global fuck-up. In the end, Germany's fate was decided by England, France and the USA. Unfortunately, Russia didn't pa

rticipate. There was more interesting entertainment for it. It was the middle of the Revolution and the civil war. Why the fuck should we go to any war to other countries? We can fucking great fight by ourselves. The country said. Okay. The Allies couldn't ever agree upon what exactly Germany had to pay for. Of course, it had to pay for all that banquet, yes. One question. What exactly was the check? It wasn't enough to simply count the losses, destroyed cities, all the military help given by th

e USA that supplied the continent with weapons. Sounds familiar, or? To count all the lost equipment, and blah blah blah. You counted all that. What's next? A check, like in a restaurant? Like, the wedding was fucking great. Here's your check for broken dishes. Germany was also taking part in the war, you know, and it was also fucked-up. And had no money. You could write a hundred of zeros, what does it matter? And if you'd still make the country into impossible debt, their economy would simply

collapse, and you wouldn't see any money at all from there. But either no one realized it back then, or didn't want to do it. As the world was facing it for the first time, and globally, all the big countries had no experience ever in solving such a serious mess, eventually, the peace accord document was absolutely marvelous. The whole document that was called the Treaty of Versailles, consisted of four hundred and forty articles with fifteen sections. That was a fucking folder of such a size. E

ach term was better than the previous one. The first term, "We take your lands away. Not much, but." Technically, the World War One ended before the Allied Forces invaded the country, as Germany surrendered when they knew the resistance was futile. That's why, they didn't take away many territories. A piece for Poland, a piece for France. Well fuck, that didn't matter. The rest terms were much funnier. Second, Germany was prohibited to have an army. A hundred thousand soldiers were the max. Well

, okay, they could have four thousand officers, too. At that time, for sixty million of German people, more or less, a hundred thousand soldiers wasn't an army. You simply couldn't protect such a huge territory with such amount of people. You'd have two soldiers per a hectare of land, what could you protect? But that was the point. They wanted to make sure that Germany didn't have any army. And that meant, it couldn't say no to anyone. To any demand ever. If you don't have an army, you are defen

seless. Anything could be done to you. Third. All the navy, all the warships, all the trading vessels, everything they had was taken by England and France. They had to trade and fight with something. They did. Germany didn't anymore. Neither trade, nor fight. It could only whine and ask for charity. Fourth term. Reparations. As they didn't manage to set a precise price, it wasn't written. You just sign it here. And we'll come up later with the number you owe us. No jokes. They made Germany to si

gn an open account with a promise, like, "In a few years, we will certainly tell you how much you owe us, dear Germany. Spoiler, you owe us everything. We'll take away everything, everything you have and will have." Fifth. Cancelled custom duties. We'll be able to bring all our wares to you, we'll be selling them in Germany, and we won't pay you either a dollar or a German mark, or any fuck. We take all your ships, remember? We'll bring our wares to you with them. Eat shit instead of taxes. We w

on't only take all your money, but all the money for our wares we will sell on your market, we'll also take all that money. Sixth. What about your planes? We'll take you planes, that's clear, yeah. But do you know that air companies usually pay when their planes fly over foreign states? You know, right? Forget it, we won't pay. Also, you had fuckloads of coal, right? That's great, now you wouldn't. Because - seventh. For the nest ten years, you supply France with a hundred and forty million tons

of coal for free, Belgium with eighty million tons, and Italy with seventy-seven million tons. You also had some chemical factories, right? They're ours. Well fuck, okay then. You can give us the half of your stocks in storage all over your country, and then, in the next seven years, we'll be taking the quarter of your produced goods. For free, obviously. Do you want money, you dog? What count is it, seventh, eighth? Don't care. Between France and Germany, there was a demilitarized region where

no troops could be stationed. Not one soldier. You won't have them anyway 'cause you're not allowed, yeah, but you also cannot do it there. Just because. A question. How did the Germans feel after that? I forgot to tell you that everyone could unofficially slag Germany off as they liked. If you saw a German, you could easily spit in their face and move on your way. And they had to go away humbly thinking that they deserved it. That wasn't prescribed but people did it. Across all Europe, there w

ere propaganda posters showing the Germans as pure evil on this planet. These may be the most popular posters of the war time and post-war time. This ape represents the Germans. And the poster called American guys to save the planet from that orangutan. Here's our poster with the German emperor, allegedly mentally ill. And here, the Germans are God knows what. Some interesting mix of a gorilla and an orc. And classics of the genre - the poster "Remember Belgium". The Germans just razed a part of

Belgium to the ground, just a scorched desert it was; and that was prevailing in the global mass media for a long time to support the image of the German monster in all people's minds. And it seemed that after the war, all that had to end. But the vilification of the Germans was only stronger, because - what will you do to us? You have lost. And that is why we will throw crap at you as long as we want. And when the diplomatic delegation came to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the French made a f

ucking long drive for them on purpose, across all the destroyed places of France. When they came to Versailles, their belongings were thrown out of the train, and instead of a hotel, they were sent to barracks with barbed wire. I remind you, those were diplomats. The country fucking officials. Who came there to negotiate. Yes, Germany caused some shit, fact. But isn't this the essence of peace? We have fought, caused some shit, Now we reconcile. Okay, please, let us think about the way it could

never happen again. Let's take a compromise, I give you that, you give me this, let's move on, yeah? Isn't this the point of peace after a fight? But Germany was simply mocked. Even its diplomats. I don't mention common people, no. In all the papers and other mass media, they were trashing the Germans so much after the war and retaliating against the whole nation, that the most sophisticated BDSM club would be jealous. But that document that practically destroyed the country and all its chances

to exist, was the basic result for Germany, but not the main one. Because the main result of the war was lying in a hospital. Some average private that was pulled out of a trench after a chemical attack, half-dead. He was lying on the bed and couldn't do two things. First, he couldn't see. He lost his sight due to chemical gas. Also, he couldn't get out of the bed at all. And second, he couldn't believe his country had lost. God knows what he suffered more of. Because that man was a possessed, f

anatical patriot and it was nothing more important than his country for him. And while he was lying in the hospital, he knew his world had crumbled and his country was crushed. And he also was. The only feeling he had in that moment, was a strong regret he had survived. Because he had to live with a thought that he didn't save or protect his country. And he couldn't do anything with it. The war was over. In truth, everything just began for him. Because this soldier was called Adolf Hitler. Chapt

er Seven. Hitler Hitler wasn't an artist. He was a soldier. Sorry to interrupt, but further on, we will talk about nazism, fascism, Hitler and all such things. I just wanted to remind you that we condemn those things and don't promote them. And since I'm crashing the party so off-handedly, here's a bonus. For your attention: how a Nazi T-Rex would look? Pterodactyls are fucked. Wha? Hitler wasn't an artist. He was a soldier. Yes, we have a meme about an unknown Austrian artist, but speaking that

Hitler was an artist is the same as speaking that I'm a builder. Formally, do I have such an education? Yes. A degree of a project engineer? Yes. Did I work in that sphere? Yes. I draw some schematics for money. But am I a builder? Of course, not. I don't know shit about constructions, I've been in the car field for eleven years. Even here I'm a bad specialist because I couldn't tell straights from BMW lovers. The same shit happened with our Austrian artist. Yes, he painted some pictures when h

e was a teenager or a student. Everybody knows that. Mostly, he sold his pictures to Jewish intellectuals or just to wealthy Jews. Not everybody knows about that. Also, he made statues, wrote poetry, studied acting skills, read tons of literature and blah blah blah. He was just looking for his place in the world. He tried all kinds of arts possible. But everyone had a go at his pictures. But, looking from the long-term perspective, and from the situation that could form a personality, a trench d

uring the World War One impressed Hitler so much, much more than a crooked tree he tried to paint from sheer boredom. Should I paint your fucking mouth? For starters, there's a huge ton of shit written about Hitler. And also, people wrote no lesser ton of really praying confessions that Hitler was just a divinity in the flesh. It's quite an undertaking to figure out what is truth and what is fiction. So many myths, retellings, gossips, propaganda misinformation from both sides, that it's really

hard to see a living person behind that shit. That's why we took a fucking ton of sources, both German and foreign and our inside Soviet ones, we took his personal notes, and notes of some foreign journalists who could see him in person. We placed them on each other and tried to calculate what was truth in all of that and what lies, most likely. The first thing I want to say, and that characterizes Hitler well, - he deferred from the service. Or rather, if you'd search something about Hitler's l

ife before the World War One, you could find a note that police was chasing him because he deferred from the service. And that is true. Based on this fact. you could find many materials kinda, "Look. The man responsible for creating a giant war machine that crushed and broke millions of human lives, was a coward, you know, and never wanted to be at the front. Hey, look at him, what a rat he was." This is a lie and manipulation. Hitler was a fanatic patriot. But pretty strange at the same time. T

his is what I mean. Do you remember that Prussia became strong and united all the German lands thanks to Otto von Bismarck? And that was the main problem. Prussia made all the German lands an empire - but Austria. Although it was inhabited by German Germans, too. But Austria wasn't a separate country. It was a piece of a huge Austria-Hungary inhabited by a shit ton of nationalities. From one hand, we had the German Empire inhabited by German Germans, real, original, pure as fuck. And from the ot

her hand, we had a bit second-rate Austro-Hungarians that weren't allowed to the normal German state, and they had to live with Hungarians, Polish, Czechs and other riffraff. Of course, average people didn't actually care about all that stuff, but propaganda was constantly spreading that case that the German Empire had normal orthodox Germans, and Austria had abnormal Germans, bad and wrong. And Hitler was a definitive example of such propaganda. Because Adolf Hitler was Austrian. He was born in

Austria-Hungary in 1889, and he thought of himself as of a real German. And if you're a real German, your homeland is Germany. And Hitler strongly believed in it. And he didn't want to fight for Austria-Hungary with its ton of nationalities. When he reached the military-age and failed to enter university, he should have gone to the army. Obviously, he avoided it as he could because he didn't want to serve Austria-Hungary. But when the World War One began, on the first day, he wrote a message to

Bavaria, to the region of another country, and he asked to be enlisted into their army as a volunteer. He didn't tell anyone he was a foreign citizen, and the military in Bavaria seemed not to think much but to enlist everyone. Hitler didn't defer from the service. He simply wanted to fight for one certain army on this planet. Hitler came almost through the whole World War One. Particular battles don't matter to us. But he took part in pretty many real fights. He participated in the first battl

es of maneuver. He fought in trenches, he survived bombings and chemical attacks. And of course, he was wounded several times. Mostly, they were light, but he was hospitalized two times. First, he was lying there with a shard in his leg, and he had all chances to lose that leg. And second, near the end of the war, blind and weak after the gas attack. At the same time, while he was recovering from his wounds, he worked as an aide-de-camp in the rear. After his wound, he wasn't so useful in battle

s, so he was sent to work with papers and communications until he fully recovered. And by the end of the war, when people at the front began to end, he was sent into trenches. Anyway, it's important that Hitler knew the war firsthand. He really knew the hard way in what horrific conditions soldiers were and the crucial importance not only of bullets, but also elementary supplies, like warm clothing, medicine, water, food and all of those. And also, all his fellow soldiers who served with him alw

ays described him somewhat like that, "He's quiet, and calm, he doesn't drink, and refuses to go to brothels." And as a rule, Hitler was sitting in a corner, reading something and also thinking. And when I read of a silent man in a hood in a dark corner in the cafe, I was a bit tense. And then, I thought a lot. Here's the result. Evident. Obviously, there were also stories that Hitler actually was a perfect son of his fatherland who carried out whole squadrons off the battlefields, and then he w

ent for enemy tanks with his bare hands. But of course, such characteristics were fucking bullshit already, written when Hitler came to power simply in order to curry favors. One way or another, in his own eyes, Hitler came back from the war a hero. At the very least, he was decorated. He had six medals - either for valor, or for responsible execution of hard tasks, or for wounds. All those awards weren't fake. Later, Hitler had a chest of them later, but when he returned from the front, from th

e wide perspective, he was a nobody from nowhere. Just an average Gefreiter who came back from the war. He came back to the country he loved fanatically and fought for with millions of other soldiers in front trenches for four years. Well, they fought on the territories of other countries, which they attacked. Yes. But the soldiers thought they were fighting to protect their country, for its grandeur. For their families, for their future, and so on. So, let us look more closely to where Hitler c

ame back. We remember two things: First, Germany didn't plan to lose. Second, it wasn't destroyed. Yet. And it seemed, you could really think that well, fuck this. If the country is well and isn't razed to the ground, it's fine: we'll fart and we'll grunt, and after a year, it'll be alright. But personally Wilhelm the Second and his government believed in victory so heartily and faithfully, and they didn't worry about their expenses. Does a soldier uniform cost ten thousand marks? Fucking great,

let's buy it. For all who lost, we'll put reparations, and they'll pay for that. - The Germans thought. - The name of the business plan… Oops. Jokes aside, no one counted war expenses. Zero fucks. Not enough money? Yet. Not enough at all? We take a loan, and it's enough. We'll pay when we win. And even if we lose, we won't have to handle this, because we'll be like, "Who did make such a pile here? Auf Wiedersehen, fucking losers." Yes, that's right. After the war, the old German government was

dismissed, condemned, put in prison. But then, they were freed and didn't return their power. That's why they had to appoint a new government. And everyone agreed - well, the victors agreed there would be democracy in Germany. And they needed a democratic government. Right. They gathered people who looked human more or less, appointed them to be executives, called it the Weimar Republic, and were like, "Fuck as you like here. Only democratic. We wish you lots of great luck, gents." There was an

important nuance: the half of the government were God knows who. And the other half was all thumbs about leading the country during a crisis. No one was a normal manager among them, they found some novices. And they fucking gave them the after-war country in crisis, with debts. Although, if truth be told, there couldn't be any experienced executives in Germany back then because they couldn't give power to the old government - and Germany had been alright in the course of the previous forty years

. There were no crises, suffering and all. They'd been living quietly, everything was great, evolving, simply ponies with rainbows. That's why they couldn't find any experienced crisis managers. You have the situation. The country is in debt due to the war, plus you lack manpower because you lost the half of the working population in trenches. No money. Economy is idle. You don't have adequate people in government. What's to be done? As you could easily guess, those guys from the new government,

without thinking twice, came to the money-printing press, and were like… We'll pay for everything. It is only now we are more or less aware that one shouldn't do like that. And if you're printing money, you must do it reasonably. But we know this here and now. But the super experienced German government… By the way, at first, it even worked. They threw money into economy, paid for government orders for trucks, hardware, construction works, food, clothes, all those things. Currency moved up but

not great. The first year and a half, everything was moving, and people could live. But we remember that Germany signed a peace treaty without a precise sum of payments for winners. It was its time. In the year 1921, the victors were like, "Eh. Schweine. Komm zu mir, my beaut. Look here, we counted it up. We have a wooden abacus, and we were like…" You owe us your mother. Oh, missis Carol… Look here, we counted it up, solved everything, it all adds up in our calculations, and we won't ask you be

cause we'll piss on your graves. Okay. You owe as a hundred and thirty-two billion golden marks in thirty years, Plus interests." That mortgage was fucking great. Of course, as all the papers were signed beforehand, the Germans couldn't help it. And of course, one hundred and thirty two billions marks was a fucking great sum. But what a fucking great sum that was… I'll explain in simple terms, I can do it. We already told about Daimler in this video. He left Otto's factory, they paid him a hundr

ed and twelve thousand golden marks, and we converted it into gold. The golden mark rate of exchange was tied to gold. One golden mark was such a number in grams. If we make it very simple, one golden mark was a third of a gram of real gold. We don't give a fuck how much other currencies or gold itself cost - one mark was a third of a gram. Three marks were one gram. I'll give three marks and get a gram. It's a monetary system, that's all. Gold is buried. Okay, we know it. And in Daimler's case,

we calculated that a hundred and twelve thousand mark was about forty kilo gold. And roughly speaking, in modern money, it was about two million dollars. And here we have one hundred and thirty-two billion marks. Everything we know about this number - it's just really fucking great, we don't know anything else. That's why we use simple math, convert marks to gold, and we get so many tons of gold. Not forty-seven tons. There are no kilos here, it's forty seven thousand tons of gold. It didn't be

came clearer, I know that, because the human brain can't comprehend 47 thousand tons of something, Especially, what you can buy for forty-seven thousand tons of gold. Or how you could pay such pile of gold to someone. And so, I invented this comparison. Let's take modern China. Here's the China, right now, in 2022, being the first economy of the world that produces everything for the planet, with one and a half billion people, the fattest country and all that bullshit. And China, in this moment,

right now, has gold holdings, here they are - almost two thousand tons of gold. Once again. Modern China. In the year 2022. With economy of China in twenty-two, with population of China in twenty-two, it has gold holdings for two thousand tons. And Germany was obliged to pay forty-seven fucking tons of cold. Germany was asked for twenty-four modern Chinas. Germany from the year nineteen-eighteen. People had no food back there, and they added to it, "Please, give us twenty-four Chinese economies

, thank you." I know that sounds absurd but it's a fucking fact. They really asked that much. Or rather, they demanded it obligatory. And you look at those documents and couldn't understand how the fuck they invented that shit. It couldn't be even invented by any ass because any ass has some brain at some near distance, at least - spinal cord. And someone who knows his economy could be say something like, "Well, actually, this comparison isn't so correct because every country decides how much go

ld it should have in holdings. And how much capital goes in there." As it comes. Forty-seven thousand tons of gold plus interests - even modern China couldn't pay it. Honestly, I don't know what they thought with for such decisions. There was no single chance that Germany was able pay it, and also with fucking interests. With interests. Indeed, yes. Fucking interests. ISAAC, RUN I will kill everyone who invented interests. But we remember we had some bright minds in the government? And as they s

urely didn't go far from the monetary press, they were like… We'll pay it right now. Either out of ignorance, or of stupidity, or of despair, the government began to print money again. A lot of money. And if we tell that there was inflation - well,' that would be okay. No one would be surprised by it. But the thing was that for the entire human history, Germany was one of the first countries in the world met the term "hyperinflation". Did you see in our modern world people in Africa with piles o

f money on carts in order to buy some bread? The same thing happened in Germany. If we take official data, since the year nineteen-twenty-one till twenty-three, the German inflation was more than three million percent a month. We were like, twelve percent of inflation a year, fucking bad. But there - three million a month. Prices in the country doubled every forty-nine hours. That was convenient to count because your prices increased two times every two days. If in the beginning of the war, one

American dollar cost four marks, in 1923, it cost four-point-two trillion German marks. Not million. Not billion. But four-point-two trillion marks. For one. German money didn't cost anything anymore. How could they live? Like that. Let's watch a very fascinating set of photos from that time. Here's a banknote of fifty million marks. Here's a woman stoking her fire with similar banknotes. Yes. Here are children flying the kite made of money. Making a kite from money was cheaper than from paper.

And here you have a shoe maker offering his services for food. It's a very often occasion when money cease to work. Everyone returns to barter - I give you that, you give me this. Here we have kids near the pile of money that equaled one dollar. Just one. And this guy is gluing his house with money because it was cheaper than the shittiest piece of wallpapers. The last thing - this magnificent banknote of one billion. In our country, you buy special apartments to keep billions there, and back th

en - it was one piece of paper. That's it. But jokes aside, the hyperinflations life is very shitty. Everything is crumbling, you couldn't wait for any help. and if you could find food somehow, you're just great. And if you didn't find food - sorry. Take a course of forced hunger cure. "What about car manufacturers?" - you would ask me; almost three hours of narrative have passed, it's high fucking time to remember them. Through the whole war, on a mandatory basis, they worked for the war indust

ry. Working overtime, Mercedes, Opel, Daimler and everyone else were making engines, trucks for moving weapons and people to the front lines, gun-carriages, missiles and whatever. Even Škoda that was situated in Austria-Hungary, Germany's ally, produced motorcycles before the war, but during the war, it turned to a giant war machine that supplied half the empire with weapons. And during the war, all car companies were earning money. So very good money. But what's the use of your money, when afte

r the war - snap, and your money will give you something only if you begin to stoke a furnace with it in your workshop? It will be warm for several hours. And people really stoked their furnaces with money because what could you do with it? And you couldn't take any new orders because people couldn't buy anything. The only chance to survive was to get an order from the government or from some other large enterprise. Only large companies were able to survive. Because all the small companies, doze

ns of them in the pre-war Germany, simply went bankrupt. In the end, there were only you and me, and me and you. Daimler produced trucks, Benz produced engines. Opel produced both, but still, it was hard to make two ends meet. I could really make a nice joke about meeting two ends now. But that would be a shiity dick. Beside that fact that they had to work, they had to feed their workers. And to feed themselves, too. But how, when the price for a loaf of bread was several bags of money? In such

a situation, you could depend only on yourself. And all the big factories, beside producing their own things, also built farms on their territories, got themselves cows, chickens, tried to grow something - only to survive. Money lost their value. You had either barter, or you could eat only those things what you grew. And add to that another thing, and it's sheer fun. If you can call suffering of an entire nation funny, but they are Germans, they're scum, and so we can. Here we had hyper-inflati

on and total economic collapse. People lived off the land and tried something like, "tit for tat", and all of that. That lasted for several years. Of course, because of that, you had protests here and there, arsons, terrorist attacks, because people had to burst their emotions somehow - and they burst them like that. But after a while, one way or the other, little by little, the economy began to recover, people learnt to milk their cows, and got used to their lives, and in nineteen-twenty-four,

prices began to settle somehow. Plus, England, France and the USA saw the country was turning up toes, and at this rate, they wouldn't be able to return any money. But they wanted to get at least some money, and those guys were like, "Okay. Good. Let's make your payments a bit smaller. Let's throw you a loan here, perhaps put some order for some factory there, and, in fits and starts, we'll get the country out of the faint to its knees. What happened in the late twenties, huh? The Great Depressi

on. The most massive global economic crisis that didn't even hit Germany that was deep in debt, it punched it in the face. And a standard German guy who just remembered yesterday about breakfast and clean clothes, was like, Fucking fuckety fuck. Well, fuck… Fuck, I took out a great mortgage. New building, new building - natuerlich, fuck. And also, here you have another simple scheme how to profit off the war beside standard things. We remember Opel. It was the largest German car manufacturer bef

ore the war and a successful company. And also, those guys placed their bet on cars right before the war and built facilities with cutting-edge equipment that allowed them to become the German manufacturer number one. At the first, after the war, they did make their ends meet, more or less, but during the Great Depression, they were standing at the edge of abyss. At that point, General Motors, looked at that circus with inflation, crises, depression, and said, "Eh… Why don't we buy almost for fr

ee the first car manufacturer in Germany? Yes, they're Germans. So horrible, bad, don't be like that. You should spit in their snoot. But here it is. It's like, easy handouts. We'll buy them for peanuts, keep their heads above the water, and all earnings of all the factories would be ours. And they bought the whole Opel. Well, eighty percent of Opel, but you could easily guess that was enough to control all the factories and to get almost all profits from the facilities. That's the bottom of lif

e of any country who lost its fight. You'll be deep in debt, they'll take your territories, your government will be remade. And all your crucial facilities will be under control of foreign corporations. Well, maybe, you'd keep some of them. But all the interesting, technological and ultimately profitable ones will be taken away, given the chance. Yes, I'm saying that Opel is an interesting, technological and upcoming car manufacturer, yes. You do anything for a documentary. But if General Motors

didn't touch Opel, it were possible for it to remain interesting, upcoming and technological. And Hitler returned into that country. All the population was shell-shocked, there was no work, no food, it was cheaper to glue your wall with money than to buy the cheapest wallpapers. And even if something remained to be able to work, the winning countries tried to take it away, too. Adolf looked at governmental actions, looked at all that chaos with eyes bulging from horror, and was like… As the cla

ssic said, You work your ass off. With these little German hands. Just a bit different. Hitler realized that he couldn't stand idly by. That's why he began to visit political groups, to listen to the speeches of local politicians, unionists, and after a while, he joined the washed up and useless Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The German Workers' Party, in English. During the first meeting in some local bar, he came to the mic and began to burst everything he had on his chest. And everyone froze. Becau

se Hitler spoke of those things that each German was thinking about deep down. He was talking about injustice, about shame, about humiliations of Germans, about fucking enemies, and that the great nation didn't have to lead such a beggarly lifestyle under any circumstances. Like, we have to break the tethers, to straighten our backs and finally, we have to start breathing freely. Applause, approving buzz, excited yells, and blah blah blah. He made several of those speeches, and after a year, Ado

lf took the helm of the party. He called it NS-DAP, the National Socialist Workers' Party, and he began to speak anywhere and by any chance. I don't see the point in describing further process of Hitler's rising to power. It was very fast and simple. You seek out an enemy or enemies who you blame in all the miseries. In Hitler's case, first of all, those were Jews, and further on, other inferior races. You promise you could fix all of that and you have a plan which supposes - one, two, three, an

d everything's well again. The only thing people have to do is uniting, clenching their fists and not giving up in any case. You walk and talk about this horseshit again and again until they believe you. That's all the scheme. We are in a deep shit now because of those assholes. They are to blame for everything, it's high time to fix that. You gather around me, listen to me because I have a plan, and go together all the way. Only that way we can defeat our enemies and make our country great agai

n. The scheme is one and the same. It may differ in other countries because of their cultural assumptions but details don't matter here. The German cultural assumption was dislike of Jewish people. Hitler didn't invent it, that was before him. Even Wilhelm the Second, the favorite ruler of the German Empire, who actually began the World War One, was constantly yelling from the stand about the Jewish conspiracy, that the Jews were to blame, and blah blah blah. Those were real people's thoughts. A

nd any politician is the person who always deals with those things people want to believe in. Or things they believe in. Doesn't matter what to speak. People have to believe and follow you. And Hitler knew how to speak to be believed in. If we watch his speeches, you see the chasm between him and other politicians, even without sound. How do they speak usually? They are standing, looking on a paper, speaking under their nose. Here we see gestures, presentation, intonement, yelling, screaming, sp

raying spit, everything is memorized and rehearsed. And he touched sore subjects, douchebag. Injustice, oppression, the bygone grandeur and the things every German thought every day. By the way, I think, now it's high time to deal with something else. - What? - Well, with that. With what "what"? We all mock Hitler's moustache. You just show that picture to the people, and they realize everything, even without bangs. First, it's also a brand and one of the tools of political PR because you create

a very memorable image. Second, Hitler didn't invent it. Before he became a politician, his moustache was like that. The thing is, that cut version of moustache was a feature of poor workers at that time. The point is, if you're a man, you certainly had to have moustache back then. If you don't… - Jack off. - But… The right care of moustache wasn't cheap. The larger it was, the more expensive the care. If you were a lord with much money, your moustache was like this. And if you were a worker, y

ou had such a short version. It was easy both to care for them and to shave them. And if you come to politics, to the National Socialist German Workers' Party it's obvious as fuck that you should choose a workers' moustache. Something like, guys. I am just like y'all. I even do have such funny moustache. Also, he had a plan. He compiled it in the beginning and repeated it like a mantra throughout his whole career. It was called twenty-five-point programme. There were really twenty five points. P

oint one, we kill Churchill. Point two, we kill Roosevelt. Point three, we kill Sta… If we look at the programme, we'll see very clear and very humane demands. "We demand equality of rights for the German people with other nations and abolition of Versailles treaty". Because Germans really became a second class nation, like on paper, after the treaty of Versailles. "We demand the union of all Germans", land and territory for the sustenance, prohibition of personal enrichment due to a war, nation

alization of all taken away businesses, old age welfare, sharing out the profits from wholesale trade with workers, and blah blah blah. Such twenty-five points. To be fair, there were also strange things in there. Like, "None but those of German blood could be members of the nation." And Jews couldn't be Germans under no circumstances. All non-Germans had to be ordered out if they lacked enough food because only Germans were to feed. All the usurers and profiteers had to be punished with death.

Execute each and every earner. But as each and every German agreed with such things somewhere deep down, even his wicked statements benefitted Hitler because he was supported. Of course, people trusted him. Not all. Because his party never got the majority of votes. But if honest approach doesn't work, you could always depend on the good old beatings. Attempts of a coup, riots, clashes, bribes, blackmail, backroom dealings, arm-twisting, killings of their rivals - all of that was happening, of c

ourse. Of course, it was; we're talking about fucking Nazi Germany, not an assembly of dreamers librarians. You cannot build stratocracy without blood, do what you will. Anyway, in nineteen-thirty-three, Hitler became the state leader. In the course of twelve years, this man rose up from speeches in a bar till the absolute dictator of the largest country in Western Europe. Of course, he wasn't alone. He had a large team with military generals, agitators, ministers and blah blah blah. And all tog

ether they really did what they did. Stratocracy, personality cult, they revived the German war machine from the ashes. How we could easily guess, car companies clearly had their hand in it. And in Hitler's team, there was a man who I simply couldn't pass by. The man Hitler respected very much and always listened to his thoughts. And in his turn, that man could be like, "Look here. It wouldn't work this way. It would work that way, but really not the way you talk about, do it my way." Only few p

eople could afford such conversations with Hitler. Fancy that, Hitler comes to you and gives you an order, and you're, like… "Oooh, who knows." You will finish your "oooh, who knows" opposed to a firing party. But still, there was one such man. He had balls, and most important, engineer's brains. And Fuehrer valued him for that. For brains, not balls. And his engineer's brains, obviously, were used in the lethal German war machine. That man was called Ferdinand Porsche. Chapter Eight. For the Sa

ke of the Idea Hitler knew all about Ferdinand Porsche long before they really met because, obviously, he was watching closely for those people who could be really useful for him. And Ferdinand was doing what he was always doing, in all innocence: aced the world in engineering. In the late twenties, when Hitler was fighting for power and gaining popularity, Ferdinand worked as CTO in the Daimler. Or rather, in Daimler-Benz that produced their collective product, Mercedes-Benz. Benz as the compan

y simply couldn't survive this commotion with inflation, financial crisis and lack of orders. and so, Daimler bought the whole company in nineteen-twenty-six. And Daimler could survive only because of trucks. Because trucks were perfect wares after the war. Everyone needed to build. Everyone needed to recover and to move people with something, so Daimler was making its trucks, but Benz didn't have such products. And it was too expensive to develop something new, and that's why they quickly colla

psed. And so. Porsche was CTO. He answered for the cutting-edge technologies. He was able to wrestle some money and permission for a fast and light vehicle in order to return Daimler-Benz into races and to show the whole Europe that though Germany was beaten, but it was capable of something and could make a car that was a cut above everything in Europe at that point. Moreover, there was an interesting cause. In the second half of the twenties, Europe's treatment of the Germans was a bit warmer,

yeah. Step by step, they began to think how they could restore their relations. The European countries saw how quickly Hitler gained popularity with his rhetoric of hate, revenge, and they were like, "Fuck, let's be kinder to the Germans, it seems we really plagued them. Later, we'll bake another plague. The first way of restoring of their relations was international sports and games. And also, global sports and games are the first thing they kick you out of if they want to make you second-grade

people. They will kick you out of the Olympics, they won't hold games on your territory, and all of that. And Europe decided to run the first German Grand-Prix in history to gather all the car manufacturers on one track and measure their strength. And also, to show to all Europe that Germany wasn't so scary. The first Grand-Prix was in nineteen-twenty-six. And it was like a reconnaissance because people were afraid to come, there were not many cars, and not many sideliners. But in nineteen-twen

ty-seven, there already had to be a full-scale event, in a big way. And especially for the Grand-Prix-twenty seven, Germany built a new racing track. The task was to build the most difficult and the most technological track in the world at the time. Because they had to put up a good show. And they decided to build the track between Cologne and Stuttgart. Beside the washed-up village Nürburg. They called the track Nürburgring. If in your mind, the word Nürburgring means nothing, my condolences to

you. But perhaps, it's for the best. Perhaps, you really are the only sane person among all of us. Racers call that track "The Green Hell". And this is a real green hell. Green - just because the track is in the woods. And it's called hell - because if you try to finish it as soon as possible, you'd have really great chances to be killed. Here's a couple of very transparent facts for you. One ring of that track is more than twenty kilometers at full speed. It's longer than the Garden Ring Road.

That road is fifteen kilometers long. Seventy four turns for one ring. The average speed is over a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. And the difference in elevation is three hundred meters. That is the height of Moscow-City. You're on the roof - well, hit the gas, fly away. Down, up, left or right, with a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. In such a tunnel out of metal walls. And I repeat, there are no sane people there. The Nürburgring is rightly called the most dangerous and one of

the most difficult tracks on the planet, and it's called The Green Hell for a reason. The German Grand-Prix in twenty-seven. The grand opening both of the Nürburgring and of the German Grand-Prix where Porsche showed his new car. Mercedes S. S meant Sports. And there was some sports in there. Air injection six-point-eight, a light body with a very hard frame. Very tricky technologies of transmission. And the main thing was, it was reliable. Because all the racers had to pass eighteen rounds of

Nürburgring. About five hundred kilometers for five and a half hours. You had to drive for five and a half hours to the limit. In such a tunnel out of metal walls and trees. As a pilot, you had to drive eighteen rounds in that with a maximally possible speed. A thousand three hundred and thirty-two turns. With full speed. One mistake - and you're either hanging on a tree, or you're smeared against the wall. There are no seat belts. There is no actual security. The car is new, it never took part

in any races, and you're the first and the only one who would do it right now. They gathered several dozens of psychos like you, put you at the start line - that was it. Put on some glasses to see what particular tree would smash you by half - and away. Not only all three Mercedes's S reached the finish in the end of the race, they took all the winning places. The first, the second, the third. All the Mercedes's finished after five hours, and the fourth place was thirty minutes behind. The fifth

and the sixth - another thirty minutes. That was smash and grandeur. All the autodrome was ready to idolize Ferdinand Porsche. It turns out that Mercedes has at least one worthy vehicle. Made by Porsche. Of course, such an important event attracted many people. Official records say about two hundred thousand people. And the crowd was wild with joy. So many years of humiliation, survival, pain - and such a smash of other countries on the racing track. And where the crowd and some important event

was, of course, there was Hitler nearby. The rising star in the politics. The long-time head of NSDAP. He'd been famous across the land for a while now, and the rumor was, he'd be the next Kaiser. Well yeah, I'm a big boy. The fun thing was that Porsche didn't know shit who the fuck he was. Well, at that moment, of course. He just didn't know how that man looked like, who the hell he was and why he needed to be favored. From the look of it, they didn't warn Porsche about any important people. T

hat's why he was just all thumbs. Not only Hitler was forced to stand in line for the whole time to congratulate Porsche, but also, when it was his turn, Ferdinand was like, "Ehh, yeah, thank you, here's my hand, you can shake it, but I'm sick and tired and I'm gonna go home." And he left. At that moment, Hitler was like… And of course, Hitler was offended by such a treatment. But Porsche was that rare case when Adolf could endure something like that. That was because Hitler needed Porsche so re

ally badly. About Porsche's skills in designing engines and technologies, legends were told globally since the World War One. Remember I told you that all countries had shitloads of artillery? Porsche gained his fame with that. If you have many artillery units, you're great, of course. But how do you bring them to the battlefield? You don't need them in the capital, right? Right. And if you're gonna attack someone, how do you get your artillery to the front? If you think a little, first of all,

you could load it on the trains, move it closer to the border, attach it to cars, and then you can go to positions. It's a good idea. With one condition. If you have any roads. And most commonly, roads are the first thing you destroy on the battlefield. And if you begin to move inward, you'll have to muddle through the dirt smashed with missiles. And if it rains, or there are some streams, hills or mountains, then - game over. How do you drag weaponry? Especially uphill over some shit. Especiall

y in fucking nineteen-fourteen. And also you should know that strategic position is strategic position. Who's the first to drag their cannons, mortars, howitzers and so on over that shit, they gain an advantage. And making some gizmo to move the artillery to the strategic position that was Porsche's schtick. During the World War Two, he was also working for Daimler, and he was the main link with Škoda. And that was a huge military facility. Yes, originally, in Austria-Hungary, Škoda was producin

g bicycles, motorcycles and all of that. But in times of war, they converted to weaponry very quickly. It was the main strategic facility of entire Austria-Hungary. And if Škoda thought how to make some cannon trickier and mightier, then Porsche thought how to bring that weapon to the battlefield. All in all, Ferdinand developed pretty many different gun carriages, trailers and other drawing machines for artillery. Also, it's funny that the most Ferdinand's biographies online lack the time perio

d since nineteen-thirteen till twenty. Well, there was nothing happening. Here you have his developments before the war, and here - already after. Right, and in between, he didn't do anything important, he was relaxing. But, actually, Porsche was making such things. For example, this shit is called M-twelve, and it can drag such a cannon through absolutely every kinds of mud very effectively. By the way, this is Škoda's mortar for three hundred and five millimeters. It will plow your garden and

turn villagers to vegetables. Or here's another tow truck that could drag a cannon uphill. It's called M-seventeen. That thing could actually drag anything anywhere. And as warfare was often conducted on mountain terrains, such tow trucks were important for the army. And also, Ferdinand discovered his passion for planes, and he designed some engines for biplanes. And even British and French admitted that Porsche really had the best engines for planes in the world. The main thing was, after the w

ar, even despite the loss, Porsche was a real national hero. Everyone knew about his designs, respected him, called him a genius, and blah blah blah. And in Germany, he was something like Elon Musk for us. He was a man of such scale. Of course, Hitler knew that. Also, he realized that he had to have that man in his team. Especially when he would come to power. And Hitler didn't doubt it. But by the thirties, not only Hitler needed Porsche. He was wanted by all the car manufacturers and producers

of heavy machinery. The number of projects Ferdinand was invited to was so big that it was simply impossible to handle them alone. That's why Porsche decided to skip Daimler to open his own design bureau where he could hire a group of engineers, so that they could make orders both for Daimler, and for Škoda - for anyone at all. A few years after the bureau was founded, Ferdinand was visited by managers from Mercedes and were like, "Look here. Let's talk. Come on, the meeting awaits." Porsche an

swered, like, "What fucking meeting? I'm not gonna go, get lost, I have shit ton of work." And obviously, their answer was, "Buddy, Roll out. No one really asks if you want it or not, dress up and let's go." The meeting was set with Hitler. Literally few weeks back, he took the half of the country. And Porsche was one of the first people Hitler wanted to meet. Adolf came to the meeting. And was like, "Well, racer, what's up? Now you'll give me five minutes of your precious time?" And of course,

Porsche answered something like, "Holy cannoli, sorry, I didn't know. How can I help?" And Hitler asked, "How's that designing going? Making your car? And why not? No money? And if there is?" Porsche was sitting, like… He didn't know what to say. He didn't understand if he needed to say something or to sit, to nod and to pretend to agree. It wasn't clear. But near the end, Hitler was like, "Look, okay. I need a car. Fuck this, the country needs a car. That costs a thousand marks and not one more

." And Porsche said, "Hey, wait. Slow down. There will be no thousand. I took part in designing of the cheapest car and I know experience of my fellow workers from other countries. Two and a half are a minimum. No less. And only if the government would pay some little extra money. Without that money, the price would be about twenty-eight hundred. But Hitler said, "I don't give a fuck. A thousand. I've said my last word, you have the money now, and you can fuck as you want." How do you want today

? Basically, there couldn't be any other task. Because Hitler really needed a people's vehicle, it was sure as hell. Although Adolf was the fucking Hitler, one of the most horrifying politicians on Earth, he wasn't a fool alright. He knew it wasn't enough to have power in his hands, he needed to keep it. Technically, his power was based on two things. It was the brutality of the Nazi regime. And the promise of grandeur for all the German nation. And for the sake of grandeur - sorry, you should e

ndure some insignificant hiccups, something like punishments and limits of the regime. For starters, let's hit the high points and figure out how it could have happened for the people willingly, on their own accord agreed on the very regime of Nazi Germany. In nineteen-sixty-seven, there was one interesting experiment in a Californian school. Back then, this history teacher worked there, Ron Jones. During some lesson about the World War Two, one student asked him, "Why the heck could it happen t

hat the German population pretended as if there were no concentration camps or all the horrors of the Nazi regime? How could it happen?" The teacher thought a bit and said, "I'll explain the next week." Through the whole week, he organized very strange extracurricular activities. On Monday, on the first day, he taught them discipline. He forced them to get up and to sit down when ordered, to change places with each other and to follow orders without extra noise. The next day, he made them chant

the slogan "Strength Through Discipline, Strength Through Community." Also, for all who was privy to the secret society, he invented a special salute - a cupped hand reaching to the shoulder. In the course of two days, all the students absorbed the rules of the new game. They gave constantly salutes to each other, and also, they followed all the rituals and directions. On the third day, the teacher begin to explain the meaning of "Strength Through Community". Like, individual results of each stu

dent weren't so important as our common cause. That's why they had to work on all projects only together. And also, they had to understand that all the members of the community were special, better than others. Like, "together we are strong". The most distinguished students were given the opportunity to attract new members, but only those who they could trust. By the end of the week, the community grew up to several hundreds of students who greeted each other with the special salute and were pro

ud with their status. They had their own symbols, their goal, their slogan. They felt that they were part of something greater. On Friday, on the final meeting of all the community members, the teacher turned on the documentary of military parades of the Wehrmacht, how the German society was goose-stepping and doing what they were doing. Every participant understood everything without saying. That experiment wasn't the only one. It was just the first. There was quite a lot of similar experiments

, and they had the very same core: If you're acting based on the clear algorithm and don't nip such movements in the bud, you could very quickly turn the whole country to such a violent regime. But people inside it would be feeling just great. Those school kids weren't obliged. They were up for that game happily, on their own. And then, the more you are playing the harder it is to see reality. And actually, at some point, you could kill a person because you don't see them as a person anymore The

y don't have such a chevron like yours. The second thing you need to nurture people is a promise of a different life for them. A better life. Such life only they are worthy of, the best sons of this planet. And no one could match Hitler with his pretty pictures and promises. On the state level, there was a special programme where all the Germans were shown their future life. On the German coasts, they were building huge resorts where average citizens would be going to vacation each year. They wo

uld be driving along new and modern roads paved throughout the country. And when they reached the resort, there would be a giant cruise ship waiting for them that would take them to cruises across the seas. And obviously, their everyday life would be also top-notch. Every German would have their own home, they would have good jobs, and no one would be deprived. The main thing was to work for the sake of your homeland, and everything would be great. The icing on the cake - of course, everyone wou

ld have their personal car. And with that car, they could go with families on that fascinating journey to the brighter future of the German nation. At those times, the real car, especially for an average citizen, was an unseen luxury. It was all in all luxury for the whole world back then. But for a German who suffered enough inflation, crises, hunger, humiliation and other shit, the simple idea of having his own car and he could hand his woman in it, hand his child in it… Hand in jail. Fuck, yo

u schiz, don't ruin my moment. I'm leading up to a pretty thought with pretty music, you fucking fag… Always here. Anyway, it was important for an average German. It was a dream of his lifetime. That he would have one simple opportunity. To go on vacation, with his family, Like humanwise. However funny it may sound, as if they had a right to go on a trip. So well, as soon as Hitler said to Porsche there was no way out except to design, he promised in public during one of his speeches that he wou

ld do it. Like, "the French have so many cars for a hundred people, the English have so many, and we have much less. And I will fix this. We will have more. More of everything. Just believe me and obey me, and I will do everything right and fix everything." And actually, in several months, a paid invoice came to the design office. Like, I promised money - here's the money. And Porsche actually had to design a new vehicle. Working side by side with Hitler. Chapter Nine. Genius Serving Forces of E

vil In the first years when Hitler came to power, he was idolized. Because he began to fulfill his promises quite sharp. He returned factories under the wing of the country. He ordered people out of the country - who infringed the German state, and so forth. And screws were being tightened at the same time. But people were still applauding because everyone was sure that the savior had come. And even you didn't think like that, shut up and fade into the woodwork. 'Cause Gestapo was watching. Gest

apo was the secret police of the Third Reich. Like those pie wagons that could come for anyone and take them to an undisclosed location, but in Germany. And it was called Gestapo. And it was much more efficient and scary. The future concentration camps were also Gestapo's domain. If you needed to frighten someone, torture, punish, hurt or simply kill, Gestapo happily rendered their services. Hitler founded Gestapo on the same day as he came to power. But even despite all those things, and the ap

pearing vibe in the society that you had to be more careful and more accurate on the curves, in large, people were happy. And greeted the new order with fervour. Especially, when everything was happening on such a great scale. Celebrations, parades, military included, banners everywhere, eagles, symbols, and it was so magnificently made, so expensive and so fucking stylish - just the same thing the nation needed as it was yearning for respect. And seeing all that happening and the country squari

ng its shoulders again, people didn't need to doubt that the dream of the image of the German family would be made a reality. That's why the news about the car were just wow. But designing was tough. I remind you, Porsche said it was just impossible. And I have to explain why designing of an ultra-cheap car was practically impossible task. My God, what's so difficult? You take some shitty engine, the simplest one you only have, then you take a body of the simplest construction, put the engine in

there, attach wheels hurry-scurry, without any options, with chairs - thank God for that. And then you send it for production. But… we know that nothing happens just like that. And prices aren't pulled out of a hat. Here you have some amount of money to design a vehicle. No matter if you design a cheap or an expensive car. You have money you have to invest into design and production. You have to spend the money in such a way so that you'd get the finished product that people would buy in such v

olumes, so you could get this money back. And ideally, to earn even more. You invest your capital into something to increase it, right? Right. And if you'd get back your money, why did you have to work for all those years for free? You could take the money to the bank and not fuck your brains. Or even buy bitcoins. And watching at the rates, you could shoot yourself. How's that for an insight to the head? Fucking miners. Here you have two cauldrons with money. You need the first cauldron to desi

gn the mockup vehicle. In order to design the mockup, you need: to pay for engineers' work in the course of years, to pay for making of test runs, to pay for those tests, then to pay for all works of refining and remaking of some parts that worked a bit wrong and you didn't like it. To pay for repeated production of those new samples, repeated testing, and yet again and again, until the car would be ready. Also, in addition to those testings, you have to frame a precise plan of how and in what s

equence to produce those parts and how to assemble the finished car from those parts. You have to give the brief for each part, for each detail, to describe the particular technological process of how to make that squiggle and also by what technology. And the second money cauldron goes for your production. And what you need is to build all factories, all assembly lines, like everything. You need the main factory to assemble your cars from the parts, and also a bunch of little factories that woul

d be making parts for them. Of course, you could find some manufacturers that would produce parts for your orders, but still, you have to go there, to negotiate, to make the pilot batch of parts, to see if they actually fit, and if they don't fit, you have to remake them. All that costs money. Any movement costs money. And you can't spend much money for such a cheap car. Because the more you spent, the higher the net cost of the car would be, and if the car is too expensive, you wouldn't earn it

back. It's a problem. You just physically can't spend much money. Spending isn't that difficult, earning back is a problem. And if you have a cheap version, you have no margin for error in any parameters. You can fuck up on paper with shock absorbers, realize they have to be remade after the tests, but for extra money. And you can't spend much money. That's why you have to make everything at once and without errors. That's why Hitler exactly needed only Porsche because no other engineer could h

andle such a designing task. And now, from such perspective, let's look at the price of a thousand Reichsmarks. At that time, in some year nineteen-thirty-five, one kilo of sugar in Germany cost zero-point-eight Reichsmarks, or eighty Reichpfennings. It's like a cent but a Reichspfenning. That means, a thousand marks, the price of the future vehicle, was a ton and two hundred and fifty kilos of sugar. Our price for a kilo of sugar is sixty to one hundred and twenty rubles, depending on the manuf

acturer. Of course, you can find some sugar in a very pretty box for two hundred and fifty rubles, but that is the same sugar. A ton and two hundred and fifty times a hundred rubles, equals 125 thousand. And you're like, "Fuck, perhaps, their sugar was just fucking expensive, and ours is fuсking cheap, and that's why we have such imbalance. Okay, let's take bread. The loaf of brown bread in nineteen-thirty five cost twenty-eight German cents, or Reichpfennings. That means, a thousand marks consi

sted of three thousand and five hundred German loafs. Our loaf of bread costs about thirty to forty rubles. Not those hipsterish gluten-free cereals but a usual and severe fucking loaf of brown bread. That fucking perfectly fits to mash potatoes. Three and a half thousand loafs times thirty-five rubles equals almost the same hundred and twenty-two thousand rubles. Even compared to the average salary, it's actually no better. The average salary of a German worker was hundred and thirty or fifty m

arks. That means, one thousand was about seven monthly salaries. Such sum of ours doesn't equal seven salaries, our people earn more than people in Nazi Germany, but. Come up to some car manufacturer looking intimidating and say, "Fucking make me a people's car for a hundred and twenty thousands." Do you imagine how the engineer would look at you? Like, "What's up with you, strange guy with moustache? Whoa." And Porsche had to make it. The task was really inadequate all around. He needed to wang

le. And Porsche wangled miraculously. The idea was the following. They needed to spare money, and so they had to simplify all the complicated mechanisms. It certainly had to be a rear-drive. They couldn't make it front-end because making your wheels turn from the steering wheel just right and at the same time, turn from the engine, is difficult. At that time, you had to design some special suspension for that, gear unit, but you had no time or money. And so, wheels and the steering wheel were at

the front, all else was at the back. You couldn't put the engine at the front because you had to drag the cardan through the car, and that was expensive. The engine was very simple, but very reliable because it had to carry the car under any conditions. The suspension had to be very simple and energy-intensive. And wheels had to be very small and narrow. The first samples appeared in nineteen-thirty-seven. And for some reason, the military suddenly came to the first trial run and began to test

the car. At first, Porsche didn't get it. Then, he was like, "Fuck, why… Why didn't you tell at once that you needed a military car? Well fuck, Adolf, you fucking cunt." Not funny at all But Hitler assured Porsche, "The civilian KdF-Wagen will exist, and the military are here for no reason, don't pay any attention. Don't pull your own leg and simply keep working, dear Ferdinand, everything will be hunky-dory." By the way, we've already mentioned that project passingly in our first historical vid

eo. But we hit the high spots and didn't go into further details. And in this story, details are really important. Soon, you will know why. But just a couple weeks after the trial run, corrections from the military came. They were like, "Listen here, look, first, we need bigger and stronger wheels to drive through some shit and mud, and the suspension has to be tougher because we actually plan to put five to seven men in one car. And plus, you should think where you could attach a machine gun."

And Porsche was like, "Attach a machine gun? - A machine gun? You just try it, and… - What can you now? What can you do to me? I'll do everything. Serving our… Oh fuck, another universe. Anyway, beside the actual civilian car, on its platform and major components, they began to make the military Kübelwagen. The main military car of the Wehrmacht. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche from top to bottom. The Kübelwagen had a ton of modifications: passenger, cross-country, amphibia to cross small r

ivers, the combat vehicle with fire arms, and so forth. And all of that was designed by Porsche. But they wanted to produce a civilian car. By the end of nineteen-thirty-seven, the cars was ready as pre-production, and finishing touches had to made on the assembly line. Despite the hard task, Porsche managed to finish his design in two years - a record. Later, it turned out that Porsche stole some solutions from the Czech Hans Ledwinka, but it's not so important for us. And for what it is, it wa

s simply impossible to design everything from scratch in under two years. But Hitler didn't tell Porsche about one detail. He had no money for the factory. But money's not an problem when you have a plan. Hitler issued the programme of the social support of the new car and of the new factory. He said to the nation openly, "Let's work together and make our future closer. We can handle this by ourselves. But if you want to be the first who gets their new KdF-Wagen, here's a thing. Only for five ma

rks a week - about two hundred and fifty a year - you can become an owner of a new car. Here's your brochure. Each week, on the post or in a bank, you buy a special mark, then you like, glue it in there, and when you fill the brochure with marks, then you'll get your car. Because it will be ready by that time. A bit under four years - you have your car. But with one condition. If you miss at least one week or withhold the payment for a few days, the whole brochure will expire. You begin from the

start. The ideal scheme in order to guarantee for yourself constant and predicted payments. After the first couple of months, such subscription supplied Hitler with sixty-seven million marks. Because whole Germany wanted that car. Almost every family brought their money for transaction at once. Everyone started the game "Save money for your own car". That money was enough to build a factory. While that was a people's project, that factory had to wear a people's name. And so - Volkswagen. Hitler

. But while people were happily gluing marks and waving flags on squares, the country was preparing to battle. All the facilities Hitler returned under his control, all the economy, everything was working for the war again. Because the regime and Hitler's mission were advancing to a climax. To the second round. By the way, how our culture depicts Germans? Like absolute and pure evil. Savages and inhumans who wanted to destroy all living things. Short of the Aryan nation. It's normal for the mili

tary. They have to genuinely hate their enemy, otherwise they would be killed. Because you have to kill, or be killed. But if we look into diaries of pre-war Germany and in Germany at war, there's another pic. There's shock. By nineteen-thirty-nine, not many Germans wanted war. And average, peaceful people were truly shell-shocked because all those parades, slogans and promises of revenge were for a reason. If during the World War Two, all the country saw their warriors to the front with flowers

and celebratory mood, the World War Two was no celebration. There is a book, "Berlin Diary". Written by the American journalist William Shirer who lived in Germany in times of Hitler's rule and at the beginning of the World War Two. It's not a fiction, but an average personal diary. The author wrote down everything happening in average people's lives, day by day. I highly recommend you to read it in your spare time. Here's how he describes people's condition and mood in Berlin in the first days

of the war. September the first, thirty-nine. The World War Two began. "It's a "counter-attack." At dawn this morning Hitler moved against Poland. The people in the street were apathetic when I drove to the Rundfunk. None of the men bought the Extras. The excitement in Berlin on the first day of the World War was tremendous. Today, no excitement. March the 24th, 1940. I was surprised to notice how shabby the Kaiser’s Palace is. The stone railing of the balcony on which Wilhelm the Second made h

is famous appearance to announce to the delirious mob at his feet the coming of war appeared to be falling to pieces. Well, they were not delirious before Hitler’s balcony when this war started. I tried to read in the faces what was in their minds. But their faces looked blank. Obviously they do not like the war, but they will do what they’re told. Die, for instance. April the nineteenth, nineteen-forty. Berlin. Hitler’s fifty-first birthday tomorrow. When I passed the Chancellery tonight, I not

iced some 75 people waiting outside for a glimpse of the leader. In other years on the eve of his birthday there were ten thousand." That's why I cannot say people were happy. There were the same things you meet in any war: fear, tears, emotional struggle and lost loved ones. From both sides, actually. Because the war is most commonly a tragedy for all participants. Whatever is on their sleeves, whatever chevron, flag or badges of rank. Beside the simple fear for war, there was another feeling.

Both executives and army, and common people realized the second loss was lethal. Like, anything else but a loss. The memory still remained about the life after the World War One, the generation didn't change. They were afraid of the loss. Germany went for broke every day, all the human things were kept for later. Because they really had to win at all costs, actually at all costs. Before the war declaration, all the German engineers and other smart people had been working for the army. Absolutely

all car manufacturers and other large companies had been toiling for the war industry. Siemens, BAS, Bayer, Kärcher - whatever. Everyone. Take any Germany company founded before nineteen-thirty-nine, it worked for Wehrmacht. It worked for Hitler and the Nazi regime. Even if they didn't produce weapons, they supplied the army with everything else: clothes, food, potbelly stoves, everything. Even Deutz, Nicolaus Otto's company that had been producing stationary engines for facilities, produced en

gines for submarines during the World War Two. Like one o'clock. Because you couldn't leave that submarine. And obviously, one of the brightest stars among Hitler's engineers was Porsche. Right after he finished Kübelwagen, his bureau was loaded with work on tanks, cross-country vehicles and other track machines. Plus, he oversaw the building of the Volkswagen factory. And when it finally began to work, he was in charge of the assembling of Kübelwagens, and they began to make weapons on the same

factory. During the second half of the war, they made V-one and V-two rockets there, some of the most lethal and destructive rockets of Nazi Germany. All of that was controlled by Porsche. If we look at his record of the World War Two, we will see the following: the first and the most popular was Panzerkampf-fucking-wagen Six VK four-five-zero-one. A.k.a. Tiger. The main heavy tank of the German army, famous everywhere around the globe. It took part in battles on every front where Germany was f

ighting: in France, in Africa, in USSR. Also, in addition, Porsche designed this piece. It was even called Ferdinand after its creator. In rightful terms, this was a self-propelled artillery vehicle, class "tank destroyer". You looked at it and realized - fucking yes, the tank destroyer class couldn't fit it more. And this thing was the most impressive. The Maus tank. Well, mouse it is. The biggest and the heaviest tank of any tanks in the world. Technically, this was a giant house on wheels, fu

lly impenetrable, and if you'd happen to be in the damage radius of that tank, you'd regret the day you were born. And for dessert, Ferdinand Porsche kept on running the Volkswagen factory where not only military cars were being produced but also V-one rockets. V- one was a cross between the rocket and the plane. Such a gizmo with a jet engine that could have been sent for several hundreds of kilometers. You could say that was the prototype of the modern weaponized drones. But the military load

of the V-one weighed almost a ton. And so, when such a rocket landed somewhere, you didn't need to send another: everything was destroyed. The most important thing was that it was very cheap to produce. Don't forget, it was Volkswagen. If the production of one Tiger cost two hundred and fifty thousand Reichsmarks, one V-one rocket cost five thousand marks. That meant, you could make fifty of those rockets instead of a Tiger. And they could raze a little town to the ground. And the Germans were p

leased to do it. If we just looked at the facts and at responsibilities of Porsche, he was Hitler's main design engineer. There was no such engineer who could be so close to the Fuehrer as he was. And he was treated as such, obviously. Whatever source you would research, they always say that Porsche was Hitler's favorite. They had pretty many photos together, Porsche was brought to party congresses and to important meetings about the military hardware. The main thing was, Porsche spoke with Hitl

er directly. That was a very serious privilege. It showed how much Porsche meant for Hitler. However painful it is, one of the brightest talents of the car world served the Wehrmacht and Hitler himself. The others did, too, yes, but Porsche was visible. In some way, he participated in all important projects. At any rate, that part of the story of Ferdinand Porsche is what it is. Varnished tale can't be round. But still, however dreadful the German war machine of death was, we managed to win. The

price of this victory is really questionable. But there was no doubt that we had to win. The countries that managed to avoid the occupation in the first months of the war. knew they had to fight until the end. Or else, no one would have any future under the Germans. Neither us, nor our neighbors, nor next generations. Everyone saw concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other parts of Eastern Europe. Everyone saw destroyed Belgium and occupied France. But we don't need here any partic

ular details. They killed people. Lots of them. With extreme atrocity, they killed people. All the details of the war. Yet again, by rough estimates, something about eighty million people were killed. Four times more than during the World War One. There is no tiny chance even to begin to comprehend how large that number is. And how much grief, sorrow and how many destroyed fates stand behind that number. The Second War really isn't some separate war. It's a logical sequel of the World War One. W

e have to study those conflicts together. 'Cause both of those bloody massacres are the processes of a single cycle. Just like a fighter in a boxing bout is knocked down, but then he stands up and fights. The very same thing. After the World War One, the fight continued with its second round because the peace treaty made Germany's life much worse than before the war. They just couldn't agree with it. And Hitler and the Nazi regime were just the adrenaline that helped the fighter stand. That regi

me didn't appear out of nowhere, nothing happens like that. However horrible it may sound, and I do not justify nazism or fascism, but the Third Reich was a very logical construction that appears when the entire nation endures monotonous and constant humiliation from both economical and cultural point of view. If you spit in the face to the entire country, a big country with a large population number for many years, kill their economy, don't let them live, then whatever it takes, people of that

country would gather around the leader that would promise that he could fix everything, and answer with all their power. Sooner or later. Just because fuck off, let us live, huh? At some point, the Germans seemed to say to the world, "If you treat us like animals, excuse us, but we also can. And later, don't you dare to tell us that you have nothing to do with it, and all that mess and blood against the walls simply happened just like that. Without thinking much, they crossed all the possible li

nes of humanity. The Second War is the tragedy of the Earth. As the World War One, as all the other wars. And of course, at the same time, the World War Two and the Great Patriotic War were heroic deeds of our army, of our soldiers that freed Europe from Nazi Germany together with our allies. All of us know that on May nineteen-forty-five, we entered Berlin, the regime collapsed, and Hitler killed himself in his bunker – it was over. And as soon as all the fanfares fell silent on all the Europea

n squares, the logical question hung in mid-air that people had wondered about a few decades ago. How to fucking deal with Germany? People didn't want for the Third World War to begin around the seventies. Well, at least, let us wait a little. But what did they have to do with the country so that it didn't happen again in the short term, at least, was perfectly unclear. They had to sit and to think. But together with the Soviet Union, because the half of our army was in Berlin, and it was also a

n ally with a right to speak. They decided to divide the country in halves, but that doesn't matter. The picture in my head just didn't add up. Since our previous videos, the documentary of financial machinations of the Porsche, I knew that Ferdinand was obsessed with vehicles. He didn't want to make anything in his life except of cars. And all I read about him back then really showed him as a very peace loving person. But we see rewards in the World War One, tanks, rockets and personal service

for Hitler. At that point, I said, "Right. Okay, let's see what they did with Porsche in the end. 'Cause all the executives who worked in Germany and all who worked on Nazis on the occupied territories all of them was caught, judged and condemned. And Ferdinand Porsche being Hitler's main design engineer had to be put in jail in the first place. That happened. Porsche didn't run away and didn't hide anywhere. The building of his design office in Stuttgart didn't survive the mass bombing, Only ch

arred foundation was left. Porsche was waiting for the end of the war in his house in Zell am See. That was near Salzburg, in Austria. Everyone knew where he was. They could come for him at any moment. And they came. At some point, French soldiers barged to him and said, "Well, Grandpa. Come on, let's face the music." Ferdinand and his son were immediately brought to France and put in jail without any trial. Both of them, just like that. The only thing, they were put not in some common jail but

in one of the former death camps. And I was like… I see. Say no more. Those guys made some shit and were held responsible. But there was a trial, and they were let out. Released. Here you go, here's your pardon, forgive us for your trouble, please, welcome to the new world. And I was like: Oh, wait. What pardon, what freedom, what world? Louis Renault, your own citizen, your own inventor, was rotten in jail because he continued to run the Renault factory when Germany occupied France. That dude j

ust ran the factory, and you tortured him in prison to death. And here we have the main engineering brain of Nazis, personal servant, party member, what the real fuck? You could look at it as you like, all of that looks like some big fat grift. And it was exactly that. Chapter Ten. Traitor Ferdinand Porsche wasn't a German citizen. Yes, he had a party card. But he was born not in Germany. But in Czechoslovakia which was a part of Austria-Hungary. Ferdinand was Sudeten German, born in Czechoslova

kia. And those who know their history must have smiled now. And if you're a normal person, you shouldn't worry. You will understand. When Ferdinand was born in 1875, Czechoslovakia didn't exist as it was. There was only large Austria-Hungary. And Czechoslovakia appeared after the World War One when Austria-Hungary divided into many small countries. Instead of the great empire, there were Austria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and a bunch of very small countries. But for Ferdinand, tha

t didn't matter, like at all. Because in his mind, all of those countries still remained as one large Austria-Hungary. Just because in the end of the war, in 1918, Porsche was 43 years old. He spent his whole life in Austria-Hungary. It was just the same as people who lived forty years in the Soviet Union, still believe the CIS to be one state. For them, it is so because they spent their whole life in one big country, and they will keep thinking that way until the end for sure. There is an opini

on that Russia and Belarus don't differ greatly, although they are two different countries. Kinda, both people are in one context, there are many common cultural things, you can speak one language, everyone loves and treats each other very respectfully. There is no border, really. You can come. And for many of those people, this is one and the same country because just several decades ago, that was really the case. It was one big country. As well as Porsche didn't see a big difference between Au

stria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and all the others just because through his whole life, all of that was one country. His country. The key to understanding Porsche's personality lies in those two things. First, Ferdinand Porsche was a patriot of his country, a.k.a. Austria-Hungary. Second, he only wanted to make cars throughout all his life. Before the World War One, Porsche had already become a famous engineer, across whole Europe. The funny thing was - Porsche had technological education, and he

was fond of machinery. But he knew very little about cars. He knew very much about electronics instead. And when he worked at the Lohner firm after his college, and he had an opportunity to design his own car, he was like, "Fuck those ICes. I can't tell about them. But we can surely attach some wires and batteries. Porsche took one of the Lohner prototypes, already with some engine attached to it, and remade two wires that were counted for electrics. Plus, he put an electric engine in there. An

d it was moving. Technically, Porsche invented the first in the world hybrid car both with the ICE and with the electric engine. And at that point, Lohner was a very solid and respectable company. They'd been existing for a hundred years and made very expensive horsed carriages of ultra-premium class. Basically, all Europe was using Lohner carriages because they were like Rolls-Royces among carriages. And naturally, when you have such a company, and suddenly, you have a vehicle like nobody has,

what would you do first? Right, you boast. Those guys went for the nineteen-hundred Paris Exposition to show all Europe what they created. And as it was the good round figure - and when it's a good round figure, it has to be interesting, - the exhibition was of unprecedented scale. There was such a big crowd of people and companies you couldn't count them. And Porsche created a furore with his invention. In a single day, he became famous all over Europe. Being the premium manufacturer, Lohner ha

d very expensive products, and they sold about three hundred hybrids, but that was a steady issue. For that time, such an issue was very good even for an average car, and for premium, it was just great. And that vehicle had Porsche's name on it. I remind you, back then, Porsche was twenty-five. And by the laws of Austria-Hungary, he had to enlist in the army. Yes, by that time, Porsche wasn't some nobody, but the main premium engineer and the pride of the nation which he celebrated with his inve

ntions. But still, he had to enlist. Those laws. But still, they couldn't send Porsche to the drill field, that would be a waste. So he became Franz Ferdinand's personal driver. Do you remember that guy? That was the prince that was killed in the Balkans and likely became the reason for the World War One. And Ferdinand Porsche was his personal driver while being in the army. Of course, that was a different time period. The prince was killed later. But if Porsche were really his driver in the mom

ent of the murder, I would say, Wow, such a fucking universal crossover. Honestly, I would like very much for Porsche to be Franz Ferdinand's driver at that point just for the headline, something like "Ferdinand drove Ferdinand. And Ferdinand was killed but Ferdinand lived." Do you remember that Porsche worked as CTO in Daimler? He went there after the army. But there was a nuance - Porsche worked not in Daimler but in Austro-Daimler. Austro-Daimler was Daimler's branch In Austria, as you could

guess. But not really a branch. Originally, it was founded like a branch, yes. But as the company was very far, and its sales weren't so great as in Germany, nobody cared much for it. It was the place where people were exiled as a punishment. If you fucked up really much in the normal German Daimler or pissed everyone off, then okay, you could go to the cursed Daimler. I mean, Astro-Daimler. But Porsche came in there, to the leading position at once, and after several years, he was like, "Guys,

why the fuck do you need such a branch in a dump? Come on, we'll be by ourselves, you'll be by ourselves. We would happily help if anything. But let me take this headache off you with our branch, and we'll branch out on our own. What a good mood you'll have. Right." It got by. In nineteen-ten, they decided for Austro-Daimler to be a separate company since that day, and to spend a couple of years for that. The company changed its logo and name, and Porsche became his own man from that time on. Ye

s, he wasn't the owner of the factory because investors paid for it, not him. But since that moment, Porsche ran that factory completely and theoretically, he could do anything. As we could guess by the timeline, he couldn't live peacefully for long. Two years after he gained freedom, the World War One began. I said that after that war, Porsche became a national hero. And that was right. Because Porsche's inventions saved giant amount of soldiers in battles. Not only the Austro-Hungarian army co

uld better defend itself because they could drag their artillery through every shit thanks to Porsche's inventions, but also his tow cars moved wounded people from the battle fields. And his inventions were truly brilliant. Despite the fact it was war machinery, not cars. The reason was, he made them for his country and for his people. Obviously, when the war was over and Austria-Hungary divided into many countries, the only thing Porsche was worried about was keeping his factory and his people

safe. Yes, they were in deep shit. Yes, without orders, without money, without food. but he had to save his workers at any cost. And the owners of the factory demanded of Porsche to fire several thousand people. But Ferdinand resisted till the last. He was like, "Yes, we have no work, I get it, fact. But that's okay. Look, I organized a farm inside the facility. We have some cows, chickens, goats, and all of that. I will pay workers with food instead of money. But I won't fire anyone." Things pr

oceeded like that for almost a year. The bosses demanded of Porsche to obey but he didn't listen to anyone and sent to hell all the investors. They fired him. So, you're Ferdinand Porsche. It's the year nineteen-twenty now. You're forty-five, You have a big birthday. You country doesn't exist anymore. You have no work. You are in deep shit, you have nothing to eat. And you have two little children. In that moment, your wife dies you lived fifteen years with. Happy birthday, Ferdinand. You are si

tting in your home. You're the honored engineer, and with a special fucking honor, you're milking a cow. And you're thinking, if it wasn't for kids, you'd have blown your brains out long ago. Why the fuck you have to live? But after some time, after about a year when Porsche had no work, guys from the original German Daimler came to him. Аnd they were like, "Come with us. We survived hyperinflation, and we have orders. We need vehicles. We don't know anyone better. Come." No choice but to agree.

Although Porsche didn't want to be hired and do someone's bidding, there was no way out. That was the only chance. And Porsche agreed. Further on, another cycle of his engineering life was upon him, similar with previous ones. He set to work, made brilliant vehicles like Mercedes S that was victorious in the Nürburgring. The he fell out with the bosses again and left the company. On his own accord. The year 1931. Porsche was 56 years old. For the first time in his life, he finally had an opport

unity to make his own thing. Porsche dreamt to make his own vehicle throughout his whole life. Not by someone's request. But his own, in such a form and of such kind he wanted. He honestly realized that he had not so much time left, yeah. And the age of fifty-six lightly insinuated it was high time for him to open his design office. Of course, he had no money to build a factory. But he could open a bureau and work for several car manufacturers at once. Among other things, at that point, he visit

ed the Soviet Union. There is a very popular belief among our people that the Soviet car industry could have taken a completely different path. Because we were visited by the great Ferdinand Porsche, and if only he would have stayed… He wouldn't have stayed here on any account. He left his country only because Germany offered him work, and it was connected to vehicles. He came to us by invitation, and our guys said to him, "We need tractors and tanks." And Porsche said, "Thanks, but I'm sick and

tired of your tanks, cannons and other shit. Let me make cars." So Porsche returned to Germany, to be visited by Hitler. Who was like, "Buddy, I need a car not for war but just for people and for the future of our great nation. And I want to give this project to you." As it was the project of a car, supposedly a people's car, that was a perfect chance for Porsche to fulfill the dream of his life - to make such a car that Ferdinand could proudly call his creation completely. Of course, he was ok

ay with it. Because in 1933, no one knew where Hitler's power would lead the whole planet. But then, the military came, corrections came, and Porsche realized where it led. It was his horror. Because, I remind you, Porsche was the foreign citizen. As I've said, Porsche was born in Czechoslovakia. To be precise, he was born in that small town of Liberec. It was the town in the Sudetenland. Basically, on the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. It's like we have Karelia, with the Karelians,

the cross between the Finns and the Russians. Sudeten in Czechoslovakia were the same. Sort of Germans but citizens of Czechoslovakia. And the Nazi regime took great advantage of that. As soon as Hitler felt his power and knew that war was near, he looked at the map, and he was like, "Okay. In order to easily conquer Eastern Europe, we have to go through Austria and Czechoslovakia. But why should I go through when I can conquer them?" Hitler began to yell from the stand that the governments of A

ustria and Czechoslovakia were constantly humiliating their German population, and they had to run and save their brothers. Austria surrendered with a fight at once. But Czechoslovakia was preparing for war. They carried out mobilization, strengthened their borders, they really were going to war. But first, the Germans were stronger. And second, the rest of Europe was like, "Hey. Wait. Don't you defend- Hey, no. Just give that region with the German population to Germany, and that would be all,

they would calm down and wouldn't attack anyone. They had to give away the Sudetenland. They did some shooting and resisting, but they gave it up. I remind you, the World War Two hadn't begun yet, it was 1938, a year before the attack on Poland. Of course, there was no humiliation of the German nation present. First, Austria and Sudeten lied in the mountains, and Hitler desperately wanted to pass those places without a fight because crossing the mountains under fire wasn't a really great idea. S

econd, Czechoslovakia had very many industrial and military facilities. The same old Škoda, for example. And third, purely random, by the merest accident, the Sudeten had large deposits of coal, metals and all of that. And of course, the conquest of the territories was framed like saving of the German nation, like, finally, we are free. But at the same time, all the important facilities and deposits went under Hitler's control. And when the war was imminent, all the rest of Czechoslovakia were o

ccupied, they were robbed and used as manpower. You are the leader of the design office working on the regime that in its turn, at the moment, is sacking your country. Death camps will be there, there will be hunger, cold and occupation. And they send prisoners of war to your facilities, in the form of order. Prisoners of war from your home country. And you understand that perfectly. Porsche wasn't stupid. What will you do? And saying "I don't agree with something here." means getting shot betwe

en the eyes at once. You'll be shot down. Of course, that's a very noble act in the manner of all activists, like "I'm sacrificing myself to the regime in the name of my causes." You can't help the cause when you dead. And your coffin will cost money. In all the short sources like Wikipedia, when all the information is given like, that was that, this was this, he was born, and then he died… By those sources, Porsche seems to be a brilliant engineer, and at the same time, the author of the half o

f the weaponry for the Wehrmacht. But Porsche was a brilliant engineer, with brains like fuck. Those brains really worked just fascinating. And with a deeper look, you can notice that actually, Porsche didn't make any working project for Hitler's war machine. So that you could understand, I need to explain how the developing for the military works. Very roughly, in simple terms, here you have a war department that deals with the army and everything that is related to it. In our case, it is calle

d the Wehrmacht. The government represented by the Commander in Chief, Hitler in our case, assigns a task to Wehrmacht at some point, like "Well, you should go there and just fuck everything down." Wehrmacht looks at the task and says, "Right, we are going to need for that as many tanks, as many cannons, and we don't have such equipment. We should order it." And every war department has some limited amount of design offices that could design something for them. It's prohibited to trust them all.

You have top-secret strategic goals, at such a secret level that without a special permission, you couldn't fart or breath. And of course, you have several bureaus for every weapon. Because you can't pick a single one. For example, if your fighters are made by one bureau, and something bad happens to it, a hit by bomb or something - that's all, you're fucked, you have no fighters. And so, many bureaus work for every kind of production at the same time. Let's suppose, you as the ministry decide

that you need a new tank. And you have fifteen design offices that make those tanks. You write the order that you need such a tank with such and such weapons, with such and such parameters and with such price. And you send it to the bureau. They design something, and then each of them brings you their own project. And then, the ministry already decides what to produce and what not. And Porsche was fucking smart to use that scheme. As we remember, Porsche's design office was making tanks. Well, o

fficially making tanks. And even if we look at the papers, there were designs, there were tanks, everything was alright. Except for one nuance: none of them was working. For starters, we take the Tiger, allegedly the most popular tank of Porsche. That big, heavy, fucking giant tank with an issue of one and a half thousand copies. And that was actually pretty great for a heavy tank. And every source will have the line that Ferdinand Porsche himself had a hand in this tank. But that is the plain b

ullshit. When the Ministry of Defence got the task to make a heavy tank, that task was handed over to Porsche's design office. And also, to the Henschel bureau. That was another big engineering company of that time that was also making tanks. Each of them had to show their own draft to the Ministry. And every time Porsche received such an order, he always did his favorite thing. He acted really dumb, made crazy eyes, and said, "We will be making the best tanks. The most technological tanks in th

e world. Okay. Ehh, first, we make an electronically-controllable chassis. Here is our tank, it rides through some shit - water, slush, intestines, all of that. And we put an electric engine into these terms, with more and more wires. It's ingenious, it's a Swiss fucking watch. I'm not messing around. Porsche started the development, and after the while, he showed his draft of the Tiger tank, With electric engines in its tracks. Like, "The tank is big and very heavy, and it's very difficult to t

urn around. To solve this question, I put a bunch of electronics in it, so it would turn around just like fucking hell." But not only all of that would die in the first puddle, it was absolutely impossible to assemble. Because Germany had a very serious shortage of copper. They didn't have their own deposits, and it was just impossible to buy it, you know. For some reason, no one wanted to trade with Germany back then, it just happened. Porsche made all the electric engines, all the wires for th

em and all that shit - of copper. With a special requirement: the metal wasn't to be changed in any case. "It would work only with copper." Which Germany simply didn't have on an industrial scale. That was the double insurance of Porsche. He initially invented a construction that Germany couldn't afford in any way, and even if they would be able to assemble some amount of tanks at bench scale, those tanks wouldn't go anywhere. It was impossible to repair the wires and electric engines on the bat

tle field. And Porsche knew that perfectly. Do you really think that the man who was busy with machinery designs for forty years, who fought the World War One, who was constantly going to battle fields to watch how his machinery works who was one of the most extraordinary engineers of that time, that he wasn't aware that electronics work bad in shit and snow? Do you really think that? Although, the military commission knew that as well. And when the competitors from Henschel showed them just a f

ucking usual, normal human tank without any fancy gizmos, it was released to construction. And Porsche's drafts remained only drafts. But Porsche's drafts are easily to confuse with the battle tank because their names differ only with one letter. The Tiger VK-four-five-zero-one-H is Henschel. That tank was used by the army. And the Tiger VK-four-five-zero-one P was Porsche's draft. There was only a hundred made, and they never left for the battle field. But. Drafts were made. Valuable materials

were spent. They had to turn them into something viable, or else the military would shot them down for the waste of resources. And so, let's make a heavier thing based on those tanks and call it Ferdinand. What a giant thing we have. But as we have to spare resources, we'll do it, right. And fuck up nine chassis. There was a hundred prototypes but ninety-one Ferdinands. Where are nine chassis? Only God knows. It's all in God's hands. Sorry. But here we have a giant and expensive machine that has

to destroy tanks. And if our main enemy is a tank, we won't protect it from the infantry. Porsche thought, and it worked. Ferdinand - I mean, the tank - didn't have any survey ports, it was a blind tank. The guys inside saw only what was ahead. And so, you could come from aside and aim for two hours straight, the crew couldn't see you. Sometimes, our Soviet tankman were having fun and ramming Ferdinand to the side. What could they do to them? They didn't see them. Plus, you design a giant and h

eavy machine with thick armor in the front, without survey for the crew and without machine guns to oppose the infantry and you leave such a hole in the ass. That was very funny that all the photos of that tank were made from the front. Such a fucking intimidating thing with such a muzzle… But from behind - oh, welcome. Our doors are opened for you. You send one soldier with one fucking grenade, he throws it in the hole - that's all, the whole giant gets fucked up. And soldiers can't protect the

mselves, they don't have any machine guns. After the first fight, it became obvious that Ferdinand didn't work and had to be refined quickly. Out of ninety-one vehicles, only forty remained in action. Some lost their engines and stayed on the battle field, and some got grenades in their asses. In the tank, too. They returned the survived engines to the factory, attached machine guns, made survey ports so that soldiers could observe the battle, but those things didn't go anywhere. Because they we

re too much pain in the ass. Just so you know, in total, Germany had about thirty thousand tanks throughout the whole war. And here you had forty fucking vehicles that fucked you brains and didn't work on the battle field. Sure as hell, Porsche knew perfectly that he made some shit. Certified and intentionally. Basically, if we take projects that worked normally, Porsche made for Hitler only Kübelwagen and the civilian Beetle. Because they were cars, they were okay, they didn't kill people. If w

e take a close look at all his military projects, they were all unsuccessful. Every single one of them. Even the horrible tank, the Maus, the heaviest tank of the planet, was some dummy shit. And Porsche didn't have to invent something complicated; they gave him a task to make a fucking giant tank. And he made it. A 180 tons of it. And with such a weight, you couldn't go across any car bridge, only over the river bottom. And if you rode out of the river happily, reached the field and got stuck l

ike a vice, that was it. You couldn't ever move that tank out of the field, just forget it. That's why that shitty thing also never took part in real battles. Porsche made it, drove it in the workshop yard and sent it to the museum. And he wasted a ton of important resources that he needed to spare. Don't you find it strange that when Porsche worked on Austria-Hungary in the first war, then his inventions were just fucking great and did good on the battle field. And when he worked on the Nazis,

everything was just out of sorts. We're working here tooth and nail, we're thinking all the day long, our eyes are even bulging. But nothing is working. By the way, with such words, Porsche was explaining away when he got a task to design a new engine for the V-one rocket to make the V-two. Kinda new generation. Everyone knew that Porsche could make a more efficient engine for that rocket, and it would fly a few hundred kilometers longer. And Porsche was like, "Yes, we'll do." And then, "Well, f

uck if I know, something's not working." For one and a half year, he fucked the brains to the military commission, Though I remind you, Porsche was one of the best designers of plane engines on the planet. In a book of his contemporary, we found just the line that very clearly explains Porsche's real attitude to the whole Nazi regime. The book is called "The Secret Project of Škoda". It's written by Jan Kralik, the Czech writer and journalist. I would like to recommend you to read it, but it exi

sts only in Czech. It's not translated into English or Russian, we did it ourselves. And that was worth it. Per se, that book is about Oldřich Meduna, the chief engineer of Škoda. And this book can be trusted, because Jan Kralik - it's the author - wrote it with Meduna. He simply told him stories about their factory, and the writer turned them to the text. It's interesting for us because Meduna became a war prisoner in occupied Czechoslovakia. And as Meduna was an important asset and a cool engi

neer, he was sent to work for Porsche's design office. And Meduna said in the book Okay then, I'm walking with my colleague that was also brought with me out there through Porsche's bureau. And we're talking about something in Czech. A German comes up and says, "Eh, listen now, what fucking language is it? Polish?" We answer him, "Eh, it's Czech." "We're from Czechia." "Fuckechia." You're now on the territory of sacred Germany, you should speak only German. Otherwise you know what will happen."

Meduna said, "Okay, okay, jawohl.. We'll be speaking German. They just brought us here, we don't know yet how it goes by you." And somehow, Porsche found out about that shit. And as soon as he was told about it, he gathered all the staff of his design office at once, and he said, "Listen now. I will tell it just once. Simply because our staff is Polish, Russian, Czech, Germans, French and fuck knows who works here, all that shit doesn't matter at all. I have humans working here. At my bureau, I

will not allow humiliating anyone along ethnic lines. If you're hypercritical, here's the original. Is it a normal statement? Supposedly, you're the main engineer of the Third Reich, Supposedly, Hitler's personal assistant. But in real life, you skullfucked the Nazi regime, or Nazis, or all that was happening. People mattered. The only thing to be done was keeping people safe. No matter if it were employees of my bureau that I'll stick up for personally, or some vague amount of people that would

n't be killed because my fucking tanks won't reach the battle field as they will stuck while being manufactured. At that, for show, Porsche acted out with obsessed eyes so great, that other engineers called him crazy professor, and they thought that grandpa was just getting wild for the better machinery. But grandpa didn't care a fuck about them. It can be seen if you look closely and carefully to the results of his work. Throughout his whole life, whatever Porsche started, everything was workin

g like a clock. Since nineteen-thirty-nine till forty-five - fuck, something was wrong back then. Honestly, I don't know the answer for one question. I don't know why Hitler didn't kill Ferdinand Porsche. Just don't know. We've read so many different books, articles, researches and all such, as we didn't read for any other documentary. And I still don't know why Hitler didn't kill Porsche. He couldn't help but notice that not one of his designs was working. Moreover, he certainly knew that Porsc

he was playing against him. On the other hand, the scheme was perfect. On paper, you can't carp. Are people working? They are. Is there know-how? There is. Why doesn't it work? Who knows? We're thinking now. We'll tell when we know. There are many mentions that Hitler treated Porsche very well. I don't believe it. Hitler had not one reason to treat Porsche well, except for common and cold math that he needed that man. There were so many members of the government murdered by him that we could rec

ite them till tomorrow. Because Hitler had a very simple policy: not one of those people who got into the higher ranks could have a return ticket. If you are on the top of the party, Wehrmacht, or public administration, you have two ways: you're with us until death, or we're gonna kill you. And Hitler knew what Porsche was doing. If Porsche was appointed to be the main designer of the Beetle before the war, he answered for the production and ruled all people, then by the end of the war, he was s

tripped of all leading positions. And all the orders about appointments were signed by Hitler. If we looked at what Porsche was doing by the end of the war, he wasn't running the Volkswagen. He was just a member of the supervisory council. Kinda, you can watch, but don't touch anything. And as soon as it became clear that Porsche wouldn't make any weapons, he was sent into occupied France to deal with the Peugeot factory. By that time, Hitler already knew that he would certainly give France to t

he Allies, sooner or later. Okay, to hell and gone, go there, get out of my sight. I don't know why Hitler didn't kill Porsche. He really was a brilliant engineer. And if Ferdinand was an actual fan of Germany and of the regime, perhaps, the war could have had different results. And although Ferdinand Porsche was described on every corner as one the main people in the Third Reich, but actually, he was a quiet and peaceful person who tried with all his might, as soon as possible, to draw peaceful

and serene times near, for the piece across the world. World of solutions. World of vehicles. World of speed. Without wars. Unfortunately, those people that were bringing peace near nice and easy are now a line in Wikipedia. The very wrong line. And only so much I as a car fan could do to show gratitude for them all is to tell you of them. And Ferdinand Porsche was an example that proves the most important thing in any times is to remain human, to do your business, and never, under no circumsta

nces to give up. And you'll succeed. As I've said, Porsche was waiting for his destiny in his house in Austria. In his beloved and home country. At first, not the French came to him. Still in Stuttgart, when the Allies only entered the city, the British came to him, and they were like, "Okay, ehh, listen here, everything is ours now. Give us your schematics, your papers, anything interesting, we take it away. And Volkswagen, too. We'll decide what to do with you later. Go on, sit somewhere. And

he was sitting in his home. But it was only for a few weeks, because the French came and said, "Welcome to our jail." They took him with his son. Funny, the French took Porsche not because they held him for a war criminal or something like that. Their logic was quite different. After France had restored its freedom, and the government and all the facilities returned there, the guys were like… Right, and now, we will definitely need the cheap vehicle. The only Frenchman that could solve this ques

tion, Louis Renault, rot in prison half a year ago. That's why… Let's snatch Porsche. And they did. Yes, officially, they said that he was arrested because he was running the occupied Peugeot factory, why Germany was there. But when it came to the trial, the charges collapsed because all the witnesses who worked on the factory back then unanimously told that Porsche, on the contrary, always protected them from the Germans. And Porsche always did that. At any factory, with any leadership. The fun

ny thing was that all the charges were formed like, "Well, Porsche is German. Yes. That means, he's responsible for everything the Gestapo did here, in France. Yes." I remind you, the Gestapo was the secret police and organizers of death camps. And even Gestapo officers told on the questionings that Porsche didn't help them with anything ever. On the opposite, if he got a request to give some of his people away, Ferdinand asserted himself as he could, but he didn't give people away. Even if they

were French who worked at the French factory. All the witnesses told the same thing as one. But the French were holding Porsche in the camp on the factory territory, and there was always a real huge pilgrimage because all the French engineers came to him seeking his advice, and were sitting with him all day long, pondering about the compact car. And it was possible that Porsche actually could die in that camp. His son saved him. As the French wanted only Ferdinand, his son, Ferry Porsche, was r

eleased pretty quickly, literally after several months. And as he wrote in his diary later, he could get his father out of prison with the help of the good old and reliable bribe with a hundred thousand dollars. I don't believe it, truth be told. A hundred thousand dollars for that man and for those projects wasn't such a great sum. But considering that Ferdinand was 72 at that moment, and they held him in prison for two years, as likely as not, they pulled out of him everything that they could.

Well, okay then, for extra hundred thousand drink money, we'll let the grandpa go." As Porsche returned home, the only thing he asked his son of, was to give him pass to the Volkswagen factory. Because he wanted to see for himself how his Beetles were being born. And by that moment, Volkswagen already launched the first run of Beetles, and they were leaving the assembly line little by little. And the last couples of years in his life, Ferdinand Porsche was just observing his vehicles leaving th

e assembly line - cars he'd been dreaming of throughout his life. Yes, that car didn't have his name on it. But it was totally his car. And he managed to look at it. In 1951, the engineer's heart snapped and stopped forever. Ferdinand Porsche was the man who survived two bloodiest wars ever, who lost everything but his kids in the age of forty-five, who worked in the most dangerous place on the Earth and in the bloodiest regime on this planet, the man who so fiercely fought throughout his life f

or just doing his favorite job because he was too good to be free from every power. Because when imperial interest clash, no one would consider your personal interests. You would do what you would. Even if you're Ferdinand Porsche. Especially if you're Ferdinand Porsche. But despite all of that, as for me, I see here a very interesting cosmic irony that exactly in conditions of the Nazi Germany, just steps from Hitler and for Hitler's money, Porsche made the most popular car in this world that w

ould be the symbol of the hippie era, by the way. It would become the exact same symbol of peace as the Pacific logo. All of that is due to one engineer, who carried two simple rules throughout his whole life: people matter; under no circumstances you should give up. If we look at the results of the World War Two through a lens of our video, in the middle of the 20 century, the Germans came back to where they started. To the complete disunity and lost control over their territories. The part of

them were given to Poland. Austria became a separate country. And the Allies divided Germany between themselves. Eastern Germany was given to the Soviet Union. And the Western was shared between France, Britain and the US. Yet again, they began to think, "Oh fuck, what should we do?" We could speak very long about events in Eastern and Western Germany. We don't have to do it here. The main thing is, after the World War One experience, the winning countries drew their conclusions. Instead of chok

ing and isolating the country, they decided to help it on its feet. The more so they could turn Western Germany to a pretty show-case compared to Eastern Germany where the Soviets ruled. Basically, the USA, Britain and France said the following to Western Germany, "Look here. Don't you mess with the war industry. Let us evolve in the peaceful technologies, we beg of you. We will support you. We'll give you money, we'll help with your construction, we'll give you orders if you could invent someth

ing useful. But only if you prove it through deeds that you are really ready to be important on this planet. But only in the peaceful field, this time. The main thing is, sometime after the war, when everything began to recover more or less, they left Germany alone. And let it live in peace as far as it was possible in the twentieth century. And that was the reason why Germany could make such a great leap from the destroyed desert to the advanced, technological country. Including the fact they w

ere turned to the right direction, and after a while, they were left alone. That they always lacked. And what else but this very video has to be finished with an idea that we actually began to make this video for in this fucking year, 2022. On this planet, there could be no first-class or second-class. There are no people who are more worthy or less worthy. There are just people on this Earth. At the first sight, you could think all people were different. They have different skin color, differen

t cultures, different languages and context. But at the first sight. 'Cause in our core, we are the same. All of us want one thing - the everyday human happiness. For loved ones to be near. For the sun to shine. So we could worry about nothing. I wish you that. And also, some of you could think at that point something like… Hey, wait. Where are my Audi and BMW?" Everything I could say is "I have another one Rolling R Story." Written by Stas Asafiev. Directed and produced by Daniil Gudkov. Execut

ive producer: Eliza Tsatsurina Director of photography: Artyom Yermakov. Edited by Andrey Esotov. VFX producer: Vladimir Bruezlie Assistant director: Georgi Krievinysh Assistant cameraman: Egor Zorin Assistant cameraman: Akhsar Tibilov Lampmen foreman: Ilya Novoschinsky Helper: Nikita Rykov Line producer: Nika Shakirova Advertising: Sergey Chernigin Copyright: Alya Tumanova Grading: Vadim Yerlin Sound and remastering: Denis Stroev Designer: Sveta Kochieva Make-up: Anastasia Rostovceva Make-up an

d wigs: Lyubov Chernysheva Legal adviser: Ivan Baranov Starring as the Blonde: Alyona Musical score: Stas Asafiev