Month: February 2022

272: The Vision of Fascism

Mark Podcast
“Die Partei.” In 1939, this statue was installed outside the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. It depicts an idealized image of the male “Aryan.” (Photo: Bundesarchiv)

In this second episode of a three-part series, we look at the ideology of fascism.

What do fascists believe? At the heart of fascism is an ideology that centers “our” people as the world’s best and brightest, and accuses “other” people of stealing “our” glory. Only by embracing fascism can “we” recover what was taken from “us.”

  • Listen now:


Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Bullets and Bayonets”
Composed in 1917 by John Philip Sousa. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 


Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

271: The Roots of Fascism

Mark Podcast
Horst Wessel and his SA unit at the 1929 Nuremberg Rally. (Photo: Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

In this first episode of a three-part series, we look at the origins of fascism.

At the turn of the century, socialists were becoming increasingly confident that expanding the right to vote to the working classes would inevitably bring socialism via the ballot box. But what happened instead was a new right-wing ideology came into being, one that competed with socialists for that new working-class vote: Fascism.

  • Listen now:


Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Bullets and Bayonets”
Composed in 1917 by John Philip Sousa. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 


Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

270: The Reichstag Fire

Mark Podcast
The famous photograph of Adolf Hitler bowing to President Hindenburg at the opening of the Reichstag in Potsdam, March 21, 1933. (Photo: Deutsches Bundesarchiv.)

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of a German government in which Nazis held only a couple of cabinet posts. But Hitler had demanded yet another Reichstag election (Germany’s third in less than a year), and the Nazis set out to create a crisis out of a supposed impending Communist revolution.

When a fire was set in the Reichstag just days before the election, Hitler and the Nazis got everything they needed to declare an emergency, crack down on the left, and persuade the Reichstag to grant them sweeping “emergency” powers that they would retain until 1945.

  • Listen now:


Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Opus 167
Composed in 1921 by Camille Saint-Saëns. Public domain.
Performed by Jordi Rumbau. Recording used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 3.0 license. Source.

Closing Theme 


Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.