Darryl Cooper: Blocking The Real WW2 History That We Need To See

Darryl Cooper is a “historian” who creates the successful Martyr Made podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, as well as having over 175,000 Substack subscribers. His discourse is one of Nazi denialist apologia and virulent anti-Sovietism. His acceptance on the Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan podcasts helps legitimize this discourse, while pushing the Overton Window of officially acceptable political discourse even more rightwards. Very much in line with the discourse of the AfD leader in Germany. The control of the historical narrative is always about the control of the present.

When an individual makes statements that would be expected to see him swiftly removed from social media platforms, and many others who have made lesser such statements have been de-platformed, one has to ask who his continued media access serves. Especially when media personalities with huge audiences, such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, have him on their shows and treat him with an unquestioning respectfulness. That is Darryl Cooper, who criticizes the highly misleading official narrative of WW2 but then replaces it with another set of lies.

Cooper starts with the Western myths about WW1 that are used to cover up the real nature of that war, a war between the imperial powers of the United Kingdom (population 46 million), Germany (68 million), Austria-Hungary (52 million), France (40 million), Russia (170 million) and the declining Ottoman Empire (25 million) driven by the great success of the Germans in the second “scientific” industrial revolution at which the British were lagging far behind. Also, by the industrialization of the colossus Russia which threatened to overwhelm the power of Germany and Austria-Hungary combined; both of which it bordered. The British needed to keep German power down and the Germans needed to knee cap Russia before it industrialized and modernized further given its huge population. That the war was triggered by the assassination in Sarajevo is more chance than anything, the kindling of imperial rivalry was bone dry and the war could have started earlier for example during the Agadir Crisis of 1911.

From Okutu on Twitter

No nation, including Germany, could be individually blamed for starting what turned into a World War, but that is exactly what happened at Versailles. In addition, throughout 1914-1917 the US operated firmly on the side of the UK and France. Through such things as the respecting of the Anglo-French maritime blockade of Germany, while continuing to ship goods to the two allies and provide financing for those goods. With the Russian February 1917 revolution and the rapidly deteriorating fighting ability of the Russian Army, it looked as if the German side would be able to take Russia out of the war and focus all of its resources on the Western Front; while also breaking the Allied blockade through access to Russian resources. Leading to a German victory, or a stalemate, both of which would have been ruinous for the US bankers that had extended massive credits to the UK.

So President Wilson, who had been elected on an anti-war ticket only the previous November dragged the US population unwillingly into war with Germany in April 2017. Even with the full support of the US industrial powerhouse and US troops starting to arrive in France, the German 1918 Spring Offensive threatened to break through to Paris. Once this petered out, and the massive waves of fresh US troops and supplies were pouring into France, the German fate was sealed. When the Germans agreed to the armistice in November they had no idea that they would be treated as the single cause of the war and dealt with so extremely harshly. The allocation of massive post-war reparations that were not payable on the day they were implemented, and the loss of significant portions of German territory (disconnecting East Prussia from Germany and giving Alsace Lorraine to France that had been gained in the 1970 war with that country), while Germany was also not allowed a significant military, were widely seen as punitive terms and humiliating by the German population. Even the industrial Ruhr was administered by the League of Nations until 1935, not the German state.

At the same time, Germany was stripped of all of its overseas imperial possessions which were predominantly taken over by the United Kingdom (South West Africa, Togoland), together with other powers (e.g. German East Africa was split between the UK and Belgium, Cameroon went to the French, in the Pacific the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, the Marianas, the Palau Islands all went to the Japanese, German Samoa to New Zealand and German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru to Australia). These were technically under “League of Nations Mandates” but were to all intents and purposes handed over to other imperial powers. The formation of a union between Germany and Austria was also forbidden. Austria-Hungary was also ripped apart, to create Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The taking away of so much productive capacity, together with the colossal reparations destroyed; the German economy during the 1920s. And just as it was recovering through some debt relief the economy was hit with the Great Depression. Unlike in previous wars, the US would not forgive the wartime debts of the UK and France, forcing them to push for the reparation payments so that they could repay the US banks. An attempted communist revolution in 1918 and 1919 had been put down with the support of the Social Democrats who had sided with the German elite and military, with the use of both the military and the paramilitary Freikorps. The latter murdered the KPD leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, as well as many others.

On all the above I am very much in alignment with Mr. Cooper. What Mr. Cooper will not agree with was that the European elites were also very much ready for a war as a way to focus the population on nationalism and an external enemy, while facilitating a crack down at home against the burgeoning threat of the working people to their elite exploiters. Across Europe and the US, the post-WW1 period was used to crush the proletarian movements; with Mussolini in Italy, Wilson in the US, David Lloyd George in the UK, Clemenceau in France, and Ebert in Germany. The Soviet Union managed to resist the attempts of the Mensheviks and Russian imperialist elites (the Whites), the Poles, the British Empire, the US, the French Empire, Japan, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Italy, Romania and Ukrainian separatists to destroy it. At the cost of colossal destruction, war losses and widespread famine and deaths from disease as well as the loss of territories that became the Baltic States and Finland, the loss of a huge chunk of what is now Belarus and Ukraine to Poland, and the loss of Bessarabia to Romania. This severely destroyed nation managed to recover somewhat during the New Economic Plan of the balance of the 1920s, before leaping forward in the mass industrialization of the 1930s. An industrialization that allowed the Soviets to withstand the ferocity of, and then destroy, the Nazi plague.

Cooper very much ignores the role of the German oligarchy (and even US elite members such as Ford) in nurturing Hitler and his Nazis through the 1920s and early 1930s, and the huge support provided by them to the Nazis during the elections of the early 1930s. In 1930, the first post-Great Crash election, the SPD (Social Democrats) gained 24.5% of the vote, with the Nazis at 18.3%, and the socialist KPD 13.1%. In July 1932, the Nazis gained 37.3%, the SPD 21.6%, and the KPD 14.3%. In the November election of the same year, Nazi support actually fell to 33.1%, the SPD gained 20.4%, and the KPD 16.9%. The Nazis had passed their peak, even with massive oligarch support, with over 6 million Germans unemployed. Big business acted and pressured President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. After which political violence, together with the Reichstag Fire (set by the Nazis themselves) that facilitated the suspending of civil liberties, gained the Nazis 43.9% of the vote in the March 1933 election; even under such circumstances the Nazis could not gain a majority of the vote. A fact very much ignored by Cooper. The Nazis then banned all opposition parties.

The German population did not vote into power the Nazis, it was the German oligarchy (the bourgeoisie and the Junkers) that placed Hitler in power. In mid 1934, in the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler destroyed the SA Brownshirts that were the wing of the Nazis that wanted the oligarchy smashed. Their time of usefulness had expired now that Hitler commanded the German army, and they stood in the way of Hitler fully implementing a fascist state and military Keynesianism that greatly benefitted the oligarchy while smashing independent trades unions and disciplining the workers. Real wages fell 25% between 1933 and 1938, while longer workdays were implemented, business profits rapidly rose and the Nazis privatized state owned businesses on very favourable terms. The big German corporations benefitted greatly from tariff protections, cartels, monopolies, government subsidies, advantageous contracts, the suppression of trade unions, and even slave labour. This directly contradicts Cooper’s attempt to paint Hitler as some kind of socialist, as Weidel of the AfD does. Cooper may quote from Hitler’s writing and speeches, but does not validate whether or not in fact the words are just propagandist rhetoric by contrasting them with Hitler’s actual policies and political-economic outcomes. Howard K. Smith very eloquently described what Nazism really was in his 1942 book “The Last Train From Berlin” where he detailed his experiences as a correspondent in Berlin from 1940 to 1942.

In actual fact, Nazism is the most reactionary and vicious form of capitalism that has ever existed, and Hitler has destroyed systematically every element in his state which was, in any degree, revolutionary … The rulers of German society not only did not struggle against the Nazi rise to power in the early 1930’s; they suborned, abetted and aided Hitler to gain power with all their vast resources of money and influence—a strange manner of revolution, indeed! And, contrary to the views of the majority of observers, Nazism was not a vast social change. Superficially, things appeared to be altered: people were put in gay uniforms; there were new salutes and a new flag, and new, but empty ideas—empty baubles on a highly and cheaply decorated Christmas tree meant to hide, by its brightness, the basis of corrupt German society which Hitler left intact. The only actual change that occurred with the rise of Hitlerism consisted in this: the old, corrupt system of acquisition was dying, and Hitler was called upon—and he and his followers were ready to accept their historical assignment—to save that moribund society by reinforcing its most unsalutary features and crushing all opposition to unlimited militarism, by which, alone, his system could be preserved for any period of time. The only new feature the Nazis introduced was a set of measures to make permanent the existing basis of society; to freeze solid the little fluidity German society possessed before 1933. To use a simile applied by one acute observer. Hitler locked himself and the German ruling classes in the top storey of society and threw the key out of the window. (pp. 179-180)

Smith also puts the lie to the position of Cooper that the German people supported Hitler when he states that, “Also, whether one likes it or not, the Nazis came to power against the will and violent opposition of the German working class which acted with singular unity at the last, late moment” (p. 181). Let’s remember that in a free and fair election, even with massive resources provided by the German oligarchs, the Nazis could only gain a maximum of 37.3% of the vote; and even that fell to 33.1% four months later. At no time did a majority of Germans express electoral support for the Nazis. After 1934, Hitler was a dictator in charge of extensive tools of authoritarian control and propaganda. In 1941, even after the great German victories in Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, Smith could detect no great enthusiasm for the war.

Hitler did not, and—I am convinced of it after living in Germany for two war years—has not yet won the German workers to his cause. In the year 1940, after eight years of Nazi rule, a German S.S. man I knew told me there was but one dull element in National Socialism’s bright, triumphant perspective at that moment (this was just after France had fallen and Nazism was enjoying its happiest period). That, he said, was the German workers. They were following, but reluctantly. (p. 181)

What Cooper also does not mention is the widespread support for Hitler (and Mussolini) among the Western elites, as a bulwark against the communist “menace”. The Western elites stood aside as Germany rearmed, had allowed the return of the Saarland to Germany, stood aside as Germany and Austria combined in the Anschluss in 1938, facilitated the transfer of the Czech defensive works to Germany, and then stood aside again as Germany took all of Czechoslovakia. The latter doubling the capacity of the Nazi military industry. They had also not intervened when Germany and Italy helped the fascists gain control of Spain in early 1939. The Western elites were also extremely anti-semitic and talked about the leadership of the Soviet Union as “Jewish-Bolsheviks”. Was all of this not strengthening Germany for a fight with the Soviet Union, one perhaps that the West could join in with if Germany started to lose? The British had repeatedly refused to join a new Entente of Britain, France and the Soviet Union to block Nazi Germany during the 1930s. One could have thought that they were going out of their way to help the Germans become as strong as possible, as Anna Louise Strong in “The Soviets Expected It” pointed out:

Tory Britain hastened to build up Hitler. British diplomacy granted to Hitler Germany everything that it had refused for more than a decade to the German republic: the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Nazi-terrorized plebiscite in the Saar, German rearmament and naval expansion, the Hitler-and-Mussolini intervention in Spain. British finance, which had strangled the struggling German democracy with demands for impossible war reparations, supported Hitler’s regime with heavy investments and loans. It was no secret to any intelligent world citizen that the British Tories made these concessions to Hitler because they saw in him their “strong-arm gangster” who would eventually fight the Soviets, which important sections of British capital have always seen as the greatest foe. (pp. 93-94)

As I have covered in an earlier piece, the Polish elite were ridiculously arrogant and delusional; assuming that they did not have to pick sides between the Germans and the Soviets while also being extremely obstinate and pig-headed in response to Germany’s requests for land access to East Prussia and better treatment of the German minority in Poland. If Poland had joined with Germany against the Soviet Union, Hitler may very well have gained his lebensraum. Instead, Germany invaded and the Soviet Union rapidly moved in to put a much greater distance between the border and Moscow. While also removing the Baltic States as possible German allies and blocking the possibility of further German moves south east into the Balkans.

During this time, and all the way until April 1940 there was the “Phoney War” on the Western front, with Britain and France making no move to attack the lightly guarded German western border. The Soviets had been negotiating with the Finnish, who they had given independence to after the 1917 revolution, in a swapping of territories to move the Finnish border farther away from Leningrad. The Finns were surprisingly belligerent, resulting in the Soviet invasion of November 30th 1939 which ended on March 13th 1940 with the Finnish having to accept worse terms. Interestingly, the Western media was filled with the need to support the Finns against the Soviet Union; with an expeditionary force of 135,000 British and French troops being put together. The Soviets managed to finish off the Finns before that force could be sent though. This was very strange behaviour for two nations formally at war with Germany, but not at war with the Soviet Union; depleting the forces that could defend against Germany. Unless the British and French really wanted to informally ally with Germany against the Soviet Union, tying down a chunk of the Soviet military far away from the German threat. Whilst also showing that they would not “stab Germany in the back” if it attacked the Soviet Union.

The Finns accepted defeat on March 13th, and the Germans invaded Norway on April 9th (with the invasion ordered by Hitler on April 1st)! Then between May 10th and June 25th the German army crushed the French and British forces in France; with a significant chunk of the French leadership seeming to favour a quick surrender. Hitler had removed the possibility of the stab in the back by the taking of France. Churchill only became British PM on May 10th, as the appeaser/fifth columnist Chamberlain was forced to resign. At this time, there were still significant elements of the British ruling class who wanted to sign a peace treaty with Hitler, including the foreign secretary Lord Halifax. Such a treaty would have provided Germany with the resources of the Western world with which to attack the Soviet Union. Perhaps this is why Cooper hates Churchill so much, as Churchill kept Britain fighting on and the resources of the British Empire away from the Germans. It is obvious that Churchill had no problem with fascism, he had been a very enthusiastic supporter of Mussolini and hated communism, but he saw the deep depravity of the Nazi version of fascism. I have written about the incompetence, casual racism, and civilizational superiority of Churchill, but for this one decision we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Now Hitler had telegraphed his genocidal intentions in Mein Kampf, where he called for an all out war against the Jewish population and the creation of lebensraum in the east through the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Slav populations all the way to the Ural Mountains; copying the example of the US with respect to the Amerindian populations. Then we also have very explicit German planning for the starving of the Soviet population and the Einsatzgruppen death squads that perpetrated the “Holocaust of bullets” across the Soviet Union. Here Cooper wades into outright Holocaust denialism, including even the rejection of the evidence of the murder of millions in the death camps; referencing the discredited work of David Irving. That it did not get him completely de-platformed is quite phenomenal, and raises the question of whether he is useful to the US oligarchy in associating anyone who questions the WW2 narrative with anti-semitic Holocaust denial; a very useful idiot?

The Allies did not really start fully supporting the Soviet Union until the German defeat at Stalingrad, it was if they were waiting to see if the Nazis would fully destroy the Soviets for them. When Germany proved not up to the job, the Allies then aligned themselves with the winning side, but then did not open up the Second Front until the Soviets had already crushed the German military machine. Cooper works very hard to try to paint the Soviets as much worse than the Nazis, repeating all the Nazi and Cold War lies and more to vilify the nation that sacrificed so much to save the world from the Nazi menace.

Howard K. Smith provides a fascinating commentary of the way in which the German invasion of the Soviet Union very quickly sucked up all the resources of Germany, its allies and the conquered territories. The very rapid fall in meat rations, the colossal destruction of the German locomotive stock; these were being felt within only a few months of the German invasion. The Germans had assumed a swift victory, and even by late 1941 it was becoming obvious that the task was beyond the productive and manpower capacity of the Axis.

But quick, easy triumph ended with Russia. The Generals did their job well at first, encircling and destroying Red divisions on the border and deeper inside Russia. But both the Generals and Hitler had underestimated the strength of Russian numbers and war material, but mostly the spirit of resistance of Soviet soldiery. (p. 215)

It was the Soviets who destroyed the Nazi war machine, and then the Japanese Army of Manchuria. It was the Chinese who fought the vast majority of the Japanese armed forces. The Western Allies helped Nazi Germany gain strength and would have been happy to help it destroy the Soviet Union, but those plans failed. And then Hitler turned West and Churchill blocked an alliance between Germany and the British Empire. We could also note that the US has been goading Japan into a war because it wanted an excuse to destroy the competing Japanese Empire. In the end both the German and Japanese fascists were destroyed as competitors, while the British Empire sank under its indebtedness and the unwillingness of British troops to fight for Empire after the defeats of Germany and Japan. With those defeats, the rapid about-face of the West back to the Cold War against communism that had reigned in the pre-war years.

Darryl Cooper very carefully crafts his podcasts over many weeks to be extremely entertaining and engrossing, but that does not mean that they cannot also be highly misrepresentative and manipulative. It is very obvious that his blind spot is communism, and that fascist Germany did not win WW2. He has worked hard to create an image of the honest nerd, and is extremely clever in weaving right-wing propaganda within somewhat factual narratives that selectively utilize and misrepresent quotes and references.

A good example is his coverage of the reprisals against the Germans in the concentration camps, in “MartyrMade #24 - Enemy: The Germans' War, Prologue”, which he uses to whip up sympathy for the German camp guards. What he does not cover is exactly what had happened in those camps and what the Allied soldiers had seen to make them attack the camp guards. He very selectively quotes a US soldier who recounts the reprisals, while leaving out the following from the same interview, “The first thing I saw was a stack of bodies that appeared to be about 20 feet long and about as high as a man could reach, which looked like cordwood stacked up there … And the thing I’ll never forget was the fact that on closer inspection we found the people whose eyes were still blinking maybe three or four bodies deep inside the stack.” The reality of these camps was also caught on film, so there is absolutely no excuse for such manipulative misrepresentation. Nazi-propaganda clear and simple, but he is very, very good at it.

The actual history of the inter-war period and WW2 is extremely interesting in the ways that it so contradicts the official narratives and exposes the Western imperial oligarchies’ manipulations and readiness to align with Nazi Germany until that Germany turned on them. And the role of the German and other oligarchies in nurturing the Nazis, bringing them to power and then helping to build up Nazi Germany. But you will hear nothing of that from Mr. Cooper, who instead will feed you a “Nazi Germany as Victim” narrative with a side helping of “Communists/Jewish Bolsheviks are Evil”.