Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…ng like from this Pill Patrol and he said, “Wow.” Like he said, “We historians, we never do drugs. We don’t understand drugs. This, we missed this.” You know. So he was very clear that we missed this. And he said this is actually the missing link that historians did not have, especially to explain Hitler’s degeneration as a leader. He made very good decisions, good in meaning militarily effective decisions in the beginning of the war, and very bad decisions for the German war effort towards the end. And you can link that to drugs. You can explain a lot of Hitler through the drugs, but you can also look at this point that historians so far had not been able to figure out, basically. What happened to Hitler? Why did he get crazy? And I mean, he was crazy, but why did he get so bad as a leader? Because he was very effective for a long time and then there’s this moment where it turns. Yeah, the degeneration of decision-making, psychology, behavior, all of that. You cannot understand that fully without understanding his drug use. And we should also say that some of the historians you mentioned, Ian Kershaw and Anthony Beevor, these legends of history, they all gave you compliments. So Kershaw said that “Your work is very good, extremely interesting, and a serious piece of well-researched history.” Anthony Beevor said that it’s a remarkable work of research. So props to them. You have received a bunch of criticism from historians, but you’ve also received, obviously, a lot of props. I mean, Kershaw, the legendary historian of Hitler, complimenting how deep your work is. That must feel good. Maybe this is a good moment to also, since we’re talking about historians, to address some of the criticism. So Richard Evans has been also a great historian, has been one of the bigger critics. He said that your work is crass and dangerously inaccurate account, and is morally and politically dangerous. I think that’s grounded in the idea that if you say that, “Well, all the Nazi forces and Hitler were on drugs, so therefore their evil can be… They’re not really evil. Accountability can be removed because they were using drugs.” Right.…

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