Part Five: How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS

As the Nazis take total power, Heinrich Himmler must build the SS into a power that can defeat his new enemy: other Nazis.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also Media, Harry everyone, Robert Evans here and on Thursday
September twenty fifth at eight pm, Behind the Bastards is
doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon,
but all of the in person seats have sold out. However,
there are live stream tickets available if you go to
Alberta Rose Theater t h E A t r E
Behind the Bastards on just type that into Google or

(00:22):
whatever search engine you use. Alberta Rose Theater Behind the
Bastards you can find a link to buy tickets for
the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund,
which helps bail people out who don't have, you know,
resources of their own, so it's a good cause. Tickets
are twenty five dollars for the live stream version of
the show, So please go to Alberta Rose Theater Behind

(00:45):
the Bastards and pick up a live stream show to
check it out. On Thursday, September twenty fifth at eight pm.
Oh wow, is it already Behind the Bastards thirty? My goodness,
my clock must be off. That's not a very good
start to a podcast either. Yeah, Sophie, that was done.
How many episodes of this week? If we started in

(01:07):
fucking twenty eighteen, like fifty episodes a year or something
like that, three hundred and fifty episodes, generally two parts each.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
I can tell you how many clips it says we
have in Omni.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I think some of them, see I think.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Some of them are like imports, and some of them
are are like trailers.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
But it says eight and eighty two. We've done too
many episodes of podcasts, right, this should this should you?
You should get immediately fifty one fifty. But the permanent version,
if you've done this many episodes of a podcast, Yeah,
there's definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, there's definitely a groundhog day effect with this when
I'm like, oh shit, I gotta do this next week, yeah,
and every other week forever.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Wait for Okay. I mean like as jobs go, it's
like upper tier. But also I do feel like a
little infinite. It's a little infinite. It does make me
want to do like a reverse Ronald Reagan where I
become president just to lock myself up in a mental institution,
like just to be like no one like me and
Joe get Joe for goddamn sure, lock him up, like

(02:13):
because if I my brain is fried like that motherfuckers
was melted long ago. Out of here, like he hit
that point fucking ten years back. Get us all off,
Get us all off the streets.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Many times, so many times I think, why do y'all
listen to me?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Uh huh? What are we doing here? I am? I
would be so tired of me. Yeah, I'm gonna be
this is that's it. Prop You and me are running
and we're gonna be the first people to run on
a ticket of get us off the streets, like stop, yes,
just don't listen. Yes, out of here, do not listen
to us, guys. Yeah, after making us president, because we
get some plans. We got some plans for six weeks.

(02:52):
Gonna be crazy, yo, speaking of people whose first six
weeks in power were crazy. That actually does Yeah? You
actually that one? Yeah, that one worked out well perfect.
That's a real real swish first down, touch back situation.

(03:14):
It was very funny when people the soccer episodes, I
may I fucked up whatever a cap is, and people
are like, I can't believe Robert got soccer facts. Ro guys,
are you not coming to this from my knowledge of soccer?
You're coming to this to hear about a fucked up
guy became a member of the SS. I told you
up at the top the soccer stuff is not gonna
be high fidelity soccer facts. Let me number one.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
And here's the thing, like, I don't know if you know,
but we American and yeah, he's a Texas American.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Football the whole time was a step step and you're
a Texas American, y'all. Don't stop.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Y'all stop talking about soccer after a third grade. So
that's a that's like, you can talk about soccer after
third grade.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
They'll put you in prison. You'll do hard time for
talking about soccer in Texas. Yeah, speaking of hard time,
most of the Nazis really didn't wind up doing it
because the Weimar authorities kind of let them off the
hook until they were in power. So we ended our
last episodes. I mean, this is a winding story, but

(04:18):
we we talked about the establishment of the Tula Society.
We talked about like the birth of all of these
different weird Nazi occult things like organizations, the secret societies
that were going to inspire how Himmler wanted his SS
to work, particularly the Knights, Templar, Ghost Alpha Bitnel yeah,

(04:39):
the Ghost alphab Yeah, yeah, So before Heinrich Himmler could
truly lean into his personal vision of what the SS
could be, this like nightly order built on these like
mystical ideas of both crafting like a perfect race and
returning to these you know, these medieval values and but

(05:00):
not Himler was going to have to solidify his position
as head of the organization of a moderate political organization first.
Right before you can you can do the weird occult
Nazi shit of your dreams, you have to make sure
that you stay in power. Now. By September of nineteen thirty,
which is the year, the first year in which the
Nazi Party achieved, they have a major electoral upset and
a lot of Nazis, Himmler included, get admitted to the

(05:22):
Reichstag right because they're running like different prominent members is
Reichstag candidates. Himmler has gotten enough trust that he gets in.
This is a big deal for him because it brings
a degree of immunity to prosecution right, Like, there's certain
things he can't get in trouble for now, which is
great because he's going to be one of the party's
crime guys in their period of time before power it's

(05:43):
very helpful for him. But you know, even once they've
got this big win, they get a bunch of people
into what is effectively congress. You know, when we're talking
about the Reichstag, it's more of like a parliament, but
right like in the US, that kind of roughly translates
to a congress. So you've you've got your party in
political power for the first time, but it's not total power.

(06:04):
You're not the majority party. You're not you know, you're
still needing to compromise with people, which is not something
the Nazis want to do. So you can't really rest
on your laurels because you don't know if the next
election is going to kick a bunch of your guys
out and if you're going to cross that threshold into
actually taking total power. And while this is going on,
Himler's primary concern, where his eyes are focused and where

(06:28):
the eyes of the SS are focused are not outside
at the communists and the Social Democrats. They're inside and
they're facing the essay, right because theess is still subordinate
to the essay, and that's where all of the problems
and all of the big conflicts had occurred, right. You know,
the ESSs has gotten started because Hitler doesn't trust this
large street fighting organization because there's too many other people

(06:51):
who control it. There's too many local leaders who their
group of guys are loyal to them, you know, more
than they are to Hitler, right, And so that's why
the SS gets power in the first place. And in
this first year that Hmdler's in power, his predecessors have
each lasted about a year or so, and he doesn't
know that he has no guarantee that he's going to
keep the job forever, right, So he's he's got this

(07:12):
dual job of trying to make sure he stays in
charge of this organization, otherwise he can't do any of
the cool stuff with it that he wants to do.
And the way to stay in charge is to continually
make himself useful against other guys inside the party. Now,
the leaders of the Essay at the time these different
brown shirts, because Rome is still out of the country,
so there's not like one guy who's running the Essay.

(07:34):
There's a bunch of local leaders who have differing amounts
of power, and they'd all been snubbed by the party
in the Reichstag elections. These guys had wanted seats to
but they're wisely seen by the Nazis in chargers, like, Okay,
these guys are useful, but they're all like drunk assholes.
It's the same way that like Enrique Tario's being treated
right now. Yeah yeah, where like even now that Trump

(07:54):
is in charge, the government's pushing it back against his
January sixth lawsuit, they clearly they go want to disavow
him entirely. There's still some use to those groups, but
also people don't want them that close to you, right,
like because they're dangerous and kind of unpredictable, and a
lot of these guys are like violent criminals in a
way that the kind of bougie money people that you're

(08:16):
courting now as the Nazis don't really like yeah, yeah,
and so that's that's the issue, right Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
So I think that, like I think Enrique Trio is
the perfect example of this to where it's just like
it's that that favor you really shouldn't call in, right
because like there's a that the interest rate on this
favor is higher than I'm willing to accept, and I

(08:44):
really don't want to be seen with you in public, no, yo,
I'm saying, but like, but I do like the fact
that you're you're down for dirty work, Like I yeah,
that's they're the perfect example of that.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, I don't. I don't.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I can't think of any like any close friend of
mine who doesn't have that guy.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Right where it's like, yeah I could, I know, I
could lean on you for certain things, but there's a cost. Yeah,
there's a cost to this.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, like there's you pressed hard enough where it's like
this is the nuke, like this is bringing in the dragons. Yeah,
if I were to do this, and I don't know, man,
you really a rider of a dragon. That dragon is
done with you when it's ready.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, No, that's right. And a good example of that
is kind of right after these nineteen thirty Reichstag elections,
one of the essay guys who's pissed because he got snubbed,
he didn't get a Reichstag position. He's this local essay
leader named Sten's, and Stins launches an essay rebellion in
which he's like, my guys, my street fighters aren't going
to back up the party, and in fact, he sends

(09:41):
his stormtroopers to take over the Berlin Nazi Party office,
which is it self guarded by an SS unit, and
they have a street fight over this, which ends when
the SS calls the cops, who intervene on their side, right,
And this is this is probably less a result of
law enforcement, like picking one specific side for ideological reasons,

(10:02):
and more SS guys are like sober, they tend to
be better dressed and more affluent, and they're actually have
property law behind them, whereas all of the essay guys
are a bunch of drunk, petty criminals trying to break
into a building. So like, of course the cops do
what the SS says, right, yes, totally, And like every
clash between the Essay and the SS, this is really

(10:23):
a clash between Hitler and anyone in the party who
felt like there ought to be a power center that
isn't Hitler in the Nazi Party. That's what the conflict is,
right broadly speaking, because there's a number of different guys
who have who launched these little internal rebellions, but it's
all over the same thing where they're like, I don't
see why Hitler should be the only person people listen to,
and Hitler's like, no, no, no, that's the point of

(10:44):
being a Nazi. Yeah, I don't think you get it, Like, yeah,
maybe you may have missed what we're doing here at
not maybe No, maybe we weren't clear. Yeah, yeah, I
mean this is the one time I'll say in Hitler's defense,
but I think he was pretty clear. I thought it
was pretty clear. I feel like I thought it was
pretty clear that he was in charge. Yeah. The print
is actually in twenty four fund the final was a

(11:08):
thousand page books call. Hitler gets to decide everything. Yes,
So in the end, obviously Hitler wins, and Hitler wins
in large part due to Hitler's help, because Hitler is
operating this elite SS unit that's kind of able to
head off and beat the Essay ultimately in every one
of these crucial power struggles. This ends with Hitler taking

(11:29):
direct nominal direct leadership, so he's not actually in charge
of either organization, but nominally they pledged loyalty to him
of both the SS and the Essay, and he gets
declarations of loyalty from members of both organizations. This wasn't
really a change for the ASS because they were already
doing that, but individual Essay chapters were all basically independent
orgs with independent leaders, right, and so now they've made

(11:52):
declarations of loyalty, but that fact hasn't changed. They still
have not gotten complete control of the Essay. So conflict
keep breaking out between these local chapters and local parties,
and often they will culminate in a fight over a
physical party office. This keeps happening in different states. During
one such eruption, Himmler has to travel to Augsburg to

(12:13):
stop an Essay unit from literally demolishing the local party headquarters.
And this happens repeatedly, and Himmler's SS is always the
shield that you know, for power in the Nazi Party
against the Essay from nineteen thirty until the seizure of
power in nineteen thirty two. Then they developed an idea,
coaxed by Himmler within the SS and within the party leadership,

(12:35):
that the men of the Essay were simple, good hearted
oaths being manipulated by evil local leaders in it for themselves. Right.
These the basic rank and file. You know, they're not kouth.
We can't have them in a polite company, but they're loyal. Basically,
it's these these leaders that are leading them astray. And
Himmler positions himself and his SS is the only counter

(12:57):
to the madness of the essay leaders. Hitler is so
happy with how the SS performs and how Himmler performs
that he awards the SS a motto your honor means loyalty,
which obviously I'm not going to try to say in German.
But in the future, like the SS, knives and stuff
all have this on the blade. They've got this all that, Like,
the SS releaches a lot of merch and this is

(13:17):
on most of it. Right, It's they're like catchphrase, right,
your honor. Say it again, Your honor means loyalty. Your
honor means loyalty. Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunately very catchy. Yeah yeah,
oh no, you can, you can. I mean it's it's
it's the same in any gang, right, And that's why
you are talking about just kind of two different competing
ideas of how to have a gang. And the SS

(13:39):
is a much more it's smaller, but it's more loyal
and so you're you have tighter comms, you have tighter
control over how people operate, you have you know, more
efficient logistics, and so as a result, the organization is better.
In this kind of a fight, I don't think the
SS on its own would have been able to win
the street war against the left. The Essay was necessary

(13:59):
for that the SS wins the war within the party right.
For the next several years, Himmler would work to gain
complete independence for the SS from the Essay, but this
was a slow process, and this period of time in
which they're struggling against the inside of the party it
becomes known as the time of struggle within the SS

(14:19):
because even kind of once they're in power, even once
the war starts, he can't talk openly about a lot
of what the SS does during this period because they're
fucking over a lot of other Nazi Party members, and
so it's just sort of referred to colloquial as the
time of struggle. And this is what makes the SS
the reason ultimately why there is an SS that becomes
a state within a state that has these independent military

(14:41):
units and is running all of the concentration camps, and
is running Riich internal security, and has all of the
power that the SS does. The reason why the SS
does the Holocaust ultimately is because of how they perform
during this time of struggle. It's because they're able to
beat the other side of the Nazi Party in a war,
right Like, that's effectively what brings the SS to prominence.

(15:04):
Getting independence is a slow process, and it's hampered by
the fact that Ernst Rome in the early thirties returns
from Bolivia and Hitler appoints him, say chief again. Now
Himmler helps to get Rome back. He writes letters because
again he and Rome they have like a mentor mentee relationship,
and Himler's like, we need you so bad. I've based
all of my SS training for my new guys on

(15:26):
the stuff you taught me. You know, you're so influential here.
We can't really get by without you. You've got to
come back. And he comes back and in May, basically
as soon as he gets back and he gets this job,
newspapers published proof that he's gay and hit him with
the big head right gay, oh man, And it's it's

(15:48):
it's the kind of thing where again this is still
hushable for a while, but now it's and everyone had
known it. Most people had known it, but now Himmler does,
and he's able to use while he's still kind of
praising Rome and pretending like, yeah, we're we're friends, We're
tight he's going behind his back and going to like
the best guys in the essay, the dudes who are
competent and who are good organizers, And he's saying, hey,

(16:11):
do you want to be in an organization run by
a degenerate right or are you gonna work with the
real professionals over yes and say yoh yeah. There's a
big fight. Rome gets Hitler to ban him officially from
poaching essay members. Now Himler keeps doing it, but like
there's a big issue over this, right.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
I will say, as a side note, uh, just more
of a cultural touch point than probably me, Sophie in
the in the seven melanated people that listen, it is no.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Is sorry.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
So I'm sorry, y'all. I just like picking on you.
I know, y'all, I just like picking on you. I'll
just play it. But for some reason, I don't like, like,
you know, what the whole when the whole Diddy thing happened,
Like it seems like as far as like hip hop culture,
the only lesson they learned about this was they was
roast out by his gayness.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Like they missed all the point.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
They you missed the whole point, yo, I'm saying of
why Diddy was a villain, you know, so uh with
the so then the slang around like oh yeah, no
no Diddy like no Diddy like like replacing pause and
just all the homophobic stuff. But what I think I
keep running into with a lot of these young men especially,

(17:25):
and I love that this this is a point. It's
because it's like you assume it's the dumbest assumption that
just because this man is gay, that he can't beat
your ass, Like like, first of all, that gay man
is still a man number one and number two, these
are brawlers, so you it's just it's just it's more

(17:47):
like a modern issue right now, like dudes be like, hey,
hey man, I just got jumped by these gay dudes.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
They beat my ass. I'm like yes, because there's there's
there's still.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Men like like what the fuck are you talking about?
Like that you look like you have have you been
to a gym? Have you ever been to a gym?
The gay dudes in the gym are lifting way heavier
to you. He goned beato ass. So it just reminds
me of this moment, like you know, he finally brings
a guy back and.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
He goes, hey, this Nika gay, and it's like, oh
and beat o ass uh huh. Yeah, that's that's the
Ernst Rome, that's the Ernstrom story in general. And that's
the story of like how the Nazis were willing to
use they were happy giving this guy a pass while
they needed him in his street fighting skills organizing this war.

(18:37):
It's once they're in power that they're going to that
they're going to murder him, right, which is always the
case with like the useful members of minority groups to
fascist movements, right, that's how they work, you know, like, yeah,
when you're useful, will be nice to you. And it's
unclear to me. And this is kind of where I
can get conspiratory a little. Does Himmler help Rome convince

(18:58):
Rome to come back because he just knows Hitler once
roam back and he's trying to make Hitler happy? Is
it because he does like the guy and thinks maybe
it'll be easier to work alongside the essay if my
friend is back in charge, or does he know Rome
is fundamentally untrustworthy. Rome is always someone who is going
to be in it for his own power and who

(19:19):
Hitler can't as long as he's in charge. Of the essay.
Hitler won't sleep easy, and that will provide more inspiration,
that will provide more fuel for him to back the SS. Right,
that Hitler will be more supportive of the SS if
this dangerous guy is back in charge of the essay,
And maybe that's why Himmler tries to convince him to
come back. Right, is a little bit that Machiavelli shit.

(19:41):
He gives a speech near the end of nineteen thirty
one Himmler where he lays out his vision for the SS. Well,
the essay are the regiments of the line, Right, in
military terms, they're like the normal infantry. The SS were
the guards and this is a reference to you in
the previous ray leading up to World War One, you
didn't have special forces, right, but you had units of

(20:03):
like horse guards and every European monarchy and this is
to this day there's like a unit of horse guards
or whatnot that traditionally is the king's or the prince's unit,
and like the UK military, right, this is like every
like it was the Czar's palace horse guards who were
supposed to be his bodyguard. And they're on paper, your
most elite unit. I think at one point in time

(20:23):
they had been by kind of the time World War
one rolls around, they're just another unit of guys with
fancier uniforms. Right. But like that, when he's saying that
the SS will be the guards, he's saying they will
be the elite bodyguard unit of the Special Piece.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Okay, Yeah, to be this elite, Hitler said, quote, the
SS must become a force that includes the best human
material we still possess in Germany. The SS must be
held together by the shared community of blood. He envisioned
an apocalyptic conflict coming between the Nordic community and Bolshevism,
and that conflict can only be one if the Nordic
race was prevented from dying out through selective breeding. He

(21:00):
saw the military conflict being something the next generation would
have to fight. His role was to win the racial
war by selecting the racially best people for the SS
and rereading them. Right. So it's important to note that
at this early point, Himmler's not like, I think that
I am going to be in charge of the SS
while we're fighting a world war. He assumes he'll be
dead for that. That like that that's in the future, still, right,

(21:23):
Like what I've got to do is get our human
capital ready, breed us up an army of unstoppable arians, right, Like,
that's my job at this stage, once we get to power.
But he's not thinking, and obviously, in like less than
ten years, will be invading Russia. Right yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah,
that's not on his that's not on his Himmler's Yeah,
you know, I think Hitler had that desire for quite

(21:45):
a while. That's not on Himmler's radar at this point.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
He's still he too worried about the space ghosts, the
space did yes.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, he's too busy learning how to channel his dead
relatives and shit.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah. So that year, Himmler also sets up an intelligence
service with the SS, which would come to be known
as the s D, and he puts a guy we've
talked about on this podcast called Reinhard Heydrich in charge
of it. Heydrick is the guy who will host the
VONSE conference and be the organizer of the Holocaust, right,
the high level organizer. Right.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Wait, okay, let's get it. Let's get our essays together.
So we got s S S a s D.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, and the SD is the intelligence service within the SS. Right,
the SS has its own CIA basically.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Okay, so San Antonio San Diego and Saint Something what
is that? Uh uh San.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
San Salvador Salvid Okay, here we go, all right? Found
out how helpful this is to the audience. Just think
of a different helpful for me. Yeah. So there's this
subset of the SS that's taking over, and right now
they're like intelligence for the party. So they're trying to,
you know, are our events safe? Is there anyone plotting
to carry out an attack against Hitler? That's what they're

(22:58):
doing at this stage. And him puts Reinhardt Heidrich in
charge of it. And Heydrick had just gotten fired from
the Navy because he had broken off an engagement and
been found dishonorable. He was engaged to I think an
admiral's daughter, So I forget the exact story, but he's
fucking around and he gets cashiered out of the Navy
for fucking around in a way that they think is
unbecoming of an officer. So he broke it off.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
He broke it off because he was trying to like
spread the seeds, not like it just wasn't working out.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it was a he
was cheating, right, Okay, that's the gist of it, which
is conduct unbecoming of an officer. So when he and
Himmler meet, Heidrick had told him like, oh, yeah, I
was an information officer in the navy, right, and Himmler,
not knowing much about the military because he was never
really a soldier but really feeling like he'd been a soldier,

(23:47):
pretends that like decides that means spy, right, that goes
an information officer, he must have been a spy. I've
got a real army spy heading up my totally real
spy network that I invented, right, and he gives Hydrick
the job, although in reality, Hydrick had been an information officer,
but he was a signals officer, which means he had
an expertise and like using you know how they use

(24:08):
like those different signals on boats when they can't communicate
by radio or whatever, Like that's what he knows how
to do. He's not like a spy. He knows like
which signs that you hold up will tell a boat
what to do, So that's super valid for this. He's
not like a He's not like fucking James Bond, And
that's kind of what Himler thinks he's getting. But again,
Hitler doesn't know anything about the army, right or the navy.

(24:32):
He's like, you're basically a spy, and Hydrich's like, yeah,
definitely pretty much a spy. That's what you give resume.
It's scary. As nineteen thirty one ended, the ss had
grown to more than ten thousand members. So again, in
the first two years they go from a few hundred
to more than ten thousands. So he's, you know, he's

(24:53):
done very well on this side of things. Now he
Himmler talks a lot about how we're only hiring racially
the best, but the racial qualifications at this point are
just based on vibes, right. Himler would later explain this
is kind of what they're thinking when they're evaluating someone
from membership because the candidate's face revealed clear traces of
foreign blood, such as excessively protruding cheekbones. So you just

(25:16):
kind of do they look like their NORDI I see
some slav in your face or whatever. That is so
funny to me. You white if you kind of look white, right,
like you just gotta look you know, I know you
look white, but you look like white white yeah, you
don't look like the right kind of white I think, homie,
like you guys were born too near the Alps. Can't

(25:37):
trust you man, some of you modern some of you
modern a right wing Nazis. Boy, y'all wouldn't have made
the cut, homie.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
Like you ain't white enough for your white Heinrich Himmler
shouldn't have made the look at him, look at him. Yeah,
speaking of people who are racially here's ads Jesus was.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah that that didn't I won't good. We're back and
we're talking about Heinrich Himmler and how well he does
or does not meet the uh beauty standards. Yeah, the
beauty standards that you expect of someone who talks racially
about the ship he talks about. And there are jokes

(26:25):
in the Third Reich that are like, uh, you know,
the ideal arian is as uh as as blonde as Hitler,
and like blue as Himmler's and all this kind of stuff. Right,
So a little self awareness people of people. People are
joking about this, right like that, Yeah that this is
kind of bullshit, right like that? That a lot of

(26:47):
but like you know, again, it's in the same way
as most people, even most people who voted for Trump
are aware that like he is not as healthy as
he pretends to be. He has not lived the ki
of life that they think is good. They just ya,
he hurts the people they don't like, and so they're
willing to pretend that stuff isn't obvious. But they are

(27:08):
aware of it, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're just not
willing to say therefore it just doesn't matter to them, Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So the fact that Himmler, so again, Himmler's not there's
not yet a formal, actual scientific way of keeping the
SS racially peer. It's just based kind of on vibes.
And part of this the reason why is that, like

(27:29):
Himler needs bodies, right, and it's not. And so it's
not until the end of nineteen thirty one that he
feels secure enough in the membership they've gained and the
size they are that he announces a new stricter set
of rules. But at the end of thirty one he
makes it the SS rule that all members of the
organization now had to secure permission to get married, and

(27:50):
their potential wives would have to be assessed by the
racial office that he just established in the SS before
they could get married. Peter Longrich, in his biography of
Himler writes Himmler was fully aware of the fact that
his marriage order would be met with incomprehension, indeed ridicule
outside his organization even anticipated the reaction. The SS is
convinced that with this order, it has taken a step

(28:11):
of great significance. Derision, scorn and incomprehension will not sway us.
The future is ours. So like, we know people are
going to be cool with this, but like, what are
you going to do about it? We're in charge now,
and you voted to be a Nazi. The head of
the new Racial Office was a guy in the SS
was a guy named Walter Dharr, and like Himmler, Darr
had been a farm worker, although he had been a

(28:33):
farm worker for real, as opposed to for a season.
He'd written a book titled The Peasantry as the Life
Source of the Nordic Race, and he was one of
the first Nazi intellectuals to make the argument that the
Nordic race had a lower birth rate than other races, which,
if not corrected, would lead to extinction. Now, like Himmler,
dar had become a believer in the artaman theory. If

(28:54):
this ancient warrior priests of Wotan, and the two had
first met through their interest in Misstaus, they're both big.
Why don't we get away from Christianity and adopt Wotan
worship again? Guys. In nineteen thirty two, the ss adopted
it's now infamous double lightning bolt symbol. Right, and these
are actually this is you know, you can close your
eyes and picture in the SSA. It's a very successful logo.

(29:17):
These are actually a pair. They're not s's. They're a
pair of sig runs from the armen and runic alphabet
that Guido von List created. So that's what that symbol
comes from. It's from this fake alphabet that's got its roots.
He's kind of was inspired by some actual runs, but
he mostly dreams them. That guidled on this art project. Man, yeah,
that's a very successful art project. Very successful. That's quite

(29:39):
a logo.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
That's you know, you hate to say it, but like again,
the design aesthetic, it.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Works, it worked, god damn. Yeah. Yeah, they had some
good marketers on the team. Now. Ye List argued that
the runes, the sig runes mean victory, so it literally
is like victory. Victory. That's what that symbol means. By
April of nineteen thirty two, the SS had swollen their
ranks to more than twenty five thousand people, and they'd
break forty thousand members in June of nineteen thirty two.

(30:07):
Himmler's success in this remarkable task owed a lot to
the explosion of the Nazi Party and its electoral victories.
Tons of Conservatives and otherwise a political rich people saw
which way the wind was blowing. Now, for some of them,
just joining the party is enough. But some of them
are like, I think I want to be if I
just joined the party, that's going to be the norm soon,
and I'm comfortable being an elite. And the SS offers

(30:29):
these guys a ready made way to set themselves apart
as members of the elite in this new order. Oh,
you want to stay elite, we'll just join the SS, baby,
as long as your backgrounds pure Nordic will take you,
and then you're automatically in the upper echelon of the
new society that we're building. Right And you know, I
maybe your background isn't as racially tidy as Himler might

(30:52):
normally want. You know, that could be a problem. Or
the SS always has benefit funds that can use donations, right,
you know, maybe you give some donations and maybe the
SS maybe we find that your racial history is better
than we thought it was. Right, We've always been movable
on this, rather the story of guys like von Let's
just deciding to become nobles and whatnot.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Right, Yeah, maybe that Dane blood is not so dany,
you know.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, maybe that celt blood is a little bit more Nordic.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
You know.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
So while the Tida history certainly helps Himmler out in
expanding the SSS size, I don't ignore his actual talents
as an organizer, because those are integral to the SS's success.
Heinrich is not a passive figure in this recruitment boom.
He has particular skill at finding a certain type of
young man in the party and actively grooming and recruiting

(31:43):
him for the SS. Heinrich's ideal recruits are fuck ups, right,
These are guys who have they generally come from his
echelona society, middle classupper middle class, but they haven't succeeded, right,
and so they've got very little going on but a
burning need to feel important, this feeling that I am
owed more in society, and guys like this, Himmler realizes,

(32:07):
will be fantastically loyal to any organization that plucks them
out of obscurity and promises to make them important. Right
if you can find guys like this and put them
somewhere and say now you matter, they'll do anything for you,
because what matters most to them is having status. Long
Rich provides several examples of the kind of people Himmler's
recruiting and his biography of Himmler. One local SS leader

(32:31):
is a guy named Kurt Witchie, who's a former reichswair
officer that's the army after the war, but who gets
shitcanned from his army job for homosexual activities. Now, he
hides that he's been discharged for this when he joins
the SS, but Himler finds out about it, and he's
fine to take this guy because the fact that this
man is like a capable organizer and whatnot, who has

(32:52):
a shame that he wants to keep hidden. That means
Himmler can trust this guy, right, because Himmler's got something
hanging over his head. Another recruit was Friedrich Jeckeln, who
is a World War One veteran who had married a
rich woman, but her father had cut him off from
the family money. This led Jecklin to conclude that the
family he'd married and who had Jewish blood, based on nothing,

(33:13):
which starts to alienate his wife. He begins drinking heavily.
They get divorced, and he winds up bankrupt and desperate,
so he joins the Nazis in nineteen twenty nine. He
joins the SS in nineteen thirty after Himler finds him
and is like, I think this guy's got some potential
for an idea of what a piece of shit this
guy is. In nineteen thirty he tells his wife he'll
be able to pay her alimony quote only when Germany

(33:35):
is free. So these are the kind of dudes Himmler's gathering,
As Peter Lowert summarizes Himler had gathered around himself a
group of men who, although they no more matched the
high ideals of the SS than he did himself, whenevertheless,
men on whose loyalty he could rely, many of them
were dependent on him for their very material existence, a
situation which, when necessary he knew how to exploit. And

(33:57):
this is just this is just gangshit, right, how you run.
This is gang shit? Uh huh, yes, this is gang shit?
Yeah period, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get fucking shooters around
you who you can trust in part because you know
you all have compromising info on each other, right.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
You all have compromising info on each other, and you
have there's no other place you can go because any
other any other place you would run to would report
to me that you ran over there, right, and because
they scared of me too.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
And then lastly, how you're gonna make money? Nigga ware?

Speaker 3 (34:31):
So yeah, stage, who else is having it? Who else
is having you? You can't get no job? You know
what I'm saying. You ain't gonna do shit. Just man,
go burn down at uh that tavern right there. I'll
talk to you later.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, that's that's basically how it's going. Yeah. And men
who meet Himler during this period tended to describe him
as cold, anxious to seem like someone with power, and
deeply insecure underneath it all. He compensated for this insecurity
by wearing an a elaborate military style uniform and only
associating with men who owed him everything and would play
into his image as the tough, knightly warrior of the

(35:07):
Nordic race. Ernst Hompstangle, Hitler's friend, who shared an office
with Heinrich during this period, would later recall that Himmler's
military haircut and mustache failed to disguise his quote pale
way face, receding chin and blank expression. Another Nazi, Albert Krebs,
described Himmler in a similar way, saying he quote behaved
coarsely and showed off by adopting the manners of a

(35:28):
freebooter and expressing anti bourgeoisie views, though in doing so
he was only trying to disguise his innate insecurity and awkwardness.
Krebs complained during a train ride that Himler inundated him
with stupid and endless prattle, a peculiar mix of warlike bombast,
the saloon bar views of a petty bourgeoisie, and the
enthusiastic prophecies of a sectarian preacher. Right, he is just

(35:52):
very much this kind of guy where he's it's this
mix of talking about how tough he is and how
totally he would fight in a civil war if he
had to, and he'd be best at it, and like
this kind of gutter racism that makes him sound like
that it's not like that's not like rich like sophisticated racism, right,
the racism of like a used car salesman. Right. And

(36:15):
then yeah, like these kind of apocalyptic political prophecies based
on these mystical tracks and all this Hitler shit that
he believes about this coming race war. And it's important
to note that other Nazis really don't like him, you know,
they find him kind of like off putting. He's just
like this weird Nazi for this guy for whom Nazism
is a nerd, like a nerdy thing like he's he

(36:35):
is a Folcish nerd, as opposed to someone who's like, well,
this is useful because I want to be in power, right,
And that's kind of off put into these guys who
are more or less in it for the power, right.
But his unlike and Himmler is aware of this side
of himself. He writes in his diary about how unhappy
he is when he goes on these rants, and he's like,
I should have kept my mouth shuit. I shouldn't have

(36:56):
said my weirdest weird shit about like my belief about
reincarnation during the serious business meeting. What the fuck is
wrong with me? Why do I do this? Like he
gets a secret.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Yeah, there's a secret Tryhard just buried inside of him.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, he's just like, why did I do that? Yeah? Yeah?
And this is although part of why he succeeds, because
Hitler's not unaware of this fact. And there's people close
to Hitler who like Hitler, I don't know, kind of
a weird, weirdd weave, Like he kind of seems off
putting to me. But that's a plus to Hitler because
nobody's Himmler's not going to take power from you. Hitler

(37:32):
may think Himmler's the next Hitler, but as Hitler, you're
not worried about him becoming the next Hitler.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Right, Yeah, believe me. You don't have to hide your
daughter's buddy. Right, We're good. He doesn't look like he's
trying to advance himself at the at a cost to
the fewer or the party.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
He's reliable when shit got gets ugly as it gets.
In August of nineteen thirty two, the day after that
year's Reichstag election, the Nazis are certain that final victory
is imminent. But this is again not the very last election, right,
there's still a long period of politicking before which Hitler's
going to become the chancellor, and the Sanss kind of
jumped the gun and they start a bombing and murdering spree,

(38:12):
killing their political opponents in Koenigsberg. Himmler himself seems to
be the guy who orchestrates this terror campaign, so it's
him that is jumping the gun, right. He has his
goons kill the editor of a left wing paper, they
kill a communist city official, they murder several other people
that had been listed as public enemies of the party.
But they go too early. The Nazis are not in

(38:34):
charge yet, there's still something of an independent media and
there's a public backlash, right because the public they're going to,
you know, be supportive of the Nazis taking power, but
they don't want it to look like this. This is scary, right,
People getting bombed in the street is messy, you know. Yeah, yeah,
we want you guys to deport everybody, but right, we
don't want it to look like this. This makes me

(38:55):
worry that I might get targeted. Yeah, So Himmler has
to shut the hush up his own involvement. He has
to pretend he didn't do this, and he does that
so successfully that there was debate until pretty recently as
to how involved he wasn't all of this. Yeah, but
the fact that he reliably organized the shedding of blood
for the movement and then shut up about it afterwards
raises his image in Hitler's eye, because again, this is

(39:17):
just a gang, right, Like he's able to go out
and kill some fuckers and he doesn't. He doesn't brag
about it afterwards, So Hitler, that makes Hitler like I
can trust this this guy's writer or die? Yeah? Yeah,
I was like, that's the perfect type of writer.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Died.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
That's like I only know credit. Man, I'm here for
the calcer. You feel me Like, dang, Yeah, he's a
little off putting in weird, but like that's not what
I give a shit about, is Hitler? Right now? You
know I can trust him? Wow?

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, there's a piece of me that's like not that shit,
but the shit that's that's relatable in the sense like
all of us in our own ways have to learn
how to like tamp down our nerdery.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Like I was just hanging out with some guys and
they actually I mean, and they ask me questions about
like autocrats and borders, and like the urge for me
to just be like, I actually don't believe in borders
at all, and I'm like a chunk, like I think
that they're only enforced by violence, and I just can't

(40:20):
think of any time in history or putting a dude
in charge has worked. So I'm like, wait, yeah, I'm
like having to like catch myself to be like, don't
let that part out is something that is a little
bit relatable. The problem is, I mean, the difference obviously
with this dude is like what he does let out

(40:40):
is the racist merger.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Yeah, it's like, you know what I don't want to
let out is I don't need There's certain people that
don't need to know too much about how much I
like Warhammer forty thousand and the thing exactly, the thing
that he's trying not to let out is that he
believes he's the reincarnation of a dead prince from the
year one thousands. Are like, I just wanted to kill communists?
Did was there more to it than that? Yeah? We

(41:04):
all have this weird, this weird magic ship.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Yeah, because right could Sophie right now could rattle off
the statistics of summer League for the Lakers.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
And I'm like, I want to know that. Oh, get
her talking about Twilight Jesus, you want to you want
to give her a Heinler Kimbler moment. Yeah, come on now,
but you know better?

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Is the point is, like you like, nobody wants to
know this, Like it's fine.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
And Himmler doesn't have that filter in his head, right,
and he yeah, he just kind of assumes at a
certain point that like anyone high up in the party
is into this ship and they aren't. All yeah. So
it's a few months later, after this bombing campaign where

(41:51):
the the S S n s A go off a
little early, that the Nazis finally achieved their goal and
Hitler becomes chancellor. This does not bring total power, right
the next couple of years, the Nazis are engaged in
a kind of dangerous dance because the military could still
overthrow them, especially if the conservative elites and the military
had gotten on the same page. Obviously, it doesn't happen,
and from this point forward in the story, Himmler and

(42:13):
the SS are no longer paramilitaries. They are now increasingly
part of the state. And it wasn't a guarantee that
the SS would become a part of the state. The
Essay I think, I mean they think there's a degree
to which they're made an official part, but there never
The Essay under Rome wanted to replace the army. That
was Rome's goal. Okay, so yeah, they are now part

(42:34):
of the state, and it wasn't a guarantee because the
Essay doesn't really become part of the state and the
way they had wanted to They don't get to become
part of the military. The SS is going to have
military divisions with tanks and artillery and shit. And also
it's going to be part of the security service. They're
running the concentration camps. Eventually, that wasn't a guarantee. When
the Nazis came to power, it was guarantee they were

(42:55):
going to be camps for their enemies, but not that
the SS would run them. This is where himmler'sing again.
This is part of where you see his genius for
politics come into play, because he is going to have
to fight against a lot of people in order to
make the SS what they become. And his situation here
is booyed by a few factors. One of them is
that his previous mentors Rome and Strasser were rapidly falling

(43:18):
out of favor. Right, once in power, he doesn't have
to worry about either of them because it's clear, you know,
Strausser's out and Rome is on the outs with Hitler.
So his main rival is Hermann Garring, right and Gearing.
He's on paper someone you gotta be really concerned about.
He's a war hero. He took over the Red Baron's
fighter squadron after the Red Baron got killed in World

(43:38):
War One, like he was an and he's famous, like
he's a celebrity for being such a good pilot. And
he was there, he got badly wounded and went into
hiding after the Munich beer Hall putsh Like he's a
hero for the party too. So on paper, he's this guy,
this is a formidable guy, and he is Hitler makes
he's Hitler's picked successor on paper, if Hitler were to die,

(44:00):
Erring is the one who's supposed to take over. And
he has initially given control of the Gestapo, the secret
police in Prussia, the largest German state, and he's basically
in charge of policing in Prussia, which is a massive deal. Right,
and so Himmler is going to be fighting to take
all of this away from him. Now, ultimately this works

(44:20):
for Himler, and there's a couple of reasons. One of
them is that Gerring always has other guys that he
is fighting with over this who with himselves fighting for
control of the Gestapo of the different state police, and
Himmler is periodic, is on several occasions going to seem
like the lesser of two evils, like, well, if I

(44:40):
back him in this, he'll get more power. But this
guy I think is more my enemy will lose power.
And again Himmler's the lowest threat. Right. Yeah, some of
Gering's judgment in this is thrown off by the fact
that Gering is a pain killer addict. At this point,
he's popping OxyS. They're equivalent of oxes. He is badly
addicted and will be throughout the whole period the Right

(45:01):
is in power. He goes on and off and stuff.
But he doesn't get sober until Nuremberg. I did not
know that he is, so he is, and that's one
of those things. By the time they get in power,
he's been a very competent member of the party up
to this point. He's old, he's got a serious injury,
he's got chronic pain, and he kind of just wants
to fuck off and relax and enjoy being in power.

(45:24):
And so to an extent, that's why, because Himmler is
purely focused on winning this struggle. Yeah, and it's never
existential for Gearing. Garing knows he's not going to wind
up getting kicked out, he's not going to get long knived,
he's not going to be iced out of power totally.
He just won't be in charge of the cops. And
he's got other shit in his portfolio, right, He's got
the Luftwaffa, you know. So it's this kind of thing.

(45:44):
Himler feels like Garing feels like, I can afford to
lose to Himmler, and I don't want to lose to
some of these other guys. But Himler's positioned himself as
a counter to and so through over this period of
like a year and a half two years, the first,
you know, all most a little less than two years
of Nazis are in power, Hitler over and over again
takes over these different state police agencies that Gering and

(46:07):
other people had been in charge of, and he's kind
of methodically. When he can't take direct control of a
police agency, he'll work and use his political connections to
a point and a member of the SS to head
a local police force. Right, And then that police force
isn't under the SS, but the guy heading it is

(46:28):
my man, and so I can still effectively order this
group around, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
One of Hitler's question, I'm still trying to think, like, Okay,
what's the cost benefit here, like the pros and cons
of being the crew that runs the camps.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Well, that's a what do you read question that. Yeah,
there's a couple of things that you gain from being
the guys who run the camps. And we'll talk. We're
talking because I wanted to introduce how the camps got started. Wow, okay,
But the gist of it is that and this is
with any organization, and this is actually my best again,
my best career advice is try to find a company
doing something or like an organization doing something that you

(47:11):
want to be doing that's new, and then figure out
what they're not doing yet and volunteer to do it,
like stick yourself in and create a job for yourself.
And this is concentration camps are New Germany had not
had a massive network of concentration camps for political prisoners,
certainly not for racial prisoners during the Weimar era that
had prisons, which is kind of where some of the

(47:31):
first camps arise out of. Yeah, but the system is new,
and so there's going to be a bunch of people
starting camps at the beginning. The first concentration camps in
Germany arise within days of Hitler taking power, and they
have a multitude of fathers. Some camps are a local
essay chapter. Will be like time to round up the
Jews we don't like and the Communists we don't like
in this city, right, And will you know there's this

(47:54):
old school that no one's operating. We'll just break in.
We'll throw them in there, we'll board it up and
lock it up and will like beat murder a bunch
of them. We'll keep them in there for a couple
of weeks or whatever. Right as a wild concentration camp.
Those are what they're called. So they're not they're often
not not all of them are officially part of the government,
because again, some of them are just the essays doing it. Yeah, right,

(48:15):
those are the indie bands, all right, yes, yeah, there's
the indie bands of concentration camps, and some of them
are created by local police. There's these police agencies, and
you know, they wind up or had already been run
by Nazis, and once Hitler's in power, they're able to
be like, all right, let's start rounding up people, and
we'll take over these buildings, these old government buildings or
whatnot that we weren't using, or you know whatever, wherever

(48:37):
we're putting them. We'll put people in a camp. We'll
murder some of them, will torture the others. And the
SS creates some wild concentration camps of their own in
this period, using you know, they've got the SD, this
intelligence service. So Heydrick's saying, we should grab these people
in this state, and they're doing it. And so you've
kind of got the Essay and the local police and
the essays all running some camps of their own, but

(48:57):
none of them super official, and him learn, no, we're
going to keep doing camps, and we can't keep doing
it this way. The Nazi state can't just have random
wild concentration camps run by whoever. That's just not acceptable.
We're going to need an organized system to destroy our enemies,
and the SS needs to have total control of that system, right,

(49:17):
And he sees this as within the SS's purview because
they're a nightly order with the goal of birthing a
purified area and race, and part of doing that is
going to be getting rid of the people who are
who should not be breeding, right, and a camp's a
great way to do that. The bones of what become
the official camp system start in police institutions established by
the Liberal by our government. One star such organ was

(49:40):
the Munich Political Police, who had been ordered during the
Weimar era to combat political extremism, and because they're cops,
that just meant fighting communists, right. And so when the
Nazis takeover, Heinrich puts Reinhardt Heidrich in charge of the
Munich Political Police and they start arresting people social democrats
and and communists and other leftists. This is primarily political

(50:04):
at first, and they use what they call protective custody,
which is a legal term that allows them to arrest
their political enemies and in turning them in camps under
the guise of keeping them safe. Right. Docou is established
as the first formal concentration camp in order to hold
people in protective custody. Himmler explained the term in a

(50:24):
press conference. I have made quite extensive use of protective custody.
I felt compelled to do this because in many parts
of the city there has been so much agitation that
it has been impossible for me to guarantee the safety
of those particular individuals who have provoked it. I must
emphasize one point in particular, for us, a citizen of
the Jewish faith is as much as citizens as someone
who is not of the Jewish faith, and his life

(50:45):
and property are subject to the same protection. We make
no distinction in this respect. So you see they still
got it for tend No, No, Jews are still citizens
because a lot of these because a lot of the
leftists and whatnot they're going after are Jewish. Right, they're
not targeting people primarily just because they're not randomly grabbing
random Jews off the street. For the most part, that
does happen. They're mainly focusing on people who are politically

(51:05):
opposed to them. But if you're Jewish in a political enemy,
that'll get you to the front of the line night
and you'll get in. You'll be a lot more likely
to get murdered obviously, but he's saying like, no, no, no,
we're not. We're resting these guys because they're political agitators,
but we want to keep him safe. You know, we
have a responsibility to these people, So we got a
lot in Docou for their own good. Yes. Docou begins

(51:26):
operating in March of nineteen thirty three. This is very
soon after Hitler takes power. It is operated at first
by the Munich Police, but in April, using his authority
as head of the Bavarian political police, Himmler gives the
camp to the SS. Right so he puts Hydrick in charge.
Docau is established as a Munich police concentration camp, and
then in April of thirty three, Himmler gives the camp

(51:49):
to the SS. Lower Rich writes that quote. Immediately after
taking over the camp, the SS indulged in an orgy
of violence, which cost four Jewish prisoners their lives. Subsequent
investigations revealed that the camp common hillmar Wackel had issued
special regulations according to which martial law was to prevail
over the camp. There was a camp court over which
he presided and which could even pass death sentences. So

(52:12):
the SS takes over. They immediately just start executing Jews,
and this commandant Wackerl, is like, well, it's you know,
we had a court. We just I'm the court and
I said they could do it.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
Listen, we have a process, and the process is asking
me yeah, and I say, he wouldn't be down.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
I say, it's cool again taking powers of process. There's
still a media and there's still public opinion you have
to deal with. And this outrages Germans right near Dacau
especially that like, oh, you're just murdering people. That's not
what we thought we were getting, right, And so state
investigators demand Himler explain why the murdered juice has been killed,

(52:48):
and Himler doesn't do this. He doesn't really take much
action other than he replaces this commandant right in order
to smooth things over. He's like, oh, obviously this guy
was just kind of a little out of pocket. I'm
gonna put Don't worry, I got a new guy to
put in. Everything's got to be fined. How do you
like this disgraced and broken psychopath who what was everything
to me? Does that seem like a better pick? He'll
do it, I'll tell you, doc ou, He'll do what

(53:10):
I'll tell you. This broken psychopath's name is Theodore Ike.
Ike had been and he was a veteran in the military.
He'd been a paymaster, and he had tried in the
Weimar era to become a police officer and repeatedly failed
the entrance exam. So we're already off to a great start.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
When the police in Germany in the twenties is like
a fan ah man n nahjee.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
You seem like too much of a crazy racist for us. Yeah,
so the best he can manage. He's such a stereotype.
All he can manage is to become a security guard, right.
And Frustrated at his failures, he joins the Nazi Party
in nineteen twenty eight in the SS. Soon after, in
nineteen thirty two, he gets arrested after being caught building
a bomb badly, and he gets fired from his job.

(53:55):
Ike claims that he'd been set up by enemies inside
the Nazi Party, but was given a two year prison Now,
because then and now, Nazis get treated with kids gloves
even when they are arrested, Ike was allowed to leave
prison when he claimed to be sick. He's like, h
I go over the weekend. You know, rest up, and
he just escapes to Italy during this period, but he
comes back in February of thirty three because Hitler's in power,

(54:17):
and he's like, obviously I won't go to prison now.
Oh yeah, we're good now. Yeah. So Himmler invites him
to Munich and he makes Ike promise to clean up
his act. But Ike gets into a brawl with the
cops right after this, and he gets arrested and they're like, oh,
this guy's got a warrant, so they send him to prison,
and he goes on a hunger strike, which gets him
sent to a mental hospital, and Himmler's like, oh fuck,
this guy removes him from the SS ranks for breaking

(54:40):
his vow to stay out of trouble. Now. Luckily for Ike,
the director of this clinic, this mental hospital that he
winds up in, is a Nazi. He would later help
run the T four euthanasia program. And this Nazi murderer
declares Ike saying, So Himmler's like, well, if you're saying
welcome back to the SS, how would you like to
be a commandat of docow? Right? Good?

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (55:00):
The docs that were good? Wow? Yeah. And Ike later
wrote of Himmler. If my farre had not achieved power
in Germany, I would have spent all of my life
going to prison and would never have been able to
take up public office. Like he writes this to Himmler,
where he's like, I owe everything to this party, which
is just that's the kind of guy the SS is recruiting.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
What a sentence. Yeah, Amen, it would have been nothing
Without helping. Amen, I'd have been in jail forever. But
instead I run this shit.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Wow, yeah he knows whereas but is what side of
his toast is buttered on? Now Ike proves to have
a genius for the work. He establishes guidelines along which
all future camps will be created. This is called the
Dochou model, right, That's what Ike establishes. He's formalizing how
camps are going to work in Germany. Peter Longrich writes,

(55:47):
among the essential elements of this system where the ceiling
off of the camp from the outside world, in particular,
the determination to prevent escapes, the separation of the guards
from the commandant's office, the introduction of work details for
the prisoners, sematized use of force through the introduction of
a uniform set of punishments the disciplinary and Punishment Code,
as well as strict discipline for the guards who were
subject to a specific disciplinary code. The aim of creating

(56:10):
the impression that the old arbitrary regime had now been
replaced by one that was strict but nevertheless bound by
certain rules was an additional aspect of this new system.
An actual fact. The camp was ruled by arbitrary terror.
The prisoners lived in continual fear for their lives. Ike
was concerned above all to prevent arbitrary murders by the guards.
The right to kill prisoners should be confined solely to
the camp authorities. Now this is never the case. In practice,

(56:34):
guards continue to murder prisoners through the entirety of the
CAZy system. Right, that's the concentration camp system. But by
removing regular police from being involved at all and isolating
the camps from the rest of German culture, Himmler and
Ike create a fiction that the camps operate according to
a rule of law, because they claiming they do, and
no one else gets to see inside. Right, So we're

(56:56):
pretending these aren't just monuments to compulsive cruelty. And this
makes normal conservative German citizens feel safe and like justice
is being done to their enemies. Wow. In roughly a year, Himmler,
using the system Ike, develops Birth's a system of camps
four enemies of the Reich, owned and operated entirely by
the SS, which he runs as a personal fiefdom. Right,

(57:18):
and he gets basically, they do so well with this
that it's made the rule that any camps like this
are going to be run by the SS. There are
a few erratic attempts by outside officials to investigate murders
and enforce some accountability, but all of these fail and
Himler's most effective strategy is simply one of delay. He'd
use his friendship with other authorities to get hostile officials

(57:38):
transferred or gum up investigations until his foes leave office. Right, Yeah,
and then no one will You know, nobody's it's nobody's
main job to be focused on the camps. Right. And
this is this is a massive coup. Right, You've gone
from Well, this is like basically a club that people
can join if they want to, that doesn't have any
real power outside of Hitler likes. As to now, we

(58:01):
are officially running the secret prison Force and are in
charge of most of the law enforcement agencies and Jenny
and the space of like eighteen months, that's how far
they've gone.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Okay, yeah, question answered. I'm like, okay, now I get it.
Now you need me and yeah, yeah now that Yeah, man,
those tables are turning. If we're someone to feel froggy
enough to be like, I mean, obviously this couldn't have happened.
But like I mean, if you run, if you in
charge of all the goons and you're executing the whole plan,

(58:31):
at some point you could look at Hitler and be like, hey, bro, yeah,
I'm gonna need you to stay in line.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
I don't like the shit you doing.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Like you could do that if you weren't such a
nerd involved in you know, dream letters.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Right, And that's that's kind of the thing where there's
there's this open because Himler saw himself at a certain
point as like being he really wanted to be the
uh like the successor to Hitler. Yeah, but I don't
know that he ever would have unless until I think
maybe if Hitler had lived longer and gotten sick, you know, yeah,
maybe something would have happened there. But that's you know,

(59:11):
will have to remain kind of like a theory thing.
So like would he have ever been able to would
he have had the juice to seize power if he'd tried?

Speaker 3 (59:19):
But yeah, yeah, he clearly he ain't like he not
built for that, Like he ain't got that metal. Yeah,
you know what I'm saying, You ain't. Yeah, you two
lighten a booty dog you wasn't you now willing to?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah? Nope. So the catalyzing moment for Hitler's personal power
came during the Night of Long Knives in June of
nineteen thirty four. He'd succeeded in becoming probably the most
powerful man in German law enforcement by this point, and
in the spree of killing that followed, he'd helped eliminate
not only his former mentors Strasser in Rome, but dozens,
probably hundreds of other Nazis and conservative political and military leaders. Right,

(59:52):
this is when all you guys who like thought you
were kind of on our side, but you weren't totally
bought into the whole Hitler thing. We'll just get rid
of you if we think you might cause a problem, right, Yeah.
I want to quote from a summary in the private
Heidenrich Himler. The perpetrators of these murders came from the
ranks of the SS. They emerged stronger from this power struggle,
finally separated themselves from the Essay and were designated by

(01:00:14):
Hitler as an independent organization, especially obligated to him through
their fidelity to the Furor. Himmler was proud of the
intimidation tactics of the SS. In November nineteen thirty five,
he stated in a speech, there are many people in
Germany who are sickened when they see this black uniform.
We understand that, and we do not expect to be
loved by very many. Oh yeah, that's a bad honor

(01:00:35):
right there, to be like that, you know what I'm saying.
I know, we got a lot of haters, I know.
You know what I'm saying. Everybody built like us man. Yeah,
but you need to be scared because like that's our job. Now.
We were always the internal guard against the party, against
people in the party who might be critical of Hitler,
and so you should be scared of us, motherfucker. That's
why we have power. In nineteen thirty six, Himler is

(01:00:58):
appointed chief of all German police, directly by Hitler himself.
Now this was a product of how deftly he'd maneuvered
the SS as an instrument for internally policing party members.
Because the SS had proven so reliable, Hitler allowed him
to begin establishing armed SS units in different cities. The
initial justification was always the need to protect Hitler from
the enemy within. We've got to have standing armed units

(01:01:20):
ready in key locations in case there's an internal coup
or whatnot, and we need to mobilize guys to protect
Hitler right away. Himmler is obviously so a weak and
unthreatening that most of the men like Gerrng, who should
have treated him as a rival, considered him a useful idiot.
Right someone will again, I can let this guy win
some power. He's not that dangerous, and then eventually this
guy winds up with a lot of power. Himler also

(01:01:42):
succeeded by never ruffling the boss's feathers or making himself
too much of a character in the media. One of
his occult mentors, Von Liebenfels, fell out with Hitler for
the simple reason that he'd written about a lot of
Hitler's favorite racial theories before Hitler did. We just walked out,
how like Hitler and Himmler were both inspired by this
guy's nonsense, and Hitler can't have that guy around once

(01:02:05):
he's in power, because then people are gonna be like, well,
these ideas were someone else's before they were Hitler's, and
that's simply not acceptable. Right. Another guy, one of the
guys we've talked about a Nazi mystic who fucked up
was Subotandorf, the founder of the Tula Society. Right. This
is the guy who founds the organization that Dietrich Eckhart,
founder the Nazi Party, is in this group, which is
how Himler first gets really tied to a lot of

(01:02:26):
these people. Subotandorf becomes persona non grata in January of
nineteen thirty three because he publishes a book about the
Nazi Party before Hitler. Because Subotandorf is there when Eckert
is creating the original party and he's like, oh, people
will be interested in the fact that there was a
Nazi Party before Hitler, and Hitler's like, they absolutely won't.
Just okay, whoa, I'm banning your book, right, yeah, absolutely

(01:02:50):
not bro. Yeah. And so when word gets out to
the fear or about this book, it's banned across the
Reich and Subotandorf has to flee the country to avoid
winding up in doc himself.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yeah, I'll just say yeah, like once again, like we
talked about the beginning of the show, I feel like
this fine print is not very fine, like this was
this is in fifty two size point font.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Yes, yeah, what I say is what it is so right?

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
You shouldn't There's no way you didn't know that this
book was not gonna fly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so by the mid thirties,
Heinrik Kimbler. He's the top cop in Germany. But he's
also one of very few high ranking Nazis who are
serious believers in the occult and these like weird mystical
trappings that had once dominated the Volcush movement. A lot
of that has been pruned off as they reach mainstream power,
where they're like, maybe we don't need as much of

(01:03:43):
this weird shit that like a lot of these bankers
think it's kind of odd. People seem to get weird.
They cool with all the murder and yeah, in the power,
but the magic. They don't like the magic. I thought
that was I thought that was the fun part. But
we're gonna be wizards too. Did you guys not get
that memo. Yeah, I thought that. It's like, like, you know,
it's like Wizard. Oh no, yeah, nobody, you don't like

(01:04:04):
the wizard stuff. Okay, it got it. Basically, the only
a cultist at a similar level of power kind of
in this period is Rudolph Hess, who's the deputy leader
of the Nazi Party and he's Hitler's He and Hitler
are cellmates. He like co writes mind cuff with Hitler
and Hess had been in the Tula society and he's
he's closer to Hitler personally than basically anyone. We'll talk
about what happens to him, because he's going to wind

(01:04:26):
up being a big part of why Hitler gets way
less tolerant for the weird occult stuff in the future.
But at this point in the mid thirties, Himmler is
top of the world and it's just really him and
Hess that are like the weird magic guys in the
in the Nazi Party and the higher echelons of the
highest echalons of the Nazi Party. So we are going
to talk about what comes next in part fucking six.

(01:04:50):
I guess so many episodes, God, gosh, darn it. I'm sorry,
And you know, what though, but you need we needed this,
We needed to understand. Ye, there's a lot of Hitler
to explain. Yeah, I feel like how this guy works
and how he succeeded is really important for people to
know as we like watch kind of what's shaking out
with the first attempts of the different people around Trump, Yeah,

(01:05:13):
to establish a new order. Yeah you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Yeah yeah, and then like the people who get like
jettisoned out and like where they went wrong. Like one
thing I thought of right now is like, you know
where Elon screwed up was like you like the camera
too much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
On camera two fears man, Like you know, yeah, nah,
you see it. Yeah, it's the it's the problem that
like yeah, it's too many Nazi syndrome, right, Yeah, yeah,
that's that's the eternal issue. So folks, uh, this has
been behind the bastards. If you're looking to help out
a charity, we're trying to help the Portland Defense Fund,

(01:05:53):
which is an abolitionist organization that helps to bail people
out of jail, primarily people who are going to be
public def and have no money for bail or for
legal assistance themselves. You can go to donor box just
type in donor box Defense Fund PDX, or go to
at Defense Fund PDX on venmo and send them a
donation via venmo. They are an actual five ozho one

(01:06:17):
ce charitable organization see three charitable organizations, so you know
it's tax deductible all that good stuff. Please help them
out at Defense Fund PDX on Venmo, donor box Defense
Fund PDX and then prop Obviously you got a pluggables
to plug. I do man.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
By the time this came out, I think that the
the thing I'm pushing now is I did I don't
know if it's a surprise album as much as it
I just didn't do any pre promotions. But it's a
poetry album. I finally made like a whole album of poetry.
It's called The Beautiful Endling, and it's kind of around

(01:06:54):
you know, a lot of the missions of Cool Zone
where it's like, Okay, look dude, we're at the end
of some thing, like something is dying right now, but
what can come from this can be beautiful, So like
that's kind of what this poetry is about. I realized
that you and Sophie don't know that either, so like, wait,
I need to send you all the poetry album.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Yeah uh please yeah yeah yeah, So that's kind of
what I'm pushing now, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
And also Terrorforms Back the Cold Coffee, please order that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
That's on my website and everything's at PROP hip Hop
so excellent, all right, check out PROP and check out
the remainder of this series, which is somehow still going on,
still going still him lerning Baby Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.
Or more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes everyone Wednesday
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(01:08:04):
at Behind the Bastards