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

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh wow, what time is it?

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Oh, my gosh, it's Bastard's thirty. It's actually one seventeen
in the afternoon, better known as my eight am. I
am Robert Evans uh and I'm not good at getting
up early, but you probably are. I imagine you're listening
to this podcast on your way to work at the
medical factory or at the whatever else job you do.

(00:29):
I don't remember any other jobs.

Speaker 4 (00:30):
But doctor the medical factory.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, we're doctors work, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Come on, let's me know that.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'll start telling my brother who works at the medical factory.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
You see how that goes.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Speaking of doctors, our guest today has a PhD in
performing I don't that was supposed to, like rhyme something
better than it didn't. It didn't whatever you prop, Jason.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Patty baptized baptized in default. You know what I'm saying.
I got a pH d In.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Being me h me, that's so much better than the
one I did.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Bar Wow, yeah, that was much better than how I
did it. Prop.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
You are the host of a show called hood Politics,
which confined the listener on this exact podcast network.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (01:21):
Yeah, I had the privilege of being the first offspring.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
That's right of the network.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
You feel me independent and we acquite you. You're the
Instagram to our Facebook.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
Basically, I am the reels to I am the stories
to your to your Vine.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
That's right, that's right. Ooh boy, we probably shouldn't compare
ourselves to Vine. That's not gonna go well, Prop, How
are you feeling today?

Speaker 4 (01:50):
You good? Feeling some?

Speaker 5 (01:52):
I mean that feeling the same low level existential dread
everybody else is feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Before you got on, Robert, I did war.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I'm always like it so biggy.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
It's so biggy.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
But I feel like I'm about to like I'm about
to you, about to ruin my day.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
I feel like I'm about to ruin several of your days,
because this is gonna take us a couple of weeks
to go through. Prop, we are you know that I
try to vary the bastards and very the level of bastardy,
keep things interesting, you know, for the whitest variety of people.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
But I got a.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
List in my head, the heavy hitters, you know, the
big guys, a lot of big folks, pokes, and I
was like, oh, you haven't done one.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Paran yet.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
You know, you haven't done Marcos yet, you haven't heard
now yet. Yeah, and today we're going back to the Nazi. Well, uh,
for reasons that should be obvious to people who watch
the news. That's extra relevant right now. Yes, and it's
time for us to hit one of the big ones.
Today and this week and next week we're doing Heinrich Himmler.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Oh shit, yeah, baby, yeah, baby. Scottie Pippen of nazis
Scotty right, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's not you know, hit Yeah,
Hitler's the Jordan, He's the Scottie Pippen. Obviously, Herman Garring
is Shack, you know, rights Shack.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
I was like Rick Fox.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Maybe Gearing is like great, he's not the worst of them,
So I guess that's that's nicer to Shack than colleague
Scottie pipp And the Hamler.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
Got damn it, the Murphy Lee fucking Lloyd Banks. Yeah,
Who's who's the other second? Got Quavo? Like you know,
I'm saying the fucking offset.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Of we're beyond my basketball knowledge.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Now we're not even in basketball anymore.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
We went to music there.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Himler Himmler's if we want to put it in the
political terms, Himmler's the the Dick Cheney of right.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
Do you know who Quevo is?

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Jose, Yeah, Cuervo. Yeah, we've been for years. I wish Yeah,
we're gonna need some for these. No, I have no
idea who Quevo is.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
We're talking to.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
Yeah, we're talking Rayquon and ghost Face to method man
right now.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Okay, ghost method. Yeah, well, the method Man of Nazism
is probably not Heinar Kimler. I'm not sure who. No, No, maybe, yeah,
that's that's a good question.

Speaker 5 (04:25):
I mean meth is, like, you know, that's that's the
leader or is it not? Let's go it myth anyway,
this is old, this is old hay and stuff like.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, I guess yeah, Hitler's the method man of Nazis,
although you know Riza. I think it was Rizza who
did the uh the soundtrack to Ghost Dog, which I
don't think Hitler could have done.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Hitler is like.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
Love it is actually a genius, like and Jizza the
genius is actually a doctor, like he's an actual PhD.
But anyway, well, Heinrich Kimler was none of these things.
What he was as a man who believed himself the
reincarnation of an old Germanic prince who died around the
year one thousand. He's the biggest nerd of the Nazis.

(05:18):
This is and in fact, one of the books I
have on this Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts, which
is about Heinrak Kimler and the occult, and we'll be
talking a lot about that through these episodes, like basically
describes Himmler and his kind of fellow travelers, the one
who are really into this German occult stuff that's going
to be part of these stories as like these are
like they would have been into D and D you know,

(05:39):
in a different nerd would be the toxic nerds, right,
like the guys who are like like threatened to murder
people over fan fiction about Lord of the Rings or
something like.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's the kind of dude he is.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
The guys gonna argued that the little more aerial should
be white because she's on the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yes, yes, yes, okay would have been he would have
been writing so many fucking letters to Disney and Marvel
about like and stuff that yeah, yeah, that Himmler is
is the thatdest guy of the Nazi high command.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
That is guy okay and then you put him in charge.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Here we go.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, So if we were in a country where kids
hadn't all been left behind since you know, I was
in high school, I would be like, this is a
guy who doesn't need introduction, but obviously he does need introduction.
This being the United States. Heinrich Himmler is the guy

(06:36):
who he didn't create the SS like it exists and
has a couple of leaders before him, but he's almost
from the jump the leader of the s S there's
it has very little history before him, and he makes
it into what it is. And the SS, the staffel
is you know, initially starts as Hitler's bodyguard and you know,
several unions of Hitler's bodyguard. It's kind of the elite

(06:58):
within the Nazi Party, and it turns to a state
within a state. The SS is handling a significant amount
of They're kind of like the FBI CIA, Like there's
the vision of the SS, the SD that is that
for the Nazi state, and they are also running all
of the concentration camps right like the Death'shead units that
have the famed the skull and Crossbones thing that the

(07:20):
SS is fame for. Those are the guys who are
running the camps. Those are the concentration camp guards. They're
manning the death camps. They also there are SS combat units,
the Vafen SS, which means the weapons SS. There's like
well over a million people in the SS at the height.
It is the elite of the party and these are
the guys who are doing the bulk of the war crimes,

(07:41):
not that the Wehrmacht doesn't, but like the SS is
the war crimes organization, and Himmler created them kind of
he wanted them to be a knightly order, right like
he was very much inspired by the medieval these some
of these medieval orders like the Knights Templar, and his
goal was to create a new aristocracy using the SS,

(08:02):
which is why, and to do a big part. They're the
guys doing the very worst of the Holocaust. And we
have spent a lot of time talking about other SS
men who are the implementation guys for the Holocaust. Right
We've talked about Reinhardt Heydrich, We've talked about Eichman, We've
talked about the einstz Grupa, and you know, several of
the people in that who are the units actually like
doing the direct shooting tens of thousands of Jews to

(08:25):
death in the East, and so in these episodes, one
thing that people might find a little weird, we're not
going to not talk about that, but we're not going
to go into most of it. We're not going to
spend very much detailed talking about the death camp stage
of the system that the SS is a part of,
because we have covered implementation, guys, and these are people
Himmler hires, Hydrich Himler is talking to giving orders to Aikman, right,

(08:49):
So we're mostly going to cover Himmler up until the
point that like the war gets going and the SS
is running and the camps are running. To talk about
how he got to where he did and how he
built the system that winds up doing the Holocaust will
spend less time on the hall. That's just because we
have covered the implementation guys, right.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
And I also think I also think this is like, like,
this is the service that is needed at this moment
because we all understand there's been movies about find Out.
There ain't been movies about fuck around, you know, and
fuck around is.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
Clearly where we're at.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
And anybody who understands that find out comes after fuck
around is going.

Speaker 6 (09:38):
Guys, hey, this is fuck around. This We're fucking around
like the flag don't get redder, you know what I mean.
So I feel like this, like and like you said,
the child left behind thing is just like the ability
to understand that four comes from two plus two is
probably one of the most frustrating things that is happening,

(10:02):
I think in our political dialogue right now. Like you
you like you want like you want a one to one.

Speaker 5 (10:08):
You want this to be as neat as possible, you know,
and then people hide in that like for example, like
when people talk about like, well, Ice is like the Gustapo,
and it's like, well, okay, in vibe, like it's got
Gustopo vibe. It's more like the secret Police, but there's
really no one to one.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
More like the SS.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right, yeah it's secret police, but like, yeah, the the
what they're trying to do with Ice is a lot
more like the SS. I mean, but again, none of
this crafts directly. There are some things compared to the
essay the brown Shirts, and like I don't want to
we'll talk some about that as we go on, but
but this is important because number one, we're gonna be
talking a lot more than we usually do about Heinrich's

(10:50):
early life in childhood, because there's so much on him.
There's a tremendous amount of detail. One of the things
we'll talk about one of the things it's unique about Himler,
of all of the Nazis, we have almost his entire
life and diaries from the time he was a little kid,
like he kept notes on most of his life, like
we have heard most of his daily life up to

(11:10):
a certain point, which is very weird and very rare
with some historical figure like this. And so I want
to try and I mean, the show is behind the bastard,
Yeah right, And I don't a lot of a lot
of these guys. There's just not enough information on their
childhood to really get that far behind. But with Himler,
we will, and we're going to spend a lot of
time talking about how he came to believe some of

(11:32):
these weird mystical beliefs that he believed in, how they
influenced because the SS is largely formed based on his
occult beliefs, Like a lot of how he organizes it
and what he wants it to be is based on
these esoteric things he believes about race, and reincarnation and
so we'll be talking about all of that in these episodes,
but I should just dive in, you know.

Speaker 5 (11:53):
Yeah, see I think too, Like it's something I've kind
of been trying to think about, like how to put
in a word for some upcoming episodes. For her, politics
is like the actual like power and danger of a
really smart like nerd that ain't afraid of you. Like

(12:18):
there's like that combo is dangerous, whether it's they create
a death cult like you're finna talk about, or you
turn into like a Nipsey hustle, like Nipsey is Nipsy,
Like some of the stories from his childhood was like
when he wanted to first start recording, he just made
a computer out of like scraps he found at a junkyard,

(12:40):
Like he built the first computer that he was when
he was a little boy. You know what I'm saying,
you gotta you gotta, you gotta roll in sixty crip
talking about like assets and liabilities and investing his you
know what I'm saying, So like somebody who's a nerd,
but it's.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Like I'm not afraid of jail. You know, say can
be either the leader we all needed or hydri Kimmler.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, and Himmler yes.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
And as we'll talk about Himmler's he doesn't have quite
the courage to be like he doesn't want to get
arrested like he's but he also he idolizes the guys
who do right.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
He really wants to be them. So, okay, we're.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Getting ahead of ourselves. Let's just dive into this man's life.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born on October seventh, nineteen hundred,
in Munich, Germany. His family are generally described as middle class,
and most kind of short summaries of his upbringing this
under sells their level of comfort by a bit. We
might be more accurate to say that his parents came

(13:43):
from something had started out more working class, but had
worked their way up to like the upper middle class
by the time he's born. They are more comfortable than
most middle class people.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
They're taking vacations through most of World War One, right,
And that you have to be doing well if you're
able to still afford that in Germany in like nineteen sixteen, right.
His father was Gebhart Himmler, and he was the son
of a civil servant in the Bavarian government. This is
the early nine eighteen hundreds when Gebert is born, and

(14:16):
that's before the unification of Germany. Johann Himmler Heinrich's grandfather,
his Gabart's dad was the son of peasants from Ansbach
who trained him as a weaver. So Heinrich's dad grows
up being taught to be like a peasant who's like
weaving stuff, but he manages to This is as modernity
is really kicking in around Germany, and he manages to

(14:39):
elevate himself up out of the peasantry by getting a job.
He joins the military first, and he's in the military.
He travels around a couple of places in the military,
I think there's a period of time which's almost kind
of working as like a soldier for hire, and eventually
back in Germany, he gets a job as a police
officer and he works his way up to sergeant. They

(15:00):
use a different word for the term sergeant in Germany,
but that's what he is. He's like an upper middle
level kind of local police officer. So by the time
Gebart Heinrich's dad is born in eighteen sixty five, Germany
is five years away from becoming a country, and Johan
is retired, you know, when his kid is born, but
he's still working for the local government.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
He's one of these guys.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
He retires with a pension from his police job, and
then he gets a job basically like the city council
almost that kind of thing. So he's like a fairly
important man in town, right and fairly so the family
is connected. Yeah, this is this is Heinrich's grandfather. Okay, right,
so this is Johan. So Johann dies when Geberd is seven,

(15:45):
which is normal for German kids of this area era
and this socioeconomic group. If your dad is manages to
make it up to be like a fairly you know,
middle or high level local government functionary, he probably has
kids later than.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
A lot of other guys.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
He's probably pretty old and a lot of this is
kind of what happens to Hitler too, right, Like his
dad is much older than his wife. His dad is
a mid level functionary and dies when he's very young.
So as soon as Johann dies his wife, Heinrich's grandmother
raises Gebhard switches him from Protestant to Catholic. We don't

(16:19):
really know why this is very weird. It doesn't happen
a lot. The opposite is more common in Germany because
Germany is a more Protestant kind. Lutherans come from.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
Germany, and yeah, Martin Luther is German.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, so the opposite switch is kind of weird and
we don't really fully know why. But biog him Heinrich,
Himler's biographer Peter Longrich seems to suggest that her motivation
may have partly been the idea that being Catholic would
be better for her son's future career because where they
are in Munich, more of the local government was Catholic,

(16:55):
and so maybe it would help, you know, if he
was Catholic. The reality of that's kind of clear. But
Gippart grows up to be a school teacher, and it's
a mark of how different Germany is in this place
and time to where we are now that that's a
big step up the ladder of social mobility. Like a
teacher is a good job, right, especially compared to like,

(17:17):
you know, what his family, their families have been doing previously.
So he gets a job at a grammar school as
a teacher initially, but he's so good at the work.
He's a very good teacher. Most people seem to agree.
There's some argument about this, but he's successful, at least
enough so that after four years as a teacher, he

(17:37):
gets kind of scouted for like the majors of being
a teacher, which is being a private tutor.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
For a member of the royal family.

Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yes, I was going to say, you get a little
comfy job, right, You're not just at the public school
teaching a teaching a riff raft.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yah.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, he still teaches the riff raft, but he is
also now private tutor for a prince of the Bavarian
royal family, which is like a big deal, right, because,
among other things, you've got one on one connection with
someone who is going to be very powerful and influential.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
So this is a job.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Not only does it pay pretty well, but it connects
you to a royal family. Now this period of time,
we're in Imperial Germany. They're ruled by a Kaiser, and
people miss this a lot, just because we don't talk
a lot about how Imperial Germany worked even under the
Kaiser prior to World War One. Germany is not us

(18:30):
just a state in the way that we conceive of
a state. It's basically like I think it's like four
kingdoms that are lashed together and they're all nominally under
the rule of the Kaiser, who is the Prussian king,
but each kingdom has a technically, like the militaries are
all independent, right, yeah, when war comes around, they all
have to like they're all unified, like it's written and

(18:51):
basically to the constitution or whatever that, yeah they call it.
But like when there's war, everybody's under one central command.
But outside of war, like the Bavarian and the Prussian military,
these are separate entities. They have separate leaders, they have
separate uniforms.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
When World War One.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Starts, I think there's something like two hundred and fifteen
different official German military uniforms.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Like it's nuts, like.

Speaker 5 (19:15):
I do like sometimes mourn and even finding it within myself,
like just us living in the era where we're in,
where we just honestly cannot imagine, like our brains can't
fathom other ways to organize governments, you know what I mean?
Like that, like, well they're not all will governments not

(19:38):
not even the right word, you know what I'm saying.
Like it's you feel me, you know what I'm saying.
So it's like it's hard to imagine them saying, well, yeah,
this is all Prussia. It's like, well I thought it
was Bavaria.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
No.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
No, it is like you're a part of the same state.
But also these are very different things and it's not
like a.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
State like as in California.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
It's like as in a nation, but it's not like
a nation because there's no sustinate as nations yet.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, they're starting to become this is like, this is
while the modern idea of the nation state is being
like worked out, right, like that's where this is all happening,
and yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
So it is a big deal.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
You know when I say his connection to the royal families,
to the Bavarian royal family, so he's not connected to
like the Kaiser's people, but he is his official charge.
The kid he's teaching as it is starting as when
this kid's like a teenager, is Prince Heinrich of Wittelsbach, right,
and he is the son of the Prince Regent of Bavaria.
The Prince Regent is the prince who's going to become

(20:31):
the king, and Prince Hydrich is not going to become
I mean he could theoretically, but a lot of people
would have to die. Right, he's not close to the throne,
but he's still a prince, right, so it's still a
big deal. And you know, Geberd is the son of
a cop who was himself the son of a peasants.
And so the fact that in two generations they've gone
from we're peasants and we're weavers or whatever to I

(20:54):
am teaching a prince is a huge upgrade for the family.
Circumstance anss they have moved a lot. There's a lot
of upward mobility for the Himmler family. And the fact
that one of the things weighs this benefits him is
that like shortly after becoming a private tutor to the prince,
he gets a permanent job. Basically, he gets you know,

(21:16):
the equivalent of like tenure teaching at a prestigious private
grammar school. Right, so he goes from like teaching at
a normal school to teaching at a really nice school
because he's like I think basically the royal family is like, hey,
you should take this guy, you should hire this guy,
because we don't want the guy tutoring the prince to
be working at like a normal school, right, Like he

(21:37):
deserves a better position. So they start making good money.
And it's not just about that they're making, you know,
upper middle class money now, but they have connections. Now
he can I think it's the kind of thing where
you don't want to ask too much, but if you
ask for a favor, you can probably get it. In
the favor of a word in someone's ear from a

(21:58):
member of the royal family of Varia can move things
for you. So now that he's established, he's got these
this prestigious job, he's got these connections. It took him
a while to get to this point. But now it's
time for him to get married. And as I said,
he's gonna get married later than is normal for people here.
Uh he falls for or at least decides to marry.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I don't know how I love.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
They were a woman named Anna Maria Hider, and this
is Heinrich Himler's mother. Anna's father was a successful local businessman.
He had died years earlier. But she brings a sizable
dowry to the marriage, right enough that they they might
have been able to live off the dowry, right Like, Like,
that's how come I don't know if I'd say that

(22:40):
they're rich, but they are upper middle class.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
That's all score man.

Speaker 5 (22:46):
Yes, I gotta tell you if there's any if there's
any incredibly toxic things in.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
The past, yeah, that I wish existed.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
It's like, oh yeah, yeah, when I already like a woman,
she's already choosing to marry me, and I'm like, wait,
but Alley.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah, I mean it was mostly downsides, but yes, it
would have been just getting money when you get married. Yeah.
Obviously there's a lot that's toxic about this for a
lot of people, but for the himmlers, you know, and
part of what this shows you is and this is
something that Heinrich's it kind of runs in the blood
or whatever. The himmlers are really good social climbers. That's

(23:28):
primarily how Heinrich gets the way. He has good instincts
for this is someone I need to meet and be
friends with, and they're going to like help me get
a leg up. And then this next person is who
I need to meet and be friends with, and that'll
help me get it. Like this is something his dad
is clearly really good at the level to which his
dad climbs and his grandfather had climbed. Show that there's
just a degree to which Himmlers are really good at

(23:51):
social climbing. You know, they've just got whatever that thing is.
So Heinrich Himmler is born, as I said in nineteen hundred,
he is the second child and the second son of
the marriage. They'll ultimately have three sons. It's a mark
of how well the Himmlers are doing that. When Heinrich
is born, Gebbert asks his student Prince Heinrich, if he'll

(24:14):
be who's like sixteen at this point, if he'll be
Heinrich's godfather.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
I'm actually kind of surprised. He's a middle child.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah, he is a middle child. That's actually to me.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
It has an influence on that guy he becomes, and
Prince Heinrich agrees again, which says that like they have
a really good relationship.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
That's kind of a big.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Ask from like a prince, like as yea, hey, what
you mean my kid's godfather?

Speaker 5 (24:39):
But he says yes, yeah, you gotta really like this
fool like I like motime. Prince is like, wait, I'm sorry,
what's your name again?

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Again?

Speaker 2 (24:45):
You're the help? Are you serious?

Speaker 4 (24:47):
But which one are you?

Speaker 5 (24:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (24:50):
They must have had a good thing.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
How many how many people have asked you to be
the godfather.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Prop. I feel like you're a lot of people's godfather.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
I've been asked many times.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah, yeah, I'm godfather to likes kids. I don't even
know the kids. Yeah, I just god I'm a godfather
for a hire. Baby.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
You just send them money on their birthday, man, and
they come over. It's like, here's here's twenty bucks.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Kid.

Speaker 5 (25:10):
No, there's only like there's there's two kids that I'm
like actually acting, one of which lives on our street.
So I'm like, okay, well I'm here godfather. She lives
next door.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
You're you're you're really getting into the godfathering.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
Yeah, you're a good choice.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah, I think you you're a good choice. Obviously it
comes natural to me being a Robert Evans. There's nothing
more natural than being a godfather.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
You are the godfather.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Uh huh, that's right, baby.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Uh. Speaking of the producer, Robert Evans, you know what
he liked? Cocaine. Maybe that's who sponsored this show.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Jesus Christ, we're back.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I hope it was cocaine.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
Did that blow your mind? Those exactly? All right? All
right with the dad joke, Hey man, I'm a goddad.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah, that's right, we get to make that mean should
get to make twice as many fucking dad jokes.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
God level you feel, yeah, god.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Level dad jokes. Yeah, that's awful. So as he comes
into the.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
World, the Heinrich Himmler, who would build the SS and
one of the deadliest organizations in human history, is from
the beginning a nepo baby. His parents put a lot
of wor again, they wait until their thirties to get married,
in part because they want to you know, Gebert especially
doesn't want to have kids until he can make sure
they'll be nepo babies because he is a climber. And

(26:31):
the whole plan that Gebert and Anna Maria have is
that the family money that his mom brought in, that's
like their their cushion, is going to pay for a
you know, childhood for their kids of like prestigious schools,
and particularly for Heinrich. For whatever reason, it seems like
they are setting Heinrich up more than anyone else for
success because he's the one who has the princess, the godfather,

(26:54):
and you know, they'll use the money to pay for
him to get a really good education. And then the
connections they've with the royal family they'll use to get
him a lucrative job as an adult, and that will
help the Himmler family ascend further towards the upper class.
Right that, like we made it to the upper middle class,
Heinrich is going to take us up to the fucking
aristocracy almost, you know, like that's the plan.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Now.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Depending on who you ask, you'll get different opinions on
Gebert Himmler as a father. A nineteen seventy one article
I found for the American Historical Review by Pete Lowenberg
describes him as quote a pedantic and conscientious man. Ernst Hampstengel,
who is an early friend of Hitler and an upper
class German. An aristocrat who attended classes taught by Gebert

(27:38):
at the private school, described him later as quote a
terrible snob, favoring the young, titled members of his class
and bearing down contemptuously on the commoners. And I could
see that it makes a lot of sense hearing other
things about the guy. Although it's also worth noting that
Hompstangle gives this account of Gebbert after he's fled Germany

(28:00):
and sat down with the OSS to gossip about Heinrich Himmler.
The first profile that the oss which comes the CIA
gives about Himmler. Ernst is a major source, as he
is for a lot of these guys because he knew
them all and then he had to flee. And that's
not perfectly trustworthy, this guy who was Hitler's friend and
a big Nazi until you know, things went too far. Yeah,

(28:24):
it's one of those things I don't there's a lot
of negative stories about like, yeah, Gilbert was an asshole,
he was like a bad teacher, he was a that
aren't entirely accurate because a lot of the first generation
of historians work backwards from like, well Himler was obviously terrible,
so everything about his upbringing must have sucked, right.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, Yeah, and maybe that's not totally accurate.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
And his most recent biot or one of his most
recent biographers, who's a his book, is a big source
for these episodes. Peter Longrich takes a more reserved tone
towards towards Gebert, and he depicts him as actually a
pretty good father for the time period quote, and this
is from his biography of Himmler. As a father, he
exercised his authority not through being unapproachable or through overbearing strictness,

(29:09):
but rather through patient efforts. With his sons, they were
subject to a system of rules and prohibitions, while their
father monitored their obedience precisely and at times pedantically. His
strictness was designed to have a lasting effect and seems
to have been altogether compatible with kindness, love, and affection.

Speaker 4 (29:24):
So, dude, I think there's something here.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
I think there's which probably will play out layer which
you'll probably correct me about. But like, I think there's
something to the fact that, like, Okay, this guy is
not royal.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Heindrich's dad.

Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yeah, but he was around royalty, so I feel like
he probably was able to see just what he He's
a teacher, so he's like I wasn't poor, I didn't
get out get it out the mud, but like you're
you're around probably very privileged people, and you like, I
definitely don't want my son to turn in it is,

(29:58):
but also I want to award him the types of
like value, Like he's a teacher, so it's like the
types of like sort of like hard work value, you know, trustworthiness,
Like you know what I'm saying. You marry into this
like pretty rather wealthy family, you got no reason to
be a hard ass, you know what I'm saying, Like,

(30:19):
because hey, dude, like it's like your needs are met,
Like we got a good job, you know what I'm saying, Like,
and I really think that like that. I wonder if
that plays into him being like, yeah, like our needs
are met. I don't have to like I'm not you know,
in a gulag somewhere like which I know I could be.
You feel me, So I'm like, I would much rather
be like, man, let me spend some time with my kids,

(30:41):
you know what I'm saying, Like I have been awarded
this gift, you know what I mean of being able
to like spend time with my kids because I see
what happens when you don't, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
so I can imagine like that that actually playing a
role as to be like, yeah, he probably was a
good dad, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
And I think he was. He's also you know, we
used to the phrase that a few years ago. Is
the book about like tiger moms, right, which is his term.
You get to like a lot of like like Asian
immigrant mothers who are like that super like into their
kids education and very hands on to try to ensure
their success. That's how you might look at Geppard, right, Yeah,
so he's very involved and he doesn't seem to be

(31:20):
emotionally unavailable like for the time, but he also is
he's obsessed with his kids education and with their success. Right,
that is his business, you know. Yeah, and so there
is to the degree that that's kind of like it
can be a toxic thing that's also present here, but
it's not toxic.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
He's not that he's not hitting his kids.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
We don't really have any reports, and I've read a
couple from the old to the new biographies of Himler
none really seemed to suggest that he was like abused
in that way.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
But he is constant.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
He is pressured from the beginning to succeed, right, to
do really well in school. Right, I could really see
that because that should be somebody, Yeah, that's your ticket.
It's like you're not born you're not a born of prince,
you know me, Like this is how you're gonna do this.
You're not born to prince, and I don't want you
breaking up rocks, so like let's do this. Yeah, And
it's one of those things where you know a lot

(32:08):
of these sources will kind of try to depict his
father as being like, oh, he was this really boring,
pedantic man who was like super shitty to anyone who
wasn't rich. And I don't think that that's not that
that isn't doesn't clash necessarily with the And he was
also very attentive and in a lot of ways a
good dad, like I think he was. The evidence does
suggest he was like very much a starfucker, like if

(32:33):
you were not of a good family, if you didn't
come from money. Again, he and Anna will like police
who their kids are allowed to hang out with, to
make sure that they are they're helping, basically like, oh,
this kid's got to be at our level or above,
otherwise you can't hang out with them.

Speaker 4 (32:48):
So they are. There is that degree of toxicystney from
the slums man.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Right, Yeah, where it's like you are going to be
somebody and I Am going to make goddamn sure of it,
you know. But also it's not like the kind of
thing where his dad is like mentally abusing him or
like hitting him or like fucking with his brain. His
dad is just down to determined to make him a success.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:10):
It sounds like some like respectability right politics, where it's
just like you know, you know, for us, it was like, hey,
you know, keep your hair in eyes, don't be wearing
hoodies like you know, speak clearly, you know, don't don't
be using out it, don't be used and slang like
you know, just don't hang with them like exactly, you
won't like make these people respect you.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Not getting Yeah, So in February of nineteen oh three,
when he's like a little kid three, Heinrich falls seriously
ill for the first time. This has something to do
with his lungs. His older brother is also sick. A
bunch the family I just think isn't super It's not
clear what's wrong. It's always said as like a lung problem.
I think it might be asthma, Like he may have

(33:52):
just had asthma. It's not perfectly clear to me, but
that would make sense. The ailment is severe enough that
his mother takes him and his siblings to the Alps
for a few months. Is a cure, right, Like that's
what you do. You get him up, and that your
doctor literally prescribed go be in the mountains with these
like it's also at this time nineteen oh three, right,

(34:14):
so like what the fuck is asthma.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
I don't know what they're doing.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
We just figured out germs like a month ago, right, Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Everyone doesn't believe it.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
But we're still we're still we're still fighting to get
the doctors washing their hands.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Yeah, reusing smocks.

Speaker 5 (34:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
So Heinrich recovers, unfortunately, but moving to them and moving
to the mountains doesn't, you know, cure him obviously, but
like they they think anyway, he winds up coming back.
But he's always a sickly kid, and he has regular
bouts of illness that will periodically. Whenever he gets really sick,
his parents focus on him again. And he's the middle kid, right,

(34:54):
so you know once he has a younger brother. There's
a kind of long Rich sort of suggests, and I
like Long, which is a biographer, But he doesn't really
provide evidence for this. I think it's just one of
those things where he's like, well, it makes sense. Maybe
is the middle kid. He savored the fact that when
he was sick he got all this attention, But he
doesn't really provide us much of the way of evidence
on this, So this may just be kind of him inferring.

(35:16):
When Heinrich starts school in nineteen oh six. So you know,
three years later, he's still ill enough that he misses
one hundred and fifty days out of his first year
of classes. Yeah, due to a variety everything. He gets measles,
he gets the moms, he gets pneumonia several times. And
his older brother had had a similar experience with school
but still gets really good grades, better than Heinrich in fact,

(35:38):
and Longrich suggests that the fact that his brother does
better than him at school is something that frustrates Heinrich.
I don't the evidence of this. There's not like direct evidence,
but there's some reasons to believe that he is very
competitive with Gebbard and kind of has some insecurity over
the fact that he never outdes his brother in school.

(35:59):
One of my second episode sources for these episodes is
a very old biographer of Himmler, just titled Himmler by
Willie Freshower. And long Rich doesn't love for Shower's book
because it's one of its it's basically the first big
biography of Himler, and so it's outdated. I think it's
written in the fifties, and that is true. I wouldn't
use this as like the prime source because it is

(36:21):
so old and historiography has moved beyond here. But it's
from the first generation of books on Himmler, right, and
say like it's closer to when it happened, it's closely
when it happened, and more. I think one of the
reasons why I do find it worth reading is that
it sets up you see in fre Shower's book, where
a lot of both misconceptions and myths about Himmler's starts,

(36:42):
because this is the first like big history, and I
think it is valuable for that for understanding where some
of these ideas come from. And one thing that is
interesting is outdated as Freshower's book is it's one of
the first, it's one of the only books of that
first generation that kind of describes the Himler finally life
the same way long rich does. Because other people writing

(37:04):
about Himler in that period really tried to emphasize the
toxicity and the fact that Himmler grows up, you know,
with this overbearing father and he's this like kind of
psychopathic kid who has these you know, And for Shower's
account of it really does jibe with long Riches in
the fact that, like no, his upbringing was reasonably good

(37:26):
for the era for Shower emphasizes the fact that Gebhard
was a huge nerd for German history and like into archaeology,
and that this has an impact on Heinrich quote. As
a little boy, Heinrich Himler sat on his father's knee
almost every evening, ear glued to the lips, from which
tales of wonderful adventure flowed in a rhythmic, studied language.

(37:46):
Hero of the tales invariably was Grandfather Johann Konrad Himmler,
soldier of fortune, who had hitched his star to any
army that would have him. A rugged nineteenth century warrior
who had burst the narrow confines of his time and
branched out into the wide world world. Grandfather's most glorious
campaign had been fought in Greece. He marched in the
shadow of the Acropolis. He had seen Thebes in the

(38:07):
pass of Thermopylae, and brought back to his own humble
environment a breadth of adventure and greatness.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
Hmmm.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
See, to me, I feel like there's like, just for
when you're just trying to understand a person era a moment,
there's like you, like you said, like a lot of this,
a lot of them, maybe this particular book is outdated,
but I do you think just as it is, you
know what I'm saying, But I do think as a practice,
Like there's pros and cons of at like, but the
pro is to understand they're writing in a time and

(38:39):
era and it's like, this is actually telling me what
you thought was important in nineteen fifty to point out,
you know what I'm saying, like, this is how you
thought about this. You feel me and like and that
and that keys that key's in that he's into us,
like you know, the the you know, the somehow or

(38:59):
another the ward sharp and magnetic zeros.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Like video resurface.

Speaker 5 (39:04):
But it was like, yo, this song is trash, like
you know what I'm saying, Like people actually going and
then we're thinking you know obviously us who was there.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
It was like, well it was a vibe, you know
what I'm saying, Like it's set vibe. It was a vibe.

Speaker 5 (39:17):
It's sat in a time of other just that was
just the vibe, you know what I'm saying. Like it's like, yeah,
like the thought never crossed my mind to think about
these lyrics, you know, or that they're.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
From last feelis, which is like you're you're from Griffin Park.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Like surprising coming out here.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Yeah, it's like what by the observatory Like.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, but uh anyway, and yeah, that's the kind of
you don't see this story repeated in a lot of
the modern historiography, which I think this is kind of
important to talk about this because and this gets more
in the books about Heinrich and the Occult and none
of the I think the best of them is Himmler
or a Master of the Dark Arts. But it's not
a great work of history, certainly not compared to long

(40:06):
Rich's book, in part because all of the books that
focus on Himler on the occult need to It's the
same problem that like Blitz has with Hitler and Drugs,
where there's a lot of really good work and really
useful original research done that I think the bigger biographies
could stand to have more of. But because you're focusing
on the occult thing, you.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Make it a bigger deal than it really was.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Right, But I think this is important and it gets
left out of a lot of the more modern accounts,
and it seems to be based on as far as
I can tell, Fresh Hour, one of his major sources
he talks to Gebhart Himmler, the junior. Heinrich's older brother
is also named Gebbard, and that's who's telling him about
their childhood and about how they're raised. And Gabbart isn't

(40:48):
an unproblematic source, right because he's Heinrich's brother. But I
don't really see much reason to doubt the basics of this, right,
you know, there's some reason to doubt was Hitler's grandfather,
did his life really go that way? But the fact
that Himmler, Heinrich was raised with stories of his grandfather
being this great warrior, and you know that be like

(41:10):
their ancestry being important, and like German history being important,
and this kind of like medieval like these medieval stories
of like knights and kingdoms, you know, one of the
things that obsessed it as a kid. They traveled this
like medieval town that still got its old walls, and
Heinrich is like obsessed with these walls. They He has

(41:31):
a big imagination and it's always focused on almost these
kind of like the German equivalent of the Arthurian myths, right,
Like that's that's what as a kid, he is a
huge Again, he'd be playing D and D you know,
day he loves magic and he loves knights, and this
this very much historically inaccurate but common picture of what

(41:54):
medieval Germany was like, right, And I think the fact
that his dad is sitting them down and tell them
these fanciful stories of like his own father and of
old Germany, that's probably where this starts. And Gebart also senior.
He's an amateur archaeologist, right, He probably spent some time
even digging for old artifacts. He collects coins, and he

(42:15):
collects like some old weapons, whatever you can get his
hands on, which is a hip hobby at the time. Right,
nationalism is a fairly new concept in the early nineteen hundreds,
and it's sexy and a big part of German nationalism.
Because Germany is very new, the country had only come
into being a couple of decades earlier. There's a lot
of focus in like official propaganda, and it just becomes

(42:37):
popular for archaeologists to find evidence of like the Germanic
tribes are ancestors, and we're going to pretend that they
were a lot more united and that German identity was
more of a thing for them than it really was.
You know, when the Romans talk about the Germans they're
not talking about the Germans as we know them. Some

(42:58):
of the tribes that they with our ancestors to modern Germans,
but some of them were like Belgians or whatnot, and
they just all got kind of lumped together because the
Romans aren't you know, we don't know it's all are
I don't know where you came from. You're here, and
you're all kind of like have some similarity. So y'all
you're all the fucking.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Germans, right, Yeah, they just meant y'all up there, yea
that like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Exactly, but they got hammered into being. Germany has just
been hammered into being Byodo von Bismarck and so. And
you know, another thing that happens around this time as
Heinrich Schleimann I think was his name, finds the ruins
of the city of Troy. Well, he destroys the ruins
of the city of Troy, digging to something older anyway,
but he finds where Troy probably was and that's a

(43:42):
huge deal in Europe and it kind of ignites this
whole like, well, there's got to be other let's find
these ancient ruins. Yeah, German civilization that proved that we're
a great and ancient people, you know. And Himler gets
carried away with this Gebhart his dad does. And you know,
Heinrich and his older and younger brother both catch this bug, right,

(44:02):
they're Germany nerds. They also get into stamp collecting. ARD's
a big stamp collector. Wait, yeah, family of Dweebs collected stamps.

Speaker 5 (44:16):
Yeah. See, there is a role in culture that bullies
are supposed to play, you know.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
And I'll last no, because it is one of those
if like Gebhard was raising Heinrich Himler today, like Heinrich
would be sitting on his lap as he sends like
death threats to Disney for putting women in Star Wars
Like that is the kind of dude, That's the kind
of family this is speaking of sending death threats to Disney.
Don't do that, please, please don't do that.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Don't do that.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
But you know, send a death threat to yourself, keep yourself.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
On your toes.

Speaker 4 (44:49):
Also, don't do that.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Why not it's not illegal to threaten to kill it?

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Well it might be actually anyway, here's ads.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
We're back.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
So, when Heinrich is a kid, his dad one of
the like again, his dad is very hands on. He's
making his when his kids are sick, he makes them
like keep up with their schoolwork and whatnot. On like
the weekends, he's sitting down with them and they're going
over what they went over in class. He's super hands
on with this. And one of the things he makes
his kids do is part of his educational plan for

(45:24):
them is from a very early age when they're quite little,
still not a toddler, but you know, when they first
learn to write. He teaches them stenography right so that
they can write quickly, and they write letters to each other.
But he also makes his kids keep a detailed diary,
and he checks the diary like this is homework he's
giving his kids. He's checking to like I want to
make sure you're not doing something bad. He's checking to

(45:46):
make sure that you are writing well right, and.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
It's hey, yeah, essays yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
Long.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Rich writes that geb Hard quote encouraged them his sons
to use school holidays to consolidate what they had been taught.
So they're spending their holidays going over their homework and whatnot,
their schoolwork, and he makes them keep these diaries and
as a result, we have, like most of Heinrich Himler's
a lot of his childhood documented from a day to day,
sometimes on an hourly basis, in granular detail.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Man, back to the tiger mom stuff. You're right, right,
it is, yeah, eh.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
And you won't be surprised to hear that once this
fact comes to light post war. Once like people find out,
you know, first the extent of the Holocaust and Heinrich's involvement,
and then that he's got this childhood diary. All of
these psychoanalysts, armchair and official ones are like, oh shit,
I'm gonna make my career analyzing finding the evidence of

(46:44):
psychopathy and the diary of young Heinrich Himmler.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Right, this has to be the key to his madness.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
You know, it's got to be in this because obviously
you can always tell when someone's a kid if they're
going to grow up to be a monster. And yeah,
this is bad medical science and its baddest storiography, working
back words from someone what they did as an adult
and trying to be like, ah, the key must have
been in this shit he wrote when he was seven,
and it's bad and it's always really like, there's every

(47:12):
analysis that tries to look into his childhood from this
standpoint that I've read is bad.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
One of them. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
It's the most detailed. There's a lot of nonsense Freudian
shit in it. But there's a paper I read called
The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Kimler, written in nineteen seventy
one by Peter Lowenberg. I mentioned it earlier. He's an
American psychoanalyst and a historian who My analysis of him
is that as a young man he discovered Freud and
never looked back. And there's a lot of There's a

(47:39):
lot that's good in this paper because he does go
over all of the diary, which is not a thing
I am able to do, is in detail, read everything,
and there's a lot of interesting stuff you get. And
it's also married to like and this is evidence of
his anal fixation. This is evidence of a schizoid personality
that's like, man, none of this is real psych like
we know this is all now, Yeah, And you also

(48:01):
can't psychoanalyze a child from this diary.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
That is no.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
His diary is like most of it is not. Here
are my thoughts and feelings that I'm pouring out. It
is you know, Monday, woke up at X hour, this
went to school. It's very very just nuts and bowls. Yeah,
like you're stretching the term diary here.

Speaker 5 (48:21):
I'm like, no, this is my Daddy's making me write
this right exactly, and so I'm not going to put
nothing deep about my soul in this.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
It's homework and there's so I don't include a lot
of his analysis of this, just because he's going way
too far. But there there are some really good things
that he does make a note of right that are
worth us quoting. And one of this is something that
he writes about Heinrich's opinion of his mother Anna quote.
Little is known about her. Unlike Keebard Himler, she scarcely
receives mention in her son's diary. And I don't think

(48:51):
this is I don't see much evidence that he hated
his mom. I think it's just he doesn't think about
his mom much as a person right like she is
not this is It says a lot about his attitude
towards women, which is consistent for his life. He's not
all that interested in his mother or her influence on him.

Speaker 4 (49:07):
Yeah, that to me is like, if you like, if
you want to do if you want to do fake science.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
Yeah, it like, oh yeah, you actually miss what's really there,
you know, I mean, what's actually really is interesting because
it's not like this is not this is useful, right,
it's useful. But you so looking for Edipie and shit.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
And clear evidence of his psychopathy. Yeah, that's not in
there yet.

Speaker 4 (49:32):
But here's what it is showing you.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
This is interesting, Yes, exactly. So I'm trying to pull
the stuff that is interesting out of this paper without
including a lot of the Freudian shit that I think
is going way too far. But so there are again
a lot of interesting details in here. I'll quote another one.
Heinrich Himler always maintained a high awareness of rank and titles.
He meticulously referred to the correct title and social status

(49:56):
of anyone mentioned in his diary. And this is both
obviously he's being used to do this by his father,
but this is an example of what I said, his
dad passes down as I'm sure his granddad did to
his dad. Yeah, the kind of the kind of things
you need to do to be a social climber, and
one of them is always know who people are, Yeah, exactly,
know who you're talking to. How to refer to them

(50:18):
and who it's worth kind of getting in good with.
And Heinrich is going to be good at this, and
it's I think this is the start of his how
he's a culture to do this?

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Right now?

Speaker 5 (50:27):
That is you, yeah, is somebody who understand Yeah, who's
in a room and who I need to impress?

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Who I don't need to impress. Like that tells us.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Something, And you get a lot people talk a lot about, like, okay,
like kids who come from poor families, which is the
kids who could come from rich families. What are the
different Like, you know, rich parents raise kids in a
way that make them understand money better and how to
keep it better because the parents know how to do that.
And this is kind of the same sort of thing,

(50:55):
right Like the fact that Heinrich is being a culture
to do this is of how his dad is preparing
him to be the kind of social climber that's able
to get as far as he did in the Nazi Party. Now,
another interesting fact from this diary is that we see
in it very little evidence of anti Semitism.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
It's not to say he is anti Semitic as a
little kid. His family is anti Semitic, but in a
normal way for German gentiles at the time. Right, there's
not evidence as a little kid in the way that
there is with like Hitler that he is really obsessed
with this stuff, right, that we don't really see. And
this comports what's in his diary, just because we always
want secondary resources. One of the people who talked about

(51:37):
Heinrich after, you know, when the war started was a
German who had fled to the United States to escape
the Nazi regime, named Hullgarden and Hallgarden. What like fig
realizes as an adult when the Nazis ris to power
that Heinrich Kimler had been in school with him, like
they were classmates. Oh so they went through years of
school together. And so he gives us some interesting details

(51:57):
on Himmler from someone and obviously not a n by
a source, but from someone who is observing him, you know,
as a young kid. He describes his appearance as quote
a child of hardly average height, who was unusually pale
and physically very awkward, with haircut fairly short, and even
then a pair of gold rimmed glasses on his slightly
pointed nose, and who was seen with a quote half embarrassed,

(52:18):
half malicious smile on his face. Now Longwitch continues to
write in his biography of Himler quote. According to Halgarden,
Himler had been a model pupil, liked by all the teachers.
Amongst the boys, he had been regarded as a swat
and been only moderately popular. Hallgarden had a particularly clear
memory of the unhappy figure Himmler cut, much to the
amusement of his fellows in gymnastics. Hatred of the Jews,

(52:41):
Halgarden went on to say, was not something Himmler was
at all associated with at the time. On the other hand,
he said he remembered Heinrich's radically anti French outlook, and
so I think that's just like he was just like
a six He's a nerdy kid. He looks he's like
a weird look. He's not like a handsome kid, and
he's not physy awkward. He does bad in jim you know,

(53:02):
kids make fun of him for that.

Speaker 5 (53:05):
But yeah, yeah, he's the guy that, like, yeah, totally
like your teacher, who I was one for a while
where you're just like, wait, this kid's in my class,
like you just like you just miss him, you know
me because it's like he's not I mean, he turns
in his homework, he does good, but not that good
at the top of the class mine in the upper
twenty percent probably, but not enough that like he super

(53:27):
stands out.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
But like the teachers like hi because he doesn't cause problems,
and the other kids make fun of him because he's
kind of he's kind of physically he's do we look
at a picture of Heinrich Himler. I'm not trying to
be like body shaming the reich sphere of the SS,
but like, he's a nerdy looking guy.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
Yeah, he's a little deep. Yeah he's not.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
He doesn't look like an Aryan superman. Right, And this
is this is this is relevant because it's going to
have a lot of influence on how he why the
SS works the way does, and how he tries to
present himself.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
But it does.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
I think Hallgarten's recollections, along with the diary, make a
very solid case Heinrich is not particularly anti Semitic as
a kid, and anti being anti French matters a lot
more to him as a kid than being anti Semitic, Right,
And the fact that you've got this guy who doesn't
like him, who wasn't biased, being like, yeah, I didn't
see much evidence that he was super racist against the
Jews as a kid. That's probably the case, right, Yeah,

(54:20):
he ain't liked the French though he hates the French.
Oh my god, fuck you Frenchy.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
He's inventing slurs for the French. What a dork now.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Thanks to his father's obsessive involvement in their education, the
Himler boys do very well in school. Heinrich is not
the standout of the family though. His grades are good,
but they're never as good as his older brothers, and
he never makes it to the very top of the class.
He doesn't stand out. Heinrich's mother pushes the boys to
be observant Catholics, and is so insistent on this that

(54:51):
Geppart actually has to force his wife to ease up
on them with the He's like, you're going way too
hard on the Catholicism stuff. We don't need to be
slowed down. And you know they go to church every Sunday.
They're they're diligent about it, but like she wants them
to be. She's she's way more into it than he is.
One of my favorite weird details from The Fresh hour biography,
which is that very older, much older biography, is that

(55:14):
as a kid, Heinrich said his prayers in front of
quote an ivory statue of Christ cut from one big
elephant's tooth.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Just a sign of the era. That's that's a word
you've got cool, I guess all right.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Fresh Hour claims that by age ten, Heinrich could quote
reel off the dates of famous battles. The Saga of
the Nibelungs were his bedtime stories. The wars of the
Middle Ages fuel for his imagination. And this is what
Heinrich's into, while the other the normal thing for boys
to be obsessed with is stories of Native Americans fighting
like the US cavalry.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Right, that is like the boys we talk about this
Hitler's hugely.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Into cowboy novels, right, This German con man named Karl
May that is the big That's the Harry Potter of
its day. It's the major thing that kids are into.
It's their fucking dragon ball z or whatever. If your
kid who grew up when I did, Heinrich is different,
and that he is just he is a nerd for
you know these this Wagner operas, The Ring of the
Nibbe Lungins, which is kind of a precursor to the

(56:16):
Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings takes
a lot from that saga and from like, you know,
stories of the Crusades and these other battles and wars
in the Middle Ages.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
This is what he's obsessed with, right.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
You don't like this?

Speaker 5 (56:28):
This also reminds me of like, as you're talking, like
just how recent this is? Yes, Like this isn't this
is pretty this kind of just happened.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
No.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
For another example of how recent it is, as like
an adolescent, I think from the time he's probably around
like ten or eleven to like his you know, maybe
preteen or teenage years. He regularly attends jiu jitsu classes.
He's into jiu jitsu as a kid, right, because this
is an upper middle class kid in upper middle class
Western kids have been going to karate for foreper you know,
it's not literally karate.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
We got fine, Oh we get it. Say yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Fresh Hour also claims quote. For many months, the boy
tortured himself with attempts to learn the piano, but his
father soon realized that the awkward fingers would not follow
the command of his over eager mind. Most boys are
relieved when their parents agree to liberate for them from
the attention of their music teachers. To Heinra Kimmler, it
was a sad day when he was told that his
hopeless endeavors had come to an end. For years afterwards,

(57:24):
he would sit silently and listen to his elder brother
extracting heavenly tunes from the self same piano which had
defied him. On Sundays, he'd accompanied his brother to the church, where,
to his envy, he was playing the organ for the congregation.

Speaker 5 (57:36):
This is I'm sorry, this is two positive points in
the dad bucket here again, just to have this.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
A lot of daddies ain't got that self awareness to
be black. Son, Son, you're not gonna make it as
a piano player. Stop. Stop. You don't have to keep that, son,
you don't have to keep playing this.

Speaker 5 (57:52):
That's not your thing. Look, you write the stories, you
went to the novels. I'm not judging you about it.
You a great student, son, but this piano just lead
that to your brother.

Speaker 4 (58:02):
Yeah, I'm saying he's better than you.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
Better.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
Look, son, be it. Be good at what you're good at.
You do the ju jitsu. Son, you are an amazing
I stop hitting him, key son, Yeah, yeah you're not.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
This isn't This isn't baby boy.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
And look I need I don't need you to do
don't do this for me, son, like go find something
you good at.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
If only someone in the same conversation with Ringo star
so yeah, that's coming in hot with some Ringo slanmer out.
One of the many similarities between Ringo and Heinrich Kimmler.

Speaker 5 (58:39):
Or Ringo trying to get bars off and the songs
like let them what what Ringo do wrong? I just
I just yes and you and then it was like wait,
I'm a Pete best stand Okay. So now again long
Rich cautions for showers. Biography is a source and this
is again not just because it's outdated, but becau because

(59:00):
we're talking about like this passage really plays up that
he is super jealous of his brother, his brother's beating
much better than him at this and the source for
this primarily is Heinrich's older brother Gebbart, after Heinrich's death,
talking about like I was so good at the piano
and he was. He never gets over the fact that
I wasn't as good he wasn't he could never be
as good as me.

Speaker 4 (59:20):
Maybe there's a degree to which Gebbart's But.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
If that's the case, if Gebart is lying about this,
and either I mean Heinrich did try to play the piano,
definitely and wound up it didn't work out. But if
he's lying about Heinrich always, you know, being super jealous
of his skill, that's just as interesting an insight into
the Himler family dynamics. Either way, if the story's true
or if it's a lie Gebert's telling, it's evidence that

(59:44):
there's a lot of kind of competition and insecurity between
the brothers, right.

Speaker 5 (59:48):
Or yeah, or just how he felt about it, like
I feel like my little brother's jealous of me, right
that as you said.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
That's yeah, I mean normal normal, But it suggests something
about the fami about Heinrich, right, that there is this
competitiveness between the brothers, and that is something that motivates
him as his desire to compete and prove himself against
his older brother. For Shower's book also goes into detail
about the Himmler family's obsession with their ancestors. Describes a

(01:00:15):
shrine in the family apartment that Himmler later named the
Osen zimmer or ancestors room. He tries to get basically
every family and certainly in the SS to have an
ancestors room.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
This is a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Later Heinrich makes a big deal about Lawitch doesn't really
talk about it in his biography. And I think it's
because he later makes this into a shrine thing. I
don't think this is a shrine for his parents. I
think that's Himmler kind of working backwards and trying to say, like, oh,
my father established this practice that we should bring to
the Reich of having an ancestor shrine. The literal description

(01:00:48):
of it is like it's some pictures of like their
grandfather and some things he'd owned, and some things they've
been sent over the years, mementos from family members. It's
a memento cupboard, right.

Speaker 5 (01:00:58):
Says I live in you know, I live in East LA.
There's a friendas everywhere. Yeah, you know, you have your altar.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
It's like it's not like an alter altar.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yeah, And Himler gets super into the occult and will
make this into and I think Himmler is exaggerating what
this was. This is just like a pretty normal thing
for ours to have. So by nineteen fourteen, which is
when the World War one is going to break out.
Heinrich is a promising teenage boy. He's thirteen fourteen years
old this year. He's doing well in school, and he's

(01:01:29):
just a couple of years away from entering the working world.
If he had been a poor kid, he would be
functionally an adult working at this point in time, right.
And the plan is when he in a couple of years,
two or three more years, when he's ready, he'll use
the influence of his godfather to secure him place in
a place in a really good school, and that'll help
him secure a really good job, and he'll elevate the family.

Speaker 5 (01:01:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Unfortunately, for everyone, world events are going to conspire to
stop this future from coming into existence. When Archduke fra
Ferdinand was gunned down in Sarajevo by a crazed Bernard
Montgomery Sanders, Heinrich Himler was on vacation with his family
on the Austrian border. Look, Sophie, the truth has to
get out, you know, someone has to stop him.

Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Listen, time travel has existed for a long time, and
I'm telling you, Bernard Sanders has got around. You know,
he's gotten around, you know, Yeah, he actually he was
actually even the group that signed Franz Ferdinand.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Yeah, the band as well, the band, Yeah they started.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
He signed a band too.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Every time there's a Franz Ferdinand in history, Bernie Sanders
is involved. Bernie did he stab Caesar? You can't prove
he didn't, so he must have. So the initial events
when because Heinrich's on vacation with his family, when the
Archduke gets assassinated and like the chain of events that
leads inevitably to wars start off. He responds to this

(01:02:48):
initial outbreak as just another in like the beginning of
the war, as like just kind of another part of
the day. His July twenty ninth, Diarentry reads Gebbrid's birthday
outbreak and this is his brother outbreak of war between
Austria and Serbia, excursion to Lake Waging.

Speaker 7 (01:03:04):
I mean he's nineteen, yeah, birthday, Austria and Serbia go
to war, We go to the lake, you know, yeah, yeah,
and I imagine like yeah, like that war for him
is as far away as like you know what I'm saying, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
It's initially like he doesn't know what it's gonna be, right, Yeah,
and long Rich, especially because Austria and Serbia, like the Balkans,
they're always shit's always going down there.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
Right, you don't even know like what, yeah, what is
like you don't know what they are?

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
What is Austria hungry? Like where's where's mine at? And
obviously he know, but he knows, but this is a
little for him. It's like it's like you hearing like, oh,
you know, Israel's exchanging missiles with a MASSI That's what
I'm trying to say. Prior to October seventh. Right now,
obviously things are much like everything's been escalated significantly, you know,
with the genocide and what not going on. But like

(01:03:54):
five or six years ago you hear there's another exchange
of missiles, right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
Totally, you know that this.

Speaker 5 (01:03:58):
I was at this event one time, way up in
the mountains in Utah, right, yeah, event with just these
people like fuck off money and like years ago, this
years ago, and then there was this you remember at
what was happening with the Kurds at the Syrian border,
like maybe about like you know, five six years ago
maybe now seven years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Right amos ago.

Speaker 5 (01:04:20):
Yeah, he was actually there and I think about it, right,
So I was talking about it and like I said,
I'm at this event with these very wealthy people. Uh,
and this lady who was clearly like clearly from the regent,
you know what I mean. Like, so we're talking about
the situation and she was like, wait, what are you
talking about? I don't think I heard of that. And
in my head I'm judging her, like, man, see this

(01:04:42):
is what happens.

Speaker 6 (01:04:42):
Man.

Speaker 5 (01:04:43):
You know what I'm saying, You get wealthy. And then
she goes, oh, no, you don't understand. I'm from Bay
Route Yeah. I was like, oh, she was like, I'm
born and raised in Bay. I went like, you're like
your your school bus was blown out, like the windows
were blown out because martyr hit it yesterday. So I'm like, oh,
never mind, I apologize. Carry on jokes on me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
And that's kind of like this is yeah, it's another
Oh these these countries that like, you know, this place
where there's always a conflict, there's a conflict. However, he
goes back kind of later once it because I think
probably within hours, maybe a couple of days, it becomes
clear that this is more severe and he goes back
to his initial entry and he like he erases some
stuff and he underlines the announcement of the outbreak of war.

(01:05:28):
Later in red and he writes the sentence proclamation of
a state of war. Once Germany declares wars, it goes
back to his notes once it becomes clear this is
more severe, and he writes he lists out the things
that are happening as they're happening. Quote number one, Germany
mobilizes the second Army Corps, even the landstorm, which is
like there their national guard type yuyes Yeah. Number two

(01:05:50):
played in the garden in the morning, afternoon as well.
Seven to thirty Germany declares war on Russia. Three attacks
on the French and Russian borders, planes and spies. We
are packed up right away. So you get this what's
so interesting. You get this idea of like starts out
we're playing in the garden and in the morning, in
the afternoon, and then I hear that like Germany's declared war,
and then like there's fighting on the borders already. Uh,

(01:06:12):
there's planes, there's reports of spies. We're packing up, we're leaving,
we're in our vacation. Early.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Things have gotten bad very quickly.

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
You get that it's interest that there's something about that
that's yeah, that's so modern. Yeah, it's like so close,
like you know, I live and not even an eight
minute drive from the Alameda Courthouse where the ice people
that have been tained by ICE are like I can
like I hear when like the smoke, Like I can

(01:06:40):
hear them, you know what I mean. And it's like
you're so I'm going, oh, made coffee, drop soul off
at school. Oh hurd, some martyrs, heard some bombs go off,
you know, saying oh there's some helicopters, you know what
I'm saying. And it's like I should go pick up
my daughter, like you know, like maybe grab her, let
me go pick let me go pick her up, you

(01:07:00):
feel me like, and then it's like you drop her off,
and then me and my wife are like we're going
to march.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
Yeah, we're going to March. So then we leave to
go to you know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:07:07):
Yeah, So just like that's that reality of like or yeah,
like you're scrolling through your feed and yeah, there's there's
a mass starvation on purpose happening, and then the next
one is some sort of joke about you know, Edward Sharp.
You know what I'm saying, is the next thing you
look at it is just something so real about him
saying yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Like yeah, it's super interesting. You very really get that. Yeah,
and it's this is the only member of the Nazi
high command that we have this kind of granular detail on,
like you get there's pieces like there's that famous picture
of like Hitler in Berlin when the Kaiser declares war.
You can see him in the crowd, like you literally
find Hitler. It's a thing he wrote about, and like
that's really interesting for Heinrichle've got almost like a minute

(01:07:46):
to minute list of like what's happening to him as
a kid as the war breaks out. That's so interesting
and it's part of why these episodes there's gonna be
so many of them. We'll try to keep it to
two weeks, but there might be more than four episodes
in those two weeks because we've got to close this
episode out now, prop words, we're over an hour, so
you know you got any pluggables to plug down at
the end there.

Speaker 5 (01:08:06):
Yeah, dude, hood politics, We're prop man. We've been really
trying to step our game up over here. So we
do a Friday tap in which are like, you know,
ten minute things that are uh yeah, just like little
extra thoughts, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
Some of them are you know, a little a little
more about me.

Speaker 5 (01:08:26):
Uh, We're I'm releasing a poetry album, uh about like
the end of the world. So uh, we're gonna be
talking about a lot of that on the tap in
and yeah, man, we've been doing that. Terror Forms back,
the Cold Bruce Back. It's not online yet, but it's
back finally Crase b b.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Finally Doug lot of business lessons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
the Cold Bruce Back, the y Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
And uh. Also, folks, we are currently raising money for
the Portland Bail Fund. If you google donor box one
word Defense Fund PDX fundraiser you can find the fundraiser. Yeah,
that would help a lot if you want to donate
money to the bail fund. They help bail out primarily
homeless people who you know, it helps them get out,

(01:09:21):
it helps them fight their case. You're a lot less
likely to go to prison if you're out on bail
as opposed to locked up. They do not they bail
out anyone with the exception of like domestic abuse clients. Right,
So it's a good fundraiser. They could use your help.
Donor box Defense fund PDX fundraiser. Just google that, it'll
take you right to it. Thank you all so much,

(01:09:41):
Go to Hell.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
I love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit
our website cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube,
new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel

(01:10:05):
YouTube dot com slash at Behind the Bastards

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS