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

In this episode we discuss Himmler's growing belief in the German occult movement, even as he rises to command the SS.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
the baddest of the worst of people history bad Heinrich
Himmler episodesin Rick, It's it's a Tuesday. We don't normally
record on Tuesdays. I never could get the hang of Tuesdays.
How are you doing, prop Jason Petty, our guest host

(00:28):
of Hood Politics, Man, do you get Tuesdays?

Speaker 3 (00:32):
I get Tuesdays, man, because I get to listen to
Behind the Bastards on Tuesdays. It's my I look forward
to Tuesdays. Yes, excuse me.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
Sorry, I guess that's what I am. Now, you you're
the best br I am.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Just hey, guys like you think you want to be homeowners, You.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Think you want to buy.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
A house, and then now you're looking at puddles of
water under your water heater.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I said you had a Tony soprano a moment your
water heater.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yep. Yeah. The upside of having a house is that
you can knock holes in the walls if you want
to to to modify it, or you can paint it
and you don't have to ask your landlord. The downside
is when you inevitably fuck something up doing your own word, Nicoll,
there's no one to call. You just accepted the person
that you have to pay money too.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Exactly. I was, yeah, that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's like I run through all of those moments where
I'm just like, oh shoot, I better call the.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Wait uh huh, better call them me.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
It called them me.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
And then I was like, Okay, how much are the
products YouTube University?

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Do I have a friend?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Like just all the things and then you and then
the trade off of like there's a guy that can
come put it in the thing, come put it in
for like two hundred bucks, but like there's no warranty
with that, there's.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
No Yeah, there's no warranty. There's no way to know
other than like maybe your buddy, hopefully, hopefully your buddy
had a good experience with this guy, because exactly the
way to know that he's exactly bonded by the fuck
whom yes exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
My brother in law goes, hey, I think I got
a friend, and I was like, okay, just tell me
how what your costs?

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Bro?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had that experience more than once
where it's like, Okay, this guy is really really good.
He doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language. Yeah,
but he'll write down on a piece of paper what
it costs and it'll probably work. And I'm like, that
sounds great because the other guy quoted me seven thousand dollars.

Speaker 5 (02:35):
Yeah, I'll just yeah, I just called the like I
called the the certified you know, city permit, like you know,
we'll we'll come in, we'll haul it out, we'll give
you new lines and everything.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
I was like, this is gonna cost how much?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah? Absolutely not Gino Guantoso. Let's just go with the
guy who's absolutely never seen the inside of a government office. Yeah,
I'll assume he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
He has a friend or yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
You know who didn't have a friend named Jorge because
he was a Nazi and also lived in Germany. Not
a lot of Hooges in Germany. Heinrich Himmler. Uh, you
know who we've been talking about for the last two episodes.
We ended part two talking about a vocush mystic named
Guido carl Anton List. Oh, yeah, I showed you letters.

(03:30):
The ghost told him the letters. Yes. Probably so many
people in this episode learned everything they know about ancient
Germans from ghosts who talk to them. That's where we
learned most of what we know about the ancient Germans
from their ghosts. Yes, god, it's so easy. Like being
an archaeologist sounds like a pain in the ass. You

(03:52):
got to go to school for like, what is it,
probably six to eight years I'm guessing you know, something
like that to get your pH d. And then you
gotta be really careful. You got to spend hours just
like brushing dirt away from artifacts. And you can't touch
him with your hands because that'll fuck stuff up. Or
you could just grow out a crazy beard, put on
a weirdo hat and start being like, yeah, some ghosts

(04:14):
told me these are letters.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Hell yeah, because that's way better. Yeah, because it ain't
Indiana Jones. You not like this beautiful college professor that
gets to go on these adventures. No, you are in
one hundred and twenty five degree weather with a toothbrush,
digging miles down and accidentally breaking the greatest discovery in

(04:37):
human history because you brush too hard with a toothbrush.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about Heinrich Schleiman now. But yeah,
so we ended last episode talking about this guy, widow
Carl Anton list He starts going after he you know,
starts talking to the ghosts and getting you know, building

(05:02):
his theories about these ancient aryans. He changes his name,
which is going to be a common thing for all
of these mystics, and he starts calling himself Guido Vaughan
list and the Vaughn. Whenever you see a Vaughn in
a German name like that, it means that they're a
member of the nobility. Now, yeah, Guido's absolutely has no
royal ancestry. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. But the

(05:26):
ghosts that he was talking to are like, oh, dude,
we recognize you're You're the you're the reincarnation of this
twelfth century night, you know, Like, in't that cool good
thing you talk to us ghosts? We know we can
recognize your spirit.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
Right, I'm telling you, m I.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Love that kind of shit.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
These people owe you a thousand dollars because you're royal.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, I know you're special because of
your blood. Nobody ever, know, nobody, nobody who's convinced that
they're reincarnated as ever, Like, yeah, you know, I finally
I saw the ghosts of my spirit, or I saw
the ghost of my ants, and I'm descended from a
seventeenth century chimney sweep in London. He died of the
black lung at age fifteen.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Somebody had to somebody has to be descended to them. Yeah,
you talked to your ancestors. Your ancestors said, Look, dog,
I died at nineteen. I got no wisdom for you.
I was, I don't know nothing. I look, I didn't
live long enough to I don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah. I saw one hundred and fifty of my past
lives and they all died before age nine, of measles. Yeah,
you don't tend to get those guys. Instead, what we
get is yeah. Guido von List, in his book on
Himmler and the Occult, Bill Yen writes about the striking
similarities between von List and Himmler's backgrounds. And I find

(06:44):
this interesting. You're gonna see this with a lot of
these guys like Heidenrich Himler. Guido List was born and
do comfortable middle class circumstances that permitted him opportunities for
daydreaming and for his imagination to create an alternate universe.
Guido's father, Carl Anton List, was a well to do
leather merchant Justice Himmler's fantasies were fueled by his views
of the cold stone walls of berg Truznitz. The fires

(07:06):
of List's later obsession for Nordic paganism were stoked by
a field trip to the catacombs beneath the city of
Vienna at age fourteen. Within these damp and musty sellers,
specifically beneath the old city post office, his tour group
came to an old altar, which he decided or was
told actually originated as a shrine for the worship of Wotan.
And as an adult, he has this like powerful spiritual

(07:28):
He just get so excited because he's fourteen and he's
got a big imagination and he loves thinking about ghosts
and wizards. This kid would be playing D and D
right like if he was around today, he'd have been
into like fantasy literature. But this is the closest thing
he's got, and he's going to chase that high of
like being a kid and being in these catacombs and

(07:49):
his feeling of excitement and not really understanding the world
and seeing something that feels magical. He's going to chase
that the rest of his life as an adult, when
he starts, he builds a tempt to Wotan as an adult,
Like you know, he uses the money he gets from
his books and whatnot and from writing to like build
this temple and he'll hold like torchlit ceremonies in the

(08:10):
dead of night there with other adults who don't have
enough going on in their life, who come from similar backgrounds.
These are not the poor. These are mostly middle class
people who's like lives are kind of boring and they
have enough, They have enough comfort and income and free
time to get bored, right. These are not people who
are laboring in the poison factory all night, like yeah,

(08:30):
waiting through cyanide on a daily basis. People like that
don't get bored enough to think of stuff like this.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Yeah, boredom is a sign of privilege in right.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, some this kind of boredom is leads.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
You know, there's the boredom of like, well, my job
is the same thing every day. But there's not the
boredom of like, oh, if only I were an ancient
warrior fighting for or you know, worshiping Wotan in the woods.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, and the big bearded guy invented the name Wotan.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
No, no, no Wotan is I mean, this is a
of Norse mythology. There was like a pagan god that's Wotan.
Like he's not inventing all of this out of whole cloth.
He's inventing the details out of whole cloth. Right. He
reads enough to them like there was this guy and
you know this is something. You know, ancient Germanic people
you know, worshiped this god. He learns a couple of

(09:18):
facts and he invents the rest. Because we don't know
all that much about like the actual especially when this
and this is especially true when you're talking about like
the ancient like Celts, like the Dramidic faith and whatnot
that the Romans mostly exterminated. There's very little we actually
know historically compared to I mean not to say that,
especially when we're talking about Wotan. There's there is some

(09:39):
stuff that we know, but compared to what these guys
claim to know, what's actually verifiable is quite small, right,
because they need to make up a lot more, right,
because there's just you know, it's not exciting enough on it.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
So I tell you, I just I didn't know, like
the Norse had a Wu tang.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yes, yes, the Wu Tang clan originate from ancient Germany.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
The god Wotang.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Ain't nothing to fuck with me. Actually, these guys kind
of are fucking with him because they're largely creating like
what they think Wotan worship should be like. And one
thing I found interesting because Liszt has some writings where
he'll admit that, like, as an adult, all of these
like torch slit ceremonies in the in the woods at
this temple that he holds, none of them get him back.

(10:25):
He's always chasing that feeling he had as a fourteen
year old, and I want to return grab this guy
through the mists of time and shake and be like
it's because you were fourteen. Yes, everything was more exciting
than you were a child.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yes, it's the law of diminishing returns. And nostalgia. Yes, everyone, nostalgia.
You always remember it better.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
We always have. When I get into this feeling, I
just watch Happy Gilmore for the four hundredth time, right, like,
it's all you got a lot. Hell, it's a lot
of healthier than creating a religion.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
It's all you got to do, man, Yeah, just put
on an old record.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Build some wars like man, Yeah, chill out there is
with guys like List, guys you know, and List is
not on the most evil side of He doesn't kill anybody,
right Like, a lot of what he's writing is pretty racist,
but he's not, Like he doesn't wind up like leading
the Nazi party, right Like, he's not actively killing people.

(11:22):
This is a guy who, if he had grown up
at a different period of time, might have been satisfied just
with fantasy novels and role playing games, right Like, you
give this guy access to World of Warcraft and maybe
we save the world a lot of.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Troubleesh man, just just a century too late.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, And it's interesting to me how similar they're because
these guys are all from the middle class. They're all
dudes whose dads do pretty well. Uh. They also a
lot of them work as journalists. Right, List is a
that's how he makes his money. He's like a journalist.
He writes for outdoor magazines and that's what funds his
occult passions, like you know, him building this temple and everything.

(12:00):
And over time as he's like, you know, doing this
kind of writing on the ancient Germans and his free time,
he's occasionally publishing stuff like that. He works up his
theory about a group of ancient German priests called the Armanen,
and these were priests of Wotan whose powers had allowed
the German tribes to defeat Rome. Right when during kind

(12:21):
of the early stage of the Roman Empire, Rome gets
as far as like this kind of chunkle western Germany
before there's this catastrophic battle in Tudeberg Forest where three
I think it's three legions get surrounded and ambushed and
just massacred. We don't know exactly how they got massacred,
but they got massacred, right, and this kind of stops

(12:41):
Roman expansion into that part of Europe. And it's so
it's a very big thing for these As this German
nationalism is developing, this becomes one of the first things
that's like, oh, this is one of the earliest achievements
of German civilization, as we beat the Romans. You know,
even as ancient barbarians, we still the greatest empire in
the world. And List's explanation is it's because we had

(13:06):
these wizards on our side, priests of Wotan. And this
he's making up the Armanin is a complete creation of
his right, like these are he is inventing these. Now
he's invent there's some kind of things that their name
is based on, but they did not exist. He creates
them and part of like for an example of how
directly this is just nerd shit, He's he explains a

(13:28):
lot of his theories for the first time in a novel. Right,
he writes a fiction novel about the armanin that he's like,
but this is basically what happened for real, this fiction novel.
This isn't just like me coming up with something because
I think it's cool. Right, this is and it's worth
noting list A lot of the primary sources that he
is basing his fiction on are the same things Tolkien

(13:51):
is working on, all right. They're inspired by very similar myths,
and they do very different things with them, right, totally
List for list. It has to be real. He has
to be the reincar nation of this ancient spirit. It
has to all be true. It doesn't matter token being
a basically healthy guy psychologically. Yeah, it's like, no, man,
I'm writing a book about elves.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
That's dope.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I just think it's cool and interesting.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Man.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, there's like some dwarves, you know, orcs, it's fun.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Bro.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah yeah, listen list can't do that.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
I still like, you know, where I be able to
like rewrite the timeline, you know, get my uh get
my low key on. You know what I'm saying, since
we're talking Norse, I just feel like the Germans, like
you had a chance to identify as an indigenous community

(14:41):
in the way that people of color identify as an
indigenous community, you know, like you had there was a
there was an invading conqueror outside for us to remove
your life.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
And it's awesome. You guys beat their asses and that's
pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (14:57):
Like you know what I'm saying, Like you could have been,
like you could have been all.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
What says something about how hard these these ancient warriors were.
And we call them Germans. That doesn't mean that they
correspond directly to what like German knew them, right, But
like these ancient these like Germanic tribes, it was not
uncommon for Rome to send a whole big ass army
three leges of the size. Of course they have them
wiped out, and then they would come up with an
army twice as big and send them back in. And

(15:24):
why that's how they won most of their wars, whole
army gets wiped out, you get another. That's what made
Rome great is the ability to lose massive numbers of
men to be like fuck it, let's get some more.
They never do that with the Germans, right Like, that's
how badly like this, this fucks them up so badly
that like they're they're almost like traumatized from it. Right

(15:44):
Like that shows you how like how hard these sons
of bitches were yeah so uh yeah from this kind
of legitimate pride in this cool chapter of their past.
He starts inventing a bunch of mythology and he writes
this novel, and the novel becomes very pop with a
lot of these this like growing Volcish movement, you know
in Germany, a lot of these again like middle aged

(16:06):
middle class and younger middle class guys who want to
feel special, like they're a part of something ancient and cool.
This like this gives them something to grasp onto. And
there's there's a lot of sort of like tacit support
from the state who is desperately trying to build a
sense of German nationalism, which is otherwise very new, the
sense of being German. No were Bavarians and Prussians and

(16:27):
YadA YadA, YadA yah. Yeah, so like that's all important too. Yeah,
Like Himmler, List is raised Catholic, but he breaks, like
Himmler with the faith in his early life, right, he
rejects Catholicism for this idiosyncratic version of paganism that happens
to mesh very well with far right politics. And List

(16:48):
is going to be one of the guys that Himmler
is reading as a young man, and one of the
guys he's going to follow this path in a very
similar way. The year after he graduates from college, Heinrich
Himmler joins another Frei Corps unit. This group is called
the reichs Krieg Flag that just means like the reich
War Flag, right, And it's headed by a veteran of

(17:09):
Germany's elitched trench fighting units, like the original Stormtroopers from
World War One. And this guy's name is Ernst Rome,
and Rome is Rome is Hitler's street fighter in the
early days of the party. You've heard of the brown Shirts.
Rome creates them. Basically, he is building them out of
a lot of these like it's essentially a Frei Core

(17:29):
unit from the start, and Rome, like all of these Nazis.
He's a bigot, he's a monster, He's a horrible person.
He's also legitimately scary, Like you would not want to
fight this man in a bar like Ernst Rome will
fucking gut you. He is a scary, scary man. He
stabbed people to death, right like he's we're talking the
kind of close combat that almost doesn't happen anymore. And yeah,

(17:52):
that's easy, yeah like these and so he's useful to
the party, but he's also never control because he is
so tough. He's not one of these guys. He likes
Hitler to an extent. He obviously is willing to work
under Hitler, but he is not He doesn't worship Hitler
and the way that Hitler really needs to be worshiped

(18:14):
in order to trust somebody. Rome is always a little
into business for himself, right, So he and Himmler become
fast friends, and I think it's probably more accurate to
say that they become a They have a mentor mentee relationship. Himmler,
this kid who never goes to war, is never blooded
in combat, idolizes Rome because he is the warrior that

(18:34):
Himmler wishes he could be and he's charismatic. All of
these other hard as nails combat veterans. Yeah, respect Ernst
Rome and listen to him. And so he worships the
ground this guy walks on and Rome likes being idolized. Now,
another thing you should know about Ernst Rome is that
he's gay. And this is a significant factor in his life.

(18:55):
And he's not totally open about it, but it's like
an open secret on the far right. A lot of people.
Hitler knows pretty early on that Rome is gay, and
you know, it's one of those things. People are just
too scared of Rome to usually make a much problem
about it.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, you love to see a gay dude that could
beatcho ass yo.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Say, Yeah, that's kind of how he gets by, right, Like,
that's that's part of it. Himmler may have. It's unclear
if or when he knew, because it becomes it gets
like published by the news in thirty one. Is there's
a good chance Himler never realizes this about Rome because Himler,
it doesn't like, I mean, he's probably a virgin until
his late twenties and he's a register general, right, he

(19:38):
just wouldn't pick up on this. Yeah, And it's the
kind of thing. People who are more experienced to know
more about the world. These like older and kind of
more mature Nazis, they know they pick up on the clues.
I don't think Himmler does. And it's through this there
there are some people who like will theorize that, oh,
maybe maybe Roman Himmler had sex, maybe Rome like groomed him.

(19:59):
I just don't. There's not any evidence of this, and
I think it's just people because of you know, Rome's homosexuality.
There's a lot of conspiracy theories. He's one of the
reasons why when right wingers will say, like, oh no,
the Nazi Party like they were homosexuals, they were all like,
that's part of their evil. Right, they're focusing on this
one guy who gets killed pretty early on right. But

(20:19):
he's a reason why there's this book called I Think
the Pink Swastika that's trying to argue that, like, no,
like the Nazi Party and the gay movement are fundamentally
tied together. Nonsense, the Nazis viciously it's a right way
a modern right wing, okay, strain of bullshit right because
the reality, of course is that the Nazis targeted and

(20:39):
murdered queer people of all kinds, put them in camps.
You know, this was a part of the Holocaust, was
the murdering of queer people in Europe. But at this
stage in the game, a guy like Rome is useful
enough that you know, this is able to get by
and obviously he's gonna get killed pretty quickly, as we'll
be talking about. But yeah, through this relationship, whatever the

(21:02):
kind of details of it are, Himmler starts attending social
events for the Nazi Party, right Rome invites him. That's
kind of how he gets into these things. And so
he joins this Frei Corps unit run by Rome, the
Reichskrieg for that flag first, and then a few months
later he joins the NSDAP. Right like, he gets into
the party proper, and this is in is going to

(21:22):
be in like nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty three
is when all of this is happening, and you know,
Himmler comes to idolize Hitler as well, and as he'd
been drawn to Rome, he's drown to the coterie of
old soldiers who have kind of consolidated themselves around Hitler.
These include a lot of famous warriors, including a former
fighter Ace, the guy who took over the Red Baron's

(21:44):
squadron once he gets shot down. Hermann Gering, as well
as the World War One general Eric von Ludendorf, who
himself wrote anti Semitic tracts of Volkish political theory. Ludendorf
is writing a lot of stuff that's kind of a
more racist version of some of the stuff that List
is writing. His is more focused on like the Jews
as the ancestral enemy of the Germans and Freemasonry. But

(22:06):
Ludendorf is also a Volcish writer, you know, in addition
to having been the former commander of the German armed
Forces during World War One. It didn't go well. So
Himmler shows up at a church in Lanchut to register
with a local Nazi party office and join the party officially.
And the guy at the desk that day taking registrations

(22:27):
was the regional party chief for the area, another dude
named Gregor Strausser. Now we haven't talked about the Straussers,
because there's Gregor and there's his brother, Otto, his younger brother,
and they are Yeah, the Strassers are important because they
are Again, the right wing today will accuse the Nazis
of being socialists, right, because socialist is in the name

(22:49):
of the party name, and the tiny germ of truth
that the using is the basis is that these two guys,
the Straussers, were members of what you could call the
left flank of the early Nazi party. This is before
the party gets into power. And what's happening here is
that the Communists are also growing in the years that
the Nazis are growing, and the Nazis recognize that they

(23:10):
need to be able to message to the working class,
to these union guys who have been sort of like
the base of the communist party. So we need to
have some messaging about how we're going to help workers,
and we're going to like, you know, make sure you
get vacations, and like, oh, these these these Jews are
actually hurting you, the laboring class, and we're going to
take what's theirs and we'll give it to you and

(23:30):
we'll make your lives easier. So that you need to
have some sort of messaging to the laboring classes that
that can kind of mimic some of what the Communists
are promising, and not Owen gregor Strausser. Are those guys, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, not not not familiar at all, but I knew.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
I'm mega communism, yeah right and such.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, I just like I realized like where I remembered it.
It was a what was that book? Death, Death of Democracy?
That's why that name was Like then they was talking
about when I was talking about, like, yeah, the the
left flank or just borrowing the language of you know,
leftists or communist thinking, I'm like, I have I experienced

(24:10):
that like in my like my church background, you know,
cause like I come from such a different tradition than
sort of the modern you know, American conservative. But they
would say stuff like, you know, change the culture, you
know what I'm saying, and like and when I think,
when you say that to me, I'm thinking, you know,

(24:33):
the ten ten points of the Black Panther. You know
what I'm saying, at ten points of black mother, that's
changing the culture.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
I'm thinking when you're saying you know that, I'm thinking
beloved community, the twenty five points of beloved community that
doctor King talks about. So like I thought we were
saying the same thing. But it's just like no, it's
just a way to message. Yeah, man, if you're not careful.
You know, you find yourself standing next to the wrong rebel.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, that's right, And like the Strasser are useful in
this early period where the party is trying to build momentum.
They're not gonna last long either, like Rome, They're going
to get purged. They do. They are actual believers, right,
Like this is like with a lot of our like
maga communist stuff. I think they are just grifters. The
Strasser brothers really do believe what they're saying, which is

(25:17):
why they're they're going to like break with the party
when they realize that Hitler is using them. You know,
they're not good people. I'm not saying that, but they
do believe what they're saying, right, Yeah. So in nineteen
twenty three, though, Auto Strausser is a big man in
the Nazi Party, and he and Himler wind up establishing
a relationship because they've get a shared interest in chemistry.

(25:39):
Himmler's interested in chemistry in school. Auto is I think
a pharmacist, and so they bond too. And what you're
seeing here is Himmler's got this kind of instinct for
CosIng up to and getting friendly with and building a
friendship almost in like this mentor mentee way with these
men who are more prominent in the party, who are

(26:00):
going to give him access to higher levels of the party.
This is something he's really good at. He's got like
an instinct for it now. Heinrich's brother, Gebbart, also joins
the Nazi Party, and both men are present in the
party in November of nineteen twenty three when Hitler incites
the Munich Beer Hall push. There's a picture of both
of them at the time that shows Himmler and his

(26:21):
brother standing awkwardly around the barbed wire fence erected around
the War Ministry in Munich. In his book, Willie Frishauer
describes the brothers as looking like awkward children playing dress up.
And yeah, Sophie's going to show you the photo. You
can see you can see Heinrich there, he's the one
holding the flag, right and he yeah, he just looks

(26:41):
like he looks like a.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
Little boy, little dark yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, like this little boy dressing like an adult. It's
so interesting to me just you can really you can
really see that like this is cos playing to a degree.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
You know, like this is the first time as many
times as I've like it was in school or my
own reading, like thought about the moments leading up to
the Puts for sure, and then ultimately to the Nazi war.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
I've never been able to wrap my brain around.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Besides just deep seated self hate and racism, like how anybody?

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Like why? Like why? Bro?

Speaker 4 (27:19):
Like what do you? What are you doing? Dog? Like
you don't know? This shit is crazy?

Speaker 3 (27:23):
But like this was the first time I ever thought about, Well,
if you're twenty three and you're meeting these these dudes
who've been to war, you know, they talk, they talk
in politics, culture revolution. We're finn overthrow the government, like
you tell, you tell, you know, twenty one year old
me listening a rage against the machine. We're gonna go

(27:43):
overthrow the government. Hell yeah, you know what I'm saying.
So like I've never saw it as like exciting, you
know what i mean from like a human perspective, you know,
Like I'm just saying, it's like a racism and genocide
with standing. You know what I'm saying, just the idea
of being like young you twenty three, you kind of

(28:05):
a dork. You know, you meet these people you interested
in chemistry, They talking po They every time you have
an idea, they don't want up to you because they
don't ban through it.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
You got this dude who's been a war, who kills
somebody with a knife.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
It's like, amn, Like, yeah, I'm gonna go to the
bar with these fools like this the dopest shit ever,
you know what I'm saying, Like, I never thought about
it like that until right now.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah. Yeah, Like that's I think that's such an important
point to notice, Like what a chunk of these guys.
There's the chunk that are the traumatized veterans, you know,
who are like angry and broken and really good at violence.
But there's also a huge amount of the fuel is
guys like Himmler, These kids who are too young to
fight and desperately want to prove themselves and this is

(28:47):
their opportunity to feel like the men they idolized and
the war they missed out on, you.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Know, and they're cool those dudes. Yeah cool, the dudes
are cool.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
They got and I'm wearing the same uniform they are.
It's like, yeah, guys who love going out and dressing
up it, wearing the body armor and carrying the gun
and like you know what, running around doing like the
milicious shit, right because it lets them feel like these
guys that they never got to be. But they're like, oh,
if it hadn't have been for you know, my knee
or whatever, having a kid too young, I would have
I would have been a great He would have been

(29:17):
a Navy seal, you know. Yeah. So Himmler's there for
the push, which does not work out, and it serves
as his baptism of fire in a way, although he
is not under fire. He's described you'll run into a
lot of like kind of casual histories that will be
like he carries the Nazi flag during the push, and
that's not really true. There's a famous flag that like

(29:39):
during you know, at the part of the march when
they get fired on, is near Hitler and it gets
like the blood of some of the guys who dies
on it, and that flag is like sacred to the Nazis, right,
it's their battle. It's literally the blood of their martyrs
is on it. Himmler is carrying the flag for Rome's
Freikorps unit, and he is not present for the actual shooting,
for any of the actual like deadly violence. The whole

(30:02):
thing falls apart while he is elsewhere. He and his
brother don't even get arrested, like when they're when the
authorities come and break up the area where they are,
where the barricades are, like they're not even worth taking
into custody because they're just kids, you know, Like the
cops like just get out of here.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, you know, yeah, look listen as as as a
kid who've been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Like sometimes you you real thankful for that cop that's
like get out of your kid.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
And that's that's that's what happens to Himler. But also
because he's there, he's now an old fighter, right, he's
one of the party vanguards. He gets a lot, he
gets credit. He gets a lot of valor, credit like honestly,
a lot of stolen valor for like being one of
the guys who's there, even though he's not there for
anything like serious. You know, he's just kind of standing

(30:52):
around awkwardly with a flag in a uniform. Now there
are consequences for the party. In the immediate wake of
the failed push, the Nazi Party is banned. Hitler and
his lieutenants are put in what you'd call the luxury
prison for his part. Himmler's history with the party makes
it hard for him to find work, but the event
also serves to strengthen his ties, especially with Ernst Rome,

(31:15):
who he visits in prison. In general, his great talent
in this period is finding men who are he can't
get to the fewor right. Hitler is unreachable to him,
but he can find guys who are close to the
fewer and he can get to them, and that brings
him closer to the center of the party. And these
guys really seem to trust him. And so because he's
out and he's free during this awkward period where the

(31:38):
Nazi Party's outlawed and a lot of its top people
are behind bars, Himler is going to be really useful
to those folks right, because he's able to move freely.
He's one of the guys who's still on the outside,
so we can use him. Now. Strausser is also free,
and because the Nazis are illegal, he helps to create
a new far right party that's like a front for

(32:00):
the Nazi Party but not technically the Nazis, and he
gets elected to the Bavarian Parliament and Himmler becomes basically
his secretary. After this point, and as Strasser rises and
rises through the party and takes on more and more duties.
Himmler takes over his old duties and he starts he's
helping to He's basically put in charge of building and
expanding this front party for the NSDAP in bavarias stealthily,

(32:24):
and he's in charge of propaganda. After a while, he
writes to a friend in August of nineteen twenty four,
I have an enormous amount to do. I am in
charge of organization and expansion of Lower Bavaria at all levels.
Given all the work, there's never a moment to think
about finding the time to write a letter. And like,
I bring this up because he's writing this in a letter, right,
He's humble bragging like I don't even have time to

(32:46):
write letters to you anyway, Enjoy the letter, you know,
like he's trying to he's big leaguing him right, And
that's a real thing for Heinrich, cause he's always kind
of bragging about how much he's doing and how important
he is. He expressed frustration that he was fighting what
seems to be a losing battle to try and spread
the Nazi party, you know, during this period of time

(33:08):
where it's illegal. But he also expresses confidence that the
seeds that the Vulcush movement was sowing would bloom in
the end, and he was sadly correct. The volksher Block,
which is his party, that's this Nazi front group, equals
the Social Democrats and local Bavarian elections later that year,
that December, Hitler is released from prison and the Nazi
Party gets unbanned. He's able to reassemble the NSDAP in

(33:32):
nineteen twenty five. He's still banned from public speaking for
a while, and the ban is a little different in
each state. It lasts in Bavaria until nineteen twenty seven,
I think in Prussia until nineteen twenty eight, So he's
able to speak in certain states but not others for
a while. And during this period of time where he's
muzzled or partly muzzled, he needs mouthpieces who can travel

(33:53):
to the places he can't and give speeches in order
to like draw crowds and build the party. That's how
they're recruiting is by having these public events. We pay
for the beer. You come, you showed it up, you
listen to some guy talk, you joined the party. You
hand him a couple of bucks, right, like that's that's
and Himmler becomes one of the most reliable speakers, right.

(34:14):
He sent all around Bavaria recruiting new members at these
local party gatherings. Yeah. You know who else helped build
the Nazi party?

Speaker 6 (34:23):
Oh jeez, is Christ Robert No, no, sob It might
be I G.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Farbin. You know it might be uh Hugo Boss. Yeah,
Hugo Boss advertise on the podcast Hugo Boss. We're not
like that anymore, this Christ and we're back. Oh yeah.

(34:49):
A lot of people don't know how critical Adidas tracksuits
were to the birth of the Nazi parties.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
What were they gonna wear at the beer holes?

Speaker 2 (34:58):
That's right, that's right. You know, a track suit, that's
the classic. Oh god, I could go for a tracksuit.

Speaker 4 (35:05):
Wow. They're never not right. That's the hard part.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
I know, they got all kind of attachments to them,
but they're never it's all.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
They're never not the right choice.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
They're never not the right choice. I used to have
a beautiful one. I got it in Istanbul and it
was a knockholoys. It set a dotus in trouble.

Speaker 4 (35:24):
I love that like cigarettes the whole time.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
It lasted like six weeks. Before it tore apart because
it was not well stitched. It was perfect, so the
private Heinrich Himler, a book written with the help of
Katrina Himmler, which used was based on the letters that
Heinrich and his wife sent each other over the entire
course of their marriage, summarizes this period in his career

(35:47):
as he's traveling around Germany giving speeches. Between nineteen twenty
five and May nineteen twenty six alone, he addressed twenty
seven different meetings in Lower and Upper Bavaria and another
twenty in Westphalia, Hamburg, Mecklenburg and Schliceswig, Holes nine and elsewhere.
In his incessant travel commitments, he was no different from
other party functionaries. In nineteen twenty five to twenty six,
Joseph Goebbels was also tirelessly on the road, speaking all

(36:09):
over Germany and supporting local national Socialist groups. In April
of nineteen twenty six, Gobels even came to Bavaria on
a lecture tour in the afternoon with Himmler and Lanshut.
Goebels noted in his diary on April thirteenth, and he continued,
Himmler a good fellow, very intelligent. I like him, so again,
he's really good at getting make it seeming likable and

(36:31):
non threatening. That's key to these guys who are a
step or two away from Hitler, and that's how he's
that's really the key to his success as a good
hanging time. He's a good hang for certain people who
are just a little closer than he is to power. Now,
you'll not be surprised prop to hear that heinrich Himler's

(36:51):
early years of career success with the Nazi Party did
not make him any less weird around women. He's really Yeah,
during this period of time in his early twenties where
he's starting at the party, he writes a lot of
really weird shit about women. There's one diary entry, and

(37:12):
that's why I like that that article by Lowenberg that
I read to you that like Freudian guy analyzing his
diary entries. There's a lot of nonsense in there where
he's like, ah, this is evidence of Himmler's anal fixation
or a schiz out person, and that's all nonsense. That's
just like debunked psychiatric bullshit from the last century. But
it quotes a lot of things that are diary entries

(37:33):
of his that I that are really really valuable, and
it talks a lot about his weird issues with women,
and obviously it draws conclusions about where that those issues
came from that I don't agree with, but the issues
themselves are undeniable, and that part is really interesting. And
one diary entry, Himmler concludes that all women can be
divided into three groups. The weak mode you prepared myself

(37:58):
you need to break.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
That's like the blacks sentence where I'm just like, oh God,
when you say the blacks and the sentence, the sentence
is over, like there's nothing else you could say after that.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
All women fall into three groups, right.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, start you right there? Oh boy, stop you right there? Boy,
what's you finish say? Is gonna be dumbest ship?

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Okay, I think your problem is you've met three women exactly.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
So what does he say? All women?

Speaker 2 (38:24):
All women can fault can be divided into three groups.
There's the weak mother, brutal eye, victimized by a brutal father,
who must be protected. There's the wife comrade, who is
basically a man, right, this is like a wife who
can do things. And then there's the goddess or the
flawless mother as seen by a child in their infancy. Right,

(38:46):
that's it. That's all women, Heinrich, You really have a
I have a great understanding. Yeah, oh he would he
would have you know what, I don't. He wouldn't have
even started, and he would have fallen for all of them.
This would be a guy who would streak toither the
ten grand to join Andrew Tate's inner circle.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
You know, Yeah, he'd be a part of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
He is such a he is very like strong in
cell vibes coming off of this kid.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
He is three. And then there's the goddess.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
But then there's the goddess. The flawless mother is seen yeah,
by the child in their infancy.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
Oh my god, Wendy Peppercorn.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
You kind of catch there's because Himler doesn't write about
his mother much in the diary. He doesn't write about
his dad being abusive. But from that I kind of think, Okay,
so your dad was probably smacking around your mom as
a kid and it fucked you up, right, Like, why
else would that be something you would conclude? Yeah, divide
like womanhood into those groups. So within days of writing this,

(39:44):
like a few days after that entry, he quotes his
maternal grandmother as having given him this advice on picking
a wife. Quote, one should buy the cow straight out
of the stall, not young girls who dance around until
they get a man, that.

Speaker 4 (39:59):
Is, grandma.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Boy, Yeah that's what your grandma.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
No, the Jayson.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
You don't want one of them loose women out there
selling everything you didn't seen everything you don't they didn't
already been tested.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
You don't want that test drive too many time.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
You want to buy that cow right out of the stall.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, you don't want a floor model. Now, you don't
want want any floor model. You want to tell him
go get it from the back. I want the one
for the back.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
Okay, awful, thanks Grandma.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
You're not supposed you're supposed to listen to grandma until
it gets to that.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
You know, sometimes you gotta cut grandma off. Maybe take
away jim. Yeah, yeah, you know, okay, Grandma.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
All right, Grandma, like you you need something from the store.
I'm about to go to the store. You only pick
up I got a bounce, Yeah, I pick up your medicine.
I drop off your medicine to night, grandma.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
So he continues to flirt poorly throughout this period. He
writes about a bunch of crushes that he has, but
none of them seemed to go anywhere. In letters to
a friend, he writes of his frustration at the traditional
engagement period, right this point in time after you're engaged
to be married, before you get married, which he defines
as a stagnant time, and which quote the fighting and

(41:04):
wooing are over. Yet one only possesses a part of
her spirit and her body not at all a lot
in that right, I.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
Got got it, but I ca smashed. That's not right.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, I can't get in there yet. Yeah, I only
have a part of her spirit. I don't own her
body yet. Now there's no fighting and wooing to do,
Like we never wooed anyone, Heinrich, Hen even know what
you're talking about?

Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, which one third of the women does this work with?

Speaker 3 (41:30):
This will fall into bro now as somebody who I mean,
I was engaged but like an hour and a half,
like we got married that day. But that being said,
there's a lot to do during an engagement, Like there's
a lot going on. You still don't know that woman?
Ain't nothing wrong with you? Still like getting a notice
and let me get off myde he's ridiculous as obviously it's.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
One of those things where like he's wrong. How much
time should we spend pointing out how Heinrich Himmler's wrong about. Yeah,
like lots of really man, right, right, do we need
to argue with the dead Nazi? Yeah? So in nineteen
twenty seven, he finally meets the woman who Wo had
become his wife and the mother of his some of

(42:15):
his children, Margas Seagroth. Like sie G r Oth, she
was born Marga Boden on September ninth, eighteen ninety three,
so she's seven years older than Heinrich, which I find interesting. Wow,
despite his previous statements about buying a cow straight out
of the stall, he falls for Marga even though she
has been married before. Right, I told you she's born

(42:36):
Marga Boden, And when he meets her, she's Margus Seagroth.
She has been married before in nineteen twenty and you
know it didn't work out. And on paper, Marga is
exactly the kind of worldly, career focused woman that Heinrich
claimed was not worth settling down with starting in World
War One. She's a nurse in field hospitals. Right, she

(42:59):
is closer to the front and combat than heinrich himself.
She's close enough where there's like a danger of being
hit by like arrant shells. Right, She's hearing the gunfire
and the and the artillery, and she's dealing with men
who have just been pulled off the line after being
grievously injured. So like she is more of a veteran
than he is.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
So at this point, now, at this point, I'm like,
I am grossly uh hypothesizing here, but knowing that about her,
she like, Oh, I see why she like him because
she could bully his little soft ass y.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
I kind of I wonder because that it doesn't seem
like that since I don't fully understand the relationship. I'm
gonna tell you that right now, prop I Other than
they're both equally, they're both the same kind of racist,
Like that's actually all we know of it. But yeah,
well we know a lot. Well, I'll go through it.
I'm just having trouble for any conclusions, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
I just feel like somebody who was pulling bodies out
of the front line, can soft can can suss out
a yellow belly, right, Like he ain't go be a problem.
I'm like, maybe he's not gonna book. Like maybe she's like,
I'm not gonna I'm not scamming this guy. But it's like, listen,
I'm gonna be able. I ain't gonna have to be
this subservient because he ain't got it in it, so I'll.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
Be able to live my life.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
You know. I think that is a part of it, because,
as I'll say, she always she always has a degree
of autonomy from him. Now, some of that's because he's
cheating constantly and doesn't want to be around, but she
gets something out of the bargain too. I don't know,
it's weird. The relationship is a little hard for me
to to kind of parse out here. In nineteen twenty three,

(44:35):
she got a job as the head nurse of a
private Berlin clinic that has her father part owned. So
like everyone in the story, she's also a nepo baby.
She's into homeopathy, right, She's like a homeopathic nurse. She
likes alternate medicine. Right, she's into like essential RFK junior
shit exactly. She's so all of these people, none of
they don't change from century to century. They're always the

(44:58):
same kind of person. Yeah, Now there's a reason there
are good reasons why, even though again on paper, this
is not the kind of woman he had talked about
wanting to fall for, there's also some very obvious reasons
why he's drawn to her. She's from the same upper
middle class strata as him, right, she's socially acceptable, her
family has money, and she's blonde haired and blue eyed, right,

(45:21):
which Himmler is not. Right Himler is obsessed with Aryan
racial theory, and he knows he doesn't match. He knows that,
like he's not as pure Nordic as he wants to be,
but she is right, like, she's clearly got the Nordic genes,
as you know, I'm not talking about in actual terms

(45:41):
of genetic science. That's of course, this is all nonsense.
But from his perspective, right, she's closer to the ideal
than he is, and that's a selling point for Himler, Marga,
and Heinrich meet in September of nineteen twenty seven on
a train ride from Burke deess Gotten to Munich. Marga
had been on vacation. Burke de Gotten is the ounta
in town where Hitler has his eagles Nest retreat, so

(46:03):
she's there on vacation because it's like a resort town,
and Heinrich is visiting for work, right because Hitler's there
a lot of the time, and so like a lot
of party business gets done there. So on the way
back they meet and they hit it off. And despite
her greater life experience, Marga is just as much of
a fascist as her husband, as this passage from the
private Heinrich Kimmler summarizes. Because this is kind of this book,

(46:27):
you can read a lot of their letters to each
other in their entirety, but it also kind of summarizes
like a lot of their communications as we know them. Obviously,
we don't know what they said in private. We just
know what they wrote each other. But that's a lot
more than you have about most people from this period. Quote.
They agreed in many areas, for example, their common rejection
of democracy, their hatred for Das system Berlin, their hatred

(46:50):
of Jews, whom they labeled Jewish rabble, and their misanthropy
how false and bad humans are. That's from Marga. They
were soon dreaming of life in the country together, not
only because they want to to supplement Himmler's modest party
salary through their own venture raising animals, and vegetables, but
also because this corresponded to the Folcish idolization of a
return to the soil. The beautiful, pure home that they

(47:12):
wanted to establish was supposed to be a secure castle
and a place to keep the filth of the outside
world at bay. So they're both kind of into this
tradwife bullshit, you know, like they're and Margo's really into this,
this idea of like, let's escape from the city and
build ourselves a fortress where we can keep the filth out.
Other people are awful, you know, Yanity is terrible, good one.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
It wasn't for the fascism.

Speaker 6 (47:37):
Hard relate, right, Like, I'm like, fortress, keep people away.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
I just want to keep people like this away.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, And I'm like, how about you stay Like.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Fortunately you can't, uh yeah, you have to just deal
in the world, right. And but like that's what they're both.
They're both racists, they're both missing thro, they're both fascists.
You know, that's fundamentally why this relationship works. The very
first letters between the couple have been lost to time,
but in later letters both alluded to their relationships starting

(48:11):
with constant, furious arguments, including at least one in which
they nearly had a fist fight, and we both know
Margao would have won that. Yeah oh yeah, yeah yeah,
not a question in my mind. And letters we have
from November nineteen twenty seven, we get some sense of
what won heinrich over. Marga tells him his constant stomach
issues are just the result of his heroic workload. She adds,

(48:33):
one works to be able to pay taxes, at least
that's fun taxes, and then adds, I read Ludendorf's book
on the Freemasons. The book criticizes the Jews. I find
that the facts speak volumes. So why all these remarks?
Life truly offers too many pleasures. So you know, you
get this, like, you know, what's unfair is all the
taxes I've got to pay. Also, Ludendorf, you know, wrote

(48:56):
this book. He's right about the Jews, But why's he
got to spend so many words talking about it? We
all know they're evil? You know, Like what she really does?

Speaker 4 (49:05):
The taxes?

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Right? All right? Nothing is Jane. So we get a
sense there of the fact that Margot was a Nazi
way before she actually joined the Nazi Party. You know,
she gets with Himmler before she actually joins the party,
but she's always been one in spirit. The two bonded
over reading the second volume of Mindkomf. We have Heinrich's
copy of the book, in which he took notes and

(49:28):
appended marginalia, so we have some idea of what they
may have discussed. Heinrich underlined a passage about the need
to stop defective people from breeding. He commented, the potential
for undoing racial mixing exists. This is always going to
be a focus of It's like this idea again that
we have to undo the damage that all this interbreeding
with poles and whatnot, you know, has done to our race.

(49:52):
And this is going to be kind of the foundation
of like how he leads the SS, like it's its
purpose primarily is to un do the damage of race
mixing by selective breeding.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Yeah, nor does he Yeah, like I never thought about. Again,
another I never thought about is like none, you can't
you can't talk about this if you don't start at
like all the like vulks like myth making. Now it
makes sense because okay, you clearly don't understand your own

(50:25):
history that like the Germanic tribe Bizarre were race mixing
and and the Nordics were hundreds of miles away from here,
Like you know what I'm saying, Like that's that's actually
not y'all. You know, so like even if I mean, granted,

(50:46):
I'm looking at it with a twenty first century brain
and obviously we're using these terms very loosely, but like,
what the fuck do you think is an indigenous person?
Is they not peer breeds either, you know what I'm saying?
So like nobody what you Yes, it's not a thing,
That's what I was gonna say, Like no, like it
just it depends on where you want to start your timeline.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Like I mean, like there's Europeans have Neanderthal DNA because
at some point we were sucking other species human.

Speaker 4 (51:13):
Being other species and that's.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Why we're here. Like that's just Neanderthals. But like the
fact that like the like the more you breed with
people who are different from you, the better, like immune.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Profiles, immune system works.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Right, yes, Like that's just we know all this.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yeah yeah, so I'm just like this undoing shit. It's
just like, oh, it's because you think you're supposed to
be this ancient thing you made up.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
And like it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, that's why the science that you say you read,
the chemistry you say you read, is that the math
is a mathing for.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
You, right, because it's fundamentally nonsense.

Speaker 4 (51:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
But that's that's going to be his like obsessive goal
is we have to undo this damage. And you know,
his part in that starts when he marries Marga in
nineteen twenty eight. As soon as they marry, they buy
a chicken farm out in the country. This is consistent
with Himmler's stated vulkish back to the land values, but

(52:15):
it's also evidence that those values are more a result
of this nerdy special interest he has in German mysticism
than a real desire to live as a peasant farmer,
because he basically never works on that farm. As soon
as they set the farm up, Marga starts having kids,
and Heinrich is gone. He is on the road all

(52:35):
the time working for the Nazi Party, furthering his grand career.
Marga not only does she raise the children, but she
minds the farm like she keeps this business going, like
it's nearly all on her shoulders. Himmler shows up every
now and again to help out and check on how
his kids are doing, but most of his direct relationship

(52:56):
with their raising and the farms day to day were
operates is him sending letters to in Front and Marcus
sending letters back to him talking about what's going on.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
So she's the uber minch.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
She she is, like she's the one putting in the
lion's share of the work here, right if she's saying
she's awful, but yeah, she's she's she's closer to the
to the area and ideal than Heinrich is.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Like, yeah, like she actually the pinnacle manhood.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Brother, your your wife's the peasant farmer. Like you're walking
around in a suit, like talking to people, pretty.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Boy, just bragging about dragging about being sore after barely
working out, like so busy working. I'm sorry, I hadn't
didn't have chance to write, man, I'm so sore. I'm
so busy, man, shut the shut up the fu.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Yeah, it's it's pretty funny. You know what else is funny? Oh?

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Man? Hearing you read ads sometimes, Yeah, it's pretty funny, man,
Because I'm like, there's an ad that that Jack does
shout out Jack, Yeah on the daily Z eye guys
that Yeah, he reads an ad that I hear all
the time about the speed of of a like gaming

(54:16):
laptop processor that I'm like, man, you don't know none
of this ship means.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
It's just so funny. Listen. I was like, you don't
know what this means, but I feel you get money.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
No, it's like me reading ads about the NFL. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
Uh, I like, you don't know what this ship means.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Please give us more money the NFL. Anyway, here's some ads.
We're back.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
Boy.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I sure do love first downs. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
You just had to remind us you're from Texas for
a minute.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
It is the only sport I know anything about. Yes,
I had to play it in high school. It's legally
required in Texas.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Yeah, you can't graduate, just like we have to know
how to recite a full Snoop Dogg song. Yeah, well
we can graduate high school.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Oh man. So this pattern where Marga does all of
the actual hard work and Heinrich then writes essays and
gives speeches about how important it is to raise children
and have farms. This pat is the pattern for most
of their relationship. Heinrich talks about how people should live,

(55:27):
and Marga lives that life while he is staying in
nice hotels, taking up mistresses, eating at restaurants and doing
everything but living as a back to the land peasant
farmer with his smiling children and aryan bride. Now Marga
quits her career to make this life possible, which for
Heinrich means he's killing two birds with one farm shaped stone.

(55:48):
You know, she's not out living an independent she like
she is very independent, but in the sense that she
is live, she is maintaining the life that he wants
to pretend he's living right.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
So, while Himmler had been in prison, Ernst Rome, who
got out earlier, had renamed the Banned Essay, turning it
into the Front Bond, and expanded it to thirty thousand fighters.
Now this is crucial because the Nazi Party in order
to grow, is going to need these fighters. The fact
that they've always got tens and eventually hundreds of thousands
of men who they're not always armed in the streets

(56:21):
with guns, but they have a lot of guns and
caches and they're willing to fight. It's a threat potentially
to the army. There's enough of the essay at a
certain point that the army, which is very limited in size,
has to be concerned about the ability of the essay
to potentially cause a problem right for the country's government
being able to maintain power. So it's very important that

(56:44):
Rome is constantly expanding this group, which again is technically
not the Essay in this period, but also because the
Nazi Party was banned and the Essay was banned and
he establishes a separate group during this period of time,
it means that this the Front Bond, which is effectively
the Essay, is separated from the Nazi Party and it's

(57:07):
just Rome's There's not a chain of command where Hitler
is in charge of these guys during this period, which
means that Rome could kind of go into business for
himself because he's got the army, so to speak, right,
and Hitler Rome is always says he's loyal, right, he
always says the right things. But Hitler doesn't trust Rome.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
You know, yeah, you shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
And there's a peer. There's a point where Hitler's like, well,
you you know, sign a pledge of loyalty and hand
over this organization, basically make it a part of the party,
you know, once the party is unbanned, and Rome says no,
and he makes up something about like I wanted to.
I think it's better if it's you know, independent for
this reason or that. But what matters to Hitler is
that like Rome has defied him. Now this is an

(57:54):
issue between the two, and ultimately it gets resolved when
Rome leaves Germany temporarily to take a job Bolivia like
hires him to train their armed forces, and Himmler kind
of talks to Roman. It's like, I think it's a
good idea if you take the job. You know, like
Hitler is kind of pissed. You know, this might cool
things down for everybody. And so Rome goes off and

(58:16):
the Essay is effectively leaderless for a while, which means that,
you know, the threat to Hitler declines, but he's still spooked.
And the fact that he has this kind of moment
of panic where he's like, oh fuck, this guy might
actually try to usurp me, and he's the dude with
the army. It convinces Hitler that he needs a new
Frei Corps, right, a new militant unit that's dedicated and

(58:41):
loyal only to him. Right, He specifically once a group
that's filled with men who are more disciplined than the
Essay men and better at fighting and are ready to
quote march against their own brothers if necessary. Geesh, the
essay had proven useful obviously, but they were like the
Proud Boys today, right, These are not disciplined soldiers. They're

(59:03):
drunken louts and reprobates, right. Most a lot of them
are addicts. A lot of them are criminals. You know,
fucking Horse Wessel, the famous martyr of the essay, who
he's a he's a pimp. You know, these guys are
are criminals and they're not They're not the kind of
criminals because the SS guys are also criminals. But they're
the kind of criminals who are like like mob criminals, right,

(59:26):
Like they're they're disciplined. They're disciplined, as opposed to the Essay,
which are just like the guy on meth who steals
your car.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
You know.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Yeah, yeah you can't really yeah, you can't really count
on them. Yeah, they're just those are just goons.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yeah, you can count on to get into street fights,
but not to be particularly good at it, and certainly
not to be a disciplined army. Right and to make
matters worse, these the essay, because they're so uncontrolled, they
scare the conservatives with money, right, Nobody, none of the people,
none of the like wealthy class, trust the Essay because

(59:59):
they it seems scarily like the mobs that occasionally, like,
you know, overthrow the government and kill all the rich people.
You know, like, just because they're technically on your side
doesn't mean you like the idea of this unaccountable, drunken mob,
you know, yea. And all of this is why ultimately
Hitler orders the formation of the SS or Staffel. Right,

(01:00:23):
the SS is started not to fight Nazism's enemies, but
to fight other Nazis. Specifically, the SS is formed as
a counter to the Essay. Now they're also supposed to
they're also formed because they're literally a bodyguard for Hitler.
He wants a unit of disciplined, reliable fighters who can

(01:00:43):
beat communists in the street, who can guard Nazi party
meetings and do so again more effectively and with more
kind of discipline than the Essay. But more than anything,
he wants them to be able to fight the Essay
off if Rome betrays Hitler, or if someone else in
the Essay betrays Hitler. Because there's a lot of Essay
leaders and he doesn't trust any of them. The core

(01:01:04):
of the SS is formed out of Hitler Stosstrup or
first bodyguard. This is like his initial guards before you know,
the party is really formed and it's headed. The first
leader of the SS is Julius Shrek, Hitler's chauffeur and
chief bodyguard. Shrek was an obvious initial choice and he
made some good early decisions that would echo in the

(01:01:24):
organization's future. Members had to be above a certain height.
They had to be between twenty three and thirty five
years old. So he don't want him too young because
those are just hewligans, but they need to be young
enough that like they're fit and able to fight effectively,
and they have to have two sponsors who vouch for
them before they can join two sponsors in the SS.

Speaker 6 (01:01:44):
I'm picturing like Shrek, Shrek like the ore.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
That is Disney or DreamWorks. Isn't like talking about it,
but yes, Shrek got his start leading the SS. That's
why he was living in that the swamp. That swamp, yeah,
because obviously you know, after Nazism fell, he had to
go into hiding.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
You're saying Shrek was a Nazi.

Speaker 7 (01:02:08):
Yes, yes, that's that's uh, that's the change he tried
to change. That's why he turned GREENID that's right. Yeah,
he had to change his appearance so that he wouldn't
get he would.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
And then Donkey made him woke.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
Then Donkey made him woke. He made a black friend,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Yeah, is one of my favorite animated characters.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
They had to leave out the movie where Donkey figures
out that Shrek had been a Nazi and they had
a serious conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Conversation, Oh my god, yeah, Shrek, one more thing, let
me ask you this real quick.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Oh man, sponsor us, Yeah, dreamwork spots. We could do
the new ads for the new Shrek movie. Shrek, He's
not a Nazi anymore anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Reform sund us your money.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah. Leaves the stops being leader of the SS in
April of nineteen twenty six, so he's just there for
about a year. And you know what he does does
kind of set up the future of the unit. It's
going to be small, but it's going to be elite, right,
It's going to be big guys who are tough and
who know each other and so like they're tight and
they have like they have like you know, they have
a stronger bond. It's not this anonymous mob of like

(01:03:20):
drunken rabble. These guys are going to hold together better
in like a combat situation. Whence Julius leaves, he hands
over control to Joseph burke Told, who's a former Essay
man who'd handled security during the push, which, given that
the push doesn't go well, you might be like, well,
why is this guy?

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
He was?

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
He fucked up? Is one job. But burke Told is
given the title Reichsfewer SS, which is, you know, leader
of the SS. He's the first man to actually hold
that title. And this is where the SS starts, like
the birth of their kind of distinctive all black uniforms.
At first, it's just that they have black ties to
differentiate them from the Essays brown ties. And you know,

(01:04:01):
over time this is going to evolve into the you know,
Hugo Boss all black uniforms that we all know today,
but it just starts with the tie. Burke Told's main
accomplishment during his brief period is reichsphere SS is to
stop the SS from being absorbed into the Essay entirely
when that organization is readmitted to the Nazi Party. Right like,

(01:04:21):
there's an attempt from Rome to just make the ssa
unit in the essay, and Broke told Stops that he
resigns in nineteen twenty seven, and he's replaced by another
guy who doubles down on the SS remaining ultra exclusive
and elite. But this guy's really bad at his job,
you know, like he tries to really focus on restricting

(01:04:41):
even further who can join, and this helps means that
the SS membership declines from its height of around one
thousand to just a couple of one hundred people in
nineteen twenty eight. And it's during this period of time
when the SS is sort of like bleeding members and
it looks like it's about to die out, like this
was kind of a failed experiment and eventually is just
going to be absorbed back into the essay, it's during

(01:05:03):
this time that Heinrich Himmler is admitted to the organization. Now,
Heinrich had joined because the SS needed men and he
was not like a threatening guy, right, Like nobody the
dude running the essays at this point doesn't consider him
to be like a rival for power, and Himmler likes
the idea that it's exclusive, that like, oh, if I

(01:05:23):
join this, people will think that I'm one of the elite.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Okay, Right, So he's a member of the Nazi Party.
He's just not a member of the SS at.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
This yes, yeah, and he becomes one in nineteen twenty eight. Right,
you join the Nazi Party and then you join the SS.
And Himmler he gets into the Again, he's not physically
he doesn't kind of match the strong requirements they're supposed
to have. But he's someone who there's a lot of
buzz about. He's doing a lot of very important jobs.
He's like liked by a lot of high ranking people

(01:05:53):
in the party, so he's got clout and he just
doesn't seem like someone who could do any who could
like be a threat to your power. Yeah, but that's
a mistake because as soon as he gets admitted, Hitler
rats on his bots. The leader of the SS to
Hitler and it's like, hey, you're the guy who's running
your bodyguard. His Taylor is Jewish. He's got a Jewish

(01:06:14):
guy Taylor in his SS uniform, and so Hitler shit
cans the reichsphere of the SS. And that's how Himmler
gets the job running the SS.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Wow, Hitches, Yes, look, you ain't here for me.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
But home, he got home. He got a snow Bundy
over there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
He's run on the SS. He's got a Jewish guy
him and his pants.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
Like, man, look me, I'm not in charge.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
I'm not in charge.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
But if it was me, I would look into that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Yeah, I wouldn't be doing it that way.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Yeah, I mean I think you know, when you when
you know you can't really you can't go head up
with none of them people.

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
You got to figure out other ways to defeat.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Them, you know what I'm saying. You know, he's like,
you're not gonna fight him? Yeah, you know, like, Okay,
this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna outsmart you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Yep, and uh it works. So yeah, heidenrach Kimler at
this point has now become the reichsphere of the SS.
He is leading the organization and he will continue to
lead it for the remainder of his and its life.
And we will talk about what he does now that
he's in power later. But first, prop you're gonna plug

(01:07:26):
some pluggables.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
I would love to plug pluggables, Like I said, the
terraform co brew is back, the website is up. Praise
be we are ready to share the good drink. The
politics will prop. We got two drops a week. This
time we got the main show on Wednesday and then
the tap in on Friday.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
A little shorter.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
I love the tappens.

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
The tap ins are fun, man, So those are.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
It's a great format for you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):
Thank you, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (01:07:57):
Yeah, so yeah, and then follow me on all the socials.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
The prop whoever whoever suggested that happened was a genius.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Oh man, look in a mirror, Sophie, look.

Speaker 4 (01:08:08):
Boss clean.

Speaker 6 (01:08:09):
Yeah, I'm in pain, so I'm just being nice to myself.

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):
You should be not in pain. You should be nice
to yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Robert, Robert, can I get a compliment on the way out?

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Yes? Uh, you're the best. Uh yeah, you're the best.
And fuck your pain. Pain is awful. I hate it,
but I don't hate is you the listener? I only
hate some of you, and I'll never tell you which
ones you are, but.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
I know mm hmm.

Speaker 6 (01:08:44):
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 eppisodes every Wednesday
and Friday.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Subscribe to our

Speaker 6 (01:09:03):
Channel YouTube dot com slash At Behind the Bastards