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

As the Nazis take total power, Heinrich Himmler must build the SS into a power that can defeat his new enemy: other Nazis. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. And on Thursday, September 25th at 8:00 PM, Behind the Bastards is doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon, but all of the in-person seats have sold out. However, there are live stream tickets available. If you go to Alberta Rose Theater, T-H-E-A-T-R-E, Behind the Bastards, just type that into Google or whatever search engine you use, Alberta Rose Theater, Behind the Bastards, you can find a link to buy tickets for the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund, which helps bail people out who don't have, you know, resources of their own. So it's a good cause. Tickets are $25 for the live stream version of the show. So please go to Alberta Rose Theater, Behind the Bastards, and pick up a live stream show

• 0:47Robert Evans?

  to check it out on Thursday, September 25th at 8:00 PM.

• 0:53Robert Evans?

  Oh, wow. Is it already Behind the Bastards 30? My goodness, my clock must be off. I'm... That's not a very good start to a podcast either. Yeah, Sophie-

• 1:04Speaker 01

  That was dumb.

• 1:04Robert Evans?

  How many, how many episodes of this? We started in fucking 2018, like 50 episodes a year, something like that.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  I can tell-

• 1:12Robert Evans?

  What is this, like 350 episodes? Generally two parts each, so-

• 1:15Speaker 01

  I can tell you how many clips it says we have in Omni. I think some of the-

• 1:20Robert Evans?

  There we go, let's see.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I think some of them are like imports and some of them are like trailers, but it says 882.

• 1:29Robert Evans?

  We've done too many episodes of podcasts, right? This should, this should, you should get immediately 5150, but the permanent version, if you've done this many episodes of a podcast.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  There's definitely a, yeah, there's definitely a Groundhog Day effect with this, where I'm like, oh shit, I gotta do this next week?

• 1:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49Robert Evans?

  And every other week forever?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  And every other week.

• 1:51Robert Evans?

  That's what I signed up for, okay? I mean, like, as jobs go, it's like upper tier, but also, I do feel like-

• 1:58Speaker 02

  A little infinite.

• 2:00Robert Evans?

  It's a little infinite. It does make me want to do like a reverse Ronald Reagan where I become president just to lock myself up in a mental institution. Like, just to be like, no one like me. And Joe, get Joe. For goddamn sure, lock him up. Like, because if I, my brain is fried, like, that motherfuckers was melted long ago.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Out of here.

• 2:17Robert Evans?

  Like, like, he hit that point fucking 10 years back.

• 2:22Robert Evans?

  Get us all off, get us all off the streets.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man, so many times, so many times, I think, why do y'all listen to me?

• 2:30Robert Evans?

  Uh huh. What are we doing here?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I am, I would be so tired of me.

• 2:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'm gonna be, this is, that's it, probably. You and me are running, and we're gonna be the first people to run on a ticket of get us off the streets.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Just stop, yes, just, don't listen to us.

• 2:44Robert Evans?

  Get podcasters out of here.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Do not listen to us, guys. Yeah.

• 2:48Robert Evans?

  After making us president, because we, we got some plans, we got some plans. First six weeks gonna be crazy.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yo.

• 2:56Robert Evans?

  Speaking of people whose first six weeks in power were crazy, that actually does.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  It works very well.

• 3:03Robert Evans?

  Nicely done, my friend.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  You actually nailed that one.

• 3:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that one worked out well.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Accidental, perfect.

• 3:08Robert Evans?

  That's a real, real swish first down. Wow. Touchback situation. Please. It was very funny when people, the soccer episodes, I may, I fucked up whatever a cap is, and people were like, I can't believe Robert got soccer facts wrong. I was like, guys, you're not coming to this for my knowledge of soccer. You're coming to this to hear about a fucked up guy who became a member of the SS. I told you up at the top. The soccer stuff is not gonna be high fidelity soccer facts.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Number one, and here's the thing, like, I don't know if you know, but we American, and, and he's a Texas American.

• 3:42Robert Evans?

  Me calling it football the whole time was a step.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Step. And you're a Texas American. Y'all don't stop, y'all stopped talking about soccer after, uh, third grade. So that's ASO.

• 3:52Robert Evans?

  That's illegal.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, you can't talk about soccer after third grade.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  They'll put you in prison. You'll do hard time for talking about soccer in Texas.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 03

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• 4:06Robert Evans?

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• 6:11Robert Evans?

  Speaking of hard time, most of the Nazis really didn't wind up doing it because the Weimar authorities kind of let them off the hook until they were in power. No, they didn't. So we ended our last episodes, I mean, this is a winding story, but we talked about the establishment of the Tula Society. We talked about like the birth of all of these different weird Nazi occult things, like organizations, these secret societies that were going to inspire how Himmler wanted his SS to work, particularly the Knights Templar. Oh, yeah, the ghost alphabet. Which is von Liebenfels. Yeah, the ghost alphabet, all that bullshit. That's my one, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my one. Yeah. So, before Heinrich Himmler could truly lean into his personal vision of what the SS could

• 6:56Robert Evans?

  be, this like knightly order built on these like mystical ideas of both crafting like a perfect race and returning to these, you know, these medieval values and whatnot, Himmler was going to have to solidify his position as head of the organization, of a moderate political organization first, right? Before you can, you can do the weird occult Nazi shit of your dreams, you have to make sure that you stay in power. Now, by September of 1930, which is the year, the first year in which the Nazi party achieved, they have a major electoral upset and a lot of Nazis, Himmler included, get admitted to the Reichstag, right? Because they're, they're running like different prominent members as Reichstag candidates. Himmler has gotten enough trust that he gets in.

• 7:37Robert Evans?

  This is a big deal for him because it brings a degree of immunity to prosecution, right? Like there's certain things he can't get in trouble for now, which is great because he's going to be one of the party's crime guys in their period of time before power. It's very helpful for him. But, you know, even once they've got this big win, they get a bunch of people into what is effectively Congress. You know, when we're talking about the Reichstag, it's more of like a parliament, but right? Like in the US that kind of roughly translates to a Congress. So you've, you've, you've got your party in political power for the first time, but it's not total power. You're not the majority party, you're not, you know, you're still needing to compromise with people, which is not something the Nazis want to do. So you can't really rest on your laurels because you don't know if the next election's

• 8:22Robert Evans?

  going to kick a bunch of your guys out and if you're ever, you're going to cross that threshold into actually taking total power. And while this is going on, Himmler's primary concern, where his eyes are focused and where the eyes of the SS are focused, are not outside at the communists and the social democrats. They're inside and they're facing the SA, right? Because the SS is still subordinate to the SA. And that's where all of the problems and all of the big conflicts had occurred, right? You know, the SS has gotten started because Hitler doesn't trust this large street fighting organization because there's too many other people who control it. There's too many local leaders who, their group of guys are loyal to them, you know, more than they are to Hitler, right? And so that's why the SS gets power in the first place.

• 9:07Robert Evans?

  And in this first year that Himmler's in power, his predecessors have each lasted about a year or so. And he doesn't know, that he has no guarantee that he's going to keep the job forever, right? So he's, he's got this dual job of trying to make sure he stays in charge of this organization. Otherwise, he can't do any of the cool stuff with it that he wants to do. And the way to stay in charge is to continually make himself useful against other guys inside the party. Now, the leaders of the SA at the time, these different brown shirts, because Rome is still out of the country, so there's, there's not like one guy who's running the SA. There's a bunch of local leaders who have differing amounts of power. And they'd all been snubbed by the party in the Reichstag elections. These guys had wanted seats too, but they're wisely seen by the Nazis in charge as like,

• 9:51Robert Evans?

  okay, these guys are useful, but they're all like drunk assholes. It's the same with like Enrique Tarrio's being treated right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where like, even now that Trump is in charge, the government's pushing it back against his January 6th lawsuit. They clearly, they don't want to disavow him entirely. There's still some use to those groups, but also, people don't want them that close to you, right? Like, because they're dangerous and kind of unpredictable and a lot of these guys are like violent criminals in a way that the kind of bougie money people that you're courting now as the Nazis don't really like. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, that's the issue, right? Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I, I, I think that, like, I, I, I think Enrique Tarrio is the perfect example of this.

• 10:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  To where it's just like, it's that, that favor you really shouldn't call in.

• 10:40Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Because, like, there's a, the, the interest rate on this favor is higher than I'm willing to accept. And I really don't want to be seen with you in public.

• 10:53Robert Evans?

  No.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? But like, but I do like the fact that you're, you're down for dirty work. Like, I, yeah, that's, they're the perfect example of that.

• 11:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I, I don't, I don't, I can't think of any, like, any close friend of mine who doesn't have a that guy.

• 11:07Robert Evans?

  Right, where it's like, yeah, I could, I know I could lean on you for certain things, but there's a cost, yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  There's a cost to this, yeah, like, there's, you pressed hard enough where it's like, this is the nuke. Like, this is bringing in the dragons.

• 11:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Like, if I were to do this, and I don't know, man, you, you really ain't rider of a dragon. That dragon is done with you when it's ready, yeah.

• 11:27Robert Evans?

  No, that's right, and a, a good example of that is kind of right after these 1930 Reichstag elections. One of the SA guys who's pissed because he got snubbed, he didn't get a Reichstag position. Yeah. Is this local SA leader named Stenz. And Stenz launches an SA rebellion in which he's like, my guys, my street fighters aren't going to back up the party. And in fact, he sends his stormtroopers to take over the Berlin Nazi Party office, which is itself guarded by an SS unit. And they have a street fight over this.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 11:56Robert Evans?

  Which ends when the SS calls the cops who intervene on their side, right? And this is, this is probably, less a result of law enforcement, like, picking one specific side for ideological reasons. And more SS guys are like sober, they tend to be better dressed and more affluent. And they're actually have property law behind them. Whereas all of the SA guys are a bunch of drunk petty criminals trying to break into a building. So like, of course the cops do what the SS says, right?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yes, totally.

• 12:24Robert Evans?

  Um, and like every clash between the SA and the SS, this is really a clash between Hitler and anyone in the party who felt like there ought to be a power center that isn't Hitler in the Nazi Party. That's what the conflict is, right? Broadly speaking, because there's a number of different guys who have, who launched these little internal rebellions. But it's all over the same thing, where they're like, I don't see why Hitler should be the only person people listen to. And Hitler's like, no, no, no, that's the point of being a Nazi.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think you get it, like, yeah.

• 12:53Robert Evans?

  You, you may have missed what we're doing here at Nazi Co.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Maybe we weren't clear. Yeah.

• 12:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, this is the one time I'll say in Hitler's defense, but I think he was pretty clear.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  I thought it was pretty clear. I feel like that.

• 13:06Robert Evans?

  I thought it was pretty clear that he was in charge.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. The print is actually in 24 font, 24 points.

• 13:14Robert Evans?

  Was a thousand-page book called Hitler Gets to Decide Everything.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:20Robert Evans?

  So in the end, obviously Hitler wins, and Hitler wins in large part due to Himmler's help, because Himmler is operating this elite SS unit that's kind of able to head off and beat the SA, ultimately, in every one of these crucial power struggles. This ends with Hitler taking direct, nominal, direct leadership. So he's not actually in charge of either organization, but nominally, they pledge loyalty to him of both the SS and the SA. And he gets declarations of loyalty from members of both organizations. This wasn't really a change for the SS, because they were already doing that. But individual SA chapters were all basically independent orgs with independent leaders, right? And so now they've made declarations of loyalty, but that fact hasn't changed. They still have not gotten complete control of the SA.

• 14:05Robert Evans?

  So conflicts keep breaking out between these local chapters and local parties. And often, they will culminate in a fight over a physical party office. This keeps happening in different states. During one such eruption, Himmler has to travel to Augsburg to stop an SA unit from literally demolishing the local party headquarters. And this happens repeatedly, and Himmler's SS is always the shield that, you know, for power in the Nazi party against the SA. From 1930 until the seizure of power in 1932, then, they developed an idea, coaxed by Himmler, within the SS and within the party leadership, that the men of the SA were simple, good-hearted oaths being manipulated by evil local leaders in it for themselves, right?

• 14:49Robert Evans?

  These, the basic rank and file, you know, they're not couched. We can't have them in polite company, but they're loyal, basically. It's these leaders that are leading them astray. And Himmler positions himself and his SS as the only counter to the madness of the SA leaders. Hitler is so happy with how the SS performs and how Himmler... Himmler performs that he awards the SS a motto, "Your honor means loyalty." Which obviously, I'm not gonna try to say in German, but in the future, like, the SS knives and stuff all have this on the blade, they've got this all like, the SS relishes a lot of merch and this is on most of it, right? It's their like catchphrase, right? "Your honor," say it again? "Your honor means loyalty." "Your honor means loyalty." Yeah. That's unfortunately very catchy.

• 15:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, oh no, you can, you can, I mean, it's, it's, it's the same in any gang, right? And that's what you are talking about, just kind of two different competing ideas of how to have a gang. And the SS is a much more, it's smaller, but it's more loyal and so, you're, you have tighter comms, you have tighter control over how people operate, you have, you know, more efficient logistics and so as a result, the organization is better in this kind of a fight. I don't think the SS on its own would have been able to win the street war against the left. The SA was necessary for that. But the SS wins the war within the party, right? Yeah. For the next several years, Himmler would work to gain complete independence for the SS from the SA. But this was a slow process and he, he, he,

• 16:18Robert Evans?

  this period of time in which they're struggling against the inside of the party, it becomes known as the time of struggle within the SS. Because even kind of once they're in power, even once the war starts, he can't talk openly about a lot of what the SS does during this period, because they're fucking over a lot of other Nazi party members. And so it's just sort of referred to colloquially as the time of struggle. And this is what makes the SS, the reason ultimately why there is an SS, that becomes a state within a state, that has these independent military units and is running all of the concentration camps and is running Reich internal security and it has all of the power that the SS does. The reason why the SS does the Holocaust ultimately, is because of how they perform during this time of struggle.

• 17:01Robert Evans?

  It's because they're able to beat the other side of the Nazi party in a war, right? Like, that's effectively what brings the SS to prominence.

• 17:11Robert Evans?

  Getting independence is a slow process and it's hampered by the fact that Ernst Rome in the early 30s returns from Bolivia and Hitler appoints him SA chief again. Now Himmler helps to get Rome back. He writes letters because again, he and Rome, they have like a mentor mentee relationship and Himmler's like, "We need you so bad. I've based all of my SS training for my new guys on the stuff you taught me. You know, you're so influential here. We can't really get by without you. You've gotta come back." And he comes back and immediately, basically as soon as he gets back and he gets this job, newspapers publish proof that he's gay.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord. Hit him with a, "Hey, big head."

• 17:49Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  You know, and then it was like, "Hey, this nigga gay."

• 17:53Robert Evans?

  Oh, man. And it's, it's, it's the kind of thing where again, this is still hushable for a while, but now it's, and everyone had known it. Most people had known it, but now Himmler does. And he's able to use, while he's still kind of praising Rome and pretending like, "Yeah, we're, we're friends. We're tight." He's going behind his back and going to like the best guys in the SA, the dudes who are competent and who are good organizers. And he's saying, "Hey, do you want to be in an organization run by a degenerate?" Right? Or do you want to work with the real professionals over in the SS?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Oh, pause. Ayo.

• 18:23Robert Evans?

  And so he's, yeah. And there's a big fight. Rome gets Hitler to ban him officially from poaching SA members. Now Himmler keeps doing it, but like, there's a big issue over this, right?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  I will say as a side note, uh, just more of a cultural touch point that probably me, Sophie, and the, and the seven melanated people that listen to this know, um, is, sorry, Sophie. I'm sorry, y'all. I just like picking on you. I know, y'all. I just like picking on you. I'm just playing. But for some reason, I don't like, like, you know, with the whole, when the whole Diddy thing happened, like, it seems like, as far as like hip hop culture, the only lesson they learned about this was they was grossed out by his gayness. Like, they missed all the, you missed the whole point. You know what I'm saying? Of why Diddy was a villain, you know? So, uh, with the, so then the slang around like, "Oh, yeah,

• 19:19Speaker 02

  no, no Diddy." Like, no Diddy, like, like replacing pause and, um, just all the homophobic stuff. But what I think I keep running into with a lot of these young men especially, and I love that this, this is a point is because it's like, you assume-

• 19:37Speaker 02

  It's the dumbest assumption that just because this man is gay that he can't beat yo ass. Like, like, first of all, that gay man is still a man. Number one, and number two, these are brawlers. So you, it is just, it's just, it's more like a modern issue right now, like dudes be like, hey, hey, man, I just got jumped by these gay dudes. They beat my ass. I'm like, yes, because there's, there's, they're still men. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, that you look like you have, have you been to a gym? Have you ever been to a gym? The gay dudes in the gym are lifting way heavier than you. He gonna beat yo ass.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  So it just reminds me of this moment, like, you know, he finally brings a guy back in, he goes, hey, this nigga gay. And it's like, oh, and? It beat yo ass.

• 20:28Robert Evans?

  Uh huh. Yeah, that's, that's the Ernst Rome, that's the Ernst Rome story in general. And, and that's the story of like, how the Nazis were willing to use. They were happy giving this guy a pass while they needed him and his, and his street fighting skills, organizing this war. It's once they're in power that they're going to, that they're gonna murder him, right? Which is always the case with like, the useful members of minority groups to fascist movements, right? That's how they work, you know? Like, yeah, when you're useful, we'll be nice to you. Um, and it's unclear to me, and this is kind of where I can get conspiratorial a little. Does Himmler help Rome, convince Rome to come back? Because he just knows Hitler wants Rome back and he's trying to make Hitler happy?

• 21:09Robert Evans?

  Is it because he, he does like the guy and thinks maybe it'll be easier to work alongside the SA if my friend is back in charge? Or does he know Rome is fundamentally untrustworthy? Rome is always someone who is going to go, be in it for his own power. And who Hitler can't, as long as he's in charge of the SA, Hitler won't sleep easy. And that will provide more inspiration, that will, that will provide more fuel for him to like, back the SS, right? That Hitler will be more supportive of the SS if this dangerous guy is back in charge of the SA. And maybe that's why Himmler tries to convince him to come back, right? Is a little bit of that Machiavelli shit.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:47Robert Evans?

  Um, he gives a speech near the end of 1931, Himmler, where he lays out his vision for the SS. Well, the SA are the regiments of the line, right? In military terms, they're like the normal infantry. The SS were the guards. And this is a reference to, you know, in a, the previous era, leading up to World War I, you didn't have special forces, right? But you had units of like horse guards in every European monarchy. And this is to this day, there's like a unit of horse guards or whatnot that traditionally is the king's or the prince's unit in like the UK military, right? Okay. This is like every, like it was the czar's palace horse guards who were supposed to be his bodyguard. And they're on paper, your most elite unit. I think at one point in time, they had been.

• 22:30Robert Evans?

  By kind of the time World War I rolls around, they're just another unit of guys with fancier uniforms, right? But like, when he's saying that the SS will be the guards, he's saying they will be the elite bodyguard unit of this monarchy, right?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah. To be this elite, Himmler said, quote, "The SS must become a force that includes the best human material we still possess in Germany. The SS must be held together by the shared community of blood." He envisioned an apocalyptic conflict coming between the Nordic community and Bolshevism. And that conflict could only be won if the Nordic race was prevented from dying out through selective breeding. He saw the military conflict being something the next generation would have to fight. His role was to win the racial war by selecting the racially best people for the SS and breeding them, right? So it's important to note that at this early point, Himmler's not like, I think that I am going to be in charge of the SS while we're fighting a world war. He assumes he'll be dead for that, that like that, that's in the future still, right?

• 23:29Robert Evans?

  Like, what I've got to do is get our human capital ready, breed us up an army of unstoppable Aryans, right? Like, that's my job at this stage, once we get to power. But he's not thinking, and obviously in like, less than 10 years, we'll be invading Russia, right?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:45Robert Evans?

  That's not on his, that's not on his Himmlers.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:49Robert Evans?

  You know, I think Hitler had that desire for quite a while. That's not on Himmler's radar at this point.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's still, he too worried about the space ghosts, the space, the...

• 23:57Robert Evans?

  Yes, yeah. He's too busy learning how to channel his dead relatives and shit.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:02Robert Evans?

  So that year, Himmler also sets up an intelligence service within the SS, which would come to be known as the SD. And he puts a guy we've talked about on this podcast called Reinhard Heinrich in charge of it. Heinrich is the guy who will host the Von Say conference and be the organizer of the Holocaust, right?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Word.

• 24:19Robert Evans?

  The high level organizer, right?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Wait, okay, let's get it, let's get our essays together. So we got SS, SA, SD.

• 24:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and the SD is the intelligence service within the SS, right? The SS has its own CIA, basically.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so San Antonio, San Diego, and Saint something.

• 24:38Robert Evans?

  Uh, what is that? Uh, uh.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  San?

• 24:43Robert Evans?

  San Salvador?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  San Salvador.

• 24:45Robert Evans?

  Okay, there we go. There we go. All right. I don't know how helpful this is to the audience, just think of different cities.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  It's helpful for me.

• 24:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So there's this subset of the SS that's taking over. And right now, they're like intelligence for the party. So they're trying to, you know, are our events safe? Is there anyone plotting to carry out an attack against Hitler? That's what they're doing at this stage. And Himmler puts Reinhard Heinrich in charge of it. And Heinrich had just gotten fired from the Navy because he had broken off an engagement and been found dishonorable. He was engaged to, I think, an admiral's daughter or something. I forget the exact story, but he's fucking around and he gets cashiered out of the Navy for fucking around in a way that they think is unbecoming of an officer.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  So he broke it off, he broke it off because he was trying to like, spread the seeds, not like it just wasn't working out?

• 25:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it was a, he was cheating, right?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:34Robert Evans?

  That's the gist of it, which is conduct unbecoming of an officer. So when he and Himmler meet, Heinrich had told him like, oh yeah, I was an information officer in the Navy, right? And Himmler, not knowing much about the military, because he was never really a soldier, but really feeling like he'd been a soldier, pretends that like, decides that means spy, right? They're like, oh, this guy's an information officer, he must have been a spy. I've got a real army spy heading up my totally real spy network that I invented, right? And he gives Heinrich the job, although in reality, Heinrich had been an information officer, but he was a signals officer, which means he had an Expertise in like using, you know, how they use like those different signals on boats when they can't communicate by radio or whatever.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:19Robert Evans?

  Like, like, that's what he knows how to do. He's not like a spy. He knows like which signs that you hold up will tell a boat what to do.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Oh, word.

• 26:26Robert Evans?

  Super valid for this. He's not like a, he's not like fucking James Bond. And it's kind of what Himmler thinks he's getting. But again, Himmler doesn't know anything about the army, right? Or the Navy.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I love that. I love that.

• 26:39Robert Evans?

  So he's like, you're basically a spy. And Heidrick's like, yeah, definitely. Pretty much a spy. Yes.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Okay, that's what you get for lying on your resume.

• 26:47Robert Evans?

  Scary. As 1931 ended, the SS had grown to more than 10,000 members. So again, in the first two years, they go from a few hundred to more than 10,000. So he's, you know, they, he's done very well on this side of things.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's prudent.

• 27:02Robert Evans?

  Himmler talks a lot about how we're only hiring racially the best. But the racial qualifications at this point are just based on vibes, right? Himmler would later explain, this is kind of what they're thinking when they're evaluating someone for membership. Because the candidate's face reveal clear traces of foreign blood, such as excessively protruding cheekbones. So you just kind of, do they look like they're Nordic?

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I was gonna say like.

• 27:25Robert Evans?

  Do I see some Slav in your face or whatever?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  That is so funny to me. You white if you kind of look white.

• 27:32Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  You just gotta look, you, I know, I know you look white, but you don't look like white, white.

• 27:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you don't look like the right kind of white. I think there's some Italian in there.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  The right kind of white, homie.

• 27:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you guys were born too near the Alps. Can't trust you.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Man, some of you modern, uh, some of you modern, uh, uh, right wing Nazis, boy, y'all wouldn't have made the cut, homie. Like, you ain't white enough for your white.

• 27:54Robert Evans?

  Heinrich Himmler shouldn't have made the cut. Look at him. Look at him.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  You ain't.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's hilarious.

• 28:01Robert Evans?

  Speaking of people who are racially, here's ads.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Jesus, that was one of your worst.

• 28:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that, that didn't have one good.

• 28:13Robert Evans?

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• 28:36Speaker 06

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• 29:12Robert Evans?

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• 29:52Robert Evans?

  We're back, and we're talking about Heinrich Himmler and how well he does or does not meet the...

• 30:00Speaker 02

  The beauty standards.

• 30:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the beauty standards that you would expect of someone who talks racially about the shit he talks about. And there are jokes in the Third Reich that are like, you know, the ideal Aryan is as blonde as Hitler and like...

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Oh, word, okay.

• 30:17Robert Evans?

  Eyes as blue as Himmler's and all this kind of stuff, right?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  So a little self-awareness?

• 30:21Robert Evans?

  People... People, people are joking about this, right? Like that, like, yeah, that, this is kind of bullshit, right? Like that, that a lot of, but like, you know, again, it's in the same way as most people, even most people who voted for Trump are aware that like, he is not as healthy as he pretends to be. Yeah. He has not lived the kind of life that they think is good. They just, he, he, he hurts the people they don't like. And so they're willing to pretend that stuff isn't obvious, but they are aware of it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just not willing to say, therefore. It just doesn't matter to them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, uh, the fact that Himmler, so again, Himmler's not, there's not yet a formal, actual

• 31:04Robert Evans?

  scientific way of keeping the SS racially pure. It's just based kind of on vibes. And part of this, the reason why is that like Himmler needs bodies, right? And it's not, and so it's not until the end of 1931 that he is, feels secure enough in the membership they've gained and the size they are, that he announces a new stricter set of rules. And by the end of 31, he makes it the SS rule that all members of the organization now had to secure permission to get married and their potential wives would have to be assessed by the racial office that he just established in the SS before they could get married. Peter Longrich, in his biography of Himmler, writes, "Himmler was fully aware of the fact that his marriage order would be met with incomprehension, indeed ridicule outside his organization.

• 31:49Robert Evans?

  He even anticipated the reaction. The SS is convinced that with this order, it has taken a step of great significance. Derision, scorn, and incomprehension will not sway us. The future is ours." So like, we know people are gonna be cool with this, but like, what are you gonna do about it? We're in charge now. And you voted to be a Nazi. Mm-hmm. The head of the new racial office was a guy in the SS, was a guy named Walther Dar. And like Himmler, Dar had been a farm worker, although he had been a farm worker for real as opposed to for a season. He'd written a book titled, "The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race." And he was one of the first Nazi intellectuals to make the argument that the Nordic race had a lower birth rate than other races, which if not. Would lead to extinction.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Here we go.

• 32:34Robert Evans?

  Himmler, Dar had become a believer in the Artemen theory of this like ancient warrior priests of Wotan, and the two had first met through their interest in mysticism. They're both big. Why don't we get away from Christianity and adopt Wotan worship again, guys? In 1932, the SS adopted its now infamous double lightning bolt symbol, right? And these are actually, this is, you know, you can close your eyes and picture the SS. It's a very successful logo. These are actually a pair, they're not S's, they're a pair of Sig runes from the Arman and Runic alphabet that Guido von List created. So that's what that symbol comes from. It's from this fake alphabet that's got its roots. He's kind of was inspired by some actual runes, but he mostly dreams them that Guido von List made.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Great art project, man.

• 33:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, a very successful art project.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Very successful. It's quite a logo. That's, you know, you hate to say it, but like, again, the design aesthetic.

• 33:26Robert Evans?

  It worked. It worked.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Goddamn.

• 33:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. They had some good marketers on the team. Now, List argued that the runes, the Sig runes mean victory. So it literally is like victory, victory. That's what that symbol means. By April of 1932, the SS had swollen their ranks to more than 25,000 people and they'd break 40,000 members in June of 1932. Himmler's success in this remarkable task owed a lot to the explosion of the Nazi Party and its electoral victories. Tons of conservatives and otherwise apolitical rich people saw which way the wind was blowing. Now, for some of them just joining the party is enough, but some of them are like, I think I want to be, if I just join the party, that's going to be the norm soon.

• 34:09Robert Evans?

  And I'm comfortable being an elite. And the SS offers these guys a ready-made way to set themselves apart as members of the elite in this new order. Oh, you want to stay elite? Well, just join the SS, baby. As long as your background's pure Nordic, we'll take you. And then you're automatically in the upper echelon of the new society that we're building, right?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Word.

• 34:30Robert Evans?

  And, you know, if you're, maybe your background isn't as racially tidy as Himmler might normally want, you know, that could be a problem. Or the SS always has benefit funds that can use donations. Right? Oh, my God. Maybe you give some donations and maybe the SS, maybe we find that your racial history is better than we thought it was. We've always been movable on this. You know, the story of guys like Von Litts just deciding to become nobles and whatnot, right? Yeah, maybe that Dane blood is not so Dane-y, you know? Yeah, maybe that Celt blood is a little bit more Nordic, you know? Yeah. Uh, so while the tide of history certainly helps Himmler out in expanding the SS's size,

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  I don't want to ignore his actual talents as an organizer because those are integral to the SS's success. Heinrich is not a passive figure in this recruitment boom. He has particular skill at finding a certain type of young man in the party and actively grooming and recruiting him for the SS. Heinrich's ideal recruits are fuck-ups, right? These are guys who have, they generally come from his echelon of society, middle class, upper middle class, but they haven't succeeded, right? And so they've got very little going on, but a burning need to feel important. This feeling that I am owed more in society. And guys like this, Himmler realizes, will be fantastically loyal to any organization

• 35:53Robert Evans?

  that plucks them out of obscurity and promises to make them important, right? If you can find guys like this and put them somewhere and say, now you matter, they'll do anything for you because what matters most to them is having status. Longrich provides several examples of the kind of people Himmler's recruiting in his biography of Himmler. One local SS leader is a guy named Kurt Witji, who's a former Reichswehr officer. That's the army after the war, but who gets shit canned from his army job for homosexual activities. Now, he hides that he's been discharged for this when he joins the SS, but Himmler finds out about it and he's fine to take this guy because the fact that this man is like a capable organizer and whatnot, who has a shame that he wants to keep hidden,

• 36:37Robert Evans?

  that means Himmler can trust this guy, right? Because Himmler's got something hanging over his head. Yeah. Another recruit was Friedrich Jekyllin, who is a World War I veteran who had married a rich woman, but her father had cut him off from the family money. This led Jekyllin- To conclude that the family he'd married into had Jewish blood, based on nothing.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:56Robert Evans?

  Which starts to alienate his wife. He begins drinking heavily, they get divorced, and he winds up bankrupt and desperate. So he joins the Nazis in 1929. He joins the SS in 1930 after Himmler finds him and is like, I think this guy's got some potential. For an idea of what a piece of shit this guy is, in 1930, he tells his wife he'll be able to pay her alimony, quote, "only when Germany is free." So, these are the kind of dudes Himmler's gathering. As Peter Logret summarizes, Himmler had gathered around himself a group of men who, although they no more matched the high ideals of the SS than he did himself, were nevertheless men on whose loyalty he could rely. Many of them were dependent on him for their very material existence, a situation which, when necessary, he knew how to exploit.

• 37:39Robert Evans?

  And this is just, this is just gang shit, right? How you run a criminal organization.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  This is gang shit.

• 37:45Robert Evans?

  Uh huh.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yes, this is gang shit.

• 37:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Period.

• 37:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you get fucking shooters around you who you can trust, in part because you know, you all have compromising info on each other, right?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  You all have compromising info on each other and you have, there's no other place you can go. Because any other, any other place you would run to would report to me that you ran over there, right? And because they scared of me too. And then lastly, how you gonna make money? Nigga, where? So, yeah.

• 38:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, who else is having you?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Who else is having you? You can't get no job. You know what I'm saying? You ain't gonna do shit, just, man, go burn down that, uh, that tavern right there. I'll talk to you later.

• 38:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:28Robert Evans?

  That, that's, that's basically how it's going.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:31Robert Evans?

  And men who meet Himmler during this period tended to describe him as cold, anxious to seem like someone with power, and deeply insecure underneath it all. He compensated for this insecurity by wearing an elaborate military-style uniform and only associating with men who owed him everything and would play into his image as the tough, knightly warrior of the Nordic race. Ernst Tomfstangl, Hitler's friend, who shared an office with Heinrich during this period, would later recall that Himmler's military haircut and mustache failed to disguise his, quote, "pale, way face." Seating chin and blank expression. Another Nazi, Albert Krebs, described Himmler in a similar way, saying he, quote, "behaved coarsely and showed off by adopting the manners of a free booter and expressing anti-bourgeoisie views, though in doing so, he was only trying to disguise

• 39:16Robert Evans?

  his innate insecurity and awkwardness." Krebs complained during a train ride that Himmler inundated him with stupid and endless prattle, a peculiar mix of warlike bombast, the saloon bar views of a petty bourgeoisie, and the enthusiastic prophecies of a sectarian preacher. Right?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 39:33Robert Evans?

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

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 39:57Robert Evans?

  And then, yeah, like these kind of apocalyptic political prophecies based on these mystical tracts and all this Hitler shit that he believes about this coming race war. And it's important to note that other Nazis really don't like him. You know, they find him kind of like off-putting. He's just like this weird Nazi, for, this guy for whom Nazism is a nerd, like a nerdy thing, like he's a, he is a volkish nerd, as opposed to someone who's like, well, this is useful because I want to be in power, right? And that's kind of off-putting to these guys who are more or less in it for the power, right? But his unlike of, and Himmler is aware of this side of himself. He writes in his diary about how unhappy he is when he goes on these rants and he's like, "I should have kept my mouth shut. I shouldn't have said my weird, this weird shit about like, my belief about reincarnation

• 40:42Robert Evans?

  during this serious business meeting. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why do I do this?" Like, he gets so inside his head.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a secret tryhard just buried inside of him.

• 40:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That he's just like, "Damn it." Why did I do that?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Shut up.

• 40:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And this is although part of why he succeeds, because Hitler's not unaware of this fact and there's people close to Hitler who like Himmler, I don't know, kind of a weird, weird dweeb, like he kind of seems off-putting to me. But that's a plus to Hitler, because nobody- Himmler's not gonna take power from you. Himmler's, Himmler may think Himmler's the next Hitler, but as Hitler, you're not worried about him becoming the next Hitler, right?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, believe me, you don't have to hide your daughters, buddy.

• 41:23Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  We're good.

• 41:25Robert Evans?

  He doesn't look like he's trying to advance himself at the, uh, at a cost to the fever or the party, right? He's reliable when shit got, gets ugly, uh, as it gets in August of 1932. The day after that year's Reichstag election, the Nazis are certain that final victory is imminent, but this is again, not the very last election, right? There's still a long period of politicking before which Hitler's going to become the chancellor.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:50Robert Evans?

  And the SANSS kind of jumped the gun and they start a bombing and murdering spree, killing their political opponents in Konigsberg. Himmler himself seems to be the guy who orchestrates this terror campaign, so it's him that is jumping the gun, right? He has his goons kill the editor of a left-wing paper, they kill a communist city official, they murder several other people that had been listed as public enemies of the party. But they, they go too early, the Nazis are not in charge yet, there's still something of an independent media, and there's a public backlash, right? Cause the public, they want, they're gonna, you know, be supportive of the Nazis taking power, but they don't want it to look like this. This is scary, right? People getting bombed in the street is messy, you know?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we want you guys to deport everybody, but not like-

• 42:36Robert Evans?

  We don't want it to look like this, this makes me worry that I might get targeted.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:41Robert Evans?

  So Himmler has to shut, hush up his own involvement, he has to pretend he didn't do this, and he does that so successfully that there was debate until pretty recently as to how involved he was in all of this.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Robert Evans?

  But the fact that he reliably organized the shedding of blood for the movement and then shut up about it afterwards, raises his image in Hitler's eye. Cause again, this is just a gang, right? Like, he's able to go out and kill some fuckers and he doesn't, he doesn't brag about it afterwards. So Himmler, that makes Hitler like, I can trust this, this guy's ride or die, yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, that's the perfect type of ride or die, that's like, I don't need no credit, man, I'm here for the culture, you feel me, like, dang.

• 43:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's a little off-putting and weird, but like, that's not what I give a shit about as Hitler right now, you know? I can trust him.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 43:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  There's a piece of me that's like- Not that shit, but the shit that's that's relatable in the sense like all of us in our own ways have to learn how to like tamp down our nerdery.

• 43:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Like I was just hanging out with some guys and they actually, I mean, they asked me questions about like autocrats and borders and like the urge for me to just be like, I actually don't believe in borders at all. And I'm like a, like, I'm like, I think that they're only enforced by violence and I just can't think of any time in history where putting a dude in charge has worked. So I'm like, wait, yeah, I'm like having to like catch myself to be like, don't let that part out is something that is a little bit relatable. The problem is, I mean, the difference, obviously with this dude is like what he does let out

• 44:23Speaker 02

  is the racist murder.

• 44:25Robert Evans?

  Well, yeah, it's like, you know, I, what I don't want to let out is I don't need, there's certain people that don't need to know too much about how much I like Warhammer 40,000. And the thing that he, the thing that he's trying not to let out is that he believes he's the reincarnation of a dead prince from the year 1000.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 44:40Robert Evans?

  And these guys were like, I just wanted to kill communists. Did, was there more to it than that? Were we all on this weird, this weird magic shit?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sophie right now could rattle off, Sophie right now could rattle off the statistics of summer league for the Lakers. And I'm like, I want to know that.

• 44:59Robert Evans?

  Oh, get her talking about Twilight. Jesus. You want to, you want to give her a Heinler Kimbler moment?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Come on now.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  But you know better is the point is like, you're like, nobody wants to know this. Like, it's fine.

• 45:12Robert Evans?

  And Himmler doesn't have that filter in his head, right? And he, yeah, he just kind of assumes at a certain point that like anyone high up in the party is into this shit and they aren't all.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Dovato, Dolutegravir, Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Dovato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

• 45:50Speaker 06

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• 46:25Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit dovato.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 46:32Speaker 04

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• 47:06Robert Evans?

  So, it's a few months later after this bombing campaign where the SS and SA go off a little early, that the Nazis finally achieve their goal and Hitler becomes Chancellor. This does not bring total power, right? For the next couple of years, the Nazis are engaged in a kind of dangerous dance because the military could still overthrow them, especially if the conservative elites in the military had gotten on the same page. Obviously, that doesn't happen. And from this point forward in the story, Himmler and the SS are no longer paramilitaries. They are now increasingly part of the state. And it's not, it wasn't a guarantee that the SS would become a part of the state. The SA, I think, I mean, I think there's a degree to which they're made an official part, but they're never, the SA under Rome wanted to replace the army. That was Rome's goal.

• 47:51Robert Evans?

  Okay. So, yeah, they're now part of the state and it wasn't a guarantee because the SA doesn't really become part of the state in the way they had wanted to. They don't get to become part of the military. The SS is going to have military divisions with tanks and artillery and shit. And also, it's going to be part of the security service. They're running the concentration camps eventually. That wasn't a guarantee when the Nazis came to power. There would, it was guaranteed there were going to be camps for their enemies, but not that the SS would run them. Yeah. This is where Himmler's politicking. Again, this is part of where you see his genius for politics come into play because he is going to have to fight against a lot of people in order to make the SS what they become. And his situation here is buoyed by a few

• 48:32Robert Evans?

  factors. One of them is that his previous mentors, Rome and Strasser, were rapidly falling out of favor, right? Once in power, he doesn't have to worry about either of them because it's clear, you know, Strasser's out and Rome is on the outs with Hitler. So his main rival is Hermann Göring, right? And Göring, he's on paper someone you gotta be really concerned about. He's a war hero. He, he took over the Red Baron's fighter squadron after the Red Baron got killed in World War I. Like, he was an, and he's famous. Like, he's a celebrity. Yeah. For being such a good pilot. And he was there, he got badly wounded and went into hiding after the Munich Beer Hall putsch. Like, he's a hero for the party, too. So on paper, he's, this guy, this is a formidable guy. And he is Hitler makes, he's Hitler's

• 49:16Robert Evans?

  picked successor. On paper, if Hitler were to die, Göring is the one who's supposed to take over. And he is initially given control of the Gestapo, the secret police in Prussia, the largest German state. And he's basically in charge of policing in Prussia, which is a massive deal, right? And so Himmler is going to be fighting to take all of this away from him. Now, ultimately, this works for Himmler, and there's a couple of reasons. One of them is that Göring always has other guys that he is fighting with over this who were themselves fighting for control of the Gestapo, of the different state police. And Himmler is periodic, is on several occasions going to seem like the lesser of two evils. Like, well, if I back him in this,

• 50:01Robert Evans?

  He'll get more power, but this guy I think is more my enemy will lose power. And again, Himmler's the lowest threat, right?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:09Robert Evans?

  Some of Göring's judgment in this is thrown off by the fact that Göring is a painkiller addict at this point. He's popping oxys, their equivalent of oxys. He is badly addicted and will be throughout the whole period the Reich is in power. He goes on and off and stuff, but he doesn't get sober until Nuremberg.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 50:28Robert Evans?

  He is so he is, and that's one of those things. By the time they get in power, he's been a very competent member of the party up to this point. He's old, he's got a serious injury, he's got chronic pain and he kind of just wants to fuck off and relax and enjoy being in power. And so to an extent, that's why, because Himmler is purely focused on winning this struggle. And it's never existential for Göring. Göring knows he's not going to wind up getting kicked out. He's not going to get long-nived. He's not going to be iced out of power totally. He just won't be in charge of the cops and he's got other shit in his portfolio, right? He's got the Luftwaffe, you know? So it's this kind of thing Himmler feels like, or Göring feels like I can afford to lose to Himmler

• 51:08Robert Evans?

  and I don't want to lose to some of these other guys that Himmler's positioned himself as a counter to. And so through, over this period of like a year and a half, two years, the first, you know, almost a little less than two years the Nazis are in power. Hitler, over and over again, takes over these different state police agencies that Göring and other people had been in charge of. And he's kind of methodically, when he can't take direct control of a police agency, he'll work and use his political like connections to appoint a member of the SS to head a local police force, right? And then that police force isn't under the SS, but the guy heading it is my man. And so I can still effectively order this group around, right?

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hey, question. I'm, I'm still trying to think like, okay, what's the cost benefit here? Like the pros and cons of being the crew that runs the camps?

• 52:06Robert Evans?

  Well, that's a great question. Yeah. There's a couple of things that you gain from being the guys who run the camps. And what we'll talk, we're talking, because I wanted to introduce how the camps got started now. Okay. Um, but the gist of it is that, and this is with any organization, and this is actually my best, again, my best career advice is try to find a company doing something or like an organization doing something that you want to be doing that's new. Yeah. And then figure out what they're not doing yet and volunteer to do it. Like stick yourself in and create a job for yourself. And this is concentration camps are new. Germany had not had a massive network of concentration camps for political prisoners, certainly not for racial prisoners during the Weimar era.

• 52:49Robert Evans?

  They had prisons, which is kind of where some of the first camps arise out of. Yeah. But the system is new. And so there's going to be a bunch of people starting camps at the beginning. The first concentration camps in Germany arise within days of Hitler taking power. And they had a multitude of fathers. Some camps are a local SA chapter will be like a time to round up the Jews we don't like and the communists we don't like in this city. Right? And we'll, you know, there's this old school that no one's operating. We'll just break in, we'll throw them in there, we'll board it up and lock it up. And we'll like beat and murder a bunch of them. We'll keep them in there for a couple of weeks or whatever. Right? That's a wild concentration camp. Those are what they're called. So they're not, they're often not, not all of them are officially part of the government. Because again, it's just some of them are just, the SA is doing it. Yeah.

• 53:34Robert Evans?

  So those are the indie bands. All right. Yes. Yeah, those are the indie bands of concentration camps. And some of them are created by local police. There's these police agencies and, you know, they, they wind up or had already been run by Nazis. And once Hitler's in power, they're able to be like, all right, let's start rounding up people. And we'll take over these buildings, these old government buildings or whatnot that we weren't using. Or, you know, whatever, wherever we're putting them, we'll, we'll put people in a camp. We'll murder some of them, we'll torture the others. And the SS creates some wild concentration camps of their own in this period. Using, you know, they've got the SD, the intelligence service. So Heidrick's saying, we should grab these people in this state. And they're doing it. And so you've kind of got the SA and the local police and the SS all running some camps of their own. But none of them super official.

• 54:18Robert Evans?

  And Himmler knows we're gonna keep doing camps and we can't keep doing it this way. The Nazi state can't just have random wild concentration camps run by whoever. That's just not acceptable. We're going to need an organized system to destroy our enemies. And the SS needs to have total control of that system, right? And this is, he sees this as within the SS's purview because they're a nightly order with the goal of birthing a purified Aryan race. And part of doing that is going to be getting rid of the people who are, who should not be breeding, right? And a camp's a great way to do that. The bones of what become the official camp system start in police institutions established by the liberal Weimar government.

• 54:58Robert Evans?

  One such organ was the Munich Political Police, who had been ordered during the Weimar era to combat political extremism. And because they're cops, that just meant fighting communists, right? Yeah. And so when the Nazis take over, Heinrich puts Reinhard Heinrich in charge of the Munich Political Police. And they start arresting people, social democrats and communists and other leftists. There's this primarily political at first, and they use what they call protective custody, which is a legal term that allows them to arrest their political enemies and intern them in camps under the guise of keeping them safe, right? Dachau is established as the first formal concentration camp in order to hold people in protective custody.

• 55:42Robert Evans?

  Himmler explained the term in a press conference. "I have made quite extensive use of protective custody. I felt compelled to do this because in many parts of the city, there has been so much agitation that it has been impossible for me to guarantee the safety of those particular individuals who have provoked it. I must emphasize one point in particular. For us, a citizen of the Jewish faith is as much a citizen as someone who is not of the Jewish faith, and his life and property are subject to the same protection. We make no distinction in this respect." So you see, they still gotta pretend, no, no, Jews are still citizens. Wow. Because a lot of these, because a lot of the leftists and whatnot they're going after are Jewish, right? They're not targeting people primarily just because, they're not randomly grabbing random Jews off the street for the most part. Yeah. That does happen. Yeah. They're mainly focusing on people who are politically opposed to them.

• 56:25Robert Evans?

  But if you're Jewish and a political enemy, that'll get you to the front of the line. That's double trouble, yeah. And you'll get in, you'll be a lot more likely to get murdered, obviously. But he's saying like, no, no, no, we're not, we're arresting these guys because they're political agitators, but we want to keep them safe, you know? We have a responsibility to these people, so we gotta lock them up in Dachau for their own good. Oh, yes. Dokau begins operating in March of 1933. This is very soon after Hitler takes power. Yeah. It is operated at first by the Munich Police, but in April, using his authority as head of the Bavarian Political Police, Himmler gives the camp to the SS, right? So he puts Heinrich in charge. Dokau is established as a Munich Police concentration camp. And then in April of 33, Himmler gives the camp to the SS.

• 57:09Robert Evans?

  Lowerich writes that, quote, "Immediately after taking over the camp, the SS indulged in an orgy of violence, which cost four Jewish prisoners their lives. Subsequent investigations revealed that the camp commandant, Hilmar Wackerl, had issued special regulations, according to which martial law was to prevail over the camp. There was a camp court over which he presided and which could even pass death sentences." So the SS takes over. They immediately just start executing Jews. And this commandant, Wackerl, is like, "Well, it's, you know, we had a court. We just, I'm the court and I said they could do it."

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Listen, we have a process and the process is asking me. And I said, "He wouldn't be done." I said, "It's cool."

• 57:49Robert Evans?

  Again, taking power is a process. There's still a media and there's still public opinion you have to deal with. And this outrages Germans, right? Near Dokau especially, that like, "Oh, you're just murdering people? That's not what we thought we were getting, right?" And so state investigators demand Himmler explain why the murdered Jews has been killed. And Himmler doesn't do this. He doesn't really take much action, other than he replaces this commandant, right? In order to smooth things over, he's like, "Oh, obviously, this guy was just kind of a little out of pocket. I'm gonna put, don't worry, I got a new guy to put in. Everything's gonna be fine. How do you like this disgraced and broken psychopath who owes everything to me?" Does that seem like a better pick?

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Don't worry, he'll do what I tell him.

• 58:28Robert Evans?

  Dokau?

• 58:29Speaker 02

  He'll do what I tell him.

• 58:31Robert Evans?

  This broken psychopath's name is Theodore Icke. Icke had been, and he was a veteran in the military. He'd been a paymaster. And he had tried in the Weimar era to become a police officer and repeatedly failed the entrance exam. So we're already off to a great start.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  Damn, when the, when the police in, in Germany in the 20s is like, "Ay, fam."

• 58:51Robert Evans?

  Nah, man, nah.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Nah, gee.

• 58:53Robert Evans?

  You seem like too much of a crazy racist for us.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:57Robert Evans?

  So the best he can manage, he's such a stereotype. All he can manage is to become a security guard, right? And frustrated at his failures, he joins the Nazi Party in 1928 and the SS soon after. In 1932, he gets arrested after being caught building a bomb, badly, and he gets fired from his job. Ike claims that he'd been set up by enemies inside the Nazi Party, but was given a two year prison sentence. Now, because then and now Nazis get treated with kids gloves, even when they are arrested, Ike was allowed to leave prison when he claimed to be sick. He's like, ah, go home for the weekend, you know, rest up. And he just escapes to Italy during this period. But he comes back in February of 33 because Hitler's in power and he's like, obviously I won't go to prison now.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, we're good now.

• 59:40Robert Evans?

  So Himmler invites him to Munich and he makes Ike promise to clean up his act. But Ike gets into a brawl with the cops right after this and he gets arrested and they're like, oh, this guy's got a warrant. So they send him to prison and he goes on a hunger strike, which gets him sent to a mental hospital. And Himmler's like, oh, fuck this guy, removes him from the SS ranks for breaking his vow to stay out of trouble. Now, luckily for Ike, the director of this clinic, this mental hospital that he winds up in, is a Nazi. He would later help run the T4 euthanasia program and this Nazi murderer declares Ike sane. So Himmler's like, well, if you're sane, welcome back to the SS.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  We're good.

• 1:00:16Robert Evans?

  How would you like to be commandant of Dachau?

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  We're good. I mean, look, the doc said we're good.

• 1:00:21Robert Evans?

  Wow.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Robert Evans?

  And Ike later wrote of Himmler, "If my Fuhrer had not achieved power in Germany, I would have spent all of my life going to prison and would never have been able to take up public office." Like, he writes this to Himmler where he's like, "I owe everything to this party." Which is, that's the kind of guy the SS is recruiting.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  What a sentence.

• 1:00:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Hey, man.

• 1:00:41Robert Evans?

  I would have been nothing without Hitler.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Hey, man, I'd have been in jail forever, but instead I run the shit. Wow, dog. Yeah.

• 1:00:48Robert Evans?

  He knows where his butt is, what side of his toast is buttered on.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:52Robert Evans?

  Now, Ike proves to have a genius for the work. He establishes guidelines along which all future camps will be created. This is called the Dachau model, right? That's what Ike establishes. And he's formalizing how camps are going to work in Germany. Peter Longrich writes- Among the essential elements of this system were the sealing off of the camp from the outside world, in particular, the determination to prevent escapes, the separation of the guards from the commandant's office, the introduction of work details for the prisoners, systematized use of force through the introduction of a uniform set of punishments, the disciplinary and punishment code, as well as strict discipline for the guards, who were subject to a specific disciplinary code. The aim of creating the impression that the old arbitrary regime had now been replaced by one that was strict but nevertheless bound by certain rules,

• 1:01:35Robert Evans?

  was an additional aspect of this new system. In actual fact, the camp was ruled by arbitrary terror. The prisoners lived in continual fear for their lives. Icke was concerned above all to prevent arbitrary murders by the guards. The right to kill prisoners should be confined solely to the camp authorities. Now, this is never the case in practice. Guards continue to murder prisoners through the entirety of the KZ system, right? That's the concentration camp system. But by removing regular police from being involved at all, and isolating the camps from the rest of German culture, Himmler and Icke create a fiction that the camps operate according to a rule of law, because they're claiming they do, and no one else gets to see inside, right? So we're pretending these aren't just monuments to

• 1:02:17Robert Evans?

  compulsive cruelty, and this makes normal, conservative German citizens feel safe, and like justice is being done to their enemies.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:02:24Robert Evans?

  In roughly a year, Himmler, using the system Icke develops, births a system of camps for enemies of the Reich, owned and operated entirely by the SS, which he runs as a personal fiefdom, right? And he gets, basically, they do so well at this that it's made the rule that any camps like this are going to be run by the SS. There are a few erratic attempts by outside officials to investigate murders and enforce some accountability, but all of these fail. And Himmler's most effective strategy is simply one of delay. He'd use his friendship with other authorities to get hostile officials transferred or gum up investigations until his foes leave office, right?

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Robert Evans?

  And then no one will, you know, it's nobody's main job to be focused on the camps, right? Like, and this is, this is a massive coup, right? You've gone from, well, this is like, basically, a club that people could join if they want to, that doesn't have any real power outside of Hitler likes us, to now we are officially running the secret prison force and are in charge of most of the law enforcement agencies in Germany. And in the space of like 18 months, that's how far they've gone.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah. Question answered. I'm like, okay, now I get it. Now you need me. And yeah, now that, yeah, man, those tables are turning. If were someone to feel froggy enough to be like, I mean, obviously, this couldn't have happened, but like, I mean, if you run, if you in charge of all the goons and you're executing the whole plan, at some point, you could look at Hitler and be like, hey, bro.

• 1:03:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  I'm gonna need you to stay in line. I don't like the shit you doing. Like, you could do that if you weren't such a nerd involved in, you know, dream letters.

• 1:04:05Robert Evans?

  Right, and that's, that's kind of the thing where there's, there's this open, because Himmler saw himself at a certain point as like being, he really wanted to be the, like, the successor to Hitler.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Robert Evans?

  And, but I don't know that he ever would have, unless, until, I think maybe if Hitler had lived longer and gotten sick, you know?

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Robert Evans?

  Maybe something would have happened there. Um, but that's, uh, that, that's, you know, will have to remain kind of like a theory thing. As to like, would he have ever been able to, did he, would he have had the juice to seize power, um, if he'd tried, but?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't, and he clearly, he ain't, like, he not built for that. Like, he ain't got that metal. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? You ain't, yeah, you too light in the booty, dog. You wasn't, you not willing to, yeah.

• 1:04:49Robert Evans?

  Nope. So, the catalyzing moment for Himmler's personal power came during the Night of Long Knives in June of 1934. He'd succeeded in becoming probably the most powerful man in German law enforcement by this point, and in the spree of killing that followed, he'd helped eliminate not only his former mentors, Strasser and Rome, but dozens, probably hundreds, of other Nazis and conservative political and military leaders, right? This is when, oh, all you guys who like, thought you were kind of on our side, but you weren't totally bought into the whole Hitler thing, we'll just get rid of you if we think you might cause a problem, right? And I want to quote from a summary in the Private Heinrich Himmler. The perpetrators of these murders came from the ranks of the SS. They emerged stronger from this power struggle, finally separated themselves from the SA

• 1:05:32Robert Evans?

  and were designated by Hitler as an independent organization, especially obligated to him through their fidelity to the Fuhrer. Himmler was proud of the intimidation tactics of the SS. In November 1935, he stated in a speech, "There are many people in Germany who are sickened when they see this black uniform. We understand that, and we do not expect to be loved by very many." Oh, yeah, that's a badge of honor right there to be like, you know what I'm saying? I know we got a lot of haters. I know, you know what I'm saying? Everybody ain't built like us, man, whatever. But you need to be scared because that's our job now, right? We were always the internal guard against the party, against people in the party who might be critical of Hitler. And so you should be scared of us, motherfucker. That's why we have power. Yeah.

• 1:06:16Robert Evans?

  In 1936, Himmler is appointed chief of all German police directly by Hitler himself. Now, this was a product of how deftly he'd maneuvered the SS as an instrument for internally policing party members. Because the SS had proven so reliable, Hitler allowed him to begin establishing armed SS units in different cities. The initial justification was always the need to protect Hitler from the enemy within. We've got to have standing armed units ready in key locations in case there's an internal coup or whatnot, and we need to mobilize guys to protect Hitler right away. Himmler is obviously somewhat weak and unthreatening that most of the men like Göring, who should have treated him as a rival, considered him a useful idiot, right? Someone, well, again, I can let this guy win some power. He's not that dangerous. And then eventually this guy winds up with a lot of power. Yeah.

• 1:07:01Robert Evans?

  Himmler also succeeded by never ruffling the boss's feathers or making himself too much of a character in the media. One of his occult mentors, von Liebenfels, fell out with Hitler for the simple reason that he'd written about a lot of Hitler's favorite racial theories before Hitler did, right? We just walked out how Hitler and Himmler were both inspired by this guy's nonsense. And Hitler can't have that guy around once he's in power because then people are going to be like, well, these ideas were someone else's before they were Hitler's. And that's simply not acceptable, right? Another guy, one of the guys we've talked about, a Nazi mystic who fucked up, was Sabatendorf, the founder of the Tula Society, right? This is the guy who founds the organization that Dietrich Eckhart, founder of the Nazi Party,

• 1:07:42Robert Evans?

  is in, this group, which is how Himmler first gets really tied to a lot of these people. Sabatendorf becomes persona non grata in January of 1933 because he publishes a book about the Nazi Party before Hitler. Because Sabatendorf is there when Eckhart is creating the original party. And he's like, oh, people will be interested in the fact that there was a Nazi Party before Hitler. And Hitler's like, they absolutely won't.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Though the fuck they won't.

• 1:08:06Robert Evans?

  And just in case, I'm banning your book, right?

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely not, bro.

• 1:08:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And so when word gets out to the Fuhrer about this book, it's banned across the Reich, and Sabatendorf has to flee the country to avoid winding up in Dachau himself.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, once again.

• 1:08:21Robert Evans?

  So by the mid 30s.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, yeah, like, once again, like, we talked about at the beginning of the show, I feel like this fine print is not very fine. Like, this was, this is in 52 size point font.

• 1:08:32Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  What I say is what it is. So, you shouldn't, there's no way you didn't know that this book was not gonna fly. Yeah.

• 1:08:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so by the mid 30s, Heinrich Himmler, he's the top cop in Germany, but he's also one of very few high-ranking Nazis who are serious believers in the occult and these, like, weird mystical trappings that had once dominated the volkish movement. A lot of that has been pruned off as they reach mainstream power, where they're like, maybe we don't need as much of this weird shit, that, like, a lot of these bankers think it's kinda odd.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  People, people seem to get weird. They cool with all the murder and the, and the power shit.

• 1:09:10Robert Evans?

  But the magic, they don't like the magic.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  I thought that, I thought that was the fun part, but.

• 1:09:14Robert Evans?

  We're gonna be wizards, too. Did you guys not get that memo?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, it's kinda cool, right? Like, it's like, like, you know, it's like wizard, oh, no, nobody?

• 1:09:23Robert Evans?

  You don't like the wizard stuff, huh?

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Okay, got it, got it.

• 1:09:25Robert Evans?

  Basically, the only occultist at a similar level of power, kind of in this period, is Rudolph Hess, who's the deputy leader of the Nazi Party. And he's Hitler's, he and Hitler are cellmates. He like co-writes Mein Kampf with Hitler. And Hess had been in the Tula Society. And he's closer to Hitler personally than basically anyone. We'll talk about what happens to him, because he's going to wind up being a big part of why Hitler gets way less tolerant for the weird occult stuff in the future. But at this point, in the mid 30s, Himmler is top of the world, and it's just really him and Hess that are like the weird magic guys in the Nazi Party. In the higher echelons of, the highest echelons of the Nazi Party. So, we are going to talk about what comes next in part fucking six, I guess.

• 1:10:09Robert Evans?

  So many episodes. Gosh darn it. I'm sorry.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  And you know what, though? But you need, we needed this. We needed to understand.

• 1:10:18Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of Himmler to explain.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Robert Evans?

  I feel like how this guy works and how he succeeded is really important for people to know as we like watch kind of what's shaking out with the first attempts of the different people around Trump.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Robert Evans?

  To establish a new order.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like the people who get like jettisoned out and like where they went wrong. Like, one thing I thought of right now is like, you know, where Elon screwed up was like, you liked the camera too much. You can't be on the camera like that.

• 1:10:49Robert Evans?

  Can't be two Führers, man.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  You can't be two Führers on me, like, you know? Yeah. Nah, you see it.

• 1:10:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's the, it's the problem that like, yeah, it's too many Nazi syndrome, right?

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That's, that's the eternal issue. So, folks, this has been Behind the Bastards. If you're looking to help out a charity, we're trying to help. The Portland Defense Fund, which is an abolitionist organization that helps to bail people out of jail, primarily people who are going to be public defenders and have no money for bail or for legal assistance themselves. You can go to donorbox, just type in donorboxdefensefundpdx. Or go to @defensefundpdx on Venmo and send them a donation via Venmo. They are an actual 501. C charitable organization, C3 charitable organization. So, you know, it's tax deductible, all that good stuff.

• 1:11:44Robert Evans?

  Please help them out at Defense Fund PDX on Venmo. Donor Box Defense Fund PDX. And then a prop, obviously. You got a pluggables to plug?

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  I do, man. By the time this came out, I think that the, the thing I'm pushing now is I did. I don't know if it's a surprise album as much as it's, I just didn't do any pre promotions, but it's, it's a poetry album. I finally made like a whole album of poetry. It's called The Beautiful Endling. And it's kind of around, you know, a lot of the missions of Cool Zone where it's like, okay, look, dude, we're at the end of something. Like something is dying right now, but what can come from this can be beautiful. So like, that's kind of what this poetry is about. I realize that you and Sophie don't know that either. So like, wait, I need to sing you all the poetry album.

• 1:12:34Robert Evans?

  Yes, please.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of what I'm pushing now. You know, and also Terraform's back, the cold coffee, please order that. That's on my website and everything's at Prop Hip Hop.

• 1:12:46Robert Evans?

  So. Excellent. All right. Check out Prop and check out the remainder of this series, which is somehow still going on.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Still going.

• 1:12:55Robert Evans?

  Still himlaring, baby. Jesus Christ.

• 1:13:02Speaker 07

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.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, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

• 1:13:27Speaker 08

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