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

Robert takes us up to Heinrich Himmler's adolescence and frustrating wait through the war years, which leads him into the world of far-right politics and eventually the welcoming arms of the Nazi party itself. LIVE SHOW ALERT: We are doing a new Behind the Bastards Live show! In the Alberta Rose Theatre, Portland, September 25th at 8pm! All performer proceeds go to support the Portland Defense Fund. Tickets: https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/behind-the-bastards-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/ https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/behind-the-bastards-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/ Sources: Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) | American Experience | Official Site | PBS https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-himmler/ THE CAREER OF HEINRICH HIMMLER_0001.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/THE%20CAREER%20OF%20HEINRICH%20HIMMLER_0001.pdf Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life (p. 13). OUP Oxford. Kindle The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler on JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/1851620?read-now=1&seq=8#page_scan_tab_contents An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/heinrich-himmler-holocaust An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/heinrich-himmler-holocaust "In Memory of the Girl in the Red Coat:" Heinrich Himmler’s Annotated Volumes of Mein Kampf https://mjhnyc.org/blog/in-memory-of-the-girl-in-the-red-coat-heinrich-himmlers-annotated-volumes-of-mein-kampf/ https://ia803406.us.archive.org/29/items/docuv3/Books/The%20Third%20Reich/The%20Celebrations%20in%20the%20Life%20of%20the%20SS%20Family%20by%20Fritz%20Weitzel%20%281939%29.pdf https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/himmlers-bridal-bootcamp-school-nazi-brides.html https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/himmler-s-secret-directive-to-all-members-of-the-ss-and-the-police-on-the-care-of-all-legitimate-and-illegitimate-children-of-good-blood-october-28-1939 https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Master-Dark-Arts-Yenne-ebook/dp/B004NNUY2Y https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/26/266698688/heinrich-himmlers-private-letters-published-in-german-newspaper https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-private-heinrich-himmler/id6505124720 https://www.amazon.com/Himmler-Evil-Genius-Third-Reich-ebook/dp/B01M2A6B3G/ref=sr_1_17?crid=E50LI9MCINFL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.z6x_l5l35NMXS2OQuWFaVyTyeQToCbFtWufYLO0Ky4L51lUaUoGgVfmp9dpb0YgMMGMBzk6Ds5M4KY8XSGQdvzs_UWlPu3KkmHJV0_w1Lis71gwuHqxL4QpDLUxg_RgLfXjB7BuAQbn7kAstKkyA7w_NZpcXTr-nDXe0RoewTewNaEu0ci8AQ1anNJXxG-Dy.nKYUB17tVmFaGgeBMu1awu8zpzoH45_FAeO3Um6YpBs&dib_tag=se&keywords=himmler+biography&qid=1756935132&sprefix=himmler+biography%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-17&xpid=KnVwOODWUvtST https://www.amazon.com/Himmler-Evil-Genius-Third-Reich-ebook/dp/B01M2A6B3G/ref=sr_1_17?crid=E50LI9MCINFL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.z6x_l5l35NMXS2OQuWFaVyTyeQToCbFtWufYLO0Ky4L51lUaUoGgVfmp9dpb0YgMMGMBzk6Ds5M4KY8XSGQdvzs_UWlPu3KkmHJV0_w1Lis71gwuHqxL4QpDLUxg_RgLfXjB7BuAQbn7kAstKkyA7w_NZpcXTr-nDXe0RoewTewNaEu0ci8AQ1anNJXxG-Dy.nKYUB17tVmFaGgeBMu1awu8zpzoH45_FAeO3Um6YpBs&dib_tag=se&keywords=himmler+biography&qid=1756935132&sprefix=himmler+biography%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-17&xpid=KnVwOODWUvtST 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.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Hey everybody, Robert here and Behind the Bastards, it's doing its first live show in quite some time at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, September 25th at 8:00 PM. All performer proceeds will go to the Portland Defense Fund, which helps people who have absolutely no money and are going to be relying on public defense get bailed out and get, you know, outside of court help while they're waiting to go on trial. So please help support the Portland Defense Fund. Google Alberta Rose Theatre, T-H-E-A-T-R-E, Behind the Bastards Live. If you just Google Alberta Rose Theatre, Behind the Bastards, it'll take you to the live show. There's an etix.com. If you go to etix.com Behind the Bastards Live, you should be able to find it as well. Again,

• 0:50Robert Evans?

  all performer proceeds will benefit the Portland Defense Fund. You can also go to @DefenseFundPDX on Venmo or type donorbox DefenseFundPDX to donate directly to the Portland Defense Fund. It's a 501(c). Please help them out. And again, Behind the Bastards Live, the Alberta Rose Theatre, September 25th, 2025 at 8:00 PM. I'll see you there. I'm actually excited for the Nuremberg movie. I don't know. It looks like maybe they kind of didn't have the budget to make it as good as they could have, but Russell Crowe is really good casting for Herman Gerring.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  You love Russell Crowe.

• 1:27Robert Evans?

  I like, well, I like him as an actor, but he is also like Herman Gerring is this guy who's a young man. He's a fighter ace. He's super fit and like together and like a handsome celebrity. And then as he gets older, like he puts on a lot of weight and has problems with addiction and like, yeah, Russell Crowe is a really good guy to pick to play Gerring late in life, right?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Robert, Robert, say hi to Anderson.

• 1:52Robert Evans?

  Hello, Anderson. How are you doing? What up, Andy? Andy, what's up?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  She's the goat.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  I also have a Russell Crowe story, but that's probably.

• 1:59Robert Evans?

  Oh, you do? Yeah. For another time.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not as good as the Bill Gates story. Oh, I love that story. Doug Wilson story. I love that story. Doug Wilson story. It's not as good as both of those.

• 2:10Robert Evans?

  For a second there, I was just thinking about like, and then you just start telling me the plot of the movie, The Nice Guys. Like, oh, no, no, that's, that's based on my actual life with Russell Crowe. It wasn't in the seventies, but yeah, no, that's, that's about me.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  That'd be so funny.

• 2:22Robert Evans?

  Your fucking Ryan Gosling's character getting hit by cars?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I ran into Russell Crowe. This, so these people came into our neighborhood and said we needed to, I was gonna try to break into 300, but I couldn't remember the rest of it. But anyway, that would have been, if I could have pulled off the 300 one, that'd have been great.

• 2:40Robert Evans?

  Well, speaking of 300. That, not really.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  In no way.

• 2:47Robert Evans?

  At least 300 guys die in World War I, and that's where we are at the start of this episode. World War I has began.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Before noon. At least 300 people die in World War I. Before noon on the first day.

• 2:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's like a bad 30 seconds during the fucking Battle of the Frontiers.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 3:11Robert Evans?

  Picture this, you're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode, from sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences. Dude wipes remove what toilet paper leaves behind. Flushable, plastic-free dude wipes are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. They're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but tough enough for methods of historical proportions.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  Unlike baby wipes, dude wipes are flushable and designed to begin breaking down when flushed. No battles there. They come in a range of at-home and travel-friendly formats, from individually wrapped singles to 48-count big daddies. Don't let skids be your lasting legacy. Grab a dude wipe and destroy the evidence. Dude wipes, best clean, pants down. Available at major retailers nationwide.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 4:48Robert Evans?

  So Heinrich Himmler, you know, starts when he's on vacation as a kid. He's taking notes. He's writing in his diary over the first few weeks as things are spinning up to a full-blown war. And we get this fascinating, one of the things that his diary entries provide us with is this really fascinating window into the state of Imperial German propaganda at this time.

• 5:10Robert Evans?

  One of his early diary entries, you know, before the outbreak, or like right after the outbreak of, you know, once the German army gets into the fray and like everybody's actually fighting, he just writes, "English army beaten." And then goes on to add, "I'm as happy at these victories as the English and French are no doubt annoyed at them, and the annoyance will be considerable. Falk and I would really," it's one of his friends, "would really like to fight right now ourselves. It's clear that the good old Germans and their loyal allies, the Austrians, are not afraid of a world full of enemies." Wow. This is a snapshot of, yeah, in the first couple of weeks of the war, things are going really well for Germany. They take Belgium, they're pushing towards Paris. Most of, you know, the English army, this is remembered differently in Great Britain, as like how well they fought. And even though there's very few of them,

• 5:54Robert Evans?

  they inflicted hideous casualties on the Germans. But also what happens is the English army, as it has existed at the start of the war, is almost wiped out, right? Yeah. Like their standing army almost doesn't exist very, very soon into the war, which is why, you know, they have to do this general draft and stuff. And so from the perspective of the Germans, sure, you know, they were good soldiers, but like we wiped them out, basically. There's not that many English soldiers left anymore. And like the French are being pushed back. So he is just absolutely, from The beginning of it is like, ah, we're unstoppable. And this, I, I think this is particularly, I, I don't want to do too much of like, again, what a lot of people do when they're looking at his diary and like,

• 6:34Robert Evans?

  working backwards from where he ended up and being like, ah, a clear sign of the monster he'd become. But there is something useful in that last sentence where he's like, the Germans, the good old Germans and their loyal allies, the Austrians are not afraid of a world full of enemies, right?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Good old Germans.

• 6:51Robert Evans?

  Idea that like, it's, you know, we can stand alone against the world. The fact that as a kid, he feels that way.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a sentence, man.

• 7:00Robert Evans?

  Right. It's, it's relevant to who he becomes.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, yeah, that says a lot.

• 7:04Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. And that,

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, you ain't afraid of haters.

• 7:07Robert Evans?

  He's not alone. This is specifically what the Kaiser's propaganda is trying to inculcate. But part of why everyone in the Nazi high command is willing to make a lot of the calls and willing to back Hitler and all other calls that lead them to being at war in the war, with the world, is that they had been raised in this propaganda where it's like, yes, it's Germany against the world and we can take them, right? Obviously, they almost do in World War One, you know, to be fair.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:33Robert Evans?

  So, um, it's also worth noting that a few weeks later, at the end of August, once his family had returned home from vacation and he'd had more time to talk with his like neighbors and his peers about what they thought of the war, uh, he writes this, quote, "Generally speaking, there is no particular enthusiasm in Lower Bavaria among the people at home. When the mobilization was announced in the old town, everyone apparently started blubbing, crying. I would have expected that least of all of the Lower Bavarians. They are usually so ready for a fight. A wounded soldier says the same. Often really dreadful and stupid rumors go around, all invented by people." And that's interesting where he's like, wow, all my neighbors are cowards that scared and sad that we're going to war.

• 8:15Robert Evans?

  They don't think it's awesome. And a wounded soldier who came back from the front said that the war is a bad thing. What a dick. These people are idiots. Yeah, they're inventing rumors. This guy who got machine gunned and all of his friends died is inventing rumors that the war is gonna be bad.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  See, this is again,

• 8:33Robert Evans?

  Hearsay.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, this is, yeah, y'all watch too many movies. Cause like, I feel like,

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I feel like one of the most miserable feelings is like a wet sock.

• 8:44Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Right, like, so like, so a wet sock that you can't do anything about.

• 8:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  But it's also inside of your boot and it's going to kill you.

• 8:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  The sock is so wet and so moist that you're probably gonna lose your foot.

• 9:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Because it's infected. Like, like, that type of like, I'm not even talking about the bullets and the machines. I'm talking about the food rations have maggots and mice in them.

• 9:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  And just like.

• 9:13Robert Evans?

  All of my friends are dead. Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  And all my friends are dead.

• 9:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  You know, the food I ate to survive to get here to talk to you?

• 9:21Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I ate it off of my dead buddy.

• 9:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it's, I, I think a lot when I'm reading about like Heinrich hearing from this wounded veteran and being like, what a coward. How, how dare he not want to fight? It brings to mind just something from the early stages of the Iraq war. Um, there was a, a sergeant who was a Nicaraguan lawful permanent resident who joins the United States Army. Camilo Mea, um, who is deployed to Iraq, uh, very early in the war in like 2004. And when he returns home after six months on a two-week furlough, he refuses to go back. And he's like, I'm a conscientious objector. The war is wrong. We shouldn't be here. You guys don't understand how bad it is and how bad it's going to go. Like, we need to stop this now. And he gets like put in prison for it for a year and stuff.

• 10:08Robert Evans?

  And I, I'm thinking about like, as a kid, the things that I heard about him from my family and from the news about what a coward this man was. And it's like, this man was in fucking combat. He fought for this country. And he came back and was like, guys, this is a bad thing. It's bad. It's going to go bad. We're not gonna win. It's gonna kill a lot of people. We should stop. And yeah, I mean, I, I, I can really understand Heinrich's reaction because as a kid, that's how I felt about this guy. Because I was fucking propagandized too, you know?

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:36Robert Evans?

  Some of us get past it. Heinrich never does.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 10:40Robert Evans?

  So, and it's, one of the things that's interesting here is that like, he's talking to these locals who are like sad that the war is happening. Uh, and the fact that, you know, a, a month before he writes. This entry about how stupid they are and ah, they're, they're listening to all these dumb rumors, all invented by people. A month ago, you were talking about how the British Army's been defeated and the French are fleeing and Germany's, and now things have bogged down and hundreds of thousands of Germans are already dead. And you don't realize like, maybe you were wrong? Like, maybe everyone was lying to you about how easy this was gonna be? Like, you don't get that yet? But he's a kid, you know? Kids are dumb and he's no smarter than any other dumb propagandized kid in the history of the world.

• 11:23Robert Evans?

  So, uh, when a trainload of wounded French soldiers arrived in town, Himmler wrote about them. This is interesting to me. He does write about these wounded foreign soldiers, despite how he felt about the French, with compassion. He's actually like, he's, he's angry that there are some locals who are like angry that the prisoners are being taken care of and fed. And he's like, no, like, they're prisoners. They fought honorably. Like, we, like, that's not bad. Which is interesting. Now, that said, several days later, he hears news about 90,000 Russian POWs and he writes in his diary that Russians, quote, "multiply like vermin." So you also get flashes of the, the guy he's gotta become, right? I think that's interesting. There's an element of, well, this was not a guy who was incapable

• 12:07Robert Evans?

  of compassion as a kid. And also, yeah, he's already, he's at 14 and he's talking about Russians like they're, they're fucking rats. So, yeah, okay, I can see, I can see both. You weren't maybe destined to be Heinrich Himmler, but there were always the pieces of that in you too. Yes. Yeah. Um, in his Freudian analysis of Himmler's diaries, Peter Lowenberg writes, "Two American historians, Werner T. Angers and Bradley F. Smith, have collaborated in studying Himmler's early years. They found that there were two distinct Himmlers, an early, normal one and a later psychopath. The early Himmler was, quote, 'to all appearances a normal human being.' It is, they write, bewildering to discover how genuinely kind, considerate, and at times downright compassionate he was as a youth."

• 12:51Robert Evans?

  And I don't know that I would agree Himmler was a psychopath as an adult. In part because that a psychopath isn't capable of empathy and he clearly is. He goes to the camps as an adult. He's nauseated, he like vomits because of what he's seeing at the camps that he is running. He is, I think this, and I don't say this to be like, he's not as bad as these guys think. I think it's worse.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  No, yeah.

• 13:16Robert Evans?

  If you just can't care about people and do terrible things, that's not as bad as being capable of empathy and choosing to do those things. 100%.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, as looking at it and go, nah, this shit sucks.

• 13:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, this shit sucks. This is super evil. Anyway.

• 13:30Robert Evans?

  Oh, fuck, we're doing the wrong thing. Like, yeah, no, oh, fuck, this is awful. Obviously, we gotta do it. This makes it more honorable that we're willing to push through our nausea to kill these people.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do?

• 13:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Right. Nah, I, I am like, man, the, just, I think both of our shows have made this point so many times that like, you wanna otherize the monster.

• 13:52Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  That like, and call them a monster. That there's something that is foreign or far from us with, they have this weird brain worm in their soul that makes them something separate than us. It's like, no, no.

• 14:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  They're us.

• 14:07Robert Evans?

  And I, I, I think that's kind of what I really wanna emphasize here is, I don't think, and you know, this is arguable, th- this is my argument, I don't think he was destined to be the genocide guy. I think he made choices and I also think that there's, obviously, like, you know, nature, the, just, the, his environment also helped push him to this, his people around him, his family pushed him to this. But I don't think that Heinrich Himmler, if you take this guy and you put him in a different time or you surround with better people in the same place, he might have wound up being a very different person, right? I don't think this is a guy who was, could only ever have been a monster. I think he's a guy who chooses to do monstrous things and I, I think that's important.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yes, rather than being born 1900, he's born 2000.

• 14:54Robert Evans?

  Right. He could have been a different guy, you know?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:56Robert Evans?

  Better parents, a better environment.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 14:59Robert Evans?

  Could have been a totally different person.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Robert Evans?

  Uh, so World War I was an accelerating agent for the worst parts of his personality. War does not tend to make people better. Like many German boys, he became obsessed with the idea of serving and particularly, he wants to be in combat. He wants to be infantry. Now, wants to be an officer. He doesn't want to be a grunt, right? He wants to be like, cause he sees that as in part, his, he's owed that kind of position, right? He does, he, his family's upper middle class. He knows the prince. He's supposed to be an officer, right? Mm-hmm. Now, by 1915, at 15, he's getting close to adulthood. He's not far from when he'll be able to join and fight. And he, he writes about being like overwhelmed. He can barely stand it that he's not out there yet, right?

• 15:44Robert Evans?

  Like this is driving him crazy that he's, he's still too young to fight and he's gonna miss it. He's still worried, even in 1915, when it's become, become clear, oh, this is bad. No, this is gonna. He still can't get over how angry he is at not being able to fight yet. And part of it, he's also very insecure. His health problems continue and he's really worried that like, he might not be able to serve at the front because of his health. And so he starts taking actions. He gets obsessively into fitness to try and, he gets into weightlifting. Like he's a, again, there's a, you could see the, the, the modern day version of Himmler would have fallen for a lot of these like far right, uh, like Joe Rogan, fucking steroid grifters, fitness guys. He would have been really into that.

• 16:29Robert Evans?

  Lowenberg writes, quote, "On the eve of his 15th birthday, he wrote, 'I work out with dumbbells every day now to get more strength.'" Yeah, you do. "But as adolescence developed, his perception of strength became an inner one. Strength to him was a function of inner control, of self-discipline over his emotions." Now, as a Freudian, Lowenberg describes this as a fundamentally anal-retentive method of building strength. Okay, man. Yeah. Uh, he quotes a later diary entry by 20-year-old Himmler where Himmler, Heinrich promises to seize, quote, "Like iron, the bit of self-control in my mouth." He means bit like a horse's bit, right? Uh, and then extends this, Lowenberg does, to a claim that Himmler must have been obsessed

• 17:09Robert Evans?

  with a desire to masturbate and all of his obsession with fitness and with self-control is as a result of his constant battle with himself to stop himself from coming. I don't think there's any evidence of this.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Where did he get that?

• 17:22Robert Evans?

  Freudians are obsessed with coming, right?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, where'd you get that? Like, where? Where did that?

• 17:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He is, this is a Catholic boy. I am sure he's got a self-complex about his sexual urges and the fact that it's called a... I'm sure that this does influence him, as it does like most kids in this era, right?

• 17:43Robert Evans?

  I just don't, I think that you're, he's, there's, there's some reaching here going on, right?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  I feel like what's, what's more, I mean, obviously, like, even the practice of doing what I'm about to say, we're against doing it, but I'm like, but what seems to be, again, right in front of us was what they said about the boy in high school. Like, he's, he didn't, he was a late glow up.

• 18:04Robert Evans?

  He's a late glow up, he's anxious about his fitness, about being scrawny and weak, yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  You know, he's, like I said, like, he's a six at best, you know what I'm saying? So that's already happening and it's like, dude, nah, let me put some, let me bulk up a little bit. I'm bigger now, I bet you, you know what I'm saying? Like, I go to this war, I put some weight on, like, everybody, you know, my lungs, I don't be running like everybody else. You feel me? Like, let him, it's, it's a normal, boy, I'll show them glow up moment. You feel me? That, like, to me is like, again, so far, I know that the tide is going to completely turn, but I feel like so far, all this is relatable.

• 18:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and that's, yeah, I, I, I think that's a, yeah, a, a really important point. And again, I'm sure he's got some weird attitudes about masturbation, that can't, that's not nothing, but it's just, Lowenberg describes it as like, this is probably, is more important to him even than like preparing his body for war. And no, I think his obsession with physical fitness and his, he might have, you might even say body dysmorphia. He's very unhappy with his body. I think that's focused on his worries about not being able to fight, not being fit to be a soldier, like he's supposed to be, and like his older brother is going to be. In September of 1915, his parents and his older brother Gebhardt go to a field hospital for wounded, or at least a hospital for wounded soldiers with their parents.

• 19:25Robert Evans?

  They go like, you know, thank these soldiers who have gotten maimed on the Western Front. And Heinrich is really envious that he doesn't get to go. Like, he's like, oh, man, I wish I should have been there. Gebhardt turns 17, and he gets to join the military reserve, or Lahnsturm. Heinrich claimed, quote, "If only I were old enough, I'd be out there like a shot." But he's not, and he has to content himself with joining the Cadet Corps, which is the Imperial German version of ROTC, right? This is like, you're not quite ready to join, you're going to be an officer, we're going to prepare you for that. He starts in autumn, and he and his peers, they spend some time, they go out, there's like a week, there's like summer camp, basically, that they do. And, you know, I think it's a thing where, once or twice a week, they'll meet up. And they get some training.

• 20:10Robert Evans?

  I think they, they do some shooting. Most of what they're doing is probably marching, right? But it's kind of trying to prepare you so that you need less training when you're old enough to go fight, right? He's enthusiastic, he really likes wearing a uniform, he really enjoys being involved in this. But again, his health issues keep cropping up. And he starts, he develops, he has this severe stomach pain that he talks about. I think he has IBS, probably IBS-D. If I just had to guess by what he's describing, we don't know. But I think he's got, huh?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Could have Crohn's.

• 20:43Robert Evans?

  It might, it might be, I don't think, it's not, I don't think it's seri- It might be Crohn's, but I, it doesn't seem quite serious enough for that, because he would have been basically entirely unmedicated. And I think unmedicated Crohn's would have been more debilitating to him. So painful. I, I think this is likelier, but I, I'm not a doctor. But he's got some sort of weird stomach gastrointestinal issue that will plague him his whole life. This is always a problem for him. Well, I mean, he's Heinrich Himmler, so I guess I'm glad he's suffered in the long run. But he hasn't done anything bad yet.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I was like, stomach problems, that's a bummer. Not, not for him. He kind of, he kind of deserved it.

• 21:20Robert Evans?

  Longrich's biography suggests that his obsessive weightlifting is more of a response to these embarrassing health problems than an example of a broader need for control because he can't stop from masturbating. I think that's probably likelier than what Lowenberg theorizes. Yeah. In late 1916, Heinrich's godfather, the prince, is killed in action in Romania at age 32. This is a calamity for the Himmler family, and Heinrich in particular. They don't entirely lose their access to the royal family because, like they know his mom, and so they have some ability to still make use of that relationship. But the prince being dead is it really damages their connections, right? Oh, that sucks, man.

• 22:02Robert Evans?

  They're much less tied in to royalty now, and the social benefits that would have come from it for Heinrich. Yeah, you're his plus one, man. Like, you can't, like, you just lost, you're the plus one, so now you're not on the list, you know what I mean? You're the plus one, and then he got fucking murked by, I think it's, I think he probably died from shrapnel, I forget exactly, uh, maybe I'm wrong, but he gets killed on the fucking front, right? Yeah. In May of 1917, Heinrich's brother Gebhard joins an infantry regiment and starts his training to become an infantry officer. Now Heinrich is now old enough to serve, right? Because, you know, his brother's 17 in like 1915, Heinrich's a couple of years younger. He's like 17 now, you know, this is the second to the last year of the war. He is old enough that he could, if he were a regular German, he probably would have gone

• 22:46Robert Evans?

  in infantry and been out there pretty quickly. But his parents, again, he doesn't want to serve as an enlisted man, and his parents beg the mother of his dead godfather, you know, the, yeah, I don't think she's the queen, I forget exactly what the term is, but she's the prince's mom, she's somewhere in the royalty. The queen aunt. Yeah, yeah, queen aunt or some shit like that, to help them get a position in an elite infantry regiment. And she does write a letter to one of these, like, elite regiments, being like, please accept this young boy. But they're like, Look, we're like serious ass soldiers, like,

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Come on fam, yeah.

• 23:20Robert Evans?

  Like, at this point, the German military, the elite units are really good. Their proto, these are like these stormtroopers, the trench fighters. These are the guys who, we are very careful with them because you can't replace these dudes, right? It takes time for someone to build up the kind of skill and fight, like, we, we, we don't just take, we're not gonna take this sickly, weak kid and like, put him in a unit where he's going to be asked to leap into a trench with a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other and kill men in hand-to-hand combat. He's not ready for that, right?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, somebody's, somebody's mom writes a letter to the SEALs, like,

• 23:57Robert Evans?

  Right, like, yeah. He can't lift a 40-pound weight, but please take him into the Navy SEAL.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  He's a good boy, he's a good boy.

• 24:06Robert Evans?

  His dad taught my dead son.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:08Robert Evans?

  So Heinrich leaves school that year. He has not graduated. He does, it's, this isn't really, it's dropping out, but not really, because kind of everyone who is 17 is doing this, either to go directly into the military, or in Heinrich's case, he doesn't want to be conscripted and as an enlisted man. And so he leaves school so he can get into the reserve and try to secure himself a position as an officer candidate. He wants to go to officer candidate school and handle all that. This'll let him choose a better assignment with at least a more prestigious unit than like some ground pounder, or someone even worse, someone in like the back rank who's never gonna see combat, who's gonna be doing like signals or whatever. To make a long story short, Gebhard Senior, his father, keeps using his connections and

• 24:50Robert Evans?

  eventually is able to secure Heinrich a posting with a reserve battalion that is like the reserve battalion for a pretty good regiment. So these are the guys, when that good regiment loses men in combat, the reserve battalion sends men over to fill them back up, right? So it's the kind of thing, well, eventually you'll get, you know, a frontline position theoretically. So Heinrich goes off to train and he's now in the military. He's doing military training to learn to be an officer. And he starts writing home and signing his letters as Milais Heinrich. Milais is Latin for soldier, so he's signing his letters. Letters as Heinrich the Soldier now. Okay. Longrich writes, quote, "The brand new warrior expressed his manliness amongst other things by taking up smoking.

• 25:34Robert Evans?

  In contrast to this masculine pose, his almost daily letters to his parents in fact reveal the considerable difficulties he had in adjusting to the world of the military. Heinrich was homesick. He complained about the poor accommodation and wretched food, though on most evenings he could supplant this by going to pubs." Oh my god. He's not really ready for what war is gonna be. Went all Shapiro on us, Ben Shapiro on us, pretending like you like cigars. Yeah, and you're still going out to the pub and getting pub food. Like, you're not doing that bad. Like, if you think this is bad, what do you see what your brother is gonna do? Yeah, like during war. Yeah. You going out to the pubs? Yeah. Yeah, got it. In the spring of 1918, his older brother Gebhard goes to the Western Front and he winds up being part of this last massive offensive, the Kaiser Schlot, I think it's called,

• 26:18Robert Evans?

  of the German army in World War I, and he experiences heavy combat. His unit loses a lot of guys. He is fighting face to face, tooth and nail in the trenches, ugly, like as bad as it gets, shit. Like Gebhard is a blooded soldier by the end of this. Heinrich, in comparison, spends his time complaining about the food and begging his parents for care packages. He receives seven care packages in his first five weeks away, but this is not enough, and he writes petulantly home in one letter, "Dearest parents, today again I have got nothing from you." That's mean. What the? Such a baby. There's a fucking war. Your brother is like ankle deep in blood. He is wading through blood,

• 27:00Robert Evans?

  fucking up to his knees probably, and storms of bullets and shrapnel. He's killing men in a hand to hand. He's watching the light drain from their eyes. And you're like, "I only got seven care packages in five weeks. Do you guys not love me anymore, mom?" Not just saying you're gonna give me the gluten free. Come on, you fucking baby. Like, Jesus. A million Germans starved to death during this period of time, and you're like, "Mommy, my care packages."

• 27:26Speaker 02

  But you gonna send, you gonna send some goldfish? They ain't got no goldfish.

• 27:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's, and Gabhard becomes a Nazi too. He's not a sympathetic figure, right? But like, it is this like discrepancy between his older brother, really smart, very good in school, fucking bleeding with his brothers, watching all of his friends get massacred in this like nightmare apocalypse battle. And Heinrich's like, mommy, you're not writing home enough. You know, he sends one letter back to his parents that reads, dear mother, thank you so much for your news, which I did not get. It's so horrid of you not to write again. He like misses a day or two of letters and he writes home being like, thank you for the letter that I didn't get. What a dick.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  The lady that wasn't in none of your journals, okay.

• 28:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Now, now, now you wanna talk about her, huh? Cause she ain't write you no letter? Okay, nah, I'm good.

• 28:18Robert Evans?

  And it's like, okay, at this point, he's a prick. Yeah, right? Like, we could say that.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  We're starting to see the churn, yeah.

• 28:25Robert Evans?

  This kid's a dick.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, your war wasn't what you thought it was, huh?

• 28:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't get your little snacks, you don't get your little tuck in every night.

• 28:33Robert Evans?

  He's not even getting shot at, right?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  You're not even at war.

• 28:36Robert Evans?

  So, he eventually gets posted to take a course on machine gun uses. He's to be basically, if he'd finished training, he would've been like an officer in a machine gun unit, you know, right? Um, on September 15th of 1918, uh, he does not wind, it's interesting to me that he doesn't wind up sent to the front, right? Cause Germany does not have guys. They are, they've been blood white by this point. A 17 year old boy even, at this point, I don't care if he's sickly. He's just there for 10 minutes until he takes a fucking bullet to the lung, right?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 29:06Robert Evans?

  Like, we just need bodies. And so it's interesting that he doesn't just get sent to the front. He's had enough training. Guys go up there with less. There's a couple of potential explanations. One is that even this late in the war, the German military still does try to make sure that their officers have a good base of training when they're sent to the front. And so maybe it's just that because he's becoming an officer, they don't wanna rush that. But they do for a lot of guys. And Longrich suggests, and this is something he can't, there's not really hard evidence for this, but I think it's a reasonable suggestion that it might've been because his superiors see kind of what we've seen in these letters home, that he's immature. And like, they're like, this guy shouldn't be commanding men in battle.

• 29:48Robert Evans?

  Like, you know, like, that's not gonna help Germany, I can tell you that much.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  He a little boy, y'all, like, he's like-

• 29:55Robert Evans?

  He's a kid.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  He's a kid, yeah.

• 29:57Robert Evans?

  And we're willing to send kids to die, but we don't, maybe we don't want them leading men to die, right? He's just not, if he's going to be an officer, let's keep him away until he grows up a little bit.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  You're gonna kill a lot of other people.

• 30:08Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Being childish, or, these men gonna turn on you because you a child.

• 30:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're gonna frag your ass. Whatever the case, he is still in the reserves and still training when Germany signs the armistice. So, Heinrich Himmler never gets the baptism of fire that he so dearly desired. And his brother Gebert, on the other hand, does the soldier thing as much as you can, right? He gets an Iron Cross for valor. He gets basically like, somewhat equivalent to like a Medal of Honor. Somewhere between like a Bronze or Silver Star and a Medal of Honor. You know, because there's different kinds of Iron Cross, I don't know exactly. But it's like, it's a very prestigious, Hitler gets one of these, right?

• 30:42Speaker 02

  He came home and got props.

• 30:43Robert Evans?

  It's a big deal that he gets this. And he manages, he doesn't get seriously injured over there, which is amazing, given the kind of combat that he's in. He's a lucky guy. And the fact that his brother, who's always been better than him, is now a war hero and Heinrich misses out entirely, he will never get over this. This will color the rest of his life. His insecurity over this is something that is present for the rest of his days. And you know what else was present for all of Heinrich Himmler's life?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Capitalism.

• 31:16Robert Evans?

  Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, sorta, yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  It was invented by them.

• 31:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it was around, it's a factor in Germany in this period, but also, products, advertisements.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:28Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutigrevir 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 was right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 31:52Speaker 06

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 32:27Robert Evans?

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

• 32:37Speaker 05

  It's 6:47 on a Friday. Your team's already gone home. And somewhere, a phone is ringing. It's a customer. They're ready to book. Nobody picks up, so they call the next company. That's a missed call and missed revenue. With Quo, you don't have to choose between doing the work and answering the phone. Your team can share calls, texts, and customer conversations in one place. And when no one's available, Quo's AI assistant can answer, handle questions, and even book the appointment for you. So whether you're on a job, in a meeting, or done for the day, your business can keep answering. Setup takes minutes. Keep the number you already have and add your team as you grow. No IT required. It's why over 90,000 companies trust Quo, the number one rated business phone system on G2.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, then get 20% off your first six months at quo.com/behind. That's Q-U-O dot com slash behind.

• 33:38Robert Evans?

  And we're back and we're talking about Heinrich Himmler post the big dub dub uno. So Germany's lost. Heinrich is very much going to fall for the stabbed in the back myth, right?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Surprise, surprise.

• 33:52Robert Evans?

  And he's angry both at the Jews and social democrats who

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 33:57Robert Evans?

  ended the war, which is not the military ended the war because they knew that the army would have collapsed if they'd kept fighting.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Right?

• 34:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And they blame it on the people who actually take over after and negotiate the peace, which is the largely social democratic government of Weimar at the start of Weimar. And, you know, the, I mean, particularly it, one of the negotiators who helps ensure the peace is a real hero is a Jewish man. Right?

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:24Robert Evans?

  Matthias Erzberger, I think was his name.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:27Robert Evans?

  Who gets assassinated as a result.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, here's a, here's a good tie to his past of him being like, oh, my having, like you said earlier, like, oh, my, like, Germany, you know, collecting enemies. Like, we'll stand alone. It's all good. You know what I mean?

• 34:41Robert Evans?

  How that work out?

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're exactly, first of all, how that work out, but you had an attitude to where you just like, you ain't forced, you against us, you a hater, like, I don't care. You know what I'm saying? We would have never lost because we don't give up. We don't mind having enemies. You know what I mean? The only way we would have lost was because, like you said, somebody had to stab us in the back. You feel me?

• 34:59Robert Evans?

  Right. And that's the, it's not, and for Heinrich, it's not only did we get stabbed in the back and Germany was robbed of its great victory. I was robbed of my chance to be a hero.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:07Robert Evans?

  Be a real man.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Personifies it like I was robbed. Yeah.

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  So.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  That's big.

• 35:12Robert Evans?

  Once the war is over, Heinrich attempted to remain with the military, but the old Imperial Army is replaced as a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles with the Reichswehr. Right? That's the post-war army and it's limited to 100,000 men and they're not allowed to have like an air force. I don't think they're allowed much in the way of artillery. They're very much, because people are like, yeah, Germany, you gotta kind of out of pocket. We gotta really keep a lid on your asses, right?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:37Robert Evans?

  This is going to prove to be a bad idea for a lot of reasons, the way, the terms of the treaty. I don't need to get into that. People are broadly familiar. The terms of the treaty play into why things happen with Germany the way they do. But one of the things this is going to mean is that like Heinrich wants a military career. Right? Uh, and he's not going to get one because the only people who get to stay in the military, it's a tiny fraction of the deployed military. And those jobs are going to go to guys who actually saw shit. Right? Anyone valuable for some reason, have connections and just not gonna have Heinrich's gonna try, but like, why the fuck would we give you a job of like the tiny number of people who get to keep military jobs? Why would you get it?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Robert Evans?

  Hitler doesn't and Hitler was actually a decorated combat soldier, right? They won't let him in, you know?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  That's great for me to hear. Because it's like, like it's like Himmler, I feel like he's like, it's privilege ain't the word per se, but like, but he is, but it's just like, it's supposed to work out for me.

• 36:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Like, you know what I'm saying? So like, why is this not working out either is like, had to have add to the like pissed offedness, you know?

• 36:47Robert Evans?

  And that is, that's a huge part of why Himmler is the way that he is and why he gets drawn into Nazism, right? Is, and this is a big, this is a major factor in almost everyone who winds up kind of especially these, a lot of these higher up members of the Nazi party, the people who are running the SS, we've talked about this with like Heinrich and with Eichmann, these guys are people who could come from the middle class and upper middle class and I was promised more, I'm supposed to be doing better and they're not never doing bad, they're never really suffering compared to how other people are, but they're furious because I was supposed, I was promised more, I'm owed more.

• 37:29Robert Evans?

  It's a massive factor in all of these guys and it's a massive thing for Himmler. So he is able to, he returns to school under a special program instituted by the post-war government to allow young men who had dropped out basically because they were either being drafted or they were trying to volunteer and thus had missed out on finishing, finishing their education to get their, it's kind of a mix between like a GED and a high school diploma to allow them to go back and finish it, right? And actually the class that Heinrich is in is taught by his father Gebhard. Longrich says Gebhard didn't show favoritism to his son, is actually pretty consistent of descriptions of him, he wouldn't have really done that.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:08Robert Evans?

  So, anyway, he gets his German GED, I think it's called an Abitur or something like that. The first few months. Once after the war are rife with socialist uprisings and attempt to take and hold different German cities by leftists which are cracked down on brutally by a mix of police, the military, and Freikorps, right, which are these groups of Freikorps, these groups of demobilized veterans who are murderous thugs used by the new Weimar government to maintain control. These guys are far right, the Weimar government isn't, but the Weimar government cares more about stopping the left from succeeding in this kind of like, because they're trying to do basically the Russian Revolution II electric boogaloo. And Weimar is like, well, if we got to have these proto Nazis

• 38:50Robert Evans?

  murder a bunch of people, as long as it stops that from happening, right?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:54Robert Evans?

  So Heinrich gets political fairly quickly. He gets involved first with a center-right political party, like it's not the far right, but that's kind of his initial, more or less an analog to like a mainline Republican Party initially. And at the end of 1919, he joins a Freikorps unit. He is deployed to them, if you can call it that, on a couple of occasions, which is, you know, there's unrest or whatever, and the Freikorps move out. He does some marching around. He does some riding in a car with some guys with guns, but he does not engage in any, a lot of Freikorps are doing fighting. There's heavy fighting and killing. He is not involved

• 39:35Robert Evans?

  in any of that. He does not see any serious action. I think in general, because even as messy as these Freikorps units are, they're organized and run by people who actually fought, and they're like, yeah, this, we should keep this kid away from anything serious. Look at him.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Look at him. You don't really want the smoke. Yeah.

• 39:52Robert Evans?

  I don't want him behind, I don't want him watching my back, you know? He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  You ain't really with the shits. You just want to wear the uniform. I do think it's also important to remember, like, and again, it's hard in our American imagination to understand, first of all, multiple forms of government, but the type of transition, I feel like this is the first time, at least in our age, era, where we've seen a government totally like-

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Lose their marbles, like we've never seen it like like our government's lost its marbles. You know what I'm saying? And like, but at this time, like you said, like during Weimar, during the Weimar Republic, I'm like, women can vote. Like, there's these just these like progressive, not progressive, but there are these like progressions in culture, like they're they're funding the arts, they're funding science and motherfuckers is pissed off. You know, like, and that's sort of like, like, okay, guys, like, think about this for a second. Like, these, like, these are, uh, maybe I'm having a modern, maybe I'm modern-pilled, but I'm like,

• 41:00Speaker 02

  it's such an interesting moment and how the clapback from that was so strong. Like, it's just, I don't know, it's just a weird time where I was like, brother, like, like, this the world, like, this, this the time Einstein's from.

• 41:18Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Like, you're getting like government endowments to understand science. You know what I'm saying? Like, this, that's, I thought that was good.

• 41:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 41:29Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep, yep. So, uh, yeah, Heinrich, you know, he's in the Free Corps. Part, part of why he's in, joins this unit is it's, uh, he's kind of trying to stay in the military after demobilization. He's hoping he can make connections, but it doesn't work out. And he gets, he's out of the military, he's cashiered out by the summer of 1919. He begins to work as a laborer on a farm. So he's like, you know, he's, he's, he's working on a farm, but he doesn't own it. But he gets entranced by rural life and he starts sending letters back to his parents, signed Heinrich Agricola, which is Latin for Heinrich the farmer. However, that's agriculture, agricola, you can see where it comes from. However, the ruthless pace of life on a farm disagrees with his fragile constitution.

• 42:14Robert Evans?

  Again, he's, he's gonna be like a lot of modern far-right guys. He will idolize homesteading and the small farmer and like, this is the life. We need a new nobility formed out of like, you know, the rural peasantry. But he's never able to really do it because he's, he's sickly and he doesn't like. Working hard outside. By September of that year, illness had forced him to pause his career. Again, this is a kid who thought he was ready for the fucking trenches and you can't handle farming for like more than two months, three months. He goes to his family doctor who diagnoses him with an enlarged heart and prescribes him a one-year break to study and regain his health. Now, obviously, an enlarged heart is a serious health issue. I don't think he actually has one, because there's not really evidence from the rest

• 42:58Robert Evans?

  of his life that he has one. I think this is just doctors, you know, they're not like, but they're not like doing a scan to see his heart's big.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're using X-ray.

• 43:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna take more cocaine, you know. So anyway, what's interesting here is that, and this is fascinating to me, Heinrich gets like basically told, hey, go chill out for a while, you know, maybe go to school, but don't do any hard outdoor labor. So he's like, he's, he's laid up sick for a year, unable to work, and he starts reading obsessively. And when he starts reading obsessively, for the most part, is right-wing Volkish propaganda.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Oh, shit.

• 43:35Robert Evans?

  So, the Volkish movement is ascendant in Germany in this period. And the literal translation of the word Volk is just like folk or people, like it's the people, right? The Volkswagen is the people's car, right? The actual meaning, though, of the word Volk in German doesn't graph directly to any term that we have in, in the English. In a 1964 book on German ideology in the 20th century, Moss explained, George Moss explained, Volk is a much more comprehensive term than people to German thinkers. Ever since the birth of German Romanticism in the late 18th century, Volk signified the union of a group of people with a transcendental essence, right? There's this added, this idea the Nazis will popularize of like the Volksgemeinschaft, which is like the people's racial community.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  That kind of sounds like, that sounds like, well, like in hip-hop when we say like the culture.

• 44:23Robert Evans?

  Right, yes.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  It kind of sounds like, like what we would say about Drake, like, you know, he's not like us, like you're not a part of the culture.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:32Robert Evans?

  What's, what's important, obviously, I don't think that's not like an inherently problematic, the culture, like referring to it that way isn't problematic, but the fact that you bring up the exclusion of people.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 44:42Robert Evans?

  There's always a degree of exclusion.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's an in-group, out-group, yeah.

• 44:45Robert Evans?

  When we're talking about is like, this is like a subculture, right? This is a subculture that's particularly relevant to like this, you know, artistic movement. That's one thing. He's talking about the Volk as these are the people who deserve to have rights and who are

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's different.

• 44:58Robert Evans?

  And the Volk excludes a lot of the people who live in Germany, right? He's not just talking about, he's talking about specific kinds of people, right?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:07Robert Evans?

  And the Volkish movement is emphasizing specific kinds of Germans who deserve to have rights and who need to breed in order to like expand their numbers, right? And this is where, this is like the root of Nazi racial ideology is the Volkish movement, you know? And the Volkish movement is obsessed with exclusion, you know? It is, it is defined not by who lives within the boundaries of a nation, but who the right wing thinks ought to be included in this racial community. In his book Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts, A History of Himmler's Interest in the Occult, author Bill Yen describes the Volkish movement as part of the counterculture in Germany. And he argues that its best modern analog would be the 1980s New Age movement, right?

• 45:49Robert Evans?

  That this is very similar to like, you know, that the, this, all this interest that starts popping up in yoga, in Eastern mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism and all that stuff. In the eighties, in like the, the US is very similar to what's happening and what the Volkish movement is a part of this broader interest in mysticism and alternative religion in the twenties, in alternative history, right? Including a big thing that is big in Germany in this period, Buddhism is big in Germany, right? Not a super accurate take on Buddhism, but like

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 46:23Robert Evans?

  Their attitude of it, as well as people get obsessed in a lot of the West with like ancient Egyptian occult ceremonies and religion. And like the Edas, right? These kind of Norse sagas that are like, is part of this like religious, the pros Edas, like that is big too. And so like Norse mythology and religion, you know, worship of deities like Wotan, right? It starts to become big and it's all tied into, the Volkish movement is a part of it. It's related to all of this stuff.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Well, that definitely wasn't the comparison I was making.

• 46:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  As far as like the culture. What I would try to say is like the term. Is not a literal translation and that the edges are more like foggy or cloudy. But like, we know what we mean when we say it, you know what I'm saying?

• 47:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but it is, I think it is very relevant to compare it to and to compare it to like the modern day, the UFO movement and stuff, all these things that feed into QAnon that have fed into the far right. The fact, this happened before, right?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:23Robert Evans?

  Like.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's like this weird like thing to where it's like you get into something that like is kind of like it exciting to you, whatever, you meet a lot of cool folk, air quotes, cool. But at some point you have to look at the back of the line and be like, oh, wait, they're in our line too. Like this, is this, wait, this will, if I get further into this concentric circle, it's gonna turn into this? Like you, and you have to consider that. So that's, yeah, so like, even if you were just like, look, like, like to your point, it's like, you know, especially with the new age movement or stuff like that, or just like, look, dude, I think it's better to eat

• 48:01Speaker 02

  food that was grown by human hands and has seeds because a seedless watermelon does not exist in nature, you know what I'm saying? So if you're just like, okay, I get it. I'm gonna eat things with seeds, you know what I'm saying?

• 48:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  But also that means I need to eat, drink raw milk and also that means I need, you know what I'm saying? You're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 48:22Robert Evans?

  There's actually like a lot of health stuff tied into it, a lot of like, you know, natural food shit is tied into it. Vegetarianism, you know, and Hitler's a vegetarian, but, but part of what's relevant here is that these are a lot of people who are not initially into far right politics, but they are willing to question the mainstream, willing to question, you know, scientific orthodoxy and cultural orthodoxy. And if you start down that road, you could go in a number of directions, but you're going to encounter other things that are questioning that orthodoxy, including weird far right shit. And then the other aspect of it, a lot of this, a lot of this, especially more esoteric occult beliefs where like people are embracing, getting into magic and getting into these different alternate religions.

• 49:05Robert Evans?

  There's an attitude of them to like, because I'm different and special. And so if you were saying, yes, you're special because you're part of this people's racial community and you have like mythical mystic powers, actually, that are tied to like the ancient, like, deep magic woven into our people's blood. Well, maybe you go from being into ancient Egyptian, you know, mysticism to far-right stuff. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's like you have to look at the back of your line. I'm special. Maybe I have powers, right? You can get someone convinced that they're part of the Ubermensch, you know? Man, that's crazy. Like, it's crazy. I wonder what it would be like to experience that moment in culture. That must have changed. Thankfully, we'll never know, probably.

• 49:48Robert Evans?

  So along these more esoteric beliefs comes a growing interest in the mythical past of the German people. And Himmler's always been drawn to this stuff. And it's a little like as a kid, nerd, you're a nerd and into this stuff that's like more fringe and you get bullied for, and then it becomes mainstream as an adult. And so suddenly, like, everybody's into this stuff that I've always liked. He joins a group called the Artaman League, which sets its goal as liberating urban workers and turning them back into peasant farmers. Once he gets sick, Himmler starts really reading into this stuff. And there's, I tie this a lot to the radicalization journey a lot of Americans go through during the COVID lockdown, where maybe they're sick, maybe they're not, but they're locked away from everybody else. They're not going out and they're just kind of obsessively falling down these YouTube

• 50:32Robert Evans?

  rabbit holes and like these different, like, forum message board rabbit holes, getting more and more into this weird, like, esoteric stuff about like vaccines and natural medicine or, you know, race theory. That's what's happening to Himmler. He's dealing with his own versions of that. And he, he reads more widely at first before he really zeroes in entirely on the vulgish stuff. He reads the volumes of Ossian, which are a fraud created by a Scottish guy that was claimed to be like ancient Celtic poetry. He devours pamphlets attacking the Freemasons, particularly one by Friedrich Witschel. Jen writes, "Witschel claimed that, among other things, Freemasonry was strongly influenced by the Jews, was aiming for world revolution, and was overwhelmingly to blame for the world

• 51:17Robert Evans?

  war. Himmler agreed and commented, 'A book that sheds light on everything and tells us who we have to fight first.'" Here's where it starts. Here's where he gets into that, right?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Here's where we start evolving the Pokemon. There's like these, it's a very, probably not an experience of most of our fanbase here, but like, when, like, me coming from like, sort of hip-hop circles, but like, the indie underground, you know, coming out of the like, conscious movement, like the, you know, the most deaths, the qualies, where like, you gonna stand on there and rap about quasars and, and pyramids for most of the cipher, and be into telekinesis, you know what I'm saying? Like, it like, you're so open-minded, you're closed-minded. Like, a lot of times, you be at these, these moments, and we're, and we're building, you know what I mean? Like, that's like the language of like, the gods and the earths, the five percenters. I think you may have done like, some stuff on them, anyway.

• 52:11Robert Evans?

  Oh, yes.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, so, a lot of times, it's like, this is my community, because this is where the real hip-hop is, but then when you saw, start, somebody start saying something that you're like, "My brother in Christ, you made that up." That history didn't, that is not history, right? But it's, but it's a story that it is in response to the suppressing of the narrative of like, our African ancestry. Like, you're, you're suppressing the, the, in modern culture, and just in modern American history, like, the, the role of the African and its descendant is not ever acknowledged, you know what I'm saying?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  So when someone comes in and says, "Well, no, well, the black man was doing this, and the black man was doing this," and it's like, I'm like, "Bro, like, I love being black just as much as the rest of us, but you made that shit up." Like, that's not what hap, like, that's not so, but if you start pushing back like that, they looking at you like, "Aw, nigga, you a sellout. You believe in a white man's story." You know what I'm saying? So, so, so it's almost like, I, like, I don't even know how to say to you, this is not liberating us. Like, I know what you, what you think you doing. You think, like you said, creating this uber mensch, if you will, like, our black version of it, like, again, the black man is God, we descended the kings, and I'm like, some

• 53:35Speaker 02

  of our ancestors was peasants, my G, like, some of us just raised, just raised goats, and that's okay. You understand what I'm saying? Because goats feed the world. So like, it's okay, I'm, I'm not an Egyptian, I'm not an ancient, I don't come from that, okay? And that's fine.

• 53:54Robert Evans?

  It's this like obsession with like, no, my ancestors were this thing that I think is cool, that represents like a tenth of a percent of the people. And it's like, everyone has ancestors who were kings. Everyone has ancestors who were warriors. And everyone's got a lot more ancestors who were fucking dirt farmers, or picking berries, or whatever, right?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  The vast majority of human history, from when we went from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, was boring as shit.

• 54:25Robert Evans?

  Most of your ancestors, like everyone else, is people who were just trying to get by.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yes, who never traveled four miles away from where they was born, right? And raised and raised some more kids.

• 54:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  And that's great.

• 54:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And Himmler, Himmler is instead getting obsessed with, you know, ah, the knight, these knightly orders that are, are, my, it's like Germanic, these, you know, these knights who were these great warriors who, you know, fought back the Muslim tides and, or, you know, before that, beat the Romans, like, and these are our ancestors, these great, you know, heroic Germanic supermen, you know?

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:01Robert Evans?

  That's, that's what he's reading. And he's also reading about, he gets into, you know, antisemitism through these theories about like the Freemasons and stuff.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:09Robert Evans?

  Now, an interesting historic curiosity is during this period when he's laid up and he's reading obsessively, he also reads the first eight volumes of a magazine titled Pro Palestine. Now, this has nothing to do with the term in its modern sense. This is a Zionist publication that's made by the German Committee for the Promotion of Jewish Settlement in Palestine. He does not leave, unfortunately, there's no record of his opinion of this, but it's not, a lot of guys, we talk about this with Eichmann, a lot of antisemites from this era go through this period of thinking like, well, maybe this is how we get rid of them, right?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why I thought it was, that's why I kind of giggled.

• 55:41Robert Evans?

  That's probably why he's into it.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Palestine's kind of cool, guys. Like, what about?

• 55:47Robert Evans?

  If we can get them over there, you know, they're not here.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Why don't you just go there? We did that, we're here with the slaves. Like, why don't you go to Liberia? You feel me? Just go back to Angola. Everything's fine. Just go back to Africa.

• 55:56Robert Evans?

  And that's what this suggests, is he's thinking more and more about the Jews and how to get rid of them, right? Already from a very young age. He's like 19 at this point. In October of 1919, he registers with the Technical University in Munich to study agriculture. Here, he made it a priority to seek membership in the first fraternity that would take him. And he winds up, as a nepo baby, getting into his dad's fraternity. Now in Germany during this period, frats looked a little different than they do now. They were focused on a lot more on fencing and dueling clubs than anything else. And prior to the war, every young man who's like of a certain class, if you're like the officer class, you want to get in one of these dueling clubs and get a scar on your face.

• 56:39Robert Evans?

  The whole point is for someone to get to hit you in the face and to earn a dueling scar. Like you're not really like, you're not really a man of a certain level in society. You don't have one. And a Himmler is bad enough with a sword that it takes him three years to have enough duels to earn his scar. Yen writes, potential opponents found Himmler a demeaning competitor because he was so small and so frail and that his stomach troubles make it difficult for him to drink heavily. Now, that's one account and I, there's some evidence behind it. Longrich gives a little bit more moderate account of Himmler, you know, in his frat years, he writes that he did at least witness multiple duels and wrote, at least it strengthens

• 57:22Robert Evans?

  the nerves and you learn how to take being wounded. He also wrote about drinking, this is him describing in his diary, a night out drinking. It was very jolly. I drank eight glasses of wine at 12:30, we went home on the train. Most of us were tipsy, so it was very funny. I got a few of the brothers back to their digs in bed at 2:00 AM. So like, he's able to party somewhat, he's not, that's not super intense, eight drinks, you know, in bed by 2:00 AM.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  It was very jolly.

• 57:50Robert Evans?

  It was very jolly, yes.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  I was like, this is, yeah, first of all, eight drinks and you a German man? Bro, don't brag on that, homie.

• 57:57Robert Evans?

  Come on, you go hard on that.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Now, if there's anything about your genes, like you should have been able to have more liquor than that. But I will say like, it like, it kind of right now, kind of sound like the like. The guy, every time you talk to him, like, "Oh, I'm so sore from the gym. I was lifting." "It's so, oh, man, I can't sit down." I'm like, "Man, shut the fuck up, dawg."

• 58:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Like, you have to have your, "Oh, you see these broccoli ears? "'Cause I was rolling, man. I was rolling last night."

• 58:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  "Okay, bro."

• 58:24Robert Evans?

  All right, man.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  His dating profile would be such a nightmare.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, he's holding a fish? Is he holding a fish in his dating profile?

• 58:31Robert Evans?

  Oh, God, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Or holding like some crops that he pulled out of the ground before going home "'cause his tummy was hurt." Yeah. He's doing something, or, yeah, he's got his tiny little scar that he's gonna show off.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, "Oh, man, sorry, I got it in battle."

• 58:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  That's fencing, bro.

• 58:47Robert Evans?

  Now, yeah, it's simply fencing. And you're all trying to get scars. Like, everybody's just kinda cutting each other's face so that you can show off.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  So dumb.

• 58:58Robert Evans?

  Now, you know who never shows off? "'Cause they earned all of their scars the honorable way in hand-to-hand combat.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Me.

• 59:07Robert Evans?

  Killing people in bar fights.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Me.

• 59:09Robert Evans?

  Yes, Sophie, absolutely.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Allegedly.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Sophie, whoop yo ass.

• 59:12Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, a lot of cities you can't go back to. Just like our sponsors for this podcast.

• 59:21Robert Evans?

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

• 59:45Speaker 06

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 1:00:21Robert Evans?

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

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  It's 6:47 on a Friday. Your team's already gone home. And somewhere, a phone is ringing. It's a customer. They're ready to book. Nobody picks up, so they call the next company. That's a missed call and missed revenue. With Quo, you don't have to choose between doing the work and answering the phone. Your team can share calls, texts, and customer conversations in one place. And when no one's available, Quo's AI assistant can answer, handle questions, and even book the appointment for you. So whether you're on a job, in a meeting, or done for the day, your business can keep answering. Setup takes minutes. Keep the number you already have, and add your team as you grow. No IT required. It's why over 90,000 companies trust Quo, the number one rated business phone

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  system on G2. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, then get 20% off your first six months at quo.com/behind. That's Q-U-O dot com slash behind.

• 1:01:32Robert Evans?

  We're back. Ah, Blue Apron.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:01:38Robert Evans?

  Killed a man in a bar fight.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Don't bring that back. Don't bring that back.

• 1:01:42Robert Evans?

  You're probably right. So, anyway. So, we're talking about Heinrich Himmler. He's in college now. He's getting his degree in agricultural sciences. He gets into ROTC, basically, in college. Because he lets him wear a uniform, he gets to march around. He writes in his diary that he enjoys being able to still feel like a soldier. In one entrance, he notes, "Another day in uniform, as one of his chief pleasures. It's what I enjoy wearing most." Like, okay, man, like, he really just desperately wants to feel like a soldier, you know, even though that has passed him by. Such a tryhard. Yes. Heinrich starts getting involved in political activism for the far right. His

• 1:02:25Robert Evans?

  first big protest campaign, because he's a member of some of these, like, right-wing groups on campus, is a German count, I think it's Count Arco Valley, assassinates a leftist, right? Kills somebody, and it's like a political murder. And the count gets sentenced to death for murdering a guy. And this becomes a cause celebre of the German right. This is kind of their equivalent of like the protests against the January 6th people facing any consequences for their crimes. And they get so angry. Heinrich is marching in the street. There's protests. You know, the Freikorps are like showing up armed in these gatherings to be like, you know, you're gonna have to deal with us if you try to kill this man. There's even talk within the military of either using, having the army go in and bust

• 1:03:10Robert Evans?

  him out, or even doing a putsch against the government if they're to kill this guy. And the liberal government caves, like they always do to fascists. Himmler writes after, because they, and they commute his sentence to like, basically your, your life in prison. We're not going to execute him. And when the government caves, Himmler writes in his diary, however pleased we were, we were equally sorry that the business passed off so uneventfully. Oh, well, there will be another time. And he also writes about like, ah, they're not willing, they're scared of us, right? And that's the problem. That's why you can't, like showing mercy to these people is a mistake, you know? Like, if you do that, they will take advantage of it every single time. Yeah, dude. It just, it just inspires them to push further. It doesn't save you any violence.

• 1:03:55Robert Evans?

  Things get much worse because they don't go through with punishing this man. Near the end of 1919, Himmler gets caught up in a debate within his dueling club, you know, this fraternity. There's an argument as to like, can we admit Jews, right? And not religious Jewish people, right? Not people who are of the Jewish faith, but people who have Jewish ancestry, but are Christian, or at least like, you know, they're not, you know, practicing members of the faith. And this is a serious debate at the time within this, the strata of people. And the Catholic Church takes a stance that Jews who converted to Christianity ought to be treated like anyone else. Obviously, it's fine to exclude practicing Jews, right? They're not full citizens.

• 1:04:37Robert Evans?

  You can be shitty to them, but all that should matter is what they're doing now, right? Basically, the Catholic Church is saying there's not a, there's not an ethnic difference between a, someone who has Jewish ancestry and a normal German, right? We don't care about that. And the, the Church takes this stance because Catholicism is a minority faith in Germany, right? So they do see a degree of threat to themselves as like, well, if these people, like, we're, we're not that much safer, right? If the Protestants decide to start fucking with us, so we should probably draw a line here. Himmler is really uncomfortable with this minimal degree of liberalism from the church. And he had been fairly strong as a Catholic, but he writes in his diary, I think I'm heading for conflict with my religion because he believes a Jew is a Jew no matter what.

• 1:05:22Robert Evans?

  It doesn't matter if they've converted, it's about the blood, right? That's how, what Himmler thinks. Now, it's worth noting that while he grows steadily more antisemitic as he ages, he still expresses as a young man, some mixed thoughts on the matter. In part, he's a fan and he's super attracted to this Jewish cabaret singer he met, Inga Barco, in a bar.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Ooh, it's always the ladies.

• 1:05:46Robert Evans?

  And so he writes really positively about her, right? So he's, you know, again, this is a guy, none of these people are perfectly consistent, right? And this is also a time period, he is starting to express interest in women around his age. At this point in time, this is really when we see in his diary, him writing about girls a lot. And it's kinda, you get some incel vibes from this dude.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Robert Evans?

  He finds that one woman, Luisa, who he had a crush on, was really nice, but not nice in the way that he wanted, right? As in, she's, she's nice to me, she's friendly, but she doesn't wanna fuck me, right?

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  That is hilarious.

• 1:06:25Robert Evans?

  What a loser. This is funny. He writes home to his brother.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  She wanna kiss me.

• 1:06:30Robert Evans?

  This is so gross. If sweet young things knew how they worried us, they would no doubt try not to. Oh, this girl knew how sad I was that she doesn't wanna fuck me, she'd surely wanna fuck me, right? That's the problem.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  I met me a little sweet thing.

• 1:06:44Robert Evans?

  That's the problem. Sweet little things. Maybe don't call them sweet little things, you fucking weirdo. Fucking cream.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Sweet little thing. What's up, sweet thing? I'm like, you somebody uncle, man. What's up, Cletus? What you say? You sound like somebody named Cleophas Jenkins. What's up, sweet thing?

• 1:06:58Robert Evans?

  All right, calm down, Heinrich Himmler. Yeah.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Cool your jets, Turbo.

• 1:07:03Robert Evans?

  In another.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Bro, I was actually thinking, I didn't wanna bring this up because I ain't wanna sound like a douchebag myself, but I was just like. He hasn't talked about girls in his diary yet.

• 1:07:12Robert Evans?

  He doesn't. He's a late bloomer. It's possible he's not. It's not until he's in his late twenties that he actually like that he's a virgin until his late twenties. Now, I'm not trying to like talk shit on that. I don't.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  No, it is what it is. That's fine.

• 1:07:22Robert Evans?

  But that's likely what's going on here.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Robert Evans?

  In another instance, he bonds with a girl named Maria. And he does. There's this kind of positive thing where he's like, I'm so overjoyed that I finally have a sister, right? Which is a nice, a positive way to look at like a female friendship. He's only got brothers.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Girl, get away from him.

• 1:07:39Robert Evans?

  Well, yeah, cuz he is. He actually just wants to fuck her, right?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  He's not safe.

• 1:07:44Robert Evans?

  She's got a boyfriend.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Maria, Maria, you remind him of a West Side Story.

• 1:07:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Growing up in Spanish Harlem.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  You're so dumb.

• 1:07:55Robert Evans?

  She's got a boyfriend and he writes of her boyfriend, I believe he doesn't understand her, his golden girl.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  I hate this.

• 1:08:05Robert Evans?

  He tries to flirt with her and like basically take her from him by offering her a ride on his motorcycle, but she's like, nah, I don't think so.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Hey, listen, listen, listen.

• 1:08:14Robert Evans?

  I wanna get on your motorcycle, Heinrich Himmler.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Listen, it's okay to be sloppy seconds because first place always messes up.

• 1:08:23Robert Evans?

  There you go. Yeah, that's how that's how he's looking at this, right? That like, I'm gonna slide in here, but uh, no, no, you're not.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Sweet thing.

• 1:08:31Robert Evans?

  Her boyfriend's not treating her right. I'd do so much better, you know?

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she called you when you when your boyfriend, nah, girl, come on over. You can stay over here, girl. I'll come get you on my motorcycle. You could stay on my couch if he tripping. You come on over here.

• 1:08:46Robert Evans?

  Like, I don't even think she's calling him. I think she's like nice, polite to him. And he's like, she must really be in love with me. If only this tyrant were to let her go, you know?

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  She's just, just, just basic human decency.

• 1:08:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Like with dudes like this, you just can't be regular.

• 1:09:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  You just can't be regular with dudes like this. Yeah.

• 1:09:06Robert Evans?

  And Heinrich's diary is the other thing that he writes about a lot regarding women is like this like white knight shit, right? He's tons of stories about that. And this is from Lowenberg's article, quote, "He witnesses a conflict between a girl and her father over the girl's desire for private dance classes. He describes the father as unyielding and stiff-necked like a tyrant. According to his own account, Himmler interposed himself and helped the young lady a great deal. The poor little girl wept tears. I truly pitied her, but she had no idea how pretty she was in her tears." Okay.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Really pretty when you cry.

• 1:09:40Robert Evans?

  Like, maybe he pays for this girl's dance classes.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  You should smile more.

• 1:09:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Robert Evans?

  Lowenberg writes of Himmler's frequent rescue fantasies. He writes fantasies about, like, I could save this girl. She's with this brute. If, you know, if I did this and this, then like, she'd know that I'm really who she's meant for. Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  That's all that medieval stuff he was reading as a kid.

• 1:10:02Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? That's all that. You're trying to live out that fantasy.

• 1:10:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah. In one instance, he meets a waitress that he has a crush on, and he writes paragraphs about his fear that, like, oh, waitresses always fall into disrepute, you know? She's doomed to a life of, you know, sin and vice, because that's the only thing that a waitress can be.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Oh, I can love you better.

• 1:10:22Robert Evans?

  If I only were rich, if I had money, I'd give her enough money to marry a nice man. So she, quote, "would not have to sink and be lost."

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Well, he's a creep.

• 1:10:32Robert Evans?

  He's a creep. Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  He's a creep.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  If I could fly, I'd pick you up. I'd take you into the night.

• 1:10:42Robert Evans?

  That, that's the word for word, his diary entry.

• 1:10:46Robert Evans?

  So Himmler finishes his diploma in August of 1922. Now, at this point, he has continued reading into German volkish mysticism, and he's become acquainted with a man named Guido Karl Anton List, who died in... Yeah, Guido.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  And that's never good news.

• 1:11:01Robert Evans?

  Shockingly not Italian. He had died in 1919, so he's, he's been died pretty recently. But during his life, he'd been the godfather of popular volkish theory. He was one of these guys who portrays himself as something between an archaeologist and a wizard. And one of his major contributions, he creates this runic alphabet, which he said had been used by the ancient Aryans. And he uncovers this system, not by like, real archaeology, but by ghost archaeology. He channels dead spirits, and they teach him about the past, and he writes books about it.

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Hold up. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  So he learns this by channeling ghosts?

• 1:11:40Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  That's your boy?

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  This is boy.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  That's your boy Heinrich?

• 1:11:44Robert Evans?

  That's Heinrich's gonna love, and not just Heinrich. This guy is the grandfather of volkish theory. Like, this guy is, like, if you're doing the line of dissent to what becomes Nazism, this guy is like above Hitler in the line of dissent to what becomes Nazism, because his ideas feed directly into Hitler's. Hitler is also influenced, not even just directly by List, but by the guys that List is influenced by, or influences, right? List is like, and he looks just like you'd imagine. Sophie's gonna show you a picture of this.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Please show me a picture of this.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly what you thought.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Shout out to ancestors, of course.

• 1:12:20Robert Evans?

  Look at this, look at this, look at this wizard-looking dude.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Of course, he's talking to the ghosts.

• 1:12:25Robert Evans?

  He's got like a Gandalf beard and a fucking, uh, it's almost like a pork pie hat. Like, I don't even know what you'd call that weird beret thing on his head, but like, yeah, like a fucking wizard-looking motherfucker. Look at him, look at this man.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:38Robert Evans?

  Perfect, he's perfect.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  He's, yeah.

• 1:12:41Robert Evans?

  I love it.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  He's perfect.

• 1:12:42Robert Evans?

  We're gonna talk a lot more about Guido von List, uh, and a lot more about the birth of the volkish movement and all of these weird occult figures who are going to have a huge influence on Heinrich Himmler, as well as continue Heinrich's life in part three. Uh, lucky you, motherfuckers. Um, anyway, prop, plugs?

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Plugs, uh, hood politics with Prop, man. We cooking over here too. Um, trying to, you know, keep putting everybody on that's going on. Uh, I released some poetry, I got some music out. Um, we have a show on Fridays now called Tap In, little, little short 10-minute shooter. Um, and also, the, the Terraform's back, I'll say it again. Terraform Cove, well, hopefully by the time y'all hear this, the website will be up. But like, the coffee's here.

• 1:13:32Robert Evans?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  So excited about it.

• 1:13:34Robert Evans?

  All right.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  I'll bring some, I'll bring some when I go up there for the thing that you have not talked about yet on recording.

• 1:13:40Robert Evans?

  Excellent, yes.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:41Robert Evans?

  Well, we'll do that. You at home, go to Google Donor Box, Defense Fund, PDX fundraiser to help the Portland Defense Fund, which helps bail out people who have no money.

• 1:13:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're great. Please, please help them out and help yourself out by listening to part three, you lucky dogs. All right, that's it for the episodes. This has been Behind the Bastards. I've been Robert Evans. Go to hell. I love you.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14:39Robert Evans?

  Dude wipes remove what toilet paper leaves behind. Flushable, plastic-free dude wipes are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. They're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but tough enough for messes of historical proportions. Unlike baby wipes, dude wipes are flushable and designed to begin breaking down when flushed. No battles there. They come in a range of at-home and travel-friendly formats, from individually wrapped singles to 48-count big daddies. Don't let skids be your lasting legacy. Grab a dude wipe and destroy the evidence. Dude wipes, best clean, pants down, available at major retailers nationwide.

• 1:15:11Speaker 07

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:15:42Speaker 08

  If you're a fight fan and you haven't seen the BKFC app yet, you're missing the world's most exciting combat sport. Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship has changed the game. No gloves, no stalling, no boring rolling around on the ground. Just pure violence and pure entertainment. The BKFC app includes live events, past fights, original series, behind the scenes access, merch discounts and more. Only $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Get the BKFC app at BKFC.com.

• 1:16:12Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.