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

In this episode we discuss Himmler's growing belief in the German occult movement, even as he rises to command the SS. 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. In person tickets sold out! Livestream Tickets available here:https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/behind-the-bastards-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/ 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?

  Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the baddest of the worst of people history bad Heinrich Himmler episodes.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 0:18Robert Evans?

  Heinrich. It's a Tuesday. We don't normally record on Tuesdays. I never could get the hang of Tuesdays. How are you doing? Prop, Jason Petty, our guest, host of Hood Politics.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Man.

• 0:30Robert Evans?

  Do you get Tuesdays?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I get Tuesdays, man, because I get to listen to Behind the Bastards on Tuesdays. It's my, I look forward to Tuesdays. Yes. Excuse me. Sorry. I guess that's what I am now.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  No, you're the best.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Bro, I am, you know, just, hey, guys, like, you think you want to be homeowners.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  That's your PSA for today?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  That's your PSA. You think you want to buy a house and then now you're looking at puddles of water under your water heater.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said you had a Tony Soprano moment. Your water heater decided to.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. The upside of having a house is that you can knock holes in the walls if you want to, to modify it, or you can paint it and you don't have to ask your landlord. The downside is when you inevitably fuck something up doing your own work.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  No one to call.

• 1:25Robert Evans?

  There's no one to call. You just, except for the person you have to pay money to.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. I was, yeah, that's the thing. It's like, I run through all of those moments where I'm just like, oh, shoot, I better call the, wait.

• 1:37Robert Evans?

  Uh huh. Better call the me.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Call the me. And then I was like, okay, how much are the products? YouTube, university? Do I have a friend? Like, just all the things and then you, and then the trade off of like, there's a guy that can come put it in the thing, come put it in for like 200 bucks, but like, there's no warranty with that. There's no.

• 1:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, there's no warranty. There's no way to know other than like, maybe your buddy, hopefully, hopefully your buddy had a good experience with this guy.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  This is exactly it.

• 2:07Robert Evans?

  The only way to know that he's good.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Exactly it. I called my brother in law.

• 2:10Robert Evans?

  Bonded by the fuck whom?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah, my brother in law goes, hey, I think I got a friend. And I was like. Okay, just tell me how much it costs, bro. Yeah.

• 2:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I've had that experience more than once where it's like, okay, this guy is really, really good. He doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28Robert Evans?

  But he'll write down on a piece of paper what it costs and it'll probably work. And I'm like, that sounds great. Because the other guy quoted me $7,000.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, yeah, I just called the like, I called the, uh, the certified, you know, city permit, like, you know, we'll, we'll come in, we'll haul it out, we'll give you new lines and everything. I was like, this gonna cost how much?

• 2:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Absolutely not.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Chino, cuantos, cuantos chino?

• 2:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's just go with the guy who's absolutely never seen the inside of a government office.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I'll assume he knows what he's doing.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  He has a friend Jorge.

• 3:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's right. You know who didn't have a friend named Jorge? Because he was a Nazi. Uh, and also lived in Germany.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  True.

• 3:12Robert Evans?

  Not a lot of Jorge's in Germany.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:14Robert Evans?

  Heinrich Himmler, uh, you know, who, who, who we've been talking about for the last two episodes. We ended part two talking about a volkish mystic named Guido Carl Anton List.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:27Robert Evans?

  And I showed you.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  The ghost told him the letters.

• 3:30Robert Evans?

  The ghost told him the letters, yes. Prob- so many people in this episode learned everything they know about ancient Germans from ghosts who talked to them. That's where we learned most of what we know about the ancient Germans, from their ghosts.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:48Robert Evans?

  God, it's so easy. Like, being an archaeologist, sounds like a pain in the ass. You gotta go to school for like, what is it? Like, probably six to eight years, I'm guessing? You know, something like that to get your PhD? And then you gotta be really careful. You gotta spend hours just like brushing dirt away from artifacts and you can't touch them with your hands, because that'll fuck stuff up. Or, you can just grow out a crazy beard, put on a weirdo hat and start being like, yeah, some ghosts told me these are letters.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 4:16Robert Evans?

  Because like- That's way better.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it ain't Indiana Jones. You not like this beautiful college professor that gets to go on these adventures. No, you are in 125 degree weather with a toothbrush.

• 4:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Digging miles down.

• 4:33Robert Evans?

  And-

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Accidentally breaking the greatest discovery in human history.

• 4:38Robert Evans?

  Ah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Because you brush too hard with a toothbrush.

• 4:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, we're talking about Heinrich Schliemann now, but yeah.

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• 6:57Robert Evans?

  So, uh, we ended last episode talking about this guy.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:02Robert Evans?

  Guido Carl Anton List. He starts going after he, you know, starts talking to the ghosts and getting, you know, building his theories about the, these ancient Aryans. He, he changes his name, which is going to be a common thing for all of these mystics. Uh, and he starts calling himself Guido von List. And the von, whenever you see a von in a German name like that, it means that they're a member of the nobility.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:26Robert Evans?

  Now, Guido's absolutely has no royal ancestry. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. But the ghosts that he was talking to are like, oh dude, we recognize you.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  You're a von.

• 7:35Robert Evans?

  You're the, you're the reincarnation of this 12th century knight, you know? Like, isn't that cool? Good thing you talked to us ghosts. We know, we can recognize your spirit, right?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Your ancestors is telling you.

• 7:49Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. I love that kind of shit.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  These people owe you a thousand dollars because you're royal. You know what I'm saying?

• 7:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, you're special because of your blood. Nobody ever, nobody, nobody who's convinced that they're reincarnated is ever like, yeah, you know, I finally, I saw the ghosts of my spirit, or I saw the ghosts of my ancestors and I'm descended from a 17th century chimney sweep in London.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  You did this.

• 8:12Robert Evans?

  He died of the black lung at age 15.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Somebody had to. Somebody has to be descended to them. Yeah, you talk to your ancestors, your ancestors said, look, dog, I died at 19. I got no wisdom for you.

• 8:24Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I was, I don't know nothing. I look, I didn't live long enough to, I don't know.

• 8:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I saw 150 of my past lives and they all died before age nine of measles.

• 8:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you don't tend to get those guys. Instead, what we get is, yeah, Guido von List. In his book on Himmler and the occult, Bill Yen writes about the striking similarities between von List and Himmler's backgrounds. And I find this interesting. You're going to see this with a lot of these guys. Like Heinrich Himmler, Guido List was born into comfortable, middle-class circumstances that permitted him opportunities for daydreaming and for his imagination to create an alternate universe. Guido's father, Carl Anton List, was a well-to-do leather merchant, just as Himmler's fantasies were fueled by his views of the cold stone walls of Burg Trusnetz. The fires of List's later obsession for Nordic paganism were stoked by a field trip to the catacombs beneath the city of Vienna at age 14.

• 9:19Robert Evans?

  Within these damp and musty cellars, specifically beneath the old city post office, his tour group came to an old altar, which he decided, or was told, actually originated as a shrine for the worship of Wotan. And as an adult, he has this like powerful spiritual experience, he just gets so excited because he's 14 and he's got a big imagination and he loves thinking about ghosts and wizards. This kid would be playing D and D, right? Like if he was around today, he'd have been into like fantasy literature, but this is the closest thing he's got. And he's going to chase that high of like being a kid and being in these catacombs and this feeling of like excitement and not really understanding the world and seeing something that like feels magical. He's going to chase that the rest of his life.

• 10:03Robert Evans?

  As an adult, when he starts, he builds a temple to Wotan as an adult, like, you know, he uses the money he gets from his books and whatnot and from writing to like build this temple. And he'll hold like torchlit ceremonies in the dead of night there with other adults who don't have enough going on in their life, who come from similar backgrounds. These are not the poor. These are mostly middle-class people who's like, lives are kind of boring and they have enough, they have enough comfort and income and free time to get bored, right? These are not people who are laboring in the poison factory all night, like waiting through cyanide on a daily basis. People like that don't get bored enough to think of stuff like this.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, boredom's a sign of privilege in some ways.

• 10:45Robert Evans?

  Right. Some, this kind of boredom at least, right? You know, there's the boredom of like, well, my job's the same thing every day, but there's not the boredom of like, oh, if only I were an ancient warrior fighting for, or you know, worshiping Wotan in the woods.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and the big bearded guy invented the name Wotan.

• 11:03Robert Evans?

  No, no, no. Wotan is, I mean, this is a part of Norse mythology. There was a Norse, like a pagan god that's Wotan. Like, he's not inventing all of this out of whole cloth. He's inventing the details out of whole cloth, right? He reads enough till him like, there was this guy and, you know, this is something, you know, ancient Germanic people, you know, worshipped this god. He learns a couple of facts and he invents the rest because we don't know all that much about like the actual, especially when, and this is especially true when you're talking about like the ancient, like Celts, like the Dravidic faith and whatnot, that the Romans mostly exterminated. There's very little we actually know historically compared to, I mean, not to say that especially when we're talking about Wotan.

• 11:44Robert Evans?

  There's, there is some stuff that we know, but compared to what these guys claim to know, what's actually verifiable is, is quite small, right?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  From the sagas and stuff, yeah.

• 11:54Robert Evans?

  Cause they need to make up a lot more, right?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know, you know.

• 11:58Robert Evans?

  It's not exciting enough on its own.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, I just, I didn't know like the Norse had a Wu-Tang.

• 12:04Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. The Wu-Tang Clan originates from ancient Germany.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  The god Wu-Tang, Wotan.

• 12:10Robert Evans?

  Ain't nothing to fuck with.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Ain't nothing to fuck with, man. Him and Odin, yeah.

• 12:13Robert Evans?

  These guys kinda are fucking with him because they're largely creating like what they think Wotan worship should be like. And one thing I found interesting, cause List has some writings where he, he'll, he'll admit that like, as an adult, all of these like torchlit ceremonies in the, in the woods at this temple that he holds, none of them get him back. He's always chasing that feeling he had as a 14-year-old. And I wanna like grab this guy through the mists of time and shake and be like, it's because you were 14. Yes, everything was more exciting then. You were a child.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it's the law of diminishing returns and nostalgia, sir.

• 12:48Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Nostalgia, it, it, you'll always remember it better.

• 12:52Robert Evans?

  We always have, when I get into this feeling, I just watch Happy Gilmore for the 400th time, right?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  That's all you gotta do.

• 13:00Robert Evans?

  It's a lot healthier than creating a religion.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  It's all you gotta do, man. Yeah, just put on an old record, go listen to like the killers.

• 13:07Robert Evans?

  Models, like, come on, man.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:10Robert Evans?

  Chill out. There is with guys like List, guys, and List is not on the most evil side. He doesn't kill anybody, right? Like, a lot of what he's writing is pretty racist, but he's not like, he doesn't wind up like leading the Nazi party, right? Like, he's not actively killing people. This is a guy who, if he had grown up at a different period of time, might have been satisfied just with fantasy novels and role-playing games, right? Like, you give this guy access to World of Warcraft, and maybe we save the world a lot of trouble.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Sheesh, man. Just a century too late.

• 13:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's interesting to me how similar they're, because these guys are all from the middle class, they're all dudes whose dads do pretty well. They also, a lot of them work as journalists, right? List is a, that's how he makes his money. He's like a journalist, he writes for outdoor magazines, and that's what funds his occult passions, like, you know, him building this temple and everything. And over time, as he's like, you know, doing this kind of writing on the ancient Germans in his free time, he's occasionally publishing stuff like that, he works up his theory about a group of ancient German priests called the Armenian. And these were priests of Wotan, whose powers had allowed the German tribes to defeat Rome, right?

• 14:26Robert Evans?

  When, during kind of the early stage of the Roman Empire, Rome gets as far as like this kind of chunk of Western Germany before, there's this catastrophic battle in Teutoburg Forest, where three, I think it's three legions, get surrounded and ambushed and just massacred. We don't know exactly how they got massacred, but they got massacred, right? And this kind of stops Roman expansion into that part of Europe. And it's, so it's a, it's a very big thing for these, as this German nationalism is developing, this becomes one of the first things that's like, oh, this is one of the earliest achievements of German civilization, is we beat the Romans, you know, even as ancient barbarians, we stopped the greatest empire in the world.

• 15:08Robert Evans?

  And List's explanation is, it's because we had these wizards on our side, the Armenian, these priests of Wotan, and this he's making up. The Armenian is a complete creation of his, right? Like, these are, he is inventing these. Now he's in there's some kind of things that their name is based on, but they did not exist. He creates them. And part of like, for an example of how directly this is just nerd shit. He, he, he explains a lot of his theories for the first time in a novel, right? He writes a fiction novel about the Arminen that he's like, but this is basically what happened for real. This fiction novel isn't just like me coming up with something because I think it's cool. Right?

• 15:48Robert Evans?

  This is, and it's worth noting, List, a lot of the primary sources that he is basing his fiction on are the same things Tolkien is working on, right? They're inspired by very similar myths and they do very different things with them, right?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 16:02Robert Evans?

  List, for List, it has to be real. He has to be the reincarnation of this ancient spirit. It has to all be true or it doesn't matter. Tolkien, being a basically healthy guy psychologically, is like, no, man, I'm writing a book about elves.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  That's just dope.

• 16:16Robert Evans?

  Like, yeah, I just think it's cool and interesting.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It's fun, man, yeah.

• 16:20Robert Evans?

  There's like some dwarves, you know, orcs, it's fun.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Crazy, bro, yeah.

• 16:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, List, List can't do that.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I, I still like, you know, were I be able to like rewrite the timeline, you know, get my, uh, get my Loki on, you know what I'm saying? Uh, since we're talking Norse. I just feel like the Germans, like you had a chance to identify as an indigenous community in the way that people of color identify as an indigenous community. You know, like you had, there was a, it was a invading conqueror, an outside force that were trying to remove your way of life.

• 17:00Robert Evans?

  And it's awesome. You guys beat their asses. That's pretty cool.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Like, you know what I'm saying? Like you could have been like, you could have been on our team. You know what I mean?

• 17:07Robert Evans?

  Like, which, which says something about how hard these, these ancient warriors were, and we call them Germans. That doesn't mean that they correspond directly to what like German knew them, right? But like these ancient, these like Germanic tribes. It was not uncommon for Rome to send a whole big ass army, three legions is a sizable force. And they whooped their ass. Have them wiped out. And then they would come up with an army twice as big and send them back in. And that's how they won most of their wars. Whole army gets wiped out. You get another, that's what made Rome great, is the ability to lose massive numbers of men. And be like, fuck it, let's get some more. They never do that with the Germans, right? Like, that's how badly, like, this, this fucks them up so badly. That like, they're, they're almost like traumatized from it, right?

• 17:50Robert Evans?

  Like, that shows you how, like, how hard these sons of bitches were. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, from this kind of legitimate pride in this cool chapter of their past, he starts inventing a bunch of mythology and he writes this novel. And the novel becomes very popular with a lot of these, this like growing volkish movement, you know, in Germany. A lot of these, again, like, middle aged, middle class, or, and younger, middle class guys who want to feel special, like they're a part of something ancient and cool. This like, this gives them something to grasp on to. And there's, there's a lot of sort of like tacit support from the state, who is desperately trying to build a sense of German nationalism, which is otherwise very new. The sense of being German, no, we were Bavarians and Prussians and yada, yada, yada. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:35Robert Evans?

  So like, that's all important, too. Yeah, uh, like Himmler, List is raised Catholic, but he breaks like Himmler with the faith in his early life, right? He rejects Catholicism for this idiosyncratic version of paganism that happens to mesh very well with far right politics. And List is gonna be one of the guys that Himmler is reading as a young man. And one of the guys, he's going to follow this path in a very similar way. The year after he graduates from college, Heinrich Himmler joins another Freikorps unit. This group is called the Reichskrieg flag. That just means like the Reich war flag, right? And it's headed by a veteran of Germany's elite trench fighting units, like the original storm troopers from World War I.

• 19:20Robert Evans?

  And this guy's name is Ernst Rohe. And Rohe is, Rohe is Hitler's street fighter in the early days of the party. You've heard of the brown shirts? Rohe. Rome creates them, basically. He is building them out of a lot of these, like, it's essentially a Freikor unit from the start. And Rome, like all of these Nazis, he's a bigot, he's a monster, he's, he's a horrible person. He's also legitimately scary. Like, you would not want to fight this man in a bar. Like Ernst Rome will fucking gut you. He is a scary, scary man. He stabbed people to death, right? Like, he's, we're talking the kind of close combat that almost doesn't happen anymore in war.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not easy. Yeah.

• 19:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like, these, and so, he's useful to the party. But he's also never controllable because he is so tough. He's not one of these guys. He likes Hitler to an extent. He obviously is willing to work under Hitler. But he is not, he doesn't worship Hitler in the way that Hitler really needs to be worshipped in order to trust somebody. Rome is always a little into business for himself, right? So he and Himmler become fast friends. And I, I think it's probably more accurate to say that they become a, they have a mentor mentee relationship. Himmler, this kid who never goes to war, is never blooded in combat, idolizes Rome. Because he is the warrior that Himmler wishes he could be, and he's charismatic.

• 20:43Robert Evans?

  All of these other hard-as-nails combat veterans, respect Ernst Rome and listen to him. And so he worships the ground this guy walks on, and Rome likes being idolized. Now, another thing you should know about Ernst Rome is that he's gay. And this is a significant factor in his life. And he's not totally open about it, but it's like an open secret on the far right. A lot of people, Hitler knows pretty early on that Rome is, is, is gay. And, you know, it's one of those things, people are just too scared of Rome to usually make much of a problem about it, yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  You'd love to see a gay dude that could beat your ass. You know what I'm saying?

• 21:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's kind of how he gets by, right? Like, that's, that's part of it. Himmler may have, it's unclear if or when he knew, because it becomes, it gets like published by the news in 31. There's a good chance Himmler never realizes this about Rome, because Himmler It doesn't like, I mean, he's probably a virgin until his late twenties and he's very naive about sex in general. Right? He just wouldn't pick up on this. Yeah. And it's the kind of thing, people who are more experienced, who know more about the world, these like older and kind of more mature Nazis, they know, they pick up on the clues. I don't think Himmler does. And it's through this, there, there are some people who like will theorize that, oh, maybe, maybe Rome and Himmler had sex, maybe Rome like groomed him.

• 22:05Robert Evans?

  I just don't, there's not any evidence of this. And I think it's just people because of, of, you know, Rome's homosexuality. There's a lot of conspiracy theories. He's one of the reasons why when right wingers will say like, oh no, the Nazi party, like they were homosexuals. They were all like, that's part of their evil, right? They're focusing on this one guy who gets killed pretty early on, right? But he's a reason why there's this book called, I think, The Pink Swastika, that's trying to argue that like, no, like the Nazi party and the gay movement are fundamentally tied together. It's nonsense, the Nazis viciously, it's, it's a right way, a modern right wing. Okay. Strain of bullshit, right? Yeah. Because the reality of course is that the Nazis targeted and murdered queer people of all kinds, put them in camps.

• 22:49Robert Evans?

  You know, this was a part of the Holocaust was the murdering of queer people in Europe.

• 22:55Robert Evans?

  But at this stage in the game, a guy like Rome is useful enough that, you know, this is able to get by. And obviously he's gonna get killed pretty quickly as we'll be talking about. But yeah, through this relationship, whatever the kind of details of it are, Himmler starts attending social events for the Nazi party, right? Rome invites him. That's kind of how he gets into these things. And so he joins this Freikorps unit run by Rome, the Reichskrieg flag first. And then a few months later, he joins the NSDAP, right? Like he gets into the party proper and this is in, this is gonna be in like 1922 to 1923 is when all of this is happening.

• 23:34Robert Evans?

  And, you know, Himmler comes to idolize Hitler as well. And as he'd been drawn to Rome, he's drawn to the coterie of old soldiers who have kind of consolidated themselves around Hitler. These include a lot of famous warriors, including. Including a former fighter ace, the guy who took over the Red Baron Squadron, once he gets shot down.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:52Robert Evans?

  Herman Garing.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Robert Evans?

  As well as the World War One general Eric von Ludendorff, who himself wrote antisemitic tracts of volkish political theory. Ludendorff is writing a lot of stuff that's kind of a more racist version of some of the stuff that List is writing. His is more focused on like the Jews is the ancestral enemy of the Germans and Freemasonry. But Ludendorff is also a volkish writer. You know, in addition to having been the former commander of the German Armed Forces during World War One, it didn't go well. So, uh, Himmler shows up at a church in Lonschut to register with the local Nazi party office and join the party officially. And the guy at the desk that day, taking registrations, was the regional party chief for the area, another dude named Gregor Strasser.

• 24:38Robert Evans?

  Now, we haven't talked about the Strassers because there's, there's Gregor and there's his brother Otto, his younger brother. And they are, yeah, the Strassers are important because they are, again, you, the right wing today will accuse the Nazis of being socialists, right? Because socialist is in the name of the party.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Of the name, yeah.

• 24:56Robert Evans?

  And the tiny germ of truth that they're using as the basis is that these two guys, the Strassers, were members of what's you could call the left flank of the early Nazi party. This is before the party gets into power. And what's happening here is that the communists are also growing in the years that the Nazis are growing. And the Nazis recognize that they need to be able to message to the working class, to these union guys, who have been sort of like the base of the Communist Party. So we need to have some messaging about how we're going to help workers and we're going to like, you know, make sure you get vacations and like, oh, these, these, these Jews are actually hurting you, the laboring class. And we're going to take what's theirs and we'll give it to you and we'll make your lives easier.

• 25:37Robert Evans?

  So there, you, you need to have some sort of messaging to the laboring classes that, that can kind of mimic some of what the communists are promising. And Otto and Gregor Strasser are those guys.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, not, not, not familiar at all.

• 25:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  But I, I knew.

• 25:53Robert Evans?

  Right, mega communism.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 25:55Robert Evans?

  And such, yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  I just, I like, I realized like where I remembered it, it was a, what was that book? Death, Death of Democracy. That's where I heard that name. Was like, then they was talking about, when they was talking about like, yeah, the, the, the, the left flank or just borrowing the language of. You know, leftist or communist thinking. I'm like, I, I have, I experienced that like in my like, my church background, you know, cause like I, I come from such a different tradition than sort of the modern, you know, American conservative, but they would say stuff like, you know, uh, change the culture. You know what I'm saying?

• 26:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  And like, and uh, when I think, I, when you say that to me, I'm thinking, you know, the ten, ten points of the Black Panther. You know what I'm saying? The ten points of Black Panther. That's changing the culture. You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking when you saying, you know that, I'm thinking beloved community, the 25 points of beloved community that Dr. King talked about. So like, I thought we were saying the same thing, but it's just like, no, it's just a way to message. Yeah, man, if you're not careful.

• 26:59Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  You know, you find yourself standing next to the wrong people. Yeah.

• 27:03Robert Evans?

  That, that's right. And like, the, the, the Strassers are useful in this early period where the party is trying to build momentum.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:10Robert Evans?

  They're not gonna last long either, like Rome. They're going to get purged. They do, they are actual believers, right? Like this is like with a lot of our like MAGA communists and stuff, I think they are just grifters.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:21Robert Evans?

  The Strasser brothers really do believe what they're saying, which is why they're going to, they're going to like, break with the party when they realize that Hitler is using them, you know? They're not good people. I'm not saying that, but they do believe what they're saying, right?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:35Robert Evans?

  Um, so, uh, in 1923 though, Otto Strasser is a big man in the Nazi party. And he and Himmler wind up establishing a relationship because they've got a shared interest in chemistry. Himmler is interested in chemistry in school. Otto is, I think, a pharmacist. And so they bond too. And what you're seeing here is Himmler's got this kind of instinct for cozying up to and, and, and getting friendly with, and building a friendship almost in like this mentor mentee way, with these men who are more prominent in the party, who are going to give him access to higher levels of the party. This is something he's really good at. He's got like an instinct for it. Um, now Heinrich's brother Gebhardt also joins the Nazi party and both men are present in the party in November of 19.

• 28:20Robert Evans?

  23 when Hitler incites the Munich Beer Hall putsch. There's a picture of both of them at the time that shows Himmler and his brother standing awkwardly around the barbed wire fence erected around the war ministry in Munich. In his book, Willie Frishauer describes the brothers as looking like awkward children playing dress up. And yeah, Sophie's gonna show you the photo. You can see, you can see Heinrich there. He's the one holding the flag, right? And he, yeah, he just looks like, he looks like a little boy.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Hey, little dork, little dork, yeah.

• 28:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like this little boy dressing like an adult. It's so interesting to me. Uh, just you can really, you can really see that like this is, this is cosplaying to a degree for him.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Like, this is the first time, as many times as I've like, whether it was in school or my own reading, like thought about the moments leading up to the putsch for sure. And then ultimately to the Nazi, I've never been able to wrap my brain around besides just deep seated self-hate and racism, like how anybody, like why, like why, bro? Like, what are you? What are you doing, dog? Like, you don't know this shit is crazy, but like, this was the first time I ever thought about, well, if you're 23 and you're meeting these, these dudes who've been to war, you know, they talk, they talking politics, culture, revolution, we finna overthrow the government. Like you tell, you tell, you know,

• 29:46Speaker 01

  21 year old me listening to Rage Against the Machine, we gonna go overthrow the government? Yeah, hell, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So like, I've never saw it as like, exciting, you know what I mean? From like a human perspective, you know, like, I'm just saying as like a racism and genocide withstanding, you know what I'm saying? Just the idea of being like young, you 23, you kind of a dork, you know, you meeting these people, you interested in chemistry, they talking politics. Every time you have an idea, they done one upped you because they done been through it. You got this dude who been to war, killed somebody with a knife. It's like, damn, like, yeah, I'm gonna go to the bar with these fools. Like, this the dopest shit ever. You know what I'm saying? Like, I never thought about it like that until right now.

• 30:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, like that's I, I, I think that's such an important point to note is like what a chunk of these guys are the chunk that are the traumatized veterans.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:38Robert Evans?

  You know, who are like angry and broken and really good at violence. But there's also a huge amount of the fuel is guys like Himmler, these kids who are too young to fight and desperately want to prove themselves.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 30:52Robert Evans?

  This is the, this is their opportunity to feel like the, the men they idolized and the, and the war they missed out on, you know?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And they're cool. Those dudes, they're cool. The dudes are cool. They got.

• 31:03Robert Evans?

  And I'm wearing the same uniform they are. It's like you get all these guys who love going out and dressing up and wearing the body armor and carrying the gun and like, you know, running around, doing like the malicious shit, right? Because it lets them feel like these guys that they never got to be, but they're like, oh, if it hadn't have been from, you know, my knee or whatever, having a kid too young, I would have, I would have been a great, he would have been a Navy SEAL, you know?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Robert Evans?

  So Himmler's there for the putsch, which does not work out. And it serves as his baptism of fire in a way, although he is not under fire. He's described, you'll run into a lot of like kind of casual histories that'll be like, he carries the Nazi flag during the putsch. And that's not really true. There's a famous flag that like during, you know, at the part of the march when they get fired on is near Hitler and it gets like the blood of some of the guys who dies on it. And that flag is like sacred to the Nazis, right? It's their battle, that's literally the blood of their martyrs is on it. Himmler is carrying the flag for Rome's Freikorps unit and he is not present for the actual shooting, for any of the actual like deadly violence. The whole thing falls apart while he is elsewhere.

• 32:11Robert Evans?

  He and his brother don't even get arrested. Like when they're, when the authorities come and break up the area where they are, where the barricades are, like they're not even worth taking into custody because they're just kids, you know? Like the cops, like just get out of here, you dumb asses, you know?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's look, listen, as. As a kid who've been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sometimes you you real thankful for that cop that's like, get out of here, kid.

• 32:37Robert Evans?

  And that's, that's, that's what happens to Himmler, but also because he's there, he's now an old fighter, right? He's one of the party vanguards. He gets a lot, he gets credit. He gets a lot of valor credit, like honestly, a lot of stolen valor for like, being one of the guys who's there, even though he's not there for anything like serious, you know, he's just kind of standing around awkwardly with a flag and a uniform. Now, there are consequences for the party in the immediate wake of the failed putsch. The Nazi party is banned. Hitler and his lieutenants are put in what you'd call the luxury prison. For his part, Himmler's history with the party makes it hard for him to find work. But the event also serves to strengthen his ties, especially with Ernst Roehm,

• 33:21Robert Evans?

  who he visits in prison. In general, his great talent in this period is finding men who are, he can't get to the Fuhrer, right? Hitler is unreachable to him, but he can find guys who are close to the Fuhrer and he can get to them. And that brings him closer to the center of the party. And these guys really seem to trust him. And so because he's out and he's free during this awkward period where the Nazi party's outlawed and a lot of its top people are behind bars, Himmler is going to be really useful to those folks, right? Because he's able to move freely. He's one of the guys who's still on the outside, so we can use him. Now, Strasser is also free. And because the Nazis are illegal, he helps to create a new far-right party

• 34:05Robert Evans?

  that's like a front for the Nazi party, but not technically the Nazis. And he gets elected to the Bavarian Parliament. And Himmler becomes basically his secretary after this point. And as Strasser rises and rises through the party and takes on more and more duties, Himmler takes over his old duties. And he's helping, he's basically put in charge of building and expanding this front party for the NSDAP in Bavaria stealthily. And he's in charge of propaganda after a while. He writes to a friend in August of 1924, "I have an enormous amount to do. I am in charge of organization and expansion of Lower Bavaria at all levels. Given all the work, there's never a moment to think about finding the time to write a letter." And like, I bring this up because it's, he's writing this in a letter, right?

• 34:50Robert Evans?

  He's humble bragging like, "I don't even have time to write letters to you." "Anyway, enjoy the letter," you know? Like, he's trying to, he's, he's big leaguing him, right? Um, and that's, that's a, that's a real thing for Heinrich is he's, he's, he's always kind of bragging about how much he's doing and how important he is. Um, he expressed frustration that he was fighting what seems to be a losing battle to try and spread the Nazi party, you know, during this period of time where it's illegal. But he also expresses confidence that the seeds that the volkish movement was sowing would bloom in the end, and he was sadly correct. The volkisher block, which is his party, that's this Nazi front group, equals the social democrats in local Bavarian elections later that year.

• 35:31Robert Evans?

  That December, Hitler is released from prison and the Nazi party gets unbanned. He's able to reassemble the NSDAP in 1925. He's still banned from public speaking for a while, and the ban is a little different in each state. It lasts in Bavaria until 1927, I think in Prussia until 1928. So he's able to speak in certain states, but not others for a while. And during this period of time where he's muzzled or partly muzzled, he needs mouthpieces who can travel to the places he can't and give speeches in order to like, draw crowds and build the party, because that's how they're recruiting, is by having these public events. We pay for the beer, you come, you showed up, you listen to some guy talk, you join the party, you hand him a couple of bucks, right?

• 36:15Robert Evans?

  Like, that's, that's, and Himmler becomes one of the most reliable speakers, right? He's sent all around Bavaria recruiting new members at these local party gatherings. Um, you know who else helped build the Nazi party? I hope not.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ, Robert, no!

• 36:33Robert Evans?

  Who knows, Sophie? It might be IG Farben, you know? It might be, uh, Hugo Boss? Yeah. Hugo Boss, advertise on the podcast. Hugo Boss, we're not like that anymore. Adidas.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 36:51Robert Evans?

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• 38:31Robert Evans?

  And we're back. Oh, yeah, a lot of people don't know how critical Adidas tracksuits were to the birth of the Nazi Party.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Listen, man. What were they gonna wear at the beer holes?

• 38:41Robert Evans?

  That's right, that's right. You know, a tracksuit. That's the classic.

• 38:46Robert Evans?

  Oh God, I could go for a tracksuit. Wow.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  They're never not right. That's the hard part. I know they got all kind of attachments to them, but they're never, it's all, they're never not the right choice.

• 38:58Robert Evans?

  They're never not the right choice. I used to have a beautiful one. I got it in Istanbul and it was a knockoff.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Ooh, I know it was fly.

• 39:04Robert Evans?

  It said a Dotus. It was incredible. I loved that tracksuit.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Smelled like cigarettes the whole time.

• 39:09Robert Evans?

  It lasted like six weeks before it tore apart because it was not well stitched. It was perfect.

• 39:17Robert Evans?

  So, The Private Heinrich Himmler, a book written with the help of Katrina Himmler, which was based on the letters that Heinrich and his wife sent each other over the entire course of their marriage, summarizes this period in his career as he's traveling around Germany giving speeches. Between 1925 and May 1926 alone, he addressed 27 different meetings in lower and upper Bavaria and another 20 in Westphalia, Hamburg, Mecklenburg, and Schleiswig-Holstein and elsewhere. In his incessant travel commitments, he was no different from other party functionaries. In 1925 to 26, Joseph Goebbels was also tirelessly on the road, speaking all over Germany and supporting local National Socialist groups. In April of 1926, Goebbels even came to Bavaria on a lecture tour.

• 40:00Robert Evans?

  "In the afternoon with Himmler and Landshut," Goebbels noted in his diary on April 13th, and he continued, "Himmler, a good fellow, very intelligent. I like him." So again, he's really good at getting, making, seeming likeable and non-threatening. That's key to these guys who are a step or two away from Hitler. And that's how he's, that's really the key to his success.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  He's a good hang.

• 40:24Robert Evans?

  At this time. He's a good hang for certain people who are just a little closer than he is to power.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:30Robert Evans?

  Now, you'll not be surprised, Prop, to hear that Heinrich Himmler's early years of career success with the Nazi Party did not make him any less weird around women. He's, he's, he gets it.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 40:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there is this period of time in his early twenties where he's starting at the party, he writes a lot of really weird shit about women. There's one diary entry, that's why I like that, that article by Lowenberg that I read to you, that like Freudian guy analyzing his diary entries. There's a lot of like nonsense in there where he's like, ah, this is evidence of Himmler's anal fixation or his schizo person, that's all nonsense. That's just like debunked psychiatric bullshit from the last century. But it quotes a lot of things that are diary entries of his that I, that are really, really valuable. And it talks a lot about his weird issues with women. And obviously, it draws conclusions about where that, those issues came from that I

• 41:25Robert Evans?

  don't agree with, but the issues themselves are undeniable and that part is really interesting. And one diary entry, Himmler concludes that all women can be divided into three groups.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 41:37Robert Evans?

  The weak mother.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me prepare myself.

• 41:40Robert Evans?

  You need to, you need to.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz that's like a, that's like the blacks sentence where I'm just like.

• 41:46Robert Evans?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  When you say the blacks in the sentence, the sentence is over. Like, there's nothing else you could say after that.

• 41:52Robert Evans?

  All women fall into three groups, right?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, bro, let me stop you right there, ho boy. Like, let me stop you right there, ho boy. What you finna say is gonna be dumb as shit, okay?

• 42:01Robert Evans?

  No, I think your problem is you've met three women.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So what does he say? All women.

• 42:06Robert Evans?

  All women can fall, can be divided into three groups. There's the weak mother, brutal eye, victimized by a brutal father who must be protected. There's the wife comrade, who is basically a man, right? This is like a wife who can do things. And then there's the goddess, or, or the flawless mother as seen by a child in their infancy, right? That's it, that's all women. Heinrich, you really have a, have a great understanding.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Bro, you need a podcast, homie, like, start your podcast.

• 42:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, oh, he would, he would have, you know what, I don't, he wouldn't have even started one, he would have fallen for all of them. This would be a guy who would have scraped up to the 10 grand to join Andrew Tate's inner circle, you know?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'd be a part of that.

• 42:51Robert Evans?

  He is such a, he is very like, strong incel vibes coming off of this kid.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Big dogs, there's three, and then there's the goddess.

• 42:58Robert Evans?

  And then there's the goddess, the flawless mother as seen, yeah, by the child in their infancy.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Windy peppercorn.

• 43:06Robert Evans?

  You kind of catch there's, cause Himmler doesn't write about his mother much in the diary. He doesn't write about his dad being abusive, but from that, I kind of think, okay, so your dad was probably smacking around your mom as a kid. And it fucked you up, right? Like, why else would that be something you would conclude? Divide like womanhood into those groups.

• 43:25Robert Evans?

  So within days of writing this, like a few days after that entry, he quotes his maternal grandmother as having given him this advice on picking a wife. Quote, "One should buy the cow straight out of the stall, not young girls who dance around until they get a man."

• 43:41Speaker 01

  That is grandma advice, boy.

• 43:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  That, that, that's what your grandma was, let me tell you something, you don't want one of them loose women out there selling everything. You done seen everything, you done, they done already been tested, you don't want them to be test drive too many times.

• 43:56Robert Evans?

  You want to buy that cow right out of the stall.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't want a floor model now, you don't want one of the floor model ones, you want, tell them, go get it from the back, I want the one from the back.

• 44:04Robert Evans?

  Okay, Heinrich.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Thanks grandma. You're not supposed to, you're supposed to listen to your grandma until it gets to that, you know?

• 44:12Robert Evans?

  Sometimes you gotta cut grandma off, maybe take away the gin, yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know.

• 44:16Robert Evans?

  Okay grandma.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  All right grandma, like you, you need something from the store, I'm about to go to the store, you want me to pick up your medicine?

• 44:21Robert Evans?

  I gotta bounce.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'll pick up your medicine, I'll drop off your medicine tonight grandma, I'll see you later. Yeah.

• 44:27Robert Evans?

  So he continues to flirt poorly throughout this period. He writes about a bunch of crushes that he has, but none of them seem to go anywhere. In letters to a friend, he writes of his frustration at the traditional engagement period, right? This point in time after you're engaged to be married, before you get married, which he defines as a stagnant time in which, quote, "The fighting and wooing are over, yet one only possesses a part of her spirit and her body not at all." A lot in that, right?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I got, I got it, but I can't smash, like, that's not fair.

• 44:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I can't get in there yet, you know, I only have a part of her spirit, I don't own her body yet. But there's no fighting and wooing to do. I'm like, you've never wooed anyone, Heinrich Himmler, you don't even know what you're talking about.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, which one third of the women does this one, would this one fall into? Bro, now as somebody who, I mean, I was engaged, but like an hour and a half, like we got married that day, but that being said. There's a lot to do during an engagement. Like, there's, there's a lot going on. You still don't know that woman. Ain't nothing wrong with you still, like, getting a notice. And let me, let me get off my. He's ridiculous, as obviously point is.

• 45:36Robert Evans?

  It's one of those things where, like, he's wrong. How much time should we spend pointing out how Heinrich Himmler's wrong about, like, love?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Is this really a good use of our time?

• 45:46Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Do we, do we need to argue with the dead Nazi?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Robert Evans?

  So in 1927, he finally meets the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his, some of his children. Margga Siegrot, like S I E G R O T H. She was born Margga Boden on September 9th, 1893. So she's seven years older than Heinrich, which I find interesting.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 46:10Robert Evans?

  Despite his previous statements about buying a cow straight out of the stall, he falls for Margga even though she has been married before, right? I told you, she's born Margga Boden, and when he meets her, she's Margga Siegrot. She has been married before in 1920, and, you know, it didn't work out. And on paper, Margga is exactly the kind of worldly, career-focused woman that Heinrich claimed was not worth settling down with. Starting in World War I, she's a nurse in field hospitals, right? She is closer to the front and combat than Heinrich himself. She's close enough where there's, like, a danger of being hit by, like, errant shells, right? She's hearing the gunfire and the artillery.

• 46:53Robert Evans?

  And she's dealing with men who have just been pulled off the line after being grievously injured. So, like, she is more of a veteran than he is.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  So, at this point, now, at this point, I'm like, I, I am grossly hypothesizing here, but knowing that about her, she like, oh, I see why she like him. Because she could bully his little soft ass.

• 47:14Robert Evans?

  You know what I'm saying? I, I kind of, I, I wonder, because that, it, it doesn't seem like that's an, I don't fully understand the relationship. I'm gonna tell you that right now, Prop. I, other than, they're both equally, they're both the same kind of racist. Like, that's actually all we know of it. But, yeah, well, we know a lot. Well, I'll, I'll go through it. I'm just having trouble coming to conclusions, you know?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  I just feel like somebody who was pulling bodies out of the front line can soft, can, can suss out a yellow belly.

• 47:41Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  And she like, he ain't gonna be a problem. I'm like, maybe he's not gonna, like, maybe she's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not scamming this guy, but it's like, listen. I'mma be able, I ain't gonna have to be this subservient cuz he ain't got it in him. So I'll be able to live my life, you know?

• 47:56Robert Evans?

  That, I think that is a part of it cuz as I'll say, she always, she always has a degree of autonomy from him. Now, some of that's because he's cheating constantly and doesn't wanna be around. But she gets something out of the bargain too. I don't know, it's weird. The relationship is, is a little hard for me to, to, to kind of parse out here. In 1923, she got a job as the head nurse of a private Berlin clinic that his, her father part owned. So like everyone in the story, she's also a nepo baby. She's into homeopathy, right? She's like a homeopathic nurse. She likes alternate medicine, right? So she's into like all of this RFK Junior shit. Exactly. She's so, ah, all of these people, none of, they don't change from century to century.

• 48:40Robert Evans?

  They're always the same kind of person.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:42Robert Evans?

  Um, now, there's a reason, there are good reasons why, even though, again, on paper, this is not the kind of woman he had talked about wanting to fall for. There's also some very obvious reasons why he's drawn to her. She's from the same upper-middle-class strata as him, right? She's socially acceptable, her family has money, and she's blond-haired and blue-eyed, right? Which Himmler is not, right? Himmler is obsessed with Aryan racial theory and he knows he doesn't match. He, he, he knows that like, he's not as pure Nordic as he wants to be, but she is, right? Like, she's clearly got the, the Nordic genes. As, you know, I'm not talking about in actual terms of genetic science.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 49:26Robert Evans?

  This is all nonsense, but from, from his perspective, right? She's closer to the ideal than he is, and that's a selling point for Himmler.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Robert Evans?

  Uh, Marga and Heinrich meet in September of 1927 on a train ride from Berchtesgaden to Munich. Uh, Marga had been on vacation. Berchtesgaden is the mountain town where Hitler has his Eagles Nest Retreat. So she's there on vacation cuz it's like a resort town. And Heinrich, Heinrich is visiting for work, right? Because Hitler's there a lot of the time and so like a lot of party business gets done there. Um, so on the way back, they meet and they, they hit it off. And despite her greater life experience, Marga is just as much of a fascist as her husband. As this passage from the private Heinrich Himmler summarizes, because this is kind of this book, it just, you can read a lot of their letters to each other in their entirety, but it also kind of summarizes like a lot of their communications as we know them.

• 50:17Robert Evans?

  Obviously, we don't know what they said in private. We just know what they wrote each other. But that's a lot more than you have about most people from this period. Quote, "They agreed in many areas, for example, their common rejection of democracy, their hatred for das System Berlin, their hatred of Jews whom they labeled Jewish rabble and their misanthropy. How false and bad humans are." That's from Marga. "They were soon dreaming of life in the country together, not only because they wanted to supplement Himmler's modest party salary through their own venture, raising animals and vegetables, but also because this corresponded to the folkish idolization of a return to the soil. The beautiful, pure home that they wanted to establish was supposed to be a secure castle and a place to keep the filth of the outside world at bay."

• 51:02Robert Evans?

  So they're both kind of into this trad wife bullshit, you know, like they're in Marga's really into this, this idea of like, let's escape from the city and build ourselves a fortress where we can keep the filth out. Other people are awful, you know? Yeah. Humanity is terrible.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  If it wasn't for the fascism, hard relate.

• 51:22Robert Evans?

  Right? I mean, I feel you.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  I'm like, fortress? Keep people away?

• 51:28Robert Evans?

  I just want to keep people like this away.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, how about you stay away from me?

• 51:33Robert Evans?

  You can't. Uh, yeah, you have to just deal in the world, right? And but like, that's what they're both, they're both racist, they're both misanthropes, they're both fascists, you know, that's fundamentally why this relationship works. The very first letters between the couple have been lost to time, but in later letters, both alluded to their relationship, starting with constant furious arguments, including at least one in which they nearly had a fistfight. And we both know Marga would have won that. She'd have whooped his ass. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a question in my mind. In letters we have from November 1927, we get some sense of what won Heinrich over. Marga tells him his constant stomach issues are just the result of his heroic workload.

• 52:15Robert Evans?

  She adds, "One works to be able to pay taxes. At least that's fun, taxes." And then adds, "I read Ludendorff's work, A Book on the Freemasons. The book criticizes the Jews. I find that the facts speak volumes, so why all these remarks? Life truly offers so too many pleasures." So you know, you get this like, you know, what's unfair is all the taxes I've gotta pay. Also Ludendorff, you know, wrote this, this book, he's right about the Jews, but why's he gotta spend so many words talking about it? We all know they're evil, you know, like, again, she really does.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  The taxes.

• 52:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:49Robert Evans?

  All right. Nothing has changed.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:52Robert Evans?

  So we get a sense there of the fact that Marga was a Nazi way before she actually joined the Nazi party. You know, she gets with Himmler before she actually joins the party, but she's always been one in spirit.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:04Robert Evans?

  The two bonded over reading the second volume of Mein Kampf. Uh, we have Heinrich's copy of the book in which he took notes and appended marginalia. So we have some idea of what they may have discussed. Heinrich underlined a passage about the need to stop defective people from breeding. He commented, "The potential for undoing racial mixing exists." This is always gonna be a focus of his, like this idea, again, that we have to undo the damage that all this interbreeding with Poles and whatnot, you know, has, has done to our race. Uh, and, and this is going to be kind of the foundation of like how he leads the SS. Like it's, it's purpose primarily is to undo the damage of race mixing by selective breeding.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, nor does he, yeah, like, I, I never thought about, again, another I never thought about is like, you can't, you can't talk about this if you don't start at like, all the like Volks, like myth-making. Now it makes sense because, okay, you clearly don't understand your own history, that like, the Germanic tribe, baza.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Were race mixing. And, and the Nordics were hundreds of miles away from here. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's, that's actually not y'all. You know, so like, even if, I mean, granted, I'm looking at it with a 21st century brain. And obviously, we're using these terms very loosely, but like, what the fuck do you think an indigenous person is? They not pure breeds either. You know what I'm saying? So like-

• 54:41Robert Evans?

  Nobody is. That's not a thing that exists.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Not a thing. That's what I was gonna say. Like, no, like, it just, it depends on where you want to start your timeline. Like-

• 54:50Robert Evans?

  I mean, like, there's, fucking Europeans have Neanderthal DNA because at some point, we were fucking other species.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Cause you were fucking other species.

• 54:58Robert Evans?

  And that's why we're here. Like, not just Neanderthals, but like, the fact that like, the, like, the more you breed with people who are different from you, the better like, immune profiles your kids have.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  The better your immune system works.

• 55:12Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:13Robert Evans?

  Like, that's just, we know all this.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just like, this undoing shit is just like, oh, it's because you think you supposed to be this ancient thing you made up.

• 55:26Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's why, that's why the science that you say you read, the chemistry you say you read, is that the math isn't mathin' for you.

• 55:35Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:36Robert Evans?

  Cause it's fundamentally nonsense, right? But that's, that's going to be his like, obsessive goal is we have to undo this damage. Um, and, you know, his part in that starts when he marries Marga in 1928. Uh, as soon as they marry, they buy a chicken farm out in the country. This is consistent with Himmler's stated volkish back to the land values. But it's also evidence that those values are more a result of this nerdy special interest he has in German mysticism than a real desire to live as a peasant farmer. Because he basically never works on that farm. As soon as they set the farm up, Marga starts having kids and Heinrich is gone.

• 56:16Robert Evans?

  He is on the road all the time, working for the Nazi party, furthering his grand career. Marga, not only does- She raised the children, but she minds the farm. Like she keeps this business going, like it's nearly all on her shoulders. Himmler shows up every now and again to help out and check on how his kids are doing. But most of his direct relationship with their raising and the farm's day to day work operation is him sending letters to and Margas sending letters back to him, talking about what's going on.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  So he's, she's the Uber minch.

• 56:50Robert Evans?

  She, she is like, she's the one putting in the lion's share of the work here, right?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I don't know, something about props saying Uber minch.

• 57:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, she's certainly, she's, she's closer to the, to the Aryan ideal than Heinrich is, right?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  That's what I'm trying to say, like, yeah, like she actually the pinnacle of manhood, brother.

• 57:09Robert Evans?

  Your, your wife's the peasant farmer. Like you, you're walking around in a suit, like talking to people for a living.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Little pretty boy just bragging about, bragging about being sore after barely working out. Like, oh, I'm so busy from working, I'm sorry I happen to didn't have chance to write, man. I'm so sore, I'm so busy, man. Shut the fuck up.

• 57:31Robert Evans?

  The fuck, yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty funny. You know what else is funny?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Hearing you read ads sometimes.

• 57:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  It's pretty funny, man, cause I'm like, I'm, there's an ad that, that Jack does, shout out Jack. Brian. Yeah, on the Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah, he, he reads an ad that I hear all the time about, uh, the speed of, of, of a like gaming laptop processor that I'm like, man, you don't know what none of this shit means. It's just so funny. I was like, you don't know what this means, but I feel you get your money.

• 58:08Robert Evans?

  No, it's like me reading ads about the NFL. Yeah.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh. I was like, you don't know what this shit means.

• 58:14Robert Evans?

  Please give us more money, the NFL. Anyway, here's some ads.

• 58:21Robert Evans?

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• 59:21Robert Evans?

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• 1:00:02Robert Evans?

  We're back. Boy, I sure do love first downs.

• 1:00:07Robert Evans?

  I don't know.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  You just had to remind us you're from Texas for a minute.

• 1:00:11Robert Evans?

  It is the only sport I know anything about. Because I had to play it in high school. It's legally required in Texas.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't graduate. Just like we have to know how to resite a full Snoop Dogg song before we can graduate high school.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Robert Evans?

  Oh, man. Um, so, uh, this pattern where Marga does all of the actual hard work, and Heinrich then writes essays and gives speeches about how important it is to raise children and have farms. Uh, this is the pattern for most of their relationship. Heinrich talks about how people should live and Marga lives that life while he is staying in nice hotels, taking up mistresses, eating at restaurants, and doing everything but living as a back-to-the-land peasant farmer with his smiling children and Aryan bride. God. Uh, now, Marga quits her career to make this life possible, which for Heinrich means he's killing two birds with one farm-shaped stone. You know, she's not out living an independent,

• 1:01:10Robert Evans?

  she is like, she is very independent, but in the sense that she is, she is maintaining the life that he wants to pretend he's living, right?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:19Robert Evans?

  So, while Himmler had been in prison, Ernst Rohe, uh, who got out earlier, had renamed the band SA, turning it into the Frontbahn and expanded it to 30,000 fighters. Now, this is crucial because the Nazi Party, in order to grow, is going to need these fighters. The fact that they've always got tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of men who, they're not always armed in the streets with guns, but they have a lot of guns in caches and they're, they're willing to fight. It's a threat potentially to the army. There's enough of the SA at a certain point that, like, the army, which is very limited in size, has to be concerned about the ability of the SA to potentially cause a problem, right, for, you know, the country's government being able to maintain power. So, it's very

• 1:02:03Robert Evans?

  important that Rohe is constantly expanding this group, which, again, is technically not the SA in this period, but also because the Nazi Party was banned and the SA was banned and he establishes a separate group during this period of time, it means that this, the Frontbahn, which is effectively the SA, is separated from the Nazi Party.

• 1:02:26Robert Evans?

  And it's just Rome's. There's not a chain of command where Hitler is in charge of these guys during this period, which means that Rome could kind of go into business for himself because he's got the army, so to speak, right? And Hitler, Rome is always says he's loyal, right? He always says the right things, but Hitler doesn't trust Rome, you know? Yeah, of course. You shouldn't. And it, there's a period, there's a point where Hitler's like, will you, you know, sign a pledge of loyalty and hand over this organization, basically make it a part of the party, you know, once the party is unbanned and Rome says no, like, and he makes something about like, I want it to, I think it's better if it's, you know, independent for this reason or that. But what

• 1:03:08Robert Evans?

  matters to Hitler is that like Rome has defied him. Now, this is an issue between the two and ultimately it gets resolved when Rome leaves Germany temporarily to take a job Bolivia, like hires him to train their armed forces. And Himmler kind of talks to Rome and is like, I think it's a good idea if you take the job, you know, like Hitler is kind of pissed, you know, this might cool things down for everybody. And so Rome goes off and the SA is effectively leaderless for a while, which means that, you know, the threat to Hitler declines, but he's still spooked. And the fact that he has this kind of moment of panic where he's like, oh, fuck, this guy might actually try to usurp me and he's the dude with the army. It convinces

• 1:03:53Robert Evans?

  Hitler that he needs a new Freikor, right? A new militant unit that's dedicated and loyal only to him, right? And specifically wants a group that's filled with men who are more disciplined than the SA men and better at fighting and are ready to quote, "march against their own brothers if necessary." Sheesh. The SA had proven useful, obviously, but they were like the Proud Boys today, right? These are not disciplined soldiers. They're drunken louts and reprobates, right? Most, a lot of them are addicts, a lot of them are criminals, you know, fucking Horst Wessel, the, the famous martyr of the SA, who, he's a, he's a pimp, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:35Robert Evans?

  These guys are, are criminals and they're not, they're not the kind of criminals because the SS guys are also criminals, but they're the kind of criminals who are like, Like mob criminals, right?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're goons.

• 1:04:46Robert Evans?

  Like they're disciplined. They're disciplined as opposed to the SA, which you're just like the guy on meth who steals your car, you know?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you can't really, yeah, you can't really count on them. Yeah, they're just, those are just goons.

• 1:04:58Robert Evans?

  You can count on them to get into street fights, but not to be particularly good at it and certainly not to be a disciplined army, right? And to make matters worse, these, the SA, because they're so uncontrolled, they scare the conservatives with money, right? Nobody, none of the people, none of the like wealthy class trust the SA because they seem scarily like the mobs that occasionally like, you know,

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Robert Evans?

  overthrow the government and kill all the rich people, you know? Like just because they're technically on your side doesn't mean you, you like the idea of this unaccountable drunken mob, you know?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Robert Evans?

  And all of this is why ultimately Hitler orders the formation of the SS or Schutzstaffel, right? The SS is started not to fight Nazism's enemies, but to fight other Nazis. Specifically, the SS is formed as a counter to the SA.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:05:54Robert Evans?

  Now, they're also supposed to, they're also formed because they're literally a bodyguard for Hitler. He wants a unit of disciplined, reliable fighters who can beat communists in the street, who can guard Nazi party meetings and do so again, more effectively and with more kind of discipline than the SA. But more than anything, he wants them to be able to fight the SA off if Rome betrays Hitler or if someone else in the SA betrays Hitler. Because there's a lot of SA leaders and he doesn't trust any of them.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Robert Evans?

  The core of the SS is formed out of Hitler's Stosstrup or first bodyguard. This is like his initial guards before, you know, the party is really formed. And it's headed, the first leader of the SS is Julius Schreck, Hitler's chauffeur and chief bodyguard. Schreck was an obvious initial choice and he made some good early decisions that would echo in the organization's future. Members had to be above a certain height. They had to be between 23 and 35 years old. So you don't want them too young because those are just hooligans, but they need to be young enough that like they're fit and able to fight effectively. And they have to have two sponsors who vouch for them before they can join, two sponsors in the SS.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  I just want you to know, I'm picturing like Schreck, Schreck. Like ogre Shrek.

• 1:07:07Robert Evans?

  That is, that is Disney or DreamWorks isn't like talking about it, but yes, Shrek got his start leading the SS. That's why he was living in, in that, uh, the, the

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Swamp?

• 1:07:20Robert Evans?

  That swamp. Yeah. Because, uh, obviously, you know, after Nazism fell, he had to go into hiding.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  You're saying Shrek was a Nazi?

• 1:07:28Robert Evans?

  Yes. Yes. Uh, that's, that's, uh, that's the truth, the dark truth.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Tried to change. He tried to change. That's why he turned green. He was, he was in hiding.

• 1:07:36Robert Evans?

  That's right. Yeah. He had to change his appearance so that he wouldn't get, uh, he wouldn't get caught.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  And then Donkey made him woke.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Then Donkey made him woke. He made a black friend.

• 1:07:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah. There, yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Donkey's one of my favorite animated characters ever.

• 1:07:48Robert Evans?

  They had to leave out the movie where Donkey figures out that Shrek had been a Nazi and they have to have a serious conversation?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  That a serious conversation?

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Say Shrek, uh, one more thing. Let me ask you this real quick.

• 1:08:06Robert Evans?

  Uh, man.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  DreamWorks sponsor us.

• 1:08:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah. DreamWorks sponsor. We could do the new ads for the new Shrek movie. Shrek, he's not a Nazi anymore.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Robert Evans?

  Anymore.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Reformed.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Send us your money.

• 1:08:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Shrek leaves the, stops being leader of the SS in April of 1926. So he's just there for about a year. And you know, what he does, does kind of set up the future of the unit. It's going to be small, but it's going to be elite. Right? It's going to be big guys who are tough and who know each other. And so like they're tight and they have like, they have like, you know, they have a stronger bond. It's not this anonymous mob of like drunken rabble. These guys are going to hold together better in like a combat situation. Um, once Julius leaves, he hands over control to Joseph Berktold, who's a former SA man who'd handled security during the putsch, which given that the putsch doesn't go well,

• 1:08:55Robert Evans?

  you might be like, well, why is this guy, he was, he fucked up is one job, but Berktold is given the title Reichsführer SS, which is, you know, leader of the SS. He's the first man to actually hold that title. Um, and this is where the SS starts, like the birth of their kind of distinctive all black uniforms. At first it's just that they They have black ties to differentiate them from the SA's brown ties. And you know, over time, this is gonna evolve into the, you know, Hugo Boss, all black uniforms that we all know today. But it just starts with the tie. Berchtold's main accomplishment during his brief period as Reichsführer SS is to stop the SS from being absorbed into the SA entirely. When that organization is readmitted to the Nazi party, right?

• 1:09:40Robert Evans?

  Like, there's an attempt from Rome to just make the SS a unit in the SA. And Berchtold stops that. He resigns in 1927 and he's replaced by another guy who doubles down on the SS remaining ultra-exclusive and elite. But this guy's really bad at his job, you know? Like, he tries to really focus on restricting even further who can join. And this helps, means that the SS membership declines from its height of around 1,000 to just a couple of hundred people in 1928. And it's during this period of time when the SS is sort of like bleeding members and it looks like it's about to die out. Like, this was kind of a failed experiment and eventually it's just going to be absorbed back into the SA.

• 1:10:22Robert Evans?

  It's during this time that Heinrich Himmler is admitted to the organization. Now, Heinrich had joined because the SS needed men and he was not like a threatening guy, right? Like, nobody, the dude running the SS at this point doesn't consider him to be like a rival for power. And Himmler likes the idea that it's exclusive, that like, oh, if I join this, people will think that I'm one of the elite.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, so he's a member of the Nazi Party, he's just not a member of the SS at this point?

• 1:10:51Robert Evans?

  Yes, yeah, and he becomes one in 1928, right? You join the Nazi Party and then you join the SS.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Word.

• 1:10:57Robert Evans?

  And Himmler, he gets into the, again, he's not physically, he doesn't kind of match the strong requirements they're supposed to have. But he's someone who there's a lot of buzz about, he's doing a lot of very important jobs. He's like liked by a lot of high-ranking people in the party, so he's got clout. And he just doesn't seem like someone who could do any, who could like be a threat to your power.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Robert Evans?

  But that's a mistake, because as soon as he gets admitted, Hitler rats on his boss, the leader of the SS, to Hitler. And it's like, hey, you know the guy who's running your bodyguard? His tailor's Jewish. He's got a Jewish guy tailoring his SS uniform. And so Hitler shitcans the Reichsführer of the SS, and that's how Himmler gets the job running the SS.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Wow, he snitches.

• 1:11:45Robert Evans?

  Yes, that's how he does it.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Um, look, look, you ain't here for me, but I heard a homie got a, homie got a snow bunny over there.

• 1:11:52Robert Evans?

  He's got a, he's brought on the SS, he's got a Jewish guy, him in his pants, like, woo boy.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Look, if it was, if it was me, I'm not in charge. I'm not in charge. But if it was me, I would look into that.

• 1:12:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I wouldn't be doing it that way.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, I mean, I figure, you know, when you, when you know you can't really, you can't go head up with none of them people, you gotta figure out other ways to defeat them, you know what I'm saying? You know, he's like, you're not gonna fight them. You know, so like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna outsmart you.

• 1:12:23Robert Evans?

  Yep, and it works. So, yeah, Heinrich Himmler, at this point, has now become the Reichsferer of the SS. He is leading the organization and he will continue to lead it for the remainder of his and its life. And we will talk about what he does now that he's in power later. But first, Prop. You wanna plug some pluggables?

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  I would love to plug pluggables. Like I said, the Terraform Cold Brew is back. The website is up. Praise be. We are ready to share the good drink. The politics with Prop, we got two drops a week this time. We got the main show on Wednesday and then the tap-in on Friday, a little shorter.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  I love the tap-ins.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  The tap-ins are fun, man. So those are-

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  It's great format for you.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sophie. That's good. Yeah, so yeah, and then follow me on all the socia's, the Prop Hip Hop.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Whoever, whoever suggested that tap-in was a genius.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Look in a mirror, Sophie, look in a mirror. Boss queen. Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  I'm in pain, so I'm just being nice to myself.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  You should be. Not in pain, you should be nice to yourself.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Robert, Robert, could I get a compliment on the way out?

• 1:13:41Robert Evans?

  Yes, uh, you're the best. Yeah, you're the best and fuck your pain. Pain is awful. I hate it. But I don't hate is you, the listener. I only hate some of you and I'll never tell you which ones you are.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  But I know.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  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/behindthebastards.

• 1:14:28Speaker 07

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• 1:14:58Speaker 08

  This January, bare-knuckle fighting championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool-deck bare-knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at bkfsea.com.

• 1:15:27Speaker 09

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