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

Ever wondered how the SS celebrated Christmas? This, and Heinrich Himmler's war on Christmas in our conclusion to Heinrich Himmler's life from birth up to the start of WW2. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:04Robert Evans?

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

• 0:46Robert Evans?

  and pick up a live stream show to check it out on Thursday, September 25th at 8pm.

• 0:54Robert Evans?

  And we're back. This is Behind the Bastards, part, what is it, six on Heinrich fucking Himmler?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  5,200 million.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  4,080, bro.

• 1:06Robert Evans?

  I held off, people always wonder like, why does, has Robert not done this guy yet? Why has he not done that guy yet? And there's always a mix of things, like, why haven't I done Mao yet? Well, because I don't know a whole lot about Chinese history and I'm gonna have to do a shitload of reading to like, do those episodes well. And I'm just like nervous about fucking it up and of the amount of work it's gonna take. And Himmler, I was nervous about the amount of work it was going to take, but I was primarily nervous because prior to doing this, I had read a lot of the books on Heinrich Himmler that exist. And I've just, I mean, a lot of this was just going back and rereading portions, but there's so much, I knew I was like, I'm not gonna be able to write this in like, less than fucking six episodes. Like, the amount of Heinrich Himmler I wanna talk about, I'm not gonna be able to do that quickly. So I should wait until we've really got some time to let these episodes breathe.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So yeah. Dude, I think like, I, when it like, even with, with my show, like, I come up with an idea. I'm like, dude, like, I could feel like, okay, this will be fresh. And then I kinda, in my, like, sort of my imagination, start doing the show, where I'm like, okay, so in my head, I would say this, this, this. And then you get to a point in the thing where I'd be like, oh, well, this part would need this type of background understanding. Oh, I don't know shit about that. And then I was like, oh, wait. So then that would mean that I'd have to learn this. And then, okay, so I would need to prove this. I would need to show the statistical data about this. And then, and the workload is just growing in my imagination.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  And I'm like, yeah, bro, now I'm gonna sit that idea to the side, homie. Like, that's cool. I'll just, we gonna have to do this when my children are on vacation or something.

• 2:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Uh, so before we get into more Himmler, I want to just highlight if you want to donate to the Portland Defense Fund and help people who have literally nobody else in their corner make bail and fight charges, often bullshit charges against them. Go to Defense Fund PDX fundraiser on donor box. Just type Defense Fund PDX fundraiser and donor box into Google. Or go to Venmo and go to at Defense Fund PDX, Defense Fund PDX. And you can, uh, send the money that way, too. Anyway, uh, let's talk about a guy who would not have been supportive of bail funds for the very poor, Heinrich Himmler. Uh, not really supportive of bail or people getting out of jail, uh, or concentration camps in, in general.

• 3:25Robert Evans?

  Not, not a big fan of any of that stuff.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 03

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• 3:35Robert Evans?

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• 4:19Robert Evans?

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• 4:42Robert Evans?

  So Himmler by this point is, he's in power. He's in actually helping to run most of law enforcement at this point. The SS has become the premier organization for running concentration camps. So he's, he's, he's doing about as well as he's going to ever be doing at this stage in the story. And he's also the highest ranking guy left, other than maybe Rudolph Hess, who's super into the weird magic shit related to this tortured version of Nordic mythology that all of these different, you know, List and Liebenfels, these guys had crafted during his, you know, adolescence. The last weirdo. So that means he becomes Himmler and his organization, the SS, become the go-to

• 5:24Robert Evans?

  clearinghouse for like mystics who are interested in this stuff still and want to build a place for themselves in the, themselves in the Third Reich. And one of these weirdos who goes to Himmler, because he knows Himmler's the same kind of weirdo I am, is Karl Maria Willigut. Now Karl was an Aust- yeah. Karl Maria Willigut. I mean, he's an Austrian. They throw Maria in wherever the fuck they can. Yeah. I mean, no one loves the name Maria more than Austrians. Yeah. Maybe the Italians. That's what World War I was largely about. Italy and Austria fighting over who gets to use Maria. Yeah, I was thinking about middle school and the amount of girls whose middle name was Marie. Yeah, yeah. There's an Austrian somewhere in the back of that family line. Yeah, I was like, y'all are Austrian, ain't you?

• 6:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah. All right, anyway. So he was a, an Austrian Willigut and he'd been, he was in, an officer in the, the Habsburg Imperial Military. He's like a Colonel, so he's fairly high ranking. But he's also, he's in like the pre-war period, he's like an occult scholar in the mold of List and Liebenfels. He's one of these nerds who cannot enjoy someone else's canon, so he has to create his own. And this is what's interesting. List and Liebenfels both create their own canon, right? List has his Armenian warrior priests and, you know, to an extent, Liebenfels is happy to just be like, oh yeah, that stuff's right and I'm going to yes and it and just kind of add to it. Yeah.

• 6:49Robert Evans?

  But Willigut doesn't play nice with others, so he rejects List's Armenian priest cult and he creates his own ancient priest cult, the Ermenn. Totally different. Yeah, just totally different. It's like McDowell. It's like if someone, someone watches. Yeah, it's like someone watching Star Wars and being like, well, I'm gonna create my own totally original thing called Star War. And it's, it's, it's original and legally distinct. Yeah, star battles. What are you talking about?

• 7:17Robert Evans?

  Airwalker. Yeah. Dark Vader. Yes. It really is that lazy. And fucking Willigut's Ermannen are identical to the Armanen in every meaningful way, except the Armanen get their magic powers from Wotan, but the Ermannen get their magic powers from the god Eirman. Now, Eirman probably was not an ancient Norse deity. Like, he was probably never worshipped by the, like, Wotan. There was a point at which people really worshipped Wotan, right? I mean, some people still do, but like, which it was like, yeah, yeah, yes, the Wotan Clan. There was a Wotan Clan. Got it. Yes, there absolutely was. And in his book on the Nazi occult, Bill Yen writes,

• 8:00Robert Evans?

  quote, "Some scholars of ancient Germanic literature have suggested that Eirman may actually have been merely an avatar or pseudonym for Wotan, as this name does not come up in German writing until relatively recent times. Nevertheless, Willigut continued to believe in Eirman's unique identity, as he believed the ancient Eirmanists communicated with him. Their spirits told Willigut that the German people had originated 2,300 centuries before, in a time when giants, dwarves, and mythical beasts moved about beneath a sky filled with three suns. The Eirmanen went on to whisper to Willigut that the Eirmanist god was named Christ, and that the Christians had stolen the term from them." And his spelling is K-R-I-S-T, but right? Yes. Again, because all of these guys, they're anti-Christian. They're like, we saw Himmler

• 8:43Robert Evans?

  started moving against Christianity when the Catholic Church was like, "Well, I guess if Jews convert, it's okay." And Himmler's like, "Nah, not to me." Time out, homie. And all of these guys, listed in Liebenfels, are part of this. They're this kind of pagan revival. And Willigut is specifically like, "No, no, no. The Jews stole Christ from the Eirmanists," right? Like, that's where that got, the name came from. That's where, like, they took it in order to cuck our Nordic faith and Jewify it. That's what Christianity is, right? That's literally the way these guys are basically talking. Yeah, oh, yeah, they're gentrifiers, man. Yeah, exactly. Well, and specifically like Christianity and its focus on social justice and like taking care of people. Like, you know, the Catholic Church, no one's going to claim is a

• 9:26Robert Evans?

  perfect organization, but the Catholic Church legitimately believes it's bad if poor brown people starve to death, right? Like now, do they devote all of their resources to stopping starvation? No, of course not. But that is like, you know, there are Catholic aid organizations that help non-white people and you don't have to be white to be a Catholic. And that's really not cool for to these guys. And so they're like, well, obviously, all of this tolerant stuff is built in the Jews when they created this, you know, sinister, when they created this fake religion that they tricked the West into being, that's what they, you know, that was part of why is they were trying to make us more tolerant of degeneracy, you know, like that's the argue, that's the anti-Christian argument from these guys essentially, right? Christianity is way too tolerant.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Wow. Here's the problem with Christianity.

• 10:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, tolerance.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  It allows other people to be alive.

• 10:12Robert Evans?

  Right, right. They don't, but the average Christian belief is not murder everyone else. Yes. Which is where we're going to take it. And yeah, that does, we talk a lot about like, why are the Nazis different than other bad regimes that existed? Because they are, like, we talk about the US got up to a lot of hideous stuff and has genocides and it's that it that it had committed and was in the process of committing when the Nazis started their rise to power, right? Fucking, and the same is true of the USSR, right? The whole of doing more horrible things done by the USSR. Both the US and the USSR did nightmarish things and were also states outside of that in that they did other stuff. Their product of the USSR was not just death and starvation. They got the first man into orbit. They massively completely,

• 10:57Robert Evans?

  like the dramatic, the change in the situation for like women's rights from Tsarist Russia to the USSR and in terms of like literacy, massive. And likewise, the United States sent a bunch of food all over the world, was responsible for rebuilding countries after World War II, put men on the moon. The only things, the only products of the US and the USSR, they had, they, they produced death and they produced other things. The only thing Nazism ever creates is death, right?

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:24Robert Evans?

  And the few scientific advancements. That are that that come from the Nazis come from the fact that they're trying to kill people. Right. And occasionally that like leads you to make a rocket or something. Right? Yeah. But the Nazi state doesn't and never could have made anything but death. And that is fundamentally different from these other states, even from like fucking Maoist China. The only product of the Chinese Communist Party is not just death, which does not mean ignoring the bad things done by these states, by the US or anyone, it just means that like, well, they did other things. The Nazis only kill people. Some other shit too. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about this guy Willigut and his Irmanist cult that totally isn't ripped off from the Arminians.

• 12:07Robert Evans?

  And Willigut's particular special interest is in this very real geographic site in Germany called the Irminsul, which is a natural rock formation in Germany that he and other volkish neo pagans believe was created by humans. Geologists say, no, this is just sort of like a weird looking natural formation. It's kind of like the Giant's Causeway, where it's this natural formation, but there are like myths about it being something ancient people made. Yeah. I mean, I think it's giants in the case of the Giant's Causeway, literally. But uh. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I'm remembering right, yeah, there was like a Scottish giant and he was fighting with his Irish. Anyway, we didn't get into the lore too much because I don't remember it perfectly, but this is another case like that where there's this natural thing.

• 12:49Robert Evans?

  And Willigut is a number among a number of volkish neo pagans who are like, this was the Stonehenge of our ancient ancestors. It was created to like harness mystical power, right? This is like a bunch of ley lines converge here, right? Okay. And so after World War One ended and with it, Willigut's military career, he gets cashiered out, his empire goes away. And he gets, he doubles down on writing these books and tracts about the Ice Kings, the Irmanian Ice Kings. And he just kind of loses his mind, right? He convinces himself that these Ice Kings are his ancestors. He's like the descendant or reincarnation of one of these great Ice Kings. Now his real life is falling apart as he's descending into fantasy. His young son dies of an illness.

• 13:32Robert Evans?

  Obviously his empire goes away, his career goes away, his family like. Financial situation changes dramatically. So he, he just completely gives up his connection to reality in favor of this fantasy. And his wife and family are not happy with this, right? Especially because as he gets more delusional, he grows more physically abusive, right? And so he'll have these days long psychotic fits where he'll, he'll rant from talking about the days when he was an ice king. So just beating the shit out of his wife, right? Okay. And it's bad enough that she in 1927, think of how hard this would be to do in 1927. His wife gets him abducted off the street by the police at a cafe in Salzburg.

• 14:16Robert Evans?

  Diagnosed as schizophrenic and locked in an asylum. Whoa. To be, to have, to have that done to you as the man, to have your wife be able to do that in 1920. You have to be exhibiting some pretty out there behavior, right? You gotta be out of there. Yeah. It is, you know, it's easy for a parent to have a kid locked up or something like that for bullshit reasons. Have for a wife to have her husband locked up, not easy in 1927. That's wild. He was out of fucking pocket. Um, yeah. So he gets released after a little while, but the only people willing to associate with him, his family has fucking left. The only people willing to talk to Williget after he gets out of the, the mental institution and take him seriously. Are these Nazis in Austria and Germany, because he's been publishing a newsletter for years.

• 15:01Robert Evans?

  And it was super popular among members of the party, right? Cause all of his like, his ice king bullshit, they think it's cool. He's basically writing fantasy novels, you know? Yeah. And so these guys convince him, uh, per Jen's book, quote, that he had been locked up, not because he was an abusive husband, but because he was a martyr being persecuted for his neo pagan religious beliefs. No. Yeah. It's not because you hit your wife. Yeah. Because you know, the truth about the ice kings.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Robert Evans?

  That's why the state came after you. Yeah. So they just used it.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Just anything but holding a man accountable, just anything but that.

• 15:33Robert Evans?

  Anything but holding a man accountable, just, no. It's like, that really tells you again, where the Nazis are socially in this period is like, this guy gets out of a, a mental institution being like, ah, the, the ice kings made my wife leave me after I just hit her a few times. And they're like, that's absolutely religious persecution, Willie, you know? So he travels to Munich in 1932 during the same month Hitler takes power and he has a meeting with Heinrich Himmler. So one of the first meetings Himmler has when the Nazis are in power is with this mystic weirdo, Willigut. Now for hours, Willigut wove stories for Himmler of the Ice Kings and how he discovered that he was their descendant, right? That he had the blood of the Ice Kings in his veins. And Himmler listens with rapt

• 16:16Robert Evans?

  attention. He falls in love with the idea that his real ancestry might be something more exciting than a line of peasants and merchants who'd done okay for themselves, right? Yeah. Because obviously, I'm the Reich sphere of the SS. I must have the blood of someone important in my veins. No one without special blood could do anything cool, right? Yeah, I'm a descendant of an Ice King. He's got like Harry Potter syndrome. I must have real, my real parents or ancestors somewhere must have been important people, you know? Yes, yes. Heinrich Himmler is the Harry Potter of the Third Reich. I think we can all agree on that. Yeah. Yeah. So the next year, he gets admit, Willigut gets admitted to the SS. And they do it under a pseudonym because again, he's disgraced and his pseudonym translates to

• 16:57Robert Evans?

  Thor Nose. So Himmler, again, the extent to which he is bought into this stuff, you can't exaggerate. Thor Nose? Thor Nose. I hate these guys. They're such fucking dweebs. Yes. Himmler makes him head of the Department of Ancient and Prehistory, uh, which is, you know, itself under Walter Dahr's Race and Settlement Office in the SS. So he's, he is, this is the guy, actually, if the people who were writing the Indiana Jones movies had wanted to, you know, make things a little more historical verisimilitude, you'd have had this guy in the first movie. In Raiders, this would have been the guy like leading the expedition, right? If you wanted to make it a little more accurate, uh, or at least he would have been involved. He would have been like one of their experts, quote unquote.

• 17:42Robert Evans?

  Okay. I'm not, that's not a complaint. I'm just being like, if you want a slightly more accurate version of Raiders, imagine this guy in play. It belongs in a museum. Yeah. And I will say of all of the guys Himmler makes generals in the SS, at least Willigut had been a Colonel in an actual military during a war. So this isn't totally out of pocket for him to be declared general. It's like, well, okay, you actually did most of the background work at least. Like you're crazy, but you, you did do a lot of the work necessary. So he starts leading.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Say what you will about the homie. I know he's got a few weird things about him, but he was, he was, he did do the thing once.

• 18:23Robert Evans?

  He, he did the thing once. He's vaguely, it's gonna make more sense for him than, I mean, Himmler's going to have that kind of like effectively be a general. And it's like, you don't know shit Heinrich, get out of here.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  You did, you were not there, bro.

• 18:37Robert Evans?

  You don't know how to start a military unit? Like, what are you talking about, man? So in a year, yeah, and he starts leading, his main job, Willigut's main job is he will take SS delegations to sites of magical significance, like the so-called Irmanzold, to try to inform them about their real history and about the, the religion they should be adopting instead of Christianity. Uh, there's a picture Sophie's gonna put up, for those of you online, that shows Willigut leading Heinrich Himmler and a bunch of SS officers around this rock formation in 1935. And I think Willigut is, he's the guy with the cane in the middle there, and right next to him, you can see Heinrich Himmler.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:15Robert Evans?

  The chinless wonder himself.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  There he is. The chinless wonder? Oh, man. Every once in a while, you hit a, you hit a home run every once in a while, bro. The chinless wonder.

• 19:26Robert Evans?

  I'm just saying, if you had to pick a Nazi to box, he's the Nazi you pick to box. Because one good left hook into that thing, and he is going down.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:36Robert Evans?

  Like, that man's jaw, put, glass is, is stronger than that man's jaw.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 19:43Robert Evans?

  Meanwhile, Willigut, that guy looks like he could probably, like, look at that guy's jawline. I mean, he's not, he's not a young whippersnapper anymore, but he looks like he could take a hit.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, not for nothing.

• 19:52Robert Evans?

  Nah, not for nothing. Um, so, th- this is, I mean, again, and this kind of stuff is happening all throughout the SS's early history, and it's part of, Himmler loves this stuff, so he loves going on these little field trips, and he likes making other SS, because he, in his mind, they're all becoming awoken to the, the real truth of Wotan and their ancient German ancestors, and the magical power in their veins. Now, you can see, the SS has already made, through this photo, some more steps towards becoming both the organization they'll be known as, and towards becoming a knightly order. They all have these big daggers hanging off their belts, which had become part of the official SS uniform in the last couple of years. These have, uh, my honor is loyalty emblazoned on the blade, right?

• 20:36Robert Evans?

  That's like written on the blade of every SS knife. This, this appellation that Hitler had, uh, had put on them. And, or this, uh, this statement that Hitler had like, uh, uh, this like motto that he gave them. And yeah, they're all, they're all wearing all black now, you know? They've, they've taken another step up and started contracting, you know, with Hugo Boss to make their uniforms. They're looking good and they're looking now like, like Knights Templar, like modern Knights Templar, right? And that's so much of it to Himmler is that the look is right. And you have to give him credit in terms of efficacy. That's why the SS, a big part of why the SS becomes what it is. And we've talked about this in other episodes. We've done, we've talked about SS guys like Eichmann.

• 21:18Robert Evans?

  The, the cool uniform is part of the appeal because it says, we're an elite organization. If I can just get in here, I'm part of the elite and I've never gotten to be that. And so I will be loyal to an organization that makes, that makes everyone have to agree I matter, right? That's why the, what the SS is, is it's, if you're in the SS, you can't be a failure, right? You can't be a freak or a weirdo, or just some like asshole who can't keep his family together. You have to be a success. You're part of the racial elite, you know? And if the world hasn't recognized that yet, it's because the world is bad and we need to change it via murdering people.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  We need to show them, we need to show them the Ice Kings and the giants and the, and the ancient made up letters.

• 22:01Robert Evans?

  They just don't know you have the blood of the Ice Kings in your vein. The Ice Kings that you fucking plagiarized off of another guy. Speaking of plagiarizing the Ice Kings.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Is it ad time?

• 22:12Robert Evans?

  The sponsor of this podcast would never do that. They legitimately are descended from the ancient Ice Kings, but that's, that's neither here nor there.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Dumb.

• 22:25Robert Evans?

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• 23:24Robert Evans?

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• 24:35Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So it's almost certainly through Williget's influence that Heinrich Himmler came to an important realization about himself. Not only did he have royal blood, just like Von List and Von Liebenfels and Williget and every German folklore, new age weirdo we've discussed.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Apparently all of y'all.

• 24:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  I just don't know, well, who was in your kingdoms?

• 24:57Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  If all of you were kings, like, was there any subjects?

• 25:00Robert Evans?

  Nope, nope. Subjects don't get reincarnated, just the cool people.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Oh, got it.

• 25:04Robert Evans?

  Um, so, and Himmler's kind of come late to this, right? Because he's, he doesn't have that much faith in himself. It's not until the SS is top shit and nobody can question him directly anymore, that he starts feeling comfortable being like, and, and he's talking with Williget and Williget's like, yeah, you know, here's how I found out that the blood of the Ice Kings is in my vein. And Heinrich's just being like, well, actually, I think maybe I've got some, I've got the blood of some, some kings and stuff in my veins, too, actually.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Me, too.

• 25:31Robert Evans?

  In fact, you know what? Like, I, I was doing some channeling and like, I had a vision and I think I'm actually the reincarnation of Heinrich I, King of the Germans. Like, oh, that's definitely actually who I was. We're both named Heinrich, for one thing. So like, I mean, there's that, right?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I'm just like, I'm just, I'm picturing you stuck at like, the company party over by like, next to the bar by the like, you know what I'm saying? And this guy's talking to you and you're just trying to eye one of your buddies.

• 26:03Robert Evans?

  Trying to piss off your boss too much?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I don't want to piss him off, but please, someone come rescue me. Like, we should have made a code, someone come get me.

• 26:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it's so funny, like, because you've got this, it's this, it's kind of like, if you've ever been to like, a work party and suddenly you realize like, oh my God, my boss or this guy who's like, above me in the company hierarchy is really drunk and he's saying some shit he shouldn't be saying, like, oh, I just learned that like, our senior vice president thinks that 9/11 was an inside job.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:34Robert Evans?

  I'm not saying that happened to me. I'm just saying, like, it would be like if that happened.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  No, that is.

• 26:38Robert Evans?

  Like, you're hanging out with like, oh shit, I'm getting FaceTime with Heinrich Himmler, like, this is gonna be great for my career in the, wait, you're the reincarn- what?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that has happened to me.

• 26:45Robert Evans?

  You're a king, you say?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  That has happened to me, where I was just like, oh, you're a dumbass. Like, it is a weird feeling.

• 26:53Robert Evans?

  You're in your mind.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, wait, what?

• 26:56Robert Evans?

  Okay, cool.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 26:58Robert Evans?

  So Heinrich I was a real king. He was born in 876 A.D. He had been crowned the first king of the Germans around 916 A.D. And then died in 936, which is not a bad run for a dude in that period of time. As far as I can tell, Himmler's main justification for why he was the reincarnation of this guy was number one, they're both named Heinrich. And number two, King Heinrich was way more impressive than Heinrich Himmler. Right? So obviously, that guy must be me, you know?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  I'm named after my grandpa.

• 27:31Robert Evans?

  And we don't, again, I brought this up a little bit earlier. We don't actually know when he starts believing he's Heinrich I. There's outside evidence. We get other people talking about this, I think at 36 for the first time. I suspect not long after he and Williget meet in like 33 is when he starts. I don't think it takes long for that belief to get inculcated, but maybe, I think he's kind of, it starts with just this inner circle of the other occult weirdos at the SS and it's gradually that he's willing to tell more people. Cause you do get the sense, we'll talk about this more in later episodes, but that he is kind of embarrassed about this a little bit sometimes. Like he doesn't want every, he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to sit down necessarily to explain to Hitler everything he believes about this being reincarnated.

• 28:15Robert Evans?

  But the SS is his safe space. Nobody can question him there. Now, the primary impact that accepting this about himself, this belief has on Himmler is that it gives him an excuse to go absolutely hog wild with all the new money and power that had started flowing towards the SS in the early years of the regime. He and Williget went on regular trips to significant magical sites around Germany. And during one visit in late 1933, Williget showed him Wewelsberg Castle. W E W E L S Berg. And this is, I think the primary castle Wolfenstein is based on, right? Wolfenstein is obviously this, what it sounds most like, but Wewelsberg is the evil Nazi occult castle, right?

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Dude, so like, the more I'm thinking about this, like, as a parent, and also as a teacher and like a former teacher and a rapper, like,

• 29:07Speaker 02

  In hip hop with your kids or with while watching other kids, it's almost like you can see the made up story

• 29:16Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  become true to that, to that kid. You know what I mean? Whether it's like my children, like I said, them playing around and they're telling some sort of story. Like I'm watching my daughter tell a story to her friends and we're like, that ain't happen. You know, but like, but it's cute. And then six months later, she's telling it to us like, you remember when? And we're like, baby, you made that up, you know? But at this point, the cement has settled. You see it all the time with like gangster rappers. Where like you just start telling this story about yourself. And you're like, sir, you did, this is not your life.

• 29:54Robert Evans?

  No, you're, you're simply like invented this. I've had, I've had this experience like hanging out with friends who were in the military and other buddies of theirs. And hearing different versions of the same story that can't all like someone has to have some details wrong. And they were all there. And I think a lot of the times it's the result, some of it's just people make mistakes or see something that they think they don't. But some of it's, you start telling yourself something in the immediate wake of a traumatic event. That's not quite the truth because it's easier to accept than the truth.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:28Robert Evans?

  And you tell it often enough that it becomes

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Becomes the truth.

• 30:31Robert Evans?

  It becomes load bearing to your psyche, right?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:35Robert Evans?

  And you know, Himmler, at some point like this is, that's certainly part of this, right? Is like, cause he, and especially as the war starts to go worse and worse, this like belief that in this, the mystical nature of things that I am the, that there's destiny, right? I am destined for great things. So even though the situation seems bad now, we, we're going to figure something out, right?

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:56Robert Evans?

  Cause I'm special, I'm the special boy of history.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  I'm the special boy.

• 31:00Robert Evans?

  So they find this castle, Himmler falls in love with it. Now, Webblesburg Castle had been created in the 1600s. And it was like, less of a real castle that like nightly, cause you know, this is after kind of the medieval period. It's more of like a rich guy house castle than like a Fortress castle, right? Yeah. But there had at one point, earlier in history, there had been other castles there. Possibly a castle of Heinrich the first was kind of in the same area. It was also close to where some people thought the Battle of Teutoburgwald might have been fought in nine eighty, right? That battle between the Romans and the, so this is all pretty thin stuff. I don't know that it's exactly where all that happened, but that was, that was enough for Himmler was like, oh, like the guy I'm reincarnated from his castle was here.

• 31:44Robert Evans?

  This is where we fought this great battle against the empire of our day and won. You know, this is obviously a site of magical importance. There's so many ley lines crossing through. Like this is a place of power. And so he leases the castle from the local government for a hundred years at the rate of one mark per year. And this is going to become the SS's spiritual headquarters. Now, Wellewesberg is in terrible shape. It's not livable, but Himmler ultimately spends more than eleven million marks in the first year alone renovating it. And they, they put it about, they put in rooms, like Himmler has a room there. All of the high ranking SS guys have their own suites. And they put in like, this is basically built as like a, uh, like a, a gathering, like a, almost a community center for the SS.

• 32:28Robert Evans?

  So you've got places you can hold conferences. You've got like rooms where you can give speeches and whatnot. Fellowship hall. Yeah. Yes, exactly. You can have parties and you can do rituals there. Now, obviously he can't spend the SS budget on this because this is an extracurricular activity. And he doesn't want to deal with like the chance of getting in trouble, you know, with the, with the Fuhrer over this by spending state money. So he creates a nonprofit called the Society for the Advancement and Maintenance of German Artifacts. Now, I have to go back a little bit and say that Himmler has collected a group of rich men around him. Who are willing to fund projects like this. And this happens because after the Nazi seizure of power, Hitler makes an industrialist named Wilhelm Kepler, his economic advisor.

• 33:13Robert Evans?

  And Kepler is one of these rich guys who was not super gung ho about the Nazi party necessarily, but was super gung ho about their ability to defeat the left and be really good for rich guys like him, right? Yeah. And. Kepler, this position that Hitler gives him, it's kind of a sop to the plutocratic class, but it doesn't give him direct power. And Kepler, he really cares about the economy, but not much else. And he's one of these guys who, you have a lot of these guys around Trump now, who are like, I don't really like necessarily all the economic stuff you're trying to do. Can you just stick to fucking up the people who want to tax me more and not destroy the economy? Cause your ideas on that are bad, right?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all I'm here for, dude. Yeah.

• 33:53Robert Evans?

  Right. And so Kepler looks for ways to influence Nazi economic policy subtly from within, using money, right? Who do we need to bribe to stop them from doing the crazy shit? That'll be bad for the economy, or at least bad for my part of the economy.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:07Robert Evans?

  In March of 1933, he convinces Himmler to let him into the SS, right? And I don't know if his actual racial background was perfectly clean, or if it's just, you know, enough money makes you Aryan, right?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:20Robert Evans?

  But he gets into the SS and he gradually is able to get a coterie of his fellow rich guy friends to join the SS, and they form an official group within the SS called the Friends of the Reichsführer, right? The Friends of Heinrich Himmler, basically. Now, this is a formal group. They have monthly meetings. Himmler oversees the meetings personally. He picks who gets to be a member. And about once a month, they meet and sometimes he'll give a lecture about how policing in Germany is changing. Sometimes he'll give a lecture about the ancient Armenian warrior priests and their runic alphabet, right? Sometimes he'll talk about reincarnation, you know?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:57Robert Evans?

  Whatever kind of shit he's interested in that week. Sometimes he'll talk about, yeah, like breeding the master race, you know?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  His podcast.

• 35:04Robert Evans?

  It's his podcast that's just for him and his three dozen richest friends, right?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Finally, he finally landed it. We finally got there.

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  He's, these guys, I don't think mostly believe this, and I don't think most of them care. They just, this is the FaceTime I gotta put in with Himmler, and he's someone who can make things happen for me.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  I mean, he's the boss and he owns the spot. So like, you kinda gotta be there.

• 35:26Robert Evans?

  He owns the spot. He's got influence, you know? And so this, this group by the late 30s, about three dozen guys, the Friends of Heinrich Himmler, and they represent all the major moneyed interests in Germany, right? Like every big company and major banking cartel has a guy in there. In 1936, Himmler first asks the friends to donate money to the SS for cultural and social purposes. And they'll basically carve out their era's equivalent of like, yeah, like a 501(c) or whatever. And, or, I mean, it's, it's better to compare this to like a super PACs, right?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:01Robert Evans?

  Where they're creating PACs and putting the money in, and then the SS can use that for whatever thing they want, right?

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:07Robert Evans?

  Even though it's not technically their money and it's not coming out of their budget, right? Because this is a donation. And this is how Himmler pays to remodel Webblesburg Castle. And it's how most of the SS shenanigans, they're sending expeditions all around the world in the late 30s. They sent an expedition to Tibet. All this stuff is funded by the friends of Heinrich Himmler.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Okay, because that was gonna be my next question. Because the, the dollar, the leasing it for a dollar a year, I'm like, no notes, bro. Brilliant.

• 36:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, smart. Good call.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then I was like, and the 11 million is an investment that makes sense. But I was like, where you get that money from? But like, that was gonna be my question.

• 36:47Robert Evans?

  How that happened. How that happened. Right? Yeah. And that's, that's, this is where the money comes from.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:51Robert Evans?

  So Himmler's got no interest. This is like, the charity they create is like, for the maintenance of German artifacts. Himmler's not interested in maintaining real artifacts. And in fact, he has destroyed the historic value of the castle by now because he has rebuilt the interior as a pagan temple to the, to Wotan, right?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I was like, you don't care about the history, bro. Like, you just bought the castle.

• 37:13Robert Evans?

  Because the history is an invention of his friends.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, yeah, first of all, you don't believe history. You make up history.

• 37:19Robert Evans?

  No, you're making all of this up. So he has the castle rebuilt into a pagan temple to the gods von List and Liebenfels and Willegut had basically invented. The core of the property was a vast dining hall that would act as an evil version of King Arthur's Round Table. And I want to quote from Bill Yen's book. Each of the chosen knights would have his own highback pig leather chair with his name engraved on a silver plate. Here at this table, the SS officers would sit and meditate in a trance-like state. The overall theme of the interior decorators naturally revolved around pagan symbolism, the swastika, the SS lightning bolts, and the runes of the Arman and Futhark, which is like the runic alphabet, right?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. This reminds me of like, okay, obviously, I'm extremely married, so I'm out the game. But like, I do remember times where there was like, if you're single enough and someone is hot enough to where you're willing to put up with their weird hippie dippy shit, you know what I'm saying? Where you're just like, I don't know, this fool is super smoking hot. But whenever I go, whenever I go see them, I gotta like, drink rosewater and charge my crystals with candles. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're just like, and so now, so I'm thinking like, yeah, I really want to be in this, I really want to be in this club, but I gotta go pretend to meditate with these like, you just have to go. But I'm like, I don't know, dude, this fool's, they're pretty hot, though. Like, I got.

• 38:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're pretty, they're pretty, yeah, you gotta, you gotta do some, they might want some of your blood for a ritual. I don't know, but like, I mean, look at them.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Oh, look at them, it's pretty hot, and I'll tell you what, man.

• 38:53Robert Evans?

  I'll believe whatever.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  I'll believe whatever, and I'll tell you what, man.

• 38:56Robert Evans?

  Ah, yeah, to be 20 again. I did a lot of weird religious shit in my early twenties. A lot of weird religions.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  I have gone to many a hypostatic dances.

• 39:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I'll summon a demon with you, fuck it.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm saying, I don't know, man, she fine as hell. Like, that's just what she into. I look, I don't know.

• 39:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Who's to say what's true? Certainly not me.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  You will make, you will justify a lot.

• 39:19Robert Evans?

  Right, right. And, yeah, that's what's going on here. So, Wölsberg is also, it's the center of the spiritual chunk of the SS, and it's the center of Heinrich Himmler's growing obsession with replacing Christianity, particularly with replacing Catholicism with a faith friendlier to the Third Reich's ambitions. Within the SS, he began substituting Christmas with a solstice Yuletide celebration. So again, you're basically banned from celebrating Christmas in the SS if you're Doing it now, do people still celebrate Christmas? Sure, they're not, they're not like recording everyone at all times, but you're not supposed to. And for an example, for an idea of what people, what was expected in the SS, I found a translation of a 1939 guide

• 40:02Robert Evans?

  for people in the SS titled "The SS Family" by General Fritz Weitzel. In it, he describes the origins of the Yuletide as something separate from Christianity, and explains that originally, people celebrated the Yuletide because like the whole death and resurrection thing from Christianity, they stole it from this ancient belief that like, it was about the sun, right? The sun stops coming out as much during the shortest, coldest days, and the Yuletide is when that starts to switch and the days start to get longer again. The sun is coming. In other words, that's the reincarnation, right? Quote, "The sun's path got shorter, and during Yuletide, there would be only a few hours of daylight, and then it would sink into the cold North Sea,

• 40:43Robert Evans?

  and was gobbled up as if eaten by a monster on midwinter day. It was dead and lay in its grave. The question whether the sun would stay buried was of equal importance to the question whether mankind would live or die. On midwinter day, the miracle happened. The sun rose from its watery grave. It was born like a child, gathered strength, and appeared in front of the celebrating and joyous folk, who felt that life was given back to them. This happened every year, and every year they celebrated this as their most important festival, their sacred and holy night festival."

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Man, and what's crazy is like, the, the, the modern Christian would agree that like, yeah, the Yuletide is evil, like Santa Claus, it's Satan, it's not supposed to be a part of Christmas. So you're right, you gotta, it's not Christian. Dude, that's crazy that like, that, and then these fools would be like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, no, it's not.

• 41:33Robert Evans?

  It's not, and you stole it from us, right?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  You stole it from us, you know what I'm saying? What a crazy weird like agreement with like, yeah, no, you're, yeah, no, totally, 100%. Y'all shouldn't be doing this, you know?

• 41:44Robert Evans?

  There's some like, real shit mixed up in there. Like, for example, the timing of Christmas celebration is related to the fact that there was a celebration called the Saturnalia in Rome during a similar time. And like, well, if you're trying to figure out when to hold this thing, It's easier as you transition people from one religion to the other to like have. And this is just always, all throughout the world.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  It's all throughout the world.

• 42:06Robert Evans?

  Around this time of year. It's just like, yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  There's just like, just, you know, and if you're, and if you're the like, the empire, you're just like, well, I don't care about none of y'all's faith.

• 42:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Look, why don't y'all all just do it on Tuesday? Let's just do it all on Tuesday.

• 42:19Robert Evans?

  We're, we're already doing something at this point of the year. Yeah, fuck it.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you go home, you do whatever you, you go, you do, we're just gonna do it on Tuesday. Y'all want a day off work? Okay, let's do that. Right?

• 42:30Robert Evans?

  And so what they're, what the SS is trying to do is trying to be like, yeah, first off, here's the real origins of like what Christianity, right? It didn't start, yeah, it really started as like this thing, and this is the actual real origin of it. And there's, it's interesting, this book, there's no direct mention of Christianity at all. Which on its own, there's nothing like, there's nothing wrong with the idea of like, here's what we're doing, and it's a different kind of celebration at this time of the year.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:57Robert Evans?

  But the goal here for the Nazis is to replace, they're not trying to replace Christianity because they have issues with religion. They are trying to make Nazism the new religion, and they are trying to replace a belief in a God with a belief in the perfectibility of German people through eugenics. The Aryan race, this, that we are trying to return by selective breeding, trying to breed the Nordic race back into Aryans, that's God.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  See, see, see, see, that's the actual war on Christmas. You know what I'm saying?

• 43:25Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  So this, you know, uh, at some point, we was probably gonna do a tap in about James Dobson dying. And, uh, who, who ruined many a Christmas.

• 43:36Robert Evans?

  Many at Christmas, yes.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  For, for plenty of people. So you, you know what I'm saying? You gotta focus on the funeral with that dog. But like, it's just so interesting to think that like, you know, I know this ain't the point of what you saying, but like, this belief that you locked into this existential war with the culture that like that, that James Dobson was really big on, is like, well, there was a war, my friend, but it's not the one that you locked into. You know what I'm saying?

• 44:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  You missing the point. You actually scoring points on for these folks. And I'm like, luckily for us in our house, like, the, the benefit for us not really falling for the James Dobson juju was that he was freakishly racist. So it became kind of obvious that like, oh, oh, you're not talking to us. Okay, so, but anyway. It's the specificity of them being like. It's almost like, like when the conspiracy theorist is sometimes right.

• 44:32Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying?

• 44:34Robert Evans?

  The CIA, yeah, where they're like, the CIA put crack in the inner cities, okay?

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Well, they cut it in.

• 44:38Robert Evans?

  And also, the CIA, you know, has a mind control laser.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:42Robert Evans?

  I don't know, man.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  But, yeah.

• 44:44Robert Evans?

  I feel like they'd have been better at shit if they had the mind control laser, bro. I don't know.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  And I'm like, no, no, really, there is someone trying to replace your religion. It's just the Nazis.

• 44:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's like whenever, yeah, when people are like, yeah, there is a small group of powerful, wealthy people who largely control politics. No, no, not, not that, not that group.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 45:04Robert Evans?

  Not that group. They're actually like a bunch of different religions.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:08Robert Evans?

  A lot of them don't even believe in anything.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:10Robert Evans?

  All sorts of races, you know?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 45:14Robert Evans?

  So, anyway, uh, yeah, there's a, there's no mention of Christianity in this, this booklet at all, but there, there is, you can see very clearly and almost stated directly that their desire is to replace Christianity and the God of the Christian faith with the Aryan race. The guide has detailed instructions for setting up, instead of a Christmas tree, an SS tree? And I know you're wondering what that looks like, and the answer is, it looks like shit. Like, basically, it's a circular wreath sideways, hanging from a pole.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  So ugly.

• 45:47Robert Evans?

  So it's not even like a tree.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  It looks like it's dying.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Come on, man, it looks like-

• 45:50Robert Evans?

  It looks like shit.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  It looks like it's dying.

• 45:53Robert Evans?

  Looks like Charlie Brown's whack-ass Christmas tree. Look at this fucking terrible tree.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  No, don't insult it.

• 45:57Robert Evans?

  Fucking SS.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Charlie Brown's looks better.

• 45:59Robert Evans?

  Charlie Brown was definitely better at Christmas than the SS, yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Imagine waking up Christmas morning, you wake up Christmas morning and see this shit?

• 46:06Robert Evans?

  See this fucking disc, this green disc on a stick? The fuck is wrong with you, mom and dad?

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, mom, what the hell is this?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Looks like a paper towel, or-

• 46:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you see that shit in your fucking living room on Christmas Day, and you know you're not getting an N64, right? You're gonna still be playing GoldenEye at your friend's house.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  100%.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  No, you're getting socks, bro. You are getting socks.

• 46:25Robert Evans?

  You're getting socks. You're simply getting socks.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:28Robert Evans?

  So the book notes that a good SS housewife is expected to bake three different kinds of cakes for Yuletide celebrations, and warns, quote, "A good SS housewife should pride herself- On keeping to the old recipes and shapes and rejecting all cheap and American factory-produced goods.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 46:44Robert Evans?

  Oh.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Nothing changes.

• 46:48Robert Evans?

  Now, I know what you're all asking at this point, which is, what was the SS explanation for Santa? And how did they replace him?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Crumples.

• 46:57Robert Evans?

  Is this a thing where they're like, the Santa's obviously this decadent capitalist bullshit? No, no, no. The SS embraces Santa. They just, again, say that the Jews who are secretly in charge of Christianity stole Santa Claus from the Nordic people. Right? Uh, here's another quote from that book. "The old feast of Wotan is on Yule 16th. In olden days, the god of our ancestors drove through the air, visited his people, was friendly to them, and left them little presents. He wanted to announce the start of the winter solstice season and the coming of the new year. The Christian church couldn't suppress these yearly visits of this white-bearded, one-eyed leader of the good spirits, so they put one of its assumed saints, Saint Nicholas, in his place. But in many areas of Germany, the rider on a white horse, also known as ruprecht, the

• 47:42Robert Evans?

  one shining with glory, Wotan, or simply Father Yuletide, remained. SS families should gather together and make the visit of Father Yuletide a memorable event for their children." So, no, no, no. Wotan actually is the original Santa. God would just visit his people and give them presents, and the Christians stole that and replaced it with Saint Nicholas. But no, no, it's Wotan, and he'll come and give your kids candy, nuts and stuff.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, man. And then, and then the Christians are like, no, no, Santa evil too.

• 48:13Robert Evans?

  Santa's evil? That's, I think the Bapt- I don't think that's super, I don't know enough about Lutheranism in this period of time, but I don't think they're anti-Santa.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  No, Lutheranism, yeah, no, they was with it because of the saints, but they was kind of like, yeah, Lutherans are like, basically just like Catholics without the Pope. Like, at this point, they weren't, they were really just trying to reform the Catholics. They wasn't trying to actually leave.

• 48:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. And so, yeah, that's the, this is Himmler, you know, this is kind of the first direct reference to Christianity that you find in this is like the Christian church stole Santa from, from the Wotanists. Oh, man, that's so funny. Now, SS men who came from Christian backgrounds, which was basically all of them, weren't required to renounce their faith, but they were made to pledge allegiance to Hitler and specifically they had to pledge to put this allegiance to Hitler above any allegiance they had to the Catholic Church or any other church. So they do have to say, I am in this for Hitler before the Pope, right? They have to, if they're going, if they are Catholic, they have to promise that, right? So this is again, this is, this is not just a Nazi thing.

• 49:18Robert Evans?

  As I try to emphasize, the German, German authoritarians being uncomfortable with the Catholic Church goes back as far as Otto von Bismarck. Yeah. When Germany becomes a thing, Bismarck's first real concern is, but this Catholic Church is a second center of power, right? So what we see with the Nazis and Himmlers war against Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general is an extension of what authoritarian Germans have been doing since the birth of Germany. And that is important to note, right? This doesn't come out of nowhere. And so even though the occult stuff and the pagan stuff is weird and not popular with the broader Nazi party, the fact that there are people high up in the party who are worried and see Christianity as a threat is not new and doesn't feel super out of place, right?

• 50:03Robert Evans?

  It feels consistent with, you know, the way in which the powers in Germany have, have what they've seen as threats since the era of Bismarck, right? In his book on the Nazi occult, Bill Yen describes the act of joining the SS as, quote, "an act of religious conversion." And as I've said, Yen's book, while it's useful and it has a lot of good details, he has book blinders. This is the same problem the guy who wrote Blitz has, right? Where there's a lot of good stuff in there about Hitler's drug use and about drug use in the Third Reich, but also the fact that he is focused on that makes him center drug use and its impact on the decision making of people in the Reich more than I think most historians believe is accurate, right? Because

• 50:45Robert Evans?

  This is the thing he's obsessed with and Yin centers the occult shit more than is reasonable, even within the SS, right? And this is not an, like, everyone who joins the SS is not converting religion and they're not being made to. It depends in part on who you are. If you're some kid coming in from the middle class, who's, you know, doesn't have much behind them and who Himmler is like, oh, this guy got in trouble for this or for that, so I can make him my own. Yeah, he's probably gonna really expect to see you buying into this stuff. Yeah. If you're the rich and powerful industrialist who joined the SS as a way to bribe Himmler, he doesn't, he's not gonna like be a super big cop about whether or not you're going to fucking church still. Yeah. Or whether or not you have an SS tree, you're paying him, right? Yep.

• 51:30Robert Evans?

  He's fine with it, right? But it wouldn't be wrong to say that Himmler envisioned the SS as an organization that members joining considered an act of religious conversion, that this was his goal for the SS ultimately. He just, at no point is it really that, right? Uh huh. Now, it is treated as a religion by the actual text of SS publications. That 1939 SS guide that I've been quoting from describes the Death's Head Ring Citation, which is, Himmler creates this award, I think in 39, it becomes the highest award in the SS. Only Himmler can give it out. Okay. And the Death's Head, this is a symbol that goes back in German military quite a while. There had been these units, these elite mounted units that had worn the Death's Head, right? Okay.

• 52:15Robert Evans?

  Um, and it's going to be, he's going, there's going to be a branch of the SS, the Totenkopf, the Death's Head Division, which is the guys who run the death camps, right? Those are the dudes, when you see, not every SS guy had the Death's Head, right? Like, that was not everyone in the organization. Those are, that's a specific chunk of the organization. And there's a Death's Head Ring that people, it's like the Medal of Honor within the SS, right? Okay. So Himmler, if Himmler really likes you, or if you do something that is, he is super into. He thinks it's dope. He'll add you to this, right? And you get this ring that's embedded with lists, armen and runes, uh, which Himmler describes as holy symbols of our past. Uh, SS General Weitzel notes, "The ring is a symbol of the new SS religion.

• 52:59Robert Evans?

  Upon the death of the wearer, the ring is kept at Himmler's Webelsberg Castle." And that was, Sophie will show you the ring. The idea was, this is, we're making these into sacred relics. These are like holy relics from our knightly order. And everyone who dies with one, the ring comes back to the castle. And I think presumably, maybe it'd get reissued. And so you build like, he was, he's thinking of in thousand year terms, after centuries, these will be holy relics. We're like, oh, I've got this ring. And I know everyone before me, you had it, right?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you'd like take it off the dude's finger or like, they believe it floats back into the?

• 53:33Robert Evans?

  Oh, no, they, no, they take it. Like they take it back to the castle.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  I'm like, look, it's very possible these. I like your version.

• 53:40Robert Evans?

  Quite that woo. They're not quite that woo about it.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  It's possible, bro.

• 53:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, in 1935, the SS magazine, Das Schwarzkorps, or The Black Corps, started publication. Circulation would eventually reach as many as 750,000 issues a week sold. A feat that's made easier by the fact that buying it, subscribing is mandatory if you're in the SS, right? So, a little hard to say how many people are reading this, but it's technically mandatory. So you have to think people who are lower are keeping up with it, right? Because in part, that's maybe how you get ahead is paying attention to what the boss is into. Figure out like, well, how am I gonna make myself noticed, right? And Himmler used his in-house magazine for political ends. There's some practical point of this, right?

• 54:27Robert Evans?

  He's got this SD, the security agency. And sometimes they'll find dirt on another German in power, another member of the party, or a member of the government, or a local leader. And it won't be enough to prosecute someone over. But if the SD leaks that dirt, it could be published in The Black Corps. And then you can kind of like get people forced out of their jobs or whatever. Otherwise punish people who are like slowing down the SS's work. So that's, that's the practical use that having this magazine does, right? But The Black Corps is also where Himmler would try to push new occult practices and popularize them among the SS rank and file. In the case of more substantial changes, it's where he would first make his arguments for how things ought to be.

• 55:11Robert Evans?

  Because like this is a sympathetic and a. Captive audience. Okay. And there's no single religious and moral issue that vexes Himmler more during this period, the late 30s, than his own, what becomes a personal war on marriage, like the Judeo-Christian concept of marriage. Okay. He takes on as an enemy. The first battle in this war is launched. Oh, yeah, yeah. He is very anti-marriage in its traditional sense. And he launches, he's not anti-marriage, but he's anti-marriage as a Christian thing. Right. You're just trying to de-Christianize everything. Okay. Right. I'm following now. I'm following now. Okay, word. So this starts in 1931. He restricts SS men from being married in Christian churches. Now, Yin describes this as an outright ban.

• 55:56Robert Evans?

  I don't see a straight up, this is forbidden, but it's basically all of the literature is like, you are, here is how a wedding is done, and it doesn't involve the church. And the SS after 31 has to approve every new wedding, right? So if your wedding, if you're trying to get married in a church, they're not going to say yes. Unless I, because I, I don't think this was a perfect 100% across the board thing. In part, guys who have, are of the nobility, guys who are rich, you have some options for getting around some of these rules, right? But in terms of what the normal rank and file are supposed to do, in that 1939 handbook, General Weitzel acknowledged that a lot of women were going, were having trouble with the idea of getting married without a church, that like, at this point, they've been doing

• 56:41Robert Evans?

  it for eight years, when he writes this guidebook in 39, but like, he acknowledges this has been a problem. Quote, "Even to this day, it seems impossible for many people to imagine these celebrations without the church and its servants, especially the womenfolk, who were held captive by the trappings of wedding veil and incense, organ music in dark churches and thought they could not do without such rituals." They want their Cinderella. Yeah. Oh, they want to be a princess. Yes. Wow. The, the party and its organizations are trying to advocate the thought of celebrating these festive occasions in accordance with our ideologies. But it repeatedly was observed that the ceremonies of the church were copied, with officials doing the important actions, and that the celebrations were used for propaganda purposes outside the family, right?

• 57:24Robert Evans?

  So what we noticed is when we first did this, everyone was just copying what the churches did, but with SS guys? And that's not right, because that's still too close to the, like, we're really trying to get away from the Christian idea of marriage. Yeah. Guys, it's too Christian. So funny. We'll get into what they do next, how they de-Christianize marriage. But you know who else has declared war on the concept of marriage? Oh, man, every last one of them ads. Yes, all of our sponsors and Sophie. Sophie's leading them in a crusade against the concept of marriage.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  It's low-key barbaric.

• 58:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Robert Evans?

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• 59:03Robert Evans?

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• 1:00:15Robert Evans?

  And we're back.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  I find such irony in the modern Nazi using so much Christian iconography.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Like, all I could think about was like, oh, so y'all ain't red, y'all, you didn't do the homework.

• 1:00:32Robert Evans?

  Well, it's, it's very American.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Very true.

• 1:00:35Robert Evans?

  You know, Nazism in the United States, our covenant was always going to be wrapped in a certain version of the faith.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Robert Evans?

  But it's also, as you'll notice, not Christianity in the traditional sense.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not Christian, really.

• 1:00:47Robert Evans?

  There's been those articles about like a lot of, like in the South, you have like preachers who were, will be like reading literally Jesus's direct quotes. And people were like, well, that's woke bullshit, right?

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, currently.

• 1:00:58Robert Evans?

  That can't be what he meant, right?

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, currently.

• 1:01:00Robert Evans?

  It's the same way Jesus was pretty clear about certain stuff like rich people, right?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:05Robert Evans?

  The whole camel through the, and then, and then there's this whole like, no, no, no. The needle was like a gate, the eye of the needle was like a gate.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Robert Evans?

  And it was only big enough for like the guy and a camel to get through.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just called the needle.

• 1:01:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's not hard to like, like, it wasn't saying you can't. I can still go to heaven, even though like I'm, I'm hoarding all of this money that people could really.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Been hoarding all these resources from everyone.

• 1:01:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, got it.

• 1:01:27Robert Evans?

  I still get to go to heaven, don't worry.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah, people always do this with religion. It doesn't matter what religion it is, it's just, they do it with politics. Do people just, there's all, it's always really attractive and very easy to just be like, you know what, I already want these things, like my impulses and desires have guided me to wanting this. That's probably what God or the universe wants, or that's probably consistent with my politics. That's effectively religion to me, right?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Robert Evans?

  You know, this is what Marx meant, this is, et cetera. People can justify whatever bullshit they want with whatever text they want.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Robert Evans?

  And do all the time.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, you dropping gems. Yeah, that's gems right there. That's really what we're witnessing. Yeah.

• 1:02:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, anyway, so one of the first changes Himmler pushes through to change how marriage works is he introduces something called a sippin book, right? And so every SS family has to have a sippin book, which is like a passport for getting married. And it lists your whole genealogy and your wife's genealogy. And the idea is your kids will, and you'll keep a track of this book, listing your whole, like, the history of your, of your, your different families and your marriages. So you can keep track of like, are we moving closer to this idealized, to breeding idealized Aryans here? Are we improving the quality of our blood? Right?

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, none of that, none of that gene pool diversity. We need to keep, we need to keep all of our anomalies and deficiencies in our genes. We need to double them.

• 1:02:57Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, got it.

• 1:02:58Robert Evans?

  And Bill Yen notes, and I think this is a good observation, that the sippin book is, quote, "not unlike the sort of stud book that owners keep for racehorses." And I think this probably is the direct inspiration, because Himmler, in his writings, and Hitler as well, compared human breeding to livestock. We gave some of those quotes in the first episodes where Himmler talks about like, yeah, you don't want like the oldest, you want like, you don't want an old cow, basically, right? They were already comparing stuff to livestock breeding. So the idea that they look at how people breed horses and go, well, obviously the SS should work this way, I think makes sense that the sippin book is inspired by stud books.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Robert Evans?

  I don't think that's much of a leap. Yen goes on to note, quote, "At one point, under the sippin book rules, a non SS man who'd had a Jewish ancestor in 1711 was forbidden to marry the daughter of an SS officer." So that's how strict this shit is.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:03:52Robert Evans?

  By 1939, the SS was nearing a quarter of a million men, as well as many thousands of women who weren't actual members, but they're formally affiliated with the SS as SS wives. There's an organization for SS wives. So, you know, this is a size, it's like, again, it's becoming a state within a state.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Robert Evans?

  Himmler's anti-Christian crusade had been effective within the SS, but not on the scale that he'd hoped because most members of the SS, throughout the period exists, are still Christian, right? About 54% of SS personnel attended Protestant churches while enrolled in the SS. Yeah. And another, almost 24%, were Catholic. Only about 22% at most would have been full-throated believers in the armenist, volkish mystic stuff. And yeah. Of that, I mean, that's obviously a lot higher than the background level. Uh huh. But also, not all of those non-believers are full-on into the weird. Some of them are just like atheists, right? They just don't care, right? You know, they, maybe they care about the race stuff, but they don't believe in Wotan, right? Yeah.

• 1:04:52Robert Evans?

  So you can see Himmler's had an impact, but he has not, this is not a massive wild difference from the general population, right? And so he still has to be careful and intentional when he wants to push a big change. And one of the biggest changes he wants to push that he just doesn't feel like even the SS is ready for, is getting everyone to accept that the racial elite need to embrace polygamy, right? Uh oh. Uh oh. Here it comes. The Wotan clan, boys, entering the 36 chambers now, y'all. You know what I'm saying? All right. So the Nazis had always been pro-natalist, right? And this is, again, this has come into vogue in the US now. Elon's a big advocate of pro-natalism.

• 1:05:34Robert Evans?

  It's the idea that certain people need to have lots of kids, right? And when we're trying not to be white supremacists, it's just like, oh no, just smart people need to have kids. Smart people, like families with money, who have a lot of, who got rich in the tech industry, they need to have a shitload of kids. Cause obviously, their inherent characteristics got them rich. Not the fact that they were lucky and were born rich, or whatever. And so this pro-natalist policy, this has always been a thing that the Nazis loved. Hitler is big into this aspect of it, increasing birth rates. And his regime immediately introduces marriage loans and a bunch of financial incentives for pro-creating. And Nazi propaganda, including SS propaganda, publishes loving quotes from SS wives about how like, giving birth is my contribution to the race war.

• 1:06:19Robert Evans?

  It's how I fight. You know, uh, the, the, the husband is responsible for the spiritual health of the family, but I, you know, the, the woman like sets the emotional mood or whatever in the family and like, all this kind of stuff.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  The chief executive officer of the home. Wonder where we heard that before?

• 1:06:39Robert Evans?

  All right, right. It's all, yeah, that's always, always how these people think.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Robert Evans?

  Now, as the 30s come to an end and Germany starts gearing up for war with Poland and, and starts its war with Poland, right? There's, you know, we, we brush over the war in Poland, the German, the German and Soviet invasion as like, and they just crushed and steamrolled Poland because they do go through very quickly. There's never a real contest, but they suffer significant casualties taking Poland. Like it's not an insignificant number of guys who die and a lot of SS guys are dying.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Robert Evans?

  And Himmler starts to worry, did we get something wrong? Because not all these young men had had time to get married or get married and have kids before they went and died at the front, which means that like they're potentially ending a blood, a this part of this precious Nordic bloodline, right? And even if they have a kid, they're young because they're soldiers. So they probably haven't had time to have more than one, maybe two, right? That's not enough. We want bigger families than that. But women, as part of one of the many flaws of their, you know, of the way things work with women, they can only have one kid at a time, right?

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They eggs got a guy that's got expiration date on them eggs. Okay.

• 1:07:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, they're gonna have kids for so long and only have one at a time. Really? If you're thinking about this from the perspective of what matters is the race, you know, the, the area, right? Our God is this race that we are trying to bring back through selective breeding into existence. And that's all that matters. It's illogical and maybe even evil to have young Nordic men be monogamous, right? Maybe the only real consistent ethical thing to do, if you believe this, is have men having kids with a lot of women.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Babe, babe, it's for the culture.

• 1:08:24Robert Evans?

  It's for the culture.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  I'm doing it for the culture.

• 1:08:26Robert Evans?

  It's how we gotta do it, right?

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  But like, please invite your friend Sally over. I don't want to do it.

• 1:08:31Robert Evans?

  I don't want to have six other wives that I have a bunch of kids with.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I don't want to do it.

• 1:08:36Robert Evans?

  I'm only doing it because it's necessary for the race, right? You believe all this race stuff, right? You know?

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  And you can watch.

• 1:08:42Robert Evans?

  And you can watch.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Y'all can even, if y'all want to. Before.

• 1:08:47Robert Evans?

  You gotta raise these kids.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Robert Evans?

  I'm not gonna have time to raise these kids.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  I gotta go to war. You want me to go to war and die?

• 1:08:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Or?

• 1:08:52Robert Evans?

  I gotta go die in the east after having six kids with six different women.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Men used to go to war?

• 1:09:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, at least, at least you're getting rid of them, right?

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:09:04Robert Evans?

  So, one of the people who was close to Himmler and would write about him after the war was his masseuse, Felix Kerstin. And there's a lot of claims Kerstin makes about Himmler and about what he did during the war. He writes a book about being Himmler's masseuse, and he gives a lot of quotes about things Himmler is supposedly said to him, right?

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Robert Evans?

  Now, Kerstin is not a good source because he li- he gets initially credited, he gets like awards for having saved the Dutch Jewish population from forced deportation, because he basically claims like, well, Himmler was like really tired and sick during, when that was happening, and I was so influential to him that I was able to like manipulate him into saving all these people. And like, he, Kerstin made claims that he basically did that a lot, that he saved a lot of people. And I don't know that he, it's possible he did save some people. I'm not enough of an expert on him to categorically bust all of his myths, but this claim that he saved the Dutch Jewish population is bullshit. He falsifies documents to make this argument, right?

• 1:10:07Robert Evans?

  And it's the kind of thing he's believed for a long time. There's a lot of people, like, that first biography of Himmler that I looked into a bit, takes what Kerstin says as gospel. Bill Yen trusts Kerstin a lot more than he should.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of issues with taking Kerstin too literally, right?

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  But what it like, okay, so let's just say, okay, so he saved the population, the Jewish population of what now?

• 1:10:33Robert Evans?

  Of, of, of, like, of the Dutch Jewish population.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Okay, the Dutch Jews, okay, to what end?

• 1:10:38Robert Evans?

  Well, because he was really a good guy. He never bought into this Nazi stuff. He was, he was just trying, he was Himmler's masseuse, but he was always trying to like, you know, save people, right?

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:10:47Robert Evans?

  I'm so, by getting close to Himmler, I'm able to exercise influence to protect people.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  Word.

• 1:10:52Robert Evans?

  This is him largely protecting himself after the war. I think he's, he's lying about a lot of this. It's not clear is he lying about all of it? And that's part of the problem is that he is Himmler's masseuse. He spends a lot of one-on-one time with him. Everything he says that Himmler said to him isn't a lie, but because we know he falsified documents and it's also very hard to trust him too much, right?

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Robert Evans?

  Um, and he is our first source on Himmler's growing distaste for marriage.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:11:18Robert Evans?

  Which Kirsten says, Kirsten claims that Himmler goes on a rant about marriage to him and describes marriage as the Catholic Church's satanic achievement. Um, and he argues, quote, "With bigamy, each wife would act as a stimulus to the others, that they both would try to be their husband's dream woman. No more in tighty hair, no more slovenliness."

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  He mixed it with capitalism.

• 1:11:37Robert Evans?

  "Their models, which will intensify these reflections, will be the ideals of beauty projected by art and the cinema." Yes.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  He mixed, he mixed polygamy with capitalism. He's like, listen, it's, it's competition. Competition gives us the best product. Oh, this guy.

• 1:11:53Robert Evans?

  And it'll, it'll make, it makes the women work harder.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  It makes them be better, yeah. You know, if you're competing, hey, baby, you gotta perform, baby. You can't, you can't have no headache. You know what I'm saying? Cause listen, it's wife number four ain't got no headache. Yeah, no, this is awful.

• 1:12:06Robert Evans?

  And, and again, I don't trust that as an exact, Kirsten gives out a, pulls out a lot of long, direct quotes from Himmler saying, and then he went on this rant.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said all that.

• 1:12:15Robert Evans?

  It's like, I don't know, man. You're not taking notes when you're massaging him. Now that said, based on other things Himmler is doing at this time, I don't doubt Kirsten that Himmler went on rants about marriage to him. And I think that broadly, cause these are points Himmler will make in other ways. So I, this is not an area in which I totally doubt Kirsten, but you should not view that as like a direct quote. And Kirsten is not an unproblematic source. Anytime you read an article being like, based on what Himmler told his massage artist, take that with a grain of salt until you can find outside verification because Kirsten is- Problematic, right?

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  But I tell you what, though, if I'm the massage artist, as he's called now.

• 1:12:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  I personally would take the rants about marriage over some sort of Wotan mythology that you supposed to tell me about that you that the that the ancestors just told you. Like, yeah, I was like, OK, like, will you will you shut up about the runes? Yeah. So what so what are your thoughts on marriage? Like, just to get you to shut up about the room.

• 1:13:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I just really need you to stop talking about these fucking rooms.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 1:13:24Robert Evans?

  And, yeah, yeah. So, uh, obviously, September 1st, 1939 is the day that Germany invades Poland.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Robert Evans?

  Right? Uh, if you want, this episode will come out after the 1st of September. Unfortunately, there's a great JG Thirwell, who performs under the name Fetus. He's a musical artist, F O E, uh, F O E T U S. It's the version of the word fetus with an E in it.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Robert Evans?

  Great musician. He does like the soundtrack to the TV show Venture Brothers or did back in the day.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  OK.

• 1:13:54Robert Evans?

  Uh, he's got a song called I'll Meet You in Poland, Baby, that's about the German Soviet invasion.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Robert Evans?

  That, yeah, a great song about the invasion of Poland. If you're looking for a musical accompaniment to this part of the episode. But September 1st, Germany invades. And if you remember, the direct justification for the invasion is that Polish soldiers wind up fight. There's a gunfight, you know, on the border that they blame on like, oh, look, the Poles. Yeah, some of these dead guys were wearing Polish uniforms. Like, we've clearly, we've been attacked, and now this is an act of defense. And this is a false flag operation, and it's put together by the SS. Like Himmler's SS does the false flag. That's the justification. That doesn't mean that Himmler's why they go to war. Like Hitler had made the decision. This was just kind of, and it was lazy. This never really, no one believes this, right?

• 1:14:44Robert Evans?

  But, uh, within a few weeks of the invasion, it becomes clear to Himmler casualties are mounting.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Robert Evans?

  And so he doesn't quite, he never quite has the courage to go openly and be like, we need to get rid of. Monogamy for our soldiers. He, he, this is not the kind of thing that he's willing to be as open about as he wants to be.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  He's growing. He's learning that you can't just say what's on your mind. Okay.

• 1:15:07Robert Evans?

  You gotta be, and so here's how he does it. This is his way of kind of threading that needle and not being like, and this is because I'm trying to destroy the Christian idea of marriage and family. Instead, he, he justifies it as an emergency order for like maintaining like the health of the race. So he issues this SS as an, he issues on October 28th, 1939, an SS decree for the entire SS and German police forces. Quote, "Beyond the limits of bourgeoisie laws and conventions, which are perhaps necessary in other instant circumstances, it can be a noble task for German women and girls of good blood to become even outside marriage, not lightheartedly, but out of a deep moral seriousness, mothers of the children of soldiers going to war, of whom fate alone knows whether

• 1:15:49Robert Evans?

  they will return or die for Germany. During the last war, many a soldier decided from a sense of responsibility to have no more children during the war so that his wife would not be left in need and distress after his death. USS men need not have these anxieties. They are removed by the following regulation." Right? And so that's what he's, he's number one, trying to make the argument that like, look, German women, it's not shameful to have a kid out of wedlock if it's with a soldier, right? So first off, we need to change the way people are talking about, you know, on these, these unwed mothers, right?

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  For now.

• 1:16:23Robert Evans?

  The right kind.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Now, guys, for now, I'm just saying for now. Okay.

• 1:16:27Robert Evans?

  For now, and for now, we're introducing policies to ensure that, you know, we'll promise to take care of you, you and your kids if you just wind up shacking up with a soldier because all that matters is continuing the bloodlines, right?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  And I can see you just, him just cloaking this in progressive talk to be like, there shouldn't be a stigma around this. Okay?

• 1:16:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there shouldn't be a stigma around this because it's good for the race.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  It's good for everybody. Listen, if you want it, like, you don't have to, he's gonna die, like, and your husband is right. Like, you, he should not, you know, you shouldn't be burdened with this. So, yeah, just, you know, it's fine. Like, what?

• 1:17:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  What a cloak of progression.

• 1:17:05Robert Evans?

  You can put on this, yeah. Yes, that's exactly it. And like that, that's, this is the cloak he picks. And it's not coincidental. He writes this, this is like, uh, October 28th of 1939. Two years before publishing this, Heinrich Himmler hires a 25 year old secretary named Hegwood Potest. Here we go. Now, we don't know exactly when they started stuppen. But by 1940, at the very latest, they're, they're begging, right? And I think they probably started their physical relationship earlier than that. Maybe not long after she gets hired, but I don't know. Uh, I think my feelings are shared somewhat by the authors of The Private Heinrich Himmler, which is that book based on all of his letters, he and Margas letters to each other. Yeah.

• 1:17:49Robert Evans?

  That's partly written by one of his, I think it's his granddaughter, Katrina. And, uh, in that book, uh, the authors note that by 1940, at the latest, Heinrich and Margas marriage was no longer working well. Yeah. In terms of like when Heinrich and Hedwig got together. Yeah. The book cites a letter Hedwig wrote her sister at the end of 41, in which she claimed, "Christmas 1938, we had a frank conversation, during which we confessed that we were hopelessly in love." But they're trying to figure out, is there an honorable way for us to get together? Right? And, you know, divorce isn't honorable, right? So like, we can't do that publicly. That's, that's still not something. Even though in the SS, maybe that would be more acceptable.

• 1:18:32Robert Evans?

  Like, you don't have to just be aware of them, right? How can we possibly make this work? Now, this could mean that they talk about being in love, but they still wait. You know, two years to consummate things physically. I suspect that by Christmas of 38, they're fucking. And yeah, after that, they decide they're in love. And then they try to figure out, how can we, how can we find an honorable way to be together? Right? Yeah, let's reverse engineer this, uh, the justification here. Yeah, totally. If that's the case, then there's, we can see maybe even outside of his vulkish mystic beliefs, maybe even race isn't the primary reason Himmler does this at all. Maybe that's just a useful excuse because by late 1939, he's either fucking or very much wants to be fucking this girl. And this gives him an honorable way out, right?

• 1:19:16Robert Evans?

  Now I've changed the policy for everybody. Now having mistresses is, you're basically ordered as a man in the SS. You're supposed to have mistresses, right? Cause you're probably not breeding enough otherwise, right? It's for the culture, man. It's for the culture, right? Okay. He and Hedwig have a child together and from the end of the 30s on Heinrich is primarily a husband and father to his original family in name only. Margot wrote in November of 1940 that since Heinrich had moved her and the kids out of the farm and to Berlin, which they do in the late 30s, quote, "I have been almost entirely alone," right? He almost abandons them. He's sending letters, he visits occasionally, but he is now interested in Hedwig and the new family he's starting with her.

• 1:20:01Robert Evans?

  Oh, yes. Younger model. Yeah. And obviously, as he's starting this affair, as he starts pushing, as he's pushing increasingly his weird religious beliefs through his personal magazine. The Third Reich is preparing for war, is starting war. They invade Poland, which brings in the UK and it brings in France, and suddenly we're looking at a world war, right? And this is a problem because, like, for one thing, Himmler had considered this to be, this war is like the next generation, right? Like, we're not gonna have to fight this war, obviously. Like, that can't be the case. So they're shocked, and then they're shocked at how well it goes, right? That like, oh, we took Poland pretty easily.

• 1:20:44Robert Evans?

  And then like, we beat France way more easily than anyone had been. Like, the people had been worried within the Nazi party, within the Wehrmacht. Can we, like, is this just another disaster? And then it's kind of not, right? So there's both this sense of like, exuberance. Some people, Heinrich is one of them, start to feel like, I'm fucking invulnerable, right? Like, nothing can stop us. Yeah. And one of the things that comes with that is they start, as they're massively expanding, they're taking in all of these Jews. And this had started before the war, as they're annexing Czechoslovakia and Austria, right? And Himmler and the SD under Heinrich had gotten the job of deporting Jews from these annexed territories, right?

• 1:21:26Robert Evans?

  On November 8th, 1938, just before Kristallnacht, Himmler gave a speech in which he acknowledged, "The Jews cannot remain in Germany. It's only a matter of years. We shall increasingly drive them out with unparalleled and ruthless brutality." So that is, it's a statement about what's going to happen. It's a statement about what's already happening. But it's also not evidence that at this point Himmler knows what the Holocaust is going to be. He's talking about driving them out, not killing them. Yeah, he's like, just get rid of them. And that's what they're doing. They're basically, yeah, they're forcing people to self deport in as much as possible. Right? Like they're, like, that's what Eichmann is doing at this point. They're organizing like deportations. Yeah. Um, in his biography of Himmler, Longrich notes, Himmler made no reference to the actual situation.

• 1:22:11Robert Evans?

  And the formulation that they would drive the Jews out in course, in the course of years, does not suggest that at that point he was working on the assumption that there was about to be a dramatic new development in the persecution of the Jews. Yeah. Now, in the early stages of World War II, a couple of important things happen. Number one is that they start to gear up after, you know, their success in France. They start preparing for a war in the East in which they know they're going to be taking a lot more Jews. Yeah. And they're going to need new solutions for dealing with them. A number far in excess of anything they'd had to deal with before. So these conversations by 41 that are going to culminate in 42 and the actual plan for the Holocaust start happening. And another major thing that happens in 41, kind of right as the war is kicking off,

• 1:22:54Robert Evans?

  is that Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. Yeah. Had been, he's one of these guys who's deeply worried about the war. Number one, again, he'd hoped that we wouldn't be going to war against the whole world quite yet, right? That we had more time. And also, he's really, he doesn't want Germany to be at war with Great Britain, right? He's kind of an Anglophile. He believes that the two countries are natural allies and he has, he's made connections within the British royal family. And so Hess, who is the other big occult guy in the Nazi hierarchy, decides, I'm gonna fly to Scotland on my own in my private plane and negotiate peace alone, right? Uh oh. And he winds up parachuting out of a plane near Glasgow and just getting arrested immediately. Immediately, bro, yes. Yeah.

• 1:23:39Robert Evans?

  And this is, this has an influence, this is part of why Hitler cracks down within the rest of the party on like the weird occult shit. This is when he really sours on a lot of that because Hess had been really into that stuff and Hess fucks up the absolute most he could have fucked up, right?

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  This is, this is my favorite little morsel of the Nazi narrative is Hess parachuting into Scotland and then being like, man, what the hell were you?

• 1:24:06Robert Evans?

  They'd be like, wait, what?

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  The fuck did you think this was?

• 1:24:08Robert Evans?

  No, we're not letting you talk to Hitler.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely not, bro.

• 1:24:11Robert Evans?

  He's a former gang at this point, yeah. No, fuck you. Absolutely not.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  Man, what the fuck are you talking about? You came, you came here like this?

• 1:24:19Robert Evans?

  No, no, no.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Nah fam, yeah.

• 1:24:21Robert Evans?

  That is not gonna work for us.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is my favorite part.

• 1:24:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's super funny.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:27Robert Evans?

  You know what else is funny, Prop?

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  How long this shit is?

• 1:24:30Robert Evans?

  How long this shit is, but it's over for today.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh, so we're not done?

• 1:24:36Robert Evans?

  No, we're not done.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:24:37Robert Evans?

  Jesus Christ. We'll see, we'll see. I'll figure it out. I mean, we could be, we could call the episodes here and be like, I've led you up to World War II, right? The SS is built, it's founded, you know? That may be the right thing to do and we'll come back later to talk about Himmler during World War II and the SS during World War II. That's probably the right call. We've got six episodes, right?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Robert Evans?

  Okay. Yeah, I think that's probably what we'll do and I'll get to the rest of Himmler later. Yeah. That's cool, man.

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll come back during Christmas. We'll just ruin your Christmas.

• 1:25:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, we'll give you more Himmler soon. But that's all the Himmler you're getting for today, you know? He's at his peak, right? The war is starting. He's the last crazy occult guy really left in the high ranks of power. He's holding his blood rituals allegedly at Wewelsberg Castle. There's some crazy, some people claimed that they were like sacrificing babies. There's no evidence of that, but they were definitely holding like candlelit rituals and like, they had like, yeah, a room where all of the dead of the SS are inscribed in the shrine and yeah, like they are doing like ceremonies and spells and stuff.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, actual weird shit.

• 1:25:52Robert Evans?

  Like they're trying to do magic in their magic castle. Spoiler, it does not win the war for them. But, you know, maybe it'll work for you.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Sorry, Wotang, it didn't work.

• 1:26:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it turns out Wotan was not on their side.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Wotan is something you can fuck with.

• 1:26:10Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, a lot of people did successfully, yeah.

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:26:14Robert Evans?

  So, uh, yeah, Prop, you got anything to plug?

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  Man, I do, man. Uh, going back to the, to the poetry record that is out now, um, you know, if you're gonna do streaming, I get it, you do what you gotta do, it's fine. I can't tell you to not go to the store, but if you're gonna pick a streamer, I guess, I'd rather you pick Apple Music, uh, in relation to the other, you know, or just don't, don't do the Spotify thing, you know what I mean? I mean, if you want to, I will take the money, but like,

• 1:26:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  The, as in money, I mean, the point two tenths of a cent. But I'll take it, yeah. The point is, just, there's a new poetry album, it's called The Beautiful Endling, that I'm super proud of, uh, that we'll probably talk about a little bit on the tap-ins, on the hood politics with Prop, uh, which is also going well, which we are just cooking with peanut oil over there and having a good time, as good a time as we can, yes.

• 1:27:13Robert Evans?

  Awesome. Well, everyone, have a good time with Prop. Uh, if you have some cash to spare, the Portland Defense Fund could use donations. They help people who have literally no one else backing them up, get, uh, out of jail, get bailed out and get basic support, so they can like get home, so they can have someone take care of their pets, all the kind of shit that, that happens when people get arrested. Uh, if you go to @defensefundpdx on Venmo, you can send them money, they are a 501(c)(3), uh, you can also go to just Google donor box, defensefundpdx and donate. So please, thank you.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  Word.

• 1:27:51Robert Evans?

  We love you. Try not to be Heinrich Himmler.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Men used to go to war.

• 1:27:56Robert Evans?

  That's right. Not Heinrich Himmler, but other men.

• 1:28:04Speaker 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/AtBehindTheBastards.

• 1:28:28Robert Evans?

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• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Gear and seat human.