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

Cool zone media.

Oh,

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

Ah, let's go.

It's a Tuesday.

We don't normally record on Tuesdays.

I never could get the hang of Tuesdays.

How are you doing, prop, Jason Petty, our guest, host of Hood Politics?

Man, do you get Tuesdays?

I get Tuesdays, man, because I get to listen to Behind the Bastards on Tuesdays.

I look forward to Tuesdays.

Yes.

Excuse me.

Sorry.

I guess that's what I am now.

Oh, you're the best.

Bro, I am,

you know,

just, hey, guys, like, you think you want to be homeowners.

That's your PSA for today.

That's your PSA.

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

Yeah, I said you had a Tony Soprano moment.

Your water heater decided to...

Yep.

Yeah.

The upside of having a house is that you can knock holes in the walls if you want to,

to modify it, or you can paint it, and you don't have to ask your landlord.

The downside is when you inevitably fuck something up doing your own work.

There's no one to call.

There's no one to call.

You just except for the person that you have to pay money to.

Exactly.

I was, yeah, that's the thing.

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

Uh-huh.

Better call the me.

It call them me.

And then I was like, okay,

how much are the products?

YouTube, university.

Do I have a friend?

Like, just all the things.

And then you, and then the trade-off of like, there's a guy that can come put it in the thing, come put it in for like 200 bucks.

But like, there's no warranty with that.

There's no,

yeah.

Yeah, there's no warranty.

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

Because that's the only way to know that he's that's exactly it.

I called my brother-in-law.

He's bonded by the fuck whom.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, my brother-in-law goes, hey, I think I got a friend.

And I was like,

okay, just tell me how much it costs, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I've had that experience more than once where it's like, okay, this guy is really, really good.

He doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language.

But he'll write down on a piece of paper what it costs and it'll probably work.

And I'm like, that sounds great.

Because the other guy quoted me $7,000.

Yeah, I'll just, yeah, I just called the, like, I called the

certified, you know, city permit.

Like, you know, we'll, we'll come in, we'll haul it out, we'll give you new lines and everything.

I was like, this is going to cost how much?

Yeah.

Absolutely not.

Chino.

Cuantos.

Cuantos, Chino.

Yeah.

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

Exactly.

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

He has a friend Jorge.

Yeah, that's right.

You know who didn't have a friend named Jorge?

Because he was a Nazi

and also lived in Germany.

Not a lot of Jorge's in Germany.

Heinrich Himmler,

you know, who we've been talking about for the last two episodes.

We ended part two talking about a Volkish mystic named Guido Carl Anton List.

Oh, yeah.

I showed you.

The ghost told him the letters.

The ghost told him the letters, yes.

Prop, so many people in this episode learned everything they know about ancient Germans from ghosts who talked to them.

That's where we learned most of what we know about the ancient Germans from their ghosts.

Yes.

God, it's so easy.

Like, being an archaeologist sounds like a pain in the ass.

You got to go to school for like, what is it, probably six to eight years, I'm guessing, you know, something like that to get your PhD.

And And then you got to be really careful.

You got to spend hours just like brushing dirt away from artifacts and you can't touch them with your hands because that'll fuck stuff up.

Or you could just grow out a crazy beard, put on a weirdo hat, and start being like, Yeah, some ghosts told me these are letters.

Hell yeah, because

way better.

Yeah, because it ain't Indiana Jones.

You're not like this beautiful college professor that gets to go on these adventures.

No, you are in a hundred and twenty-five-degree weather with a a toothbrush, digging miles down and accidentally breaking the greatest discovery in human history because you brushed too hard with a toothbrush.

Yeah, yeah.

We're talking about Heinrich Schliemann now, but yeah.

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So,

we ended last episode talking about this guy, Guido Carl Anton Liszt.

He starts going after he starts talking to the ghosts and getting, you know, building his theories about these ancient Aryans.

He changes his name, which is going to be a common thing for all of these mystics.

And he starts calling himself Guido Vaughan Liszt.

And the Vaughan, whenever you see a Vaughan in a German name like that, it means that they're a member of the nobility.

Now,

Guido's absolutely has no royal ancestry.

There's no evidence of that whatsoever.

But the ghosts that he was talking to are like, oh, dude, we recognize you.

You're a von.

You're the reincarnation of this 12th century knight, you know?

Like, isn't that cool?

Good thing you talk to us ghosts.

We know we can recognize your spirit, right?

Your ancestors telling you.

I love that kind of shit.

These people owe you $1,000 because you're royal.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, you're special because of your blood.

nobody ever nobody who nobody who's convinced that they're reincarnated is ever like yeah you know i finally i saw the ghosts of my spirit or i saw the ghosts of my ancestors and i'm descended from a 17th century chimney sweep in london

he died of the black lung at age 15.

somebody had to Somebody has to be descended to them.

Yeah, you talk to your ancestors.

Your ancestors said, look, dog, I died at 19.

I got no wisdom for you.

I was, I don't know nothing.

I look, I didn't live long enough to, I don't know.

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

Yeah, you don't tend to get those guys.

Instead, what we get is, yeah, Guido von List.

In his book on Himmler and the Occult, Bill Yen writes about the striking similarities between von List and Himmler's backgrounds.

And I find this interesting.

You're going to see this with a lot of these guys.

Like Heinrich Himmler, Guido List was born into comfortable middle-class circumstances that permitted him opportunities for daydreaming and for his imagination to create an alternate universe.

Guido's father, Carl Anton Liszt, was a well-to-do leather merchant.

Just as Himmler's fantasies were fueled by his views of the cold stone walls of Berg Trusnitz, the fires of Liszt's later obsession for Nordic paganism were stoked by a field trip to the catacombs beneath the city of Vienna at age 14.

Within these damp and musty cellars, specifically beneath the old city post office, his tour group came to an old altar, which he decided, or was told, actually originated as a shrine for the worship of Wotan.

And as an adult, he has this like powerful spiritual experience.

You just get so excited because he's 14 and he's got a big imagination and he loves thinking about ghosts and wizards.

This kid would be playing D,

right?

Like if he, if he was around today, he'd have been into like fantasy literature.

But this is the closest thing he's got.

And he's going to chase that high of like being a kid and being in these catacombs and this feeling of like excitement and not really understanding the world and seeing something that like feels magical.

He's going to chase that the rest of his life.

As an adult, when he starts, he builds a temple to Wotan as an adult.

Like, you know, he uses the money he gets from his books and whatnot and from writing to like build this temple.

And he'll hold like torchlet ceremonies in the dead of night there with other adults who don't have enough going on in their life, who come from similar backgrounds.

These are not the poor.

These are mostly middle-class people whose like lives are kind of boring And they have enough, they have enough comfort and income and free time to get bored, right?

These are not people who are laboring in the poison factory all night, like wading through cyanide on a daily basis.

People like that don't get bored enough to think of stuff like this.

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

Yeah, like some this kind of boredom, yes, exactly.

Right?

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

Yeah.

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

No, no, no.

Wotan is, I mean, this is a part of Norse mythology.

There was a Norse, like a pagan god that's Wotan.

Like, he's not inventing all of this out of whole cloth.

He's inventing the details out of whole cloth.

Right.

He reads enough to learn, like, there was this guy and, you know, this is something that, you know, ancient Germanic people, you know, worshipped this god.

He learns a couple of facts and he invents the rest because we don't know all that much about like the actual,

especially when this, and this is especially true when you're talking about like the ancient like Celts, like the Druidic faith and whatnot that the Romans mostly exterminated.

There's very little we actually know historically compared to, I mean, not to say that, especially when we're talking about Wotan, there is some stuff that we know, but compared to what these guys claim to know, what's actually verifiable is quite small with sagas and stuff.

Yeah.

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

Because there's just, no, you know, it's not exciting enough on it.

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

Yes, yes, the Wu-Tang clan originates from ancient Germany.

Um, the god

Wotang,

ain't nothing to fuck with, ain't nothing to fuck with.

Man, him and all of them.

Actually, these guys kind of are fucking with him because they're largely creating like what they think Wotan worship should be like.

And one thing I find interesting, because List has some writings where he'll admit that, like, as an adult, all of these like torchlit ceremonies in the woods at this temple that he holds, none of them get him back.

He's always chasing that feeling he had as a 14-year-old.

And I want to

grab this guy through the mists of time and shake him and be like, it's because you were 14.

Yes, everything was more exciting than you were a child.

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

Yes, everyone.

Exactly.

Nostalgia,

you always remember it better.

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

Like

it's a lot healthier than creating a religion.

It's all you got to do, man.

Yeah, just put on an old record.

I'll build some war hammer models.

Like, come on, man.

Yeah.

Just chill out.

There is with guys like List, guys, you know,

and List is not on the most evil side.

He doesn't kill anybody, right?

Like a lot of what he's writing is pretty racist, but he's not like, he doesn't wind up like leading the Nazi party, right?

Like he's not actively killing killing people.

This is a guy who, if he had grown up in a different period of time, might have been satisfied just with fantasy novels and role-playing games, right?

Like, you give this guy access to World of Warcraft, and maybe we save the world a lot of trouble.

Sheesh, man,

just a century too late.

Yeah.

And it's interesting to me how similar they're, because these guys are all from the middle class.

They're all dudes whose dads do pretty well.

They also, a lot of them work as journalists, right?

List is a that's how he makes his money.

He's like a journalist.

He writes for outdoor magazines, and that's what funds his occult passions, like his, you know, him building this temple and everything.

And over time, as he's like, you know, doing this kind of writing on the ancient Germans and his free time, he's occasionally publishing stuff like that, he works up his theory about a group of ancient German priests called the Arminen.

And these were priests of Woton whose powers had allowed the German tribes to defeat Rome, right?

When during kind of the early stage of the Roman Empire, Rome gets as far as like this kind of chunk of western Germany before there's this catastrophic battle in Tudeburg Forest where three, I think it's three legions get surrounded and ambushed and just massacred.

We don't know exactly how they got massacred, but they got massacred, right?

And this kind of stops Roman expansion into that part of Europe.

And it's so it's a

very big thing for these, as this German nationalism is developing, this becomes one of the first things that's like oh this is one of the earliest achievements of german civilization is we beat the romans you know even as ancient barbarians we stopped the greatest empire in the world and Liszt's explanation is it's because we had these wizards on our side the arminen okay these priests of wotan and this he's making up the armanin is a complete creation of his right like these are he is inventing these now he's in there's some kind of things that their name is based on but they did not exist he creates them And part of, like, for an example of how directly this is just nerd shit,

he explains a lot of his theories for the first time in a novel, right?

He writes a fiction novel about the Arminen that he's like, but this is basically what happened for real.

This fiction novel.

This isn't just like me coming up with something because I think it's cool, right?

This is, and it's worth noting, List, a lot of the primary sources that he is basing his fiction on are the same things Tolkien is working on.

Oh, wow.

They're inspired by very similar myths, and they do very different things with them, right?

Totally.

For List, it has to be real.

He has to be the reincarnation of this ancient spirit.

It has to all be true or it doesn't matter.

Tolkien, being a basically healthy guy psychologically, is like, no, man, I'm writing a book about elves.

That's dope.

Yeah.

I just think it's cool and interesting.

It's fun, man.

Yeah.

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

It's fun.

Crazy, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah.

List can't do that.

I still like, you know, were I be able to like rewrite the timeline, you know, get my,

get my low-key on, you know what I'm saying, since we're talking Norse,

I just feel like the Germans, like, you had a chance to identify as an indigenous community in the way that

people of color identify as an indigenous community.

You know, like you had, there was a, it was an invading conqueror, an outside force that were trying to remove your way of life.

And it's awesome.

You guys beat their ass.

That's pretty much, you know what I'm saying?

Like, you could have been, like, you could have been on our team.

What says something about how hard these ancient warriors were, and we call them Germans, that doesn't mean that they correspond directly to what German knew them.

Right.

But like these ancient, these Germanic tribes.

It was not uncommon for Rome to send a whole big-ass army, three legions is a sizable force.

They would have them wiped out.

And then they would come up with an army twice as big and send them back in.

And that's how they won most of their wars.

Whole army gets wiped out.

You get another.

That's what made Rome great is the ability to lose massive numbers of men and be like, fuck it, let's get some more.

They never do that with the Germans, right?

Like, that's how badly, like, this, this fucks them up so badly that, like, they're, they're almost, like, traumatized from it, right?

Like, that shows you how like how hard these sons of bitches were.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah, from this kind of legitimate pride in this cool chapter of their past, he starts inventing a bunch of mythology and he writes this novel.

And the novel becomes very popular with a lot of these, this like growing Volkish movement, you know, in Germany.

A lot of these, again, like middle-aged middle class and younger middle-class guys who want to feel special, like they're a part of something ancient and cool.

This, like, this gives them something to grasp on to.

And there's, there's a lot of sort of like tacit support from the state who is desperately trying to build a sense of German nationalism, which is otherwise very new.

This sense of being German.

No, we were Bavarians and Prussians and yada, yada, yada.

So, like, that's all important too.

Yeah,

like Himmler, Liszt is raised Catholic, but he breaks like Himmler with the faith in his early life, right?

He rejects Catholicism for this idiosyncratic version of paganism that happens to mesh very well with far-right politics.

And Liszt is one of the guys that Himmler is reading as a young man, and one of the guys he's going to follow this path in a very similar way.

The year after he graduates from college, Heinrich Himmler joins another Freikor unit.

This group is called the Reichskriegflag, that just means like the Reich War flag, right?

And it's headed by a veteran of Germany's elite trench fighting units, like the original stormtroopers from World War I.

And this guy's name is Ernst Röhm.

And

Röhm is Hitler's street fighter in the early days of the party.

You've heard of the brown shirts.

Rome creates them, basically.

He is building them out of a lot of these, like it's essentially a Freikorps unit from the start.

And Rome, like all of these Nazis, he's a bigot.

He's a monster.

He's

a horrible person.

He's also legitimately scary.

Like, you would not want to fight this man in a bar.

Like, Ernst Rome will fucking gut you.

He is a scary, scary man.

He stabbed people to death, right?

Like, he's, we're talking the kind of close combat that almost doesn't happen happen anymore.

And we're not

easy.

Yeah.

Like these, and so he's useful to the party, but he's also never controllable because he is so tough.

He's not one of these guys.

He likes Hitler to an extent.

He obviously is willing to work under Hitler, but he is not, he doesn't worship Hitler in the way that Hitler really needs to be worshipped in order to trust somebody.

Rome is always a little into business for himself, right?

So he and Himmler become fast friends.

And I think it's probably more accurate to say that they become a, they have a mentor-mentee relationship.

Himmler, this kid who never goes to war, is never blooded in combat, idolizes Rome because he is the warrior that Himmler wishes he could be.

And he's charismatic.

All of these other hard as nails combat veterans respect Ernst Rome and listen to him.

And so he worships the ground this guy walks on, and Rome likes being idolized.

Now, another thing you should know about Ernst Röhm is that he's gay.

And this is a significant factor in his life.

And he's not totally open about it, but it's like an open secret on the far right.

A lot of people, Hitler knows pretty early on that Rome is gay.

And, you know, it's one of those things people are just too scared of Rome to usually make much of a problem about it.

Yeah.

You love to see a gay dude that could beat your ass.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's kind of how he gets by, right?

Like, that's part of it.

Himmler may have, it's unclear if or when he knew, because it becomes, it gets like published by the news in 31.

Is there's a good chance Himmler never realizes this about Rome?

Because Himmler, it doesn't, like, I mean, he's probably a virgin until his late 20s, and he's very

registered in general, right?

He just wouldn't pick up on this, yeah.

And it's the kind of thing people who are more experienced, who know more about the world, these like older and kind of more mature Nazis, they know, they pick up on the clues.

I don't think Himmler does.

And it's through this, there are some people who like will theorize that, oh, maybe, maybe Rome and Himmler had sex.

Maybe Rome like groomed him.

I just don't, there's not any evidence of this.

And I think it's just people, because of, you know, Rome's homosexuality, there's a lot of conspiracy theories.

He's one of the reasons why when right-wingers will say, like, oh, no, the Nazi Party, like, they were homosexuals.

They were all like, that's part of their evil, right?

They're focusing on this one guy who gets killed pretty early on, right?

But he's a reason why there's this book called, I think, the Pink Swastika that's trying to argue that, like, no, like the Nazi party and the gay movement are fundamentally tied together, which is nonsense.

The Nazis

viciously,

it's a right way, a modern right-wing

strain of bullshit, right?

Yeah.

Because the reality, of course, is that the Nazis targeted and murdered queer people of all kinds, put them in camps.

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

But at this stage in the game, a guy like Rome is useful enough that, you know, this is able to get by.

And obviously he's going to get killed pretty quickly, as we'll be talking about.

But yeah, through this relationship, whatever the kind of details of it are, Himmler starts attending social events for the Nazi Party, right?

Rome invites him.

That's kind of how he gets into these things.

And so he joins this Freikorps unit run by Rome, the Reichskrieg flag first.

And then a few months later, he joins the NSDAP, right?

Like he gets into the party proper.

And this is in, this is going to be in like 1922 to 1923, is when all of this is happening.

And, you know, Himmler comes to idolize Hitler as well.

And as he'd been drawn to Rome, he's drowned to the coterie of old soldiers who have kind of consolidated themselves around Hitler.

These include a lot of famous warriors, including a former fighter ace, the guy who took over the Red Baron squadron once he gets shot down, Hermann Goering,

as well as the World War I general Erich von Ludendorff, Ludendorff, who himself wrote anti-Semitic tracts of Volkish political theory.

Ludendorff is writing a lot of stuff that's kind of a more racist version of some of the stuff that Liszt is writing.

His is more focused on like the Jews as the ancestral enemy of the Germans and Freemasonry.

But Ludendorff is also a Volkish writer, you know, in addition to having been the former commander of the German armed forces during World War I.

It didn't go well.

So Himmler shows up at a church in Landschutt to register with a local Nazi party office and join the party officially.

And the guy at the desk that day taking registrations was the regional party chief for the area, another dude named Gregor Strasser.

Now, we haven't talked about the Strassers because there's Gregor and there's his brother Otto, his younger brother.

And they are,

yeah, the Strassers are important because they are.

Again, the right wing today will accuse the Nazis of being socialists, right?

Because socialist is in the name of the party.

And the tiny germ of truth that they're using as the basis is that these two guys, the Strassers, were members of what you could call the left flank of the early Nazi party.

This is before the party gets into power.

And what's happening here is that the communists are also growing in the years that the Nazis are growing.

And the Nazis recognize that they need to be able to message to the working class, to these union guys who have been sort of like the base of the communist party.

So we need to have some messaging about how we're going to help workers and we're going to like, you know, make sure you get vacations and like, oh, these, these, these Jews are actually hurting you, the laboring class, and we're going to take what's theirs and we'll give it to you and we'll make your lives easier.

So there, you need to have some sort of messaging to the laboring classes that can kind of mimic some of what the communists are promising.

And Otto and Gregor Strasser are those guys.

Yeah, yeah,

not familiar at all.

Yeah.

But I knew I remember mega communism

and such.

I just, I realized like where I remembered it, it was, what was that book?

Death of Democracy.

That's where I heard that name.

Was like, then they was talking about, when they was talking about like, yeah, the, the, the, the left flank or just borrowing the language of, you know, uh, leftists or, or, or communist thinking.

I'm like, I, I have, I experienced that, like, in my, like,

my church background.

you know, because like I, I come from such a different tradition than sort of the modern, you know, American conservative, but they would say stuff like, you know,

change the culture.

You know what I'm saying?

And like, and when I think, when you say that to me, I'm thinking, you know, the 10, 10 points of the Black Panther.

You know what I'm saying?

The 10 points of the Black Panther.

That's changing the culture.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm thinking when you saying, you know, that I'm thinking beloved community, the 25 points of beloved community that Dr.

King talks about.

So like, I thought we were saying the same thing, but it's just like, no, it's just a way to message.

yeah, man, if you're not careful, yes, you know, you find yourself standing next to the wrong people, yeah.

That that's right, and like they, the, the strassers are useful in this early period where the party is trying to build momentum, yeah, they're not gonna last long either, like Rome, they're going to get purged.

They do, they are actual believers, right?

Like, this is like with a lot of our like MAGA communists and stuff, I think they are just grifters.

Yeah, the Strasser brothers really do believe what they're saying, which is why they're going to, they're going to like break with the party when they realize that Hitler is using them, you know?

They're not good people.

I'm not saying that, but they do believe what they're saying, right?

Yeah.

So in 1923, though, Otto Strasser is a big man in the Nazi party, and he and Himmler wind up establishing a relationship because they've got a shared interest in chemistry.

Himmler is interested in chemistry in school.

Otto is, I think, a pharmacist.

And so they bond too.

And what you're seeing here is Himmler's got this kind of instinct for cozying up to and

getting friendly with and building a friendship almost in like this mentor-mentee way with these men who are more prominent in the party, who are going to give him access to higher levels of the party.

This is something he's really good at.

He's got like an instinct for it.

Now, Heinrich's brother Gebhardt also joins the Nazi Party, and both men are present in the party in November of 1923 when Hitler incites the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

There's a picture of both of them at the time that shows Himmler and his brothers standing awkwardly around the barbed wire fence erected around the war ministry in Munich.

In his book, Willie Frischauer describes the brothers as looking like awkward children playing dress-up.

And yeah, Sophie's going to show you the photo.

You can see Heinrich there.

He's the one holding the flag, right?

And he, yeah, he just

looks like a little boy.

Hey, little dirk.

Little dirk, yeah.

Yeah, like this little boy dressing like an adult.

It's so interesting to me.

Just you can really you can really see that like this is this is cosplaying to a degree.

You know, like this is the first time as many times as I've like, whether it was in school or my own reading, like thought about the moments leading up to the puts for sure.

And then ultimately to the

Nazi world, I've never been able to wrap my brain around besides just deep-seated self-hate and racism like how anybody like why like why bro?

Like what are you what are you you doing, dog?

Like, you don't know this shit.

It's crazy.

But, like, this was the first time I ever thought about,

well, if you're 23

and you're meeting these, these dudes who've been to war, you know,

they talking politics, culture, revolution.

We finna overthrow the government.

Like,

you tell, you know, 21-year-old me listening to Rage Against the Machine, we're going to go overthrow the government.

Hell yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

So, like, I've never saw it as

exciting, you know what I mean?

From like a human perspective, you know, like I'm just saying as like a

racism and genocide withstanding, you know what I'm saying?

Just the idea of being like young, you 23, you kind of a dork, you know, you meeting these people, you interested in chemistry, they talking positive, every time you have an idea, they done one up to you because they done been through it.

You got this dude who been to war who killed somebody with a knife.

It's like, damn, like, yeah, I'm going to go to the bar with these fools.

Like, this is the dopest shit ever.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I never never thought about it like that until right now.

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

They're the chunk that are the traumatized veterans, yeah, you know, who are like angry and broken and really good at violence.

But there's also a huge amount of the fuel is guys like Himmler, these kids who are too young to fight and desperately want to prove themselves.

And this is the

opportunity to feel like the men they idolized and the war they missed out on.

And they're cool.

Those dudes, they're cool.

The dudes are cool.

And I'm wearing the same uniform they are.

It's like all these guys who love going out and dressing up and wearing the body armor and carrying the gun and like, you know, all that shit.

Running around doing like the militia shit, right?

Because it lets them feel like these guys that they never got to be, but they're like, oh, if it hadn't been for, you know, my knee or whatever, or having a kid too young, I would have, I would have been a great, I would have been a Navy SEAL, you know?

Yeah.

So Himmler's there for the putsch, which does not work out.

Um, and it serves as his baptism of fire in a way, although he is not under fire.

Um, he's described, you'll run into a lot of like kind of casual histories that will be like he carries the Nazi flag during the putsch, and that's not really true.

There's a famous flag that, like, during, you know, at the part of the march when they get fired on, is near Hitler and it gets like the blood of some of the guys who dies on it.

And that flag is like sacred to the Nazis, right?

It's their battle, it's literally the the blood of their martyrs is on it.

Himmler is carrying the flag for Rome's Freikorps unit.

And he is not present for the actual shooting, for any of the actual like deadly violence.

The whole thing falls apart while he is elsewhere.

He and his brother don't even get arrested.

Like when they're, when the authorities come and break up the area where they are, where the barricades are, like, they're not even worth taking into custody.

because they're just kids, you know?

Like the cops, like, just get out of here, you dumbasses, you you know yeah no that's look listen as

as as a kid who've been in the wrong place at the wrong time like sometimes you you real thankful for that cop that's like get out of here kid and and that's that's that's what happens to himmler but also because he's there he's now an old fighter right he's one of the party vanguards he gets a lot he gets credit He gets a lot of valor credit, like a lot, honestly, a lot of stolen valor for like being one of the guys who's there, even though he's not there for anything like serious, you know, he's just kind of standing around awkwardly with a flag and a uniform.

Now, there are consequences for the party in the immediate wake of the failed putsch.

The Nazi party is banned.

Hitler and his lieutenants are put in what you'd call a luxury prison.

For his part, Himmler's history with the party makes it hard for him to find work.

But the event also serves to strengthen his ties, especially with Ernst Röhm, who he visits in prison.

In general, his great talent in this period is finding men who are, he can't get to the Führer, right?

Hitler is unreachable to him, but he can find guys who are close to the Führer, and he can get to them.

And that brings him closer to the center of the party.

And these guys really seem to trust him.

And so because he's out and he's free during this awkward period where the Nazi party's outlawed and a lot of its top people are behind bars, Himmler is going to be really useful.

to those folks, right?

Because he's able to move freely.

He's one of the guys who's still on the outside.

So we can use him.

Now, Strasser is also free.

And because the Nazis are illegal, he helps to create a new far-right party that's like a front for the Nazi party, but not technically the Nazis.

And he gets elected to the Bavarian parliament.

And Himmler becomes basically his secretary after this point.

And as Strasser rises and rises through the party and takes on more and more duties, Himmler takes over his old duties.

And he's helping to, he's basically put in charge of building and expanding this front party for the nsdap in bavaria stealthily and he's in charge of propaganda after a while um he writes to a friend in august of 1924 i have an enormous amount to do i am in charge of organization and expansion of lower bavaria at all levels given all the work there's never a moment to think about finding the time to write a letter And like, I bring this up because it's, he's writing this in a letter, right?

He's humble bragging, like, I don't even have time to write letters to you.

Anyway, enjoy the letter, you know?

Like, he's trying to, he's, he's big leaguing him.

Yeah.

And

that's a real thing for Heinrich.

He's always kind of bragging about how much he's doing and how important he is.

He expressed frustration that he was fighting what seems to be a losing battle to try and spread the Nazi party, you know, during this period of time where it's illegal.

But he also expresses confidence that the seeds that the Volkisch movement was sowing would bloom in the end.

And he was sadly correct.

The Volkischer Bloc, which is his party, that's this Nazi front group, equals the Social Democrats in local Bavarian elections later that year.

That December, Hitler is released from prison, and the Nazi party gets unbanned.

He's able to reassemble the NSDAP in 1925.

He's still banned from public speaking for a while, and the ban is a little different in each state.

It lasts in Bavaria until 1927, I think in Prussia until 1928.

So he's able to speak in certain states, but not others, for a while.

And during this period of time where he's muzzled or partly muzzled, he needs mouthpieces who can travel to the places he can't and give speeches in order to like draw crowds and build the party.

Because that's how they're recruiting is by having these public events.

We pay for the beer.

You come, you show up, you listen to some guy talk, you join the party, you hand him a couple of bucks, right?

Like that's that's and Himmler becomes one of the most reliable speakers, right?

He's sent all around.

Bavaria recruiting new members at these local party gatherings.

You know who else helped build the Nazi party?

I hope not.

Jesus Christ, Robert.

No.

Who knows, Soviet?

It might be IG Farben.

You know, it might be

Hugo Boss.

Yeah.

Hugo Boss, advertise on the podcast.

Hugo Boss, we're not like that anymore.

Adidas.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

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It was an unimaginable crime.

It's four consecutive life terms for Brian Koberger, who killed the four University of Idaho students.

The defense were on a sinking ship.

It was clear at that point he was out of options.

Nearly 30 months of silence until.

Bombshell development Brian Koberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start.

No trial, no testimony.

He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary, and then four counts of murder.

In this final season, we returned to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

Why did the prosecution take this?

They were holding all the cars.

How on earth could you make a deal?

What message does that send?

Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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And we're back.

Oh, yeah.

A A lot of people don't know how critical Adidas' track suits were to the birth of the Nazi Party.

Listen, man.

What were they going to wear at the beer halls?

That's right.

That's right.

You know, a track suit.

That's the classic.

Oh, God, I could go for a track suit.

Wow.

They're never not right.

That's the hard part.

I know they got all kind of attachments to them, but

they're never not the right choice.

They're never not the right choice.

I used to have a beautiful one.

I got it in Istanbul, and it was a knockoff.

It said a Dotus.

I love that.

It smelled like cigarettes the whole time.

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

It was perfect.

So the private Heinrich Himmler, a book written with the help of Katrina Himmler, which used, was based on the letters that Heinrich and his wife sent each other over the entire course of their marriage, summarizes this period in his career as he's traveling around Germany giving speeches.

Between 1925 and May 1926 alone, he addressed twenty-seven different meetings in Lower and Upper Bavaria, and another twenty in Westphalia, Hamburg, Mecklenburg, and Schleiswig-Holstein, and elsewhere.

In his incessant travel commitments, he was no different from other party functionaries.

In 1925-26, Joseph Goebbels was also tirelessly on the road, speaking all over Germany and supporting local national socialist groups.

In April of 1926, Goebbels even came to Bavaria on a lecture tour.

In the afternoon, with Himmler in Landschutt, Goebbels noted in his diary on April 13th.

And he continued, Himmler, a good fellow, very intelligent.

I like him.

So again, he's really good at getting making, seeming likable and non-threatening.

That's key to these guys who are a step or two away from Hitler.

And that's how he's, that's really the key to his success as a good hang time.

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

Yeah.

Now, you'll not be surprised, prop, to hear that Heinrich Himmler's early years of career success with the Nazi party did not make him any less weird around women.

Really?

Yeah.

During this period of time in his early 20s, when he's starting at the party, he writes a lot of really weird shit about women.

There's one diary entry, and that's why I like that, that article by Lowenberg that I read to you, that like Freudian guy analyzing his diary entries.

There's a lot of like nonsense in there where he's like, ah, this is evidence of Himmler's anal fixation or his schizopers.

And that's all nonsense.

That's just like debunked psychiatric bullshit from the last century.

But it quotes a lot of things that are diary entries of his that are really, really valuable.

And it talks a lot about his weird issues with women.

And obviously.

It draws conclusions about where those issues came from that I don't agree with, but the issues themselves are undeniable.

And that part is really interesting.

And one diary entry, Himmler concludes that all women can be divided into three groups.

Oh, God.

The weak mother.

Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Let me prepare myself.

You need to prepare.

That's like the blacks sentence where I'm just like, oh, God, yeah.

When you say the blacks in the sentence, the sentence is over.

Like, there's nothing else you could say after that.

All women fall into three groups, right?

Yeah, like, bro, let me stop you right there, homeboy.

Like, let me stop you right there, homeboy.

What you finna say is going to be dumb as shit, okay?

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

Yeah, exactly.

So, what does he say?

All women.

All women can fall, can be divided into three groups: there's the weak mother, brutalized, victimized by a brutal father who must be protected.

There's the wife comrade, who is basically a man, right?

This is like a wife who can do things, and then there's the goddess or the flawless mother as seen by a child in their infancy, right?

That's it.

That's all women.

Heinrich, you really have a, I have a great understanding.

Bro, you need a podcast.

Start yourself.

Yeah.

Oh, he would, he would have, you know what?

I don't, he wouldn't have even started one.

He would have fallen for all of them.

This would be a guy who would have scraped together the 10 grand to join Andrew Tate's inner circle.

You know, yeah, he'd be a part of that.

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

Big dog says three.

And then there's the goddess.

And then there's the goddess, the flawless mother is seen.

Yeah, by the child in their infancy.

Oh my god.

Windy peppercorn.

You kind of catch there's because Himmler doesn't write about his mother much in the diary.

He doesn't write about his dad being abusive.

But from that, I kind of think, okay, so your dad was probably smacking around your mom as a kid and it fucked you up, right?

Like, why else would that be something you would conclude?

Divide like womanhood into those groups.

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

that is grandma advice boy yeah that that that's what your grandma would tell me let me let me tell you something you don't want one of them loose women out there selling everything

you done seen everything you done you done already they done already been tested you don't want that test drive too many times you want to buy that cow right out of the stall yeah you don't want a floor model now you don't want one of the floor models you want to tell them go get it from the back.

I want the one from the back.

Okay, I know.

Awful.

Thanks, Grandma.

You're supposed to listen to your grandma until it gets to that.

You know, then you'll get it.

Sometimes you got to cut grandma off, maybe take away the gin.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know.

Okay, grandma.

All right, grandma.

Like, you need something from the store?

I'm about to go to the store.

You want me to pick up your medicine?

I got to bounce.

Oh, yeah.

I'll pick up your medicine.

I'll drop off your medicine tonight, grandma.

I'll see you later.

Yeah.

So he continues to flirt poorly throughout this period.

He writes about a bunch of crushes that he has, but none of them seem to go anywhere.

In letters to a friend, he writes of his frustration at the traditional engagement period, right?

This point in time after you're engaged to be married before you get married, which he defines as a stagnant time in which, quote, the fighting and wooing are over, yet one only possesses a part of her spirit and her body, not at all.

A lot in that, right?

I got it, but I can't smash.

Right, that's right, right.

Yeah, I can't get in there yet, you know?

I only have a part of her spirit.

I don't own her body yet.

But there's no fighting and wooing to do.

Yeah, like we never wooed anyone, Heinrich Himmler.

You don't even know what you're talking about.

Yeah, which one-third of the women does this one category, would this one fall into,

bro?

Now, as somebody who, I mean, I was engaged, but like an hour and a half, like we got married that day.

But that being said,

there's a lot to do during an engagement, like

there's a lot going on.

You still don't know that woman.

Ain't nothing wrong with you still, like, getting to notice.

Let me, let me get off my.

He's ridiculous, as obviously pointing out.

It's one of those things where, like, he's wrong.

How much time should we spend pointing out how Heinrich Himmler's wrong about like

use of our time?

Right, right.

Do we do we need to argue with the dead Nazi?

Yeah.

Um, so in 1927, he finally meets the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his some of his children, Marga Seagroth, like S-I-E-G-R-O-T-H.

Uh, She was born Marga Bowden on September 9th, 1893.

So she's seven years older than Heinrich, which I find interesting.

Wow.

Despite his previous statements about buying a cow straight out of the stall, he falls for Marga even though she has been married before, right?

I told you that she's born Marga Bowden, and when he meets her, she's Marga Seagroth.

She has been married before in 1920,

and you know, it didn't work out.

And on paper, Marga is exactly the kind of worldly, career-focused woman that Heinrich claimed was not worth settling down with.

Starting in World War I, she's a nurse in field hospitals, right?

She is closer to the front and combat than Heinrich himself.

She's close enough where there's like a danger of being hit by like errant shells, right?

She's hearing the gunfire and the artillery, and she's dealing with men who have just been pulled off the line after being grievously injured.

So, like, she is more of a veteran than he is.

So, at this point, now at this point, I'm like,

I am grossly

hypothesizing here, but knowing that about her, she like, oh, I see why she like him because she could bully his little soft ass.

You know what I'm saying?

I kind of, I wonder, because that, it doesn't seem like that's an, I don't fully understand their relationship.

I'm going to tell you that right now, prop.

I, other than they're both equally, they're both the same kind of racist.

Like, that's actually all we know more of it.

But yeah, well, we know a lot.

Well, I'll get, I'll go through it.

I'm just having trouble coming to conclusions.

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

Right.

He ain't going to be a problem.

Maybe he's not going to book.

Like, maybe she's like, I'm not going to, I'm not scamming this guy, but it's like, listen, I'm going to be able, I ain't going to have to be this subservient because he ain't got it in him.

So I'll be able to live my life.

I think that is a part of it.

Because as I'll say,

she always has a degree of autonomy from him.

Now, some of that's because he's cheating constantly and doesn't want to be around, but she gets something out of the bargain too.

I don't know.

It's weird.

The relationship is a little hard for me to

kind of

parse out here.

In 1923, she got a job as the head nurse of a private Berlin clinic that her father part owned.

So, like everyone in the story, she's also a Nepo baby.

She's into homeopathy, right?

She's like a homeopathic nurse.

She likes alternate medicine, right?

She's into like essential rfk junior exactly she's so uh all of these people none of they don't change from century to century they're always the same kind of person yeah um

now there's a reason there are good reasons why even though again on paper this is not the kind of woman he had talked about wanting to fall for there's also some very obvious reasons why he's drawn to her She's from the same upper middle class strata as him, right?

She's socially acceptable.

Her family has money and she's blonde-haired and blue-eyed, right?

Which Himmler is not, right?

Himmler is obsessed with Aryan racial theory, and he knows he doesn't match.

He knows that he's not as pure Nordic as he wants to be, but she is, right?

Like she's clearly.

got the the the Nordic genes.

As, you know, I'm not talking about in actual terms of genetic science.

That's this is all nonsense, but from his perspective, right?

She's closer to the ideal than he is.

And that's a selling point for Himmler.

Marga and Heinrich meet in September of 1927 on a train ride from Berchtesgaden to Munich.

Marga had been on vacation.

Berchtesgaden is the mountain town where Hitler has his eagle's nest retreat.

So she's there on vacation because it's like a resort town.

And Heinrich is visiting for work, right?

Because Hitler's there a lot of the time.

And so like a lot of party business gets done there.

So on the way back, they meet and they hit it off.

And despite her greater life experience, Marga is just as much of a fascist as her husband, as this passage from the private Heinrich Kimmler summarizes, because this is kind of this book.

You can read a lot of their letters to each other in their entirety, but it also kind of summarizes a lot of their communications as we know them.

Obviously, we don't know what they said in private, we just know what they wrote each other, but that's a lot more than you have about most people from this period.

Quote: They agreed in many areas, for example, their common rejection of democracy, their hatred for Das System Berlin, their hatred of Jews, whom they labeled Jewish rabble, and their misanthropy.

How false and bad humans are.

That's from Marga.

They were soon dreaming of life in the country together, not only because they wanted to supplement Himmler's modest party salary through their own venture raising animals and vegetables, but also because this corresponded to the Volkish idolization of a return to the soil.

The beautiful, pure home that they wanted to establish was supposed to be a secure castle and a place to keep the filth of the outside world at bay.

So they're both kind of into this trad wife bullshit, you know?

Like, they're, and Marga's really into this.

This idea of like, let's escape from the city and build ourselves a fortress where we can keep the filth out.

Other people are awful, you know?

Yeah.

Humanity is terrible.

If it wasn't, we're the only good ones.

If it wasn't for the fascism hard relate,

right?

I'm like, I feel you.

I'm like, fortress, keep people away.

I just want to keep people like this away.

Yeah.

And like, I'm like, how about you stay away

me?

You can't.

You have to just deal in the world, right?

And, but, like, that's what they're both.

They're both racist.

They're both misanthropes.

They're both fascists.

You know, that's fundamentally why this relationship works.

The very first letters between the couple have been lost to time, but in later letters, both alluded to their relationship, starting with constant, furious arguments, including at least one in which they nearly had a fist fight.

And we both know Margot would have won that.

She'd have whooped his ass.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not a question in my mind.

In letters we have from November 1927, we get some sense of what won Heinrich over.

Marga tells him his constant stomach issues are just the result of his heroic workload.

She adds, one works to be able to pay taxes.

At least that's fun.

Taxes.

And then adds, I read Ludendorff's work, a book on the Freemasons.

The book criticizes the Jews.

I find that the facts speak volumes.

So why all these remarks?

Life truly offers too many pleasures.

So, you know, you get this like, you know, what's unfair is all the taxes I've got to pay.

Also, Ludendorff, you know, wrote

this book.

He's right about the Jews, but why has he got to spend so many words talking about it?

We all know they're evil, you know?

Like,

she really does.

The taxes.

Right.

All right.

Nothing has changed.

So we get a sense.

there of the fact that Marga was a Nazi way before she actually joined the Nazi party.

You know, she gets with Himmler before she actually joins the party, but she's always been one in spirit.

The two bonded over reading the second volume of Mein Kampf.

We have Heinrich's copy of the book, in which he took notes and appended marginalia, so we have some idea of what they may have discussed.

Heinrich underlined a passage about the need to stop defective people from breeding.

He commented, the potential for undoing racial mixing exists.

This is always going to be a focus of his, like this idea, again, that we have to undo the damage that all this interbreeding with Poles and whatnot, you know, has done to our race.

And this is going to be kind of the foundation of like how he leads the SS.

Like it's its purpose primarily is to undo the damage of race mixing by selective breeding.

Yeah, nor does he, yeah.

Like,

I never thought about, again, another I never thought about is like,

you can't talk about this if you don't start at like all the like Volksmy making.

Now would make sense because

okay you clearly don't understand your own

history that like the Germanic tribe biz

were race mixing and and the Nordics were hundreds of miles away from here like you know what I'm saying like that's that's actually not y'all You know, so like, even if, I mean, granted, I'm looking at it with a 21st century brain.

And obviously, we're using these terms very loosely.

But like, what the fuck do you think an indigenous person is?

They not peer breeds either.

You know what I'm saying?

So like, nobody is.

That's not a thing that exists.

Yeah, it's not a thing.

That's what I was going to say.

Like, no, like, it just,

it depends on where you want to start your timeline.

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

We were fucking other species.

And that's why we're here.

Like, not just Neanderthals, but like the fact fact that like

the like the more you breed with people who are different from you the better like immune profiles your kids

works right yes like that's just we know all this yeah yeah so I'm just like this undoing shit is just like oh it's because

you think you supposed to be this ancient thing you made up

and like it doesn't yeah that's why the science that you say you read the chemistry you say you read is the math isn't mathing for you.

Right.

Yeah.

Because it's fundamentally nonsense, right?

But that's going to be his like obsessive goal is we have to undo this damage.

And, you know, his part in that starts when he marries Marga in 1928.

As soon as they marry, they buy a chicken farm out in the country.

This is consistent with Himmler's stated Volkish backed the land values.

But it's also evidence that those values are more a result of this nerdy special interest he has in German mysticism than a real desire to live as a peasant farmer because he basically never works on that farm.

As soon as they set the farm up, Marga starts having kids and Heinrich is gone.

He is on the road all the time working for the Nazi Party, furthering his grand career.

Marga.

Not only does she raise the children, but she minds the farm.

Like she keeps this business going.

Like it's nearly all on her shoulders.

Himmler shows up up every now and again to help out and check on how his kids are doing.

But most of his direct relationship with their raising and the farm's day-to-day work operation is him sending letters to and from, and Marga sending letters back to him talking about what's going on.

So she's the uber minch.

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

You know what I'm saying?

I don't know.

You know, think about if she's saying she's awful, but yeah, she's certainly, she's, she's closer to the i to the Aryan ideal than Heinrich is.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Like, yeah, like she actually the pinnacle of manhood, brother.

Your wife's the peasant farmer, yeah.

Like, you're walking around in a suit, like, talking to people.

No, pretty boy just bragging about

being sore after barely working out.

Like, oh, I'm so busy

working.

I'm sorry, I happened to have a chance to write, man.

I'm so sore.

I'm so busy, man.

Shut the fuck up.

Shut up.

The fuck, yeah.

Yeah, it's It's pretty funny.

You know what else is funny?

Oh, man.

Hearing you read ads sometimes.

Yeah.

It's pretty funny, man.

Cause I'm like,

there's an ad that Jack does.

Shout out, Jack.

Oh, Brian.

Yeah, on the Daily Zeitgeist.

Yeah, he reads an ad that I hear all the time about

the speed of...

of a like gaming laptop processor that I'm like, man, you don't know what what none of this shit means.

It's just so funny.

I was like, you don't know what this means, but I feel you get your money.

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

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

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

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Boy, I sure do love first downs.

I don't don't know.

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

It is the only sport I know anything about.

Yes.

I had to play it in high school.

It's legally required in Texas.

Yeah, you can't graduate.

Just like we have to know how to recite a full Snoop Dogg song before we can graduate high school.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

So

this pattern where Marga does all of the actual hard work and Heinrich then writes essays and gives speeches speeches about how important it is to raise children and have farms.

This is the pattern for most of their relationship.

Heinrich talks about how people should live and Marga lives that life while he is staying in nice hotels, taking up mistresses, eating at restaurants, and doing everything but living as a back-to-the-land peasant farmer with his smiling children and Aryan bride.

Now, Marga quits her career to make this life possible, which for Heinrich means he's killing two birds with one farm-shaped stone.

You know, she's not out living an independent,

she is very independent, but in the sense that

she is maintaining the life that he wants to pretend he's living, right?

Right.

So while Himmler had been in prison, Ernst Röhm, who got out earlier, had renamed the band SA, turning it into the frontbahn, and expanded it to 30,000 fighters.

Now, this is crucial because the Nazi Party, in order to grow, is going to need these fighters.

The fact that they've always got tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of men who they're not always armed in the streets with guns, but they have a lot of guns and caches and they're willing to fight.

It's a threat potentially to the army.

There's enough of the SA at a certain point that like the army, which is very limited in size, has to be concerned about the ability of the SA to potentially cause a problem.

right for you know the country's government being able to maintain power so it's very important that rome is constantly expanding this group, which again is technically not the SA in this period.

But also because the Nazi Party was banned and the SA was banned and he establishes a separate group during this period of time, it means that this, the frontbond, which is effectively the SA, is separated from the Nazi party.

And it's just Rome's.

There's not a chain of command where Hitler is in charge of these guys during this period, which means that Rome could kind of go into business for himself because he's got the army, so to speak, right?

And Hitler, Rome always says he's loyal, right?

He always says the right things, but Hitler doesn't trust Rome, you know?

Yeah, of course.

You shouldn't.

And

there's a point where Hitler's like, will you, you know, sign a pledge of loyalty and hand over this organization, basically make it a part of the party, you know, once the party is unbanned.

And Rome says no.

And he makes him something about, like, I want it to, oh, I think it's better if it's, you know, independent for this reason or that.

But what matters to Hitler is that, like, Rome has defied him.

Now,

this is an issue between the two.

And ultimately, it gets resolved when Rome leaves Germany temporarily to take a job.

Bolivia like hires him to train their armed forces.

And Himmler kind of talks to Rome and is like, I think it's a good idea if you take the job.

You know, like, Hitler is kind of pissed.

You know, this might cool things down for everybody.

And so Rome goes off, and the SA is effectively leaderless for a while, which means that, you know, the threat to Hitler declines, but he's still spooked.

And the fact that he has this kind of moment of panic where he's like, oh, fuck, this guy might actually try to usurp me and he's the dude with the army.

It convinces Hitler that he needs a new Freikorp, right?

A new militant unit that's dedicated and loyal only to him, right?

He specifically wants a group that's filled with men who are more disciplined than the SA men and better at fighting and are ready to, quote, march against their own brothers if necessary.

Sheesh.

The SA had proven useful, obviously, but they were like the proud boys today, right?

Yeah, these are not disciplined soldiers, they're drunken louts and reprobates, right?

Most, a lot of them are addicts, a lot of them are criminals, you know, fucking Horst Wessel, the famous martyr of the SA, who he's a, he's a pimp, you know?

Yeah, like these guys are, are criminals and they're not

the kind of criminals because the SS guys are also criminals, but they're the kind of criminals who are like

mob criminals.

Yeah, right?

They're disciplined.

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

Yeah.

Yeah, you can't really, yeah, you can't really count on them.

Yeah, they're just, those are just goons.

You can count on them to get into street fights, but not to be particularly good at it and certainly not to be a disciplined army, right?

And to make matters worse,

the SA, because they're so uncontrolled, they scare the conservatives with money, right?

Nobody, none of the people, none of the like wealthy class trusts the SA because they seem scarily like the mobs that occasionally like, you know,

overthrow the government and kill all the rich people, you know?

Like just because they're technically on your side doesn't mean you, you like the idea of this unaccountable drunken mob, you know?

Yeah.

And all of this is why ultimately Hitler orders the formation of the SS or Schutzstaffel, right?

The SS is started not to fight Nazism's enemies, but to fight other Nazis.

Specifically, the SS is formed as a counter to the SA.

Wow.

Now, they're also supposed to, they're also formed because they're literally a bodyguard for Hitler.

He wants a unit of disciplined, reliable fighters who can beat communists in the street, who can guard Nazi party meetings and do so, again, more effectively and with more kind of discipline than the SA.

But more than anything, he wants them to be able to fight the SA off if Rome betrays Hitler or if someone else in the SA betrays Hitler, because there's a lot of SA leaders and he doesn't trust any of them.

The core of the SS is formed out of Hitler's Stostrup or first bodyguard.

This is like his initial guards before the party is really formed.

And it's headed, the first leader of the SS, is Julius Schreck, Hitler's chauffeur and chief bodyguard.

Schreck was an obvious initial choice, and he made some good early decisions that would echo in the organization's future.

Members had to be above a certain height, they had to be between 23 and 35 years old.

So you don't want them too young because those are just hooligans, but they need to be young enough that they're fit and able to fight effectively.

And they have to have two sponsors who vouch for them before they can join.

Two sponsors in the SS.

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

That is, that is.

Disney, or sorry, DreamWorks isn't like talking about it, but yes, Shrek got his start leading the SS.

That's why he was living in

that swamp.

Yeah.

Because obviously, you know, after Nazism fell, he had to go into hiding.

Are you saying Shrek was a Nazi?

Yes, yes.

That's

it.

He tried to change.

He tried to change.

That's why he turned green.

He was in hiding.

That's right.

Yeah, he had to change his appearance so that he wouldn't get

it.

And then Donkey made him woke.

Then Donkey made him woke.

He made a black friend.

Donkey's one of my favorite animated characters ever.

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

That's a serious conversation.

Oh, my God.

Say, Shrek, good.

One more thing.

Let me ask you this real quick.

Oh, man.

Dreamwork, sponsor us.

Yeah.

Dreamwork sponsors.

We could do the new ads for the new Shrek movie.

Shrek.

He's not a Nazi anymore.

Anymore.

Reform.

Send us your money.

Yeah.

Shrek leaves the stops being leader of the SS in April of 1926.

So he's just there for about a year.

And, you know, what he does does kind of set up the future of the unit.

It's going to be small, but it's going to be elite, right?

It's going to be big guys who are tough and who know each other.

And so like they're tight and they have like, they have like, you know, they have a stronger bond.

It's not this anonymous mob of like drunken rabble.

These guys are going to hold together better in like a combat situation.

Once Julius leaves, he hands over control to Joseph Berchtold, who's a former SA man who'd handled security during the putsch, which given that the putsch doesn't go well, you might be like, well, why is this guy?

He was, he fucked up.

His one job.

But Berchtold is given the title Reichsfuhrer SS, which is, you know, leader of the SS.

He's the first man to actually hold that title.

And this is where the SS starts, like the birth of their kind of distinctive all-black uniforms.

At first, it's just that they have black ties to differentiate them from the SA's brown ties.

And over time, this is going to evolve into the Hugo boss all-black uniforms that we all know today.

But it just starts with the tie.

Berchthold's main accomplishment during his brief period as Reichsführer SS is to stop the SS from being absorbed into the SA entirely when that organization is readmitted to the Nazi Party, right?

Like there's an attempt from Rome to just make the SS a unit in the SA, and Bruchtold stops that.

He resigns in 1927 and he's replaced by another guy who doubles down on the SS remaining ultra-exclusive and elite.

But this guy's really bad at his job, you know?

Like he tries to really focus on restricting even further who can join.

And this helps means that the SS membership declines from its height of around a thousand to just a couple of hundred people in 1928.

And it's during this period of time when the SS is sort of like bleeding members and it looks like it's about to die out, like this was kind of a failed experiment and eventually it's just going to be absorbed back into the SA.

It's during this time that Heinrich Himmler is admitted to the organization.

Now, Heinrich had joined because the SS needed men and he was not like a threatening guy, right?

Like nobody, the dude running the SS at this point doesn't consider him to be like a rival for power.

And Himmler likes the idea that it's exclusive, that like, oh, if I join this, people will think that I'm one of the elite.

Okay, wait, so he's a member of the Nazi Party.

He's just not a member of the SS at this point.

Yeah, and he becomes one in 1928, right?

You join the Nazi party and then you join the SS.

Word.

And Himmler, he gets into the, again, he's not.

physically, he doesn't kind of match the strong requirements they're supposed to have, but he's someone who there's a lot of buzz about.

He's doing a lot of very important jobs.

He's like liked by a lot of high-ranking people in the party.

So he's got clout.

And he just doesn't seem like someone who could do anything, who could like be a threat to your power.

Yeah.

But that's a mistake because as soon as he gets admitted, Hitler rats on his bots, the leader of the SS, to Hitler and is like, hey, you know, the guy who's running your bodyguard?

His tailor's Jewish.

He's got a Jewish guy tailoring his SS uniform.

And so Hitler Hitler shit cans the Reichsfuhrer of the SS.

And that's how Himmler gets the job running the SS.

Wow, he stitches.

Yes.

That's how he does it.

Look, you ain't here for me, but

homie got a snow bunny over there.

He's running the SS.

He's got a Jewish guy, him in his pants.

Like, no, man.

Look,

if it was me, I'm not in charge.

I'm not in charge.

But if it was me, I would look into that.

I wouldn't be doing it that way.

Yeah, I mean, I feel, you know, when you know you can't really, you can't go head up with none of them people, you got to figure out other ways to defeat them.

You know what I'm saying?

You know, he's like, you're not going to fight them.

Yeah.

You know, so like, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

I'm just going to outsmart you.

Yep.

And it works.

So, yeah,

Heinrich Kimmler at this point has now become the Reichsfuhrer of the SS.

He is leading the organization and he will continue to lead it for the remainder of his and its

And we will talk about what he does now that he's in power later.

But first, prop.

Yes.

You want to plug some pluggables?

I would love to plug pluggables.

Like I said, the Terraform Cold Brew is back.

The website is up.

Praise be.

We are ready to share the good drink.

Hood politics with prop.

We got two drops a week this time.

We got the main show on Wednesday and then the tap in on Friday.

A little shorter.

I love the tap-ins.

The tap-ins are fun, man.

So those are.

It's great format for you.

Thank you, Sophie.

That's good.

Yeah.

So, yeah, and then follow me on all the socials.

The prop hip-hop.

Whoever suggested that tap-in was a genius.

Oh, oh, man.

Look in a mirror, Sophie.

Look in a mirror.

Boss queen.

Yeah.

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

You should be.

Not in pain.

You should be nice to yourself.

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

Yes.

You're the best.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're the best.

And fuck your pain.

Pain is awful.

I hate it.

What I don't hate is you, the listener.

I only hate some of you.

And I'll never tell you which ones you are.

But I know.

Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.

For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at behind the bastards.

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