Behind the Bastards - Episode 0: Farting Hipster Hitler

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

Let's be real, Hitler’s probably the most famous person…ever. In episode 0 Robert is joined by Jack O'Brien (The Daily Zeitgeist) and they discuss young Hitler, his hipster wardrobe and his horrible farts.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, everybody. I am Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we take you through all of the strange things you didn't know about the very worst people in all of history. With me today is Jack O'Brien, my once-in-future boss. We worked together at Cracked for, like, more than a decade. For a long time? Yeah, a very long time. Yeah, I am thrilled to be here, thrilled to be launching a podcast with the Robert Evans who, you know, started the personal experience section at Cracked, wrote some of our most

popular articles. And yeah, one of the things you were always good at is finding out interesting information about awful, awful people. Yeah, yeah. I think the genesis of this might have come after the revolution in Ukraine where that quasi-dictator, Yanukovych, got kicked out, and he did this press conference afterwards where he was, like, shouting at how angry he was, and he tried to break a pencil to, like, emphasize a point, but he had a pen in his hands, and it just bent. And so there's just, like, 20 seconds of this dictator trying to break a pen and failing. And that's the stuff I want to, like, the sad, like, Michael Scott from The Office moments

in the lives of all these, like, nightmarish dictators who started wars and, you know, ruined hundreds of thousands or millions of lives. They're all such, like, weird, sad people when you really get right down to them. Yeah. One of our most popular articles that cracked was you reading every single edition of the ISIS, like, magazine that was almost, like, a 17 for ISIS kids. Yeah. Yeah. It's like they're people. Yeah, it's always, like, these, the monsters in their monstrous regimes are always, like, there's this beautiful layer of the absurd that if you can get past

the nightmarish human suffering, like, there's a lot to just goggle at. Yeah. It's amazing. In addition to being a really funny dude, Robert is also a really great journalist. The personal experience section of the cracked site was where he would interview people with just really crazy or harrowing or interesting life experiences. And then he would put together these articles that were, you know, funny, but really interesting accounts that you've never heard before of, like, what it's like to be on heroin, what it's like to be on

math. Yeah. A lot of drug stuff. Yeah. But, you know, all sorts of interesting stories, things that truck drivers see out on the highway, which included a lot of people having sex, apparently. Yeah. But, yeah, so this was one of the ideas when we decided that you were allowed to work with

me again. This was, I think, the first idea you pitched, and I got super excited right away. First, I love talking about terrible people. You get a deeper understanding of the world when you understand these guys, monsters like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and good old fashioned Hitler, Nikolai Chichescu, like all these dictators. But they're also just like, like, we're going to be talking about later in the series, we're going to be talking about, like, Hitler's young adult fiction novels that he based his plans for World War II on.

And we'll be talking about, like, Osama bin Laden's love of Hollywood movies and how he'd use it to jazz up his fighters before, like, going into battle. Like, all these ridiculous stories that add, like, so much color to these people's lives and help explain, like, why they did the shit they did. Right. But also, you know, puncture the myths. Like, we mythologize and make these people into just these huge icons of, you know, their Darth Vader type of people. And actually, they have bowel problems, as we'll talk about today. Yeah, that's what we're getting into today. Adolf Hitler, warlord, monster, history's

greatest evil, and also a ridiculous farting hipster in his 20s and 30s. Yeah. So you're giving them a little taste of what they would get in a normal episode. Yeah. Just a quick, quick in and out. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. I think a lot of people feel like they, they know the fewer pretty well, you know, you've seen a lot of Hitler in movies and TV shows, and he's usually either this, like, psychopath

thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's either, like, the psychopathic, powerful warlord or the broken, trembling wreck of a person in downfall, and those are both accurate to certain periods. But you never see nerdy hipster Hitler portrayed in fiction. You sure do not. So when Hitler was a teenager and a young adult, his best friend was a violinist named August Kubicek. Now, after the war, Kubicek wrote a book about Hitler called The Young Hitler I Knew, and it's weird because Hitler and Kubicek had a very weird relationship. In the book, Kubicek writes about a time when Hitler went with him to the funeral for Kubicek's

violin teacher, which, quote, rather surprised me as he did not know Professor de Sauer at all. When I expressed my surprise, he said, I can't bear it that you should mix with other young people and talk to them. So that's, that's the kind of friend young Hitler is. A little. Showing up at Strangers Funeral, so his friend doesn't talk to anyone else. So one night in 1905, Kubicek and Hitler are on a walk and Hitler's, you know, ranting about Hitler stuff, which he apparently did from the time he was like 15 on up. Oh, that's adorable.

Yeah. Like just a smaller version of himself, but just always ranting. He's always been yelling about stuff. And so during this walk, they see a, quote, slim blonde girl and Hitler grabs his friend's arm and says, you must know I'm in love with her. Now, according to Kubicek's book, Hitler remained obsessed with this girl for like four straight years. He never talked to her. He never told her how he felt. He never flirted with her, but he forced his best friend to spy on her and report back to him for years.

There's like all these crazy little, like one time there's this parade and she's one of the girls who's like handing out flowers at the parade and she like throws one to Hitler just because he's in the crowd. And he's like, that was a secret sign that she loves me. Like he's full on nuts. So he never talks to this girl, not once, but he becomes convinced that she loves him too. And that, you know, all these different things that his friend is reporting on her doing are like her sending him secret messages because he's nuts. After the war, someone tracked her down and let her know that like Hitler had had a crush on her when they were kids. And she was like, I have no idea. But she did say, I once received

a letter from someone who said they were to attend the Academy of Arts and that I should wait for him. He could come back and marry me. I had no idea who the letter might have been from or who I should have sent it to. So that's... Do you think it's like a, the social network thing where everything he did was secretly for this woman? He's like, maybe she'll love me now. I think that there's a little bit of that there because she was always dating young Austrian soldiers and Hitler kind of had a chip on his shoulder about the army because there were always like good looking fit guys and he was like this sick, pale kid who couldn't

talk to girls. So yeah, I feel like there's a little bit of that going on. But as he grew up, Hitler got a little bit less awkward, not a lot less awkward, but a little bit. And in his mid-twenties, when his political career was still young, he started to make some rich friends. One of them was a cultured, wealthy German named Humpstangle. And so this rich dude frequently would have Hitler over for dinner, but he and his wife were appalled by the man's lack of table manners. And at one point, Humpstangle reports being horrified that Hitler was caught pouring sugar and fine wine so that he could drink it, which is like...

Oh my God. It's like a Michael Scott moment. Right. Fucking barbarian. That's great. Someone hands him like, here's this decade old French wine and then I'm gonna take my wine with two lumps of sugar. Wow, that's great.

Yeah, so Hitler's a classy guy. But as he grew older, into his thirties and stuff and his political career blew up, he started to make some actual money, mainly from Nazi party-dos and stuff. And he put a lot of that money into perfecting his look, which would not be at all out of place in an alt-right gathering today. In the biography, Hitler, by Ian Kershaw, Kershaw notes that the young Fuhrer wore, quote, a trilby, a light-colored raincoat, leather leggings, and a riding whip. Yeah, that's like his leather shorts and a fedora and a whip is how this guy's walking around. Hitler in the 1920s was never without a whip. Another description from the book notes, quote,

in his gangster hat and trench coat over his dinner jacket, touting a pistol and carrying as usual his dog whip. He cut a bizarre figure in the salons of Munich's upper crust. Dog whip. Dog whip, yeah. Hitler impressed girls by whipping dogs with his hippopotamus hide whip. And also people, when Hitler would get into fights, there were all these brawls, he would just pull out a whip and start whipping folks. I thought whips were cool when I was like six. Hitler didn't grow out of that. He spent like a solid decade never leaving the house without a hippopotamus hide whip. Just beating people with a whip. So yeah, that's young

Hitler walking around in a trilby and a trench coat, hitting people and animals with whips. And he went by the nickname Hare Wolf and made all of his friends call him Mr. Wolf, or the wolf. And that was another thing he kept doing his entire life because during like the invasion of Russia, his secret headquarters was called the Wolf's Lair. Is it Hare Wolf, Mr. Wolf? Yeah, Mr. Wolf. Man, that is a bad nickname. That was Hitler's nickname for himself that he made everyone call him by. He signed his

love letters, Wolf. Wolf is okay, but Mr. Wolf is just silly. Yeah, yeah. Well, the real meat that I want to get into here is the story of Hitler's terrible farts and how they impacted history. So we've set it up, Hitler's, you know, walking around in a trilby and a trench coat, wielding a whip, hitting dogs all the time. But he's also farting constantly because Hitler suffered through his entire life from what was then known as meteorism, which is uncontrollable flatulence. He initially adopted his vegetarian diet so that his farts would get better, but they only made his farts worse.

Hitler's farts were a constant source of embarrassment and important political meetings. There's all these tales of like before he was in power when he was still like in politics and stuff, like him meeting with all of these other German politicians and like just couldn't stop farting in tiny enclosed rooms and train cars. And it just ruins these these meetings where he's trying to like, you know, establish a consensus government or whatever. So this isn't a thing that he's overly sensitive about and, you know, he's worried about it. Oh, he hates it. More than other people. But it's it's actually a thing where everybody else is like, Oh,

there goes Hitler, the guy who ends meetings by farting too much. Well, it was usually he would do a lot of dinner meetings and he would flee the room at the end of dinner. Like some they would just sometimes he would just run out like right afterwards and hide for the rest of the night because his farts were so bad, right? Like they were stick his ass out the window. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So in 1936, after he's in power, he decides he's had enough of his farts. And he decides to seek professional attention. This brings him into the orbit of a guy named Theodore Morel, who was a 50 year old doctor who primarily worked on actors. So Morel prescribed

Hitler two different pills for his terrible farts. The first pills were mutaflora capsules, which is a medicine you can still buy today. They're made from the poop of a World War One soldier who proved resilient to dysentery. And that is actual medicine. Like you get it today for for real stomach issues. Poop transplants. Yeah. The other thing he took were Dr. Kester's anti gas pills, which were just pure stric nine. Oh, right.

Yeah. As you do. Just poison. And you got the farts. Yeah. There's no consensus on how much of an impact taking poison every day for a decade had on on Hitler. Some people say that it was probably responsible for his tremors and his like horrible physical pain and ailments at the time. They said he would have needed to take 30 a day of these pills for them to be toxic. But we know he was taking like six

to 10 per meal. Like he was just eating them like candy. And the doctor kept him constantly, you know, stocked up on anti fart pills. So there's a US intelligence report made by the precursor to the CIA during World War II that noted all this. It says Hitler complained of meteorism, especially after eating black bread and cabbage and an abnormal feeling in the hypogastric region. These symptoms probably were due to a neurosis since occasional errors in diets such as the intake of lentils and peas brought only the normal amount of complaining. Furthermore, the prescriptions of unsuitable and useless drugs for these complaints brought about improvement. Epigastric

cramps and vomiting were noted during 1944-45. These were probably the result of constant strychnine and atropine medications and not of historic origin. So the CIA thinks Hitler's farts are all in his head and it's the poison pills that are causing his cramps. It's a weakness of character, as are all farts. So Hitler considered Morrell his savior for his anti farting pills, which apparently seemed to help. And privately said he saved my life. Wonderful how he helped me. So Morrell became Hitler's number one doctor. This led Morrell to a great wealth and power because he was able to start manufacturing vitamin pills first just for Hitler and then for everyone

who wanted to take the same pills as Hitler. And then presumably in his long like infomercial career afterwards as Hitler's number one doctor. So he starts giving Hitler different drugs. Like the fact that the farting pills work mean that Hitler trusts Morrell to do anything. So over the course of World War II we know that Morrell gave Hitler 92 different medications. 20 were manufactured by firms that Morrell owned himself and most of those had never been scientifically tested. So he was actually testing out drugs on Hitler. Hitler was his guinea pig for a lot of medicines before anyone else would try them. He'd be like, well let's see how it works on Hitler and then we'll

sell him to the Germans. Right. This makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Now there's a common myth that Hitler was addicted to methamphetamine. That's not quite true. He took a lot of meth but he didn't take anything all the time because Morrell kept him on a constant cycle of morphine, methamphetamine, cocaine and a variety of other substances.

Jesus. So he had morphine administered about 25 times from 43 to 44 for stomach cramps. 29 different injections and 63 kinds of oral tablets and skin applications. Like he's just doing a carousel of drugs for Hitler. In his last 28 months alive, Hitler had 21 injections to treat colds and 757 to restore his energy. Most of those are mixes of cocaine, methamphetamine and vitamins. So yeah, Hitler is taking just a swinging carousel of random doses of drugs and vitamins for the entirety of World War II and he doesn't question it at any point because these are being prescribed

by the doctor who was able to stop him from farting. Jesus Christ, man. Yep. Didn't he also like sleep in till noon every day? Well he stayed up really late too. Right. Like back before the war years. As he did when you were being injected 700 times with amphetamine.

Yeah. Yeah, before the war years he would stay up until like three or four in the morning watching American movies and like make all of his colleagues watch them with him. Stalin did kind of the same thing. Like that's just a dictator thing. Right. Like forcing people to watch movies with you. Mm-hmm. There we go.

Well, that's the sort of crazy stuff you're going to learn about History's Biggest Villains I guess on this show, huh? Yep. Yep. We're going to uncover who was wearing trilbis and who was farting uncontrollably. Now what is a trilby? A trilby is a fedora. Okay, got it.

It's like the alt-rightist hat that exists. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So that's one thing I've learned doing this is that those eight-chan Nazis are actually just kind of like returning to a pattern. Right. Yeah.

That's one of the balls to rock a Hitler moustache that I've seen. Yeah. I'm sure they all have horrible farting problems though. Right. Yeah. They do not look like a good smelling bunch. All right. So.

Yeah. So check back next week. I would recommend hitting the subscribe button and you will then be able to listen to our next episode. This has been Behind the Bastards. You can find us on at Bastards Pod and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook or behindthebastards.com on the internet. I am Robert Evans.

Thank you for listening.