Behind the Bastards - Part One: How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Robert sits down with Prop to discuss the early life of Heinrich Himmler, the man who built the SS into Hitler's engine of genocide. (6 part series)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coalzo Media Oh, wow, what time is it? Oh my gosh, it's Bastards 30. It's actually 117 in the afternoon, better known as my 8 a.m. I am Robert Evans, and I'm not good at getting up early. But you probably are. I imagine you're listening to this podcast on your way to work at the medical factory or at the whatever else job you do.

I don't remember any other jobs but doctor. The medical factory. Yeah, where doctors work, Sophie. Come on. You know that. I'm going to start telling my brother he works at the medical factory. See how that goes. Speaking of doctors, our guest today has a PhD in performing.

I don't, that was supposed to like rhyme something better than it didn't, it didn't, whatever. Prop, Jason Petty. What's up, man? Look, baptized in the phone. You know what I'm saying? I got a PhD in being me-h-me, whatever that means. That's so much better than the one I did. Bars.

Wow. Yeah, that was much better than how I did it. Prop, you are the host of a show called Hood Politics, which you can find the listener on this exact podcast network. Absolutely. Yeah. I had the privilege of being the first offspring. That's right.

of the network you feel me independent and we acquire you're the Instagram to our Facebook basically I am the reels to I am the stories to your to your vine that's right

that's right oh boy we probably shouldn't compare ourselves to Vine that's not going to go well no no no no prop how are you feeling today you good feeling some I mean feeling the same low level

existential dread everybody else is feeling Before you got on, Robert, I did warn him, I was like, it's a biggie. It's a biggie. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I feel like I'm about to, like, I'm about to, you're about to ruin my day. I feel like I'm about to ruin several of your days because this is going to take us a couple of weeks to go through, prop. We are, you know, I try to vary the bastards and vary the level of bastardry to keep things interesting, you know, for the widest variety of people.

but I got a list in my head of the heavy hitters, you know, the big guys. There's a lot of big folks, folks, and it was like, oh, you haven't done Juan Perron yet. You know, you haven't done Marcos yet. True. You haven't done Mao yet. Yeah.

And today, we're going back to the Nazi well for reasons that should be obvious to people who watch the news. That's extra relevant right now. Yes. And it's time for us to hit one of the big ones. Today, and this week and next week, we're doing Heinrich Himmler. Oh, shit.

Yeah. Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. The Scotty Pippin of Nazis. The Scotty Pippen of Nazism, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not, you know, Hitler's the Jordan. He's the Scotty Pippen.

Obviously, Herman Garing is Shaq. You know, everyone knows that. Shack taking strays. Dang, I was like, Rick Fox, maybe. Garing is like. Rick Fox, great callback. He's not the worst of them. So I guess that.

That's nicer to Shaq than calling Scottie Pippen the Hamler basketball. God damn it, the Murphy Lee fucking Lloyd Banks. Yeah. Who's the other second guy? Cuevo, like, you know what I'm saying? The fucking offset of, we're beyond my basketball knowledge now. Oh, we're not even in basketball anymore. We went to music there.

Himmler's, if we want to put it in the political terms, Himmler's the Dick Cheney of Nazism. Do you know who Cuevo is? Jose? Yeah, Cuervo? Yeah. We've been acquainted for years. I wish.

Yeah, we're going to need some for these. No, I have no idea who Cuevo is. We're talking to Migos. Yeah, we're talking Rayquan and Ghostface to Method Man right now, dude. Oh, okay. It's real. I know ghost base and Method Man. Yeah.

Well, the Method man of Nazism is probably not Heinrich Himmler. I'm not sure who. No, no. Maybe, hmm, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, meth is like, you know, that's the leader. Mm-hmm. Or is it Rizza? Nah, let's go with Meph.

Anyway, this is old, this is old-haired stuff. Like, yeah, I guess, yeah, Hitler's the method man of Nazis. Although, you know, Rizza, I think it was Rizza who did the soundtrack to Ghost Dog, which I don't think Hitler could have done. No, Rizzo. Rizzo is like. It's so dumb. They're so dumb.

I love it. Riz is actually a genius. And Jizza, the genius, is actually a doctor. Like, he's an actual PhD. But anyway. Well, Heinrich Kempler was none of these things. At all. What he was is a man who believed himself the reincarnation of an old Germanic prince

who died around the year 1,000. Oh, word? He's the biggest nerd of the Nazis. This is, and in fact, one of the books I have on this, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts, which is about Heinrich Himmler and the occult, and we'll be talking a lot about that through these episodes, like basically describes Himmler and his kind of fellow travelers, the one who are really into this German occult stuff that's going to be part of these stories.

As like, these are, like, they would have been into D&D, you know, in a different period of time. Nerd court, yeah. They would have been to really toxic nerds, right? Like, the guys who are, like, like, threatened to murder people over fan fiction about Lord of the Rings or something. Like, that's the kind of dude. he is. The guy that's going to argue that the little aerial should be white because she on the bottom of the ocean.

Yes. Yes. Okay. He would have been writing so many fucking letters to Disney and Marvel about like Woke and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Himmler is the thatist guy of the Nazi high command.

The that is guy. Okay. And then you put him in charge. Here we go. Yeah. This is an I-Heart podcast. Just like great shoes, great books take you places, through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

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So, if we were in a country where kids hadn't all been left behind since, you know, I was in high school, I would be like, this is a guy who doesn't need introduction. But obviously, he does need introduction, this being in the United States. Heinrich Himmler is the guy who he didn't create the SS. Like, it exists and has a couple of leaders before him. But he's almost from the jump, the leader of the SS. It has very little history before him, and he makes it into what it is. And the SS, the Schutstaffel, initially starts as Hitler's bodyguard and several units of Hitler's bodyguard.

It's kind of the elite within the Nazi party. And it turns into a state within a state. The SS is handling a significant amount of, they're kind of like the FBI CIA, like there's division of the SS, the SD that is that for the Nazi state. And they are also running all of the concentration camps. Like the Death's Head units that have the famed, the Skolin Crossbones thing that the SS is famed for, those are the guys who are running the camps. Those are the concentration camp guards. They're manning the death camps.

They also, there are SS combat units, the Vofan SS, which means the weapons SS. There's like well over a million people in the SS at the height. It is the elite of the party. And these are the guys who are doing the bulk of the war crimes. Not that the Vermacht doesn't, but like the SS is the war crime. crimes organization. Yeah. And Himmler created them, kind of, he wanted them to be a knightly order, right?

Like, he was very much inspired by the medieval, some of these medieval orders, like the Knights Templar. Yeah. And his goal was to create a new aristocracy using the SS, which is why, and to a big part, they're the guys doing the very worst of the Holocaust. And we have spent a lot of time talking about other SS men who are the implementation guys for the Holocaust, right? We've talked about Reinhard-Hydrich, we've talked about Eichmann, we've talked about the

Ainsets Grupa and, you know, several of the people in that who are the units actually like doing the direct shooting tens of thousands of Jews to death in the East. Yeah. And so in these episodes, one thing that people might find a little weird, we're not going to not going to not talk about that, but we're not going to go into most of it. We're not going to spend very much detail talking about the death camp stage of the system that the SS is a part of because we have covered implementation guys. And these are people, Himmler,

hires hydrick. Himmler is talking to and giving orders to Eichmann, right? So we're mostly going to cover Himmler up until the point that like the war gets going and the SS is running and the camps are running to talk about how he got to where he did and how he built the system that winds up doing the Holocaust. We'll spend less time on the Holocaust. That's just because we have covered the implementation guys, right? And I also think, I also think this is like, like this is, the service that is needed at this moment because we all understand there's been movies about Find Out.

Right. It ain't been movies about Fuck Around. Yes. You know, and Fuck Around is clearly where we're at. And anybody who understands that Find Out comes after Fuck Around is going, guys, hey, this is fuck around. I think they're fucking around. I think they're fucking around.

Yeah, like the flag don't get redder. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I feel like this like, and like you said, the child left behind thing is just like the ability to understand that four comes from two plus two is probably one of the most frustrating things that is happening, I think, in our political dialogue right now. Like you, like you want like you want a one to one. You want this to be as neat as possible, you know. and then people hide in that. Like, for example, like, when people talk about, like,

well, ICE is like the Gustavo, and it's like, well, okay, in vibe. Like, it's got Gustavo vibe. It's more like the secret police, but there's really no one-to-one. It's more like the SS, right? Yeah, it's more like this. But, like, yeah, the, what they're trying to do with ICE is a lot more like the SS. I mean, but, again, none of this graphs directly.

There are some things to declare to the SA, the brown shirts, and, like, I don't want to, we'll talk. some about that as we go on. But this is important because, number one, we're going to be talking a lot more than we usually do about Heinrich's early life and childhood because there's so much on him. There's a tremendous amount of detail. One of the things, we'll talk about one of the things that's unique about Himmler, of all of the Nazis, is we have almost his entire life and diaries from the time he was a little kid. Like he kept notes on most of his life. Like we have most of his daily life up to a certain point, which is very weird and very rare.

with a historical figure like this. And so I want to try in, I mean, the show is behind the bastards, right? And a lot of these guys, there's just not enough information on their childhood to really get that far behind. But with Himler, we will. And we're going to spend a lot of time talking about how he came to believe some of these weird mystical beliefs that he believed and how they influenced. Because the SS is largely formed based on his occult beliefs.

Like a lot of how he organized. It recognizes it and what he wants it to be is based on these esoteric things he believes about race and reincarnation. And so we'll be talking about all of that in these episodes, but I should just dive in, you know? Yeah, see, I think, too, like, it's something I've kind of been trying to think about, like, how to put into words for some upcoming episodes for Her of Politics is, like, the actual, like, power and danger of a really... smart, like, nerd that ain't afraid of you. Right. Like, there's, like, that combo is dangerous, whether it's they create a death cult like you're going to talk about or you turn into like a Nipsey hustle.

Yeah. Like, Nipsey is, like, some of the stories from his childhood was like, when he wanted to first start recording, he just made a computer out of, like, scraps he found at a junkyard. Like, he built the first computer that he was. when he was a little boy, you know what I'm saying? You got a rolling 60 crib talking about like assets and liabilities and investing is, you know what I'm saying? So like somebody who's a nerd, but is like, I'm not afraid of jail.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Can become either the leader we all needed or Hydra Kimler. Yeah, and Himmler, yes. And as we'll talk about, Himmler's, he doesn't have quite the courage to be, like, He doesn't want to get arrested. But he also, he idolizes the guys who do, right? He really wants to be them.

So we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's just dive into this man's life. Heinrich Luitold Himmler was born on October 7, 1900 in Munich, Germany. His family are generally described as middle class and most kind of short summaries of his upbringing. This undersells their level of comfort by a bit. he might be more accurate to say that his parents came from something had started out more working class, but had worked their way up to like the upper middle class by the time he's born.

They are more comfortable than most middle class people, right? They're taking vacations through most of World War I, right? And that, you have to be doing pretty well if you're able to still afford that in Germany in like 1916, right? His father was Gebhard Himmler, and he was the son of a civil servant in the Bavar. in government. Now, this is the early 1800s when Gebert is born, and that's before the unification of Germany.

Johann Himmler, Heinrich's grandfather, his Gebhardt's dad, was the son of peasants from Ansbach who trained him as a weaver. So Heinrich's dad grows up being taught to be like a peasant who's like weaving stuff. But he manages to, this is as modernity is really kicking in around Germany, and he manages to elevate himself up out of the peasantry by getting a job. job he joins the military first and he's in the military he's he travels around a couple of places in the military i think there's a period of time which he's almost kind of working as like a soldier for hire um and eventually back in germany he gets a job as a police officer and he works

his way up to sergeant um they use a different word for the term sergeant in germany but that's what he is he's like a he's like a upper middle level kind of local police officer okay um so by the time Gebert, Heinrich's dad, is born in 1865. Germany is five years away from becoming a country. And Johan is retired, you know, when his kid is born, but he's still working for the local government. He's one of these guys. He retires with a pension from his police job.

And then he gets a job basically in like the city council almost, that kind of thing. So he's like a fairly important man in town, right? Okay. And fairly, so the family is connected. Yeah, this is, this is Heinrich's grandfather, his dad's dad, right? So this is Johann. So Johann dies when Gebert is seven, which is normal for German kids of this era and this socioeconomic group. If your dad manages to make it up to be like a fairly, you know, middle or high level local government functionary,

he probably has kids later than a lot of other guys, and he's probably pretty old. And a lot of – this is kind of what happens to Hitler, too, right? Like his dad is much older than his wife. His dad is a mid-level functionary and dies when he's very young. So as soon as Johann dies, his wife, Heinrich's grandmother, raises Gebhard, switches him from Protestant to Catholic. We don't really know why. This is very weird. It doesn't happen a lot.

The opposite is more common in Germany because Germany is a more Protestant kind of Lutherans come from Germany, right? Yeah, Martin Luther is German. So the opposite switch is kind of weird. And we don't really fully know why, but Heinrich Himmler's biographer, Peter Longrich, seems to suggest that her motivation may have partly been the idea that being Catholic would be better for her son's future career because where they are in Munich, more of the local government was Catholic. And so maybe it would help, you know, if he was Catholic. The reality of that's kind of unclear.

But Gepphardt grows up to be a schoolteacher. And it's a mark of how different Germany is in this. placed in time to where we are now, that that's a big step up, the ladder of social mobility. Like, a teacher's a good job, right? Especially compared to, like, you know, what his family, their families have been doing previously. Yeah. So he gets a job at a grammar school as a teacher initially, but he's so good at the work.

He's a very good teacher. Most people seem to agree. There's some argument about this, but he's successful, at least. enough so that after four years as a teacher, he gets kind of scouted for like the majors of being a teacher, which is being a private tutor for a member of the royal family. Yeah, so I was going to say, yeah, you get a little comfy job. Right, you're not just at the public school teaching a riffraff. Yeah, yeah. He still teaches the riffraff, but he is also now private tutor for a prince of the Bavarian royal family, which is like a big deal, right?

Yeah. Because among other things, you've got one-on-one connection. with someone who is going to be very powerful and influential. So this is a job, not only does it pay pretty well, but it connects you to a royal family. Now, at this period of time, we're in Imperial Germany. They're ruled by a Kaiser, and people miss this a lot just because we don't talk a lot about how Imperial Germany worked. Even under the Kaiser, prior to World War I, Germany is not just a state in the way that we

conceive of a state. It's basically like, I think it's like four kingdoms that are lashed together. And they're all nominally under the rule of the Kaiser, who is the Prussian king. But each kingdom has a technically, like the militaries are all independent, right? Yeah. When war comes around, they all have to, like they're all unified, like it's written in basically to the constitution or whatever that's what they call it. But like when there's war, everybody's under one central command.

But outside of war, like the Bavarian and the Prussian military, these are separate entities. They have separate leaders. They have separate uniforms. When World War 1 starts, I think there's something like 215 different official German military uniforms. Like, it's nuts. I do like sometimes mourn and even finding it within myself, like, just us living in the era where we're in where we just honestly cannot imagine, like our brains can't fathom other ways to organize governments. You know what I mean? Like that like,

well, they're not all, well, government's not even the right word. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, you feel me? You know what I'm saying? So it's like, it's hard to imagine them saying, well, yeah, this is all Prussia. It's like, well, I thought it was Bavaria.

This is. No, no, no. It is like, they're all part of the same state, but also these are very different things. Yeah, and it's not like a state like as in California. It's like, as in a nation. But it's not like a nation because there's no sustained as nations yet. Yeah.

They're starting to become, this is like, this is while the, modern idea of the nation state is being like worked out right like that's where this is all happening and yeah it is so it is a big deal you know when I say his connection to the royal family is to the Bavarian royal family so he's not connected to like the Kaiser's people but he is his his official charge the kid he's teaching as it's starting as when this kid's like a teenager is Prince Heinrich of Wittlesbach right and he is the son of the Prince Regent of Bavaria the Prince Regent is the prince who's going to become the

king. Yeah. And Prince Hydrick is not going to become, I mean, he could theoretically, but a lot of people would have to die, right? He's not close to the throne, but he's still a prince, right? So it's still a big deal. And, you know, Gebert is the son of a cop who was himself the son of a peasant. And so the fact that in two generations they've gone from, we're peasants, we're weavers or whatever to, I am teaching a prince is a huge upgrade for the family circumstances. They have moved a lot. There's a lot of upward mobility for the Himmler family. And the fact that one of the ways this benefits him is that, like, shortly after becoming a private tutor to the prince, he gets a permanent job.

Basically, he gets, you know, the equivalent of, like, tenure, teaching at a prestigious private grammar school, right? So he goes from, like, teaching at a normal school to teaching at a really nice school because he's, like, I think basically the royal family is like, hey, you should take this guy, you should hire this guy because we don't want the guy tutoring the prince to be working at like a normal school, right? Like, he deserves a better position. So they start making good money.

And it's not just about that they're making, you know, upper middle class money now, but they have connections now. He can, I think it's the kind of thing where you don't want to ask too much. But if you ask for a favor, you can probably get it in the favor of a word in someone's ear from a member of the royal family of Bavaria. can move things for you. So now that he's established, he's got this prestigious job,

he's got these connections. It took him a while to get to this point, but now it's time for him to get married. And as I said, he's going to get married later than is normal for people here. He falls for, or at least decides to marry,

I don't know how in love they were, a woman named Anna Maria Heiter, and this is Heinrich Himmler's mother. Anna's father was a successful local businessman. He had died years earlier, but she brings a sizable dowry to the marriage, right? Enough that they might have been able to live off the dowry, right? Like, that's how come.

I don't know if I'd say that they're rich, but they are upper middle class. That's a score, man. Yes. I got to tell you, if there's any, if there's any incredibly toxic things from the past, that I wish existed. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Like, you already, like, I already. She's already love this woman. She's already choosing to marry me. And I'm like, wait,

you come with what? Yeah. Wait, hold up. Yeah. I mean, it was mostly downsides, but yes, it would have been just getting money when you get married. Yeah. Obviously, there's a lot that's toxic about this for a lot of people, but not for the Himmlers, you know. And part of what this shows you is, and this is something that Heinrich's, it kind of runs in the blood or whatever, the Himmlers are really good social climbers. That's primarily how Heinrich gets the way, like, he has good instincts for, this is someone I need to meet and be friends with. And they're going to, like, help me get a leg up. And then this next person is who I need to meet and be friends with.

And that'll help me get a, like, this is something his dad is clearly really good at. The way, the level to which his dad climbs and his grandfather had climbed show that there's just a degree to which Himmlers are really good at social climbing, you know? They've just got whatever that thing is. So Heinrich Himmler is born, as I said, in 1900. He is the second child and the second son of the marriage. They'll ultimately have three sons. It's a mark of how well the Himmlers are doing that when Heinrich is born,

Geberd asks his student, Prince Heinrich, if he'll be, who's like 16 at this point, if he'll be Heinrich's godfather. I'm actually kind of surprised he's a middle child. Yeah, he is a middle child that actually has an influence on the guy he becomes. Oh, okay. And Prince Heinrich agrees, again, which says that, like, Like, they have a really good relationship. That's kind of a big ask from, like, a prince, like, hey, we mean my kid's godfather?

But he says, yes. Yeah, you got to really like this fool. Like, I'm at, like, most time, Prince is like, wait, I'm sorry, what's your name again? What's your name again? You're the help? Are you serious? But he says, yes. Yeah.

They must have had a good thing going on. How many people have asked you to be the godfather prop? I feel like you're a lot of people's godfather. I've been asked many times. Yeah. Oh, I'm godfather to like six kids. I don't even know the kids. Yeah.

I just godfather. I'm a godfather for hire, baby. You just send them money on their birthday, man. They come over. It's like, here's 20 bucks, kid. No. There's only like, there's two kids that I'm like actually active, one of which lives on our street.

So I'm like, okay, well, I'm her godfather. She lives next door. You're really getting into the godfathering. Yeah. You're a good choice. Yeah. I think so. You're a good choice.

Obviously it comes natural to me, being a Robert Evans. There's nothing more natural than being. a godfather. You are the godfather. Uh-huh. That's right, baby. Uh, speaking of the producer Robert Evans, you know what, he liked. Cocaine. Maybe that's who sponsored this show.

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So, as he comes into the world, the Heinrich Himmler, who would build the SS and one of the deadliest organizations in human history, is from the beginning a nepo baby. His parents put a lot of, again, they wait until their 30s to get married, in part because they want to, you know, Gebert especially, doesn't want to have kids until he can make sure they'll be nepo babies, because he is a climber. And the whole plan that Gebert and Anna Maria have is. that the family money that his mom brought in, that's like their cushion, is going to pay for a, you know, childhood for their kids of, like, prestigious schools. And particularly for Heinrich,

for whatever reason, it seems like they are setting Heinrich up more than anyone else for success, because he's the one who has the prince as the godfather. And, you know, they'll use the money to pay for him to get a really good education. And then the connections they've got with the royal family, they'll use to get him a lucrative job as an adult. And that will, you know, help the Himmler family ascend further towards the upper class, right? Okay. That, like, we made it to the upper middle class. Heinrich is going to take us up to the fucking aristocracy almost.

You know, like that's the plan. Now, depending on who you ask, you'll get different opinions on Gebert Himmler as a father. A 1971 article I found for the American Historical Review by Pete Lohenberg describes him as, quote, a pedantic and conscientious man. Ernst Hamfststengel, who is an early friend of Hitler and an upper-class German, an aristocrat who attended classes taught by Geppert at the private school, described him later as, quote, a terrible snob favoring the young titled members of his class and bearing down contemptuously on the commoners. And I could see that. It makes a lot of sense hearing other things about the guy, although it's also worth noting that Hanfstangle gives this account of Geppard after he's fled Germany and sat down with the OS to gossip about Heinrich Himmler. The first profile that the OSS, which becomes the CIA, gives about Himmler, Ernst is a major

source, as he is for a lot of these guys, because he knew them all and then he had to flee. And that's not perfectly trustworthy. This guy who was Hitler's friend and a big Nazi until, you know, things went too far. Yeah. It's one of those things. I don't, there's a lot of negative stories about like, yeah, Gebert was an asshole. he was like a bad teacher, he was a, that aren't entirely accurate because a lot of the first generation of historians work backwards from like, well, Himmler was obviously terrible.

So we, everything about his upbringing must have sucked, right? Yeah, yeah. And maybe that's not totally accurate. And his most recent biographers, or one of his most recent biographers, who's a major, his book is a big source for these episodes, Peter Longrich takes a more reserved tone towards towards Gebert, and he depicts him as actually a pretty good father for the time period. Quote, and this is from his biography of Himmler. As a father, he exercised his authority, not through being unapproachable, or through overbearing

strictness, but rather through patient efforts with his sons. They were subject to a system of rules and prohibitions, while their father monitored their obedience precisely, and at times pedantically. His strictness was designed to have a lasting effect and seems to have been all together compatible with kindness, love, and affection. So, I, dude, I think there's something here. I think there's, which probably you'll play out layer, which you'll probably correct me about. But like, I think there's something to the fact that like, okay, this guy is not royal,

Heinrich's dad. Yeah. But he was around royalty. So I feel like he probably was able to see just what his. And he's a teacher. So he's like, I wasn't poor. I didn't get out, get it out the mud. But like, you're around probably very privileged people.

And you like, I definitely don't want my. son to turn into this. But also, I want to award him the types of, like, value, like, he's a teacher. So it's like the types of, like, sort of, like, hard work, value, you know, trustworthiness. Like, you know what I'm saying? You marry into this, like, pretty, rather wealthy family. You got no reason to be a hard ass. You know what I'm saying? Like, because, hey, dude, like, it's like your needs are met. Like, we got a good job. You know what I'm saying? Like, And I really think that that, I wonder if that plays into him being like, yeah, like our needs are met. I don't have to like, I'm not, you know, in a gulag somewhere, like, which I know I could be.

You feel me? So I'm like, I would much rather be like, man, let me spend some time with my kids. You know what I'm saying? Like, I have been awarded this gift, you know what I mean, of being able to like spend time with my kids because I see what happens when you don't. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I can imagine, like, that actually playing a role has to be like, yeah, he probably was a good dad, you know?

Yeah, and I think he was. He's also, you know, we used to, the phrase that a few years ago is the book about, like, tiger moms, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that you get for, like, a lot of, like, Asian immigrant mothers who are like, that super, like, into their kids' education and very hands-on to try to ensure their success. That's how you might look at Geppard, right? Yeah. So he's very involved, and he doesn't seem to be emotionally unavailable. like for the time. Yeah.

But he also is, he's obsessed with his kids' education and with their success, right? That is his business, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there is, to the degree that that's kind of like, can be a toxic thing, that's also present here. But it's not toxic. He's not hitting his kids. We don't really have any reports.

Yeah. And I've read a couple from the old to the new biographies of Himmler. None really seem to suggest that he was, like, abused in that way. But he is, he is pressured from the beginning to succeed, right? to do really well in school, right? I could really see that, because that's your ticket. Like, yeah, that's your ticket. It's like you're not born, you're not a born of Prince, you know what I mean?

And like, this is how you're going to do this? You're not born a Prince and I don't want you breaking up rocks. Yeah. So like, let's do this. Yeah. And it's one of those things where, you know, a lot of these sources will kind of try to depict his father as being like, oh, yeah, he was this really boring pedantic man. It was like super shitty to anyone who wasn't rich.

And I don't think that that's not, that isn't, doesn't clash. necessarily with the, and he was also very attentive and in a lot of ways a good dad. Like, I think he was, the evidence does suggest he was, like, very much a starfucker. Like, if you were not of a good family, if you didn't come from money, he and Anna will, like, police who their kids are allowed to hang out with to make sure that they are, they're helping, basically like, oh, this kid's got to be at our level or above. Otherwise, you can't hang out with them. So they are, there is that degree of toxicity.

Right in front of slums, man. Right. Yeah, where it's like you are going to be somebody and I am going to make goddamn sure of it, you know? Yeah. But also it's not like the kind of thing where his dad is like mentally abusing him or like hitting him or like fucking with his brain. His dad is just bound and determined to make him a success. Yeah, it sounds like some like respectability kind of politics where it's just like, you know, you know, for us it was like, hey, you know, keep your hair nice. don't be wearing hoodies, like, you know, speak clearly, you know, don't be, don't be using

out of, don't be using slang, like, you know, just don't hang with them, like. Exactly. You won't, like, make these people respect you. Now, I get it. Yeah. So in February of 1903, when he's like a little kid, three, Heinrich falls seriously ill for the first time. This has something to do with his lungs.

His older brother is also sick a bunch. The family, I just think, isn't super, it's not clear what's wrong. It's always said as like a lung problem. I think it might be asthma. Like he may have just had asthma. It's not perfectly clear to me, but that would make sense. The ailment is severe enough that his mother takes him and his siblings to the Alps for a few months as a cure. Right.

Like that's what you do. You get them up in the mountain air. Your doctor literally prescribed go be in the mountains with these kids. I was like it's also at this time 1903. Right. So like what the fuck is asthma? Like what does that mean? They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

We just figured out germs like a month ago. Right. You know what I was that? Yeah. And everyone doesn't believe it. And everybody don't believe it. We're still fighting to get the doctors washing their hands. Yeah, I'm saying.

Reusing smocks. Yeah. So Heinrich recovers, unfortunately. But moving to them and moving to the mountains doesn't, you know, cure him obviously. But like they think, anyway, he winds up coming back. But he's always a sickly kid. And he has regular bouts of illness that will periodically Whenever he gets really sick, his parents focus on him again, and he's the middle kid, right?

So, you know, once he has a younger brother, there's a kind of Longrich sort of suggests, and I like Longrich as a biographer, but he doesn't really provide evidence for this. I think it's just one of those things where he's like, well, it makes sense. Maybe as the middle kid, he savored the fact that when he was sick, he got all this attention, but he doesn't really provide us much of the way of evidence on this. So this may just be kind of him inferring. when Heinrich starts school in 1906 so you know three years later he's still ill enough that he misses 150 days out of his first year of classes due to a variety everything he gets

measles he gets the mumps he gets pneumonia several times and his older brother had had a similar experience with school but still gets really good grades better than Heinrich in fact and long rich suggests that the fact that his brother is does better than him at school is something that frustrates Heinrich. I don't, the evidence of this, there's not like direct evidence, but there's some reasons to believe that he is very competitive with Geberd and kind of has some insecurity over the fact that he never outdoes his brother in school. One of my secondary sources for these episodes is a very old biographer of Himmler, just

titled Himmler by Willie Frischauer. And Longrich doesn't love Frischauer's book because it's one of, it's basically the first big biography of Himmler. And so it's outdated. I think it's written in the 50s. And that is true. I wouldn't use this as like the prime source because it is so old. And historiography has moved beyond here.

But it's from the first generation of books on Himmler, right? I was going to say like it's closer to when it happened. It's closer when it happened. I think one of the reasons why I do find it worth reading is that it sets up you see in Frischauer's book where a lot of both misconceptions and myths about Himmler start because this is the first. like big history. And I think it is valuable for that, for understanding where some of these ideas come from. And one thing that is interesting is outdated as Frischauer's book is

it's one of the first, it's one of the only books of that first generation that kind of describes the Himmler family life the same way Longrich does, because other people writing about Himmler in that period really tried to emphasize the toxicity and the fact that Himmler grows up, you know, with this overbearing father, and he's this, like, kind of psychopathic kid who has these, you know, and Feshawr's account of it really does jive with long riches in the fact that, like, no, his, his upbringing was reasonably good for the era. Fershauer emphasizes the fact that Gephard was a huge nerd for German history and, like,

into archaeology, and that this has an impact on Heinrich. As a little boy, Heinrich Himmler sat on his father's knee almost every evening, ear-glued to the lips from which tales of wonderful adventure flowed in a rhythmic-studied language. Hero of the tales, invariably, was grandfather Johann Conrad Himmler, soldier of fortune who had hitched his star to any army that would have him, a rugged 19th-century warrior who had burst the narrow confines of his time and branched out into the wide world. Grandfather's most glorious campaign had been fought in Greece. He marched in the shadow of the Acropolis.

he had seen Thebes in the past of Thermopylai and brought back to his own humble environment a breath of adventure and greatness. See, to me, I feel like there's like, just for when you're just trying to understand a person, an era, a moment, there's like, like you, like you said, like a lot of this, a lot of maybe this particular book

is outdated, but I do think just as a, it is, you know what I'm saying? But I do think as a practice, like there's pros and cons to that, like, but the pro is to understand. understand they're writing in a time and era. And it's like, this is actually telling me what you thought was important in 1950 to point out. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is how you thought about this.

You feel me? And like, and that, and that keys, that keys in, that keys into us. Like, you know, the, you know, the, you know, that somehow or another, the Edward Sharp in Magnetic Zero's, like, video resurface where we was like, yo. this song is trash like you know what I'm saying like people actually go and then we're thinking

you know obviously us who was there it was like it was a vibe you know what I'm saying like it was a vibe it sat in a time of other just that was just the vibe you know what I'm saying

like it's like yeah like the thought never crossed my mind to think about these lyrics you know or that they're from Las Phileas which is like you're from Bro you're from Griffin Park

surprising Edward Sharp hate coming out here. Yeah, I was like, what? By the Griffith Exervatory, guys. Like, yeah, but anyway. And yeah, that's the kind of, you don't see this story repeated in a lot of the modern historiography, which I think this is kind of important to talk about this because, and this gets more in the books about Heinrich and the occult. And none of the, I think the best of them is Himmler or Master of the Dark Arts,

but it's not a great work of history, certainly not. compared to Long Rich's book, in part because all of the books that focus on Himmler on the occult need to, it's the same problem that like Blitz has with Hitler and drugs where there's a lot of really good work and really useful original research done that I think the bigger biographies could stand to have more of, but because you're focusing on the occult thing, you make it a bigger deal than it really was, right? But I think this is important and it gets left out of a lot of the more modern accounts. And it seems to be based on, as far as I can tell, Frischauer, one of his major sources,

he talks to Gebhardt, Himmler, the junior, Heinrich's older brother is also named Geppard. And that's who's telling him about their childhood and about how they're raised. And Geppard isn't an unproblematic source, right, because he's Heinrich's brother. But I don't really see much reason to doubt the basics of this, right? You know, there's some reason to doubt was Himmler's grandfather, did his life really go that way? But the fact that Himmler Heinrich was raised with stories of his grandfather being this great warrior and, you know, that be like their ancestry being important and like German history being important and this kind of like medieval, like these medieval stories of like knights and kingdoms, you know, he one of the things that obsess, as a kid, they traveled this like medieval town that still got its old walls. And Heinrich is like obsessed with these walls. He has a big imagination, and it's always focused on almost these kind of like the German equivalent of the Arthurian myths, right? Like that's what as a kid, he is a huge, again, he'd be playing D&D, you know, every day.

He loves magic and he loves knights and this very much historically inaccurate but common picture of what medieval Germany was like, right? And I think the fact that his dad is sitting them down and telling them these fanciful stories of like his own father and of old Germany, that's probably where this starts. And Gebhardt also, senior, he's an amateur archaeologist, right? He probably spent some time even digging for old artifacts. He collects coins and he collects like some old weapons, whatever can get his hands on, which is a hip hobby at the time, right? Nationalism is a fairly new concept in the early 1900s. And it's sexy and a big part of German nationalism because Germany is very new. The country had only come into being a couple of decades earlier.

There's a lot of focus in like official propaganda and it just becomes popular for archaeologists to find evidence of like the Germanic tribes, our ancestors, and we're going to pretend that they were a lot more united and that German identity was more of a thing for them than it really was. You know, when the Romans talk about the Germans, they're not talking about the Germans as we know them. Some of the tribes that they fought with are ancestors to modern Germans, but some of them were like Belgians or whatnot. And they just all got kind of lumped together because the Romans aren't, you know. We don't know what y'all are. You don't know where you came from.

You're here and you're all kind of like have some similarity. So you're all the fucking Germans, right? Yeah. Yeah. They just meant y'all up there. Yeah. That like, yeah, exactly. But they got hammered into being.

Germany has just been hammered into being by Otto von Bismarck. And so, and, you know, another thing that happens around this time is Heinrich Schliemann, I think, was his name, finds the ruins of the city of Troy. Well, he destroys the ruins of the city of Troy, digging to something older. Anyway, but he finds where Troy probably was. And that's a huge deal in Europe. And it kind of ignites this whole, like, well, there's got to be other. Let's find these ancient ruins of German civilizations.

that prove that we're a great and ancient people, you know? And Himmler gets carried away with this. Gebhardt, his dad does, and, you know, Heinrich and his older and younger brother, both catch this bug, right? They're Germany nerds. Yeah. They also get into stamp collecting. Gephard's a big stamp collector.

Wait. Yeah. Family a dweebbs. Family a dweebts. Oh, my, guys, collecting stamps. Yeah. See, there is a role in culture that bully. are supposed to play.

Do you know what I'm saying? And alas. No, because it is one of those, if, like, Gebhardt was raising Heinrich Himmler today, like, Heinrich would be sitting on his lap as he sends, like, death threats to Disney for putting women in Star Wars. Like, that is the kind of dude.

That's the kind of family this is. Speaking of sending death threats to Disney. No. Don't do that. Oh, wow. Please, please don't do that. Don't do that. But, you know, send a death threat to yourself.

Keep yourself on your toes. No, also don't do that. Why not? It's not illegal to threaten to kill it. Well, it might be actually. Anyway, here's ads. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Othia and Billy Shaka

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now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast, We're back. So, when Heinrich is a kid, his dad, one of the, like, again, his dad is very hands-on, he's making his, when his kids are sick, he makes them, like, keep up with their schoolwork and whatnot on, like, the weekends, he's sitting down with them and they're going over what they went over in class. He's super hands-on with this. And one of the things he makes his kids do is part of his educational plan for them is from a very early age when, they're quite little still, not a toddler, but, you know, when they first learned to write, he teaches them stenography, right, so that they can write quickly, and they write letters to each

other, but he also makes his kids keep a detailed diary. And he checks the diary. Like, this is homework he's giving his kids. He's not checking it to like, I want to make sure you're not, you know, doing something bad. He's checking it to make sure that you are writing well, right? And it's, hey, yeah. Rating your essays. Yeah. Longrich writes that Gabhard, quote, encouraged them his sons to use school holidays to consolidate what they had been taught. So they're spending their holidays going over their homework and whatnot, their school work. And he makes them keep these diaries.

And as a result, we have, like, most of Heinrich Himmler's, a lot of his childhood documented from a day to day, sometimes on an hourly basis, in granular detail. Yeah, now we're back to the tiger mom stuff. You're right, dog. Right. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

And you won't be surprised to hear that once this fact, fact comes to light post-war, once, like, people find out, you know, first the extent of the Holocaust and Heinrich's involvement, and then that he's got this childhood diary, all of these psychoanalysts, armchair and official ones, are like, oh, shit, I'm going to, I'm going to make my career analyzing, finding the evidence of psychopathy and the diary of young Heinrich Himmler, right? This has to be the key to his madness, you know? It's got to be in this, because obviously, you can always tell when someone's a kid if they're going to grow up to be a monster.

And this is bad medical science and it's bad historiography working backwards from someone, what they did as an adult and trying to be like, ah, the key must have been in this shit he wrote when he was seven. It's bad and it's always real. There's every analysis

that tries to look into his childhood from this standpoint that I've read is bad. One of them, I don't know, it's the most detailed. There's a lot of nonsense Freudian shit. written it, but there's a paper I read called the unsuccessful adolescence of Heinrich Kimler, written in 1971 by Peter Lohenberg. I mentioned it earlier.

He's an American psychoanalyst and a historian who my analysis of him is that as a young man, he discovered Freud and never looked back. And there's a lot of, there's a lot that's good in this paper because he does go over all of the diary, which is not a thing I am able to do is in detail, read everything. And there's a lot of interesting stuff you get. And it's also married to like, and this is evident. of his anal fixation. This is evidence of a schizzoid personality.

That's like, man, none of this is real psych. We know this is all nonsense now. And you also can't psychoanalyze a child from this diary that is... No. His diary is like, most of it is not, here are my thoughts and feelings that I'm pouring out.

It is, you know, Monday, woke up at X hour, ate this for breakfast, went to school. It's very, very just nuts and bolts. Yeah, I'm like, you're stretching the term diary here. I'm like, no, this is, my daddy's making me write this. Right, exactly. You know what I'm saying? So, like, I'm not going to put nothing deep about my soul in this.

Yeah. It's homework. And there's, so I don't include a lot of his analysis of this just because he's going way too far, but there are some really good things that he does make a note of, right, that are worth us quoting. And one of this is something that he writes about Heinrich's opinion of his mother, Anna. Quote, little is known about her. Unlike Gebhard Himmler, she scarcely receives mention in her son's diary.

And I don't think this is, I don't see much evidence that he hated his mom. I think it's just he doesn't think about his mom much as a person, right? Like she is not, this is a lot about his attitude towards women, which is consistent for his life. He's not all that interested in his mother, right? Or her influence on him. Yeah, that to me is like, if you, like, if you want to do, if you want to do fake science, yeah. It like, oh yeah.

You actually miss what's really there. You know what I mean? What actually really is interesting. because it's not like this is not like this. This is useful, right? It's useful, but you're so looking for edipus and shit that you're missing. Clear evidence of his psychopathy. Yeah, I was like, no.

That's not in there yet. But here's what it is showing you. But this is interesting. Yes, exactly. So I'm trying to pull the stuff that is interesting out of this paper without including a lot of the Freudian shit that I think is going way too far. But so there are, again, a lot of interesting details in here. And I'll quote another one.

Heinrich Himmler always maintained a high awareness of rank in titles. He meticulously referred to the correct title and social status of anyone mentioned in his diary. And this is both. Obviously, he's being raised to do this by his father. But this is an example of what I said, his dad passes down, as I'm sure his granddad did to his dad. Yeah. The kind of things you need to do to be a social climber. And one of them is always know who people are.

I know who you talking to. Yeah, exactly. Know who you're talking to, how to refer to them. and who it's worth kind of getting ungood with. And Heinrich is going to be good at this. And I think this is the start of how he's accultured to do this. I was going to say, now, that is useful. It's somebody who understands, yeah, who's in a room and who I need to impress,

who I don't need to impress, like, that tells us something. And you get a lot, people talk a lot about, like, okay, like kids who come from poor families versus kids who come from rich families, what are the different, like, you know, rich parents raise kids in a way that make them understand money better and how to keep it better, because the parents know how to do that. And this is kind of the same sort of thing, right? Like the fact that Heinrich is being accultured to do this is evidence of how his dad is preparing him to be the kind of social climber that's able to get as far as he did in

the Nazi party. Now, another interesting fact from this diary is that we see in it very little evidence of anti-Semitism, right? which is not to say he is anti-Semitic as a little kid, his family is anti-Semitic, but in a normal way for German Gentiles of the time, right? There's not evidence as a little kid in the way that there is with like Hitler, that he is really obsessed with this stuff, right? That we don't really see.

And this comports what's in his diary, just because we always want secondary sources. One of the people who talked about Heinrich after, you know, when the war started, was a German who had fled to the United States to escape the Nazi regime named Hullgarten. And Hullgarten realizes as an adult when the Nazi rise to power that Heinrich Himmler had been in school with him. Like they were classmates.

Oh, shoot. They went through years of school together. And so he gives us some interesting details on Himmler from someone, obviously not an unbiased source, but from someone who is observing him, you know, as a young kid. He describes his appearance as, quote, a child of hardly average height, who was unusually pale and physically very awkward, with haircut fairly short and easy. even then a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his slightly pointed nose, and who was seen with a, quote, half-embarrassed, half-malicious smile on his face.

Now, Longridge continues to write in his biography of Himmler, quote, according to Hallgarden, Himmler had been a model pupil, liked by all the teachers. Amongst the boys, he had been regarded as a swat and been only moderately popular. Hallgarden had a particularly clear memory of the unhappy figure Himmler cut, much to the amusement of his fellows, in gymnastics. Hatred of the Jews, Hallgarden went on to say. was not something Himmler was all at all associated with at the time.

On the other hand, he said he remembered Heinrich's radically anti-French outlook. And so I think that's like, he was just like a six. He's a nerdy kid. He looks, he's like a weird look. He's not like a handsome kid. And he's not, he's awkward. He does bad in gym, you know, kids make fun of him for that. Yeah, yeah, he's the guy that like, yeah, totally like your teacher, who I was one for a while where you were just like, wait,

this kid's in my class? Like you just, like you just miss him. You know what I mean? Because it's like, he turns in his homework. He does good, but not that good.

Yeah, he's not that good. He's not that good. He's not that upper 20% probably, but not enough that like he super stands out. But like the teachers like him because he doesn't cause problems.

And the other kids make fun of him because he's kind of, he's kind of physically, he's a dwee. Look at a picture of Heinrich Himmler. I'm not trying to be like, body shaming the Reichsfehrer of the ass. says, but like, he's a nerdy-looking guy.

He's just a little dweeb, yeah. He's not, he doesn't look like an Aryan Superman, right? And this is, this is relevant because it's going to have a lot of influence on how he, why the SS works the way it does and how he tries to present himself. But it does, I think Hallgarten's recollections, along with the diary, make a very solid case. Heinrich is not particularly anti-Semitic as a kid. And being anti-French matters a lot more to him as a kid than being anti-Semitic, right?

And the fact that you've got this guy who doesn't like. him, who wasn't biased, being like, yeah, I didn't see much evidence that he was super racist against the Jews as a kid. That's probably the case, right? Yeah. He ain't like the French, though. He fucking hates the French. Oh, my God.

Fuck you, Frenchie. He's inventing slurs for the French. What a dork. Now, thanks to his father's obsessive involvement in their education, the Himler boys do very well in school. Heinrich is not the standout of the family, though. His grades are good, but they're never as good as his older brothers. and he never makes it to the very top of the class.

He doesn't stand out. Heinrich's mother pushes the boys to be observant Catholics and is so insistent on this that Gephard actually has to force his wife to ease up on them. He's like, you're going way too hard on the Catholicism stuff. We don't need to be... Slow down, because. You know, they go to church every Sunday.

They're diligent about it. But like, she wants them to be... She's way more into it than he is. One of my favorite weird details from the Frischauer biography, which is that very older, much older biography, is that as a kid, Heinrich said his prayers in front of, quote, an ivory statue of Christ,

cut from one big elephant's tooth. Just a sign of the era that that's a thing they've got. Cool, I guess. All right. Frischauer claims that by age 10, Heinrich could, quote, reel off the dates of famous battles. The saga of the Nibylungs were his bedtime stories. The wars of the Middle Ages fuel for his imagination.

nation. And this is what Heinrich's into, while the other, the normal thing for boys to be obsessed with is stories of Native Americans fighting like the U.S. cavalry, right? That is like we talk about this. Hitler's hugely into cowboy novels, right? This German con man named Carl May. That is the big, that's the Harry Potter of its day. It's the major thing that kids are into. It's their fucking Dragon Ball's ear or whatever if your kid who grew up when I did. Heinrich is different in that he is just he is a nerd for you know these this Wagner operas the ring of the nibolungens which is kind of a precursor to the Lord of the Rings the Lord of the Rings takes a lot from that saga and from like you know stories of the crusades and these other battles and wars in

the Middle Ages this is what he's obsessed with right you know like this is this also reminds me of like as you're talking like just how recent this is yes like this isn't this is pretty this kind of just happened. No. For another example of how recent it is, as like an adolescent, I think from the time he's probably around like 10 or 11 to like his, you know, maybe preteen or teenage years, he regularly attends jujitsu classes. He's into jujitsu as a kid, right?

Because this is an upper middle class kid. In upper middle class, Western kids have been going to karate for forever. I know it's not literally karate. Shut up. It's fine. No, we get it. Boutier-Sensei. Yeah.

Frischauer also claims, quote, for many months, the boy, tortured himself with attempts to learn the piano. But his father soon realized that the awkward fingers would not follow the command of his over-eager mind. Most boys are relieved when their parents agree to liberate them from the attention of their music teachers. To Heinrich Himmler, it was a sad day when he was told that his hopeless endeavors had come to an end.

For years afterwards, he would sit silently and listen to his elder brother, extracting heavenly tunes from the self-same piano which had defied him. On Sundays, he'd accompanied his brother to the church where, to his envy, he was playing the organ for the congregation. This is, I'm sorry, this is two positive points in the dad bucket here again. Right. Just to have this, a lot of daddies ain't got that self-awareness to be like, son, son, you're not going to make it as a piano player.

Stop, stop, stop, stop. You don't have to keep going to. Son, you don't have to keep playing this. That's not your thing. Look, you write the stories. You went to the novels. I'm not judging you about it. You are a great student, son, but this piano, just lead that to your brother.

Yeah, leave that piano. You're doing Jitsu. He's better than you will. Look, son, be good at what you good at. You do the Jiu-Jitsu, son. You are an amazing student and I love me. Stop hitting him keys, son. Yeah, yeah, you're not, this isn't going to work for you.

This ain't your thing, baby boy. And look, I don't need, I don't need you to do, don't do this for me, son. Like, go find something you good at. If only someone had the same conversation with Ringo Starr. Yes. Wow. Yeah, that's coming in a hot with some Ringo slander. Wow.

One of the many similarities between Ringo and Ringo. to Kimmler. Sheesh. Sorry. Poor Ringo trying to get bars off in the- He didn't do anything wrong. Witing songs. You're like, let that, what, what Ringo do wrong?

I just, I just yes and you, and then it was like, wait. I'm a Pete Best Stan. Okay. So now again, Longridge cautions for Shower's biography as a source. And this is, again, not just because it's outdated, but because we're talking about, like, this passage really plays up that he is super jealous of his brother, his brother's much better than him at this. And the source for this primarily is Heinrich's older brother,

Gebert, after Heinrich's death, talking about, like, I was so good at the piano, and he was, he never got over the fact that I wasn't as good, he wasn't, he couldn't never be as good as me, right? Maybe there's a degree to which Geberts. But if that's the case, if Geppard is lying about this and either, I mean, Heinrich did try to play the piano definitely and wound up, it didn't work out. But if he's lying about Heinrich always, you know, being super jealous, of his skill, that's just as interesting an insight into the Himmler family dynamics,

either way, if the story's true or if it's a lie Geberts telling, it's evidence that there's a lot of kind of competition and insecurity between the brothers, right? Or yeah, or just how he felt about it. Like, I feel like my little brother's jealous of me. Like, as you said, that's, I mean, normal, you know what I'm saying? Normal, but it suggests something about the family and about Heinrich, right? That there is this competitiveness between the brothers, and that is something that motivates him is his desire to compete and prove himself against his older brother.

Yeah. For Shower's book also goes into detail about the Himmler family's obsession with their ancestors. It describes a shrine in the family apartment that Himmler later named the Azenzimmer or Ancester's Room. He tries to get basically every family and certainly in the SS to have an Ancester's Room. Okay. This is a thing later Heinrich makes a big deal about. Longwich doesn't really talk about it in his biography. And I think it's because he later makes this into.

do a shrine thing, I don't think this is a shrine for his parents. I think that's Himmler kind of working backwards and trying to say, like, oh, my father established this practice that we should bring to the Reich of having an ancestor shrine. The literal description of it is like, it's some pictures of like their grandfather and some things he'd owned and some things they've been sent over the years, mementos from family members. It's a memento covered, right? I was going to say, yeah, it's like, you know, I live in, you know, I live in East L.A., there's Ophrenda's everywhere. You know, you have your all-te. That's what this is.

It's not like an altar, altar. No. And Himmler gets super into the occult and we'll make this into it. And I think Himmler is exaggerating what this was. This is just like a pretty normal thing for hours to have. So by 1914, which is when the World War I is going to break out, Heinrich is a promising teenage boy. He's 13, 14 years old this year. He's doing well in school.

And he's just a couple of years away from entering the working world. If he had been a poor kid, he would be functionally an adult working. at this point in time, right? And the plan is when he, in a couple of years, two or three more years, when he's ready, he'll use the influence of his godfather to secure him a place in a place in a really good school, and that'll help him secure a really good job, and he'll elevate the family, right? Unfortunately, for everyone, world events are going to conspire to stop this future from coming into existence. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was gunned down in Sarajevo by a crazed Bernard Montgomery Sanders.

Heinrich Himmler was on vacation with his family on the Austrian border. Look, Sophie, the truth has to get out, you know? Someone has to stop him. Listen, time travel has existed for a long time, and I'm telling you, Bernard Sanders has got around, you know what I'm saying? He's gotten around, you know? Yeah, he actually, he was actually even the group that signed Franz Ferdinand. Yeah, the band as well.

The band, yeah, they started, he signed a band too. Every time there's a Franz Ferdinand in history, Bernie Sanders is involved. It's really Bernie. Did he stab Caesar? You can't prove he didn't. So he must have. So the initial events, because Heinrich's on vacation with his family, when the Archduke gets assassinated and like the chain of events that leads inevitably to war start off, he responds

to this initial outbreak as just another and like the beginning of the war as like just kind of another part of the day. His July 29th diary entry reads, Gebert's birthday, outbreak, and this is his brother, Outbreak of War between Austria and Serbia. Excursion to Lake Waging. I mean, he's 19. Yeah, yeah, let's give him that. Austria and Serbia go to war.

We go to the lake, you know, yeah. Yeah, and I imagine, like, yeah, like, that war for him is as far away as, like, you know what I'm saying? It's initially, like, he doesn't know what it's going to be, right? Yeah. And Longrich, especially because Austria and Serbia, like the Balkans, they're always, shit's always going down there. You don't even know, like, what is, like, you don't know what they are. What is Austria-Hungry? Like, where's the line at?

Obviously, he knows, but this is a little, for him, it's like, it's like you hearing like, oh, you know, Israel's exchanging missiles with Hamas again. That's what I'm trying to say, yeah. Prior to October 7th, right? Now, obviously, things are much, like, everything's been escalated significantly, you know, with the genocide and whatnot going on. But, like, five or six years ago, you heard, oh, there's another exchange of missiles, right? Yeah, totally.

I was at this event one time, like, way up in the mountains in Utah, right? Yeah. The event with just these, like, people would, like, fuck off money. And, like, years ago, this was years ago. And then there was this, you remember at what was happening with the Kurds at the Syrian border, like, maybe about, like, you know, five, six years ago, maybe seven years ago. That would have been there almost seven years ago, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you was actually there. I think about it.

Right. So I was talking about it. And like I said, I'm at this event with these very wealthy people. And this lady who was clearly, like, clearly from the regent, you know what I mean? Like, so we're talking about the situation. And she was like, wait, what are you talking about? I don't think I heard of that. And in my head, I'm judging her.

Like, man, see, this is what happens, man. You know what I'm saying? You get wealthy. And she goes, oh, no, you don't understand. I'm from Beirut. Yeah. I was like, oh. She was like, I'm born and raised in Bay.

I went, like, you're like, your school bus was blown out, like the windows. Those were blown out because the martyr hit it yesterday. You know what I'm saying? So I'm like, oh, never mind. I apologize. Carry on. Jokes on me. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's kind of like this is, yeah, it's another, oh, these countries that like, you know, this place where there's always a conflict, there's a conflict. However, he goes back kind of later. Once it, because I think probably within hours, maybe a couple of days, it becomes clear that this is more severe. And he goes back to his initial entry. And he, like, he erases some stuff.

And he underlines the announcement of the outbreak of war later in red. And he writes the sentence, Proclamation of a State of War, once Germany declares war. So it goes back to his notes once it becomes clear, this is more severe. And he writes, he lists out the things that are happening as they're happening. Quote, number one, Germany mobilizes the Second Army Corps, even the Landstrom, which is like their National Guard type units. Number two, played in the garden in the morning.

Afternoon as well. 7.30, Germany declares war on Russia. Three, attacks on the French and Russian borders, planes and spies, we are packing up right away. So you get this, this is what's so interesting. You get this idea of, like, it starts out, we're playing in the garden in the morning and the afternoon. And then I hear that, like, Germany has declared war.

And then, like, there's fighting on the borders already. There's planes, there's reports of spies. We're packing up. We're leaving. We're ending our vacation early. Things have gotten bad very quickly. You get that. There's something about that that that's, yeah,

That's so modern. Yeah. That's like so close. Like, you know, I live and not even an eight-minute drive from the Alameda courthouse where the ice people that have been detained by ice are like, I can, like, I hear when like the smoke, like I can hear them. You know what I mean? And it's like you're, so I'm going, oh, made coffee, drop so all off at school.

Oh, heard some martyrs, heard some bombs go off. You know what I'm saying? Oh, there's some helicopters. you know what I'm saying and it's like I should go pick up my daughter like you know like maybe I have to grab her let me go pick her up you feel me like and then it's like you drop her off

and then me and my wife are like we're going to march yeah we're going to march so then we leave to go to you know what I mean so just like that's that reality of like or yeah like you're scrolling through your feed and yeah there's a there's a mass starvation on purpose happening and then the next one is some sort of joke about you know

Edward Sharp you know what I'm saying is the next thing you're looking at. It's just something so real about him saying, yeah. Yeah, it's super interesting. You very rarely get that. Yeah. And this is the only member of the Nazi high command that we have this kind of granular detail on. Like you get, there's pieces like there's that famous picture of like Hitler in Berlin when the Kaiser declares war.

You can see him in the crowd. Like you literally find Hitler. It's a thing he wrote about. And like that's really interesting. For Heinrich, we've got almost like a minute to minute list of like what's happening to him as a kid as the war breaks out. That's so interesting. It's part of why. these episodes, there's going to be so many of them.

We'll try to keep it to two weeks, but there might be more than four episodes in those two weeks. Because we've got to close this episode out now, Prop. We're over an hour. So, you know, you got any plugables to plug down at the end, dear? Yeah, dude, the hood politics. With prop, man, we've been really trying to step our game up over here.

Talk about the tap-in. So we do a Friday tap-in, which are like, you know, 10-minute things that are, yeah, just like little extra thoughts. You know what I mean? Some of them are, you know, a little more about me. I'm releasing a poetry album about like the end of the world. So we're going to be talking about a lot of that on the tap end. And yeah, man, we've been doing that.

Terraform's back. The cold brew's back. It's not online yet, but it's back finally. Praise B. Praise B. Praise B. Finally, dog. Man, hollered a lot of business lessons.

Listen. Yeah, yeah. So the Colbro's back. I need it. I need the energy. Yeah. And also, folks, we are currently raising money for the Portland Bail Fund. If you Google donor box, one word, defense fund, PDX fundraiser, you can find the fundraiser.

Yeah, that would help a lot if you want to donate money to the bail fund. They help bail out primarily homeless people who, you know, it helps them get out. It helps them fight their case. You're a lot less likely to go to prison if you're out on bail as opposed to locked up. They do not. They bail out. Anyone with the exception of like domestic abuse claims, right? So it's a good fundraiser.

They could use your help. Donor box, defense fund, PDX fundraiser. Just Google that. It'll take you right to it. Thank you all so much. Go to hell. I love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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