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

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Robert takes us up to Heinrich Himmler's adolescence and frustrating wait through the war years, which leads him into the world of far-right politics and eventually the welcoming arms of the Nazi party itself. LIVE SHOW ALERT: We are doing a new Behind the Bastards Live show! In the Alberta Rose Theatre, Portland, September 25th at 8pm! All performer proceeds go to support the Portland Defense Fund. Tickets: https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/behind-the-bastards-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/  Sources: Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) | American Experience | Official Site | PBS THE CAREER OF HEINRICH HIMMLER_0001.pdf Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life (p. 13). OUP Oxford. Kindle  The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler on JSTOR An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans "In Memory of the Girl in the Red Coat:" Heinrich Himmler’s Annotated Volumes of Mein Kampf https://ia803406.us.archive.org/29/items/docuv3/Books/The%20Third%20Reich/The%20Celebrations%20in%20the%20Life%20of%20the%20SS%20Family%20by%20Fritz%20Weitzel%20%281939%29.pdf https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/himmlers-bridal-bootcamp-school-nazi-brides.html https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/himmler-s-secret-directive-to-all-members-of-the-ss-and-the-police-on-the-care-of-all-legitimate-and-illegitimate-children-of-good-blood-october-28-1939 https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Master-Dark-Arts-Yenne-ebook/dp/B004NNUY2Y https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/26/266698688/heinrich-himmlers-private-letters-published-in-german-newspaper https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-private-heinrich-himmler/id6505124720 https://www.amazon.com/Himmler-Evil-Genius-Third-Reich-ebook/dp/B01M2A6B3G/ref=sr_1_17?crid=E50LI9MCINFL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.z6x_l5l35NMXS2OQuWFaVyTyeQToCbFtWufYLO0Ky4L51lUaUoGgVfmp9dpb0YgMMGMBzk6Ds5M4KY8XSGQdvzs_UWlPu3KkmHJV0_w1Lis71gwuHqxL4QpDLUxg_RgLfXjB7BuAQbn7kAstKkyA7w_NZpcXTr-nDXe0RoewTewNaEu0ci8AQ1anNJXxG-Dy.nKYUB17tVmFaGgeBMu1awu8zpzoH45_FAeO3Um6YpBs&dib_tag=se&keywords=himmler+biography&qid=1756935132&sprefix=himmler+biography%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-17&xpid=KnVwOODWUvtSTSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coalzo Media Hey everybody, Robert here, and Behind the Bastards, it's doing its first live show in quite some time at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, September 25th at 8 p.m. All performer proceeds will go to the Portland Defense Fund, which helps people who have absolutely no money and are going to be relying on public defense, get bailed out, and get, you know, outside of court help while they're waiting to go on trial. So please help support the Portland Defense Fund. Google Alberta Rose Theater, T-H-E-A-T-R-E, Behind the Bastards Live. If you just Google Alberta Rose Theater Behind the Bastards, it'll take you to the live show. There's an E-Tix.com. If you go to E-Tix.com behind the Bastards Live, you should be able to find it as well.

Again, all performer proceeds will benefit the Portland Defense Fund. You can also go to at Defense Fund PDX on Venmo or type donor box. Defense Fund, PDX to donate directly to the Portland Defense Fund. It's a 501C. Please help them out. And again, Behind the Bastards Live, the Alberta Rose Theater, September 25th, 2025 at 8 p.m. I'll see you there. I'm actually excited for the Nuremberg movie.

I don't know. It looks like maybe they kind of didn't have the budget to make it as good as they could have. But Russell Crowe is really good casting for Herman Gehring. You love Russell Crow. Well, I like him as an actor. But he's also, like, Herman Garing is this guy who is a young man. He's a fighter ace. He's super fit and, like, together and, like, a handsome celebrity.

And then as he gets older, like, he puts on a lot of weight and has problems with addiction. And, like, yeah, Russell Crow is a really good guy to pick to play Gering late in life, right? Robert. What? Say hi to Anderson. Hello, Anderson. How are you doing? What up, Andy?

What's up? She's the goat. I also have a Russell Crow story, but that's probably. you do. Okay, for another time. It's not as good as the Bill Gates story. Oh, I love that story. Or the Doug Wilson story. I love that story. It's not as good as both of those. For a second there, I was just thinking about like, and then you just start telling me the plot of the movie, the nice guys. Like, oh, no, no, that's based on my actual life with Russell Crow. It wasn't in the

70s, but yeah, no, that's about me. That'd be so funny. You're fucking Ryan Gosling's character getting hit by cars. Yeah, I ran into Russell Crow. Yeah, I ran into Russell Crow, this, so these People came into our neighborhood and said we needed to... I was going to try to break into 300, but I couldn't remember the rest of it. But anyway, that would have been... If I could have pulled off the 300 one, that'd have been great.

Well, speaking of 300. That guy... In no way. At least 300 guys die in World War I, and that's where we are at the start of this episode. World War I has began... Before noon. At least 300 people die in World War I...

In a minute, yeah. Before noon on the first. Yeah, that's like a bad 30 seconds during the fucking battle of the frontiers. Yes. This is an I-Heart podcast. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For my heart podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced to.

them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning River Road on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast, hunting for answers, I highlighted the story of 19-year-old Lachey Dungey. But she never knocked on that door.

She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last. time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to hunting for answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body party. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and colidoscope about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it listen to levitown on

bloomberg's big take podcast find it on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hi everyone it's nikol ann jemmy p a and curator of at mrs an jemmy on instagram where i have been teaching about pathology and death for over 10 years and i'm her daughter maria kukane and we host the podcast mother knows death each week we dive into the darker side of life exploring topics such as what can go wrong with the human body, true crime, medical mysteries, freak accidents, and more. New episodes of our show drop twice a week. Make sure to tune in the Mother Knows Death on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. So Heinrich Kimler, you know, starts when he's on vacation as a kid. He's taking notes. He's writing in his diary over the first few weeks as things are spinning up to a full-blown war. And we get this fascinating. One of the things that his diary entries provide us with is this really fascinating window into the state of imperial German propaganda at this time. One of his early diary entries, you know, before the outbreak or like right after the outbreak of, you know, once the German army gets into the fray and like everybody's actually fighting, he just writes English army beaten and then goes on to add, I'm as happy at these victories as the English and French are no doubt annoyed at them.

And the annoyance will be considerable. Falk and I would really, it's one of his friends, would really like. to fight right now ourselves. It's clear that the good old Germans and their loyal allies, the Austrians, are not afraid of a world full of enemies. Wow. This is a snapshot of, yeah, in the first couple of weeks of the war, things are going really well for Germany.

They take Belgium. They're pushing towards Paris. Most of, you know, the English army, this is remembered differently in Great Britain as like how well they fought. And even though there's very few of them, they inflicted hideous casualties on the Germans. But also what happens is the English army, as it has existed at the start of the war, is almost wiped out, right? Yeah.

Like, their standing army almost doesn't exist very, very soon into the war, which is why, you know, they have to do this general draft and stuff. And so, in perspective of the Germans, sure, you know, they were good soldiers, but, like, we wiped them out, basically. There's not that many English soldiers left anymore. And, like, the French are being pushed back. So he is just absolutely, from the beginning of it, is like, ah, we're unstoppable. And this, I think this is particularly, I don't want to do too much of, like,

like, again, what a lot of people do when they're looking at his diary and, like, working backwards from where he ended up and being like, ah, a clear sign of the monster he'd become. But there is something useful in that last sentence where he's like, the Germans, the good old Germans and their loyal allies of the Austrians are not afraid of a world full of enemies, right? The idea that, like, it's, you know, we can stand alone against the world. The fact that as a kid, he feels that way. Yeah, that's a sentence, man. Right. It's relevant to who he becomes. Yeah, that says a lot. Yes, yes. And that, you know, that's not, he's not alone. This is specifically what the Kaiser's propaganda is trying to inculcate. But part of why everyone in the Nazi high command is willing to make a lot of the calls and willing to back Hitler and a lot of the calls that lead them to being at war with the world is that they had been raised in this propaganda where it's like, yes, it's Germany against the world and we can take them, right?

Honestly, they almost do in World War I, you know, to be fair. Yeah. So it's also worth noting that a few weeks later at the end of August, once his family had returned home from vacation, and he'd had more time to talk with his, like, neighbors and his peers about what they thought of the war, he writes this, quote, generally speaking, there is no particular enthusiasm in Lower Bavaria among the people at home. When the mobilization was announced in the old town, everyone apparently started blubbing, crying. I would have expected that, least of all, of the lower Bavarians. They are usually so ready for a fight. A wounded soldier says the same. Often really dreadful and stupid rumors go round, all invented by people.

And that's interesting, where he's like, wow, all my neighbors are cowards. They're scared and sad that we're going to war. They don't think it's awesome. And a wounded soldier who came back from the front said that the war is a bad thing. What a dick. These people are idiots. Yeah, they're inventing rumors. This guy who got machine gunned and all of his friends'

diet is inventing rumors that the war is going to be bad. See, this is, again. Hearsay. Yeah, like, this is, yeah, y'all watch too many movies. Because, like, I feel like that, I feel like one of the most miserable feelings is, like, a wet sock. Yeah. Right? Like, so, like, so a wet sock that you can't do anything about.

Yeah. But it's also inside of your boot, and it's going to kill you. Yeah. The sock is so wet. and so moist that you're probably going to lose your foot because it's infected. Like that type of like, I'm not even talking about the bullets and the machines.

I'm talking about the food rations have maggots and mice in them. Yeah. All of my friends are dead. Yeah. And all my friends are dead. Yeah. You know the food I ate to survive

to get here to talk to you? I ate it off of my dead buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think a lot. when I'm reading about, like, Heinrich hearing from this wounded veteran and being like, what a coward, how dare you not want to fight?

It brings to mind just something from the early stages of the Iraq War. There was a sergeant who was a Nicaraguan lawful permanent resident who joins the United States Army, Camilo Maya, who is deployed to Iraq very early in the war in, like, 2004. And when he returns home after six months on a two-week furlough, he refuses to go back. and he's like, I'm a conscientious objector, the war is wrong, we shouldn't be here. You guys don't understand how bad it is and how bad it's going to go. Like, we need to stop this now. And he gets, like, put in prison for it for a year and stuff.

And I'm thinking about, like, as a kid, the things that I heard about him from my family and from the news about what a coward this man was. And it's like, this man was in fucking combat. He fought for this country. And he came back and was like, guys, this is a bad thing. It's bad. It's going to go bad. We're not going to win.

It's going to kill a lot of people. We should stop. And yeah, I mean, I can really understand Heinrich's reaction because as a kid, that's how I felt about this guy, because I was fucking propagandized too, you know? Yeah, you, some of us get past it. Heinrich never does. Yeah, totally. So, and it's one of the things that's interesting here is that, like, he's talking to these locals who are, like, sad that the war is happening. And the fact that, you know, a month before he writes this entry about how stupid they are and they're listening to all these dumb rumors, all invented by people, a month ago.

you were talking about how the British army's been defeated and the French are fleeing and Germany's and now things have bogged down and hundreds of thousands of Germans are already dead and you don't realize like maybe you were wrong like maybe everyone was lying to you about how easy this was got to be like you don't get that yet but he's a kid you know kids are dumb and he's no smarter than any other dumb propagandized kid in the history of the world So, when a trainload of wounded French soldiers arrived in town, Himmler wrote about them. This is interesting to me. He does write about these wounded foreign soldiers, despite how he felt about the French, with compassion.

He's actually, like, he's angry that there are some locals who are, like, angry that the prisoners are being taken care of and fed. And he's like, no, like, they're prisoners. They fought honorably. Like, that's not bad, which is interesting. Now, that said, several days later, he hears news about 90. thousand Russian P.O.Ws. And he writes in his diary that Russians, quote, multiply like vermin. So you also get flashes of the guy he's got to become, right? I think that's interesting. There's an element of, well, this was not a guy who was incapable of compassion as a kid. And also,

yeah, he's already, he's at 14. He's talking about Russians like their fucking rats. So, yeah, okay. I can see, I can see both. You weren't maybe destined to be Heinrich Himmler, but there were always the pieces of that in you too. Yes. Yes. Yeah. In his Freudian analysis of Himmler's diaries, Peter Lowenberg writes, two American historians, Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith have collaborated in studying Himmler's early years. They found that there were two distinct Himmlers, an early normal one, and a later psychopath. The early Himmler was, quote, to all appearances, a normal human

being. It is, they write, bewildering to discover how genuinely kind, considerate, and at times downright compassionate he was as a youth. And I don't know that I would agree, Himmler was a psychopath as an adult, in part because that a psychopath isn't capable of empathy, and he clearly is. He goes to the camps as an adult. He's nauseated. He, like, vomits because of what he's seeing at the camps that he is running. He is, I think this, and I don't say this to be like, he's not as bad as these guys think.

I think it's worse. If you're like, if you just can't care about people and do, terrible things, that's not as bad as being capable of empathy and choosing to do those things. 100%. Yeah, as looking at it and go, nah, this shit sucks. Yeah, this shit sucks. This is super evil. Anyway, oh, fuck, we're doing the wrong thing.

Like, yeah, no, oh, fuck, this is awful. Obviously, we got to do it. This makes it more honorable that we're willing to push through our nausea to kill these people. What are you going to do? Yeah. Right. Nah. I am like, man, the just, I think both of our shows have made this point so much.

many times that like you want to otherize the monster right like and call them a monster that there's something that is foreign or far from us with they have this weird brain worm in their soul that makes them something separate than us it's like no no yeah they're us and i i think that's kind of what i really want to emphasize here is i don't think and you know this is arguable this is my argument, I don't think he was destined to be the genocide guy. I think he made choices. And I also think that there's obviously, like, you know, nature, just his environment also helps push him to this, his people around him, his family push him to this. But I don't think that Heinrich Kimler, if you take this guy and you put him in a different time or you surround with better people

in the same place, he might have wound up being a very different person, right? I don't think this is a guy who could only ever have been a monster. I think he's a guy who chooses to do monstrous things. And I think that's important. Yes, rather than being born 1900, he's born 2,000. Right. He could have been a different guy. You know, better parents, a better environment.

Totally. It could have been a totally different person. Yeah. So World War I was an accelerating agent for the worst parts of his personality. War does not tend to make people better. Like many German boys, he became obsessed with the idea of serving and particularly he wants to be in combat he wants to be infantry now he wants to be an officer he doesn't want to be a grunt right he wants to be like because he sees that as in

part his he's owed that kind of position right he does his family's upper middle class he knows the prince he's supposed to be an officer right um now by 1915 at 15 he's getting close to adulthood he's not far from when he'll be able to join and fight and he he writes about being like over He can barely stand it that he's not out there yet, right? Like, this is driving him crazy that he's still too young to fight, and he's going to miss it. He's still worried, even in 1915, when it's become clear, oh, this is bad. He still can get over how angry he is at not being able to fight yet. And part of it, he's also very insecure.

His health problems continue, and he's really worried that, like, he might not be able to serve at the front because of his health. And so he starts taking actions. He gets obsessively into fitness to try and he gets into weightlifting. Like he's a, again, there's a, you can see the, the modern day version of Himmler would have fallen for a lot of these like far right. Joe Rogan-y-Hig. Like Joe Rogan fucking steroid grifters, fitness guys. He would have been really into that. Lowenberg writes, quote, on the eve of his 15th birthday, he wrote, I work out with dumbbells every day now to get more strength.

Yeah, you do. But as adolescence developed, his perception. of strength became an inner one. Strength to him was a function of inner control, of self-discipline over his emotions. Now, as a Freudian, Lowenberg describes this as a fundamentally anal retentive method of building strength. Okay, man. He quotes a later diary entry by 20-year-old Himmler, where Himmler Heinrich promises to seize, quote, like iron, the bit of self-control in my mouth. He means bit like a horse's bit, right? And then extends this, Lowenberg does, to a claim that Himmler must have been obsessed with a desire to masturbate.

And all of his obsession with fitness and with self-control is as a result of his constant battle with himself to stop himself from coming. I don't think there's any evidence of this. I think this is that Freudians are obsessed with coming, right? Yeah. Now, where did you get that? Like, where did that? Yeah.

He is, this is a Catholic boy. I am sure he's got a self-complex about his sexual urges and the fact that it's called I'm sure that this does influence him as it does like most kids in this era, right? I just don't, I think that you're, he's, there's, there's some reaching here going on, right? Yeah, I feel like what's, what's more, I mean, obviously like, even the practice of doing what I'm about to say, we're against doing it. But I'm like, but what seems to be, again, right in front of us was what they said about the boy in high school. Like, he's, he didn't, he's a late glow up. Like he's a late grow up. He's anxious about his.

fitness about being scrawny and weak yeah you know he's like i said like he's a six at best you know i'm saying so that's already happening and it's like dude nah let me put some let me bulk up a little bit i'm bigger now i bet you you know i'm saying like i go to this war i put some weight on like everybody like everybody you know my lungs i don't be running like everybody else you feel me like let him it's it's a normal boy i'll show them glow up moment you feel me that like to me is like, again, so far, I know that the tide is going to completely turn, but I feel like so far all this is relatable. Yeah.

And that's, yeah, I think that's a, yeah, a really important point. And again, I'm sure he's got some weird attitudes about masturbation. Of course. That's not nothing, but it's just, Loenberg describes it's like, this is probably is more important to him even than like preparing his body for war. And no, I think his obsession with physical fitness and his, he might have, you might even say body dysmorphia. He's very unhappy with his body. I think that's focused on his worries about not being able to fight, not being fit to be a soldier like he's supposed to be,

and like his older brother is going to be. In September of 1915, his parents and his older brother Geppard go to a field hospital for wounded, or at least a hospital for wounded soldiers with their parents, go like, you know, thank these soldiers who have gotten maimed on the Western Front. And Heinrich is really envious that he doesn't get to go. Like he's like, oh man, I wish I should have been there. Gepphard turns 17, and he gets to join the military reserve or Landstrom. Heinrich claimed, quote, if only I were old enough, I'd be out there like a shot. But he's not, and he has to content himself with joining the Cadet Corps, which is the Imperial

German version of ROTC, right? This is like, you're not quite ready to join, you're going to be an officer, we're going to prepare you for that. He starts in autumn, and he and his peers, they spend some time, they go out, there's like a week, there's like summer camp basically that they do. And, you know, I think it's a thing where once or twice a week they'll meet up. And they get some training. I think they do some shooting. Most of what they're doing is probably marching, right? But it's kind of trying to prepare you so that you need less training when you're old enough to go fight, right? He's

enthusiastic. He really likes wearing a uniform. He really enjoys being involved in this. But again, his health issues keep cropping up. And he starts, he develops, he has this severe stomach pain that he talks about, I think he has IBS, probably IBSD. If I just had to guess by what he's describing, we don't know, but I think he's got, huh? That have Crohn's. It might be, I don't think it's not, I don't think it's serious. It might be Crohn's. I, but I, it doesn't seem quite serious enough for that, because he would have been basically entirely unmedicated, and I think unmedicated Crohn's would have been more debilitating to him.

So painful. I think this is likely, but I, I'm not a doctor. But he's got some sort of of weird stomach gastrointestinal issue that will plague him his whole life this is always a problem for him um well i mean he's heinrich him so i guess i'm glad he suffered in the long run but he hasn't done anything bad yet i was like stomach problems that's a bummer not not for him he kind of he kind of deserved it long rich's biography suggests that his obsessive weightlifting is more of a response to these embarrassing health problems than an example of a broader need for control because he can't stop from masturbating. I think that's probably likelier than what Lohenberg theorizes. In late 1916, Heinrich's godfather, the prince,

is killed in action in Romania at age 32. This is a calamity for the Himmler family. And Heinrich in particular, they don't entirely lose their access to the royal family because like they know his mom. And so they have some ability to still make use of that relationship. but the prince being dead is it really damages their connections, right? They are much less tied in to royalty now and the social benefits that would have come from it for Heinrich. Yeah, you're his plus one, man. Like you can't like you just lost, you're the plus one. So now you're not on the list.

You know what I mean? You're the plus one. And then he got fucking murked by I think it's, I think he probably died from Schrappel. I forget exactly. Maybe I'm wrong. But he gets killed on the fucking front, right? Yeah. In May of 1917, Heinrich's brother Geppard joins an infantry regiment and starts his training to become an infantry officer.

Now, Heinrich is now old enough to serve, right? Because, you know, his brother's 17 in like 1915. Heinrich's a couple years younger. He's like 17 now. You know, this is the second to the last year of the war. He is old enough that he could, if he were a regular German, he probably would have gone in infantry and been out there pretty quickly. But his parents, again, he doesn't want to serve as an enlisted. man and his parents beg the mother of his dead godfather, you know, the, yeah, I don't think she's

the queen. I forget exactly what the term is, but she's the prince's mom. She's somewhere in the royalty. The queen aunt. Yeah, queen aunt or some shit like that to help them get a position in an elite infantry regiment. And she does write a letter to one of these like elite regiments being like, please accept this young boy. But they're like, look, we're like serious-ass soldiers. Like at this point, the German military. The elite units are really good. They're proto-spe. These are like these stormtroopers, that trench fighters.

These are the guys who we are very careful with them because you can't replace these dudes, right? It takes time for someone to build up the kind of skill and fight. Like, we don't just take, we're not going to take this sickly weak kid and, like, put him in a unit where he's going to be asked to leap into a trench with a knife in one hand at a pistol in the other and kill men in hand-to-hand combat. He's not ready for that. Like, yeah, somebody's mom writes a letter to the SEALs. Right, like, yeah, he can't lift a 40-pound weight, but please take him into the Navy SEALs. He's a good boy. He's a good boy.

His dad taught my dead son. Yeah. So Heinrich leaves school that year. He has not graduated. This isn't really, it's dropping out, but not really, because kind of everyone who is 17 is doing this, either to go directly into the military or in Heinrich's case, he doesn't want to be conscripted. and as an enlisted man. And so he leaves school so he can get into the reserve and try to secure himself a position as an officer candidate.

He wants to go to officer candidate school and handle all that. This will let him choose a better assignment with at least a more prestigious unit than like some ground pounder or someone, even worse, someone in like the back rank who's never going to see combat who's going to be doing like signals or whatever. To make a long story short, Gebhardt, senior, his father, keeps using his connections and eventually is able to secure Heinrich up. posting with a reserve battalion that is like the reserve battalion for a pretty good regiment.

So these are the guys when that good regiment loses men in combat, the reserve battalion sends men over to fill them back up, right? So it's the kind of thing. Well, eventually you'll get, you know, a frontline position theoretically. So Heinrich goes off to train, and he's now in the military. He's doing military training to learn to be an officer. And he starts writing home and signing his letters as Miles Heinrich. Meles is Latin for soldier, so he's signing his letters as Heinrich the soldier now.

Longrich writes, quote, The brand new warrior expressed his manliness, amongst other things, by taking up smoking. In contrast to this masculine pose, his almost daily letters to his parents, in fact, reveal the considerable difficulties he had in adjusting to the world of the military. Heinrich was homesick. He complained about the poor accommodation and wretched food, though on most evenings he could supplant this by going to pubs. Oh, my God. He's not really ready for what war is going to be.

He went all Shapiro on us, Ben Shapiro on us, pretending like you like cigars. Yeah. And you're still going out to the pub and getting pub food? Like, you're not doing that bad. Like, if you think this is bad, what do you see what your brother's going to do? Because- Yeah, like during war. Yeah. You going out to the pubs?

Yeah. Yeah, got it. In the spring of 1918, his older brother Gebhard goes to the Western Front, and he winds up being part of this last massive offensive, the Kaiser Schlacht, I think it's called, of the German army in World War. and he experiences heavy combat. His unit loses a lot of guys. He is fighting face-to-face tooth and nail in the trenches,

like as bad as it gets shit. Like, Gabbard is a blooded soldier by the end of this. Heinrich, in comparison, spends his time complaining about the food and begging his parents for care packages. He receives seven care packages in his first five weeks away, but this is not enough. And he writes petulantly home in one letter, Dearest parents, today again, I have got nothing

from you. That's mean. What the fuck? Okay. Such a baby. There's a fucking boy. Your brother is like ankle deep in blood. He is wading through blood fucking up to his knees probably and storms of bullets and shrapnel. He's killing men in a hand-to-hand. He's watching the light drain from their eyes. And you're like, I only got seven care packages in five weeks. Do you guys not love me anymore, mom? Not just saying you're going to give you the gluten-free. Come on, you fucking baby. Like, Jesus. A million Germans starve to death during this period of time.

And you're like, Mommy, my care packages. But you're going to send some goldfish? They ain't got no goldfish. Yeah. And Gebhard becomes a Nazi, too. He's not a sympathetic figure, right? But, like, it is this, like, discrepancy between his older brother, really smart, very good in school, fucking bleeding with his brothers,

watching all of his friends get massacred in this, like, night. nightmare apocalypse battle. And Heinrich's like, Mommy, you're not writing home enough. You know, he sends one letter back to his parents that reads, Dear Mother, thank you so much for your news, which I did not get.

It's so horrid of you not to write again. Oh, my God. He misses a day or two of letters. And he writes home being like, thank you for the letter that I didn't get. What a dick. The lady that wasn't in none of your journals. Okay.

Yeah. Now you want to talk about her, huh? Because she ain't write you no letter? Okay. No, I'm good. And it's like, okay, at this point, he's a prick. Yeah, right? Like, we can say that.

We're starting to see the churn. Yeah, this kid's a dick. Yeah, your war wasn't what you thought it was, huh? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't get your little snacks. You don't get your little tuck in every night. And he's not even getting shot at you.

And you're not even at war. So he eventually gets posted to take a course on machine gun uses to be, basically, if he'd finished training, he would have been like an officer in a machine gun unit, you know, right? on September 15th of 1918 he does not wind up it's interesting to me that he doesn't wind up sent to the front because Germany does not have guys

they are they've been bled white by this point a 17 year old boy even at this point I don't care if he's sickly he's just there for 10 minutes until he takes a fucking bullet to the luck right? Yeah basically like we just need bodies and so it's interesting that he doesn't just get

sent to the front he's had enough training guys go up there with less there's a couple of explanations potential explanations. One is that even this late in the war, the German military still does try to make sure that their officers have a good base of training when they're sent to the front. And so maybe it's just that because he's becoming an officer, they don't want to rush that. But they do for a lot of guys.

And Longrich suggests, and this is something he can't, there's not really hard evidence for this, but I think it's a reasonable suggestion that it might have been because his superior see kind of what we've seen in these letters home that he's immature. And like, they're like, this guy. shouldn't be commanding men in battle. Like, we don't, like, that's not going to help Germany. I could tell you that much. He's a little boy.

Yeah, like, he's a kid. He's a kid. Yeah. And we're willing to send kids to die, but we don't maybe we don't want them leading men to die, right? He's just not, right, if he's going to be an officer, let's keep him away until he grows up a little bit. You're going to kill a lot of other people.

Right. Being childish. Or these men going to turn on you because you're a child. Yeah, they're going to frag your ass. Whatever the case, he is still in the reserve. and still training when Germany signs the armistice. So Heinrich Himmler never gets the baptism of fire that he so dearly desired. And his brother Gebert, on the other hand, does the soldier thing as much as you can, right?

He gets an iron cross for valor. He gets basically like somewhat equivalent to like a Medal of Honor, somewhere between like a bronze or silver star and a medal of honor, you know, because there's different kinds of iron cross. I don't know exactly. But it's like a very prestigious Hitler gets one of these, right? He came home and got props. It's a big deal that he gets this. and he manages he doesn't get seriously injured over there

which is amazing given the kind of combat that he's in he's a lucky guy and the fact that his brother who's always been better than him is now a war hero and Heinrich misses out entirely he will never get over this this will color the rest of his life his insecurity over this is something that is present for the rest of his days

and you know what else was present for all of Heinrich Himmler's life oh my god capitalism Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, sort of, yeah. It was invented by then. Yeah, it was around. It's a factor in Germany in this period, but also products, advertisements. Yeah.

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Jan Marselech was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself, now, did I know the true Jan at all?

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And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning River Road on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're talking about Heinrich Himmler. post the big dub-dub-uno. So, Germany's lost. Heinrich is very much going to fall for the stabbed in the back myth, right? Oh, yeah.

Surprise, surprise. And he's angry both at the Jews and social Democrats who ended the war, which is not the military ended the war because they knew that the army would have collapsed if they kept fighting, right? And they blame it on the people who actually take over after and negotiate the peace, which is the largely social democratic government of, Weimar at the start of Weimar, and, you know, the, I mean, particularly, one of the negotiators who helps ensure the peace who's a real hero is a Jewish man, right?

Yeah. Matthias Erzberger, I think was his name. Yeah. Who gets assassinated as a result. Yeah. Now, here's a, here's a good tie to his passive, him being like, all my having, like he said earlier, like, all mine is like Germany, you know, collecting enemies, like, we'll stand alone. It's all good. You know what I mean? And you have this attitude. Yeah, yeah, exactly. First of all, how that work out. But you had an attitude to where you just like, you ain't forced you against us.

You a hater. Like, I don't care. You know what I'm saying? We would have never lost because we don't give up. We don't mind having enemies. You know what I mean? The only way we would have lost was because, like you said, somebody had to stab us in the back. You feel me?

Right. And that's the, it's not, and for Heinrich, it's not only did we get stabbed in the back and Germany was robbed if it's a great victory. I was robbed. Yeah. You'd be a real man. You almost personifies it, like I was robbed. Yes.

Yeah. Damn, that's big. Once the war is over, Heinrich attempted to remain with the military, but the old imperial army is replaced as a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles with the Reichsvair, right? That's the post-war army, and it's limited to 100,000 men. And they're not allowed to have, like, an Air Force. I don't think they're allowed much in the way of artillery.

They're very much because people are like, yeah, Germany, you've got to kind of out of pocket. We've got to really keep a lid on your asses, right? Yeah. This is going to prove to be a bad idea for a lot of. reasons the terms of the treaty i don't need to get into that people are broadly familiar the terms of the treaty play into why things happen in germany the way they do um but one of the things this is going to mean is that like heinrich wants a military career right uh and he's not going to get one because the only people who get to stay in the military it's a tiny fraction of the deployed military and those jobs are

going to go to guys who actually saw shit right and who are valuable for some reason have connections and it's just not going to have heinrich's going to try But like, why the fuck would we give you a job of the tiny number of people who get to keep military jobs? Why would you get it? Hitler doesn't. And Hitler was actually a decorated combat soldier, right? They won't let him in, you know? That's great for me to hear.

Because it's like, like, Hitler, I feel like he's like, it's, privilege ain't the word per se. But he is, though, yeah. But he is, but it's just like, it's supposed to work out for me. Yeah. Like, you know what I'm saying? so like why is this not working out either is like had to have add to the like pissed offedness you know and that is that's a huge part of why Himmler is the way that he is and why he gets drawn into to Nazism right is and this is a big this is a major factor in almost everyone

who winds up kind of especially these a lot of these higher up members of the Nazi party the people who are running the SS, we've talked about this with like Heinrich and with Eichmann, these guys are people who could come from the middle class and upper middle class and I was promised more. I'm supposed to be doing better. And they're not never doing bad. They're never really suffering compared to how other people are. But they're furious because I was supposed, I was promised more.

I'm owed more. It's a massive factor in all of these guys. It's a massive thing for Himmler. So he is able to, he returned. to school under a special program instituted by the post-war government to allow young men who had dropped out basically because they were either being drafted or they were trying to volunteer and thus had missed out on finishing their education to get there. It's kind of a mix between like a GED and a high school diploma to allow them to go back and finish it, right? And actually

the class that Heinrich is in is taught by his father, Gephard. Longrich says Gabbard didn't show favoritism to his son. This is actually pretty consistent of descriptions of him. He wouldn't wouldn't have really done that. So, anyway, he gets his German GED. I think it's called an Abbottor or something like that. The first few months after the war are rife with socialist uprisings and attempt to take and hold different German cities by leftists, which are cracked down on brutally by a mix of police, the military and Freikor, right, which are these groups of Free Corps, these groups

of demobilized veterans who are murderous thugs used by the new Weimar government to maintain control. These guys are far right. The Vimar government isn't, but the Vimar government cares more about stopping the left from succeeding in this kind of like, because they're trying to do basically the Russian revolution to electric boo-glu. And Vimar's like, well, if we got to have these proto-Nazis murder a bunch of people, as long as it stops that from happening, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Heinrich gets political fairly quickly. He gets involved first with a center-right political party. Like, it's not the far-right, but that's kind of his initial. It's more or less an analog to like a mainline Republican Party initially. And at the end of 1919, he joins a Free Corps unit. He is deployed to them, if you can call it that, on a couple of occasions, which is, you know, there's unrest or whatever, and the Freikor move out. He does some marching around.

He does some riding in a car with some guys with guns. But he does not engage in any. A lot of Freikor are doing fighting. There's heavy fighting and killing. He is not involved in any of that. He does not see any serious action. I think in general, because even as messy as these Freikor units are, they're organized and run by people who actually fought.

And they're like, yeah, we should keep this kid away from anything serious. Look at him. Look at him. You don't really want the smoke. I don't want him watching my back, you know? He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. You ain't really with the shits. You just want to wear the uniform.

I do think it's also important to remember like, and again, It's hard in our American imagination to understand, first of all, multiple forms of government. But the type of transition, I feel like this is the first time, at least in our age era, where we've seen a government totally, like, lose their marbles. Like, we've never seen it. Like, our government's lost its marbles. You know what I'm saying? And, like, but at this time, like you said, like during the Weimar Republic, I'm like, women can vote

like there's these just these like progressive not progressive but they're these like progressions in culture like they're funding the arts they're funding science and motherfuckas is pissed off you know like and that

sort of like like okay guys like think about this for a second like these like these are maybe I'm having a modern maybe I'm modern pilled but I'm like it's such an interesting moment and how the clap back

from that was so strong. Like it's just, I don't know, it's just a weird time where I was like brother, like, this the world, like, this the time Einstein's from. Right. Yeah. You're getting like government endowments

to understand science. You know what I'm saying? Like this that's, I thought that was good. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, Heinrich, you know, he's in the Free Corps. Part of why he joins this unit is he's kind of trying to stay in the military after demobilization. He's hoping he can make connections, but it doesn't work out.

And he gets, he's out of the military. He's cashiered out by the summer of 1919. He begins to work as a laborer on a farm. So he's like, you know, he's working on a farm, but he doesn't own it. But he gets entranced by rural life. And he starts sending letters back to his parents. signed Heinrich Agricola, which is Latin for Heinrich the farmer. However, that's agriculture, agricola.

You can see where it comes from. However, the ruthless pace of life on a farm disagrees with his fragile constitution. Again, he's going to be like a lot of modern far right guys. He will idolize homesteading and the small farmer and like this is the life. We need a new nobility formed out of like, you know, the rural peasantry. But he's never able to really do it because he's sickly and he doesn't. doesn't like working hard outside. By September of that year, illness had forced him to pause his career.

Again, this is a kid who thought he was ready for the fucking trenches and you can't handle farming for like more than two months, three months. He goes to his family doctor who diagnoses him with an enlarged heart and prescribes him a one year break to study and regain his health. Now, obviously, an enlarged heart is a serious health issue. I don't think he actually has one because there's not really evidence from the rest of his life that he has one. I think this is just doctors, you know, they're not like, but they're not like doing a scan

to see his heart's big. Yeah, what are you using X-Rae? Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to take more cocaine, you know. So anyway, what's interesting here is that, and this is fascinated to me, Heinrich gets like basically told, hey, go chill out for a while, you know, maybe go to school, but don't do any hard outdoor labor. So he's like, he's laid up sick for a year, unable to work, and he starts reading obsessively. And what he starts reading obsessively for the most part

is right-wing volkish propaganda. So the volkish movement is ascendant in Germany in this period. And the literal translation of the word volk is just like folk or people. Like it's the people, right? The Volkswagen is the people's car, right? The actual meaning, though, of the word volk in German doesn't graph directly to any term that we have in English. In a 1964 book on German ideology in the 20th century,

George Moss explained, Volk is a much more comprehensive term than people to German thinkers ever since the birth of German romanticism in the late 18th century Volk signify the union of a group of people with a transcendental essence right there's this added this idea the Nazis will popularize of like the Volksgemineshaft which is like the people's racial community that kind of sounds like in hip-hop when we say like the culture right like it kind of sounds like like what we would say about Drake like you know he's not like

us, like you're not a part of the culture. Right. And like, yeah. What's important, obviously, I don't think that's not like an inherently problematic. The culture, like referring to it that way isn't problematic. But the fact that you bring up the exclusion of people. Yes, exactly. There's always a degree of exclusion. Yeah, there's an in-group out-group. Yeah. When we're talking about it's like this is like a subculture, right? This is a subculture that's particularly irrelevant to like this, you know, artistic movement. That's one thing. He's talking about the Volk is these are the people who deserve to have rights and who are actually

Germans. And the Volk excludes a lot of the people who live in Germany, right? Yeah. He's not just talking about, he's talking about specific kinds of people, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Volkish movement is emphasizing specific kinds of Germans who deserve to have rights and who need to breed in order to, like, expand their numbers, right? Yeah. And this is where, this is like the root of Nazi racial ideology is the Volkish movement, you know, and the Volkish movement is obsessed with exclusion. You know, it is defined not by who lives within the boundaries of a nation, but who the right wing thinks ought to be included in this racial community. In his book, Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts, a history of Himmler's interest in the occult, author Bill Yen describes the Volkish movement as part of the counterculture in Germany. And he argues that its best modern analog would be the 1980s New Age movement, right? that this is very similar to like, you know, that this, all this interest that starts popping

up in yoga, in Eastern mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all that stuff, in the 80s in like the U.S. is very similar to what's happening and what the Volkish movement is a part of this broader interest in mysticism and alternative religion in the 20s, alternative history, right? Including a big thing that is big in Germany in this period, Buddhism is big in Germany, Right. Not a super accurate take on Buddhism, but like their attitude of it, as well as people get obsessed in a lot of the West with like ancient Egyptian occult ceremonies and religion. And like the Edas, right, these kind of Norse sagas that are like part of this like religious, the prose edas. Like that is big too.

And so like Norse mythology and religion, you know, worship of deities like Wotan, right? It starts to become big and it's all tied into the voice. Volkish movement is a part of it. It's related to all of this stuff. Well, that definitely wasn't the comparison I was making as far as like the culture. What I would try to say is like the term is not a literal translation and that the edges are more like foggy or cloudy, but like we know what we mean when we say it. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. But it is, I think it is very relevant to compare it to and to compare it to like the modern day, the UFO movement and stuff. All these things that feed into QW. went on that have fed into the far right the fact this happened before right yeah like yeah there's like this weird like thing to where it's like you get into something that like is kind of like exciting to you whatever you meet a lot of cool folk air quotes cool but at some point you have to look at the back of the line and be like oh wait they're in our line too like this is this wait

this will if i get further into the concentric circle it's going to turn into this like you and you You have to consider that. So, like, yeah. So, like, even if you were just like, look, like, to your point, it's like, you know, especially with the New Age movement or stuff like that, or just like, look, dude, I think it's better to eat food that was grown by human hands and has seeds because a seedless watermelon does not exist in nature. You know what I'm saying?

So if you're just like, okay, I get it. I'm going to eat things with seeds. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But also that means I need to eat. drink raw milk. And also that means I need, you know what I'm saying? You're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, there's actually like a lot of health stuff tied into it. A lot of, like, you know, natural food shit is tied into it. Vegetarianism, you know, and Hitler's a

vegetarian. But part of what's relevant here is that these are a lot of people who are not initially into far right politics, but they are willing to question the mainstream, willing to question, you know, scientific orthodoxy and cultural orthodoxy. And if you start down that road, you can go in a number of directions, but you're going to to encounter other things that are questioning that orthodoxy, including weird, far-right shit. And then the other aspect of it, a lot of this, a lot of this especially more esoteric occult beliefs where, like, people are embracing getting into magic and getting into

these different alternate religions, there's an attitude of them to like, because I'm different and special. And so if you're saying, yes, you're special because you're part of this people's racial community, and you have, like, mythical, mystic powers, actually, that are tied to like the ancient, like deep magic woven into our people's blood. Well, maybe you go from being into ancient Egyptian, you know, mysticism to far right stuff. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's like you're already, I'm special.

Maybe I have powers, right? You can get someone convinced that they're part of the Uber Minch, you know? Man, that's crazy. Like, it's crazy. I wonder what it would be like to experience that moment in culture. That must have been. Thankfully, we'll never know, prop. Yeah.

So along these more esoteric beliefs comes a growing interest in the mythical past of the German people. And Himmler's always been drawn to this stuff. And it's a little like as a kid, nerd, you're a nerd, and into this stuff that's like more fringe and you get bullied for. And then it becomes mainstream as an adult. And so suddenly, like everybody is into this stuff that I've always liked. He joins a group called the Artaman League, which sets its goal as liberating urban workers and turning them back into peasant farmers. once he gets sick, Himmler starts really reading into this stuff. And there's, I tie this a lot to the radicalization journey.

A lot of Americans go through during the COVID lockdown where maybe they're sick, maybe they're not, but they're locked away from everybody else. They're not going out and they're just kind of obsessively falling down these YouTube rabbit holes and like these different like forum message board rabbit holes, getting more and more into this weird, like, esoteric stuff about like vaccines and natural medicine or, you know, race theory. That's what's happening to Himmler. He's dealing with his own versions of that. And he reads more widely at first before he really zeroes in entirely on the Volkish stuff. He reads the volumes of Ossian, which are a fraud created by a Scottish guy that was claimed

to be like ancient Celtic poetry. He devours pamphlets attacking the Freemasons, particularly one by Friedrich Wichel. Yen writes, Wichel claimed that, among other things, freemasonry was strongly influenced by the Jews, was aiming for world revolution, and was overwhelmingly to blame for the World War. Himmler agreed and commented a book that sheds light on everything and tells us who we have to fight first. Here's where it starts.

Here's where he gets into that. Here's where we start evolving the Pokemon. There's like these, it's a very probably not an experience of most of our fan base here, but like me coming from like sort of hip hop circles but like the indie underground, you know, coming out of the like conscious movement,

like the, you know, the most deafs, the qualis where, like, you're going to stand on there and rap about quasars and pyramids for most of the cipher and be into telekinesis, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, you're so open-minded, your closed-minded. Like, a lot of times you be at these moments and we're building, you know what I mean? Like, it's like the language of, like, the gods and the earths, the five-centers. I think you may have done, like, some stuff on them. Oh, yes. But, yeah, so a lot of times, it's, like, it's, like, like this is my community because this is where the real hip hop is

but then when you start, somebody starts saying something that you're like my brother in Christ, you made that up. That history didn't, that is not history right? But it's a story that it is in

response to the suppressing of the narrative of like our African ancestry. Like you're suppressing the in modern culture and just in modern American history like the role of the African and its descendant is not ever acknowledged you know what I'm saying

so when someone comes in and says well no well the black man was doing this and the black man was doing this and it's like I'm like bro like I love being black just as much as the rest of us but you made that shit up like that's not what happened like that's not so but if you start pushing back like that they looking at you like oh nigga you a sellout you believe in a white man's story you know what I'm saying so so so it's almost like I like I don't even know how to say to you this is not liberating us like I know what you what you think you do it you think like you said creating this ubermensch if you will like our black version

of it like again a black man is God we descended the kings and I'm like some of our ancestors was peasants my gee like some of us just raised just raised goats and that's okay yeah I'm saying, because goats feed the world. So, like, it's okay. I'm not an Egyptian. I'm not an ancient. I don't come from that, okay? And that's fine.

It's just, like, obsession with, like, no, my ancestors were this thing that I think is cool that represents, like, a tenth of a percent of the people. And it's like, everyone has ancestors who were kings. Everyone has ancestors who were warriors. And everyone's got a lot more ancestors who were fucking dirt farmers. Or picking berries or whatever, right? The vast majority of human history from when we went from Homo erectus to Homo sapien was boring as shit. Most of your ancestors, like everyone else, is people who were just trying to get by.

Yes, who never traveled four miles away from where they was born, right? And raised and raised some kids. Yeah. And that's great. Yeah. And Himmler is instead getting obsessed with, you know, Ah, these knightly orders that are, these like Germanic, these knights who were these great warriors who fought back the Muslim tides and, or before that beat the Romans, like, and these are

our ancestors, these great, you know, heroic Germanic Superman, you know, that's what he's and he's also reading about, he gets into, you know, anti-Semitism through these theories about like the Freemasons and stuff. Now, an interesting historic curiosity is during this period when he's laid up and he's reading obsessively. He also reads the first eight volumes of a magazine titled Pro-Palestine. Now, this has nothing to do with the term in its modern sense. This is a Zionist publication that's made by the German Committee for the Promotion of Jewish Settlement in Palestine. He does not leave, unfortunately, there's no record of his opinion of this, but it's not a lot of guys,

we talk about this is Eichmann, a lot of anti-Semites from this era go through this period of thinking, like, well, maybe this is how we get rid of them, right? Yeah, that's what I thought That's why I kind of giggled. That's probably why he's into it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Palestine's kind of cool, guys. Like, what about? If we can get them over there, you know, they're not here.

Why don't you just go there? We did that we're here with the slaves. Like, why don't you go to Liberia? Yeah. You feel? He just go back to Angola. Everything's fine. Just go back to Africa.

And that's what this suggests is he's thinking more and more about the Jews and how to get rid of them, right? Already from a very young age. He's like 19 at this point. In October of 1919, he registers with the technical university in Munich to study agriculture. here he made it a priority to seek membership and the first fraternity that would take him and he wound up as a nepo baby getting into his dad's fraternity.

Now in Germany during this period frats looked a little different than they do now. They were focused on a lot more on fencing and dueling clubs than anything else. And prior to the war, every young man who's like of a certain class if you're like the officer class you want to get in one of these dueling clubs

and get a scar on your face. The whole point is for someone to get to hit you in the face and to earn a dueling scar. Like, you're not really like a, you're not really a man of a certain level in society. You don't have one. And a Himmler is bad enough with a sword that it takes him three years to have enough duels to earn his scar. Yen writes, potential opponents found Himmler a demeaning competitor because he was so small and so frail. And that his stomach troubles make it difficult for him to drink heavily. Now, that's one account, and there's some evidence behind it.

Longrich gives a little bit more moderate account of Himmler. In his frat years, he writes that he did at least witness multiple duels and wrote, at least it strengthens the nerves, and you learn how to take being wounded. He also wrote about drinking. This is him describing in his diary, a night out drinking. It was very jolly. I drank eight glasses of wine. At 1230, we went home on the train.

Most of us were tipsy, so it was very funny. I got a few of the brothers back to their digs, in bed at 2 a.m. So, like, he's able to party somewhat. He's not, that's not super intense, eight drinks, you know, in bed by 2 a.m. It was pretty, he was very jolly. It was very jolly, yes. I was like, this is, yeah, first of all, eight drinks and you a German man, bro, don't brag on that, homie. Come on, you go hard on that.

Now, if there's anything about your jeans, right? Yeah. Like, you should have been able to hail more liquor than that. Yeah. I will say like it like it kind of right now kind of sound like the like the guy every time you talk to him like oh I'm so sore from the gym I was lifting it's so oh man I can't sit down like man shut the fuck up dog yeah like you have to have your oh man you see his broccoli ears because I was rolling man I was rolling last night yeah okay bro okay his dating profile would be such a nightmare oh my god he's holding a fish is he holding a fish in his dating profile oh god yeah yeah yeah definitely we're holding like some crops that he pulled out of the ground before going home because his tummy was hurt. Yeah, he's doing something.

Yeah, he's got his tiny little scar that he's got to show off. Yeah, oh, man, sorry, I got it in battle. Yeah. That's fencing, bro. Yeah, it's simply fencing. And you're all trying to get scars. Like, everybody's just kind of cutting each other's face so that you can show off.

Yeah. Yeah. So dumb. Now, you know who never shows off? Because they earned all of their scars the honorable way. in hand-to-hand combat, killing people in bar fights. Me. Yes, Sophie, absolutely.

Allegedly. Sophie, whoop your ass. Oh, yeah, a lot of cities you can't go back to. Just like our sponsors for this podcast. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself.

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Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jan Marselech was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him?

His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. because this ties together the cold war with the new one. Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network.

Join me every weekday as I share bite-sized stories of missing and murdered black women and girls in America. several ways we can all do better at protecting black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tamika Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people, talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tamika never bought the car, And she never returned home that day. One podcast, one mission, save our girls. Join the searches we explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered black women and girls.

Listen to hunting for answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turn. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man? And in thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt.

For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning River Road on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Ah, blue apron. Why? Killed a man in a bar fight. Don't bring that back.

Don't bring that back. You're probably right. You're probably right. Anyway, so we're talking about Heinrich Himmler. He's in college now. He's getting his degree in like agricultural sciences. that he enjoys being able to still feel like a soldier. In one entrance, he notes, another day in uniform as one of his chief pleasures.

It's what I enjoy wearing most. Like, okay, man, like, he really just desperately wants to feel like a soldier, you know, even though that has passed him by. Such a tryhard. Yes. Heinrich starts getting involved in political activism for the far right. His first big protest campaign, because he's a member of some of these, like, right-wing groups on campus is a, a German count, I think is Count Arco Valley, assassinates a leftist,

right? It kills somebody. It's like a political murder. And the count gets sentenced to death for murdering a guy. And this becomes a cause-selep of the German right. This is kind of their equivalent of like the protests against the January 6th people facing any consequences for their crimes. And they get so angry.

Heinrich is marching in the street. There's protests. You know, the Frye Corps are like showing up armed in these gatherings to be like, you know, you're going to have to deal with us if you try to kill this man. There's even talk within the military of either using, having the army go in and bust him out or even doing a pooch against the government if they're to kill this guy. And the liberal government caves like they always do to fascists. Himler writes after, because they and they commute his sentence to like basically your life in prison. We're not going to execute him. And when the government caves, Himmler writes in his diary,

however pleased we were, we were equally sorry that the business passed off so uneventfully. Oh, well, there will be another time. And he also writes about like, ah, they're not willing. They're scared of us, right? And that's the problem. That's why you can't, like showing Mercedes people is a mistake, you know? Like, if you do that, they will take advantage of it every single time. Yeah, dude.

It just inspires them to push further. It doesn't save you any violence. Things get much worse because they don't go through with punishing this man. Near the end of 1919, Himmler gets caught up in a debate within his dueling club, you know, this fraternity. There's an argument as to like, can we admit Jews, right? And not religious Jewish people, right? Not people who are of the Jewish faith, but people who have Jewish ancestry.

But are Christian or at least like, you know, they're not, you know, practicing members of the faith. And this is a serious debate at the time within. the strata of people. And the Catholic Church takes a stance that Jews who converted to Christianity ought to be treated like anyone else. Obviously, it's fine to exclude practicing Jews, right? They're not full citizens. You can be shitty to them. But all that should matter is what they're doing now, right? Basically, the Catholic Church is saying there's not an ethnic difference between someone who has Jewish ancestry and a normal German, right? We don't care about that. And the church takes this stance because Catholicism is a minority faith in Germany, right? So they do see a degree

of threat to themselves as like, well, if these people, like, we're not that much safer, right, if the Protestants decide to start fucking with us. So we should probably draw a line here. Himmler is really uncomfortable with this minimal degree of liberalism from the church. And he had been fairly strong as a Catholic, but he writes in his diary, I think I'm heading for conflict with my religion because he believes a Jew is a Jew no matter what. It doesn't matter if they've converted. It's about the blood, right? That's how, what Himmler thinks. Now, it's worth noting that while he grows steadily more anti-Semitic as he ages, he still expresses as a young man some mixed thoughts on the matter. In part, he also, he's a fan, and he's super attracted to this Jewish

cabaret singer he met, Inga Barco in a bar. And so he writes really positively about her, right? So he's, you know, he's, again, this is a guy, none of these people are perfectly, consistent, right? No. And this is also a time period. He is starting to express interest in women around his age. At this point in time, this is really when we see in his diary, him writing about girls a lot.

And it's kind of, you get some in-cell vibes from this dude. Yeah. He pines that one woman, Louisa, who he had a crush on, was really nice, but not nice in the way that he wanted, right? As in she's nice to me. She's friendly, but she doesn't want to fuck me, right? Mm-hmm. That is hilarious

I'm a loser This is funny He writes home to his brother She wants to kiss me This is so gross If sweet young things knew how they worried us They would no doubt try not to

Oh this girl knew how sad I was That she doesn't want to fuck me She'd surely want to fuck me Right? That's the problem That's the problem Sweet little things Maybe don't call them sweet little things You fucking weird out

You fucking cream Sweet little thing What's that sweet thing I'm like you so my uncle man. What's up? Cleetus? You sound like somebody named Cleophas Jenkins. What's up, sweet thing? All right. Calm down, Heinrich

Hemler. Cool your Jets, Turbo. I was actually thinking, I didn't want to bring this up because I ain't want to sound like a douchebag myself, but I was just like, he hadn't talked about girls in his diary. He doesn't. He's a late bloomer. It's possible he's not until he's in his late 20s that he actually, like, that he's a virgin

until his late 20s. Now, I'm not trying to like talk shit on that. I don't get like, it is what it is. That's fine. But that's likely what's going on here. In another instance, he bonds with a girl named Maria. And he does. There's this kind of positive thing where he's like, I'm so overjoyed that I finally have a sister, right?

Which is a nice, a positive way to look at like a female friendship. He's only got brothers. That's nice. Get away from him. Well, yeah, because he actually just wants to fuck her, right? He's not safe. She's got a boyfriend. Maria, Maria.

You remind him of a West Side story. Yeah. Growing up in Spanish Harlem. You're so dumb. She's got a boyfriend, and he writes of her boyfriend, I believe he doesn't understand her, his golden girl. And he tries to, like, he tries to flirt with her and, like, basically take her from him by offering her a ride on his motorcycle. But she's like, nah, I don't think so. Hey, listen, listen, listen.

I want to get on your motorcycle Heinrich Himmler. Listen, it's okay to be sloppy seconds because first place. place always messes up. There you go. Yeah, that's how he's looking at this, right? They're like, I'm going to slide it in here, but no, no, you're not. Sweet thing. Her boyfriend's not treating her right.

I do so much better, you know? Yeah, so she called you when your boyfriend, and no, girl, come on over. You can stay over here, girl. I'll come get you on my motorcycle. You could stay on my couch if he tripping. You come on over here. Like, I don't even think she's calling him. I think she's like nice, polite to him.

And he's like, she most. really be in love with me. If only this tyrant were to let her go, you know? She's just, just, just basic human decency. Yeah, he's like, you must want to fuck me. You just can't be regular. You just can't be regular with dudes like this. Yeah.

And Heinrich's Diaries, the other thing that he writes about a lot regarding women is like this white night shit, right? Tons of stories about that. And this is from Lowenberg's article, quote, he witnesses a conflict between a girl and her father over the girl's desire for private dance classes.

He describes the father as unyielding and stiff-necked like a tyrant. According to his own account, Himmler interposed himself and helped the young lady a great deal. The poor little girl wept tears. I truly pitied her, but she had no idea how pretty she was in her tears. Okay. Oh, my God. Really pretty when you cry. Maybe he pays for this girl's dance classes.

You should smile more. I don't know. Yeah. Lohenberg writes of Himmler's frequent rescue fantasies. No. He writes fantasies about, like, I could save this girl. She's with this brute. If, you know, if I did this and this, then, like, she'd know that I'm really who she's

meant for. Yeah. That's all that medieval stuff he was reading as a kid, you know what I'm saying? That's all that. You're trying to live out that fantasy. Yeah. In one instance, he meets a waitress that he has a crush on, and he writes paragraphs about his fear that, like, oh, waitresses always fall into disrepute, you know, she's doomed to a life

of, you know, sin and vice because that's the only thing that a waitress. can be. Oh, I can not be better. If I only were rich, if I had money, I'd give her enough money to marry a nice man. So she, quote, would not have to sink and be lost. Well, he's a creep. He's a creep. Oh, yeah.

He's a creep. If I could fly, I'd pick you up. I take you into the night. That's word for word, his diary entry. So, Himmler finishes his diploma in August of 1922. Now, at this point, he has continued reading into German Volkish mysticism, and he's become acquainted with a man named Guido Carl Anton Liszt. Guido?

Yeah, Guido. And that's never good news. Shockingly not Italian. He had died in 1919, so he's died pretty recently. But during his life, he had been the godfather of popular Volkish theory. He was one of these guys who portrays himself as something between an archaeologist and a wizard. And one of his major contributions, he creates this runic output. alphabet, which he said had been used by the ancient Aryans, and he

uncovers the system, not by like real archaeology, but by ghost archaeology. He channels dead spirits, and they teach him about the past, and he writes books about it. Hold up. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. So he learns this by channeling ghosts. That's your boy. That's your boy, Heinrich.

Okay, that's our... Heinrich's going to love... And not just Heinrich. This guy is the grandfather of... vulkish theory like this guy is like if you're doing a line of dissent to what becomes nazism this guy is like above Hitler in the line of descent to what becomes nazism because his ideas feed directly into Hitler's Hitler is also influenced not even just directly by list but by the guys list is influenced by or influences right list is like and he looks just like you'd imagine so

he's going to show you a picture of this please show me a sister of this exactly shout out the ancestors. Of course. Look at this. Of course. Look at this. Look at this wizard-looking dude. Of course he's talking to the ghosts.

He's got like a Gandalf beard and a fucking, it's almost like a pork pie hat. Like, I don't even know what you'd call that weird beret thing on his head. But like, yeah, like a fucking wizard-looking motherfucker. Look at him. Look at this man. Oh, my God. He's perfect. Yeah.

I love it. He's perfect. We're going to talk a lot more about Guido Von List. And a lot more about the birth. of the Volkish Movement and all of these weird occult figures who are going to have a huge influence on Heinrich Himmler, as well as continue Heinrich's life in part three. Let's go. Lucky, you motherfuckers.

Anyway, prop. Plugs? Plugs. Hood politics with prop, man. We cooking over here, too. Try to, you know, keep putting everybody on. That's going on. I released some poetry.

I got some music out. We have a show on Fridays now called Tap In, a little short 10-minute shooter, and also the Terraform's back. I'll say it again. Terraform COVID, hopefully by the time y'all hear this, the website will be up. But like, the coffee's here. Hell yeah. I'm so excited about it. All right.

I'll bring some when I go up there for the thing that you have not talked about yet on recording. Excellent. Yes. Well, we'll do that. You at home, go to Google. donor box defense fund PDX fundraiser to help the Portland defense fund

which helps bail out people who have no money yeah they're great please please help them out and help yourself out by listening to part three you lucky dogs all right

that's it for the episodes this has been Behind the Bastards I've been Robert Evans go to hell I love you Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, appa 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.

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life, what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning River Road, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast, Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19-year-old Lechay Dungey. But she never knocked on that door.

She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for Answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI. fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body party. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Klydiscope, about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levitown

on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's Nicole Ann Jemmy, PA and curator of Atmosis Zan Jemmy on Instagram, where I have been teaching about pathology and death for over 10 years. And I'm her daughter, Maria Kukane, and we host the podcast, Mother Knows Death. Each week, we dive into the darker side of life exploring topics such as what can go wrong with the human body, true crime, medical mysteries, freak accidents, and more. New episodes of our show drop twice a week. Make sure to tune in the Mother Knows Death on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.