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

Summary

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Behind the Bastards

Episode: Part Four — How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS
Date: September 11, 2025
Host: Robert Evans (A)
Guest: Prop (B)

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Episode Overview

In this dense and darkly comic episode, Robert Evans continues his multi-part exploration of Heinrich Himmler's transformation from a nondescript, awkward adolescent to the architect of the SS and a principal engineer of Nazi atrocity. The episode focuses on the intellectual, psychological, and cultural influences that shaped Himmler's worldview and the bizarre subcultures that incubated Nazi ideology, particularly Germany’s occult and "Ariosophy" movements. In characteristic "Behind the Bastards" fashion, Evans and Prop blend meticulous historical research with asides about pop culture, modern politics, and the persistently relatable pathologies of history’s villains.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Himmler's Early Years with the SS (05:47–09:44)

• Himmler’s Rise: He became Reichsführer of the SS by informing on his boss, showing the pettiness and backstabbing inherent to early Nazi power structures. At this time, the SS is seen as inconsequential—just a few hundred men compared to the tens of thousands in the SA.
• Manipulating Elitism: Himmler relaxes some standards (like height requirements) but doubles down on Aryan "pedigree"—more rhetoric than rigorous vetting. He focuses on creating the image of exclusivity to attract disaffected, unimpressive, but desperately aspirational men.

"The first thing he’s gonna be really good at is expanding the SS as a power within the party, right? While maintaining at least the image that they have strong standards, that they’re elite...he’s reaching for people like him who are not impressive, who are not successes, and who have kind of, in a lot of cases, been failures at everything outside of this. But they desperately want to feel special. And that’s what the SS offers them, right?"
— Robert Evans (08:39)

• Modern Parallels: Prop draws connections to contemporary toxic masculinity movements (e.g., Andrew Tate’s “war room”) as contemporary expressions of similar psychological needs (09:44–09:58).

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2. The Psychological Drivers: Insecurity and Fantasy (10:00–13:35)

• Medieval Obsessions: Himmler styles himself, and the SS, as a "knightly order," inspired by his boyhood idolization of the Knights Templar. This fantasy fills his yearning for belonging and significance.
  • "He feels like he should be special in a way that the world has not recognized. But if he’s able to forge the SS into this thing—this knightly order of his dreams—well then he matters. Then he’s important." — Robert Evans (12:08)
• Craving for Purpose: Both hosts note that Himmler’s entire identity becomes bound up with the SS as a vehicle for personal validation.
• Self-Image and Masculinity: Himmler’s frustrated need to “prove himself as a man,” having never fought in World War I, pushes him to ever more elaborate schemes to achieve importance—a pattern that recurs in fascist movements.

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3. Occultism, Mysticism, and Nazi Mythmaking (13:35–21:43)

• The SS as New Templars: Himmler fantasies the SS as a spiritual order like the Templars—only protecting the 'blood' of the Nordic race.
• Broader Fascination: Popular depictions of Nazi occultism in fiction exaggerate reality, but are “more based in Himmler’s actual factual history than Hitler’s” (15:45). Hitler himself grew tired of “woo woo occult bullshit,” but Himmler dove in deeper.
• Why Mysticism Matters: Occult thinking didn’t drive Nazi policy directly, but deeply influenced SS culture and internal logic.

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4. The Founding Fathers of Ariosophy: Von List and Liebenfels

(19:09–46:24)

Guido von List & Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels:

• Both Austrians from Vienna, these fraudsters became the spiritual grandfathers of Nazi race-mysticism.
• Middle-class backgrounds, feelings of being “owed more by the world,” and obsessions with medieval chivalry.

Liebenfels’ Inspiration:

• A 12th-century Templar grave depicting a knight stomping a monkey allegedly gives Liebenfels his “aristocratic mastermen vs. monkey men” racist epiphany.
• Converts his own fantasy into founding the Order of the New Templars, mixing the Holy Grail, “men’s rights,” and race science (33:47).
• Fakes his ancestry, nobility, and even his PhD to fit his mythic self-image (37:04–41:12).

"He now claimed to have been born in Messina, Italy, and he changed the name of his father from Johan Lanz to Baron Johann Lannes de Liebenfels...He also gives himself a fake PhD. Because if you’re forging documents, why stop at that?" — Robert Evans (38:08)

• Culture of Lying & Self-Reinvention: Fascist and occult circles tolerate and enable such self-mythologizing, as long as it serves the ‘race-myth’ agenda.

Distinct Take on White Supremacy:

• Their racism extended not only to non-white “monkey men,” but also ‘lesser’ white people such as Poles.

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5. The Role of Catholicism and the Church

(43:47–46:49)

• The “Away from Rome” Movement: Supported by nationalist elites to dilute the Catholic Church’s influence and create an explicitly race-based religious alternative.
• Race Supremacy over Faith: Aryan mysticism is constructed in conscious opposition to the Catholic Church, whose universality is seen as an existential threat by white supremacists.
• “If you take your Christianity seriously, you have to accept that other races are loved by God and can be saved. But if those other races aren’t really human—that’s the question." — Robert Evans (46:29)

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6. The Swastika and Symbolic Inheritance (50:04–50:29)

• Origin of Swastika as Aryan Symbol: Liebenfels introduces swastika into his “New Templar” coat of arms before the Nazis, making him a progenitor of Nazi symbolism.

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7. Race Mysticism, Eugenics, and Reproductive Fantasies (55:53–64:45)

• Electric Jesus: Liebenfels’ 1906 book Theozoology merges Aryan supremacy with pseudoscience, claiming Jesus was "an electric human being."
• Morality is Race Survival: For the Aryan mystics, morality is solely defined as "whatever is good for the superior race."
• Obsession with Breeding: Idealizes polygamy for “superior men,” racial purification, and even forced breeding colonies. Early eugenics, forced sterilization, and euthanasia are advocated as duties.
• Direct Influence on Hitler and Himmler: The magazine Ostara—dedicated to "heroic racetom and men’s rights”—likely reached both men during their formative years, supplying much of their core ideology.

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8. Parallels to Modern Tech Elites & Fascism (57:17–59:10)

• Techno-Futurism and Modern Fascism: Early fascists worshiped the technology of their time (airplanes, cars, electricity) as signs of destiny/modernity. Today’s fascists glorify AI and digital tech in the same way, and exhibit the same contempt for democratic values.
• Masculinism and Resentment: Remarkable continuity is drawn between the gender anxieties of early fascists and the incel/tech bro radicalization of today.

Notable Quote on Tech Fascism:

"The fact that all these Silicon Valley founders have gotten in bed with fascism isn’t a deviation from the norm... This is a return to the bad old days."
— Robert Evans (57:43)

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9. The Logical Violence of Aryan Mysticism (59:10–66:34)

• The SS and Nazi genocidal policies see themselves in mythological terms—a project to “restore” a superhuman Nordic heritage, akin to Tolkien’s immortal men of Númenor.
• Central mission: not just genocide, but breeding a 'master race,' directly modeling themselves on Liebenfels’ and List’s metaphysics of blood and soil.

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10. Personal Pathologies and Political Atrocity (66:34–68:23)

• Misogynistic Underpinnings: Prop flags how so many of these grand schemes come back to “you just want to fuck more girls” and resent having their advances rejected.
• The sense of exclusion, wounded ego, and online ridicule driving today’s tech villains is paralleled with the interior lives of early Nazi leaders.
• Evans notes, “These people are nothing. They’re complete failures outside of this ideology they’ve created to make themselves important.”

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11. The Final Synthesis: Himmler as Synthesis of all these Currents (70:17–72:47)

• As Himmler consolidates power in the late 1920s, he models the SS directly on the template of List and Liebenfels, merging occult, racial, and organizational obsessions into a new totalitarian order—"a state within a state."
• The Nazi movement thus emerges not as the inevitable result of German culture, but as the bizarre, toxic flower of a specific stew of alienation, fantasy, and reactionary paranoia.

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Memorable Quotes

• "You’ve had literally nothing but sausage. That’s your whole life. Try this. There’s seasoning in it."
  — Robert Evans (64:28). Satirizing the insularity and dullness of Nazi and Aryan mystical thinking.
• "Hitler and Himmler are not as bad as you think, they’re far worse, but they are different than you think they are."
  — Robert Evans (75:14)
• "It’s the learning of this to me... it’s the how and the why. Because that’s always the question: how y’all fall into this? How did y’all let this slide?"
  — Prop (76:27)

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Key Timestamps

• 05:47: Transition to Himmler’s power grab and SS reforms.
• 09:44: Contemporary analogies—Tate’s “war room,” modern masculinity cults.
• 13:35: Himmler’s and the Nazis’ occult interests vs. Hitler’s skepticism.
• 21:01: "Cocaine really helps to convince you that the voices in your head are telling you the truth."—on the wild concepts of List and Liebenfels
• 33:47: Creating the "Order of the New Templars"—Nazi myth soup of Grail, men’s rights, and eugenics.
• 50:04: Swastika’s debut as an Aryan mystical symbol by Liebenfels.
• 57:17: Modern AI cults and Silicon Valley fascism—historical roots.
• 64:11: "We gotta treat our people more like we treat our cows."—argument for eugenics.
• 72:47: Himmler’s vision: an SS as a new breed of knightly, racially pure nobility.

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Episode Takeaways

• The most monstrous ideologies often start in banality—alienated, mediocre men seeking significance through fantasy, misogyny, and conspiracy.
• Nazi racial doctrine, especially as instantiated by Himmler and the SS, owes as much to occult charlatanry and romanticized self-mythologizing as it does to traditional politics.
• The same psychological dynamics—status anxiety, the desire for belonging, a sense of wounded specialness—fuel reactionary movements in every era, from Nazi Vienna to today’s Silicon Valley.
• Understanding the eccentric details of Nazi ideology illuminates the deeper, recurring roots of cruelty, and why such belief systems remain dangerously plausible to some.

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For listeners: This episode is a fascinating, disturbing dive into the pre-history of the SS and Nazi ideas, through the lens of the oddballs and grifters who helped invent them. Its relevance to modern politics—and especially to the culture of online and tech-driven radicalization—is a chilling reminder that history’s monsters are never just past tense.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. And on Thursday, September 25th at 8pm, behind the bastards is doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon, but all of the in person seats have sold out. However, there are live stream tickets available if you go to Alberta Rose Theater. T H E A T R E Behind the Bastards on, just type that into Google or whatever search engine you use. Alberta Rose Theater, behind the Bastards. You can find a link to buy tickets for the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund, which helps bail people out who don't have, you know, resources of their own. So it's a good cause. Tickets are $25 for the livestream version of the show. So please go to Alberta Rose Theater, behind the Bastards and pick up a livestream show to check it out on Thursday, September 25th at 8pm hey Sophie, did I already do the Himmler? I hardly know her a bit. Yeah. Every day, everybody in my life. Uh huh. Okay, well, you can't do it for a lot of the other Nazi leaders, you know, So I feel like I gotta get my money's worth, but I guess I already got my money's worth and also I didn't pay any money. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast where I, Robert Evans, have recorded, I don't know, like a thousand episodes and I still don't know how to do my job. What other industry but podcasting could this be allowed and also still make me qualify as a success? Just podcasting. That's the only industry where that works that way.

[B]

Podcasting.

[A]

Just podcasting. Prop Jason Petty. Guest back. What's up, Himler?

[B]

Talk, Henrik.

[A]

We've been talking her, man. These fucking episodes. Unfortunately, Himmler's like, I don't know, he might be my favorite Nazi in terms of like, reading about. That's a bad way to phrase it. But I'm fascinated by him.

[B]

I don't know if there's. I don't know if English has another word for what we're trying to say right now.

[A]

This is like my special interest is the different weirdos who lead the Nazi party. And I do a lot of Himmler reading and I honestly, I don't know how to like, do this episode succinctly in any way, shape or form. Like we're on. I'm 36 pages and 15,000 words into it and I'm still not done writing, so this is a disaster. This is just a fucking calamity for me. For you, the listener.

[B]

Yeah, it's just like there's a few people where Every rabbit trail is actually so fun. Yeah, like, yeah, like you're like the one about. Who's the guy that.

[A]

Oh, Von List. Yeah, yeah, yeah, him and these. Yeah.

[B]

Who's the dude that freaking ruined Cambodia? Not the Khmer.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pol Pot.

[B]

Pol Pot. Not him. I'm talking about the American guy that ruined so many.

[A]

Oh, you mean him. Kissinger. Kissinger, yes.

[B]

Kissinger, yes. Where I'm like, every rabbit hole on Kissinger is its own adventure and you can't not say it.

[A]

Yeah, you got to keep going down. It's like with Himmler, we've got to talk about all of these different guys in the occult. Right? Like, they're just too many and then that's a whole story. And you've got to talk about these other Nazi leaders who, you know, Himmler interfaced with and these other. Like, there's just so much to get into. So I guess let's get into it still and keep talking about Heinrich Himmler. This is an iHeart podcast.

[C]

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[A]

When we last left off, he had become Reichspeare of the SS by ratting on his boss for using a Jewish tailor. Yes. Yes.

[B]

By Tekashi69 this is like, it's not.

[A]

A. I mean, that's for me and you, Sophie. I'm trying to figure out.

[B]

Robert has no idea what's going on. Yeah, that was for me and you, Sophie.

[A]

Yeah, well, I'm also, I'm trying to figure out the joke here. Cause you normally you'd say snitches get stuck, but in this case, he snitched about a tailor. And tailors literally make stitches. I still, I like how do I.

[B]

Wear stitches on stitches.

[A]

Right? Yeah. Snitch snitches about stitches.

[B]

It snitched on.

[A]

There should be a more satisfying joke to make. But I didn't figure it out. Yeah, I got it. It's lilo and snitch bars.

[B]

See, it was there.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

It's in there. It's still like, there's something there.

[A]

I don't accept that.

[B]

I'm in pain. And that was really funny.

[A]

I don't accept that at all. Stitching snitches who got accepted was Heinrich Himmler as Reichsfuhrer of the ss, which is a really petty reason to get to be the leader of the ss. But the SS ain't shit at this point. That's very important. You understand, right? There's a couple of hundred guys. They're very much seen as, oh, they were formed as this elite and obviously Hitler's bodyguard is a part of it. They're kind of like the younger brother of the sa. And they're just. There's tens of thousands of people in the sa. The SS is not much. So the fact that Himmler isn't much himself doesn't seem weird. Cause like, well, who gives a shit about who's in charge of the ss? Like, it just doesn't matter. That much at this point. Now, Himmler's first order of business was to double down on some of the elite entry requirements while relaxing others. He relaxes the rules around height. You don't have to be as tall anymore to join the ss, right? But he gets more emphatic about the Aryan pedigree, right? Like that. We need to make sure that all of these people are, like, good. Have good Nordic genes. Only people who have, like, a clean racial background should be joining. Now at this point, they're not actually doing anything to prove that. It's like, does he look right? Yeah, okay. You know, and obviously, does he look right? Is the kind of thing where part of what's going on is like, do I like him? Because Himmler doesn't look right, you know, like, he does not look like a Nordic, you know, traditional Nordic, you know, the idolized Nordic, you know, person. So he's talking a big game about how we're very, you know, we're super. We don't want any slobs in here, right? We don't want any Poles in here. But they're also not doing very. They're not doing anything actually, officially, to make that the case. It's just kind of rhetoric at this point. And he sees his goal and the thing that he's going to be good at. The first thing he's gonna be really good at is expanding the SS as a power within the party, right? While maintaining at least the image that they have strong standards, that they're elite, that we only take the best of the. They're not only taking the best of the best, quite the opposite. But that image of exclusiveness, right, of exclusivity. That's key to why, like, the fact that what he's really good at is propagandizing to the rest of the Party, that this is the organization for the best of us. And soon guys from the SA are like, well, shit, I can actually see that a lot of the guys are like drunken louts. I don't want to be associated with them. Hey, can I join the ss? Like, you know, they start poaching people. That's how he's able to initially start rebuilding. The SS is by. And he's reaching for people like him who are not impressive, who are not successes, and who have kind of, in a lot of cases, been failures at everything outside of this. But they desperately want to feel special. And that's what the SS offers them, right? That's what the Nazi Party offers in broad. But then these guys who get into the Party wanting that. Okay. This will finally make me feel like I belong somewhere, like I'm a real boy. I still feel that kind of a fuck up and a failure. Ah, the SS is there, right? You know, that'll fix it.

[B]

Listen, that's called the upsell right there. That's the joining the, what is it? The war room, you know, for Andrew Tate's thing, you know what I'm saying? You get to join the war room, you know what I'm saying?

[A]

Yeah, and that's like. Yeah, that's exactly what's like. It's the same play every time this happens, right? You're reaching out to these people who they personally feel like failures and you're offering them, like if you join this group, if you belong here, you know, clearly you must be important, you must be impressive. Now, as early as 1927, Himmler Start is describing himself in letters to Marga, who, you know, they're not married. In 1927, he's describing himself as a knight. And he starts describing the SS in a similar way. Not just. Not as an elite military force, but specifically as a knightly order. And it's one constructed in the image of a group that he had read obsessively about as a boy, the Knights Templar. Right. Like he is, yeah, like he, he, he. This idea of this group that he views as these were these elite warriors protecting the faithful against the, the Muslim hordes. Now in reality they're mostly bankers, right, like the bulk of the Knights Templar. But he's. And that's what he wants to make the SS into, right? Is that is a new sort of Knights Templar dedicated instead of to Christianity, which he's falling away from, dedicated to protecting the Nordic race. You know, that's, it's. Instead of Christian pilgrims, it's protecting like the blood of the Nordic people. That's what he increasingly. Even though what's actually happening on the ground is he's sort of still treading water, trying to separate this organization from the SA and trying to like make it something that can stand on its own.

[B]

Do you think? Do you think. I mean, this is obviously like how do you reach back in the past and do this? But I'm like, I wonder how much of this is a personal self improvement project and how much of it is I have finally found purpose and I'm really passionate about building this thing. Or is it just more for him, you know what I'm saying? Like, I just wonder. Obviously it's never that cut and dry, but like, I just wonder, like how much of this is really just like a self aggrandizing project in his head?

[A]

I think that that's, that's a, it's a hugely important point that he is tying his self worth to this, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That he feels like he should be. He feels like he should be special in a way that the world has not recognized. But if he's able to forge the SS into this thing, this knightly order of his dreams, well then he matters. Then he's important. Then he is like this legendary figure.

[B]

Like I'm the star, I'm the star. I've always seen myself as.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

His ego is entirely tied to the essence. Right. So he's going to throw his whole life into this because this is the thing that's offering him what he's always wanted and never had. Right.

[B]

Can you guys see how I'm standing on business right now?

[A]

Yeah, that's another one.

[B]

That's, that's another one for Sophie. That's another one for Sophie. It's a Justin Bieber clip.

[A]

So it's really one of the best. He's got a lot in common with Justin Bieber, you know, I love it.

[B]

Okay, side note to everyone, this does a piece of media. Speaking of Daily Zeitgeist, there was this clip of this guy who took, who took a picture of Justin Bieber and how he looks now. And he has, he was like, he has reached the, the level of uni race in the sense that he could pass for everything now like that he kind of looks like he's half black. Yeah, he kind of looks black, but he kind of looks Latino, but, you know, he's a white boy. It's like this fool might like take your lunch money and do your taxes, like, you know what I'm saying? So it's just. So anyway, can you not stand up standing on business right now? Anyway, let's move on.

[A]

Well, and he's, you know, I wonder a lot with, with Himmler, because this is clearly the root of all this, is that he never got to fight, he never got to prove himself as a man. So he's going to these increasingly elaborate lengths to prove himself as a man by creating this whole organization that, you know, is the most important and elite thing in the Nazi, which is the world and is the savior of the race. So I'm really saving humanity, the only part of humanity that matters. If he had just gotten to go to the front line and fucking take some incoming fire here, a bullet whiz past his head, maybe get wounded Would that have fixed him? Like, I don't think I have to feel like, because like, I can tell you personally, just being in combat doesn't fix insecurity. It doesn't make you like. But I think he feels that way. Right. I think this is all him making up for the fact that he never, never got his baptism of fire. Right. I think a lot of it's rooted in that insecurity. And obviously that insecurity starts elsewhere. So it takes him about a year to go from joining the SS to commanding the whole organization. And within that year it goes from. Again, it had been down to like maybe 300 guys to back up over a thousand. He's pretty good at like expanding this organization and he pictures it as a medieval institution immediately. And this. He can't instantly introduce all of these occult elements that he's obsessed with, but they're always in his head. And I think everyone is casually aware of the fact that the Nazis got up to some occult shenanigans. They were obsessed with ancient artifacts and the like. This is a major factor in a bunch of popular media, the Hellboy comics and the Hellboy movies, the first one of which is really good. Obviously two out of three of the Indiana Jones trilogy movies are about the Nazis being obsessed with, with artifacts. And there's numerous other fictional depictions of the Third Reich which focus, including the Wolfenstein video games. Right. That these guys are like, that the Nazis were obsessed with like magic and like ancient artifacts and rituals and stuff. And none of those depictions are accurate. But all of them are based in more real history than you'd expect. Right. Like a surprising amount of the stuff in those movies has a direct historic analog. I want to give a caveat up top that while those movies are rooted in the reality that these beliefs were very common, particularly within Heinrich Himmler's ss, they were not amassed. They had no impact on the Reich's performance in war. They had no real impact on its crimes against humanity. And they had fairly little impact on Hitler himself. We'll talk about this. But Hitler gets fed up with all of the woo woo occult bullshit, like kind of midway through the process. Heinrich Himmler never gets over this stuff. And he is, after a point, the high, the last high ranking Nazi who is super obsessed with the mysticism, you know. And so all of that stuff, all of like the shit in those popular movies is more based in Himmler's actual factual history than Hitler's, which I find really interesting.

[B]

That's super interesting to think. Like first of all, that Element of needing some sort of divine mandate has never left us to justify whatever atrocities or power that we're.

[A]

It makes it easier.

[B]

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And then, you know, if you start with that already, that foundational premise that there is some sort of, again, supernatural mandate or reason that I'm supposed to be here, then you have to. Then you have to reverse engineer it and then go find it, you know? And the idea that, like. Like you said, like, it don't always necessarily mean that the person actually in charge really gives a shit about any of it. It's just this helps me stay get in power. But the minute you get annoying, y' all might get jettisoned out. I think about, like, the. The Doug Wilson of it all. Like, the. The. The Christian nationalists that, like. And I think what's. Maybe it's not the same. It's obviously not the same. It was never a one to one. But I feel like I don't believe that that movement gives a shit about Trump either. You know what I'm saying? Nor does Trump give a shit about them. They're just like, we have a mutual need. Right, that each of us fulfill. Like, you fulfill my need, I fulfill your need. But we really don't like each other. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Yeah. We don't have anything in common outside of this, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And that's the case for a lot of these guys, which is why Hitler will jettison so many of us. This is the case with, like, we talked about the Strassers and the Maga. Commun. Communists, right? As soon as Hitler's done with the Strassers, once they're no longer useful, they get the bullet, right?

[B]

Like, I hate it when the worst people on Earth do something relatable, you know, Like. Like, that's like Hitler being like, all.

[A]

Right, I'm done with you guys.

[B]

I'm dope. These weirdos, like, do we still gotta work with them? Like, okay. Relatable. Yeah, I'm good, bro. Like, Trump walking around the roof at the White House, I was like, that's kind of relatable, homie. Like, you just, like, I just need to walk. Y' all leave me alone for a second.

[A]

Yeah, it's a lot of how. Like, what he did with Bannon, right? Where it's like, you were useful up to a point, and now you're kind of a liability, you know? I think Bannon. Bannon doesn't see himself that way. But I think if there's a. If if our right has their Night of the Long Knives, there's a decent chance he gets it, you know?

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

So, as I've said, you know, the mysticism and the occult stuff, not a massive impact on what happens in the war, but it's hugely influential, both to Himmler himself and how the SS becomes what it is. It does have a formative impact on how the SS is organized and, like, why Himmler does a lot of the things with it that he does. So we're gonna have to pull back in time a bit to discuss some other major figures in Germanic mysticism. Right. We talked earlier in the last couple episodes about Guido von List. You know, he was kind of the first guy I wanted to get into the background. He's channeling ghosts. He's learning the secret history of these priests of Wotan the Armenian. Right. Another influential myst theorist who's, like, kind of coming up right around the same time as Guido, the two of them are peers is Jorg Lanz von Lebenfels. And, like, Guido, he's not a real. That's not his real birth name. He's not a Von. You know.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He's actually born Adolf Joseph Lanz in 1874. And, like von List, he's an Austrian from Vienna, which I think is interesting. These two guys who are the two real founding fathers of, like, the volkish occult movement, both Austrians from Vienna. That's really interesting. Also Hitler. Austria. Austria, right.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Also Freud, Austrian, from Vienna. There's a lot of thinking about. There's a lot of guys who are all trying to, like, puzzle out why the world is the way it is in Vienna who all come to some really wild conclusions. And I think the fact that cocaine is like water at this period of time probably has an impact on that. But I don't have any evidence that Lister Liebenfels were on Blow. I just really suspect they were.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Cocaine really helps to convince you that the voices in your head are telling you the truth about your.

[B]

What just came out of your mouth is logical.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

The consciousness that Blow gives you just.

[B]

Left a rap festival last weekend. And I'm like. I've talked to plenty of people that. I was like, oh, you think what you said made sense?

[A]

Yeah. Cause you're snowblind, you know?

[B]

You are snowblind, boy.

[A]

Sometimes, you know, it can work or it can't. Right. We get it. The book. Because Stephen King took enough cocaine to feel. Like all of those weird scenes with the child orgy like, this is a good idea. I gotta publish this. People are gonna love this shit. Right? Yeah. And we loved the other parts of that book. Right. On the whole, it worked out for him.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every once in a while it works.

[A]

Yeah. Fucking Fleetwood Mac, thanks to Cocaine, had the courage to be like, should we just turn our whole breakup, all of our breakups into an album? Yeah, let's fuck do it. Right. Unfortunately, sometimes you get Freudian psychoanalytic theory, which is amazing. And all of this shit with Leben Fels and Liszt, which is just pure toxicity.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But we're talking about Adolf Joseph lanz, born in 1874. His parents, again, these are middle class, upper middle class families. His dad, like Himmler's dad, was a teacher. And again, it's just really worth emphasizing that all of these people, Himmler and his wife Liston Lebenfels are like comfortable middle class class guys with like dads who do pretty well.

[B]

So the. So the problem is middle class white men.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Where they've got enough money that they're not worried about much, but they don't have very much to. They've got very little to do. And they have this feeling that I'm special and I'm owed more than the world is giving me. And that leads you into some weird places. In the case of leadership.

[B]

I was just kidding.

[A]

This is. This is a.

[B]

You kind of nailed it. Yeah.

[A]

Right. I don't think. It's not just white people. Right. It's this problem of. But white people are more represented in the upper middle class. If you have people who, as kids, they've got money but they're bored as hell, and then when they go up into the world, they expect things to go better for them than it does. And they need an explanation for why because obviously I'm supposed to be more important and impressive than I wound up being. What's wrong? Whose fault is it? It. Right. Yeah. So it's possible that Len Fels, his mother may have had some Jewish ancestry, which is going to be relevant later. But as a boy, he, like Himmler, he's obsessed with medieval history. Although he's initially more interested in like the Arthurian myths than Germanic myths. Right. He's really, really into King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and all those stories. He initially opts for life of faith and he becomes a Cistercian Monk in the 1890s and he takes up the name George. But the life of a monk is boring as shit. So he is compensated by developing an obsession with astrology and medieval history. One day in 1894, he stumbles upon a gravestone for a member of the Knights Templar. And I think this gravestone is probably, like, on the grounds of the monastery. I'm not 100% sure, but we talked a little bit about them earlier. The real Knights Templar were a Catholic military order founded in the 1100s to defend religious pilgrims in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In their early period, they were elite soldiers. These are actual knights. They're wearing the plate mail. You know, these are like, you know, fighting on horseback. These are like the military elite of the Crusades for a brief period of time. But the Knights Templar continue on for a couple hundred years. And the vast majority, like, 10% of them are soldiers. Right? The vast majority of the order are bankers. And in fact, the first. There's a. This is kind of one of the first examples of an international banking system is created by the Knights Templar because they build this network of bases from the Holy Land all the way into Europe that function as an early banking. International banking system where if you go to one of these places, they have the records and you can, like, pull your money out wherever you happen to be. Right. Like. And that's a very. That's a fairly new idea at this point in time. There's some other stuff. They're not the.

[B]

The.

[A]

They're not the first people to do something like this or the only ones, but they're among the very first people who are operating an Internet, an intercontinental banking system that's a really wild thing to exist in the 1100s, 1200s. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, this is legitimately impressive and it's a very. The history of the Knights Templar is fascinating, but the fact that they're the bankers for most of Christendom leads to problems for them because people don't like bankers. Right. Didn't know. People don't like bankers in any period of time for the same reason, which is that they wind up in debt to those banks. Right. And in the 1300s, the king of France winds up owing a shitload of money to the Templars. And if you're the king and you owe a lot of money to these people, you know what solves your problem real easily? Arresting them. Declare them heretics, and arrest these assholes who you owe money to. Right.

[B]

Get rid of them. The most logical.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. Now, that is so funny to me.

[A]

He charges them with, like, worshiping idols. I think he's saying that they're basically like devil worshipers. And he also Charged them with homosexual behavior. Right, of course. Which I'm sure is a lot of these are monks basically, right?

[B]

Of course.

[A]

Of course some of them are stupid each other, right? You know, that's part of why people become monks. But these charges are bullshit. He's making shit up. So he has an excuse to arrest the Knights Templar and get rid of this, like, debt problem that he's got. So they take a bunch of these guys into custody in France and they torture the ever living shit out of them until they confess to being, you know, worshiping false idols and engaging in gay orgies and all this stuff, right? You know, you get people to say anything if you cut enough pieces off of them. So the King goes to the Pope and he's like, look at what all of these guys admitted to doing under torture. You should arrest the whole Order all over the Christian world, right? Because clearly they're all guilty. This conspiracy goes all the way to the top. And the Pope being the Pope is like, well, yeah, this is like a power center. That's not me. So I get some benefit in getting rid of these guys. And I'm very much simplifying the story. But this all ends with the Pope ordering all of the kings of Europe to arrest the Knights Templar, the whole order. And they are expunged brutally. Right? That is the real history of the Knights Templar in brief. But guys like Lebenfels and Himmler, who are both, both Himmler and Lebenfels, are obsessed with the Knights Templar from a young age. They're not interested in reality. To them, the Templars are heroic, badass warriors fighting evil Muslims to protect the faithful. This view was reinforced in Lebenfels when he comes upon this grave. Because on this Templar grave that he finds, it's carved with a rel of a knight stomping on a monkey with his foot. And I want to quote now from the book Hitler's Vienna by Brigitte Haman, quote, Lance interpreted this as a reference to the need for aristocratic mastermen to subject monkey men and from then on placed himself in the service of this idea which had come to him in a dream. So he sees this thing and then he has a dream about it and he becomes clear, like, oh, what the. What the Knights Templar are trying to tell me, right? Because he thinks this dream is like the spirits of these deceased knights speaking to him, is that there needs to be an aristocratic master race that can keep a foot on the monkey men. And I don't think I need to tell you who the monkey men are right. Nope.

[B]

Don't need to tell me.

[A]

To be clear, the kind of white supremacists that this guy is and these guys, it's not just non white, it's also other kinds of white people. Right. The poles are just is white to that. Right.

[B]

You know, you trying to purge polish blood out of you then. Yeah. Nah, you have really stretched your definition of white.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. This is just, it's just, it's a different kind of white supremacy and a little bit than what we have today. Not any less bad, just different. You know what else is different? The quality of advertisers that we have on this podcast. No one else has ever had advertisers as good as we have.

[B]

You know, we do it blindfolded like we begin these good ad we don't even know. It's just they just be good.

[A]

A lot of people don't know this. Every single one of our advertisers has been approved as a saint by the Pope. You know, every one of them.

[B]

Chicago Pope too.

[A]

That's right, a Chicago Pope.

[B]

Which means a double. Yep.

[A]

Anyway, here's ads.

[C]

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[A]

Ah, great stuff. So we're back. You know, we're enjoying our ads. We're sponsored by the Knights Templar, all of whom are currently being tortured by the King of France. So very impressive that they're still able to sponsor a podcast. We wish you all the best of luck. They are bankers pulled out. Yeah. Yeah. And bankers love getting their toenails pulled out. You know, if only that had happened after the financial crash in 2008. You know, if there was ever a time to torture bankers, man. Right.

[B]

They would have really learned they lesson in.

[A]

Yeah, maybe that would have fixed things. Maybe the King of France was onto something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In 1899, Lebenfels is ordained to the priesthood. The next year, he leaves the order due to what he described as a growing nervousness and instead founded a new order of his own, which he called the Order of the New Templars. Now, unlike the Knights Templars, his new order is obsessed with the Holy Grail, which he has grown interested in because he's reading all these books on medieval myths. And so the new Templars, their three interests are the Holy Grail, men's rights, and race science.

[B]

Good.

[A]

Fuck. God.

[B]

Shit.

[A]

God, it's good stuff, huh?

[B]

What the.

[A]

The Holy Grail, men's rights and race science. Oh, man. Yeah.

[B]

Like. Like you're already the worst human beings and then you just had to add salsa on top of it. Like.

[A]

Yeah, you just.

[B]

You're already. You just added Tapatio on top of already being the worst human beings ever. Just. God, I hate these dudes.

[A]

Yeah, okay. No, it's so funny. The whole men's rights thing is always so. It's fascinating to me that that's every sing every time. Yeah. And like you're angry about men's Rights and the fucking 1902, like, what the fuck, man? You own women can't even vote most places.

[B]

Yes. I'm like, you're the only ones with rights. Like, what war are you fighting? Okay, yeah, yeah. It's so frustrating.

[A]

It's magical. So Liebenfels starts recruiting men to his new Templar order that he sees as natural rulers. Right? Right. He's trying to recruit the master men he wants to make. He wants to make a knightly order and fill it with like natural leaders who can like take over as the, the hierarchy of Germany. Right. Like that's, that's what he wants to create here. And his ideal candidate for the new Templars are independently wealthy, racially pure Aryan men who are honorable. And honorable to him means that they're willing to give Georg von Lebenfels money. And a shocking number of people are down to do that. And using their donations, he buys an old crumbling castle outside of Wahau to be their headquarters. And the castle's name is Werferstein.

[B]

Okay, Now Wienerschnitzel. Got it.

[A]

If you played first person shooters in the 90s or more recently, you've heard of Wolfenstein, right? Wolfenstein 3D, one of the very first first person shooter games ever made. I think a very early game and obviously there's been more modern adaptations. And the basic plot is you're an Allied soldier in a castle filled with like German occult bullshit and you've got to fight your way to the end where Hitler has a robot body and two chain guns for arms. But there's a lot of occult weird bullshit. There's like, they're raising the dead, there's magic and all sorts of stuff. And the name of Castle Wolfenstein comes from Castle Wurfenstein. Right. Like this is. And that's not the only. There's another castle that also is mine right now. Yeah. It's wild, right? Yeah. Like there is. It's one of those things. The amount of actual history that these games are based on is kind of surprising. You would expect it to be basically none. But there is more than a little bit of real history here. Obviously the Nazis weren't really raising the dead. Most historians agree Hitler did not have a robot body and chain gun arms. But that is still debated.

[B]

I was going to say it's still debated. Still debated, yeah.

[A]

I think Richard Evans's biography of Hitler really goes into the chain gun arms hypothesis. But it's argued.

[B]

I think I read a book somewhere about it.

[A]

Yes. In 1902. George, who's now going as Lonz von Leben Fels adopts a fake identity, complete with forged documents. He now claimed to have been born in Messina, Italy, and he changed the name of his father from Johan Lanz to Baron Johann Lannes de Liebenfels. Now, he claims that this invented father was a member of the Swabian nobility, right? Which makes obviously Lebenfels a noble, which is why he starts going by Vaughn. Now, both of his real parents are still alive. You'd think, like, wait a second, you're lying about who your dad is while your real dad is alive. But he doesn't. See, this doesn't seem to have caused him any problems, right?

[B]

Ain't no Internet, so you can't just call your daddy.

[A]

Who's gonna call this up, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You gonna go all the way into the countryside to go find my father?

[A]

Yeah. So he goes. He basically, like, yeah, starts claiming like, no, I'm an Italian. I'm a Swabian nobleman, you know, so you can call me Lanz von Lebenfels. That's my name now. And he also gives himself a fake PhD. Because if you're forging documents, why. Stop it?

[B]

I mean. Yeah, why? Like, dude, add the guacamole, man. Upgrade to the.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

To the platinum package. You're already. You already changed your name. You done already gave your. Yeah, just upgrade the dude. Yeah, man. And then, like, why don't you throw in, like, throw in a couple ex girlfriends, you know what I mean? Like a couple. Couple supermodel ex girlfriends. Why not?

[A]

Yep. So by this point, Leben Fels has become a follower of Von List, you know, who creates this Armenian theory about these priests of Wotan. And. And Liszt adopts Liebenfels as kind of a protege. Like, he sees this. Oh, you changed your name too. You're also pretending to come from an aristocratic, noble background, just like me. They kind of like, they're simpatico. There's just like this natural alliance that they have because they're both the same kind of con man and they're the same kind of nerd. You know, again, in a modern era, fucking Von List would be the dungeon master and Lebenfels would be like, the guy who always has time for a session, right? Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And Von List is aware that Lebenfels is, like, faking his ancestry because he creates a fake family tree for the Von Liebenfels family with a heraldic figure that includes imagery from Lyst's invented armanins. So he creates a fake family tree and a Family crest using the runes that those ghosts told him in a dream. All to help out Lebenfels.

[B]

Yeah. Feel like if you, if you're like sitting like four chairs down in like the office meeting, like, are you like, we gotta take, we have to take him serious. Like, I have to take this serious. Did like, he just. You just made up your whole past or do they not know that this is comically made up?

[A]

I think outside of Leben Fels enlist, their followers don't. And certainly the people who are just like reading because they've got their followers who are actually showing up and doing rituals with them. Both Lebenfels and List have their own organizations. They've said, like Leben Fels has like this order of the New Templar. Most of those guys don't know. And it's hard for me not to think of Lebenfels and List. I can imagine them as like me when I'm 10 with my friend. As we're like inventing, you know, creating our own worlds for like D and D games or like creating our own space marine chapters for war and being like. And this is this guy's backstory and he did all of these things.

[B]

That's what I'm trying to say, right?

[A]

Like, that's what they're doing, right?

[B]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. But we grown ass men. So that's what I mean by like, it's fun if we know we're suspending reality. But you literally went to the office to change your name to A. And your dad is alive, sir.

[A]

Your father simply is alive. Still. Like, you know, this is full of shit.

[B]

We know he's not dead.

[A]

Yeah, that's the big question is right? Does the fact that these guys know they're lying make them believe they're bullshit any less? And I think the answer is no. And I'm going to quote from Brigitte Haman again, quote. Later on, Lanz would explain these manipulations by saying he wanted to avoid astrological checkups of himself. However, the real reason was the Hoffenreich family's Jewish ancestry, which made Lanz fail to meet his own racial criteria in the Order of the New Templars. He did succeed in sneaking these false facts into the city of Vienna's official registration files. Thus, Adolf Lanz became the Aryan Baron Adolf George lanz von Liebenfels PhD. And so he justifies this when people find out. Anyone who finds out, he's like, oh, I didn't want anyone to be able to astrologically spy on me. So I had to fake some dates about my birth. But that's the only reason he's actually doing this, because he's got Jewish family and Liszt again, the fact that Liszt is willing to help him disguise his Jewish ancestry. And I think it's because it lets Liszt spread his bullshit even more because he gets to create a fake family tree and a fake family crest and he can go to. You don't think the Armenian are real? Well, look, my friend who's a real noble and registered with the government, his family crest has these symbols that came to me in a dream. Obviously everything I'm saying is real, you know? Yeah. Now, like his mentor, Liszt, Liebenfels makes his money as a journalist. In pre war imperial Germany, a number of moneyed conservatives had subsidized the creation of pan German newspapers which existed to support the still new concept of German as an identity by pretending it had always been a thing. So he's being paid by these right wing conservatives who buy newspapers to have guys like this lie about the German identity. Right. Like, because nationalism, you know, is in their best financial interests.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Leben Fels, his patron is this guy George Schoner, who's this, you know, he's this very rich dude who's a nationalist. And Leben Fels repays Schoner by licking his boots in print. Like he writes, you know, as he's writing about these ancient Aryans and the Volkish movement, he's writing about how great Shoner is. Right. Like this guy is the very model of a Nordic, you know, Superman, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now as time goes on, Lebenfels gets more and more obsessed with Liszt's Armenian priests and the ancient Aryans. And this causes him to break with the Catholic Church that he had literally been a monk, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now part of why he breaks from the church is that his financial patron Schonerer had also created something called the Away from Rome movement. Now this is part of a larger struggle. We've talked about this in several episodes. At the birth of the German nation of Imperial Germany after the Franco Prussian War, Otto von Bismarck has this huge fight with the Catholic Church. Because the Catholic Church is a problem for the Kaiser, it's a problem for Bismarck, and it's gonna be a problem for the Nazis. Because Catholics don't just look at whoever's in charge of their country as a leader. They've always also got the population. And that's a second center of power. That's an issue for you if you want to be a dictator, right? Yeah.

[B]

If you ain't first, you're last, baby. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Exactly, exactly. And so Schonerer starts this Away from Rome movement and part of why he likes Lebenfels is Lebenfels's weird pagan shit. Even though Schoner maybe doesn't fully buy into the pagan stuff, it's something that separates people from the church in Rome, you know. And Lanz's big innovation in fact is that he turns the Away from Rome movement into the Arian race movement. The Aryan race movement gets started. A lot of the initial impetus behind it is people can be like anyone can be a Catholic, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You don't have to be white. The Catholic Church is happy to have non white people in it. Obviously still pretty racist. But non white people can be Catholic, non white people can go to heaven. Right. Jesus will save all of them. That's pretty core white Jesus Catholic doctrine. Right. It may be white Jesus, but he'll still save a black person or someone who's brown and someone who's Native American. They can all be Catholic. And that's a huge issue for racists like Lebenfels and List and Schoner. Right. And so wait, hold up, that's another.

[B]

Thought that never crossed my mind that like if you a white supremacist that still believes in somewhat some version of, of the Christian God that you like. Wait a minute now you telling me heaven is gonna have other races in it?

[A]

It's not segregated like the water fountains.

[B]

That's gonna be a problem. That's a problem for me. Like, you know, I never thought of that.

[A]

That's exactly what Liebenfels is saying. And that's why again, the birth of the Aryan race movement is in wanting to come up with something to replace Catholicism in the minds of a lot of germs and replace. Because they're focused issue on Catholicism. But this is a problem that they have with all of Christianity, which is.

[B]

Yeah, it was like the Protestant Reformation.

[A]

If you take your Christianity seriously, you have to accept that other races are loved by God and can be saved. Right. But if those other races aren't really human.

[B]

That's the question.

[A]

There's some room to both be like, well, Jesus is an Aryan and God, the only people who are fit for heaven are Aryans. Right?

[B]

Yeah, that's, that's the, yeah, the, the Jonathan Edwards like the sinners in the hands of angry God guy. Like he was like, dude, you know, if, if all people are made in the image of God, including the slaves and the savages, then we should give them the gospel. I'm just not sure that they're human.

[A]

It. Right, right.

[B]

Yeah, it was, yeah.

[A]

And that's what like Leben Fels is trying to replace the Roman Catholic church and to a larger extent Christianity with this worship of like the Aryan race and this idea of no, no, no, what matters is not saving souls. What matters is saving the Aryan race through selective breeding. Right. In order to fix the problems that race mixing has created. Right, yeah. And Lebenfels argument is that everyone's every, every German's primary duty is to their race. And so Aryan descended people have to reject Rome in order to properly show race loyalty. He writes, quote, the religious controversies of former times and the national wars of the most recent times are but the forerunners of a tremendous struggle among the races for global predominance. Already we see everywhere the signs of this most enormous of all battles appear. The Mediterranean countries, Mongols and Negroes are getting ready their joint fight against the Germanic race. Now in this upcoming fight, Rome is the leader of the alliance of inferior races and quote the German's most embittered enemy. So he has turned this from like no, no, everyone's loyalty should be to the race instead of the church. To the Roman Catholic Church is the head of this evil alliance of non white people that's going to destroy you know, the Nordic race, the Germans, you know that's, that's, that's what he's selling.

[B]

So rather than feeling solidarity with all of the people that were conquered by the Roman Empire, do you say like yeah, yeah, yeah. If you already use in this myth making.

[A]

Well you know that's interesting because he is, there is, there is a line from like this obsession with Germany fighting against the Romans and like the victory in Turner burg force and everything and, and his hatred of the Roman Catholic church. Right. This is, there's a lot of Germans have always been defined by their resistance. Rome has always been the enemy. Right. One way or the other. That is very interesting. You know but what we have at this point is this has gone from these guys being like nerds and cooking up their own fake version of medieval history and wanting to feel like I'm descended from knights, I'm the reincarnation of this, you know, ancient noble 12th century night to there's a race war brewing and the Catholic church is going to lead it and we need to get, we need to convince our fellow Germans to reject Catholicism and worship this idea. Of the Aryan race, this new and and and co. And return to these old pagan beliefs that again, we've largely created about Wotan and the fucking like, Right? Like that's what they're going for here. So Liszt and Lon's Cross promoted each other's ideas and organization. And it's Liebenfels who first uses the swastika as a symbol of a far right Aryan racist movement. When he creates the new Templar coat of arms, he puts a swastika in it. Right.

[B]

Dang.

[A]

And so all of. And this is, you know, 1906 or so we're at Hitler is just a fucking bum in Vienna. And all of the pieces of Nazi have come together in these occult mystic organizations, right, that Liebenfels and Liszt, they are the ones who create the basis of it. Right. This is where Hitler gets everything and it's where Himmler gets everything. Right.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

Obviously there's some other guys, but they're all related to Liston Lebenfels. You can draw a line between them. We've talked about, you know, Madame Blavatsky is a part of this. But Liston Lebenfels are really, they're like the spiritual grandfathers of Nazis. Yeah. Speaking of the spiritual grandfathers of Nazism, they would never buy the products and services that support this podcast.

[B]

I was like, it might be the spiritual grandchildren.

[A]

Who's to say? Yeah, I'm to say they're not buy these ads products.

[C]

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[D]

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[A]

We'Re back. You can buy the ads too, you know, advertise on our podcast. Pay us money. We'll show whatever product you want.

[B]

Please give me money.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, you know we've got an ad here from Jerry in Tallahassee, Florida who sells the best cocaine in Florida. So yeah, go to Jerry if you're looking to get. You can create your own far right Aryan racist.

[B]

That's what I was going to say.

[A]

You might use cocaine.

[B]

You might become a legendary psychologist.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you might. Or you might OD because Jerry's cocaine is 100% fucking fentanyl. Who's to say? Jesus Christ. What? Sophie, this is what the ad said. Jerry paid us good money for this. Wow, $30. So we're talking about Liston lawns. They're cross promoting each other's ideas and organizations. Liebenfels uses is the first to use the swastika. And yeah, it's also, you know, as important as it is to know that this is is where Nazism and the SS come from. This is their backstory. And millions of people die partly as a result of like these nerds geeking out over their weird medieval obsession with the Knights Templar and all this stuff. It's also important to know that there's a lot of silly stuff in these Beliefs. A lot of stuff that's just ridiculous, that doesn't even tie into, like, what we know from the Nazis. Like, there's a lot of just absolute nonsense here. And I want to quote from Hitler's Vienna again, quote. In 1906, Lanz's most important work was published. Theozoology, or the news about the Little Sodom monkeys and the Gods Electron. A member of his generation which experienced electricity as an overwhelming phenomenon. Lanz ascribed to the Aryan gods electric powers and borrowed ideas from Karl von Richenbaum theories on magnetism and the breath of life. The human brain, for example, was described as a breath accumulator. He corroborated his obscure ideas with biblical sources and arrived at conclusions such as Christ proven to have been an electric human being during the tertiary. Jesus was made out of electricity.

[B]

He's made out of electricity.

[A]

People are just. Just. Cause it's new and it's cool.

[B]

Yeah, I was gonna say. I mean, I get it. I get it. If you hit a switch and something lights up.

[A]

Up. Yeah.

[B]

Like you. It's definitely magic.

[A]

And this is all very silly. It's very. The fact that, like, the title of this book, Theozoology, or the news about the Little Sodom monkeys and the gods Electron, it's all just, like, wildly ridiculous. Yes. But this is also tied directly to. This is a part of an ongoing trend that extends to the present day within fascism, which is. Fascism is always inextricably tied with future. Right. In Italy, the first fascists to name themselves such worshipped airplanes and automobiles as signs of modernity. Right. That's a huge deal for early fascism is like this worship of speed. Right. And fascism is an I. We, you know, people think about, like. And we've been talking about these guys who are obsessed with the Middle Ages, but they're also obsessed with new technology. And fascism is an ideology for the future, for people who embrace action for the sake of action and speed for the sake of speed. And Leben Fels is doing something similar here, right? This kind of bringing electricity into it. Right. You can and should draw a line from that, from what he's doing, from these Italian fascists who are in love with automobiles and race cars and stuff, to the embrace of AI aesthetics by the modern fascists.

[B]

That's what I was going to say.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's why my. Like, I know everybody don't be watching this, but, like, y' all that are watching, that's why my face is looking like this, because I'm just. Just like, oh, why it. Oh, my God.

[A]

You know, it's this. Leben Fels convinces himself that like, Christ must have been like this being of electricity because that's the sexy new technology. And our modern fascists have convinced themselves that using AI they're going to make a God out of Eli.

[B]

They're going to make a God out of a.

[A]

Like, exactly. Rule the future. You know, it's the fact that all these Silicon Valley founders have gotten in bed with fascism isn't a deviation from the norm. It's not weird. This is a return to the bad old days.

[B]

They're so broke, dog man. It's like it's. I hate. You can't use extreme words. But just like every answer.

[A]

Huh?

[B]

Like every question we got already been answered. Like just. It's crazy that that's already. Cuz that was a open question to me. I was like, why y'? All? What is the thing? Like, is this a hustle? Like, is there a. I don't see the play. Like with, with these tech bros. I was like, like, truly. I was like, I don't see the play. Like what is the play? And now I see it.

[A]

Yeah. And a lot of this is rooted in this idea of if you're obsessed with modernity and these new ideas and new technologies, part of what you have to do is sweep away the old. And democracy is old. The idea that people deserve rights is old. We don't have time for that. Right. The future, whatever it is we're doing with this new technology is more important than these archaic ideas of human rights.

[B]

Rights, yes. And that there has to be a great, you know, the great men theory, like of history. Like there has to be a great man that steps in a Christ like figure, if you will, to like, make it happen. Precisely, yes.

[A]

Now, Leben Fels, from this basis formulates a view, a new view of morality that discards everything besides race. Writing quote, everything that is good for the superior race is moral and everything that is harmful, immoral, moral right. So ethics is based now entirely upon what is good for the Nordic race, for the Germanic race. Right. These words are kind of interchangeable here.

[B]

It's good.

[A]

Yeah. And what brings us closer, it's again, it's like how a lot of these. We've talked about these different Silicon Valley cults, like the Zizians, Everything that's good for bringing about the birth of this benevolent godlike AI.

[B]

The singularity.

[A]

That's the only thing that determines good and evil. Right. What you do to people is. Is immaterial as long as you're Taking us closer to birthing this AI. God. That's the only thing that matters. Bonkers. Now, the ultimate logical conclusion of this kind of thinking is that other races cannot coexist in Germany, because if you let other races survive within, you know, this. This heartland of these Germanic, the Nordic peoples, the remaining Norman Nordic peoples, race mixing will inevitably occur. Right. And, quote, if they mingle with inferior races, then the divine in them will gradually disappear as well. And I've talked about how Tolkien is writing his stories. He's basing a lot of what he's writing on a lot of the same things these guys are. They're interested in the same myths. You know, Lebenfels is interested in the Arthurian myth. That's a big thing for Tolkien. We've talked a lot about the Nibelungen cycle. Right. Which Leben Fels and List are both obsessed with. Himmler is obsessed with as a boy. That's one of the direct inspirations for the Lord of the Rings. Yeah. And the Nazis conceive of. And by the way, I'm not saying anything. Tolkien was not in any way, not a Nazi in any way. Hated the Nazis, specifically rejected their anti. Semitism. Obviously. He was a man of his time. There's some problematic stuff in there, but he was not a. I don't think he was a bad person at all. The Nazis, though, do. See, the Nazi conception of the Aryans is a lot like how Tolkien conceives of the men of Numenor. Right. Which is, you know, Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movies must be like 80 something, right?

[B]

Yeah. Transcendent something.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He comes from a superior type of human beings who had lived, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years and were much more powerful and just better. But over the thousands of years, the men of Numenor are dying out, Right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What the Nazis are doing, they see the Aryans as like the men of Numenor. And the goal of Nazi eugenics is not just eliminating non Aryans, which is kind of what people think today is like, oh, they wanted to wipe out everyone who wasn't an Aryan. No, no, no, no. They wanted to wipe out the non Aryans because those people were watering down Aryan blood.

[B]

Turn they turn to their godlikeness.

[A]

Right. They were trying to breed Nordic people together to recreate this mythical super race. Right. To bring back the men of Numenor, so to speak.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

This belief started with List and Lebenfels, the latter of whom wrote extensively about the need to, quote, refine and improve One's race through pure breeding, the only genuine and effective kind of repentance for the sin of intermat. Now, List had prodded this issue, but Leben Fels makes it an obsession. In 1905, he launched a magazine, Ostara, which he described as the first and only publication dedicated to studying, quote, heroic racetom and men's rights. Direct, quote, rights.

[B]

Yeah. I feel like y', all, somebody. I feel like that's, like, them. Them when bills get announced to. That the Congress is gonna vote on.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then somebody just throws one at the end that ain't got nothing to what we about to vote on. And men's rights, like.

[A]

And men's rights, sure.

[B]

What? Like, why are we talking about that?

[A]

Well, let me explain why. Because in the pages of Ostara, Liebenfels extensively explored how concepts like the family, like what we call the nuclear family, and women's rights, which was still not. Not much at that period of time, had to be reformed and curtailed in order to save the race. He advocated for the establishment of colonies, colonies in rural parts of Germany where, quote, brood mothers could be protected and isolated from inferior races and kept constantly pregnant by men with the blood of the Armenian in them.

[B]

Protect the pure white woman.

[A]

Right, okay. He's now increasingly against the idea of, like, marriage. Right. Because, like, the family, all of that limits how many Aryan kids you can pop out. He writes, quote, we have protected our cattle against racial degeneration and contamination by way of cattle. Cattle breeding tariffs, but we still render unprotected human beings to contamination and blood adulteration. God damn.

[B]

Yeah, Right, Okay, Right.

[A]

We gotta treat our people more like we treat our cows.

[B]

Sometimes I feel like, man, it'd be so great if, like, while the middle of this, while this person is talking, you just pull out, like, the perfect, just like el Pastor taco and just be like, man, eat this. Eat this. Hold on, hold on. Hold up. We need to keep the period.

[A]

Just try that. You've had. You've had literally nothing but sausage. That's your whole life. Try this. There's seasoning in it.

[B]

Yes. Have this Carneti. Here's a burrito.

[A]

We just need to keep the race, motherfucker. This is called Pad Thai. Eat it. Yes, yes, yes.

[B]

Here, here, try. Bite. This is called a noodle. Try this. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No list. I don't. Well, I don't know that that would have affected him, but.

[B]

No, not at all.

[A]

He starts advocating, in addition to all, like, because of all this, he starts advocating for polygamy to be Legal specifically for soldiers who have proved their racial wor. Battle. Right. That like, well, if, you know, a veteran comes back from the war having proved himself to be a superior kind of man, he should be impregnating as many women as possible. Right. And weak men should be stopped from breeding. In fact, we should sterilize the mentally ill and we should euthanize anyone. That's unproductive. Right. He is one of the first. Again, there's other people who have. He's not the only guy having these ideas, but he's one of the first people writing these in an influential publication. And we don't know because Hitler is a homeless bum in Vienna right now, living intermittently in like a men's hostel and like selling postcards. Paint is paintings as postcards basically, a lot of the time doing like sketches for money. It's theorized that he read Ostara. He almost, I mean, all of his biographers pretty much agree. He almost certainly came across issues of this. He read a good amount of it. And he also would have read. People are. There's a lot of what's going around are like cheaply put together pamphlets and tracts that are being sold on the street, a lot of which are like plagiarizing Ostara too. Right. So we don't know. We don't have like a list that he's on as a subscriber, but he is definitely reading this stuff. Cause he himself wrote that during this time, he came across countless hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of like different sort of like writing on racial theory and, and all of this Aryan race, science and stuff. So Hitler is actively reading this during the most influenceable period of his life.

[B]

Ok, so two thoughts here. Just how much of these weird, sweeping, full hitting the alamoth of just these pithy ideas somehow or another come back to, oh, you just want to fuck more girls. Like, how you doing all this just to be like, you just trying to. You just trying to smash more. You want a justification to smash whoever you want without any responsibility. That's what you're trying to do. Right. And. And of course there might be more to it, but I'm just so surprised how often it just, oh, you just want some girls, right.

[A]

You're angry that they have a choice in the matter.

[B]

That you show them who you are, are, and they say, no, thank you. And then you think that was unjust.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're like, what do you mean it was. Yeah. So I think that, yeah, it's the same.

[A]

So much of it is that Ego thing of, like, people not being able to take. Being told no, just like, this is a bit different. But the fact that you can see with a lot of our. The most prominent, like, people like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, of these, like, fascist ideologues we're dealing with today, the root of why they started making this far right turn is they got on social media and people made fun of them.

[B]

People dragged them.

[A]

Yeah. When they would have a bad take, they would get, like, mocked. And, you know, most of us, that happens to us, you know, periodically. Like, someone will be a dick to you online and you just be like, yeah, you know, that happens. But these guys, their whole life outside of this, no one's ever talked shit to them, no one's ever been mean to them. Like, their whole world on a daily basis is people, people agreeing with them, like, reflexively. And the fact that that doesn't happen online kills them.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

This is also a big factor in Himmler's childhood, or like, not childhood, but like, early adulthood. Ostara is one of the magazines he is reading, you know, or as a kid, like, he gets access to this and he gets access more to the point, when he's an adult. Astara is, I think, out of publication most of that time, but people are cribbing from it and plagiarizing it and rewriting it. Right. Like, this is. It's like an ur text of the Volkish movement and all this stuff, you know. So List and Liebenfels are really the core of the ideology that obsesses both Hitler and Himmler. Hitler is primarily going to be focused on building the, like, rebuilding the Aryan race and, you know, finding living space, which is another thing. Lebenfels writes a lot about the need for living space space, the need for expansion for Germany for Germans to have more space to colonize, to, you know, breed. So Hitler takes a lot of that. Himmler also takes a lot of the magic stuff. Right. Like a lot more of it than Hitler does. Yeah. So when World War I rolls around, both List and Lebenfels are really bullish on the war. Right. Because it's going to lead to the. Germany's going to conquer a bunch of land, obviously, and then we'll have. Have this space that we need. You know, we'll defeat our racial enemies. But the war doesn't go as well as they'd hoped. And the privations of the war years forces Ostara to stop publishing because paper gets very expensive. Guido von List probably dies partially As a result of the food shortages in the war, he dies, like, right after it ends. He's kind of old, but the fact that, like, he had been starving like everyone else probably contributes to his ill health during the war years. Liebenfels refines his theozoology beliefs that he'd written that book about. About, like, electric Jesus and everything.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And he comes to the conclusion that, like, theozoology kind of a shitty name. Like, I gotta. I gotta rework this. And by the time the war ends and the Weimar Republic comes into being, he has smoothed all of this out and come up with a new name for his belief system. Ary, or Aryan mysticism. Right. And he is. This is. He's very, like, consciously aping Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. Right. Like, that's. That's part of what's going on here. We've talked about this in our episodes on her, but, yeah, Ariosophy is Aryan mysticism, and that is what Leben Fels is kind of selling. Once the war ends and once Heinrich Himmler starts really getting into this stuff when he has his. His sick period, where he's reading everything he can get his hands on ereosophy, like, that's how he comes into the ideas of Liston Lebenfels in a big way. Yeah. And it's here we return to Heinrich Himmler. Bill Yin, in his book Hitler's Master of the Dark Arts, describes young Himmler and his school days as having a passing familiarity with Guido von List. He had some involvement in a Volkish group molded by Liszt's and Liebenfels theories. The Tooleys decided, which added to the growing corpus of Aryan fantasy the idea that the ancient homeland of the Aryans was an isolated Nordic island or continent in the Arctic named Ultima Thule. And I'm saying Thule, that's how it's pronounced, but it's spelled Thule. T H U L E. Okay. Himmler would have become familiar with a German New Ager named Adam Glauer through his interest in the Thule Society. Glauer was a disciple of Liston Liebenfels, so much so that he actually changed his name and gave himself a voice von going by Rudolf von Sebattendorff. We know Himmler was familiar with Sebattendorf because one of the Freikorps units he joined in 1919 was founded and run by Sebattendorf. Another prominent Thule Society member was Dietrich Eckert, an ariosophist who founded A political party, the German Workers Party. Now, all of this background is necessary to understand why Himmler did the things that he did once he took over the SS in 1929. He was well familiar with the secret societies that List and Liebenfels had created. Thanks to their example, the far right was rife with such societies, including the Tooley Society. Himmler deliberately sought to make the SS something similar, but also something beyond what any of those men had ever dreamed. A state within a state. Like Lebenfels. He used the Knights Templar, or at least his mental image of them, as a model. His goal was to breed a new nobility using the theories of Lebenfels as a guide. Died.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

And that's where we're going to end for today.

[B]

We still ain't done with this man.

[A]

Okay, I know, I know. There's a lot to get through. You really want to understand why all of this happens the way it does? Why Nazism becomes what it is, why Himmler does what he does as leader of the ss. You need all of this history. There's so much to get through to really. Are we even at the Third Reich? No, no, no. We're not even. This is. This is. We're in 29, right? We're in 1929. Hitler's a few years away from power. We're getting close to the Nazis being in power, but, like, no, this is. This is.

[B]

We're at the moment where the party that Hitler joins just started.

[A]

That's like that.

[B]

That's.

[A]

I mean, we finally. We're beyond. Because we've gotten to Himmler taking over the SS.

[B]

It's 1929.

[A]

So we're about where I just had. Had to. I debated between just starting with all of the prehistory and then episode, like three, getting to Himmler, and I felt like we should explain Himmler's background and then kind of. Anyway, these are the choices I made. I thought this was the best way to do it. We'll see if it's helpful to everyone, but, yeah, so we're gonna end this episode. It's 1929. Himmler has succeeded in rebuilding the SS up to, like, a thousand. And he has this dream of turning it into a knightly order that is the new racial elite of Europe. And in the next episodes, we're gonna see how he goes about doing that and how it plays into the greatest, some of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. But first, you know, it's not a crime against humanity. Is props. Podcast hood politics.

[B]

Yes. And My cold brew.

[A]

And your cold brew also. Not a crime against humanity.

[B]

Not a crime against humanity. Yeah. Hood politics with prop. We're cook making. We're talking. We kikiing all the words. It's in your same podcast feeds. It's also on YouTube just like this feed. Terraform. Cold brew's back. There's links. All in. All the things and I'm just deeply troubled with.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

All the things I'm learning right now. Things for which you thought you knew. Like, you think you know what you think you understand the Nazis in World War II, and then you learn something else and you're just like, oh, word.

[A]

Yeah. No, no, no, it's. It's. I. I mean, again, it's one of those things when I try to tell people, oh, you're wrong about the Nazis. They interpret it as like, oh, you're trying to explain that they're not as bad or whatever. It's like, no, no, no. I just want you to understand what they really were. Yeah, right. They're. They're as bad, if not much worse than you think they are far worse, bro. But they are different than you think they are. You don't full. Like most people, you don't full Nazis believed and maybe you don't necessarily. You don't need to. To know that they were evil. Right. The Holocaust is enough.

[B]

Yeah, I got the big. Yeah, I got the big themes here.

[A]

Learning all this stuff, it does help you understand stuff like, oh, it's not weird that all these Silicon Valley oligarchs are getting involved in all this. Weird. It's not weird that these, these guys, like Elon Musk and all are in Peter Thiel are obsessed with, like, birds, birth rates and, you know, the white race being bred to extinction and, you know, wanting to, like, all of these interests that they have. None of this is new. All of this has happened before and all of it makes complete sense. It's not, it's not at all surprising that they're doing the same thing again, you know?

[B]

Yeah, it's the learning of this to me is like, it's the how and the why. Because that's always the question is like, how y' all fall into this? Like, how did y' all let this slide? You know, why? Like, you know, rather than just the idea of, like, well, yeah, well, they're monsters. It's like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, understand this. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And understand that, like, this is their. The only thing they're interested in because they don't have anything else. These people are nothing. They're complete failures. Yeah. Outside of this ideology they've created to make the themselves important. Right. The people like Himmler and then at the top, the people, these like oligarchs, the guys who have the money, the guys like Schonerer who are funding guys like Liebenfels, they do have money, they do have power and they want to keep it. And they see I want to build. I want to use my money to build this ideological scaffolding that justifies me always being in power. Right?

[B]

Yes, yes, yes. That's it. The preserving of your way of life. Not even in the Nazi way. I'm saying in the money way. Like I want to be able to. I need the line to keep going up and this is a way to secure that.

[A]

Yep, yep. Anyway, that's the episode. Everybody have a good week.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

Behind the Basterds is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[D]

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards stop.

[C]

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