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)

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.”

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.