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

Summary

Podcast Summary: Behind the Bastards

Episode: Part Six: How Heinrich Himmler Went From Nerdy Boy To Master of the SS
Date: September 18, 2025
Host: Robert Evans (with guests Prop and Sophie)
Podcast by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode continues Robert Evans's deep dive into the life and rise of Heinrich Himmler, focusing on his consolidation of power, the occult underpinnings of the SS, the transformation of the SS into a quasi-religious knightly order, and Himmler's bizarre quest to replace Christianity in Nazi Germany. The discussion explores Himmler's relationships with mystics, the creation of Nazi religious rituals, the funding of SS occult projects, and the intersection of personal justification and policy—especially around marriage and procreation. The hosts also unpack the tragicomic weirdness and harm inherent in Himmler’s policies and mindset.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why It's Taken So Long to Cover Himmler

[01:05] Robert Evans:

• Explains he delayed this topic due to the massive amount of research needed and his desire to do it justice.
• "I've just—I mean, a lot of this was just going back and rereading portions, but there's so much...I'm not gonna be able to write this in like, less than fucking six episodes." (01:05)

2. Himmler, the Occult, and Karl Maria Wiligut

[06:25]–[21:02]

• By this period, Himmler wields immense power, with the SS in charge of law enforcement and concentration camps.
• Himmler is deeply invested in occult beliefs, particularly those linked to a constructed "Nordic" mythology.
• Karl Maria Wiligut, an Austrian occultist (diagnosed as schizophrenic and institutionalized), becomes influential in the SS thanks to shared interests with Himmler.
• Wiligut invents an alternative mythology, claiming ancient Germanic origins and that Christianity itself plagiarized from his supposed "Irminen" cult, a concept Himmler finds compelling.
  • "The Jews stole Christ from the Irmenists…to cuck our Nordic faith and Jewify it. That's what Christianity is." — Robert (10:45)
• Himmler's absorption of these fringe theories leads to legitimizing bizarre mystical figures within the SS hierarchy.

3. Comparison of Nazi Ideology with Other Authoritarian Regimes

[12:22]–[13:40]

• Explores how Nazi Germany differed in that it produced "only death," unlike the US or USSR, which, despite atrocities, created other lasting achievements.
  • "The only thing Nazism ever creates is death...the Nazi state...never could have made anything but death." — Robert (13:14)

4. SS Rituals and the Creation of a Nazi Religion

[19:19]–[24:08]

• Under Wiligut's influence, Himmler attempts to revive or invent ancient Germanic rituals, recasting the SS as a knightly pagan order.
• Wewelsburg Castle is acquired and lavishly renovated as the SS's spiritual headquarters, using funds from Nazi industrialists (the Friends of Heinrich Himmler).
• The castle is transformed into a temple with invented symbols, rituals, and planned relics.
  • "The core of the property was a vast dining hall that would act as an evil version of King Arthur's round table." (39:53)

5. The Nazi War on Christianity—Especially Within the SS

[43:48]–[55:15]

• Himmler's goal: replace Christianity with a racially focused, quasi-pagan ideology.
• "Yuletide" celebrations replace Christmas—SS families are required to follow esoteric rituals, use SS-approved symbols, and recast Santa as the one-eyed God Wotan.
  • "The Christian church couldn't suppress these yearly visits of this white bearded one eyed leader…So they put one of its assumed saints, St Nicholas in his place." (49:49)
• Marriage and family ceremonies are to follow new rituals designed to reinforce racial goals.

6. Nazi Social Engineering—Marriage, Genealogy, and Procreation

[65:29]–[76:37]

• Mandatory genealogical record-keeping (“Sippenbuch”) for SS families; obsessive tracking of racial purity and ancestry (breed like racehorses).
  • "The Sippenbuch is…not unlike the sort of stud book that owners keep for racehorses." — Bill Yin (66:14)
• Himmler increasingly pushes for a shift away from monogamous marriage—preferring polygamy as a means to maximize Aryan births, justified with a veneer of pseudo-progressivism.
  • “With bigamy, each wife would act as…a stimulus to the others that they both would try to be their husband’s dream woman…Competition gives us the best product.” — Kirsten (75:01 & Prop 75:10)
• Official decrees permit and encourage unwed births by SS men to further the race, cloaking these policies in language of national emergency and gendered duty.

7. Himmler’s Private Motivations

[81:40]–[83:10]

• Himmler’s personal life intertwines with policy. His affair with his secretary, Hedwig Potass, coincides with the overhaul of SS marriage and procreation policy.
• Policy pivots—such as the endorsement of extramarital relationships—serve personal purpose as much as ideological ones.

8. SS Expansion, World War II, and Antisemitism

[84:14]–[86:29]

• Rapid growth of the SS, their involvement in the invasion of Poland, and increasingly radical policies as the war accelerates.
• Early policies toward Jews focused on expulsion and persecution, with the full-scale Holocaust machinery still developing at this stage.

9. The (Comic) Failure of Nazi Mysticism

[86:29]–End

• Rudolf Hess's farcical solo peace mission to Scotland is described as emblematic of the Nazi occultist mindset and its detachment from reality.
  • “Hess parachuting into Scotland and them being like, man, what the hell were you—No, we’re not letting you talk to him. Absolutely not, bro!” — Prop (87:23)
• Despite the seriousness of Nazi crimes, the episode highlights the farcical and pathetic aspects of Nazi mysticism—emphasizing the “chinless wonder” Himmler's lack of heroism.
• “Spoiler. [The occult stuff] does not win the war for them.” — Robert (89:14)

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Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• [01:05] Robert Evans: “I’m not gonna be able to write this in like, less than fucking six episodes. Like, the amount of Heinrich Himmler I want to talk about...So I should wait until we've really got some time to let these episodes breathe.”
• [10:45] Robert Evans: “The Jews stole Christ from the Irmenists…to cuck our Nordic faith and Jewify it. That's what Christianity is.”
• [13:14] Robert Evans: “The only thing Nazism ever creates is death…The Nazi state doesn't and never could have made anything but death.”
• [18:26] Robert Evans: “Heinrich Himmler is the Harry Potter of the Third Reich. I think we can all agree on that.”
• [23:23] Robert Evans: “That's what the SS is…If you’re in the SS, you can't be a failure.”
• [39:53] Robert Evans (quoting Bill Yin): “Each of the chosen knights would have his own high back pig leather chair with his name engraved on a silver plate…here at this table, the SS officers would sit and meditate in a trance-like state.”
• [43:48] Robert Evans (quoting SS guide): “The sun rose from its watery grave. It was born like a child, gathered strength, and appeared in front of the celebrating and joyous folk who felt that life was given back to them.”
• [49:49] Robert Evans (quoting SS guide): "The Christian church couldn't suppress these yearly visits of this white bearded one-eyed leader [Wotan]. So they put one of its assumed saints, St Nicholas, in his place..."
• [66:14] Bill Yin (quoted by Robert Evans): "The Sippenbuch is…not unlike the sort of stud book that owners keep for racehorses."
• [75:01] Himmler via Kirsten (read by Robert): "[With bigamy] each wife would act as…a stimulus to the others that they both would try to be their husband’s dream woman."
• [75:10] Prop: "He mixed polygamy with capitalism. He's like, listen, it's competition. Competition gives us the best product. Oh, this guy."
• [87:23] Prop: "Hess parachuting into Scotland and them being like, man, what the hell were you?"
• [89:14] Robert Evans: “Spoiler. It does not win the war for them. But, you know, maybe it'll work for you.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [06:25] — SS’s rise to power and its occult orientation
• [07:02] — Introduction to Karl Maria Wiligut and occultism
• [19:19] — SS field trips to “mystical” sites
• [23:21] — SS uniforms and the psychology of belonging
• [39:53] — Wewelsburg Castle fantasy headquarters
• [43:48] — Nazi reinvention of Christmas/Yuletide
• [65:29] — Sippenbuch and Nazi genealogical policy
• [76:32] — Himmler’s evolving view on marriage and procreation
• [81:40] — Himmler’s affair with secretary and policy changes
• [84:14] — Rapid SS build-up, Polish campaign, early antisemitic policies
• [86:29] — Rudolf Hess’s failed solo peace mission
• [89:14] — Nazi occult rituals' ultimate futility

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Additional Memorable Moments

• Comic relief: The hosts repeatedly lampoon SS occult trappings, fake “knightly” rituals, and Himmler’s personal insecurities, turning the episode’s bleak subject matter into insightful dark humor.
• Debunking of sources: The hosts caution listeners about unreliable narrators (like Himmler’s masseuse, Felix Kirsten), reinforcing skepticism in historical analysis.
• Social commentary: Discussion ties Nazi pro-natalist, anti-Christian, and pseudo-progressive policies to modern parallels (e.g., contemporary “pro-natalism,” American right-wing misuse of Christianity).

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains Robert Evans's signature dark, sardonic humor and candid irreverence, with Prop serving as quick-witted, insightful comic foil and Sophie providing commentary. The show alternates between deeply researched historical narrative, social critique, and banter-laden asides that drive home the “nerdy weirdo” origins of historical evil.

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For listeners: This episode is essential for understanding not only Himmler’s personal transformation and the SS's grotesque evolution, but also the role of social engineering, myth-making, and egomania at the heart of Nazi evil. The hosts’ use of humor never detracts from the seriousness of the topic but makes the material accessible and memorable.

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Next episode preview:
The chronological deep dive continues with Himmler and the SS’s transition into World War II, focusing on the machinery of the Holocaust and the consequences of the cultic madness outlined here.

Transcript

[Sophie]

Hey, everyone.

[Robert Evans]

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 and we're back. This is behind the hat bast part. What is it? Six on fucking Himmler?

[Prop]

400,000,000 4080, bro.

[Robert Evans]

I held off. People always wonder, like, why does has Robert not done this guy yet? Why has he not done that guy yet? And there's always a mix of things like, why haven't I done Mao yet? Well, because I don't know a whole lot about Chinese history and I'm gonna have to do a shitload of reading to, like, do those episodes well, and I'm just like, nervous about fucking it up and of the amount of work it's gonna take. And Himmler. I was nervous about the amount of work it was going to take, but I was primarily nervous because prior to doing this, I had read a lot of the books on Heinrich Himmler that exist. And I've just. I mean, a lot of this was just going back and rereading portions, but there's so much I knew. I was like, I'm not gonna be able to write this in like, less than fucking six episodes. Like, the amount of Heinrich Himmler I want to talk about, I'm not gonna be able to do that quickly. So I should wait until we've really got some time to let these episodes breathe.

[Prop]

Yeah. Nah, dude, I think, like, I wouldn't, like, even with. With my show, like, I. I come up with an idea. I'm like, dude, like, I could feel like, okay, this would be fresh. And then I kind of, in my, like, sort of my imagination, start doing the show where I'm like, okay, so in my head I would say this, this, this. And then you get to a point in the thing where I'd be like, oh, well, this part would need this type of background understanding. Oh, I don't know shit about that. Then I was like, oh wait, so then that would mean that I'd have to learn this and then okay, so I would need to prove the stati. I would need to show the statistical data about this and then and the the workload is just growing in my imagination and I'm like, yeah bro, nah, I'm gonna sit that idea to the side, homie. Like that's cool. I just. Yep. We gonna have to do this when my children are on vacation or something.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Crazy.

[Robert Evans]

So before we get into more Himmler, I wanna just highlight if you wanna donate to the Portland Defense Fund and help people who have liter else in their corner make bail and fight charges, often bullshit charges against them, go to Defense Fund PDX Fundraiser on Donor box. Just type Defense Fund PDX Fundraiser and Donor box into Google. Or go to Venmo and go to defensefundpdx Defense Fund pdx. And you can send the money that way too. Anyway, let's talk about a guy who would not have been supportive of bail funds for the very poor Heinrich Himmler. Not really supportive of bail or people getting out of jail or concentration camps in general. Not a big fan of any of that stuff.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Robert Evans]

So Himmler by this point is he's in power. He's actually helping to run most of law enforcement at this point. The SS has become the premier organization for running concentration camps. So he's doing about as well as he's going to ever be doing at this stage in the story. And he's also the highest ranking guy left other than maybe Rudolf Hess, who's super into the weird magic shit related to this tortured version of Nordic mythology that all of these different Liszt and Lebenfels these guys had crafted during his adolescence.

[Prop]

The last weirdo.

[Robert Evans]

So that means he becomes Himmler and his organization, the ss, become the go to clearinghouse for mystics who are interested in this stuff still and wanna build a place for themselves in the third Reichstag. And one of these weirdos who goes to Himmler because he knows Himmler's the same kind of weirdo I am is Karl Maria Willegut. Now Carl Maria was an Austrian. Yeah, Carl Maria Willigut. I mean he's an Austrian they throw Maria in wherever the fuck they can. Sure. I mean, no one loves the name Maria more than Austrians.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe the Italians. That's what World War I was largely about. Italy and Austria fighting over who gets to use Maria.

[Prop]

Yeah. I was thinking about middle school and the amount of girls whose middle name was Marie.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. There's an Austrian somewhere in the back of that family line.

[Prop]

Yeah. I was like, austrian, ain't you?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Prop]

All right.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway, so he was an Austrian, Willigut, and he'd been. He was an officer in the Habsburg Imperial Military. He's like a colonel, so he's fairly high ranking, but he's also in like the pre war period. He's like an occult scholar in the mold of List and Lebenfels. He's one of these nerds who cannot enjoy someone else's canon, so he has to create his own. And this is what's interesting. Liszt and Lebenfels both create their own canon.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Liszt has his Armenian warrior priests, and to an extent, Lebenfels is happy to just be like, oh, yeah, that stuff's right. And I'm going to. Yes. And it. And just kind of add to it.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But Willigut doesn't play nice with others, so he rejects Liszt's Armenian priest cult and he creates his own ancient priest cult, the Irminen. Totally different.

[Prop]

Yeah, just totally different. It's like McDonald's.

[Robert Evans]

It's like if someone watch. Yeah, it's like someone watching Star wars and being like, well, I'm gonna create my own totally original thing called Star War. And it's original and legally distinct.

[Prop]

Yeah. Star battles. What are you talking about?

[Robert Evans]

Airwalker? Yeah. Darth Vader.

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

It really is that lazy and fucking. Willigut's Irminen are identical to the Armenen in every meaningful way. Except the Armenen get their magic powers from Wotan, but the Irminen get their magic powers from the God Irmin. Now, Irmin probably was not an ancient Norse deity. Like, he was probably never worshiped by the, like, Wotan. There was a point at which people really worshiped Wotan.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, some people still do, but.

[Prop]

There was a Wotan clan, which it was like.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yes, the Wotan clan.

[Prop]

There was a Wotan clan. Got it.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, there absolutely was. And in his book on the Nazi occult, Bill Yin writes, quote, some scholars of ancient Germanic literature have suggested that Irman may actually have been merely an avatar or pseudonym for Wotan, as this name does not come up in German. Writing until relatively recent times. Nevertheless, Wooligut continued to believe in Irman's unique identity, as he believed the ancient Irmenists communicated with him. The spirits told Willega that the German people had originated 2300 centuries before in a time when giants, dwarves and mythical beasts moved about beneath a sky filled with three suns. The Irminin went on to whisper to Willigut that the Irmenist God was named Christ and that the Christians had stolen the term from them. And his spelling is K, R I S T, but Right. Yes, again, because all of these guys, they're anti Christian. We saw Himmler started moving against Christianity when the Catholic church was like, well, I guess if Jews convert, it's okay. And Himmler's like, nah, not to me.

[Prop]

Time out, homie.

[Robert Evans]

And all of these guys listed Lebenfels are part of this. They're this kind of pagan revival. And Willigut is specifically like, no, no, no. The Jews stole Christ from the Irmenists.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like that's where that got the name came from. That's where like they took it in order to cuck our Nordic faith and Jew ify it. That's what Christianity is.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

That's literally the way these guys are basically talking.

[Prop]

Oh yeah, gentrifiers, man.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. Well, and specifically Christianity and its focus on social justice and taking care of people. The Catholic Church, no one's gonna claim as a perfect organization, but the Catholic Church legitimately believes it's bad if poor brown people starve to death.

[Prop]

They do believe that.

[Robert Evans]

Now, do they devote all of their resources to stopping starving? No, of course not. But that is like there are Catholic aid organizations that help non white people and you don't have to be white to be a Catholic. And that's really not cool to these guys. And so they're like, well, obviously all of this tolerance stuff is built in the Jews. When they created this, you know, when they created this fake religion that they tricked the west into being, that's what they, you know, that was part of why is they were trying to make us more tolerant of degeneracy. You know, like that's the anti Christian argument from these guys essentially.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Christianity is way too tolerant.

[Prop]

Wow. Here's the problem with Christianity.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Tolerance.

[Prop]

It allows other people to be alive.

[Sophie]

Right, right.

[Robert Evans]

They don't. But the average Christian belief is not murder everyone else. Yes. Which is where we're going to take it. Yes. And yeah, that does. We talk a lot about like, why are the Nazis different than other bad regimes that existed? Because they are like we talk about the US got up to a lot of hideous stuff that has genocides that it had committed and was in the process of committing when the Nazis started their rise to power.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And the same is true of the ussr, Right. The whole le domor horrible things done by the ussr. Both the US and the USSR did nightmarish things and were also states outside of that in that they did other stuff. Their product of the USSR was not just death and starvation. They got the first man into orbit. They massively, completely, like the dramatic, the change in the situation for like women's rights from czarist Russia to the USSR and in terms of like literacy, massive. And likewise, the United States sent a bunch of food all over the world, was responsible for rebuilding countries after World War II, put men on the moon. The only things, the only products of the US and the ussr, they produced death and they produced other things. The only thing Nazism ever creates is death, right? Yes. And the few scientific advancements that come from the Nazis come from the fact that they're trying to kill people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And occasionally that leads you to make a rocket or something.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But the Nazi state doesn't and never could have made anything but death. And that is fundamentally different from these other states, even from like fucking Maoist China. The only product of the Chinese Communist Party is not just death, which does not mean ignoring the bad things done by these states, by the US or anyone. It just means that like, well, they did other things. The Nazis only killed people.

[Prop]

We did some other shit too, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about this guy Willegut and his Erminist cult that totally isn't ripped off from the Armenians. And Willigut's particular special interest is in this very real geographic site in Germany called the Irminsul, which is a natural rock formation in Germany that he and other Volkish neo pagans believe was created by humans. Geologists say no, this is just sort of like a weird looking natural formation. It's kind of like the Giant's Causeway where it's this natural formation, but there are like myths about it being something ancient people made.

[Prop]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I think it's giants in the case of the Giants Causeway. Literally.

[Prop]

But probably.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I'm remembering right, yeah, there was like a Scottish giant and he was fighting with his Irish. Anyway, we don't need to get into the lore too much because I don't remember it perfectly. But this is another case like that where there's this Natural thing. And Willigut is among a number of volkish neo pagans who are like, this was the Stonehenge of our ancient ancestors. It was created to, like, harness mystical power.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

This is like a bunch of ley lines converge here.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

And so after World War I ended, and with it Willigut's military career, he gets cashiered out, his empire goes away, and he gets. He doubles down on writing these books and tracts about the Ice Kings, the Irmin and Ice Kings. And he just kind of loses his mind, right? He convinces himself that these Ice Kings are his ancestors. He's like the descendant or reincarnation of one of these great Ice Kings. Now his real life is falling apart as he's descending into fantasy. His young son dies of an illness. Obviously, his empire goes away. His career goes away. His family, like, financial situation changes dramatically. So he just completely gives up his connection to reality in favor of this fantasy. And his wife and family are not happy with this.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Especially because as he gets more delusional, he grows more physically abusive. And so we'll have, these days, long psychotic fits where he'll rant from talking about the days when he was an Ice King to just beating the shit out of his wife.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

And it's bad enough that she. In 1927. Think of how hard this would be to do in 1927, his wife gets him abducted off the street by the police at a cafe in Salzburg, diagnosed as schizophrenic, and locked in an asylum. Whoa. To have that done to you as the man, to have your wife be able to do that in 1952.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You have to be exhibiting some pretty out there behavior.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

You gotta be out of there.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it is. You know, it's easy for a parent to have a kid locked up or something like that for bullshit reasons to have. For a wife to have her husband locked up. Not easy. In 1927, that's wild. He was out of fucking pocket.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So he gets released after a little while, but the only people willing to associate with him, his family has fucking left. The only people willing to talk to Willigutt after he gets out of the mental institution and. And take him seriously are these Nazis in Austria and Germany because he's been publishing a newsletter for years, and it was super popular among members of the party.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Cause all of his, like, his Ice King bullshit, they think it's cool. He's basically writing fantasy novels, you know? And so these guys convince him, per Yen's book quote, that he had been locked up not because he was an abusive husband, but because he was a martyr being persecuted for his neo pagan religious beliefs.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It's not cause you hit your wife. It's because you know the truth about the Ice Kings. That's why the state came after you. Yeah.

[Prop]

So they just used it.

[Robert Evans]

Just anything but holding a man accountable. Just anything but that. Anything but holding a man accountable.

[Prop]

Just.

[Robert Evans]

No, it's like that really tells you again, where the Nazis are socially in this period is like this guy gets out of a mental institution being like, ah, the Ice Kings made my wife leave me after I just hit her a few times. They're like, that's absolutely religious persecution, Willy. You know. So he travels to Munich in 1940, during the same month Hitler takes power, and he has a meeting with Heinrich Himmler. So one of the first meetings Himmler has when the Nazis are in power is with this mystic weirdo, Willigut. Now, for hours, Willegut wove stories for Himmler of the Ice Kings and how he discovered that he was their descendant.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That he had the blood of the Ice Kings in his veins. And Himmler listens with rapt attention. He falls in love with the idea that his real ancestry might be something more exciting than a line of peasants and merchants who'd done okay for themselves.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because obviously I'm the Reich sphere of the ss. I must have the blood of someone important in my veins. No one without special blood could do anything cool, right?

[Prop]

Yeah. I'm descended of an Ice King.

[Robert Evans]

He's got like Harry Potter syndrome. I must have real, my real parents or ancestors somewhere. Must have been important people, you know.

[Prop]

Yes, yes.

[Robert Evans]

Heinrich Himmler is the Harry Potter of the Third Reich. I think we can all agree on that.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So the next year he gets admit. Willigut gets admitted to the ss and they do it under a pseudonym because again, he's disgraced. And his pseudonym translates to Thor knows. So Himmler, again, the extent to which he is bought into this stuff, you can't exaggerate.

[Prop]

Thor knows.

[Robert Evans]

Thor knows.

[Prop]

I hate these guys.

[Robert Evans]

They're such fucking dweebs.

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Himmler makes him head of the department of Ancient and prehistory, which is, you know, itself under Walther Darr's race and settlement office in the ss. So he's. He is. This is the guy. Actually, if the people who were writing the Indiana Jones movies had wanted to, you know, make things a little more historical verisimilitude, you'd have had this guy in the first movie in Raiders, this would have been the guy, like, leading the expedition.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

If you wanted to make it a little more accurate, or at least he would have been involved. He would have been like one of their experts, quote, unquote. Okay, that's not a complaint. I'm just being like, if you want a slightly more accurate version of Raiders, imagine this guy in play.

[Prop]

It belongs in a museum.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I will say, of all of the guys Himmler makes generals in the ss, at least Willigut had been a colonel in an actual military during a war. So this isn't totally out of pocket for him to be declared general. It's like, okay, you actually did most of the background work at least. Like, you're crazy, but you did do a lot of the work necessary. So he starts leading.

[Prop]

Say what you will about the homie. I know he's got a few weird things about him, but he was. He was. He did do the thing once.

[Robert Evans]

He did the thing once. He's vaguely. It's gonna make more sense for him than. I mean, Himmler's going to have that kind, like, effectively be a general. And it's like, you don't know shit. Heinrich, get out of here. You did.

[Prop]

We're not there, bro.

[Robert Evans]

You don't know how to start a military unit. Like, what are you talking about, man? So in a year, yeah. And he starts leading his main job. Willegat's main job is he will take SS delegations to sites of magical significance, like the so Irminsul to try to inform them about their real history and about the religion they should be adopting instead of Christianity. There's a picture Sophie's gonna put up for those of you online that shows Willegut leading Heinrich Himmler and a bunch of SS officers around this rock formation in 1935. And I think Willegut is. He's the guy with the cane in the middle there. And right next to him, you can see Heinrich Himmler, the chinless wonder himself. There he is, the chinless wonder.

[Prop]

And, oh, man, every once in a while, you hit a. You hit a home run every once in a while, bro. The chinless wonder.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just saying, if you had to pick a Nazi to box, he's the Nazi you picked, because one good left hook into that glass and he is going down.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Like, that man's jaw put glass is. Is stronger than that man's jaw.

[Prop]

I love it.

[Robert Evans]

Meanwhile, Willigutt, that guy looks like he could probably, like, look at that guy's. I mean, he's not a young whippersnapper anymore, but he looks like he could take a hit.

[Prop]

Yeah. Not for nothing.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, not for nothing. So this is. I mean, again, and this kind of stuff is happening all throughout the SS's early history. And it's part of. Himmler loves this stuff. So he loves going on these little field trips and he likes making other ss, because in his mind, they're all becoming awoken to the real truth of Wotan and their ancient German ancestors and the magical power in their veins. Now you can see the SS has already made, through this photo, some more steps towards becoming both the organization they'll be known as and towards becoming a knightly order. They all have these big daggers hanging off their belts which had become part of the official SS uniform in the last couple of years. These have. My honor is loyalty emblastoned on the blade.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's, like, written on the blade of every SS knife.

[Prop]

This.

[Robert Evans]

This appellation that Hitler had. Had put on them and. Or this. This statement that Hitler had, like, this, like, motto that he gave them. And yeah, they're all. They're all wearing all black now. You know, They've taken another step up and started contracting, you know, with Hugo Boss to make their uniforms. They're looking good and they're looking now like Knights Templar. Like modern Knights Templar. Right. And that's so much of it to Himmler, is that the look is right. And you have to give him credit in terms of efficacy. That's why the ss. A big part of why the SS becomes what it is. And we've talked about this in other episodes. We've talked about SS guys like Eichmann. The cool uniform is part of the appeal because it says we're an elite organization. If I can just get in here, I'm part of the elite, and I've never gotten to be that. And so I will be loyal to an organization that makes everyone have to agree. I matter.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That's what the SS is, is. It's. If you're in the ss, you can't be a failure.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

You can't be a freak or a weirdo or just some, like, asshole who can't keep his family together. You have to be a success. You're part of the racial elite. You know, and if the world hasn't recognized that yet, it's because the world is bad and we need to change it via murdering people.

[Prop]

We need to show them. We need to show them the ice kings and the giants and the. In the ancient made up letters.

[Robert Evans]

They just don't know you have the blood of the Ice Kings in your vein. You just don't know Ice Kings that you fucking plagiarized off of another guy. Yeah, speaking of plagiarizing the Ice Kings, is it ad time sponsored this podcast would never do that. They legitimately are descended from the ancient Ice Kings. But yeah bro, that's neither here nor there. Dumb.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So it's almost certainly through Willegut's influence that Heinrich Himmler came to an important realization about himself. Not only did he have royal blood, just like Von List and Von Lebenfels and Willegut and every German folklore, uh, weirdo we've discussed.

[Prop]

Himmler's like, yeah, I just don't know. Well, who was in your kingdoms if all of you were kings? Like, was there any subjects?

[Robert Evans]

Nope, nope. Subjects don't get reincarnated, just the cool people.

[Prop]

Oh, got it.

[Robert Evans]

So, and Himmler's kind of come late to this, right, because he doesn't have that much faith in himself. It's not until the SS is top shit and nobody can question him directly anymore that he starts feeling comfortable being like. And he's talking with Willigut. And Willigit's like, yeah, here's how I found out that the blood of the ice kings is in my vein. And Heinrich's just being like, well, actually, I think maybe I've got the blood of some kings and stuff in my veins too. Actually, in fact, you know what? I was doing some channeling and I had a vision, and I think I'm actually the reincarnation of Heinrich, the first king of the Germans. Like, oh, that's definitely actually who I was. We're both named Heinrich for one thing. So, like, I mean, there's that, right?

[Prop]

And, oh, man, I'm just like. I'm just. I'm picturing you stuck at, like, the company party over by, like, next to the bar by the.

[Sophie]

Like, right?

[Prop]

You know what I'm saying? And this guy's talking and you're just trying to fight one of your buddies too much. Yeah, I don't Want to piss him off, but please, someone come rescue me. Like, we should have made a code. Someone come get me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And it's so funny because you've got this. It's kind of like if you've ever been to a work party and suddenly you realize like, oh, my God, my boss or this guy who's above me in the company hierarchy is really drunk and he's saying some shit he shouldn't be saying. Like, oh, I just learned that our senior vice president thinks that 911 was an inside job. I'm not saying that happened to me. I'm just saying it would be like, if that happened.

[Prop]

No, that is like, you're hanging out.

[Robert Evans]

With like, oh, shit, I'm getting and FaceTime with Heinrich Himmler. Like, this is gonna be great for my career in the. Wait, you're the reincar.

[Sophie]

What?

[Prop]

Yeah, that has happened, King. You say that has happened to me, where I was just like, oh, you're a dumbass. Like, it is a weird feeling. Yeah. Like, wait, what?

[Robert Evans]

Okay, cool.

[Prop]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

So Heinrich I was a real king. He was born in 876 AD he had been crowned the first King of the Germans around 960 and then died in 936, which is not a bad run for a dude in that period of time. As far as I can tell, Himmler's main justification for why he was the reincarnation of this guy was, number one, they're both named Heinrich. And number two, King Heinrich was way more impressive than Heinrich Himmler.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So obviously that guy must be me.

[Prop]

You know, I'm named after my grandpa.

[Robert Evans]

And we don't. Again, I brought this up a little bit earlier. We don't actually know when he starts believing he's Heinrich I. There's outside evidence. We get other people talking about this, I think at 36, for the first time, I suspect not long after he and Willigan meet in like, 33, is when he starts. I don't think it takes long for that belief to get inculcated, but maybe I think he's kind of. It starts with just this inner circle of the other occult weirdos at the ss. And it's gradually that he's willing to tell more people. Cause you do get the sense we'll talk about this more in later episodes, but that he is kind of embarrassed about this a little bit sometimes. Like, he doesn't want every. He doesn't want to talk. He doesn't want to sit down necessarily and explain to Hitler everything he believes about this being reincarnated but the SS is his safe space. Nobody can question him there. Now. The primary impact that accepting this about himself, this belief has on Himmler is that it gives him an excuse to go absolutely hog wild with all the new money and power that had started flowing towards the SS in the early years of the regime. He and Willigutt went on regular trips to significant magical sites around Germany. And during one visit in late 1933, Williget showed him Wewelsburg Castle, W E W E lsburg. And this is I think the primary castle Wolfenstein is based on.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Wolfenstein is obviously what it sounds most like, but Webelsburg is the evil Nazi occult castle. Right, dude?

[Prop]

So like, the more I'm thinking about this like as a parent and also as a teacher and like a former teacher and a rapper, like in hip hop with your kids or with. While watching other kids, it's almost like you can see the made up story become true to that, to that kid. You know what I mean? Whether it's like my children, like I said, them playing around and they're telling some sort of story, like I'm watching my daughter tell a story to her friends and we're like, that ain't happened, you know, but like, but it's cute. And then six months later she's telling it to us like, you remember when? And we're like, baby, you made that up, you know. But at this point the cement has settled. You see it all the time with like gangster rappers where like you just start telling this story about yourself and you're like, sir, you did. This is not your life.

[Robert Evans]

No, you're simply like invented this. I've had this experience hanging out with friends who were in the military and other buddies of theirs and hearing different versions of the same story that can't all. Like someone has to have some details wrong. And they were all there. And I think a lot of the times it's the result. Some of it's just people make mistakes or see something that they think they don't. But some of it's. You start telling yourself something in the immediate wake of a traumatic event that's not quite the truth because it's easier to accept than the truth. And you tell it often enough that it becomes real, it becomes load bearing to your psyche, right?

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

And Himmler at some point, that's certainly part of this. Especially as the war starts to go worse and worse. This belief that in this, the mystical nature of things, that I am the. That there's destiny, right. I Am destined for great things. So even though the situation seems bad now, we're gonna figure something out, right?

[Prop]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Cause I'm special. I'm the special boy of history.

[Prop]

I'm the special boy.

[Robert Evans]

So they find this castle. Himmler falls in love with it. Now Webelsburg castle had been created in the 1600s and it was like less of a real castle that like knightly. Cause you know, this is after kind of the medieval period. It's more of like a rich guy house castle than like a fortress castle, right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But there had at one point earlier in history, there had been other castles there, possibly a castle of Heinrich. I was kind of in the same area. It was also close to where some people thought the Battle of Teutoburg Wald might have been fought in 980.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The battle between the Romans and the. So this is all pretty thin stuff. I don't know that it's exactly where all that happened, but that was enough. Where Himmler was like, oh, like the guy I'm reincarnated from his castle was here. This is where we fought this great battle against the empire of our day and won. You know, this is obviously a site of magical importance. There's so many ley lines crossing through. Like this is a place of power. And so he leases the castle from the local government for 100 years at the rate of one mark per year. And this is going to become the SS spiritual headquarters. Now Wewelsburg is in terrible shape. It's not livable. But Himmler ultimately spends more than 11 million marks in the first year alone renovating it. And they, they put it above, they put in rooms. Like Himmler has a room there. All of the high ranking SS guys have their own suites and they put in like this is basically built as like a, like a gathering, like almost a community center for the ss. So you've got places you can hold conferences, you've got like rooms where you can give speeches and whatnot.

[Prop]

Fellowship hall. Yeah, I got you.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. You can have parties and you can do rituals there. Now obviously he can't spend the SS budget on this because this is an extracurricular activity and he doesn't want to deal with like the chance of getting in trouble, you know, with the, with the Fuhrer over this by spending state money. So he creates a non profit called the Society for the Advancement and Maintenance of German Artifacts. Now I have to go back a little bit and say that Himmler has collected a group of rich men around him who are willing to fund projects like this. And this happens because after the Nazi seizure of power, Hitler makes an industrialist named Wilhelm Kepler his economic advisor. And Kepler is one of these rich guys who was not super gung ho about the Nazi party necessarily, but was super gung ho about their ability to defeat the left and be really good for rich guys like him.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Kepler, this position that Hitler gives him, it's kind of a sop to the plutocratic class, but it doesn't give him direct power. And Kepler, he really cares about the economy, but not much else. And he's one of these guys who. You have a lot of these guys around Trump now who are like, I don't really like necessarily all the economic stuff you're trying to do. Can you just stick to fucking up the people who want to tax me more and not destroy the economy? Because your ideas on that are bad, right?

[Prop]

Yeah. That's all I'm here for, dude. Yeah.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And so Kepler looks for ways to influence Nazi economic policy subtly from within, using money.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Who do we need to bribe to stop them from doing the crazy shit that'll be bad for the economy, or at least bad for my part of the economy?

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

In March of 1933, he convinces Himmler to let him into the SS.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And I don't know if his actual racial background was perfectly clean or if it's just, you know, enough money makes you Aryan.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But he gets into the SS and he gradually is able to get a coterie of his fellow rich guy friends to join the ss, and they form an official group within the SS called the Friends of the Reichsfuhrer.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The Friends of Heinrich Himmler, basically. Now this is a formal group. They have monthly meetings. Himmler oversees the meetings personally. He picks who gets to be a member. And about once a month they meet. And sometimes he'll give a lecture about how policing in Germany is changing. Sometimes he'll give a lecture about the ancient Armenian warrior priests and their runic Alphabet.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Sometimes he'll talk about reincarnation, you know, whatever kind of shit he's interested in that week. Sometimes he'll talk about. Yeah, like breeding the master race, you know, podcast. It's his podcast that's just for him and his three dozen richest friends. Right.

[Prop]

Finally. He finally landed it. We finally got there.

[Robert Evans]

These guys, I don't think mostly believe this, and I don't think most of them care. They just. This is the facetime I gotta put in with Himmler. And he's someone who can make things happen for Me, I mean, he's the.

[Prop]

Boss and he owns the spot. So like, you kinda gotta be there.

[Robert Evans]

He owns the spot. He's got influence, you know? And so this group, by the late 30s, about three dozen guys, the Friends of Heinrich Himmler. And they represent all the major moneyed interests in Germany, Right. Like every big company and major banking cartel has a guy in there. In 1936, Himmler first asks the Friends to donate money to the SS for cultural and social purposes. And they'll basically carve out their errors equivalent of like. Yeah, like a 501C or whatever. I mean, it's better to compare this to like a super PACs, right. Where they're creating packs and putting the money in and then the SS can use that for whatever thing they want.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Even though it's not technically their money and it's not coming out of their budget.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because this is a donation and this is how Himmler pays to remodel Wevelsburg Castle. And it's how most of the SS shenanigans, they're sending expeditions all around the world. In the late 30s, they send an expedition to Tibet. All this stuff is funded by the friends of Heinrich Himmler.

[Prop]

Okay, because that was gonna be my next question because the, the dollar, the leasing it for a dollar a year, I'm like, no notes, bro. Brilliant, smart.

[Robert Evans]

Good call.

[Prop]

Yeah. And then I was like, and the 11 million is an investment. That makes sense. But I was like, where you get that money from? But like, that was gonna be my question.

[Robert Evans]

How'd that happen? How'd that happen?

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And that's, that's. This is where the money comes from.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So Himmler's got no interest. This is like the charity they create is like for the maintenance of German artifacts. Himmler's not interested in maintaining real artifacts. And in fact, he has destroyed the historic value of the castle by now because he has rebuilt the interior as a pagan temple to Wotan.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

To the song.

[Prop]

I was like, you don't care about the history, bro. Like, you just bought the castle.

[Robert Evans]

Cause the history is an invention of his friends.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah. I was like, yeah. First of all, you don't believe history. You make up history.

[Robert Evans]

No, you're making all of this up. So he has the castle rebuilt into a pagan temple to the gods. Von List and Lebenfels and Willegut had basically invented. The core of the property was a vast dining hall that would act as an evil version of King Arthur's round table. And I want to quote From Bill Yen's book. Each of the chosen knights would have his own high back pig leather chair with his name engraved on a silver plate. Here at this table, the SS officers would sit and meditate in a trance like state. The overall theme of the interior decorators naturally revolved around pagan symbolism. The swastika, the SS lightning bolts and the runes of the Armenian futhark, which is like the runic Alphabet, right?

[Prop]

Oh my God. This reminds me of like, okay, obviously I'm extremely married, so I'm out the game. But like I do remember times where there was like, if you're single enough and someone is hot enough to. Where you're willing to put up with their weird hippie dippy shit, you know what I'm saying? Where you're just like, I don't know, this fool is super smoking hot. But whenever I go, whenever I go see them, I gotta like drink rose water and charge my crystals with candles, you know what I'm saying? Like you're just like. And so now, so I'm thinking like, yeah, I really want to be in this. I really want to be in this club, but I gotta go pretend to meditate with these. Like you just have to go. But I'm like, I don't know dude. This fool's. They pretty hot though. Like I got.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, they're pretty. They're pretty. Yeah, you got it. You got to do some. They might want some of your blood for a ritual. I don't know. But like, I mean, look at them, look at him.

[Prop]

It's pretty hot.

[Robert Evans]

And I'll tell you what, I'll believe whatever.

[Prop]

Yeah, I'll believe whatever. And I'll tell you what.

[Robert Evans]

20 again. I did a lot of weird religious in my early 20s. A lot of weird religions.

[Prop]

I have gone to many a hyper.

[Robert Evans]

Hypostatic dances because, yeah, I'll summon a demon with you. Fuck it, you know what I'm saying?

[Prop]

I don't know, man. She fine as hell. Like that's just what she into. Look, I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's to say what's true? Certainly not me.

[Prop]

You will justify a lot, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's what's going on here. So Wewelsburg is also. It's the center of the spiritual chunk of the ss and it's the center of Heinrich Himmler's growing obsession with replacing Christianity, particularly with replacing Catholicism with a faith friendlier to the Third Reich's ambitions. Within the ss, he began substituting Christmas with a solstice Yuletide Celebration. So again, you're basically banned from celebrating Christmas in the SS if you're doing it now. Do people still celebrate Christmas? Sure. They're not. They're not like, recording everyone at all times, but you're not supposed to. And for an example, for an idea of what people. What was expected in the SS, I found a translation of a 1939 guide for people in the SS titled the SS Family by General Fritz Weitzel. In it, he describes the origins of the yuletide as something separate from Christianity and explains that originally people celebrated the yuletide because, like, the whole death and resurrection thing from Christianity, they stole it from this ancient belief that, like, it was about the sun, right? The sun stops coming out as much during the shortest, coldest days. And the yuletide is when that starts to switch and the days start to get longer again. The sun is coming. In other words, that's the reincarnation, right? The sun's path got shorter, and during yule time, there would be only a few hours of daylight, and then it would sink into the cold North Sea and was gobbled up as if eaten by a monster. On midwinter Day, it was dead and lay in its grave. The question whether the sun would stay buried was of equal importance to the question whether mankind would live or die. On midwinter Day, the miracle happened. The sun rose from its watery grave. It was born like a child, gathered strength, and appeared in front of the celebrating and joyous folk who felt that life was given back to them. This happened every year. And every year they celebrated this as their most important festival, their sacred and holy night Festival, man.

[Prop]

And what's crazy is, like, the. The. The modern Christian would agree that, like, yeah, the yuletide is evil, like Santa Claus, it's Satan. It's not supposed to be a part of Christmas. So. You're right. You gotta. It's not Christian, dude. That's crazy. That. Like, that. And then these fools would be like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, no, it's not.

[Robert Evans]

It's not. And you stole it from us, right?

[Prop]

Stole it from us. You know what I'm saying? What a crazy, weird, like, agreement. Like, yeah, no, yeah, no, totally, 100%, yeah. Y' all shouldn't be doing this.

[Robert Evans]

You know, there's some, like, real shit mixed up in there. Like, for example, the timing of Christmas celebration is related to the fact that there was a celebration called the Saturnalia in Rome during a similar time. And, like, well, if you're trying to figure out when to hold this Thing. It's easier as you transition people from one religion to the other to, like, have. And this is just always. All throughout the world cultures do shit around this time of year. It's just like.

[Prop]

Yeah, there's just, like. Just, you know, and if you. And if you're the, like, the Empire, you're just like, well, I don't care about none of yalls faiths. Yeah, look, why don't y' all all just do it on Tuesday? Let's just do it all on Tuesday.

[Robert Evans]

We're already doing something at this point of the year. Yeah, fuck it. This is when we go. You go home.

[Prop]

You do whatever you want.

[Robert Evans]

You go home.

[Prop]

We just gonna do it on Tuesday. Y' all want a day off work? Okay, let's do that. Right?

[Robert Evans]

And so what the SS is trying to do is trying to be like, yeah, first off, here's the real origins of, like, what, Christianity.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It didn't start. Yeah, it really started as, like, this thing. And this is the actual, real origin of it. And it's interesting, this book. There's no direct mention of Christianity at all, which on its own, there's nothing, like. There's nothing wrong with the idea of, like, here's what we're doing. And it's a different kind of celebration at this time of the year. But the goal here for the Nazis is to replace. They're not trying to replace Christianity because they have issues with religion. They are trying to make Nazism the new religion, and they're trying to replace a belief in a God with a belief in the perfectibility of German people through eugenics, the Aryan race that we are trying to return by selective breeding, trying to breed the Nordic race back into Aryans. That's God.

[Prop]

See, see, See, that's the actual war on Christmas, you know what I'm saying? So this. You know, at some point, we was probably gonna do a tap in about James Dobson dying and who. Who ruined many a Christmas.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Prop]

For. For plenty of people. So you. You know what I'm saying? You got to focus on the funeral with that dog. But, like, it's just so interesting to think that, like, you know, I know this ain't the point of what you saying, but, like, this belief that you locked into this existential war with the culture that, like, that James Dobson was really big on is like, well, there was a war, my friend, but it's not the one that you locked into. You know what I'm saying? You missing the point. You actually scoring points on for these folks. And I'm like, luckily for us, in our house, like the benefit for us not really falling for the James Dobson juju was that he was freakishly racist. So it became kind of obvious that, like, oh, oh, you're not talking to us. Okay. So. But anyway, it's the specificity of them being like. It's almost like, like when the conspiracy theorist is sometimes right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. We're like, the CIA put crack in the inner cities. Okay, well, they kind of also. The CIA, you know, has a mind control laser.

[Prop]

Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, I feel like they'd have been better at if they had the mind control laser.

[Prop]

And I'm like, no, no, really, there is someone trying to replace your religion. It's just the Nazis.

[Robert Evans]

It's like whenever. Yeah. When people are like, yeah, there is a small group of powerful wealthy people who largely control politics. No, no, not, not that, not that group. No, no, no, not that group. They're actually like a bunch of different religions. A lot of them don't even believe in anything. All sorts of races, you know.

[Prop]

Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

So anyway, yeah, there's no mention of Christianity in this booklet at all. But there is, you can see very clearly and almost stated directly that their desire is to replace Christianity and the God of the Christian faith with the Aryan race. The guide has detailed instructions for setting up instead of a Christmas tree, an SS tree. I know you're wondering what that looks like and the answer is it looks like shit. Like, basically it's a circular wreath sideways hanging from a pole.

[Sophie]

So ugly.

[Robert Evans]

So it's not even like a tree. It looks like it's not dying, man. It looks like shit.

[Prop]

It looks like it's dying.

[Robert Evans]

It looks like Charlie Brown's whack ass Christmas tree. Look at this fucking terrible donuts. Fucking ss. Charlie Brown's looks better. Charlie Brown was definitely better at Christmas than the ss.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Prop]

Imagine waking up Christmas morning. You wake up Christmas morning, see this shit?

[Robert Evans]

See this fucking disc? This green disc on a stick. The fuck is wrong with you? Mom and dad.

[Prop]

Mom. What the hell?

[Robert Evans]

Looks like a paper towel. You see that shit in your fucking living room on Christmas day. And you know you're not getting an N64, right? You're gonna still be playing GoldenEye at your friend's house.

[Sophie]

100.

[Prop]

I know you're getting socks, bro. You are getting socks.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you're getting socks. You're simply getting socks.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So the book notes that a good SS housewife is expected to bake three different kinds of cakes for yuletide celebrations and warns quote, a good SS housewife should pride herself on keeping to the old recipes and shapes and rejecting all cheap and American factory produced goods.

[Prop]

Oh Lord, nothing changes.

[Robert Evans]

Now I know what you're all asking at this point, which is what was the SS explanation for Santa and how did they replace him? Is this a thing where they're like the Santa's obviously this decadent capitalist bullshit? No, no, no, the SS embraces Santa. They just again say that the Jews who are secretly in charge of Christianity stole Santa Claus from the Nordics people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Here's another quote from that book. The old feast of Wotan is on Yule 16th. In olden days the God of our ancestors drove through the air, visited his people, was friendly to them and left them little presents. He wanted to announce the start of the winter solstice season and the coming of the new year. The Christian church couldn't suppress these yearly visits of this white bearded one eyed leader of the good spirits. So they put one of its assumed saints, St Nicholas in his place. But in many areas of Germany the rider on a white horse, also known as Rupprecht, the one shining with glory, Wotan or simply Father Yuletide remained. SS families should gather together and make the visit of Father Yuletide a memorable event for their children. So no, no, no, Wotan actually is the original Santa. God would just visit his people and give them presents and the Christians stole that and replaced it with St. Nicholas. But no, no, it's Wotan and he'll come and give your kids candy, nuts and stuff.

[Prop]

Yeah. And, and then, and then the Christians are like no, no, Santa evil too.

[Robert Evans]

Santa's evil. That's I think the Baptist, I don't think that's super. I don't know enough about Lutheranism in this period of time, but I don't think they're anti Santa.

[Prop]

No. Lutheranism. Yeah, no, they was with it because it's because of the saints. But they was kind of like yeah, Lutherans are like basically just like Catholics without the Pope. Like at this point they wouldn't, they were really just trying to reform the Catholics. They wasn't trying to actually leave.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. But anyway, and so yeah, that's the, this is Himmler. You know, this is kind of the first direct reference to Christianity that you find in this is like the Christian church stole Santa from the Wotanists.

[Prop]

Oh man, that's so funny.

[Robert Evans]

Now SS men who came from Christian backgrounds, which was basically all of them weren't required to renounce their faith, but they were made to pledge allegiance to Hitler and Specifically, they had to pledge to put this allegiance to Hitler above any allegiance they had to the Catholic Church or any other church. So they do have to say, I am in this for Hitler before the Pope.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

They have to. If they're going. If they are Catholic, they have to promise that.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. So this is, again, this is not just a Nazi thing, as I try to emphasize, the German authoritarians being uncomfortable with the Catholic Church goes back as far as Otto von Bismarck. When Germany becomes a thing, Bismarck's first real concern is, but this Catholic Church is a second center of power.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So what we see with the Nazis and Himmler's war against Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general is an extension of what authoritarian Germans have been doing since the birth of Germany. And that is important to note.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

This doesn't come out of nowhere. And so even though the occult stuff and the pagan stuff is weird and not popular with the broader Nazi party, the fact that there are people high up in the party who are worried and see Christianity as a threat is not new and doesn't feel super out of place.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

It feels consistent with the way in which the powers in Germany have what they've seen as threats since the era of Bismarck.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

In his book on the Nazi occult, Bill Yen describes the act of joining the SS as, quote, an act of religious conversion. And as I've said, Yin's book, while it's useful and it has a lot of good details, he has book blinders. This is the same problem the guy who wrote Blitz Taz, right. Where there's a lot of good stuff in there about Hitler's drug use and about drug use use in the Third Reich, but also the fact that he is focused on that makes him center drug use and its impact on the decision making of people in the Reich more than I think most historians believe is accurate.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because this is the thing he's obsessed with. And Yin centers the occult shit more than is reasonable even within the ss.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And this is not an. Like, everyone who joins the SS is not converting their religion and they're not being made to. It depends in part on who you are. If you're some kid coming in from the middle class who's, you know, doesn't have much behind them and who Himmler is like, oh, this guy got in trouble for this or for that, so I can make him my own. Yeah, he's probably gonna really expect to see you buying into this stuff.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

If you're the rich and powerful industrialist who joined the SS as a Way to bribe Himmler. He doesn't. He's not gonna, like, be a super big cop about whether or not you're going to fucking church still or whether or not you have an SS tree you're paying him.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's fine with it.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

But it wouldn't be wrong to say that Himmler envisioned the SS as an organization that members joining, considered an act of religious conversion, that this was his goal for the ss. Ultimately, he just. At no point is it really that right now it is treated as a religion by the actual text of SS publications. That 1939 SS guide that I've been quoting from describes the Death's Head ring citation, which is. Himmler creates this award. I think in 39, it becomes the highest award in the SS. Only Himmler can give it out.

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

And the Death's head, this is a symbol that goes back in German military quite a while. There had been these units, these elite mounted units that had worn the Death's head.

[Sophie]

Right, okay.

[Robert Evans]

And it's going to be. There's going to be a branch of the ss, the Totenkopf, the Death's Head division, which is the guys who run the death camps.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

Those are the dudes.

[Robert Evans]

When you see not every SS guy had the Death's head.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like, that was not everyone in the organization. That's a specific chunk of the organization. And there's a Death's Head ring that people. It's like the Medal of Honor within the ss.

[Prop]

Right, okay.

[Robert Evans]

So Himmler, if Himmler really likes you or if you do something that he is super into, he thinks he does, he'll add you to this.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And you get this ring that's embedded with Liszt's Armen and runes, which Himmler describes as holy symbols of our past. SS General Weitzel notes the ring is a symbol of the new SS religion. Upon the death of the wearer, the ring is kept at Himmler's Webelsburg castle. And that was as Sophie will show you the ring. The idea was this is we're making these into sacred relics. These are like holy relics from our knightly order. And everyone who dies with one, the ring comes back to the castle. And I think presumably maybe it'd get reissued. And so you build like he's thinking of in thousand year terms. After centuries, these will be holy relics. We're like, oh, I've got this ring and I know everyone before. Before me.

[Sophie]

You had it, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Prop]

So you like take it off the dude's finger or like. Yeah, they Believe it floats back into the.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, no, they. No, no, they take it like, they take it back to the castle. I'm like, look, it's very possible they're not quite that. Woo. They're not quite that.

[Prop]

I was like, it's possible, bro.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Now, in 1935, the SS magazine, Dash Schwartz Corps, or the Black Corps, started publication. Circulation would eventually reach as many as 750,000 issues a week. Sold. A theme that's made easier by the fact that buying it. Subscribing is mandatory if you're in the ss, Right. So a little hard to say how many people are reading this, but it's technically mandatory. So you have to think people who are lower are keeping up with it.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because in part, that's maybe how you get ahead, is paying attention to what the boss is into. Figure out like, well, how am I going to make myself noticed?

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Himmler used his In House magazine for political ends. There's some practical point of this, right? He's got this sd, the security Agency, and sometimes they'll find dirt on another German in power, another member of the party or a member of the government or a local leader, and it won't be enough to prosecute someone over. But if the SD leaks that dirt, it could be published in the Black Core and then you can kind of like get people forced out of their jobs or whatever, or otherwise punish people who are like, slowing down the SS's work. So that's the practical use that having this magazine does.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

But the Black Core is also where Himmler would try to push new occult practices and popularize them among the SS rank and file. In the case of more substantial changes, it's where he would first make his arguments for how things ought to be. Because, like, this is a sympathetic and a captive audience. And there's no single religious and moral issue that vexes Himmler more during this period, the late 30s, than his own. What becomes a personal war on marriage, like the Judeo Christian concept of marriage he takes on as an enemy. The first battle in this war is launched. Oh, yeah, yeah. He is very anti marriage in the traditional sense. And he launches. He's not anti marriage, but he's anti marriage as a Christian thing.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

You just trying to de. Christianize everything. Okay, right, exactly. I'm following now. I'm following now. Okay, word.

[Robert Evans]

So this starts in 1931. He restricts SS men from being married in Christian churches. Now, Yin describes this as an outright ban. I don't see a straight up. This is Forbidden. But it's basically all of the literature is like you are. Here is how a wedding is done. And it doesn't involve the church and the SS after 31 has to approve every new wedding. Right. So if your wedding. If you're trying to get married in a church, they're not going to say yes unless I. Because I don't think this was a perfect 100% across the board thing. In part. Guys who are of the nobility, guys who are rich, you have some options for getting around some of these rules.

[Prop]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

But in terms of what the normal rank and file are supposed to do. In that 1939 handbook, General Weitzel acknowledged that a lot of women were having trouble with the idea of getting married without a church. That like at this point they've been doing it for eight years. When he writes this guidebook in 39. But he acknowledges this has been a problem. Quote, even to this day, it seems impossible for many people to imagine these celebrations without the church and its servants, especially the womenfolk who were held captive by the trappings of wedding veil and incense, organ music and dark churches and thought they could not do without such rituals. They wanted. Yes.

[Prop]

They want to be a prince.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Prop]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

The party and its organizations are trying to advocate the thought of celebrating these festive occasions in accordance with our ideologies. But it repeatedly was observed that the ceremonies of the church were copied with officials doing the important actions, and that the celebrations were used for propaganda purposes outside the family.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So what we noticed is when we first did this, everyone was just copying what the churches did. But with SS guys. And that's not right. Cause that's still too close to the. Like we're really trying to get away from the Christian idea of marriage.

[Prop]

Yeah, guys, it's too Christian. So funny.

[Robert Evans]

We'll get into what they do next and how they de Christianize marriage. But you know who else has declared war on the concept of marriage?

[Prop]

Oh man. Every last one of them adds. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

All of our sponsors and Sophie. And Sophie. Sophie's leading them in a crusade against the concept of marriage. It's low key, barbaric.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

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[Robert Evans]

And we're back.

[Prop]

I find such irony in the modern Nazi using so much Christian iconography. Yeah, like all I could think about was like, oh, so y' all ain't read, y'.

[Sophie]

All.

[Prop]

You didn't do the homework.

[Robert Evans]

Well, it's. It's very American, Very true. You know, Nazism in the United States, our equivalent was always going to be wrapped in a certain version of the fake. But it's also, as you'll notice, not Christianity in the traditional sense.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It's like Christianity, really. There's been those articles about, like, a lot of, like, in the south, you have, like, preachers who will be like, reading literally Jesus's direct quotes. And people were like, well, that's woke. Bullshit.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Like, that can't be what he meant, right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Currently it's the same way. Jesus was pretty clear about certain stuff. Like rich people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

The whole camel through the. And then. And then there's this whole, like. No, no, no. The needle was like a gate. The eye of the needle was like a gate. And it was only big enough for a guy in a camel to get through.

[Prop]

Yeah, it was like, called the needle. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It's not hard to. It wasn't saying, you can't. I can still go to heaven, even though I'm hoarding all of this money that people could really use.

[Prop]

I've been hoarding all these resources from everyone. Yeah, got it.

[Robert Evans]

I still get to go to heaven. Don't worry. Yeah. People always do this with religion. It doesn't matter what religion it is. It's just they do that with politics. Do people just. It's always really attractive and very easy to just be like, you know what? I already want these things. Like, my impulses and desires have guided me to wanting this. That's probably what God or the universe wants. Or that's probably consistent with my politics. That's effectively religion to me.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You know, this is what Marx meant. This is et cetera. People can justify whatever bullshit they want with whatever text they want and do all the time.

[Prop]

Yeah. You dropping G for us? Yeah, that's Jim's right there. That's really what we're witnessing. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Anyway, so one of the first changes Himmler pushes through to change how marriage works is he introduces something called a sippin book.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And so every SS family has to have a sip in book, which is like a passport for getting married. And it lists your whole genealogy and your wife's genealogy. The idea is your kids will. And you'll keep a track of this book listing your whole, like, the history of your. Of your. Your different families and your marriages so you can keep track of, like, are we moving closer to this idealized. To breeding idealized Aryans here? Are we improving the quality of our blood.

[Prop]

Right, yeah, none of that, none of that gene pool diversity.

[Robert Evans]

We need to keep, we need to.

[Prop]

Keep all of our anomalies and deficiencies in our genes. We need to double them.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly, yeah, got it. And Bill Yen notes, and I think this is a good observation, that the sip in book is, quote, not unlike the sort of stud book that owners keep for racehorses. And I think this probably is the direct inspiration because Himmler in his writings and Hitler as well, compared human breeding to livestock. We gave some of those quotes in the first episode where Himmler talks about like, yeah, you don't want like the oldest, you want like you don't want an old cow basically.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Like they were already comparing stuff to livestock breeding. So the idea that they look at how people breed horses and go, well, obviously the SS should work this way. I think many makes sense that the sippin book is inspired by stud books. Yeah, I don't think that's much of a leap. Yen goes on to note, quote, at one point, under the sip and book rules, a non SS man who'd had a Jewish ancestor in 1711 was forbidden to marry the daughter of an SS officer. So that's how strict this shit is.

[Prop]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

By 1939, the SS was nearing a quarter of a million men, as well as many thousands of women who weren't actual members. But they're formally affiliated with the SS as SS wives. There's an organization for SS wives. So you know, this is a size. It's like again, it's becoming a state within a state.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now Himmler's anti Christian crusade had been effective within the ss, but not on the scale that he'd hoped because most members of the SS throughout the period exists are still Christian.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

About 54% of SS personnel attended Protestant churches while enrolled in the SS and another almost 24% were Catholic. Only about 22% at most would have been full throated believers in the Arminist Volkish, mystic stuff. And that's obviously a lot higher than the background level. But also not all of those non believers are full on into the weird. Some of them are just like atheists. Right. They just don't care.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe they care about the race stuff, but they don't believe in Wotan.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So you can see Himmler's had an impact, but he has not. This is not a massive wild difference from the general population.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And so he still has to be careful and intentional when he wants to push a big change. And one of the biggest Changes he wants to push that he just doesn't feel like even the SS is ready for is getting everyone to accept that the racial elite need to embrace polygamy.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Uh oh.

[Prop]

Oh, here it comes. The Wotang clan boy is entering the 36 chambers now, y'. All. You know what I'm saying?

[Robert Evans]

All right, so the Nazis had always been pronatalist, right? And this is. Again, this has come into vogue in the US Now. Elon's a big advocate of pro natalism. It's the idea that certain people need to have lots of kids, right? When we're trying not to be white supremacists. It's just like, oh, no, just smart people need to have kids. Smart people, like families with money who have a lot of got rich in the tech industry. They need to have a shitload of kids. Cause obviously their inherent characteristics got them rich, despite the fact that they were lucky and were born rich or whatever. And so this pronatalist policy, this has always been a thing that the Nazis loved. Hitler is big into this aspect of it, increasing birth rates. And his regime immediately introduces marriage loans and a bunch of financial incentives for procreating. And Nazi propaganda, including SS propaganda, publishes loving quotes from SS wives about how, like, giving birth is my contribution to the race war. It's how I fight. You know, the. The husband is responsible for the spiritual health of the family, but I. You know, the woman, like, sets the emotional mood or whatever in the family and like, all this kind of stuff.

[Prop]

The chief executive officer of the home. Wonder where we heard that before.

[Sophie]

All right, right.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

It's all. Yeah, that's always, always how these people think.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, as the 30s come to an end and Germany starts gearing up for war with Poland and starts its war with Poland, right? There's, you know, we brush over the war in Poland. The German and Soviet invasion as like. And they just crushed and steamrolled Poland because they do go through very quickly. There's never a real contest, but they suffer significant casualties. Taking Poland. Like, it's not an insignificant number of guys who die. And a lot of SS guys are dying. And Himmler starts to worry, did we get something wrong? Because not all these young men had had time to get married or get married and have kids before they went and died at the front. Which means that, like, they're potentially ending part of this precious Nordic bloodline, right? And even if they have a kid, they're young. Cause they're soldiers. So they probably haven't had time to have more than One, maybe two.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's not enough. We want bigger families than that. But women, as part of one of the many flaws of their, you know, of the way things work with women, they can only have one kid at a time, right? Yeah.

[Sophie]

Ye.

[Prop]

Yeah, they eggs. That's got an expiration date on them eggs. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. They can only have kids for so long and only have one at a time. Really, if you're thinking about this from the perspective of what matters is the race, you know, the Aryan race, our God is this race that we are trying to bring back through selective breeding into existence, and that's all that matters. It's illogical and maybe even evil to have young Nordic men be monogamous.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe the only real, consistent, ethical thing to do, if you believe this, is have men having kids with a lot of women.

[Prop]

Babe.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Babe. It's for the culture.

[Robert Evans]

It's for the culture.

[Prop]

I'm doing it for the culture.

[Robert Evans]

I don't want to do it.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

But, like, please invite your friend Sally over. I don't want to do it.

[Robert Evans]

I don't want to have six other wives that I have a bunch of kids with.

[Prop]

I don't want to do it.

[Robert Evans]

I'm only doing it because it's necessary for the race. Right. For the club, all this race stuff. Right.

[Prop]

You know, and you can watch.

[Robert Evans]

And you can watch.

[Prop]

Y' all can. Even if y' all want to before.

[Robert Evans]

You gotta raise these kids. Yeah, I'm not gonna have time to raise these kids.

[Prop]

I gotta go to war. You want me to go to war.

[Robert Evans]

And die, or I gotta go die in the east after having six kids with six different women? Yeah, exactly. Men used to go to war. Yeah. Yeah. At least you're getting rid of em, right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Right. So one of the people who was close to Himmler and would write about him after the war was his masseuse, Felix Kirsten. And there's a lot of claims Kirsten makes about Himmler and about what he did during the war. He writes a book about being Himmler's masseuse, and he gives a lot of quotes about things Himmler has supposedly said to him.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now, Kirsten is not a good source because he gets initially credited, he gets, like, awards for having saved the Dutch Jewish population from forced deportation because he basically claims, like, well, Himmler was, like, really tired and sick during when that was happening, and I was so influential to him that I was able to, like, manipulate him into saving all these people. And, like, Kirsten made claims that he Basically did that a lot. That he saved a lot of people. And I don't know that it's possible he did save some people. I'm not enough of an expert on him to categorically bust all of his myths, but this claim that he saved the Dutch Jewish population is bullshit. He falsifies documents to make this argument.

[Prop]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And it's the kind of thing he's believed for a long time. There's a lot of, like that first biography of Himmler that I looked into a bit. Takes what Kirsten says is gospel. Bill Yen trusts Kirsten a lot more than he should.

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

There's a lot of issues with taking Kirsten too literally.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

Like, okay, so let's just say, okay, so he saved the population. The Jewish population of what now?

[Robert Evans]

Of, of. Of like, of the Dutch Jewish population.

[Prop]

Okay, the Dutch. Okay, to what end?

[Robert Evans]

Well, because he was really a good guy. He never bought into this Nazi stuff. He was just trying. He was Himmler's masseuse, but he was always trying to like, you know, save people.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He just. I'm so by getting close to Himmler, I'm able to exercise influence to protect people. This is him largely protecting himself after the war. I think he's lying about a lot of this. It's not clear is he lying about all of it? And that's part of the problem, is that he is Himmler's masseuse. He spends a lot of one on one time with him. Everything he says that Himmler said to him isn't a lie. But because we know he falsified documents and it's also very hard to trust him too much.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And he is our first source on Himmler's growing distaste for marriage, which Kirsten says. Kirsten claims that Himmler goes on a rant about marriage to him and describes marriage as the Catholic Church's satanic achievement. And he argues, quote, with bigamy, each wife would act as. As a stimulus to the others that they both would try to be their husband's dream woman. No more untidy hair, no more slovenliness. Their model, which will intensify these reflections will be the ideals of beauty projected by art and the cinema. Yes.

[Prop]

He mixed polygamy with capitalism. He's like, listen, it's competition. Competition gives us the best product. Oh, this guy.

[Robert Evans]

And it makes the women work harder.

[Prop]

It makes them be better.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Prop]

You know, if you're competing, hey, baby, you gotta perform, baby, you can't. You can't have no headache, you know? What I'm saying. Cause listen, it's wife number four ain't got no headache. Yeah. No, this is awful.

[Robert Evans]

And again, I don't trust that as an exact. Kirsten gives out a. Pulls out a lot of long, direct quotes from Himmler saying. And then he went on this rant.

[Prop]

Yeah. He texted it.

[Robert Evans]

It's like, I don't know, man. You're not taking notes when you're massaging him. Now, that said, based on other things Himmler is doing at this time, I don't doubt Kirsten that Himmler went on rants about marriage to him. And I think that broadly, because these are points Himmler will make in other ways. So this is not an area in which I totally doubt Kirsten. But you should not view that as, like, a direct quote. And Kirsten is not an unproblematic source. Anytime you read an article being, like, based on what Himmler told his massage artist, take that with a grain of salt until you can find outside verification, because Kirsten is problematic.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

But I tell you what, though, if I'm the massage artist, as he's called now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Prop]

I personally would take the rants about marriage over some sort of Wotan mythology that you post to tell me about that you. That. That the ancestors just told you. Like, yeah, I was like, okay, like, will you. Will you shut up about the runes? Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So.

[Prop]

So what? You. So what are your thoughts on marriage? Like, just to get you to shut up about the room.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I just really need you to stop talking about these fucking runes, please. Yeah. So obviously, September 1, 1939, is the day that Germany invades Poland.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

If you want, this episode will come out after the 1st of September. Unfortunately, there's a great JG Thirlwell who performs under the name Fetus. He's a musical artist. F O E T U S. It's the version of the word fetus with an E in it. Great musician. He does like the soundtrack to the TV show Venture Brothers or did back in the day.

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

He's got a song called I'll meet you in Poland, Baby, that's about the German Soviet invasion. Yeah. Great song about the invasion of Poland. If you're looking for a musical accompaniment to this part of the episode. But September 1st, Germany invades. And if you remember, the direct justification for the invasion is that Polish soldiers wind up fighting. There's a gunfight, you know, on the border that they blame on, like, oh, look at the Poles. Some of these dead guys were wearing Polish uniforms. Like, we've clearly We've been attacked and now this is an act of defense. And this is a false flag operation. And it's put together by the SS like Himmler's SS does. The false flag, that's the justification. That doesn't mean that Himmler's why they go to war. Like, Hitler had made the decision. This was just kind of. And it was lazy. This never really. No one believes this, right? But within a few weeks of the invasion, it becomes clear to Himmler, casualties are mounting. And so he doesn't quite. He never quite has the courage to go openly and be like, we need to get rid of monogamy for our soldiers. This is not the kind of thing that he's willing to be as open about as he wants to be.

[Prop]

He's growing, he's learning that you can't just say what's on your mind. Okay?

[Robert Evans]

You've gotta be. And so here's how he does it. This is his way of kind of threading that needle and not being like, and this is because I'm trying to. To destroy the Christian idea of marriage and family. Instead, he justifies it as an emergency order for maintaining the health of the race. So he issues this SS as an issue. On October 28, 1939, an SS decree for the entire SS and German police forces, quote, beyond the limits of bourgeoisie laws and conventions, which are perhaps necessary in other circumstances, it can be a noble task for German women and girls of good blood to become, even outside marriage, not lightheartedly, but out of a deep moral seriousness, mothers of the children of soldiers going to war, of whom fate alone knows whether they will return or die for Germany. During the last war, many a soldier decided from a sense of responsibility to have no more children during the war so that his wife would not be left in need and distress after his death. USS men need not have these anxieties. They are removed by the following regulation.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And so that's what he's. He's number one, trying to make the argument that, like, look, German women. And it's not shameful to have a kid out of wedlock if it's with a soldier.

[Prop]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

So first off, we need to change the way people are talking about, you know, these unwed mothers, Right?

[Prop]

Yeah, for now.

[Robert Evans]

These are the right kind.

[Prop]

Now, guys, for now. I'm just saying. For now.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, for now. And for now, we're introducing policies to ensure that, you know, we'll promise to take care of you and your kids if you just wind up shacking up with a soldier. Cause all that matters is continuing the bloodline, dude.

[Prop]

And I can see you just, just him just cloaking this in progressive talk to be like, there shouldn't be a stigma around this.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, yeah, there shouldn't be a stigma around this because it's good for the.

[Prop]

Race, it's good for everybody. Listen, if you want, like, you don't have to. He's going to die. Like, and your husband is right. Like you, he should not, you know, you shouldn't be burdened with this. So, yeah, just, you know, it's fine. Like, what? Yeah, what a cloak of progression you can put on this. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, that's exactly it. And like, this is the cloak he picks. And it's not coincidental he writes this. This is like October 28th of 1939, two years before publishing this, Heinrich Himmler hires a 25 year old secretary named Hegwood Potass. Here we go. Now, we don't know exactly when they started stuppen, but by 1940 at the very latest, they're begging, right? And I think they probably started their physical relationship earlier than that, maybe not long after she gets hired, but I don't know. I think my feelings are shared somewhat by the authors of the Private Heinrich Himmler, which is that book based on all of his letters, he and Marga's letters to each other, that's partly written by one of his. I think it's his granddaughter Katrina. And in that book, the authors Note that by 1940 at the latest, Heinrich and Marga's marriage was no longer working. Well, in terms of like when Heinrich and Hedwig got together. The book cites a letter Hedwig wrote her sister at the end of 41, in which she claimed Christmas 1938. We had a frank conversation during which we confessed that we were hopelessly in love. But they're trying to figure out, is there an honorable way for us to get together.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And you know, divorce isn't honorable.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So we can't do that publicly. That's still not something. Even though in the SS maybe that would be more acceptable. Like you don't have to just be aware of them.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

How can we possibly make this work? Now? This could mean that they talk about being in love, but they still wait two years to consummate things physically. I suspect that By Christmas of 38, they're fucking. And after that they decide they're in love. And then they try to figure out, how can we find an honorable way to be together.

[Sophie]

Right, yeah.

[Prop]

Let's reverse engineer the justification here. Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

If that's the case, then there's. We can see, maybe even outside of his volkish mystic beliefs, maybe even race isn't the primary reason Himmler does this at all. Maybe that's just a useful excuse because by late 1939, he's either fucking or very much wants to be fucking this girl. And this gives him an honorable way out.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Now I've changed the policy for everybody now. Having mistresses is. You're basically ordered as a man in the ss, you're supposed to have mistresses. Right?

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Because you're probably not breeding enough otherwise.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Prop]

It's for the culture, man.

[Robert Evans]

It's for the culture. Right.

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

So he and Hedwig have a child together. And from the end of the 30s on, Heinrich is primarily a husband and father to his original family in name only. Marga wrote in November of 1940 that since Heinrich had moved her and the kids out of the farm and to Berlin, which they do in the late 30s, quote, I have been almost entirely alone.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He almost abandons them. He's sending letters. He visits occasionally. But he is now interested in Hedwig and the new family. He's starting with her.

[Sophie]

Oh, yes.

[Prop]

Younger model.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And obviously, as he's starting this affair, as he starts pushing, as he's pushing increasingly his weird religious beliefs through his personal magazine. The Third Reich is preparing for war, is starting war. They invade Poland, which brings in the UK and it brings in France. And suddenly we're looking at a world war.

[Sophie]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

And this is a problem because, like, for one thing, Himmler had considered this to be. This war is like, the next generation, Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Like, we're not gonna have to fight this war. Obviously, like, that can't be the case. So they're shocked, and then they're shocked at how well it goes, right? That, like, oh, we took Poland pretty easily, and then we beat France way more easily than anyone had been. Like, people had been on worried within the Nazi party, within the Wehrmacht. Can we. Like, is this just another disaster and then it's kind of not, Right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So there's both this sense of, like, exuberance. Some people, Heinrich is one of them, start to feel like, I'm fucking invulnerable.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Nothing can stop us. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that comes with that is they start as they're massively expanding. They're taken in all of these Jews. And this had started before the war as they're annexing Czechoslovakia and Austria.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And Himmler and the SD Under Heydrich had gotten the job of deporting Jews from these annexed territories.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

On November 8, 1938, just before Kristallnacht, Himmler gave a speech in which he acknowledged, the Jews cannot remain in Germany. It's only a matter of years. We shall increasingly drive them out with unparalleled and ruthless brutality. So that is. It's a statement about what's going to happen. It's a statement about what's already happening. But it's also not evidence that at this point, Himmler knows what the Holocaust is going to be. He's talking about driving them out, not killing them.

[Prop]

Yeah. He's like, just get rid of him. I don't want him to hear.

[Robert Evans]

They're basically. Yeah. They're forcing people to self deport as much as possible.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's what Eichmann is doing at this point. They're organizing deportations. In his biography of Himmler, Longrich notes Himmler made no reference to the actual situation. And the formulation that they would drive the Jews out in the course of years does not suggest that at that point he was working on the assumption that there was about to be a dramatic new development in the persecution of the Jews. Now, in the early stages of World War II, a couple of important things happen. Number one is that they start to gear up after their success in France. They start preparing for a war in the east in which they know they're going to be taking a lot more Jews and they're going to need new solutions for dealing with them, a number far in excess of anything they'd had to deal with before. So these conversations by 41 that are going to culminate in 42, and the actual plan for the Holocaust start happening. And another major thing that happens in 41, kind of right. As the war is kicking off, is that Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, had been. He's one of these guys who's deeply worried about the war. Number one, again, he'd hoped that we wouldn't be going to war against the whole world quite yet. Right. That we had more time. And he also. He's really. He doesn't want Germany to be at war with Great Britain.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's kind of an Anglophile. He believes that the two countries are natural allies. And he's made connections within the British royal family. And so Hess, who is the other big occult guy in the Nazi hierarchy, decides, I'm gonna fly to Scotland on my own in my private plane and negotiate peace alone.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And he winds up parachuting out of a plane near Glasgow and just getting arrested. Immediately.

[Prop]

Immediately, bro. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

And this has an influence. This is part of why Hitler cracks down within the rest of the party on, like, the weird occult shit. This is when he really sours on a lot of that, because Hess had been really into that stuff. And Hess fucks up the absolute most he could have fucked up.

[Sophie]

Right.

[Prop]

This is my favorite little morsel of the Nazi narrative is Hess parachuting into Scotland and them being like, man, what the hell were you?

[Robert Evans]

Like, wait, what did you think this was? We're not letting you talk to him. Absolutely not, bro. I think it's a former gang at this point. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely.

[Prop]

What are you talking about? You came.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no.

[Prop]

You came here like this.

[Robert Evans]

No, no.

[Prop]

Nah, fam.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that is not gonna work for us.

[Prop]

Yeah, this is my favorite part.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's super funny.

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

You know what else is funny, Prop?

[Prop]

How long this shit is.

[Robert Evans]

How long this shit is. But it's over for today.

[Prop]

Okay. Oh, so we're not done?

[Robert Evans]

No, we're not done. No.

[Prop]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

We're not done. We'll see. We'll see. I'll figure it out. I mean, we could call the episodes here and be like, I've led you up to World War II, right? The SS is built, it's founded. You know, that may be the right thing to do. And we'll come back later to talk about Himmler during World War II and the SS during World War II. That's probably the right call. We've got six episodes, right?

[Prop]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Yeah, I think that's probably what we'll do. And I'll get to the rest of Himmler later. Yeah, that's cool, man.

[Prop]

Yeah, we'll come back during Christmas. We'll just ruin your Christmas.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, we'll give you more Himmler soon. But that's all the Himmler you're getting for today. You know, he's at his peak, right? The war is starting. He's the last crazy occult guy really left in the high ranks of power. He's holding his blood rituals, allegedly at Wewelsburg Castle. There's some crazy. Some people claim that they were sacrificing babies. There's no evidence of that, but they were definitely holding candlelit rituals. And they had a room where all of the dead of the SS are inscribed in the shrine. And, yeah, they are doing ceremonies and spells and stuff.

[Prop]

Yeah, yeah. Actual weird shit.

[Robert Evans]

They're trying to do magic in their magic cast.

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Spoiler. It does not win the War for them. But, you know, maybe it'll work for you.

[Prop]

Sorry, Wotang, it didn't work.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it turns out Wotan was not on their side.

[Prop]

Yeah, Wotan is something you can fuck with.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

A lot of it did successfully. Yeah.

[Prop]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

So, yeah. Prop, you got anything to plug, man?

[Prop]

I do, man. Going back to the poetry record that is out now. You know, if you're gonna do streaming, I get it, you do what you gotta do, it's fine. I can't tell you to not go to the store, but if you're gonna pick a streamer, I guess I'd rather you pick Apple music in relation to the other, you know, or just don't. Don't do the Spotify thing, you know, I mean, I mean, if you want to, I will take the money. But like as in money. I mean the 0.2 10 of a cent, but I'll take. Take it. Yeah. The point is just there's a new poetry album, it's called the Beautiful Endling that I'm super proud of that we'll probably talk about a little bit on the tap ins on the hood politics with Prop, which is also going well. Which we are just cooking with peanut oil over there and having a good time. As good a time as we can.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, awesome. Well, everyone have a good time with Prop. If you have some cash to spare, the Portland Defense Fund could use donations. They help people who have literally no one else backing them up, get out of jail, get bailed out and get basic support. They can like get home. They can have someone take care of their pets. All the kind of shit that that happens when people get arrested. If you go to defensefundpdx on Venmo, you can send the money. They are a 501C3. You can also go to just Google Donor Box Defense Fund PDX and donate. So please, thank you. We love you. Try not to be Heinrich Himmler. Men used to go to war. That's right. Not Heinrich Himmler, but other men. Behind the Basterds is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

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[Robert Evans]

Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube.

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[Robert Evans]

Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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[Robert Evans]

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[Prop]

Stop hitting snooze on new tech.

[Robert Evans]

Win the tech [e-mail] Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device. This is an iHeart podcast.