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

Summary

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

Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts)
Date: September 9, 2025
Host: Brett Weinstein
Co-Host/Guest: Jason Petty (Prop, of Hood Politics)
Producer: Sophie

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the life of Heinrich Himmler, focusing on his transformation from a privileged, awkward youth with nerdy obsessions to the architect of the SS. Brett Weinstein and guest Jason Petty ("Prop") explore the bizarre roots of Nazi mysticism, the importance of daydreams and fantasy in the early Nazi movement, Himmler’s path through far-right politics, and the personalities central to the Nazi Party's rise. The hosts dissect not only the actions, but also the personal and psychological factors that fueled Himmler’s trajectory—from his odd relationships to his relentless ambition.

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Key Themes and Structure

1. The Allure of Mysticism & Pseudohistory Among Nazis
2. The Personalities Behind the Nazi Party’s Rise
3. Himmler’s Personal Life and Relationships
4. Formation and Evolution of the SS

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Detailed Breakdown

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1. The Allure of Mysticism & Pseudohistory Among Nazis

Volkish Mysticism: Ghosts, Nobility, and Catacombs (08:12 – 15:00)

• Guido von List and Volkish Fantasy:

  • The episode examines Guido Karl Anton List, an occultist whose ideas (allegedly whispered by ghosts) shaped early Nazi mythology about “racial” nobility and ancient Germanic heritage.
  • Quote: “He starts going after... talking to ghosts and getting, you know, building his theories about these ancient Aryans.” (08:12, Brett)
  • Von List claims ghostly confirmation of his noble "Von" status—a theme of self-delusion and wish fulfillment echoed in Himmler's life.

• The Role of Imagination and Privilege:

  • “Boredom’s a sign of privilege in some ways.” (11:57, Jason)
  • Middle-class backgrounds gave Nazis like List and Himmler the leisure to concoct elaborate fantasies, embracing mysticism over hard evidence.

• Invented Traditions:

  • List's “priests of Wotan,” the Armenian, are his own creation, inserted into history to create a sense of ancient, magical German superiority.
  • Parallels are drawn between List’s mythmaking and Tolkien’s fantasy works—though crucially, Tolkien knew his writings were fiction; List and his followers insisted theirs were fact.

• Relatability Through Modern Analogies:

  • The hosts joke about how much easier wishful thinking is versus archaeology, and riff that “if List had World of Warcraft, we’d all be better off.” (14:33 – Brett)
  • Pop culture references interspersed throughout, e.g., "the Norse had a Wu-Tang" (13:15, Jason), blending humor with critique.

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2. The Personalities Behind the Nazi Party’s Rise

From Failed Beer Hall Putsch to Nazi Bureaucrats (20:00 – 37:44)

• Mentors, Mentees, and Power Struggles:

  • Ernst Röhm: A brutal, openly gay early Nazi leader whom Himmler idolized; the tension and hypocrisy within Nazi leadership are discussed.
    • “You love to see a gay dude that could beat your ass.” (22:31, Jason)
  • The Strasser Brothers: Otto and Gregor, representing a pseudo-left wing of the party, using socialist rhetoric to court workers before being purged by Hitler.
  • Recounting the Beer Hall Putsch: Himmler’s participation was more cosplay than combat—he gets the ‘old fighter’ valor without real risk.
    • Quote: “[They] look like awkward children playing dress up... you can see that this is cosplaying to a degree.” (30:04 – 30:16, Brett)

• Recruitment and Party-Building:

  • Himmler’s real talents: networking, finding power, ingratiating himself with higher-ups.
    • “His great talent ... is finding men who are... close to the Fuhrer and getting to them.” (34:10, Brett)
  • He took on a central role in Nazi propaganda and stealth party-building during times Hitler was banned from speaking.

The Psychology of Young Adherents (31:44 – 32:39)

• Why Young Men Fall for Extremism:
  • “If you’re 23 and you’re meeting these dudes... we finna overthrow the government? You tell 21-year-old me... hell yeah!” (31:44, Jason)
  • Explores the appeal of extreme groups to aimless, alienated young men—parallels with modern radicalization.

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3. Himmler’s Personal Life and Relationships

Awkwardness, Misogyny, and the Search for the Aryan Ideal (44:18 – 57:34)

• Himmler’s Weird Ideas about Women:

  • Private diaries reveal a bizarre, reductionist view: all women fit into three categories—the weak mother, the wife/comrade (basically a man), and the goddess/flawless mother.
    • Quote (sarcastic incredulity): “All women fall into three groups, right?” (45:41, Brett)
    • “Let me stop you right there, homeboy. What you finna say is gonna be dumb as shit.” (45:43, Jason)

• Influence of Upbringing:

  • Himmler’s own grandma gives “buy the cow from the stall” wisdom, set up as an example of generational misogyny. (47:29 onwards)

• Engagement and Frustration:

  • Himmler laments being unable to fully possess his fiancé’s spirit/body during engagement—presented as clear evidence of his entitled, incel tendencies.

Courtship and Marriage with Marga (49:40 – 60:36)

• Meeting Marga Siegroth:

  • She is older, more experienced, and matches his social class—yet also just as much of a racist and misanthrope.
  • Quote: “Their common rejection of democracy, their hatred for ... Jews...and their misanthropy... How false and bad humans are.” (54:36, summary from Private Heinrich Himmler)
  • Their initial relationship was characterized by arguments and even near-fistfights (Marga would have won, hosts agree).

• The Reality of ‘Back to the Land’:

  • After marriage, they buy a farm for ideological reasons, but Marga does all the work—Himmler lectures about peasant virtues from a distance.
    • “She’s the Übermensch. ... She’s the one putting in the lion’s share of the work here.” (60:37, Jason & Brett)
    • “He talks about how people should live, and Marga lives that life while he’s staying in nice hotels...” (67:10, Brett)

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4. Formation and Evolution of the SS

Why the SS Was Created: Internal Nazi Power Struggles (67:08 – 77:58)

• Rome, SA, and Party Control:

  • Rome’s growing power over Nazi militia (SA) alarmed Hitler—he wants a force not loyal to Rome.
  • “Hitler orders the formation of the SS...not to fight Nazism’s enemies, but to fight other Nazis.” (71:33, Brett)

• The Early SS:

  • The SS initially functioned as a private bodyguard unit, with strict requirements and an ethos of being elite and controlled (not “drunken louts and reprobates” like the SA).
  • “The SA...are just goons. The SS are criminals, but they’re like disciplined, mob criminals.” (70:36, Brett/Jason)

• Himmler’s Rise to Power:

  • Joins SS in 1928, exploits rival’s Jewish tailor to get him ousted, becomes Reichsführer-SS.
    • Quote: “As soon as he gets admitted...he rats on his boss...‘Hey, you know the guy who’s running your bodyguard? His tailor’s Jewish.’ ...That’s how Himmler gets the job running the SS.” (77:09, Brett)
    • “He snitches!” (77:34, Jason)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On bored, privileged young men and Nazi mysticism:
  “Boredom’s a sign of privilege in some ways.” (11:57, Jason)

• On Himmler’s romantic ineptitude:
  “He is very, like, strong incel vibes coming off this kid.” (46:39, Brett)

• On the foundational stupidity of Nazi race ideology:
  “No, like it just depends on where you want to start your timeline.” (58:31, Jason)

• On the difference between the SA and SS:
  “The SA are just the guy on meth who steals your car...You can count on them to get into street fights, but not to be particularly good at it.” (70:36, Brett)

• On joining extremist movements:
  “If you’re 23... meeting these dudes who have been to war... We finna overthrow the government... I never saw it as exciting from a human perspective—until right now.” (31:44–32:15, Jason)

• On Nazi social mobility:
  “His great talent... is finding men who are... close to the Fuhrer and getting to them.” (34:10, Brett)

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Flow and Tone

The conversation is fast-paced, irreverent, and peppered with pop-culture references (e.g., Indiana Jones, Wu-Tang Clan, Shrek). Humor is used to highlight absurdities and provide critical distance, but the hosts never lose sight of the horror inherent in the topic. There is a clear emphasis on the human (and all-too-familiar) psychology that makes extremism seductive: insecurity, boredom, longing for belonging, and delusions of grandeur.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The Ghosts of German Nationalism (Von List): 03:02 – 14:55
• Beer Hall Putsch and Nazi Party Early Dynamics: 30:04 – 37:44
• Himmler’s Bizarre Views on Women: 44:18 – 46:51
• Himmler and Marga: Racist Romance: 49:40 – 54:51
• Himmler’s Farm and Family Life: 60:36 – 67:08
• Rise and Purpose of the SS: 67:08 – 77:34
• Himmler’s Final Power Grab (Becoming SS Leader): 77:34 – 78:14

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Summary & Takeaway

This episode unveils the odd and often pathetic roots of one of history’s most monstrous figures. Himmler is depicted not as a supervillain from birth, but as a maladjusted, privileged nerd within a subculture obsessed with false histories, violent mentors, and belonging. The show offers a warning about the dangers of combining fantasy with political resentment, and how the quest for significance can help ordinary people become history’s worst villains.

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Further Listening

• Previous episodes on Himmler’s early life and Nazi occultism
• Next episode: What Himmler does as head of the SS

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"Do we need to argue with the dead Nazi?" (49:34, Brett) – No, but understanding his psychology might help us keep from making new ones.

Transcript

[Brett Weinstein]

Call Zone Media. Oh, welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast about the baddest of the worst of people history. Bad Heinrich Himmler episodes.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Ah, let's go, Heinrich.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's a Tuesday. We don't normally record on Tuesdays. I never could get the hang of Tuesdays. How. How are you doing, Prop? Jason Petty, our guest host of Hood Politics. Man, do you get Tuesdays?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I get Tuesdays, man, because I get to listen to behind the Bastards on Tuesdays. It's my. I look forward to Tuesdays. Yes. Excuse me. Sorry. I guess that's what I am now.

[Sophie]

Oh, you're the best, bro.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I am a. You know, just. Hey, guys, like, you think you want to be homeowners?

[Sophie]

That's your PSA for today.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That's your psa. You think you want to buy a house, and then now you're looking at puddles of water under your water heater.

[Sophie]

Yeah, I said you had a Tony Soprano moment. Your water heater decided.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yep.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. The upside of having a house is that you can knock holes in the walls if you want to. To. To modify it, or you can paint it and you don't have to ask your landlord. The downside is when you inevitably fuck something up doing your own work, there's no one to call you just. Except for the person you have to pay money to.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Exactly. I was. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like I run through all of those moments where I'm just like, oh, shoot, I better call the.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wait, better call the me.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

It called the me. And then I was like, okay, how much are the products? YouTube University. Do I have a friend? Like, just all the things and then you. And then the trade off of, like, there's a guy that can come put it in the thing. Come put it in for like 200 bucks. But, like, there's no warranty with that.

[Brett Weinstein]

There's no. Yeah, there's no warranty. There's no way to know other than like, maybe your buddy. Hopefully. Hopefully your buddy had a good experience with this guy because that's the only way to know that he's exactly it.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I called my brother in law.

[Brett Weinstein]

Bonded by the fuck whom.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. My brother in law goes, hey, I think I got a friend. And I was like, okay, just tell me how much it cost, bro.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had that experience more than once where it's like, okay, this guy is really, really good. He doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language. Yeah, but he'll write down on a Piece of paper, what it costs, and it'll probably work. And I'm like, that sounds great because the other guy quoted me $7,000.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, I just. Yeah, I just called the, like, I called the. The certified, you know, city permit, like, you know, we'll. We'll come in, we'll haul it out, we'll give you new lines and everything. I was like, this is going to cost how much?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, absolutely not.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Chino. Cuantos? Cuantos? Chino?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, let's just go with the guy who's absolutely never seen the inside of a government office.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Exactly.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. I'll assume he knows what he's doing.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

He has a friend, Jorge.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's right. You know, who didn't have a friend named Jorge because he was a Nazi and also lived in Germany. Not a lot of Jorge's in Germany. Heinrich Himmler. You know who we've been talking about for the last two episodes? We ended part two talking about a Volkish mystic named Guido Karl Anton List. Oh, yeah, I showed you.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

The ghost told him the letters.

[Brett Weinstein]

The ghost told him the letters. Yes. So many people in this episode learned everything they know about ancient Germans from ghosts who talked to them. Where we learned most of what we know about the ancient Germans from their ghosts.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

God, it's so easy. Like, being an archaeologist sounds like a pain in the ass. You got to go to school for like, what is it, like, probably six to eight years, I'm guessing. You know, something like that to get your PhD. And then you got to be really careful. You got to spend hours just, like, brushing dirt away from artifacts. And you can't touch them with your hands because that'll fuck stuff, stuff up. Or you could just grow out a crazy beard, put on a weirdo hat, and start being like, yeah, some ghosts told me these are letters.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Hell yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Because, like, that's way better.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, because it ain't Indiana Jones. You not like this beautiful college professor that gets to go on these adventures.

[Brett Weinstein]

No.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You are in 125 degree weather with a toothbrush, digging miles down and accidentally breaking the greatest discovery in human history because you brush too hard with a toothbrush.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, we're talking about Heinrich Schliemann now, but yeah, this is an iHeart podcast.

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[Brett Weinstein]

So we ended last episode Talking about this guy, Guido Carlo Anton List. He starts going after, he, you know, starts talking to the ghosts and getting, you know, building his theories about the, these ancient Aryans. He changes his name, which is going to be a common thing for all of these mystics, and he starts calling himself Guido von List and the Vaughn. Whenever you see a Vaughn in a German name like that, it means that they're a member of the nobility now. Yeah, Guido's absolutely has no royal ancestry. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. But, but the ghosts that he was talking to are like, oh, dude, we recognize you. You're a Vod. You're the reincarnation of this 12th century knight. You know, like, isn't that cool? Good thing you talk to us ghosts. We know we can recognize your spirit.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Your ancestors is telling you, mm, I.

[Brett Weinstein]

Love that kind of shit.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

These people owe you $1,000 cause you royal, you know what I'm saying?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, you're special because of your blood. Nobody ever, nobody, nobody who's convinced that they're reincarnated is ever like, yeah, you know, I finally, I saw the ghosts of my spirit or I saw the ghosts of my ancestors. And I'm descended from a 17th century chimney sweep in London. He died of the black lung at age 15.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Somebody had to, somebody has to be descended to them. Yeah, you talk to your ancestors, your ancestors said, look dog, I died at 19. I got no wisdom for you. I was, I don't know nothing. I look, I didn't live long enough. I don't know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I saw 150 of my past lives and they all died before age nine of measles. Yeah, you don't tend to get those guys. Instead what we get is, yeah, Guido Von List. In his book on Himmler and the occult, Bill Yen writes about the striking similarities between Von List and Himmler's backgrounds. And I find this interesting. You're gonna see this with a lot of these guys. Like Heinrich Himmler, Guido Liszt was born into comfortable middle class circumstances that permitted him opportunities for daydreaming and for his imag to create an alternate universe. Guido's father, Karl Anton Liszt, was a well to do leather merchant. Just as Himmler's fantasies were fueled by his views of the cold stone walls of Berg Trusnitz, the fires of Liszt's later obsession for Nordic paganism were stoked by a field trip to the catacombs beneath the city of Vienna at age 14. Within these damp and musty cellars, specifically beneath the old city Post office. His tour group came to an old altar which he decided, or was told actually originated as a shrine for the worship of Wotan. And as an adult, he has this like, powerful spiritual experience. He just gets so excited because he's 14 and he's got a big imagination and he loves thinking about ghosts and wizards. This kid would be playing D and D, right? Like, if he was around today, he'd have been into like fantasy literature. But this is the closest thing he's got. And he's going to chase that high of like being a kid and being in these catacombs and this feeling of like, excitement and not really understanding the world and seeing something. That like, feeling feels magical. He's going to chase that the rest of his life as an adult. When he, he starts, he builds a temple to Wotan as an adult, like, you know, he uses the money he gets from his books and whatnot and from writing to like build this temple and he'll hold like torchlight ceremonies in the dead of night there with other adults who don't have enough going on in their life who come from similar backgrounds. These are not the poor. These are mostly middle class people who's like, lives are kind of boring and they have enough, they have enough comfort and income and free time to get bored.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

These are not people who are laboring in the poison factory all night, like wading through cyanide on a daily basis. People like that don't get bored enough to think of stuff like this.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, boredom's a sign of privilege in some ways. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like this kind of boredom at least.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

You know, there's the boredom of like, well, my job's the same thing every day. But there's not the boredom of like, oh, if only I were an ancient warrior fighting for, or you know, worshiping Wotan in the woods.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. And the big bearded guy invented the name Wotan.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, no, no. Wotan is, I mean, this is a part of Norse mythology. There was a Norse, like a pagan God. That's Wotan. Like, he's not inventing all of this out of whole cloth. He's inventing the details out of whole cloth.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

He reads enough to learn. Like there was this guy and, you know, this is something, you know, ancient Germanic people, you know, worshiped this God. He learns a couple of facts and he invents the rest. Because we don't know all that much about, like the actual. Especially when this, and this is especially true when you're talking about like the ancient, like Celts, like the Druidic faith and whatnot that the Romans mostly exterminated. There's very little we actually know historically compared to. I mean, not to say that especially when we're talking about Wotan. There's a. There is some stuff that we know, but compared to what these guys claim to know, what's actually verifiable is quite small.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Sagas and stuff. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Cause they need to make up a lot more.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Because there's just, you know, it's not.

[Brett Weinstein]

Exciting enough on its own.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I'm telling you. I just. I didn't know, like, the Norse had a Wu Tang.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes, yes. The Wu Tang clan originates from ancient Germany. The God Wotang ain't nothing to fuck with.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Ain't nothing to fuck with, man. Him and Otan, actually, these guys kind.

[Brett Weinstein]

Of are fucking with him because they're largely creating, like, what they think Wotan worship should be like. And one thing I found interesting. Cause Lyst has some writings where he'll admit that like, as an adult, all of these, like, torchlight ceremonies in the woods at this temple that he holds. None of them get him back. He's always chasing that feeling he had as a 14 year old. And I want to like, grab this guy through the mists of time and shake and be like, it's because you were 14. Yes. Everything was more exciting than you were a child.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes. It's the law of diminishing returns. And nostalgia, sir.

[Brett Weinstein]

Exactly.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Nostalgia. You always remember it better.

[Brett Weinstein]

We always have. When I get into this feeling, I just watch Happy gilmore for the 400th time.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

That's all you gotta do. It's a lot healthier than creating a religion.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That's all you gotta do, man. Yeah, Just put on an old record.

[Brett Weinstein]

Go, I'll build some Warhammer models. Like, come on, man, just chill out. There is with guys like List guys. And Liszt is not on the most evil side. He doesn't kill anybody.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, a lot of what he's writing is pretty racist, but he's not. Like, he doesn't wind up leading the Nazi party, right? Like, he's not actively killing people. This is a guy who, if he had grown up at a different period of time, might have been satisfied just with fantasy novels and role playing games, right? Like, you give this guy access to World of Warcraft and maybe we save the world a lot of trouble.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Sheesh, man. Just a century too late.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. And it's interesting to me how similar they're. Because these guys are all from the middle class. They're all dudes whose dads do pretty well. They also, a lot of them work as journalists, right? Liszt is a. That's how he makes his money. He's like a journalist. He writes for outdoor magazines, and that's what funds his occult passions, like, you know, him building this temple and everything. And over time, as he's, like, you know, doing this kind of writing on the ancient Germans, in his free time, he's occasionally publishing stuff like that. He works up his theory about a group of ancient German priests called the Armenen. And these were priests of Wotan whose powers had allowed the German tribes to defeat Rome.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

When during kind of the early stage of the Roman Empire, Rome gets as far as, like, this kind of chunk of western Germany before there's this catastrophic battle in Teutoburg Forest where three. I think it's three legions get surrounded and ambushed and just massacred. We don't know exactly how they got massacred, but they got massacred, right? And this kind of stops Roman expansion into that part of Europe. And it's. So. It's a. It's a very big thing for these. As this German nationalism is developing, this becomes one of the first things that's like, oh, this is one of the earliest achievements of German civilization as we beat the Romans, you know, even as ancient barbarians, we stopped the greatest empire in the world. And List's explanation is it's because we had these wizards on our side, okay, These priests of Wotan. And this he's making up, the Armenian is a complete creation of his, right? Like, these are. He is inventing these now. He's invent. There's some kind of things that their name is based on, but they did not exist. He creates them. And part of, like, for an example of how directly this is just nerd shit, He. He. He explains a lot of his theories for the first time in a novel, right? He writes a fiction novel about the Armenian that he's like, but this is basically what happened for real, this fiction novel. This isn't just, like, me coming up with something because I think it's cool, right? This is, and it's worth noting, List, a lot of the primary sources that he is basing his fiction on are the same things Tolkien is working on.

[Interjector]

Oh, wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're inspired by very similar myths, and they do very different things with them, right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Totally.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. For Liszt, it has to be real. He has to be the reincarnation of this ancient spirit. It has to all be true or it doesn't matter. Tolkien being a basically healthy guy, psychologically yeah, yeah. Like, no, man, I'm writing a book about elves. Yeah. I just think it's cool and interesting and. Yeah, there's like some dwarves, you know, orcs. It's fun. Yeah, yeah. List. List. Can't do that.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I still like, you know, where I be able to like rewrite the timeline, you know, give my, get my loki on, you know. I'm saying since we're talking Norse, I just feel like the Germans, like you had a chance to identify as an indigenous community in the way that people of color identify as an indigenous community. You know, like you had, there was a. It was an invading conqueror, outside force that were trying to remove your way of life.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's awesome. You guys beat their asses dope. Pretty cool.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like you could have been like, you could have been on our team. You know what I mean?

[Brett Weinstein]

Like what says something about how hard these, these ancient warriors were. And we call them Germans. That doesn't mean that they correspond directly to what like German knew them.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

But like these ancient, these like Germanic tribes. It was not uncommon for Rome to send a whole big ass army, three lieges is the size of them wiped out. And then they would come up with an army twice as big and send them back in. And that's how they won most of their wars. Whole army gets wiped out. You get another. That's what made Rome great, is the ability to lose massive numbers of men and be like, fuck it, let's get some more. They never do that with the Germans.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, that's how badly like this, this fucks them up so badly that like they're almost like traumatized from it.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like that shows you how like how hard these sons of bitches were.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So, yeah, from this kind of legitimate pride in this cool chapter of their past, he starts inventing a bunch of mythology and he writes this. No. And the novel becomes very popular with a lot of these, this like growing Volkish movement, you know, in Germany. A lot of these again, like middle aged middle class and younger middle class guys who want to feel special, like they're a part of something ancient and cool. This, like, this gives them something to grasp onto. And there's, there's a lot of sort of like tacit support from the state who is desperately trying to build a sense of German nationalism, which is otherwise very new. The sense of being German. No, we were Bavarians and Prussians and yada yada, yada.

[Interjector]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So like that's all important too. Yeah. Like Himmler, Liszt is raised Catholic, but he breaks, like Himmler, with the faith in his early life.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

He rejects Catholicism for this idiosyncratic version of paganism that happens to mesh very well with far right politics. And Liszt is going to be one of the guys that Himmler is reading as a young man and one of the guys. He's going to follow this path in a very similar way. The year after he graduates from college, Heinrich Himmler joins another Freikorps unit. This group is called the Reichskrieg flag. That just means, like the Reich war flag.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's headed by a veteran of Germany's elite trench fighting units, like the original Stormtroopers from World War I. And this guy's name is Ernst Rohm. And Rome is. Rome is Hitler's street fighter in the early days of the party. You've heard of the Brown Shirts. Rome creates them. Basically. He is building them out of a lot of these. Like, it's essentially a fry corps unit from the start. And Rome, like all of these Nazis, he's a bigot. He's a monster. He's. He's a horrible person. He's also legitimately scary. Like, you would not want to fight this man in a bar. Like, Ernst Rohm will fucking gut you. He is a scary, scary man. He stabbed people to death, right? Like, he's. We're talking the kind of close combat that almost doesn't happen anymore in one.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, that's not easy.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, like these. And so he's useful to the party, but he's also never controllable because he is so tough. He's not one of these guys. He likes Hitler to an extent. He obviously is willing to work under Hitler, but he is not. He doesn't worship Hitler in the way that Hitler really needs to be worshiped in order to trust somebody. Rome is always a little into business for himself, right? So he and Himmler become fast friends. And I think it's probably more accurate to say that they become a. They have a mentor, mentee, relationship. Himmler, this kid who never goes to war, is never blooded in combat, idolizes Rome because he is the warrior that Himmler wishes he could be. And he's charismatic. All of these other hard as nails combat veterans respect Ernst Rome and listen to him. And so he worships the ground this guy walks on. And Rome likes being idolized. Now, another thing you should know about Ernst Roem is that he's gay. And this is a significant factor in his life. And he's not Totally open about it, but it's like an open secret on the far right. A lot of people. Hitler knows pretty early on that Rome is gay. And it's one of those things people are just too scared of Rome to usually make much of a problem about it.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, you love to see a gay dude that could beat your ass. You know what I'm saying?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. That's kind of how he gets spy.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like that's, that's part of it. Himmler may have. It's unclear if or when he knew because it becomes. It gets like published by the news in 31 is there's a good chance Himmler never realizes this about Rome because Himmler, it doesn't like, I mean, he's probably a virgin until his late 20s and he's.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I don't think none about in general.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

He just wouldn't pick up on this.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's the kind of thing people who are more experienced, who know more about the world, these like older and kind of more mature Nazis, they know, they pick up on the clues. I don't think Himmler does. And it's through this. There, there are some people who like will theorize that oh maybe, maybe Roman Himmler had sex, maybe Rome like groomed him. I just don't. There's not any evidence of this. And I think it's just people because of, of, you know, Rome's homosexuality. There's a lot of conspiracy theories. He's one of the reasons why when right wingers will say like, oh no, the Nazi party, like they were homosexuals. They were all like, that's part of their evil.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're focusing on this one guy who gets killed pretty early on.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

But he's a reason why there's this book called I think the Pink Swastika that's trying to argue that like, no, like the Nazi party and the gay movement are fundamentally tied together, which is nonsense. The Nazis viciously. It's a right way. A modern right wing strain of bullshit.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Because the reality of course, is that the Nazis targeted and murdered queer people of all kinds of put them in camps. You know, this was a part of the Holocaust, was the murdering of queer people in Europe. But at this stage in the game, a guy like Rome is useful enough that, you know, this is able to get by. And obviously he's going to get killed pretty quickly as we'll be talking about. But yeah, through this relationship, whatever the kind of details of it are, Himmler starts attending social events for the Nazi Party.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Rome invites him. That's kind of how he gets into these things. And so he joins this Fry Corps unit run by Rome, the Reichskrieg flag first, and then a few months later, he joins the nsdap.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, he gets into the party proper, and this is in. Is going to be in, like, 1922 to 1923 is when all of this is happening. And, you know, Himmler comes to idolize Hitler as well. And as he'd been drawn to Rome, he's drawn to the coterie of old soldiers who have kind of consolidated themselves around Hitler. These include a lot of famous warriors, including a former fighter ace, the guy who took over the Red Baron squadron once he gets shot down, Hermann Goering, as well as The World War I general, Erich von Ludendorff, who himself wrote anti Semitic Tracks of Volkish political theory. Ludendorff is writing a lot of stuff that's kind of a more racist version of some of the stuff that Liszt is writing. His is more focused on, like, the Jews as the ancestral enemy of the Germans and Freemasonry. But Ludendorff is also a Volkish writer, you know, in addition to having been the former commander of the German armed forces during World War I. It didn't go well. So Himmler shows up at a church in Landschut to register with a local Nazi party office and join the party officially. And the guy at the desk that day taking registrations was the regional party chief for the area, another dude named Gregor Strasser. Now, we haven't talked about the Strassers because there's. There's Gregor and there's his brother, brother Otto, his younger brother. And they are. Yeah, the Strassers are important because they are, again, the right wing today will accuse the Nazis of being socialists, right? Because socialist is in the name of the party. And the tiny germ of truth that they're using as the basis is that these two guys, the Strassers, were members of what's you could call the left flank of the early Nazi Party. This is before the party gets into power. And what's happening here is that the Communists are also growing in the years that the Nazis are growing. And the Nazis recognize that they need to be able to message to the working class, to these union guys who have been sort of like the base of the Communist Party. So we need to have some messaging about how we're gonna help workers, and we're going to, like, you know, make sure you get vacations and like, oh, these Jews are Actually hurting you, the laboring class. And we're gonna take what's theirs and we'll give it to you, and we'll make your lives easier. And so you need to have some sort of messaging to the laboring classes that. That can kind of mimic some of what the communists are promising. Otto and Gregor Strasser are those guys.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, yeah. Not, Not. Not familiar at all.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

But I knew.

[Brett Weinstein]

I remember Mega Communism.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, right.

[Brett Weinstein]

And such. Yeah, yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I just. I, like, I realized, like, where I remembered it, it was. What was that book? Death, Death of Democracy. That's where I heard that name was. Like, then they was talking about. When they was talking about, like. Yeah, the. The. The. The left flank or just borrowing the language of, you know, leftists or communist thinking. I'm like, I. I have. I experienced that, like, in my, like, my church background, you know, because, like, I. I come from such a different tradition than sort of the modern, you know, American conservative. But they would say stuff like, you know, change the culture. You know what I'm saying? And, like. And when I think. When you say that to me, I'm thinking, you know, the 10. 10 points of the Black Panther. You know what I'm saying? The 10 points of black Panther, that's changing the culture. You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking. When you saying, you know that. I'm thinking beloved community. The 25 points of beloved community that Dr. King talked about. So, like, I thought we were saying the same thing, but it's just like. No, it's just a way to message. Yeah, man. If you're not careful.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You know, you find yourself standing next to the wrong people.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, that's right. And, like, the Strassers are useful in this early period where the party's trying to build momentum.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're not gonna last long either. Like Rome, they're going to get purged. They do. They are actual believers.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, this is, like, with a lot of our, like, maga Communists and stuff. I think they are just grifters. The Strasser brothers really do believe what they're saying, which is why they're going to. They're going to, like, break with the party when they realize that Hitler is using them. You know, they're not good people. I'm not saying that. But they do believe what they're saying, right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So in 1923, though, Otto Strasser is a big man in the Nazi Party. And he and Himmler wind up establishing a relationship because they've got a shared Interest in chemistry. Himmler is interested in chemistry in school. Otto is I think a pharmacist. And so they bond too. And what you're seeing here is Himmler's got this kind of instinct for cozying up to and, and, and getting friendly with and building a friendship almost in like this mentor, mentee way with these men who are more prominent in the party, who are going to give him access to higher levels of the party. This is something he's really good at. He's got like an instinct for it. Now Heinrich's brother Gebhard also joins the Nazi party and both men are present in the party in November of 1923 when Hitler incites the Munich Beer hall putsch. There's a picture of both of them at the time that shows Himmler and his brother standing awkwardly around the barbed wire fence erected around the War Ministry in Munich. In his book, Willie Frischauer describes the brothers as looking like awkward children playing dress up. And yeah, Sophie's going to show you the photo. Correct. You can see Heinrich there. He's the one holding the flag, right? And he, yeah, he just looks like, he looks like a little boy.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Little dork.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, like this little boy dressing like an adult. It's so interesting to me just you can really, you can really see that like this is cosplaying to a degree.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You know, like this is the first time as many times as I've like whether it was in school or my own reading, like thought about the moments leading up to the puts for sure. And then ultimately to the Nazi world, I've never been able to wrap my brain around besides just deep seated self hate and racism. Like how anybody, like why, like why bro, what are you doing dog? Like you don't know, this shit is crazy. But like this was the first time I ever thought about, well if you're 23 and you're meeting these dudes who've been to war, they talk in politics, culture, revolution. We finna overthrow the government. Like you tell, you tell, you know, 21 year old me listen in a rage against the machine, we gonna go overthrow the government. Yeah, hell yeah. You know what I'm saying? So like I've never saw it as like exciting, you know what I mean, from like a human perspective, you know, like I'm just saying as like a racism and genocide withstanding, you know what I'm saying? Just the idea of being like young, you 23, you kind of a dork, you know, you meeting these people, you interested in chemistry, they talking positive Every time you have an idea they don't one up to because they done been through it. You got this dude who've been to war who killed somebody with a knife, it's like, damn, like, yeah, I'm gonna go to the bar with these fools. Like, this the dopest shit ever. You know what I'm saying? Like, I never thought about it like that until right now.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's. I think that's such an important point to note is like, what a chunk of these guys. They're the chunk that are the traumatized veterans. Yeah. You know, who are, like, angry and broken and really good at violence. But there's also a huge amount of the fuel is guys like Himmler, these kids who are too young to fight and desperately want to prove themselves, and this is their opportunity to feel like the men they idolized and the war they missed out on, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

And they're cool. Those dudes. The dudes are cool. They got.

[Brett Weinstein]

And I'm wearing the same uniform they are. It's like you get all these guys who love going out and dressing up and wearing the body armor and carrying the gun and, like, you know, running around doing, like, the militia.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Because it lets them feel like these guys that they never got to be, but they're like, oh, if it hadn't have been from, you know, my knee or whatever, having a kid too young, I would have. I would have been a great. I would have been a Navy seal, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So Himmler's there for the putsch, which does not work out, and it serves as his baptism of fire in a way. Although he is not under fire, he's described. You'll run into a lot of, like, kind of casual histories that will be like, he kind of carries the Nazi flag during the putsch. And that's not really true. There's a famous flag that, like, during, you know, at the part of the march when they get fired on, is near Hitler, and it gets, like, the blood of some of the guys who dies on it. And that flag is, like, sacred to the Nazis.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

It's their battle. It's literally the blood of their martyrs is on it. Himmler is carrying the flag for Rome's Fry Corps unit, and he is not present for the actual shooting, for any of the actual, like, deadly violence. The whole thing falls apart while he is elsewhere. He and his brother don't even get arrested, like, when they're. When the authorities come and break up the area where they are, where the barricades are like they're not even worth taking into custody because they're just kids, you know, like the cops. Like, just get out of here, you dumbasses, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, no, look, listen, as a kid who've been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sometimes you, you real thankful for that cop. That's like, get out of here, kid.

[Brett Weinstein]

And, and that's, that's, that's what happens to Himmler, but also because he's there, he's now an old fighter, right? He's one of the party vanguards. He gets a lot, he gets credit. He gets a lot of valor credit, like a lot, honestly, a lot of stolen valor for like being one of the guys who's there, even though he's not there for anything, like serious, you know, he's just kind of standing around awkwardly with a flag and a uniform. Now there are consequences for the Party in the immediate wake of the failed putsch, the Nazi Party is banned. Hitler and his lieutenants are put in what you'd call the luxury prison. For his part, Himmler's history with the party makes it hard for him to find work. But the event also serves to strengthen his ties, especially with Ernst Rohm, who he visits in prison. In general, his great talent in this period is finding men who are. He can't get to the Fuhrer, right? Hitler is unreachable to him, but he can find guys who are close to the Fuhrer and he can get to them. And that brings him closer to the center of the party. And these guys really seem to trust him. And so because he's out and he's free during this awkward period where the Nazi Party's outlawed and a lot of its top people are behind bars, Himmler is going to be really useful to those folks, right, because he's able to move freely. He's one of the guys who's still on the outside, so we can use him Now. Strasser is also free. And because the Nazis are illegal, he helps to create a new far right party that's like a front for the Nazi Party, but not technically the Nazis. And he gets elected to the Bavarian parliament. And Himmler becomes basically his secretary after this point. And as Strasser rises and rises through the party and takes on more and more duties, Himmler takes over his old duties and he start. He's helping to. He's basically put in charge of building and expanding this front party for the NSDAP in Bavaria stealthily, and he's in charge of propaganda. After a while, he Writes to a friend in August of 1924. I have an enormous amount to do. I am in charge of organization and expansion of Lower Bavaria at all levels. Given all the work, there's never a moment to think about finding the time to write a letter. And like, I bring this up because it's. He's writing this in a letter, right? He's humble, bragging, like, I don't even have time to write letters to you anyway. Enjoy the letter. You know, like, he's trying to. He's. He's big league. Ing him, right? And that's a real thing for Heinrich is he's always kind of bragging about how much he's doing and how important he is. He expressed frustration that he was fighting what seems to be a losing battle to try and spread the Nazi Party during this period of time where it's illegal. But he also expresses confidence that the seeds that the Volkish movement was sowing would bloom in the end. And he was sadly correct. The Volkisher Bloc, which is his party, that's this Nazi front group, group equals the Social Democrats in local Bavarian elections later that year. That December, Hitler is released from prison and the Nazi Party gets unbanned. He's able to reassemble the NSDAP in 1925. He's still banned from public speaking for a while. And the ban is a little different in each state. It lasts in Bavaria until 1927, I think, in Prussia until 1928. So he's able to speak in certain states, but not others for a while. And during this period of time where he's muzzled or partly muzzled, he needs mouthpieces who can travel to the places he can't and give speeches in order to, like, draw crowds and build the party. Cause that's how they're recruiting, is by having these public events. We pay for the beer. You come, you show up, you listen to some guy talk, you join the party, you hand him a couple of bucks, right? Like, that's. That's. And Himmler becomes one of the most reliable speakers, right? He's sent all around Bavaria recruiting new members at these local party gatherings. You know who else helped build the Nazi Party?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I hope not.

[Brett Weinstein]

Jesus Christ.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Robert.

[Brett Weinstein]

No. Who knows? So it might be IG Farben. You know, it might be Hugo Boss. Yeah, Hugo Boss. Advertise on the podcast Hugo Boss. We're not like that anymore.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Adidas.

[Brett Weinstein]

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[True Crime Narrator]

It was an unimaginable crime.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

It's four consecutive live terms for Bryan Kohberger who killed four University of Idaho students.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

The defense are on a sinking ship. It was clear at that point he was out of options.

[True Crime Narrator]

Nearly 30 months of silence until bombshell development.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Brian Koberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start.

[True Crime Narrator]

No trial, no testimony.

[Brett Weinstein]

He has pleaded guilty to five criminals counts one of burglary and then four counts of murder.

[True Crime Narrator]

In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Why did the prosecution take this? They were holding all the cars.

[Brett Weinstein]

How on earth could you make a deal?

[Ad Voice]

What message does that send?

[True Crime Narrator]

Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz's Husband]

My husband comes back outside and he's. He's shaking, and he just looks like he's seen a ghost, and he's just in shock. And he said, your. Your dad's been killed.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help.

[Liz's Husband]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Her dad had been stabbed to death.

[Liz's Husband]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened.

[Liz's Husband]

There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me, and I just. I want answers.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Listen to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brett Weinstein]

And we're back.

[Interjector]

Oh, yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

A lot of people don't know how critical Adidas tracksuits were to the birth of the Nazi party.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Listen, man.

[Interjector]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

What were they gonna wear at the beer holes?

[Brett Weinstein]

That's right. That's right. You know, a tracksuit. Yeah, that's. That's. That's the classic. Oh, God. I could go for a tracksuit.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Wow. They. They're never not right. That's the hard part. I know they got all kind of attachments to them, but they're never. It's all. They're never not the right choice.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're never not the right choice. I used to have a beautiful one. I got it in Istanbul, and it was a knockoff. It said a dotis. It was incredible. I love that smell.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Like cigarettes the whole time.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, it lasted like six weeks before it tore apart because it was not well stitched. Oh, it was perfect. So the Private Heinrich Himmler, a book written with the help of Katrina Himmler, which used was based on the letters that Heinrich and his wife sent each other over the entire course of their marriage, summarizes this period in his career as he's traveling around Germany giving speeches. Between 1925 and May 1926 alone, he addressed 27 different meetings in Lower and Upper Bavaria and another 20 in Westphalia, Hamburg, Mecklenburg and Schleswig Holstein and elsewhere. In his incessant travel commitments, he was no different from other party functionaries. In 1925-26, Joseph Goebbels was also tirelessly on the road, speaking all over Germany and supporting local National Socialist groups. In April of 1926, Goebbels even came to Bavaria on a lecture tour in the afternoon with Himmler in Landschut. Goebbels noted in his diary on April 13, and he continued, Himmler a good fellow, very intelligent. I like him. So again, he's really good at getting seeming likable and non threatening. That's key to these guys who are a step or two away from Hitler. And that's how he's, that's really the key to his success as a good hang time. He's a good hang for certain people who are just a little closer than he is to power.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Now you'll not be surprised prop to hear that Heinrich Himmler's early years of career success with the Nazi party did not make him any less weird around women. He gets really. Yeah. During this period of time, in his early 20s when he's starting at the party, he writes a lot of really weird shit about women. There's one diary entry, that's why I like that. That article by Lowenberg that I read to you, that Freudian guy analyzing his diary entries. There's a lot of nonsense in there where he's like, ah, this is evidence of Himmler's anal fixation or his schizo person. And that's all nonsense. That's just like debunked psychiatric bullshit from the last century. But it quotes a lot of things that are diary entries of his that are really, really valuable. And it talks a lot about his weird issues with women. And obviously it draws conclusions about where those issues came from that I don't agree with. But the issues themselves are undeniable and that part is really interesting. And one diary entry, Himmler concludes that all women can be divided into, into three groups. Oh God, the weak mother.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me prepare myself.

[Brett Weinstein]

You need to, you need to break.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That's like the blacks sentence where I'm.

[Brett Weinstein]

Just like, oh God, yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

When you say the blacks in the sentence, the sentence is over. Like there's nothing else you could say after that.

[Brett Weinstein]

All women fall into three groups, right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. Let me stop you right there, homeboy. Like, let me stop you right there, homeboy. What you finna Say Is gonna be dumb as shit. Okay.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, I think your problem is you've met three women.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, exactly. So what does he say? All women.

[Brett Weinstein]

All women can fall, can be divided into three groups. There's the weak mother. Brutalized, victimized by a brutal father who must be protected. There's the wife. Comrade. Who is basically a man.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is like a wife who can do things. And then there's the goddess. Or. Or the flawless mother as seen by a child in their infancy.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's it. That's all women. Heinrich, you really have a. I have a great understanding, bro.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You need a podcast. Start your podcast. Incredible work.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Oh, he would. He would have. You know what? I don't. He wouldn't have even started one. He would have fallen for all of them. This would be a guy who would have scraped together the ten grand to join Andrew Tate's inner circle, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. He'd be a part of that.

[Brett Weinstein]

He is such a. He is very, like, strong incel vibes coming off of this kid.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Big dog said this three. And then there's the goddess.

[Brett Weinstein]

Then there's the goddess. The flawless mother is seen. Yeah. By the child in their infancy.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh, my God.

[Brett Weinstein]

Wendy Peppercorn, you kind of catch. There's. Because Himmler doesn't write about his mother much in the diary. He doesn't write about his dad being abusive. But from that, I kind of think, okay, so your dad was probably smacking around your mom as a kid, and it fucked you up.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, why else would that be something you would conclude. Divide, like, womanhood into those groups? So within days of writing this, like, a few days after that entry, he quotes his maternal grandmother as having given him this advice on picking a wife. Quote, one should buy the cow straight out of the stall, not young girls who dance around until they get a man.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That is grandma advice, boy. Yeah, that. That. That's what your grandma was. Let me tell you something. You don't want one of them loose women out there selling everything that you did. You didn't seen everything. You. You don't already. They didn't already been tested. You don't want that. Been test drive too many times.

[Interjector]

No.

[Brett Weinstein]

You want to buy that cow right out of the stall.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. You don't want a floor model now. You don't want one of the floor model. You want to tell them, go get it from the back. I want the one from the back.

[Brett Weinstein]

Okay.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Awful. Thanks, Grandma. You're not supposed to. You're supposed to listen to grandma until it gets to that, you know, sometimes.

[Brett Weinstein]

You gotta cut Grandma off. Maybe take away this gin. Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. You know.

[Brett Weinstein]

Okay, Grandma.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

All right, Grandma, like, you need something from the store. I'm about to go to the store. You want me to pick up the other stuff?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, I got a bounce.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh, yeah. I'll pick up your medicine. I'll drop off your medicine tonight, Grandma.

[Brett Weinstein]

I'll see you later.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So he continues to flirt poorly throughout this period. He writes about a bunch of crushes that he has, but none of them seem to go anywhere. In letters to a friend, he writes of his frustration at the traditional engagement period.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

This point in time, after you're engaged to be married, before you get married, which he defines as a stagnant time in which, quote, the fighting and wooing are over. Yet one only possesses a part of her spirit and her body. Not at all. There's a lot in that.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I got it. But I can't smash. Like, that's not fair.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. I can't get in there yet. You know, I only have a part of her spirit. I don't own her body yet. But there's no fighting and wooing to do. Like, we never wooed anyone. Heinrich. Him. You don't even know what you're talking about.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. Which one third of the women does this one category would this one fall into, Bro? Now, as somebody who. I mean, I was engaged, but like an hour and a half. Like, we got married that day. But that being said, there's a lot to do during an engagement. Like, there's a lot going on. You still don't know that woman. Ain't nothing wrong with you still, like, getting a notice and let me get off my. He's ridiculous as obviously.

[Brett Weinstein]

Point is, it's one of those things where, like, he's wrong. How much time should we spend pointing out how Heinrich Himmler's wrong about, like, love?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

This is a really good use of our time.

[Interjector]

Right, Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Do we. Do we need to argue with the dead Nazi?

[Interjector]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

So in 1927, he finally meets the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his. Some of his children. Marga Siegroth. Like, S I E G R O T H. She was born Marga Boden on September 9, 1893. So she's seven years older than Heinrich, which I find interesting.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Despite his previous statements about buying a cow. Straight out of the stall. And he falls for Marga, even though she has been married before.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

I told you that. She's born Marga Bowden. And when he Meets her, she's Marga Segroth. She has been married before in 1920, and you know, it didn't work out. And on paper, Marga is exactly the kind of worldly, career focused woman that Heinrich claimed was not worth settling down with starting in World War I. She's a nurse in field hospitals, right? She is closer to the front and combat than Heinrich himself. She's close enough where there's like a danger of being hit by like, errant shells, right? She's hearing the gunfire and the artillery and she's dealing with men who have just been pulled off the line after being grievously injured. So, like, she is more of a veteran than he is.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

So at this point, now, at this point, I'm like, I am grossly hypothesizing here, but. But knowing that about her, she like, oh, I see why she like him. Cause she could bully his little soft ass. You know what I'm saying?

[Brett Weinstein]

I kind of. I wonder because it doesn't seem like that since I don't fully understand the relationship. I'm gonna tell you that right now, Prop. Other than they're both equally. They're both the same kind of racist. Like that's actually more of it. But. Yeah, well, we know a lot. Well, I'll go through it. I'm just having trouble coming to conclusions.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You know, I just feel like somebody who was pulling bodies out of the front line can solve. Can suss out a yellow belly, right? He ain't gonna be a problem. I'm like, maybe he's not gonna book. Like, maybe she's like, I'm not gonna. I'm not scamming this guy. But it's like, listen, I'm gonna be able. I ain't gonna have to be this subservient. Cause he ain't got it in him. So I'll be able to live my life, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

I think that is a part of it. Cause as I'll say, she always has a degree of autonomy from him. Now, some of that's because he's cheating constantly and doesn't wanna be around, but she gets something out of the bargain too. I don't know. It's. Weir is a little hard for me to. To. To kind of parse out here. In 1923, she got a job as the head nurse of a private Berlin clinic that his. Her father part owned. So like everyone in the story, she's also a Nepo baby. She's into homeopathy, right? She's like a homeopathic nurse. She likes alternate medicine.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

She's, she's into like junior shit. Exactly. She's so all of these people, none of they don't change from century to century. They're always the same kind of person.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Now there's a reason, there are good reasons why, even though, again, on paper, this is not the kind of woman he had talked about wanting to fall for. There's also some very obvious reasons why he's drawn to her. She's from the same upper middle class strata as him, right. She's socially acceptable, her family has money and she's blonde haired and blue eyed.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Which Himmler is not.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Himmler is obsessed with Aryan racial theory and he knows he doesn't match. He knows that, like he's not as pure Nordic as he wants to be. But she is, right? Like she's clearly got the Nordic genes. I'm not talking about in actual terms of genetic science, of course, this is all nonsense. But from his perspective, right. She's closer to the ideal than he is. And that's a selling point for Himmler. Marga and Heinrich meet in September of 1927 on a train ride from Berchtesgaden to Munich. Marga had been on vacation. Berchtesgaden is the mountain town where Hitler has his Eagle's Nest retreat. So she's there on vacation because it's like a resort town and Heinrich is visiting for work, right? Because Hitler's there a lot of the time and so like a lot of party business gets done there. So on the way back they meet and they, they hit it off. And despite her greater life experience, Marga is just as much of a fascist as her husband as this passage from the Private Heinrich Himmler summarizes. Because this is kind of this book, it, it just, you can read a lot of their letters to each other in their entirety, but it also kind of summarizes like a lot of their communications as we know them. Obviously we don't know what they said in private, we just know what they wrote each other. But that's a lot more than you have about most people from this period. Quote, they agreed in many areas. For example, their common rejection of democracy, their hatred for Das system Berlin, their hatred of Jews whom they labeled Jewish rabble, and their misanthropy, how false and bad humans are. That's from Marga. They were soon dreaming of life in the country together. Not only because they wanted to supplement Himmler's modest party salary through their own venture raising animals and vegetables, but also because this corresponded to the volkish idolization of a return to the soil. The beautiful, pure home that they wanted to establish was supposed to be a secure castle and a place to keep the filth of the outside world at bay. So they're both kind of into this trad wife bullshit, you know, like, they're in. Margo's really into this. This idea of, like, let's escape from the city and build ourselves a fortress where we can keep the filth out. Other people are awful, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Humanity is terrible.

[Sophie]

If it wasn't for the fascism. Hard relate.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Right. I feel you.

[Sophie]

I'm like, fortress, keep people away.

[Brett Weinstein]

I just want to keep people like this away.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

I'm like, how about you stay away?

[Brett Weinstein]

Unfortunately, you can't. You have to just deal in the world.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

But, like, that's what they're both. They're both racist, they're both misanthropes, they're both fascists, you know, that's fundamentally why this relationship works. The very first letters between the couple have been lost to time. But in later letters, both alluded to their relationship, starting with Constant at furious arguments, including at least one in which they nearly had a fist fight. And we both know Margot would have won that.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

She'd have whooped his ass.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interjector]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Not.

[Brett Weinstein]

Not a question in my mind. In letters we have from November 1927, we get some sense of what one Heinrich over Marga tells him his constant stomach issues are just the result of his heroic workload. She adds, one works to be able to pay taxes. At least that's fun. Taxes. And then adds, I read Ludendorff's work, a book on the Freemasons. The book criticizes the Jews. I find that the facts speak volumes. So why all these remarks? Life truly offers so too many pleasures. So, you know, you get this, like, you know what's unfair is all the taxes I've got to pay. Also, Ludendorff, you know, wrote this. This book. He's right about the Jews, but why has he got to spend so many words talking about it? We all know they're evil. You know, like.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Like, she really does the taxes.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, right. All right. Nothing has changed. So we get a sense there of the fact that Marga was a Nazi way before she actually joined the Nazi party. You know, she gets with Himmler before she actually joins the party, but she's always been one in spirit. The two bonded over reading the second volume of Mein Kampf. We have Heinrich's copy of the book in which he took notes and appended marginalia. So we have some idea of what they may have discussed. Heinrich underlined a passage about the need to stop defective people from breeding. He commented the potential for undoing racial mixing exists. Oh, this is always going to be a focus of his, like this idea again that we have to undo the damage that all this interbreeding with poles and whatnot, you know, has, has done to our race. And, and this is going to be kind of the foundation of like how he leads the ss. Like it's, it's purpose primarily is to undo the damage of race mixing by selective breeding. Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Nor does he. Yeah, like I, I never thought about again. Another I never thought about is like you none. You can't, you can't talk about this if you don't start at like all the like Volks, like myth making. Now it makes sense because, okay, you clearly don't understand your own history that like the Germanic tribe Biza were race mixing and, and the Nordics were hundreds of miles away from here. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like that's, that's actually not y', all, you know, so like, even if, I mean, granted I'm looking at it with a 21st century brain and obviously we're using these terms very loosely, but like what the do you think an indigenous person is? They not peer breeds either, you know what I'm saying?

[Brett Weinstein]

So like nobody is. That's not a thing that exists.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes, not a thing. That's what I was gonna say. Like. No, like it just, it depends on where you want to start your timeline.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like, I mean, like there's Europeans have Neanderthal DNA because at some point we were other species, human beings, other species. And that's why we're here. Like, yes, just Neanderthals, but like the fact that like, like the more you breed with people who are different from you, the better, like immune profiles your.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Kids, the better your immune system works.

[Brett Weinstein]

Right?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like that's just. We know all this.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, yeah. So I'm just like, this undoing shit is just like, oh, it's because you think you supposed to be this ancient thing you made up.

[Brett Weinstein]

And like it doesn't.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That's why the science that you say, you read, the chemistry you say, you ready? Is that the math isn't mathing for you?

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, because it's fundamentally nonsense. Right. But that's, that's going to be his like obsessive goal is we have to undo this damage. And you know, his part in that starts when he marries Marga in 1928. As soon as they marry, they buy a chicken farm out in the country. This is consistent with Himmler's stated volkish back to the land values. But it's also evidence that those values are more a result of this nerdy special interest he has in German mysticism than, than a real desire to live as a peasant farmer. Because he basically never works on that farm. As soon as they set the farm up, Marga starts having kids and Heinrich is gone. He is on the road all the time working for the Nazi party, furthering his grand career. Marga, not only does she raise the children, but she minds the farm like she keeps this business going, like it's nearly all on her shoulders. Himmler shows up every now and again to help out and check on how his kids are doing. But most of his direct relationship with their raising and the farm's day to day work operation is him sending letters to and Fri and Marga sending letters back to him talking about what's going on.

[Interjector]

So he's.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

She's the uber minch.

[Brett Weinstein]

She, she is like, she's the one putting in the lion's share of the work here, right? I don't know. She's saying she's awful, but yeah, she's certainly, she's, she's closer to the, to the Aryan ideal than Heinrich is to say.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Like, yeah, like she actually the pinnacle of manhood, brother.

[Brett Weinstein]

Your, your wife's the peasant farmer like you. You're walking around in a suit like talking to people.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

No, pretty boy, just bragging about, bragging about being sore after barely working out. Like, oh, I'm so busy working. I'm sorry I haven't, didn't have chance to write, man, I'm so sore. I'm so busy, man.

[Sophie]

Shut the, shut up the fuck.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty funny. You know what else is funny?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh man. Hearing you read ads sometimes. Yeah, it's pretty funny, man, because I'm like, there's an ad that, that Jack does shout out. Jack o'?

[Brett Weinstein]

Brien?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah. On the Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah, he, he reads an ad that I hear all the time about the speed of a, of a like gaming laptop processor that I'm like, man, you don't know what none of this shit means. It's just so funny. I was like, you don't know what this means, but I feel you get your money.

[Brett Weinstein]

No, it's like rereading ads about the NFL. Yeah. Huh.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh, like you don't know what this shit means.

[Brett Weinstein]

Please give us more money. The NFL. Anyway, here's some ads.

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[True Crime Narrator]

It was an unimaginable crime.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

It's four consecutive live terms for Bryan Kohberger, who killed the four University of Idaho students.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

The defense are on a sinking ship. It was clear at that point he was out of options.

[True Crime Narrator]

Nearly 30 months of silence until bombshell development.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Bryan Kohberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start.

[True Crime Narrator]

No trial, no testimony.

[Brett Weinstein]

He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary and then four counts of murder.

[True Crime Narrator]

In this final season, we return to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Why did the prosecution take this? They were holding all the cars.

[Brett Weinstein]

How on earth could you make a deal?

[Ad Voice]

What message does that send?

[True Crime Narrator]

Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz's Husband]

My husband comes back outside and he's, he's shaking and he's just, just looks like he's seen a ghost. And he's just in shock. And he said, your dad's been killed.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help.

[Liz's Husband]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Her dad had been stabbed to death.

[Liz's Husband]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened.

[Liz's Husband]

There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me, and I Just, I want answers.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Listen to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place, it's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Brett Weinstein]

We're back. Boy, I sure do love first downs. I don't know, you just have to.

[Sophie]

Remind us you're from Texas for a minute.

[Brett Weinstein]

It is the only sport I know anything about. Cause I had to play it in high school. It's legally required in Texas.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, yeah. You can't graduate. Just like we have to know how to recite a full Snoop Dogg song. Yeah. Before we can graduate high school.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, man. So this pattern where Marga does all of the actual hard work and Heinrich then writes essays and gives speeches about how important it is to raise children and have farms. This pat is the pattern for most of their relationship. Heinrich talks about how people should live and Marga lives that life while he is staying in nice hotels, taking up mistresses, eating at restaurants, and doing everything but living as a back to the land peasant farmer with his smiling children and Aryan bride. Now Marga quits her career to make this life possible, which for Heinrich means he's killing two birds with one farm shaped stone. You know, she's not out living an independent. She is very independent, but in the sense that she is, she is maintaining the life that he wants to pretend he's living.

[Interjector]

Right, Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

So while Himmler had been in prison, Ernst Rohm, who got out earlier, had renamed the band SA, turning it into the front bon and expanded it to 30,000 fighters. Now this is crucial because the Nazi party, in order to grow, is going to need these fighters. The fact that they've always got tens and eventually hundreds of thousands of men who, they're not always armed in the streets with guns, but they have a lot of guns and caches and they're, they're willing to fight state. It's a threat potentially to the army. There's enough of the essay at a certain point that like the army, which is very limited in size, has to be concerned about the ability of the sa to potentially cause a problem.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

For, you know, the country's government being able to maintain power. So it's very important that Rome is constantly expanding this group, which, again, is technically not the essay in this period, but also because the Nazi Party was banned and the SA was banned. And he establishes a separate group during this period of time. It means that this. The front bond, which is effectively the SA is separated from the Nazi Party. And it's just Rome's. There's not a chain of command where Hitler is in charge of these guys during this period, which means that Rome could kind of go into business for himself because he's got the army, so to speak. Speak.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

And Hitler. Rome always says he's loyal, right? He always says the right things. But Hitler doesn't trust Rome, you know.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, of course you shouldn't.

[Brett Weinstein]

And it's. There's a period. There's a point where Hitler's like, will you, you know, sign a pledge of loyalty and hand over this organization? Basically make it a part of the party, you know, once the party is unbanned. And Rome says, no, like, and he makes up something about, like, I want it to. Oh, I think it's better if it's, you know, independent for this reason or that. But what matters to Hitler is that, like, Rome has defied him. Now, this is an issue between the two, and ultimately it gets resolved when Rome leaves Germany temporarily to take a job. Bolivia, like, hires him to train their armed forces. And Himmler kind of talks to Roman, is like, I think it's a good idea if you take the job. You know, like, Hitler is kind of pissed. You know, this might cool things down for everybody. And so Rome goes off, and the SA is effectively leaderless for a while, which means that the threat to Hitler declines, but he's still spooked. And the fact that he has this kind of moment of panic where he's like, oh, fuck, this guy might actually try to usurp me. And he's the dude with the army. It convinces Hitler that he needs a new Freikorps, right? A new militant unit that's dedicated and loyal only to him.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

He specifically wants a group that's filled with men who are more disciplined than the SA men and better at fighting and are ready to, quote, march against their own brothers if necessary.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Sheesh.

[Brett Weinstein]

The essay had proven useful, obviously, but they were like, the proud boys today, right?

[Interjector]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

These are not disciplined soldiers. They're drunken louts and reprobates, Right? Most. A lot of them are addicts A lot of them are criminals, you know, fucking Horst Wessel, the. The famous martyr of the sample, you know.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

These guys are. Are criminals. And they're not. They're not the kind of criminals because the SS guys are also criminals, but they're the kind of criminals who are like. Like mob criminals.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, they're like.

[Brett Weinstein]

They're like disciplined. They're disciplined. As opposed to the essay, which are just like the guy on meth who steals your car, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, yeah. You can't really.

[Interjector]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You can't really count on them. Yeah, they're just. Those are just goons. Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

You can count on them to get into street fights, but not to be particularly good at it and certainly not to be a disciplined army.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

And to make matters worse, these. The sa, because they're so uncontrolled, they scare the conservatives with money.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Nobody, none of the people, none of the, like, wealthy class, trust the SA because they seem scarily like the mobs that occasionally, like, you know, overthrow the government and kill all the rich people. You know, like, just because they're technically on your side doesn't mean you. You like the idea of this unaccountable drunken mob, you know?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

And all of this is why ultimately Hitler orders the formation of the ss, or Schutzstaffel.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

The SS is started not to fight Nazism's enemies, but to fight other Nazis. Specifically, the SS is formed as a counter to the sa.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Wow.

[Brett Weinstein]

Now they're also supposed to. They're also formed because they're literally a bodyguard for Hitler. He wants a unit of disciplined, reliable fight who can beat Communists in the street, who can guard Nazi party meetings and do so again more effectively and with more kind of discipline than the sa. But more than anything, he wants them to be able to fight the SA off if Rome betrays Hitler or if someone else in the SA betrays Hitler, because there's a lot of SA leaders and he doesn't trust any of them.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah.

[Brett Weinstein]

The core of the SS is formed out of Hitler's Stoss Troop, or first Bodyguard. This is like his initial guards before, you know, the party is really formed and it's headed. The first leader of the SS is Julius Shrek, Hitler's chauffeur and chief bodyguard. Shrek was an obvious initial choice, and he made some good early decisions that would echo in the organization's future. Members had to be above a certain height. They had to be between 23 and 35 years old. So you don't want him too young because Those are just hooligans. But they need to be young enough that, like, they're fit and able to fight effectively. And they have to have two sponsors who vouch for them before they can join. Two sponsors in the ss.

[Sophie]

I just want you to know I'm picturing, like, Shrek. Shrek, like Ogre Shrek.

[Brett Weinstein]

That is. That is Disney or. Sorry, DreamWorks isn't, like, talking about it. But yes, Shrek got his start leading the ss. That's why he was living in. In that. The.

[Sophie]

The swamp.

[Brett Weinstein]

That swamp, yeah. Because obviously, you know, after Nazism fell, he had to go into hiding.

[Sophie]

Are you saying Shrek was a Nazi?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes. Yes. That's. That's. That's the dark.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

He tried to change. That's why he turned green. He was. He was in hiding.

[Brett Weinstein]

That's right. Yeah. He had to change his appearance so that he wouldn't get. He wouldn't.

[Sophie]

And then Donkey made him woke.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Then Donkey made him woke. He made a black friend, you know?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Donkey's one of my favorite animated characters ever.

[Brett Weinstein]

They had to leave out the movie where Donkey figures out that Shrek had been a Nazi. And they have to have a serious conversation.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

That is a conversation.

[Sophie]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Say Shrek. One more thing. Let me ask you this real quick.

[Brett Weinstein]

Oh, man.

[Sophie]

DreamWorks sponsor us.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. DreamWorks sponsors. We could do the new ads for the new Shrek movie. Shrek, he's not a Nazi anymore. Anymore.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Reformed.

[Sophie]

Send us your money.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah. Shrek leaves the. Stops being leader of the SS in April of 1926. So he's just there for about a year. And you know what he does, does, does kind of set up the future of the unit. It's going to be small, but it's going to be elite.

[Interjector]

Right?

[Brett Weinstein]

It's going to be big guys who are tough and who know each other. And so, like, they're tight and they have, like, they have, like, you know, they have a stronger bond. It's not this anonymous mob of, like, drunken rabble. These guys are going to hold together better in, like, a combat situation. Once Julius leaves, he hands over control to Joseph Berchtold, who's a former SA man who'd handled security during the putsch, which, given that the putsch doesn't go well, you might be like, well, why is this guy. He fucked up his one job. But Berchtold is given the title Reichsfuhrer ss, which is leader of the ss. He's the first man to actually hold that title. And this is where the SS Starts like the birth of their kind of distinctive all black uniforms. At first it's just that they have black ties to differentiate them from the SA's brown tie. And you know, over time this is going to evolve into the, you know, Hugo Boss all black uniforms that we all know today. But it just starts with the tie. Berchtold's main accomplishment during his brief period as Reichsfuhrer SS is to stop the SS from being absorbed into the SA entirely when that organization is readmitted to the Nazi party.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

Like there's an attempt from Rome to just make the SS a unit in the SA. And Berchtold stops that, that he resigns in 1927 and he's replaced by another guy who doubles down on the ss. Remaining ultra exclusive and elite. But this guy's really bad at his job. You know, like he, he, he tries to really focus on restricting even further who can join. And this helps means that the SS membership declines from its height of around a thousand to just a couple of hundred people in 1928. And it's during this period of time when the SS is sort of like bleeding members and it looks like it's about to die out. Like this was kind of a failed experiment and eventually it's just going to be absorbed back into the sa. It's during this time that Heinrich Himmler is admitted to the organization. Now Heinrich had joined because the SS needed men and he, he was not like a threatening guy, right? Like nobody, the dude running the SS at this point doesn't consider him to be like a rival for power. And Himmler likes the idea that it's exclusive, that like, oh, if I join this, people will think that I'm one of the elite.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Okay, wait, so he's a member of the Nazi party, he's just not a member of the SS at this point?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah, and he becomes one in 1928.

[Interjector]

Right.

[Brett Weinstein]

You join the Nazi Party and then you join the ss.

[Interjector]

Word.

[Brett Weinstein]

And Himmler, he gets into the, again, he's not physically, he doesn't kind of match the strong requirements they're supposed to have have. But he's someone who there's a lot of buzz about. He's doing a lot of very important jobs. He's like liked by a lot of high ranking people in the party. So he's got clout and he just doesn't seem like someone who could do any, who could like be a threat to your power. Yeah, but that's a mistake because as soon as he gets admitted, Hitler rats on his bots the leader of the SS to Hitler and is like, hey, you know the guy who's running your bodyguard, his tailor's Jewish. He's got a Jewish guy tailoring his SS uniform. And so Hitler shit cans the reichsphuhr of the ss. And that's how Himmler gets the job running the ss.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Wow, he snitches.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes, that's how he does it.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Look, look, you ain't here for me, but I heard homie got his, Homie.

[Brett Weinstein]

Got a snow bunny over there, he's running the ss. He's got a Jewish guy, him in his pants like. I don't know man.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Look, if it, if it was me, I'm not in charge. I'm not in charge. But if it was me, I would look into that.

[Brett Weinstein]

Dang. I wouldn't be doing it that way.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when you know, you can't really. You can't go head up with none of them people. You gotta figure out other ways to defeat em. You know what I'm saying?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You know like. Cause you're not gonna fight them.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You know, so like okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna outsmart you.

[Brett Weinstein]

Yep. And it works. So yeah. Heinrich Himmler at this point has now become the Reichsfuhrer of the ss. He is leading the organization and he will continue to lead it for the remainder of his and its life. And we will talk about what he does now that he's in power later. But first. Prop.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Yes.

[Brett Weinstein]

You wanna plug some pluggables?

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

I would love to plug pluggables. Like I said, the terraform cold brew is back. The website is up. Praise be. We are ready to share the good drink politics with Prop. We got two drops a week this time. We got the main show on Wednesday and then the tap in on Friday a little shorter.

[Sophie]

I love the taverns.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

The tap ins are fun man. So those are.

[Sophie]

It's great format for you.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Thank you, Sophie. That's good. Yeah. So yeah, and then follow me on all the socials, the prop hip hop.

[Sophie]

Whoever, whoever suggested that tapping was a genius.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

Oh, oh, oh man. Look in a mirror, Sophie. Look at boss queen.

[Sophie]

Yeah, I'm in pain. So I'm just being nice to myself.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

You should be not in pain. You should be nice to yourself.

[Brett Weinstein]

Robert. Robert.

[Sophie]

Could I get a compliment on the way out?

[Brett Weinstein]

Yes. You're the best. Thank you. Yeah, you're the best. And your pain, pain is awful. I hate it. But I don't hate is you the listener. I only hate some of you, and I'll never tell you which ones you are.

[Sophie]

But I know.

[Interjector]

Mm.

[Sophie]

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

[Ad Voice]

Wherever you get your podcast.

[Sophie]

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

[Ad Voice]

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[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz's Husband]

My husband said your dad's been killed.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar.

[Liz's Husband]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Liz's father murdered and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound.

[Liz's Husband]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers.

[Liz's Husband]

We're still fighting.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Listen to how Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[True Crime Narrator]

It was an unimaginable crime.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

It's four consecutive live terms for Brian Coburger, who killed the four University of Idaho students.

[True Crime Narrator]

Nearly 30 months of silence until Bombshell development.

[Liz (True Crime Narrator)]

Brian Coburger has agreed to plead guilty.

[True Crime Narrator]

No trial, no testimony.

[Jason Petty (Prop)]

The defense are on a sinking ship. This isn't the justice you wanted, but this is justice.

[True Crime Narrator]

Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the important importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Brett Weinstein]

This is an iHeart podcast.