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

Summary

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

Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts)
Host: Robert Evans
Date: September 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this second installment on Heinrich Himmler’s life, Robert Evans and his co-host trace Himmler’s journey from a sickly, nerdy boy in Imperial Germany through his formative years during and after World War I. Rather than reducing him to a cartoonish monster, the episode explores the human quirks, ideological roots, personal failings, and incremental choices that transformed Himmler from an aspiring soldier to architect of the SS. The episode emphasizes the dangers of otherizing evil, offering a nuanced portrait of how societal forces, personal insecurity, and fringe beliefs merge in the making of history’s worst villains.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Himmler's Early Life and World War I Influences

• Patriotic Fervor and Propaganda:

  • Young Himmler’s diaries reflect how German propaganda shaped his perceptions of the war (05:22).
    • "One of his early diary entries... he just writes: 'English Army beaten.'... 'I'm as happy at these victories as the English and French are no doubt annoyed at them.'" – Robert Evans (05:52)
  • Himmler’s excitement is dampened when he observes local Bavarians’ lack of enthusiasm and hears a wounded veteran’s realistic horror stories (08:09).
    • "All my neighbors are cowards... they don't think it's awesome... this guy who got machine-gunned and all of his friends died is inventing rumors that the war's gonna be bad." – Robert Evans (08:44)

• Youthful Empathy and Early Bigotry:

  • Displays brief compassion for French POWs, anger at locals for mistreating them (12:10).
  • Yet dehumanizes Russian POWs, writing they "multiply like vermin"—early evidence of the racist worldview that would intensify (12:50).

2. Nature, Nurture, and the Making of a "Bastard"

• Capacity for Empathy:

  • Researchers highlight a dichotomy: a "normal" young Himmler with flashes of kindness, and the monstrous adult (13:00).
  • "I don't know that I would agree Himmler was a psychopath as an adult... He is capable of empathy and choosing to do terrible things—100%." – Robert Evans (13:46)
  • Theme: “Otherizing” monstrous figures lets the rest of us off the hook (14:12).

• Personal Insecurity Drives Obsession:

  • Fails to join the military as he wanted—his health and social class stir intense insecurity and aspirations (15:45).
  • Obsessive weightlifting and quests for masculinity stem both from health anxieties and a desire for status, not just Freudian "anal retention" (17:30).

3. Postwar Disillusionment & Search for Belonging

• Frustrated Ambition:

  • Despite family connections, Himmler is seen as too frail and immature for frontline combat; his brother emerges as the heroic opposite (23:45).
  • He signs his letters “Heinrich the soldier” (26:00), desperate for affiliation.

• Care Packages and Petulance:

  • Tone shifts as Himmler whines about lack of care packages, contrasting starkly with his brother’s harrowing front-line ordeals (27:50).
    • "Dearest parents, today again, I have got nothing from you. That's mean." – Robert Evans, reading Himmler’s letter (27:25)

4. Early Political Radicalization and Involvement

• "Stabbed in the Back" Myth and Blaming Jews/Socialists:

  • Embraces conspiracy that the German army was betrayed, not defeated—a mindset that seeds future Nazi ideology (35:39).
    • "For Heinrich, it's not only did we get stabbed in the back and Germany was robbed of its great victory, I was robbed of my chance to be a hero, be a real man." – Robert Evans (37:00)

• Joining the Freikorps and Far-Right Circles:

  • Nominal involvement with militias, but excluded from real action—remains a marginal figure, yearning for recognition (41:00).
  • Experiences postwar Germany’s instability and the rise of competing political and cultural movements.

5. Drift into Mysticism and Völkisch Ideology

• Influence of the Völkisch Movement:

  • Isolated and weakened by illness, Himmler fills time reading volkish and esoteric literature, fueling his radicalization (45:10).
    • The movement blends German romantic nationalism, exclusionary racial identity, mysticism, and pseudoscience (46:19).
    • "Volk signifies the union of a group of people with a transcendental essence." – George Moss, as quoted by Evans (46:19)
  • Comparison to the 1980s New Age movement and COVID-era radicalization online (48:53).

• Anti-Semitism and Conspiracy Thinking:

  • Reads anti-Freemason, anti-Jewish propaganda:
    • "Freemasonry was strongly influenced by the Jews, was aiming for world revolution, and was overwhelmingly to blame for the world war. Himmler agreed and commented, 'A book that sheds light on everything and tells us who we have to fight first.'" – Robert Evans quoting Bill Yen (53:06)

6. College Life: Fraternities, Masculinity, and Awkward Romance

• Dueling Clubs and "Scar Culture":

  • Status among elite students involved fencing for facial scars—Himmler isn’t skilled, but tries to "fit in" (58:00).
  • Typical nights of mild drinking and attempts at bravado (59:53).
    • "He writes in his diary a night out drinking: 'It was very jolly. I drank eight glasses of wine. At 12:30, we went home on the train. Most of us were tipsy, so it was very funny.'" – (59:33)

• Rising Anti-Semitic Attitudes:

  • Fraternity debates about whether to admit Jews spark Himmler’s break with Catholic teaching, moving toward blood-based, exclusionary racism (65:49, 68:43).

• Awkward, Incel-esque Attitude Toward Women:

  • Begins writing wistful, self-pitying diary entries about women—expressing desires to be their savior or feeling entitled to affection (69:52).
    • "She wants kissing. This is so gross. If sweet young things knew how they worried us, they would no doubt try not to." – Himmler, via Robert Evans (69:55)

7. Falling Deep Into Mystical and Occult Pseudohistory

• Obsession with Mythic Germanic Past:
  • Devours literature about “noble” ancestors, knightly orders, and fringe historical theories (56:40).
  • Idolizes figures like Guido von List, who claimed to channel spirits and invented a runic alphabet, laying intellectual groundwork for Nazi occult beliefs (74:33).
    • "Portrays himself as something between an archaeologist and a wizard... he uncovers this system not by real archaeology, but by ghost archaeology." – Robert Evans (75:02)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Empathy and Evil:
  "I think it's worse if you can care about people and do terrible things. That's not as bad as being capable of empathy and choosing to do those things—100%." – Robert Evans (13:46)

• On Masculinity and Military Ambition:
  "There's a modern-day version of Himmler that would have fallen for a lot of these, like, far-right Joe Rogany...fitness guys. He would have been really into that." – Robert Evans (16:31)

• On Manipulating History for Self-Esteem:
  "It's this obsession with ‘No, my ancestors were this thing that I think is cool...’ and it's like, everyone has ancestors who were kings, ...everyone's got a lot more ancestors who were dirt farmers." – Robert Evans (55:54)

• Describing Himmler's Awkwardness with Women:
  "He writes home to his brother: 'She wants kissing. This is so gross. If sweet young things knew how they worried us, they would no doubt try not to.'" – Robert Evans (70:10)

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Key Timestamps

• 05:22–09:00 – Himmler’s childhood diary entries, early attitudes toward war and propaganda.
• 12:10–13:46 – Childhood empathy, racism toward Russians, and evolution into bigotry.
• 15:23–17:30 – Obsessions with fitness, self-discipline, echoes of modern bro “wellness”/masculinity culture.
• 23:45–26:00 – Failing to enter elite combat units, contrasted with brother’s success.
• 27:25–28:43 – Complaint-laden care package letters (petulance).
• 35:39–38:48 – Embrace of the “stabbed in the back” myth, resentment, and exclusion from military after WWI.
• 45:10–53:27 – Reading volkish propaganda, descent into conspiracy and anti-Semitism.
• 58:00–60:44 – Fraternity life, masochistic scar culture, childish pursuit of legitimacy.
• 65:49–69:52 – Rising anti-Semitism, awkward encounters and perceptions about women.
• 74:33–76:11 – Idolizing occultist Guido von List, the foundation for Nazi mythos.

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, irreverent but deeply researched—a balance of humor and gravity.
• Frequent asides connecting historical patterns to modern politics and online culture.
• Willingness to draw psychological parallels and social commentary, but grounded by frequent direct quotations and primary source references.

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Conclusion & Tease for Next Episode

The episode ends with Himmler college-aged, still obsessed with belonging, masculinity, and grandiose myths. His growing fascination with volkish and occultist ideas, combined with political disillusionment and personal insecurity, sets a clear trajectory toward his future infamy. The hosts signal that the next installment will delve deeper into the dark roots of Nazi spirituality and the characters who shaped Himmler’s esoteric worldview.

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[Listen to Part Three for further exploration into Himmler’s transformation and the origins of Nazi occultism.]

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Media. Hey, everybody. Robert here. And behind the Bastards. It's doing its first live show in quite some time at the Alberta Rose theater in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, September 25th at 8:00pm all performer proceeds will go to the Portland Defense Fund, which helps people who have absolutely no money and are going to be relying on public defense get bailed out and get, you know, outside of court help while they're waiting to go on trial. So please help support the Portland Defense Fund. Google Alberta Rose Theater T H E A T R E Behind the Bastards Live. If you just Google Alberta Rose Theater behind the Bastards, it'll take you to the live show. There's an etix.com if you go to etix.com behind the bastards live you should be able to find it as well. Again, all performer proceeds will benefit the Portland Defense Fund. You can also go to AT Defense Fund PDX on Venmo or type donor box Defense Fund PDX to donate directly to the Portland Defense fund. It's a 501C. Please help them out. And again, behind the Bastards Live, the Alberta Rose Theater September 25, 2025 at 8:00pm I'll see you there. I'm actually excited for the Nuremberg movie. I don't know, it looks like maybe they kind of didn't have the budget to make it as good as they could have, but Russell Crowe is really good casting for Herman Gehring.

[Podcast Announcer]

You love Russell Crowe.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I like him as an actor, but he's also like, Herman Goering is this guy who's a young man. He's a fighter ace. He's super fit and together and a handsome celebrity. And then as he gets older, he puts on a lot of weight and has problems with addiction. And yeah, Russell Crowe is a really good guy to pick to play Gehring late in life. Right, Robert? Robert. What? Say hi to Anderson. Hello, Anderson. How are you doing?

[Co-host/Commentator]

What up, Andy?

[Robert Evans]

Hey, Andy. What's up? She's the goat.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I also have a Russell Crowe story, but that's probably true.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, you do? Okay, for another time.

[Co-host/Commentator]

It's not as good as the Bill Gates story.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I love that.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Or the Doug Wilson story.

[Robert Evans]

I love that.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Or the Doug Wilson story. It's not as good as both of those.

[Robert Evans]

For a second there, I was just thinking about, like. And then you just start telling me the plot of the movie. The nice guy is like, oh, no, no. That's based on my actual life with Russell Crowe. It wasn't in the 70s, but yeah, no, that's about me.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That'd be so funny.

[Robert Evans]

You can Ryan Gosling's character.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I ran by cars. Yeah, I ran into Russell Crowe this. So these people came into our neighborhood and said we needed to. I was gonna try to break into 300, but I couldn't remember the rest of it. But anyway, that would have been if I could have pulled off the 301. That have been great.

[Robert Evans]

Well, speaking of 300, that. No way. Not really. At least 300 guys die in World War I and that's where we are at the start of this episode. World War I has began before noon.

[Co-host/Commentator]

At least 300 people die in World War I before noon on the first day.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's like a bad 30 seconds during the fucking battle of the frontiers.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes.

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Which is more effortful to use unless.

[Robert Evans]

You think there's a good outcome.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Avoidance is easier.

[Robert Evans]

Ignoring is easier. Denial is easier.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Complex problem solving takes effort.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

Meant for my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lashay Dungy. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for Answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sarah Spain]

Get fired up, y'.

[Robert Evans]

All.

[Sarah Spain]

Season 2 of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people, an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapinoe, to the show and we had a blast. Take a listen. Sue and I were like riding the lime bikes the other day and we're.

[Robert Evans]

Like, wee people ride bikes because it's fun.

[Sarah Spain]

We got more incredible guests like Megan in store, plus news of the day and more so make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network.

[Robert Evans]

So Heinrich Himmler, you know, starts when he's on vacation as a kid. He's taking notes, he's writing in his diary over the first few weeks as things are spinning up to a full blown war. And we get this fascinating. One of the things that his diary entries provide us with is this really fascinating window into the state of Imperial German propaganda at this time. One of his early diary entries, you know, before the outbreak or like right after the outbreak of, you know, once the German army gets into the fray and like everybody's actually fighting, he just writes english army beaten, and then goes on to add, I'm as happy at these victories as the English and French are no doubt annoyed at them. And the annoyance will be considerable. Falk and I would really, it's one of his friends would really like to fight right now ourselves. It's clear that the good old Germans and their loyal allies, the Austrians, are not afraid of a world full of enemies. Wow, this is a snapshot. Yeah. In the first couple of weeks of the war, things are going really well for Germany. They take Belgium, they're pushing towards Paris. Most of you know, the English army, this is remembered differently in Great Britain as, like, how well they fought. And even though there's very few of them, they inflicted hideous casualties on the Germans. But also what happens is the English army, as it existed at the start of the war, is almost wiped out. Right. Like their standing army almost doesn't exist very, very soon into the war, which is why, you know, they have to do this general draft and stuff. And so from the perspective of the Germans, sure, you know, they were good soldiers, but like, we wiped them out, basically. There's not that many English soldiers left anymore and like the French are being pushed back. So he is just absolutely, from the beginning of it is like, ah, we're unstoppable. And this, I think this is particularly, I don't want to do too much of, like, again, what a lot of people do when they're looking at his diary and like, working backwards from where he ended up and being like, ah, a clear sign of the monster he'd become. But there is something useful in that last sentence where he's like, the Germans, the good old Germans and their loyal allies, the Austrians are not afraid of a world full of enemies. Right. The idea that, like it's, you know, we can stand alone against the world. The fact that as a kid he feels that way.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, that's a sentence, man.

[Robert Evans]

Right. It's relevant to who he becomes.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, yeah. That says a lot.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And that, yeah, you ain't afraid of haters.

[Robert Evans]

He's not alone. This is specifically what the Kaiser's propaganda is trying to inculcate. But part of why everyone in the Nazi high command is willing to make a lot of the calls and willing to back Hitler and all of the calls that lead them to being at war with the world is that they had been raised in this propaganda where it's like, yes, it's Germany against the world and we can take them. Right. And obviously they almost do In World War I, you know, to be fair. Yeah. So it's also worth noting that a few weeks later, at the end of August, once his family had returned home from vacation and he'd had more time to talk with his, like, neighbors and his peers about what they thought of the war, he writes this quote. Generally speaking, there is no particular enthusiasm in Lower Bavaria among the people at home. When the mobilization was announced at in the old Town, everyone apparently started blubbing, crying. I would have expected that least of all of the lower Bavarians. They are usually so ready for a fight. A wounded soldier says the same. Often really dreadful and stupid rumors go round, all invented by people. And that's interesting where he's like, wow, all my neighbors are cowards. They're scared and sad that we're going to war. They don't think it's awesome. And a wounded soldier who came back from the front said that the war is a bad thing. What a dick. These people are idiots. Yeah. They're inventing rumors. This guy who got machine gunned and all of his friends died is inventing rumors that the war's gonna be bad.

[Co-host/Commentator]

See, this is again, hearsay. Yeah, like, this is. Yeah. Y' all watch too many movies. Cause like, I feel like, I feel like one of the most miserable feelings is like a wet sock.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Right. So like, so a wet sock that you can't do anything about, but it's also inside of your boot and it's going to kill you.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

The sock is so wet and so moist that you're probably gonna lose your foot because it's infected. Like, like that type of like. I'm not even talking about the bullets and the machines. I'm talking about the food rations have maggots and mice in them.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. And just all my friends are dead.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, and all my friends are dead. You know the food I ate to survive, to get here, to talk to you? I ate it off of my dead buddy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, I think a lot when I'm reading about like, Heinrich hearing from this wounded veteran and being like, what a coward. How dare he not want to fight. It brings to mind just something from the early stages of the Iraq War. There was a sergeant who was a Nicaraguan lawful permanent resident who joins the United States Army. Camilo Mehr, who is deployed to Iraq very early in the war, in like 2004. And when he returns home after six months on a two week furlough, he refuses to go back. And he's like, I'm a conscientious objector. The war is wrong. We shouldn't be here. You guys don't understand how bad it is and how bad it's going to go. Like, we need to stop this now. And he gets like, put in prison for it for a year and stuff. And I'm thinking about like, as a kid, the things that I, I heard about him from my family and from the news about what a coward this man was. And it's like, this man was in fucking combat. He fought for this country and he came back and was like, guys, this is a bad thing. It's bad. It's going to go bad. We're not gonna win. It's gonna kill a lot of people. We should stop. And yeah, I mean, I can really understand Heinrich's reaction. Cause as a kid, that's how I felt about this guy. Cause I was fucking propagandized too. You know, Some of us get past it. Heinrich never does.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

So, and one of the things that's interesting here is that like, he's talking to these locals who are like, sad that the war is happening. And the fact that a month before he writes this entry about how stupid they are and ah, they're listening to all these dumb rumors all invented by people. A month ago you were talking about how the British Army's been defeated and the French are fleeing and Germany's. And now things have bogged down and hundreds of thousands of Germans are already dead. And you don't realize, like, maybe you were wrong. Like, maybe everyone was lying to you about how easy this was gonna be. Like, you don't get that yet. But he's a kid, you know, kids are dumb. And he's no smarter than any other dumb propagandized kid in the history of the World. So when a trainload of wounded French soldiers arrived in town, Himmler wrote about them. This is interesting to me. He does write about these wounded foreign soldiers, despite how he felt about the French with compassion. He's actually, like. He's. He's angry that there are some locals who are, like, angry that the prisoners are being taken care of and fed. And he's like, no. Like, they're prisoners. They fought honorably. Like, we. Like, that's not bad. Which is interesting. Now, that said, several days later, he hears news about 90,000 Russian POWs, and he writes in his diary that Russians, quote, multiply like vermin. So you also get flashes of the. The guy he's gotta become. Right. I think that's interesting. There's an element of, well, this was not a guy who was incapable of compassion as a kid. And also, yeah, he's already. He's at 14 and he's talking about Russians like they're fucking rats. So, yeah, okay, I can see both. You weren't maybe destined to be Heinrich Himmler, but there were always the pieces of that in you too.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. In his Freudian analysis of Himmler's diaries, Peter Lowenberg writes. Two American historians, Werner T. Angris and Bradley F. Smith, have collaborated in studying Himmler's early years. They found that there were two distinct Himmlers, an early normal one and a later psychopath. The early Himmler was, to all appearances, a normal human being. It is, they write, bewildering to discover how genuinely kind, considerate, and at times, downright compassionate he was as a youth. And I don't know that I would agree Himmler was a psychopath as an adult, in part because that a psychopath isn't capable of empathy, and he clearly is. He goes to the camps as an adult, he's nauseated. He, like, vomits because of what he's seeing at the camps that he is running. He is, I think this. And I don't say this to be like, he's not as bad as these guys think. I think it's worse if you can't care about people and do terrible things. That's not as bad as being capable of empathy and choosing to do those things 100%.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. As looking at it and going, nah, this shit sucks.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. This just sucks. This is super evil. Anyway.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, fuck. Doing the wrong thing, like, yeah, no. Oh, fuck, this is awful. Obviously, we got to do it. This makes it more honorable that we're willing to push through our nausea to kill these people.

[Co-host/Commentator]

What are you going to do. Yeah. Right now I am like, man, just. I think both of our shows have made this point so many times that, like, you want to otherize the monster, right. And call them a monster, that there's something that is foreign or far from us with. They have this weird brain worm in their soul that makes them something separate than us. It's like, no, no.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

They're us.

[Robert Evans]

And I think that's kind of what I really want to emphasize here is I don't think. And this is arguable, but this is my argument. I don't think he was destined to be the genocide guy. I think he made choices. And I also think that there's obviously, like, you know, nature, the. Just his environment also helps push him to this. His people around him, his family push him to this. But I don't think that Heinrich Himmler, if you take this guy and you put him in a different time where you surround with better people in the same place, he might have wound up being a very different person. Right. I don't think this is a guy who was. Could only ever have been a monster. I think he's a guy who chooses to do monstrous things, and I think that's important.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes. Rather than being born 1900, he's born 2000.

[Robert Evans]

Right. He could have been a different guy, you know, better parents, a better environment, could have been a totally different person.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So World War I was an accelerating agent for the worst parts of his personality. War does not tend to make people better. Like many German boys, he became obsessed with the idea of serving. And particularly he wants to be in combat. He wants to be infantry now. He wants to be an officer. He doesn't want to be a grunt. Right. He wants to be like. Because he sees that as, in part, he's owed that kind of position. Right. His family's upper middle class. He knows the prince. He's supposed to be an officer right now by 1915, at 15, he's getting close to adulthood. He's not far from when he'll be able to join and fight. And he writes about being overwhelmed. He can barely stand it. That he's not out there yet. Right. Like, this is driving him crazy that he's still too young to fight and he's gonna miss it. He's still worried even in 1915, when it's become clear, oh, this is bad.

[Co-host/Commentator]

No, this is gonna.

[Robert Evans]

He still can't.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Plenty of time, buddy.

[Robert Evans]

How angry he is at not being able to fight yet. And part of it, he's also very insecure. His health problems continue and he's really worried that like he might not be able to serve at the front because of his health. And so he starts taking actions. He gets obsessively into fitness to try and he gets into weightlifting. Like he's a. Again, there's a. You can see the modern day version of Himmler would have fallen for a lot of these, like far right Joe Rogany, like Joe Rogan. Fucking steroid grifters. Fitness guys. He would have been really into that. Lowenberg writes, quote, on the eve of his 15th birthday, he wrote, I work out with dumbbells every day now to get more strength.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, you do.

[Robert Evans]

But as adolescence developed, his perception of strength became an inner one. Strength to him was a function of inner control of self discipline over his emotions. Now as a Freudian, Loewenberg describes this as a fundamentally anal retentive method of building strength. Oh my God. Okay, man. He quotes a later diary entry by 20 year old Himmler where Heinrich promises to seize like iron the bit of self control. In my mouth, he means bit like a horse's bit. Right. And then extends this, Loewenberg does, to a claim that Himmler must have been obsessed with a desire to masturbate. And all of his obsession with fitness and with self control is as a result of his constant battle with himself to stop himself from coming. I don't think there's any evidence of this. Where did he get. Freudians are obsessed with coming. Right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. Now where'd you get that? Like just where, where did that. I don't.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he is. This is a Catholic boy. I am sure he's got a self complex about sexual urges and the fact that it's called a. I'm sure that this does influence him as it is like most kids in this era. Right. I just don't, I think that you're, he's, there's, there's some reaching here going on. Right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I feel like what's, what's more, I mean obviously like even the practice of doing what I'm about to say, we're against doing it, but I'm like. But what seems to be again right in front of us was what they said about the boy in high school. Like he's, he didn't, he was a late glow up.

[Robert Evans]

Like he's a late grow up. He's anxious about his fitness, about being scrawny and weak. Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You know, he's like I said, like he's a six at best. You know, I'm saying. So that's already Happening. And it's like, dude, nah, let me put some. Let me bulk up a little bit. I'm bigger now, I bet you. You know, I'm saying, like, I go to this war, I put some weight on like, everybody, you know, my lungs. I don't be running like everybody else. You feel me, like, let him. It's a normal boy. I'll show them glow up moment, you feel me? That, like, to me is like, again, so far, I know that the tide is going to completely turn, but I feel like so far all this is relatable.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a really important point. And again, I'm sure he's got some weird attitudes about masturbation that can't. It's not nothing, but it's just. Loewenberg describes it as like, this probably is more important to him even than like, preparing his body for war. And no, I think his obsession with physical fitness and his. He might have, you might even say body dysmorphia. He's very unhappy with his body. I think that's focused on his worries about not being able to fight, not being fit to be a soldier like he's supposed to be. And like his older brother is going to be. In September of 1915, his parents and his older brother Gebhard go to a field hospital for wounded, or it's at least a hospital for wounded soldiers with their parents to go, like, you know, thank these soldiers who have gotten maimed on the Western Front. And Heinrich is really envious that he doesn't get to go. Like, he's like, oh, man, I wish I should have been there. Gebhard turns 17 and he gets to join the Military Reserve, or Landsturm. Heinrich claimed, quote, if only I were old enough, I'd be out there like a shot. But he's not. And he has to content himself with joining the cadet corps, which is the Imperial German version of rotc. Right? This is like, you're not quite ready to join. You're going to be an officer. We're going to prepare you for that. He starts in autumn and he and his peers, they spend some time. They go out. There's like a week. There's like summer camp, basically, that they do. And I think it's a thing where once or twice a week they'll meet up and they get some training. I think they do some shooting. Most of what they're doing is probably marching, right? But it's kind of trying to prepare you so that you need less training when you're old. Enough to go fight. Right. He's enthusiastic. He really likes wearing a uniform. He really enjoys being involved in this. But again, his health issues keep cropping up and he. He develops. He has this severe stomach pain that he talks about. I think he has ibs. Probably ibs. D. If I just had to guess by what he's describing. We don't know, but I think he's got. Huh. Could have Crohn's. It might be. I don't think it's not. I don't think it's serious. It might be Crohn's, but it doesn't seem quite serious enough for that cause. He would have been basically entirely unmedicated, and I think unmedicated Crohn's would have been more debilitating to him.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So painful.

[Robert Evans]

I think think this is likelier, but I. I'm not a doctor, but he's got some sort of weird stomach gastrointestinal issue that will plague him his whole life. This is always a problem for him. Well, I mean, he's Heinrich Himmler, so I guess I'm glad he suffered in the long run. But, yeah, he hasn't done anything bad yet. I was like, stomach problems?

[Podcast Announcer]

That's a bummer.

[Robert Evans]

Not. Not for him. Yeah, he kind of. He kind of deserved it.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Longrich's biography suggests that his obsessive weightlifting is more of a response to these embarrassing health problems than an example of a broader need for control. Because he can't stop from masturbating. I think that's probably likelier than what Loewenberg theorizes.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

In late 1916, Heinrich's godfather, the prince, is killed in action in Romania at age 32. This is a calamity for the Himmler family and Heinrich in particular. They don't entirely lose their access to the royal family because, like, they know his mom. And so they have some. Some ability to still make use of that relationship. But the prince being dead really damages their connections. Right. They are much less tied in to royalty now. And the social benefits that would have come from it. For Heinrich.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. You're his plus one, man. Like, you can't. Like, you just lost. You're the plus one. So now you. Not on the list. You know what I mean?

[Robert Evans]

You're the plus one. And then he got fucking merked by. I think he probably died from shrapnel. I forget exactly. Maybe I'm wrong. But he gets killed on the fucking front, right? Yeah. In May of 1917, Heinrich's brother Gebhard joins an infantry regiment and starts his training to become an infantry officer. Now Heinrich is now old enough to serve, right? Because you know, his brother's 17 in like 1915. Heinrich's a couple of years younger. He's like 17 now. You know, this is the second to the last year of the war. He is old enough that he could, if he were a regular German, he probably would have gotten an infantry and been out there pretty quickly. But his parents, again, he doesn't want to serve as an enlisted man. And his parents beg the mother of his dead godfather. You know the. Yeah, I don't think she's the queen. I forget exactly what the term is, but she's the prince's mom. She's somewhere in the royalty.

[Co-host/Commentator]

The queen aunt.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, queen aunt or some shit like that to help them get a position in an elite infantry regiment. And she does write a letter to one of these like elite regiments being like, please accept this young boy. But they're like, look, we're like serious ass soldiers. Come on, fam. At this point, the German military, the elite units are really good. They're proto spears. These are like the Stormtroopers, the trench fighters. These are the guys who we are very careful with them because you can't replace these dudes, right? It takes time for someone to build up the kind of skill in fighting. Like we don't just take, we're not going to take this sickly, weak kid and put him in a unit where he's going to be asked to lose, leap into a trench with a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other and kill men in hand to hand combat. He's not ready for that.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Nah. Like, yeah, somebody's mom writes a letter to the SEALs, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he can't lift a 40 pound weight, but please take him into the Navy SEALs.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He's a good boy. He's a good boy.

[Robert Evans]

His dad taught my dead son. So Heinrich leaves school that year. He has not graduated. This isn't really. It's dropping out, but not really. Cause kind of everyone who is 17 is doing this either to go directly into the military or in Heinrich's case, he doesn't want to be conscripted and as an enlisted man. And so he leaves school so he can get into the reserve and try to secure himself a position as an officer candidate. He wants to go to officer Candidate school and handle all that. This will let him choose a better assignment with at least a more prestigious unit than like some ground Pounder or someone even worse. Someone in like the back rank who's never going to see combat. Who's going to be doing, like, signals or whatever? To make a long story short, Gebhard Senior, his father, keeps using his connections and eventually is able to secure Heinrich posting with a reserve battalion that is like the reserve battalion for a pretty good regiment. So these are the guys. When that good regiment loses men in combat, the reserve battalion sends men over to fill them back up. Right. So it's the kind of thing where eventually you'll get, you know, a front line position, theoretically. So Heinrich goes off to train, and he's now in the military. He's doing military training to learn to be an officer. And he starts writing home and signing his letters as Miles Heinrich. Miles is Latin for soldier. So he's signing his letters as Heinrich the soldier now.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Longrich writes, quote, the brand new warrior expressed his manliness, amongst other things, by taking up smoking. In contrast to this masculine pose, his almost daily letters to his parents, in fact, reveal the considerable difficulties he had in adjusting to the world of the military. He complained about the poor accommodation and wretched food, though on most evenings he could supplant this by going to pubs.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

So he's not really ready for what.

[Co-host/Commentator]

War is gonna be. Went all Shapiro on us. Ben Shapiro on us. Pretending like you like cigars.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And you're still going out to the pub and getting pub food. Like, you're not doing that bad. Like, if you think this is bad, what do you see what your brother's gonna do? Because.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, like during war, you going out to the pubs. Okay, yeah, yeah, got it.

[Robert Evans]

In the spring of 1918, his older brother Gebhard goes to the Western Front and he winds up being part of this last massive offensive, the Kaiserschlacht, I think it's called, of the German army in World War I. And he experiences heavy combat. His unit loses a lot of guys. He is fighting face to face, tooth and nail, in the trenches, like, as bad as it gets. Shit. Like Gebhard is a blooded soldier by the end of this. Heinrich, in comparison, spends his time complaining about the food and begging his parents for care packages. He receives seven care packages in his first five weeks away. But this is not enough, and he writes petulantly home in one letter. Dearest parents, today again, I have got nothing from you. That's mean.

[Co-host/Commentator]

What the. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Such a baby. There's a fucking word. Your brother is like, ankle deep in blood. He is wading through blood, fucking up to his knees, probably, and storms of bullets and shrapnel he's killing men in a hand to hand. He's watching the light drain from their eyes. And you're like, I only got seven care packages in five weeks. Do you guys not love me anymore?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Mom. That's what. Give me the gluten free.

[Robert Evans]

Come on, you fucking baby. Like Jesus, a million Germans starve to death during this period of time. And you're like, mommy, my care packages.

[Co-host/Commentator]

But you gonna send some goldfish. They ain't got no goldfish.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, and Gab Hart becomes a Nazi too. He's not a sympathetic figure, right? But like it is this discrepancy between his old brother, really smart, very good in school, fucking bleeding with his brothers, watching all of his friends get massacred in this like nightmare apocalypse battle. And Heinrich's like, mommy, you're not writing home enough, you know? He sends one letter back to his parents that reads, dear mother, thank you so much for your news, which I did not get. It's so horrid of you not to write again. Oh my God. And this is a day or two of letters. And he writes something like, thank you for the letter that I didn't get. What a dick.

[Co-host/Commentator]

The lady that wasn't in none of your journals. Okay, yeah, now, now, now you want to talk about her, huh? Cause she ain't write you no letter. Okay? Nah, I'm good.

[Robert Evans]

And it's like, okay, at this point, he's a prick. Yeah, right? Like we can say that.

[Co-host/Commentator]

We're starting to see the churn.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, this kid's a dick.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. Your war wasn't what you thought it was, huh?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't get your little snacks, you don't get your little tuck me and everything.

[Robert Evans]

He's not even getting shot at.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And you're not even, you're not even at war.

[Robert Evans]

So he eventually gets posted to take a course on machine gun uses to be. Basically, if he'd finished training, he would have been like an officer in a machine gun unit, right? On September 15th of 1918, he does not wind up. It's interesting to me that he doesn't wind up sent to the front, right? Cause Germany does not have guys they've been bled white by this point. A 17 year old boy even at this point. I don't care if he's sickly. He's just there for 10 minutes until he takes a fucking bullet to the lug. Right? Yeah, basically, like we just need bodies. And so it's interesting that he doesn't just get sent to the front. He's had enough training. Guys go up there with less. There's a couple of potential explanations. One is that even this late in the war, the German military still does try to make sure that their officers have a good base of training when they're sent to the front. And so maybe it's just that because he's becoming an officer, they don't want to rush that, but they do for a lot of guys. And Longrich suggests, and this is something he can't. There's not really hard evidence for this, but I think it's a reasonable suggestion that it might have been because his superiors see kind of what we've seen in these letters home, that he's immature. And like, they're like, this guy shouldn't be commanding men in battle. Like, we don't like he's gonna help Germany. I could tell you that much.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He a little boy.

[Robert Evans]

He's a kid.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He's a kid.

[Robert Evans]

And we're willing to send kids to die, but maybe we don't want them leading men to die. Right. He's just not ready. If he's going to be an officer, let's keep him away until he grows up a little bit.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You're gonna kill a lot of other people being childish or these men gonna turn on you Cause you a child?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. They're gonna frag your ass. Whatever the case, he is still in the reserves and still training when Germany signs the armistice. So Heinrich Himmler never gets the baptism of fire that he so dearly desired. And his brother Gebert, on the other hand, does the soldier thing as much as you can, right? He gets an Iron Cross for Valor. He gets basically like somewhat equivalent to like a Medal of Honor, somewhere between like a bronze or Silver Star and a Medal of Honor, you know? Cause there's different kinds of Iron Cross. I don't know exactly, but it's like. It's a very prestigious. Hitler gets ways.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He came home and got props.

[Robert Evans]

It's a big deal that he gets this and he manages. He doesn't get seriously injured over there, which is amazing, given the kind of combat that he's in. He's a lucky guy. And the fact that his brother, who's always been better than him, is now a war hero. And Heinrich misses out entirely. He will never get over this. This will color the rest of his life his insecurity over. This is something that is present for the rest of his days. And you know what else was present for all of Heinrich Himmler's life?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Oh, my God, capitalism.

[Robert Evans]

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, sort of. Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

It was invented by then.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it was around as a factor in Germany in this period, but also products, advertisements. Yeah.

[Podcast Announcer]

I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Join me every weekday as I share bite sized stories of missing and murdered black women and girls in America. There are several ways we can all do better at protecting black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tameka Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tameka never bought the car and she never returned home that day. One podcast, one mission. Save our girls. Join the search as we explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered black women and girls. Listen to Hunting for Answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

For my Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the Turning River Road.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor?

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Podcast Announcer]

Someone was posting photos.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone.

[Robert Evans]

Else'S body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I wanted to scream.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the Internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

[Podcast Announcer]

This should be illegal, but what is this?

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carvell. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And here's Heather with the weather.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

Well, it's beautiful out there. Sunny and 75, almost a little chill in the shade. Now let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the backseat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise, and that could be fatal.

[Robert Evans]

Cars get hot fast and can be deadly.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Never leave a child in a car. A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. And we're talking about Heinrich Himmler Post the big dub dub. So Germany's lost Heinrich is very much going to fall for the stabbed in the back myth, right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

In part because, surprise, surprise.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Matthias Erzberger, I think was his name, who gets assassinated as a result.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Now, here's a good tie to his past of him being like all my having, like you said earlier, like, I don't mind, like Germany, you know, collecting enemies. Like, we'll stand alone. It's all good. You know what I mean? You had that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. First of all, how'd that work out? But you had an attitude to where you just, like, you ain't forced you against us. You a hater. Like, I don't care. You know what I'm saying? We would have never lost. Cause we don't give up. We don't mind having enemies. You know what I mean? The only way we would have lost was because like you said, somebody had to stab us in the back. You feel me?

[Robert Evans]

Right? And that's the. And for Heinrich, it's not only did we get stabbed in the back and Germany was robbed of its great victory, I was robbed of my chance to be a hero, be a real man.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He almost personifies it. I was right. Yeah, that's big.

[Robert Evans]

Once the war is over, Heinrich attempted to remain with the military, but the old Imperial army is replaced as a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles with the Reichswehr. Right. That's the post war army and it's limited to 100,000 men. And they're not allowed to have like an air force. I don't think they're allowed much in the way of artillery. They're very much. Because people are like, yeah, Germany, you gotta kinda out of pocket. We gotta really keep a lid on yo asses. Right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

This is gonna prove to be a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The terms of the treaty. I don't need to get into that. People are broadly familiar the terms of the treaty play into why things happen in Germany the way they do. But one of the things this is going to mean is that Heinrich wants a military career. Right. And he's not gonna get one. Because the only people who get to stay in the military, it's a tiny fraction of the deployed military. And those jobs are gonna go to guys who actually saw shit. Right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

And who are valuable for some reason, who have connections. And he's just not gonna have. Heinrich's gonna try but like why the fuck would we give you a job of the tiny number of people who get to keep military jobs? Why would you get it? Hitler doesn't. And Hitler was actually a decorated combat soldier. Right. They won't let him in.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You know, that's great for me to hear because it's like I feel like he's like privilege ain't the word per se. But.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, but he is.

[Co-host/Commentator]

But it's just like it's supposed to work out for me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Like you know what I'm saying? So like why is this not working out either is like had to have add to the like pissed offedness, you know.

[Robert Evans]

And that is, that's a huge part of why Himmler is the way that he is and why he gets drawn into Naziism. Right. And this is a big, this is a major factor in almost everyone who winds up kind of especially these, A lot of these higher up members of the Nazi party, the people who are running the ss. We've talked about this with like Heinrich and with Eichmann. These guys are people who could come from the middle class and upper middle class. And I was promised more. I'm supposed to be doing better. And they're not never doing bad. They're never really suffering compared to how other people are. But they're furious because I was supposed. I was promised more, I'm owed more. It's a massive factor in all of these guys and it's a massive thing for Himmler. So he is able to. He returns to school under a special program instituted by the post war government to allow young men who had dropped out basically because they were either being drafted or they were trying to volunteer and thus had missed out on finishing their education to get their. It's kind of a mix between like a GED and a high school diploma to allow them to go back and finish it. Right. And actually the class that Heinrich is in is taught by his father, Gebhard. Longrich says Gebhard didn't show favoritism to his son. Is actually pretty consistent of descriptions of him. He wouldn't have really done that. So anyway, he gets his German ged, I think it's called an abitur or something like that. The first few months after the war are rife with socialist uprisings and attempt to take and hold different German cities by leftists, which are cracked down on brutally by a mix of police, the military and Freikorps, right? Which are these groups of Free Corps, these groups of demobilized veterans who are murderous thugs used by the new Weimar government to maintain control. These guys are far right. The Weimar government isn't. But the Weimar government cares more about stopping the left from succeeding in this. Kind of like, because they're trying to do basically the Russian Revolution to electric boogaloo. And Weimar's like, well, if we got to have these proto Nazis murder a bunch of people, as long as it stops that from happening, right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So Heinrich gets political fairly quickly. He gets involved first with a center right political party. Like, it's not the far right, but that's kind of his initial, more or less an analog to like a mainline Republican party initially. And at the end of 1919, he joins a Free Corps unit. He is deployed to them, if you can call it that, on a couple of occasions, which is, you know, there's unrest or whatever and the Fry Corps move out. He does some marching around, he does some riding in a car with some guys with guns, but he does not engage in any. A lot of Fry Corps are doing fighting. There's heavy fighting and killing. He is not involved in any of that. He does not see any serious action, I think in general, because even as messy as these Fry Corps units are, they're organized and run by people who actually fought. And they're like, yeah, this we should keep this kid away from anything serious. Look at him, look at him.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You know, you don't really want the smoke.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I don't want him behind. I don't want him watching my back, you know, he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You ain't really with the shits. You just want to wear the uniform. I do think it's also important to remember, like, and again, it's hard in our American imagination to understand first of all, multiple forms of government. But the type of transition. I feel like this is the first time, at least in our age era where we've seen a government totally like, like, lose their marbles. Like, we've never seen it. Like, like our government's lost its marbles, you know what I'm saying? And like, but at this time, like you said, like during Weimar, during the Weimar Republic, I'm like, women can vote. Like, there's these just these like progressive, not progressive, but they're these like progressions in culture. Like they're, they're funding the arts, they're funding science and, and motherfuckers is pissed off, you know, like that sort of like, like, okay, guys, like, think about.

[Robert Evans]

This for a second.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Like these, like, these are. Maybe I'm having a modern. Maybe I'm modern pilled. But I'm like, it's such an interesting moment and how the clapback from that was so strong. Like, it's just, I don't know, it's just a weird time where I was like, brother, like, like this, the world, like this the time Einstein's from.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Like, you're getting like government endowments to understand science. You know what I'm saying? Like this, that's. I thought that was good.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Anyway, yep, yep, yep. So, yeah, Heinrich, you know, he's in the free corps. Part of why he's in joins this unit is it's. He's kind of trying to stay in the military after demobilization. He's hoping he can make connections, but it doesn't work in. And he's out of the military. He's cashiered out. By the summer of 1919, he begins to work as a laborer on a farm. So he's like, you know, he's working on a farm, but he doesn't own it. But he gets entranced by rural life and he starts sending letters back to his parents. Signed Heinrich Agricola, which is Latin for Heinrich the farmer. However, that's agriculture Agricola. You can see where it comes from. However, the ruthless Pace of life on a farm disagrees with his fragile constitution. Again, he. He's gonna be like a lot of modern far right guys. He will idolize homesteading and the small farmer and like, this is the life we need a new nobility formed out of like, you know, the rural peasantry. But he's never able to really do it because he's sickly and he doesn't like working hard outside. By September of that year, illness had forced him to pause his career again. This is a kid who thought he was ready for the fucking trenches. And you can't handle farming for like, like more than two months, three months. He goes to his family doctor who diagnoses him with an enlarged heart and prescribes him a one year break to study and regain his health. Now, obviously, an enlarged heart is a serious health issue. I don't think he actually has one because there's not really evidence from the rest of his life that he has one. I think this is just doctors, you know, they're not like doing a scan to see his heart's big.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Stop using.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, probably that. Yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna take more cocaine, you know. So anyway, what's interesting here is that, and this is fascinating to me, Heinrich gets like, basically told, hey, go chill out for a while, maybe go to school, but don't do any hard outdoor labor. So he's like, he's laid up sick for a year, unable to work, and he starts reading obsessively. And what he starts reading obsessively for the most part, is right wing volkish propaganda shit. So the Volkisch movement is ascendant in Germany in this period. And the literal translation of the word volk is just like volk or people, like, it's the people, right? The Volkswagen is the people's car. Right. The actual meaning, though, of the word volk in German doesn't graph directly to any term that we have in English. In a 1964 book on German ideology in the 20th century, George Moss explained. Volk is a much more comprehensive term than people to German thinkers ever since the birth of German romanticism in the late 18th century. Volk signifies the union of a group of people with a transcendental essence. Right? There's this attitude, this idea the Nazis will popularize of, like the Volksgemeinschaft, which is like the people's racial community.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That kind of sounds like. That sounds like in hip hop. When we say, like the culture, right? Like, it kind of sounds like what we would say about Drake, like, you know, he's not like us. Like, you're not a part of the culture.

[Robert Evans]

What's important, obviously, I don't think that's not like an inherently problematic. The culture, like, referring to it that way isn't problematic. But the fact that you bring up the exclusion of people.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes, exactly.

[Robert Evans]

There's always a degree of exclusion.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. There's an in group, out group. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

When you're talking about it like this is like a subculture, Right. This is a subculture that's particularly relevant to, like, this, you know, artistic movement. That's one thing he's talking about, the Volk is these are the people who deserve to have rights and who are actual Germans. And the Volk excludes a lot of the people who live in Germany. Right. He's not just talking about. He's talking about specific. Specific kinds of people, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the volkish movement is emphasizing specific kinds of Germans who deserve to have rights and who need to breed in order to, like, expand their numbers. Right. And this is where this is like the root of Nazi racial ideology is the volkish movement, you know, and the Volkish movement is obsessed with exclusion. You know, it is. It is defined not by who lives within the boundaries of a nation, but who the right wing thinks ought to be included in this right racial community. In his book Hitler's Master of the Dark, A History of Himmler's interest in the Occult, author Bill Yen describes the Volkish movement as part of the counterculture in Germany. And he argues that its best modern analog would be the 1980s New Age movement. Right. That this is very similar to, like, you know, that the. This. All this interest that starts popping up in yoga, in Eastern mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism and all that stuff in the 80s in like, the US is very similar to what's happening and what the volkish movement is a part of this broader interest in mysticism and alternative religion in the twenties and alternative history. Right. Including a big thing that is big in Germany in this period. Buddhism is big in Germany. Right. Not a super accurate take on Buddhism, but, like, their attitude of it as well. As people get obsessed in a lot of the west with like, ancient Egyptian occult ceremonies and religion and like the eddis, right? These kind of Norse sagas that are, like, part of this, like, religious. The prose Eddas, like, that is big, too. And so, like Norse mythology and religion, you know, worship of deities, like Wotan, right. Starts to become big. And it's all tied into the Volkish Movement is a part of it. It's related to all of this stuff.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Well, that definitely wasn't the comparison I was making. Yeah. As far as, like, the culture, what I would try to say is like, the term is not a literal translation and that the edges are more like foggy or cloudy, but like, we know what we mean when we say it, you know what I'm saying?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, but it is, I think it is very relevant to compare it to. And to compare it to like the modern day, the UFO movement and stuff. All these things that feed into Qanon that have fed into the far right. The fact this happened before, right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, like, yeah, there's like this weird, like, thing to where it's like you get into something that like, is kind of like, exciting to you. Whatever. You meet a lot of cool folk, air quotes, cool. But at some point you have to look at the back of the line and be like, oh, wait, they're in our line too. Like, this is this. Wait, this will. If I get further into this concentric circle, it's gonna turn into this. Like, you. And you have to consider that. So that's. Yeah, so like, even if you were just like, look, like, like to your point, it's like, you know, especially like the new age movement or stuff like that are just like, look, dude, I think it's better to eat food that was grown by human hands and has seeds because a seedless watermelon does not exist in nature. You know what I'm saying? So if you're just like, sure, okay, I get it. I'm gonna eat things with seeds. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but also that means I need to eat, drink raw milk. And also that means I need. You know what I'm saying?

[Robert Evans]

You're like, there's actually like a lot of health stuff tied into it. A lot of natural food shit is tied into it. Vegetarianism, Hitler's a vegetarian. But part of what's relevant here is that these are a lot of people who are not initially into far right politics, but they are willing to question the mainstream, willing to question scientific orthodoxy and cultural orthodoxy. And if you start down that road, you can go in a number of directions, but you're going to encounter other things that, that are questioning that orthodoxy, including weird far right shit. And then the other aspect of it, a lot of this, a lot of this, especially more esoteric occult beliefs where people are embracing getting into magic and getting into these different alternate religions. There's an attitude of them to like. Because I'm different and special. And so if you were saying, yes, you're special because you're part of this people's racial community and you have, like, mythical mystic powers, actually, that are tied to, like, the ancient, like, deep magic woven into our people's blood. Well, maybe you go from being into ancient Egyptian, you know, mysticism to far right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's like you're already at the back.

[Robert Evans]

Of your line, special. Maybe I have powers. Right. You can get someone convinced that they're part of the Ubermensch, you know?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Man, that's crazy. Like, it's crazy. I wonder what it would be like to experience that today moment in culture that must have been.

[Robert Evans]

Well, thankfully, we'll never know. Prop.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So along these more esoteric beliefs comes a growing interest in the mythical past of the German people. And Himmler's always been drawn to this stuff. And it's a little, like, as a kid, nerdy. You're a nerd. And into this stuff that's like, more fringe and you get bullied for. And then it becomes mainstream as an adult. And so suddenly, like, everybody's into this stuff that I've always liked. He joins a group called the Arteman League, which sets its goal as liberating urban workers and turning them back into power peasant farmers. Once he gets sick, Himmler starts really reading into this stuff. And I tie this a lot to the radicalization journey a lot of Americans go through during the COVID lockdown, where maybe they're sick, maybe they're not, but they're locked away from everybody else, they're not going out, and they're just kind of obsessively falling down these YouTube rabbit holes and these different forum message board rabbit holes, getting more and more into this weird esoteric stuff about vaccines and natural medicine or race theory. That's what's happening to Himmler. He's dealing with his own versions of that. And he reads more widely at first, before he really zeroes in entirely on the Volkish stuff. He reads the volumes of Ossian, which are a fraud created by a Scottish guy that was claimed to be like ancient Celtic poetry. He devours pamphlets attacking the Freemasons, particularly one by Friedrich Witchell. Yen writes, Witchell claimed that, among other things, Freemasonry was strongly influenced by the Jews, was aiming for world revolution, and was overwhelmingly to blame for the world war. Himmler agreed and commented, a book that sheds light on everything and tells us who we have to fight first. So here's where it Starts. Here's where he gets into that.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Here's where we start evolving the Pokemon. There's like these. It's a very. Probably not an experience of most of our fan base here, but like when like me coming from like sort of hip hop circles, but like the indie underground, you know, coming out of the like, like conscious movement, like the, you know, the most deaths, the qualis, where like you going to stand on there and rap about quasars and, and pyramids for most of the cipher and be into telekinesis, you know what I'm saying? Like, it like you're so open minded, you're closed minded. Like a lot of times you be at these, these moments and we're. And we're building. You know what I mean? Like, that's like the language of like the gods and the earths, the 5 percenters. I think you may have done like some stuff on them anyway. But yeah, so a lot of times it's like, this is my community because this is where the real hip hop is. But then when you start, start, somebody start saying something that you're like, my brother in Christ, you made that up. That history didn't. That is not history. Right, but it's, but it's a story that it is in response to the suppressing of the narrative of like our African ancestry. Like you're, you're suppressing the, the in modern culture and just in modern American history, like the, the role of the African and its descendant is not ever acknowledged. You know what I'm saying? So when someone comes in and says, well, no, well, the black man was doing this and the black man was doing this and it's like, I'm like, bro, like, I love being black just as much as the rest of the of us, but you made that shit up. Like, that's not what hap. Like, that's not so. But if you start pushing back like that, they looking at you like, oh, nigga, you a sellout. You believe in a white man's story, you know what I'm saying? So it's almost like I don't even know how to say to you, this is not liberating us. I know what you think you doing. You think you, like you said, creating this ubermensch, if you will, our black version of it. Again, the black man is gone. We descended of kings. And I'm like, some of our ancestors was peasants, my G. Like, some of us just raised goats. And that's okay. You understand what I'm saying? Because goats feed the world. So, like, it's okay. I'm not an Egyptian. I'm not an ancient. I don't come from that. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And that's fine.

[Robert Evans]

It's this, like, obsession with like. No, my ancestors were this thing that I think is cool that represents like a tenth of a percent of the people. And it's like. Like everyone has ancestors who were kings. Everyone has ancestors who were warriors. And everyone's got a lot more ancestors who were fucking dirt farmers or picking berries or whatever. Right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

The vast majority of human history from when we went from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens was boring as shit.

[Robert Evans]

Most of your ancestors, like, everyone else is people who were just trying to get bought.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yes. Who never traveled four miles away from where they was born. Right. And raised and raised some more kids.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

And that's great.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And Himmler is instead getting obsessed with, you know, these knightly orders that are these, like, Germanic. These knights who were these great warriors who, you know, fought back the Muslim tides and. Or, you know, before that beat the Romans. Like. And these are our ancestors. These great, great heroic Germanic superman, You know, that's what he's reading. He's also reading about. He gets into anti Semitism through these theories about the Freemasons and stuff. Now an interesting historic curiosity is during this period when he's laid up and he's reading obsessively. He also reads the first eight volumes of a magazine titled Pro Palestine. Now, this has nothing to do with the term in its modern sense. This is a Zionist publication that's made by the German Committee for the Promotion of Jewish Settlement in Palestine. Stein. He does not leave, unfortunately. There's no record of his opinion of this. But it's not a lot of guys. We talk about Eichmann. A lot of anti Semites from this era go through this period of thinking, like, well, maybe this is how we get rid of him. Right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That's why I thought.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That's why I kind of giggled.

[Robert Evans]

That's probably why he's into it.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I don't know. I mean, Palestine's kind of cool guys.

[Robert Evans]

Like, if we can get them over there, you know, they're not.

[Co-host/Commentator]

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

[Robert Evans]

And that's what this suggests is he's thinking more and more about the Jews and how to get rid of them. Right. Already from a very young age he's like 19 at this point. In October of 1919, he registers with the Technical University in Munich to study agriculture. Here he made it a priority to seek membership in the first fraternity that would take him. And he wounds up as a Nepo baby getting into his dad's fraternity. Now, in Germany during this period, frats looked a little different than they do now. They were focused on a lot more on fencing and dueling clubs than anything else. And prior to the war, every young man who's like, of a certain class, if you're like the officer class, you want to get in one of these dueling clubs and get a scar on your face. The whole point is for someone to get to hit you in the face and to earn a dueling scar. Like, you're not really. Like, you're not really a man of a certain level in society if you don't have one. And Himmler is bad enough with a sword that it takes him three years to have enough duels to earn his scar. Yen writes potential opponents found Himmler a demeaning competitor because he was so small and so frail and that his stomach troubles make it difficult for him to drink heavily. Now, that's one account, and there's some evidence behind it. Longrich gives a little bit more moderate account of Himmler in his frat years. He writes that he did at least witness multiple duels and wrote, at least it strengthens the nerves and you learn how to take being wounded. He also wrote about drinking. This is him describing in his diary a night out drinking. It was very jolly. I drank eight glasses of wine. At 12:30, we went home on the train. Most of us were tipsy, so it was very funny. I got a few of the brothers back to their digs in bed at 2:00am so, like, he's able to party somewhat. He's not. That's not. Not super intense. Eight drinks, you know, in bed by 2am he's pretty. It was very jolly. It was very jolly, yes.

[Co-host/Commentator]

I was like, this is. Yeah, first of all, eight drinks. And you a German man, bro. Don't brag on that, homie.

[Robert Evans]

Come on. You go hard on that now.

[Co-host/Commentator]

If there's anything about your jeans, you should have been able to. Hell, more liquor than that. But I will say, like, it kind of right now kind of sound like the. Like the guy every time you talk to him, like, oh, I'm so sore from the gym. I was lifting. Oh, man, I can't sit down. Like, man, shut the fuck up, dog. Yeah, like, you have to have your. Oh, you see his broccoli ears? Because I was rolling, man. I was rolling last night. Yeah, like, okay, bro.

[Robert Evans]

All right.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

His dating profile would be such a nightmare.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Oh, my God, he's holding a fish. Is he holding a fish in his dating profile?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Or holding, like, some crops that he pulled out of the ground before going home because his tummy was hurt. Yeah, he's doing something or. Yeah, he's got his tiny little scar that he's got to show off.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. Oh, man. Sorry. I got it in battle. Yeah, that's fencing, bro.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, it's simply fencing. And you're all trying to get scars. Like, everybody's just kind of cutting each other's face so that you can show off. Yeah, yeah. So dumb. Now, you know who never shows off because they earned all of their scars. The honorable way in hand to hand combat. Killing people in bar fights. Yeah, Sophie. Absolutely. Allegedly.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Sophie, whoop your ass.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah. A lot people of. Of cities you can't go back to. Just like our sponsors for this podcast.

[Podcast Announcer]

I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Join me every weekday as I share bite sized stories of missing and murdered black women and girls in America. There are several ways we can all do better at protecting black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tameka Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tameka never bought the car, and she never returned home that day. One podcast, one mission. Save our girls. Join the searches. We explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered black women and girls. Listen to Hunting for Answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Co-host/Commentator]

From.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

Iheart Podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the turning river road.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor?

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the Prey. And then he became the prey.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

Listen to the turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Podcast Announcer]

Someone was posting photos.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone.

[Robert Evans]

Else'S body parts on my body. Parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up.

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I wanted to scream.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the Internet and to the front line of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

[Podcast Announcer]

This should be illegal, but what is this?

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carvell. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And here's Heather with the weather.

[Margie Murphy / Olivia Carvell]

Well, it's beautiful out there. Sunny and 75. Almost a little chilly in the shade. Now let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the backseat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise, and that could be fatal.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Cars get hot fast and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from NHTSA and the ad Council.

[Robert Evans]

We're back. Ah, blue apron. Why? Killed a man in a bar fight. Don't bring that back. Don't bring that back. You're probably right. Someone will. Anyway, so we're talking about Heinrich Himmler. He's in college now. He's getting his degree in, like, agricultural science. He gets into ROTC basically in college because he lets him wear a uniform. He gets to march around. He writes in his diary that he enjoys being able to still feel like a soldier in one entrance. He notes another day in uniform as one of his chief pleasures. It's what I enjoy wearing most. Like, okay. He really just desperately wants to feel like a soldier, you know, even though that has passed him by.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Such a try hard.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Heinrich starts getting involved in political activism for the far right. His first big protest campaign. Cause he's a member of some of these like right wing groups on campus is a German count. I think his Count Arco Valle assassinates a leftist right, kills somebody and it's like a political murder. And the count gets sentenced to death for murdering a guy. And this becomes a cause celeb of the German right. This is kind of their equivalent of like the protests against the January 6th. People facing any consequences for their crimes. And they get so angry. Heinrich is marching in the street, there's protests. You know, the Freikorps are like showing up armed in these gatherings to be like, you know, you're gonna have to deal with us if you try to kill this man. There's even talk within the military of either using, having the army go in and bust him out or even doing a putsch against the government. If they're to kill this guy and the liberal government, government caves like they always do to fascists. Himmler writes after, because they, and they commute his sentence to like basically your life in prison. We're not going to execute him. And when the government caves, Himmler writes in his diary, however pleased we were, we were equally sorry that the business passed off so uneventfully. Oh well, there will be another time. And he also writes about like, ah, they're not willing, they're scared of us, right? And that's the problem. That's why you can't, like, showing mercy to these people is a mistake, you know, like if you do that, they will take advantage of it every single time. Yeah, dude, it just, it just inspires them to push further. It doesn't save you any violence. Things get much worse because they don't go through with punishing this man. Near the end of 1919, Himmler gets caught up in a debate within his dueling club. You know, this fraternity. There's an argument as to like, can we admit Jews, right, And not religious Jewish people. Right? Not people who are of the Jewish faith, but people who have Jewish ancestry but are Christian or at least like, you know, they're not, you know, practicing members of the faith. And this is a serious debate at the time within this strata of people. And the Catholic Church takes a stance that Jews who converted to Christianity ought to be treated like anyone else. Obviously it's fine to exclude practicing Jews, right? They're not full citizens. You can be shitty to them, but all that should matter is what they're doing now, right? Basically the Catholic Church is saying there's not an ethnic difference between someone who has Jewish ancestry and a normal German, right? We don't care about that. And the church takes this stance because Catholicism is a minority faith in Germany, right? So they do see a degree of threat to themselves as like, well, if these people, like, we're not that much safer, right. If the Protestants decide to start fucking with us. So we should probably draw a line here. Himmler is really uncomfortable with this minimal degree of liberalism from the church. And he had been fairly strong as a Catholic, but he writes in his diary, I think I'm heading for conflict with my religion. Because he believes a Jew is a Jew, no matter what. It doesn't matter if they've converted. It's about the blood, right? That's how. What Himmler thinks. Now, it's worth noting that while he grows steadily more anti Semitic as he ages, he still expresses, as a young man. Man. Some mixed thoughts on the matter. And in part, he's a fan and he's super attracted to this Jewish cabaret singer he met, Inga Barco in a bar. He writes really positively about her, right? So he's, you know, again, this is a guy. None of these people are perfectly consistent, right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

No.

[Robert Evans]

And this is also a time period he is starting to express interest in women around his age at this point in time. This is really when we see in his diary him writing about girls a lot. And it's kind of. You get some incel vibes from this dude. He pines that one woman, Luisa, who he had a crush on, was really nice, but not nice in the way that he wanted, right? As in, she's nice to me, she's friendly, but she doesn't want to fuck me. Right?

[Co-host/Commentator]

That is hilarious. What a loser.

[Robert Evans]

This is funny. He writes home to his brother, she wants kissing. This is so gross. If sweet young things knew how they worried us, they would no doubt try not to. Oh, this girl knew how sad I was that she doesn't want to fuck me. She'd surely want to fuck me, right? That's the problem.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, I met me a little sweet thing.

[Robert Evans]

That's the problem. Sweet little things. Maybe you don't call them sweet little things. You fucking weirdo. You fucking cream.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Sweet little thing. What's up, sweet thang? I'm like you somebody uncle man. What's up, Cletus? You know what I'm saying? You sound like somebody named Cleophas Jenkins. What's up, sweet thing?

[Robert Evans]

All right, calm down, Heinrich Himmel.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Cool your jets, Turbo. I was actually thinking, I didn't want to bring this up because I ain't want to sound like a douchebag myself. But I was just like. He hadn't talked about girls in his diary yet.

[Robert Evans]

He doesn't. He's a late boomer. It's possible he's not. It's not until he's in his late 20s that he actually like that he's a virgin until his late 20s. Now, I'm not trying to, like, talk shit on that. I don't get.

[Co-host/Commentator]

No, it is what it is. That's fine.

[Robert Evans]

But that's likely what's going on here. In another instance, he bonds with a girl named Maria. And he does. There's this kind of positive thing where he's like, I'm so overjoyed that I find finally have a sister. Right. Which is a nice. A positive way to look at, like, a female friendship. He's only got brothers, girl. Get away from him. Well, yeah. Cause he is. He actually just wants to fuck her, right? He's not safe. She's got a boyfriend.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Maria. Maria. You remind him of a West side story.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Growing up in Spanish Harlem.

[Robert Evans]

You're so dumb. She's got a boyfriend and he writes of her boyfriend. I believe he doesn't understand her. His golden girl. I hate this. He tries to flirt with her and basically take her from him by offering her a ride on his motorcycle. But she's like, I don't think so.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Hey, listen, listen, listen.

[Robert Evans]

I don't want to get on your motorcycle. Heinrich Himmler.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Listen, it's okay to be sloppy seconds because first place always messes up.

[Robert Evans]

There you go. Yeah. That's how he's looking at this, right? That, like, I'm going to slide in here. But no, no, you're not. Sweet thing. Her boyfriend's not treating her right. I'd do so much better, you know?

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah. So she called you when your boyfriend and. Nah, girl, come on over. You can stay over here, girl. I'll come get you on my motorcycle. You could stay on my couch. If he tripping. You come on over here.

[Robert Evans]

Like, I don't even think she's calling him. I think she's, like, nice, polite to him. And he's like, she must really be in love with me. If only this tyrant were to let her go. You know, she's just, just.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Just basic human decency.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Like, with dudes like this, you just can't be regular.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

You just can't be regular with dudes like this. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Heinrich's diaries, the other thing that he writes about a lot regarding women is like this, like, white knight shit, right? He's tons of stories about that and this is from Lowenberg's article. Quote, he witnesses a conflict between a girl and her father over the girl's desire for private dance class. He describes the father as unyielding and stiff necked like a tyrant. According to his own account, Himmler interposed himself and helped the young lady a great deal. The poor little girl wept tears. I truly pitied her. But she had no idea how pretty she was in her tears. Okay.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Oh my God, you're really pretty when you cry.

[Robert Evans]

Like, maybe he pays for this girl's dance classes usually. Smile, boy. Yeah. Loewenberg writes of Himmler's frequent rescue fantasies. He writes fantasies about like, I could save this girl. She's with this brute if, you know, if I did this and this, then like, she'd know that I'm really who she's meant for.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah, that's all that medieval stuff he was reading as a kid. You know what I'm saying? That's all that. You trying to live out that fantasy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. In one instance, he meets a waitress that he has a crush on and he writes paragraphs about his fear that like, oh, waitresses always fall into disrepute. You know, she's doomed to a life of sin and vice because that's the only thing that a waitress can be. Oh, I can know that better. If I only were rich. If I had money, I'd give her enough money to marry a nice man so she would not have to sink and be lost. Well, he's a creep He's a creep He's a creaner oh yeah, he's a creep.

[Co-host/Commentator]

If I could fly I'd pick you up I'd take you into the night.

[Robert Evans]

That'S the word for word. His diarrhea. So Himmler finishes his diploma in August of 1922. Now at this point, he has continued reading into German volkish mysticism and he's become acquainted with a man named Guido Karl Anton List, who died in Guido. Yeah, Guido.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That's never good news.

[Robert Evans]

Shockingly not Italian. He had died in 1919. So he's been died pretty recently. But during his life he had been the godfather of popular volkish theme. He was one of these guys who portrays himself as something between an archaeologist and a wizard. And one of his major contributions, he creates this runic Alphabet which he said had been used by the ancient Aryans. And he uncovers this system not by like real archaeology, but by ghost archaeology. He channels dead spirits and they teach him about the past and he writes books about it.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Hold up, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Robert Evans]

Hold up.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So he learned. Learns this by channeling ghosts. That's your boy.

[Robert Evans]

That's his boy.

[Co-host/Commentator]

That's your boy Heinrich. Okay?

[Robert Evans]

That's Heinrich's gonna love. And not just Heinrich. This guy is the grandfather of Volkish theory. Like, this guy is if you're doing the line of descent to what becomes Nazism, this guy is like above Hitler in the line of descent to what becomes Nazism because his ideas feed directly into Hitler's. Hitler is also influenced. Influenced not even just directly by Liszt, but by the guys that Liszt is influenced by or influences. Right. Liszt is like. And he looks just like you'd imagine. Sophie's gonna show you a picture of this.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Please show me a sister of this.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly as you exactly.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Shout out the ancestors. Of course.

[Robert Evans]

Look at this.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Of course. Look at this.

[Robert Evans]

Look at this wizard looking dude.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Of course he's talking to the ghost.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Co-host/Commentator]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

Perfect. He's perfect.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I love it.

[Co-host/Commentator]

He's perfect.

[Robert Evans]

We're gonna talk a lot more about Guido von List and a lot more about the birth of the Volkish movement and all of these weird occult figures who are going to have a huge influence on Heinrich Himmler as well as continue Heinrich's life in part three. Lucky you motherfuckers. Anyway, Prophet Prop Plugs.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Plugs. Hood politics with Prop man. We cooking over here too. Trying to, you know, keep putting everybody on that's going on. I released some poetry, I got some music out. We have a show on Fridays now called Tap in little. Little short 10 minute shooter. And also the. The terraform's back. I'll say it again. Get terraform cover. Hopefully by the time y' all hear this, the website will be up. But, like, the coffee's here.

[Robert Evans]

Hell yeah.

[Co-host/Commentator]

So excited about it. All right, I'll bring some. I'll bring some when I go up there for the thing that you have not talked about yet on recording.

[Robert Evans]

Excellent. Yes, well, we'll do that. You at home, go to Google donor box Defense fund PDX fundraiser to help the Portland Defense Fund, which helps bail out people who have no money. Yeah, they're great. Please help them out. And help yourself out by listening to part three, you lucky dogs. All right. That's it for the episodes. This has been behind the Bastards. I've been Robert Evans. Go to hell. I love you.

[Podcast Announcer]

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.

[Robert Evans]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

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

[Cult Survivor (Turning River Road)]

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that.

[Narrator (Turning River Road)]

Meant for my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch this is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you when you think about emotion Reg, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Which is more effortful to use unless.

[Robert Evans]

You think there's a good outcome.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Avoidance is easier.

[Robert Evans]

Ignoring is easier. Denial is easier.

[Co-host/Commentator]

Complex problem solving takes effort.

[Robert Evans]

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

[Podcast Announcer]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lachey Dungey. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for Answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sarah Spain]

Get fired up, y'.

[Robert Evans]

All.

[Sarah Spain]

Season 2 of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite, an incomparable soccer icon Megan Rapinoe to the show and we had a blast. Take a listen. Sue and I were like riding the lime bikes the other day and we're.

[Robert Evans]

Like, wee people ride bikes because it's fun.

[Sarah Spain]

We got more incredible guests like Megan in store, plus news of the day and more. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network.

[Robert Evans]

Work.

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.