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Walk with me for a moment into the manosphere. All across social media, I see videos about how women are sluts and whores and the same accounts telling men what real masculinity is, how to not look quote gay. And you should only be nice to a woman for sexual favors, otherwise you're a simp. Isolated young men are groomed with a mix of grievance, identity crisis, and false promises of purpose. Men defending Andrew Tate because he's said some good things while he's actively a human trafficker. Men calling for the removal of what's called pink collar jobs and getting women out of the workforce, taking away their right to vote and defending and advocating for violence and rape against them. You should see my comment section and my DMS. You can take a quick stroll through my DMs and see all of that displayed pretty quickly, especially if I say something, quote, controversial. It's easy to treat that phenomenon as something new, something born out of algorithms and message boards. But the truth is, we've seen this before. Nearly a century ago, the Nazi movement perfected the weaponization of young men by exploiting their vulnerabilities, their longing to belong, and their search for meaning in a world that made them feel small. This isn't about excusing the harms of these men that they would go on to commit. It's about understanding the machinery that shaped them, because manipulation thrives in silence. It's about acknowledging the fear and the pain men face and how that is weaponized when we don't actually acknowledge it and try to heal it. The Nazi regime built its youth culture on rigid hierarchy and patriarchal control, teaching boys that dominance was strength, obedience was virtue, and violence was destiny. The best submissives historically are men in far right movements, very good at obeying orders. The system didn't only devastate the people it targeted, it damages the boys inside it, stripping them of empathy, curiosity, and the possibility of becoming whole human beings. Patriarchy promises power but delivers chains. It convinces young men that their value lies in control, not connection, in supremacy, not self. Knowledge and history shows how easily that story can be weaponized by extremist movements seeking foot soldiers who mistake domination for purpose. Understanding this isn't about the past. It's about prevention. When we recognize how these systems manipulate and deform young men, we can interrupt the cycle before resentment becomes radicalization and before loneliness becomes violence. Before another generation is taught that the only way to matter is to harm other people. Now, I know this feels a little late. The rise of the proud boys, the visibility of the clan, the weaponization of the brutality of ice. As of this recording, two days ago, Alex Preddy was shot in the street of Minneapolis. Were there, and I'm not naive to that at all. But there are a lot of men on the fence and a lot of young men being exposed to these ideologies, and we don't have the luxury of not talking about it. And we certainly can't leave these young men behind. For my gentlemen listeners, please stay with me through this. A lot of the stories are hard to hear, but your voice matters here more than anyone else's does. As young men count on you to lead by example. I was raised by my dad, and despite the abuse and the flaws of my father, I loved him deeply. And it saddens me that he never healed. If I could hold my dad and tell him anything, I would tell him he deserves to have his dreams, not just provide that. He deserved love and care and respect and curiosity. He deserved joy and a life he loved. He deserved to be seen. He deserved his father's love, that he was worthy because he was not, because of what he did. And to all the men hearing this, I'm saying this to you as well. You deserve more. And hopefully by the end of this, we can have some meaningful ways to create that. Today we're talking about the weaponization of young men that took place in Nazi Germany, taking normal, decent young men and leading them down a path of brutality that ended with I was just following orders here on Flipping Tables. Hello and welcome back to Flipping Tables from very icy, very snowy Nashville. We've all kind of been iced in for the last four days. Few announcements before I jump in. This podcast is also a little bit on the longer side. For the next six weeks, I have a lot of travel plans. I'll be in New York this weekend helping a animal rescue that I had promised to collaborate with. And then I will be in Minneapolis starting February 3rd and will be there until the end of February when I will leave to go to Cambridge University in the UK for a debate that I'm participating in. I am being brought in as opposition to the statement, this house believes that feminism has failed men. So that will be very, very interesting. It's my first British parliamentary style debate. But because of all of that travel, I'm going to be doing some mobile recordings of the podcast as well as yesterday's news, which are I ordered some equipment and the yesterday's news recaps are going to start to be a morning release on Flipping Tables as well, all of that being said, it's going to be via webcam. We'll still be editing in post, but there might be a slight decrease or slight change in quality. So please just bear with me as I go through this travel. Really excited to go up to many Minneapolis and be supportive. I've been doing a mutual aid fund since the death of Alex Preddy. And the mutual aid fund has raised over $60,000 as of today, which is incredible. And already $12,000 has been sent directly to protest leaders as well as organizations trying to protect people. We're emphasizing gas masks, protective gear as well as cold weather gear, just so you know, on Patreon. Again, thank you for your support. You're the reason that the show moves onward and upward. Patreon.com montemater I've started doing live pop ups. So these are live streams for about 30 minutes to an hour where I come on, I talk about current events, sometimes I do a little bit of teaching and we just kind of have some community time. My goal for these is to give people a space to go to feel like they're in community with others. It's one of the detriments of social media. Social media can get information out quickly and it can kind of fool us into thinking that we're connected while it disconnects us. And my goal is, even though it's digital, to start somewhere building a sense of community. And just some announcements on the Bible study schedule. Again, these are just scholarly studies. We just study the context and the historical context of Scripture. They are not conversion studies. Anyone is welcome to join. We have a wide variety of wonderful people. We had to move the study on the 28th just due to my schedule and just feeling like I could do more help with Minneapolis. I was kind of deep in mutual aid and wanted to dedicate my time there. So just so you know, for February, starting February 4th, we're going to be reteaching the making of Biblical Womanhood Study. This is really about what the Bible Bible says about women versus what ended up happening later on in the church. And I'm hoping to have a special guest for that second Bible study. So the next upcoming studies are gonna be on February 4th, February 18th and then March 4th. So the original January 28th study is moved to March 4th. All right, let's jump in. I'm very excited for this episode. I, I it moved me a lot emotionally because I feel that the weaponization of young men and the weaponization of young men's pain is such a relevant topic today. And. And I'm excited to dive into this with you. So if you haven't watched the TV show Adolescence, I highly recommend it. Besides the absolute insanity that each episode was shot in one take, which is insane, I still can't wrap my mind around that. I think it's so impactful for the crisis that we do see in young men. Adolescence offers kind of this unfiltered look at the emotional landscape of young men, something most media avoids or oversimplifies. The show revealed the depth of their loneliness, confusion around identity, and the quiet ways that boys are taught to suppress vulnerability until it turns into anger. And Isol, the show showed how desperately young men want connection, to fit in, to feel love. They want guidance and belonging, and how they are often left to navigate those needs alone. The whole patriarchal standard that we have of just figure it out. You're a man, don't cry, you're a man, don't ask for help is really not helping. It highlighted the harm of cultural expectations that tell boys to toughen up, shut down, or man up, exposing how those pressures leave them wounded, directionless, or searching for meaning in a lot of the wrong places. So before I jump into the meat of our story, I want to quickly define what patriarchy is. I know that people hear that word, and it's often triggering, especially for men. Men hear me say something like that, and they're like. Or they hear something like, they want to burn the patriarchy. They want to burn men. They hate all men. That's not what that means. If you hear the word patriarchy, it does not mean men. And if we're going to understand how patriarchy does harm to everyone who's not in the elite class, we have to understand exactly what it is. Patriarchy and hierarchical social structures have existed in various forms across human societies for thousands of years. And these systems promise order, instability, and clearly defined roles. And modern scholarship and sociology, psychology, gender studies, political silence. Silence, political silence. Political science, and public health make clear that patriarchy, which is defined as a social order in which men hold a disproportionate power, authority, and privilege, creates widespread harm. So all patriarchy means is that there is this social order where men hold a disproportionate amount of power and authority and privilege. But it's been proven that this system harms everyone. So patriarchy obviously visibly disadvantages women and minorities through structural inequality, discrimination, and reduced access to resources and safety. It also profoundly harms men, often in ways that are less visible but deeply destructive. And I think that those Ways are becoming more visible and more known now, and they're very much felt by men, even though they maybe can't articulate that. Patriarchy is sustained through rigid hierarchies, especially gender norms that prescribe how men and women must act, how they must show up to be considered legitimate members of society. Patriarchy is very regressive. It says if you follow these exact rules and you fit into these little boxes and you toe the line, everything's going to be perfect and stable. And it never admits its own shortcomings. Patriarchy is also largely responsible for the demonization of LGBTQ people within a patriarchal society because they don't adhere to these social norms prescribed by the system, and therefore they disrupt it. They disrupt these norms that are promising us stability and safety and familiarity. Now, they package this up with a nice bow. This is what you're supposed to do. Who you love, how you dress, how you act, which is in itself a comfort, right? It's. It's kind of a comfort to be prescribed. This is what you do. This is how you show up. This is what your life looks like. But at least, you know, even if it's not great, even if it's not your preference, at least you know the answer. In. In my life, I think of this when I was prescribed as a young kid, well, you're gonna grow up, and you might go to school, but that's not important. You need to get married and you need to have kids. And I knew I didn't want either of those things, but I was like, well, at least I know what to do. And. And I guess I'll figure it out when I'm adult. An adult. And it wasn't until I was in my mid-20s that I realized I had other choices. And at least it gives you this prescription. At least you don't have to face the unknown. But these same prescriptions limit your well being, your psychological development, your emotional expression, and social cohesion. A full understanding of Patri requires that we recognize it's simply not men over women, but a system in which power flows downward. So it flows from elite men downward. It enforces dominance at every level and punishes vulnerability in all the genders. At the very core, patriarchy is built on a hierarchical principle. Hierarchy organizes people into ranked tiers in which some lives are considered more valuable or more deserving of authority than others. In patriarchal systems, men occupy the top by default. But within the category of men, there's another hierarchy. There's powerful men at the top. Then there's Ordinary men. And then there's marginalized men who are defined by their race, their class, their sexuality, disability, or ethnicity. In this sense, patriarchy is not only oppressive to women, it's a system that sorts men into winners and losers. So in bell hooks and ray Win Connell have argued, patriarchy promises that all men will benefit. Patriarchy looks at men and says, you're going to win in this system. Even though only a small elite few actually enjoy the rewards of the system. Ordinary men are encouraged to identify with dominant groups, whoever's in power, believing they have more in common with powerful men than with women or minorities that they live besides side we see this with finances, right? We've been kind of trained to align ourselves with the wealthy elite. So many people aligning themselves with people who are taking corporate subsidies or people like Elon Musk thinking they're closer to be being a billionaire than they are to being homeless, which the inverse is actually true. Racism is also built on this hierarchical principle. Keep the men fighting people around them so they won't rise up against the men in power who are taking advantage of them. In practice, most men are not the patriarchs, and they are the subordinates expected to obey those patriarchal norms while receiving none of its privileges. It's very much a system built on obey, fall in line. But they get men to buy into the system by convincing them that they are so close to being part of that elite, that elite group. And this is why patriarchy harms men so deeply. From childhood onward, boys are taught that masculinity requires emotional restriction, fearlessness, stoicism, dominance, self reliance, and the suppression of vulnerability. Psychologists refer to this as hegemonic masculinity. It's a cultural idealized form of manhood that demands control, toughness, and the rejection of anything that's perceived as feminine. You can't wash your ass if your hand is near your booty hole. You're gay. You get it? You get it. That's why there's dude wipes now. We had to, like, specifically label it. This conditioning has measurable and devastating effects. Like, we actually have data on how this impacts men. Public health research shows that men raised under strong patriarchal expectations suffer significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, untreated mental health, illness, and violent death. They also have higher suicide rates across nearly every country in the entire world. The World Health Organization notes that men are roughly four times more likely to die by suicide in western countries, a pattern that's heavily linked to cultural norms, Discouraging emotional disclosure or seeking Help through venues like therapy. You can't go to a therapist because that's gay. And patriarchal cultures, men are taught that that would be weak to ask for help. You can't even have a close friendship with a guy friend because again, it's always and, and think about how often that thrown around on social media where anything that doesn't fit this very narrow prescribed role. And it's often said as a joke, right, oh, that's gay, bro, or you're a simp, or you're this or this. But there's some truth to that. It's. It's the way that they've gotten men as a group to participate in kind of this bullying system of don't you dare step out of line because if you do, it means that you're gay or it means that you're. And of course that's bad, right? That's how they, that's how they frame it. This is bad. You got it. You got to show that you're straight or it's weak or it's vulnerable, or if you love your wife, you're a simp. We see it all the time. In patriarchal cultures, men are taught that expressing vulnerability is shameful and as a result, they internalize their pain and distress until it becomes unbearable. One of the primary contributors to the high suicide rate. This emotional restriction also damages men physically. Studies in psychosomatic medicine reveal that men who pressure, who feel pressure to appear stoic have elevated levels of cortisol, increased inflammation, higher risk for heart disease and hypertension. There's a reason that men die younger. Research published in the American Journal of Men's Health shows that men who endorse traditional masculine ideology are less likely to seek medical care leading to undiagnosed or untreated conditions. If you want to read some of those reports, many of them are available at the National Institute for Health in my source list and as much as I can fit into the show notes. I try to put all of my sources in the show notes, but sometimes I actually run out of space. This refusal to appear weak by actually going to the doctor becomes a literal threat to their survival. Patriarchy also encourages risk taking behaviors. Dangerous driving, public aggression, binge drinking and violence are all statistically more common among men attempting to prove their masculinity through this dominance or this fearlessness. Many men do not consciously believe in these ideals. Most men have not sat down and said, I'm going to believe and list the boxes. It's been a, it's been a system that has grown up around them, where status and belonging depend on performing masculinity. Quote the right way, you got to do it right. You got to be a man. You can't cry all these things. Men feel enormous pressure to engage in these behaviors because of that system. On the psychological level, patriarchy damages men by limiting the emotional range they are allowed to inhabit. Boys are often taught that anger is acceptable, but sadness or fear or tenderness or confusion are not. Over time, this leads to emotional illiteracy, a low eq, as we would refer to it, the inability to name and understand and regulate feelings. Men will don't have the emotional vocabulary to sometimes articulate what they're feeling. It shows up in anger and violence and frustration because they either can't articulate it or they've been told that if they do, it's a threat on their masculinity. When that type of emotion builds up in you over time, you're more prone to intimate partner violence, explosive anger, and difficulty forming deep relationships. It also creates this barrier that even in your relationships, you feel that you can't be vulnerable. You feel that you can't share. They're more likely. Men who experience this type of emotional dysregulation are more likely to experience loneliness, which research now identifies as the most significant predictor of premature death. Not having community will kill you. A large body of evidence show that men have fewer close friendships than women, especially after adolescence. Again, because patriarchy discourages close emotional bonds between men, Unless it's mediated by a sports activity or a competition or some mutual manly hobby. You can't just. You can't just have a. A close homie that you hug and that you tell you love him. Again, it's just this. This ridicule and this narrowing of what a man can be. You'll get it. You get it. Many men reach adulthood with no one that they can confide in except a romantic partner. If that putting immense pressure on romantic relationships. Which is why there's so much pressure right now to put, to push women into these relationships. I can't remember the guy's podcast, but these two men were talking about, you know, and they're both in their 30s and childless. But of course, criticizing women that are in their 30s and childless. But they're like, should we create a system that, you know, pushes women into these relationships with men? Because women in this system are seen as the problem solver because this is the only person that can, within this narrow definition of masculinity, fill this emotional void. No one person can Fill that void for you. Not possible. It's not possible for one, one person to take on all of that load to be your. Your mother and your lover and your therapist and your only friend. That is too much for anyone. But this system creates all of that pressure typically being put on these men's romantic partners. And it leaves men very vulnerable to crisis of identity, anger and despair, especially when they go through a breakup. Let's think of the in public figures today, the divorce to Nazi ideology pipeline, which should be studied. We see that with a lot of. A lot of very famous millionaires and billionaires or even we see it kind of in our own lives of someone going through a breakup and then all of a sudden they're leaning into this red pill or manosphere ideology because they've put so much weight on that romantic relationship that when it falls apart, they feel so betrayed and so lonely. And their anger is their most accessible emotion. So they have to take it out somewhere.
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These harms are often invisible because again, patriarchy trains men to hide their suffering. Vulnerability threatens their social status. Admitting distress feels like a violation of their masculine role. Instead of seeking help, men externalize or suppress the pain. Sociologists studying violence note that patriarchal masculinity also encourages the belief that dominance is a legitimate means of asserting your identity. Thus, it also harms women and minorities, both directly, indirectly, directly, through violence, discrimination and Unequal access to power indirectly through the emotional and psychological damage it inflicts on the mental health, who then act out these harms on other people. Women meanwhile, are restricted by the patriarchy in very obvious ways. Their reduced access to political power, workplace equality, bodily autonomy, safety and economic independence. It assigns women roles centered on caregiving, obedience and sexuality that is defined by male standards. Your job is to please a man sexually. You can't have sexuality on your own because if you consent to it, then you're a. If you don't consent to it, you're just being submissive and obedient. See how up that is. Women living under these expectations face higher rates of domestic violence, emotional labor, unpaid care, work and economic marginalization. We see this in, in far right movements today where they are very serious about taking away women's right to vote. They want to take away women's access to education. They want to pull out. They call it pink collar jobs. So essentially industry that is dominated by women, we can look at nursing, caregiving, they want to pull women out of those industries to make them financially dependent. I had to look up what pink collar job was. I'm like, what, what, what is that? It's a very popular rhetoric right now. But it, it, it's again, because women are supposed to fill this role, this emotional and sexual need for men. So if they're not doing that because they have a career, because they're independent, they don't have to tolerate abuse. These systems because they want to keep men in this box, have to have to modify the system to force women to fill that role, even if they don't want to. Women in this system, so women who are living in this type of patriarchal system include have elevated rates of anxiety, depression and trauma. Patriarchy also dictates that women's women must regulate themselves constantly. They must moderate their tone, their appearance, their sexuality, their ambition, their assert, their assertiveness. Because deviation from these norms invites punishment or ridicule. If you're too ambitious, if you're too assertive, well then you're a. Again, if you consent to sexuality, well then you're a. Or you're a. You need to watch your tone. It doesn't matter if you're right in confronting someone's bad behavior. You should have said it differently. Remember, the rules promise stability, so you can't operate outside these rules. The promise of all of this is if you just fall in line with the system, everything is going to be stable and everyone's going to be happy and it's all going to be fine, and it never translates that way. And also, how boring to expect everyone to be exactly the same. As if human beings, men and women and everywhere in between, are not unique people. As if we can all fill the same role. We can't. For women, the stress of navigating these constraints leads to exhaustion and decreased well being. Women, typically within these relationships, tend to work extensive hours beyond their paid jobs, doing unpaid care labor as well as emotional labor for these environments. So for minorities, whether it's racial, ethnic, sexual or gender based, or even the disabled, the effects of patriarchy are compounded. So we have this intersection with white supremacy. Patriarchal religions like Christianity in the US Islam and Afghanistan are examples. These religions become a way to establish these systems as God. Or so now we're pulling God into the chat, saying God wants it that way. God wants men to be in charge. God wants men to be this way. God wants women to just bow down and submit. So we've got this heteronormative ableism, colonialism. We bring God into it. And this is what's called an interlocking system of oppression. These systems reinforce each other, meaning marginalized men face both the patriarchal pressure to conform and the structural barriers keeping them subordinate. For example, black indigenous and immigrant men may be expected to uphold a patriarchal masculinity in their home, but they're simultaneously being denied social power that the patriarchal masculinity promises. So as you have to be a man, you have to act this way, but you're also being denied political power and equality. Queer men face intense pressure to prove their masculinity in a society that devalues femininity and stigmatize anything that's non heteronormative. Think about the slurs yelled often at gay men, especially if a gay man is more feminine presenting. Disabled men confront stereotypes of weakness that are incompatible with the patriarchal definition of men. And it leads to profound identity conflict. So hierarchy itself, not just patriarchy, magnifies these harms. So patriarchy is a hierarchical system. Hierarchical systems rely on, again, obedience, submission, competition. And nobody is more submissive than men who want to prove they're getting manliness right. And these systems can't function without that obedience. Those at the top maintain power by keeping those below them in line. This creates a culture of fear and insecurity where people must constantly prove their worth, whether that's in the workplace, militaries, religious institutions, political structures that are shaped by these type of systems. Loyalty gets rewarded, dissent gets punished, and moral courage. So the courage to stand up and say, hey, this isn't right, is discouraged. It's a good way to lose your community, to lose your status if you stand up for, quote, the wrong people. This mirrors the psychological dynamics seen in extremist movements across history. Men who feel powerless within a hierarchy may attempt to reclaim power by aligning with an even stricter hierarchy that promises them dominance. I don't like where my life is at now, but if I alive with this brutal group over here, they're going to give me more power because I feel powerless. This is why patriarchal and hierarchical cultures are often fertile ground for things like authoritarianism, fascism, extremist recruitment and political violence. The psychology of manhood is something to be earned through dominance. Creates vulnerable men that are easy for extremist ideologies to exploit. Patriarchy harms men further by tying their value to external achievements, how much money you make, physical strength, sexual success and dominance. When men fail to meet these standards could be the economic shifts they lost their job, unemployment, changing gender norms, or even personal struggles. Struggles they can often experience identity collapse. It's amazing to see how many men either fall into substance abuse or self harm or thoughts of suicide because they lost their job. Because how much of this system tells men, your only purpose is a paycheck. If you're not working, if you don't have this job, you're not worth it as a man. And let's look at this lens so we see again, we go back to social media and we see a lot of these male podcasters like, oh, women want six feet, six packs, six figures. I have never heard a woman say that ever. I, I've never felt that way. As someone who is almost 6ft tall, I have never had a height requirement and I think most women prefer someone taller than them. But also women give a lot of leeway. Women are the ones that popularize the dad bod. This whole six foot, six pack, six figures thing is pushed by men because that's how men are defining their masculinity. It's how tall you are, how jacked you are and how much money you make, because that's what this system has told men they're worth. This is one of the reason that far right movements in particular disproportionately attract men. It's this extremist ideology and it simplifies it, right? You just need to be a man. It gives you a clear enemy. This is your enemy over here. This is who you're. This is who's to blame for how unhappy you are. It gives them clear orders and the promise of restored status. If you just obey us, you're going to get the world that we promised you from the beginning. I read a quote the other day, and I can't remember where I read it, but it says, patriarchy promises men belonging, but instead gives them loneliness. And the check is coming due something along that line, which is really, really true. But the system that tells men you must dominate to be a man is the same system that isolates them, damages them, and makes them vulnerable to manipulation. This system punishes everyone. It punishes women and minorities by placing them in subordinate roles, taking away power and access. It punishes marginalized men by keeping them at both at the bottom of the male hierarchy of that section. It punishes ordinary men by demanding emotional sacrifice, blind obedience, psychological numbness and physical risk as proof of their worth. The health outcomes for men under these norms. So under this society, these standards, these quote gender norms. Higher suicide rates, higher rates of addiction, lower social support, increased likelihood of violent death. It's not a coincidence. That's the way the system is built. Because ordinary men within the system only serve to protect the men at the top, which means that you're expendable. I think of Fortunate Son where it talks about, they're not gonna, they're gonna send you off to war. When you ask them, how much do we give? They only answer, more, more, more. The people at the top are not risking themselves, they're risking you. These are predictable results of a system that values dominance over well being and control over connections. So understanding that patriarchy does not mean men. It means this very specific hierarchical system. And understanding that it harms everyone is why breaking it down leads to a healthier society. It's not about dismantling men. It's about dismantling the rigid roles that dehumanize men and women. Because if you look at a man and you're like, you're only worth a paycheck. You're only worth it if you're jacked and you have a. You are completely dehumanizing them, taking away what makes them. You're a human being first, A man second. You're a human being first, A woman second. When we understand how these systems work, that's when we, we can click into oh, this is why dismantling this system is, is helpful, because it will make all of us better and healthier. When societies value emotional literacy, mutual care, shared power and interconnectedness, the harms associated with a patriarchy decrease dramatically. Men are allowed to feel, to question, to seek help, to redefine strength as compassion rather than dominance, and to experience better mental health and deeper relationships. Women and minorities gain safety and agency and full participation in public life. When we flatten these hierarchies, power becomes something shared rather than something that's imposed from the top down. Patriarchy persists not because it benefits most people, but because it has convinced them that if you don't do what we tell you, the world's going to fall into chaos. Think of how many times you've heard the America's going to hell, America's in moral decline, the world's going to hell in a handbasket. It has to convince you that your only salvation is to stay in alignment with the system, or otherwise it's going to be complete chaos. That's not true. The alternative is people get a lot more freedom, freedom to be. If we don't follow these exact rules, they say, society will crumble. That's not true. How many times have we seen a post of women aren't getting married and having kids and it's the downfall of Western society? Or comments calling a man beta because he works as a caregiver, followed by what is the world coming to? The truth shown across decades of social science is that the alternative is actually healthier. When we remove these restrictions and we let people be, we let people express themselves. We let people we let men ask for help, we let men be open is a it's healthier, safer, and more human for everyone. The dismantling of the system is not a zero sum game, but the expansion of human possibility, including for men. So now that we have that background, because it's really important to understand that definition, let's dive into how the Nazi movement used propaganda, indoctrination and social pressure to recruit average, kind, decent, often Christian young men into a campaign of violence. But before I do that, let's take our first of two mid show sponsor breaks a reminder that these episodes are always ad free on patreon@patreon.com America Monty Mater and thank you to those patrons for your support. The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany was not an inevitable mass conversion, but a deliberate strategic campaign that targeted young men at multiple social, cultural and psychological levels. And quickly, let's talk about how the word socialism in the Nazi Party platform was not what we associate with democratic socialism today. I see this online all the time, especially because I talk about a lot about World War II history. Despite sharing one word in their name, the National Socialism and Democratic National Socialism of The Nazi party and democratic socialism have nothing in common ideology ideologically, in the case of Nazism, the term socialism was largely a propaganda tool meant to appeal to struggling workers in post World War I Germany, especially with the negative economic impact of the Treaty of Versailles. The movement itself was ultra nationalist, authoritarian project built on racial hierarchy, eugenics, often borrowed from the United States and total obedience to the state. This was was utter like total submission. It dismantled free elections, criminalized dissent, eliminated independent unions and crushed any form of democratic participation. Private industry was not abolished. It was preserved and tightly controlled so that it served the interests of the Nazi state as its war machine. So within the Nazi Party, the word socialist was simply a propaganda tool to align themselves with the working party who were experiencing extreme poverty. By contrast, democratic socialism today is rooted in democracy, pluralism, free markets and human rights. It prioritizes economic fairness through strong social programs, worker protections, especially unions and public accountability, while maintaining and strengthening democratic institutions. Democratic socialists advocate for free elections, multi party governance, civil liberties and equality across race, gender, class and religion. The focus is on expanding democratic control, not eliminating it, and expanding that control by voting, unions and publicly accountable institutions. It's really about making sure the people are in control and that resources are benefiting the people, not just the few. The core difference is that the Nazis use the language of socialism to mask a violent racist dictatorship, while democratic socialism is grounded in equity, inclusion and democratic governance. But from the early 1920s through the consolidation of power in 1933 and the subsequent militarization of German society as a whole, the Nazi party developed a sophisticated recruitment ecosystem. This system fused propaganda, economic insecurity, hyper masculine ideals, manufactured community and promise of purpose. Young men, especially those disillusioned after World War I and the economic instability of the Weimar Republic, were ideal targets. It was a combination of youth organizations, mass rallies, visual and textual propaganda rituals and social incentives. The party transformed adolescent and young men into ideological adherents prepared to join the paramilitary organizations such as the SA and the ss. The failing economy was the gateway. Germany in the aftermath of World War I presented the precise social environment in which extremist movements often thrive. There were millions of young men returned to a defeated nation. There was no clear future, no economic security. This profound sense of defeat, emasculation and national humiliation. The Treaty of Versailles, which imposed reparations, territorial losses and strict military limitations, produced very deep seated resentment and hopelessness. The early Nazi movement exploited this resentment with a simple message. Germany had been stabbed in the back by internal enemies who were the Socialists, the Jews, the intellectuals and the Weimar Politicians who supposedly betrayed the nation. There's no way that Germany actually lost the war. They'd been betrayed. It was stolen from them. Young men who had grown up too late to serve in the war, but watched their fathers return beaten, traumatized, wounded and economically powerless were especially susceptible. A 1924 Nazi pamphlet framed the moment as a generational call to action, saying, germany needs her young warriors. The old have failed her, Only youth can raise her up again. What a call to purpose. The party's earliest recruiters understood that young men craved meaning, identity and belonging. Within Weimar Germany's fractured political landscape, no other party offered such a cohesive, exciting and very, very gendered vision of a national rebirth. Nazism provided a space where boys could feel powerful, valued and necessary. At a time when the nation felt directionless, propaganda was the most effective tool for recruiting these young men. Joseph Goebbels, the future Minister of Propaganda, articulated this strategy in 1928 when he said, it is not the mind that must be reached, but the heart. Nazi imagery centered on the furhor princip, the leader principle fur princip man. These words are going to be fun. Militarized masculinity and racial purity. Posters and print media showcased muscular blonde men portrayed as the protectors of the nation, heirs to Germanic warrior traditions and future soldiers. So they're, they're reaching into the ancestry and they're reaching into this calling for glory in the future again. Remember, patriarchy promises men glory and belonging and often just gives them loss and loneliness. And eventually men start looking for that glory they were promised. This visual propaganda targeted both young men and the cultural expectations surrounding them. One widely circulated poster from the early 1930s depicted a young man raising a spade and a flag with the caption, Youth serves the FU. All 10 year olds belong to us. This was not a metaphorical message. The Nazis intended to seize male youth psychologically from early childhood. You see this in, in cults, high control groups. They try to access children as early as possible. It's much easier to get indoctrination, to hold that way. The idealized Nazi man was obedient, strong, loyal, physically fit, and unquestioningly devoted to Hitler. More submission. These movements, I'm telling you, these far right movements, are all about submission, all about obedience, all about falling in line. They make you believe that you're a leader, but what they require of you is your absolute submission and their dominance over you. The contrast between this and the heroic image and the economic despair of daily life made the movement so appealing to boys who felt powerless. Propaganda Films such as Der Hitler Jun Keel 1933 dramatized this conversion of the working class teenager to Nazism, framing the party as noble and heroic. Its central slogan of the movie was, was our flag leads us forward. And became a rallying cry for countless young recruits. Now, long before Hitler seized state power in 1933, Nazi sympathizers in schools were already helping spread the ideology. I want to draw a parallel here to Christian nationalism. The Christian nationalist movement that is so, so strong right now started in school boards. They ran for school boards. They started to determine what curriculum could be taught. They really started in the school. And this is the same thing that happened with Nazi sympathizers affecting schools and the ideology that was taught them there. Teachers who joined or supported the party introduced nationalist and racial themes informally, very subtly, very quiet, the same way it happened in the US Once in power, the regime rapidly transformed education into a system of political indoctrination. I think of the Department of Education's they're going to do. They're going to create a patriotic ethics course which is essentially just lying about history. History textbooks portrayed World War I as a betrayal by internal enemies for young German boys and girls. Biology and quote, race science lessons were taught and taught that the Aryan race was superior and threatened the Jews and non Aryan populations. Think about white replacement theory. Physical education was doubled or tripled in many schools, prioritizing strength, endurance and discipline. A 1934 teaching directive stated plainly that, quote, the task of the school is to create National Socialist men, end quote. Boys were taught militarized, obedience, unquestioning, loyal to Hitler, submission and the readiness for sacrifice. The restructuring of education ensured that by adolescence most German boys had been absorbed in, had already absorbed core Nazi values, making recruitment into youth organizations the next easy natural step. The Hitler Youth was founded in 1926 and became the primary mechanism for recruiting these young men into the Nazi worldview. And it was founded earlier. The organization exploded after 1933 and became compulsory for most German boys by 1936. Hitler Youth offered outdoor adventure in sports, paramilitary drills, uniform and badges, songs, rituals and community, a sense of mission and superiority and a substitute for family or school authority. Get them. There's so much power in creating an in group and creating a sense of belonging. And that's exactly what the Hitler Youth did so well. It's like fascism, boy Scouse. The movement framed participation as a patriotic duty. Incentivize the parents to send their sons. Balder von Shirak, the leader of the Hitler Youth, described its mission saying, we want to turn Young people into loyal, disciplined generation that will carry National Socialism forward. These meetings used camp songs, sworn oaths, intense bonding exercises. The famous oath recited by new recruits would declare, I promise to do my duty in love and faithfulness to the Fuhrer and to our flag, establishing that obedience and that submission to Hitler. Remember that Nazis also identified as a Christian movement. No idolatry here, nothing to see. Though the constant exposure to ideology, paramilitary experiences, peer pressure, the Hitler Youth ensured that a majority of German boys internalized Nazi values by their mid teens. Indoctrin Indoctrination never comes by access to more information. It comes by limiting, standardizing and requiring specific information. That's why whenever you see book bans, whenever you see people limiting access to information, limiting access to dialogue, the censorship that we see on TikTok right now, where anyone who has been a Trump critic is getting zero views, the pages are functionally shut down thanks to Larry Ellison, a self proclaimed Christian nationalist and Zionist. Whenever you see that type of limiting of information, your red flag should go up. Because it's always through the limiting of information that indoctrination happens, not the exposure to more information. The higher education is not a, you know, liberal bastion of indoctrination. It's just that when people come into access to more information, often their opinions change. The Weimar era was defined by hyperinflation in 1923, the Great Depression that hit in 1929 and mass unemployment among young men. In some regions, youth unemployment reached 40 to 50%. Nazi recruiters use these conditions to pitch the movement as a source of structure and dignity. Nazis use slogans such as work, freedom and bread and Germany Awake to speak directly to the anxieties of young men who felt that they had no economic future joining the Nazi movement, whether it was the party, Hitler Youth or later the SA and the ss, promised a steady income, social status, a role in the national rebirth, making Germany great again, access to networks and to career advanced. Many young men joined less out of ideological conviction, at least initially, and more from the desperation for stability and belonging. If you can't eat and you can't get a good job, guess what? The Nazis will pay you. Men were also manipulated at rallies. Nazi rallies were carefully staged psychological operations. These, these were, these rally is a, is a. They were theatrical performances. It was meant to psychologically manipulate, manipulate you. The Nuremberg rallies, beginning in the mid-1920s, reaching their theatrical peak in the 1930s, blended spectacle, Marshall discipline, music and collective enthusiasm. Think WWE. But like circa 1920s, young men were encouraged to attend, volunteer and participate. A young Attendee described the experience in a 1934 diary entry. He said, you feel lifted out of yourself. It is, is. It is as if you become a part of something eternal, something greater. You never want that feeling to end. These rallies provided emotional intoxication, a sense of unity and escape from individual isolation. Amid thousands of chanting young men, recruits felt transformed. The Nazis understood that once someone had been swept up in this collective emotion, they were far less likely to question the ideology behind it. Often the feeling, the narrative, is more important than the fact. Emotion matters far more than fact most of the time. And you see this in the church. I think we see this the most in mega churches. These are very, very curated experiences. Now there is a natural kind of comfort, mentally and psychological benefit to just being in community, right? How many times do so many people, the only time they interact with other people is at church. It's the only time they get to hug someone or shake their hand. It's the only time they come together to sing. Hume Singing is so good for humans and we don't do that in our day to day life. For many people, church is the only place they do that. But in mega churches, and as someone who's not only attended, but also kind of been behind the scenes, they control the temperature. The music is written with specific chords and specific tempos, holding on to certain notes in order to kind of garner this emotional response. It's a very emotional, binding response. And that doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad, but it is curated in such a way to help you feel that emotional fervor, that connection. Sometimes you can even see, like what musicians on stage are doing to create this emotional response. And that's why for those of you that are big music fans who maybe grew up in the church, when you go to a concert that's really locked in and really powerful, it feels like church. It's the same emotional response. It's the same emotional fervor. Been to some really powerful concerts that felt that way. Nazism prospered in part because of it fused political belonging with social belonging. Boys were encouraged to recruit their friends. Communities applied pressure to boys. Teachers, pastors, local leaders publicly praised patriotic youth that were involved. And to refuse participation was to risk being isolated, being under suspicion or persecution, or thrown out of your community entirely. One former Hitler Youth member described this dynamic, saying, quote, you joined because everyone else did. You didn't want to be the only one not marching. Conformity became a powerful motivator. We don't want to lose our community. Conformity is such a huge tool to manipulate people into bowing down and submitting. And if you want to be liked and you want to belong, you follow along. We see that now for German youth, the cost of resisting increasingly outweighed the moral discomfort some of the boys may have felt with these ideologies. And even as men and I want to be very clear here that while many young men joined out of social pressure, conformity, a job, many young men did join for the violence. Some of them wanted to get it on. For many young men, Nazism's glorification of violence was inherently attractive. The essay and the SS projected images of strength, discipline and uncompromising masculinity and the ability to dominate other dominate people that are not like you, Whether it's socialists or communists or people who are of a different race. Early Nazi recruiters promised young men the chance to fight communists, defend Germany and reclaim national honor. A pamphlet distributed to young laborers in 1931 proclaimed, Stand with us and you will be a soldier of Germany's rebirth. Violence in the streets, brawls with communists, intimidation of political opponents became a rite of passage for some men. This was the appeal. I think we see this now with what's going on with ICE. To join the SA or the SS was to prove one's loyalty, courage and manhood. In 2024, for instance, talking about ICE and recruitment, here in Nashville, there were eight Nazi marches that marched at some point in the city. Most of them through downtown. Full regalia, black mass, huge swastikas. One of them marched right by my apartment. 2025, there were zero. I live very close to where the Klan was founded, the kkk. Those groups didn't disappear or go silent. They are simply working elsewhere because they are now giving governmental permission to enact that violence. And the violence has always been the point for those groups. Authoritarian movements have to provide something in order for it to work. A common enemy. Enemy. The Nazis had the Jews, the Communists, political rivals. Young men were taught that the Jews in particular represented an existential threat to the German race. Now, now these young men are already feeling the economic pressure, they're feeling the social pressure. They're feeling humiliated from the loss of the war. They're. They're being told that their race is in danger again. White replacement theory is the same thought. So now they have someone to blame. Propaganda books such as Dare Gift Pills, which is the poisonous mushroom of 1938 were designed for youth audience and taught boys to hate stories and illustrations. Posters showed grotesque caricatures of Jewish men framed as corrupting and dangerous. Hitler's own words in mine conf were plastered in pamphlets and lecture halls saying the youth must be led to recognize the enemy. You must be led, you must be shown and taught who your enemy is. By providing an external enemy, the Nazis channeled youthful aggression and frustration outward. Hatred became a bonding force, a shared project and a justification for violence. Again, indoctrination is, is not accessing as much information as you can and saying, okay, well now that I've seen all this information, what do I think? It's limiting and curating the information and then saying this is what you should think. So that's the difference is the way that something's being presented, saying hey, what do you think? Or is it saying this is what you should think? Cults and extremist organizations, secret societies, rely on rituals because ritual is a powerful psychological tool for shaping identity, loyalty and perception. Again, we see this in all different kinds. You can see this in, in local sports clubs, we see it in church. These rituals are very psychologically bonding. Rituals are used because they bypass logic and speak directly to emotion, identity and belonging. When a group asks recruits to perform, say, a repeated symbolic action, such as a chant, an oath, uniforms, hand signs, shared meals, synchronized movement, it creates a sense of unity that feels deeper than ordinary social bonding. You're part of something and at the core of all of this, these movements, the core of it is wanting, love and belonging and certainty. Humans are wired to find meaning in symbolic acts, especially when it's performed collectively. The ritual becomes a doorway. It marks who's on the inside and who's on the outside, giving recruits a sense of specialness, purpose and exclusivity. For many organizations, rituals also serve as a psychological conditioning. Repetition creates familiarity and it creates comfort, which creates loyalty. Over time, recruits begin to associate with group, the group with emotional safety. Even if that group is harmful, it's emotionally safe for them. Rituals also create mild altered states. Again, chanting, rhythmic movement, sensory overload or deprivation, which makes people more suggestible and more emotionally bonded to the leaders who guide those experiences. Again, think of, think of when you're chanting or you're singing the same song with a group of people and like how often that kind of trance like state can occur. The meaning of the ritual doesn't have to make rational sense, it's the feeling that it produces that matters. Rituals are especially potent for people who feel lost, lonely or directionless. People experiencing extreme grief. The structure and symbolism offer them a ready made identity, something to belong to, something to hold onto, a narrative that explains who they are and why they matter. The psychological relief makes recruits more willing to adopt the group's worldview, even its most extreme beliefs, because the ritualized belonging becomes more important than outside relationships or the their prior values. Over time, the rituals create behavioral dependence. The the recruit, the new recruit sense of self becomes tied to the group's rhythms, to their symbols, to that. That kind of euphoric feeling of belonging. Questioning the group starts to feel like questioning themselves. And that is why cults and extremist movements guard their rituals very carefully. These are not decor, decoration. They're psychological glue that keeps people attached, compliant, and willing to sacrifice for the cost. Nazi recruitment relied heavily on these rituals. Oaths were central. Boys were swore personal loyalty to Hitler. And it was not abstract patriotism. It was. It was a loyalty to a person. This psychological technique bound recruits emotionally and morally. It unified their cause. One of the most significant rituals was the Hitler Youth flag consecration, in which new recruits touched the blood flag or the blutfont. I think it's Blutfan, I think is how it's pronounced. Blood flag. A cloth said to have been stained with the blood of Nazi martyrs from the failed 1923 beer hall poosh. This is the. The pooch that Hitler tried to overthrow the government and failed at. So they literally take this blood flag that they claim is from the beer hall pooch. It's probably not. And they have this consecration ceremony. The ritual conveyed the idea that the recruits were joining a sacred lineage, that the people who had died in the beer hall pooch were martyrs for the Nazi cause. Sounds very, very January 6th. Such ceremonies strengthen commitment and moral disengagement from the violence. Sprinkle on might makes right. God is on our side. And since he's on our side, it doesn't matter what we do. To others, others. The young men symbolically pledged themselves to the movement, Breaking away and becoming emotionally difficult and socially sorry. And breaking away became emotionally difficult and socially dangerous. They bind them so tightly that if you do want to leave, it becomes a little too late. As the boys age from Hitler youth into young men, the Nazi system seamlessly transitioned them into adult paramilitary and military organizations. Recruitment into the essay. The essay was the party's first mass paramilitary wing. It attracted working class youth, unemployed men, those seeking some action. And the appeal of it laid in this sense of brotherhood. You had a uniform, you had status, you had a chance to fight these political enemies that were ruining Germany. And you had the opportunity for rapid advancement. The essay presented violent street activism as masculine heroism. This is the Real men of Germany. By 1933 it included over 3 million men, many of them former Hitler Youth. And then there was the ss. So the SS in contrast was the elite group. They saw elite young men who embodied the racial and ideological period purity. You had to be of Aryan ancestry. You had to pass physical fitness, both appearance and tests. You had to demonstrate absolute loyalty to Hitler and you had to basically adopt a near monastic lifestyle, like very, very strict prescriptions for how you were to live your life if you were going to be part of the ss. Himmler described, described the SS as a new Germanic warrior order. The SS appealed to very ambitious, educated young white men, particularly those seeking prestige and looked the part. So there, here's where you get your strong jawed blonde blue eyes men. Its training emphasized discipline, ruthlessness and ideological commitment above all else, including your family. By the late 1930s, the Hitler Youth programs directly prepared the boys for service. The Hitler Youth Leadership Corps, the Naval Hitler Youth, the Air Hitler Youth and the motorized Hitler Youth taught technical and military skills that fed directly into the service branches. In 1943, as the war intensified, many Hitler Youth boys were drafted directly into the escort SS or served as anti aircraft auxiliaries. The system had achieved its intended outcome. There was a generation of men raised from childhood to serve in the militarized Nazi state again. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor on January 30th of 1933, Germany's young male population was already primed for mobilization. They've been working on this for over a decade. Years of social breakdown, mass unemployment and national humiliation after World War I had produced a generation searching for purpose and belonging, many who were also financially desperate. Desperate for many, the Nazi movement seemed to offer precisely what the Weimar Republic had denied from them. The SA at this point, numbering nearly 400,000 members, mostly in their teens and 20s and early 30s, had long served as a political outlet for the frustrated young men hungry for action. And then the smaller SS presented itself as that elite, racially pure fraternity. The Reichstag fire in February 27th of 1933 and the following Reichstag fire decree issued the next day provided the legal pretext for an unprecedented assault on civil liberties. So the groundwork's been laid. We now have this generation of young men that have been weaponized. The SA and the SS are now very strong. Loyalty to Hitler is in a kind of a fever pitch. And then there's the Reichstag fire. February 27th, a little over almost a month after Hitler became Chancellor. They then issue the Reichstag fire decree and it allowed for them to suspend freedom of speech, the press, assembly, the privacy of communication and habeas corpus, thereby granting these young SA and SS and police police almost an unlimited mandate to arrest, detain and brutalize anyone they perceived as a political opponent. You can think of this as absolute immunity. Within a matter of days, thousands of communists, social democrats, trade unionists and dissidents, largely young men themselves, were dragged from their homes, beaten in the streets, tortured in basements and murdered outright. Makeshift detention facilities known, known as wild concentration camps sprang up across Germany, staffed primarily by SA men who felt empowered to act as judge, jury and execute executioner. One SA commander captured the regime's spirit at the time when he proclaims, the Fuhrer has unleashed us. Now the enemies of Germany shall feel our fists. These acts of violence were not merely tolerated. They were framed as patriotic duty. On March 22 of 1933, the SS opened the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, the first permanent model for the system that would eventually become synonymous with the Nazi repression and the Holocaust. SS officers, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, 30s, enforced strict discipline, administered beatings, devised humiliation rituals and carried out extrajudicial executions. Theodore Eicke, one of the Dachau central architects, declared to his recruits, we are not here to reform. We are here to annihilate the state's enemies. A statement that encapsulated the ideological framing of the violence for young SS men. You agree, therefore you sorry, you disagree, therefore you are my enemy and therefore you deserve to die. In the first months of 1933 also marked the beginning of systemic violence against Jews, LGBTQ Germans and those labeled asocial. On April 1st of 1933, the nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses was enforced by SA men positioned outside shops, intimidating customers who tried to purchase and vandalizing storefronts. This actually recently happened in Memphis, where ICE agents blocked a business owner in Memphis because of his criticism of of ICE activity. Here in Tennessee, the criminalization of queer life intensified. Under paragraph 175, which punished male homosexual. The SS and police raids targeted gay bars and private residences, resulting in arrests and beatings. Homeless youth, Roma and sinti sex workers. Anyone who deemed who was deemed socially deviant were likewise swept into this expanding apparatus of repression. By the end of 1933, repression had become normalized and young men across Germany had learned that violence was legitimate extension of state power. And if you're wondering why they specifically targeted gay men, the Nazi ideology essentially deemed that even though lesbians were deviant, they could still be be forced to impregnate and give birth to Aryan German children. By 1934 the Nazi leadership faced new internal tensions, primarily with the SA. The SA's rapid growth into nearly 3 million member from that 400,000 members when Hitler became Chancellor had emboldened its leaders, most notably Ernst Rohm, to believe that the SA should replace the traditional German army and carry the revolution forward through intensified street violence. They'd gotten a little, a little too rowdy even for Nazi supporters. Hitler, however, needed the army's support to consolidate his authority. The German army was supported by the German elite and Hitler needed both of those groups to support him. The purge that became known as the Night of the Long Knives was carried out on from June 30 to July 2 of 1934 was to resolve this conflict. Young SS men arrested and executed Rome and dozens of SA leaders with a series of coordinated killings that shocked Germany and demonstrated Hitler's absolute control over life and death. In the speech he would later give justifying the purge, Hitler declared, quote, in this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people and I became the supreme judge. End quote. Signaling to young men throughout the country that loyalty to the furor superseded loyalty to any comrade or institution. It also gave Hitler essentially absolute authority over Germany. The purge elevated the SS as the premier instrument of Nazi violence, permanently subordinated the sa. And for ambitious young men the message was unmistakable. The future of the regime lay with the SS whose ideology rested on absolute obedience, racial purity and ruthless act action. Under Heinrich Himmler, the SS conce was conceived as a racial elite. Requirements would vary slightly in the 1930s but at their core for the senior ranks they had to be able to trace their an Aryan ancestry to 1750 or 1800 for regular officers. So you had to be able to prove that you had Aryan ancestry. You had to be able to prove pretty far back. They had to prove this with verified documents like births, baptisms, marriage and death certificates of parents and grandparents and great grandparents. In this context Aryan meant northwestern European ancestors, ancestry non Jewish, non Slavic as defined by the Nuremberg racial categories. The applicants were subjected to health screenings. They were disqualified for congenital diseases, mental health illness, physical disabilities, substance abuse and any kind of hereditary condition that was deemed undesirable. Early SS recruitment requirement was a height of 510 or higher. That would be shortened during the war when they needed more bodies and men needed to be lean, athletic and Nordic looking. SS doctors evaluated the skull shape of candidates based on a now long debunked phrenology. At the time that was Widely popular, phrenology is the pseudoscience of the 19th century that involved the study of the shape and dimensions of the human skull to determine an individual's personality traits and mental faculties. Phrenologists believe that specific areas of the brain were responsible for certain characteristics and that their size could be measured by the bumps on the overlying skull. In short, it's absolute, absolute, utter nonsense. Doctors also evaluated the men for their facial structure, wanting high, narrow noses, light eyes. They preferred blonde hair, though blonde wasn't a requirement. After 1933, SS soldiers were expected to swear absolute loyalty to Hitler, submit to obedience unto death, and this oath was assumed to replace all other allegiances, including family, church and state. The SS could only marry with Himmler's personal approval, and he would evaluate their bride for her Aryan ancestry, her health. Sufficiently Nordic looking and marriage permits were a eugenic tool to control SS reproduction and again get more soldiers for later. Soldiers were expected to have no major outstanding debt, no criminal backgrounds, no public associations outside of the Nazi Party, and to be willing to subject themselves to Hitler and to embrace SS ideology as their comprehensive worldview. And though the Nazi party pitched itself as a Christian movement, it had intense occult and pagan ties and overtows, especially through Himmler. He was absolutely obsessed. And if you've been listening to highway to Hell, Andy and I have been mentioning, wanting to do a episode episode talking about the occult and pagan characteristics that were part of the Nazi party. It's really, really interesting. So we might, we might do a crossover episode. The year 1935 marked the formal legalization of the racial ideology that had been embedded in Nazi thought for years. On September 15th of 1935, the Nuremberg Laws codified racism into the legal structure of the Reich. The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of citizenship, reducing them to subjects without political rights, while the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor criminalized marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans. SS men became the enforcement arm of these racial restrictions, conducting investigations into ancestry, humiliating Jewish citizens in public and monitoring sexual relationships. It's always these, these very far right groups that are always like the government, you know, can't censor us. Freedom, freedom, freedom. They always want government to micromanage everybody's business. The state's racial engineering extended to disabled Germans through the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring Spring, which authorized forced sterilization of disabled people. Young SS affiliated doctors and medical students participated willingly in sterilization courts, internalizing the idea that violence was a scientific and moral duty to purify the race. By 1934 and 1939, more than 300,000 people were forcefully sterilized under the supervision of men in their 20s and early 30s who embraced the ideology of racial hygiene. The regime's repression of the LGBTQ German intensified dramatically in 1935 with the expansion of paragraph 172. 75 the revised law broadened the definition of criminalized male same sex behavior, increased penalties, and enabled mass arrests. Himmler frequently framed homosexuality as a political threat. He said, we have no room for this vice in Germany. A homosexual is a traitor to manhood. Thousands of gay men were arrested. Many were sent to concentration camps where young SS guards subjected them to uniquely harsh treatment, identifying them by the pink triangle and using them for the most brutal labor. Assignments. Assignments. In 1936, the Hitler Youth became mandatory for all boys under the Hitler Youth law that was issued on December 1. This created a pipeline through which millions of boys were funneled into Nazi ideology before they reached adulthood. Hitler Youth training emphasized military discipline, physical toughness, racial mythology, anti communism, anti Semitism, and an absolute obedience to Hitler. Val Dur von Schirach, the head of the Hitler Youth, declared, we have made youth hard as steal. A statement that captured again, this. This militarized masculinity. You want to be a real man, you got to be tough. You got to be militaristic. As boys age out of the organization at 18, they were essentially moved directly into the SS, the SA or the we're mucked. Bringing them many years of indoctrination. I mean, they were just ready to be part of these movements. The Gestapo law, February 10, 1936, meanwhile, declared that the actions of the Gestapo are not subject to review by the courts. G guaranteeing absolute impunity for young Gestapo and SS officers who carried out surveillance, beatings, disappear and torture. They were not accountable to anyone. Police forces were centralized under Himmler, meaning that all law enforcement was now infused with SS ideology and young men in uniform understood that their violence would never be punished. It's amazing what you'll do when you think you can get away with it. By 1937, the regime, securing its power, intensified its persecution of the Jews, the LGBTQ community, and again, those categorized as asocial. And this, this really affects anyone who didn't fall in line with what they deemed to be within normal gender roles or to be within what they wanted for productivity. So this was homeless men, disabled men, jobless youth, again, the Roma and the Sinti sex workers, anyone labeled asocial, anyone who didn't fall in line with these really strict hierarchies and roles. In June of 1938 alone, more than 10,000 people were rounded up and shipped to concentration camps, often by young SS and police officers, officers who had come to view mass arrests and brutality as just part of the job. Newspapers such as the Der Sturmer intensified anti Semitic rhetoric, publishing captions like the Jew is our misfortune and conditioning young Germans to associate Jews with disease, criminality and subversion. By the end of 1937, many young men in the SS and the Hitler Youth had absorbed years of dehumanizing propaganda that would soon escalate into acts of mass public violence. In 1938, the Nazi violence escalated dramatically. The annexation of Austria in March of 1938 provided German forces and young SS men with an opportunity to unleash raw brutality. Photographs from Vienna show Jewish men, some very elderly, forced to scrub sidewalks with toothbrushes while crowds, many of them young men and boys, laughed and taunted them. The violence was spontaneous, but framed as patriotic. No one was punished for these actions. During the summer of 1938, the regime intensified its persecution of gay men, with raids and and arrests expanding sharply. By the end of the year, more than 15,000 gay men had been imprisoned. The program known as Kristal Knock, carried out in November 9th, 9th and 10th on 1938, was the most dramatic pre war escalation of anti Jewish violence in the Reich. SA men, SS security forces, Hitler Youth, boys and local male citizens, encouraged by the propaganda and the state approval, attacked Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship. Over two days, 267 synagogues were burned down, 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed and at least 91 Jews were murdered. Then more than three. Excuse me. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. A report from Munich noted that the youth were particularly enthusiastic, highlighting the central role of young men in the violence. New anti Jewish decrees issued in November and December ban Jewish Jewish people from public schools, universities, theaters, parks, driving cars and owning businesses. Young SS and Gestapo officers forced these restrictions ruthlessly, often with beatings and humiliation. And keep in mind, they're, they're also demonizing anyone who's homeless. And so like, if you can't work your job and you can't go to school, you have no resources, you lose your home, they have another reason to arrest you. By 1939, the transformation of young German men into ideological instruments of violence was largely complete. Again, Hitler boys are being funneled right into SS recruits, SA shock troops and soldiers in the Wehrmacht and SA still operated as a street level force of intimidation. While the SS consolidated power over policing, intelligence and racial policy. Early preparations for The ACT and T4 euthanasia program began in 1939 involving SS doctors, nurses and orderlies who were accustomed to forced sterilization and institutional abuse. These men learned lethal techniques such as starvation, injection and gas, methods that would later be deployed on a much larger scale. When Germany occupied Czechoslovakia In March of 1939, SS units accompanied the army and immediately began seizing Jewish property, arresting political law opponents and launching terror campaigns against civilians. Young SS men learned to apply methods of domestic repression to the management of occupied territories. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1st of 1939, the regime unleashed its most violent young men, those in the Einste Groupen. These men, Most in their 20s and early 30s, carried out mass shootings, deportations and terror against Jewish Jews, Polish intellectuals, priests, Roma, LGBTQ people, disabled people in political leaders. Some of the earliest massacres in Bid? Gast P? Nika and other regions involved young SS officers who had been shaped for years by audiological training in public acts of violence. One soldier wrote in his diary during the Polish campaign, it becomes easier each time we are doing what must be done. For Germany, this is a terrifying statement, but it captured the culmination of six years of indoctrination, legal empowerment and desensitization to the ideological violence, violence. Between 1933 and 1939, Nazi Germany succeeded in weaponizing these young men, embedding that violence in them. So now, as the Reich begins to take over other places, it becomes easier for them to take that violence into these new countries. We have some soldiers, letters from the Polish campaign in particular, that show an early sense of shock that mixed in gradual desensitization. A member of The Police Battalion 101 later recalled in a post war testimony, he said, the first time we were sick, the second time less so. By the third time, the men were talking while they fired. That is a rapid and tragic transformation. The ideology that had framed Jews, Slavs, anyone considered other as subhuman worked hand in hand with the orders from above. Many young men believed that they were participating in a project of racial purification, that they were going to save their country. Himmler addressed SS men in 1940 when he told them, you must be hard. You must learn not to show pity. We are engaged in a war of extermination. Like the stakes were very clear. This was all very clear, clear. It is not that nobody knew what was going on. These messages were frequent. They were given directly to men who would carry out the Shootings, the deportations and the mass atrocities. The invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 initiated an even more radical phase of violence. Operation Barbarossa was conceived explicitly as a racial war. The young men of the Wehrmacht and the SS were told from the beginning that no moral limits applied. A directive that was circulated by the high Command before the invasion stated, in the east, the soldier is not merely a fighter, but a bearer of ruthless ideology. I mean, they have, they have these young men locked in. At this point, the SS and the police units that accompanied the army were given limitless freedom. Massacre reports reveal the horrific scale. We're talking tens of thousands of people shot in forests, ravines, towns, squares, Field. A member of the ICE and Groupa Sea described the massacre at Babi Yar, in which more than 33,000 Jews were murdered over two days, noting the screams were unbearable, unbearable. But the order was the order. And another SS man would later testify, we had become machines. If you hesitated, your comrades looked at you as though you were sick. While some German soldiers were initially shocked by the brutality, many quickly adapted due to this training, conformity, fear of being ostracized. You don't want to be part of the Owl Group. A young soldier wrote home in July of 1941 saying, you cannot imagine what we do here, but if one refuses, he is finished. And we all believe the Russians would do worse to us. That's another, another thing that these type of ideologies, these especially far right high control groups, well, if you don't get them first, they're going to do so much worse to you. I remember growing up and the. I was constantly told that, especially after Columbine, that the Democrats are going to hold you at gunpoint and ask you if you believe in God and they're going to kill you if you say yes. And it's your duty, it's your duty to stand up for your faith. But also this idea of we had to get them first. And this was a common sentiment. Nazi propaganda constantly warned of the Bolshevik menace, creating this sense of defensive brutality. Many young men believed that violence was necessary to prevent. Prevent an imagined future in which Germany would be destroyed by communism or a Jewish world conspiracy. How often in the United States do we see this? Anytime someone is like, well, Zoran Mamdani, both socialist and a Muslim people are like, we're gonna be taken over by Islam. We have to get rid of them first. Same ideology, same thing. No evidence of that. By 1942, the extermination of the Jews, disabled people and any again, anyone who's not part of the in group had become systematized through ghettos, shootings and the expanding camps of system. The young men of the SS Death's Head units who guarded concentration and extermination camps often entered service believing they were performing difficult but necessary tasks. Training emphasized ideological commitment, total obedience and the need to protect the German racial body. A guard at Auschwitz would later recall in his interviews, we were told these people were enemies. We saw them as filth. If anyone showed softness, he was seen as weak. Another young guard confessed after the war, I remember the first time I saw a child killed. Something inside me broke. But then it happened again and again and I stopped feeling anything. And I want to be careful with this. I'm reading these quotes and, and telling the story because I want, you know, a little window into the, into the insight of how weaponization of, of men's desire for belonging and strength and, and purpose can be. And I want some of these thoughts from these men of like, what were you thinking? What were you feeling? What was the environment like? This is not at all a justification or giving them an out, right? Because you look at all of these movements and yes, by and large, most men aligned themselves with this movement. But in every instance in history, whether it's the Holocaust or it's slavery or any other time, there were always people that knew better. So this is not an excuse for them. It's simply more insight, more information. And I consistently think of John Brown in the abolition movement, a man, a Christian man, who was so devout and knew that slavery was such an egregious evil that he was willing to die for it. Even in a time where people would say, oh, well, you know, it was a different time. So I think there's value in us evaluating and getting more information and insight and also understanding. This has always been wrong. And it doesn't matter that it wasn't part of popular opinion because in those eras there were always people who knew it was wrong.