Episode 638: Heinrich Himmler Part II - The Reich Stuff

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left: Episode 638

Heinrich Himmler Part II - The Reich Stuff

Date: October 10, 2025
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, Ed Larson

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Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the life and mind of Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazi SS and one of the most terrifying, bizarre, and obsessive figures in the Third Reich. The hosts trace Himmler’s early failures, occult interests, and path to power, analyzing how his personal obsessions shaped the deadly Nazi bureaucracy. They blend sharp, irreverent humor with historical insight, revealing the roots and rise of Himmler’s influence in both chilling and absurd detail.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Himmler After the Failed Putsch (04:05–10:20)

• Following Hitler’s failed 1923 coup, Himmler’s life bottoms out.
• He becomes an unemployed, isolated extremist, entrenched in the volkish (folkish) movement, obsessed with racial purity and land-based German myths.
• The parallels between radicalization then and now are drawn, especially the echo chamber effect and culture of blame.
  • Quote: “When a movement is founded on hate and blame, it becomes baked into every decision that movement makes… the hate becomes exponentially larger and more intense as time goes on.” —Marcus Parks (10:18)

2. The Nazi Occultism Myth—Reality and Exaggeration (15:00–20:30)

• Himmler’s obsession with the occult is explored. He wasn’t practicing ritual magic but was deeply into pseudoscience, fake history, and esoterica.
• The hosts distinguish sensational stories ("Indiana Jones stuff") from genuine, insidious myth-making inside Nazism, where pseudo-history justified policies and created Nazi “universe building.”
  • Quote: “This is about universe building. It's world building... to create a body of work that stands behind Nazism... You use that as the line from the beginning of your new culture.” —Marcus Parks (16:52)
• Occult beliefs provided legitimacy and coherence to Nazi ideology, especially for the SS.

3. Constructing the "Aryan" Myth and Nazi Worldview (23:15–32:00)

• The concept of Aryans, with historical roots in bad 18th and 19th-century linguistics and volkish grifters, is detailed—tying together pseudo-history, anti-Christian sentiment, and nationalist longing.
  • Cites Alfred Rosenberg’s book, The Myth of the 20th Century, and its effect.
  • Nazis portrayed Jesus as non-Jewish and Christian philosophy as “stolen” Aryan wisdom.
  • Nazi ideology sees life as a mythic struggle between the “honor of a knight” and the “weakness of love.”

4. Mein Kampf: Its Impact and Parallels (30:03–34:57, 36:00–38:32)

• Mein Kampf as a manifesto echoes beliefs Himmler already held—he finds community in it, not inspiration.
• Hitler’s book is explored for its tediousness, paranoia, and myth-mongering.
  • Quote: “Himmler loved [Mein Kampf] because it was proof that there were plenty of other people out there who thought exactly the same way that Himmler did.” —Ed Larson (32:46)
• The creepiness of “white people built civilization” rhetoric then and now is dissected.

5. Building Nazi Institutions and Bureaucracy (56:05–1:10:45)

• Himmler’s rise: Returns to the Nazi party with “gifts” (local goons). Initially stuck with admin work—but that’s his zone of genius.
  • Quote: “Hate ain't hitting the table unless somebody fills out the Excel sheets.” —Marcus Parks (59:51)
• His failed career as a chicken farmer lampooned; parallels drawn between his agricultural and genocidal fantasies.
• The obsession with paperwork, inventory, and administrative detail is linked directly to the efficiency of the Holocaust.

6. Formation of the SS and Nazi Racial Institutions (1:12:19–1:38:00)

• Himmler is given command of the fledgling SS, which he shapes as the Nazi “knightly” order—distinct from the chaotic, street-level SA (Stormtroopers).
• Establishes the SS as an occult-driven elite, crafting their mythos around Hyperborea and the Holy Grail.
• Implements eugenics, strict racial criteria, and conformity—obsessed with uniforms, visual branding (Himmler designs the famous black SS uniform himself), and internal policing.
  • Quote: “Himmler actually knew the power of branding and especially the power of conformity.” —Ed Larson (96:17)

7. Nazification, Bureaucratic Cruelty & Expansion (1:39:39–1:56:00)

• Himmler builds a new Nazi aristocracy, tightly knit and poised for the seizure and exercise of real state power.
• The process of “Nazification”—turning all of German society into a reflection of SS discipline and values—described as a relentless, boiling-frog transformation.
• Discusses how Nazi ideas infiltrated government and daily life, sometimes through “faux pas” and social pressure rather than laws.
• Parallels drawn to modern “corporate” takeover by unqualified but administratively savvy operators.

8. Seizure of Power, Reichstag Fire & Dachau (2:03:12–2:08:00)

• The Nazis use electoral gains and the 1933 Reichstag fire (arson, then spun as a communist plot) to orchestrate Hitler’s rise to chancellor and unleash a reign of violence.
• Founding of Dachau concentration camp as a “pit of despair,” with Himmler as its architect.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I feel like a lot of this could have been stopped by one well-placed older black woman named Hermler just giving a withering look to the Nazis.” —Marcus Parks (02:36)
• “Nazis love merch... the power of creating group iconography is so powerful.” —Marcus Parks (11:24)
• “Heinz Himmler’s Entirely Unreasonable and Strict Rules for Proper Living—world’s worst self-help book.” —Henry Zebrowski (12:13)
• “He’s a power scavenger. Himmler knew how to set up rules so other people would be sure to break them—then he could rise.” —Marcus Parks (72:45)
• “The SS is just a guy. The SS are not soldiers. They’re just men in uniform.” —Ed Larson (66:46)
• “He might not have an Aryan body but he has a Nordic brain.” —Marcus Parks (101:31)
• “Be careful what you pretend to be. The problem with pretending to be a monster is that both the pretender and the believer end up in the exact same spot.” —Ed Larson (111:55)

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Timeline of Key Segments

• [01:01] Show start and tone-setting Nazi jokes
• [04:05] Himmler’s life post-putsch, radicalization, volkish influences
• [10:20] Analysis of how hate-based movements escalate and reflect online radicalization
• [15:00] The Nazi occult myth: Pseudoscience vs. Indiana Jones
• [23:15] Aryan mythmaking, Christian reinterpretation, The Myth of the 20th Century
• [30:03] Mein Kampf's impact and laughably bad writing
• [36:00] Hitler and Himmler’s intellectual kinship, Himmler not “inspired” but vindicated by Mein Kampf
• [56:05] Himmler’s return, bureaucracy, and admin genius
• [66:39] Early SS, occult foundation, Himmler as designer of Nazi imagery
• [79:56] Himmler’s personal life: marriage, prudishness, home life
• [82:29] Adolf Hitler’s slow path to power, political context
• [104:26] Nazi adoption of American eugenics, SS family policies
• [109:23] Nazification of German society, the pressure to conform
• [120:13] How Nazis enter government: coalition, manipulation by elites
• [124:33] The Reichstag fire: myth vs. fact, Nazi opportunism
• [127:11] Creation of Dachau, the birth of the concentration camp system

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Overall Tone and Approach

• The episode balances the absurdity and horror of Nazi beliefs with irreverent, dark humor, without minimizing the scale or seriousness of Nazi crimes.
• The hosts puncture myths and pop culture exaggerations (e.g., Nazi occultism as “magic”) to focus on the bureaucratic, obsessive, and fundamentally human roots of Nazi evil.
• Frequent asides and jokes maintain the show’s trademark style, but cutting historical analysis and warnings about the legacy of fascism and modern parallels are front and center.

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For First-Time Listeners/Those Who Haven’t Heard

This episode delivers an in-depth, historically grounded yet irreverent portrait of how Heinrich Himmler—a failed nobody obsessed with rules, myths, and paperwork—became the architect of Nazi terror. The hosts show how Himmler’s blend of personal inadequacy, occult fantasy, and administrative obsession created the machine of the SS and, by extension, the Holocaust. The parallels to contemporary radicalization, conspiracy culture, and the dangers of bureaucracy in evil hands are frequently, pointedly brought up.

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Suggested Next Episode

Part III (“The Birth of the Camps”) is teased as a deeper look into Dachau and the escalation from hateful fantasies to industrial murder.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

There's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

That's when the cannibalism started.

[Ed Larson]

What was that?

[Marcus Parks]

Today's episode, I want to dedicate to the Saudi Arabian royalty and I want to dedicate it to them because we've been working so hard and I just want to make them laugh so bad.

[Ed Larson]

So do I.

[Marcus Parks]

And I feel like this series, I.

[Ed Larson]

Want to make all 12 people in that audience laugh.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, there were no. There was like several thousand. They were put there. They were placed there at gunpoint. But these guys, like, what's nice is, is that like this, these. Maybe if we show them this series. Yeah, they'll like. I don't know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

To honor the Saudi Arabians, I just destroyed a bunch of solar panels.

[Ed Larson]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Nor.

[Marcus Parks]

That's actually really good idea. I do plan to spray some gasoline on the street later on.

[Ed Larson]

We. Welcome to the last podcast on the left. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the highly ambitious Henry Zabrowski.

[Marcus Parks]

Very ambitious. Invite me, royal family. I can't wait to dance in a cage for you.

[Ed Larson]

I would say the equally ambitious Ed Larson. Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Arabian Nights.

[Ed Larson]

I'm ready for you.

[Marcus Parks]

Before we begin today, Marcus, I wanted to pitch this thing at you.

[Ed Larson]

Please.

[Marcus Parks]

Which is a thought I've been having. We've been watching hours and hours and hours and hours of Nazi footage. You want to get slaves deep into it.

[Ed Larson]

No, no.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, what a hassle. I don't even know what to tell our employees to do, man. Yeah, now. But I was thinking about this, about how I feel like a lot of all of this could have been stopped by one well placed older black woman named Hermler that could be insinuated in these various circumstances and just say, like, oh, no, like to the Nazis And I think that if there was a withering look of an el. I think the withered look of an older black woman at Himmler's going like, have you ever had collard greens like at him? And he would just be like, I have never tried something's most beautiful delicious foods in all of my life.

[Ed Larson]

So you thought about it, but not very hard.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I mean, just drop her in there. I've been playing Hermler. Every single time I watch one of these documentaries, I just go, oh child. Every single time Himler says something, I go, no, no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But by the end there, he didn't have any hair for her to run her fingers through or anything, you know, so it might not have worked on him.

[Marcus Parks]

Himler does not exist in a world that contains biscuits and gravy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, know the gravy. You can't have the biscuits.

[Marcus Parks]

You could have Soul food changes Nazi Germany.

[Ed Larson]

All right, it's the worst take I've ever heard, but let's move on.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, why don't we just keep rolling with that him.

[Ed Larson]

So when we last left Heinrich Himmler, the year was 1924.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, so nice.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, 1924 seems like a fun year. Adolf Hitler's attempted coup to take control of the Bavarian government with 3,000 of the Nazis had failed. And as a result, Hitler had been sentenced to a meager sentence of five years in jail. And Germany's Weimar Republic had explicitly banned the Nazi party.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, they were cancelled.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Now, after the failed putsch, Heinrich Himmler's life was at its lowest point thus far. His supposed destiny of becoming a military officer fighting for Germany's glory seemed as if it would not come to pass because Germany would never return to its former military dominance as long as the Weimar Republic was the law of the land. And of course, if there was no military to clear away the so called undesirables of Eastern Europe, then Himmler's dreams of being a warrior, farmer, settler in a faraway land. A fantasy inspired by various extreme right wing volkish writers that would not come to pass either. As it was, Himmler was just another unemployed Weimar Germany goon in his mid-20s that nobody would hire because he was a hateful person with demonstrable and public connections to odorous organizations. Organizations who were already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people through gang violence.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What a bunch of pushies. That's funny.

[Ed Larson]

One of the few German words that I just can't say for some reason.

[Marcus Parks]

But you know, it's just hard because he's organized. Doesn't that mean anything?

[Ed Larson]

I. Yeah, it does.

[Marcus Parks]

Doesn't that mean anything in this fucking country?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, thank. I love paperwork.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it's true. You know what also I realized about the volkish movement that I did, I forgot about was all the nudism.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they were super loved it.

[Marcus Parks]

All the volkish writers a part of it. With the getting back to the country or getting back. There's all this pastoral view, view of the former Germanic lifestyle. A lot of involved sun rituals, which was like getting naked and showing your butthole. Not even. This is not even a joke. Showing your butthole to the sun as like a part of a magical reason. And like, that's all they were doing. So he was just flipping through magazines of fat men, dick out in canoes, just like being like, that's the life, you know?

[Henry Zebrowski]

But have you tried it?

[Marcus Parks]

No, I mean, I haven't. I don't. I don't want to get splinters.

[Ed Larson]

You know, and that's stuff like. It's weird how these things, these little things show up again and again throughout, like the Nazi reign, like in certain parts of their propaganda. Like, you know, Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will that she, you know, Triumph of the Will was her massive propaganda film about the Nuremberg rallies. But she also did a film about the 1936 Olympics. Was it 36, called like Olympia or Olympiad or something like that. And it's just full of these like nudes of German men, German women. Actually she herself appears nude in the movie. But yeah, it's all about this.

[Marcus Parks]

I know I jerked off to it.

[Ed Larson]

Andrew Zabrowski going on record saying, I've masturbated Delaney, Riefenstah.

[Marcus Parks]

It was an experiment I was researching for the show.

[Henry Zebrowski]

J Off is also in the movie as well.

[Ed Larson]

Even though the Nazi party was explicitly banned from participating in German politics, Himmler continued working for them by acting as a courier between Nazi members.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he became like a fucking a pa. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Himmler also fell deeper into the aforementioned Volkish movement, who held a lot of power in the local Bavarian government. As a member of the volkish street team, so to speak, Himmler gave public speeches in which he preached the movement's ethno nationalist beliefs. And he openly pontificated in the foulest ways possible about the so called Jewish question. But because he was unemployed, Himmler was forced to move back in with his.

[Marcus Parks]

Parents in Munich, which honestly happens a lot after public speeches is about the Jewish question.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Jewish question was, are you gonna finish that?

[Marcus Parks]

And the answer is of Course I am.

[Ed Larson]

Where can I get a good nosh? Yeah, that's the Jewish question.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you met my son Isaac?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You didn't keep the receipt.

[Ed Larson]

Again, we must. Edward is Jewish. Well, after he moved in with his parents, he joined a small Nazi group in Lower Bavaria. That was, for lack of a better term, keeping the dream alive. While Hitler was in jail, isolated and humiliated, Himmler fell into a paranoid depression, Believing that people were opening his mail, he became increasingly arrogant and irritated at the entire world, convinced that he was the only person who knew the quote, unquote, right way of doing things. Bored and angry, Himmler began sticking his nose into the affairs of others without invitation. This, of course, only further ostracized him from polite society, which pushed Himmler more and more to the arms of his fellow socially inept Nazi buddies, who had many of the same complaints about how the world worked as Himmler.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what these guys needed? PewDiePie. This is a big deal. I feel like Nazis. Another thing that really could have. I don't know where it would have taken them, but they would have loved YouTube.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Oh, my God, loved. I mean, I see that. The parallels. We'll get into it here in a bit, but the parallels between the rabbit holes that Heinrich Himmler fell down and the rabbit holes that people today fall down.

[Marcus Parks]

Anders Breivik.

[Ed Larson]

It's the same fucking shit. It's the. It's the same ideas, it's just delivered in a different medium. And that's the thing is, while we think about Himmler as some sort of like mastermind from the very beginning, he actually joined the Nazi party from pretty much the same station as many of the started from the bottom.

[Marcus Parks]

Now we're here, all the Nazis are here. I think I did that in the last time with this.

[Ed Larson]

I think you did.

[Marcus Parks]

I think it's the same joke.

[Ed Larson]

I think that's when that song was new.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, it's offensive because Drake is Jewish.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a lot older.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Himmler, like many early Nazis, was a young man who couldn't find work, which is a legitimate complaint that really does affect one's quality of life and one's self esteem. But the special sauce that made these young men into Nazis is that they chose a path where someone had to be blamed and someone had to be hated for their lot in life. See, when a movement is founded on hate and blame, it becomes baked into every decision that movement makes. Furthermore, the hate becomes exponentially larger and more intense as time goes on. Basically, this is how we get from, hey, why Is that brown person using food stamps when they have an iPhone to Alligator Alcatraz.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, man, I fucking hate the term alligator Alcatraz. It's too cool. It's the Everglades camp. I know. Like, you have to like tell people like, you know, so they understand. But like alligator, it's like if they're selling T shirts of it and go fuck itself, it doesn't matter.

[Marcus Parks]

It's an empty fucking swamp right now that they get filled back up, bro.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Don't worry about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I know.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's. It's so. I mean, that's. It's not like Himmler was selling Dachau.

[Marcus Parks]

Shirts, but hey, he's definitely left money on the table. Nazis love merch. They don't even deny. Don't even do Nazis love merch. Merch is one of those things that. This is one of the. When we talk about occultism too, later on in this episode, this is like, it sounds like a bit, but the idea of creating a group iconography is so powerful. Yes. And it's hard to describe how powerful it is because you don't really. Those of us that are not in that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't understand it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also, like, the overhead on our bands is very low.

[Marcus Parks]

Super low.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You can make a lot of money on those.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Tell me about it. Honestly, Rob, write it down.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, we need some pentagram.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you so much. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Even though Heinrich Himmler was in his loser era, he did briefly become engaged to the daughter of a banker while he was still living with his parents. The relationship, however, inevitably crumbled because of Heinrich Himmler's entirely unreasonable and strict rules for Proper Living, which sounds like the world's worst self help book. Come to my signings this Saturday for Heinrich Himler's Entirely Unreasonable and Strict Rules for Proper Living.

[Marcus Parks]

Excellent. I'm an unreasonable person and I hate living without rules.

[Ed Larson]

Then you must come and me and have fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Rule me. Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How many rules do you have to have to chase away a banker?

[Marcus Parks]

Banker's daughter. Supple, big titted bankers banker's daughter. You know how they make old money bags? Yeah. They make those old girls.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Himmler placed all the blame for the relationship's failure on his fiance. Because she was apparently too friendly towards another man. Himmler declared that she had, in his words, failed the test.

[Marcus Parks]

You are the weakest link.

[Ed Larson]

Making the matter even more embarrassing is that Himler was too chicken shit to break off the engagement himself. Instead, Himmler had his father write a letter to his fiance's parents. Telling them to tell her that the engagement was off.

[Marcus Parks]

And you make sure that you put in there said, I think that she was rude and crude and lewd and I just, oh, I hate her, daddy. I hate that there are sex. Why do they always lie to us? Deadims.

[Ed Larson]

But even after Himmler broke it off, he still couldn't let it go. He was determined to find damaging material that would further prove his point that she was unsuitable. So he actually hired a private private detective to follow his now ex fiance. The PI of course, found nothing. But when word got out that Himmler was harassing this poor woman, it only served to ostracize him further from normal society. Himmler, of course, blamed this further isolation on his ex fiance. Because it seems like the central personality trait of a fascist is to blame everyone but yourself for your problems.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, because you know why? If you're the problem, that means you gotta fix you. No, and the thing is, is that it's super hard, but it's much easier just attack people randomly. It's so much easier to just attack and attack and attack and attack.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, just give in to the anger and let that take you away.

[Marcus Parks]

You just gotta not feel anything. As long as you don't have any feelings, then it's actually a great way to live. And it always works because nobody wants to deal with you. And so a lot of times they just push you along and a lot more than often push you up.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, get out of here.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But for Himmler, he would have to get someone to attack for him because he would probably lose the fight to the woman.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yes. Oh, a woman would have beat him to death. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

And so what's an unemployed loser who lives with his parents to do after a relationship goes bad? Well, like many others, Heinrich Himmler dove down twin rabbit holes that are still warping the brains of young men today. He of course, tripled down on the right wing extremist ideology. But he alternated the anti Semitic and highly nationalist dogma being spewed by so many Germans at the time with what else but the occult? In short order, Himmler began saturating himself with books about astrology, hypnosis, spiritualism and telepathy, amongst other topics. Now, Himmler's occult obsessions are an interesting wrinkle in the Nazi story. Some historians have made the occult Nazi angle the focus of everything.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, because that's interesting. Oh yeah, it's Indiana Jones. Oh, of course.

[Ed Larson]

No. Well, it's how you sell books. Like if you say the motivations for the Founding of the party to the military decisions Hitler made during World War II. If you say all of that was because they were doing rituals and castles and it was all this secret that it makes for a very cool story.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. With the Spear of Destiny.

[Ed Larson]

The Spear of. Trevor Ravenscroft was the big guy who was into it.

[Marcus Parks]

But I actually find that a very interesting smokescreen for why they did what they did. I. I feel like. Well, talk about it here, too. Because you say like, it's true, then some people just don't talk about it at all.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Others treat it is. If even mentioning the occult is going to lose them any and all credibility.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it makes you not, quote, unquote, not serious.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Makes you not serious. So they ignore the occult angle completely. They claim that it had nothing to do with Nazi Germany. But the truth is, of course, somewhere in between. Because while Adolf Hitler may not have been on the quest for the Spear of Destiny, many of Heinrich Himmler's decisions and beliefs were informed by his occult studies.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not even just his decisions and beliefs. It's literally what he realized you needed to build. This is universe building.

[Ed Larson]

This is about universe building.

[Marcus Parks]

It's world building. The whole point of this is to create a body of work that stands behind Nazism, that appears to be outside of Nazism, that happens to validate what's inside of Nazism very much. And then you use that as a line from the beginning of your new culture. Because Germany at the time is a new coalescing, like, national culture.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And you're trying to find out what's the vibe.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I mean, like, what's the vibe? So a bunch of guys that are in there at the very beginning of this are all talking about, what's the vibe here?

[Ed Larson]

What are we doing here? What are we doing?

[Marcus Parks]

We're going to be. We're nomadic warriors. Germanic people were hunted back and forth by the Christian state. Right. Like, they were literally the entire Holy Roman Empire after the fact. Like, just fuck them up again and again and again. They took our cities.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

They hate Christianity. They deeply, deeply, deeply hate Christianity. But they still know you need something with that kind of skeletal frame that needs to be there for people to believe in you. So they wanted to believe in. They wanted to. Himmler started to understand we have to create something that is our Christianity.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And he's not just creating it for other people to believe in. He's creating it for himself to believe.

[Marcus Parks]

In and for the country to believe in. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But the important thing to know About Himmler's so called occult studies is that he wasn't like studying right hand path magic and performing rituals to summon entities like Alistair Crowley or Jack Parsons, which I think is where everyone's mind goes when they hear the word occult. Instead, Himmler's occult studies were more in the realm of pseudo history and pseudoscience put into modern terms. Himmler would have been far more interested in watching ancient aliens and following influencers who have wild, vague theories about mysterious energies than he would in doing anything practical. Like he wouldn't join a Wiccan study group at a local occult bookstore, for example.

[Marcus Parks]

No, because honestly, because a lot of times they'll celebrate Hanukkah, you know what I mean? They do a lot of stuff. Wiccans, it's always like a. Always celebrate, you know, they always teach everybody everything.

[Ed Larson]

No, he's, I mean he's on the very dark side of this stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not, it will give me my time.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's like the ancient alien stuff. It's, you know, the complaint about the ancient alien stuff has always been deeply racist. It's deeply racist because it's saying like, well, these people couldn't possibly have done this on their own. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And you don't realize that you could. If you throw thousands of art and artisan slaves at something and you don't have any sort of like workers rights or any form of like kind of unions or anything like that in that way, then it's much easier to build those giant things.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They also had thousands of years to do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they had a very long time to do it. And also it's not like they needed to go home and like catch the latest episode of 90 Day Fiance.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, though, God, I wish they had. I wish they had. 90 day.

[Ed Larson]

90 day.

[Marcus Parks]

Calm down, calm down.

[Ed Larson]

But even so, with, with Himmler, it's not like he would watch ancient aliens and think it's aliens. He would watch ancient aliens and think, oh, that's white people that did that. For example, Himmler was absolutely obsessed with the Great Pyramid of Egypt because he believed that it contained all forms of occult knowledge from various ancient civilizations. Civilizations that were all begun by the Aryan race, basically. Himmler believed that the proof for all of his wacky theories about Aryan domination, these were always just out of reach. They were always in the next place.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And if he could just read enough books and eventually investigate enough locations, he would finally discover that secret that's out there somewhere that would finally confirm all of his beliefs.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dude, it's so Indiana Jones.

[Ed Larson]

It is.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But I love how much because he did his homework. Another thing I noticed, like, is such a nerd side thing, but, like, Raven's Cross. The guy who, like, did the Spear Destiny thing. Mary. That's supposed to be Marion's father.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because she's Ravenswood. And so, like. And then that's why he's looking for the Spear of Destiny and stuff like that. So, like, it's like they just change the end of the name a little bit.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, my God.

[Marcus Parks]

Fascinating, because. No, but that's true. But it's, it's, it's works because it gives them extra zhuzh. It gives them an extra edge. It gives them something to be frightened of. If the Nazis are powered by ancient, unrecognizable German gods, then you can't beat them, right? That's the idea.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, Himmler was certainly not alone in his beliefs that the Aryan race had created all of civilization. In fact, spirituality in general was incredibly confused and confusing in Germany during the mid to late 1920s. See, one of the interesting things about German and Nordic people when it comes to Christianity is that a lot of them never quite bought into the religion in the way that, say, the Italians or the English did. Like, you never heard of it. Like, have you ever heard of a, like, oh, I'm German Catholic. That doesn't exist. And all you have to do is you want to see how the Nordic people never quite got into Christianity. Look at the fucking murderous Norwegian black metal scene in the early 90s. That's what all that was about. Burning down churches in order to bring back the Nordic gods. And they got a lot of followers.

[Marcus Parks]

All they remembered about Christianity is how you fucking chased us around the woods.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

For hundreds of years.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And drowned us all that. But the reason why Christianity never fully caught on is because the Germanic people hadn't quite let go of their pagan roots. They once had a whole pantheon of powerful gods, and many Germans saw their medieval ancestors as almost godlike themselves.

[Marcus Parks]

They talked to their ancestors. They were close with their ancestors, and they viewed that as their own. Like, families almost had their own personal religiosities.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I mean, where it was like, almost like your line was way more important than a nuxter. Your God or heaven.

[Ed Larson]

Very much so. So when writers like Alfred Rosenberg of the aforementioned Thule Society began releasing books that rewrote history from an exclusively white person perspective, a lot of Germans like Heinrich Himmler saw it as a confirmation of what they already Secretly suspected. And they therefore added these claims to their own view of the universe.

[Marcus Parks]

It's all creating things that looks like they're accidentally there. It all. It's like this idea that. No, it was always validated.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yep. Now, in his bestselling book, the Myth of the 20th century, Alfred Rosenberg claimed that the origins of Christianity were simply a philosophical interpretation of the eternal laws of the Aryans. Whoa. Those laws predated all other religions.

[Marcus Parks]

Who wrote those laws then?

[Ed Larson]

The Arians.

[Marcus Parks]

But before them, I don't know who did it before. What happens next.

[Ed Larson]

The Arians were the first. The Arians were the first. They had to. Someone had to be the first. And this guy said the Aryans were the first.

[Marcus Parks]

So I'm just asking questions.

[Ed Larson]

By Rosenberg's reading of history, Jesus was either Syrian or Roman. Anything but Jewish.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No way he ever said that or anything. Being a rabbi or anything.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but that didn't really even matter because every bit of Christian dogma had been stolen from Eastern religions anyway and melded with evil black magic. But besides the pseudo history, Rosenberg also suffused his book with philosophy. He only reinforced Heinrich Himmler's ideas that humanism was a dead end. Preaching that life was nothing more than an internal battle between the heavenly honor of a knight and the effeminate weakness of love.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I ain't heard no lies yet. Yeah, I know how that dog walks.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's you all over. Gallantry, knighthood.

[Marcus Parks]

That's constantly fighting the two wolves in me. Is that the knight that fights for honor and the evil, wicked poet that yearns for love?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Stupid ass.

[Marcus Parks]

Hate that guy. I wanna fight Mazda.

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[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

How about that?

[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

But while Himmler was immersing himself in books about occult pseudo history at his parents house.

[Marcus Parks]

Shut up. I'm trying to read. Mom, you listening to the clock and spill too loud. Don't you Know that we come from the ancient gods of the orientation. Not going to be able to figure out where Atlantis is if the cuckoo clock keeps going off every 10 hours. Heinrich, I just want to say we are so happy to have you home and it's been so wonderful. But we do wish, me and your father wish that you would go get a job for you would maybe make some friends.

[Ed Larson]

I do have a job, Mom. I'm a researcher.

[Marcus Parks]

I know that you're very important, very important. But if you could do something that was real, you know, right now you're.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Starting to look like the potato salad.

[Marcus Parks]

So father and I realized you look like a prairie dog covered UN.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Shit.

[Ed Larson]

Going to send my mother to the concentration. Well, while he was doing all that, Adolf Hitler was in jail writing a book of his own. A book that would incorporate many of the same ideas, but in a far subtler way.

[Marcus Parks]

I can see him writing loudly, just.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yelling while he writes. Well, it gets written in all caps.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Mein Kampf, technically, there was a rumor for many years that he would dictate it and someone would write it. But now we're like, no, no, no, he wrote it himself.

[Ed Larson]

See, after the coup, Hitler wasn't sent to prison for five years so much as he was held in a building for nine months.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeffrey Epstein.

[Ed Larson]

The cushy treatment he received from Nazi sympathizers enabled write the foundational text of Nazism, the infamous Mein Kampf. Or in English, my Struggle.

[Marcus Parks]

My struggles. Oh, no. I was trying to get out of the bath, but I'm too slippery for Mommy's soap.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Another one of my struggles is a regular Adolf Mandela.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I was trying to put my pants on earlier, but my hands are numb. I guess it was because my. My shirt's too tight. Another struggle of mine. They took away my second pillow. Actually, you know something I've learned too? Mine. Kumph. Kumph.

[Ed Larson]

Kumpf.

[Marcus Parks]

Koomph.

[Ed Larson]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, it sounds like a silencer.

[Ed Larson]

It is now. My Struggle is an incredibly whiny title.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's my struggle.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Every time I have a problem shitting.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm like, my struggle. I gotta make a moral. Oh, I didn't drink enough water yesterday.

[Ed Larson]

And now my poop's too hard and big.

[Marcus Parks]

My Struggle.

[Ed Larson]

But it's far better than what Hitler originally wanted to call it. He wanted to call it, which is.

[Marcus Parks]

Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity und Cowards.

[Ed Larson]

This not a snappy title.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, yeah, it's like, whatever. Wrong.

[Ed Larson]

Hitler's publisher, however, a Nazi named Max Aman.

[Marcus Parks]

Think about that. He had a publisher and an editor. They're all like Hitler, you know, like having to deal with him.

[Ed Larson]

This guy, he also operated as the Nazis first business manager. He's also the guy that's telling hills like, huh. Really? The overhead on armbands is a little higher than you think it is.

[Marcus Parks]

Think about this. Do we really need two custom Mercedes?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What if we just made it one s?

[Marcus Parks]

Think about how much you'll save. Think about how you say that's just one rune. That's one rune you have. Yeah, the rune market's insane right now.

[Ed Larson]

Well, he talked Hitler into the much snappier title that we know today. Mein Kampf. Kampf. And of course one of the people who absolutely adored Mein Kampf was Heinrich Himmler. But not because Hitler was saying anything new. Personally, I think Himmler loved it because it was proof that there were plenty of other people out there who thought exactly the same way that Himmler did.

[Marcus Parks]

He was just looking for the other ones. Yeah, and that was the thing. He. We talked about this. He's not inspired by Hitler. He was already there.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, he was there long before.

[Marcus Parks]

I too also struggle here. I do not like things to be reason. I do not like things to be not a hassle.

[Ed Larson]

It's just, you know, when you go through life with a head like this potato head, you just, you don't think of the struggles.

[Marcus Parks]

The more you point out to a potato I get, the more realize it's a Aryan blood and you was fan.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The struggle was getting out of the Leader Hosen every time.

[Marcus Parks]

It's leather, dude. You ever been in real Leader Hosen? No, I haven't.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know you have.

[Marcus Parks]

They're hard to wear. They're heavy. It's like being inside of a boa constrictor. They should be made for. They should be honestly more giving because it's for big gutted men and big titted women.

[Ed Larson]

Any other thoughts?

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know, it's just my podcast.

[Ed Larson]

Sounds like leader sounds like it's your struggle. Even though the publisher of Mein Kampf was a Nazi, he had still expected a racy personal story from Hitler when he offered to publish his book.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the thing. He literally thought this is. It's I love this breakdown. He thought that Hitler was going to write a spicy insider's view of the beer hall pooch.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he thought he was at the very least going a dish. Like, what's the inside story? How did it all go down?

[Marcus Parks]

Tell me, what were you wearing that night? You know, like, stuff like that. They literally thought they was going to be all. Because they never thought that the Nazis were going to come back. They thought it was over. They thought this whole thing was done.

[Ed Larson]

But, I mean, this guy was still a Nazi. Like, he was a Nazi Nazi.

[Marcus Parks]

But at this point, they're still super uncomfortable with being the Bad News Bears, right? They're super like, we. We are. We are underdogs. And we, like, everybody knows everybody. Roots for Zeon's dog and V's.

[Ed Larson]

The we like that.

[Marcus Parks]

We, you know, we're. We're a fun band of rapscallions.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but Hitler didn't either. He didn't even mention the very thing he was in prison for doing, the thing that had made him infamous. Instead, Mein Kampf is more about how Hitler used to be. Totally reasonable, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Someone. You might even call him a liberal.

[Marcus Parks]

Whoa. Yeah, you. That guy Hitler, when I first met him, I thought he was from San Francisco. What happened?

[Ed Larson]

The Jews.

[Marcus Parks]

Every fucking time. We should never let them in San Francisco.

[Ed Larson]

He ran afoul of the Zeju, covering a wide range of topics that nobody but other Nazis would find interesting. Hitler ranted for nearly 800 pages about imagined Jewish and communist global conspiracies, along with the need to destroy France and the Soviet Union so Germany had room to grow. Lebensraumsraum.

[Henry Zebrowski]

800 pages.

[Marcus Parks]

800.

[Ed Larson]

800.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you ever tried to read it? No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Why would I do that? I have no reason to. Read my comments.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what's funny is that I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I got a feeling I know what's in there.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude. The center fold.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Nice.

[Marcus Parks]

Ava Braun.

[Ed Larson]

I'd read it.

[Marcus Parks]

Nipples out.

[Ed Larson]

I'd read it, but I. It got spoiled for me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I got. I have all the spoilers now. Himmler, of course, loved all the. About the global conspiracies in the Lebens realm. But the parts that really caught his attention, all of Hitler's nods to the pseudo histories that Himmler was reading about how ancient Aryans were responsible for everything modern humankind enjoyed and that all humanity forever lay in their debt. But what's important about this is that Hitler is not coming out and saying this stuff so explicitly. And he's not going into all the theory. He's just saying it. He's just putting the ideas out there.

[Marcus Parks]

Because he doesn't really know. You know what I mean?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Hitler, Hitler. We have to remember, Hitler was.

[Ed Larson]

Well, he. He's reading the same books as Himmler. And actually Himmler's like It's like, what is Hitler's reading list? I want that. And he actually did get a copy of Hitler's reading list and he read all the same books that Hitler did.

[Marcus Parks]

Was it on his Patreon? Because we have ours in our patreon. Go to patreon.com last podcast and you can get your own Mein Kampf reading list. Wait, no, not just that one, but no, he Hitler. I still feel like again, it's why we're now realizing that Himmler is the Nazi of all Nazis.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He is.

[Ed Larson]

He's top Nazi. There had to be one.

[Marcus Parks]

Even Hitler had an idea of like, we got to set this thing. Yeah, we got to set us this thing. This whole thing's about presentation. We can't immediately do this. We can't immediately go into all this folklore. Like they know they can't do that.

[Ed Larson]

Oh yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And so he's just kind of like. Like the one way certain someone does where it just kind of says stuff that he's vaguely familiar with because he knows it rings true with a bunch of people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. You let other people pick it up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I. I messed up. You know, it's. I feel bad that. Can you ask me if I read minecampf again?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Have you read minecomf?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I struggle to get through it.

[Marcus Parks]

You've been thinking about this this whole time. Didn't listen to a goddamn.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can check back into the to you now, Marcus. Where are we?

[Marcus Parks]

Nice struggles.

[Ed Larson]

Well, the idea that Hitler was putting forth that Aryans were responsible for everything that modern humankind enjoyed. This is exactly the same line of thinking used by certain right wing commentators today. The ones who maintain that white people built modern society. It's the exact same myopic shit Hitler was spewing in 1925. It's just dressed up in a movie. More acceptable package.

[Marcus Parks]

Is it? I actually don't think it is.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean acceptable enough, I guess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do they have the part with the white people killing all the dinosaurs?

[Marcus Parks]

I wish.

[Ed Larson]

The feats is a dinosaurs, but you know, now that I think about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Second is this rabiosaurus.

[Ed Larson]

Think about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Up size. The penis of the devilish brontosaurus.

[Ed Larson]

You know, if there were dinosaurs running around, we wouldn't get anything done.

[Marcus Parks]

You're right. You're right. I'd be chasing them now.

[Ed Larson]

Another concept that Himmler loved in Mein Kampf.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Was the idea of the third Reich. See, according to Hitler, the first so called Reich was the medieval Holy Roman Empire which lasted from the year 800 until 18 oh, six.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Reich.

[Ed Larson]

It's a big. It's the biggest Reich.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the biggest Reich. Now that is like, the idea of, like, that's where all the great guys came.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I mean, this is where Frederick Barbarossa comes from. This is also where, like, Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer. It's where he got a lot of his characters, like Parival, the knight and the villain Klingzor, who becomes a hero just by virtue of being a villain in a Wagner opera.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Am I not allowed to like Wagner anymore?

[Ed Larson]

Oh, you didn't know this about Wagner? Oh, my God.

[Marcus Parks]

You like Wagner specifically.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm a big fan of Apocalypse Now Now.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he got me into it. Listen objectively. The music is incredible. It's amazing.

[Marcus Parks]

It's classic music. It's just. Know what it means. He just tried it. He was a super nationalist. Ah. He was a big old German nationalist, World War I style.

[Ed Larson]

Massive anti. Semite.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Huge.

[Ed Larson]

Huge.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right. I'll have to sell my records back.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I mean, no, honest. I will say. I don't think that that's like. How do we put this? This isn't like Woody Allen movies. You know what I mean? Like, this is a. The classical music of Wagner's style is a part of history.

[Ed Larson]

Right. Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

You put it. You just don't. Don't play it at a bar mitzvah. Just don't play it at Hanukkah. Don't play it. You know, just. It's Yom Kippur today.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right, I'll take it off the list.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly. Yeah. That's the thing is I. I was listening it to this morning, and now. And then I realized I heard the news that it was Yom Kippur. So then I did. Switch it over.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, It's a good idea. It's a good idea.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Switch it over.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Don't even even tell me anything about Carl Orf.

[Ed Larson]

Actually, I know nothing about him. Good. So maybe we're fine. All right. But, yeah, the Vagner.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Pretty iffy.

[Marcus Parks]

It's iffy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Can't believe you're huge Wagner fan. That's the surprise of the episode.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I used to be into classical music, and then I got out of it.

[Ed Larson]

It's not that big of a surprise. Well, for. He likes music of all kinds.

[Marcus Parks]

The idea that he's, like, specifically said out loud into account.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's like, Wagner.

[Marcus Parks]

There's problems with V. Hey. Which I've never even. I didn't even know, you mean.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Please don't say anything bad about Copeland.

[Ed Larson]

I know nothing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good.

[Ed Larson]

I know nothing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Go ahead.

[Ed Larson]

Now, the Second Reich was started in 1871 by Otto von Bismar, who unified Germany into the country we know it as today. And he became Germany's first Chancellor. This Reich was, in Hitler's view, disgustingly and dishonorably ended by the Weimar Republic and the Jews, which had erased Himmler's beloved aristocracy. What Hitler was offering in Mein Kampf, however, was a Third Reich, a Reich that would last for 1,000 years.

[Marcus Parks]

That is a very, very long time.

[Ed Larson]

The Third Reich would do. What else but make Germany great again? And while Hitler never used that as a campaign slogan, he certainly used the first phrase in quite a few speeches in Goring.

[Marcus Parks]

Did. Definitely, absolutely did. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

They did not. It was not an actual. It was not a slogan, but it was used over and over and over again in speeches.

[Henry Zebrowski]

His slogan would have been, when you're right, you're right.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what. But they got rid of all the juice. So they couldn't figure out who. No one could write that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And so. But it's true. Like, that's. That. That was like.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Since it's shivering my spine now.

[Ed Larson]

I think it is extraordinarily important to note that the Nazis were not the only Germans who desired a return to the past. Many average Germans still held up Otto von Bismar as an authoritarian hero because he ignored the law of other German states to do what he thought was best. They wanted a strong leader to come in and tell him what's what.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

In fact, author William Shearer argues that the ideals of democracy, the will of the people and a parliamentary system of government, these never quite took hold in Germany with the Weimar Republic. And of course, because it never really took hold. It's a new. That's a. That was a new thing to them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

It made the Germans far more amenable to Hitler simply seizing power later on. This, of course, is one of the major differences between then and now, because in America, these concepts of freedom are so ingrained in our DNA that I'm only just now waking up to the extent of how much we take them for granted. Granted. This, however, is why I truly do believe that if a big power grab is ever made in this country, and I do mean big. Oh, the big one, it will not work. Most Americans won't stand for it because that sort of. It tends to raise our hackles instinctively. I'm actually going to go ahead and say as a moment of hope here, that after all, The. This administration just pulled with ABC and Jimmy Kimmel, people I know personally who are a little on the fence about everything, they're finally starting to wake the up after 10 goddamn years.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's because they know. They say a lot of up, too. And if they can't say their f. If we. They just start coming after him after.

[Marcus Parks]

They all know that was piddly. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So they're like, oh, man, I say a lot worse stuff than that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Those little. Those little jokes of yours are gonna end up coming around biting you in the ass, and we'll see how it goes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, after Heinrich Himmler, Red Mein Kampf, where all of his own beliefs and ideas were mirrored back to him so perfectly, he became fully convinced that the. Were the creators of human civilization and therefore the only ones capable of keeping it going.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, I also wonder whether or not he believed it or if he understood. That's the line.

[Ed Larson]

He believed it. He.

[Marcus Parks]

Himmler. I. You know, in the end, He. He does for me. He's. I'll always talk about this. I always like the idea of who. How do they keep how much of a foot in and how much a foot out? These guys have. Himmler is standing fully within.

[Ed Larson]

Himmler is a. Himmler is a romantic. Hitler is far more of a cynic than Himmler is.

[Marcus Parks]

But Himmler also knows, even Goebbels is.

[Ed Larson]

More of a cynic.

[Marcus Parks]

But what Himmler knows, not to mention Goring. Yes. History has to win.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

History has to be written. History has to come in. So he also kind of knows, because he's a true believer, he understands that unless it becomes real, it never happened.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So he has to make it all real.

[Ed Larson]

Well, here might be a good place then to talk about where the idea of Aryans actually came from. Because it was not, as is often supposed, Madame Helena Blavatsky, the famous American occultist who first popularized the term. See if you made it through our series on hpb, and thank you very much, if you did, you'll remember.

[Marcus Parks]

It was worth it.

[Ed Larson]

God, we worked so hard on that.

[Marcus Parks]

I read a. A quarter of the Secret Doctrine. Do you have any idea what it's like fighting your way through that horseshit?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's not that secret if you put a book out.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly.

[Ed Larson]

But if you made it through that series, you'll remember that while Blavatsky certainly had some foul racial beliefs, she used the term Aryan to simp classified the current iteration of mankind. For her, Aryans weren't better or worse. They were simply next they were the fifth iteration of humanity out of six, if I remember correctly.

[Marcus Parks]

The key here is we can't entirely not blame hpb. She did write it into the secret doctrine. But there were people that helped this.

[Ed Larson]

Well, there were many other people who said. Who talked about it long before she did, and in far worse ways.

[Marcus Parks]

The secret doctrine was just this little idea. She was trying to run her own grift. Yeah. HPB was the. The secret doctrine was her take on a. A world theory that she was trying to bring forward. That was her proprietary storyline that she.

[Ed Larson]

Ripped off from the Hindus.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. That's what grifters do. But the problem is other grifters started to arise. So a part of this volkish movement, like when that really started, there was a guy by the name of Guido von List.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Who was far more to blame for the Aryan thing than hpb.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a funny looking guy. He's seen him.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You remember that he looks like kind of like Dr. John. Slash the guy that he has like a beret on, like he wears a beret. He looks like. What was that? That French chef Proudhon. He kind of looks like Paul Proudhon. Oh, yeah. And he wrote these series of novels in these books, attaching these thoughts, like this idea of the sea within the secret doctrine to this idea of naming Aryans. And he plucked the Aryans out. And, and he said the way he. The bridge is, is that, yes, Aryans doesn't mean white necessarily or Germanic necessarily, but the Germanic white people have the most Aryan blood within them. So that's the bridge. That's the jump off point that begins all of the rest of the thought, which is very interesting because they just took one guy. It's like, it's white people. And everyone's like, cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just basically because they can handle the cold maybe.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, I do feel like they always talk about that, but the problem is then they always bump up against this thing of. The main issue with all of the greatest, biggest works of humankind is that they're all built in these super hot places by brown people. And so they keep having to figure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Out, well, what do we do about this?

[Marcus Parks]

How do we get white people from here to there?

[Ed Larson]

That's the biggest question. It's like, how do we make it where white people are the sole proprietors of all humanity?

[Marcus Parks]

And you know how he did that? Tied it to Tibet.

[Ed Larson]

Yep. Because that's the thing is that Blavatsky, the only connection she has to the Nazis is that she's the reason why The Nazis later became obsessed with Tibet. If you'll remember, the swastika is a Buddhist symbol. And Blavatsky claimed that the Aryan race had its origins in East Asia.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

So since the Nazis took a piece of everything that even mentioned Aryans and added it to their own belief system, Blavatsky got lumped in with all of the purely repellent writers who use the term Aryan. Those men were of course mostly homegrown white supremacists.

[Marcus Parks]

Also they talked about this idea of which I think is funny, you know that the idea that the original Asians were white. Oh yeah, they became Asian somehow. But the white people there, first they built everything, then became Asian. Then they got super lazy. It's like these are these, understand when you start breaking down the ideas granularly, that's what they amount to, always.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is this how they were able to like rationalize, like becoming allies with the Japanese, Bartley?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah. Because yeah. Cuz literally they are taught, they talk about that used to be us.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's part of it, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

No, and also they just were fun guys and they got along real well and they really, really got along very well.

[Ed Larson]

As far as origins go, the concept of Aryans as blue eyed, blonde haired Germans had been invented in the 1700s by two men with oddly similar names. Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very Jewish names. Every Gottfried and Gottlieb I've ever met is extremely Jewish.

[Marcus Parks]

Because they were German Jew.

[Ed Larson]

No. Who these. Oh, the guys that Edward knows?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. No, these, these guys were not. See, the two Johannes had noticed some linguistic similarities between contemporary Germanic languages and ancient Persian languages.

[Marcus Parks]

They both use letters. What a coincidence.

[Ed Larson]

You ever noticed how they all use the sound?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh my God, everyone's white.

[Ed Larson]

Well, both being extreme nationalists, the two Johannes greatly extrapolated from that coincidence by claiming that northern white Europeans have been the creators of all civilization. And the classification they gave to these Europeans was the Aryans.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, sit down, child. What you mean you're talking about. Talk about all this? You making all this stuff up about my people? Have a piece of pie. Oh, you. Oh, you look so thin. You look so. You just look so pale.

[Ed Larson]

I suppose maybe I could just have some pie.

[Marcus Parks]

You sp. Some sweet tea.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I have been working very hard.

[Ed Larson]

That does sound like. Actually sounds like a very nice drink.

[Marcus Parks]

Now you sit down here. Now let me fix that jacket of yours. Most of the time I spend mended.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

You ever heard of Little Richard?

[Ed Larson]

I Have not. But he sounds very nice.

[Marcus Parks]

Perhaps you're going to love Little Richard.

[Ed Larson]

Sounds very manly.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, he'd be surprised. You'd be surprised.

[Ed Larson]

Now, of course, all of this begs the question as to why it isn't common knowledge that the Aryans created everything. Why everybody doesn't know that white people were the start of every single aspect of civilization.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, why not?

[Ed Larson]

I mean, why is this earth shattering fact been buried over millennia? And more importantly, who?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Marcus, I don't know if I want to know the answer to that.

[Ed Larson]

It's the Jews.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, actually I did know.

[Ed Larson]

Always the answer to everyone.

[Marcus Parks]

Because honestly, how easy is that for them?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They do make the Jews sound extremely successful.

[Ed Larson]

But actually we're going to get into that later.

[Marcus Parks]

Jews are both the most powerful cabal that run everything and they're slimy, pestilent rats that need to be destroyed.

[Ed Larson]

There is an absolute reason behind that which we're going to get into later on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh yeah, and we're going to isolate that and ruin Henry's life.

[Marcus Parks]

We could.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

If we could put that Henry Zabrat like as a quote, that'd be great, honestly. Thank you. If we could send that to our agents, that'd be great.

[Ed Larson]

And make sure they knew he said it on Yom Kippur.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes, I am trying.

[Ed Larson]

The Aryan idea was reawakened in 1919 by the writer Hans Gunther, the author we spoke of last episode, who wrote one of Hemler's favorite books, the Night Death and the Devil. Gunther came up with five human races based on physical, intellectual and emotional traits, and he placed the Aryans on top. Gunther was also a staunch conservative who despised the Weimar Ra Republic. And he believed that the Aryan race was so advanced that they might as well be their own species. Like you wouldn't, like, let a dog be president and expect him to do a good job. Would you?

[Marcus Parks]

Wait a second.

[Ed Larson]

Why would you do that with a Jew?

[Marcus Parks]

Is he guessing about my Air President script that I just wrote where everybody in the government dies except for Airbot and he has to be President of the United States of America and then he goes to war with Iran, but then the guy finds out, he's a good boy and everybody hangs out and it's fine and everybody. And then Iran gets a cat and then they fall in love.

[Ed Larson]

Brilliant. Have you sent that off yet?

[Marcus Parks]

No. Mostly it's all notebook paper. I wrote it. My dookie. Copyright.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I say copyright.

[Marcus Parks]

I got it.

[Ed Larson]

It's mine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I say copyright.

[Marcus Parks]

I say copyright. My struggle. Another struggle.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Golden retrievers. Also the Aryans.

[Ed Larson]

Adults. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Who's the Jew of the dog wolf world? I'm not going to answer that. Excuse the answer.

[Ed Larson]

Stop.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Irish setter.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Guther's books and other romantic tomes in the Vish vein were runaway bestsellers. Many used the central idea that the so called sick and impure races had to be exterminated while the remaining pure blooded Nordic stock must exclusively procreate with the each other. It is, I think important to note that these books outsold Mein Kampf by incredibly large margins. Meaning that there were a lot of people in Germany who dug this stuff even before Hitler amplified it. Henrik Himmler, however, was the one person in Germany who read all this garbage and began giving serious thought as to how one could actually pull all this off. And he started thinking about it long before the Nazis rose to the full height of their powers.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did Himmler ever write a book?

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Those who can't do, teach.

[Marcus Parks]

His diary. Copiously kept diary.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh man, you got a diary now?

[Marcus Parks]

I have a little journal. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The poop diary.

[Marcus Parks]

I do. I am on it. I'm dealing with. No, I'm dealing with a. I'm literally dealing with a doctor right now in which I'm going on this. I'm trying to figure out stuff about my diet and I have to keep a diary of my bowel movements and I have to describe, describe them.

[Ed Larson]

So like stuff like two paragraphs, three.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm shooting for longer. I'm shooting for page two page stuff.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like I sat down to poop. It was just a pee.

[Marcus Parks]

Be back soon. Be back soon. Love you. I love you. Good night.

[Ed Larson]

And then doing PS Ed was so mean to me today.

[Marcus Parks]

My poop looked like a bunch of raisins. Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I never like had any instinct to read anyone's diary, but I would love to get my hands that.

[Marcus Parks]

Dearest Dr. Chris Anthem. How does my poop find you today? I. I hope. Well, the brown today was most surprising. A serene mahogany like an old woman's chair.

[Ed Larson]

You know, I know exactly the poop you're talking about and I feel good every time I see it.

[Marcus Parks]

Every time.

[Ed Larson]

Serene mahogany is the perfect color.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Delicious.

[Marcus Parks]

Like it looks like a chocolate mare.

[Ed Larson]

With a head full of ideas. Ideas. Heinrich Himmler rejoined the main Nazi party officially In August of 1925, just weeks after the publication of Mein Kampf. Himmler brought the lower Bavarian Nazis had been hanging out with while Hitler had been in prison. So he essentially came bearing gifts.

[Marcus Parks]

Whoa. It was a bringer.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but by the time Himmler joined back up, Hitler had been out and about for a while. After spending only nine months in so called jail, the ban on the Nazi party had been lifted and two brothers named Gregor and Otto Strasser were doing everything they could to reconstruct the Nazis into a functioning political party. See, Hitler and his fellow Nazis had realized after the failed coup that the path to power was not through sheer brute force. In order to destroy democracy, they had to first use democracy. And Heinrich Himmler was just the type of stooge to help helped do it. Once he rejoined the Nazis, Himmler began working as a secretary and assistant to Gregor and Otto Strasser. They took a shine to Himmler because one, he owned a motorbike which was super cool and useful.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's fine, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he could type a lot of words a minute.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he could. But more importantly, Gregor and Otto Strasser recognized Himmler's frustrated ambitions to be a soldier, which was certainly something they could use to the party's advantage.

[Marcus Parks]

I went to go boom boom I went to go bing bang boom shoot, shoot, drop and bow oh, wish I could fight my struggles.

[Ed Larson]

But in 1925, Himmler became briefly distracted by his old fantasy of being a warrior farmer. That year, Himmler resigned as Gregor and Otto's secretary to devote time to his brand new chicken farm. This is what, when people describe Himler derogatory in derogatory terms is like. Oh, the chicken farmer. This is what they're talking about.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What was it called? Cluckow.

[Marcus Parks]

Put it on top of the wire. All ye who enter here, abandon all eggs. I actually weirdly think, I mean, this is really fucked up, but I do weirdly think that being a chicken farmer is actually quite similar to the way.

[Ed Larson]

He viewed human beings, beings possibly, I mean, at least viewed human beings that he didn't consider to be Aryan, which is Everybody. Yeah. Now, 1925 is the year that many Nazis found, for lack of a better term, their groove.

[Marcus Parks]

That's groove tonight It's a Nazi night.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And around now they're starting to get their groove back.

[Marcus Parks]

That's groove tonight It's a Nazi night.

[Ed Larson]

Around this time, future propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels found his talent as a speaker. Speaker. And since Goebbels was an upand comer, he ended up replacing Heinrich Himmler as Gregor and Otto Strasser secretary, which put Goebbels in the position to truly shape the Nazi Party's politics.

[Marcus Parks]

Now that guy sucked.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But as it was with the farming apprenticeship, Himmler discovered that being a chicken farmer kind of sucked. What? And Himler had no instincts for agriculture, despite having a degree in the subject.

[Marcus Parks]

None of these chickens respect me. Not a one was. And they all know what they're supposed to do. You're supposed to stick your little wing up. Stick your wing up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All of his chickens only had right wings.

[Marcus Parks]

That's hilarious.

[Ed Larson]

So Himmler's attention slowly began to return to the Nazi party. Before long it was discovered that Heinrich Himmler had an almost uncanny talent for mundane administrative activities and desk work. I. E. The shit that nobody else wanted to do.

[Marcus Parks]

Because what did he really realize? That hate ain't hitting the table unless somebody fills out the Excel sheets.

[Ed Larson]

That's right. Now this admittedly doesn't sound like an exciting turn of events, but it was this talent that enabled Heiner Kemmler to conceptualize, organize and carry out the Holocaust.

[Marcus Parks]

It can't be overstated that it was as organized as it could possibly be.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. That's the reason why we know so much about it is because even though they spent spent weeks trying to get rid of all the documentation. Weeks upon weeks trying to get rid of it. But the thing about something like the Holocaust is that it requires a lot of paperwork. You're not going to get rid of all of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Supplies moving around concrete and good. Making rail lines and building all the buildings. And then that's just the non human side of it. What about the 6 to 10 million people that went missing?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do we not know how many people are actually killed if. If they kept such accurate records?

[Marcus Parks]

It's cuz there was so many killed.

[Ed Larson]

Well, because.

[Marcus Parks]

And some was official and some was off the books.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And they also didn't necessarily keep records of like this is how many people were killed. It didn't go that far necessarily. Not always.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Cuz once they were dead, they were dead. Unfortunately they didn't treat them like people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

They treat. The idea was that it was really about capacities. What we know is stuff like the fuel that had gone to run the crematoriums.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's how we know how often they're running, how many.

[Ed Larson]

How much Zyklon B they had to order.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And then like how many people can fit in by how long were they running them?

[Ed Larson]

That's.

[Marcus Parks]

That's how they have to figure that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And then when you go start going into Eastern Europe, like when we start getting the Einsatzgruppen, it's like, okay, how many bullets are they ordering? And they can actually Go there and dig up some of the mass graves and maybe count some of the corpses.

[Marcus Parks]

If you're really a fun person. Yeah. If you're super curious.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, we could go to Poland. Poland, buddy. And we could fucking do shovel to go.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you really do. Poland's incredible.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I want to go. I want to go. I can't wait to go to Krakow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, I could be wrong about this, because I'm still very much learning about Heimer Himmler, but when they captured his home in his safe, wasn't it just filled with paperwork?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, we'll get to that.

[Ed Larson]

Money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, we'll get to all of that.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Himmler putting together the Holocaust. This was, of course, in addition to Himmler's construction of a network of terror and brutality that tormented, intimidated, and oppressed. Oppressed the whole of Europe. It didn't matter if you were Jew, gentile, or even a fellow Nazi. You were scared of Heinrich Himmler and his people.

[Marcus Parks]

He now knows, too. He understands that the most powerful fear is the stuff from inside the party.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Now, eventually, Himmler's ambitious diligence was noticed by Adolf Hitler, who made the decision to make Himmler second in command of a small core of men known as the Schutzstaffer, which in English roughly translates to the Protection Staff squad. Basically, these men began as security guards, the ones who tried to prevent assassinations and attacks carried out against Nazi leaders. History, however, knows them better as the administrators, guards, and executioners of the concentration camps, the dreaded SS. The SS was only 200 men strong when Himmler was put second in command. But while he was half assing it at his chicken farm, he was also spreading his occult beliefs throughout the ss, which basically made the SS an occult organization.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so hard to get all those chickens to sit at a round table.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

They don't even understand what a grail is unless you fill it with feed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can't believe he was bad at it. I mean, he already looks like an egg.

[Marcus Parks]

I know, but that's the problem. I actually think that.

[Ed Larson]

That yesterday I was potato, today I'm egg.

[Marcus Parks]

Bit funny to make a decision, but the chickens. Look at you being like you're just a baby, you know? But I find it's not just the he. The point of the SS was the occult angle.

[Ed Larson]

Because.

[Marcus Parks]

Because it was an exact opposite vibe of the stormtroopers.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yes. Which we're going to get into.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So the idea was that he made the SS specifically for. To house this philosophical viewpoint.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, indeed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I didn't know it was Schutzstaffel. I always thought it was.

[Marcus Parks]

Shitsuckers they are. That is actually how.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's.

[Marcus Parks]

How it's actually pronounced in Detroit.

[Ed Larson]

Well, as far as the SS being an occult organization, Himmler did his level best to spread his beliefs into every single man who became an SS member. See, Himmler had cobbled together a Nazi approved version of history that began with the Aryans living their best lives in a mythical land called Hyperborea, which was supposedly located in the far north of Europe and sounds quite a bit like Atlantis.

[Marcus Parks]

No, but it's cold.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. See, like Atlantis, Hyperborea sank or disappeared, but there were survivors. Supposedly the survivors were made up of the ancestors of Aryans, Jews and the Romani, who often get overlooked when we talk about the. The Nazis.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep.

[Ed Larson]

See, the Romani played a central role in the Nazi myth, acting as the evil turncoats who had betrayed the Aryans. On Hyperborea, Himmler taught his SS men that the Romani were deeply antisocial, treasonous, and ultimately responsible for the flood that had destroyed most of the earth 12,000 years earlier.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, Romani just mostly have some of the most entertaining weddings I've ever seen in television history.

[Ed Larson]

Indeed, this myth was the justification behind the murder of between 300,000 and 1.5 million Romani during World War II. These murders were perpetrated by the Nazis and specifically Himmler's ss, either by simply executing them where they stood in their homelands, or later by shipping them off to be killed or worked to death in Himmler's concentration camps.

[Henry Zebrowski]

300,000 to 1.5 million is a huge gap.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's how it is with every single number in World War II. Like, unless you have UN. Because there weren't. The records didn't necessarily exist in the way they do today. Unless you. It's like a military operation. Like military. Every military knows exactly how many men they lost. But when it just comes to people like you don't really know exactly how many Romani were out there. There's a, there's, you know, you have an idea. And then not only that, you don't know some of these people. You don't know. Some of them might have just moved somewhere else. They might have just been chased, they might have just ran away, got away, chased at me and. Or they could be at the bottom of a fucking pit. You just don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, the key here is to remember the SS is a paramilitary group. So it's another interesting factor that Hitler did that he understood to separate things from the main body of the, the official governorship and the official military of Germany. So a paramilitary group doesn't necessarily have to follow all the same regulations and all this kind of same thing as the military and. And then they can go do a bunch more off the books.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I mean, they're just guys.

[Marcus Parks]

They're just guys like they're not like, the SS are not soldiers. They're just men in uniform.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they're just guys like, they're just. Seriously, the SS is a guy. Is that Heinrich Himmler, who himself is just a guy. They say like, you look good. Come on.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're tall, you've got a scary look, you got blue eyes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But according to Himmler's myth, the Romani's treachery on hyperborea was nothing compared to that of the Jewish Jews. See, the central tenet of the Nazi story, the thing that answers the seeming contradiction between the Jews being simultaneously all powerful and subhuman, was that the Jews and the Aryans were locked in a never ending battle of domination over the earth that could only be won if the Jews were exterminated and their religion destroyed. It's not that the Jews were necessary. Like that's the thing. It's not that they were not. It's not that they didn't have power. The whole point was like, no, they're very powerful. They're just evil and they must be eliminated. But this was not necessarily just so the Nazis could spend all their time as warrior farmers. Because one of the little spoken of aspects of Nazism is that it was ultimately an apocalypse cult. They believed that another great cataclysm like the great Flood was coming. And the reason why they had to sweep away all of their rivals for earthly supremacy was so the Aryans could survive. Survive to lead human evolution to the next level. Again.

[Marcus Parks]

The worst villains of history believe they are heroes. Himmler believed that putting all of this together was going to save the world.

[Ed Larson]

The greater good, always about the greater good.

[Marcus Parks]

Interestingly though, but he, you know, but at that point on to that level, I don't think he believed in that. I believed he was just like, once the Nazis are in power, power, we'll, we'll see. I feel like once he's like, once we've achieved world domination, there. The ceiling. There is no ceiling. We could do whatever we want, you know, maybe.

[Ed Larson]

Interestingly, Himmler did not keep his historical fantasies to just Germanic origins, just like it was portrayed in the movies. Heiner Kimler really was Obsessed with finding the Holy Grail.

[Marcus Parks]

It's still white people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. He believed that the inevitable war for domination over Europe would lead to the acquisition of the Grail. And once found, it would be placed in a castle where it would be guarded by Himler's modern medieval evil knights. These knights, of course, would be the men of the SS. Now, Himmler made a name for himself throughout 1925 in the Nazi party by fundraising and organizing. But he also gave dozens of speeches at various regional Nazi headquarters across Germany.

[Marcus Parks]

God, how sad must be to be a regional Nazi headquarter. Like being out there in the middle.

[Ed Larson]

Just being like, I'm, I'm the leader of Heidelberg.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm the most evil man in Heidelberg. Juvante, you know what I mean? Like, they're all having to deal with all these idiot. Scott.

[Ed Larson]

Well, the topics of his speeches were of course, all anti Semitic and no way. Yeah, well, that's the. Himler sort of became known as the guy who really didn't like the Jews. He's the guy that other Nazis would be like, all right, like, calm down a bit.

[Marcus Parks]

But then when they did that to him, he'd know, oh, you'll be on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The list as well.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. In speeches that were often over two hours long, Himmler would openly complain that if Germany had gassed more Jews during the Great War, then maybe Germany would be in a better position than they currently were. But judging from Himmler's speeches, top Nazi Joseph Goebbels took notice of the 26 year old hate bug. Before long, Goebbels had made Himmler the deputy Reich propaganda chief, writing quote, himmler's.

[Marcus Parks]

A good fellow, very intelligent. I like him.

[Ed Larson]

First time anyone had ever written that about Himmler. I like him.

[Marcus Parks]

And guess who was Joseph Goebbels. That's who likes you. But then again, you're hypocrisy.

[Ed Larson]

Rick Himmler.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, exactly.

[Henry Zebrowski]

26.

[Ed Larson]

26, that's me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So crazy.

[Ed Larson]

And you know, and he looks 45.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

When he's 26, he didn't moisturize. No. But one thing that set Himmler apart from the other Nazis was that Himmler was not brought into Nazi leadership through Adolf Hitler's charisma like so many others. In fact, Himmler never spoke about Hitler directly in his speeches because Himmler was playing a different game than most other Nazis. See, many Germans have been swayed far more by Hitler's promise to return Germany to its former glory than they were by all the Jewish stuff. In fact, the race talk. I was sort of waved Off. Much like that sort of thing is waved off today. Like, ah. Like, so what? Like Hitler, he might say some stuff about the Jews that goes further than I might. But, you know, Hitler just, like, says stuff, you know, like, he just says whatever comes to his mind. He's crazy like that.

[Marcus Parks]

I love him for that. And they're all like, literally. And again, it sounds familiar in that way where they're like, he's just fucking spouting off and he's just saying. He's just trying to get attention. You know, he's just. He's just like. It's all just his personality. That's him.

[Ed Larson]

He's just playing to his base. I mean, it's. The more important thing is that Hitler's gonna give us jobs. He's gonna take care of the farmers again. And also, aren't Jews kind of annoying anyway? Like, don't you kind of think that.

[Ad Read Announcer]

You said, like, a little bit annoying?

[Marcus Parks]

Like, you can admit it to me. You can.

[Ed Larson]

Because we are not Jewish. You can say it to me. Yeah, it's kind of. Why would you say that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Are you calling Gilbert Gottfried annoying?

[Marcus Parks]

Y.

[Ed Larson]

What? Himler. By contrast, Honestly, God help us.

[Marcus Parks]

Them. They have. They had met Gilbert. God help. Or would they be turned? Would he be like, hey, love this little angry man. Like, I feel like they could literally, like, he is hilarious. Like, I could see that. Well, like, obviously we all know all the stories about Hitler bringing Jewish entertainers into the castles, and he was obsessed with Jewish singers and comedians and he would play movies and wizard of Oz and all that. It's all way everybody's. Again, hypocrites.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. And is there any. Is there anything worse? Himmler, by contrast, he came to the Nazis with his beliefs fully formed. The Nazis were simply the ones who were saying in public what he'd already been saying in private for years. And Himmler saw in the Nazis, and therefore in Hitler, a path towards actually making his horrid dreams a reality.

[Marcus Parks]

The key is, remember, he's not here to make Hitler in charge. He wants to make Hitler in charge only because it's going to give him license to spread his hatred on everyone.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, once the Nazis really started cooking in the mid-1920s, Himmler immediately saw how he could rise in the ranks. He would sit back and watch the other Nazis rip each other to shreds. And when one Nazi fell, Himmler would pick up the responsibilities left behind. He was sort of a power scavenger. Himmler also knew how to leverage his comrades to get support from Hitler Indirectly, by concerning himself with organizational matters, communication and propaganda, and endless reports, Himmler made sure that when people spoke about him to Hitler, it was only to say how amazing and capable Himmler was at everything he did.

[Marcus Parks]

It also shows that Hitler was like. It's more just him seeing all this paperwork and going like, oh, he's very busy. It's like, he's just not. It's all of this. It's old, says Bunzang.

[Ed Larson]

I love. It's a busy beat, busy beat.

[Marcus Parks]

And they're all just like. That's the thing. It's all surface level. Like, they're all, like, lying to each other.

[Ed Larson]

But the other side of Himmler's rise to power was that he knew how to set up the rules so that other people would be sure to break them. And when they did break them, he gained only further opportunities to gain influence. Once Himmler got a little more responsible in trust within the party, he put together a pamphlet which laid out guidelines for all Nazi administrators. This was basically the beginning of Himmler practicing for the day when the Nazis were in power and his view of morality could be forced upon the whole of Germany. Keeping with the strict guidelines set out by his father when he was a child, Himmler wrote that failure to keep deadlines would result in a stern warning. And when necessary, these failures would be reported directly to Defer.

[Marcus Parks]

You don't want me to tell Daddy, do you?

[Ed Larson]

Now, this may not sound like such a big deal, but remember that the Nazis were, at this point, they're basically a bunch of dudes in their early to mid-20s. That's a fact that is often forgotten by history. Heinrich Himmler himself was only 26. Six years old at this point. So he knew that placing extreme importance on deadlines was going to get a lot of Nazis in trouble with Hitler, who Hitler, ironically, was himself, famously lazy.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't think it's ironic. I think it's built in.

[Ed Larson]

I think it's.

[Marcus Parks]

The idea is that he can be lazy. You know, he's in charge, he's the Fuhrer, but he can be lazy. The rest of them can't. The rest of them, God forbid, they're lazy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, Himmler does have resting, tattletale face.

[Marcus Parks]

He does. Well, then again, Himmler was working when Hitler wasn't working.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I mean? Himmler knew. And I like the idea of Hitler was never working. You never. And I love the concept of power scavenger. Yeah. Because it's a corporate thought. It's a way these guys.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it's how fascism. Fascism works.

[Marcus Parks]

Why do you think we have David Zaslav, who's never made a movie in his life, in charge of one of the most important show business pillars right now? Right. Economically. Because he's good at all the other dumb shit, except for making movies. And so this. And someone likes that. There's somebody they understood at some point, oh, we're sitting here all day making movies when we should be making money. And this is. That's how you find yourself in a corporate idiot running everything. This guy is just great. He's great at the corporate edge. And that's exactly how the Nazis are going to make it to the top.

[Ed Larson]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All I know is someone who's got a Kickstarter for their movie shouldn't be talking shit about David Zaslav UFO movie.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, if you can check it out. I just got re. I just got. Obviously I'm not to going.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

Two of you, good.

[Ed Larson]

But within this pamphlet, Himmler also began giving explicit instructions on how Nazis could purposefully target Jews. He wrote that it was a Nazi's duty to document all relevant information about any Jew that a Nazi might come upon. Information like ages, jobs and addresses. Any person who refused to work with the Nazis collection of data was to be fine, imprisoned, or when deemed necessary, necessary, killed. This was all before the Nazis had any actual governmental power at all. Because at this point, the Nazis were more like a street gang. They're more like. There's something like the Proud Boys than they were an actual political party.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So they're actually killing people at this point?

[Ed Larson]

Very much so, yes. They're. They've been killing people since the twenties or since the. Yes, since the early twenties. Even before that, they were. They had killed a couple hundred people. Like they're just street gang. Like, they're. They are killers. An extraordinarily violent street street gang.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Crazy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, yeah, they. They actually killed enough people where. I think I mentioned it last episode. It was a plot line in Downton Abbey where one of, like one. One of the girls, like boyfriends goes to Germany and he is killed in 1924 by. He's like this horrid man, Adolf Hitler, I believe is his name. I don't think that's. I don't think that's the last we'll be hearing of him.

[Marcus Parks]

I hate that bullshit. That shit makes me so angry.

[Ed Larson]

I love it so much.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're not gonna go see the Wedding One in the theater?

[Ed Larson]

I love it. I love it so much.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm gonna make It a red wedding.

[Ed Larson]

Perhaps because the Nazis gave Heinrich Himmler a bit of street cred. He was in 1927, finally able to convince a woman to marry him.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Yeah, because you know, you know, because that's exactly. She's like, honey, you need to get a job.

[Ed Larson]

Himmler's bride was a large, huge, humorless divorced woman with a noticeable facial tick. Eight years older than Himler, named Marga.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Handsome name.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I don't get the full name of Margaret because I was already so big.

[Ed Larson]

As far as we know, Margaret was the first woman to ever take a serious interest in Heinrich. In Heinrich Himmler, who had little, if any. Any sexual experience. He may not have even kissed a woman before Marga.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I honestly don't think. Yeah, I don't think he did.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Himmler was the soul of prudishness. And Marga was a domineering woman who did all the seducing for him.

[Marcus Parks]

Show me your pickle now. Make pickle big. Oh, I show you how to make pickle big. Oh. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Now put the milk in my craft. Put the milk in me, you little bitch.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Put the fucking evil milk filled with your little squids in my fucking cleft. It sounds very, very dirty. Fuck my horse. Fuck my horse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He probably couldn't kiss with the little lips.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Which he thought were very nice. He loved little lips. He loved thin lips.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Teeth just keep hurting you.

[Ed Larson]

According to Himmler's diaries, he was terrified to take Marga home to his father, writing that he would ra rather clear a hall of a thousand communists single handedly rather than try to get approval for a marriage to an older Protestant divorcee. But in the end, Professor Himmler said, fine, whatever. Because Heinrich and Marga seemed to be a good match.

[Marcus Parks]

He's just like, get him out of my fucking house.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, he's out by this point.

[Marcus Parks]

Just do whatever you want. I don't fucking care.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't fucking care.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, both.

[Marcus Parks]

Please have sex with my son. Fuck my son.

[Ed Larson]

Both of them worshiped few a efficiency, thrift and rigorous neatness. And Margra would call Himmler her quote, naughty darling.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, man. She also called him Heine.

[Marcus Parks]

Heine's cute.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Which is the Jewish name for ass.

[Ed Larson]

Heiny.

[Marcus Parks]

Heiny's. Oh, my naughty little darling. Well, she also, she was just barely a human being.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, she was the owner of a homeopathic health clinic. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Very vulcish.

[Ed Larson]

Which shows you that. Well, not just vulkish, but, you know, it shows. Shows you that the whole natural healing phenomenon touches tips with fascism quite a bit. Always. That's why always has.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so funny, it's so strange.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Calling her a vindictive bitch. I don't think I can stand for that.

[Marcus Parks]

I know, I know.

[Ed Larson]

I'm just saying when people, when someone's really into crystals, there is a better than not chance that they might be a Nazi.

[Marcus Parks]

It's weird.

[Ed Larson]

Like it's weird, but it's happens.

[Marcus Parks]

It's always about if they, if they have crystals and a bra, they might be a Nazi. I view that. I view it that way.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, Heinrich and Marga were married in July of 1928 and shortly after took out a mortgage on a small chicken farm outside of Munich where they kept 50 chickens and grew produce. The next year, Marga gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Gudrun. True to Himler's nerd nature, his daughter Gudrun was named after the wife of the Germanic folk hero Siegfried. It's like a, it's like the modern equivalent. Like if you named your daughter like Katniss or Hermione, today it's the same thing.

[Marcus Parks]

I could see Himler deep in Funko. He would love Funko Pops.

[Ed Larson]

But to show you that all these dudes hung out, I've got to drive to Dragon Con. There is a limited edition female Silver Surfer from Fantastic Four. First Death is only available.

[Marcus Parks]

Now I must acquire my Doctor who Funko Pop or say Will be Vengeance.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He was kind of like his own Funko Pop.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tiny, big headed piece of shit.

[Ed Larson]

Thank you. But to show you that all these dudes hung out together and formed their own little world bit by bit. The man who delivered Gudrun Himmler was one of the great villains of Nazi Germany, Dr. Victor Brack. About a decade after delivering him daughter Dr. Brack would lead Himmler's euthanasia program.

[Marcus Parks]

Nice. Keeping it in the family.

[Ed Larson]

East Asia, you know, like, you know, it'd be great for this. You remember that guy who delivered Gordon?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. He would be great at annihilating the Jewish race.

[Ed Larson]

Well, actually Brack was in charge of Action T in which The Nazis murdered 300,000 people with disabilities and supposed mental illness. In essence, Dr. Brack oversaw the dry run for the holocaust. Like Acton T4 was like, let's try this out, see what people think of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Just so you know, in the industry, if we call it it's Tech Week, but we call it Hell Week.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And actually that was a good run.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Good run.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's allowed.

[Marcus Parks]

He is just a Jew now.

[Ed Larson]

When Gudrun was born in 1928, the Nazis had made some slight gains in Germany's parliament, known as the Reichstag. They held 12 seats, just 2% of the vote, and Hitler had no official standing. In other words, they were not popular. And it seemed like the Nazis might peter out.

[Marcus Parks]

I think that's what people thought.

[Ed Larson]

In general, it's 100% what most people thought.

[Marcus Parks]

They're like, okay, these, you know, he. At a moment.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But as we mentioned last episode, the Great Depression swept through Germany in 1929 and erased any economic gains the Weimar Republic had made since the years of hyperinflation. Hitler and the Nazis therefore leveraged the economic turmoil into massive support amongst people who were looking for simple and comforting answers to complicated questions. As such, The Nazis took 107 seats in the next election, giving them 18% of the vote. This made them the second largest party in the Reichstag, although Hitler still held no official position. While Hitler had no power in government, he was still making moves within the Nazi party to prepare for the day when he did seize power. In 1929, Adolf Hitler made the fateful decision to appoint Heinrich Himmler as the sole commander of the entire square.

[Marcus Parks]

So what?

[Henry Zebrowski]

How did Hitler fit in if he had no position? Was he just like a mouthpiece, Tucker Carlson type of deal?

[Ed Larson]

No, he's just the guy. He's the guy behind the guy. He's the guy that's telling you we're here, we're. We're getting there. We're going to take you where you need to go. Vote my people into power. I'm. I need to get there eventually, but vote my people into power.

[Marcus Parks]

You put this correctly last time, it kind of feels like he's like LeBron James of the Nazi Party. All these other guys, they're waiting because they know he's not going to be some little guy. He's the team captain. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You don't like. That's the thing. You don't put him as, like a Reichstag member. He's too big for that. He's too important for that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. They're aiming for him to be Chancellor, which is their version of the prime.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Minister, and it's more Jordan because of the tiny mustache.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's after the fact. That's what he really. That was that commercial where he.

[Ed Larson]

He was trying stuff out and, you.

[Marcus Parks]

Know, if there was one man that is allowed to take back the Hitler mustache, it is the true goddamn American, Michael Jordan.

[Ed Larson]

He Tried.

[Marcus Parks]

Allowed to try.

[Ed Larson]

He tried and he fails.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, but he's allowed to try. And he took that personally.

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Marcus Parks]

A PSA from Instacart. It's Sunday, 5pm You've had a non stop weekend. You're running on empty and so is your fridge. You're in the trenches of the Sunday scaries. You don't have it in you to go to the store, but this is your a reminder you don't have to. You can get everything you need delivered through Instacart so that you can get what you really need. More time to do whatever you want. Instacart for one less Sunday. Scary. We're here. You know what's really hard about keeping a bowel movement during all this? Starting to realize like how many times I really.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did you write that down in your log? The one you just took?

[Marcus Parks]

I looked at it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, it's funny that it is a log.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, it's a log.

[Ed Larson]

Log.

[Marcus Parks]

I looked at it, I noted it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Nice.

[Marcus Parks]

It was. Do you take pictures solid? No, not yet. It was solid. It had frayed edges. I would say it was more towards a ceramic tan.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. In the days of the camera, like the camera phone, isn't it far easier to just take a picture of it and send and text it to your doctor than it is to describe it with words?

[Marcus Parks]

It seems that this woman doesn't want.

[Ed Larson]

Pictures of your feces.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it seems that she'd prefer my attempt at explaining them. I'm going to just start. I am going to start taking pictures so like when we have the one on one I can show her.

[Ed Larson]

Maybe the problem is that she would get so many pictures of feces that she would lose track of whose was who's who. So you should probably start writing your name down and the date and putting and taking a picture of that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Or let's put a little clown face at the edge of your toilet.

[Ed Larson]

So she knows.

[Marcus Parks]

So she knows it's you? Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Back to Himmler. Now, even though Adolf Hitler was famously lazy and spent much of his time when he did finally get in office, reading right wing newspapers instead of listening to briefings or actually governing. God, who does it, he did have a knack for placing people where they could operate at maximum efficiency, which fortunately is not a skill that the current administration has.

[Marcus Parks]

He really was, unfortunately, yes. Super good at delegating a authority.

[Ed Larson]

He was, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's a Cas manager.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes. Especially like the one in Toledo by the 145. That's a high volume.

[Ed Larson]

See, Hitler recognized Himmler's incredible administrative skills, his perfectionism and his self discipline.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's willing to do all the work that nobody else wants to do.

[Ed Larson]

But more importantly, Hitler recognized Himmler's military ambitions. And since Himmler had so desperately wanted to play army his whole life, Hitler figured that Himmler was the right, right guy to turn around the ss. See, at the time, the SS was sort of the disappointing younger brother of the sa, the Stormtroopers. The sa, they'd been causing havoc all over Germany. They were doing great. Oh, yeah. At least when it came to, you know, the Nazis.

[Marcus Parks]

But they were like scruffy and like.

[Ed Larson]

There was like tens of thousands of them and they were very, very dangerous.

[Marcus Parks]

But the vibe was distinctly one way.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, right. Like it was a gang vibe.

[Marcus Parks]

Street gang, young guys, high energy, lots of violence and. But largely like they were sort of like kids. Like, they kind of feel like drugies. They're reminding me of like Clockwork Orange where they're running around doing chaos for chaos sake.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Less drugs though.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, and that, that's exactly what it was. And the SA were starting to become completely out of control. People were starting to complain like, you created this monster. You need to get a handle on this, Mr. Hitler.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, like my thing is I don't really get a hanger on things unless I'm killing it in a mass state.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Himmler's 26 at this point, or like 30 maybe he's about.

[Ed Larson]

He. This is. We're at 1930 now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is Hitler the same age?

[Ed Larson]

No, Hitler's a few years older.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Hitler, he's from senior class.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Gotcha.

[Ed Larson]

I don't know exactly how old Hitler is this point. I think he's maybe like five, six years older. Okay. But yeah, Hitler died in his 50s, so he wasn't, he really wasn't that old either.

[Marcus Parks]

He didn't look good, buddy. No, he didn't look good at all.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He had a 41 on that face.

[Marcus Parks]

He was 41, right? At 1930.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, yeah. Because the SA had been causing so much havoc, Hitler called up the corpulent, openly gay World War I veteran known as Ernst Chrome. Yay. Rome had actually been absent from Germany for the previous six years, which is kind of how the SA had gotten out of hand because he'd been spending his time as an advisor to the Bolivian military in South America. And you'd think there'd be like a massive story there. There ain't. Like he just hung out in South America for six years kind of doing stuff, kind of not had very little impact on the affairs of South America.

[Marcus Parks]

But it does seem like it's a little eerie in the fact that they all went to South America. So there must have been like, not anything, but there must have been like that idea at some point, must have at least been like, tacked on a wall somewhere in a Nazi idea of, like, retired to Bolivia.

[Ed Larson]

It was just like, just start a. With one guy's like, you remember, like, Ernst, like. And before we killed him, you remember his Bolivia was really nice.

[Marcus Parks]

He said it was like, really cool for us. So, so very cool for us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Zork was unbelievable, honestly.

[Ed Larson]

Well, when Adolf Hitler called Rome and asked him to return to Germany to run the SA once again in 1930, Rome came running. Now, Himler knew that as soon as he was put in charge of the SS that he was going to have.

[Marcus Parks]

To bring also please prancing.

[Ed Larson]

But Himmler knew that as soon as he was put in charge of the SS that he was going to have to break away from the SA eventually. At this point, the SS was a part of the sa, which meant that Himmler was beholden to Ernst Rohm. Himmler, of course, saw Rome as a filthy degenerate due to his homosexuality. Himmler believed that he could transform the disappointing SS into the pride of the Nazi party. So he imposed his own brand of discipline and order onto the group, while also passing down his techniques for gaining power. See, Himmler thrived on information. So he instructed the SS to gather information not just on prominent Jews, but on the leaders of rival political movements in addition to well known Freemasons. Because Himmler was nothing if not a conspiracy theorist.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Freemasons, we talked a little about it last time. It's the same groups of people that these secret society places became hubs of international espionage. So he viewed that as. Because he knew it was going on inside of the Tula society. It's like, so he just, again, like all Nazis, they commit crimes against people committing their same crimes.

[Ed Larson]

Indeed. But once Himmler was fully given the ss, he lost all enthusiasm for his wife Marga and their chicken farm, which was failing just as badly as every other agricultural pursuit Himmler had ever attempted.

[Marcus Parks]

My husband.

[Ed Larson]

All I have is all these feathers.

[Marcus Parks]

My husband will come and fill my graves again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Anish, your neck is getting very big. Very big.

[Ed Larson]

I can't keep coming home to this fucking neck.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm sick of it.

[Ed Larson]

See, Himmler had been appointed a spot in the Reichstag, a position that paid far better than chicken farming. Himmler was the type of guy that you put in the Reichstag. You don't put Hitler in the Reichstag. So Himmler therefore all but abandoned his family and his farm to devote himself fully to remaking his section of the Nazi party in his own image.

[Marcus Parks]

Ew. Yeah, right. What an image, no?

[Ed Larson]

With the ss, Himmler could truly bring his fantasies to life. As opposed to the street gang vibe of Ernst Rohm's sa, Himmler saw the SS as an elite band of warriors who would eventually become Hitler's knights at arms. Following this line of gallantry, Himmler demanded that every SS leader follow and enforce Himmler's brand of strict discipline. SS men could not drink alcohol. They were required to get plenty of sleep, drink plenty of water. And their clothes were required to be clean and properly ironed at all times.

[Marcus Parks]

I do believe there's a little bit of this, that we've seen, this new kind of, this sentiment I keep coming about of this idea of like civilized ways of doing things. And this is a, this is a civil way of doing things. We're doing these things right, proper way of doing things. And it's, you could see that that's what he did with the ss, where he started to understand being like, we will make them a fearsome group of serial killers. They will be very neat so that people will at first think they're official and they're real.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they'll look up to them.

[Marcus Parks]

They'll look up to them.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in other words, Himmler demanded that everyone beneath him be as exact scrupulous and pedantic as he was in all respects. This meant that Himmler's great obsession was the elevation of his men. So he had little to do with the day to day strategy of the Nazi party. He wasn't in the meetings with Hitler and Goring and Goebbels. To build out the ranks of the ss, the most Nazi of the Nazis, Himmler purposefully sought out disaffected middle and Upper middle class young men like himself, as well as the sons of former former nobility. These were the men who had a specific nut against the Weimar Republic and the communists. And bonus points were awarded to those who had formerly served other paramilitary organizations or had served in World War I. Unlike Himmler.

[Marcus Parks]

Because, you know, it's nice. Don't gotta train them.

[Ed Larson]

Nope. And they can actually tell you what should be done.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

And then you can make it seem like it's your idea.

[Marcus Parks]

Because that's what Himmler was doing. Because he had no idea what he was doing.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean he'd gone through officer training school. He, he had, he knew everything from an academic perspective. Everything.

[Marcus Parks]

But again, it's also an example of somebody that is still largely. He's not a professional soldier.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

He's not an amateur. And then all of a. He's an amateur.

[Ed Larson]

He is.

[Marcus Parks]

And he is put in charge of an extremely important part of the government.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he's a super fan.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he is a super fan. But at this point like he's not in charge of. He's just like. The SS is still not a part of the government.

[Marcus Parks]

No, they're just its own crew.

[Ed Larson]

There's still a bunch of guys. Now somewhat underrated aspect of the SS in terms of importance is their now infamous uniforms which contrary to popular belief were not designed by Hugo Boss. They were manufactured by Hugo Boss.

[Marcus Parks]

They were the seamstresses worked at Hugo Boss.

[Ed Larson]

No, they, no, Hugo Boss did make that. They took the contracts to make the SS uniforms.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay, so I could still be mad at them.

[Ed Larson]

Sure, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the designer of the uniforms was none other than Heinrich Himmler.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's. You know what's nice about that guy? What a. What a multi talent.

[Ed Larson]

The further separate the SS from the sa, Himmler designed a uniform consisting of a brown shirt, an SS armband showcasing the goofy double lightning bolt, a black tie, black pants, black shoes and a black belt. See, Himmler actually knew the power of branding and especially the power of conformity. And he became so obsessed with the SS uniform that one could be dismissed from the SS or even the Nazi party itself itself for wearing the uniform outside of Himmler's exacting standards.

[Marcus Parks]

This has a psychological like effect as well.

[Ed Larson]

Oh yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Like this idea of making these rules that you almost can barely follow. It's a way to. It keeps you on the line. Right. It's the same with all the other stuff. It makes you feel like you're. You are a part of an elite group.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And it's, but it's also the idea of knowing like I gave you all this, I put you in this position and I can take it away for the tiniest reason. So be on your phone. Toes. Now. Once Himmler got the look under control, he began implementing his foul racial theories by crafting policies within the SS itself. In anticipation of one day implementing these rules worldwide. In 1931, Himmler formed the Race and Settlement Office. In German, that's called Reich Zika Heit shoutout. But we'll call it Russia.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, oh, I thought they were against them.

[Ed Larson]

Arusha developed a racial grading system that weeded out men who would not serve Himmler's vision of the SS or his vision of Germany's future. Because remember, they're one and the same. By investigating the physical characteristics of each applicant and grading them on a five point scale from pure Nordic to suspected non European blood components, Himmler whittled down applicants to construct a group of perfect physical Nazis. Amongst the most sought after characteristics were long heads, narrow faces, flat foreheads, angular chins, thin lips, tall, slender bodies, blue eyes and fair hair.

[Marcus Parks]

Whatever, man.

[Ed Larson]

So I mean I've got like, you know, four out of six, four out of four out of eight there.

[Marcus Parks]

That's just cuz you're mostly British. But yeah, your hair and honestly your eyes.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I got the angular chin, I got the thin lips.

[Marcus Parks]

Thin lips.

[Ed Larson]

I got the slender body. Tall, slender body. No, not blue eyes, kind of.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know if I was similar, I still might just shoot you in the head. I'm not certain. I got to think about this.

[Ed Larson]

Think about it, think about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Let me think about it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, get back to me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But didn't they need everybody?

[Ed Larson]

No, this is, well that's the thing, this is the ss and that's a really, it's actually a really important thing to remember and that's a really important distinction. This is not the army like that. This is, this is the elite group of Nazis within the Nazis itself. This is the most Nazi of Nazis. Nazis.

[Marcus Parks]

And this is before they became the Nazis that ran Germany. This is the beginnings of all of this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like they're marines. I'm trying to equate it to something I understand.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude, it's like their Royal Guard. It's like the Pope's Guard. Like the Royal Swiss Guard. Yeah, it's like that, but for Hitler. And then he's going to turn them, but he's going to expand it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, because right now these are supposed to be Hitler's Guards. They're knights like that. These are, think of them as knights. Like you know, you have a king and the king has his knights. The SS are supposed to be the knights. That's how Himmler sees them at least.

[Marcus Parks]

But then his goal probably is to turn the SS into the actual government. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Well, once inspected and deemed worthy, Himmler would keep a so called stud record of the SS officer proving that the man had what it took to breed Germany into Aryan superiority.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they were obsessed with babies.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But the great irony here is that everyone who worked at Russia knew that Heinrich Himmler himself did not in any way qualify as pure blood blooded Nordic. In contrast to the ideal, Himmler had a small pigeon chested body, a round face, sallow skin, dark hair and a receding chin which were all signs of so called non European blood. After the war, one Russia examiner finally let his frustrations fly by openly saying that Himmler was quote, an unassimilated half breed, unfit, unfit to be equal. Even a member of the organization that Adolf Hitler, another obvious non Aryan, had actually put him in charge of. But while Himmler was still alive, no one dared say anything about this to his face, save for one man. Dr. Werner Best, eventual organizer of the Einsatzgruppen and the creator of the Jewish registry in Germany. He did actually confront Himmler about his non Nordic appearance. Himmler however, was completely unfazed. He already knew he didn't fit the mold, but he had an answer all ready to go. While he didn't have an Aryan body, Himmler said he did have, quote, a Nordic brain. Yeah, his brain was Nordic. See, you can't check that. You.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like a lot of people would assume I'm white. A lot of people assume just by looking at me I'm white.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So what is your brain?

[Marcus Parks]

No, I'm Polish. Well, my brain's white, but my pol. My body's Polish.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I got.

[Marcus Parks]

See like that's the thing again. I'd be in a concentration camp.

[Ed Larson]

No, you wouldn't.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they would. No, simply just because I'm too great.

[Ed Larson]

No, because you couldn't keep your mouth shut, that's why. Not cuz you're Polish.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean they would have, they would have been happy about it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The only person who in my you.

[Ed Larson]

Would have been higher on the list than me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So half my family's Jewish, half my family is Catholic. And the only person in my family that went to a concentration camp was a Polish Catholic.

[Ed Larson]

Interesting.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. What for?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think she was hiding Jews oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Oh, I thought. I was really afraid you're going to be like. She was catering.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She worked there.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. She cleaned on like Mondays and Fridays.

[Marcus Parks]

That's like, that's my dad's old. That's an old dad joke. It's been like his grandfather died in Auschwitz. Yeah. He fell off one of the gun towers.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now Himmler wormed his way into the lives of the men of the SS in far more ways than just examining their physical characteristics. In an attempt to control every aspect of their lives, Himmler decreed that the potential wives of ne officer had to also undergo racial screenings and medical examinations. Incredibly, these women who today would be put into the trad wife category, they were fully willing to submit to these tests because Nazism had by this point begun to move from the lonely loser space into mainstream German society. That's when you really have to watch out. When the ladies are starting to say, okay, I'll do it too.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they're also, remember because they're white ladies and they're getting the same privileges and they also know this is actually kind of of in this for me, it's in the function of why people have sex with serial killers, like why they are attracted. That style of thing is that there a lot of these ladies are starting to see the very cynical writing on the wall of, oh, I better catch some gunk for some Nazis, because that's going to keep me fed in a really nice lifestyle, my life won't change. Like, like nothing about my life will change. I get to. I actually maybe will live like a normal life in this world.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, there's certainly some of that.

[Marcus Parks]

But you're also just pure hate.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's the thing. You can't discount the fact that there plenty of women who are just filled with hate just as much as men are.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, there's a bunch of them, man. There's a bunch of them. You ladies, you ladies, you guys got it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You guys know what's going on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So before this, they all looked like Marga, but then they started looking a little better.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, they.

[Marcus Parks]

The SS one specifically.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Because the SS guys are supposed to be handsome. So they're getting more handsome ladies as well.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this is the beginning of also like their views on like, this is like a, a vaguely like eugenics like programs.

[Ed Larson]

It's not vaguely. It's 100. It is 100% inspired by eugenics, like the, the eugenics. Because eugenics, that's an American creation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, really?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. They were inspired by that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Eugenics is American creation. It was created here, it was developed here. And the Nazis, Himmler and Hitler both loved eugenics. They thought it was incredible. Yeah, Hitler, Hitler was actually kind of surprised. He always expected, he actually always expected America to like come around. He's like that. They'll be, they'll, they'll get into it eventually. Like, come on. Like, I mean, the manifest destiny. Love that. Based my entire Lebensraum on that. That's awesome. You know, eugenics, they're super into that. I'm super into that.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, to be honest, that's what we'll, once we get later on in the series, we'll talk about that. But I do think that that is one of the weird, like, hitches in all this, is that these guys really do believe on some level that when we get the Third Reich up and running, the rest of the world is going to be into it. Like there is like this kind of almost thought of like, once we get it all set, the rest of the.

[Ed Larson]

World'S going to be like, okay, yeah, that looks cool. I want that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, he fucked up by not telling Japan.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It just turned out that, like, what's really probably good to hear is that a lot of these ideas aren't super popular.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Across the world. And eventually, eventually you're gonna end up in a trench covered in gasoline. On fire.

[Ed Larson]

Concerning, you know, Himmler's search for the perfect Aryan bride. If any fault was found in a potential wife for an SS member, Himmler had the power to deem the woman unsuitable for marriage. And if Himmler thought the woman was offensively unsuitable, he reserved the right to kick the man who brought her out of the SS altogether for even suggesting her as a potential mate. But once the woman was deemed suitable, Himmler would put her through so called bride schools of his own design. These taught future SS wives the principles of both trad wifery and the principles that needed to be taught to their children to ensure that they were brought up in the proper Nazi fashion.

[Marcus Parks]

Because the Nazis were very invested in children.

[Ed Larson]

Very much so. Yeah. Well, I mean, they had that four. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That was the rule, right?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And eventually it got to be where children in Nazi Germany were the most terrifying people of all.

[Marcus Parks]

Watch the white ribbon. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Yes. Because the children were the ones who were telling on their parents. They were completely out of control. And parents everywhere in Germany were absolutely terrified of what was going to happen. Likewise, the men were told not to drink, fight or have sex in excess, even with their own wives. Every SS man had to be extremely disciplined in every way because Himmler believed that it was that discipline that made them good. Arrogance and examples for the German people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Or as a good excuse for him not to fuck his own wife.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, no, no, no.

[Ed Larson]

Do you know, you see the rules. It's the rules.

[Marcus Parks]

A real man only has sex once a month.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And I made the rules. Yes, I am where I made the rules, but there's still the rules that I can't have sex with you.

[Marcus Parks]

Marga, he just. What was that neck? Do you think that it was, that was Marga or was, was Himmler gay? I sometimes I really wonder how much focus he puts on, on handsome broad chested tall men and, and measuring their bodies and taking pictures of their naked bodies and, and making sure they're right and eating right. And all these dudes do is watching these big alpha Germans that are taller than him, wider than him, stronger than him and he's getting to like lord over them and like, like look at their pain.

[Ed Larson]

S and it's an interesting theory. It's possible, but I, I think, I just guess honestly I, I think Himler was asexual.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah. I mean he's a Nazi first.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a Nazi first and a lover third.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I, I, I don't think him administrator second. Yeah, I don't think Himler really had, if he did have sexual feelings, he didn't like them and he didn't really want them. Like, he didn't say like sex to him was useless, it was a nuisance. It's kind of like how I look at eating, you know, it's like, it's a pain in the ass.

[Marcus Parks]

I get it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's how I look at honestly. No, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm full bio de viv.

[Ed Larson]

Now. What Himler put the men of the SS through in order to be a part of his medieval knight revival society was just the start. Essentially what Himmler was doing with the SS was merely a blueprint that he planned to use for all society. He and he alone would decide who the ideal human should be. And while he knew that the creation of that ideal human would cause suffering on an unimaginable scale, he believed that any sacrifice was justified in the pursuit of that goal. In incredibly short order, though, Himmler's obsessions would catch on first in the Nazi party and then throughout Germany to the point where if you wanted to be a part of society, you had no choice but to believe in or at least accept the same things. That Heinrich Himmler believed it sounds like.

[Marcus Parks]

A silly term, but it's called Nazification.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they say it a lot in historical contexts, and I did not know that that actually really was that. And they talk about it. They talk about it like the idea that, like the, the boiling frog allegory, like this idea that you don't really understand quite how fast it's going. And then everything becomes Nazified. The, the judges become. Not like every single layer become infused with this fake thing. Everybody has to like, walk through to like, you know, like all of the, the, the. The ritual, the zig hiling and the. And the things you have to do and it keeps people like, locked in.

[Ed Larson]

And it just becomes a part of society. It's like. It wasn't. But it wasn't necessarily illegal to not zig hile people.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, but it was frowned upon.

[Ed Larson]

Well, you would get the shit beat out of you. You could be beaten half to death for not zig hiling someone and probably.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Get beat to shit to death by a lot of things.

[Ed Larson]

Many, many things. Yes. There's so many foe. Like, that's the thing. They created a whole new system of faux pas and a whole new system of things they could get pissed off about. Well, basically Himmler was creating a new aristocracy from the peasantry, the aristocracy of the Third Reich.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's a part of the egalitarian nature of the Nazis, which is very true. They understood a little bit about the class war stuff that Russia was talking about. And they understood that if we make this a workers, if we make this about the quote unquote little people in the beginning, the voke.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, that's. That was. The whole point was the vote. It's all about zoo. The people, the existing aristocracy of Germany. However, the wealthiest people in the country, they believed that they could use the Nazis for their own personal gain. Oh, yeah. This same thing is happening with rich men today. Men like Mark Zuckerberg. Have you. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg changed his entire personality to better fit in with this administration. There is no Mark Zuckerberg grilling these meats.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. There is no Mark Zuckerberg. There is no Peter smoke these meats. Yeah. They're all. I literally, if I. I'm starting to almost believe that they believe that. Do you know that that's a big thing with Peter Thiel right now, Right. That he believes that AI is God. But he's saying this. He's saying it because he knows he's going to be in charge of it. So this is a New thing that they're doing is acquiring Christianity. This, this whole, like, creating frameworks around Christian thought because they're reacting to our current government.

[Ed Larson]

Sure, yeah. I mean, it's all about molding to fit into the government so you can get. So you can get what you want, you can get. Get your blah pushed through, you can get your favors, you can get whatever you want.

[Marcus Parks]

And guess what? Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg also think they're smarter than everybody else and everybody's going to fall in line with whatever it.

[Ed Larson]

Is that they do. But the problem with pretending to be a monster is that both the pretender and the believer end up in the exact same spot in the end. Yes. Be careful of what you pretend to be. Now, while Himler was constructing his racial hierarchy within the ss, he met what could essentially be described as mini Himler in terms of brutality and cruelty. A man who doesn't quite reach the heights of the Mount Rush. More of evil, but certainly has an honorable mention. That man who joined the SS in 1931 was Reinhard Heinrich.

[Marcus Parks]

I got to say, he's all right. I am a peanut.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Isn't this the guy we were originally going to do the series about?

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Oscar Durlowinger.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, yeah, that's where. Yeah, this started with Oscar der Lenger and turned into Himmler.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay, cool.

[Ed Larson]

All right, all right. See, Reinhardt, Heydrich was damn near Himmler's physical idea of what a Nazi should be. Heydrich was tall and blonde haired with a model physique and piercing hypnotic blue eyes.

[Marcus Parks]

God, Himmler just wants to be fucking ass full of that.

[Ed Larson]

Heydrich, however, wasn't perfect. He also had very wide, very feminine hips. His voice was far too high for a man, and he spoke in a nervous staccato.

[Marcus Parks]

Hello. Men with big butts are weird.

[Ed Larson]

I have a big butt.

[Marcus Parks]

No, but big butts.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I got a bubble butt.

[Marcus Parks]

You have a nice butt. I'm talking about big butts.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Big wide butts. Yeah, Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like my big wide ass.

[Ed Larson]

Talking about a grimace butt. Yeah, yeah. But Reynard Heydrich, he was alert, filled with nervous energy, hard working, and above all, extremely intolerant to anyone who wasn't just like him. That's. That's what you call a perfect Nazi.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I've got to say to you, Hydrick, I love your tolerance for intolerance. You only like people that are just like me. If you don't like me, then I don't like them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's.

[Marcus Parks]

It's your attitude. I like you. You, you not like me, but you like me. Okay, I'm already annoyed by you. Now waggle your fat asses out of this room, please. You like it. We are. Don't you love to watch me go, ooh, shites and hike and hike and schneik and I want to put my strudel in that fucking click clack clock. I dropped me pencil. I just dropped a mind pencil.

[Ed Larson]

Personality wise, Heydrich was the perfect match for Himmler's cunning. An astute and calculating Nazi who surrounded himself with men who compensated for his failings while remaining training subservient.

[Marcus Parks]

But the problem is I was constantly knocking things over with his big old butt that does that is like a thing that allows. It doesn't allow you go to management.

[Ed Larson]

See, Heydrich was the one who came up with the idea that the SS should have an intelligence service specifically to secretly investigate other members of the Nazi party. Every member of the Nazi party and any Nazi whose ambitions didn't line up with Hitler's, Himmler's or Heydrichs would be identified and eliminated at the proper time.

[Marcus Parks]

I will get them out. We will get these bad Nazis, the bad Nazis for being not bad enough, and kick them out.

[Ed Larson]

Mostly it came down to like, do you believe that Adolf Hitler is the one and only Fuhrer? And if the answer was anything other than absolutely or just the idea that.

[Marcus Parks]

Any, any Jewish person could be, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

These sorts of ideas created a mutual respect between Himmler and Heydrich over the next 10 years. Until of course, Heydrich was killed in 1942 while he was plotting to surpass Himmler and even Adolf Hitler himself.

[Marcus Parks]

And that's the key. That's Himmler in a nutshell. Because Himmler knows that he also wants to do the same thing. Yeah, but guy like Heydrich, he just doesn't do it right. No, Himmler knows you gotta be very patient.

[Ed Larson]

You gotta wait for just the right moment. And even when he had his moment, he was still too stupid to notice.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what happens with being a Nazi, apparently. Means that you're not super good at many things.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but even though hey DRI was close to the Aryan ideal, many of the other men that Himmler chose as leaders in the SS weren't. Rather than enforce extreme strictness when choosing leaders, Himmler chose men who would be loyal to him. Although that wasn't the main requirement. Perhaps even more important than loyalty was an inability to live in German society as it existed. Same problem that Heinrich him had himself. See, many of the SS leaders had served in World War I, and they had not adjusted back to civilian life at all. And others were just like Heinrich Himmler. Himmler therefore chose men who otherwise would not have been able to hold positions of real power, like, say, making a podcast host, the deputy director of the FBI. And it was the elevation that created the loyalty that Himmler needed so badly.

[Marcus Parks]

I also think it serves as a function when somebody doesn't know quite what they're doing and they're put in a really perilous situation that requires a lot of attention. Attention. And then you can get quite a lot out of that person.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you can.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So you kill them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Or until they. Something bad happens to them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Or they self destruct. Yeah. Now, while it sounds like the SS was nobody's idea of a good or even tolerable time, Himmler's ideas were attractive to a lot of young Germans. See, when Himmler took control of the SS in 1929, he commanded only 280 men. By 1932, though, the SS. SS numbered 30,000. Fuck. 280 to 30,000 in three years. And this is entirely under Heinrich Himmler's control. Hard worker, they had specialist departments, they had administration, training, discipline, intelligence. But even though Himmler was extremely important within the party itself, he somewhat operated outside of everyone else. Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler never built an intimate relationship with each other, like, say, Hitler and Goebbels or Hitler and Goring. Those guys, they all stayed over at each other's houses at big Nazi slumber parties all the time.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, that's so cute. Like doing makeup and playing like that dating game with the phone. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Who do you. That's mystery date. And mystery date.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, let's go to the mall.

[Henry Zebrowski]

In the rainbow game, you know, when they all wear different kinds of lipstick.

[Ed Larson]

But Himler was always sort of the cheese that stood alone. Instead, Himmler made connections with everyone around Hitler, which kept his name in good standing with the fur. And it kept Himmler out of Hitler's crosshairs when something went wrong. This also kept Himmler in the perfect position to scavenge power when a fellow Nazi up.

[Marcus Parks]

And the perfect position to scavenge power for even if Hitler up. Yes, because then you're right. Not. You're not right next to him when that man eventually goes down.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that Hitler's the ultimate carcass. Like, that's. That's the big one that he's waiting for.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

As it turned out, Himmler had backed the right horse when he chose the Nazis. At least when it came to power, the party did not.

[Marcus Parks]

When it comes to like, yeah, the ideas hanging out.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Creativity, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The parties, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

The Nazis did even better in the election of 1932, doubling their wins to 37.4% of the overall vote. That doesn't sound like a whole lot in our two party system.

[Marcus Parks]

That's more than what Trump won with. Literally like the amount of people that obsessed. Abstained from the vote.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But that was a massive show of support from the people in a parliamentary system like Germany's. As such, the day after those elections, both Rome's SA and Himmler's SS launched a series of bombings against Nazi opponents in the city of Konigsberg. Several elected communist officials were straight up murdered and socialist newspaper editors were injured in a campaign that had been masterminded by Heinrich, Him, Himmler himself. But within the government, Himmler was simultaneously working alongside Hitler and the German Vice Chancellor. A sniveling little fucking weasel. He's one of history's great villains, Franz von Papen.

[Marcus Parks]

His lack of cowardice is like, his lack of strength is the exact reason why. And like this is the thing, he's.

[Ed Larson]

Why Hitler got into power. He's the guy who. He is the man who opened the door for Hitler. Because together these three men formulated a plan to fully integrate the Nazis into. Even though Franz von Papen knew that the Nazis were dangerous, he just thought that he was smarter.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they also knew that the Nazis wouldn't be able to be the governmental body that they need to be. Right. Because that's the other thing too, is that when the Nazis come together like this is, this is the type of thing where they have to build a coalition government, they have to build a government out. It's very complicated. So. And these guys don't have any administrative experience at all. And so these guys all think like, we'll just fuck it, we're gonna ride these Nazis and we're going to ditch them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, when they killed all these Communists, did they just replace them with Nazis?

[Marcus Parks]

No, they just were. They just. Everybody just died. It's all happening so fast.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I mean, it does happen very, very fast. Now, Von Poppin was not the only conservative who believed he could use Hitler for his own purposes. Everybody thought, everyone thought that they could use Hitler. See, after the Great Depression, the Nazis became the most popular conservative alternative to the Communist and Social Democratic parties. And the capitalist conservatives of Germany wanted to do anything to keep the left wing out. So seeing how popular the Nazis were and thinking that Hitler was sort of A useful idiot. The conservatives began machinations to install Hitler as Germany's Chancellor, which was the highest position of power in Germany, right under the president. They think, all right, we get Hitler in there, we can ride this until the wheels fall off. Just so long as we don't get anybody in government that might actually, I don't know, tax us or like, help people or anything like that. Now that we want to keep all of our money, put Hitler in, we can handle it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Take a chancellor on Adolf Hitler.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow, you should have been there.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

When you're right, you're right, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

They needed you then. Oh, my God, if they just let one Jew in, you would have been the perfect one for Hitler. God, he needed you to the detriment.

[Ed Larson]

Of the entire world. Those machinations became a reality In January of 1919 33, when Adolf Hitler, having never actually been elected to office, was appointed Chancellor of Germany under the elderly, barely cognizant President Paul von Hindenburg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, that's. What a great name.

[Ed Larson]

Right? I know, I know.

[Marcus Parks]

But also, I will say this is one of those things where I don't. We can't get into the nuts and bolts of how it happened, but just understand that the. They all negotiated a way to create a cult coalition government. They needed the Nazis to create a coalition conservative government. And there was involved all these guys negotiating. And one of the final negotiating point was like, okay, if we just give him the chance, he was like a co chancellor. Right. Isn't the thing that was like him kind of. They were like, well, he's just in there nominally.

[Ed Larson]

It's very complicated, but. Yeah, but they didn't. But they did. The point is that they all thought that they could control him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And von Hindenburg at this point point, he's in his 80s, he's barely there, and he's also very tired.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And they're all telling him that the other parties are going to destroy the concept of the aristocracy and they're going to pull these things. And he's like, I can't have that happen. And then he also was having problems with war outside of Germany. And they, they said, what if we give you the Stormtroopers as German soldiers? And so he was like, all right, now.

[Ed Larson]

When Settler was made Chancellor, his man Herman Goring was immediately placed in charge of the police forces. Goring ordered about 35,000 SA and SS men to supplement the Nazi actions to come. And in short order, massive acts of violence and terror became the norm where leftists were murdered by Nazis en masse and Then, in the midst of the chaos, came the Reichstag fire. On February 27, 1933, the German parliament, aka the Reichstag, was engulfed in flames, burning half the building down. The blame conveniently was placed on a Dutch communist named Marinus Bertrand van der Lubbe. Now, Hitler immediately declared that the fire had been a communist conspiracy where leftists had been working in tandem to destroy all of Germany. In reality though, Marinus van der Luba was a half witted bricklayer who simply had a passion for arson and by all evidence and accounts, acted alone.

[Marcus Parks]

This is a big question I had that I actually didn't understand. I guess for a long time we keep saying this idea that the Reichstag fire was this incident inside job, but I guess it really wasn't, right?

[Ed Larson]

It wasn't, it wasn't.

[Marcus Parks]

It was twisted. It was, it was, it was spun.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it, it was, it was taken advantage of.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I just didn't know. It was like one of those where I was like. I always assumed in my head that the Reichstag fire was an inside job, but now it just seems like he did just happen to set fire to the Reichstag and then he's like, great.

[Ed Larson]

Well, kind of, sort of. Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, who knows? I don't know. I mean, I was about to say. Yeah, I'm about to tell you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just didn't realize that lube was flammable.

[Marcus Parks]

You gotta go fast enough.

[Ed Larson]

Well, all Luba had to start this massive fire was his own shirt. But half the Reichstag was on fire within just two minutes. And expert witnesses testified that the fire was ignited by vast amounts of chemicals and gasoline.

[Marcus Parks]

Maybe it was. Maybe the shirt was made out of polygon.

[Ed Larson]

Esther. Well, what actually happened was that days before, some Nazis had overheard Luba in a bar bragging that he was going to set fire to several public buildings. And the Reichstag was next in line. So seizing the opportunity, the Nazis set the Reichstag on fire themselves. Then they used Luba and by extension all communists as scapegoats.

[Marcus Parks]

You mean.

[Ed Larson]

So it's, so it's both. They, Luba did start the fire, but the Nazis helped. Helped and they made it bigger and large. Far bigger and far larger than it was going to be if Luba would have done it on his own.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, so that's kind of like the Great White.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I was just surprised that Nazis would lie.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Right. Now the Reichstag fire was truly the beginning of the end for Germany. Hitler pressured the ailing President Von Hindenburg into declaring a state of emergency to quote, unquote, protect the people because the communists were out of control. And the people let it happen because they believed Hitler's lies about the danger that left us posed. Again, Hitler was telling everybody that the leftists are coming for you. They're going to destroy us all. They're here to destroy the country. So you need to give me all of the power so I can protect you against the leftists. And the Nazis claimed that they had found documents, documents which those documents have never been seen. But the Nazis said that the communists were planning to burn down government buildings, museums and mansions. Women and children were going to be executed. And the communists were not going to stop until every wealthy German was dead.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, thank God they stopped those communists.

[Ed Larson]

Using President von Hindenburg's powers, Hitler suspended all constitutional civil liberties the day after the Reichstag fire, which meant that anyone could be arrested without trial. This was very good news for Heinrich Himmler and the brand new prison he just built outside of his hometown of Munich. History knows this pit of despair as Dachau, the first concentration camp. And that's where we'll pick back up next week for part three of our series on Heinrich Himmler.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I got a question about the Dachau episode. Can I skip it?

[Marcus Parks]

Nobody. You gotta check it out, buddy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The fun thing is is that it's not even gonna be the worst one. No, not even close.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, dude, cool. That one was for actually Newark. What a fucking script, dude.

[Ed Larson]

Thanks.

[Marcus Parks]

Really fucking good. We're really. I think it's good history. And we're going to go.

[Ed Larson]

I hope so.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm also going to tell you this right now. We're going farther than that other series that went a certain distance about Heinrich Himmler. We're going farther and longer. We're going to be covering the entire life and crimes of Heinrich Himmler throughout the entire Reich and we're going to be covering his untimely death, whether you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Reich it or not.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And. But this is a. This is important. And also we're going to keep having fun with it and just got there. And the next time you see if you see anything like standing next to Nazi flag or having a Nazi flag, throw some Atom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Patreon.com Last podcast and left Watch us do this live. Go and see us every Tuesday night, 6pm Pacific for last stream on the Left Live. You can join the chat. It's a lot of fun and we have a lot of good times with engaging with you.

[Ed Larson]

Indeed. And don't forget to check out all of our live shows. We got a shitload coming up. And we're about to announce 2026, and we're coming to some really cool fight. We're really fun places next year.

[Marcus Parks]

And our Cleveland show is now in Akron.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So go get your tickets to that. We're gonna be at the Goodyear theater. That's on November 29th. But don't forget, we're also going to be in Oakland in October 25th and in Portland December 12th and 13th. And then, you know, can we say some of the cities we're gonna go to?

[Ed Larson]

Not quite yet.

[Marcus Parks]

Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. But it comes to the Matteo Center. The community center me and Eddie are doing. It is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

October 24th. Fourth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

October 24th, come to the Meteal Community Center. Eddie and I will be doing side stories live with our good friend Billy Wayne Davis. And then we're doing a call. We're doing a Halloween costume contest. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So come dressed up. You know, and I know you guys.

[Ed Larson]

I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Not everyone can dress as weed, but if you do, we'll smoke you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also, October 12th, I'm gonna be in Madison with my good buddy Logan Metz. It's going to be a lot of fun. And then. Then on November 16th, I'm gonna be in San Diego at Mic Drop Comedy with Amber Nelson, Ashley, Brooke Roberts, and my wife, Julie Rosing.

[Marcus Parks]

I just had a really good time with your wife yesterday. What the. What were you doing with a wonderful time with your wife yesterday?

[Ed Larson]

The.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You talking about?

[Marcus Parks]

I. You know, I just entertained her.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right. Maybe I'll have a nice time with your wife.

[Marcus Parks]

Maybe you would. Honestly, that sounds kind of nice. Maybe I will. No, we actually. We're filming Hoopa Goo Part two.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

[Marcus Parks]

You gotta. But we're having fun. That was a blast yesterday.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hail. Hail. Natalie.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I hail your wife.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You hear that?

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, I'll hail. You talk to my. No, you take it back. Nope. Take it back. I can't.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can't.

[Ed Larson]

None of this is gonna end well.

[Marcus Parks]

Love your wife.

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