Episode 639: Heinrich Himmler Part III - The Dachau Spirit

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left – Episode 639: Heinrich Himmler Part III – The Dachau Spirit

Release Date: October 17, 2025
Podcast Network: The Last Podcast Network
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, Ed Larson

Episode Overview

This episode, the third installment in the multi-part series on Heinrich Himmler, delves deep into the horrifying evolution of Nazi repression after the Nazis' consolidation of power. The hosts focus on the early days of concentration camps—specifically Dachau—examining how Himmler was instrumental in reshaping German society and building the machinery of terror. They explore the “Dachau Spirit,” the systematic brutality, and the normalization of extreme violence and cruelty as central features of Nazi rule. With their signature blend of historical detail, black humor, and stark honesty, the hosts break down the bureaucracy and psychology of early Nazi terror, the mechanisms that allowed it to flourish, and the key players—including Himmler’s circle and the infamous SS Death’s Head units.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nazis in Power: Mechanisms of Control

• Consolidation through Fear and Propaganda

  • After rising to power, the Nazis employed violence and propaganda to subdue and control German society. The Reichstag Fire ushered in state terror, allowing Hitler to seize unchallenged authority ([04:31]).
  • Marcus: “It’s designed to make you feel hopeless and outnumbered.” ([04:31])

• Fascist Acceptance

  • Discussion of how prolonged exposure to Nazi tyranny wore down resistance and normalized totalitarian ideas.
  • Henry: “…the more you’re exposed to these totalitarian ideas, the more you just sort of break down and accept it.” ([05:57])
  • Forced public presence of Nazi symbols as psychological warfare, likened to modern-day political iconography ([04:31]).

2. The “Dachau Spirit” and Concentration Camp System

• Origins of the Camp System

  • Prisons quickly overflowed as political arrests skyrocketed post-1933, leading Nazis to create concentration camps as a "solution"—with Himmler tasked with their organization and expansion ([18:00]).
  • Henry: “That solution, of course, was the concentration camps. And…the person Hitler chose to build and run this vast network…Heinrich Lewitpold Himmler.” ([18:00])

• Dachau as Prototypical Camp

  • Dachau (just outside Munich) is described as the model for all future camps—formulated under Himmler’s strict, sadistic, and bureaucratic guidance ([35:08], [54:47]).
  • Openly referenced in news and public life—contrary to later German claims of ignorance:
    • Henry: “In reality…the existence of the camps was spoken of in newspapers as early as May of 1933…so it wasn’t hidden at all by the Third Reich…” ([38:15])
    • The German public prayer: “Please, oh Lord, make me dumb, so I want to Dachau come.” ([38:45])

• Early Function and Normalization

  • Early camps functioned as instruments of fear, re-education through labor, and political deterrence.
  • Nazi logic relied on existing German institutions/traditions—workhouses, punitive labor, etc.—which normalized mass detention ([41:26]).
  • Henry: “For the German people, the concentration camps…were more or less an extension of what they were already doing as a country.” ([41:57])

3. Heinrich Himmler’s Methods and His Circle

• Himmler’s Rise and Administrative Evil

  • Himmler was chosen for his organizational prowess and sycophantic loyalty to Hitler—though he also played his own games, possibly even against Hitler ([25:40], [26:03]).
  • Henry: “What puts the Nazis above everyone else really is Heinrich Himmler and everything that he brought to the table.” ([19:28])
  • Himmler’s “punitive administration of sadism” gave Nazi oppression its cold, efficient, and uniquely bureaucratic flavor ([20:12]).

• Discussion of Himmler’s Allies and Rivals

  • Interplay with Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich, and especially rival (and eventual victim) Ernst Röhm ([97:11]–[103:29]).
  • The comic but damning contrast between the “party Nazis” (Goebbels, Göring) and Himmler’s disciplined, ideologically-maniacal SS. Jokes about the flamboyance and possible queerness of Nazi elites recur, with historic context ([33:27], [33:41]).

4. Camp Organization & The SS Death’s Head Units

• Recruitment and Indoctrination

  • Average age of camp guards was shockingly young; many were plucked straight from the Hitler Youth—malleable, easily radicalized, and full of “purpose” ([48:09], [77:56]).
  • Henry: “They called them Blut Jung…young blood.” ([77:47])
  • Indoctrination involved Mein Kampf exams and occult/nationalist texts ([51:38]).

• Brutality and Cruelty as Norm

  • Guards vied in cruelty—a “frat-like” atmosphere of violence, boredom, and escalating sadism ([83:10]).
  • Marcus and Ed highlight how this dynamic is mirrored wherever young men are granted unchecked power amid institutional violence ([85:52], [84:29]).

• Infamous Personnel

  • Introduction of notorious SS figures: Adolf Eichmann (architect of genocide logistics) & Rudolf Hoess (Auschwitz commandant) were Dachau alumni ([54:18]).

5. Types of Victims & Shifting Targets

• Camp Populations in Flux

  • Dachau’s prisoners changed depending on who the regime needed as scapegoats: Jews, communists, socialists, journalists, Catholics, gay men, Roma, and more ([55:14]).
  • Marcus draws analogies to current-day bogeymen in US politics (e.g., “trans-tifa”) ([55:35]–[56:04]).
  • Nazis’ rationale for targeting homosexuals and different sexual minorities is unpacked, with disturbing period quotes ([44:32]–[45:44]).

• Early Atrocities & Escalation

  • Details of violence: beatings, tortures, forced labor, and systematic rape.
  • Marcus: “As a matter of fact of course, inmates were beaten with hands, fists, and an array of weapons like truncheons, whips and sticks…the prisoners were also forced to eat those feces and drink urine.” ([59:03]–[59:37])
  • “Dachau Spirit” came to mean not only extreme violence but also arbitrary, capricious terror ([62:11]).

6. German Awareness and Complicity

• The Myth of Ignorance
  • Hosts deconstruct postwar German claims of innocence: Dachau and its ilk were widely known, used as warnings in common parlance, and even discussed in open media ([35:38]–[38:52]).
  • Public denial later aided by memoirs like Albert Speer’s but thoroughly debunked by the actual historical record ([35:38]–[37:37]).

7. Case Studies & Striking Stories

• Joseph Hartinger: A Rare Resister

  • Munich prosecutor who doggedly investigated early murders at Dachau, compiled evidence that would help at Nuremberg ([67:23]–[69:43]).
  • Henry: “If there had been just a hundred men like Joseph Hartinger…then the Nazis could have been stopped even after the Reichstag fire.” ([68:29])

• Hans Beimler: Communist Survivor

  • Political prisoner who escaped Dachau with SS help, mailed a cheeky postcard taunting his captors, later fought (and died) in Spain ([87:45]–[88:34]).

• The Night of the Long Knives (June 1934)

  • Detailed narrative of the coordinated murder of SA (Sturmabteilung) leadership and Hitler’s rivals, solidifying Himmler’s power. Notably, Hitler spun the massacre as a favor to the “reasonable” public by disposing of the most violent Nazis ([103:29]–[119:20]).
  • Eddie: “…everyone thought that he had killed all the really bad Nazis. And now there would only be reason, quote unquote, fake, reasonable Nazis.” ([118:17])
  • After this purge, SS becomes independent under Himmler, setting the stage for the full machinery of mass murder ([120:06]).

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Memorable Quotes

• Henry: “The most complete record of torture, destruction, and despair that has ever been compiled in human history.” ([20:28])
• Marcus (on the swastika flags): “…it’s good marketing…as much as I hate to say it, it’s a good-looking symbol.” ([06:25])
• Eddie: “You fucking piece of shit. Do you understand what elote and tamales have done to the waistlines of the United States of America…” (satire on scapegoating, [13:49])
• Henry (on Himmler’s impact vs. other dictators): “No other regime in history achieved such horrors with as much cold and deliberate precision…” ([20:32])
• Marcus (discussing “Handsome Tony–the Nazi guard”): “It’s the true fear.” ([81:21])
• Henry (criticizing postwar German claims): “You could say, I didn’t know anything. Even though you very much did.” ([37:28])
• Marcus (on “frat-like” violence): “A bunch of guys who can’t make friends all become friends.” ([85:24])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00 – 01:39: (Ads and theme—skip)
• 02:01 – 08:19: Nazis consolidate power; propaganda and normalization of fascism
• 08:19 – 18:00: Early Nazi repression, legal crackdown, economic associations
• 18:00 – 25:25: Genesis of concentration camps, Himmler’s administrative philosophy
• 25:40 – 41:26: Comparison with other dictators, Himmler’s rivals, creating the Dachau system
• 41:26 – 54:18: German public normalization, economics of camps, IG Farben
• 54:18 – 62:11: Organization, Death’s Head units, mechanics of violence
• 62:11 – 83:10: Structure and culture of camps, sadism, recruitment of guards, youth radicalization
• 83:10 – 90:43: Impact of proximity, psychological and social elements of cruelty
• 90:43 – 101:19: Unification of German police state, rise of Heydrich, Himmler’s grasp on power
• 101:19 – 119:20: The Night of the Long Knives, political assassinations, Hitler’s spin
• 119:20 – 122:14: Aftermath, public sigh of relief, SS independence, expansion of the camp system
• 122:14 – 123:28: Preview for next week—Himmler’s mythic/occult obsessions

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Tone and Style

The hosts maintain their trademark combination of gallows humor, self-aware irreverence, and genuine moral horror. Their banter and references are edgy, sometimes crass, but always tempered with historical clarity and empathetic outrage at Nazi crimes. They acknowledge the discomfort of mining laughs from such grim subject matter, often explicitly calling out or undercutting their own jokes.

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Conclusion & Next Episode Teaser

This episode charts the germination of Nazi state terror—how horrifying methods became institutional routine under Himmler’s oversight, and how German society was recalibrated to accept (or at best, ignore) evil as “normal.” The hosts conclude by previewing the next chapter in Himmler’s story: his obsession with myth, race, and building a strange Nazi “religion” (Wewelsburg, Ahnenerbe, and more), before the machinery of annihilation truly accelerates with the coming of the war.

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For Listeners

If you missed this episode, expect an unflinching yet often darkly comic journey through the banality and bureaucracy of evil—the perfect primer for understanding how ordinary people, organizations, and even aesthetics contributed to atrocity.

Transcript

[Jeff]

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

[Zoe]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

[Jeff]

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[Zoe]

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[Jeff]

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[Marcus Parks]

Nice.

[Zoe]

Je free.

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[Jeff]

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[Eddie]

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Us with eligible traded in any condition.

[Jeff]

So what are we having for lunch?

[Zoe]

Dude, my work here is done.

[T-Mobile Announcer]

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[Eddie]

Data 182025 Visit T mobile.com Dead is just a word. On October 17th, just in time for Halloween, the terrifying Black Phone 2 hits theaters. Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan Hawke, who is back as the Grabber and more sinister than ever. The Grabber's story wasn't over and he asked the question, do you know what happens when you die? Find out for yourselves. October 17th. Hell is in Flames. It's ICE. Black Phone 2 only in theaters.

[Henry]

There's no place to escape to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the last darkness on the left.

[Eddie]

That's when the cannibalism started.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What was that? Oh, shit. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la.

[Eddie]

It's a serious topic.

[Henry]

It's a serious day.

[Eddie]

Thank God you got two wacky guys.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Here today who read it. Just read it.

[Marcus Parks]

Laugh.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Some of the funniest things that you can find this side of Duckhouse. Oh, what a great comedy show.

[Eddie]

We're gonna reverse that for you today, Eddie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Give him a big one.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I've been doing to like, get into the mood is I've been downloading pictures of Ernest Rome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know if that's good or bad. I know Himmler would hate it, but Rome would like it. And I just don't know where I stand if it's a good thing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I kind of like.

[Eddie]

It's like, so open. Yeah, it comes all the way back around, you know what I mean? Like, if you only allow yourself to be gay for Nazis, what kind of hate is that? Yeah, yeah, it's like love and hate together.

[Marcus Parks]

I've changed the word coming to roaming, and my cell phone package hates it. But yeah, Verizon looks real upset about it. But otherwise, you know, I've been roaming, you know, days, for days now, actually.

[Eddie]

I love the idea of concept of raming is cutting your nose off and jerking off on a man's chest. Please.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's roaming.

[Henry]

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the man who's trying to bring a little bit of levity. His name's Henry Zabowski.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, everybody. I hope everybody likes super long lines for death.

[Henry]

And of course, the man who's been roaming all over Los Angeles, it's Ed Larson.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, man, I, I earlier I roamed and I let it come out. You know, I let the roam come out and, and it just went on the table and I put a little mustache on. It looked just like Himler.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, cute.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, a little cumler.

[Henry]

Actually. I, I do like calling come Rome. I've got like a big like, oh, I got Rome all over my pants. Yeah, I roamed in my pants.

[Eddie]

But the worst is going to be.

[Marcus Parks]

It'S in my nose. I roamed in my nose somehow.

[Eddie]

You know, every once in a while though, with your wife, you're going to pull out and one time you're to be like room as you shoot it all over and she's going to be like, I guess I've made a bunch of lean Sturman all over you and she's going to leave you.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah, that's not going to happen. Yeah, not to me.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And we're three episodes deep to nine episodes maybe of Himler. So when it comes down to it, you better start getting with the program and getting hard for Himler, honestly.

[Marcus Parks]

Julie's last name is Rosing. She's very German, and I'm a little disappointed in how little she cares about this.

[Henry]

This.

[Eddie]

Her silence is deafening.

[Henry]

So when we last left Heinrich Himmler, the Nazis were finally in power. By manipulating conservative figures in the German government who thought they were manipulating Hitler, the Nazis managed to get good old Adolf appointed as Chancellor, which was the highest position of power in government, right under President von Hindenburg. Within just months of being in power, however, the Nazis false flag their way into a full authoritarian regime by starting the infamous Reichstag fire in Which Germany's parliament building was burned down and left wing politicians and activists were used as the scapegoat. In the weeks following the Reichstag fire, Nazi flags began appearing everywhere in the streets of Germany. You couldn't escape the swastika. It was an overbearing presence. It's sort of how, like how you feel when you go to a conservative town and there's like MAGA shit everywhere. It's designed to make you feel hopeless and outnumbered. But one by one, Germany's most powerful institutions surrendered to Hitler and his goons. Because the alternative was to face the violence being perpetrated by either the SA under Ernst Rohm or the SS under Heinrich Himmler.

[Eddie]

And now we see what it means to be inside of a fascist fantasy land. Because what has to happen within fascism and within one of something, especially within Nazi Germany, is that everybody has to sort of now accept the reality that they're in. Because if not, they get murdered.

[Henry]

Yeah, they get murdered. Or you just can't deal with it like you really like they do. There's a lot of talk about how and a lot of debate as to how fully the German people accepted Nazism and how fully they accepted it into their lives. And that's the thing, but that's the thing about a fascist government is that the more you're exposed to it, the more you're exposed to these totalitarian ideas, the more you just sort of break down and accept it because you're trapped within the.

[Eddie]

You're in it.

[Henry]

Yeah, you're in it. No way out.

[Marcus Parks]

And when you talk about the Nazi flag too, it was like, it's good marketing. It is like, like it, like it's like it's a good looking symbol. Like I, you know, I hate to compliment them, but like, girl, what he was doing.

[Eddie]

These guys know what they're doing, knew what they were doing.

[Marcus Parks]

They had two different Nazi flags. I learned about this today. I didn't realize there was like one that was just like red, white and black and then like stripes, like the, like the actual, like Germany flag. And then they changed it to the Swastika flag in 35.

[Henry]

Yep.

[Eddie]

And then it tested better.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so weird. And it was off center a little bit too, which kind of tripped me out. Like it wasn't like perfectly center. The actual swastika.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

On the flag, which is like a little weird. Which it kind of kind of threw me off a little bit.

[Eddie]

So you're not there yet because you don't know enough about World War II until when you close your eyes, you just see two swastikas.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Or like when a woman takes off her shirt instead of.

[Eddie]

Every time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You get out, you. You get out. You villain. You get out.

[Marcus Parks]

Wonderful booby tasses.

[Eddie]

I've seen a couple of those films.

[Henry]

Now. Much of the worst violence began with who else but the Jews. In April of 1933, just a month or two after the Nazis seized total power, Hitler declared a nationwide boycott on all Jewish owned shops. Soon after, tens of thousands of Jews were robbed, beaten or murdered by Rome's SA and Himmler's ss. And soon after, laws were passed that banned Jews from public service, university positions and various other profess. But the point we're going to come back to again and again in this series is that the Jews weren't even close to the only targets in Nazi Germany and beyond when it came to detention, harassment and mass murder. See, after the Reichstag fire was blamed on a non existent cabal of communists, which is exactly what our government is doing today with the non existent antifa.

[Eddie]

It's not a group, it's a concept.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, but they got the girlfriend. I know, tell me about it.

[Jeff]

I know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I see Greta Thunberg every day, defying me with her bangs. Those bags are a wall of hate.

[Henry]

After the blame was placed on this non existent cabal of communists, left wing political party leaders in Germany stepped down or they were arrested along with labor leaders. This also of course destroyed the unions. But those on the right wing, even those who weren't Nazis, they were largely fine with the crackdown. This was because conservatives in big business and finance, the aristocracy and the landlords, they were given free reign to do whatever they wanted. This however, came at a great human cost. Not just to themselves, but to their neighbors as well.

[Eddie]

Landlords, Landlords.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wait a second. Landlords don't. They don't do anything ever wrong.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Henry, I'm sorry to do this to you, but apparently landlords can be bad.

[Henry]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What are we? I'm more or less.

[Marcus Parks]

Any job that has a word.

[Henry]

Yeah. Hey.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey.

[Eddie]

Except when I applied to be Goon lord, my local county. It's actually kind of nice. I am, honestly, I'm. I'm second. I'm kind of second running up to be Goon lord of LA County.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, congratulations.

[Henry]

That's great.

[Marcus Parks]

You haven't been roaming lately.

[Eddie]

You know, the key is to. Is to roam, but never arrive.

[Henry]

For any autonomy that people may have had to live their lives the way they wanted to, as they did in Weimar Germany before the Third Reich. That was swiftly squashed by the Nazis. The people on the right, they lost freedoms along with everyone else. And even if they didn't care about that, even if they were like, well, if you don't do anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide, those people paid dire consequences later on when Germany was utterly and totally destroyed because of the actions of the Nazis. It's going to come back to bite you in the ass one way or another.

[Eddie]

Just know that. The checks in the mail.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I think mostly it's because of how little respect they had for V's. Like, why are they. You know, Like, I know W looks like two V's, but, you know, we don't need to do that.

[Eddie]

I actually learned that the hard way in when I was in Greenpoint one time, and I went to one of the, like, the super Polish, like, places. Like, I went to. And I went to go get Carma.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And no, not. It was like a bodega.

[Henry]

Oh.

[Eddie]

And I walked in, and legitimately, the man didn't want to serve me. And then he saw my license and he was like. And he hit me. And I was just like, sir, I do not have the father's tongue. Like, I was a despicable rat.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's how they do. They. They start speaking Polish to you, and then you. And you can't answer. They fucking hate it.

[Eddie]

Yeah, they get real angry.

[Henry]

No, when I was in. When I lived in Greenpoint for many years, and I was often confused for Polish, and anytime someone would speak to me in Polish and I would say, like, hey, sorry, not Polish. I always got bah, bah. And then they would walk away.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was always bah.

[Henry]

But before World War II even started, the Nazis worked hard and fast on establishing an atmosphere in which the average German had to live their life in a way that was largely prescribed and dreamed up by Heinrich Himmler and his ilk. See, after the Nazi Party took over Germany, Himmler's insane ideas about racial hierarchies and social mores were seen by the average German as more and more reasonable, even necessary to Germany's continued existence. In other words, as the country became fully Nazified, Heinrich Himmler's entirely unreasonable and strict rules for proper living became not only normal, but essentially, if you wanted to survive the Third Reich, it's.

[Eddie]

It's kind of like a chicken and the egg, because the rules beget rule, beget the lifestyle. And then now you have the rules set in place, and they have the power. Once they have the power. Then those rules become a giant whack and stick.

[Henry]

Yeah. Now the most effective action the Nazis took when it came to seizing and holding power within Germany was their takeover of the police. The power to arrest German citizens was given to Ernst Rohm's SA and Heinrich Himmler's ss. And since neither group was actually a part part of the government itself, they could act independently and extrajudiciously. They could act to arrest or even kill anyone that could even be a possible threat to Nazi rule. This of course produced a wide net and as a result, Nazi detention in 1933 was unpredictable and confusing. Just the suspicion of an illegal act was enough to detain someone. And mass arrests were used to destroy any possibility of organizing a counteraction. Nazi propaganda, however, maintained that the entire process was legal and well organized. In reality though, the Nazis were basically kidnapping people with only the slightest veneer of bureaucracy. Doing it with just enough officialdom where people who were only half paying attention might say, sure sounds okay. It's like how today people will say like, well like ICE is just arresting criminals, right? Because they're not paying enough attention to see the stories of the incredible amount of innocent people who are being detained and disappeared along with the criminals. All these people who are half paying attention see is photos of scary looking dudes, which is good enough for them.

[Eddie]

You fucking piece of shit. Do you understand what elote and tamales have done to the waistlines of the United States of America, of the good American citizens of this and those people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Out there fucking cutting into the money of our wonderful government selling that tamale outside of the US taxation system? Yeah, I say string them up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I for one fucking support our ISIS groupen.

[Henry]

And really this is how the Nazis kept getting away with it and how the German people allowed all this to happen. The frenzy of arrests and street violence after the Reichstag fire had badly frightened the millions of middle class German voters. But it wasn't just the chaos that frightened them. Instead of believing their own eyes as far as what the Nazis were doing to their friends and neighbors, Germans listened to what Hitler was saying about how the Bolsheviks would take over and kill them all if the Germans didn't vote for the Nazis again. And sure enough, when the next election came In May of 1933, the people listened to Hitler and their own fears instead of trusting what they saw with their own eyes. And the Nazi share of power only increased.

[Eddie]

Do you think that it's also a show of power? Also helps them believe that the problem is big and Ever present.

[Henry]

Yes, of course. No. When you have all of this chaos going on, like the people, when people, when that fear hits you, like you, you don't want to think that something bad is happening there. You want to think something good is happening.

[Eddie]

They've got to be busy doing something good.

[Henry]

Yeah, they get this has to be good. That person can't be innocent.

[Eddie]

I elected him.

[Henry]

Yeah, I elected him. I pay, I said yes to this. So therefore this action that's going on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That must be good.

[Henry]

It has to be good. Because that's how they feel better about themselves now. They feel better about what's going on. Because people have a very hard time changing their minds when they've up.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I mean it's fair. We talk about sunken cost fallacy when it comes to cults. We talk about this when it comes on those extreme ends. And what people sometimes understand is that none of us ask no one. A lot of these people within Germany weren't asking for this. They weren't asked for this. But when the cult builds up around you, you might want to figure out how to get out. You have to look at that exit. If you start to see the, the bricks start building around you, it's about time to start bugging out.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah. It's time to get out of there now. Speaking of democracy, the Nazis soon began arresting democratically elected communist members of the Reichstag and over 4,000 left wing officials. And not just communists, these were social democrats, these were liberals. They were arrested without evidence as enemies of the state, even though it Nazis causing 95% of the trouble. Truckloads of Rome stormtroopers openly roared through the streets of Germany where they broke into homes and rounded up not just Jewish leaders, but communists, socialists and very importantly, journalists who had been critical of the Nazi regime. The German people meanwhile, largely accepted it because, and I can't stress this enough because many were overcome by the fear that a non existent left wing conspiracy was lurking just outside their door, waiting for just the right moment to destroy them all. It's the same.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And they're all poor. They're all just so desperate, very sad. And they don't have, they don't, they don't see where their next meal is coming from. And so they're like, if you're doing anything, I'm with you. Yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

And if you're dressing me Hugo Boss, I'm there. I absolutely love it. I also go, I wonder if the. I want to tell the audience. Just so you know, I pitched to Marcus before this like, adding a running joke to this episode that we would kind of cut back to some humors, you know, like. Like, back and forth. But he said, this isn't even the bad episode.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I just want you to know that I'm gonna save that for when.

[Eddie]

We get to the quote, unquote, bad episodes.

[Henry]

This is. No, this, this. Like, that's the thing. Like, I'm writing this one. I'm like. Like, it's not even close to the worst one that we're gonna get to in this series. Not even close.

[Eddie]

Cool.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll make sure. Make sure you let me know ahead of time so I can bring my armband.

[Eddie]

It's for his blood pressure.

[Henry]

But with the Nazis arresting so many people, the prisons soon ran out of room. They briefly held the overflow of political prisoners in SA barracks around the country. But the Nazis finally realized that a better solution, so to speak, was needed. That solution, of course, was the concentration camps. And the person Hitler chose to build and run this vast network of facilities was his number one fussy boy. The one who had the patience and the dedication to make it all work. Heinrich Lewitpold Himmler.

[Marcus Parks]

Snot worst himself.

[Eddie]

Honestly, it's just good he kept him busy.

[Henry]

No, it's not good that he kept him busy, because if he.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It made the Holocaust.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

[Marcus Parks]

He was pretty busy.

[Eddie]

No, I take it back.

[Henry]

Now, contrarians like to say that the Nazis weren't any more brutal in their practices than their contemporary oppressors in Europe.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, Marcus, you know, the Nazis weren't brutal than the practices of their contemporary oppressors in Europe.

[Henry]

Contrarians might say.

[Eddie]

They actually say that a lot of the other people were a lot worse than what they. Just as bad.

[Henry]

Yeah, that's what contrarians might say.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Stalin, you know.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah. They might say that.

[Marcus Parks]

They might say.

[Henry]

They might say that. Wow. They might say, wow, Ma killed more people. Wow. Mussolini was just as bad.

[Eddie]

Yeah, he. And he was a carb.

[Henry]

Yeah, he was. Cuz all the pasta. Cuz he's Italian. Cuz you're racist.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I am. Against them.

[Henry]

Yeah. But the way I see it, what puts the Nazis above everyone else really is Heinrich Himmler and everything that he brought to the table.

[Eddie]

Thank you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I can hear him somewhere. Somewhere he's smiling, knowing that I made one man happy.

[Henry]

It's not making me happy. I'm just saying it's what made the Nazis worse.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love the attention.

[Henry]

Doesn't matter if it's good or bad. I just like to be seen how many parties?

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's Rushmore crazy. That's amazing. What's an honor? No one ever chose me to be the most evil.

[Marcus Parks]

Those.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hitler this, Goring that.

[Henry]

Under Himmler's meticulous guidance and administration, the Nazis created, as one writer put it, the most complete record of torture, destruction, and despair that has ever been compiled in human history. That same writer wrote that the Nazis utilized Himmler's, quote, punitive administration of sadism, unquote. I love that quote.

[Marcus Parks]

I do.

[Henry]

And no other regime in history achieved such horrors with as much cold and deliberate precision as the Nazis. And the big thing is that the Nazis made their anti. Semitism. They made their. Like the. The murder and the. The extermination was an actual function of the state itself, an official function of the state itself, a stated goal of the state itself. Y.

[Eddie]

Even a lot of other dictators had this sort of almost like style to pretend or to disguise or to say that it was one thing or another, that they were doing one thing, but then they would do another. They would kind of even play to this idea of like, well, I still kind of want to keep my power here. There's, like a beloved contingent I want to keep. There's, like, a thing I want to keep. But the Nazis were unique in that level of detail that they allowed themselves to do this with. Like, all the rest of them knew, to be honest. Well, we don't need all this evidence.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And we could kill them more just indiscriminately, and we can do this. The Nazis really decided to do it with a. Like, a real panache.

[Marcus Parks]

Didn't Hitler's inner circle, like, have a meeting where they were like, all right, how Jewish does someone have to be for us to kill them always?

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

That was a moving needle.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Because they were like, oh, half isn't enough. You know, like, it was like one of the. I think it was like three grandparents was like, what they settled on or something.

[Henry]

Yeah, they def. They had many, many, many, many discussions about this. It's damn near the only thing they talked about. It was up there.

[Eddie]

Well, they weren't talking about feeding people, and they weren't talking about the economy, and they weren't talking about rebuilding. They weren't talking about any of that, because the only goal was to kill as many Jewish people and Jewish aligned people as possible.

[Henry]

Well, and the reason why the Nazis specifically had this and the reason why that, you know, because Nazism doesn't work without the idea that individual morality does, is that you're talking about racial morality. You're talking about, you know, we're doing this for the good of the race and we're doing this for the good of humanity. And that's the only thing that matters. Individuals don't matter at all. And when you look at everything from that perspective, then you're gonna do some horrible shit. And furthermore, the Nazis also looked at everything from the perspective of the law of nature. Everything was about nature. The Nazis not only saw other people as animals, they saw themselves as animals. Everything was about. It was animalistic and survival the fittest. Complete misunderstanding of it. But still it was survival of the fittest. So if you see yourself as an animal and you see everybody as animal and everything is nature, you are going the pro. But the pro you're going to do some horrible. But the problem is that like you know like monkeys may kill each other, but monkeys not. Not as clever as man.

[Eddie]

They really are.

[Henry]

They really don't have the. The ability to make the engines of death and destruction that we can make.

[Eddie]

I would actually love to see the connections to stuff like Schopenhauer and all those other like really dower racist philosophers that were around in GE in the late 1800s too and actually wonder if some of that like the really sad shit. I'm reading Thomas Ligati's the Conspiracy against the Human Race and he breaks down all of these.

[Henry]

Sounds interesting.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's awesome.

[Eddie]

It's all these philosophical. He's an antinatalist. His idea that essentially.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he doesn't have a belly button.

[Eddie]

Well he basically says consciousness is a burden placed upon those that are born.

[Henry]

Oh, human consciousness was a tragic misstep in human evolution.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And he bases this Russ Cole.

[Eddie]

He's Russ Cole but he rates its all like from his. He's a horror writer and it's kind of like he decided to write a horror version of a philosophy book. And it's great but there's a lot of German thought in the 1800s that all involves this long stretch of like life is a purposeless clock. We are meat machines. This idea that we are self conscious nothings in a. What he said in a. In chaos eating itself and you know, shit like that. I wonder if any of that things got like that got to get has trickled in at all.

[Henry]

It sounds incredible but I mean I would say from my understanding of Nazism is that Nazism would be a reaction to that maybe to that sort of thing because it's.

[Eddie]

Because N is about like we can do something about it.

[Henry]

It's about Purpose. It's all about purpose. And it's. It's about acting.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Oh. Because even like Stalin sometimes would go like he was like, okay, we can kind of let the status quo go for a little bit. Like, we can relax for a bit. But Hitler and Himmler and all of his people, no, it was always go, go, go, go, go. We always have to be doing something. We always have to be accomplishing something. There's always got to be another goal, another thing to do. And that sort of like manic energy is what powered the Third Reich, empowered the Holocaust and powered, you know, what, 30 million people dead.

[Eddie]

And that's kind of what he talks about in that idea that we're just we in consciousness. Force subs forces us to set these fake goals to keep going towards. And that's what quote unquote, a useful life is, which is garbage.

[Henry]

Now, Adolf Hitler chose Himmler for the concentration camps not only because he was well organized, but also because Hitler believed that Himmler worshiped him. Himmler, however, was, as we said, playing his own game. And he quite possibly may have done some pretty nefarious shit to even Hitler behind the Fuhrer's back when the Nazis were coming up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's my Nazi.

[Henry]

See, that's how you are the worst Nazis that you even fuck over Hitler. You fuck over Hitler? Yeah. Yeah. See, in the early 1930s, Hitler had a girlfriend by the name of Gelly Raball.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, what if she could have just.

[Eddie]

Kissed him to smiles.

[Henry]

She didn't. She couldn't. Cuz he's Hitler.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, wow.

[Eddie]

Weird.

[Henry]

No, a girlfriend is all well and good, but the problem was not just that g Raball was 20 years younger than Adolf Hitler.

[Eddie]

Yeah, cuz Who's Hitler? Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Henry]

The big problem was that Gelly was Hitler's niece.

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Hitler.

[Eddie]

Some kind of Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Henry]

Well, technically, basically he was. She was his half niece.

[Eddie]

Like she was, honestly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, she was.

[Eddie]

She was absolutely her.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I always check.

[Eddie]

You guys gotta make sure it's a.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Dipping stick that you stick in her.

[Eddie]

And it comes out. And if it hits the two marks. Yeah, you can her.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay.

[Henry]

Oh, great. Glad you weighed in on that one.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Let's start. Let's start a new podcast that I think would be great for a 42 year old man to start calling called you can her. And I'm 44. Yeah. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Isn't that like what Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer are doing right now? Are they hiring a girl? Are they.

[Eddie]

They're like becoming a pimp to only fans, girls.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah. What I'm. What I'm saying is we don't want to do that, of pitching that ironically to you. But it's already a show and you're.

[Eddie]

Making a lot of money on it.

[Henry]

Boy, that's sad. God fucking damn it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, Great shot.

[Henry]

Now, as far as Hitler as a boyfriend went, he was what you'd call a bit possessive. And as the Nazis gained more power, Geli effectively became Hitler's prisoner. So rather than spend a life as Hitler's plaything, Geli died by suicide in 1931.

[Eddie]

Smartest thing she's ever done.

[Henry]

Or at least that's the historically accepted story. Rumors exist, without direct evidence, mind you, that Heinrich Himmler actually, actually ordered Gellies death behind Hitler's back to eliminate a possibly embarrassing situation that could have kept Hitler out of power and could have completely up Himmler's personal goals.

[Eddie]

I really, honestly, I find it really irresponsible that you would spread gossip like this.

[Henry]

I said without evidence.

[Eddie]

This is called misinformation. No, and I think that you should be deep platformed.

[Henry]

You know, if you're open with how it's like. This is just a rumor, which I was. And I wouldn't entertain this rumor if it involved anyone else in the Naz Nazi party. But if any of those had the power to make this happen, and more importantly, keep it a secret from Hitler, it would have been Heinrich Himmler.

[Eddie]

They're absolutely going to kill his super sad niece that he's having sex with, to be honest. They're going to kill her.

[Henry]

Yeah, they're going to kill her.

[Eddie]

Guess what? That is a liability.

[Henry]

A massive liability.

[Marcus Parks]

Didn't everyone hate Himmler? Like, how was he able to convince people to do this?

[Eddie]

They were afraid of Himmler.

[Henry]

Yeah, the blackmail. And. And it wasn't necessarily that people hate. Well, see, that's the thing. Regular people hated Himmler. Like people like normal people with just like, you know, who were just trying to live their lives. They didn't like Himmler. Nazis. They liked what Himmler had to say. They liked what he could accomplish. They liked what he was capable of. They liked his ideas.

[Eddie]

But you also think that one thing I seem to get more and more I research about Himmler, the reason why he was so smart is that he. He knew did not make his presence too overwhelming.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And he knew when to go in and out. And to be honest, it seemed like a lot of what Himmler did was kind of off on his own. Yeah. And he'd come back in and they wouldn't even know what he was necessarily up to. And then he'd fill everybody in and they would do stuff like that. So they. Himmler wasn't in the office. Like.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Goring was the personality hire.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Goebbels is the funny one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The two, the three of them are.

[Eddie]

All hanging out playing grab ass all day. Doing all this hanging out with.

[Marcus Parks]

Not.

[Eddie]

Himmler doesn't hang like that.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But he's in the inner circle. But he leaves a lot.

[Eddie]

He's too cool for it.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah, he's. He's definitely in the. He's. He's the. He is the big one of the big three. Like, the big three is Goebbels, Himmler and Goring. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh my gosh. I was just in New York City and falls coming. And I look looked great. I got my new cashmere sweater on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Damn.

[Henry]

Eddie looked fine.

[Marcus Parks]

I went to a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant. Mmm, so good. And then I went to the movies afterwards. My wardrobe was appropriate for either. That's what quince delivers. You want to look fancy quince. You want to look regular quince. It works no matter what. And I gotta tell you, comfortable as all hell. Man, that hundred percent Mongolian cashmere just.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Gets me rocking, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

So layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to quince.com last for free shipping on your order. Quarter and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com last free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com last. Be good to yourself, folks.

[Jeff]

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

[Zoe]

Jeff Bridges. Why are you still living above our garage?

[Jeff]

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you. You teach me, Soldana.

[Zoe]

Oh, no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mob. We'll get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

[Jeff]

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Nice.

[Zoe]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Jeff]

T mobile is the best place to.

[Henry]

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.

[Jeff]

So what are we having for lunch?

[Zoe]

Dude, my work here is done.

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[Henry]

Now Rumors around having his girlfriend murdered notwithstanding, Hitler ultimately chose Himmler to organize and run the concentration camp camps. But Himmler was not the sole creator. Herman Goring one of the big three. He had first established the first concentration camps in the German state of Prussia when Goring was heading the German secret police AKA the Gestapo.

[Eddie]

I got into a little bit of a Goring hole the other day and I didn't realize it was all the stuff.

[Henry]

That's a big hole to dig into. Oh yeah.

[Eddie]

But he's like so he's another one that was probably gay. They've been kind of. That's one of those things that they circle around.

[Marcus Parks]

Definitely found fat.

[Eddie]

But he was one of those where they said that because the thing with Goring was with all the makeup, like he would cover himself in like very obvious makeup. Like he would be very fabulous everywhere he went. He was always in fantastic clothes and he'd have long ranging parties with his men.

[Henry]

He was no I there was a one quote from one of Mussolini's men when the Nazis went to go visit the Italian fascists and he said where is he? Like Dakota did go. He wear a coda like a prostitute. He seem like a prostitute. Is a that that a type of.

[Eddie]

Coat he aware I say Mussolini tears these guys to trash.

[Henry]

Oh over and over again. And it's all about their fashion too.

[Marcus Parks]

Well it's very Italian.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just so funny. Cuz he's such a clown and he's all these terrifying Nazis come to meet.

[Eddie]

Him and he's just being like you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Look like so funny.

[Henry]

You fly all the way to Italy. You can't even coma your hair.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey hey, look at put on a little cologne. Put on little cologne.

[Marcus Parks]

That outfit is Goring.

[Henry]

Going off of Goring's example, Himmler established his own concentration camp completely under his control.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'll make my own concentration camp, so I'll be in charge of all the pain.

[Marcus Parks]

And we're gonna think so hard.

[Eddie]

There is actually a really good book called Concentration Camp that's about psychic children put into it, and they have to do stuff for the government.

[Henry]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that Magneto's story?

[Henry]

No. Well, this concentration camp was established just outside of Himmler's hometown of Munich, and it was the first camp run solely by the ss. This most enduring of Nazi concentration camps was very soon known to the German people as dock out.

[Eddie]

It's the way you bring it up. It sounds like it's the Simpsons. What?

[Henry]

This most enduring character, Mo Sislak, was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

One of the most loved.

[Henry]

And endure it. It's important to establish right up top that when the German people claimed that they didn't know anything about the concentration camps or that they didn't know how bad the camps really were, they were trying to feed the world a very large load of revisionist horeshit.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry]

The lie that they didn't know came about mostly because of an autobiography published in the 1970s by Hitler's architect and Hitler's best friend, Albert Speer.

[Eddie]

You are my best friend.

[Henry]

I can just sit here and talk to you about big, ugly blocks of stone for hours.

[Eddie]

And also, you know what I like is that also sometimes we can just sit in the comfortable silence of the concentration camps.

[Henry]

That's true.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you serious right now?

[Henry]

Although it's not really silent because of all the screaming.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Screaming? I don't even hear it. I fall asleep to it.

[Henry]

Well, Albert Speer claimed in his autobiography that he'd know nothing about what was going on in the camps.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know nothing.

[Henry]

And this was after he had spent 20 years in prison after the Nuremberg trials.

[Eddie]

Let me just throw my brain or not. I've just done so much that I don't know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're talking about the time I worked on that Dave und Busters. That's what you mean. The Dave Wunderbusters.

[Henry]

Well, his claim that he knew nothing about the concentration camps was a demonstrable lie because Albert Speer helped design some of the camps.

[Eddie]

As an architect, he nailed up the signs.

[Henry]

But this book, written decades after the war, it gave the German people an out. They can say, well, if Hitler's closest advisor knew nothing, how could I know as an average. How could I, as an average German, know more than Albert? Speech year. And so, for many surviving Germans, the camps basically became memory hold. You could say, I didn't know anything. Even though you very Much did.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you think they might have known?

[Eddie]

Not everything. Yes.

[Henry]

Yeah. They didn't know every single detail, of course, but they knew that.

[Marcus Parks]

Were they allowed to visit the camps?

[Henry]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

The citizens?

[Eddie]

No. Well then also started understanding where they started to put the camps.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Right. Because eventually it began to be. Be outsourced out.

[Henry]

Right? Yeah.

[Eddie]

It. Get moving. It was moving farther and farther away from Germany in order to hide it eventually.

[Henry]

But Dachau was 12 miles outside of Munich. It was not that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, you can literally.

[Marcus Parks]

You can walk there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

It's a sad walk. Yes. They could put something in there like a water fountain or a couple of hot wings places, but they don't.

[Henry]

In reality, the existence of the camps was spoken of in newspapers as early as May of 1933, just months after the Reichstag fire. In the context that people were being held in Dachau under so called protective custody. In other words, see, it wasn't hidden at all by the Third Reich that leftists and Jewish leaders were being sent to Dachau. In fact, Dachau was such a known quantity in Germany, the people had a cautionary verse about it. Almost a prayer went like this. Please, oh Lord, make me dumb, so I want to Dachau come.

[Eddie]

Jesus Christ.

[Henry]

Yeah, it's something people would say.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So yeah, you have known something.

[Eddie]

But this again you do have an explanation. Like you do know kind of why, which is that people are getting mass arrested and they had to figure out quote unquote. Right. This was the solution of where we put all these people were arresting.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And at first they weren't. They were just putting them there. They weren't like killing them.

[Eddie]

Right.

[Henry]

Not in the way.

[Marcus Parks]

Not weren't exterminating them. They would die like malnourished and they would die like get beaten to death by. By a prison guard. Yeah. But it wasn't like a. Like line them up and shoot them, put them in the gas chamber.

[Eddie]

Some guys were getting shot, but shot again. It was. They got real organized.

[Henry]

Yeah, we're, we're going to get to that here in a bit. But yeah, most of that started after the war.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry]

Yeah. The Duck out was established soon after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. But by the time Hitler put a bullet in his own Brain in 1945. Woohoo. 20 if 27 concentration camps and 1100 satellite camps have been created.

[Eddie]

Wow. That's the worst 27 club of them all.

[Henry]

Yeah. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what that song's about, right?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

It's about the Ones, you know, around.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

Birkenau, it's not. Yeah. These camps were utilized for everything from slave labor to simple extermination. The camps did, however, open and close according to need. But whether by necessity or some strange sense of twisted sentimentality, the only camp that was open and functioning for the entirety of the third one Reich was Dachau. Now, the Third Reich was not flush with cash. People were fighting in streets over butter, for fuck's sake. So the first concentration camps utilized infrastructure that was already built. Workhouses, vacant hotels, sports grounds, castles, and even restaurants were used to imprison the enemies of the Third Reich. Likewise, Nazi torture dens also appeared all over Germany to the point where no village or even city quarter was not home to at least one private room where the Nazis could quickly torment and abus use their enemies without having to travel too far.

[Eddie]

I just wish I could get one, you know, I mean, it'd be fun to do to just randomly attack comedians in various cities just for the sake of just like keeping them on their toes.

[Marcus Parks]

And we'll put them in restaurants.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

As they're hiding them.

[Eddie]

Ooh, delicious. And you have a back room. That's what we should do with all.

[Marcus Parks]

The closed down hooters.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a great idea.

[Henry]

It's exclusively to torture and kidnap local open mic comedians.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The green room.

[Henry]

We about talk also about Nazis.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Wow, weird.

[Henry]

Now it probably wasn't on purpose, but the utilization of existing structures as concentration camps, this actually helped the German people to accept their existence as a reasonable solution to their imagined problems. This was especially true of the workhouses because Germany already had a large number of them before the Third Reich due to their cultural tradition of performing manual labor as both punishment and rehabilitation. Where do you think our bite mock fry comes from?

[Eddie]

I thought it was a commercial jingle.

[Henry]

Bite Mock Fry. About Mac Fry with we work. See, many Germans believed that a strict work ethic could cure so called deviants of their degenerate instincts and even social welfare in Germany prior to the Third Reich was based on the concept of performing hard work in exchange for social services. So for the German people, the concentration camps as they were in the beginning, they were more or less an extension of what they were already doing as a country. Basically, the average German could look at a concentration camp and say, I suppose it's fine, like it'll be good for them in the long run and who cares, as long as I can get a job and stop feeling like a fucking loser.

[Eddie]

Would you also say that they did kind of Create jobs in the constructions of these things too.

[Henry]

Well, they were already. Most of them were already built. It wasn't say that what they created jobs with. Actually that's what I'm about to get to right now.

[Eddie]

Got it.

[Marcus Parks]

All right.

[Henry]

Now, just like it's been across humanity. German citizens believed that the oppression of other people would somehow benefit them economically. Trickle down slave labor, as it were. And as it was, some people did benefit. Each concentration camp basically became a town unto itself with its own tailors, blacksmiths, shoemakers and bakers. And some farmers even used the excrement of prisoners as free fertilizer. God, can you imagine lining up with a smile for your monthly allotted share of prisoners? Or feces.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh God. Human potatoes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I will say.

[Marcus Parks]

No wonder they were so angry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know those things right where they say like, you know, you could get.

[Eddie]

Gets to that point where a bad smell, they go like. Smells like money, you know like that thing.

[Henry]

Yeah. But in the end, as it always goes, the only people who really made massive profits on the concentration camps were the big corporations like the chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate IG Farben, who double dipped on the concentration camps in the worst way possible possible. Bayer. Yeah. IG Farben used slave labor from concentration camps at their factories, but they also manufactured and distributed the infamous chemical Zyklon B, which was used to kill over a million concentration camp prisoners once the Final solution became an integral part of the concentration camp system in the early 40s. It is important to note, however, that the majority of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were not murdered in concentration camps as it's often associated assumed. Where and how they were killed will be covered extensively in a later episode. That would be the aforementioned worst one.

[Marcus Parks]

How exciting.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yay. What a tease.

[Henry]

But for this episode, we must remember that the concentration camps targeted a wide variety of people, including leftists, gay men, trans people, Roma, and basically anyone who might have given the Nazis a hard time. You know what I learned is that was weird is the Nazis, of course they hated gay men, but not because they were necessarily homophobic. It was because was you shouldn't be having sex with other men. You should be having sex with a woman so you can bake, make a baby. But they also had really had no, they actually came out and said they had no problem with lesbians because they said that lesbians were merely go. And it was. It's up how they put it. But they said that they were. I can't remember the exact term they used, but they said they were not enough men in Germany for all the women because of World War I. And so these women like some sort of like they were frogs. They were needing to go. Yeah. They were needing comfort. So they were turning to each other. But of course the plan was like once we do have enough men in Germany, then yeah, we're going to start killing the lesbians too. But until then, let's just kill the gay guys. I think they killed somewhere it was 15,000 or 15,000 gay men were murdered. Most of them were, most of them were castrated chemically or physically.

[Eddie]

And then you look at somebody like Guring or the Rome. Right. They were all part of the actual function of the Nazi government. They, that were largely living out loud gay. And I think that why, why that works is cuz there's, there's something about. But it's different because he's a chosen one. Yeah, there's something that's like a different one where it's like that's about subjugating other men.

[Henry]

Well, he's contributing otherwise.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Henry]

Like he, he, he's, he's, he's doing his part.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, weren't other countries in Europe also like chemically castrating gay people during this time?

[Henry]

I don't know about that necessarily. I, I do know that other countries in Europe at this time were also incredibly anti Semitic.

[Eddie]

I mean I was getting, I think they get chemically like blown up.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I was, I was. Because I was member of the Imitation Game. I remember they, they, they chemically castrated that guy.

[Eddie]

Well, yeah, that was he. Because I think. But also that come. I think that was in the uk.

[Henry]

Yeah, that was uk. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's why I brought it up.

[Eddie]

Oh yeah. I mean it's not, yeah, it's not, it's frowned upon, Eddie. Okay.

[Henry]

Yeah, it was going real bad for gay men during this time period. Yeah. Really, really badly. Now under Hiner Kimler's exacting guidance, the concentration camp system of the Third Reich had its own organization, rules, staff and even its own acronym for easy reference in Nazi paperwork. In official documents, camps were referred to as kls from the German Concentration Slager.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're going to want to abbreviate that.

[Henry]

Yeah. But since there was so much paperwork, we're able to see how the concentration camps constantly evolved and overlapped as opposed to how it's normally thought of that concentration camps were just there to kill Jews. See, in the early to mid-30s where we're at now in this story, concentration camps were more used as deterrent threats, reformatories, slave labor centers and straight up torture chambers. It was only towards the end that they became used more for human experimentation and genocide. It is necessary, however, to discuss the evolution because the elements that were needed to get the camps to their endgame were present from the very beginning. Beginning when Heinrich Himmler was building and establishing Dachau. Now, when Heinrich Himmler was deciding who should staff Dachau, he figured that it would be best to use not just the ss, but SS officers who volunteered for the position. Or at least SS officers who understood that it would be in their best interest to volunteer. As far as who those volunteers were, the average age of a Nazi concentration camp trooper was 2023. I mean, think about that.

[Eddie]

I mean that's how it's the only ones you could get, I imagine.

[Henry]

I mean, they're more or less the age of a recent college graduate.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. And you're stupid at that age. No offense to our listeners that are 23, but you're gonna get smarter.

[Eddie]

You just don't understand yet what you might be involved in and what, what's what that all is doing.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I did some really stupid up.

[Eddie]

At that age, but still, you know, it's still hard to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's hard to forgive a Nazi.

[Henry]

Yeah, I mean. Yeah. You were never a concentration camp guard.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I know.

[Henry]

No.

[Eddie]

Yeah, you like sold drugs.

[Jeff]

Yeah.

[Henry]

You sold drugs and owned guns.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yes. But I'm just saying like even, you know, even if you become a better person, Eddie, though, at that age you really make some bad decisions.

[Henry]

You do.

[Eddie]

I will say though, Eddie, what about the time you and I burnt Grenada? Well, that was one of our hardest, most immature Grenada.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

We went to me and Eddie did a twers assault against this town in Spain called Grenada. We burnt it down. We attacked all the women, we killed the children and we arrested all the men. But we were.

[Marcus Parks]

I went to the island.

[Eddie]

Yeah, we were like. But we were 23.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Dang.

[Henry]

Now most of these guys were middle class and most had not fought in World War I due to their age. They had, however, been radicalized by years of right wing propaganda that had made them terrified of communists and furious towards Jews for supposedly losing World War I and making their lives miserable.

[Eddie]

That's the thing I want to correct is for you guys to understand that a lot of these Nazis didn't serve in World War I.

[Henry]

Many of them did not.

[Eddie]

I think a lot of these, I think a lot of people assume that the Nazis were the. These war Destroyed World War I disaffected in my. That's what I thought legitimately when I was first getting into this, that there would be a lot of World War I disaffected German soldiers that would want to be a part of this. But we realized, like, now that was like 25 years between the two.

[Marcus Parks]

They'd be in their 50s.

[Eddie]

And so everyone that said it's like they weren't World War I officers.

[Henry]

These were.

[Eddie]

These were angry children.

[Henry]

Well, not just that, but what the World War I officers did is they came back like, Germany was one of the very few countries that looked upon World War I with a sort of romance.

[Eddie]

Yes. They thought they wanted to do it all over again.

[Henry]

Yeah. They looked at it and, you know, and the younger kids like, ah, if only I could get. If only I could get there. If only I could do that. Where he's in every other. In France, in England, in America, like every. World War I veterans. I don't want to talk about it. I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to talk about it. Please don't. Let's just let. Never talk about it again. Let's please never mention. And let us do every single thing we possibly can. I don't care what. To make sure that we never have to do that ever again.

[Eddie]

We've done very little touchings on Wobble War one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

World War one was bad. Yeah, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

If you get.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was like. It was rough.

[Eddie]

I saw all those fake faces in Edinburgh.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

I saw all those of the search. All the things that they had to do to replace everybody's cheekbones. Put a piece of porcelain in your face and you go, I just want.

[Henry Zabrowski]

To say so nice opportunity to be a part of the government here.

[Eddie]

You mean like, it was bad?

[Henry]

It was so incredibly bad. And. And every. And that was part of how the journey. Germans got as powerful as they did and part of why they were able to get to the point where they could invade Czechoslovakia. Because every other country in Europe was saying, like, we gotta do everything. Anything. I don't. I don't care what. We're not going to war again. And Germany's like, we're going to war again. We're doing it. We're going, like, try and stop us now. Back to the ss.

[Eddie]

Great.

[Henry]

While one had to be of a certain temperament to even think about joining, new members still had to undergo a full regimen of brainwashed washing once they signed up, which included weekly exams on Mein Kampf and quizzes on the works of Heinrich Himmler's. Favorite occult and right wing authors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, we could get deep into that.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's kind of like what you make me do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I'm the himler of this podcast.

[Eddie]

I'm keeping the lore straight.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, I love that. I'm watching 31 horror movies and nothing but holocaust footage.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, man, the waters.

[Henry]

Fine.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All I know is I got sad watching the Nazis and that was one of my struggles.

[Henry]

I never requested you to watch any holocaust footage.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you.

[Henry]

You didn't have to.

[Marcus Parks]

I appreciate it.

[Eddie]

I just been sending to him on Tik tok. That's my algorithm right now. I'm on cost talk right now. You ever found yourself on hash cost talk?

[Henry]

I've not. I've never been on cost talk. It sounds bleak.

[Eddie]

It is.

[Henry]

Now, out of his new essay recruits, Himmler began singling out individuals who could look upon Jews and communists with no humanity whatsoever. And these were the guys recruited to run and guard the concentration camps. These units came to be known as der Turtenkopf, or as they're better known, the Death's head. Now, with the Death's Head, Himmler upped the uniform game from the simple brown shirt and black pants uniform of your average SS member. The Death's head unit had the full black uniforms, the classic SS look, the classic Nazi look. But the piece de resistance was the skull and crossbone badges that the deaths had proudly and openly wore on their caps. Now, yeah, we all think about that fucking amazing Mitchell and Webb sketch. Here are we the baddies and all that. But the German military had been using the Totenkopf as far back as the year 1740. The skull and crossbones were revived by the German army in world war war I and its use was continued by various right wing paramilitary groups after the war during their battle against the Weimar republic. In other words, the skull and crossbones were something that the Germans were very much used to. Now, out of the early recruits at Dachau, two stars of the ss, they rose to the top of the death's head pile. These two men were Adolf Eichmann, who eventually managed the deportation of Jews to extermination camps, and Rudolph Huss, who you may remember from zone of interest as the top man at Auschwitz.

[Eddie]

Very nervous man.

[Henry]

These two men were amongst many SS officers who went to great lengths to export what was called Da da geist or the Dachau spirit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow.

[Eddie]

Yeah, that's like.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, it's like.

[Eddie]

Is that like one of the nights? Is that a theme night?

[Henry Zabrowski]

In Dacao, yeah.

[Eddie]

Spirit night.

[Henry]

Gimme that old Dachau spirit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're gonna fight.

[Eddie]

We're gonna push every Jew into a trench. We're gonna fight.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're gonna push.

[Henry]

Well, no, they really did. They worked to export this to concentration camps all over Europe. Dachau was the model for every camp to come, and the man who set the tone for the whole thing was Heinrich Himmler. They would seriously ask, like, is this new place, this Birkenau, does it have the Dachau, Our geist? Yeah, it's got a lot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you better believe it, mein Franken.

[Marcus Parks]

So Himmler did have hoes in different area codes. He did.

[Henry]

He did. Before the war, the prison population of Dachau would vary depending on which community was being most villainized by the Nazis at that time. The one that was most useful as far as who could be blamed for Germany's problems. This is very much like how our current administration switches between groups like MS.13, the non existent antifa, and trans people as their bogeymen.

[Marcus Parks]

Hold on. My antifa badge isn't real.

[Eddie]

Nobody.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I paid $30 for my badge.

[Eddie]

Yep, you got conned by a Rusky agent.

[Henry Zabrowski]

God damn it.

[Henry]

You got. That's just somebody on Etsy. That's it. That's just some guy on Etsy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Stop talking to septum rings.

[Henry]

Sometimes, just like the Nazis did with the Jews and the communists, this administration will mush their bogeymen together. Like this recent trans tifa nonsense that would keep hearing about.

[Eddie]

Well, yeah, honestly, I did. I did have to avoid a roving band of trans Tifas the other day because it was so hard getting around all zero of them. It was so hard to just deal with those. Those. That phantom area where there was no one there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's interesting because the clan are the ones wearing dresses.

[Eddie]

Yeah, interesting.

[Henry]

And, you know, table clubs.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry]

And I'll tell you this. I've seen a lot more clan members in my lifetime. Y. Many, many more. In person, with my own eyes.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah, very much so. Was it at dinner?

[Henry]

No, no, it was when I was a kid coming back from a basketball game. There was a. The clan was having a meeting in a field right off of the road, and there was a bus with a bunch of other kids, and they were burning a cross on the side of the road, and it was pretty. Pretty pointed towards our school. We had black kids in our school, which not many schools at that time did.

[Eddie]

But they filed their permits and it's allowed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

In Throckmorton, Tex. That's very much allowed. Now, all this, of course, depends on what's going on in the news and what can scare people who are half paying attention the most. But in Germany, that meant that while Dachau could certainly be majority Jewish, it was at times majority homosexual, majority homeless, Catholic, communist, and so on and so forth. Now, most of these people would not be held indefinitely in Dachau, nor were they killed in the camp. A lot of prisoners came in and out of Dachau in the years before the war, because remember, the Nazis were fucking up Germany for a full five years before they invaded Czechoslovakia. But after Hitler kicked off World War II, Germany needed as much slave labor as it could get to maintain the war machine, because Germany's economy under Hitler was backwards, idiotic, and totally fucking nonsensical. But that's all to say that the Nazis military accomplishments are much like the pyramids and that you can really get a lot of shit done if you're willing to kill a lot of people in the pursuit of. Of your goal. But the necessity of slave labor meant that very few prisoners were released from Dachau after the war began. And since Germany didn't have the means to feed even their own citizens, the most common release from Dachau after 1939 was through death. Now, once Dachau began filling up with Jews, leftists and Nazi critics, the SS guards began.

[Eddie]

I was about to say, you got. You got hilarious.

[Henry]

Place to be.

[Eddie]

All the funnest people in the world were there, actually.

[Henry]

They were. Yeah. Jews, leftists. Yeah. There are the.

[Eddie]

All the funny people. Yeah, all the people with class. Honestly, Roberto Bellini is the only one. I agree with this murder. It's the only time the Nazis were right.

[Henry]

He was very good in down by Law. You gotta admit, he was very good in that movie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Do you really not like Life is Beautiful? Life is Beautiful is phenomenal.

[Henry]

This is one of his contrarian things.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm allowed to hate him.

[Henry]

Well, after Dachau began filling up, the SS guards began torturing the prisoners. As a matter of fact, of course, inmates were beaten with hands, fists, and an array of weapons like truncheons, whips and sticks. Their skin would be slashed, their organs ruptured, and their bones broken. And this was without killing them. Taking a page from the Italian fascists, the Nazis would also force feed prisoners castor oil, which can cause both diarrhea and constipation, depending on the person. But once the river began flowing, so to speak, the prisoners were also forced to eat those feces and Drink urine?

[Marcus Parks]

What's that supposed to do?

[Henry]

Castor oil?

[Eddie]

No, I mean in terms of eating all the poo poo and the pee pee.

[Henry]

It's torture. It's torture.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh.

[Henry]

Oh. What do you mean, what's it supposed to do? Would you think it was supposed to, like, I don't know, make them run real fast?

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know.

[Eddie]

Or maybe it was one of those things.

[Henry]

The Olympics are coming up. We need a good shot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Geez, you never know.

[Marcus Parks]

You just never know.

[Eddie]

I just always like to know. I just. I'm curious. Why?

[Henry]

Because it's horrible.

[Marcus Parks]

You would have made a great baker in Dachau.

[Eddie]

Why?

[Henry]

Sexual abuse was also far more common in the early camps when compared to the later SS camp system, and a lot more random because, you know, later the Nazis set up brothels at concentration camps called Freidnapterlungen. That roughly translates in English to Joy Division, which is where the band gets its name. So please listen to our four part series that me and Carolina did in no Dougs in Space about Joy Division for the full context on that, because that really does take a lot of context.

[Eddie]

It does.

[Henry]

It's good.

[Eddie]

But honestly, good plug.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that why they're so sad?

[Henry]

Partly, yeah. Yeah.

[Eddie]

I mean, that's got to be the least horny place in the world concert.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Henry]

But in Dachau, while the female prisoners were certainly raped and abused, the more specific sexual abuse was mostly directed towards the men. In some cases, their naked. Naked genitals were thwacked with sticks and truncheons and some were even forced to masturbate each other.

[Marcus Parks]

The only person in my family was a female on the Catholic side. Was. Was raped at a concentration camp. Got pregnant from. Got pregnant from the SS officer that did it. Had, got. Made it through. Came to America with the child and then my entire family on.

[Eddie]

Apparently.

[Marcus Parks]

Apparently, from what I heard from my mother, shunned them because she had a Nazi child.

[Henry]

Oh, my God.

[Eddie]

Eddie, are you. Is this a part of your new hour? Where's the punchline on that?

[Marcus Parks]

You know, it's my. It's. You know, this is the Catholic.

[Henry]

Not everything he says has to have a punchline. He can just tell I was trying.

[Eddie]

To make his extremely brutal story funny.

[Henry]

Okay?

[Eddie]

I was trying to bail us out of an extremely brutal story.

[Henry]

Sometimes, Henry, you can just let it sit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm sick of it.

[Eddie]

Yeah, everything sits.

[Henry]

You just let it sit.

[Eddie]

My coffee.

[Henry]

Comedy stands, quote unquote. Comedy. Yeah.

[Eddie]

Thank you.

[Henry]

Is it comedy if it doesn't land?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Yeah, no, okay. Jokes are jokes, even if they're not good.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, unfortunately.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Just like people.

[Eddie]

Yeah, exactly. I never judge a joke.

[Henry]

The so called Dachau spirit featured a few elements that were deemed by the SS as necessary for an effective concentration concentration camp. First, the camp had to be sealed off from the outside world to prevent escapes and to engender a feeling of hopelessness. This also created jobs because it meant that the concentration camps had to basically become towns under themselves.

[Eddie]

I actually heard that the Luxor took quite a bit from Dachau.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I thought they took from the pyramids Jewish slaves.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Either way.

[Henry]

Second, the guards and the commandant had to stay separated to keep the idea of hierarchy firmly at the forefront of every everyone's mind. Third, it had to feature work details from the prisoners because the camps solely dedicated to extermination camps like Treblinka, those were technically outside of the KL system, because a KL is supposed to serve a purpose. But perhaps the thing that gave the concentration camps the most Dachau spirit was Himmler's contribution of a set of strict rules that had to be enforced through a uniform set of punishments. Now, that was of course, the idea, but in reality, each camp was ultimately ruled by what one writer called an arbitrary terror in which each prisoner lived in continual fear of their lives. This fear was of course warranted because the killing of prisoners began extremely early in both the existence of Dachau and the reign of the Third Reich. See, before the SS, Dachau had been staffed by 70 members of the Bavarian police force.

[Eddie]

And they're just mostly arresting chocolate so they can eat it for lunch.

[Henry]

I put arrest on Undistruder and on dis. I don't care if it's French. I know I'm supposed to hate the French, but I love the eclair.

[Henry Zabrowski]

These sentences, death.

[Henry]

But in April 1933, a month or two after the Nazi seized power, Himmler replaced the police at Dachau and put the camp under full SS control. Figuring that they needed to set the tone, SS officers premeditatively murdered four inmates the day after they arrived to demonstrate how things were going to be from then on. Those inmates were of course, all Jewish. But while two of the victims were local political activists, the other two were of no particular political importance. This basically showed the so called political agitators what would happen if they didn't keep their mouth shut. But it also showed the Jews that they could be killed just for being Jewish.

[Marcus Parks]

Were they killed in front of everybody or do you know like as I know it's a gross detail to ask.

[Henry]

No, it's not a gross detail. We don't know. Yeah, we actually. That, that. That actually is not known at all.

[Marcus Parks]

I was curious how much of a statement it like was meant to be.

[Henry]

It was, I think, enough of a statement where word could spread, you know, like these four guys ain't around anymore.

[Marcus Parks]

That's a good point.

[Henry]

From your grave.

[Jeff]

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

[Zoe]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living a boy above our garage?

[Jeff]

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So. Dana.

[Zoe]

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

[Jeff]

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Nice.

[Zoe]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Jeff]

T Mobile is the best place to.

[Henry]

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Us with eligible traded in any condition.

[Jeff]

So what are we having for lunch?

[Zoe]

Dude, my work here is done.

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[Henry]

But once the SS men in Dachau began the killing they found it very difficult to stop. Especially after it became obvious that there wasn't going to be any real consequences for murdering prisoners. See when the first four people were killed in Dachau, this is the first four people killed in any. These are the first people killed in any Nazi concentration camp.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Prosecutor in Munich was actually called out to the camp by the Nazis because the Nazis were I suppose still trying to at least pretend like they respected any law other than their own. In the early days of the Third Reich it was still the law that if any person died in state custody from anything other than natural causes, the death had to be reported and investigated by a local prosecutor. So the guy called out to Dachau, a principled decent man named Joseph Hartinger, who's kind of a hero of mine, drove out to the camp and was immediately shocked when he noticed that the entire place was staffed by SS men. This was still early days and the SS were not again not a part of the government and they had act no actual legal authority to detain people in this manner. Hartinger was even more disturbed when he was shown the bodies of the four victims who had been simply tossed in a storage shed to rot. The SS claimed that all four men had died while trying to escape. But seen as how they'd all been shot at the base of their skull in the same spot, the more obvious conclusion here was murder. Joseph Hardinger didn't roll over. When more and more deaths were reported, so called suicides in which the victims were obviously beaten before dying. Hardinger got to work trying to figure out any and every way that he could personally stop what the Nazis were doing. After compiling a mountain of evidence with the local medical examiner, Joseph Hartinger issued a murder indictment for the camp commandant at great risk to his own safety. And he did achieve a few victories merely by pushing back against the Nazis when everyone else was too afraid to do so. In fact it's been said that if there had been just a hundred men like Joseph Hartinger pushing back in all of Germany and 100 in Germany, not like, not we're not talking about Munich, we're just talking about Germany, then the Nazis could have been stopped even after the Reichstag fire. Hartinger by the way, survived the war and never gave up hope. Throughout he brought bravely kept all of the records from his investigation throughout the Third Reich's 12 year rule hidden away papers that would have gotten him sent to a concentration camp and killed. He was saving it for the day when the Nazis would inevitably lose power and he might have the opportunity to prosecute those murders. And while he did not prosecute those murders directly, the evidence that Joseph Hartinger gathered was used in the Nuremberg trials.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Eddie]

Weirdly enough, these very scary individuals, individuals it seems, are affected by even the smallest amounts of pushback.

[Henry]

Very much so you just have to do it.

[Eddie]

And then it does take you sacrificing yourself to do it. And it's very, very difficult to make the choice.

[Henry]

I mean not even necessarily he didn't like.

[Eddie]

Because it was. Then it was. Because it was, it wasn't too late yet.

[Henry]

Well, you got. Well the thing is too is that you got to know who has the power to be able to do it. Because like Joseph Hardinger was not Jewish. If Joseph Hardinger was Jewish, then yeah, they would have killed him because there were lawyers and people and prosecutors, prosecutors who pushed back against Hitler hard, who were killed for doing it. But Joseph Hart. And that's the lesson is that you got to know when you're the guy who can say fuck you, the one who can stand up and say no, I'm not going to go along with this. You're out there, you exist. They have always existed.

[Eddie]

You can't pay off an entire country to kill us all. Like that's kind of what this is about. Like you can't just pay us off and think that we're just going to walk away from what's happening inside the country. But they're just, you know, they're just wasn't enough of him.

[Marcus Parks]

How does he get, how did he get away with not getting killed? Did he hide or because he was.

[Eddie]

White, he was a fucking Aryan German card carrying member of the fucking society.

[Henry]

Basically they swept him aside because the Nazis, when they could just sweep someone aside, especially if it's just like a regular ass white dude named Yosef, you know, like if when they could sweep him aside, that's what happened is like basically the, the files were sent off and it went to this person and that person. The whole case was basically killed. So when they could that they did like if they could avoid outright murdering someone they would just because it was.

[Eddie]

Honestly just because it was messy.

[Henry]

It was messy, you know and they would have to deal with, they would have to deal with push. You know, people say, oh, why did you kill Joseph? I like Joseph, you know. Now the biggest consequence of Joseph Hartinger's pushback against what was happening in Dachau was that the killings did temporarily stop and to avoid any heat from the ever sensitive middle class, the camp commandant who was in Dakota for the murder was replaced. But unfortunately for everyone who ever went to Dachau afterward, Himmler replaced that commandant with a super Nazi named Theodore Eike, who had joined the Nazi party in 1928 and had been a member of Himmler's SS since 1930.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I can't even leave skid marks.

[Henry]

Onto my underwear because it's such a good nonsense. Yeah. Have you tried?

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's very difficult to fix my diet.

[Henry]

What's your diet?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Venusnitzel and beers. Big long pollenos, Big delicious Hepavisons, delicious brothwurst, more delicious Frankenforters, delicious little ones. And I get filled with evil brown substance and I wish that I could do anything to make my shit white.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, if you eat chalk, maybe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Good idea Jew. Good idea. Jews is the capes.

[Henry]

Well, like many of Himmler's top men, Theodor Eicke was yet another crackpot that Himmler had put into a position of power. And this was after Eicke, of course, proved that he could not succeed or even exist in a civilized society. See, after Eicke had become a full SS man, he was arrested just before the Nazis came into power for constructing a bomb at the IG Farben plant where he worked. And the intent was to use the bomb against the police. But Eicke had become, as one writer put it, one of Himmler's most trusted adherents on racial matters. As such, Himmler was able to pull some strings to get Eicke released because there were already plenty of Nazis in positions of power. But Himmler told Eicke that he'd only be set free if you promise to never do anything like that ever again.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Never do that.

[Henry]

Never.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Never. You never do that again.

[Henry]

The bomb. Stop with the bomb. Out of. You're out of my special secret medieval night club.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I've been eating chocolate. Look at my boobs. I made some cream.

[Henry]

Good job, good effort. But still no bomb. Aika said yes and was sent to Italy to train their Nazis on how to be effective terrorists. It tells you of what I could good for. You know, like go train people to be terrorists. You'd be good at that. Don't stay here in Germany.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Honestly.

[Eddie]

Thank you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Would you like another Hogwart egg? I don't even like the fact it's.

[Marcus Parks]

A mid yellow or Himler would call a self portrait.

[Henry]

The I returned to Germany In March of 1933 after Himmler came to power. That's how much he sucked he had to wait until Hitler was in charge before he could come back. But upon his return, this is again how much further he sucked. He immediately got into a fight with a local Nazi leader that was so intense that the other Nazi was able to arrange to have Eike committed to a mental asylum.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I cannot believe you went on vacation and got a 10. You are not allowed. I will not allow you to live.

[Henry]

That sounds. This guy's bit crazy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Overblowing everything.

[Henry]

Well, to Himmler, this had meant that I could broken his word. He got he'd gotten in trouble again. So Ika was kicked out of the ss. But after the asylum's director informed Himmler that Eika was not mentally unbalanced by his standards, Himmler apologized, got Eika released, reinstated him in the SS and gave him a promotion. Even gave r200 marks to his family.

[Eddie]

I've got to say, honestly, it was kind of even fun being in jail because I got to hate new things.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I meant new types of things.

[Eddie]

To hate an animal just. It's crazy. So honestly, thank you for the opportunity.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They l to l terrible people.

[Henry]

See, this was right around the time that Dachau's first commandant was under fire from the whole prisoner murder thing. So Himmler figured that since he'd saved Ike twice, and since Ika had the right points of view, who better to run Dachau? This again is the elevation for loyalty exchange we were talking about. And since Aika had the same insane racial and societal block beliefs as Himmler, Himmler knew that Eika would have no problem whatsoever in executing Himmler's vision.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I mean, I'm just pissed.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

You don't like Nazis.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What's wrong with them?

[Marcus Parks]

You're right. It's not giving me heartburn or anything.

[Henry]

Now, Ika thrived almost immediately upon taking over operations at Dachau. The young guards at the camp reportedly adored him and even began affectionately to referring. Referring to him as Papa Aika.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, Papa.

[Henry]

And so, since Aika was doing such a bang up job at Dachau, Himmler elevated him once again and made him the top man in charge of the SS Death's Head units. Even going so far as to share in the recruitment process of potential Death's Head members.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the most emotional day I've ever had. I never knew that my hate could take me so far. I knew as a hateful little boy that one day I was hoping that I could hate my way to the Hate Olympics. And it's just been. It's been A pleasure.

[Henry]

I know this song was. Was written by a Jew, a Jewess.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But you really are the villain in my way. God, sometimes the Jews are just. It's horrible. It's so incredible.

[Marcus Parks]

Unfortunately, a Jew also wrote White Christmas.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow. What? What now?

[Henry]

Both Eika and Himmler agreed that younger recruits would be the best fit for the Death's Head. They called them Blut Jung, which translates roughly to those in the first flush of youth. It means, it literally translates as young blood.

[Eddie]

Yeah, like young blood. Yeah, the musician. Oh, this is all coming back to me. It's all coming back to Young Blood.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This talentless waist, his thin, stupid, talentless torso.

[Henry]

Switch over to the. The image comic Young Blood. That's fin.

[Eddie]

Sorry. Yeah. Oh, yes. But okay.

[Marcus Parks]

It's funny how much you don't like Youngblood and you just keep talking about it and I know that your phone is listening to you and then like giving you Young Blood material. So you just like, you start hating him more.

[Eddie]

Young Blood had to go on three different interviews to explain that he did have a relationship with Ozzy Osbourne. And when they finally got to the nut of it, he turns out he.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Met him 20 minutes before a concert a year ago. And then all of a sudden, now I still again, I believe Ozzy Osbourne thought he was a hot woman.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so fun. The it's how much you hate Youngblood is making me like him.

[Henry]

Well, back to the Blut Young eventually.

[Eddie]

First against the wall when Henry Zabrowski's in charge.

[Henry]

Well, eventually. Many of the Death's head guards were handpicked directly out of the Hitler youth. So by 1938, the average age of a Death's head guard at a concentration camp had dropped to just 20 years old.

[Eddie]

Big balls. Does it remind you of anything? Funny, in a way, you need young dumb men to do quite a bit of this.

[Henry]

You really do.

[Marcus Parks]

Because they're driven. They got nothing else to do.

[Eddie]

They got nothing literally. They're filled with common. And if they're not making Aryan babies, most of the other people probably don't want to touch them.

[Henry]

It's just anger. They're just full of so much anger. And they need purpose. They really, they crave it, they want it. And the Nazis were very good at giving people purpose.

[Eddie]

And we are looking a part time person here at last podcast in that court too. So you could send that over to side Stories LP gmail dot com. We're actually looking for Young Blood ourselves. That's true.

[Henry]

Now these young men had, according to himler A balance of malleability and resilience not found in the older recruits. Himmler also found that the enthusiasm of the young recruits tended to spread to the older ones. Which was needed because the older deaths were head members came with their own set of problems. See, older SS guards tended to become far more sadistic and corrupted by power. Harder to control. These are your guards who are nicknames like the Beast or the bone breaker. Although one interesting nickname I found amongst the list of infamous concentration camp guards. Handsome Tony.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, it's me. Hey, I'm from the old neighborhood. You got a problem?

[Eddie]

Listen, you're looking a little kind of skinny.

[Henry]

You want some?

[Eddie]

Woo.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's a joke.

[Eddie]

I'm not giving you nothing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm a Nazi.

[Henry]

Technically I'm from Coney island, but I grew. I say I'm from Bensonhurst.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Eddie]

Look at me.

[Marcus Parks]

So was he like the only Italian in the ss?

[Henry]

No, no, no, his name, he was a very much German. German.

[Eddie]

Yeah, it's a Tony.

[Henry]

Yeah, he's very much a death sad assessed man. He was convicted for beating 100 prisoners to death in the terrorism camp in 2002 at the age of 90. He was one of those later Nazis that they caught and prosecuted.

[Marcus Parks]

I got, I'm glad we got him.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I saw say people always do this. We always find like some 95 year old Nazi and everyone's like there's any left? Hang them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No it's fun to do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We should literally get the old out. We should have all get all the old stall, set up an old fashioned hanging gulag style thing and string them up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's not a bad idea. You know it's interesting is because like Handsome Tony is the most infamous of all these guys. Like it's like the other ones like Beast and Bone Breaker, they like needed the bad name to make him scary. Handsome Tony, that's the true fear.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah buddy.

[Henry]

Oh no, I'm so much more afraid of the fucking Handsome Tony than the bone breaker. It's like if you say the bone breaker's coming, like all right, fine. I guess he's going to break my bones. Like you know he's coming to visit you.

[Eddie]

Nice Frank.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, not nice Frank.

[Henry]

Beautiful Philip.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

But the other problem with older death set guards was that some could get a little tender hearted with the prisoners and would even begin to sympathize with them if given enough time.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, this is the Hogan's Heroes types of.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

Well they begin to open because it's almost like they forget that everybody's people or whatever. And that's, you know, whatever. Waste of Nazi energy.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And also, I hate Jews are charming.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

It's gonna be a lot of like, hey, you want to hear a song? You want to hear a joke?

[Marcus Parks]

Why do you think it took so long to kick Woody Allen out of business?

[Jeff]

Yeah.

[Henry]

And not all communists are just like, super annoying and bad at parties. Some of them are. Some of them can be very fun. Yeah. And, you know, with older guys, you know, the older you are, the more experienced you are, you know, the more you might be reminded of somebody that you knew.

[Eddie]

You know, most people soften. Most people naturally soften as they get older. If you are a good person trying to change. Yeah.

[Henry]

But with. But with younger people, you could just tell them, hey, this is how it is. That person's evil. Not go, okay, and then do whatever you want.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, they just don't care.

[Eddie]

They like having the hat and the uniform and the gun. Like, really, when it comes down to it, you can impress a 20 year old very easily by giving them a hat and a gun.

[Henry]

Yeah. Well, the sympathy was especially true in Dachau, where death's head sentries were in far closer contact with prisoners than in the more expansive camps like AITZ and Buchenwald. But for the young bucks, the close proximity in Dachau, that just gave them more opportunities for cruelty. Being young, they were often bored and looking for status. And acts of violence could both alleviate the tedium and make them more popular amongst the other guards. As such, cruelty to prisoners was often seen by other Nazis as a boyish joke.

[Eddie]

Chocular humor.

[Henry]

Yes. For example, a guard might yell at a prisoner to get him to jump. Prisoner gets frightened and he jumps. Makes the other guards laugh. Young man sees this, yells again, gets the got to jump again. But when that joke gets old, you got to keep up in the stakes if you want to keep gaining that social currency. You got to keep making people laugh. And they're not going to laugh if you keep doing the same thing over and over again.

[Eddie]

It sets a vibe, it sets a tone. Yeah, it's that Dachau spirit that it is.

[Henry]

And now that I think about it, this whole. It has like this weird frat like atmosphere. I mean, like prisoners when they can't. Like, they shaved off all their body hair, which seems like a prank. And in one case, a prisoner actually died after an SS officer inserted a hose into his rectum, opened up a high pressure water tap. Didn't the frat boy like die from that, if you like, fairly recently.

[Eddie]

Well, that's why I think that it. There's a, again, an overt function and a subtle function of these young men al together, because they really are. That's what it is. What we talked about with QAnon specifically, or any conspiracy thing that radicalizes young men. One of the things it definitely does is tell young men you're. You're okay. You're correct. We're going to support you no matter what you do. We're in. This is unconditional love. This is your new version of unconditional love. We actually want you to be the worst version of yourself because we love you, because we want to support you. And it permeates this. It's a fake love that permeates it all the way through. It's like in France, the fake love comes from buying your way in. Right. Like you buy in, you have to fit in whatever this area. And in here it's a. Are you, you nasty enough? Are you. Are you mean enough to be in the club?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. It's a bunch of guys who can't make friends all become friends.

[Eddie]

Yes. And they could also maybe want to. This is also would be the same pool that would normally be in the German army. And so it's kind of then at some point you begin to. I bet as a young person you begin to almost even forget the veneer of the costume and what you're doing and all this kind of. And it does begin to feel like boys being boys playing pranks and other men and boys and doing some weird jocular up thing. Because again, also on the other side.

[Henry]

And also at this point, like, if these kids, like, if, if they really do want to be a part of, like feel like they're a part of that World War I spirit, you know, and to have a uniform. Like, at this point, the German army is limited to 100,000 members because of the Treaty of Versailles. They legally can't have over 100,000 people. So if a young kid wants to join the army, he most likely can't.

[Eddie]

No.

[Henry]

You know, so. But he can get a uniform if he joins the SS or the Stormtroopers.

[Eddie]

Or one of those things. But the ss, it seems to be really aimed towards the people. I honestly do think that that's what Himmler understood about the uniform. Kind of like what Elrond, what LRH understood about the uniform, which is that it gives an instant character.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

All of a sudden you are in. When you are in head to toe black SS with the skull's head and all the kind of. Yeah, it changes a person from the outside in.

[Henry]

Now, as far as the people who were sent to Dachau in the early days went, the best story involves a World War I veteran and dedicated communist named Han Hans Beimler. See, Beimler had participated in the Bavarian socialist revolution of 1919, but he had been falsely accused by the Nazis of participating in the execution of 10 people during the uprising, including a Bavarian countess. It did happen, but Beimler had nothing to do with it. This mass execution was used by the Nazis to demonstrate the Communist threat over and over and over again. It was one of the few cases of real left wing violence. So of course, it was all they talked about. And Beimler was used as a scapegoat for the event because he had become prominent Reichstag politician in Weimar Germany in the years afterward. Bler was actually quite confrontational. And when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was known to rally crowds with the phrase, we'll meet again in Dachau. Okay. He didn't say. But you get it. That's how. That's how I felt when I said it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, that was very powerful.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

This, of course, made Bimler quite the prize prisoner in which he was in fact sent to Dachau. He was forced to wear a welcome sign around his neck upon arrival.

[Marcus Parks]

Welcome, please.

[Henry]

You're right, actually, it would. It should. It would have. Vil. Yeah. Beimler was immediately singled out for torture, beaten thoroughly, and thrown into a cell with the corpse of a fellow Communist. The SS then told Beimler that the Communist had killed himself. And if Beimler didn't do the same, the SS would do it for him. But the SS was not the entirely loyal organization that Heinrich Himmler had envisioned. Two rogue SS men saw the light and actually helped Beimler escape just hours before his scheduled execution. And Beimler spent months evading the SS in Munich.

[Eddie]

That's how charming he was.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he must have been hilarious.

[Henry]

He had to have been. Yeah. Well, this. Listen to this. He eventually escaped to Czechoslovakia, and from there, he mailed a postcard to Dachau telling the SS to kiss my ass. However, would soon after die doing what he loved in 1936, fighting the fascists in Spain. But interestingly, Hans Beimler's grandson would go on to write an impressive number of Star Trek, Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes, including, ironically, all the big Ferengi episodes like the Magnificent Ferengi. The one with Iggy Pop is the Vorta. He also Wrote the much maligned Prophet and Lace, considered by most to be the worst episode of Deep Space Nine.

[Eddie]

So is that good or bad?

[Henry]

Well, he also. He wrote some other. Like, he also wrote Impoc. Nora. That's a really good episode. He. He wrote. And he was a producer for, I think, most of Deep Space Nine. But yeah, it's weird because the Ferengi episodes are all about, like, capitalism, because it's the Fringi, the most capitalist species to ever exist when his grandfather was an inveterate communist. But I think it kind of makes.

[Eddie]

Those episodes and making fun of itself.

[Henry]

It makes the episodes make more sense because he thinks that it's really funny. Like Prophet and Lace is supposed to be funny and it's not.

[Eddie]

Yeah, but, you know, what are you gonn. He made it.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't think I've ever thought this before, but can we please get back to the Nazis?

[Henry]

So now that we painted a picture of the early days in Dachau, let's return to Germany at large. See, Weimar Germany had existed as eight semi independent states, but Hitler immediately moved to illegally unify all of them after he became Chancellor. This was partly symbolic, a further step towards Hitler's dream of unifying Germany, Austria and its. Its bordering lands. But it was also a practical decision. If power was totally centralized under Hitler, then Himmler and Goering could establish a unified police state far more easily. And Himmler could force local governments to subsidize SS units and concentration camps. Resistance unification was, of course, met with extortion, torture and murder. And this is where our mini Himmler comes back into play.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Henry]

Reinhard Heydrich.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hello.

[Eddie]

That's the Stephen Miller.

[Henry]

Yeah. No, well, maybe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

I'd say that. That way he's the. Like it.

[Henry]

He looks. No, he definitely looks.

[Eddie]

He looks just like Stephen.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he looks like an Easter island statue. The Proclaimer.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he does.

[Henry]

You looked like if, like, Spuds McKenzie became a person and then got AIDS.

[Eddie]

Dolph Condren.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry]

He was ultimately such an awful person that he had more nicknames than Mengele. He was called the Hangman, the Blonde Beast Ol Schnitzel Ears. Himmler's evil genius.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They called me Scheisse, the Butcher of Prague.

[Henry]

And most hyperbolically, the young evil God of death.

[Eddie]

That's a long nickname.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he was fucked up. He was like. Because he was like. He had the same ideals as Himmler, but he also, like, was strong enough to actually follow through with it himself.

[Eddie]

He actually was a badass in a Bad way.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, he went and fought like, he would, like, go and, like, participate in the raids and shit like that.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

That's how he got the nickname of the Butcher of Prague. Yeah. Now, acting as Himmler's top man in the ss, Reinhard Heydrich coordinated the police under a centralized authority by claiming that there was still, even after all the mass arrests, a widespread communist plot operating in Germany.

[Eddie]

It has to be.

[Henry]

Yeah. Then in an example of how these people lie to even each other to get what they want, Himmler took Heyrich's kill claims to Hitler and said that if Hitler truly wanted the communists gone out of Germany, then Hitler should probably. I don't know if you want to do this. If you want to. I mean, you do it how you want to do it, but if you want to do it the right way, you should probably give me complete control over the state police and so on. Hitler's birthday on 1934. You know what day that is? On that 14, Himmler was given formal control over one of the most feared and terrifying secret police forces in history, the dreaded Gestapo.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Bummer, man. Why are you doing this to me, man? Why are you talking about this right now, bro?

[Henry]

It's actually one of the darkest days in European history.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What the are we even doing this for? Stop talking about it.

[Henry]

You guys want to watch the Columbine footage?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Actually, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I missed that day school.

[Henry]

Well, with the ss, the concentration camps, and the secret police under his control, Himmler was perfectly positioned to gather even more information on his and Hitler's enemies. With Reinhard Heydrich as his top deputy, Himmler established a meticulous system that gathered information on all opponents of the Nazi party. Dossiers that included business affairs, finances, lovers, family secrets, character flaws, daily habits, as well as more practical information like addresses and recent photos, but also the addresses of all of their relatives and their girlfriends and their phone numbers and their photos.

[Eddie]

And that same. That's actually one of those things that the CIA would learn to do, too. Like, that was like, one of those things that we almost. We probably learned from them.

[Jeff]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, now we got Zuckerberg for it.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, now.

[Eddie]

Now we just give it up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry]

Yeah. And once the information was gathered, it was written down on cards and filed into different categories, like Jews, Freemasons, political Catholics, bourgeois conservatives, and nobility hostile to National Socialism. And all of this was just saved and to be used when the Nazis saw fed.

[Eddie]

What would be my tag? Where am I, asshole?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, okay.

[Henry]

Yeah, okay. I don't know. I Would say, who's my tag? I will call. Okay. I got to think of it. Degenerate entertainer.

[Eddie]

Yeah, Cool, cool, cool.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you're skinny.

[Eddie]

Know it all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Do me, do me, do me.

[Henry]

I'm sorry, Eddie. You just get Jew?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Big old ham filled Jew.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, apparently I'd be okay because only got two Jewish grandparents.

[Eddie]

I honestly. But if I was the Nazi deciding, I'd still kill you.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Thank you.

[Henry]

But since Himmler was coming up in the world once again with his takeover of the Gestapo, he completely abandoned his farm and his horrible wife, Marga.

[Eddie]

Poor Marga.

[Henry]

Poor Marga.

[Marcus Parks]

You gotta say it right?

[Henry]

Marga. When Himmler permanently moved to Berlin to be at the center of the action, apparently Himmler did not have strong feelings for Mar.

[Eddie]

I feel like he didn't have any feelings towards anything.

[Henry]

No.

[Eddie]

You know, ladies.

[Henry]

And while they did not formally separate, their relationship was reduced to a cold exchange of formal letters in which Marga gave Himmler harvest tallies and asked for money. Marga's letters were also full of complaints that chastise Himmler for spending all his time during his infrequent visits to the farm either working or reading our stupid books.

[Eddie]

That's good thing, because he was busy working.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What do you want from America? He's working.

[Marcus Parks]

You're only two towns away and you can't come say hi to Margot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How hard it is to orchestrate the Holocaust. Yeah. You and Gundun. Me and Gundun are here. I would pay more attention to you.

[Eddie]

If eyes of one of you was the systematic destruction of the Jews. All right, Once one of you is the systematic destruction of the Jews since you come, and then I'll maybe want to spend more time with you.

[Marcus Parks]

And Himmler had a side piece, too.

[Henry]

Yeah, we'll talk about her in an upcoming episode. Well, in the end, Himmler was just not very proud of his wife.

[Eddie]

Yeah, she's gross.

[Henry]

Yeah, as is Evan. Evidenced by Marga's frequent request to be present at the great Nazi events like the Nuremberg rallies. Like Magda Goebbels gets to go. Emily Amy Gordon gets to go. Why can't Margaret Himmler be a part of the master race?

[Eddie]

Because they knew how to dress, okay? They know how to dress since they were in a big stupid dump every single time we went everywhere. Okay, that they say funny things, they make impressions, and they do good things. All right? You just sit here and talk about chickens and you smell like chicken by, like, chickens.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know. Me, too. But I said we shouldn't be bringing up Every dinner. Especially when we aren't the middle of eating chicken.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you know why the chicken crossed the road?

[Eddie]

Why?

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know.

[Henry]

I was asking.

[Eddie]

Hopefully it was done at gunpoint because the chicken was a juke.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You are funny, my husband.

[Eddie]

Thank you.

[Henry]

And even though Himmler was riding high as the leader of the SS and the Gestapo, there was still one man standing in not only his way, but in the way of Nazism as Himmler envisioned it. That man was Ernst, whose charisma had helped swell the ranks of the SA street thugs to get this 4.5 million men by 1934.

[Eddie]

Isn't that just because they'll take anybody and they're just grabbing packs of dudes? Oh totally. And they're like, here you go, here's a stick. You can go beat the out of anybody you want. And they're just grabbing people, right?

[Henry]

Very much so.

[Eddie]

Cuz it's not like the way the SS were disciplined.

[Henry]

No, quite the opposite in fact. And yes, these millions of men were loyal to Hitler and many had joined because of that. But they were also very loyal to Rome himself. And the sheer size of the SA meant that Rome could be a little mouthier and a little pushier with Hitler than anyone else.

[Eddie]

Yeah, because he had his own. He was supplanting the German army with them too.

[Henry]

He was what he wanted. Yeah, yeah, that's what he wanted to do. Because I mean that since Rome was a military man, he was pressuring Hitler just like, hey, merge, we got four point million guys. Make it a part of the army and then give me control of the army.

[Marcus Parks]

That's like 8% of the population.

[Henry]

It's a lot of people.

[Eddie]

Yes, but then Hitler knew did not make this man in charge of that much power.

[Henry]

Well, because he knew Hitler knew that, you know, these are just dudes, you know, he doesn't want to piss off the military at this point because Hitler needed the military on his side for his future plans of conquest. And he also, and hit. Hitler also knows that if Hitler hadn't have gotten into power, like the, you know, the what if scenarios of history is that if Hitler hadn't gotten into power, then it's likely that Germany probably after the Weimar Republic, it probably would have become military dictatorship at some point. Yeah, like so like it wouldn't necessarily be a Nazi in power, but definitely like right wing fascist military, you know, just not as bad. And, and Hitler knows this. Like he, he knows that the military is breathing down my neck and one of these guys can pull the Trigger at any time.

[Eddie]

Well, we do that. Germany was also farther along in any other country of being spoken to and, and having communist thought points layered throughout their society too. So that was like what a lot of they're talking about is like they kind of thought that Berlin would fall before Moscow, before the whole Russian revolution. They assumed that the communist revolution will come out of Germany. So that was also right there waiting.

[Henry]

Yeah, it was. Hitler was also pissed off with Rome because Hitler wanted to merge the SA with Himmler's ss. He wanted the SA to be more, more like the ss. But Rome wanted absolutely nothing to do with Himmler's nerdy wannabe medieval knight fashion plates, who were also, ironically, extremely homophobic. But perhaps most importantly, when it came to Hitler winning over the German people in the early days of Nazi rule was that Rome's SA had become a liability and an embarrassment to Hitler. The SA's numbers, their ages and their beliefs had made them an extraordinarily dangerous and impulsive group who basically made one wandering around and up their hobby. And when you got 4.5 million dudes doing that, it's gonna be a problem. In other words, no middle class German would ever feel like their country was approaching stability as long as Rome's SA was roaming the streets, beating people up and sometimes killing them for no reason at all, just because they felt like it.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah. Well then. Because he created a monster.

[Henry]

Yeah, he did.

[Marcus Parks]

It's amazing they didn't get along. I feel like they would have just talked for a little bit longer. They would have been buddies.

[Henry]

Roman Hitler in Himmler. Oh, and Himmler. No, no, because Rome was gay. He was openly gay and unapologetically gay. And that, and that's the thing about.

[Eddie]

Himmler is remember, he's the real Nazi here.

[Henry]

Yeah. If you break one of Himmler's rules, you're done. Yeah. At least one of his big roles. If you weren't, if you were loyal to him, he might forgive a couple of things. If you kissed his ass and if he saw that he could use you for something, like he might look past a thing or two. But if you were in any way antagonistic towards him, or if you weren't completely subservient to him, one rule, you're gone.

[Eddie]

You're gone.

[Henry]

Additionally, Rome was still working with Gregor and Otto Strasser, the two early Nazis who had discovered Heinrich Himmler's incredible talent for administrative action. While both the Strasser brothers and Himmler believed in Nazism more than they believed in Hitler, the Strassers knew that Hitler was, would inevitably it up. In fact, Gregor and Otto Strasser had broken away from the Nazis in 1930. They'd spent years trying to draw Nazis away from Hitler's influence.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Isn't that amazing?

[Eddie]

This, the concept of like, well, we all like Nazism, we all like to hate, but this guy is just going to it up. So we're not going to be able to hate as long and as powerful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

As we want to hate.

[Henry]

Well, it wasn't about the hate for them. It was more about like the economics.

[Eddie]

Taking control of the country, taking control of the army. And they actually, actually were those.

[Henry]

The problem was that Hitler was like, it's just, it's too much hate. You know, it's like the focus we need to refocus on the jobs and possibly these other things. The hate is like, it's getting out of hand.

[Eddie]

Yeah, but they. He said, but the hate's the point.

[Henry]

Yeah, well, that was Himmler's point of view because the Strasser brothers, they're calling for a second Nazi revolution without Hitler. But as opposed to the Strasser brothers, Heinrich Himmer believed that Adolf was the guy who could make his version of Nazism work. While the Strasser brothers were more into the economics of Nazism, Himmler was, was into the fantasy. See, I'm sure by this point, Himmler saw that Hitler was lazy enough and filled with just the right amount of hate that he would basically let Himmler do whatever he wanted, just so long as Himmler stayed in his good graces. That, of course, meant that anyone who might stand in Hitler's way in any respect had to go. Which put Ernst Rohm in the sa, firmly within Himmler's crosshairs. Without Hitler even asking, Himmler had his man Reinhard Heydrich gathered dirt on various SA leaders. Then Himmler began spreading rumors that Rohm and the SA were plotting a coup to overthrow Hitler. A claim for which no evidence exists. Himmler's actions ultimately culminated in an orgy of murder orchestrated by Himmler and Heydrich that came to be known to history as the Night of the Long Knives.

[Eddie]

Wow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We made it.

[Henry]

Yay.

[Marcus Parks]

I can't believe the war hasn't started yet.

[Henry]

No, buddy, it's starting to tell you this, bud. But we're five years from the war starting.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, we haven't got there, buddy.

[Marcus Parks]

That's all right. At least some Nazis are going to die anyway, right now.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

At least that's the thing, Knives.

[Henry Zabrowski]

At least Nazis were also killed.

[Eddie]

They just happen to be the reasonable Nazis. You know, let's say.

[Henry]

Let's put the relatively reasonable.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's what I mean is saying those words.

[Henry]

Yeah. Because no Nazi is reasonable. It's like. Yeah. Now, interestingly, the night of the Long Knives may have come about as a result of Hitler's bruised ego. See, In June of 1934, Hitler flew to Italy to take a meeting with Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. We gave a little bit of a preview of what this meeting was like earlier. It went very poorly. It's so far because the immaculately dressed Mussolini pretty much spent the their whole time together just making fun of Hitler's uniform and his overall shitty appearance.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're the better white. I look at you and I see somebody. You're barely a white guy. What is the guy? You. You need a bigger hat. You need a bigger hat. You need a sash.

[Marcus Parks]

There's another Gucci. No.

[Eddie]

You ever seen how Mussolini dresses?

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

L. He's ludicrous.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

I just. One day we'll do like. That's the problem is that Mussolini would be on the Mount Rushmore of evil, but if it was like comedic evil, like Mussolini, such a funny character.

[Henry]

Yeah. I mean, he was also extraordinarily evil and. And out of his mind.

[Eddie]

Well, he invented fascism.

[Henry]

Yeah, he did.

[Marcus Parks]

Fashionism.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

But just the whole time, just like, oh, man, why are you looking so much like. Hey, hey, let me ask you a question. Why are you looking like so much?

[Eddie]

Because it's.

[Henry]

I'm just a curious. I just want to know. I just want to know why you want to look like a summer shit all the time.

[Eddie]

But it's fascinating because that is a real direct line of this style of thought. Like, I don't even know which is fascist. It's like this idea of a style and representation that you're supposed to uphold. And there's like, it's an outward appearance thing that has to always be upheld. I just find it interesting because the Nazis were the ultimate in all of that. And then they roll in looking like shit.

[Henry]

Yeah, well, I mean, they necessarily look like shit. Is this like Mussolini just didn't like the style? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Now Hitler did also look like shit. Most of the time.

[Eddie]

Hitler just wore a shitty little jacket. He always wore kind of the same thing. And he'd go and do like he was.

[Henry]

Hair was always fucked up.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

Now Hitler returned to Germany from his meeting with Mussolini with a big chip on his shoulder, and he immediately called a meeting to assess the so called critical situation. Regarding Ernst Rome and the rumors of the supposed coup of the sa, rumors that Himmler had totally made up. That, however, wasn't the only impetus behind the upcoming purge. The same day Hitler called the Rome meeting, the conservative who put Hitler into power, Vice Chancellor Franz Von Poppen. He gave a speech in which he showed a bit of buyer's remorse. Oh, yeah.

[Eddie]

He was like, oh, this is just getting to be a lot.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah. After a year and a half of Nazi rule, Poppin saw that he had quite simply made a very big boo boo in elevation Adolf Hitler. In his speech, Poppin called for an end to the daily terrorism being perpetrated by the SA and for the restoration of some of the freedoms that have been taken away in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. It's kind of like you remember when, like, Lindsey Graham went up right after January 6th, he's like, I'm done. I am done.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry]

He kind of like admitted that he fucked up and bending the knee, but then, of course, went right back to bending the knee.

[Eddie]

Well, yeah, because it's. He's always bent on his knees, but.

[Henry]

This is sort of of like that, you know? And Poppin speech greatly angered Hitler, who ordered all copies of the speech destroyed. Poppin, however, decided to keep the fight going and threatened to tattle on Hitler to President von Hindenburg, who was very near the end of his life. Remember, at this point, Hitler still technically has to answer to this old fossil who's hanging out in his country estate.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And he's like, kind of be. He's like, dying, right?

[Henry]

Yeah, he's dying.

[Eddie]

Just sitting there, like, waiting for him to do anything.

[Henry]

He's very much dying, trying to head the crisis off himself. Hitler went directly to Hindenburg in late June, before Von Poppen. But Hitler was headed off by a general who told Hitler that if he couldn't get his SA under control, President Hindenburg was going to declare martial law and turn control of the country over to the military. Hindenburg was no great Hitler fan. He had to be turned to except Hitler. So in order to stay in power, Hitler had to do something big, something splashy. And luckily for him, Heinrich Himmler already had a plan ready to go. And this is another reason why Himmler is on the Mount Rushmore of evil, because he's the one who keeps Hitler there. This is another term. This is another. The swinging door point in history. Like, you know, without Himler, this is when Hitler goes, yeah, because they're ready.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All.

[Eddie]

They're. They're all ready about to kick him out. And he understands it. But it's amazing. That's. I wonder how long he had the plan. I wonder how long he thought about this idea that one day this is. This is going to be the transition.

[Henry]

Months at least, if not longer.

[Marcus Parks]

It went smoothly, right?

[Henry]

Yeah. You know, yeah, technically, yeah, it did.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Exactly as it is intended.

[Henry]

Well, to push Hitler into action, Himmler and Goring allegedly concocted a pair of urgent messages on June 29 saying that the SA had assembled in Berlin and Munich to finally enact the coup d'. Etat. No, none of this was true. But these messages inspired Hitler to pull the trigger on the Nazi purge known as the Night of the Long Knives.

[Marcus Parks]

Swords.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, exactly.

[Henry]

Jake said the same thing earlier today. He's like, isn't a long knife a sword?

[Eddie]

And I'm like.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How does a translation. It's a sword during the day, but at night it's a long knife.

[Henry]

They said, Mr. Jungs, that sounds like a bit of a Jewish joke.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sounds like weaving to have a bit.

[Henry]

Of an investigation background, I suppose, considering now they'd known each other for over a decade. Hitler wanted to confront Ernst Rome himself on the Night of the Long Knives. On the night of the Great Purge, Hitler and Goebbels flew to a spa town where Rome was quote, unquote, vacationing with his quote, unquote guards.

[Marcus Parks]

Hell yeah.

[Henry]

Blowjob weekend with the boys roaming all over that spa town.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not come knocking. If the Nazi is rocking, he is ready to come, ready to shoot.

[Marcus Parks]

Who wants to see my long knife?

[Henry Zabrowski]

It looks like you lost some of the edge there. A little bit of the tip must have fallen off.

[Henry]

But that fun weekend ended suddenly when Hitler burst into rome's room at 2am he arrested the guy Rome was in bed with and he began screaming, aiming at Rome for all of his supposed transgressions. Every account talks about how much spittle was flown and flicked while Hitler screamed at Rome.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Rome was then taken to a prison in Munich where a pistol was left in his cell so he could quote, unquote, do the honorable thing. Instead, Rome essentially said, hitler, if he wants me dead, let him do it himself. Hitler, of course, didn't do it ass first.

[Eddie]

I dare you.

[Henry]

Hiller, of course didn't do it and instead ordered two of Rome's own SA officers to murder him with their revolvers at point blank range. And that was the end of Ernst.

[Eddie]

Bye, headphone.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not smelling tits in hell.

[Henry]

Rome, however, was not even close to the only person killed that night. The upper estimate of Murder victims during the Night of the Long Knives is around a thousand.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jesus.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

I had no idea it was that many.

[Henry]

Well, I mean, that's the upper estimate because it's thought that, like, some Nazis may have settled personal scores that night as well. Let's throw in a guy. I don't like this. I don't like this guy. Let me kill him, too. In the midst of all this, on the low end, they say 116 were officially confirmed, but what's most likely is probably around 4 to 500. But that's still 4 to 500 people, all killed in one night by Himmler's SS goons.

[Marcus Parks]

Isn't this kind of like a coup?

[Eddie]

Yes. Oh, yeah, it's the opposite.

[Henry]

It's kind of a reverse coup. Yeah, it's. Well, it's trying to prevent. It's like a preemptive strike. Let's say it's like when we went. When America went into Iraq. It's like we think that they're planning on attacking us, so we're gonna attack them before they attack us. But just like Iraq, they weren't planning any sort of coup. It was just Himmler seeing a political opportunity. And he's seeing the opportunity to get rid of all these people all at once. See, just amongst the SA, Himmler and Goering had 150 SA laws leaders rounded up and quickly executed by Himler's SS and Gestapo firing squad. But the Nazi SA were not the only ones on the enemy's list who were taken care of. That night, for instance, a squad of SS men visited the home of General Kurt von Schleicher, who had also helped Hitler into power, but had ultimately regretted his decision.

[Marcus Parks]

Did he say, oh, yeah.

[Henry]

Schleicher was also another shitty conservative. Like, he was one of the ones that thought that they could control Hitler. Useful idiot. He was actually chancellor right before Hitler. He's like, oh, let's let this Hitler guy do it. He seems to have the ear of the people. But he had, of course, in the time since said like, ah, this is a bad idea. We got to get this Hitler guy out of here. So when General von Schleicher opened his door that night, both he and his wife were immediately gunned down by Himmler's SS goons. Other generals who opposed Hitler were killed the same way. Gregor Strasser, one of the, you know, Strasser brothers, He was given a relatively dignified death, again by firing squad, but they're taking care of everybody. But surprisingly, Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen was spared yes, his secretary and two of his associates were killed. And yes, the rest of his staff were sent to concentration camp, but that's what they're there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, there's no point in having them.

[Eddie]

We're to not going going to use them.

[Henry]

But I suppose for Hitler, killing the number three man in government was probably going too far. You could kill a former chancellor, but you couldn't kill the current Vice Chancellor.

[Eddie]

He only ever did things not because he didn't want to, you know, I mean like, you know, no, Hitler and all these guys, like they would have absolutely killed him if they felt they needed to, but I guess they felt like it would bring too much heat. I don't really understand how you can kill 400 to 500 other people in one night and then decide that guy's going to cost us too much and too much grief.

[Henry]

It really depends on the size of the person, you know, it depends on how big they are. Well, instead Poppin was made ambassador to Austria and shipped off where he could cause no more trouble. And Hitler didn't really care about ambassador to Austria anyway because in his mind, Austria was only a couple years away from being a part of Germany again.

[Eddie]

Oh yes.

[Henry]

These men, however, had it the easiest. During the night of the long Knives, Hitler's true enemies were given brutal showy deaths. And Hitler took this opportunity to settle long standing scores. For example, the man who had given the speech in the beer hall when Hitler attempted his fail coup a decade earlier. He was found in a swamp near Dachau, hacked to death by pickaxes, even though he'd long since retired from politics.

[Eddie]

Seems like these guys really know how to hold. Seem to really hold a grudge.

[Henry]

Sent a message to. Yeah, even former allies were killed. They murdered the guy who helped edit Mein Kampf.

[Marcus Parks]

No selling errors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, don't you fucking dare me. There, there and there are gonna be. However I spell them in whatever order I choose to spell them. My struggle. I sound like a bitch. I'm the old name as I.

[Henry]

It loses the context.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But you just bring it down to my struggle.

[Eddie]

None of you get anything that I do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

None of you appreciate my energy.

[Henry]

Well, the actual reason why Hitler had this man killed was because this guy was going around telling people that he knew the real reason why Hitler's lover and niece had died by suicide.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's not something you say.

[Henry]

Yeah, no. Well, that's the thing. You can't. He's getting. He's even getting rid of gossips. And for that this guy was found dead in a Forest with his neck broken and three bullets in his heart.

[Eddie]

There might have been something to that gossip.

[Henry]

Yeah, the Night of the Long Knives was. So. Yeah.

[Eddie]

Yeah. That's the thing, is it actually sounds.

[Henry]

Like there might have been something that maybe Hitler actually did kill her. Because that's one of the other theories, is that Hitler flew into a rage one night and murdered her, and they covered it up.

[Eddie]

I don't know, Marcus. It doesn't sound like him. I can't even see him doing that.

[Henry]

Well, the Night of the Long Knives was so violent and reckless that some people actually ended up dying by accident. A music critic for a Munich paper, for example, was taken away by SS men, and the critic's body was returned to his home four days later in a coffin. This was highly confusing to his family because the victim was not in any. Any way political. As it turned out, the critics simply had the same name as an SA leader who had been marked for death. But the SA guy, he'd already been killed by another SS squad by the time the critic was murdered.

[Eddie]

Honestly, I don't even. I'm not even that angry. He only gave two stars to visits of arts. And that's the artistry of Steve.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay?

[Henry Zabrowski]

She says that Judy Garland was uninspired, un believable.

[Eddie]

This is a camp.

[Marcus Parks]

I think I wrote Oopsie Strudel on his casket.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oopsie strudels.

[Henry]

Now, even though the Night of the Long Knives was messy, it was ingeniously used by Hitler once he worked up the nerve. See, at first, Hitler was terrified that he'd gone too far, and he spent days refusing to address the Reichstag. But when he finally did go to the public, he fully admitted to ordering the murders of dozens of men, saying, it's my bad. It's on me. If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I told him to do it, but he said he did it for the good of Germany. It's like, you hated the sa, right?

[Eddie]

Weren't you scared of those guys?

[Henry]

Like, they sucked, you know? So you know what I did? I did you all a favor, and I took care of them for you.

[Eddie]

And everyone was like, in a while. Well, okay, Holy shit.

[Henry]

Like, oh, my God. Like, thank Christ we don't have to worry about all those Nazis anymore.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Like, maybe the Nazis got rid of the Nazis. Well, you broke. You broke this to me. And I had no idea because I thought that he came out and proudly proclaimed that we got rid of the Communist threat. I didn't realize that everyone thought that he had killed all the really bad Nazis. And now there would only be reason, quote unquote, fake, reasonable Nazis.

[Henry]

That's what won over the majority. It's like the. What is it, the bomb? You know, when they're talking, when you're talking about, like negotiations, like, tell someone something really bad and then bring it back.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry]

And that's what Hitler did. It's like, you know, make things really awful. That's actually what a lot of these people do, is you make things really awful in the. Within the country itself, you. You create chaos. You create division. You create it. And so. And everyone's looking around saying, like, why is all this happening? What's going on here? And then you solve the problem that you created. And then people go, oh, my God, look at him. He's so wonderful. He solved all of our problems. Like, no, he created the problems and then he murdered a bunch of people and did a bunch of illegal. In order to take those problems away. We would have been much better off if never would have voted him in office in the first place.

[Eddie]

I will say it does that. It does remind me a lot of like, you know, like, it's bad to do to a country, but it's extremely good way of getting out of a long term dead relationship with the girl. If you got to get out of there and you just make it hostile in it. You make it in the relationship and then she'll leave eventually.

[Henry]

Eventually.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. We all know that's the case. Oh, yeah.

[Henry]

Oh, yeah. People don't stay in marriages for decades upon decades until death.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Just waiting.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, this can be used in that fact as well. Like someone who beats somebody and then like beats him and beats him and beats him and then gives them an ice pack and said, oh, I helped you get better.

[Henry]

Exactly.

[Eddie]

Exactly.

[Henry]

I was.

[Eddie]

Mine was more of a, like, the idea of like, not going and being fun. Not being fun on vacation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Henry]

Yeah. And incredibly, it worked. It worked perfectly. The German people breathed a sigh of relief. We don't have to worry about the Nazis anymore. Thank Christ. They were even more relieved when Hitler officially disbanded the sa. They're like, smooth, Salem, from here on out, we're gonna finally get on track. Things are gonna finally start happening around here. But little did the German people know that what Hitler was replacing the SA with was far worse. As a reward for a job well done with the nice of the long knives, Hitler made the SS completely independent. With Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich leading it. These two men were answerable to Only Hitler himself. And since Hitler was very lazy and didn't like to, I don't know, read briefings or go over, Heinrich Himmler pretty much had total freedom to carry out his most hanging, heinous policies. From that point forward, Dachau was used as the model concentration camp for mass expansion. And nearly a hundred more would be established over the next five years. Before the war even started, there were a hundred concentration camps in Germany. Himmler, meanwhile, was as proud and as happy as he could be. He had his 35th birthday party at Dachau.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, God damn. Do you think that there's. Do you get like, free pizza?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they did, actually. Good. Rune was talking about the gifts that she got when she went there and stuff like that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

How much she loved Dachau. Again, we've, you see zone of interest. They try to make it real comfortable.

[Henry]

Yeah, yeah. Those kids had a great time. Unless, until, of course, you know, the jawbones start floating down the river when you're having a nice schwim. Himmler's ultimate vision, however, was not just about extermination. It was also about the creation of Germany. Germany's own myth, a Nazi religion.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yay.

[Henry]

And it's with the links that Himmler went to in order to establish that religion that will return next week with all of the horrific things that happened as a result.

[Eddie]

That's where I get to talk a lot.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Excited to start talking about that. Wavelsburg. I gotta visit.

[Henry]

Yeah, you can.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I want to go.

[Henry]

It's open.

[Marcus Parks]

Wavelsburg.

[Eddie]

Wavelsburg.

[Marcus Parks]

It's right here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, neighbor.

[Henry]

We'll get into Wavelsburg next week. The Ana Nurba, the expeditions, the, you know, the. All of. All of Himmler's wonderful, wonderful ideas and how they shaped Germany over basically the. The next five years and the lead up to war.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So I hope you guys enjoyed that waffle minute episode of the last podcast of the Life. We're coming back next week with a.

[Eddie]

Little bit more Himler. But until then, you go to patreon.com lastpodcast on the left and you can.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Watch us yak and chop it up.

[Eddie]

Up about Himler for the rest of your life.

[Henry Zabrowski]

LP on the left for all the socials. You go on YouTube through all the.

[Eddie]

Other rest of the horseshit someplace underneath. LPN Romantasy, the Foreign Report, no Dogs in space and LPN tv look out for. We have several gigantic announcements coming. You're going to have, I'm just going to just say, tease that there might be a second Season of hoopa goo on the scene.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And it might be cring over the horizons very, very soon.

[Marcus Parks]

We better start making it.

[Eddie]

And there's another thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And so just so you know, we got a lot of stuff coming out of the Laugh Factory and we want to say thank you for everything you. For everything you've. You've given over the years.

[Henry]

And if you want to watch this podcast video form, go to patreon.com Last podcast on the left, where you can also watch our stream Every Tuesday at 6pm PST, you can watch it live and actually interact on the chat and say. And you can tell us things. And Henry might read them.

[Marcus Parks]

I do.

[Henry]

If they're funny.

[Marcus Parks]

I do. Funny enough to get past the screening.

[Henry]

Yeah, they're funny enough to get past gurney.

[Eddie]

They get to me. And then Last podcast and left.com. we have a bunch of new dates.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we do.

[Henry]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Next week we're gonna be in Oakland.

[Eddie]

Come out.

[Marcus Parks]

That's gonna be a ton of fun. I can't wait for Oakland. I never got to party there. I'm very excited to go to the Fox Fox Theater.

[Eddie]

It's truly a beautiful theater.

[Marcus Parks]

Awesome city. Yeah, it's going to be October 25th. That's next week. And then also, of course, Akron, Ohio, not Cleveland on November 29th, we're going to be at the Goodyear Theater. And then Portland on December 3rd again, remember that, Cleveland.

[Eddie]

Remember that, Cleveland.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're. We're going to Akron. Everybody loves Akron.

[Marcus Parks]

Of the Cramps are from. That's right. Antique tickets are now available for all our 2026 dates. We got January 31, Philadelphia. February 28, Austin, Texas. March 13, Indianapolis. April 25, Cincinnati, Ohio, the Taft feeder. Oh, it's such a fat theater. Then we got May 29th, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And July 18th, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City. You know where that is?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oklahoma.

[Eddie]

Yep.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I can't wait to be there because.

[Eddie]

We'Re gonna go down to those honky tonks just like we did the last time, Marcus. And we're gonna start a fight with a couple of cowboys.

[Henry]

I think I'm just gonna hang out. I think I'm gonna hang out with my buddy Tommy this time.

[Eddie]

Nah, dude, we went out. Marcus got. We almost got into a bit of a dust up.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, well, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna kiss them all.

[Eddie]

Yeah, dude.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm a Roman. I'm a Roma. We're gonna suck you cowboys till you're fun. Okla. Rome, you know what I'm saying.

[Henry]

I just want to hang out with Tommy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, we're gonna suck and we're gonna our way through okc, so see you there.

[Marcus Parks]

And we're starting with Tommy.

[Eddie]

Hail Satan, everyone.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay. Hail Joseph Hardinger.

[Eddie]

Also know that Heinrich Himmler's birthday was October 7th. That makes you feel like anything.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's nice.

[Henry]

It's interesting.

[Eddie]

So, happy birthday.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not his birthday. He's dead. When did he die? That's the day I want to celebrate.

[Eddie]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

And each one more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful.

[Eddie]

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[Instacart Announcer]

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