Episode 637: Heinrich Himmler Part I - Nazi Number Two

Marcus Parks: There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left.

Henry Zebrowski: That's when the cannibalism started.

Marcus Parks: Who's that?

Henry Zebrowski: I was listening to lots of Bavarian music.

Marcus Parks: Oh yeah. I gotta say, I don't like it.

Henry Zebrowski: No, it's not good.

Marcus Parks: I like most genres of music. The Bavarian music is stupid.

Henry Zebrowski: It is. It's silly.

Marcus Parks: It is. It's silly. Bavaria used to be its own silly little place where Bierstein used to be president. But then that Bierstein began to be filled to the very brim with hate.

Henry Zebrowski: Can you imagine being like a guy at this time period and being like, "Oh, I want to be Hitler"? Yeah, like you think about Hitler as like, "Oh, what a dashing young man." They always say this stuff about him, about how like he was dashing, charismatic, and you see all the videos of him. I've been obviously up to where my hairline and the stuff, but it's like you just forget Hitler was like a wall-eyed monster man. Kind of like they always talk about the charisma of Hitler, and then whenever he's around kids, it reminds me of a certain someone where he's just like, he's got these big, huge eyes. It looks like Marty Feldman.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: He's got crazy, like, he looks like he's frightening.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, well, it's Hitler.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, I know, but I'm still saying, it's like when you go re-look at it again. Objectively. You look and you realize, "Oh, he also has those crazy eyeballs."

Marcus Parks: Yeah, well, those crazy eyeballs captured the heart of a nation. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks, and I'm here with Henry Zebrowski. How you feeling, Henry?

Henry Zebrowski: I've never been more 41 years old. And I can't wait for our audience to get ready to be 41 years old because this fucking series is for the motherfucking dudes. It is for those who are 41 years old who want to be a 41-year-old man. If you want to be one, I was explaining to my therapist this morning, he just had a child. Time for him to slap on the old horse feed bag of World War II content because it is coming for you by the trainload.

Marcus Parks: I feel like this is the series we could say anything about our wives and not get caught.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, boys. My wife is extraordinarily supportive of my World War II love. She knows when I'm down and I'm like, "I kind of need something to relax." She's like, "Do you want to put on your Nazi show? Do you want to put on your Nazi show and maybe relax a little?" And once again, the beaches were filled with action. You just smiling, drifting off to sleep. But dude, this is our A&E history channel cramming your fucking asshole. Jam packed, filled with Himmler. So happy about this.

Marcus Parks: Yes. And of course we also have—

Henry Zebrowski: Okay, I'm happy. I'm happy. Cram jammed with Hitler.

Marcus Parks: All right. It's just, there I was talking to my guy this morning and I was saying, there's a few things in life that I'm always going to be interested in and I'm going to read and watch everything about it no matter what. It's Nazis, Manson family, Jonestown, and Hurricane Katrina.

Henry Zebrowski: He likes 9-11 too.

Marcus Parks: And 9-11 too.

Henry Zebrowski: You're a fan of 9-11.

Marcus Parks: I will watch everything about 9-11. Yes I will. And we have the man who knows me very well, Ed Larson. How you doing Ed?

Ed Larson: Ed Fudge! My name is Ed Fudge!

Marcus Parks: I like it. Edward, I understand. I understand, yeah, yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: I did explain to him. I did explain to my therapist a little bit about how we were running into this and I was trying to explain to him, I was like, "I feel this sort of... it's like a not happy, it's like the opposite of happy, it's like a bad feeling but I don't know what the feeling is." And it's been reading all this material and my therapist was like, "So you've been reading about Nazis for 36 days or whatever, and you're feeling sad." I was like, "No, absolutely not."

Marcus Parks: Well, today's series is the first of four profiles on some of the most evil men in the history of the world.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes!

Marcus Parks: A little something that we're calling the Mount Rushmore of evil.

Henry Zebrowski: Evil! It's evil!

Marcus Parks: Now, before we get started, I want to say that Mount Rushmore itself is evil.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes.

Marcus Parks: It was carved into a mountain in the Black Hills, which was supposed to be land given to the Lakota and Sioux people. It was then taken back to carve these faces of the very men who helped commit the genocide of their people into what is supposed to be the land given to them after the other land was violently taken away.

Henry Zebrowski: Hey, we have a right to take back the land that we took in the first place.

Marcus Parks: That's right. It was carved by father and son team Gutzon and Lincoln Borglum, who carved the mountain. Gutzon Borglum also helped begin the carving of Stone Mountain, which is a tribute to Confederate generals, complete with an altar to the KKK.

Henry Zebrowski: Hey, listen, he was there. He was just a hired hand. He just loves rocks.

Marcus Parks: I could do an entire episode on this, but I think it's important to mention that the Nazis were known to be inspired by America's genocide of the indigenous people, thus starting the Holocaust.

Henry Zebrowski: I'm sorry, Marcus, please continue.

Marcus Parks: 100% and we're going to be getting into that later on because you know why the Nazis were so inspired by our conquest of the West? It's because Hitler loved cowboy novels. He really did. As a kid, absolutely loved cowboy novels. He's like, "Wow, there's some really great ideas in here."

Henry Zebrowski: God, seeing him learn some chaps with a big old hat, nothing would make me happier than to see a corpse in the dust.

Marcus Parks: You said chaps.

Henry Zebrowski: Thanks.

Marcus Parks: Okay, good. Now these men, and yes, it's going to be all men for the Mount Rushmore of evil because we couldn't think of a single woman to compare to these four.

Henry Zebrowski: Hey, we might. The fourth is still up. Who knows? Ladies, you still got a shot. My step-grandmother, Boba, was a cunt. And Judy is a bitch as well. I'll tell you that much. Do you remember that fucking bitch, Barbara Bush? Who knows? Completely shaven. Barbara. Ninebush.

Marcus Parks: Well, these four men are all despicable in their own respect. These are men who perverted entire institutions, and in some cases, entire countries, to fulfill their own sick needs, desires, and beliefs. These are the worst of the worst. The ones who used and abused power in ways that caused untold damage on humanity, both physical and psychic. But the first head to go up on the Mount Rushmore of evil just may be the worst we have to offer. Who knows? See, we figured it would be appropriate to kick off this event with a Nazi. Because who's more objectively evil than Nazis? He asked as some dickhead began writing a comment on our Instagram page about how the Nazis actually really weren't that bad.

Henry Zebrowski: Buddy, it all over the place. I was watching a really interesting documentary about the Thule organization and I have so many people writing underneath it being like, "No one going to talk about the Jewish secret societies?" And you're like, "Guys, I think we might not be learning the lesson."

Marcus Parks: Now, the obvious choice would be Hitler. But personally, I don't think that you really learn about the Nazis by focusing on Hitler specifically, because studying Hitler is more about studying a cult of personality. And Hitler, it's still such a mystery anyway that he almost becomes a little dull after a while. All of the reports about him are both, like, they don't make sense. Nothing adds up. It's all wildly contradictory. And everyone's got a different pet opinion on Hitler. You can't pin him down. He's the most written about man since Jesus Christo.

Henry Zebrowski: So it's one of those, and everybody's got something to say.

Marcus Parks: So exactly. It's like, just because Hitler wasn't even necessarily even about the Nazis. Hitler was all about Hitler.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: He wants it too much. Well, I think if you truly want to understand Nazis, Nazism and the true evil behind the whole movement, the person you've got to study is Hitler's number two guy. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Number two, man. Doo doo, man. Chalky doo doo. You look like it. He's bad. He's ugly. He makes Hitler look handsome.

Marcus Parks: I would also say we are aware that there was a Behind the Bastards series that happened, I guess, vaguely recently. But also, we've been working on this too long to stop the fucking trucks doing this. We've been preparing for this series for almost a year. We'll get into it later. But yeah, we had planned this Hitler series for right now. And we're going to fucking do this right now. We're going to cover Heinrich Himmler, this man who looks like if a potato was a balloon, and if that balloon was overinflated and then tried to be reinflated.

Henry Zebrowski: To be honest, if you could get him those badass, like, weird Nazi no-rim glasses, Chad Daybell. Clamp me dressed in Hugo Boss, you know what I'm saying? He really is the least example of what you want. I mean, I'm just glad I'm not white. He's an Easter egg that demanded it stay white.

Marcus Parks: If Wrigley's Chew was a man.

Henry Zebrowski: Wrigley's Chew was a man. Don't come at Wrigley's Chew.

Marcus Parks: Now, out of all the high-ranking Nazis in the Nazi Party, Himmler was by far the one who believed in the philosophy of Nazism most fervently. See, Himmler was an idealist who truly believed that he was doing something good by orchestrating the murders of tens of millions of people across Europe. Now, just like any fascist government, there were plenty of people who joined up with the Nazis just because it made them feel powerful, or because they believed they could take advantage of the situation for their own purposes. But Heinrich Himmler was no naked opportunist in the sense of using the Nazis for personal gain. He didn't have the guts to be an individual.

Henry Zebrowski: No.

Marcus Parks: While Himmler was a loyal follower of Adolf Hitler until he wasn't, Himmler wasn't necessarily following Hitler like much of Germany did. Himmler was following the ideas, and it was Himmler who created and oversaw the plans to carry those ideas out. See, Himmler was the quintessential white person nerd we spoke of in our Nazi occult series so many years ago, meaning the thing that Himmler was obsessed with more than anything was white people, their origins, their history, and their supposed superiority over every other race.

Henry Zebrowski: What a beautiful way that he could have explored all the different ways we eat hard-boiled eggs. There are so many things that he could have done here that he left on the table, like Gherkin culture. We are the most boring looking people. I don't know. Certainly the ugliest babies there are. Think of what we offer. Tuna fish sandwiches. Big ornate clocks.

Marcus Parks: Honestly, we do amazing things.

Henry Zebrowski: We're really good at like taking things that they made and pretending we made it.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, great at that.

Henry Zebrowski: That's our shit. It's called packaging. Spaghetti.

Marcus Parks: Well, when you read about or hear some of the more off-the-wall Nazi beliefs about Aryan bloodlines or Atlantis, and you ask, "Who came up with this shit?" The answer is Heinrich Himmler.

Henry Zebrowski: [In character as Himmler] It's me!

Marcus Parks: Because Himmler was the Nazis' number one guy when it came to the occult. Basically, Himmler studied every racist occult and pseudoscientific writer he could find, and he cobbled together both the belief system and the wild set of racial purity rules that every Nazi eventually followed. But just like Hitler himself, Heinrich Himmler was anything but the Aryan ideal. According to one source, he had, quote, "a slack butt, a pigeon chest, a receding chin, and small feminine hands."

Henry Zebrowski: You knock that mustache off or you just take it down a shade. That's Lena Dunham. I mean, like, she'd be amazing as him in the movie. She should try to play him. Oh, my God. That's exactly what he deserves.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. As one fellow Nazi party official put it, quote, "If I look like Himmler, I would not talk about race." And that was a fellow Nazi. Now, to the point of appearance, one author said that Himmler was considered to be awkward looking for a German, but his inner world certainly reflected his outward appearance. For example, Himmler was plagued with constant anxiety, which caused horrific stomach cramps throughout his entire life.

Henry Zebrowski: Aw.

Marcus Parks: Emotionally, Himmler was effectively dead and approached every social interaction, whether it be romantic or platonic, through the lens of what would be best for the Aryan race and his own personal agenda. But while Himmler sounds and looks like an absolutely ridiculous figure, he was, at one time, easily the most feared person in all of Europe. And he would brutally and directly orchestrate the deaths of 20 million people at most and 11 million at the very least. But incredibly, he did not, as far as we know, ever kill anyone with his own two hands.

Henry Zebrowski: Tiny hands. I don't think he could clap. Like, I don't think he had—

Marcus Parks: No, because it's just the ultimate example of a guy that couldn't, wouldn't, and then basically punished the whole world for it, which sounds vaguely familiar.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, I imagine he would constantly look at his hands and his fingers and just be like, [In character as Himmler] "Groh! Groh! Groh! What is wrong with you?" He was so sad. His hands were so small that it didn't even make his penis look big. It was like one of those where all he could think of was how small his hands were. If only I could wrap the fingers around the shaft.

Marcus Parks: You're giving him too strong of a voice. Hitler is the full-breasted one.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, okay. He talks like this. [In a higher, whinier voice] "Oh, little Himla is the most evil man in the world. Oh, everyone going to pay me now. They going to bend over backwards for me."

Marcus Parks: It's a good caricature, but Himmler, he could bring out the hot when he wanted to. I know, I know. Now, the personality trait that made Himmler so interested in the white race was the same that made him an excellent administrator. In his pursuit of Aryan purity and German dominance over Europe, Himmler became the main architect of not only the Holocaust, but of the wholesale slaughter of the people of Eastern Europe. See, while the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust is a horrifically large number, it only tells part of the story of the mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis and organized specifically by Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was the creator and administrator of the concentration camps, where up to two million people were executed. These two million included not only Jews, but LGBT people, communists, and basically anyone the Nazis didn't like.

Henry Zebrowski: Again, I'm Chadwick Boseman, according to him. You know what I mean? I am the most foreign man to exist to him. I want you to understand that.

Marcus Parks: Well, you're a Slav.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes. And I get more Slavic every day. The concentration camps, however—

Marcus Parks: My back's wider than my front.

Henry Zebrowski: My back is coming around. You see that? How my back is getting so big. I'm Polish as hell, dude.

Marcus Parks: You're good at that. The concentration camps, however, were just the endgame of extermination. It began with another of Heinrich Himmler's creations: the Einsatzgruppen, whose story we will finally tell in full during this series. We've been dancing around the Einsatzgruppen for years. We're getting really hardcore into it on this one.

Henry Zebrowski: Cool. Yay, good. Can I be the funny one in the Eisengruppen? Do they have a Goldberg?

Marcus Parks: A Goldberg? Certainly not.

Henry Zebrowski: But an equivalent.

Marcus Parks: Comprised of seven death squads made up of just a few hundred men each, the Einsatzgruppen terrorized, tortured, and murdered their way through Eastern Europe like a pack of psychotic locusts. Under Himmler's orders, the 3,000 members of the Einsatzgruppen murdered between 2 and 3 million people face-to-face using a horrific variety of tactics, which makes Himmler's death squads quite possibly the most prolific killers in world history. Think about that: 3,000 men, 3 million deaths. How come no one went after them?

Henry Zebrowski: That's one of the massive, massive injustices of the Nuremberg trials. The vast majority of the Einsatzgruppen, vast majority of them, they faced zero consequence. Absolutely nothing.

Marcus Parks: Because you know why? There were so many Nazis.

Henry Zebrowski: There were many Nazis, and they were trying to get all of them. What could you do? So they tried to flip them, and then a lot of them, they're like, "Well, maybe they won't do it again."

Marcus Parks: Well, the problem was that America went in and said, "Okay, we're going to prosecute every Nazi." And then they looked around and said, "Oh, shit, we don't have anyone to run this country because they're all Nazis."

Henry Zebrowski: Well, that's what we got into when we started talking about Operation Paperclip, and then it turns into all that. And then we had to find out which Nazis we decided to side with, and that began the Great American Slide Down. So that's all. We just jumped into another series.

Marcus Parks: Now, Himmler was also incredibly dangerous to other Nazis. As we all know, right-wing fascist governments are filled with people who absolutely fucking hate each other. And the survival of the fittest ethos that they usually live by routinely results in them ripping each other apart in a quest to reach the top.

Henry Zebrowski: That is the only true, I guess, immediate justice of all of these people we always have to deal with. It's that right-wing people have to hang out with other right-wing people.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: And these guys all have to—the Nazis have to hang out with other Nazis.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: And guess what the other Nazis are bad at? Being friends. They're bad at being friends. They're bad at being co-workers. They're not cool team members. It's like that Anders Breivik shit when he tried to join that one group and he couldn't.

Marcus Parks: No, it's because everybody, they're mean. Nazis are mean. They're crazy. But since Heinrich Himmler was a sniveling worm of a man, he instinctively knew how to navigate his way through a fascist government. By waiting in the background for other Nazis to make mistakes, Himmler set himself up to scoop up whatever power they had and add it to his own. This is how Himmler came to be head of both the SS and the Gestapo, which were both folded into Himmler's massive administrative mechanism of death. And the worst part is, Himmler was so incredibly good at what he did that if Hitler had focused his energies entirely on Russia instead of fighting a war on two fronts, Himmler's genocidal vision of a pure Aryan Europe, at least in Eastern Europe, it might have become a reality.

Henry Zebrowski: And I'm going to save the audience from Marcus and I's production call, where from there we jumped into Marcus and I doing—we left the meeting and began to do a 25-minute version of Civ 6 against each other. We went off and we just started talking about alternative history, and we're like, "Oh, but what if they slide in and you have a Nazi-run Moscow? What if then, instead, we're fighting them on the Eastern Front with Japan? We got to go against—all of a sudden, we're nuking Moscow, Nazi-run Moscow." And it was like, "That's awesome."

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Cool. None of that's real, though, right?

Marcus Parks: No, no, no, no, no. It's not real at all. But the thing is, this series is not going to be about military history, because Heinrich Himmler was not a soldier. While the Einsatzgruppen were certainly a part of the military, Himmler's role for the majority of his reign of terror in Nazi Germany was not about winning battles and taking land. Rather, Himmler's job was to engineer murder on a scale not seen before or since, all in the pursuit of some half-baked romantic ideal. And this is true: the German people's ultimate destiny was to be a race of pure-blooded warrior farmers spread across the whole of Europe.

Henry Zebrowski: Every single Nazi, every single one of these guys that think they're going to do this, does any one of them have the upper body strength to do any of this? At least the guys in the upper echelons. Imagine Himmler with a pitchfork with bales of hay. Oh, there's so many tiny bugs.

Marcus Parks: We'll get into it. There's so many big bales of hay filled with large protruding bugs.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, they're all equipment managers, you know what I'm saying?

Marcus Parks: Well, to accomplish his vision, Himmler believed he would have to engineer the deaths of up to 50 million people. That was his goal: 50 million. And true to his spot on the Mount Rushmore of evil, Himmler believed that this mass murder was not only justified, but morally correct. Now, just so you know, this series is not going to be solely about Heinrich Himmler. By telling Himmler's story, we're able to tell the story of the Nazi party itself. We're going to be talking about how the Nazis came to power, how they were able to accomplish such monstrous acts, and why the people of Germany allowed it to happen. In doing so, we hope to show not just the similarities of what's happening in our modern world, but also the differences, which are just as important. See, the people in power right now are not literal Nazis, because as you're going to hear during this series, things were far worse in every possible way in Nazi Germany, even from the very beginning. But I will say that certain things rhyme between the current administration and Nazi Germany. And the point of talking about it is that if there is any parallel between what any government does and what the Nazis did, then people are going to get hurt, freedoms are going to be curtailed, and people are going to die. See, the reason why it's so easy to make comparisons between the current administration and the Nazi party is that, well, the Nazis were at their core an extremist right-wing group. They just took things further than any party before or since. That means that any extreme right-wing or conservative group is going to touch tips with the Nazis at some point or another, simply by virtue of coming from similar places of intolerance, reactionary rhetoric, and the belief that they should be able to tell other people how to live their lives. Not all birds are blackbirds, etc., etc. That being said, I think that it is very much in the best interest of our nation to point out if there are any similarities between what is being done in our name and what the Nazis did. Because while I don't think we're headed in exactly the same direction, we really do want to avoid getting anywhere near it for the sake of everyone involved.

Henry Zebrowski: I saw Cabaret this year. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be in Cabaret. I saw Cabaret. I don't want to be the emcee. No. Okay? I would just like, you know, like, let's just like, even if we're close.

Marcus Parks: I think what you're saying is right, Marcus, is that it's not that we're there. It's just that, like, even if we get even kind of close, we should try to avoid that.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, you really want to start ringing that bell.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, I would. I would because it seems to be concerning. Especially when there's Nazi salutes during the inauguration.

Henry Zebrowski: No, Eddie!

Ed Larson: What?

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, you really want to ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You want to ring that bell and be like, "Ding, ding, ding, ding."

Marcus Parks: Wow, in the first hour, huh?

Henry Zebrowski: But I don't think you guys get it that it was a joke.

Marcus Parks: Oh, yes.

Henry Zebrowski: And you know how these are.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: It's so easy to make that—it's an easy joke, we do it all the time on Side Stories. I was joking. We always get the crowd going with "Sieg Heils" before we're gone because we want people to fucking be energized, pumped up, to reference—

Marcus Parks: I also did deep into research why Hitler's "Sieg Heil" was different.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh yeah, why was it the so-called Roman salute?

Marcus Parks: His "Sieg Heil" was different because he was to be hailed.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, okay. And so it's a receptive hail.

Marcus Parks: It was very interesting. I did not know that he did it on purpose.

Henry Zebrowski: Is it bottom?

Marcus Parks: Yep.

Henry Zebrowski: So what, his went straight up and the other one went across, right? What are you doing there?

Marcus Parks: I, uh...

Henry Zebrowski: They were light. They were light. They were light.

Marcus Parks: Well, no, they would do—

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: Oh, okay.

Henry Zebrowski: The back one. The back one, yeah.

Marcus Parks: He would do the back one.

Henry Zebrowski: It's a casual one.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: They would go forward, he would go back.

Marcus Parks: Oh, he's cool breeze.

Henry Zebrowski: Because guess what the real reason why? It's because doing his "Sieg Heil" too long hurt his shoulder. And his tiny little wrist.

Marcus Parks: Now, as far as sources go, we've been working on this series in one form or another for nearly a year. And since we wanted to do this right, we have no less than eight sources from books alone. So in the interest of expediency, we're going to post our full source list on our Instagram page instead of listing them one by one, so we can jump directly into the story of Heinrich Himmler and the Nazi Party. So put on your big wool bathing suit, light up a cigar, and tell your wife to go in the other room and shut up. Now it's time for some Nazi history, Himmler style. Or invite your wife if she is also into history as much as you are, because sometimes that is the case. If she won't get too hysterical. And if she can possibly sit and pay attention for long enough without you having to curb her like a child.

Henry Zebrowski: Have you ever read Mein Kampf?

Marcus Parks: No.

Henry Zebrowski: Could you? Like, how do you do that?

Marcus Parks: It's a book. You buy it.

Henry Zebrowski: You buy it? Really? They sell it at like Barnes & Noble?

Marcus Parks: United States of America. We technically still are a free country that allows you to read whatever you want.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: Well, I know you can read it if you want it, but can you buy it?

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, you can buy it.

Henry Zebrowski: Really? Who gets the money?

Marcus Parks: I do. I've been getting a chunk for the last couple of years. It's actually kind of crazy.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marcus Parks: The copyright came up. Henry scooped it out.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: Now he gets 50 cents on the dollar for every Mein Kampf.

Henry Zebrowski: Thank you. Oh, good. Thank you. Rob just brought up the Amazon listing for Mein Kampf. Oh, on Kindle.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, wow.

Marcus Parks: And it's $11.99. Unburnable on Kindle.

Henry Zebrowski: It's boring. It's very boring.

Marcus Parks: Is it goring?

Henry Zebrowski: No. It's pretty good. It's not bad.

Marcus Parks: We're going to get into Mein Kampf on episode two because Mein Kampf was a massive inspiration to Heinrich Himmler. But yes, it's boring. It's repetitive. And it's very whiny, as is everything that these fucking people do.

Henry Zebrowski: They're such fucking whiners. They're such bitch babies. God damn, they are.

Marcus Parks: Himmler, isn't that what he called his mother? Mein Kunt?

Henry Zebrowski: I'm sorry.

Marcus Parks: Now, Heinrich Himmler was born in the German city of Munich in the year 1900 to an upper-middle-class couple with pretensions towards German royalty. Himmler's father, Professor Gebhard Himmler, was the personal tutor to Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, who was a member of an ancient Germanic royal family whose lineage dated back 700 years. And so when Professor Himmler's second child was born, he named him after his benefactor, Prince Heinrich.

Henry Zebrowski: His father was a fucking cuck and he's a fucking piece of shit. He just named him after a prince he works for.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, he named him after his boss. And the prince even agreed to be Heinrich Himmler's godfather. That meant that Heinrich Himmler came into this world already believing that he was far more important than he really was, simply because his father was a tutor to a barbarian prince.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, is it wrong to say a part of where the main issue of where we're going to see all of this bad stuff come out of is that Germany was like a bunch of little provinces for a while that was actually only grouped together not that recently. It was like the 1890s, right? Germany itself as a country is relatively new.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. And so every section had its own history and its own lineage and its own ruling classes and shit. So as things were slammed together, it changed the fabric of the aristocracy, right? It changed the fabric of all these things. And these are people that are really looking to stay in the aristocracy.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: The changes that came when the aristocracy went away, the aristocracy did not like it. They don't like it. They really hate it when they lose their power and when things change, when the little people start coming up.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, when the money that they were handed just because their father came inside of a woman and it made you, and then you get to make that money, they were really sad when that system wasn't working for them anymore.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. What did he teach the Bavarian prince? Like how to make pretzels and shit?

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Honestly, how to whittle shoes, how to unwittle yourself out of shoes. But that's the hardest part.

Marcus Parks: They also had whittle gloves.

Henry Zebrowski: Whittle, whittle, whittle gloves. Fly from your grave.

Marcus Parks: Development, and not just because it gave Heinrich his bookish habits. It also inured Heinrich to institutionalized violence like so many other Germans of his generation. See, even after extreme punishment by parents and school teachers had subsided in other parts of Europe, it was alive and well in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Germany when so many future Nazis were being born and raised. And this is important not just to Himmler's development, but to the development of all Nazis.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, this generation.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. In Germany, punishment towards children was so severe that between 1906 and 1913, 25% of suicides by young Germans between the ages of 3 and 20—and yes, I did say the age of 3—was the result of fear of punishment for something they'd done or sustained abusive treatment from their parents.

Henry Zebrowski: A 3-year-old committing suicide. How?

Henry Zebrowski: Bad at letters. Super bad with blocks. Super bad at being a dinosaur. Sometimes you gotta, you know, correct the kid being like, "Tyrannosaurus Rex, yeah, has little arms, was a scavenger. I'm gonna hit you with a book." Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I fought back though.

Ed Larson: Watch *The White Ribbon*. That movie's fucking awesome.

Henry Zebrowski: No, *The White Ribbon*.

Ed Larson: I love *The White Ribbon*.

Henry Zebrowski: No, *The White Ribbon*'s a bad motherfucker. Have you ever seen that?

Ed Larson: No.

Henry Zebrowski: Save *The White Ribbon* for later, because *The White Ribbon* is for after the kids became Nazis, and the kids started to understand that they could get stuff out of society by being Nazis as well. I own it on Blu-ray. I will share it with you. It's fun to watch.

Ed Larson: Very nice.

Henry Zebrowski: It's about how kid Nazis rat you out.

Ed Larson: Yeah, okay. I understand.

Marcus Parks: This extreme strictness and frequent punishment that was placed on kids like Heinrich Himmler basically meant that violence as a solution was bred into the German people. And because Himmler's father was a schoolmaster, that meant that Himmler got a double dose.

But I will say, because it was so across the board, there were a lot of people that came out of this process that didn't turn into the leaders of the Holocaust. Some of them did stuff like... there were guys in there that did some stuff. There was the guy that made, like... there's got to be some guy that did "Tubular Bells," or some guy that did...

Henry Zebrowski: That's Mike Oldfield. He was British. That was the 70s. Karl Orff, maybe? Maybe some guy made a new cheese. There gotta be some guys in there that did good things.

Marcus Parks: No, there were. There was Bertolt Brecht, Max Ernst. We're gonna talk about all these people later.

Henry Zebrowski: It was boring. I did Brecht. I love Brecht.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, I know. But when's the last time you saw it?

Henry Zebrowski: I own the record. I listen to it fairly often.

Marcus Parks: No, you were talking about his compositions.

Henry Zebrowski: I like the music. I like *Three Penny Opera*.

Marcus Parks: You should be in his plays.

Henry Zebrowski: I was in his play. I was in *The Good Woman of Szechuan*. I played an Asian man.

Ed Larson: Oh, one of the Axis of Evil?

Henry Zebrowski: No, I was... well, you know.

Marcus Parks: So Himmler's dad probably beat the shit out of him. Himmler's dad definitely beat the shit out of him.

Henry Zebrowski: God, I'm so jealous!

Ed Larson: That's why he looked like Silly Putty?

Henry Zebrowski: He looks like Himmler looks like Marcus's fidget player.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, my fidget player. The stuff that keeps me from moving around too much and being distracting on video. He literally broke the mold.

More than anything, Heinrich Himmler learned from his father that life was nothing without order. Himmler's father set up an extremely strict system of rules and prohibitions for Heinrich and his brothers, and their obedience was monitored precisely and pedantically. Himmler, of course, would one day take this philosophy and apply it first to the Nazis' paramilitary wing, the SS. And then Himmler would apply those rules to the German people themselves before finally forcing it upon any state that the Nazis conquered in their quest for world domination.

Henry Zebrowski: I think pedantic is one of the true signs of this whole culture.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Because you've got to remember that, too. They're going after things. They're criminalizing things that are normal.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: And that's when you hear the term that I heard a lot in these documentaries I've been watching of, "nazification."

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: That's the things that they do. They take things that you first thought was a normal concept, and they make them crimes. So then you're committing a crime, and all of a sudden you're a criminal.

Ed Larson: Now, I know I'm probably going to ask this question a bunch of times in this series. What does pedantic mean?

Marcus Parks: Pedantic basically means like following rules in a very small and useless way. Almost like you're following rules that you don't really need to follow, but you're following them for the sake of following them, even if they don't really make sense.

Henry Zebrowski: Or if you're like, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" At some point it was called malicious compliance, where they create very ornate rules and then they hold you to them to the very, very letter. And they're almost impossible to follow.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Like, "Technically you didn't do that, right?" It's that. But instead of you just getting a demerit, you could go to a concentration camp.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. You die.

Ed Larson: Sounds like you used the right word.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. Now, not surprisingly, Professor Himmler's system of rules and prohibitions created an incredibly neurotic son. Heinrich Himmler was always anxious, which caused the aforementioned constant stomach cramps, meaning that the most feared person in Europe suffered from a chronically upset tummy.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, I wish I could eat more popcorn, but it's too rich. Just so nervous, being a little boy so filled with hate.

Marcus Parks: Because Himmler was so neurotic, he tersely recounted all of his activities in a diary from a young age, perhaps to ensure that his father knew exactly what Himmler was doing at all times and could therefore avoid punishment. For example, in 1911, we know that Heinrich Himmler went swimming 37 times.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh shit, I didn't know Tylenol was around then.

Marcus Parks: But interestingly, it seems like hate was something that Heinrich Himmler was simply born with.

Henry Zebrowski: Thank you.

Marcus Parks: While his virulent anti-Semitism would appear later, Himmler was known in grade school for having radical views against the French.

Henry Zebrowski: He just chose them. "I hate the French." And then he would just go off on all the reasons why he hated the French and why the French sucked as a child. He really did have a natural instinct to understand that. He's like, "We could see it."

Ed Larson: How many times have we seen these evil nerds take over shit? It's like you could see him understand immediately as a little boy. "Oh, I'm ugly, sickly, uncharming piece of shit. How am I going to need to be in charge? How can I make myself feel better?"

Henry Zebrowski: Yes. By pointing out the shortcomings of others and by creating shortcomings for other entire races of people.

Marcus Parks: And there are several quotes in this that I had to read to my therapist. I don't even know where to share them, where I had to explain... it's very interesting that you could see this little boy Himmler because of his diary. There are so many clips of his thoughts that if you put the words he was saying and put next to them pictures of some very current human beings that are talking on the Internet, you would see the exact same words coming out of a 15-year-old Himmler's mouth.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Out of the 15-year-olds that we're seeing that are being taught by the malicious evil people that are talking to them about this stuff. Especially about women.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: And it started with women and abstract hate.

Marcus Parks: Yes. And we're going to get into that later on. Way into that.

Ed Larson: Do you think he hated the French because of how much they cooked with cream? And you're just upset, too much butter. It made me want to do the brogue with the poopadoops. I wish I could have a chicken alfredo, but I won't because it just makes me all gurgly-burgly and makes my dumpers loose. So I'll stick to my whole breakfast. If there's anything I could have, it's the bearnaise sauce and the wonderful... my stomach hurts.

Henry Zebrowski: I'm doing him. My goal is to do him as... it's like I'm passing him a movie. You're little Lord Fauntleroy-ing him a little bit.

Marcus Parks: Yes, he is right now. He will be big Lord Fauntleroy very soon. But the thing is, it could be that Himmler's hate may have been born from his own shortcomings, which were many.

Henry Zebrowski: It's almost like they were just his comings. Or non-comings.

Marcus Parks: As I said earlier, Himmler was not the ideal Aryan. He was a small, short, sickly child whose round spectacles only accentuated his round face. And his legendarily weak chin did him no favors either.

Ed Larson: Yeah, yeah, that's a bad one.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. Heinrich, he's one of those guys that, you know, somehow he's skinny, but he also has seven chins.

Ed Larson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Looks like brain. Like Pinky in the Brain.

Ed Larson: He does.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. He looks like somebody I want to fucking knock in the mouth.

Ed Larson: Yeah. That's what he looks like. Like a peach sofa at an abandoned model home.

Marcus Parks: Heinrich also complained repeatedly in his diaries about his frequent bouts with illness. He had many, many colds. And, you know, to kind of fight against all this, he tried bettering himself through daily weight training with dumbbells, but he was too sickly to get anywhere with lifting weights.

Henry Zebrowski: Can I get somebody to remake the picture of Pee-wee Herman working out at the bottom of that thing? Can I get that with putting Himmler's face on Pee-wee Herman's body? Because that's, like, perfect.

Marcus Parks: Now, even though Himmler would have been killed immediately if he had ever stepped foot on a battlefield.

Henry Zebrowski: He would have gotten bit by a bug.

Marcus Parks: He's got death by trench foot written all over him.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, no. That's how Himmler dies on the battlefield. "Oh, no. He's got death by trench foot written all over it." He was supposed to be cannon fodder.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: His ears are innies.

Marcus Parks: He was still fascinated with every aspect of World War I, which broke out when Himmler was 14 years old. He wrote that had he been old enough, he would have been, quote, "out there like a shot."

Henry Zebrowski: "I'd be out there. I need to be out there, but I can't be out there. I'm too young. I'm too much of a boy. They will be so frightened by my tenacity. Oh, I'm coming for you. Oh, the dirt is so hot. Mark Wahlberg. Does anyone have incense for boots? My boots are attacking the soles of my feet."

Marcus Parks: See, for all his evil, Heinrich Himmler was, at his heart, a romantic. Like most Nazis and like many people on the extreme right wing, Himmler was a fantasist obsessed with glory in the present that would result in a return to a past that never actually existed.

I'm just going to say this once: it's how many posters I read while watching these documentaries that say "Make Germany Great Again." And it is legitimately the quote. So just remember that. Okay? Because it's hard to get away from this. We're not trying to turn Rachel Maddow here. I don't want to be on the MSNBC side of things. But I just need you to understand that. They are literally the same slogan. It's the same. The playbook is exactly the same.

Henry Zebrowski: Also, Reagan used the same slogan.

Marcus Parks: Exactly.

Henry Zebrowski: No, the playbook is the same across the board. And Reagan at least had the balls to get shot.

Marcus Parks: But for all the glory World War I could offer Himmler, if only he were old enough, it also took away Himmler's connection to Bavarian royalty. Heinrich's godfather and namesake, Prince Heinrich, was killed in Romania in 1916, which removed the Himmler family's privileged access to the Bavarian court. Himmler's dreams of being attached to German royalty were dashed. And personally, I think that Prince Heinrich's death instilled a drive within Himmler to return to a position of power and importance at any cost.

Henry Zebrowski: Because he knows 700 years ago, little Himmler was dead on the gate of a feudal lord, his bones hanging from it, begging for food. In any other generation, Himmler is a runoff. Hitler is the guy the tribe literally leaves behind. He is a waste of physical potential. He's a waste of mental potential. And he knows that. He knows that if I don't become dictator, no one's ever gonna like me.

Ed Larson: Yeah, they used to be... Germans used to be barbarians. They were fucking giant madmen. But they also had levels, because Vikings actually kind of had some sort of interesting matriarchal societies. There was stuff in there that wasn't like this. They're going to go ahead and make up a world that didn't exist after this to explain how the Nazis got to there. So it wasn't like, in the end they were just people. They were like nomadic tribes living their own little lives.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, but they definitely find, they create a narrative that fits the world that they want to live in. And they tell people, "Oh, this is the truth," when in fact it's just a fantasy that they've created.

Now, when Himmler was 17 years old, his father used all of his remaining influence with the Bavarian royal household to get Heinrich accepted into the army as an officer-in-training cadet. But ironically, Himmler's privileged position made it impossible to lie about his age in order to enter the war early like so many other teenagers.

Henry Zebrowski: We were so close. So close.

Marcus Parks: As a result, Heinrich did not qualify for officer training until after Armistice Day on November 11th, 1918, when the war was all said and done.

Ed Larson: Day after my wedding anniversary.

Marcus Parks: But Himmler still went through with his army training anyway, although he soon discovered that military life was actually quite difficult for a sniveling, sickly bookworm such as himself. Himmler wrote dozens upon dozens of letters to his parents complaining about the food, the bed, and how homesick he was. He would berate his parents for not writing him enough.

Henry Zebrowski: Better bet! We chastise them for not sending a message or a package literally every single day. And these are... Marcus, please, I want you to read these directly.

Marcus Parks: No, no, give it some sauce, but don't add any. In one letter, Himmler wrote, quote, "Dearest parents, today again, I have got nothing from you. That's mean."

Henry Zebrowski: He is 18 years old then. No one cares about what I did in a canoe today. Nobody cares about the knots I tied.

Marcus Parks: Then when his parents still didn't write him back, he wrote, quote, "Dear Mother, thank you so much for your news, which I did not get. It's so horrid of you not to write again."

Henry Zebrowski: Mean mommy. Mean, bad mommy. Not good to me. Not good to little Jaime. The most feared man in Europe. "Oh, you need to be, Mommy. Show me, Teet." He's not 14. He's not 12. He's not writing from summer camp. He is writing from officer training school. "Mommy, how big was your belly when I was inside? Can you show me how big it was? It was as big as a beach ball. Or was it a cantaloupe? Answer me, Mommy. Oh, I hate the Jews."

Ed Larson: I just can't help but think that his name, his nickname is Heine.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: Which is like a Jewish name for butt.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: His wife called him Heine.

Marcus Parks: That's next episode. We'll get there.

Now, Heinrich considered himself a failure for never being able to fulfill what he believed was his true calling. Despite his obviously weak nature and physical shortcomings, Himmler believed that it was his destiny to be an officer in a war to defend Germany. And he'd missed that destiny by just a few months.

Henry Zebrowski: That's not how destiny works.

Marcus Parks: Nope. Additionally, Himmler, like many Germans, was dismayed about how the war had ended, except Himmler, of course, took it personally. "Why did we lose? It was because I wasn't there. I was the X-Factor."

In Himmler's view, the Bavarian government had been overthrown by communists and anarchists who had replaced the Bavarian royal family to which he'd only had the slightest connection. But for Himmler, the dissolution of the royal family was a great loss. And he, like so many other Germans, was starting to give serious consideration to the rumor that the German people had been, quote unquote, stabbed in the back by the Jews who had supposedly conspired to orchestrate Germany's defeat.

Ed Larson: But aren't they also in Germany? Why the fuck would they be orchestrating the defeat of the country in which they're in, Marcus?

Marcus Parks: Because they're there to... the story goes, the cabals are moving all the revolutions. They're there to make money. The whole thing is so they can make money on the misery of the German people.

Ed Larson: They were making money before. But they could make more money. They can't actually. People... you actually make more. It's shown economically. Why are you arguing with me?

Marcus Parks: I'm not.

Ed Larson: I don't subscribe. Stop believing. Why are you saying these things? It works. It doesn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense.

Henry Zebrowski: No, it's stupid. No, and that's what we'll get into again and again, is that these theories about the Jews and these conspiracy theories about the Jews is that basically what it does is it gives these people an answer for everything to be able to go like, "Ah, of course, the Jews. I should have known." It's again and again. And they're able to use it for anything.

Ed Larson: I know my Jewish father was horrible with money. It doesn't work like that. Not all blackbirds, right?

Marcus Parks: Not all blackbirds. And so in April of the year 1919, Heinrich Himmler put his natural-born hate into practice by becoming a right-wing youth just after graduating high school. And he joined no less than two paramilitary units led by extreme right-wing figures.

Now, two paramilitary units, that sounds a little overblown. But that's one of the mistakes people make when thinking about Nazi Germany. It's not like the Nazis were some right-wing aberration that just happened to find their way into power through deceit and cleverness. Instead, the Nazis just happened to be the one extreme right-wing party in Germany out of many who came out on top in the end. And Heinrich Himmler claimed membership in a fair amount of these groups throughout his 20s before he finally settled on the one led by Herr Hitler.

Now, one of the two right-wing groups that Heinrich Himmler joined in 1919 was led by a man named Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who was the chairman of a group that was extremely important to the development of certain elements of the Nazi party and to Himmler's own interest in the occult. In addition to running right-wing paramilitary groups, Rudolf von Sebottendorf was also the chairman of the infamous occult organization known as the Thule Society, who were using the swastika as their symbol years before the Nazis co-opted it as their own.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes, we were doing it long before it was cool. Yes, I saw the years when there's only 25 people in there. And they kept saying, "999! 999!"

Ed Larson: So why have I heard that the swastika comes from Japanese culture?

Marcus Parks: It's not necessarily Japanese. It's a Hindu thing. Buddhist, Eastern Asian cultures. Indian-Asian color. It's an ancient symbol, but it's just a symbol of good luck. And it also, it looks cool. Like, "Wow, that looks great." There are things that were done in this time period that were done literally for stylistic reasons and for propaganda reasons.

Henry Zebrowski: I mean, I would say that 90 percent of what they did was done for style and propaganda. And Rudolf von Sebottendorf was a truly very mysterious, dark character in all of this because he came from Turkey. He came from essentially maybe being one of the people that ran guns to the same guys that did the Armenian genocide. So Rudolf von Sebottendorf has been this kind of proto understanding of mixing international espionage with racist ideologies and learning how to use them in political worlds. So this guy, Rudolf von Sebottendorf, is like a giant dark hole into history that I started to tumble down. And then you're like, "Oh, okay, this is this whole other series."

Ed Larson: Have you ever seen the swastikas that they use as design in Glendale on all the light posts and stuff?

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Fucking weird.

Ed Larson: Yeah. But it's like, again, they're still being like, "Well, we had it first."

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. It's an easy design.

Marcus Parks: Founded in 1919 by a war veteran named Walter Nauhaus who was obsessed with the Teutonic Knights responsible for the Crusades, the Thule Society was the group that gave the Nazis their flavor, so to speak.

Henry Zebrowski: Your swerve.

Marcus Parks: See, the reason why the Thule Society had chosen the swastika as their symbol was because it was ancient and it was in no way connected to Christianity. It was therefore in no way connected to the Jews, because the Thule Society was naturally anti-Semitic. But as it went many times with these people, they found a way to turn their hatred of someone else into a plus for themselves. The reasoning went that if the swastika wasn't Christian and it wasn't Jewish, then it had to have originated with ancient white people. And the only ancient white people around were the Aryan race.

Ed Larson: If you believe it.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: If you even believe it.

Henry Zebrowski: If you can believe it, it's the Aryans again. I just want... let me know when you're ready for me to jump on in here.

Marcus Parks: See, by 1917, the Thule Society had become obsessed with two things. First and foremost, they were convinced they were going to find the origins of the Aryan race somewhere in Europe. But they were also going to ensure that the existing Aryan race remained pure.

Henry Zebrowski: What these guys started to understand is that we need lore. We need world building. Yes. We need stuff that we can hang our hat on. There is no Germanic capital-G spirit. We don't know what we can do. We all want it. We're all desperate for some kind of national spirit. Something that can fill us with something outside of ourselves that we can then use as a cudgel against everybody else.

Marcus Parks: So the Thule Society created a version of the birth of white people. That there was a frozen island named Thule where that's where we crawl out of. That white people crawl out of the ice in this magical place where we had technology in the ice, and then we spread, and we are the beginning of all society.

Henry Zebrowski: We are the White Walkers. We are, literally.

Marcus Parks: But now it's not. We know it's not true. But they were going to just make it up. Because they can.

Well, the Thule Society, to ensure that they at least kept their own house in order, any prospective member had to sign a special oath swearing that to the best of their knowledge, no Jewish or quote-unquote colored blood flowed in either his or his wife's veins, and that there were no members of the so-called colored races amongst their ancestors.

But besides the racial stuff, the Thule Society also involved themselves in politics. Like most of these groups, the Thule Society lumped Jews and communists together. The Nazis also subscribed to this. So the Thule Society attempted to infiltrate the new German socialist government in 1919 to perform a coup. Instead, seven Thule Society members were captured and executed, including its founder and three German aristocrats.

This, I think, tells you that Heinrich Himmler was not the only person in Germany who wanted things to return to the way they were before the war. And that's, I think, extremely important. The aristocratic class in Germany plays a massive role in the rise of the Nazis. And actually the aristocrats were the ones who opened the door because they thought that they could take advantage of Hitler. They thought they could control Hitler. They thought they could control the Nazis. They called him a jumped-up corporal. "He's just some idiot. He's just some peasant. We can control him." Guess what? You fucking can't. You cannot control these people.

Ed Larson: And aren't the Nazis more communist than socialist in reality?

Marcus Parks: What they did... this is actually, so this is an extremely complex thing.

Ed Larson: Should I not ask that question?

Marcus Parks: No, we shouldn't get into it too far. But it's extremely complex. The answer is those thought structures were extremely popular within Germany at the time. Actually, Germany was way more left wing during this time period after the collapse of Germany and then all of this after World War I. Basically, Nazis realized if we talk like communists, if we talk like socialists, people will essentially hook people in. And that's what they did. They took the language of those things and just flipped it on its head so they could do stuff like, "We're a communist, we're a socialist group, we're for the people." We're saying these things because one of the big things...

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, and what Himmler's gonna say later on is that the SS looks scary, but he's gonna tell the SS, "Act like you're... they're gonna be afraid of you, naturally, but you're helpers. You're helpers." And so that's this whole... remember that. So every single time they're doing, they're just twisting language so that somebody like you can be like, "Aren't you all socialists?" Because that's part of the game.

Marcus Parks: Now, the Thule Society's link to the Nazi Party has admittedly been overblown over the years by occult Nazi conspiracy theorists. And that includes us. Way back in the day when our grasp on history was, let's say, a little more tenuous than it is now.

Henry Zebrowski: We're still doing our best. We're still learning. We're trying.

Marcus Parks: That's what you got to do. You got to educate yourself and learn over the years. That's what we've been doing. You never stop. You never stop growing. And, you know, I've learned... there are two layers. There are just more and more layers. There's more and more understanding that certain things are just done for reasons that we don't want to understand. Like that the idea that this occult side of it... Himmler knows when we'll begin to express that there is a literal, there's a practical way to harness this. And that's what it is. It's keeping a foot outside.

Henry Zebrowski: There's a power in using it.

Marcus Parks: Yes. Yes. In reality, no prominent Nazi was ever a part of the Thule Society, save for Anton Drexler. Drexler was the founder of the party that became the Nazi Party, the German Workers' Party, which, to your point, sounds very communist. And while Drexler was definitely a member of the Thule Society, Hitler never was, despite many claims to the contrary. Really, the Nazis just liked the cut of the Thule Society's jib and vice versa. But when Hitler began his true rise to power, he purposefully distanced himself from the Thule Society.

Henry Zebrowski: "Like, I don't know. They're fine. They're fine. But that's not really our thing."

Marcus Parks: This wasn't because he disagreed with anything the Thule Society was saying, but because Hitler knew that the Thule Society was simply too weird for most regular Germans. Too out there with their occult beliefs. In modern terms, the Thule Society is to the Nazis kind of like what QAnon is to today's right wing. Put differently, you're not going to win over most of middle America talking about Tom Hanks raping a child any more than a middle-class German in 1919 was going to be swayed by arguments that white people deserve to be in charge because we come from Atlantis.

Ed Larson: What did Tom Hanks do?

Henry Zebrowski: Tom Hanks, you know, he's very persuasive. You know, if I'm going somewhere, I'm molested. "I want to get in your box of chocolates. I'm molested, little boy."

Marcus Parks: But that's one of the things that people don't realize about the Nazis. Hitler always liked to present himself as a reasonable man.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, he...

Marcus Parks: He very much... all the crazy shit, all the wacky shit, it was a slow roll. He always wanted to present himself as reasonable. He loved a referendum. He always loved, like, "Let's just put it to the people and see what the people say."

Henry Zebrowski: But then you see the Slasher... what's his name? Schleicher? The guy that would, like, end up putting Hitler in charge, blah, blah, blah.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: The one who ended up fucking getting killed during the Night of the Long Knives because he thought that he could fucking control Hitler, because you can never fucking control these people. But then he brought Hitler, right? So he was the first one to meet. But everybody who met Hitler was like, straight up, "We're like, this guy's fucking insane, right?"

Henry Zebrowski: Like, this guy's really insane. But they all were like, ah. Because he began to realize, I have to change tone.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: But just as it is with QAnon, there were some people in Germany who were swayed by the wackier shit. And Heinrich Himmler was most certainly one of those people.

Ed Larson: Dude, this is the Xenu poll.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: Because the Xenu poll, like what that does, with the Xenu poll, this is the Xenu poll. So what this does again is that you're in so far, I'm going to tell you something ridiculous. Now what that's actually going to do, that's a loyalty test.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: And that's going to make you double down. Like if you don't believe that white people can naturally harness the transformative power of the earth itself, Vril, and be able to create UFOs that can fly and be able to travel past in time in order to like fuck a mastodon or whatever. Like these guys legitimately believe that outwardly because that's a sign that you're a true believer and you're going to be in lockstep no matter what. And some people are more willing to believe the crazier shit than rational shit sometimes, too, because the crazier shit can't be proved.

Henry Zebrowski: And it's a better story.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, it makes life more interesting.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, while Himmler wasn't a member of the Thule Society, he was a member of right wing groups run by Thule Society members. And Himmler gobbled up every bit of pseudoscience and pseudohistory that these people spewed. He started understanding. See, during World War I, many Germans found themselves drawn to the myth of Atlantis, but what they heard was an Atlantis myth with a racist slant. This myth said that Aryans, i.e. white people, were actually Atlanteans and that the lesser races had caused their downfall. This belief was thanks in part to the occult thinkers of the time, like Madame Helena Blavatsky, who didn't give a second thought to the possible consequences of the shit that she was making up on the fly.

Marcus Parks: I will say, upon a rereading of The Secret Doctrine, if you look at it, she legitimately, it's all filler.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: The race stuff in The Secret Doctrine is all filler. It makes zero sense. It's garbage. We tried covering it on our series and it was the worst part of the whole thing.

Henry Zebrowski: But they understood that what you do is you take a thing that appears to be a mysterious truth that you can't understand and need an otherworldly intelligence to walk you through. What they'll do is, what they understand immediately is, zoom into something specific that's already around that nobody can explain. We will attach an explanation to it. Now it has an explanation. Now it can be actionable. And they're going to simplify it.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: How do Jews sink a city? That's the idea that the Atlanteans had created proto-nukes and they had sunk themselves and that the actual lesson of Atlantis is supposed to be these very magical white people destroyed themselves with their own hubris. That's the story. That's what the real story is supposed to be. But the Germans who love this shit combine the Atlantis myth with the pseudoscience of the day, stuff like phrenology and eugenics, which eugenics comes from America.

Ed Larson: And it's all coming back. All that phrenology shit's all back. That's the new fun stuff that these guys are all doing. All the, these people, I'm not allowed to name anymore, all the various celebrities that we're dealing with. The shape of our skull tells us what our criminality is supposed to be. Phrenology is racial science. It's bigger than it ever been.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. Since this time period.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, it became common occult knowledge amongst people in Germany that Atlantis was either Iceland or Greenland and evidence of ancient Aryans, they believed, could be found somewhere on these islands. Now, Himmler was just as into all of this shit as all of the other white people nerds who were getting into it at the time. But Himmler was also obsessed with Germanic history and mythology. There's a term for it, Areosophy.

Marcus Parks: Areosophy. Which is the turning of theosophy into Aryan base.

Henry Zebrowski: That's interesting. Additionally, archaeology was all the rage amongst the upper crust of Germany when Himmler was growing up. So having knowledge of ancient history only played further into Himmler's ideals of what was required to be a part of a proper society. See, by the time Himmler was 10, he had memorized the details of all of Germany's most famous historic battles. And in high school, his knowledge of ancient German weaponry and warfare was said to equal or surpass that of his teachers, which I'm sure made him an incredibly aggravating student.

Ed Larson: Of course that's who he was.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, dude.

Ed Larson: Yeah, actually, the thing is about that staff, I'm not sure you're putting it in the right period.

Henry Zebrowski: Heidi, no one's asking you! As far as Himmler's specialties went, his historical hero was Friedrich Barbarossa, the 12th century king of Germany who had launched the Second and Third Crusades. Barbarossa was also who Hitler named the invasion of Russia after, Operation Barbarossa.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, you know, these guys.

Ed Larson: Nothing to do with the Willie Nelson movie.

Henry Zebrowski: I find it so fascinating that it's always the weakest guys, like the big, strong guys. Those big, strong, strapping, big cocked, big bald men. Just love a big breasted men.

Ed Larson: Yeah, like a sports journalist.

Henry Zebrowski: Most specifically, Himmler was drawn to Barbarossa's restoration of the Justinian codes, which were laws enforced by moral justifications. In King Frederick's case, he ruled by the divine right of kings. And that meant that everything he did was moral and just solely because he was king. Himmler took these ideas and internalized them and began to believe that laws should enforce morality. Influenced by King Frederick further, Himmler also believed that morality was universal, not subjective. But Himmler also believed that he was one of the few people who knew what those universal morals were. And those morals certainly weren't good news for anyone who wasn't white, straight, and chaste.

Marcus Parks: Now, Heinrich Himmler was a sponge for ideas.

Ed Larson: And in the mirror.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: Yeah, I got him.

Henry Zebrowski: So he was just as influenced by contemporary thought coming out of Germany as he was by the concepts dreamed up by his medieval forebears. Himmler particularly latched on to an ethno-nationalist German movement called the Völkisch Movement, which first gained steam in the late 19th century and also heavily influenced Hitler. If it tells you anything, the official Nazi newspaper was called the Völkisch Observer. See, during World War I, Imperial Germany believed that it was owed expansion beyond its borders so the German people could spread across Central and Eastern Europe and return to what made Germany great in the first place.

Ed Larson: I understand. They weren't Germany yet. They were just there already. They didn't need more. They always were there. They wanted more.

Henry Zebrowski: No, they wanted Eastern Europe.

Ed Larson: But they didn't ever have it before. Why do they want it now? You were fine sitting there.

Henry Zebrowski: Because there are more Germans now, and so they needed more land in order to be more German.

Ed Larson: Yeah, World War I must have been real fun.

Marcus Parks: Did you say more land or more bland?

Ed Larson: Hey, there's nothing bland about Germany. We went, it's good. It's many tapestries of different flavors.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, they have all kinds of different mustards.

Ed Larson: Dude, they do.

Henry Zebrowski: Hey, dude, wait till you go. I love, I'll say this. I love Germany. I love Germany. And I love German culture. I love German music and art. It really does suck that the Nazis gave the Germans such a bad name because they really have made some incredible things throughout the years.

Ed Larson: Hey, but ever since, they've been doing good.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: They just had a little period of time.

Marcus Parks: Yep.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, by the 20s, Germans had become obsessed with rolling back the clock to the country's ancient agricultural roots because writers in the Völkisch movement began espousing the idea that old German farming traditions had refined and biologically honed the Nordic race. But those traditions had been lost.

Ed Larson: I mean, they definitely did create a series of ladies with some of the best, most succulent alabaster mommy milkers that you've ever seen in your life, but I don't know if that's going to do much for the war effort. Big-titted beer wenches are probably some of the best things that God and his German face ever created, but I don't know. I mean that really where I tap out. Not sure if it like superiority.

Marcus Parks: Sausage makers are delicious. I want to meet them.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Well, the reasoning went that in ancient German tradition, German farmers had picked the strongest of their children to inherit their land so that only the fittest would farm the fields and therefore continue propagating a superior bloodline.

Ed Larson: So somebody like Himmler would have been definitely chosen by his big strapping father and certainly not drowned in the river when he was fucking five years old.

Henry Zebrowski: But owing to what the Völkisch writers saw as the negative influence of the French Revolution, German landowners were now dividing their land equitably amongst all their heirs, thereby imperiling the Nordic race and undoing generations of selective breeding. So through the Völkisch movement, the ideas of being pure through breeding and the importance of agriculture, these two ideas became inextricably linked in the minds of certain segments of the German population.

Ed Larson: No one's telling you that you can't farm!

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, but that's the thing. And we're not talking 1933 here. We're talking like 1899. We're talking like, these are ideas that have been fomenting in Germany for decades by the time the Nazis come along. And by the time Heinrich Himmler starts really getting into it. And so to see here is like Himmler's putting these things together to create a story you can follow. Like that's going to be one of the things he understands that a fascist government and just kind of like what a revolution needs, like what he views as a revolution needs. A revolution needs a plot. It needs benchmarks. It needs all of these things.

Ed Larson: 360 degrees.

Marcus Parks: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: But it needs a story. And Himmler understood that immediately. And he started seeing, oh, this is the story we're going to tell.

Marcus Parks: By the time of the Nazis, this idea had been taken even further. They called it Lebensraum or living space.

Ed Larson: I remember that from high school.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: Social studies.

Marcus Parks: Oh, yeah. But the Nazis had added the provision that anyone who was in the German so-called living space, unfortunately, they had to be removed, enslaved, or exterminated, depending on their racial characteristics.

Ed Larson: You're kind of living in my space. You shouldn't be living in the space. And I would move you, but that's hard, so we're just going to have to kill you.

Marcus Parks: Yep. This sick fantasy would be central to Heinrich Himmler's future plans, and it would drive every major decision throughout his life to the detriment of millions.

Ed Larson: You don't want to be online after Himmler when you're at the fucking old country buffet because, oh, motherfucker wants his room.

Henry Zebrowski: Man, imagine if Himmler was on Twitter.

Ed Larson: Oh, he might have been actually, he might have been saved. There's someone else. Maybe he would have gotten out of his system by just being, because there's definitely, I'm having such a hard time not comparing him to so many different people that we know in the space right now because he's very, very similar to a lot of them.

Marcus Parks: They wish!

Ed Larson: Exactly.

Henry Zebrowski: I mean, that's the thing. I mean, we're starting to see, you know, they say like, oh, you know, Twitter helps it get the poison out, but now we're starting to see that, no, these things online, fighting online, it doesn't help get the poison out. It only increases the poison until it flows over and spills over and splashes the rest of us.

Marcus Parks: I actually have a kind of a theory that I'm building now that I think that it does sort of help for a while. I think that it does allow pressure to increase from people saying hateful things. I think the problem is that eventually you do begin to realize it's not moving the needle. And that sometimes that either hopefully that makes you stop being a troll. That normally either it's like one or two. It's either you upgrade to something worse or you finally stop.

Ed Larson: It's also good that we see it in real time because all this Himmler shit we learn from like his diaries and stuff.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: After he died, we got a handle on it. Now we get to see people post their thoughts in real time, which is kind of cool.

Henry Zebrowski: What's amazing about Himmler in this aspect is the fact that he wrote down every single one of his thoughts.

Marcus Parks: He did.

Henry Zebrowski: So we know exactly what he was thinking.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, that's why we know Himmler. That's why we can say so much about Himmler as opposed to why Hitler is still such a... Even though Hitler wrote an entire book about his beliefs.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, he was a fake version of himself.

Marcus Parks: You know what I mean?

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, with Himmler, we know exactly who this man was. Now, when Heinrich Himmler read about the Völkisch movement, it sounded to him like the ideal life, despite the fact that he was the upper-middle class son of a professor from one of Germany's most cosmopolitan cities.

Ed Larson: A horse farted, and now I'm sick. I hate this corn. The corn is hard. Oh, oh, mmm. I hate shocking that even the paper around the corn is sharp. It's the husk.

Henry Zebrowski: But like any nerd, Himmler was just trying to live out a fantasy he'd read in a book because Himmler had been greatly inspired by an author with the extremely German name of Hans Günther.

Ed Larson: Yes, my mother was a tuber.

Henry Zebrowski: Hans Günther's book was a hugely popular tome called The Night, Death, and the Devil, in which he argued in the most racist way possible that the German people were destined to live in an agrarian culture in which every German is a warrior farmer who could both live off the land and defend it, if need be.

Ed Larson: It's the same guys that were at Charlottesville. You know what I mean? It's the same fat-bodied, piece-of-shit, weak-shouldered, weak-chested little bitches that are going to go and act like they're going to till a field. A lot of them can't till a Walmart.

Marcus Parks: I will say The Night, Death, and the Devil is a great title.

Ed Larson: It's a pretty good title.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, The Night, Death, and the Devil.

Ed Larson: Yeah, it's pretty good.

Henry Zebrowski: You know, if that was a movie on like a shelf at Blockbuster, I'd be like, that's one, please. Give me that and 310 to Yuma.

Marcus Parks: Inspired by Hans Günther's ideas, Himmler made the very surprising decision to study farming at the Technical University in Munich when he was 19. But the catch was that he had to have one year of practical experience under his belt before he could join the program. Now, even though Himmler acquired an apprenticeship on a farm in short order, his body was not prepared for 12 hours of manual labor six days a week. To his credit, he did try to push through the pain, but he still ended up sick in bed with paratyphoid fever after just five days on the farm. He couldn't even get through a work week.

Ed Larson: Dearest father, I think a chicken coughed on me.

Henry Zebrowski: Dearest father, will the white race prevail?

Ed Larson: I have beet disease.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, oh, beet disease.

Ed Larson: The vegetable.

Henry Zebrowski: It's the vegetable.

Ed Larson: Also, you have sun.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes, you have not conquered disease.

Ed Larson: Oh, you have disease of the beets.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes, I have radish AIDS.

Ed Larson: Help.

Henry Zebrowski: Help, father.

Ed Larson: Send help.

Henry Zebrowski: Send money.

Ed Larson: Send money.

Marcus Parks: The fever landed Himmler in the hospital for three weeks. But Himmler's hospital stay basically became the 1920s equivalent of falling down a racist YouTube algorithmic rabbit hole. While bedridden, Himmler alternated between Jules Verne and political works that only reinforced his conservative nationalist viewpoints.

Ed Larson: That right.

Henry Zebrowski: It kind of like sitting there and going back and forth between Minecraft videos and Nick Fuentes.

Ed Larson: Yes, excellent.

Henry Zebrowski: I knew that beets were the Jews' apple. I knew that for certain.

Ed Larson: Go sour, beets.

Henry Zebrowski: Particularly, Himmler devoured books that had the seemingly incongruent views that the Jews had both started World War I and had stabbed Germany in the back by forcing them to surrender on the cusp of victory.

Ed Larson: Really? Because you figure the people who forced them surrender were the other armies that defeated them. That is more what happened.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: And it was the generals that were like, oh, we can't win this. Oh, we not. We're losing this.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, that was that. Well, but that really was kind of where the idea came from, is that the German generals at the time, unlike Hitler later on, who took Germany to the bitter end until Berlin was absolutely destroyed. The German generals in World War I looked at the men they had, they looked at everyone else, and they thought, we can't win this. And if we keep going with this, then these people are going to march into Germany and they're going to destroy our entire country. And we don't want that to happen. But there were guys on the German front lines who were like, oh, everything's going great. Like, we're still, we're winning battles. We're doing shit. Like, everything's going good. But because the German generals made the responsible decision to not sacrifice millions more of their citizens, many Germans did not believe.

Ed Larson: Pussy! Pussies!

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, that's what they thought. They wanted to fight to the last man until there was no hope.

Ed Larson: Man, fucking Himmler would have died so fucking fast.

Henry Zebrowski: So fast!

Ed Larson: No, I know, it would have been awesome. He can't even garden much less live in a trench.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, yes. He couldn't. Five days.

Ed Larson: I have to confess to you, I don't even really like water. I don't like to be wet. It's covered with snow.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, once Himmler was out of the hospital, he decided that maybe the hands-on apprenticeship wasn't the right move. So he quit the program and enrolled at the University of Munich with a major in agriculture.

Ed Larson: So I could write papers about farming.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, so he could be more theoretical with it.

Ed Larson: Yeah, you know how that is. It's like, what are seeds? What is a seed? I mean, you can get a major. You can get a degree in agriculture in college and go on to be a farmer. My grandfather did that.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, you can be a researcher. You can do lots of stuff.

Ed Larson: Yeah, no, I'm not putting it down. I'm putting him down.

Marcus Parks: Oh, please, please, yes.

Henry Zebrowski: He also joined a group that was far more suited to his background, a racist fencing fraternity.

Ed Larson: That now that is Heinrich Himmler lane.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, he does look like a pincushion. He wrote in his diary that he only gained the confidence in college to engage in intellectual debates with other men after he had received his first fencing scar.

Ed Larson: After I was cut with the sword for the first time, then I felt I could truly debate with the men.

Henry Zebrowski: God, I just want to mash his face into my fucking ass.

Ed Larson: As do I. It's truly stabable.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, at the University of Munich, Himmler linked up with other young, extreme, right-wing shitheads who also wanted to waste their youth on hating people different from them while talking endlessly about the best ways to subjugate said people. See, anti-Semitism was on a sharp rise in Germany after World War I due to the whole stab in the back thing. So Himmler and his compatriots would quote-unquote debate as to whether or not Jews deserved equal rights or if they should even be allowed to participate in Himmler's precious fencing duels. Himmler also immersed himself in an anti-Semitic book called The Sin Against the Blood by a German dickhead named Arthur Dinter, where Jews are depicted as race defilers and the embodiment of everything wrong with society. That's all to say that the Nazis did not in any way, shape, or form create the anti-Semitism that eventually bore the Holocaust, although writers like Arthur Dinter did become members of the Nazi party eventually. Instead, the Nazis merely picked up the ideas that were already floating around Germany and took them to the most extreme conclusions.

Ed Larson: Maybe he was just mad that his last name was Dinter.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: I would not be Dinter no more. Nobody likes a Dinter. An Arthur. Arthur Dinter. Arthur Dinter. It's a hard name and people don't like looking at it. Sounds like he was named by Croke.

Henry Zebrowski: As you might expect, Heinrich Himmler, with his extreme anxiety, weak chin, and hateful personality, he was not the most charismatic man in Germany. And he was almost completely bereft of social graces. Himmler always had problems forming personal relationships because he was shy, uncertain, and constantly struggling to understand what people expected of him.

Ed Larson: Well, he was also a myopic racist shithead.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: As one author put it, Himmler simply didn't know how to strike the right note in his behavior with other people.

Ed Larson: Yeah, because he was a virulent Nazi?

Henry Zebrowski: Mm-hmm.

Ed Larson: That same... Tends to make you unlikable to the majority of people.

Henry Zebrowski: And it just always, like, fine. The idea, too, I'll never understand that. Like, these guys do have, like, friends, and they do have these things where you have to act all normal around them or whatever. Can you fucking imagine it? Can you imagine it? I like, yeah, I get it. You're going to put me in a concentration camp, but honestly, you might have to if you think I'm going to give Himmler a high five. I don't want to touch him. I really, it's like, it's like he was like, just, I keep going back to Anders Breivik. He just, he looks like him. He acts like him. It's crazy.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, very similar. Well, that same author basically diagnosed Himmler with what modern psychologists would call an attachment disorder. That meant that Himmler placed very high expectations on other people, but was unable to define what those expectations were. So as a result, his expectations could never be fulfilled. It was impossible. But Himmler would still become highly frustrated when people disappointed him, and he had a constant desire for affection with no way of knowing how to obtain it. Because of these constant failed connections, a disordered person like Himmler will shut down even further emotionally while trying to find outlets to compensate for their lack of relationships.

Ed Larson: He could have used like a body pillow.

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, wow.

Ed Larson: Oh, what a fleshlight attached to a gunky machine. Put it down for this man. This man, honestly, you just look at Himmler and your first thought in my head, this man needs some hentai.

Henry Zebrowski: In Himmler's case, his attachment disorder manifested in strict observance of social formalities and rules for everyday life. Himmler believed that if he abided by every rule there was, no matter how pedantic, he could defend his lack of emotional maturity by saying, "Actually, everyone else sucks because they don't follow the rules."

Marcus Parks: And if this doesn't ring true to what we are dealing with on the internet, then I don't know what does. Because this is such like an incel thought process. Like this is such like this idea of like, you're wrong, I hate you. And what I have to do then is that because all of you aren't behaving the way that you all need to be behaving, there should be rules. And would you all have to give me things and treat me nicely because you won't do it because I'm a putrid boil?

Ed Larson: And it just like, yeah, I'm sorry, putrid boil. Maybe think about the putrid part of the boil. I get it. You're just a boil. Plenty of boils out there who have a good time. You know what you do? Nice shirt. Yeah. Good haircut. You know what women like? You know what people like in general? Better shoes. You'd be less. Then you'd just be a boil with great shoes.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, while Heinrich Himmler certainly had compatriots who shared his beliefs, he never had what you'd call friends. Well, he did have one friend when he was a teenager, a kid named Falk Zipperer.

Ed Larson: Oh, man, oh, man.

Henry Zebrowski: Apparently, they would write...

Ed Larson: Was he played by Martin Starr in the movie?

Henry Zebrowski: Apparently, they would write poetry together. Himmler's poetry, awful, absolutely terrible. Falk Zipperer, though, did get some poems published. He was okay, but eventually he just got tired of them. Like, I don't want to hang out with this fucking guy anymore.

Ed Larson: I am Zip-a-doodle-doo!

Henry Zebrowski: In Himmler's view, human relationships required him to commit too deeply, although his diary entries from college portray a nerd who was extremely anxious to be accepted by other students. This, however, was a difficult proposition, because he was, after all, Heinrich fucking Himmler, and he wasn't any more of a likable guy when he was in college than when he was second in command of the Third Reich.

Marcus Parks: Reichable.

Ed Larson: Thank you.

Henry Zebrowski: Himmler was described as shy but incredibly arrogant, notoriously anti-Semitic, violently opposed to communism, inflexible in straying from his routine, and terrible at reciting Bavarian folk poetry, which he tried to do often. When Himmler ran for student office, he got the smallest number of votes, because while most people didn't hate Heinrich Himmler, nobody liked him either.

Ed Larson: Why?

Henry Zebrowski: As such, Himmler did not do well in the romance department either. Himmler, however, justified his lack of success in forming intimate relationships with women by announcing publicly that he would remain a virgin until marriage.

Ed Larson: You don't even try. Try to break me. Try to see if I'll give you some of this big penis. I am choosing not to have sex with any one of you.

Henry Zebrowski: I hate the way he would say, I hate the way I feel when there's a body to body with me. I hate the way I lose control.

Ed Larson: Even though he looks like sperm and an egg.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, here we go. Here a quote from Himmler's college diary. And if you put this quote next to somebody else's face, you might be confused as to who said it: "A woman is loved by a real man in three ways: as a beloved child that one must argue with or even punish, as a wife who shares your struggle without shackling you, as a goddess whose feet one must kiss."

Marcus Parks: Yes, and so, uh...

Ed Larson: Yeah, there's a guy, probably, put it right next to his face, you probably know exactly who I'm referring to.

Henry Zebrowski: It's exactly what I mean when I say that, you know, it's so easy to compare these, like, extreme conservatives and extreme right-wing thinkers to the Nazis because they're all coming from the exact same place.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, they're butthurt virgins that can't make friends, can't do anything, they suck at everything, and so they want to destroy the world and bring it down to their shitty little level.

Ed Larson: I mean, that's partly that, it's partly that, but I think that only is a small, that's only a fraction of these people.

Marcus Parks: Oh, get me, I know, oh, I know. I'm just saying that for frustration.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, during college, the only time Himmler came close to a relationship was an obsession with a young woman named Marja, whom Himmler claimed to have gained considerable influence over through the use of hypnosis.

Ed Larson: Yeah, oh yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Despite his hypnotic charms, however, Himmler and Marja remained, as he wrote in his diary, just friends.

Ed Larson: I was just trying to challenge my own virginity. And my virginity won.

Henry Zebrowski: I like you because you sound like Marza.

Ed Larson: Marza!

Henry Zebrowski: Now, after Heinrich graduated with a fucking agriculture diploma in 1922, owing to his teenage obsession with somehow becoming a Germanic warrior farmer, Himmler took a low paying office job in Munich until he could afford to buy his own farm. In his spare time, he participated in hollow military exercises with the German Reserve Army.

Ed Larson: You could just see him with his like body armor that he bought off Amazon. You see all these guys playing ice. It's like all the same shit.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: Because of Himmler's piddling services, he would denounce any of his peers who had not participated in the military. While considering his own experiences in the military, in which he whined to his mother about not writing him often enough, he considered those to be heroic.

Marcus Parks: He said a very... Himmler had what you'd call an extraordinarily good self-image.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes. Himmler also continued to fail in the realm of romance, and once remarked to a peer that he actually despised women.

Ed Larson: Yes, he despised them.

Henry Zebrowski: Specifically, Heinrich would write obsessively in his diary about a pretty waitress who was living a life of moral depravity which Himmler believed he could alleviate simply by giving her money. Again and again, Himmler adopted the Madonna viewpoint when it came to women. He considered flirting, kissing, and sex above all to be wicked. And he thought that people who indulged in sexual acts for any reason other than procreation were simply giving in to their animalistic side, which was not very German at all.

Marcus Parks: I actually asked my therapist for what this would be called, and he couldn't give me something. The idea of like a gateway idea. This is like one of those gateway ideas. This is like one of those things that like if you can learn to hate one person, I can teach you how to hate 10. Like it seems like it's one of those where, because it's interesting, right?

Marcus Parks: This hatred for women really just comes from his own incel-like nature. Well, it's his own frustrations and his inability to connect with any. But then he uses that as another way. So later on, when he will subjugate women, he will use this as another... It's a way to get a 15-year-old boy in the door.

Ed Larson: Yeah, sure.

Marcus Parks: This is a thought that puts a 15-year-old boy at the foot of all the other thoughts. But it's also very much about his attachment disorder and his expectations, and women never meeting those expectations. But because he has no sense of real self, he can't understand that's a him problem. He wants to change the literal government. He wants to change the world's government in order to reflect those ideas.

Henry Zebrowski: Exactly what we're saying. Again, it's the problem. It's not just like, "Oh my God, I should dress better. Oh my God, I should learn to play the piano." It's the world needs to change. Women are whores.

Ed Larson: Yeah, he can monologue. He can't listen.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes. Well, for Himmler's part, his ideal woman was untouchable and totally desexualized, with an attitude towards coitus that was just as chaste and strict as his own. In his dreams, Himmler fantasized about a woman who would gladly join his quest to Germanize the lands of Eastern Europe as a settler. She would be a nurse, a mother, and a sister figure, all while avoiding any erotic or threatening femininity that served any purpose other than to propagate the German race. In turn, women mocked Heiner Kemmler and openly called him a eunuch.

Ed Larson: Oh, very much so.

Marcus Parks: Because this idea, because guess what it sounds like? I mean, it sounds like the idea that women are just supposed to be baby factories. That's all they're supposed to be. They're supposed to father the armies of the Nazis.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, baby factories and they must keep the house in order. They must make him dinner, make sure he's okay.

Ed Larson: Milk the cows.

Henry Zebrowski: It's definitely all subservience. Now, around 1922, Himmler's diary entries displayed a massive uptick in anti-Semitism, and he also began to write quite a bit about how much he hated homosexuals, whom he considered degenerate. Himmler also started referring to himself, with his weak chin and pigeon chest, as a so-called true Aryan.

Marcus Parks: I think he was right. I think he is the true Aryan.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, one of the reasons why Himmler's anti-Semitism increased in 1922 is because that was the year that hyperinflation hit Germany. Because of the extraordinarily short-sighted conditions of the Versailles Treaty, which placed most of the blame and responsibility for World War I on Germany, the country owed massive reparations. In order to pay these reparations to other countries, the ruling government figured, "Fuck it, why don't we just print more money? That'll solve everything."

Ed Larson: Why hasn't anyone ever thought of this before? It's money. Just make more of it.

Henry Zebrowski: This is of course a stupid idea, and pretty soon the price of goods in Germany increased by literally 10 million percent. In 1923, one dollar was equal to 4.2 trillion Reich marks.

Ed Larson: I'll always remember those pictures. When they had split up the country afterwards, the idea of big wheelbarrows filled with money. They were burning it to keep the house warm.

Henry Zebrowski: And the Himmler family lost much of their wealth due to hyperinflation. And the right-wing extremist that Heinrich already followed began saying that a cabal of Jewish bankers were somehow profiting off all the misery hyperinflation caused. It's at this point that the answer to any problem in Himmler's life was, "Ach, of course, it's the Jews."

Ed Larson: As if Protestants and Catholics won't steal your fucking money. Crazy to think that the Catholics wouldn't try to get a chunk of that shit.

Marcus Parks: You guys are crazy. You mean the organization that demands 10% of its followers seriously?

Ed Larson: Or let's go over to all the fucking televangelists who are constantly asking people for money and telling them if you don't give them money you're gonna go to hell, and the only way to get to heaven is to give them money. Industrialists make money on a world collapse. So these guys are all doing it. It's not just the Jewish people. It's a lot of guys that look like you, Himmler.

Henry Zebrowski: But as a result, Heinrich Himmler began associating with even more far-right extremists who were railing against what they believed was the grand communist Jewish plot behind the whole thing. The source of it all was the ruling government known to history as the Weimar Republic. Founded as Germany's first attempt at democracy, the Weimar Republic was what replaced the throne when Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated after his defeat at the end of World War I.

Ed Larson: Welcome, welcome.

Henry Zebrowski: You know what I mean? It's all that. It's because then's when things got sexy.

Ed Larson: Oh, very sexy.

Henry Zebrowski: The Weimar Republic was extraordinarily sexy.

Ed Larson: Yeah, that's why it made him so angry, because none of those sexy girls wanted to talk to him, because he was a miserable, hate-filled troll.

Henry Zebrowski: Basically, an uprising of workers and veterans bloodlessly took over Germany and established a parliamentary system much like England's, then combined it with an American-style presidency. Now, the moderates of the Weimar Republic beat out the communists, who were also trying to grab power after the Second Reich fell. But while on paper, the Weimar Republic was one of the most liberal governments of its time—it gave women the right to vote, it declared all Germans equal, it gave every German the right to free expression.

Marcus Parks: Mistake, mistake, mistake.

Henry Zebrowski: All this did was make these guys angry. It was effectively a centrist government that pleased no one. As a result, the Weimar Republic in the early years had to deal with not only massive inflation, but a fair amount of attempted coups by paramilitary groups on the right and the left, in addition to its continued diplomatic isolation, because the whole world was still really pissed off about World War I.

Ed Larson: It was a bad one.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, it was a really bad one.

Henry Zebrowski: The world was still very pissed off about it, and a lot of them still blamed Germany. Now, Himmler took the hyperinflation of the early 20s personally once again, because with his agriculture degree, the best job he could get in the economic climate was a low-paying job working for a fertilizer company.

Ed Larson: I don't want to work at the poo-poo store.

Marcus Parks: I purchased from the poo-poo store.

Henry Zebrowski: Additionally, Himmler had no friends and no romantic prospects.

Ed Larson: I don't want them. They're gross.

Henry Zebrowski: In other words, Heinrich Himmler was pissed off at anything and everything. But in 1922, Himmler heard tell of another group of miscreants, where his anger and conspiracy theories would enable him to finally fit in somewhere. This group was just one of the numerous extreme right paramilitary groups in Germany at this time. But this group had a massive advantage. In effect, this group had just drafted the LeBron James of hateful charismatic leaders. The one man who was going to grab everyone's attention and push this group to the top. The group was, of course, the Nazi Party. And their stock in Germany was rising quickly due to their star speaker, Adolf Hitler.

Ed Larson: Y'all, I am bringing my talents down to South Beach.

Marcus Parks: I like Heimlich Himmler because he looks like my one testicle.

Ed Larson: But it's true. It's like he was kind of banding about and he was like the guy. Hitler was the guy. He was the Chevy Chase.

Henry Zebrowski: Also, I hate that we say "party" all the time.

Ed Larson: I know. It's a political party. I love parties, but I hate that one.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, Hitler's ideas had mostly been taken from the German return to nature Volkisch movement that we mentioned earlier. It's the same one that got Himmler so excited, where every German was supposed to start a farm, have as many babies as possible, and defend their country when necessary. Hitler also believed, like Himmler, that Jews and communism were inextricably linked and had to be exterminated, while the Slavs of Eastern Europe were destined to be a race of sterilized slaves who would get the warrior farmers on their feet before dying out completely.

Ed Larson: Please leave us alone. I really do, man. I feel fucking super foreign in this.

Marcus Parks: Yes, yes. It's nice. Yes, I feel very American and British at the same time.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, dude. Both men believed that the most dangerous ideas in human history were pacifism, socialism, and democracy.

Ed Larson: This looks like the opposite, though.

Henry Zebrowski: And they scoffed at any pretensions towards humanism. In other words, they were both massive dickheads in every way possible. And Himmler was immediately attracted to the ideas being espoused by the Nazi party.

Marcus Parks: He's like, finally, not the main dickhead.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: You know what I mean? You can go there and be like, "Oh my god, they're bigger dickheads than me. And they do worse stuff than me."

Ed Larson: No one, dude, no one's a bigger dickhead than Heinrich Himmler. I know, he's gonna be like, "Oh, wait till they fucking see me once I'm in there."

Henry Zebrowski: Now, by the time Himmler came along in 1922, the Nazi party was well on its way. Hitler had joined in 1919 when it was still called the German Workers Party. He was member number 555, although the party had started its membership numbers at 500 to make them seem like they were much more popular than they really were.

Ed Larson: What are you saying? They were liars.

Henry Zebrowski: They were liars. He was actually member number 55. Within two years, the Nazi membership went from 55 to 2,000, mostly because of Hitler. He was elected their leader in 1921, and the swastika, borrowed from the Thule Society, was adopted as the party's official symbol. By the end of the year, Hitler was speaking for crowds of up to 6,000 people. And by the time Himmler started coming around, the Nazis' membership had exploded to more than 20,000 people who had mostly been lured in by Hitler's speeches.

Marcus Parks: People like action. This is one of those things that I think that we're kind of even seeing now. People like fast action and are easily fooled by fast action. I think that somebody like a Hitler, what he does is offer fast action. It's a simple solution. It's easy answers, fast action. And people are amazed because they're used to bureaucratic red tape. And nobody likes and they always joke and hate about the idea of government's red tape, even though the reason why the red tape is there is to sort of do the thing the governments are supposed to do. It's called checks and balances. And calling the people and seeing how it works and creating coalitions, doing all this dumb shit that takes a long time, makes everybody angry and upset. Hitler's like, "What if I just take all that out?"

Ed Larson: Yeah, what if I just did like that?

Marcus Parks: Actually, that is kind of Hitler in a nutshell. "What if I just did it and it didn't matter what the consequences were to the people you don't like? Because then we're doing it."

Ed Larson: Yeah, I'm just doing it.

Henry Zebrowski: See, Hitler had actually joined the Nazis as a spy for the German army, who were investigating various extremist organizations due to all the paramilitary coups that the Weimar Republic was constantly batting away. As a result, Hitler had infiltrated several political movements prior to discovering the German Workers' Party. And he'd learned something from all of them. He's sort of like, you know, we talk about Jim Jones. He went to every single church in his town and paid attention to every single one. Hitler did the exact same shit. From the Social Democratic Party, Hitler said he learned how to manipulate crowds and how to destroy opposition through constant attack. He wrote, quote, "I understood the infamous spiritual terror this just movement exerts. At a given sign, it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous until the nerves of the attacked persons break down. This is a tactic based on the precise calculation of all human weaknesses and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty."

Marcus Parks: And he is 100% correct. 100% correct. This tactic is still used today.

Ed Larson: By who?

Henry Zebrowski: Hitler also understood that the way to win over the public was to keep things simple. If you have just a few straightforward ideas that you ceaselessly hammer into people's brains and pair them with recognizable symbols, pageantry, and colors that arouse them, it will make people feel like everything's going to be all right.

Ed Larson: Lock her up.

Marcus Parks: Yep.

Ed Larson: Lock her up.

Henry Zebrowski: Use songs that people know that make people feel comfortable. This has been used to great effect in recent American history. Simple, straightforward ideas that you say again and again and again.

Marcus Parks: And the whole thing, and that's the thing about Hitler. Farts lead to shit.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: Farts do lead to shit. That's right. But that's the thing about Hitler is that you really got to understand about this is that it's not about that Hitler created hate within people. But the feeling that Hitler created in the German people is the same feeling that people are responding to now. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine.

Ed Larson: Well, he's doing it and then they're telling us that everything is okay.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, and then everything's good.

Ed Larson: Yeah, everything is okay, but everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to go back to the way it was, even though the way it was never actually fucking existed in the first place.

Marcus Parks: You were just young.

Ed Larson: Why was he screaming it?

Marcus Parks: That is true.

Ed Larson: Why was he screaming it? You know, sing a song.

Marcus Parks: Rap. "My name's Adolf Hitler and I'm here to say, I'm doing things in a Nazi-like way."

Ed Larson: That's the only way I knew how to do it. That's the only way I know.

Henry Zebrowski: Additionally, Hitler knew that acts of terror and violence, if successful, would attract people who wanted to feel a sense of power. This was extraordinarily attractive to a lot of young German men in 1922 who were coming off a humiliating defeat in World War I and had little future to speak of in Germany economically.

Ed Larson: He got to take the momentum of a bunch of guys that just got done killing a bunch of people in a field, and now they have no idea what to do with all that energy. He now gets to use those guys also.

Henry Zebrowski: But he also was able to get guys like Himmler who never got to be in the war.

Ed Larson: Exactly. They wanted a little taste.

Henry Zebrowski: Well, because the guys who were actually in the war in Germany at this time, they actually looked at the trenches very nostalgically.

Ed Larson: Nostalgically. They looked at it as like that was the time of glory. That was the time when in England and America, they're like, "It's the worst fucking thing that ever fucking happened." Because it was bad. It was fucking awful. Because it was bad and we were right. And it's not glorifying to die in a trench. It actually sucks. You want to die anywhere else but in a trench. But in Germany, they didn't think of it that way. They would talk about how glorious it was, how wonderful it was, how we should return to that. It's a fantasy that wasn't real.

Henry Zebrowski: Yes, and there were all these younger guys like Heinrich Himmler that were like, "Oh, God, I wish I could have done that. I wish I could have had that." So when it came time to go to war, there were a lot of people like, "Oh, this is my chance. I can have the same glory that those guys in the Great War had."

Ed Larson: Also, everyone's so poor right now in Germany. Extremely so. And so when you get to that, you get extremely desperate and you start making irrational decisions. We see that with people in this country right now.

Marcus Parks: Exactly. This tactic of playing on the hopelessness of disenfranchised young men has been used to great effect here in America in the last few years. But it's by people who are simply looking for clout or influence. We call it the manosphere. But the difference between then and now is that the young men of 1920s Germany have been raised with the same extreme brutality that Himmler had been raised with. So they had absolutely no problem meting out violence whenever they were told that violence was the solution. This, thankfully, isn't the case in America anymore, because while we may be conditioned to accept violence, we've been conditioned to accept gun violence. And we've been conditioned to accept it as a way to protect our freedoms. It's passive. We're also constantly told that gun violence is wrong and the people who perpetrate it are routinely vilified. So the difference here is that while young men are being recruited, they're being recruited to buy products and like and subscribe because they are not conditioned to commit violence on a Nazi Germany scale.

Henry Zebrowski: What we're seeing though is on the other side, which is a soft encouragement versus hard encouragement is what I would put it in this way. And we're saying like, the Nazis and the stormtroopers were told to beat people up. "Go out there, beat the communists, go beat them up, kill them if you have to." These guys are being told now that what they're doing is, on the news, everyone's saying, "It's bad, don't do that." They go on the internet and memes are telling them it's hilarious. And the memes are coming from inside the house.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: The memes are literally coming from people within these organizations that are using those memes to, you know, what was it, 764? That other group, we have that group, we have Order of the Nine Angles. This is my episode on Panic World for more about 764. And so we have these things that are also then actively happening, but it's just, they're going to the same guys and appealing to them in ways that are specifically... but no, all of these groups are hunting for young men.

Marcus Parks: Memes are news for people who can't read full sentences.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: Now Hitler did not rise to power alone. And many of the most famous shitheads of the Nazi party were recruited during these early days in the 1920s. As far as Heinrich Himmler went, he was brought in by an early ally of Hitler's who would of course not survive the inevitable purges that come with these sorts of movements. The man who brought in Himmler was an actual World War I veteran who'd lost his fucking nose during the war.

Ed Larson: Catch your nose! Catch your nose! Give it back!

Henry Zebrowski: This noseless man was an absolute fucking bruiser named Ernst Röhm. Röhm was an excellent organizer, a strong leader, and he utterly lacked any sort of moral compass, which were all qualities that Heinrich Himmler appreciated.

Marcus Parks: It's actually quite interesting. He has no moral compass because actually our personal body compasses are actually in our nose. There's tiny deposits of iron in men's noses more so than women. That's why technically they believe that men have more of an ability to naturally find direction, because we have more of that iron content in our nose. So technically he would have even less of a moral compass without the nose.

Ed Larson: Interesting. Oh, that is interesting.

Marcus Parks: And, you know, Himmler probably liked him because with all his belly issues he could fart around him.

Ed Larson: Yeah. And he's just like, "I can still taste it in my coventy."

Henry Zebrowski: Röhm also had an extreme capacity for violence. He believed that Germany was going to be won basically through street fighting. And he was kind of right. I mean, that was one of the big advantages of the Nazi party was that they had roving bands of psychopaths that would just walk through the streets of Germany and beat the shit out of anybody who didn't fall in line. It was never a law that you had to "Heil Hitler" every time you saw somebody else. But if you didn't "Heil Hitler," then one of Röhm's men would beat you half to death, if not beat you to death. That wasn't just a fucking Downton Abbey storyline. It happened.

Ed Larson: Well, also, they learned to separate the two. What they would do is the stormtroopers became an unofficial side group to the main Nazi crew.

Henry Zebrowski: Right.

Ed Larson: Because for a while, Hitler was saying, "I don't run the stormtroopers."

Henry Zebrowski: Yes. Oh, very much so.

Ed Larson: He had plausible deniability.

Henry Zebrowski: Röhm's capacity for violence made him the perfect man to co-found the Nazis' first paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung, a.k.a. the SA. But history knows them better as the stormtroopers. And remember, the stormtroopers, they're not a part of the government.

Ed Larson: No.

Henry Zebrowski: Not in any way whatsoever. They're not soldiers. They're just fucking guys.

Ed Larson: They're kids.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, guys and kids.

Ed Larson: It's Proud Boys.

Henry Zebrowski: Now, under Röhm's leadership—

Ed Larson: Again, they wish.

Henry Zebrowski: —the SA made several attempts to violently overthrow local governments throughout the Weimar Republic in the early years of the Nazi party. They also carried out several assassinations across the political spectrum, including the murders of rival right-wing extremists. Between 1919 and 1923, right-wing Freikorps, like the SA, killed 354 people in politically motivated murders, while only 22 murders were committed by left-wing groups in the same time period.

Ed Larson: Step it up!

Henry Zebrowski: But just like today, because there were some murders committed by left-wing provocateurs, the right wing was extraordinarily good at convincing anyone who would listen that it was actually the leftists who represented the real danger, even though their own people were committing murders at 16 times the rate.

Marcus Parks: Hmm. Interesting.

Henry Zebrowski: Isn't it? Now, in the early days of the Nazi party, Hitler was not the infallible Führer that he would one day become. Men like Ernst Röhm—I just, God, I love saying it.

Ed Larson: Yeah, Röhm.

Henry Zebrowski: I know I sound like an asshole, but I love saying his name properly.

Ed Larson: You're allowed.

Henry Zebrowski: Ernst Röhm. Röhm in particular would disagree with Hitler, because Hitler believed that the military should be subservient to Nazi ideology, while Röhm thought that the military should come first and everything else was secondary. Both men, however, hated Jews and communists.

Ed Larson: Hey, so as long as they can get along, that's really what it's about. Fighting compromise. It did unify them for a surprisingly long period of time.

Henry Zebrowski: That's just nice of you. But really, Hitler put up with Röhm because he desperately needed Röhm's connections.

Ed Larson: I also like how every time he puts on sunglasses, they fall to his bottom lip. I always laugh. That's how we did. We only have one jack-o'-lantern. We can't lose our jack-o'-lantern.

Marcus Parks: Stop, I can hear you. I hear you talking about me in the other room. Jack-o'-lantern. I did good things. That bastard stole my nose.

Henry Zebrowski: Röhm was a war hero who had deep connections to the military, and he wore his resume literally on his face. You could see what he had sacrificed. While Hitler's military experience made him little more than a so-called jumped-up corporal, as I said earlier.

Ed Larson: That's what all of the guys who ran Germany's military, that's what they looked at. That's what, even like, you know... They didn't take him seriously.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, even von Hindenburg, the German president, that's what he called him when Hitler started gaining power. He was like, "Who's this jumped-up little corporal?"

Ed Larson: Well, when he first met him, he was like, "Get him away from me."

Henry Zebrowski: Yes, that was most people's reaction to Hitler was get this man away from me until some of the aristocrats and some of the more right wing people decided like, "Oh, no, we can use him."

Marcus Parks: And again, you cannot use them.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, watch *Rise of the Nazis* on BBC. Honestly, it really does explain this really well.

Ed Larson: Yeah, BBC Select, *Rise of the Nazis*. It's my favorite Nazi documentary series ever. It's incredible.

Henry Zebrowski: It's his favorite.

Ed Larson: Yes, it is.

Henry Zebrowski: That is my, that's my, the Nazi show that I mentioned earlier. When he makes love to Carolina each night, the beginning of it is the "Deutschland du Vorhom!"

Ed Larson: No, not even close. It has nothing to do with a sex life. Sex. Yeah, they only listen to Cannes.

Henry Zebrowski: Röhm also had connections to weapons and explosive manufacturers who were far more likely to make a deal with someone like him rather than, say, a failed artist whose biggest military accomplishment was getting gassed and blinded at the end of the war. That would be Hitler.

Ed Larson: I couldn't see bitches. Bye. I changed the name of the group. You know, Röhm, he could take the gas.

Henry Zebrowski: But it was these connections and more that made Hitler ignore a very large part of Ernst Röhm's life. See, Ernst Röhm lived as an openly gay man in the Weimar Republic. He attended gay nightclubs without shame. He held membership in an organization that supported gay rights.

Marcus Parks: Don't think this makes him fucking cool. It doesn't. He still earns his home.

Henry Zebrowski: It's like, no, it's just this.

Ed Larson: What?

Ed Larson: He's been like, "I know." This is the best part about my experiences in Vulfo 1. I now got two horrors in my face. He has an asshole on his face.

Henry Zebrowski: GP my head. Someone come and come in my fucking brain. I'm gay as hell and I'm ready for head sex.

Ed Larson: Come in my brain. I don't know what "come in my brain" is. God, I'm gonna be thinking about that for days. Just being like, "Oh, oh, I keep hitting my penis on your nostril bones."

Marcus Parks: See, while Weimar Germany was more open about homosexuality than, say, America at the time, it was still a "don't ask, don't tell" situation. Although the Weimar Republic was still famously swinging and comparatively progressive.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, it was awesome. There were very few openly gay men. But gay clubs weren't explicitly banned, and major political parties actually worked to decriminalize homosexuality. The laws were never passed, of course, but the point is they still tried.

Marcus Parks: Ironically, though, the Nazi Party was the predominant party against gay rights, even though one of their top men was openly gay. Never one to let a contradiction stop them, though. The Nazis would use Röhm to recruit people who might be on the fence about the conservatism of the Nazis. The Nazis would point to Röhm and say, "Hey dude, we're cool. We got a fucking gay dude and he's a totally badass gay dude too. He don't got a nose or nothing."

Henry Zebrowski: That guy better be hot as hell. That's what I'm saying. If you're gonna have a major gay Nazi, I want that guy to be hot. I don't want him to have no nose. Sell me.

Ed Larson: Yeah, no, he was a hefty man as well.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, I want somebody. Yeah, dude, I don't want an expert level gay. I want an entry level gay.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, but the thing is, the fucking right wingers are still doing this today. I mean, they did it with fucking Milo Yiannopoulos. Like, "Oh no, look, we got a gay guy. Look, there are gay guys here. It's fine. It's great. No, we're cool. Don't worry about it."

Henry Zebrowski: You always notice how they push the three black people they have behind Trump.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: They push them right behind his speech and stuff like that because they're like, "See? Look."

Ed Larson: Yeah. It's always that "see, look."

Marcus Parks: Now, Heinrich Himmler met Ernst Röhm in 1922, but Röhm did not immediately bring Himmler into the Nazis. Like Hitler, Röhm was a member of several right-wing groups. So Himmler was brought into a right-wing paramilitary group that allied itself with the Nazis called the Reichskriegsflagge, or Reich War Flag.

Henry Zebrowski: I don't know why they haven't probably got members. Get a look at the name.

Marcus Parks: And from what it seems like, Himmler was not necessarily a Hitler stan like so many others in Germany. In fact, Hitler doesn't even make an appearance in Himmler's diary until February of 1924. This is interesting because Himmler had formally joined the Nazi party six months earlier. So he definitely knew Hitler personally long before that. But I think this points towards my assumption that for Heinrich Himmler, the ideas of the Nazi party were far more important than the leader, who in Himmler's mind was just a means to an end.

Henry Zebrowski: He's the guy that can get this shit done. They all view him as somebody that can control, which is because in the end, as we know, they don't succeed. They'll get their seed for a while. But the idea is that they just think, "We'll get through this Hitler stage."

Ed Larson: Yeah. It's kind of how Cheney is Bush.

Marcus Parks: Yeah. Now, frustratingly, there was actually a moment in time when Hitler's right wing movement might have been stopped before it gained too much steam. This moment came when Hitler figured he had enough men to do what so many others had tried and failed to do before. Hitler was going to make a run for a coup with the infamous Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. During this short failed attempt, thousands of Nazi stormtroopers marched with Hitler through the streets of Munich the day after Hitler had taken over a political rally in a beer hall.

Henry Zebrowski: I love the name of the beer hall, Bürgerbräukelle, with 600 of his goons and a machine gun.

Marcus Parks: The capture of the beer hall had filled Hitler with a false sense of confidence. He figured he had it in the bag. But when he marched to the center of Munich to fully take over the Bavarian government the next day, the Bavarian paramilitary opened fire with many machine guns and killed 16 Nazis while three of their own were killed as well. Hitler ran away barely injured while top Nazi Hermann Göring was badly wounded in the groin.

Henry Zebrowski: God, he should have gotten shot in the fucking dick.

Marcus Parks: Hitler was tracked down and sent to prison, but even though his actions had led to the deaths of 19 people, he was given the incredibly light sentence of five years. Five years.

Ed Larson: It is fascinating, though. Because right there and then the whole thing could have been over.

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Right there. And then the whole thing could have been over.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Henry Zebrowski: But really, if they really put the boot down on him, which they try to do several times. And then after this, we'll see.

Marcus Parks: Well, they do. They will try. There will be a giant emergency attempt at some point to stop the rolling train. But it's already too late. It is far too late. By the time they realize they can't control Hitler and that he's not just useful, it's way too late.

Ed Larson: Oh, yeah.

Marcus Parks: Now, since Himmler wasn't fully into the Nazis just yet, he did not participate directly in the Beer Hall Putsch with Hitler. Instead, he was with Ernst Röhm and his men that day. They actually were the only ones who had the only successful action of the putsch. They occupied the war ministry by barricading themselves in with barbed wire and machine guns. This group, however, negotiated a peaceful end with the Bavarian paramilitary. Röhm was arrested, but Himmler was allowed to go free. Although he lost his job and had to move back in with his parents because of his involvement with the coup.

Henry Zebrowski: But this is the key. This is one of the big keys. His family going back to live with his parents.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: In their basement.

Marcus Parks: So as the year ticked over to 1924, Hitler was in jail. The Nazis were banned by the government. And Ernst Röhm had left the party soon after the coup over an argument he had with Hitler. Although he would return six years later.

Henry Zebrowski: You know what he did? He went and ran the Bolivian army for a while.

Ed Larson: Whoa!

Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, he was actually like the proto, like, yeah, let's go to South America. Let's check that out. Let's check this out. Oh, actually, it's kind of nice. Hold on.

Ed Larson: So he killed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Henry Zebrowski: Oh, wow.

Ed Larson: Whoa, what if he did?

Marcus Parks: Well, this was the moment when life was looking up in Germany. While things weren't perfect or even all that stable, the Weimar Republic had finally started to gain its footing as a legitimate power that could provide an actual life for the German people. The economic and political systems had begun to stabilize. Germany joined the League of Nations in an attempt to return to the world stage. And the German people were creating incredible art, movies, and music. While Hitler was in prison writing his bullshit fucking book, the people of Germany were enjoying Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and the surrealist masterpieces of Max Ernst. And this is just three examples of all kinds of incredible art coming out of Germany in the 20s. In other words, it looked like Germany might be on a comeback, having narrowly missed a right-wing takeover.

But tragically, in an example of how the world has been interconnected for well over a century, despite claims that globalization is a relatively recent phenomenon, the Weimar Republic was absolutely fucking destroyed by America's Great Depression.

Henry Zebrowski: How? Since everything is kind of interconnected. Americans had invested in Germany. Since all of these things were related to each other, when America's economy fell, Germany's economy absolutely fell apart.

Ed Larson: Well, they were also like the first that was like an extension of us in a way, too. We were all over Germany at that point. We were deeply extended. So when all of that went down, we were knocked out because we were the new financial superpower. And then all of a sudden we're knocked off the board.

Marcus Parks: Yeah, and the consequences of the Great Depression hit Germany harder than even America due to the fragile nature of the Weimar Republic. Their unemployment was far worse than ours was. Hyperinflation came back and the return of economic instability allowed the far parties like the Nazis back inside just as they were about to be kicked into the dustbin of history. They were able to say, "Look, this is what you get with the Weimar Republic," even though it had nothing to do with the Weimar Republic. It had everything to do with the greed of American stockbrokers doing what they did that led to the Great Depression. But the Nazis and these right-wing fucks are able to use anything and everything and say, "Look, this is why things are bad. Give it to us. We're going to make it better. We're going to make it great again. Everything's going to be fine if you only give us all the power in the world."

And in the end, Hitler ended up serving nine months for starting a coup that resulted in the deaths of 19 people. Additionally, Hitler gained another victory in February of 1925 when the ban on the Nazi party was lifted after Hitler made a solemn promise to, quote, "obey the law."

Henry Zebrowski: See, I mean, that's as good as a—you better want to hold on to some of these IOUs. That was for a Lamborghini. You might want to hold on to that.

Marcus Parks: But while Hitler had been in prison, Heinrich Himmler had done what a lot of frustrated, unemployed young men who had to move back in with their parents have done over the decades. He immersed himself in the occult.

Henry Zebrowski: Yay!

Marcus Parks: And that's where we'll pick back up next week for part two. That's where all the Zebrowski comes in. Hitler's out of jail. Himmler's getting into the occult and shit's about to really start popping off in Nazi Germany. It's about to become Nazi Germany.

Henry Zebrowski: I can smell the vrilla bubbling. It tossed salad and scrambled eggs. This is going to be... Well, I don't know what to do. It tossed salad and scrambled eggs. Well, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. This is only the beginning.

Ed Larson: Scramble eggs all over my face!

Marcus Parks: Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left. Watch that Nazi information roll on by. What is a boy to do? What is a boy to do? Come check out Patreon.com. Watch us talk about Nazis live. Go to LP on the left to watch us do social media about Nazis for the next month and a half. It's about Rushmore Evil. Looking for new merch, new ideas? Send them down the pipe. And then go to our YouTube channels and check out all our new shit at LPN TV, someplace underneath LPN Romance, see No Dogs in Space, and The Foreign Report.

Henry Zebrowski: Hell yeah, man.

Marcus Parks: And we're coming out. We're coming to you, motherfuckers. We're going to be in Milwaukee really soon on October 11th at the Pabst Theater. Come check us out there. And then we're going to be in Oakland on October 25th at the Fox Theater. And then, all right, Cleveland, rescheduled officially. This is official now. This is official. We are coming on the same day, November 29th. We're going to Akron at the Goodyear Theater.

Henry Zebrowski: Nobody's happy about this.

Ed Larson: No.

Henry Zebrowski: Not even the people of Akron.

Ed Larson: Nobody's happy about this.

Henry Zebrowski: It's not our fault. We did the best we could. We tried. But yeah, Akron's the best we could do.

Ed Larson: Yeah.

Marcus Parks: So we're going to be, it's only 40 minutes away. So please still come out to the show. If you had tickets in Cleveland, you will be able to transfer them over. Correct?

Ed Larson: I believe that that is true.

Marcus Parks: Yeah.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Marcus Parks: All right. If not, you can flood our emails and yell at us. Honestly don't because we have no control over that. You have to actually go to where you got the tickets and get them refunded.

Henry Zebrowski: It's Henry's fault. He did this. He closed down the theater. I specifically need to say: We have no control. We don't know anything about the tickets. Please for the love of Christ go to where they gave you the tickets. We can't help you. I'm going to go ahead and say they sent you an email. Read it carefully. Click that email. The email is going to clearly tell you what you need to do. We don't know. Henry's phone number is 513.

Marcus Parks: And of course, we're coming to Portland Revolution Hall December 12th and 13th. We've got more dates coming. And also, if you are in Wisconsin, I'm doing an extra show while we're in town. On October 12th, I'm going to the Comedy on State with my buddy Logan Metz from The Promise of the Real. It's going to be a badass show. Come check us out there. That's it.

Henry Zebrowski: Love it.

Marcus Parks: All right. Well, hail Satan.

Ed Larson: And hail Gein.

Henry Zebrowski: You know what? Honestly, I've learned nothing.

Ed Larson: Yes.

Henry Zebrowski: How am I not surprised? I'm just going to keep barreling forward exactly as I was. I got a good hail today, guys. Hail the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.

Ed Larson: Yeah! Two, three, four. We are the Jumbo Shrimp. Here to play a game. Champions. Minor league champions. 2025 Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. Way to get them, boys. One more. Two, three, four. We are the Jumbo Shrimp. Here to play a game. Marching in single file. Shrimp stepping their way.

Henry Zebrowski: You know what I'll say? You know what's nice? Is that shrimp? It's a kosher meat.

Ed Larson: No it's not, it's the opposite.

Henry Zebrowski: It is the opposite.

Ed Larson: They can't have shrimp.

Henry Zebrowski: They actually can't have shrimp.

Ed Larson: That's another hateful thing that we've done today.