Part One: The Young, Evil God of Death: Reinhard Heydrich | BEHIND THE BASTARDS 

"The worst thing about Nazis is their absolute commitment to style" yknow, I really don't think that is the worst thing about Nazis

Real basic crash course on German/Austrian schools: You start with Kindergarten, which is pretty much the same idea as the US version. Then you have elementary school called "Grundschule" ("basic school") until 4th grade or so. Then you spend two years doing special tests and courses to determine what you should do for a living. When you finish that, you basically pick/get picked for one of the following three schools: 1. Hauptschule ("High School") - basically same idea as the US's high schools 2. Realschule ("Real school") - basically a vocational school 3. Gymnasium - basically a prep school for students who plan to go to university. At the end of the Gymnasium you take a test and after passing it you get a special diploma called an Abitur (or "Matura" in Austria) and with that in hand, you can go to university. There are also professional/further education schools for Realschule and Hauptschule students. It's complicated... but this is basically the oversimplified version. And while in the US we think of gymnasiums as places where you play sports... in ancient Greece they were also used for school/training as well as for athletics. This is where the German version originates.

My historian buddy likes to refer to Heydrich as “Hitler’s Darth Vader”, and the Naziest Nazi of them all (blonde, blue eyed, Heidelberg duelist, etc.)…

Jesus....this was one of those men that I had never been taught about in History class. Then HBO released the made-for-TV movie "Conspiracy" and my HS teacher gave us credit for watching it. This man was a true monster.

The irony is that Reinhard joining the Navy could have had a moderating effect on him, because the German Navy was staunchly conservative in a traditional sense, which made them heavily resistant to Nazism.

i take issue with calling kaiser wilhelm II the dumbest man in europe. tsar nicolas II was right there.

The 1984 German TV show/movie The Wannsee Conference is really good too. The script is derived from the minutes of the meeting and what is discussed.

I'm at the 9:55 mark, and that middle name Eugen made me go: "Eugen, as in Eugenics? No, it's probably just coincidence."

watching this on a WED and having it end with lots of genocide planned for Thursday coupled with me having mandatory micro aggression training at work aligns very well

some additional info: I'm assuming that the former con-man turned writer of popular "cowboy novels" is Karl May. His novels are still very popular in Germany, especially after WWII and were turned into adventure movies. His best known novels indeed feature a romanticized view on Native Americans during the expansion of the United States on the western frontier. They had a huge impact on the sympathy of ordinary Germans for Native American culture and history. Literary scholars in the 1980's noticed underlying homoeroticism in the description of characters and landscapes. Other novels include travel adventures in Arabia and the Osman Empire, Mexico and Latin America. Ian Kershaw in his two-volume Hitler biography reported about Hitler having once attended a public author's reading of Karl May from which Hitler came away disappointed because of May's pacifism. The German "gymnasium" is a hybrid of high school and college similar to the french "lycée", children can enter it after 4 years of primary school. A succesful graduation at a gymnasium is mainly required for being allowed to study at a German university. Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost federal state in Germany with coastlines both at North Sea and Baltic Sea. Schleswig is the part with the recognized Danish minority living inside of Germany, the Südschleswiger.

I love to picture Kaiser Wilhelm saying "It's called a fucking Hail Mary, have you ever fucking heard of it?"

up next on TLC: hanging with the heydrichs

"There are two living popes right now. I've seen that movie!' Is the movie Popeback Mountain?

I think TLC just got it’s new show, “Nazi Wives.” I mean they could start with Orange County

Best Fake German Accent Podcast, ever.

Robert is such a character in his own book. Which I mean obviously, but after reading After The Revolution I can't help but think about how well he would fit in in rolling fuck

Ben Shapiro is a violin player. Jus saying...

Fun personal experience with "Yes Man," I went to that movie as a date. We saw it at the Mann's Chinese Theatre. There's a scene in the movie where the leads are on a date. They went to a movie, at the Mann's Chinese Theatre. On top of that, they saw a Don Knott's movie and happened to feature a quote my mom used all of the time in the scene. Maybe I should've bought the Lotto ticket that day..... 🤔

So, some things about the german navy part. The reason they didn't sortie except for that one massive clash was that the Hochseeflotte _was all the germans had_ and the Royal Navy, even if it'd lost the Grand Fleet entirely, would have been able to pull in ships from various corners of the empire to make up the losses until replacements could be built. The only reason the germans ever got within shouting distance of beating the british at sea was that britain had to patrol a globe-spanning empire and a single, massed fleet couldn't be everywhere it needed to be all at once. Losing the Grand Fleet would have _hurt_ the brits, but it wouldn't have knocked them out of the naval war. Losing the Hochseeflotte would have been the end of ANY naval operations for Germany. As for the battle of Jutland...Germany decisively lost that one. Yes, they did more damage than they took in return, but they failed to break the blockade that was killing them, which had been the whole point of having the battle, and they never again even got _close_ to a position where they could take another shot at breaking free. Additional fun facts: 1.) One reason the germans did more damage at Jutland was that the royal navy had traditionally bought its ammunition on the open market...from _Krupp._ Since that source had understandably dried up, they had to set up their own shell production lines and the quality they got was kind of messy for the first few years of production. A lot of shells failed to detonate or detonated too early (i.e. on contact with the target's armor, not after penetrating it). 2.) Another was that the Royal Navy's internal politics had placed an admiral in charge who barely qualified as "mediocre" when it came to commanding a fleet at sea but who was _incredibly_ good at playing politics, getting rid of his opponents and placing his own guys in prestigious positions. In particular, his chief signals officer was an absolute moron who didn't know the first thing about his job and turned any attempts at complex maneuvering into a farce. 3.) And finally, a combination of lax safety measures and shortcuts being taken for maximum fire rate led to several british battlecruisers blowing up the moment they took a hit on a turret thanks to flash fires travelling all the way to the magazines. Not to say the germans didn't fight well but they were extremely lucky to get as far as they did (and then escape during a series of confused night maneuvers where both sides were fumbling around blindly). They were _very_ badly outmatched from the start.

Barely started and just wanted to say, that's a supervillain ass sounding name. So probably perfectly fitting...

Regarding the battle of Jutland there is an argument to be made that the Germans won tactically but the British won strategically. The Germans destroyed more British ships but retreated rather than face off against the combined grand fleet. Further the mutiny later in the war was also occurring when the British had launched many more ships and had a number of ships available to them that weren't at Jutland including American capital ships. I don't think many these days would blame the German sailors for not wanting to engage in a battle that at best strengthens the German negotiating position and at worst kills a very significant amount of them.

You ain't gettin' me, Robert! I'm straightedge because I like to remember how to walk when partying! (Also a designated tripsitter, so there's that)

Great episode. Also, more Sophie.

Love from a Xanderhal and Vaush fan!

For a moment I thought Tim Heidecker was a guest on this episode.

I assume Part 2 will discuss "Operation Reinhart" named after him.

Mustache Man was a fan of Opera, could be he got the "stabbed in the back" notion from there

Uff. This is gonna be a doozy.

It always stuns me how little the guests and co-hosts seem to know. I wouldn't want them on my trivia team.

Matt's German accent is very camp.

Sigh kids these days , how can you possibly be anti Nazi and not know who Reinhardt Heydrich was ? Like pretty important

Schleschwig-Holstein is literally the name of Germany's northernmost state.