Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy and this week I'm talking
Speaker 1: with Sharne Shrine. How are you doing good? Actually, I
Speaker 1: know the first time you told me, I just said
Speaker 1: I was like basically doing bad. But after recording the
Speaker 1: first part. I don't know if people know that record
Speaker 1: them back to back, but I feel much better than
Speaker 1: I did earlier. So I feel good after hearing about
Speaker 1: all these cool fucking people. Yeah. Cool. And our producer
Speaker 1: Sophie is on the line as well. Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm great, drinking a cream soda Zevia, live in my
Speaker 1: best life, you know, so speaking of aftertastes and Nazis,
Speaker 1: and there's this I actually don't know how to do
Speaker 1: this segway. Um, But you are listening to the part
Speaker 1: two of our two part series on gay resistance to Fascism,
Speaker 1: and so you're probably a little bit confused if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard the episode that came out Monday, So you
Speaker 1: should go back and listen to it. If you haven't,
Speaker 1: you really should. It's a really good episode and people
Speaker 1: learn about a lot of really cool people. And this
Speaker 1: is coming from a very big cynic. So this is good.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to impress the cynic is like an
Speaker 1: interesting not even about impressing. It's like, will I still
Speaker 1: be miserable by the end of this, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like it's like, yeah, you know what. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well this one is going to be Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to spoil it. Okay. So where we last left off,
Speaker 1: there was like a motley crew of queers, artists and
Speaker 1: medical students in Amsterdam who just pulled off a like
Speaker 1: heist movie level antics to blow up a Nazi records storehouse.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to bring things back to Germany.
Speaker 1: So Germany, there's a country called Germany. Vimar Germany is
Speaker 1: the period from nineteen nineteen, after Germany got its fucking
Speaker 1: ass handed to it in the First World War to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, when Hitler came to power and did
Speaker 1: the whole Hitler thing that I presume most people are
Speaker 1: familiar with on some level. And Vimar Germany had a
Speaker 1: lot going for it, right. It was a republic, for
Speaker 1: one thing, which is a step up from dictatorships and such.
Speaker 1: People could like vote and ship, and there was free speech,
Speaker 1: there was free assembly, there was no state religion, some
Speaker 1: of the gay laws weren't being enforced, although they were
Speaker 1: still there, and the government was based out of a
Speaker 1: city called Weimar, which is how they got the name
Speaker 1: Bimar Germany. But Germany was completely fucked economically. World War
Speaker 1: One left their economy and shambles. Hyperinflation took over. Everyone
Speaker 1: was hungry and you know, fucked, and then they had
Speaker 1: the fucking worldwide Depression after all of that on top
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, I think that's the reason why
Speaker 1: the Nazis worked, you know what I mean. They had
Speaker 1: to like kind of get the desperate, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like they had to really and like then
Speaker 1: Hitler quotes like, oh he can save us kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I think they had to have the previous shitty part
Speaker 1: in order to even part, if that makes sense totally,
Speaker 1: because people are so fucked they're like, I'll try anything
Speaker 1: exactly yeah. And then so so most of the stuff
Speaker 1: I had been exposed to about by our Germany, which
Speaker 1: focus on really cool stuff because by our Germany was
Speaker 1: very in seeing artistic time period, and mostly I've heard
Speaker 1: about the cabaret scene, all the sort of decadent queer
Speaker 1: artists who try to live fancy, free lives while they're
Speaker 1: basically starving. And all that is like true and interesting
Speaker 1: and beautiful, but it's only one part of Germany's culture
Speaker 1: at the time, and actually only one part of it's
Speaker 1: it's queerness and it's queer culture. You've also got this
Speaker 1: really messy assortment of different organizations that have different names
Speaker 1: but get called like the vonder Vogel or the German
Speaker 1: youth movement or the hiking clubs, and these go back decades.
Speaker 1: They go back to the eighteen nineties and there's this
Speaker 1: movement that it kind of looks like boy Scouts. Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts was like a funk off, huge thing that involved
Speaker 1: millions of boys and girls both through various levels of
Speaker 1: formal and informal organization, with weird paganism, vegetarianism, nudism, and
Speaker 1: queerness running out through the entire thing. So not actually
Speaker 1: very much like boy Scouts. I would like to be
Speaker 1: that kind of boy Scout. Okay, well then you're gonna
Speaker 1: love our characters today. Um So, millions of German kids
Speaker 1: formed these hiking clubs and uh spent their days like
Speaker 1: camping and getting in touch with nature. It was an
Speaker 1: anti modernist movement a lot of a lot of parts
Speaker 1: of it, and whenever people are like, oh, it was this,
Speaker 1: it's like it's all kinds of different things all happening
Speaker 1: at the same time. Um, But it was kind of
Speaker 1: a lot of it was about leaving civilization behind. A
Speaker 1: lot of it was German nationalist, although it didn't have
Speaker 1: necessarily an anti Semitic character as far as I can tell, um,
Speaker 1: at least on any systemic level. Some of it was
Speaker 1: really middle class and some of it was really working class,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was just fucking outright criminal
Speaker 1: in kind of the best and worst ways. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a French gay anarchist named Daniel Gurin who wrote about
Speaker 1: the movement in the nineteen thirties because he would go
Speaker 1: visit nineteen thirties Germany because it was a fucking awesome
Speaker 1: place to be a gay anarchist, and but he found it.
Speaker 1: He found this movement increasingly politically polarized between the communists
Speaker 1: and the fascists. And as the whole worldwide depression is hitting,
Speaker 1: more and more youth are finding themselves homeless. They choose
Speaker 1: itinerant lifestyles over staying still in one place. So the
Speaker 1: movement keeps growing, and it keeps polarizing and doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of weird ship. In nineteen thirty three, huge chunks
Speaker 1: of has come to an abrupt end when Hitler bands
Speaker 1: all alternative youth organizations that aren't the Hitler Youth. A
Speaker 1: lot of the more mainstreams of these groups just basically
Speaker 1: become the Hitler Youth, and in nine he makes participation
Speaker 1: in the Hitler Youth compulsory um. And but the youth
Speaker 1: movement went a lot of different directions. Not all of
Speaker 1: it went into Hitler Youth, as we'll get into, but
Speaker 1: some of it did. And so we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about gay Nazis now, these are not the cool people
Speaker 1: who did cool stuff. Well balance it out, I suppose.
Speaker 1: But also I'm fascinated where where this will go. My
Speaker 1: own experience with boy Scouts. Um, I was a boy Scout,
Speaker 1: and uh, my best friend and who was a boy Scout,
Speaker 1: came out as trans like years before I did. Um,
Speaker 1: And so I love that you know me and my
Speaker 1: best friend because people are like, oh, they're they're letting
Speaker 1: girls into boy Scouts now, and then like me and
Speaker 1: a lot of other trans women are like, oh no,
Speaker 1: they always did but so gay Nazis. Uh, that's that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Yeah. So before Hitler took over completely and
Speaker 1: the National Socialists were just like one of the parties
Speaker 1: in Germany. They were actually the only political party in
Speaker 1: Weimar Germany with unknown high ranking gay member. Ernst Rom
Speaker 1: was the leader of Hitler's essay, which are usually called
Speaker 1: the brown Shirts, which are basically the parties like street
Speaker 1: thugs who operate outside the law, like you know when
Speaker 1: Trump told his brown Shirts proud Boys to stand by
Speaker 1: and stand back, similar sort of organization. And and ernst
Speaker 1: Rom was really into this hyper masculinity thing. He's so
Speaker 1: anti you know, if you're so anti feminine that you
Speaker 1: don't fuck women, right, Um. And he's really into authority
Speaker 1: and discipline and obedience as are good manly things, unlike democracy, socialism, anarchism,
Speaker 1: fucking girls, all that weird stocked Yeah. And this is
Speaker 1: not to say that the Nazis were pro gay. They
Speaker 1: were just kind of pro hypocrisy, I think. Um, even
Speaker 1: before they came to the power, they were the most
Speaker 1: adamantly anti gay party in politics. But even the Social Democrats,
Speaker 1: who were the ones who weren't enforcing paragraph on seventy
Speaker 1: five and were part of trying to fight to get
Speaker 1: paragraph on SV repealed. When um they used they used
Speaker 1: homophobic language to try and talk shot on the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Basically they were like, oh, Rom's gay, and so they
Speaker 1: like published his private letters in order to basically be like,
Speaker 1: if you support the Nazis, you support uh pedophilia and gayness,
Speaker 1: and the Nazis will corrupt our children, and so no
Speaker 1: one's fucking good at this point. No no political party
Speaker 1: is looking good. The Nazis are clearly looking the worst.
Speaker 1: But it's just kind of interesting to me. And this
Speaker 1: causes us split in the gay rights scene. Right, some
Speaker 1: groups like the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which is, as Magnus
Speaker 1: Hirsh felt, the guy I was talking about a lot
Speaker 1: last episode, he warns the gay Zis. He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the fucking Nazis are going to come after you too, right.
Speaker 1: But then the other big organization at the time, this
Speaker 1: is really not something to be proud of. Uh, They're like,
Speaker 1: what nah, They're not coming after all the gay people,
Speaker 1: just those Jewish gay people. Um yeah, but but spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: the Nazis are coming after all. The case m hmm.
Speaker 1: So On June four, on what gets called the Night
Speaker 1: of Long Knives, Hitler has Rom and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of the other brown Shirt leaders just murdered, and in public,
Speaker 1: Hitler was like, oh, I definitely did this because Rom
Speaker 1: was going to betray me. But it was really transparently.
Speaker 1: Hitler was tired of being made fun of for putting
Speaker 1: up with gay people in the ranks. His pal Mussolini
Speaker 1: like to make fun of him, and they were like,
Speaker 1: ah ha, you harboring gays, you know whatever, you know
Speaker 1: his pal Musolini, Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's like the
Speaker 1: very first no homo with consequences or something. I don't yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And then it what's kind of interesting is that Hitler
Speaker 1: probably didn't personally have a problem with Rome's homosexuality. He
Speaker 1: just he was a fucking people pleaser and he wanted
Speaker 1: people to like him. Um, which has definitely never happened again.
Speaker 1: There's never been a populist right wing leader any time
Speaker 1: in history, certainly not in the past ten years in
Speaker 1: the United States who has clearly not had any problem
Speaker 1: personally with gay people. And then no, yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: greatest country in the world, we're the ones who beat
Speaker 1: these Nazis. Okay, so we're the heroes of this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then fire the conductor for being gay. Um. So
Speaker 1: in private, Hitler would either defend or attack romes have homosexuality,
Speaker 1: depending on the audience, right, Like, sometimes he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was in his misspent youth and he's learned better now.
Speaker 1: And other times he's like a US, worldly men, we
Speaker 1: understand that such thing has happened, and are fine. That's
Speaker 1: my Hitler accent. Um, I don't do accents. You should. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also don't do accents, but I think I when
Speaker 1: I tried, I've learned my lessons. So yeah, I'm reasonably
Speaker 1: so that if someone put a gun to my head
Speaker 1: and said that I had to speak like a British
Speaker 1: person for two minutes or I would die. I would
Speaker 1: die because I genuinely believe that with a gun to
Speaker 1: my head, I would not be able to talk with
Speaker 1: a British accent. No, no, no, no no. I did
Speaker 1: a live reading of Twilight Ones with backdel Cast, another
Speaker 1: amazing podcast, and I had to voice one of the
Speaker 1: characters who was French and for and like in the thing,
Speaker 1: he has an accent, and so I tried before we recorded,
Speaker 1: I was like, can I do this? And I tried
Speaker 1: to have a French accent and I sounded like Jamaican
Speaker 1: every time it was so I was that was like cemented,
Speaker 1: like sharene. Accents are not for you. This is not so.
Speaker 1: Accents are hard. So I understand and I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that to the audience. Okay. So another one
Speaker 1: of the people that another one of the gay brown
Speaker 1: Shirts that Hitler has killed, was a guy named Edmund
Speaker 1: Hines who was actually Hitler's cell mate after the failed
Speaker 1: cove that Hall pusch Um and he was one of
Speaker 1: the fucking original Nazis, Like literally, he was number seventy
Speaker 1: eight in the enlisting in the National Socialists and he
Speaker 1: was gay as hell um And when they came for
Speaker 1: him during the Night of Long Knives, he was in
Speaker 1: bed with a lover. By one Hitler starts suggesting the
Speaker 1: death penalty for gay kids and the Hitler youth, and
Speaker 1: then they passed the death penalty for gay s S members.
Speaker 1: But what they do instead, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: them they kill, right, some of those sentences get commuted
Speaker 1: to go be cannon fodder in the war against Russia,
Speaker 1: which I think they actually did to a lot of um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people end up dying that way, get
Speaker 1: taken out of prison and sent to go die on
Speaker 1: the Eastern Front um or they're sent to serve in.
Speaker 1: It's like all criminal Durley Vanger Brigade of the s S,
Speaker 1: which is basically a brigade within the SS that's like
Speaker 1: all of the worst people and the criminals. And I
Speaker 1: put worse people in quotes, but like you know where
Speaker 1: they like go give criminals a chance to go. I
Speaker 1: I bring all this stuff up. Okay, do you know
Speaker 1: that meme the I never thought leopards would eat my face,
Speaker 1: said the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces. Party. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know this is I just said, okay, okay, okay, okay, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just basically this It's like someone's like,
Speaker 1: but I never thought the leopards would eat my face,
Speaker 1: the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party.
Speaker 1: And that's how I feel about the gay Nazis. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reasons to bring this up in this like
Speaker 1: otherwise conversation about good gay people is that I feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: when we talk about the bad people in history who
Speaker 1: are gay. We're usually playing into this trope that like
Speaker 1: all of them were closeted, right, but these gay's Nazis weren't.
Speaker 1: They were not closeted. They were open about their interests.
Speaker 1: It was part of their like storied tradition of right
Speaker 1: wing homosexuality that ran concurrently with left wing in a
Speaker 1: political homosexuality. And it's just like internalized homophobia or like
Speaker 1: hatred that I tried to wrap my head around stuff
Speaker 1: like that, like what they tell themselves to legitimize their
Speaker 1: existence or like what they're doing. So it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just sucking racists, you know, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I like the Racist Party and then they're like what
Speaker 1: the Racist Party hates you for being gay? And you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I'm so racist that that's you know.
Speaker 1: It's like we see that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: like the modern far right in the United States there
Speaker 1: are like, you know, gay members of it, and you're
Speaker 1: just like, what are you fucking doing? They hate you
Speaker 1: and will laugh at you and show you at the
Speaker 1: first opportunity, and they're like, no, they like me. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, I just thought of it's probably power that
Speaker 1: changes it, you know what I mean, Like if you
Speaker 1: feel like you're a little bit not untouchable but like protected,
Speaker 1: you feel more able to be a hypocrite. I feel like, right, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that that actually makes sense, honestly, Like almost everything comes
Speaker 1: down to power at the end. M wompomp Okay, ready okay.
Speaker 1: And so the other is gonna bring all this up
Speaker 1: is that, um, I think that we we forget that
Speaker 1: a lot of this ship has like really high stakes,
Speaker 1: the way that we talked about sex and sexuality and gender.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that we should be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for when some segment of oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: feminism or gay politics starts making common cause with the
Speaker 1: right wing, which obviously would never happen now, No feminists
Speaker 1: would just start making common cause with the right wing
Speaker 1: at all. No, no, no white feminism here. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I just thought I was I wanted to
Speaker 1: make like a really subtle Harry Potter reference, but I
Speaker 1: went fast enough, and so I just went with that
Speaker 1: the most obviously. But you should know a listener that
Speaker 1: I was trying to uh talk about Jay, Yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking of. To Yeah. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so you've got the gay Nazis. They don't last very long,
Speaker 1: fuck them whatever. Um, But now I want to talk
Speaker 1: about gay pirates. Hell yeah, let's do Yeah. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the edl wise pirates, who are so
Speaker 1: much fucking cooler, and they're on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: all this. So all the youth from the what I
Speaker 1: was saying, when they're all itinerant doing all this crazy
Speaker 1: ship they're running around in these like it gets a
Speaker 1: million names buns or bands or clubs or clicks or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're coming out of the vonder Vogel and all
Speaker 1: these related movements and the whitewashed version of history that
Speaker 1: I had run across primarily before doing this research honestly
Speaker 1: has them like wandering around the pristine German countryside, like
Speaker 1: singing camp songs and thinking about like marrying their heterosexual
Speaker 1: sweethearts monogamously and popping up pure arian babies and all
Speaker 1: that ship. Right, But like this could not be further
Speaker 1: from the truth. Uh, this, this growing culture of vagabond
Speaker 1: is um and has a desire for change because they're
Speaker 1: all fucking broken, hungry, and mainstream societies completely failed them.
Speaker 1: And more and more of them. We're living in camps
Speaker 1: and again totally unfamiliar to people today's you know whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of the clubs are gangs. They were the
Speaker 1: wild gangs, and they were in a war against civilization
Speaker 1: and everything boring. Every winter they would like disband in
Speaker 1: every easter, they would celebrate their click or their gang's rebirth.
Speaker 1: Their their camp songs where parodies of the Hitler youth songs.
Speaker 1: They told dirty jokes, They got into fist fights with
Speaker 1: the Hitler youth. Um, basically with all the men off
Speaker 1: to war, the Hitler youth were acting like the police
Speaker 1: and a lot of German cities and so they and
Speaker 1: they lived criminal lives and they fucked and oh my god,
Speaker 1: did they fuck. And it was anything but straight, anything
Speaker 1: but monogamous. Like it's it's like queer enough to like
Speaker 1: maybe even get me a little bit like, oh my
Speaker 1: may that's not the right way to go about these things,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So these are not the assimilationist gays.
Speaker 1: These are street fighting, forest fucking, sex working, Nazi robbing
Speaker 1: criminal queers. Yeah. It's like the anarchy of gay Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and they're called the They have a lot of
Speaker 1: different names, and but the one I'm going to use
Speaker 1: now is the wild Fry, which means the wild free,
Speaker 1: which was one of their mottoes. And they would have
Speaker 1: like things emblazoned while I'll get to that, um. And
Speaker 1: they they live up to the name. History mostly remembers
Speaker 1: like a subsect of them called the Edelwise Pirates. And
Speaker 1: and I've got yeah it's a flower. Oh interesting, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I know, right. Yeah, So so I've got
Speaker 1: information kind of about two generations of the Wild Fry,
Speaker 1: and one chunk comes from about and one chunk comes
Speaker 1: from the early forties. And so I'm kind of doing
Speaker 1: my best to give an honest like the way that
Speaker 1: these two connect. But there isn't a lot of information
Speaker 1: about that because all of the ship is so heterowashed um.
Speaker 1: But so it's an important I'm gonna do an imperfect job,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna do the best I can and quote
Speaker 1: original sources and all that ship. And because people when
Speaker 1: they mentioned Edlwise Pirates, they present the sort of like
Speaker 1: generic working class youth subculture who ruled and we're bravest
Speaker 1: fuck and they like fought Nazis. There's a movie about
Speaker 1: them called I think it's called Edowise pirates um but
Speaker 1: has taken out Yeah, totally, and it doesn't talk about
Speaker 1: their origins and it definitely doesn't talking about gay fucking
Speaker 1: and um. So so Daniel Garon, who's the French anarchists
Speaker 1: who wants to go hang out with gay folks in Germany.
Speaker 1: So does. He describes a run in with them in
Speaker 1: his book called the Brown Plague, which is a doesn't
Speaker 1: translate well now, but means that it's critical of the
Speaker 1: rising tide of fascism. Okay, one Sunday on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of Berlin, we met by chance a strange troop on
Speaker 1: the road. Needless to say, neither they're short pants, their
Speaker 1: bare calves which disappeared under their long wolf vests, the
Speaker 1: bulky and sundry loads swain on their backs, nor their
Speaker 1: enormous hiking boots distinguished them from ordinary vagabonds. But they
Speaker 1: were very much toughs. They had the depraved and troubled
Speaker 1: faces of hoodlums, and the most bizarre coverings on their heads,
Speaker 1: black or gray chaplinesque bowlers, old women's hats with the
Speaker 1: brims turned up in amazon fashion, adorned with ostrich plumes
Speaker 1: and metals, proletarian navigator caps created with enormous edel wise
Speaker 1: above the visor, handkerchiefs or scarves, and streaming colors tied
Speaker 1: any which way around the neck, bare chests bursting out
Speaker 1: of open skin, vests with broad stripes, arms scored with
Speaker 1: fantastic or lewd tattoos, ears hung with pendants or enormous rings,
Speaker 1: leather shorts surmounted by immense triangular belts, alsho of leather,
Speaker 1: both daubed with all the colors of the rainbow, esoteric numbers,
Speaker 1: human profiles, and inscriptions such as wild fry or rude
Speaker 1: ber bandits around their wrists. They wore enormous leather bracelets.
Speaker 1: In short, they were a bizarre mixture of virility and feminacy. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a sentence, that is That is amazing, I know.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you two can buy all of their
Speaker 1: costumes from our sponsor, the Pirates Store UM, which is
Speaker 1: a nonprofit again because we're going full pure wholesome with
Speaker 1: the ads. Here is a nonprofit store. Uh yeah, what
Speaker 1: you said in blazon. The first thing I was like
Speaker 1: they have merch you know, like you know, this is
Speaker 1: that's one way to spread the word. Yeah, totally, Um
Speaker 1: and we too. I actually don't think we have merged
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording, but we we do
Speaker 1: have advertisers, and some of them are hopefully the Pirates Store. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're manifesting. Yeah, here's some ads and we're back. So
Speaker 1: the Wild Fry they're there. They're self organized, right, they
Speaker 1: don't have this like overarching structure, but they do sometimes
Speaker 1: form into these larger coalitions, sometimes not. There's thousands of
Speaker 1: these bands and they all have fucking weird, fantastic names.
Speaker 1: Some of them are Black Love, Red Oath, Fear Not Death,
Speaker 1: Bloody Bones, Dirty Guys, Forest and Field Sleepers, Tortoises, Brandy Frush,
Speaker 1: Black Flag, Forest Pirates, or the Northern Lights. Well. I
Speaker 1: love that it's like the Legends of the Hidden Temple,
Speaker 1: like the team names. Yeah, it's like, well, I'll get
Speaker 1: to why it sounds like fantasy in a second. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about it. Um Okay.
Speaker 1: They also they all had their own distinct styles of dress,
Speaker 1: which um and they basically the basic idea was take
Speaker 1: some idea from fantasy literature and just fucking run with it.
Speaker 1: Just basically like, try to live like you're in a
Speaker 1: fantasy novel um, they're like, what's the what's the cult? Uh,
Speaker 1: what's the thing. When you're role playing, it's like LARPing. LARPing,
Speaker 1: it's like laping. It's like laping. Yeah, but but for
Speaker 1: really very creative and yeah. And so they and unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the Vondervogel movement, which
Speaker 1: was fairly middle class, almost all of these are working
Speaker 1: class kids. And basically they're like, well, a fantasy life
Speaker 1: that sounds better than starving, right, And so some of
Speaker 1: them would dress up as like American frontiersman. Others would
Speaker 1: dress up like pirates, somewhere in stereotypical German garb and
Speaker 1: like leader hosen and ship. Others were like sader knights um.
Speaker 1: Some were caricatures of indigenous Americans. All of them wore
Speaker 1: at a wise flowers, the single symbol that like united
Speaker 1: all of them and gave them the eventual name the
Speaker 1: Oedowise Pirates, and they were into tattoos, including on their genitals.
Speaker 1: Girls and boys both wore earrings and when the various gangs,
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite details. I ran Chris,
Speaker 1: one of various gangs would meet up together, though instead
Speaker 1: of all wearing their like different colors from their different clicks.
Speaker 1: They all wore like top hats and tailcoats and like
Speaker 1: the finest, like fancy clothes that I'm sure they stole.
Speaker 1: And I want to look up when wise flower looks
Speaker 1: like because I want I want to visualize their merch.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh that's a really it's like a starfish.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, huh yeah, they're like for anyone's listening there,
Speaker 1: they're pretty white flowers with like yellow I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about biology botany. I definitely never seen one before.
Speaker 1: It's very unique looking, but okay, cool. I have a
Speaker 1: visual um the most influential fantasy author for them, which
Speaker 1: is it's kind of funny. Is this guy named Carl May.
Speaker 1: Who is this nineteenth century adventure novel author who's you
Speaker 1: know I'm going with this, no, no, oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is Hitler's favorite author, favorite author. May yea did not
Speaker 1: know that there's a hole behind the Bastard's episode about
Speaker 1: about Hitler and about how he loves uh Carl May. Wow,
Speaker 1: old friend, I don'd how Carl felt. Oh man, this
Speaker 1: is like, I mean, you know, Robert describes Carl May
Speaker 1: as the J. K. Rowling of their day. Oh interesting,
Speaker 1: That's all I need to know. That's all I need
Speaker 1: to know. But I want to know because I think
Speaker 1: of like I'm in a metal band that takes a
Speaker 1: lot of inspiration from Tolkien, and so are a lot
Speaker 1: of Nazi metal bands, right, and so I think of
Speaker 1: it like that, you know, But I haven't read any
Speaker 1: Carl May um. But anyway, so these Carl may LARPers
Speaker 1: who like rob people into sex work. Hey, a few
Speaker 1: years ago a modern queer sex worker focused radical publishing
Speaker 1: project called Underbelly translated some of their songs from German.
Speaker 1: And so I'm not gonna sing it unfortunately, I'm sorry everyone,
Speaker 1: um dar, but my my favorite is just making fun
Speaker 1: of the Hitler youth for being too masculine and NORMI
Speaker 1: and it's called short hair, big ears, Such short hair,
Speaker 1: such big ears. That means the Hitler youth must be here,
Speaker 1: grow long hair, tango nights. There's no Hitler youth in sight.
Speaker 1: Oh ho oh ho. And one hears the words on
Speaker 1: every street. There's no Hitler youth. I'd like to meet
Speaker 1: o ho o ho. And they're fucking poets. Come on,
Speaker 1: that's amazing, amazing, um. And most of them are like
Speaker 1: fourteen eighteen. I'll get into that more. Uh, but that's
Speaker 1: the age where you kind of feel like invincible, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the damn I would have been all over that. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: They made their living as delivery drivers in various unskilled positions,
Speaker 1: petty crime, non petty crime, sex work, especially at various
Speaker 1: gay bars throughout the city. And honestly, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I love them so much as they just sound
Speaker 1: like my friends. That's just like a description of what
Speaker 1: my friends do. Um, and especially when we were younger. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they would pull all their money and then
Speaker 1: use it to pay off all their criminal finds that
Speaker 1: they incur or to support their arrested friends, and they
Speaker 1: go to juvenile detention and jail and ship constantly, and
Speaker 1: they break out of juvenile detention constantly, Like the study.
Speaker 1: The study I read of fifty wild fry who had
Speaker 1: been held in detention, almost all of them had broken
Speaker 1: out at least once, and six of them had broken
Speaker 1: out of detention centers more than twenty times individuals. That
Speaker 1: is incredible. Well yeah, yeah, I know. And the more
Speaker 1: they faced repression, the more they just resent mainstream society.
Speaker 1: This is even before the Rise of the nazis a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff. They just resent mainstream society and
Speaker 1: they retreat further and further into their fantasy worlds. Um
Speaker 1: in the city column where the movement is strongest. They
Speaker 1: coordinated all their gangs, which they called guilds into of course,
Speaker 1: they're called guilds, yeah, of course, right, yeah, And they
Speaker 1: coordinate them into rings, which are coalitions of each guild
Speaker 1: of guilds by district. And then each guild had a
Speaker 1: had a leader called a gang bull, and the bulls
Speaker 1: of each guild would together elect the ring bull. And
Speaker 1: to be a bull, you had to prove that you're strong, brave,
Speaker 1: good at crime and down to fun down to fun,
Speaker 1: like good at criming down to fun. Yes, all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird ways. Um. And at least one gang, the
Speaker 1: Eagles of the Mountains, everyone in it was a bull
Speaker 1: because they were like no leaders, I guess, um. And
Speaker 1: each bowl had a queen, which I think might have
Speaker 1: been of either sex, but I'm not entirely sure. All
Speaker 1: male gangs had a beloved who is expected to be
Speaker 1: sexually available to everyone in the gang. Um. Since some
Speaker 1: gangs didn't let girls in, girls formed their own all
Speaker 1: girl gangs. And then some boys wanted to join the
Speaker 1: all girl gangs, and so the girls let them in.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate that because that would have been me.
Speaker 1: I would have been the boy being like can I
Speaker 1: join the girl gang? Though? Yeah, I mean girls are
Speaker 1: nicer than yeah, yeah man. But I also was thinking,
Speaker 1: like just guilds and all these little factions and stuff.
Speaker 1: This is like I r L World of warcraft, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, This is just like factions and
Speaker 1: battle and like whatever, like wow, that's art is life
Speaker 1: and life are I suspect these kids weren't bored very often,
Speaker 1: you know, um and okay, So each new member, when
Speaker 1: they would join, was initiated through bizarre and ceremonial baptisms,
Speaker 1: which were elaborate rituals of violence and sex. Uh. They
Speaker 1: would start off with fist fights and knife fights and
Speaker 1: then turn into public sexuality like fucking everyone in the gang,
Speaker 1: or masturbating in front of everyone, or getting off during
Speaker 1: sex fast enough, like literally someone sending a stopwatch and
Speaker 1: you've like get off fast enough. So it's like hazing,
Speaker 1: but like for badass yeah yeah totally. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: way more like you're cool enough to be cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for me to imagine the frat where
Speaker 1: the haziness. Now you've got to funk all of us. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know whatever, also a mixed gender frat um
Speaker 1: and they would all descend into drunken orgies every time
Speaker 1: someone knew was baptized. And there's actually there's I should
Speaker 1: have saved them in a file to make them easily available,
Speaker 1: but there's actually photos of some of these um. Some
Speaker 1: of the like weird likeness, like people dressed like pirates
Speaker 1: with knives and all kinds of weird ship and they
Speaker 1: would they lived in the forests and in squats in
Speaker 1: the cities. They would like each each crew would have
Speaker 1: it each each guild would have its own squad basically
Speaker 1: um addicts or sellers or on unused storage rooms and
Speaker 1: they would put a single bed in the middle and
Speaker 1: they called it the fucking sofa and that was like
Speaker 1: the only sleeping space. I mean, I'm sure they slept
Speaker 1: on the floor, but and they would just like I
Speaker 1: would not if I wasn't on this podcast, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think this was true. No, I know, and like and
Speaker 1: so so I'll say that my main source of this
Speaker 1: is Daniel Garin's account of talking to of the more
Speaker 1: like crime sex stuff is talking to a sociologist a
Speaker 1: social workers sorry at the time, who did a study
Speaker 1: on these people, and that study is replicated in a book,
Speaker 1: The Brown Plague. Um. But yeah, like because a lot
Speaker 1: of the later stuff that we hear about otherwise, pirates
Speaker 1: just doesn't talk about their drunken orgies at all, um,
Speaker 1: But stuff gets raised all the time, right, like as
Speaker 1: we've learned from this podcast and just life. Yeah, totally okay.
Speaker 1: So they would like, like one account I was reading,
Speaker 1: they like they would steal and sell cars, and then
Speaker 1: they would like in their stolen car, they would like
Speaker 1: drive around and like I don't remember exactly, was like
Speaker 1: the guy who steals the car, he's like known his
Speaker 1: like a car guy that's like his name or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And then they like go around and
Speaker 1: rip off payphones. I didn't even know they had payphones
Speaker 1: back then, but they would like go and like rip
Speaker 1: off payphones and then try and get all the money
Speaker 1: out that they couldn't throw them in the river or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And they would fence all their stolen goods through bartenders
Speaker 1: in exchange for alcohol and this gets and this leads
Speaker 1: a lot of them. A lot of them end up
Speaker 1: like in debt to these bartenders, and then like when
Speaker 1: they age out of the wild fry, they just enter
Speaker 1: like a more mainstream life of crime, for better or worse.
Speaker 1: I don't even consider that they would age out. Actually,
Speaker 1: now that you say that out loud, I know, you
Speaker 1: can't stay a wild fry if you're not a small fry.
Speaker 1: You have to be fire self committing crime all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. I don't know, yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And it's like because one of the things that this
Speaker 1: reminds me so much of when I was like a
Speaker 1: teenage squatter. Um, but I did most of that one
Speaker 1: was like nineteen and twenty, and so I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit like, oh, I would have been too old to
Speaker 1: be you know. Yeah, And that's funked up. That's not fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like Harry Peter Panty lost boys about them, you
Speaker 1: know what. I'm totally yeah, it is just Peter Pan's army. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the Nazis come to power and they refused to disband,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of cities they're powerful enough that
Speaker 1: they completely just challenge the hedgemony of the Hitler youth.
Speaker 1: In some cities they outnumber the Hitler youth UM. And
Speaker 1: one of the slogans that they had at the time
Speaker 1: was eternal war against the Hitler Youth. And yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And so they did resistance in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: right like um, just by existing. They continuing to like
Speaker 1: hike and camp and wander their resisting Nazi era um
Speaker 1: travel restrictions. But they they weren't hent with only doing that,
Speaker 1: and so it wasn't long before they go from like
Speaker 1: street fights with the Nazi the Hitler youth to distributing propaganda,
Speaker 1: like when the Allies would drop leaflets on the city,
Speaker 1: the wild Fry would run around and like stick the
Speaker 1: leaflets through people's doors and ship um they help people
Speaker 1: desert from the Nazi army. They would rob Nazi warehouses
Speaker 1: and uh, you know eventually started like killing Nazis who
Speaker 1: needed a good killing. Um. And actually what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like aging out. I think that I think that the
Speaker 1: war like Fox up the best I can tell the
Speaker 1: war like Fox up there, you know, sort of like
Speaker 1: their specific organizational structure, it becomes a lot looser and
Speaker 1: so some of the people that you know who get
Speaker 1: hanged and stuff for this activity are like formal edelwise
Speaker 1: pirates and shipped like that right, um, And so they're
Speaker 1: still hanging out with like sixteen year olds doing all
Speaker 1: these crimes together. Um, And a lot of them get
Speaker 1: caught and get sent to concentration camps on November, thirteen
Speaker 1: of them or thirteen people six them who are teenagers
Speaker 1: and some of them are formal otherwise pirates get executed
Speaker 1: without trial and cole and I believe for for theft,
Speaker 1: murder and planning to blow up a Gestapo headquarters. This
Speaker 1: is the like most known thing that that they were doing.
Speaker 1: Forgive me you mentioned this, But like demographically what are
Speaker 1: most of them? Are they just like mixed like ethnicity wise?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, they do so they are both Aryan and Jewish,
Speaker 1: or at least they specifically refused to disallowed Jews. I
Speaker 1: could not tell you what percent of the movement was Jewish. Um.
Speaker 1: Probably I don't know. I know that historically they allowed
Speaker 1: in Uh. That was like a thing that distinguished them
Speaker 1: from a lot of it is that they were like
Speaker 1: what funk all that? Um? It was like kind of
Speaker 1: started I would assume by like Aryan people, but that
Speaker 1: that were good, probably, but I couldn't tell you. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you about Jewish proticipation in the beginning. I
Speaker 1: was just trying to imagine them for whatever reason, when
Speaker 1: imagine something badass and doing stuff, They're not white, so
Speaker 1: I have to rerange. Yeah, totally. Yeah, we're considering like
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of Germans at this point are not
Speaker 1: like really doing their best, you know. Um, so like
Speaker 1: I see my prejudice now, I'm just gonna um, I
Speaker 1: think that's fair. Yeah yeah, and um and so so
Speaker 1: plenty of historians. So they run into this problem where
Speaker 1: they're not seen as political, uh, which in a sense
Speaker 1: it's true, right, because they were not friends of polite society,
Speaker 1: any polite society. They were criminals under the Weimar Republic.
Speaker 1: There were criminals under the Nazis, and they continued to
Speaker 1: be criminals when the Allies liberated the country. The wild
Speaker 1: fry and Soviet controlled areas were treated really harshly. In
Speaker 1: many of them were sentenced to twenty five years in prison. Um.
Speaker 1: And because they're working class criminals, they were never acknowledged
Speaker 1: their anti fascist work until two thousand eleven, when and
Speaker 1: the families of the Edelwise pirates who are killed never
Speaker 1: received like reparations from the German and state on like
Speaker 1: other partisans. Um. And the last known surviving at a
Speaker 1: Wise pirate was a woman named Gertrude Cook. Uh coach,
Speaker 1: I don't know who died at the age of ninety two.
Speaker 1: Well it's a long life. Yeah, you know who else survives?
Speaker 1: The people who drink tap water and eat potatoes? The
Speaker 1: sponsors of this show you will live forever. And this
Speaker 1: is especially funny because now I've been learning about the
Speaker 1: more about potatoes because I listen to buying the bastards,
Speaker 1: which I feel terrible to admit on this show. Um,
Speaker 1: how could you? I know? And I'm learning people only
Speaker 1: what a hack podcast? I wonder who produces that show.
Speaker 1: But anyway, here's some ads from tap water, potatoes and
Speaker 1: whatever else gets mixed in there. And we are back
Speaker 1: and we are talking about pirates. Yes, when you first
Speaker 1: started with the pirates, I don't I've never heard of
Speaker 1: the otherwise pirates. But I was curious what definition of
Speaker 1: pirate you're going to use, like the actual like people
Speaker 1: that were pirates on you know what I mean? Because yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly or like just but it's just really funny that
Speaker 1: they're just like dress like pirates and they do pirty things.
Speaker 1: It's all like they're I don't know, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of funny to see it all come together totally imagination.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean they lived really similar lives to
Speaker 1: like Golden Age pirates, but they like we're doing it
Speaker 1: in costume, you know, yeah, which fucking rules honestly, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's yeah. It's like, especially at the time,
Speaker 1: it's like if the world is going to ship, just
Speaker 1: you live once, you know, like that's the I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's I like the uninhibited nature of their life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too, jesus. Yeah. And then one of the
Speaker 1: things I like about them is like it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it was like a a gay culture as in,
Speaker 1: like some of them are gay, and some of them
Speaker 1: are heterosexual, and some of them are by it was
Speaker 1: just fucking weird, Like I don't think any of them
Speaker 1: knew their sexuality. Some of them probably cared, and some
Speaker 1: of them probably didn't. And like they definitely weirdos unite,
Speaker 1: right sorry yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: just like weirdoes all unite. Right, So it's like when
Speaker 1: you're in high school, the outcast are altogether, whether they're
Speaker 1: like people of color or gay or whatever. Like that's
Speaker 1: what happened to my experience anyway. Or like when you're Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're what's the word, um, marginalized, marginalized exactly, if
Speaker 1: you're marginalized and you're fucking weird, you will unite because
Speaker 1: you want a weird community and weird. Honestly, I think
Speaker 1: it's a great thing. You should be weird being a normy, boring,
Speaker 1: you know, so stay weird. Hell yeah, totally. And then okay,
Speaker 1: so the So these aren't the only queers fighting the
Speaker 1: Nazis within German any um. Far from it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you about some more some more of them. There's
Speaker 1: a gad Beck who was a gay part Jewish Berliner
Speaker 1: who in two he borrows a Hitler youth uniform and
Speaker 1: he marches into the pre deportation camp where his lover
Speaker 1: man Fred, is being detained. So he shows up in
Speaker 1: his uniform and he goes to the commanding officer and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I need I need to borrow this
Speaker 1: guy for a minute on a construction project. And so
Speaker 1: the request is granted, and the you know, when he
Speaker 1: starts out the camp with with his lover Manfred, but
Speaker 1: then Manfred stops and he says, I can't leave my
Speaker 1: family basically, and he he goes back into the back
Speaker 1: into the camp. He dies him and his family. Um.
Speaker 1: But he basically said, you know, if I will never
Speaker 1: be free if I'm not free with my family. Um.
Speaker 1: But so then gad Beck spends the next three years
Speaker 1: helping Jews escape before he gets betrayed by a fucking
Speaker 1: a Jewish spy for the Gestapo. Um and he gets arrested.
Speaker 1: But he survives the war. So this is gonna be
Speaker 1: another one of those like who lives, Who dies? Yeah,
Speaker 1: little list of me just listening intently until the very end.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, yeah, well not of the next one.
Speaker 1: Maybe the next one we better Yeah, well then this,
Speaker 1: you know, so this guy survives the war and he
Speaker 1: spends his lover doesn't but he does. Well it's nice
Speaker 1: that like, even after his lover doesn't go with him,
Speaker 1: he's actually true, like you know what I mean, he
Speaker 1: keeps doing fighting the good fight totally. He doesn't just
Speaker 1: sunk off, which would be exactly perfectly fair. I am
Speaker 1: not judging anyone who sucks off out of a place
Speaker 1: is trying to murder them, you know, yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: he he lives to be eighty eight and he spends
Speaker 1: the last thirty five years of his life with his partner. Um.
Speaker 1: So I like when that's a good ending, Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you others yeah okay. So then there's a Count Albrecht
Speaker 1: von Bernstaff who's a gay aristocrat and he's this. He's
Speaker 1: a short balding man. He's always impeccably dressed, and he
Speaker 1: wastes mostly war years sitting around cafes hitting on waiters.
Speaker 1: Or that's what he wants people to think. I mean,
Speaker 1: he he does. He is these things. He's a short baulding,
Speaker 1: well dressed man who hits on a lot of waiters.
Speaker 1: But he's actually he's he's playing up the like foppish
Speaker 1: aristocratic gay man stereotype, um to draw attention from his
Speaker 1: actual work, which is he's running an underground railroad helping
Speaker 1: Jews and other dissidents get themselves out of Germany. Um
Speaker 1: that's genius, I know. And like that does take like
Speaker 1: front and center, you know, like put the gay out
Speaker 1: front and then let me do my secret good job. Yeah, totally. Um,
Speaker 1: this one could keep him distracted. Yeah, he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just a creepy, harmless old gay guy, you know.
Speaker 1: Like uh. And and he's so aristocratic and I kind
Speaker 1: of love him for this. He's so aristocratic that he
Speaker 1: figures like, alright, I'm doing something that is obviously illegal,
Speaker 1: being being gay, but I'm so rich that everyone puts
Speaker 1: up with it. Yeah, exactly. Power. I think it was
Speaker 1: the last episode. Maybe it was, Yeah, it was last,
Speaker 1: but like or you can you can get away with more? Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally uh and yeah, because because and money, power and money. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Like I have a lot of inside thoughts that are
Speaker 1: just I think, and they say it out loud, even
Speaker 1: if it's like not even my right timing. But I
Speaker 1: think that's the point of a podcast. Why my podcast cast,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it would be me talking to myself and
Speaker 1: that would be half as interesting. But no, money and power.
Speaker 1: That's how you hack life, unfortunately, I know. And it's
Speaker 1: like all across history, if you're poor and gay, you're fucked,
Speaker 1: And if you're rich and gay, you're just eccentric, you know, Yes,
Speaker 1: very true, like Oscar Wilde. Yeah, totally, although it only
Speaker 1: sort of works out for him different points. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: still but that was a bad example whatever, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it is. It is a good example because like he's
Speaker 1: able to exist in that way at all because of
Speaker 1: that kind of exactly Yeah, who was accepted as what
Speaker 1: he was versus Yeah. Anyway, Um, so the so the
Speaker 1: so Count Albrecht he he coordinates with gay resistance groups
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands And to quote an anonymously written article
Speaker 1: that's coming from an upcoming issue of a magazine called
Speaker 1: Batten that the author let me read before, Count Albrecht
Speaker 1: had warned his contacts in Holland about the Nazi invasion
Speaker 1: before it began, so they could prepare themselves. In one instance,
Speaker 1: members of a gay society took measures ahead of the
Speaker 1: German invasion. In preparation for the catastrophe. The editor of
Speaker 1: their paper, Levin Strict, burned the organization's mailing list. Another comrade,
Speaker 1: Aren't Vin saut Hoorst, committed the entire list to memory
Speaker 1: so that they could find one another afterwards. And I
Speaker 1: really like that because I like because when I first
Speaker 1: started doing this, like everyone's like keeping these records and
Speaker 1: it keeps getting them all in trouble, right, and so
Speaker 1: I'm like, what do you what do you fucking do
Speaker 1: and burn your fucking records? Right, But then the guy
Speaker 1: who memorizes it all makes reminds me that I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it was so hard for them to find each other
Speaker 1: in the first place. That like losing that is losing
Speaker 1: something really important, you know. Yeah, memorizing in that's what.
Speaker 1: That's a great solution if you're able to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, totally mohammed of the profit of mom. He
Speaker 1: memorizes the Koran you know how to read it rite,
Speaker 1: so it works. Look at him now he's done. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of him, you know. Praise. Yeah. So eventually
Speaker 1: Count Albrett gets gets found out, and he gets arrested,
Speaker 1: and he gets into a series of concentration camps and
Speaker 1: he gets really horrendously tortured. Um. But his his fellow inmates,
Speaker 1: they remember him based on how he kept everyone's spirits up.
Speaker 1: Like he would he'd be sitting around in the concentration
Speaker 1: camp and he'd be like, we're all going to have
Speaker 1: a most fabulous party at my house when this is
Speaker 1: all done. You are all invited. Everyone's coming over, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, break out all the finest stuff, best
Speaker 1: party ever and um, and he he didn't survive the camps.
Speaker 1: He died in the camps. Um, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people, at least Jews and gays and gay
Speaker 1: Jews and at least two different countries survived the war
Speaker 1: because of his efforts and him disguising himself himself as
Speaker 1: a fop, you know, and playing into the like being like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: homosexuals are cowards, we would never do anything bad, you know,
Speaker 1: use the stereotype to your benefit, just like you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's or like that benefit but like
Speaker 1: your advantage. Yeah uh yeah, Well what a guy. I know,
Speaker 1: I like him. Um okay. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that it's kind of dark that I ran across in
Speaker 1: a lot of this research, a lot of the gay
Speaker 1: men who survived the concentration camps get immediately re arrested
Speaker 1: because they're gay, because you're not allowed to be gay,
Speaker 1: whether it's Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. While East Germany
Speaker 1: at least the Soviet Union had more complicated Oh yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I think Hitler had re I know that, like Lenin
Speaker 1: made homosexuality legal, and then Stalin was like j K
Speaker 1: all you. Um. But um, anyway, one guy, for example,
Speaker 1: that I was reading about, I don't have his name
Speaker 1: in front of me. Um. He wasn't as much of a
Speaker 1: a resistance fighter, although just existing his resistance. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to like knock him. Um. He retold his experience
Speaker 1: where he was taken back literally in front of the
Speaker 1: same judge that had sentenced him to a concentration camp previously,
Speaker 1: because they didn't actually get rid of the fucking Nazis,
Speaker 1: they just like cut off the head of it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so he gets sent back to the same judge he's
Speaker 1: like you again and then sentences him right back to prison. Um.
Speaker 1: That makes me so mad. People empower stay in power ultimately. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to end with with one last short story
Speaker 1: about a queer poet named Robert desns and he was Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was heavily involved in the French surrealist scene. Um,
Speaker 1: and he joins the resistance of Germany. Once you know,
Speaker 1: francis under occupation and like our Dutch heroes from last
Speaker 1: episode or last Monday whatever I know how to say,
Speaker 1: is this a new episode? Is this just the different
Speaker 1: half of the same episode. I don't understand the taxonomy
Speaker 1: of my own job. It's a two part Okay. In
Speaker 1: the last part of this two part episode, um perfect, thanks, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm good at my job. So uh. He works as
Speaker 1: a counterfeiter and he makes fake I d s. And
Speaker 1: he also does a ton of other stuff. He actually
Speaker 1: works for a collaborationist newspaper as a spy, and he
Speaker 1: passes along all the information he learns by working for
Speaker 1: a shitty pro German newspaper. He passes it along to
Speaker 1: to the Resistance. He also wrote for underground papers under
Speaker 1: a ton of different names, and he gets caught and
Speaker 1: he gets sent to a series of concentration camps. But
Speaker 1: at heart, right, this guy's a surrealist. So one day,
Speaker 1: according to Holocaust, Holocaust survivor named a debt and it's relayed.
Speaker 1: This story is relaid through a writer named Susan Griffin.
Speaker 1: So Robert's waiting in line for the fucking gas chamber
Speaker 1: and and he just jumps up and runs up to
Speaker 1: a man who's ahead of him in line, and he
Speaker 1: just gets really excited and he starts reading the man's
Speaker 1: palm and he's like, look here, look at your lifeline.
Speaker 1: You're going to live a long life, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have three children, and his absurd as them, right, because
Speaker 1: they all know what's happening, all right. I think it's
Speaker 1: his absurdism is so contagious that everyone's just like breaking
Speaker 1: out laughing, and it confuses the guards so completely that
Speaker 1: the guards sent them back to their barracks because they
Speaker 1: don't know how to handle these people who are supposed
Speaker 1: to just be like totally given up, who are like
Speaker 1: riotlessly riotously, who are laughing very hard, uncontrollably, and wow,
Speaker 1: that's so fascinating. And he he doesn't die in a
Speaker 1: gas chamber. Um. He used the phrase unexecuted in your script.
Speaker 1: Everyone gets sent back to the barracks unexecuted, as the
Speaker 1: way I wrote it. Yeah, and he technically survives the war,
Speaker 1: but he caught typhoid I believe, in the concentration camp,
Speaker 1: and he dies within a month of liberation. Um. But
Speaker 1: again that doesn't seem right. I know the thing, okay.
Speaker 1: But the reason I want to end on that note
Speaker 1: is because I think people look at some of this
Speaker 1: history wrong, at least like queer history. Um, because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: did they succeed, Like a lot of the stuff I
Speaker 1: would read being like, oh, they didn't succeed because they died,
Speaker 1: or they didn't succeed because they only blew up eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand records instead of three million records or whatever. Right, um,
Speaker 1: but they it's to me, it feels like they succeeded, right.
Speaker 1: They they chose resistance and a lot of them, most
Speaker 1: of them didn't survive the war. But they say fucking
Speaker 1: thousands of people, and I don't know they died fighting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like if they did die
Speaker 1: in a way that they shouldn't have, Like it's just
Speaker 1: a testament to like, I don't know, caring more about
Speaker 1: the world and yourself and like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know where I'm going. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: end when I started. Um, but I think it's pretty badass.
Speaker 1: I think that they like they basically they proved a
Speaker 1: fucking lot and they certainly proved like our man Willem
Speaker 1: said at the beginning that homosexual is not a fucking
Speaker 1: synonym for a week, which is what people used to
Speaker 1: treat it as um And and no one can say
Speaker 1: that they were cowards, you know, no one. Yeah, definitely not.
Speaker 1: That's the last thing would be. I was thinking though
Speaker 1: not to like yes and but yes, and it uh
Speaker 1: like the vast majority of these people that we learned
Speaker 1: about are our men, correct, So it is interesting just
Speaker 1: to think, like how many more people there were that
Speaker 1: maybe didn't get like attention or history and about them,
Speaker 1: or that were who were I mean, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a spattering of women wore in there, for sure, But
Speaker 1: it does make me wonder if again it goes back
Speaker 1: to power. As a man, you have more power, right,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's why you're able to accomplish more especially
Speaker 1: I mean back to that, and now what am I saying?
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to think about who gets written about,
Speaker 1: even like alt history, because as I'm a filmmaker, I
Speaker 1: want to say in quotes, but come on, I should
Speaker 1: like me whatever imposters ENDM one oh one, but imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome is real. And but I was reading about like
Speaker 1: writing like scripts and movies and stuff, and how we're
Speaker 1: so used to just pretending that Western story structure is
Speaker 1: like the default way to tell stories and we forget
Speaker 1: that like so many cultures have different ways of telling stories,
Speaker 1: and like it's like Bollywood films are structures, so differently
Speaker 1: than ours, and we just we assume ours is the
Speaker 1: right default way. And I think that's the same with
Speaker 1: just everything. That's all. You didn't mention that this is
Speaker 1: the westernized version of it, But it just makes me
Speaker 1: wonder what else is out there, because I know there
Speaker 1: are more amazing people out there. Maybe maybe we don't
Speaker 1: have to know about them. Just to know they existed
Speaker 1: is enough. I don't know if that made any sense. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think that that actually gets at something really important. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I kept running across with
Speaker 1: this is like I think I feel certain that there
Speaker 1: was as many you know, lesbians fighting against the Nazis
Speaker 1: right as there were gay men. And most of the
Speaker 1: people with names that are coming up with are gay men,
Speaker 1: and I think partly that's because they get written about
Speaker 1: for being gay in a way that a lot of
Speaker 1: the women aren't being written about. Um. And then like
Speaker 1: it's actually telling that the Edlwise pirates who were a
Speaker 1: mixture of boys and girls, right, Um, they that's not
Speaker 1: a story full of names. You know, there are some
Speaker 1: names we have for that, but mostly you have these
Speaker 1: like anonymous masses of like mixed group of queer kids
Speaker 1: who are like, all right, let's sunk up these Nazis
Speaker 1: and they don't get fucking remembered except kind of collectively.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know whether that's better or
Speaker 1: worse or different or whatever, but it does it. You're right,
Speaker 1: it leads to this, like you know, the which stories
Speaker 1: get told absolutely exactly. No, yeah, I think about this
Speaker 1: stuff all the time because I mean I don't know
Speaker 1: even like, yeah, the history stories or whatever, like what
Speaker 1: what we've even gotten as a civilization about like what
Speaker 1: we've learned and from our past centuries of existence, Like
Speaker 1: even that is curated, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: like it just we just live in a matrix and
Speaker 1: it's real. But um, but no, I I'm really happy
Speaker 1: to have learned all of this stuff from you today
Speaker 1: and on Monday two days ago because we're not recording
Speaker 1: at the same time. But but no, I I hope
Speaker 1: it makes other people think about this kind of stuff too,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have to be like this default way
Speaker 1: of thinking of like, oh, this is just the way
Speaker 1: things are because this is the way they are. Is
Speaker 1: it the way they are because this is how they
Speaker 1: always have been because certain people make it this way
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. So it's I don't know, just
Speaker 1: using your brain to philosophize. I think sometimes a good
Speaker 1: thing and like do some shrooms or something. Every other
Speaker 1: podcast about them like shrooms. But if you're able to
Speaker 1: it's I think it's the cure for things or just
Speaker 1: seeing the world in a different way. Can I shut up? Good? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm shutting up though. Um yeah, when I when I
Speaker 1: saw shrooms, I saw the void. It was really bad
Speaker 1: and dark for months. But okay, I stay correct, but
Speaker 1: my experience is not the I'm certainly not anti people
Speaker 1: messing around with this kind of stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: gave it multiple shots. I shouldn't have made a blanket.
Speaker 1: You're right, No, No, I mean, but people should. I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's all kinds of blankets better dangerous. You know.
Speaker 1: All I meant to say was like, expand your mind
Speaker 1: and like I like that. I'm leaving this recording being like, you, what,
Speaker 1: maybe we're not so bad? Hell yeah? Would you say
Speaker 1: that there's cool people who did cool stuff? You know?
Speaker 1: I would say that there are cool people that did
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Mentioned it, but thank you for having me
Speaker 1: letting me ramble to no end. This was really fun.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks so much for being on. Come back again,
Speaker 1: please please, I would love to come back and learn
Speaker 1: more good things about good people, cool cool things about
Speaker 1: what am I doing. I'mussing get all up, cool things
Speaker 1: about cool people who happened to be good doing good.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it again. I'm gonna stop talking. This is
Speaker 1: the end of my sentence. Now Sharene before we send
Speaker 1: you off. Is there anything you would like to plug? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm Sharene. You can follow me on the internet if
Speaker 1: you want. Twitter Shiro Hero six six six and Instagram
Speaker 1: is just Shiro Hero Um. I make films, write poetry.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of poetry books out that I
Speaker 1: self published. What's the newest one called um Archives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's basically just emo diaries I've decided to publish. It's
Speaker 1: very personal. Uh but yeah, that's just my I'm honest
Speaker 1: to a fault. And if you want to follow along, great.
Speaker 1: If you don't like me rambling, good because I'm going
Speaker 1: to stop now. Margaret plugs anything. You can also follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy, where I try
Speaker 1: to be clever because Twitter is just this awful competition.
Speaker 1: It's like an arena of people trying to um acquire
Speaker 1: enough clout to not starve by being clever and having
Speaker 1: all the right takes. And I always always but were
Speaker 1: you were you? Were you on Twitter when it was
Speaker 1: just like a place to like say your thoughts out loud.
Speaker 1: I looked at and the dumbest ship. It's like Facebook
Speaker 1: status is or like whatever where it's just like I'm hungry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to fail my test. And now it's just
Speaker 1: instead of being like a random thought catalog. It's definitely
Speaker 1: this one upping the arena of death. Yeah, speaking speaking
Speaker 1: of death, can I can I uh plug? Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: is Ghost Church that's on cool Zone Media as well.
Speaker 1: That will be will be out by the time this
Speaker 1: this episode drops, So check that out. Ghost Church by
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus, Queen future guest of this podcast, Jamie Future
Speaker 1: Guests of this podcast, Jamie Loftus. I also produce that one,
Speaker 1: so check it out. Sophie produces all podcasts I think
Speaker 1: you've already heard me say. Yeah, legally all podcasts are mine,
Speaker 1: except except for once again, the Joe Rogan Podcast actually
Speaker 1: a YouTube show. Yes legally distinct, Yes, yes, thank you,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back Monday Right, Margaret yea Next Monday,
Speaker 1: Forever until the heat death of the universe. Cool by
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool zone Media. For more podcasts on cool zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.