Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I am Robert Evans, and this is Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, the podcast where we take you through all
Speaker 1: of the strange things you didn't know about the very
Speaker 1: worst people in all of history. With me today is
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien, my once and future boss. We worked together
Speaker 1: at Cracked for like more than a decade, long time,
Speaker 1: yea very long time. Uh yeah. I am thrilled to
Speaker 1: be here, thrilled to be launching a podcast with the
Speaker 1: Robert Evans, who you know, started the personal Experience section
Speaker 1: at Cracked, wrote some of our most popular articles. And yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the things you were always good at is
Speaker 1: finding out interesting information about awful, awful people. Um yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the genesis of this might have come after
Speaker 1: the revolution in Ukraine where that quasi dictator Yunukovic got
Speaker 1: kicked out and he did this press conference afterwards where
Speaker 1: he was like shouting at how angry he was, and
Speaker 1: he tried to break a pencil to like emphasize a point,
Speaker 1: but he had a pin in his hands and it
Speaker 1: just bent. And so there's just like twenty seconds of
Speaker 1: this dictator trying to break a pin and failing. And
Speaker 1: that's the stuff I want to like the sad like
Speaker 1: Michael Scott from the Office moments in the lives of
Speaker 1: all these like nightmarish dictators who who started wars and
Speaker 1: you know, ruined hundreds of thousands or millions of lives.
Speaker 1: They're all such like weird, sad people when you really
Speaker 1: get right down to them, right. Yeah. One of our
Speaker 1: most popular articles that Cracked was you reading every single
Speaker 1: edition of the Isis Like magazine that was almost like
Speaker 1: a seventeen for Isis kids. Yeah, it's like they're people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always like these monsters and their monster's regimes are
Speaker 1: always like there's this beautiful layer of the absurd that
Speaker 1: if you can get past the nightmarish human suffering, like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to just goggle at. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: So in addition to being a really funny dude, Robert
Speaker 1: is also a really great journalist. The Personal Experience section
Speaker 1: of the Cracked site was where he would interview people
Speaker 1: with just really crazy or harrowing or interesting life experiences
Speaker 1: and then you would put together these articles that were,
Speaker 1: you know, funny but really interesting accounts that you've never
Speaker 1: heard before of, like what it's like to be on Heroin,
Speaker 1: what it's like to uh be on math a lot
Speaker 1: of drugs stuff mostly that. Yeah, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of interesting stories, things that uh truck drivers
Speaker 1: se out on the highway, which included a lot of
Speaker 1: people having sex apparently. Um but yeah, So this was
Speaker 1: one of the ideas when we decided that you were
Speaker 1: allowed to work with me again. Uh, this was I
Speaker 1: think the first idea you pitched, and uh, I got
Speaker 1: super excited right away. Yeah, I just I love talking
Speaker 1: about terrible people. You get a deeper understanding of the
Speaker 1: world when you understand these guys, monsters like Saddam Hussein
Speaker 1: and Osama bin Laden and good old fashioned Hitler, Nikolaich
Speaker 1: chest Go, like all these dictators, but they're also just
Speaker 1: like like we're gonna be talking about later in the
Speaker 1: in the series, we're gonna be talking about like Hitler's
Speaker 1: young adult fiction novels that he based his plans for
Speaker 1: World War two on, And we'll be talking about like
Speaker 1: osamban Laden's love of Hollywood movies and how he'd use
Speaker 1: it to jazz up his fighters before like going into battle.
Speaker 1: Like all these ridiculous stories that add like so much
Speaker 1: color to these people's lives and help explain like why
Speaker 1: they did the ship they did, like, but also you know,
Speaker 1: puncture the myth, like we mythologize and make these people
Speaker 1: into just these huge icons of you know, their Darth
Speaker 1: Vader type of people. And uh, actually they have bal
Speaker 1: problems as well. Talk about today. Yeah, that's what we're
Speaker 1: getting into today. Adolf Hitler, warlord, uh monster, history's greatest
Speaker 1: evil and also a ridiculous, farting hipster in his twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties. Yeah, so you're giving them a little taste
Speaker 1: of what they would get in a normal episode, just
Speaker 1: a quick, quick in and out. Yeah. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel like they know the fewer
Speaker 1: pretty well. You know, you've seen a lot of Hitler
Speaker 1: and movies and TV shows, and he's usually either this
Speaker 1: like psychopathic yeah yeah, yeah, he's either like the psychopathic
Speaker 1: powerful warlord or the broken, trembling wreck of a person
Speaker 1: in downfall. And those are both accurate to certain periods.
Speaker 1: But you never see nerdy hipster Hitler portrayed in fiction,
Speaker 1: do not. So. When Hitler was a teenager and a
Speaker 1: young adult, his best friend was a violinist named August
Speaker 1: Kuba check Um. Now, after the war kuba Check wrote
Speaker 1: a book about Hitler called The Young Hitler I Knew
Speaker 1: And It's weird because Hitler and kuba Check had a
Speaker 1: very weird relationship. In the book, kuba Check writes about
Speaker 1: a time when Hitler went with him to the funeral
Speaker 1: for kuba Checks violent teacher, which quote rather surprised me,
Speaker 1: as he did not know Professor Desaur at all. When
Speaker 1: I expressed my surprise, he said, I can't bear it
Speaker 1: that you should mix with other young people and talk
Speaker 1: to them. So that's that's the kind of friend, young
Speaker 1: little showing up at stranger's funerals. So his friend doesn't
Speaker 1: talk to anyone else. Um. So one night in nineteen five,
Speaker 1: kuba Check and Hitler are on a walk and Hitler's
Speaker 1: you know, ranting about Hitler stuff, which he apparently did
Speaker 1: from the time he was like fifteen on up. That's adorable,
Speaker 1: like just a smaller version of himself, but just always ranting.
Speaker 1: He's always been yelling about stuff. Uh. And so during
Speaker 1: this walk they see a quote slim blonde girl, and
Speaker 1: Hitler grabs his friend's arm and says, you must know
Speaker 1: I'm in love with her now. God. According to kuba
Speaker 1: Check's book, Hitler made obsessed with this girl for like
Speaker 1: four straight years. He never talked to her, he never
Speaker 1: told her how we felt. He never flirted with her,
Speaker 1: but he forced his best friend to spy on her
Speaker 1: and report back to him for years. Um, there's like
Speaker 1: all these crazy little like one time, there's this parade
Speaker 1: and she's one of the girls who's like handing out
Speaker 1: flowers at the parade, and she like throws one to
Speaker 1: Hitler just because he's in the crowd, and he's like
Speaker 1: that was a secret sign that she loves me. Like
Speaker 1: he's full on nuts um. So he never talks to
Speaker 1: this girl, not once, but he becomes convinced that she
Speaker 1: loves him too, and that you know, all these different
Speaker 1: things that his friend is reporting on her doing or
Speaker 1: like her sending him secret messages because he's nuts um.
Speaker 1: After the war, someone tracked her down and let her
Speaker 1: know that like Hitler had had a crush on her
Speaker 1: when they were kids, and she was like, I have
Speaker 1: no idea, but she did say, I once received a
Speaker 1: letter from someone who said they were to attend the
Speaker 1: Academy of Arts and that I should wait for him
Speaker 1: he could come back and marry me. I had no
Speaker 1: idea who the letter might have been from or who
Speaker 1: I should have sent it to. So that's do you
Speaker 1: think it's like the social network thing where everything he
Speaker 1: did was secretly for this woman, like maybe she'll love
Speaker 1: me now. I think that there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: that there, because she was always dating young Austrian soldiers
Speaker 1: and Hitler kind of had a chip on his shoulder
Speaker 1: about the army because they were all these like good looking,
Speaker 1: fit guys and he was like this sick, pale kid
Speaker 1: who couldn't talk to girls. Um. See, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of that going on. But as
Speaker 1: he grew up, Hitler got a little bit less awkward,
Speaker 1: not a lot less awkward, but a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in his mid twenties, when his political career was
Speaker 1: still young, he started to make some rich friends. One
Speaker 1: of them was a cultured, wealthy German named Hampstengel uh.
Speaker 1: And so this rich dude frequently would have Hitler over
Speaker 1: for dinner, but he and his wife were appalled by
Speaker 1: the man's lack of table manners uh And at one point,
Speaker 1: Hopstengle reports being horrified that Hitler was caught pouring sugar
Speaker 1: in fine wine so that he could drink it, which
Speaker 1: is like, God, it's like a Michael Scott moment, right,
Speaker 1: barbarian Right, someone hands, I'm like, here's this, you know,
Speaker 1: decade old French wine, and I'm gonna take my wine
Speaker 1: with two lumps of sugar. Yeah, wow, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Hitler's a classy guy. But as he grew older
Speaker 1: into his thirties and stuff, and his political career blew up,
Speaker 1: he started to make some actual money, mainly from like
Speaker 1: Nazi Party dues and stuff, and you know, he put
Speaker 1: a lot of that money into perfecting his look, which
Speaker 1: would not be at all out of place in an
Speaker 1: all right gathering today. In the biography Hitler by Ian
Speaker 1: Kershaw Uh, Kershawn notes that the young fearer war quote
Speaker 1: a trilby, a light colored raincoat, leather leggings, and a
Speaker 1: writing whip. Yeah that's like his leather shorts and a
Speaker 1: fedora and a whip is how this guy's walking around. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: Hitler in the nineteen twenties was never without a whip.
Speaker 1: Another description from the book notes quote in his gangster
Speaker 1: hat and trench coat over his dinner jacket, touting a
Speaker 1: pistol and carrying as usual his dog whip. He cut
Speaker 1: a bizarre figure in the salons of Munich's upper crust.
Speaker 1: Whip dog whip. Yeah yeah. Hitler impressed girls by whipping
Speaker 1: dogs with his hippopotamus hyde whip. Uh yeah. And also people.
Speaker 1: When Hitler would get into fights, you know, there were
Speaker 1: all these brawls, he would just pull out a whip
Speaker 1: and start whipping folks. I thought whips were cool when
Speaker 1: I was like six. Yeah. Yeah. Hitler didn't grow out
Speaker 1: of that, and it spent like a solid decade and
Speaker 1: never leaving the house without a hippopotamus with the whip,
Speaker 1: just beating people with a whip. Um. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: young Hitler walking around in a trill, be in a
Speaker 1: trench coat, hitting people in animals with whips. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he went by the nickname har Wolf and made all
Speaker 1: of his friends call him Mr Wolf or the Wolf. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that was another thing he kept doing his entire
Speaker 1: life because during the invasion of Russia, his secret headquarters
Speaker 1: was called the Wolf's Lair is hair Wolf, Mr Wolf Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mr wolf Man. That is a bad nickname. That's that
Speaker 1: was Hitler's nickname for himself that he made everyone call
Speaker 1: him by he signed his love letters wolf Wolf is okay,
Speaker 1: but Mr Wolf, he's just silly. Yeah. Well, the real
Speaker 1: meat that I want to get into here is the
Speaker 1: story of Hitler's terrible farts and how they impacted history.
Speaker 1: So we've set it up. Hitler's you know, walking around
Speaker 1: in a trill, be in a trench coat, wielding a whip,
Speaker 1: hitting dogs all the time. But he's also farting constantly.
Speaker 1: Because Hitler suffered through his entire life from what was
Speaker 1: then known as meteorism, which is uncontrollable flatulence. Uh. He
Speaker 1: initially adopted his vegetarian diet so that his farts would
Speaker 1: get better, but they only made his farts worse. Hitler's
Speaker 1: farts were a constant source of embarrassment and important political meetings.
Speaker 1: There's all these tales of like before he was in power,
Speaker 1: when he was still like in politics and stuff, like
Speaker 1: him meeting with all of these other German politicians and
Speaker 1: like just couldn't stop farting, and tiny and closed rooms
Speaker 1: and train cars, and it just ruins these these meetings
Speaker 1: where he's trying to like, you know, establish a consensus
Speaker 1: government or whatever. But this isn't a thing that he's
Speaker 1: overly sensitive about and you know he's worried about it. Oh,
Speaker 1: he hates it more than other people. But it's it's
Speaker 1: actually a thing where everybody else is like, Oh, there
Speaker 1: goes Hitler, the guy who ends meetings by farting too much. Well,
Speaker 1: it was usually he would do a lot of dinner
Speaker 1: meetings and he would flee the room at the end
Speaker 1: of dinner like something. They would just Sometimes he would
Speaker 1: just run out, like right afterwards and hide for the
Speaker 1: rest of the night because his arts were so bad,
Speaker 1: like they would stick his ass out the window. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty six, after he's in power, he
Speaker 1: decides he's had enough of his farts, uh, and he
Speaker 1: decides to seek professional attention. This brings him into the
Speaker 1: orbit of a guy named Theodore Morrell, who was a
Speaker 1: fifty year old doctor who primarily worked on actors. So
Speaker 1: Morrell prescribed Hitler two different pills for his terrible farts.
Speaker 1: The first pills were Mooda floor capsules, which is a
Speaker 1: medicine you can still buy to day. They're made from
Speaker 1: the poop of a World War One soldier who proved
Speaker 1: resilient to dysenterry uh. And that is actual medicine like
Speaker 1: you'll get it today for for real stomach issues, poop transplants. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing he took were Dr. Kester's anti gas pills,
Speaker 1: which were just pure strychnine. Oh right, yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: got the farts. Yeah. There's no consensus on how much
Speaker 1: of an impact taking poison every day for a decade
Speaker 1: had on on Hitler. Some people say that it was
Speaker 1: probably responsible for his tremors and his like horrible physical
Speaker 1: pain and ailments at the time. They it said he
Speaker 1: would have needed to take thirty a day of these
Speaker 1: pills for them to be toxic. But we know he
Speaker 1: was taking like six to ten per meal, like he
Speaker 1: was just eating them like candy. Um. And the doctor
Speaker 1: kept him constantly, you know, stocked up on anti fart pills. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a U. S. Intelligence report made by the
Speaker 1: precursor to the CIA during World War Two that noted
Speaker 1: all this. It's it says Hitler complained of meteorism, especially
Speaker 1: after eating black bread and cabbage, and an abnormal feeling
Speaker 1: in the epi hypogastric region. These symptoms probably were due
Speaker 1: to in neuroses, since occasional errors and diets such as
Speaker 1: the intake of lentils and pas brought only the normal
Speaker 1: amount of complaining. Furthermore, the prescriptions of unsuitable and useless
Speaker 1: drugs for these complaints brought about improvement. Epigastric cramps and
Speaker 1: vomiting were noted during These were probably the result of
Speaker 1: constant strychnine and atropine medications and not of historic origin.
Speaker 1: So the CIA thinks Hitler's farts are all in his
Speaker 1: head and it's the poison pills and causing his cramps.
Speaker 1: It's a weakness of character, as are all farts. Ye So,
Speaker 1: Hitler considered Morrell his savior for his anti farting pills,
Speaker 1: which apparently seemed to help UH and privately said he
Speaker 1: saved my life. Wonderful how he helped me. Um. So
Speaker 1: Morrell became Hitler's number one doctor. UH. This led Morrell
Speaker 1: to a great wealth and power because he was able
Speaker 1: to start manufacturing vitamin pills, first just for Hitler and
Speaker 1: then for everyone who wanted to take the same pills
Speaker 1: as Hitler UM and presumably in his long like infomercial
Speaker 1: career afterwards, as Hitler's number one doctor. Yea, so he
Speaker 1: starts giving Hitler different drugs UH. Like the fact that
Speaker 1: the farting pills work mean that Hitler trusts Morrell to
Speaker 1: do anything. So over the course of World War Two,
Speaker 1: we know that Morrell gave Hitler ninety two different medications,
Speaker 1: twenty were manufactured by firms that Morrell owned himself, and
Speaker 1: most of those had never been scientifically tested, so he
Speaker 1: was actually testing out drugs on Hitler. Hitler was his
Speaker 1: guinea pig for a lot of meta sins before anyone
Speaker 1: else would try them. He'd be like, well, let's see
Speaker 1: how it works like Hitler, and then we'll sell him
Speaker 1: to the Germans. This makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now there's a common myth that Hitler was addicted to methamphetamine.
Speaker 1: That's not quite true. He took a lot of meth
Speaker 1: but he didn't take anything all the time because Morrell
Speaker 1: kept him on a constant cycle of morphine, methamphetamine, cocaine,
Speaker 1: and a variety of other substances. Jesus um So he
Speaker 1: had morphine administered about twenty five times from forty three
Speaker 1: to forty four for stomach cramps, twenty nine different injections,
Speaker 1: and sixty three kinds of oral tablets and skin applications
Speaker 1: like he's just doing a carousel of drugs for Hitler.
Speaker 1: In his last twenty eight months alive, Hitler had twenty
Speaker 1: one injections to treat colds and seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: seven to restore his energy. Most of those are mixes
Speaker 1: of cocaine, methamphetamine, and vitamins. Um. So, yeah, Hitler is
Speaker 1: taking just a swinging carousel of random doses of drugs
Speaker 1: and vitamins for the entirety of World War too. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't question at any point because these are
Speaker 1: being prescribed by the doctor who was able to stop
Speaker 1: him from farting Jesus christ Man, yep, didn't. He also
Speaker 1: like sleep in till noon every day. Well, he stayed
Speaker 1: up really late to write, like back before the year
Speaker 1: being injected seven times with ant enemies. Yeah, before the Warriors,
Speaker 1: he would stay up until like three or four in
Speaker 1: the morning watching American movies and like make all of
Speaker 1: his colleagues watch them with him. Stalin did kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing, Like that's just a dictator thing, like
Speaker 1: forcing people to watch movies with you. But yeah, where
Speaker 1: we go, that's the sort of crazy stuff you're gonna
Speaker 1: learn about history's biggest villains. I guess on this show. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: we're gonna uncover who was wearing tril bees and who
Speaker 1: was farting uncontrollable. Now, what does a tril be Fedora?
Speaker 1: It's like the alt rightiest hat that exists. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's one thing I've learned doing this is that
Speaker 1: those eight chan Nazis are actually just kind of like
Speaker 1: returning to a pattern, and yet none of them have
Speaker 1: the balls to rocket Hitler mustache. Yeah, I'm sure they
Speaker 1: all have horrible parting problems though. Yeah, they do not
Speaker 1: look like a good smelling bunch. Uh well all right,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so check back next week. I would recommend
Speaker 1: hitting the subscribe button and you will then be able
Speaker 1: to listen to our next episode. This has been Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards. You can find us on at Bastard's pot
Speaker 1: and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, or behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: dot com on the Internet. I am Robert Evans. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening.