Part Two: Gay Resistance to Nazis

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Shereen Lani Younes about everything from queer youth gangs fighting the Hitler Youth in the street to artists who turned their talents to forgery and sabotage. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy and this week I'm talking
with Sharne Shrine. How are you doing good? Actually, I
know the first time you told me, I just said
I was like basically doing bad. But after recording the
first part. I don't know if people know that record
them back to back, but I feel much better than
I did earlier. So I feel good after hearing about

(00:24):
all these cool fucking people. Yeah. Cool. And our producer
Sophie is on the line as well. Sophie, how are you?
I'm great, drinking a cream soda Zevia, live in my
best life, you know, so speaking of aftertastes and Nazis,
and there's this I actually don't know how to do
this segway. Um, But you are listening to the part

(00:46):
two of our two part series on gay resistance to Fascism,
and so you're probably a little bit confused if you
haven't heard the episode that came out Monday, So you
should go back and listen to it. If you haven't,
you really should. It's a really good episode and people
learn about a lot of really cool people. And this
is coming from a very big cynic. So this is good.

(01:07):
It's like trying to impress the cynic is like an
interesting not even about impressing. It's like, will I still
be miserable by the end of this, you know what
I mean? Like it's like, yeah, you know what. Okay,
Well this one is going to be Oh, I don't
want to spoil it. Okay. So where we last left off,
there was like a motley crew of queers, artists and
medical students in Amsterdam who just pulled off a like
heist movie level antics to blow up a Nazi records storehouse.

(01:30):
And today we're going to bring things back to Germany.
So Germany, there's a country called Germany. Vimar Germany is
the period from nineteen nineteen, after Germany got its fucking
ass handed to it in the First World War to
nineteen thirty three, when Hitler came to power and did
the whole Hitler thing that I presume most people are
familiar with on some level. And Vimar Germany had a

(01:53):
lot going for it, right. It was a republic, for
one thing, which is a step up from dictatorships and such.
People could like vote and ship, and there was free speech,
there was free assembly, there was no state religion, some
of the gay laws weren't being enforced, although they were
still there, and the government was based out of a
city called Weimar, which is how they got the name
Bimar Germany. But Germany was completely fucked economically. World War

(02:17):
One left their economy and shambles. Hyperinflation took over. Everyone
was hungry and you know, fucked, and then they had
the fucking worldwide Depression after all of that on top
of it. I mean, I think that's the reason why
the Nazis worked, you know what I mean. They had
to like kind of get the desperate, you know what
I mean, Like they had to really and like then
Hitler quotes like, oh he can save us kind of thing.

(02:39):
I think they had to have the previous shitty part
in order to even part, if that makes sense totally,
because people are so fucked they're like, I'll try anything
exactly yeah. And then so so most of the stuff
I had been exposed to about by our Germany, which
focus on really cool stuff because by our Germany was

(02:59):
very in seeing artistic time period, and mostly I've heard
about the cabaret scene, all the sort of decadent queer
artists who try to live fancy, free lives while they're
basically starving. And all that is like true and interesting
and beautiful, but it's only one part of Germany's culture
at the time, and actually only one part of it's
it's queerness and it's queer culture. You've also got this

(03:19):
really messy assortment of different organizations that have different names
but get called like the vonder Vogel or the German
youth movement or the hiking clubs, and these go back decades.
They go back to the eighteen nineties and there's this
movement that it kind of looks like boy Scouts. Boy
Scouts was like a funk off, huge thing that involved
millions of boys and girls both through various levels of

(03:40):
formal and informal organization, with weird paganism, vegetarianism, nudism, and
queerness running out through the entire thing. So not actually
very much like boy Scouts. I would like to be
that kind of boy Scout. Okay, well then you're gonna
love our characters today. Um So, millions of German kids
formed these hiking clubs and uh spent their days like

(04:01):
camping and getting in touch with nature. It was an
anti modernist movement a lot of a lot of parts
of it, and whenever people are like, oh, it was this,
it's like it's all kinds of different things all happening
at the same time. Um, But it was kind of
a lot of it was about leaving civilization behind. A
lot of it was German nationalist, although it didn't have
necessarily an anti Semitic character as far as I can tell, um,

(04:22):
at least on any systemic level. Some of it was
really middle class and some of it was really working class,
and a lot of it was just fucking outright criminal
in kind of the best and worst ways. Um. There's
a French gay anarchist named Daniel Gurin who wrote about
the movement in the nineteen thirties because he would go
visit nineteen thirties Germany because it was a fucking awesome

(04:44):
place to be a gay anarchist, and but he found it.
He found this movement increasingly politically polarized between the communists
and the fascists. And as the whole worldwide depression is hitting,
more and more youth are finding themselves homeless. They choose
itinerant lifestyles over staying still in one place. So the
movement keeps growing, and it keeps polarizing and doing all
kinds of weird ship. In nineteen thirty three, huge chunks

(05:07):
of has come to an abrupt end when Hitler bands
all alternative youth organizations that aren't the Hitler Youth. A
lot of the more mainstreams of these groups just basically
become the Hitler Youth, and in nine he makes participation
in the Hitler Youth compulsory um. And but the youth
movement went a lot of different directions. Not all of
it went into Hitler Youth, as we'll get into, but

(05:28):
some of it did. And so we're going to talk
about gay Nazis now, these are not the cool people
who did cool stuff. Well balance it out, I suppose.
But also I'm fascinated where where this will go. My
own experience with boy Scouts. Um, I was a boy Scout,
and uh, my best friend and who was a boy Scout,
came out as trans like years before I did. Um,

(05:51):
And so I love that you know me and my
best friend because people are like, oh, they're they're letting
girls into boy Scouts now, and then like me and
a lot of other trans women are like, oh no,
they always did but so gay Nazis. Uh, that's that's
the thing. Yeah. So before Hitler took over completely and

(06:11):
the National Socialists were just like one of the parties
in Germany. They were actually the only political party in
Weimar Germany with unknown high ranking gay member. Ernst Rom
was the leader of Hitler's essay, which are usually called
the brown Shirts, which are basically the parties like street
thugs who operate outside the law, like you know when
Trump told his brown Shirts proud Boys to stand by

(06:33):
and stand back, similar sort of organization. And and ernst
Rom was really into this hyper masculinity thing. He's so
anti you know, if you're so anti feminine that you
don't fuck women, right, Um. And he's really into authority
and discipline and obedience as are good manly things, unlike democracy, socialism, anarchism,

(06:53):
fucking girls, all that weird stocked Yeah. And this is
not to say that the Nazis were pro gay. They
were just kind of pro hypocrisy, I think. Um, even
before they came to the power, they were the most
adamantly anti gay party in politics. But even the Social Democrats,
who were the ones who weren't enforcing paragraph on seventy
five and were part of trying to fight to get

(07:15):
paragraph on SV repealed. When um they used they used
homophobic language to try and talk shot on the Nazis.
Basically they were like, oh, Rom's gay, and so they
like published his private letters in order to basically be like,
if you support the Nazis, you support uh pedophilia and gayness,
and the Nazis will corrupt our children, and so no

(07:39):
one's fucking good at this point. No no political party
is looking good. The Nazis are clearly looking the worst.
But it's just kind of interesting to me. And this
causes us split in the gay rights scene. Right, some
groups like the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which is, as Magnus
Hirsh felt, the guy I was talking about a lot
last episode, he warns the gay Zis. He's like, you know,

(08:01):
the fucking Nazis are going to come after you too, right.
But then the other big organization at the time, this
is really not something to be proud of. Uh, They're like,
what nah, They're not coming after all the gay people,
just those Jewish gay people. Um yeah, but but spoiler alert,
the Nazis are coming after all. The case m hmm.

(08:24):
So On June four, on what gets called the Night
of Long Knives, Hitler has Rom and a whole bunch
of the other brown Shirt leaders just murdered, and in public,
Hitler was like, oh, I definitely did this because Rom
was going to betray me. But it was really transparently.
Hitler was tired of being made fun of for putting
up with gay people in the ranks. His pal Mussolini

(08:46):
like to make fun of him, and they were like,
ah ha, you harboring gays, you know whatever, you know
his pal Musolini, Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's like the
very first no homo with consequences or something. I don't yeah, totally.
And then it what's kind of interesting is that Hitler
probably didn't personally have a problem with Rome's homosexuality. He
just he was a fucking people pleaser and he wanted
people to like him. Um, which has definitely never happened again.

(09:09):
There's never been a populist right wing leader any time
in history, certainly not in the past ten years in
the United States who has clearly not had any problem
personally with gay people. And then no, yeah, yeah, but
greatest country in the world, we're the ones who beat
these Nazis. Okay, so we're the heroes of this story. Yeah,

(09:29):
and then fire the conductor for being gay. Um. So
in private, Hitler would either defend or attack romes have homosexuality,
depending on the audience, right, Like, sometimes he was like, oh,
that was in his misspent youth and he's learned better now.
And other times he's like a US, worldly men, we
understand that such thing has happened, and are fine. That's
my Hitler accent. Um, I don't do accents. You should. Yeah.

(09:52):
I also don't do accents, but I think I when
I tried, I've learned my lessons. So yeah, I'm reasonably
so that if someone put a gun to my head
and said that I had to speak like a British
person for two minutes or I would die. I would
die because I genuinely believe that with a gun to
my head, I would not be able to talk with
a British accent. No, no, no, no no. I did

(10:15):
a live reading of Twilight Ones with backdel Cast, another
amazing podcast, and I had to voice one of the
characters who was French and for and like in the thing,
he has an accent, and so I tried before we recorded,
I was like, can I do this? And I tried
to have a French accent and I sounded like Jamaican

(10:35):
every time it was so I was that was like cemented,
like sharene. Accents are not for you. This is not so.
Accents are hard. So I understand and I don't want
to do that to the audience. Okay. So another one
of the people that another one of the gay brown
Shirts that Hitler has killed, was a guy named Edmund
Hines who was actually Hitler's cell mate after the failed

(10:58):
cove that Hall pusch Um and he was one of
the fucking original Nazis, Like literally, he was number seventy
eight in the enlisting in the National Socialists and he
was gay as hell um And when they came for
him during the Night of Long Knives, he was in
bed with a lover. By one Hitler starts suggesting the
death penalty for gay kids and the Hitler youth, and

(11:20):
then they passed the death penalty for gay s S members.
But what they do instead, I mean a lot of
them they kill, right, some of those sentences get commuted
to go be cannon fodder in the war against Russia,
which I think they actually did to a lot of um. Yeah,
a lot of people end up dying that way, get
taken out of prison and sent to go die on

(11:40):
the Eastern Front um or they're sent to serve in.
It's like all criminal Durley Vanger Brigade of the s S,
which is basically a brigade within the SS that's like
all of the worst people and the criminals. And I
put worse people in quotes, but like you know where
they like go give criminals a chance to go. I
I bring all this stuff up. Okay, do you know

(12:02):
that meme the I never thought leopards would eat my face,
said the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces. Party. No,
I don't know this is I just said, okay, okay, okay, okay, no, no, no,
I mean, it's just basically this It's like someone's like,
but I never thought the leopards would eat my face,
the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party.
And that's how I feel about the gay Nazis. Yeah. Yeah.

(12:26):
And the reasons to bring this up in this like
otherwise conversation about good gay people is that I feel like, okay,
when we talk about the bad people in history who
are gay. We're usually playing into this trope that like
all of them were closeted, right, but these gay's Nazis weren't.
They were not closeted. They were open about their interests.
It was part of their like storied tradition of right
wing homosexuality that ran concurrently with left wing in a

(12:49):
political homosexuality. And it's just like internalized homophobia or like
hatred that I tried to wrap my head around stuff
like that, like what they tell themselves to legitimize their
existence or like what they're doing. So it's like, I
don't know, just sucking racists, you know, and they're like,
I like the Racist Party and then they're like what

(13:11):
the Racist Party hates you for being gay? And you're like, well,
I don't care. I'm so racist that that's you know.
It's like we see that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, And
like the modern far right in the United States there
are like, you know, gay members of it, and you're
just like, what are you fucking doing? They hate you
and will laugh at you and show you at the
first opportunity, and they're like, no, they like me. You know,

(13:32):
you know, I just thought of it's probably power that
changes it, you know what I mean, Like if you
feel like you're a little bit not untouchable but like protected,
you feel more able to be a hypocrite. I feel like, right, yeah, no,
that that actually makes sense, honestly, Like almost everything comes
down to power at the end. M wompomp Okay, ready okay.

(13:58):
And so the other is gonna bring all this up
is that, um, I think that we we forget that
a lot of this ship has like really high stakes,
the way that we talked about sex and sexuality and gender.
And I would argue that we should be on the
lookout for when some segment of oh, I don't know,
feminism or gay politics starts making common cause with the
right wing, which obviously would never happen now, No feminists

(14:20):
would just start making common cause with the right wing
at all. No, no, no white feminism here. Yeah exactly.
Oh god, I just thought I was I wanted to
make like a really subtle Harry Potter reference, but I
went fast enough, and so I just went with that
the most obviously. But you should know a listener that

(14:41):
I was trying to uh talk about Jay, Yeah, me too,
That's what I was thinking of. To Yeah. Okay, so
so you've got the gay Nazis. They don't last very long,
fuck them whatever. Um, But now I want to talk
about gay pirates. Hell yeah, let's do Yeah. I want
to talk about the edl wise pirates, who are so

(15:03):
much fucking cooler, and they're on the opposite side of
all this. So all the youth from the what I
was saying, when they're all itinerant doing all this crazy
ship they're running around in these like it gets a
million names buns or bands or clubs or clicks or whatever,
and they're coming out of the vonder Vogel and all
these related movements and the whitewashed version of history that
I had run across primarily before doing this research honestly

(15:26):
has them like wandering around the pristine German countryside, like
singing camp songs and thinking about like marrying their heterosexual
sweethearts monogamously and popping up pure arian babies and all
that ship. Right, But like this could not be further
from the truth. Uh, this, this growing culture of vagabond
is um and has a desire for change because they're

(15:46):
all fucking broken, hungry, and mainstream societies completely failed them.
And more and more of them. We're living in camps
and again totally unfamiliar to people today's you know whatever. Um,
A lot of the clubs are gangs. They were the
wild gangs, and they were in a war against civilization
and everything boring. Every winter they would like disband in
every easter, they would celebrate their click or their gang's rebirth.

(16:10):
Their their camp songs where parodies of the Hitler youth songs.
They told dirty jokes, They got into fist fights with
the Hitler youth. Um, basically with all the men off
to war, the Hitler youth were acting like the police
and a lot of German cities and so they and
they lived criminal lives and they fucked and oh my god,
did they fuck. And it was anything but straight, anything

(16:32):
but monogamous. Like it's it's like queer enough to like
maybe even get me a little bit like, oh my
may that's not the right way to go about these things,
you know. Um, So these are not the assimilationist gays.
These are street fighting, forest fucking, sex working, Nazi robbing
criminal queers. Yeah. It's like the anarchy of gay Yeah.
And and they're called the They have a lot of

(16:52):
different names, and but the one I'm going to use
now is the wild Fry, which means the wild free,
which was one of their mottoes. And they would have
like things emblazoned while I'll get to that, um. And
they they live up to the name. History mostly remembers
like a subsect of them called the Edelwise Pirates. And
and I've got yeah it's a flower. Oh interesting, Okay,

(17:17):
I think I know, right. Yeah, So so I've got
information kind of about two generations of the Wild Fry,
and one chunk comes from about and one chunk comes
from the early forties. And so I'm kind of doing
my best to give an honest like the way that
these two connect. But there isn't a lot of information
about that because all of the ship is so heterowashed um.

(17:42):
But so it's an important I'm gonna do an imperfect job,
but I'm gonna do the best I can and quote
original sources and all that ship. And because people when
they mentioned Edlwise Pirates, they present the sort of like
generic working class youth subculture who ruled and we're bravest
fuck and they like fought Nazis. There's a movie about
them called I think it's called Edowise pirates um but

(18:02):
has taken out Yeah, totally, and it doesn't talk about
their origins and it definitely doesn't talking about gay fucking
and um. So so Daniel Garon, who's the French anarchists
who wants to go hang out with gay folks in Germany.
So does. He describes a run in with them in
his book called the Brown Plague, which is a doesn't
translate well now, but means that it's critical of the

(18:23):
rising tide of fascism. Okay, one Sunday on the outskirts
of Berlin, we met by chance a strange troop on
the road. Needless to say, neither they're short pants, their
bare calves which disappeared under their long wolf vests, the
bulky and sundry loads swain on their backs, nor their
enormous hiking boots distinguished them from ordinary vagabonds. But they
were very much toughs. They had the depraved and troubled

(18:46):
faces of hoodlums, and the most bizarre coverings on their heads,
black or gray chaplinesque bowlers, old women's hats with the
brims turned up in amazon fashion, adorned with ostrich plumes
and metals, proletarian navigator caps created with enormous edel wise
above the visor, handkerchiefs or scarves, and streaming colors tied
any which way around the neck, bare chests bursting out

(19:10):
of open skin, vests with broad stripes, arms scored with
fantastic or lewd tattoos, ears hung with pendants or enormous rings,
leather shorts surmounted by immense triangular belts, alsho of leather,
both daubed with all the colors of the rainbow, esoteric numbers,
human profiles, and inscriptions such as wild fry or rude

(19:34):
ber bandits around their wrists. They wore enormous leather bracelets.
In short, they were a bizarre mixture of virility and feminacy. Wow,
that's a sentence, that is That is amazing, I know.
And uh, and you two can buy all of their
costumes from our sponsor, the Pirates Store UM, which is

(19:54):
a nonprofit again because we're going full pure wholesome with
the ads. Here is a nonprofit store. Uh yeah, what
you said in blazon. The first thing I was like
they have merch you know, like you know, this is
that's one way to spread the word. Yeah, totally, Um
and we too. I actually don't think we have merged
at the time of this recording, but we we do

(20:15):
have advertisers, and some of them are hopefully the Pirates Store. Yes,
we're manifesting. Yeah, here's some ads and we're back. So
the Wild Fry they're there. They're self organized, right, they
don't have this like overarching structure, but they do sometimes
form into these larger coalitions, sometimes not. There's thousands of

(20:39):
these bands and they all have fucking weird, fantastic names.
Some of them are Black Love, Red Oath, Fear Not Death,
Bloody Bones, Dirty Guys, Forest and Field Sleepers, Tortoises, Brandy Frush,
Black Flag, Forest Pirates, or the Northern Lights. Well. I

(21:00):
love that it's like the Legends of the Hidden Temple,
like the team names. Yeah, it's like, well, I'll get
to why it sounds like fantasy in a second. It's
one of the things I love about it. Um Okay.
They also they all had their own distinct styles of dress,
which um and they basically the basic idea was take

(21:20):
some idea from fantasy literature and just fucking run with it.
Just basically like, try to live like you're in a
fantasy novel um, they're like, what's the what's the cult? Uh,
what's the thing. When you're role playing, it's like LARPing. LARPing,
it's like laping. It's like laping. Yeah, but but for
really very creative and yeah. And so they and unlike

(21:41):
a lot of the rest of the Vondervogel movement, which
was fairly middle class, almost all of these are working
class kids. And basically they're like, well, a fantasy life
that sounds better than starving, right, And so some of
them would dress up as like American frontiersman. Others would
dress up like pirates, somewhere in stereotypical German garb and
like leader hosen and ship. Others were like sader knights um.

(22:02):
Some were caricatures of indigenous Americans. All of them wore
at a wise flowers, the single symbol that like united
all of them and gave them the eventual name the
Oedowise Pirates, and they were into tattoos, including on their genitals.
Girls and boys both wore earrings and when the various gangs,
this is one of my favorite details. I ran Chris,

(22:22):
one of various gangs would meet up together, though instead
of all wearing their like different colors from their different clicks.
They all wore like top hats and tailcoats and like
the finest, like fancy clothes that I'm sure they stole.
And I want to look up when wise flower looks
like because I want I want to visualize their merch.

(22:46):
Oh wow, oh that's a really it's like a starfish.
Oh yeah, huh yeah, they're like for anyone's listening there,
they're pretty white flowers with like yellow I don't know
anything about biology botany. I definitely never seen one before.
It's very unique looking, but okay, cool. I have a
visual um the most influential fantasy author for them, which

(23:08):
is it's kind of funny. Is this guy named Carl May.
Who is this nineteenth century adventure novel author who's you
know I'm going with this, no, no, oh yeah, this
is Hitler's favorite author, favorite author. May yea did not
know that there's a hole behind the Bastard's episode about

(23:30):
about Hitler and about how he loves uh Carl May. Wow,
old friend, I don'd how Carl felt. Oh man, this
is like, I mean, you know, Robert describes Carl May
as the J. K. Rowling of their day. Oh interesting,
That's all I need to know. That's all I need
to know. But I want to know because I think

(23:51):
of like I'm in a metal band that takes a
lot of inspiration from Tolkien, and so are a lot
of Nazi metal bands, right, and so I think of
it like that, you know, But I haven't read any
Carl May um. But anyway, so these Carl may LARPers
who like rob people into sex work. Hey, a few

(24:15):
years ago a modern queer sex worker focused radical publishing
project called Underbelly translated some of their songs from German.
And so I'm not gonna sing it unfortunately, I'm sorry everyone,
um dar, but my my favorite is just making fun
of the Hitler youth for being too masculine and NORMI
and it's called short hair, big ears, Such short hair,

(24:37):
such big ears. That means the Hitler youth must be here,
grow long hair, tango nights. There's no Hitler youth in sight.
Oh ho oh ho. And one hears the words on
every street. There's no Hitler youth. I'd like to meet
o ho o ho. And they're fucking poets. Come on,
that's amazing, amazing, um. And most of them are like

(24:58):
fourteen eighteen. I'll get into that more. Uh, but that's
the age where you kind of feel like invincible, right, Like,
that's the damn I would have been all over that. Yeah. Um.
They made their living as delivery drivers in various unskilled positions,
petty crime, non petty crime, sex work, especially at various
gay bars throughout the city. And honestly, one of the

(25:20):
reasons I love them so much as they just sound
like my friends. That's just like a description of what
my friends do. Um, and especially when we were younger. Um.
And then they would pull all their money and then
use it to pay off all their criminal finds that
they incur or to support their arrested friends, and they
go to juvenile detention and jail and ship constantly, and
they break out of juvenile detention constantly, Like the study.

(25:43):
The study I read of fifty wild fry who had
been held in detention, almost all of them had broken
out at least once, and six of them had broken
out of detention centers more than twenty times individuals. That
is incredible. Well yeah, yeah, I know. And the more

(26:04):
they faced repression, the more they just resent mainstream society.
This is even before the Rise of the nazis a
lot of this stuff. They just resent mainstream society and
they retreat further and further into their fantasy worlds. Um
in the city column where the movement is strongest. They
coordinated all their gangs, which they called guilds into of course,
they're called guilds, yeah, of course, right, yeah, And they

(26:25):
coordinate them into rings, which are coalitions of each guild
of guilds by district. And then each guild had a
had a leader called a gang bull, and the bulls
of each guild would together elect the ring bull. And
to be a bull, you had to prove that you're strong, brave,
good at crime and down to fun down to fun,

(26:45):
like good at criming down to fun. Yes, all kinds
of weird ways. Um. And at least one gang, the
Eagles of the Mountains, everyone in it was a bull
because they were like no leaders, I guess, um. And
each bowl had a queen, which I think might have
been of either sex, but I'm not entirely sure. All

(27:05):
male gangs had a beloved who is expected to be
sexually available to everyone in the gang. Um. Since some
gangs didn't let girls in, girls formed their own all
girl gangs. And then some boys wanted to join the
all girl gangs, and so the girls let them in.
And I appreciate that because that would have been me.
I would have been the boy being like can I
join the girl gang? Though? Yeah, I mean girls are

(27:29):
nicer than yeah, yeah man. But I also was thinking,
like just guilds and all these little factions and stuff.
This is like I r L World of warcraft, you
know what I mean, This is just like factions and
battle and like whatever, like wow, that's art is life
and life are I suspect these kids weren't bored very often,

(27:53):
you know, um and okay, So each new member, when
they would join, was initiated through bizarre and ceremonial baptisms,
which were elaborate rituals of violence and sex. Uh. They
would start off with fist fights and knife fights and
then turn into public sexuality like fucking everyone in the gang,

(28:13):
or masturbating in front of everyone, or getting off during
sex fast enough, like literally someone sending a stopwatch and
you've like get off fast enough. So it's like hazing,
but like for badass yeah yeah totally. Um, it's like
way more like you're cool enough to be cool. Yeah,

(28:36):
and it's hard for me to imagine the frat where
the haziness. Now you've got to funk all of us. Um,
but you know whatever, also a mixed gender frat um
and they would all descend into drunken orgies every time
someone knew was baptized. And there's actually there's I should

(28:56):
have saved them in a file to make them easily available,
but there's actually photos of some of these um. Some
of the like weird likeness, like people dressed like pirates
with knives and all kinds of weird ship and they
would they lived in the forests and in squats in
the cities. They would like each each crew would have
it each each guild would have its own squad basically
um addicts or sellers or on unused storage rooms and

(29:17):
they would put a single bed in the middle and
they called it the fucking sofa and that was like
the only sleeping space. I mean, I'm sure they slept
on the floor, but and they would just like I
would not if I wasn't on this podcast, I wouldn't
think this was true. No, I know, and like and
so so I'll say that my main source of this
is Daniel Garin's account of talking to of the more

(29:38):
like crime sex stuff is talking to a sociologist a
social workers sorry at the time, who did a study
on these people, and that study is replicated in a book,
The Brown Plague. Um. But yeah, like because a lot
of the later stuff that we hear about otherwise, pirates
just doesn't talk about their drunken orgies at all, um,

(29:58):
But stuff gets raised all the time, right, like as
we've learned from this podcast and just life. Yeah, totally okay.
So they would like, like one account I was reading,
they like they would steal and sell cars, and then
they would like in their stolen car, they would like
drive around and like I don't remember exactly, was like
the guy who steals the car, he's like known his
like a car guy that's like his name or whatever,

(30:20):
you know. Um, And then they like go around and
rip off payphones. I didn't even know they had payphones
back then, but they would like go and like rip
off payphones and then try and get all the money
out that they couldn't throw them in the river or whatever. Um.
And they would fence all their stolen goods through bartenders
in exchange for alcohol and this gets and this leads
a lot of them. A lot of them end up
like in debt to these bartenders, and then like when

(30:42):
they age out of the wild fry, they just enter
like a more mainstream life of crime, for better or worse.
I don't even consider that they would age out. Actually,
now that you say that out loud, I know, you
can't stay a wild fry if you're not a small fry.
You have to be fire self committing crime all of
a sudden. I don't know, yeah, I know, I know.

(31:05):
And it's like because one of the things that this
reminds me so much of when I was like a
teenage squatter. Um, but I did most of that one
was like nineteen and twenty, and so I'm a little
bit like, oh, I would have been too old to
be you know. Yeah, And that's funked up. That's not fair. Yeah,
it's like Harry Peter Panty lost boys about them, you
know what. I'm totally yeah, it is just Peter Pan's army. Yeah. Okay.

(31:28):
So the Nazis come to power and they refused to disband,
and in a lot of cities they're powerful enough that
they completely just challenge the hedgemony of the Hitler youth.
In some cities they outnumber the Hitler youth UM. And
one of the slogans that they had at the time
was eternal war against the Hitler Youth. And yes, yes,
And so they did resistance in a lot of ways

(31:49):
right like um, just by existing. They continuing to like
hike and camp and wander their resisting Nazi era um
travel restrictions. But they they weren't hent with only doing that,
and so it wasn't long before they go from like
street fights with the Nazi the Hitler youth to distributing propaganda,
like when the Allies would drop leaflets on the city,

(32:09):
the wild Fry would run around and like stick the
leaflets through people's doors and ship um they help people
desert from the Nazi army. They would rob Nazi warehouses
and uh, you know eventually started like killing Nazis who
needed a good killing. Um. And actually what you're talking about,
like aging out. I think that I think that the
war like Fox up the best I can tell the

(32:30):
war like Fox up there, you know, sort of like
their specific organizational structure, it becomes a lot looser and
so some of the people that you know who get
hanged and stuff for this activity are like formal edelwise
pirates and shipped like that right, um, And so they're
still hanging out with like sixteen year olds doing all
these crimes together. Um, And a lot of them get

(32:52):
caught and get sent to concentration camps on November, thirteen
of them or thirteen people six them who are teenagers
and some of them are formal otherwise pirates get executed
without trial and cole and I believe for for theft,
murder and planning to blow up a Gestapo headquarters. This
is the like most known thing that that they were doing.

(33:16):
Forgive me you mentioned this, But like demographically what are
most of them? Are they just like mixed like ethnicity wise?
Oh okay, they do so they are both Aryan and Jewish,
or at least they specifically refused to disallowed Jews. I
could not tell you what percent of the movement was Jewish. Um.
Probably I don't know. I know that historically they allowed

(33:40):
in Uh. That was like a thing that distinguished them
from a lot of it is that they were like
what funk all that? Um? It was like kind of
started I would assume by like Aryan people, but that
that were good, probably, but I couldn't tell you. I
couldn't tell you about Jewish proticipation in the beginning. I
was just trying to imagine them for whatever reason, when
imagine something badass and doing stuff, They're not white, so
I have to rerange. Yeah, totally. Yeah, we're considering like

(34:05):
the overwhelming majority of Germans at this point are not
like really doing their best, you know. Um, so like
I see my prejudice now, I'm just gonna um, I
think that's fair. Yeah yeah, and um and so so
plenty of historians. So they run into this problem where

(34:26):
they're not seen as political, uh, which in a sense
it's true, right, because they were not friends of polite society,
any polite society. They were criminals under the Weimar Republic.
There were criminals under the Nazis, and they continued to
be criminals when the Allies liberated the country. The wild
fry and Soviet controlled areas were treated really harshly. In
many of them were sentenced to twenty five years in prison. Um.

(34:47):
And because they're working class criminals, they were never acknowledged
their anti fascist work until two thousand eleven, when and
the families of the Edelwise pirates who are killed never
received like reparations from the German and state on like
other partisans. Um. And the last known surviving at a
Wise pirate was a woman named Gertrude Cook. Uh coach,

(35:09):
I don't know who died at the age of ninety two.
Well it's a long life. Yeah, you know who else survives?
The people who drink tap water and eat potatoes? The
sponsors of this show you will live forever. And this
is especially funny because now I've been learning about the
more about potatoes because I listen to buying the bastards,

(35:30):
which I feel terrible to admit on this show. Um,
how could you? I know? And I'm learning people only
what a hack podcast? I wonder who produces that show.
But anyway, here's some ads from tap water, potatoes and

(35:52):
whatever else gets mixed in there. And we are back
and we are talking about pirates. Yes, when you first
started with the pirates, I don't I've never heard of
the otherwise pirates. But I was curious what definition of
pirate you're going to use, like the actual like people

(36:13):
that were pirates on you know what I mean? Because yeah,
exactly or like just but it's just really funny that
they're just like dress like pirates and they do pirty things.
It's all like they're I don't know, it's just kind
of funny to see it all come together totally imagination.
Yeah yeah, I mean they lived really similar lives to
like Golden Age pirates, but they like we're doing it

(36:35):
in costume, you know, yeah, which fucking rules honestly, Like
it's it's it's yeah. It's like, especially at the time,
it's like if the world is going to ship, just
you live once, you know, like that's the I don't know,
it's it's I like the uninhibited nature of their life. Yeah,
I do too, jesus. Yeah. And then one of the

(36:59):
things I like about them is like it doesn't seem
like it was like a a gay culture as in,
like some of them are gay, and some of them
are heterosexual, and some of them are by it was
just fucking weird, Like I don't think any of them
knew their sexuality. Some of them probably cared, and some
of them probably didn't. And like they definitely weirdos unite,
right sorry yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, I mean

(37:21):
just like weirdoes all unite. Right, So it's like when
you're in high school, the outcast are altogether, whether they're
like people of color or gay or whatever. Like that's
what happened to my experience anyway. Or like when you're Yeah,
if you're what's the word, um, marginalized, marginalized exactly, if
you're marginalized and you're fucking weird, you will unite because

(37:44):
you want a weird community and weird. Honestly, I think
it's a great thing. You should be weird being a normy, boring,
you know, so stay weird. Hell yeah, totally. And then okay,
so the So these aren't the only queers fighting the
Nazis within German any um. Far from it. I'm gonna
tell you about some more some more of them. There's

(38:04):
a gad Beck who was a gay part Jewish Berliner
who in two he borrows a Hitler youth uniform and
he marches into the pre deportation camp where his lover
man Fred, is being detained. So he shows up in
his uniform and he goes to the commanding officer and
he's like, oh, I need I need to borrow this
guy for a minute on a construction project. And so

(38:25):
the request is granted, and the you know, when he
starts out the camp with with his lover Manfred, but
then Manfred stops and he says, I can't leave my
family basically, and he he goes back into the back
into the camp. He dies him and his family. Um.
But he basically said, you know, if I will never
be free if I'm not free with my family. Um.

(38:49):
But so then gad Beck spends the next three years
helping Jews escape before he gets betrayed by a fucking
a Jewish spy for the Gestapo. Um and he gets arrested.
But he survives the war. So this is gonna be
another one of those like who lives, Who dies? Yeah,
little list of me just listening intently until the very end.

(39:12):
It's like, okay, yeah, well not of the next one.
Maybe the next one we better Yeah, well then this,
you know, so this guy survives the war and he
spends his lover doesn't but he does. Well it's nice
that like, even after his lover doesn't go with him,
he's actually true, like you know what I mean, he
keeps doing fighting the good fight totally. He doesn't just
sunk off, which would be exactly perfectly fair. I am

(39:34):
not judging anyone who sucks off out of a place
is trying to murder them, you know, yeah, exactly. And
he he lives to be eighty eight and he spends
the last thirty five years of his life with his partner. Um.
So I like when that's a good ending, Yeah, thank
you others yeah okay. So then there's a Count Albrecht
von Bernstaff who's a gay aristocrat and he's this. He's

(39:55):
a short balding man. He's always impeccably dressed, and he
wastes mostly war years sitting around cafes hitting on waiters.
Or that's what he wants people to think. I mean,
he he does. He is these things. He's a short baulding,
well dressed man who hits on a lot of waiters.
But he's actually he's he's playing up the like foppish
aristocratic gay man stereotype, um to draw attention from his

(40:18):
actual work, which is he's running an underground railroad helping
Jews and other dissidents get themselves out of Germany. Um
that's genius, I know. And like that does take like
front and center, you know, like put the gay out
front and then let me do my secret good job. Yeah, totally. Um,
this one could keep him distracted. Yeah, he's like, oh,
I'm just a creepy, harmless old gay guy, you know.

(40:41):
Like uh. And and he's so aristocratic and I kind
of love him for this. He's so aristocratic that he
figures like, alright, I'm doing something that is obviously illegal,
being being gay, but I'm so rich that everyone puts
up with it. Yeah, exactly. Power. I think it was
the last episode. Maybe it was, Yeah, it was last,
but like or you can you can get away with more? Yeah,

(41:02):
totally uh and yeah, because because and money, power and money. Sorry,
Like I have a lot of inside thoughts that are
just I think, and they say it out loud, even
if it's like not even my right timing. But I
think that's the point of a podcast. Why my podcast cast,
because otherwise it would be me talking to myself and
that would be half as interesting. But no, money and power.

(41:24):
That's how you hack life, unfortunately, I know. And it's
like all across history, if you're poor and gay, you're fucked,
And if you're rich and gay, you're just eccentric, you know, Yes,
very true, like Oscar Wilde. Yeah, totally, although it only
sort of works out for him different points. Yeah, but
still but that was a bad example whatever, No, no, no, no,
it is. It is a good example because like he's

(41:45):
able to exist in that way at all because of
that kind of exactly Yeah, who was accepted as what
he was versus Yeah. Anyway, Um, so the so the
so Count Albrecht he he coordinates with gay resistance groups
in the Netherlands And to quote an anonymously written article
that's coming from an upcoming issue of a magazine called
Batten that the author let me read before, Count Albrecht

(42:10):
had warned his contacts in Holland about the Nazi invasion
before it began, so they could prepare themselves. In one instance,
members of a gay society took measures ahead of the
German invasion. In preparation for the catastrophe. The editor of
their paper, Levin Strict, burned the organization's mailing list. Another comrade,
Aren't Vin saut Hoorst, committed the entire list to memory

(42:31):
so that they could find one another afterwards. And I
really like that because I like because when I first
started doing this, like everyone's like keeping these records and
it keeps getting them all in trouble, right, and so
I'm like, what do you what do you fucking do
and burn your fucking records? Right, But then the guy
who memorizes it all makes reminds me that I'm like, well,
it was so hard for them to find each other

(42:51):
in the first place. That like losing that is losing
something really important, you know. Yeah, memorizing in that's what.
That's a great solution if you're able to do that,
you know, totally mohammed of the profit of mom. He
memorizes the Koran you know how to read it rite,
so it works. Look at him now he's done. Well, yeah,

(43:14):
I've heard of him, you know. Praise. Yeah. So eventually
Count Albrett gets gets found out, and he gets arrested,
and he gets into a series of concentration camps and
he gets really horrendously tortured. Um. But his his fellow inmates,
they remember him based on how he kept everyone's spirits up.
Like he would he'd be sitting around in the concentration

(43:35):
camp and he'd be like, we're all going to have
a most fabulous party at my house when this is
all done. You are all invited. Everyone's coming over, Like,
I'm you know, break out all the finest stuff, best
party ever and um, and he he didn't survive the camps.
He died in the camps. Um, But I don't know.
Hundreds of people, at least Jews and gays and gay

(43:58):
Jews and at least two different countries survived the war
because of his efforts and him disguising himself himself as
a fop, you know, and playing into the like being like, oh, yes,
homosexuals are cowards, we would never do anything bad, you know,
use the stereotype to your benefit, just like you know
what I mean, it's or like that benefit but like
your advantage. Yeah uh yeah, Well what a guy. I know,

(44:20):
I like him. Um okay. And one of the things
that it's kind of dark that I ran across in
a lot of this research, a lot of the gay
men who survived the concentration camps get immediately re arrested
because they're gay, because you're not allowed to be gay,
whether it's Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. While East Germany
at least the Soviet Union had more complicated Oh yeah, right,

(44:41):
I think Hitler had re I know that, like Lenin
made homosexuality legal, and then Stalin was like j K
all you. Um. But um, anyway, one guy, for example,
that I was reading about, I don't have his name
in front of me. Um. He wasn't as much of a
a resistance fighter, although just existing his resistance. I'm not
trying to like knock him. Um. He retold his experience

(45:02):
where he was taken back literally in front of the
same judge that had sentenced him to a concentration camp previously,
because they didn't actually get rid of the fucking Nazis,
they just like cut off the head of it. Yeah. Um,
so he gets sent back to the same judge he's
like you again and then sentences him right back to prison. Um.
That makes me so mad. People empower stay in power ultimately. Yeah, Okay,

(45:25):
I want to end with with one last short story
about a queer poet named Robert desns and he was Yeah,
he was heavily involved in the French surrealist scene. Um,
and he joins the resistance of Germany. Once you know,
francis under occupation and like our Dutch heroes from last
episode or last Monday whatever I know how to say,

(45:47):
is this a new episode? Is this just the different
half of the same episode. I don't understand the taxonomy
of my own job. It's a two part Okay. In
the last part of this two part episode, um perfect, thanks, thanks,
I'm good at my job. So uh. He works as
a counterfeiter and he makes fake I d s. And
he also does a ton of other stuff. He actually

(46:08):
works for a collaborationist newspaper as a spy, and he
passes along all the information he learns by working for
a shitty pro German newspaper. He passes it along to
to the Resistance. He also wrote for underground papers under
a ton of different names, and he gets caught and
he gets sent to a series of concentration camps. But

(46:30):
at heart, right, this guy's a surrealist. So one day,
according to Holocaust, Holocaust survivor named a debt and it's relayed.
This story is relaid through a writer named Susan Griffin.
So Robert's waiting in line for the fucking gas chamber
and and he just jumps up and runs up to
a man who's ahead of him in line, and he
just gets really excited and he starts reading the man's

(46:50):
palm and he's like, look here, look at your lifeline.
You're going to live a long life, and you're gonna
have three children, and his absurd as them, right, because
they all know what's happening, all right. I think it's
his absurdism is so contagious that everyone's just like breaking
out laughing, and it confuses the guards so completely that

(47:11):
the guards sent them back to their barracks because they
don't know how to handle these people who are supposed
to just be like totally given up, who are like
riotlessly riotously, who are laughing very hard, uncontrollably, and wow,
that's so fascinating. And he he doesn't die in a

(47:32):
gas chamber. Um. He used the phrase unexecuted in your script.
Everyone gets sent back to the barracks unexecuted, as the
way I wrote it. Yeah, and he technically survives the war,
but he caught typhoid I believe, in the concentration camp,
and he dies within a month of liberation. Um. But

(47:55):
again that doesn't seem right. I know the thing, okay.
But the reason I want to end on that note
is because I think people look at some of this
history wrong, at least like queer history. Um, because they're like, oh,
did they succeed, Like a lot of the stuff I
would read being like, oh, they didn't succeed because they died,

(48:16):
or they didn't succeed because they only blew up eight
hundred thousand records instead of three million records or whatever. Right, um,
but they it's to me, it feels like they succeeded, right.
They they chose resistance and a lot of them, most
of them didn't survive the war. But they say fucking
thousands of people, and I don't know they died fighting,

(48:37):
you know what I mean, like if they did die
in a way that they shouldn't have, Like it's just
a testament to like, I don't know, caring more about
the world and yourself and like I don't know, I
don't know where I'm going. I don't know what the
end when I started. Um, but I think it's pretty badass.
I think that they like they basically they proved a

(49:00):
fucking lot and they certainly proved like our man Willem
said at the beginning that homosexual is not a fucking
synonym for a week, which is what people used to
treat it as um And and no one can say
that they were cowards, you know, no one. Yeah, definitely not.
That's the last thing would be. I was thinking though
not to like yes and but yes, and it uh

(49:24):
like the vast majority of these people that we learned
about are our men, correct, So it is interesting just
to think, like how many more people there were that
maybe didn't get like attention or history and about them,
or that were who were I mean, there's a there's
a spattering of women wore in there, for sure, But
it does make me wonder if again it goes back

(49:47):
to power. As a man, you have more power, right,
and maybe that's why you're able to accomplish more especially
I mean back to that, and now what am I saying?
But it's interesting to think about who gets written about,
even like alt history, because as I'm a filmmaker, I
want to say in quotes, but come on, I should

(50:07):
like me whatever imposters ENDM one oh one, but imposter
syndrome is real. And but I was reading about like
writing like scripts and movies and stuff, and how we're
so used to just pretending that Western story structure is
like the default way to tell stories and we forget

(50:28):
that like so many cultures have different ways of telling stories,
and like it's like Bollywood films are structures, so differently
than ours, and we just we assume ours is the
right default way. And I think that's the same with
just everything. That's all. You didn't mention that this is
the westernized version of it, But it just makes me
wonder what else is out there, because I know there

(50:49):
are more amazing people out there. Maybe maybe we don't
have to know about them. Just to know they existed
is enough. I don't know if that made any sense. No, No,
I think that that actually gets at something really important. Um.
One of the things that I kept running across with
this is like I think I feel certain that there
was as many you know, lesbians fighting against the Nazis

(51:10):
right as there were gay men. And most of the
people with names that are coming up with are gay men,
and I think partly that's because they get written about
for being gay in a way that a lot of
the women aren't being written about. Um. And then like
it's actually telling that the Edlwise pirates who were a
mixture of boys and girls, right, Um, they that's not

(51:31):
a story full of names. You know, there are some
names we have for that, but mostly you have these
like anonymous masses of like mixed group of queer kids
who are like, all right, let's sunk up these Nazis
and they don't get fucking remembered except kind of collectively.
And you know, I don't know whether that's better or

(51:52):
worse or different or whatever, but it does it. You're right,
it leads to this, like you know, the which stories
get told absolutely exactly. No, yeah, I think about this
stuff all the time because I mean I don't know
even like, yeah, the history stories or whatever, like what
what we've even gotten as a civilization about like what

(52:13):
we've learned and from our past centuries of existence, Like
even that is curated, you know what I mean. It's
like it just we just live in a matrix and
it's real. But um, but no, I I'm really happy
to have learned all of this stuff from you today
and on Monday two days ago because we're not recording

(52:36):
at the same time. But but no, I I hope
it makes other people think about this kind of stuff too,
because it doesn't have to be like this default way
of thinking of like, oh, this is just the way
things are because this is the way they are. Is
it the way they are because this is how they
always have been because certain people make it this way
if that makes sense. So it's I don't know, just

(52:57):
using your brain to philosophize. I think sometimes a good
thing and like do some shrooms or something. Every other
podcast about them like shrooms. But if you're able to
it's I think it's the cure for things or just
seeing the world in a different way. Can I shut up? Good? Okay,

(53:25):
I'm shutting up though. Um yeah, when I when I
saw shrooms, I saw the void. It was really bad
and dark for months. But okay, I stay correct, but
my experience is not the I'm certainly not anti people
messing around with this kind of stuff. You know, I
gave it multiple shots. I shouldn't have made a blanket.

(53:46):
You're right, No, No, I mean, but people should. I
don't know. There's all kinds of blankets better dangerous. You know.
All I meant to say was like, expand your mind
and like I like that. I'm leaving this recording being like, you, what,
maybe we're not so bad? Hell yeah? Would you say

(54:06):
that there's cool people who did cool stuff? You know?
I would say that there are cool people that did
cool stuff. Mentioned it, but thank you for having me
letting me ramble to no end. This was really fun.
Oh thanks so much for being on. Come back again,

(54:26):
please please, I would love to come back and learn
more good things about good people, cool cool things about
what am I doing. I'mussing get all up, cool things
about cool people who happened to be good doing good.
I'm doing it again. I'm gonna stop talking. This is
the end of my sentence. Now Sharene before we send

(54:47):
you off. Is there anything you would like to plug? Yeah,
I'm Sharene. You can follow me on the internet if
you want. Twitter Shiro Hero six six six and Instagram
is just Shiro Hero Um. I make films, write poetry.
I have a couple of poetry books out that I
self published. What's the newest one called um Archives. Yeah,

(55:09):
it's basically just emo diaries I've decided to publish. It's
very personal. Uh but yeah, that's just my I'm honest
to a fault. And if you want to follow along, great.
If you don't like me rambling, good because I'm going
to stop now. Margaret plugs anything. You can also follow
me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy, where I try

(55:32):
to be clever because Twitter is just this awful competition.
It's like an arena of people trying to um acquire
enough clout to not starve by being clever and having
all the right takes. And I always always but were
you were you? Were you on Twitter when it was
just like a place to like say your thoughts out loud.

(55:53):
I looked at and the dumbest ship. It's like Facebook
status is or like whatever where it's just like I'm hungry, Yeah,
I'm going to fail my test. And now it's just
instead of being like a random thought catalog. It's definitely
this one upping the arena of death. Yeah, speaking speaking
of death, can I can I uh plug? Jamie Loftus

(56:16):
is Ghost Church that's on cool Zone Media as well.
That will be will be out by the time this
this episode drops, So check that out. Ghost Church by
Jamie Loftus, Queen future guest of this podcast, Jamie Future
Guests of this podcast, Jamie Loftus. I also produce that one,
so check it out. Sophie produces all podcasts I think

(56:39):
you've already heard me say. Yeah, legally all podcasts are mine,
except except for once again, the Joe Rogan Podcast actually
a YouTube show. Yes legally distinct, Yes, yes, thank you,
and we'll be back Monday Right, Margaret yea Next Monday,
Forever until the heat death of the universe. Cool by

(57:04):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool zone Media. For more podcasts on cool zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.