'Supernatural' Season 8, Episode 13: 'Everybody Hates Hitler' Recap

In Vitsyebsk, Belarus (1944), a giant golem attacks a Nazi army base. One of the Nazis sounds the alarm and all the Nazis inside go on red alert. They try to stop the golem, but it breaks through their defenses. The men inside scribble their notes in a book and seal it away before it gets them.

One of the higher-ups recites a spell while the golem tears his men apart. After successfully completing the spell, he is vanishes in a flash of flames.

In Lebanon, Kansas (current day), Sam and Dean find the “supernatural mother lode” they learned about from their grandfather. It contains all the knowledge of the Supernatural, previously guarded by the Men of Letters. When they enter it, they find telegraphs, ham radios, old timey computers and more; the nerve center for the Men of Letters.

Dean finds the light switches, and returns power to the foreboding building. Lights come up revealing a meticulously decorated swanky interior, complete with a record player and neatly organized bookshelves.

“Sammy, I think we found a Bat Cave.”

The next morning, Dean strolls out in a robe, looking well rested, and Sam tiredly scours over books of information. Dean boasts about the amazing showers, but Sam isn’t sure how they even have water or electricity.

Dean warns Sam not to get too geeked over the knowledge. The Men of Letters were a secret society, so it’s likely they made stuff up, and they wouldn’t have known anything that Sam and Dean didn’t already know. Sam disagrees, thinking this is their calling. They could use a break, and he views this as it.

In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, an elderly German man hurriedly approaches the librarian, concerned he’s being followed. He requests a manuscript, which turns out to be the book locked away back in 1944. He dons some gloves and begins perusing it, realizing what it is.

He approaches the librarian once again, demanding that the ledger be protected, since whatever is following him is too close and he can’t risk taking it with him. The librarian tells him he only has 8 minutes until the book must be returned to the desk.

The elderly man leaves the library and head to the nearest payphone. He calls a number and leaves a message with the archive number needed to find the book. Outside, a man watches him through the window. The elderly man realizes his time is up and invites the man to come inside and get him.

The elderly man taunts him, calling him a “Nazi piece of rubbish” and a “Nazi pig” as he slowly combusts, bursting into flames. The man outside slinks away.

Two weeks later, Dean comes back to the Bat Cave after having visited Kevin and Garth. Dean asks Sam if he’s heard from Cas, but neither of them have heard anything from him.

Sam tells him he’s been going through the Men of Letters’ archive of hunters and networks, and found one Dean would want to check out. The Judah Initiative, a group of Rabbis from World War II. They acted as saboteurs. Sam checked the roster, and found one of the rabbis was still around… until two weeks ago when he spontaneously combusted on campus.

The brothers head to Pennsylvania; Sam questions the librarian, asking to see what he was looking for, while Dean hits up the bar where he spontaneously combusted and chats up some of the pretty eyewitnesses.

The girls reveal the rabbi was a kook, and always talking to them about a secret war, and other ‘conspiracies’. They say he was obsessed with Nazis… But not just any Nazis, the ‘special’ Nazis, necromancers.

“Nazi necromancers?”

They describe the fire as being “alive” and attacking him.

In the library, Sam finds the “ledger”, but it’s been replaced with “The Explorer’s Guide to North American Birds”.

In the bar, Dean confronts of a mysterious man who seems to be following him around. The guy thought they had “a thing”, “a little eye magic; a moment” and was following him, hoping to hook up. Dean assures him there was no moment. The guy isn’t exactly deterred, still finding Dean fascinating.

Sam calls Dean, trying to explain what he found; the rabbi was apparently an avid bird watcher, but as he’s speaking, he notices someone is watching him.

 “You’re being followed?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That’s weird. I thought I was being followed earlier, turned out to be a gay thing.”

“…what?”

“Nothing.”

Dean agrees to meet him in an distant parking lot in 30 minutes to give him a hand.

In the parking lot, Sam approached the empty Impala, while Dean investigated in the woods, finally catching the guy who was following Sam.

But it wasn’t a man. It was the golem, towering over Dean, tossing him across the parking lot into a van.

 The golem turns his attention to Sam, rapidly approaching him. Sam grabs a machete from the truck of the Impala and attacks, but the blade gets stuck in the golem’s arm, doing no damage. The golem grabs Sam’s throat and begins to choke him, but a man calls out “stop”, and he drops him.

It’s the “gay” man from the bar, Aaron.

Dean rolls on the pavement in pain (“My spleen!”) and Sam asks Aaron what that thing is. He tells Sam that it’s a golem. His golem.

Aaron brings the brothers into his home and explains the rabbi that was murdered, Isaac Bass, was his grandfather. He says that once the Winchesters started digging into the case, he started following them.

“So, wait, what you’re saying is that you and me…  We, uh, didn’t have a moment?”

“No, man. I was tailing you.”

“Told you I was being followed. He was my gay thing.”

He tells the brothers that to golems are made from clay, and brought to life by Rabbis to protect the Jewish people in times of crappiness. His grandfather left the golem to him, since he’s the last decedent of the Judah Initiative.

The golem doesn’t seem too pleased that he was telling them about it. But Sam reassures them that it’s okay, and that their grandfather was a Man of Letters. The golem seems okay with that.

Outside the house, the man who hunted down the Rabbi stands watching.

They sit down for a beer and talk about how they got into the Supernatural game. Aaron says his grandfather told him all these stories growing up, but he always believed they were just stories.

He says that when his grandfather died, a box was delivered to him. When he opened it up, the golem was inside. It came to life and trashed his apartment.

The golem isn’t too pleased to be stuck with him, either.

“This boy knows nothing, observes none of the mitzvahs, labors on Sabbath, dines on swine…”

“Everybody loves bacon!”

He says he wasn’t prepared for any of this, and doesn’t know what to do. His grandfather spent his life trying to track down the Thule society. The Winchesters recognize them as the Nazi necromancers.

Aaron says that the Thule society hoped to take over the world, and sponsored the early Nazi parties. The golem says that the Thule killed Aaron’s grandfather.

He tells Sam and Dean about the message his grandfather left; that he found something the Thule were willing to kill for. He hid it in plain sight, but Aaron had no idea what the numbers meant that he left, and, thus, couldn’t find it.

Sam recognizes the numbers as a call number for a book. For the book he saw earlier about birds.

The brothers, Aaron, and the golem break into the library. Sam thinks the rabbi switched the ledger with the bird book, and goes to find it on the shelf.

When he finds it, he is shot in the neck by a dart and begins to black out. The man who had been lurking in the shadows reveals himself, and thanks him for making it so easy to find the ledger.

Sam runs, kind of, and makes it back to the group. Aaron gets shot with a dart and passes out. Dean tells the golem that they’re both going to die if they don’t get the necromancer who cast the spell. Golem smash.

The golem looks for the guy, and gets shot in the face with a dart. However, it has no effect, and the golem grabs the guy and smashes him into a bookshelf, knocking him out. The golem drags the guy down to Dean.

The man spouts “long live the Thule” before the golem snaps his neck, saving Sam and Aaron.

Aaron wakes up in the back of the Impala. The golem informs them that the Men of Letters saved his life. They are salting, burning, and burying the corpse of the necromancer.

Back at Aaron’s house, Sam and Aaron figure out what the ledger is. It contains details of all the horrible magical experiments the Thule ran on people there.

The golem recounts some of the experiments, saying he was created in a ghetto, and sent to attack the Thule base, but the commandant burned it to the ground around him.

They ask the golem what he means when he tells Aaron to “take charge”, and he says Aaron would know if he would consult the pages.

The pages turn out to be a book (an owner’s manual for a golem) that his grandfather left him at his bar mitzvah, but when he went to high school, he “kind of… smoked it.”

Aaron asks the golem why he can’t just tell him what he’s supposed to do, and the golem grows angry and tells him it’s not his place to teach the rabbi.

Sam eases the tension by saying that the Thule murdered the Jews, Gypsies, etc, in order to practice reanimating them. He knows they were successful, because the ledger contains a list of Thule members that were successfully resurrected.

The only way to kill it is a headshot, and to burn the body within 12 hours, otherwise it will reanimate.

Back at the library, two German men, members of the Thule, investigate the library. They find the security footage was wiped, but they also find bits of clay on the shelf where the golem attacked.

Sam and Dean try to figure out how to stop the golem, but the lore about them is leading them nowhere. But Aaron overhears them plotting to take down his golem and gets defensive. But as they are talking, two Thule members break in, and attack. They knock Dean away and hold a gun on Sam. The golem attacks, but is stopped when he hears the voice of a familiar foe, the commandant from the Nazi camp years ago. The one that got away.

The man chants a spell, disabling the golem. He commands the golem surrender the bond, which causes him to spit out a scroll.

The commandant reveals Aaron was supposed to write his name on the scroll in order to “take charge”, but since he didn’t, he lost control of the golem. He knocks Aaron to the floor.

The commandant asks for the ledger book, but Sam and Dean try to stall him, but he still manages to get the book. The man says they will suffer for killing the other necromancer, but first decides to tell them a joke. As he’s speaking, Aaron grabs a piece of wood and knocks him out. Dean and Sam grab the nearest guns and take out two of his three guards. The third escapes.

The commandant comes to and threatens them, so they shoot him in the head.

They return from burning and burying the commandant, but Aaron is concerned that the Thule are still out there. He adds his name to the scroll and feeds to back to the golem, bringing it back to life.

Aaron proclaims that he’s the Judah Initiative now, and his golem acknowledges that he has taken charge.

Back in their Bat Cave, Sam starts a card catalogue for the archives. Dean says he’s happy that Sam’s acting like a Man of Letters now.