Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1: If you were ever a fan of video games, you
Speaker 1: were probably aware at some point of the video game
Speaker 1: franchise Wolfenstein three D first person shooter wherein your your
Speaker 1: obliterating Nazis. It's a lot of fun. It scared me
Speaker 1: as a kid. Hi, I'm Ben, Hi, I'm know, and
Speaker 1: so Ben, did you you played? You played the Wolfenstein
Speaker 1: three D? Yeah, I can't remember it was three D,
Speaker 1: but it was on a it was on a PC,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of the in my childhood mind,
Speaker 1: it was like the lighter version of another similar game
Speaker 1: called Doom. What's the it's the Predecessor. I think it's
Speaker 1: the Predecessor, that's correct, and that's our super producer, Casey Pegrum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wolfenstein was like pseudo three D. It's really just two D.
Speaker 1: It's just moving a bunch of two D sprites around
Speaker 1: to make it feel like three D. Doom was kind
Speaker 1: of like what is this? Nerd talk? What is this?
Speaker 1: Sprite was a little more two and a half D,
Speaker 1: and then Quake is where they made the big jump
Speaker 1: to full three actual three D casey on the case.
Speaker 1: I am also pleasantly surprised that you you have some
Speaker 1: thoughts on this matter. Huh. I was a die hard
Speaker 1: gamer in the nineties. Yeah, I have not cared about
Speaker 1: it in a long time. Sprites are just kind of
Speaker 1: the building blocks of these games, like the characters. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like the they're like the elements you move around rely,
Speaker 1: but like they're they're even textures and stuff, right, isn't
Speaker 1: that Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a sprite. This is where
Speaker 1: my knowledge runs out. But I think, you know, like
Speaker 1: nowadays is about textures because you have like the services
Speaker 1: and you're applying to textures to them. The sprite was
Speaker 1: kind of like all in one, like it was the
Speaker 1: character but also the texture because it was like a drawing.
Speaker 1: That's cool. This uh, this is strange because like many
Speaker 1: people in the West who grew up in a post
Speaker 1: World War two environment, uh we, whenever there was like
Speaker 1: an evil army, easily, I'm just gonna make up the statistic.
Speaker 1: Easily eight point six two times out of ten, that
Speaker 1: evil army would be represented by the Nazis or something
Speaker 1: like the Nazi Party, which is which is strange when
Speaker 1: you look back. But it was very common to have
Speaker 1: games wherein a person is fighting against Nazi forces, just
Speaker 1: the way that some modern fighting games have people fighting
Speaker 1: against North Korean forces or somewhere in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: Today's story is about Nazis, and it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of cool stuff in here. We've got we've got a
Speaker 1: spooky castle, right, Hence the Wolfenstein reference, because I believe Wolfenstein,
Speaker 1: in the parlance of the game, was this giant fortress
Speaker 1: that you're traversing, like all the different floors. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: I totally forgot that is what we're talking about, Wolfan stay.
Speaker 1: I was, we're also talking about killing Nazis. Yes, someone's
Speaker 1: got to do it. So we can't go ahead and
Speaker 1: set the stage for World War two very very quickly.
Speaker 1: It's the global conflict that lasted from ninety and it
Speaker 1: involved access powers and allied powers. Often, at least in
Speaker 1: the US, it is painted as a war with a
Speaker 1: few prime actors. You know, they'll say, yes, Japan and
Speaker 1: the US fought. Yes, Uh, Europeans helped out That's how
Speaker 1: they'll put it. There'll it'll be like Europeans helped out
Speaker 1: American forces. But really it was America versus Germany. That's
Speaker 1: a vast oversimplification, it really is. That's what we do
Speaker 1: here on ridiculous history, vast over simplifications. That is, that's
Speaker 1: our bread and butter. My man, well, it is painted.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of countries do that. If you
Speaker 1: read a textbook somewhere else. They're going to have their
Speaker 1: own countries take on World War Two, and the American
Speaker 1: take is you know, pretty America centric, right. Absolutely. What
Speaker 1: we have in today's episode, though, is a very rare
Speaker 1: case of cooperation between these parties, right, and an unprecedented
Speaker 1: move to kind of like when everything hit the fan, right,
Speaker 1: you know, so the war is coming to an end.
Speaker 1: Hitler has eaten a suicide pill and shot himself in
Speaker 1: the face. That's the thing I remember most about Wolfing Stay.
Speaker 1: By the way, you have to fight Hitler in the
Speaker 1: end spoiler alert for a game that's like thirty. He's
Speaker 1: in a Giant Max suit and at the end when
Speaker 1: you kill him, he says they have a al veder Zane,
Speaker 1: referring to his wife a le braun Um. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so Mac Hitler has been annihilated at this point in
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, alternate history version of World War Two,
Speaker 1: and uh, this castle becomes the site of an unusual union. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is castle. It's ur and today we're exploring the
Speaker 1: story of the only time that Americans and Germans fought
Speaker 1: as allies during World War Two. So itter Castle is
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century castle in a village called Ittter in Austria.
Speaker 1: And it looks spooky. It looks like something out of
Speaker 1: I don't know, it looks like the kind of castle
Speaker 1: hell Boy runs into in the Mike Mignola stories. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely haunted as hell seeming. And just
Speaker 1: for fun, let's see what four of us says about
Speaker 1: the pronunciation of this castle. I got it it. I
Speaker 1: love the I love the German intensity. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into some fun German words in this episode. But
Speaker 1: it's true. It looks like something out of like a
Speaker 1: fractured haunted grim Grim Grimm fairy tale. It's top with
Speaker 1: those cool little you know, crenelations where that are the
Speaker 1: separated little turrets in between, um, the walls where you
Speaker 1: can shoot you know, yeah, arrows or whatever. The pattern
Speaker 1: that looks like one side of a zipper. That's exactly right. Um,
Speaker 1: And it has a very very rich history. At first
Speaker 1: shows up in around twelve forty four in German Land records,
Speaker 1: and then it's been passed through several different different owners,
Speaker 1: different hands. Um In nineteen thirty eight, when Germany annexed Austria,
Speaker 1: the castle became a very uh sought after site for
Speaker 1: all the secret weird stuff that Nazis were getting into.
Speaker 1: It's true the Reich government officially leased the castle in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty from its owner at the time, one Franz Gruner,
Speaker 1: and the castle went through some some weird things because
Speaker 1: after they had leasted or requisitioned it for their very
Speaker 1: vaguely phrased official use, it went through a couple of iterations.
Speaker 1: It was for a while it was the swank offices
Speaker 1: of an organization called the German Association for Combating the
Speaker 1: Dangers of tabat Echo because say which will about Nazis,
Speaker 1: they understood that tobacco was dangerous. They were sticklers for health.
Speaker 1: Although it doesn't take away from the image of the
Speaker 1: you know, imperially slim s s officer with a cigarette
Speaker 1: holder and an eye patch, you know, but I could
Speaker 1: still be harkening back to our our video game and
Speaker 1: then like think about this though. How amazing is that
Speaker 1: to have your office be a castle. It didn't last.
Speaker 1: On February seven, the entire structure and all the accompanying
Speaker 1: buildings were requisitioned by s S Lieutenant General Oswald Pole
Speaker 1: under the orders of Heinrich Himler, and then it was
Speaker 1: transformed into a prison, but not just any prison, No,
Speaker 1: not just any prison, and it was associated with probably
Speaker 1: the most notorious UH site in all of like Nazi
Speaker 1: involvement in World War Two, which would be the Dachau
Speaker 1: Concentration Camp UM, which operated the facility, which they referred
Speaker 1: to as Oh boy, I'm gonna do my best on
Speaker 1: this one evacuee Rungschlager, which means a an evacuation camp.
Speaker 1: I love how the etymology is so interesting, like evacuee
Speaker 1: is spelled E V A k U I E and
Speaker 1: then the American words, you know, evacuation, evacuate UM. So
Speaker 1: the castle was already you know, an impenetrable fortress I
Speaker 1: mean with these high walls and those turrets we talked
Speaker 1: about UM. But they transformed it even further UM, adding
Speaker 1: onto features that already existed like this, these huge walls.
Speaker 1: They had a moat had this gatehouse that was very,
Speaker 1: very difficult to penetrate, and they added, um, these tangles
Speaker 1: of multi layers of barbed wire or that they called
Speaker 1: concertina wire, which I guess is the really really skinny
Speaker 1: like razor wire that will slice right through you. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they refitted it with these very complex locks
Speaker 1: and essentially rendered the facility absolutely impregnable, uh to either
Speaker 1: get into or get out of. Twenty of the existing
Speaker 1: guest rooms in the central housing structure were converted into
Speaker 1: secure but pretty pretty roomy cells. Others were turned into
Speaker 1: guard rooms and offices. These were not cells for your
Speaker 1: typical uh, political protester or petty criminal. This became a
Speaker 1: home for v I P. French prisoners of war. Yeah, folks,
Speaker 1: like the two former prime ministers of France. There was
Speaker 1: Paul Renault Casey on the case. And then we have
Speaker 1: edu r uh dallader d A l A d I
Speaker 1: E r Huh Dad got it? Uh? And I know
Speaker 1: this one, General Charles de gaull Ya see Charles, I
Speaker 1: love this is my favorite part of the show, in
Speaker 1: case he gets to correct our pronunciations. The older sister
Speaker 1: in fact of General Charles de gal not a hardass
Speaker 1: on the end is to Charley, and her name was
Speaker 1: Marie Agnes Kalelu Marian, probably Casey on the case multipart.
Speaker 1: So we have a firsthand account about the conversion of
Speaker 1: the castle into a prison by Hans Fuchs. Hans saw
Speaker 1: every he was growing up in the area. Hans says,
Speaker 1: we saw everything from our school window, the double barbed
Speaker 1: wire fence, the floodlights so that the whole night was
Speaker 1: lit up like the day. But again, Loss Itter or
Speaker 1: the Castle Itter was a subunit of the Dochau concentration camps,
Speaker 1: and they wanted the people who were imprisoned in this
Speaker 1: castle to be relatively well cared for so that they
Speaker 1: could be used as bargaining chips. We will give you
Speaker 1: one of the former prime ministers if you give us
Speaker 1: this other stuff. But the problem here for Castle Itter
Speaker 1: was that they were existing in the last days of
Speaker 1: the war. Like May, it's pretty clear how things are
Speaker 1: gonna shake out. The German guards at the prison run away,
Speaker 1: but the French prisoners are trapped and the woods around
Speaker 1: the castle are full of roaming desperate units of SS
Speaker 1: and Gestapo, not necessarily in max suits. But we weren't
Speaker 1: there Max suits are amazing. I'm just gonna say. I
Speaker 1: know that they've been used for evil purposes in fiction,
Speaker 1: but they're they're just they're like one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: You've got some figures on your desk, don't you. Models, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from oh from Pacific Rim and those are those are
Speaker 1: huge mix But you know I'm a sucker for it.
Speaker 1: Tell me your favorite mix ridiculous set. I heart radio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should just have an email box just for favorite
Speaker 1: Max at I heeart radio, dot nom um. The newer iterations.
Speaker 1: I know we keep harping on this, but the newer
Speaker 1: iterations of the Wolfenstein games are super cool and involved
Speaker 1: a lot more of this like future attack that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, like the big the big robot suits and
Speaker 1: they have like robot ss dogs and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and they get really intense. The last few were quite difficult.
Speaker 1: In fact, I haven't played it in years and years
Speaker 1: and years. To me, this, uh, this story feels like
Speaker 1: something very inglorious Bastards esque, you know. It's it feels
Speaker 1: like there's some Tarantino inspiration here. Because the French prisoners
Speaker 1: know that if they try to escape, they will be discovered.
Speaker 1: So through some internal mechanism. Perhaps they're drawing straws, or
Speaker 1: maybe some brave souls volunteered. The French prisoners send out
Speaker 1: to prisoners on bicycles to try to find help. According
Speaker 1: to Stephen Harding, author of a book called The Last Battle,
Speaker 1: one of these French prisoners found a German major, Joseph
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna spell the last name g A N
Speaker 1: G L gongle like. He was a highly decorated Rmacht
Speaker 1: officer and he had become opposed to the Nazis and
Speaker 1: was collaborating with the local resistance in Austria. That is
Speaker 1: so interesting is there can we discuss a little bit
Speaker 1: of the difference between the Nazis and the Verrmacht Republic.
Speaker 1: Oh good question, Yeah, because there is a difference, and
Speaker 1: it gives us a little insight into the motivation of
Speaker 1: this major. It does, and again a little bit of
Speaker 1: a surfacy discussion of this. But the Nazi party, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially took over a pre existing Germany with the under
Speaker 1: the attempt to make it a one party system. But
Speaker 1: the very marked soldiers were already you know, in place
Speaker 1: before the Nazis took over. The Nazis like including like
Speaker 1: the s S and the Gestapo UH and the Nazi
Speaker 1: soldiers were required to really have this ethnic cleansing kind
Speaker 1: of ideology, um, you know, in a very fanatical way,
Speaker 1: whereas the Vermacht should soldiers. Some of them might have
Speaker 1: been hole hog into the Nazi way of thinking. Some
Speaker 1: of them might have been you know a little more
Speaker 1: old school or like the way they like things before
Speaker 1: the Nazis came in. Um. So that totally makes sense
Speaker 1: that this guy would have been one of the ones
Speaker 1: who maybe wasn't as fanatical at all and was into
Speaker 1: helping the resistance. Absolutely picture him saying, the German army
Speaker 1: used to stand for something noble. Long story short, this
Speaker 1: was the perfect guy for these French prison scouts to meet.
Speaker 1: And the major thinks, well, I can't protect these prisoners.
Speaker 1: I only have twenty soldiers that I that I can
Speaker 1: count on. So he takes a huge white flag, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, the universal symbol for coming in peace, and
Speaker 1: he finds the closest American unit, the twenty third Tank
Speaker 1: Battalion of the U S twelve Armored Division, led by
Speaker 1: a guy named Captain Jack Lee. Jack Well, led by
Speaker 1: a guy named Jack Lee who was a captain. His
Speaker 1: first name was not Captain Jack Lee, though that would
Speaker 1: be really cool. I still will refer to him a
Speaker 1: hand worth as Captain jack Um. And Lee was down
Speaker 1: he wont he was like, okay, let's do this, and
Speaker 1: he offered to lead a rescue mission, very daring um
Speaker 1: rescue mission to the impenetrable castle. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: strange the Americans, as you said, No, they go with
Speaker 1: this Vermont major and they park their tank close to
Speaker 1: the castle entrance. On May five in the morning, that
Speaker 1: SS finally attacks. They blow up the tank, but they're
Speaker 1: unable to storm the castle. And this is about five
Speaker 1: days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April. So things
Speaker 1: are already very very desperate on the German side. You
Speaker 1: know what, before we go too too far, we should
Speaker 1: examine those two people they sent out for help and
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about them. Because I had
Speaker 1: said earlier that two of the French prisoners went out
Speaker 1: on bicycle, right, that's not entirely true. One of the
Speaker 1: guys was their Yugoslavian handyman, and he actually he's the
Speaker 1: first guy who went out. He found some US troops
Speaker 1: in Innsbruck. But because the castle was outside of their jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: They didn't all go. Major John T. Kramer's had a
Speaker 1: crisis of conscience and sent a small rescue group, but
Speaker 1: the French v I P folks in it had not
Speaker 1: heard back from him. So the person they sent who
Speaker 1: actually found Gongole and Captain Jack Cee Lee, uh, that
Speaker 1: was their cook. So they were they were sending out
Speaker 1: the help. Yeah, exatly because let's not forget these were,
Speaker 1: um let's call them high value prisoners, right, folks that
Speaker 1: could leverage. They wanted to keep alive, and they wanted
Speaker 1: them to live and at least relatively comfortable environments, almost
Speaker 1: like uh Juliana sang in the embassy kind of situation,
Speaker 1: free to move around the facilities at quit you know,
Speaker 1: comfortable quarters and food and all of that. But at
Speaker 1: this point, um, these folks were very much in fear
Speaker 1: of their lives and they could either be executed summarily
Speaker 1: just just to get rid of any witnesses or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. I at this point it was like a
Speaker 1: scorched earth kind of situation for the for the Germans
Speaker 1: right there, trying to like get rid of any evidences
Speaker 1: at point being is you would not have felt very
Speaker 1: safe with all of these Nazis in full freak out mode,
Speaker 1: right agreed, And the battle that takes place is in
Speaker 1: some ways astonishing because the defenders were vastly outnumbered. They
Speaker 1: were fighting about a hundred to a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: s S troops. Eventually, the attackers shoot and kill the
Speaker 1: rmach major Gongol as they mentioned, they destroyed the tank,
Speaker 1: they damaged the castle walls. Even the prisoners are joining
Speaker 1: in with small arms they found after the guards ran away. Originally,
Speaker 1: the battle lasts for about six hours and things are
Speaker 1: looking increasingly dire. The allied forces that would be the
Speaker 1: German forces and the UH and the prisoners and the
Speaker 1: US forces are running out of ammunition. And then the
Speaker 1: last moment, the way that all great battles go in
Speaker 1: works of fiction and so on, just as they were
Speaker 1: getting down to their last bullets, a column of tanks
Speaker 1: that small rescue party organized by John Kramer's arrives in
Speaker 1: the afternoon and scatters the SS forces. And this Hans
Speaker 1: Fuchs kid, who's fourteen at the time, was watching it
Speaker 1: all from his family's farm. He's seeing clouds of dust
Speaker 1: and smoke and machine gun fire, that goes on and
Speaker 1: on for hours. That's that's the battle. They Oh they
Speaker 1: take prisoners, Well, you gotta take some prisoners. They got
Speaker 1: a castle at their disposal. I mean, they might as
Speaker 1: well make good use of it, right, I know, right,
Speaker 1: it's like you have to have a moot. They called
Speaker 1: it a dry moat, though, Ben, what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound as scary as a wet mode full
Speaker 1: of like alligators, right, Yeah, I guess a dry moat
Speaker 1: is just the circular ditch. Yeah, but I guess it would.
Speaker 1: It would certainly make it. You know, you couldn't like
Speaker 1: cross it with a tank or something like that. Right.
Speaker 1: It limits your path into and out of the field.
Speaker 1: Line is probably so steep, so wide that you can
Speaker 1: only cross over a bridge. That's it. That makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: So about a hundred s s troops are taken prisoner,
Speaker 1: that's according to a report from the BBC, And the
Speaker 1: only fatality on the Allied side there was Major Gongle,
Speaker 1: who later was buried in a nearby town and had
Speaker 1: a street named after him. Did we talk about the
Speaker 1: commander who killed himself? We did not, So this is
Speaker 1: backtracking is a little bit. But I just think It's
Speaker 1: interesting because this is you know, a very dramatic end, right.
Speaker 1: So I mean once it was very clear that things
Speaker 1: were not going their way, um, they were losing round,
Speaker 1: you know. By by the second uh, the actual commander
Speaker 1: of Dakao turned tail uh and ran to Castle eater
Speaker 1: Um as it was being liberated by the troops, and
Speaker 1: then he killed himself on May the second, and that's
Speaker 1: when the castle's own commandant and the guards took off,
Speaker 1: and that was what left the prisoners in charge of
Speaker 1: their own destiny kind of right, So then they were
Speaker 1: able to you know, but they were still locked inside, right, yes.
Speaker 1: So later after they start picking up the pieces of
Speaker 1: the conflict, caring for the wounded, getting rid of the dead,
Speaker 1: the French v I p s are driven off. They're
Speaker 1: on their way back to Innsbruck and then they're going
Speaker 1: to be met by senior Allied officers and then they
Speaker 1: would return to France to resume their careers. But for
Speaker 1: the U. S forces, this was a little bit um,
Speaker 1: not not a letdown, an anti climactic ending. Uh. The
Speaker 1: seven Americans and their surviving soldiers of the Vermont, because
Speaker 1: remember Gongole commanded twenty soldiers. They all piled in the
Speaker 1: back of a truck and they took a ride back
Speaker 1: to a place called Kufstein and once there the Germans
Speaker 1: are marched off to a pow camp. Uh. The soldiers
Speaker 1: rejoined their unit, and you should mention these are African
Speaker 1: American soldiers and Lee, Harry Bass and the other tankers
Speaker 1: just like called it a day. They did eventually get
Speaker 1: recognized for their leadership. Captain Jack Lee received the Distinguished
Speaker 1: Service Cross and Harry Bass received the Silver Star, and
Speaker 1: it did turn some heads over in the States. On
Speaker 1: July there was a piece that ran in the Saturday
Speaker 1: evening Posts and there's a lovely quote that summed up
Speaker 1: the whole thing, I think remarkably well. Um it was
Speaker 1: from Lee himself, the the the Akan tank commander, and
Speaker 1: he referred to it as being quote, just the damnedest thing.
Speaker 1: Oh shucks. And that is where we will leave the story.
Speaker 1: I think that Lee summed it up best. We want
Speaker 1: to hear your strange stories about wartime, you know, because
Speaker 1: it war is a terrible, terrible thing, but they're also
Speaker 1: inspiring and sometimes beautiful moments that happened in the midst
Speaker 1: of all that chaos, like the time the times that
Speaker 1: opposing forces stop fighting each other and go hang out
Speaker 1: for Christmas. Right, that's actually happened before. So let us
Speaker 1: know what sort of moving or strange or just downright
Speaker 1: ridiculous stories you have encountered in your own reading or
Speaker 1: in your own experience. Uh and let us know. On Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Twitter. You can find us as a show. You
Speaker 1: can find us individually. I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I'm at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram as and
Speaker 1: if you want to check out our Facebook community, you
Speaker 1: can do so at the Ridiculous Historians where we have
Speaker 1: to do his name me Ben or Casey on the
Speaker 1: case or make us laugh big big thanks as always too,
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram research associates Gabe Lusia and Ryan Barrish.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme are pal.
Speaker 1: Christopher Haciota is here always in spirit. Damn you the quister,
Speaker 1: Damn your eyes. And we hope to see again back
Speaker 1: on the show very soon, because I really enjoyed the secondments.
Speaker 1: Despite putting up a tough front, We're overdue. I'd love
Speaker 1: to I'd love to have him back on the show. Absolutely. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know who else I'd love to have back
Speaker 1: on the show, Ben, who's you? Because you're the co
Speaker 1: host of the show and you do a great job
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate you. Wait, who's not gonna get
Speaker 1: on the show? What? What are you firing? People? Can't
Speaker 1: fire people to fire anybody. I'm just saying, I want
Speaker 1: I look forward to the next time we do this.
Speaker 1: That was around about what I'm saying, okay, um, And
Speaker 1: I look forward to you folks. You find folks out
Speaker 1: there in podcast land joining us. Yeah, it's no smoke
Speaker 1: when we say reach out. We would We would love
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts. You are our favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show. So thank you for tuning in. See you
Speaker 1: next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.