Speaker 1: Wow, that is quite a story. And the FBI is
Speaker 1: still looking for you. Huh yeah, it's like you are
Speaker 1: right there right now. Oh good time. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: I didn't notice you all come in. I was just
Speaker 1: chatting with my friend. Paul left Tompkins. Paul get carried away.
Speaker 1: The audience is here. What oh hi guys, how are
Speaker 1: you all doing. I hope UM treated you well. This
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history and today, Paul, I thought I
Speaker 1: might have you on along with all of our friends
Speaker 1: here to talk about. How do you let me? Let
Speaker 1: me start with the simple question, Paul, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about Nazis? I gotta say, and I hope this
Speaker 1: is not uncool. But not a fan, not a fan,
Speaker 1: not a fan of Nazis. Okay, now, answillary question, Paul.
Speaker 1: Do you diss like either chocolate or peanut butter but
Speaker 1: like Reese's peanut buttercups. I'm gonna say I like them
Speaker 1: both individually and in the coke. Okay. Interesting? Is there
Speaker 1: anything that in combination you like but alone you don't like? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are certain tastes like um orange or tomato. I
Speaker 1: like them in different forms, but I don't like them
Speaker 1: as their own thing. That's okay, So this is kind
Speaker 1: of like that. Maybe maybe because we've got a Nazi, right,
Speaker 1: don't like Nazis. But he's also a cult leader and
Speaker 1: a torturer for the Chilean government and a pedophile. I
Speaker 1: don't actually think you're gonna like all those things in combination.
Speaker 1: Now that now that I read it out, let me
Speaker 1: tell you something. If a pedophile was turning a corner
Speaker 1: and ran into a torturer for the Chilean government and
Speaker 1: they became the same thing, I wouldn't think it was
Speaker 1: a great taste that that tastes that tasted better together
Speaker 1: that mash up. If it's the If it's the pedophile
Speaker 1: truck hitting the Chilean torturer truck hitting the SI truck,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make a good mix. I would like to
Speaker 1: see those trucks hit each other, though. I would be
Speaker 1: fun to see those trucks hit each other. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually think I would enjoy seeing them collide, but not
Speaker 1: not merge their skills. Anyway, this has been a tortured
Speaker 1: way of introducing the tale of a guy named Paul Schaefer.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of Paul Shaffer. I mean I've
Speaker 1: heard of not not the Letterman guy. I have to say,
Speaker 1: the Letterman guy. This might be the most unfortunate person
Speaker 1: other than Hitler to share in name with a spelled
Speaker 1: completely different. It's such an unfortunate thing when that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really not great. Um speaking as a Robert
Speaker 1: Evans Uh, but by Robert Evans just made godfather. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean probably had a couple of people tortured, right,
Speaker 1: it was Hollywood and like the seventies. Emotionally for sure,
Speaker 1: emotionally for certain. Yeah, I mean, didn't you work with Kubrick? Right? Like? Um? So.
Speaker 1: On January four, and American mathematics professor named Boris wisse
Speaker 1: Feiler was hiking in the Indian Foothills in Chile. Boris
Speaker 1: was the son of a Jewish scientist who had been
Speaker 1: forced to flee Nazi Germany in the nineteen thirties in
Speaker 1: order to you know, not get murdered. His sister still
Speaker 1: lived in the Soviet Union. Boris was an American citizen, though,
Speaker 1: and that his disappearance that night would mark him out.
Speaker 1: Is the only U. S citizen who was disappeared by
Speaker 1: the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet. So Boris wise Feiler. Now,
Speaker 1: as best we can tell, a local that wise Feiler
Speaker 1: met uh noticed that he was wearing an old backpack
Speaker 1: that he'd taken with him from Russia that had cyrillic
Speaker 1: letters on it, and he was dressed in khaki pants
Speaker 1: and under Pinochet Communism not a not good, not not
Speaker 1: big fans of communism. So this local sees he's got
Speaker 1: cyrillic writing on his backpack, turns him into the state authorities,
Speaker 1: who turned him over not to a government agency, but
Speaker 1: to a group of German Nationals who lived in a
Speaker 1: nearby cult compound and specialized in torture for the Pinochet
Speaker 1: regime as well as making broad worst. Um Boris was
Speaker 1: tortured horribly for an unknown period of time before being
Speaker 1: shot in the head and dumped into a mass grave.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have had that right after the broad worst line.
Speaker 1: Um broad worst is part of life, it is especially
Speaker 1: for these guys. Exactly now, While Boris's father had succeeded
Speaker 1: in escaping the Nazis, Boris was not so lucky because
Speaker 1: the German Nationals who carried out his torture and execution
Speaker 1: were led by a charismatic Nazi apocalypse preacher named Paul Shaffer.
Speaker 1: It is entirely possible that when the time came, Paul
Speaker 1: himself pulled the trigger. And that's that's our little introduction
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about today. Are you Are you pumped? Paul?
Speaker 1: My appetite has been quitted. It's like the mention of
Speaker 1: Broadworst has done. I could go for the broad worst.
Speaker 1: One thing that's fun about this week, Paul, is we're
Speaker 1: talking about a bastard who shares your first name. And
Speaker 1: the episode I'm writing this week is a bastard who
Speaker 1: shares my first name. We're talking about. I'm writing an
Speaker 1: episode about Robert Baden Powell of the Boy Scouts. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the Boy Scouts have been up to some
Speaker 1: fucked up ship when in the middle of a discussion
Speaker 1: of Nazi pedophile tortures you mentioned them and go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a monster match for this Halloween season. Yeah tis
Speaker 1: the season. Paul Paul Schaefer Schneider was born in the
Speaker 1: town of Siegeberg on December four, nineteen one, or he
Speaker 1: was born in Bonn. It's also possible he was born
Speaker 1: in the small town of Troy Dorf near the Dutch
Speaker 1: German border. I think all these towns are kind of
Speaker 1: near each other, as you might get from the fact
Speaker 1: that credible sources have all provided me with three different
Speaker 1: birthplaces for the man. Um there's some mixed up facts
Speaker 1: about his early life. You know, some some stuff happened
Speaker 1: in Germany about twenty years after he was born that
Speaker 1: made record keeping less than ideal in parts of the
Speaker 1: country due to sale shall we say, spontaneous fires. Um So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was born somewhere near that Dutch German border area.
Speaker 1: We don't know a tremendous amount about his early life.
Speaker 1: He seems to have been a very poor student and
Speaker 1: quite clumsy. The reason we know this is because we
Speaker 1: have one clear story from his childhood, and it's that
Speaker 1: while he was a preteen, he was attempting to untie
Speaker 1: his shoelaces with a fork. He's screwed up and he
Speaker 1: gouged out his own right eye. I mean, the physics
Speaker 1: of it, I know, right you're working through it in
Speaker 1: your head right now, trying to figure out how you
Speaker 1: do it. But if this was a sketch, how do
Speaker 1: you even fake that Daddy had a rib removed? Usually
Speaker 1: for another purpose. I mean that is wow, that's that's
Speaker 1: an I'm I'm not a coordinated man, but that is
Speaker 1: a fascinating act of discordination. It's it's the antithesis of Parkoo.
Speaker 1: So when he was twelve, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany,
Speaker 1: and since Paul was the sort of young man who
Speaker 1: was dumb enough to gouge out his own eye while
Speaker 1: untying his shoe, he really liked the Nazis. Big big
Speaker 1: Hitler fan from an early age, probably tied to the
Speaker 1: fact that he was not competent to untie his own
Speaker 1: shoe without serious injury. In nineteen thirty nine, on the
Speaker 1: eve of World War Two, Paul tried to join the
Speaker 1: elite should Stuffle or s S. They rejected him because
Speaker 1: he was missing an eye. Yeah, buddy, you're too dumb
Speaker 1: for the s S. You can't. I mean, look, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're talking about an elite force of the
Speaker 1: master race, you can't have a one eyed guy in there. No, no,
Speaker 1: unless he lost it in a cool way exactly. But
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna ask. Eventually, somebody's gonna ask, and you're gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: so you know how your shoes get really tight, you
Speaker 1: know forks, those tricky bastards. Really, they're the Jews of
Speaker 1: the silverware world. Oh, Nazis. So Paul was enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: Nazism still, and he joined either the army or the
Speaker 1: Air Force. I've heard different explanations of this too. I
Speaker 1: think it's most likely he joined the Wehrmacht. Um because
Speaker 1: he is so. He worked as a nurse. Some sources
Speaker 1: will say medic I think they were kind of the
Speaker 1: same basic gig at that time, in a field hospital
Speaker 1: and occupied France throughout the war, which is one of
Speaker 1: the better jobs you could have in the German army, right.
Speaker 1: The nightmare is being sent east. Being stationed in France
Speaker 1: is like, that's that's really where you want to be. Um.
Speaker 1: He ended World War Two as a corporal without a
Speaker 1: particularly exciting war experience. Corporals also the same rank Adolph
Speaker 1: Hitler attained in World War One, which may have brought
Speaker 1: Paul some comfort as he prepared to endure several horrible
Speaker 1: years if everyone around him pretending they had not been
Speaker 1: Nazis for a while, and awkward parties that must you know,
Speaker 1: what did you get up to? Yeah, people are trying
Speaker 1: to pin down times and day locations. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: at school, I think, yeah, yeah, because working on my degree,
Speaker 1: I've been rebuilding a classic car. I've hot air balloon
Speaker 1: trying to break a record around Seveld in sirteen years
Speaker 1: or so, so Paul had not. Again, when the war ends,
Speaker 1: we try to punish some of the Nazis. Paul's a
Speaker 1: corporal who worked in a field hospital. Nobody's after this guy, right,
Speaker 1: You'll hear people be like he was hiding from the Allies.
Speaker 1: I don't think the Allies were looking for corporals who
Speaker 1: worked in field hospitals like and I've never heard any
Speaker 1: allegations he was involved in any war crimes, which I'm
Speaker 1: not saying obviously to defend him. He would have absolutely
Speaker 1: done a war crime if he could have. I don't
Speaker 1: think the Nazis thought he was competent enough to do
Speaker 1: war crimes. We gotta keep this guy away from the war.
Speaker 1: Christ we got it working just so, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't in here. This ship is a well oiled machine.
Speaker 1: Don't let sport Gray do it. The gomer pile of
Speaker 1: the third rite. So um yeah, he uh. He becomes
Speaker 1: a Lutheran pastor, after the war and he's hired to
Speaker 1: be a young people's leader at the Evangelical Free Church,
Speaker 1: where he preached the gospel and told boys how good
Speaker 1: it was to be abstinate. Now that's a red flag
Speaker 1: to me. Some people are fine with that. I think
Speaker 1: if you're an adult and you decide to make it
Speaker 1: your job to tell teenage boys how bad sex is,
Speaker 1: there might be something questionable about you. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like girl having grown up in religion. That's just
Speaker 1: par for the course. It's like a part of everything.
Speaker 1: But if you say I want to focus on that,
Speaker 1: I think that you have to be a little concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's probably something something up there, and there was
Speaker 1: with Paul because not lock it and long into his gig,
Speaker 1: people at the church started to suspect that he had
Speaker 1: mistreated some of the boys in his care. And you
Speaker 1: don't get more details on than that. In this instance,
Speaker 1: we can guess what he was doing because of the
Speaker 1: stuff that came out later, although just knowing the way, again,
Speaker 1: this guy's a pedophile on an industrial scale. I don't
Speaker 1: actually know if he'd started fully molesting them. It may
Speaker 1: have been because people often take time to like build up.
Speaker 1: He may have just been kind of like a little
Speaker 1: bit like inappropriate touching and stuff. He may have like
Speaker 1: not built up to that. At this point, we really
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, he's actually like if if like
Speaker 1: they'll say something specific, if they can say a specific thing,
Speaker 1: but it's too grim. That's when the the the euphemisms
Speaker 1: come out. Yeah, exactly. Um, So we don't know how
Speaker 1: bad it was at this stage, but the rumors about
Speaker 1: him were vague enough that there were no criminal charges filed.
Speaker 1: Although he was forced out of the Free Church. Now,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of fans even at this point.
Speaker 1: He's a very charismatic guy. Um, and so there were
Speaker 1: a lot of adult that the Free Church who are
Speaker 1: like really surprised that he gets fired and still really
Speaker 1: liked him. One woman who knew him at the time
Speaker 1: later told a documentarian quote after Schaefer was fired, he
Speaker 1: lived for a while in the forest. He said he
Speaker 1: had a direct encounter with Jesus there and that Jesus
Speaker 1: had chosen him for a mission founding something like a
Speaker 1: community of true Christians. So already, I mean, we've had
Speaker 1: a few red flag being a Nazi red flag number one. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like, let's say I'm on the forest and
Speaker 1: Jesus appears to me and says he's got a mission
Speaker 1: for me. Let's say that back. I have to think
Speaker 1: back on all the people who have said similar things
Speaker 1: and how successful were those missions? Yeah? How good? How
Speaker 1: how often do those missions not in this nightmares? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Also, Jesus like had his mission mission accomplished. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he was like, I'll come back when I'm ready,
Speaker 1: when I'm done. He never said anything about and here
Speaker 1: and there, we're gonna give you his assignments. I mean,
Speaker 1: to be honest, what I respect about Jesus is the
Speaker 1: same thing that I respected out the Amicus brothers, where
Speaker 1: you do one great thing and you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't need to do any more of these, Like
Speaker 1: we I don't need to come back, we don't need
Speaker 1: to reboot back to the future. We're good. We're good.
Speaker 1: Like I don't need we don't need a second coming.
Speaker 1: I got it right. Um, that's why we call Jesus
Speaker 1: the Marty McFly of religion. Yes, if people were wondering,
Speaker 1: If people were wondering. Um, So he goes into the woods.
Speaker 1: God tells him to create a community of true Christian believers,
Speaker 1: and so he becomes a roving Lutheran pastor, and he
Speaker 1: spends the next several years traveling the countryside dressed in Liederhosen,
Speaker 1: playing acoustic guitar and singing songs to kids about how
Speaker 1: awesome abstinence is. A couple of flags there. I mean,
Speaker 1: even back then, when a priest brings out the guitar,
Speaker 1: this is such a drag. I don't know. I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I didn't like the guitar mass. I like
Speaker 1: the really old stuff. I like the old hymns. There's
Speaker 1: gravity og yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, tar mass is like
Speaker 1: what do you I can get this somewhere else. What
Speaker 1: do you here doing this for? Yeah? I don't need.
Speaker 1: The only guitar based religious music I want is that
Speaker 1: one Peter Paul and Mary Christmas Concert. Great album. Although,
Speaker 1: speaking of people with troubling histories involving children, I was
Speaker 1: not aware, but it was either Peter or Paul. Yeah, anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: we're really racking them up today. Yeah. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got a Nazi who gets kicked out of his
Speaker 1: first church job from his treating boys and then decides
Speaker 1: to form a community of true believers by wandering the
Speaker 1: woods and playing acoustic guitar for children about how good
Speaker 1: it is not to have sex already, also wearing tight
Speaker 1: leather pants the whole time. More red flags than the
Speaker 1: Communist Party rally at this point, like just just a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Um. That said, this is also the
Speaker 1: forties and fifties, people are not as suspicious about such
Speaker 1: things like there's I think probably most people don't even
Speaker 1: really understand that that's possible, that like a man could
Speaker 1: do that to child, which is why a lot of
Speaker 1: this is you know, able to happen. Um. Paul develops
Speaker 1: a following, and at prayer meetings he would encourage his
Speaker 1: listeners to come up and confess their sins. Over years
Speaker 1: on the road, he honed his craft and he became
Speaker 1: an exceptional public speaker. Skill augmented his natural charisma. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to him as it is to imagine he
Speaker 1: must have had natural charisma. There's a good documentary, it's
Speaker 1: a German language documentary, but it's on Netflix called Colonia
Speaker 1: that's about Paul Shaffer and everything we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: There's some audio of him from this period. He sounds
Speaker 1: like Hitler and I'm not saying that because like, oh,
Speaker 1: all German men sound like he. I don't speak German.
Speaker 1: I have listened to a lot of Hitler speeches with
Speaker 1: the subtitles on the cadence of his voice is Hitlarian
Speaker 1: and other Germans will say he spoke and I don't
Speaker 1: even know if it was conscious. This is a kid
Speaker 1: who grows up during Hitler's rise to power. That may
Speaker 1: just have been how he internalized this is how you
Speaker 1: speak to a crowd, you know. But he has that
Speaker 1: kind of speaking skill and it has an effect on people.
Speaker 1: He draws together hundreds of rededicated followers over the course
Speaker 1: of a couple of years. Um. One follower who first
Speaker 1: met him at a prayer meeting in nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: said that he was so charming that charisma radiated out
Speaker 1: of his body like beams of light, and um, this
Speaker 1: is what I But it's the same thing with like
Speaker 1: any time I hear this about somebody, somebody who's who's
Speaker 1: a leader of some kind of cult, whether it's a
Speaker 1: religious called or Hitler or whatever, there's always this thing
Speaker 1: where people say, like he just transfixed people. He was
Speaker 1: just couldn't look away. And then you see this person,
Speaker 1: You're like this dude, this guy, people, this motherfucker. Whenever
Speaker 1: I see like, I can understand. I guess on some
Speaker 1: level that like Hitler got people all worked up. He
Speaker 1: tapped into the defeated aspect of the German people and
Speaker 1: it was like, guess what, You're not defeated. We're the
Speaker 1: greatest in the world. And I can see how he
Speaker 1: could cast a spell on someone. But the it's the
Speaker 1: charisma thing that always throws me. They never ever seem
Speaker 1: charismatic when I see them. I think part of it
Speaker 1: is because charisma is so dependent upon the audience right
Speaker 1: there are. It's like with um, there's people who absolutely
Speaker 1: love Beyonce. Obviously she's huge, a massive, massive, massive star.
Speaker 1: Millions of people are are drawn to her. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't care one way or the other about her,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not. That's not an insult. I just like
Speaker 1: whatever charisma she has, it doesn't like do the thing
Speaker 1: for me. Um. I am magnetically attracted to Pedro Pascal,
Speaker 1: and I assume there are people in the world who
Speaker 1: are not, although I can't get inside of that head.
Speaker 1: Who would dare? Who would dare? The funniest thing about
Speaker 1: about his charisma, Paul, The absolute funniest thing about his
Speaker 1: charisma is that if you look at it again Colonia Dignidad,
Speaker 1: this this documentary on on Netflix, if you look at
Speaker 1: the early footage of him from like the fifties, when
Speaker 1: he's still a youngish guy. Did you ever watch Star
Speaker 1: Trek the Next Generate? Of course you watched Dart. He
Speaker 1: looks like Barkley. He looks like Reginald Barkley's It's very
Speaker 1: weird because again, hundreds of people followed this man into
Speaker 1: an unthinkable situation and he looks like Barkley. What a world.
Speaker 1: It just goes to show. It's just like it's it's
Speaker 1: like Trump. There are people who find that man irresistible
Speaker 1: and he looks like Donald Trump, like depictions of him.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, as this, as this, like great Superman
Speaker 1: are are always So It's it's chilling in a way
Speaker 1: because it's like you are we looking at the same dude,
Speaker 1: what is happening here? And it's that they have a
Speaker 1: whole however many years they've been alive of life that
Speaker 1: has built them into a person who finds this person charismatic.
Speaker 1: That's the way you know that It's like I say,
Speaker 1: I think there is a cult who could ensnare everyone.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody is impossible to be brought in
Speaker 1: by a cult. I don't think it's unless maybe you've
Speaker 1: already been in a cult and like you get that
Speaker 1: kind of like PTSD. But I think every bloody could
Speaker 1: at some point in their life be reached by some
Speaker 1: coult out there. Um, it just depends. It's like a drug.
Speaker 1: Anybody could become an addict to something. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: I accept your cult challenge and we'll see about that,
Speaker 1: all right, Paul. Are we having a cult off? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: you know meetings, this is this is what l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard and Frank or Um, Robert Heinland did. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we got both the Church of Scientology and the Libertarian
Speaker 1: Party art of it. So I think this could go
Speaker 1: really well. We'll do it good though. We'll do it
Speaker 1: good though. We'll do it good. Yeah, I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: do will be nice. Cults. I'm still gonna I'm still
Speaker 1: gonna have twenty year olds build the navy for me
Speaker 1: and search for gold in the Caribbeans. That's not negable.
Speaker 1: That is non negotiable. A lot of teenagers searching for
Speaker 1: gold for me. So after several years in the proverbial
Speaker 1: and also sometimes literal wilderness, because I think he did
Speaker 1: live in the woods sometimes, Paul Schaefer had gathered enough
Speaker 1: followers and money because you know, again, part of the
Speaker 1: whole cult thing is you get a bunch of people together,
Speaker 1: you have them pool their money so you can buy things.
Speaker 1: They buy a compound um which they intend to turn
Speaker 1: into an orphanage outside of a town called troy d
Speaker 1: Orf for war widows and orphaned children. Now again, this
Speaker 1: is the early fifties, mid fifties in Germany, a plot
Speaker 1: of desperate ass people. Um So like as my family,
Speaker 1: my grandpa was stationed in Germany like immediately after the war,
Speaker 1: along with a bunch of his brothers. Um Our family
Speaker 1: heirlooms are like we have a bunch of hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty year old antique, precious grandfather clocks that he bought
Speaker 1: for like pennies because everybody was starving in Germany. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: that's that was the situation. There was nothing. So Paul
Speaker 1: is opening the center is like, Okay, there's all these
Speaker 1: these women whose whose entire families are gone. It's just
Speaker 1: them and and kids, sometimes not even their kids, just
Speaker 1: children they took from their destroy town or from this
Speaker 1: apartment building that collapsed. They need a place to stay.
Speaker 1: And that's on the surface, a very good thing to do, right, um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of these people are also refugees from
Speaker 1: from the East, people who when the Soviets occupy there's
Speaker 1: this Again, never to equate Soviet with Nazi war crimes,
Speaker 1: because there's no equating, but a couple of million German
Speaker 1: women get raped during the occupation of of of Germany. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking nightmare. Um. So a lot of of
Speaker 1: these women who like have kids as a result of
Speaker 1: this and have no resources. And again, on the surface,
Speaker 1: creating a place to take care of these people, to
Speaker 1: educate their kids, to give them food, a leg up,
Speaker 1: one of the best things you could possibly do. But
Speaker 1: also if you're a predator, anyone who's going to need
Speaker 1: that facility is going to be someone with almost no
Speaker 1: recourse to to deal with the fact that you're praying
Speaker 1: on their children. Like it's both, you could say, one
Speaker 1: of the best things you could do, and also, as
Speaker 1: a pedophile, the best kind of situation you could create
Speaker 1: for your your self, and that's what Paul is doing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad, Paul. That's pretty bad. Um. And also
Speaker 1: this has never really talked about any of the coverage.
Speaker 1: I've seemed it has to have affected it. When you
Speaker 1: think about the women in that situation and what they
Speaker 1: had lived through during the war, I'm going to guess
Speaker 1: they're able to tolerate a lot more fucked up shipped
Speaker 1: from Paul, just because it's like, well, I lived through
Speaker 1: World War Two, Mike, your your your barometer for what
Speaker 1: is an unacceptable situation is just completely off forever. I
Speaker 1: think that's a big factor in this whole story. Um.
Speaker 1: So Paul offers these women and their families food security
Speaker 1: and stability, um. And the people who are not. So
Speaker 1: there's a mix of He's got these people who are
Speaker 1: living in the orphanage because they have nothing, and all
Speaker 1: of these people who live in the area around who
Speaker 1: are like middle class and they're funding all of this
Speaker 1: because the tithed ten percent of their income to Paul. Um.
Speaker 1: That's one of the requirements for being in his cult.
Speaker 1: The others that you have to confess your sins day
Speaker 1: ideally to him. I think it's always to him at
Speaker 1: this stage. Yeah, they have these big meetings where everybody
Speaker 1: talks about all the bad stuff they've done, which we
Speaker 1: talked about synanon last time. Paul. This is happening at
Speaker 1: the same time, late fifties, early sixties. All of these
Speaker 1: different cults are doing scientology happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: Huge emphasis is kind of confessed. They don't call it
Speaker 1: confessing your sins, but that's the idea. It's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: It's the collateral thing. Yeah, I mean, it's like it
Speaker 1: makes sense, Like I get why having having a bunch
Speaker 1: of ship on people that they have admitted to you
Speaker 1: of their own free will, um, could be very handy um.
Speaker 1: Later on. There's that. Here's the other thing I find interesting, Paul.
Speaker 1: All of the cults that do this all start late fifties,
Speaker 1: early sixties, and all of the people who become cult
Speaker 1: members are like the children and the people who came
Speaker 1: out the other side of World War two. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: this idea of like the center of our cult is
Speaker 1: going to be the confessing of sins is huge. Maybe
Speaker 1: because there's no therapy and every but a lot of
Speaker 1: people in need of therapy because they have what. I
Speaker 1: think there's something there. I've never really seen it dealt
Speaker 1: with enough, but it's such a common through line in
Speaker 1: all of these cults, like the confession of sins that
Speaker 1: start up in this period of time. Um, like the
Speaker 1: group confession of like things you've done that's bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think there might be there's something. There's
Speaker 1: gotta be something there in Germans, in lot of sins
Speaker 1: to confess, as as a population speaking of sins to confess,
Speaker 1: it's time for an adverb you know who never confesses
Speaker 1: their sins advertisers, that is for sure. Yeah, or just
Speaker 1: capitalism and broad um. Actually, capitalism makes it very profitable
Speaker 1: to confess and discuss the sins of capitalism, which is
Speaker 1: one of the great geniuses of the of the system. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think about that while you listen to the ads,
Speaker 1: we're back so um for a while. Things are good,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface. You know, he's taken all
Speaker 1: these women, these families in, He's got his flock. People
Speaker 1: are tithing, confessing their sins. Um. Obviously, the reality is
Speaker 1: that Paul is a pedophile and again a grand scale,
Speaker 1: which is why he established an orphanage in the first place,
Speaker 1: So he is molesting an unknown number but not certainly
Speaker 1: on an insignificant number of these kids. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: one of the widows at his orphanage came forward to
Speaker 1: the police and reported Paul for molesting her kids. A
Speaker 1: warrant was issued for his arrest, and Schaefer fled to
Speaker 1: the Middle East with two trusted assistants. So he is
Speaker 1: now a wanted man in Germany and will be for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. So he gets the funk
Speaker 1: out of Germany never comes back. UM. It is important
Speaker 1: to note that a lot of I don't have any
Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage of his flock stays with,
Speaker 1: but hundreds of them do. UM. A couple of hundred people,
Speaker 1: maybe three four hundred people. UM continue to believe that
Speaker 1: he's a legitimate holy man, and that the allegations against
Speaker 1: him were I think part of a communist conspiracy. Is
Speaker 1: kind of the way it was generally like justified. UM.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly how Schaefer talked to his flock
Speaker 1: about all this stuff, but we have some hints and
Speaker 1: how he explained this to them, And the fact that
Speaker 1: by the late nineteen fifties, Paul had become a follower
Speaker 1: of an American evangelical preacher named William Branham. Now this
Speaker 1: is gonna be a digression, Paul, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a necessary one. In the US digression. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. You said only one digression per episode and
Speaker 1: threatened me with your cattle proud, but I appreciate your
Speaker 1: your openness. I'm feeling generous to digressions today, thank you
Speaker 1: so um. In the US, in the late forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: there's this huge resurgence of evangelical Christianity again right after
Speaker 1: World War Two. This is all tied to the in
Speaker 1: and on in the Confession. When all of this is
Speaker 1: tied together, specifically, what what has a big surge is
Speaker 1: the kind of charismatic evangelism that would have eventually evolve
Speaker 1: into the moral majority and the religious right. This is
Speaker 1: known historically as the post World War two Healing Revival.
Speaker 1: Since it occurred right at the same time the Cold
Speaker 1: War kicked off, you won't be surprised to hear that
Speaker 1: it was profoundly anti communist. And again it's not until
Speaker 1: the seventies, like seventy three, seventy four something like that,
Speaker 1: that it starts to become political in the traditional sense,
Speaker 1: like a right wing movement, and you know, anti abortion
Speaker 1: gets tacked on, and it becomes eventually like a part
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party. That hasn't happened yet, but it evolves.
Speaker 1: For that evolves from this Jerry fallwell, and stuff all
Speaker 1: comes out of this post World War two healing revival,
Speaker 1: which is from the beginning rooted in anti communism because
Speaker 1: of the Cold War. So all of this is a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on, is what I'm saying now, Brandom,
Speaker 1: this preacher who Paul Shaffer comes to follow is a
Speaker 1: preacher in Indiana. He's an evangelical preacher in Indiana, and
Speaker 1: Indiana in the late nineteen forties was still from the
Speaker 1: Second ku Klux Klan. The KKK national office had been
Speaker 1: located there, and even though the clan had faded in
Speaker 1: size and influenced by the fifties, Indiana still had a
Speaker 1: lot of clansmen. William Branham had been brought into the
Speaker 1: Pentecostal faith by an official clan spokesman named Roy Davis.
Speaker 1: So the guy who brings Brannaman is a klansman. And
Speaker 1: as you might expect. Branham is rather hard right in
Speaker 1: his own beliefs, telling his tens of thousands of followers
Speaker 1: that they must strictly follow the Bible, reject communism, and
Speaker 1: ensure that women obey their husbands no matter what. Um not,
Speaker 1: not great stuff coming in here. Brandham later inducted a
Speaker 1: charismatic young preacher. So Brandham gets brought in by this clansman,
Speaker 1: and he brings in a charismatic young preacher to the
Speaker 1: evangelical faith and guy you might have heard of named
Speaker 1: Jim Jones. Boy, we had our real best stuff coming
Speaker 1: for you today, Like The Avengers of Evil, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Adventures of Weird sixties cult Leaders. Yeah. Um God, And
Speaker 1: you know the guy who played what's the name of
Speaker 1: the dude in The Avengers, the suit guy who gets
Speaker 1: killed in the first movie and then gets his own
Speaker 1: TV Yeah. Click. Great. Honestly, wouldn't make a bad Paul
Speaker 1: Schaeffer good actor. Doesn't look wildly different from him. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're doing an Avengers of Evangelical cult Leaders, which
Speaker 1: is a terrible idea, I mean it's it's a terrible
Speaker 1: idea to do in life, but for a movie, I
Speaker 1: mean I would I'd go to a matinee, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? It would be fun if if that
Speaker 1: movie was just like Paul Shaffer, Jim Jones and Aunt
Speaker 1: Man played by Paul red Man. What are you doing here?
Speaker 1: Why do you have hundreds of people in the jungle?
Speaker 1: So um, Paul Rudd could absolutely pull that off by
Speaker 1: the very charismatic so brandam. Later, So Brandon brings Jim
Speaker 1: Jones into the faith, and Brandon and Jim Jones do
Speaker 1: preaching revival meetings to together in the late nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and early sixties. And I'm gonna quote from a write
Speaker 1: up by John Collins from San Diego University here and
Speaker 1: this is He's too. Collins is writing about how this
Speaker 1: healing revival in the United States Branham and Jones, how
Speaker 1: this influences Paul Shaffer. The Healing Revival itself coincided with
Speaker 1: the Second Red Scare of nineteen forty seven to nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, and some revivalists of that era claimed to
Speaker 1: have prophetic insight into what they considered to be the
Speaker 1: impending destruction of the United States. The state of Indiana
Speaker 1: heavily impacted by the propaganda of the Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: and its anti communist speeches in literature held crowds of
Speaker 1: people eager to hear any extraordinary insight into the turmoil ahead.
Speaker 1: Two years prior to the Jones Brandon revival, at the
Speaker 1: Cattle Tabernacle, William Brannam began proclaiming the first of several
Speaker 1: of his doomsday predictions, claiming that nineteen fifty four was
Speaker 1: the year of destruction. Only two months prior to their revival,
Speaker 1: Brandam updated his prediction to nineteen fifty six as the
Speaker 1: final year for America to accept his vision of the gospel.
Speaker 1: This prediction came with emphasis on his claim of a
Speaker 1: prophetic vis describing communist Russia's bombing northern Kentucky and southern Indiana.
Speaker 1: His doomsday predictions appeared to have finally made an influence
Speaker 1: on Jim Jones. By nineteen sixty one, Jones himself began
Speaker 1: claiming prophetic vision of the same bombing. In November of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, Brandham claimed that great men around the
Speaker 1: world were predicting that the first bomb from Russia would
Speaker 1: drop in drop in Louisville, Kentucky, a mile from the
Speaker 1: Indiana border. Around the same time, in the fall of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, Jim Jones began claiming to have had
Speaker 1: a prophetic vision of Indianapolis being consumed in nuclear holocaust.
Speaker 1: So this is fascinating. This Jim Jones connection is fascinating
Speaker 1: because he and Paul Schaeffer both huge fans of Brandham
Speaker 1: and both do the same basic thing, which is take
Speaker 1: a group of people from their home country to a
Speaker 1: foreign country to create a cult that then does a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of violence. Um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I'm sorry what you are we talking about where Jim
Speaker 1: Jones gets involved fifty nine Paul Shaffer flees sixty one
Speaker 1: is when Jim Jones, I think when he leaves. Actually,
Speaker 1: so Jim Jones hits the ground running in ens of
Speaker 1: like well though Jones starts creating with Brandham in the fifties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Jim Jones will do a hole of Jim Jones episode.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. But one of the things that's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is that he and Paul Schaeffer have the same
Speaker 1: kind of mentor guy, the same basic journey, absolutely opposite politics.
Speaker 1: Paul Schaeffer is a fucking Nazi, right like literally literally
Speaker 1: a Nazi Jim Jones is a lifelong anti racist activist.
Speaker 1: He spoke regularly about the need for socialism. Most of
Speaker 1: his followers were black, um, and a huge part of
Speaker 1: what he was doing with why he took people out
Speaker 1: of the United States was this nation is so lost
Speaker 1: to fascism and racism that we can't survive here. We
Speaker 1: have to flee to someone where we couldn't create an ethical,
Speaker 1: multiracial society. Um. Whereas Paul Schaeffer is a Nazi. And
Speaker 1: it's fascinating that they have the same religious uh inspiration
Speaker 1: behind what they're doing, and they do the same things
Speaker 1: for exactly opposite politics, and they do it at the
Speaker 1: same fucking time. Um, because nineteen sixty one is when
Speaker 1: both guys leave to start their cults in foreign countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Um. It's like the common denominator could be
Speaker 1: the problem, could could be what could be the problem?
Speaker 1: Could be the problem? Yeah, maybe we should look at
Speaker 1: what the common denominators, maybe the Pentecostal faith is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've just thrown it out there. Yeah. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get too much into that. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be canceling the snake handlers. Well, let me just
Speaker 1: take a little sip of Strict nine here. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: do some psychic surgery. We'll talk more again. Jim Jones
Speaker 1: deserves a couple of episodes on his own fascinating story.
Speaker 1: But um so it's hard for me to say whether
Speaker 1: or not Paul Schaffer was a real believer in Brandom's
Speaker 1: message of illuming apocalypse or if he was an opportunist
Speaker 1: who was like, oh, this guy is preaching. Because Schaffer
Speaker 1: is not just pre ching that, he's uh that the
Speaker 1: US is going to get nuked in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: actually the same year that Brandam and Jim Jones preach
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis. Later that year, Brandham goes to Germany and
Speaker 1: he preaches that Germany is gonna get nuked too, And
Speaker 1: Paul Schaeffer is a follower of this guy, goes to
Speaker 1: his followers and says, hey, Germany is not safe anymore.
Speaker 1: And it just is coincidental that also he can't be
Speaker 1: in Germany anymore because he's wanted for the police for
Speaker 1: molesting kids. It works, people, I will give people of
Speaker 1: that era in this it was very easy to believe
Speaker 1: that anywhere was going to be nuked. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is not unreasonable, Like it barely didn't happen, Like we
Speaker 1: were right on the edge for a while there. Um.
Speaker 1: Thankfully we solved that problem, and nuclear apocalypse is no
Speaker 1: longer a looming threat entirely in the hands of a
Speaker 1: single person and a given point in time. What a relief,
Speaker 1: What a relief. Um. So. In nineteen sixty one, Paul
Speaker 1: Shaffer takes the first ten of his followers overseas to Chile.
Speaker 1: He had apparently decided that Chile in particular was a
Speaker 1: good place to move after a chance meeting with the
Speaker 1: Chilean ambassador when he's in the Middle East, and the
Speaker 1: ambassador didn't know this guy's an accused pedophile. It was like,
Speaker 1: you're looking for a place to move your flock of
Speaker 1: religious followers. We got a shipload of Chile. I mean
Speaker 1: so much Chile to be handed out. Come and get
Speaker 1: your Chile. Um. The very best information in English about
Speaker 1: Schaefer's cult comes from an article in The American Scholar
Speaker 1: by Bruce Falconer, which is an incredible name for a journalist. Um.
Speaker 1: He writes, quote Faden is a Falconer named Bruce journalist.
Speaker 1: Bruce journalist. No, no, I'm in the falconry the other
Speaker 1: guys the journalist um quote. A faded black and white
Speaker 1: photograph shows Schaefer stepping off the plane in Santiago in
Speaker 1: January nineteen sixty one and a long black winter coat
Speaker 1: and matching fedora, smiling faintly. Within a year, using funds
Speaker 1: collected from his congregation back in Germany, Schaefer bought an
Speaker 1: abandoned forty four hundred acre ranch several hundred miles south
Speaker 1: of Santiago, which he and some ten original settlers from
Speaker 1: Germany began to rebuild. By the end of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: an initial group of approximately two hundred and thirty Germans,
Speaker 1: the bulk of Schaefer's congregation, had immigrated from Europe to
Speaker 1: the newly named Colonia Dignidad Dignity Colony. Two more waves
Speaker 1: of German pilgrims followed in nineteen sixty six and seventy three,
Speaker 1: most belonging to the fifteen families that formed the core
Speaker 1: of Schaefer's following. So this is the way this works,
Speaker 1: and it's there's footage of that documentary. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of like wild wild country stuff where you've got these
Speaker 1: groups of white people in in the middle of the wilderness,
Speaker 1: who are like putting together building you know, these massive
Speaker 1: barracks is and barns and whatnot from kind of unhewn
Speaker 1: wild land. Um. And one of the things about this
Speaker 1: is that there's not enough space to host everybody at first.
Speaker 1: So he says, at first, Hey, we're just gonna build
Speaker 1: one big barracks to host everybody, and everyone's gonna live
Speaker 1: communally instead of in family groups and houses. But that's temporary.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. Eventually every family is going to get their
Speaker 1: own house. It's just right now, that's not practical. So
Speaker 1: keep that in mind that Chile, there's a lot. But
Speaker 1: you can't make a house in a night, Paul. You
Speaker 1: can if you're Jimmy Carter and you're motivated by the
Speaker 1: ghosts of all the war corrects you had to do
Speaker 1: as president. So but Jimmy Carter's president, well, not quite president,
Speaker 1: but not far from it at this point. So Schaefer's
Speaker 1: passage into Chile was eased by the fact that the
Speaker 1: elected government at the time was led by President George Alessandri,
Speaker 1: a conservative, who gave him personal permission to create his
Speaker 1: Dignity Colony. The land he bought was a former farm
Speaker 1: outside of a town called Parol, dead in the middle
Speaker 1: of Chile. Nestled amongst the Indian foothills. It was a
Speaker 1: fairly isolated place, and this allowed Paul to exert something
Speaker 1: like total control over his followers. In Germany, most of
Speaker 1: his congregation had not lived with him. He did have
Speaker 1: his orphanage and a corps of single mothers and children
Speaker 1: who had no choice but to stay with him, but
Speaker 1: much of his congregation had lived in their own private homes.
Speaker 1: People giving him money all had houses and stuff nearby.
Speaker 1: Now that they were all in Chile, though, everybody effectively
Speaker 1: lived with Schaefer and thus under his rule at all times,
Speaker 1: and he quickly took total control. Step one was to
Speaker 1: forbid anyone from engaging in private conversations. So you cannot
Speaker 1: talk if there's just two of you, as he tells
Speaker 1: his flock quote, if two are gathered, they are under
Speaker 1: the devil. If three are gathered, they are under Jesus.
Speaker 1: So because the Sophie were under the devil right now, Paul, thanks, wait,
Speaker 1: now we're under Jesus because of Sophie. Never mind, who
Speaker 1: was just you and I would be at It's hard
Speaker 1: to keep there's a lot going on here to keep
Speaker 1: track of. But it's like it's actually it's I'm a
Speaker 1: little messed up. Yeah, no, there's there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on here, going on a lot of people because Jesus
Speaker 1: of being the devil to Robert. That's right, that's right,
Speaker 1: and you know what, maybe he was. We don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, now that's another episode behind the Jesus. So
Speaker 1: back in Germany, Schaefer's followers had been ordered to confess
Speaker 1: their sins on a regular basis, as often as possible.
Speaker 1: In group. This was ratcheted up though. Sins now had
Speaker 1: to be confessed immediately, whether the sins were physical actions
Speaker 1: or just thoughts. Now. Another key aspect of life at
Speaker 1: the Dignity Colony was that children and their parents had
Speaker 1: to be separated forever. Like you said, that seems to you, huh,
Speaker 1: it's like that. I don't know. What's so what's amazing
Speaker 1: to me about because this this was sent in onto
Speaker 1: right where they separated the kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, and right around the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't that's not an immediate red flag is always
Speaker 1: like that's that's how sad cults are is that you're
Speaker 1: so sucked into this thing that there must be something
Speaker 1: inside of you, and said, is this right that they
Speaker 1: take my kids away from I feel like it's natural
Speaker 1: for children to be important to parents. It's almost like
Speaker 1: I'm having an instinct right now. Yeah, I am having
Speaker 1: to fight against Yeah, this feels maybe unnatural, maybe abandoning
Speaker 1: your children and having no contact with them through forces
Speaker 1: like not human. But what do I know? What do
Speaker 1: I know? He's holy? I'm not He's He's the holy
Speaker 1: Man who can't live in Germany for unspecified reasons. Also,
Speaker 1: I did tell him that I thought about a boob recently.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I don't want that tid thing getting out.
Speaker 1: He can tell my parents who were Nazis. So another yea,
Speaker 1: So parents and children had to be separated. Now, Paul,
Speaker 1: to go into this little detail, I need to note
Speaker 1: the source here is Wikipedia, and as a rule, I
Speaker 1: don't like to use Wikipedia as a source for my episodes,
Speaker 1: not because it's not a useful it's very useful, but
Speaker 1: because you can always trace the claims back, and that's
Speaker 1: always ideal. But of the claims for this episode are
Speaker 1: based on recorded conversations that Schaefer had with people, and
Speaker 1: those were translated by somebody who was doing the wickie,
Speaker 1: and that's where I found the translation. So we're trusting
Speaker 1: them a little bit on this. Um, I don't see
Speaker 1: a reason not to, particularly um cat caveat Emptoor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this translation from Wikipedia claims that Schaefer justified his
Speaker 1: child parents separation policy by claiming the problems in child
Speaker 1: education aren't the children, they are always the parents, because
Speaker 1: the parents are responsible for the sins of the children. True.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's that's that's not again that's good
Speaker 1: cult ship though, because that's the thing where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well you can't argue that point. But it's also it's
Speaker 1: irrelevant to the idea of separating children permanently from their parents,
Speaker 1: like exact, well, yeah, generally, if a kid is doing
Speaker 1: something fucked up, it's the parents something the parent it
Speaker 1: is involved because their kids. You know. Essentially, the reasoning is,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do something, do it right. So if
Speaker 1: the if the parents are responsible for the sins uh
Speaker 1: and and and intrudes on the teaching, I just gotta
Speaker 1: get those kids out of there. Got to get those
Speaker 1: kids out of there, Gotta unparent them. That's the problem. Now.
Speaker 1: The reality, of course, is that again Paul Shaffer was
Speaker 1: a pedophile on an industrial scale, and as a pedophile,
Speaker 1: your best situation, the situation he had in the orphanage
Speaker 1: was pretty good, but obviously one of those moms was
Speaker 1: able to go to the cops because they were still
Speaker 1: living in society. The best situation is to drop out
Speaker 1: of society, have your own weird, self sufficient cult where
Speaker 1: parents and their children are forced to live separately, but
Speaker 1: you have total run over all of the facilities and
Speaker 1: couldn't go anywhere. That's that's your best case scenario as
Speaker 1: a pedophile. Um. Yeah, and he's orchestrated this, and I
Speaker 1: have to think I don't. It's always the question like
Speaker 1: what do they what do they believe? How much of
Speaker 1: it did they buy into? With any cult leader, you
Speaker 1: have that question. With Schaefer, maybe he believed something. But
Speaker 1: I can't help but see everything he's doing is this
Speaker 1: extremely calculated, years long plan to develop the best case
Speaker 1: scenario for a child molester. Like like that really feels
Speaker 1: like at least a big part of what's going on here.
Speaker 1: I mean because I don't know, I have not studied pedophilia.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like the but what from what I
Speaker 1: what I kind of just know from osmosis is like
Speaker 1: the thing that makes pedophiles so horrible is that they
Speaker 1: have convinced themselves that they are that this is okay
Speaker 1: to do, and that people don't understand it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it's like the only that that's why I have
Speaker 1: to keep it hidden is because nobody would understand ort
Speaker 1: understand what a what a pure love this is or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that that you would want to
Speaker 1: uh create a world literally a world what you can
Speaker 1: just do whatever you want and you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about people understanding it or not. Yeah, you make
Speaker 1: the moral rules here so you don't have to care
Speaker 1: about what other people and you have convinced yourself that
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that you
Speaker 1: just have to you have to explain it in a
Speaker 1: way that people will understand because they're not going to
Speaker 1: understand the purity of what you are doing. Um, so
Speaker 1: put it in terms of these these sort of like
Speaker 1: these less evolved people like I don't know what they mean.
Speaker 1: I think that's how Schaper sees it, Yeah, because he
Speaker 1: also sees we'll talk about this more. But like traditional
Speaker 1: sex between adults as horrible and to be avoided at
Speaker 1: all costs. My god, I know this is um. There's
Speaker 1: a lot going on with Mr Paul. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you're curious about the experience of little kids taken from
Speaker 1: a relatively normal home life in Germany to this whole world,
Speaker 1: I want to read you the story of a kid
Speaker 1: named Werner Schmidka Um. This is from a write up
Speaker 1: in Reuters Quote. He sailed to Chile in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: was a two year old, along with his mother and
Speaker 1: nine brothers and sisters, one of whom died as a
Speaker 1: child in Colonia Dignidad. His parents were convinced to sell
Speaker 1: the family home and follow Schaeffer to South America by
Speaker 1: his powerful preaching and promise of a more godly life.
Speaker 1: Schmidka's father stayed in Germany to look after the sect's
Speaker 1: business interests and joined them in Chile eight years later.
Speaker 1: On board the ship, the children were separated from their mother,
Speaker 1: whom Schmidka remembers as a good hearted woman, and then
Speaker 1: were kept apart like the other families in the enclave.
Speaker 1: In their new home. Schmika lived in the Timber kinder
Speaker 1: House or children's house, where Schaeffer had his private apartment.
Speaker 1: It was there that he first encountered the charismatic leader.
Speaker 1: One or two boys would be taken to his room
Speaker 1: every day, and one day I was called Schmidka told Reuters.
Speaker 1: He sat me down on his bed and started to
Speaker 1: stroke me and ask me questions, to talk the way
Speaker 1: a father talks to his child. And I had no
Speaker 1: parents anymore. I have never forgotten my first dealings with Shaeffer,
Speaker 1: he said. I was about seven or eight. That is
Speaker 1: when the abuse and rape started. So they're a lot
Speaker 1: going on here. One of the things he's doing is
Speaker 1: he's in order to make these kids, I think, more compliant,
Speaker 1: you take away their parents and then you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: the father figure for all of the kids here. And
Speaker 1: not only does that mean the parents aren't around to complain,
Speaker 1: but like kids, the parents, you know, um, and they
Speaker 1: don't they're they're more they're understanding of the moral universe
Speaker 1: is heavily influenced by parents. And so if this guy
Speaker 1: who's the only father figure they're allowed, is saying, this
Speaker 1: is just what you do, Yeah, it's just what you do.
Speaker 1: You're eight you know, Yeah, it's pretty funked up. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's real bad, like I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's already monstrous enough. And then when you get into
Speaker 1: the what feels like the deviousness of it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's heartbreaking that somebody, somebody can be this evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is evil on like an almost incomprehensible scale, because
Speaker 1: he spent like a decade orchestrating this, like the work
Speaker 1: that was put into it. Yeah, um, it's it's honestly,
Speaker 1: is so far a pretty unique story that I've come across,
Speaker 1: Like this is a thank God like yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know what's not a unique story advertisements, the story of
Speaker 1: the success of all of our fantastic advertisers. That's not
Speaker 1: unique at all because there's so many wonderful products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast. So we're back, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the fact that there's elements of this
Speaker 1: in a number of cults, taking kids away from parents,
Speaker 1: even like Ron Hubbard did this to some of his
Speaker 1: followers and stuff, and it wasn't like I don't I've
Speaker 1: never come across any evidence that he was a child molester.
Speaker 1: It's also just like as a cult leader. The concept
Speaker 1: of a family is one of your chief enemies, right like.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so we have, Oh, I no way of
Speaker 1: knowing how many children Schaeffer abused. It's not even entirely
Speaker 1: clear to me. I think it was was boys, just boys,
Speaker 1: but that I can't say that to a point of certainty.
Speaker 1: All of the direct claims I've heard from victims were male.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm sort of locked out from a lot
Speaker 1: of the survivor accounts of this guy because I don't
Speaker 1: read German, and a decent number of those accounts are
Speaker 1: in German language print books that have not been digitized,
Speaker 1: um in any way or translated. One thing that's clear
Speaker 1: is that Paul Schaeffer absolutely hated the concept of people
Speaker 1: having sex in a way that did not involve him
Speaker 1: molesting children. There's a story that's told in that Netflix
Speaker 1: documentary of of two of his victim well to two
Speaker 1: people who were in the cult, one of whom, as
Speaker 1: a young boy, was one of his victims. Um and
Speaker 1: they're married now, and they talk about there was one
Speaker 1: time early on in the cults history where they did
Speaker 1: a big dance with all the men and women, and
Speaker 1: Schaeffer saw the way they tell the story, he saw
Speaker 1: a couple of like young couples, like little kids, who
Speaker 1: were clearly like into each other, including this couple who
Speaker 1: again lad to get married, dancing together, and it it
Speaker 1: enraged him because he was jealous of the boys that
Speaker 1: the girls were like. That's why he starts to separate
Speaker 1: the sex, because he's insanely jealous that there will be
Speaker 1: rivals for the attention of these little boys. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's why he separates the genders. Uh, that's that's what
Speaker 1: they claim. I don't know, like you know that they're
Speaker 1: they're coming at this from one perspective. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much that it was played ahead of time. But um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting in that documentary, while
Speaker 1: the husband relates the stories of the time Schaefer abused him,
Speaker 1: his wife is sitting there next to him. It was
Speaker 1: also in the cult and I think, if you want
Speaker 1: to look at the purest expression of hatred I've ever
Speaker 1: seen on a human face, her face in that scene is, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's chilling. Um. Obviously completely justified, but it is quite
Speaker 1: a thing to see. UM. So back in Germany, Schaefer
Speaker 1: had obviously preached about abstinence constantly, and now that he
Speaker 1: was in Chile, he insisted that everybody be abstinent, even
Speaker 1: married couples. Schaefer preached that women were temptresses who would
Speaker 1: uncontrollably drive men too sexual sin and pull them away
Speaker 1: from God. Channeling his spiritual mentor Brandam, he argued that
Speaker 1: this was why women needed to be tightly controlled by men.
Speaker 1: But unlike Brandam, he didn't believe that husbands could be
Speaker 1: trusted with this job. Only he could keep sexual anarchy
Speaker 1: at bay. So he's taking this this this traditional Christian
Speaker 1: cult leaders like, women have to be controlled because of
Speaker 1: their uncontrollable sexuality. So you have to make sure people
Speaker 1: women are tightly unalish until they're married, and then it's
Speaker 1: there husband's responsive. Shaffer's like, even if they've got a husband,
Speaker 1: they'll be fucking and God doesn't what. People fucking know what.
Speaker 1: Let me take care of this. I got a better idea.
Speaker 1: I'll be in charge of it, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. Isn't that great as time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's work for you, because you just can't. As time
Speaker 1: went on, women and men were entirely i selated from
Speaker 1: each other at the Colonial women were dressed at all
Speaker 1: time in baggy sackcloth dresses that were meant to hide
Speaker 1: every hint of breasts or hips. They wore their hair
Speaker 1: in tight buns. Both men and women engaged in constant
Speaker 1: hard labor, sometimes for twelve hours a day to ensure
Speaker 1: they were too tired to bone. The side effect of
Speaker 1: this is that they made a lot of money For
Speaker 1: Paul Shaffer, these are Germans, you know, they're good at
Speaker 1: They're good at work, industrious people. Yeah. So, after he'd
Speaker 1: arrived in Chile, his agents back in Germany has succeeded
Speaker 1: in selling his old orphanage, which he used to buy
Speaker 1: a German stone crushing machine in order to operate a
Speaker 1: profitable quarry. His followers began to farm too, and in
Speaker 1: a few years they were selling both wheat and quarried stone.
Speaker 1: Gradually they build up a financial but they do start
Speaker 1: selling like broad worst and stuff like German. They start
Speaker 1: making and selling like raising animals, making German food products
Speaker 1: to sell to Chile like Argentina has a sizeable German
Speaker 1: expat community for reasons that are not right. Uh, but
Speaker 1: all of this allows them to build a financial base. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they were able to build a lot of infrastructure
Speaker 1: on this compound, including several barracks, is for the faithful
Speaker 1: to live in. And again it starts as like we
Speaker 1: all have to live in the same barracks, and then
Speaker 1: all men and have to live in one and women
Speaker 1: have to live in the other. Because we haven't been
Speaker 1: here long, we don't have time to make everyone a house.
Speaker 1: And then gradually shavers like you know what, nobody's getting houses.
Speaker 1: You're all living communally except for me. I have a
Speaker 1: bedroom in the children's house. I just feel like the gymnastics,
Speaker 1: the mental gymnastics that people are in a cult have
Speaker 1: to go through with with all of the plans changing
Speaker 1: all the time, like it's the same story every time,
Speaker 1: where it's like I promise you this, but now here's
Speaker 1: a different thing. I I told you I was immortal,
Speaker 1: but guess what now now I'm this like and these
Speaker 1: poor people have to keep it must like the the
Speaker 1: number must do on your brain to to just be
Speaker 1: in that kind of denial and say like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: he is the sort of god on earth to me,
Speaker 1: and I just have to trust that he knows what's best,
Speaker 1: even though he's changed this plan every single time. You
Speaker 1: know what, there's an element of it that this is
Speaker 1: like if you've ever been in a relationship that gets
Speaker 1: really bad and you're living together and it becomes intolerable,
Speaker 1: but you're like, ship, we gotta like figure out what
Speaker 1: to do about the least, like I have to have
Speaker 1: to separate our stuff, all this stuff we bought together.
Speaker 1: We have to figure out who And you just continue
Speaker 1: to say, stay in an intolerable situation because you think
Speaker 1: about like the logistics of getting out of it. These
Speaker 1: people don't come to Germany being like, yeah, everyone will
Speaker 1: be separated, you'll have no family, you'll live in a
Speaker 1: barracks with every one of the same gender in age
Speaker 1: as you. They told like, well, you know, come over here,
Speaker 1: we're gonna build this godly community. You know, everyone will
Speaker 1: have their houses eventually, but we got to do this
Speaker 1: first and this first, and this first, and then it
Speaker 1: becomes clear that like, oh no, this has changed and
Speaker 1: this is never going to happen. You're there and you
Speaker 1: don't have to pass forward out exactly. Um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult in people just accept things, you know, and
Speaker 1: also like everybody who knows, they're like, what are you
Speaker 1: going back to you know um that said, while most
Speaker 1: people go along with this, there weren't folks who rebelled
Speaker 1: from the beginning. And Bruce Falconer writes about these rebels
Speaker 1: quote a rebel named Wolfgang Mueller tried to escape on
Speaker 1: three separate occasions twice one then once in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two and again in nineteen sixty four. He fled to
Speaker 1: the home of a Chilean family in a nearby town,
Speaker 1: and twice members of the colonial security force found him
Speaker 1: there and brought him back. Both times, Mueller was beaten
Speaker 1: and forcibly sedated. On his third and final escape attempt,
Speaker 1: at nineteen sixty six, he made it as far as Santiago,
Speaker 1: where he received police protection and sought refuge in a
Speaker 1: German embassy safe house. On orders from Schaffer, fifteen members
Speaker 1: of the colony stormed the house in an attempt to
Speaker 1: recapture him. After a fistfight with police, they fled. Soon after,
Speaker 1: Mueller left Chile and found safety in Germany, where despite
Speaker 1: his repeated accusations against Schaefer, government officials took no action.
Speaker 1: And there's this mix with the German government of on
Speaker 1: the on the grand scale shameful failure to do anything
Speaker 1: about this. On an individual scaling scale, there's some very
Speaker 1: heroic members of the German government. This When this kid
Speaker 1: finally escapes to Santiago, he goes to like the German
Speaker 1: ambassador basically in Santiago and tells him what's happened, and
Speaker 1: this guy hides him in a safe house and like
Speaker 1: it's a significant danger and eventually helps him smuggle out
Speaker 1: to the country. So there's this mix of like the
Speaker 1: German government total failure. Individuals in the German government do
Speaker 1: a lot of laudable work to try to help this
Speaker 1: guy and other people escape when they when they're able
Speaker 1: to get out. Um. It was actually the Chilean government,
Speaker 1: which is not going to get a lot of praise
Speaker 1: in this article, that first attempted to investigate Mueller's allegations
Speaker 1: against Schaefer. In night, they sent a parliamentary delegation to
Speaker 1: look into the claims of torture. Schaefer had his children
Speaker 1: sing for the delegation and then applied them with a
Speaker 1: meal of excellent food. They determined that no abuse had
Speaker 1: occurred and that Mueller was lying, and there was like
Speaker 1: a period where they had like an a warrant out
Speaker 1: to try to question him and stuff. They were like
Speaker 1: Shaffer organized protests that never actually got him. And it's
Speaker 1: like he has friends in the government, you know, like
Speaker 1: right wing friends in the government because he's this, he's
Speaker 1: he's he's got a lot of money and stuff to
Speaker 1: throw around, and so does the Nazi community in Chile,
Speaker 1: which is a part of this. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more later. So, the first attempt to shed light on
Speaker 1: the crimes of Paul Schaefer and the Colonia Dignidad failed,
Speaker 1: not for lack of trying. Mueller still lived in Germany
Speaker 1: as of two thousand eight, and now he operates a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that works to fight the abuse of children by
Speaker 1: religious sects. So he seems to have gotten out of
Speaker 1: that as well as you possibly could. Now, there were
Speaker 1: several attempts by children to flee the abuse of the
Speaker 1: colonial during the nineteen sixties. One of the first was
Speaker 1: Helmet Hop. He was caught and punished, but he had
Speaker 1: a chance to redeem himself and Paul Shaffer's eyes. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, when another teenager succeeded in escaping, Wolfgang
Speaker 1: Nice fled and managed to reach the German embassy. Again,
Speaker 1: he made allegations that he had been tortured and sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: and he made these directly to the press. To deal
Speaker 1: with this, Shaefer convinced Helmet Happ, who had just been
Speaker 1: trying and trying to escape himself a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: to go to Santiago and accused Niece of lying and
Speaker 1: having sexually assaulted him. So he's like, hey, you want
Speaker 1: to get back to my good graces, Like, I'll make
Speaker 1: you my number one boy, but you gotta go say
Speaker 1: number one. This guy's lying at number two. He's the
Speaker 1: one who's doing the sexual assaults. This successfully muddies the
Speaker 1: waters enough that Niece's allegations don't do any permanent damage
Speaker 1: to the coult. Niece is allowed to return to Germany, thankfully,
Speaker 1: and Schaefer rewards Hoped for his service by allowing him
Speaker 1: to leave the colonia temporarily and go to medical school.
Speaker 1: So this is like you play a ball with Shaefer,
Speaker 1: you get you get special privileges other people don't get.
Speaker 1: And he needs Hoped to be a doctor right because
Speaker 1: he has a scheme that heavily involves having a doctor.
Speaker 1: So over the mid nineteen sixties, Schaeffer had been funneling
Speaker 1: the money made by his flox labor into the construction
Speaker 1: of a sixty bed hospital. It was reportedly state of
Speaker 1: the art, and by the time hop came back from
Speaker 1: medical school a newly minted doctor, it was ready to go.
Speaker 1: Paul Schaeffer was not a dumb man, and he understood
Speaker 1: that bringing a bunch of Germans into the middle of
Speaker 1: Chile and the doing weird cult ship was something that
Speaker 1: could go really bad, especially if the right wing president
Speaker 1: who liked him got replaced the Colonia Dignidad Hospital though,
Speaker 1: once they get this running, they start providing free healthcare
Speaker 1: to local Chileans who have no closer options for medical
Speaker 1: care of this quality. The hospital had sterile operating rooms,
Speaker 1: a high quality maternity ward where for generations most of
Speaker 1: the local women in the area give birth to their children.
Speaker 1: About twenty six thousand people relied on this hospital, which
Speaker 1: is subsidized by government funds. You know, the government has
Speaker 1: a vested interest in this continuing to function. It's smart. Wow,
Speaker 1: the deviousness is yeah, it's off the charts. This guy,
Speaker 1: Oh my godd like, I don't know, I guess it's
Speaker 1: like for me, for me, if I try to do
Speaker 1: something like this. Yeah, I would there's so many things
Speaker 1: I would not have thought about. Yeah, hospital, then this
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be nearly this good at a Chilean colt.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, I mean it's uh, it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's something else. It's amazing how smart he is for
Speaker 1: a man who once gouged his own eye out trying
Speaker 1: to untie your shoe. But you know what, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You You must learn from mistakes. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, this didn't go the way it should have.
Speaker 1: What could I have done differently? And then apply that
Speaker 1: lesson as you go along in life. Gouge my own
Speaker 1: eye out once, Shame on you. Yeah. So, the Colonia
Speaker 1: Dignata Hospital also pays for a network of buses that
Speaker 1: drive to and from isolated villages in the area collect
Speaker 1: locals who need to see a doctor in a regular basis.
Speaker 1: The Colonial also supplies local women with four and a
Speaker 1: half pounds of powdered milk a month for the first
Speaker 1: six months of their child's life, so this is becomes
Speaker 1: very quickly an integral part of the healthcare infrastructure of
Speaker 1: this area. This is particularly a big deal because Chile
Speaker 1: spends a lot of the sixties and seventies in a
Speaker 1: state of political and economic turmoil, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a bit more later. The thrust of the matter is
Speaker 1: that few of the powers that be in the area,
Speaker 1: and even the regular people who live nearby, had any
Speaker 1: interest in looking critically at what was going on in
Speaker 1: the colonial because it's a lifeline to the people there.
Speaker 1: But while the hospital undoubtedly saved a lot of lives,
Speaker 1: it was by all accounts a quality hospital. Although qualities.
Speaker 1: Let me explain to you what this hospital doing. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's doing a lot of birds, it's doing a
Speaker 1: lot of surgeries. A lot of people's lives are saved
Speaker 1: by this hospital. That is not all that it's doing.
Speaker 1: It is an integral part of Paul Shaffer's architecture of torture.
Speaker 1: See As the colonial aged, Paul developed tactics for more
Speaker 1: clearly delineating and punishing the rebels. In his midst He
Speaker 1: forced the men to wear rebel like men who had
Speaker 1: basically committed crimes against the colony, to wear red shirts
Speaker 1: and white pants. He forced the women to wear potato
Speaker 1: sacks over their dresses, and he ordered the other followers
Speaker 1: to treat them with hatred. One rebel was a young
Speaker 1: Chilean boy, and in order to deal with the fact
Speaker 1: that his so in the late sixties, he starts taking
Speaker 1: local Chilean boys in. And this is to deal with
Speaker 1: the fact that he's not letting his followers breed. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this guy's a pedophile. He's not letting his followers breed.
Speaker 1: So there's at some point not going to be any
Speaker 1: more young boys for him them molest so they start
Speaker 1: adopting local kids to provide him with a steady stream
Speaker 1: of victims. This boy, Franz Bar, was adopted by the
Speaker 1: German could when he was ten. Now he did not
Speaker 1: like being forced to live in a weird Nazi sex cult,
Speaker 1: and by the time he was a teenager, Paul had
Speaker 1: singled him out as a rebel. I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: Bruce Falconer's article in The American Scholar here quote as
Speaker 1: Bar now remembers it, a group of men approached him
Speaker 1: one day while he was working in the carpentry shop
Speaker 1: and accused him of stealing the keys to one of
Speaker 1: the dormitories. When Bar denied it, he was beaten unconscious
Speaker 1: with electric cables, his skull broken and loaded into an ambulance.
Speaker 1: He awoke sometime later in the hospital, where he would
Speaker 1: remain as a prisoner for the next thirty one years.
Speaker 1: Barr was kept in an upstairs section of the hospital,
Speaker 1: never seen by the local Chileans who sought treatment there.
Speaker 1: As he later described to me, his days began with
Speaker 1: a series of intravenous injections, after which the nurses brought
Speaker 1: him bread in a plate with twelve to fifteen different pills.
Speaker 1: Once satisfied that he was properly medicated, nurses delivered his
Speaker 1: clothes and shoes hidden from him to reduce the likelihood
Speaker 1: of escape. After he dressed, a security detailed escorted him
Speaker 1: to his job at the carpentry shop. Bar worked on
Speaker 1: heavy machines in a cramped space. The injections and pills
Speaker 1: slowed his movements and made him clumsy. Today, scar tissue
Speaker 1: on his forearms maps the places where the electric saws
Speaker 1: bit into his flesh. Barr was forced to work late
Speaker 1: into the night, sometimes until three am. He was not
Speaker 1: permitted to eat with the rest of the community. Instead,
Speaker 1: his meals were delivered to him at the carpentry shop,
Speaker 1: where he devoured them in isolation. A still worse punishment
Speaker 1: awaited in rooms nine and fourteen of the hospital, where
Speaker 1: Barr and other members unfortunate enough to draw the full
Speaker 1: measure of Shaffer's fear were subjected to shock treatments. A
Speaker 1: female physician worked the machines, her mannered attached, and clinical
Speaker 1: patients were strapped down and fitted with crowns attached by
Speaker 1: wires to a voltage machine. Barr told me how the
Speaker 1: doctors seemed to enjoy watching him suffer. She kept asking
Speaker 1: me questions, he said. I heard what she was saying
Speaker 1: and wanted to respond, but I couldn't. She was playing
Speaker 1: with machine and asking what do you feel? Are you
Speaker 1: feeling something? She wanted to know what was happening to
Speaker 1: me as she adjusted the voltage. I mean, the female physician,
Speaker 1: was this an actual doctor, that is that is agreed to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll torture these guys for you. I think these are
Speaker 1: people special, preferred people who he lets get medical degrees
Speaker 1: and whatnot, because he needs doctors and because he needs
Speaker 1: people to operate to do this torturing to help him
Speaker 1: with that. Damn. He's also doing a lot of the torturing.
Speaker 1: A lot of sources will note that when they were tortured,
Speaker 1: Schaefer was there. So he's often there, particularly when children
Speaker 1: are tortured, and he really likes to be the one
Speaker 1: who does the torturing of the children. That not always
Speaker 1: reasons given for punishment. Now, the bar's case was one
Speaker 1: of the more elaborate ones, but it was not uncommon
Speaker 1: for kids to get punished without being told why and
Speaker 1: just beaten with rods for thirty minutes at a time. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems likely that this was just a kink of Shafer's.
Speaker 1: This is something that gave him sexual pleasure and that's
Speaker 1: why he was doing it. Um, it's it's messed up, Paul, Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the people who helped him with the torturing
Speaker 1: and punishment was a guy named Heinrich Himpel. Now himple survived.
Speaker 1: Paul Shafer he still lived, or at least when he
Speaker 1: did this interview, he still lived in the colonia. Because
Speaker 1: it could pursue. It's still around a day, it exists
Speaker 1: after Shaver. Yeah, wait, don't you hear what they're doing
Speaker 1: with it? Now, Paul, you know what I'll tell you, Robert,
Speaker 1: I did not I did not see that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A lot of surprises in this one. So this guy,
Speaker 1: Heinrich Himpel, who's one of the I don't think he's
Speaker 1: doing the the elected, the hardcore torture, but he's one
Speaker 1: of the guys who's like beating kids with a stick
Speaker 1: when they're punished and whatnot. Um and I think probably
Speaker 1: adults too. He gives an interview with Bruce Falconer of
Speaker 1: The American Scholar, and Falconer writes quote Himple confides that
Speaker 1: during World War Two, as the Soviets were pushing through
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, his family had been forced out of East
Speaker 1: Prussia and thrown into a Soviet labor camp in Poland.
Speaker 1: They spent five years there under terrible conditions. His brother
Speaker 1: and sister froze to death in the snow. He describes
Speaker 1: the highfenses that had surrounded the camp in Poland and
Speaker 1: draws them in my notebook, with coils of razor wire
Speaker 1: at their base. He tells me that after his release,
Speaker 1: he had gone to Germany and joined a shaffer's congregation.
Speaker 1: I asked him why he had moved to Chile. He
Speaker 1: thinks for a minute, smiles, and says, I came here
Speaker 1: to do five years of charity work. But then I
Speaker 1: forgot how to leave. And that's a key and why
Speaker 1: people are willing to accept this brutality, and why some
Speaker 1: of these people are willing to do this brutality. You
Speaker 1: have to think about what was their fucking childhood, Like
Speaker 1: they were Germans in the early forties, you know, like
Speaker 1: everything that's happening seems a little bit less fucked up
Speaker 1: if your childhood was My family starved to death at
Speaker 1: a prison camp after the war when I was a child, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's yeah, a real man hands down misery,
Speaker 1: demand situation um. Now, depending on how you measure such things.
Speaker 1: The rebels, the people like bar who were punished, were
Speaker 1: in some ways the lucky ones, because on the other
Speaker 1: end of things were the young boys who Schaefer considered
Speaker 1: the his his golden boys, the ideal representatives of proper behavior.
Speaker 1: He called these his sprinters, and this is because of
Speaker 1: the job that he gave them. If he wanted to
Speaker 1: speak to a follower who was laboring in a distant
Speaker 1: end of the colonia, he would send a sprinter to
Speaker 1: run off and go get them. L Ron Hubberd actually
Speaker 1: did a very similar thing. He had this network of
Speaker 1: little kids who would be his voice to his followers.
Speaker 1: In time, these sprinters Sherlock Holmes, yeah or Fagan like
Speaker 1: having your a little hurry of kids. Yeah. Now with
Speaker 1: this exception that this is the problem here, he's molesting
Speaker 1: all of them. Um, well, I mean yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: Holmes rarely did. Um when he was under the influence
Speaker 1: of the solution. Yeah. So in time, like these kids
Speaker 1: are doing They're not just like running and getting people.
Speaker 1: They're doing stuff like he gets so lazy that they're
Speaker 1: like holding a phone up to his ear and ship
Speaker 1: like real decadent could leaders ship. Sprinters were rewarded with
Speaker 1: better treatment, with respect, and with an ability to whisper
Speaker 1: into the profit's ear about those on the colonial they disliked.
Speaker 1: But this came at a terrible cost, because of course
Speaker 1: Schaefer was molesting all of them. He kept them around
Speaker 1: him at all times. They followed him when he took
Speaker 1: his daily tour of the grounds, wearing a uniform he
Speaker 1: had picked out for them, loose athletic shorts with an
Speaker 1: elastic waistband. Obviously this is their uniform for reasons that
Speaker 1: should be unfortunately obvious, you know, for his very best sprinters,
Speaker 1: there was a special reward. His room included a child
Speaker 1: sized beds set up right next to his own bed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes more than one sprinter would sleep there. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: would drug with sedatives, washed them with a sponge, and
Speaker 1: sexually assault them. So oh, it's not getting better. It's
Speaker 1: not getting better. Yeah, expected, but it's a bleak one, Paul.
Speaker 1: It's what if the rougher ones we've had to talk about.
Speaker 1: Left wing candidate Salvador Allende was elected to be the
Speaker 1: you know, president of Chile in nineteen seventy, and he
Speaker 1: brought with him promises of socialism and a number of
Speaker 1: different reforms. This terrified Paul Shaffer, who considered Allende to
Speaker 1: be nothing more than the physical reincarnation of Joseph Stalin
Speaker 1: mixed with one presumes the literal Christian devil. He started
Speaker 1: marshaling his followers to prepare for an apocalyptic assault. They
Speaker 1: smuggled weapons in from Germany. Since the Colonial was a
Speaker 1: charitable organization, it's shipments were not stopped by customs. In
Speaker 1: this way, they smuggled in dozens of submachine guns, which
Speaker 1: they used as models so they could turn their machine
Speaker 1: shop to the task of reproducing dozens of yearly identical
Speaker 1: assault rifles. Over the years of illende short time in power,
Speaker 1: they acquired thousands of grenades, mortars, and even a handful
Speaker 1: of surface to air missile launchers. So now they have
Speaker 1: an army. Great, that's when this pedophile cult really needed
Speaker 1: to get cooking. Should have seen it come in surface
Speaker 1: to air missile launchers when when I heard about the hospital,
Speaker 1: I should have said, what's keeping that army? Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: what's keeping? So given what comes later, it's very likely
Speaker 1: that Colonia Dignidad was not just able to acquire this
Speaker 1: arsenal because the authorities didn't check the shipping of a
Speaker 1: charitable organization. The police and military hated Allende because he
Speaker 1: was left wing and likely had an arrangement with Shaefer.
Speaker 1: He may have en giving guns to right wing militant groups,
Speaker 1: we don't entirely know. In the early nineteen seventies, though
Speaker 1: Schaeffer starts planning a coup against Dillende. He brings in
Speaker 1: another Nazi to help him with the planning, and it's
Speaker 1: unclear to me if this coup attempt fed into the
Speaker 1: coup against Diende or was just a separate plan for
Speaker 1: a co attempt, But as we've talked about a couple
Speaker 1: of times on the show, the CIA comes in, they
Speaker 1: give a right wing general like backing, and Augusto Pinochet,
Speaker 1: that right wing general, in September ninety three, takes power
Speaker 1: by extreme violence. I end A dies of a self
Speaker 1: inflicted gunshot wound um and for a week or so
Speaker 1: the scattered forces of the left fought in the street,
Speaker 1: but in very short order the country was under the
Speaker 1: military's control. Pinochet immediately declared a state of emergency. He
Speaker 1: suspended the constitution, he disbanded Congress, he banned political parties,
Speaker 1: and he censored the press. Socialism was annihilated in Chile,
Speaker 1: which Paul Shaffer hailed as a victory against international communism.
Speaker 1: In the months that followed, Pinochet ordered at least forty
Speaker 1: five thousand people arrested and taken to detention centers to
Speaker 1: be interrogated and often tortured. More than fift hundred people
Speaker 1: were killed this way in the first year of his reign.
Speaker 1: To facilitate all this, the general ordered the creation of
Speaker 1: the National Intelligence Directorate, where d I n A to
Speaker 1: act as a secret police force dedicated to maintaining his
Speaker 1: grip on power. But it's actually kind of hard to
Speaker 1: do that. Um, I don't know if you've ever tried
Speaker 1: to build a brutal intelligence apparatus from scratch, Paul. Not
Speaker 1: an easy task. It's it's really we're trying to do
Speaker 1: it now. It cools out. Media and Garrison and Chris
Speaker 1: barely understand how to attach a nipple to a car battery.
Speaker 1: I mean, are you terrible at it? Are you saying
Speaker 1: I shouldn't bother? No? No, I mean you gotta, you
Speaker 1: gotta try, Paul. You look, a journey of a thousand
Speaker 1: steps starts with one step, right, the journey of a
Speaker 1: thousand forty dissidents torture. You gotta start torturing, you know, Okay, okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I need. Thank you, just trying to
Speaker 1: encourage you. I give up too easy, that's my problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why most people never get the kind
Speaker 1: of secret police force they deserve. So the good news
Speaker 1: for the fascists, the bad news, it's that the you know,
Speaker 1: the bad news for the fascists is that it's actually
Speaker 1: hard to find a lot of people who are willing
Speaker 1: to like torture folks to death, most folks, even most
Speaker 1: folks who were shitty are aren't up for that, you know,
Speaker 1: Like even among the people who are assholes, the people
Speaker 1: that want to do it, they really want to, really
Speaker 1: want to do it. And the great news for Pinochet
Speaker 1: is that there's this heavily armed Nazi commune full of
Speaker 1: psychopaths who have been torturing their own children. So they're
Speaker 1: psyched to torture people for the dictator, right like, they
Speaker 1: got no issue with that at all, And in very
Speaker 1: short order, Colonia Dignidon becomes one of Pinochet's most well
Speaker 1: used torture and execution sites. We're gonna talk more about
Speaker 1: that in part to Paul, But that's kind of a
Speaker 1: bummer note to end the episode on. And so in
Speaker 1: the interest of closing things out on a more upbeat note,
Speaker 1: I got a little story, Paul, A little story about
Speaker 1: Santa Claus. Alright. This comes from that article in the
Speaker 1: American Scholar, and um boy, howdy, Paul, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: read this one to you. Okay, now, this is this
Speaker 1: is We're ending on an up not that I would
Speaker 1: call it a high note, all right, because it's one
Speaker 1: of the craziest things I've heard about in my entire
Speaker 1: fucking life. Okay. No one inspired greater love and admiration
Speaker 1: among the children of the colonial than Santa Claus. It
Speaker 1: is said that in the days shortly before Christmas one
Speaker 1: year in the mid nineteen seventies, Schaffer gathered the colonials children,
Speaker 1: loaded them onto a bus, and drove them out to
Speaker 1: a nearby river, where he told them Santa was coming
Speaker 1: to visit. The boys and girls stood excitedly along the
Speaker 1: river bank while an older man in a fake beard
Speaker 1: in a red white suit floated towards them on a raft.
Speaker 1: Shaefer pulled a pistol from his belt and fired, seeming
Speaker 1: to wound Santa, who tumbled into the water, where he
Speaker 1: thrashed about before disappearing below the waves. It was a charade,
Speaker 1: but Shaffer turned to the children assembled before him and
Speaker 1: said that Santa was dead from the day forward. That
Speaker 1: day forward, Shaffer's birthday was the only hall it a
Speaker 1: celebrated inside Colonia. Dignit dot. He's so jealous of these
Speaker 1: kids attention that he literally murders Santa Claus and rivers. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that is that is extra I I I can't just
Speaker 1: I mean to to to have a brain. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: came up with that that comes up with that fucking idea, I,
Speaker 1: in a weird way, I have to respect it. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like when you hear about like some of the
Speaker 1: like l Run Hubbard infiltrating the federal government more than
Speaker 1: the USSR ever did. It's like, God damn, it's not
Speaker 1: only not letting kids have Santa. Yeah, they didn't know
Speaker 1: he's dead. I gotta take this motherfucker out. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't have him around. Drop this son of a bitch,
Speaker 1: this guy who doesn't exist, and it has to be
Speaker 1: the whole story that he told. There has to be that, like,
Speaker 1: well he flew over the colonials, so we shot him
Speaker 1: down with one of our sam's, executed him in the river.
Speaker 1: Jesus exactly. Yeah, they have to. They have to see
Speaker 1: it for tan't is a thing that's just told to kids.
Speaker 1: They believe. I have to. I can't trust that. I
Speaker 1: have to kill him. We are at behind the bastards
Speaker 1: kind of connoisseurs of like the extremes of the human condition.
Speaker 1: That's one of the wildest things I've ever heard of
Speaker 1: a human being doing. That is beyond rattlesnake assassination levels
Speaker 1: of like wild Miles Rio a level ship here, Shaffer's
Speaker 1: playing in the big leagues. Damn. Oh, I'm gonna say it.
Speaker 1: That's the one to beat. That's the one to beat.
Speaker 1: That's the one to beat. Yeah. Anybody can torture, anyone
Speaker 1: can assassinate. This is the one. This is like gold standard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is our new gold standard. Good luck, other criminally
Speaker 1: insane bad man. Yeah, you've got you've got quite quite
Speaker 1: a quite a thing to top here. If you're not,
Speaker 1: if you're not arranging Santa's assassin assassination in front of children,
Speaker 1: turn around and walk out that I had no time
Speaker 1: for you. I don't want to hear your story. Wow, oh, Paul,
Speaker 1: that is going to close us out for part one.
Speaker 1: That was a journey man. That was a journey Oh
Speaker 1: you were lying, okay, okay, from gouging his own eye
Speaker 1: out and tying a sheet murdering Santa Clause in front
Speaker 1: of an audience of children. What a fucking tale. We
Speaker 1: covered some ground, my man, Yes we did well, Paul.
Speaker 1: You got anything to plug? I will say. Um I
Speaker 1: did a show um this past Saturday called The Uncanny Hollow.
Speaker 1: I did a live show in um here in l
Speaker 1: a but it's available online. We we archived it, We
Speaker 1: filmed it and archived it, and if you'd like to
Speaker 1: see that, you can go to Dynasty typewriter dot com.
Speaker 1: It is a a sort of Twilight Zone ish sketch
Speaker 1: show that I did with an awesome cast and it
Speaker 1: was a blast. So, um yeah, go check that out
Speaker 1: on it sounds great. Yeah, those guys are the best,
Speaker 1: They're the best rad So check that out. Check Paul out,
Speaker 1: and don't move to Chile with a Nazi cult leader.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say to him, Santa claud that.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, look, look I'm a Texan. So somebody
Speaker 1: comes into my home with asking you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: do what you gotta do. And on that note, that's
Speaker 1: part one. Oh boy, m hm