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A Big Chill · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the US and the
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  Speaker 1: Soviet Union were in a race for control, for nuclear power,
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  Speaker 1: for outer space, and of course for our minds. But
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  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about propaganda or even ideology. I'm talking
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  Speaker 1: about how in nineteen seventy one lone housewife in Russia
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  Speaker 1: set off a new type of Cold War where two
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  Speaker 1: world powers tried to create weapons of psychic destruction. Sometime
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  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, tapes smuggled out of the
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  Speaker 1: Soviet Union made their way to the CIA. One video,
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  Speaker 1: recorded on March tenth of nineteen seventy quickly became an
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  Speaker 1: object of fascination to the agency. The tape showed forty
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  Speaker 1: four year old Nina Cooliina, a housewife and former Red
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  Speaker 1: Army soldier, in an observation room somewhere in Leningrad. Sitting
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  Speaker 1: in front of her on a table was a tiny,
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  Speaker 1: still beating heart. The heart had been taken from a
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  Speaker 1: frog just minutes before and placed in a solution that
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  Speaker 1: would allow it to keep beating for up to an
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  Speaker 1: hour after death. Both Nina and the tiny heart were
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  Speaker 1: wired with electrodes which recorded their heart rates. As CIA
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  Speaker 1: analysts watched the small, dark haired woman on the tape
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  Speaker 1: focused intently, to their amazement, the frog heart began to
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  Speaker 1: beat faster. Nina screwed up her face in concentration again,
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  Speaker 1: and the frog heart beat slowed, and finally, after a
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  Speaker 1: few minutes, Nina focused one last time, and right before
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  Speaker 1: the analyst's eyes, through the power of thought alone, she
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  Speaker 1: stopped the frog heart cold. Dozens of tapes trickled in
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  Speaker 1: from across the Iron Curtain, showing Nina moving matchsticks across
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  Speaker 1: a table with her mind, separating egg whites from yokes,
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  Speaker 1: even accelerating a researcher's heartbeat to dangerous levels. And needless
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  Speaker 1: to say, the CIA was shocked. It seemed that the
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  Speaker 1: Soviets had found someone who could master ESP or extrasensory perception.
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  Speaker 1: You see for decades, researchers at the fringes of respectable
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  Speaker 1: science had been looking into the world of ESP. Psychical researchers,
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  Speaker 1: as they called themselves, were bent on discovering whether humans
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  Speaker 1: could do extraordinary things with psychic energy, such as reading
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  Speaker 1: another person's thoughts, viewing a place halfway around the world,
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  Speaker 1: or even moving objects with their minds. With the discovery
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  Speaker 1: of Nina's tapes, the world of psychical research immediately went
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  Speaker 1: from crackpot theories to serious, government funded science. The American
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  Speaker 1: government commissioned an intelligence report on what they called Soviet
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  Speaker 1: psycho energetic threat. When it was finished, it was a bombshell.
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  Speaker 1: Researchers and intelligence officials believed the Soviets were trying to
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  Speaker 1: develop mind control and wanted to use people with powers
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  Speaker 1: like Nina's to defeat their enemies. By nineteen seventy eight,
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  Speaker 1: the CIA began its own top secret ESP program, which
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  Speaker 1: they called Stargate, hoping to spy on the Soviets. Researchers
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  Speaker 1: especially focused on remote viewing, or using a psychic to
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  Speaker 1: see inside a place on the other side of the world.
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  Speaker 1: They gave their subjects the coordinates of Soviet military bases
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  Speaker 1: and asked them to describe what they saw in some cases,
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  Speaker 1: the results were scarily accurate. Both countries continued psychical research
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  Speaker 1: for the next few decades, although as far as we know,
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  Speaker 1: they've yet to employ telekinesis or remote viewing as wide
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  Speaker 1: scale weapons. However, sources report that military psychics were used
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  Speaker 1: by Russia as recently as the Chechen Wars, which ended
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  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. And as for Nina Well,
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  Speaker 1: she gained international note notoriety for her part in the
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  Speaker 1: psychic Cold War. She claimed the newspapers that she realized
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  Speaker 1: her powers when she was young when she noticed that
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  Speaker 1: things near her would move when she got angry. According
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  Speaker 1: to her, her mother had the same ability to fine
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  Speaker 1: tune it. She began to meditate to prepare herself to
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  Speaker 1: concentrate intensely unmoving objects with her mind, and while she
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  Speaker 1: had many supporters in the military, she found even more
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  Speaker 1: critics once she went public with her powers. It was
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  Speaker 1: pointed out that many of her miraculous tricks could be
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  Speaker 1: faked using sleight of hand. Not to mention, the Soviet
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  Speaker 1: Union had a reputation for exaggerating their victories for use
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  Speaker 1: in propaganda, and wouldn't you know it, Nina was caught
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  Speaker 1: cheating during demonstrations using magnets and tiny threads, and it
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  Speaker 1: was believed by some that she had faked all of
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  Speaker 1: her powers. Even Pravda, the official communist newspaper of the
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  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, called her a fraud. In nineteen eighty seven,
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  Speaker 1: another magazine called her a fake, and Nina sued and
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  Speaker 1: won the lawsuit, and she maintained the truth of her
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  Speaker 1: abilities until she died in nineteen ninety. Maybe Nina really
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  Speaker 1: did have powers, or perhaps she was faking all along.
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  Speaker 1: Either way, with all the news coverage of the debate,
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  Speaker 1: she really did a great job of getting inside our heads.
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  Speaker 1: When we think of World War II, we picture the
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  Speaker 1: forces of the US and Western Europe coming together unanimously
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  Speaker 1: to defeat the Germans. But it's easy to forget that
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  Speaker 1: every nation had a diverse population with different views on
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  Speaker 1: the war. There were Nazi sympathizers inside America, England, and France,
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  Speaker 1: and there was resistance to the Nazis inside Germany and Austria.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps the most colorful example of this, though, came right
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  Speaker 1: at the end of the war, when Americans, Germans, and
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  Speaker 1: the French joined together at a castle in Austria to
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  Speaker 1: defeat a Nazi assault. Castle. It was the Nazi version
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  Speaker 1: of a luxury prison located in western Austria, sandwiched between
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  Speaker 1: Germany and Italy. It housed French VIPs from the very
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  Speaker 1: beginning of the war. Among the many who were held
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  Speaker 1: there were Paul Renaud, former French Prime Minister, Marie Agnes Cayu,
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  Speaker 1: sister of then leader of the French military Charles de Gaul,
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  Speaker 1: and Tennis star Jean Buautra. As the Allies closed in
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  Speaker 1: on Germany and Austria in April of nineteen forty five,
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  Speaker 1: the guards at Castle Eiter fled, but the region was
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  Speaker 1: still swarming with Nazis belonging to the ESS, the most
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  Speaker 1: loyal and brutal organization within the German military, and the
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  Speaker 1: French prisoners worried that if THEESS found them trying to escape,
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  Speaker 1: they would kill them, and so they sent one of
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  Speaker 1: their own to sneak out of the castle and through
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  Speaker 1: the countryside to the nearest village, where they made contact
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  Speaker 1: with Major Josef Gongel. Now Josef was Austrian, but he
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  Speaker 1: had defected from the German military recently after seeing what
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  Speaker 1: it had become under Hitler. He was filled with regrets
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  Speaker 1: over his role in helping them conquer Europe. Joseph heard
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  Speaker 1: about the plights of the French prisoners and immediately went
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  Speaker 1: on a covert mission of his own, sneaking through the
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  Speaker 1: countryside and making contact with a nearby American tank division.
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  Speaker 1: It speaks to how late in the war this all was,
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  Speaker 1: that these different factions were all right there on top
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  Speaker 1: of each other. The combined pleas of Joseph and the
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  Speaker 1: French prisoner were enough to motivate at least one of
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  Speaker 1: the Americans, Captain John Kerrie Lee. He was only twenty
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  Speaker 1: seven years old and a football player back home, and
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  Speaker 1: as much as his men just wanted to keep their
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  Speaker 1: heads down and avoid putting their lives on the line
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  Speaker 1: this close to German surrender, Lee knew that it would
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  Speaker 1: be wrong to leave the French prisoners there to die,
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  Speaker 1: so he rallied his men and they began to drive
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  Speaker 1: their tanks toward the castle. This was a process of attrition,
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  Speaker 1: as they had to cross several bridges into the mountains
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  Speaker 1: leading to the castle. The bridges were narrow and weak,
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  Speaker 1: so Lee ended up leaving behind all but one of
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  Speaker 1: his tanks. When they finally arrived at the castle, they
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  Speaker 1: prepared to defend it from any SS troops who might
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  Speaker 1: take an interest. Lee even blocked the entrance with his tank,
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  Speaker 1: and the French prisoners were determined to help. Imagine the
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  Speaker 1: elderly French prisoner Agnes holding a machine gun next to
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  Speaker 1: a young American soldier, and of course Josef also continued
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  Speaker 1: to assist, providing what insight he could into SS tactics.
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  Speaker 1: They went to bed that night, hoping that all their
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  Speaker 1: precautions wouldn't be needed, but as it so happened, a
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  Speaker 1: lookout spotted grappling hooks on the castle walls. Just hours
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  Speaker 1: into his watch, the SS were on their way, and
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  Speaker 1: soon enough they were pouring out of the woods heading
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  Speaker 1: for the castle. The Americans, the French, and Joseph all
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  Speaker 1: stood side by side, firing machine guns down at the
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  Speaker 1: invading army. Lee's tank fired off shells from the front gates,
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  Speaker 1: blowing away any Germans who came close. But then things
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  Speaker 1: took a turn for the worse. As morning arrived, German
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  Speaker 1: eighty millimeter guns appeared on the horizon, blowing massive holes
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  Speaker 1: in the side of the castle. Then one of the
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  Speaker 1: shells got especially lucky, striking Lee's tank. His men had
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  Speaker 1: just enough time to flee before it exploded into flames,
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  Speaker 1: and so Joseph and Lee kept moving everyone further and
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  Speaker 1: further into the castle. But this was a losing game.
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  Speaker 1: In one last desperate gamble, they sent a volunteer, Jean
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  Speaker 1: the Tennis Star, to pull vault over a castle wall
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  Speaker 1: and sneak past the enemy lines to find help. While
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  Speaker 1: they waited, Paul Renaud, the elderly former Prime Minister of France,
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  Speaker 1: viciously fired down from a castle window, refusing to give up. Joseph,
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  Speaker 1: sensing that Paul was in danger, rushed forward, throwing his
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  Speaker 1: body in front of him. Joseph's instincts were correct, too.
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  Speaker 1: A sniper's bullet meant for Paul struck him in the head,
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  Speaker 1: killing him instantly. He had given everything to make up
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  Speaker 1: for his role in the German Army, and that included
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  Speaker 1: his life. Just as all hope seemed lost, new arrivals
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  Speaker 1: appeared on the horizon. Jean the Tennis Star had been successful.
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  Speaker 1: He'd found a second American tank division and led them
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  Speaker 1: straight to the castle. He even showed up wearing one
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  Speaker 1: of their uniforms, and soon enough the tanks tour through
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  Speaker 1: the SS, driving them away from Castle Eider. The prisoners
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  Speaker 1: were saved and the curious band of Americans, French and
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  Speaker 1: German soldiers suffered zero casualties, that is except for Joseph,
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  Speaker 1: who was later honored as an Austrian war hero, and
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  Speaker 1: just three days later, the war in Europe was over.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.