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The Time Nazis Invaded Florida · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there.
0:16
Speaker 1: This is stuff you should know. So huge thanks right
0:24
Speaker 1: off the bat to everyone who came out for our
0:26
Speaker 1: Northeast plus one summer tour. Yes it was a pretty
0:31
Speaker 1: big success. Yeah, big thanks Boston and New York in
0:34
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0:38
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0:43
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0:48
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0:53
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0:58
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1:04
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1:07
Speaker 1: um maybe some advice wisconsinites. Yeah, and then everyone in
1:12
Speaker 1: each city will just say come here because I don't
1:14
Speaker 1: feel like driving a few hours. Uh So yeah, thanks
1:17
Speaker 1: for the support and look for us this fall. And
1:21
Speaker 1: did you thank squarespace. Yeah, did you think how stuff works? Yeah?
1:25
Speaker 1: Did you thank Jerry for the moral support? Sure? I
1:29
Speaker 1: think Jerry every day. It's part of my wake up routine. Yeah,
1:33
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to going back on tour. It's fun.
1:37
Speaker 1: It is Okay, you read for this, I'm ready. We're
1:41
Speaker 1: gonna channel our stuff you missed in history class. Yeah.
1:45
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they've done this or not. Have
1:46
Speaker 1: you are you? I don't know? So, um, Chuck, I
1:51
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this one because it didn't
1:53
Speaker 1: come up in this article. But back in World War Two,
1:56
Speaker 1: did you know that the Japanese actually carried out main campaigns,
2:01
Speaker 1: two of them in Oregon? I didn't know that, Oh
2:04
Speaker 1: you did. I'm a bit of a buff and then insane. Yeah.
2:08
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of forgotten history or little
2:11
Speaker 1: known history that you read it in. Uh. Thank god
2:14
Speaker 1: for like the Internet, because someone will post an article
2:17
Speaker 1: and say, I bet you never knew this, and then
2:19
Speaker 1: you're like what, Yeah, that's pretty much the function of
2:22
Speaker 1: the internet that what you just describe, you know, So
2:26
Speaker 1: this one, I think I've learned about this from unsurprisingly
2:30
Speaker 1: Uncle John's bathroom reader years and years and years ago.
2:33
Speaker 1: But definitely not in this kind of detail. It turns out.
2:37
Speaker 1: Then in World War Two, in I believe in Armagansett,
2:44
Speaker 1: New York, which is on Long Island, and ponte Vedra Beach, Florida,
2:49
Speaker 1: which is just south of Jacksonville. UM, Nazi saboteurs landed.
2:54
Speaker 1: They invaded America. Pretty remarkable, it really is. What's even
3:00
Speaker 1: remarkable is how badly their operations went. Yeah, what's remarkable
3:05
Speaker 1: is well, not remarkable, what's uh. Thankfully they chose a
3:10
Speaker 1: bunch of dopes, um, half hearted dope, half hearted dopes
3:16
Speaker 1: who I don't know if they didn't do their research.
3:19
Speaker 1: We'll get into how they picked these these shmos. But
3:24
Speaker 1: it didn't go so well. But if they had to
3:27
Speaker 1: pick them like the right guys, it might have been
3:29
Speaker 1: a whole different story. Oh yeah, totally in this war
3:32
Speaker 1: and and the FBI, especially Jager Hoover, really lucked out
3:37
Speaker 1: that these guys were half hearted dope. Well not if
3:39
Speaker 1: you ask him. No, it was just you might as
3:43
Speaker 1: well have worn a cape around the office, you know,
3:46
Speaker 1: well he may have. And little else. So um, back
3:51
Speaker 1: in World War two, even before World War tour, before
3:54
Speaker 1: the US centered the Second World War Hitler had this
3:58
Speaker 1: great fantasy of sending New York City up in flames,
4:03
Speaker 1: Like he really wanted to just destroy New York and
4:07
Speaker 1: Verna von Broun, the guy who helped get America to
4:11
Speaker 1: the Moon, was working on a rocket program that could
4:15
Speaker 1: strike uh, the United States from Europe. That was one
4:19
Speaker 1: thing never fully realized, um, because the war came to
4:23
Speaker 1: an end before they could develop the right kind of missile.
4:25
Speaker 1: But they were working on it, and they were also
4:28
Speaker 1: working on long range bombers. They could fly out of
4:30
Speaker 1: Europe all the way to america'ss coast and bomb. Apparently
4:33
Speaker 1: hit they used to literally sit around and watch like
4:36
Speaker 1: film footage of cities burning and like fantasizes about New
4:40
Speaker 1: York City. Crazy. Yeah, well he was pretty crazy, um.
4:46
Speaker 1: But he finally realized that, like, if he was going
4:50
Speaker 1: to get New York, the best, most efficient, most at
4:54
Speaker 1: hand way to do that was to send saboteurs into
4:57
Speaker 1: the United States to infiltrate and do New York themselves.
5:02
Speaker 1: That's right, you know, terrorists essentially. Well, yeah, the only
5:06
Speaker 1: thing that kept him from being considered full fledged just
5:08
Speaker 1: straight up terrorists is because we were formally at war
5:12
Speaker 1: with this country. So they were they were considered officially
5:15
Speaker 1: spies and unofficially saboteurs. Yes, Uh should we shout out
5:21
Speaker 1: the articles here? Yes, let's right off the bat. I read, well,
5:26
Speaker 1: I read a few. I read one on uh damned interesting,
5:29
Speaker 1: which was good. Uh. There was one you sent called
5:32
Speaker 1: world War two German saboteurs invade America in nineteen two. Yeah,
5:37
Speaker 1: that was on history Net. History Net, and I feel
5:40
Speaker 1: like there was one more. There was a Spiegel article.
5:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's one o UM called Operation past Storious
5:47
Speaker 1: Hitler's unfulfilled dream of the New York in flames poor.
5:52
Speaker 1: I know his dreams failed. So, uh, World War two
5:57
Speaker 1: hadn't been raging for long for the U S when
5:59
Speaker 1: this happened. It was right after uh Paul Harbor was bombed,
6:04
Speaker 1: and Hitler said, you know what, they think they're over there,
6:08
Speaker 1: They're a long way from us, so they probably feel
6:10
Speaker 1: pretty pretty safe. So let me undermine that and let
6:14
Speaker 1: me devise this plan um. And it was originally going
6:18
Speaker 1: to be a wave of saboteurs like every you know,
6:22
Speaker 1: four to six weeks. They were going to be sending
6:24
Speaker 1: in small teams of of terrorist slash spies to wreak
6:30
Speaker 1: havoc on the US, and uh, thankfully it didn't work
6:33
Speaker 1: out that way, so it was kind of scrapped. Yeah,
6:35
Speaker 1: the the obver I think that's how you pronounce that
6:39
Speaker 1: you're the one who knows German, Is that right? Yeah?
6:43
Speaker 1: So that was the the basically the sabotage unit of
6:48
Speaker 1: the German Military Intelligence Corps. And these guys had kind
6:52
Speaker 1: of perfected their craft with explosives and terrorism and and
6:57
Speaker 1: um all that jazz in your Pean theaters already in
7:01
Speaker 1: the war. And so they set up a school, a
7:04
Speaker 1: terrorist school, which supposedly these guys were trained in like
7:08
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu as well as explosives and stuff like that.
7:12
Speaker 1: And I'll bet it looked a lot like um, enter
7:15
Speaker 1: the Dragon in there, but with Germans, you know. Yeah.
7:19
Speaker 1: I wonder if they were training kung fu school on
7:21
Speaker 1: an island somewhere, but this is in the woods. I
7:24
Speaker 1: wonder if they in the Black forest perhaps. I wonder
7:26
Speaker 1: if they were trained in pe knuckle and movie watching
7:29
Speaker 1: and car buying I think that, and rolling over and
7:34
Speaker 1: singing like a canary. So the the app there um
7:38
Speaker 1: selected a man. His name was Walter Capp Or is
7:42
Speaker 1: that Cappy Walter cop what Walter Capp, who was a pudgy,
7:47
Speaker 1: bull necked man as described in the history article, and
7:51
Speaker 1: the reason that they selected him to head up this operation,
7:54
Speaker 1: which Cap came to um nickname is Operation Pastorious, which
7:58
Speaker 1: was named after Francis Daniel past Story is one of
8:01
Speaker 1: the early German immigrants to the United States who arrived
8:04
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia in three The reason they selected Cap for
8:09
Speaker 1: this operation was because he had lived in America for
8:13
Speaker 1: twelve years already, so he was he was he understood America,
8:18
Speaker 1: how it functioned, what targets should be struck, that kind
8:21
Speaker 1: of stuff. And they said, select your teams, and so
8:26
Speaker 1: he put a donkey on the wall and got a
8:29
Speaker 1: tale with a little pin on it. Right now. What
8:32
Speaker 1: he did was he did some research and he went
8:35
Speaker 1: through the records of something called the Austlin Institute, and
8:38
Speaker 1: they were big on getting Germans back to Germany ones
8:42
Speaker 1: that had emigrated to the United States workout, yeah, okay,
8:46
Speaker 1: So specifically the ones who were looking he was looking
8:48
Speaker 1: for ones who had been in the United States in
8:51
Speaker 1: this case, and a lot of these people have been
8:54
Speaker 1: in what was called the Boon or is it the
8:56
Speaker 1: bund uh I would say it's a booned, the American booned,
9:01
Speaker 1: which was like the basically the Nazi sympathizers in the
9:05
Speaker 1: United States, and they would set up little shops all
9:08
Speaker 1: over the country. Yeah, and they would speak out against
9:11
Speaker 1: UM Franklin Roosevelt or UM speak in favor of fascism.
9:16
Speaker 1: And apparently they managed to get twenty thousand people at
9:19
Speaker 1: a rally at Madison Square Garden once by holding a
9:22
Speaker 1: Knicks game. Pretty much. I don't think the Knicks could
9:25
Speaker 1: even get twenty people would come out to Madison Square. Um,
9:29
Speaker 1: but they were so unpredictable and radical here in the
9:34
Speaker 1: United States that even the Nazi Party officially distanced itself
9:39
Speaker 1: from these guys officially. Unofficially they recruited from their ranks
9:44
Speaker 1: specifically for Operation Pastorious. Yeah. So what he uh? He
9:48
Speaker 1: found some some blue collar dudes, um. All but two
9:51
Speaker 1: of them had been Nazi Party members, which was a
9:54
Speaker 1: good start. Ford dropped off right off the bat, and
9:57
Speaker 1: that left him with what would be U eight dudes,
10:01
Speaker 1: which they divided up into two teams of four, one
10:04
Speaker 1: leader on each side and three dopes below them, with
10:08
Speaker 1: with cap at the head of the whole thing. Yeah.
10:11
Speaker 1: Even though he didn't come over to the United States
10:14
Speaker 1: for the operation. He was just sort of running the
10:16
Speaker 1: training initially. Yeah, and he was watching him do jiu jitsu.
10:20
Speaker 1: I guess so you're in the hilarious Germans. I don't
10:27
Speaker 1: think so. It just seems a little like, you know,
10:30
Speaker 1: neighborhood ninja camp kind of stuff. You know. Well, they
10:35
Speaker 1: had to train in some sort of hand to hand combat. No,
10:39
Speaker 1: they're saboteurs. They're not. They don't need to know that
10:41
Speaker 1: they're not. They're supposed to know how to blow up
10:43
Speaker 1: a bridge. Yeah, but what if they it caught in
10:45
Speaker 1: the middle. I gotta like turn and run away jiu
10:47
Speaker 1: jitsu somebody down. Now, you just run if you're a saboteur. Well,
10:52
Speaker 1: that's some foreshadow right there. So I hear the players
10:55
Speaker 1: on on one on Team one, we'll call it Team
10:58
Speaker 1: um Nights. How about that? That one? Sure? On Team Minds,
11:03
Speaker 1: you had the leader George John Dosh and he was
11:06
Speaker 1: thirty nine. He was the oldest guy and uh thirty nine,
11:12
Speaker 1: and he was picked because he was um. He was
11:14
Speaker 1: a smooth talker, and he was apparently just seemed very American,
11:18
Speaker 1: which was you're gonna stick some Germans over there to
11:21
Speaker 1: to be saboteurs. It's probably good if they can pass
11:23
Speaker 1: themselves off as just regular good German Americans. Right. Plus
11:28
Speaker 1: also you have the added benefit of not having to
11:30
Speaker 1: teach them to speak colloquial English. Sure. Um, and they
11:36
Speaker 1: already know the terrain, they know the culture. Where's Coney Island?
11:40
Speaker 1: Vant the hotdog exactly? Yeah, so they were all good, right. Yeah,
11:45
Speaker 1: was that count Dracula? Uh No, that was that was
11:48
Speaker 1: my German saboteur. So that's why they went with the
11:52
Speaker 1: guys who had already spent time in America. Plus they
11:55
Speaker 1: it also showed, um, a pretty significant loyalty to your homeland,
12:01
Speaker 1: the fatherland in this case, where when war breaks out,
12:05
Speaker 1: you go back to where the war is being fought supported. Yeah,
12:09
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So they're like selecting from
12:12
Speaker 1: the Ostlands Institute roles of emigrants who were also boond members.
12:17
Speaker 1: It seemed like a just to knock it out of
12:20
Speaker 1: the park group of guys. Yeah, so um, uh josh,
12:24
Speaker 1: he was. He actually did, like he said, served in
12:27
Speaker 1: the German Army in World War One, came to America,
12:30
Speaker 1: worked as a waiter, and then in nineteen thirty nine said,
12:33
Speaker 1: you know what duty calls, I'm going back home. Um.
12:37
Speaker 1: The second guy on the first team, Ernest Peter Berger.
12:40
Speaker 1: He was supposedly a smart guy, and he had an
12:43
Speaker 1: interesting story because he was he had long been a Nazi,
12:48
Speaker 1: since they said, as you know, as long as Hitler
12:50
Speaker 1: himself had been a Nazi. Yeah, he was part of
12:52
Speaker 1: the beer hall push. Yeah, he was what you call
12:54
Speaker 1: a what's the early adopter. He was Nazis, he really was.
12:59
Speaker 1: And he he actually had fled Germany for the United
13:03
Speaker 1: States because he was afraid he was going to get
13:05
Speaker 1: brought up on brawling charges. That's right. He like to fight. Yeah,
13:09
Speaker 1: And he stayed there for about six years and then
13:12
Speaker 1: worked as a machinist in the Midwest, even joined the
13:15
Speaker 1: National Guard, the U. S National Guard, and um became
13:19
Speaker 1: an American citizen yep. And then he went back after
13:23
Speaker 1: Hitler game power, right, Well, he went back mainly because
13:26
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, because the right yeah, but I
13:29
Speaker 1: mean it coincided. But he was like, yeah, this place
13:31
Speaker 1: stinks now yeah, and Hitler's in power, I'm gonna go
13:33
Speaker 1: become a brown shirt and rough up people on the street,
13:36
Speaker 1: which is what he did. Pretty much because he really
13:38
Speaker 1: did love to fight. And um, the brown Shirts were
13:42
Speaker 1: purged in the Night of the Long Knives by Hitler
13:46
Speaker 1: and his cronies and um Burger was it was Burger right? Yeah.
13:53
Speaker 1: He he managed to not be killed during that purge. Yeah,
13:59
Speaker 1: so he was working with his buddy um Ernst Room
14:03
Speaker 1: of the Stormtroopers like serious business, right, Rome was actually
14:07
Speaker 1: killed during the perch Oh yeah, they put apparently they
14:12
Speaker 1: put a pistol in his cell with him and gave
14:14
Speaker 1: him ten minutes to kill himself. And he said, if
14:18
Speaker 1: if you want me dead, Adolph's gonna have to do
14:20
Speaker 1: it himself. And they came back and he was staying
14:25
Speaker 1: there right, and Hitler is like, what is going on here? Um,
14:29
Speaker 1: and the guy was standing there with the shirt off,
14:30
Speaker 1: with his chest bear to him. Yeah, supposedly, and they
14:33
Speaker 1: just shot him in the chess point blank and the
14:35
Speaker 1: head of the Brown Shirts went down. So that didn't
14:38
Speaker 1: work out for him, No, but Burger did survive this, Yeah,
14:42
Speaker 1: he did survive and went off to college. But then
14:44
Speaker 1: he wrote a a paper about the Gestapo that was
14:49
Speaker 1: not too favorable and he got sent to a concentration
14:52
Speaker 1: camp for his efforts for seventeen months, right, and then
14:55
Speaker 1: when he was released, they said you can come out,
14:58
Speaker 1: but you have to go off with the army. Yeah,
15:00
Speaker 1: they harassed his wife. It was I don't know that
15:03
Speaker 1: he was the best pick, right, think we've antagonized, thrown
15:09
Speaker 1: in prison and then forced into the army. We also
15:13
Speaker 1: killed his boss, harassed his wife. Will trust him as
15:17
Speaker 1: a savage as a team of one of eight, So
15:21
Speaker 1: Burger is the right hand man to Dash's team on
15:24
Speaker 1: Team Team mites E I n Z E I n Z.
15:30
Speaker 1: And then there were other There were two other dudes,
15:32
Speaker 1: Heinrich Henk, right, it's a great name, and Richard queerin Yes,
15:38
Speaker 1: And they were a couple of machinists who, um, we're
15:42
Speaker 1: a couple of machinists. They've been in America for a
15:44
Speaker 1: while back, and we're selected for this team. Yeah. Basically
15:49
Speaker 1: they went back to Germany started working at Volkswagen and um,
15:54
Speaker 1: you know, I guess we're probably eager to leap on
15:57
Speaker 1: h top secret job like this. It's probably appealing to
16:01
Speaker 1: these guys, you know. So that was Team Ice. We'll
16:04
Speaker 1: talk about teams right after this. So Chuck tell us
16:24
Speaker 1: about the smiling faces on Team survive well, Josh teams
16:30
Speaker 1: FY was led by a man named Edward Curling or
16:33
Speaker 1: Edward I guess who is I take it as the
16:35
Speaker 1: only competent person in this entire mission. Yeah, he seemed
16:40
Speaker 1: like it, right, kind of a little more than the rest.
16:43
Speaker 1: Comparatively speaking, he seemed like a criminal genius. Yeah, that's
16:47
Speaker 1: a good point. Um. So he was also one of
16:51
Speaker 1: had gone to American to work, married a German woman
16:56
Speaker 1: there and then they worked together as butler, butler and
16:59
Speaker 1: cook for a little while, and then he said, you
17:01
Speaker 1: know what, I don't like you anymore. I think I
17:03
Speaker 1: want an American woman. So he did that and then, uh,
17:07
Speaker 1: when the war broke out, he tried to sail to Germany. Right,
17:10
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure if he was a mastermind either.
17:12
Speaker 1: Another thing about it, well, he showed a lot of initiative. Well,
17:15
Speaker 1: good point, and he was turned back by the um
17:19
Speaker 1: the coast Guard. But he finally made it to Germany
17:22
Speaker 1: UM in nineteen forty and he ended up working at
17:24
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Propaganda. Yeah, I guess, huh yeah, sure.
17:29
Speaker 1: And when he tried to um sail to Germany that
17:34
Speaker 1: one time, he actually had a guy with him named Um,
17:39
Speaker 1: was it Herbert new Bauer. I believe that was a
17:42
Speaker 1: new Bauer on his boat. Yeah, he was on that crew,
17:45
Speaker 1: and so he would have been turned back as well. So, um,
17:48
Speaker 1: he was a natural fit, right, and each other and
17:51
Speaker 1: Curling actually recommended Herman new Bauer uh to be part
17:55
Speaker 1: of the team. He's like, he can hoist a sail. Yeah,
17:58
Speaker 1: what else do you need? That he was in the
18:00
Speaker 1: boone who cares that was the youngest member of his
18:04
Speaker 1: crew at twenty two? Was Herbert helped? And um, he
18:08
Speaker 1: moved to the U S when he was just five
18:09
Speaker 1: years old. And so I don't know that he was
18:12
Speaker 1: a great choice because he was practically American. Yeah, and
18:16
Speaker 1: you know he was also not so smart, or put
18:21
Speaker 1: it this way, experienced. He was not experienced, right, A
18:24
Speaker 1: little a little green, a little wet behind the ears. Um.
18:28
Speaker 1: And then the last guy, Werner Thiel, he surprised surprise
18:33
Speaker 1: as a member of the boond and he was working
18:37
Speaker 1: in a war plant. So just this weird hodgepodge rag
18:42
Speaker 1: tag group of guys were selected. Only two people out
18:46
Speaker 1: of the whole original twelve or had been in the military.
18:49
Speaker 1: This sounds like a movie in the making, but it
18:53
Speaker 1: just if it would have had a great third act,
18:55
Speaker 1: it probably would already be a movie. Oh yeah, you
18:58
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Yeah, it is lack a third act.
19:00
Speaker 1: I imagine like when if someone had tried to develop this,
19:03
Speaker 1: like this sounds great so far, it's going great, and
19:05
Speaker 1: then that's how it ends. Yeah, shel fit. Yeah. Um.
19:10
Speaker 1: So these guys are put together. They're sent to the
19:13
Speaker 1: over school to learn jiu jitsu, and the old guy,
19:18
Speaker 1: George Josh is like low kick low kick, Oh my hip,
19:21
Speaker 1: yeah you know. Yeah. They were also studying like explosive
19:24
Speaker 1: techniques and wiring, not just explosive jiu jitsu technique, but
19:29
Speaker 1: real explosive wiring, detonation timers, all of this stuff. They
19:35
Speaker 1: got to go on field trips to um power plants
19:39
Speaker 1: and bridges and canals and see like where the weak
19:42
Speaker 1: points were um and all of this took place over
19:46
Speaker 1: an intensive eighteen days of training. That's it. They got
19:49
Speaker 1: eighteen days of training. Yeah, and apparently Josh, the leader
19:52
Speaker 1: of Team Inns, wasn't even I read one account this
19:55
Speaker 1: said he basically kind of snoozed through most of it,
19:58
Speaker 1: which would go on to explain a few things later
20:00
Speaker 1: it's hilarious. Eighteen days and you can't even stay awake
20:04
Speaker 1: to learn how to blow something up. Seriously. Um, all right, one,
20:10
Speaker 1: they were given their assignment, um, and these were I
20:14
Speaker 1: mean this was pretty smart. The assignments were. They had
20:16
Speaker 1: a good they had a good plan in place. Small
20:19
Speaker 1: teams of dudes. Uh Dash's team was assigned to destroy
20:23
Speaker 1: quite a few things. Um, hydro electric plants at Niagara Falls,
20:28
Speaker 1: the Aluminum Company of America factory in Illinois, Tennessee, New
20:33
Speaker 1: York three plants, and the Philadelphia Sault Company's cryolite plant,
20:37
Speaker 1: which apparently supplies raw materials for aluminum. Right. And the
20:41
Speaker 1: reason they want wanted to go after aluminium was because
20:44
Speaker 1: aluminum production in the United States the output was greater
20:48
Speaker 1: than all of Europe's both sides access and or no,
20:51
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. All of the access is aluminum production put together.
20:55
Speaker 1: And aluminium is a very very valuable thing. During war
20:58
Speaker 1: you used to make air craft frames. You use it
21:01
Speaker 1: to make um, the interiors of ships. Apparently you use
21:07
Speaker 1: it for everything from like m R. E's, like the
21:10
Speaker 1: field ration tink hands or well not tin cans, aluminum
21:13
Speaker 1: can but all of this stuff comes in handy. And
21:16
Speaker 1: if you can sure pin wheels like the good ones,
21:20
Speaker 1: if you um put those man, you can cut your
21:22
Speaker 1: finger off with one of those things. Uh. If you
21:25
Speaker 1: can cripple aluminum production, you can put a serious thing
21:28
Speaker 1: in the wartime effort. Yeah, it was. It was a
21:30
Speaker 1: smart play. Um. And then they are also told to
21:34
Speaker 1: bomb um locks on the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky
21:38
Speaker 1: and Pittsburgh. Yes, so disrupting transportation that would have been
21:42
Speaker 1: a huge deal. They would just strap a bomb to
21:45
Speaker 1: a pack mule that was supposed to be pulling a
21:49
Speaker 1: boat along the canal and kaboom. So that's team mines. Yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: team spy curling steam. They said, all right, you guys,
21:58
Speaker 1: we want you to concentrate on railroad because we saw
22:01
Speaker 1: during the American Civil War destroying railroads is a great
22:04
Speaker 1: way to cripple and army. Um they blew. And I
22:07
Speaker 1: don't think that's where they got the idea. You know,
22:10
Speaker 1: it's long been a wartime thing to destroy railroads. I
22:13
Speaker 1: see Pennsylvania Railroad station at Newark. Uh, the Horseshoe Bend
22:20
Speaker 1: section of railroad track near Altoona, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Ohio
22:25
Speaker 1: railroad parts of it, the New York Central Railroads, Hell
22:28
Speaker 1: Gate Bridge locks and canals in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Ohio,
22:34
Speaker 1: and the water supply system of New York. Right. And
22:37
Speaker 1: they were also told to carry out acts of general
22:40
Speaker 1: terrorism to scare people in general, bombing Jewish own department stores, UM,
22:46
Speaker 1: locker rooms at UM train stations, just basically just foment
22:52
Speaker 1: like real fear and make Americans feel like, wow, America
22:55
Speaker 1: is being struck. Yeah, we're vulnerable. Um. And so the
22:59
Speaker 1: guy said, okay, let's do this, and they they they
23:04
Speaker 1: shipped out on two different subs from Lorient, France. U
23:08
Speaker 1: boats Baby, this is Germany, Yeah, okay, U boats. Um.
23:14
Speaker 1: They left on U five eighty four in U two
23:17
Speaker 1: oh two and um they had each team had four boxes,
23:23
Speaker 1: three of like dynamite and other explosives, and then a
23:26
Speaker 1: fourth box of things like timers and UM detonators and
23:32
Speaker 1: wiring and all that stuff. Sausages sure, just in case
23:36
Speaker 1: they got a little hungry on the trip. Yeah it
23:38
Speaker 1: was Germans after all. They also had a lot of
23:41
Speaker 1: money and roughly about a million dollars today UM. At
23:46
Speaker 1: the time each group had fifty grand and they needed
23:49
Speaker 1: this to travel and to live and to bribe people
23:51
Speaker 1: and pay folks off right in cash. So they had
23:55
Speaker 1: and what's equal to about a million dollars today in
23:57
Speaker 1: cash on them and nothing greater than a fifty bill.
24:00
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money, like physically a lot of money.
24:04
Speaker 1: Each member was given nine thousand five of which it
24:07
Speaker 1: was his very funny like team leader is going to
24:10
Speaker 1: hold onto this and you can keep for yourself and
24:13
Speaker 1: your money belt and only carry like four fifty in
24:16
Speaker 1: your pocket, and um, that should be enough dough to
24:20
Speaker 1: carry out this plan was the idea, yep, and then
24:23
Speaker 1: the uh. The team leaders also got handkerchiefs that had
24:28
Speaker 1: um the names and addresses and things of contacts in
24:32
Speaker 1: invisible ink written on them. Yeah. So this is like
24:36
Speaker 1: a bona fide spy, yes, bionage terrorism operation. Again, great
24:41
Speaker 1: movie in the making so far, so the m And
24:46
Speaker 1: again I think you said before that like Hitler was
24:48
Speaker 1: planning on sending several waves or wave after wave. Apparently
24:53
Speaker 1: the schedule was every six weeks they were going to
24:55
Speaker 1: send one, one or two teams to the United States. Yeah,
24:58
Speaker 1: I got, I mean it was a really smart and
25:00
Speaker 1: scary plan. Um, because catching you know, a tiny team
25:05
Speaker 1: of four guys who can assimilate as Americans, um or
25:09
Speaker 1: at least good German Americans. That's that's tough to catch.
25:14
Speaker 1: So chuck you uh two O two, which actually left
25:19
Speaker 1: two days after you. Eight four showed up off like
25:23
Speaker 1: fifty yards off the shoreline of Long Island and just
25:28
Speaker 1: frightening the thing about. Yeah, there was a German U
25:31
Speaker 1: boat fifty yards off of the shore of Long Island.
25:34
Speaker 1: UM on June twelve, showed up about eight in the
25:41
Speaker 1: evening and it belches out its cargo of um box
25:45
Speaker 1: of explosives and saboteurs, and the dudes um as they're
25:49
Speaker 1: rowing to shore, they put they were wearing like German
25:53
Speaker 1: military uniforms. Yeah. I didn't fully and this didn't make
25:56
Speaker 1: a ton of sense to me. Oh well, if you
25:58
Speaker 1: were caught in playing was behind enemy lines. The rules
26:01
Speaker 1: of war state that you can be shot on site,
26:04
Speaker 1: but if you're caught as a German marine prisoner of
26:08
Speaker 1: war and you have to be, that was taking a chance.
26:11
Speaker 1: I would addressed as an American. No, I mean, like
26:15
Speaker 1: I think that was smart. Yeah, I don't know. I
26:18
Speaker 1: would have addressed. I would have tried to assimilate, not
26:20
Speaker 1: been like, I'm a German marine, You're you're supposed to
26:24
Speaker 1: take me hostage, right, But I think it would be yeah,
26:29
Speaker 1: come on, let's go, I'm taking you hostage, whereas if
26:33
Speaker 1: the guy had been like, you're a spy, I am
26:36
Speaker 1: allowed to kill you right here and now. Yeah, I
26:39
Speaker 1: just I don't know. I don't agree with that one,
26:40
Speaker 1: but hey, everyone has their own rules when it comes
26:43
Speaker 1: to saboteuring. So sabotaging, right, yes, sabotaging. I was just
26:49
Speaker 1: kidding anyway, And I've learned recently that that was of um,
26:53
Speaker 1: that's that words of recent providence. Did you know that,
26:55
Speaker 1: like it didn't come into use until the beginning of
26:58
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. That makes sense. I would have thought
27:00
Speaker 1: it was a fairly old word. Yeah, nope. Did we
27:05
Speaker 1: just think of sabotage or do we just start calling
27:07
Speaker 1: it that? Like? Did they not used to sabotage back
27:10
Speaker 1: in the day. Yeah, I think they just started calling
27:13
Speaker 1: it that. Okay, So, um, the so this is Dash's
27:17
Speaker 1: team team since team mines, and they show up on
27:21
Speaker 1: the shore and they're wearing again German military uniforms, which
27:25
Speaker 1: they took off really quickly, very quickly. Yeah, once they
27:28
Speaker 1: saw that. You know, Okay, we made it. Yeah, the
27:31
Speaker 1: operation has begun. They changed, right, Yeah, they changed clothes
27:35
Speaker 1: and they started uh I guess they put on there
27:37
Speaker 1: I love New York shirts and they started digging big
27:41
Speaker 1: holes in the beach to to bury these munitions so
27:45
Speaker 1: they could come back as needed when they wanted to
27:47
Speaker 1: blow something new up. Yes, they can't just carry that
27:50
Speaker 1: stuff around, No, and they needed to just stash everything
27:53
Speaker 1: and go and cool out and make sure that no
27:56
Speaker 1: one was like onto him or anything like that, and
27:58
Speaker 1: then come back and get it, like you said, as
27:59
Speaker 1: they need. Yeah. The plan was to meet up for
28:01
Speaker 1: the two teams to meet up in Cincinnati on July four,
28:05
Speaker 1: UM for a baseball game. That is what I'm imagining. Yeah,
28:09
Speaker 1: the Reds versus the Braves. I don't know where the
28:14
Speaker 1: Braves were then, probably Milwaukee, sure, Okay, I don't think
28:18
Speaker 1: they moved to Atlanta until the sixties. Yeah, but I
28:20
Speaker 1: was trying to think of Boston, but they were that
28:22
Speaker 1: was long before so um. The team in inst was
28:28
Speaker 1: it was changing. They just landed. They were in the
28:33
Speaker 1: midst of changing when they were discovered by coast guardsman. Yeah.
28:37
Speaker 1: Well one of them was that Josh climbed over a
28:39
Speaker 1: dune and while the other guys were still bearing and
28:42
Speaker 1: changing uh their clothes, and he walked up and there
28:45
Speaker 1: was a coast guard dude, John Cullen, standing right there,
28:48
Speaker 1: and he was like, hey, what you're doing, basically, and
28:51
Speaker 1: the guy was like, oh, nothing and uh he uh.
28:56
Speaker 1: He apparently was kind of handling things when comes over
29:01
Speaker 1: and Burger thought that so the team Inns had been
29:04
Speaker 1: rowed to shore by two German sailors, and I guess
29:08
Speaker 1: Burger lost track of the German sailors and assume that
29:10
Speaker 1: they were still there and that for some reason it
29:13
Speaker 1: was only Josh four guys plus the two right. And
29:16
Speaker 1: then Josh had climbed over the dune to talk to
29:19
Speaker 1: one of the sailors. So Burger comes up and asks
29:22
Speaker 1: the question in German, and the coastguardsman, John Cullen, is like,
29:28
Speaker 1: why are you speaking German? We're at war with Germany.
29:31
Speaker 1: What's going on? And at that point Josh tells Burger
29:34
Speaker 1: to get Yeah. He said, you fool, go back to
29:38
Speaker 1: the others. And the guy was like, what others? Wait
29:42
Speaker 1: a minute, And so Josh's story was that they were
29:45
Speaker 1: um fisherman stranded Fisherman and before he got really suspicious, Cullen,
29:50
Speaker 1: the guy from the Coastguard said, well, if you guys
29:53
Speaker 1: are Shannon Fisherman's yeah, we have a Coastguard like house
29:58
Speaker 1: party house up the beach. We just ordered some pizza.
30:01
Speaker 1: Come with me. You guys can eat some pizza and
30:04
Speaker 1: um chill out. And Josh is like, well, uh, we
30:09
Speaker 1: don't have any idea on us. Yeah, we don't fishing
30:11
Speaker 1: permits either. We don't want to get in trouble. And
30:14
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you're telling a guy from the
30:16
Speaker 1: coast guy that, so you're in trouble first of all,
30:19
Speaker 1: but secondly that strikes me as weird. About that time,
30:22
Speaker 1: Burger comes up asked his question in German, and Josh
30:25
Speaker 1: sees the writing on the wall and tells Um tells Colin, well,
30:31
Speaker 1: he says, do you have a mother and Colin says yes,
30:35
Speaker 1: And he goes do you have a father? Says yes,
30:37
Speaker 1: and Dash says, well, then I wouldn't want to kill you,
30:40
Speaker 1: So how about I give you some money you can
30:41
Speaker 1: forget that this ever happened. And he tries to give
30:44
Speaker 1: him a hundred bucks and Colin says nope, yeah, he
30:47
Speaker 1: says no, thank you, um, and he said He ends
30:50
Speaker 1: up giving him two hundred and sixty dollars and Colin
30:53
Speaker 1: basically realize that something was going down and I just
30:59
Speaker 1: needed just take this money and act like I'm down
31:02
Speaker 1: with the take and get out of here. So so
31:05
Speaker 1: he does, so he does. He's scaddles and then oh
31:08
Speaker 1: but not before this is very key piece. Actually, Josh
31:11
Speaker 1: grabbed his flashlight before he left and shined it on
31:14
Speaker 1: his own face and said, you will be meeting me
31:19
Speaker 1: in East Hampton sometime soon. Do you know who I am?
31:23
Speaker 1: And then guy was like, no, I don't know who
31:24
Speaker 1: you are. And he said my name is George John Davis,
31:26
Speaker 1: which was a lie. Uh well, it was his real
31:29
Speaker 1: alias for the mission though, so like he actually gave
31:32
Speaker 1: him his real alias, and he said what's your name?
31:34
Speaker 1: And um, Colin said Frank Collins, which was a lie.
31:38
Speaker 1: Which was a lie. Pretty quick thinking and um, basically
31:42
Speaker 1: he scrambled back and Josh came back over and was like,
31:46
Speaker 1: little seeing there, guys, I totally took care of it.
31:48
Speaker 1: Should not be a big deal. Don't even worry about
31:51
Speaker 1: paying the guy two sixty. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, So
31:54
Speaker 1: everybody finished bearing these boxes, which they did, and um
31:58
Speaker 1: Colin ran off and went and grabbed some of his
32:01
Speaker 1: fellow Coast guardsmen. By the time they got back, Team
32:05
Speaker 1: Science had left a train. But apparently, and this is
32:08
Speaker 1: another thing, so the U boat that dropped off Team
32:11
Speaker 1: Acience had grounded itself on a sandbar and was sitting
32:16
Speaker 1: there like trying to get back out to sea because
32:19
Speaker 1: Dawn was just rocked back and forth in your chair?
32:22
Speaker 1: Was that that's what it looked, was that the method
32:25
Speaker 1: in there? Yeah, it just moved right exactly. And finally
32:30
Speaker 1: the tide came in just enough for them to dislodge
32:32
Speaker 1: themselves and go back out of seat, just in time.
32:34
Speaker 1: But apparently um Colon and the other Coast Guards wanh
32:38
Speaker 1: it came back, caught sight of this U boat heading
32:41
Speaker 1: back out to sea. Not good, right, No German U
32:45
Speaker 1: boat off the coast of Long Island just ran into
32:47
Speaker 1: some guys who are speaking German and tried to pay
32:49
Speaker 1: you off. And then now all of a sudden, in
32:51
Speaker 1: the moonlight, you can see the ghostly outlines of four
32:55
Speaker 1: freshly dug holes in the sand. Let's see what's in there. Yeah,
32:59
Speaker 1: I wonder if um i couldn't find. I saw that
33:02
Speaker 1: about the boat being stuck, but I couldn't find if
33:05
Speaker 1: that was like, if they could have gotten away, you know,
33:08
Speaker 1: it could have all changed. They may not have been
33:10
Speaker 1: that suspicious. I think that Collen was suspicious. Yeah, he
33:15
Speaker 1: was definitely coming back, but seeing the U boat was
33:17
Speaker 1: just icing on the cake exactly. Okay, so the other
33:21
Speaker 1: dudes had hop date. Well, they dug up the holes
33:23
Speaker 1: and they found the stuff and said, okay, um, this
33:28
Speaker 1: is a huge deal. Yeah, we just found a trove
33:31
Speaker 1: of explosives in German military uniforms buried on the beach,
33:36
Speaker 1: like sixty miles from New York. Yeah, so Toots sweet.
33:39
Speaker 1: By ten twenty three that morning, those boxes were in
33:43
Speaker 1: the office of New York City Police Captain John Bayliss,
33:47
Speaker 1: who then promptly got in touch with the FBI, and
33:50
Speaker 1: by noon that day, thirteen hours after they had arrived,
33:54
Speaker 1: the FBI had all that stuff in custody, and j
33:57
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover said, there's a to get a blackout on
34:00
Speaker 1: the news, so these guys don't get wise to this,
34:03
Speaker 1: and we need to get the largest man hunting FBI
34:05
Speaker 1: history underway. And they did, and we will explore that
34:09
Speaker 1: and all the ways the FBI got some lucky breaks
34:11
Speaker 1: on this right after these messages. All right, so Team Science,
34:31
Speaker 1: let's recap here. They are in Manhattan. They go shopping
34:36
Speaker 1: at Macy's. Of course. Yeah, we got a lot of cash.
34:39
Speaker 1: All they had with them was the clothes the civilian,
34:41
Speaker 1: the clothes they brought and all that cash. Yeah, that
34:44
Speaker 1: was it. Everything else is buried back to the beach,
34:45
Speaker 1: but is now an FBI custody unbeknownst to these guys.
34:48
Speaker 1: That's right. So they go shopping at Macy's. They split
34:51
Speaker 1: into they said, let's split up into pairs, because that
34:53
Speaker 1: makes sense. Uh, Kieran and uh he checked into the
34:58
Speaker 1: hotel Martinique ssh and Burger I went to the Governor
35:02
Speaker 1: Clinton hotel Governor Bill Clinton, and uh, I don't think so.
35:06
Speaker 1: And um, unless he was named after the hotel, Oh yeah,
35:10
Speaker 1: I never know. That's why he always wanted to be governor.
35:13
Speaker 1: And so apparently, um, Josh and Burger met. He summoned
35:18
Speaker 1: Burger to his hotel room up on a tall floor
35:21
Speaker 1: and opened the window and said, I've got a plan
35:25
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna tell you about it, and if you're
35:28
Speaker 1: on board, you're on board. But if you're not, then
35:31
Speaker 1: one of us is leaving through the door. One of
35:33
Speaker 1: us is leaving through the window. He basically threw down
35:35
Speaker 1: the gauntlet Burg to Burger, I wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah,
35:40
Speaker 1: And so Burger he basically said, I would like to
35:44
Speaker 1: turn and sabbothe tour, sabotage the sabotage, and go against Germany.
35:54
Speaker 1: And because America is kind of great. So Josh was
35:58
Speaker 1: going to kill Burger if Burger can go along with it.
36:00
Speaker 1: That's what he said. And apparently Burger had the choice
36:03
Speaker 1: to like, or you can you can defeat you and
36:05
Speaker 1: throw you out the window where you can triumph and
36:08
Speaker 1: be the living victor. Yeah. So I think Burger was
36:11
Speaker 1: just on board. And they said that in this article
36:15
Speaker 1: that um Josh probably was telling the truth that he was.
36:19
Speaker 1: He was really this was his idea from the beginning.
36:22
Speaker 1: So here's the here's the question. Like, historically speaking, Josh
36:27
Speaker 1: has been uh seen as a genuine betrayer of this mission. Sure,
36:34
Speaker 1: but when he became a genuine betrayer of the mission
36:38
Speaker 1: is is issue? Still? According to this history and that article,
36:42
Speaker 1: either he he knew it before they even landed, and
36:46
Speaker 1: that that is why he showed his face and gave
36:49
Speaker 1: his real alias to John Colin on the beach, which
36:52
Speaker 1: makes sense, or his encounter with John Colin on the
36:55
Speaker 1: beach rattled him enough that he was like, this is
36:58
Speaker 1: never gonna work. We're already we're already dead in the water.
37:01
Speaker 1: That's a quick turn. So now I'm going to go
37:03
Speaker 1: ahead and betray it. Yeah. I say that he was
37:06
Speaker 1: in on it from the beginning. That's what that's my feeling,
37:08
Speaker 1: because he was in sicycle. Just I don't know, it
37:11
Speaker 1: seems like a really quick like they just land on
37:13
Speaker 1: the beach. Five minutes later he meets a guy and
37:15
Speaker 1: he's like, wait a minute, it's off. I'm gonna betray Germany.
37:18
Speaker 1: It just seemed I don't know, a little too hasty.
37:20
Speaker 1: Well maybe he had nerves of spaghetti. Yeah, cook spaghetti.
37:26
Speaker 1: Even so, uh, he says, here's the plan, the on
37:29
Speaker 1: Monday burger. Yeah, he said, on Monday, I'm gonna go
37:33
Speaker 1: to the head. They closed the window by now I
37:36
Speaker 1: think said they went to dinner and everything was good,
37:38
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm gonna go to Uh, I'm gonna
37:40
Speaker 1: go to Washington meet with j Edgar Hoover. That should
37:42
Speaker 1: be pretty easy to get that meeting. The man himself, Yeah,
37:44
Speaker 1: here he wears nothing but a caper on the office,
37:47
Speaker 1: and he said, you go back to the other two
37:48
Speaker 1: guys and just sort of occupied them for a little
37:50
Speaker 1: while while I'm going to d C and requesting a
37:53
Speaker 1: meeting with the FBI. The head of the FBI, um
37:57
Speaker 1: so Burger, says do this. Josh says, okay. It's Sunday,
38:04
Speaker 1: and Josh doesn't make his way to d C until
38:07
Speaker 1: Thursday morning. Instead, he goes so remember he was a
38:10
Speaker 1: waiter in America. Well, he called. He called the FBI first,
38:14
Speaker 1: at least right and the reason why he called first
38:16
Speaker 1: he was a little worried because apparently back in UM
38:18
Speaker 1: in a training camp in the woods, cop Falter Cop
38:23
Speaker 1: had said, you guys don't need to worry, we have
38:25
Speaker 1: a man on the inside of the FBI. So Um,
38:30
Speaker 1: Josh was worried that if he called, or if he
38:32
Speaker 1: just showed up at FBI headquarters he talked to that
38:35
Speaker 1: one guy right out of all the FBI guys, he
38:38
Speaker 1: would have that that level of bad luck, which, from
38:40
Speaker 1: what I understand, that was something that was a good
38:43
Speaker 1: concern for her to have um. So he called the
38:45
Speaker 1: New York Bureau first and said, I'm a German dude,
38:49
Speaker 1: I've got information for Jacker Hoover. Tell him I'm coming.
38:52
Speaker 1: And then he hung up, and he went to a
38:55
Speaker 1: club for waiters and then played pinuckle for like two
38:58
Speaker 1: straight days. Yeah, I get I think he was probably gambling.
39:02
Speaker 1: That's what I think too, because if I'm not mistaken
39:05
Speaker 1: with the math, he ended up with more money than
39:06
Speaker 1: he came with. Yeah, so he wentn't gambled with sabotage money.
39:12
Speaker 1: I think. So, Man, that guy is some serious. He's
39:16
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Uh So, eventually he said, all right, I
39:19
Speaker 1: gotta go to Washington. This peanuckle game has dried up.
39:22
Speaker 1: So he hopped on the Sella Express for Washington, which
39:28
Speaker 1: I highly recommend. By the way, man, train travel is awesome.
39:32
Speaker 1: Regional train travel is a delight, such a delight, And
39:36
Speaker 1: especially from Boston to New York. You just right along
39:40
Speaker 1: the coastline there and it's just lovely. It is lovely.
39:43
Speaker 1: Sailboats and cape cod houses on points, lobster rolls. Yeah,
39:48
Speaker 1: it's nice, good stuff. All right. So Josh has arrived
39:52
Speaker 1: by train finally. By this point, team spy has landed. Yeah,
40:00
Speaker 1: show up in Florida and they're like, let's do this
40:02
Speaker 1: for real. And I imagine Pontevedra Beach in three It
40:05
Speaker 1: was a pretty low key scenario for sure, you know, yeah,
40:08
Speaker 1: I would think so. So they are twenty five miles
40:11
Speaker 1: south of Jacksonville. They bury their crates, no sweat, hop
40:14
Speaker 1: on a bus, go to Jacksonville. Um. They split up
40:18
Speaker 1: from that point to went to Cincinnati too, went to Chicago. Yeah,
40:22
Speaker 1: and like I mean, there was no must There wasn't
40:26
Speaker 1: like any no one was calling the FBI like they
40:29
Speaker 1: were in it to win it basically. Yeah, why they
40:32
Speaker 1: should have done Team I should have done their recond beforehand.
40:35
Speaker 1: The U boat should have not pulled up next to
40:37
Speaker 1: a Coastguard station first of all. That would have been
40:39
Speaker 1: one thing. Yeah, because that Coastguard station was like half
40:42
Speaker 1: a mile away. Yeah, it was there. All right, maybe
40:44
Speaker 1: they're bad until so, uh Josh gets to d C,
40:48
Speaker 1: checks into the Mayflower Hotel. Yeah, this is the same
40:51
Speaker 1: day that Caroling's group lands in Pontevedra. It's a big day,
40:55
Speaker 1: huge day. Uh, And he in d C said all right,
40:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call the FBI again because you gotta meet
41:01
Speaker 1: with Hoover, and he reached out to a Dwayne Trainer,
41:05
Speaker 1: and of course, Trainer says, you know, this is probably
41:08
Speaker 1: not a legitimate call. We get these kind of weird
41:10
Speaker 1: calls all the time, but just in case, um, let's
41:13
Speaker 1: go pick him up. Yeah, let's let's see what's going on.
41:16
Speaker 1: It's a slow day at headquarters. Yeah exactly. So they
41:18
Speaker 1: go and pick up the German and they bring him
41:21
Speaker 1: to the Justice Department, and Dash said that he was
41:25
Speaker 1: basically bounced from agent to agent every He's kind of
41:29
Speaker 1: a hot potato on nobody wanted to deal with him,
41:32
Speaker 1: And finally he convinced these guys enough to end up
41:36
Speaker 1: in the office of Mickey Ladd, who was running the
41:40
Speaker 1: man hunt for the spies, and the head of the
41:45
Speaker 1: Spies was now sitting in his office, Yeah, telling him
41:49
Speaker 1: he's the head of the spies, and he still didn't
41:52
Speaker 1: quite believe him until Dash said, oh, yeah, well here,
41:56
Speaker 1: let me show you this and dumped out dollars on
42:00
Speaker 1: Lad's desk and Lads said, I'm so pleased you came
42:04
Speaker 1: in today. Come with me. Yeah, so, Josh, here's here's
42:08
Speaker 1: his idea. Is I want to talk to Hoover himself,
42:12
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna be a hero and I might even
42:15
Speaker 1: get like a medal of honor out of this, right,
42:17
Speaker 1: Like maybe Jagger will have me over to his house
42:20
Speaker 1: for dinner. Who knows what could come of this. Take
42:23
Speaker 1: your tape parade, They threw those all the time back then.
42:26
Speaker 1: Um so they the FBI gets them talking. He does
42:30
Speaker 1: get to meet Hoover briefly, but um, a couple of
42:34
Speaker 1: other agents take his deposition, which lasts for thirteen hours.
42:38
Speaker 1: Before he finished, he had told them about Burger and
42:41
Speaker 1: where Burger was, and they went and picked up Burger. Yeah,
42:43
Speaker 1: he like, while he was still telling him the story,
42:46
Speaker 1: they were already on Burger's hotel staking him out. Yep,
42:49
Speaker 1: so they before they picked up Burger, they were staking
42:52
Speaker 1: him out, like you said. And they watched Burger go
42:54
Speaker 1: meet Karen and Hink and so they just arrested all
42:57
Speaker 1: three of them, and all all of a sudden, they
42:59
Speaker 1: had team in custody within like a day of um
43:04
Speaker 1: dash walking in the FBI headquarters. It didn't go so
43:07
Speaker 1: well for team I No, so when when the team
43:11
Speaker 1: leader betrays you, like, yeah, you're you're in trouble. Your
43:14
Speaker 1: toast so on June twenty two, Hoover wrote to f
43:18
Speaker 1: d R and said, you know what, sir, we've we've
43:20
Speaker 1: caught all the members of this group that landed on
43:22
Speaker 1: Long Island. Pretty great, huh and we are awesome. Um.
43:27
Speaker 1: He didn't mention that the guy turned himself in and
43:30
Speaker 1: told him where everyone was, and uh so FDR was
43:34
Speaker 1: just thought that Hoover had done like a bang up
43:36
Speaker 1: job basically, and he's like, wait, way to go, way
43:38
Speaker 1: to do your job exactly. He lied pretty much, so
43:42
Speaker 1: um Dash had no real leads or anything about team,
43:50
Speaker 1: but he did have a handkerchief that had contacts on
43:54
Speaker 1: invisible inc. And surprisingly he hadn't blown his nose in
43:57
Speaker 1: it at this point, but he and remember how you
44:00
Speaker 1: were supposed to get the invisible ink to become visible. Luckily,
44:04
Speaker 1: the FBI had a crack team of lab Tex on
44:08
Speaker 1: this thing and they figured it out. And now all
44:11
Speaker 1: of a sudden they had the names and addresses of
44:13
Speaker 1: all of the German contexts for these teams right there
44:16
Speaker 1: in their hands, thanks to Josh Right. So they were
44:19
Speaker 1: all obviously staked out, just waiting on Team Heights or
44:23
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Team Spy to meet up with these people, right,
44:25
Speaker 1: which they did. But first teams FI did some other
44:29
Speaker 1: weird stuff like Herbert hopped. He was in Chicago, where
44:33
Speaker 1: again he had lived since he was five, and Holpe
44:37
Speaker 1: decided that he would buy a Pontiac car. Yea, yeah.
44:42
Speaker 1: He went to his parents house, told his dad everything. Yeah,
44:45
Speaker 1: I had his dad buy in the car. Yep, and um,
44:47
Speaker 1: he proposed to his girlfriend. He remember he had left
44:51
Speaker 1: during the war and he was an able bodied man
44:54
Speaker 1: over age eighteen, and so the local draft board um
44:58
Speaker 1: wanted to know where he was. So he dropped by
45:01
Speaker 1: FBI headquarters to clear up his draft problem. Says I'm back. Sorry,
45:05
Speaker 1: I've already registered with my local draft board. No need
45:08
Speaker 1: to track me anymore. I'm just an all American boy.
45:12
Speaker 1: And um the FBI was like, yeah, sure, thank you
45:16
Speaker 1: for coming by, and then tailed them on the way out,
45:20
Speaker 1: and then he led them to at least one other
45:22
Speaker 1: team member, right yeah. And while this was going on,
45:26
Speaker 1: Curling and verner Thiel went to New York UM and
45:31
Speaker 1: met up with a friend named Helmet Lena because they
45:34
Speaker 1: wanted to have sex with a lady, and so Lena
45:37
Speaker 1: hooked him up with the mis his mistress said here,
45:41
Speaker 1: have sex with her, and he said great, thanks, and
45:45
Speaker 1: he ended up traveling with that woman. Curling did and
45:50
Speaker 1: within a couple of days after Dash surrendered. Um, they
45:52
Speaker 1: spotted Curling because they were trailing him at a bar
45:58
Speaker 1: where he met with Deal, and they arrested both of
46:00
Speaker 1: those guys. Right, So two down on team Spy about help,
46:05
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, three down at this point. Right, Hope was
46:07
Speaker 1: taken down in Chicago. The only one left at this
46:10
Speaker 1: point was Herman new Bauer. Right, and new Bauer spent
46:13
Speaker 1: his time in was it in New York? Uh? I
46:18
Speaker 1: think he was in chick Okay, you're probably right. Um,
46:21
Speaker 1: he just went to the movies over and over again.
46:25
Speaker 1: That's what he did. He was apparently lonely, so he
46:28
Speaker 1: sought out some friends of his wife, whom he hadn't
46:31
Speaker 1: really met before. Umthing told him everything. He gave him
46:36
Speaker 1: his money for safekeeping, but kept enough to go to
46:40
Speaker 1: the movies a bunch. So basically he kept a dollar right,
46:43
Speaker 1: and um, okay, dollar fifty and h then he um
46:49
Speaker 1: was I think he just come back from the movies
46:51
Speaker 1: when the FBI picked him up. Right, So Dash remember
46:56
Speaker 1: is sure that like he's going to be feted as
46:59
Speaker 1: a herero that Jaker Hoover is probably like thinking about
47:04
Speaker 1: him right then, he's just like basically like Ralphie in
47:08
Speaker 1: a Christmas story, just daydreaming about like how he's going
47:11
Speaker 1: to be carried around on everyone's shoulders. He probably should
47:13
Speaker 1: have been so, I mean, he's the reason why this
47:15
Speaker 1: went south because he said, you know what, I'm siding
47:19
Speaker 1: with America. The thing is Hoover. He didn't care Jager Hoover.
47:24
Speaker 1: Not only did he not care, Hoover was taking the
47:27
Speaker 1: credit for all of this unraveled, right. He couldn't let
47:31
Speaker 1: Josh be known as this guy who had come and
47:34
Speaker 1: um given him this whole thing on a platter, or
47:38
Speaker 1: else Hoover would look like an idiot, and Josh might
47:41
Speaker 1: very well have been hailed as at least a slimy
47:44
Speaker 1: collaborators rather than a criminal. After everybody was rounded up,
47:48
Speaker 1: the FBI arrested Josh, and Josh must have been quite
47:52
Speaker 1: surprised by this. Well, yeah, they arrested him, but they said, hey,
47:55
Speaker 1: just go along with this. You'll get a full presidential
47:58
Speaker 1: pardon after six months. Sort of play along with the arrest,
48:01
Speaker 1: and he was like, Okay, I see so put me
48:04
Speaker 1: in the jail with the other guys so they don't
48:07
Speaker 1: know yeah exactly. It was like, yeah, sure, well, because
48:10
Speaker 1: that job with Hooper's planned to keep it all quiet
48:13
Speaker 1: still exactly was working out great for Hoover, it didn't
48:16
Speaker 1: work out great for Josh or the others. Chuck No.
48:19
Speaker 1: So um FDR wanted to make sure that he could
48:23
Speaker 1: get the death penalty and that this could be kept quiet.
48:27
Speaker 1: So he as he formed a military tribunal to try
48:32
Speaker 1: these guys, and it was the first one since um
48:34
Speaker 1: Lincoln had been assassinated. It was a big deal. So
48:38
Speaker 1: the prosecutor was Attorney General Francis Biddle, chief defense was
48:42
Speaker 1: Colonel Kenneth Royal Um. They defense argued initially for a
48:46
Speaker 1: civilian trial that was quickly scrapped and they said, no,
48:50
Speaker 1: we're going to move forward with the tribunal and held
48:53
Speaker 1: the trial out the Justice Department in Washington during the
48:56
Speaker 1: month of July nine and basically said, we know the
49:00
Speaker 1: whole there's not going to be much of a trial, fellas,
49:04
Speaker 1: we know everything because you told us everything. You are
49:07
Speaker 1: coming here to sabotage and blow up our junk and
49:11
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. Right, And the prosecutors sought the
49:14
Speaker 1: death penalty as expected. Um, but it was up to
49:18
Speaker 1: FDR to decide when and where, and to do that
49:21
Speaker 1: he had to have a transcript of the trial. And
49:24
Speaker 1: when he got this transcript of the trial, he it
49:27
Speaker 1: became obvious that Hoover hadn't really done anything. Yeah. Appinently
49:31
Speaker 1: FDR never called him out on it in public, No,
49:34
Speaker 1: which was a nice thing to do, I guess, because
49:37
Speaker 1: that would have just been further embarrassment for like the
49:39
Speaker 1: whole country, you know. So they kept that quiet, but
49:42
Speaker 1: at this point it was news all over the country.
49:44
Speaker 1: They weren't keeping it quiet with a press, uh. And
49:47
Speaker 1: the American public was way in favor of the death penalty.
49:51
Speaker 1: In fact, there was an open letter published in one
49:54
Speaker 1: newspaper calling for them to be fed to Gargantua, the
49:58
Speaker 1: guerrilla at the Wringling Brothers circuit, because that's fair to
50:02
Speaker 1: Gargantua too, Yeah, eat those Germans. Well. Instead, they electrocuted
50:07
Speaker 1: six of them on August eight of the District jail
50:10
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. That's right, um, including Herbert Hout
50:14
Speaker 1: who was just like, I just wanted up Pontiac, Yeah,
50:18
Speaker 1: I just wanted to see my parents. Right, Burger and
50:22
Speaker 1: Uh and Josh were spared the death penalty because they
50:26
Speaker 1: basically had a hard time proving in court that they
50:29
Speaker 1: didn't you know, fully intend to betray the operation. Yeah, exactly,
50:34
Speaker 1: So they did not get electrocuted. Um. They were sentenced
50:38
Speaker 1: Burger too hard labor for the rest of his life,
50:40
Speaker 1: and Josh was given thirty years. But President Truman commuted
50:45
Speaker 1: their sentences, released them and deported them, had them shipped
50:48
Speaker 1: to UM West Germany. West Berlin said don't come back, Nope,
50:54
Speaker 1: get out, and the other guys were buried in a
50:57
Speaker 1: potter's field by the way and outside Washington, Yes, which
51:00
Speaker 1: is now UM the d C Municipal Water treatment plant
51:06
Speaker 1: where they were buried. Yeah, just right now. They're part
51:09
Speaker 1: of the system, I guess Um. And so Josh and
51:13
Speaker 1: Burger go back to Germany and Burger starts like feeding
51:18
Speaker 1: the media Um the story basically five years later and
51:23
Speaker 1: blames Right and blames Josh for the deaths of these
51:26
Speaker 1: other six German patriots who were saboteurs. Right and Josh
51:31
Speaker 1: Um tried to publicly clear himself through he first saw
51:34
Speaker 1: to pardon in America so that he could come back.
51:38
Speaker 1: He really wanted to get that Germany, Yeah, I can imagine, um,
51:42
Speaker 1: and Uh America said, no, we're not going to do that.
51:45
Speaker 1: We're not going to pardon you. We're still mad at you.
51:47
Speaker 1: Germany said, we're mad at you too, and so he
51:50
Speaker 1: just kind of faded out of the public spotlight. Ye.
51:54
Speaker 1: He he ended up dying in nineteen at the age
51:56
Speaker 1: of eighty nine, and I didn't see any follow up
52:00
Speaker 1: or Burger for Burger. I think he wasn't quite as
52:04
Speaker 1: vilified as Doosh was, right for sure. But that was
52:09
Speaker 1: not the last time the Germans sent saboteurs ashore. There
52:12
Speaker 1: was at least one other ill fated attempt in another
52:18
Speaker 1: German submarine. These are expensive boats. Many, they are really
52:23
Speaker 1: taking a massive risk to drop off a couple of saboteurs.
52:27
Speaker 1: But they did it again off off of Maine in
52:31
Speaker 1: a snowstorm, and two uh former American residents German Americans, um,
52:38
Speaker 1: we're we're sent off under the main coast in a snowstorm.
52:44
Speaker 1: They were seen by a local boy scout using a
52:47
Speaker 1: compass during the snowstorm on the side of the road,
52:50
Speaker 1: and the boy scout was suspicious, so he traced their
52:52
Speaker 1: tracks all the way back to the shoreline when they
52:54
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere and he's like, I'm going to
52:57
Speaker 1: call the police. So the scouts actually called these guy. Yeah,
53:00
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. What's ironic is one of these German
53:03
Speaker 1: American saboteurs was a boy scout himself, so it's like
53:07
Speaker 1: boy scout on boy scout tattling um. And they got
53:11
Speaker 1: picked up immediately, and as far as everybody knows, that's
53:14
Speaker 1: the last time Germany ever tried that. Yeah. I think
53:18
Speaker 1: the idea was that hitler Um. It's like this, this
53:23
Speaker 1: is embarrassing. Yeah, let's just focus on the rocket program. Yeah,
53:26
Speaker 1: we can't keep sending guys to the United States who
53:28
Speaker 1: immediately get there and start doing stupid things giving themselves up.
53:33
Speaker 1: Go and see mom and Dad seeing the movies playing
53:37
Speaker 1: p knockle. So that's it. That's the story of the
53:40
Speaker 1: time the Nazis invaded Florida and New York and Maine. Uh.
53:45
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about that, check out
53:47
Speaker 1: history Net, check out damn interesting, check out all sorts
53:50
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yes, just search it. You'll find all sorts
53:53
Speaker 1: of cool things on it. I would not look for
53:55
Speaker 1: the movie coming soon into a theater near you know,
53:57
Speaker 1: the third act non existent? Not really, No, it's just
54:00
Speaker 1: kind of a let down. Yeah, that end with a
54:02
Speaker 1: bang hands with Germany being mad at them in America too.
54:08
Speaker 1: Uh let's see. I think I said Germany's mad, which
54:12
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this
54:17
Speaker 1: a cute our cutest youngest fan and it includes an
54:21
Speaker 1: audio clip. Hey, guys, did you hear this? Yes, it's
54:25
Speaker 1: pretty great. My son, Archer is two and a half
54:28
Speaker 1: years old, Just two and a half. We listened to
54:31
Speaker 1: podcasts together while I rock him to sleep at naptime
54:33
Speaker 1: and bedtime. Anytime he's tired, he says, Mommy, let's go
54:37
Speaker 1: Archer's room and listen to podcast. I usually rotate between
54:41
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know and other house stuff works podcasts.
54:44
Speaker 1: He's never seemed to have a preference until about two
54:46
Speaker 1: weeks ago when I put another podcast on. He said, no, Mommy,
54:51
Speaker 1: not that podcast, just stuff you know, the red one. Uh.
54:57
Speaker 1: You guys are his favorite, which is fine with me.
54:59
Speaker 1: And I've even to attach the voice recording of him
55:01
Speaker 1: requesting your podcast. It was not rehearsed, find you, It's
55:05
Speaker 1: just me asking him before his naptime today. That is
55:08
Speaker 1: from Shawna and Shawna it was permission to hear from Archer.
55:12
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and play that clip right now. Okay,
55:15
Speaker 1: are you ready to take a nap? Yeah? Do you
55:20
Speaker 1: want to listen to a podcast? Okay? Which podcast? Stuff
55:26
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know? Okay, ah, wow, pretty cute, Holy cow,
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Speaker 1: kid knows his stuff. Unbelievable, So Archer, if you can
55:38
Speaker 1: understand what's going on here, a boy, the sound coming
55:41
Speaker 1: out of the speakers. We know you don't have four memories,
55:44
Speaker 1: but hopefully this episode will be a documentation. That's right, Archer,
55:48
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55:51
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55:56
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56:11
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