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CLASSIC: Castle Itter: When Germans and Americans Joined Forces in World War II · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians we are returning with a classic episode
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: now as any student of history knows uh american and
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: german forces didn't really get along during world war.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Ii no sure didn't uh however sometimes there's a bit
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: of an exception and that in this case is a
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: little something called the battle of.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Castle itter this is a cinematic story so much so
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that no i almost don't want to spoil it other
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: than just saying the name.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Ben, you couldn't spoil it for me if you tried.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: No recollection of this one either.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Castle Itter, when Germans and Americans joined forces in World
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: War II.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Sounds nice. Let's roll the tape.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in. If you were
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: ever a fan of video games, you were probably aware
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: at some point of the video game franchise Wolfenstein II.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: 3D first-person shooter wherein you're obliterating Nazis. It's a lot
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of fun. It scared me as a kid. Hi, I'm Ben.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Noel. So, Ben, you played the Wolfenstein? Wolfenstein? Steen?
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: 3D?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't remember if it was 3D, but it
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: was on a PC, and it was sort of the,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: in my childhood mind, it was like the lighter version
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of another similar game called Doom.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Right, right. It's the predecessor. I think it's the predecessor. Yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: That's correct.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: And that's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Wolfenstein was like pseudo 3D. It's really just 2D.
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: It's just moving a bunch of 2D sprites around to
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: make it feel like 3D. Doom was kind of like.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: What is this nerd talk? What is this sprites?
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: It was a little more two and a half D.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: And then Quake is where they made the big jump
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: to full 3D.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: To actual 3D. Casey on the case.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I am also pleasantly surprised that you have some thoughts
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: on this matter, huh?
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I was a diehard gamer in the 90s, yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: I have not cared about it in a long time.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: So sprites are just kind of the building blocks of
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: these games.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: They're like the characters.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. They're like the elements you move around, basically.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: But like they're even textures and stuff, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Isn't that?
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so sprites. this is where my knowledge
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: runs out, but I think, you know, like nowadays it's
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: all about textures. Cause you have like surfaces and you're
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: applying the textures to them. The Sprite was kind of
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: like all in one, like it was the character, but
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: also the texture. Cause it was like a drawing.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: This, this is strange because like many people in the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: West who grew up in a post world war two environment, we,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: whenever there was like an evil army, uh, Easily, I'm
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: just going to make up the statistic, easily 8.62 times
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: out of 10, that evil army would be represented by
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the Nazis or something like the Nazi party, which is
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: strange when you look back. But it was very common
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: to have games wherein a person is fighting against Nazi
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: forces just the way that some modern fighting games have
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: people fighting against North Korean forces or somewhere in the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Middle East. Today's story is about Nazis, and it's got
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of cool stuff in here. We've got a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: spooky castle, right?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hence the Wolfenstein reference because I believe Wolfenstein in
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the parlance of the game was this giant fortress that
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: you're traversing, like all the different floors.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you. I totally forgot. That is why we're
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: talking about Wolfenstein.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: We're also talking about killing Nazis. Ah, yes.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Someone's got to do it. So we can go ahead
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  Speaker 1: and set the stage for World War II very, very quickly.
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  Speaker 1: It's the global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945,
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  Speaker 1: and it involved Axis powers and Allied powers. Often, at
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: least in the U.S., it is painted as a war
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: with a few prime actors. You know, they'll say, yes,
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  Speaker 1: Japan and the U.S.
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  Speaker 3: Fought.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, Europeans helped out. That's how they'll put it. They'll
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: be like, Europeans helped out American forces, but really it
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  Speaker 1: was America versus Germany. That's a vast oversimplification.
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  Speaker 3: It really is, but that's what we do here on
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Ridiculous History. Vast oversimplification.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Is that it?
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: That's our bread and butter, my man.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Well, it is painted. You know, a lot of countries
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: do that. If you read a textbook somewhere else, they're
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: going to have their own country's take on World War II,
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  Speaker 1: and the American take is, you know, pretty America-centric, right?
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: What we have in today's episode, though, is a very rare—
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  Speaker 2: case of cooperation between these parties, right? And an unprecedented
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: move to kind of, like, when everything hit.
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  Speaker 3: The fan, right? You know, so the war's coming to
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: an end.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Hitler's eating his suicide pill and shot himself in the face.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: That's the thing I remember most about Wolfenstein, by the way.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: You have to fight Hitler in the end. Spoiler alert
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: for a game that's, like, 30, 40 years old. He's
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: in a giant mech suit.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's awesome.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And at the end, when you kill him, he says, Eva,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: auf Wiedersehen, referring to his wife, Eva Braun.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So, so Mech Hitler has been annihilated at this point
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  Speaker 2: in the, you know, alternate history version of World War II.
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  Speaker 2: And this castle becomes the site of an unusual union.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, this is Castle Itter. And today we're exploring the
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  Speaker 1: story of the only time that Americans and Germans fought
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  Speaker 1: as allies during World War II. So Itter Castle is
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  Speaker 1: is a 19th century castle in a village called Itter
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  Speaker 1: in Austria. And it looks spooky. It looks like something
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  Speaker 1: out of, I don't know, it looks like the kind
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of castle Hellboy runs into in the Mike Mignola stories. Absolutely.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it definitely haunted as hell seeming.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And just for fun, let's see what Forvo says about
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  Speaker 2: the pronunciation of this castle. Itta.
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  Speaker 3: I got it.
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  Speaker 1: Itta.
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  Speaker 2: I love the German intensity. And we're going to get
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: into some fun German words in this episode.
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  Speaker 3: But it's true.
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  Speaker 2: It looks like something out of, like, a fractured, haunted, grim, grim,
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  Speaker 2: grim fairy tale. It's topped with those cool little, you know,
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  Speaker 2: crenellations that are the separated little turrets in between the
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  Speaker 2: walls where you can shoot, you know, arrows or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: The pattern that looks like one side of a zipper.
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  Speaker 3: That's exactly right. And it has a very, very.
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  Speaker 2: Rich history at first shows up in around 1244 in
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  Speaker 2: German land records. And then it's been passed through several
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  Speaker 2: different owners, different hands. In 1938, when Germany annexed Austria,
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  Speaker 2: the castle became a very sought-after site for all the
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  Speaker 2: secret weird stuff that Nazis were getting into.
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  Speaker 1: It's true. The Reich government officially leased the castle in 1940.
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  Speaker 1: from its owner at the time, one Franz Gruner. And
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the castle went through some weird things because after they
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  Speaker 1: had leased it or requisitioned it for their very vaguely
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: phrased official use, it went through a couple of iterations.
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  Speaker 1: It was, for a while, it was the swank offices
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  Speaker 1: of an organization called the German Association for Combating the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Dangers of Tobacco. Because say what you will about Nazis.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: They understood that tobacco was dangerous. True.
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  Speaker 2: They were sticklers for health, although it doesn't take away
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  Speaker 2: from the image of the, you know, imperially slim SS
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  Speaker 2: officer with a cigarette holder and an eye patch, you know.
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  Speaker 3: But I could still be hearkening back to our video game.
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  Speaker 1: And then, like, think about this, though. How amazing is
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  Speaker 1: that to have your office be a castle? It didn't last.
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  Speaker 1: On February 7th, 1943— The entire structure and all the
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  Speaker 1: accompanying buildings were requisitioned by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl
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  Speaker 1: under the orders of Heinrich Himmler. And then it was
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  Speaker 1: transformed into a prison, but not just any prison.
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  Speaker 3: No, not just any prison.
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  Speaker 2: And it was associated with probably the most notorious site ever.
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  Speaker 2: in all of, like, Nazi involvement in World War II,
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  Speaker 2: which would be the Dachau Concentration Camp, which operated the facility,
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  Speaker 2: which they referred to as a— oh, boy, I'm going to
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: do my best on this one— evacuee rungschlager, which means an
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  Speaker 2: evacuation camp.
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  Speaker 3: I love how the etymology is so interesting.
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  Speaker 2: Like, evacuee is spelled E-V-A-K-U-I-E, and then the American word is,
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  Speaker 2: you know, evacuation, evacuate. So the castle was already— you know,
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  Speaker 2: an impenetrable fortress. I mean, with these high walls and
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  Speaker 2: those turrets we talked about, but they transformed it even further,
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  Speaker 2: adding on to features that already existed, like these huge walls.
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  Speaker 3: They had a moat.
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  Speaker 2: It had this gatehouse that was very, very difficult to penetrate.
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  Speaker 2: And they added these tangles of multi-layers of barbed wire,
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  Speaker 2: or they call it concertina wire, which I guess is
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  Speaker 2: the really, really skinny, like, razor wire that'll slice right
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  Speaker 2: through you. and then they refitted it with these very
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  Speaker 2: complex locks and essentially rendered the facility absolutely impregnable to
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  Speaker 2: either get into or get out of.
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  Speaker 1: Twenty of the existing guest rooms in the central housing
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  Speaker 1: structure were converted into secure but pretty roomy cells. Others
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  Speaker 1: were turned into guard rooms and offices. These were not
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  Speaker 1: cells for your typical office. a political protester or petty criminal.
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  Speaker 1: This became a home for VIP French prisoners of war. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Folks like, uh, the two former prime ministers of France.
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  Speaker 2: There was, uh, Paul Renault, Renault, Casey on the case.
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  Speaker 4: Renault.
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  Speaker 3: Renault.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Renault.
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  Speaker 3: And then we have Eduard, uh, Daladier, D-A-L-A-D-I-E-R, huh? Daladier. Yeah. Daladier.
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  Speaker 3: Got it. Uh, And I know this one, General Charles
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle. Yeah, see, Charles. I love this.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: It's my favorite part of the show when Casey gets
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: to correct our pronunciations. The older sister, in fact, of
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: General Charles de Gaulle. Not a hard S on the end,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: just a Charles.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. Okay. And her name was Marie Agnes Callelou.
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: Marie Agnes Callelou, probably.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Casey on the case.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Oh.
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  Speaker 1: So we have a firsthand account about the conversion of
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the castle into a prison by Hans Fuchs. Hans saw
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: every— he was growing up in the area. Hans says, we
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: saw everything from our school window, the double barbed wire fence,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the floodlights, so that the whole night was lit up
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: like the day. But again, Schloss Itter, or the Castle Itter,
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  Speaker 1: was a subunit of the Dachau concentration camp's And they
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  Speaker 1: wanted the people who were imprisoned in this castle to
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: be relatively well cared for so that they could be
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: used as bargaining chips. We will give you one of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the former prime ministers if you give us this other stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But the problem here for Castle Itter was that they
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: were existing in the last days of the war, like
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: May 1945. It's pretty clear how things are going to
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: shake out. The German guards at the prison run away,
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  Speaker 1: but the French prisoners are trapped, and the woods around
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  Speaker 1: the castle are full of roaming, desperate units of SS
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  Speaker 1: and Gestapo.
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  Speaker 3: Not necessarily in mech suits, but we weren't there.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Mech suits are amazing. I'm just going to say. I
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: know that they've been used for evil purposes in fiction,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but they're just, they're like one of my favorite things.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: You've got some figures on your desk, don't you? Models. Yeah,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: from Pacific Rim. Oh, no. Okay.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: From Pacific Rim. And those are huge mechs. But, you know,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for it. Tell me your favorite mechs.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous at iHeartRadio.com.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Please do.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: We should just have an email box just for favorite mechs.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio.com. The newer iterations, I know we keep harping
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: on this, but the newer iterations of the Wolfenstein games
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: are super cool and involve a lot more of this
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: future tech that we're talking about, like the big robot suits,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: and they have robot SS dogs and all this stuff,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: and they get really intense.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: The last few were quite difficult, in fact.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I haven't played it in years and years and years.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: To me, this story feels like something... very Inglorious Bastards-esque,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: you know? It feels like there's some Tarantino inspiration here
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  Speaker 1: because the French prisoners know that if they try to escape,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: they will be discovered. So through some internal mechanism, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: they're drawing straws or maybe some brave souls volunteered, the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: French prisoners send out two prisoners on bicycles to try
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  Speaker 1: to find help. According to Stephen Harding, author of a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: book called The Last Battle, One of these French prisoners
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  Speaker 1: found a German major, Josef, I'm just going to spell
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the last name, G-A-N-G-L, Gangl.
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  Speaker 3: I like it.
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  Speaker 1: He was a highly decorated Wehrmacht officer, and he had
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: become opposed to the Nazis and was collaborating with the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: local resistance in Austria.
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  Speaker 2: That is so interesting. Can we discuss a little bit
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: the difference between the Nazis and the Wehrmacht Republic?
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, good question. Yeah, because there is a difference and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it gives us a little insight into the motivation of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: this major.
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  Speaker 3: It does.
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  Speaker 2: And again, a little bit of a surfacy discussion of this,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: but the Nazi party, you know, essentially took over a
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: pre-existing Germany with the attempt to make it a one-party system.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: But the Wehrmacht... soldiers were already, you know, in place
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: before the Nazis took over. The Nazis, like including like
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the SS and the Gestapo and the Nazi soldiers were
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: required to really have this ethnic cleansing kind of ideology,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: you know, in a very fanatical way. Whereas the Wehrmacht soldiers,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: some of them might have been whole hog into the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Nazi way of thinking. Some of them might have been,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: you know, a little more old school or like, or
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: the way they liked things before the Nazis came in.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So that totally makes sense that this guy would have,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: been one of the ones who maybe wasn't as fanatical
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: at all and was into helping the resistance.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. You can picture him saying the German army used
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: to stand for something noble. Long story short, this was
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: the perfect guy for these French prison scouts to meet.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And the major thinks, well, I can't protect these prisoners.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I only have 20 soldiers that I can count on.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: So, He takes a huge white flag, which is, you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the universal symbol for coming in peace. And he finds
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the closest American unit, the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: 12th Armored Division. led by a guy named Captain Jack Lee.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Oh, Captain Jack.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Well, led by a guy named Jack Lee, who was
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a captain. His first name was not Captain Jack Lee,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: though that would be really cool. I still will refer
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to him henceforth as Captain Jack.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: And Lee was down. He was like, okay, let's do this.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And he offered to lead a rescue mission.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Very daring.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Rescue mission to the impenetrable Castle Ita. Yeah, so this
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: is strange.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: The Americans, as you said, Noel, they go with this
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  Speaker 1: Wehrmacht major and they park their tank close to the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: castle entrance. On May 5th in the morning, the SS
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: finally attacks. They blow up the tank, but they're unable
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: to storm the castle and And this is about five
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30th. So
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: things are already very, very desperate on the German side.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You know what? Before we go too, too far, we
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: should examine those two people they sent out for help
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and learn a little bit more about them. Because I
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: had said earlier that two of the French prisoners went
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: out on bicycle, right? That's not entirely true. One of
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the guys was their Yugoslavian handyman, and he actually, he's
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the first guy who went out. He found some U.S.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: troops in Innsbruck, but because the castle was outside of
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: their jurisdiction, they didn't all go. Major John T. Kramers
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: had a crisis of conscience and sent a small rescue group,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: but the French VIP folks in Itter had not heard
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: back from him So the person they sent who actually
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: found Gungle and Captain Jack C. Lee, that was their cook.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So they were sending out the help.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Because let's not forget, these were, let's call them. high
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: value prisoners, right? Folks that they could leverage. They wanted
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: to keep alive and they wanted them to live in
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: at least relatively comfortable environments, almost like Julian Assange in
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: the embassy kind of situation. Free to move around the facilities, adequate,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: you know, comfortable quarters and food and all of that.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: But at this point, these folks were very much in
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: fear of their lives. They could either be executed summarily
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: just to get rid of any witnesses or whatever. You know,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: at this point, it was like a scorched earth kind
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: of situation for the Germans, right?
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: They're trying to, like, get rid of any evidence.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Point being is you would not have felt very safe
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: with all of these Nazis in full freak-out mode, right?
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Agreed.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And the battle that takes place is terrifying. in some
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: ways astonishing because the defenders were vastly outnumbered. They were
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: fighting about 100 to 150 SS troops. Eventually, the attackers
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: shoot and kill the Wehrmacht Major Gangl. As I mentioned,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: they destroyed the tank. They damaged the castle walls. Even
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the prisoners are joining in with small arms they found
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: after the guards ran away originally. The battle lasts for
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: about six hours, and things are looking increasingly dire. The
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Allied forces, that would be the German forces and the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: prisoners and the U.S. forces, are running out of ammunition.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: And then, the last moment, the way that all great
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: battles go in works of fiction and so on, just
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: as they were getting down to their last bullets, a
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: column of tanks, that small rescue party, organized by John Kramers,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: arrives in the afternoon and scatters the SS forces. And
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: this Hans Fuchs kid, who's 14 at the time, was
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: watching it all from his family's farm. He's seen clouds
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of dust and smoke and machine gun fire that goes
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: on and on for hours. That's the battle. Oh, they
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: take prisoners.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Well, you got to take some prisoners. They got a
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: castle at their disposal. I mean, they might as well
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: make good use of it, right?
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I know, right?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: It's like you have to have a moat.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: They called it a dry moat though, Ben. What does
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: that mean? that doesn't sound as scary as a wet
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: moat full of like alligators right.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah i guess a dry moat is just a circular ditch.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah but i guess it would it would certainly make
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: it you know you couldn't like cross it with a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: tank or something like that right it limits your path Right.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Into and out of the facility.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The incline is probably so steep and so wide that
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: you can only cross over a bridge.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: That's it. That makes perfect sense. So about 100 SS.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Troops are taken prisoner. That's according to a report from
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: the BBC. And the only fatality on the Allied side
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: there was Major Gongle, who later was buried in a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: nearby town and had a street named after him.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Did we talk about the commander who killed himself?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: We did not.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So this is backtracking just a little bit, but I
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: just think it's interesting because this is, you know, a
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: very dramatic end, right? So, I mean, once it was
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: very clear that things were not going their way, they
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: were losing ground, you know, by the second, the actual
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: commander of Dachau turned tail and ran to Castle Ytter
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: as it was being liberated by the troops, and then
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: he killed himself on May the 2nd. And that's when
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the castle's own commandant, and the guards took off, and
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: that was what left the prisoners in charge of their
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: own destiny, kind of, right?
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: So then they were able to, you know, but they
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: were still locked inside, right?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yes. So later, after they start picking up the pieces
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: of the conflict, caring for the wounded, getting rid of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the dead, the French VIPs are driven off. They're on
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: their way back to Innsbruck, and then they're going to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: be met by senior Allied officers, and then they would
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: return to France to resume their careers. But for the U.S. forces,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: this was a little bit, not a letdown, an anticlimactic ending.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: The seven Americans and their surviving soldiers of the Vermont,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: because remember, Gongle commanded 20 soldiers. They all piled in
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the back of a truck, And they took a ride
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: back to a place called Kufstein. And once there, the
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Germans are marched off to a POW camp. The soldiers
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: rejoin their unit. And you should mention these are African-American soldiers.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: And Lee, Harry Bass, and the other tankers just, like,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: called it a day. They did eventually get recognized for
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: their leadership. Captain Jack Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And Harry Bass received the Silver Star.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: And it did turn some heads over in the States.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: On July 1945, there was a piece that ran in
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: the Saturday Evening Post. And there's a lovely quote that
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: summed up the whole thing, I think, remarkably well. It
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: was from Lee himself, the American tank commander.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: And he referred to it as being, quote, just the
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: damnedest thing ever.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Aw, shucks. And that is where we will leave the story.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I think that Lee summed it up best. We want
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: to hear your strange stories about wartime, you know, because
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: war is a terrible, terrible thing, but they're also inspiring
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and sometimes beautiful moments that happen in the midst of
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: all that chaos. Like the time, the times that opposing
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: forces stop fighting each other and go hang out for Christmas, right?
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: That's actually happened before. So let us know what sort
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: of moving or strange or just downright ridiculous stories you
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: have encountered in your own reading or in your own experience.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And let us know on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: can find us as a show. You can find us individually.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: I am at HowNowNoelBrown on Instagram as well.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: And if you want to check out our Facebook community,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: you can do so at The Ridiculous Historians.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: All you have to do is name me, Ben, or
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Casey on the case or make us laugh.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Big, big thanks, as always, to super producer Casey Pegram,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: research associates Gabe Luzia, and Ryan Barish.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Our
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: pal Christopher Haciotis, here always in spirit. Damn you, the quizster.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Damn your eyes. And we hope to see you again
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: back on the show.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Very soon, because I really enjoyed those segments, despite putting
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: up a tough front.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: We're overdue. I'd love to have him back on the show.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And you know who else I'd love to have
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: back on the show, Ben?
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Who's that?
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: You.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Because you're the co-host of the show, and you do
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: a great job, and I really appreciate you.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Wait, who's not going to get on the show?
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: What?
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: What, are you firing people?
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: You can't fire people. I'm not firing anybody. I'm just
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: saying I look forward to the next time we do this.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: That was a roundabout way of saying that. And I
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: look forward to you folks, you fine folks out there
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: in podcast land joining us.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no smoke when we say reach out. We
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts. You are our favorite
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: part of the show, so thank you for tuning in.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: See you next time, folks.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.