July 23, 2019 • 24 mins
With one notable exception, American and German forces were bitterly opposed to one another during World War II -- that exception? The Battle of Castle Itter. Tune in to learn more about the strange sequence of events that led both the US and the Germany army to team up for a rescue mission.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
If you were ever a fan of video games, you
were probably aware at some point of the video game
franchise Wolfenstein three D first person shooter wherein your your
obliterating Nazis. It's a lot of fun. It scared me
as a kid. Hi, I'm Ben, Hi, I'm know, and
(00:49):
so Ben, did you you played? You played the Wolfenstein
three D? Yeah, I can't remember it was three D,
but it was on a it was on a PC,
and it was sort of the in my childhood mind,
it was like the lighter version of another similar game
called Doom. What's the it's the Predecessor. I think it's
the Predecessor, that's correct, and that's our super producer, Casey Pegrum. Yeah,
(01:14):
Wolfenstein was like pseudo three D. It's really just two D.
It's just moving a bunch of two D sprites around
to make it feel like three D. Doom was kind
of like what is this? Nerd talk? What is this?
Sprite was a little more two and a half D,
and then Quake is where they made the big jump
to full three actual three D casey on the case.
I am also pleasantly surprised that you you have some
(01:38):
thoughts on this matter. Huh. I was a die hard
gamer in the nineties. Yeah, I have not cared about
it in a long time. Sprites are just kind of
the building blocks of these games, like the characters. Yeah, yeah,
they're like the they're like the elements you move around rely,
but like they're they're even textures and stuff, right, isn't
that Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a sprite. This is where
my knowledge runs out. But I think, you know, like
(01:59):
nowadays is about textures because you have like the services
and you're applying to textures to them. The sprite was
kind of like all in one, like it was the
character but also the texture because it was like a drawing.
That's cool. This uh, this is strange because like many
people in the West who grew up in a post
World War two environment, uh we, whenever there was like
(02:20):
an evil army, easily, I'm just gonna make up the statistic.
Easily eight point six two times out of ten, that
evil army would be represented by the Nazis or something
like the Nazi Party, which is which is strange when
you look back. But it was very common to have
games wherein a person is fighting against Nazi forces, just
(02:45):
the way that some modern fighting games have people fighting
against North Korean forces or somewhere in the Middle East.
Today's story is about Nazis, and it's got a lot
of cool stuff in here. We've got we've got a
spooky castle, right, Hence the Wolfenstein reference, because I believe Wolfenstein,
in the parlance of the game, was this giant fortress
(03:07):
that you're traversing, like all the different floors. Yes, thank you.
I totally forgot that is what we're talking about, Wolfan stay.
I was, we're also talking about killing Nazis. Yes, someone's
got to do it. So we can't go ahead and
set the stage for World War two very very quickly.
It's the global conflict that lasted from ninety and it
(03:30):
involved access powers and allied powers. Often, at least in
the US, it is painted as a war with a
few prime actors. You know, they'll say, yes, Japan and
the US fought. Yes, Uh, Europeans helped out That's how
they'll put it. There'll it'll be like Europeans helped out
(03:50):
American forces. But really it was America versus Germany. That's
a vast oversimplification, it really is. That's what we do
here on ridiculous history, vast over simplifications. That is, that's
our bread and butter. My man, well, it is painted.
You know a lot of countries do that. If you
read a textbook somewhere else. They're going to have their
own countries take on World War Two, and the American
(04:11):
take is you know, pretty America centric, right. Absolutely. What
we have in today's episode, though, is a very rare
case of cooperation between these parties, right, and an unprecedented
move to kind of like when everything hit the fan, right,
you know, so the war is coming to an end.
Hitler has eaten a suicide pill and shot himself in
the face. That's the thing I remember most about Wolfing Stay.
(04:32):
By the way, you have to fight Hitler in the
end spoiler alert for a game that's like thirty. He's
in a Giant Max suit and at the end when
you kill him, he says they have a al veder Zane,
referring to his wife a le braun Um. Right, So,
so Mac Hitler has been annihilated at this point in
the uh, you know, alternate history version of World War Two,
(04:53):
and uh, this castle becomes the site of an unusual union. Yes,
this is castle. It's ur and today we're exploring the
story of the only time that Americans and Germans fought
as allies during World War Two. So itter Castle is
a nineteenth century castle in a village called Ittter in Austria.
(05:19):
And it looks spooky. It looks like something out of
I don't know, it looks like the kind of castle
hell Boy runs into in the Mike Mignola stories. Absolutely,
I mean it definitely haunted as hell seeming. And just
for fun, let's see what four of us says about
the pronunciation of this castle. I got it it. I
love the I love the German intensity. And we're gonna
(05:39):
get into some fun German words in this episode. But
it's true. It looks like something out of like a
fractured haunted grim Grim Grimm fairy tale. It's top with
those cool little you know, crenelations where that are the
separated little turrets in between, um, the walls where you
can shoot you know, yeah, arrows or whatever. The pattern
that looks like one side of a zipper. That's exactly right. Um,
(06:01):
And it has a very very rich history. At first
shows up in around twelve forty four in German Land records,
and then it's been passed through several different different owners,
different hands. Um In nineteen thirty eight, when Germany annexed Austria,
the castle became a very uh sought after site for
(06:25):
all the secret weird stuff that Nazis were getting into.
It's true the Reich government officially leased the castle in
nineteen forty from its owner at the time, one Franz Gruner,
and the castle went through some some weird things because
after they had leasted or requisitioned it for their very
(06:46):
vaguely phrased official use, it went through a couple of iterations.
It was for a while it was the swank offices
of an organization called the German Association for Combating the
Dangers of tabat Echo because say which will about Nazis,
they understood that tobacco was dangerous. They were sticklers for health.
(07:06):
Although it doesn't take away from the image of the
you know, imperially slim s s officer with a cigarette
holder and an eye patch, you know, but I could
still be harkening back to our our video game and
then like think about this though. How amazing is that
to have your office be a castle. It didn't last.
(07:27):
On February seven, the entire structure and all the accompanying
buildings were requisitioned by s S Lieutenant General Oswald Pole
under the orders of Heinrich Himler, and then it was
transformed into a prison, but not just any prison, No,
not just any prison, and it was associated with probably
(07:49):
the most notorious UH site in all of like Nazi
involvement in World War Two, which would be the Dachau
Concentration Camp UM, which operated the facility, which they referred
to as Oh boy, I'm gonna do my best on
this one evacuee Rungschlager, which means a an evacuation camp.
(08:09):
I love how the etymology is so interesting, like evacuee
is spelled E V A k U I E and
then the American words, you know, evacuation, evacuate UM. So
the castle was already you know, an impenetrable fortress I
mean with these high walls and those turrets we talked
about UM. But they transformed it even further UM, adding
(08:31):
onto features that already existed like this, these huge walls.
They had a moat had this gatehouse that was very,
very difficult to penetrate, and they added, um, these tangles
of multi layers of barbed wire or that they called
concertina wire, which I guess is the really really skinny
like razor wire that will slice right through you. Um.
And then they refitted it with these very complex locks
(08:54):
and essentially rendered the facility absolutely impregnable, uh to either
get into or get out of. Twenty of the existing
guest rooms in the central housing structure were converted into
secure but pretty pretty roomy cells. Others were turned into
(09:16):
guard rooms and offices. These were not cells for your
typical uh, political protester or petty criminal. This became a
home for v I P. French prisoners of war. Yeah, folks,
like the two former prime ministers of France. There was
(09:37):
Paul Renault Casey on the case. And then we have
edu r uh dallader d A l A d I
E r Huh Dad got it? Uh? And I know
this one, General Charles de gaull Ya see Charles, I
love this is my favorite part of the show, in
case he gets to correct our pronunciations. The older sister
(09:58):
in fact of General Charles de gal not a hardass
on the end is to Charley, and her name was
Marie Agnes Kalelu Marian, probably Casey on the case multipart.
So we have a firsthand account about the conversion of
the castle into a prison by Hans Fuchs. Hans saw
(10:21):
every he was growing up in the area. Hans says,
we saw everything from our school window, the double barbed
wire fence, the floodlights so that the whole night was
lit up like the day. But again, Loss Itter or
the Castle Itter was a subunit of the Dochau concentration camps,
(10:41):
and they wanted the people who were imprisoned in this
castle to be relatively well cared for so that they
could be used as bargaining chips. We will give you
one of the former prime ministers if you give us
this other stuff. But the problem here for Castle Itter
was that they were existing in the last days of
(11:03):
the war. Like May, it's pretty clear how things are
gonna shake out. The German guards at the prison run away,
but the French prisoners are trapped and the woods around
the castle are full of roaming desperate units of SS
and Gestapo, not necessarily in max suits. But we weren't
(11:24):
there Max suits are amazing. I'm just gonna say. I
know that they've been used for evil purposes in fiction,
but they're they're just they're like one of my favorite things.
You've got some figures on your desk, don't you. Models, Yeah,
from oh from Pacific Rim and those are those are
huge mix But you know I'm a sucker for it.
Tell me your favorite mix ridiculous set. I heart radio. Yeah,
(11:48):
we should just have an email box just for favorite
Max at I heeart radio, dot nom um. The newer iterations.
I know we keep harping on this, but the newer
iterations of the Wolfenstein games are super cool and involved
a lot more of this like future attack that we're
talking about, like the big the big robot suits and
they have like robot ss dogs and all this stuff,
and they get really intense. The last few were quite difficult.
(12:09):
In fact, I haven't played it in years and years
and years. To me, this, uh, this story feels like
something very inglorious Bastards esque, you know. It's it feels
like there's some Tarantino inspiration here. Because the French prisoners
know that if they try to escape, they will be discovered.
(12:32):
So through some internal mechanism. Perhaps they're drawing straws, or
maybe some brave souls volunteered. The French prisoners send out
to prisoners on bicycles to try to find help. According
to Stephen Harding, author of a book called The Last Battle,
one of these French prisoners found a German major, Joseph
(12:54):
I'm just gonna spell the last name g A N
G L gongle like. He was a highly decorated Rmacht
officer and he had become opposed to the Nazis and
was collaborating with the local resistance in Austria. That is
so interesting is there can we discuss a little bit
of the difference between the Nazis and the Verrmacht Republic.
(13:14):
Oh good question, Yeah, because there is a difference, and
it gives us a little insight into the motivation of
this major. It does, and again a little bit of
a surfacy discussion of this. But the Nazi party, you know,
essentially took over a pre existing Germany with the under
the attempt to make it a one party system. But
(13:34):
the very marked soldiers were already you know, in place
before the Nazis took over. The Nazis like including like
the s S and the Gestapo UH and the Nazi
soldiers were required to really have this ethnic cleansing kind
of ideology, um, you know, in a very fanatical way,
whereas the Vermacht should soldiers. Some of them might have
(13:54):
been hole hog into the Nazi way of thinking. Some
of them might have been you know a little more
old school or like the way they like things before
the Nazis came in. Um. So that totally makes sense
that this guy would have been one of the ones
who maybe wasn't as fanatical at all and was into
helping the resistance. Absolutely picture him saying, the German army
used to stand for something noble. Long story short, this
(14:19):
was the perfect guy for these French prison scouts to meet.
And the major thinks, well, I can't protect these prisoners.
I only have twenty soldiers that I that I can
count on. So he takes a huge white flag, which is,
you know, the universal symbol for coming in peace, and
(14:41):
he finds the closest American unit, the twenty third Tank
Battalion of the U S twelve Armored Division, led by
a guy named Captain Jack Lee. Jack Well, led by
a guy named Jack Lee who was a captain. His
first name was not Captain Jack Lee, though that would
be really cool. I still will refer to him a
hand worth as Captain jack Um. And Lee was down
(15:03):
he wont he was like, okay, let's do this, and
he offered to lead a rescue mission, very daring um
rescue mission to the impenetrable castle. Yeah, so this is
strange the Americans, as you said, No, they go with
this Vermont major and they park their tank close to
(15:24):
the castle entrance. On May five in the morning, that
SS finally attacks. They blow up the tank, but they're
unable to storm the castle. And this is about five
days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April. So things
are already very very desperate on the German side. You
(15:44):
know what, before we go too too far, we should
examine those two people they sent out for help and
learn a little bit more about them. Because I had
said earlier that two of the French prisoners went out
on bicycle, right, that's not entirely true. One of the
guys was their Yugoslavian handyman, and he actually he's the
(16:06):
first guy who went out. He found some US troops
in Innsbruck. But because the castle was outside of their jurisdiction.
They didn't all go. Major John T. Kramer's had a
crisis of conscience and sent a small rescue group, but
the French v I P folks in it had not
heard back from him. So the person they sent who
(16:28):
actually found Gongole and Captain Jack Cee Lee, uh, that
was their cook. So they were they were sending out
the help. Yeah, exatly because let's not forget these were,
um let's call them high value prisoners, right, folks that
could leverage. They wanted to keep alive, and they wanted
(16:48):
them to live and at least relatively comfortable environments, almost
like uh Juliana sang in the embassy kind of situation,
free to move around the facilities at quit you know,
comfortable quarters and food and all of that. But at
this point, um, these folks were very much in fear
(17:09):
of their lives and they could either be executed summarily
just just to get rid of any witnesses or whatever,
you know. I at this point it was like a
scorched earth kind of situation for the for the Germans
right there, trying to like get rid of any evidences
at point being is you would not have felt very
safe with all of these Nazis in full freak out mode,
right agreed, And the battle that takes place is in
(17:37):
some ways astonishing because the defenders were vastly outnumbered. They
were fighting about a hundred to a hundred and fifty
s S troops. Eventually, the attackers shoot and kill the
rmach major Gongol as they mentioned, they destroyed the tank,
they damaged the castle walls. Even the prisoners are joining
(18:00):
in with small arms they found after the guards ran away. Originally,
the battle lasts for about six hours and things are
looking increasingly dire. The allied forces that would be the
German forces and the UH and the prisoners and the
US forces are running out of ammunition. And then the
(18:22):
last moment, the way that all great battles go in
works of fiction and so on, just as they were
getting down to their last bullets, a column of tanks
that small rescue party organized by John Kramer's arrives in
the afternoon and scatters the SS forces. And this Hans
Fuchs kid, who's fourteen at the time, was watching it
(18:44):
all from his family's farm. He's seeing clouds of dust
and smoke and machine gun fire, that goes on and
on for hours. That's that's the battle. They Oh they
take prisoners, Well, you gotta take some prisoners. They got
a castle at their disposal. I mean, they might as
well make good use of it, right, I know, right,
it's like you have to have a moot. They called
it a dry moat, though, Ben, what does that mean.
(19:05):
It doesn't sound as scary as a wet mode full
of like alligators, right, Yeah, I guess a dry moat
is just the circular ditch. Yeah, but I guess it would.
It would certainly make it. You know, you couldn't like
cross it with a tank or something like that. Right.
It limits your path into and out of the field.
Line is probably so steep, so wide that you can
only cross over a bridge. That's it. That makes perfect sense.
(19:27):
So about a hundred s s troops are taken prisoner,
that's according to a report from the BBC, And the
only fatality on the Allied side there was Major Gongle,
who later was buried in a nearby town and had
a street named after him. Did we talk about the
commander who killed himself? We did not, So this is
(19:48):
backtracking is a little bit. But I just think It's
interesting because this is you know, a very dramatic end, right.
So I mean once it was very clear that things
were not going their way, um, they were losing round,
you know. By by the second uh, the actual commander
of Dakao turned tail uh and ran to Castle eater
(20:09):
Um as it was being liberated by the troops, and
then he killed himself on May the second, and that's
when the castle's own commandant and the guards took off,
and that was what left the prisoners in charge of
their own destiny kind of right, So then they were
able to you know, but they were still locked inside, right, yes.
So later after they start picking up the pieces of
(20:32):
the conflict, caring for the wounded, getting rid of the dead,
the French v I p s are driven off. They're
on their way back to Innsbruck and then they're going
to be met by senior Allied officers and then they
would return to France to resume their careers. But for
(20:53):
the U. S forces, this was a little bit um,
not not a letdown, an anti climactic ending. Uh. The
seven Americans and their surviving soldiers of the Vermont, because
remember Gongole commanded twenty soldiers. They all piled in the
back of a truck and they took a ride back
to a place called Kufstein and once there the Germans
(21:17):
are marched off to a pow camp. Uh. The soldiers
rejoined their unit, and you should mention these are African
American soldiers and Lee, Harry Bass and the other tankers
just like called it a day. They did eventually get
recognized for their leadership. Captain Jack Lee received the Distinguished
(21:39):
Service Cross and Harry Bass received the Silver Star, and
it did turn some heads over in the States. On
July there was a piece that ran in the Saturday
evening Posts and there's a lovely quote that summed up
the whole thing, I think remarkably well. Um it was
from Lee himself, the the the Akan tank commander, and
(22:01):
he referred to it as being quote, just the damnedest thing.
Oh shucks. And that is where we will leave the story.
I think that Lee summed it up best. We want
to hear your strange stories about wartime, you know, because
it war is a terrible, terrible thing, but they're also
(22:21):
inspiring and sometimes beautiful moments that happened in the midst
of all that chaos, like the time the times that
opposing forces stop fighting each other and go hang out
for Christmas. Right, that's actually happened before. So let us
know what sort of moving or strange or just downright
(22:42):
ridiculous stories you have encountered in your own reading or
in your own experience. Uh and let us know. On Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter. You can find us as a show. You
can find us individually. I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram,
I'm at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram as and
if you want to check out our Facebook community, you
(23:02):
can do so at the Ridiculous Historians where we have
to do his name me Ben or Casey on the
case or make us laugh big big thanks as always too,
super producer Casey Pegram research associates Gabe Lusia and Ryan Barrish.
Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme are pal.
Christopher Haciota is here always in spirit. Damn you the quister,
(23:23):
Damn your eyes. And we hope to see again back
on the show very soon, because I really enjoyed the secondments.
Despite putting up a tough front, We're overdue. I'd love
to I'd love to have him back on the show. Absolutely. Uh.
And you know who else I'd love to have back
on the show, Ben, who's you? Because you're the co
host of the show and you do a great job
and I really appreciate you. Wait, who's not gonna get
on the show? What? What are you firing? People? Can't
(23:44):
fire people to fire anybody. I'm just saying, I want
I look forward to the next time we do this.
That was around about what I'm saying, okay, um, And
I look forward to you folks. You find folks out
there in podcast land joining us. Yeah, it's no smoke
when we say reach out. We would We would love
to hear your thoughts. You are our favorite part of
the show. So thank you for tuning in. See you
next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
(24:16):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
If you were ever a fan of video games, you
were probably aware at some point of the video game
franchise Wolfenstein three D first person shooter wherein your your
obliterating Nazis. It's a lot of fun. It scared me
as a kid. Hi, I'm Ben, Hi, I'm know, and
(00:49):
so Ben, did you you played? You played the Wolfenstein
three D? Yeah, I can't remember it was three D,
but it was on a it was on a PC,
and it was sort of the in my childhood mind,
it was like the lighter version of another similar game
called Doom. What's the it's the Predecessor. I think it's
the Predecessor, that's correct, and that's our super producer, Casey Pegrum. Yeah,
(01:14):
Wolfenstein was like pseudo three D. It's really just two D.
It's just moving a bunch of two D sprites around
to make it feel like three D. Doom was kind
of like what is this? Nerd talk? What is this?
Sprite was a little more two and a half D,
and then Quake is where they made the big jump
to full three actual three D casey on the case.
I am also pleasantly surprised that you you have some
(01:38):
thoughts on this matter. Huh. I was a die hard
gamer in the nineties. Yeah, I have not cared about
it in a long time. Sprites are just kind of
the building blocks of these games, like the characters. Yeah, yeah,
they're like the they're like the elements you move around rely,
but like they're they're even textures and stuff, right, isn't
that Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a sprite. This is where
my knowledge runs out. But I think, you know, like
(01:59):
nowadays is about textures because you have like the services
and you're applying to textures to them. The sprite was
kind of like all in one, like it was the
character but also the texture because it was like a drawing.
That's cool. This uh, this is strange because like many
people in the West who grew up in a post
World War two environment, uh we, whenever there was like
(02:20):
an evil army, easily, I'm just gonna make up the statistic.
Easily eight point six two times out of ten, that
evil army would be represented by the Nazis or something
like the Nazi Party, which is which is strange when
you look back. But it was very common to have
games wherein a person is fighting against Nazi forces, just
(02:45):
the way that some modern fighting games have people fighting
against North Korean forces or somewhere in the Middle East.
Today's story is about Nazis, and it's got a lot
of cool stuff in here. We've got we've got a
spooky castle, right, Hence the Wolfenstein reference, because I believe Wolfenstein,
in the parlance of the game, was this giant fortress
(03:07):
that you're traversing, like all the different floors. Yes, thank you.
I totally forgot that is what we're talking about, Wolfan stay.
I was, we're also talking about killing Nazis. Yes, someone's
got to do it. So we can't go ahead and
set the stage for World War two very very quickly.
It's the global conflict that lasted from ninety and it
(03:30):
involved access powers and allied powers. Often, at least in
the US, it is painted as a war with a
few prime actors. You know, they'll say, yes, Japan and
the US fought. Yes, Uh, Europeans helped out That's how
they'll put it. There'll it'll be like Europeans helped out
(03:50):
American forces. But really it was America versus Germany. That's
a vast oversimplification, it really is. That's what we do
here on ridiculous history, vast over simplifications. That is, that's
our bread and butter. My man, well, it is painted.
You know a lot of countries do that. If you
read a textbook somewhere else. They're going to have their
own countries take on World War Two, and the American
(04:11):
take is you know, pretty America centric, right. Absolutely. What
we have in today's episode, though, is a very rare
case of cooperation between these parties, right, and an unprecedented
move to kind of like when everything hit the fan, right,
you know, so the war is coming to an end.
Hitler has eaten a suicide pill and shot himself in
the face. That's the thing I remember most about Wolfing Stay.
(04:32):
By the way, you have to fight Hitler in the
end spoiler alert for a game that's like thirty. He's
in a Giant Max suit and at the end when
you kill him, he says they have a al veder Zane,
referring to his wife a le braun Um. Right, So,
so Mac Hitler has been annihilated at this point in
the uh, you know, alternate history version of World War Two,
(04:53):
and uh, this castle becomes the site of an unusual union. Yes,
this is castle. It's ur and today we're exploring the
story of the only time that Americans and Germans fought
as allies during World War Two. So itter Castle is
a nineteenth century castle in a village called Ittter in Austria.
(05:19):
And it looks spooky. It looks like something out of
I don't know, it looks like the kind of castle
hell Boy runs into in the Mike Mignola stories. Absolutely,
I mean it definitely haunted as hell seeming. And just
for fun, let's see what four of us says about
the pronunciation of this castle. I got it it. I
love the I love the German intensity. And we're gonna
(05:39):
get into some fun German words in this episode. But
it's true. It looks like something out of like a
fractured haunted grim Grim Grimm fairy tale. It's top with
those cool little you know, crenelations where that are the
separated little turrets in between, um, the walls where you
can shoot you know, yeah, arrows or whatever. The pattern
that looks like one side of a zipper. That's exactly right. Um,
(06:01):
And it has a very very rich history. At first
shows up in around twelve forty four in German Land records,
and then it's been passed through several different different owners,
different hands. Um In nineteen thirty eight, when Germany annexed Austria,
the castle became a very uh sought after site for
(06:25):
all the secret weird stuff that Nazis were getting into.
It's true the Reich government officially leased the castle in
nineteen forty from its owner at the time, one Franz Gruner,
and the castle went through some some weird things because
after they had leasted or requisitioned it for their very
(06:46):
vaguely phrased official use, it went through a couple of iterations.
It was for a while it was the swank offices
of an organization called the German Association for Combating the
Dangers of tabat Echo because say which will about Nazis,
they understood that tobacco was dangerous. They were sticklers for health.
(07:06):
Although it doesn't take away from the image of the
you know, imperially slim s s officer with a cigarette
holder and an eye patch, you know, but I could
still be harkening back to our our video game and
then like think about this though. How amazing is that
to have your office be a castle. It didn't last.
(07:27):
On February seven, the entire structure and all the accompanying
buildings were requisitioned by s S Lieutenant General Oswald Pole
under the orders of Heinrich Himler, and then it was
transformed into a prison, but not just any prison, No,
not just any prison, and it was associated with probably
(07:49):
the most notorious UH site in all of like Nazi
involvement in World War Two, which would be the Dachau
Concentration Camp UM, which operated the facility, which they referred
to as Oh boy, I'm gonna do my best on
this one evacuee Rungschlager, which means a an evacuation camp.
(08:09):
I love how the etymology is so interesting, like evacuee
is spelled E V A k U I E and
then the American words, you know, evacuation, evacuate UM. So
the castle was already you know, an impenetrable fortress I
mean with these high walls and those turrets we talked
about UM. But they transformed it even further UM, adding
(08:31):
onto features that already existed like this, these huge walls.
They had a moat had this gatehouse that was very,
very difficult to penetrate, and they added, um, these tangles
of multi layers of barbed wire or that they called
concertina wire, which I guess is the really really skinny
like razor wire that will slice right through you. Um.
And then they refitted it with these very complex locks
(08:54):
and essentially rendered the facility absolutely impregnable, uh to either
get into or get out of. Twenty of the existing
guest rooms in the central housing structure were converted into
secure but pretty pretty roomy cells. Others were turned into
(09:16):
guard rooms and offices. These were not cells for your
typical uh, political protester or petty criminal. This became a
home for v I P. French prisoners of war. Yeah, folks,
like the two former prime ministers of France. There was
(09:37):
Paul Renault Casey on the case. And then we have
edu r uh dallader d A l A d I
E r Huh Dad got it? Uh? And I know
this one, General Charles de gaull Ya see Charles, I
love this is my favorite part of the show, in
case he gets to correct our pronunciations. The older sister
(09:58):
in fact of General Charles de gal not a hardass
on the end is to Charley, and her name was
Marie Agnes Kalelu Marian, probably Casey on the case multipart.
So we have a firsthand account about the conversion of
the castle into a prison by Hans Fuchs. Hans saw
(10:21):
every he was growing up in the area. Hans says,
we saw everything from our school window, the double barbed
wire fence, the floodlights so that the whole night was
lit up like the day. But again, Loss Itter or
the Castle Itter was a subunit of the Dochau concentration camps,
(10:41):
and they wanted the people who were imprisoned in this
castle to be relatively well cared for so that they
could be used as bargaining chips. We will give you
one of the former prime ministers if you give us
this other stuff. But the problem here for Castle Itter
was that they were existing in the last days of
(11:03):
the war. Like May, it's pretty clear how things are
gonna shake out. The German guards at the prison run away,
but the French prisoners are trapped and the woods around
the castle are full of roaming desperate units of SS
and Gestapo, not necessarily in max suits. But we weren't
(11:24):
there Max suits are amazing. I'm just gonna say. I
know that they've been used for evil purposes in fiction,
but they're they're just they're like one of my favorite things.
You've got some figures on your desk, don't you. Models, Yeah,
from oh from Pacific Rim and those are those are
huge mix But you know I'm a sucker for it.
Tell me your favorite mix ridiculous set. I heart radio. Yeah,
(11:48):
we should just have an email box just for favorite
Max at I heeart radio, dot nom um. The newer iterations.
I know we keep harping on this, but the newer
iterations of the Wolfenstein games are super cool and involved
a lot more of this like future attack that we're
talking about, like the big the big robot suits and
they have like robot ss dogs and all this stuff,
and they get really intense. The last few were quite difficult.
(12:09):
In fact, I haven't played it in years and years
and years. To me, this, uh, this story feels like
something very inglorious Bastards esque, you know. It's it feels
like there's some Tarantino inspiration here. Because the French prisoners
know that if they try to escape, they will be discovered.
(12:32):
So through some internal mechanism. Perhaps they're drawing straws, or
maybe some brave souls volunteered. The French prisoners send out
to prisoners on bicycles to try to find help. According
to Stephen Harding, author of a book called The Last Battle,
one of these French prisoners found a German major, Joseph
(12:54):
I'm just gonna spell the last name g A N
G L gongle like. He was a highly decorated Rmacht
officer and he had become opposed to the Nazis and
was collaborating with the local resistance in Austria. That is
so interesting is there can we discuss a little bit
of the difference between the Nazis and the Verrmacht Republic.
(13:14):
Oh good question, Yeah, because there is a difference, and
it gives us a little insight into the motivation of
this major. It does, and again a little bit of
a surfacy discussion of this. But the Nazi party, you know,
essentially took over a pre existing Germany with the under
the attempt to make it a one party system. But
(13:34):
the very marked soldiers were already you know, in place
before the Nazis took over. The Nazis like including like
the s S and the Gestapo UH and the Nazi
soldiers were required to really have this ethnic cleansing kind
of ideology, um, you know, in a very fanatical way,
whereas the Vermacht should soldiers. Some of them might have
(13:54):
been hole hog into the Nazi way of thinking. Some
of them might have been you know a little more
old school or like the way they like things before
the Nazis came in. Um. So that totally makes sense
that this guy would have been one of the ones
who maybe wasn't as fanatical at all and was into
helping the resistance. Absolutely picture him saying, the German army
used to stand for something noble. Long story short, this
(14:19):
was the perfect guy for these French prison scouts to meet.
And the major thinks, well, I can't protect these prisoners.
I only have twenty soldiers that I that I can
count on. So he takes a huge white flag, which is,
you know, the universal symbol for coming in peace, and
(14:41):
he finds the closest American unit, the twenty third Tank
Battalion of the U S twelve Armored Division, led by
a guy named Captain Jack Lee. Jack Well, led by
a guy named Jack Lee who was a captain. His
first name was not Captain Jack Lee, though that would
be really cool. I still will refer to him a
hand worth as Captain jack Um. And Lee was down
(15:03):
he wont he was like, okay, let's do this, and
he offered to lead a rescue mission, very daring um
rescue mission to the impenetrable castle. Yeah, so this is
strange the Americans, as you said, No, they go with
this Vermont major and they park their tank close to
(15:24):
the castle entrance. On May five in the morning, that
SS finally attacks. They blow up the tank, but they're
unable to storm the castle. And this is about five
days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April. So things
are already very very desperate on the German side. You
(15:44):
know what, before we go too too far, we should
examine those two people they sent out for help and
learn a little bit more about them. Because I had
said earlier that two of the French prisoners went out
on bicycle, right, that's not entirely true. One of the
guys was their Yugoslavian handyman, and he actually he's the
(16:06):
first guy who went out. He found some US troops
in Innsbruck. But because the castle was outside of their jurisdiction.
They didn't all go. Major John T. Kramer's had a
crisis of conscience and sent a small rescue group, but
the French v I P folks in it had not
heard back from him. So the person they sent who
(16:28):
actually found Gongole and Captain Jack Cee Lee, uh, that
was their cook. So they were they were sending out
the help. Yeah, exatly because let's not forget these were,
um let's call them high value prisoners, right, folks that
could leverage. They wanted to keep alive, and they wanted
(16:48):
them to live and at least relatively comfortable environments, almost
like uh Juliana sang in the embassy kind of situation,
free to move around the facilities at quit you know,
comfortable quarters and food and all of that. But at
this point, um, these folks were very much in fear
(17:09):
of their lives and they could either be executed summarily
just just to get rid of any witnesses or whatever,
you know. I at this point it was like a
scorched earth kind of situation for the for the Germans
right there, trying to like get rid of any evidences
at point being is you would not have felt very
safe with all of these Nazis in full freak out mode,
right agreed, And the battle that takes place is in
(17:37):
some ways astonishing because the defenders were vastly outnumbered. They
were fighting about a hundred to a hundred and fifty
s S troops. Eventually, the attackers shoot and kill the
rmach major Gongol as they mentioned, they destroyed the tank,
they damaged the castle walls. Even the prisoners are joining
(18:00):
in with small arms they found after the guards ran away. Originally,
the battle lasts for about six hours and things are
looking increasingly dire. The allied forces that would be the
German forces and the UH and the prisoners and the
US forces are running out of ammunition. And then the
(18:22):
last moment, the way that all great battles go in
works of fiction and so on, just as they were
getting down to their last bullets, a column of tanks
that small rescue party organized by John Kramer's arrives in
the afternoon and scatters the SS forces. And this Hans
Fuchs kid, who's fourteen at the time, was watching it
(18:44):
all from his family's farm. He's seeing clouds of dust
and smoke and machine gun fire, that goes on and
on for hours. That's that's the battle. They Oh they
take prisoners, Well, you gotta take some prisoners. They got
a castle at their disposal. I mean, they might as
well make good use of it, right, I know, right,
it's like you have to have a moot. They called
it a dry moat, though, Ben, what does that mean.
(19:05):
It doesn't sound as scary as a wet mode full
of like alligators, right, Yeah, I guess a dry moat
is just the circular ditch. Yeah, but I guess it would.
It would certainly make it. You know, you couldn't like
cross it with a tank or something like that. Right.
It limits your path into and out of the field.
Line is probably so steep, so wide that you can
only cross over a bridge. That's it. That makes perfect sense.
(19:27):
So about a hundred s s troops are taken prisoner,
that's according to a report from the BBC, And the
only fatality on the Allied side there was Major Gongle,
who later was buried in a nearby town and had
a street named after him. Did we talk about the
commander who killed himself? We did not, So this is
(19:48):
backtracking is a little bit. But I just think It's
interesting because this is you know, a very dramatic end, right.
So I mean once it was very clear that things
were not going their way, um, they were losing round,
you know. By by the second uh, the actual commander
of Dakao turned tail uh and ran to Castle eater
(20:09):
Um as it was being liberated by the troops, and
then he killed himself on May the second, and that's
when the castle's own commandant and the guards took off,
and that was what left the prisoners in charge of
their own destiny kind of right, So then they were
able to you know, but they were still locked inside, right, yes.
So later after they start picking up the pieces of
(20:32):
the conflict, caring for the wounded, getting rid of the dead,
the French v I p s are driven off. They're
on their way back to Innsbruck and then they're going
to be met by senior Allied officers and then they
would return to France to resume their careers. But for
(20:53):
the U. S forces, this was a little bit um,
not not a letdown, an anti climactic ending. Uh. The
seven Americans and their surviving soldiers of the Vermont, because
remember Gongole commanded twenty soldiers. They all piled in the
back of a truck and they took a ride back
to a place called Kufstein and once there the Germans
(21:17):
are marched off to a pow camp. Uh. The soldiers
rejoined their unit, and you should mention these are African
American soldiers and Lee, Harry Bass and the other tankers
just like called it a day. They did eventually get
recognized for their leadership. Captain Jack Lee received the Distinguished
(21:39):
Service Cross and Harry Bass received the Silver Star, and
it did turn some heads over in the States. On
July there was a piece that ran in the Saturday
evening Posts and there's a lovely quote that summed up
the whole thing, I think remarkably well. Um it was
from Lee himself, the the the Akan tank commander, and
(22:01):
he referred to it as being quote, just the damnedest thing.
Oh shucks. And that is where we will leave the story.
I think that Lee summed it up best. We want
to hear your strange stories about wartime, you know, because
it war is a terrible, terrible thing, but they're also
(22:21):
inspiring and sometimes beautiful moments that happened in the midst
of all that chaos, like the time the times that
opposing forces stop fighting each other and go hang out
for Christmas. Right, that's actually happened before. So let us
know what sort of moving or strange or just downright
(22:42):
ridiculous stories you have encountered in your own reading or
in your own experience. Uh and let us know. On Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter. You can find us as a show. You
can find us individually. I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram,
I'm at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram as and
if you want to check out our Facebook community, you
(23:02):
can do so at the Ridiculous Historians where we have
to do his name me Ben or Casey on the
case or make us laugh big big thanks as always too,
super producer Casey Pegram research associates Gabe Lusia and Ryan Barrish.
Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme are pal.
Christopher Haciota is here always in spirit. Damn you the quister,
(23:23):
Damn your eyes. And we hope to see again back
on the show very soon, because I really enjoyed the secondments.
Despite putting up a tough front, We're overdue. I'd love
to I'd love to have him back on the show. Absolutely. Uh.
And you know who else I'd love to have back
on the show, Ben, who's you? Because you're the co
host of the show and you do a great job
and I really appreciate you. Wait, who's not gonna get
on the show? What? What are you firing? People? Can't
(23:44):
fire people to fire anybody. I'm just saying, I want
I look forward to the next time we do this.
That was around about what I'm saying, okay, um, And
I look forward to you folks. You find folks out
there in podcast land joining us. Yeah, it's no smoke
when we say reach out. We would We would love
to hear your thoughts. You are our favorite part of
the show. So thank you for tuning in. See you
next time. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
(24:16):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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