April 29, 2025 • 41 mins
Ophira Eisenberg (Comedian and Host of 'Parenting is a Joke' podcast) partners with Arturo as they head back to World War II, and recap the biggest escape to ever occur from an American Prisoner of War Camp. (Spoiler Alert: the good guys still come out victorious!)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is great as Escapes, a show bringing you the
wildest true escape stories. Now, today we're heading back to
World War Two and the biggest escape from an American
prisoner of war camp. I'm Martora Castro and today I'm
joined by the comedian Canadian and public radio sization of
Fida Eisenberg. Hi you, Fear, I thank you so much
(00:51):
doing this. I'm so happy to see you. We've met
once before when you were hosting Ask Me Another Live
on stage. Yes, Santo for Grace was on that pot
guests with me, and he wiped the floor with me.
Uh because there was a bunch of cereal questions. But
I had a fucking bliss and a trivia show.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Don't make don't make people think it was a serial podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It was a trivia show.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, we were talking about kidnapping, and suddenly he just
started he started asking him questions about Cereal.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
It was super weird.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Let me ask you something, what do you consider to
be your greatest escape?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
You have a little bit of idea of this.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I was living in Toronto and I decided that
I wanted to live in New York. Every stand up
comic and actor that I saw leave Toronto would do
this thing where they would throw up goodbye party for
themselves and then they would be like see later, I'm
going to pilot season in La or steal later like
make it yeah, And then some of them never moved.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Back, and many of them did, oh man, like it's
about having to come back with the table to your legs,
because I think most people when they move for an
artistic reason. Every you got everybody saying like okay, like
fucking see you in about a month, right, So.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I concocted this plan.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I go to get this rental car the next day,
and I started driving towards the border, just being.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Like, you never see me again, go to America.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm gonna make it in New York City, baby, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And I got to the border to apply for this visa.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The guy said what are you applying for? I said,
graphic designer. He goes, where's the evidence of your work?
And I was like, I have evidence of my work
and he goes, well, did you go to school in
graphic designer? I was like no, no, I went to
school in cultural anthropology. And he was like, but it's okay.
Just go back home to Toronto and just get the
stuff together and bring it back, like you can bring
it back later today, you could bring it back tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
What'd you do? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The line was really really long to get back to
go to Canada, and then I just saw a sign
that said Buffalo Airport forty miles and so I just
gunned it and looked in my rear view mirror the
whole time going like, this can't be happening. This can't
be happening. This can't be happening. Did I just blow
through a border?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh my god?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And I was shaking the whole time.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And I dropped off the car at the Buffalo Airport
rental car Did you know you can do that? You
can drop a rental car off anywhere for hundreds of Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Going to say, for a fee and a small child
of your firstborn. And you got away with it.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I seem to have gotten away with it as I
sit here right now.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh my god. But like, what a stroke of luck that,
after all that, you're suddenly in New York ready to
make it. Baby.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's like, now I'm going to learn how to do
graphic design.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And now let me tell you about the story of
our great this escape. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Let's do it. So far our story, we're heading down
to America's southern border, to a sweep of land that
covers fifteen hundred acres outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Today, it's
called Papago Park and it's this beautiful area covered with large,
jagged rock formations the rice up out of the red soil.
Now why did the American government take that land? Besides
because it was filled with beautiful buttes, it was to
(03:59):
build your shit, of course, like a strange white pyramid tomb.
For Arizona's first governor, George Hunt.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's like being a king. He's like, I want all the.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Beauty, all the buttes around me, the beautes of Arizona mine.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So the government put an army base in Papago Park.
But eventually that base became a prison. And part of
the reason that they made that switch is that when
they were building, they had trouble digging in the rocky ground.
So they even had to like blast it with dynamite
to get through. So they thought that there was escape proof.
You know, They're like, we're not going to give them dynamite.
We're not that.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Stupid, right, Every prisoner just gets one stick and.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It was a coyote pushing that thing down.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So well, oh, that's my favorite cartoon.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So in nineteen forty four, the prison was used to
hold German prisoners of war. Right when they arrived at
Papaco Park in January that year, they were put to
work doing manual labor. In the spring they were digging canals,
and in the summer they were hired by local farmers
to do things like pick potatoes and pack analog and
bail hey, and of course entertained them by doing the
(05:03):
patient in germanoonstans.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Did you say antelopes? By the way, did you.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Say, yeah? They kept packing antelopes into these massive surfaces.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I was like the antelopes would have grooved out to
those tombs.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So life in the prison was fairly routine for these soldiers, right,
and despite the fact that they were enemy combatants, security
was I mean somewhat lax, pretty lax, I'd say. Prisoners
were always moving in and out for work, and the
prison guards were confident that no real escapes were possible. Okay,
this is foreshadowing a little bit, but the show is
(05:46):
about escapes, right, So also, what the fuck man how
do you let these social paths out of it, like
to go pack antelopes, Like that's unacceptable on so many
levels now.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And also, is it Arizona not a prison in itself?
They actually need another thing.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
That's it exactly so, which brings us to the fall
of nineteen forty four, when the prison plumber responsible for
maintaining the sewage plant noticed something weird the prison. Oh
is that sound of a fucking Oh? That is nasty
the prison. So yeah, yeah, I think that's good. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
So funny.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Why that's such an innocuous noise and we're both just
totally creeped up.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh my god, It's just I don't know, because it's like,
once you say sewage and you hear that, you just
think poop.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
I yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So, the prison sewage pipes kept getting clogged. He would
open them up, clear them out, and find that they
were blocked with packed dirt and rocks. He was maybe
like slightly annoyed, but he wasn't going to replace the
whole prison sewage system just to fix where dirt was
getting in, which is what he thought was happening. But actually, though,
what the plumber was seeing was the first sign of
(06:51):
a massive attempt to escape. It was a breakout schedule
for Christmas nineteen forty four. Actually, there had already been
an escape attempt at Papago Park within the first month
of arriving. Five Germans hid in an army truck and
try to sneak out of the prison so they could
head for the southern border. They were hoping they could
(07:12):
catch a ship back to Germany from the Mexican port.
It's like, these guys really wanted to get back into
the fight. You know. It kind of tells us like
who was being kept in this place?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
What kind of person? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Like, also, there wasn't there one guy that was just like,
I don't know when we just waited out.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I love them. They're being like honor system about this,
Like yeah, actually, yeah, no, they'll come back. I know.
They love antelopes, they love candelops, they love the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I love them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The buttes are nice.
Do you know what they had before? Did they have buttes?
Have you seen the sky in Arizona?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah? So two of them were arrested in Tuson, but
the others made it all the way to Mexico before
they were stopped. When they were returned to the prison.
The guards hadn't even realized that they were gone. Can
you fucking believe.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Those were the top notch guards.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They're like, oh, that's awkwreat I thought I just talked
to you in Well, so they sill they come back in.
So word got out to the local papers. Inspections around
the prison found just how free and easy things were.
Roll called wasn't taken seriously, and prison gates were left
unlocked and some of the German prisoners of war were
allowed to drive trucks so they could go in and
(08:20):
out of the prison regularly as part of their work.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
This is the best prison ever.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Do you think that, like, when you're guarding literal Nazis,
you'd be a little more fucking eye on the ball, kid,
you know.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It sounds a little bit like summer camp.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah. And so they also had crocheting, you know, they
got to swim, They got to swim, They made friends.
So the lackadaisical attitude towards security was especially fucking nuts
right because the prison held German naval officers, and in
particular the commanders of German submarines called U boats. German
U boats commanders were hardcore, and they were the most
(08:55):
ruthless and most fanatical officers in the German Navy. They
had to be the kind of men able to live
in a metal tube underwater for days and weeks at
a time. And they had to be fanatical and Nazis
willing to sink civilian ships without mercy, some real evil shit.
And they had to also be highly trained engineers who
were capable of fixing broken down systems underwater without any
help from the outside.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And they still found these guys with those three insane criteria.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I could be
in the tube underwater. Do you think you could ever
survive like in a submarine or sign up for that
that kind of duty.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I think in the beginning you would go crazy, and
then as time went on you would be like, you
know what, tubes looking nice today?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, from the inside you're like, wow, this this turk
was really brings out your eyes.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
But I just think I really do think, like the
weirdest thing is that humans are unbelievably flexible, and that
if some if you just go like twenty more days
in a tube, like I would need to do some
hash marks on the wall.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Oh, yeah, that's what you would in prison too. That's
what you would do. That's the yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
But I would also do it in the tube. It
would be a different form.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
A prison, but that we know how you would spend
your days inside of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Submarine and I'd be like, you know what, I can
meditate in the morning, like I'm trying the upside.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Nobody's asking you to do shit like so in this submarine.
In this scenario, nobody wants you to do anything around
the submarine. You're just kind of like there and like
having like just like working on yourself, you know, working
on anytime, anytime underwater. These U boats, right, because they
were filled with fucking psychopaths. They're filling guys like Jurgen Wottenburg.
(10:27):
And he was a naval officer who was already had
one wartime prison escape under his belt. Also, I'd like
to think that he only responded to his name. But
it was like Yoda and him like yur Agan, Like
it's just like hard to find somebody scared. There's like, ah,
I'm new, I'm.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
He seems so nice, so gentle.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Look he's he's troking the antelope in such a beautiful way.
So at the beginning of the war, Jurgen was one
was on the crew of a German battleship. His crew
lost a fight off the coast of Uruguay, and Wottenburg
navigated his damaged shipped to land, but was captured. He
escaped from a prison there and made his way back
to Germany, where he was treated like a fucking hero
(11:08):
and then trained to command a German submarine. Right Jurgen's
U boat sank fourteen ships in nineteen forty two, including
a lot of civilian cargo ships. He was finally captured
northeast of Trinidad and sent to the desert with the
first batch of German soldiers in nineteen forty four. So
when people like Wadenberg were slipping out of the American
prison and riding around in trucks, it did actually ruffle
(11:31):
some feathers in the army ranks. They made some changes
to the security of Paplco Park. For instance, the most
uncooperative of the prisoners were all put together into a
single area of the prison compound. One A.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's what I would do, Take all the batties and
put them together so they can scheme.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Stupid fucking idea.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
They're like, they're all the worst. Yeah, put them there together,
they'll learn from each other. They'll be real scared.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, right right exactly, so they can all chat and
be like, who's got the best idea?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Thanks, I got it you. So the American prison guards
continued to underestimate the prisoners, and that was a mistake
with serious consequences. When German prisoners were captured by the
Americans during World War Two, the first stop was Fort
Hunt in Virginia, where they would be questioned thoroughly. When
(12:23):
it came to German submarine officers, the US Navy would
take the first crack at questioning them. So they're hoping
to learn everything from submarine technology to fleet movements, secret
codes and trading methods and astrology signs, stuff like that. Right. So,
what do you think the US military was doing to
make German prisoners talk during World War Two?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I guess you could go two tactics. It could be torture.
That would be like one tactic just to torture them,
and the other tactic would be like butter them up,
making your friends so they would give you all the information.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's exactly what the army did. They in order to
get them to talk. The Navy interrogators made them super comfortable.
They house them in cozy rooms where they had plenty
of food and books and magazines at their disposal. They
had a swimming pool, playing cards, cigarettes and liquor. This
is not a joke, can you fucking believe? So this
(13:14):
was during wartime rationing too. So imagine how you would
have felt if you were in New Yorker at the
time and you heard that this is what they were
getting when everybody else had to like tie to their belts, you.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Know, right back then, all the New Yorkers had to
eat the garbage food of the time, which was oysters, oysters.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, they were all feasting on lobsters and oysters, and
we're like, what the fuck? They get meat loads also,
you know, not to go on a full tangent, but
I don't think people talk a lot about how instrumental
the Canadian Army and Canadian military was in winning World
War Two. Thank my grandfather or my grandma's step grandfather,
I guess was fought and so and sold it. All
(13:50):
of his brothers from Owen Sound, And it's incredible what
they did on D Day. And I don't think in movie.
I mean in movies they're barely mentioned. But I just
don't think it's in the general psyche.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Because Canada, if you think about right now, we don't
think of a Canadian military presence or even a lot
of money put towards military, or that even being talked about.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I have been asked before, you know, like well.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
What Canadian army? What?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
What?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Sometimes I just say, yeah, we have a cannon in
one of our museums.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Another thing that they used to butter these guys up
is that one American Navy guy let sex workers in
to entertain some of their German prisoners.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, listen, I would have chopped, like, forget about the pool,
just do sex workers and cigarettes, Like why are you
spending your money on the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
So, when things inside the prison felt like they were
actually turning peaceful in the fall of nineteen forty four,
the guards really should have known that they were being
lulled into a false sense of security. They even ignored
this big sign that said vivantu escape. It didn't seem
to like really register with them. They're like, we are escaping.
It just crossed out all the time. It's happening soon
and They're like, oh my god, there arts and crafts
(15:00):
really improved, you guys.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I like all these signs. I feel like it's like
word art.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
They seem like, you know, Amy Poehler and mean girls
where she's like I'm cool mom. Like they're like, I'm
just like cool. I'm just like here to support.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I love that they have positive affirmations, you know, escape.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You are seeing, you are loved. One American officer in
charge of security at Public Park would later say that
he had a bad feeling about Compound one. A oh yeah,
bad fat feel good for you, champ, you hero, go on?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
That is that what? That's a number one attribut I'm
looking for in a guard.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hey do you do? You have bad feelings?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
So that's like, go check. But man, I feel kind
of uneasy about it. Might be the oysters that they
keep shipping down from New York.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Does anyone else feel queasy?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Mostly because there was a place in the middle. He
felt bad because there was a place in the middle
of it that couldn't be seen from any of the
guard towers. So, in other words, it was a blind
spot that.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Was known a known blind spot.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And they're like, guys, that doesn't seem like a good idea,
but I'm not going to go look in there.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Let's ignore the blind spot, how about you.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So so the security officer later said that he knew
that the Germans were too smart not to know what
is a blind spot, and he thought it didn't make
any sense to put all their smartest prisoners right next
to it.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Oh my, this is the comedy of errors in prison style.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Is this should tell you something about this guy. He
also said that the Nazis were a bunch of fine men,
So fuck that guy.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, we know, I see what's happening.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
You understand what they're getting. I feel like they were enamored.
There's an enamorment by these prison guards.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Who side were they on? Where's the mole?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Where's the mole? Oh my god, I love that reality
TV series? Don't get me right? So good? Yeah, so
they really should have known better than putting all the
most angry, most troublesome, the most dedicated Nazis together in
one compound. But for some reason, that's exactly what they
fucking did. The first thing that the German captains did
in Compound one A was a little landscaping. They started
(16:50):
plotting out flower beds and generally working on a plant
to beautify the place, or so it seemed. The other
part of the routine was whining. That's true. The guards
started to get regular complaints from you again, Vattenberg. He
winded about the food, he winded about the work. He
mostly whined that he was a high ranking officer and
he didn't think it was fair that he was being
treated like a prisoner. He especially didn't like it when
(17:12):
low ranking guards were telling him what to do and just,
uh god, can you.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Believe they do to make him feel better. I know
they were on it. I know they were like you.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I know that they didn't let him. They did not
let this one man go through such suffering. Anything I know.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
About this story is they were like I everyone meet,
emergency meeting.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
They were like, oh my god, we're so so, so
so embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Urget is sad.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But you guys, you guys sorry. Is it reported by
the war No? No, no, no, Get's sad. He doesn't
want to plant daffodils today. So it wasn't a surprise.
One day you're going to approach the camp commander and
ask for some shovels for the flower bit You know, and.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Of course they were like, we will give you the biggest.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Heaviest shovel.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Oh my god, do you need a tractor because I
have one.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
The guns that look like shovels, do you want those?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Oh my god. So for some of all about reason,
the army guards decided that they should fucking agree. And yes,
the gardening tools were supposed to be under close watch,
but still none of them happens. Nothing is none of
them having to notice when a pickaxe went missing and
the gardens were popping up all over.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It's not like in the like a classic movie where
you look at the shed and there's a shadow of
where the pickaxe was supposed to go.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, exactly, like what is this? Must be? What an
interesting design the shed maker created here? So they they
were popping out everywhere with the gardens. There's gardens everywhere.
So that's when the Germans came up with the next idea.
They asked the guards if they could have a sports
field then their compound. They needed more digging tools and
(18:51):
also rakes that they could use to smooth out the
dirt into a nice level playing field.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Oh and what are they playing?
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Oh well, thank you guys. What are you think they're playing.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I think they're playing hide all of the tools and
maybe killing the guards so they can escape.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
They started creating a volleyball court in the middle of
the compound. One volley and at least that's what it
looked like to the guards. I mean they're like, yeah,
but they called it the volleyball Kurten. And behind their backs,
the German U boat crews were actually working on a
different project. Surprise, Rice. They were actually working furiously to
dig a tunnel under the prison fence. Yes, you know
(19:30):
where it started in the blind spot.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I was just gonna say the compound where all the
smarty pants are one hundred evil smarty pants dudes.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, And it was right next to the bathhouse. So
to get to ease the access, the prisoners losing the
boards in the bathhouse wall. Anytime they were going into
the tunnel, they would walk in the door of their
bath house, sneak out through the back wall, and then
get to work. And when then when they were done,
it was back into the bathhouse and out the door again. Imagine,
if you're a garden you're just like think thinking that
the Germans are showering for like three hours at a time.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You know, we have established these guards are not thinking no,
so they're.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Like, really, guys, get really clean.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Are you sure the sex workers weren't hanging out with
the guards because these guards seem oblivious.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
They're distracted. They were playing. The guards were playing volleyball
this entire time.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
They're just like, wait, we're just playing with them. They're
very good at volleyball.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So the biggest challenge for the digging Nazis was what
to do with the dirt as they made progress on
the tunnel. And at first they tried flushing it down
the toilets in the bathhouse, but as you know, it
caught them and risk their plans. Don't don't do that
sound again? Pleased? I will fucking die. Stop. Oh my god,
that's a real shitty sound. Sorry, Oh my god. So
what's what I'm just listen. This is not a question
(20:45):
of mine, but my producers want me to do it.
So what is your best worst clog toilet experience?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Oh my gosh, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Okay, I have one. It's very female centric. I'm not
embarrassed by it, but I bet you will be.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Okay, So I've a budding young teen and I have
a period like like young teens do, and I'm still
getting used to how everything works with the products right,
And basically, you know, we lived in a house that
had a very ancient sewer system that you were not.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
To pull the chain like it was like the right, it.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Was a sleeve on a pipe.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
But no, it was always like, you know, don't even
like put the good toilet paper down it kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
But you know, I'm a I'm a young teenager girl.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I'm on the run and I'm self obsessed with me
And i had my own room in the basement and
there was a toilet there and anyways, it got clogged up.
It was overflowing, basically flooded the entire basement. But it
wasn't nothing could be seen what it was just water,
and so my mother had to you know, hire a plumber.
(21:53):
They went into another room in the basement, took apart
these ancient pipes that hadn't been taken apart in a
hundreds of years.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, there was like lead poisoning warnings. And then they.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Pulled out one super tampon holy smoked and it was
it was rinsed clean, so it was just white in case.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I mean, I don't care, I'm just surprised by the
fucking expansion.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
It was basically like a cotton umbrel.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Were you dying as a teenage girl when you found
it out.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It was like a full denial now, and we need
to talk about what the fuck he's doing in those battoms.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Also, I didn't help. The diplumbers were all shirtless and
incredibly hot like so there.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Was men as far as the eye could see in
every direction.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The clogpipes bring us to the flower beds in the
volleyball court. Once those projects had been approved, that German
prisoners started smuggling dirt out in the open right, raking
evenly across volleyball court and mixing it into the planting soil.
Once the guards got used to seeing piles of dirt
scattered around, they didn't really think much of it, even
when the piles seemed to never get any smaller and
(23:10):
they're like, that's fucking weird. The digging prisoners took it
in turns to work through October and November and into December.
Outside the fence, there was a drainage stage they had
to get past, which meant that the tunnel had to
go even deeper underground.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To light the tunnel, the Germans used a single bulb
on the bare wire that connected back through the tunnel
into a socket in the bathhouse.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
They had like a they well, I guess engineers and
all this working together.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Of course, the water and bear wiring met that the
wire shocked them as they work, which makes me fucking laugh. Yeah. Now,
digging the tunnel was only one part of the preparations.
The Germans also started storing food, maps, and other supplies
for the journey. They forged papers by making US government
stamps that they could use to approve documents. Looking at
the map, time, do you say they made them? Yes,
(23:59):
the fors papers by making government stamps.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
There are This is not just flower beds and.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
No, no, no in these rocks. I know, I know.
It's just like, you know, they have that military mentality
and like sort of like fucking you.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Know, and every day they're just asking for more materials.
They're like, we're gonna need some.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
That's not related, but we're gonna need a swimsuit. Uh,
we're gonna need We're gonna need a Do you guys
have a vacuum cleaner up here in.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
The printing press. We're gonna need a printing press.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It was the beginning of three D printing. Not a
lot of people know this. So looking at the map,
three of the Germans even decided that they were going
to build a boat. They saw that the Hilo River
ran south into Mexico, so they plan to carry raft
through the tunnel and use it to float to freedom.
God so, okay, this is crazy. They tested out each
(24:52):
part of their boat in the prison bathtub before disassembling
it to be carried through the tunnel.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
What kind of beautiful, large sized bathtub. First of all,
prisons don't have bathtubs.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
There was clawfoot. It was just like palm trees are out.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It fantastic.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
So one of the craziest things that the Germans engineered
was a makeshift radio receiver. They used wire, racial blades,
and other savage pieces of equipment and they tapped into
the prison sparb wire fence to use it as an antenna.
The radio receiver was so effective that they were able
to pick up Nazi radio broadcasts from the German propaganda ministry.
(25:26):
It allowed them to follow the news of the war
from the Nazi perspective. Can you believe how?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I mean again, why did they have to do all
of this? They could have just said, we need a
radio and a transmitter.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
They're going, You're right, why didn't it?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Just as they just they're kidding everything else?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Like I need it for I need to I like
to talk to people when I'm bathing.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, Hey, Sandy, how is it going? How is little
h my God? Also, like I don't know, you know,
not not because of the story, but just in general.
I have some friends that are so handy at building
shit out of nothing, and I just realize how ill
equipped I would be for the apocalypse, you know what
I'm saying. I'd just like be wandering around be like,
does anybody need acting?
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Trust me, I have thought about this a million times.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I'd be like, I'm going to lighten the mood.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So because they had a radio. When the Nazi army
launched the Battle of the bulg in Europe in December
nineteen forty four, the prisoners in Compound one A were
able to fall along and celebrate the advance of the
German tanks across Belgium, which in and of itself the
Battle of the Bulch was a fucking insane plan by
a drug addicted hitler. And I don't know how much
you know about it, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
As a matter of fact, when you said Battle of
the Bulch, I was like, that's where we got it from, yeah, right,
because I was just like, I've only heard this in
context of like dumb weight loss, but obviously, oh really,
I have.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Never heard the term outside of the outside of the battle. Basically,
he knew he was losing the war, he was losing
in the East, and now he had gotten invaded in
D Day in the West. So fucking absolute meth head
that he was, he decided to throw everything everything he had,
full court press, full court press, so that they couldn't
(27:10):
make it to the port. But they were all the
way back out to Germany, I believe, and they'd worked
at first, which is a crazy thing. They threw all
their tanks or every available tank commanders over to the
Allies and then in they are. Then forest was where
they finally stopped because nobody sent them with extra fuel.
They just had to calculate that they have enough fuel
(27:30):
to get to a port and then capture the fuel supplies.
But if it didn't work. There's just no point to
this fucking advance because if they had no fuel, it
would get up number one and number two. They didn't
have enough troops to hold any of this territory, so
it was literally just an insane.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Fucking suicide for all these people.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It was a scary kind of to the Allies because
you're getting attacked out and it was just like, you
can't fucking win this. Why are we fighting? And it
just goes to show you how fanatical people were and
listening to every order even if it made no sense
and it meant their death. Now that you know, I
love this. Some World War two histories are going to
fact check the shit out of me.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
If anyone writes into fact check you on anything. Just
realize you've made their day?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Is it? That's it?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
They spend twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Say happy right now.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So back in the German camp, five days before Christmas,
the tunnel was complete. Both ends were this guy's with
boards and brush, and it was time to put the
rest of their escape plane into action. On the night
of the summer of twenty third, nineteen forty four, the
(28:35):
German prisoners threw a party next door in Compound one
B the guards try to shut them down a few times.
So they were busy going in and out of Compound
one all night.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Ye, here's what works at a prison.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Why stop?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So so all right, it's fun, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I get it. Yeah, so the quiet, the quiet, Compound
one A got no attention. Just before nine pm, the
escape plan began. The twenty five soldiers organized into small,
three man flight groups. He started dropping down into the tunnels.
The tunnel was almost two hundred feet long, and it
crossed under two lines of fences and even the perimeter
(29:14):
road that went around the park. It took more than
a half an hour for each group to crawl through
to the other side. Prisoners who stay behind the Papaco
Park closed up the tunnel once they were through. What
would you think if you were just one of the
dudes that was left be hiding, like, but you are
coming back, right? I was just wet here.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, this sounds like they're like, you guys threw a
party while we escape. I'd be like that, no, no,
wait this second.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
No, no, yeah, that was what the party was.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We like people that were like wait what I was
having a fucking green.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It was just like a blower just like.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
The far end of the tunnel opened into a clump
of bushes on the bank of a nearby canal. As
the men started to emerge, he found that it was
raining super hard. It was a cold December desert rain,
but all the same, it will help screen their escape.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So they even got lucky with the weather. That never
happens for.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just for a little while. As each flight group had
made it through the passage, they slid down into the canal,
where the water was about three feet deep. If they
stayed load, the escapees could then wade quietly forward, and
the canal banks would keep them out of sight from
any prison guards looking their way. How the fuck the
army thought that this was inescapable. There's like an escape
highway right outside. I will never know.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh, Like, when you're building a tunnel, don't you think
like when you get to the end, like you wouldn't
just be like, Okay, now I'm going to go back
and wait for the plan.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Wouldn't you just go well.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, I wouldn't have the
wherewithal to be Like, I'm like, fuck those guys they
were having a party. I'm I'm just gonna pelt it
out here. I'm just gonna run fast and make a
lot of noise. I think that's how it was got so.
Once the Germans moved far enough to be out of
side of the prison, the flight groups went their separate ways.
They all look for places to lay low. The three
men carrying the pieces of the boat marched west towards Phoenix.
(30:58):
They found a public school that was locked, and they
went inside, where they prepared for their journey down the
Hilo River, which they were going to reach the very
next day. Oh Captain Jurgen Wattenburg took the other two
men and marched northwest into the hills around Phoenix. They
found a cave where they would hide out and plot
their next move, And with that, twenty five German navymen
(31:19):
had achieved the largest mass escape from any American prison
camp in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Dun Dun Dunn.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But for some of these ski piece so journey did
not last long. One twenty two year old soldier only
lasted one day because after being pounded by cold rain,
here we go, dring in the cold canal and trying
to eat a meal of dried Brent cubs that he
had packed for himself in his pockets, which is so
fucking stupid it makes me laugh.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
That's like ridiculous. One of them was dumb.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
One of them was incredibly dumb. He was the guy
that was like, I thought we were going back to
the pat I don't know what they don't. So he
hitchhike directly to the local sheriff and asked to be
brought back to the prison. The sheriff called Papaco Park
just as prison officials. We're discovering the missing men the
next day. Also, the descert gets really fucking cold to night,
so I'm thinking, particularly in the winter, you get rained,
(32:10):
you're a fucked Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Can you imagine how great your life is at that
prison if you escape and with the taste of freedom,
you go, this is hard.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I should go back.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I'm going back with the sex work stuff. And like
they have baths, they have cloth to baths, Like no
one does that.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
No one's Like I'm a prisoner of war in another country.
I escaped and it's like feels hard and I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
God, I have one hundred and fifty percent. You are
so fucking rare, Like there is no prison where you
exactly where you're Like we were you suddenly don't have
a fucking five force meal and you're like, actually, I
don't mind. I'm not it's not for me. Not for me.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
I liked it when I had friends.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
What a great point of me. So other flight groups
have been less lucky in trying to find spots to hide,
so instead of empty schools and farms, at least two
of them went directly into a farmhouse and knocked on
the door on Christmas Eve asking for food and shelter.
They were quickly turned in by no, no, no, not
in Christmas. They're like, well not Christmas. Any other day, Yes,
we would have your picking cantalope.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
The army jumped into the day It's family, Yes, it's right.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
The day it was vin Diesel actually at the time
catching all of them, so they called them the FBI,
the Border Patrol, and every other agency that would lend
a hand. A reward was offered of twenty five dollars
for each German pow captured. That's like four hundred dollars
of today's money. But yeah, I don't no, no, it
doesn't seem like they would trying very hard.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Right, Oh, no, Like how much do you get when
you win the voice.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
They're like, I don't know. We got twenty dollars at
a bus pass. Anybody any takers.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yes, it should be the equivalent to one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So ranchers, farmers, and local trackers all started combing the desert.
Once they found the prisoners tracks, it was actually pretty easy.
Most of the fight groups were caught as they tried
to cross the desert on foot, but the V shapes
had been cut into the soles of the prison shoes,
so their tracks easily stood out. They're like, it's either
here or there's like some mighty offensive ostriches walking around.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh that's hilarious. No one ever thought to do that
to change their so whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Had a little arrow, like literally, it had a little
arrow pointing in the direction that they went.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
So this.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Is getting more and more road runner every single second.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
But what about the three boatmen. You know, they might
have actually escaped if there wasn't a major flaw in
their nautical plan. Not with a boat, mind you. That
worked great because they tried it out in their beautiful
claw foot bath the but they dragged it thirty miles
over the desert and finally they'd reached the Heelo River,
and here, my friends, was a flaw. Germans had assumed
(34:40):
that if a map showed the river, they would count
on a river. But what they didn't know was that
by December, the Heel River was hardly more than a
trickle running through puddles a mud, so there was nowhere
they could flow their fucking boat. Got your motherfucking I
can just it just gives me such joy, like I imagine.
And they try to just like slush through the shit
(35:02):
like it's not working. It's not working, just thick mud
and shale. And you've spent.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Hours building a boat ahead of the finest days.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, you could have been playing volleyball this.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Entire time, Yes, smelling roses.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
They try to find deeper spots to launch, but they
could never go down more than the short stretch of
the muddy river bed before they would get stuck again. Eventually,
they abandoned the boat and decided to walk. Two days later,
when they stopped for a breather, two of the men
laid down for a nap, and the third decided he
would take a bath and wash his underwear. Okay, and
that's what he was doing when the cowboys caught up
(35:35):
with him. They literally found him with his pants down. Ah,
how about the rest of the slippery Nazis. Well, one
of the eskps ended up breaking down under questioning and
telling the prison guards how it all went down. Following
his testimony, they finally discovered the hidden tunnel. The other
German prisoners had been hoping that if they didn't give
the tunnel away, the guards would never find it and
(35:58):
other prisoners could use it again to escape the future.
Another one of the escapees gave up after he had
a run in with a Chola cactus. The spines had
dug their wig into his foot and he didn't know
how to deal with it. It hurts so fucking bad
that they just asked the farmer to drive them back
to the station. Apparently the Chola actors is also the
worst kind of thing. Oh yeah, fucking haha, Nazi piece
(36:20):
of shit.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
So, just like the Battle, Tarantino came into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, so ha ha ha yeah what I like what?
I like his stories. I like stories because it's fun,
because it's fun. Violence, it's fun. So that's my terrible
one to replace. I guess I'm not getting cast in
his last film. Shit.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So just like the Battle of the bulls.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
The escape was a big Nazi plan that made splashy
headlines before ending in complete fucking failure, and the last
Gairman call was whiny little Jurorgan Vazenburg. He mentioned to
hide out in his cave until the end of January,
when he tried to make his way to a train
in Phoenix. He went to a hotel, had dinner, and
then asked a gas station attendant the way to the
train station. Now, fortunately the attendant had recognized Wattenburg. The
(37:02):
Arizona Republic had just published a story about him that
morning titled the big Shots Still at Large. When the
police stopped Addenburg, he said, I'm the big shot you
are looking for.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Oh my god, the guy had way too much ego.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah. So in the end, all of the Germans were
recaptured in the state of Arizona. People around Phoenix were
especially furious when the Arizona Republic reported that some of
the escapees were caught with milk, gum, tobacco, and slaps
of bacon in their fucking packs.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
It was clear just slaps, some just thick cut bacon, which,
by the way, bacon, as you may know, is and
I'm sure at the time the luxury food.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That is the luxury food.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Oh my god, foods. There's very little I won't do
for some thick cut bacon.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
It was the most expensive. If you raise pigs, it
means that you don't. You're like, because pigs are. They
don't do anything else.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
They just exist and they cuddle and then they die
for you to have some bacon. Yeah, all of our
vegan all of our vegan listeners are like, fuck you, guys.
We know how it works. We've been telling you for centuries. Sorry, guys.
So it was clear that the prisoners had been giving
things that were scarce at the time, while most of
the country was rationing for the war. The papers made
sure to point out that the prison at Papago Park
(38:18):
held the most ruthless and fanatical Nazis, for instance, like
fucking Jurgen. After in nineteen forty five, he got sent
back to Germany. There he put his prison experience to
good use. He became the branch manager of the Bavaria
and Saint Pauli Brewery in Luba.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Are you kidding me? This guy talk about failing up.
They talk about men failing up in life, but this guy,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
For like Nazis fucking failing up makes me particularly mad.
Like but brewery, they're like, well, this is like give
him a beer, give okay, fine, RelA tiation him was lesson.
Give him a beer. Give him as many beers as
he won.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
The Jurugan's got a couple stories? Oh really does? You're
gonna have a couple of stories.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And the brewery has since been demolished, but the legend
says that you can still hear his whiny, little shitty
voice on the Southwest. That's it, that's the sound hear it.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I am not in the.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And that is our story. Thank you so much, a
fear for coming.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You know what, Jurgen is the luckiest motherfucker, laniest motherfucker
I've ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
But what is what is the biggest takeaway from the story?
What do you think you're going to remember from it?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
You know, if you look at it from the point
of view, is that in the beginning, you know, at
one point in the story we were talking about how
the Germans were coddled in order for the Americans to
get information out of him.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
That was the tactic.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
But if you look at this crazy like insanity of
the lifestyle they were given. How stupid these guards were
in Arizona. You just like I'm amazed that any of
this is possible.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Listen, I gotta tell you, this has been some of
the most fun I've had during episode.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
That's very sweet.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I loved, I loved, I learned a little something, so
thank you, Urduro.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I think when they fact check me, it turns out
that none of this was true, but we learned to
get it. But the Angelope thing was her with you.
When for our listeners, where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Oh, they can find me in all the socials at
O Fira e uh and I play all around tour
and all around. You can also listen to my podcast
parenting as a joke on iHeart Weekly Episodes.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Awesome, Thank you so much, Afirah. We'll see you next time,
and here's a mop of music to play us out.
(40:45):
Grady's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from
me Or Touro Castro, Lissa Martino and Milan Popelka from
Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded
Audio and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced
and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
our research overlord and music Overlord. Our associate producer is
(41:09):
Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
(41:35):
for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
a rating or review. My mom will call you each
personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
week
This is great as Escapes, a show bringing you the
wildest true escape stories. Now, today we're heading back to
World War Two and the biggest escape from an American
prisoner of war camp. I'm Martora Castro and today I'm
joined by the comedian Canadian and public radio sization of
Fida Eisenberg. Hi you, Fear, I thank you so much
(00:51):
doing this. I'm so happy to see you. We've met
once before when you were hosting Ask Me Another Live
on stage. Yes, Santo for Grace was on that pot
guests with me, and he wiped the floor with me.
Uh because there was a bunch of cereal questions. But
I had a fucking bliss and a trivia show.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Don't make don't make people think it was a serial podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It was a trivia show.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, we were talking about kidnapping, and suddenly he just
started he started asking him questions about Cereal.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
It was super weird.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Let me ask you something, what do you consider to
be your greatest escape?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
You have a little bit of idea of this.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I was living in Toronto and I decided that
I wanted to live in New York. Every stand up
comic and actor that I saw leave Toronto would do
this thing where they would throw up goodbye party for
themselves and then they would be like see later, I'm
going to pilot season in La or steal later like
make it yeah, And then some of them never moved.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Back, and many of them did, oh man, like it's
about having to come back with the table to your legs,
because I think most people when they move for an
artistic reason. Every you got everybody saying like okay, like
fucking see you in about a month, right, So.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I concocted this plan.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I go to get this rental car the next day,
and I started driving towards the border, just being.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Like, you never see me again, go to America.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm gonna make it in New York City, baby, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And I got to the border to apply for this visa.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The guy said what are you applying for? I said,
graphic designer. He goes, where's the evidence of your work?
And I was like, I have evidence of my work
and he goes, well, did you go to school in
graphic designer? I was like no, no, I went to
school in cultural anthropology. And he was like, but it's okay.
Just go back home to Toronto and just get the
stuff together and bring it back, like you can bring
it back later today, you could bring it back tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
What'd you do? Well?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The line was really really long to get back to
go to Canada, and then I just saw a sign
that said Buffalo Airport forty miles and so I just
gunned it and looked in my rear view mirror the
whole time going like, this can't be happening. This can't
be happening. This can't be happening. Did I just blow
through a border?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh my god?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And I was shaking the whole time.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And I dropped off the car at the Buffalo Airport
rental car Did you know you can do that? You
can drop a rental car off anywhere for hundreds of Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Going to say, for a fee and a small child
of your firstborn. And you got away with it.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I seem to have gotten away with it as I
sit here right now.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh my god. But like, what a stroke of luck that,
after all that, you're suddenly in New York ready to
make it. Baby.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's like, now I'm going to learn how to do
graphic design.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And now let me tell you about the story of
our great this escape. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Let's do it. So far our story, we're heading down
to America's southern border, to a sweep of land that
covers fifteen hundred acres outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Today, it's
called Papago Park and it's this beautiful area covered with large,
jagged rock formations the rice up out of the red soil.
Now why did the American government take that land? Besides
because it was filled with beautiful buttes, it was to
(03:59):
build your shit, of course, like a strange white pyramid tomb.
For Arizona's first governor, George Hunt.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's like being a king. He's like, I want all the.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Beauty, all the buttes around me, the beautes of Arizona mine.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So the government put an army base in Papago Park.
But eventually that base became a prison. And part of
the reason that they made that switch is that when
they were building, they had trouble digging in the rocky ground.
So they even had to like blast it with dynamite
to get through. So they thought that there was escape proof.
You know, They're like, we're not going to give them dynamite.
We're not that.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Stupid, right, Every prisoner just gets one stick and.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
It was a coyote pushing that thing down.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So well, oh, that's my favorite cartoon.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So in nineteen forty four, the prison was used to
hold German prisoners of war. Right when they arrived at
Papaco Park in January that year, they were put to
work doing manual labor. In the spring they were digging canals,
and in the summer they were hired by local farmers
to do things like pick potatoes and pack analog and
bail hey, and of course entertained them by doing the
(05:03):
patient in germanoonstans.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Did you say antelopes? By the way, did you.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Say, yeah? They kept packing antelopes into these massive surfaces.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
I was like the antelopes would have grooved out to
those tombs.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So life in the prison was fairly routine for these soldiers, right,
and despite the fact that they were enemy combatants, security
was I mean somewhat lax, pretty lax, I'd say. Prisoners
were always moving in and out for work, and the
prison guards were confident that no real escapes were possible. Okay,
this is foreshadowing a little bit, but the show is
(05:46):
about escapes, right, So also, what the fuck man how
do you let these social paths out of it, like
to go pack antelopes, Like that's unacceptable on so many
levels now.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And also, is it Arizona not a prison in itself?
They actually need another thing.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
That's it exactly so, which brings us to the fall
of nineteen forty four, when the prison plumber responsible for
maintaining the sewage plant noticed something weird the prison. Oh
is that sound of a fucking Oh? That is nasty
the prison. So yeah, yeah, I think that's good. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
So funny.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Why that's such an innocuous noise and we're both just
totally creeped up.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh my god, It's just I don't know, because it's like,
once you say sewage and you hear that, you just
think poop.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
I yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So, the prison sewage pipes kept getting clogged. He would
open them up, clear them out, and find that they
were blocked with packed dirt and rocks. He was maybe
like slightly annoyed, but he wasn't going to replace the
whole prison sewage system just to fix where dirt was
getting in, which is what he thought was happening. But actually, though,
what the plumber was seeing was the first sign of
(06:51):
a massive attempt to escape. It was a breakout schedule
for Christmas nineteen forty four. Actually, there had already been
an escape attempt at Papago Park within the first month
of arriving. Five Germans hid in an army truck and
try to sneak out of the prison so they could
head for the southern border. They were hoping they could
(07:12):
catch a ship back to Germany from the Mexican port.
It's like, these guys really wanted to get back into
the fight. You know. It kind of tells us like
who was being kept in this place?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
What kind of person? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Like, also, there wasn't there one guy that was just like,
I don't know when we just waited out.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I love them. They're being like honor system about this,
Like yeah, actually, yeah, no, they'll come back. I know.
They love antelopes, they love candelops, they love the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I love them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The buttes are nice.
Do you know what they had before? Did they have buttes?
Have you seen the sky in Arizona?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah? So two of them were arrested in Tuson, but
the others made it all the way to Mexico before
they were stopped. When they were returned to the prison.
The guards hadn't even realized that they were gone. Can
you fucking believe.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Those were the top notch guards.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They're like, oh, that's awkwreat I thought I just talked
to you in Well, so they sill they come back in.
So word got out to the local papers. Inspections around
the prison found just how free and easy things were.
Roll called wasn't taken seriously, and prison gates were left
unlocked and some of the German prisoners of war were
allowed to drive trucks so they could go in and
(08:20):
out of the prison regularly as part of their work.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
This is the best prison ever.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Do you think that, like, when you're guarding literal Nazis,
you'd be a little more fucking eye on the ball, kid,
you know.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
It sounds a little bit like summer camp.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah. And so they also had crocheting, you know, they
got to swim, They got to swim, They made friends.
So the lackadaisical attitude towards security was especially fucking nuts
right because the prison held German naval officers, and in
particular the commanders of German submarines called U boats. German
U boats commanders were hardcore, and they were the most
(08:55):
ruthless and most fanatical officers in the German Navy. They
had to be the kind of men able to live
in a metal tube underwater for days and weeks at
a time. And they had to be fanatical and Nazis
willing to sink civilian ships without mercy, some real evil shit.
And they had to also be highly trained engineers who
were capable of fixing broken down systems underwater without any
help from the outside.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And they still found these guys with those three insane criteria.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I could be
in the tube underwater. Do you think you could ever
survive like in a submarine or sign up for that
that kind of duty.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I think in the beginning you would go crazy, and
then as time went on you would be like, you
know what, tubes looking nice today?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, from the inside you're like, wow, this this turk
was really brings out your eyes.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
But I just think I really do think, like the
weirdest thing is that humans are unbelievably flexible, and that
if some if you just go like twenty more days
in a tube, like I would need to do some
hash marks on the wall.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Oh, yeah, that's what you would in prison too. That's
what you would do. That's the yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
But I would also do it in the tube. It
would be a different form.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
A prison, but that we know how you would spend
your days inside of.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Submarine and I'd be like, you know what, I can
meditate in the morning, like I'm trying the upside.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Nobody's asking you to do shit like so in this submarine.
In this scenario, nobody wants you to do anything around
the submarine. You're just kind of like there and like
having like just like working on yourself, you know, working
on anytime, anytime underwater. These U boats, right, because they
were filled with fucking psychopaths. They're filling guys like Jurgen Wottenburg.
(10:27):
And he was a naval officer who was already had
one wartime prison escape under his belt. Also, I'd like
to think that he only responded to his name. But
it was like Yoda and him like yur Agan, Like
it's just like hard to find somebody scared. There's like, ah,
I'm new, I'm.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
He seems so nice, so gentle.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Look he's he's troking the antelope in such a beautiful way.
So at the beginning of the war, Jurgen was one
was on the crew of a German battleship. His crew
lost a fight off the coast of Uruguay, and Wottenburg
navigated his damaged shipped to land, but was captured. He
escaped from a prison there and made his way back
to Germany, where he was treated like a fucking hero
(11:08):
and then trained to command a German submarine. Right Jurgen's
U boat sank fourteen ships in nineteen forty two, including
a lot of civilian cargo ships. He was finally captured
northeast of Trinidad and sent to the desert with the
first batch of German soldiers in nineteen forty four. So
when people like Wadenberg were slipping out of the American
prison and riding around in trucks, it did actually ruffle
(11:31):
some feathers in the army ranks. They made some changes
to the security of Paplco Park. For instance, the most
uncooperative of the prisoners were all put together into a
single area of the prison compound. One A.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's what I would do, Take all the batties and
put them together so they can scheme.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Stupid fucking idea.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
They're like, they're all the worst. Yeah, put them there together,
they'll learn from each other. They'll be real scared.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, right right exactly, so they can all chat and
be like, who's got the best idea?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Thanks, I got it you. So the American prison guards
continued to underestimate the prisoners, and that was a mistake
with serious consequences. When German prisoners were captured by the
Americans during World War Two, the first stop was Fort
Hunt in Virginia, where they would be questioned thoroughly. When
(12:23):
it came to German submarine officers, the US Navy would
take the first crack at questioning them. So they're hoping
to learn everything from submarine technology to fleet movements, secret
codes and trading methods and astrology signs, stuff like that. Right. So,
what do you think the US military was doing to
make German prisoners talk during World War Two?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I guess you could go two tactics. It could be torture.
That would be like one tactic just to torture them,
and the other tactic would be like butter them up,
making your friends so they would give you all the information.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's exactly what the army did. They in order to
get them to talk. The Navy interrogators made them super comfortable.
They house them in cozy rooms where they had plenty
of food and books and magazines at their disposal. They
had a swimming pool, playing cards, cigarettes and liquor. This
is not a joke, can you fucking believe? So this
(13:14):
was during wartime rationing too. So imagine how you would
have felt if you were in New Yorker at the
time and you heard that this is what they were
getting when everybody else had to like tie to their belts, you.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Know, right back then, all the New Yorkers had to
eat the garbage food of the time, which was oysters, oysters.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, they were all feasting on lobsters and oysters, and
we're like, what the fuck? They get meat loads also,
you know, not to go on a full tangent, but
I don't think people talk a lot about how instrumental
the Canadian Army and Canadian military was in winning World
War Two. Thank my grandfather or my grandma's step grandfather,
I guess was fought and so and sold it. All
(13:50):
of his brothers from Owen Sound, And it's incredible what
they did on D Day. And I don't think in movie.
I mean in movies they're barely mentioned. But I just
don't think it's in the general psyche.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Because Canada, if you think about right now, we don't
think of a Canadian military presence or even a lot
of money put towards military, or that even being talked about.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I have been asked before, you know, like well.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
What Canadian army? What?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
What?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Sometimes I just say, yeah, we have a cannon in
one of our museums.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Another thing that they used to butter these guys up
is that one American Navy guy let sex workers in
to entertain some of their German prisoners.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, listen, I would have chopped, like, forget about the pool,
just do sex workers and cigarettes, Like why are you
spending your money on the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
So, when things inside the prison felt like they were
actually turning peaceful in the fall of nineteen forty four,
the guards really should have known that they were being
lulled into a false sense of security. They even ignored
this big sign that said vivantu escape. It didn't seem
to like really register with them. They're like, we are escaping.
It just crossed out all the time. It's happening soon
and They're like, oh my god, there arts and crafts
(15:00):
really improved, you guys.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I like all these signs. I feel like it's like
word art.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
They seem like, you know, Amy Poehler and mean girls
where she's like I'm cool mom. Like they're like, I'm
just like cool. I'm just like here to support.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I love that they have positive affirmations, you know, escape.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You are seeing, you are loved. One American officer in
charge of security at Public Park would later say that
he had a bad feeling about Compound one. A oh yeah,
bad fat feel good for you, champ, you hero, go on?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
That is that what? That's a number one attribut I'm
looking for in a guard.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hey do you do? You have bad feelings?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
So that's like, go check. But man, I feel kind
of uneasy about it. Might be the oysters that they
keep shipping down from New York.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Does anyone else feel queasy?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Mostly because there was a place in the middle. He
felt bad because there was a place in the middle
of it that couldn't be seen from any of the
guard towers. So, in other words, it was a blind
spot that.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Was known a known blind spot.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
And they're like, guys, that doesn't seem like a good idea,
but I'm not going to go look in there.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Let's ignore the blind spot, how about you.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So so the security officer later said that he knew
that the Germans were too smart not to know what
is a blind spot, and he thought it didn't make
any sense to put all their smartest prisoners right next
to it.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Oh my, this is the comedy of errors in prison style.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Is this should tell you something about this guy. He
also said that the Nazis were a bunch of fine men,
So fuck that guy.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Well, we know, I see what's happening.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
You understand what they're getting. I feel like they were enamored.
There's an enamorment by these prison guards.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Who side were they on? Where's the mole?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Where's the mole? Oh my god, I love that reality
TV series? Don't get me right? So good? Yeah, so
they really should have known better than putting all the
most angry, most troublesome, the most dedicated Nazis together in
one compound. But for some reason, that's exactly what they
fucking did. The first thing that the German captains did
in Compound one A was a little landscaping. They started
(16:50):
plotting out flower beds and generally working on a plant
to beautify the place, or so it seemed. The other
part of the routine was whining. That's true. The guards
started to get regular complaints from you again, Vattenberg. He
winded about the food, he winded about the work. He
mostly whined that he was a high ranking officer and
he didn't think it was fair that he was being
treated like a prisoner. He especially didn't like it when
(17:12):
low ranking guards were telling him what to do and just,
uh god, can you.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Believe they do to make him feel better. I know
they were on it. I know they were like you.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I know that they didn't let him. They did not
let this one man go through such suffering. Anything I know.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
About this story is they were like I everyone meet,
emergency meeting.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
They were like, oh my god, we're so so, so
so embarrassed.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Urget is sad.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
But you guys, you guys sorry. Is it reported by
the war No? No, no, no, Get's sad. He doesn't
want to plant daffodils today. So it wasn't a surprise.
One day you're going to approach the camp commander and
ask for some shovels for the flower bit You know, and.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Of course they were like, we will give you the biggest.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Heaviest shovel.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Oh my god, do you need a tractor because I
have one.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
The guns that look like shovels, do you want those?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Oh my god. So for some of all about reason,
the army guards decided that they should fucking agree. And yes,
the gardening tools were supposed to be under close watch,
but still none of them happens. Nothing is none of
them having to notice when a pickaxe went missing and
the gardens were popping up all over.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It's not like in the like a classic movie where
you look at the shed and there's a shadow of
where the pickaxe was supposed to go.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, exactly, like what is this? Must be? What an
interesting design the shed maker created here? So they they
were popping out everywhere with the gardens. There's gardens everywhere.
So that's when the Germans came up with the next idea.
They asked the guards if they could have a sports
field then their compound. They needed more digging tools and
(18:51):
also rakes that they could use to smooth out the
dirt into a nice level playing field.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Oh and what are they playing?
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Oh well, thank you guys. What are you think they're playing.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I think they're playing hide all of the tools and
maybe killing the guards so they can escape.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
They started creating a volleyball court in the middle of
the compound. One volley and at least that's what it
looked like to the guards. I mean they're like, yeah,
but they called it the volleyball Kurten. And behind their backs,
the German U boat crews were actually working on a
different project. Surprise, Rice. They were actually working furiously to
dig a tunnel under the prison fence. Yes, you know
(19:30):
where it started in the blind spot.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I was just gonna say the compound where all the
smarty pants are one hundred evil smarty pants dudes.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, And it was right next to the bathhouse. So
to get to ease the access, the prisoners losing the
boards in the bathhouse wall. Anytime they were going into
the tunnel, they would walk in the door of their
bath house, sneak out through the back wall, and then
get to work. And when then when they were done,
it was back into the bathhouse and out the door again. Imagine,
if you're a garden you're just like think thinking that
the Germans are showering for like three hours at a time.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You know, we have established these guards are not thinking no,
so they're.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Like, really, guys, get really clean.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Are you sure the sex workers weren't hanging out with
the guards because these guards seem oblivious.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
They're distracted. They were playing. The guards were playing volleyball
this entire time.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
They're just like, wait, we're just playing with them. They're
very good at volleyball.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So the biggest challenge for the digging Nazis was what
to do with the dirt as they made progress on
the tunnel. And at first they tried flushing it down
the toilets in the bathhouse, but as you know, it
caught them and risk their plans. Don't don't do that
sound again? Pleased? I will fucking die. Stop. Oh my god,
that's a real shitty sound. Sorry, Oh my god. So
what's what I'm just listen. This is not a question
(20:45):
of mine, but my producers want me to do it.
So what is your best worst clog toilet experience?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Oh my gosh, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Okay, I have one. It's very female centric. I'm not
embarrassed by it, but I bet you will be.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Okay, So I've a budding young teen and I have
a period like like young teens do, and I'm still
getting used to how everything works with the products right,
And basically, you know, we lived in a house that
had a very ancient sewer system that you were not.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
To pull the chain like it was like the right, it.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Was a sleeve on a pipe.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
But no, it was always like, you know, don't even
like put the good toilet paper down it kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
But you know, I'm a I'm a young teenager girl.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I'm on the run and I'm self obsessed with me
And i had my own room in the basement and
there was a toilet there and anyways, it got clogged up.
It was overflowing, basically flooded the entire basement. But it
wasn't nothing could be seen what it was just water,
and so my mother had to you know, hire a plumber.
(21:53):
They went into another room in the basement, took apart
these ancient pipes that hadn't been taken apart in a
hundreds of years.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, there was like lead poisoning warnings. And then they.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Pulled out one super tampon holy smoked and it was
it was rinsed clean, so it was just white in case.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I mean, I don't care, I'm just surprised by the
fucking expansion.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
It was basically like a cotton umbrel.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Were you dying as a teenage girl when you found
it out.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It was like a full denial now, and we need
to talk about what the fuck he's doing in those battoms.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Also, I didn't help. The diplumbers were all shirtless and
incredibly hot like so there.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Was men as far as the eye could see in
every direction.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The clogpipes bring us to the flower beds in the
volleyball court. Once those projects had been approved, that German
prisoners started smuggling dirt out in the open right, raking
evenly across volleyball court and mixing it into the planting soil.
Once the guards got used to seeing piles of dirt
scattered around, they didn't really think much of it, even
when the piles seemed to never get any smaller and
(23:10):
they're like, that's fucking weird. The digging prisoners took it
in turns to work through October and November and into December.
Outside the fence, there was a drainage stage they had
to get past, which meant that the tunnel had to
go even deeper underground.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To light the tunnel, the Germans used a single bulb
on the bare wire that connected back through the tunnel
into a socket in the bathhouse.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
They had like a they well, I guess engineers and
all this working together.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Of course, the water and bear wiring met that the
wire shocked them as they work, which makes me fucking laugh. Yeah. Now,
digging the tunnel was only one part of the preparations.
The Germans also started storing food, maps, and other supplies
for the journey. They forged papers by making US government
stamps that they could use to approve documents. Looking at
the map, time, do you say they made them? Yes,
(23:59):
the fors papers by making government stamps.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
There are This is not just flower beds and.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
No, no, no in these rocks. I know, I know.
It's just like, you know, they have that military mentality
and like sort of like fucking you.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Know, and every day they're just asking for more materials.
They're like, we're gonna need some.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
That's not related, but we're gonna need a swimsuit. Uh,
we're gonna need We're gonna need a Do you guys
have a vacuum cleaner up here in.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
The printing press. We're gonna need a printing press.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It was the beginning of three D printing. Not a
lot of people know this. So looking at the map,
three of the Germans even decided that they were going
to build a boat. They saw that the Hilo River
ran south into Mexico, so they plan to carry raft
through the tunnel and use it to float to freedom.
God so, okay, this is crazy. They tested out each
(24:52):
part of their boat in the prison bathtub before disassembling
it to be carried through the tunnel.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
What kind of beautiful, large sized bathtub. First of all,
prisons don't have bathtubs.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
There was clawfoot. It was just like palm trees are out.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It fantastic.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
So one of the craziest things that the Germans engineered
was a makeshift radio receiver. They used wire, racial blades,
and other savage pieces of equipment and they tapped into
the prison sparb wire fence to use it as an antenna.
The radio receiver was so effective that they were able
to pick up Nazi radio broadcasts from the German propaganda ministry.
(25:26):
It allowed them to follow the news of the war
from the Nazi perspective. Can you believe how?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I mean again, why did they have to do all
of this? They could have just said, we need a
radio and a transmitter.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
They're going, You're right, why didn't it?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Just as they just they're kidding everything else?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Like I need it for I need to I like
to talk to people when I'm bathing.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, Hey, Sandy, how is it going? How is little
h my God? Also, like I don't know, you know,
not not because of the story, but just in general.
I have some friends that are so handy at building
shit out of nothing, and I just realize how ill
equipped I would be for the apocalypse, you know what
I'm saying. I'd just like be wandering around be like,
does anybody need acting?
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Trust me, I have thought about this a million times.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I'd be like, I'm going to lighten the mood.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So because they had a radio. When the Nazi army
launched the Battle of the bulg in Europe in December
nineteen forty four, the prisoners in Compound one A were
able to fall along and celebrate the advance of the
German tanks across Belgium, which in and of itself the
Battle of the Bulch was a fucking insane plan by
a drug addicted hitler. And I don't know how much
you know about it, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
As a matter of fact, when you said Battle of
the Bulch, I was like, that's where we got it from, yeah, right,
because I was just like, I've only heard this in
context of like dumb weight loss, but obviously, oh really,
I have.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Never heard the term outside of the outside of the battle. Basically,
he knew he was losing the war, he was losing
in the East, and now he had gotten invaded in
D Day in the West. So fucking absolute meth head
that he was, he decided to throw everything everything he had,
full court press, full court press, so that they couldn't
(27:10):
make it to the port. But they were all the
way back out to Germany, I believe, and they'd worked
at first, which is a crazy thing. They threw all
their tanks or every available tank commanders over to the
Allies and then in they are. Then forest was where
they finally stopped because nobody sent them with extra fuel.
They just had to calculate that they have enough fuel
(27:30):
to get to a port and then capture the fuel supplies.
But if it didn't work. There's just no point to
this fucking advance because if they had no fuel, it
would get up number one and number two. They didn't
have enough troops to hold any of this territory, so
it was literally just an insane.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Fucking suicide for all these people.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
It was a scary kind of to the Allies because
you're getting attacked out and it was just like, you
can't fucking win this. Why are we fighting? And it
just goes to show you how fanatical people were and
listening to every order even if it made no sense
and it meant their death. Now that you know, I
love this. Some World War two histories are going to
fact check the shit out of me.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
If anyone writes into fact check you on anything. Just
realize you've made their day?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Is it? That's it?
Speaker 1 (28:09):
They spend twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Say happy right now.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So back in the German camp, five days before Christmas,
the tunnel was complete. Both ends were this guy's with
boards and brush, and it was time to put the
rest of their escape plane into action. On the night
of the summer of twenty third, nineteen forty four, the
(28:35):
German prisoners threw a party next door in Compound one
B the guards try to shut them down a few times.
So they were busy going in and out of Compound
one all night.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Ye, here's what works at a prison.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Why stop?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So so all right, it's fun, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I get it. Yeah, so the quiet, the quiet, Compound
one A got no attention. Just before nine pm, the
escape plan began. The twenty five soldiers organized into small,
three man flight groups. He started dropping down into the tunnels.
The tunnel was almost two hundred feet long, and it
crossed under two lines of fences and even the perimeter
(29:14):
road that went around the park. It took more than
a half an hour for each group to crawl through
to the other side. Prisoners who stay behind the Papaco
Park closed up the tunnel once they were through. What
would you think if you were just one of the
dudes that was left be hiding, like, but you are
coming back, right? I was just wet here.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, this sounds like they're like, you guys threw a
party while we escape. I'd be like that, no, no,
wait this second.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
No, no, yeah, that was what the party was.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We like people that were like wait what I was
having a fucking green.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It was just like a blower just like.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
The far end of the tunnel opened into a clump
of bushes on the bank of a nearby canal. As
the men started to emerge, he found that it was
raining super hard. It was a cold December desert rain,
but all the same, it will help screen their escape.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So they even got lucky with the weather. That never
happens for.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just for a little while. As each flight group had
made it through the passage, they slid down into the canal,
where the water was about three feet deep. If they
stayed load, the escapees could then wade quietly forward, and
the canal banks would keep them out of sight from
any prison guards looking their way. How the fuck the
army thought that this was inescapable. There's like an escape
highway right outside. I will never know.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh, Like, when you're building a tunnel, don't you think
like when you get to the end, like you wouldn't
just be like, Okay, now I'm going to go back
and wait for the plan.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Wouldn't you just go well.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, I wouldn't have the
wherewithal to be Like, I'm like, fuck those guys they
were having a party. I'm I'm just gonna pelt it
out here. I'm just gonna run fast and make a
lot of noise. I think that's how it was got so.
Once the Germans moved far enough to be out of
side of the prison, the flight groups went their separate ways.
They all look for places to lay low. The three
men carrying the pieces of the boat marched west towards Phoenix.
(30:58):
They found a public school that was locked, and they
went inside, where they prepared for their journey down the
Hilo River, which they were going to reach the very
next day. Oh Captain Jurgen Wattenburg took the other two
men and marched northwest into the hills around Phoenix. They
found a cave where they would hide out and plot
their next move, And with that, twenty five German navymen
(31:19):
had achieved the largest mass escape from any American prison
camp in World War Two.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Dun Dun Dunn.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But for some of these ski piece so journey did
not last long. One twenty two year old soldier only
lasted one day because after being pounded by cold rain,
here we go, dring in the cold canal and trying
to eat a meal of dried Brent cubs that he
had packed for himself in his pockets, which is so
fucking stupid it makes me laugh.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
That's like ridiculous. One of them was dumb.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
One of them was incredibly dumb. He was the guy
that was like, I thought we were going back to
the pat I don't know what they don't. So he
hitchhike directly to the local sheriff and asked to be
brought back to the prison. The sheriff called Papaco Park
just as prison officials. We're discovering the missing men the
next day. Also, the descert gets really fucking cold to night,
so I'm thinking, particularly in the winter, you get rained,
(32:10):
you're a fucked Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Can you imagine how great your life is at that
prison if you escape and with the taste of freedom,
you go, this is hard.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I should go back.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I'm going back with the sex work stuff. And like
they have baths, they have cloth to baths, Like no
one does that.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
No one's Like I'm a prisoner of war in another country.
I escaped and it's like feels hard and I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
God, I have one hundred and fifty percent. You are
so fucking rare, Like there is no prison where you
exactly where you're Like we were you suddenly don't have
a fucking five force meal and you're like, actually, I
don't mind. I'm not it's not for me. Not for me.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
I liked it when I had friends.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
What a great point of me. So other flight groups
have been less lucky in trying to find spots to hide,
so instead of empty schools and farms, at least two
of them went directly into a farmhouse and knocked on
the door on Christmas Eve asking for food and shelter.
They were quickly turned in by no, no, no, not
in Christmas. They're like, well not Christmas. Any other day, Yes,
we would have your picking cantalope.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
The army jumped into the day It's family, Yes, it's right.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
The day it was vin Diesel actually at the time
catching all of them, so they called them the FBI,
the Border Patrol, and every other agency that would lend
a hand. A reward was offered of twenty five dollars
for each German pow captured. That's like four hundred dollars
of today's money. But yeah, I don't no, no, it
doesn't seem like they would trying very hard.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Right, Oh, no, Like how much do you get when
you win the voice.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
They're like, I don't know. We got twenty dollars at
a bus pass. Anybody any takers.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yes, it should be the equivalent to one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So ranchers, farmers, and local trackers all started combing the desert.
Once they found the prisoners tracks, it was actually pretty easy.
Most of the fight groups were caught as they tried
to cross the desert on foot, but the V shapes
had been cut into the soles of the prison shoes,
so their tracks easily stood out. They're like, it's either
here or there's like some mighty offensive ostriches walking around.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh that's hilarious. No one ever thought to do that
to change their so whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Had a little arrow, like literally, it had a little
arrow pointing in the direction that they went.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
So this.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Is getting more and more road runner every single second.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
But what about the three boatmen. You know, they might
have actually escaped if there wasn't a major flaw in
their nautical plan. Not with a boat, mind you. That
worked great because they tried it out in their beautiful
claw foot bath the but they dragged it thirty miles
over the desert and finally they'd reached the Heelo River,
and here, my friends, was a flaw. Germans had assumed
(34:40):
that if a map showed the river, they would count
on a river. But what they didn't know was that
by December, the Heel River was hardly more than a
trickle running through puddles a mud, so there was nowhere
they could flow their fucking boat. Got your motherfucking I
can just it just gives me such joy, like I imagine.
And they try to just like slush through the shit
(35:02):
like it's not working. It's not working, just thick mud
and shale. And you've spent.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Hours building a boat ahead of the finest days.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, you could have been playing volleyball this.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Entire time, Yes, smelling roses.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
They try to find deeper spots to launch, but they
could never go down more than the short stretch of
the muddy river bed before they would get stuck again. Eventually,
they abandoned the boat and decided to walk. Two days later,
when they stopped for a breather, two of the men
laid down for a nap, and the third decided he
would take a bath and wash his underwear. Okay, and
that's what he was doing when the cowboys caught up
(35:35):
with him. They literally found him with his pants down. Ah,
how about the rest of the slippery Nazis. Well, one
of the eskps ended up breaking down under questioning and
telling the prison guards how it all went down. Following
his testimony, they finally discovered the hidden tunnel. The other
German prisoners had been hoping that if they didn't give
the tunnel away, the guards would never find it and
(35:58):
other prisoners could use it again to escape the future.
Another one of the escapees gave up after he had
a run in with a Chola cactus. The spines had
dug their wig into his foot and he didn't know
how to deal with it. It hurts so fucking bad
that they just asked the farmer to drive them back
to the station. Apparently the Chola actors is also the
worst kind of thing. Oh yeah, fucking haha, Nazi piece
(36:20):
of shit.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
So, just like the Battle, Tarantino came into this podcast.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, so ha ha ha yeah what I like what?
I like his stories. I like stories because it's fun,
because it's fun. Violence, it's fun. So that's my terrible
one to replace. I guess I'm not getting cast in
his last film. Shit.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
So just like the Battle of the bulls.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
The escape was a big Nazi plan that made splashy
headlines before ending in complete fucking failure, and the last
Gairman call was whiny little Jurorgan Vazenburg. He mentioned to
hide out in his cave until the end of January,
when he tried to make his way to a train
in Phoenix. He went to a hotel, had dinner, and
then asked a gas station attendant the way to the
train station. Now, fortunately the attendant had recognized Wattenburg. The
(37:02):
Arizona Republic had just published a story about him that
morning titled the big Shots Still at Large. When the
police stopped Addenburg, he said, I'm the big shot you
are looking for.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Oh my god, the guy had way too much ego.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah. So in the end, all of the Germans were
recaptured in the state of Arizona. People around Phoenix were
especially furious when the Arizona Republic reported that some of
the escapees were caught with milk, gum, tobacco, and slaps
of bacon in their fucking packs.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
It was clear just slaps, some just thick cut bacon, which,
by the way, bacon, as you may know, is and
I'm sure at the time the luxury food.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That is the luxury food.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Oh my god, foods. There's very little I won't do
for some thick cut bacon.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
It was the most expensive. If you raise pigs, it
means that you don't. You're like, because pigs are. They
don't do anything else.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
They just exist and they cuddle and then they die
for you to have some bacon. Yeah, all of our
vegan all of our vegan listeners are like, fuck you, guys.
We know how it works. We've been telling you for centuries. Sorry, guys.
So it was clear that the prisoners had been giving
things that were scarce at the time, while most of
the country was rationing for the war. The papers made
sure to point out that the prison at Papago Park
(38:18):
held the most ruthless and fanatical Nazis, for instance, like
fucking Jurgen. After in nineteen forty five, he got sent
back to Germany. There he put his prison experience to
good use. He became the branch manager of the Bavaria
and Saint Pauli Brewery in Luba.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Are you kidding me? This guy talk about failing up.
They talk about men failing up in life, but this guy,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
For like Nazis fucking failing up makes me particularly mad.
Like but brewery, they're like, well, this is like give
him a beer, give okay, fine, RelA tiation him was lesson.
Give him a beer. Give him as many beers as
he won.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
The Jurugan's got a couple stories? Oh really does? You're
gonna have a couple of stories.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And the brewery has since been demolished, but the legend
says that you can still hear his whiny, little shitty
voice on the Southwest. That's it, that's the sound hear it.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I am not in the.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And that is our story. Thank you so much, a
fear for coming.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You know what, Jurgen is the luckiest motherfucker, laniest motherfucker
I've ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
But what is what is the biggest takeaway from the story?
What do you think you're going to remember from it?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
You know, if you look at it from the point
of view, is that in the beginning, you know, at
one point in the story we were talking about how
the Germans were coddled in order for the Americans to
get information out of him.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
That was the tactic.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
But if you look at this crazy like insanity of
the lifestyle they were given. How stupid these guards were
in Arizona. You just like I'm amazed that any of
this is possible.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Listen, I gotta tell you, this has been some of
the most fun I've had during episode.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
That's very sweet.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
I loved, I loved, I learned a little something, so
thank you, Urduro.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I think when they fact check me, it turns out
that none of this was true, but we learned to
get it. But the Angelope thing was her with you.
When for our listeners, where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Oh, they can find me in all the socials at
O Fira e uh and I play all around tour
and all around. You can also listen to my podcast
parenting as a joke on iHeart Weekly Episodes.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Awesome, Thank you so much, Afirah. We'll see you next time,
and here's a mop of music to play us out.
(40:45):
Grady's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from
me Or Touro Castro, Lissa Martino and Milan Popelka from
Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Winning Donaldson from Gilded
Audio and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced
and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively,
our research overlord and music Overlord. Our associate producer is
(41:09):
Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicki Stein,
Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
(41:35):
for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
a rating or review. My mom will call you each
personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
week
Host
Arturo Castro
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