November 29, 2018 • 41 mins
Join Josh and Chuck today as they go down the sport shoe rabbit hole, detailing the strange tail of the brothers who brought Puma and Adidas to the world. Sibling rivalry, Nazis, shoes - there's a lot to unpack here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the
guest producer. I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, Andrew's
(00:22):
wearing Reebok. None of us are speaking to one another
right now. Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Reebok
high tops with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts.
And he claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Oh oh oh, yes, I like that. You didn't know
that because that means you don't go into Hooters. No, No,
(00:44):
I've seen pictures on TV. I had to go. Actually,
I've only been there once, and that was when I
worked at that awful job with the Chicken Killers, and uh,
it was on a stupid work trip. They made me
go on and that was like the only place in town,
and all these yokels that I worked with were like, yeah, man,
let's go to Hooters. And I went in there and
(01:05):
I was just like, my lord, what is They were
trapped in time. I've been there a couple of times.
Actually when I was a younger, younger, man, it's the same,
I imagine it is. I'm sure. And I was there
on my twenty first birthday in Jacksonville because it was
the only place open. It was like it's a Tuesday
night or something, and I was like, this is this
(01:26):
is not the best twenty first birthday all ever. Half yeah,
and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum. If
you're if you work at Hooters, or if you'd love
going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, right, that's
pretty awesome that you said you don't want to yuck
any once yung. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about
a couple of weeks ago when uh, it was like
(01:48):
the Castanza moment when he thought of a line after
the moment when you were talking about how I was
crazy for not liking olives, and I got onto you.
I should have said, don't yum my yuck, right, or
I was just funny you said that. Because I was
thinking about that later on too, I thought that I
should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking you're yum.
(02:10):
I'm yucking you're yuck, which is different. You know, think
about it, man, are you thinking about it. I think
it's weird that we both thought about that moment afterward.
I think so too, because usually we just go back
into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the next six days.
It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
(02:30):
in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
hyperbaric chamber? Yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed
to fill it up, right, right, So, Chuck, Obviously, what
we're talking about today is athletic gear, sports shoes in particular,
and two of the most well known sports brands in
(02:53):
the entire world, Adidas and Puma. And some people might
not know this, Chuck, but Adidas and Puma were founded
by two brothers who spent many decades of their lives
not speaking to one another. And some people might even
know that that their arrival brands founded by rival brothers,
But I guarantee they don't know the full story behind
(03:16):
the one of the most bitter family rivalries of all
time that gave us Adidas and Puma. And it is
extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis, there's run d m C.
There's all this stuff all rolled into one and it
turns out that this is it's one of the better
stories I ever come across. That's right. And before we
(03:37):
dive into that awesome story to head off emails, I
know I said hyperbolic inside of Hipperbarick. No such thing
as a hyperbolic chamber could be. It's a chamber that
It's like, I'm the biggest chamber ever probably, So all right,
so let's this is a great story. And I had
heard uh bits and pieces of this over the years,
(03:59):
but it is interesting that Nazis and run DMC and
feuding brothers all come together too. Because you know, my Pumas.
I've been a Puma guy for many, many years, even
though I did have a pair of Adidas Superstars at
one point, but they're too uh flashy. No, I liked them,
(04:21):
but they were you know, white shoes aren't good on me.
I get get them too dirty too quick. Yeah, So
now I just vary my Pumas between the black and
the black suede and sort of like the olive green
swade usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you
could try. Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the
three blue stripes, those, yeah, those are the ones. The
(04:42):
shell toes. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
cool ones to like. Gazelles are pretty cool, like the
the flat bottomed soccer shoe. And yeah, my my brother
was in duw I've worked Gazelles for a while when
I was a soccer poser. But my brother was into
Stan Smiths. Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got
some some stand Smiths. They are like this blue mesh.
(05:02):
And now that I think about it, if I have
a loyalty to either one, it would be Adidas. But
I don't. I don't consider myself like Adidas loyal Well,
I'm a Puma guy just because they look good on
me and they're comfy. But I was also a low
top Converse All Star guy for a while. And in
(05:24):
high school, of course, in the preppy days, I was
all about the Tree Torrents. I never had Tree Torrents.
It was a look. Oh, I know for sure I was.
I was right after Tree Torns when I started getting
his shoes case Swiss We're in. Yeah, I've never had
any of those. Uh. And then what was the other shoe?
The the vans Um There's a particular style of Vans
(05:46):
that I really still enjoy. The slip on ones with
the black and white checks. No, those are cool, but
I don't know if I can pull those off at seven.
You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
That's already happening. Uh yeah, I'll remember at some point. Okay, well,
just shout it out. And plus, I just wanted to
cover our basis by saying as many name brands as possible.
(06:08):
Don't forget British Nights, the b KS. Um, So Chuck,
let's start the story, shall We were gonna have to
get in the way back machine for this one, okay,
and this is also full of urine, so that was
you though. Let's let's let everybody know. Um, we're gonna
(06:32):
go back to the end of World War One in
Germany and We're going to go to a little town
that I'm going to let you pronounce because I've been
trying and I cannot do it. And I thought it
was interesting that we're recording this now because we just
acknowledged and recognized the UH one years removed from World
(06:52):
War One. The end of World War One, Yeah, in
the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like three
times as many people. Right after it. It's another celebration,
right so so we're going back there. We're just going
back a hundred days almost to the day. Yeah, and
so that the name of that town is uh, well
(07:14):
I could have done at least that good Hurtzela. It's
it's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's let's
play this. That's how it said. Okay, okay, So so
maybe we should just have that voice say of for use,
but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
just called the town hurts So, sure, that's all we'll
(07:34):
call it. But it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
They can't even pronounce it. No, they're like, we're not
even going to try. And we were born here. Don't
don't be too hard on yourself, Josh, is what they're saying.
Um so in Hurts. So it's a little town in Bavaria,
little village. There's a river running through it, significantly. Yes.
And in um around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
(07:55):
who was born there, a guy named um Adolph desk Ler,
takes a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran
a laundry out of out of their house, and he
starts cobbling athletic shoes, specifically track shoes, I think, to
begin with, and he had a knack for it. Um,
he started making shoes that athletes actually wanted pretty pretty
(08:21):
early on, pretty much out of the gate, and he
started doing so well so quickly that within a year
or two, he asked his older brother, who was by
far the more outgoing extrovert salesmany type of the of
the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph, to start selling
his shoes, start kind of creating a business operation out
of it. And I think within just a few years, um,
(08:43):
they had twelve employees and they founded a company called
Sports far Brick Gabrueder Dassler, which they called Ghetta for short. Yeah,
so Gebruder is uh, you know for brothers. So Gebruda
Dossler is the Dossler Brothers company. Um, And people were like, wow,
so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
(09:05):
sport boot any longer, pitch, I don't have to tie
some sharp rocks to the bottom on my feet. Uh.
So their nicknames you'll probably heres refer to them as
uh Addie and Rudy, r U d I and uh
you'll if you kind of put your head to it.
You can see where this is headed. This is exciting.
(09:25):
So uh, the laundry business wasn't going well. So like
you said, little Addie started making these shoes and things
started going great. Um. And it turns out they made
a pretty good team at first because they complimented one another,
uh and what they were and what they were good at.
So Addie was creative, uh and he was the brains
and Rudy was a little more extroverted and he was
(09:46):
a really good salesperson. Right, so they start to do
a pretty good, pretty good business. Um. And it's it's
if you're like, well, it's a weird thing to start
doing as a younger man, to start making supports shoes.
It turns out that hurt So is like a shoemaking town,
has a long tradition of shoemaking. And in for example,
(10:07):
their population was thirty undred, but they had a hundred
and twelve shoemakers. That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio.
So it's not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along,
they're making really high quality shoes, like right out of
the gate. Um, Addie had a real like I said,
a talent for making high quality athletic shoes, and one
(10:30):
of the first things they made were track shoe that
that one of these articles says looks like a ballet
slipper with some nails coming out of the front of it,
the front, bottom, the four soul and it was um
it just changed everything. It was a genuinely great track shoe.
At the time, they they people who were running sprinters
(10:51):
who are running track, they didn't have any traction when
they were taking off. This gave them traction and just
gave an immediate um lag up over the competition. And
so the athletes like really really liked the shoes that
they were putting out and the company started to grow
and grow and grow, and then I think the nineteen
twenty eight Olympics in Los Angeles is where they really
(11:16):
debuted their shoes. And a German sprinter was wearing a
pair of their track shoes and all he won was
a bronze medal. But he won a bronze medal, uh
wearing the Dassler Brothers shoes and as a German sprinter exactly,
so that should say at all it does. So he
was wearing these track spikes and this this helped him.
This got him a little bit of notoriety, but it
(11:37):
was really in Ni in Berlin at that very very
famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named Jesse Owens
dominated and literally tore up the track wearing those uh
Gibruda Dassler track spikes with Hitler in the stands and
(11:58):
people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse Owens
was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure the
shoes are great, but I'm also vastly superior athlete to
the rest of these jumps out here. Yeah. So um.
That was the Olympics that Jesse Owen's famously finished in
first place, won the gold and did another lap around
(12:19):
the track, went up into the stands and slapped Hitler
right in the face. Man slapt his little stash right
off that lip. So um. The fact that Jesse Owens
was wearing these shoes immediately brought international attention to ghet A,
the gi Brewer Um Dossler company. Um so they I
saw one article that said, had World War two not happened,
(12:41):
this this business would have just gone global immediately, and
it started to. But then when World War two broke out,
and that was the nineteen thirty six Olympics. I think
I said the Olympics. It was I think that the
nineteen thirty two Olympics that I talked about first. But
at the Olympics. Within just a couple of years, the
(13:01):
Nazis invaded Poland, and uh, we're running Germany and World
War two kicked off in earnest and the time for
sports apparel kind of got derailed a little bit. Yeah. So, um,
just like in the United States and and actually in
countries all over the world, Uh, the war effort was. Uh,
(13:23):
it's not like they were just like, all right, we
have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our
military and that's gonna be good enough. It's like, no,
we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
that we want to to go toward the war effort.
And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
and kind of everyone else. Um, and everything from Hugo
(13:47):
Boss to luft Hanza to these little shoemakers in this
small town in Bavaria. Yeah, they're they're factories were co
opted for the war effort basically, and what the Dossler
brother There's factory ended up making are something called the
Ponza Shrek, which means the tank Terror, and it was
(14:09):
modeled after the American Bazukah, which was one of the
first shoulder mounted recoil lest rocket launchers that had enough
power to punch right through a tank and blow up
everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers. And the Ponza
Shrek was the German version of the bazuka. And the
German version of the Bazuka was created in the Dossler
(14:31):
Brothers shoe factory. Yeah, it's uh, December nineteen forty three
is when they kind of made the full switch in
these these little you know, German ladies who were so
in shoes the week before were now manufacturing uh, German bazukash.
The good news is by this side because these things
(14:53):
were really effective actually, and had they been um, had
they been brought into the war sooner, thing might have
really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though they
were doing the job, it was too late. The tides
had turned and the Allies were were steaming toward victory,
and even though they started pumping out these bazukas, it
(15:13):
was sort of too little, too late. Yeah, have you
ever wondered about the name bazuka, not until just now. Okay,
well I did, and I was like, what does a
bazooka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer. I think
he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
and he Joe, I can't remember his name, doesn't matter.
(15:33):
He created a musical instrument out of brass called a bazuka,
and um it was kind of like a trumpet and
a trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but
he was popular enough that in the bazuka looked like
his instrument enough that it became called the bazuka. This
this shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Interesting, I thought, so too,
(15:55):
Sure why not? But the point is is that all
of a sudden, the Germans, who had been totally helpless
against the American tank divisions, were messing the American tank
divisions up. And the source of their their power was
the Dossler Brothers shoe factory. And you mentioned their their
seamstresses welding bazukas together. They're also in their factory there
(16:18):
was forced labor of French POWs, so they had slaves
and the seamstresses working together to create bazukas. To take
out the American tank divisions of the Allied tank divisions
thanks to the companies that would eventually become Adidas and Puma.
All Right, that's a great setup. That's only part one
into what is a very interesting story. So we're gonna
(16:41):
take a little break and we'll come back and talk about, um,
what went wrong with these two brothers right after this
as skak all Right, So we're gotta we gotta go
(17:12):
back in time a little bit, because we we sped
right up to World War Two. It was just too
interesting to wait to talk about any longer. But we
need to go back to about nineteen thirty three because, uh,
these brothers ended up fracturing in a big, big way. Um.
And there have been, you know, some legendary sibling rivalries
through the years, but this is this is really one
(17:34):
of the greats uh. And I believe even Rudy wrote,
as an older man, the relation to my brother was
ideal from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then
his young wife tried to interfere with business matters, although she,
with her sixteen years, had no experience at all, and
the wall fapp again. So here's how the story goes,
(17:59):
is it a nineteen thirty three Addie was uh, indeed
married to a sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now,
but back then it was not the strangest thing in
the world. Slightly less creepy. Slightly less creepy. Well, they
just it was a different time. So he was married
to a sixteen year old and tried to get involved
in the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and
(18:22):
they all lived together. The two brothers and their wives
all lived together in the same town house, which is
not a great recipe for success anyway, right, You know,
you need to have your own place. So you can
imagine that all the little bickering and snide remarks and
just all the stuff that if you have two couples
that don't really really really like and love each other,
(18:45):
um living together will will accumulate. If you translate that
to a business relationship, it's going to be hard on
the business than it was. So there was apparently am
a series of just little things like that. But the
as far as the family legend goes, the real break
happened during World War Two when the Allies were bombing
(19:06):
the juror the the village of Hurtzo and the Rudy
and his wife made it made their way to the bunker,
the bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Addie and his wife,
I think her name was kata Um, they made their
way into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
it looks like the bastards are here again. And Addie
(19:28):
apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
to the Allied bombers. But Rudy took it that Addie
was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
was the final straw. Yeah, this was true evidence that
things were really bad. If something is simple, possibly it's
just a little misunderstanding of whether or not the bastards
(19:51):
were the Allies bombing or you my brother and my
sister in law, right, So I mean things were things
were pretty bad. If this is what did it? Right,
So that that's World War Two still going on, and
at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
(20:12):
so this rift has already happened, so he's suspecting one
that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
him drafted. And he can't get that that idea out
of his head so much so that apparently multiple times
he deserted his post to go home to make sure
that he wasn't being ousted from the business he built
with his brother Um. And then he gets arrested for desertion,
(20:35):
and he's sure that his little brother read it him
out for desertion, and so he's arrested. He's held for
a while, and as he's making his way back after
the war to hurt So he gets picked up by
the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestapo agent.
He's sure again this is a little brother ODDI who
(20:58):
got him this time landed in a e OW camp
that he stays in for a little while. And it
turns out he was right. There is documentary evidence from
an American officer who took the accusation down, and apparently
it was Addie who went to the Americans and said,
my brother is a Gesta. You may want to arrest him. Jerk.
(21:20):
This is the level of stuff these brothers are doing
to one another. Um, and the riff just kept getting
bigger and bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we
have to say, because uh, the wife, the younger wife,
the sixteen year old kata Um gets historically blamed for
creating this riff to think, in a lot of ways unfairly,
she's also the one who saved the family business single handedly. Yeah.
(21:45):
So in April, the Americans uh march into Hurts. Those
tanks pull up in front of that factory and the soldiers,
American soldiers are out there like kind of going over
what they should do. Should we destroy this building or not.
This is the place where the pondser shrucks were made. Yeah.
So Oddie's wife, kata comes out and she basically walks
(22:08):
right up to these uh enemy soldiers and says, we
only want to make shoes, We only desire to make shots.
And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Clint,
and she said, we all do okay, uh, And that's
basically like she convinced them to spare the factory. They
did so. And not only that, the air the Air
(22:31):
Force US Air Force set up operations there at their
air base and realized that they really liked these shoes. Well,
they found out that this was the company that made
Jesse Owen's famous track shoes. Yeah, and so they went
off the charts. They started getting these huge orders for
sports teams, American sports teams because of this. So this
(22:51):
is all going on. Um, it's all starting while Rudy's
off in the pow camp because his brother rated him out,
and the is this all of a sudden is starting
to turn international like like like you said, people around
the world are taking notice of this thanks to the
American g i s who were coming back with this
um gheta sportswear. Um. And when when Rudy comes back,
(23:15):
it's done. His brothers rated him out. There was the
whole thing in the bomb shelter, and the brothers split
the company that they built together. They split, get Bruder,
Tessler and or Dostler and they go off and found
their own companies. Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident,
so it was it took a long time to finally
(23:36):
boil over. And in between there was another war. They
were not good Nazis, we should point out, uh kind
of you know, there were members of the Nazi Party
and Rudy did get drafted. But like he said, he
deserted his post a lot and they you know, they
really did just want to sell shoes. Right, He's like
Dwight Shrewts uncle or grandfather who spent a lot of
(23:59):
the war in Allied pow camp. That's right. So, like
you said, they split up the company. And we mentioned
earlier that this river ran through the center of town,
and I said significant, And it is significant because it
literally divided the town and they set up their business.
It's not like one of them said, well I'm going
off to Berlin. They just set up camp on opposite
(24:22):
sides of that river. Audi Dossler said, I will name
my company Addids. Actually at first they named it odd Us.
Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks. Well, no, that
that was a different one. That one. There was a
children's footwear line already called odd Us, so he added
the eye and turned it into Adidas. Yeah, Rudy went
(24:45):
with Ruda, and everyone said that no one's gonna buy
is shoes named Ruda, especially in the United States. And
he said, I don't understand, and they said, don't worry
about it. So somehow he got Puma out of Ruda, right,
which I don't get. But it's a name that's stuck. Yeah,
and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda for sure.
(25:07):
So these two go off and form directly competing companies
that split from the same company that the brothers had
founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
headway out of the gate at first. UM Rudy had
the sales team, had the marketing team, had the the
(25:28):
ability to to move some product. But ODDI had the
technical know how, the dedication to making high quality footwear
that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted to wear, and so
he could get his shoes onto athletes who would wear
them on the world stage. And eventually his his I
(25:49):
guess his tack one out over his brothers and and
from from a very early stage on, Adidas has always
led Puma, at least as far as, like say, revenue goes. Yeah,
and you know, there were mistakes from both of them
along the way business wise. UM one of the big
ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
(26:11):
a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team. Uh.
And of course all that did was opened the door
for his brother and Adidas to go in there and say,
what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened. And
so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany wears
Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they were
(26:35):
not favored at all West Germany actually won against uh
who Hungary, I believe, and that was a huge, huge
deal on the national international stage. It was like the
miracle on ice on grass. You mean they were stoned.
They were all stoned out of their gods, the miracle
on ice on grass. That that might have legs. My
(26:56):
friend trademark that, well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
I love it. So that was one mistake. Um. Adidas
would of course go on to make some mistakes later.
UM I know that that you sent that one article
where they talked about how um they said, you know
at one point that like yogging, no one's gonna do that,
(27:19):
So we're not gonna make yogging shoes and aerobics. That's uh,
that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares about
physical fitness. So you mentioned Rebok earlier. It's hard for
the young folks out there who are listening to to
know this, but there was a time when Reebok was
the name in sports apparel well plus all yeah, and Reebok.
(27:42):
This article says that they lost their way at some point,
But the way that Reebok kind of took the lead
for a little while was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff um
at a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it.
One of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma
made was that they were so focused on beating one
another they just completely dropped the ball as it were
(28:06):
on the rise of Nike, and Nike was able to
take over and apparently right out of the gate, and
since then Nike has always been the leader in sports apparel. Yeah,
and Adidas is two and pumas three. Right, Yeah, amazing.
So you have an option these days. You can buy
your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
(28:27):
use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
let's take a break. Yeah, we'll take a break, and
we'll talk about how this riff uh still oddly carries
over in that town today and run dmc SK should
(28:52):
know SK alright. So back in the day when they
first split off this company and that river's running through
(29:12):
this town, it was a really big deal. Uh. It
wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town wide rivalry.
And that you you worked for one company or the
other as a family, like husband and wife didn't work,
they didn't split up, and one worked at Puma and
one worked at Adidas. But plus, I mean, if you
(29:34):
fell in love with somebody from a family across the
river like you, that was sorry that you got a
Romeo and Juliet thing going on. That ain't gonna work.
Crazy it is, and I was glad that this. One
of the local historians who was interviewed for one of
these articles said, it wasn't like bloody or anything like
someone lost their lives over this. It was just, you know,
(29:54):
if you worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma
side of the river, If you worked for Adidas, you
stayed on the Adida side of the river. And each
each group kept to themselves. That was all. Yeah, And
it still carries over to this day. Um, some of
those recent interviews that we both read, I mean, it's
certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing. But
they say, when you walk around this town, walk through
(30:16):
a playground and you see will you will see kids
kid it out in all Adidas or all Puma. And
this is carried down from generations where they were Adidas
or Puma families, and it was it was a really
big deal and still remains so to this day, such
that the the mayor who actually came from a Puma family.
But to be mayor, you can't, you know, you gotta
(30:38):
be a politician. Sure, so he will wear to some events,
casual events, Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in
two thousand nine, they had a friendly soccer match between
the official Puma sponsored team and Adidas team, and he
wore one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to
remain neutral, I guess, and to look like a total
(30:59):
jackass probably so then it showed him rubbing like his
Puma his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
So this was, like you said, there was a soccer
game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back and I
think two thousand nine, um that happened. Think about this
(31:21):
the the Rude, the Rudy and Audi Dostler died in
the seventies within four years of each other. This was
two thousand nine before the companies finally kind of had
this um reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like
you kind of will you'll gently, you know, make fun
of somebody wearing Adidas if you're a Puma family or whatever.
(31:43):
But while the brothers were alive, you just steered clear
of everybody who was on the on the other side.
And so much so that Hurtzo was known as the
town of the lowered gaze, because if you came upon
somebody on the street, you would look at their shoes
to see what shoes they were wearing before you decided
whether you're gonna talk to that. It was that it
(32:04):
was that established this brother these brothers hatred and rivalry
of one another, and they didn't speak for decades. Um
spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
and the town itself took sides because of this riff
between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
shelter during World War two. Yeah, and the mayor Hacker
(32:27):
his first name is German, could that be right. Uh,
the journalists the German or the journalist is really lazy
and didn't they were just like, it's a he's a
German or just gonna call him that. I wonder if
he pronounces that German that's whatever, or Herman because they
don't say Germany over there anyway. But yeah, they say
(32:48):
Deutsche linn. Yeah. But but would would it be Herman
or no? I guess they spelled the herman's with an H. Yeah,
I think it would be mayor German hakka right? Oh? Yeah.
There is a nature German, Hacky Saka, who was on grass. Uh.
But he says, if someone someone comes in through the
door to this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
(33:11):
It's just in the DNA of those people that this
athletic gear is so important. It's so strange, such a cool, cool,
weird story. It is a great story, um, of sibling
rivalry and bitterness and hatred. And like you said, they
didn't speak for decades apparently UM much later in life.
(33:32):
There were a couple of times when they were a
rumor to have spoken. Once. I think they ran into
each other at an airport. Once they saw each other
at a hotel uh and I believe on the deathbed,
which one tried to get in touch with the other,
Rudy Ruddy put out the call said I would like
to see my brother Audi one more time, and Addi
(33:54):
went no, thanks, I'm good nine. Can you believe it? Yeah, man,
that's that's tough. So they died. The families sold the
business in the eighties late eighties, and they got bought
by UM like corporate conglomerates. Ironically, Puma now owns Reebok
(34:15):
and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is still just Adidas, but
again it's it's owned by like a mega conglomerate UM
and they just gone enormous and make billions of dollars
a year. So the families aren't necessarily involved. But one
family member still works in the business. His name is
Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson and he
(34:41):
used to work at Puma. He was pretty high up
in Puma. Now he works as the head of the
legal department for Adidas. It's a pretty good indication of
how how much this Cold War is kind of thawed
between the two companies quite a bit. Because the people
who are running it have no in in the game.
They don't they don't care anymore, you know. Yeah. Or
(35:03):
he's an attorney and he would just after the most money, right,
He's like, let me suck. So we have a fun
little PostScript on this. I know we've been talking about
run dmc uh and again you young inn's. It might
be second nature now to associate athletic gear and hip
hop and rap music and culture, but back in the
(35:23):
early nineteen eighties that was not the case until run
DMC came along. No, like your your rappers probably dressed
like a Gonen King um or maybe like the New
York Dolls, Yeah, or just like I mean sometimes I
feel like I've seen just like denim jackets and just
sort of like just sort of streetwear, which is the
(35:47):
unhip thing I've ever said. It was pretty unhip. I
didn't want to say any theme, so you know, play close.
So run DMC changed everything when released a single called
My Adidas and I saw elsewhere that they released a
single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to a song
(36:09):
called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed that, um,
run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the tongues
popped out. That was supposedly because that's how people in
prison had to wear their shoes because they weren't allowed
to have shoelaces, and they were kind of saying like,
we're down with all of our buddies in prison. So
this song Fell in Shoes basically was making fun of
(36:31):
that and basically teaching kids not to not to emulate prisoners,
and Run d m C took issue with that, and
they ended up releasing My Adidas the song on Raising
Hell in nine six. Sorry Raisin Hell. Yes, I remember
my family was on a bust to Disney World once,
I think in the windows were foggy and I was
(36:51):
so into Run d m C. I just wrote Raisin
Hell in the fog on the window. People on the
bus thought that was really hilarious. Is a great story.
So um, I was into my Adidas too because of
Run d m C. But it wasn't just me. Apparently,
if you went to a Run DMC show on the
Raisin Hell Tour or the Together Forever Tour or eighty seven,
(37:13):
when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. That's how
that's how big of an impact this song had. Yeah,
And in six a senior employee Adidas named Angelo Anastasio
went to that tour at Madison Square Garden saw this
happen with the Adida sneakers and it was like, hold
(37:35):
on a minute, wait just a second, we could have
something here. Ran back to the headquarters and uh, within
just a few days, they signed them to a million
dollar endorsement deal. And that was like a sea change
forward for hip hop groups getting money in all sorts
(37:55):
of ways. Yeah, and apparently made Adidas's sales just go
through the roof. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that
began the marriage of like I'm gonna put out a record,
I'm gonna get a shoe deal, i might get a
vodka sponsor, Like, oh yeah, I'll get money flown in
from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it.
All vodka's fonts or it's hilarious. Sure, I feel like
(38:18):
I've seen that now. Oh yeah, you know you totally
have like P Diddy and Si Rock vodka. I think, yeah,
look at works. I associate P Diddy and Rock vodka.
Andrew's nodding, correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew, Jerry would have been like, what,
I'm my miso is getting cold? Right, key, guys, hurry up?
(38:39):
Uh we will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you
want to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, will
just go start reading up more. There's actually a book
by a woman named Barbara Smit called Sneaker Wars appropriately
um all about the rift between Adidas and Puma. So
if you want to know more about it, that's a
pretty good place to start. And since I said that
(39:01):
it's time for a listener mail, yeah, I'm gonna call
this uh sponges. Hey, guys, I was listening to Pando
and I was excited y'all mentioned glass sponges, which are
thought to be the oldest animals on Earth. I am
a PhD student at the Scripts Institution of Oceanography in
San Diego, and I study marine sponges because they make
(39:24):
all sorts of unique molecules that can be used as
new medicines. I think sponges at the coolest animals on Earth,
and I'd love to share some of my favorite sponge
fun facts. Ready. Not only are sponges thought to be
the oldest living, uh single living animals on Earth, but
Some evolutionary biologists even think sponges were the first animals
to ever evolve. In other words, are last common animal
(39:48):
ancestor could very well have been a sponge. Did you
know the first antiviral drug approved by the FDA was
developed from a molecule in a c sponge. I didn't
until just now as it PhD student. I collect and
study sponges because they are known to produce thousands bioactive molecules,
many of which have met a medicinal potential. I think
(40:08):
it's pretty incredible that the ocean may hold the cure
to some of the most devastating human diseases, and I
hope my work might inspire people to protect the world's
oceans and the valuable resources within them. Heck yeah, thanks
for all the hard work you guys put into the show.
Y'all have kept me company on many a long night
in the lab with my sponges. That's awesome. It makes
(40:29):
me want to go chew on a sponge and see
what happened. That's right, that's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases. Yeah, we'll
look into these sponges as you call them. If you
want us to look into anything that we put in
scare quotes, well we want to know about it. You
(40:51):
can go onto our website, stuff you Should Know dot com,
follow us on our social links. There you can get
in touch with us. You can also send us a
good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
(41:13):
dot com. Yeah,
Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the
guest producer. I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, Andrew's
(00:22):
wearing Reebok. None of us are speaking to one another
right now. Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Reebok
high tops with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts.
And he claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Oh oh oh, yes, I like that. You didn't know
that because that means you don't go into Hooters. No, No,
(00:44):
I've seen pictures on TV. I had to go. Actually,
I've only been there once, and that was when I
worked at that awful job with the Chicken Killers, and uh,
it was on a stupid work trip. They made me
go on and that was like the only place in town,
and all these yokels that I worked with were like, yeah, man,
let's go to Hooters. And I went in there and
(01:05):
I was just like, my lord, what is They were
trapped in time. I've been there a couple of times.
Actually when I was a younger, younger, man, it's the same,
I imagine it is. I'm sure. And I was there
on my twenty first birthday in Jacksonville because it was
the only place open. It was like it's a Tuesday
night or something, and I was like, this is this
(01:26):
is not the best twenty first birthday all ever. Half yeah,
and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum. If
you're if you work at Hooters, or if you'd love
going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, right, that's
pretty awesome that you said you don't want to yuck
any once yung. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about
a couple of weeks ago when uh, it was like
(01:48):
the Castanza moment when he thought of a line after
the moment when you were talking about how I was
crazy for not liking olives, and I got onto you.
I should have said, don't yum my yuck, right, or
I was just funny you said that. Because I was
thinking about that later on too, I thought that I
should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking you're yum.
(02:10):
I'm yucking you're yuck, which is different. You know, think
about it, man, are you thinking about it. I think
it's weird that we both thought about that moment afterward.
I think so too, because usually we just go back
into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the next six days.
It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
(02:30):
in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
hyperbaric chamber? Yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed
to fill it up, right, right, So, Chuck, Obviously, what
we're talking about today is athletic gear, sports shoes in particular,
and two of the most well known sports brands in
(02:53):
the entire world, Adidas and Puma. And some people might
not know this, Chuck, but Adidas and Puma were founded
by two brothers who spent many decades of their lives
not speaking to one another. And some people might even
know that that their arrival brands founded by rival brothers,
But I guarantee they don't know the full story behind
(03:16):
the one of the most bitter family rivalries of all
time that gave us Adidas and Puma. And it is
extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis, there's run d m C.
There's all this stuff all rolled into one and it
turns out that this is it's one of the better
stories I ever come across. That's right. And before we
(03:37):
dive into that awesome story to head off emails, I
know I said hyperbolic inside of Hipperbarick. No such thing
as a hyperbolic chamber could be. It's a chamber that
It's like, I'm the biggest chamber ever probably, So all right,
so let's this is a great story. And I had
heard uh bits and pieces of this over the years,
(03:59):
but it is interesting that Nazis and run DMC and
feuding brothers all come together too. Because you know, my Pumas.
I've been a Puma guy for many, many years, even
though I did have a pair of Adidas Superstars at
one point, but they're too uh flashy. No, I liked them,
(04:21):
but they were you know, white shoes aren't good on me.
I get get them too dirty too quick. Yeah, So
now I just vary my Pumas between the black and
the black suede and sort of like the olive green
swade usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you
could try. Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the
three blue stripes, those, yeah, those are the ones. The
(04:42):
shell toes. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
cool ones to like. Gazelles are pretty cool, like the
the flat bottomed soccer shoe. And yeah, my my brother
was in duw I've worked Gazelles for a while when
I was a soccer poser. But my brother was into
Stan Smiths. Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got
some some stand Smiths. They are like this blue mesh.
(05:02):
And now that I think about it, if I have
a loyalty to either one, it would be Adidas. But
I don't. I don't consider myself like Adidas loyal Well,
I'm a Puma guy just because they look good on
me and they're comfy. But I was also a low
top Converse All Star guy for a while. And in
(05:24):
high school, of course, in the preppy days, I was
all about the Tree Torrents. I never had Tree Torrents.
It was a look. Oh, I know for sure I was.
I was right after Tree Torns when I started getting
his shoes case Swiss We're in. Yeah, I've never had
any of those. Uh. And then what was the other shoe?
The the vans Um There's a particular style of Vans
(05:46):
that I really still enjoy. The slip on ones with
the black and white checks. No, those are cool, but
I don't know if I can pull those off at seven.
You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
That's already happening. Uh yeah, I'll remember at some point. Okay, well,
just shout it out. And plus, I just wanted to
cover our basis by saying as many name brands as possible.
(06:08):
Don't forget British Nights, the b KS. Um, So Chuck,
let's start the story, shall We were gonna have to
get in the way back machine for this one, okay,
and this is also full of urine, so that was
you though. Let's let's let everybody know. Um, we're gonna
(06:32):
go back to the end of World War One in
Germany and We're going to go to a little town
that I'm going to let you pronounce because I've been
trying and I cannot do it. And I thought it
was interesting that we're recording this now because we just
acknowledged and recognized the UH one years removed from World
(06:52):
War One. The end of World War One, Yeah, in
the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like three
times as many people. Right after it. It's another celebration,
right so so we're going back there. We're just going
back a hundred days almost to the day. Yeah, and
so that the name of that town is uh, well
(07:14):
I could have done at least that good Hurtzela. It's
it's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's let's
play this. That's how it said. Okay, okay, So so
maybe we should just have that voice say of for use,
but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
just called the town hurts So, sure, that's all we'll
(07:34):
call it. But it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
They can't even pronounce it. No, they're like, we're not
even going to try. And we were born here. Don't
don't be too hard on yourself, Josh, is what they're saying.
Um so in Hurts. So it's a little town in Bavaria,
little village. There's a river running through it, significantly. Yes.
And in um around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
(07:55):
who was born there, a guy named um Adolph desk Ler,
takes a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran
a laundry out of out of their house, and he
starts cobbling athletic shoes, specifically track shoes, I think, to
begin with, and he had a knack for it. Um,
he started making shoes that athletes actually wanted pretty pretty
(08:21):
early on, pretty much out of the gate, and he
started doing so well so quickly that within a year
or two, he asked his older brother, who was by
far the more outgoing extrovert salesmany type of the of
the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph, to start selling
his shoes, start kind of creating a business operation out
of it. And I think within just a few years, um,
(08:43):
they had twelve employees and they founded a company called
Sports far Brick Gabrueder Dassler, which they called Ghetta for short. Yeah,
so Gebruder is uh, you know for brothers. So Gebruda
Dossler is the Dossler Brothers company. Um, And people were like, wow,
so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
(09:05):
sport boot any longer, pitch, I don't have to tie
some sharp rocks to the bottom on my feet. Uh.
So their nicknames you'll probably heres refer to them as
uh Addie and Rudy, r U d I and uh
you'll if you kind of put your head to it.
You can see where this is headed. This is exciting.
(09:25):
So uh, the laundry business wasn't going well. So like
you said, little Addie started making these shoes and things
started going great. Um. And it turns out they made
a pretty good team at first because they complimented one another,
uh and what they were and what they were good at.
So Addie was creative, uh and he was the brains
and Rudy was a little more extroverted and he was
(09:46):
a really good salesperson. Right, so they start to do
a pretty good, pretty good business. Um. And it's it's
if you're like, well, it's a weird thing to start
doing as a younger man, to start making supports shoes.
It turns out that hurt So is like a shoemaking town,
has a long tradition of shoemaking. And in for example,
(10:07):
their population was thirty undred, but they had a hundred
and twelve shoemakers. That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio.
So it's not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along,
they're making really high quality shoes, like right out of
the gate. Um, Addie had a real like I said,
a talent for making high quality athletic shoes, and one
(10:30):
of the first things they made were track shoe that
that one of these articles says looks like a ballet
slipper with some nails coming out of the front of it,
the front, bottom, the four soul and it was um
it just changed everything. It was a genuinely great track shoe.
At the time, they they people who were running sprinters
(10:51):
who are running track, they didn't have any traction when
they were taking off. This gave them traction and just
gave an immediate um lag up over the competition. And
so the athletes like really really liked the shoes that
they were putting out and the company started to grow
and grow and grow, and then I think the nineteen
twenty eight Olympics in Los Angeles is where they really
(11:16):
debuted their shoes. And a German sprinter was wearing a
pair of their track shoes and all he won was
a bronze medal. But he won a bronze medal, uh
wearing the Dassler Brothers shoes and as a German sprinter exactly,
so that should say at all it does. So he
was wearing these track spikes and this this helped him.
This got him a little bit of notoriety, but it
(11:37):
was really in Ni in Berlin at that very very
famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named Jesse Owens
dominated and literally tore up the track wearing those uh
Gibruda Dassler track spikes with Hitler in the stands and
(11:58):
people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse Owens
was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure the
shoes are great, but I'm also vastly superior athlete to
the rest of these jumps out here. Yeah. So um.
That was the Olympics that Jesse Owen's famously finished in
first place, won the gold and did another lap around
(12:19):
the track, went up into the stands and slapped Hitler
right in the face. Man slapt his little stash right
off that lip. So um. The fact that Jesse Owens
was wearing these shoes immediately brought international attention to ghet A,
the gi Brewer Um Dossler company. Um so they I
saw one article that said, had World War two not happened,
(12:41):
this this business would have just gone global immediately, and
it started to. But then when World War two broke out,
and that was the nineteen thirty six Olympics. I think
I said the Olympics. It was I think that the
nineteen thirty two Olympics that I talked about first. But
at the Olympics. Within just a couple of years, the
(13:01):
Nazis invaded Poland, and uh, we're running Germany and World
War two kicked off in earnest and the time for
sports apparel kind of got derailed a little bit. Yeah. So, um,
just like in the United States and and actually in
countries all over the world, Uh, the war effort was. Uh,
(13:23):
it's not like they were just like, all right, we
have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our
military and that's gonna be good enough. It's like, no,
we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
that we want to to go toward the war effort.
And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
and kind of everyone else. Um, and everything from Hugo
(13:47):
Boss to luft Hanza to these little shoemakers in this
small town in Bavaria. Yeah, they're they're factories were co
opted for the war effort basically, and what the Dossler
brother There's factory ended up making are something called the
Ponza Shrek, which means the tank Terror, and it was
(14:09):
modeled after the American Bazukah, which was one of the
first shoulder mounted recoil lest rocket launchers that had enough
power to punch right through a tank and blow up
everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers. And the Ponza
Shrek was the German version of the bazuka. And the
German version of the Bazuka was created in the Dossler
(14:31):
Brothers shoe factory. Yeah, it's uh, December nineteen forty three
is when they kind of made the full switch in
these these little you know, German ladies who were so
in shoes the week before were now manufacturing uh, German bazukash.
The good news is by this side because these things
(14:53):
were really effective actually, and had they been um, had
they been brought into the war sooner, thing might have
really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though they
were doing the job, it was too late. The tides
had turned and the Allies were were steaming toward victory,
and even though they started pumping out these bazukas, it
(15:13):
was sort of too little, too late. Yeah, have you
ever wondered about the name bazuka, not until just now. Okay,
well I did, and I was like, what does a
bazooka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer. I think
he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
and he Joe, I can't remember his name, doesn't matter.
(15:33):
He created a musical instrument out of brass called a bazuka,
and um it was kind of like a trumpet and
a trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but
he was popular enough that in the bazuka looked like
his instrument enough that it became called the bazuka. This
this shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Interesting, I thought, so too,
(15:55):
Sure why not? But the point is is that all
of a sudden, the Germans, who had been totally helpless
against the American tank divisions, were messing the American tank
divisions up. And the source of their their power was
the Dossler Brothers shoe factory. And you mentioned their their
seamstresses welding bazukas together. They're also in their factory there
(16:18):
was forced labor of French POWs, so they had slaves
and the seamstresses working together to create bazukas. To take
out the American tank divisions of the Allied tank divisions
thanks to the companies that would eventually become Adidas and Puma.
All Right, that's a great setup. That's only part one
into what is a very interesting story. So we're gonna
(16:41):
take a little break and we'll come back and talk about, um,
what went wrong with these two brothers right after this
as skak all Right, So we're gotta we gotta go
(17:12):
back in time a little bit, because we we sped
right up to World War Two. It was just too
interesting to wait to talk about any longer. But we
need to go back to about nineteen thirty three because, uh,
these brothers ended up fracturing in a big, big way. Um.
And there have been, you know, some legendary sibling rivalries
through the years, but this is this is really one
(17:34):
of the greats uh. And I believe even Rudy wrote,
as an older man, the relation to my brother was
ideal from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then
his young wife tried to interfere with business matters, although she,
with her sixteen years, had no experience at all, and
the wall fapp again. So here's how the story goes,
(17:59):
is it a nineteen thirty three Addie was uh, indeed
married to a sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now,
but back then it was not the strangest thing in
the world. Slightly less creepy. Slightly less creepy. Well, they
just it was a different time. So he was married
to a sixteen year old and tried to get involved
in the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and
(18:22):
they all lived together. The two brothers and their wives
all lived together in the same town house, which is
not a great recipe for success anyway, right, You know,
you need to have your own place. So you can
imagine that all the little bickering and snide remarks and
just all the stuff that if you have two couples
that don't really really really like and love each other,
(18:45):
um living together will will accumulate. If you translate that
to a business relationship, it's going to be hard on
the business than it was. So there was apparently am
a series of just little things like that. But the
as far as the family legend goes, the real break
happened during World War Two when the Allies were bombing
(19:06):
the juror the the village of Hurtzo and the Rudy
and his wife made it made their way to the bunker,
the bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Addie and his wife,
I think her name was kata Um, they made their
way into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
it looks like the bastards are here again. And Addie
(19:28):
apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
to the Allied bombers. But Rudy took it that Addie
was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
was the final straw. Yeah, this was true evidence that
things were really bad. If something is simple, possibly it's
just a little misunderstanding of whether or not the bastards
(19:51):
were the Allies bombing or you my brother and my
sister in law, right, So I mean things were things
were pretty bad. If this is what did it? Right,
So that that's World War Two still going on, and
at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
(20:12):
so this rift has already happened, so he's suspecting one
that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
him drafted. And he can't get that that idea out
of his head so much so that apparently multiple times
he deserted his post to go home to make sure
that he wasn't being ousted from the business he built
with his brother Um. And then he gets arrested for desertion,
(20:35):
and he's sure that his little brother read it him
out for desertion, and so he's arrested. He's held for
a while, and as he's making his way back after
the war to hurt So he gets picked up by
the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestapo agent.
He's sure again this is a little brother ODDI who
(20:58):
got him this time landed in a e OW camp
that he stays in for a little while. And it
turns out he was right. There is documentary evidence from
an American officer who took the accusation down, and apparently
it was Addie who went to the Americans and said,
my brother is a Gesta. You may want to arrest him. Jerk.
(21:20):
This is the level of stuff these brothers are doing
to one another. Um, and the riff just kept getting
bigger and bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we
have to say, because uh, the wife, the younger wife,
the sixteen year old kata Um gets historically blamed for
creating this riff to think, in a lot of ways unfairly,
she's also the one who saved the family business single handedly. Yeah.
(21:45):
So in April, the Americans uh march into Hurts. Those
tanks pull up in front of that factory and the soldiers,
American soldiers are out there like kind of going over
what they should do. Should we destroy this building or not.
This is the place where the pondser shrucks were made. Yeah.
So Oddie's wife, kata comes out and she basically walks
(22:08):
right up to these uh enemy soldiers and says, we
only want to make shoes, We only desire to make shots.
And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Clint,
and she said, we all do okay, uh, And that's
basically like she convinced them to spare the factory. They
did so. And not only that, the air the Air
(22:31):
Force US Air Force set up operations there at their
air base and realized that they really liked these shoes. Well,
they found out that this was the company that made
Jesse Owen's famous track shoes. Yeah, and so they went
off the charts. They started getting these huge orders for
sports teams, American sports teams because of this. So this
(22:51):
is all going on. Um, it's all starting while Rudy's
off in the pow camp because his brother rated him out,
and the is this all of a sudden is starting
to turn international like like like you said, people around
the world are taking notice of this thanks to the
American g i s who were coming back with this
um gheta sportswear. Um. And when when Rudy comes back,
(23:15):
it's done. His brothers rated him out. There was the
whole thing in the bomb shelter, and the brothers split
the company that they built together. They split, get Bruder,
Tessler and or Dostler and they go off and found
their own companies. Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident,
so it was it took a long time to finally
(23:36):
boil over. And in between there was another war. They
were not good Nazis, we should point out, uh kind
of you know, there were members of the Nazi Party
and Rudy did get drafted. But like he said, he
deserted his post a lot and they you know, they
really did just want to sell shoes. Right, He's like
Dwight Shrewts uncle or grandfather who spent a lot of
(23:59):
the war in Allied pow camp. That's right. So, like
you said, they split up the company. And we mentioned
earlier that this river ran through the center of town,
and I said significant, And it is significant because it
literally divided the town and they set up their business.
It's not like one of them said, well I'm going
off to Berlin. They just set up camp on opposite
(24:22):
sides of that river. Audi Dossler said, I will name
my company Addids. Actually at first they named it odd Us.
Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks. Well, no, that
that was a different one. That one. There was a
children's footwear line already called odd Us, so he added
the eye and turned it into Adidas. Yeah, Rudy went
(24:45):
with Ruda, and everyone said that no one's gonna buy
is shoes named Ruda, especially in the United States. And
he said, I don't understand, and they said, don't worry
about it. So somehow he got Puma out of Ruda, right,
which I don't get. But it's a name that's stuck. Yeah,
and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda for sure.
(25:07):
So these two go off and form directly competing companies
that split from the same company that the brothers had
founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
headway out of the gate at first. UM Rudy had
the sales team, had the marketing team, had the the
(25:28):
ability to to move some product. But ODDI had the
technical know how, the dedication to making high quality footwear
that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted to wear, and so
he could get his shoes onto athletes who would wear
them on the world stage. And eventually his his I
(25:49):
guess his tack one out over his brothers and and
from from a very early stage on, Adidas has always
led Puma, at least as far as, like say, revenue goes. Yeah,
and you know, there were mistakes from both of them
along the way business wise. UM one of the big
ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
(26:11):
a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team. Uh.
And of course all that did was opened the door
for his brother and Adidas to go in there and say,
what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened. And
so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany wears
Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they were
(26:35):
not favored at all West Germany actually won against uh
who Hungary, I believe, and that was a huge, huge
deal on the national international stage. It was like the
miracle on ice on grass. You mean they were stoned.
They were all stoned out of their gods, the miracle
on ice on grass. That that might have legs. My
(26:56):
friend trademark that, well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
I love it. So that was one mistake. Um. Adidas
would of course go on to make some mistakes later.
UM I know that that you sent that one article
where they talked about how um they said, you know
at one point that like yogging, no one's gonna do that,
(27:19):
So we're not gonna make yogging shoes and aerobics. That's uh,
that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares about
physical fitness. So you mentioned Rebok earlier. It's hard for
the young folks out there who are listening to to
know this, but there was a time when Reebok was
the name in sports apparel well plus all yeah, and Reebok.
(27:42):
This article says that they lost their way at some point,
But the way that Reebok kind of took the lead
for a little while was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff um
at a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it.
One of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma
made was that they were so focused on beating one
another they just completely dropped the ball as it were
(28:06):
on the rise of Nike, and Nike was able to
take over and apparently right out of the gate, and
since then Nike has always been the leader in sports apparel. Yeah,
and Adidas is two and pumas three. Right, Yeah, amazing.
So you have an option these days. You can buy
your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
(28:27):
use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
let's take a break. Yeah, we'll take a break, and
we'll talk about how this riff uh still oddly carries
over in that town today and run dmc SK should
(28:52):
know SK alright. So back in the day when they
first split off this company and that river's running through
(29:12):
this town, it was a really big deal. Uh. It
wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town wide rivalry.
And that you you worked for one company or the
other as a family, like husband and wife didn't work,
they didn't split up, and one worked at Puma and
one worked at Adidas. But plus, I mean, if you
(29:34):
fell in love with somebody from a family across the
river like you, that was sorry that you got a
Romeo and Juliet thing going on. That ain't gonna work.
Crazy it is, and I was glad that this. One
of the local historians who was interviewed for one of
these articles said, it wasn't like bloody or anything like
someone lost their lives over this. It was just, you know,
(29:54):
if you worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma
side of the river, If you worked for Adidas, you
stayed on the Adida side of the river. And each
each group kept to themselves. That was all. Yeah, And
it still carries over to this day. Um, some of
those recent interviews that we both read, I mean, it's
certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing. But
they say, when you walk around this town, walk through
(30:16):
a playground and you see will you will see kids
kid it out in all Adidas or all Puma. And
this is carried down from generations where they were Adidas
or Puma families, and it was it was a really
big deal and still remains so to this day, such
that the the mayor who actually came from a Puma family.
But to be mayor, you can't, you know, you gotta
(30:38):
be a politician. Sure, so he will wear to some events,
casual events, Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in
two thousand nine, they had a friendly soccer match between
the official Puma sponsored team and Adidas team, and he
wore one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to
remain neutral, I guess, and to look like a total
(30:59):
jackass probably so then it showed him rubbing like his
Puma his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
So this was, like you said, there was a soccer
game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back and I
think two thousand nine, um that happened. Think about this
(31:21):
the the Rude, the Rudy and Audi Dostler died in
the seventies within four years of each other. This was
two thousand nine before the companies finally kind of had
this um reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like
you kind of will you'll gently, you know, make fun
of somebody wearing Adidas if you're a Puma family or whatever.
(31:43):
But while the brothers were alive, you just steered clear
of everybody who was on the on the other side.
And so much so that Hurtzo was known as the
town of the lowered gaze, because if you came upon
somebody on the street, you would look at their shoes
to see what shoes they were wearing before you decided
whether you're gonna talk to that. It was that it
(32:04):
was that established this brother these brothers hatred and rivalry
of one another, and they didn't speak for decades. Um
spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
and the town itself took sides because of this riff
between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
shelter during World War two. Yeah, and the mayor Hacker
(32:27):
his first name is German, could that be right. Uh,
the journalists the German or the journalist is really lazy
and didn't they were just like, it's a he's a
German or just gonna call him that. I wonder if
he pronounces that German that's whatever, or Herman because they
don't say Germany over there anyway. But yeah, they say
(32:48):
Deutsche linn. Yeah. But but would would it be Herman
or no? I guess they spelled the herman's with an H. Yeah,
I think it would be mayor German hakka right? Oh? Yeah.
There is a nature German, Hacky Saka, who was on grass. Uh.
But he says, if someone someone comes in through the
door to this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
(33:11):
It's just in the DNA of those people that this
athletic gear is so important. It's so strange, such a cool, cool,
weird story. It is a great story, um, of sibling
rivalry and bitterness and hatred. And like you said, they
didn't speak for decades apparently UM much later in life.
(33:32):
There were a couple of times when they were a
rumor to have spoken. Once. I think they ran into
each other at an airport. Once they saw each other
at a hotel uh and I believe on the deathbed,
which one tried to get in touch with the other,
Rudy Ruddy put out the call said I would like
to see my brother Audi one more time, and Addi
(33:54):
went no, thanks, I'm good nine. Can you believe it? Yeah, man,
that's that's tough. So they died. The families sold the
business in the eighties late eighties, and they got bought
by UM like corporate conglomerates. Ironically, Puma now owns Reebok
(34:15):
and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is still just Adidas, but
again it's it's owned by like a mega conglomerate UM
and they just gone enormous and make billions of dollars
a year. So the families aren't necessarily involved. But one
family member still works in the business. His name is
Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson and he
(34:41):
used to work at Puma. He was pretty high up
in Puma. Now he works as the head of the
legal department for Adidas. It's a pretty good indication of
how how much this Cold War is kind of thawed
between the two companies quite a bit. Because the people
who are running it have no in in the game.
They don't they don't care anymore, you know. Yeah. Or
(35:03):
he's an attorney and he would just after the most money, right,
He's like, let me suck. So we have a fun
little PostScript on this. I know we've been talking about
run dmc uh and again you young inn's. It might
be second nature now to associate athletic gear and hip
hop and rap music and culture, but back in the
(35:23):
early nineteen eighties that was not the case until run
DMC came along. No, like your your rappers probably dressed
like a Gonen King um or maybe like the New
York Dolls, Yeah, or just like I mean sometimes I
feel like I've seen just like denim jackets and just
sort of like just sort of streetwear, which is the
(35:47):
unhip thing I've ever said. It was pretty unhip. I
didn't want to say any theme, so you know, play close.
So run DMC changed everything when released a single called
My Adidas and I saw elsewhere that they released a
single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to a song
(36:09):
called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed that, um,
run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the tongues
popped out. That was supposedly because that's how people in
prison had to wear their shoes because they weren't allowed
to have shoelaces, and they were kind of saying like,
we're down with all of our buddies in prison. So
this song Fell in Shoes basically was making fun of
(36:31):
that and basically teaching kids not to not to emulate prisoners,
and Run d m C took issue with that, and
they ended up releasing My Adidas the song on Raising
Hell in nine six. Sorry Raisin Hell. Yes, I remember
my family was on a bust to Disney World once,
I think in the windows were foggy and I was
(36:51):
so into Run d m C. I just wrote Raisin
Hell in the fog on the window. People on the
bus thought that was really hilarious. Is a great story.
So um, I was into my Adidas too because of
Run d m C. But it wasn't just me. Apparently,
if you went to a Run DMC show on the
Raisin Hell Tour or the Together Forever Tour or eighty seven,
(37:13):
when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. That's how
that's how big of an impact this song had. Yeah,
And in six a senior employee Adidas named Angelo Anastasio
went to that tour at Madison Square Garden saw this
happen with the Adida sneakers and it was like, hold
(37:35):
on a minute, wait just a second, we could have
something here. Ran back to the headquarters and uh, within
just a few days, they signed them to a million
dollar endorsement deal. And that was like a sea change
forward for hip hop groups getting money in all sorts
(37:55):
of ways. Yeah, and apparently made Adidas's sales just go
through the roof. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that
began the marriage of like I'm gonna put out a record,
I'm gonna get a shoe deal, i might get a
vodka sponsor, Like, oh yeah, I'll get money flown in
from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it.
All vodka's fonts or it's hilarious. Sure, I feel like
(38:18):
I've seen that now. Oh yeah, you know you totally
have like P Diddy and Si Rock vodka. I think, yeah,
look at works. I associate P Diddy and Rock vodka.
Andrew's nodding, correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew, Jerry would have been like, what,
I'm my miso is getting cold? Right, key, guys, hurry up?
(38:39):
Uh we will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you
want to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, will
just go start reading up more. There's actually a book
by a woman named Barbara Smit called Sneaker Wars appropriately
um all about the rift between Adidas and Puma. So
if you want to know more about it, that's a
pretty good place to start. And since I said that
(39:01):
it's time for a listener mail, yeah, I'm gonna call
this uh sponges. Hey, guys, I was listening to Pando
and I was excited y'all mentioned glass sponges, which are
thought to be the oldest animals on Earth. I am
a PhD student at the Scripts Institution of Oceanography in
San Diego, and I study marine sponges because they make
(39:24):
all sorts of unique molecules that can be used as
new medicines. I think sponges at the coolest animals on Earth,
and I'd love to share some of my favorite sponge
fun facts. Ready. Not only are sponges thought to be
the oldest living, uh single living animals on Earth, but
Some evolutionary biologists even think sponges were the first animals
to ever evolve. In other words, are last common animal
(39:48):
ancestor could very well have been a sponge. Did you
know the first antiviral drug approved by the FDA was
developed from a molecule in a c sponge. I didn't
until just now as it PhD student. I collect and
study sponges because they are known to produce thousands bioactive molecules,
many of which have met a medicinal potential. I think
(40:08):
it's pretty incredible that the ocean may hold the cure
to some of the most devastating human diseases, and I
hope my work might inspire people to protect the world's
oceans and the valuable resources within them. Heck yeah, thanks
for all the hard work you guys put into the show.
Y'all have kept me company on many a long night
in the lab with my sponges. That's awesome. It makes
(40:29):
me want to go chew on a sponge and see
what happened. That's right, that's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases. Yeah, we'll
look into these sponges as you call them. If you
want us to look into anything that we put in
scare quotes, well we want to know about it. You
(40:51):
can go onto our website, stuff you Should Know dot com,
follow us on our social links. There you can get
in touch with us. You can also send us a
good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
(41:13):
dot com. Yeah,
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