March 11, 2025 • 55 mins
Were Nazis in LA during World War II? Local legends around places like the Murphy Ranch and the Furst Castle suggest they were, with fascist sympathizers building retreats and strongholds. Some claim Hitler even visited during the war. However, the truth is never quite what it seems, and it is way way more interesting. Listen to learn about an unheralded spy master who prevented treason and violence from Nazis in the City of Angles, as well as the truth behind local lore.With special guest Curtis T. Andersen! (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Gilmore Girls)
https://www.instagram.com/curtisandersen/
https://www.youtube.com/@CurtisAndersen
https://www.theboardbard.com/
https://www.instagram.com/boardbardgamestore/
Theme Music by Matt Glass https://www.glassbrain.com/ Instagram: @astudyofstrange Support the Show! astudyofstrange.substack.com/ Website: www.astudyofstrange.com Hosted by Michael May Email stories, comments, or ideas to astudyofstrange@gmail.com! ©2022 Convergent Content, LLC LINKS! https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Los-Angeles-Against-Hollywood/dp/1620405628 https://theweek.com/articles/477179/hitlers-bizarre-plan-rule-world-from-hollywood https://oldviennagardens.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/endless-rumors/ https://la.curbed.com/2014/9/24/10043624/murphy-ranch-trail-pacific-palisades-history https://www.circlingthenews.com/debunking-a-palisades-urban-legend-nazi-utopia/ https://oldviennagardens.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/endless-rumors/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1013675595342155/files/files
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Warning this episode contains detailsthat some listeners
may find disturbing.
February 1942.
Just a few monthsafter the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
the coast of Californiahad become fortified,
protecting the shores from enemies, subs,and aerial attacks.
(00:23):
On one particular night,most of the residents of Los Angeles
were home asleep when there was a suddenexplosion of anti-aircraft guns.
Something unidentified enteredthe airspace.
The night became alive with chaos,
but by morning there was no evidenceanything ever entered
Los Angeles airspace.
(00:44):
This event, now known as the Battle of LosAngeles, is not the subject
of today's episode,but it perfectly represent the fear
that the residents of the city hadthat the enemy could attack at any moment.
And as that fear took hold
in the reality of World war set in, locallegends and rumors began to circulate,
(01:05):
the Nazis were hidingin the city of angels.
This is a study of strange.
(01:28):
Welcome back to the show.
I am your host, Michael May.
And today I'm going to jump right intointroducing my guest, Curtis T Anderson.
I don't knowif t is your middle initial at all.
It is actually.
Are you serious? For real?
Yes. It's an old Scandinavian name.
It was my great great grandfather'sfirst name.
And it's not one that you've heardvery often.
(01:49):
It's spelled Trygve.
Trygve. Yeah. Whereas Trygve Andersen.
As I was saying your name,
it just felt like I neededto put in an extra initial in there.
I didn't plan on that.I didn't know trivia.
What was that?
Trygve. Trygve was your middle name. Well.
That's awesome.
Well, I guess some might call it strange.
(02:10):
Ooh, some might. Here we. Go. Yes, yes.
Well, you have been on the show before,and today
this episode's a little different,because here
I'm going to give a littlebehind the scenes to my listeners.
Curtis.
Normally, my guests know the topicor, like, I'll tell them what it is.
They may not be expertson the topic usually,
but they'll know what it isand generally have a basic idea.
(02:33):
I did not tell you anythingabout what we're talking about today.
I know nothing.
Do you want a guest?Do you want to just take a random guess?
Based on our history.
I am supposing
this may have something to do with a,
a odd phenomenon that may have happenedin the Orange County area.
(02:53):
Perhaps related to a theme parklike Knott's Berry Farm or Disneyland.
That is a.
That's a great guess.It is not the case, though, that.
Oh, although I'm going to have to do thatand you'll have to be on because of
because of your life around this.
So, Curtis, Curtis Anderson is an actor.
He's a producer.
He's been in the entertainment industrysince he was a kid.
(03:15):
He, you know, have a story is a comic.
Books that you're doing now is like games.Games?
That's right.
Books and board. Games in Portland.
Oregon and Portland, Oregon.
And the reason I wanted you on today,Curtis, is because you are
I don't know if you were born there,but you were raised in orange.
Orange County, in the L.A. area.
You've workedin the entertainment industry
since you were a kidin and around the Los Angeles area.
(03:38):
You know, people from and inand around the Los Angeles area.
You have a feel for the heartbeat of LosAngeles.
I'm going to say, I hope that's true, but.
It's all true. It's all true.
I think it's very true.
Yeah.
We're going to talk about some realand some folklore
stories and placesbased around Nazis in Los Angeles.
(04:00):
Oh yeah.
Okay. Yes, yes.
I lived in Huntington Beachfor a very long time,
and that is a very prominent placefor them right now.
It's a horrible thing to say,but it's true.
Oh, it is something that peopledon't realize about
Southern California, because people think
people outside of California think,oh, California hippie is super liberal,
(04:24):
and it's like, no,especially places like Orange County,
there's a long history of conservatism, ofalt right things.
I mean, even American History Xtakes place in Orange County, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, we also had the, orange juicewoman who,
got paid in the facebecause she was against.
Well, at the time,she was just against gay people.
(04:45):
And that happened in Fullerton,California, which is,
you know, dead set in the middle of O.C..
There you go.
So the topics I'm going to covertoday is a variety of topics.
And that includes a spy ring before WorldWar Two involving Nazis, Nazi
mansions and compounds,and even a place that legend
(05:05):
says that Hitlervisited himself in the Los Angeles area.
So stick aroundso you can learn about all these things.
And Curtis already looks shocked.
I truly fascinated because this is allstuff that I've never heard of before.
This is amazing.Yes. Yeah, and I'm covering a lot.
I said, is it, parts of OrangeCounty you can not see.
(05:28):
And that's our show.
Everybody okay?
No, I, I as I was researching this
and writing my notes,I kept getting the song walking in L.A.
stuck in my head.
But with Nazi in LA, Nazi in LA.
Yeah.
It's, it's terrible,but that's the dirtiness that I am.
That's all right.
So, Curtis, I in the intro,you didn't hear the intro,
(05:50):
but I introduced the show off by talkingabout the Battle of Los Angeles.
Yes. Okay.
That is its own episode.
I do want to do an episodeabout Battle of Los Angeles,
because nowadays there's theoriesthat there were like UFOs or spies.
There's all sortsof different conspiracies on it now,
but it really does set upthat there's a fear because we're entering
a world war, people are super on edge,and the
(06:12):
the feeling of everybodystarted to go against the Nazis.
And what most residents didn't realize is
Nazis were already in Los Angelesand this is not folklore.
This is very, very real.
Curtis even already mentioned OrangeCounty being a hotbed of some alt right,
far right thinkingand it had started back then.
(06:36):
So what I'm going to talk about first
is an anti Nazi spy ring
that started in the 1930sand this should be a show on Netflix.
I honestly don't know how it isn't alreadybecause it's crazy fascinating.
So what I'm hearing is we're goingto develop this show afterwards
to be able to sell.Just by just mentioning it.
(06:57):
We own it.
So now even if someone else makes it,we own it.
So I love it. We're I love it. Yeah.
The. Nazis were hiding in plainsight in the 1930s.
There was an American Boot,the political party organization
that was developed to promote Nazismin the United States
and spread propaganda, propagandaabout the Nazi Party.
(07:21):
And they wanted to sway the opinionof American
to basically startfeeling soft for Nazi Germany.
They wanted the Americans to be like,yeah, let's support them.
And they were predated by another groupcalled the Friends of New Germany,
which actually had money from Germany,went into the United States
to help sort of fund this groupand influence them in the United States.
(07:45):
This may be skipping ahead.
Does this have any relation to the,
the Nazi rallythat happened in New York City?
It does.I think that was the American Jews.
Yeah. Okay.
Because they were based in New York.
And you like, you've probably seenthe newsreels, you even just mentioned it.
But like, yeah,they had rallies, they had.
30,000 Nazisin the middle in New York City.
(08:07):
Exactly. And so that was the same group,
and they were largely in New Yorkand Los Angeles.
And the reason they were in Los Angelesis because Germany saw L.A.
as a focal pointto influence American politics.
Political thinking also influencethe media industry at large as well.
(08:29):
So there were Nazi offices, pro-German,anti-Semitic bookstores.
One of the big ones was in downtown LA,and it literally,
I forget the name of the store,
but it literally was like,Jews are terrible campfire.
But like, that's the name of the store.
And by the way, that's not me saying that.
That's mesaying there was a store with this.
And yeah, it was ait was pretty interesting because L.A.
(08:51):
generally was okay with this, andthey were like meeting spots in offices
that were public that people could go toand learn more about the silver shirts
and American boots and all these differentorganizations that were pro-Nazi.
Most of the police forcein Los Angeles and Orange County leaned
into the more Nazi ideology, and everybodywas pretty much against communism.
(09:13):
And so they saw Nazis as like,we're pro-Nazi
because we're against communismkind of thing.
Color me surprised.
This is my surprised face. Yes.
There you go. You'reyou're so sorry, Fred.
So it turns out that Los Angeles was hometo about one third of disabled veterans.
And, that had lost their benefitsduring the depression.
And so they were not happywith the Roosevelt administration.
(09:37):
The area also had 50 German Americanorganizations with 150,000 members.
There was also a lot of
Klu KluxKlan membership in SoCal, Orange County.
And I already mentioned, law enforcementmembers were generally
a part of that,or at least thought they were good.
Some of those that, workforcesare the same, that burn crosses.
(10:01):
The more things change,the more they stay the same.
Here you go. There you go. Good grief.
And then so this is all just set upthat along came a Jewish veteran,
also a lawyer named Leon Lewis,who decided to take on the Nazis himself.
Good for him. Good chant.
I will tell you that this is my source forthis is coming from a book called Hitler
(10:22):
in Los Angeles How Jews Foiled Nazi PlotsAgainst Hollywood in America,
by Stephen J. Russ.
And I'm not going to gointo the whole thing today
because I'm going to diveinto some other subjects.
But it is a great, great book.
I really enjoyed reading it and Stephen J.
Ross, I think he's a professor,but he found all this information
does not have a lot of it's public.
(10:43):
He found it through records at UC.
It was either UC
Davis or Fullerton or whatever that hadall these, all the original records.
And so he was able to research thisand put all the pieces together
and the people and the playersand find all this out.
So according to the book, LouisLeon Lewis knew from years of monitoring
the foreign press that Germany wantedto grow groups in the U.S.
(11:03):
to strike when appropriate, and the U.S.
government was more focused on communismthan fascism.
Lewis put together his own spy ring.
And again,this should totally be a TV show.
I not to go on that tangent,but I it would be so good.
And the spy ring was essentialto infiltrate Nazi groups in and around
(11:23):
Los Angeles,
and who he used were Germans,
German immigrants,and a lot of the people he used
were German immigrants that had foughtfor Germany in World War One.
And he did that specificallybecause they understood the the fears
and the dangers of fascism,but also they could infiltrate the group
(11:44):
because the group would be like,oh, you're one of us.
You fought in the war and you're a German.
And so it was easier for these peopleto get into these groups
undercover, not even undercover,because they're playing themselves.
You know, they'd go to these partiesand stuff with their family or whatever.
Yeah.
But here's what they uncovered.
And again, I'm skipping a lot becauseI don't want to give away the book.
And it's so there's so much to it.
(12:05):
But here are various thingsthey uncovered.
They found multiple plots to lynchfilm producers
like Louis B Mayer, SamuelGoldwyn, actors like Charlie Chaplin.
They there were
plots to use gunsjust to go into places like Boyle Heights,
which was a predominantly Jewishneighborhood, and just mall down
the neighborhood, just opened firewith machine guns and kill as many
(12:27):
Jews as they could. Jeez. Yeah.
They also were plans to use fake companies
to go to Jewish homesand then go inside and kill the family.
Leave.
Sort of like a plumber van would show upin the front yard, and so the neighbors
wouldn't suspect anything was wrong,and they'd go in and kill the families.
There were plots to disruptshipping in the Port of Los Angeles
and the Port of Long Beach,
(12:49):
and there were plots to blow upmunition plants in San Diego.
All of these were foiled by this spy ring.
That's all of.
Them. Isn't that amazing?
It's so, you know,and this also really points to the fact
that this was in the 30s, right?Yeah. Yeah.
So this isbefore we even got into the war.
This was before, things like theconcentration camps became publicly known.
(13:12):
Yeah.
Like they were really, really trying.
Like it was abundantly clear.
Let there be no mistake.
Eliminatingthe Jewish people was on the docket.
And from the. Beginning.
There was no Ippolit like, yeah, yeah,anybody who says different is wrong.
Clearly wrong.
Yes. And and that's part of fascism.
(13:32):
Fascism is a very nationalistic view.
It's a very racist view of politicswhere you typically want one party rule.
And the way that you keep that oneparty rule is everybody else's opposition.
Everybody else should be killed or in jailor put down.
And, and there was a lot of racismbehind it.
And, and there you go.
So you have this spy ring specifically.
(13:53):
You brought it up.
I forgot to mention, it startedin 1936 is when he first put it together
and it lasted all the waythrough the end of the war.
So 1945 that it kept going. Yeah.
And again, I'll put links to the book inthe show notes at is worth a buy.
It is worth a read if you like history,if you like crazy stories,
it crazy real stories.
The reason I wanted to start the episodementioning the spy ring Curtis
(14:16):
is I do think that even if it wasn'tvery public, that there was a spy ring,
that still those kind of feelingsare being ingratiated into the city.
Fears of Nazi, both pro-Naziand fears of Nazis
are all kind of combining,
and they're influencing everybody,the feeling of the town.
And it could have influencedsome of the folktales that have come up
(14:39):
with two very real places in Los Angelesthat are still, to this day
considered Nazi compoundsor Nazi locations.
Oh, wow.
And so I'm going to startwith one called the Murphy Ranch.
Have you heard?
I feel like you would have heardof the Murphy Ranch.
Now, this is where this is where my brain
(15:00):
clicks in andand I get confused about things because,
there are a lot of ranches.
There are. There are, yes.Both worked on. Yes.
Whether it be Warner Brothers or,or like the,
the, are.
You thinking of the one. Where Mansonfancied. One? That's that.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so I am not sure about Murphy Ranch.
(15:22):
Yeah.
Okay,so the Murphy ranch, the legend tells you,
I'm going to tell you whatthe legend says.
It is a compound that was built for Nazis,where the people that were
there could live off of the grid,take over the city, take over Hollywood.
And some tales saythat it was being built for.
Has a mansion for Hitler.
Oh, wow.
(15:42):
The ranch itself is.
It's just like, it's like a home.
They never finished fully building it,
but it's in a place called placecalled Rustic Canyon in the Palisades.
And you can hike to it.
And literally just a week or so ago,
my wife was listeningto the Conan O'Brien podcast,
and Tom Hanks brought up
(16:04):
the Murphy Ranch,and he was riding his bike near it.
And it's not that he's even talking aboutit being a Nazi compound.
And it was built for Nazis backduring the war.
Are there Nazis there rightnow? No, no, no.
Sorry. Let me. Okay.
No. It's built during the war.
Nazi compound back then.
Well, thank you for making me clarify.
That was,
(16:26):
but even, likeTom Hanks is talking about it
as, like,oh, it's this place where Nazis lived.
But none of that might be true.
So here,I'll, I'll. I'll read you a little.
Yeah. I was going to say,where did this come up?
How do people, how do people get the ideathat Nazis were in this spot?
I will tell you,and this was fascinating to do.
(16:47):
I'll give a little anecdote first.
I first heard about thiswhen I moved to LA, and I've seen programs
like on TV, like KTLA will have like,you know, a series that they go out
and they go to like Los.
I think it was actually lost LA,which is a great PBS series.
And they went
there and talkedabout its relationship to Nazi history.
(17:07):
I've seen other like, documentariesthat mention it or go there.
There's a million YouTube videosyou can pull up and people like,
because I don't think you can actually,you're not
I don't think you're actually supposedto go where there's like a home and stuff.
I think you're supposed to stay offthat and just be on hiking trails nearby
where people, of coursego in there. Everything's fine.
People go in there,
they film, there's ghost hunting videosbecause, oh, Nazis were here.
(17:28):
A lot of people believethat it is a good a ghost thing.
A lot of people believethat it is associated with Nazis.
So here's here's this tale
not far from Santa Monica.
Hidden in the hills of Rustic Canyonare the remnants of a bizarre property
known as Murphy Ranch,built in the late 1930s,
the ranch was fundedby a mysterious couple, Winona and Norman
(17:50):
Stephens, who believed in the comingof a fascist revolution.
But they weren't acting alone.
The Stephens were allegedly connectedto a German man named Hare Schmidt,
who convinced them to build the ranchas a self-sustaining Nazi compound.
Plansincluded a powerhouse, water tank storage,
even a bomb shelter, and their visionwas to ride out the collapse
(18:11):
of American democracy and help establishNazis, a Nazi stronghold in the U.S.
Rumors exists that neighbors in the 1930switnessed uniformed men dressed
similar to the Silver Shirts and Americanfascist group patrolling the property.
But in 1941, their dream fell apart.
The attack on Pearl
Harbor turned public opinionsharply against fascist sympathizers.
(18:34):
The story goes that
the FBI raided the ranchand it was abandoned shortly after.
Today, graffiti covered ruins and whispersof secret meetings are all that remain.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube videosexist where people visiting the Nazi
compound hundreds of articlesover the last 80 years say the same thing.
But here's the twist here's Schmidt.
(18:56):
He may not have existed at all.It was such.
It was such a stereotypical name.
The second you said it, I was like,is this the Red skull?
Yeah.
Are you seriously pulling a comic bookvillain in your eyes?
Yeah.
A historical record suggests that he mighthave been a scam artist or a cult leader
exploiting this Stevens for his own gain.
(19:17):
All right, so I do want to ask a call outto my listeners
if anybody knows that the Murphy Murphyranch got burned in the fires,
I would love to know,because it's in the Palisades.
It might be completely gone.
Now, I'll be honest with you.
I'm looking it up right nowas we talk about it.
There are current photosthat show that it it's still standing.
(19:38):
Okay.
Does say that it is, currently temporarilyclosed.
Okay. Got it, got it.
I don't know if that means at some pointit ever becomes open.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I think they closed it to the publica while ago, but still,
Yeah, it's right in the Palisades.
Where the where the bigone of the big fires just went through.
(19:59):
So it may not it may not be there anymore,but it is cement.
Maybe some of it still there. Right.
Find out. We'll find out.
All right.
So the tale startedbecause of an affidavit
from a gentleman named DoctorJohn Vincent in the 70s.
He was a professor at UCLA andthe director of the Huntington Hartford
Foundation, which was an artist retreatthat occupied the property after the war.
(20:22):
They bought the property in the 50s,I think 1950 exactly is
when they bought the property.
He tells of a story visiting the propertyin 1948, he met Winona and Norman
Stephens, and they were talking to himabout selling to the Hartford Foundation.
And allegedly,Winona was a Chicago heiress
with a deep interest in the esoteric
(20:45):
air all out of New Age sort of stuff.
Sure.
And he had learned from them that they hadmet a man named Hare Schmidt,
who was from
Germany, and he was telling the Stevensthat Germany's going to win.
There's going to be a world war.Germany is going to win.
And he convinced themto build a self-sufficient place to live
that could be part of thisNational Socialist ideals.
(21:08):
You can live there and be off the gridand be Nazis.
And the reason they believed himis because they had a son
who apparently was sick and normal doctorsweren't really doing a lot in here.
Schmidt somehow healed himthrough the power of whatever it may be.
And so they believe it, believed him,and believed everything
(21:28):
he said because he helps their son.
And so they started buildingthis property.
The property never, hit its full potentialor planned construction.
There are a lot of drawingsthat date from 1934 to 1941.
In their house today
in the Lloyd Wright Collection at UCLA'sYoung Research Library.
And not that Lloyd Wright
(21:48):
designed the place,but they're just that's the library.
That's just a place of the librarywhere lots of architectural things.
Exactly.
And they designed a home they designed,like I already said it earlier,
but they designed like little other placesto grow food.
And there was a power buildingand an outhouse.
And they neverthey never finished all of it.
They just kind of finishedone of the main buildings.
Yeah.
Seeing the picturesthat are available online,
(22:08):
there's a lot of like half built things.
Yes. Even in the ruins ofjust half built things. Yes.
And they apparentlythey would even like change designs.
They spent a lot of money on this.They would like design it.
And then again, what if we do this
and they'd have like a new architectcome in and like design a new thing.
So from census records,
(22:28):
it's, it does seem like Normanand Winona are real.
Like they're not part of this folk legend.They are.
They are real people.
And Winona did come from a wealthy family,but they met in Pasadena
and not Chicago. And.
Yeah. Sorry. You they're in Chicago.
Same same thing,same different, same difference.
And so it turns out what is possibly true
(22:51):
and most likely trueis they met a healer named Conrad J.
Anderson. Ooh.
What are your relatives.
Dropping a hat to spell it right.
That's the big question.
Yeah, it's a and c o n. Oh, yeah.
No, those guys are frauds. Yeah.
And he was Norwegian.Not German, by the way.
So he was an American,which might have led to
(23:11):
some of the rumors,
because Americans, we just hear an accentlike, oh, you must be German or whatever.
Clearly. Yeah, yeah.
And the family, like I said, withthe Schmidt thing, the family believed him
because he healed their child,healed with quilts, healed their child,
and so quickly you can find outhe was not named Schmidt.
He was named Anderson.
And he he would tell peoplethat he could heal people
(23:34):
from the magic of his fingertips.
And he had this weird electric chargethat he could,
you know, influence people or whatever.
And he convinced them to build this place,to be off the grid.
I don't know if he said Nazi ism is good.
It sounds like he was just like,you should build a compound.
He was like,I need a compound and you have money.
And that's what I believe happened.
(23:54):
I think you're dead, right, Curtis?
Because apparently,according to, the children of the Stevens,
he was a womanizer.
And whenever they would see him, he'dbe on the compound with multiple women.
And, I mean, it justit just keeps the cults in Los Angeles.
They just. They they just start covenant.
(24:14):
They don't stop coming.
You can't.
You can't stop it.
It's it'spart of the lifeblood of the town.
And yeah, there's very much like thisManson feeling with him.
He's very influentialin the way he treats people.
He has a lot of women coming and goingand staying with him,
and he would live on the propertywhile it was being built.
And he
he had a lot of influencewith the Andersons over
how they were spending their moneyin the property.
(24:35):
And the Stevens.
The Stevens, excuse me? The Stevens who?
The people. The people who live there.
So I'm trying to find in my notes.
At one point, one of they're one ofthe Stevens kids mentioned that Anderson
at one point wanted to poison the Stevensafter he had
gotten them to sign a will and leaveall their money and property to him.
(24:56):
That never happened,but that apparently was his plan.
So tracks that tracks with the cultleader for.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so he was not not a good dude.
And at some point during the war,it sounds like
they did separate themselves from him.
Now, why Hare Schmidt?
I don't fully know.
I don't knowif anybody will fully know how.
(25:18):
That was probably.
Less embarrassingto say that we got duped by Nazis
than it was to say we got duped.
But maybe this is wherethey might have started the rumor.
Like, oh, it was a German guythat got us into this mess.
Yeah.
Now there is an article, CurbDelay did a bunch of research
into this story,and they had an article that mentions
there was a hair Schmidtin Los Angeles around the time of the war.
(25:39):
And in 1940, he was arrestedand so it was a different guy.
He wasn't on that property.
He actually may have been in OrangeCounty, I believe, and the like.
U.S. Naval Intelligenceraided his home and arrested him.
We don't know much more, but that
because that was in the LA times paper,that name could have just gotten
sort of trapped into this cycleof like rumors and stories.
(26:02):
So that could be one of the reasons.
So that article about Schmidtand then the affidavit from this Vincent
guy in the 70s telling the story of Nazisat the compound.
This is the beginning of the spiraling ofthe local legends that Nazis were there.
And it didn't help.
There's a writer named Betty Lou Young
who wrote a book,who used the affidavit as her source.
(26:24):
So she was like, oh, it's this place.And Nazis lived there, and it was guarded.
It was being built for Hitlerthat start spreading the rumors.
There's a historian named Randy young whothen also started telling the stories of,
oh, there were Nazis in LA.
This is like throughout the 80s and this.
Game of telephone just getting worse.
And I think the reasonI'm even covering this on this crazy
episode I'm doing on my podcastis that's what I love finding out
(26:48):
where the game of telephone startsand where do these stories come from.
And Randy young, I mentioned the historianwho spread the story forever.
I think I've even seen
interviews on on PBS here locally with himtalking about it over the years.
He now has done enough researchand come across enough,
historical truththat he's now like, oh, we were wrong.
(27:09):
There were that weren'tNazis there. Sorry.
Not not actually what happened?
So, but the myth is still going,including Tom Hanks claiming, you know,
oh, I drive by this place, and apparentlyNazis lived there and built it and stuff.
That's wild.
Yeah. That's while.
All because some dude just wantedto bang people in the hills.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly.
(27:29):
Exactly.
So that takes me to my next
location, the next area of local folklore.
This one I would not be surprisedif you've never heard of because it's it's
less well known,but kind of similar to the Murphy Ranch.
First of all, do you know, and you may noteven know you're from the LA area.
Do you know where Shadow Hills is?
(27:51):
Oh, yeah. Totally. No, I have no idea.
Okay.
Yeah,yeah, shadow Hills is a little community.
Sort of near.
It's kind of like West ish of La Canada.
It's if you go from, Sun Valley,which is north of Burbank,
like through the mountains there.
That's that's where Shadow Hills is.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
I do actually know that area.
(28:12):
I did not know it was called Shadow Hills.
I did not eitheruntil researching this, by the way.
Even though I have a direct connectionto this place, I didn't even know.
So the next segment,what I'm leading towards is
a place called the First Castle Forest.
First castle in Shadow Hills,
just in the northern partof the Los Angeles area. And
(28:35):
I have a
personal connection to this placebecause I had never heard of it,
but I was working on a project actuallyprojects with the production company
that was based in Sun Valley,which is just north of Burbank.
And every nowand then we would take one of the roads
out behind the officeinto this canyon road.
You don't feel like you're in L.A anymore.
It very quickly becomes very rural.
(28:56):
There's homes that have horses in the yardand like, they,
you know,they have little ranches and stuff.
And so, yeah,you don't feel like you're in L.A anymore.
But right up that road there is a littleItalian restaurant and it's.
And it's inside this German styledlooking building.
It has, like, a windmill out front.
There obviouslyused to be like a pool or something
and or like a riverbedkind of built into it.
(29:19):
It's very like,you know, you want to put on your.
What are those?
What are those shoes like,the heavy wooden shoe, things like.
The clogs, the clogs.
It makes you want to do that.
Maybe yodel and,you know, the hills or whatever.
It's, it has that very stereotypicalGerman feel.
And it's in that restaurantwhere we go to lunch
sometimes that I first heardthat that property boasts
(29:41):
a mansion up above it,known as the First Castle, and the and
the restaurant itself were part of a Nazi
sympathizer ring during the war.
Is iswas that old restaurant called old Vienna?
Yes. Yeah, it was oldVienna was the original name.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
What I when I first learnedabout this place, this castle, is that
(30:05):
not only was it home to Nazi sympathizers,but it had secret tunnels
and a German cemetery
where German spies were being buriedwhen they passed away.
And according to legend, Hitlersecretly came into the country
during the war to have meetingswith his American cohorts.
(30:26):
At the first castlein Chateau Hills in Los Angeles.
Okay, where did these tunnels go?
Because that that good questionleads to, yeah.
No one knows.
But they do suspect thatit, like, connected.
So the restaurant is downat the base of a mountain.
The castle is up above on the mountain.
So the tunnels were,I think, secretly, just a way to get to
(30:47):
and from withouthaving to drive up the complicated road.
Probably led tosome other little secret hideouts.
Some of the legends claim that there waslike a radio on top of the castle
that would communicateto German subs out in the, the Pacific.
So yeah, it's, it's pretty, pretty crazy.
And so here's the story, Curtis.
(31:08):
The story goes
that a German immigrant and former Germanmilitary officer named August 1st
moved to the area around 1936,and he quickly opened the old Vienna
Gardens restaurantin a German style building.
And by 1939, there were complaintswhich you can find records of.
I have read many newspaper articlesfrom the time about it,
(31:29):
where there were complaintsthat the restaurant would get very rowdy
and noisy at night,and the neighbors were complain about it.
Now, at the time, people claimedthat first was a Nazi sympathizer
and the propertywas being used to hold Nazi meetings.
First himself was a spy.
And then came the rumors that they hadbuilt tunnels and caves into the mountain
(31:50):
behind the restaurant,and they would communicate with Nazi subs.
Uniformed men would roam the propertyfor protection,
and everything was guardedby gates and dogs.
And soon during during the war,according to legend,
first built this Moorish styled castleon the mountain above and built
(32:11):
also a cemetery to house the fallenGerman spies during the war.
Now keep it.
Nothing says secrecy like here'smy German spy cemetery.
I would like to see the spiesthat work. Now we're burying.
Also, you do have
to, I wouldsay, feeding into the rumors of the time.
(32:32):
You do have to keep in mind,we're coming out of a depression.
And yet this guy who owns a smalllittle restaurant in Chateau Hills,
which is not very populated, is buildingthis giant house on a mountain.
So where's that money coming from?
I think that'sleading into the speculation. Oh, sure.
Going on here? Sure.
And after the war, the first continuedto live there until the 1970s.
(32:55):
And there's a lot of local history,a lot of local records to look into.
The restaurant changed handsmultiple times today.
It's an at least the last time I went,it was an Italian restaurant,
and the property is still there.
I will add.
I have been to the castle,not just a restaurant.
I went there on a on a film, locationscout for a movie and got to explore it.
(33:15):
You can rent it out.
I think skateboarders go up therebecause the pool is empty.
So used pool to skateboard.
It's a fascinating property.
I did not find any secret tunnels,secret rooms or hideaways.
There is, like,this weird room on the roof
that I think was a sauna at one point.Sure.
It's a fascinating.
You mean the radio roomfor the subs? Mike?
There you go. Sorry.Let me. Yes, yes yes yes, yes.
(33:37):
All right, so.
You got to pay extra for the tunnel tour.
You did? I guess you do.
I guess you're not part of renting it outfor real.
Yeah.
So, like the Murphy Ranch,
this has the feeling of local talltales, right?
And I love that.
And so through a lot of research,I think I have pieced together
what may have happenedand where these stories come from.
(33:59):
And I look, I'mnot pulling one over on the audience.
There were no Nazis there.
That is that is my belief.
You know, it's almost relieving actually,so far that does that
that these two major spotswhere Nazis were supposed to be ended up
not actually having Nazis, that'sactually that's actually nice.
And it is it is a nice thing. I will say,
(34:23):
oh, I evenI think I wrote a sentence about this.
It might be a nice little cliffhangerhere,
even though I'm not cuttingto a commercial break.
So while that might seem nice, Curtis,
the truth does point to somethingfar darker.
Oh crap. And one that Michael.
Human nature in the neighbors at the time.
Maybe not.
Maybe that's taken it a little too far,but okay, so Shadow
(34:46):
Hills, it turns out like Orange County.
A lot of Klan.
Know.
There were Klan meetings, in
some of these centers built around there.
And actually, there's a giant crossthat at least last time I was
there is still there.Or at least it's been rebuilt.
The history of that cross,
(35:08):
may have led to the rumorsthat there was a cemetery on the property.
It's actually not on the propertyof the mansion.
It's like next door nearby.
And it looks likeit could be the same property.
And I think it's right next to a church.
That giant cross was put thereby the Klan in the, I think, in the 1940s,
because they were holding meetings,and it was a way for them
to give back to the community,build this big giant cross.
(35:28):
Aren't we good Klan members?
And and the fact that your cross was there
at least until the last time I was inthe area is pretty, is pretty terrible.
It also turns out that the speculationthat first was a Nazi sympathizer
was basically because the sympathieshad turned against Germany
very quickly when the war started.
(35:49):
So the complaints about the restaurantessentially stemmed from that.
There were people complaining.
You can find newspaper articles about it,
where first himself is talkingto, like the LA times and L.A.
weekly and all the other local newspapers
saying a lot of the claimantsaren't even neighbors.
They don't even live there.
And it's essentiallyjust because they were like,
oh, it's a Germanthat owns a German restaurant.
(36:11):
We need that shut down.
So they claim that it was super loudand they're getting rowdy at night.
All this kind of crazy stuff.
So that's what I mean by darkerside, is that neighbors are turning
against a neighborjust because he's German.
Yeah, it always comes down to racism.
And we like to turn itagainst where humans, we don't like
(36:31):
people that are different than us.
And yeah, yeah, that is that's what has.
Good grief. Yeah.
As, as Frankie,who went to Hollywood once said,
when two tribes go to war,one is all that you could score.
Ooh. Oh, yeah.
What did he say that in.
The song Two Tribes.
Two tribes. Okay.
Yeah, yeah, I to think I have to hear thatsong to remember it.
(36:55):
So first, I did write down.
I gave a few quotes from newspaper
articles,but we've essentially already covered it.
He was claiming the claim.
It's, the complaints are coming for peoplethat didn't even live there.
And he was given permissionby the courts to,
like, get his own witnesses togetherbefore he went to court with these people.
He also, he and his wife told a reporterin the 1970s that the Nazi rumors grew
(37:16):
when they allowed war movies to be shoton the property, including people dressed
as German soldiers in German tanksbeing on the property, after the war.
And that fed into the rumors that,of course, over time it snowballs.
And it was like,oh yeah, they're Germans. They're
so here's some of the truththat I've been able to piece together.
They lived on the propertyuntil the 1970s.
(37:39):
I don't think German spieswould have necessarily done that.
Yeah, they they sold the house becauseit was a very costly house to have.
It was too much of a burdento take care of.
So they sold it anotheranother bit of information.
Curtis, the first kids fought in WorldWar two for the United States.
Oh, that's good.
That is good.
(37:59):
And alsobut I again, if they were German spies,
I mean, who knows,maybe their kids or something like this.
Some conspiracy theorist is going to claimtheir kids were spies too then.
But that's not the case.
They were very proud Americans first.
I'd also lived in Americafor like 30 years before the war.
It's not like he had just like came
came over ten yearsprior to World War two, starting.
And also the most important pieceof information I was trying to figure out
(38:22):
when the castle was built,because it was built after the restaurant
and some of the other little homeson the property. Right.
It was hard to figure out, butit turns out it was built after the war.
Oh, wow.
Okay, so yeah, really hard to have Hitlermeeting you there.
Yeah, when there's not even the placethat exist.
No tunnels have been foundor anything like that.
So none of the stories seem to line up
(38:45):
that this guy is a Nazi sympathizer.
And the story behindall of that seems to be just legends.
Legends of intrigue and interesting
Los Angeles local stories.
Now, not to tie this to deep backinto the entertainment industry,
but it is the first family at allrelated to, you know, grift first.
(39:08):
Don't you? Grift first?No, no. Who's that?
He's a producer. Filmmaker.
His dad was in animal House. Oh. Oh, no.
It was an actor for a very,very long time. A character actor.
Yeah, it might be.If they're related at. All.
I don't,because I didn't even look that up.
But that is, that is an interesting thing.
Maybe I'll do that when we finish.
And now I had a little postscript.
If so, or if you're doing it right now.
(39:30):
I am totally doing it right now.
Or, you. Know. Yeah.
No, I don't think he is because itlooks like his dad, who would have been,
August 1st son, was born in Virginia, so.
Oh. Never mind.
Yeah. Everybody.
Well, that's a tenuous connection.
Print the legend, Michael.
You know, if there's anythingto learn from this story.
(39:52):
And I'm about to ask some questionshere about that,
but it is that rumors start very easily.
And even if we're joking about himbeing related, someone could pick that up
and make a comment.That comment spins into a story.
That story turns into a newspaper articlethat no one fact checks anymore.
We do live in a post-truth society,so I feel like it's easier
(40:12):
for these things to spread.
Yes, so bad things happen.
But local legends,you don't always have to believe.
And it is more.
I always think that truthis more fascinating than fiction.
It really is.
And these stories, to meit is more fascinating
that something like the Murphy Ranchor the first castle you think
(40:32):
is associated with Nazis during the war,and then you find out they weren't.
And that, to me is very it's fascinating.
If they were associated with Nazis.
But to me it's more fascinating.
The stories that have happened.
That are actual stories
are actually so much more interesting,like Nazis is the boring part.
Yes. Yeah. Because.
Because when we get into sex crazedcult leader at Murphy Ranch,
(40:54):
like there is so much moreto tell to that.
Like,how did what was the kid suffering from?
How did he convince themthat he was healed?
Like, what actually healed?
Did he remain healedor did he actually just get sick again?
And yeah.
And then when it comes to the castle andstuff like it, just anti-German sentiment.
(41:14):
Yeah, totally. What I meant.
Yeah, yeah.
Just having thatbe like the core of it all.
Is it just it's just a family.
Just a family with the.
Restaurant family trying to live, tryingto run out, trying to run a business.
Also, the questions around like moneybecause I do think that went into like,
oh, he could be a spybecause where's he getting his money from?
Shadow Hills is still not that expensivewhen you compare it
(41:34):
to the rest of Los Angeles area.
So definitely at the timeit would have been less expensive.
And used to be able to build a houselike, he's.
Able to build his. Catalog.
And. Also legitimately.
That's not even a joke. Yeah, absolutely.
And I did look up property recordsand like permitting stuff
that you can look up with them, and itlooks like it didn't all happen at once.
This was a very timeconsuming piece of property.
(41:57):
So it's not like they just splurgedand spent a bunch of cash.
Like they're slowlykind of building things on that property
above the restaurantand adding to the restaurant.
All this kind of stuff.
So, it happened and then they sold itbecause they didn't really.
They were like, this is gettingreally expensive to live here.
Too much house is way too much cost.
The kids are gone.
And that was the thing is,they wanted a place
(42:18):
the kids could live, like all their kidscould grow up and live.
And they did it.
They didn't all live there.So it was like time to move on.
So there you have it, and I do want it.
Before we go
a we already mentioned ita little earlier,
but part again, part of wanting you onthis episode is my own personal theory
with how these legends startis because LA,
Orange County, Southern Californiadoes have a history with Nazis.
(42:41):
And that's whyI talked about the spy ring.
To start us off.
So yeah, tell me about it.
I just it doesn't have to be specifics.
I don't want you to get in troublewith anybody,
but like growing up in or in OrangeCounty,
did you ever come across skinheads or didyou come across people that had used
to be part of some kind of like, far rightpolitical ideology or things like this?
(43:02):
This is whereit gets a little disappointing.
So I moved to Southern California in 85,
and we moved immediately to Orange Countybecause my dad's job was in Fullerton
and in the
mid 80s and through the 90s,
OrangeCounty was definitely still pretty pale.
(43:22):
But, it was going througha progressive movement.
And so,
a lot of whatI would find out about later,
especially when it came to skinheadsand neo-Nazis and things
like that, actually went undergroundbecause at the time
there was the two tone movementthat was coming out of ska in England.
(43:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so they had adopted the skinhead.Yeah.
As a way to like eliminatethe idea of the neo-Nazi.
Yeah, yeah.
And and so in Scott, music in OrangeCounty was becoming a huge thing.
And we see that with the eventual riseof like in the 90s when we got real
(44:07):
big fish and, say Ferris and no doubt
who, like, just dominated the scene
out of out of that, what was comingout of the mid 80s and early 90s.
And so when I was
growing up, the idea of racismwas actually really weird.
And, and we didn't and weI didn't see a lot of it.
(44:28):
Yeah.
But then in college,
I started to hear about the undercurrentsof things that were going on.
And this was 95, 96, 97, and,
Anytime you start to see
financial hardship or there's
(44:49):
massive social change or anythinglike that, you and you start to see
people panic and, and look for thingsthat they feel like they can count on.
That'swe start to see those things come back.
And so it used to be a joke
that, you'd go to MainStreet, Huntington Beach
(45:10):
and, and,
you know, I'm very pale.
Even when I lived in Southern California,mayonnaise was darker than I was.
So I never really felt it.
But if I was even with friends
that were just ten,sometimes you would get some looks.
(45:33):
And, that only really elevated as we gotdeeper, like.
And I lived at Huntington Beachfor a really long time and, and didn't
notice much of anything until the 20 tenswhen it really started to kick.
And then,
not to get too specific about it,but around 2016 or 2016,
(45:54):
that's when,things really started to happen.
And that's when there were likeoutright movements on the pier.
And, and, people of Hispanic descent
started to be chased out of restaurantsand, getting yelled at by patrons.
And racism was not put in checkthe way that it was
(46:18):
when I was growing up as a kid.
So it's kind of interesting to see how,
sometimes
it feels like we were in a better spot.
And this could just be ignorance of youth
before.
And I'm hoping I'm hoping
that what we're seeing right now
(46:39):
is the extinction burst
of this ideology that,
race mattersor that that sexual orientation matters,
or that how you identify mattersand that we can all just get down to,
you know, respecting people as peopleand not worrying
(47:02):
about what they do in their spare timeunless it's horrible
and evil,in which case, really don't do that.
And and, yeah.
To have a way with you.
But yeah, it's it's a weird thing. I.
LA folks always used to look down on,
on Orange County as a region.
(47:23):
And, and when I was a kid,I didn't understand it.
As I got older, I started to see whythey would have those feelings.
And now
now especially especially with spots like,
like HB isthey really bring it on themselves.
So, you know, it's, it'sit was interesting.
(47:44):
I'm, I'm
grateful to be,
in Portland right now.
Yeah. Mr.. Portland ma'am. Yeah.
You're right.
You know, it's, Yeah,I really have more of a
I guess I'm looking at thisat more of a historical perspective,
just as it relates to meresearching this episode,
(48:07):
because when I, when I was looking at thatspy ring and I was reading that book,
it was scary to think abouthow many people
would have sided with Nazi Germany to me.
And it's really interestinghow that didn't happen with America.
And that's that's a whole other thingthat I'd have to read about and whatever
(48:28):
to find out that thing.
But especially in Los Angeles,which again, even at the time
was considered relatively progressivebecause you had all these,
you know, crazyentertainment people out there.
But there was a big contingent of,
very ultra, ultra conservative.
If you look at the spectrum,I hate the right left spectrum
(48:50):
because I think everything'smore cyclical than right and left.
And but they're they're far out there.
And the book,the spy ring book was so fascinating
because when Leon Lewis, the lawyerwho was like,
I'm going to have to do this myselfbecause the government isn't helping me,
when he would go to to the policeand the sheriff's office, he'd
have literally the authorities be like,yeah, I'm not worried about those Nazis.
(49:13):
We gotta worry about those commies, right?Yeah.
And like, weren't worried at all.
And it's like, meanwhile he's like,you guys need to look at what's
happening in Europeand see what's going on.
And that's they're trying to do thatright here, and they're trying
to influence people right in this city,and we have to do something about it.
What what's something is so horrible
(49:35):
and and I don't say that lightlyand I don't exaggerate.
When you see something so horrible,
you can't imagine thatit would ever affect you directly.
And you don't even just see thatwith social movements.
You see that when people thinkabout the ideas of like cancer
or other serious illness or,
sudden death or car accidentsor anything like,
(49:58):
you never imagine that it's somethingthat will be able to affect you,
because if you did, the overwhelming
existential dread of the worldwould be crushing, you know what I mean?
And and
you know, when you know
people, you never want to assumethat they could be
(50:19):
the frickin worst, right?
Yeah,we see that a lot with family members
who are maybe onthe other side of a spectrum.
You never want
to think that your family could be
somebody that you disagreewith so strongly,
or could think that bad things happeningwould be good.
(50:40):
I don't know how to be more general,
you know?
But I mean, honestly,I hate to try to bring it back to this,
but in terms of these
legends that happened around Los Angeles.
Yeah, you do have this, this hotbed ofof political ideology that is real.
That's in the city.
Then you have the fear of the warand things started to change.
(51:01):
And when you're talking about, you know,this danger that you don't necessarily
see for yourself, I do think that addsto local legends that come up.
100. Percent.
You find these ways to connect the thingsthat you've heard about or read about or,
oh, I'm reading about the warand my brother went to war.
And there's a place right there.
Nazis are there.
(51:23):
And it's like,I feel like it's all it's all connected.
It's like romanticizing itto be able to deal with it.
Yeah,yeah, yeah. And to deal with it in a way.
But yeah.
All right. Good stuff Curtis. Good stuff.
Thank you for bearing with me on ait's like a relatively frantic episode
and I say frantic becauseI had to jump around with various topics.
(51:45):
But it's it's been a fascinating subjectto learn about it.
This episode took at least 2 or 3 complete
180 turns when I like was like,oh, I'm going to talk about Nazis in LA.
And then I've read about the spy ringand I'm like,
well, shoot,I got to talk about the spy ring.
And then I found out the Murphy Ranchwasn't actually, for Nazis.
(52:05):
And it's like, well, I'll shoot.I didn't expect that.
I thought there was a tie with Nazis.
And so they kept making little turnsand and that's fun.
That's part of the fun of thiskind of thing is like learning
about this stuff and.
And I mean, again,I'm grateful to find out that,
first of all, not as many peoplewere Nazis as, as originally intended.
Yeah.
A little disappointed to find outthat the Klan had so much to protect.
(52:30):
And but but it gets saved
by the fact that there was an anti Nazi.
Yeah. Spy ring.
Yeah.
Like the constantly undermining like. Yes.
Vicious attack.
It made me think ofis it an Amazon series?
The hunters. The hunters.It made me think of the hunters.
(52:51):
But a more like grounded real worldexample of the hunters.
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
So we'll develop that. We'll develop.
We'll sell it to the Netflixor or one of the other streamers.
Absolutely.
I'm sure that it looks, the writer of thatbook probably sold the rights already,
but just again, by us talking about it,we've, we now own 20% at least.
(53:12):
All I'm saying isit doesn't have to be the book.
It's a historical thing that exists.
It's a historical thing that exists.
That's right. Yes.
Well thank you.
Curtis,where do you want people to find you?
What do you want people to know?
So, the best places to find me at
the moment are Instagram,even though meta is meta.
(53:33):
And also on YouTube at,
Curtis Anderson and RCN,
where some of the shorts that we've beenproducing were going to be found and, and,
it's justa nice place to be able to keep up.
And in case I have a largecontingent of listeners in Portland,
what about your story?
Oh, and of course,you can always visit me at board Bard.
(53:56):
Gabe's a beautiful downtownMont de villa in Portland, Oregon.
We're right on Stark Streetbetween Ranch Pizza and Tinker Tavern.
Nice, nice.
And now I want you to do, like,
a mattress commercial,but it's for your store.
Like when it's because
for some reason, mattress companies alwayshave the hokey s weirdest commercials.
(54:17):
That's honest to God.
You should go take a lookat the store's Instagram account.
Oh, we are known for our during peak times
we do completely unhinged post nice.
And for the holiday season we we
we did some particularly stronglike in the moment.
That's. Good for you.
We'll check it out.
(54:37):
Will definitely fall back on the training.
Totally paid off. So there you go.
Well, thank you so much, Curtis,for being on and I will talk to you soon.
Truly my pleasure. Thank you again.
Thankyou for listening to a study of strange.
Come find us on social media on Instagram,check out our website City
of strange.com. Through the support tab.
(54:58):
You can find more content and a way tosupport the show by joining our Substack.
And please,if you haven't done so already,
hit that follow or subscribe buttonand leave a rating a review.
It goes a long way to helping othersfind our show.
Thank you and good night.
Warning this episode contains detailsthat some listeners
may find disturbing.
February 1942.
Just a few monthsafter the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
the coast of Californiahad become fortified,
protecting the shores from enemies, subs,and aerial attacks.
(00:23):
On one particular night,most of the residents of Los Angeles
were home asleep when there was a suddenexplosion of anti-aircraft guns.
Something unidentified enteredthe airspace.
The night became alive with chaos,
but by morning there was no evidenceanything ever entered
Los Angeles airspace.
(00:44):
This event, now known as the Battle of LosAngeles, is not the subject
of today's episode,but it perfectly represent the fear
that the residents of the city hadthat the enemy could attack at any moment.
And as that fear took hold
in the reality of World war set in, locallegends and rumors began to circulate,
(01:05):
the Nazis were hidingin the city of angels.
This is a study of strange.
(01:28):
Welcome back to the show.
I am your host, Michael May.
And today I'm going to jump right intointroducing my guest, Curtis T Anderson.
I don't knowif t is your middle initial at all.
It is actually.
Are you serious? For real?
Yes. It's an old Scandinavian name.
It was my great great grandfather'sfirst name.
And it's not one that you've heardvery often.
(01:49):
It's spelled Trygve.
Trygve. Yeah. Whereas Trygve Andersen.
As I was saying your name,
it just felt like I neededto put in an extra initial in there.
I didn't plan on that.I didn't know trivia.
What was that?
Trygve. Trygve was your middle name. Well.
That's awesome.
Well, I guess some might call it strange.
(02:10):
Ooh, some might. Here we. Go. Yes, yes.
Well, you have been on the show before,and today
this episode's a little different,because here
I'm going to give a littlebehind the scenes to my listeners.
Curtis.
Normally, my guests know the topicor, like, I'll tell them what it is.
They may not be expertson the topic usually,
but they'll know what it isand generally have a basic idea.
(02:33):
I did not tell you anythingabout what we're talking about today.
I know nothing.
Do you want a guest?Do you want to just take a random guess?
Based on our history.
I am supposing
this may have something to do with a,
a odd phenomenon that may have happenedin the Orange County area.
(02:53):
Perhaps related to a theme parklike Knott's Berry Farm or Disneyland.
That is a.
That's a great guess.It is not the case, though, that.
Oh, although I'm going to have to do thatand you'll have to be on because of
because of your life around this.
So, Curtis, Curtis Anderson is an actor.
He's a producer.
He's been in the entertainment industrysince he was a kid.
(03:15):
He, you know, have a story is a comic.
Books that you're doing now is like games.Games?
That's right.
Books and board. Games in Portland.
Oregon and Portland, Oregon.
And the reason I wanted you on today,Curtis, is because you are
I don't know if you were born there,but you were raised in orange.
Orange County, in the L.A. area.
You've workedin the entertainment industry
since you were a kidin and around the Los Angeles area.
(03:38):
You know, people from and inand around the Los Angeles area.
You have a feel for the heartbeat of LosAngeles.
I'm going to say, I hope that's true, but.
It's all true. It's all true.
I think it's very true.
Yeah.
We're going to talk about some realand some folklore
stories and placesbased around Nazis in Los Angeles.
(04:00):
Oh yeah.
Okay. Yes, yes.
I lived in Huntington Beachfor a very long time,
and that is a very prominent placefor them right now.
It's a horrible thing to say,but it's true.
Oh, it is something that peopledon't realize about
Southern California, because people think
people outside of California think,oh, California hippie is super liberal,
(04:24):
and it's like, no,especially places like Orange County,
there's a long history of conservatism, ofalt right things.
I mean, even American History Xtakes place in Orange County, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, we also had the, orange juicewoman who,
got paid in the facebecause she was against.
Well, at the time,she was just against gay people.
(04:45):
And that happened in Fullerton,California, which is,
you know, dead set in the middle of O.C..
There you go.
So the topics I'm going to covertoday is a variety of topics.
And that includes a spy ring before WorldWar Two involving Nazis, Nazi
mansions and compounds,and even a place that legend
(05:05):
says that Hitlervisited himself in the Los Angeles area.
So stick aroundso you can learn about all these things.
And Curtis already looks shocked.
I truly fascinated because this is allstuff that I've never heard of before.
This is amazing.Yes. Yeah, and I'm covering a lot.
I said, is it, parts of OrangeCounty you can not see.
(05:28):
And that's our show.
Everybody okay?
No, I, I as I was researching this
and writing my notes,I kept getting the song walking in L.A.
stuck in my head.
But with Nazi in LA, Nazi in LA.
Yeah.
It's, it's terrible,but that's the dirtiness that I am.
That's all right.
So, Curtis, I in the intro,you didn't hear the intro,
(05:50):
but I introduced the show off by talkingabout the Battle of Los Angeles.
Yes. Okay.
That is its own episode.
I do want to do an episodeabout Battle of Los Angeles,
because nowadays there's theoriesthat there were like UFOs or spies.
There's all sortsof different conspiracies on it now,
but it really does set upthat there's a fear because we're entering
a world war, people are super on edge,and the
(06:12):
the feeling of everybodystarted to go against the Nazis.
And what most residents didn't realize is
Nazis were already in Los Angelesand this is not folklore.
This is very, very real.
Curtis even already mentioned OrangeCounty being a hotbed of some alt right,
far right thinkingand it had started back then.
(06:36):
So what I'm going to talk about first
is an anti Nazi spy ring
that started in the 1930sand this should be a show on Netflix.
I honestly don't know how it isn't alreadybecause it's crazy fascinating.
So what I'm hearing is we're goingto develop this show afterwards
to be able to sell.Just by just mentioning it.
(06:57):
We own it.
So now even if someone else makes it,we own it.
So I love it. We're I love it. Yeah.
The. Nazis were hiding in plainsight in the 1930s.
There was an American Boot,the political party organization
that was developed to promote Nazismin the United States
and spread propaganda, propagandaabout the Nazi Party.
(07:21):
And they wanted to sway the opinionof American
to basically startfeeling soft for Nazi Germany.
They wanted the Americans to be like,yeah, let's support them.
And they were predated by another groupcalled the Friends of New Germany,
which actually had money from Germany,went into the United States
to help sort of fund this groupand influence them in the United States.
(07:45):
This may be skipping ahead.
Does this have any relation to the,
the Nazi rallythat happened in New York City?
It does.I think that was the American Jews.
Yeah. Okay.
Because they were based in New York.
And you like, you've probably seenthe newsreels, you even just mentioned it.
But like, yeah,they had rallies, they had.
30,000 Nazisin the middle in New York City.
(08:07):
Exactly. And so that was the same group,
and they were largely in New Yorkand Los Angeles.
And the reason they were in Los Angelesis because Germany saw L.A.
as a focal pointto influence American politics.
Political thinking also influencethe media industry at large as well.
(08:29):
So there were Nazi offices, pro-German,anti-Semitic bookstores.
One of the big ones was in downtown LA,and it literally,
I forget the name of the store,
but it literally was like,Jews are terrible campfire.
But like, that's the name of the store.
And by the way, that's not me saying that.
That's mesaying there was a store with this.
And yeah, it was ait was pretty interesting because L.A.
(08:51):
generally was okay with this, andthey were like meeting spots in offices
that were public that people could go toand learn more about the silver shirts
and American boots and all these differentorganizations that were pro-Nazi.
Most of the police forcein Los Angeles and Orange County leaned
into the more Nazi ideology, and everybodywas pretty much against communism.
(09:13):
And so they saw Nazis as like,we're pro-Nazi
because we're against communismkind of thing.
Color me surprised.
This is my surprised face. Yes.
There you go. You'reyou're so sorry, Fred.
So it turns out that Los Angeles was hometo about one third of disabled veterans.
And, that had lost their benefitsduring the depression.
And so they were not happywith the Roosevelt administration.
(09:37):
The area also had 50 German Americanorganizations with 150,000 members.
There was also a lot of
Klu KluxKlan membership in SoCal, Orange County.
And I already mentioned, law enforcementmembers were generally
a part of that,or at least thought they were good.
Some of those that, workforcesare the same, that burn crosses.
(10:01):
The more things change,the more they stay the same.
Here you go. There you go. Good grief.
And then so this is all just set upthat along came a Jewish veteran,
also a lawyer named Leon Lewis,who decided to take on the Nazis himself.
Good for him. Good chant.
I will tell you that this is my source forthis is coming from a book called Hitler
(10:22):
in Los Angeles How Jews Foiled Nazi PlotsAgainst Hollywood in America,
by Stephen J. Russ.
And I'm not going to gointo the whole thing today
because I'm going to diveinto some other subjects.
But it is a great, great book.
I really enjoyed reading it and Stephen J.
Ross, I think he's a professor,but he found all this information
does not have a lot of it's public.
(10:43):
He found it through records at UC.
It was either UC
Davis or Fullerton or whatever that hadall these, all the original records.
And so he was able to research thisand put all the pieces together
and the people and the playersand find all this out.
So according to the book, LouisLeon Lewis knew from years of monitoring
the foreign press that Germany wantedto grow groups in the U.S.
(11:03):
to strike when appropriate, and the U.S.
government was more focused on communismthan fascism.
Lewis put together his own spy ring.
And again,this should totally be a TV show.
I not to go on that tangent,but I it would be so good.
And the spy ring was essentialto infiltrate Nazi groups in and around
(11:23):
Los Angeles,
and who he used were Germans,
German immigrants,and a lot of the people he used
were German immigrants that had foughtfor Germany in World War One.
And he did that specificallybecause they understood the the fears
and the dangers of fascism,but also they could infiltrate the group
(11:44):
because the group would be like,oh, you're one of us.
You fought in the war and you're a German.
And so it was easier for these peopleto get into these groups
undercover, not even undercover,because they're playing themselves.
You know, they'd go to these partiesand stuff with their family or whatever.
Yeah.
But here's what they uncovered.
And again, I'm skipping a lot becauseI don't want to give away the book.
And it's so there's so much to it.
(12:05):
But here are various thingsthey uncovered.
They found multiple plots to lynchfilm producers
like Louis B Mayer, SamuelGoldwyn, actors like Charlie Chaplin.
They there were
plots to use gunsjust to go into places like Boyle Heights,
which was a predominantly Jewishneighborhood, and just mall down
the neighborhood, just opened firewith machine guns and kill as many
(12:27):
Jews as they could. Jeez. Yeah.
They also were plans to use fake companies
to go to Jewish homesand then go inside and kill the family.
Leave.
Sort of like a plumber van would show upin the front yard, and so the neighbors
wouldn't suspect anything was wrong,and they'd go in and kill the families.
There were plots to disruptshipping in the Port of Los Angeles
and the Port of Long Beach,
(12:49):
and there were plots to blow upmunition plants in San Diego.
All of these were foiled by this spy ring.
That's all of.
Them. Isn't that amazing?
It's so, you know,and this also really points to the fact
that this was in the 30s, right?Yeah. Yeah.
So this isbefore we even got into the war.
This was before, things like theconcentration camps became publicly known.
(13:12):
Yeah.
Like they were really, really trying.
Like it was abundantly clear.
Let there be no mistake.
Eliminatingthe Jewish people was on the docket.
And from the. Beginning.
There was no Ippolit like, yeah, yeah,anybody who says different is wrong.
Clearly wrong.
Yes. And and that's part of fascism.
(13:32):
Fascism is a very nationalistic view.
It's a very racist view of politicswhere you typically want one party rule.
And the way that you keep that oneparty rule is everybody else's opposition.
Everybody else should be killed or in jailor put down.
And, and there was a lot of racismbehind it.
And, and there you go.
So you have this spy ring specifically.
(13:53):
You brought it up.
I forgot to mention, it startedin 1936 is when he first put it together
and it lasted all the waythrough the end of the war.
So 1945 that it kept going. Yeah.
And again, I'll put links to the book inthe show notes at is worth a buy.
It is worth a read if you like history,if you like crazy stories,
it crazy real stories.
The reason I wanted to start the episodementioning the spy ring Curtis
(14:16):
is I do think that even if it wasn'tvery public, that there was a spy ring,
that still those kind of feelingsare being ingratiated into the city.
Fears of Nazi, both pro-Naziand fears of Nazis
are all kind of combining,
and they're influencing everybody,the feeling of the town.
And it could have influencedsome of the folktales that have come up
(14:39):
with two very real places in Los Angelesthat are still, to this day
considered Nazi compoundsor Nazi locations.
Oh, wow.
And so I'm going to startwith one called the Murphy Ranch.
Have you heard?
I feel like you would have heardof the Murphy Ranch.
Now, this is where this is where my brain
(15:00):
clicks in andand I get confused about things because,
there are a lot of ranches.
There are. There are, yes.Both worked on. Yes.
Whether it be Warner Brothers or,or like the,
the, are.
You thinking of the one. Where Mansonfancied. One? That's that.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so I am not sure about Murphy Ranch.
(15:22):
Yeah.
Okay,so the Murphy ranch, the legend tells you,
I'm going to tell you whatthe legend says.
It is a compound that was built for Nazis,where the people that were
there could live off of the grid,take over the city, take over Hollywood.
And some tales saythat it was being built for.
Has a mansion for Hitler.
Oh, wow.
(15:42):
The ranch itself is.
It's just like, it's like a home.
They never finished fully building it,
but it's in a place called placecalled Rustic Canyon in the Palisades.
And you can hike to it.
And literally just a week or so ago,
my wife was listeningto the Conan O'Brien podcast,
and Tom Hanks brought up
(16:04):
the Murphy Ranch,and he was riding his bike near it.
And it's not that he's even talking aboutit being a Nazi compound.
And it was built for Nazis backduring the war.
Are there Nazis there rightnow? No, no, no.
Sorry. Let me. Okay.
No. It's built during the war.
Nazi compound back then.
Well, thank you for making me clarify.
That was,
(16:26):
but even, likeTom Hanks is talking about it
as, like,oh, it's this place where Nazis lived.
But none of that might be true.
So here,I'll, I'll. I'll read you a little.
Yeah. I was going to say,where did this come up?
How do people, how do people get the ideathat Nazis were in this spot?
I will tell you,and this was fascinating to do.
(16:47):
I'll give a little anecdote first.
I first heard about thiswhen I moved to LA, and I've seen programs
like on TV, like KTLA will have like,you know, a series that they go out
and they go to like Los.
I think it was actually lost LA,which is a great PBS series.
And they went
there and talkedabout its relationship to Nazi history.
(17:07):
I've seen other like, documentariesthat mention it or go there.
There's a million YouTube videosyou can pull up and people like,
because I don't think you can actually,you're not
I don't think you're actually supposedto go where there's like a home and stuff.
I think you're supposed to stay offthat and just be on hiking trails nearby
where people, of coursego in there. Everything's fine.
People go in there,
they film, there's ghost hunting videosbecause, oh, Nazis were here.
(17:28):
A lot of people believethat it is a good a ghost thing.
A lot of people believethat it is associated with Nazis.
So here's here's this tale
not far from Santa Monica.
Hidden in the hills of Rustic Canyonare the remnants of a bizarre property
known as Murphy Ranch,built in the late 1930s,
the ranch was fundedby a mysterious couple, Winona and Norman
(17:50):
Stephens, who believed in the comingof a fascist revolution.
But they weren't acting alone.
The Stephens were allegedly connectedto a German man named Hare Schmidt,
who convinced them to build the ranchas a self-sustaining Nazi compound.
Plansincluded a powerhouse, water tank storage,
even a bomb shelter, and their visionwas to ride out the collapse
(18:11):
of American democracy and help establishNazis, a Nazi stronghold in the U.S.
Rumors exists that neighbors in the 1930switnessed uniformed men dressed
similar to the Silver Shirts and Americanfascist group patrolling the property.
But in 1941, their dream fell apart.
The attack on Pearl
Harbor turned public opinionsharply against fascist sympathizers.
(18:34):
The story goes that
the FBI raided the ranchand it was abandoned shortly after.
Today, graffiti covered ruins and whispersof secret meetings are all that remain.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube videosexist where people visiting the Nazi
compound hundreds of articlesover the last 80 years say the same thing.
But here's the twist here's Schmidt.
(18:56):
He may not have existed at all.It was such.
It was such a stereotypical name.
The second you said it, I was like,is this the Red skull?
Yeah.
Are you seriously pulling a comic bookvillain in your eyes?
Yeah.
A historical record suggests that he mighthave been a scam artist or a cult leader
exploiting this Stevens for his own gain.
(19:17):
All right, so I do want to ask a call outto my listeners
if anybody knows that the Murphy Murphyranch got burned in the fires,
I would love to know,because it's in the Palisades.
It might be completely gone.
Now, I'll be honest with you.
I'm looking it up right nowas we talk about it.
There are current photosthat show that it it's still standing.
(19:38):
Okay.
Does say that it is, currently temporarilyclosed.
Okay. Got it, got it.
I don't know if that means at some pointit ever becomes open.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I think they closed it to the publica while ago, but still,
Yeah, it's right in the Palisades.
Where the where the bigone of the big fires just went through.
(19:59):
So it may not it may not be there anymore,but it is cement.
Maybe some of it still there. Right.
Find out. We'll find out.
All right.
So the tale startedbecause of an affidavit
from a gentleman named DoctorJohn Vincent in the 70s.
He was a professor at UCLA andthe director of the Huntington Hartford
Foundation, which was an artist retreatthat occupied the property after the war.
(20:22):
They bought the property in the 50s,I think 1950 exactly is
when they bought the property.
He tells of a story visiting the propertyin 1948, he met Winona and Norman
Stephens, and they were talking to himabout selling to the Hartford Foundation.
And allegedly,Winona was a Chicago heiress
with a deep interest in the esoteric
(20:45):
air all out of New Age sort of stuff.
Sure.
And he had learned from them that they hadmet a man named Hare Schmidt,
who was from
Germany, and he was telling the Stevensthat Germany's going to win.
There's going to be a world war.Germany is going to win.
And he convinced themto build a self-sufficient place to live
that could be part of thisNational Socialist ideals.
(21:08):
You can live there and be off the gridand be Nazis.
And the reason they believed himis because they had a son
who apparently was sick and normal doctorsweren't really doing a lot in here.
Schmidt somehow healed himthrough the power of whatever it may be.
And so they believe it, believed him,and believed everything
(21:28):
he said because he helps their son.
And so they started buildingthis property.
The property never, hit its full potentialor planned construction.
There are a lot of drawingsthat date from 1934 to 1941.
In their house today
in the Lloyd Wright Collection at UCLA'sYoung Research Library.
And not that Lloyd Wright
(21:48):
designed the place,but they're just that's the library.
That's just a place of the librarywhere lots of architectural things.
Exactly.
And they designed a home they designed,like I already said it earlier,
but they designed like little other placesto grow food.
And there was a power buildingand an outhouse.
And they neverthey never finished all of it.
They just kind of finishedone of the main buildings.
Yeah.
Seeing the picturesthat are available online,
(22:08):
there's a lot of like half built things.
Yes. Even in the ruins ofjust half built things. Yes.
And they apparentlythey would even like change designs.
They spent a lot of money on this.They would like design it.
And then again, what if we do this
and they'd have like a new architectcome in and like design a new thing.
So from census records,
(22:28):
it's, it does seem like Normanand Winona are real.
Like they're not part of this folk legend.They are.
They are real people.
And Winona did come from a wealthy family,but they met in Pasadena
and not Chicago. And.
Yeah. Sorry. You they're in Chicago.
Same same thing,same different, same difference.
And so it turns out what is possibly true
(22:51):
and most likely trueis they met a healer named Conrad J.
Anderson. Ooh.
What are your relatives.
Dropping a hat to spell it right.
That's the big question.
Yeah, it's a and c o n. Oh, yeah.
No, those guys are frauds. Yeah.
And he was Norwegian.Not German, by the way.
So he was an American,which might have led to
(23:11):
some of the rumors,
because Americans, we just hear an accentlike, oh, you must be German or whatever.
Clearly. Yeah, yeah.
And the family, like I said, withthe Schmidt thing, the family believed him
because he healed their child,healed with quilts, healed their child,
and so quickly you can find outhe was not named Schmidt.
He was named Anderson.
And he he would tell peoplethat he could heal people
(23:34):
from the magic of his fingertips.
And he had this weird electric chargethat he could,
you know, influence people or whatever.
And he convinced them to build this place,to be off the grid.
I don't know if he said Nazi ism is good.
It sounds like he was just like,you should build a compound.
He was like,I need a compound and you have money.
And that's what I believe happened.
(23:54):
I think you're dead, right, Curtis?
Because apparently,according to, the children of the Stevens,
he was a womanizer.
And whenever they would see him, he'dbe on the compound with multiple women.
And, I mean, it justit just keeps the cults in Los Angeles.
They just. They they just start covenant.
(24:14):
They don't stop coming.
You can't.
You can't stop it.
It's it'spart of the lifeblood of the town.
And yeah, there's very much like thisManson feeling with him.
He's very influentialin the way he treats people.
He has a lot of women coming and goingand staying with him,
and he would live on the propertywhile it was being built.
And he
he had a lot of influencewith the Andersons over
how they were spending their moneyin the property.
(24:35):
And the Stevens.
The Stevens, excuse me? The Stevens who?
The people. The people who live there.
So I'm trying to find in my notes.
At one point, one of they're one ofthe Stevens kids mentioned that Anderson
at one point wanted to poison the Stevensafter he had
gotten them to sign a will and leaveall their money and property to him.
(24:56):
That never happened,but that apparently was his plan.
So tracks that tracks with the cultleader for.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so he was not not a good dude.
And at some point during the war,it sounds like
they did separate themselves from him.
Now, why Hare Schmidt?
I don't fully know.
I don't knowif anybody will fully know how.
(25:18):
That was probably.
Less embarrassingto say that we got duped by Nazis
than it was to say we got duped.
But maybe this is wherethey might have started the rumor.
Like, oh, it was a German guythat got us into this mess.
Yeah.
Now there is an article, CurbDelay did a bunch of research
into this story,and they had an article that mentions
there was a hair Schmidtin Los Angeles around the time of the war.
(25:39):
And in 1940, he was arrestedand so it was a different guy.
He wasn't on that property.
He actually may have been in OrangeCounty, I believe, and the like.
U.S. Naval Intelligenceraided his home and arrested him.
We don't know much more, but that
because that was in the LA times paper,that name could have just gotten
sort of trapped into this cycleof like rumors and stories.
(26:02):
So that could be one of the reasons.
So that article about Schmidtand then the affidavit from this Vincent
guy in the 70s telling the story of Nazisat the compound.
This is the beginning of the spiraling ofthe local legends that Nazis were there.
And it didn't help.
There's a writer named Betty Lou Young
who wrote a book,who used the affidavit as her source.
(26:24):
So she was like, oh, it's this place.And Nazis lived there, and it was guarded.
It was being built for Hitlerthat start spreading the rumors.
There's a historian named Randy young whothen also started telling the stories of,
oh, there were Nazis in LA.
This is like throughout the 80s and this.
Game of telephone just getting worse.
And I think the reasonI'm even covering this on this crazy
episode I'm doing on my podcastis that's what I love finding out
(26:48):
where the game of telephone startsand where do these stories come from.
And Randy young, I mentioned the historianwho spread the story forever.
I think I've even seen
interviews on on PBS here locally with himtalking about it over the years.
He now has done enough researchand come across enough,
historical truththat he's now like, oh, we were wrong.
(27:09):
There were that weren'tNazis there. Sorry.
Not not actually what happened?
So, but the myth is still going,including Tom Hanks claiming, you know,
oh, I drive by this place, and apparentlyNazis lived there and built it and stuff.
That's wild.
Yeah. That's while.
All because some dude just wantedto bang people in the hills.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly.
(27:29):
Exactly.
So that takes me to my next
location, the next area of local folklore.
This one I would not be surprisedif you've never heard of because it's it's
less well known,but kind of similar to the Murphy Ranch.
First of all, do you know, and you may noteven know you're from the LA area.
Do you know where Shadow Hills is?
(27:51):
Oh, yeah. Totally. No, I have no idea.
Okay.
Yeah,yeah, shadow Hills is a little community.
Sort of near.
It's kind of like West ish of La Canada.
It's if you go from, Sun Valley,which is north of Burbank,
like through the mountains there.
That's that's where Shadow Hills is.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
I do actually know that area.
(28:12):
I did not know it was called Shadow Hills.
I did not eitheruntil researching this, by the way.
Even though I have a direct connectionto this place, I didn't even know.
So the next segment,what I'm leading towards is
a place called the First Castle Forest.
First castle in Shadow Hills,
just in the northern partof the Los Angeles area. And
(28:35):
I have a
personal connection to this placebecause I had never heard of it,
but I was working on a project actuallyprojects with the production company
that was based in Sun Valley,which is just north of Burbank.
And every nowand then we would take one of the roads
out behind the officeinto this canyon road.
You don't feel like you're in L.A anymore.
It very quickly becomes very rural.
(28:56):
There's homes that have horses in the yardand like, they,
you know,they have little ranches and stuff.
And so, yeah,you don't feel like you're in L.A anymore.
But right up that road there is a littleItalian restaurant and it's.
And it's inside this German styledlooking building.
It has, like, a windmill out front.
There obviouslyused to be like a pool or something
and or like a riverbedkind of built into it.
(29:19):
It's very like,you know, you want to put on your.
What are those?
What are those shoes like,the heavy wooden shoe, things like.
The clogs, the clogs.
It makes you want to do that.
Maybe yodel and,you know, the hills or whatever.
It's, it has that very stereotypicalGerman feel.
And it's in that restaurantwhere we go to lunch
sometimes that I first heardthat that property boasts
(29:41):
a mansion up above it,known as the First Castle, and the and
the restaurant itself were part of a Nazi
sympathizer ring during the war.
Is iswas that old restaurant called old Vienna?
Yes. Yeah, it was oldVienna was the original name.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
What I when I first learnedabout this place, this castle, is that
(30:05):
not only was it home to Nazi sympathizers,but it had secret tunnels
and a German cemetery
where German spies were being buriedwhen they passed away.
And according to legend, Hitlersecretly came into the country
during the war to have meetingswith his American cohorts.
(30:26):
At the first castlein Chateau Hills in Los Angeles.
Okay, where did these tunnels go?
Because that that good questionleads to, yeah.
No one knows.
But they do suspect thatit, like, connected.
So the restaurant is downat the base of a mountain.
The castle is up above on the mountain.
So the tunnels were,I think, secretly, just a way to get to
(30:47):
and from withouthaving to drive up the complicated road.
Probably led tosome other little secret hideouts.
Some of the legends claim that there waslike a radio on top of the castle
that would communicateto German subs out in the, the Pacific.
So yeah, it's, it's pretty, pretty crazy.
And so here's the story, Curtis.
(31:08):
The story goes
that a German immigrant and former Germanmilitary officer named August 1st
moved to the area around 1936,and he quickly opened the old Vienna
Gardens restaurantin a German style building.
And by 1939, there were complaintswhich you can find records of.
I have read many newspaper articlesfrom the time about it,
(31:29):
where there were complaintsthat the restaurant would get very rowdy
and noisy at night,and the neighbors were complain about it.
Now, at the time, people claimedthat first was a Nazi sympathizer
and the propertywas being used to hold Nazi meetings.
First himself was a spy.
And then came the rumors that they hadbuilt tunnels and caves into the mountain
(31:50):
behind the restaurant,and they would communicate with Nazi subs.
Uniformed men would roam the propertyfor protection,
and everything was guardedby gates and dogs.
And soon during during the war,according to legend,
first built this Moorish styled castleon the mountain above and built
(32:11):
also a cemetery to house the fallenGerman spies during the war.
Now keep it.
Nothing says secrecy like here'smy German spy cemetery.
I would like to see the spiesthat work. Now we're burying.
Also, you do have
to, I wouldsay, feeding into the rumors of the time.
(32:32):
You do have to keep in mind,we're coming out of a depression.
And yet this guy who owns a smalllittle restaurant in Chateau Hills,
which is not very populated, is buildingthis giant house on a mountain.
So where's that money coming from?
I think that'sleading into the speculation. Oh, sure.
Going on here? Sure.
And after the war, the first continuedto live there until the 1970s.
(32:55):
And there's a lot of local history,a lot of local records to look into.
The restaurant changed handsmultiple times today.
It's an at least the last time I went,it was an Italian restaurant,
and the property is still there.
I will add.
I have been to the castle,not just a restaurant.
I went there on a on a film, locationscout for a movie and got to explore it.
(33:15):
You can rent it out.
I think skateboarders go up therebecause the pool is empty.
So used pool to skateboard.
It's a fascinating property.
I did not find any secret tunnels,secret rooms or hideaways.
There is, like,this weird room on the roof
that I think was a sauna at one point.Sure.
It's a fascinating.
You mean the radio roomfor the subs? Mike?
There you go. Sorry.Let me. Yes, yes yes yes, yes.
(33:37):
All right, so.
You got to pay extra for the tunnel tour.
You did? I guess you do.
I guess you're not part of renting it outfor real.
Yeah.
So, like the Murphy Ranch,
this has the feeling of local talltales, right?
And I love that.
And so through a lot of research,I think I have pieced together
what may have happenedand where these stories come from.
(33:59):
And I look, I'mnot pulling one over on the audience.
There were no Nazis there.
That is that is my belief.
You know, it's almost relieving actually,so far that does that
that these two major spotswhere Nazis were supposed to be ended up
not actually having Nazis, that'sactually that's actually nice.
And it is it is a nice thing. I will say,
(34:23):
oh, I evenI think I wrote a sentence about this.
It might be a nice little cliffhangerhere,
even though I'm not cuttingto a commercial break.
So while that might seem nice, Curtis,
the truth does point to somethingfar darker.
Oh crap. And one that Michael.
Human nature in the neighbors at the time.
Maybe not.
Maybe that's taken it a little too far,but okay, so Shadow
(34:46):
Hills, it turns out like Orange County.
A lot of Klan.
Know.
There were Klan meetings, in
some of these centers built around there.
And actually, there's a giant crossthat at least last time I was
there is still there.Or at least it's been rebuilt.
The history of that cross,
(35:08):
may have led to the rumorsthat there was a cemetery on the property.
It's actually not on the propertyof the mansion.
It's like next door nearby.
And it looks likeit could be the same property.
And I think it's right next to a church.
That giant cross was put thereby the Klan in the, I think, in the 1940s,
because they were holding meetings,and it was a way for them
to give back to the community,build this big giant cross.
(35:28):
Aren't we good Klan members?
And and the fact that your cross was there
at least until the last time I was inthe area is pretty, is pretty terrible.
It also turns out that the speculationthat first was a Nazi sympathizer
was basically because the sympathieshad turned against Germany
very quickly when the war started.
(35:49):
So the complaints about the restaurantessentially stemmed from that.
There were people complaining.
You can find newspaper articles about it,
where first himself is talkingto, like the LA times and L.A.
weekly and all the other local newspapers
saying a lot of the claimantsaren't even neighbors.
They don't even live there.
And it's essentiallyjust because they were like,
oh, it's a Germanthat owns a German restaurant.
(36:11):
We need that shut down.
So they claim that it was super loudand they're getting rowdy at night.
All this kind of crazy stuff.
So that's what I mean by darkerside, is that neighbors are turning
against a neighborjust because he's German.
Yeah, it always comes down to racism.
And we like to turn itagainst where humans, we don't like
(36:31):
people that are different than us.
And yeah, yeah, that is that's what has.
Good grief. Yeah.
As, as Frankie,who went to Hollywood once said,
when two tribes go to war,one is all that you could score.
Ooh. Oh, yeah.
What did he say that in.
The song Two Tribes.
Two tribes. Okay.
Yeah, yeah, I to think I have to hear thatsong to remember it.
(36:55):
So first, I did write down.
I gave a few quotes from newspaper
articles,but we've essentially already covered it.
He was claiming the claim.
It's, the complaints are coming for peoplethat didn't even live there.
And he was given permissionby the courts to,
like, get his own witnesses togetherbefore he went to court with these people.
He also, he and his wife told a reporterin the 1970s that the Nazi rumors grew
(37:16):
when they allowed war movies to be shoton the property, including people dressed
as German soldiers in German tanksbeing on the property, after the war.
And that fed into the rumors that,of course, over time it snowballs.
And it was like,oh yeah, they're Germans. They're
so here's some of the truththat I've been able to piece together.
They lived on the propertyuntil the 1970s.
(37:39):
I don't think German spieswould have necessarily done that.
Yeah, they they sold the house becauseit was a very costly house to have.
It was too much of a burdento take care of.
So they sold it anotheranother bit of information.
Curtis, the first kids fought in WorldWar two for the United States.
Oh, that's good.
That is good.
(37:59):
And alsobut I again, if they were German spies,
I mean, who knows,maybe their kids or something like this.
Some conspiracy theorist is going to claimtheir kids were spies too then.
But that's not the case.
They were very proud Americans first.
I'd also lived in Americafor like 30 years before the war.
It's not like he had just like came
came over ten yearsprior to World War two, starting.
And also the most important pieceof information I was trying to figure out
(38:22):
when the castle was built,because it was built after the restaurant
and some of the other little homeson the property. Right.
It was hard to figure out, butit turns out it was built after the war.
Oh, wow.
Okay, so yeah, really hard to have Hitlermeeting you there.
Yeah, when there's not even the placethat exist.
No tunnels have been foundor anything like that.
So none of the stories seem to line up
(38:45):
that this guy is a Nazi sympathizer.
And the story behindall of that seems to be just legends.
Legends of intrigue and interesting
Los Angeles local stories.
Now, not to tie this to deep backinto the entertainment industry,
but it is the first family at allrelated to, you know, grift first.
(39:08):
Don't you? Grift first?No, no. Who's that?
He's a producer. Filmmaker.
His dad was in animal House. Oh. Oh, no.
It was an actor for a very,very long time. A character actor.
Yeah, it might be.If they're related at. All.
I don't,because I didn't even look that up.
But that is, that is an interesting thing.
Maybe I'll do that when we finish.
And now I had a little postscript.
If so, or if you're doing it right now.
(39:30):
I am totally doing it right now.
Or, you. Know. Yeah.
No, I don't think he is because itlooks like his dad, who would have been,
August 1st son, was born in Virginia, so.
Oh. Never mind.
Yeah. Everybody.
Well, that's a tenuous connection.
Print the legend, Michael.
You know, if there's anythingto learn from this story.
(39:52):
And I'm about to ask some questionshere about that,
but it is that rumors start very easily.
And even if we're joking about himbeing related, someone could pick that up
and make a comment.That comment spins into a story.
That story turns into a newspaper articlethat no one fact checks anymore.
We do live in a post-truth society,so I feel like it's easier
(40:12):
for these things to spread.
Yes, so bad things happen.
But local legends,you don't always have to believe.
And it is more.
I always think that truthis more fascinating than fiction.
It really is.
And these stories, to meit is more fascinating
that something like the Murphy Ranchor the first castle you think
(40:32):
is associated with Nazis during the war,and then you find out they weren't.
And that, to me is very it's fascinating.
If they were associated with Nazis.
But to me it's more fascinating.
The stories that have happened.
That are actual stories
are actually so much more interesting,like Nazis is the boring part.
Yes. Yeah. Because.
Because when we get into sex crazedcult leader at Murphy Ranch,
(40:54):
like there is so much moreto tell to that.
Like,how did what was the kid suffering from?
How did he convince themthat he was healed?
Like, what actually healed?
Did he remain healedor did he actually just get sick again?
And yeah.
And then when it comes to the castle andstuff like it, just anti-German sentiment.
(41:14):
Yeah, totally. What I meant.
Yeah, yeah.
Just having thatbe like the core of it all.
Is it just it's just a family.
Just a family with the.
Restaurant family trying to live, tryingto run out, trying to run a business.
Also, the questions around like moneybecause I do think that went into like,
oh, he could be a spybecause where's he getting his money from?
Shadow Hills is still not that expensivewhen you compare it
(41:34):
to the rest of Los Angeles area.
So definitely at the timeit would have been less expensive.
And used to be able to build a houselike, he's.
Able to build his. Catalog.
And. Also legitimately.
That's not even a joke. Yeah, absolutely.
And I did look up property recordsand like permitting stuff
that you can look up with them, and itlooks like it didn't all happen at once.
This was a very timeconsuming piece of property.
(41:57):
So it's not like they just splurgedand spent a bunch of cash.
Like they're slowlykind of building things on that property
above the restaurantand adding to the restaurant.
All this kind of stuff.
So, it happened and then they sold itbecause they didn't really.
They were like, this is gettingreally expensive to live here.
Too much house is way too much cost.
The kids are gone.
And that was the thing is,they wanted a place
(42:18):
the kids could live, like all their kidscould grow up and live.
And they did it.
They didn't all live there.So it was like time to move on.
So there you have it, and I do want it.
Before we go
a we already mentioned ita little earlier,
but part again, part of wanting you onthis episode is my own personal theory
with how these legends startis because LA,
Orange County, Southern Californiadoes have a history with Nazis.
(42:41):
And that's whyI talked about the spy ring.
To start us off.
So yeah, tell me about it.
I just it doesn't have to be specifics.
I don't want you to get in troublewith anybody,
but like growing up in or in OrangeCounty,
did you ever come across skinheads or didyou come across people that had used
to be part of some kind of like, far rightpolitical ideology or things like this?
(43:02):
This is whereit gets a little disappointing.
So I moved to Southern California in 85,
and we moved immediately to Orange Countybecause my dad's job was in Fullerton
and in the
mid 80s and through the 90s,
OrangeCounty was definitely still pretty pale.
(43:22):
But, it was going througha progressive movement.
And so,
a lot of whatI would find out about later,
especially when it came to skinheadsand neo-Nazis and things
like that, actually went undergroundbecause at the time
there was the two tone movementthat was coming out of ska in England.
(43:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so they had adopted the skinhead.Yeah.
As a way to like eliminatethe idea of the neo-Nazi.
Yeah, yeah.
And and so in Scott, music in OrangeCounty was becoming a huge thing.
And we see that with the eventual riseof like in the 90s when we got real
(44:07):
big fish and, say Ferris and no doubt
who, like, just dominated the scene
out of out of that, what was comingout of the mid 80s and early 90s.
And so when I was
growing up, the idea of racismwas actually really weird.
And, and we didn't and weI didn't see a lot of it.
(44:28):
Yeah.
But then in college,
I started to hear about the undercurrentsof things that were going on.
And this was 95, 96, 97, and,
Anytime you start to see
financial hardship or there's
(44:49):
massive social change or anythinglike that, you and you start to see
people panic and, and look for thingsthat they feel like they can count on.
That'swe start to see those things come back.
And so it used to be a joke
that, you'd go to MainStreet, Huntington Beach
(45:10):
and, and,
you know, I'm very pale.
Even when I lived in Southern California,mayonnaise was darker than I was.
So I never really felt it.
But if I was even with friends
that were just ten,sometimes you would get some looks.
(45:33):
And, that only really elevated as we gotdeeper, like.
And I lived at Huntington Beachfor a really long time and, and didn't
notice much of anything until the 20 tenswhen it really started to kick.
And then,
not to get too specific about it,but around 2016 or 2016,
(45:54):
that's when,things really started to happen.
And that's when there were likeoutright movements on the pier.
And, and, people of Hispanic descent
started to be chased out of restaurantsand, getting yelled at by patrons.
And racism was not put in checkthe way that it was
(46:18):
when I was growing up as a kid.
So it's kind of interesting to see how,
sometimes
it feels like we were in a better spot.
And this could just be ignorance of youth
before.
And I'm hoping I'm hoping
that what we're seeing right now
(46:39):
is the extinction burst
of this ideology that,
race mattersor that that sexual orientation matters,
or that how you identify mattersand that we can all just get down to,
you know, respecting people as peopleand not worrying
(47:02):
about what they do in their spare timeunless it's horrible
and evil,in which case, really don't do that.
And and, yeah.
To have a way with you.
But yeah, it's it's a weird thing. I.
LA folks always used to look down on,
on Orange County as a region.
(47:23):
And, and when I was a kid,I didn't understand it.
As I got older, I started to see whythey would have those feelings.
And now
now especially especially with spots like,
like HB isthey really bring it on themselves.
So, you know, it's, it'sit was interesting.
(47:44):
I'm, I'm
grateful to be,
in Portland right now.
Yeah. Mr.. Portland ma'am. Yeah.
You're right.
You know, it's, Yeah,I really have more of a
I guess I'm looking at thisat more of a historical perspective,
just as it relates to meresearching this episode,
(48:07):
because when I, when I was looking at thatspy ring and I was reading that book,
it was scary to think abouthow many people
would have sided with Nazi Germany to me.
And it's really interestinghow that didn't happen with America.
And that's that's a whole other thingthat I'd have to read about and whatever
(48:28):
to find out that thing.
But especially in Los Angeles,which again, even at the time
was considered relatively progressivebecause you had all these,
you know, crazyentertainment people out there.
But there was a big contingent of,
very ultra, ultra conservative.
If you look at the spectrum,I hate the right left spectrum
(48:50):
because I think everything'smore cyclical than right and left.
And but they're they're far out there.
And the book,the spy ring book was so fascinating
because when Leon Lewis, the lawyerwho was like,
I'm going to have to do this myselfbecause the government isn't helping me,
when he would go to to the policeand the sheriff's office, he'd
have literally the authorities be like,yeah, I'm not worried about those Nazis.
(49:13):
We gotta worry about those commies, right?Yeah.
And like, weren't worried at all.
And it's like, meanwhile he's like,you guys need to look at what's
happening in Europeand see what's going on.
And that's they're trying to do thatright here, and they're trying
to influence people right in this city,and we have to do something about it.
What what's something is so horrible
(49:35):
and and I don't say that lightlyand I don't exaggerate.
When you see something so horrible,
you can't imagine thatit would ever affect you directly.
And you don't even just see thatwith social movements.
You see that when people thinkabout the ideas of like cancer
or other serious illness or,
sudden death or car accidentsor anything like,
(49:58):
you never imagine that it's somethingthat will be able to affect you,
because if you did, the overwhelming
existential dread of the worldwould be crushing, you know what I mean?
And and
you know, when you know
people, you never want to assumethat they could be
(50:19):
the frickin worst, right?
Yeah,we see that a lot with family members
who are maybe onthe other side of a spectrum.
You never want
to think that your family could be
somebody that you disagreewith so strongly,
or could think that bad things happeningwould be good.
(50:40):
I don't know how to be more general,
you know?
But I mean, honestly,I hate to try to bring it back to this,
but in terms of these
legends that happened around Los Angeles.
Yeah, you do have this, this hotbed ofof political ideology that is real.
That's in the city.
Then you have the fear of the warand things started to change.
(51:01):
And when you're talking about, you know,this danger that you don't necessarily
see for yourself, I do think that addsto local legends that come up.
100. Percent.
You find these ways to connect the thingsthat you've heard about or read about or,
oh, I'm reading about the warand my brother went to war.
And there's a place right there.
Nazis are there.
(51:23):
And it's like,I feel like it's all it's all connected.
It's like romanticizing itto be able to deal with it.
Yeah,yeah, yeah. And to deal with it in a way.
But yeah.
All right. Good stuff Curtis. Good stuff.
Thank you for bearing with me on ait's like a relatively frantic episode
and I say frantic becauseI had to jump around with various topics.
(51:45):
But it's it's been a fascinating subjectto learn about it.
This episode took at least 2 or 3 complete
180 turns when I like was like,oh, I'm going to talk about Nazis in LA.
And then I've read about the spy ringand I'm like,
well, shoot,I got to talk about the spy ring.
And then I found out the Murphy Ranchwasn't actually, for Nazis.
(52:05):
And it's like, well, I'll shoot.I didn't expect that.
I thought there was a tie with Nazis.
And so they kept making little turnsand and that's fun.
That's part of the fun of thiskind of thing is like learning
about this stuff and.
And I mean, again,I'm grateful to find out that,
first of all, not as many peoplewere Nazis as, as originally intended.
Yeah.
A little disappointed to find outthat the Klan had so much to protect.
(52:30):
And but but it gets saved
by the fact that there was an anti Nazi.
Yeah. Spy ring.
Yeah.
Like the constantly undermining like. Yes.
Vicious attack.
It made me think ofis it an Amazon series?
The hunters. The hunters.It made me think of the hunters.
(52:51):
But a more like grounded real worldexample of the hunters.
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
So we'll develop that. We'll develop.
We'll sell it to the Netflixor or one of the other streamers.
Absolutely.
I'm sure that it looks, the writer of thatbook probably sold the rights already,
but just again, by us talking about it,we've, we now own 20% at least.
(53:12):
All I'm saying isit doesn't have to be the book.
It's a historical thing that exists.
It's a historical thing that exists.
That's right. Yes.
Well thank you.
Curtis,where do you want people to find you?
What do you want people to know?
So, the best places to find me at
the moment are Instagram,even though meta is meta.
(53:33):
And also on YouTube at,
Curtis Anderson and RCN,
where some of the shorts that we've beenproducing were going to be found and, and,
it's justa nice place to be able to keep up.
And in case I have a largecontingent of listeners in Portland,
what about your story?
Oh, and of course,you can always visit me at board Bard.
(53:56):
Gabe's a beautiful downtownMont de villa in Portland, Oregon.
We're right on Stark Streetbetween Ranch Pizza and Tinker Tavern.
Nice, nice.
And now I want you to do, like,
a mattress commercial,but it's for your store.
Like when it's because
for some reason, mattress companies alwayshave the hokey s weirdest commercials.
(54:17):
That's honest to God.
You should go take a lookat the store's Instagram account.
Oh, we are known for our during peak times
we do completely unhinged post nice.
And for the holiday season we we
we did some particularly stronglike in the moment.
That's. Good for you.
We'll check it out.
(54:37):
Will definitely fall back on the training.
Totally paid off. So there you go.
Well, thank you so much, Curtis,for being on and I will talk to you soon.
Truly my pleasure. Thank you again.
Thankyou for listening to a study of strange.
Come find us on social media on Instagram,check out our website City
of strange.com. Through the support tab.
(54:58):
You can find more content and a way tosupport the show by joining our Substack.
And please,if you haven't done so already,
hit that follow or subscribe buttonand leave a rating a review.
It goes a long way to helping othersfind our show.
Thank you and good night.
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