American History Tellers - The Bastard Brigade - Showdown in the Alps | 6

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

The Alsos mission had a hard-charging leader in Boris Pash and an eccentric band of recruits. But if the so-called Bastard Brigade was going to track down the Nazi atomic bomb, they would also need scientific expertise. For that, they turned to the Dutch-American physicist Samuel Goudsmit. Goudsmit wasn’t the brigade’s first choice—far from it. He was considered weak and timid, and even Goudsmit himself worried he lacked the courage for the mission. But the scientist had been friends with Werner Heisenberg as a young man in Europe, and he felt personally betrayed by Heisenberg’s work for the Nazis. And as a Jew who’d lost his parents to the concentration camps, Goudsmit was determined to fight back against Hitler.But Goudsmit would eventually prove himself, and his brilliant detective work would lead the mission to a cave in Germany hewn into the side of a cliff — Heisenberg’s secret lair and the heart of the Nazi bomb project. Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's the summer of 1944. You're a secretary on the Manhattan Project, and today you're taking a new employee through orientation, a 40-something Dutch-born physicist named Samuel Goudschmidt. He's joined the Allsauce mission, a top-secret spy outfit that's headed to Europe to discover secrets about the Nazi atomic bomb. He arrives looking anxious. Come in, Mr. Goudsmit. Excuse me, am I late? Early, actually. Take a seat. First thing, I have this list of supplies you'll need to pick up. Routine items every recruit should procure. Canteen, woolen underwear, gas mask.

Gas mask? That's standard. Oh, and good lord, recruits should update their wills? It's a formality, really. Moving on, you have a meeting later with Colonel Pash. Yes. May I ask you something? Is Colonel Pash normal? He seems very... gung-ho. That's Boris. I'm too soft for him. I'm built for the peace and quiet of the laboratory. Braving enemy fire and parachuting behind enemy lines is not my idea of recreation. Can I ask you something? Why are you joining the mission? There's plenty of lab work here. It's complicated. The Nazis invaded my homeland, and I am Jewish. My parents were arrested and put into a concentration camp. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, thank you. But I also know several of the German

scientists, including Werner, the infamous Mr. Heisenberg. We're good friends, or we were. I admit I am scared, but I feel I can do more to stop the Nazis in Europe. Well, I'm sure you'll do great over there. Thank you. Well, is there anything more? Yes, yeah. We have some personnel files here, so you can select your assistants. You watch him flip through the file on top.

Suddenly, a frown creases his face. Then he laughs. What's funny, Dr. Goudsmit? It says, Dr. Goudsmit has been recommended principally because he is available. His name adds nothing to the prestige of the mission, while his grouchy and tactless manner could be liabilities in gathering information from sources. You jump up and run around the desk, realizing that he's reading his own personnel file. You've accidentally included it in the pile.

Oh, I am so sorry. You were not supposed to see that. Can I have it back, please? No, ma'am. It's better than I know what people think. Like this. On the other hand, because he knows very little about atomic bomb design,

the enemy would not be able to torture any secrets out of him if captured. Well, that's probably true. He chuckles sadly. And it occurs to you that maybe he's not as soft as people or he thinks. But you still wonder how on earth he's going to survive over there. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight

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From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, fearless leader. But military bravado alone wouldn't be enough to end the threat of the Nazi atomic bomb project. Pash also needed scientific help, someone who could interrogate scientists and sift through the mountains of technical documents for clues about what the Nazi uranium club was up to. Unfortunately, the Allsauce mission's chief scientist,

Samuel Goudschmidt, was an enigma. As his personnel file showed, even those who hired him had grave doubts about his capabilities, doubts that Goudschmidt himself shared. But he also had a quiet determination to stop the members of the Uranium Club, including his former friend, Werner Heisenberg. And as the war neared its final stage, Goudschmidt would transform from the Alsace mission's biggest question mark

to one of its biggest assets. This is Episode 6, Showdown in the Alps. Imagine it's late August 1944. You're driving along the road into Paris, and you have a sinking feeling that you're in deep trouble. Normally, your job consists of ferrying military VIPs around your base in northern France. But yesterday, you got an odd assignment, driving around a scientist named Samuel Gauchemot. He seemed scared of his own shadow, and you wasted a whole day looking for some colonel he knew named Boris Pash. You never found him, and Gauchemot went to bed looking

miserable. But when you picked him up this morning, he seemed determined. In fact, he marched up and asked you several questions, which you've been running over in your head this whole trip. He asked exactly what were your orders. You told him to be his driver, to take him wherever he wanted. And that his face brightened. He said, fine, let's go to Paris. You didn't think that was a very good idea. You normally didn't leave the base, ever. But he was insistent, and in the end, you agreed to take him. But as you look at him now, you can't shake the feeling that you got tricked, especially considering what happens when you reach the outskirts of Paris and Goudschmidt practically shouts at you, wait, wait, don't take this road. The map says you should have turned left a mile ago.

What's wrong with this road? There's a checkpoint ahead. So? I would like to avoid them. They're slow. But your route is twice as long, and I'd have to backtrack. What were your orders? To take me wherever I wanted? Yes, sir. Fine. You pull a U-turn and double back, but you notice that he's dodged every single checkpoint so far. Finally, you reach the city.

You've never been to Paris before, and you're amazed how beautiful the parks and buildings are. But a noise from the passenger seat interrupts your enjoyment. Goudschmidt is crying. Sir, are you okay, sir? Yes. There was a time back when the Nazis seemed invincible that I thought I never would set foot in Paris again. You must think I'm an old fool. No, sir. No, that's quite all right. I am. A few blocks later, you arrive at your destination, a scientific lab. Pash should be here.

There, there, with the mustache, we found him. That's a relief. You can get this scientist out of your hair finally. But as you pull up to Colonel Pash, you realize he looks furious. He hands Goudschmidt a cable, which Goudschmidt reads aloud. All army units should keep an eye out for Samuel Goudschmidt and his driver. They have stolen a government jeep and should be arrested immediately. You know, I don't think... You don't think? That's clear. Do you think you can do your job from inside a jail cell? Goudschmidt starts sputtering, trying to explain. Meanwhile, you close your eyes. This will probably mean a

court-martial and discharge back home. But at least you got to see Paris. Once again, you're interrupted by an unexpected sound. It's Pash, and he's laughing. Laughing so hard he has to hold his belly. A second later, he slaps Gauchman on the back. Welcome to the war, Longhair. You're stunned. It's been a long, strange day, and this has to be the weirdest moment of all. Samuel Gauchman was no stout-hearted rebel like Boris Pash. He was the opposite, in fact. Gauchman made his greatest scientific discovery almost by accident, then spent the rest of his career trying to live up to his early promise. Given the disappointment he felt with his life, Goudsmit desperately wanted to contribute

to the war effort. His parents had been swept into a concentration camp in Europe, giving him a personal stake in the war's outcome. And so despite his insecurities, he took some big risks to do his part. The almost accidental discovery that won him renown happened one stormy afternoon in 1925 in Holland. He and a colleague sat down to explain some odd new experimental results they'd heard about in atomic physics. They began fiddling around with some equations, adding terms and scribbling them out, trying this and trying that, and groping about with no real plan. By the end of this work, they'd succeeded in explaining the experiments, but that wasn't all.

Their equations also hinted at something more, a new subatomic phenomenon called spin. It's a fundamental property of all particles, as important as their mass and charge. Goudschmidt was just 23 years old, and the discovery made him a scientific celebrity. He started lecturing all over Europe and became good friends with Werner Heisenberg, another brilliant young scientist. Heisenberg even stayed with Goudschmidt's parents in Holland once, and the two men watched fireworks on the beach afterward. After that, however, their careers took starkly different paths. Heisenberg kept improving and would soon win a Nobel Prize.

Goudschmidt, though, stagnated. He made no new discoveries and began to fear that the breakthrough with quantum spin was a fluke. By 1931, at only age 28, he was referring to himself as a has-been. And while Heisenberg had his pick of professorships in Europe, Goudschmidt got zero job offers. He ended up having to take a post all the way in the United States at the University of Michigan, an excellent school but far removed from Berlin, Paris, and other major scientific centers of the day. He spent a dozen increasingly miserable years in Michigan, growing more homesick every month. His only consolation at Michigan was the physics camp he ran there.

Each June, he'd bring in dozens of scientists from across the world for a week of seminars and socializing. In between sessions, they'd hit the zoo or the beach, where they'd drink malted milks and zip down to the water slide. And the 1939 camp was shaping up as the best yet, because Goudschmidt had pulled a coup and convinced two Nobel Prize winners to come, including his old friend Werner Heisenberg. Heisenberg even agreed to stay at Goudschmidt's house. But if Goudschmidt thought they'd rekindle their friendship, he was mistaken. Despite all the lively seminars, the looming war in Europe dominated every

conversation that week. In fact, with the recent discovery of uranium fission in Germany, which opened the door to build atomic bombs, it became increasingly hard to separate physics from politics. And unfortunately, Heisenberg was an ardent German patriot. He tried repeatedly to defend his country's honor, and arguments erupted, spoiling the mood night after night. Goudsmit was one of many who felt bitter and betrayed. After the war started, Goudsmit decided he was wasting away in Michigan. So he moved from the Midwest to Massachusetts, where he ended up doing radar work at MIT. It was there that he got tangled up in the drunken plot to kidnap Heisenberg and was nearly arrested for using the British code phrase

tube alloys in a letter to intelligence officials. It was his effort to warn of the Nazi atomic weapons program, but it backfired. Chagrined, Goudschmidt kept his head down and worked hard the next few years. And when he got a chance to join the Alsace mission in 1944, he was determined to make the most of it. And he was a good fit for the Bastard Brigade for several reasons. He spoke multiple European languages and knew several German physicists personally so he could provide psychological insight into them.

Still, he wasn't the mission's top choice. In a clerical mix-up, he ended up seeing his own personnel file, where he read a blunt assessment of his pros and cons. In addition, Goudsmit knew that all the really smart nuclear physicists had already been recruited to Los Alamos and other Manhattan Project sites. Goudschmidt swallowed his pride and accepted the post anyway. As a European Jew whose homeland had been invaded and whose parents were languishing in a concentration camp, he wanted to fight Hitler directly, and he knew he might not get another chance. And upon joining the fight, he was plunged

into the thick of things before he expected. He left for England in June of 1944, in preparation for eventually going to France. But right after he arrived in London, the first Nazi V-1 rockets began blasting buildings and leaving huge craters. Given all the rumors about German atomic weapons, the Allies feared these rockets might be nuclear. So for his very first assignment, Goudsmit grabbed a Geiger counter and descended into a few of the smoldering craters, waving around, ready to scramble right back out if the counter started clicking. Thankfully, it didn't. Eventually, in late August, Goudsmit arrived in northern France.

He and Boris Pash had planned to rendezvous there and travel to Paris together. But what Goudsmit didn't realize was that as soon as Paris had started falling a few days earlier, Pash had taken off without him, not even leaving a note for his scientific chief about his whereabouts. Unaware of this, Goudschmidt searched several bases with increasing frustration. He even begged one base headquarters to lend him a driver and car to search more widely. But they only wasted time aimlessly driving around. Finally, Gauchemot heard rumors that Pash had ditched him and gone to Paris alone. It was a humiliating discovery. He knew that Pash already doubted his courage,

and now he'd abandoned him like an unwanted child. Just like with his scientific career, he was being left behind. That night, Goudsmit slept on an old cot in a dorm near the base used to house soldiers and refugees. He spent the long, lonely hours listening to the moans of the refugees and trying to ignore the stink of the overflowing toilets. But he mostly spent the night thinking. About his life, about the war, about whether maybe Pash was right about him. The next morning, he tricked his driver into taking him all the way to Paris, dodging every checkpoint on the way.

They arrived in Paris to find that Pash had orders to arrest them for stealing an important colonel's jeep. That's when Pash asked whether Goudschmidt could do his job from a jail cell. But in truth, it was all another Pash ruse. He actually admired Goudschmidt's guts and initiative in getting here on his own. He probably would have pulled the same trick himself. After letting his chief scientist twist for a moment, a grin broke through Pash's face, and he congratulated Goudschmidt for outfoxing everyone. Goudschmidt melted with relief, and he'd proved himself to Boris Pash at last. So now he could settle in

and start his real mission in Europe, hunting the Nazi nuclear bomb. Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London. Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes. Even if you haven't read the book, you think you know the story. One of the incredible things about Dracula is that not only is it this wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today. The vampire doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror, so when we look in the mirror, the only thing we see is our own monstrous abilities. From the host and producer of American History Tellers and History Daily comes the new podcast, The Real History of Dracula.

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Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself. Imagine it's October 1944. You're a young physicist right out of college. And when the draft board found out about your background, you got assigned to the Alsace mission in Paris. It's been mostly desk work and document analysis so far, but today things are different. Today you're going on your first raid.

You were studying some technical documents this morning when you came across a reference to a German firm that processes uranium ore. Some further digging revealed that the firm has branches all over Europe, including one here in Paris. Within two minutes, eight of you hopped into Jeeps and were racing over. Now, as you pull up to the firm's office, you run up the stairs and a soldier kicks open the door. Your heart is racing. Men with weapons drawn rush in. But after all the excitement, the place looks like a bust. The file cabinets, where you were sure you would find more information, are all empty. You feel all the adrenaline drain out of you, disappointed.

But you notice one person who doesn't seem to be upset. Your scientific chief, Samuel Goudsmit. What have you got there, chief? Goudsmit is rummaging through the trash, and soon his hand emerges with a piece of carbon paper. I read about this in a detective novel once. He walks over to the window and holds it up to the light. He calls you over, and to your surprise, you can read the text.

Your German isn't great, but you can make it out. Regarding your letter of last week, the train cars arrived in Belgium safely. Next week, we'll be unloading uranium. Holy Toledo, that's a big clue. Not just a clue. Look. Gougement leads you over to a secretary's desk. The drawers are open.

The file folder is empty. But he grabs a leather-bound notebook on top and holds it up. You read the cover. Certified mail. Yes, and every certified letter's been logged. Ah, see? Dr. Fisher. He does work in atomic fission,

and he sent several letters to one Fritz Becker. You think they're friends? No, friends don't chit-chat through certified mail. This is official correspondence. So wait. Dr. Fisher does atomic research, and he's exchanging official letters with this Becker? So then Becker is probably involved in fission research too. Exactly.

Another lead. Goudsmit proceeds to walk around the room, pointing out all the clues left. You can use train ticket stubs to reconstruct whether Germans have traveled, textbook receipts to figure out what technical topics they were investigating. Jeez, there are clues everywhere. Yes, there are. It also means we have a lot of work to do. Gauchman was an expert at piecing together easily overlooked clues. He was a man of many enthusiasms, and he'd once taken an eight-month course on scientific detective work just for fun. When he and the other members of the Bastard Brigade

poured over the abandoned office in Paris, no scrap of paper was too trivial to escape scrutiny. And whenever his team found an intriguing lead, he'd send Boris Pash racing off to investigate. Often, he sent Pash into dangerous situations, like at the Antwerp Zoo, where Pash's crew found Belgian Nazis in cages. But on that same trip, Pash found a stockpile of uranium in a warehouse just across a canal from a German infantry unit. When the Germans saw the American troops poking around, they began shelling the place, forcing the Bastet Brigade to dive for cover.

They kept searching, though, on their hands and knees. Eventually, the brigade located 68 tons of uranium there, packed into barrels. And while the Germans continued to shell them, they loaded it onto trucks and removed it beyond the reach of the Reich. By tracking the serial numbers of railroad cars on shipping records there, they also traced 30 additional tons of uranium to France and seized it there. All of this uranium ended up getting shipped to the Manhattan Project in the United States, where it was processed and ended up in the bomb that later devastated Hiroshima.

All in all, the brigade seized nearly 100 tons of Nazi uranium on those two trips, a huge haul. But records in Belgium spoke of thousands of tons of uranium elsewhere in the Reich. And as long as it remained at large, the Allies couldn't shake the fear of waking up one morning to a mushroom cloud. Pash also visited labs in newly liberated cities and either seized documents for Gauchemette's crew to investigate back in Paris or summoned Goudsmit down to look for himself. One especially important cache of documents came from Strasbourg University in Nazi-controlled France, where one of the Uranium Club members had been a professor. In a huge security lapse, Goudsmit fished around in that scientist's trash can and found a torn-up letter from Werner Heisenberg. The reconstructed scraps included calculations on atomic reactors

and references to a so-called special metal, an obvious code for uranium. Even more incredibly, the letter had Heisenberg's address in southern Germany right there on the letterhead. The Basel Brig brigade now knew exactly where to find him. Goudschmidt studied these and other documents by candlelight each night until his eyes ached. One document spoke of large-scale fission experiments being conducted just 15 miles from Berlin. Another revealed that German officials had already briefed Hitler about atomic weapons. Ominously, around that same time, reports were trickling in to Allied intelligence officials about something said at a military conference

by Hitler. Up to this day, I can answer for all the acts I've committed before God and my compatriots. But for what I'm going to order in the near future, I will no longer be able to justify before God. Officials at the Manhattan Project trembled. What else could he mean but atomic weapons? As the Allied army pushed from France into Germany in 1945, the Alsace mission followed on their heels and into danger. Whereas French citizens had greeted the Alsace mission with cheers, the Germans met them with hard stares, or worse. In one German village, a sniper put a hole in the windshield of one of their jeeps, nearly killing the driver.

A few weeks later, Samuel Goudschmidt, who was standing up surveying the countryside in a jeep doing 50 miles an hour, was nearly scalped when his head struck a wire across the road to stop tall vehicles. Only his steel helmet saved him. Then, in mid-April, Alsace reached the central German town of Stadthilm, where Pash encountered a mob even rowdier than the one at the Antwerp Zoo. The town had virtually no electricity, and refugees and escaped prisoners were running amok.

Someone had also tapped a rail car of industrial alcohol, and people were guzzling it. Two people died, and one more went blind before Pash prevailed on a local official to drain it. Allsauce had come to central Germany seeking the missing Nazi uranium ore, and they quickly hit the jackpot, nearly 2.2 million pounds of it in an abandoned warehouse. The Nazi army was in full retreat at that point, and in such disarray that they had no choice but to abandon the precious ore packed in barrels in the warehouse. But most of the barrels had cracked or split,

spilling the ore and making a quick confiscation impossible. Refusing to concede defeat, Pash summoned two military trucking units to the site. Then he found a nearby factory that made barrels and thick bags for packaging fruit and persuaded the workers to fire up their machines. They cranked out several thousand containers over the next few days, then helped the Americans stuff the spilled uranium inside. Despite occasional shells and gunfire from nearby Germans, they cleared out every last ounce of uranium in a week. Manhattan Project leader Leslie Groves called the heist one of the biggest reliefs of the war. Thanks to Pash and Goudschmidt, the vast majority of Nazi uranium was now accounted

for. With the Nazi uranium safely in hand, Pash and Goudschmidt shifted focus and began to hunt down the scientists of the Nazi Uranium Club. They called the plan Operation Big. Several members of the Uranium Club were working near a charming little village in southern Germany called Hegerloch. Lilacs blanketed the surrounding countryside, and a cathedral and castle sat atop a nearby cliff. At the base of this cliff was the town itself, with cobblestone streets and houses dating back to the 1100s. But the cliff also concealed a dangerous secret. Carved into its side was a cave, housing the secret lab where Werner Heisenberg was building his most powerful atomic reactor yet. Pasch's team approached Hegerloch with caution, since southern Germany

was a stronghold of the Reich. Many villagers in the region had hung white cloths in the windows to signal surrender, and most of them meant this genuinely. But every so often, these white flags concealed nests of stormtroopers who had no compunctions about faking a surrender and opening fire. In addition, bands of Werferwaffen, self-proclaimed Nazi werewolves, continued to roam the countryside, ambushing and killing as many Allied soldiers as possible. When Pash and his team rolled into Hegerloch, Heisenberg was nowhere to be found. So Pash and his team entered the reactor cave, stepping forward cautiously and watching for booby traps. After a few yards, they came to a huge pit in the floor.

It was 10 feet in diameter and designed to hold heavy water, a key substance for producing chain reactions. Wires for suspending uranium in it lay nearby, and pipes and electrical cables snaked all around them. It was the Sanctum Sanctorum, the secret Nazi nuclear reactor. On a blackboard off to the side, someone had written a cryptic message in German. Let rest be holy to mankind. Only the insane are in a hurry.

After seizing all the equipment inside for the Americans, Pash and his officers loaded the cave with dynamite. They planned to bring the whole cliffside down on Heisenberg's atomic lair and bury it forever. But at the last second, a priest raced up, begging Pash to spare the cathedral perched above. It would likely fall in the detonation, along with the cliff. As the son of a Russian Orthodox bishop, Pash couldn't deny a man of the cloth. So he set off a much smaller charge instead, merely collapsing the cave's roof. But it was enough. Although there were several Nazi labs doing atomic research

during the war, Heisenberg's was the most advanced and the last one left intact. With its destruction, the Nazi nuclear bomb program was finally dead. Pash's mission was not over, however. In other villages near Hegerloch, the Alsace crew rounded up several members of the Nazi Uranium Club, including Otto Hahn, the German chemist who'd helped discover uranium fission in the first place. But unfortunately, Alsace learned that Werner Heisenberg had skipped town, fleeing east to be with his family. And until Pash had him in custody, his mission was not complete. But intelligence work by Samuel Goudsmit and the ex-Red Sox catcher Moe Berg, including the postcard from Heisenberg that Berg had stolen in Italy,

pointed to where Heisenberg's family had taken refuge. A cabin in the Bavarian Alps near a village called Urefeld. A few days later, Pasch rounded up a few dozen troops and headed east. They raced over hills and through valleys. Not even a freak spring blizzard along the way could slow them down. But they were nevertheless stopped a few miles short of their target, because there, a few Nazi werewolves had blown up a bridge across the gorge, cutting off the only road into Urfeld. But if the werewolves thought that a missing bridge would stop Boris Pash, they were wrong. He called in some local American military engineers to fix the bridge and left behind some of his men to help them. While they worked, he grabbed a few stout soldiers

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Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Imagine it's May 1945. You're working under Boris Pash in the village of Erfelt in the Bavarian Alps. You're supposed to be arresting Werner Heisenberg, but instead, there's a crisis brewing. Some troops in your unit just got into a shootout with local Nazi diehards, and there are now several dead and bloody bodies lying in the town square. And before you can catch your breath from that, something worse happened. Two German officers marched into town

and demanded a meeting with Pash. You all retired to a hotel lobby where they've explained, in good but thickly accented English, that they have 700 troops nearby and wish to surrender. This sends a chill up your spine. Counting Pash, you have just seven men.

But even more shocking, Pash accepts their surrender. Colonel Pash explains the terms to one of the German officers. You'll be prisoners of the American army and will be treated as such. Unfortunately, we've gone on stationary guard procedure for the night. Stationary guard? You've never heard of such a thing. As a result, I cannot possibly accept your surrender until 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. The Germans agree to this, which will at least buy you some time. Pash then turns to you. Lieutenant, see that the number of men at all posts is doubled and ensure that the stationary guard order is in effect. What is he talking about? Everyone's

looking at you, so you answer without thinking. But we have only seven men, Colonel. You've seen Pash angry only once before. But his teeth are bared now, and he seizes you by the arm. Perhaps you misunderstood, Lieutenant. I want you to double the men at the posts and ensure that the stationary guard order is in effect. As his nails dig into your biceps, you realize that Pash is bluffing. He's trying to conceal how few troops you have, except you and your big mouth just gave it away. Or did you? You steal a glance at the Nazi officers.

English isn't their first language, and they look confused. Oh, yes, sir, of course. Stationary guard procedure. Perhaps we should more than double it, sir. Pash's grip relaxes. Double will suffice. He turns back to the Germans. Gentlemen, we'll see you bright and early. Guten Tag. The Germans salute, click their heels, and leave. As soon as the door closes, you catch Pash's eye.

Colonel, I am an idiot. Yes, you are. Do you think they caught on? I have no idea. We better call for reinforcements. He marches to the hotel phone and has the operator put him through to another nearby village where an American unit is stationed. You stand there biting your fingernails. You can't believe how badly you screwed up. Hello? Hello? Yes, this is Colonel Pash. We're in a fix up here. Wait, hello? You're breaking up. Suddenly another voice comes on the line. Oh, hello. I see. Colonel Pash hangs up the phone and stares intently right at you. That was not our commander in the next village. That was the Germans we just spoke to. They've cut or crossed the wires. Anyways, turns out that they did hear you, loud and clear. You know what the last thing he said to me was? He says they know there are not many of us. Then he said, we will die for the Fuhrer, Heil Hitler.

Bohr's passion as men were armed to the teeth as they plunged into the snowy gorge near the broken bridge to hunt down Werner Heisenberg. Pash, in fact, reported that his small crew of soldiers looked less like alpine mountaineers and more like Pancho Villa bandits, with ammunition tucked in pockets and cargo bandoliers slung across our shoulders. The snow reached halfway to their knees, and they encountered several pockets of Nazi soldiers along the way. Most of the Germans were tired and hungry and wanted to surrender. Pasch's team didn't have the time or personnel to accept prisoners, however, so they simply disarmed the men, slit the waistband of their pants, and moved on. As long

as the Germans were preoccupied with holding up their pants, Pash figured, they couldn't run or fight. After five miles of trudging, Pash's crew reached Erfeld, an idyllic mountain village overlooking a cold, clear lake. An innkeeper holding a white tablecloth pointed them toward Heisenberg's cabin up the road. Pash assigned several of his men to guard the town, while he and a single companion took off in pursuit of the physicist. The trail to Heisenberg's family cabin, grandly named the Eagle's Nest despite its dilapidated appearance, was a steep uphill slog. But by 4.30 p.m., Pash arrived at last.

The six Heisenberg children gawked at the Americans, and Heisenberg's wife, Elizabeth, informed Pash that her husband had gone to visit his mother nearby. She telephoned Werner and told him to hurry back. A few minutes later, Pash finally met the man he'd been stalking for months. Far from looking like the most dangerous scientist in the world, Heisenberg seemed haggard, already defeated. Pash was cordial, but firm in placing him under arrest. At that moment, I took a deep breath, Pash later said. Alsace was about to close the book on one of the most successful intelligence missions of the war, or so I thought. Because as soon as he and Heisenberg sat down to

discuss what would happen now, gunfire erupted in the distance. It was coming from the village of Erfeld. Not wanting to risk Heisenberg's life, Pash ordered him to stay put with his family and race back down the mountain. He discovered several bodies lying bleeding in the village square, the aftermath of a German assault. Luckily, the Alsace unit escaped with no casualties. The Nazis suffered two killed, three wounded, and 15 taken prisoner. Shortly afterward, the German officers marched in and tried to surrender, until the blunder by the young Alsace officer made them realize that they had a huge numerical advantage. Pash was furious, but he couldn't risk going back for Heisenberg and getting caught or killed. So as much as he hated to, he hurried back to the blown bridge over the gorge.

If he could just get a few armored vehicles across, he might be able to overwhelm or outrace the Nazis and nab Heisenberg again. At the bridge, the engineers Pash had requested were already at work, but Pash drove them even harder, begging them to erect something, anything, as soon as possible. It only had to hold for a few hours. While they worked, a scout returned with bad news. Back in Erfeld, a hundred Nazi troops had stormed the village square to hunt down the Americans.

Finding none, they'd murdered some local townsfolk instead, people who'd cooperated with Alsace earlier that day, accusing them of treason. Then they dumped the bodies in the local lake and disappeared. The scout had no idea where the Germans were now, perhaps waiting an ambush. Pash considered the news, but didn't hesitate. The engineers got a makeshift bridge erected around 4 a.m., and almost before the last nail was driven in, Pash and his team rattled across in several armored vehicles with mounted machine guns, headed toward Heisenberg.

They crept along the road for several miles in the dark, stopping often to check for booby traps. But in Erfeld, they made a show of force, driving in aggressively and making sure everyone saw their machine guns. The bravado worked, and shortly after dawn, the German units hidden in the forest nearby began entering the village to surrender. Unfortunately for Pash, those units included a mountaineering platoon with a high-strung mule. It was already nervous, and with the village growing more noisy by the minute, the mule finally snapped. It suddenly began bucking and reared up, kicking, and caught Boris Pash

square in the back. The two hoofs came at me like pistons, he later said. I landed ten feet farther away than I could have jumped under my own power. The blow broke three ribs, and a moaning Pash was dragged to a local inn for treatment. The leader of the Bastard Brigade, therefore, did not make the final climb up the mountain to arrest Werner Heisenberg the second time. His men continued on and took the world's most wanted physicist into custody without him. But the pain he felt couldn't dull Pash's satisfaction. Finally, after years of searching and dozens of lives lost, every last member of the Nazi Uranium Club was now in American hands. The war in Europe ended five days later, on May 8th, with Germany's surrender. All saw celebrated

by getting stinking drunk with some wine they looted from the basement of one of the members of the Uranium Club. At their party, a thoroughly lubricated Boris Pash, and still with three broken ribs, began a traditional Russian dance, squatting down and kicking up a storm. Samuel Goudschmidt, on the other hand, was in a more bittersweet mood. A few days earlier, he'd just heard confirmation of something he'd long feared, that his parents had both died in the concentration camp at Theresienshütte. In fact, they died on his father's 70th birthday. So while he was satisfied to see Hitler defeated,

he couldn't feel fully joyful either. Meanwhile, the most prominent members of the Uranium Club, including Heisenberg and Hahn, ended up in custody at a large country estate in England. They assumed they'd been detained there so the Allies could milk them for atomic secrets, having no idea that the Allies had atomic bombs of their own. In fact, the Germans were still at the estate when they first heard news about the American bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And at first, most of them refused to believe it, especially Heisenberg.

He simply couldn't imagine that mere Americans had succeeded in making an atomic bomb where the mighty Germans had failed. But as more news trickled in, the Germans began to accept that they'd been outsmarted and outworked, and they were crushed. As Samuel Goudschmidt said, that was the first time they really felt that Germany had lost the war. Up to that time, they had believed that Germany at least had won the war of the laboratory, but not anymore. The Bastard Brigade disbanded not long afterward. Samuel Goudsmit went back to his comfortable lab, where Boris Pash headed to Tokyo on a new assignment. But they and the rest of the Allsauce crew held reunions every few years afterward, gathering at someone's house for a boozy party

on Friday night, then hitting the link Saturday morning for a golf scramble. The winners claimed the coveted hash cup. But most of all, like old soldiers everywhere, they swapped war stories. Stories about the Antwerp Zoo and packing uranium into fruit baskets. About the young lieutenant's blunder with the German surrender, that time Samuel Goudschmidt stole a colonel's Jeep and rushed off to Paris, and especially about Werner Heisenberg and their role in stopping Hitler from getting an atomic bomb. Next on American History Tellers, remembering Emmett Till on the anniversary of his brutal killing in Mississippi in 1955. Till's murder was a galvanizing moment of the

civil rights movement, but there are parts of the story and the events leading up to it that are far different than many people remember. Florida State University scholar Davis Howe recently released an educational smartphone app detailing the locations and extensive backstory behind the killing. He joins us to talk about what many people get wrong about the case and why it matters today. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Sam Keen and based on his book, The Bastard Brigade, edited by Dorian Marina, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman.

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