An Army of Normal Folks - The Soldier Who Stared Down a Nazi Officer—and Saved 200 Lives

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

After being captured at the Battle of the Bulge, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds unexpectedly became the commanding officer of 1,200 American POWs. The Nazis demanded that he present the Jewish American soldiers to them and his heroic response risked his own life—and ultimately saved over 200 Jewish lives! The newly announced Medal of Honor recipient will teach you what real moral courage looks like. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an Army of Noble folks. Welcome in to the shop. Hey, Alex. How you doing? I got a raging headache, Bill, but it's good to see you. It's good to see you, too. I'm glad you're here getting up at 3.30 at morning and forgetting our audio equipment, so this is not going to sound right. Yeah, we're recording this through Microsoft Teams. So if you do notice a difference, it is all my fault. where is our recording device Alex it's sitting on my living room table right now back in Oxford

so everybody if the audio sounds a little weird on this shop talk you got to forgive us and forgive Alex he's been pulling triple duty run around setting up our army and normal folks service clubs all over the country and trying to run the show and get guest here. So, Alex, I'm actually taking up for you. I'm not going to break your balls too hard, although this is weird doing this on teams. I know. But hey, number 95, you got any numbers?

That's it. 95 is a defensive end. So I don't know. I don't know a 95, but it's a defensive end. All right, so I guess we'll start a football first. Richard Dad? Richard Dillep defensive end for the Chicago Bears Charles Haley Charles Haley for the San Francisco 49ers Same here Kennechi or Daisy If I'm saying is there right

Who? I've heard of him before Kinechia you Daisy I don't know that one No And then Martin Luther's 95 Theses Oh well There you have that

Okay so shop talk number 95 Everybody is about a guy named Rodney Edmonds, a normal guy who did something so extraordinary. Don't read that yet. That's the actual thing. I'm going just, you shush. He's a normal guy who did something extraordinary that it took eight decades for the country to fully catch up on.

And we're going to talk about that right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. You know, Roaldahl, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the shop. Shop talk number 95 being done via teams. And although it is being done being teams, Alex is only about 40 feet from me in another room so we don't get feedback. And we're doing it on teams because Alex

left all our recording stuff on his coffee table. So if the audio sounds a little different, bear with us. But we are so committed to bring you a weekly shop talk that we're doing it this way. And we're going to talk about Roddy Edmonds. Roddy Edmonds is a normal guy. He did something so extraordinary that it took eight decades

for our country to fully catch up and officially call what he did, what it accurately is, heroism. His name was Master Sergeant Roddy Edmins. And he is now a Medal of Honor recipient, by the way, I have often said, and I hear many people say a medal honor winner, and I think it's important to distinguish that nobody wins the Medal of Honor. They receive it, the recipients. It's actually very important because rarely, when there's a Medal of Honor recipient noted,

was there not death surrounding it? So it's very important that we don't talk about people winning the Medal of Honor, but receiving recognition for their heroism. And so like winning the lotto. Yes, not at all. So Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds is now a Medal of Honor recipient posthumously because of what he did as a POW in Nazi Germany. But here's the thing.

He didn't do it for a medal. He didn't do it for attention, and he didn't even tell his own family about it once he returned home. He did what he did, because a moment came, we're doing the right thing, was going to cost him something, and he decided it was worth paying. It was World War II. Edmonds and his unit were captured at the Battle of the Bulge and taken to a German POW camp, Staling 9A, in, Zigenhain, Germany, or Zgen-H-N-H-N-H-A-N, but it's Z-I-E-E-G-E-N-H-A-I-N. You're actually crushed it the first time. It is Zigen-Hane. Zigen-Hang, Germany.

Perfect. Inside that camp, Edmonds becomes the senior non-commissioned officer, which is the top-ranked enlisted man responsible for 1,200 American prisoners. Now, if you've ever held leadership, when you don't control the environment. When you don't control the rules, the food, the safety, the consequences, you know and understand what it means to be that leader. Leadership and comfort is not eat. It can be easy, but leadership in captivity is a whole different animal. And the leadership and captivity under Nazis, well, that was something else entirely. It was January

1945. The German commandant gives Edmonds an order. Have all the Jewish soldiers present present themselves the next morning. And everybody listening knows exactly what that meant. That wasn't paperwork. That wasn't we're reorganizing the bongs. That was a separation order that could have led to an execution or death camps of Jewish-American prisoners of war. So Edmund does something brilliant and simple. He tells the camp, tomorrow morning, everyone lines up, not the Jewish shoulders, all of us, 1,200 Americans standing shoulder to shoulder. And the commandant comes out furious. He pulls a pistol. He presses it to Edmund's head, and he demands again, tell me who the Jews are. Master Sergeant Roddy Adman says the line that should be

carved into his stone. We are all Jews here. Then he reminds the common of something the Nazis didn't like to hear. The Geneva Convention only required prisoners to give their name, rank, and serial number, not religion. And at the end of the war, he will be prosecuted for this war crime. Incredibly, incredibly, the commandant back down. And in that one decision, Edmund saved the lives of nearly 200 of the 1,200 American captive soldiers that were Jewish, by some accounts, maybe even more. So let's just think about that. He didn't know if the Nazis would shoot him and then start sorting the line anyway. He didn't know if the men behind them would live. He didn't know if the men behind them would stay in line and not give the Jewish soldiers up to protect their own lives.

He just knew this. They're going to take its men. They're going to have to take all of them. Roddy Edmonds came home after the war. And like a lot of the greatest generation, he went back to work. He went back to life. He didn't talk about what he did. No book tour, no speeches.

He didn't even tell his own family. He passed away in 1985. And after that, his son, Chris Edmonds, was going through his father's Bible and personal papers. Inside were notes about the POW camp, names and details. Chris started tracking those names down. One of the many contacted was a Jewish soldier named Lester Tanner, one of the men in that line. Tanner went on to become a successful lawyer and businessman in New York. At one point, Tanner sold his home to Richard Nixon, after Watergate,

when many people didn't want to sell it to them. The New York Times were to sort of peace about the sale, and buried in that article, almost like a footnote, was a single line mentioning that Tanner had survived a Nazi POW camp because an American master sergeant had refused to identify Jewish soldiers. A tiny line that caught Chris' attention. He called Tanner, and Tanner told him the full story. That's how Chris learned about the heroism of his dad,

a son reading his father's Bible, a house sale, one newspaper line. That's how one of the greatest acts of moral courage in World War II resurface decades later. Chris reflects on us to add courage with the powerful line that my dad had already died to Christ so he wasn't afraid of an earthly death. What does that have to do with us? Most of us won't have a pistol pressed to our head, The life will ask us the same version of the same question. Will you protect others when it could cost you?

Will you take a stand when it's inconvenient or maybe even unsafe? Will you take a stand when it's unpopular? Will you take a stand when it might make you the target? Roddy Edmonds didn't save lives because he had power. He saved lives because he had courage, moral courage. He was the only thing he had left. So here's the challenge. Here's today's Shop Talk Challenge.

Where in the world is someone being separated, othered, pushed out? What would it look like for you to say, we're all blank here? We're all black here. We're all Jewish here. We're all Hispanic here. We're all Republican here. We're all Democrat here. We're all that here.

something that's different than how you identify this very minute, at work, at school, in your community. Because that sentence wasn't just about religion. It's about solidarity. It's about refusing to let fear decide who deserves protection. That's what normal folks like us can do. In a literal army of them, in Roddy's case, saved over 200 lives. what could a million-man army of normal folks in the United States do in changing lives if we could all just understand we're all blank here pretty awesome mr. Cortez it's amazing um I've actually gotten to be friends with Chris his son I mean really I just spent some time with him

yeah I was really tickled this week on Sunday night I got a text from Chris hey Alex this is Chris Edmonds I meant to let you know that my father is receiving the Medal of Honor tomorrow praise the Lord like Chris has been on this crusade that's probably not the right word but for the last decade

like he has committed his life to telling his dad's story like he wrote a whole book about it that you know some Harper Collins and he's been traveling the country telling his dad's story actually at one point when Obama was president, they had a ceremony, I think actually at the Israeli embassy, with Obama, Netanyahu, and Steven Spielberg there,

all honoring Chris's dad. And he's, maybe he was the first American soldier who was named was called the Righteous Among the Nations. It's this really distinguished honor from Yad Bishem, the Israel's Holocaust Museum. And he was the first American soldier named it. Yeah, it's because Chris, you know, discovered the story, tracked it down, like, got in touch with all these guys.

I think he probably got to know at least five or ten of the people whose lives, his dad, you know, saved eventually. And, you know, he's been working this for over a decade at this point. And finally, just this week, his dad received the Medal of Honor. That is fantastic. And, you know, we're all blank here. Can you imagine the walls and the dysfunction that that breaks down? And how uniquely American just that way. line is we're all

Jews here, we're all whatever here. Godly, that's inspiring. I'm not saying point too at the camp, the POW W camp they were at. They were like figuring out how to hold Catholic ceremonies and Jewish ceremonies

and like, I think it was like four or five different nominations. They had figured out how to have ceremonies there at the POW camp. Unbelievable. Okay, everybody. Shop Talk number five 95. What's that?

95. You said 5. Shop talk number 95. Of course, I could have said 95, and it could be this horrible audio we have, and you didn't hear me say 95. But, of course, that could be fixed if you wouldn't have left it on your coffee table.

All right. Shop talk number 95, everybody. Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds, 80 years ago, challenged us to think about this. We are all blanked. here. And we can't be an army of normal folks with all of our different cultures and thoughts and phase and everything else without understanding that as an army of normal folks, we've got to be

all blank here in order to bond together and make our country a better place. And I can't think of anybody better than Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds in the lesson of what he did one day to save over 200 lives, using more courage, risking his own life to do the right thing as a lesson for how we have to approach one another to grow this army, normal folks, change our country. Can you imagine telling nobody this, like, the level of humility that would take, like, I feel like I'm too arrogant of a person. I would have told my spouse or my kids or some friends to tell nobody this story is wild. It is incredible to have just found out through a newspaper article.

Yeah, I mean, here's the other thing. Those 200 people, let's say 80% of them got married and had children. So that's 160. And each of them had two children. That's 320. Who each had two children. That's 64. you get it. Exponentially, those lives he saved touches thousands of lives today.

And it's just incredible to think about, you know, what that act of heroism and moral courage, what the legacy, the human legacy that that act left behind. And it also goes to say, what if a million of us did that. Think of the exponential, touch, human touch that that work can have across the landscape of our country over the next 15, 20 years is pretty phenomenal. So actually, I interviewed when I did this in the past, two people who got married because of this. So like one guy's, I'm going to screw this up now, but one guy came home because he was doing the Jewish soldiers they saved. And his like best friend during the war, he ended up marrying that guy's sister. And even, I just asked Chatchett who'd be too quickly.

They said likely 2,000 to 5,000 people are living today because of, yeah, that one act. Yeah. There's the numbers crazy. All right, everybody. That's shop talk number 95. Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds, a man exhibiting moral courage and heroism in a way that should inspire us the way to live by. And to sign off, let's all just remember. we're all blank here.

Shop talk number 95, thanks for join us. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with friends and on social. Join the Army at normalfolks. Us and join a service club if you live in an area where there is one, and if they're not,

we're going to be opening some more. So join those and give to the giving circle and tell friends about us, wake the kids, phone the neighbors, everybody needs to join the Army and Normal Folks. That's Shop Top number 95, Thanks for joining us. Until next time.

Do what you can. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart podcast awards are happening live at South by Southwest. This is the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative, talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees.

you guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app. You know Roald Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either.

Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?

Oh my God, I think. you might be innocent. Listen to doubt the case of Lucy Lettby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpbright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real?

If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.