Citation Needed - Jean Borotra and the Battle of Castle Itter

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

The battle of Castle Itter was fought on 5 May 1945, in the Austrian village of Itter in the North Tyrol region of the country, during the last days of the European Theater of World War II. Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

And then the Woldash or Mizzle, it's like a fairy person who just happened to be named the same thing as the shoes. How do you keep track of all of this in your head? It's just kind of thrown upon us like, you know, you don't really need to track of it. There you guys are. Finally, you got to help me. What's the matter? So Noah and Cecil start to read about the battle for the castle of itter or whatever,

and they both got super excited about a castle battle that they hadn't heard about yet. No, what's the angle on those Shamwicks? 45 degrees. And they're looking a little high. Can you check them again, man? Right, but Eli, the battle for castle itter was more of a prison break than a castle battle. There's no like nights or archers or anything like that.

I know I tried to tell them that, but they kept telling me that I needed to change into some authentic vestments if I wanted them to listen to me. Yeah, I say, don't worry about that. I'll explain to them the mistake. I'm do we happy to do the essay as I wrote it. I'm sure.

You might wanna let them finish upstairs before you break the news to them, Tom. Why, what's up there? Uh, that's where they're boiling the tar. Uh, I mean, I can wait till they're downstairs. We call ya, wait till they get downstairs. Yeah. Hello and welcome to Cytation Needed. Podcasts where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia to pretend

we're experts because this is the internet internet, that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnick, and I'll be leading this charge into knowledge this week, but I'll need a motley band of brothers. First up, a Mussolini and V-sheet, my head's burnt up. Man, I don't know how that comparative analogy works, Eli, and I'm just not going to it all. Because she's a city, the other two or people, whatever, just to introduce

the other people. And also joining us tonight. Two men who admittedly have spoken to me several times about comparing myself to Hitler in any context, Cecil and we've also had several talks about you recording in that Gimp mask too. So yeah, but now that I know that those references

could get Kanye on our podcast, we can rethink that. I'm keen to start soon. Before I begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. These fine folks pledges little as a dollar a show. And while we pin no medals to their chests, they do get bonus extras like behind the scenes content

and our patron only bonus episodes, which includes our reading of the first 10 chapters of my immortal, which many are calling the best thing we've ever created. We didn't actually create it. We just read it. So that's great and made fun of it. That's super great. Yeah. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah, what person, place, theme, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? Today we're gonna be talking about Jean Baratra and the battle for the castle, itter.

And Tom, you found a tale to weave that's as relevant today as it was to yesterday for a lesson for a soul. Or you found a Smithsonian article to rephrase on Friday night. One of those, are you ready for us to guess which? That hurts. That was a dead spin article.

I mostly worked from. So tell us, Tom, what was the battle for Castle? All right. So today, I'm going to tell you the story of the only time that the Nazis joined forces with a rag tag group of French prisoners and American soldiers to defeat the Nazis joined forces with a Ragtag group of French prisoners and American soldiers to defeat the Nazis. And if that's set in slifed you scratching your head, I don't blame you, but before I tell you that story, I'm going to have to explain how the madness was made possible because

of a hard-party world war one hero turned pro tennis player by the name of Jean Baratre. Just backhand in those live shells and the enemy mocks holes. A Jean Baratre was born in 1898 on the basket side of France. Jean had three siblings that history has forgotten and that nobody cares about. His father died when Jean was only nine years old, which put Jean as the oldest male in the family in the rather unfortunate position of becoming the man of the house before sprouting so much as a single shortened curly. While this was undoubtedly a lot of pressure, Jean's remarkable aptitude for handling pressure

was on display early and he said his sights on doing everything he could to attend the highly selective and famous engineering school, which I will mispronounce. Ecole Polytechnique nailed it. Sure, but back then engineering was just the wheel and the pulley, the end. So no wonder a nine year old could drive him in. I think, I, so Tom, I think it's weird how often you point out how historically irrelevant your subjects You're rubbing it in right why can't you play tennis like your brother and cheese

It's might having to help support his family as a fourth grader John was eventually admitted to this prestigious school I think he did fine academically, but nobody really cares. This is an a story about some boring engineer. Was John really got into was a game called Hello-toe, which is a variation on a racquetball, which itself is kind of like tennis, except it's played in a concrete box made of echoes. But it's just called ball. That's right. It's a ball and a pitch. A jaun didn't play tennis even once until he was 14 years old when he played in England where he'd been sent for a short time to learn to speak English. And he didn't seem terribly interested in the game. When you learn English for tennis, you have to speak it through your teeth like the rich

guy on Gilligan's Island. You're like, there, she asked out of the pants, my parents. Now, then came World War I, which has a way of refocusing one's attention away from racket sports and engineering schools. And in John's case, Ford's becoming an artilleryman in 1916. They kept having to tell him he didn't need to throw the shell in the air before he put it in the cannon. It was all a pain. It was all over the face.

A jaunce served in the artillery with distinction until the end of the war after which he became the sports officer for the French Army of the Rhine. This is the highly essential military role of organizing sports tournaments and games for the troops. Now, here's the part that I love. One day, as the organizer for a tennis game, Jean was forced to pick up a racket and play when one of the players in the doubles tournament didn't show. It turned out that he was a tennis natural and he and his partner went on to the finals in the army of the Ryan doubles championship. He starts just walking

towards the other trenches with a tennis racket. He's climbing over barbed wire. Do it real time out. We need a fourth. I have to returning home from the war. Jean and his brother got into tennis big time and they would spend day after day at the local tennis club hitting balls back and forth. But Jean had made a promise to his mother before going off to war that if he returned from the war, he'd finish his education so john reenrolled at the impossible to pronounce equal i polytechnique and two years later he had the degree he promised he'd earn in hand but john had found his real passion and it was tennis good for him because it's weird that his mom put conditions on him not dying in the war

right It's weird that his mom put conditions on him not dying in the war, right? That is weird, right? Don't think that just because you survive a war, you can come here and be a lay about. Right. Yeah. And he was crazy good at tennis. He wasn't well coached and he wasn't well trained. He started playing the game seriously, much too late to be a serious player, but John's lack of formal knowledge of the game combined, much too late to be a serious player, but John's lack of

formal knowledge of the game combined with his remarkable natural athleticism in stamina would prove to be an enormous asset. While most players at the time tried to win on this serve, Baratra favored the volley, and he attacked the net with a ferocity and zeal that unnerved his opponents. Fred Perry, eight-time grand slam winner, said of Baratra, he quote, came in behind his serve so fast that the ball almost hit him on the back of the head. Quote. Okay, if that's not sex talk, I don't want to live in this world. Okay. See, so is a servant volley guy sexually serving. Yeah. I'm a ground strokes guy, but yeah. Two handed. I can't go ahead.

Fault is fault one. I think I'm false. Yeah. Love. No. As Sean was also a huge fucking ham about the way he played. So here's this guy. He's too old, he's too untrained, he's got a bad serve, he's constantly violating something called the footballed rule, I don't know what that is. And he was winning big in professional tournaments. And he wasn't just good, he was a huge showboat about the whole thing. When he would hit a wide shot into the crowd,

he'd jump into the crowd and kiss the hands of the women in his stands, apologizing and flirting. If he was set to play five matches in a day, he'd bring five flamboyant burrays, and then at tense critical moments of each match, he'd make a big production of walking over and selecting which hat to wear to continue, vamping and working the crowd into his selection like a clown at a circus. And it wasn't just antics. John was quite the verbose player frequently hurling barbs and insults at officials, opponents,

and anyone in the crowd he suspected might not be cheering for him. John also played tennis like it was a Texas hold-em game, bluffing and calling his opponent to win a series. I am admittedly not a sports guy, but I gather from my reading that tennis is usually a series of games or sets between opponents rather than just a single game that determines the winner. So John would just take off entire games or sets and rest, pretending he was too exhausted to continue, and then the next game or set he'd come roaring in full of piss and vinegar. And his opponent would be so surprised.

Their whole concentration and rhythm would be shot. And then John was swooping and just like, out ten is them super hard. How's that a surprise though? Just add in to where you're like, Oh my God, there's a guy in the other side again. What happened? Like, if you were to lose either way. See, when I read that, I thought he was just like, oh my God, there's a guy on the other side again. What happened? If you're too off, you were gonna lose either way. See, when I read that, I thought he was just like, he was just sandbagging it for half the matches. And I was thinking, another great strategy is to lose more than half your matches and then X-Pose Facto

declared that you meant to do that. That's really easy, too. To be fair, it's been working great for the Republican sea. So yeah. Yeah. I have to say, is Palm doing a sports essay essay is a lot like me doing a beer essay. This is great.

It's supposed to taste like this. How the fuck? About 1923, Sean again, uncoached and untrained and without any competitive experience until he had just randomly picked up a racket one day, nearly won the national championship of France. He was added to France's Davis Cup squad. And he went on to play at Wimbledon. That's like if somebody once played some mean mini-golf for a hot minute in college, and they took the few years off and then showed up one day, blowing raspberries and moaning Tiger Woods while playing at the mast. Okay. As you just said, but this is like 1923.

So not tiger woods or anybody. Well, to put also keep in mind that people were like terrible at sports back then, right? Like, but here's like watch video of a gymnastics competition from the like early Olympics. Tell me those moves aren't best proceeded by a haramfi mom, you're not looking. Everything they did. And this is for it's to the way across the fucking balance beam. Come give me a fucking break. He made it across.

I'm 10. I'll never twice Give me the silver. Bajon couldn't make a living playing tennis because that just wasn't really a thing back then probably to your point. Huh? If you wanted to play serious tennis, you had to have someone subsidizing your playing. John didn't really have shit. So we needed to get a job that would pay him enough money. He'd get a Ford to be a tennis player. Luckily, he did have that engineering degree and he

also had notice that France didn't have a lot of gas pumps just everywhere the way they did in the States. So, John decided he'd get a job and fix that problem. Sprang gasoline in an arc on your windshield. I'm not a job. I'm a job. John took a job as an engineer working on getting the new fangled gasoline pump to become more ubiquitous. Within a few months of arriving at pretty much his first job, he was promoted to export

manager. And this was the perfect job for jaunt since it required him to travel all around the world, trying to get people hooked on fossil fuels. Not, once it thenally, his business travel seems to have lined up nicely with major tennis tournaments. His boss is just like, okay, I don't know where this wimbledon place is, but this is like their 25th gas station. It's crazy. Which I'm not sure if you know this, Tom, but that's why we call them surface stations. By 1924, Jean had begun his incredible winning streak, which would include 15 grand slam titles,

including two at Wimbledon in 1924 and 26. The Australian Open in 28 and the French Open in 24 and then again in 31. Twice this untrained player just out of nowhere in his spare time off of work was ranked as high as second in the world. But his real notoriety and success came as part of what would be called the four horsemen. This is four French tennis players who vigorously defended the Davis Cup for years. In the eight years between the four horsemen, they had racked up 20 Grand Slam singles victories, 23 Grand Slam doubles titles and six consecutive Davis Cup trophies. It feels a lot like that you have seen the 2000s and you could be a high school teacher

and the middleweight champion at the same time. I mean, you have seen the 2000s. You could be an ninja, Cecil. No, that's the 90s. That's the 90s. Come on. They graduated to middle school teacher. He's just playing tennis with a giant boxing glove on one side. One hand boxing punch on him back.

I remember John Baratra did not start playing tennis as a young person. He came to the game late. So late, he'd already fought an entire world war. And after a stunning and somewhat controversial final win in the Davis Cup, John was set to retire and then maybe become a broadcaster, perhaps sports calmness, but Hitler would have other plans. All right. Well, that set up makes it feel like World War II was decided with a four set match of tennis.

Like Google real quick to see if I miss something. We're gonna take a trick for a little apropos of nothing. And here we have the two finalists for the 1910 Grand Slam Open. John Smith and Sean Baratra, the two men, meet at the net, shake hands and begin play. All right, have a good game. Indeed it shall be. I shall give you a kiss. Come here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I was... it was literally always you want. What do you say? Double or nothing?

Nope. Nope. Oh, you can't actually do that, sir. Very well, and I have no choice but to play with my other hand. Still haven't played yet. And? To change it to my red balleray! Zibare, I love. Can you just make him play tennis, please?

I cannot, sir, no. One last thing? I promise. Have you just make him play tennis, please? I cannot, sir, no. Well, last thing, I promise, have a challenge for you. Is it tennis? Nobody needs love, give me a kiss. P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P And we're back. And I got to do my French guy voice. So you know, good day. Come, you have a wildly different story.

You'd like to start telling you now. I, okay, I do, but they'll come back together. All right, in May of 1939, Hitler's blitz of France had begun, and it was brutally effective. In just six weeks after World War I returned to France, 130,000 French soldiers were already dead, a million more captured and shipped off the camps. Before anyone could really blink, frantic fallen and tennis matches seemed a distant luxury. Jean's first impulse was actually to join up

with a number of other former French soldiers whose aim was to travel to Britain to take up arms opposing Hitler from across the channel. From there, Jean intended to join the allies in their fight against Nazi fascism. Well, yes, as Axi Moronicus, depression, era, luxury sounds like, yes, is oxymoronicus depression-era luxury sounds? I guess, yeah, and those tournaments did fall into that category.

Instead, just before he was set to leave, Churchill ordered a bombing of the Algerian port of Merz Elkaber. This bombing killed 1,200 French soldiers and Jean, however the patriot, decided he couldn't work for Great Britain after all. And since Paris had fallen to newly installed French government, now around at a Vichy, was essentially a Nazi puppet regime. And working for the Vichy government was an act of either collaborationism or treason, depending on who was doing the counting. Still, Jean decided to stay in France and work with the Vichy

government as the minister for general education and sport. Okay, the World Cup is the time for unity, Tom. Just put politics aside. A Jean had some pretty, shall we say, unusual ideas about the role of sports and fitness as a function of public policy. He believed that a lack of emphasis on sports and fitness in schools were creating a generation ill-equipped for the rigors and difficulties of life and that schools prioritized book learning over physical education and that was some real bullshit. You know, I bet we should be more athletic as a super easy sell in a country that just got its ass kicked in a war like during six weeks of a campaign, right? That was a pretty easy sell at that particular time in history.

Ooh, that's the drawing board. As John saw his appointment into the V. She regime as an opportunity to fix both of those problems. He said about working on a curriculum, which would include a minimum of nine hours of compulsory gym class every week, and which would involve building an athletic field in every city in France, no matter how small. I mean, how the fuck are you gonna bully the unathletics smart kids?

If you don't have a physical competition with them every single day, yeah. Yeah, exactly, thank you. Cecil, if I have to read books by liars with secret meanings that I never understand all day, I get to hit you in the face with a ball for a couple of hours. That's just fair. And there you have it, folks. The two sides of the citation needed to go in. And you might be wondering, what value does any of this nonsense have in the midst of an

existential war against the Nazi? That would be a great question. A question that eventually even the collaborationist Vichy regime also asked John's ardent patriotism and his annoying insistence on improving the physical well-being of the French people at a time when the physical well-being of the French people was not much of a concern for the German powers that be finally came to a head. In 1942, John was fired by the regime from his weird ministry of fitness job, and so John headed back home. Unlike most Jim teachers, he wasn't fired for dating one of his high school students. That's it.

John was not a terribly politically sophisticated guy. He was used to winning tennis matches and show boating about as a national celebrity. And this whole fired thing had really soured him on collaborating with the Nazi oppressors. So we decided again that he would join the fight against the Nazis, but first he had to tell someone in the V. She government about his plans to basically betray the German installed puppet regime and wouldn't you know what that didn't work out for him. He's just sadly taken a closet full of warm-up suits off the hangers. Okay, maybe I don't like the Nazis.

This is my life. At the train station, Jean was captured by two Gestapo Thuds. Jean was held for seven days and interrogated and given truth serum, which is nothing, and is also about as much as Jean knew about anything important. From there, he was sent to a concentration camp outside of Berlin, and he was kept in solitary confinement without running water or a toilet for six months. But when you are an international celebrity, even in times of brutal fucking war with the actual Nazis, the privilege train rolls on because the king of Sweden, a big tennis fan had heard of baratras capture and imprisonment and lobby to have Sean move to a better,

swankier, Nazi prison. Oh, every shower comes with Zyclon A instead of Zyclon D. Upgrade. I mean, look, six months without a toilet, he was busting out of that prison with her without the king of Sweden. Which finally brings us to castle, inner the site of that prison. Boo! More tennis talk! More tennis talk! All right, so page nine of twelve, Tom doesn't get to give you shit about getting to the subject below the fold anymore, okay? You're gonna make sure you're not that clear.

The fold was when we had these things, it was at, don't worry about it, this is the way. A castle itter is a small castle on a hill in Austria. When the Nazis took shit over, they converted the castle into a prison for the VIP set. These were prisoners that had enough social or political value that the Nazis wanted to keep them alive so they could use them likely for prisoner exchanges. I feel like that's a judgy moment when you show up. Just like, hey, so yeah, I'm a nuclear scientist and a new guy, what'd you do? You played a little tennis school.

That makes sense. That's great. Real threat to the Reich. A compared to the run of the Mil-Nazi concentration camps, Castle Iter was pretty posh. There was enough food for people to eat more than a single meal every day. And they were allowed to talk with fellow hostages and even from time to time to correspond with their family. John would live at Castle Iter for two years. I mean, I pretty posh at this point was contains shit receptacle. But yeah, I mean, that sounds, that's not, I guess, I guess. In 1944, Paris was retaken from the Nazi hordes and Hitler died a coward and a bunker not long after.

And I think modern listeners would think that as these things were happening, as the red army of Russia swept across Europe, rushing to Germans before them, they might be tempted to really say, great, now everyone's been saved. But it doesn't work that way. Tom, I swear, if Nick Fuentes is waiting on your side of the mic to warn us about the dangers of communism. Now, for the prisoners in Castle Iter, this was actually the most fraught moment in the entire war. Even though the guards abandoned the castle itself, leaving the prisoners technically free, they were very far from safe. The value of these prisoners as political currency had just collapsed, and they understood this. The area surrounding the castle was absolutely crawling with SS soldiers, some loyal true believers, others fearful that any living

prisoners might tell on them for, you know, being Nazis. But while the war itself was quickly collapsing, so too was the only thing shielding Baratra and his fellow prisoners from certain death. The men held a castle itter knew they needed to get help, and Baratra volunteered. Slipping out a window in the castle, Baratria began his journey for help, dressed as a quote, dim-witted peasant. I didn't know there was a dress.

Did he start as a smart one and get caught? Yeah, just go back. A help in the form of American troops capturing enemy territory nearby was still 40 miles away. Between castle itter and the Americans were active German lines, including a no-man's land between still lightly active trenches full of confused, but again active SS soldiers. Eventually, Roger came across a German major named Joseph Gung Gengl.

Hmm, I'm not sure if I should trust this person, but it does seem dim-witted. So I can't find anything that explains how Baratra knew this, but Gangle was working with the Austrian resistance to oppose the Nazis. Baratra explained the whole castle situation to Gangle and Gangle agreed to help. He could really do much because he only had about 20 guys who were also trustworthy to the cause of, you know, not being fucking Nazis. Okay, these 20 guys were very clearly just walking around doing Nazi hedging stuff. Right.

Right. It sounds like they're going to help, but still, I feel like they were just like, I will see. Now taking a big white flag and a huge chance, gangle met up with an approach to the American 23rd tank battalion. He spoke with Captain Jack Lee who explained that, you know, a famous tennis player dressed as an idiot needed them to help storm a castle. Finally, we're rescued.

Can I take off this Ranger's jersey? You know now that I'm on your side? But perhaps because the story was too insane to be made up, Captain Lee agreed to lead a rescue mission. And so it was that 20 German soldiers, along with the American 23rd Tank Battalion, marched together back to Castle Iter. They parked their tank, of which by the way, they only had one left at the castle entrance and entered the castle, prepare for the inevitable German attack.

I'm saying, I feel like you, you have to lose the official battalion title at a certain number of tanks, though, right? Like, you can't, you're a battalion at, right? So like, so maybe the prisoners, many of them old, were armed with what weapons the guards had left behind, and the castle entrance was further reinforced. The help had come just in time. By dawn of the next day, the SS attacked the castle, destroying the tank of the castle entrance, a firefight ensued in for a full day in the very last days of the war. Americans, Germans, and the French fought together to defend a castle from the German SS invaders. It's a good thing

they won because the consequences would have been super embarrassing. They're like, okay, go back inside, right? And this motleyley crew they did unbelievably well. The only casualty on the side of the not-notsies was Joseph Gangle, who was killed by a sniper. One hundred SS troops were captured as prisoners of war. Now you might be wondering if this little nothing burger of a battle was really all that noteworthy as more than just a footnote or a piece of trivia, but that's because I've withheld some key information until now. Of the prisoners at Castle Iter, two of them were former French Prime Ministers, and these prisoners were instrumental after the war in rebuilding and reformulating the policies that propelled France forward

into the 20th century. Had these prisoners been recaptured and killed modern day France might not look the same all because they were saved by the world's least likely tennis star. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I managed to write a lot of words about a tennis player and still not learn anything about tennis. And are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it. All right, Tom. What's the best name for the Nazis hotel for POWs? Hey, the double tree We, it's Carlton or D. Radisson, Cawthorn. Radisson, Cawthorn all day. That's great. That is correct. Well done.

All right, Tom. What lesson can we take away from John's story when fighting today's Nazis? Hey, all you need is love. Be never underestimate the trouble a high school gym teacher can cause. Or see, if you surround the French with someone from every side, they don't have anyone to surrender to. So they actually do a pretty good job. He's the best.

All you need is love. It's a I like it. Correct. Yes. All right, I have one for you, Tom. Over the course of the SSA, we've learned that Sean Baratre used to lose some of his tennis measures on purpose

to get into his opponent's heads. And we learned that he was right about to not collaborate with the V.C. government when it turned out at the last second that he was actually too patriotic to the Monoc commit treason. What other little known fact about him is equally true. Hey, he was actually just big-boned. B, his penis was actually kind of the ideal size

because big ones, like really big ones hurt. That wasn't true though. I think that was just that's the true one. C, that wasn't a stumble. He was actually just about to start to jog. Or, D, he was actually stirring up all that negative press just to drive record numbers of people to Twitter It was It is D well done sir so good all right Tom who's the worst opponent to play in Nazi tennis a

Base line Rick Himmler, C, serve a brawn, C, Lindsey Graham slam, for D, eight off racquetler. Oh, Rick Hitler. It's got to be Lindsey Graham slam.

It's got to be Lindsey Graham slam Oh, I'm sorry. It's baseline Rick him So hard to make tennis puns holy shit Jesus Christ fuck that game. I hate that game. I don't even like fucking hate it period the end so mad about that Speaking of things you fucking hate, who do you wanna do in S-Z-N-A-S-E-N-A-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-S- I will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Noah Heath and myself on God-Off-A-Movies, the Scaling Atheist, the Skeptocrat, and the Antiminus. You can hear Cecil and Tom over on cognitive dissonance, and if you'd like to help keep this show going,

you can make a burp episode donation at patreon.com, slash citation pod, or the Visify Star Review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media media or check, show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. And another point for Baratra.

He's playing an outstanding match today. I said you're the ball, but which one is there real ball? Can I murder you guys? I said you the ball, but which one is the real ball? Can I murder you guys?