Doomed to Fail - Ep 115 - The Bumbling Germans who Landed on Long Island: Operation Pastorius

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

🚀 Dive into the covert world of WWII espionage with our latest episode on Operation Pastorius! 🌍🔍 Discover the daring mission, the saboteurs' journey, and how it all unraveled. Tune in for a thrilling tale of spies, secrets, and sabotage. 🎙️🎧#OperationPastorius #WWIIHistory #Espionage #PodcastEpisode #HistoricalMysteries #SecretMissions #WarStories #SpyTales #HistoryUnveiled #MustListen Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B-A-019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom, we are recording in one. This is for you. Welcome to Doom the Fell Pod. This is the number one podcast on nothing, but we appreciate our fans and the folks that support us.

I'm joined here by Taylor. I'm sorry to redo this. No, stop. I'm going to do it. Okay. Ready? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Doom to Fail.

My name is Taylor. I'm joined by Fars. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, anywhere you listen to podcasts. And today, Fars, it's going to tell us the story. Taylor, you're actually more confident than me at like everything. That's how I've been doing it on TikTok because it's trying to get us more views. No, you're, you crushed that way more than me.

There is a mosquito that is. tracking me it's okay so I'm covering a fun topic today it is like a serious topic but it's like so funny the way that it played out one article that I read about this

said that this was kind of like a Mr. Bean episode which once you start to get into it you can totally relate to so I'm going to cover something called Operation Historius have you heard of this before Taylor I feel like maybe but keep you go

well I'm going to break this up into several acts so act one is what Operation Pistorius was two is the historical context by which it was created and then number three is what was the outcome of this operation

so go ahead sorry I tell you do you read you this we watch the day of the dolphin no It's this George C. Scott movie and it's so stupid but the poster says

unwittingly he trained a dolphin to kill the president of the United States and it's about George Scott be a dolphin trainer and that's what I feel like this is going to be about but I'm sure it's not really about that. It's like it's not that off actually this is incredible. It is absolutely incredible.

Everything you expected to be. It's almost as stupid actually. It's a different subject matter but it's as stupid. So getting into Act 1, what Operation Pistorius was, people are going to start kind of clueling it on what I'm talking about here.

So Operation Pistorius was a Nazi German plan to sabotage key targets in the United States during World War II. So this was a Hitler-created, Hitler-ordained mission, and it was given to an Admiral named Wilhelm Canaris, much to his bad luck, to execute on this mission. So Canaris named it

pastorius. I was curious like where that came from because it reminded me a lot of that South African guy, the blade man. Yeah, that's what is that his name? It's Pistorius. He just got out. He just got out. It's crazy. Like I hope he has a horrible life from here on not because I'm 100% I think he 100% did it. He 100% killed her. Like for sure he killed her.

He just got scared and shot her. And also like the Get scared. You don't believe that. Do you? Like he clearly shot and killed her. Like if. No. I think he was like weirdly drunk and like fiddling around on his stumps and like got confused and had a gun which you shouldn't have and he was hot because also part of the story is where the fans in no AC I just think it was like a weird situation but listen if I woke up and Rachel wasn't there but I knew she had stayed the night my first inclination if I hear a door open somewhere else is into like start shooting my first inclination was like no probably Rachel yes yes

I mean, unless she had it coming. Anyways, sorry, we're going to go to dark territory. I need to stop incriminating myself. So this is interesting. I looked this up. So Canaris, this admiral that Hitler was like, Canaris, you figure this out. He named it Pestorius after this guy named Francis Daniel Pestorius,

who was one of the first German settlers to come to the original 13 colonies in the U.S. and establish the first permanent German-American settlement called Germantown, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Philadelphia. So, quick sidetrack here. I know someone who lives there. It's beautiful. I love Philadelphia is great.

I love family. Taylor, so this is a little bit of a side note. I think I might be starting to come over to your side of the equation when it comes to whether the time in which something happens should shape how we feel about the morals of the people of that time because in 1688 1688 six years after this guy Francis arrived in the colonies

he along with other prominent German expats drafted and signed the 1860 or sorry the 1688 German town Quaker petition against slavery which was the first public statement against slavery in the colonies literally the first one. It was actually referenced in the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln. It was dusted off and found in 1844. It was lost again until like 2015.

And like it was just found again and restored and on exhibit in Pennsylvania. But this is literally the very first time. This is happened in the U.S. And it happened in 1688. Yeah. Yeah, they knew. They knew, which is interesting. This is crazy to me because I went through several rabbit holes here.

None of this is right now. So I'm kind of just vamping here. So forgive me if I'm wrong about this. But they, Germany, the parts of Europe that are now called Germany, the Rhineland, they didn't have slavery there. The Atlantic slave trade didn't come to Germany until like the early 1800. So by the time these guys were there. And when they left, they never experienced slavery.

Like, it wasn't even a thing in their home country. Like, it was all brand new when they first arrived to the U.S. So really weird, really wild. So, um, anyways, it's kind of interesting that he named it after Francis, given Hitler's general view about German Americans. So on the one hand, he was kind of proud that Germans were typically more accomplished than other ethnic groups in the United States at that time. but on the other hand he also hated them for intermarrying and diluting german blood so

a little bit of a weird kind of relationship that hitler had with german americans but there we go so regardless this guy caneris admiral he set about to recruit agents for the mission and settled on eight guys i'm going to name them off for the historical content for the sake of history but their names outside of two or three of these don't really matter so one is um george john dash uh ernest peter burger those are the two that really matter going forward. Herbert Hans Haupt, Heinrich Hink, Edward John Curling,

Herman Otto Newbauer, Richard Kourin, Werner Thiel. So the top two, the dash guy that I mentioned in the burger guy, the only ones that really matter going forward in the story, but those are the eight that were recruited. His recruitment criteria was to find people who had experience in the U.S.

or with American culture and the interests of basically blending in with Americans easily. All these guys were deemed loyal to Hitler in Germany, and all the men he recruited were members of the German-American Boond, which that's if they were like American citizens, for example, or residents, then they were part of that organization, or if they were German residents directly, then they were part of the Nazi party. Either way, they were part of some affiliation with the Nazi party.

Yeah, for context, the Boond, it was a U.S. political party, established support and promote Nazi ideology. That's basically it. That's who they were. Yeah. Yeah. They were really famous for having, like, a Madison Square Garden rally. Do you remember this? Yeah. That big Nazi rally rally. I think, like, someone very, very famous spoke there.

I'm sure. You keep going. I'm sure. Yeah. You know what? I did find that. And I just didn't write down the outline, but I can't remember what it was now. But, um, so these recruits were given extensive training on how to destroy or sabotage targets.

This included training on explosive and mechanics. and chemical engineering. Their targets were going to be hydroelectric plants, chemical manufacturing plants, railroad tracks, cryolite plants, which they were used to create fluorine and aluminum,

aluminum being a critical component in production of aircraft vehicles and munitions, and fluorine was used for uranium enrichment. And they also wanted to blow up bridges, water facilities, that's kind of the one part of like what this operation was. Let me go into the historical context of what was happening at this time. So act to the historical context.

So in September of 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a tripartite pact forming the access powers. So the point of the pact was to establish that if any member country was attacked, the remaining countries were duty bound to defend them. In 1941, the U.S. was neutral. And it wanted to remain neutral. It was actually passing Neutrality acts as bills in Congress to almost force the president into neutrality. The war at that time was seen as a European issue and one that we didn't really need to butt in on. Japan saw it differently, though.

I started going on a rabbit hole of why Japan and Germany joined forces because they seemed kind of like strange bedfellows. But that is like a whole another episode. There's a whole lot of history and context in terms of why that happened. Regardless, Japan was part of this pact between Germany and Italy, and Japan decided to engage the U.S. proactively at Pearl Harbor. So their logic was that the U.S. would join the war anyways, and so they might as well cripple the Pacific Fleet before that happens. The U.S. had reacted to Japan. Basically, Japan had been acting aggressively towards China and other countries in Southeast Asia, and so the U.S. had already started. aggressions towards them, but they had done it through economic sanctions, not through actual

attack because they were trying to stay neutral. And Japan just saw like, okay, eventually they're going to come in anyways. They're already putting economic sanctions. They're going to escalate. So the goal was to cripple that fleet while they had the chance to do it. But being crippled was kind of the opposite outcome of the U.S. Japan had destroyed somewhere around 1% of the overall fleet at Pearl Harbor, but what it had done was accelerate the U.S.'s involvement in World War II. So it was a badly, it was a bad plan, basically. I was just talking to an older gentleman who I coached baseball with and he was like, we were

chatting, he was like, oh, I was like, you know, World War II history, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, do you think FDR knew about Pearl Harbor? And he said 100% yes. You mean you was going to happen? Yeah, because it got U.S. into the war. I think we'd already given about bunch of ships to the to england like we were going to have to do it eventually you know yeah yeah and that's kind of what i meant when i said that congress was trying to keep the president at bay with legislation was because fdr did see it going that way and the rest of america wasn't with them they're like we don't need to be involved in this so the u.s enters the the war at this time

Germany was kind of easy, breezy about the whole thing because Hitler's calculation was that the Americans would be focused on Japan and mostly leave the European battle between Germany, France, and the Brits. The U.S. didn't see it that way. Technically, we attacked Japan first. So it was an operation called the Doolittle Raid four months after Pearl Harbor. But the engagement in the Pacific was mostly to just let Japan know, like, hey, we know we're coming for you eventually, like we're here.

but like we'll get to you later and the US FDR specifically viewed Germany as a much more dangerous threat overall than it did Japan and and yet another miscalculation by Hitler the US basically applied the vast majority of its military focus towards it rather than Japan which was a bad time for that to happen so one reason for that miscalculation had to do with the US's capacity to produce. materials needed to conduct war. You are going to remember this from the Manhattan Project episode of last podcast on the left, but there was during World War II, a Japanese commander named General Taramichi Kouribayashi, who was responsible for holding Iwo Jima against the Americans during World War II. He studied in the U.S. and he traveled around to industrial hubs in the U.S., specifically to motor vehicle plants in Michigan.

he was quoted as saying quote I saw the plant area of Detroit by one button push all the industries will be mobilized for military business so he knew something that Hitler didn't when all this went down which was the US had the resources

to continuously wage war when other countries didn't other countries would have to invade other countries to marshal their resources to continue to conduct war so that was a miscalculable on Hitler's part. There was another one that was a big one that led to why Operation

Pistorius ended up happening. In June of 1941, Germany did probably the first really big, bad, stupid thing, which was mobilized the largest ground invasion in history in Operation Barbarossa against the USSR. The point of this being that the USSR had agricultural means and also oil production, that Germany needed to continue the war and it was the only choice it had but obviously nobody's ever been successful

invading the USSR and so Germany also realized it was not going to be successful basically what ended up happening was that if they didn't knock them out in this first blow they were in for a very long sustained ground battle which is what ended up happening and they didn't have the resources to continue fighting this so there's obviously a great downcarlin

on this called Ghost of the Oast Front If you ever listen to that or have it, so good. It's about Germany trying to go into Russia. I actually have listened to that. And he paints a really great picture of this has never worked. Never. No country. It's cold as balls there.

No. It's cold as balls. Like, yeah, it's, um, it's that in Afghanistan. No country has ever successfully fought invaded Afghanistan or Russia. Like it's just those two places seemingly, it's weird. Like they even can't fight themselves. Yeah, they can't each other, yeah.

Yeah, I know, we all saw Rambo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get most of my history from Rambo movies. If Sylvester Sloan doesn't know it, then I don't need to know it either. Fair, fair. So long story short, is that when the U.S. entered the war,

Hitler saw, which we don't know for sure, because we don't know what he actually thought about the situation, but he saw the destruction of the U.S. industrial power is the only way to fend them off while he sorted out this Russia problem and the fact that he's being invaded by or being attacked by every other country. He just didn't expect when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor that Germany would be in the line of fire for this, right?

He was like, whatever, Japan attacked you, go kill Japan. I'll keep fighting this horrible battle that I'm losing right now anyways and deal with you later. But then he learned that that wasn't going to be the case. He was like, the only thing I can do is destroy their, military creation apparatus which is what that general in japan had learned long ago so but long story short is like at this point uh there's some historical speculation that even by late 1941 to 1942 around this time hiller probably knew he was cooked like he probably knew he was

done um but we don't know for sure obviously so getting to act three what the outcome was this is where the Mr. Bean part of this whole thing starts, which is incredible. So with that backdrop of history, knowing that Hitler was like, I have to take out these industrial plants. Let's get this rag-tag team of eight screw-ups together to try and blow up a bunch of factories. That's what was going on. So this group of eight were separated into four and four. And each was put on a submarine. So U202, a submarine which landed at Amigenesset, Long Island.

Oh, God, Long Island. Do you know this? No, like, it's like Amgenacet or something. I mean, yeah. So on June 13, 1942, four of these idiots landed there. There was another submarine called U-584, which landed at Ponte Bedbara Beach in Florida, which is just east of Jacksonville, about three days later on June 16th.

This is all 1942. Okay, I know that this, you're going to tell me a bumbling story, but they got here. Yeah. That's crazy. That like eight Germans invaded the United States. But still.

But they did it in the goofiest way. So the first group, they were spotted immediately by a Coast Guardsman, a guy named John Cullen. And he was like, what are you idiots doing like you don't really it wasn't that I mean I know we're trying

to make it sound like but it wasn't that skillful I know but I think it's still wild what's funny is that these these Germans tried to bribe this guy Cullen and so they give him $300 cash like hey I'll give you 300 bucks

forget that you just saw us disembark from a naval submarine get into a rubber dingy with crates of explosives I'm just going to be 300 bucks wearing our Nazi hats. We're in our Nazi hats. They legitimately were wearing military uniforms.

The reason being was that they were like, well, if we wear these, then we'll just be held as prisoners of war rather than shot in the back of the head as spies. That was the entire idea. Good, good, good, good, good. What's incredible. So they offer this guy $300. And he goes, yeah, sure, I'll take it. It turns out they shortened him $40.

He gave him $260 instead of the $300. and so he goes you know what fuck these guys he went and reported them anyways amazing so the coast guard searched the area and they found these a bunch of like german uniforms and creates of explosives it's just all kinds of obvious spies here yeah blow this up circled x like an x on it yeah exactly but the guys themselves they'd already left they already caught a train to uh to new york city so they were on their way. It's funny because the U-boat for this group had its own issue. Like I said, it stayed kind of like offshore and let them load up on a rubber dinghy and go to shore that way,

but it beached itself. So this German U-boat was beached right off Long Island until the following morning when the tide came in and finally lifted it up enough to it could actually float away. It's just so stupid. Yeah. The Florida team, the other U-Vote, the Florida team, they ended up booking it over to Chicago with the intent of being the, with intent being the two teams would sink up in Cincinnati on the 4th of July,

ironically. None of this came to fruition. So one of the guys, the first guy I listed off, this guy, George John Dash, the leader of one of the two groups. So he was actually a U.S. citizen. He was born in Germany, but he had been naturalized after illegally

immigrating to the U.S. as a stow weight on a ship. he would eventually be naturalized and join the U.S. Army before being honorably discharged. He would marry an American woman with whom he would later cheat on by marrying another American woman under a false identity and having a baby with that lady. So he had a lot of going on. Yeah. And it's like you just stay, just get divorced. It's fine. Just get divorced.

See, if he could maybe spend some time learning a skill like archery, maybe another sort of happened. Yeah. If he was really big in a curling, you know, if he just distracted himself with curling. If only. So similarly, this other guy, the second guy lists off, Ernest Peter Berger, which is a hilarious German name, was...

Burger just means, like, citizen. This is really? Yeah. Why do you know weird German words? You know Toad is murder and Berger is citizen. Like, wow. I'm so German for like eight years. And these two, like, sunk in.

And a lot of other words, but I just happen to know those words that are helpful for this conversation. They're very helpful. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't mean to criticize you. So this guy, Berger, he was also a naturalized U.S. citizen. He would serve in the National Guard before moving back to Germany during the Great Depression. What, so these two basically had closer ties to the U.S. than the other six. And it was with this that, While they were in a hotel room in New York City, pulled Berger into his room and basically told him only one of us. I'm going to tell you something. And depending on how you react, only one of us is going to walk out of this room, which is like pretty cool and serious. I love it.

He told him that he was defecting the U.S. He was pulling a hunt for Red October and that he was planning on selling out the other agents. Burger, are you with me? and obviously under these conditions he was like yeah I'm with you because you just told me you're going to kill me if I'm not with you so Burger agreed to join dash whatever you want sir

yeah of course one part of the story is that he had the window open on this hotel room was like somebody somebody is going to walk out of this room and the other one's going to go out this window cool cool dash cool

um so on june 15th this is two days after they land like this guy defected immediately like he was like why did you do all this like so two days uh on june 15th uh dash calls the fbi and tells them about this plot the fbi was like okay sure cool we'll call you later like it was like they were so dismissive and so didn't give a shit about this whole thing um it was on the 19th that he would catch a train into D.C. and go to FBI headquarters with $84,000 in catch,

which is the equivalent of $1.4 million today. And again, told him the plot. This time the FBI believed him and we're like, okay, tell us everything about the other people that are a part of this instead about to capture the rest of them. So FDR

was super involved with all this. And he was super pissed. Like he he had really strong feelings about this. He wanted all these people to be killed immediately. It's interesting because as I research this, and this is why history

is amazing and why it matters so much. The way FDR handled this was brought up again after 9-11 by the Bush administration on how we should handle enemy combatants. Whoa. It's crazy. That's cool. Yeah, it is

it is well because basically the point was that in most cases people will be tried in a criminal court but that takes time that takes the offense to be a salary it takes a lot of like effort and after i was like you know what uh classify these like combatants and we're not doing a court thing we're going to set up a military tribunal and i'm going to choose who's a part of it and they're just going to decide my way like it's basically yeah like he just went around the entire system um And these guys were, again, at this point, they'd only been the U.S. for like two days. Like, they hadn't done anything. They ended up being convicted of violating the law of war, violating an article of war against providing intelligence to an enemy,

violating another article against spying, and the conspiracy to commit all the offenses above. So their court, well, I guess a trial, be. So their trial would have been held on July 8th. And by August 1st, they were all found guilty. And they were all sentenced to death, all eight of them. Later, because Berger and Dash thought that they would be considered heroes. So they were like shocked by all this. The FBI had never told anyone that they helped. Hoover took full responsibility for catching these guys. but I guess in some way he had some back channel communications with FDR. So FDR decided that he would commute Berger's sentence to life in prison

and dashed his sentence to 30 years in prison. The other six, they were all executed about a week after their conviction by lecture. Again, this went all outside the normal procedures because what have you ever heard of anybody in America being executed a week after they were convicted? Like it's literally never happened. And they all went on the same day. It was just like one after the other, after the other, after the other, which had to be like a super creepy workday for those jailers.

They had all written out letters to loved ones. I couldn't find any actual last words. And really, like, reading some of the letters, most of them were pretty sad. Like, it was just a lot of, like, longing for a different life and a different outcome. It's until you get to Edward Curling, what he wrote to his wife.

So he wrote the following to his wife. in quotes. Marie, my wife, I am with you to the last minute. This will help me to take it as a German. Even the heaven out there is dark. It's raining. Our graves are far from home, but not forgotten. Marie, until we meet in a better world, may God be with you, my love to you, my heart to my country. Hail Hitler, you're at always. It was just like, come on, man. You really had to put the Hill Hitler there. I mean, he's on the way out. I mean, my thing is, like, you don't have to be a scumb act to the end. Like, I don't know.

Yeah. No, no, no. It's not great. So, luckily for Burger and Dash, Fterr actually dies three years after all this happens on April 12th, 1945. And his successor, Harry S. Truman, he didn't harbor the same resentment for them. F. F.R. hated these yet.

I don't know what it was, but he really hated these guys. But Truman didn't actually feel that way. These are the, like, I think it's just like it's wild that they got here. I don't know. Like, I just, it's right. Maybe I'm not thinking about that way. I mean, just like, they got all the way here.

Do you know how fucking pissed I'd be at the Navy that they got all the way here at the Coast Guard? That's true. That's true. I was thinking about it. I was thinking about in the context of like September 11th. But at the same time, those people weren't dropped off by a U-Boat.

U-boats. Yeah. If there's a U-boat that makes it all the way in Long Island, I'm going to be fucking pissed. You want to know what's even funnier? I have friends who have manages on Long Island. I'm FDR. My friends have mansions on Long Island.

What are they going to do? Walking to my friend's mansion house. You have friends who have mansions on Long Island? And that was me being FDR. That's my FDR. Oh, I have friends. I was going to say, we've got to hang out with your friends.

You know, what's even funnier is that this whole trip started with them flying through France. And apparently that one of these guys got shit fuck hammered and started to talk about how he's a spy going to America. Like, all this was like close to getting derailed almost immediately when they left training in Germany after those three weeks. So the fact that he got this far, actually a good point. Yeah, I could see why he'd be so upset.

I'd be pissed. My dad will sometimes be like, oh, I'm, I got recruited by the military. Just like go to the Middle East and just like mess with people. So I'm going to like walk when there's no, when they don't walk signs up and like, you know, parking, parking in a no parking zone. And just like, you know, mess with the culture. Make people feel uncomfortable. Uh-huh. Just be a minor annoyance.

Yes. so so harry truman again he did not harbor this resentment for them so in 1948 he actually granted clemency on the condition that dash and burger i mean the other six were dead right so at this point he only has dash and burger to deal with he was like look guys just go home never come back again and we'll be good so they did that but their later life wasn't really that well documented what we do know is that they were very much shunned in Germany as traders. Burger started

making and selling tools to get by and he ultimately died in 1975. Dash actually seemed, yeah, which like this one's even more wowie. So Dash kind of seemed to have a sadder life since he was kind of the orchestrator of all this. He was a lot more

of like a public face for the scrutiny that they all received. And so he ended up having a move from city to city like constantly once people in the city knew who he was. he wouldn't die until 1991 Wow Yeah

Yeah So that's kind of That's kind of almost where it ends Except for The fact that In 2010 Utility workers Were doing something

At a wastewater facility in Washington, D.C. And they stumbled on a monument that was dedicated to the executed agents It had their names and the dates they were executed and it had the inscription of NSWPP, which was believed to stand for the Nationalist Socialist White People's Party, which is the American Nazi Party. And this just came right back to life of like what's going on with what happened and the all the stuff going on around like the trial and everything else. long story short was a park service decided that it was going to just remove this it stored somewhere the scene had been out there presumably for 50 60 years and nobody had stumbled

on it and that's weird yeah super random but it was in a really weird spot nobody ever went there um and it is thought that that was the burial ground of the six that were executed um wow so yeah i wrote down um i wrote down thoughts on maybe who i would cast for this but I can't even think of who have to cast for this. It's so, it's so Monty Python. I'm looking at their photos. I'm going to share a couple of them, but you just see them just like,

and also like, these guys are very German. They're not like, what's that movie with Brad Pitt? We're like, he's killing Nazis. What's it called? In glorious bastards.

Yeah. Like, so, remember the part in glorious bastards where they find out that that guy is the, is the spy because of the way he does the number three. Yes, yes. So I knew that immediately because, as you know, I've studied German for a really long time. And I knew that that is how, I knew that that was wrong.

The second he did it, I was like, oh, my God, he's fucked. And then, like, he got fucked and, like, whatever. Like, these guys aren't even trying to, like, not walk on the shore whether you're not the uniform. You know? Well, the thing is, like, being, I mean, there's a lot of Germans. Like, we just, the person this was named after Pistorius. Like I said, like, there's, like, a German town in Pennsylvania. There's a lot of Germans there, but these were, yeah, I'm looking at the curling guy,

the one who wrote Hell Hitler in his last letter to his wife. Just for the record, the reason I called that one out, none of the other ones who wrote letters or loved ones said Hail Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. They're all like, I'm really sad. I brought so much shame to my family. You know, like that's how they framed it, not like going proud of the dark night.

I know. Well, that's weird, though. But, like, why? So did Curling want, he didn't want to defect the United States. Who'd wanted to defect to the United States? It was Dash and Berger. Well, Dash is the one who started all this. Okay.

But he got to go back to Germany? Yeah, him and Berger did. Yeah. That doesn't seem fair. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, that's why they were outcasts because they're like, you fucked your fellow German's over.

to save yourself and i mean dash does look like a weird skeleton man he doesn't not look like a nazi it's funny burger and um heinrich hink they look like they can be siblings they do feel also there's like i feel yeah um let me just screenshot this entire page and i'll put this in our thing because this is in um i get all these pictures from the creative common so they're all like unlicensed because they're old you know um so i was going to screech out the whole thing to show you but i did yeah yeah i mean god also like how long was that trip i'm really really fixated on the fact that they got here like how long does it take to get to america on a u-boat from germany how long was it just the four of them on that like a tiny u-boat was it no no no

it was like a big evil and it dropped them off yeah it was a naval operation okay so when the one when the one was beached for a while there were like people in it being like fuck dude but that's what's funny about it yes like it's so Monty Python it's like what you're like what are you talking like you just dropped off a gang of Nazis and now you're just like it's so weird I know it sounds so implausible that's wild these guys Let's see what Middoney gives us It didn't give anything

You know what gave me I did just the operation Pistorius and it gave me like a UFO Well you got No no I just wanted to see what it said in just that And then I did soldiers seeking onto a beach in Florida

From a submarine that has beached in the sand And those are pretty good People were so crazy back then you just have to have like a lot of guts to do that yeah I mean he lasted two days so I don't know how much guts it took but like it was in the grand scheme it wasn't a bad idea

like if you're trying if you're fucked if you're Hitler this is like the part of where I was like I always thought Hitler was some like military genius you know and you read about this like oh you just did a lot of really like these were known bad ideas but also there are moves of desperation right like if he didn't have to go into russia i doubt he would have broken his pack

with Stalin and gone into russia like that's a he's he had to have known at least as much that that was a bad move yeah did you watch downfall no should i in german it's so good is it really okay yes it is so intense but it really i mean like it shows how like crazy he was getting and it shows like some of the people that were around him were like still like weirdly believing it until like the very very end and then some people were like trying to escape and berlin's just like getting attacked it's just like so so like what's her name like hitler's girlfriend is like having parties still she's trying to like eva brown's that actually everything is normal and then like i know that like

the gerbils family killed all their kids but there's and then like each other but there's a scene yes so they have like seven kids right there's a scene in downfall where frau gerbius the wife of gerbils obviously seven kids in a bunker so they're in like bunk beds and at night they're all sleeping so first she goes to hit hitler she's like don't quit don't quit and he's like get her off of me like whatever she's a true believer then she goes and she takes all of her children are sleeping she takes cyanide pills puts them between their teeth and then pushes their heads together and cracks the pill and kills all of them it's so intense

I'm just like I know she's bad like I know they're bad people but like watching someone kill all of their children just like systematically killing all of them was like so super intense definitely it's crazy that's not you know okay it's gonna probably

sound bad but uh Hitler was a great super villain yes for sure i mean obviously like like i mean it's not that he did anything good but he definitely was like man if he galvanized like he brought the entire world like together and galvanized an entire world and like became this like we're never going to see a villain like that again i don't think i don't think we're ever going to have a super villain like like he's he's it like he went down in

history. That's crazy. Grubel's wife killed their kids. In the bunker? It's in downfall. This is like, you know what, I know what happened historically, but like watching this person do it is so wild. I should watch that. It's actually free on peacock, apparently.

Yeah, you should watch it. It's good. It's also the movie where like, I remember like 10 years ago they were like putting captions over it where he was like yelling other things. do you remember that trend yes it's like so so like other people who made off all were mad about it but it was like you didn't get the right pizza because he's like screaming and like winning the maps oh this is wild wow okay yeah into yeah i've wanted to watch it and i was like i've seen so many of those memes i thought i'd just start laughing but um no it's really

it's really whoever whoever that guy is plays the absolute perfect hitler he's a really really good at it. I also think it's wild how like Germans are in that movie, but like their grandparents were in World War II. Yeah. You know? Like they're like in it so quickly afterwards. The movie, I don't know. The movie came out in 2004. I mean, it's 60 years.

Like, no, I know, but like, if dude time is so crazy Taylor 60 like 80 years ago Hitler was a thing I know 100 years 100 years before that slavery was a thing

it's crazy like I was in Japan the other day taking a sushi making class hosted by a Japanese woman and it was me and Juan two Americans and the rest of the people there were Austrian and German

and I'm like 50 years ago we were actively trying to kill each other and now i'm like learning how to make sushi i was like apartment in toky with you guys it's so weird oh weird yeah yeah history's history's wild yeah um anyways that's my fun little that's super fun today i think yeah i think after uh i would have loved hated to be in the room when fjr found out about that i'm like what what what what what happened we're bad Long Island.

What? Throne a martini glass across the room. And you would have been scared. It would have been fucking great. Someone caught Eleanor and get her in here. He's lost it. Get her in here. He's freaking out.

Yeah. I love it. Dude, this guy who played Hitler, Bruno Gans, like he's, he didn't have the mustache and he looks like Hitler. He looks like Hitler. That's funny.

Anyways. Cool. And do you want to read out before we cut it? I put this on our Instagram, but my friend Agnes is coming on Wednesday to hang out, but she bought me Wisconsin Death Trip, which no one had bought me until now. Remember I talked about that? Yeah. It's so cool.

It took all these, like, pictures of, like, old-timey people, and then, like, little stories from the paper that are just, like, really fun and weird. You hear about that. I heard a little weird noise. What was that? I hear it, look. audience won't know oh my god there's so many dogs in your house they're just losing it this one's trying to climb you while the other one's trying to bite the other one oh yeah anyways like you um

thank you agnes for Wisconsin death trip I will see you in a couple days or I guess I'll see you today because you're coming on the day this gets released and um if anyone else has any fun ideas we are talking histories most epic disasters and notorious failures send us an email Doomedepilpod at gmail.com. Taylor, you're getting good at that. Well, it's been 150 episodes. It's been 150 episodes. I know that.

I'm going to be, we're going to figure, we're going to figure this shit out. I'm on TikTok now every day. I've been TikToking for four days in a row. I'm going to keep going. And, uh, yeah. Great. Um, we'll go ahead and cut it off. Thank you, Taylor.

Thank you, Fars. Thank you.