Forbidden History - The Rise and Fall of Hermann Göring

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

How did Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, cheat the hangman at Nuremberg? This episode unpacks the mysterious circumstances of his death, his manipulative charm, and the unsettling bond he formed with U.S. Army psychiatrist Lt. Colonel Douglas M. Kelley. Cast List: Dr. Linda Papadopoulos: Psychologist Nigel Jones: Author & Historian  Jack El-Hai: Author, 'The Nazi and the Psychiatrist' Frank McDonough: Author & Historian of the Third Reich  Douglas Kelley Jr.: Son of Dr. Douglas Kelley Andreas Mix: Memorium Nuremberg Trials Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Herman Goering, Hitler's second in command, was one of the most intriguing men in wartime Germany. Probably the most charismatic figure in the whole Nazi elite. It's important to have a great sense of humor. And then on the other side, you have this kind of very dark Machiavellian,

manipulative, vindictive person. You know, he was seriously drug addicted. There's no doubts about that. Guring would pop paracoding like peanuts. But his suicide at the Nuremberg trials has remained a mystery for over 70 years. It was fairly obvious that where people were focusing on the potassium cyanide as a primary point of interest.

Just how did Guring get his hands on the poison that ended his life? ended his life. Number one, did he bring it in himself? Number two, was it this American who he became friendly with in Nuremberg prison? On the 1st of October, 1946, Herman Gurring, one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany, was sentenced to death by hanging at the Allied court in Nuremberg. Preparations were made, but on the eve of his execution, in a final act of defiance, Gurring cheated the hangman by deciding his own fate.

His suicide shocked the Allies. But it also posed a question, how did he manage to get hold of a cyanide capsule in a heavily guarded maximum security prison? Had he carried it with him the whole time, concealing it from the extensive and thorough checks carried out by the prison guards, or had he received help from the very people

who were supposed to be guarding him? Herman Goering had risen to become one of the most powerful political leaders in Nazi Germany. A larger-than-life character, he was admired, feared and hated in equal measures. At one time, Gurring was a close confidant of Adolf Hitler, but as the war progressed, he soon found himself out of favor. Guring had a slightly unusual upbringing, certainly as compared to the other Nazi leaders, who were mainly lower middle class origins. Goerin certainly had pretensions to being in high society.

He very early on showed a desire for the military life. He went to military boarding schools when he was in his early teens, and it was very clearly apparent that he was set for a military career, and then the First World War very conveniently broke out, and he joined the Air Force, and became one of Germany's top-scoring air aces in the First World War. Goering's actions in battle had meant that he was seen as a hero in Germany, but his arrogance had made him unpopular with the other men in his squadron, a theme that would run through his career even after the war had ended.

He was a bit of a loss at the end of the war, as many German officers were, they wouldn't really accept the fact that Germany had been defeated. He had a brief period as a stunt flyer in Scandinavia during which he met his first wife Karin, then he came back to his native Barberia and he attended a meeting of the Nazi party. Gurring was looking for a movement to align himself with. He wanted it to be a movement that would be attractive to other military veterans like himself. And so he shopped around and he liked the young Nazi party at the time, Hitler's party,

because it was small. And he believed that he could rise up the ranks quickly. He could become a big fish in this little pond of the Nazi party. Within a year, Hitler gave him command of the Nazi paramilitary wing, the SA, which he took from a disorganized rabble to an organized unit of 11,000 men. And Hitler, for his part, saw that Goering was a great catch because not only was a hero of the war with poor Lamerit, Germany's top medal, glistening at his throat. But he also had contacts in high society, could move in a high society which Hitler never

did and felt very awkward in, and could perhaps unloose purse strings and give them a Nazi party not only added kudos, but funds. I think the ability to get people to feel comfortable around you, to like you, is certainly a very important personality trait when you're in public life, right? So in terms of rising to the top, we see people that are actually, you know, maybe not as charismatic,

but they rise to the top because they give people that sense of, you know, they know what they're doing, they've got that confidence. I think with Guring, what you had was an interesting combination of the confidence, but also he looked like an affable kind of guy.

He looked like the kind of guy you could have a laugh with, which is such a paradox given who he was. Guring was able to prove his worth and loyalty once again in 1923, when the Nazis attempted to seize power with the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. In the early years of the Nazi Party, Hitler, of course, attempted to seize power violently in November 1923 in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, and Guring took a prominent part in that.

He was in the front rank of the marchers when they came up against the police cordon and the police opened fire. Guring was injured, a ricocheting bullet struck him high up in the leg, almost in the groin. Guring was treated for his gunshot wound in Innsbruck, where he received surgery and morphine for the pain. This would be the beginning of his lifelong addiction to opiates. Guring had a long history of drug addiction. It began in the 1920s.

He had been injured, had been shot, and received narc. narcotics to relieve the pain and was soon addicted to that. By 1925, Guring had become a violent and aggressive drug addict. His wife and family were so shocked at both his mental and physical decline that he was sent to Longbro Asylum in Sweden, where he was certified a dangerous drug addict and placed in a straitjacket while he received treatment. He'd actually been in a kind of, you know, a kind of drying-out clinic

in the 1920s. He had two years where, you know, he was seriously drug addicted. There's no doubt about that. And people did talk about him. You know, Gorbils would have nicknames for him, you know, the junkie. So Goring did have this reputation of, you know, he possibly was a drug addict.

Here's a man who kind of, you know, he loved life in that way. But obviously this addiction must have played a part with Goring. In 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. and he appointed Guring Minister without portfolio, Minister of the Interior of Prussia, and Reich Commissioner of Aviation. It would be a long fall from Grace to the Nuremberg prison where he would eventually take his own life in mysterious circumstances.

But even at the height of his career, Guring had never fully recovered from his addiction, and his behavior had not gone unnoticed. I think one of the things that was very noticeable, was the difference between his behavior pre-becoming addicted to morphine and post that. So we see someone who goes from being actually quite controlled to a time when he's very erratic in his behavior.

It wouldn't be until the Nuremberg trials that he would fully regain control of both his addiction and ultimately his life. But despite his troubles at this time, Gering still proved to be an effective leader, In the early years of World War II, he presided over many successful campaigns and victories on all fronts. In the early years, he was a very effective leader. He was in charge of the Nazis' rearmament program.

He was in charge of building up the Luftwaffe. He was a great frontman for the Nazis. Before the Nazi take over power, he was Speaker of the Reichstag and manipulated Parliament in the Nazis' favor. He was one of the three-narser. in Hitler's first coalition cabinet. He was the first head of the Gestapo. So he had almost all the jobs that were going, and he did them extremely efficiently.

It was only when the Second World War broke out that he messed up, and he messed up very big time. He was always prone to make grandiose boasts of what his Luftwaffe could do and not being able to follow that up in actuality. In 1943, the remnants of the German 6th Army was surrounded by Russian troops in Stalingrad. Depleted in numbers and provisions, Hitler ordered them to carry on fighting based on

Gurring's promise to provide them with at least 300 tons of daily provisions. He assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could continue to supply the trapped Sixth Army encircled that Stalingrad, and for that reason Hitler forbade the Sixth Army. to withdraw until it was too late. Guring was only ever able to deliver a fraction of the supplies he had promised. And of the 285,000 troops sent, only 5,000 would live to return to Germany. And they were completely eliminated because Guring wasn't able to keep his promise to supply the army from the air. He just wasn't.

So I think the drugs probably did have a long-term effect on inhibiting his efficiency. So yeah. From Stalingrad onward, Hitler, he hates, he hates scoring. And he becomes alienated from Hitler, and he starts to think, you know, we need to get out of this war. And he's putting our feelers to the Allies. And I think by the end, I think the Allies were thinking, well, we don't want to negotiate with any of these Nazis, we want to put them on trial.

That was quite clear because Churchill says, we don't want to negotiate with these people. These are rats, he said, deserting a sinking ship, and we're going to have retribution, and we're going to have a trial here, and they're not going to wriggle out anymore like they did in the First World War. We're going to put them on trial, and we're going to find them guilty, we're going to execute them, and that's the way we'll deal with them. Towards the end of the war, as the Russians approached, Hitler declared he would not leave his bunker, and instead decided to stay in Berlin till the end and take his own life.

On his learning of the Fuhrer's plans, Gurring sent a telegram to Hitler, requesting permission to take over as leader. But Hitler was convinced Gurring was attempting to usurp him, accused him of treason, and forcibly made him resign from his positions. In May 1945, just days after Adolf Hitler died of suicide, Guring handed himself over to the US forces. He, the man who surrendered to the Americans, was obsessed with keeping the jewels and the art that he'd amassed during the war. He was soft.

He simply was a bit of a mess. One of the first war criminals is captured, Herman Guring. With Guring now in custody, the Allies were keen to commence with the very public war crimes trials at Nurember But his health, both mental and physical, was a real concern to the Allies. They needed to make sure Gurring was fit enough to take the stand, and that task fell to Lieutenant Colonel Douglas M. Kelly. Douglas M. Kelly was an American psychiatrist who served with the U.S. Army during World War II.

Kelly worked with this very high-ranking group of Germans who were being held for trial, and they included Herman Goering and Rudolph Hess and Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Stryker, among many others, a total of 22 men who are military and government leaders. My father had a great opportunity to study some of the most famous criminals, sociopaths, in the entire world. Kelly's initial assignment of the German leaders was quite simple to examine them and determine whether they were fit to stand trial, whether they had the mental capacity to understand the charges against them and to be held responsible for anything that they were

guilty of. And he got to know almost all of them well, and it quickly emerged that some of them were, from a psychiatrist standpoint, more interesting than others. Among the most interesting was Herman Guring. While writing a book on Kelly's life and work, author Jack L. High uncovered boxes of Kelly's research from his time in Nuremberg, the contents of which give intriguing insight

into the mind of one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. When Gering was first captured and imprisoned in Luxembourg, he had with him thousands of pericry Percodein tablets. And this contains probably about 100 tablets that Herman Guring was addicted to. An interesting thing about Guring's history with paracodyn is that Germany was the only place

this drug was manufactured during the war. And Guring managed to divert the factory's entire production to himself. So he was the sole consumer of paracodyn in Germany by the end of the war and was consuming about a hundred tablets about 100 tablets per day. Kelly often refer to how Guring would pop

paracoding like peanuts during meetings and whatever he was doing. You would think that this would have a big effect on his thinking and his behavior. It did have an effect, but it was an effect that increased over time. And by the end of the war, yes, Gering was in bad shape. He came here to Nuremberg in 45, overweight, drug addicted, and it was a hard time for him here in the prison.

They were imprisoned here next to the palace of justice, and they prepared themselves for the trial. One of Kelly's first tasks was to help Guring manage his addiction in time for the trial. But he also had another agent. to medically determine and define the personality type of a Nazi. And it would be the results of this study that would continue to haunt Dr. Kelly with tragic consequences. Kelly went into his study of the prisoners with a hypothesis

that they shared, most likely, some common disorder, psychiatric disorder, that accounted for their criminal behavior. Kelly began to assess his patient's psychological state, but it would be no easy task. Guring wasn't just going to give him what he wanted. He remained cold, aloof, and arrogant. But Kelly was no pushover. Like Guring, when needing to, he could be charming, witty, and manipulative.

One of the traits that Kelly and Guring had in common was skill in manipulating others. manipulating others. Garing, of course, had manipulated the thoughts and feelings and actions of an entire nation of people. They were both master manipulators, and they were masterly manipulating each other and aware of it to some extent. Kelly continued with his assessment, and before long, the two formed a mutual respect. Gurring started to cooperate with Kelly and complied with taking part of his assessment. part in the tests. The main one that he relied on is called the Roershock test.

The idea behind this test was that the subject would look at a set of cards with inkblots on them. There were completely abstract images. They didn't represent anything. And the respondent was asked to tell what he saw and interpret it. Another that he liked to use is called the thematic apperception test. It uses a representational image. a photo of a scene or a painting

to elicit stories from the respondent. When he gave it to Guring, one of the images he showed Guring was showed a farm laborer with two women, one on each side of him. One woman was, appeared to be another laborer type of person who was helping in the field. And then the other was maybe a city girl. who was holding a stack of books.

And the story that Gering told from this image was about a man who was torn between two women, one who was more like him, and then one who was more intellectually gifted. And Kelly's interpretation of this was that Guring was talking about his two wives. Kelly was also successfully helping Guring to manage his addiction to Kodin.

He already had some... insights into Guring's character. He knew that Guring was vain, narcissistic, cared a lot about his image and the image of the government that he had represented. And so he told Guring that if he gets into shape, overcomes the narcotics addiction, loses weight, he will not only look better to the world during the trial, but he will show the world what kind of a man he was. Guring took his advice and began to wean himself off the drugs. Before long, Guring was looking noticeably healthier. It looked different. He lost a lot of weight and he became another Goring, another man.

Became Saber and that sharpened his mind. He was fit for the trial. Along with improvements to his physical health came improvements to his mental health. health. No longer was he the erratic drug addict that had arrived at Nuremberg. He was now sharp, calculating, and ruthless. He was the Guring who had risen to power before the war. Once he becomes clean, we begin to see him being who he was prior to the addiction. One of the ways that Guring's manipulative skills appeared in the Nuremberg prison was in the way that he formed friendships or bonds with the military guards who were

supposed to be watching over him. Gurring started to use his celebrity status to cultivate friendships with prison guards in the hope of receiving special treatment. Gurring knew that these men were a bit in awe of him and so he charmed them, told jokes, told stories, an interest in their lives. He has some sort of celebrity status, right? These are prison guards that are seeing someone who was at the top of public life, has a celebrity status.

And also, I'm not sure that they're aware of the level of the atrocities coming out at that time. Jack Willis, known to his friends as Tex, was a young U.S. Army lieutenant tasked with guarding the Nazi high command during the trials. Guring had struck up a friendship with Tex, possibly on their shared love of hunting and shooting, and the two were often seen talking together around the prison. Other guards felt that they had become too close, and Goring was known to have given Willis expensive gifts from his personal belongings. Tex ended up owning several items that Goring had given him.

On one occasion, Goring even presented him with his personal belongings. with a gold watch. Goering was the most famous man, and it was very interesting to get something from Goering. I think the main points of manipulation that Gurin used on the prison guards were keeping them entertained, making them feel important, and giving them things. So it's simple stuff.

Even though fraternizing with the prisoners and receiving gifts from them, was strictly prohibited, many of the guards wanted souvenirs and mementos to take home to their families. They realized the guards, it's a very important moment in history here. And so it was interesting to have some information. It's interesting to have some things from the accused here. He was happy to give away his belongings as gifts, and always accommodating the guards by signing autographs and photos.

But Gering would, of course, be expecting something in return, and would be calling on those same guards to repay the favor when the time came. By late November 1945, the prosecution was ready to make their case. The courtroom had been built and the scene set. It was now time for Guring to face his accusers. The man who months later went on trial in Nuremberg, he was slimmed down, his uniform was hanging about his frame and he dominated the proceedings from the first to the last. It was without doubt Guring's last show. Hammer Goring was the most famous man in the dog, the most famous among the accused,

and he himself felt like a star, like a media star. Goring faced charges on four counts, including war crimes, conspiracy, waging a war of aggression and crimes against humanity. He was asked to take the stand to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, a question that Guring believed could simply not be answered with a one-word response. Goring pleaded not guilty and went on to put forward a strong defense. He dominated the proceedings, laughed at his accusers, and even influenced the other defendants into changing their testimonies.

Here we see Goring's amazing personality, and Jorrenberg, he's the dominant figure. He takes over the 24 people, the defendants from the Nazi period, and he leads, more or less, a defence. I don't think it's too much to say he was enjoying himself in the trial, but I think he was determined

to make one last hurrah and to go down in history. That sort of shows the overwhelming ego of the man, and it was, Nuremberg was his last show, and he made the most of it. It was clear that Guring was not about to make things easy for the prosecution. He gave convoluted, evasive answers and plausible excuses for his defence. At one point they say, well, you know, you were involved in all these decisions that led to the Second World War, and he said, well, I'll tell you something.

At the Munich Conference, I couldn't believe the way change. was willing to cave in and give us everything. He said, I just thought, God, I can't believe the British are going to let us just take Czechoslovakia for nothing. So we took it. And he said, now you're blaming us for doing this. He said, I'm saying that, you know, the Western democracies contributed to this war as well. Of course, it's a good argument, isn't it? It's a poor.

Because, of course, appeasement did help Hitler to achieve lots of aims without anyone doing anything. Over the course of the trial, the court was shown films of concentration camps and atrocities. Goering seemed to be shocked by what he was seeing. Do you still say that neither Hitler nor you knew of the policy to exterminate the Jews? I already have said that not even approximately did I know to what degree this thing took place. Goring said, okay, I was a designated successor out of Hitler. I was a powerful man in the Third Reich. And I'm responsible for a lot of things, but I didn't know about the crimes

committed against the Jews. That was Himmler's guilt. That was Goebbels' guilt. But these men were not here in Nuremberg. They committed suicide. It was, yeah, it was quite clear why Goring are good this way. Guring's own defense lasted for 14 days,

and at the end of the trial, the accused received the court's verdict. Wilhelm Helman Guring, guilty of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity, death by hanging. He was scheduled to be hanged on the 16th of that same month.

Guring accepted the sentence, but rejected the sentence, the manner in which he was to be executed. What he resented most was the fact that he was going to be hanged. He wanted a soldier's death which he regarded as a firing squad, death by a bullet. He'd faced bullets before. And when this was refused, I think this was the final decision

that he was determined to have the last laugh and to have the final victory by choosing his own death by taking his own life. The night before he was due to be hanged, Guring took a cyanide capsule, placed it in his mouth, and bit down to release the poison. Within moments, Guring lay dead in his cell. And so he decides to go out on his own terms, and so he does. Very embarrassing this was for the Allies. You can imagine all around the world they were saying,

how the hell did he manage to get a cyanide capsule and take it? So there was a big sort of debate, a big mystery. who had given him the cyanide capsule. Guring had left a suicide note, claiming that he had kept the capsules with him from the moment he had handed himself over. But many historians have claimed that this would have been impossible and that he must have had help from the inside.

Number one, did he bring it in himself? If so, who checked his bags? Number two, was it this American who he became friendly with in Neurban? with in Nuremberg prison. Did he give him the cyanide capsule? On arriving at Nuremberg, Guring's belongings had been inventoried and taken to the prison's storeroom.

Among his possessions was a tin of skin cream. Could have been the case that they didn't really go through Goring's possessions and that it actually was secreted in this hand cream. Rumors quickly spread that Goring had asked the guard he had become friendly with, Jack Willis, to retrieve it for him. And even though it

was against all protocol, Willis granted his request. It had always been Tex Willis, who was most strongly suspected of helping Gurring get his hands on the cyanide. But in 2004, 78-year-old Herbert Lee Stivers, a former Nuremberg Guard, decided to reveal a secret he'd kept hidden for nearly 60 years. Probably the most plausible theory is that one of the American guards probably smuggled it into him. Stivers was 19 years old when he was assigned to Nuremberg. While off-duty one day, Stivers met a young German woman called Mona, who took an interest

in his job at the prison. When she discovered that one of the prisoners he guarded was Hermann Goering, she asked if if he could get a signed photograph of the former Nazi leader. Hoping to impress her, Stivers approached Guring and asked her for an autograph on the young woman's behalf. According to Stivers, the next time he met with Mona, she insisted on taking him to meet her two friends who wanted to ask for his help with a delicate matter. The two men informed Stivers that Gering was very sick and asked him to smuggle a pen containing

a vial of medicine into the prison. Stivers, naive and enamored by Mona, foolishly agreed. Returning to duty the next day, he brought with him the pen containing a vial of the supposed medicine and handed it to Herman Guring. Herbert Lee Stivers has since passed away, and no one has ever been able to corroborate his story. But many have questioned why in such a late stage of his life, he would have chosen to invent such a story unless it was indeed true. But it wasn't just the guards who have been accused of assisting Guring with his suicide. When Dr. Kelly returned to California after the trials, he brought with him a disturbing realization.

When his testing and all his interviewing failed to turn up any kind of common disorder like that, it was a huge shock to Kelly. for a lot of reasons. Because for one thing, it indicated that these men were normal, which is a horrible thing to contemplate. He had set out to determine exactly what made Nazis like Guring different from regular everyday people around the world. What Kelly finally concluded was that there was no difference.

I think that it bothered him a lot, that what he could see there, within them, he could see it home. He could see across the street. He could see through history. Kelly eventually concluded that not only were these men not mentally ill in any way, but they exhibited traits that were common in the population, that there are people out there who will look for an opportunity

to gain power over others, and walk over the backs of everybody else in order to get there. He believed it was present in all countries, all spheres of activity, and that was to him much more dangerous and frightening than the idea that these are the acts of specifically sick people who can be identified and controlled. Perhaps Kelly had a hard time coming to terms

with what he had discovered. Possibly the things he had seen and heard during his work had taken too much of a time. toll. But Dr. Kelly was finding it increasingly difficult to cope. This was the 50s. Psychiatrist didn't seek help. It would have ruined his career. So instead, he bottled up the pressures. He drank. At times, this would allow the pressure to come out. Just like Guring, Kelly was prone to rages. On one fateful day, Doug Kelly jellie, Jr. heard his mother and father having one of their regular arguments at home.

When my father exploded and he ran across the living room and up the stairs to his office, it seems serious. Moments later, Dr. Kelly came out of his office and made his way to the top of the stairs. He stopped at the landing and said, I can't take this anymore, essentially, something to that effect. And this is potassium cyanide. I'm going to eat this. and I'm going to die in 32nd. Standing there, with the cyanide he had kept hidden in his office, Kelly placed it in his mouth and swallowed the poison

as his family looked on from the bottom of the stairs. Almost immediately it began to affect him, and he began to fall. And my mother, who was at the bottom of the stairs, ran up and got him, she said the look on his face was essentially surprise. surprised that it had gone that far and surprised that he was dying. Then she and my grandfather called the ambulance. My grandfather tried to pour water down his throat. The last of my son of my father was for me an advertisement of don't take potassium cyanide.

It was pretty dramatically horrible. It didn't take long for the similarities between Gurings and Kelly's suicides to make the newspapers. Soon, rumors were starting to spread that it was Dr. Kelly who had helped Guring to end his life in 1946. Many people, of course, remembered that he had worked with Guring in Nuremberg, and its rumors began that since Kelly had access to cyanide, then maybe he provided it to Guring for Guring's suicide. His family, still grieving from the loss of a father and husband, had to be given to Guring. deal with the accusations made by the newspapers and local community. Seventh grade is not a really great place to go back to school

when multiple newspaper reports are coming out. It was fairly obvious that people were focusing on the potassium cyanide as a primary point of interest. There was the theory that he brought it, the theory that he gave it to him, the theory that he brought it home. His children had to grow up enduring the rumors of Kelly's involvement in Guring's death. But was there any truth to it? I don't think Kelly had anything to do with it.

Almost impossible for a variety of reasons. The first is that Kelly was surprised when Gering committed suicide. He was not expecting Goring to do that. Another is that Kelly left Nuremberg, about nine months before Guring's suicide. And so if Kelly had provided cyanide to Guring, he would have had to have figured out a way to hide it or keep it all that time. I don't think my father would have given Guring

any means of getting out. I think he felt the world was owed them to hold out to the end and complete the process. I mean, you know, it seemed an easy way out. I don't think my father would have been happy for Gering to do it, even though he chose the same path himself. Although an investigation into Guring's suicide did take place at the time, it failed to deliver any solid explanation as to exactly how he obtained the cyanide capsule.

The rooms were searched, but, you know, a girl committed suicide, and so not well enough. And in fact, there was another cyanide capsule found among Gering's belongings, unused, when Gering died. By Goring's own account, he had these capsules with him when he was captured. All the Nazis were issued with these cyanide capsules, so there's no doubt that Goring had one, and possibly it was him. He secreted it in his luggage, and no one had checked it enough. And he may have used one of the American guards to help him get access to the capsule from its hiding place, wherever it was.

Either because they felt sorry for him and admired him or because he bribed them, and they probably slipped the pill to him. We'll never really know. Unexplored catacombs buried beneath the city. A crumbling castle perched on a mountain peak. A top secret government bunker. A cursed mansion cloaked in legend.

I'm Sasha Auerbach. Join me in Tom Ward every Wednesday and Sunday as we reveal the mysteries and histories behind these abandoned places and ask, where did everyone go? We'll hear from Sasha, who knows the history the best. In fact, there's a very famous book by a chap named Marcus Rediker, called The Many-Headed Hydra,

and he talks about pirate ships as an experiment in radical democracy. And me, who knows nothing, aeronautical scientists can't quite explain it. They say, we don't actually know how it gets up there. No, no, no. How it stays up? You're just not good at a science. No, there are explanations?

There are explanations. It's just plain physics. Brought to you by Like a Shot, makers of forbidden history. Search for Where Did Everyone Go on your favorite podcast platform.