Futility Closet - 308-Nicholas Winton and the Czech Kindertransport

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from a sesquipedalian Santa to an American Hamlet. This is episode 308. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1939, as the shadow of war spread over Europe, British stockbroker Nicholas Winton helped to spirit hundreds of threatened children out of Czechoslovakia. In today's show, we'll describe Winton's struggle to save the children and the world's eventual recognition of his achievements.

Starting point is 00:00:44 We'll also consider some ghostly marriages and puzzle over a ship's speed. In December 1938, a London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton was planning to take a skiing holiday in Switzerland when he received a phone call from a friend in Prague. He said, come as soon as you can and don't bother bringing your skis. The two of them had been anxiously watching the events unfolding on the continent. In Nazi-occupied Europe, anti-Semitism had been established in law and violence was increasing against Jewish businesses. In October, the Nazis had annexed the Sudetenland, the western region of Czechoslovakia, and refugees were now flooding into the center of the country. When Winton

Starting point is 00:01:30 reached the city on New Year's Eve, it was filling with an estimated 250,000 people. His friend introduced him to Doreen Warriner, a British economist who was trying to arrange safe transit to Britain for the adult refugees who were most at risk. As Winton joined in the work, he met desperate mothers seeking food for their families and pleading to know how they could send their children to Britain. If they themselves could not be helped, perhaps their children could be sent to safety in a foreign land. Winton was a British citizen and had contacts there, and many of the children had no one to help them. He suggested he focus on them, and Warriner agreed. In the refugee camps, the harsh winter was especially hard on the children had no one to help them. He suggested he focus on them, and Warriner agreed. In the refugee camps, the harsh winter was especially hard on the children. Winton watched

Starting point is 00:02:09 a Czech official handing out small amounts of money to the families and trying to explain how it might be possible to save the children before the adults. He wrote home in a letter, How does one answer such questions as, How long will it be before my child can go? I know myself it may take months, and maybe they may never be able to go. And what about the question, and will I soon be able to follow my child? It may well be that circumstances will prevent her ever seeing her child again if we are successful in getting it to England. And so there is weeping when they can't go, and weeping again when they go, and weeping because they don't want to go but only want enough money to exist.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Winton was sure that a war would soon start and believed the Germans would quickly occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia. He'd heard that volunteer organizations had been bringing children from Germany and Austria to safety in Britain on the so-called kindertransport, and he resolved to do the same in Czechoslovakia. He realized the scope of the job he'd undertaken, but he said, I work on the motto that if something's not impossible, there must be a way to do it. He met with the children's aid agencies in Prague, asked his mother to start inquiries with the British government, and set up a makeshift headquarters in his hotel room,

Starting point is 00:03:16 where he began to collect the names of families who wanted to send their children to safety. There were five main refugee organizations in the city, each attending to a different group of children. Rather than work together, each wanted its own children to take priority, and each was pressing Winton to focus on its own list of children. He tried to reason with them, and then he resorted to a simple deception. He told each group he had accepted a list from another group and would use that unless they sent their own immediately. Within a day, he had all five lists. At the hotel room, he was besieged every day by desperate parents who wanted to send their children to Britain. From early in the morning until late at night, he accepted applications,

Starting point is 00:03:55 managing a growing list of names, photos, and details. He had to conduct all the business in German because he didn't speak Czech, though eventually he learned one sentence, I am British, but I cannot speak Czech, though eventually he learned one sentence, I am British, but I cannot speak Czech, to keep parents from walking away when they heard the language of their oppressors. Eventually, he left the hotel room and opened a storefront office in Prague. Over the course of three weeks, he registered more than 900 children and collected the names and details of 5,000. For the time being, the Nazis did not interfere. There was still nominally a Czech government in Prague, the German invasion had reached only to the Sudeten borderlands, and, as Winton said later, we were getting rid of people they wanted to get rid of.

Starting point is 00:04:35 But Winton's time in the city was limited. He'd asked for only two weeks' leave for his skiing holiday. He stole another 10 days, but on January 21st, he returned to London at his job at the Stock Exchange. His mind was still on the children, though, and every evening from his home in Hampstead, he went to work, seeking foster parents for the children, arranging entry permits, and raising funds to cover the costs of the journeys. Doreen Warner had sent a letter from Prague to the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, recommending that he be put in charge of the children's rescue. She wrote, he is ideal for the job. He has enormous energy, businessman methods, knows the situation perfectly here. All he needs now is authority to go ahead.

Starting point is 00:05:15 It is an opportunity for the committee to get the services of a really first-class organizer. Winton will get things through if you will give him status as secretary of a children's section. It would take three months for that title to be approved, and rather than wait, Winton adopted it unofficially and printed up his own letterhead. He wrote to newspapers about the desperate situation of the refugee children, opened lines with assistance organizations, and established crucial contacts at the home office. They told him that a separate application must be made for each child, including a medical

Starting point is 00:05:45 certificate and the name of a foster parent or guarantor who would look after the child until they were 17 or able to return home. The government also required a guarantee of 50 pounds to cover the cost of their eventual return. That would be about 3,000 pounds today, so it was a significant sum, but it could be raised through supportive organizations and donations. If all these requirements were met, then the government would issue an entry permit for the child. Some of the children had relatives in Britain, but in most cases, Winton had to persuade complete strangers to take the children in. Fortunately, the British were already making plans to evacuate children from city centers in the event of war, so the public were familiar with the idea of opening their homes to needy children. Having got the permission of the Home Office, Winton contacted Trevor Chadwick, who was

Starting point is 00:06:29 organizing the transports from Czechoslovakia, and on March 14, 1939, a plane full of 20 children left Prague. The very next day, as Winton had feared, Hitler invaded the rest of the Czech lands. Now the office in Prague was working under Nazi rule and needed Nazi approval for children to leave. But over the next six months, they allowed another seven transports to depart. These went by train out of Prague and across the continent to the Atlantic coast, then by ship across the English Channel to Britain. One survivor remembered, By April 1939, my parents realized the game was up, and my father sat my brother and me down and told us we were going on a long journey. As it came time to leave, my mother took off her wristwatch and gave it to us.

Starting point is 00:07:11 For us, it was a mixture of fear and adventure. We didn't really understand. One girl held a diamond under her tongue during the whole journey so that if she were captured, she could use it to buy her future or perhaps to bargain for her life. Another girl grew up to write, The parents were heroes because none of them let on that this was, in all probability, the final goodbye. We sat in the carriage and held hands, saying together, we are not going to cry. In Prague, Trevor Chadwick let parents know when homes had been found for their children and ensured that the necessary permits were in place and trains had been paid for. He also negotiated with the occupying Germans to get exit permits for the children. The trains were allowed to leave

Starting point is 00:07:49 because the Holocaust lay still in the future. At this point, Hitler was content to strip greater Germany's Jews of their wealth and allow them to flee. Chadwick had sometimes to bribe and argue with the Nazis to get what he needed, but the head of the Gestapo in Prague cleared the trains and transit papers and only asked politely why England wanted so many Jewish children. Suspicion and tension did rise in the months that followed. Sometimes a train would be ready before the children's entry permits had arrived from the British Home Office. In those cases, Chadwick would present forged entry documents for the Germans to stamp so that the train could leave. When it reached the British border, they would replace the forgeries with the valid permits from the Home Office.

Starting point is 00:08:28 In London, each trainload of children would arrive at the Liverpool Street station, each child carrying a small bag and wearing a name tag. From the station, they were led to a gymnasium where they sat on benches behind a curtain. As each name was called out, the child would pass through an opening in the curtain to be welcomed by its new parents. To sustain all this, Winted would work a full day each day at the stock exchange, get home around 4 p.m., and set to work sending out press releases and letters pleading for money to fund the guarantees. At first, he was corresponding with groups such as the YMCA, Boy Scouts International, and the Salvation Army to help find homes. But when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, the urgency increased,

Starting point is 00:09:06 and he was soon writing directly to papers and journals, imploring people to come forward to sponsor children. In a May 4th letter to a newspaper, he wrote, The more conscientious, perhaps, dream the platitude that, if the individual were perfect, all would be perfect, and go home resolved to lead good lives. But there is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness, which is, in my opinion, the giving of one's time and energy in the

Starting point is 00:09:29 alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails going out, finding and helping those in suffering and danger, and not merely leading an exemplary life in the purely passive way of doing no wrong. And they can help to an enormous extent. These letters brought hundreds of offers of help through the spring and summer, and where funds were wanting to sponsor a child, he made them up from his own pocket. But there were still thousands of children on the list. He wrote to America and was told that a pending bill might permit more refugees to be accepted, but this never came through. Winton said later, if America had only agreed to take them too, I could have saved at least 2,000 more.

Starting point is 00:10:09 In the end, only Sweden joined Britain in accepting the refugee children. Some people objected to the methods he used to find homes for the children. Jewish leaders raised concerns that Jewish children were being placed in non-Jewish foster homes, and some humanitarians complained that they needed more time to properly match refugee children to foster parents. Winton was unmoved. He said, I didn't mind if the children were Jewish or communist or Catholic if they were endangered, and I didn't mind who they went to. At least they were in England. I didn't mind a damn what happened to them afterwards, because the worst that would happen to them in England was better than being in the fire. The last trainload of children left Prague on August

Starting point is 00:10:43 2nd, 1939, and then on September 1st, the whole operation had to stop because Germany invaded Poland and the Nazis closed the Czech borders. A further trainload of children had been scheduled to depart that day. None of those children was ever seen again. It's believed that all of them perished, as did most of the Jews in Czechoslovakia. The children who had safely reached foster homes in England had been receiving regular letters from their parents. These now began to stop. The last letter received by two young Jewish brothers read, We want to say farewell to you who were our dearest possession in the world. We ask you to become good men and think of the years we were

Starting point is 00:11:19 happy together. We are going into the unknown. Most of the children never saw their parents again. Of the 118,000 Jews living in Czechoslovakia in 1939, more than 78,000 were killed by the Nazis. After the war, Wynton married and resumed his old life, and he rarely spoke about his efforts to save the children. It's often said that his wife, Greta, didn't learn about it until she discovered a scrapbook in their attic that documented his efforts. That's not really true. She knew about the work, and over the years the two of them had occasionally tried to interest people in the story, including friends, family, and various Jewish and historical organizations. Winton had even put it forward when he stood unsuccessfully for election to the Maidenhead Town Council in 1954.

Starting point is 00:12:03 But for some reason, no one they told took much of an interest in the story until Greta found the scrapbook, which contained pictures, documents, letters, photos, and lists of the children and their parents. She gave that to a Holocaust researcher named Elizabeth Maxwell, and Maxwell passed it on to her husband, Robert, the media magnate. That brought the story to life again. Maxwell published the story in the Sunday Mirror in February 1988, and at the same time, Winton was profiled on a BBC television series called That's Life, where he was reunited with many of the children he'd saved, now in their 50s and 60s. The host asked whether anyone in the audience owed their life to Nicholas Winton, and more than two dozen people stood up and applauded. I'll put that clip in the show notes. After that, Winton's daughter Barbara wrote,

Starting point is 00:12:47 Nothing was the same again. For the rest of his life, Winton was honored for his work in organizing the Czech Kindertransport. In 2003, he was knighted for services to humanity, and in 2014, he received the Order of the White Lion, the highest honor bestowed on individuals by the Czech Republic. It should be noted that Nicholas Winton was hardly alone in volunteering to help refugees flee fascism. His efforts saved 669 children from Czechoslovakia, but the Kindertransport in Germany and Austria eventually brought around 10,000 unaccompanied children to safety in Britain, and extensive work was carried out by volunteers elsewhere. Winton's fame made him to some extent symbolic, and many of the children who'd had no specific person to thank began to thank him. That shouldn't diminish the respect

Starting point is 00:13:29 for his own achievements, though he modestly deprecated these throughout his life. He said, there was no courage involved at all. There was no danger to English people in Prague initially, for no one expected a war between Britain and Germany. He insisted that he was not a hero, and repeated that he'd done most of the work from the safety of his home in Hampstead. After the war, many of the rescued children remained in Britain, but others returned to Czechoslovakia or emigrated to Israel, Australia, or the United States. The survivors, many now in their 80s and 90s, still call themselves Winton's children. If we include their descendants, today there are around 6,000 people who owe their lives to Nicholas Winton. Vera Egermeier, a survivor of the Terezin camp, said,

Starting point is 00:14:10 Nicky is a national hero here in the Czech Republic. In England, you don't know about him, but everywhere else, we do. He did a kind act and never told anybody. He told the New York Times in 2001, one saw the problem there, that a lot of these children were in danger, and you had to get them to what was called a safe haven, and there was no organization to do that. Why did I do it? Why do people do different things? Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all. When asked what his life lesson was, he said, standard ethics and compromise. That's what we all have to learn to make the world a better place. He died in 2015 at 106, 76 years to the day after 241 of the child refugees had left Prague on a train. At his death, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth,

Starting point is 00:14:59 called him a giant of moral courage and one of the heroes of our time. He said, Our sages said that saving a life is like saving a universe. Sir Nicholas saved hundreds of universes. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. We want to thank everyone who Thank you. at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of our website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support Futility Closet. We really couldn't do this without you. The puzzle in episode 302 asked how it would be possible for a person to have a marriage

Starting point is 00:16:04 certificate that's dated after their death certificate, and several of our listeners had follow-ups for us on that. As usual, I'm sorry that I can't include everyone's emails, but here are some of the follow-ups, and there will be spoilers for the puzzle. Moxie Labouche wrote, Good morning, Sharon and Greg. The lateral thinking puzzle in episode 302 got me thinking about some interesting cases I'd heard of, especially while the significance of location was debated. The setup was a person having a death certificate dated before their marriage certificate,

Starting point is 00:16:33 and the answer was to do with the international date line. Another feasible answer could have been that the situation took place in France, where it is possible, under certain circumstances, to marry a dead person. Off the top of my head, I knew of a case in 1984 where a woman married her fiancé who had been killed in the line of duty as a policeman, but as I was looking for a reference to that, I found out there are so many more. There is actually a federal law in France, dating back to the Napoleonic Code, that allows living people to marry dead people under certain circumstances and with the

Starting point is 00:17:05 approval of the president. The living person must establish that the dead person would have wanted to marry them and that there's a serious enough reason to permit the marriage, such as legitimizing an unborn child. Here's an article for more. You'll note in the article that I would have been wrong in guessing France for this puzzle because they backdate the marriage certificate to the day before the person's death. It also seems to be not uncommon, though not legally binding, for people in the Philippines to marry a deceased loved one at the funeral, essentially pledging to remain loyal to that person even after their death. And of course, there's always Chinese ghost brides, but that's another show. Thanks for smoothing out Many a Monday. And Ted Graham, formerly of Durham, North Carolina,

Starting point is 00:17:46 and now of Queens, New York, wrote, Hi, Greg and Sharon. Your most recent lateral thinking puzzle revolved around a person whose death certificate bore an earlier date than their marriage license because they got married, crossed the international date line, and then immediately died.

Starting point is 00:18:00 However, I was fairly sure that you were heading for a different, non-hypothetical answer until Greg told Sharon that the country in the puzzle wasn't particularly important. In France, it is entirely legal to marry someone after their death in cases when two people are provably planning to be married, but one member of the couple dies before the wedding can take place. I happened to stumble across an article from The Guardian on the subject recently, and I include a link to it below. across an article from The Guardian on the subject recently, and I include a link to it below. Although the piece is now over a decade old, it reports that dozens of such marriages take place in France every year. While I was, at first, slightly taken aback at the idea, after a little reflection, it struck me how meaningful such a ceremony would be to someone who had their fiancé

Starting point is 00:18:40 suddenly ripped from their life. Still, the cynic in me can't help but wonder if a posthumous spouse would have to seek a divorce if years and years later they met someone living that they wanted to marry. Thank you once again for all the work you put into creating your wonderful podcast. I've been listening to you since the beginning, and I still look forward to the start of the new week when I can get my fix of forgotten and perplexing esoterica. So, necrogamy, or marrying someone who is deceased in a posthumous marriage, has actually occurred, at least in some sporadic cases, in several countries and is

Starting point is 00:19:12 officially codified into law in France. According to the article from the local that Moxie sent, this dates back to the Napoleonic Code in France and was particularly common during and after the First World War in order to legitimize children whose fathers had died on the front before marrying the mothers. The law was written in its current form after a dam burst in 1959 killing 423 people, including a man whose pregnant fiancée petitioned President de Gaulle to allow the marriage, and the National Assembly passed a law allowing the president to authorize posthumous marriages under particular conditions. Many of these posthumous marriages are private affairs, but some do gain a certain amount of attention,

Starting point is 00:19:53 such as in 2017 when a man married his longtime partner, a police officer who had been killed five weeks earlier in a terrorist attack, and the story received some international attention. in a terrorist attack, and the story received some international attention. The 2019 article in The Local states that about 50 requests for posthumous marriages are made yearly in France, but now that marriage is no longer required for establishing paternity, fewer of the requests are granted than previously. And to answer Ted's concern about potentially needing a divorce, from what I read, after a posthumous marriage, the living spouse is actually considered to be a widow or widower, which would take care of that potential issue and probably several others.

Starting point is 00:20:31 As Moxie noted, France's posthumous marriages wouldn't actually work as an answer to the puzzle as the marriage is backdated to the day before the death of the deceased spouse. And another of our listeners, Eric Cohen, addressed this and another reason that these marriages might not work for the puzzle when he pointed out that it's not clear that the deceased partner actually gets a marriage certificate in this situation. I couldn't find whether the deceased partner gets a certificate or not. I mean, I'm not sure why they would need it, but maybe they would for some legal reason at some point.

Starting point is 00:21:04 I think this whole thing is fascinating. You know, you could see that other countries, I mean, every country potentially would have the same reasons to want to adopt this. Yeah. So it's interesting that it turns up where it does. Moxie had mentioned Chinese ghost brides in her email, as did a couple of other listeners, such as Stephen Jones, who wrote, Your recent puzzle about a posthumous marriage made me think of the Chinese tradition of ghost marriages. These are marriages in which one or both parties are deceased and occur for various reasons. So ghost marriages are usually seen today in the more rural areas of China, where

Starting point is 00:21:41 traditional values and beliefs are still more prevalent. Traditionally, in China, for both genders, being unmarried is a less worthy state. And for example, marital status determines where someone can or can't be formally buried. Traditionally, an unmarried male may be considered unworthy of being buried with his ancestors, while an unmarried female can't be formally buried anywhere. And incidentally, apparently traditionally, unmarried women couldn't even die in their family homes. A death house would be built for them or they would be taken to a shed or other outlying building to die. Sons in China traditionally married partly or even mainly out of a familial obligation to continue the family line and to provide descendants to maintain the familial ancestral worship. To this end, a deceased unmarried man would need a posthumous marriage so that his

Starting point is 00:22:30 family could adopt an heir for him. While for women, a posthumous marriage would be necessary to provide them with a patrilineage, as an unmarried woman would be seen as having no descendants to worship her. Households have altars that display the spirit tablets of the paternal ancestors, with a married woman's spirit tablet kept on the altar of her husband's family. So a deceased unmarried woman would need to be married in order to give her an affiliation to a male line so that her spirit could be worshipped and appropriately cared for. Other reasons for posthumous marriages in China include that customarily younger brothers aren't supposed to be married before their elder brothers, so a ghost marriage for an older

Starting point is 00:23:09 deceased brother might be held before a younger brother's wedding so that he could avoid incurring the disfavor of his older brother. Similarly, ghost marriages might be held in the hope that the deceased will live a happy married life in the netherworld rather than being alone, both to provide for the deceased family member but sometimes also in the netherworld rather than being alone, both to provide for the deceased family member, but sometimes also in the fear that the unhappy deceased will haunt the family or cause misfortune or illness. And similar to in France, if her fiancé dies, a bride-to-be could still choose to go through with the wedding. However, this might require her to participate in mourning customs involving strict dress and conduct standards, to take a vow of celibacy, and to take up residence with the man's family, so not all women choose this option.

Starting point is 00:23:50 China has a significant imbalance between the numbers of men and women, with the Australian ABC reporting in 2017 that there were almost 33 million more males than females in China. The imbalance may be even worse in some rural areas, where female fetuses may be more likely to be aborted or newborn girls may be abandoned. In areas dependent on industries such as coal mining, women may leave for a city in order to find work, and the high mortality rate of the industry may lead to a sizable number of young, unmarried, deceased men. This has led to there being a black market for female corpses for ghost brides in China, with auctions for a corpse sometimes starting even before a dying woman

Starting point is 00:24:30 has actually died, and also leading to grave robbery and even sometimes murder of young women in order to sell the corpses so that they can be buried with their deceased grooms. I'm trying to think through all the repercussions there. I don't have enough imagination, I guess. That's a really fascinating situation. As I mentioned, I saw examples of posthumous marriages being performed at least once in several countries. And one other interesting example of this practice that I happened to come across was a BBC article that said that in Taiwan, when an unmarried woman dies, her family might place outside special packets with money, a lock of her hair, and a fingernail, and wait for a man to pick one up. If one does, he is intended to be her groom, and it's believed to be bad luck if he refuses the marriage.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Apparently, he is usually allowed to marry another woman later if he chooses, although his first wife is supposed to be revered as his primary wife. And I suppose if you weren't familiar with Taiwanese customs, I mean, you just happen to pick something up off the ground. And lastly, John Jerome had a rather different alternative solution to the puzzle, saying, Another way one's death certificate could be dated before one's marriage certificate is if the person is mistakenly or erroneously declared dead

Starting point is 00:25:43 and then is found to be alive. Think of the movie Castaway. Chuck Nolan was declared dead, and there is presumably a death certificate to that effect. Then he shows up on his raft, gets rescued, and maybe later marries the artist who drew the wings. Sure, the death certificate is voided, but it still exists, and the puzzle didn't specify the certificate must be currently valid.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So yeah, perfectly valid answer. So that was an unusually fatal listener mail section for us today. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate getting your comments and follow-ups. And if you have anything that you'd like to send to us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to see if I can figure out what's going on asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Ken Somolinos. During World War II, the U.S. Navy used a type of cargo ship called the Liberty Ship, which had a top speed of 11.5 knots, or 13.2 miles per hour.

Starting point is 00:26:50 By 1943, the Navy made them eight times faster, despite no significant changes to the engines or the shape of the boat. How did they do it? They made the boat lighter. No. Darn. That would have been really impressive. Well, I would have had to figure out how they made the boat lighter, but that would fit the criteria.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Okay, so they made the boat faster, even though they didn't change the engine or the shape of the boat. Right. And apparently, probably not the size, if it's not changed in weight significantly. That's right. They didn't make the boat much smaller, with the same size engine in it. See, that would work. That would work. No. That's right. They didn't make the boat much smaller with the same size engine in it. See, that would work. That would work. No, that's not.

Starting point is 00:27:27 Did they make it that the boat's now going on land instead of on water? No. Or the boat's now flying instead of on the water? No. Darn. Did they add sails? No. Or oars?

Starting point is 00:27:39 People are rowing. That would be an interesting solution, but no. Okay. All right. I was just trying to have some fun. So let's see. Let's get serious about this. All right.

Starting point is 00:27:50 How do you make a boat faster, basically, without changing the engine or the size or shape of the boat, right? Yes. Or adding another means of propulsion, such as sails or oars or something. That's right. They didn't add like a second engine. Correct. Is the boat being towed by something?

Starting point is 00:28:09 No. Is the boat in a different part of the world where there's a strong current? All excellent guesses. No, that's not it. Okay. Does this boat have special characteristics that I need to work out? No. Okay.

Starting point is 00:28:26 And by a boat, you mean a large vessel that floats on the water? Yes. Large enough for people to be in or on? Yes. Okay. And there's nothing else specific to the boat that I need to try to guess? Um... Is it going underwater now?

Starting point is 00:28:42 It's a submarine now. No, that doesn't make any sense. No, I will say there's nothing. Really? Okay. Not to solve the puzzle. Not to solve the puzzle. Okay.

Starting point is 00:28:50 So how do you make a boat faster? Were they using a different kind of fuel? No. And they didn't, by making it lighter, would that, that includes what was normally on the boat too? Like, normally it's carrying very heavy things, and it's now not carrying those very heavy things. Um. Oh.

Starting point is 00:29:13 No, but you're. Getting closer? Making an assumption. I'm making an assumption. I'm making an assumption. Yes. Did they change how they measure how fast the boat goes? They changed the whole measurement system?

Starting point is 00:29:25 No. I'm trying to think if I can give you a clue. Okay, okay. I'm making an assumption. You said that the boat now goes faster, travels faster. No. Okay, read that part of the puzzle again then. By 1943, the Navy made them eight times faster

Starting point is 00:29:41 despite no significant changes to the engines or the shape of the boat. Made them eight times faster despite no significant changes to the engines or the shape of the boat. Made them eight times faster. Yes. Are the boats actually traveling faster? No. No. Is the Navy pretending that they're traveling faster to confuse the enemy? No.

Starting point is 00:29:57 But so have they changed the way that they measure the speed of a boat? No. The Navy made them eight times faster. Yes. But so by made them, you don't mean that the boat is actually faster, what I would consider. That's correct. So it turns on, what does it mean that the Navy made them? Oh, produced them eight times faster.

Starting point is 00:30:24 That was really fun to watch. Ken writes, the actual sailing speed of the ships never changed over the course of the war, but the Navy's ability to mass produce them did. So while the speed of the ships didn't increase, the Navy did in fact make them faster. And I'll just put in here, that story in itself is very interesting. Ken writes, it was due to several factors, including the use of welding instead of riveting, employing women to fill work was due to several factors including the use of welding instead of riveting, employing women to fill work shortages caused by the draft

Starting point is 00:30:48 and the implementation of mass production techniques created by the auto industry. While a cargo ship used to take close to a year to make, by 1943, they could be assembled

Starting point is 00:30:56 almost eight times faster. See, that actually is a really interesting piece of trivia in itself. Just in itself, yeah. So thank you to Ken for that actually very interesting puzzle that took me way longer to solve than it should have. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try,

Starting point is 00:31:12 you can send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. If you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our celebration of the quirky and the curious, and check out some bonus content, like outtakes, extralateral thinking puzzles, more discussions on some of the stories, and peeks behind the scenes, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 exceptional esoterica. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. Our music was written and performed by Greg's amazing brother, Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:32:05 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 308-Nicholas Winton and the Czech Kindertransport

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