Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 142 - Castle Itter

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

At the end of WWII a group of French POWs went looking for help and ended up taking part in one of the weirdest battles in military history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32622651 https://www.historynet.com/the-battle-for-castle-itter.htm https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/itter-castle-strangest-battle-world-war-ii-152721

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow my Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me today is podcast conciliary, Cary Shockey. Hey, Joe. is podcast conciliary Kerry Shockey. Hey, Joe. Well, you know, I'm back from my undisclosed location and back here in the lovely East Coast.

And now it's cold and shitty and snowing outside. So, you know, I feel right back at home. It's great. You know, that's one thing about like the Pacific Northwest

that I don't entirely miss is that, you know, there's, we have a winter and it's very mild but it just feels like you're kind of getting pissed on the whole time. Yeah, it's just kind of like a brawl.

Not a ton of snow, just a drizzle forever. Yeah. When it says it rains 10%, it just means 10% of the air is full of rain all day. Yeah, and now my option is it's just dry forever and hot. I mean, at least it's there and it's not like Arizona.

You know, that's fair. It has been raining a lot. This is my first Hawaiian winter, and it seems to just be misting constantly, but it's not cold. The rain isn't even cold. It's just kind of a nuisance. It's not bad.

So it's just kind of like a head of lettuce in the supermarket. Yeah. You're just kind of gradually getting misted. Probably I taste worst. Just hairy Armenian lettuce. Yeah, you got to bite it. It's like if you live in a house

with a husky or something, you got to eat something. You got to pick out the hair. You know bite it. It's like if you live in a house with a husky or something, you gotta eat something. You gotta pick out the hair. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, my buddy has a husky down in Rhode Island. I definitely slept on their couch once before Thanksgiving when he used to live over in Connecticut at the naval housing there.

Woke up in the morning and I just felt like I had to shave all my clothes. Speaking of puppies, I have a new puppy. He is adorable. However, he's in the podcast room with me currently because it's the only good option. Because if I put him in the crate where he sleeps,

he'll cry constantly, which will be picked up by the mic. So I left him in the room with me where he is now currently walking around and biting on random things. So if you hear anything loud, it's the puppy, not me, the guy that you pay to make a

show for you. If you cancel for this, you're only hurting the puppy. You have to get five other people to also subscribe to the Patreon or Joe kills the puppy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We, you know, we don't make the rules here.

It just, it's read what I'm trying to say. Your legal tip of the day is always read your contracts. It's that Pete Buttigieg meme where it's the, it's the dog with the gun to it. Actually, he seems to have just fallen asleep on the floor, which is adorable. that Pete Buttigieg meme where it's the dog with the gun to its head. Actually, he seems to have just fallen asleep on the floor, which is adorable. Now, Shox, we talk about World War II an awful lot on this show. And, you know,

a good reason for that is, you know, it's one of the pinnacle changing moments of human history, modern human history. And there's all sorts of little nuggets within this disgusting, horrible conflict that

should have never happened that pique my fancy, which is a terrible way of saying that. I'm sorry. What I'm saying is I have for you the weirdest battle of World War II all right

have you ever heard of Eider Castle no okay now this is a historical event that is probably only known because of dumb fun fact type shit that you see on the internet like a

pictograph as correct.com calls them after they fired all the good people what yeah they fired all the good people save money and then sold it to some stupid hedge fund or whatever so just like every media outlet in the country at this point yeah you know though thankfully this time around we got good things like

you know behind the bastards and even more news because that's where all those guys came from. Okay. So the best thing that came from them is that those guys end up being able to do what the fuck they wanted. And the reason why most people have a surface layer

and idea of this battle, if they've ever heard of it all, because of websites like that, where you see a sentence or maybe a paragraph of like, fun fact. Did you know? Yeah. And they're leaving a lot out.

I remember I had a book like that about World War II. Maybe it was even just general war facts. It was just anywhere from a paragraph to a couple sentences, little fun facts and stories and shit. I feel like I remember that being a thing for a while when I was growing up that I had a book like that. I think they just call it a high school history textbook. I mean, also that. So there's a reason why

this is the weirdest battle of World War II. It stars American tankers fighting side by side with members of the German Wehrmacht held up in an Austrian castle defending French prisoners of war squaring off against the Waffen SS. Huh. All right. All right.

You've peaked my interest. You have also peaked my fancy. And I have to say, it is even weirder than that surface layer sentence right there and that's normally that's all you get it's like did you know that US soldiers fought side by side at the Wehrmacht against the SS in Austria and that's it that's all you get and it is so much

weirder when you first said castle in World War 2 all I could think of was like the Wolfenstein series yeah fair I was kind of hoping for... I'm admittedly a little disappointed because we're not talking about

cyborg death soldiers. Yours is good, too. I mean, what are tankers other than cyborg death soldiers? I say that in the worst way possible as someone who used to be a tanker in that all of our knees and hips end up being made out of metal and we breathe it and we breathe

in somebody so much fucking jet fuel we end up just dying and you know you glow after a while from the depleted uranium but other than that it's great yeah it's like mr burns running through the woods yeah exactly it's gonna be you like you know when you get to like 65 like coming out of the va now the reason i think in my opinion other than the fact this is not a major battle is that uh like there's not a lot of information about this uh that was until 2013 when a guy named stephen harding published the last battle um and that finally fleshed out the story because other than that and if you cursor a very short articles there's really not shit out there uh that covers this so uh thanks to the patreon for giving me the money necessary to buy steven harding's book it's pretty rad you should buy it it's great um because it's just so deeply weird.

You're not going to hear about this shit anywhere else. And another reason for that is that this battle occurs at quite literally the end of World War II in Europe. The government in Berlin had surrendered, and this was what they called the Flensburg government. And at that point, they were mostly worried about surrendering uh hopefully to the allies uh on the west rather than the the soviets on the east um and there wasn't a whole lot of command and control happening anymore who who was like who was kind of in charge at that point because i know wasn't it uh donuts who signed like ended up signing the surrender papers yes it was it was

a reich admiral carl donuts who became um i don't believe they named him chancellor but uh he was the head of the flensburg government okay and you know you do not in fact have to hand it to the nazis carl donuts is a war criminal and he was sentenced as such but he did a pretty rapid um attempt at surrendering as best as he could uh but he had a very very loose uh control over various elements of the ss which is why this episode ever happened um now before we get to all this weirdness we have to start from the beginning uh

so shocks this might surprise you it all started with this guy named Hitler um you may have heard of him history's worst wife guy he was only married like a day before he died yeah that's what I'm saying his entire marriage consisted mostly of

murder suicide and then getting burned outside of a bunker I mean if there's any marital history of Hitler where that's how it ends I'll take it bunker wife guy bunker wife guy much like Joseph Fritzl also from austria weird um there's a good uh there's

a good trash future crossover joke right there for the for you folks not very often i could bring up joseph fucking fritzl this podcast also if you've never heard of him do not google him do yourself a favor uh and also if you if you've never heard of him, do not Google him. Do yourself a favor. And also, if you've never heard of him and you learned about him this way, you'll only think less of me. Now, all of this falls under the idea of Greater Germany or the Greater German Reich. And Hitler did not invent that. This idea was bounced around from the time of German unification. The idea of Austria becoming part of Germany. Because, you know, they're German speaking Germanic people.

But during that time, the time of German unification post Franco-Prussian War, Austria is part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that was still around, even though they were rapidly dying. But so this this idea was postponed until post-World War One when the joint empire died and Austria once again wanted to join Germany. And this was something that was fielded almost immediately after World War I when it became obvious that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was going to die. But it was actually shit-canned by the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles. the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles. I think a lot of it had to do with the idea of Germany having

any kind of colony or expandable because they lost almost everything at the end of the war. And the idea that they considered giving them Austria was almost effectively like letting them keep their African colonies. And they shit-canned it.

Which, fine. you do not in fact have to give Austria Germany or Germany Austria sure I mean the the Treaty of Versailles was a lot of fucked up but I do not think that was one of the bad parts yeah well I mean plus also that was during the time when you know they

were pushing like a very limited sense of like self-determinism only for like certain groups of white people essentially so yeah mostly just white people we didn't just defeat no war yeah like you know but like wilson was like making noises about you know some of the liberatory project that you know would eventually happen after world war ii of course he was also terrible fucking racist which is why yeah yeah yeah it's funny that this is the second podcast, I think, in a row we've had to talk about him after Eugene Debs. And that was like the thing is like I was talking about this earlier

with somebody else, and it's Wilson, you know, if you cut off the racism like a malign tumor, he had a lot of like pie-in-the-sky ideas when it came to, you know, liberalization and self-determination. And then he assumed that all of his friends in Europe to you know liberalization and self-determination and then he assumed that all of his friends in europe you know the the kings and so forth um and you know the french and whoever all had the same ideas as him because the hey you're democracies too and they're like no man we want to control these people like an empire and he was like oh shit okay and then he

just gave up. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, they formed the League of Nations, which was just, like, somehow even more toothless than the UN is right now. Which the US itself didn't even join. Yeah. I love that it was Wilson's idea, and Wilson's government's like, nah, man.

It's kind of incredible when you think about it. Yeah, that's, maybe everybody's like, why don't we have more PhDs become about it um yeah that's maybe everybody's like why don't we have more phds become president maybe that's why yeah i mean i'm trying to think about who's the last phd who ran for president that ran for president i don't know i couldn't even imagine like nowadays you know it's weird because you know i almost don't think that they ever will again because uh the the track towards federal office has changed so much that you kind of have to be just a career politician yeah yeah

you don't really have time to like get deep into academia and then yeah only one united states president has earned a doctor of philosophy it was uh it was wilson yep yep yeah i know he was the only one to ever uh uh actually get elected i wasn't sure know he was the only one to ever actually get elected. I wasn't sure if he was the only one to ever try. Yeah. I don't know. That just tells me we need to have the guy from... Fuck, what is that band?

Offspring. Offspring, yes. He's a PhD in molecular biology. That's fucking weird. Right. He has a PhD in molecular biology That's fucking weird Right but I mean at least Good for him at least on that versus You know dude from Blink-182 Who's just like gone off the deep end with UFO

Conspiracies Hey I got him on Joe Rogan You gotta say that I guess Not that that's a good thing anymore Right So fast forward to the 1930s And this idea of greater germany i was being batted around again by even some austrians um now this idea of greater germany was pretty much boiled down to at least if you're hitler um we're just gonna swallow austria like austria will no longer exist

and that was a bit much even for Austrian Nazis like they wanted to become part of a greater German Reich or you know Empire but they still wanted to keep all the trappings of Austrian statehood yeah they wanted to be like you know Austro-Germania right

and Hitler wasn't about that action and there's a lot of backroom politics I'm not going to get into it and it all boils down to Hitler did some backroom politics to simply

invade and force annexation totally unopposed by the Austrian military because the Austrian government was like well we're fucked we're fucked. We're not going to be able to stop them. And it's also weird because Chiang Kai-shek's son was involved.

Oh, yeah. I think I remember. Did you guys do an episode on him a long time ago? Yes. He was a tank commander and he got lost because a lot of Germans got lost when they invaded Austria because the maps were all fucked up. Now, in recent years, Austria has attempted to frame themselves as the Nazis' first victims of Nazi imperialism. But that is their own version of historical revisionism, a la the clean Wehrmacht.

Yeah. I don't buy it. a la the clean Wehrmacht. Yeah. I don't buy it. Now, I'm not saying that Austrians, as a monolith, approved of what the Nazis did because I can't say that for Germans either.

That would be unfair. Though, the Austrian people, in general, were enthusiastic supporters of Nazi rule. I mean, I remember seeing videos of... Obviously, they're Nazi propaganda films. It's not like it's an honest record, but by the same token, they sure

found a lot of apparently pretty enthusiastic cheering crowds. They definitely showed their Nazi spirit. Now, a lot of this could be chalked up to, well, we kind of know what happens if you disagree with Nazis because we have Nazis in Austria as well.

But they also support a horrific anti-Jewish pogroms pretty much as soon as the Nazis cross the border. Nearly a million Austrians served in the Wehrmacht. And while I understand that a lot of that is from conscription, a lot of them were also high-ranking war criminals. This included people that were involved in the quote-unquote Jewish question and were eventually hung as war criminals like Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf fucking Hitler himself.

Who was Austrian. Were there separate Austrian army units? No. So they were just in the Wehrmacht? Yes. All right. Because I know there were, for some of the other, Hungary, Romania, whatever,

they still kind of had their own nominal army. Now, it's important to think of what separated Austria from a lot of places being occupied by the Nazis, is that in no way, shape, or form did Nazis consider Austrian occupation. That was an annexation, like the Sudetenland. They were not occupying Austria. Austria is now Germany. There was no pretense, really, of a separate national government. There was no pretense really of like a Separate national government

There was no puppet leader It was just you are You're a German county now Congratulations There was local Nazis in Austria But they were pretty much All just absorbed in the Nazi party Now while all this is happening

As their Shitty Nazi empire began to spread throughout the rest of Europe. Now, most of the time, when Nazis took over a country, whatever, they murdered most of its former leaders and elites. Yeah. And obviously, its Jews as well, eventually. obviously it's jews as well eventually uh this uh happened to like uh this even happened in austria like the first uh austrian republic almost all of its leaders died um others were whisked away to like dachau um though this was not always the case okay sometimes it simply arrested them and chucked them into a prison so they couldn't whip up any resistance like Charles de Gaulle would do with the Free French Army.

Obviously, the Third Reich was not short of terrible prisons and death camps to throw people into, but they didn't want to give that treatment to everyone. They also had several other prisons for what they considered VIPs, and one of those was Castle Eider. Castle Eider was built sometime in the Middle Ages and eventually purchased by a gang named Franz Junger. Or a Gunger?

Probably the first one. I don't know. I'd imagine it was probably Junger. Yeah. Though unfortunately for Franz, when your country is taken over by a bunch of, you know, fucking Nazis, they tend to steal your shit. And that's exactly what happened. His castle was seized by oswald pole under the orders of heinrich himmler in 1940 this would be end up becoming a wing of a vip prison more specifically a wing of

a prison for french vips had fallen under their control under the administration of the Dachau concentration camp, which is just over the border in Germany. Okay. And a lot of the people who ended up in this prison were high-ranking military leaders who refused to join the Vichy government in France, like Maurice

Gamlon. He was a former military leader, but there's also prime ministers and presidents in there as well okay so it was just weird everyone who would like they kind of you know they they didn't necessarily want to make a martyr out of but then also like who wasn't going to join uh i think i i think some of it in my opinion this is not in fact historical fact i don't know, was they were hoping that they might flip. Yeah, like after long enough to, you know.

Yeah, like I think what I'm thinking is if I'm keeping these guys prisoner and I'm propping up my own puppet regime in France, you know, if the tide of the war turns in my favor, you're going to realize that there's no choice but to work for me in

this new France. You could be a good puppet leader. Plus, I imagine they did form French Waffen-SS units at one point during the war or whatever. I'd imagine also... Ah, yes, the SS Charlemagne. Yeah.

I imagine, too, you might at some point need military leaders who are like of that nationality who aren't just, you know, like other German officers or whatever. Yeah, I mean, there's a long game at play here and some of it is petty like for instance Charles de Gaulle's sister was thrown in there because, you know,

fuck Charles de Gaulle for fighting you effectively. Yeah. But she was also joined by a guy named Jean Botaraara he was a nationalist tennis star uh now one of his jobs he at one point he worked for the vichy government uh as like the head of the directorate of sport or whatever yeah but like he planned on running away from the uh the vichy corner of France into Allied territories, arrested by the Gestapo, and got thrown in prison.

Field Marshal, Field Marshal, Prime Minister, President, tennis guy? Just imagine just bemoaning my fucking luck. My backhand is never going to recover. Why can't I have been the number two tennis guy? They just would have left me alone. Yeah, nobody remembers the number two tennis guy that didn't get fucking

tortured by the Gestapo. Now for all of being in a Nazi prison probably sucks. Being in Castle Eider was considered pretty fucking chill. I'm just imagining that as like a Yelp review. Two stars.

It's like when people review prisons or whatever on fucking, you know, like Google or whatever, you know. That's one of my favorite things. You can pull up any of your local jails near you and someone left a Yelp review and it's amazing. Yeah. But it fucking amazing. Yeah. It fucking sucks. Camp counselors are assholes. Food is terrible. It's always like, look, I understand it's a jail, but the customer service is dog shit.

Like, fair enough. Yeah, probably it's terrible. Yeah, I mean, can't say I've ever had a different experience, so you're probably right. Yeah, I've never had an enjoyable moment while being put in handcuffs and forced into a jail um now like obviously having a chill time while being arrested by the nazis you know in your mind probably boils into like not having your fingernails ripped out by like gestapo or being sent to you know the rest of dachau remember, this is part of it. During all this, remember,

this is technically part of Dachau concentration camp system. So this is as good as it gets. But the Nazis also agreed with this. This is considered a retirement spot for camp guards who thought it was an easy

place to ride out the war. There's only about 20 guards in all of cast lighter and all of them are older dudes from other concentration camps um and like but they were also considered incapable of being sent to the front line or being sent to another camp

so this is like all the nazis here were like broke dick concentration camp guards that couldn't do their job anywhere else this whole everything about that is so deeply fucking cursed which i guess is just what we consider the bureau of prisons right now just like you know just like you know punching my like punching my time card in like, you know, only two years away from my retirement is a fucking concentration camp card. You know, I actually take great solace in the fact that when you look at the timeline that none of these guys are actually able to retire. Right.

Like they were all killed or made unemployed before they ever could punch the retail, like drop the retirement packet. ever could drop the retirement packet? No, they probably just tried to get credit for their years when they became German police officers like 10 years later. What was your pay grade before your polo zai? Ah, I was tower

guard Auschwitz, second class. Yeah, like, you know, I was a grade 14 death train conductor. You know the GS scale expands the concentration camps?

Oh, wait. They actually do because ice is GS scale. Right. Fuck. This got really close to home. Life at the prison at Castle Eider was called a mixture of brute force, politeness, and occasional attempts at friendship. Which is...

Now it just sounds like the worst fucking summer, like, you know, like, John Cusack, like, summer movie ever. Yeah, like, imagine wet, hot hot american summer but this is the tagline yeah like it's kind of like jojo rabbit oh god yeah i mean like it really seemed like uh if if they broke the rules they would get their asses kicked uh but the rules were were more suggestions for these guys. Yeah. Because the guards didn't want to do anything. The daily life for the captives was better than probably anywhere else in any other German prison, maybe outside of an American POW camp, I guess.

Even some of those could get pretty grim. Yeah, they could, especially later on. The French inmates slept in converted guest rooms, had free access to the castle's substantial library, and took their daily exercise in a courtyard built on a 13th century fountain. They also had a pirated radio that someone had put together and then everybody would get together and listen to as a group. And it also is kind of like on the download noted that the guards knew about the radio didn't do anything about it because I am willing to

bet that the guards realized that if we just let these guys do whatever they're not going to try to escape because they're all a bunch of old generals and prime ministers and shit yeah yeah like these guys aren't going to tie a group of ropes together and try to climb the fucking wall yeah prime minister Pierre is't going to tie a group of ropes together and try to climb the fucking wall. Yeah.

Prime minister Pierre is not going to be like chiseling through his floor to like drop down into the sewer system and escape. Yeah. And you don't have to worry about like Maurice gum lawn in his like late sixties, like throwing a haymaker at you. Right. Uh,

he might sharpen a baguette against the ground to give you a fucking shape though. Yeah. Just bludgeoning you with a piece of hard cheese. But just because the castle's an easy place to do your time did not mean that the prisoners liked one another. For instance, Gamblon

was locked in with Maxime Weigand, a name I'm sure I mispronounced. Weigand had actually replaced Gamblon as commander of the French defenses during the Nazi invasion of France only to surrender and then work for the Vichy French government

before being thrown in prison with the guy that he had replaced. Just so many L's in one room. Jesus. And there's also different groups of prisoners. Being the Germans and just like carving a Magno line sign and just putting it above their room. Yeah, it's the fucking sitcom like Maurice, Maxime, you can't cross this line. I understand the bathrooms on Maxime's side, but you're're gonna figure out some wacky hijinks to come together and kill us with liberator handguns or whatever um like there was

left-wing organizers and right-wing organizers in this prison together uh and they all fucking hated one another yeah the the only thing stopping things from like I know turning into some straight up prison shit was because they all had jobs like president prime minister and field marshal and probably thought shanking a guy with a razor that you secreted up your asshole was probably below their station in life

well they also probably like they keep getting in arguments with each other and then like calling for like their minions, but their minions aren't there. Like I'm demanding my second. Yeah. Like keep like,

they keep yelling, seize him, but like forget that they don't have six guys around them at the time. Now, unfortunately the chill lives of the prisoners, prisoners would begin to change as the Germans began to lose the war. First, rations stopped showing up, not just for the prisoners, but their guards

too. This led to both sides bartering with each other over whatever they had laying around. Then fuel started drying up, so their generators stopped working. Which is like the most aristocratic thing. Like, huh, the war must be going wrong. I have to light a candle.

Well, and also, like, Jesus fucking Christ, during the dodge-out prison system, your biggest problem is like, oh, man, I can't read at night anymore because the generator doesn't work. Yeah, now let's glance two miles down the road at what's happening at the rest of the system. Yeah, Jesus fuck.

This is like all the, like, the white-collar, like, if you fuck with stocks, where you go to prison in comparison to prison prison. Yeah. Whenever someone gets done for a little bit of insider trading and does six months. Or what is it here in Boston? It's been all the college admission prosecution. So we had Lori Loughlin uh asked the judge if she could do the last half of her sentence from her

mansion it's a pablo escobar shit building like right uh was it uh whatever his private prison was called to have like lions and tigers and shit in it right and like i'll totally do my time from here it's fine an apartment with his mistresses and shit

yeah now prisoners were pretty happy obviously they could tell that some shit was going bad for the germans when you know the fuel stopped showing up and their electricity stopped working because it told them the war was going bad but it also meant that their lives would no longer become so important to the German government. This is when the prisoners started asking their commandant, who was pretty friendly with them, a guy named Sebastian Wimmer.

They cornered him and were like, look, when this war is over, what happened here will be what happens to you. So if you fucking kill us all, you're going to be hung as a war criminal. Which was, you know,

they weren't so disconnected. They didn't know what was happening other places in Germany. Like they kind of understood roughly what was happening at the rest of the prison camp that they were in, even though they were not close to the bulk of Dachau. Like they understood how, how Nazis work. Right.

I mean, also just like having, you know, dealt with them for however fucking long. I mean, you know, it couldn't have been a work. Right. I mean, also just having dealt with them for however fucking long. I mean, it couldn't have been a surprise. Yeah, they knew that life was cheap in a place ran by Nazis. Right. But Wimmer was not SS. Wimmer was Wehrmacht.

So he saw himself as just a prison commandant. saw himself as just a prison commandant. He kind of framed it as he was running a POW camp and executing POWs is wrong. And he told them that he promised that no POWs would be executed. One, it made no sense. And two, the only person that would be doing it is him and he wasn't going to do it.

And that's how things went for a little bit. But remember, they're in Austria. They're not in Germany. So they actually ended up being part of kind of like the escape route for a lot of high-ranking people. A lot of people... Yeah, exactly.

It was a rat line. A lot of high ranking Nazis mostly SS party members and Gestapo would flee into Austria but one of the things they did was stop at Castle Eider as a secure place to sleep as their entire bullshit

rut came collapsing down around their ears and as the prisoners saw more and more SS officers show up at the prison as like a way station as the last leg to get to go towards allied lines to the west rather than get captured by the soviets to the east um they were starting to get worried because a reason for that was one of the officers that came to the castle was Edward Viter. He was the last commandant of Dachau.

And it was kind of known the dude is a psycho. Other guards told the prisoners stay the fuck away from him. And there's some evidence to suggest that one, maybe it was Wimmer himself, told the prisoners that Viter just liquidated all of

dachau uh like don't go near him he might do the same thing here right but instead he shot himself the fucking head so that's cool well i mean you know also that ends well there say say what you will about edward viter but he killed edward viter um now this also had a problem though vimmer just watched a very high ranking member of the ss fucking kill himself and it terrified him like why are they killing themselves like what's gonna happen next you know uh he immediately became scared for his own future and he didn't want to sit around and await what was coming to him. So he fled the castle with his family and May 4th, 1945.

This was something of a domino effect that guards other boss flee like, yo, we're getting the fuck out of here too. Right. Leaving the prisoners in complete control of the prison themselves. So I take it like, you also probably weren't locked in or anything anywhere either,

so it's kind of different than pretty much every other prison camp where they might have, I know sometimes the guards generally still lock the gates behind them as they fled. No, they were given free reign of the whole, the only place that was locked

was the arms room, which they immediately broke into. Did they actually leave arms behind? Yes. Mostly pistols, rifles, submachine guns. Yeah. Now, a lot of the prisoners in this prison were military men,

and they started to get scared because before Vimmer ran off, he told them, keep yourselves in this prison because there's ss everywhere um and the what the ss was doing at the time was what rounding up what they considered traitors so by this point like i said before the berlin government had surrendered and now carl donuts was in charge of what was considered the flensburg government the reich was fucking doomed and pretty much everybody saw uh the writing on the wall here yeah so you saw this during the battle of berlin and you saw this in other places what the ss was

doing instead of fighting though they were doing that in some places was rounding up military aged males and some civilians that they saw fleeing towards american and british lines to surrender and shooting them or hanging them as traitors yeah uh there was also stories of them killing pows that the wehrmacht had kept uh because ss reasons uh now because you're a murdering psychopath and have no regard for any human life. Right. Now, I know if anybody's listening to this that's listening to our clean Wehrmacht episode,

I am not excusing the Wehrmacht for anything. Go back and listen to it. Right. Now, the prisoners... To heap abuse on one is not to praise the other by any means. No. And at this point, it's safe to consider a lot of this of a lot of people trying to save their own asses right um so the prisoners within castle eider realized that like these ss guys might find the fucking castle and

they might come for us we'd arm the fuck up uh so despite all of their political and historical differences like between gamelan and wygand they broke into the arms room armed themselves and then begin to span out to hold and defend the castle but they also realized this was not enough a lot of them were not military men a lot of them were like prime ministers and shit. Like we need fucking soldiers. Or even if they are military men. I mean, they're military men in the same way that Wesley Clark is still a fucking military man. Yeah.

The last time Maurice Gumlon had probably pulled the trigger is maybe World War I. Yeah. More likely even before that. Yeah. Maybe the Franco-Prussian War if we squint real hard maybe not that's probably too old for him but yeah they're old uh there is some partisans um some czech partisans that were held there temporarily they're younger but also they would just want to escape um right like they just they just want to go the fuck home like you know and blend back into the background they don't give a shit about you know protecting these old french geezers right

and like honestly i'd have a hard time if one of these guys like no we just stay put i'm like we need a fucking what now like get the fuck out of here uh very much you are not my supervisor like fuck right off like bitch i just broke out of prison I will fucking shoot you and this is the one murder anybody can get away with because we're in the middle of Nazi Austria because I'm in fucking prison yeah I am in Dachau you motherfucker

but they realize like we're the safest in the castle their numbers are very very small if they get cut on the open road they'd very easily be outgunned. Castle Eider, while built in the Middle Ages, can stop machine gun rounds at least. We can hold up in here. But they also knew Americans are nearby.

We need to go tell them what's going on over here. Maybe they'll send people to come help us. But they needed to pick someone who could go find the americans who was fast and in shape which led to one czech partisan named andre um which is his nom de guerre i cannot pronounce his full name i'm not even gonna try uh but he went by andre he was also the guy who put their fucking pirate radio together um and he volunteered he's like i'll go find the fucking americans he's like the one like you know kind of like american style like action star like you know it's like you know it's like a you know has operated undercover put together the radio like the most in shape guy like you know speaks like five line he's like the fucking jason bourne of uh you know like austria

in 1945 he has his hair slicked back with like fucking track grease a pack of cigarettes up in his sleeve and shit yeah like everyone else there is just like you know kind of like a you know fat like uh interwar style politician and then there's this one dude who looks like marlon brando but like good marlon brando not like apocalypse now marlon brando yeah no like uh you know like uh you know uh wild one marlon brando not a not a last tango and perilous marlon brando no butter involved oh wild one marlon brando would get the business for sure um now um so he decided he was gonna go but he couldn't run the whole way because it's the nearest town is like six miles away so he stole a bike that the uh veramok had left being like a pedal bike and pedaled six fucking miles in the nearest town once again just like those moments and more that you have to

imagine you just like feel both like really fucking scared and fucking ridiculous all at the same fucking time yeah it's like when the fucking Japanese invaded Singapore on bicycles like it's ridiculous but also kind of like terrifying yeah um so he got to the nearest town and he was relieved to see that it was not held by the SS

but instead elements of the Wehrmacht commanded by a guy named Major Joseph Gangle um Joseph Gangle. Now Gangle was mulling over the idea of surrendering what remained of his unit which was maybe about a platoon to the Allies when Andre popped up and told him about the castle. Now we don't know

Gangle's reason. Gangle, Gangle I don't fucking know. Gargle. It's an unwieldy last name even for Germany but nobody is really sure why he talked to Andre Andre isn't alive to tell the story

either is Gangle but what we can assume is that he heard of a castle full of presidents and prime ministers and shit and decided that you know what would look really good and help me escape any war crimes trials or gallows at the end of this war. Yeah. Helping

those guys. Yeah, it's a hell of a bargaining chip. And admittedly, the French government when reconstituted treated German POWs fucking terribly. So Gangles got something here. Right. Like they made them diffuse minefields by hand,

which is a war crime, to be fair. And a lot of them did not survive. So like Gangles onto something here, like the French might not be our friends when all this shit's over, which no shit, right? It's like lepers. I can't believe leopards would eat my face.

Or you say, you know, just, you know, German Wehrmacht officers just immediately calling for unity. Can't imagine what that would be like. That's exactly what that is. Look, guys, we should probably all get over this and come together. You know, the invasion of France was like five years ago. You know, I think it's important that no one holds a grudge anymore. Yeah, exactly. So he assumed that this, honestly, rightly,

this would probably help him when he wanted to surrender what remained of his unit to the Allies afterwards. Gangl told Andre to head to the town of Innsbruck, which had just been taken over by the U.S. 103rd Infantry Division, while his command team headed in a different direction to try to cover as much ground as they could. Andre found some firsts, running into Major John Kramers, who happened to be a guy who could speak fluent German.

Andre told him what was happening, and Kramer's and the French liaison, Lieutenant Eric Luton, slapped together a rescue force made up of four M10 tank destroyers, three Jeeps, and a truck full of infantry, amounting to be about a platoon, about 30-ish guys. Right. But these guys would take forever to get there for other reasons

Gangle found a different American unit the 23rd tank battalion and while holding a white flag he told them about what was going on the castle that's when lieutenant Jack Lee volunteered to take a

patrol up to the castle to see just what the fuck was going on he chose eight volunteers the man that patrols two Sherman tanks his named besotten Jenny which I included because I thought it was sound fucking hilarious

well you know my girl's kind of a drunk so fuck it and lieutenant Wallace as Holbrooks bosh buster for people unaware bosh is an old timey slur name for Germans. And two other Shermans

along with a handful of infantry to ride with them. Interestingly enough, these infantry were all black men, which is one of the few times that something like this occurred. The army was not integrated yet. That would not occur until the Korean War.

Instead of leaving Gangle and his platoon of infantry behind, they asked if he would like to come with them, and they did. Putting the Nazi soldiers directly under the command of an American lieutenant, which had to be the weirdest fucking command briefing of all time. Like, this guy's only a lieutenant uh actually like one of like uh war history was it was a world war ii magazine did a spread on this and they like they kept noting that like lieutenant lee should have been a captain by then but he had done something which nobody ever talks about um of why he had not been promoted yet he

gets promoted after this, so congrats. But he's like, first you're holding... He's like, first you're holding... He's a tanker. He probably got drunk and punched somebody. I'm going to assume. But he's like, I'm going to take the truckload of Nazis with me too. Is that cool? Alright,

bro, I'm gone. And then nobody really debates it. Everyone's like, okay, fine. And Gangle and his men are not like, you guys are going to come with us, other than you need to show us where the castle is. And Gangle was going to go on his own. But he's like, no, we want to fight.

We want to help you secure this place. And he's like, all right. I mean, I'd imagine a lot of them are thinking the same thing. If we do the Allies a solid, then maybe we all won't end up in a prison camp immediately after this. I certainly think that's some of it. And I think a lot of it is... Now, when we talked about in our clean Wehrmacht episode,

a lot of the Wehrmacht crimes, when they worked hand-in-hand with the Einsatzgruppen, the SS, and what have you, were out east. Most of those soldiers are dead. Most of the surviving soldiers in 1945 on the Western Front did not serve in the Eastern Front. Most of those veterans are fucking gone. So most of these guys in the West, they might be veterans of the most of those veterans are fucking gone yeah so most of these guys in the west are they might be veterans of the western front they might be new conscripts but either way

most likely the only relationship they have with the ss is watching them kill civilians and like hang people for being deserters and shit yeah at this point if these guys want to survive the war they probably see themselves having a better chance fighting the ss than the americans yeah yeah i can see that so it's like look we don't like each other but we both also hate the ss it's like we have a joke on the show called the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy and that's kind of what this is a lot of people tag us and shit when it comes to stuff like the theory of fuck that guy but well i mean we've seen a great one this week it's been pretty good um now normally in my opinion only works when you have to kill people or like it's like quite literally quite literally life and death um but you know this worked uh so like nobody asked a whole lot of questions it's one of the

most unifying theories of fuck that guy in all of world war ii because like uh lieutenant lee was not some fresh cherry lieutenant off the off the boat this guy had fought through Germany against Wehrmacht soldiers to get to where he was in Austria. The book notes that he's just exhausted and all of his men are so sick of fighting. So he had been fighting Wehrmacht for a long time.

So, yeah, they worked together and they deployed back towards the castle castle passing through the town the town of vorgal and that's when they discovered a whole bunch of ss people or at least they assume it was ss people had wired the only bridge in the town to explode so lee kind of like well the german said they'd listen to me he's like hey go defuse the bomb and a whole bunch of soldiers were like okay and went and defused it bomb. And a whole bunch of Wehrmacht soldiers were like, okay, and went and defused it.

They didn't even argue. They're like, he's our officer. We have to listen to him. Jesus, that's like the most and least surprising thing all at the same time together. It's the most enlisted thing on Earth. Like, I know these guys are probably conscripts, but at the same time, like, well,

the officer's telling us something to do. We have to go do it, right? Well, I mean an lt though so i mean you know this is actually a lot more respect than one would typically you know give an lt yeah i assume there's also a sergeant nearby like you know you're gonna have to go fucking do it man all right fine um so they cleared the way and admittedly like well i'm sure lieutenant lee did this because like well if it explodes it'll only kills some germans right like 100% I believe that but also like they would

know how to diffuse their own shit I would hope yeah at least have a better you know jumping off point yeah they could at least read it because like it's noted that lee doesn't speak german but uh gangles spoke english yeah it's just you know never discover over the course of the entire war that there's just a sign in every It's noted that Lee doesn't speak German, but Gangle spoke English.

Yeah, I just never discovered over the course of the entire war that there's just a sign on every German charge that says, cut this wire. But it just says it in German. It's like a video game. You have to aim for the red barrels. Yeah, clearly. You have to press the right combination of buttons in the right order in the right amount of time. Of course. Now, after this, they moved forward with

clearing the way in front of them. As Lee and the rest of the unit moved forward, they ran directly into a group of SS soldiers who were setting up a roadblock. Now, this wasn't a very well fortified roadblock, so it was probably out looking for deserters or, most likely

ganglion his men who had since gone missing now before the ss the roadblock probably realized what was happening the infantry is seated on top of lee's tank open fire on the ss and to the shock of everyone else so did the vermacht without orders like they're like yeah fuck that guy i hope like it's just amazing it's incredible like i something could be said for contagious contagious firing which i think i've told stories on this show before about how i've fallen for it yeah but like it's one thing to guide these guys back to the castle.

Like, they're just like start pumping rounds and some SS guys who are, let me be clear, running away. Like just shooting into their backs. Like, fuck you, you lightning bolt wearing motherfuckers.

Well, also it's like, I mean, I guess if you can't, you know, like kill your own officers, at least you can like, you know, do the next best thing yeah i mean if you can't kill a member of the vermont killing a member of the ss is just as good and i think this is a lot of that goes into

um like the firsthand accounts of a lot of these vermont guys were like obviously rose-tinted glasses and all that because they're not gonna be like, yeah, we're fucking bastards, but at least we're not the SS. But like, a lot of them noted how they were killing civilians who were just simply trying to run away

from a possible Soviet advance. Yeah. And like, dudes in their, like, with their family in their cars would be pulled out and shot on the street

and their families would be sent home or like, Wehrmacht soldiers who were just, just wanted to survive would be sent home or like vermark soldiers who were just just wanted to survive would be strung up with like uh uh poster boards around their neck saying like traitor or whatever or deserter and things like that i feel like that's become like a pretty common like you know covered now i feel like uh the last few movies i've seen that have dealt with kind of you know at least in part that era of world war ii always include you know some scenes of exactly that sort of shit you know the kind of like you know volunteer death squads that popped up at the

end of the war to like you know you know eat eat their own essentially yeah and like the ss is doing this like the hitler youth as well like they they did not have any qualms about murdering children they're the fucking ss right so like even uh and i and i know that like we talked about in the in the clean wehrmacht episode more however a lot of these guys are just soldiers and they're like yo fuck those dudes like i said the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy they're bastards but they also want to survive the war the americans want to kill people in the ss and the vermont's like this is the way to survive the war now uh the ss soldiers have banned their post because you know they got ambushed by several tanks um and open this

opened the road back up the The rescue mission at this point then floored it towards the castle, realizing the SS are already getting close. And they got there just as the sun began to set. And the former inmates now defending the castle were actually very unimpressed by the rescue force that came for them. They assumed that Gangle and Andre

telling the Americans like, like hey there's prime ministers and field marshals and shit in there you know they would get like George fucking Patton driving down the road to like rescue them and instead they got Lieutenant Lee a whole bunch of Nazis and a couple tanks well you can imagine like

you're this fucking like not promoted like tired ass fucking lieutenant and you have all these like you French officials who are really disappointed that Patton himself with Eisenhower in tow wasn't showing up to glad hand him. Yeah, and Lee did not give them any courtesy at all. And so two of the tanks were actually left behind at this point. And so two of the tanks were actually left behind at this point. So when they crossed the bridge, they left two behind to secure it, to make sure they didn't get surrounded or fucked up in any way, to keep the route of escape open. Right. So when a besotten Jenny showed up to the castle, they had one Sherman, seven whole Americans, which to be clear, were black dudes and the French were not happy about that.

And then about a platoon of Nazis, which is the weirdest fucking rescue force that has ever been put together in human history. Like even the Wehrmacht's like, look, I'm fine with this, but can they at least be white? Like, that's like the one thing that the Wehrmacht and the French agreed upon. It was fucking gross. There's a whole lot of implied racism here um i mean probably not implied i mean at that point in french history pretty probably fucking explicit yeah and it's not implied because they're nazis like right of course they're fucking racist you know um and like uh gangl uh introduced himself to the French knew who they were um because he was told and treated them with the utmost

courtesy as he could while Lee acted like you imagine a lower ranking lieutenant who's also a tanker axe and um one of the prisoners called Lee quote crude in both looks and manners.

And the French were much nicer to gangle. Who's a Nazi. Cause he treated him better. Of course he treated him better. This whole wants to survive. If he didn't know any better, you'd think this whole fucking thing was a parody. Like this,

like it's fucking Hogan's heroes or some shit. Yeah. Like that's, that's like what essentially this, like, or not even hogan's heroes this is like kelly's heroes yeah yeah that's probably what i meant uh but yeah like you would expect that the french were smart enough to realize like this made and i mean gangles a major he's not a dumb guy he's fought a lot of this war and he's probably seen what's coming for him he's like no no yes Mr. Field Marshal Prime Minister I will get you a drink of water anything you

need well like Lieutenant Lee's chain smoking in their face and probably smells terrible because he's a tanker right just like dipping on the floor as like you know the Major just you know like literally is kissing the boots of everyone in front of him yeah yeah he knows that the only thing that that a bad bootlicker Art Major just, you know, like literally is kissing the boots of everyone in front of him. Yeah. Yeah.

He knows that the only thing that that a bad bootlicker can do is become a good bootlicker. And the prisoners were also pretty bummed to find out that Lee's intention was not to leave the castle. Remember, they only had one tank and about 37-ish infantry in a truck. What happened to the fourth tank? They were all sitting at the bridge. Oh, so they left three tanks? Yes. Oh, okay.

So they started out with four, they left three at the bridge and they only brought one to the castle? Yeah, he was more worried about an escape route and also to secure reinforcements. But also, what are you really going to do with a tank at a castle? Fire. I mean, it's a Sherman, so they're not as bad as people give them credit for.

But you could turn into a functioning pillbox. Yeah. I just meant if you have a bunch of tanks in a castle, there's only so many places where you can really put a tank i would imagine without it being like exposed and the whole point of is to have a hard point yeah and that's actually pretty much what ends up happening um lee is smart enough to realize like he needs to block the escape route and he does like something that is pretty common like even today at american like outposts is that they use an armored vehicle as a gate. Which, it works. Now, Lee's idea

was like, I can't bring in all of you guys out of here. We're going to hunker down here. If the SS want to fuck with us, we'll fight from the castle, but we're going to hold on until the rest of the American offensive comes this way, because they're coming.

If the SS really wants to fuck around we'll help them find out from this castle right so there's a nearby town of Kufstein I'd probably pronounce it Kufstein he it was relatively close by but he also realized like i could feasibly load everybody up

but if we get caught on the street we are fucked um because i mean the the the v the truck that the germans rode in on is unarmored i can't put this fucking prime minister inside my tank and have the tank still work right yeah you'd be riding on top of it or whatever. But he figured if the SS wanted to dick around, they'd mostly just be looking at vulnerable targets. Yeah. They wouldn't try

to attack a fortified castle. And even if they did, this castle it's elevated. They have machine guns there now. They have a platoon plus of trained infantry. You can cause a lot of damage held up in a castle on an attacking force. And everything in front of the castle is open.

It's a killing field. It's surrounded by woods. But they have to get over a clearing first to get to the castle so lee probably assumed that the ss wasn't stupid enough to attack it and then 11 p.m that night the ss was stupid enough to attack it now nobody's entirely sure why the ss actually attacked the castle they weren't sure if they knew the americans were held up there and that's why they attacked it or because they came to kill prisoners or a combination of the two.

But at the point when hundreds of SS threw themselves at the castle, that point wasn't important anymore. The American soldiers, German soldiers, and French prisoners all ran out to pre-arranged fighting positions and fought side-by- side throughout the night,

keeping the SS at bay. Like, one American soldier noted that he was being fed ammunition into his.30 caliber machine gun by a German. Which had to be weird. Like, we were both shooting at each other last week. Yeah. What you can also imagine, too,

I mean, just even, like, the inherent language barrier involved. Yeah, and I think that, I mean, just even like the inherent language barrier involved. Yeah. And I think that's like one of the things, uh, it notes in the book is that, uh, they had like one of their scouts at the highest part of the castle was screaming out shit in German.

Now, Gangle did speak English, but also I think a lot of it is like the implied language of soldiering in that situation is like, you all kind of know what's going on. Kind of more or less. Yeah. Like shoot in that situation is like you all kind of know what's going on kind of more or less yeah like shoot in that direction

but the battle didn't end when the sun came up instead the SS realized like oh no these guys intend on holding on so they wheeled up an 88 millimeter anti-tank gun into position and began shelling the defenders it did not take long for poor, poor

Bissat and Jenny to get hit and go up in flames. Though there was Lee was not in the tank at the time and one of his crew members were killed. The rest were able to escape. And this 88 tank shell attacking the tank

was the signal for a general attack. And that's when the hundreds of SS men swarmed out of the surrounding forest and attack the castle at all sides, the soldiers defending outside, uh, and like they're hastily dug fighting positions were quickly withdrew back into the castle,

uh, give it being given coven fire cover fire by German soldiers with American machine guns who were being fed ammunition by a French tennis star. As one does. As is normal in 1945. Now, this

curtain of cover fire was enough to keep the SS at bay. And that is when Gangle, who was standing with lee up at the top commanding a joint defense was shot and killed by a sniper leaving the defense to lee who remember did not speak german gangl spoke english lee was now fucked uh he began like wildly motioning with his hands uh like you. You know what Americans do whenever they talk to someone

that doesn't speak the same language? They speak slowly and louder. Yeah, slowly louder and trying to make weird gestures that are supposed to correspond with whatever verb you're saying. Yeah, and thankfully, there wasn't German civilians or something. The German soldiers at this point knew

they needed to defend this fucking castle because if it fell they're gonna die just like the americans like the ss are not gonna have any sympathy for them right and it's not like you know like yeah uh i don't know shoot the guys outside all right yeah yeah boss like yeah at this point they all unified under the extent like if we don't defend this castle every single one of us is going to die and not only are we gonna die we're gonna die real real bad because the ss is gonna do it right and it's like that it's like the ending of um fury it's like they're gonna kill you real bad it's gonna last a real long time yeah like it's not this is not even just going to be like a normal war crime this is going to be like a special war crime yeah especially if you're the fucking verhrmacht and you're shooting at the

SS. Jesus Christ, you're going to get the SS special. Even just random people that they're finding are getting hung at this point. It's going to definitely be worse than that. Yeah, your best bet is going down fighting and hoping a bullet catches you in the face and not that you catch one in the gut and they get to come and finish

you off. Now, back at the bridge a random gathering of american soldiers had met the rear guard now this was not like an organized ford element uh they were kind of scouts kind of just lingerers of a different american unit and they heard the gunfire and were talking to the people holding the bridge and they were told like oh no no no we have americans in that castle fighting like they need help and they tried to raise lee on the radio but couldn't that's when an austrian partisan who also had trickled over there directed the officers to a nearby hotel where you could just call the castle at a landline

which is what he did lee picked up the phone it was like oh yeah we could really use some help also we have no ammo left bring all the ammo you can uh because you know it's 30 against 500 at this point right and this is where another problem was now it wasn't with an eye shot of the castle so like they did did not know how exactly to get to the castle. And this is something that Lee was worried about. Like, they're going to get on their tanks and they're going to roll this way and they're going to end up getting lost. Yeah. So that is when Lee Botara or sorry, John Botara, not Lee Botara, offered Lieutenant Lee, like, I'll go find them and I'll bring them here.

Wait, the fucking tennis guy? The tennis guy. Yeah. The nationalist former Nazi collaborator tennis guy. I love a good Chekhov's tennis pro. You know, it's good. And he's like, you know what? I can get there.

I'll show these guys how to get to the castle. No problem. And Lee at this point is like, you know what? I can get there. I'll show these guys how to get to the castle. No problem. And Lee at this point is like, fuck, nothing else could go possibly more wrong. Sure. I'll give the tennis guy a green light. I don't give a fuck at this point. So he snuck out in a lull of the fighting and apparently sprinted across 40 yards of open ground. And at one point got close enough to an ss uh position where they were as confused as

he was and didn't shoot at him as he jumped by like that looked like the tennis guy i'm pretty sure that was the fucking tennis guy god damn it just like imagining it like i don't know playing fucking call of duty or something and so you're just like you know jumping constantly to like make sure no one can fucking nose go to you buddy hopping through yeah and i know this isn't the case but i also want him to be dressed as a tennis player during this time right yeah just like sweat bands and like short shorts yeah not even like one of the period but like one of like the 70s like you know like like sweat bands like both like on on his head as well as like both wrists like some short shorts, some Chuck Taylors. If somebody tried to throw a grenade at him,

he just hits him with a sick back hand and sends it flying back at them. It's like fucking shuttlecock. At this point, he sprinted down the road and found the American tanks, who probably were also very confused as to why this guy was waving them down. They just keep having like different fucking

people with different nationalities just waving them down and telling them how to get to a castle. Like it's just the most surreal possible shit. Like oh yeah. Like at this point the only part that isn't surprising is somehow the Red Army does not show up at some point. Right or like I don't know like some

like a you know two truckloads of italians somehow like blunder in or something like you know the immediately surrender and join the ss and then once the battle's over they join the castle um so at this point uh this is taking quite some time because remember this is the the bridge is three to five miles away and jean is like just sprinting through the woods wildly trying to get in that direction so it takes some time and ammo goes very quickly in a battle so lee realizes we are fucked we're out of ammo so they fell back into the castle's keep which at this point their plan was to use their last remaining bullets as they came in through the keep doors and then spread out into the various stairwells and very, very narrow hallways and use bayonets and their own fists to force the SS to fight to the death over every inch of the castle. Like, imagine like the Germans like, wait, we have to do what now? Like, I thought this was gonna be

easy. Also, just, like, even, like, even the Americans, like, you imagine, like, just, like, any enlisted, like, junior enlisted at this point, having to, like, listen to your NCOs and officers and just having it be something like, I don't know, man, I read the fucking newspaper, it said the war was over, like, you know,

a couple days ago. I don't want to deal with any of this shit. Yeah, and I'll imagine, because a day ago, when they're all just sitting pretty in Austria, and they're like, all right, lads, remember to stab them in the fucking eyes when they come through the doors. Yeah, just like some real how it started,

how it's going sort of moment. So just as the SS were lining up a Panzerschreck anti-tank rocket to blow down the keep doors, they were hit by machine gun fire from a Sherman tank that appeared on their flank like something out of a fucking action movie. Some fucking Lord of the Rings shit. Yeah, exactly. It's Gandalf the White white but it's a Sherman tank full of people that smell like garbage and that's when like the American

relief column spanned out led by a French tennis tennis star to cut a swath of SS men who are now just like standing out in the open thinking they were just seconds away from victory and they just started getting blasted by tanks and shit and the

SS immediately broke off their attack and retreated back into the woods yeah I fucking would too the strange combined force of white Americans, black Americans French aristocrats and Nazis had beaten the other Nazis.

The French VIPs were then whisked away, and American and German soldiers rode back to their base together, bringing their dead along with them side by side. Once there, the Germans who had just been fighting alongside them officially surrendered to Lee.

Lee was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and finally promoted to captain. All it took was an almost suicidal last stand. Nowadays, you can just record a good runtime. And like the nicest thing that the Americans did for the Germans that fought with them was like shuffle them into an American POW camper, then turning them over to the French, which also happened from time to time. They're like, nah, you guys have earned our POW camp. Yeah, you won't immediately be murdered. Congratulations. Yeah, you might die of cholera or some shit, though. What were the

casualties like for this thing anyway was not that high uh the americans lost one or two the germans lost significantly more um because there's just more of them yeah but i mean like the deaths were like five five or six uh nobody's really sure of the ss because they were pulling their own casualties back yeah but it was a lot it was a fucking lot plus probably no one really like thought to you know oh well he's kind look at him he's just kind of uh sitting there rotting in a ditch I'm just gonna leave him sitting there rotting in a ditch yeah there's no need to count the dead Germans at most days kick him over into a mass grave right um now later on a few years later uh captain lee who never made major because of course he didn't uh was interviewed by a paper about the battle and he described the entire battle

and probably the best way i had found yet and he took a few seconds thought about it because at this point nobody had really asked him about it it was it was a nothing battle very small battle at the end of a war um and he said well it was the damnedest thing that was it yeah sure sure fucking was bud like

which is just like some world war two vet era like under it like just under describing shit. That was just so crazy. Now, Shox, thank you for joining me on this insane story. And we'll close it off with our question from the Legion. Now, if you'd like to ask us a question from Legion, you can donate a dollar to the show and do that other thing

that I say at the end of every other episode. Slide in my DMs and tell me something stupid. Now, everybody knows that if there's ever an intergalactic war, it'll almost certainly include an AK-47 and a T-55. But what other military hardware will be fighting alongside these eternal weapons? And I have to say the Toyota Hilux right off the top of my head. Yeah. Similarly, I was going to say kind of regardless of,

uh, you know, somewhat a historically, you know, when you look at a climate change thing, but I would go with the diesel engine, uh, for very similar reasons.

Cause I like, uh, on the 47 that I used to, uh, work on the, the two, uh, for very similar reasons. Cause I like, uh, on the 47 that I used to, uh, work on the, the two, uh, engines.

There are two Detroit diesel engines, which are, uh, some of the same ones that were used in like deuce and a half and shit. Like they just like show up fucking everywhere and they just like run and run and run until they don't. Yeah. I mean,

that's like a Toyota Hilux can be more bullet hole than truck and it will still run yeah and you don't have to give them any fucking maintenance at all that's the reason why that they're like given to the afghan army yeah we know you're not gonna do any oil chains it'll be good for 20 000 miles regardless or like i don't know i feel like maybe like a uh um i don't know maybe like a lee enfield rifle or something. I'm just thinking about all the shit that has just lasted in either the Middle East or Afghanistan or something. The shit that just still seems to pop up every now and again.

There's been more than one Lee Enfield or even STG-44 that has surfaced during the Syrian Civil War. Yeah, all the stuff that shows up on uh was it a calibre obscura yes i love that fucking page it's amazing um yeah i don't know like even just like thinking about like types of things that reoccur because i feel like uh

um like battle wagons of some sort have just like existed in some way shape or form for fucking forever like technicals yeah i mean like technicals and just like or even... Like Nestor Mokno made the first fucking technical on horseback. Right. It's incredible.

I think it's called like a Tachanka or something like that. It's amazing. Or like even like looking at like maritime shit. Like I feel like you know, everyone is eventually at some point... Like I know I was talking to you recently about like the Cod Wars and like, you know, kind is eventually at some point, like, I know I was talking to you recently about, like, the Cod Wars and, like, you know, kind of, like, less, like, kind of, you know, lukewarm conflicts between different powers over fishing rights. Yeah.

And it's amazing that a lot of them, you know, still essentially just use a ship as a battering ram. Yeah, I did not expect that. You know, and you have to think about, like, how far back that shit goes. I'd expect that. You know, and you have to think about, like, how far back that shit goes. And, like, even in, like, you know, when you see that in fucking Star Wars, like, I'm thinking of, like, Rogue One, where they essentially just, like, use one of their ships to, like, you know, disable the, like, the force field by just, like, ramming the fuck into it. Yeah, like, I can say something like that. Or, like, you know, I actually got to visit the Icelandic coastguards museum when i was in reykjavik and like uh one of the weapons that

they used against the royal fucking navy was like a effectively as like a cannon but like it was i think it was powered by black powder and all it did was fire a giant fucking knife with a hook at the end of it that tried to cut fishing lines. Yeah. We see your fucking ocean-going destroyer. We raise you this fish cannon. It's also funny when you think about it.

Reading about that too, just because it was also around the same time as the Falklands War and shit like that. The Royal Navy was eating a pretty good shit sandwich there for a while, for a couple decades. Every time they went out to try to go do something. Yeah, and they should be, because fuck them. I don't know. I'm trying to think of anything else that I could think of that's just absolutely indestructible.

I don't know. Adidas track pants and flip flops For sure I got my track suit recently I'm fully in favor of that Be floating around on Mars Fighting the first intergalactic war Spitting sunflower seeds in a sick optic squat To be great

Or just like Still fucking Still smoking cigarettes Or like still In a pure oxygen atmosphere oh vaping fucking huge clouds kid uh god shocks as always thank you for joining

us um it's always great to have you on one day we'll get back on here i'm not sure what i'll have to hand receipt him back from the army at some point just sign for him yeah i thought i did i guess my hand receiptin-the-seat has lapsed, and now I have to go talk to his commander and get custody of him again.

Oh, poor lost boy. And until next time, redacted Nazis with a machine gun. Yep. I don't think I can say that whole thing. Nope, you're good. All right, it clears the lawyers, so do it, kids.

Later.