Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 235- Otto Skorzeny Part 3: Otto Skorzeny, Mossad Assassin

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Things get weird in the conclusion to the Otto Skorzeny story. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:34 Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. and with me, as always, is Liam. Hello, Liam. How are you doing? Since we recorded part two and you're optimistic about the Phillies. Why don't you go fuck yourself there, bud? You're a fucking Tigers fan. Let's all settle down.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Yeah, it's because that's why I'm never optimistic. You can't take down what is already as far down as it can possibly go. I could do some real psychic damage to you based on the things I know about you, but I'm not going to because I'm a nice person. Yes, I could. I could make you feel real bad. I don't need your help with that. Thank you. It's very funny because part two at the time of recording is out on Patreon.
Starting point is 00:01:22 If you donated to the show, you'd have access to it right now there there's the sales um but everybody's like buy our t-shirts in the comments is like we're so sorry liam go go phillies or whatever the one person did say go astros and i assume it's because their parents don't love them yeah that is true i'm just kidding uh but uh oh yeah ever ever since the first two episodes have come out, our German listeners have been messaging, German and Austrian listeners have been messaging us quite a bit, saying that these fencing clubs that Otto Skorzeny was a part of are still very much a thing,
Starting point is 00:01:57 and they're still very much full of right-wing psychos, which is... You guys are a bunch of fucking freaks, and I say that as somebody who's got a... You know what? I'm not even going to fucking talk about it sucks dude it fucking sucks here i don't know today is election day in the united states it's on our eighth uh all i can say is uh i dude i had to like not like convincing people to not vote for a nazi is the worst fucking thing and i just like i i don't know man i will piss on your grave thug mastriano god that guy's fucking insane oh yeah but the worst part is by the time
Starting point is 00:02:32 this episode comes out we're gonna know uh i i am i'm not gonna say anything because uh you know i'm just not gonna actionable threats actionable threats threats, actionable threats. Yeah. I mean, it's most actionable threats, but, uh, it, I'll, I'll leave it at that. Uh,
Starting point is 00:02:47 you know, I, uh, at the gates of hell, when he meets his God, uh, his God will not look kindly upon him. Uh,
Starting point is 00:02:55 spoiler. Well, like here's a plot twist. He's actually, uh, a full on like LeVay and Satanist the whole time. So he's like, I'm home,
Starting point is 00:03:02 baby. I don't know. Uh, I know that's not what LeVay and Satanism is about leave me alone some weird person who's got really into Satanism in high school is like actually it's about worshipping
Starting point is 00:03:13 yourself leave me alone yeah go fucking I don't know go listen to ministry about it go listen to Burzum and be weird with other weird people speaking of nazis i don't know squirzeny part three uh right and here's the good news he's in prison uh that's where we left off on part two is uh squirzeny turned himself in uh and the war is over and
Starting point is 00:03:41 you know he uh squirzeny assumed uh everybody would know who he was thanks in no small part uh to dwight eisenhower circulating wanting posters with his very easily recognized face on them big fucked up face yes yeah it was very fucked up uh but he was wrong uh like he assumed that because he was something of a celebrity he would be be treated like an officer and a gentleman, etc, etc, etc. Okay, here's the fucking thing with that, right? Eat shit. I agree. And he also forgot something quite
Starting point is 00:04:16 important. He was still in the fucking SS. Hang them. Hang all of them. Every single last one, please. And that comes from the Lions Led by Donkeys war crime trial. I don't disagree. But, yeah, obviously the U.S., not a huge fan of the SS after the Malmedy Massacre, which we will talk about at some point on the show.
Starting point is 00:04:42 Especially when we talk about the Battle of the Bulge, whenever we do that. Obviously, the U.S. treated them slightly better than the Soviet Union, and honestly, also slightly better than France, because France had them go waffle-stomp minefields to clear them. But Eisenhower especially kind of sort of accepted... Okay, there's a little bit of controversy here, but there was an order passed after the Malmedy Massacre where there was effectively a no quarter order in the United States military towards the SS.
Starting point is 00:05:15 You kill them on sight. And there is some argument whether or not Eisenhower actually knew about that. I don't mind if he did but let's just say yeah like i'm not gonna hold that against them uh that should have just been standard policy uh but yeah there's a there's a little bit of argument of how much he knew but either way he he turns himself in he assumes he's going to be treated very, very well. And I mean, to be fair, he is kind of. He's just treated like a POW, which is not good. He turns himself in.
Starting point is 00:05:51 He's surrounded by soldiers and strip searched at gunpoint. Which, I mean, he may have been a victim of his own success. Because remember, Eisenhower and several other people thought this guy was effectively the most dangerous man in the world because of propaganda. Sure. Right. So they're like, they're going to treat him like he might be like his assholes full of dynamite or some shit like that. They have to treat him with like very, very carefully. Right.
Starting point is 00:06:15 Yeah. Yeah. He's handcuffed and shoved into a prison cell where he's left for hours and hours and hours. And from there, he pretty much realized, well, this is certainly not going as planned. So he scores any, which is, he's a master of self-preservation. And he immediately switched into self-preservation mode. He acted like when he went into a room with interrogators, he acted open and sincere, trying to play himself off as like really wanting to help them and tell them everything he knew when in reality he wasn't uh in like instead he also realized because he had heard
Starting point is 00:06:52 like oh no i'm in the ss that is bad for me at the moment um spoiler alert not looking good uh yeah like literally like you named a criminal organization afterwards and he'd have to deal with that. But like he tried to frame himself not as a lifelong career Nazi terrorist and hit man, which he was all of those things. Rather, he simply tried to portray himself as your normal. I'm just a simple country anti-communist. A simple country Nazi. Right. Yes. Which, to be fair, I suppose you could add anti-communist to the list of things that he is because he was that as well.
Starting point is 00:07:28 I don't know. You're leaving a lot out. Hanging from a nice country rope. Yeah. As we've talked about before, generally when someone labels themselves an anti-communist, it's because they're a fascist. Oh, yeah. Especially in 1945. especially in 1945 um and and you know despite all the other things we're going to talk about about americans and other countries kind of sort of turning a blind eye towards squarzeny later
Starting point is 00:07:53 years later down the road americans did not believe him at all uh they're like no this guy is like this guy's auto squarzeny he's hit hitler personally knows. He's a Nazi. He's not just some dedicated anti-communist. Right. This guy's an actual fucking literal Nazi. Died in the war. Nazi. And he would be until the day he died. I think I said that in part one,
Starting point is 00:08:16 but he was an unrepentant Nazi through and through until he finally shit himself and died. He never backed down from that. I mean, granted, there's some debate over what exactly he knew in regards to some Nazi things, which is you could copy and paste that to anyone else that wasn't like a Nazi bigwig
Starting point is 00:08:37 or in Central Command or in the government, which he wasn't. But ideologically, he was a fucking Nazi until the day he died right right so um eventually word got out that scorzini had been captured and that got turned into something of a media field day that even the army in midst of wartime censorship really could not control soon stories that adolf hitler was still alive and smuggled out of Germany because Skorzeny had rescued him from Berlin became common and widespread, as did the supposed plot to kill Eisenhower, which in reality
Starting point is 00:09:12 was not part of his plan. That was all invented by paranoia within US Central Command. Sure, right. Because that does sound like something Skorzeny would set out to do. Right. But all of this didn't really matter. The Scorsese mythos of him being a crack commando who could do anything, anywhere, to anybody at any time had broken Nazi propaganda containment and now was mainstream media shit. Though, that didn't save him from charges.
Starting point is 00:09:40 I'm a species on Earth, baby. The Nazi bigwigs, like all of the people that Skorzeny had glommed on to to further his career, like Kaltenbrunner and Schellenberger and the people we talked about in parts one and two. They would eventually stand in front of the Nuremberg Tribunal as category A and B war criminals. Normally the things that ends with them being wind chimes. criminals. Normally, the things that ends with them being wind chimes. This stuff... We love us a good set of Nazi wind chimes.
Starting point is 00:10:12 The stuff that the Allies are charging Skorzeny with was nothing in comparison because, I mean, outside of the stuff he did in Denmark, which they still had not quite pinned on him, he probably wouldn't have been charged at all. Instead, he stood in front of the U.S. Army Tribunal, which was ironically
Starting point is 00:10:27 held at Dachau. Hey, when you already have a prison built, why not throw the other people right into the prison that they built? That is true. Making me shit. I hope my ancestors pissed in your mouths. Now, according to his own notes,
Starting point is 00:10:47 Skorzeny's years in detention were terrible which we could all smile i don't fucking care good dude yeah he was shifted around constantly to different prisons without being told oh the thing that pissed him off the most though is that the u.s made sure to use black prison guards around the SS because they knew it pissed the Nazis off. Yeah, it should have gotten some Ethiopian Jews just to really rev it up. You'd get a twofer. They really should have put out an all-call on the ranks for Jewish
Starting point is 00:11:16 soldiers. We're looking for you to guard prisoners. Bring the biggest star of Dave and Necklace you own. If you guys execute prisoners, we will look the other way. Yeah, like, oh, he dropped his rifle. That was an accident. Oh, no, what are you going to do?
Starting point is 00:11:31 Yeah, Private Hershowitz, this is the ninth guy you've killed this month. It's like that scene from, is it Band of Brothers where he takes away all but one bullet and gives his rifle back so he doesn't kill any more prisoners? Except you just give him a backpack full of ammunition. Poor private Hershowitz out of Brooklyn.
Starting point is 00:11:54 A good Jew in service to his country. All five foot, whatever, eight of him. One of our very tall Jews, of course. Loading, just walking around with like an m2 just you know it's it's uh it's a living like the like quipping like a fucking uh both backpacks of ammo are overweighted he's gotta he's gotta get another guy to just to light his cigarettes for him i fucking hate nazis man now uh another fun part is and i will so uh i asked our our producer uh tom uh who did this episode because nate is on vacation last time to splice in the the vomiting scene uh from team america world police and that caught a lot of
Starting point is 00:12:41 people off guard which tells me we have a lot of new listeners you must be new around here but Skorzeny was also shitting his brains out in solitary confinement because he had like just terminal dysentery he could not get rid of it which again you know
Starting point is 00:13:00 good I can't stop pooping from my mouth yeah you're that's good i i i know we're both against whatever the death penalty sort of with uh with limitations attached but yeah uh sorry if you want a fair and nuanced and balanced opinions for me from nazis you're not gonna fucking get it hang them all now yeah we're in june of Now, he has been in prison for about two years. Why is he still alive? He hasn't even gone to trial.
Starting point is 00:13:31 Like, this is where he found out he was being charged because he was effectively a celebrity. He was marched out in front of cameras to have the charges read off. And this is the first time he even found out he was being charged with anything but he assumed he was effectively uh in where he was because he's a high value pow or what and he also knows that because they haven't gotten around to you yet yeah they have i mean there's a lot of serious people they have to get through before they get down to like random ss commanders the propaganda or no propaganda um and he assumed that he was there because he's a high value pow and because he was a member of the ss which had
Starting point is 00:14:11 been labeled a criminal organization so he's like i'll get out eventually it's whatever now he realizes he's facing charges um he assumed that he would be facing charges for the operations in denmark on account of them being well a war crime however everyone involved in that case had so far managed to keep their fucking mouth shut and the army had no idea he was connected to it oh wow instead he'd be facing charges from the battle of the bulge because his men not him were wearing enemy uniforms during sabotage operations. Was this Operation Ghost, whatever it was called? Ghoul? Grief, I believe it was called.
Starting point is 00:14:49 Grief, there we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I'm unaware of what it means in German. I assume it means a loved one died and he was going through the stages of grief. Which, unfortunately for us, did not kill him just putting a bullet through his fucking head. Yeah, that's unfortunate.
Starting point is 00:15:04 Now, during this period, he was accused of taking part in the Mulberry Massacre of American POWs. Now, this shocked the hell out of Skorzeny, because despite Skorzeny being an unrepentant monster, he never did that. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, charge me for the crimes that I did. Don't go tacking
Starting point is 00:15:20 shit on me. No, charge him for it. Just invent shit if you have to. don't fucking care i mean you through this you kind of see it's not a miscarriage of justice when we're doing it it's not a miscarriage of justice when the guy's literally in the ss uh we've talked before about how like the the war crimes trials after world war ii were only loosely based in law like i'm not saying that like and you can kind of see through him being tacked on the malmati massacre and a few other things how like low the the the clearance
Starting point is 00:15:51 of like let's just charge him with shit and see what happens uh now one of the easiest ways to get away with anything of course is that the not like we've also talked about nazis like to keep paperwork right uh doing it and like it was very easy to prove that Skorzeny was nowhere near Malmedy, nor were his men when the massacre took place. And instead, the guy who pointed at Skorzeny and his commandos was just another Nazi who he had a personal problem with and just snitched on him for no reason. There was a matter of poisoned bullets, though. Now, this was bullets tipped with a substance called alkanite, which if you shot someone with them on top of having a gunshot wound, which you don't really seem like you need to poison that, in my opinion.
Starting point is 00:16:38 It's already pretty serious. But the alkanite would leach into their bloodstream, and if you shot someone in the leg or whatever, they would eventually die from alkanite would leach into their bloodstream and if you like shot someone on the leg or whatever they would eventually die from alkanite poison um now there's no argument that these bullets existed and scores any use them uh and his soldiers carried them um but he explained that a way that like the alkanite bullets were only there to make sure like if they were going to be captured they could shoot themselves and make damn sure the job was carried through right uh okay oh okay guy we have cyanide capsules for a reason yeah and they also all had cyanide capsules um which to me what why not uh like do the twofer
Starting point is 00:17:17 take the cyanide bullet shoot yourself in the face of the poison really make it count yes you're deader than fuck um uh and there's there was like a lot of completely unverifiable stories about like scores any testing these bullets at concentration camps which honestly like i said he's an unrepentant monster but there's no evidence he ever went to a concentration camp he knew about the holocaust he was in the fucking ss but like that wasn't what his job was. There's no reason for him to show up at a concentration camp and start shooting prisoners. That was Totenkamp-Verband's job.
Starting point is 00:17:52 They had an entire branch of the military for that. Or there's also the order police and the Einsatzgericht, all of these other things that he wasn't. I'm not saying he wouldn't have done that. There's just no evidence that he did it. But that charge was also eventually dropped. That left charge number one, that he had ordered his men to wear American military uniforms while firing on American soldiers in violation of the Hague's Convention Article 24 and 23. However, this is where things get kind of lawyer-y because the Hague Conventions are terribly written and there's no definitions for any of the crimes he's being charged with. Specifically, Article 23F and B. Now, F prohibits, quote, improper use of a flag of truce, the national flag, or military insignia and uniform of the enemy. nowhere in the convention does it actually say what exactly the word improper means in this
Starting point is 00:18:45 context and b describes treacherous actions but does not bother to explain what a treacherous action is so like by letter of the law it's unenforceable uh so they had to prove yeah yeah they had to prove that he had broken these despite the fact there was no definition for them. They used accounts of Germans dressed as Americans shooting actual Americans as evidence of treachery. However, the accounts were made up. I'll say they don't line up with what we know about reality. Like we talked about, the Nazi undercover mission was a giant failure. And most of the shooting was done towards the nazis after they had surrendered not from them whoops yep look you fuck around you'll eventually find out if you're walking
Starting point is 00:19:33 towards american lines dress as american and don't speak english you might get your skull ventilated by some farm kid from kentucky like that's just what's gonna happen right now when we come yeah you might become a set of German wind chimes. Be grateful we didn't use the firebinds. Oh, we should have. One account submitted as evidence for the prosecution of Skorzeny was written by Skorzeny's men and couldn't be confirmed at all. The German commando insisted that he shot and killed an American military policeman while undercover
Starting point is 00:20:07 after his team was discovered. However, the U.S. didn't even have an MP elicit his killed in action on the day that he said this happened, and there was never a body found in the place where he said that he did this. Also, the shooting did not take place behind enemy lines, but rather between Nazi and American lines,
Starting point is 00:20:23 an area that could be very rightly considered no man's land so you could shoot anybody there it's fine yeah it's fine whatever fog of war and so on yeah like so the evidence that squirzeny's men committed treachery was kind of like all made up and i'm not saying that like again squirzeny i i need to keep saying this so people don't like us because saviour is trying to whitewash Otto Skorzeny. Obviously, we're fucking not, you dumbass freaks. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:51 Like, fuck him. Suck a tailpipe. If you're going to bring a guy to a war crimes trial, bring shit to convict him. Bring the good shit. Bring the good shit. Right. Or if you're going to lie, just roll with the line. Hang him.
Starting point is 00:21:03 Like, you do it all the time during war crimes trials. Just fucking go for it. Or just take him out back and shoot him. It's still 1947. You can probably get away with that. Who cares? They're Nazis. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:15 Now, like we talked about before, the war crimes trials were not really fair trials at all. They didn't follow any kind of established jurisprudence. The military just made up as it went along. One of the biggest problems was like how evidence evidence worked uh which was effectively you didn't have to establish any kind of chain of custody um you didn't have to uh like uh check the evidence to be legit job and you didn't have to be a lawyer like right You said to be a guy. The American Supreme Court, fuck all of you, even they considered this to be a little more than a kangaroo court.
Starting point is 00:22:02 And again, this is not in defense of Nazis walking from justice, but it is how a guy gets charged for several crimes based on nothing. What? Based on someone just like, no, he was totally there. Like, right get the rope just get the rope already what are we doing this for yeah now the court quickly figured out even this fucking court quickly figured out that uh they actually had zero evidence that scorzini's men shot anyone while dressed as americans meaning this might be the first time in what i've found in my research uh in history for incompetence to be a rock solid defense in the face of a war crimes trial um because that's what happened now if that wasn't enough uh the defense team uh also point out that the allies had routinely worn german uniforms while undercover yo oh no tugging my collar uh just lie they're nazis what is it gonna get you for perjury we're
Starting point is 00:22:55 making this shit up as we go dude like just sitting there in my ss uniform as a british commander like no i've never dressed like a German soldier a day before. What are you fucking talking about? Who gives a shit? We won! And this included not just British commandos, but also allied planes had been painted with German paint and symbols and stuff to escape being shot down.
Starting point is 00:23:18 There are accounts of American Rangers capturing the town of Aachen while wearing SS uniforms. This actually, the Aachen raid was one of the inspirations for Skorzeny's plan in the first place. So it's like, eh. And to testify for the defense was a top special operations executive or
Starting point is 00:23:37 SOE agent, Wing Commander Yeo Thomas. Now, that's his last name, not a first and last name. It's Yeo hyphen Thomas. He's his last name not a first and last name it's yeo hyphen thomas uh just he's british he's like british uh aristocracy so they have a ton of weird names attached to one another um who weirdly was allowed to take the stand in defense of auto scorsese yeah just like if if if you are a military officer and one of your agents or soldiers is like i'm gonna go take the defense of a nazi just like no the fuck you're not so
Starting point is 00:24:11 no you're not congratulations you've earned yourself i don't know 500 billion years in military you're going back to leavenworth yeah uh and he testified quite openly that, yeah, they were very comfortable wearing undercover German uniforms and how often they were ready to, quote, bump off the other guy, meaning that he was openly admitted to war crimes off the stand. Shut the fuck up! Yeah. Solid lawyering there, guys. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Solid lawyering there, guys. Jesus Christ. This I am rubber, you're glue defense worked perfectly as convicting the Nazis on such a charge.
Starting point is 00:24:53 Because remember, these trials are happening publicly. If it happened behind closed doors, I'm sure the British and all of the judges would have been like, whatever, we don't care. You're guilty. Fuck you. But it's public, right? So they can't be like, you're guilty of war crimes because they've just indicted themselves for war crimes. Jesus fucking wept. Yeah, so they had to just like acquit him, but not before the army prosecutor, I believe
Starting point is 00:25:18 his last name was Rosenfeld, dubbed Skorzeny, quote, to the most dangerous man in Europe, adding to his mythos a little more um though i need to point out here just because he's kept being acquitted of everything that did not mean scorzini was being let out of prison because remember he was still a lifetime member of the fucking ss and was in the automatic arrest category as a member of a criminal organization so despite beating every charge like the teflon Nazi, he was still going right back to prison. And the plan was to hold the entire SS
Starting point is 00:25:50 in detainment until they went through the denazification process, which was horribly flawed and didn't work. We'll go into that a bit more way back during our clean Wehrmacht episode, but go listen to it. In short, it didn't work. But it did mean he also had no money because part of being in the ss money your bank accounts are frozen and shit uh the the u.s military officer in charge of scorzini's denazification investigation was clearly the dumbest man on earth despite having his all of his career records sitting in front of him after a short interview with scorzini he decided that this lifelong lifelong literal Nazi hitman and terrorist who had helped fascism come to power in Austria from day one was not ideologically driven and was not a committed Nazi.
Starting point is 00:26:35 Instead, he wrote down he was simply a, quote, patriotic German, which, in my opinion, if someone says they're a patriotic German, I just assume you're a Nazi. I will buy you the rope. Then I will... If you have to bleep that, do it. I don't give a shit. I'm quickly looking for a sound drop, but I don't have one for actionable threats. Oh, good. Ross just bleeps it.
Starting point is 00:27:01 Just bleep it. Leap it in and bleep it. But now this is because Skorzeny was being investigated by the CIC or you might know them as their successor agency. The CIA has an asset and they couldn't have an asset.
Starting point is 00:27:17 Before anybody jumps in, yes, you can. Just string them up. Who cares? What is the point of torture programs if we can't torture nazis that's a joke that's a fucking joke don't get mad at me because torture programs for torturing people who aren't white liam everybody knows that um now the i should tell you that the cia actually didn't want anything to do with him not because of it obviously is because like he was beyond the pale of their ideological purity standards he was a loud mouth a known liar and oh yeah a hardcore unrepentant nazi which again the ci is generally okay with that
Starting point is 00:27:56 yeah but you can't be a loud mouth and a lot a liar you can be a hardcore nazi as long as like you keep your fucking mouth shut and do your work as a spy or whatever but like you know he can't be all three of those things uh there's also the fact he was facing possible extradition to several countries where he had done operations for more charges and somewhere he actually end uh some of those are namely czechoslovakia and yugoslavia uh and this would have certainly ended with him being turned into uh you know being connected to adolf's wi-fi yeah he would just slowly fed feet first into a into tito's wood chipper oh my god we have we have the fire mines again boys the the crimes he was accused of a checklist of akia were actually completely made up he had only been to the country for two days as an entire life and
Starting point is 00:28:43 never planned or led an operation there instead it was almost certainly an attempt to get him into the hands of the Soviet Union, who, as you can imagine, really want to get their hands on Otto Sk back to the Eastern Front than he ever tried on anything else in his life to make sure he never went back. He is not a fan of the Soviet Union because he knows what happens to him if he goes there, which like – not a Soviet apologist here, but you know what? Good. Give him to the Soviets. Yeah, I don't have any complaints. Whatever, man. Yeah. But they weren't alone.
Starting point is 00:29:29 The details from Operation Peter, which is their terror campaign in Denmark, were slowly coming to light. And Denmark was also on the list of countries wanting to execute Skorzeny, which might be the only time in modern history that Denmark would have executed someone. They're like, you know what? We'll make an exception for you. We're going to make it count. We're going to make it count. be the only time in modern history that Denmark would have executed someone. You know what? We'll make an exception. We're going to make it count. We're going to make it count. Instead, the U.S. made sure they didn't send him anywhere and put him to work in the U.S. Army Historical Society, which again, you can hear more about in our Clean Wehrmacht
Starting point is 00:29:57 episode. He was told to provide the U.S. military with a broad history of his reign on Gran Sasa when he rescued Mussolini. And this is why we get the flowery, Skorzeny rules version of that. Because he wrote the fucking history. Just like the same reason why you have clean
Starting point is 00:30:13 Wehrmacht shit, blaming the SS for all the crimes of World War II, because it was written by Wehrmacht commanders in the US Army Historical Society. The US Army did not fact-check or have any oversight or review process of anything that it published. So that's how we have the most
Starting point is 00:30:29 pro-Scores Any version that still makes its rounds because Scores Any wrote it. So, you know, thanks, Army. Another reason why the Americans... You devoted him twice! Yeah, I should have simply been a Nazi. I would have gotten a cushy job
Starting point is 00:30:46 of the historical society uh another reason why the americans want to hang on to him was the never-ending conspiracy of a network of rogue nazi ss commandos still out in the world plotting attacks and maybe even planning to break scorzini out of jail that he was locked in sometimes this is folded into the werewolf stuff that people think existed after the Nazis surrendered that there's these insurgent groups hiding in the forest, going to bring the fucking Fourth Reich into power
Starting point is 00:31:15 or whatever. Those guys did exist in a very limited way. But this is completely separate because this is actually real. But the US military kept being shocked because they had Skorzeny under intense
Starting point is 00:31:32 supervision because they were worried that commandos were going to fucking glide her down from the sky or whatever and rescue her from prison. And they did uncover a prison escape plan, but it was between Otto Skorzeny and the prison barbers uh there there's no mass commando underground yet just some dudes that scorzini bribed and badly because as
Starting point is 00:31:52 soon as they were questioned by prison guards they they told them everything um even uh even when scorzini fucking everything dude look man if if i'm an ss commando and i'm trying to get out of fucking prison why am i leaning on the barber like that's how you know you're down bad it's like right i need the barber to help me out of this one like you're supposed to be the most dangerous man in europe um now even when squires any was given temporary parole to visit his family they sent a team to tail him assuming he was gonna make contact with other commandos, only discover that he did nothing. He just went out and hung out with his family.
Starting point is 00:32:28 But Skorzeny was doing this on purpose. He knew he was under intense supervision. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think what you said, he's very good at self-preservation, if nothing else. However, each time he went to prison for further denazification proceedings, it would take longer and longer. He hadn't been convicted of anything
Starting point is 00:32:44 and was only considered a C-class war criminal at best, which meant he wasn't going to be sentenced to prison, probably. Probably some form of probation where, I don't know, don't be a Nazi for a year. How do we even do the trials? You know, it's just, you hang up, right? They did crimes against humanity, so you string them up. No, don't bleep that, leave it in. Remember, this is almost 1950 at this point, so that urge to prosecute all these people is waning quite quickly. I'll do it.
Starting point is 00:33:12 Send me back in time. I'll do it. I volunteer. While all this was going on, he was again randomly charged with something, this time being an Einsatzgruppen commander, which he wasn't. Again, not defending him, but just a simple fact. Come on, idiots.
Starting point is 00:33:27 He was not a death squad commander. Jesus fuck. Instead, the connection was one of the guys who was in his commando unit earlier had been promoted and gone on to command an Einsatzgruppen squad a few years later. So there was six degrees of Kevin Bacon death squad situation
Starting point is 00:33:45 going on um did you not just hang him that's that's what you do you get on and you say okay step here and then you hang him like that again they that was tacked on to him it was the charges were quickly dropped and i think scores scores any finally realized that like they're never gonna let me out of prison there's to keep tacking charges on until something finally sticks which is actually kind of funny yeah yeah it's so dumbass legally so i was like listen there's gotta be something here like how can this guy just be a commando he's gotta do something fucked up here and remember like they still hadn't tagged operation peter on him so it's the one thing that they had for sure but they never tacked it on to him and it's because scorzini was a loud mouth about everything he did and never talked about Denmark because he's not fucking stupid.
Starting point is 00:34:30 So he started to realize, I might not get executed, but they're not going to rest until they have a solid prison sentence hanging over my head. And I can't stick around for that. So it turned out that mass underground network of SS commandos the US was worried about was very, very real. And it was operating within the Dachau prison itself. So many people were double agents within the camp. The head department of censorship was working with Skorzeny undetected for years, sending out letters to waiting commandos, a process that was made very, very easy by the fact that the head of censorship was a German guy and had no non-German supervision. So the prison for SS criminals was being ran by Nazis, effectively, or at least Nazi sympathizers. So when Skorzeny got word out that, hey, I keep catching more charges, get me the fuck out of
Starting point is 00:35:19 here, the local head of censorship got word out to the commandos. And on July 27th, 1948, he did. So he's been in prison for years now. And he's finally like, you know what? I'm done here. It's very weird because he seemed completely comfortable writing out the process as legit as possible. And until he realized that this process is stupid, I'm going to break out. And then he just broke out. He was there on his own volition.
Starting point is 00:35:43 He could have broken out seemingly at any time. and then he just broke out. He was there on his own volition. He could have broken out seemingly at any time. You're probably thinking this is some daring, glider-borne, over-the-top assault onto the prison, since those are all things that Skorzeny and his men favored. But instead, it was the most simple, boring,
Starting point is 00:35:58 and comically easy prison break we've probably ever talked about on the show. Three SS commandos dressed as American military police simply drove up to the prison, said they were there to transfer Skorzeny somewhere else, and he was turned over to them without any questions being asked. Real Keystone cop shit there, boys. Okay, hold on. There's a little bit more
Starting point is 00:36:15 to it. Now, this went so well, and it was so easy to do, it sparked countless conspiracy theories ever since. Namely, that the CIA helped Skorzeny escape. Now, this gained popularity for the reason that you probably think of since we're talking about Otto Skorzeny. This is what Otto Skorzeny
Starting point is 00:36:32 told everybody. But hold on. I actually believe this, and I'll tell you why. Now, as everybody's aware, I generally don't dabble in conspiracy theories on the show, and especially ones that paint the CIA as these infallible worldwide supervillains, because in reality, they're very fucking stupid most of the
Starting point is 00:36:50 time. But namely, the commandos had the exact paperwork needed to transfer Skorzeny to a different prison. Remember, this is 1948. They don't have a state structure to forge things and to get copies of this paperwork. They had to get it from somewhere. It could have been counterfeit, but the paperwork was convincing enough to fool MPs who were guarding auto fucking Scorzeny and had almost certainly been warned to look out for forgeries. Also, Scorzeny is not a guy that can go undercover. Remember what this guy looks like. He's huge, and he has a fucking well-known dueling scar on his face, and now he's a celebrity.
Starting point is 00:37:34 This is not a guy that can go undercover fucking anywhere. Somehow, after escaping prison, he went undetected for two years. Half of that was within the American zone of occupation. Another eight months, he was living openly in fucking Paris. Jesus fucking Christ. The only way this is possible is for someone to be running cover for him. And the only fucking possible suspect in that is the CIA. Yeah, absolutely. There's no way this happens without the CIA.
Starting point is 00:38:01 There's also the small fact that despite being a wanted criminal with warrants throughout Europe and also having broken out of prison, he made his living publishing as an author and journalist with books and articles published in the US, Germany, France, and other places who were all technically supposed to arrest him, but not really. Outstanding work. Now, what comes next for scores any in a long line of things you can call quote alleged at
Starting point is 00:38:28 best and total worse and sometimes both of those things at the same time to be fair for starters we have to talk about the Korean War during the war scores and he was
Starting point is 00:38:38 living in Spain because of course he was yep yep it was one of the few places for a long period and so he wasn't worried about like the Germans or the Americans coming for him he was yep yep it was one of the few places uh for a long period and so he wasn't worried about like the germans or the americans coming for him he was worried about the fucking israelis coming for him he was on uh like simon wiesenthal's kill list until the day he died so he was living in franco spain for protection against the israelis not not the world War II allies. And he could live quite comfortably at the behest of the fascist Franco government. He was convinced that the war in Korea was going
Starting point is 00:39:12 to spiral into a larger World War III, which fair enough, it almost did. And the Soviets were going to steamroll their way through Europe. Now, despite the fact that the Nazis or the Nazi government is gone, remember, he's a hardcore fascist and a quote-unquote anti-communist. So, of course, he stands against the Soviet Union. So, Skorzeny began working with the Spanish military's general staff to put together an army, dubbed the Carlos V Legion, which would be made up of around 200,000 German World War II veterans. made up around 200,000 German World War II veterans. Somehow, even the Catholic Church was involved in this recruiting drive, including
Starting point is 00:39:47 Giovanni Montini, who, if you're Catholic, you probably know better by the name Pope Paul VI. Oh, yeah, yeah. We will be doing the Nazi Pope episode, even if I have to go rogue on the stream myself. Nothing really came from
Starting point is 00:40:04 this. There's no evidence that these guys are an established legion. However, it was an accepted idea on paper at minimum. And the idea was that this Carlos V Legion was going to go into Western Europe and fight back the red tide
Starting point is 00:40:20 or whatever. Of course, it didn't happen. There's another episode of Skorzeny's Life where he told someone he was offered a large cash payment to fly eight tons of gold to argentina for nazi bankers which sounds like some indiana jones shit um there's a good chance this never happened as he is the only source but what made me really believe this never happened is because the guy was telling this the guy that scorzini told the story to told him reason why scorzy turned the job down is because he didn't feel like, quote,
Starting point is 00:40:47 running from justice, despite the fact he had literally just done that and escaped from prison. He just did that a lot, actually. Yeah, there's several different layers of him doing that. Now, what he was really doing while being in Spain was acting as something of an agent between Franco-Spain and
Starting point is 00:41:03 the US government. This directly in spain was acting as something of an agent between franco spain and the u.s government this directly led in no small part to the eventual signing of the pact of madrid in 1953 uh normalizing relationships between the two so that's that's fun he was also heavily involved in german neo-nazi circles because of course he was which is one of the reasons why when everybody says he's like he was just a commando etc etc etc like he was very ideologically driven like he was he was a fucking nazi he was involved in nazi groups from the time he escaped well obviously he was involved in nazi groups before he went to prison that's part of the problem um but he was involved in not like it actively in nazi groups from the day he escaped prison to the day he fucking died. He was politically active in Nazi circles.
Starting point is 00:41:54 And something of a small episode that probably should be more serious than it's generally treated is the attempted coup in 1953 in the cities of Hamburg and Dusseldorf, when a group of neo-Nazis attempted to overthrow West Germany's government and replaced it with an outright fascist one. Now, Skorzeny wasn't dumb enough to actually be shoes on the ground when this was going down. Because he, I mean, again, he's an expert in self-preservation. But a lot of his close associates sure were. And they got wrapped up when the police cracked down on it. So, I mean, he attempted a Nazi coup of West Germany. He was involved heavily in that.
Starting point is 00:42:29 Of course. Oh, I gotta lay low except for all the stunts I'm gonna pull. Someone pay attention to me. God damn, dude. Now he was traveling around making friends with the fascists of the world like he was good friends with Oswald Mosley. Got shit rocked yeah he uh he eventually
Starting point is 00:42:47 got into the good good field of military contracting because of course he did yeah that sounds about right nazis were in high demand by both powers of the cold war uh to hire as military advisors to go help their proxies you know um because what you can't send you know an american guy because that that looks bad you can't send, you know, an American guy because that looks bad. You can't send a Russian guy that looks bad. We'll hire a Nazi. For example, Reinhard Galen had been working with the CIA for years and had been ordered to travel to Egypt, where he'd be working under two different dictators. First, Mohammed Nayyub, where he'd be working under two different dictators. First, Mohammed Nayyub,
Starting point is 00:43:29 and then Gamal Abdel Nasser. Now, Galen's job was, of course, espionage, but also train officers and commandos, as well as several different detachments of Palestinians, including Yasser Arafat, weirdly enough. Because sometimes when you're throwing money and weapons at people to counter an ideology, you end up training a lot of your enemies sometimes. Whoops. Another thing Galen did was help build the dreaded Mukarabot security service, which was modeled on the Gestapo. And because he was, Galen was a Gestapo guy. He was joined in doing so by several other recruited Nazis,
Starting point is 00:44:02 including the head of the Gestapo Jewish Affairs in Poland, Leopold Gleim, who had since converted to Islam. Fun fact. Okay, sure. Why the hell not? Remember that guy who used to be a neo-Nazi and then he converted to Islam and brutally murdered his former roommates for being
Starting point is 00:44:26 Nazis. Yes, I did hear that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So like, alright, glow up, baby. Like, do what you do. Normally when this story is told, Skorzeny is lumped in with this group of noted psychos working for the Egyptian government, but in reality he
Starting point is 00:44:42 had nothing to do with it. Though he was in the country at the same time as they were because he had come to Egypt to try to become an arms dealer for Spanish weapons into Egypt, but he had actually failed completely. The local government fucking hated him. Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted nothing to do with him, and he sucked so badly at being an arms dealer, he couldn't even sell a few refurbished World War II machine guns to the Egyptian government on a discount. Amazing. Yeah. He couldn't even sell a few refurbished World War II machine guns to the Egyptian government on a discount.
Starting point is 00:45:05 Amazing. Yeah. The reason why Skorzeny couldn't get on the CIA money train in Egypt is pretty simple. Reinhard Galen fucking hated Skorzeny and thought he was an idiot and told the CIA that he absolutely refused to work with him. And it's funny coming from someone like Galen. He was close friends with Adolf Eichmann. He worked with multiple SS war criminals. He was very, very close to some of the worst people of Nazi Germany.
Starting point is 00:45:32 But Skorzeny, one bridge too far. Of course, it's going to have a code, you know. I mean, it's almost entirely due to personal politics, like we talked about before. Like the politicking behind closed doors of Nazi Germany was was intense and that's why they fucking hated one another is that nothing to do with like i have standards right now of course not um during this entire time scruzzetti was now effectively broke all of his money had been seized due to him still not being declared denazified and being a writer and author doesn't pay a lot trust me on that one uh his job in egypt ended with him not only being able to sell a single goddamn gun to the government, but he'd actually bought those
Starting point is 00:46:09 guns on credit. So he was now dead. However, that eventually changed through hustling the greater European fascist intelligence networks, as well as contacts in Spain, where he ended up having a legit job selling steel contracts for the Spanish government with German intermediaries. Now, of course, even this is nefarious. He did this by being a go-between for previous Nazi war profiteering companies like Krupp Steel. And it was his job to sell Nazi steel, now a reformed Nazi steel, to places like Argentina and Spain because he was now a personal advisor for both Juan Peron
Starting point is 00:46:50 and Francisco Franco. Of course. This made him a ton of money and his life quickly turned around. He owed so many different properties by the time he died. Nobody's entirely sure of how many he actually had in totality. We know he had an estate in Ireland.
Starting point is 00:47:08 This is kind of a weird story. He was technically a legally stateless war criminal at this point, but he had a stateless person passport, which is a thing that exists. He was allowed to stay in Ireland for only six weeks at a time because of local visa laws. And all of his neighbors fucking hated him. It was noted that he drove like an asshole all the time and parked his car in people's front lawns. Michael Bobby used to do that. Yeah. And Skorzeny had so much money that the tickets were a pitman, so he didn't really care. Whatever, I'll pay him.
Starting point is 00:47:47 Now, of course, this leads us to what could absolutely be the weirdest part of Skorzeny's life, if it's true. And honestly, I could go either way on this one. And that's the time of how Otto Skorzeny, SS war criminal, became a hitman for the Israeli Mossad. Don't pick a man. No, I did hitman for the Israeli Mossad. Did you see that, you fucking motherfuckers? No, I did. I read the wiki, but you know. Though I should point out here that Nazis working
Starting point is 00:48:14 for the Israeli intelligence apparatus on the street is not unheard of. And in fact, Otto Skorzeny is not even close to the worst person that Israel hired. In 1949, the Mamad, which was the precursor to the Mossad, recruited a guy named Walter Rauf. He was a real, real motherfucker.
Starting point is 00:48:34 He invented Nazi gas vans and was a close personal friend of Reinhard Heydrich. And he's generally thought of to be responsible for, at minimum, 100,000 deaths directly in the Holocaust. Yep. Yeah. You understand why I'm not especially pro-Israeli. Oh, you? I can't imagine. Nation states were a bad idea, folks. You need to point out here that while Israel wanted to work with Ralph, because Ralph worked with Egypt and obviously Israel and Egypt and Syria and all of the other Middle Eastern
Starting point is 00:49:10 countries at the time were shooting at each other quite frequently. And they were hoping to do a double agent situation. Sorry, Ralph didn't work with Egypt. He worked with Syria. He had worked with the Syrian government and therefore had a ton of contacts. They wanted to use him as a spy. However, they didn't work with him for very long because he was an alcoholic and it was to the point he could
Starting point is 00:49:32 barely function. He was a terrible spy. Well, he again, you just hang these people and then you use their hanged corpses in some sort of weirdo monster house. And then you make the Nazis that you haven't hanged fight their way through the weird ass corpse house.
Starting point is 00:49:55 And then when they get to the end, surprise, it's a punji pit. And then you shoot them. Leave all that in. Leave all that in. leave all that in leave all that in while all of this is happening israel was worried about the development of egyptian of an egyptian rocket program that would if it was finished arm them with weapons that would leave israelis uh you know the possibility of israel israelis winning the next war between the two of them pretty pretty pretty fucked right um not to mention nasser had shown he was pretty comfortable deploying chemical weapons during the Yemen war.
Starting point is 00:50:26 So Israel is a little worried that these rockets would then be tipped with chemical weapons and then they'd be able to be fired into population centers in the country. So they did what Israel tends to do, and that is launching an assassination campaign. Now, this is targeted against. So this is where you get a little torn here. This is an assassination campaign specifically against former Nazis that are now helping Egypt with the missile program. So, you know, it's like the worst person you know is actually right about something. However, there was another problem. On top of these former Nazi scientists, former SS intelligence agents were also working for Egypt and were killing the Israeli assassins before they could kill the scientists. So they called up Skorzeny, a man many of them are very, very familiar with.
Starting point is 00:51:14 However, they didn't attempt to send Skorzeny a letter or make contact with him, but instead they recruited him through his girlfriend, who is also already known uh to israel as a not only a cia plant but also a french intelligence asset um there is some doubt if scores any had any idea that his girlfriend was almost certainly spying on him the entire time they were together which they eventually got married and stayed together for the rest of his life the super common uh scores any was once remarked as being the most infiltrated man ever because all of his friends and close associates were agents of some intelligence service and were also spying on him. It's very weird. Spycraft was interesting, but everybody was spying on him. Everyone was the worst person you've ever met. Don't worry.
Starting point is 00:52:00 One of his girlfriend's covers was investing in tourism. ever met. Don't worry. Yeah. One of his girlfriend's covers was investing in tourism, right? So Israel set the head of Israeli Nazi hunting teams, which is known as Amal, to make contact with her. And his cover was using her to invest in tourism in Israel. The reason for this is for all of these different layers. Remember, Skorzeny was very, very sure the Israelis were eventually going to try to assassinate him. Because they had done that to a lot of other well-known Nazis after the war. So, if a member of Amal
Starting point is 00:52:32 simply showed up and like, hello, Otto, it's probably going to end in a fucking gunfight, right? And then the Amal chief fucked his girlfriend. Please face the wall. He pretty much honeypotted her. They, please face the wall. He pretty much honeypotted her. They kind of dated
Starting point is 00:52:47 for months. In October 7th, 1964, after hours of drinking and doing coke in the club, an Israeli operative told her that a, quote, senior security official from Israel wanted to meet Skorzeny, her now husband, despite the fact they had been
Starting point is 00:53:03 fucking for months regarding a matter of state. And it was the utmost importance that they did not care about his Nazi past. She told Skorzeny, I assume leaving out the part that the guy that she had as a side piece was also an Israeli intelligence agent. And he immediately ran downstairs to meet him because I think almost certainly is like, if I work with these guys, they won't want to kill me anymore. I don't have to have eyes in the back of my head for a fucking Amal hit squad. As soon as Skorzeny met with the local handler, a guy named Avraham Ahituv, a man that would eventually become commander of the absolutely terrifying Israeli Shin Bet. And he was a decorated nazi hunter he had he had carried out dozens of assassinations of nazis and he fucking hated scorsese like
Starting point is 00:53:54 understandable he told his government that they should just shoot him like can i just shoot this guy um and and as if to uh as if to underline why they should have shot scorzetti as soon as they met scorzetti said something insanely anti-semitic um like is scores like in uh the avraham the the guy was like let's not let's not talk about that uh and scorzetti just kept going saying that the the Nazis would have been powerless if all of the Jews had simply moved to Israel. And he was always amazed that, quote, Jews led all the communist parties and espionage
Starting point is 00:54:32 rings. Jesus Christ, just execute this guy already. And for no reason that he won't stop talking. Just imagine this guy, again, professional Nazi hunter, how hard he is grinding his teeth together not to strangle the fucking life of this guy. Then Skorzeny
Starting point is 00:54:48 lied to the Mossad's face. Remember how we talked about his previous attempt at business in Egypt, which was a miserable failure, and Skorzeny lied, painting it that he had deep ties to the country and personally knew Gamal Abdel Nasser, which he did not. But that didn't matter. What the Israelis wanted had nothing to
Starting point is 00:55:04 do with his experience in Egypt, but because of his SS commando connections. Because the Egyptian security chief, Herman Valentin, was once one of Skorzeny's commandos. However, Skorzeny pointed out that he knew him and he could turn him to work for Israel, but not directly. Because Valentin, as a German, could never work for Jews. Instead, they would have to lie to them and say that Skorzeny was actually working for the CIA and then dupe them to work with Israel without them knowing, which is actually quite common at the time. There's people that thought they were working for MI6 or working for the Mossad or working for the CIA, but the agents were actually from somewhere else.
Starting point is 00:55:43 Right? Now, according to the Mossad's in-house report, Skorzeny did not ask for any money, but for one small favor. Skorzeny had heard from his handler, from the Amal, that his memoirs had appeared in Hebrew. And he asked the Mossad to publicize this fact in order to counter the vehement Jewish objection to the publication of his work in West Germany. So, yeah, he did this for a book deal, and he got it. I hate Nazis, man. Another Mossad agent said that Skorzeny also asked for an unofficial favor. Could the Mossad please request that Simon Wiesenthal, famed Nazi hunter, to remove Skorzeny's name from his list.
Starting point is 00:56:26 No, keep it on there. Keep it on. Bold it. Wiesenthal immediately and flatly refused to ever think about doing that. And Skorzeny was like, yeah, all right, I'll work with you guys anyway. It's fine. Yeah, this is how we don't catch a bullet to the head. Skorzeny met with Valentin shortly thereafter, claiming he was working with MI6,
Starting point is 00:56:50 British intelligence, and needed details of the Egyptian military program should a new war start. He turned out to be very easy to fool because he agreed to meet with two MI6 agents who were actually two Mossad agents pretending to be British. However, small problem here, Mossad did not even try to come up with crafting a disguise. They didn't even fake British accents. So when confronted by two men who were very clearly not British and supposedly working for MI6, Valentin decided to back out. So Skorzeny deployed the old trick of getting shit-faced with a guy until he tells you something he isn't supposed to. The next morning, using this information as well as some old war stories for bonding, Valentin was more than willing to work with the MI6, who were also actually Mossad. Spycraft is fun, it's stupid, and I love it. Within a few months, Valentin and his handlers had handed over almost everything to the quote-unquote MI6 about the Egyptian rocket program that he knew, giving up-to-date, authentic, and sometimes surprising material
Starting point is 00:57:46 that the Mossad had no idea. For instance, the German team who were working for the Egyptians had still completely failed on a working guidance system. And so Nasser was completely terrified of actually using the goddamn things, thinking that he would accidentally bob like an Arab population center with nerve gas or whatever. So they were nowhere close to being complete. Now, depending on who you believe, this is where Skorzeny's Mossad employment ended.
Starting point is 00:58:12 Though he remained on the books with the agency until his death in the 1970s, he never really did anything else for them, unless you consider an old dying man meeting up with a Mossad agent every few months to drink beer and then force his handler to storm off in anger after saying some Nazi shit, which happened literally every time they met. I am begging you to simply put a bullet into his skull. It is not that hard. Mossad,
Starting point is 00:58:36 you have a lot of them. You killed that waiter in Lillehammer in the 90s. You can do this. Now, there is another timeline of Skorzeny mythos, which also might be true. In 2006, sorry, in 2016, Haaretz published an article claiming that Skorzeny had actually been more than just a Mossad agent or asset, but a full-blown hitman as a part of Operation Damocles, the Israeli assassination campaign against Nazis who worked for Egypt. The target linked to Skorzeny was a man named Heinz Krug. He was the head of a German company in Munich, which was actually acting as a
Starting point is 00:59:10 shell company to send things to Egypt for the rocket program, which they weren't supposed to be doing. Krug had previously worked in the Nazi missile program in Peenemunde and was a high-value Israeli hit list target. According to Horowitz, Skorzeny simply called Krug on the phone to talk to him as Krug had been getting tons of threatening phone calls, which he correctly assumed for the work of the Mossad trying to drive him nuts. That's something that they did quite frequently, hoping that he would flee. Skorzeny told him that, look, I have a plan to keep German scientists safe. And not to remember, this guy was a Nazi missile scientist at Pinamunda. Everybody knows who Otto Skorzeny is,
Starting point is 00:59:51 right? Like, oh shit, if Otto Skorzeny has a plan to keep me safe, I have to meet with him. Any Nazi worth his stolen gold teeth would have heard of Skorzeny and trusted him as a dedicated Nazi like themselves, or at least sympathetic. Using that as cover, Skorzeny entrusted him as a dedicated Nazi like themselves, or at least sympathetic. Using that as cover, Skorzeny met with him in Munich and shot him dead. Then three Mossad agents helped to dump his body in a vat of acid. Once it mostly liquefied into the, I don't know, the viscera, they chucked him into a pre-made grave and covered the entire thing in lime. To this day, Krug's body has never been found. Oh, Jesus.
Starting point is 01:00:25 Now, however, again, there's a good chance none of this ever happened. According to other people within the Mossad, they never hired Skorzeny to kill anyone. And this is one of those things where it's like, we wouldn't do that. It was one that was like, no, no, no. We're the Mossad.
Starting point is 01:00:40 We kill people. We don't need to hire it. Right, right, right. Instead, Krug was kidnapped by Mossad agents, smuggled back to Israel, interrogated, shot and then dumped into the sea, which is something that the Mossad really
Starting point is 01:00:54 really liked to do. Because then, you know, if you dump everybody out in the sea, no evidence. He's gone. And because you have your own country now, who's going to investigate you? You're the Mossad. Right. Honestly, we truly don't know which part is true. And it could go either way for me.
Starting point is 01:01:10 This could be the Mossad covering for the fact that they did hire a Nazi hitman. But again, he worked for the Mossad as an asset. That part is undeniable. What he actually did, if it was more than the missile program, we have no idea. And I highly doubt the Mossad is going to suddenly become an open and transparent institution. Now, as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, Skorzeny's spy life came to an end, though he did remain intimately involved in far-right circles all throughout European politics. The man who was fully and totally an unrepentant nazi and was very public with this fact but on the bright side in 1970 he was diagnosed with cancer in his spine
Starting point is 01:01:50 so good he nearly killed him uh he looked like absolute shit and he eventually had an operation to remove the tumor from his spine which left him paralyzed from the waist down the doctor said that he would never walk again but but Skorzeny is nothing if not determined, and he got himself to walk within the next couple months. Outside of that, he refused any treatment for the cancer that was absolutely not gone and went about his life for several more years. Again, despite the fact doctors only told him he had a couple months to live. Unfortunately, he's one of those motherfuckers who just refused to die. In February 1975, while giving an interview with Spanish media, he was still preaching nazi bullshit leading to a guy that was why that was
Starting point is 01:02:30 uh like just watching the interview live walked up to him as he was leaving a radio station and beat the shit out of him with a club after this he spiraled into a pit of paranoia assuming that this guy worked for the massad, and they finally came for him. Because obviously, when the Mossad comes to assassinate you, they send a Spanish guy with a club. But this led to him pretty much drinking all the time. And occasionally, whenever he heard the wind blowing outside of his door, he'd fire his gun wildly through the walls of his house. Assuming that Simon Wiesenthal was finally coming for his scalp.
Starting point is 01:03:07 It's time. A few months later in July, he became bedridden and died, finally, at the age of 67. His CIA French intelligence asset slash honeypot wife who fucked his way into Mossad employment was at his side the entire time.
Starting point is 01:03:23 We love true love stories, folks. God damn it. Hey, different strokes for different folks, and sometimes those different strokes are for the local Mossad agent. After he died, hundreds of people attended his funeral, to include people in Nazi dress uniform,
Starting point is 01:03:43 tossed up the old Hitlerler salute and sang some nazi songs for old time's sake but fuck him he's dead rest in piss you nazi bitch the end um that is the tale of autoscores any liam how do you feel after listening for three hours of about a nazi just hang these people just fucking hang these people you don't listen they're nazis you don't need to give them a trial i haven't a show trial you say can you please face the wall and you get a 45 out and you put and then what you do is again you make the nazis fight their way through corpse house and then at the end they just get stabbed through with fucking bayonets corpse house just sounds like a uh like a very intricate haunted house.
Starting point is 01:04:28 Yeah. No, it is a haunted house. That's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing. I'm making the Nazis shit themselves right until they get bayoneted. Outstanding. Liam, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion, where if you support the show, you can write us on Patreon, and we will answer your
Starting point is 01:04:45 question on air. And this one is, of all of the military formations that you've ever talked about, which one of them would do the best during a zombie apocalypse? Honestly, unfortunately, I feel like Skorzeny would probably be fine. Like, the guy refuses to fucking die.
Starting point is 01:05:02 Yeah, it's the... I also think that after reading world war z the book which is good not the movie which is bad uh that a roman legion would be quite good i was kind of thinking a legion yeah i mean you don't have to worry about resupplying with bullets you know you don't have to worry about that uh their shields to protect them quite well. The leather they wear, you're not going to be able to bite through that. I feel like a Roman Legion would probably be the best. Or Otto Skorzeny.
Starting point is 01:05:32 So I'm going with the Roman Legion. Yeah. Liam, plug your shows. Theater, screw it. 10,000 losses. Well, there's your problem. Go listen to them. Listen to them. If you like what we do here thank you very much for listening um if you like this show you can maybe consider supporting us
Starting point is 01:05:50 you could have got this episode early uh and as well as the rest of the series you get bonus episodes um some of which are ongoing series you get uh access to our discord uh all sorts of other stuff so consider supporting the show show and helping us moving forward. If not, that's fine. It's your money. We're not going to tell you how to spend it. But leaving a review is free, and it helps us for algorithmic-based reasons I'm not entirely sure of. So leave us a five-star review on whatever platform you listen to, and that helps us a lot.
Starting point is 01:06:23 Everybody, Liam, thank you for joining me once again uh and until next time nazis get spine cancer

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