Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 225 - Operation Pastorious

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

During WWII the Nazis attempted to recruit a team of spies to sabotage factories within the US. Instead what they did was hire a bunch of rejects who took their spy money, got drunk, and hired sex workers until they turned themselves in to the FBI. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-how-nazi-plot-sabotage-us-war-effort-was-foiled-180959594/ https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs-and-george-dasch https://web.archive.org/web/20151218132240/http://www.montauklife.com/history/history_night_of_the_nazis.html https://www.spiegel.de/politik/erschiessen-oder-erhaengen-a-77234129-0002-0001-0000-000007859070?context=issue https://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-german-saboteurs-invade-america-in-1942/

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 today. Where? At the farm, sir. Tapping a minor to you fellows, enjoying the war? Where are you from, son? Hello, and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I just did an intro, like we're coming back from an ad break or something. Hey, welcome back. Sponsored by Blue Chew.

What the fuck is Blue Che blue chew it's it you know is that one of the new ones that are like every podcast and youtube video you're on time yes yeah we uh we just got a sponsor for well there's your problem that was like hey we'd we'd love to monetize like we fucking wouldn't i've gotten a few uh like i've done ads for like a friend years ago and people still let me forget about it um but i've gotten a couple emails and they're always like the most lowball shit on earth and it's like look man if i'm gonna sell out like it needs to be a little bit more than this um oh yeah absolutely dude like uh i my girlfriend is asking what time i put dinner on and i'm just like it's on okay like it's it's ready just fucking eat it please what yeah i made dinner

today because corinne had a very stressful day at work and like i work from home all the time so i can make dinner and she's like oh what time did you put it on i'm like it's fucking cooked don't worry about time what you're not gonna get like scurvy or like whatever fucking salmonella. Just fucking eat the food. That's what scurvy is. Are you having a dinner on the high seas without vitamin C? I'm just dumping in orange juice. Not on my watch.

You said you want orange fucking chicken, didn't you? Just hurling oranges at people. Look, I'm just trying to help you not get scurvy why are you so unappreciative uh i just cosplaying the the royal navy where everything is full of my teeth falling out my gums and butt stuff and butt stuff yeah that comes with the gums bleeding poop is fun like when they pooped in the bed uh it was funny uh so how we haven't recorded in like a week how have you been delirious with rage joe i mean that's how you always are though someone sent me a question from the legion which is like just do a word association with liam and see what words make him angry and i like i messaged them but like that's all of them. That's all of the words. There's some stuff I like.

I like my girlfriend. I like cats. Really like cats. What else do I like? Oh, this is a short list. Exactly. What are you going to do? I was tweeting about Ann Arbor today and you were like, oh, Liam likes to burn down

cities, wants to threaten to burn down cities. That's not true. That is true. You've done that multiple times. You've threatened to burn down so many cities during this podcast. I don't know that that's true. Please please refer to my attorney. You don't have an attorney

because you probably threatened to burn them down too. It's both my parents, baby. Not that kind of lawyer. If you ever need an estate done or you're getting a really messy divorce, you can call one of my parents. We just talked about ad reads, and now you're doing an ad read for your parents.

They're retired. I don't even think that's bad. I don't think that's unethical. Also, yeah, please see bluechew.com for more detail please don't please don't why are you doing this no but do buy a shirt from our teespring store please support us on t-shirt who emailed you are you sneaking into well there's your problem ad rate on this show no no no we've never gotten a blue chew uh we got what is blue chew it's like chewable viagra dude i don't know my dick works how many how many different kinds of unread like look okay this isn't at this isn't

an actual ad and i'm sure this is all being cut out for being fucking stupid but if you're gonna get unregulated dick pills you have to do what your forefathers did and that is go to the gas station and get like i don't know extend spelled incorrectly uh and it's like next to for some reason a gym gym sock that they're selling for huffing paint um and totally for tobacco pipes yeah uh and and roses don't forget the roses you the single what are the roses for i never got that glass roses are crack pipes bud oh shit okay okay man that makes so much more sense now okay that's all i'm here for is to explain drug paraphernalia welcome to the lions led by crack podcast oh man. It's been a while since I did crack.

Did you smoke crack out of a fucking rose pipe? No. I was always more sophisticated than that. Well, you do have to. You got to keep the pinky up. I'm a man of certain tastes. What is being sophisticated while you smoke crack? It's not a crack house.

It's a crack mansion like that episode of futurama okay yeah i do remember that now speaking of nothing we just talked about world war ii is a thing that happened this episode is brought to you by world war ii oh it's actually brought to you by whatever uh horrific ripoff quote free to play world war ii game is popular at the moment i mean it's just World of Warships, isn't it? Or is there a World of Tanks one? Yeah, there is. Is War Thunder free-to-play? I don't

know these games. They're all free-to-play. Yeah, they want to get you, much like World War II, they really want to get you at the microtransactions. Pay $5 if you wish to live. And for as long as the u.s has been fighting overseas wars which has been a long time generally speaking you never think of the u.s as like being

infiltrated by mobs of enemy spies um so i thought it would be fun to talk about the time that kind of happened um oh is this gonna be the one where the the mob stepped in and we had to bribe the mob to do surveillance of the New York courts or whatever? No, because it's been largely blown out of proportion by mobsters who want to sound cool. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I sort of had figured. No, that is a story for a later time for sure and i'm not counting the cold war because one that wasn't an actual war um if you lived in the soviet union or the united states so therefore infiltrating with spies is a whole lot easier when like the embassy is still open my parents

used to live across from the soviet embassy and never had a problem with security i'll tell you that yeah i bet they didn't yeah they used to in dc and my parents were like yeah it was a rough neighborhood but it really didn't matter because just like 900 dudes all wearing earpieces just like looking around outside you're like who's gonna rob us no one a lot of interesting people wearing old-timey like knee-length jackets and wide brim hats it's just 900 alices Alice's. But you know, you don't think of like German and Japanese spies as like infiltrating the US. Though obviously that

was a fear, which of course led to a large concentration camp system through the United States when we, you know, illegally arrested the Japanese population of America. And some Germans. And some Germans.

Significantly less. Yeah, I wonder why, Joe. Can you think of a reason that we may have arrested a few Germans? Oh, I can't possibly imagine. Even weirder, like, I did stumble upon some, like, history when it comes to the internment program, which is what is officially called. Of course, that wasn't an internment. That was a

concentration camp system. Don't worry about that that one we will eventually cover that at length um but like even fdr and j agar hoover didn't think that like japanese people were a risk um which like and they responded to public pressure which was to do racism sure which like if you're so fucked up that that like j edgar hoover is like you've gone too far incredible this will not stand sir i said as i uh did some incredibly unethical stuff to some black people oh i mean his entire history is just one unethical streak which we'll talk about of course in this episode and i'm not saying jay edgar hoover is fucking innocent when it comes to the the internment of the japanese people we must free my boy that's an argument for a completely

different free him from his fucking grave um yeah that's that's a different thing for a different series. Now, there's a very obvious reason why it was very hard to spy on the United States, namely that America tends to fight wars. Not in America. And we tend to be far away from our mainland when we do them. One of the reasons why most that sweet James Bond shit that everybody loves to talk about happens in Europe, because it's really easy to spy on people when you can just drive to your target. Oh, sure. You ever see the camo America's Away colored shirt? Yeah,

that's unfortunate. Obviously, this isn't always a thing. In the early days, we were busy fighting indigenous tribes, the French, the British, the Canadians, indigenous tribes again, ourselves, indigenous tribes the french the british the canadians indigenous tribes again ourselves indigenous tribes again we shot a lot of indigenous people that's what i'm getting a whole bunch of yeah uh i hate to break it to you but uh general sherman's not exactly the uh unspeakable monster

yeah yeah yeah that's been a tough one for me. It's someone who, you know, I read his memoirs and I was like, oh, what a cool guy when I was like 14. I was like, oh, he did some genocides. Yeah, it's one of those things that the U.S. really likes to do in its school system is like do that whole like breathing on the cuff of a shirt and

wiping it across the historical record of historical heroes in this country. Don't worry, the genocide buffs out. See, it wipes right off. What's the problem? So during those wars, not counting the indigenous wars, because they didn't really do this, also don't consider anything they did spying or espionage or sabotage,

because it's their country. It's self-defense, if nothing else. You're allowed to do some shit if it's self-defense. If Whitey comes into your house and you kill a couple white people, that's fine. That's fair. The reason why it was a lot easier to do back then is because Confederate sympathizers

could very easily slip over the border. Loyalist sympathizers during the Revolution. French, British, Canadians, whatever. It's really easy to do when you're the colonies or the union. There's no border really. And that's why

a whole bunch of Confederate sympathizers were able to blow out the back walls of Abraham Lincoln. And no foreign power has been able to do that same thing ever again. I don't want to hear blow out the back walls of Abraham Lincoln as a sentence ever again please you're welcome sir and of course conspiracy theories

aside no foreign power has ever killed an American president ever since I don't really want to fucking lay that one into existence talk about Cuba Joe Cuba killed John F. Kennedy. No, they did not. I fucking...

This is not the show for that. You go to the fucking weird ones where they think aliens are abducting people in cornfields and shit. They do do that, though. Shut up! Okay. I'm podcasting under duress. Now, this is not due really to the secret service who spend most of their time if you look at recent news blowing it kind of just getting drunk doing coke and

touring the local supply of sex workers wherever they go uh like even recently when um i mean it won't be recent when this episode comes out but pretty much every time the president whoever it is travels there's always like a small side note of like a secret service agent was sent home due to an incident and it's always like they got drunk and punched someone as you do as one does not me though i would never do that oh i would never get hired by the secret service oh dude no Fuck no dude Though that doesn't mean since throwing their hats into the ring Of European power fuckery

That America has not been the target of at least few Large scale plots of spying Sabotage and other such things And some have been more Successful allegedly Than others because some of these have never been Proven well they tried to blow up the Horseshoe curve oh yeah We're getting to that now the first time that america truly caught this the

foreign smoke not counting the confederacy since nobody recognized it as a foreign government uh what about the war of 1812 joe well that doesn't really count i mean that wasn't espionage it was an invasion yeah okay fair enough no the canadians were all spies um was from the empire of germany during world war one um and that was like the first modern time this occurred though not while the u.s was actually in it if you actually this isn't proven we'll we'll talk about it now the u.s is supplying the allies of world war one with tons of munitions and logistical support while officially being neutral since pretty much the start of the conflict. And as you can imagine, that was very unpopular for Germany, though.

And this is important. The U.S. offered to sell things to Germany as well. However, the German ships could not get to the U.S. due to a very effective blockade over the German Empire. And of course, the U.S. knew this. Just like dangling at some keys when it's like munitions. Hey, you want a grenade?

You want some gas masks? Get off too slow. It's that fucking was an Allstate commercial where it's the old guy with a fucking dollar on the fishing line. Oh, almost got some rifles. Yeah. I mean, the blockade was incredibly effective over Germany.

Like it ended up making the German population largely starve. Like anytime there's something called the turnip winter, that's never a good sign. Oh, no. You know what? Don't start. No shit. There won't be no shit as how we say things in the show don't invade the fucking low countries and you'll have dinner

yeah okay well then we have to nope we don't have to talk about the low countries we can just move swiftly on yeah we know that you hate them as long as along with every other hundred dollars down the drain joe how long ago was that dutchman kick a spaniard in the heart uh what year is this 2022 is 12 years ago jesus christ that that is holding a grudge uh in a in a kind of desperation that i've never heard of before i just i don't like them however eventually germ eventually Germany, of course, responded to this with unrestricted submarine warfare, where even though the U.S. was nominally neutral, they would target American ships and ships carrying civilians.

Now, the Lusitania, again, is a topic for its own episode, which was... Because it had munitions, even though they swore up and down that it didn't oh yeah that shit was full of ammo not saying that germany was in the right uh both people could in fact be wrong here because they did torpedo a ship full of civilians who did not know the ship was full of ammo yeah don't do that that's mean, that's the mental gymnastics that requires that to be okay is like... Very German, yeah. Is a lot like rationalizing blowing up hospitals that happens today, right?

Like, well, there was soldiers there. Like, yeah, they're wounded and they're in a hospital. Yeah, they're not doing anything. Yeah, according to even the laws of the day, party foul. there like yeah they're wounded and they're in a hospital they're not doing anything yeah according to even the laws of the day party foul um but that's that's that's something for a different time now most of this most of this unrestricted submarine warfare ended with like the weirdest gentlemanly kind of shit you've ever heard of in your life um which is you boat surfacing telling the crew they'd blow

up their fucking ship and they needed to get off they would then supply that ship with rowboats and then they would sink the ship some weird ira shit yeah i mean they weren't trying to kill the civilians they were attempting to sink the munitions though that was definitely not always the case um that did not always happen now even though the u.s would not enter the war until 1917 by 1916 it was pretty clear that we were leaning that way um even though it was still very unpopular um and germany was coming to the conclusion that if they did not stop the flow of american supplies they were were almost certainly going to lose the war. And there was this idea that Britain

would collapse if they could sink X amount of tons of supplies. Sure. They're an island. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I get it. It would have worked hypothetically, but a lot like World War II, when the US sent just fleets of liberty

ships out to die, they're like we can send way more supplies than you have bullets which is certainly a tactic it works I love the brute force method of

supply. Some countries are like we will have more soldiers than you can possibly handle, the US is like our manufacturing base can can just churn out i see you sink six badly put together boats we're gonna build 12 more worry about those i'm not worrying about those hey the only thing you have to worry about is if you're the guy on the boat that's like welded together right like better not hit a big wave there Chuck pray my rivets survive um and that's when like

a small landfill turned into an island known as Black Tom Island in New York Harbor exploded um now Black Tom was known for being a massive munitions dump for the U.S. during the war,

and it went off like a fucking nuke. It was home to millions of pounds of explosives, including hilariously, accidentally, 100,000 pounds of TNT. How do you accidentally round up 100,000 pounds of TNT? How do you accidentally round up 100,000 pounds of TNT? It shouldn't have even been there. It was all loaded up on a barge and then parked off the coasts. Because, well, the guy in charge of the barge had cut a deal with the guy in charge of Black Tom.

You never want to hear the guy in charge of the explosives had cut a deal. Yeah, because if they put it at the regular harbor, it would have cost them $25 a night, which is more in 1916 or 1917. But like not that much when you're carrying 100,000 pounds of TNT. But he cut a deal that he could park it at Black Tom overnight for free. Whoops. Should have done that.

Now, the explosion started with a small fire which quickly spread out of control. Hey, when I go to Joe's discount explosive storage. No questions asked. The fire spread pretty quickly out of control and detonated. This ended up being one of the largest non-nuclear

weapons explosions in human history. And honestly the only reason why it didn't leave a crater, kind of like Beirut, is because it was in the middle of the harbor, far away from the city itself. Somehow it only killed four people. Wow. Yeah. Not half bad. With my bad rough math, it was kind of on par on par roughly with the beirut explosion and if you're curious what that looks like there's video of it yeah uh which is an episode for your podcast

at some point yeah it was bad um and the only like four people died and the statue of liberty got like nailed with uh a ton of shrapnel sh, yeah. They end up having to close down the torch, I think, because it was dangling by a thread. At this point, the U.S. had no actual national intelligence service. Right, this is World War I. Yeah, so it was just like a loose collection of, like, naval intelligence directorates and local cops. And everybody came to the conclusion pretty quickly, like,

ugh, this is probably sabotage, huh? If you think that this could be them covering for their own lack of safety, sure. But there was no security on this fucking place. There wasn't even a gate. There was a single night watchman. Nice! This is a place that had, remember, millions of tons of bullets, artillery artillery hundreds of thousands of pounds of TNT

I don't know a townie like sitting behind a desk shocks it's just shocks yeah there wasn't a gate someone could just walk right in one theory love to see it

there's a lot of everything beyond behind this is unconfirmed um though the the prevailing theory is under the command of the german foreign office agent named franz von rittenlein who is a german spy who was known to be in the u.s at at the time worked out a plan to blow it up. Now we know most of this from a Slovak immigrant named Michael Kristof who got picked up for doing something

else even though he was in the army during World War I after this and he admitted that Franz had bribed him and a bunch of guys that worked on the pier so nobody looked at him too hard and then Franz gave him

something that turned out to be an incendiary device and told him to put it on the pier though Michael insists he did not know that none of this was ever proven Kristoff was never charged and you know like the very low barrier for evidence when it

comes to something like this during World War I yeah it's just like no he told me wink wink nudge nudge and surprisingly that wasn't enough like there was a lot of civil liberties that were stripped away during World War I that I'm surprised this guy didn't end up in an electric chair or the firing squad or something just for saying that he did it

but even the naval director it's like this guy's probably full of shit though that did spark a lot of fear about this kind of things as you can imagine a fucking nuke went off in new york effectively right um there was a similar explosion in kingland new jersey about a month after the u.s officially entered the war in 1917 again it's her with a fire but this time it was an ammunitions plant. In Lindhurst. That's where the Hindenburg went down.

And nobody was killed this time. And immediately afterwards. People began to worry. That this must be the same guys. Because they never captured them the first time. Oh sure. Though. It was finally investigated.

And fully investigated in 1931 that the factory workers really just weren't so good with safety I mean this was 1917 in like effectively a pop up munitions plant to fuel total war

like one of the things that I found in the government report is that people were just leaving pails of fuel on the ground you gotta stop doing that war like one of the things that i found in the government report is that people were just leaving pails of fuel on the ground you gotta stop doing that like one person can do that that's bad one person noted that like they kept a pail of fuel on the ground next to a grinder that threw sparks it's like 101 man it's like imagine osha in 1970 of course they didn't exist but just like some guy in a pinstripe suit they were like actually everything's on fire he just does the charleston out the fucking locked fire exit or something

23 skidoo as everything explodes behind him uh but yeah that that wasn't uh weirdly enough uh germany paid or the u.s requested that germany pay restitution for all of these despite the fact the only one they claimed responsibility for kind of was black tom yeah but did we get it uh no definitely not because this all happened in the 30s when they were nazis a similar incident occurred again in 1918 in jersey as saryaville which killed around 100 people yes that i know um now again this was just another case of like no fire safety. I don't know. People just lathering themselves in fuel and handling things that are flammable.

I gotta stop asking you to do that. Now you see, to really get the right angle on that artillery shell that you're grinding, I'm really, really gonna need you to just slather yourself in plastic explosive

PD. Is that understood? Alright boss! Hi, I'm the United States Army Munitions Department and this is Jackass. Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville and this is the Sariaville Shuffle. Now probably the best, and by best I mean would have been the most catastrophic if it worked, plot came from a guy named Anton Dillger.

Now, he was born in the U.S. to a guy who actually won the Medal of Honor in the Civil War named Hubert Dillger. But he had moved to Germany at a very, very young age and stayed there for most of his life. He went to medical school there, became like a biologist, but he was still technically an American citizen. He had an American passport, and he could easily travel back and forth.

And during the war, he went to the United States and linked up with some German agents. He rented a space in dc and built a bioweapons lab what yeah just like literally within miles of the white house um yep and uh he he prepared cultures of anthrax in something called glanders uh which is um like uh an equine disease that targets horses and cows i believe if you remember this is world war one uh they're still using horses yeah yeah like poisoning people's horses is a legitimate like logistical target and from there he his plan

was to bottle it and give it over to some stevedores which the germans had bribed at which point those stevedores were to stuff it in the noses of livestock as they're being loaded up onto ships um however that's where the story that we know it kind of ends um obviously we know it didn't work uh there was never any large-scale anthrax breakout during world war one and uh america didn't have a sudden large-scale livestock die off during world war one um and since the i don't know a huge group of fucking untrained dock workers didn't keel over from handling anthrax incorrectly which almost certainly would have happened uh you can't handle you can't hand a jar of anthrax to a bunch of fucking stevedores in the 1900s and expect this not to become an international incident. Fucking doing the flapper dance as they start foaming from their mouth.

So everybody's guess is that Dilger fucked up and gave them inactive cultures. Or he handed the stevedores the shit who had no idea what it was and they just chucked it in the ocean. Either or didn't work. However, he

ironically had to run because naval intelligence did eventually get onto him. And he died of the Spanish flu in 1918. That'll do it. Kind of ironic for a guy who is effectively a bioterrorist. Not an especially good one, though, apparently. And the only foreign bioterrorism plot in America is famously the anthrax shit after

9-11. Wasn't American. Just some scientist. We live in a real weird place. And he was linked to a larger World War I German bio-warfare program that was like throughout most of the allied world.

More horse bombing? It was mostly uh like anthrax calanders sort of been smart you couldn't have done anything about it right but they were targeting livestock that's what you're saying yeah their goal wasn't to kill a ton of people uh amateurs lions led by donkeys does not endorse bioterror weirdly uh the german intelligence plans and sabotage plans in the west um largely tell their agents to not target civilians we're it's it's strange coming from like the nazis um this was before the nazis but uh no we jumped to world war ii and the u.s entered world war ii after being attacked by the japanese you know, the day they'll live in empathy. Pearl Harbor.

Yeah, Pearl Harbor. In which case, the U.S. declared war on Japan, with Germany responding by declaring war four days later, and then the U.S. returning the favor. Now, some people largely and often weirdly say this is evidence that the U.S. never intended to declare war on Germany, which just isn't true. evidence that the US never intended to declare war on Germany, which just isn't true. They had effectively been in an undeclared war at sea for years at this point.

They had already been shooting at one another. And one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR famously said, quote, remember always that Germany, Italy, regardless of any formal declaration of war, consider themselves at war with the United States at this moment, just as much as they consider themselves at war with Britain or Russia. A poll held at the time said that 90% of Americans want to blow up some fucking Nazis as well as the Japanese.

So, yeah, quite popular. Now, a more realistic way to look at this is that Japan had attacked the U.S. while Germany had not yet. Look at your priorities. The Pacific Fleet is still currently on fire. The American bomber, it's a real thing. Look it up. Also because the U.S. thought that Germany might not declare war on them, as they didn't actually have to. People often say that Germany had no choice but to declare war on the United States

due to a treaty with Japan. Oh boy. Their treaty was a self-defense treaty, as in if America attacked Japan, Germany would join. However, it was more of a handshake agreement about a few days before Pearl Harbor that Germany would join in

the war. But we know that it did happen. So, whoops. Anyway, I don't know why i went on that tangent shortly after declaring war in the u.s hitler ordered a sabotage mission using undercover agents from the german intelligence agency the abwehr now um this idea came from a guy named walter kapp he was a nazi party member and uh then government official who spent the 1920s working a factory gig and oh man i'm gonna fuck this name up kaneki in illinois um yeah before he moved to new york joined the german-american boond you know the nazi party in america and then eventually made

his way back to germany where's the kankakee forget. Now, Cap codenamed this mission Operation Pistorius after Franz Daniel Pistorius, who was the leader of the first group of Germans to settle in colonial America in Pennsylvania. Not the Olympic runner with no legs who shot his girlfriend. Different guy. That's Oscar.

Don't make the same mistake I did. Now, he wanted men who spoke english were familiar with the united states and had some kind of skilled trade that would give them cover uh while they're in the u.s now in case you're wondering why germany would have such a large number of people with connections to the u.s at that time um the agency had actually been stocking up on possible candidates for quite some time prior to the entry of World War II,

and then even after that, prior to America's entry. I thought Germany was, quote, forced to declare war. Now, Germany openly cultivated a close relationship with the German diaspora. They wanted Germans who lived abroad, known as the Volksdeutsch, to return home.

There was even, like a huge ministry programs For this they're given special money Yeah you know who else helped facilitate that J.P. Morgan Chase look it up Not lying look it up Now famously one of these guys Is shown in Band of Brothers Which is actually a true story per the telling

Of Donald Malarkey One of the guys in the show If you've never seen it, he runs into a guy that... He's taunting him. Yeah, he's like, where are you from? So where are you from?

And the guy's like, Eugene, Oregon, which I have to say, finding out that a Nazi soldier is from Eugene, Oregon is the most on-brand thing on Earth. Now, the Nazis were normally really good at keeping records and things like famously so

but we actually don't know how successful this return program was um especially when it comes to the military or the intelligence now this could easily be just uh be explained away with like the records were destroyed um but there also wasn't any random Americans trying to come back home after the war of course that could also be said because then they'd have to explain why the fuck they were in Germany yeah and unless they were a scientist

they're not getting away with that shit right Operation Paperclip also looked that up oh I think people are mostly aware of that one most people probably aren't aware of the significantly larger Soviet program oh yeah i've had to defend uh operation paperclip as well the soviets were doing it too that does not feel good i'll tell you that defense that's just uh no i'm not defending it no right but now a footnote in george nafsinger is the german order of battle which is a exhaustive list of of units in the in the wehrmacht and ss uh as well as the ethnicities

of their people lists only five american citizens of german descent that enlisted within the army or the ss throughout the entirety of world war ii now there again, a lot of these records could have been lost. There are also a lot of non, well, not a lot, but some non-German Americans who ended up in Germany during World War II, which there's quite a few famous ones we'll talk about at some point in the future. But this return thing wasn't very successful coming from America. Now, a reason for that is the same reason why it wasn't that successful in world war one there was a huge german-american population and while the german-american bund was successful in some ways and who's quite popular for for a time german-americans assimilated

pretty seamlessly and considered themselves american before they were German. And that was probably forced on them by World War I. Like, during World War I, there was a whole lot of effort going around being like, look how American I am! So, you know, when a couple decades passed, they've already gone through this once. That's what I was going to say. That's also where we get the

phrase, on the fritz. We called sauerkraut liberty cabbage for a while yeah thankfully america never did that again no now i would like to go out for some freedom fries after this yeah yeah or some uh freedom toast god i forgot about freedom toast yeah i mean it's kind of hilarious that we watched america do this uh you know when we were kids and now russia is doing it at a lot even larger scale yeah i mean there was some obviously very true believers in nazism in america no fucking doubt uh but you know the boond was crushed pretty effectively uh as soon as you know war war were declared yeah and most people fell in line, or there were about, I think, a couple thousand Germans who ended up in camps in the U.S.

But yeah, there wasn't a huge transfer of Americans to Germany. But that didn't mean that the Nazis didn't have some people who were connected to the U.S. laying around. connected to the U.S. laying around. Ernst Berger and Herbert Haupt were dual American citizens, along with a lot of Germans who had previously worked in America and could therefore speak English, which they had to lower their bar a bit when they realized who they had laying around. George Dosh, Edward Curling, Richard Querion, Heinrich Hecht, and Hermann Neubauer, as well as verner teal um they all had

either in-depth or loose connections to america most of them had kind of like become illegal immigrants when that was an incredibly easy thing to do in the 20s like most of them just like got fucking ship tickets and walked into america like sure um they were all recruited promised sweet promotions bonuses and cushy jobs in the future when germany of course inevitably won the war for further evidence that germany's return program wasn't so successful points that these guys were not the trade professionals that cap was looking for in fact most of them were failures at life at this point dudes now love to fight a war with just some dudes dosh was probably the most important he was one of the team leaders of the two teams but he becomes the most important later on um he

floated through life mostly working dead-end jobs through new york city and like philly before he enlisted in the army on two separate occasions got kicked out on two separate occasions and got married twice under two different names in order to hide his little crime of bigamy and then he was arrested twice for running brothels in Philly no sorry it's Pittsburgh

he waited some tables before he ditched both of his wives and families and made a run back to Germany in 1941. Now, so yeah, this is the rigid professional that Cap is looking for. Now, when you

made your return, your repatriation into Nazi Germany, you were questioned by the Gestapo. And you had to fill out a ton of paperwork. paperwork like why the fuck are you coming back to germany in 1941 right nazi bureaucracy required that he filled out forms explaining for his reasons of return and dash worried that the nazis might pick up on his

criminal history said that he wrote down quote i intend to partake in political life which of course in nazi germany means I intend to be a Nazi. Right now, Dosh, but there's no evidence. This guy was a Nazi at all. Other than the fact that he wasn't even a party member. Um, just a guy basically.

He's literally just a guy. He's looking for an easier life than running brothels into God knows what else. Um, though most people would say he wasn't a Nazi at all. He was telling them what he wanted to hear so he could get through customs, which I'm sure everybody has been there at least once. Yeah. We've all lied to customs.

Uh, but because he was eventually sent to meet cop and, uh, cap and, and dash, uh, he, he told them that he wanted,

since he was in the U S army, he thought he could be best at use for, for Germany by being in the German army. Now he had no, he was since he was in the U.S. Army, he thought he could be best at use for Germany by being in the German Army. Now, he was like a private in the Army. He had no skills or whatever. But Cap pointed out that actually you can be much more useful since he spoke very fluent English. Now, Haupt was a German World War I veteran who immigrated to Chicago, worked in an eyeglasses factory, got married and had some kids

before he abandoned them to go on a globetrotting vacation. Father of the year award right here, baby. It landed him directly in the middle of World War II. Now, he was in Europe when it truly got spicy and he didn't have an American passport, which was kind of negotiable

at the time, but he was a German citizen. So he went to like the local German consulate, got a German passport and figured that he would hide out in his grandma's house in Germany until this whole war thing blew over. Spoiler alert, that didn't happen. Now, Berger and Quirion were seemingly the only true believers in Nazism at at least some point. Now, Berger was born in Germany and was a Nazi party member at the age of 17. He moved to the US and then moved back and forth, eventually making his way back to Germany, where he was an aide to Ernst Fromm. Oh. You know, Before he got

Knight of the Long Knives. Got whacked. And Berger found himself in a concentration camp for over a year for being critical of the Gestapo. After that, he was released, drafted to the German army, and became a guard

at a POW camp, not a concentration camp, a POW camp. He was recruited into this anyway? He seems like the last fucking person. Yeah, they're really just taking just band of schlubbers, if you will. It's like, okay, we have this long

list of pre-reqs. And then a month goes by, okay, we'll settle for anybody who speaks English. You guys heard of Project 50,000? Now, Quirion had been born in Germany before moving to the US and he worked for GE. He joined the Bund and was an open Nazi

party supporter and returned to Germany when that suddenly and quickly became illegal. And he worked in the VW plants where intelligence ended up finding illegal and he worked in the vw plants uh where intelligence ended up finding him and another member of the team hank uh who barely spoke english at all so at by the time they were they recruited him like fuck it you know how to say hello and count to 10 oh we need baby now curling was the most believer out of all of these guys he was one of the first 80,000 people to join the Nazi party.

He was a teenager, but he immigrated to America while still a Nazi party member. Picked up a job smoking ham for a few years. Now tell me, does this man die a horrible, painful death, please? Oh, we'll get there. Now, after smoking some hams for a little bit, he moved back to Germany, picked up where he left off the Nazi party, and worked for the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, you know, Joseph Goebbels' ministry, where he ran a movie theater. I'm hoping this ends in some sort of Inglorious Bastards type situation. Ooh, that'd be nice. I'm hoping this ends in some sort of Inglorious Bastards type situation.

That would be nice. They pushed these guys to a three week long training course at a farm outside of Berlin where they had gym classes because they needed to be in shape. They had judo practice and shit. What? Just absolute fucking nerds

as Nazis always are. Nazis are the fucking worst, dude. Every day they were supplied with fresh fruit, vegetables, and vegetables and weirdly flowers i don't know why that's important i just find it weird yeah that's there's a war going on man did uh did the nazis get the tulips today um now they were also required because they they had to pass as americans right? So in order to do that, they had to learn and memorize the Star Spangled Banner and Oh Susanna. Okay. Why not, I guess? In the classroom, they were

forbid to take any notes, and they had to put everything to memory, which seems like a bad idea. I understand there's secret agents and shit, but this is a three-week-long school, man. You're not turning anybody into James Bond in three weeks. Not with that attitude. Cap also made the men sign contracts which weirdly doesn't

seem like something you need to do now the contract was uh require them to remain silent about their mission which is implied when you're a fucking spy right you're a spy now of course it's not an episode of Archer man yeah uh one of the punishments like oh if you

tell anybody about this we'll kill you again implied you work for the nazis right um now they it did say if if they were killed while doing their mission their wives would get huge lump sums from the german government um in reality that probably wouldn't have happened since they abandoned many of their wives in America, but cool. And by wives, we mean the state. Yeah.

Now the teams were shoved into a train towards France because that's where the U-boat bases were and sent on their way. The plan was to attack a hydroelectric plants in Niagara Falls, a serial light plan plant in Philly, cryolite, I don't know, fucking materials. Some of these are just plastics. Probably. Canal locks on the Ohio River,

as well as an aluminum company of America factory in New York, Illinois, and Tennessee. Did you say Illinois? I did, yeah. New York, Illinois, and Tennessee. Fuck. say illinois i did yeah new york illinois and tennessee fuck uh now curling's team of newbauer hopped and teal uh were to invent paypal uh which is where peter teal came from no um oh yeah that that fucking track that's a joke but that's how fucking tracks uh no they were they were designated to attack a water system uh in new york city railway station in Newark, Horseshoe Bend near Altoona, PA,

and the canal locks. They didn't get there, but don't worry. Norfolk Southern did. They put a fucking train on the ground. Norfolk Southern accomplished what the Nazis could not and put a train on the ground at Horseshoe Curve. Coincidence? I think not.

It literally isn't. Norfolk Southern is the worst goddamn railroad in the world uh they're also going to target the canal locks in st louis and cincinnati now uh they were given counterfeit birth certificates social security cards draft deferment cards nearly 175 000 in cash and fake driver's license are we talking 1940s whenever cash? Yeah, yeah. Dude, that's a shit ton. Yeah, it's like several million dollars, I think. Yeah. And now the reason

why they were given that much money was obviously for bribes and stuff, but this mission was to last two fucking years, at which point Germany assumed that they had won the war. Right? So these guys were going to be in there for a long haul. Why they would need several million dollars over two years.

Maybe the Nazis aren't so good at budgeting. Nazis being bad at stuff? Like winning wars? Or sending a sabotage mission to America? Hey, dumbasses. There was going to be two teams of saboteurs. One was going to land in New York and the other was going to land in Florida.

But at first they would have to be loaded in u-boats and brought to the coast but before they got there they got a little bit of leave to go go have a night on the town and occupied france oh boy and immediately released from their handlers dash almost ruined the fucking plan oh they did the archer thing he left a folder with his entire plan on the train. Yeah, on the train. Now, weirdly, the Nazis didn't do that thing where they only tell each team leader their specific mission. His plan, like each team leader knew the entire mission. So Dosh knew the Florida's mission.

That's a good OPSEC. Yeah. And he left all of that on a train. Good job. Um, thankfully the Nazis also didn't trust these guys. Uh, so they actually had an adware agent following them.

Don't say thank you. They'll say thankfully. Uh, yeah. Well, it's not like they ended up doing anything. Uh, and the adware agent like picked up the file,

like, Hey idiot, you dropped this. So that like disappeared into the distance. Then if that wasn't dumb enough, they got shit-faced blind drunk at a bar in paris and dash began screaming at someone who cut him off that he can drink as much as he wants he's a german spy and he's going to america i can't believe this plan didn't work out shocked by the keystone cops of intelligence ironically enough like one of the articles i

use as a source from this from the atlantic is called like the keystone spies so yeah you nailed it yeah yeah somehow this was not enough for cap or whoever else was keeping tabs on these guys like look adolf maybe we shouldn't fucking send these guys off nine do the spy work I'm a very smart man these guys seem very trustworthy get got in a minute here um yeah uh anyway they did it anyway

on May 25th they went to Brest France uh where Kettering's team or sorry Curling's team got into U-Boat 584 en route to Point of Vedra Beach Florida and Dasha's team got into U-Boat 584 en route to Point Vedra Beach, Florida and Dasha's team got into U-202 en route

to Long Island. Do not go Isles, actually. I fucking hate the Isles. Dasha's gonna land in Long Island, step onto the beach, step onto a razor blade or something and then become a fucking Isles fan, and they'll just immediately assimilate.

Sounds about right, actually. Now, their plan was to, obviously, land these two separate places, and then meet in Ohio by July. Because, of course, the Nazis would go to fucking Ohio! God damn it! It's fine. Fine. It's fine. You all right there, bud? I'm good.

We will seize Toledo. Some brilliant, beautiful mind It's fine. Fine. It's fine. You doing all right there, bud? I'm good. We will seize Toledo. Some brilliant, beautiful mind came up with an extra layer to this plan. Since they would be landing on random beaches, remember, launched from a U-boat on rowboats, they didn't want people to be like,

oh, look, some spies. So they had everybody dress in German army uniform. Oh, that seems smart. So if they were seen upon landing, they'd be like, oh, I was shipwrecked and I'm just a POW and get thrown into POW camp

rather than being spies and getting shot. And be brutally executed, right. Now, I have no idea how they plan on answering a simple question such as, okay, but how did a Wehrmacht soldier end up in fucking Florida? Like, where did you get shipwrecked from, my dude? Look, Nazis, not great long-term planners.

Of course, they brought civilian clothes. They're going to hide everything and then change. But yeah, they were landing like, oh, look, some German soldiers. Whoa. And normally when you see Nazis in Long Island, it's just the local cops. But yeah, they were landing like, oh, look, some German soldiers. Whoa. And normally when you see Nazis in Long Island, it's just the local cops. But these guys are like wearing uniforms. Dosh's team landed in Long Island on the night of June 13th. And because this mission has to be as dumb as humanly possible, they floated across the beach directly in front of a coast guardsman named John Cullen.

Oh, beautiful. Now, Cullen caught them just past the time where they changed out of their uniforms. However, there's like a gang of dudes just hanging out on a beach in the middle of a fucking war.

And like, being suspicious and shit, and Cullen is like, is like hey excuse me what the fuck uh what are you doing or he's from long island so he's probably like hey you what are you doing you mook i don't know i don't do long island very well i think it might just be but i think my boston and long island accents are exactly the same it's okay um but now dosh who spoke the best mostly unaccented german like yeah it wouldn't have been out of place in new york for sure um was like oh we're just uh fishermen you see uh we we we crashed here in this tiny rowboat um and we're just gonna camp out here until the morning and we're gonna row on out uh back to like southhampton or whatever uh and cullen despite being um like a pretty new recruit into the coast guards like

well that doesn't make any fucking sense uh but he decides to play along because he's unarmed oh okay so he's like okay well why don't we come back to the coast station? It doesn't make any sense for you to sleep out here on the beach. You can stay at the Coast Guard station until morning, which, of course, is like, I'm going to get these guys in the Coast Guard station where we have fucking guns and we're going to arrest them. Dosh, also not quite that stupid, is like, that sounds like a trap. So they're kind of dancing around one another until one of the guys came up up and was just yelled something in german

at dash yeah uh like i think he yelled like what are we do like what should we do uh which colin of course he could speak english moron yeah and dash in english like turns out, shut up, you fucking idiot. Like, what are you doing? Now, again, Colin is like, oh, no. Sound like Nazis. This sounds a bit like the local cops. But now, Dosh at this point is like, hey, do you do you got parents? And Colin is like, yeah, like yeah like well it'd be a shame if we had to fucking kill you here's a hundred dollars shut up and cullen is like well no you guys are nazis and then realizing that his life was in immediate danger he's like you know what

i'll take the money i'll take the money i didn't see anything and dosh for some reason decides this is good enough and he lets him leave oh that's not very bright no it's not now colin immediately ran back to his coast guard station like yo there's a grip of fucking nazis at the beach let's go shoot them and uh he turns the money over to like he's an honest boy uh which i would not have done i would be like no they did not bribe me no shut up uh no uh because a hundred dollars a lot of fucking money in the 40s man uh now colin and the and the uh uh the coast guard ran up to where the spot was the germans were already gone uh but they did unearth a massive

cache of weapons and explosives they were buried in the sand which was very very easy to find because someone had left a trail of German branded cigarettes and schnapps bottles as well as pieces of their Wehrmacht uniform simply laying around. Jesus Christ. Also Colin was like hey look

out in the ocean. You think that's a U-boat? Because a U-boat had gotten fucking stuck on a sandbar and it was just sitting there and like oh my god it's revving its engine which is a diesel engine right um while it's uh above the water revving its engine trying to get off the sandbar and they can clearly hear it but they have like no coastal defenses to shoot at it or anything. And like Colin said that every time it revved its engine, the fucking like ground shook.

Some of they call the FBI. I'm like, Hey, uh, we got a lot of fucking Nazis out here. Now, by that point, a team's already in New York city by the night,

by June 16th, curling steam land in Florida without incidents. And that is the last time I will say that any of this happened without incident. Uh, as soon as dashes team, dashes team got to new york city they bought new clothes uh because there's like this this point where they're super paranoid after this right because like you know they almost just got well they did get caught but they almost got arrested so they're like low crawling through

swamps and shit and their civilian clothes um i believe it's Queerling that every time that they see lights from a car, he screams, Oh God, we're surrounded! He doesn't seem like a very calm leader. None of them are. None of them are good at this. They get to New York. They buy new clothes.

They're flush with literally millions of dollars of cash. They get a really Good hotel room they start Drinking doing drugs and sampling The local sex worker selection And you know just partying their Nazi fucking brains out Millions of dollars of Nazi money yeah

Literally any group of idiots One of these guys is like He's like 21 so like of course They're gonna do this yeah if you were 20 if I was 21 again I mean course they're gonna do this yeah if you were 20 if i was 21 again i mean i wouldn't be a nazi but if you gave me like millions of dollars like all right let's go hang out in another country i would just treat it as a semester abroad yeah that's what they did for like two days at this point dash starts getting cold feet about the entire sabotage

plot uh he was never a nazi like he was very on the he's almost like just went along with it and found himself drafted into an intelligence plot he was just lying to custom he's a fucking idiot but like he is never in it um it seems like as soon as he like repatriated to germany he realized he was in over his head but his entire life is him kind of failing so that makes sense now at this point the team had gotten to know one another pretty well and he knew burger of all people would uh would probably listen to him remember he's the guy who spent over a over a year in a concentration camp right uh and probably would be the most agreeable to wanting to get out of this shit. Now, upon hearing Dash tell Berger, like Berger hearing Dash be like,

hey, we should get the fuck out of here, Berger broke down to tears. Because it turns out, all that shit that left on the beach, the cigarettes, the schnapps, bottles, the uniform, he had done that on purpose, hoping to get the team caught. And he didn't have the balls to like just turn himself into colin right um now dash knew if they were caught as they were all of them are going to be executed like saboteurs are not protected under any law of war you get treated

like an uh unlawful combatant which is a terminology we'll use later. We'll talk about later on. But he figured, hey, dude, if we flip and we turn all these guys in, the government will welcome us as intelligence assets with open arms and we'll get to stay in America, which is what they both wanted to do. Sure.

Remember, one of them has two wives there. It's not the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So he picked up a phone called the fbi and was like hey i uh like i landed in new york story uh from a u-boat uh a couple days ago which remember the fbi had already been told about this uh that this happened and this story was not made public it was immediately there was an immediate blackout over the whole thing. Oh, sure. That makes sense. And, uh, now Dash was picked to do this because

he knew everything. He was one of the team leaders. Um, so, he, uh, he called the FBI, told them everything, and the FBI pretty much laughed at him, said fuck off, and hung up the phone. Now, the reason for this is it turns out that when you're in the middle of a war and there's, you know, subterfuge happening, the FBI, because the CIA doesn't exist yet war and there's subterfuge happening, the FBI

because the CIA doesn't exist yet, right? The FBI is the main arm of this shit. It's getting a lot of bullshit calls at the time. Their lines were flooded with people, either complete bullshit or crazy people reporting on their neighbor who looked slightly foreign.

Not to mention at this point, thousands of Japanese people have been put in concentration camps. So the FBI was exerting a lot of resources spying on the Japanese population rather than the German one. So they didn't really take it too seriously. Now, since this didn't work, Dash snuck away from the team,

told them that he was going to go do something, got on a train, went to DC, and once there, he called them again, saying, quote, I'm the man who called you New York office. I'm in room 351 at the Mayflower Hotel. I want to speak to J. Edgar Hoover. He was not put through.

Oh, okay. Then he walked into the DC headquarters of the fbi told the people like hey i called you new york office i've called you i'm the guy i'm a german spy who landed via fucking you i keep calling but you never answer yeah dear hoover i wrote you but you still ain't calling um and still the guys at the off at the desk like this guy's probably high or something so for proof he upended his suitcase and emptied 80 000 in cash onto the desk which is about 1.5 million dollars in today bucks and it was like do you fucking believe me now and this finally got the fbi's attention meaning he might be the only person who bribed his way into being arrested uh congratulations on

that sir now the fbi did not arrest him yet uh they went into his hotel and for the next five days they questioned him non-stop with the stenographer present who typed out everything dash gave them everything they wanted including all of the names of everybody in the plan because they were all using their real names while they were in Germany in Spycraft. Oh, that's genius, Spycraft. Now, they did have cover names in the US, but it's not like they came in through a normal port of entry.

They smuggled aboard U-Boat, so it's not like there'd be any record of these people. My name is Fritz American. Yeah. He gave them addresses of what they planned on hitting, addresses of where everybody was staying, because he also knew exactly what route the Florida team was to be taking and what hotel they'd be staying in along the way,

which in retrospect seems like a very bad idea for both teams to know this. And over the next... Not geniuses. Yeah. Over the next 14 days, all eight saboteurs were in jail from a string of arrests from new york to chicago now before the arrest not a single target was hit nor did it nobody even made an attempt there was not an attempt to do any single bit of their plan all of the men

pleaded not guilty claiming they had only taken the mission to get back to their families, into the US, or simply get out of Germany. So, yeah. I mean, I'm willing to buy that from a lot of them. Not the guy who worked for Goebbels. No. Not that I have sympathy, mind you. But, you know, I've heard of dumber plans to get out of places. Actually, I don't know if I have.

I stand corrected. As soon as the word of the arrest got out, panic skyrocketed as people suddenly thought their roving gangs of German spies were to bring America to its knees using thousands of tons of explosives. Now, really, this team probably could have fucked up a few things if they tried.

Remember, they were home free. As soon as they got off the beach, the FBI had no leads. They just didn't. In order to keep the public calm, Hoover told everybody a completely made up story about how the cops and the agents of the FBI had sniffed these guys out through grunt and good police work and therefore saved everybody. Rather than effectively, the team had turned itself in. rather than effectively the team had turned itself in now there's even a newsreel of hoover like dead eyes staring into the camera telling soldiers overseas that the fbi was doing their part to keep their family safe at home okay now for his part dash was told not to tell anybody anything when

the news broke not to tell his jailers not to tell journalists that were sure to show up uh that he had helped with the plot not the men or anything to do that he had uh turned himself in and done their work for them he was told to quote take the punishment and after a few months when the heat died down the president would pardon him and he'd be allowed to go on and live his life like nothing had ever happened or most likely become an intelligence asset for the FBI. None of this happened. And, uh, Dosh found this out

because he was sitting in his jail cell at the D.C. jail, and he looked over and saw a jail guard reading a newspaper with his face plastered on the front page with the headline, CAPTURED NAZI SPY in all caps. Whoops. He's like, ooh boy, I'm starting to really regret turning everybody in. All hopes

that Dash was going to be let loose or anything like that were thrown out the window when it became clear that the government did not want to say shit about them turning themselves in. There's a single line in a newspaper, I believe in the New York Times,

that said Dash had, quote, cooperated with U.S. officials in procuring evidence against the others, and that is it. So it makes it sound like he was capturing, he's like, oh, I'll tell you everything, rather than turning himself in and be like, I'm here. Here's 80,000 U.S. dollars.

Yeah. Part of the reason for this is that everybody knew that the Nazis read American newspapers. This is actually one of the things they did in the spy camp, was keeping up to date on American news and politics. And if it got out that Dosh had given them everything, that wouldn't make the US look good. So they wanted it to look like the FBI knew all about these guys before they even hit the beach. FBI knew all about these guys before they even hit the beach. That way the planet look like such a failure of intelligence for the adware and counterintelligence for the FBI that Hitler

wouldn't even bother sending another team. And largely that worked. I mean, there's no evidence that Hitler was like, oh damn, the FBI is simply too good. But like this never happened again. However, that did lead to everybody in the government wanting to kill these guys, including FDR. Um, he even put out a, uh, executive order saying as much,

um, he is like effectively his executive order pretty much boiled down to anybody caught. It's going to be knelt over a ditch. Pretty much, uh, conducting espionage or sabotage for foreign powers will not be afforded the rights of a prisoner of war which was actually already established law at that point and he was from my understanding copying a very similar executive order that lincoln had put out

during the civil war now this was a bit much even for jay agar hoover uh who again another thing i thought i'd say and the attorney general uh Biddle, who both requested leniency for Dosh, and Berger for that matter, pretty much telling FDR, like, look, I know we're keeping this on the down low, but he did give us everything. Spies are useful, too. Yeah, and they probably know at least one or two other things about the German intelligence layout. at least one or two other things about the German intelligence layout in FDR was setting out to crush these guys going so far as telling his attorney general quote, I won't have them have them handed over to any United States. Marshall arm with a writ of habeas corpus.

Oh, yeah. Fair enough. Just like Lincoln. Yeah. Yeah. A military tribunal, which is the first held since abe lincoln got clapped

or as some would say having his back walls blown out uh you're welcome thank you charge them with violating the law of war which is the sabotage part violating article 81 of the articles of war defining the offenses corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy because some of them were american citizens violating article 82 of the articles of war defining the offense of spying and conspiracy to commit offenses alleged in the first three charges which that's a given but whatever uh now they were actually given civilian attorneys one of whom would eventually become secretary of the army uh at some. And these guys effectively spent the entire case trying to get it transferred to civilian court.

Because they were pretty understanding that the, like, ooh, military tribunal, this only ends in one way. I don't want to be an El Tovar ditch. And this, they were demanding a writ of habeas corpus. And this ended up going to the Supreme Court in ex parte Quirin decision, which has some very, very grim historical precedent as we are sitting here in 2020.

This is not the 5-4 podcast where we talk about the Supreme Court. But eventually, now we all are like, LOL, Nazis are going to fry in the electric chair. But the ex parte decision was cited for effectively making gitmo a thing right yeah i know yeah the yeah so this has some uh a large scale of skeleton or like a large like you know some things have skeletons in their closet this is a skeleton road right like going all the way into the 2000s and largely to today gitmo is still open because of this and also because of political weakness but whatever the u.s was a signatory to the 1929 geneva convention before the they revised it in the

late 40s but it was already kind of decided that saboteurs and spies were not afforded this status of a pow but this large scale paintbrush of unlawful combatants comes from ex parte that's what the bush administration used too yes yep so yeah uh fdr accidentally gave us gitmo cool now i'm not saying without that decision gitmo wouldn't exist. We'd probably just find a different reason to do it. But the military pretty much just laughed at this. Of course, the Supreme Court supported the military's right to do this

per the executive order which they found lawful in a time of war and the 1929 Geneva Conventions, all forming into the ex parte decision uh they were all found guilty in all counts all of their defenses were thrown out and all of them they were sentenced to die in the electric chair now on the morning of august 8th an army chaplain walked into the

dc jail and informed they were all they were going to die that's how they found out that's nice and that is also when dosh and burger found out that they were not going to die like literally Dosh was just like accepting it he's like I'm gonna fucking die like this is like this is what I accepted but Berger was like well have I been spared and the chaplain looked at those two like oh you two are good

you two are fine like imagine fighting like Jesus Christ I mean again no sympathy for literal nazi saboteurs but jesus christ that's a hell of a way to find out i love that uh fdr had spared them uh dash was given 30 years and uh burger i believe got life without that was that would eventually both be changed as well the executions were put on like an assembly line with an electric chair that nobody had ever used in a long time and nobody had bothered

to test beforehand. So there's a little bit of questions if it was actually going to work. It did. The process began at noon. Each execution took no longer than 14 minutes. That counted the time of setting them up, reading off their death warrant, establishing a time of death, removing

the corpse, and then ventilating the room of burnt corpse stink before the next guy got loaded in. Efficiency By 1.30pm all six were dead. Their bodies were buried out back behind the home for the aged and infirm and next to the industrial home school for colored children

Jesus. The schools were not told about this No I bet not. Hey you guys mind if we bury some Nazis out back No we're not talking about that Don't worry Per POW regulations their graves Are marked with a wooden plank With a number on it rather than a name

Fair enough all their Nazis Also it turned out that Some of their families were in on it Oh yeah It was found out that the Haupt family living in the US was corresponding with their son

during this time. Haupt's mother Erna was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Hans was sentenced to death. There's four others in the family that were convicted during the same trial hop's uncle uh will uh walter wilhelm froling his aunt lucille froling his friend otto

richard vergan and his mother's friend kate martha vergan uh walter and otto both received death sentences while everybody else got about 25 years. All of the death sentences were eventually overturned on the Court of Appeals. The judge involved was kind of known for being an asshole, even to not people being accused of espionage. And the Court of Appeals was like, ooh, this seems a bit steep, even for Nazis.

Nah. Nah. In 1948, Truman granted clemency to everybody involved who, well, at least those who are still alive and still in prison with the added piece of immediate deportation to the American zone of occupation

of Germany. Now, this clemency was dependent on never returning to America. The second they stepped foot back onto American soil, their penalties penalties death or otherwise would be immediately reinstituted that seems

like a fair deal anybody who had their American citizenship stripped not get it back anybody who had not had their citizen stripped had it stripped and and Western German citizenship given to them they were never given pardons that they were promised,

and weirdly, by the end of his life, Dosh eventually wrote a book, which is largely bullshit. It's mostly just circled upon making him look like an innocent victim. Now, in his later life, Dosh became friends with Charlie Chaplin because they bonded over how J. Edgar Hoover ruined their lives. What up, man?

That's kind of funny. But that is Operation Pistorius. Just outstanding. How are you feeling about this? Nazis are fucking dumb is how I'm feeling about it. Could these guys have just been turned

into intelligence assets? Yeah. Did they need to be executed? Probably not. Yeah. Am I going to shed a tear? No. No.

All right. So, Liam, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. Without incident, by the way. Without any incidents that have been edited out. If you'd like to ask us a question in the Legion, donate to the show and ask me a question on Patreon, DMs, Discord, which you also unlock if you

donate to the show. There's the plug. And we'll answer it. Not serious questions, but they're fun. This one. You have time traveled back to World War I. You're in charge of an American tank. You're in charge of the American tank program. You can only use weapons from battle bots.

What does your tank look like? Oh, hang on one second. Did you ever watch Battle Bots? Yeah, I think so. It's incredible. That show just simply wouldn't... I mean, I know that it still exists in some form, but there's something about peak BattleBots

that can simply never be outdone because a lot of them were made illegal because they were too dangerous for BattleBots. One of them, I think... Oh, fuck, it was the guy that was in... The Mythbusters guy. The Mythbusters guy made one that had a giant buzzsaw that flung parts into the audience. Deadblow, yeah. Yeah was the guy that was in... The Mythbusters guy. The Mythbusters guy. Made one that had a giant buzzsaw that flung parts into the audience.

Deadblow, yeah. Yeah, that shit rules. They used a pneumatic hammer. Alright, I'm gonna go anti-tank vehicle here, but not the way you're thinking. Oh, we're talking about Blendo. Was it Blendo? Yeah, Blendo, because it threw... The shell had a...

The robot had a shell made from a walk it was spun by a lawnmower engine blades attached to the shell caused damage to its opponents removing bodywork and in some instances caused them to be thrown over the safety shields into the audience hell yeah dudes rock they made a game boy advanced battle bots game in 2002 um so i'm gonna go anti tank warfare here but not in the way you're thinking. So you remember the battle bots? Cause there's met for people who are a little bit younger. You don't want to look up the YouTube clips or whatever. There's a lot of different,

what you could win from just like incapacitating the enemy battle bot. And that could include simply tipping them over. Uh, so there's a lot of like ramps and stuff. Uh, so I'm going to Mark five tank from world war one. Cause it's where we're talking about But it has one of those gigantic

Cartoonish pneumatic flipping devices So like It pulls up to the German tank and just Fucking catapults them like an Acme device into the sun Or people or horses Okay So I'm stealing the

Renault FT And so the FT-17 and what i'm doing is replacing the turret with uh buzzsaw guns buzzsaw guns wait like they shoot buzzsaws yeah they'll shoot but they shoot uh spinning blades i think you've transcended BattleBots into supervillain territory, which I'm fine with. I always support good supervillainy. Was there ever a flamethrower in BattleBots? I don't think it would be very useful because you're fighting robots.

I don't think you're allowed to. Yeah, lame. My other option is I got the big flipper, right? And my secondary weapon is a giant pneumatic pick. I also like the idea of using the Ford three-tom with, like, a giant pneumatic acme hammer.

Well, yeah, because that way, if you're flipped over, you can use it, like, watch BattleBots. They use the pneumatic hammer to flip yourself back over. It's just a pillbox now. Hammer pillbox. Liam, thank you for joining me on this episode of operation pastorious uh this is the last podcast i am recording here in my office joe he is moving to armenia yeah by the time this

comes out he will have he will be he will be there so congratulations joe this is the last this is the first podcast or the sorry the last podcast in four years that I will not... Well, not the first. I've been moving around a bit, but I've always had this table. And it's the last one that will be recorded on this repurposed, formerly used as a beer pong table. On to bigger and better things, Joe. I'd bring the table with me if I could. I hear that.

Liam, this is the area where you plug your other shows plug away a thousand losses well there's your problem listen to the shows uh consider uh donating to the show uh donate uh get bonus stuff discord or buy my books they're all they're all available um and until next time don't end up in an intelligence plot so you can illegally immigrate back to a country that you enjoy. Don't have two wives at once is my advice. Don't be a Nazi. Also that.