October 4, 2019 • 55 mins
As World War II drew to a close, multiple Nazi officials saw the writing on the wall: Germany would lose the war, and members of the Nazi party would have to answer for their crimes -- if, that is, they were caught. In a desperate bid to avoid justice, various factions of the SS and other Nazi officials created secret international escape routes called ratlines. Just how big was the operation? Tune in to learn more about the mysterious organization called ODESSA, and why it remains a subject of intrigue and controversy in the modern day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We are joined today with our
super producer role brilliante. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Quick question at the top of the show.
Have you all ever had to make an escape? And
(00:45):
it could be an escape from a party don't want
to be at, or family function, h an escape from
a social obligation, and escape from a country unsuccessfull? They
participated in an escape room did not get out? In
me a lot of time. It was quite a letdown.
Did you tortured? No? I blame one particular team member
who shall go nameless, who had the confidence of a
(01:06):
general and the intelligence of something much less than a general.
And to be clear, I've heard this story and you
were not talking about yourself. Okay, it's a different what
about you met? I was once at an extended in
laws house, uh far away and one of the persons
(01:28):
there was um acting as a bit of a bully,
and and then it escalated and escalated throughout the course
of an evening. And uh perhaps, and I packed up
the things that I had unpacked with my wife and
we got the heck out of there. Good. Yeah, good
(01:51):
forget those people. It wasn't that crazy in hindsight, but
I was certainly uncomfortable in the moment. So, Ben, you're
always talking about getting kicked out of countries if you
ever had to make a ad crazy getaway. Yes, I've
had several close calls over my time. UM one in
Germany two and Guatemala, one in Canada. Um. Yeah, number
(02:15):
once I get to say, I had to get out
of a town in Guatemala after dark. It was it
was in the who was in the jungle? It was strange.
I was essentially racing to catch the last charter bus
that would pass through that area of the of the
country before dawn. So the next one we come at dawn.
(02:40):
But I was not in a place where you would
have want to stay overnight, gotcha using those diplomatic privileges wink? No,
oh well sure, sure. Anyway, I made it here right here,
we go. Today's episode does have something in common thematically
with this series of escapes. We're talking about whether an
(03:02):
escape room, whether a weird living situation, whether you are
whether you are racing the darkness or the dawn. Today
we are exploring a strange secret story. It's one that begins,
we say, right around the close of World War Two,
but that's not entirely accurate. This story begins before the
(03:25):
end of the actual war. It just the rubber hits
the road at the end. Uh wait, wait war? What
what war are we talking about? Here are the facts.
That's why. It's the Great War, the one that is
taught to children across the world. No matter where you
grow up, you will learn about this because it was
such an important um few I mean, really what didn't
(03:49):
even last that long, but it was one of the
most important things that ever occurred in the history of humanity.
It was the whole world and war with itself to
each other. The second time it's and it took place
from n and nineteen forty five. World War two, of course,
is what we're speaking of. If you didn't get it
through those means, um But here's the thing. I mean,
(04:10):
that timeline isn't perfect, right, because there are machinations that
occur prior to that. There are there's a lot of
cleaning up essentially that occurs afterwards. There's a lot of
setting up to socio economic positions that are that are
changed in an unsustainable way in the thirties. Also, there
are a lot of banks evolved. I'm gonna say, I
(04:31):
know it's a different episode, but it would be naive
to pretend that was not the case. Certainly, and at
least one major religious organization, yes, at least one. We
know today that the opponents in the war were collectively
primarily referred to as the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers.
This is still the deadliest conflict and recorded history, Matt.
(04:54):
I like what you pointed out about how how short
that timeline actually seems thirty nine to already five, especially
when the news just broke this year this month. Actually
that we're recording their U S soldiers in Afghanistan who
were born after the current US conflict in that part
(05:14):
of the world began. There are people have grown up
only knowing that war, yeah, or at least as the
major defining war in their lifetime or in their their worlds.
Right yeah, that is that's very odd. It's still not
the deadliest war and recorded history. That dubious honor goes
to World War Two. As you said, man, most children
(05:35):
learn about this war at some point in school. Exactly
what we learned depends on where we are raised. We
did an earlier episode on an episode or a video
I cannot remember. On the insidious ways that textbooks guide
the reasoning of children, like if you read. If you
(05:56):
read a textbook about World War two that's published by
a textbook company in Japan, it's going to be very
different from a book about World War two for children
that's published in Russia, or in China, or of course
in the US. But regardless of their disagreements, all these
textbooks agree on one central point, including the German textbooks,
(06:19):
mind you, and that is this, the Nazi Party of
Germany were the bad guys. They were the ones every
textbook will tell you seeking global dominance, responsible for genocide,
human experimentation, all these other atrocities, a seemingly unending list
of war crimes. Nazi officials foresaw the close of the
(06:41):
war and the fall of the Access Powers before it
actually happened. They could see the writing on the wall,
you know what I mean, even they knew that they
got caught, they would have to answer for these crimes
and be tried. You know, as you you kind of
listed off a few of those things that have been
these aren't things that are you're going to get a
lenient sentence for. Were they were aware that the whole
(07:02):
world essentially would be holding them accountable for these things,
and they would be either in jail or put in
front of a firing squad or hanged at the end
would would come either either very swiftly or it would
be an elongated process for perhaps decades. Yeah, the human
species is not perfect. But what, thankfully, one thing billions
(07:26):
of people can agree on is that if you try
to kill billions of other people, something bad should happen
to you. Yes, you know, so go us, go team.
So understandably, these folks looked to plan their escape. Yeah,
anyway they possibly could get out of the countries where
they were, because we're not just talking about Nazis in Germany.
(07:47):
There were there were people in countries you know, across
that area in Europe, in uh you know, and again
if you look to Japan, people were trying to escape
justice yeah, yeah, and of Italian fascists, members of the
that aspect of the Axis powers. Well, even on some
of the Allied powers, there were there were numerous Soviet
(08:11):
higher echelon soldiers and military personnel that we're trying to
get out because they feared what would occur after the war. Yeah, yeah,
can you imagine. After the close of the war, Nazi
officials who were captured were tried in court during a
series of military tribunals known as the Nuremberg Trials. The
(08:33):
Nuremberg Trials are incredibly important right for human history. They're
often depicted in works of fiction, in films and so on,
and they set some crucial precedents. The first tribunal began
on November twenty nine, and it was aiming to try
twenty four prominent members of Germany's Nazi Party. Some of
(08:57):
these people were tried in absentia because they had not
been apprehended. That is that like, what an awkward proceeding
that must have been. It's weird. People really, people are
into it. I think they they had to set the
precedent and then also if they find the person guilty
and absentia, the law still apply. So anytime that person
(09:19):
is found. Who knows, maybe the sentence can be carried
out immediately. Probably not something that medieval, but similar who
do they yell at and shame in the room though
they're like a proxy person that stands in for the
absent party. I don't know, because even when that one
pope dragged the carcass of his predecessor out and had
(09:40):
a trial for the dead guy, they at least needed
that props. In any in any court, at least within
the US, if you don't have somebody to stand trial,
then there is no trial. So but in this it
really is. It was just a matter of needing to
to state, essentially, this person is guilty of these things.
(10:01):
It is known now throughout the world that this guy
did this. And these were the big fish of the party,
not all of them, but many of them were the drivers,
the builders, the architects of the horrible socioeconomic engine that
Germany had created, you know, the heads of economic policy,
(10:23):
military of course, the people who were in charge of
the concentration camps. The surviving members of the party worked
ardently to avoid justice. And it's interesting that today we're
talking about escape because the stakes were so high that
some people who could not well, I guess the best
(10:43):
way to say it is, some people found only one
route for physical escape, and they took it without hesitation.
And of course you're talking about both Joseph Gerbel's as
well as Adolf Hitler. And if you want to learn
more about these guys, uh, they chose to take their
own lives. Uh. We did an episode called What Happened
(11:05):
to Hitler a little while ago and gosh, I think
it's twenty seventeen maybe, but you can learn about all
of the theories surrounding Hitler's death. Whether he actually died then, um,
he's probably dead now either way, yes, But listen to
that episode if you want to learn more about that,
figure out what what people found, what people learned about
(11:26):
the skull. And then you had folks like Heinrich Mueller
who just kind of vanished like Kaiser SoSE style. So
what happened? Where did they go? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
(11:49):
So this was a rumor, this was a whisper for
a long time. What happened to these Nazis? Says? You said, Noel,
what happened to these ones who disappeared Kaiser SoSE style. Oh.
For the decades since World War Two, declassified files have
proven the Nazis had an ongoing conspiracy, or it's better
to say a nest of conspiracies. Uh, this cavalcade of
(12:11):
secret plans created to evade the consequences of their actions.
This is not well, technically speaking, this is not a
conspiracy theory because it's not a theory. It really actually happened.
It is a genuine conspiracy, and it's it's really multily
like you said, multiple conspiracies, multiple groups, and multiple plans,
(12:32):
and a lot of them were successful. Yeah, and there's
overlap and some worked better than others. Right, And to
a degree, this conspiracy, this let's call it an uber
conspiracy since we're using German. Right. Uh, This uber conspiracy
or metic conspiracy remains unsolved. It all goes back to
something called ratlines. What is a rat line, you may ask, Well, today,
(12:56):
the various escape networks, tunnels, um infrastructure used for this
purpose by the Nazis and fascists at the close of
the war are all collectively referred to as ratlines, and
they were essentially plans for individuals and groups to vanish
themselves disappear themselves, leaving Germany for safe havens like South
(13:17):
America and also the US shout out to Operation paper Clip. Yeah,
but yes, they also want other places right now like Switzerland. Yeah.
And there are even a couple of rumors of areas
in the Middle East where people were secreted away to Syria. Yeah.
But just to jump back to paper Clip again, we've
done an episode on this. This was the specifically the
(13:39):
United States version of a ratline to get Nazi scientists
generally scientists, but there are a few other characters in
there to the United States for our own gain, because
the minds behind some of the terrible things that occurred
were I don't know how better to put this there,
(14:01):
they were some innovative people, uh that were doing things
that were complicated, and the United States saw strategic advantage
to using those minds for their own advantage. That just
it's absolutely it's it's absolutely brutal and ruthless and Mackavellian
and true Nazi scientists are the reason that human beings
(14:26):
ended up on the Moon if you think about it,
and then they're one of the reasons, right because Operation
paper Clip focused on taking thousands of German scientists and engineers,
particularly Werner von Braun, Right, that's the big name, right,
who had done so much work on V two rockets.
If you, if you think about it, that that expertise
(14:48):
that the US took does lead, maybe not directly, but
does lead to the rocket technology that the US later
uses to send people into space. In the least, it
helped tremendously at the very least. And I know it
can be seen as somewhat of a hot take to
again say the Nazis helped the US land people on
(15:12):
the Moon. It sounds weird when you, you know, boil
it down to one sentence maybe former Nazis. Yeah, well,
you know what, that's way more diplomatic, former Nazis. But again,
I feel I feel weird even saying that. It feels
like I'm downplaying it. Well, we know that some members,
especially in the scientific community, some members of the Nazi
(15:33):
Party were maybe members in name because of internal political pressure,
and they had to do it too. They say they
had to do it to survive. We also will never
know the true story. And you you you read a
really great quote on a recent episode of Ridiculous History
where you said, nobody really cares about anyone's motivation for
being a Nazi. Whether you did it on purpose or
(15:53):
you know, we're kind of strong armed into it, you're
still called a Nazi at the end of there's no
like former Nazi are like Nazi in name only, really right, Well,
the things you did, the physical acts, the the ideas
that you created that you know, brought into this world
were for a means that was nefarious and did terrible
(16:15):
things other people. Whether it was a rocket that was
being shot to blow up soldiers from you know, some
other land, whether it's a punch card machine like IBM. Yeah, wow, Fanta, No,
I'm just kidding, uh this, I mean, this is an
excellent point. Right, So, the recent Operation paper Clip happens
(16:37):
without going into the full episode we have on it
that you can hear whenever you wish available wherever you
get your favorite shows. The primary reason Operation paper Clip
exists is because the US boffins and eggheads and military
leaders do a cost benefit analysis, and before the end
(16:58):
of World War Two, the beginnings of the Cold War
are already it's nascent, it's it's kicking into gear, and
the Soviet side and the US and the West are
already planning on how to become the global hegemon. Right,
so Operation Paperclip was this cost benefit analysis where U
(17:19):
s scientists and what did I say, boffins and eggheads
and military leaders. They know that these these ideological orphans, right,
these brilliant evil people because again Likenel said they are Nazis,
knew that they would be hunted around the world. But
(17:42):
more importantly, the US knew that if they did not
spirit these folks away, the Soviet machine would get them.
And the Soviet government did apprehend German scientists. I think
the US only got around sixty hundred or so, but yeah, yeah, right,
(18:04):
just sixteen hundred of those uh top men. To quote
Indiana Jones, right, doesn't he say that the end of
Raiders of Lost artis Yeah, so we're going I'm going
a little in the weeds on Operation paper Clip. It's
just very important for everyone living in the US to
(18:24):
know that when you hear about ratlines, when you hear
about countries like Argentina, healthy Brazil, Yeah, yeah, yeah, when
you hear about these countries helping war criminals disappear, we
have to realize this is very much a glass house.
Our country did the same thing, you know what I mean,
and did it with even um less of a clandestine attitude,
(18:49):
more of an official stance. But okay, so what is
what is a rat line? Let's say, now we're not
going to pick on super producer Lowell because it's his
first day with us. So so let's let's just pick
uh someone no one can hate and say they're Nazi. Uh? Okay,
So what if, like Tom Hanks is you know, he
(19:10):
got caught up, he's a Nazi and he needs to
escape Germany it's the fall of World War two? What
kind of rat line would he use? What would he?
How would he? How does it work? Well? So there
are several routes that could be taken, like as far
as locations that people are secretive through, um, But we
kind of have to talk about the functionality of it, right, You,
(19:32):
The first thing you need to do to get past
a border, right, if you're gonna do that, is to
have a false identity. And generally that's how these things began,
where you would have someone somewhere that could get you
false papers and prove that you're someone else as you're
leaving and as you are attempting to leave somewhere like
(19:52):
Germany or Austria. Wherever you're heading out of you would
generally end up head from Germany to Spain and then
eventually over to Argentina. That's one way. They're one of
the major ways. The other major way is from Germany
to Italy, Genoa in particular. Um, and that's also that's
(20:13):
going through Rome. And by the way, when you're going
through Rome, you know who's helping out I guess no,
the old Vatican, because again that is a an arm
that reaches very far and it has way too many fingers.
You'd think it only had five fingers, but that arm
just has like fingers. You know, I'm not gonna I
(20:37):
am not um a theologian who would say it does
seem somewhat off brand, somewhat un christ like to assist
mass murders and uh, to assist war criminals. But yeah,
there's a there's a deeper connection there with the Vatican
and a lot of the happenings of World War two
(20:57):
that we were probably not going to fully get into today,
but you can look that up if you wish, um.
But anyway, they would also end up somewhere in South
America that that line that goes through Italy, and there
there's the for ratlines that depended on the help of
the Vatican of the Catholic Church. South America makes sense, right,
(21:18):
because there is so much Catholic presence there, as well
as the lack of extradition extradition treaties in a lot
of those places. And I do want to say, I
do want to say, when we're saying the Vatican or
we're saying the Catholic Church, we're not talking about people
who actually just practice Catholicism. No, no, no, We're talking
(21:38):
more about the political machine, yes, rather than the spiritual idea.
We do have etymology of ratline. It's a nautical term,
which I did not know because it's not ratline sounds
like something snarky that maybe someone in Western intelligence made up.
May I guess what it is before? I always in
(22:00):
my mind it's the small pathways that you'd have to
get down on all fours essentially within a ship or
something to access some of the other parts of the
ship that, like the that are inaccessible. I I like, okay,
I like where your heads at this. The original rat
(22:22):
line was a a sort of last resort passage. It
was it was a rope, these small lengths of cord
that ran between the big ropes, the proper ropes that
fixed the top of a mass to the sides of
a vessel. So rat lines you could use them because
(22:43):
they were horizontal as these kind of makeshift ladders. So
if you absolutely had to get someone up the mast,
they would crawl up this rat line. And there's a
terrible image here, so they crawl up right, these these
makeshift little rope ladders. Scampering up the rat line was
(23:07):
something that desperate sailors would do when the ship was sinking.
And so the last thing to go under the surface
of the water is the mast, and so as the
water is rising, there running up the rat line. Okay,
checks out, makes sense. And that's the people who missed
out on the lifeboats. So that's that's interesting though, because
(23:32):
in that etymology, there may be a deeper, deeper puzzle, right, certainly,
and and we'll get to that just that. We'll get
to that just a second. But these roots that you're describing,
the they start independently, right. The thing is, there's not
a great conspiracy. Yeah, you'll have you'll have basically a
(23:55):
leader in one area that generally has access to getting
those kinds of identity papers that we were kind of
met briefly mentioning up up at the top there. Um,
if you can find one person like that who has
a few other associates and then you can link up
with that group, that then becomes essentially a cell right
of network, because then those are popping up everywhere. But
(24:18):
it doesn't necessarily mean that that network is fully connected
or communicating with each other. Um, you just have to
find your node. Yeah. Yeah, Like a lot of a
lot of dirty things that state actors and governments do
tend to be less an official decision of the government
as a whole and more like a faction of people
(24:38):
or community, a wheel within the wheel. Right. So, according
to historian Michael Phair, there were two alternate routes, the
ones you describe that, and they developed independently, but they
eventually merged, likely as the actors in these roots learned
about one another and they were able to help and
assist each other. And for years after the war, the
(25:00):
concept of these escape routes, these ratlines were, as we
said earlier, rumors, whispers, They were not officially confirmed. And
you can see why because at the close of World
War Two, when US soldiers have died, it would be
terrible and very it would be political suicide for members
(25:22):
of the US government to say, Okay, we won the war.
We're doing our best to bring justice to people, except
for the scientists. You guys, there's one dude who's just
great at rockets, and we have to have them. We're
sorry that your children have died, but we really want
(25:44):
to get to the moon. You can't say that stuff,
you know what I mean? Said, well, yeah, but I'm
not not not the president after War two. It's not
a great when you said, it's not a very authoritative
concept of guys here us out. Let's take a beat.
That's I mean, it's true though, if you think about
like who could who who on earth would go public
(26:08):
with that? So of course this was considered a wild
tinfoil hat conspiracy, you know what I mean? And people
who if someone told you in the nineteen sixties, hey,
I think the US government is abducting scientists, right, or
I think that the Pope is abducting Nazis and helping
(26:29):
them live a new life in Argentina, then if someone
told you that, you probably think, wow, this guy is
on LSD. And I've never liked someone tripping like that
that the plot of a movie that exists, like a
scientists are disappearing. They're all being spirited away into a
secret underground lab to do evil research under duress. Yeah,
(26:50):
it sounds like Watchman. It sounds like a whole bunch
of different things, very similar to right, because even today,
like even today, now that the stuff is confirmed, there
are historians and researchers, not necessarily fringe historians nor fringe researchers,
who believe that there's still something nefarious, that there there's
(27:16):
still more we need to learn about this. And one
of the largest controversies in the story of Nazi rat
lines is something called Odessa. What is that you ask?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor. So,
(27:38):
according to author Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, Odessa,
or the organization er Madigan U S. S Anga Horrigan,
was founded in nineteen forty six, one year after the
close of the war. Um Odessa O D E S
(27:59):
s A is US code name for the operation um and,
according to Guy Walter, as a historian, U S Intelligence
first became aware of this term when members of the
s S and the CAZy Bensheim Auerbach internment camp used
it in conversation while attempting to gain special favors or
privileges from the Red Cross so they would be The
(28:22):
way this story goes is that these s S members
would be trying to maybe get in communication with someone
outside of where they were being held, uh, you know,
get maybe some cash, maybe maybe even try to see
if they could get in touch with someone who could
get them a passport. And from what we could tell,
(28:44):
the conversation something like could you send this letter to
my friend blah blah blah and then say no, sorry,
I can't can't send letters and go, oh but it's
care of Odessa, don't don't exactly. So the first mention
of it from the Allied side shows up in this
(29:05):
memo from American intelligence and that's on July third, nineteen.
So what was Odessa like? What? We know that these
smaller roots are, these these more discreet organizations and ratlines.
We already know that they exist. What's the difference with
(29:28):
Simon Wisenthal's Odessa? This author Wisenthal he he believed that
Odessa was this big organization. Um I would kind of
liken it to something like al Qaeda similar to that, like,
it's one big thing that was functioning uh together, right, um.
And it was mostly made up of veterans of the
(29:48):
s S. And not only were these did this group
odessa uh. Not only did they get them out of
Germany initially with passports like we were talking about, but
they would also assist these people in setting up new
lives in new countries such as Argentina or Brazil or
wherever they were going to end up in South America
a couple of times in the Middle East in places
(30:09):
like Syria. Um. But there is one major issue with this.
Not everybody believes the same thing that Wisenthal believes, right.
That's the thing. Multiple other historians say odessa as as
he has described never actually existed. Again, That's that's strange.
(30:31):
No one is denying that the rat lines really did exist.
And yes, everyone knows that some Nazi officials did successfully
use these routes to escape, as well as some like
members of fascist parties and so on. But there's a
complication to this narrative. Years before Simon Wisnthal of Eistal
went public with his claims about Odessa. The government of
(30:53):
Austria had already been investigating the idea. It's sort of
it's it's like, um, if you're familiar with James Bond,
the World's Worst Superspy, it's sort of like the concept
of Specter. Remember this uh specter in the Bond films?
Is this global evil organization. Every spy franchise has one,
(31:16):
Yeah and gets smart. I think it was chaos. All
of them are acronyms that nobody remembers if they stand for,
but they're generally like this quasi governmental private organization right
the functions outside of any government or yeah, and just
has like a way cooler name than an actual government
entity would ever have. It's like Scorpio chaos, the octoquad,
(31:39):
the oct I would yeah, I would join the octo quad.
But why is it octo? And because the symbol is
like a weird eight and four together, it's like a rune. No,
it's it's four octas, it's a quad of octos. Okay, Okay,
so it's it's twenty four. Uh, send us your design
(32:03):
for octoquad and teach us how to do math. So
that's uh, but but it's true. Like so the argument then,
is that Odessa is a real life version of this
evil superspy bondesque thing. And also Simon Wisenthal in the
fall of World War Two, he did not get along
(32:25):
with West German military intelligence. They butted heads all the time.
That doesn't mean that his claims are untrue, and it doesn't,
you know, It's all it means is that there's a
wrinkle here. And it could people claiming that Odessa is
not real could be seeking to discredit the Wisenthal Weisonal organization.
(32:51):
Or it could also mean maybe in his um in
his search to find these escaped war criminals, that Eisenthal
started drawing connections in his own head where none existed,
You know what I mean absolutely, I mean we all
know that that's some of what gives conspiracy theory circles
a bad rap. Sometimes it's easy to do foregone conclusions
(33:14):
or sort of work backwards and like sort of have
a preconceived notion of what something is when it maybe
isn't actually that at all. Yeah, And again, the thing is,
so he was definitely right about the smuggling operations, the
rat lines, and we found proven ones, right, Yeah, we did.
We found a whole bunch of proven ones, and I
(33:35):
just want to add on to what you're saying. There
are guys, it feels like, and this is complete speculation
on my part that if Odessa really was a thing
and it was kept you know, secret enough to where
we are still in twenty nineteen post you know, postulating
whether whether or not it could be real. Um, it
(33:56):
feels like it could have had integration somehow with one
or more intelligence communities or agencies throughout the world. And
what what intrigues me is that the CIA was involved
in several of these, you know, secreting away of Nazis
along with paper clip, you know what was occurring with
(34:16):
paper Clip, but in other instances as well, to get
essentially s S officials and high level targets to then
flip them and become informants, not only to find other
ss you know, escape e s, but also to inform
them on strategy and other things. So it's we're gonna,
(34:38):
we're gonna continue down here because we we we know
several of these uh names people that escaped and people
who were involved in things like this. But it just
does make me feel like if Odessa was real, perhaps
there was a higher involvement with some other powerful intelligence agency, Right,
(34:59):
some sort of institution capable of not only moving people
across the world, but also cleaning up after themselves such
that they could they could sweep up the trace. Right.
We also, okay, we have to say it. We we
(35:20):
already we already mentioned this, but we have to say it.
The Vatican did it. The that's the institution that has
the power and the reach to move people across I'm
not being an anti papist or whatever, and I'm not
saying anything bad about the spiritual beliefs of anybody who
ascribes to Christianity or Catholicism. But the machine, the machine
(35:46):
that runs that organization on an earthly level, is more
than capable of of creating these sort of I know
it sounds very Dan Brown, right, but they're more than
capable of and that acting this sort of this sort
of process, and in a very real way. Uh, the
(36:08):
Catholic Church at this time was, you know, hand in
hand with the ostensible governing powers of some developing countries. Right,
and in some cases not all, not all. And again
it's very it's very easy, I think, to connect dots
where none exists. But it is true that in some cases,
(36:30):
the Catholic Church had so much influence over a country
or parts of a country that it was effectively the government.
Yeah wow, Okay, well I don't even notice say following that,
I just want to let your soapbox for a while
because I'm sorry, thanks for coming to my ted talk. Well, no,
because we found we've found this to be true. I mean,
(36:52):
if you look at somebody, um like uh dragon Ovic,
I don't know how to move precisely pronounce the name there,
but um, this is a person who would get false
identity papers, like we were kind of mentioning before, he
would get them from the let's see this. Uh so
an unidentified person, an American who was serving at the
(37:15):
Eligibility office of the International Refugee Organization in Rome. Okay,
so you've got a person working with an office in Rome,
uh to get some papers, right. That only apparently that
only happened for a short time because things fell through
with all of that. But then he ended up working
(37:36):
with another organization, the National Catholic Welfare Organization and UM
as well as the Italian police and the Italian Foreign Office. Uh.
And that was again to obtain false documentation for Nazis
that were attempting to escape. He would get false exit
and entry visas for at least three South American countries,
(37:57):
the Argentina that we talked about, belive, even Chili Um
and again in a lot of times, it's not known
precisely how these documents are obtained, but it is known
that there were just bribes that were going on with
maybe an individual diplomat or somebody who could have access
to those and it's not necessarily known the full um,
(38:21):
let's say, compliance of any of these larger organizations that
I've mentioned up here, but someone at a higher level,
or a high enough level to actually create and get
these documents was involved. Because these weren't counterfeit documents. These
were official documents, yes, and with names with brand new names. Yeah,
that's the thing. It's it's like, at what point is
(38:43):
something to forgery? You know, and at what point is
it real? It's so because we're an audio podcast, Matt,
you just held your hands the kind of the old
six in one hand happens another It's it's true. And
we have to also remember if we're being if we're
being completely objective, we have to a member in this
situation with the organization the size of the Vatican or
(39:05):
the Catholic Church, it is laughably unlikely that everyone knew
this was happening. Again, these are factions, right, this Dragonovic
in what Croatia, right in the Nazi puppet state of
Croatia at the time. It's a Knislav Sorry, I didn't
say that earlier, oh first name, yes, yeah. And we
(39:26):
also have to note that the Red Cross was another institution,
not near as big nor as powerful as the Catholic Church,
but they also effectively helped war criminals escape in the
Did I did I mention that Dragonovic was a Catholic priest?
He was? Yet? Did I don't? I don't think I yeah,
(39:47):
I am so sorry. I totally bury the lead there.
That was the whole point. It was, it was a
priest doing all of that work, obtaining all of these papers.
Um yeah, sorry, Croatian Roman Catholic priest. Yes, yeah, yeah,
he is uh yeah, Kronoslav Dragovic. Uh. He was working
in Croatia and was assisting Croatian fascists like sympathizers to
(40:12):
the Nazi Party. Members of the Nazi Party working in Croatia,
which at that point was a vassal of larger Germany.
The Red Cross, though, the big question with them is
whether they whether they aided and embedded war criminals on
purpose or just through the sheer, the sheer weight of incompetence,
(40:34):
the sheer inertia of ineptitude, because they were overwhelmed with refugees.
How easy is it if you're one, even as many
as fifteen people, How easy is it for you to
slip through with hundreds of thousands? And you know, imagine
your job is every day, eight hours a day, you
(40:56):
sit at the at the front of a never ending line.
People hand you papers. It may or may not speak
a language you understand. You have three to five seconds
to look at the paper and stamp it. I'm I'm
spitballing here. I know, I totally see this working, especially
if you're talking about between nineteen nineteen forty eight. Maybe, Um,
(41:20):
if you show up to a refugee servicing area like
that or processing location and you don't have official papers
with you because whatever the excuses they you know where
my country is literally at war. I don't have my
papers with me. I'm trying to escape. How like, how
do you prove the identity of somebody. So the Red
(41:42):
Cross had previously mentioned this that they said, yes, some
Nazi war criminals or Axis criminals had escaped through the
refugee process. But oddly enough, when I went back to
look at the page on the Red Cross website where
they mentioned it, it's been pulled. Yeah, maybe it's just
(42:05):
an older link. I'm sure, I'm sure we can find
the source out there. But they that's their argument, is
that the system was overwhelmed. No one was doing anything
on purpose, but there their process was supposed to have
the equivalent of a background check from the Allied military,
(42:26):
but it was pretty it was pretty cursory, and they
often in the Red the Red Cross relied on references
from the Vatican that could easily be duped up or fixed.
And these travel papers that people would get they were
called uh ten, one hundreds or one zero dote and
(42:49):
they were very easy to get because when you're trying
to process millions of Venis and people who have had
their lives destroyed, you know, you want to make the
process as quick as possible, right yeah, and you have to,
I mean for safety, for health reasons. You can't just
leave people in limbo like that. So with Dragonovic. He
(43:10):
is he is functioning as an agent in this chaotic time. Uh,
he had would you say he had? He had set
up travel to three different South American Yeah, Bolivia, Argentina,
and Chile. So we know that he had some kind
of pool what did they call it on the wire,
(43:31):
suction maybe it was it was, Yeah, I think it
was in a lot of suction. Yeah, they had some
kind of you know, juice or whatever Dragonovic did. And
this rat line was abandoned or disbanded would be a
better word than what the fifties. Yeah, it was disbanded
nine And according to some sources, it was because they
(43:54):
were just done with it. They've gotten everyone out that
they wanted to get out and they were able to
shut it down, so they succeed did essentially. Yeah, and
this leads us to this leads us to one of
the great mysteries of World War Two, one of the
real and genuine conspiracies. What happened to the ones that
got away? You can find plethora of ideas and I'm
(44:19):
using that word correctly. Uh, you can find a plethora
of ideas about this, but some are more plausible than others.
In the Dragonovic case, we know that he assisted Klaus
Barbie in escaping. This person has never been caught. Yeah,
Klaus Claus ended up getting to Bolivia, at least that's
(44:42):
what's believed. Um. It's also believed that the United States
ended up helping him get there along with Dragonovic. Um.
He was Barbie was actually captured in eighty three. Um,
and then we found out that he died in uh
and we found out because he was in prison in France.
(45:03):
There we go. Yeah, so some of these people just
got away for a time. A lot. That's a that
is the one of the main stories of a lot
of these guys. They end up getting identified much later
in life. Um. Several of them end up in trial
for you know, in various ways. They end up in
trial because they end up in a prison somewhere else,
or they get used for a time. UM as in, Oh,
(45:25):
who which which guy is this? Let me jump back
over here. I believe it's Alloy Brunner. Yes, I think
Alloy Brunner. He is a guy who ended up in
Syria and he was actually assisting the prior to Bashar
al Assad, Buthar's father. He was assisting that regime in
(45:48):
military tactics allegedly in developing something called the German chair,
which was a torture device that would break someone's back
when they were when it was applied to them. Um,
he was like, since the century modern furniture is interesting. No, no, um,
I mean real torture. This guy was developing real torture
while in Syria, and he was living a fairly comfortable
(46:11):
life early on when he got there. I think it's
sometime in the fifties when he ended up in Syria
and he uh he He's described as a card in
the hand of a regime. Right, So, like we were
talking about with the United States seeing strategic power and
having these scientists, this guy was seen as a military
(46:32):
strategist or a at least someone who could help them
with their means to or in their ways to achieve
greater power. Right under the name George Fisher. Yes, he helped.
He helped organize the this let's see, it's important, but
it's weird to explain. He helped organize the compartmentalization of
(46:56):
the intelligence services, and I think he trained of the
regime's top intelligence people. The big thing it was teaching
them was that if you truly want to be in
charge you compartmentalize information. You don't want your left hand
knowing what your right hand is doing, because one day
you may have to clap them against one another essentially,
(47:16):
and only you, in a very small group of people
will know. Anyway, here's this chair I made. It breaks
people's backs. Yeah, it's really messed up and it's a
crazy story. You can read more about it at the
Irish Times dot com. That's where we found an article
called Nazi war criminal reportedly died in Assyrian Dungeon Um.
And again the name is A L O I S
B R U N N E R. And then there
(47:38):
are others such as Adolph Eichman, Joseph Mangle. There's one
in particular one to touch on. This guy's name is
or was Heinrich Mueller is the last chief of the Gestapo.
His fate after World War Two. According to the Jewish
Virtual Libraries accounts, Mueller got away or was thought to
(48:01):
have gotten away for decades and decades. They thought he
had just slipped the net and no one could find
him After multiple investigations. However, the official story is that
in October evidence surface that he had been buried in
a mass grave in Berlin at the close of the
war in fort However, No, that's this, this research still
(48:30):
remains for some people a little I don't know, arguable,
Like they're just like we talked about with deaths of
I hate to say it, but deaths of other historically notable,
infamous or famous people. Uh, the the story doesn't die
when the person does. Like there are people alive now
who think Elvis Presley is somehow alive. And Elvis Presley
(48:55):
was a celebrity and a musician who did briefly work
with us long force or attempt to. But he was
a Asian man exactly talking and but but these are
war criminals, and we will never know the fate of
some of them. That's why for decades, and that's why,
(49:18):
for decades after the war, you know, since before many
of us were born listening today, there were people who
just hunted these folks down. And the list doesn't stop there.
We have a lot of like allegedly or is believed
twos or is suspected twos in these people's stories. We know,
(49:38):
we know stories of Nazis where you can follow the
line maybe to an extradition country, right, and then they
disappear and there's a few years later a report of
like an elderly uh an elderly German retiree expiring quietly
(49:59):
in a small town and then some stuffs found in
the attic or something. But there are also a lot
of these people who end up in a tribunal or
a court when they are in their eighties because they
get found out living in America somewhere, or living in
France even sometimes, or in Argentina, Believia, wherever it's going
to be. There's so many stories of this, stories about this,
(50:21):
and of people going through this and finally seeing justice
because there, I mean, it's alleged like somewhere between. I
don't know the exact number, and we can't really ever
know the exact number, but thousands of SS and German
soldiers military made it out alive. We just don't know
(50:42):
exactly how many that is. I've seen it alleged up
to ten thousand, I think perhaps even more, just through
the alleged Odessa program exactly. And there we have to
leave it at this point. Still it's and people will
tell you Odessa was or was not real, right, we
(51:05):
have to ask ourselves about the degree of sophistication the
degree of collaboration that these rat lines employed. While they
may have not been members of some elaborate global secret society,
those clandestine escape routes were real, and more often than
some would like to admit, these roots were also successful.
(51:29):
Is this something that could happen in in these our
modern days. It could. It would have to be different though,
because surveillance technology has just evolved, right, it would have
to be more of a low level human trafficking kind
of situation, I think, where you're not actually going to
(51:50):
use real papers. Well maybe that's not true, maybe that's
maybe that's not true at all. So there's an interesting
there's an interesting dilemma here because although there there have
been so many technological breakthroughs that allow people to be
closely observed, more closely than ever before at any point
in history, the control of those technologies is also increasingly
(52:15):
in the hand of a smaller and smaller and smaller
subset of human individuals and institutions. So it's like there's
more water coming out of the faucet, but there are
fewer people capable of turning the knobs. And what that
means is that if this is entirely hypothetical, I'm not
(52:35):
describing the real thing. What that means in theory is
that if if our superproducer Loell needed to disappear for
some reason and had the assistance of Uncle Sam in
doing so, then the Alphabet agencies could simply erase his
(52:56):
digital footprint. It's it's fascinating and something don't really have
an answer for. Again, that's entirely speculative, but it is possible. Agreed.
I don't want to talk about Nazis anymore today? Can we?
Can we stop talking about Nazis? Yes? I'm right there
with you. Do you want to talk about Nazis? No?
(53:17):
I mean you you want to talk about Nazis? Um?
You do? Tune into our nude podcast, Nazi Talk, Yes,
coming out soon on the I Heart Radio podcast. Did
you did you call our nude Podastes? Do you do
it in the nude? Yes? Yes? What do you think, um?
Do you believe that these rat lines are an historical oddity?
(53:40):
Do you think that they were less effective than films
and some historians would have us believe. Do you think
things like this occur in the modern day? And if so,
where and when? There is some evidence of CIA involvement
in some Eastern European situations where they spirited out a
couple of dictators and give them false identities. But do
(54:02):
you think it ever occurred on the scale Again, and
maybe on a more personal note, since, as you said, Matt,
we should get away from the Nazi stuff. If you
were going to disappear, where would you go? And why
let us know? You can find us on Instagram, you
can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter.
You can hang out with our favorite part of the show,
(54:23):
your fellow listeners on our Facebook page. Here's where it
gets crazy. If you don't want to do that, you
give us a call. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. You can leave a
message and perhaps get on the air at some point
when we do another one of those episodes, which we
will uh And if you don't want to do any
of that stuff, please send us a good old fashioned email.
(54:43):
We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Yeah. Stuff
(55:05):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We are joined today with our
super producer role brilliante. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Quick question at the top of the show.
Have you all ever had to make an escape? And
(00:45):
it could be an escape from a party don't want
to be at, or family function, h an escape from
a social obligation, and escape from a country unsuccessfull? They
participated in an escape room did not get out? In
me a lot of time. It was quite a letdown.
Did you tortured? No? I blame one particular team member
who shall go nameless, who had the confidence of a
(01:06):
general and the intelligence of something much less than a general.
And to be clear, I've heard this story and you
were not talking about yourself. Okay, it's a different what
about you met? I was once at an extended in
laws house, uh far away and one of the persons
(01:28):
there was um acting as a bit of a bully,
and and then it escalated and escalated throughout the course
of an evening. And uh perhaps, and I packed up
the things that I had unpacked with my wife and
we got the heck out of there. Good. Yeah, good
(01:51):
forget those people. It wasn't that crazy in hindsight, but
I was certainly uncomfortable in the moment. So, Ben, you're
always talking about getting kicked out of countries if you
ever had to make a ad crazy getaway. Yes, I've
had several close calls over my time. UM one in
Germany two and Guatemala, one in Canada. Um. Yeah, number
(02:15):
once I get to say, I had to get out
of a town in Guatemala after dark. It was it
was in the who was in the jungle? It was strange.
I was essentially racing to catch the last charter bus
that would pass through that area of the of the
country before dawn. So the next one we come at dawn.
(02:40):
But I was not in a place where you would
have want to stay overnight, gotcha using those diplomatic privileges wink? No,
oh well sure, sure. Anyway, I made it here right here,
we go. Today's episode does have something in common thematically
with this series of escapes. We're talking about whether an
(03:02):
escape room, whether a weird living situation, whether you are
whether you are racing the darkness or the dawn. Today
we are exploring a strange secret story. It's one that begins,
we say, right around the close of World War Two,
but that's not entirely accurate. This story begins before the
(03:25):
end of the actual war. It just the rubber hits
the road at the end. Uh wait, wait war? What
what war are we talking about? Here are the facts.
That's why. It's the Great War, the one that is
taught to children across the world. No matter where you
grow up, you will learn about this because it was
such an important um few I mean, really what didn't
(03:49):
even last that long, but it was one of the
most important things that ever occurred in the history of humanity.
It was the whole world and war with itself to
each other. The second time it's and it took place
from n and nineteen forty five. World War two, of course,
is what we're speaking of. If you didn't get it
through those means, um But here's the thing. I mean,
(04:10):
that timeline isn't perfect, right, because there are machinations that
occur prior to that. There are there's a lot of
cleaning up essentially that occurs afterwards. There's a lot of
setting up to socio economic positions that are that are
changed in an unsustainable way in the thirties. Also, there
are a lot of banks evolved. I'm gonna say, I
(04:31):
know it's a different episode, but it would be naive
to pretend that was not the case. Certainly, and at
least one major religious organization, yes, at least one. We
know today that the opponents in the war were collectively
primarily referred to as the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers.
This is still the deadliest conflict and recorded history, Matt.
(04:54):
I like what you pointed out about how how short
that timeline actually seems thirty nine to already five, especially
when the news just broke this year this month. Actually
that we're recording their U S soldiers in Afghanistan who
were born after the current US conflict in that part
(05:14):
of the world began. There are people have grown up
only knowing that war, yeah, or at least as the
major defining war in their lifetime or in their their worlds.
Right yeah, that is that's very odd. It's still not
the deadliest war and recorded history. That dubious honor goes
to World War Two. As you said, man, most children
(05:35):
learn about this war at some point in school. Exactly
what we learned depends on where we are raised. We
did an earlier episode on an episode or a video
I cannot remember. On the insidious ways that textbooks guide
the reasoning of children, like if you read. If you
(05:56):
read a textbook about World War two that's published by
a textbook company in Japan, it's going to be very
different from a book about World War two for children
that's published in Russia, or in China, or of course
in the US. But regardless of their disagreements, all these
textbooks agree on one central point, including the German textbooks,
(06:19):
mind you, and that is this, the Nazi Party of
Germany were the bad guys. They were the ones every
textbook will tell you seeking global dominance, responsible for genocide,
human experimentation, all these other atrocities, a seemingly unending list
of war crimes. Nazi officials foresaw the close of the
(06:41):
war and the fall of the Access Powers before it
actually happened. They could see the writing on the wall,
you know what I mean, even they knew that they
got caught, they would have to answer for these crimes
and be tried. You know, as you you kind of
listed off a few of those things that have been
these aren't things that are you're going to get a
lenient sentence for. Were they were aware that the whole
(07:02):
world essentially would be holding them accountable for these things,
and they would be either in jail or put in
front of a firing squad or hanged at the end
would would come either either very swiftly or it would
be an elongated process for perhaps decades. Yeah, the human
species is not perfect. But what, thankfully, one thing billions
(07:26):
of people can agree on is that if you try
to kill billions of other people, something bad should happen
to you. Yes, you know, so go us, go team.
So understandably, these folks looked to plan their escape. Yeah,
anyway they possibly could get out of the countries where
they were, because we're not just talking about Nazis in Germany.
(07:47):
There were there were people in countries you know, across
that area in Europe, in uh you know, and again
if you look to Japan, people were trying to escape
justice yeah, yeah, and of Italian fascists, members of the
that aspect of the Axis powers. Well, even on some
of the Allied powers, there were there were numerous Soviet
(08:11):
higher echelon soldiers and military personnel that we're trying to
get out because they feared what would occur after the war. Yeah, yeah,
can you imagine. After the close of the war, Nazi
officials who were captured were tried in court during a
series of military tribunals known as the Nuremberg Trials. The
(08:33):
Nuremberg Trials are incredibly important right for human history. They're
often depicted in works of fiction, in films and so on,
and they set some crucial precedents. The first tribunal began
on November twenty nine, and it was aiming to try
twenty four prominent members of Germany's Nazi Party. Some of
(08:57):
these people were tried in absentia because they had not
been apprehended. That is that like, what an awkward proceeding
that must have been. It's weird. People really, people are
into it. I think they they had to set the
precedent and then also if they find the person guilty
and absentia, the law still apply. So anytime that person
(09:19):
is found. Who knows, maybe the sentence can be carried
out immediately. Probably not something that medieval, but similar who
do they yell at and shame in the room though
they're like a proxy person that stands in for the
absent party. I don't know, because even when that one
pope dragged the carcass of his predecessor out and had
(09:40):
a trial for the dead guy, they at least needed
that props. In any in any court, at least within
the US, if you don't have somebody to stand trial,
then there is no trial. So but in this it
really is. It was just a matter of needing to
to state, essentially, this person is guilty of these things.
(10:01):
It is known now throughout the world that this guy
did this. And these were the big fish of the party,
not all of them, but many of them were the drivers,
the builders, the architects of the horrible socioeconomic engine that
Germany had created, you know, the heads of economic policy,
(10:23):
military of course, the people who were in charge of
the concentration camps. The surviving members of the party worked
ardently to avoid justice. And it's interesting that today we're
talking about escape because the stakes were so high that
some people who could not well, I guess the best
(10:43):
way to say it is, some people found only one
route for physical escape, and they took it without hesitation.
And of course you're talking about both Joseph Gerbel's as
well as Adolf Hitler. And if you want to learn
more about these guys, uh, they chose to take their
own lives. Uh. We did an episode called What Happened
(11:05):
to Hitler a little while ago and gosh, I think
it's twenty seventeen maybe, but you can learn about all
of the theories surrounding Hitler's death. Whether he actually died then, um,
he's probably dead now either way, yes, But listen to
that episode if you want to learn more about that,
figure out what what people found, what people learned about
(11:26):
the skull. And then you had folks like Heinrich Mueller
who just kind of vanished like Kaiser SoSE style. So
what happened? Where did they go? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
(11:49):
So this was a rumor, this was a whisper for
a long time. What happened to these Nazis? Says? You said, Noel,
what happened to these ones who disappeared Kaiser SoSE style. Oh.
For the decades since World War Two, declassified files have
proven the Nazis had an ongoing conspiracy, or it's better
to say a nest of conspiracies. Uh, this cavalcade of
(12:11):
secret plans created to evade the consequences of their actions.
This is not well, technically speaking, this is not a
conspiracy theory because it's not a theory. It really actually happened.
It is a genuine conspiracy, and it's it's really multily
like you said, multiple conspiracies, multiple groups, and multiple plans,
(12:32):
and a lot of them were successful. Yeah, and there's
overlap and some worked better than others. Right, And to
a degree, this conspiracy, this let's call it an uber
conspiracy since we're using German. Right. Uh, This uber conspiracy
or metic conspiracy remains unsolved. It all goes back to
something called ratlines. What is a rat line, you may ask, Well, today,
(12:56):
the various escape networks, tunnels, um infrastructure used for this
purpose by the Nazis and fascists at the close of
the war are all collectively referred to as ratlines, and
they were essentially plans for individuals and groups to vanish
themselves disappear themselves, leaving Germany for safe havens like South
(13:17):
America and also the US shout out to Operation paper Clip. Yeah,
but yes, they also want other places right now like Switzerland. Yeah.
And there are even a couple of rumors of areas
in the Middle East where people were secreted away to Syria. Yeah.
But just to jump back to paper Clip again, we've
done an episode on this. This was the specifically the
(13:39):
United States version of a ratline to get Nazi scientists
generally scientists, but there are a few other characters in
there to the United States for our own gain, because
the minds behind some of the terrible things that occurred
were I don't know how better to put this there,
(14:01):
they were some innovative people, uh that were doing things
that were complicated, and the United States saw strategic advantage
to using those minds for their own advantage. That just
it's absolutely it's it's absolutely brutal and ruthless and Mackavellian
and true Nazi scientists are the reason that human beings
(14:26):
ended up on the Moon if you think about it,
and then they're one of the reasons, right because Operation
paper Clip focused on taking thousands of German scientists and engineers,
particularly Werner von Braun, Right, that's the big name, right,
who had done so much work on V two rockets.
If you, if you think about it, that that expertise
(14:48):
that the US took does lead, maybe not directly, but
does lead to the rocket technology that the US later
uses to send people into space. In the least, it
helped tremendously at the very least. And I know it
can be seen as somewhat of a hot take to
again say the Nazis helped the US land people on
(15:12):
the Moon. It sounds weird when you, you know, boil
it down to one sentence maybe former Nazis. Yeah, well,
you know what, that's way more diplomatic, former Nazis. But again,
I feel I feel weird even saying that. It feels
like I'm downplaying it. Well, we know that some members,
especially in the scientific community, some members of the Nazi
(15:33):
Party were maybe members in name because of internal political pressure,
and they had to do it too. They say they
had to do it to survive. We also will never
know the true story. And you you you read a
really great quote on a recent episode of Ridiculous History
where you said, nobody really cares about anyone's motivation for
being a Nazi. Whether you did it on purpose or
(15:53):
you know, we're kind of strong armed into it, you're
still called a Nazi at the end of there's no
like former Nazi are like Nazi in name only, really right, Well,
the things you did, the physical acts, the the ideas
that you created that you know, brought into this world
were for a means that was nefarious and did terrible
(16:15):
things other people. Whether it was a rocket that was
being shot to blow up soldiers from you know, some
other land, whether it's a punch card machine like IBM. Yeah, wow, Fanta, No,
I'm just kidding, uh this, I mean, this is an
excellent point. Right, So, the recent Operation paper Clip happens
(16:37):
without going into the full episode we have on it
that you can hear whenever you wish available wherever you
get your favorite shows. The primary reason Operation paper Clip
exists is because the US boffins and eggheads and military
leaders do a cost benefit analysis, and before the end
(16:58):
of World War Two, the beginnings of the Cold War
are already it's nascent, it's it's kicking into gear, and
the Soviet side and the US and the West are
already planning on how to become the global hegemon. Right,
so Operation Paperclip was this cost benefit analysis where U
(17:19):
s scientists and what did I say, boffins and eggheads
and military leaders. They know that these these ideological orphans, right,
these brilliant evil people because again Likenel said they are Nazis,
knew that they would be hunted around the world. But
(17:42):
more importantly, the US knew that if they did not
spirit these folks away, the Soviet machine would get them.
And the Soviet government did apprehend German scientists. I think
the US only got around sixty hundred or so, but yeah, yeah, right,
(18:04):
just sixteen hundred of those uh top men. To quote
Indiana Jones, right, doesn't he say that the end of
Raiders of Lost artis Yeah, so we're going I'm going
a little in the weeds on Operation paper Clip. It's
just very important for everyone living in the US to
(18:24):
know that when you hear about ratlines, when you hear
about countries like Argentina, healthy Brazil, Yeah, yeah, yeah, when
you hear about these countries helping war criminals disappear, we
have to realize this is very much a glass house.
Our country did the same thing, you know what I mean,
and did it with even um less of a clandestine attitude,
(18:49):
more of an official stance. But okay, so what is
what is a rat line? Let's say, now we're not
going to pick on super producer Lowell because it's his
first day with us. So so let's let's just pick
uh someone no one can hate and say they're Nazi. Uh? Okay,
So what if, like Tom Hanks is you know, he
(19:10):
got caught up, he's a Nazi and he needs to
escape Germany it's the fall of World War two? What
kind of rat line would he use? What would he?
How would he? How does it work? Well? So there
are several routes that could be taken, like as far
as locations that people are secretive through, um, But we
kind of have to talk about the functionality of it, right, You,
(19:32):
The first thing you need to do to get past
a border, right, if you're gonna do that, is to
have a false identity. And generally that's how these things began,
where you would have someone somewhere that could get you
false papers and prove that you're someone else as you're
leaving and as you are attempting to leave somewhere like
(19:52):
Germany or Austria. Wherever you're heading out of you would
generally end up head from Germany to Spain and then
eventually over to Argentina. That's one way. They're one of
the major ways. The other major way is from Germany
to Italy, Genoa in particular. Um, and that's also that's
(20:13):
going through Rome. And by the way, when you're going
through Rome, you know who's helping out I guess no,
the old Vatican, because again that is a an arm
that reaches very far and it has way too many fingers.
You'd think it only had five fingers, but that arm
just has like fingers. You know, I'm not gonna I
(20:37):
am not um a theologian who would say it does
seem somewhat off brand, somewhat un christ like to assist
mass murders and uh, to assist war criminals. But yeah,
there's a there's a deeper connection there with the Vatican
and a lot of the happenings of World War two
(20:57):
that we were probably not going to fully get into today,
but you can look that up if you wish, um.
But anyway, they would also end up somewhere in South
America that that line that goes through Italy, and there
there's the for ratlines that depended on the help of
the Vatican of the Catholic Church. South America makes sense, right,
(21:18):
because there is so much Catholic presence there, as well
as the lack of extradition extradition treaties in a lot
of those places. And I do want to say, I
do want to say, when we're saying the Vatican or
we're saying the Catholic Church, we're not talking about people
who actually just practice Catholicism. No, no, no, We're talking
(21:38):
more about the political machine, yes, rather than the spiritual idea.
We do have etymology of ratline. It's a nautical term,
which I did not know because it's not ratline sounds
like something snarky that maybe someone in Western intelligence made up.
May I guess what it is before? I always in
(22:00):
my mind it's the small pathways that you'd have to
get down on all fours essentially within a ship or
something to access some of the other parts of the
ship that, like the that are inaccessible. I I like, okay,
I like where your heads at this. The original rat
(22:22):
line was a a sort of last resort passage. It
was it was a rope, these small lengths of cord
that ran between the big ropes, the proper ropes that
fixed the top of a mass to the sides of
a vessel. So rat lines you could use them because
(22:43):
they were horizontal as these kind of makeshift ladders. So
if you absolutely had to get someone up the mast,
they would crawl up this rat line. And there's a
terrible image here, so they crawl up right, these these
makeshift little rope ladders. Scampering up the rat line was
(23:07):
something that desperate sailors would do when the ship was sinking.
And so the last thing to go under the surface
of the water is the mast, and so as the
water is rising, there running up the rat line. Okay,
checks out, makes sense. And that's the people who missed
out on the lifeboats. So that's that's interesting though, because
(23:32):
in that etymology, there may be a deeper, deeper puzzle, right, certainly,
and and we'll get to that just that. We'll get
to that just a second. But these roots that you're describing,
the they start independently, right. The thing is, there's not
a great conspiracy. Yeah, you'll have you'll have basically a
(23:55):
leader in one area that generally has access to getting
those kinds of identity papers that we were kind of
met briefly mentioning up up at the top there. Um,
if you can find one person like that who has
a few other associates and then you can link up
with that group, that then becomes essentially a cell right
of network, because then those are popping up everywhere. But
(24:18):
it doesn't necessarily mean that that network is fully connected
or communicating with each other. Um, you just have to
find your node. Yeah. Yeah, Like a lot of a
lot of dirty things that state actors and governments do
tend to be less an official decision of the government
as a whole and more like a faction of people
(24:38):
or community, a wheel within the wheel. Right. So, according
to historian Michael Phair, there were two alternate routes, the
ones you describe that, and they developed independently, but they
eventually merged, likely as the actors in these roots learned
about one another and they were able to help and
assist each other. And for years after the war, the
(25:00):
concept of these escape routes, these ratlines were, as we
said earlier, rumors, whispers, They were not officially confirmed. And
you can see why because at the close of World
War Two, when US soldiers have died, it would be
terrible and very it would be political suicide for members
(25:22):
of the US government to say, Okay, we won the war.
We're doing our best to bring justice to people, except
for the scientists. You guys, there's one dude who's just
great at rockets, and we have to have them. We're
sorry that your children have died, but we really want
(25:44):
to get to the moon. You can't say that stuff,
you know what I mean? Said, well, yeah, but I'm
not not not the president after War two. It's not
a great when you said, it's not a very authoritative
concept of guys here us out. Let's take a beat.
That's I mean, it's true though, if you think about
like who could who who on earth would go public
(26:08):
with that? So of course this was considered a wild
tinfoil hat conspiracy, you know what I mean? And people
who if someone told you in the nineteen sixties, hey,
I think the US government is abducting scientists, right, or
I think that the Pope is abducting Nazis and helping
(26:29):
them live a new life in Argentina, then if someone
told you that, you probably think, wow, this guy is
on LSD. And I've never liked someone tripping like that
that the plot of a movie that exists, like a
scientists are disappearing. They're all being spirited away into a
secret underground lab to do evil research under duress. Yeah,
(26:50):
it sounds like Watchman. It sounds like a whole bunch
of different things, very similar to right, because even today,
like even today, now that the stuff is confirmed, there
are historians and researchers, not necessarily fringe historians nor fringe researchers,
who believe that there's still something nefarious, that there there's
(27:16):
still more we need to learn about this. And one
of the largest controversies in the story of Nazi rat
lines is something called Odessa. What is that you ask?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsor. So,
(27:38):
according to author Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, Odessa,
or the organization er Madigan U S. S Anga Horrigan,
was founded in nineteen forty six, one year after the
close of the war. Um Odessa O D E S
(27:59):
s A is US code name for the operation um and,
according to Guy Walter, as a historian, U S Intelligence
first became aware of this term when members of the
s S and the CAZy Bensheim Auerbach internment camp used
it in conversation while attempting to gain special favors or
privileges from the Red Cross so they would be The
(28:22):
way this story goes is that these s S members
would be trying to maybe get in communication with someone
outside of where they were being held, uh, you know,
get maybe some cash, maybe maybe even try to see
if they could get in touch with someone who could
get them a passport. And from what we could tell,
(28:44):
the conversation something like could you send this letter to
my friend blah blah blah and then say no, sorry,
I can't can't send letters and go, oh but it's
care of Odessa, don't don't exactly. So the first mention
of it from the Allied side shows up in this
(29:05):
memo from American intelligence and that's on July third, nineteen.
So what was Odessa like? What? We know that these
smaller roots are, these these more discreet organizations and ratlines.
We already know that they exist. What's the difference with
(29:28):
Simon Wisenthal's Odessa? This author Wisenthal he he believed that
Odessa was this big organization. Um I would kind of
liken it to something like al Qaeda similar to that, like,
it's one big thing that was functioning uh together, right, um.
And it was mostly made up of veterans of the
(29:48):
s S. And not only were these did this group
odessa uh. Not only did they get them out of
Germany initially with passports like we were talking about, but
they would also assist these people in setting up new
lives in new countries such as Argentina or Brazil or
wherever they were going to end up in South America
a couple of times in the Middle East in places
(30:09):
like Syria. Um. But there is one major issue with this.
Not everybody believes the same thing that Wisenthal believes, right.
That's the thing. Multiple other historians say odessa as as
he has described never actually existed. Again, That's that's strange.
(30:31):
No one is denying that the rat lines really did exist.
And yes, everyone knows that some Nazi officials did successfully
use these routes to escape, as well as some like
members of fascist parties and so on. But there's a
complication to this narrative. Years before Simon Wisnthal of Eistal
went public with his claims about Odessa. The government of
(30:53):
Austria had already been investigating the idea. It's sort of
it's it's like, um, if you're familiar with James Bond,
the World's Worst Superspy, it's sort of like the concept
of Specter. Remember this uh specter in the Bond films?
Is this global evil organization. Every spy franchise has one,
(31:16):
Yeah and gets smart. I think it was chaos. All
of them are acronyms that nobody remembers if they stand for,
but they're generally like this quasi governmental private organization right
the functions outside of any government or yeah, and just
has like a way cooler name than an actual government
entity would ever have. It's like Scorpio chaos, the octoquad,
(31:39):
the oct I would yeah, I would join the octo quad.
But why is it octo? And because the symbol is
like a weird eight and four together, it's like a rune. No,
it's it's four octas, it's a quad of octos. Okay, Okay,
so it's it's twenty four. Uh, send us your design
(32:03):
for octoquad and teach us how to do math. So
that's uh, but but it's true. Like so the argument then,
is that Odessa is a real life version of this
evil superspy bondesque thing. And also Simon Wisenthal in the
fall of World War Two, he did not get along
(32:25):
with West German military intelligence. They butted heads all the time.
That doesn't mean that his claims are untrue, and it doesn't,
you know, It's all it means is that there's a
wrinkle here. And it could people claiming that Odessa is
not real could be seeking to discredit the Wisenthal Weisonal organization.
(32:51):
Or it could also mean maybe in his um in
his search to find these escaped war criminals, that Eisenthal
started drawing connections in his own head where none existed,
You know what I mean absolutely, I mean we all
know that that's some of what gives conspiracy theory circles
a bad rap. Sometimes it's easy to do foregone conclusions
(33:14):
or sort of work backwards and like sort of have
a preconceived notion of what something is when it maybe
isn't actually that at all. Yeah, And again, the thing is,
so he was definitely right about the smuggling operations, the
rat lines, and we found proven ones, right, Yeah, we did.
We found a whole bunch of proven ones, and I
(33:35):
just want to add on to what you're saying. There
are guys, it feels like, and this is complete speculation
on my part that if Odessa really was a thing
and it was kept you know, secret enough to where
we are still in twenty nineteen post you know, postulating
whether whether or not it could be real. Um, it
(33:56):
feels like it could have had integration somehow with one
or more intelligence communities or agencies throughout the world. And
what what intrigues me is that the CIA was involved
in several of these, you know, secreting away of Nazis
along with paper clip, you know what was occurring with
(34:16):
paper Clip, but in other instances as well, to get
essentially s S officials and high level targets to then
flip them and become informants, not only to find other
ss you know, escape e s, but also to inform
them on strategy and other things. So it's we're gonna,
(34:38):
we're gonna continue down here because we we we know
several of these uh names people that escaped and people
who were involved in things like this. But it just
does make me feel like if Odessa was real, perhaps
there was a higher involvement with some other powerful intelligence agency, Right,
(34:59):
some sort of institution capable of not only moving people
across the world, but also cleaning up after themselves such
that they could they could sweep up the trace. Right.
We also, okay, we have to say it. We we
(35:20):
already we already mentioned this, but we have to say it.
The Vatican did it. The that's the institution that has
the power and the reach to move people across I'm
not being an anti papist or whatever, and I'm not
saying anything bad about the spiritual beliefs of anybody who
ascribes to Christianity or Catholicism. But the machine, the machine
(35:46):
that runs that organization on an earthly level, is more
than capable of of creating these sort of I know
it sounds very Dan Brown, right, but they're more than
capable of and that acting this sort of this sort
of process, and in a very real way. Uh, the
(36:08):
Catholic Church at this time was, you know, hand in
hand with the ostensible governing powers of some developing countries. Right,
and in some cases not all, not all. And again
it's very it's very easy, I think, to connect dots
where none exists. But it is true that in some cases,
(36:30):
the Catholic Church had so much influence over a country
or parts of a country that it was effectively the government.
Yeah wow, Okay, well I don't even notice say following that,
I just want to let your soapbox for a while
because I'm sorry, thanks for coming to my ted talk. Well, no,
because we found we've found this to be true. I mean,
(36:52):
if you look at somebody, um like uh dragon Ovic,
I don't know how to move precisely pronounce the name there,
but um, this is a person who would get false
identity papers, like we were kind of mentioning before, he
would get them from the let's see this. Uh so
an unidentified person, an American who was serving at the
(37:15):
Eligibility office of the International Refugee Organization in Rome. Okay,
so you've got a person working with an office in Rome,
uh to get some papers, right. That only apparently that
only happened for a short time because things fell through
with all of that. But then he ended up working
(37:36):
with another organization, the National Catholic Welfare Organization and UM
as well as the Italian police and the Italian Foreign Office. Uh.
And that was again to obtain false documentation for Nazis
that were attempting to escape. He would get false exit
and entry visas for at least three South American countries,
(37:57):
the Argentina that we talked about, belive, even Chili Um
and again in a lot of times, it's not known
precisely how these documents are obtained, but it is known
that there were just bribes that were going on with
maybe an individual diplomat or somebody who could have access
to those and it's not necessarily known the full um,
(38:21):
let's say, compliance of any of these larger organizations that
I've mentioned up here, but someone at a higher level,
or a high enough level to actually create and get
these documents was involved. Because these weren't counterfeit documents. These
were official documents, yes, and with names with brand new names. Yeah,
that's the thing. It's it's like, at what point is
(38:43):
something to forgery? You know, and at what point is
it real? It's so because we're an audio podcast, Matt,
you just held your hands the kind of the old
six in one hand happens another It's it's true. And
we have to also remember if we're being if we're
being completely objective, we have to a member in this
situation with the organization the size of the Vatican or
(39:05):
the Catholic Church, it is laughably unlikely that everyone knew
this was happening. Again, these are factions, right, this Dragonovic
in what Croatia, right in the Nazi puppet state of
Croatia at the time. It's a Knislav Sorry, I didn't
say that earlier, oh first name, yes, yeah. And we
(39:26):
also have to note that the Red Cross was another institution,
not near as big nor as powerful as the Catholic Church,
but they also effectively helped war criminals escape in the
Did I did I mention that Dragonovic was a Catholic priest?
He was? Yet? Did I don't? I don't think I yeah,
(39:47):
I am so sorry. I totally bury the lead there.
That was the whole point. It was, it was a
priest doing all of that work, obtaining all of these papers.
Um yeah, sorry, Croatian Roman Catholic priest. Yes, yeah, yeah,
he is uh yeah, Kronoslav Dragovic. Uh. He was working
in Croatia and was assisting Croatian fascists like sympathizers to
(40:12):
the Nazi Party. Members of the Nazi Party working in Croatia,
which at that point was a vassal of larger Germany.
The Red Cross, though, the big question with them is
whether they whether they aided and embedded war criminals on
purpose or just through the sheer, the sheer weight of incompetence,
(40:34):
the sheer inertia of ineptitude, because they were overwhelmed with refugees.
How easy is it if you're one, even as many
as fifteen people, How easy is it for you to
slip through with hundreds of thousands? And you know, imagine
your job is every day, eight hours a day, you
(40:56):
sit at the at the front of a never ending line.
People hand you papers. It may or may not speak
a language you understand. You have three to five seconds
to look at the paper and stamp it. I'm I'm
spitballing here. I know, I totally see this working, especially
if you're talking about between nineteen nineteen forty eight. Maybe, Um,
(41:20):
if you show up to a refugee servicing area like
that or processing location and you don't have official papers
with you because whatever the excuses they you know where
my country is literally at war. I don't have my
papers with me. I'm trying to escape. How like, how
do you prove the identity of somebody. So the Red
(41:42):
Cross had previously mentioned this that they said, yes, some
Nazi war criminals or Axis criminals had escaped through the
refugee process. But oddly enough, when I went back to
look at the page on the Red Cross website where
they mentioned it, it's been pulled. Yeah, maybe it's just
(42:05):
an older link. I'm sure, I'm sure we can find
the source out there. But they that's their argument, is
that the system was overwhelmed. No one was doing anything
on purpose, but there their process was supposed to have
the equivalent of a background check from the Allied military,
(42:26):
but it was pretty it was pretty cursory, and they
often in the Red the Red Cross relied on references
from the Vatican that could easily be duped up or fixed.
And these travel papers that people would get they were
called uh ten, one hundreds or one zero dote and
(42:49):
they were very easy to get because when you're trying
to process millions of Venis and people who have had
their lives destroyed, you know, you want to make the
process as quick as possible, right yeah, and you have to,
I mean for safety, for health reasons. You can't just
leave people in limbo like that. So with Dragonovic. He
(43:10):
is he is functioning as an agent in this chaotic time. Uh,
he had would you say he had? He had set
up travel to three different South American Yeah, Bolivia, Argentina,
and Chile. So we know that he had some kind
of pool what did they call it on the wire,
(43:31):
suction maybe it was it was, Yeah, I think it
was in a lot of suction. Yeah, they had some
kind of you know, juice or whatever Dragonovic did. And
this rat line was abandoned or disbanded would be a
better word than what the fifties. Yeah, it was disbanded
nine And according to some sources, it was because they
(43:54):
were just done with it. They've gotten everyone out that
they wanted to get out and they were able to
shut it down, so they succeed did essentially. Yeah, and
this leads us to this leads us to one of
the great mysteries of World War Two, one of the
real and genuine conspiracies. What happened to the ones that
got away? You can find plethora of ideas and I'm
(44:19):
using that word correctly. Uh, you can find a plethora
of ideas about this, but some are more plausible than others.
In the Dragonovic case, we know that he assisted Klaus
Barbie in escaping. This person has never been caught. Yeah,
Klaus Claus ended up getting to Bolivia, at least that's
(44:42):
what's believed. Um. It's also believed that the United States
ended up helping him get there along with Dragonovic. Um.
He was Barbie was actually captured in eighty three. Um,
and then we found out that he died in uh
and we found out because he was in prison in France.
(45:03):
There we go. Yeah, so some of these people just
got away for a time. A lot. That's a that
is the one of the main stories of a lot
of these guys. They end up getting identified much later
in life. Um. Several of them end up in trial
for you know, in various ways. They end up in
trial because they end up in a prison somewhere else,
or they get used for a time. UM as in, Oh,
(45:25):
who which which guy is this? Let me jump back
over here. I believe it's Alloy Brunner. Yes, I think
Alloy Brunner. He is a guy who ended up in
Syria and he was actually assisting the prior to Bashar
al Assad, Buthar's father. He was assisting that regime in
(45:48):
military tactics allegedly in developing something called the German chair,
which was a torture device that would break someone's back
when they were when it was applied to them. Um,
he was like, since the century modern furniture is interesting. No, no, um,
I mean real torture. This guy was developing real torture
while in Syria, and he was living a fairly comfortable
(46:11):
life early on when he got there. I think it's
sometime in the fifties when he ended up in Syria
and he uh he He's described as a card in
the hand of a regime. Right, So, like we were
talking about with the United States seeing strategic power and
having these scientists, this guy was seen as a military
(46:32):
strategist or a at least someone who could help them
with their means to or in their ways to achieve
greater power. Right under the name George Fisher. Yes, he helped.
He helped organize the this let's see, it's important, but
it's weird to explain. He helped organize the compartmentalization of
(46:56):
the intelligence services, and I think he trained of the
regime's top intelligence people. The big thing it was teaching
them was that if you truly want to be in
charge you compartmentalize information. You don't want your left hand
knowing what your right hand is doing, because one day
you may have to clap them against one another essentially,
(47:16):
and only you, in a very small group of people
will know. Anyway, here's this chair I made. It breaks
people's backs. Yeah, it's really messed up and it's a
crazy story. You can read more about it at the
Irish Times dot com. That's where we found an article
called Nazi war criminal reportedly died in Assyrian Dungeon Um.
And again the name is A L O I S
B R U N N E R. And then there
(47:38):
are others such as Adolph Eichman, Joseph Mangle. There's one
in particular one to touch on. This guy's name is
or was Heinrich Mueller is the last chief of the Gestapo.
His fate after World War Two. According to the Jewish
Virtual Libraries accounts, Mueller got away or was thought to
(48:01):
have gotten away for decades and decades. They thought he
had just slipped the net and no one could find
him After multiple investigations. However, the official story is that
in October evidence surface that he had been buried in
a mass grave in Berlin at the close of the
war in fort However, No, that's this, this research still
(48:30):
remains for some people a little I don't know, arguable,
Like they're just like we talked about with deaths of
I hate to say it, but deaths of other historically notable,
infamous or famous people. Uh, the the story doesn't die
when the person does. Like there are people alive now
who think Elvis Presley is somehow alive. And Elvis Presley
(48:55):
was a celebrity and a musician who did briefly work
with us long force or attempt to. But he was
a Asian man exactly talking and but but these are
war criminals, and we will never know the fate of
some of them. That's why for decades, and that's why,
(49:18):
for decades after the war, you know, since before many
of us were born listening today, there were people who
just hunted these folks down. And the list doesn't stop there.
We have a lot of like allegedly or is believed
twos or is suspected twos in these people's stories. We know,
(49:38):
we know stories of Nazis where you can follow the
line maybe to an extradition country, right, and then they
disappear and there's a few years later a report of
like an elderly uh an elderly German retiree expiring quietly
(49:59):
in a small town and then some stuffs found in
the attic or something. But there are also a lot
of these people who end up in a tribunal or
a court when they are in their eighties because they
get found out living in America somewhere, or living in
France even sometimes, or in Argentina, Believia, wherever it's going
to be. There's so many stories of this, stories about this,
(50:21):
and of people going through this and finally seeing justice
because there, I mean, it's alleged like somewhere between. I
don't know the exact number, and we can't really ever
know the exact number, but thousands of SS and German
soldiers military made it out alive. We just don't know
(50:42):
exactly how many that is. I've seen it alleged up
to ten thousand, I think perhaps even more, just through
the alleged Odessa program exactly. And there we have to
leave it at this point. Still it's and people will
tell you Odessa was or was not real, right, we
(51:05):
have to ask ourselves about the degree of sophistication the
degree of collaboration that these rat lines employed. While they
may have not been members of some elaborate global secret society,
those clandestine escape routes were real, and more often than
some would like to admit, these roots were also successful.
(51:29):
Is this something that could happen in in these our
modern days. It could. It would have to be different though,
because surveillance technology has just evolved, right, it would have
to be more of a low level human trafficking kind
of situation, I think, where you're not actually going to
(51:50):
use real papers. Well maybe that's not true, maybe that's
maybe that's not true at all. So there's an interesting
there's an interesting dilemma here because although there there have
been so many technological breakthroughs that allow people to be
closely observed, more closely than ever before at any point
in history, the control of those technologies is also increasingly
(52:15):
in the hand of a smaller and smaller and smaller
subset of human individuals and institutions. So it's like there's
more water coming out of the faucet, but there are
fewer people capable of turning the knobs. And what that
means is that if this is entirely hypothetical, I'm not
(52:35):
describing the real thing. What that means in theory is
that if if our superproducer Loell needed to disappear for
some reason and had the assistance of Uncle Sam in
doing so, then the Alphabet agencies could simply erase his
(52:56):
digital footprint. It's it's fascinating and something don't really have
an answer for. Again, that's entirely speculative, but it is possible. Agreed.
I don't want to talk about Nazis anymore today? Can we?
Can we stop talking about Nazis? Yes? I'm right there
with you. Do you want to talk about Nazis? No?
(53:17):
I mean you you want to talk about Nazis? Um?
You do? Tune into our nude podcast, Nazi Talk, Yes,
coming out soon on the I Heart Radio podcast. Did
you did you call our nude Podastes? Do you do
it in the nude? Yes? Yes? What do you think, um?
Do you believe that these rat lines are an historical oddity?
(53:40):
Do you think that they were less effective than films
and some historians would have us believe. Do you think
things like this occur in the modern day? And if so,
where and when? There is some evidence of CIA involvement
in some Eastern European situations where they spirited out a
couple of dictators and give them false identities. But do
(54:02):
you think it ever occurred on the scale Again, and
maybe on a more personal note, since, as you said, Matt,
we should get away from the Nazi stuff. If you
were going to disappear, where would you go? And why
let us know? You can find us on Instagram, you
can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter.
You can hang out with our favorite part of the show,
(54:23):
your fellow listeners on our Facebook page. Here's where it
gets crazy. If you don't want to do that, you
give us a call. We are one eight three three
st d w y t K. You can leave a
message and perhaps get on the air at some point
when we do another one of those episodes, which we
will uh And if you don't want to do any
of that stuff, please send us a good old fashioned email.
(54:43):
We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Yeah. Stuff
(55:05):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
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