[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Spy Fi guys.
So I apologize to the universe for that. Yeah. Wow.
Justice for Denison.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Is it though?
[00:00:14] Speaker A: I laughed and then I heated myself for laughing.
Hello and welcome back to the Spy Fi guys where we cover spy facts, spy fiction, and everything in between. I'm Zachary.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: And I'm Christian.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And today we have a microdot for you, Christian. Thanks for stopping by to hear a little bit. So last time we did the Great escape World War II movie based on a true story.
And I have a little bit of a true story for you because I recently finished a book called Sons and Soldiers, the untold story of the Jews who escaped the Nazis and returned with the US army to fight Hitler by Bruce Henderson.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Okay. And my brother would not leave me alone until I read it.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: All right.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: She said it's like a Jewish band of brothers.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Which it is also a little bit of inglorious bastards as well.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Fun.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: So it's about a very specific type of soldier story which are German born Jews who fled Germany before the war and then were recruited into a specific unit that made use of their dual language skills.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: They spoke German like natives, which of course they were.
And they had a very specific job as well, which was they were interrogators of prisoners of war.
So they would interrogate German prisoners and then use what they learned for intelligence purposes to help the US army know where the Germans were positioned on like a micro level. Okay.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So it follows a series of men, most of them came over as children with their families, sacrificing everything to get them to the US Because US Immigration authorities would only take children and would only take one per family. Really?
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how restrictive Jewish immigration was at the time. And there's one exception was a guy named Martin selling. He was 20 years old. He was arrested by the Nazis on Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938, and was sent to prison in Nuremberg and then to Dachau.
Yeah. Well, at the time it wasn't an extermination camp. It was just a concentration camp. Obviously he was treated badly, but eventually released. Another of the characters named Stephen Louie, who lived in a orphanage for most of his life because he had a father and a stepmother, but they couldn't afford to take care of him.
So. And the orphanage was for like, Jewish children. A lot of them were able to escape that way. Now, ultimately, all of these characters who we follow in the book and end up in Camp Richey, Maryland, not so far from here.
[00:02:51] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: And they still have a museum there if you're ever curious to check it out.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: That'd be interesting.
In 1942, it was activated. The military intelligence Training center where they trained 19,600 intelligence troops, including what was known as the Richie Boys, which were these guys. 14% of them were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria.
Okay. And actually, something interesting about Camp Richie is Nisai, also known as Japanese American women joined the military intelligence service as translators and interrogators.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: And they attended a six month study course to educate women on the Japanese military language.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: Interesting. I didn't know about that.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: I mean, the thing you hear about for the Nisei is the 442nd. Really, which is the old Japanese American battalion that.
That a lot of folks joined and fought in Europe because they obviously didn't want any cultural conflicts if they sent them into Pacific. But yeah, you hear about them. But I've never heard about the Nisei women who are doing the intelligence stuff. That's pretty cool. I want to learn more about that.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Well, let's go to Camp Richie and check it out. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: Be a fun field trip.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Yeah. This is from Wikipedia, by the way. All this stuff about Camp Richie, not in the book.
And so they worked with Japanese documents to uncover plans like as translators.
So a couple of funny stories. A lot of it's like war stories, right? Like they get into a battle, they get bombed, but a couple of funny stories. So there's one character named Guy Stern. A character one of the people had trouble with tough prisoners, prisoners that wouldn't tell him what they wanted to know. And he had a buddy named Fred Howard. And they knew four techniques to interrogate, impressing them with knowledge. They would be like, we know you're in the woods. We know you have tanks. We know you have this. Why don't you just tell us what we want to know?
[00:04:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: You could also try to bribe them with candy or cigarettes or talk about something like soccer to find a common interest. And the last one was fear.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: So they're like, okay, what are the Nazis most afraid of? And Guy Stern says, that's easy. Sig order Siberian, which means victory or Siberia.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: They're most afraid of being taken prisoner by the Soviets. So they're like, okay, let's find a Soviet to threaten them with.
They had no liaison officers assigned, and if they did, they wouldn't let them take it. So instead they created a Russian No.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Guy was like, I'm going to call myself Comrade Krukov spoke many languages. They're all like, multilingual. That's why they have that job. But he didn't know Russian, so he learned a fake Russian accent by listening to a guy named Eddie Cantor's radio show.
Kind of like the equivalent of like Rocky and Bullwinkle at the time.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: So then they went around and they found Russian medals, like Soviet, like souvenirs from German POWs, traded clothes with Russian POWs that they liberated. And. And they put together a tent that they called Commissar Krupkov, Liaison Officer. Like a fake sign on it, and they had a framed picture of Stalin, and they signed it to my good friend, Comrade Krukov.
So they would bring a prisoner in and Guy would say something like, this is who you bring me. That Nazi won't even survive the transport to our Siberian salt mines.
And then they would scare him. And then they would say, I'm sorry, we have no choice but to hand you over.
I have my orders. And then they would start talking.
So then another story is Marlene Dietrich showed up. Joe. Marlene Dietrich?
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Yes, I do. Yes.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: So she was a German actress who fled before the war.
She would come in to perform for the troops. And then Fred and Guy were actually able to get her to, like, hang out with them because Fred's mother had worked as her masseuse when she lived in Germany. So that was the connection. They took her to go see German prisoners who were in these giant, like, cages, mobile cages, actually, because they would move with the army and they almost caused a riot when the Germans recognized Marlene. So they had to get out of there.
So I have one last story, if you'll indulge me. One last funny story. This was Fred and Guy again. For some reason, they get all the funny stories, even though there's lots of other characters.
So their captain named Captain Khan, he read the Canadians had like, you know how every army has their own internal newspaper, like Stars and Stripes? Yeah. The Canadians had a parody humorous story, and their captain wanted one like that as well, to raise morale.
And Guy was like, what am I, like a stand up comedian that I have to be funny because you told me to?
So they had an idea, though. They found they were going in to interrogate a verar corporal who was dancing from one foot to another while waiting to be interrogated. And the guy came off as like a total joke. He didn't know anything. But in the middle of the interrogation, he said, I have to go to the bathroom. Can I go to the bathroom? The guy had an Idea.
So they created a parody intel report about Obergefreiter Joachimstahler, who they said was Hitler's personal latrine cleaner. Okay, so the whole report about Hitler's bathroom, including that this guy had personally observed that Fuhrer had a scribbled scrotum when he took a dump.
So it's like a parody, like a joke. They send it out. The captain approved it, and they got calls from all these people, like, that was really funny. All my people really liked it. You know, you guys did a great job. But then shortly after midnight, guy got a call from Bill Galanis, a communications clerk, and he says, listen, that funny report of yours, the fat is in the fire. A liaison officer with the OSS in Paris read it and phoned Washington. He's asked for Hitler expert to fly over and question your latrine orderly.
So guy was like, if this happens, you're gonna get corn marshalled. Like, this shit is gonna hit the fan. So he woke up the captain woke up his superior. They all explained it, and everything was fine.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Those are the stories of the sons and soldiers. Yeah, he reads really easily. It's really interesting stuff. We should go check out Camp Richard at some point.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
All right, well, thank you all for joining us. You can find us on social media at the Spyfy Guys on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube and Instagram, and our merch
[email protected] until next time. I'm Zach.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: And I'm Christian.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: And we are the Spy Fi Guys signing off.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Spy Fi Guys. If you enjoyed our podcast, please be sure to give us a five star rating on iTunes. The theme song from this podcast is Mistake the getaway by Kevin McLEO from Incompetech.
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