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As is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the cooperative for education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right, and here is this year's call to action.
You can join coed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the rise youth development program and if you set up that gift by december 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
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Hi, Kyle.
Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link?
Thanks.
Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.
Here's the link.
But there was no link.
There was no business plan.
I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.
I'm Evan Ratliff, here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.
Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people.
Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's sitting in for Dave, which makes this an official short stuff.
Don't accept substitutes.
That's right, and I'm only going to say this at the beginning.
But boy, oh boy, this should be a movie.
This episode.
It's insane that it's not.
Yeah, really great cinematic story in every way, the way it, you know, is laid out there, you know.
Yeah, the Battle of Castle Itter.
Would it be Itter or Iter?
Well, here we go.
We already don't know what to call it.
So we're going to call it Itter after John Ritter.
But it's also called Schloss Itter, which is castle.
And it's located in Austria, in the Tyrolean region of Austria.
And the reason why it's significant is too it's one of the last battles of the European theater of World War II.
Like, I can't name any other battles after it, but that doesn't really mean that much.
And then the second reason is because it is a really unusual battle in that Germans got together with Americans and French and fought the Nazis in this battle.
Yeah.
And other randos from different places like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Like it was a like you mentioned, a real motley crew, real ragtag group.
Yeah.
But you didn't put both of them.
You got to put it over the oath, too.
Oh, I didn't.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Man, I screwed up.
It was pretty great, everyone.
Josh put this together and he typed out Motley Crue and he put umlauts over the U Just clearly, as a little love letter to me.
It was.
Yeah, I got it.
But I'm sorry I screwed up the love letter.
No, it's fine.
It's the thought that counts.
That's what they say, right?
Yeah, but that's really patronizing.
What if this was the very last battle?
That makes it even more cinematic.
I mean, that's what I read.
It was like one of the last.
And that could just be somebody hedging, you know, and it could have been the last one.
Yeah.
All right.
So this castle sitting up there since the 13th century, since 1878 it's been kind of in its present form.
And it's been a bunch of things.
It was a private estate for a while.
It's a hotel for a while.
But notably for our story, after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, they took it over.
And a few years later, in 1943, it became part of Dachau, you know, the death camp.
And it served as a sort of a VIP prison for some high-value prisoners of war that they thought could like.
We're not going to put these people to death.
We think we might be able to use them as hostages.
So we'll hold them up in this castle.
Right.
And there were some like real VIPs in there.
There were two French generals, two former French prime ministers.
Yeah.
A tennis star who'd become a politician and one of the sisters of Charles de Gaulle who was, like I guess he was, the head of the military in World War II, correct?
Or was he the, no, he was the current prime minister, right?
In exile.
Oh, I thought he just built the airport.
Yeah, hand by hand.
But that was a side project that he did on weekends.
Yeah, yeah.
There were also, like you said, some Czech prisoners, some Yugoslavian prisoners.
And they were there for a couple of years.
And in May of 1945, the beginning of May 1945, the war was not just starting to wind down.
It was coming to like a car smashing into a tree kind of stop, because Hitler had just killed himself in Berlin.
Yeah.
Mussolini had been strung up and hung out to dry, literally, by partisans in Italy.
And it was just very clear that Germany had lost World War II and the European theater was coming to an end.
Yeah, that's right.
They were literally about to offer up their formal surrender.
But if you're in this castle you're a little worried because the SS at this point there's some SS that are like hey, you know, we're going to lay down our arms.
The war is clearly over.
Let's just get this over with.
There's other SS that are like nine.
I'm going to go down in a blaze of glory and kill everyone that I can before they formally call this thing over.
And so if you were in this castle as a VIP prisoner, you were worried that they were going to be coming for you.
And they found out that that was true.
Yeah.
So one of the things that really unsettled them is, on May 2nd, the butcher of Dachau, the guy who ran the prison camp, Eduard Witter.
He showed up at the castle because remember, this was like an annex of the Dachau prison system.
And he was on the run from the Allies who had just liberated the camp right after he'd escaped.
But being a horrible, terrible Nazi, as all Nazis are, he ordered the execution of 2000 prisoners on his way out the door.
The people at Castle Itter had heard about this.
I mean, that's kind of a big deal even in World War II, even in Germany.
And the fact that Witter showed up there like, well, this is it for us.
But instead, Witter took his own life.
He shot himself in the heart.
That didn't work.
So then he shot himself in the head while he had shot himself in the heart.
Yeah, so he really finished the job.
I guess they were briefly relieved, and they were like, oh, well, thank God.
But a couple of days after that, the commandment of the castle and all the guards, they left.
And so all of a sudden, all these people are trapped in this castle, these prisoners.
There's no way to get out.
Even if they could get out, they know that there are probably hostile Germans nearby and they don't want to meet up with them.
So a handyman, a Yugoslavian handyman in the castle said, you know what?
I'm going to make a run for it, you guys.
And I'm going to go and try and meet up with the American troops that are coming our way and see if I can get us some help and rescue.
He did make it to the Americans, which is again, if this is a movie, it's like an amazing success story that he found the Americans.
And didn't get shot.
Yeah.
And the Americans were like, hey, listen, man, we're legally the war is not quite over.
We're not allowed to be in that area yet.
But they were led by Major John T. Kramer.
And he said there will be a podcaster one day that will coin the term nuts to that.
But I'm going to say it right now.
Let's send a small detachment of tanks that way and see if we can help those guys out.
I can't take credit for that.
I learned that from Grandpa on Simpsons.
Oh, was that him?
Yeah.
That's funny.
So, yeah, Major John Kramer says, we're going to go help you guys.
And he leads a column of tanks.
He turns the steering wheels and heads them toward Castle Itter.
And I say we take a break here because I think it's a pretty good spot.
Yeah, let's do it.
S-Y-S-K.
S-Y-S-K.
S-Y-S-K.
Josh Clark.
Who would you call if the unthinkable happened?
I just fell and started screaming.
If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way?
I sat through with y'all 22 times.
The police, right?
But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of?
This dude is the devil.
He's a snake.
He'll hurt you.
I got you, I got you, I got you.
I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends Untouchable.
Detective Roger Golubsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing Black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence.
This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down.
I told Roger Golubsky, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die.
Listen to The Girlfriends Untouchable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey everybody, as is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the cooperative for education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school.
That's right, and here is this year's call to action.
You can join coed for 20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the rise youth development program and if you set up that gift by december 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I.
We do it every year and it's a lot of fun.
That's right.
You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash SYSK, set up your $20 a month sponsorship.
You can also go make a one-time donation if you like, and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January.
Thank you for giving.
Thank you.
All right.
So meanwhile, back at the castle, these prisoners, they don't know what's happened to this Yugoslavian handyman that went for help because obviously it's you know, he can't send word back.
So another volunteer stepped forward.
This is the cook of the castle.
And he said, all right, I'm going to try and go get help.
He finds, oh God, this is such a movie.
He finds a German major, Sepp Gangl.
And this guy, you said, you know, all Nazis were terrible.
I guess you would call him almost a former Nazi, because he was one of the dudes that was like no, this is what we're doing, isn't right?
So he broke with the SS.
He was leading a little group of allied friendly troops.
So he was a complete turncoat.
And he said, all right, let's get together and go get these prisoners.
Like we finally have a job to do.
Like, you know, guns of the Navarone style.
Let's go.
Let's go save these prisoners.
Yeah.
So Gangle's on his way now to Castle Itter.
And on the way he runs into a tank, commander and his tank, the Besot and Jenny is the name of the tank.
And the commander's name is Jack C. Lee Jr.
He's captain.
And Gangle tells him what's going on.
And Jack C. Lee says, you know, sir, I'd really like to take part in that.
Let's go.
So he grabs a few members of his company, a few members of a nearby all-black company D of the 17th Armored Infantry Battalion.
Good movie stuff.
Yeah, all played by Jim Brown in different disguises.
Yeah.
And then he puts them all together and he and Gangle and their ragtag group of people start moving toward Castle Itter.
And this is not like some sort of... First of all, this isn't sanctioned.
This is not like some obvious platoon that's already been assembled.
This is just a group of people who almost were like yeah, I want to go get those people out of that castle.
And they said, come on.
And this is the group that's moving toward Castle Itter.
And they finally get there and...
I think about 12 hours before the siege finally began on the castle.
Yeah, so they suspected there were Germans coming their way, and they were right.
The Waffen-SS, they were the combat detachment of the SS, really bad dudes, very elite fighters.
They arrived at the castle, like you said, about 12 hours after.
This ragtag group is there to defend them.
And they take out Bassat and Jenny right away.
They take out that tank.
It was a pretty smart move, I guess, to go ahead and get the heavy artillery down.
It was parked in front of the main gate.
So with that tank gone, they were basically— you know fully free to just assault this castle outright.
And a battle starts like a really gruesome battle.
They inside the prison, they had broken to the armory.
So they had some stuff to defend themselves with, like pistols, some rifles and machine guns.
But this was.
These are pistols and machine guns and rifles, not not heavy artillery, which is kind of what they needed at that point.
Yeah, I think the Nazis had some 80 millimeter gun that they were using to pound the castle walls.
This is like a medieval siege that's going on, but with modern armory, right?
Yeah.
And at first, like it looked like, OK, the people in the castle might be able to hold this off.
There's like 100 Waffen SS attacking them.
But then they started to run low on ammunition.
And it doesn't really matter what kind of gun you have.
If you don't have bullets to shoot out of it, you're in trouble.
If the people who you're fighting do still have bullets,
And so by noon, it was starting to look really grim.
And also by this time, Gengel had been killed by a Nazi sniper.
And I saw that Jack Lee, Captain Lee, was already the de facto commander.
Even the two French generals were deferring to his command.
But he was kind of co-commanding with Gengel.
Now he was alone commanding this whole thing by himself.
And he came up with a plan basically to hide everybody in the castle keep.
Yeah, I really felt bad for Gangl because he turncoated against the Nazis.
He's doing the right thing.
He brought them there.
And just like a movie scene, he's up on the top like trying to get an assessment of the situation and gets taken out by a sniper.
It's like such a powerful movie scene, you know.
Yeah, the only thing about it you would have to change is that he was probably killed instantly.
He would have to have been shot somewhere where he could tell Lee to get these people out of here alive.
Yeah, tells him, I said, Tell the Nazis I said, suck it.
There's a really funny – yeah, who cares?
I'll go a little long.
There's a really funny Dana Gould comedy bit about his plan on his deathbed is to say you know, I've buried a million dollars.
Yeah.
And it's located at... Oh, man.
And that's kind of funny, but the real punchline is he's like, you got to time it just right.
He said otherwise you just have to lay there and pretend you're dead for the remaining minutes of your life.
That's pretty good stuff.
Yeah, it's great stuff.
The great Dana Gould.
All right.
So Gongle is taken out.
Lee comes up with that plan to get holed up in the keep, which is what a keep is for.
That's where you take your last stand in a castle.
So it's, you know, not a bad plan.
He was like hey, let's feed this SS into that narrow passage that leads to the keep and just see if we can pick them off one by one as they come in there.
Yeah.
And it's not a bad plan, but the chances of anyone in the castle surviving during that plan is pretty low.
And then just as things were at their most hopeless, seriously, this is how it happened.
That column of tanks that was originally contacted by the Yugoslavian handyman who first made a run for it, led by Major Kramer, show up.
And they flank the Nazis or attack the Nazis from the rear and just immediately scatter the people besieging this castle.
And the battle ends almost immediately.
Yeah.
And, oh man, if this is true, then it just writes itself.
Because supposedly Kramer got to the castle, met up with Captain Lee, and Lee said, what kept you?
That was a quote from Lee later on recounting it.
Yeah, I would punch that up to what took you so long with like a little wink or something, and then maybe they fall in love.
Yeah, and Kramer responds with traffic.
Oh, man.
That's so perfect.
You know, very sadly, well, I mean, I guess it's good news that Gongo was the only casualty.
It's sad that that was him again because he was pretty brave for going against his own kind.
But he was the only casualty out of all of that.
And this ragtag group held off this force until the reinforcements arrived.
Like, happy ending.
Yeah.
Major Lee lived to be an old man.
I think he died in the 70s.
And he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for this.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
This is movie stuff, like out the yin-yang.
Right up the yin-yang.
Which means, of course, short stuff is out.
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