This week's episode of the Wild Card podcast is brought to you by the Wild Card Witch. Jared Eton. How is it you came to be in league with a devil? Once you were witnessed talking with the Black Wolf at the Crossroads.
What say ye? I say this is stupid. Enron, why were ye witnessed to be signing the Book of Shadows and Suckling Blub from the Teet of a Gilding Raccoon? What say ye?
Yep, it is true, Your Honor. What? It is true. I suckle the raccoon.
I didn't have to. I'm not sorry. Indeed. Indeed.
And Jeff, how is it ye were seen? Darkest heart of the wood and transformed into the shape of a Gilding Raccoon. What say ye? Wait, what is this raccoon business?
It was not I, nor have I ever been involved in the workings of Lucifer's Will. But there is one other here who is in the deepest league with Satan. He came unto me as a crow, as black as pitch, and after landing on my shoulder, whispered into my ear that these eyes swore fealty to him. He would blike my field and curse my livestock.
Hey, did you guys ever find it weird that Jeff looks so much like me? I refused. And the crow flew into the wood. Later, as I was strolling into these same woods, in the darkest heart of the wood, near a thigh blare plantation, a wolf.
Nay, a werewolf fell into step alongside me, and begged me for my protection. I feared for my safety for if a werewolf sees you. It is thy ass. As we snapped upon our witch cakes, he spakeeth as to how he was being hunted by the spawn of Satan himself.
As only Satan's spawn could destroy a werewolf without divine providence of his silver blood. Haha, or unless your name is Jared Eaton, am I right? Can I go back to myself? I've already confessed.
I, and so is named the crow that spakeeth unto me. Jared Eaton is in league with beals above. What say ye? A lys.
Also, have you ever seen Jeff Doublefire with his bare hands? Hush, Ron. I'm being accused of... It's a neat trick.
Shut up. I object to this entire procedure. Silence. I have one more testimony as to the devil's puppet.
As I lie in slumber that very night, I felt my spirit leave with my body and look down upon Jared Eaton as he spakeeth his evil incontation. He spake with malisen whispered. What's that mean? It's a nonsense when I made up it means nothing.
Jared Eaton has brought evil to this podcast. They do. I did too. I demand that he be hanged.
That's a bit much isn't it? And then drowned after he's hanged. And then burned at the stick where his ashes will be fed to the pigs who shall then be slaughtered for a delicious hammer. Hang him.
Hang the son of a bitch. Wait, Ron Blair, you have confessed. Yes. And was your name the only name in the book?
It was not. It was what other names did voused witness in Satan's ledger of souls. Satan's. It's Jeff's book.
He was like, oh, the book. He said, your soul. And I was like, this whole thing? What do I get out of it?
And he said nothing. And I was like, OK. Anyway, here's a list of the other names as they appeared in the devil Jeff book. Ah, if I stand accused, social Mary Smith, Elizabeth Miller, Abigail Walcott, Imogene Cooper, Randy Hercules, Chip Huntley, Alice Schweitzer, Idi Amin, Betty Hitchcock, Hitchie Betcock, Calvin Colt, Neil Young, Gabby, Rhonda Thorndike, Elsa Goldstein, Chuck Parley, Danielle D'Mesowitzki, Elmer Bernstein, Ling Ciao, the big daddy monster, Dana Andrews, Sir Lee Joe, Big J.
Jim Slee, Helma Romanowski, Blackbeard Sanchez, Stanley, Stans like Bear, Abberforth Dumbledore, Austin Millbarge, Emmett Fitzhughm, Dr. Detroit, Ellen Klondike, Marsha Loubrython, and Gary. Enough. It is Jerry who's on trial here.
Hang him. Yeah, let's bring on the meat. Have you any last words? Yes, people of Salem.
Heed my words. The hand that times minus is the very hand that is leading all of you down the path of damnation. Excuse me. Excuse me.
Pardon me. Excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me.
Moira, they need to do the break room. What? It appears there's been a bit of a scrap and tittle issue that's broken out. Scrap and tittle.
I must away immediately. Stayed I'm wild. By death, the edge. Ha ha ha.
Well, I guess there'll be no hanging today. Hey, I brought the rope. I brought the pig. I brought the thunder.
Hey, yeah. Hey, yeah. Hey, yeah. Well, welcome to the wild card podcast.
I'm your host, Jerry Dean, and my co-pilots on this journey to wherever are my good friends, Jeff Curtis. Hello. I'm your host, Ron Blair. That is correct.
Always ready to cast a spell on you. He always has one hand on his magic wand. That's true. Well, he is.
He's so cute. I have the Blair with you. It's a euphemism. Yeah, I guess.
I'm so clever. I'm so clever. You're very smart. Hey, give me a back.
Give me a back. Give me a back. I'll catch you. I'll catch you.
Our random nonsense. I'll catch you. Our art. Speaking of our random nonsense.
Ooh. Ron Blair, can you tell the people listening to this podcast? I can try. Well, this podcast might be all about.
This podcast is about looking at the world from the point of view of the outcasts. And now, we have our verb study, and judge those who have been deemed to fit to nestle in the warm bosom of the bourgeois. Yeah. That's what we are.
That's what we're all about. And also, make fun of people. Yes, that's one of who are part of the bourgeois. We're not part of that.
We don't make fun of non- Named bourgeois people. So you guys heard of what last week was what we did last week? We talked about the witch's. Yeah.
We said that much. We had more retailure. But incredible... Who brought the thunder.
Who brought the thunder. Oh, before we go further, can I mention that the list of names that Jared read off in the commercial, I wrote the list of names. We printed it. And then we gave it to Jared as he was reading the list of names.
So kudos to you for not breaking up during that. I did a little bit, but I kept going. And he hitch-cock, hitch-cock, hitch-cock. That got me pretty well.
That got me. That was nice. Stanley stands like Bear. Stanley stands like Bear.
I think once I had my momentum, nothing was going to stop me. No, you were all alone. That came early, and so I wasn't quite steam rolling through. I was like, oof.
No, that was good. Well done coming up with all the things, by the way. Also very impressive. But last week, we had more room here.
And she talked about Syllwood's travels. And Jeff asked her a question. Yeah. He asked her if she had brought court transcripts.
But this week's favorite question does involve the three of us reading things. Oh! So you have choices. You have purple, you have white, and you have orange.
I'm a purple fan. I love purple. Jeff, white orange. I'll be white.
So in just a moment. So today's favorite question is what are Jared's, very specifically Jared's, favorite dumb political quotes? Oh! So we are going to read these political quotes.
We're going to go purple white ones. Jeff, I'm so glad you chose white. I really didn't want to go that one because that one has a theme to it. With one exception, there's a theme to that one.
So wrong, purple first. Purple first. You have each have five. Okay.
My first one is expressing concern during a congressional hearing that the presence of a large number of American soldiers might up in the island of Guam. My fear, oh, should I read it? So that was context. Yeah, that was context.
Here's the quote. Okay. My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize. He was afraid to either say because there's a game.
Wow, that was representative, hey, Johnson, Georgia Democrat. Almost all of these are like senators, governors, presidents with one, our number two are different. Okay. So the Holocaust wasn't obscene period in our nation's history.
I mean, in the centuries history, but all lived in the century. I didn't live in the century. Dan Quel. Can you say that one more time, please?
He's vice president Dan Quel. The whole more time for it, please. Oh, the whole Holocaust wasn't obscene period in our nation's history. Our nation's history.
I mean, in the century's history, but we all lived in the century. I didn't live in the century. I didn't live in the century. He did.
Much about that. Okay. Mine is George W. Bush.
Okay. From January 11th, 2000. Rarely is the question asked. Is our children learning?
Is our children learning? Is they? Are you going to read the context? So our number twos are all from beauty pageants.
These are all the rest of our number twos come from, like, governors, politicians. These are just people in the beauty page. So you have a little context like what question they were asking. Okay.
At the 2007 Miss USA competition, the 18-year-old contestant from South Carolina was asked why she thinks a fifth of Americans cannot locate their country on a map to which she responded. I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And I believe that our education, like such as South Africa and Iraq everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US, should help South Africa. It should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.
Jesus Christly. What the hell? That is what brought this whole thing on. I just really wanted you to read that.
I'm crying. You're crying. I never cried. That was the fifth of my life.
Okay. Number two for me. When Miss Arizona, Alicia Monique Blanco was asked whether or not she believed citizens of the USA should be granted universal access to health care as a benefit of citizenship. She did her best to keep politics out of the question.
I think this is an issue of integrity regardless of which end of the political spectrum that I stand on. I was raised in a family to know right from wrong in politics. Whether or not you fall in the middle, the left or the right, it's an issue of integrity no matter what your opinion is. And I say that with the utmost conviction.
She said nothing. She talked it really good. I don't have the full name or the year of my contestant but it says in response to a question about why the gender gap persists in America. You know, an impale answered.
I think we can relate this back to education and how we are continuing to try to strive to figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem. I think especially the men are seen as the leaders of this and so we need to figure out how to create education better so that we can solve this problem. What?
What? Gender gap. Obviously. So, okay.
I don't remember what the question is now. Good job. All right. Back to politicians now.
Okay. This is George Bush. I'll try to. Jeff, I got the pattern.
I'll try to do the best I can. There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas. Probably in Tennessee that says fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me. You can't get fooled again. George Bush making it the who. Yeah, George W Bush.
Yeah, George W Bush. Yeah, George W Bush. Hey, Jeff. Two over three.
Some of yours I put two together for because I just found so many good ones. I tell people what the pattern is. No, no, no, no, no. Okay.
All right. So I've got two quotes here by the same person. One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president and that one word is to be prepared. I have made good judgments in the past.
I have made good judgments in the future. Dan Quail. Incredible. All right.
This is Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stephen explaining the workings of the internet during a debate on net neutrality. The internet is not something you just dumped something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of two.
I know that. And those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material. Ted Stephen.
Ted Stephen. Ted Stephen. Mark and Tom. All right.
This is Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department Briefing February 12, 2002. He was the Defense Secretary at the time. We know there are known knowns. There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. The ones we don't know we don't know.
The thing is that makes perfect sense. Sure it does. I get it. But it's still common sense.
And it's a briefing to the Defense Department. All right. I have two more quotes here. They're the same person.
From the same person. I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix. And it's a second quote.
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change. Well, the first quote, the first quote. Yes.
The first quote. Yeah. George H.W. Bush speaking to employees of insurance company during the 1992 New Hampshire primary.
You cannot be president of the United States if you don't have faith. Remember Lincoln? Go into his knees in times of trial and the Civil War and all that stuff? You can't be.
And we are blessed. So don't cry for me Argentina. Message. I care.
He actually said that. That is what he said. Don't cry for me Argentina. He said don't cry for me Argentina.
Message. I care. What the hell. All right.
And our final series of quotes. All right. This is Gerald Ford. Those are more like they are now than they have ever been.
I cannot. I cannot. Hey, if you would have two questions. I just can't hold it from Sam.
They are from Sam. They are from Sam. He was the most brilliant. All of his different things.
What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is very being very wasteful. How true that is. What?
He was gone. Here's a second quote. I was recently on a tour of Latin America. And the only regret I had was that I didn't study Latin hard in school.
So I can convert with those. I would love to see you going down there speaking Latin to those people. To those people. All right.
Okay. This one is then governor and future president Martin Van Buren. Oh. 1829.
Okay. As you well know, Mr. President. Railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour.
The almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such rate and exp. 15 miles an hour. Yep. And there guys are some of my favorite quotes.
Oh, wow. Oh my God. Those were great. I'm going to pull that back at some point.
I just thought that because you wanted to do some delivering of lines. That's what you just thought. No. I'm going to read Transmit.
Yeah. Right. That would have been exciting. Speaking of things Jeff wants, he wants to present a quote.
Well, I do. Well, it's a Jeff episode. That is a Jeff episode. We'll allow it.
All right. You guys, today's Jeff episode is actually based on one of your suggestions. Do you remember what your suggestions were? I do.
No. I don't remember anything that happened over 15 minutes ago. Okay. Well, then I won't be talking to you very much.
I suggested the Essex. Yes. I suggested the Waco siege. Okay.
And I think the third one was called it's Castle. Right. Those are the three suggestions. It is one of Jared's suggestions.
It's one of Jared's. It's like a theater actor or something you wanted to talk about? Yeah. Was it?
Oh, the WPA. Or the theater works. The public theater program. That would have been interesting.
Yeah. That would have been interesting. And then was another one. Waco?
Was that you? No, it's just Waco. Full Ron. Yeah.
I thought Jon Snow was me. No, Jon Snow was me. Waco was yeah. Okay.
Well, I got it into Waco. Right. So here's a clue to which one of those suggestions. All right.
I love clues. Okay. There's a tangential connection to the James Bond movies. Oh.
Desmond Luellen, the actor who played Q, spent five years as a prisoner of war here. I watched the Great Escape like a week ago. I'm ready for this. I know everything is escaping.
This is astounding. Okay. So Luellen, just to talk about it briefly, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British Army starting with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. In 1940, he was captured by the German Army in France and was held as a prisoner of war for five years in the infamous Coldets Castle in Germany.
For five years? Five years? 1940. The US joined World War II until December 1941.
So, but World War II began in 1939. No, I'll wear that. I ended in 1945. Yeah, so five years.
I thought the Germans fell in like 44. Oh, okay. Well, my years were off. Let's do this.
You were only called at the time. That's true. I wasn't paying attention. All right.
So, let me give you some history of the castle before we get into the use as a POW camp, which is just amazing. I spent weeks studying this. Okay. So, Coldets was first settled by Serbs in the sixth century.
Coldets, the word itself, means dark forest. Okay. The town was built in 892 as a Christian settlement. In 982, the German king Henry I won it and the surrounding area from the Dalmatians in the Battle of Ghana.
I was thinking about it. Yeah, no. Eventually, it came under the rule of Wiprick von Grochst, who is... I think it was one of the names on the list of it.
Who in 1080 began to build a castle on a rock promontory overlooking the river Mold. Okay, so are there trees surrounding this? It's the forest forest. It's the dark forest.
And so there's this rocky promontory sticking up above the river that the castle is being built on. It's really like what you think of as Frankenstein's castle. It's like, it's like, on a cliff in the woods. So, in 1083, German king Henry IV urged Margrave Wiprick of Groch to develop the castle site, which cold...
That's accepted. During the 1158, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa made Thiemo I, Lord of Coldits, and Major Billingworx began. By 1200, the town around the market was established. Do you guys know Thiemo I don't know about that?
I don't know about that. He was conquering... He was conquering... Jeremy, the territory there.
And he died because there was some huge march across he had to do. He finally got to where he wanted it. And he was so happy that he found this river he jumped into with a chainmail. He jumped into his chainmail.
Wow, that seems a bad idea. That's a bad thing to do. In 1404, the 250 year rule dynasty of the lords of Coldits ended when Thiemo VIII sold the castles. For 15,000 silver marks to the Whitten ruler of Saxony.
Why would he do this? Because he wanted the money and he didn't want to live anywhere. So there's war and stuff like that. So the castle burned down in 1504.
Okay. And then it was rebuilt. And then they had this menagerie that became one of the largest zoos in Europe in 1523. I don't understand how castles burned down.
Well, you might have the rock outside, but you have all this wood and structures inside. Okay. So during the 1524 rebuilding of the upper floors of the castle, the castle was reconstructed in the fashion that corresponded to the way it was divided into a cellar, the royal house and the Banqu Whitten hall building. In the 1500s, the complex was reconstructed into a Renaissance style castle that it is today with Gothic architecture.
Nice. The castle became an administrative office for the office of Coldits and a hunting lodge. Yeah. During 1694, King Augustus the Strong of Poland began to expand it resulting in a second courtyard and a total of 700 rooms.
You can't have a courtyard. I don't think so. Yeah. Well, as you'll see, the two courtyard make are coming to play during the, so during the 19th century, the castle was used as a workhouse to feed the poor, the ill and persons who had been arrested.
In 1829, the castle became a mental hospital for the incurvling insane from Waldheim, yet remained a mental institution until 1924. Wow. Well, it also was a sanitarium, generally reserved for wealthy and the nobility of Germans. You're like hanging out and heal.
Well, it was a term for tuberculosis and things like that. Okay. Okay. We mentioned it.
The Nazis converted the castle into political prison for communists, homosexuals, Jews, and other people they considered undesirable. In 1939, LIPOW started being held there. So now we're, so that's a brief history of the castle which nobody really cares about, so I skipped over most of it. So, don't hold to it.
It started as a concentration camp with them became a prison camp. Well, it was never a concentration camp, but it was a whole thing in turn. It wasn't, you that as a prison, until the war started, the war started in 1939. So, in 1939, they used it for political prisoners like communists and homosexuals.
So, they shoot them out at the beginning of the war. Yes. Well, well, so in 1939, the war started in 1939. So, in 1939, they moved the political prisoners to other places.
Okay. And the first prisoners there, at first it was used as a transit camp for Polish prisoners because Poland was the first country they invaded. Right. So, Coldus was known as Oflog IVC.
Oflog is an abbreviation for officer, officer logger. No. So, officers were placed. Yeah.
So, officers, it was an officer's place of detention. NCOs and enlisted men were held in Stolks, which is a contraction of Stom logger, it's self-short for Kriegs, Fungung, Menschau Stom logger. I always thought it was interesting that they kept officers in a certain camp and enlisted men in a certain camp, but aren't you really bringing down trouble getting all the officers together like these? Well, see how they did.
Well, fair enough. Here's the reason they did. They considered officers to be gentlemen of an upper class than the enlisted men. The enlisted men were not of upper.
So, there were different rules from the Geneva Convention for the treatment of both. Officers, because they were gentlemen, would feel honor bound to try to escape. And it was an expectation that they would try to escape. And so, they were, officers were imprisoned together with under heavier security, knowing that they are going to escape.
But if they were, if they were escaped and caught, they weren't supposed to be executors, they're supposed to be brought back. And they would be punished by things like 28 days, solitary confinement, or other things like that. Whereas the NCOs, which are non-commissioned officers are enlisted men, because they weren't gentlemen, they, there was the expectation that they were under no, gentlemen or honor bound obligation to try and escape. So, they could be put to work in factories, or fields, or other places, and they were supposed to be paid what other people were paid, and they were under minimal guard, because the expectation was that they would not try to escape.
And if they did, they were often shot or sent to concentration camps, because they, because they weren't gentlemen, they weren't officers. They were held under Lester Guard because they were not honored bound to escape, therefore they weren't privileged or protected when they did escape. And they were getting paid. I mean, it's not a bad gig, though.
Well, unless you don't want to be a prisoner. Well, no, nobody wants to be a prisoner, but it could be worse. Well, the other reason they did that was that the Germans, especially, but all the, all the, all the different nationalities were separating the officers from the men. Yeah.
But the other reason, especially that the Germans wanted to do that was so that you wouldn't have the officers with the enlisted men to instill discipline and order so that they wouldn't be a united fraud. They wouldn't be organized. And so, so there were different, so that's why the officers in officers camp and enlisted in enlisted in enlisted camp. And then generals generally were kept in their own camps, too.
They were generally with the rest of the officers, although there were a couple Polish generals at Coldens. Now, Coldens itself was set up even before it started being used this way. It was envisioned to be the place where they would send the hardest of the officers, those that kept trying to escape or those who were difficult at other camps. Right.
So it was always envisioned that that would be their prison, but at the beginning they didn't have very many of those prisoners yet, so they, it was used as a transit point for Polish prisoners that they were sending to other camps, but they would be put there for a little while. Makes sense. Okay. So the NIVA convention of 1929, Section 3, Article 49, permits non-commissioned personnel of Lorex, I already said this, so I won't go to that.
Control of the POW camps, by Germany, if you were, the Vermok was witches like their army, they would control army prisoners or army prisoners would go to there. The Luftwaffe would have camps for airborne, or RAF, so they divided them up. But Coldens or Oftwag, 4C, it held officers from all different branches of the military because it was specialized for all those that wanted, who were the most likely to escape and worked the most to do so. Alright.
Interesting. The parallels between that and the greatest escape. Yeah. The greatest escape was an officer camp.
And it was known that those people were the ones who had, like I think one of the Charles Bronson's here was on his 17th escape at that time. Well, it's, it's, but you, the thing about the great escape is a fictionalized telling of the story of, of Stoleb moved through. It was a camp. It was a castle.
It was just a camp. Well, it was a camp. And in the movie they're only showing one of the compounds. They actually had like four different compounds.
And there were no Americans who were part of the greatest escape. The Americans were kept in a different compound than the British. But in the film you have three Americans. Right.
Because they, they want American actors. And so you got to sell it in America. Right. And so, so while much of the great escape is based on fact, there's a lot of fiction mixed in just to make it a better movie.
Sure. Sure. And it was great. Right.
Okay. So one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the books I ran, the things that I was read was written by one of the inmates at Coldens. He eventually escaped, but his name is P.R. Reed.
And so this is, this is a quote from his book about what the, the Coldens castle was like when he first sought or what his impression of it was. When he first sought. So they came into the town of Coldens by train. And then they, they marched up to this, to Coldens.
And he was in a group, there have been three British officers at the before. And then he was in the next group of six to come. Okay. Almost upon leaving the station, we saw looming above us our future prison.
Beautiful serene majestic and yet forbidding enough to make our hearts sink into our booths. It's houred above us dominating the whole village. It was the fairy castle of the childhood story books. It was built on top of the high cliff promatory that jetted out over the river.
The outside walls were an average of seven feet thick. And the inner courtyard of the castle was about 250 feet above the river level. The castle rooms in which we were to live were another 50 feet above the courtyard. It was in the heart of the German Reich and 400 miles from any frontier not directly controlled by the Nazis.
Oh my God. Even if you got on the building somewhere else. You got along. You know, entering the main arch gateway we crossed a causeway that strayed what had once been a deep wide moat.
And passed under a second cavernous archway whose open doors swung open and closed ominously behind us with the hanging of the heavy iron bars in true medieval fashion. We were then in a courtyard about 45 yards square with some grass lawn and flower beds and surrounded on all four sides with building six stories high. This was the commandantor or garrison area. That's where the Germans were living.
We were escorted farther through a third cavernous archway with formidable doors of an inclined cobbled coachway for about 50 yards. Then turning sharp right through a fourth and last archway with its normal compliment of heavy oak and iron work into the inner courtyard. This was a cobbled space about 30 yards by 40 yards surrounded on its foreside by buildings whose roof ridges must have been 90 feet above the cobbles. Little sun could ever pin it right here.
And that was the prisoner courtyard. Where they got no sun. Where they got no sun. Now one of the things that they were able to do or the Germans would march some of them down to a lower park area that was surrounded in barbed wire and fencing for exercise once a day.
Yeah. That's fair. It's fair. It's not fair.
It's not fair. It's not fair. Yeah. That's nice.
Eventually Collet's would house officers from Poland, France, Britain, Canada, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Holland, Belgium, India, and the United States. So there were US officers there? Yeah. But not until near the end of the war.
And then at that point there were the most eight. In 1944 the Germans decided that Collet should just be a prison for only British and Americans. But they still didn't put very many British there, mostly British. And then near the end of the war they started bringing French back into there.
At 1.8, 1,500 French people down there. Goodness. We'll get to that later. It also now, here are the other prisoners.
Because it wasn't just officers. It also held prisoners labeled as prominentin. Or prominentin. The German term was used in World War II to describe high profile prisoners from various countries that were imprisoned for possible use as hostages.
These included former statesmen, politicians, political dissidents, and priests as well as prisoners of war related or believed to be related to allied politicians and royalties. How's the dog doing? The dog is great. The dog is so happy.
You can tell how important they were to Hitler by his standing order that if any of the prominentin were to escape the commandant and security officers. The commandant and security officers were to be shot. So no more of them had to escape again. Not just that.
It's not the prisoner that he shot. The commandant and the security of the head of security would be shot if any of these people were to escape. There's that important to the third right. Wow.
This was a standing order from the beginning of the war. These prominentin, they were kept separate and in much more secure quarters. So the escape of these people would be crippling to the third right. Well, it would mean that they would be able to be used as hostages, which is what they were being held for.
Right. Right. And so they were considered so important that if you were in charge of them and they got away, you'd be punished by death. Wow.
It's a political leverage. Yeah. Before they were removed near the end of the war, the prominentin at Colditz included Lord LaSalle and Lord Elphin Stone, nephews of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Captain the Lord Hagg, son of World War One Field Marshal Douglas Hagg, Lord Hope Town, son of the Lord, Lord Lindeth Go, the biceroy of India, Lieutenant John Winant, Jr., son of John Gilbert Winant, U.S.
Ambassador to Britain. The Britain, Dazdas Bork, Morrowski, Commander of, Armina Croke, Commander of the Warth Alprising and five other Polish generals, as well as British commando, Michael Alexander claimed to be a nephew of Field Marshal Harold Alexander in order to escape being executed, but was merely a distant cousin. In this 1944? Yeah.
So the end is near. This is not deep Germany though. Well, that's true. If you cut off the head, the rest of the snake died.
But the snake was very close. But the first one of these prominentin was Polish, right? Well, no. The first one was actually British, and he was brought there in 1940.
They were collecting these people and housing them over the place, and eight of them eventually ended up at Coldus, but they had like 160 of them stationed in various places around Germany. Yeah. Okay. Now each nationality had their own senior officer who was in command of them and was the point of communication with the commandant of the camp.
So the British had their SBO who was the senior British officer in charge of the British officers. And the SBO was also held responsible by the commandant for the behavior of the officers under his command. Fair enough. Okay.
So the first was Lieutenant Colonel Guy German of the Royal Rochester Regiment. The second was Lieutenant Colonel Steiner when German was sent to a different prison camp because he wasn't working hard enough to stop people from escaping as far as the Germans were concerned. Jesus. Okay.
Not that the others stopped either. Okay. And then in 1942, and that was in 1942, and the third and last was Colonel Todd of the Royal Scots, Fusiliers who arrived on November 18th in Outranked Steiner. Okay.
So at first the Germans attempted to segregate each nationality from the others. To keep the Polish, separate from the French, the British, just so that they wouldn't, they would, they would be in an honesty between them, you know, or a rivalry. But they couldn't do that because the castle had so many halls and corridors and stairways and winding passages that they would lock them into their separate rooms at night. But the Polish were so good at picking locks that they would pick the locks off all the doors and they'd still be moving back and forth.
So eventually the Germans just gave up on that. They'd lock the outer doors and just let them roll. Well, because they didn't have the manpower to station someone in each one of these, in each one of these hallways. Or, or staircases.
They, they could, they would go in and inspect them in small groups. But they didn't have the manpower to be able to station someone every place. So they, they would station people in places where they would be able to catch people trying to escape as opposed to trying to keep them separated from mingling with each other. Okay.
So one of the first things that they did, the officers did when they got there was they created an escape committee. And each country had its own escape committee. And, and at the head of the escape committee would be the escape officer who would have the final say on whether an escape plan was okay to go or not okay to go. And it wasn't the senior officer, the senior officer had to remove himself from that so that he could honestly be able to, to be innocent or all.
Well, also so that he could command with the commandant and his actions couldn't be viewed as trying to get things specifically to hide, to, to, right, enable the escapes and stuff like that. So, but at first the different countries were talking to each other about their escapes. They were keeping them jealous. And so sometimes one group would be trying to escape and another group would foil their plot by, by escaping the same way or trying to escape the same way.
So they were stepping on each other's shows. So eventually while they never combined as one escape group, they started communicating with each other saying, this is our plan, this is our plan. So, and this is what we're planning on doing it so that each, that no one was getting in each other's way. And sometimes like the British and the Dutch would do things together because the Dutch could speak fluent German.
Right. Right. Right. And so, and so if you get out, you don't have to go in with you could speak German.
So, and another thing, you know, all these officers that are brought here have escaped from someplace else or their problem child and someplace else. Yeah. So, so a lot of them weren't happy to be told that, okay, well, you don't get to just decide to escape. You have to bring your plan so us and you have to join the queue and get behind other people who are ahead of you in line.
Right. It almost feels like a sitcom, even though it's very not. Like, how can you rush? It is, but it's not at all.
So, yeah. Someplace, you're a spherical. Yeah. So, so, one of the things they, one of the first things they did was read was an engineer in, in, before the war broke out.
So, he surveyed the castle to see it look for weak points about, you know, where you could you get in and where it can be, where it would be the easiest place to try to escape. Yeah. The other thing they did was survey the skills and the prior careers of the officers, you know, who was, you know, who was a tailor. Who was an artist.
Right, of course. And one of the great things about being in a castle that's that old is you have all these nooks and crannies and places that have been boarded up in renovations and other ways of finding hiding places and spaces that you, at first glance, you think is one thing and then it's not. And so, they were very good at finding places to hide all these, you know, illicit things that they're making. Or people.
Or people. Yeah. We'll get to the hiding of people. And, you know, the Germans kept with certain events and finds out.
And they got a lot of their stuff by stealing it. You know, at one point, there's a story about a dentist who came into the castle to work on someone else and while he's working on it on this guy's teeth, someone else came in through a different door and stole his hat and coat. So that they could use it in an escape. So they would have.
So they would have actual civilian clothing. Another way that they got stuff was through the black market. They would buy things or ride stuff off of the guards. The guards would bring them.
No, you understand these guards were not frontline soldiers. These were the bottom of the ball. These are soldiers who couldn't work good enough to be in the, they were too old or too out of shape or too crippled to be in the front line. So they were here.