Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Short Stuff: Battle of Itter Castle About this episode At the end of WWII in Europe, one of the strangest battles of the war took place between German troops fighting alongside Americans and French to beat back an assault by the Nazi SS.
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1:09 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave, which makes this an official short stuff. Don't accept substitutes.
1:18 Speaker 03 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.
1:25 Josh Clark? It's insane that it's not.
1:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, really great cinematic story in every way, the way it, you know, is laid out there, you know?
1:33 Josh Clark? Yeah, the Battle of Castle Itter. Would it be Itter or Itter?
1:38 Speaker 03 Well, here we go. We already don't know what to call it.
1:40 Josh Clark? 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 two. 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.
2:17 Speaker 03 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 umlauts. You gotta put it over the O, too.
2:32 Josh Clark? Oh, I didn't. Oh, I'm sorry. Man, I screwed up.
2:35 Speaker 03 It was pretty great, everyone. Josh put this together and he typed out motley crew and he put umlauts over the U. Just clearly is a little, little love letter to me.
2:45 Josh Clark? It was.
2:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, I got it.
2:47 Josh Clark? But I'm sorry, I screwed up the love letter.
2:49 Speaker 03 No, it's fine. It's the thought that counts. That's what they say, right?
2:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, but that's really patronizing.
2:55 Speaker 03 What if this was the very last battle? That makes it even more cinematic.
2:59 Josh Clark? I mean, that's what I read. It was like, one of the last, and it could just be somebody hedging, you know, and it could have been the last one.
3:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, all right. So this castle's 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 was 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, we'll hold them up in this castle.
3:47 Josh Clark? Right. And there were some, like, real VIPs in there. There were two French generals, two former French prime ministers.
3:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:55 Josh Clark? 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?
4:08 Speaker 03 Oh, I thought he just built the airport.
4:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, hand by hand, but that was a side project that he did on weekends.
4:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
4:15 Josh Clark? 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, like a car smashing into a tree kind of stop. Because Hitler had just killed himself in Berlin. Mussolini had been strung up and hung out to dry, literally by partisans in Italy. And it was just very clear that, that Germany had lost World War Two and the European theater was coming to an end.
4:53 Speaker 03 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.
5:27 Josh Clark? Yeah. So one of the things that really unsettled them is on May 2, the Butcher of Dachau, the guy who ran the prison camp, Edouard 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 2,000 prisoners on his way out the door. The people at Castle Eder had heard about this. I mean, that's kind of a big deal even in World War Two, even in Germany. And they, the fact that Witter showed up, they're like, well, this is, this is it for us. But instead, Witter took his own life.
6:12 Josh Clark? 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.
6:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, so he really finished the job. Couple of days, I guess they were briefly relieved and they're 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.
6:38 Speaker 03 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 gonna make a run for it, you guys. And I'm gonna 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.
7:05 Josh Clark? And didn't get shot.
7:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, and the Americans were like, hey, listen, man, we're legally, the war's 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 gonna say it right now, let's send a small detachment of tanks that way and see if we can help those guys out.
7:29 Josh Clark? I can't take credit for that. I learned that from grandpa on Simpsons.
7:33 Speaker 03 Was that him?
7:34 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:35 Speaker 03 That's funny.
7:36 Josh Clark? So yeah, Major John Kramer says, we're gonna go help you guys. And he leads a column of tanks over, he turns the steering wheels and heads them toward Castle Eder. And I say we take a break here because I think it's a pretty good spot.
7:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's do it.
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10:26 Speaker 03 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 Gongel. 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
11:07 Speaker 03 together and go get these prisoners. Like, we finally have a job to do. Like, you know, Guns at the Navarone style. Let's go, let's go save these prisoners.
11:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. So Gangl is on his way now to Castle Itter. And on the way, he runs into a tank commander and his tank, the Besotting Jenny is the name of the tank. And the commander's name is Jack C. Lee Jr. He's captain. And Gangl 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.
11:51 Speaker 03 Good movie stuff.
11:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, all played by Jim Brown in different disguises.
11:57 Josh Clark? And then he puts them all together and he and Gangl 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. Like, 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 that's, this is the group that's moving toward Castle Itter. And they finally get there. I think about 12 hours before the siege finally began on the castle.
12:30 Speaker 03 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 arrive at the castle, like you said, about 12 hours after this ragtag group is there to defend them. And they take out Besotting 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
13:13 Speaker 03 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.
13:20 Josh Clark? 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?
13:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:31 Josh Clark? And at first, like, it looked like, okay, 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, Gangl 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 Gangl. Now he was alone commanding this
14:12 Josh Clark? whole thing by himself. And he came up with a plan, basically to hide everybody in the castle keep.
14:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, I really felt bad for Gangl because he turn coded against the Nazis. He's doing the right thing. He brought them there. And, and just like a movie scene, he's up on the, 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?
14:39 Josh Clark? 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 like somewhere where he could
14:48 Speaker 03 Say something.
14:49 Josh Clark? Tell Lee to, yeah.
14:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:50 Josh Clark? Get him, get these people out of here alive.
14:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, tells him, I said,
14:56 Josh Clark? Tell the Nazis I said, suck it.
14:59 Speaker 03 There's, there's a really funny, uh, oh, yeah, who cares? I'll go a little long. There's a really funny, uh, Dana Gould comedy bit about, uh, his plan on his deathbed is to say, you know, I've buried a million dollars and it's located at.
15:21 Josh Clark? Oh, man.
15:22 Speaker 03 And he, and that's kind of funny, but the, the real punchline, they see he's like, you gotta 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. It's pretty good stuff.
15:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's great stuff.
15:35 Speaker 03 The great Dana Gould. Uh, all right. So, uh, Gongle is taken out. Lee comes up with that plan to get, um, 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.
15:55 Josh Clark? 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.
16:28 Speaker 03 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?
16:40 Josh Clark? That was a quote from Lee later on recounting it.
16:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, I would punch that up to what took you so long.
16:45 Josh Clark? Yeah.
16:46 Speaker 03 With like a little wink or something, but, uh, and then maybe they fall in love.
16:49 Josh Clark? Yeah. Or, and Kramer responds with, uh, traffic.
16:53 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
16:55 Josh Clark? They fought.
16:55 Speaker 03 That's so perfect. Uh, you know, very sadly, uh, well, I mean, I guess it's good news that Gong was the only casualty. It's sad that that was him again because he, 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.
17:18 Josh Clark? Major Lee lived to be an old man. I think he died in the seventies and he was awarded the distinguished service cross for this.
17:26 Speaker 03 Amazing.
17:26 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. This is movie stuff like out the yin yang.
17:32 Speaker 03 Right out the yin yang.
17:33 Josh Clark? Which means, of course, short stuff is out.
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