Short Stuff: POW Olympics

Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Charles. Wait, I'm Josh. There's Charles.

Wow.

This is off to a good start already, this is short stuff. Jerry's here too, YadA YadA.

Let's go all right, this is about the Pow Olympics. We're going to hop in the al wayback machine and go back to nineteen forty four and Voldenbruke in western Poland, where Polish military officers were being held captive as POWs by the Nazis. But the Nazis were like, hey, be glad you're here, because it's not so bad. We treat you guys pretty well. We adhere to the Geneva Convention for the most part. And if you'll notice, there are no death chambers and things like that here. You've got

Yeah, did you did you say that the POWs were all officers?

I did?

Okay, so that that that was why this pow camp was called offlog two c Offlog is derived from a German word. I think it might be slang for an officer's prison camp.

Yeah, it's kind of like the Great Escape. Okay, sure, remember they had it pretty easy in that camp.

Right, So, yeah, I think that was there were a lot of political reasons why they were taking it easy on them and following the Geneva Convention. But doesn't it just feel dirty to give the Nazis credit for anything?

No, for sure, but I think it was one of those cases where I wasn't really joking when I said they were like, hey, remember this after the war, because they were trying to set themselves up for being treated okay after the war, and also to draw comparisons to at the time Russian prison camps and saying like they're the they're the really bad ones. This one isn't so bad, specifically here in Poland.

So part of that was allowing of an Olympic Games to be held at Waldenburg. It was a Pow Olympics that was organized and carried out in cooperation with the German captors that were supposed to be in London and then got canceled and then popped up again in the at the Waldenburg Pow camp.

Right. Yeah. I doubt if the real Olympic Games people know about it, although you never know, you never know. I mean, we know about it so well.

I know that I know that the Chinese held a nineteen fifty two POW Olympics at a camp in Korea, in North Korea with Korean War captives as a huge propaganda coup. Like they kept records, they followed the IOC instructions to a t, and they let the world know about it. So I wouldn't surprised that the Nazis told people that this was going on as a pr thing.

Yeah, and since we're talking about other Pow Olympics, got it to talk about nineteen forty because they were supposed to be in Tokyo. World War II was just getting cranking up there, so they moved it to Helsinki, Finland, and then they canceled those altogether. And there was a German POW camp in Langfasa, Germany that had they called it the International Prisoner of War Games, but that one was a little bit different. That one was in secret.

Yeah, I guess the captors just thought they were watching a basketball game or something like that.

Yeah. Maybe, and that weird Olympic flag with the rings was I don't know, just for fun.

Yeah, let's take a break, chuck.

All right, let's do it.

And job.

All right. So geez, we've now covered very quickly two Olympic game POW Olympic games, but we're gonna go back to the one in nineteen forty four and voted in book because they, like you said, had the permission of the Nazis to do this, and it was It kind of became one of those stories of the war, kind of like the Christmas where the ceasefire happened on Christmas Eve. Yeah, and they got together. It sort of has that air about it.

Man, that's just such an amazing story.

It was.

So Yeah, they are probably the most famous long long Losser and Woldenburg are about the most famous of all the POW games, so we know the most about them. In Waldenburg's they had a bunch of different events, like they really kind of followed the Olympics at the time to a t. There was soccer aka football, handball, basketball, track and field, but there were some events that they're like, we're gonna draw the line at that because we don't trust you. Still, this is a pow camp.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. Of course, they were like, maybe nothing where you shoot an arrow, so archery was out. They said maybe nothing where you hold a sword, so fencing was out. And then they said, beer, wow, we're at it. Let's get rid of the javelin because I imagine that would not feel good in the chest. And it seems to me that practicing for pole vaulting, it's just another way of saying practicing for getting over that fence over there.

Right, tough to slip it past them while you're having an Olympics. They also had to say no boxing, not because there was any they were worried about it were getting beaten up, I guessed by the boxers. They were worried about the boxers killing one another because they were again even though they were officers, these were held in pow camps, and so the boxers were essentially too frail to box. It was just too dangerous for the boxers.

Yeah, and we can't not mention the great great World War two soccer film Victory with Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine and.

Pele Plee was in it.

Plee was in it neat what year was this?

Uh?

This is in the eighties. But it told the story of a soccer match that was held between the Nazis and the POW's. But there was an escape plan at halftime. They were to bust out dig they had people digging in and then we're going to bust into the locker room and get them out. And I'm not gonna spoil it, but let's just say they are faced at halftime with the choice do we escape during this game or do we go back on that field and try and beat the Nazis at soccer?

Uh? You escape.

It's unequivocal, great, great movie, one of the great sports movies.

It sounds like it was remade as The Longest Yard. Isn't that kind of like the plot of that too?

Hmmm? I mean no, it wasn't like a remake. But The Longest Yard was That was the Burt Reynolds football movie about prison Adam game. Yeah, well, then remade again by Adam Sandler. But I don't think there was an escape thing in the Longest Yard? Was there?

That's what I thought. That's why I said that. I thought there might be, But maybe I just put that in there to entertain myself because I was bored.

It's been it's been. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that.

No, no, no, I mean with the movie, not with your anecdote.

Oh okay, no, I don't think there was, unless I'm wrong. I think Along as Yar was just about a football game. But I may be wrong. It's been a minute.

Okay, Well, this conversations boring. Let's move on.

Still unplays a goalkeeper?

Does he really?

True? Yeah?

Does he take one in the face?

Uh? Well, they had to teach him. He wasn't very good at it, but they needed him on the escape team. So he was not the most gifted goalkeeper. But they had Pele, and they had all these other English football stars from the time that I didn't know about. But my friend Justin's like, oh that was Bobby's something something and whatever.

I hadn't realized Pele had been a pow.

Oh my god, we just stop.

Well, wait a minute, wait a minut. Before we stop, we have to say that. In addition to those like basketball, handball, track and field, that kind of stuff, they actually held cultural events as part of the Olympic competitions at Woldenburg in nineteen forty four for like sculpture and painting and chess, and you would just normally think like, okay, they were just trying to round some stuff out. Maybe they were trying to replace the javelin event with something else, so

Yeah, I had no idea, So that was sort of on My big one takeaway out of this whole thing was that they actually, for four decades gave out Olympic medals in the arts. Yeah, so cool.

It is very cool. Its a surprising little factoid that I had not expected to learn from this one.

Yeah. That, and that Pele was a POW in nineteen eighty three or whatever.

Right, So hats off to everybody who participated in Olympics and Pow camps. It is kind of the triumph of the human spirit. You know what, I mean totally like the purest form of Olympic competition. That's right, And I guess since Chuck is agreeing with me, then we should just go ahead and say this short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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