Wars have made up a significantly large portion of our history as the human race.
And yet one war in particular, and in fact, one man in
particular, keeps cropping up amidst history's weirdest stories. As you would have seen
in the title of this episode, yes, I am once again exploring a
bizarre food related story from history then in some way involves Adolf Hitler. Now,
if you haven't already listened to the entire back catalog, you may get
a kick out of the episode about Hitler's plan to harvest whales from the South
Pole in order to keep up German Margarine supplies, or his plot to assassinate
Winston Churchill with an exploding chocolate bar. And yet this story may in fact
be by far the strangest of them all. So let's roll into the intro
and any ads, if there are any, and in dive write in these
are the bizarre but true stories from history that in some way involved food.
I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of food. Do
you like candy? Do you like candy? Do you like candy? If
you answered yes to any of the above questions, then candy is dandy is
the right podcast for you. Candy Is Dandy is the world's only candy review
podcast, and we know that because we looked as deep as a third ozho
in a Google search. Every first and third Wednesday of the month, we
pick a different candy, give you its history, taste it, live,
and review it and rate it. We've tried candy such as Snickers, Butterfingers,
Dailly Belly, Jellybeans, and we've had a cavalcade of celebrity guests such
as The Three Musketeers, Bazooka Joe, and comedy Bang Bangs Carl Tart.
So download and subscribe to Candy's Dandy anywhere podcasts are found. When I first
stumbled upon the story while conducting research for another episode, I thought I was
reading an out of date April Fool's prank. Surely this couldn't rarely be true.
But the more I read into it, it turns out that it was
in fact a real plot that the Allies were cooking up as one more method
to turn the tide of the war in their favor. It reads like something
out of a comic book or an episode of an old British sitcom with slapstick
caricatures. Of wartime shenanigans. But again I must assure you that the following
story was indeed a real military plot, cooked up, excuse the pun,
by Allied intelligence agencies. The Second World War was raging onwards, with men
fighting and dying each and every day. It was so delicately poised that there
seemed to be no end to the fighting in sight. Days, weeks,
and even months dragged on into years, and with them came more more plots
of how to win the war. Some were impractical, some were impossible,
and some were downright insane. But every now and again one of these plots
would be just insane enough to work. And so out of this think tank
came possibly one of military history's greatest ever schemes. What if we turned Hitler
into a woman? Well, not actually turn him into a woman, per
se, but what if we could bring out more of his effeminate side,
turned down the volume on his tyrannical ranting, calmed down his wild gesticulating on
stage, and maybe even cause him to become more cautious from his clearly displayed
gung home military style to date. It was well known that Hitler had a
younger sister named Paula, who, by contrast to her megalomaniac brother, was
rather shy, reserved and quiet. While the hope amongst the Allies was that
these same tendencies lived deep within Adolf too, if they could force him to
tap into them. Now that all sounded well and good, if a little
far fetched, But how would they go about actually doing something like this now?
The idea was borne out of existing research being done in London around the
topic of sex therapy and the importance of sex hormones on the body. They
were already popular sentiments swirling around the world about the nature of Hitler's sexuality.
To begin with, there was infamous rumor subsequently proven to be true, that
he only had one testicle, made famous by the comedy wartime Troop song,
whose lyrics include the lines Hitler has only got one ball, Gering has two,
but very small. Himler has something similar, but poor old Gebels has
no balls at all. In fact, why don't we have a quick listen
to a short clip of a bet Middler rendition of this famous old war ditty.
Hitler one Gary had too bad, they weren't small. Himmler had something
similer at all. Reading up to tempo. Up to tempo for a second.
Here we go Hitler. He had only one baball Gary, and he
had to buy. Weren't small either, Imbler well. Along with his missing
testicle came accusations calling his sexuality into question. He had started adult life as
an artist and a painter in the romantic style, and throughout his childhood he'd
been a rather sickly boy, never engaging in sports or manual labor of any
kind. In the nineteen forties, this was essentially all the proof you needed
to cast any spursions you may care to choose upon your intended target. However,
a wartime report from nineteen forty three, written by a Harvard psychiatrist by
the name of doctor Henry A. Murray, the same psychiatrist who would go
on to examine and test the Unibummer in the late nineteen fifties, made some
interesting conclusions about Hitler's state of mind and the possible causal links to his aggressive
and world dominating ideals. Studying Hitler's biography Mind Coumph, as well as a
plethora of his other writings, it was clear to doctor Murray that Hitler did
indeed struggle to come to terms with his own sexuality in one way or another,
and that this struggle and his associated physical failings in the bedroom caused him
to express exorbitant cravings for superiority. Now, doctor Murray believed that right below
his grandiose surface was a terrified man struggling to understand himself and the world around
him, and that the only thing that made sense to him was to burden
all doubt. The Allied intelligence agencies viewed this information with interest and began hatching
a plan to bring out that side of him that they believed lay just beneath
the surface, and in doing so rob him of much of his image,
stature, and status amongst his German supporters. Their plan was simple. They
were going to lace Hitler's food with estrogen so that within a few months his
femininity would come to the foe, and more importantly, that his aggression levels
would drop, resulting in a slackening off of German military efforts. More so,
even than the military benefits of the plan was the possibility of this plot
embarrassing and discrediting the Nazi leader in the eyes of those who looked up to
him. The Allies believed that the hormones in his food would aid in the
rapid onset of hair loss, and would tamper with his infamous rally speeches by
altering his voice to a more high pitched soprano. Now you may be asking,
if you have access to his food, why not just poison it and
have him done with once and for all. Well, my friends, if
you're asking that question, you may not be cut out for military counterintelligence just
yet. You see, Hitler was a paranoid man. He had survived multiple
assassination attempts from both inside and outside of his own military, and had long
since put in place measures to try and mitigate against anything like that happening again.
So poisoning his food was not an option because he had a horde of
food tasters, just like the kings of olden day history, to make sure
that his food was okay to consume before he himself would eat any of it,
Which brings us to the long term genius of this plan. You see,
First of all, estrogen is tasteless, and so it wouldn't be picked
up by himself or any of his tasters. Secondly, the plan was never
meant as a one and done solution. Rather, they would have agents on
the inside slowly smuggling the issue into his meals over the course of a few
months. This was planned so that the changes in his personality and or body
would happen imperceptibly slowly until it was too late. Now, as wild and
out there as it sounds, this plan was actually plausible. The Allies had
agents in the right places to administer the hormones into his food, and they
had the means by which to smuggle the hormones to those agents. But for
whatever reason, when it came to crunch time, they put the plan on
hold and ultimately found the war had ended before they could ever revisit it as
an idea. As the years pass and more and more documents become declassified,
we are constantly being treated to a barrage of bizarre but brilliant stories from history
that have just been waiting to be told. In some of these documents,
we find that the British and Allied forces were in fact not alone in their
food based wartime plotting. Recently discovered Nazi documents speak of their own far fetched
schemes to murder and maime Allied troops in the event that Germany lost the war.
In their withdrawal of towns and villagers. They planned to leave behind poisoned
sausages, poisoned chocolate, and even poisoned coffee in the hopes that Allied troops
would find them and then consume them. They had even given out secret powders
to sympathetic supporters, and they occupied towns and villages in the event of their
withdrawal, that these supporters should pretend to welcome in the Allied forces, offer
to make them food, and then dust the powder over the meals. Upon
the consumption of the meal, the Allied soldier would die and agonizing death.
Now, there are no stories of any of these sorts of things actually happening
towards the end of the war, as I believe for most of the soldiers
they were just too tired of fighting, killing and dying. But for a
while towards the end, after capturing German spies who spoke of these plans under
the name Operation Werewolf Commanders. We're concerned enough about the possibility of it happening
as to forbid any soldiers from eating German food found in these towns, upon
the pain of very harsh consequences should they not comply. As with all of
these sorts of bizarre stories from history, and especially these ones that so very
nearly happened. I've always left with a sense of wonder and amusement upon contemplating
the what ifs? Should any of these plans actually have gone ahead? And
maybe if all of these Marvel movies are right, and there are infinite multiverses
just waiting to be explored well in some way, and at least one of
them, there's a very good chance that Hitler grew breasts. Now that's a
Marvel movie I'd watch. This show is made entirely by me, Nick Charlie
Key, with our theme music having been made by the enigma that is the
mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to support the show, the simplest way
to do that is over on our Patreon account. There's just one option,
so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me keep producing the show,
and in return, you'll get your name forever etched onto our supporters Wall
of Fame over on our website, and then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So until next time, bu petit. Wow. Yeah,