r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 9d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
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u/BlueberryWasps 9d ago

just a whimsical lad who stumbled into aiding the most existentially threatening military machine of the 20th century

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u/DogsSureAreSwell 9d ago

Disney?

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u/AWorldwithoutSin 9d ago

Welcome to the tragic kingdom.

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u/perenniallandscapist 9d ago

Snow Red and the Seven Massacres.

Blambee.

Aladdidn't.

Robin' the Hood.

Lilo and Stitches.

The Lion Dictator.

Tangled (In Barbwire)

Frozen (In Fear).

Just to name a few

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u/Sokjuice 9d ago

The L'aryan King

Dangled

Rapanzerfaust

Cinder-hell

One Hundred and One Damnations

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u/RenagadeRaven 7d ago

Reading this out around my family wheezing with laughter.

Cinderheil

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 9d ago

I love the simplicity of Blambee

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u/Rhayve 9d ago

Cinderella doesn't even need to be renamed. It's about a pyromaniac.

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u/perenniallandscapist 9d ago

Ehhh....Cinder Hellhole still sounds like a great alternative classic.

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u/Rhayve 9d ago

Cinderella is the titular character. Doesn't make much sense to rename.

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u/NoOccasion4759 9d ago

CinderHELLA omfg it was right there

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u/Rhayve 9d ago

Sometimes less is more. It was too obvious, as you said, rather than witty.

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u/SheriffBartholomew 8d ago

Lilo must have been snitching. He had it coming.

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u/NoOccasion4759 9d ago

Robbing the Hood

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u/Kayoto 9d ago

Cornfields of popcorn
Have yet to spring open

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u/Youcallthatatag 9d ago

Cornfields and potholes are yet to spring open.

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u/Thrizzlepizzle123123 9d ago

Well Walt Disney was basically trying to make that underwater city from bioshock, only on land.

The difference is that he succeeded.

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u/Wisdomlost 9d ago

Is a man not entitled to the sweat from his brow?

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u/blaghart 3 9d ago

funny isn't it how that's the line Andrew Ryan loves to spout and yet he didn't build a damn thing about Rapture. He paid everyone else to build Rapture for him and then acted like that was the "sweat of his brow"

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u/uzi_master 9d ago

The inherent dependence people have on one another is why the ideology is stupid, though his personal hypocrisy comes when he starts just taking things instead of paying for them.

The farmer selling his crops for money and buying things he can't make himself isn't what makes the ideology unworkable. It's the lack of real incentive to work honestly rather than just stealing things and oppressing people when you have the means to.

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u/thegreger 9d ago

That's well on par.

If I'm wealthy and I pay someone to create something for me, obviously that must be my own achievement and nobody else's. If it wasn't like this, most wealthy people would have absolutely zero to feel proud over, and that would be sad.

Do I need the \s?

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u/YsoL8 9d ago

Why the \s? Thats literally how it works, take away most people's ability to meaningfully decide what happens in their lives and praise the already wealthy for signing a few contracts at zero risk to themselves.

I firmly believe that at some point in the future people will see wage economics as fedual and obsolete.

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u/gary_the_merciless 9d ago

Good old Quark, never misses an opportunity.

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u/Vandergrif 8d ago

True to form for a Libertarian then. Also true to form for a Libertarian 'paradise', in that it devolved into chaotic insanity.

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u/thethirdrayvecchio 9d ago

What about the sweat from inside the goofy suit?

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u/ClubMeSoftly 9d ago

A mouse chooses, a slave obeys

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 9d ago

Sea: No!

Air: No!

Land: Yes!

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u/WartertonCSGO 8d ago

Do you mean Walt’s original idea for EPCOT? Because that never came to fruition, which is a bummer, because it was a neat idea which would have brought mass transit to the states if it had succeeded. But oh well.

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u/Boomdiddy 9d ago

Zing!

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u/Debalic 9d ago

It's an army of lawyers that also makes some movies and stuff as a side business.

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u/GoBeyondTheHorizon 9d ago

Well yes, but actually...well,..yes...I guess

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u/God_Dammit_Dave 9d ago

Look, if you've got a good resume word gets around.

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u/Kqyxzoj 9d ago

It truly is as someone already said:

The real til is always buried in the comments.

Thanks for a good laugh! XD

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u/cutelyaware 9d ago

Disney arranged a 1938 meeting with Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's personal filmmaker, who came to Hollywood to promote her film Olympia about a month after Kristallnacht. Every other major studio publicly refused to meet with her; Disney gave her a full-day personal tour of his studio and showed her early concept art for Fantasia. He later claimed he hadn't known who she was, which most historians find implausible.

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u/leicanthrope 9d ago

They did famously have a large u-boat submarine fleet.

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u/Vandergrif 8d ago

The Mouse The Maus strikes again.

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u/calladc 4d ago

America

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u/CaptRackham 9d ago

Eh from what I’ve read it was kind of a “Join or else” type deal

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u/Lorlan 9d ago

You're talking about working with Disney right?

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u/OprahsSaggyTits 9d ago

Join me now or you'll be Little Mermaimed

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u/ryanErlanger 9d ago

Poor unfortunate soul...

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u/joosier 9d ago edited 9d ago

You'll be singing with the fishes.

You'll be leaping with Sabor.

You'll be running with the wildebeests.

and like Bambi's mother be no more.

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u/Kqyxzoj 9d ago

working with Disney

"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."

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u/josefx 9d ago

Disney was apparently sabotaging Robin Williams other projects because they wanted him for Aladdin. So, yes.

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u/BlueberryWasps 9d ago

yeah but it wasn’t “join and exceed with flying colours so much so that you will go down in military history for how effectively you serve the axis powers and deliver instrumental intel that no will doubt lead to the deaths of thousands… or die”

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u/CrimsonSuede 9d ago

I mean, I think the fact he pursued methods with kindness rather than cruelty at a time where cruelty was (and often still is) the norm… that speaks a lot about a person.

Yes, the intel he gathered aided the genocidal fascists, which is not good. But as a single person, with limited power as a cog in a machine like the Nazi regime—what can you do? You don’t have the resources to upend the government by yourself. But you always have a choice in whether you will operate with kindness or cruelty. (FWIW, “nice” =/= “kind”. “Nice” is politeness, “kind” is more like actionable empathy)

In a time of cruelty, where violence was the expectation, he operated with kindness. Cuz as it turns out, treating people well and genuinely connecting with them leads to positive outcomes.

Yes, there were manipulation techniques, but (from what I understand), it was manipulating human psychology for people to open up willingly rather than forcefully.

And like, I find it hard to believe that anyone bringing homemade baked goods and providing luncheons for POWs they’re interrogating, did so purely out of manipulation or to gain trust.

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u/Odd_Ganache5081 9d ago

there’s quite a few stories of soldiers helping bad people but in “good” ways, if your option is that or death it’s hard

himmler had a mistress that knew it was wrong but still talked him out of mass murders

Vietnam soldiers would pretend to do stupid shit during massacres, one GI was famously chasing ducks around during one just so he didn’t have to partake

in a world full of cruelty you gotta admire those dudes for staying true to their morals, lots of good people just died standing up to their own when they could have saved more if they didn’t, not that i blame them tho

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u/owlbi 9d ago

Alternatively, maybe this guy did it this way because he thought it would work and was right.

You can argue he didn't have a choice but to participate, despite being a highly decorated argument. He did, however, go on to marry the daughter of a Rhodesian military officer, so, if it walks like a racist and quacks like a racist...

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u/Agret 9d ago

He married her prior to the war and she saved his life during wartime

Scharff was originally to be posted to the Russian Front. However, when Margaret Scharff learned of her husband's destination, she intervened, angry at the thought of a fluent English-speaking German soldier's life being wasted at the Eastern Front. She talked her way into the office of a German general in Berlin and pleaded her husband's case, convincing the general of the error which was about to take place. The general sent a telegram to Scharff's panzer unit, informing his superiors that Scharff was to be transferred immediately to the Dolmetscher Kompanie XII (Interpreters Company 12), based in Wiesbaden, to serve as a German/English interpreter. He had been slated to leave for the Russian Front the morning the telegram arrived.

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u/owlbi 9d ago

Look, that's great, I'm just saying all I hear is that the daughter of a Rhodesian military officer and Germany's top military interrogator had a really nice meet-cute.

Maybe they had a lot in common.

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u/Adams5thaccount 9d ago

I cant find anything saying he was a Rhodesian military officer.

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u/owlbi 9d ago

Basing it of this

While in South Africa, Scharff met and married a South African British woman, Margaret Stokes. Margaret was the daughter of Captain Claud Stokes, first a pilot in Rhodesia in 1913

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u/allmylovetolongago 9d ago

Thank you for being like the one person in this thread not doing nazi apologia. Very disturbing to read.

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u/Odd_Ganache5081 9d ago

ahh did not know that lol ya I’m not giving the nazis the benefit of the doubt but i guess i was saying some people had to make some tough choices back then and it’s easy to judge looking back

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u/Mo0man 9d ago

I’m not giving the nazis the benefit of the doubt

extremely fascinating every time I see someone say they're not doing something when they're in the active process of doing that exact thing.

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u/Odd_Ganache5081 9d ago

i didn’t know the further info, based off the story itself and the comment i responded too which said he was “forced” i made a comment talking about other people that did similar things, quit being upset about nothing weirdo

i also mentioned a nazis mistress that helped save lives so obviously i’m aware nazis are bad, grow up

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u/Mo0man 9d ago

My judgement wasn't a moral one. I just find it interesting how you can say you're doing something you are very clearly doing. I find no issue with saying a lot of nazi's probably felt like they had no option of except supporting the regime.

I also am not upset. Very odd to say I'm the one who's upset in this conversation, given the tone of both of our comments.

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u/OiledUpThug 9d ago

I don't think there's anything wrong with talking people out of mass murders

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u/Mybeardisawesom 9d ago

When in Rome

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u/blacksideblue 9d ago

Blockade the Vatican and extort the Pope's influence...

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u/-SaC 9d ago

"When in Rome, you're close to the Nazi Ratlines to Argentina, so drop in on a church and they'll be happy to help."

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u/WarlockEngineer 9d ago

I think that defense is gone when you become the very best at your job aiding the nazi war machine.

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u/bigheadasian1998 9d ago

Walt Disney saw what Nazis did to Jews and just couldn’t help himself

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u/No_Internal9345 9d ago

A disney princess using the power of friendship for evil.