Speaker 1: Hey friends, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
Speaker 1: I've chosen our twenty eighteen episode on Adidas Versus Puma.
Speaker 1: It's the German version of the Hatfield Versus the McCoys,
Speaker 1: except with cool sports apparel rather than overalls. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I noticed at the end of this
Speaker 1: episode is that sometimes when we're just doing our thing,
Speaker 1: talking back and forth like we do, we'll have some
Speaker 1: throwaway comment or side conversation or something that takes on
Speaker 1: much greater significance years on. It's one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about talking out loud for seventeen years at any rate.
Speaker 1: Sarrak Vodka, anyone.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Andrew over there, the guest producer.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing Adidas, Chuck is wearing Puma, and Andrew's wearing Reebok.
Speaker 1: None of us are speaking to one another right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. Andrew was wearing white Rebock high tops
Speaker 2: with bronze pantyhose and orange Dolphin running shorts. Well any
Speaker 2: claims he doesn't work for Hooters part time.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh, yes, I like that.
Speaker 2: You didn't know that because that means you don't go
Speaker 2: into Hooters.
Speaker 1: No, No, I've seen pictures on TV.
Speaker 2: I had to go. Actually, I've only been there once
Speaker 2: and that was when I worked at that awful job
Speaker 2: with the Chicken Killers, and it was on a stupid
Speaker 2: work trip. They made me go on and that was
Speaker 2: like the only place in town. Yep, And all these
Speaker 2: yocals that I worked with were like, yeah, man, let's
Speaker 2: go to Hooters. And I went in there and I
Speaker 2: was just like, oh my lord, what is they were
Speaker 2: trapped in time.
Speaker 1: I've been there a couple of times actually, when I
Speaker 1: was a younger, younger. Man.
Speaker 2: It's the same, I imagine it is.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. And I was there on my twenty first
Speaker 1: birthday in Jacksonville because it was the only place. It
Speaker 1: was like a Tuesday night or something, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is not the best twenty first birthday
Speaker 1: all ever have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hey, we don't want to yuck your yum.
Speaker 2: If you're if you work at Hooters or if you
Speaker 2: love going there, more power to you. Sure, sure, why not? Right?
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome that you said you don't want to
Speaker 1: yuck anyone's yum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago when, uh, it was like the Costanza moment
Speaker 2: when you thought of a line after the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when you were talking about how I was crazy for
Speaker 2: not liking olives and I got on to you, I
Speaker 2: should have said, don't yum my yuck.
Speaker 1: Right, or I was just funny you said that. Because
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that later on too, I thought
Speaker 1: that I should have said, well, actually, I'm not yucking
Speaker 1: your yum. I'm yucking your yuck, which is different. H
Speaker 1: you know, think about it, man, are you thinking about it?
Speaker 2: I think it's weird that we both thought about that
Speaker 2: moment afterward. I think so too, because usually we just
Speaker 2: go back into our hyperbolic chambers and float for the
Speaker 2: next six days.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great life. We have pretty nice just soaking
Speaker 1: in our own urine. God, don't you pee in your
Speaker 1: hyperbaric chamber?
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but I mean that's how you're supposed to
Speaker 2: fill it up, right.
Speaker 1: Right, So chuck. Obviously, what we're talking about today is
Speaker 1: athletic gear, sports shoes in particular, and two of the
Speaker 1: most well known sports brands in the entire world, Adidas
Speaker 1: and Puma. And some people might not know this, chuck,
Speaker 1: but Adidas and Puma were founded by two brothers who
Speaker 1: spent many decades of their lives not speaking to one another.
Speaker 1: And some people might even know that that they are
Speaker 1: rival brands founded by rival brothers, but I guarantee they
Speaker 1: don't know the full story behind one of the most
Speaker 1: bitter family rivalries of all time that gave us Adidas
Speaker 1: and Puma. And it is extraordinarily fascinating. There's there's Nazis,
Speaker 1: there's Run DMC, there's all this stuff all rolled into
Speaker 1: one and it turns out that this is it's one
Speaker 1: of the better stories I've ever come across.
Speaker 2: That's right. And before we dive into that awesome story,
Speaker 2: to head off emails, I know, I said hyperbolic inside
Speaker 2: of Hepperbarrick. No such thing as a hyperbolic chamber.
Speaker 1: I know it could be it's a shamber that it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm the biggest shamer.
Speaker 2: Ever probably so. All right, So this is a great story,
Speaker 2: and I had heard bits and pieces of this over
Speaker 2: the years, But it is interesting that Nazis and Run
Speaker 2: DMC and feuding brothers all come together to cause you
Speaker 2: know my Pumas. I've been a Puma guy, sure for many,
Speaker 2: many years, even though I did have a pair of
Speaker 2: Adidas Superstars at one point, but they're two.
Speaker 1: Flashy.
Speaker 2: No, I liked them, but they were you know, white
Speaker 2: shoes aren't good on me. I get get them too dirty,
Speaker 2: too quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So now I just vary my Pumas between the black
Speaker 2: and the black suede and sort of like the olive
Speaker 2: green swade.
Speaker 1: Usually. You know, Adidas makes non white shoes you could try.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but those classic white Superstars with the three blue stripes,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, those are the ones.
Speaker 1: The shelters. Yeah, well, I mean they have some other
Speaker 1: cool ones too, like Gazelle's are pretty cool, like the
Speaker 1: flat bottomed soccer shoe.
Speaker 2: And yeah, my brother was in du i worred Gazell's
Speaker 2: for a while when I was a soccer poser. But
Speaker 2: my brother was into Stan Smiths.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, those are cool too. I've got some stand Smiths.
Speaker 1: They are like this blue mesh. And now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, if I have a loyalty to either one,
Speaker 1: it would be Adidas. But I don't. I don't consider
Speaker 1: myself like Adidas loyal.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a Puma guy just because they look good
Speaker 2: on me in their comfy But I was also a
Speaker 2: low top Converse All Star guy for a while. And
Speaker 2: in high school. Of course, in the preppy days, I
Speaker 2: was all about the tree torns.
Speaker 1: I never had tree torns.
Speaker 2: It was a look.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know for sure I was comfy. I was
Speaker 1: right after tree torns when I started to get into
Speaker 1: shoes case wiss we're in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never had any of those.
Speaker 1: Those are cool.
Speaker 2: And then what was the other shoe? The Vans. There's
Speaker 2: a particular style of vans that I really still enjoy.
Speaker 1: The slip on ones with the black and white checks.
Speaker 2: No, those are cool, but I don't know if I
Speaker 2: can pull those off at forty seven.
Speaker 1: You could, but people will laugh at you behind your back.
Speaker 2: That's already happening. Yeah, I'll remember at some point.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, just shout it out.
Speaker 2: And plus, I just wanted to cover our basis by
Speaker 2: saying as many name brands as possible.
Speaker 1: Don't forget British Nights, not the b KS yep, So chuck, Yes,
Speaker 1: let's start the story. Shall We were gonna have to
Speaker 1: get in the way back machine for this.
Speaker 2: One, okay, and this is also full of urine.
Speaker 1: So that was you though. Let's let everybody know. We're
Speaker 1: going to go back to the end of World War
Speaker 1: One in Germany and we're going to go to a
Speaker 1: little town that I'm going to let you pronounce because
Speaker 1: I've been trying and I cannot do it.
Speaker 2: And I thought it was interesting that we're recording this
Speaker 2: now because we just acknowledged and recognized the one hundred
Speaker 2: years removed from.
Speaker 1: World War One, the end of World War One, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the beginning of the Spanish flu that killed like
Speaker 1: three times as many people right after it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another celebration.
Speaker 1: Right, So we're going back there, We're just going back
Speaker 1: one hundred days almost to the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so the name of that town is Hertzo Generach.
Speaker 1: Well I could have done at least that good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hertzel Generach.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly said that like that. Here, let's play
Speaker 1: this Helzel Oh that's how it said. Okay, okay, so
Speaker 1: maybe we should just have that voice say it for us,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to it. Turns out the locals
Speaker 1: just called the town Hurtzo. Sure, that's all we'll call it,
Speaker 1: but it's a little tiny village in Bavaria.
Speaker 2: They can't even pronounce it.
Speaker 1: No, They're like, we're not even going to try. And
Speaker 1: we were born here. Don't be too hard on yourself, Josh,
Speaker 1: is what they're saying. So in Hertzo, it's a little
Speaker 1: town in Bavaria, a little village. There's a river running
Speaker 1: through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes. And in around nineteen eighteen, one of the villagers
Speaker 1: who was born there, a guy named Adolph Dassler, takes
Speaker 1: a seat in his mother's laundry. His mother ran a
Speaker 1: laundry out of their house, and he starts cobbling athletic shoes,
Speaker 1: specifically track shoes, I think, to begin with, and he
Speaker 1: had a knack for it. He started making shoes that
Speaker 1: athletes actually wanted pretty early on, pretty much out of
Speaker 1: the gate, and he started doing so well so quickly
Speaker 1: that within a year or two he asked his older brother,
Speaker 1: who is by far the more outgoing extrovert sales many
Speaker 1: type of the of the two brothers, his older brother Rudolph,
Speaker 1: to start selling his shoes, start kind of creating a
Speaker 1: business operation out of it. And I think within just
Speaker 1: a few years they had twelve employees, and they founded
Speaker 1: a company called Sports Farbrick Gabruder Dostler, which they call
Speaker 1: Getta for short.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Gabruda is, you know, for Brothers. So Gabruda
Speaker 2: Dossler is the Dossler Brothers ship company. And people were like, wow,
Speaker 2: so I don't have to wear my high heeled leather
Speaker 2: sport boot any longer, I bitch.
Speaker 1: I don't have to tie some sharp rocks to the
Speaker 1: bottom on my feet.
Speaker 2: So their nicknames you'll probably here is referred to them
Speaker 2: as Addi and Rudy are ud I and you'll know,
Speaker 2: if you kind of put your head to it, you
Speaker 2: can see where this is headed.
Speaker 1: This is exciting.
Speaker 2: So the laundry business wasn't going well, so like you said,
Speaker 2: little Addi started making these shoes and things started going great.
Speaker 2: And it turns out they made a pretty good team
Speaker 2: at first because they complimented one another in what they
Speaker 2: were and what they were good at. So Addi was
Speaker 2: creative and he was the brains, and Rudyo was a
Speaker 2: little more extroverted and he was a really good salesperson.
Speaker 1: Right, So they start to do a pretty good, pretty
Speaker 1: good business and it's if you're like, well, it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing to start doing as a younger man, to
Speaker 1: start making supports shoes. It turns out that Hurtzo is
Speaker 1: like a shoemaking town. It has a long tradition of shoemaking.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, for example, their population was thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred, but they had one hundred and twelve shoemakers.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's a high shoemaker to regular population ratio. So it's
Speaker 1: not the weirdest thing ever. But they're plotting along. They're
Speaker 1: making really high quality shoes. Like right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: Atti had a real, like I said, a talent for
Speaker 1: making high quality athletic shoes. And one of the first
Speaker 1: things they made were track shoe that one of these
Speaker 1: articles says looks like a ballet slipper with some nails
Speaker 1: coming out of the front of it, the front bottom
Speaker 1: of the four soule, and it was it just changed everything.
Speaker 1: It was a genuinely great track shoe. At the time,
Speaker 1: the people who were running sprinters, who were running track,
Speaker 1: they didn't have any traction when they were taking off.
Speaker 1: This gave them traction and just gave them an immediate
Speaker 1: leg up. Over the competition, and so the athletes like
Speaker 1: really really liked the shoes that they were putting out,
Speaker 1: and the companies started to grow and grow and grow,
Speaker 1: and then I think the nineteen twenty eight Olympics in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles is where they really debuted their shoes and
Speaker 1: a German sprinter was wearing a pair of their track shoes.
Speaker 1: He won was a bronze medal, but he won a
Speaker 1: bronze medal wearing the Dassler Brothers.
Speaker 2: Shoes as a German sprinter exactly, so that should say
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 2: So he was wearing these track spikes and this helped him,
Speaker 2: This got him a little bit of notoriety. But it
Speaker 2: was really in nineteen thirty six in Berlin at that
Speaker 2: very very famous Olympic Games, where a young athlete named
Speaker 2: Jesse Owens dominated and literally tore up the track wearing
Speaker 2: those Gibruda Dossler track spikes with Hitler in the stands,
Speaker 2: and people are like, those shoes are amazing, and Jesse
Speaker 2: Owens was like, it's kind of me, but yeah, sure
Speaker 2: the shoes are great, but I'm also a vastly superior
Speaker 2: athlete to the rest of these jumps out here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that was the Olympics that Jesse Owens famously
Speaker 1: finished in first place, won the gold and did another
Speaker 1: lap around the track, went up into the stands and
Speaker 1: slapped Hitler right in the face.
Speaker 2: Oh Man slapt his little stash right off that lip.
Speaker 1: So the fact that Jesse Owens was wearing these shoes
Speaker 1: immediately brought international attention to get the Gebruder Dossler company.
Speaker 1: So they I saw one article that said, had World
Speaker 1: War Two not happened, this business would have just gone
Speaker 1: global immediately, and it started to. But then when World
Speaker 1: War two broke out, and that was the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six Olympics, I think I said the nineteen twenty eight Olympics.
Speaker 1: It was I think the nineteen thirty two Olympics that
Speaker 1: I talked about first. But at the nineteen thirty six Olympics,
Speaker 1: within just a couple of years, the Nazis invaded Poland
Speaker 1: and were running Germany, and World War Two kicked off
Speaker 1: in earnest and the time for sports apparel kind of
Speaker 1: got derailed a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, just like in the United States and actually
Speaker 2: in countries all over the world, the war effort was
Speaker 2: It's not like they were just like, all right, we
Speaker 2: have a few companies that manufacture military needs for our military,
Speaker 2: and that's going to be good enough. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: we need to really co opt kind of any manufacturing
Speaker 2: that we want to to go toward the war effort.
Speaker 2: And certainly Germany did that along with the US and
Speaker 2: kind of everyone else and everything from Hugo Boss to
Speaker 2: Lufthansa to these little cheemakers in the small town in Bavaria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their factories were co opted for the war effort basically,
Speaker 1: and what the Dossler Brothers factory ended up making are
Speaker 1: something called the ponzer Shrek, which means the tank Terror
Speaker 1: and it was modeled after the American Bazukah, which was
Speaker 1: one of the first shoulder mounted, recoil less rocket launchers
Speaker 1: that had enough power to punch right through a tank
Speaker 1: and blow up everybody inside. They were nasty little buggers.
Speaker 1: And the ponzer Shrek was the German version of the Bazuka.
Speaker 1: And the German version of the Bazuka was created in
Speaker 1: the Dossler Brothers shoe factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's December nineteen forty three is when they kind
Speaker 2: of made the full switch in these little you know,
Speaker 2: German ladies who were sewing shoes the week before were
Speaker 2: now manufacturing German bozukahs. The good news is by this time,
Speaker 2: because these things were really effective actually, and had they been,
Speaker 2: had they been brought into the war sooner, things might
Speaker 2: have really changed. But thankfully, by this time, even though
Speaker 2: they were doing the job, it was too late. The
Speaker 2: tides had turned and the Allies were steaming toward victory,
Speaker 2: and even though they started pumping out these bazukahs, it
Speaker 2: was sort of too little, too late.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you ever wondered about the name bazuka?
Speaker 2: Not until just now?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well I did, and I was like, what does
Speaker 1: a bazuka mean? Apparently there was a an entertainer, I
Speaker 1: think he might have been vaudeville, kind of a country act,
Speaker 1: and he Joe. I can't remember his name, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: He created a musical instrument out of brass called a
Speaker 1: bazuka and it was kind of like a trumpet a
Speaker 1: trombone together. It was a weird little instrument, but he
Speaker 1: was popular enough that and the bazuka looked like his
Speaker 1: instrument enough that it became called the bazukah. This shoulder
Speaker 1: mounted rocket launcher.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I thought so too, Sure, why not?
Speaker 1: But the point is is that all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the Germans, who had been totally helpless against the American
Speaker 1: tank divisions, were messing the American tank divisions up. And
Speaker 1: the source of their their power was the Dossler Brothers
Speaker 1: shoe factory. And you mentioned there are seamstresses welding bazukas together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're also in their factory. There was forced labor of
Speaker 1: French pow.
Speaker 2: You sure.
Speaker 1: So they had slaves and seamstresses working together to create
Speaker 1: bazookas to take out the American tank divisions or the
Speaker 1: Allied tank divisions thanks to the companies that would eventually
Speaker 1: become Adidas and Puma.
Speaker 2: All right, that's a great setup. That's thank you. That's
Speaker 2: only part one into what is a very interesting story.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna take a little break and we'll come
Speaker 2: back and talk about what went wrong with these two
Speaker 2: brothers right after this as why why s k as.
Speaker 1: You should definitely should know our childhood each s k.
Speaker 2: All Right, So we're gotta we gotta go back in
Speaker 2: time a little bit, because we we sped right up
Speaker 2: to World War Two.
Speaker 1: It was just too interesting to wait to talk about
Speaker 1: any longer.
Speaker 2: But we need to go back to about nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: three because these brothers ended up fracturing in a big,
Speaker 2: big way. And there have been, you know, some legendary
Speaker 2: sibling rivalries through the years, but this is really one
Speaker 2: of the greats. And I believe even Rudy wrote as
Speaker 2: an older man, the relation to my brother was ideal
Speaker 2: from nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three. Then his
Speaker 2: young wife tried to interfere with business Mattis, although she
Speaker 2: with us sixteen years had no experience at all, and
Speaker 2: the warfare agan. So here's how the story goes, is it.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty three, Otti was indeed married to a
Speaker 2: sixteen year old, which seems very creepy now, but back
Speaker 2: then it was not the strangest thing in the world.
Speaker 2: Slightly less creepy, slightly less creepy. Well, they just it
Speaker 2: was a different time, Okay. So he was married to
Speaker 2: a sixteen year old and tried to get involved in
Speaker 2: the business. Rudy was not happy about this, and they
Speaker 2: all lived together. The two brothers and their wives all
Speaker 2: lived together in the same townhouse. Yeah, which is not
Speaker 2: a great recipe. For success anyway, right, you know, you
Speaker 2: need to have your own place.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine that all the little bickering and
Speaker 1: snide remarks and just all the stuff that if you
Speaker 1: have two couples that don't really really really like and
Speaker 1: love each other living together will will accumulate. If you
Speaker 1: translate that to a business relationship, it's going to be
Speaker 1: hard on the business than it was, for sure. So
Speaker 1: there was apparently a series of just little things like that.
Speaker 1: But as far as the family legend goes, the real
Speaker 1: break happened during World War Two when the Allies were
Speaker 1: bombing the village of Herzo and the Rudy and his
Speaker 1: wife made it made their way to the bunker, the
Speaker 1: bomb shelter, and shortly after that, Audi and his wife,
Speaker 1: I think her name is Kata, they made their way
Speaker 1: into the bomb shelter and when they entered, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: it looks like the bastards are here again. And Oddi
Speaker 1: apparently went to his grave saying that he was referring
Speaker 1: to the Allied bombers, but Rudy took it that Oddie
Speaker 1: was talking about Rudy and his wife, and apparently that
Speaker 1: was the final straw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was true evidence that things were really bad,
Speaker 2: if something as simple, possibly as just a little misunderstanding
Speaker 2: of whether or not the bastards were the Allied's bombing
Speaker 2: or you my brother and my sister in law. Right,
Speaker 2: So I mean things are pretty bad if this is
Speaker 2: what did it.
Speaker 1: Right. So that's World War two still going on, and
Speaker 1: at some point Rudy gets called to go fight for
Speaker 1: the Nazis. He gets drafted, so Rudy has to go
Speaker 1: to war, and the whole time he's away, he's he's
Speaker 1: so this rift has already happened, So he's suspecting one
Speaker 1: that his brother and his brother's wife plotted to get
Speaker 1: him drafted, and he can't get that idea out of
Speaker 1: his head so much so that apparently multiple times he
Speaker 1: deserted his post to go home to make sure that
Speaker 1: he wasn't being ousted from the business he'd built with
Speaker 1: his brother. And then he gets arrested for desertion, and
Speaker 1: he's sure that his little brother ratted him out for desertion,
Speaker 1: which he may have, and so he's arrested. He's held
Speaker 1: for a while, and as he's making his way back
Speaker 1: after the war to Hurtze, he gets picked up by
Speaker 1: the Allies for under suspicion of being a Gestopo agent.
Speaker 1: He's sure again his little brother Addi who got him
Speaker 1: this time landed in a pow camp that he stays
Speaker 1: him for a little while, and it turns out he
Speaker 1: was right. There is documentary evidence from an American officer
Speaker 1: who took the accusation down. And apparently it was Addi
Speaker 1: who went to the Americans and said, my brother is
Speaker 1: a Gestapo agent. He may want to arrest him. This
Speaker 1: is the level of stuff he's others are doing to
Speaker 1: one another. And the rift just kept getting bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger. There's one other thing we have to say,
Speaker 1: because the wife, the younger wife, the sixteen year old Kata,
Speaker 1: gets historically blamed for creating this rift. I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways unfairly sure, she's also the one
Speaker 1: who saved the family business single handedly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in April nineteen forty five, the Americans march
Speaker 2: into Hurze. Those tanks pull up in front of that
Speaker 2: factory and the soldiers, American soldiers are out there like
Speaker 2: kind of going over what they should do. Should we
Speaker 2: destroy this building or not.
Speaker 1: This is the place where the Ponzer shreks were made.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Audi's wife Kata comes out and she basically
Speaker 2: walks right up to these enemy soldiers and says, we
Speaker 2: only want to make shoes. We only desire to make shoes.
Speaker 1: And they're like, why are you talking like Colonel Klink and.
Speaker 2: She said, okay, And that's basically like she convinced them
Speaker 2: to spare the factory. They did so, and not only that,
Speaker 2: the Air Force US Air Force set up operations there
Speaker 2: at their air base and realized that they really like
Speaker 2: these shoes.
Speaker 1: Well, they found out that this was the company that
Speaker 1: made Jesse Owen's famous track shoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they went off the charts. They started
Speaker 2: getting these huge orders for sports teams, American sports teams
Speaker 2: because of this.
Speaker 1: So this is all going on. It's all starting while
Speaker 1: Rudy's off in a pow camp because his brother ratted
Speaker 1: him out, and the business all of a sudden is
Speaker 1: starting to turn international. Like you said, people around the
Speaker 1: world are taking notice of this thanks to the American
Speaker 1: gis who were coming back with this Getta sports wear.
Speaker 1: And when Rudy comes back, it's done. His brothers ratted
Speaker 1: him out. There was the whole thing in the bomb shelter,
Speaker 1: and the brothers split the company that they built together.
Speaker 1: They split Gabbruder, Dessler and or Dostler and they go
Speaker 1: off and found their own companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fifteen years after that bunker incident.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So it was it took a long time to finally
Speaker 2: boil over, right, and in between there was another war.
Speaker 2: They were not good Nazis, we should point out kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, they were members of the Nazi Party, and
Speaker 2: Rudy did get drafted, but like he said, he deserted
Speaker 2: his post a lot and they, you know, they really
Speaker 2: did just want to sell shoes.
Speaker 1: Right. He's like Dwight Shrewds uncle or grandfather who spent
Speaker 1: a lot of the war in an Allied pow camp.
Speaker 2: That's right. So, like you said, they split up the company.
Speaker 2: And we mentioned earlier that this river ran through the
Speaker 2: center of town, and I said significant, and it is
Speaker 2: significant because it literally divided the town and they set
Speaker 2: up their business. It's not like one of them said,
Speaker 2: well I'm going off to Berlin. Right, They just set
Speaker 2: up camp on opposite sides of that river. ADDI Dossler said,
Speaker 2: I will name my company Adi Das.
Speaker 1: Actually, at first they named it Adas.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but everyone said that stinks.
Speaker 1: Well, no, that was a different one. That one. There
Speaker 1: was a children's footwear line already called Oddis, so he
Speaker 1: added the eye and turned it into Adidas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rudy went with Ruda, and everyone said that no
Speaker 2: one's going to buy a shoes named Ruda, especially in
Speaker 2: the United States, And he said, I don't understand, and
Speaker 2: they said, don't worry about it. So somehow he got
Speaker 2: Puma out of Ruda, right, which I don't get, but
Speaker 2: it's a name that's stuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it works. Puma is definitely better than Ruda
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So these two go off and form directly competing companies
Speaker 1: that split from the same company that the brothers had
Speaker 1: founded together, and Adidas and Puma started making pretty good
Speaker 1: headway out of the gate. First, Rudy had the sales team,
Speaker 1: had the marketing team, had the ability to move some product.
Speaker 1: But Audi had the technical know how, the dedication to
Speaker 1: making high quality footwear that athletes, like professional athletes, wanted
Speaker 1: to wear, and so he could get his shoes onto
Speaker 1: athletes who would wear them on the world stage. And
Speaker 1: eventually his his I guess his tech won out over
Speaker 1: his brothers, and from a very early stage on, Adidas
Speaker 1: has always led Puma, at least as far as like
Speaker 1: sales revenue goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, there were mistakes from both of
Speaker 2: them along the way business wise. One of the big
Speaker 2: ones for Puma early on was that Rudolph got into
Speaker 2: a spat with a coach of the German national soccer team,
Speaker 2: and of course all that did was open the door
Speaker 2: for his brother and Adidas to go in there and
Speaker 2: say what about the shoes, which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: And so at the nineteen fifty four World Cup, Germany
Speaker 2: wears Adidas with those signature stripes, and even though they
Speaker 2: were not favored at all West Germany actually won against
Speaker 2: who Hungary I believe, and that was a huge, huge
Speaker 2: deal on a national international stage.
Speaker 1: It was like the miracle on ice on grass.
Speaker 2: You mean, they were stoned.
Speaker 1: They were all stoned out of their gourds.
Speaker 2: The miracle on ice on grass. That might have legs,
Speaker 2: My friend, I think need to trademark that.
Speaker 1: Well, I do officially right now, trademarked.
Speaker 2: I love it. So that was one mistake. Adidas would
Speaker 2: of course go on to make some mistakes later. I
Speaker 2: know that you sent that one article where they talked
Speaker 2: about how they said, you know at one point that
Speaker 2: like yogging, no one's going to do that, So we're
Speaker 2: not going to make yogging shoes and aerobics.
Speaker 1: That's that's a flash in the pan. Sure, who cares
Speaker 1: about physical fitness.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned Reebok earlier. It's hard for the young
Speaker 2: folk out there who are listening to know this, but
Speaker 2: there was a time when Reebok was the name in
Speaker 2: sports apparel.
Speaker 1: Well plus all yeah, and in Reebok. This article says
Speaker 1: that they lost their way at some point, but the
Speaker 1: way that Reebok kind of took the lead for a
Speaker 1: little while, I was saying, no, we'll get into jogging,
Speaker 1: we'll get into aerobics, and we'll make this stuff at
Speaker 1: a time when Adidas and Puma were ignoring it. One
Speaker 1: of the other mistakes that both Adidas and Puma made
Speaker 1: was that they were so focused on beating one another
Speaker 1: man they just completely dropped the ball. As it were
Speaker 1: on the rise of Nike Ya and Nike was able
Speaker 1: to take over and apparently right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: and since then, Nike's always been the leader in sports apparel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Adidas is two and Pumas three. Right, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1: So you have an option these days you can buy
Speaker 1: your sports apparel from a company that's been known to
Speaker 1: use child labor, or company that used forced French labor
Speaker 1: under the auspices of the Nazi Party in World War Two. Hooray,
Speaker 1: let's take a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll take a break, and we'll talk about how
Speaker 2: this rift still oddly carries over in that town today
Speaker 2: and run DMC as why s K.
Speaker 1: Definitely should know lar childs of each.
Speaker 2: Y s K. All right, So back in the day
Speaker 2: when they first split off this company and that river's
Speaker 2: running through this town, it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just a sibling rivalry. It became a town
Speaker 2: wide rival and that you you worked for one company
Speaker 2: or the other as a family like a husband and wife.
Speaker 2: Didn't work, they didn't split up, and one worked at
Speaker 2: Puma and one worked at Adidas.
Speaker 1: But plus, I mean, if you fell in love with
Speaker 1: somebody from a family across the river like you, that
Speaker 1: was sorry, Yeah you got a Romeo and Juliet thing
Speaker 1: going on, that ain't gonna work. That crazy it is,
Speaker 1: And I was glad that this one of the local
Speaker 1: historians who was interviewed for one of these articles said
Speaker 1: it wasn't like bloody or anything like sue lost their
Speaker 1: lives over this. It was just, you know, if you
Speaker 1: worked for Puma, you stayed on the Puma side of
Speaker 1: the river. If you worked for Adidas, you stayed on
Speaker 1: the Adida side of the river. And each each group
Speaker 1: kept to themselves. That was all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it still carries over to this day, some
Speaker 2: of those recent interviews that we both read. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's certainly now it's a little more good natured ribbing.
Speaker 2: But they say, when you walk around this town, walk
Speaker 2: through a playground and you see will you will see
Speaker 2: kids kit it out in all Adidas or all Puma.
Speaker 2: And this is carried down from generations where they were
Speaker 2: Adidas or Puma families, and it was a really big
Speaker 2: deal and still remains so to this day, such that
Speaker 2: the mayor who actually came from a Puma family. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: but to be mayor, you can't, you know.
Speaker 1: You got to be a politician.
Speaker 2: Sure, so he will wear to some events, casual events,
Speaker 2: Puma gear and sometimes Adidas gear. Eventually, in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, they had a friendly soccer match between the
Speaker 2: official Puma sponsor team and Adidas team, and he wore
Speaker 2: one Puma shoe and one Adidas shoe just to remain neutral,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: And to look like a total jackass.
Speaker 2: Probably so then it showed him rubbing like his pum
Speaker 2: his Adidas foot. Later on they called him on camera.
Speaker 1: So this is like you said, there was a soccer
Speaker 1: game that was played between Adidas and Puma, kind of
Speaker 1: a reconciliation thing on International Peace Day back in I
Speaker 1: think two thousand and nine. Yeah, that happened. Think about this.
Speaker 1: The the Rudy and Addi Dossler died in the seventies,
Speaker 1: within four years of each other. This was two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine before the companies finally kind of had this
Speaker 1: reconciliation game. And yeah, today still it's like you kind of, well,
Speaker 1: you'll gently, you know, make fun of somebody wearing Adidas
Speaker 1: if you're a Puma family or whatever. But while the
Speaker 1: brothers were alive, you just steered clear of everybody who
Speaker 1: was on the on the other side, so much so
Speaker 1: that Herze was known as the town of the lowered gays,
Speaker 1: because if you came upon somebody on the street, you
Speaker 1: would look at their shoes to see what shoes they
Speaker 1: were wearing before you decided whether you're going to talk
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: That's so funny.
Speaker 1: It was that established this brother These brothers hatred and
Speaker 1: rivalry of one another, and they didn't speak for decades,
Speaker 1: spread out into the town that was divided by this river,
Speaker 1: and the town itself took sides because of this rift
Speaker 1: between these brothers that all started supposedly in this bomb
Speaker 1: shelter during World War Two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the mayor Hacker his first name is German.
Speaker 2: Could that be right?
Speaker 1: Uh? Journalism on the German or the journalist is really
Speaker 1: lazy and didn't They're just like, it's a he's a German,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna call him that.
Speaker 2: I wonder if he pronounces that German that's what I
Speaker 2: or Herreman because they don't say Germany over there anyway.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they say Deutsche Linn.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but would would it be Herrmann or no? I
Speaker 1: guess they spell that Hermans with an H.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it would be mayor German Hakka right, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: there is an h German Hackey Sokka who's on grass.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: But he says if someone someone comes in through the door.
Speaker 2: To this day, your gay still wanders to their shoes.
Speaker 2: It's just in the DNA of those people that this
Speaker 2: athletic gear is so important. It's so strange. It's such
Speaker 2: a cool, cool, weird story.
Speaker 1: It is a great story of sibling rivalry and bitterness
Speaker 1: and hatred.
Speaker 2: And like you said, they didn't speak for decades. Apparently
Speaker 2: much later in life, there were a couple of times
Speaker 2: when they were a rumored to have spoken. Once. I
Speaker 2: think they ran into each other at an airport. Once
Speaker 2: they saw each other at a hotel. And I believe
Speaker 2: on the deathbed which one tried to get in touch
Speaker 2: with the other, Rudy. Rudy put out the call said
Speaker 2: I would like to see my brother Adi one more time,
Speaker 2: and Audi went, no, thanks, I'm good nine.
Speaker 1: Can you believe it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that's tough.
Speaker 1: So they died. The families sold the business in the
Speaker 1: eighties late eighties, and they got bought by like corporate conglomerates. Sure, ironically,
Speaker 1: Puma now owns Reeboch and Gucci owns Puma. Adidas is
Speaker 1: still just Adidas, but again it's it's owned by like
Speaker 1: a mega conglomerate, and they've they've just gone enormous and
Speaker 1: make billions of dollars a year, so the families aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily involved. But one family member still works in the business.
Speaker 1: His name is Frank Dossler. I believe he was Rudy's grandson,
Speaker 1: and he used to work at Puma. He was pretty
Speaker 1: high up in Puma.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now he works as the head of the legal department
Speaker 1: for Adidas.
Speaker 2: Man, So let's switch inside.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good indication of how how much this
Speaker 1: cold war is kind of thawed between the two companies
Speaker 1: quite a bit because the people who are running it
Speaker 1: have no skin in the game. They don't care anymore,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or he's an attorney and he would just after
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 1: Money, right, He's like, let me suck your.
Speaker 2: So we have a fun little PostScript on this. I
Speaker 2: know we've been talking about run DMC and again, you
Speaker 2: Youngin's It might be second nature now to associate athletic
Speaker 2: gear and hip hop and rap music and culture, but
Speaker 2: back in the early nineteen eighties that was not the
Speaker 2: case until run DMC came along.
Speaker 1: No, like your your rappers probably dressed like a Gone
Speaker 1: and King, Yeah, or maybe.
Speaker 2: Like the New York dolls, yeah, or just like I
Speaker 2: mean sometimes I feel like I've seen just like denim
Speaker 2: jackets and just sort of like just sort of streetwear,
Speaker 2: which is the unhippous thing I've ever said.
Speaker 1: It was pretty unhipp I didn't want to say anything,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad streetwear, so you know, play clothes. So
Speaker 1: run DMC changed everything when they released a single called
Speaker 1: My Adidas. Yeah, and I saw elsewhere that they released
Speaker 1: a single My Adidas kind of in retaliation to song
Speaker 1: a song called felon Shoes. So if you ever noticed
Speaker 1: that run DMC wore their Adidas without laces with the
Speaker 1: tongues popped out, I noticed that was supposedly because that's
Speaker 1: how people in prison had to wear their shoes because
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to have shoelaces. And they were kind
Speaker 1: of saying like, we're down with all of our buddies
Speaker 1: in prison. Interesting, So this song fell in Shoes basically
Speaker 1: was making fun of that and basically teaching kids not
Speaker 1: to not to emulate prisoners, and run DMC took issue
Speaker 1: with that, and they ended up releasing My Adidas the
Speaker 1: song on Raisin Hell in nineteen eighty six. Sorry Raisin Hell, Yes,
Speaker 1: which I remember. My family was on a bus to
Speaker 1: Disney World once, I think, and the windows were foggy,
Speaker 1: and I was so into run DMC. I just wrote
Speaker 1: Raisin Hell in the fog on the window.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 1: People on the bus thought that was really hilarious.
Speaker 2: That is a great story.
Speaker 1: So I was into my Adidas too because of Run DMC.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just me. Apparently, if you went to
Speaker 1: a run DMC show on the Raisin Hell Tour or
Speaker 1: the Together Forever tour in nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
Speaker 1: when they sang my Adidas, everybody would take off their
Speaker 1: shoes and hold their Adidas in the air. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how That's how big of an impact the song had.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in nineteen eighty six, a senior employee Adidas
Speaker 2: named Angelo Anastasio went to that tour at Madison Square
Speaker 2: Garden saw this happen with the Adida sneakers, and it
Speaker 2: was like, hold on a minute, wait just a second,
Speaker 2: we could have something here. Ran back to the headquarters
Speaker 2: and within just a few days they signed them to
Speaker 2: a million dollar endorsement deal, and that was like a
Speaker 2: sea change forward for hip hop groups getting money in
Speaker 2: all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently it made Adidas's sales just go through
Speaker 1: the roof.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. And it's like that began the marriage
Speaker 2: of like I'm going to put out a record, I'm
Speaker 2: going to get a shoe deal, I might get a
Speaker 2: vodka sponsor, like, oh yeah, I'll get money flowing in
Speaker 2: from all kinds of directions and run DMC started it all.
Speaker 1: A Vodkas fonts or that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Sure, I feel like I've seen that.
Speaker 1: No, oh yeah, you know you totally have like P
Speaker 1: Diddy and Sarrak vodka. I think, yeah, look it works.
Speaker 1: I associate P Didty and Sarrak vodka.
Speaker 2: Andrew's nodding, I means.
Speaker 1: You correct, awesome, Thanks Andrew.
Speaker 2: Jerry would have been like, what, I'm my miso's getting cold, right,
Speaker 2: can you guys hurry up?
Speaker 1: We will hurry up, Ghost of Jerry. If you want
Speaker 1: to know anything else about Adidas and Puma, we'll just
Speaker 1: go start reading up more. There's actually a book by
Speaker 1: a woman named Barbara Schmitt called Sneaker Wars, appropriately all
Speaker 1: about the rift between Adidas and Puma, So if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about it, that's a pretty good
Speaker 1: place to start. And since I said that it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mayo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna call this sponges. Okay, Hey, guys, I
Speaker 2: was listening to Pando and I was excited y'all mentioned
Speaker 2: glass sponges, which are thought to be the oldest animals
Speaker 2: on Earth. I am a PhD student at the Scripts
Speaker 2: Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, and I study marine
Speaker 2: sponges because they make all sorts of unique molecules that
Speaker 2: can be used as new medicines. I think sponges are
Speaker 2: the coolest animals on Earth, and I'd love to share
Speaker 2: some of my favorite sponge fun facts. You ready? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Not only are sponges thought to be the oldest living,
Speaker 2: single living animals on Earth, but some evolutionary biologists even
Speaker 2: think sponges were the first animals to ever evolve. In
Speaker 2: other words, our last common animal ancestor could very well
Speaker 2: have been a sponge.
Speaker 1: That's so cool.
Speaker 2: Did you know the first antiviral drug approved by the
Speaker 2: FDA was developed from a molecule and a c sponge.
Speaker 1: I didn't until just now.
Speaker 2: As a PhD student, I collect and study sponges because
Speaker 2: they are known to produce thousands of bioactive molecules, many
Speaker 2: of which have medicinal potential. I think it's pretty incredible
Speaker 2: that the ocean may hold the cure to some of
Speaker 2: the most devastating human diseases, and I hope my work
Speaker 2: might inspire people to protect the world's oceans and the
Speaker 2: valuable resources within them.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Heck yeah, thanks for all the work you guys put
Speaker 2: into the show. Y'all have kept me company on mini
Speaker 2: long night in the lab with my sponges.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. It makes me want to go chew on
Speaker 1: a sponge and see what happened.
Speaker 2: That's right. That's from Kayla Wilson from San Diego.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Kayla, Thanks for the work you're doing too.
Speaker 1: Thank you for saving humanity from grave diseases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll look into these sponges as you call them.
Speaker 1: If you want us to look into anything that we
Speaker 1: put in scare quotes, well we want to know about it.
Speaker 1: You can go onto our website stuff youshould Know dot com,
Speaker 1: follow us on our social links. There you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. You can also send us a
Speaker 1: good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank that thing
Speaker 1: on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at HowStuffWorks dot com.
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