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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Casual Friday.

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Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson, Tracy. This whole

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Speaker 1: week was Wacky Spy Week. It was Fritz Ducaine. Uh. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: who is somebody that I wanted to talk about for

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Speaker 1: several years and just kind of kept back burnering it. Uh,

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Speaker 1: partially because his life has a lot to pick through. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He was very busy, ma'am, and I wanted to make

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Speaker 1: sure that I had time to really like read up

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Speaker 1: on as many of the shifts in his life as

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Speaker 1: I could. And you were actually out last week, so

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Speaker 1: I gave me a little extra time when we weren't

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Speaker 1: recording where I could do some of that. So that

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Speaker 1: is why we ended up with a two parter in

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Speaker 1: Fritz Ducaine. I mentioned at the end of our second

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Speaker 1: episode about him that I am psychologically fascinated by him

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Speaker 1: because I always wonder in the case of someone who,

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Speaker 1: even before they are doing it for any sort of

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Speaker 1: um wartime spy or sabotage reason, starts kind of telling

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Speaker 1: yarns about who they actually are, Like, what is their

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Speaker 1: sense of self? How do they self identify when they

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Speaker 1: are lying alone at night in the dark, like I

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Speaker 1: I will never know, but I always wonder that, which

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Speaker 1: is why I think people like him are so appealing.

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Speaker 1: There is another part of his story that I did

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Speaker 1: not go into in the show because eventually you had

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Speaker 1: to start cutting things for time or you end up

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Speaker 1: down long explanatory rabbit holes. Um. He had a woman

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Speaker 1: in his life from very early on. Uh, this woman

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Speaker 1: named Lilian Lending, and it seems they were probably at

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Speaker 1: some point linked romantically, but they also were best friends.

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Speaker 1: And so a lot of what we do know about

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Speaker 1: him kind of comes from his letters to Lilian, which isascinating. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He has one of those lives that, of course, as

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Speaker 1: you're reading it, you're like, this would be a great movie,

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Speaker 1: and I know who should play him, and this would

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Speaker 1: be amazing. But I actually think what would be really

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Speaker 1: fascinating as a take on that would be his letters

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Speaker 1: back and forth with Lilian, because they are a little

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Speaker 1: more intimate. There are some towards the end of his

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Speaker 1: life where he is feeling his age, but he's also

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Speaker 1: talking about like there's one letter that I read where

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Speaker 1: he talks about getting lost when he is in New York, um,

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Speaker 1: even though he has no New York his whole life.

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Speaker 1: But he gets a street in Brooklyn and a street

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Speaker 1: and I think queens with the same name confused, and

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Speaker 1: he ends up on the wrong train and at and

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Speaker 1: he tells her about this whole ordeal of how it

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Speaker 1: took him everywhere all over the city. This is when

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Speaker 1: he was living in the nursing home and then he

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Speaker 1: had to remember exactly where the nursing home was. But

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Speaker 1: at the end there is this very sort of sweet

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Speaker 1: part of it where he talks about how proud he

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Speaker 1: is that he can still get around and figure it

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Speaker 1: out even if it's a big mess, and that like

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Speaker 1: he fought through it even though it was one of

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Speaker 1: the most miserable days of his life. Uh. And to me,

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Speaker 1: that stuff is where all of the interesting lives. We

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Speaker 1: didn't talk about this in the episode at all, um,

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Speaker 1: but he and especially the earlier like big Game hunting,

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Speaker 1: living in in South Africa, like the sort of hyper

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Speaker 1: masculine persona. Um, Like, that's just a whole thread it is.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's it's one of those things like when

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Speaker 1: you get into even the Roosevelt stuff. I mean that's

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Speaker 1: what he's selling, right, is like I'm the actual man.

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Speaker 1: You are trying to go live the life of um,

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Speaker 1: which is a as you said, that's all the whole thing. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is really really fascinating. There are Uh it's easy

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Speaker 1: to find a lot of sympathetic sounding articles when you

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Speaker 1: talk about the occupation of transpal in particular by the

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Speaker 1: British on the side of the Boers, because they are

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Speaker 1: just defending their way of life. Um, that life involves slavery. Yeah, uh,

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Speaker 1: slave trade. Like it's very funny. I mean you will

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Speaker 1: even find pretty modern writeups where they're like, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Boers were really gentle people, they were very Christian,

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Speaker 1: and I'm like, but but plus really into slavery. I don't,

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Speaker 1: And then that that whole thing was also like just

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Speaker 1: part of of European colonialism in South Africa, which like

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Speaker 1: is a zone layer of stuff that gets kind of

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Speaker 1: glossed over I think, uh not, I mean definitely not

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Speaker 1: all the time, but in the accounts that are sort

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Speaker 1: of like, oh, these they were simple farmers and they

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Speaker 1: were just trying to make They're living, like well, colonialism

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Speaker 1: and slavery, and like there's a lot yeah, going on there. Um,

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Speaker 1: they were defending their life from Britain, and really Britain

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Speaker 1: was just doing a larger scale version of what they

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Speaker 1: had done to the populations that already lived in those places, right. Uh. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's very problematic in that regard. It's interesting this idea

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Speaker 1: that um Duquesne hated Britain so much he would do

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Speaker 1: anything to hurt them, Yeah, and including siding with Nazis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a really weird thing. There is in that one

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Speaker 1: of those um biographies I read that I mentioned because

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Speaker 1: there are two primary ones. One is that one, which

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Speaker 1: was written in the nineties. The other is a biography

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Speaker 1: that came out when Ducaine was still alive before the

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Speaker 1: Nazi involvement, so there's no real mention of it, but

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Speaker 1: there is sort of like a uh, he didn't really

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Speaker 1: seem to buy into the whole like pure blooded airy

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Speaker 1: and race thing or any of that. He just wanted

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Speaker 1: to hurt Britain and it's like, yeah, but at what

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Speaker 1: costs to like his humanity and morality, But that didn't

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Speaker 1: ever seem to be a factor in any of the

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Speaker 1: discussion or any of his decisions. Um. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: comes up when his girlfriend calls a reporter and goes,

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Speaker 1: I am Jewish and did not know he was collaborating

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Speaker 1: with pro Nazi groups. This is a problem. Um, clearly

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Speaker 1: he didn't see the conflict there, right, Right, I think

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Speaker 1: he's kind of a mess. I mean that's a big,

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Speaker 1: big understatement on my part. But like there as like

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Speaker 1: I I enjoy reading about just the over the top

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Speaker 1: grandiosity of his own invented backstory and his many many

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Speaker 1: escapes like those are fun. But I'm also like, man,

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Speaker 1: I I don't like you being well. I think that

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Speaker 1: is I think we've stumbled upon what the real problem is. Right,

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Speaker 1: There's no morality driving it other than this one thing,

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Speaker 1: which is that he hates Britain and clearly horrible things

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Speaker 1: happened to his family at the hands of British soldiers. Right.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to negate that at all, but that

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Speaker 1: completely like obliterated any other nuance of thought for him

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Speaker 1: for the rest of his life, which is not really

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Speaker 1: a particularly moral way to live. Like vengeance isn't really

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Speaker 1: a moral code, uh, and it it Uh Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a weird thing because that's the other flip, right, is

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Speaker 1: that everybody seemed to fall in love with him and

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Speaker 1: just find him incredibly appealing. Right, I feel it kind

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Speaker 1: of like we're lucky that his only plan was this

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Speaker 1: vengeance thing, because he seems like the kind of person

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Speaker 1: who in that time, I don't think it would work today.

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Speaker 1: He had wanted to take on greater power, he probably

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Speaker 1: could have, and then heaven only knows what would happen. Um.

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Speaker 1: I certainly wonder and I'm sure many other people do

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Speaker 1: if there were always explosives in that giant iron case. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like if he left New York potentially knowing he might

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Speaker 1: need explosives, or if there actually was film and then

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Speaker 1: he switched that out for explosives, claimed that he had

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Speaker 1: lost the film because the film still would have cost

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Speaker 1: him something. So even if he had to jettis in

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Speaker 1: it to make room for a bomb, I can see

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Speaker 1: why he wanted to go after the insurance money. It's

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Speaker 1: a weird combination, though, right, of these sort of very

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Speaker 1: grandiose plans, really going after a world power and also

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Speaker 1: always hustling to make a buck, And that to me

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Speaker 1: is the fascinating juxtaposition as well. For him, right, this

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Speaker 1: is part of the puzzle of what makes him like

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Speaker 1: a creature, where you're just like, what even are you?

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Speaker 1: How do you live your life? How does any of

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Speaker 1: this function or work? It's okay, So if anybody wants

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Speaker 1: to write that screenplay, um, I'm happy to help because

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Speaker 1: I'm completely and thralled problematic though he is, I just

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Speaker 1: find myself making the big eyes of like I really

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Speaker 1: wish I could travel back in time and talk to

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Speaker 1: him for like a minute, like, dude, what was your deal? Fritz?

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Speaker 1: Are you okay? I know you're not, but um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I also am really, I mean, here's the thing. On

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Speaker 1: some level, you have to admire that level of bravado.

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Speaker 1: Right that he can convince medical doctors that he has

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Speaker 1: actual things wrong with him is an achievement. But again, also, hey,

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Speaker 1: you killed people with your horrible behavior. Yeah yeah, and

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Speaker 1: sided with Nazis. That's where I keep getting. Oh, I'm

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Speaker 1: even before that. I'm like the dudes on the tennis

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Speaker 1: in and even like the these stories of him like

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Speaker 1: killing people as a kid right right in m this

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Speaker 1: you know, conflict that is born inherently of racism. It

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Speaker 1: is a weird thing to try to like unspool all

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Speaker 1: of that and figure out how that person ended up

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Speaker 1: in some of the other pockets of his life, like

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Speaker 1: how does that strange very sort of brutal beginning, also

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Speaker 1: end up the guy who is like the toast of

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Speaker 1: New York society for his writing and his like turn

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Speaker 1: of phrase. And then also later you know, making films

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Speaker 1: for a school board in South America. Like there, that's

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Speaker 1: a life. That's a resume for sure. Um, I think

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Speaker 1: where Fritz to caaned out? Probably probably, so Yeah, I'll

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Speaker 1: keep thinking about him because he's fascinating. If you would

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Speaker 1: like to write to us, you can do so at

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Speaker 1: find us everywhere on social media as Missed in History.

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