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WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

INSIDE THE ARCHIVES: Otto Wächter and Charlotte

WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Goalhanger Podcasts

Society & Culture, History, Education

4.84.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

ARCHIVE EPISODE

In this second episode of our Philippe Sands interview, we explore The Ratline and its central cast of characters. Otto Wächter, the Nazi on the run from justice; his wife Charlotte, avowed Nazi but loving wife and mother. And Horst Wächter, their son, still trying to prove his parents were innocent of the worst Nazi crimes.


A Goalhanger Films production

Produced by Joey McCarthy

Exec Producer Tony Pastor

Twitter: #WeHaveWays @WeHaveWaysPod

Email: [email protected]



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Music

0:11.0

Achtung, Achtung. Welcome to We Have Ways and Making You Tour. Once again, we're joined by author Philippe Sans.

0:16.2

Last week, we discussed his family history, Nicholas Frank, and the extraordinary story of Nicholas Frank's

0:25.2

life and attitude to his father and the issues that come out of that. And today we're going to talk about his latest book,

0:32.4

and podcast The Rat Line, which came out of meeting Horse Vector in the course of writing East West Street.

0:38.8

Many of you will have listened to Philippe's brilliant podcast of the same name a little while ago.

0:43.6

Believe me though, the book is an absolute treat and goes into a colossal forensic detail,

0:49.8

it's exactly what Otto Vector got up to, and leaves you in no doubt. I mean, to the extent of his son's,

0:59.0

I think, his delusion, the right word I don't know, because Horse Vector is the son of Otto Vector.

1:04.0

Is someone that Nicholas Frank told you you should meet? That's what you told us last week, Philippe.

1:10.4

So how did you meet Horse Vector? And he must be a terribly nice man because he carries some baggage.

1:16.2

He is a nice man, and I'm very, very fond of him. He's a troubled person though. He is son of Otto and Shalota.

1:24.4

Otto was an SS group in Fuhrer. He was the governor of Krakow. He built the Krakow ghetto.

1:31.6

He was then the governor of the District of Galicia, based in Lemberg, which territory,

1:38.8

including half a million Poles and Jews who perished whilst he was governor.

1:45.4

And he was the deputy of your family? Including my grandfather's family, absolutely.

1:49.4

And he was the deputy of Hans Frank, who we were talking about last week.

1:55.0

And the families were very closely connected. And those of you who've read the book,

2:00.4

although they became even more closely connected, almost, we can talk about that in due course,

2:05.8

because one of the things we didn't have a chance to talk about last week was sex and the third right.

2:11.4

Well, we talked about it a bit, but people were having affairs all over the place.

2:16.2

Anyway, one day Nicholas Frank says to me, you must meet my friend Horst because he was the governor of Lemberg,

...

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