Take No Prisoners (Rebroadcast)

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode originally was broadcast July 28, 2018.

In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field.

Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway pieces together what led up to that event, who was responsible and why no Americans were held accountable for this war crime.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is reveal. I'm Alex.
0:05.5	Back in 2016, Chris Harlan, done away, was between two worlds.
0:10.0	Well, I just finished my first year in journalism school and I had been a semi-pro bike racer for six years.
0:18.4	Chris was in his mid-20s. He was thinking more seriously about his career in journalism,
0:23.2	but he also wasn't quite ready to give up on bike racing.
0:26.0	I had always dreamt of racing my bike in Europe because that's the heartland and I decided,
0:32.0	well, this is my opportunity.
0:34.0	So, in the middle of grad school, Chris made a go of it.
0:38.0	He flew to Belgium and got a little apartment and began testing himself against the elite riders in a place where bicycle racing is a really big deal.
0:46.0	It's full of traditions and idiosyncrasies like the Rodaniacar that drives ahead of Belgium bike races,
0:52.0	blaring an ad for Rodaniacar watches.
0:58.0	It's the ice cream truck of Belgium. Everyone hears that call and they hear the Rodaniacar
1:04.0	and they know there's a bike race happening just out their front door and so they gather along the sides with their paper cones of fries and beer and watch the racing.
1:16.0	So, this Chris, doing this thing he's always dreamed of doing and is performing really well, placing in races and just training all the time.
1:24.0	Taking these long rides on narrow ribbons of road through the Ardennes,
1:28.0	a region stretching from Belgium through France, Luxembourg and into Germany.
1:32.0	I would go on these rides and I would pass through the spruce forests. It's so peaceful and like I couldn't help thinking whenever I sort of encountered these moments out there that um...
1:44.0	This is also this place where there's this unbelievable carnage happened there during World War II.
1:52.0	And this is where Chris's curiosity and love for journalism began creeping back into focus.
1:58.0	The Ardenne Forest saw some of the fiercest fighting of World War II.
2:02.0	In December 1944, Germany launched a surprise attack that would become one of its last major offensives.
2:10.0	Today, we know it as the Battle of the Bulge and Chris wanted to know what it was really like.
	...

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