Sept. 17, 2022 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the political cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I promised you at the beginning of the broadcast tonight, you are in for a very special treat with Harry Cooper.
I think you're going to be enthralled when you hear about this man's work and the purpose of his organization.
He is an old friend, and we got reconnected a few days ago, and it's great to have him on this evening this Saturday night.
He is Harry Cooper, the founder of Shark Hunters International, an organization that exists to tell the history of the U-boats without propaganda and to bring former enemies together as friends.
Shark Hunters organizes tours of Europe where members can meet with German veterans themselves as they visit various historic sites together.
Harry, welcome back.
I'm happy to be there back, but what's with this old friend?
I know I've blown out a lot of candles on my cake.
Let me just rephrase, we have known each other for more than a minute.
You were one of the guys I said in the first hour that I met before the show even started.
And I've always been an admirer of your work.
So let's get to it.
You were a businessman, and back in the 80s, I believe it was, you decided to retire and you started Shark Hunters.
Tell us a little bit.
I've got to cover a lot of ground quickly this hour because I want to give as much information to the audience as I can about this organization and what it does.
But you decided to retire and start Shark Hunters.
Give us a little bit more info about your background and what led you to that decision.
Yeah, it was a little more complicated than that.
I was a vice president of a company in Chicago, and I was also a professional racing driver.
And in 1976, my last race, blew the engine in my race car.
I was racing the Texas 500 down a Texas World Speedway, which no longer exists.
Going back home, I blew the engine in my truck.
I was a good race car driver.
I was not a good engine builder.
Got back, found out my boss had quit, and a guy that I had known in the company for a long time who was a real jerk.
He was my boss.
So I just said to heck with it.
I quit.
I sold everything I owned, bought a 30-foot sailing yacht, and went down the river system from Chicago to the Bahamas, and I found an old plantation there that apparently had been furnishing fresh water and food to German U-boats.
At least that's what the rumor was.
And of course, my first thought was, those dirty Nazis, because that's what we were taught.
Germans were all Nazis.
They machine gun helpless survivors in the water, etc.
And World War I, they would rape young women to death and fire their lifeless bodies out to torpedo tubes.
Everybody believed it, but nobody stopped to ask, where do you find young women out in the middle of the ocean?
We believe the propaganda our government tells us.
And in a war, you have to hate the enemy.
You can't tell your soldiers that the guy in the other uniform on the other side of the field there, he's got a wife and kids like you do, and he wants to get home like you do.
He loves his country like you do.
He goes to the same church you do.
Now go kill him.
You couldn't have a war that way.
But I found out.
You put that so well, Harry.
I just, pardon the interruption, but that was magnificently stated.
Well, thank you.
I've been doing this shark hunters now.
We're coming on our 40th anniversary pretty quick.
But I got to researching, and I found out that, first off, this was all propaganda.
They never machine gunned people in the boats.
There was nice propaganda.
But after the war, the propaganda should be made right.
But with the Germans, it wasn't.
And we're not going to get into the whys about that.
You and I both know why that is.
But then I got to looking at the attrition rate.
These guys had the worst attrition rate of any military ever in history.
To give you a comparison, on the United States Navy submarine service had the worst attrition of any U.S. military forces, period.
One man out of seven got killed.
One man out of seven, you can't run a viable military losing one man out of seven.
With the Germans, it was reversed.
One man out of seven came home.
Six men went out and died for their country.
They knew at the end nine out of ten German submarines were lost on the very first patrol.
But I'm sure these guys figured it's the other boat that's going to get sunk, not mine.
So I just felt, as you've known me for a long time, you know, I'm a fanatic for honor and honesty.
And I just thought it was incredibly wrong to paint these guys with that broadbush of murderers and criminals when it just plain wasn't true.
They were honorable, decent young men like I was when I joined the U.S. Air Force, 18-year-old kid, ready to go kill commies because that's what I was.
Russians are terrible people when I joined.
And I've been to Russia many times.
Jovas Pachudniroski Pedwednik, I'm an honorary Russian submarine officer.
They ain't no different than you or me, James.
The average Russian, the average German, they're just decent people that get up in the morning, go to work, and hope that we don't get into a war again.
So that's why I started, and I was so incredibly fortunate.
All the survivors, almost all the survivors were still alive.
I got to meet and become friends with so many of the great names.
Otto Kretzmer, the top submarine commander of the war, I had a sleeping room in his house.
He and his wife considered me family.
Incredible.
Hans Georg Hess, the youngest combat submarine commander, he's just barely passed 21 years old.
They gave him command of a combat submarine.
After the war, he became a doctor of law.
He was my best friend in Germany.
And so many of them, Gunther Rawl, the third most successful fighter pilot ever in history, 275 confirmed.
I was a guest in his house.
I was going, before this kung flu virus crap came along, I was in Germany twice a year, every year.
And these were just decent people.
And the nicest thing about it, in the early days, 1987, we had a convention in Key Largo, Florida.
I needed a reason to get out of Chicago in February.
And we had 11 German U-boaters come to visit.
Wow.
And that got covered actually very objectively, did it not, Harry, by NBC.
That got some big-time coverage.
But it wasn't the way they would have gotten coverage today.
That is correct.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, as it is, the Southern Poverty Law Center has already stated that I'm a Nazi.
I'm all the people who are going to talk about that.
Hey, we were on my notes.
Yeah, no, we were at the best.
And we had a bunch of American submarine sailors.
And the nicest, the most poignant part, I used to drink back in them days.
I gave that up a long time ago.
But I was sitting at the bar trying to set a new record for drinking pinching a lotis.
And on my right was Hans Georg Hess, who later became my best friend in Germany, U-boat skipper.
And on my left was a guy named Ray Lankheim, who had been a gunner on an American destroyer, 20 millimeter.
And these two guys were talking across my face.
And Hess said, well, Hess said, this was my area.
What was your area?
And, oh, well, geez, that was my area, too.
When were you there?
Harry, hold on right there.
Hold on right there.
We're going to get to some fascinating stories of his personal interactions with these German veterans of World War II.
If you've been interested so far, we're going to turn up the dial next.
Stay tuned.
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CALL FOR Civility.com back with the always fascinating Harry Cooper,
the founder and president of Shark Hunters International.
Check out their website, sharkhunters.com, for more information.
I'm actually going to read a couple of passages from sharkhunters.com right now, and then we're going to toss it back over to Harry.
So, Harry, you share with us that a multitude of U-boat skippers, officers, and crew were or are or once were or may still be in the membership of shark hunters and contributed to your organization.
So you're talking about first-person accounts by the men who actually waged the U-boat war from both sides of the periscope.
Okay, so these are the men whose names are etched in submarine history, and it's not just a membership organization for the German veterans.
Obviously, a lot of their American counterparts who fought against them at the time have come together under the umbrella of your organization.
And through meeting with one another, well, we'll talk about what those interactions are like.
But this is on both sides of the Atlantic.
Membership in Shark Hunters includes these World War II veterans and people like me who weren't even alive then.
I'm a member.
People who are interested in it.
But these people too that actually were belligerents against one another.
They have come together to, as you say, yesterday's enemies are today's friends, Harry.
Yep, absolutely correct.
As I was mentioning before the break, Captain Hess and Ray Lankheim were talking back and forth across my face, and they realized they were in the same area at the same time.
And Hess said, oh, hey, the number on your destroyer was such and such.
And Lankheim says, yeah, how'd you know that?
And Hess said, on such and such a day, I fired two torpedoes at your ship, but someone must have seen me because you turned and I missed.
And Ray Lankine got very excited.
Yeah, yeah.
He named the lookout, and he said, and he kind of, a little arrogant, he says, so you missed, Captain.
What do you think of that?
And Hess slammed his big fist down on the bar.
He says, well, I'm glad we missed.
We have more time for beer now.
And the two guys got to be best buddies.
And I'll tell you something else nobody's been able to accomplish at all before.
At our convention in 2000, the third most successful submarine commander who was also an admiral in NATO, Eris Top, was there.
It was a good friend of mine.
I've been to his house a couple of times.
And also, Lev Davidovich Chonyevin, the last comm sub of the Soviet Union, was there.
He and I exchanged hats.
That's like being blood brothers in the old West.
Those two guys were there, bitter enemies in the war.
They were shaking hands at my convention.
Who else could have put these guys together?
Listen, this isn't an exaggeration, and this isn't hyperbole.
Only you.
You are the only person in the world that has done anything like this.
And you've been doing it for, as you said, right at four decades now.
And I want to ask you this.
I think this is an important question.
So again, I'm reading from your website.
Part of the, you have three or four planks to your mission.
And I'm reading now, one of the purposes of Shark Hunters is to restore the dignity and pride to these brave, honorable warriors.
The American Legion, and you mentioned in the previous segment, you are a veteran yourself.
The post to which you belong has a big sign stating that it is the Legion post and most American Legion post and the VFW post.
They are loud and proud, proclaiming themselves as such.
But you look back and you look back on the German side of it, and they have to meet in secret.
If they meet at all, they cannot show pride.
It's illegal to show pride.
It's a crime.
They have to meet in the basements of homes or buildings or wherever they can in secret.
Now, as an American, why was this something that was important to you?
Why was this the cause that you said, you know what, I'm going to do something about this.
I'm going to build an organization that, in my opinion, will set this thing straight.
As I said before, I'm a fanatic for honor and honesty.
And you're going to have to pause your recording for a moment.
Sorry, my wife's just getting out of the doctor's office.
Hi there.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Yeah, we're still going as if we're live right here, which we are.
But so I will tell you just another thing from Shark Hunters.
Shark Hunters, you're going to get information.
And it's not just the Kriegsmarine that Shark Hunters deals with.
I mean, members of all branches of the World War II era German military are a part of this, but there's a specific focus on the German U-boats.
And they publish a magazine.
It is approved by these veterans.
It is supported by these veterans.
And it is assisted by these veterans when they tell their stories.
And it is, of course, the only one of its kind to do this.
And so I think that this is a fair claim and a fair statement that Shark Hunters is the most complete and comprehensive source for the history of the submarine in general and the German U-boat in specific.
And so that is the organization that Harry is, of course, serving as the president and the founder of.
And we mentioned that a multitude of U-boat skippers, officers, and crews have been.
I mean, so many of them have, of course, passed away over the course of the last 40 years since Shark Hunters has been in existence.
But they have contributed their personal memories of the Kriegsmarine and their service during World War II.
First-person accounts by the men who actually waged this war, as he said, from both sides of the periscope.
So very, very fascinating.
And we're going to continue on with Harry.
Harry, are you back?
I'm back.
Okay, let's get right back to it.
Okay, yeah, I'm not patting myself on the back, but there's only one man in the whole world that knows more about the U-boats than I do, and that's Peter Hanson.
He's 98 years old.
He was a U-boat officer, and he was in the German version of NCIS, and he knows everything.
And I'm not patting myself on the back, but the reason is I started when these guys were still alive, and I got all their stories.
I've been in the homes of so many veterans, some of the Luftwaffe guys, too.
And now there are some Johnny come lately outfits on the internet, and they don't know the history.
All they know is what they hear from others.
There's one that the U-Boat guys used to call U-Boat.not.
And, you know, they have forums.
James Edwards could write in and ask for information on the U-boat full of gold that sunk in the Sea of Tranquility.
And before long, you're going to have 50 opinions before anybody realizes the Sea of Tranquility is on the face of the moon.
So we've published, oh, man, more than 40 books so far.
14 of them are in a series called U-Boat, Volume 1 through 14.
Every chapter in every book is a separate standalone story by a different guy, usually a U-boater, but a lot of times American veterans, submarine veterans too.
But it's hardcore history.
The guy was there.
The guy tells us what was going on.
You can read the history on such and such a day.
This battle went on, etc.
This one shot at this one.
But what was the guy doing in the conning tower?
What was the guy doing in the torpedo room?
And that's what you get in these books.
We've got another series called U-Boat War in Photos.
Go ahead, sorry.
No, no, no.
And people, you can check these out at an extensive library at sharkhunters.com.
We've got about a minute or two before the next break, and I really want to put my pedal to the middle on this because I got so many questions that I think the audience would be interested to hear your answer.
So you have explained why you started Shark Hunters, but how was it possible to build this organization?
It couldn't have been the easiest thing to reach out to these German veterans.
I mean, how did you get in touch?
How did you get so many people to join to the point where you could have these tours all over the world and they'd be very well attended?
I mean, how did it get from the idea, the theory, to the practice?
Absolutely a great question.
I contacted one or two U-boaters, and they were very reticent about getting involved.
And then we had the convention in Key Largo, 1987, and Captain Hess said, next year you must come to Old Germany.
Okay, so we did.
We had a ton of people.
We had 40, 50 people, I think.
We got off the train, and the owner of the hotel, who was also a Knights Cross-winning submarine commander, he met us.
We all walked to the hotel, which was 500 meters away.
No matter where you're going in Germany, it's only 500 meters, if they explain it.
He had a big ballroom open with tables for us to have cold cuts and stuff.
And there were two distinguished-looking gentlemen standing against a firewall.
And they stood there for about the first 20 minutes or so.
They wanted to make sure we weren't goose-stepping and waving our right arm in the air, singing forbidden.
They realized we were historians, people interested in the history.
Turned out one was Carl Frederickschmerton with the Knights Cross and Oakleaf, commander of U-68.
The other was Reinhardt Hardagen, Knights Cross with Oakleaf.
Only 28 skippers got the Knights Cross with Oakleaf.
And here were two of them.
And they wanted to make sure we were okay.
Once that happened, they just worked us all over the place.
Networked all over the place, got you in touch with everybody else, gave you a vouch, and off you went.
And of course, but we'll talk about the fascination about things like this from the American side as we continue on hearing these stories from Harry Cooper.
Stay tuned.
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Back with Harry Cooper of SharkHunters.com.
The question I last posed to Harry before the previous break was, How did you go about building this organization once you got the idea?
And he mentioned getting in touch with some U-boat crewmen who were naturally a little hesitant.
They'd been so run down, so denigrated that I'm sure they look at anyone wanting to talk to them with a degree of skepticism, particularly an American.
But he got in and he had his first, Harry had their first conference, they call them patrols, in Key Largo in the 1980s.
And from there, these patrols have taken place all over the world, in South America, obviously in Europe specifically, in northern and southern Germany, all over the place.
And he was talking about how his reputation for being fair and even-handed grew amongst the people on the German side.
But the question now is, well, actually, let me read this.
So talking about these patrols, which again, that's these tours of Europe, tours of Germany that shark hunters put on.
You said that the German veterans opened up.
They laughed.
They told jokes.
They had feasts with us.
They danced.
They drank.
And they made many new friends of former enemies.
But above all, they realized that they were not looked down on or despised, but respected as warriors who fought bravely and cleanly.
Now, this is happening with American veterans.
Americans join shark hunters.
They are invited to go on these tours.
And then and there in Germany, for instance, they meet with their former adversaries.
And they're all celebrating with this camaraderie.
How did shark hunters begin to gain such a following here in the United States?
What was it about this particular mission of yours that Americans, including American veterans, even of the World War II crisis, really thought they wanted to be a part of?
In the early days, in the 1980s, we put ads in various military magazines, World War II, military history, etc., etc., because the ads were inexpensive and they reached a large number of people.
So we got a whole lot of members joined that way.
But now, print ads, They just don't work anymore.
And we lost a lot of the older guys.
You know, nobody gets out of this world alive.
And so now we're just members are bringing in other members.
And we've changed our format just in the last month or so from what you remember.
You remember you paid a membership fee once a year and you got the magazine sent to you.
Well, now we have changed it.
And your listeners can go to sharkhunters.com, scroll to the bottom, just under the picture of Ronald Reagan, who was also a member.
And now we don't send the magazine together.
I was going to mention that, by the way.
I was going to mention that.
And not only, Ronald Reagan actually paid compliment to the shark hunters, did he not?
Yeah.
Yeah, he did.
He said, regards and admiration.
You'll see it on the page.
Regards and admiration to organizations like Shark Hunters who keep American history alive.
So we're telling everybody's history here.
But primary focus is on the German U-boats.
And now, because we have gotten so embedded, we've also started learning and distributing the history of the Third Reich, some of it.
Once you become a member, you will get this magazine and you will be invited to go on these patrols.
Now, we were talking about some of the fellowship and the camaraderie that exists over there.
Now, you don't have to go to the next one.
Let me throw in one quick point.
When somebody joins Shark Hunters Now, they not only get the magazine, they get the key to go into our special website.
They can read all our back issues.
And we also used to have one about the Flyboys, all those back issues, 300 movies and videos.
You can look at them anytime you want.
Just go into that special website.
Music, et cetera, et cetera.
So now you get all that stuff.
Well, you know, you just re-signed a couple of days ago, and you get all this stuff.
Now I'll shut up and let you get back to what you're doing.
No, no, no, not at all.
This is what you're here to talk about.
So yes, you can sign up and join up and look at some of the books and all of that stuff at sharkhunters.com.
Scroll down to the bottom.
But I believe, what was I going to say?
Oh, yes.
So you have the chance to go once you're a member and attend these patrols.
Meet these veterans.
Go around the world.
Now, we have about a minute before, a couple of minutes before our next prank, so I want to work this in.
When you're in Germany, you don't just sit at a hotel and everybody come together.
I mean, even if that's all you did, that would certainly be well enough.
And I know people who have gone on these patrols with you, and they just raved about the experience.
But you actually go to World War II-era historical sites.
And would you mind naming some of the sites that you've taken your tours to?
One of the most well-known is the big stadium at Nuremberg, where they had the Nuremberg, the party rallies.
Anybody can go there.
But did anybody wonder what's inside that huge stadium?
We go inside that building, which is off-limits to everybody.
We go inside.
The gold swastikas are still embedded in the ceiling.
Hitler's office is still there.
There's not a damn...
Huh?
There's...
No, I was just going to say, I'm surprised that they haven't eradicated all of that.
So I was going to say, what sites do you go to and in what conditions do they remain?
That one.
Now, some years ago, after there was a big rush to tear down everything that was Third Reich, the German government passed a law that anything that was built during the Reich cannot be destroyed.
But they don't give them any money to maintain it.
So I think they're just going to let them all fall apart.
But we go there, we go to Bavaria, we go up to the area where Hitler's home had stood.
We go, we used to stay at a hotel right next door where his bodyguard used to stay, but it got bought out.
And there's a tunnel and bunker system in the basement there that we used to go in.
They're going to open that up again pretty soon.
The eagle's nest.
And just all sorts of places that, and the deep tunnel, I mean, you got to be able to walk to go to this thing because we walk about a mile through the forest and on a skinny little trail just widened up for your feet.
And then the trail stops and you look to your right and there's eight foot by eight foot hole in the side of the mountain.
And you go in, it goes back a half a mile into the mountain, makes a zig right and it goes another quarter mile.
And that was to be the escape for Hitler and all the rest of the guys who would be on the Ober Salzburg at the end of the war.
But he was in Berlin when the war ended and nobody else was going to escape.
So they just quit building it.
There's still dynamite sticks in some of the holes they drilled into the mountain.
And so, and these are just some of the places.
I know you're only offering a smattering.
Because you go all over Germany.
You don't just go to one city.
I mean, you have different patrols that go to different areas and visit different sites.
So I know you're just giving sort of painting with a broad brush here, but there are dozens of historical sites and homes, former homes of different leaders and things like that.
Your show is not 10 hours long, so I have to cut it short.
But also, there are just beautiful little restaurants up in the middle of nowhere, like you'd see if you're watching the movie Heidi.
And then on the other side of the patrols, we go to northern Germany, places in Berlin, the underground there, Berliner Unterwelt.
And we go into a big flak tower.
And I just found out that there are two days every year in September when the government opens up a lot of the locked up places in Berlin.
So we're going to hit that.
Hold on right there.
We'll be right back.
One more segment with Harry Cooper.
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Harry Cooper of SharkHunters.com.
Imagine taking a trip to Europe where you meet with veterans on both sides of the war and you visit historic sites.
That's just an amazing thing.
Did you know that an organization existed that could make that happen?
Harry Cooper's been making it happen for 40 years, very near 40 years.
And Harry, I've got five questions for you in about 10 minutes.
So I'm going to try to do my own little radio blitzkrieg.
We're going to do a radio blitzkrieg here, and I want to work all of this in.
Now, the fact that we're having this conversation, we are going to be called, of course, we're both already called neo-Nazis, but the SBLC has you officially listed as a neo-Nazi.
This is what they write in their biography of you.
Harry Cooper hoped to heal some of the wounds.
This is the SBLC's own language I'm reading.
Harry Cooper hoped to heal some of the wounds of the Second World War by bringing together American and German veterans in a space dedicated to honoring the heroism of both sides.
And of course, it goes on from there, but that's part of it.
And for that, you get labeled a neo-Nazi.
Now, I want to, of course, that means nothing to me because everybody's a neo-Nazi now.
If you're half a step to the right of Comrade Stalin, you're a neo-Nazi.
The Garden Veronica Trump voters are now neo-Nazis, according to the press.
I don't concern myself with any of that.
But I would ask you this.
Norman McDonald, a comedian, he passed away not too long ago.
He made a joke one time.
He said, I was reading through my history book and the good guys won 100% of the time.
And of course, what he was joking about is the victors write the history.
And even with that being the case, there is still a great fascination from very good people about armies who lost.
So for instance, I have a friend who was born up in New York and lived abroad as an expat for a long time.
And he went to Gettysburg.
And he asked the museum curator, hey, you know, what sells more stuff?
This is one of the few battles that was fought on northern soil up there in Pennsylvania.
He asked, what stuff sells more in the gift shop?
Is it Confederate stuff or the units?
And they laughed.
They said, oh, the Confederate stuff.
And I can remember, every time I've ever been to a gun show, Harry, at a gun show, there is always Third Reich memorabilia, whether it be authentic or replica, for sale there.
So what is the enduring fascination that Americans have with this?
That's a good question.
I can't answer it, but I go to the show of shows, which is up in Louisville in Lake February every year.
The biggest in the world, 2000 and something tables.
About 85% of the stuff there is Third Reich.
Why?
I don't know.
I know why I'm involved in it because I met a lot of these guys.
They were decent, honorable people, and they fought.
Let me step back.
The three biggest lies about the war are in one sentence.
Hitler started World War II to kill all the Jews and to rule the world.
First off, Hitler did not start the war.
It was the Polish.
Secondly, to kill all the Jews.
I had a friend named Helmut Schmuckl.
He was a Jew.
He was a U-boat commander.
There was another one, Helmut Rosenbaum.
It don't get much more Jewish than that.
He was a U-boat commander that sank the British aircraft carrier, Courageous, I think it was.
I've been in cemeteries in Germany that are all Jewish soldiers died fighting for Germany.
So, you know, we can go way deep into who caused the war, who profited from the war.
Roosevelt was a puppy being pulled along by Churchill, who was probably the biggest war criminal of the bunch, but we won't get onto that now because I was supposed to get an honorary doctorate, and then they found out that I was a Nazi, so they pulled that offer.
Thanks, Bill.
Hey, I'll tell you what, we share scars.
This whole thing is...
We refer to those guys as the spit lickers.
That's right.
And I remember you saying that back years ago.
That's funny.
But yes, I mean, all these people that go to these militaria shows and all of the people who go to these gun shows, they purchase these things.
These aren't evil people that are doing this.
I mean, to say the least.
So there is a fascination.
I'll tell you a quick story, too.
Very, very, very quick.
My dad owned a construction company for his entire working career.
My grandfather started in the 1960s, and my dad took it over when he passed away and ran it until a few years ago when he retired.
And his last job, it wasn't even really a job.
It was an old customer who asked if dad could still come over and do a weatherproofing on the basement.
And she was an older lady and pretty well-to-do.
And her husband had passed away, and she was liquidating some of his belongings and putting them up for auction.
And when it came time to settle up, she asked how much she owed.
And Dad said, you know what?
You don't owe me a thing, but I would ask you this.
Is there any way I can get that Luger you're about to put up on auction?
My son would really like that.
And so my dad's last job, he got one, and this was actually used.
This was an authentic piece that was used during the war.
And, you know, I guess that makes me a neo-Nazi too.
You know, I have a fascination with the pre-Columbian cultures of, you know, but if I had an Aztec at Lattl, that wouldn't make me a neo-Aztec.
So let's just get that out there.
Well, of course.
And my greatest hero in the whole world was Julius Caesar, so I must be an evil Roman lover.
You got to wonder about the brains of the people who believe this shit, but they bring in $50 million a year to the spitlickers.
$50 million a year from stupid people who donate money.
Go ahead.
Well, that's right.
Well, and of course, I mean, they just do this to shut people up that have a descending point of view.
We know what's going on.
I mean, it's a lot of projection.
I mean, there is a lot of hatred out there, and it's coming from our opposition.
But in any event, I'm fascinated by this history, too.
Who couldn't be fascinated with it?
If you understand as we do, it's not pure good versus pure evil.
I mean, America's done a lot of really evil things.
I mean, the firebombing of Dresden, what we've done in the Gulf, I mean, you name it.
That's another whole show.
But I was actually in Germany back many years ago, and I went to a bar, and it just so happened that the people in front of me were also Americans.
So I'm an American, and two Americans in front of me, and they're coming up to the bar, and the young German man, there's the bartender, and he finds out they're Americans.
They have a little bit of an exchange, and they said, oh, yeah, we went to Auschwitz yesterday.
And then this guy, this strapping, young, strong guy, said, oh, I'm so glad you were able to do that.
Everybody needs to know how evil our people.
We need to have those there so people like you can know about when you hear and I you know.
I just said there's so much more to being a German.
I mean what a beautiful culture.
I was in a city where Martin Luther was tried in 1521, right on the on the Rhine.
This is a beautiful culture of beautiful people and it's just a shame that that's all they are to be remembered for.
That's what they're taught in school, that they have to be, but more and more we're starting to throw off the yoke of self-beating and all that stuff.
We're terrible people.
In the Reich Chancellery right now, the Reichsagerboider, the graffiti that the Soviet troops put on the wall is still there, and Germany passed a law.
You cannot take that graffiti off the wall.
Russian graffiti.
But we can get into the political part of that at another time.
Right, we'll do that on an hour.
On the follow-up yes, I remember having these conversations with you back during our very early years and just always being fascinated, as I am tonight.
But with only two minutes remaining, a couple of minutes remaining, let me ask you this, how many of these veterans you talked about the attrition rate, just an ungodly attrition rate that German military of all branches suffered during that war so there wasn't a lot of them to that survived to begin with, and the numbers that have died since 1945?
Here we are mid-September, in 2022, not counting, you know, maybe 12-year-old boys that grabbed a rifle in April of 45 and ran out into the streets of Berlin, how many people that that that served in an official capacity?
These veterans of any of the branches of the German military in World War II, how many are still alive?
I don't have an accurate number, but doggone few.
Let's figure.
If they were 17 years old in 1945, how old would they be today, in their late 90s?
Got to be 100, right yeah?
Well, like I said, my friend Peter Henson is 98.
Reinhard Hardegen, who sank the first ship in American waters, was 105 when he died, but that was a few years ago, so the skippers are all gone.
There are no more skippers crew.
Yeah right, because they would have been older correct right, I'm still in contact with a lot of the crewmen, but they're really way up in age.
My best friend over there Hess.
He raised too much fuss and he died suspiciously some years ago.
He was he was a doctor of law and the state TV program was airing all sorts of nasty things about how horrible the German military was and he brought a major lawsuit against them and a week later he was dead.
Well Harry let me ask you this with a minute left and that's terrible but any veterans that would have served are pushing up on the ceiling of 100 right now if they're a day.
I mean they're close to 100 they're over 100.
They're right around 100 give or take.
But there are still some and I know you were knocked out a couple of years from traveling with COVID.
We got about a minute remaining.
For more information contact Harry through sharkcunters.com.
Are you planning any future patrols to Germany to where you can continue to, where members can continue to meet these veterans before they're all gone?
We are planning patrols next year, two places.
One, probably in springtime for us, which is fall for them.
We're going to South America to visit.
There is so much Third Reich down there.
And we're also planning a trip in late September to Bavaria and Austria.
And anybody, members, come on along with us.
I don't know what the price will be because prices are going crazy right now.
South America, for God's sake, Argentina, inflation is almost 90%.
That must be the Joe Biden school.
Well, I'll tell you what we'll do.
And we'll make this a promise.
Before your next patrol, whether it be to South America or to Bavaria, Austria, wherever it may be, we'll certainly have you back on.
I'd like to have you back on on a much more regular basis again, as we used to do.
And we'll keep people posted if they're interested in a trip like that.
Like I said, I've had friends who have gone on these patrols and just they said it's a trip of a lifetime.
So, Harry Cooper, shockrunners.com.
Harry, great to be back with you tonight.
And we'll talk to you again soon, my friend.
Sounds like a plan.
Have a great day, James.
Take care.
You got it.
And ladies and gentlemen, everybody else, please stay tuned for our third and final hour.
We're going to discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the ascension of King Charles III, and the past, present, and future of Great Britain.