Bannon's War Room - Episode 4151： A WarRoom Special 2024： Combat History of Christmas Cont.

00:00:00.000 I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell and I'm hosting America's Christmas, Combat History of Christmas.

00:00:19.680 And we're going to go back in time to our most important Christmas, the Christmas of 1776,

00:00:26.680 where all could have been lost, but all was won in a series of crucial victories,

00:00:33.580 10 crucial days that will change the course of history.

00:00:37.720 Let's go back first to the summer of 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of Long Island,

00:00:46.420 where a massive British force, most of the entire British Army and Navy,

00:00:53.900 congregate in New York, over 35,000, along with their German allies, to crush the nascent United

00:01:02.880 States, which is now only about a month, a little more than a month old after the signing of the

00:01:07.620 Declaration of Independence. This wasn't a situation of negotiation. It was a situation of we were going

00:01:14.640 to crush the Americans, as they had done in all the other empire's history. They had always won any 0.99

00:01:22.200 kind of rebellion or revolution. And they planned, the British Empire had planned to do it again.

00:01:27.440 And a massive and important hub was New York City, because of its strategic location and its ability

00:01:36.580 to make, to sally forth from different parts to the various parts of the colony. It was one of the

00:01:42.340 largest cities in the colonies at the time. And the British rolled up their entire fleet, or two-thirds

00:01:48.000 of their fleet, and much of their army, along with thousands of German or Hessian volunteers.

00:01:55.840 They land at Long Island, and it's the summer of 1776. It's August. And they make a sort of an epic attack.

00:02:11.780 The American lines, half the army is in New York, and half is in Brooklyn or Long Island.

00:02:18.820 And the army is arrayed where it's on a long spur called the Heights Iguanas. This is current-day

00:02:27.380 Greenwood Cemetery. It's one of the greatest cemeteries in the United States, where many,

00:02:31.700 many notables have their final resting place. But it's also the scene of an epic battle, the Battle of

00:02:39.140 Brooklyn. And it's here on the night of August 27th, 26th, 1776, that the battle begins in a

00:02:48.260 watermelon patch, where British skirmishers are out, and they encounter Edward Hans,

00:02:56.820 Pennsylvania's rifleman, in a watermelon patch. The British want the melons for obvious reasons,

00:03:05.620 and then a small battle occurs there in that patch. But it's really, it just touches off a much larger

00:03:14.580 operation. The British are conducting a massive flanking maneuver around the Heights Iguanas with 0.67

00:03:20.900 General Cornwallis in the lead, along with General Clinton and Lord Howe. And they flank the American

00:03:28.980 lines, while another force approaches from the, from the, towards the Heights Iguanas to pin down the

00:03:37.540 Americans. It's a classic hammer and anvil maneuver, where they're trying to smash the Americans. 0.99

00:03:45.460 And the force that's the flanking maneuver maneuver is unseen. They attack, you know,

00:03:53.300 they move out in the midnight hours of the 26th and 27th, and they move around. And it's that morning,

00:04:03.540 though, that General Grant with the British attack, the main line of resistance at the Heights Iguanas.

00:04:09.220 And it's here that the Washington's immortals earn immortal fame. I wrote this book, which is a

00:04:18.820 multiple bestseller. It's been through about 12 reprintings. It's here that they conduct a rear

00:04:26.580 guard that literally saves the United States. The British are attacking from the flank and the front,

00:04:34.900 and it's near a stone house that they lead a series of charges that allow the American army

00:04:43.940 to escape back to their entrenchments in Brooklyn Heights. And it's here that, you know, this,

00:04:51.540 this epic stand, which is, as one historian at the time would say, it was an hour more important in

00:04:58.820 our history than any other. They make the stand. It's a, it's in blood. And there's about 400 Marylanders.

00:05:06.260 Nearly the entire force is annihilated or captured. And what drew me to this book, like all the other

00:05:16.420 books I've written, is it found me. And I found a rusted old sign near that area that I mentioned,

00:05:22.820 that battleground near that house, which says, here lie 276 Marylanders, Maryland heroes.

00:05:32.580 And I wanted to know more. Where did they, you know, where are they buried? And the answer is,

00:05:39.300 we don't know. They're buried in a mass grave in and around that area. And it's one of the great mysteries

00:05:45.220 in American, in American history of where these men are located. Many of them were captured and put

00:05:50.820 on prison ships and their bodies were never seen again because these prison ships were like literally

00:05:57.060 floating concentration camps. And most of the men that went on the ships never survived. The, uh,

00:06:05.380 fast forward a little bit and it's Washington has to make decision. Does he stand and fight

00:06:12.180 or does he retreat? And he, he, he has a war council, you know, in the middle of a massive

00:06:18.340 lightning storm and they decide to retreat. And it's here that the story of the marble headers

00:06:28.500 relates directly to the, to Christmas 1776. It's here that their first epic, uh, evacuation occurs.

00:06:38.500 They, they, uh, they affect an American Dunkirk. They pull off the entire American army in, in

00:06:46.660 extraordinary circumstances. The massive British army of 25,000 men is in the entire front of the,

00:06:57.140 of Brooklyn defenses. They face this army. The British Navy is in the East, East river

00:07:04.180 and about to sail behind the American defenses and crush it. It's here at this time that the United

00:07:13.300 States, which is only 45 days old is in its greatest peril because Washington's army is

00:07:21.300 potentially going to be destroyed. Washington would be, is about to be captured and a miracle

00:07:27.380 needs to occur. And that's exactly what would God provides. Uh, they, the marble headers,

00:07:35.940 the most experienced seamen or mariners in the continental army are given the task of bringing

00:07:43.540 the army off 10,000 men along with his horses and cannon and somehow pull off the, uh, the impossible

00:07:52.100 in the middle of the prying British eyes and loyalists and everybody else in that, in the middle of the

00:07:59.220 night, the, um, Washington orders, the men that they are going to be attacking when in, in reality,

00:08:06.660 they're moving back towards the boats. Glover is only given a few hours. They round up all the boats

00:08:12.500 that they can, and they begin the task of bringing off the army somehow into, to New York City itself.

00:08:22.180 And it doesn't go well at first. The water in the river is so treacherous. There's so many currents

00:08:29.620 that they literally are not able to move the boats across and they have to abandon the operation.

00:08:34.580 They try to find Washington to call it off and he can't be found. And miraculously, he can't be found

00:08:41.540 because they, they, they move forward with the operation and it's, it's a race against time.

00:08:47.700 They only have about six or seven hours to move 10,000 men across the river. And it's not just one time.

00:08:53.780 They have to go back nearly a dozen times with these boats under the eyes of the entire, 0.97

00:09:01.220 a large portion of the British Navy somehow, which is parked not far on the, on the East River.

00:09:06.820 And they are doing that back and forth. The British army is about to pounce in front of them.

00:09:16.100 The Navy is about to potentially be unleashed, but miraculously, the winds don't favor the Navy

00:09:21.460 to, to move behind the fortifications. And they're able to, to move more men across,

00:09:28.500 but daylight is coming. And it's here that the hand of God, as the men say,

00:09:32.340 today shows itself in a fog, a miraculous fog sets in and screens the movement of the remaining boats.

00:09:40.660 And they're able to evacuate the, the, the rest of the force back to New York City.

00:09:47.460 And it's from there that the, the American army sustains one massive defeat after another.

00:09:56.340 And it's, it's a situation of, of retreat and defeat. The, the, the greatest being at Fort Washington,

00:10:08.340 where if you are familiar with the Fort Washington bridge, the, the base of that bridge was a portion

00:10:15.780 of it was a massive fortification that stretched over a mile that were, it was a massive American

00:10:22.100 fortification known as Fort Washington. And they had a number of redoubts and defensive areas. There

00:10:30.420 was a star fort and it's here that the Americans make an epic stand, but what they don't know is that

00:10:40.020 the adjutant, the second in command had deserted only a few days earlier and delivered the entire plans

00:10:48.980 of the fort, all of its weak points and where the forces were positioned. So the British knew exactly

00:10:55.060 where to attack. And, and that's exactly what they did in mid November. When they started to,

00:11:02.180 to roll up the fort and roll up many of the men inside it, the Washington's immortals and the 0.86

00:11:09.140 indispensables, which is the book about the marble headers is all based on original primary source

00:11:17.060 documents. One being pension applications. And one of the great stories of this book,

00:11:24.420 both books actually, is a pension application from an individual that was lucky enough to escape

00:11:31.940 Fort Washington. And he talks about how the fort is being surrounded. They find a rowboat and they row

00:11:39.300 across the Hudson River and they make their way to New Jersey where Washington is in a house overlooking

00:11:48.980 the entire battle through his spyglass. And he, he sees Washington, distraught Washington.

00:11:59.860 And he sees Washington with tears in his eyes as the fort has fallen. And many of his men

00:12:05.700 are, are run through literally a gauntlet where British and German soldiers form a gauntlet. And

00:12:15.940 they, the men are run through the gauntlet and they're kicked, beaten, in some cases, bayoneted

00:12:21.540 and robbed of their personal possessions. This is just one of the defeats that Washington's

00:12:29.060 army faces as they make their long retreat back through white plains where they make a stand as

00:12:38.980 well. And eventually they, they cross over and make their way through New Jersey. And it's the

00:12:44.820 British army that's never too far behind as they're felling trees and, and making their way towards

00:12:50.260 the safety of elites, the relative safety, they think of the Delaware river in the, the farms of

00:12:59.780 Pennsylvania. And it's here, um, that they're only just a little bit ahead of the British army that they

00:13:06.820 escape across the Delaware. And they, they are making, um, they're making preparations. This is a

00:13:16.580 situation where they escape one demise, but they now face another. And this is the most,

00:13:23.700 this is known as the crisis. Some of the most crucial days in American history, because everything

00:13:29.540 was collapsing. The enlistments for the men were about to expire. Washington was about to lose his

00:13:35.860 entire army. Hyperinflation racked the colonies. Prices for food skyrocketed. The cause

00:13:46.260 was about to be lost. Many Americans in New Jersey had in, in, in other areas had taken, um, a pardon from

00:13:55.140 the King and we're now turning sides and everything was being lost. Uh, the potential for the entire war

00:14:05.940 ending was very much in the, the month of December, 1776. And it's, it's here that Washington

00:14:15.700 plans, the great, one of the greatest comebacks in military history, the crossing of the Delaware

00:14:25.060 in the, that will change the course of the entire revolutionary war. It's a epic stand. It's an epic

00:14:35.380 battle. One of the greatest battles in American history, the battle for Trenton.

00:14:40.500 And it's appropriately, Washington's call sign or code words for that night were victory or death.

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00:16:10.820 Good morning and Merry Christmas. I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell, combat historian and best-selling author,

00:16:28.820 hosting the Combat History of Christmas with the worm. Today, Steve is traveling, so I'm hosting it

00:16:36.660 alone, but we're talking about the combat history of Christmas and our most important history

00:16:44.580 of Christmas, which is the Christmas of 1776 in the counterattack at Trenton, which changes history

00:16:53.540 in the world. It's in and around in Pennsylvania that Washington near Trenton on the Pennsylvania

00:17:06.580 side decides to mount one of the greatest comebacks in military history, an attack on the garrison of

00:17:15.940 Hessian troops. These are German mercenaries that are based in Trenton. He's got one problem,

00:17:22.020 though. He somehow has to get across the Delaware River. This is a very difficult obstacle.

00:17:32.420 Washington decides to launch the attack or the counterattack on Christmas Day. What they don't

00:17:38.980 know is that there will be a raging nor'easter that day that will make it almost impassable.

00:17:44.980 But days before the planning, he asks the most experienced mariner in the Continental Army,

00:17:55.140 John Glover, who initially has the Marblehead Regiment with the Indispensables, he's now a brigade

00:18:03.540 commander, if it's even possible to cross the river.

00:18:08.740 You know, you have to make making an assault crossing on a river against an enemy force is one of the most

00:18:16.260 difficult things imaginable in a military maneuver. And it was compounded by the climate that day. But they don't

00:18:29.300 know at the time if it's even doable. So he asked Glover if it's possible. Glover says to General Washington,

00:18:35.780 Washington, don't worry, my boys can handle it. And that's exactly what they do. They pull off the

00:18:42.180 impossible. Washington, who's kind of known for complicated strategies, has three prongs of an

00:18:49.620 attack that are to attack the Trenton garrison under the command of Johan Rahl. And Rahl is an extremely

00:18:58.980 experienced commander that has been, you know, since his childhood, a soldier, and a very,

00:19:07.700 very good one. He had, at White Plains, he had led the attack, and he even took, he led the attack

00:19:16.260 at Fort Washington, which I mentioned earlier, and was, you know, incredibly important,

00:19:22.100 played an important role in seizing the American garrison there. This man's an incredible war

00:19:27.460 hero. He's also a very, very skilled commander and knows military strategy. But he's left with

00:19:36.740 a very difficult task. He somehow has to defend this isolated garrison. New Jersey has a number

00:19:43.700 of little, of smaller isolated garrisons that are tying down the British gains there. And he is,

00:19:51.620 his 900 or so men are garrisoning the Trenton area. They're on constant alert for American attacks and

00:20:01.460 raids. And he is given information by British intelligence. There's a spy in Washington's camp

00:20:09.220 that General Grant has that they will attack on Christmas. So he's warned. His men

00:20:16.660 are armed. They sleep in their arms and in their uniforms. This is not the Christmas story that,

00:20:23.780 you know, many children's books have of these men being drunk on Christmas and not ready to do battle.

00:20:32.980 It's just the opposite. They're very trained. They're ready to go. But they're also worn out

00:20:38.820 because the Americans had raided them multiple times. And that night he's warned. He's given,

00:20:48.500 it's really quite extraordinary story. He's given intelligence by a loyalist that the American

00:20:55.540 Army had crossed the Delaware River. And the enslaved individual tried to see him multiple times. 0.74

00:21:02.820 He was playing checkers at the time with another loyalist and later played cards. And eventually,

00:21:10.020 after being pestered multiple times, he sees the man and then takes the message which says that the

00:21:15.380 Americans are coming and puts it in his pocket and never reads it. And the Americans indeed are coming 0.96

00:21:20.900 that night on Christmas night. And it's mission impossible, though, because John Glover and his

00:21:28.900 men have to somehow cross a river, which is a raging torrent. There's pieces of ice. There is a nor'easter

00:21:36.980 occurring where snow and sleet is pelting the men. And only the most experienced mariners in the

00:21:46.180 in the Continental Army can do this task. They have to somehow transport over 2,500 men across the river

00:21:57.060 about 12 miles north of Trenton. And they have to battle the different currents that are inside the

00:22:07.620 river. If they if they fail, there's literally a there's a there's an eight foot waterfall on several

00:22:15.380 hundred yards down the river that will capsize the boats and drown many of the men will die of

00:22:21.380 hyperthermia if they're not successful. But they're able to somehow with their skills and in mariner skills,

00:22:29.060 which they developed in the Grand Banks, which is off Nova Scotia, where they were fishermen,

00:22:34.100 which are the most treacherous waters in the world, they're able to bring the men 1.00

00:22:40.500 and the army across against all odds. For perspective, Washington had two other attacks

00:22:48.500 that were trying to cross the river, two other forces that were trying to cross over. They failed

00:22:53.620 because the water was too treacherous. It was only through the skilled hands of the marble

00:22:59.140 hunters that they were able to cross the river, the Delaware that night. And they're using a variety

00:23:05.940 of craft. There's a flat bottom boats. There's also something called a Durham boat. There's 25 to 40 of

00:23:13.140 these boats which deliver iron to to a Durham, the iron foundry in your Durham, the Durham iron foundry.

00:23:23.140 And these boats are used to bring the men across in this raging snowstorm. And I think what's so

00:23:31.380 incredible is as the men get off the boats, there's snow on the ground and many of them don't have

00:23:38.100 shoes. And there's many, many accounts of how they literally leave a trail of blood as they march in 0.67

00:23:46.420 their wake because the men have no shoes. But somehow they have this Elan in the spirit that is

00:23:57.060 extraordinary. One of the accounts in The Indispensables that chronicles the Marbleheader story

00:24:04.180 talks about how they had a cheerfulness, despite the fact that they were facing

00:24:09.700 the, this weather that was, that was beating down on them. And as they probe forward, they had to go

00:24:16.660 through a ravine, which was very slippery. And many of the men were literally, some of the men were so

00:24:23.940 exhausted that they, they, they almost fell asleep in the snow. One man almost did. And that would have

00:24:30.100 been instant death. You would have died of hypothermia. And in this march, they, they move along

00:24:36.660 and they meet a doctor whose, whose dog is barking on the, near his house. And they, they approach him.

00:24:46.740 Anybody that, any, anybody that is, approaches the army is literally apprehended because they could,

00:24:52.660 they could give away the great secret of the Revolutionary War that the, the, the Washington

00:24:58.420 had landed his force and they were moving towards Trenton. They bring this doctor forward, who is a, a

00:25:04.820 patriot. And he tells them that he will very gladly come. And they move down the road and they encounter

00:25:12.820 a force under the command of a guy by the name of Wallace, who was authorized by Adam Steven to make a

00:25:20.580 revenge raid. And Washington is in a tower of rage because you, he says to him, you, sir,

00:25:28.740 have destroyed my entire plan. And it destroyed the element of surprise. And when in reality,

00:25:36.580 it's, it's, it's, it's an unintended consequence that may have occurred. The raid may have alerted

00:25:43.060 while, uh, Johan Rahl that the Americans had landed, but it was a small force and that this was indeed the

00:25:50.020 force that British intelligence had warned him of. And he then went back to sleep. Johan Rahl went back to

00:25:57.380 sleep and put the mess and never read the message that the Americans were coming. And the, the 0.96

00:26:04.580 Marylanders who I chronicle Washington's immortals, there's a small force of Marylanders. There's the, the

00:26:12.020 stalwart men that remained, including the Marblehead Mariners that marched towards Trenton, uh, as, as daylight

00:26:22.180 approaches. And John Glover is marching on the long, the river road. That is the road that corresponds

00:26:28.740 with the Delaware river. And without orders, he sees a bridge across the acid peak Creek and realizes

00:26:37.780 that this is an absolutely important target. And he orders men to seize the bridge and attack the

00:26:44.260 Hessian guards there and then move a number of cannon on the high ground at the bridge. And it's, uh, it's

00:26:52.180 here that Johan Rahl alerts his men. Uh, the, the garrison in, in Trenton is, is alarmed and they attack,

00:27:03.460 uh, Washington with a number of cannons. And, uh, he has three regiments of his disposal. Two of those

00:27:09.860 regiments make a desperate attack on Washington, uh, to somehow break the grip of, of the American

00:27:20.820 attack on Trenton. And it's, it fails. Johan Rahl is, is mortally wounded. The, the, the, the, the

00:27:28.980 Glover's force at acid peak Creek basically seals one of the last escape routes for Johan Rahl's force at

00:27:39.060 Trenton. And it becomes one of the greatest American victories in history. One of the great military

00:27:47.460 victories in world history that will change the entire course of the revolutionary war. And it was

00:27:53.940 part of 10 days of, of battles that would change the entire revolutionary war and world history.

00:28:09.060 I'm Patrick K. O'Donnell. Merry Christmas. I'm hosting the combat history of Christmas today. It's our

00:28:30.740 annual tradition with Stephen K. Bannon. And what we, we like to do is we go back in time and look at the,

00:28:38.820 the inflection points in history, which often revolve around Christmas. But there are also stories

00:28:46.580 about individuals and their agency that change the course of events in one way or another.

00:28:52.260 And that is certainly the case with the next story that I'm going to tell, which is a Christmas story

00:28:58.420 set in World War II. It's set in the, um, in the mountains, the Dolomite mountains of Northern Italy,

00:29:06.820 where a raging guerrilla war was taking place against the SS, against the Germans. It's a situation where

00:29:17.220 small groups of OSS men, otherwise the first special forces, small groups of teams that were arming the

00:29:25.700 resistance behind the lines would, would do some extraordinary things in or the complete with the

00:29:33.620 hallmarks of today's special operations forces. And that story begins and has some really key points

00:29:42.820 at Christmas. For me, it's a, it's a special story. It found me, um, many years ago, over 15 years ago,

00:29:52.500 where I was contemplating going back overseas with embedding with, uh, another combat unit in

00:30:00.260 Afghanistan. And it was my, uh, my great friend whose nickname was the brain, who was an operations

00:30:08.900 officer with the OSS that ran the special ops missions deep into Northern Italy said to me, Pat,

00:30:15.540 don't go. It's, it's too dangerous. Um, and I, I, I, I said that, okay. He's like, I want you to tell

00:30:24.340 the story. I want you to tell Howard's story, Howard Chapel story, the Tacoma mission. I said that,

00:30:32.260 that's great. But, uh, Howard never will never talk. Um, I spent years trying to get

00:30:39.540 arguably one of the greatest World War II veterans I ever interviewed to talk and he would never talk.

00:30:47.620 Uh, he would always, I would always call him up and he'd say, well, Pat, you know,

00:30:51.860 you need to come out here and, and, and, and maybe interview me. And it was always a throwaway line

00:30:57.220 because I did go out a couple of times and try to interview him and it never succeeded. But finally,

00:31:03.140 I got the brain to, to basically triangulate and pressure Howard to letting me talk to him.

00:31:10.580 And he said to me, I landed in San Francisco and I called him up and I expected sort of the usual

00:31:17.700 treatment and said, he said, Pat, meet me at the gas station at spyglass road at Pismo beach at noon

00:31:25.940 tomorrow. And I was there, I was there five, you know, 10 minutes ahead of time. And I'll never forget,

00:31:32.900 this big Lincoln kind of rolled up and he had sunglasses on and he looks over at me. He goes,

00:31:39.460 follow me. And I went back to his house and Howard Chappell was six foot two kind of built like

00:31:47.380 Schwarzenegger and, and still kind of had that frame and physique. And he immediately tried to

00:31:56.580 intimidate me to intimidate me. And I, I'll never forget. I tried to enter to bring him back in time.

00:32:02.820 And he said to me, um, you know, Pat, um, he starts to open up his mail

00:32:11.060 with his Fairburn Sykes fighting knife right in front of me to sort of intimidate me. And then he

00:32:17.140 started to like sharpen his fingernails. It's like, you know, you need to use the bathroom

00:32:21.700 or anything. I'm like, no, I'm fine, Howard. And then I said to him, well, let's go back in time

00:32:27.460 to when you, you killed the German officer with your bare hands with a ski pole.

00:32:34.020 And that was like the opening that I needed. And he went back in time and told me how

00:32:40.020 he killed, he was running for his life from what was known as an SS for Stalamento behind the lines

00:32:48.260 where his entire team was captured. Going back a little bit, that team was set behind the lines

00:32:56.980 on Christmas day, 1944. And they, they dropped at a place called Valmoral, which is nestled in the

00:33:05.540 Dolomite mountains on the side of a mountain. The place is something you can visit today. It's,

00:33:10.980 there's a grappa bar there on the drop zone. And I went back like I always do to the places that I

00:33:18.100 write about. And I visited Valmoral. I visited San Antonio, which is nearby. And I interviewed all of

00:33:26.260 the old partisans that were with the Tacoma team. And I'll never forget my, my, my first,

00:33:36.500 one of the first and most important people that I interviewed was an old man who was a mayor of,

00:33:41.860 of a town. And I was there with, with one of the partisans relatives that had died in combat on,

00:33:51.540 on, on, on Chappell's team. And we went from house to house to interview the old partisans.

00:33:57.620 And this mayor, former mayor was sitting there watching TV and his door was kind of open and I

00:34:03.220 knocked on the door and he looked up at me and he said, what do you want? And I said,

00:34:10.580 one thing I said, I just said, Howard Chappell. And this man's jaw literally dropped as I said that.

00:34:18.100 And he said to me, Rambo, and that's what Chappell, that's how tough, that's how much of a badass

00:34:26.660 and illegitimately Howard Chappell was. And I'll start to tell you that story of

00:34:32.580 the Brenner assignment. And these men drop in on Christmas day and it's almost immediately hot.

00:34:39.700 The, uh, the entire area is, is, uh, there's a very active SS presence there that, um,

00:34:51.460 they hunt partisans and they, and it's not a, uh, it's not a pleasant thing at all. If you're found

00:34:58.180 to be aiding the Americans or in a resistance group, you're hung from a meat hook. And many of the squares

00:35:05.540 of the small towns in and around this area, there were dozens of men that were hung from meat hooks

00:35:11.380 for helping the Americans or just being part of the partisan group or just being, you know,

00:35:16.500 in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's how brutal and ruthless the SS were. And it's

00:35:22.420 this environment, the chapel had to operate in his primary mission was to find another main

00:35:32.020 character in my book, a guy by the name of Stephen Hall and Stephen Hall in his story is epic and

00:35:39.540 extraordinary. He dropped in August, 1944, and he would be part of a single one man mission to somehow

00:35:48.500 destroy the sub passes that were part of the Brenner pass. And he wrote a letter to the OSS

00:35:55.060 command months earlier, um, as he was going back to Corvallis, Oregon on a troop train. He was an

00:36:03.540 engineer, combat engineer that knew how to blow things up, but he's also an expert skier. He was

00:36:10.420 a mountaineer. He was a rich kid that went to Harvard and Yale dropped out of both and then sort of traveled

00:36:18.420 the world. He went to Cortina, which is in the Dolmite mountains, a ski area. And he, he, he hiked

00:36:26.100 and skied all the mountains for six months. And he wrote in a letter in 1944 to the OSS, if they dropped

00:36:36.020 the man with explosives and, you know, the proper equipment, he could destroy the passes that led into

00:36:43.700 the Brenner pass. And why is the Brenner pass important at this time? It was the lifeline or the

00:36:49.220 artery where the German army was, was bringing their supplies and their men into Northern Italy

00:36:56.340 and Italy from Germany and Austria. And it was bombed relentlessly by the Allied Air Corps, but it

00:37:04.020 was so heavily fortified that every, the troop trains and everything else were getting through.

00:37:08.660 So they had to look at an alternative means, a special operation to arm the resistance in the area

00:37:15.780 and then potentially take out the sub passes. And this is Stephen Hall's mission. And he drops in

00:37:23.940 with a, uh, uh, another team initially guy by the name of Lloyd Smith. And I interviewed all of these

00:37:31.380 men that were alive at Smith nickname was Smitty was epic legendary. He was a rising star within the OSS at

00:37:38.180 the time because he had rescued, um, a bunch of nurses that had crashed in a C 47 behind the lines

00:37:44.340 in Albania. He went in with a three 57 Magnum alone and had to navigate all these partisan groups with a,

00:37:51.940 with a letter from president Roosevelt saying that don't harm me. He somehow gets out these men along

00:37:58.500 with Sterling Hayden, who's the famous movie star later. And then also Jack Taylor, who was a main

00:38:04.180 character in my book for seals, but Smitty then is given, uh, the task of bringing in, uh, Stephen Hall.

00:38:12.340 And, uh, you know, I connected immediately with him because I was a division one wrestler in college.

00:38:18.180 And so was he, and we had this immediate rapport and I'll never forget. He pulled out the three 57

00:38:23.700 Magnum that he had behind the lines in Albania. And then also in Northern Italy and showed it to me.

00:38:28.980 And he talked about how Hall was a, uh, a unique character that in many ways was trying to find

00:38:35.780 himself. This, this is an incredible movie. It's been optioned a few times of, of him trying to find

00:38:42.580 himself, but also to accomplish mission impossible. They, they jump in to an area, um, known as the

00:38:50.900 Fraioli, which is further away from the Dolomites. And he has to, to, he goes in with Smith and then he goes

00:38:57.860 alone to the Dolomites area where his mission will take place. And he has to march, climb and ski

00:39:07.700 for days, weeks alone in the mountains, in some of the most treacherous terrain in the world,

00:39:16.500 as he is being hunted by the SS. And he's blowing up bridges. He's working with the resistance to some

00:39:24.180 degree because, but he's a fish out of water because he is a, I mean, he's kind of this white 1.00

00:39:31.060 Anglo-Saxon, um, guy that went to Harvard and Yale and he's dealing with partisans in many cases who are

00:39:37.780 communists. He has nothing in common with them. And he is, he is able to thwart, um, you know, several

00:39:44.100 attempts on his life, but he makes his way towards the mission area. And it's here, you know, like

00:39:52.020 every great story. This is, I think, in my opinion, I've, I've interviewed thousands of World War II

00:39:58.740 veterans. I've written seven or eight books on World War II. This is one of the greatest World War II

00:40:03.780 stories of all time. It also has a love story with it. And it's here that he's making his way towards

00:40:11.140 Cortina that he encounters a woman that will change his life. A countess who is also a French agent,

00:40:20.500 but he's also working for the Germans. And she is a mayor of a small town in their interest. They're,

00:40:26.820 his entree to this woman, the countess de obligato and her, her mansion, her small home in a place called

00:40:34.820 Morrison still exists. All of these places still exist. And oh, by the way, the World War II museum

00:40:42.900 is planning on doing a epic tour of the Brenner assignment in this mission. And it's one for,

00:40:50.980 it's such a special place. It's a, it's a, it's a story that is not known of World War II.

00:40:57.220 And it's also, as I mentioned, a love story. And it's here that he encounters her in a, in a strange

00:41:03.700 way. He receives a book, the Scarlet Pimpernel, which is a sort of her call sign for him to meet her.

00:41:12.100 And she has a specific code. She leaves a pine branch at the windowsill of her home

00:41:21.700 out if the Germans are not in the house. And as it's a, it's a, it's a wintery night in, in November, 0.67

00:41:30.900 1944. And he, along with a partisan leader is making their way to Mars on and they see the pine branch

00:41:40.020 near the window. And he goes into the countess's house and encounters a woman, which will change his

00:41:48.500 life. And, uh, she's sort of seated on a, uh, a sofa rather seductively. And it's, it's there that,

00:41:58.660 uh, life will change for Stephen Hall.

00:42:05.460 I'm Patrick K O'Donnell and I'm hosting the Comet History of Christmas for the War Room,

00:42:27.140 our annual tradition. I'm taking you back behind the lines in the Brenner assignment. It's Christmas

00:42:34.580 day, 1944. And Stephen K Hall is in the house of the Countess, who's a double agent. She works for

00:42:43.460 France, but also Germany, but she is a, she's also a sympathizer with the resistance and a resistance

00:42:50.180 leader in and of herself. It's here that Stephen K Hall is given sort of, sort of the mission impossible

00:42:57.780 to destroy a small light railroad and a transformer that is, that is about 10 miles away.

00:43:05.460 Hall spends the night Christmas Eve with the Countess. And what's extraordinary is he records

00:43:12.580 his story on cigarette paper and buries his diary in wine bottles in and around various homes.

00:43:21.620 This book that I'm talking about, this story is in a book called the Brenner assignments,

00:43:28.980 bestselling book. It's made up of over thousands, tens of thousands of documents,

00:43:35.460 including Stephen K Hall's, uh, diary that was on cigarette paper, but also the mission reports

00:43:43.780 from Howard Chappell and the Tacoma team and Hall's mission reports. There's a, a radio messages.

00:43:50.740 It's a, it's thousands of, of documents, tens of thousands of documents to assemble a narrative,

00:43:56.740 which is extraordinary. It's here. He's given this, this impossible mission on Christmas day,

00:44:02.700 and he sets out on skis in the middle of a snowstorm to blow up the, the rail station and the,

00:44:10.080 the transformer because it's a mercury condenser. It's something that has to come from Germany.

00:44:15.360 It would, it would disable the line for months or weeks and sets off in the middle of this raging

00:44:21.360 snow storm, trying to destroy this, this rails, uh, light rail station, which is a artery towards

00:44:29.360 the Brenner pass and moving troops and supplies. And he's disoriented after several hours of skiing.

00:44:37.600 And, um, um, he basically collapses not far from this rail station, which is his mission.

00:44:44.480 And he's, he's captured by a forest forester who's, who's sympathetic to Germany. And he's brought to a

00:44:52.640 priest and it's, uh, it's here that he is, he's arrested and he's, he's very tragically tortured,

00:45:01.520 uh, tortured to death, uh, by the SS. And what this book is about is a, an epic story of the SS

00:45:13.040 against Howard Chappell in the, in the partisans and resistance behind the lines. This is the first

00:45:18.400 special operations team. These were known as operational groups. And he had the German operational

00:45:23.920 group. If you've ever seen the movie and glorious bastards at the beginning, this is the, his group. 0.97

00:45:29.680 It's, it's, he was a German, uh, speaking, uh, guy that was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger 0.91

00:45:36.000 that went behind the lines and, and then accomplishes Stephen Hall's mission. And

00:45:42.720 it's amazing. Uh, Hall's is captured and he's killed by the SS. And then Chappell has to somehow

00:45:52.000 get towards Hall. He doesn't know he's killed and he reforms Stephen, uh, Hall's partisans.

00:46:00.320 And they set up what is really one of the great ambushes of the war. They seal a portion of the

00:46:10.000 Brenner pass as the SS are escaping, including the 504 heavy tiger tank battalion, which has one

00:46:16.880 operational tiger tank as they're making their way to the Brenner pass. They, they blow up a bridge

00:46:23.600 before the pass. And then they, they, they capture the high ground above it and they fire upon the SS

00:46:30.240 and the SS thinks that they have chapel in a checkmate. They, they tell him under a white

00:46:36.640 flag that they will blow up the church, which contains all the civilians in the small town of 1.00

00:46:42.640 Caprilli and chapel, um, takes the, they basically calls their bluff goes down to the, the, the, uh,

00:46:52.720 the, the area of Caprilli on a motorcycle with his, with one of his men. He's only armed with a 45

00:46:59.920 and he confronts the SS and says, it is you that are surrounded. You are cut off. And we,

00:47:06.800 there's a parachute battalion that has landed nearby and you must surrender.

00:47:10.960 And he does, he provides, he does the impossible. The SS surrenders 3,500 men, including the payroll

00:47:20.320 for the German army to Howard chapel, single man, how a single person with agency changes the course

00:47:27.120 of an entire campaign in Northern Italy. And, you know, Steven K Bannon, who's my favorite host of

00:47:35.920 this show, always asked me, where do you find, where do you get these books, uh, Pat, or where do

00:47:42.160 you, where, where can the audience find them? You can go to my website, patrickkodonald.com.

00:47:48.080 You can go to at a combat historian, which is not get her or Twitter. And the book, uh, the unvanquished

00:47:56.160 is at the front of the store at Barnes and Noble nationwide. But what is it about? It's about

00:48:03.280 agency. It's about you are responsible. You, the individual can change the course of history.

00:48:10.320 Merry Christmas.

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Bannon's War Room - December 25, 2024

Episode 4151： A WarRoom Special 2024： Combat History of Christmas Cont.

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