Part Two: The Evilest Football Player of All Time

Summary

Behind the Bastards: "Part Two: The Evilest Football Player of All Time"

Podcast: Behind the Bastards
Host: Bobby Finger
Guest: Dana Schwartz
Date: August 21, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode completes the two-part exposé on Alexandre Villaplan, a once-celebrated French footballer whose life descended into criminality and ultimately into collaboration with the Nazis during France’s occupation. The hosts trace Villaplan’s arc from sporting legend, through addiction and match-fixing, to his notorious role as a war criminal in the service of the French Gestapo, revealing how personal failings, opportunism, and the horrors of history transformed “the evilest football player of all time.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Rise: Villaplan’s Football Fame (04:21–13:26)

• Early Career Success:

  • Villaplan is recruited by Racing Club de Paris, becoming a top athlete in a nascent professional sport.
  • "Vilaplan is the best ball header. He's one of the best passers. You gotta have him, right?" — Bobby (04:44)
  • Lives lavishly, spending earnings on gambling, nightlife, and ostentatious pleasures.

• Acclaim & the 1930 World Cup:

  • Captains France in the inaugural World Cup (Montevideo, 1930), leading the team to an opening victory against Mexico.
  • "He tells interviewers on the day, this is the most beautiful day of my life." — Bobby (07:41)

• Turning Point:

  • Despite initial success, France loses the next two matches and is eliminated.
  • Villaplan returns to France as a national hero—but the global economic crisis looms.

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The Fall: Addiction, Gambling, and Crime (13:26–17:54)

• Descent into Crime:

  • Gambling debts entangle Villaplan with underworld figures.
  • Orchestrates a sports betting and match-fixing scandal at Olympique d’Antibes, rigging games and bribing teams for profit.
  • Caught and ejected from the club, though the manager is scapegoated.

• Personal Decline:

  • Career deteriorates further due to alcoholism, missed games, and overall lack of discipline—“He's not eating food, he's eating liquor and brothel. And he's engaging in... brothels. Like, that's his entire diet.” — Bobby (14:13)
  • Ends up playing in lower divisions, eventually fired for non-attendance.

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From Washed-Up Athlete to Organized Crime (22:01–24:40)

• Transition to Professional Gambler (and Failure):

  • "He is now a professional gambler and he sucks at it, right? He's horrible at this job." — Bobby (22:24)
  • Arrested for race-fixing, spends time in and out of prison.

• Criminal Marginality:

  • Functions as an enforcer for Parisian gangsters. His physicality is now weaponized for debt collection and violence.

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Collaboration & War Crimes with the Nazis (24:40–56:56)

• War Clouds and New Allegiances:

  • Called up as a reservist (1939), Villaplan avoids frontline combat, remaining in support units.
  • Demonstrates little loyalty to France, identifying more with the criminal/immigrant margins.

• Nazi Occupation and Underworld Opportunism:

  • With Paris under Nazi control, Villaplan taps into black market, racketeering, and extortion.
  • Quote from The Blizzard: “Vilaplan tried his hand at racketeering and blackmail, his preferred targets being black marketeers and Jews.” — read by Bobby (29:36)

• Joining the French Gestapo (Carlingue):

  • In prison, he’s recruited into Henri Lafont’s infamous Carlingue, the “French Gestapo,” collaborating directly with SS to crush resistance and target Jews.
  • Initially acts as a chauffeur/bodyguard, but rises due to his “work ethic and skill at social manipulation.” — Bobby (35:55)

• The BNA: North African SS Brigade:

  • Villaplan is promoted to Obersturmführer of the BNA (North African Brigade), a unit largely comprised of Algerians and other marginalized figures, tasked with anti-Resistance operations and atrocities.
  • “Hitler had started in the early 40s... funding an Arabic language French newspaper, which was geared towards recruiting and radicalizing Muslims who had immigrated to France from colonized nations.” — Bobby (39:33)

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Atrocities & Massacres (47:36–56:56)

• Personal Involvement in War Crimes:

  • “Alex seizes the 59 year old mother of six by the hair. ‘Where is your Jew?’ he shouts... Men from the BNA torture two peasants in front of her. After being beaten and set ablaze, the two peasants were machine gunned. Alex laughs.” — Bobby reading from Guardian (48:20)

• Systemic Brutality:

  • The BNA avoids open combat with the Resistance, preferring mass reprisals and execution of civilians—including the massacre at Musedan (June 1944).
  • “Official records... tell of pillage, rape, plundering and burning of property, extortion and profiteering... Arrests, deportations or summary murders of civilians and executions of suspects took place on an almost daily basis.” — Bobby quoting Robert Pike (53:14)

• Villaplan’s Infamy and Wealth:

  • “He makes a fortune during this period of time. By some accounts, he becomes as wealthy or wealthier than he'd ever been during the height of his football career, because he's taking shitloads of bribes.” — Bobby (50:35)

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Collapse, Betrayal, and Execution (56:56–62:13)

• Desperation & Double-Agent Routinely Claimed:

  • As Nazi defeat nears, Villaplan pretends to be a double agent, extorting captives:

    • “I am not their master. They are going to kill you. But I will try to save you... You will be the 55th if you give me 400,000 francs.” — Bobby (57:32 quoting eyewitness account)

  • “He sucks so bad. He's so awful.” — Dana Schwartz (58:11)

• Endgame and Reckoning:

  • Captured by Resistance agents on August 24, 1944, with a gun and fake credentials after a failed escape scam.
  • Tried and condemned as a conman and murderer; executed by firing squad on December 26, 1944.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Villaplan’s Dissolution:

  • “He's burning money as fast as he can spend it. Just lighting it on fire at the racetrack.” — Bobby Finger (06:01)

• On French Society’s Collapse:

  • “I saw a child drop a sweet which someone trod on and then the man behind bent down and picked it up, wiped it and ate it.” — Morvan Lebesque via Bobby (10:48)
  • “That makes me sad.” — Dana Schwartz (11:08)

• On His Atrocities:

  • “He is just beating a 59 year old woman with a fucking pistol butt... This is the real version of that character [from Inglourious Basterds], you know.” — Bobby Finger (49:32)
  • “He sucks so bad.” — Dana Schwartz (58:11)

• On Postwar Justice:

  • “On the day after Christmas 1944, he is executed by firing squad along with seven of his colleagues. Yeah. So we have a happy ending.” — Bobby Finger (60:38)
  • “Seems like the thing to do to that sort of person.” — Dana Schwartz (60:41)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:21 | Villaplan’s football stardom, 1930 World Cup | | 13:26 | Start of Antibes match-fixing scandal | | 17:54 | End of athletic career, descent into lower leagues | | 22:01 | Transition to criminal underworld, failed gambling | | 24:40 | Outbreak of WWII and unwillingness to serve France | | 27:49 | Nazi occupation: black marketeering and collaboration | | 35:12 | Becomes higher-up in the Carlingue, French Gestapo | | 39:33 | Hitler’s propaganda to Arabic speakers; BNA/SS context | | 47:36 | Atrocities and massacres committed by Villaplan and the BNA | | 56:56 | Collapse of Nazi rule: Villaplan attempts to switch sides | | 60:38 | Capture, trial, and execution of Villaplan | | 62:13 | Reflections on justice and colonial influences |

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Final Thoughts & Reflections

• Complexity of Villaplan’s Motives:
  The episode underscores Villaplan’s transformation from celebrated athlete to villain, driven not just by evil but by addiction, opportunism, and a lack of moral core. His actions, especially under Nazi occupation, mark him as a uniquely despicable figure in sports and wartime history.

• On Historical Forces and Individual Agency:

  • The hosts reflect on how shifting identities (colonizer vs. colonized, immigrant marginality) intersect with personal and societal trauma to produce collaborators and criminals of astonishing brutality.

• A Fitting End:
  “Justice won out in the end. Sort of.” — Dana Schwartz (61:38)

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Guest Plugs

• Dana Schwartz:

  • Noble Blood: Historical royals and murder
  • Hoax: Historical hoaxes and scams

  “Fewer Nazis. I can promise that.” — Dana (61:58)

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Fans of true crime, sports history, and twentieth-century European history will find this episode a chilling but riveting account of the depths to which fallen idols can sink, especially in times of chaos and moral collapse.

Transcript

[Bobby Finger]

Call Zone Media. Oh, goodness. It's behind the Basterds, the podcast that you've been listening to. Because this is part two of our episodes on Alexander Villaplan. And if you're listening to part two, you've listened to the show before. This isn't your first time. Like, otherwise, why would you be listening to it this way? To answer that question, our guest, Dana Schwartz.

[Dana Schwartz]

Dana, someone just listening to part two as like, a challenge to be like, maybe I'll just figure it out on the.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, they're like second Acting a podcast. Yeah, it's Gen Z.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's the new trend that Gen Z's love. They call it second acting.

[Bobby Finger]

That's right. That's right. And another thing that the Gen Zs love is your podcast Noble Blood and your podcast Hoax, you know, with an exclamation point. You know you want to plug them right before we get in.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes, please. Noble Blood is a scripted podcast about historical royals and the usually murderous shenanigans again, too. And Hoax Is a Story about is a podcast about stories about historical hoaxes. And they're both really fun. Listen to Hoax because it's brand new. It could use new listeners to rate, review, subscribe, all the above. I think you'll like it. I have a great time making it.

[Bobby Finger]

Yes, definitely. Check that out. You will enjoy it. And you'll also enjoy the continuing shenanigans of Alexandre Villeplan.

[Hunter]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Liz]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

My husband said, your dad's been killed.

[Liz]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz]

Liz's father murdered and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

I didn't feel real at all.

[Liz]

More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

We're still fighting.

[Liz]

Listen to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of, and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Liz]

I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for.

[Bobby Finger]

The rest of my life what that meant for my heart.

[Liz]

Podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bobby Finger]

So what happened to Chappaquiddick?

[Brown Ambition Host]

Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[Bobby Finger]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on.

[Bobby Finger]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

You get your podcast.

[Bobby Finger]

So at this point, you know, we. We kind of ended last episode when he wins a France cap, which is some sort of football. And by football, we mean soccer. For my mostly American listener base award. And against. In a game against Belgium in 1926, he becomes the captain of his team in Nimes. And yeah, he's just on top of the world in the late twenties. In 1929, Villeplan is recruited by the Racing Club de Paris, which is striving to become the premier French football club. In an era in which the whole concept of the sport is still kind of new, right? Football's still getting its legs as a big thing. So it's kind of an open question who's going to be like the French A team, right? And the Racing Club of Paris wants to be that a team. And Vilaplan is the best ball header. He's one of the best passers. You gotta have him, right? So the new club president makes signing Villeplan a priority again. At this point, he's still an amateur and is working for free in the strictest legal sense of the word. But he's been handed so many jobs and businesses at this point that he is a wealthy man. He is very comfortable and he has no real job outside of soccer. So he gets to spend all of his free time that he's not playing and out at bars and nightclubs doing those, you know, if you've seen Moulin Rouge, he's doing shit like that. He's going to these fancy live theater events and burlesque shows. He's gambling uncontrollably at racetracks.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

He has everything he needs to be set up for life. But he absolutely has no control of himself outside of the field.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Like, he is just. He's one of these guys, he's burning money as fast as he can spend it. Just lighting it on fire at the racetrack. Right?

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And he's also, while he's still in his early 20s, the fact that he spends all of his free time partying and drinking, you can get away with it because your body is very forgiving. That's not gonna be the case forever.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

So he makes his first contacts with organized crime during this period of time when he's in his early 20s and his star is ascendant. Cause he's repeatedly getting into debt with different shady underworld characters to continue his gambling habit. Now, initially, this isn't a problem, right? Nobody in the underworld is going to like, break his leg. For one thing, they care about how the team performs. And for another thing, they know he'll keep making money.

[Dana Schwartz]

The whole country needs his legs.

[Bobby Finger]

The whole country needs his legs. You're not gonna break him.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And also, you know that as long as he's playing soccer at this level, he'll be good for it eventually. Even if it takes him a while. The money's coming in. So you wanna kind of keep this big, this whale, like on the hook, right? People don't fish for whales with hooks. It's a harpoon, but that doesn't sound as good. So in 1930, just three years after moving to Paris, I think his team wins its way to the very first World cup.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

So he's with this Club de Paris and they win admission to the first, very first football World Cup.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

This is again, kind of the birthdays of the sport. And the first World cup is going to be held in Montevideo, Uruguay.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

Now, the Algerian, as he was known sometimes in the sports press, is going to be the team captain leading France before the entire world at this first World Cup.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

This is the inaugural FIFA World cup event. Actually, I'm not sure if it's FIFA even at this point. But this is what becomes the FIFA World cup, right? So this is held in 1930, and Villaplan is the head of France's team. He's considered the Best midfielder in the country at this point and one of the best passers. His team wins their first game, Mexico at the World Cup. And at this point, this is the most significant event in the history of French football because there's not a lot of French football history, right? But he leads them to a victory at the World Cup. That's a huge deal. There's photos of Villeplan at the time that show this. He is just exultant, right? He is the star at the peak of his abilities. He's gleeful. You can just see it on his face. He tells interviewers on the day, this is the most beautiful day of my life, right? So this is, this is his peak moment, you know, and things are only going to get worse from here. Unfortunately for him and for a lot of other people, everything after this first World cup game is downhill now. Because the World cup isn't a normal God fearing sporting event like the super bowl or whatever it is we do for hockey. The cup itself is actually a bunch of different games, right? It's not just like one thing, you know, and, and so after defeating Mexico, Villaplan leads his team into two more matches, which they lose both games, I think 1 to 0, which is close in football terms. And they're forced out of the running. So, you know, France, they win one game at the World cup, but it's, it's not his, his chief moment is still not even like that great, right? A performance which is kind of a bummer. So his, his team returns back to Paris and like they've technically been defeated, but also this is literally the first ever World cup. So people are still really psyched that they.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

The whole football playing world is there and France did okay is kind of the way they're feeling. And so like this is like, this is like a big moment for them. Alexander returns home a national hero. Unfortunately, he's also coming back to Europe in like 1931. Things aren't looking great for European politics at that point, but 1931, everything's gone up. Not a good time. You know, the stock market, they're not good really for much of anywhere in the world, but the stock markets crashed in 1929 in New York and things moved a little slower back then, right? So like the, the Europe, France doesn't feel the repercussions as immediately as like they would today, but by the time the team is on their way back from Uruguay, the global economy is in what might be politely turned a state of cascading collapse. The end of World War I had brought this economic boom, particularly to the victorious Western powers, but that was now proved to have been a bubble.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

This, like, period of post war prosperity comes to an end very rapidly. In his book the King of Nazi Paris, Christopher Othen writes, france held out until 1931, but then started to struggle on street benches and at metro entrances. Groups of exhausted and starving young men would be trying not to die, wrote Breton journalist Morvan Lebesque. I don't know how many never came round. I can only say what I saw in the Rue Madame one day I saw a child drop a sweet which someone trod on and then the man behind bent down and picked it up, wiped it and ate it. Aww. That's a succinct description of how bad shit is, bro.

[Dana Schwartz]

That makes me sad.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, and they're not. I don't think they're eating it just because they're jonesing for sugar. They're just like, oh, calories. Fuck, yeah. This is my only opportunity. This is my only way to avoid dying. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's great stuff. So Alexander is at first insulated from the broader calamity by his wealth. For the next two years, he continues to be a star player as money kind of trickles in, right? Like he's, you know, going to be one of the later people to suffer. But part of the problem is that his salary is not from football, right? If his salary had just been from literally a traditional working salary, he might have done better, but his salary is like these fake businesses that he's been given, these turnkey businesses and like fake jobs. And like the nightclub that he owns does a lot worse once the economy collapses, right? So this hits him more than it might hit like a professional footballer today. And problems are compounded. In 1932, things get even more complex because French football turns professional, right? So France, you know, players are now being paid directly for their work, which, like, initially helps Villaplan, right? Like the fact that they're actually allowed to, like, take the money. He quits his position at RC Paris to sign on to a new team which is fighting to make a place for itself in the sports world. Olympic d'. Antibes. But the new club doesn't have money to pay him what he's worth, right? So he gets this new. This is. He should have been doing better once it transitions to professional, but he takes a lower paid job with this, this club in Antibes because he's able to have an ownership stake in it, right? And he thinks this club might have the chance to be the big French club. They might be bigger than RC Paris. And if I get it on the ground floor and I own part of the club, it'll be worth a lot more money in the long run. Right, so that's his attempt, or that's at least on paper, what he's trying to do. But what. What's also going on here is that he is in the middle of a massive sports betting scheme, right? Like he. And part of why he wants ownership of this is that he and his friends are going to like, basically start rigging matches and throwing games and whatnot in order to make a lot of money on sports gambling.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

And he seems to be the. We don't entirely know, but it's. Most of the historic. Of the historians I've read suggest that he was the mastermind of this. Like, he is the guy strong arming everyone. He is the guy with the connections to the underworld. And so he gets to be clear.

[Dana Schwartz]

This is allowed, right? This is just like legal.

[Bobby Finger]

No, no, no, no, no. This is totally illegal. Yes, massively illegal. So he convinces several of his comrades from RC Paris to join as well. And the thought of this is that, like, yeah, this is a struggling small team. If we bring some ringers in, we can put money on games and make a fortune, right? And for a while this seems to be working and the club's first season goes surprisingly well. But Vila Plan isn't just sort of like fixing matches, he's also using his money and the money of others to bribe opposing teams to throw matches.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

So it's not just, we've got these ringers and they don't know how good we are. It's like I am. We are paying people or ordering our own people to throw games in order to. Which is. That's the really illegal part. So they get caught during this first season, they don't even make it a full season. They get caught fixing games and it causes a huge scandal. Per a write up in the Guardian quote, at that time, the championship was divided into southern and northern sections, with the winners of each playing off for the title of champions. Antibes won the southern section and then beat SC5 Lille in the decider, only for it to emerge that the match had been fixed. Antibes were stripped of their title and the team's manager banned, although it was widely believed he was a scapegoat. Villaplan and two teammates with whom he had previously played were suspected of being the real plotters. All three players were soon let go. Right so the team manager gets banned forever. He gets shit canned with two of his colleagues, but they're not banned from the sport, I think, because he's, you know, that the kind of shine off of leading the team in the World cup is still on him a little bit. So he's generally agreed to have been the mastermind of this scheme, but he doesn't pay as much of a price as the team manager does. He's still a top player after this. And so after Antibes collapses, like this club collapses, he gets pulled in by Nice's team, right? And however, by this point in the early 1930s, Viliplan is no longer in his prime. He's getting older. He's basically taking. His calories are nothing but hard liquor, right? With like brothels for dessert, you know, like, he's not eating food, he's eating liquor and brothel. And he's engaging in, yeah, brothels. Like, that's his entire diet. And he's also gambling uncontrollably and burning all of his money that he's not really sleeping. It has an impact on his ability on the court, you know. So his next few years as a footballer are notably less impressive than the previous ones had been. He misses regular training sessions because he's hungover, right? He'll just be absent when he's supposed to be practicing with the team because he's. Or in a lot of cases, he's still drunk from the night before. Sometimes he's even still drinking. A lot of times it's a combination of all three. When he makes it to practice, he's often still kind of wasted and just not able to function. And he makes it, you know, when he is well enough to actually play in games and he's not, you know, spacing out of that. He's noted by sports writers for seeming to be out of shape and barely able to focus on the game itself. And after a few seasons, Nice lets him go, right? They're like, you're not really worth paying and now we actually have to pay you, right? And this marks the first time when he gets shit canned by Nice. This is the first time that he leaves a team without choosing to do so to get better pay somewhere else, right? So that's kind of noteworthy. This is functionally the end of his career in football, although he continues, he goes to another team, a second division team in Bordeaux, who are kind of willing to take this guy because they're not as good a team. So, you know, he's still an upgrade for them, but they Only really like the Bordeaux. Only condescends to hire him because they're being managed by his former mentor, that Scotsman Gibson. And even in this situation where his mentor is running the team and he's got an end, he can only last three months before he gets fired for refusing to turn up to training sessions and games.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

He just won't do the job.

[Dana Schwartz]

He sounds like a fun time.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, he's fucking great. You had it all, man. You could have easily kept going for at least a few more years, but yeah, he's just not able to sober up to make the game. You know who else can't sober up to do their jobs? The sponsors of this podcast. Yeah.

[Liz]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

My husband comes back outside and he's, he's shaking and he just looks like he's seen a ghost and he's just in shock. And he said, your, your dad's been killed.

[Liz]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz]

Her dad had been stabbed to death.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz]

For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me, and I just, I want answers.

[Liz]

Listen to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of. Of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Hunter]

I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Join me every weekday as I share bite sized stories of missing and murdered black women and girl in America. There are several ways we can all do better at protecting black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tameka Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tameka never bought the car and she never returned home that day. One Podcast, One Mission. Save our Girls Join the search as we explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered Black women and girls. Listen to Hunting for Answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Brown Ambition Host]

Hey sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro tell you how to manage your money again? Welcome to Brown am. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem. A year from now when you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union. Shopping around online looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt. And it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment free money advice, listen to Brown ambition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Bobby Finger]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast about football, the soccer of sports. So by the mid-1930s, Viliplan's career in pro football is over and he transitions, I have to say, very seamlessly to what has become his true passion. You know, he's over football. He's getting into a new line of work, gambling badly. He is now a professional gambler and he sucks at it, right? He's horrible at this job and he can't stop getting caught from doing. He's doing like really high stakes bad gambling. Like, it's not enough to like lose at the horse tracks or like, you know, lose money playing fucking blackjack or whatever. He is constantly getting in trouble for trying to fix different sporting events, which is like the one way as a rich guy to get in trouble for gambling outside of just losing your money, you know. So in 1935, he gets caught fixing horse races both in Paris and Cote d'. Azur. And before you know, his charm and his fame as a beloved sports hero had Been enough that when he got caught doing shit like this, like the last time, he avoided the most serious trouble, right? Cause he's beloved and he's charming. He's not that anymore. He is a washed up, alcoholic, degenerate gambler who is no longer good at football. So he gets sent to prison after this time in 1935. And he does some time, right? Not a lot of time, but, you know, enough that it's been made clear you do not enjoy the same kind of benefit of the doubt that had previously accompanied you in your sporting career and your life. So this is not the last time he's going to be locked up for gambling related crimes. It's going to happen to him periodically over the next few years before World War II. And he spends the remainder of the pre war years and cheating on his several wives. He has a couple of divorces, I think three during this period of time. And it's always because he's cheating constantly. And he becomes a. He does some more time in jail. He gets caught, you know, doing other gambling crimes. He becomes a figure of minimal note in the world of Parisian organized crime.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

He's kind of in part due to his debts. He's like working. I think he's basically being muscle sometimes for some of these, like gangsters and whatnot, because he owes them and he doesn't really have any other skills, but he's fit or, you know, he's in better shape than most people, right? So he could beat someone up maybe. So war clouds start to gather above Western Europe and Alexander shows no interest whatsoever either in joining the fascists or in fighting them to protect his home country.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Again, cause he doesn't consider France his home country. This is part of why. Also because he's Algerian. He's. I think he does. I think he has citizenship technically, but he still doesn't consider himself French in the way that like, people born on the mainland do. And he's also, because he's Algerian, he's got this kind of inroads because a lot of the organized crime world are people who are on the margins, right? They're people who don't benefit from citizenship. They're people who, you know, are in a more marginal place. And so they wind up kind of associating with organized crime because they don't. They never benefit from like a legal position in society. And you know, because of his stardom he had. And he had that opportunity, but he still identifies more with that side of things, which is part of why this kind of is the direction he takes. So when the. It becomes clear, when Germany and the USSR invade Poland, it becomes clear that France and Germany are going to have them a war. And France starts, you know, hoovering up all of the young men they can because they're like, well, we got to throw some boys at the Germans. We might have another couple of years of that. And Alexander wants no part of this. His biographer Luc Briand writes, Alex would have liked to stay away from the march towards war that was leading Europe to disaster. He was easily satisfied with this life of gambling, women and petty trafficking. But it was impossible to escape. From June 1939, France began recalling its reservists. Villaplan was one of them and joined the 416th Pioneer Regiment based in the Jura, far from any possible front. This unit was primarily intended to accompany the movement of the combatant regiments by diggin trenches for them and setting up cantonments. No machine guns or tanks here. The men's only weapons are shovels, picks and a few vague Lebel rifles.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

So he gets called up, he's not with a combat unit, they're like combat engineers basically. And he's not even gonna really do that.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

France's war with the Germans winds up being brief, or at least the kind of much like, again, this is a mirror of what happens in Algeria. The war on the ground is very brief. Obviously France puts up more of a, you know, more of a military fight than Algeria does. Like the casualties that Germany suffers, pretty significant casualties, which we often kind of gloss over. Like this is not a total cakewalk for them, but it is over very quickly.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And it's going to be a situation like in Algeria where the actual sort of open conflict is over shortly and then we transition to this more, this insurgent warfare, which lasts a lot longer.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And I do think it's really interesting how these things mirror each other and how, you know, the side that Viliplan is going to find himself on in this case. So Paris falls to the Nazis in June of 1940, and Viliplan happily ends his service in a defeated military, he might have been happy to return to his life of debauchery, you know, to return to the women and the gambling and the petty crime. If a better opportunity hadn't presented itself, and it very quickly does. So the Nazis are occupying Paris herself at this point.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And so you've got all these foreign officers, these Germans and Austrians who, I mean, they're all technically Germans for our purposes, but they're new to France and They don't know the lay of the land. But number one, they're corrupt as hell. Like the Nazi regime is a gangster regime. Especially all of these SS guys who are in country are just gangsters by mindset, in a lot of cases, by background. And also they're just like military officers who are occupying any country in any point in history. They want luxuries that they're not supposed to have, that they're not being provided by their government, and that are hard to come by in wartime.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Respectable French citizens, number one, often don't have access to this stuff either, because they're respectable French citizens. So when the nice stuff is harder to come by because there's a war on, they don't have it. So the people who have access to the luxuries and who are willing to sell them to the occupiers are the criminals.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

And it's these members of the underworld who, in their attitude, again, a lot of these people are not French citizens, they're living in France, but they're, you know, in a lot of cases, Algerians are members of, like, other, you know, immigrant populations. They've never had a legal status or their legal status has been questionable. And they're also working in a criminal enterprise. So their attitude is like, look, does it matter if we're breaking the law under the French Republic or the German Reich? Like, whatever, we're criminals either way. Who gives a shit? You know? So they have this very. And to an extent, especially if you're an Algerian, why would you immediately assume the Nazis are any worse than the French Republic given what they've done to your people?

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

It just doesn't make a lot of sense that you'd be particularly pissed at the Nazis in 1940.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

So a lot of these. These black market guys, these smugglers and whatnot, are only too happy to serve whoever's got cash on hand. And I want to quote from an article in the Blizzard, quote. As soon as the armistice was signed on June 1940, Vilaplan tried his hand at racketeering and blackmail, his preferred targets being black marketeers and Jews. He was immediately arrested for handling hot goods, however, and it was in jail that he was approached by Henry Lafont, one of the most reviled figures of the collaboration. To many, a psychopath, a sadist, but first and foremost an opportunist who convinced the occupier that he was someone they could do business with by leading them to the destruction of a whole Belgian resistance network. And so, you know, Villeplan is immediately like, okay, the Nazis are in charge. Oh, I can really fuck over like Jewish French people, right? Like nobody's gonna come after me, right? And nobody's gonna be paying attention to my petty crimes. But he's really bad at petty crimes. And so he's still mad. He gets in trouble in Nazi Paris for like scamming Jewish people. Like, that's hard. You have to be bad as a scammer.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh God.

[Bobby Finger]

So he gets fucking locked up. And there's this, this mafia figure, Henry Lafont, right, who had been an organized crime figure who once the Germans take over, he basically uses his connections to help them destroy this resistance network in Belgium. And is that the SS is like, hey, you're useful. Can you put together a team of like, locals who we can rely on to do stuff like what you just did to this Belgian network, right? Like we're having some trouble with the French Resistance. Can you get us some local criminals who know the lay of the land and can help us dismantle these developing resistance networks? And Lafont is like, of course I can, baby. Like, I'm a piece of shit. I am so down for this job, right? Henri Lafont is described by the Guardian as an illiterate orphan turned rampant. Ne' er do well. Which is just a charming.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ne' er do well.

[Bobby Finger]

Ne' er do well.

[Dana Schwartz]

Does he do well? Ner.

[Bobby Finger]

No, NER NER Nair. And it's funny to describe a guy who winds up working for the SS to dismantle resistant networks as a ne' er do well. We're a little beyond ne' er doing well, right? He is as shady a character as they come. And Lafont rubs a lot of people. He has a mixed relationship with these different Germans, right? Cause a lot of the German military guys who are responsible for the occupation of Paris are Prussians. They're these old Prussian military, in a lot of cases, members of the nobility. They have these very old fashioned attitudes about the right way and the wrong way to do things and about honor. And they don't like all of the criminals that they're associating with to try to win this developing insurgent war. But then you've got the SS who are basically gangster, like the Nazis are a gangster regime and the SS are basically gangsters themselves. And the SS is really down to work with these guys, right? Because they're, you know, we're all the same kind of asshole, more or less. So the SS sees potential in a man like Lafont, a man with no loyalties towards anything but himself. And the promise of a payday and a deep well of knowledge about how things are done, you know, in the underground. And the SS gives Lafont a choice. Work for us and help us round up Jews and crack down on the growing resistance and you get a place in the new order. And Lafont is like, fucking hell. Yeah. I want to quote from Doyle's book. The more Lafont's influence grew, the more he recruited. He toured the Parisian prisons, arranging the release of old associates and anyone who could help consolidate his powerful place in the perverted new social order. Pierre Bonny, once the most famous police officer in France before being disgraced and jailed for corruption, became his right hand man. At some point they hooked up with Vilaplane, whose assorted activities now included gold smuggling. The gang set up their headquarters at 93 Rue Lauriston, probably the most infamous address in Parisian history. The home of the gang that became known as the French Gestapo. Right, wow. So l' enfant partners with this corrupt French police officer who got fired by the Republic. And then, you know, the Nazis bring back and they start hooking up with Viliplan, right? And initially he's their driver. He's like their chauffeur, but obviously driver for these guys. You're doing bodyguard work, you're acting as muscle, right? And their goal is to make money. These guys are with the ss. They are going to be wearing SS uniforms. They're not ideologically in love with Hitler. I doubt they've read Mein Kampf. They're anti Semitic, but like the normal kind of French anti Semitic, where they're like, oh, we can fuck with these people now. I always hate it. Let's rob them. You know, I never liked them. We can take their stuff now. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

See what side their bread is buttered on, right? It's like more like cynical Nazism.

[Bobby Finger]

Yes, yes. Their preexisting biases are compatible with Nazism because they are racist against Jewish people. But that's not like the primary motivation, right? The primary motivation is there's money in this shit, right? And so, you know, they start tracking down, you know, Jewish refugees and people who have, like, gone into the underground to try to avoid the SS dragnet that's growing in this period. So they're tracking down Jews for the ss. They're tracking down resistance fighters and helping to bust resistance cells. They're helping, in general, for the SS to police the enemies of the Reich. And from their headquarters in 93, Rul Loristan, they are Torturing hundreds of people.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

They're murdering people. There's a lot of, like, executions and whatnot, but there's also just a lot of, you know, pulling out of fingernails. Just. Yeah, torture. Torture, right. Like, it's gnarly shit. So. Better known as the Karlink, the French Gestapo saw the new order as an opportunity for personal wealth and power. Villeplan had known Laurent because for years they'd both kind of been involved in similar aspects of the underworld together. And as I said, he's brought in as a chauffeur for higher ranking criminals who made a place for themselves in the Karlink at first. But he exhibits the same kind of work ethic and skill at social manipulation that had previously served him so well in football.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

This is the kind of thing he'd gotten sort of burnt out on football, but now that he's got a chance to be in the ss, it's like his career, he gets a second lease on life.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

Like, oh, this is what I wanted to be doing the whole time. Perfect for me.

[Dana Schwartz]

So in short order, Dean Cain joining ice, right?

[Bobby Finger]

Right. He's Dean Cain joining ice, where he's like, ah, you know, my Superman years are behind me, but my Aryan Superman years may not be behind me. Even though I'm out here, my Ubermensch years, my Ubermensch years are still ahead of me.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And again, this is a kind of thing. There's a lot of misconceptions people have about the way Nazism's white supremacy and like, racial supremacy worked, where we say, like, well, they're Nazis, they're obviously white supremacist. That doesn't mean that they were white supremacist in a way that translates totally directly to the way a lot of white supremacists are racist today.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Nazi racism is a little different from a lot like OG Nazi racism is a lot different from even like the way the KKK was racist. Because this is not straight up white supremacy in the area. Like, being white is not what matters most.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

For one thing, their whole attitude is that being Aryan and kind of bringing back through breeding. We've got the Norwegians, the Nordic peoples, and the Germans are closest to this Aryan race.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And so we want to, through eugenics and whatnot and through careful breeding of our population, recreate this Aryan race. But we're working towards it. So that's a difference from just, well, we're white and we're superior to everybody.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

There's a difference there. And there's other differences in that there's this belief in kind of a global hierarchy of races that is more fluid than you get with kind of a lot of modern white supremacists. For one thing, the Germans are working with the Japanese, right? And Hitler's attitude, Hitler's goal is not I want Germany to rule the entire world, it's Germany is going to be in control of Europe, stretching basically almost into China, all across the Russian steppes. And there will be spheres of influence, right? Japan will control this other sphere of influence, right. And it's not that they don't consider themselves superior to the Japanese, but it's not quite as simplistic as a lot of racism is today. And so as a result, there is room within this Nazi movement for people who are not white and who are not Christian. And one of the examples of this is as the ss. As Lafonte starts working for the ss, in collaboration with the ss, he creates a unit called the bna, which roughly translates to the North African Brigade. And this is made up of, I think 50 to 100 Algerian French residents that the SS decides they can trust to crack down on the French resistance. And a lot of these guys, obviously Villaplan is a European Algerian or European descended Algerian. But a lot of these BNA guys are Arab and they're Muslim, right? And part of why the SS decides they're trustworthy is that because of all of the shit that France had done to Algeria and the genocide that basically had been carried out in, you know, over the decades, right, with around 2 million people killed, including a mass amount of starvation because of that. The SS is very astutely like, well, these people aren't loyal to France. They're certainly not loyal to the regular French population. We can use them, right? And so Hitler had started in the early 40s, right, when Germany takes over France, funding an Arabic language French newspaper which was geared towards recruiting and radicalizing Muslims who had immigrated to France from colonized nations. And the paper described Hitler as almost a Mahdi like figure. The Mahdi is this. I mean, it's both this figure in kind of Islamic theology, but also there had been a guy in North Africa called the Mahdi who had led this rebellion against the British, right? And Hitler is describing himself in these propaganda papers to the Arab population of France as this messianic figure who is bent on Hitler's goal is to free colonized people from the shackles of their Western oppressors and put an end to colonialism and communism. That's how Hitler is portraying himself to this community because he's like, look, I don't care about India. Free India. Sure, free India.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Because that'll hurt the British. Right? That's what I care about. The war with India's so far outside of my area of giving a shit. Of course you can be free. I'm an anti colonialist hero. Me, Adolf Hitler. Right, yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Mutually beneficial.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. He's fine with this, Right. And he's also, Hitler is insanely jealous of Great Britain and the United States. And there's a degree to which the thing he's angry about is kind of fair is the wrong word. But he's pissed because like, well, they got to do a genocide, genocides and steal everyone's land and no one's pissed at them. Why can't Germany? Why don't I get to do this? Right? And that is like a major thing for Hitler. So the fact that it often gets left out of our discussions of Nazism, but part of Hitler's propaganda is to portray himself as this kind of anti colonial figure to certain groups of people. And in fact, the bna, this North African SS group that's going to be trying to cut down the resistance in France, is not the only instance in which non white soldiers were admitted to the ss. Which this is a little bit of a side story, but it's one of my favorite weird side stories from the Second World War. There was a unit in the SS called the Indian or Indian Legion that was made up entirely of Muslim and Hindu Indian soldiers in the ss. Hey everyone, Robert here, just wanted to clarify. The Indish Legion was initially started as part of the Wehrmacht and then it was absorbed by the Waffen SS later in the war. So it was ultimately part of the ss, but it started as a project with the Wehrmacht. That explains the discrepancy and the quote I read. Anyway, I just wanted to make a note of that. Per a study by Baijalanti Roy published by Oxford Academic quote, set up jointly by Subhas Chandra Bose, who is an Indian independence leader, and the Wehrmacht in 1941, the Legion composed about 3,500 volunteers from the Indian POWs who belonged to the British Imperial army that had fought the Germans in Africa. In order to integrate the newly formed legion, the Indian soldiers needed to be provided proper training by the German military personnel. An important element of this training was ideological indoctrination into the Nazi worldview. Several India experts, who were not all academic specialists on India, were called on to mediate between the German army and the Indian soldiers, not only as Interpreters, but also as propagandists of Nazi ideology.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And so to propagandize this very peculiar unit in the Nazi military, Urdu and Hindu speaking authors are brought in to write a magazine edited by Germans called Baiban. And the overall project is a failure.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

These guys do briefly see combat in France actually, after the Normandy landings, but they don't. They like basically roll over immediately. They see which way the war is going. They're like, we're not gonna die for the fucking. The Third Reich. Are you kidding me?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

So this doesn't have much of an impact on the war, and this has very little. The hope had been that if Indians over in India see, you know, liberated, you know, Muslim and Hindu soldiers fighting together against the British, that it'll spark a rebellion in India, basically. That doesn't work at all.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Jesus Christ. It is not. This is not one of the more successful Nazi plans. But speaking of successful Nazi. Nope, here's. Yeah, probably shouldn't do that. Listen to some ads. Forget what I just said.

[Liz]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

My husband comes back outside and he's, he's shaking and he just looks like he's seen a ghost and he's just in shock. And he said, your, your dad's been killed.

[Liz]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

I was just completely in shock.

[Liz]

Her dad had been stabbed to death.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz]

For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me and I just, I want answers.

[Liz]

Listen the to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place, it's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of team teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Hunter]

I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Join me every weekday as I share bite sized stories of missing and murdered black women and girls. In Americ. There are several ways we can all do better at protecting Black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tameka Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tameka never bought the car and she never returned home that day. One Podcast, One Mission Save Our Girls Join the search as we explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered Black women and girls. Listen to Hunting for Answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Shock Incarceration Host]

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on Earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.

[Bobby Finger]

He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you.

[Shock Incarceration Host]

Shock Incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discovery, discipline, physical training, hard labor and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months.

[Bobby Finger]

The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything.

[Shock Incarceration Host]

Listen to Shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bobby Finger]

We're back. You've all forgotten that I just compared our sponsors to the Third Reich. You know, nobody needs to think about that anymore. We're done, we're good. We're back to Alexandre Vilaplan. So Vilaplan is that the BNA is created, this North African unit that's going to be helping to destroy the Resistance, and Vilaplan is made Obersturmfuhrer, or lieutenant, of a unit of around 100 men. And it's possible, if not likely, that his status as a white Frenchman essentially close enough, helped him secure this place. But it's likelier that he'd simply done a good job of making himself useful. Already the Guardian writes of the B&A's crimes in Philippe Ziza's authoritative 1970 book on the L' Enfant and Bonny gang, the following story is told. Following a tip off from a source in the Paris Gestapo, Alex and three of his men burst into the home of Genevive Lenard Accused of harboring a Jew, they ransack the house. Alex seizes the 59 year old mother of six by the hair. Where is your Jew? He shouts. The lady refuses to answer. Alex picks her up brutally pushes her into a neighboring farm, hitting her with his rifle butt on the way. And there he forces her to watch. An appalling scene. Men from the BNA torture two peasants in front of her. After being beaten and set ablaze, the two peasants were machine gunned from close range. Alex laughs. During his time, some other men from the BNA had located the Jew, Antoine Bachmann. They bring him to the farm. Alex hits him and then arrests him. He then orders Genevive Lenard to give him 200,000 francs. So we've broken bad. That's pretty hideous. Yeah, yeah, that's real. Just evil. Yeah, he is effectively. He's that character from Inglourious Basterds. He's the real version, right, where there's no charm, there's no point at which he's like, oh, he's evil, but he's like this evil genius who's cruel, but there's this degree of. You just want to keep watching him. No, this is the real version of that guy where he is just beating a 59 year old woman with a fucking pistol, bud. He's having people lit on fire and then just random peasants machine gunned after being lit on a fire. Like this is the real version of that character, you know. So over the last year or so of the war, which France, or at least the last year that France spends under German and German dominance during the war, Villaplan and his men are responsible for dozens of executions and turning over countless Jews to the Gestapo. And he makes a fortune during this period of time. By some accounts, he becomes as wealthy or wealthier than he'd ever been during the height of his football career. Because he's taking shitloads of bribes, right? And a lot of times he's taking bribes and he's turning the, these, these people, these Jews, these resistance figures in any way. We'll talk about the other things that he's getting bribed for in a sec. But he and the BNA become notorious and they earn a nickname among the resistance. And this nickname is of course based in the racism that was quite common even among the Frenchmen fighting the Nazis. They called them the SS Mohammed. Right again, there's no non racist side in this, in this conflict.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, no, this is just flat bad.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, this is just all pretty ugly.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Obviously the resistance is the Right side. But that doesn't mean these guys that number one, a lot of people who fought in the Resistance had been unapologetic colonialist bigots prior to the German occupation and continued being after. And just also war doesn't make anyone a better person.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

So they had other nicknames. The non racist members of the Resistance would call them the Phalange, which is a term that gets used around a lot of different fascist groups. So like that's just kind of calling them what you would call like the Spanish, you know. The phalanges is like a term, it's a, it's a term that a lot of different European fascist groups used. So that, that one's fine. Some locals also called them les Bacos, which is a colonial slur for non white denizens of French possessions. Author Robert pike describes they were a strange looking bunch at best, dressed in a combination of sheepskin jackets with baggy blue boiler suits and berets. They wor thick leather belts with a Waffen SS buckle and were armed with machine guns and grenades. So weird looking uniforms on these guys. One of the stranger units In World War II, the BNA, they receive combat training from the SS, but these guys are thugs and gangsters first. Right. So they don't. They avoid direct combat with the Resistance whenever possible because they're not good at that.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

And the Resistance is getting, as the war comes to a close in France, increasingly competent and well armed because more stuff's getting, getting from the Allies. And as a result the bna, they're avoiding, they want to avoid fighting directly with the Resistance, which means when the Resistance carries out a successful attack, they're not going in and attacking the Resistance, they're just massacring civilians with the goal of forcing the Resistance to make difficult choices.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Basically we're going to try and stop them from carrying out attacks because they know that we'll massacre villagers when they do. We're not even trying to fight them.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Cause we'll be bad at that.

[Robert]

Right?

[Bobby Finger]

Yes. This is all awful. I mean it's the calculus of war for the Resistance and this is how a lot of counterinsurgency actually winds up in practice, whether it's the Nazis or the Americans doing it, where even if you're not supposed to, it's a lot easier to do reprisals against unarmed civilians. So that's what you do. Much of this, much of these reprisal attacks against civilian populations are being done on the orders of Michael Hambrecht, who is the Gestalt Dapohead of Dordogne, and he used the BNA as his dedicated war crimes unit in Support of the 11th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht. One of the things this does is there's this myth that comes up postwar that, like, well, the SS was bad, but the Wehrmacht was mostly clean, right? There was like a clean branch of the German army, and there wasn't. The Wehrmacht are involved in a lot of war crimes. And part of how some of these units avoid more direct things is like, well, the Wehrmacht, when they need to move in to fight a resistance cell, we'll send the Wehrmacht in. But we have the Algerians massacring civilians on our behalf, right? Because they're doing these war crimes to try to roll up these networks or get, you know, they'll torture citizens to get them to, like, give up the locations of different resistance cells, right? So we're outsourcing our war crimes, right, to these, to this Algerian unit. The BNA was so successful at this, at least in the eyes of the occupiers, that they soon get seconded, in addition to this wehrmacht, to the 2nd SS Panzer Division as well. Robert pike writes, official records are scarce, but those available, as well as the many eyewitness accounts and reports by the judicial police, tell of pillage, rape, plundering and burning of property, extortion and profiteering. However, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Arrests, deportations or summary murders of civilians and executions of suspects took place on an almost daily basis. As an auxiliary police force to the Gestapo, its members held carte blanche to do as they pleased. They were hardly accountable to anyone. But the massacres were on a different scale. Gael. These were ordered by the Germans and executed by the Falange In March. The town of Brantme was the first to field the full force, with 25 hostages bussed in to be executed in a show of force designed to persuade the local population to inform on resistance activity. The following day, in Sainte Marie de chenac, a further 25 hostages, mainly Jews, were executed. Both were in retaliation for resistance ambushes. Many other towns and villages suffered losses of innocent inhabitants as well as as resistance sympathizers, Jews or refugees. The events of 11th of June 1944, by which time it is likely that Alexandre Villeplan was replaced by the even more brutal Raymond Manang, are perhaps most striking of all. On that day, in the town of Musedan, 20 km west of Paris, had its name etched into the history of Nazi barbarity. An armored train heading from Paris to Montpain was attacked by the Resistance. Thirteen Germans were killed in the firefight and a further ten were taken prisoners. Consequently, the entire male population of the town and surrounding hamlets were rounded up and questioned, many tortured. Michael Hambrecht arrived in the town late in the afternoon along with 30 members of the Falange. Already visibly drunk, he had been told to personally select 50 men for execution. Of those under 60 years of age that had been retained, he chose 48, who were then led to a nearby alleyway overlooking farmland. Along the way they passed the line of men that had just been released. There they stood in two rows for more than two hours, until they were mown down by machine guns operated by Phalange members, who then finished off survivors with handguns. Later, the mayor and his adjutant were tortured and killed, while two other men were killed in the street, taking the death toll that day to 52. All the bodies were left where they fell. Miraculously, two men survived the massacre. The town was then pillaged and there's debate, as was Vilipran there, was he not? Was he just there in the massacres? Heading up to this, I've heard sources that say he was there at Musedan, some that say he actually pulled the trigger and shot people directly during that day, which was not he liked. He didn't like to get his hands dirty. But some of the stories at least say that he did that day. It's a little long. I don't have perfect evidence on it, but if he wasn't there in Musa Dan, he was there other days where similar massacres were carried out. We just talked about him having people lit on fire and machine gunned.

[Robert]

Horrible.

[Bobby Finger]

As the war comes to an end, he's not stupid. He's aware that the Nazis aren't winning and that Vichy France's days are numbered. And Alexander, he's never been a true believer, so he starts to hedge his bets as soon as he realizes which way the wind is blowing. So during this later period of time, while he's carrying out these massacres, he starts pretending to be a Resistance double agent. And so he'll let captives go if they can pay. He'll be like, you know, hey, I'm with the Resistance, but like, also, I need some cash, right?

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, God, he's like the worst sort of person. He's the worst sort of person.

[Bobby Finger]

He can't even commit to pretending to be a double agent. One eyewitness describes him arriving in a village one day and saying to a group of prisoners, oh, in what times we live. Ours is a terrible era to what harsh extremes. I am reduced. Me, a Frenchman, compelled to wear a German uniform. Have you seen my brave people? What terrible atrocities these savages have committed. I cannot be held responsible for them. I am not their master. They are going to kill you. But I will try to save you at the risk of my own life. I've already saved many people. 54, to be precise. You will be the 55th if you give me 400,000 francs. He's such bullshit. He's such a piece of shit. He sucks so bad.

[Dana Schwartz]

He sucks so bad. He's so awful.

[Bobby Finger]

I hate him. Yeah, that's just. Yeah, that's a special kind of evil. I'm excited to hear about how he dies. Yeah, I know.

[Dana Schwartz]

I was like, I didn't know this guy existed. And now I hate him so much.

[Bobby Finger]

Sucks so bad. That's what we do here. So by the end of summer of 1944, the jig was well and truly up. Paris was liberated with French colonial troops, including a lot of Africans being some of the first soldiers to enter the city. This was a bloody period of time for those who had suffered under years of Nazi occupation, beat, tortured and sometimes murdered their fellow citizens who'd acted as collaborators, right? There's a lot of ugliness, some of it understandable, where there's some people who had done horrible things under the Nazis and they get their just desserts. And there's also uglier things where, like, women who had, you know, been dating, quote, unquote, members of the German military, who knows how often they had a choice in the matter, right? They get, like, their hair shaved and get beaten in public. Like there's a lot of ugly stuff that happens during this period of time too, because not everyone who had been a quote, unquote, collaborator really had a full choice in the matter, right? But some of the people who are going to get their just desserts are the French Gestapo. And from the time that they're planning retaking Paris, the French government in exile, all these people know we're not going to leave these folks up to the populace to take their vengeance on these people. We need to make a public example on Alexander. He tries to hold onto his uniform as much as possible as Paris falls. He attempts to use his position with the SS to commit one last robbery to fund his escape into Germany. He tries to scam a man out of $900, an Armenian man out of $900 and a gold ring in return for giving him back valuables that he'd stolen from this Armenian man. But he gets overtaken by events, and on August 24, 1944, he gets caught by a Resistance agent with a gun and a fake police identity card. Vilaplan is put on trial and declared to be a con man and a murderer by a French judge. He pleas desperately that I'd been working for the Resistance all along. No, I was really on your side. I was a good guy the whole time. Does not work. Avails him nothing. This judge is like, no, you're a con man and a monster. And on the day after Christmas 1944, he is executed by firing squad along with seven of his colleagues. Yeah. So we have a happy ending.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Seems like the thing to do to that sort of person.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's the story.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, God, I'm like, going out there just like, oh, what a bad person.

[Bobby Finger]

What a bad person. What an interesting boomerang around from. You're kind of born in this mix between colonizer and colonized, at least as you see it.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Where like, you know, we might see it more accurately as a colonizer. But his attitude on it is a little more mixed than that. As a young man, certainly his dad's attitude and. And certainly influenced in his willingness. The colonial brutality of the French in Algeria, I think definitely does impact how. Willing to. What happens, especially with these North African units in France and why they're willing to do some of the things that they're willing to do.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Because they've seen it before. They've endured it before.

[Robert]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

So, yeah. Bad times all around.

[Dana Schwartz]

Bad times all around. I guess he. Justice won out in the end. Sort of.

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

He gets killed, you know, that's good. This is one of our for behind the Bastards. This is like as happy a story as we get. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, you want to plug your plugables. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Please listen to Noble Blood as a podcast about historical royals and hope. A podcast about hoaxes throughout history that I host with my friend Lizzie Logan. Fewer Nazis. I can promise that.

[Bobby Finger]

Fewer Nazis. You know, that's always a good thing to promise, not zero. Yeah. Cause, you know, especially the British royal family, there's a few.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, they're Nazis. And also, just like Nazis are popping.

[Bobby Finger]

Up in history, they tend to do that. It's like the number one thing Nazis do is pop up. Yeah. They're like a bad taco restaurant.

[Dana Schwartz]

I wanna say this was a delight. This was an education.

[Robert]

Yeah, there we go.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, talking with you is a delight.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, talking with you has been a delight too. Listen to Noble Blood. Listen to hoax. And yeah, you know, keep listening to behind the Bastards. We'll be back next week with a guy who may or may not be a Nazi, but definitely sucked. Or maybe a lady. Sometimes it's a lady. Not often, but sometimes.

[Hunter]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Bobby Finger]

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Liz]

Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube.

[Bobby Finger]

New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

[Hunter]

Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Liz]

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

My husband said, your dad's been killed.

[Liz]

This is Hands Tied, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

And just completely in shock.

[Liz]

Liz's father murdered and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

It didn't feel real at all.

[Liz]

More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers.

[Liz (continuation or related speaker)]

We're still fighting.

[Liz]

Listen to Hands tied on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're gonna be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Liz]

Everyone thinks they'd never join a cult.

[Bobby Finger]

But it happens all the time to people just like you and people just like us. I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth.

[Hunter]

We're the hosts of Trust Me, a.

[Bobby Finger]

Podcast about cults, manipulation and the psychology of belief.

[Liz]

Each week we talk to fellow survivors.

[Bobby Finger]

Former believers and experts to understand why people get pulled in and how they get out. Trust me.

[Hunter]

New episodes every Wednesday on Exactly right.

[Bobby Finger]

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dana Schwartz]

Let's start with a quick puzzle.

[Brown Ambition Host]

The answer is Ken Jennings appearance on.

[Dana Schwartz]

The puzzler with A.J.

[Brown Ambition Host]

Jacobs.

[Dana Schwartz]

The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land Jeopardy truthers believe in.

[Bobby Finger]

I guess they would be conspiracy theorists. That's right. They give you the answers and you still blew it.

[Brown Ambition Host]

The puzzler.

[Dana Schwartz]

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Bobby Finger]

Or wherever you get your podcasts, this.

[Hunter]

Is an iheart pod.