An Unknown American Hero: Katie S. Sanders on the Man Who Saved Her Grandfather's Life in WW2.

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday, August 25, 2026. Yesterday, we did a show with the writer and singer-songwriter David Baerwald. He— his book, which is a novel, The Fire Agent, doing very well. It's based loosely on the life of his grandfather, Ernst Baerwald, and his exploits, rather controversial exploits during the Second World War, in Japan. My guest today also has a grandfather who was involved in the Second World War and also has a new book out which connects with her grandfather. Katie S. Sanders is a Boston-based writer, journalist, thinker. And her grandfather, a man called Murray Simon, was a very brave fellow involved in the OSS and was captured in France. And part of the story of Katie's new book, which she co-authored with Nicholas Reynolds, Ortiz's War, connects with her grandfather, Murray Simon, and I'm thrilled that, Katie is joining us from her home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Katie, congratulations on the book. It's out today. The remarkable true story of the OSS saboteur, Peter J. Ortiz. Before we get to Ortiz, tell me about your grandfather.

00:02:01 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I should note that it's also the anniversary of the liberation of Paris. August 25 is a day of celebration in the context of World War Two history as well. So glad to be here. I never knew my grandfather, but I— actually, he died before I was born. He also died before I was born. [ed.: apparent duplication in source] But, I can see— that the [unclear] behind me in this frame is a picture of the plane that my grandfather was piloting when he was shot down a month before D-Day. And, you know, he was a 23-year-old United States Army Air Force pilot, a Jewish American kid from Queens who certainly never been on a plane until he learned to fly one, in this really horrific global conflict. And when he found himself shot down in France, he was on an OSS mission, Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA. And he had been told, you know, if you get shot down, you might be captured and tortured as a spy and killed, not funneled as a prisoner of war. So the advice was don't get shot down. Obviously, he makes it back, and that's sort of the story that I set out to tell with Nick in Ortiz's War— of part of the story of who helps him get back and then the life of that American hero.

00:03:22 Andrew Keen: You mentioned Nick, Colonel Nicholas E. Reynolds, another CIA officer, a very distinguished writer, a military figure. Was this book his idea or your— your idea? Who came to it first?

00:03:39 Katie S. Sanders: I like to say I convinced him that it should be done, and then we embarked on it together. You know, Nick is, certainly, was in no need of a co-author in the sense that he is a military historian, you know, an Oxford-minted PhD and true biographer who wrote a Hemingway biography called Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy. That was, you know, on my radar before I knew him. But really, you know, I connected to Nick over our mutual interest in Peter Ortiz. We both sort of just couldn't stop, wondering why more people didn't know the story, of this American hero. And so we kind of— let's say eventually I convinced him and then we came to it together. So I guess I can take credit.

00:04:26 Andrew Keen: So I have to admit, I've never heard of Peter J. Ortiz, but— Yeah. He's a remarkable character on lots of fronts. Mhmm. He has his own Wikipedia page, although he's not that well known. I think your book's gonna make him much better known, a US Marine Corps colonel. One of the— yeah— the astonishing things about him is after the war, he had a small career in Hollywood, playing in a sense himself. Tell me about this Ortiz character. What's so remarkable about him?

00:04:56 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. Well, you know, the picture you just showed of him with John Ford, you'd think that John Ford would have made him famous, not, you know, a book many, many years later, or there have been articles about him too. I would have never heard of Peter Ortiz had my grandfather not, been basically smuggled to him and intercepted by him in the middle of Nazi occupied France. But that was really, back in 1944. Peter Ortiz was doing what Peter Ortiz did best, which was, coming to the aid of very vulnerable people, and fighting fascism in ways that— I really hesitate when I say this, but there's a very Inglourious Basterds-esque quality [ed.: garbled audio; reading conjectural] about Peter Ortiz, I'd say much classier and more you know, righteous in the line of the rules of war. But Peter Ortiz was a, sort of an American blue blood. He was born to, the editor of Paris Vogue, one of the founding editors, publisher, Philippe Ortiz, and, his mother as well. Like, they're kind of you call it aristocratic background, but he's also sort of a third culture kid where he, you know, his dad was working, in Paris. Parents were divorced. He went to French boarding school and didn't want to be in fancy French boarding school, ran away, joined the rough and tough French Foreign Legion, which again, I wasn't particularly familiar with and still, like, started learning about Ortiz. But this kid who was sort of born in New York City, couldn't sit still in the classroom, and rejected a lot of the things that, you know, his, you know, fancy upper echelon of society father was trying to impose on him, ends up becoming really one of the greatest World War Two heroes of the twenty-first century. And sorry, the twentieth century. And he really rises into, you know, his full on hero mode in World War Two. And again, lucky for me, my grandfather was one of many people that Peter Ortiz rescued. There's a town in France that celebrates him every year and what he did in France, to help spare their town from Nazi annihilation. So— the short answer is, he's a hero. And then after the war, his Hollywood— his OSS pal John Ford was obviously big in Hollywood. He played minor roles in a bunch of John Ford films, sometimes, you know, wearing his real uniforms. But he had also been working for a spy organization. So it wasn't as though he was going around revealing his, activity. So it's been fun to piece together and learn about what he did, especially, in this moment in history.

00:07:35 Andrew Keen: This moment in history. What do you mean, Katie? Do— are we crying out now for heroes like Ortiz, unambiguous heroes? What do you mean by this moment in history?

00:07:48 Katie S. Sanders: I mean, I'd say society is always crying out for heroes, or that we're better with heroes, and that I find it tricky now because there's, you know, so much emphasis on people telling their own stories and, you know, bragging in ways that Peter Ortiz would never have had social media. You know, he, certainly wasn't going to be flashing his, resume anywhere. But I mean, in a moment when, you know, democracy is increasingly under threat. You know, I ever since learning my grandfather's story and connecting to my family history, but also just, you know, twentieth century history in general and largest global conflict of, you know, human history that we have documented being World War Two, I have gone through a lot of, you know, exhibits, be at a Holocaust museum or Imperial War Museum. And I find that, you know, when you start in 1933 and Hitler comes to power and it's like, oh, this isn't great, but in hindsight, you know, it's easier to see. And then you get to 1936, you're like, oh, the Olympics are canceled. Like, but okay, it's still, you know, okay over here. And so I think right now, I certainly hope we're not in 1939. But I also think that a lot of the dangerous confluences of, both political power and, you know, international relations and economics and geopolitics does make for a particularly threatening time and that Peter Ortiz was someone who was not okay standing back while his neighbors were, you know, under threat. He was, as his son would tell you, you know, he had this, the family motto of noblesse oblige, which usually [means] nobility obligates. He had a lot of privilege, I think, but also, you know, in a very Spider-Man way, he felt that was a real responsibility to do the right thing. And that's something that echoed through his actions, especially in World War Two, but also really for the remainder of his life to, you know, feel so. Yes, I think the world would be much better if we had people who are compelled to do what they felt was, you know, not only the noble thing to do, but the, you know, the thing with regard for other human lives, you know, even before your own.

00:10:10 Andrew Keen: It's interesting you bring up Spider-Man. I saw the movie or the latest Spider-Man movie. Tried to get into the head of a young Spider-Man. You also mentioned noblesse oblige. This man was, Ortiz was, as you know, from very privileged background, for better or worse. I don't think that necessarily implies bad things. He spoke 10 languages, as you say. He was a rebel. He ran away to the French Legion, which is what upper class rebels did in the nineteen thirties. Have you tried to get into his head? I'm sure you have in Ortiz's War, Katie. What's it like in— in Ortiz's— you write about Ortiz's war. What's his head like? Is it more or less complicated by this sense of noblesse oblige? Did he think a lot or not very much? Does that excessive or maybe scarcity of thinking, does that explain his heroism in the Second World War?

00:11:15 Katie S. Sanders: It's a really interesting question because you're looking at someone and by the way, we have come to conclude that he spoke closer to five languages. So history and Wikipedia like to have a little—

00:11:24 Andrew Keen: Yeah, Wikipedia is a storyteller. I know.

00:11:26 Katie S. Sanders: I know. I've never edited it. I don't wanna, you know, make this my first wiki edit. But— and, you could get by— Nick the historian would say, well, his Arabic wasn't fluent. He didn't call it fluent. I'm like, Nick, he spoke Arabic. But you know, so I'll give him five. And again, as someone who speaks one and change, you know, Ortiz was really brilliant. He was a thinker, but he wasn't necessarily a worrier. I would say more of a warrior, and that he was very instinctually driven. I think if you look at the French Foreign Legion, you know, the more I learned about the French Foreign Legion, the more I learned about the cloth he'd been cut from. But also Nick made the parallel of, you know, alright, a professional athlete, like, to what it takes to become one. You know, not everybody is predisposed to being capable of being one. But then you really also have to have all these other ingredients and I would say sort of falls in this category of, you know, he— I would say is intellectual for sure. And again, he couldn't stay in school. He was quoted as not a good candidate for a desk job ever in a military file. And we found that to be very true. Very gravitationally pulled toward the eye of the storm is how I would describe Peter Ortiz. I don't know if you've seen the movie Free Solo, or Alex Honnold— that's nothing to do with Peter Ortiz except that—

00:12:44 Andrew Keen: No, I haven't seen that movie.

00:12:45 Katie S. Sanders: Just this guy who, you know, is going— opting to boulder with no harness. And I'm like, I'm a Jewish mother who, like, you know, cringes at the statement of that. But for Peter Ortiz, there's something, you know, thrilling about that, or about walking into a bar in the middle of Nazi occupied France in your Marine uniform. When you asked who Peter Ortiz was, I would also say he was a Marine in Europe in World War Two, which in and of itself, people say what there were Marines in Europe in World War Two and because he was a secret agent, you know, working for the OSS. It's even more niche. Yeah. He was someone who was, you know, again, very gravitationally pulled towards action, as he would say in a short autobiography, you know, under 20 pages that he wrote after the war. I'm no peacetime soldier, and I think, that sums it up well too.

00:13:41 Andrew Keen: Yeah. When we think of the French Foreign Legion, of course, we think of North Africa. We think of Casablanca.

00:13:47 Katie S. Sanders: And he was there too.

00:13:49 Andrew Keen: Right. And we think of these romantic heroic soldiers like Peter Ortiz and their love of women. Did he have a rich— alongside his rich military heroic exploits, was he also a ladies' man? Was he quite— I mean, he certainly—

00:14:07 Katie S. Sanders: I mean, I was gonna say—

00:14:08 Andrew Keen: —enormous physical appeal.

00:14:10 Katie S. Sanders: I was gonna say, let's just look at the guy. It's a big blow-up the publisher sent me behind me, and I don't mind having it here. He— I think what you see is what you get. We have the diary of his wife who was, you know, probably she's about half his age. He wasn't married till after the war. He certainly had a woman— like, his son had a silver flask that was engraved from a lady friend. You know, I think he was very gentlemanly though. So, you know, there I have heard no stories about anything but him, you know, really being a class act. And so I think again, look at the guy. I don't think women were an issue. His wife, Jean Ortiz, who he courted when she was 17 or 18 and he was in his thirties, this war hero had been courted by Frank Sinatra, and others and was incredibly, beautiful. And they got married on Valentine's Day. They eloped in Vegas, in nineteen— the late nineteen forties.

00:15:15 Andrew Keen: So coming back to that question about thinking too much or too little, I mean, he clearly was a remarkably brave man. He put his life on the line many times.

00:15:24 Katie S. Sanders: Yep.

00:15:25 Andrew Keen: What do we learn about bravery then, leaving aside the peculiarities of Ortiz's own life. Yeah. What lessons does this new book out today, Ortiz's War, teach us about moral and physical bravery?

00:15:44 Katie S. Sanders: I'm glad that you put together the moral and physical, courage component. I just read Courage Can Save Us by Rye Barcott, which is a great book. Rye, a Marine veteran who runs an organization called With Honor, and the book is profiling 10— I will answer your question, but first I'm gonna tell you about Rye's book because it relates— again, Rye's a Marine who wrote about, five Republicans, five Democrats, all of whom have served their country. I think nine of them have been in the military and one in special— in the FBI. And so, I think that Ortiz really does have the moral and physical courage of someone who is a leader and who's, you know, incredibly mature in the context of a battlefield. It was an unusual battlefield in the context he was operating because the Office of Strategic Services is for anyone who is not familiar, I mean, Wild Bill Donovan— my co-author Nick— [unclear] OSS.

00:16:42 Andrew Keen: It's the precursor, of course, to the CIA.

00:16:45 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. So if you go into the CIA today, you walk, you know, into the lobby at Langley. There's a giant, [unclear] bronze statue of Wild Bill Donovan. So he's sort of seen as the original spymaster. But in a lot of ways, the OSS was a, you know, wartime startup. You know, FDR would refer to, Donovan as his secret legs, but they were also Republican and Democrat working together. So I think Peter Ortiz again, was someone who would think more than you would expect someone to think in a moment when bullets are flying at you. And that's what we see in the, prologue of the book. We're situated in, you know, a pretty harrowing situation, that feels incredibly life or death in, you know, as the Germans are being forced out of France and are angry and on this murderous terror and Ortiz finds himself at a moment of, you know, decision that I think to your question earlier of, you know, is he a real thinker? It's like, yeah. But he was able to think while being shot at, and that I think is, a big deal.

00:17:51 Andrew Keen: Well, certainly, if you're gonna be a Hollywood hero. You mentioned Wild Bill Donovan, the founder of the OSS. Could we compare and contrast somebody like Donovan with the, the founder of the FBI, a longtime FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover? Are they different types? So they were both officials.

00:18:14 Katie S. Sanders: They're incredibly different types. Obviously, you know, things end differently for them in their own— and they both— things probably don't play out the way they want them to. But I respect Donovan a lot more than I respect J. Edgar Hoover.

00:18:28 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Not a lot of love lost between Bill and J. Edgar.

00:18:33 Katie S. Sanders: Yes. But J. Edgar was actually considered for the, the same role, head of the OSS, this fledgling, you know, intelligence and special ops organization. And, he was decided against. And I think in a lot of ways the British SOE— actually, the Special Operations Executive— that Churchill had, you know, mandated set Europe ablaze, was very much involved in the decision to have Donovan, be at the helm. Roosevelt and Donovan have both gone to Columbia Law School, I believe. Donovan, just by virtue of graduating from law school, is clearly, able to sit in a desk more than Ortiz was. But Donovan also pushed boundaries, defied orders. They said that he could see an ac— or, yes, see an acorn, envision an oak tree. He referred to the OSS members, which at its peak was 13,000 military and civilian personnel. Those were people— the people like Ortiz were a very, very small subset. You— like Moe Berg, Catcher of the Spy [as spoken: The Catcher Was a Spy], Peter Ortiz, Virginia Hall, you know, with her wooden leg trekking through the Pyrenees. But, then you also have a lot of, you know, back office people. You have a lot of Wall Street lawyers and bankers and, cryptographers and cartographers. And, yeah, Donovan, I think, he also was told don't go anywhere near D-Day. You are, like, the one guy who cannot land on D-Day— where too— you know, there's too many secrets in you. And, of course, he's, like, sniffing around trying to get there on D-Day. And he's a World War One Medal of Honor winner— or recipient. So

00:20:11 Andrew Keen: And he's got a great nickname. Why— who wouldn't have called Wild Bill? You mentioned the SOE, which, of course, was the British equivalent to the OSS. It was also, if this is the right word, riddled with communist sympathizers and, indeed, spy— people who ended up spying for Russia. They were romantics, I guess, in their own way. Was Ortiz ever, was he ever exposed, so to speak, to political idealism? Often, this was developed during the Spanish Civil War. Was he sympathetic? What was his take on I mean, obviously, he didn't like the Nazis, and who does? And he was on the Western rather than the Eastern front. But what were his thoughts about the Russians and the promise of communism?

00:21:04 Katie S. Sanders: I might answer this by reflecting on McCarthyism as something that he was kind of allergic to. So just to give you— he did not like infringement on people's, you know, health, safety and personal liberties. And he was again, didn't like political targeting. I don't think he really liked politics. Again, wasn't there to ask him, nor did I get to ask my grandfather what he was like. But Peter Ortiz was someone who I mean, his son will tell you Don Quixote was a guiding light for him. And I think that's— no, that's not surprising. He was, you know, philosophical. I think intellectual. I think I would have loved to, you know, be able to ask him all these questions and have him give you much better answers. But yeah, I—

00:21:59 Andrew Keen: But in your book, in this new book, there's nothing of his politics then. He certainly wasn't a man of the left.

00:22:07 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. No. I mean, I— you could maybe just— I mean, he was in Hollywood after the war. He, you know— Although—

00:22:13 Andrew Keen: of course, many leftists were in Hollywood after the war, and some were prosecuted in the McCarthyite—

00:22:18 Katie S. Sanders: That's— and I think—

00:22:18 Andrew Keen: [unclear].

00:22:20 Katie S. Sanders: Again, I think he was very, defensive of people who were being persecuted in that context. And maybe even, you know, wishes he had done more to, you know, stand up to McCarthyism. So, yeah, I think, I mean also when he was, after he got back from World War Two and the war ends, he then goes sort of on a trip that we don't have much information about, but, to look behind the Iron Curtain and as he cites it— and you think, well, what was he doing there? But I think he was also working with the French resistance. And you have to remember that the French resistance is not, you know, a line of formally trained French army officers necessarily. There might be some in there who have run away from conscription and are trying to defend, you know, France from, the Nazis, reclaim France from the Nazis, really. But there's also a bunch of derelicts and sort of, people who have, you know, escaped certain things, and who are not like, you know, or criminals. So I think he— [unclear]— you know, doing the right thing was like his, you know, vantage point. And I think he had to work with a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and try to get them all, united in what he thought the right thing was.

00:23:43 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Doing the right thing, of course, is an ideal, and I think that's one of the reasons why this book's gonna do very well. We're all nostalgic for guys like Ortiz who did the right thing, remarkably romantic.

00:24:02 Katie S. Sanders: Yep.

00:24:03 Andrew Keen: Heroic figure, Peter Ortiz. I wonder from the book, and then your thinking and writing about it, Katie, whether we could argue that Peter Ortiz was himself a product of his times. Last year, we had Brandon Webb on the show, a SEAL sniper, a heroic figure, but also— yeah— a very complicated man, and he— he's just written a book about his complicated relations with his kids. Yeah. I wonder whether— yeah. I mean, if Brandon Webb had been around the Second World War, he probably would have had a heroic narrative like Ortiz, and now it's a little more complicated. Do you think we are all, especially military figures, are products of the time? And if we're too nostalgic for figures like Ortiz in the Second World War, the greatest so called greatest, most heroic generation, we're not quite being truthful.

00:25:01 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. So a couple different things. This is actually why I brought up Rye Barcott's book, you know, about courage because it's looking at this and he actually opens with his father's experience in the military before him. And I think you do see I recently interviewed Tom Hanks about World War Two— his new docuseries for the History Channel. And obviously there's incredible nostalgia for the greatest generation. People eat it up. There's a reason that, you know, these books keep selling. It's not that fun to read, you know, these Afghanistan, narratives or, you know, more even from Vietnam. There's a reason why this category is, larger, I think, in American, you know, book publishing culture at least because, yes, we were operating from a time where there was not only existential but quite literal threat, to Western democracy. And, you know, Americans from all backgrounds responded coming together. I think if anything, it's a— I don't— I think we need to remember that someone like Ortiz is great in any time. You know, maybe even especially important now. He was a hero who you asked about his character before for him being a hero without giving away too much in the book, I hope everyone, you know, will, pick it up and give it a chance. You know, he was a hero who saw surrendering as, you know, the right thing to do and heroic, in context where he didn't have to. But he felt that it was to the benefit of, you know, he knew it was, you know, would save more lives. And so I think that, you know, I wouldn't make the comparison between just the landscape of American society today and I mean that being— I think it's great that Tom Hanks is surfacing these stories. I love, you know, Saving Private Ryan. I get what you're saying about, you know, romanticizing it. But at the same time, I think we can all learn from standing up to fascism and making sacrifices that would go on to shape the rest of, you know, not only our generation but our kids' generations. And most of these people didn't talk about what they did. That's why another, you know, greatest generation trope that's true because, everyone was doing something and, you know, they kept on with their lives and it was very, you know, formative to their character. My grandfather was someone who dropped out of high school to, help support his widowed mother who had lost her two daughters. And then going into the military for him, you know, it was formative, and enabled him again, a Jewish kid from Queens to become a pilot that he would have never been able to, on the GI Bill, you know, start a family and a business and buy a house. Am I saying that's the America we live in today and it's that simple? No. But at the same time, I think that, we can still learn from, you know, as my grandfather would call it— the— in his case, he started as the warm womb of Uncle Sam.

00:28:13 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You mentioned, Spider-Man. Maybe the movie that most reflects our own ambivalence now about violence and heroism is The Odyssey. I don't know if you saw it, but it's—

00:28:24 Katie S. Sanders: [I haven't] actually seen it yet, but actually someone got on the— with me the other day, me and Nick, and they said, I just wanna say, I think that, Peter Ortiz was like Odysseus. And then they're, like, kinda going on this whole thing, and I thought it was really interesting, that they weren't— [unclear] bought into, you know, Matt Damon or whoever.

00:28:41 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I don't know. I think Matt Damon, at least in The Odyssey, is presented as someone full of regret and sadness rather than I mean, he is a heroic figure, but the heroism is almost— it's presented in an apologetic way.

00:28:55 Katie S. Sanders: Right.

00:28:57 Andrew Keen: Katie, a few years ago, I had a novelist on the show, Kristin Beck— Mhmm— who specializes in World War Two novels. And she suggested that World War Two for writers like herself, for fiction writers, remains so seductive because it enables them to write about good and evil. Is that also true for this book? It's a nonfiction book that it enabled you to write about good and evil? I mean, I'm not sure how much you write in Ortiz's War—

00:29:31 Katie S. Sanders: A lot.

00:29:32 Andrew Keen: About the Nazis and the evil. Because to have an Ortiz, you also need Nazis.

00:29:36 Katie S. Sanders: You need the stakes of— and you have, you know, a couple days before Ortiz makes this, you know, decision to surrender. He, is clearly observing a town that has been leveled as a result of having people like himself pass through it. So, yeah, I mean, you have, not only did I write about this, but I felt it. You know, this is my grandfather's— what remained of his plane when it was shot down on May 6.

00:30:01 Andrew Keen: Katie's waving a remarkable photo. For people who are just listening, Katie, they may not be able to see it.

00:30:07 Katie S. Sanders: I'm sorry. Yeah. It's a—

00:30:09 Andrew Keen: You might describe the photo for our audio audience.

00:30:12 Katie S. Sanders: Of, a forest in France where, you know, these eight American airmen who were coming, not with bombs, but with spy supplies really to drop to the resistance were shot down. And so, yeah, I think it's very easy to I think part of my, I gravitate towards stories of resistance, probably in part because I'm a product of one. I was— you know, one of my best friends is the granddaughter of the man who— before my grandfather got to Ortiz— after this plane crashed, was shot down, took him into his home. He was a Frenchman. Sorry, he was a Bulgarian-born Jew living in France, who was, you know, pretending to be Catholic and helping, you know, people who he would have absolutely been killed for helping. He would have— was already supposed to be dead. And so, yeah, Jacques Majar [as spoken: name unverified], who— you pulled up that photo earlier? He's an example of someone who in the face of, I think it's not just good and evil, but it's what do you do when evil takes hold? Right? And where do you find hope? And I think for me, I find hope in knowing that this man with his eight-month-old daughter and pregnant wife could still open his home to somebody who was going to make Nazis even more magnetically attracted to his house. So I think like these, it brings a lot of tensions and I think she's right. It brings moments of decision. I also think it's interesting because— I would— no, there's some points where I was like, maybe I'll write a novel because I can just, you know, I can have done the research, but paint it how I want to paint it. But, ultimately, for me, with Ortiz, it's really important to have it be all true because, you know, the truth is this is something Tom Hanks said. He's like, sometimes, like, the truth is so crazy, you wouldn't even believe it. So if you made it a novel, you really wouldn't believe it.

00:32:09 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Although, coming back to the Baerwald book, The Fire Agent, it's about the moral complexity of his grandfather. It's an unbelievable story. His grandfather was German Jewish aristocrat.

00:32:20 Katie S. Sanders: Yep. I wonder why he made—

00:32:22 Andrew Keen: —it a novel. IG Farben and did a deal with the Americans to get to America. He revealed a lot about Japanese cities, which enabled the firebombing of many of their great cities, and he never seemed to quite get over it. Did— what was Ortiz's relationship like with France? Was he— did he have a particular— I mean, he was born in New York to an American mother and a French-born Spanish father. Did he think of himself? I mean, he obviously thought of himself as American, but did he have a special love of France?

00:32:59 Katie S. Sanders: He had a special love of the French Foreign Legion. And, again, you think of the French Foreign Legion as a you know, if you're studying in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, it was a place where you could go to reinvent yourself. Sometimes that meant you were a criminal, sometimes it meant you were escaping your past. And Ortiz, again, he was like a beat-to-your-own-drum quirky character in a sense. But he could also operate like he was a circus performer and he was, a lion tamer, quite literally.

00:33:28 Andrew Keen: Wow, that's interesting.

00:33:29 Katie S. Sanders: Yeah. And again, that sort of speaks to that, like the thrill seek, like, you have to, like, you know, be a little bit like amygdala is different than mine to, like, you know, have that be your profession. But he— yeah. Again, it sort of all sounds made up. I think the French Foreign Legion had his heart. Because he said, you know, it was tough, it was rough. I came to like it. I even came to love it. And that challenge is kind of like that Olympic athlete thing where you just like to get to like, he is kind of almost addicted to it. What's also really interesting is that, so again, in this culminating final World War Two mission that really is the climax of the book, Operation Union II— that's when Ortiz meets my grandpa— he's on a mission that— it's an inter-Allied mission. There's Brits, there's French people. The second mission, Union II, is his mission. He's leading for the OSS. He recruits Marines, who he knows, because they, you know, were at Parris Island— as his parachute instructor— back when he showed up to boot camp as an enlisted Marine after having been in the French Foreign Legion and sort of blew them all away. So he meets these guys back in, you know, again, 1944 OSS spaces in England. And he says, well, I'm gonna go on this mission. You're jump-trained. You know, he recruits them to do it with them. I bring this up because the one non-Marine he recruits for the seven-man mission, is, Francis Coolidge. And Francis Coolidge is also a, you know, blue eyed, blue blood. He was a Harvard dropout who is the great-great-great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson. And what did Francis Coolidge do after he dropped out of Harvard? He went and joined the French Foreign Legion. So both of them, I think, saw the fight even more than, like, the love of France. It was like the love of what it stands for. The French Foreign Legion was also, like, you know, sort of had a reputation for, alright, they take these, like, enlisted, non-French people to be bossed around by French officers, and to do the dirty work of, you know, maintaining the French empire. But I think both Ortiz and Coolidge, came to really, you know, become the soldiers and the warriors that they become in the French Foreign Legion and that liberty, equality, brotherhood was a message that they both gravitated towards. Ortiz, you know, went back and spent time in France, I think. But I don't think he was like the, you know, a Francophile to the extreme or, like, only, you know— Yeah.

00:36:05 Andrew Keen: And I mean, he was on the ground, so he saw both sides of France, the heroic side of the resistance, but also the many collaborators. Finally, we did a show with the great British historian Richard Overy. He's [as spoken: "You've"] written many books about the Second World War. And the conversation in part was about whether the Second World War had ended with, of course, the war now in Ukraine with the increasing hostility with Russia, with one kind of war or another preoccupying us. Do you think in a sense, I mean, from this book, World War Two still hasn't ended? And what does this kind of book do? Does it help close the door on World War Two, or does it somehow keep it ajar?

00:37:00 Katie S. Sanders: I would like to think that Nick and my book will have that sweeping of an effect of, you know, systemically, changing how people perceive history. I mean, I think the type of warfare that this book is chronicling is a type of warfare that's pretty uniquely World War Two. And I think it's also another reason that you see a lot of these romantic, portrayals Again, World War Two has a lot going for it in terms of, like, why the media gravitates towards it, why writers like myself, find it so compelling. I mean, now it's like not as interesting to watch people, like, communicate on cell phones about you know, like, you think of the couriers, all these, like, roles in World War Two, where there's, you know, the stakes are made very high by the, you know, technology of the time being the technology of the time. You have, like, the early radios and you have, you know, carrier pigeons that are being dropped from the planes. My grandfather was flying. They literally dropped pigeons to, you know, bring messages. So things like that, like, just, you know, drone warfare. I think we've closed the chapter of— just like World War One was trench warfare, like, that's not what we're looking at in World War Two. I think what's really interesting about like you brought up a Navy SEAL earlier, who— you know, the lineage of the Navy SEALs connects back exactly. I don't want to say his title is— [unclear]— Navy SEAL Webb. Without—

00:38:32 Andrew Keen: Brandon Webb.

00:38:33 Katie S. Sanders: Yes. There we go. But, he—

00:38:35 Andrew Keen: And he was a famous sniper as well as a Navy SEAL.

00:38:38 Katie S. Sanders: And their lineage does trace back to, you know, the OSS. And when you think of Special Operations Command today and MARSOC or whatever, capabilities we have, you're looking at Wild Bill Donovan's vision for a group of Americans that comes together with these special, you know, skills and tactics. But I connect this to Ukraine because I was just in France with some Marines, for the eighty-second anniversary of Ortiz's Operation Union II. And, ironically and amazingly, these Marines were coming from Germany where they're stationed, which, you know, doing a World War Two thing with Marines from Germany and France is just, like, beautifully, poetic. And one of them works— He's in the reserves and he works for a nonprofit that helps bring basically deliver supplies to Ukraine, via drones. And my grandfather, the one who I showed the picture of his crash, right, who was shot down. His plane was painted black to blend into the darkness. Like he was a pilot on this hulking B-24 Liberator that is really hard to fly. We don't have to do that anymore. Right? And I don't think we need to romanticize that. There's nothing romantic about, you know, almost getting killed, in a giant, you know, hulking warbird. So Peter Ortiz rescues my grandpa in that moment. But you don't have that same story anymore. You have the story of drones. And so this friend, this Marine was talking about how he thought it was really important to visit Ukraine. And he had just visited Ukraine and, you know, is again a Marine, who in a civilian life is working with this nonprofit, to get aid to Ukraine. And I think just dropping aid from the sky— not just— but that it didn't have the— [unclear]— it was worth it to go, to take the risks that come with going to Ukraine for him to be able to see and connect with who he was helping. And so I just think it's— we're entering a stage of how wars are fought. That is, you know, in some ways there are parallels, there's shadow wars, there's, you know, a lot of behind the scenes stuff. But there's also just a much bigger disconnect in the human element. In some cases, that's really great. I'm glad that we don't have to have as many pilots be shot down. And in other cases, I think we sort of forget what's happening and, who's on the other side of it.

00:41:10 Andrew Keen: Well, maybe Second World War has ended, which is one good reason why you should pick up Ortiz's War, the remarkable true story of OSS saboteur, Peter J. Ortiz. It's out today. It's co-written by my guest, Katie S. Sanders and Nicholas Reynolds, very distinguished war historian. Katie, congratulations on the book, and lovely to talk to you.

00:41:34 Katie S. Sanders: Thank you so much.

00:41:35 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I think, you've done great credit, especially to your grandfather.

00:41:40 Katie S. Sanders: Oh, thanks so much, Andrew. I'm sure he and Ortiz would be kind of mortified that we're bringing the stories of, you know, behind-the-scenes covert warfare into, the spotlight. But I also think it's— that's— heroes don't brag and that, by illuminating what they do, we can, you know, hopefully learn.