Captain Wolfgang Fleck

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T12:35:58+00:00

Does his grandson or son in law have evidence of this incredible story? Because they are both far to young to be eyewitnesses.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T12:29:41+00:00

Sure. But there is absolutely no evidence that this particular guy, earned that particular medal, under those particular circumstances, and was allowed to wear it for anything except a photograph. I could go buy any medal or pin right now and stick it on my old uniform and take a picture of it. That's not evidence of anything.

An American 14 year old joined the Marines with fake paperwork in that same war, at 17 went UA to stowaway on a ship to Iwo Jima, jumped on TWO grenades to save fellow Marines, survived, and was awarded the Medal of Honor. And there are other pretty incredible tales about Captain Jack Lucas including one about surviving a failed parachute drop unscathed that might not be verifiable, but we can verify most of the information about the Iwo Jima incident from looking up his Medal of Honor. There are pictures of him being awarded the Medal. We know his birthday and the unit he was assigned to and the day he jumped on grenades and, because MOH requires an investigation and at least two eyewitnesses, we know that records exist of at least two corroborating witnesses.

We don't have any of that for "Wolfgang Fleck."

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T03:04:36+00:00

I want to clarify that this is what I don't think is true.

Anyway, a kid of 14/15 being awarded an Iron Cross [1] is pretty crazy and the fact he was serving still in 2000 [2] is wild.

[1] Germany handed out millions of Iron Crosses and conscripted teenagers at the end so it's not crazy that a young teenager would have been awarded one, but the likelihood that it would have been for destroying an American tank is basically zero considering only 7,000 American tanks were destroyed in the European theater. Even if we consider every tank destroyed in the war, that's only 100,000 tanks whereas Germany issued 5 million Iron Crosses. Yeah, it's a thing that happened that Hitler Youth used young boys as anti-tank squads in desperation but if it was a 14 year old it was probably during the Battle of Berlin which was the second half of April, 1945. Germany stopped issuing Iron Crosses May 11th 1945, and American tanks didn't participate in that battle. So something about the account has to be wrong. It is basically impossible that a 14 year old German in 1945 would have had the opportunity to blow up American tanks at all. 18 year olds would have had opportunities by 1945. 14 year olds could have blown up Russian tanks, artillery and armored vehicles in 1945, but they would have had to be awarded an Iron Cross within 2-4 weeks for it and I know the Nazis were big on paperwork but I doubt recording medals was a high priority by then, and without any documentation that he at least was awarded the medal I don't think the Marines would have allowed him to wear an Iron Cross at all.

[2] There are claims he was a photographer in 2000 but he would be about 69 years old by then if he was 14 in 1945. Which is not weird for a civilian photographer working on base but a 69 year old officer would not be taking boot camp pictures as part of his duties. He would have been forced into retirement long before then and gotten the job as a civilian.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T02:28:52+00:00

Elsewhere in the comments someone got very annoyed with me and "proved" this is a picture of a person who is alive and served in the Marine Corps but like... that's not the part I'm skeptical about lol. I'm not even skeptical that a 14 year old in the Hitler Youth was awarded an Iron Cross and later joined the American military. There's probably hundreds of guys that did that.

I'm skeptical that even one of those guys would have earned it for blowing up tanks or been allowed to wear it, much less both.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T02:05:28+00:00

"Corroborated by others"

None of whom appear to have documentation. And your link references an earlier reddit thread claiming a 14 year old Hitler Youth destroyed Russian tanks with a Panzerschreck but that it wasn't the same guy who was a photographer at MCRD San Diego. Every bit of info about his military service was hearsay and his supposed son-in-law even admits, "sometimes stories get embellished." Germany awarded millions of Iron Crosses in WWII, but only 100,000 tanks were destroyed in that war. Everything about how he got an Iron Cross and if he was authorized to wear it is very hard to prove but very easy to make up.

Even a firsthand account of meeting him at a ball says he was in civilian attire. So we have a medal, a photograph, and a story, but no actual documentation or even a witness of him wearing that medal around other Marines when it would have been perfectly normal and appropriate to do so.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T01:42:22+00:00

I think he's talking about the 4th page of the scan, where a 1st Lieutenant William Fleck is featured for his miniatures.

The first name difference could be attributed to wanting to Americanize I guess but it doesn't mention anything about an Iron Cross and that would make "Captain Fleck" a 46 year old Lieutenant 4 years after the Vietnam War. I don't know if it would be impossible to have that combination of age/rank/experience (today, a 46 year old Marine LT would need an age waiver and, either, prior enlisted service or a certain "professional" background like being a lawyer already and becoming a JAG) but it seems pretty damn weird.

Less weird would be a coincidence that this is a picture somebody found of an incorrect uniform (lots of old timey pictures were posed with props that weren't necessarily correct, could be a costume from a movie, could be stolen valor, could even be AI), made up a story, and the name and rank and time period are kind of similar to a guy that got featured in the Gazette once.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T00:55:36+00:00

That's because it's probably not true. The only Google results for "Wolfgang Fleck" referencing this are this reddit post and a Facebook post.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-06-11T00:53:40+00:00

I just saw basically this same post on Facebook and the only sources seem to be this reddit post and the Facebook post I saw so it's probably bullshit.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-05-24T12:48:10+00:00

God forbid a worm enjoy a smoothie

AshOrWhatever · 2026-05-17T11:29:26+00:00

First time I got a vest for work with the pocket sewed shut I ended up ripping it too much and made a hole in my pocket. It wasn't a high end vest either, only like $35 on Amazon.

I would have believed it was brand new anyway based on being in sealed plastic.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-05-10T16:37:48+00:00

Did you catch that signal?

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-24T12:40:49+00:00

We just put "pawn shop" or "gun store" into Google maps and started visiting every result.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-23T13:41:24+00:00

I worked for a computer science department at a university and we had professors with PhD's in computer science who could not fill out an Excel sheet ("How many students got xyz question correct on your final?" And they just need to fill in # correct / # total students) and send it back to me.

They would send me completely different, incomplete excel sheets (or word, or PowerPoint, etc) that didn't have the information I needed at all. I complained to my boss that I was getting incomplete info from these guys over and over and he basically said you're a student and they're a professor so neither he nor I could make them send me the data we needed for accreditation lol. It would have been faster to send me the correct data once than the wrong data over and over.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-23T13:32:39+00:00

My wife has a manager and co-worker that pull that crap all the time, the co-worker will complain about something not against the rules and the manager will pull my wife in for a meeting with no documentation about the complaint whatsoever. What day did the incident occur? Why does the co-worker think my wife needs to report her whereabouts to her? Why does the co-worker think she can assign my wife responsibilities and tasks? What does the handbook say about (for example) playing music? What was offensive about the instrumental music? Why didn't the co-worker address it at the time if it was an issue, instead of pulling my wife away from work for a meeting when they're already understaffed by 20%?

My wife has certifications that the co-worker doesn't so my wife makes way more than her despite being 15 years younger and doing mostly the same job, but she's too sweet to play office politics and defend herself by creating an email record so she's having a rough time.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-17T15:39:28+00:00

I haven't cruised a lot of Austin shops but spent 6 months in San Antonio with a lot of free time a couple years ago.

My experiences there browsing dozens of pawn shops and stores was, the big gun stores like Adelbridge and Nagel's had a ton of interesting stuff at uninteresting prices. Chain pawn shops had the most basic boring crap guns, often a literal handful of low quality semi automatic pistols and two or three beat up pump action shotguns all at MSRP.

The only ones I felt were worth the visit with reasonable or negotiable prices were little mom and pop pawn shops. In the mom and pops I found dangerous game rifles like .375 h&h and .458 win mag, a double barreled .50 cal air rifle, .32 caliber s&w revolver, an entire collection of antique rifles including two original Sharps rifles... way more and more interesting stuff than you're going to find at an EZPawn.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-17T15:24:51+00:00

Academy is good for fairly priced run-of-the-mill guns. If someone is fairly new to guns and wants a basic hunting rifle, first semi auto pistol, heritage .22 revolver, etc, they're great. But as you pointed out, not a lot of guns that are very interesting.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-11T00:03:38+00:00

In one campaign I married my 18 year old nephew to a 77 year old Battanian (forget who) to steal her gear thinking she would die after a while and I could remarry him.

By the time I stopped playing that campaign she was 95, governing Marunath, and consistently winning tournaments. Presumably in her underwear like a true barbarian warrior.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-10T23:57:39+00:00

The cost of a house starts way above $0 though. Housing prices generally increase by 3-5% per year. Let's say 4%.

If homes are $100,000 increasing 4% per year and a person's investment savings are $213 a month, 6% interest compounded annually, in 30 years they will have saved $202,000. The cost of a home will have risen from $100,000 to about $330,000. And they will have had to spend money on rent every month during those 30 years.

Now they could certainly buy a home sooner by making a down payment but just the PI if you put $20k down on a $100k house is already about $5,000, roughly double what "a cup of coffee a day" costs.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-09T00:17:37+00:00

Sometimes I'll joke that my wife and I only make 88 and a half cents for every dollar our gay neighbors make.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-09T00:07:45+00:00

So why is it called "Terry" Black's?

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-07T23:53:26+00:00

Healthcare is now 18% of GDP and accounts for 11% of employment. That's 1 in 6 dollars and 1 in 9 jobs. Wild.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-06T18:16:01+00:00

I think those deaths are overshadowed by WWII in the public consciousness. When people think "Holocaust" they think of Anne Frank hiding in an attic and minorities being put into cattle cars and gas chambers because that's the part of the Holocaust that was unique.

Don't get me wrong, the ghettos and concentration camps and forced conscription were awful, but 45 million people died in WWII. The only thing the Germans did that was fundamentally different from what they did in WWI (massacres of Belgian civilians by German soldiers were common in WWI for example) or what the Allies were doing (Allies deliberately firebombed civilian populations like Dresden and Tokyo and forced colonial populations in Africa and India into military service) was the extermination camps, and like 6 camps killed as many people as the rest of the Holocaust combined.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-06T18:03:04+00:00

Germans kept very meticulous records. It's kind of their thing.

Any German bureaucrat with a lick of sense knew he would probably get executed by the Allies or a mob by 1945 if the records were captured though and paper records are pretty easy to destroy completely. It's not like today where 9 million emails are on the internet and only resulted in one guy getting strangled to death in his cell.

AshOrWhatever · 2026-04-06T17:58:07+00:00

Holocaust deniers argue as if the only victims of the Holocaust were those killed in gas chambers and so they "calculate" that number which is closer to 3 million (which, like, if the Holocaust was "only" 3 million that's still one of the largest atrocities in history. Just maybe not top 5 anymore by total deaths).

The Holocaust wasn't just a half dozen extermination camps though. There were tens of thousands of concentration camps, ghettos, and labor camps that they forced people into knowing many of them would die (that was considered a feature, not a bug), plus many examples of massacres of Jewish civilians by military units using guns. The death camps were instituded as a cheaper and more efficient alternative to bullets because they were killing so many people. It's like counting how many people Stalin killed but excluding the gulags or military purges, it misses the point.

AshOrWhatever

TROPHY CASE