In 1906, an unemployed German shoemaker named Wilhelm Voigt decided he had endured enough poverty and bureaucracy. Having spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of prison for petty theft, he could not even secure official residence papers to find honest work.
Instead of filing more paperwork, he went to second-hand pawn shops across Berlin.
Voigt pieced together a ragged, mismatched uniform of a Prussian infantry captain. On October 16, wearing his makeshift officer tunic, he strolled through the streets until he spotted a detachment of four guardsmen marching back to their barracks.
In the militaristic German Empire, a captain's uniform commanded unquestioning obedience. Voigt snapped a crisp salute, barked an order in a harsh aristocratic tone, and told the squad that he had received secret imperial instructions from the Kaiser to commandeer them immediately.
Without asking for written orders or identity papers, the armed guards clicked their heels, formed up behind him, and followed. Along the way, he flagged down six more infantrymen, commandeering them on the spot as well.
With his personal platoon of ten fully armed soldiers, the fake captain hopped on a train to the nearby town of Köpenick.
Upon arrival, he marched his troops straight into the town hall, placed the building on military lockdown, and ordered the local police chief to secure the perimeter against imaginary conspirators. He then arrested the mayor and the town treasurer for alleged corruption, confiscated the municipal treasury containing over four thousand marks in cash, and wrote out an official receipt signed with his former prison director's name.
Voigt ordered two horse-drawn carriages to transport the bewildered mayor and treasurer under armed guard to the central military headquarters in Berlin for questioning.
While the real soldiers escorted their hostages away, Voigt walked calmly to the train station, changed back into civilian clothes in a public restroom, and vanished into the crowd with the cash.
When the military authorities in Berlin realized what had happened, the story blew up into an international sensation. Voigt was caught ten days later, but the German public found the stunt so hilarious that Kaiser Wilhelm II pardoned him personally, amused that his people respected military uniforms so much they would surrender an entire town without a second thought.
Conquering an entire city hall, arresting the mayor, and walking away with the city treasury using nothing but thrifted clothes and an aggressive tone is the greatest social engineering heist in history. That wraps up Day 15 of Crazy History Facts!
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