It was 1936 when Bavarian-born August Furst and his family arrived in Los Angeles from New York City. They bought a hillside orange grove on a winding dirt road and built their Old Vienna Gardens Restaurant. Their timing couldn’t have been worse. By 1936, the Great Depression already had a stranglehold on most Americans. Locals were suspicious of outsiders - people escaping the Dust Bowl, Mexico, and Europe. While Adolf Hitler was terrorizing people in Germany, the German-American Bund was active in Los Angeles. Its goal was to turn the U.S. into a Nazi state. Citizens became the eyes and ears of the government. It wasn't long before people began reporting August Furst to the police and the FBI - they were certain he was a German spy, a former officer in the German army. They told of secret Bund meetings there, that illegal radios were transmitting to German U-boats, that there was a cave being used as an arsenal, that armed guards with vicious German shepherd dogs patrolled the area, and much more. Furst later built a Moorish-style castle on the hill behind the restaurant, and soon there were rumors of tunnels connecting them. Some say Hitler, himself, was a guest. The Old Vienna Gardens was sold in the ‘70s and became an Italian restaurant and then a Mexican restaurant before it emerged as the beautifully restored Villa Terraza.